Category Archives: Black Comedy

Coup de tete (1979)

Posted on May 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

coup de tete

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Soccer player gets revenge.

Francois (Patrick Dewaere) plays soccer (football) for the local amateur team in the French town where he lives. One day, while the rich owner of the team (Jean Bouise) watches, Francois has a physical altercation with the team’s star player Berthier (Patrick Floersheim), which immediately gets the owner and the rest of his teammates to turn on him. Not only does Francois get kicked off the squad, but he loses his factory job too. Francois then gets accused of rape in a crime that was actually committed by Berthier, but the police manipulate the evidence so Francois goes to jail instead. It’s only later when the team bus gets into an accident that Francois is released from prison so he can help them win, which he does, but he also has a very creative plan that he enacts on those who wronged him.

After directing the highly successful Black and White in Color, which won the Academy Award for best foreign film for 1976, director Jean-Jacques Annaud decided to take another stab at social satire. For the most part the film works well and is filled with a lot of intriguing elements. The best part is the way it pokes fun at the fans, who are just regular people that become so obsessed with their team winning that they lose sight of everything else that is important while clinging to the misguided notion that if their team achieves victory then that will somehow make up for all of life’s other transgressions.

Dewaere excels in his usual outsider role and watching him climb up some precarious apartment building walls and at one point even pull his way up a scaffold in his effort to visit his lady friends is entertaining in itself. Dorothee Jemma is attractive as the woman who initially accuses him of rape then retracts it and the side-story dealing with the quirky romance that ensues between them is enjoyable and better than the main one.

However, like with Annaud’s first film, I didn’t find this to be quite as entertaining as all the other critics seemed to. There are certainly some amusing moments and the script by Francis Veber is highly unpredictable, but in the end it doesn’t pack the intended punch. I think the main reason for this is the fact that the townspeople who screw Francois over are just too one-dimensional. They behave like unbridled jerks without ever realizing how hypocritical they really are, which makes their ultimate comeuppance not as satisfying because I could never believe that they were real people and instead just poorly crafted caricatures.

Alternate Title: Hothead (American reissue)

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 14, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Studio: Gaumont International

Available: VHS (Dubbed), DVD (Region 2), Blu-ray (Multi-region) (Subtitled)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sports Movies

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Throw Momma from the Train (1987)

Posted on February 2, 2016 | 3 comments

throw momma 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Two guys trade murders.

Larry (Billy Crystal) is a creative writing teacher who’s bitter about his ex-wife (Kate Mulgrew) stealing his story idea and using it to write a successful novel that has made her rich and famous while he wallows in the realm of writer’s block. Owen (Danny DeVito) is a writing student taking one of Larry’s classes who is stuck living with his miserable mother (Anne Ramsey) who he’d like to see dead. After watching the movie Strangers on a Train he comes up with what he thinks is a brilliant solution. He’ll murder Larry’s ex-wife while Larry in turn will murder his Momma. Owen does his part, but Larry is reluctant to pull his end of the ‘deal’.

DeVito gets a lot of accolades for his acting, but in many ways I think he is an even better director and doesn’t get enough credit for it. This movie was way ahead-of-its-time and ushers in many interesting juxtapositions and edits that we take for granted now, but was considered quite novel back then. I loved the close-up of Owen’s Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and then a jet plane formatted over it, which is used to cut to the next scene as well as the scene showing Larry’s students sitting in class and then the camera panning over in one take to Larry sleeping on the sofa in his apartment. The segments with a camera spinning around the characters is good and gives it a very Hitchcock feel especially the one with Larry lying on the floor as the camera rotates above him, but the best directorial touch is when Owen goes bowling while imagining that the pins are his mother.

Ramsey’s performance as the ultimate mother from hell is another selling point and one that has made this a cult classic. The fact that the woman was dying of cancer at the time and was in severe pain during the entire time that the movie was being filmed makes it all the more impressive. My only complaint is that it would’ve been nice had there been at least one moment where her character revealed a softer side and made her seem at least slightly human. I also felt that her eventual demise was quite unimaginative especially for a film that was otherwise very creative.

