Late Night Cable Horror: College Coeds vs. Zombie Housewives (2015, dir. Dean McKendrick)

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Sylvester Stallone, Russ Meyer, Jill Clayburgh, Ron Jeremy, David Duchovny, Abel Ferrara, Frankie Cullen, Catherine Bell, Zalman King, Lloyd Kaufman, Roger Ebert, Ed Wood, Jacqui Holland, Andy Warhol, Jim Wynorski, and many others have worked in erotica, softcore, and/or hardcore. That’s all I have to say about the stupidity that happened today.

Since this movie didn’t have the courtesy to start with a usable title card and I’m still refusing to resort to black boxes, I am beginning where the movie actually starts. We have a black screen and hear a woman say, “What the hell is wrong with you bitches?!” Then we cut to cheerleaders, such as that one played by Erika Jordan, beating up the “zombies”. I put zombies in quotations because they are about as much zombies as the zombies were in the Pierre Kirby movie Zombie vs. Ninja (1989). By that I mean people moving stiff as a board and that’s about it. You’d think they’d go for the obvious joke here, but they don’t.

Funny fact: According to the credits, Erika was the fight choreographer for this movie.

We are now taken back three days so the movie can introduce us to our main couple.

For those of you who have seen Invisible Centerfolds, yes, that is Frankie Dell. Yes, he once again plays a scientist. And yes, that does mean this is a wacky Dean McKendrick movie like Invisible Centerfolds. Just thankfully they don’t dress Frankie Dell in such a way that he becomes porno Bill Nye. However, this is one where they have music that sure sounds similar to Santana’s Smooth. They don’t directly rip it off, but if you watch this, then you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

The setup here is that Jennings (Frankie Dell) isn’t getting laid at home by his wife any more. Being a scientist he decides that if men get Viagra, then surely he can come up with something similar to help out women. Of course he’s as bright as the guy in the first part of Pietro Germi’s The Birds, The Bees, and the Italians (1966). By that I mean he just leaves his friend with his wife to go to work not even thinking there might be something going on there. Of course there is.

There’s a documentary called Aroused (2013) where the director Deborah Anderson interviews numerous female porn stars. I don’t recommend it. It’s self-serving and the cinematography is headache inducing. However, an interesting piece of information slipped out from one of the ladies. She mentioned that people usually don’t realize that it’s actually harder on the guys. Of course that wasn’t on the agenda so it wasn’t followed up on. I mention it because several times in this movie you can see the guys go into a Buddhist-like meditation to keep going for the scene.

Now we go to the lab and meet Jennings’ assistant Marilyn (Mary Carey). Apparently, they have brought in rats, monkeys, rabbits, raccoons, chipmunks, and beavers to test out this stuff on. There is actually a payoff later in the movie for them stopping to list those animals.

Mary decides to be a guinea pig herself and drinks the stuff even though there are apparently some early signs of a secondary effect. She pretends that it works and has sex with Jennings. Of course he does it in the name of science. By the way, here’s what I mean by a Buddhist-like trance state.

That is not the face of a happy man. That’s the face of either a man who can’t go off at all or is desperately trying to work in a symbiotic relationship with it rather than a parasitic one. People may tell you myths about it, but that it has a mind of it’s own is not one of them. It doesn’t control you, but it sure does its own thing.

However, it’s not all fun and games. After Jennings leaves the room, that secondary effect kicks in, but only for a moment.

She acts like she is partially possessed by a spirit. She bumps into a few things before regaining control. I love that one of the things she bumps into is a bottle of the very pain killer I take for fibromyalgia.

Meanwhile, back at what I’m pretty sure was Atomic Hotel Erotica (2014), we meet two of the housewives. That’s Tracy (Karlie Montana) and Carrie (Christine Nguyen). Jennings convinces them to have a drink, which of course spikes with the experimental drug. Seeing as they have no reaction whatsoever, he figures Marilyn was lying to him.

After tennis so that the guy boning Jennings wife can rub it in how about much better his sex life is, we finally meet the “coeds” of the title.

By that I mean cheerleaders who have apparently moved in next door. Guess it could be worse. Could be vampires who suddenly become your neighbors like in Erotic Vampires of Beverly Hills. Oh, and yes, they are terrible cheerleaders. And that’s coming from someone who suffered through the last two Bring It On movies without having seen any of the others. That is definitely Erika Jordan in the center. You can always tell it’s her. She’s the porn star who looks like she went back in time to 1915 and was branded by Sessue Hayakawa in The Cheat (1915). Course while he’s over there getting googly eyed at cheerleaders, Jennings’ formula kicks in.

After they are done giving each other thorough cleanings and inspections for lumps, we cut back to the lab and Marilyn receives a call. I have to mention that they even bothered to put in a quick line here that Marilyn has no boyfriend. I can’t tell you how nice it is when any movie that prominently features sex provides a reason for it to occur. Even if it’s something wacky like a potion. He has the bad news that the stuff she drank does after awhile induce a trance-like state. This is going on as we crosscut to the couples playing tennis when…

zombie housewives!

