Category Archives: Movies with a rural setting

Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987)

Posted on October 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

rock n roll nightmare 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rock band gets slaughtered.

In a remote Canadian farmhouse a family is killed by some evil spirits from hell. Now, years later a rock band called The Tritons uses the place as a recording studio, but soon both they and their girlfriends start getting killed off one-by-one by the same spirits. Eventually only lead singer John (Jon Mikl Thor) remains and with his big muscular physique and fashionably long hair decides to take them on singlehandedly.

This low budget cheapie was shot at an isolated farmhouse near Markham, Ontario in a mere seven days and suffers from an excessive amount of footage on stuff that doesn’t matter like spending the first five minutes watching the group’s van driving down the highway. The dialogue and characters are predictably cardboard and the special effects unimpressive except for the moment where a monster’s hand pops out of a guy’s stomach, which wasn’t bad.

The film, which ends up being nothing more than a vanity project of its star who also wrote and produced it, has a million and one holes. For one thing it is never explained why these spirits attack this farmhouse or why a big sound studio was built in a place that had a family slaughtered in it or even why the people that constructed the studio weren’t killed just like the family and band members were.

If you are going to watch it then do like I did with a few beers at hand and a group of people who make jokes at it much of which are  far more entertaining than anything on the screen.

rock n roll nightmare 2

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Alternate Title: The Edge of Hell

Released: July, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 23Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Fasano

Studio: Shapiro Entertainment

Available: DVD

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

The Collector (1965)

Posted on October 23, 2014 | 3 comments

the collector 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Collecting women like butterflies.

Freddie (Terence Stamp) is a withdrawn loner who collects butterflies for a hobby. One day he manages to win a lot of money in a football pool and uses it buy an old, isolated house in the English countryside. The place has a very large cellar, which gives him the idea that it can be used as a prison. It is then that he decides to kidnap beautiful art student Miranda (Samantha Eggar). He keeps her in the cellar, but fixes it up making it seem almost like an apartment. He treats her with the upmost respect and even knocks before entering her room. He buys her art supplies so she can continue her work and makes an agreement with her that he will let her go after 4-weeks, but hopes in between then that she will fall in love with him.

The film puts an interesting spin on the old ‘psycho kidnapping a beautiful woman’ theme and for the most part succeeds. The viewer ends up feeling almost as sorry for Freddie as they do his victim as it becomes clear that through his social awkwardness he is in even more of a prison than she. The way the two try to communicate and connect, which only ends up driving the them further apart is fascinating and their contrasting views about the book ‘Catcher in the Rye’ as well as the paintings of Picasso are equally revealing.

Stamp gives one of his greatest performances in his already illustrious career playing a character who weaves from being menacing to vulnerable and childlike. Eggar makes for an appealing victim and apparently turned Stamp down years earlier when he had asked for her date while the two were students in acting school.

the collector 4

William Wyler’s direction is perfect as he wisely decides to pull back without adding any unnecessary Hitchcock touches and thus allowing the interactions between the two characters to propel the film. His superimposed, colorful shots of butterflies seen over the closing credits are a nice added touch. My only minor grievance is the Maurice Jarre score, which seemed too melodic without enough of the dark foreboding undertones that music for a thriller should have.

If you’re looking for the conventional thriller you may be disappointed as the emphasis is more on the psychological than the suspenseful. There are a few good tense moments including Miranda’s final attempt to escape during a nighttime rain storm, but for the most part the compelling element comes from the way these two multi-layered people deal with each other and ultimately reveal things about themselves that they didn’t know existed. The story also makes an excellent point of how everyone to a certain degree is trapped in a prison and the challenging if not impossible effort it can sometimes be to bond with others especially when reaching across different social-economic lines. The only thing that does get ruined is the ending, which no longer has the novelty or shock value that it once did.

the collector 3

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 59Minutes

Not Rated

Director: William Wyler

Studio: Columbia Pictures

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

3 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Psychological, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Hearse (1980)

Posted on October 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

the hearse 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Haunted by a hearse.

Jane (Trish Van Devere) is recuperating from a nervous breakdown and decides to move away from the bustle of big city life into a home left to her from her recently deceased aunt, which is situated in a small town. Unfortunately things do not go smoothly. The townspeople are reticent to Jane’s presence and weird things begin to occur including a mysterious big, black hearse that appears late at night and seemingly intent on running Jane over.

