Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

Coming Apart (1969)

Posted on January 20, 2016 | 1 comment

coming apart 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Psychiatrist secretly films people.

Rip Torn plays a psychiatrist living in a Manhattan apartment who has a camera secretly film everything that goes on there. Many of his female patients including Joann (Sally Kirkland) talk about their intimate desires and his ex-wife Monica (Viveca Lindfors) shares her darkest secrets thinking he is the only one hearing it, but instead a glass box resembling an antique camera sits in the living room and takes it all down.

The film’s concept is novel and if executed in a slightly better manner could’ve been brilliant. Without a doubt it breaks all the old filmmaking conventions and was year’s ahead-of-its-time. The sexual openness of its characters and tawdry subject matter make it quite voyeuristic and real. The actors have an amazingly natural quality to their delivery giving one the idea that it was ad-libbed when in actuality it wasn’t.

Kirland gives an emotionally over-the-top performance that is both remarkable and riveting. Her meltdown at the end in which she proceeds in slow motion to tear up the apartment is quite memorable and the best part of the whole film.

Writer/director Milton Moses Ginsberg manages to keep things relatively fresh by continuously introducing situations that become increasingly more provocative including a party that turns into a sex orgy and explicit love making between Torn and Kirkland that could almost be considered pornographic. There’s even an interesting scene involving a young lady looking to be barely 18 coming to the apartment with her baby in a carriage and propositioning herself to Torn and then having the two make love on the floor while the baby, still in the carriage, cries next to them. There is also a segment featuring recorded phone conversations that Joe has with his fellow psychiatrists that I found to be revealing as well.

Unfortunately despite these creative efforts the film is agonizingly boring to sit through. No matter what is going on in the scene the viewer is still forced to stare at the same wall, same mirror, and same skyline for almost two-hours. The scenes needed to be broken up with cutaways that would’ve taken the viewer out of the apartment and given them some other visual element to look at. Simply turning on a camera that’s nailed to the floor and then filming whatever happens in front of it is not a movie, but more like C-Span and the ultimate result is a failed experiment lacking the necessary cinematic touches that would have made it come off as a fluid whole.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 26, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Milton Moses Ginsberg

Studio: Kaleidoscope Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Cult, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat, Psychological, Sex

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Jagged Edge (1985)

Posted on January 18, 2016 | 1 comment

jagged edge

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: An old Corona typewriter.

Rich socialite Paige Forrester (Maria Mayenzet) is brutally murdered in her own home the victim of wounds done by the jagged edge of an unusually curved hunting knife. Her husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) claims he was knocked unconscious and didn’t come to until after she was killed and the assailant gone, but when evidence points to his head wound being self-inflicted he gets arrested for the crime. Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) becomes his reluctant public defender. She is initially not convinced of his innocence, but the more she gets to know him the more she believes it while also allowing herself to become romantically involved with him. As the court case progresses there are many twists and turns including mysterious, anonymous notes typed with the use of an old typewriter and sent to Teddy, which reveal intriguing clues about her client.

The film, written by Joe Eszterhas, has all the trappings of a great court drama. Lots of clues that go either way making the viewer unsure if the defendant is really guilty or not and working very much like real trials do. I felt for the most part the trial procedures were well research and believable including all the meticulous investigating that Barnes does on her own before the trial even begins. The only thing in this area that could’ve been done better was trying to string out the suspense a bit more by prolonging the length of the jury deliberation. In real-life this can go on for several days, even weeks, but this film made it seem like it was only a few short hours.

Close gives an outstanding performance in a part that was originally intended for Jane Fonda. I love the way she can show such a wide range of emotions and the simple, but effective way that her character’s eyes well up with tears as she listens to the testimony of a rape victim is one the ingredients that makes all of her performances impactful and endearing. Veteran actors Robert Loggia, as a gruff, foul-mouthed detective, and John Dehner as a stern, hard-lined judge are also terrific. I also liked the way Teddy’s children are portrayed as being much more savvy to the world and not just there to say cute and precocious things.

Spoiler Alert!!!

The film’s biggest downfall tough is with its twist ending as Teddy ends up finding the typewriter that had written all those mysterious notes inside Jack’s closet and convincing her that he had actually been guilty all along despite getting off as innocent. She then takes the typewriter with her back to her house and then a few hours later Jack breaks into her place and in an effort to ‘silence her’ tries to kill her, which is all quite ridiculous.

