Category Archives: Cult

Scanners (1981)

Posted on November 19, 2012 | 7 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: His head will explode.

Scanners are people with strange psychic powers that can not only read other people’s minds, but also kill them and even move objects with their brainwaves. A corrupt group of scanners lead by Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) threatens world domination. Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) who works for a company that is trying to stop these dangerous people finds a scanner named Cameron (Stephan Lack) that Darryl’s groups is seeking, but has not yet located. Ruth trains Cameron on how to hone in his scanning powers and then track down Darryl’s group and destroy it.

Director David Cronenberg is still in my estimation one of the premiere cult/horror directors around. It is one thing to make a great horror movie when you have a big budget and state of the art special effects, but it is another to make an effective movie when you have little to work with and yet Cronenberg has continually shown that a creative imagination can triumph over all else. He has also shown a refreshingly daring vision throughout his career and seems to have no hesitation in tackling taboo subjects.

This film proves no exception. The story is quite creative and there are continually new and surprising twists thrown in. The special effects are excellent and imaginative. I loved the protruding, blood spurting veins coming out of the arms and heads of Cameron and Darryl during their intense scanner showdown at the end. The melting telephone receiver isn’t bad and off course the exploding head is memorable and deserves its place in the annals of gross cinema history.

With that said I still felt the film could have done a better job at setting up the story. It starts right away with a lot of action before anything is explained and makes things confusing. Some sort of prolog in this case would have been appropriate. Everything also seems rushed. This is a great plot with interesting scenarios and I as a viewer wanted a little more time to soak it all in, but wasn’t given any. The sets and backdrops are redundantly dark and grimy and lack visual design. Overall the film has a seriously dated look and although there are way too many films being remade these days and some that are not necessary this is one movie were I would advocate it especially if done with a high budget and a competent director.

Stephan Lack makes for incredibly weak leading man. He is better known in the art world as a renowned painter and his film career was quite brief. After watching his performance here it is not hard to see why. He has very much of a ‘deer-in-headlights’ look and a voice tone that shown no infliction, or emotion. His lack of charisma or stature seriously weakens the film’s overall effect and why he was chosen for the part is a mystery.

Jennifer O’Neill is gorgeous as Kim a female scanner who works with Cameron in his quest to find Darryl. The woman, who was a former model, has a face that is so beautiful it is mesmerizing no matter what angle she is shown at or emotion that she is conveying. My only complaint is the small streak of gray that was put into her hair, which I found unnecessary especially since she was portraying someone who was Cameron’s same age, which was the early 30’s.

On the villainous side Ironside certainly has the chiseled threatening features of a bad guy. However, I actually thought that Canadian character actor Lawrence Dane who plays one of Darryl’s spies was actually more effective.

The artwork done by the Benjamin Pierce character (Robert A. Silverman) visualizing giant heads and the thoughts inside people’s heads was really cool and avant-garde.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated R

Director: David Cronenberg

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD

7 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Sci-Fi, Slasher/Gore

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Halloween II (1981)

Posted on October 29, 2012 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Michael won’t go away.

It’s still Halloween night 1978. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is rushed to the nearby Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to have her wounds attended to while Michael Meyers (Dick Warlock) roams the streets. Eventually he becomes aware of where she is and stalks her in the hospital while killing off anyone who gets in his way.

The film starts out okay. I liked the camera closing in on the pumpkin during the opening credits and revealing the shape of a skull inside. A fiery car crash that burns a kid wearing a similar mask to Michael’s is effectively graphic and  showing things from Michael’s point-of-view as he peers inside the neighbor’s homes has shades of Rear Window to it. However, I was confused why it wasn’t shown through the two eye holes of the mask since Michael was still wearing it and that was how it was done in the first film.

Things start to decline as it goes on and deviates too much to the standard slasher formula. I forget where I read it, but I remember somebody writing about the perennial characteristics of a tacky 80’s slasher film and one of them was having a scared cat jump out at someone some time during the film. The scene where the hospital security guard (Cliff Emmich) is going through the dumpster behind the building I started to think that this is the part for the proverbial scared cat and sure enough within seconds one jumps out pretty much cementing this for me as a second-rate shocker.

Donald Pleasance as Dr. Loomis is solid as always. The intensity that he displays is good and seeing him as a good guy for a change since the majority of his career he played dark and twisted characters is refreshing. Curtis is also good in the reprisal of her part, but for the first hour she barely appears at all. I was also confused with the scene where she for some unexplained reason falls into a comatose state and then just as strangely snaps out of it a few minutes later.

