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]

HUNK (1987): "A 'devilish' tale about an ordinary guy who is visited bt a beautiful apparition promising him popularity and drop-dead good looks in exchange for his soul. Transformed overnight into a 'hunk', he soon discovers there may be hell to pay for his new lifestyle."

Subject matter aside, this is exactly like a Disney movie. Tracy reaction: "At least there weren't any boobs in it. I am so sick of boobs!" I think this was filmed at the same Malibu beach house where The Beach Girls was set. the first film appearance of Brad Pitt, briefly, as an extra.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

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. We checked online to see if any of these were available to be cast. We found two of them, but they weren't free (and we already spent fifty cents per movie on them). This effectively skips us past the rest of the "boob" movies into the "car/motorcycle/racing" movies, the first of which is...

THE WILD REBELS (1967): "This action packed biker film is about a former stock-car racer who joins the police department and infiltrates the Satan's Angels motorcycle gang to stop a bank robbery by the malevolent trio of bikers bent of terrorizing South Florida."

That's a pretty accurate summary, except they might have said "rock & roll stock car driver" or at least "guitar-playing stock car racer." (Also, the "trio of of bikers" also includes a girl.) Except for the grittiness, this could almost be an Elvis Presley movie... without Elvis. The main character does sing two songs, and the opening credits "lounge" theme is a hoot. (I couldn't find it online, but here is the trailer.) Hey, The Wild Rebels was MST3K #207; I did not know that. (The theme begins at 5:55.) Regardless of what you may think of Elvis Presley, or Elvis Presley movies, just imagine one without Elvis in it and that's what this is. It's pretty mild for an R-rated movie; in the '70s it would have been PG, I'm sure.

[Richard Willis]

The Window (1949)

I recorded this from TCM. It will be available on TCM-com until April 17.

A boy sleeping on the fire escape witnesses a neighbor couple rolling a sailor in their apartment. He wakes up and fights with the husband, who kills him. Unfortunately, the boy has a history of making up stories. It gets to the point that no one believes him except the killers. Hijinks ensue.

Very well done. A lot of suspense.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

HELL ON WHEELS (1967): "High action, great music--a thrilling story about two brothers who survive the perils of stock car racing, a kidnaping and an intense sibling rivalry to become loving brothers and racing phenomenons! [sic] Starring and featuring music by Marty Robbins, Connie Smith and more!"

"High action"? "Great music"? Did we watch the same movie? (Plus, there are three brothers.) Like The Wild Rebels, Hell on Wheels is another stock car movie, except this time the "guitar-playing stock car racer" is played by Marty Robbins instead of Elvis Presley. There are a few other differences between this and and Elvis movie: first, the production values on an Elvis movie are much higher; second, the acting in an Elvis movie is much better; and third, all of the music in Hell on Wheels is played by the musicians on screen, not actors pretending to play instruments. 

Marty plays himself: a stock car racer and recording star. His envious brother Del is his mechanic, until he quits to become a stock car racer in his his own right. Their brother Steve is and agent of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms whose mission it is to destroy all the illegal stills in the county. Del is hired by moonshiners to be the mechanic of the cars the bootleggers drive, and I can see I'm already making this movie sound much more interesting than it actually is.

The racing scenes are interminable and are interspersed with scenes of Marty Robbins (and other country acts) performing in a lounge and linked together by scenes of Steve at work and Del at home with his wife. They all have dinner with the brothers mother, who lives with her brother. There is also a little girl running around who Marty sings to. (Tracy tells me she's Steve's daughter.) Del's wife kind of has the hots for Marty. These scenes are strung together one after the other with no real sense of continuity other than that they have some characters in common. The sets are terrible. They look like stage sets, with a table and chairs to suggest a dining room, two easy cars and a radio to suggest a living room, a curtain, couch and coffee table to suggest Del's house, and so on. It looks like the "lounge" set redressed with a couple of props. 

Guitar player friends of mine have told me how technically proficient Marty Robbins is as a guitar player, but none of that technical proficiency is on display in this movie. All three plots come together at the end, and Marty sings a final song to the little girl, comparing her to a butterfly and warning her not to fly to high because an eagle is waiting to kill her. 

[Tracy of Moon-T]

He definitely made the movie sound much more interesting than it was. It was a low budget, predictable piece of boring garbage. One female singer moved only her neck. It was like watching a cobra memorized by a snake charmer. 