DeVito scores as well in his performance of the nebbish grown son in a character that could’ve easily been unlikable had it not been perfectly balanced, which he does marvelously. Crystal is excellent as a sort of sane everyman stuck in a very insane situation. His best part comes when he paces his house endlessly while trying desperately to come up with the opening sentence of his novel, which I found to be one of the funniest moments in the movie and something every struggling writer can relate to.

The wrap-up is a bit too good natured and works against the story’s otherwise dark comical roots, but it still gets a few points for showing Owen’s children’s pop-up book that he made, which illustrates the film’s scenario.

throw momma 2

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 11, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Danny DeVito

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Cult, Movies with a train setting, Remakes

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The Fortune (1975)

Posted on January 30, 2016 | 3 comments

fortune

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to murder heiress.

Oscar (Jack Nicholson) and Nicky (Warren Beatty) are two inept con men living in the 1920’s who think they’ve come up with the perfect plan for gaining a lot of money by having Oscar marry Fredericka (Stockard Channing) who is set to inherit millions from her father as she is the sole heiress to his fortune.  Unfortunately for them once the wedding is over Fredericka suddenly announces that she plans on donating her entire fortune to charity convincing the two that they must murder her before she does.

I found this to be a highly enjoyable movie and was laughing-out-loud in a lot of places, which is something that I don’t typically do. So it made me surprised to find that there were quite a few people on IMDB that were critical of it, or that it did so poorly at the box office when it was initially released. I admit that for the first hour the script meanders and things don’t really get going until the final 30 minutes when the two try to implement their hair-brained murder attempts, which they hope to make look like a suicide, but instead encounter one unexpected disaster after another.

Two of the funniest moments include the scene where Jack Nicholson walk out onto the wing of a flying airplane and scares Fredericka who is sitting as a passenger inside in a sort of comic spin of the famous ‘Twilight Zone’ episode that starred William Shatner. Another great scene is when Nicky and Oscar put Fredericka’s unconscious body inside a trunk and then try to throw if off a bridge only to inadvertently hold up a long procession of honking cars and angry drivers.

The three leads are in top form and play completely against type here. Beatty, who usually plays laid-back and detached characters, is more cantankerous and belligerent and Nicholson, with his hairstyle resembling that of singer Art Garfunkel’s is very funny as the dimwitted second-banana. Channing looks great in a flapper style hairdo and the segments detailing her desperate attempts at cooking are quite amusing. Florence Stanley is also good in support as the noisy landlord.

The film has the ingredients for a perfect comedy although it will appeal more to those who enjoy their humor on the dark side. The twist ending is kind of clever and the final camera shot that rotates to an almost complete turn is excellent.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: October 16, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mike Nichols

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies

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The Girl Most Likely to…(1973)

Posted on January 17, 2016 | 1 comment

girl most likely 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ugly girl gets revenge.

Miriam (Stockard Channing) is a homely student attending college who can’t seem to find a boyfriend or even any friends. Instead she is ostracized and rejected constantly in the cruelest ways possible. Upset by her depressing life she one day gets into her car and drives recklessly down the highway only to get into a crash, which forces surgeons to do major reconstructive surgery on her face that amazingly turns her into a beautiful woman. Now she can have any guy that she wants, but the bitterness of the way she was treated in the past eats away at her and she instead decides to get revenge by killing off all the people that rejected her using increasingly novel methods.

This made-for-TV film was written by Joan Rivers and it has the same humor that she used in her stand-up comedy act, which mainly focused on women’s deep seated insecurities involving their looks and the need to get married and please their husband. To some degree the whole thing is quite dated particularly the idea that a woman’s sole purpose in life is to use their looks to snare a rich husband who will then take care of them for the rest of their life. The humor and characters are also extremely clichéd and broad, but it still manages to have some funny bits.

Channing’s presence helps immensely and she manages to somehow carry off the role with dignity despite being degraded and humiliated at every turn. Her ugly makeover is impressive particularly the way they wadded up her nose to make her left nostril much larger than the right one, which had me reluctantly focused on it every time it came into view.