For one thing I didn’t understand why Jack would hide the typewriter in a closet that is only a few feet from where he and Teddy slept. The guy lives in a gigantic mansion, so why not place it where it would be hard-to-find and not where she could easily come upon it. Also, he doesn’t need to kill her at all, he simply needs to retrieve the typewriter, which she leaves sitting on the staircase and he walks right past it. Without the typewriter there is no evidence. He takes it back and destroys it and she has nothing on him. Trying to kill her like the character here proceeds to do is the dumbest thing possible because he would be killing her in the exact same manner that he did in his wife, which would immediately make him the prime suspect and quickly arrested. The Jack character had been so smart otherwise that I’m sure he would’ve thought of this, which makes the wrap-up quite weak and unfortunately hurts what is otherwise a slick and entertaining production.

End of Spoiler Alert!!!

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 4, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Marquand

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Court Drama, Movies with Nudity, Mystery

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Sweet Revenge (1976)

Posted on January 16, 2016 | 2 comments

sweet revenge

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pretty lady steals cars.

Despite squatting in an abandoned house, having no job, no money and virtually no life Vurrla (Stockard Channing) becomes obsessed with getting herself a brand new Dino Ferrari. She knows how to steal cars, so she decides to steal a Porsche, resell it to unsuspecting buyers and then a few days later steal the same car back and resell it again and continue this process until she has secured enough to pay for the Ferrari. The plan works smoothly, but public defender Le Clerq (Sam Waterston) has been following her and determined that she turn herself in before she gets herself into even deeper trouble.

As I watched this movie I found myself quite perplexed as to how Leonard Maltin in his Movie Guide could’ve given this thing a ‘bomb’ rating. This is certainly not a four-star flick, but it’s far from being bad one either. The plot moves along at a nice breezy pace with an engaging combination of drama, action and humor. The characters are believable and interact with each other in interesting ways. The on-location shooting of Seattle, which was done by renowned cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond who died just this past New Year’s, is quite vivid and focuses on some of the city’s lesser known neighborhoods, which should be fun for those from the area as it is sure to bring back a flood of memories.

Channing is dynamic and especially enjoyable when she puts on different wigs and a variety of accents as she tries to sell the cars to different people and I wished these segments were played up more. Waterston’s character is much more controlled and practical making the two play off each other in revealing ways. Franklyn Ajaye lends great support as Vurrla’s streetwise friend and Richard Daughty is amusing as Vurrla’s dimwitted cohort and I was surprised that he seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet and never did a thing after this. This also marks the acting debut of Daryl Anderson who appears briefly getting out of his car and going inside only to have Vurrla sneak up and steal it a few minutes later.

On the negative side the film could’ve used a little more action. There is one car chase that occurs near the end, which turns inexplicably tragic and hurts the film’s otherwise lighthearted tone. The ending is frustratingly vague and outside of watching a Ferrari burn into a cinder offers no finality to the character’s eventual fate. There is also a segment where Channing and Daughty go shopping at a grocery store and for a brief couple of seconds the scene is shown through the lens of a black-and-white security camera making the viewer believe that the two are being monitored and will soon be arrested since they are shop lifting, but nothing ever happens, so why insert that shot if it serves no purpose?

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 16, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jerry Schatzberg

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD (Warner Archive)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Comedy/Drama, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Heist Movies, Movies with Nudity

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Cover Me Babe (1970)

Posted on January 14, 2016 | 5 comments

cover me babe 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Student filmmaker alienates everyone.

Tony Hall (Robert Forster) is a student filmmaker who feels he is a great director in the making and not afraid to let everyone know it. He becomes obsessed with capturing reality as it is and people’s emotional responses. He goads those around him including his own girlfriend (Sondra Locke) into doing things they are uncomfortable with simply so he can capture that uneasiness and the facial expressions that come with it. Some feel he is going too far, but the more they try to reel him in the more boundaries he pushes.

I’ve attended a film school in Chicago back in the early ‘90s, so for me I found this plot to be intriguing. In a lot of ways, at least at the beginning, I thought they captured the arrogance of these young would-be student directors who are convinced they are the next Kubrick or Scorsese in-the-making quite well. Their elitist attitude and willingness to compromise good taste and common sense simply to attain a shock effect to get attention are all very real.

