What was the last movie you saw?

[KGeo777]

Planned to watch the Dirty Dozen but couldn't get it in time so opted for another Donald Sutherland showcase, OEDIPUS THE KING 1968. Ok so he doesn't have much to do, and if we are really fussy, portraying a Greek chorus leader isn't exactly his signature role, and if we really want to fuss, the fact that when he opens his mouth he sounds exactly like Patrick Allen is probably the deal breaker but I recall catching this one afternoon on A&E and wondering what it was all about given the dubbed Sutherland. Now I can appreciate it in full. I agree with reviews that it gets almost comical with Christopher Plummer crying out when he realizes who his parent were. It's different. Nice locations.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars (1981)

Another "movie" made up from four episodes of a puppet TV show, this time Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Visually impressive, but otherwise not so hot. Unseen Martians who can duplicate humans wage war on Earth. Watched with an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 from the local television era. Minimal riffing.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)

The giant flying turtle monster returns from its exile in space. Meanwhile, some guys set out to grab a huge opal from a tropical island. (Cue Japanese actors in dark makeup as "natives," except the love interest, who is extremely pale.) This crime/adventure movie jumps back to monster action, as the "opal" is actually an egg, which turns into a big monster who has a long tongue that freezes things and who shoots a destructive rainbow out of its back. Watched, once again, as part of MST3K when it was a local program. A little more riffing now.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Gamera (1965)

I had already seen Gammera [sic] the Invincible (1966), the severely Americanized version, with commentary from RiffTrax. This is pretty much the Japanese version dubbed into English. In addition to giant turtle monster antics, it introduces the concept of the "Kenny," the annoying little kid who shows up in these things. His insistence that Gamera is a "good turtle" defies all evidence. Watched with very minimal riffing from the local version of MST3K.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Three babies are born during a total solar eclipse. Ten years later, they go on a killing spree.

That's about all the plot you need in this "evil children" variation on the slasher theme. Of note is the fact that some of the killings are simple (gun, bludgeoning with a baseball bat) and some are weirdly elaborate (arrow shot through a hole in a closet.) The three young actors manage to convince the viewer that they're coldblooded killers.

 

[paranoid marvin]

The Departed

A great Scorcese movie, although I admit to sometimes getting confused with the characters and who is doing what.

Jack Nicholson playing himself (when does he not?) as a paranoid gangster who trying to root out the 'rat' in his gang, whilst the police are trying to do the same with their own.

 

[alexvss]

American History X (1998). The brother of a convicted neonazi has to write an essay about his brother every day for a special class named American History X.

This movie aged really well. Everything they say feel really current.

I appreciate the fact that it tells a redemption arc. I wouldn’t have enjoyed watching a guy being racist just for the sake of it and then just walking free. But the arc is very painful, and it comes with a high price.

Recommended.


Paths of Glory (1957). The story of the trial of the French soldiers that refused to attack a German position in WWI.

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, and another one of his masterpieces. Great war movie.

Some nitpicking: the trial scene is inaccurate because they held it in the English-American style. In the Continent, it’s different: there are no “objections” and no plea bargains. I don’t know if that was intentional (the English model is much cooler).


We were soldiers (2002). The first American soldiers in Vietnam try to hunt down the vietcongs that exterminated French soldiers.

One of the best Vietnam war movies. Sam Elliot (and his radio voice) plays the coolest sergeant I’ve seen in movies. The battle scene is terrific; very well directed.

Recommended.

Garryowen!

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Three more Gamera movies viewed via the KTMA version of MST3K:

Gamera vs Gaos (1967)

There's a subplot about construction workers building a road facing some farmers, but what we're really interested in is the blood-drinking pterodactyl monster released by a volcanic eruption. It also shots laser beams (or some such) out of its mouth and has two spines. Annoying little kid, Gamera saves the day.

Gamera vs Zigra (1971)

Dials the goofiness level up to eleven, and offers two annoying kids. Shark-like alien with a hypnotized human woman as servant (and who provides plenty of eye candy in her skintight cat suit, skimpy bikini, and tiny miniskirt) comes to Earth intent on conquest. Alien grows to giant size on Earth, Gamera saves the day.

Gamera vs Guiron (1969)

Oh, joy. Three annoying kids.

Two of 'em wind up on a spaceship and get captured by "groovy space girls" (that's one one of the kids calls them) who want to absorb knowledge from their brains, apparently by eating them. (Holy cow, they actually shave one of the kid's hair off!) Knife-head monster is present also. Guess what? Gamera saves the day.