Then Erika leaves two of the other cheerleaders to go meet with their coach. Then as Bring It On: Quest For The Mighty Spirit Stick taught me, cheerleaders do need to limber up. Yeah, that is a weak excuse, but these movies often do try to have a reasonably equal mix of both girl-on-girl as well as guys with girls.

Some stuff happens now that doesn’t matter. But we do get this line from Jennings’ wife.

Could be worse. Could be the potion that turns you into a gorilla Frankie Dell made in Invisible Centerfolds.

Then we get a call to Steve played by Mike Gaglio. By the way, among other things, Mike Gaglio is in the religious movie God’s Club (2015).

He’s not having a good time over there. According to him he’s “got a roomful of killer zombie rabbits over here.

I got squirrels going after raccoons. The rats have overtaken the commissary. I don’t even want to tell you what the monkeys are up to!” But he does comfort her that he has someone working on an antidote.

Back home, Frankie Dell has a short scene that once again reminds us that he really doesn’t belong in these movies. Frankie Cullen could make a career in these films if he wants to, but Frankie Dell should jump ship ASAP. He is just a comedian. Heck, one of his earliest roles was as a voice on Daria. He doesn’t belong here at all.

Then we go to Andrew Espinoza Long who played G.W. Bushwhacker in Bikini Model Mayhem and plays Hank who is married to Carrie hanging out with the cheerleaders. This leads exactly where you think it does. I just wonder a bit of how the girl on the bottom is getting any fun out of the situation.

Now we get a little zombie action out of Marilyn.

Then Carrie complains to Marilyn about her husband hanging out with those cheerleaders. Of course this means Carrie needs to give Marilyn her annual checkup.

After Carrie points out the obvious to Jennings that the cheerleaders are closer to his martial problems than any stupid formula, we finally have our stand down between the college coeds and zombie housewives.

It’s kind of funny, but pretty stupid. I was much more interested in Mike Gaglio who shows up in the lab with the antidote. He’s been dealing with “killer zombie raccoons, and killer zombie squirrels.” I wanted to see that!

They do get the antidote to the girls in time and Jennings wife breaks up with him. You know, it is appropriate that I review these movies and Hallmark movies cause aside from, of all movies today, Carnal Wishes is the only one I remember that doesn’t have a super happy ending like Hallmark movies do. Even Jennings ends up with Judy (Erika Jordan) six months later after losing his wife. He is still up to his experimental hijinks too.

This is not as good as Bikini Model Mayhem or Carnal Wishes. See those first, then come back for this. It’s Dean McKendrick in fine form. Also, Frankie Dell is a funny man. I strongly hope he starts showing up in other kinds of movies. It’s kind of sad that since he has done some of these films he most likely can’t make the jump to a Disney Channel show. He would make for a very humorous supporting character on one of those shows as a bumbling scientist at the kids’ school. Oh, well.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Blossoms In The Dust (dir by Mervyn LeRoy)

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that up until the year 1936, if a child was born to unwed parents, it was common practice to actually put the word “illegitimate” on that child’s birth certificate? As you all know, I am perhaps the biggest history nerd in the world and, while I knew that there was once a huge stigma associated with being born outside of marriage, I did not know just how institutionalized that stigma was.

I’m also proud to say that my home state of Texas — the state that all the yankees love to bitch about — was the first state to ban the use of the word “illegitimate” on birth certificates. This was largely due to the efforts of Edna Gladney, an early advocate for the rights of children. Along with starting a home for orphans and abandoned children in Ft. Worth, Edna also started one of the country’s first day care centers for the children of working mothers.

That’s right — there was a time when day care was itself a revolutionary concept.

I have TCM to thank for my knowledge of Edna Gladney, largely because TCM broadcast a 1941 biopic called Blossoms in The Dust. According to Wikipedia, the film was a highly fictionalized look at Edna’s life but, to be honest, I would have guessed that just from watching the movie. While Blossoms In The Dust gets the important things right (and it deserves a lot of credit for sympathetically dealing with the cultural stigma of being born to unwed parents at a time when it was an even more controversial subject that it is today), it’s also full of scenes that are pure Hollywood.

In real life, Edna knew firsthand about the challenges faced by children of unwed parents because she was one herself. Apparently, at the time, that was going too far for even a relatively progressive film like Blossoms In The Dust so, in Blossoms, Edna (played by Greer Garson) is given an adopted sister named Charlotte (Marsha Hunt). When the parents of Charlotte’s fiancée discover that she was born outside of marriage, they refuse to allow Charlotte to marry their son. In response, Charlotte commits suicide.

In real life, Edna was born in Wisconsin but, following the death of her stepfather, moved to Ft. Worth to stay with relatives. Edna was 18 at the time and eventually met and married a local businessman named Sam Gladney. In Blossoms in The Dust, Edna is already an adult when she first meets Sam (played by Walter Pidgeon, who played Greer Garson’s husband in a number of films) and they meet in Wisconsin. It’s only after Charlotte dies that Edna marries Sam and it’s only after they’re married that Edna moves to Texas. Whereas the real life Edna had relatives in Texas, the film’s Edna is literally a stranger in a strange land.