Unfortunately the film goes overboard especially with the lead character who quickly becomes unlikable. I don’t mind a certain bit of cockiness or a say-it-like-it-is persona, but this guy is downright rude, smug, abrasive and even cruel. You spend the whole time hoping someone will punch him in his face, but it never happens and I believe this is the sole reason why this film failed at the box office as no one wants to sit through an entire movie watching a person whose behavior they can’t stand.

His excessively rude attitude towards a studio head (Jeff Corey) who wants to offer him an opportunity make a feature film is particularly confounding. It’s similar to Troy Duffy the real-life subject of Overnight and the director of The Boondock Saints who became quite arrogant to everyone once he got himself a Hollywood contract, but at least in Duffy’s case he had gotten his proverbial foot-in-the-door and therefore felt it was ‘safe’ to let his obnoxious side out, but the Forster character here doesn’t yet have one and you’re compelled to feel that the guy must be mentally ill to think he ever will by behaving in the outrageous way that he does.

Forster gives a solid performance, but the character seems too similar to one he just got done doing in Medium Cool and bordered almost on type casting. Locke is okay as the girlfriend and can be seen fully nude at the beginning, but why she would want to stick with such a jerk is hard to understand and makes her character annoying because of it. I realize some gals have the ‘bad-boy syndrome’, but it goes overboard with it here.

The film lacks a cinematic touch and its best part comes at the beginning where we watch a student film with a dream-like sequence in a Federico Fellini style that is actually pretty good. Another memorable bit comes near the end where Forster broadcasts to a group of students his own film, which features a scene showing a man jumping off a ledge and then panning over to reveal the shocked expressions of the people on the ground who witnessed it as well as the students watching it on film.

cover me babe 2

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 1, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes

Rated R

Director: Noel Black

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: None at this time.

5 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Drama, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Ishtar (1987)

Posted on January 12, 2016 | 1 comment

ishtar

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Songwriters travel to Morocco.

Clarke (Dustin Hoffman) and Lyle (Warren Beatty) are losers-at-life that now in their middle-age years are convinced that they have talent as songwriters even though this opinion is shared by no one else. They manage to get themselves a talent agent (Jack Weston) who tells them that the only place he can get their act booked is at a club in Morocco. The two, desperate for any attention they can get, decide to take him up on the offer, but once they arrive they become swept up in international intrigue with the Emir of Ishtar and the CIA.

This film was a notorious flop in its day not only with its cost overruns, production delays and box office receipts, but with its behind-the-scenes discord between star Beatty and writer/director Elaine May. It seemed that critics and film goers alike considered it a bomb, but I came into this thing with an open mind. May has written some great scripts in the past and is known for her impeccably dry humor. I was convinced that in this day-and-age of broad comedy and over-the-top farces American audiences were simply not geared to pick up on the subtleties of the humor.

Unfortunately five minutes in it becomes painfully clear this thing is every bit as bad as its reputation states. The humor relies too heavily on the two main characters spending what seems like hours on end sitting around trying to come up with bad lyrics for their already dumb sounding songs and then singing them in an off-key, tone deaf kind of way. This may elicit a mild grin for a minute or so, but after spending the first twenty minutes on it, it gets really annoying. Even at the end as the two crawl on the desert floor they continue to work on these same lyrics, which by that time has become as dried up as the desert itself.

The insane, almost incoherent plotline is another issue. It’s like two diametrically different stories clashed precariously into one with only the thinnest of threads holding it together. What starts out as a sardonically amusing look at two middle-aged men chasing an elusive dream suddenly becomes the second reel of Raiders of the Lost Ark without warning. The wild array of loosely structured coincidences that the two go through as they reluctantly find themselves more and more inadvertently involved with the intrigue around them is so flimsily plotted and poorly thought out that it’s not even worth the effort to describe other than to say it makes little sense, is unexciting and most of all not funny.

The main characters are a turn off as well and not comically engaging as intended. The idea that two men hitting 50 would suddenly decide to chuck their relationships and jobs to chase after a songwriter career despite not getting any positive feedback from anyone else to convince them that they even possessed the ability to do it and which usually doesn’t pay well anyways seems weird and bordering on mental illness. Having the characters in their early 20’s and just starting out and willing to take any remote venue they could in order to get their first ‘big break’ would’ve worked better, or portrayed these middle-aged men as once being famous and now desperate for a comeback, or even has-been CIA agents caught up in one last case of intrigue. Just about any other scenario would’ve made more sense than the one that ultimately gets used.

