by ·Comments Off on Wake In Fright (1971, Ted Kotcheff)

A teacher attempts to go on holiday, but unfortunately he is the dumbest, drunkest idiot in all Australia. He is Gary “U.S.” Bond of Growing Pains (the Hammer horror, not the comedy series), a Blind Faith fan who hates his job and hates ordinary fuckin’ people. During a train layover in a thriving town, he gets sucked into a game of high stakes heads-or-tails and loses all his vacation money so has to look for work instead of proceeding to the shore. But some locals are very happy to host the stranger and keep him drunk. White-suited Tim’s daughter Janette wants to make out with the newcomer, but he throws up instead. Finally he settles for having a bromance with Donald Pleasance, the only other intellectual in Australia. He never actually wakes in fright, but with twenty minutes left he wakes in disgust. Gary escapes, but continuing to be an idiot he accidentally hitches a ride to the town he just left, then thinks he has to kill Pleasance, or maybe himself. Not a horror movie, it turns out (unless you count the scene where a bunch of kangaroos are shot and stabbed to death), just another in a long line of Australian movies about how it brutally sucks to live in Australia.

How can you hate a country whose only features are cockatoos and drinking?

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 32: SHOCKtober Revisits Part 2

Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985, Philippe Mora)

Last watched The Howling in 2007, and last watched Howling II on channel 3 at a Motel 6. Howling sequels are famously the worst sequels, but who can remember which is which? Christopher Lee speaks an incantation, but only in voiceover. Despite your sister’s best efforts to control him, Vlad makes a big show of wolfing out and rushing the captives, then some guy with a shotgun easily kills both Vlad and your sister. A woman wearing insane clothes (Stirba!) throws a prop demon at a priest, who turns into a Svankmajer head, then Lee punches her in the stomach and they both spontaneously combust. Now that the… demon cultist werewolf vampires?… are dead, our romantic heroes enjoy a Cars concert. “Punk group: Babel,” man, this is not punk, it’s new wave. Vlad was in two Dollman movies and Lynch’s Dune, seems like a cool guy, and the girl who gets naked was predictably cast 30 years later by Rob Zombie.

Enter Stirba:

Stirba and her demon friend:

Stirba auditioning to be in Rawhead Rex:

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Howling III: The Marsupials (1987, Philippe Mora)

Gentle scenes of Australians enjoying life surrounded by colorful birds, did I get the wrong movie? Lead guy (Bad Boy Bubby’s dad) is surprised by an old friend who says it’s safe to come out of hiding, so BBB’s dad moves to California to teach at a school where all the students wear the same shirt. The worst actor they could find drops in to reveal the secret identities of the professor’s long-lost marsupial friends. That night one of them wins an oscar and transforms into a possum-person on live TV. At least part two had demons killing priests and Christopher Lee and Stirba, I dunno what this is supposed to offer.

The Substance was just a Howling sequel:

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Night of the Demons II (1994, Brian Trenchard-Smith)

I was last disappointed by the original in 2006, pretty sure I’ve seen both these sequels before on VHS. A girl being sexually harassed by a demon gets rescued by… a nun with nunchucks, get it? This is the movie with the holy water balloons and super soaker, I assumed that was Fright Night. They defeat demonmaster Angela with the power of their faith (ugh) then she returns as Golobulus and they simply defeat her again. Cast members also appeared in: Nemesis, Tremors, Dr. Giggles, 976-EVIL 2, Leprechaun in Space, and Slumber Party Massacre 4. At least Angela is the same Angela in all three of these dumb movies, and the director works on Trailers From Hell so I can’t stay mad at him.

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Night of the Demons III (1997, Jim Kaufman)

Angela’s teeth have got crazier, and she’s making the same deal with the survivors to trade one for many, with the same CG snakes backing her up. Hitting her with a car doesn’t help, she just transforms into a sphere of pure love and light, but fails to escape the same way when the kids drag her into a sunbeam. Not one of the Kaufmans you’ve heard of, Jim made an emmy-nominated talking cat movie.

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Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977, John Boorman)

A whole bunch of Linda Blairs, and the priest is hot for a couple of them, while in a different location someone sets themself on fire. The Great Locust arrives and the house starts tearing apart as the priest (Richard “Dr. Faustus” Burton) gets his bearings and rips out Bad Linda’s heart with his bare hands, breaking the curse or whatever. “The world won’t understand… not yet,” says Louise Fletcher (Invaders From Mars) and we still don’t. I remember this movie being very bad – apparently there’s a new feature-length doc arguing that yes it’s bad, but at least it’s also interesting. I ain’t sitting through all that, but I did read the Reveal interview.