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The supporting cast features many familiar faces in small, bit parts some of which are quite funny including Joe Flynn as a surgeon unable to find a patient’s appendix, Larry Wilcox as a dumb football player named Moose, Warren Berlinger as Miriam’s plumber fiancée and Susanne Zenor as the haughty roommate. This also marks the acting debut of Larry Manetti who can be spotted in a small role as a football player.

The murders themselves are what help stand this film apart from the others in what otherwise could be described as a Carrie precursor. The scene where Miriam kills off the Wilcox character while skydiving is impressively captured as is the segment where Berlinger drowns in a flood in his own bathroom. The only one that doesn’t quite make sense is when she tries to kill a pool player by having him hit the eight ball that is secretly a bomb. However, when it does finally go off, it explodes the entire pool hall, which would’ve easily killed Miriam along with the others had she not been inadvertently lead away at the last minute.

Fans of black humor should especially enjoy this and for a TV-movie it is far and away better than most. It also scores better than River’s theatrical feature Rabbit Test, which she did five years later and wasn’t funny at all.

girl most likely 3

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 6, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 15Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Lee Phillips

Studio: ABC Circle Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, College Life, Cult, Made-for-TV, Offbeat

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Eraserhead (1977)

Posted on January 2, 2016 | 2 comments

Eraserhead

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Couple has deformed baby.

In David Lynch’s first feature length film, a movie that took almost 5 years to make and had a good deal of it financed by Sissy Spacek and her husband, we have a surreal almost cryptic-like tale detailing a lonely man named Henry (Jack Nance) and his ultimate descent into a madness as he is forced to take care of severely deformed child while also harboring the dark urge to kill it.

It is hard to say whether one can like or dislike this as it goes so far out of the conventional form of film narrative that it seemingly defies all genres and puts itself into a category all its own. On a sheer technical level it is quite impressive especially when you factor in its shoestring budget and array of production set-backs. Each scene is meticulously detailed with wild and unsettling imagery that on a purely visual level will be more than enough to leave an impact. Overall the film is cold, ugly and unyielding, but helped tremendously by Nance’s presence as a sort of detached everyman who seems as confused and aloof to his surroundings as the viewer.

To me the most jarring image is the baby, which is incredibly lifelike. Had it came off looking fake, or like some puppet or Claymation attempt the film would’ve been a failure, or deemed laughable, but this thing is freaky looking to the extreme and Lynch spares no expense in getting the camera close up to it, which could force some viewers to turn away. Supposedly it was made from the embalmed fetus of a calf, but no one knows for sure and the crew was forced to blind fold themselves when Lynch set it up, so the secret would never come out. Either way it is effective and it manages to move its eyes and mouth almost like it were real and coming off as far more authentic than any computerized effect.

Spoiler Alert!

Of course the most confounding thing about the film is its story and symbolism’s that can be interpreted in a million different ways depending on the viewer’s own perspective. For what it’s worth I’ll give you my interpretation, which isn’t that complicated. To me the deformed baby symbolizes Henry’s soul, which has been mangled by the soulless world that he lives in, which would explain why he is so extremely passive because he is simply a walking zombie. The scene where his head pops off and the ugly child’s head pops into its place only reinforces this. The lady that he sees in the radiator is an angel from heaven and the beautiful lady that lives across the hall from him is the devil who entices him with sex, but when she realizes he has no soul to take, just an ugly mangled remnant of one, which gets exposed to her when she sees him standing in the doorway, she quickly loses interest and moves onto someone else. When he finally kills the baby he is essentially killing himself, which then explains why he ends up in the final scene in heaven with the lady in the radiator.

The man in the planet that we see at the beginning represents Henry’s own subconscious as he quarrels within his mind at the thoughts of killing the child. The man could also represent the world at large and how it controls everyone with its levers, which when Henry finally kills himself they start to have sparks fly from them and the man struggles in containing them, which shows that Henry has now ‘broken free’ from the man and this world by taking his own life.

End of Spoiler Alert!

