by ·Comments Off on Who Saw Her Die? (1972, Aldo Lado)

Four years ago a kid was killed in the snowy woods by somebody in a woman’s hat. Now a bunch more people start dying so the survivors and authorities figure they’d better inspect whether Adolfo Celi (of Thunderball) has a secret brother who wears ladies’ hats and pretends to be a priest and murders red-haired girls – which he does. He’s still not as big a maniac as the people who do sound for these movies. James Bond himself George Lazenby and giallo fave Anita Strindberg play the grieving parents. Strangers online point out (coincidental) similarities to the following year’s Don’t Look Now, and seem to prefer Aldo Ladi’s debut Short Night of Glass Dolls over this one.

by ·Comments Off on Cobra Verde (1987, Werner Herzog)

Intro with a storyteller and a poem sets this up as a fable or legend, then some great storytelling economy as Klaus Kinski going from mourning his dead mother, leaving home, to penniless gold digger, to merciless bandit in a few minutes.

Kinski is hired as slavedriver of a sugarcane plantation. There among macaws and storks, bats and crabs, he knocks up all three of the owner’s daughters so they decide to send him to certain death in the deadly kingdom of Dahomey within Benin. He’s rescued from the insane king by an insane prince, and trains a woman army, but is he happy? He is not.

Werner Herzog’s Black Panther:

Entire movie was worth making for the scene of a goat taking communion:

by ·Comments Off on Minnie and Moskowitz (1971, John Cassavetes)

You settle in for a Gena Rowlands memorial screening and you’re immediately treated to a long ornery Timothy Carey showcase, what a great day. Mosk is Seymour Cassel with a grand mustache, introduced going out to a Bogart movie. He makes a scene at various bars, gets money from his mom, moves to California and gets a shitty job parking cars.

Minnie is introduced going out to a Bogart movie with her friend, a good sign. Her man (John) is a real loser so she goes out and finds a new one, Val “Zelmo” Avery, who is disrespectful to people around him, and so gets beaten up by Seymour while picking up the car. In fact every time there’s more than one man in a scene a brawl ensues. But this leads to Minnie meeting Mosk, very much against her will, and soon her mom (played by her mom) will meet his mom (played by John’s mom) and they’ll be blissfully married. It’s a performance movie, also has alarming/hilarious editing

See: Kenji and Brendanowicz and Filipe.

What John C. could never have predicted is that the movie would provide so many useful subtitle reaction images in the horrible online future.

by ·Comments Off on The Big Night (1951, Joseph Losey)

Georgie (John “Drew’s dad” Barrymore) is a 17yo nerd, his dad (Preston Foster of The Informer) a bartender, both of them getting shaken down by every tough guy in town – particularly big man Howard St. John (Strait-Jacket and Shockproof). Revenge on his mind, Georgie puts on a suit, grabs his dad’s gun, and goes out to find St. John.

Along the way he gets confused by liquor… has a nightmare flashback during a drum solo at a club… mortifyingly tries to condescendingly compliment a Black singer… makes out with Joan Lorring (The Verdict)… tries to pick up a baby while holding a gun… meets a poodle… learns some harsh truths about his pop and the world. The kid does try to kill St. John, but “just creased him” according to the cops, then decides “nothing matters to me anymore, and there’s nobody I matter to.” Dark little movie, with the sound recording quality of a ’30s film. Losey made this the same year as M, and fled to Europe before editing was finished to escape the anti-communist brigade.

by ·Comments Off on Burning Paradise (1994, Ringo Lam)

Shaolin monks are made illegal, so all monks have to run or fight or die. Monk Fong (Wong Fei-hung in Drunken Master III the same year) and Carman Lee (between Wicked City and Lifeline) are on the run, get thrown in a trap-filled prison temple and have to fight and scheme their way out. One of the best-looking HK blu-rays around, the blood and intense brutality coming through crystal clear.

by ·Comments Off on Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)

Blackie and his bestie, the thinner-mustached Marko are communists in 1941. The nearby zoo is bombed, panicking Marko’s brother, the stuttering zookeeper Ivan, and nazis overtake the town. Enter Natalija, Blackie’s girl, an actress also beloved by Marko and Nazi Franz. Marko hides Blackie and his fellow revolutionaries in a basement and when the war ends he decides not to tell them, so he keeps Natalija above ground and the undergrounders keep manufacturing weapons for him to sell. When a monkey blows a hole in the wall during Blackie’s son’s wedding they escape, come across the set of the film reenacting Blackie’s war heroism, and he starts killing German actors. Thirty years later as Yugoslavia is violently dissolving, Ivan finds his lost monkey then everybody dies tragically.

Young Ivan and flock:

Marko and Nat preparing to take drastic measures:

Inserting Blackie into documentary footage from the era was well-done. I think the internet is saying the movie is pro-genocide, but I don’t follow why. Even if so, this is counterbalanced by the movie’s major macaw presence. Won the top prize at Cannes versus Dead Man, City of Lost Children, Shanghai Triad, Hou, Oliveira, Terence Davies, and a pissed-off Theodoros Angelopoulos. Blackie appeared with a couple of James Bonds and played Santa Claus in the nutty-looking anthology Goodbye 20th Century. Marko was in Ozon’s Criminal Lovers, and Franz was in Ozon’s Frantz. Natalija came to Hollywood and ended up hundredth-billed in Maid in Manhattan, playing a maid, that’s embarrassing.

Old Blackie:

Old Ivan finds Old Marko:

by ·Comments Off on Holy Smoke (1999, Jane Campion)

A good bird movie, with emus and cockatoos and budgies. Kate Winslet falls in with guru Baba and decides to stay in India, so her parents trick her into returning home and hire cult deprogrammer Harvey Keitel. But he lacks his required assistant and fucks up the assignment – the sight of Kate nude leads to a fully degraded Harvey selling out his whole plan. Keitel in the Emil Jannings tradition, a master of playing an apparent tough guy who becomes a blubbering mess. When his would-be assistant does arrive it’s Pam Grier, who I just saw in Ghosts of Mars.

L-R: Kate, Cockatoo

L-R: Robbie (Chopper), Yvonne (Muriel’s Wedding), Tim (Farscape)

Harvey, tough as nails, uncorruptable:

Ah, well, nevertheless…

by ·Comments Off on Brief Encounters (1967, Kira Muratova)

Muratova plays a local government official who hires Nina Ruslanova (of Khrustalyov, My Car! two decades later) as a maid. At other times they’ve both been in love with Vladimir Vysotsky. Psychologically true and beautiful drama. Nervous cutting between timelines, solid within each particular time and place. If this had been widely seen, the cold war would’ve not gone down the way it did.

by ·Comments Off on The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963, Mario Bava)

Criterion did a giallo series and I went straight for the John Saxon movie. Nora is a young “New Yorker” visiting Rome (Letícia Román, also of a Russ Meyer erotic comedy and an Elvis flick). Her Aunt Ethel was being cared for by Dr. Saxon, dies almost instantly after he leaves, then Nora runs outside for help and is immediately mugged – tough town. She has a Blow-Up fever dream of a witnessed murder and ropes John Saxon into her madness, and I guess her landlady (Valentina Cortese, Masina’s friend in Juliet of the Spirits) has been doing some murders.

Italians are absolute goofballs. Last night I told Katy about Trap, and she asked how could a dumb movie be great, and as if to answer her, here’s Italy with one of the dumbest greatest movies of its era. Movies aren’t even allowed to be this beautiful or dumb anymore. Bava made this the same year as Black Sabbath and The Whip and the Body (which we just might watch this Shocktober). There are seven credited writers, which honestly makes sense.