That said, the film is actually rather kind to my home state. The film spend a lot of time contrasting the judgmental snobs up north with the more straight-forward people who Edna meets after she moves to Ft. Worth and it’s occasionally fun to watch. (Of course, I would probably feel differently if I was from Wisconsin.)

Blossoms In The Dust was nominated for best picture but it lost to How Green Was My Valley. Greer Garson was nominated for best actress but she lost to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion. However, just one year later, Garson would win an Oscar for her performance in the 1942 best picture winner, Mrs. Miniver. Incidentally, her husband in that film was played by none other than Walter Pidgeon.

Ultimately, Blossoms in the Dust is typical of the type of movies that you tend to come across while watching films that were nominated for best picture. Some best picture nominees were great. Some were terrible. But the majority of them were like Blossoms in the Dust, well-made, respectable, and just a little bit bland. Blossoms in the Dust is not bad but it’s also not particularly memorable. If, like me, you’re a student of history and social mores, Blossoms in the Dust has some historical interest but, when taken as a piece of cinema, it’s easy to understand why it’s one of the more forgotten best picture nominees.

Hallmark Review: The Good Witch’s Garden (2009, dir. Craig Pryce)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

This is actually the first Hallmark movie I’ve watched on DVD. I only mention that for others who might watch it on their computer using VLC like I did because it makes taking screenshots easy. This movie’s particular DVD really gave me trouble and I had to force it to bypass the menu in order to get it to play. Sadly, the captions on the DVD were not very good so if that’s important to you then I’m sorry. They drop out at times and get wonky. At least that was my experience.

This now means there is only one more Good Witch film for me to see. That would be The Good Witch’s Gift (2010). If I didn’t notice it before, then I definitely did this time after recently watching Garage Sale Mystery: Guilty Until Proven Innocent. That one introduced Good Witch style subplots to it that I really didn’t like and should be taken out from future installments. I remember them being in, I believe, all of these Good Witch films. I have never watched the TV Show, but I get the strong feeling that this works far better as a TV Show than it did as a yearly series of films. The main plots and subplots are fine for a TV Show and even if they are completely self-contained to a single episode almost always would add to a character in some way. However, when I watch these Good Witch movies I just wanna scream: “Please have a single self-contained plot that all of the characters are involved in and which moves them all forward to a state that we will pick up in the next film.” The Signed, Sealed, Delivered movies do just that. I’m theorizing here, but that’s probably why that went from a show to a series of movies and the Good Witch franchise did the opposite. Let’s talk about the movie now.

The movie starts off and we have Martha Tinsdale (Catherine Disher) once again in full busybody mode. Luckily, she starts to come around by the end of this installment. She is joined by her friend Gwen (Elizabeth Lennie). I love the drastic difference in their faces here. Gwen is certainly interested in Grey House, but she acts like a reasonable person. Martha actually has some priceless nonsense that she comes up with here to say. First off though, yes, just like For The Love Of Grace, this one also prominently features a Nikon camera. The only other product I ever recall showing up in a bunch of Hallmark movies was the Wii and once the Wii U.

Anyways, they are there to scout out a location for the bicentennial of their town called Middleton. They decide to take a look at Cassie’s (Catherine Bell) house since it is 200 years old. Martha bumps into a creeper plant on the ground, freaks out, and runs to Jake Russell (Chris Potter) who is the top cop in town. He also happens to be dating Cassie.

There is a brief little period here where they quickly reintroduce us to Cassie, George (Peter MacNeill), and Lori (Hannah Endicott-Douglas). This time they tone down the she’s a little girl, get it, she’s a little girl, can we remind you one more time she’s a little girl stuff, but without changing the character. It’s just the way they present her. She fits in better this time around than she did in the first film.

Now we get probably the best part of this movie. Martha shows up at Jake’s office and among other stupid things, she actually alludes that Cassie is growing pot. She says she suspects some of her plants are “illegal”.

Can’t think of something else reasonable that she could be referring to in talking to a police officer and using that particular word. She also talks about this vine on the ground that she bumped into like she just saw the movie The Crawlers (1993). She seems to really believe that Cassie may have plants that are like the roots in that movie which will reach out to kill you. I think Chris Potter’s face gets across how hilariously ridiculous these lines are.

Disher does a great job delivering them. I just love her line that Cassie may be growing illegal plants. I can’t get over that.

Now we kick off the main plot and the subplots. Let’s do the subplots first.

That’s George meeting Gwen. I’m sorry, does that need an explanation?

That’s Lori on the right who has been assigned to do a paper with Jess (Jordy Benattar). However, you can see that Jess has gotten up to flee. For an adult audience the reason is immediately understood. Jess can’t read. Lori doesn’t find this out till a little later. Up till then she thinks Jess is just trying to get her to do all the work, which is understandable. People do that.

That’s Brandon (Matthew Knight) on the right and his two new “friends”. His subplot is these two guys are pushing him around to do something stupid to I guess be initiated into the stupid kids society. It’s similar to the one in the most recent Garage Sale Mystery movie except this time it’s not filled with humorous goofs, lines, and a resolution that had his friends looking like Bill Pullman from Ruthless People (1986). This time Cassie does almost the same thing she did in the first film. She gives him a mirror and just before they do their stupid thing, she shows up causing the item she gave him to come into play.

With the subplots going, this guy shows up to be our main attraction.

He’s Nick Chasen (Rob Stewart) and he has his eyes set on Grey House. He presents himself as the true heir to the house.

Again, Catherine Bell does the Jadzia Dax thing here. She always comes across as wise and with years of experience, but never appearing in some super state of nirvana above us mere mortals. She definitely has her suspicions, but still needs help and has to work through the situation with Jake and his family. She doesn’t just foresee it all and play along. That would make for a rather bland film in my opinion.

As you know from the later films, he does propose at the end of the movie.

There are a couple of little goofs, but nothing worth mentioning. Most of it seems to have been shot around Hamilton, Ontario. That’s really it in that department. I did not see the goof listed on IMDb about Martha’s shoes. Apparently the opening shot shows them as black, but after she goes in the gate of Grey House they are leopard print. Here’s the two shots. I didn’t see it.

With these Good Witch movies there really isn’t much else to talk about except to lay out the plots for you. That’s how these films work.

It’s not as good as the first film. That one felt like it could have been self-contained. This feels like what it is really: the second episode of a TV Show rather than a new film that continues a saga. The acting is good all around as usual. I actually forgot that Matthew Knight was on My Babysitter’s A Vampire. I liked that show.

I recommend this one, but I could tell it was already starting to drop off in quality from the first one more than I would have liked. I want to hear from anyone who has seen the show to tell me if it does seem to work better that way than as an annual TV Movie.

Footnote: Since I brought it up in a past review of a Good Witch movie, let me put it to rest. I did track down the relevant scenes from the one episode Catherine Bell did of Hot Line back in the 1990’s. It’s just really generic 90’s late night erotica. Nothing special or interesting at all. I thought there might be something, but there isn’t. Often when you come across an entry in someone’s filmography that is so different from their usual, then it turns out to be worth seeing if you are a fan of their work. Not here. I would only recommend this for Catherine Bell completionists who must see everything she has ever done. It certainly wasn’t even worth the couple of minutes it took me to find it. The clip I saw from an episode of Dream On that she was on looked like a much more interesting example of her really early work if that’s what you want to see. Just wanted to bring that to a close.

Spies Like Us: THE VENETIAN AFFAIR (MGM 1967)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

Robert Vaughn played superspy Napoleon Solo on TV’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. from 1964 to 1968. The series was inspired by the James Bond craze, filled with outlandish gadgets and evil supervillains. Vaughn’s popularity led to a starring role in THE VENETIAN AFFAIR, a Cold War spy thriller with a much more adult theme. Here, he plays Bill Fenner, ex-CIA agent, now a hard-drinking reporter who gets caught up in international intrigue.

Fenner is sent to Venice after a U.S. diplomat supposedly sets off a bomb at an international nuclear disarmament conference. He soon learns the assignment was arranged by his former CIA boss, “Rosey” Rosenfeld (Edward Asner). Rosey wants to use Fenner to smoke out old flame Sandra Fane (Elke Sommer), a Communist agent with a mysterious link to the bombing. Fenner’s odyssey takes him through double-and-triple crosses in the world of international espionage he once left behind.

Boris Karloff is on hand in…

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Film Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (dir by Burr Steers)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I had high hopes for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the just-released film which, like the novel upon which it is based, attempts to combine Jane Austen and The Walking Dead. The source material was good. The cast — with Lilly James as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Huston as Wickham, and Matt Smith as Parson Collins — was impressive. The trailers looked great, promising a combination of zombies, ornate costumes, and a very British sense of humor. Sadly, however, the ultimate film is a bit of disappointment.

Actually, it’s more than just a bit of a disappointment. It is a HUGE disappointment. To have so much promise and then to turn out so bland — well, it’s enough to make you wonder if maybe zombies have become so common place in popular culture that they’re no longer as interesting as they once were. Don’t get me wrong, as a symbol of the impossibility of escaping death, zombies are great nightmare fuel. But, when you see them in a relatively bloodless PG-13 film like this, you realize that it takes more than just a few random zombies to make an effective horror film.

Plotwise, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is exactly what it says it is. It tells the same basic story as Pride and Prejudice, with the exception being that England is now under siege from zombies, the Bennet sisters have now been trained in how to kill zombies, Mr. Darcy (played by Sam Riley) is now Col. Darcy and he’s an expert at tracking down zombies and killing them, and Wickham is now more than just a cad, he’s a cad who wants to help the undead overthrow the living. As I typed all that out, I realized I was probably making the film sound a lot more fun than it actually is. And really, the movie should be fun but it’s not.