That's plenty of giant turtle stuff for me.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

How to Succeed With Girls (1964)

Ultra-cheap, ultra-obscure (there are no reviews on IMDB, and the synopsis found there has nothing to do with the actual film) sex comedy. I'd be hard pressed to tell you what the plot is, as it mostly consists of random scenes, but it has something to do with an aggressive ladies' man of a poet and a meek fellow. Poet is fooling around with the meek fellow's wife, but also tries to teach him how to be more assertive with women. These black-and-white "real" segments alternate with the meek fellow's full color fantasies. The latter are set in a mad scientist's laboratory, a harem, the Old West, and a diplomatic meeting.

All of these involve a number of scantily clad young women. Locked up in the mad scientist's lab, where they are covered with body paint matching the color of their bikinis, which has the odd effect of looking like fake nudity. Looking like costume party harem girls and dance hall girls. Representing fictional nations (like French Lorraine [?] or the Union of Socialistic Republics; two of them just represent "Scandinavia" and "Orient.") The latter start off in evening gowns, but get into a six-way catfight so their dresses get torn off.

It's very much like a nudie cutie without the actual nudity, but with the camera frequently aimed at parts of the women's bodies. The typical nudie cutie of the time is actually a lot more innocent than this thing, which has a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude.

Not a good film. Future Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan is the poet's girlfriend or wife (the messy, often bizarre dialogue implies both.)

 

[KGeo777]

EYE OF THE NEEDLE 1981 - Never seen it before and knew little about it.
The first half is quite riveting with Donald Sutherland being tracked by spy smashers (reminded me of the Day of the Jackal) but once it gets to the island and Kate Nelligan as the frustrated housewife it gets implausibly melodramatic and just keeps going down a path that makes it seem like a cheap 1940s Nazi agent flick. Especially curious was why she drugs her son's drink instead of giving it to Sutherland. And then she tries to stop his radio message by sticking her finger in a live electrical current. Too bad since it is a rare film where both main stars are Canadian (playing non-Canadians of course).

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Driller Killer (1979)

Short review: Taxi Driver: The low budget B movie slasher version.

Artist lives with his girlfriend and the girlfriend's girlfriend (cue gratuitous lesbian shower scene) in a crummy apartment in the Escape From New York version of the Big Apple. They can't pay the rent, the phone bill, etc. Artist's fragile mental state is worsened when a punk rock band moves into the building and constantly rehearses. He has hallucinations, and eventually starts killing derelicts with a portable power drill. His failure to sell his latest painting brings the killings closer to home.

A clue to the artist's violent breakdown comes at the very start of the film, when a nun takes him to an uncommunicative, obviously homeless elderly man who had the artist's name and phone number on a piece of paper. The old man takes his hand but the artist denies knowing him and runs off.

The killings are few but quite bloody. The majority of the film is a psychological drama. (Note the skinned rabbit intended for a meal, a clear allusion to Repulsion.) It has a grimy, gritty, sleazy feel that isn't exactly pleasant, but is very effective.

 

[pogopossum]

Three more Gamera movies viewed via the KTMA version of MST3K:

Gamera vs Gaos (1967)

There's a subplot about construction workers building a road facing some farmers, but what we're really interested in is the blood-drinking pterodactyl monster released by a volcanic eruption. It also shots laser beams (or some such) out of its mouth and has two spines. Annoying little kid, Gamera saves the day.

Gamera vs Zigra (1971)

Dials the goofiness level up to eleven, and offers two annoying kids. Shark-like alien with a hypnotized human woman as servant (and who provides plenty of eye candy in her skintight cat suit, skimpy bikini, and tiny miniskirt) comes to Earth intent on conquest. Alien grows to giant size on Earth, Gamera saves the day.

Gamera vs Guiron (1969)

Oh, joy. Three annoying kids.

Two of 'em wind up on a spaceship and get captured by "groovy space girls" (that's one one of the kids calls them) who want to absorb knowledge from their brains, apparently by eating them. (Holy cow, they actually shave one of the kid's hair off!) Knife-head monster is present also. Guess what? Gamera saves the day.

That's plenty of giant turtle stuff for me.

I have always appreciated Gamera's form of locomotion.Although the more polite fans have denied the obvious , my theory is that he has a huge stash of beans somewhere to power his jet stream.

 

[JunkMonkey]

The Bandit of Sherwood Forest 1946 uninspired bit of Robin Hoodery with lots of horses galloping backwards and forwards over ground they probably went over the day before but with the same actors dressed as cowboys, or a minor horde of Ghengis Khans sat on them. The less than inspired script delivers the the barest minimum needed to set up the next scene before everyone climbs on their horses and rides off again. The castle set was impressive - I wonder what movie it was built for? Cornel Wilde is Robert son of Robin of Loxely. Henry Daniell as the evil regent - who could do evil sneery baddies better than anyone at that time - looked bored with his undercooked lines. The whole film was just a bit dull really. But it was in Technicolor. And some of the nighttime scenes had great lighting; great washes of dark cold steely blue with warm, flambeaux lit, orangey yellow doorways and side lighting. I love technicolor. It's so rich.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Quick note that, as I make my way through Season Zero (the KTMA local TV period) of MST3K, I next watched their riffing of Phase IV (1974). I saw that when it first came out. Intelligent, visually stunning science fiction film.