Some consider this a horror pic, but I found certain parts of it to be quite funny in a darkly humorous way particularly the segment where Henry goes to visit his girlfriend’s parents. To me the most horrifying thing about is the way it challenges the viewers to question their own morality by forcing them to face the difficult quandary or what they would do if put into the same situation as Henry and forced to care for a hideous looking baby that some would consider would be better off dead.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Not Rated

Director: David Lynch

Studio: Libra Films International

Available: DVD (Criterion Collection), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black & White, Black Comedy, Cult, Moody/Stylish, Offbeat, Psychological, Surreal/Fantasy

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A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

Posted on December 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

zed 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: They’re really into decay.

Oswald and Oliver (Brian and Eric Deacon) are twin brothers working at a zoo who become devastated to learn that both of their wives have died in the same freak accident in a car driven by Alba (Andrea Ferreol) who survives, but without her leg. Initially the brothers’ are angered with her, but this slowly grows into a strange attraction, which eventually forms into a ménage a trois. To help with their grief they begin doing time-lapse photography of the decaying process. They start with dead animals before deciding on a human subject with Alba as their chosen ‘star’.

From a completely visual level this film can be considered a great success. This was the first of ten projects that Director Peter Greenaway and cinematographer Sacha Vierny collaborated on and the result is stunning. The vivid contrasting colors, lighting and symmetrically designed sets make each and every shot look like its own painting. This is also one of the few films that completely transcend its era. Usually one can tell what decade a movie is from by watching it for only a few minutes, but this film is unlike any other ‘80s movie made, which is an achievement unto itself.

The best part of the movie is its depiction of the real-life decaying process captured in time-lapse form. I realize this may sound extremely morbid and ‘sick’, but it’s a natural process of the world we live in and if taken from a purely scientific perspective quite an interesting and fascinating phenomenon to watch. It gives the film a unique one-of-a-kind edge and something I wished had been shown even more.

The film’s drawbacks are the characters that come off as too weird and twisted, which is an issue in a lot of Greenaway’s movies that are always technically brilliant, but lacking in emotion or empathy. A good movie, no matter how ‘artistic’ it may be still needs relatable characters to help propel it and instead this movie has what amounts to mouth pieces in disguise as people who are simply used to relay a concept, but in no way connected to anyone you’d ever meet in real life. This results in leaving the viewer cold and making the film more of an ‘Avant-garde experiment’ than an actual story.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 4, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 55Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Peter Greenaway

Studio: British Film Institute

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat

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The King of Comedy (1983)

Posted on November 23, 2015 | 2 comments

king of comedy 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Struggling comic craves fame.

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is a lonely 34-year-old still living in the basement of his mother’s home while fantasizing about one day appearing on the top-rated Jerry Langford show as a stand-up comedian. When he tries to contact Langford (Jerry Lewis) he’s given the blow off, so he decides to plot an elaborate plan with an equally obsessed fan named Masha (Sandra Bernhard). Together they kidnap Jerry at gunpoint and take him back to her apartment where they tie him up with duct tape. They then call the show’s producers and demand that Rupert appear that night as a guest comedian on the show or Jerry’s life will be ended.

Paul D. Zimmerman’s script, which was originally written in the late ‘60s and intended as a vehicle for talk show host Dick Cavett, is nothing short of brilliant and the main reason for its success is that it takes an outrageous idea and adapts it to realities of modern day life while pinpointing with amazing clarity all the absurdities of today’s celebrity worship culture. The story is told by people who’ve worked in the entertainment business, which makes the viewer feel like they’ve experienced life from inside after watching it.

There are so many ingeniously funny moments that it is hard to pick only one in fact you have to watch the movie several times in order to appreciate all of its subtly and satirical nuances. I loved the scene where Rupert talks to cardboard cutouts of Liza Minnelli and Langford as he pretends to be on their show or when he imagines doing his routine in front of an audience while speaking to a blown-up picture of a crowd of people. The segment in which Rupert arrives at Langford’s home unannounced is equally good and was entirely ad-libbed by the cast. The scene involving Langford’s kidnapping and subsequent ‘ransom’ note, which he must read from cue cards is also hilarious and Rupert’s wedding that he imagines being done live on the Langford show is a terrific send-up of the real-life wedding between Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki that occurred on ‘The Tonight Show’ on December 17, 1969.

