Movies I Have Seen Lately

[The Baron]

Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"Dead Clowns"? Let's see... "Deadly Duo, Death Machines, Death Rage, Death Riders, Death Warmed Up, Deathrow Gameshow..." Nope, no "Dead Clowns" in our set. (Did find the trailer on YouTube, though.) Probably just as well: there's no way in hell Tracy would ever consent to watch it.

[Richard Willis]

The Baron said:

Anyone who thinks that Ed Wood was the worst director ever has never seen any Coleman Francis movies.

I think it was the Johnny Depp movie that suggested that Ed Wood saw the completed movies in his mind’s eye as what he wanted them to be, not what they were.

I heartily recommend Rashomon if you haven't seen it.

I’ve seen several tributes to Rashomon in various TV shows, including Star Trek TOS. Seven Samurai’s 3 1 /2 hours is a little off-putting. Jeff’s approach of splitting it over two days is what I will do when I get to it.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Dana Gould has staged live readings of Plan Nine From Outer Space with a rotating cast of actors, and they're a hoot. When we saw them do it in Brooklyn, there was John Hodgman, Janet Varney, Adam Savage, Michael Ian Black, and Jean Grae. 

There was an online version they did for SF Sketchfest that was broadcast on TCM a while back. We've still got it on our DVR, but I don't know if there's anywhere to see it online these days. That version had Laraine Newman in it!

As for Rashomon, the first tribute I ever saw to it was on an episode of Happy Days! Finally saw the genuine article on the big screen last year, at a Toshiro Mifune double feature! 

[Luke Blanchard]

Plan 9's worst movie title is from the book The Golden Turkey Awards. It's silly but watchable, unlike some AIP movies. When I saw it as a kid it reminded us of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

SANTEE (1973): "A bold, powerful, yet decidedly off-beat story about a dedicated bounty hunter--half lawman, half desperado--whose main mission in life centers on tracking down outlaws with high prices  on their heads."

Glenn Ford plays a former sheriff who turned to bounty hunting ten years ago when his young son was killed by an outlaw gang. When he's not hunting bounties, he lives on a ranch with his wife and hand, played by Jay Silverheels. (Oddly, John Hart played one of the villains.) He takes the son of a bounty he was forced to kill under his wing, and they both go after the gang who killed the sheriff who replaced him the day before he was gong to retire. I know the capsule review describes this movie as "bold" and "powerful," but I found it kind of bland.

TRAILER.

[Richard Willis]

I recently watched The Bounty Hunter (1954) starring Randolph Scott. It’s a “B” movie that’s only 89 minutes, but like a lot of the shorter movies it packs a lot into that time. IIRC, he became a well-known bounty hunter when his wife was killed.

One year before, a train carrying a $100,000 payroll (approximately $3 million today) was robbed by a gang which killed several people in the process. They got away clean and the Pinkerton Detective Agency hasn’t found any clues. They turn to Jim Kipp (Scott), hiring him to see what he can turn up. No one knows what the four robbers look like or where they might be. The only clue is that one of them was shot in the leg. Figuring that they went to the nearest town, he goes there under an assumed name and asks about a wounded man last year. Hijinks begin to ensue when one or two people identify him. It’s a true mystery that will keep you guessing.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

THE SPECIALIST (1975): "A beautiful woman, whose distinct talent is seducing men, is planted on a jury by a wealthy, old-fashioned, influential man to help him to intimidate the opposing attorney and win the case."

John "Hey, It's That Guy!" Anderson and Adam "Batman" West star as competing attorneys in what starts out to be the most farcical courtroom drama I have ever seen, but gets better. Alvy "Mr. Kimball" Moore plays the bailiff and Lou Rawls does for the theme song what Shirley Bassey does for Goldfinger (see trailer, below). Anderson sets up West to have an affair with a planted jury member, the "specialist" of the title. Then Adam West, with the helps of his wife, sets about trying to prove he was set up. Rated R.

TRAILER.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I posted this on March 19th of this year...

Jeff of Earth-J said:

MY CHAUFFEUR - (1986 - R)

MALIBU BEACH - (1978 - R)

TOMBOY - (1985 - R)

WEEKEND PASS - (1984 - R)

Disc 6 is defective, so I won't be watching any of these.

Disc 6 was kind of "rough around the edges." I don't know why that would have prevented it from playing, but it wouldn't even load. Our old DVD player gave up the ghost a while back so we bought a new one a couple of weeks ago. Tonight, on a whim, I put the "defective" disc in the new player just to see if it would play, and it did. First up is...

MY CHAUFFEUR (1986): "A perky young woman is recruited to join an all-male, all-snobby limousine service. Although given the most difficult assignments, she prospers and untimatly wins not only the respect and admiration of the other drivers, but also the love of her toughest assignment--the son of her boss!"

That's pretty much the whole movie in a nutshell. Everything about this movie positively screams "80s!"... the hair, the fashions, the music. Howard Hesseman plays the dispatcher, and Penn & Teller play two of her clients. It's a cute little rom-com with only a modicum of nudity.

TRAILER. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

MALIBU BEACH (1978): "School's out and the kids line the Malibu shore for a wild summer of fun."

This movie started and I was certain we had seen it before (and, in a sense, we had). I feel as if we'd paid out dues by making it through the teen sexploitation section of the set, and now, like Michael Corleone, we're being pulled back. This movie is part of a trilogy, of sorts, which accounts for some of the familiarity. (One character, Duggan, from The Van, doesn't like being called "turd.") The movie started glitching about halfway through (defective disc, remember), so we didn't have get to watch the whole thing.

TRAILER.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

SHAZAM!: FURY OF THE GODS: I have made no secret of my distain for most superhero movies, but occasionally I will deign to go see one in the theater, most recently Shazam! (2019). It was pretty much what I expected, but Tracy must have liked it more than I did because she's been lobbying pretty hard to watch the sequel now that it's on TV, which we did last night. The special effects sequences are pretty impressive, but it's a decidedly juvenile movie otherwise. I don't have to delve any further into it than that, however, because Danny Horn of the "Superheroes Every Day" blog has written this review which is decidedly more entertaining than the movie itself. (Unfortunately, Mr. Horn has abandoned his blog in the middle of Superman III in favor of a podcast.) 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Oh, I forgot to mention how Tracy talked me into watching Fury of the Gods. She said, "It can't be any worse than the movies we're been watching." I must admit she had a point. Speaking of which, next up is...

TOMBOY (1985): "A budding female racecar drive finally meets her racing idol and unbelievably they fall in love... a love that is quickly put to the test when, having received the chance to show her racing talents, the two find themselves in a race for a multi-million dollar sponsorship contract."

The "racing idol" is played by Gerard Christopher (who I met one year in Metropolis, IL). It is an odd sensation hearing Superboy curse and use sexual innuendo. 

TRAILER.

[Richard Willis]

Looking at the trailer, her hairstyle and the welder's mask were really on-the-nose copies from Flashdance (1983). One of my not-so-guilty pleasures.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

TOMBOY (1985): "A budding female racecar drive finally meets her racing idol and unbelievably they fall in love... a love that is quickly put to the test when, having received the chance to show her racing talents, the two find themselves in a race for a multi-million dollar sponsorship contract."