Director Burr Steers never manages to capture the proper tone for telling this story. The satire is never as sharp as it needs to be. The scenes that are meant to pay homage to Austen try a bit too hard to capture Austen’s style without contributing any of her insight and the romance between Elizabeth and Darcy is sabotaged by the fact that Sam Riley and Lilly James had absolutely no chemistry together. The scenes with the zombies are bland, largely because this is a PG-13 rated film and bloodless zombies aren’t particularly scary. A typical episode of The Walking Dead is more graphic than anything you’ll see in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Which is not to say that there aren’t a few moments when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kind of works. It has moments but they’re isolated and they never really come together to build any sort of narrative momentum for the film as a whole. Sam Riley is a bit of a dud as Darcy but Lilly James, Jack Huston, and especially Matt Smith all give good performance. (Smith, in particular, is so good as Collins that I would like to see him play the role in an actual adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.) Early on in the film, there’s a fun scene where the Bennet sisters destroy a horde of zombies and it actually strikes the right balance between comedy and horror. Before that, we get the traditional scene that we get in all Austen adaptations, of the Bennet sisters preparing for a ball and, in between lacing up corsets and discussing whether they will all be able find husbands, they also carefully conceal the daggers and knives that they will be carrying just in case they happen to run into any of the undead. It’s one of the few scenes that suggests what Pride and Prejudice and Zombies could have been if it had only found a consistent tone.

For that matter, I also liked the animated opening credits, which wittily explained how the zombies first appeared in England and, not surprisingly, suggested that it was all the fault of the French. And the film also had a fairly effective scene that shows up in the middle of the end credits and suggested what would might happen if Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 2 is ever put into production.

But ultimately, even those moments that worked only left me frustrated that the rest of the film did not. For all of its potential, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies disappoints.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Sergeant York (dir by Howard Hawks)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1941 film Sergeant York was the American Sniper of its day. A biopic of Alvin York, one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I, Sergeant York was not only a huge box office hit but it was a film that celebrated American patriotism in the type of unabashed fashion that you would never see in a film made today. Though Sergeant York went into production at a time when the United States was officially pursuing a policy of international neutrality, it was released shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and, whether intentionally or not, Sergeant York served as a strong recruiting tool. According to Wikipedia (and we all know that Wikipedia is never wrong), there were reports of young men going straight from the movie to the nearest military recruitment office.

Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours (and running at least 40 minutes too long), Sergeant York is two films in one. The second half of the film deals with the military career of Alvin York (Gary Cooper), a plain-spoken and honest Tennessee farmer who, because of his strong religious beliefs, unsuccessfully attempts to register as a conscientious objector. Forced into the Army, York is, at first, dismissed as a simple-minded hillbilly. (His fellow soldiers are amused to discover that York doesn’t know what a subway is.) However, to the shock of his commanding officers, he proves himself to be an expert marksman. As he explains it, being from the country means that he’s been shooting a rifle his entire life.

On the basis of his skills as a marksman, York is given a promotion but he still says that he refuses to kill. It’s not until his superior officer reminds him of the sacrifices that past Americans have made that York starts to reconsider his position. Then, a gust of wind opens York’s bible to a verse about giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and York realizes that he can go to war and, if need be, he can kill.

And it’s a good thing that he can! Because World War I is heating up and York may be the only guy around with the strength and confidence to single-handedly defeat and capture over 170 German soldiers.

The army section of Sergeant York is predictable but well-done. As you’d expect from a film directed by Howard Hawks, a lot of emphasis is put on how the soldiers work together. York is portrayed not as being super human but instead as just an honest man who is exceptionally good at his job. There’s nothing surprising about the second half of Sergeant York but Hawks keeps the action moving and Cooper gives a good performance.

To be honest, I preferred the first half of the film, which examined York’s life before he joined the Army. When we first meet Alvin York, he drinks too much, he fights too much, and he’s totally irresponsible. It’s not until he falls in love with Gracie Williams (Joan Leslie) that York starts to change his ways. The scenes of York in the backwoods of Tennessee had a lively feel to them and it was enjoyable to see Cooper play a somewhat disreputable character. Cooper seemed to be having fun playing a ne’er-do-well and, in the scenes before York finds God, his bad behavior was a lot of fun to watch.

Considering its success at the box office, it’s not surprising that Sergeant York was nominated for best picture of the year. While Gary Cooper won the Oscar for best actor, the award for Best Picture went to How Green Was My Valley.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Smiling Lieutenant (dir by Ernst Lubitsch)

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched The Smiling Lieutenant, a musical comedy from 1931. I recorded it off of TCM as a part of the 31 Days of Oscar and I have to admit that I really was not expecting much. While I love old movies and I have a special place in my heart for pre-code movies and their obsession with lingerie and suggestive winks, I was concerned that The Smiling Lieutenant was a musical that was made at a time when the Hollywood studios were still figuring out how to use sound to tell a story. I worried that the film would be one of those extremely creaky and overly theatrical movies that you always run the risk of coming across whenever you explore the cinema of the early 30s.