[The Baron]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THE WILD REBELS (1967): "This action packed biker film is about a former stock-car racer who joins the police department and infiltrates the Satan's Angels motorcycle gang to stop a bank robbery by the malevolent trio of bikers bent of terrorizing South Florida."

That's a pretty accurate summary, except they might have said "rock & roll stock car driver" or at least "guitar-playing stock car racer." (Also, the "trio of of bikers" also includes a girl.) Except for the grittiness, this could almost be an Elvis Presley movie... without Elvis. The main character does sing two songs, and the opening credits "lounge" theme is a hoot. (I couldn't find it online, but here is the trailer.) Hey, The Wild Rebels was MST3K #207; I did not know that. (The theme begins at 5:55.) Regardless of what you may think of Elvis Presley, or Elvis Presley movies, just imagine one without Elvis in it and that's what this is. It's pretty mild for an R-rated movie; in the '70s it would have been PG, I'm sure.

[Tracy of Moon-T]

*mesmerized* oy! 

Tracy of Moon-T said:

He definitely made the movie sound much more interesting than it was. It was a low budget, predictable piece of boring garbage. One female singer moved only her neck. It was like watching a cobra memorized by a snake charmer. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

...and I should have said "brothers' mother" and "not to fly too high." Typos happen.

(Now I'm hungry for "Wild Rebels" breakfast cereal... and it doesn't exist!")

[Jeff of Earth-J]

THE SIDEHACKERS (1969): "A thrilling, suspenseful story about the exiting sport of 'sidehacking'  and the gutsy, dangerous rides the racers of the three-wheel vehicles take to impress their women and themselves!"

Or, according to TV's Mary Jo Pehl: "This was the first movie to show the brutal reality of sidehacking--dull, boring and stupid."

If you've read all that and still don't know what sidehacking is, a sidehack is a motorcycle with a platform welded on one side in place of a sidecar. The platform has bars welded to it which holds on to while leaning out when going around curves to... what? Make it go fast, I guess. The movie credits the "Southern California Sidehack Association," but, thankfully, the sidehacking is finished about a half hour in, after which it becomes a revenge flick. 

Rommel is the good guy and J.C. is the bad guy. When J.C.'s girlfriend makes a play for Rommel and is rejected, she tells J.C. that he raped her, after which J.C. kills Rommel's girlfriend in retaliation. This movie was chosen early on in MST3K's run, but they made the choice without having seen the entire film. Once they realized the movie had an unusable rape and murder scene (about 35 minutes in), it was too late for them to choose another movie. They cut the scene and had Crow say, "For those of you playing along at home, Rita is dead."

That story reminds me of STANLEY (the snake movie from last month). I thought that would make a good MST3K movie because there are many scenes of just the snakes which the host and the 'bots could have provided dialogue for. But, near the end, a nest of baby snakes were beaten to death with a rifle butt, and later a snake is swung around by its tail and beaten against the ground. I don't think those were props or stunt snakes; I'm pretty sure some animals were harmed during the filming of that particular motion picture. But see, I watch the whole picture before thinking about MST3K.

As you can see on the poster, the movie was filmed in "Fantascope" (widescreen), but the DVD is pan-and-scan. The whole movie was shots of people's noses on each side of the screen while the camera apparently focused on a piece of furniture or something (not that the actors were much better). 

[The Baron]

This is another one of those movies that I can't imagine watching an un-MSTed verssion of.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THE SIDEHACKERS (1969): . 

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

That story reminds me of STANLEY (the snake movie from last month). I thought that would make a good MST3K movie because there are many scenes of just the snakes which the host and the 'bots could have provided dialogue for. But, near the end, a nest of baby snakes were beaten to death with a rifle butt, and later a snake is swung around by its tail and beaten against the ground. I don't think those were props or stunt snakes; I'm pretty sure some animals were harmed during the filming of that particular motion picture.

When you first discussed this movie, I found these two charming trivia items on IMDB:

The rattlesnakes used in this film were de-fanged and their mouths were sewn shut to keep them from biting people.

According to producer / director William Grefé, 'Stanley' the rattlesnake was made into a wallet that he still owns to this day.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"This is another one of those movies that I can't imagine watching an un-MSTed version of."

I have the MST3K version dubbed on VHS. ("Keep circulating the tapes"!)

"...the rattlesnake was made into a wallet..."

Yes, "charming."