I remember I first heard of this film when it was shown on Showtime during the early 80’s as part of their ‘After Hours’ films, which typically amounted to soft core sex flicks and gory horror. However, this film was only rate PG, which always made me wonder how ‘adult’ or scary could it really be.

To some degree this fares slightly better than the usual low budget horror flick at least at the beginning. There are some nice on-location shots of the San Francisco bay area and the main character is likable enough. The production values are decent and the story, as thin as it is, has a certain intriguing quality to it.

Van Devere makes for a strong female protagonist as she is quite practical and doesn’t allow herself to scare easily and seeing a female character that is confident and poised and not used simply as a sex object especially in these types of films is a refreshing change. After a while though I started to think that the character became a little too stubborn as there were so many bad things that started to occur that I think I would have left and not come back and the fact that she stays past when most other people wouldn’t makes her seem a bit irrational.

The atmosphere is minimal and the scares are almost non-existent and depend almost completely on a few doors slamming and windows bursting open for no reason. Moments of intruders breaking into the home and shots of their feet silently creeping up the stairs starts to become redundant and dull. A dream-like funeral sequence can’t save what is otherwise a slow moving plot. The ‘secret’ behind the hearse’s presence isn’t very imaginative and the film borrows too many elements from other cheesy haunted house films without adding anything unique or distinctive in the process.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 5, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated PG

Director: George Bowers

Studio: Crown International Pictures

Available: DVD (Drive-In Cult Classics Vol. 2)

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies with a rural setting

Tagged , , , ,

The Children’s Hour (1961)

Posted on September 10, 2014 | 1 comment

childrens hour

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ruined by a lie.

Martha and Karen (Shirley Maclaine, Audrey Hepburn) are two single young women running an all-girl’s school. They have the respect of the community and the parents, but that suddenly changes when one of the students named Mary (Karen Balkin) decides to spread a rumor that Martha and Karen are lovers. This sends everything into an uproar. All the students are moved out and the two women find themselves fighting desperately for their reputations and livelihoods. Karen’s boyfriend Joe (James Garner) remains their staunch supporter, but eventually even he begins to have his suspicions.

The film is based on the landmark play written by Lillian Hellman which ran for 691 performances in 1934 and was based on a true incident that happened in Scotland in 1810. The original film version of the play was made in 1936 and entitled These Three that was also directed by William Wyler and starred Miriam Hopkins as Martha who in this film plays Martha’s Aunt Lily. That film was heavily watered down with the lesbian element completely taken out and instead has the rumor revolve around the two teachers being in love with the same man.

This second film version was supposed to be more like the play, but hardly seems worth the effort. Although Wyler makes some attempts to make it seem more cinematic it still comes off very much like a filmed stage play and a static one at that. Lots and lots of talk with a narrative that is quite plodding and predictable. Having the story work more in a fragmented style might have helped, but either way it is never very engrossing or compelling. It also completely skips over the libel trial, which I thought could’ve given some added drama and it never completely explains why the Aunt Lily character avoided testifying. She comes up with the lame excuse that she was touring with her show, but I felt it was more because she secretly knew Martha was a closet lesbian and didn’t want to have to confront that and the film should’ve made this more clear.

It is also unintentionally funny at times especially the part where actress Fay Bainter’s eyes get bigger and bigger as Mary whispers her ‘shocking’ secret into her ear. Balkin also overdoes the facial expressions, which was probably due to too much coaching on the part of Wyler, but with that said her presence in the film is fun and gives the proceedings a liveliness that is otherwise stagnant.

The film really isn’t all that groundbreaking either and handles the delicate issue in too much of a timid way. For instance there is a scene where Martha admits to her homosexual feelings and states that she feels ‘ashamed’ for having them and Karen counsels her by stating that ‘you did nothing wrong’ because ‘nothing happened’, but what if it had then would it have been wrong? I tend to lean towards the latter making the production seem as stale and prejudicial as the public at the time. I was also confused as to how the two women could remain living at the school when all the students had moved out and they no longer had any income, or how they were still able to have groceries delivered to them.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1961

Runtime: 1Hour 47Minutes

Not Rated

Director: William Wyler

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Drama, Gay/Lesbian, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with a rural setting

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Pack (1977)

Posted on August 23, 2014 | Leave a comment

the pack 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dogs on the prowl.