The Meyers character becomes a detriment here. Having him constantly getting shot at and then bouncing back up without any rational explanation was irritating. He gets around at too many different places and seems a little too slick. For instance he’s able to cut off the phone lines to the hospital in some unexplained way as well as slashing the tires of every single car in the hospital’s parking lot. Also, where does a guy who has been institutionalized since age six manage to figure out the meaning and origins of samhain, which is a word that he writes in blood on a wall of a classroom?

There are other loopholes as well. For instance the hospital seems extremely dark and shadowy. Most hospitals I have been to are always well lit inside especially the hallways, but here it is almost like there are no lights on at all. The part where Michael stabs a nurse in her back with a thin surgical blade and then is able to lift her from the floor with it is ridiculous because the blade just wouldn’t be strong enough. The knife that Michael steals from an old lady (Lucille Benson) when he sneaks into her house is different from the one that he jams into the desk of a classroom that he breaks into.

The extreme lapses of logic are a big problem. When the film starts to have no bearing in reality then I find it hard if not impossible to get caught up into it. Clearly the screenwriter and director were making up the rules as they went along causing the climatic sequence that should have been suspenseful to be, at least to me, boring and annoying instead.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 30, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video 

2 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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Halloween (1978)

Posted on October 26, 2012 | 13 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Michael Meyers comes home.

On Halloween night in 1963 6 year old Michael Myers stabs to death his older sister Judith. He is taken away to a mental institution, but fifteen years later he escapes and comes back to his hometown of Haddonfield to stalk three teenage women (Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles) on Halloween night.

I first saw this film 25 years ago when I was in College and thought it was cool, but now on my second viewing I’m not quite as impressed. There are still some good things about it, but also in my opinion some glaring loopholes. I’ll start with the things I liked.

Cinematically it is a well mounted thriller. The lighting is perfect. The dark shadowy interiors create the feeling of menace and the little light that is shown has a bluish tone and resembles authentic moonlight. The music by director John Carpenter is distinct and has an effective up-tempo beat almost like a warning siren. The editing and pacing is great. It builds the tension nicely and has some creepy imagery.

One of the scenes I always found to be the creepiest is when Tommy, the young boy that the Curtis character is babysitting, sees from across the street Michael carrying one of his dead victims from the car to the house. In fact all the long shots showing Michael are the most effective. Somehow it was a combination not only of the way the actor walked in the costume, but his mask as well, which was apparently a William Shatner Captain Kirk mask that was painted all white.

The fact that there is never any reason given for why Michael became the way he did is also good. There are many similar true-life crimes where even after the murderer is interviewed by the psychiatrists they still can’t always come up with a satisfying explanation. Movies that try to show the reason behind why the bad guy becomes murderous usually end up being contrived and clichéd.

The three actresses looked too old for teenagers and in the case of both Loomis and Soles where already in their late twenties. Loomis though is kind of funny in her part especially with the way she interacts with Lindsey (Kyle Richards) the young girl that she is babysitting. Curtis is good and although I respect her right to going natural with the gray hair that she now sports I still felt she was at her most attractive when she had the long red hair like she has here.

On the negative side there seemed to be too many story elements that didn’t make sense. For instance Michael is institutionalized when he is six and then escapes fifteen years later and is able to miraculously drive a car even though he was never trained. The book version of the movie explains this anomaly by stating that when Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) would take Michael to sanity hearings over the years that Michael would watch very closely how Loomis operated the vehicle and thus ‘learned’ how to drive, but that still doesn’t make sense because watching how something is done and then finally doing it yourself are two completely different things. Besides if watching how somebody drives where enough then every child who watched his parents drive could learn it and there would be no need for driving schools. Also, Michael escapes from the asylum without any explanation, which seemed way too convenient.

When Dr. Loomis shows up in town and tells the sheriff (Charles Cyphers) that there may be an escaped mental patient in the vicinity the sheriff comes up with the logical step of warning everybody about it, but Loomis disagrees and his reasoning is ridiculous. Also, when Laurie (Curtis) gets a call from Lynda (Soles) that sounds like she is being murdered Laurie doesn’t do the most sensible thing and that is to call the police and let them investigate it. Instead she decides to go over to the home in the middle of the night and investigate it herself, which not only needlessly puts her in a dangerous position, but also leaves the two kids that she is supposed to be watching home alone in bed, which is something a good babysitter should never do.