I just found out that the film has a "lost" alternate ending, which takes it deep into surreal 2001: A Space Odyssey territory.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Another early MST3K episode:

Cosmic Princess (1982)

Pseudo-movie made up of two episodes of the lousy TV series Space: 1999 from 1976. Basic ridiculous premise: A nuclear explosion causes the whole darn Moon to go flying off into space like a starship. Real-life spouses Barbara Bain and Martin Landau are the bland leads.

1. The Moon folks wind up on a planet where Brian Blessed tries to make them slaves of his mind-eating computer. His daughter Maya (Catherine Schell) is a shapeshifter who became a regular character on the show.

2. Maya goes berserk for some reason and changes into some really, really lousy-looking monsters. I'm talking Z movies from the 1950's level of guy-in-a-monster-suit stuff.

Not good at all.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Next on my list of MST3K episodes from the KTMA era was Humanoid Woman (1981). I won't discuss it in this form, because it's a severely truncated version of the Soviet film Per Aspera Ad Astra, with about an hour of footage removed. With a running time of about two and one-half hours, it was split into two parts. I tracked down the original version, with English subtitles.

Part one: An Earth starship discovers a derelict vessel. Aboard are several clones, identical but of varying ages. All are dead, due to the explosion that wrecked the ship, except one. She is our "humanoid woman" in the truncated version. She is brought to Earth to live with the family of a "first contact" expert. She has snow-white, extremely short hair and has little or no memory of her previous life. It turns out she also has powerful telekinetic abilities and can even teleport. On the other hand, she has something in her brain that allows another person to control her via the right transmission.

When a delegation from a planet with a devastated environment shows up, asking for help from Earth, she realizes that they are from her home world. She sneaks aboard the spaceship heading for the planet.

Part two: The Earthlings do what they can to clean up the planet, where the surviving population huddles at the poles to avoid the increasing heat. The waters are black and slimy, the atmosphere is yellow and requires people to wear gas masks to breathe. Interfering with this benign mission is the guy who provides the basics for survival to the populace, but only at a price. (This is a Soviet film, remember.) Things look bad for our heroes when he figures out how to control the "humanoid woman" and her amazing powers.

I thought it was pretty good. There are some weak points. (The male inhabitants of the polluted planet all have a lock of hair on one side only of their chins. Supposed to be "alien," I guess but it just looks silly.) There are a couple of robots that are quite obviously people in suits. There's a completely irrelevant subplot about an octopus-like alien being transported back to its watery planet. (This was completely cut out of the truncated version.) But those are quibbles. Well worth a look for patient science fiction buffs.

 

[Guttersnipe]

The Intruder (1962): Based on the novel by Charles Beaumont, who was also famous for writing many of the original Twilight Zone episodes, some of which were adapted from his short stories. He makes an appearance in the film as a teacher.

A man played by William Shatner comes to a small town looking to capitalize off the town's racial prejudices. African-American students are being admitted into what were once schools exclusively for white students. The collective hatred of most residents builds to a fever pitch, leaving the few sane citizens to strive against Shatner's character. In the end, he gets what he deserves.

The whole film can be found on YouTube (I searched "the intruder 1962"). Trigger warning: Lots of racial slurs in this one, but keep in mind that the ones doing it are portrayed as they should be--as vicious, backwards bigots. Also, it's pretty short, only lasting for about an hour and twenty minutes.

It is sad that Beaumont died so early due to early-onset dementia. He was a good man and I often wonder what he would have done had he more time.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Next on my list of MST3K episodes from the KTMA era was Humanoid Woman (1981). I won't discuss it in this form, because it's a severely truncated version of the Soviet film Per Aspera Ad Astra, with about an hour of footage removed. With a running time of about two and one-half hours, it was split into two parts. I tracked down the original version, with English subtitles.

ohh where did you find that? I've been looking for one on and off for years. I have the dubbed Sandy Frank edit - without MST3K help - but would love to see the full thing.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

ohh where did you find that? I've been looking for one on and off for years. I have the dubbed Sandy Frank edit - without MST3K help - but would love to see the full thing.

Your wish is my command.

Part One:

Part Two:

 

[JunkMonkey]

Thank YOU!