TODAY’S FEATURE: RUSS MEYER’S

FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!

SEE TURA SATANA KICK ASS IN FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL, KILL! HERE >>

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

1957/Director: Val Guest/Writer: Nigel Kneale

Cast: Forrest Tucker, Peter Cushing, Maureen Connell, Richard Wattis, Robert Brown, Michael Brill, Wolfe Morris, Arnold Marlé

The Abominable Snowman was one of Hammer’s ealry films that came out right before Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. It was written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Val Guest, the pair who earlier had created the two Quartermass films. It stars a young and intense Peter Cushing before he became legendary as the morally ambivalent Victor Frankenstein and the morally unshakable Abraham Van Helsing. I had earlier reviewed X-The Unknown and like that film I will say the same thing about The Abominable Snowman and that is that it is too bad Hammer did not do more films like this after they took off in the early sixties. This is a fine film, well written, directed and acted and I wonder what else this great studio could have produced along these lines had they set their minds to it. Of course Hammer did do other films during the sixties than just their classic retakes of old Universal horror films like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and The Mummy. Other than The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Cushing playing Sherlock Holmes, I have not had a chance to get too many of those suspense and crime style films from Hammer but hopefully I will be shortly. But this film, released the same year as but prior to Curse of Frankenstein, was from their very early days when they were just beginning to emerge as a so to be major horror studio and there is a certain quality the film has that their later non-Universal style films, the few I have seen, did not usually have though The Hound of the Baskervilles is a very good film.

MORE ABOMINABLE SHOWMAN HERE >>

“This is one of the best movies ever made!

Upskirt karate rules!”

Ghidorah from Chainsaw Maintenance

THE MACHINE GIRL

2008/Director: Noboru Iguchi/Writer: Noboru Iguchi

Cast: Minase Yashiro, Asami, Kentaro Shimazu, Honoka, Nobuhiro Nishihara

Noburu Iguchi

The director of Sudakan Boy (which I have queued up to see soon) Noburu Iguchi basically delivers the gory goods in this TokyoShock science-fiction Yakuza revenge blood bath starring gravure model Minase Yashiro. Also in the mix are Japanese AV stars Asami and Honoka. Now I am far from an expert in these matters (though I have done ample research) but I am pretty sure the difference in the terms is that a gravure (a term for how photos are developed for glossy magazines) models pose provocatively but rarely nude or in explicit sexual situations. An AV (adult video) star on the other hand basically does everything you can image plus some things you never have and with the cutest, most innocent faces imaginable. Well there is no nudity in The Machine Girl so don’t get excited. What flesh we see is usually covered in blood and slimy internal organs. While the CGI effects have been criticized online here I have seen much worse and had no major problems myself. The film never looked like a video game to me. If more Japanese horror/action/school girl gore films were being done like this I would praise the genre more rather than berate it or struggle to find kinder words.

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ICE STATION ZEBRA

1968/Director: John Sturges/Writers: Alistair MacLean (novel), Douglas Heyes (screenplay)

Cast: Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, Jim Brown, Tony Bill, Lloyd Nolan, Alf Kjellin, Gerald S. O’Loughlin

My dad was stationed on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas in the late 60’s. One of the little perks of being the son of a military dad was having the ID card that got me onto the base and then into some cool places, like the bowling alley, the PX (base exchange), the cafeterias and of course the various bland looking movie houses. With my ID card it cost me all of 35 cents to see assorted spaghetti westerns, horror and sci-fi films, comedies and once in a while a real movie. Such was the case with Ice Station Zebra, a film I saw all alone in the base theater at about the age of eleven. Shot in stunning 70mm  with a dramatic score my Michael Legrand (restored in full with intermission music on the version I have) it was awesome to behold on the big screen and if I remember right I saw it about three times in a week. (more…)

ROMPER STOMPER

1992/Director: Geoffrey Wright/ Writer: Geoffrey Wright

Cast: Russell Crowe, Daniel Pollock, Jacqueline McKenzie, Alex Scott, Leigh Russell, Daniel Wyllie, James McKenna,    Eric Mueck, Frank Magree,