I also had some problems with the setting itself. Now of course the town of Haddonfield is fictitious, but the state of Illinois isn’t. It is situated right in the middle of the Midwest and there are no palm trees anywhere within its borders and yet I spotted a few lining the streets especially near the beginning when Laurie is seen walking home from school. I didn’t buy into the idea that the Meyers house would stand vacant for 15 years either. There are a lot of homes that have murders committed in them that do not remain abandoned, or considered ‘haunted’. In some cases the original house is torn down and a new one is built in its place such as the infamous John Wayne Gacy house in Des Plaines, Illinois, which is now being occupied by a new family. The neighborhood in the film looks nice and well-kept. The other homeowners wouldn’t stand for a building being abandoned for that long as it brings down the property values.

When I first saw this movie I got a real kick out of the part where Michael kills a man and then hangs him by a knife on a wall and stares at the corpse in a child-like way. However, on second viewing I don’t think the blade of the knife would have been long enough, or strong enough to go through a man’s body as well as a wooden door.

The opening sequence where we see Michael killing his sister from his perspective didn’t completely work with me either. I liked the idea of seeing the action through the two eye holes of the mask that Michael was wearing, but I think if someone is stabbing someone else that they would be looking at what they are doing, but instead the eye holes remain fixated on the sister’s face during the stabbing that is being done on the lower parts of her body, which looked stilted and unrealistic.

Now, I know this movie has a large legion of fans and some may take umbrage to my negative points, but hey, I take my film criticism seriously and feel I need to say it the way I see it. That is not to say that I ‘hated’ the movie either. I still liked it overall, but when given the issues that I described above I can only give it 6 points.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 25, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Carpenter

Studio: Compass International Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

13 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Classic, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Slasher/Gore

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Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Posted on October 22, 2012 | 7 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: They were really hungry.

A group of people go into the deep dark jungles of the Amazon looking for a missing film crew. They never find the crew, but they do find some lost film footage of theirs. They bring it back home and play it and what they see is so gruesome that it startles the imagination.

This is truly a gross-out classic. If you have ever watched a horror movie purporting to have gruesome special effects and then walked away disappointed then this one will make up for the rest and everything else in between. No cutaways here and certainly no restraint for good taste. The effects look real and, at times, almost too real. Best of all is the fact that the story is handled in a realistic fashion giving the effects even more credibility. For instance the cutting off of one of the characters legs after he is bitten by a snake looks completely authentic. There is also a castration scene that has to be one of the most vivid ones ever filmed. There is also the cutting up of man’s body into little pieces and some really graphic rape scenes.

The film also doesn’t have that cheap look like with most horror films and it gets you immersed in the jungle atmosphere. It is well paced and builds up some really good tension. The editing is seamless without any of those annoying jump cuts. The music score is melodic, but distinct and effective making it one of the best scores ever made for a horror film. The eventual showing of the lost crew’s footage packs a wallop.

Former adult film star Richard Bolla plays the professor and the leader of the search party. He is credited as the star of the film yet his character is bland and forgettable. His only memorable moment comes when he jumps naked into a river and allows the adolescent girls from a nearby tribe to grope him, which has got to be a cinematic first. My favorite character was Chaco (Salvatore Basile). He is gruff and rough and absolutely nothing seems to faze him. He is so hardened by it all that it actually becomes amusing and I wished he would have stayed on for the duration.

The actual lost film crew is a vile bunch giving the film its main message of just who is ‘civilized’ and who is the savage. Their behavior is so disgusting that most viewers will actually look forward to their eventual gruesome demise.

The same cannot be said for the animals. There are graphic, ugly scenes involving the torture and mutilation of animals and it is not pretty. The animals flail their arms and legs and scream in very real pain and fright. It’s all handled in a distasteful and mocking way with the dissection of a sea turtle making even this jaded viewer feel nauseous. This will certainly be unsettling for animal lovers, but fortunately for those people the DVD release has a version that will cut out these segments while still allowing the viewer to enjoy the rest of the movie.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: February 7, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated: NC-17

Director: Ruggero Deadato

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD

7 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Outdoors, Slasher/Gore

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Seconds (1966)

Posted on October 21, 2012 | 5 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Starting a new life.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a middle-aged man just going through the paces of life. He is stuck in a marriage that no longer has any spark and a job that is boring. His life is confined to the basic suburban rituals and he is quietly looking for a way out. Then he gets a call from Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton) who he thought was dead. Charlie tells him that he is very much alive, but with a new identity. Arthur goes to a address that Charlie gives him and there he is told for $30,000 dollars he can be ‘reborn’ and given a completely new identity via plastic surgery as well as a whole new life with new friends and no connection to his dreary past. He would even be given a new set of fingerprints and new teeth while the death of his former self would be created in a way that it would leave no question, or suspicion.