Director Scorsese does a masterful job of jumping from the real to surreal as well as allowing the viewer to get inside Rupert’s head and appreciating the warped logic that many obsessed fans like him have. I also enjoyed the inspired casting including having Scorsese’s own mother playing the voice of Rupert’s mom and De Niro’s real-life wife at the time playing Rupert’s would-be girlfriend. Frederick De Cordova who was the producer of ‘ The Tonight Show’ during its run with Johnny Carson essentially plays himself as Langford’s producer and even Scorsese can be spotted during a brief bit with actor Tony Randall.

Lewis is interesting in his first serious role and it’s fun seeing a picture of him when he was only 12-years-old. Comedian Sandra Bernhard is surprisingly good and I enjoyed the fact that even though her character was nutty she still came off as being quite sensible when compared to Pupkin. De Niro though steals it by making psychotic character seem strangely likable.

The few drawbacks include why at 34 would Rupert suddenly decided to break into the entertainment business and what was he doing before this. The Bernhard character also needed more of a backstory especially when we find that she’s living in a luxurious apartment and apparently loaded with money, which goes against the grain of most celebrity stalkers who are almost always on society’s fringe.

The humor may not resonate with everyone, but if one is a fan of dark comedy then it doesn’t get much darker than this. The twist ending, which blew me away when I first saw this years ago, now doesn’t seem quite as believable, but the rest of it is on-target in what is clearly a top comedy to of the ‘80s.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: February 18, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 49Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Martin Scorsese

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Kidnapping Movies, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Satire

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Shocker (1989)

Posted on October 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

shocker

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Serial killer becomes electric.

Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) is a serial killer who’s dabbled in black magic, which allows him to kill people without getting caught. Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy) is trying to track him down and when he starts to get too close Horace then kills Parker’s family. Parker’s adopted son Jonathan (Peter Berg), who was not present when the murders occurred, begins to have visions where he appears as Horace is committing the atrocities and he uses his new found ability to track Pinker down and eventually get him arrested, but Horace continues to dabble in black magic even in his jail cell, which allows him to survive the electric chair and go on killing people by entering into the bodies of his latest victims.

I couldn’t help but feel as I watched this that writer/director Wes Craven, in his drive to create another Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, completely sold out on this one by writing a script with a voodoo logic that may satisfy a 13-year-old, but will send any discerning adult’s head spinning. For one thing there is no real explanation of how this sleazy, low-life chump that works as a TV repair man was able to attain the powers that he does and simply saying he ‘dabbled in black magic’ says nothing as many other people have done the same, but never achieved these same cataclysmic results.

There is also the issue of Jonathan’s girlfriend’s necklace being the one thing that can supposedly ‘stop’ Horace, but why as this is nothing more than a flimsy piece of jewelry made by humans. And since when do spirits, evil or otherwise come connected with physical defects as Horace continues to walk around with the limp that he had in his old body even when he goes into someone else’s. Clearly this thing is making up its own rules as it goes along and proceeds to get even more convoluted until it gets downright confusing by the end.

Berg is a complete bore in the lead and it’s easy to see why he subsequently left acting and got into directing of which he has had better success. The role of Pinker isn’t any better, but this is more because of the way the character is written. Having a bad guy behave like a one-dimensional psycho killing machine isn’t scary or interesting and a background to the character was needed, but never comes.

The part where Pinker and Jonathan get stuck inside an episode of ‘Leave it to Beaver’ is funny as is the segment where Pinker inhabits the body of a 6-year-old girl, but otherwise it’s a complete mess. Normally it would’ve been a career killer for most directors, but it still managed to make enough money at the box office to keep Craven’s name off the studio’s black list and the film that he did after this The People under the Stairs is considered by many to be a vast improvement.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 27, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Slasher/Gore

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The Raven (1963)

Posted on October 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

raven 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: The search for Lenore.