Mouseover to transform Linda Blair:
image

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Exorcist III (1990, William Peter Blatty)

Serial killer Brad Dourif and detective George C. Scott are playing Silence of the Lambs mind games in the psych ward – this is a restored version with VHS-quality deleted scenes reincorporated. Dourif has sent a demon-possessed catatonic nurse (she’s also a murderer in Creepshow) to murder Scott’s family. He gets home in time for the nurse to attack him instead, then she just stops, so Scott returns to the hospital to shoot Dourif with a gun, apparently an effective method of dealing with demonic possession. Did we know that before his Exorcist movies Blatty wrote the Tashlin romp The Man from the Diners’ Club?

Comin’ at ya:

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The Guardian (1990, William Friedkin)

While Exorcist III was in production, what was original Exorcist director Friedkin working on: an even worse movie about an evil tree cult. With help from the confounding editing, hero mom hits evil nanny Jenny Seagrove (also narrator of the New Order rock doc) with her car. The cops then tell the upset parents (nobodies, though dad was in House 1 and 2) that none of this happened. Sorry I missed Miguel Ferrer, not sorry Sam Raimi dropped out of this to make Darkman, and anyway the bloody man-with-chainsaw-versus-sentient-tree climax would be nothing new for Sam. It was all worth it for this review .

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Friday the 13th (1980, Sean S. Cunningham)

Looks like the last surviving camp counselor is fixin’ to get slain by Jason’s Mom. Nobody knows how to close doors quietly in movies. J’s M here’s-johnny’s her way into the hidey closet and gets a frying pan to the skull for her troubles. The showdown continues outside, where J’s M is cleanly beheaded by a machete. I don’t know much about horror movies so I’ll assume that’s the end of it! Oh, the (un)dead kid attacking her in a canoe afterwards was just a dream… or was it?? The mom had been in John Ford and Anthony Mann movies, and this was the director’s follow-up to a couple of kids-playing-sports movies.

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Friday The 13th Part 2 (1981, Steve Miner)

If the clumsy guy in the one-eyed cloth-bag mask is Jason, he sure grew up fast. I appreciate both movies using loon sounds whenever the action moves outdoors. Again the sole surviving girl fights back with superior weapons (a chainsaw), then tries a new tactic, putting on his dead mom’s sweater and threatening him maternally. Her friend Paul does not help her kill Jason with a machete, but he does gallantly carry her over a puddle afterwards. Ending is fun, macheted zombie Jason smashing through the window and grabbing her, then inexplicable half-minute coda where she’s fine but Paul is missing. These movies were not built to last, or to be viewed by adults – when Howling II looks better than your movie, you have fucked up. Miner went on to make House and Warlock and… Soul Man.

Comin’ at ya:

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Friday The 13th Part 3 (1982, Steve Miner)

Jason’s got his iconic hockey mask and is smashing up a barn trying to find the final girl who got away. She hit him with a shovel then lynched him, of course that didn’t work. A guy arrives and gets dismembered in under a second, then the girl finds an axe and gives the iconic hockey mask its iconic axe-hole. She wakes up in a boat the next morning to the sound of loon calls and gets pulled into the water by a zombie the cops didn’t see, precisely like the first movie.

Comin’ at ya:

by ·Comments Off on Hardware (1990, Richard Stanley)

This is clever in its visual transitions and I like the early bits of the soundtrack composed of chill slide guitar (and Iggy Pop as a wacky DJ), but ultimately feels like a cool robot design with a movie loosely hung around it.

Dylan McDermott (also of future-robot movie Automata) and his sidekick Shades (of Jarman’s Edward II) bring the scavenged head of a self-healing military attack robot to Dylan’s off-again girlfriend Jill (Phantasm II). She puts on some Ministry before integrating the head into one of her artworks (Spielberg would use the same band to convey dystopian junkyard aesthetics a decade later).

Three guesses which one is Shades:

Unfortunately the robot was built as part of a government program to kill all the humans, and it reactivates to complete its mission. First it lets the girl’s creeper neighbor (Wm Hootkins of Death Machine) make a slow fool of himself before it megakills him. Jill lowers her body heat to undetectable levels by jumping into an open-door fridge for five seconds, then they throw the robot in the shower and it does the whole “I’m melting” bit.

by ·Comments Off on Long Weekend (1978, Colin Eggleston)

Good tagline: “Their crime was against nature – nature found them guilty.” This refers to the lead asshole, on a camping trip with his unwilling wife, who trashes and destroys and kills every natural thing he comes across. He flicks wildfire cigs out the window and runs down a roo before they even arrive, then shoots a manatee he thought was a shark, is always brandishing axes and missile weapons.

Can these matching jackets save their marriage?

The wife didn’t want to be here in the first place, won’t let him touch her because she has a headache this year. He persists, both with her and with his camping-by-brute-force mission. An eagle attacks him, weirdly, then a possum bites him, righteously. A half hour before the movie’s over we’re still in anything-could-happen mode. After the wildlife frustrations and the wife threatening to exit the campsite and the marriage, husband kills her with a speargun, then he tries to fuck his way out of the swampy forest in a 2WD Nissan. At this point we know he’ll die – and he does in the funniest way, getting run down by a truck when a cockatoo attacks its driver.