Jerry (Joe Don Baker) moves to idyllic Seal Island with his new wife Millie (Hope Alexander-Willis) and their two sons. They meet vacationers Jim and Marge (Richard O’Brien, Bibi Besch) and their grown son Tommy (Paul Wilson) as well as island locals Hardiman (Richard B. Shull) and Cobb (R. G. Armstrong). As the days progress Jerry becomes aware of wild dogs roaming the island that are led by a particularly vicious mongrel. These dogs become more aggressive as they have already attacked other humans and have now acquired a taste for them. The eclectic bunch becomes trapped in a home surrounded by 15 hungry dogs while forced to use their cunning and wits to outsmart the animals and make it to freedom.

The film has an interesting even novel idea of turning man’s best friend into a villain and is quite similar to Dogs, which came out at the same time and will be reviewed next week. Unfortunately the structure runs along the predictable mechanical formula of a conventional horror film using the same type of scares and shocks that are not all that imaginative.  Although shot on-location in Bodega Bay, California it looks more like a cheap studio back lot that lacks any type of visual flair. In a lot of ways it comes off like a TV-Movie and whenever there is any gore it will cut away and not show it giving it very tame, trite and dated feeling.

The characters are dull and generic and a few more interesting personalities or dramatic side-stories could have helped. The film also takes a very old fashioned viewpoint on women as they are portrayed as being helpless and incapable of handling things on their own and in desperate need of the big, burly man to come in, take control and save the day.

I thought it was amusing that Baker was cast in the lead as his face has always reminded me of a bulldog. I don’t consider him to be all that bad of an actor, but there are other male leads that could have worked better. The female cast members are completely wasted and seem put in only to sit around with a frightened looks while the men do all the action.

The dogs themselves aren’t too bad. The pack leader is made to look like he is demonic, which is a little overdone, but still effective.  A fight scene between two of the dogs is well done and intense. I also liked the climatic finish in which Baker goes face-to-face with the lead animal with only some box springs between them. However, the basic concept seems dubious and these were all pets apparently abandoned by their owners only a few weeks earlier and it seemed hard to believe that they would have turned this wild and aggressive so quickly. Most stray dogs that have been previously socialized by humans can usually be taken back into captivity relatively easily while feral dogs remain frightened of humans, but in either case rarely go on the organized attack like they do here especially when they don’t have rabies and are mostly non-aggressive breeds.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Alternate Title: The Long Dark Night

Released: November 20, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Robert Clouse

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD (Warner Archive)

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , ,

Woodstock (1970)

Posted on August 20, 2014 | 3 comments

woodstock 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Love, peace and music.

During August 15 – 18, 1969 Max Yasgur loaned out his 600 acre farm, which was near the town of Bethal, New York to some concert promoters for an epic 32-act rock extravaganza that has become the cornerstone for the counterculture movement and a major moment in Rock’N’Roll history. Although originally expected to attract only 50, 000 it ended up being more than 400,000 and this movie captures the mood, festivities, and music right up close.

Unlike most documentaries this film doesn’t just turn on the camera and then proceed to let things happen at a sometimes slow and boring pace. Instead it relies on a great use of editing done at the time by an unknown Martin Scorsese, which helps give the film a very polished and dramatic narrative. The dual screen setting allows the viewer to see two things at once and you are given a full view of the occasion as you watch not only the beginning as they construct the stage, but also the massive clean-up of all the debris left afterwards.