Hoffman is a great actor, but his efforts here are wasted on the weak material. Beatty does well playing a dimwit and the scene where he ‘beats up’ on Adjani who he thinks is a boy is probably the only funny moment in the film. Isabelle Adjani though, who was dating Beatty at the time, is miscast in a role that doesn’t convey her talents and seems almost degrading especially the scene where she lifts up her dress at a crowded terminal and exposes her breasts in effort to prove to Hoffman that she is really a female.

This movie is in some way so amazingly bad that I was almost convinced that it was intentional and if that was the case then at least in that area it can be considered a success.

ishtar 2

ishtar 3

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: May 15, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 47Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Elaine May

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Buddy Movies, Dry Humor, Movies with Nudity

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Ea$y Money (1983)

Posted on January 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

easy money

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Breaking his bad habits.

Monty Capuletti (Rodney Dangerfield) is a married man with two teenage daughters who is trying desperately to make ends meet while working as a child photographer. His oldest daughter Allison (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is set to get married to a man named Julio (Taylor Negron) that Monty does not approve of. Attending the wedding is Monty’s rich, but hateful mother-in-law (Geraldine Fitzgerald) who promptly dies on her way back home. At the reading of her will she stipulates that she will give her entire fortune to Monty, but only if he gives up all of bad habits, which includes his drinking, gambling and drug use. Monty isn’t sure he can do it, but his eager family members try to coach him into trying.

This was Rodney’s first starring vehicle after his breakout success in Caddyshack, but the script doesn’t take advantage of his comic ability. The opening sequence in which the viewer gets an understanding of the character’s personality visually by having the camera pan through his cluttered work area is great and probably the best part of the whole movie, but trying to confine his edgy persona into the sterile role of a suburban dad isn’t effective. His wife, played by Candice Azzara, is much too young and good looking a woman and would typically be way out of his league. His daughters are also too attractive and he was already in his 60’s at the time, which made him much better suited for a grandfatherly role. A much funnier plot would’ve had him stuck with his adult daughters still living at home because they were too ugly to find suitors and his desperate attempts to con someone into marrying them just so he could get rid of them and be able to enjoy  his ‘golden years’ in peace.

The script is limp and doesn’t get going with its main premise until the second half with the first part dealing with the daughter’s on-again, off-again relationship with her new husband that goes nowhere and seems added in solely to pad the running time. The idea of Monty having to give up his bad habits is poorly thought out as well as there is no third party coming in to observe that he sticks with it, or hidden cameras placed somewhere to monitor him. It leaves everything up to his family members to ‘keep him on track’ even though they could’ve lied and covered up for him and his ability to cheat at any time was wide open.

The film also does not take enough advantage of the jokes that it does have. One scene has him, in a bout of frustration, swearing at a fat kid that is not behaving, but the camera never cuts back to the parent’s shocked expression, which would’ve been the best part. Another segment has Julio and his friend trying to sneak into Rodney’s house late at night in an attempt to win back Allison, but in the process they snap off the power lines connected to the home and knock out the electricity yet the film never gets the response of the rest of the household when this occurs and instead quickly cuts away and never comes back to it making it seem almost like it never happened. Last, but not least is a scene where Rodney gets an exercise bike for Christmas and tries it out only for him to go crashing into the Christmas tree and hitting his head against the window and yet no one jumps up to see if he is alright even though I would think that would be the most natural response for someone, especially family members, to do.

There is also a scene involving drunk driving, which I found interesting only because 5 years later the movie License to Drive also had a similar scene, but in that one it was somehow considered more controversial and labeled in bad taste even though the scene here I thought was worse because it was done by the main characters, or in this case Joe Pesci who plays Rodney’s best friend.

The segment where Rodney gets shot in the buttocks and forced to hang in midair at the hospital while his injuries are allowed to heal is quite funny as is the scene involving male runway models showing off Rodney’s latest ‘regular guy’ fashions, but outside of these two segments the film falls flat in a script that never gains any traction and is wildly unfocused. Billy Joel of all people sings the film’s title tune in a song that is catchy, but I’ve never heard played on the radio even though all the rest of his tunes seemingly are.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: August 19, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 35Minutes

Rated R

Director: James Signorelli

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Grunt! The Wrestling Movie (1985)

Posted on December 31, 2015 | 1 comment

grunt

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who is masked wrestler?

On October 13, 1979 Mad Dog Joe De Curso (Greg ‘Magic’ Schwarz) has a violent wrestling match with defending champion Skull Crusher Johnson (Greg Rivera). During the melee Johnson accidently gets his head stuck in the ringside ropes where Mad Dog decapitates him with one swift kick. The wrestling world then goes into an uproar with the biting question on everyone’s mind ‘Does a defending champion lose his title when he loses his head?’ that nobody, not even the commissioner seems willing to answer. After spending 90 days in jail Mad Dog gets released, but suffers from severe depression and eventually jumps to his death off of a bridge. Yet documentary filmmaker Leslie Uggams (Jeff Dial) thinks that Mad Dog is still alive and working under the disguise of a masked wrestler whose identity is unknown. Uggams begins a crusade of trying to unravel the mystery by interviewing those who knew Mad Dog best while also following the masked wrestler around to his events and trying to get to know both him and his French lady manager Angel Face (Lydie Denier).

The first 10 minutes of this thing is brilliantly bizarre that has just the right mix of offbeat humor, wrestling action and cinematic quality to make it interesting, original and hilarious. I am no wrestling fan myself, but director Allan Holzman manages, at least in the opening segment, to draw the uninitiated into the wrestling world by unfolding all the side dramas, storylines and over-the-top characters that fans of the spectacle find so enjoyable. The bit is also filmed in black-and-white with a sort-of foggy back drop that helps give it a surreal effect while also playfully making fun of the event and those who watch it.

Unfortunately the remainder of the movie is unable to sustain that same momentum becoming instead an overplayed one-joke that goes nowhere. It also spends too much time in the ring where the viewer is forced to watch one wrestling bout after another until it becomes more like a pay-per-view event than a movie.

One of the few non wrestling segments that I did enjoy is when the masked man and Angel Face go onto Wally George’s ‘Hot Seat’ TV-Program. George was a notoriously combative conservative talk show host during the ‘80s and the precursor to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. He was also the father to actress Rebecca De Mornay who has spent her entire career trying desperately to downplay that fact. Liberal guests would come onto his show and almost immediately be berated before being thrown off, which is what happens to the masked man and Angel Face, but not before George gets into the masked man’s face and demands he take it off, which is pretty funny.

Adrian Street, a wrestler who dresses in drag, is a scene stealer and the segment with the masked man being interviewed on his show is equally good. I also enjoyed Denier as the rambunctious manager who flashes an opposing player during one of the mask man’s wrestling matches and carries around a pet poodle who wears a mask similar to her clients.

The scene involving a bout between two lady wrestlers with the song ‘She Was a Mighty Big Girl for Her Age’ is good and the match where the masked man takes on four dwarf wrestlers is an absolute howl, but the film is geared too much to the hardcore fan and those with very little interest in the ‘sport’ will find it off-putting and overtly silly.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: November 24, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated R

Director: Allan Holzman

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black & White, Cult, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Parody

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The Happiness Cage (1972)

Posted on December 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

mind snatchers

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: They control his mind.

Christopher Walken plays James Reese a veteran of the Vietnam War who has issues with aggression. After numerous arrests he gets shipped off to a hospital in Europe run by Dr. Frederick (Joss Ackland) and overseen by a U.S. General (Ralph Meeker). There they do tests on the patients by implanting special devices into their brains that connects to their pleasure centers and can quell their aggressive behavior by having them feel a pleasurable sensation every time a button is pressed from a remote.

Walken’s performance is outstanding and Ronny Cox as his fellow patient is also quite good especially the part where he has the device implanted into his own brain, which turns him into a sad, pathetic, child-like state. Bette Henritze gives an interesting performance as well as a naïve, middle-aged nurse hired to make the patient’s stay more ‘happy’ by supplying them with books and board games only to be attacked and raped by Cox and then forced to play a game of checkers with him afterwards.

The story, which was based on a play by Dennis Reardon, certainly has its moments. In fact I was surprised how caught up into I got since the production values are close to appalling. The film was shot in Denmark in a building that looks like it was formerly a rundown mansion converted into a makeshift hospital for the sake of the movie. It all looks embarrassingly cheap and the idea of having a big hospital with a full-time staff and even a barbed wire fence and guard dogs, but only three patients is quite hard to believe.

Had the budget been bigger it might’ve been able to reach a broader audience. Bernard Girard’s direction is okay for the limitations that he was given, but the film’s faded, grainy stock and overall amateurish look becomes a turn off from the beginning and something that it cannot overcome. The plot itself is interesting, but the concept has been filmed before and with better results.

Alternate Title: The Mind Snatchers

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: June 28, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Bernard Girard

Studio: Cinerama Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Low Budget, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Psychological

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When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? (1979)

Posted on December 3, 2015 | 1 comment

when you comin back red ryder 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Terror at a diner.

The year is 1968 and the setting is a small, lonely diner nestled at the border of Texas and New Mexico. Richard (Hal Linden) and his violinist wife Clarissa (Lee Grant) arrive for a morning cup of coffee. There is also Angel (Stephanie Faracy) the diner’s lone waitress and Stephen (Peter Firth), who was nicknamed Red during his youth due to his red hair at the time, but besides them the place is empty and peaceful. Then Teddy (Marjoe Gortner), an unhinged Vietnam vet and his hippie girlfriend Chery (Candy Clark) enter. They are without money and stranded with a broken down van, which makes Teddy particularly volatile as he begins harassing the others with evasive questions before eventually terrorizing them all by trapping them inside the place and forcing them to do whatever weird, sick thing he asks.

The film is based on the 1973 Off Broadway play by Mark Medoff, who also wrote the screenplay. In many ways it’s similar to the 1967 black-and-white drama The Incident in which Tony Musante and a young Martin Sheen trap several subway riders inside a subway car and spend the rest of the night terrorizing them simply for their own personal amusement.  Both films are structured the same with the first part examining the characters before they arrive at the scene and revealing a bit of the personal dramas that each of them face and then spending the second half showing them trapped in a claustrophobic setting and forced to deal with their reluctance at confronting their fears.

The 1967 film though outshines this one as there were more characters, which gave it a better variety of personalities as well as bad guys that were menacing and believable. Gortner is too much of a ham making him more irritating than scary. The part was originally played by Kevin Conway during its Off Broadway run and his performance won many accolades, which should’ve been enough for them to have offered him the chance to reprise the role here. Gortner, who also produced seemed intent at trying to use this as a vehicle to promote himself as being a ‘serious’ actor, but he was too old for the role from the beginning since he was already in his mid-30’s at the time this was shot while vets coming back from the war during the ‘60s where only in their late teens or early 20’s.

The film only gets mildly interesting during the confrontation sequence inside the diner, which takes 45 minutes of the film’s 2-hour runtime just to get there. The way the characters respond to Gortner’s scare tactics and the supporting cast’s performances, who are all far better actors than Gortner, is the movie’s only compelling element, but even here there are issues. The biggest one being that the people seem too wimpy and today’s viewers will get frustrated at how overly compliant they are to Gortner’s demands and never once try to overpower him despite having ample opportunity.

The movie is also notorious for featuring some rather shocking moments of nudity. It starts out with a full body shot of Candy Clark in the buff, who was married to Gortner in real-life at the time this was made and that isn’t too bad, but then it proceeds to later show 48-year-old Linden in nothing but speedo shorts doing sit ups with his butt crack clearly exposed. Still later there is a scene where 52-year-old Lee Grant has her shirt hoisted all the way over her head with her breasts in full view and then paraded around the diner in mocking fashion. The film’s most over-the-top moment though comes when Gortner himself is stripped naked and bent over a table while having a proctoscope shoved up his rectum as he continues to have a conversation with the man who’s doing it.

Filmed on-location in Fabens, Texas, which was also the site of a famous scene in The Gateway, and Las Cruces, New Mexico the movie just doesn’t convey enough tension to make it compelling or worth catching. It would’ve worked better had it skipped the first half dealing with the backstories of the characters, which was never a part of the original play anyways and just gone straight into the diner sequence while also casting a leading actor that had some actual acting training.

when you comin back red ryder 1

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: February 9, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 58Minutes

Rated R

Director: Milton Katselas

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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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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