This story is unique and fascinating on many levels. It pinpoints the monotony of middle-aged life and views living in suburbia not as the great American dream, but more as the American trap. I enjoyed the part where one of the Doctors named Davalo (Khigh Dhiegh) tells Arthur who has now been changed into Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) that his new identity will be that of an established painter and he will no longer have to be quarantined with any responsibility and will instead be able to live the rest of his life pursuing is own individual interests, which is probably what everyone secretly desires.

The second half of the story where Tony tries to adjust to his new ‘dream’ lifestyle is equally as interesting if not more. Tony finds that his new friends and neighbors are other ‘reborns’ who will not allow him to backtrack into his old identity and seem compelled to keep in line with his new environment whether he was completely happy with it or not. During this segment I couldn’t help but think of the characters from Easy Rider and how Tony’s situation wasn’t much different. Both longed for complete personal freedom, but the more they tried to escape the societal strings the more they seemed to be dragged back into it. The part where Tony goes back to visit his wife while under the disguise of being a long lost friend of her late husband is revealing and dramatically the strongest part of the whole film.

John Frankenheimer’s direction is superb and intoxicating. The opening sequence featuring a lot of distorted imagery is excellent and creates a terrific mood for the story. The dream sequence where Arthur finds himself in a hotel room with another woman is captured in such a way that it looked almost like a Salvador Dali painting. The use of the fish-eyed lens that is put in at certain strategic moments is effective as well as stylish. The black and white cinematography is evocative and the organ playing soundtrack is distinct and moody.

Rock Hudson has always seemed to me as a weak leading man and apparently Frankenheimer considered him ‘lightweight’ as well, but when his first two choices turned down the role he decided to go with him and here it actually worked. I felt Hudson’s blank expression and confused demeanor fit well with the character’s situation. The part where he is shown tied to a bed and struggling to get out while his mouth is gagged is convincing. Veteran actor Randolph is quite good in the beginning playing Arthur a man who seems run over by life. The close-up of his nervous and sweating face leaves a strong impression. Will Geer is also excellent in support as the founder and head of the secret organization.

The twist ending is well done although I saw it coming long before our naïve protagonist did. Unlike the book it is clearer and less vague. This is one case where the film can make a great companion piece to the book, or vice versa. This is a definite sleeper of a movie screaming for more attention and has strong cult potential.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: October 5, 1966

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated NR (Not Rated)

Director: John Frankenheimer

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD,  Blu-ray (Criterion Collection) Amazon Instant Video

5 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Cult, Drama, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Sci-Fi

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Posted on October 19, 2012 | 10 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Man can she scream.

Four young adults on a summer trip inadvertently come into contact with a mutant family and their chainsaws.

This is the type of horror film most others strive to be, but usually never succeed. The tension builds right from the start. It’s slow but consistent and eventually hitting on an almost unparalleled level. Director Tobe Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl make terrific use of the location shooting. Between the music and visuals you are given an otherworldly sense. The atmosphere literally hugs you with the dementia of the situation. You feel as engulfed with it as our heroine Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns). It transcends most other horror films simply because of its intensity and grotesque perspective. It blends so many unusual things together and yet everything still works. It’s both artsy and raw, moody and exciting, humorous and ugly and a masterpiece in many ways.

If you are looking for gore you may end up disappointed. Despite its reputation there really is very little if any. Apparently they were going for the ‘PG’ rating, but even so certain scenes become almost laughable with their restraint. One scene in particular features Leatherface (Gunnar Hanson) jumping out at a man in a chair. He jams his chainsaw into him and yet only small droplets of blood can be seen coming out.

There is also the problem of Marilyn Burns running. By most crew accounts she was a slow runner. This caused problems because it would allow the assailants to actually catch up to her even though they weren’t supposed to. Both Hansen and Edwin Neal as the Hitchhiker have to do some goofy things to avoid reaching her. This is obvious in the final chase sequence and it hurts the tension a bit.

I still feel though that Marilyn was a good choice for the part. Her face holds an authentic look of terror and her screams reach amazing decibels. The graphic close-ups of her eyes are astounding and memorable.