Dr. Craven (Vincent Price) is a former sorcerer who one night is visited by a talking raven. The raven is actually Dr. Bedlo (Peter Lorre) who has been turned into a bird by the evil Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Craven manages to concoct a potion that allows Bedlo to turn back into his human form and in appreciation he tells Craven that he has seen Lenore (Hazel Court), who Craven was once married to and was thought to be dead, living with Scarabus in his castle. Craven decides to pay Scarabus a visit to see if this is true and brings along his daughter Estelle (Olive Sturgess) as well as Bedlo and Bedlo’s son Rexford (Jack Nicholson). When they arrive they are greeted by the conniving wizard who at first denies any wrongdoing, but it soon becomes clear that he is jealous of Craven’s powers and wants to attain them for himself, which leads to a climactic cosmic duel between the two sorcerers.

This film marked the fourth collaboration between writer Richard Matheson and director Roger Corman and for the most part it is an entertaining success. The two apparently had so much fun creating the comic story of ‘The Black Cat’ in Tales of Terror trilogy that they decided to do a feature length horror/comedy that is very loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem. Despite being shot in only 15 days the film isn’t as limited by Corman’s usual low budget constraints and I was genuinely surprised how imaginative the special effects where and the overall impressive background sets.

The film’s biggest boost is clearly the three lead actors who are all at their absolute peak. I especially enjoyed Lorre who brazenly steals every scene he is in and ad-libbed many of his funny lines much to the consternation of his co-stars. In fact if Lorre wasn’t in this it wouldn’t have been half as enjoyable. A young Nicholson as his son is equally entertaining and the frosty relationship that the two characters have was apparently a carry-over from how they felt about each other from behind-the-scenes.

Some of the effects are clearly animated, which looks tacky and as the group arrive at Scarabus’ castle one can see that the place is merely a painting matted on the screen. The story also does have its share of lulls, but all of this gets forgiven by the climactic sorcerer’s duel, which is the film’s highlight.

raven

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 25, 1963

Runtime: 1Hour 26Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Roger Corman

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black Comedy, Surreal/Fantasy

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Homebodies (1974)

Posted on October 7, 2015 | 3 comments

homebodies 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Old people become killers.

Senior citizens living in a rundown apartment building are shocked to learn that they will be evicted so that their place can be torn down and turned into an office complex. They resist the move and devise a scheme in which they will create ‘accidents’ at the construction site that will cause fatalities and hopefully impede the building process. They even do away with the project developer (Douglas Fowley) by drowning him in hardening cement, but then one of them, Mrs. Loomis, (Ruth McDevitt) begins to suffer from a guilty conscience. She considers going to the authorities, but the others try to stop her, which soon creates deceit and murder from within the group.

Shot on-location in Cincinnati the film has a neat offbeat concept, but it’s unable to execute it to its full potential. It tries too hard to mix in too many different story elements and shifts awkwardly between drama, dark comedy, horror and even social commentary. The result is a mixed bag that never gets off the ground. There are a few interesting moments, but the first half is slow and barely seems like a horror movie at all.

Part of the problem is that the deaths aren’t novel. Outside of the one where Fowley gets submerged in cement the rest are run-of-the-mill. We never see how the seniors are able to create the ‘accidents’ at the construction site and it seemed hard to believe that they would’ve been agile enough to get around inside a dark building, late at night to set up the booby traps to begin with. It would’ve been fun had the killings been caused by using items connected with old age like bashing the victims over the head with a cane, running them down with a walker, or forcing them to swallow a bottle of Geritol. The filmmakers work hard to create sympathy for the seniors, but portraying them as creepy, scary and threatening would’ve made it more edgy.

Paula Truman is good in the lead as well as Ruth McDevitt as the granny with mixed emotions. Fowley though is a bore as the heavy as his caricature of a brash, ego-driven developer is too one-dimensional and he looks just as elderly as the rest of the cast. Hiring a much younger actor to play the part would’ve created more of an interesting contrast.

Larry Yust’s direction is competent and helps keep the proceedings palatable, but as a whole it’s undercooked and undeserving of the cult classic status that they were clearly hoping for.

homebodies 4

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 29, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Larry Yust

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: VHS

3 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Low Budget, Obscure Movies, Offbeat

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