But you know what? I was pleasantly surprised. The Smiling Lieutenant is an undeniably old-fashioned film and yes, there were a few scenes that felt a bit too stagey. Compared to what modern audiences are used to, some of the acting does seem stilted. This is a film that will demand a bit of adjustment on the part of the viewer. But, with all that in mind, The Smiling Lieutenant is still an enjoyable little movie.

The story is charmingly simple. In Vienna, Lt. Nikki von Preyn (Maurice Chevalier) is in love with Franzi (Claudette Colbert), the worldly and free-spirited orchestra leader. However, Nikki makes the mistake of winking at Franzi while in the presence of Princess Anna (Miriam Hopkins). When Anna takes offense, Nikki says that he was only winking because Anna is so beautiful. Anna immediately falls in love with Nikki and demands to marry him. She explains that if Nikki doesn’t marry her, she’ll marry an American suitor which would totally scandalize Vienna.

Doing his patriotic duty, Nikki marries Anna. However, Nikki still longs for the more experienced Franzi and spends his time pining for her. Realizing that her husband is in love with another woman, Anna confronts Franzi and this is exactly where, if this was a modern film, there would be either be a huge cat fight or Anna and Franzi would team up to destroy Nikki. However, since this is a 1931 pre-code film, Franzi realizes that Anna loves Nikki. As a result, Franzi decides to help her boyfriend’s wife win back his interest.

And how does Franzi do this? By giving Anna a makeover! As Franzi explains in song, it’s time for Anna to “jazz up (her) lingerie!”

The Smiling Lieutenant is an entertaining movie. I suppose that many would probably consider it to be the epitome of “fluff” but so what? I imagine that for audiences in 1931, a film like The Smiling Lieutenant provided a nice escape from the Great Depression and isn’t escape one of the best things that a good film can provide? Colbert, Hopkins, and Chevalier all give likable performances and, even 85 years after it was first released, it’s a fun little movie.

The Smiling Lieutenant was a huge box office hit and it was nominated for best picture of the year. However, it lost to Grand Hotel.

Following The Amazon Prime Recommendation Worm #4: High Kick Angels (2014), The Pinkie (2014), The Ravine of Goodbye (2013), Gyeongju (2014)

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

I did make it out of South Korea for three films in Japan, but then was thrown back there. I feel like this is turning into MASH on me.

High Kick Angels (2014, dir. Kazuhiro Yokoyama) – Hmmm…can’t say I have. I unfortunately can say an elementary school girl tried to grab my genitals when I was in the 4th grade, but I don’t think that counts. Well, with a poster like that you might be thinking Sailor Moon.

Maybe Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981)?

Perhaps even Lollipop Chainsaw?

Nope, it’s Die Hard (1988).

Seriously, it’s Die Hard with schoolgirls in a school rather than a tower. It even recreates two scenes very obviously just to make sure you know this. And we have trailer this time!

If you are thinking you probably just saw all the fighting scenes in the movie, then you’re pretty much right. There are a few more, but not many.

The movie starts with some girls filming a zombie movie at a school when I guess no one is there. I really wasn’t sure if this school was abandoned or if everyone else was just on vacation. It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that a girl they admire who knows martial arts shows up for some reason and bad guys show up looking for treasure or something.

The two scenes explicitly recreated are the safe lock bit and the body with writing on it dropped down to the bad guys. The body part is self-explanatory. The lock bit is done by having a little tower that requires several USB sticks which will allow the bad guys to see where this treasure is in the school. Of course the schoolgirls get one of the USB sticks and need to be tracked down. Basically it comes down to the big girl who knows martial arts working with these girls out of a safe room a la Die Hard. Really, what you see in the trailer is what you get besides conversations among the girls about not being very confident, but finding the strength to go kick some ass.

The only scene that really stuck with me is when the big martial arts girl convinces the girl who does ballet dancing that she can curl her toes and use them like a spear. I expect to read about Lisa doing this to someone who liked The Leisure Class any day now.

I really can’t recommend this one. It’s a bit of a letdown.

The Pinkie (2014, dir. Lisa Takeba) – Ever wanted to see a comedy by someone who wants to make a David Cronenberg movie from before his tragic accident when he lost the ability to make good movies while high on whatever Nobuhiko Ôbayashi was on when he made House (1977)? Too bad! Cause director Lisa Takeba essentially did just that with this weird slightly dark and bizarre romantic comedy with echoes of Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988).

The movie is about guy who gets his pinkie cut off. It had something to do with the Yakuza. I learned back in the 90’s thanks to the TV Show The Pretender that they take your finger as punishment. What didn’t happen in The Pretender though is for that finger to wind up in the hands of a crazy stalker girl who then uses it to make a clone of a guy she is obsessed with. Having two of these guys going around made me think of Dead Ringers at the time, but in retrospect it also makes me think of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Air Doll (2009). That’s the one with Doona Bae from Cloud Atlas (2012) playing a blow up sex doll come to life.