This film makes its sequels look awful. A good companion to this picture is Hooper’s follow-up film Eaten Alive. It has the same atmosphere and intensity and is interesting in an equally odd way with Neville Brand making a unique villain.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: October 1, 1974

Runtime: 1Hour 23Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Tobe Hooper

Studio: Bryanston Distributing

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray 

10 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Classic, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting

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The Prowler (1981)

Posted on October 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Just another slasher flick.

A gruesome murder is committed during a graduation dance in 1945. Now, thirty-five years later, the town decides to hold another one and soon the gruesome murders start back up.

The film does have an unusual opening for a slasher film, which consists of actual newsreel footage from World War II. It also nicely recreates a 1940’s dance scene. The presence of veteran’s Farley Granger and Lawrence Tierney help a little, but not much. Neither is seen a whole lot and in the case of Tierney isn’t even given a single line of dialogue. Bill Nunnery comes off best in his brief appearance as a lazy and apathetic hotel clerk. There is also a good moment of juxtaposition featuring the girls dressing up for the dance while cutting away to show the killer dressing up to kill them.

However, the movie is incredibly boring and redundant. There seems to be no point to the murders from before and why it was even put in seems ridiculous. The teen characters are one-dimensional and useless. The scenes that are supposed to be intense and scary become excessively dragged out until they become dull. The much ballyhooed special effects by Tom Savini don’t seem all that gruesome. The killings are pretty much standard stuff with most consisting of just a quick slash to the victim’s throat and then cutting away. The only decent one involves the death of a nude shower victim via a pitchfork. One particular killing seemed hard to believe if not completely impossible. It involved the killer putting a large knife all the way through the top of the victim’s skull and then out the bottom of his jaw with just one swoop. Then somehow the killer is able to easily take this same knife all the way back out, clean if off, and use it on his next victim. The girls are decent looking, but there needed to be a lot more nudity to make it worthwhile.

Despite attaining a cult following I found the film to be unimaginative and formulaic. The killings are boring and there isn’t one single scare or fright in it.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: November 6, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joseph Zito

Studio: Sandhurst

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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The Burning (1981)

Posted on October 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cropsy doesn’t look good.

A summer camp caretaker named Cropsy (Lou David) is badly burned during a practical joke gone horribly wrong. Five years later and disfigured he gets out of the hospital and goes on a murderous rampage using a pair of gardening shears. However, he kills young campers at a completely different campsite and who had nothing to do with his accident.

Jason Alexander, in his film debut, is great. He shows a lot of charisma and pretty much carries the movie. You not only get to see him with a full head of hair, but for the lady viewers you also see his bare behind along with Fisher Stevens’s. This is also Holly Hunter’s first film, but she is seen very little. The teen characters here look like real teenagers instead of college- aged young adults like in most of the other films in this genre. They also have a little more distinctive personalities and aren’t quite as cardboard as usual. The women are good looking and there is a gratuitous nude scene involving actress/model Carole Houlihan.

On the Blue Underground DVD version make-up artist Tom Savini hosts a bonus feature, but warns everyone at the start not to watch it until they have seen the film so as not to ‘spoil’ it for them. However, it is hard to figure out what exactly it is that he would be spoiling as the movie is routine to the extreme. There are absolutely no interesting plot twists or surprises. It is also hard to believe that anyone could get a pair of simple gardening shears to do the things this killer gets them to do. The only really scary scene in this film is at the beginning where you get to see a close-up of actor Lou David’s strangely shaped nose. The camera slowly zooms into him as he is sleeping and you feel almost like you are being driven into his extremely large nostrils that seem to get bigger and bigger.

Savini’s special effects really don’t seem all that impressive especially in this day and age. There is a scene on the infamous raft killing sequence where it is quite obvious that the neck that the shears are cutting through is plastic and not really that of the actor’s. Also during the opening sequence when Cropsy runs out of the cabin while on fire he is not wearing anything on top of his head yet when the camera cuts to an outdoor shot of him it is obvious that the stunt double has something on his head.

I found this to be as bad and as uninspired as all the other Friday the 13th rip-offs. This is good only as a curio at seeing Alexander, Stevens and Hunter in their film debuts.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 8, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tony Maylam

Studio: Filmways Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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El Topo (1970)

Posted on September 28, 2012 | 6 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lust is not good.