The music acts are captured perfectly as director Michael Wadleigh’s use of the camera nicely compliments the energy on stage with a variety of angles and quick cuts. In some ways you feel more connected with the music by watching it here than having been there in person as you are made to feel like you are right next to the performer as they are playing. One of the best moments is Richie Haven’s opening act where you see the broken strings on his guitar, the sweet glistening off his nose and saturating his back as well as a close-up of his mouth where he appears to have no teeth on his upper jaw. Janis Joplin who was known to have an incredible onstage energy is also memorable and is part of the added 45-minutes of the director’s cut. Country Joe Mcdonald is also memorable with his now famous ‘fuck cheer’ and ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag’, which comes complete with lyrics on the screen and a little bouncing ball.

woodstock 1

The film also features different elements than what you would find in most other concert movies including one segment that looks at the cleaning of the many port-o-potties as well as a long drawn out rain storm in which many of the concert goers’ end up sliding through the mud. There is another segment looking at the skinny dippers as well as all the naked children in attendance.

There are some good interviews spliced in although I wished there had been a few more. Some of the more interesting ones include those with the townspeople who despite reports to the contrary where actually excited about the event and supported ‘the kids’at least the ones seen here. I also liked hearing from the attendees as they lined up to take turns at calling their parents on pay phones. The only interview that I didn’t care for was of a young man who used the phrase ‘you know’ so numerously that it really got on my nerves.

The movie is quite long with the director’s cut being almost 4 hours in length and not all of the music acts shown including some of the better ones. However, the film is still quite electrifying and doesn’t end up seeming as long as it is. It is also so amazingly vivid that it gives you the feeling like you were there and something that only happened yesterday instead of forty-five years ago.

woodstock 4

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 26, 1970

Runtime: 3Hours 45Minutes (Director’s Cut)

Rated R

Studio: Warner Brothers

Director: Michael Wadleigh

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

3 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Documentaries, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Musical, Outdoors

Tagged , , , , , ,

Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968)

Posted on July 6, 2014 | Leave a comment

did you hear the traveling saleslady

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Saleslady saves family farm.

Agatha (Phyllis Diller) is a traveling saleswoman who arrives in a small Missouri town in the summer of 1910 trying to sell a piano that can play by itself. During a demonstration of it one of the townspeople, the kindly, but inept Bertram (Bob Denver) accidently destroys it. Agatha now finds herself stuck with a piano she can’t sell and nowhere to go. Bertram allows her to stay at his family farm, which is at risk of being foreclosed by the town’s greedy banker Hubert Shelton (Joe Flynn). Bertram and Agatha come up with a way to save the farm by winning an automobile race in a wild vehicle created by Bertram using parts from the destroyed piano.

It seems hard to believe in retrospect that eccentric comedian Diller was ever considered star making material, but she did 8 films during the 60’s with 4 of them centered on her flamboyant persona. All of them tanked both critically and at the box office with this one being the last of them. I imagine trying to come up with a scenario using Diller as the centerpiece would be no easy task, but this screenplay penned by John Fenton Murray is too broadly written to be even remotely interesting and seemed already badly dated even for its era. The humor is locked in a kiddie level with a plot that is excessively simplistic and won’t intrigue anyone over the age of 6.

Diller pretty much just plays herself, which would be alright if some her jokes and lines were actually funny, but none of them are. The reoccurring gags centered on her whacky outfits, ugly appearance and horses that go crazy the second she reveals any part of her legs gets old fast. Denver’s character is nothing more than an extension of Gilligan and Flynn is pretty much being the same character he was in ‘McHale’s Navy’.

The film is watchable if you come into it with extremely low expectations, but that is not saying much. None of the gags work and the town’s set was clearly filmed inside Universal’s studio lot, which looks phony and annoying. Denver’s milking machine invention, which can milk 6 cows at once, has potential, but when the cows escape and rampage the entire town it becomes forced humor at its worst, which goes likewise for the climatic and silly car race.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 14, 1968

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Don Weis

Studio: Universal

Available: None at this time.

Leave a comment

Posted in 60's Movies, Campy Comedy, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , , , ,

Little Darlings (1980)

Posted on June 23, 2014 | 3 comments

little darlings

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Competing to lose virginity.

Ferris (Tatum O’Neal) is a prissy girl from a rich family who attends summer camp along with Angel (Kristy McNichol) who’s more brash and streetwise. The two get into a competition to see who can lose their virginity first. The rest of the girls in the camp take sides and place bets.  Angel sets her sights on Randy (Matt Dillon) a cute boy from a neighboring boy’s camp while Ferris goes after Gary (Armand Assante) who is one of the adult camp counselors.