Romper Stomper was early on in Russell Crowe’s movie acting career and when I first saw the film on VHS back in the 90’s he had yet to achieve the level of stardom he has since attained. Had I known Crowe already and some of the Hollywood work I have seen of his lately, such as A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man I would have thought something like “wow, he really made some wild movies way back then, not like Gladiator at all”. But when I first saw the film I really knew very little of the guy and doubt that I even knew his name, which only added to the intensity of this already riveting drama about angry skinheads in Melbourne Australia. Crowe is simply mesmerizing as Hando, the leader of a band of skinheads who at the moment are focusing their plentiful hatred and violent behavior on the local Vietnamese community. The film was written and directed by Geoffrey Wright and has a blood pumping soundtrack of instrumental music as well as the “Oi” type skinhead punk rock music. The photography  is often rawand grainy and the editing fast at the right moments but not overboard and constantly jerky, as it often can be with this type of film. Along with Crowe are Australian actress Jacqueline McKenzie and actor Daniel Pollock, who had played a small role with Crowe in 1991’s Proof, another great independent Australian film.

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TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS

1945/ Director: Kurt Neumann/ Writers: Edgar Rice Burroughs (characters)/ John Jacoby (writer)

Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Johnny Sheffield, Brenda Joyce, Henry Stephenson, Maria Ouspenskaya, Barton MacLane, Shirley O’Hara

Tarzan and the Amazons was Johnny Weissmuller’s ninth outing as Edgar Rice Burrough’s jungle lord and his youthful and Olympian physique of 1932’s Tarzan and the Apes have long disappeared, though he is still sturdy and imposing. Also gone is sexy Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane. O’Sullivan quit her role as Jane and Tarzan stayed in the jungle with Boy playing Mr Mom while the film makers sorted out what to do. They needed to replace the irreplacable Maureen O’Sullivan. After a couple films absent a Jane Porter (who is abroad in her home of England, though the original Jane was American) she returns to the film series in Tarzan and the Amazons and is now played by the lovely and capable (but not smoldering, as Ms O’Sullivan certainly was) model Brenda Joyce, who it seemed did much like her stint as Jane all of the time and had a short lived movie career. The film was produced by film maverick Sol Lesser and co-produced and directed by Kurt Neumann. The pair would churn out the last of the great, classic Tarzan films for RKO, from 1945 to 1954, the latter ones starring Lex Barker as the ape man. Tarzan and the Amazons is considered by many fans of the Weissmuller films to be one of the better ones technically and certainly the sets and photography are a notch above many of the earlier films. Under RKO and Lesser the Tarzan films worked on much less of budget than they did under mighty MGM, but the films seem to look and feel more authentic for some strange reason. Though Weissmuller is obviously not inclined to want to do sit ups or skip on second helpings he still does a fine job as the monosyllabic Lord Greystoke. Also returning is Johnny Sheffield as Boy who is getting bigger and less boyish and yet is still curious and susceptible to trusting white men from the outside world. (more…)

Tarzan the Apeman

1932/Director: W.S. Van Dyke / Screenplay: Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel) Cyril Hume (adaptation)

Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Neil Hamilton, Maureen O’Sullivan, C. Aubrey Smith, Doris Lloyd, Forrester Harvey, Ivory Williams

I recently picked up all the Tarzan movies on DVD here in Beijing and have watched them all a couple times except for Tarzan’s New York Adventure which I never really liked even as a kid, but one night I will pop it in and give it a go. Tarzan the Ape Man was the 1st of the Tarzan films from MGM and Johnny Weissmulller at the time was under contract with the BVD underwear company and MGM had to do some quick bargaining to allow BVD’s spokesman to appear clad only in a loincloth.

The movie only generally follows the Edgar Rice Burroughs narrative of the adventures of Lord Greystoke who is the sole infant survivor of a plane crash in the African Jungle, near the fabled Mutia Escarpment. Rather this movie takes up with the arrival of Jane Parker, played perfectly by Maureen O’Sullivan, in Africa to assist her aging father in his duties there. A safari is soon set up to go to the escarpment in search of the elephant’s graveyard, a veritable Fort Knox of ivory. Tarzan comes in to the story gradually and the direction by W.S Van Dyke in some instances is pretty good, but in others pretty shoddy. For instance in the early scenes where the characters are talking about images that are obviously being back-projected as the proportion and contrast is utterly wrong.
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