When not spending time with the horrible humans the movie offers a parade of cool creatures. This was the back half of my Australian weirdo-horror double-feature. From the writer and cinematographer of Roadgames, Eggleston later made a (bad?) vampire movie featuring the expectant husband from Body Melt.

by ·Comments Off on Body Melt (1993, Philip Brophy)

I love finding uniquely bizarre movies like this one, wacko in all the best ways. Our pharma villain is introduced nude, injecting her man with a serum that will turn him goopy by sunrise. After looking up an address on his rad computer, he makes it all the way to the cul-de-sac where he was trying to warn(?) the residents that they’re all unwitting test subjects of the secret drug.

It’s vacation time, and the cul-de-saquers head out on their adventures. Slick-haired Paul (narrator of the Adam Elliot shorts) goes to the airport and sees people who aren’t really there. Two young guys on a road trip stop to get a new windshield where freaky kids are eating kangaroo adrenal glands. Family of four start melting (the son dies unrelatedly in a freak skateboarding accident), while the pregnant couple stay home and experience placenta-attacks. I’m not sure of the drug’s intended purpose, but the lead scientist’s ex-partner (father of the gland-chewing kids) ran off with the special ingredient that makes people not explode. Too much raver music, otherwise a perfect movie, the sole feature by a gang of art weirdos.

Did I mention it’s Australian?

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 Until the End of the World (1991, Wim Wenders)

Nice thing about the five-hour movie being spread across two discs is it’s an easy way to break it up across two evenings. The down side is my brain played the title U2 song on a loop for the 22 hours between discs. This began Wenders’ U2 era – they also did songs for Faraway, So Close and Beyond the Clouds and The End of Violence, and Bono wrote and produced the awful Million Dollar Hotel, beginning a drought during which WW couldn’t make a decent fiction film until (here’s hoping) 2023.

Sam Neill is our narrator writing a book about what happened after Claire left him. I thought there’d be some play between the real versions of events and the way he writes them, but no, he’s just following the story as we are and typing it up neatly so we don’t get lost. Claire is Solveig Dommartin, star of the two angel movies and Claire Denis’s No Fear, No Die. She takes an abandoned road to avoid a traffic jam and crashes into a couple of thieves with bags full of money, beginning the road movie tradition of accumulating a cast of friendly characters. Next she’ll add tech fugitive William Hurt and original road man Rudiger Vogler as a bounty hunter. In various configurations they travel to Lisbon, Berlin, China, Japan, USA. Across the shabby chaotic cities of nuclear crisis 1999, WW nailed how annoying computer voices and graphics would be in our future.

It’s all very plotty, not a loose hangout piece like the earlier films with Vogler. That’s not a problem, just a different sort of thing, but when they settle down in Australia for part two, it becomes a problem. Hurt (“Trevor”) and Claire gerry their way through the desert clutching the airplane door she’s been handcuffed to, soundtracked by Peter Gabriel. I imagine Rabbit Proof Fence was a reference to this – also imagine that their character names are a shout-out to Stagecoach star Claire Trevor. When they arrive at Hurt’s family tech lab, the brisk travel plot abruptly stops and we get bogged down in the plot of transmitting brainwave images to Hurt’s blind mom Jeanne Moreau. Dad Max von Sydow (my second 1980s von Sydow this month) changes the focus of his project to dream capture, alienating the locals and the viewers. Neill keeps writing as Hurt and Claire lose their sense of waking reality and the movie turns to drug addiction metaphors (she goes through withdrawal when her dream-viewer runs out of battery). The gang starts to fall away and it all peters out, ending with a postscript of Claire taking a zoom call in space. Spotted in the credits: Michael Almereyda, Paulo Branco, Chen Kaige.

The Australia half is almost redeemed by this band:

Chico can dig it:

From the extras: Almereyda tried to write a draft. Wenders very interested in creating and distorting the HD images, a prototype technology at the time, and talks about being a music collector. “That was another reason why the movie had to be so long” – he wrote all his fave musicians asking them to write a futuristic song, thinking most would say no, then ended up with a ton of songs. He wanted an Elvis song he couldn’t have, so “I don’t know how it happened but” David Lynch produced a cover version.

by ·Comments Off on The Royal Hotel (2023, Kitty Green)

Julia Garner from The Assistant and Jessica Henwick run out of money on an Aussie cruise and find work at a rural bar to pay their way home, but none of the men turn out to be friendly. I thought this would be horrorish, maybe a bit, but the women hold their own and burn the fuckin’ place down after the men turn on each other.

Bad Dudes: Hugo Weaving is the drunk owner, Toby Wallace (The Bikeriders) takes them swimming, Daniel Henshall (The Babadook) is dangerous from the start, James “Teeth” Frecheville only saves them because he wants them for himself, and cruise shipper Herbert Nordrum basically turns out worse than Teeth. We like Carol the cook, anyway, and this will be more rewatchable than The Assistant.