The film is for the most part okay and amounts to nothing more than a slice-of-life glimpse at adolescent girls and the snotty and sometimes peculiar ways that they perceive things. Most movies that portray this age group go too much to one extreme either by showing them as being overly bitchy or too innocent, but this film manages to find just the right balance making their conversations and overall scenarios believable and amusing.

I especially liked Krista Errickson as the spoiled and snobby drama queen Cinder. Normally these types of characters can be quite annoying and overplayed, but Errickson makes it fun and a major plus to the movie.

The film also has a few funny scenes including the one where the girls steal an entire condom dispensing machine from a men’s bathroom and then take it back to camp where they have to smash it with crowbars in order to finally open it. The massive food fight in the cafeteria is a hoot as well.

McNichol is excellent particularly with the way she can become teary-eyed seemingly on cue. I also enjoyed Alexa Kenin an engaging actress that died under mysterious circumstances at the young age of 23 who plays Dana here and helps ‘coach’ the two on what it is like to have sex. This also marks the film debut of Cynthia Nixon playing the hippie girl Sunshine.

The dramatic moments between Angel and Randy help give the film a little more depth and dimension, but also completely ruins the comic momentum. I also felt the film could have been funnier and didn’t take enough advantage of its setting or plot.

The Armand Assante character is another issue. Although he does not have sex with Ferris she does let it get around the camp that he did, which these days would have him fired and thrown into jail before he would even had a chance to defend himself. Although the girls do finally go and tell the truth later on I felt seeing him still working at the camp at the end while acting unblemished from it seemed to be a bit of a stretch.

I was also stunned that this film was given an R-rating. I realize the storyline is a bit titillating, but there is not nudity or sex shown as well as no violence or foul language. The sexual conversations that do occur are never explicit or crude and overall the film has an innocent quality to it.  13 and 14-year-olds do talk and think about sex as they certainly did when I was growing up and that shouldn’t make this an ‘adult movie’.  In fact I think young teens would be the ones to find this movie the most appealing as adults are likely going to consider it rather banal. The R-rating unfairly prevented the target audience from viewing it and showed just how misguided, useless and confusing the rating system can be.

This film has attained quite a cult following namely for the fact that it has never been released onto DVD and most likely never will. Part of the reason for it is because of its musical soundtrack and the licensing agreements that come with. There are some good tunes here including Ian Matthew’s ‘Shake It’ that opens the film as well as Blondie’s ‘One Way or Another’. Unfortunately other classic rock songs that were on the theatrical version failed to make it onto VHS, which is the only format this film can currently be seen on.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 21, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ronald F. Maxwell

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS

3 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Comedy/Drama, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies, Sex

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Lord of the Flies (1963)

Posted on June 12, 2014 | 2 comments

LOTF

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kids turn into savages.

Based on the William Golding novel that has been required reading for most high school students. The story centers on a group of British schoolboys who survive a plane crash on an uninhabited tropical island. The boys are of varying ages, but none older than 14. Ralph (James Aubrey) is chosen as their leader, but finds almost immediate friction from Jack (Tom Chapin) who is an aggressive type that likes to hunt and doesn’t tolerate being told what to do. As things progress Jack breaks off from the main group and eventually starts his own following that comes to odds with Ralph’s. More and more of the boys join Jack and start to display savage behavior that leads to two deaths and puts the frightened Ralph on the run and into hiding.

It has been three decades since I’ve read the book, so I can’t really compare it with the film. The criticisms that I have are aimed solely at the film although as I remember the book had some of the same issues. One of the biggest ones is just the fact that there are so many survivors from a plane crash and all of them are conveniently the kids while all the adults perishing, which seems to play too much against the odds. There are also no scratches, bruises or injuries, which you usually come about with a crash even amongst those that survive it. Director Peter Brook does a clever job of intimating a plane disaster at the beginning over the opening credits through use of photographs, which I found to be creative, but showing an actual destroyed plane with kids getting out of it would have given it a little better foundation.

There is also another segment where the kids are convinced some sort of strange beast is on the island and as they go searching for it, it is found to a pilot in a helmet who was killed while trying to parachute to safety. Yet the kids don’t seem to realize this and remain frightened of it. I realize the setting is the 1940’s around the time of the war, but I would still think the kids of that time would have been sophisticated enough to recognize a dead man in a fighter helmet and the fact that they don’t seems pretty odd and even farfetched.