Air Doll (2009, dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)

The movie is as wacky as that trailer makes you think, but it also definitely has it’s more Cronenberg-ey dark moments. In particular, the clone finding out it’s a clone and the issues that raises. The real guy is there too and actually uses the clone as sort of slave labor. He even has him prostitute himself as, I hate to use the expression since I’m trans but, a chick with a dick.

Oh, and did you notice the lightning near the end of the trailer around the guy? Yeah, that’s cause the clone shows up like The Terminator in a ball with lightning around him.

The problems with the clone basically start when she makes the clone aware it’s a clone and of course when the real guy shows up. From then on the movie just gets more wacky.

I kind of recommend it. It’s not that great, but I like really bizarre things and Japan is great at them. Plus, the movie is only about an hour long. It’s not going to take up much of your time. Unlike the next movie and the one after that!

The Ravine of Goodbye (2013, dir. Tatsushi Ohmori) – I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I will again, and probably again and again. I used to watch a lot of the established film canon. Basically that’s all I watched from about 2005 to 2012. I mean it’s not normal for someone to just know right off the top their head that Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni was commissioned by 1970’s China to make a documentary about the country, they hated it with a vengeance, and so they basically got Dutch director Joris Ivens to make another one for them. That’s really not a good thing. However, I bring it up cause is this is that kind of movie.

Let me be straightforward cause the movie sure as hell isn’t. The film is about two cops looking into how exactly this couple got together. Turns out he raped her, and neither of them really got over it, so they got together as a couple. There’s also something about a dead kid as well. Honestly, despite what IMDb says, that’s not really important. In my opinion, what the film does is try to reflect the confusion created by trying to follow a story as the facts slowly trickle out in the way its story unravels. The jumping to conclusions before all the information has come in thing. It does this by basically backing it’s way into what I told you in a couple of sentences. However, for me, it felt like the narrative structure was reflecting the experience of being a small child forced to watch Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1982), and then explain it. In other words, watching this was for me like how the children look in Godfrey Reggio’s anti-TV BS propaganda film Evidence (1995).

Actually, in that the kids were supposed to be watching Dumbo (1941). Yeah, right!

If you enjoy films like those of Michelangelo Antonioni, then you might enjoy this. The same probably goes for the next film as well. Amazon Prime doesn’t make these recommendations based on nothing. Just expect a lot of still shots on things that made me think of why I don’t enjoy a majority of Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s films.

Gyeongju (2014, dir. Lu Zhang) –

Wow! That may be the most deceptive trailer I’ve ever seen! It appears to be real, but it’s like a fake trailer that takes Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and makes it look like a romantic comedy. That movie had someone mysteriously disappear. Then a man and a woman wander around drifting towards each other as the architecture/environment around them changes to reflect the state of their characters. It’s the first in his trilogy of alienation. Sound like a romantic comedy?

This movie is about a Korean professor on Asian relations living in China who goes back home for a funeral and basically wanders around with a woman from a tea shop. Sound like a romantic comedy? It isn’t!

That really is the movie. I have a feeling that just like Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (1975) is only fully understood by Russians, this movie is only fully understood by Koreans. I believe the movie is a long mediation on what it’s like for a Korean born person to return home to a place divided in two and in other ways pushes itself away from other parts of Asia as well. The movie reminds you of the conflict with Japan via a Japanese woman who wants to forgive the professor and the tea shop owner for the crimes committed against their country by Japan. Another time a man will ask the professor how long he thinks North Korea will stay in business and flips out when the professor says a century. North Korea potentially attacking is brought up too, but I’m not sure if it’s serious or not. It almost comes across as a joke. Of course technically to the best of my knowledge, South Korea is the only country I’m aware of that is in a constant state of war because I believe they never signed the treaty ending the Korean War. Perhaps that’s why this film seems to evoke Antonioni’s trilogy of alienation with it’s cinematography.

It likes to use still shots of the environment and a lot of pans. There’s at least one 360 degree pan in it. It also breaks the 180 degree rule. It just stops and freezes on a pole in the tea shop for no discernible reason. I think there’s a scene that’s out of order. Also, near the end it appears to flash black for a less than a second. I’m really not sure what to make of that last one.

I would say this film is for cinematic explorers. I won’t say it’s bad, nor recommend it. You know who you are if this is your kind of thing. I’m just telling you as somebody who’s seen quite a few of these sort of movies that you probably won’t be disappointed.

The Art of Noir: Fritz Lang’s SCARLET STREET (Universal 1945)

Posted on February 9, 2016 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

One of my favorite movies of any genre has always been SCARLET STREET. I used to watch the grainy Public Domain print on my local cable access channel over and over. When I saw that TCM was running the film last October, I recorded it for future reference, as I was in the midst of my “Halloween Havoc” marathon. I finally got the chance recently to sit down and enjoy this beautiful, crispy clear print and watch the film as it was meant to be seen.

Meek, mousey cashier Christopher Cross receives a gold watch at a party honoring his 25 years of service to J.J. Hogarth’s company. Chris has done his boring, repetitious job without complaint, though his dream has always to be a successful painter. When Hogarth leaves the party, Chris watches him get into a car with a pretty young girl. Walking home with friend and co-worker Pringle, Chris muses aloud what it would be like…

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Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Cabaret (dir by Bob Fosse)

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Godfather is such a classic film that it’s always somewhat surprising to be reminded that it wasn’t exactly an Oscar powerhouse. When the Academy Awards for 1972 were handed out, The Godfather may have won Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Actor but, out of 10 nominations, that’s all it won. Francis Ford Coppola did not win Best Director, Gordon Willis was not even nominated for Best Cinematography, and neither Al Pacino, James Caan, nor Robert Duvall won Best Supporting Actor. According to the fascinating book Inside Oscar, Godfather producer Al Ruddy started his acceptance speech by acknowledging that, “We were getting a little nervous there.”

When you look at the 1972 Academy Awards, what quickly becomes obvious is that the year’s big winner was Cabaret. All of those Oscars that people naturally assume went to The Godfather? They went to Cabaret. Out of ten nominations, Cabaret won eight. It set a record for the most Oscars won by a film that did not win best picture.

If it hadn’t been for The Godfather, Cabaret would have won best picture and it would have totally deserved it. Oh my God — how I envy all of our readers who were alive in 1972! How wonderful it must have been to have not one but two legitimately great and groundbreaking films released in the same year! Five years ago, I was lucky enough to see both The Godfather and Cabaret on the big screen and it was an amazing experience but I can only imagine what it was like to discover these two films for the very first time, with no preconceived notions.

Seriously, I need a time machine and I need it now.

Cabaret takes place in Berlin in 1931. Germany is still struggling to recover from World War I. When the reserved English academic Brian (Michael York) first arrives in the city, he barely notices the buffoonish men standing on street corners, handing out anti-Semitic pamphlets. He’s more interested in earning his doctorate. When he moves into a boarding house, he meets and cautiously befriends Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a free-spirited American actress who dances at the Kit Kat Klub. When Sally tries to seduce Brian, he is curiously passive. Finally, after she asks him if he doesn’t like girls, Brian tells her that he’s tried to have sex with three separate women and each time, he failed. However, Sally is not one to give up and eventually she does manage to seduce Brian, telling him that the other women were just the “wrong three girls.”

To make money, Brian gives English lessons. One of his students is the wealthy and innocent, Natalia (Marisa Berenson). While Brian teachers her English and Sally gives her advice about sex and love, Natalia finds herself more and more of an outsider in Berlin. She’s Jewish and as a result, her dog is murdered. Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper) falls in love with Natalia but marrying her means publicly revealing that he’s Jewish and putting both of their lives in danger.

Sally performs at the Kit Kat Klub, where the Emcee (Joel Grey) gives the wealthy audiences a taste of decadence. At first, the audience is full of well-dressed and upper class people but, with each performance, we notice that the audience is changing. More humorless men in uniforms appear at the tables, like constantly multiplying cancer cells. Outside the Klub, men are attacked in the streets but the show inside continues. Though they may not know it (and Sally would certainly never admit it), we watch the performances in Kit Kat Klub with the full knowledge of what is going to eventually happen to the majority of the people who we see on stage. (That the Emcee is played by an actor who is both Jewish and gay only serves to drive the point home.) As a result, the performances are both entertaining and ominous at the same time.

It’s easy to be critical of Sally. In fact, I think it’s a little bit too easy for some critics. Sally may be apathetic and she may be self-centered and apolitical but how different is she from most of us? With the exception of Natalia, Sally may be the only truly honest character in the film. She alone understand that life is a nonstop performance and that there’s nothing she can do to change the world in which she’s found herself. All she can do is look out for herself.

Sally and Brian eventually meet and enter into a brief ménage à trois with Max (Helmut Griem), a wealthy baron. Sally occasionally allows herself to dream of being a baroness while Brian struggles to deal with the jealousy he feels towards both Max and Sally.

Of the three of them, Brian is the only one to eventually become alarmed by the rise of the National Socialism. Sally refuses to take consider anything that’s happening outside of her own life and her own dreams. Meanwhile, Max holds the Nazis in disdain but insists that the aristocracy can control them and that the Nazis are useful for keeping the lower classes in line.

And then this happens:

This scene is one of the most important in the history of cinema and it’s one that is even more relevant today than ever. With the U.S. currently in the middle of a bitter and angry election cycle, everyday seems to bring more of the political mob mentality that this scene epitomizes. In Cabaret, the mob sang in a beer garden. In the modern world, they hop on twitter and start hashtags.

Whenever I watch Cabaret, I always think about that old man in the beer garden. He alone sits there and does not sing. He alone seems to understand.