This is an experimental film that has received a large and loyal following. Although considered highly controversial at the time it is pretty tame by today’s standards. The story deals with a mysterious gunman named El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) who comes out of nowhere to avenge a town that has been massacred. Once finished with this he takes the perpetrator’s women and goes off into the desert. Here he must prove himself against four different masters whom all appear to be invincible. Yet it is the women and his lustful desires that turn him into a victim. Defeated and demoralized he turns to spirituality and ends up fighting to save some deformed people from a town that has barricaded them into an underground cavern.
The blood, violence, and sexuality are no big deal. The special effects are weak and the editing is choppy. In many ways it comes off looking like an amateurish artifact from a bygone era. Yet content wise it is fascinating and Director Jodorowsky shows a unique and definite talent. It bites off more than it can chew especially with its low budget, but it is far from a failure as certain scenes are guaranteed to leave a strong impression.
It has a reputation of being convoluted, but I found it to be quite lyrical. Once one adjusts to its mesmerizing use of symbolism it becomes almost riveting. The heavy allegorical nature is both intriguing and provocative and the unique vision helps raise it well above the fray.

If nothing else it will keep you engaged. It is fun and interesting to see one man go through such different stages and it effectively gives you a complete understanding of him by showing all the different sides to his personality. Besides having a lot of religious correlations and an overall negative view of women there is also, surprisingly, a lot of comedy and lightheartedness.

It does fail to leave an overall strong impact and the tone is cold and alienating with characters that are unpleasant. I also felt it gets too bogged down with its use of symbolism and need to build everything up to epic proportions is overdone. Still for those that like movies that are weird and different they won’t be disappointed. The castration of a pompous colonel is amazing. The showdowns with the masters are memorable and the game of Russian roulette amongst a group of churchgoers isn’t bad either.

The film promotes a rather curious statement made by its director and used as a tagline on most of its posters and box covers. It states “If you are great ‘El Topo’ is a great picture. If you are limited than ‘El Topo’ is limited.” This statement has always struck me as funny because it allows no room for anyone to criticize the film otherwise they will be labeled as ‘limited’. In any case I give this film 7 out of 10 points, which I guess only makes me 30 percent limited.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 18, 1970

Runtime: 2Hours 5Minutes

Rated: NR (Not Rated)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Studio: Douglas Films

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

6 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Sex, Surreal/Fantasy

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Batman Returns (1992)

Posted on September 12, 2012 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: This version is cool.

Genuinely twisted, marvelously executed superhero tale in this the second and by far the best in the series. This time Batman (Michael Keaton) must battle both Catwoman (Michele Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito) who is running for mayor.

The big reason I feel that this film works so well is because director Tim Burton continues to use the city of Gotham as the major centerpiece. It’s a consistently gray apocalyptic setting with a surreal element that has its own unique set of rules that correlates well with the story. It also emanates a cold and lonely feeling that creates the desperation and madness that the villains show.

The villains themselves are terrific. The film nicely captures their dark nature and all the components that drive them to it. They are colorful, but still menacing and funny without being silly. Also, unlike a lot of today’s action flicks they are not used merely as props to spew out clever one-liners.

Devito as The Penguin makes one of the better villains. He is physically perfect for the role. He wears some nice ghoulish make-up and is not one-dimensional. We are shown that he was a ‘freak baby’ and how badly he was treated and thus understand his personality. He does get vicious, but in a funny way kind of like the Louie De Palma character he played on the TV-show ‘Taxi’. The only thing that is missing is the Penguin walk that Burgess Meredith had in the 60’s TV series.

Pfeiffer as Catwoman does her part without a fault and yet doesn’t seem completely right for the role. I found it hard to believe that with such a great looking face and figure that she could be overlooked by all the men even if does wear glasses and act nerdy. Also, the sinister cat has always been portrayed as being a black one and therefore the Catwoman character would have been better played by a raven haired actress. Sean Young competed for the role and might have been a better fit as her complexion is darker and her voice deeper. Pfeiffer though is still quite good and her constant dual personalities make her character interesting.

Keaton is the weakest link and continues to seem uncomfortable in his superhero role. Having the boy wonder beside him would have helped.

This feature comes together much better than the first one and has a more complete vision. It is kind of like a Grimm fairy tale, cult comedy, sci-fi, and modern day actioner all rolled into one. There is a good set-up and a nice emphasis on atmosphere. The humor never gets out of hand and is always laced in dark origins. It stays consistently twisted including the finale which features bomb wearing penguins marching into Gotham ready to blow it all up. Lots of fun!

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: June 19, 1992

Runtime: 2Hours 6Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Tim Burton

Studio: Warner Brothers

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

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Posted in 90's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Cult, Sequels, Surreal/Fantasy

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