Opens with a threesome sex scene over the credits, nice. “Torso” turns out to be code for “boobs.” This was technically pre-shocktober, part of Criterion’s giallo series from which I also watched Who Saw Her Die? and The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

Someone is strangling hot young people with scarves. Flo goes out to a sex commune and gets drowned and mutilated in the swamp on the way home. The local scarf vendor (of Toby Dammit, also a good scarf movie) knows who bought the murderscarves but instead of telling the cops he calls the killer to blackmail him, then is immediately smooshed by a car. Mostly this raises the question of why a weirdo running a scarf kiosk keeps his customers’ phone numbers.

Suzy Kendall (kidnapped girlfriend of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and macaw:

A group of hot girls decide to take a trip to the country after failing to locate their friend Stefano (Roberto Bisacco of Stavisky), presumed scarf murderer – though after watching more than one giallo, we know the most suspicious guy is least likely to be the killer, and sure enough when Stefano finally shows up he’s been scarf-strangled.

Jane’s car has Chicago (not Illinois) plates:

Jane wakes up and the others are dead, then hides while the killer hacksaws them. Their professor John Richardson (victorious hero of Black Sunday) is the baddie, and the moment he’s discovered he narrates his entire traumatic triggering backstory which involves a Mac & Me-esque cliff fall. Some guy fights him and saves her, I’m not sure who. Have I mentioned that all the dialogue is super ridiculous?

Girls who need a vacation:

What girls do on vacation:

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.

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.

Opens with a heist, Peter Fonda collecting money from the manager whose family is held hostage by his partner Deke (biker-movie regular Adam Roarke). Dirty drifter Susan George (Straw Dogs) gets in the way so they take her along. Sheriff Vic Morrow takes this pursuit personally and throws all resources into the chase. Car swappin’, fast drivin’, and drawbridge jumpin’ ensue, up to the requisite ’70s downbeat ending (our group is flattened by a train). Amazing to read that a lab error led to the movie being badly color-shifted for its first 30 years. Hough was mostly a horror guy, made The Legend of Hell House, the Cassavetes Incubus, and a Howling sequel.

Movie is known for its car action but I only gasped at this helicopter:

Long wikipedia-caliber intro with narration by Jeff Bridges (haha). He shouldn’t have compared CCR’s sales records to the Beatles in the intro then followed with a bunch of interview and tour diary clips where they are infinitely less witty and charismatic than the Beatles. But after a half hour of this feature-length stretching-out, the April 1970 concert begins and is pure fire.

Following Love is Colder and Katzelmacher, more crime plots with carefully composed scenes and actors with flat affect, though he’s beginning to allow Hanna Schygulla to be glamorous.

Harry Baer gets out of jail, sees all his people again, puts together a grocery store heist which goes bad because Hanna has tipped off the police inspector – in the meantime, every character sleeps with every other character.

Harry with Margarethe von Trotta and Günther The Gorilla:

The hero is a pig-toting bumpkin in a straw hat (I kept wanting the my-my-Mitchell theme song to play) and the villain is a gangster who fancies himself a talent agent (see also: The Girl Can’t Help It). Rough and active camerawork, but the human action is just whatever, except for Kano who is good with the roundhouse and the high kick. Sonny Chiba’s reputation was that he could fight convincingly onscreen – China had thousands of these guys and Japan just had Sonny. The cops are idiot assholes in this except for Sonny and the one who turns out to be the serial killer.

A filmed version of his own play, which was a stage adaptation of his own novel, which he wrote in French then translated to English – he filmed first, opened the play with the same cast, then released the movie. Sounds exhausting. Instead of the final film in the Van Peebles box set, Criterion could just as easily have released this as a double-feature with To Sleep With Anger, each of them about a happy Black household infiltrated by forces of evil.

A couple of passing imps decide to stop in Harlem to ruin a party thrown by Esther Rolle of Good Times. Instead of going in together, Trinity arrives first and completely fails to wreak havoc then falls for the birthday girl. When he’s belatedly joined by Devil David (Avon Long, who discovered Lena Horne in the 1930s), they only succeed in chasing off the Johnsons, a late-arriving condescending couple and their giant son, whom everyone else is glad to see go.

It’s a musical, and I wish any of the songs was great – too gospelly for me – but there’s a cool bit at the end when everyone’s singing what’s on their mind at once, the whole party semi-harmonizing and semi-chaotic.

Lisa Thompson:

Van Peebles frequently overlaps two different images to make a contrast that is then commented upon in a third shot, such as on the dangers of evil or the inability to stay true to oneself. Van Peebles occasionally uses the same overlapping technique with sound, playing with dissonance and harmony as multiple characters sing their own signature parts, or a single character sings while the others join in a communal chorus.


Three Pickup Men for Herrick (1957)

Herrick needs three pickup men, but five showed up. The white boss picks the one white guy, then the tough looking guy, then the young guy, and the rejects walk back home. No dialogue, Light humming and harmonica on the soundtrack.


Sunlight (1957)

I think the pretty girl married someone else because the guy she danced with at the restaurant said you can’t get married without money… but I don’t think restaurant guy was the hat guy who robs some lady and is chased by the cops and ends up at the wedding… maybe the older guy at the wedding is a different hat guy? Try paying attention next time?

Turns out it’s a 4th of July movie (which I watched on the 6th).

Months after a senator is shot by waiters at a Space Needle party, a reporter at the scene tells colleague Warren Beatty that witnesses are being killed. Warren goes rogue, raises hell with a small-town sheriff’s department and comes away with some papers from an organization that recruits assassins. He goes undercover calling himself Harry Nilsson, gets a crazy guy to fill out the admission forms for him, and convinces the parallax group he’s crazy enough to kill for them. I didn’t follow all the twists when he saved a flight full of people from a bombing, but the company is onto him afterwards, sending his editor a heart attack sandwich then framing Warren for the climactic assassination.

Alan “The Count” Pakula was the 70’s conspiracy thriller guy, making this between Klute and All the President’s Men. The screenwriters also did Three Days of the Condor (sure) and The Money Pit (what) with uncredited work by the late Robert Towne. They got a Taking of Pelham hijacker in this, a Stepford wife, and a Hitchcock actor.

Proof that it’s a 1970s movie: