Placenta Ovaries

The Top 50 Movies I Watched in 2009

In previous years, I've posted like a hundred lists of the best movies I saw the year before, broken down by genre. But last year, I mostly watched new releases (which will be a separate post) and not as much older stuff, so I decided to just condense it all into one brief Top 50 list. Below is just a list of the movies, but if you want to see it complete with reviews and some exciting images, then you can check that out right over here on Kittysneezes.

The Top 10 Greatest Movies I Watched in 2009
1. The War Zone (1999, Tim Roth)
2. Pieces (1982, Juan Piquer Simon)
3. Sorry, Haters (2005, Jeff Stanzler)
4. A Woman Obsessed (1989, Chuck Vincent)
5. Raw Force (1982, Edward Murphy)
6. Gang Boys (1994, Wings Hauser)
7. Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)
8. Johnny Mnemonic (1995, Robert Longo)
9. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002, Park Chan-wook)
10. Lady Terminator (1988, Jalil Jackson)

40 More Movies I Saw in 2009 That I Also Loved (alphabetical)
Ace in the Hole (1951, Billy Wilder)
Airport (1970, George Seaton & Henry Hathaway)
Airport 1975 (1974, Jack Smight)
Bedroom Eyes (1984, William Fruet)
Black Book (2007, Paul Verhoeven)
Brighton Rock (1947, John Boulting)
Bye Bye Birdie (1963, George Sidney)
Choque (Short, 2005, Nacho Vigalondo)
The Dirty Dozen (1967, Robert Aldrich)
Double Blast (1994, Tim Spring)
Electric Dreams (1984, Steve Barron)
Event Horizon (1997, Paul W.S. Anderson)
Fright Night Part 2 (1988, Tommy Lee Wallace)
Gravity (Short, 1976, Michael Nankin & David Wechter)
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988, Tony Randel)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008, Guillermo Del Toro)
Homicidal (1961, William Castle)
Ice Castles (1978, Donald Wrye)
Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986, Penny Marshall)
Junior High School (Short, 1978, David Wechter & Michael Nankin)
The Killers (1946, Robert Siodmak)
Megaforce (1982, Hal Needham)
Mister Scarface (1976, Fernando Di Leo)
Moving Target (1988, Marius Mattei)
Mr. Sardonicus (1961, William Castle)
Never Too Young to Die (1986, Gil Bettman)
New Year's Evil (1980, Emmett Alston)
Point Blank (1967, John Boorman)
The Quick and the Dead (1995, Sam Raimi)
Risky Business (1983, Paul Brickman)
School, Girls, and You (Short, 1978, David Wechter)
Seed (2008, Uwe Boll)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979, Robert Wise)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
Supervixens (1975, Russ Meyer)
To Let (2008, Jaume Balaguero)
The Tooth Fairy (2006, Chuck Bowman)
Vigilante (1983, William Lustig)
Virtuosity (1995, Brett Leonard)
West of Zanzibar (1928, Tod Browning)

Black Dynamite (2009)

January 23
Black Dynamite - 2009, 35mm
Scott Sanders
9.5

After his brother is killed, Black Dynamite joins up with the honkies from the CIA and hits the streets to avenge his brother. In the process, he manages to successfully clean up the streets, and halfway through the movie, he's already eradicated all of the city's drug and crime problems. But then he discovers there's a huge conspiracy at hand involving malt liquor and dick shrinkage, and he works his way up to the top trying to find out who’s responsible. It could be considered an affectionate parody of blaxploitation films from the 70’s, but it really just used that style as a starting point for an action-packed, brilliantly funny comedy. There are some amazing lines and moments in this movie, and it’s a total fucking blast that never settles down. Michael Jai White, who co-wrote it and plays the title character, is hilarious and perfect. It's really fucking good, and I can’t wait to watch it again.

November Reviews, Part 1

11/1

Night of the Creeps (Rewatch, 1986, Fred Dekker, Blu-ray) - 10.0
A boy has a crush on a girl, and so his best friend tries to help him connect with her, and they end up trying to join a fraternity, which requires them to procure a corpse, and the corpse they find is cryogenically frozen, and when it thaws out, alien slugs explode out of its head and slither around campus infecting other people’s brains and turning them into zombies, and it’s up to the boy and the girl and a hard boiled detective to defeat the alien slug zombies using blowtorches. It pays a lot of tribute to the science fiction and horror genres, and is an original, inventive enough story to become a classic in it’s own right. The cast is amazing, particularly Tom Atkins, the humor is well-played, the effects are fucking awesome, and amidst all the horror, there’s a touching story of friendship and first love. One of the greatest fucking horror movies ever made.

Pig Hunt (Rewatch, 2009, James Isaac, 35mm, Red Vic) - 3.0
My review here sums it up, for the most part. But even though I didn’t like it, I wanted to see it again because I couldn’t quite place what it was that didn’t work about it. I was also working at the Red Vic one of the nights it was playing and I didn’t have any film work or anything else better to do, so it’s not like I went out of my way to see it when I could’ve been watching something more promising I hadn’t seen yet. Anyway, the problem with it is that it kind of borders between wanting to be fun and campy and wanting to be fuckin’ badass, and ends up failing on both counts. My impression is that it wants to be a badass movie, and there are a few one-liners where it’s obviously trying for this, but I guess it’s just poorly written because it always comes out lame. I think if they had tried to be a little campier and funnier, the story had the potential to be good, but instead it constantly lingers on the edge of this, without ever embracing it. In particular, there’s a hillbilly who really stands out as an interesting character, and it seems like any minute he’s about to say or do something amazing and/or hilarious, but it simply never comes. The characters are bland and boring, and since nothing actually happens for over an hour, there’s nothing about it to make it worth watching.
One thing that did kind of make me appreciate the movie, however, were the people who came to see it, who I’m pretty sure had all come down from the backwoods locale where it was shot. A man named Troll who doesn’t believe in “male feminists” and two haggard-looking women in their 60’s showing off their tits in skimpy outfits totally made my night.

11/2

Where the Wild Things Are (2009, Spike Jonze, 35mm, Vogue) - 2.0
Max is an imaginative, but high maintenance kid who is prone to tantrums, and he gets in a fight with his mom, bites her, and takes off running, and ends up sailing to an island of whiny monsters, all of whom represent a different negative aspect of his inner depression, and when he sees how fucking irritating they all are, he learns to fucking get over himself already. I really, really wanted to like this movie, but all that happens in it is the Wild Things bitching and complaining about everything. I can see how this would be considered a dark or a sad movie, but I don’t agree, because nothing sad or tragic ever actually happens. They all just act as if it had, or they invent problems where there actually aren’t any, and after awhile, it’s intolerable to watch. Hating this movie makes me feel like the mother in Happiness when she says her son is “depressed” all annoyed and disbelieving, but I really didn’t feel like this shit was “emotionally honest.” It was simply whiny and obnoxious.
The movie does have one highlight, though, in the form of two owls. Everything about their scene is weird and confusing, and reminded me a lot of the best humor from the Muppet movies (specifically, Muppets Take Manhattan). Why does KW knock them out of the sky and then hold their sad faces in headlocks? Are they actually friends with her, or just enslaved? I don’t know what the fuck was going on in that scene, but I know that I loved it, and their knock-knock joke was hilarious.

11/3

Antichrist (2009, Lars von Trier, 35mm, Embarcadero) - 4.0
After an infant commits suicide to get away from his fucking parents, the mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) gets depressed, so the therapist father (Willem Dafoe) decides to help her work through her grief by taking her to some woods because she’s afraid of them. She doesn’t really get any better, and it turns out maybe she had been kind of crazy all along, and then she eventually gets a lot worse. The build-up is incredibly fucking slow, and starts to get real fucking boring, and though the payoff is fairly amazing (movies, in general, could use more shots of real penises ejaculating blood), it doesn’t make up for the tedium that precedes it, or the completely retarded, symbolism-drenched ending that follows it. Aside from the inclusion of genitals, the gore is pretty much the same as any of Lucio Fulci’s better works, or most of the Saw movies, so I’d rather just watch those since at least they’re entertaining.

11/5

The War Zone (1999, Tim Roth, DVD) - 10.0
A teenage boy finds out his sister is having a sexual relationship with their father, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Really fucking bleak story that goes to very graphic and disgusting places. Incest is one of those themes that completely fascinates me and it’s always a treat seeing it in the movies, but this one actually made me feel gross. And for that, I fell in love with it, as I have literally waited my entire life for a movie to make me as uncomfortable as this one did, at least while also being a great fucking movie. The performances are all low-key, realistic, and amazing, particularly Ray Winstone and Lara Belmont. It reminded me a lot of a Mike Leigh movie, but a thousand times more depressing.

BEST MOVIES OF THE DECADE - 1940s

Even though I've seen about the same amount of movies from the 1940s that I have from the 30s or 20s, it still feels like the decade I'm most removed from, and am generally not that interested in. But when I make an actual list like this, I realize these were plenty of great films. This list is really more like a guideline for myself of directors and actors I need to get into more thoroughly, like Preston Sturges, Busby Berkeley, Barbara Stanwyck, and even Hitchcock. I've seen a fair amount of Hitchcock stuff, but there's still a shitload more to go, and quite a few I need to see again.

TOP 15 MOVIES OF THE DECADE - 1940s


1. Unfaithfully Yours (1948, Preston Sturges)
2. Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Brighton Rock (1947, John Boulting)
4. Kiss of Death (1947, Henry Hathaway)
5. Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
6. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)
7. Sullivan's Travels (1941, Preston Sturges)
8. Detour (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer)
9. The Killers (1946, Robert Siodmak)
10. Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)
11. The Story of Molly X (1949, Crane Wilbur)
12. For Me and My Gal (1942, Busby Berkeley)
13. Black Narcissus (1947, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
14. Ball of Fire (1941, Howard Hawks)
15. Lady Scarface (1941, Frank Woodruff)

The Pee-wee Herman Show

January 21
The Pee-wee Herman Show

On my last day in L.A., I was privileged with seeing the live revival of Pee-wee’s Playhouse at Club Nokia, with Paul Reubens returning to the role, as well as the original Miss Yvonne and Jambi. It was amazing. But before I get to that, here’s the bad news. Someone nearby was talking through it and yelling stuff out. Not quite heckling, but just stupid shit that wasn’t appropriate. And he was often wildly cackling like a drunk homeless person during random moments.

I get mad a lot about audience members making noise and doing anything that’s distracting from the show (be it talking, texting, or smoking pot). Usually, it pertains to midnight movies. I’m very frustrated by people who make fun of movies in a public space where there may be others nearby who do not hate cinema or general decency like they do. I’ve gone on record as saying that these people deserve to be raped. But the truth is, I don’t really believe they deserve something so harsh. Me being distracted from a great movie is not actually as horrible as being raped. So the genuine truth is that the only thing that I wish upon these monsters is that they are sent to internment camps, where they will be forced to watch actually terrible movies, like Werckmeister Harmonies and L’Avventura, and they will be gagged so they won’t be able to shout out their own attention-seeking, dumbass comments to entertain themselves, and this will force them to learn the value in movies that actually have shit going on in them, and are much more enjoyable without their outside input. And once they are no longer a threat to people who genuinely love movies, they can be set free, so long as they always flash their identifying asshole-badge when buying movie tickets, so the employees know to charge them triple and seat them in a special, segregated section.

Anyway, in this case, I’m not talking about a movie. This was a live event. With way more expensive seats. I didn’t part with that money easily, and now my experience is being fucking tainted? This also wasn’t something that any sane person could possibly conceive of as “bad” like some of the movies I like. It was PEE-WEE HERMAN. He is a National Motherfucking Treasure! And he was there in person! What if he was able to hear this fucking douche? What if he, or any of the other actors, were being distracted as performers? I was distracted less by the actual output of noise, and more by the context of it. It really went way beyond my normal frustration with this kind of thing. It completely horrified and disturbed me. I wanted to murder this person. I wanted to slit his fucking throat. He nearly ruined what should’ve been an all-around incredible experience. I never saw the person myself, but apparently he was a “really ugly frat-boy”. I hope he gets raped.

Aside from that, the show was truly amazing, hilarious, and fun. It was essentially a live episode of Playhouse, with a full set, and all the original characters. The jokes were a bit more adult, and it was kept up-to-date with the modern world, making references to Twitter and Shamwow. At the beginning of the show, Pee-wee, looking adorable and youthful, rushed on stage to say hello and lead us in the pledge of allegiance. This was followed by the reveal of the set, which brought an enormous rush of nostalgia and glee, and this held up throughout. Looking back on the show, I find myself still smiling about certain jokes, or perfect gags and mannerisms. Reubens has successfully brought back the magic of the TV show, in a way anyone who grew up with it will appreciate.

City of the Walking Dead (1980) & Night of the Zombies (1980)

January 19 City of the Walking Dead - 1980, 35mm Umberto Lenzi 8.0 A news reporter goes to report on a plane landing, and when it does, a bunch of zombies rush out wielding weapons and start attacking everyone. From there, there are a few loose attempts at subplots, but it’s basically just a series of setups for zombie attacks, of mixed gore quality. Usually it looks pretty cheap and cheesy, but occasionally it’s gross and awesome, and either way, it’s a lot of fucking fun. And the ending is amazing. Also known as Nightmare City.

Night of the Zombies - 1980, 35mm Bruno Mattei 6.0 A female reporter and her boyfriend team up with some commandos to fight zombies in the jungle. The movie utilizes a ton of stock footage of various jungle animals and various jungle natives, which was an interesting approach, but it starts relying on it a bit too often, especially considering the film stock doesn’t even come close to matching up. There are a lot of really good, really funny scenes, but mostly, the film fucking drags. There’s gore, but it’s mostly just zombies getting shot (which keeps to the bizarre Italian tradition of characters uselessly shooting every zombie 4 or 5 times in the chest before the single effective head shot). At the very end of the movie, out of nowhere, we are treated to a zombie shoving its fist through a woman’s mouth and poking out her eyeballs from the inside. It’s an incredible scene, and I’m certainly glad it’s there, but why couldn’t the rest of the movie have had that kind of shit? It was a good movie, but needed a better pace, and some more creative gore interspersed throughout. Also known as Virus or Hell of the Living Dead.

This double feature played at the New Beverly in L.A. (where I saw True Grit and A.I. the previous night), and since these were grindhouse films in a theater that’s new to me, I figure an audience review is also in order. First off, the theater was completely packed. Obscure grindhouse films rarely play in San Francisco, and most programmers here fear that audiences won’t show up for movies they haven’t heard of. They’re probably right, but I do wonder sometimes, and obviously I wish that this weren’t the case because I would love to see a lot more exploitation films on 35mm. There were a few shouts and comments made throughout the films, and the loudest, most frequent culprit was naturally right behind us (I have the worst luck ever with my seating choices), but it was fairly subdued. It wasn’t as unrelenting and constant as the drunken assholes who are always at the Clay midnights, for instance. But one thing I did notice was that the audience laughed uproariously at pretty much everything, especially during the second movie (which was an extra pain in the ass because the sound was way too low). Like, anytime a character picked up a drink of alcohol, the audience lost their fucking shit. I like to laugh at these movies, too, but there were moments where I seriously didn’t have a fucking clue what people were finding humor in. Still, though, even if this was occasionally annoying and/or baffling, at least they were there to enjoy the actual movie, rather than trying to prove themselves as being better than the movie by inflicting their bullshit snarkiness on people like me. This was only one screening, but so far, I basically approve of Los Angeles movie audiences. An upcoming post will reveal an extremely traumatizing experience with a non-movie audience, however.

True Grit (1969) & A.I. (2001)

January 18 True Grit - 1969, 35mm Henry Hathaway 8.5 Kim Darby’s father is shot and killed by some asshole, so she seeks out the help of U.S. Marshal John Wayne to help her out because she’s heard he’s got “true grit”, and then some Texas Ranger who is after the same guy tags along with them, too. Darby is really fucking good in it, and despite being third billed, is clearly the centerpiece, and I took the movie to be about her own display of the truest of grit. John Wayne, whose career I’m largely unfamiliar with, was also very likable and awesome. Really good Western. This played as a double feature at the New Beverly in L.A. with A.I. Both movies were selected by one of my favorite directors, Stuart Gordon, but apparently he had nothing to do with randomly pairing them. Also apparently, he was there for the previous night’s screenings, but unfortunately, I was unable to make it because I was just arriving in town. There may actually be a theme between the two movies, in that they’re both about someone young starting out alone, then meeting up with others and going on a journey, determined to find someone. I don’t know if it was intentionally programmed that way, but either way, double features of two vastly different movies are always awesome.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence - 2001, 35mm -Rewatch Steven Spielberg 8.5 A robot named David gets adopted by some parents who think they’ve lost their son, and the robot is programmed to love the mother, but he’s a little creepy and oft-putting, so once the real son turns out ok and comes back home, the mother drops off the robot in the forest, and he sets out to find the Blue Fairy because he thinks she can make him organic, and then the mother will love him back. He meets up with a sexbot named Jude Law who helps him along. There’s some really great stuff in this movie, mostly involving amazing special effects, like the robot girl’s face opening up in the beginning of the movie, David’s face melting when he tries to eat food, the various deformed robots, and every single moment with his adorable stuffed robot Teddy. I love pretty much any movie about robots, and I like how this one plays as kind of a maudlin fairy tale. The much-detested ending is pretty ok, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not as strong as the rest of the movie, but it serves it’s purpose of giving David some closure, and it’s got just the right amount of sentiment to satisfy me, without taking it too far. Had it ended sooner, with David submerged underwater staring at a statue for all eternity, then certainly that would’ve been preferable; fucking amazing, even. But I feel that way about the endings of about 80% of the movies I watch. Most films reach a point where it would be incredible if it ended there, and sometimes they’ll even tease you into thinking it actually might, as this one did, but every time, it continues on for something more traditional, cheerful, sentimental, etc., and I’m long past being disappointed about it. And in this case, I thought all the stuff with the futuristic aliens was actually pretty neat.

24 Seasons 5 & 6

November
24 Season 5
Joel Surnow & Robert Cochran, DVD
10.0

January
24 Season 6
Joel Surnow & Robert Cochran, DVD
9.0

Two more incredible seasons of 24. The fifth might actually be my favorite so far, because it is definitely the most upsetting. The entire season is fucked. Everything that happens is horrible and depressing. I cried at one point. Actually, at two points, but they both related to the same event. I won’t say too much about the plot, partly so as not to spoil anything, but also because the overall plot is not especially important. I realized that there are two reasons the show is so amazing. The first, obviously, is the character of Jack Bauer, as played by Kiefer Sutherland. Bauer is intense when he’s on a mission for answers, and can be extremely threatening and intimidating, but he is equally intense with how much he loves his friends, family, and country. He may torture and/or kill someone in practically every episode, but he’s got an unbelievable heart. He is also ridiculously smart, and his ability to make quick, always correct decisions, no matter how brash they initially may seem is awe-inspiring. And Kiefer’s insane dedication to his performance is fucking unparalleled. He is amazing. Jack Bauer is amazing.

The second thing that makes me love the show so much is that it’s not really about terrorism. And it’s barely about all the office romances, or familial drama, or whatever else is going on, though all of that stuff is also great. 24 is all about the torture of Jack Bauer. Sometimes it may seem like they’re running out of ideas. Like, Season 2 dealt with a nuclear bomb. So for Season 6, all they could come with was, how about 5 nuclear bombs? It doesn’t matter. The writers aren’t dedicating themselves to what kind of devices the terrorists are using, they are dedicating themselves to who can next betray Jack that will fuck up his mental stability the most. Or they’re sending him to a foreign prison to be tortured, day and night, for nearly two years straight. They’ve built up this amazing character that we can’t help but feel compassion for, and then we constantly watch him suffer. Nearly every season ends with all the terrorism issues being resolved, but Jack is still miserable. He’s always in tears, or thinking about suicide, or forced to fake his own death and not have contact with anyone he loves ever again, or being sent to that foreign torture prison. The show revolves around his misery. And for that, it is fucking brilliant.

Also, in the first episode of Season 6, Jack bites someone in the neck and tears off some flesh, and I’d like to think this was an intentional Lost Boys reference.

October Reviews, Part 4

TV

10/30

Tales from the Crypt Season 2 (Joel Silver, Walter Hill, Richard Donner, Robert Zemeckis, David Giler, DVD) - 9.0
More short horror tales by awesome directors, and a few unknown directors, and starring great actors. The episodes weren’t as consistently perfect as the first season, but there weren’t any duds, either. The best episode was definitely Richard Donner’s "The Ventriloquist’s Dummy", which appears to be about a dummy who is alive and homicidal, but it turns out to be something way stranger and grosser. I also loved Jack Sholder’s "Fitting Punishment", Howard Deutch’s "Dead Right", Fred Dekker’s "The Thing from the Grave", Jeffrey Price’s "For Cryin’ Out Loud", Tom Holland’s "Four-Sided Triangle", Peter Seaman’s "My Brother’s Keeper", and Kevin Yagher’s "Lower Berth" (which turned out to be The Cryptkeeper’s origin story). Speaking of the Cryptkeeper, he’s fucking adorable. I’m still charmed every single time he makes himself laugh.

MOVIES

10/30

Paranormal Activity (Rewatch, 2009, Oren Peli, 35mm, Balboa) - 9.0
First review here. Not as scary the second time around, but still a great movie about people being fucked with by a malevolent force. I also watched an alternate ending online that I liked a lot more (the one with the cops), though it still wasn’t perfect. There’s one other that I read about (with a throat-slitting) that sounded fucking awesome.

10/31 - Halloween Quadruple Feature

The Last House on the Left (2009, Dennis Iliadis, DVD) - 8.5
Two girls run into three criminals, who kill one of them, and rape the other, leaving her for dead. The criminals then end up at the raped girl’s house, with her parents, and when the parents find out what’s happened, they seek revenge. The violent scenes are suitably nasty, and the performances are convincing, making it into a solid horror thriller. I didn’t really think the lead guy suffered enough, though I did like his death. I haven’t seen the original in forever, not sure how they compare.

Homicidal (1961, William Castle, DVD) - 9.0
A woman pays a bellhop to marry her, and as soon as he does, she stabs the justice of the peace to death, and takes off. The woman returns to the family she’s staying with, and makes some people uncomfortable, and during the investigation of the murder, scandalous family secrets are uncovered. It’s fucking awesome, with a crazed performance from the lead, and a great twist that’s a little obvious now but probably completely blew the minds of people in ’61.

Basket Case (Prewatch, 1982, Frank Henenlotter, DVD) - 9.0
A man carrying a large basket with his deformed, formerly conjoined twin brother in it, stays at a hotel, and they seek out the doctors who had separated them, and the deformed brother kills them in ridiculous ways. The man meets a girl, and tries to start something up with her, but his brother is too much of a troublemaker. Pretty funny and sleazy, with cheap and amazing kill scenes. The climactic sex scene is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

Trick 'r Treat (2009, Michael Dougherty, Blu-ray) - 8.0
Four interweaving stories that take place on Halloween. Interesting take on an anthology film, in that the stories occasionally cross over into each other. Really fun, occasionally kinda nasty movie, if a bit forgettable. The 80's Trick or Treat is definitely a lot better (not that they have anything to do with each other aside from the title). This one's worth rewatching, though, sometime.

October Top 10
1. Whip It
2. Basket Case
3. Jennifer's Body
4. Zombieland
5. Homicidal
6. Hellbound: Hellraiser II
7. Last House on the Left
8. Whatever Works
9. Black Book
10. Fright Night Part II

October Reviews, Part 3

MOVIES

10/24

Fright Night (Rewatch, 1985, Tom Holland, DVD) - 10.0
The guy from Herman’s Head is a teenager named Charley Brewster and he’s dating Marcy from Married with Children, but he never wants to have sex with her because he has ADD and keeps getting distracted by his new neighbors next door who are probably homosexuals, and also probably vampires. Marcy doesn’t believe him, and neither does his friend Evil Ed or TV horror host Roddy McDowell, but they play along with him for awhile, before finally realizing that Charley is right. It’s an insanely good, fun movie with campy and amazing characters, and some awesome special effects. Fucking great.

10/25

Fright Night Part 2 (1988, Tommy Lee Wallace, DVD) - 8.0
Charley Brewster is trying to move on with his life, but the sister of the vampire he killed in the first movie has moved to town with some other vampires, and they’re looking to get revenge. It did something that always annoys me in movies where the lead vampire girl (not necessarily a vampire in other movies) is supposed to be the most beautiful and desirable woman ever, and the main character is completely entranced by her, but they get the casting all wrong, and end up with the actress (in this case, Traci Lind) who plays the apparently ordinary girlfriend being like a billion times hotter than the lead vampire girl. I kind of bought it in this movie because whatever, it’s supernatural, and also because Charley Brewster is so easily distracted by new things that it probably didn’t even matter what the woman looked like, or even if she was a woman, since I guess the exact same thing happens in Part 1 with a male vampire. Anyway, this movie is great. There are vampires who rollerskate and go bowling, sometimes at the same time. It’s awesome.

10/24

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Rewatch, 1986, Tobe Hooper, 35mm, Bridge) - 10.0
Years have passed since the events of the first film, but the homicidal family is still up to no good, and when one of their murders is inadvertently taped by a radio DJ, Dennis Hopper uses it as a lead to track the family down. From the opening scene, every single thing that happens in this movie is fucking perfect. It’s gory, funny, creepy, disturbing, and seriously fucking gross. Tom Savini has claimed that his best special effects work was in The Prowler, but The Prowler does not even fucking come close to what he did with TCM2. There’s a scene where Leatherface slices off someone’s face (as well as some other random flesh), and puts it over the squirming lead girl’s face, then puts a cowboy hat on her, and I don’t even want to say much more, but the scene continues to escalate into even more horrifying territory, and not only is it amazing just on the basis of what’s going on, but it looks genuinely disgusting. Another sequence that stood out for me was when the girl escapes from the meat room, and is watching the family. Leatherface, Chop-Top, and the father are all standing in a huge room just being crazy. The father is ranting incoherently, something about property taxes, Chop-Top is also screaming fairly incoherently and dancing around with a corpse, and Leatherface just watches them both, looking completely bewildered and unsure what to do with himself. And I realized that this is what the characters are like all the time. They’re only doing this amongst themselves, and I found it to be a fascinating, brilliant insight into the lives of a family of maniacs. It’s true that the movie is also somewhat campy, but for me, this never takes away from how disturbing it is. It is truly one of the most perfect horror films ever made.

10/28

The Last Man on Earth (1964, Sidney Salkow/Ubaldo Ragona, 35mm, Clay) - 7.5
An epidemic has struck the world, turning everyone into zombie vampires, but Vincent Price is immune, and so becomes the last man on Earth. He spends his days staking sleeping zompires, searching for a cure, and reminiscing about the past when he had a family, and spends his nights keeping the zompires out of his house. But then he finds a woman who seems to still be human, and talks of a colony with more humans, which gives him some hope. It’s pretty good.

The Tomb of Ligeia (1964, Roger Corman, 35mm, Clay) - 6.0
Taking place in the English countryside of the 1800’s, Vincent Price meets a woman who looks just like his dead wife, so he marries her, but then hardly spends any time with her because he’s still obsessed with the dead one, who is still haunting him. It was a good story, with some pretty weird stuff in it, but I just couldn’t get that involved in it. It was alright.

10/29

Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Digital Projection, Rafael) - 7.0
A group of girls with distinct character traits (one knows kung fu, one eats a lot, one plays music, etc.) all go to one of the girl’s Aunt’s house, but the house is haunted and starts killing the girls in various bizarre ways (the best being a girl who gets eaten by a piano). There’s a lot of good stuff here, and I certainly liked it, but I think my expectations were a bit too high. It’s a somewhat legendary cult movie that I’ve heard a lot about over the years, and it ended up not being nearly as crazy as I expected. I’ve refused to watch the movie over the years because it was never available with subtitles, and I don’t even like watching movies in English without the subtitles on. Interestingly, though, I could see how Hausu might actually be a better, and crazier, movie without any context for what the fuck is going on. Not sure what to make of that. It’s also worth noting that I was in kind of a shitty mood while watching, because I was hoping since Criterion had bought the rights to the film and was screening it all around the country, that maybe they had struck up a print. But it was on digital, and even though it was at a fancy, well-respected theater in Marin, the projection quality was fucking garbage, so I should’ve just waited until it hit DVD (I’ll probably watch it again).

BOOK

10/28

Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews - 10.0
After the father of a happy, perfect family dies in a tragic car accident, the mother takes her four children to their wealthy grandparent’s enormous house, but the kids have to hide in the attic for awhile, because the grandfather can’t know of their existence or he’ll kick them out. Awhile turns into years, with their only contact to the outside world being their abusive grandmother and their increasingly distant mother, whose visits become less and less frequent. Incredibly bleak, horribly upsetting story, that just keeps getting worse. It’s fucking amazing, and I can’t wait to read the sequels.

The Neighbors (2006)

January 11
The Neighbors TV Pilot
2006, USA, Projected DVD
Tommy Wiseau
10.0

This is a TV pilot for a sitcom from Tommy Wiseau, the genius behind the incredible and unique The Room. Please watch the trailer if you have not already repeatedly done so. No networks have picked it up yet, if you can believe it, and apparently, it’s not quite finished, which is evidenced by a full scene that actually plays twice with slightly different takes, and some very awkward sound issues. For this reason, Wiseau doesn’t want anyone to see it, and for that reason, I can’t say too much about how I came to access it, and I especially can’t get you a copy.
Here’s what I can tell you: It’s amazing. If you are a fan of The Room, you will love The Neighbors. I wouldn’t say it’s better than The Room, but it is definitely even fucking weirder. It’s about a bizarre and excitable cast of characters in an apartment complex (the one pictured here, I guess, which is taken from the website) who all frequent the office of the superintendent (played by Wiseau with a short haircut), and complain about everything from a severe bug infestation to being scolded by their girlfriend after being caught in bed with another man. At some point, they all come together to welcome a “Princess” who is visiting the United States, and naturally makes her first stop at the apartments. Like his feature, The Neighbors is hilarious and wholly unique. I really hope Wiseau figures out what it’s future is, so more people can have a chance to experience it.

The Box (2009)

January 16
The Box
2009, USA, 35mm, Red Vic
Richard Kelly
5.5

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are a couple in the 70s, and Frank Langella shows up at their house with part of his face missing, and he’s got a button in a box. If Diaz and Marsden push the button, then someone they don’t know will die, but they’ll get paid a million dollars. They end up pushing it, but instead of just giving them the money and leaving them alone, Langella sends all these weirdos to stare at them all the time, and everyone’s noses keep bleeding. And so they try to figure out what his fucking deal is, and I guess they do, but the audience sure as fuck doesn’t.
I really enjoyed the movie while watching it. I found it to be an intriguing sci-fi mystery, with some creepy scenes and a lot of offbeat humor, so I can’t say that it was bad or I didn’t like it. But talking about it afterwards, I did have to admit that none of it made any sense, and that it constantly sets up all this weird shit while making references to dire consequences or whatever, and then just casually moves on to the next scene. Suddenly the characters are back at home, and the conflict they were having about which floating water coffin would give them the best afterlife is apparently dealt with. The only explanation that’s ever given for anything that happens is so lazy that it’s definitely not worth not spoiling. Apparently, Langella was struck by lightning. End twist. And I don’t know, I think it implied that he was employed by Mars?
This movie did have some good shit going for it, though, I just wish it tried a little harder.

Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy (1996)

January 14
Brain Candy
-Rewatch
1996, Canada/USA, 35mm, Clay
Kelly Makin
8.0

A scientist creates a pill that cures depression by tapping into people’s happiest memories, and the pill is rushed onto the market without proper testing, and it ends up putting people into comas. The five members of Kids in the Hall play virtually every character, and they’re all pretty great and hilarious, though Bruce McCulloch is obviously the cutest. There are jokes that fall flat, but mostly they work, and I like that they were able to come up with a complete and coherent story for a feature, while still utilizing their style and talent from the sketch show. It's really good.

Steven Severin: Music for Silents

January 12
The Seashell and the Clergyman
-Score by Steven Severin
1928, France, Digital Projection, SF360 Film+Club
Germaine Dulac
5.0

This played as part of a program called Steven Severin: Music for Silents. Severin was a member of Siouxsie and the Banshees and now he composes, I guess. The first half of the show was the 35-minute silent surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman that had something to do with a clergyman having visions about various things. There were some decent, interesting images, but I mostly had a hard time paying attention to it. And the last thing I had watched before this were those vintage porn films, so I kept expecting it to go in a different direction. There was actually a flash of tits, but I was still a little disappointed.
Severin’s score was fucking dull. Very low-key ambient noise that sounded perpetually ready to build itself up into something intense, but instead remained exactly the same throughout. The second half consisted of six shorts that were much more recent, though equally experimental, and were a little easier to take in. Though not by much because experimental films just aren’t my kind of thing. And unfortunately, the person in front of me had shifted in his seat in a way such that his head blocked literally the entire screen, and the only way I could see any of it was if I leaned so far forward and over that I would actually be blocking Erin’s view in the seat next to me. And so for the last two shorts, I just gave up and sat back. I had already pretty much decided I didn’t care for the show, anyway, so it didn’t feel like much of a loss. Severin’s score at least was a lot more impassioned and interesting through the second part.

The Good Old Naughty Days (2002)

January 11
The Good Old Naughty Days
2002, France, 35mm, Red Vic
Michel Reilhac
8.5

A selection of short pornographic films mostly from the 20s (the opening film of a topless girl combing her hair is from 1905). Pretty good stuff, and pretty fascinating to see how little difference there is with modern porn, as far as the basic setups go. I wasn’t really surprised by the fact that these films were indeed hardcore, with penetration, lots of oral sex, lots of lesbianism, and cum shots (though the facial had not yet been popularized), although I had never really thought about titty-fucking existing back then. I mean, why wouldn’t it? I just hadn’t thought about it, in the way that I have extensively thought about a nun and a dog going down on a dude at the same time, which is a scene that also shows up in this movie. There are some intertitles between all the shorts that are occasionally informative, but usually seem like there’s not actually anything to say and they’re straining to come up with some kind of trivia, and sometimes resort to just listing a bunch of euphemisms for genitals. I didn’t mind it too much, but I do kind of wish they had come up with actual trivia. Anyway, it’s really good, and only 70 minutes.