Overall though I really enjoyed the film and feel reluctant to watch the 1990 remake as I am afraid it would ruin the experience of this one.  It was filmed on-location off the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico during late August of 1961. The entire cast was made up of amateur actors who had not read the book. There was no actual script and the boys were allowed to ad-lib their lines, which helps give it an extra air of realism.

lord of the flies 1

I will admit there are shots where some of the boys look bored and detached from things, but then again I suppose boys that age can be that way anyways no matter what situation they are, so in some ways it doesn’t really hurt things. Hugh Edwards who plays Piggy is a real standout and apparently got the role simply by writing a letter to director Brook and informing him that he was fat and wore spectacles.

The black and white photography helps heighten the dark undertones. The shot showing a close-up of the pig’s head on top of a stake with flies’ going in and out of its mouth and nostrils is quite impressive and a brilliant realized moment from the book. The climatic sequence where Ralph must run through the burning foliage to escape the other boys is quite intense. The shot showing a dead boy’s body floating in the water under the moonlight has an evocative flair, but fake looking to the extent that the child was stabbed to death and yet has no visible wounds or blood coming out.

On the DVD commentary Brook states that he likes to believe something like this couldn’t happen. That we have somehow evolved enough as a human race where this savagery would be impossible, but I respectively this disagree. I think this could very well happen in this day and age which is what makes this an infinitely fascinating look at human nature and ultimately a great movie.

lord of the flies 3

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: August 13, 1963

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Peter Brook

Studio: Continental Distributing

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

2 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Black & White, British Movies, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Outdoors, Psychological

Tagged , , ,

Luggage of the Gods! (1983)

Posted on June 2, 2014 | Leave a comment

luggage of the gods

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cavemen find some luggage.

This is a bizarre hybrid between Quest for Fire and The Gods Must Be Crazy that really doesn’t work at any level. The story focuses on a lost tribe of cavepeople living somewhere in the deep jungle and what happens when they come into contact with luggage that was dropped from an airplane.

The natural inclination is that this was an American rip-off of The Gods Must Be Crazy as that film was released two years earlier, but really didn’t become the international hit until it was released in the U.S. in 1984, which was a full year after his one came out, so it is hard to tell. Either way this film doesn’t have the charm or gentle humor as that one did and has a glaring amount of loopholes that makes no sense. A viewer can be willing to suspend their disbelief even in a fanciful story, but there still needs to be some overriding logic and explanation of some kind even a quirky one and this has neither.

For instance are we really supposed to believe in this modern age that there are people living somewhere on the planet in a Neanderthal state? I’ve heard of third-word nations, but this has to be fifth or sixth world. How do they come into contact with a plane? Do they go through a time warp, or does the plane? Also, how many plane crews will arbitrarily dump out the entire luggage from their cargo bay the minute there is trouble with the engine? On top of that one of the cave ladies has a curly perm hairdo. Where did she get that from the local cave lady hairstylist?

The scenes showing the cave people interacting with each other becomes quite tedious mainly because they don’t speak any English and communicate through an odd language that the viewer cannot understand. It would have helped had there been some subtitles and might have actually made it funnier. Also, the segments showing the cave people opening up the luggage and their bewilderment at all the items they find inside is quite predictable and one-note.

When two of the plane’s passengers come into contact with the tribe later on while looking for their lost luggage it only adds to the films mounting incongruities.  When one of the men lights a match and holds it in front of one of the cavemen he somehow instinctually pulls out a cigar that he found in the luggage and lights it, but how would he have known that is what a cigar is for? When one of the men asks about a specific crate the cave people immediately knows what he means and even repeat the word, but again how?

I’m all for weird offbeat movie ideas, but this one leaves so many loose ends that it is hard to get into it from the start. Despite its brief 78 minute runtime it is still way too long and ultimately quite boring and pointless.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: June 4, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 18Minutes

Rated PG

Director: David Kendall

Studio: General Pictures

Available: VHS, Amazon Instant Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Campy Comedy, Low Budget, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies, Offbeat, Outdoors

Tagged , ,