Movie A Day!: Gilmore Spectre Girl

Another week and another list of things I’ve watched. I wrapped up the Gilmore Girls this week and now begins trying to catch up on other things. I had the weird experience of having a news article quote me heavily this week and entered into the wild. All of it is anonymous, but it’s still weird to see deeply personal stuff aired in public like that. There will not be links at this time.

072 03/20 Gilmore Girls Season 7 (2007) 3.5/5   And here is where the journey ends. I’ve heard nothing but complaints about this season, and for the first half of it I can see why. Both Lorelai and Rory make all the wrong decisions and it is absolutely infuriating to watch. The interesting thing though is that these horrible decisions don’t actually conflict with the characters behaviour as set up previously, so it’s sort of brave for the creative team to make them so unlikable despite how unpopular it was. Second half of the season is much better, with things resolving relatively naturally for the end of the series. According to Wikipedia, this season had different show runners which might explain some of the confusion at the start. The wiki also says that the original show-runners wanted to have a season 8 to wrap up all the storylines. Which would of been interesting, but as it plays out, it wasn’t really necessary. As a whole, I really enjoyed revisiting the series and am glad I finished it after all these years. It mostly holds up. Some of the pop-culture stuff is dated of course, it was hard not to snicker/weep over the many references to future president Hillary Clinton seeded though out. I’m still a little in love with Lauren Graham. As far as this style of show goes, the writing helps to keep it more relevant than some of the other soapy dramas of the era. I think? I’m no expert on soapy dramas. 

073 03/22 His Marriage Wow (1925) 3/5   Harry Langdon takes the lead in this slapstick comedy, starring as the groom who ends up convinced that his wife is only after his insurance. This one wasn’t as wild as the genre is typically, but it’s charming as hell. Langdon is more quiet and naive like Stan Laurel (the commentary track confirmed my suspicion that Laurel was influenced by Landon) and it makes for an interesting juxtaposition to the wilder action to see him work small in a genre that is so broad.

074 03/24 Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life (2016) 3.5/5   Ten years after season seven ends and the girls are back. Presented as four 90 minute movies as opposed to a series of episodes, it was both a joy and a mixed bag. The shocking thing is the sheer number of the cast they were able to bring back. It’s great, but it makes the episodes very busy to fit everyone in which makes for nice moments that work against actual cohesive storytelling. There was also more than a few music montage type deals that I found flat out annoying and excessive as opposed to fun and charming. Episode three I found to be the strongest of the four, and episode four nearly falls apart before redeeming itself in the later half. They could probably continue with another series after this one, but I won’t lose sleep if they don’t.

075 03/24 China Girl (1975) 3.5/5   Annette Haven stars in this one as a biochemist who is kidnapped and tortured with extreme pleasure in a bid to get her to give up the recipe for a drug that allows mind control. An exceptionally well done hardcore feature that actually delivers dramatically (in a grindhouse sense) more than just the sex scenes. Haven does a great job at both aspects, and the big surprise is James Hong (you’ve seen him in movies and television) making a non-sex appearance as the crime boss. Overall it doesn’t fully work as a kung-fu sex drama since it’s not fully committed to the drama (probably due to budget limitations for action scenes), but it works enough to be legit and worthwhile. A perfect example of the period of porno chic when it looked like hardcore was going to go legit, the bluray from Vinegar Syndrome is fantastic.

076 03/25 Spectre (2015) 3/5   The latest Bond film hits all the marks that is expected which is kind of the problem. It’s hard to get swept up in the action when you’re thinking “There’s the car ad, ah, there’s the watch commercial.” It all feels a bit outdated instead of fun. Especially now that we literally have superhero movies in which unstoppable feats of action fit more than in a “real world” spy film. The great Christoph Waltz gets to be the villain and they give him nothing to do. It’s not the worst Bond film, just a serviceable one.

That’s it.

Movie A Day! Gruesome Night of Spanish Fly

Not much for news this week. Time seemed to drag and go by to quick to accomplish much at the same time. Now it’s daylight savings time Sunday and I already feel jet lagged so I’m keeping things short.

063 03/06 The Gruesome Twosome (1967) 2.5/5   Herschell Gordon Lewis attempts a horror comedy that is baffling in its ineptitude. The first 5-10 minutes is made up with a bit with two Styrofoam wig display head puppets discussing matters to set up the plot. The only reason is to shamelessly pad the run time to 70 minutes since the film fell short in editing. Once the film begins it barely improves. A wacky old woman wig maker who talks to her stuffed wild cat Napoleon has a drooling idiot son that she gets to scalp young college girls for her wigs. The gore is the only reason to watch this, despite being crappy and actually looking worse in spots compared to Lewis’s earlier pictures (The beheading by electric night bit being the exception). This is one of those films that you have to wonder why it exists since it’s not the worst plot in the world but the planning and execution of it is so piss-poor. Take out the comedic wackiness that doesn’t work and play up a Psycho rip with the boy and his mother and you would have something. As is, it’s a bonkers curio more than anything.

064 03/09 A Taste of Blood (1967) 2/5  Another HGL opus, this one see’s him doing an update on Dracula. A smarmy business man gets a mysterious shipment of blood-laced brandy, becomes a vampire and learns that he is an heir to Dracula himself. He’s then tasked with killing of the heirs of Van Helsing and all the other people responsible for killing the original Dracula in the book. It’s not a bad plot, it’s the execution that is horrendous. The usual HGL cheapness shines through, bad set-ups, ine-take acting, things out of focus, but it’s the pacing that really kills this one. Extraneous scenes go on forever, eating up the screen time to a glacial paced two hours. On top of all this, Lewis cut back on the gore so there’s no payoffs. Yet despite all that, it’s not his worst film.

065 03/10 Gilmore Girls Season 6 (2006) 3/5   This season improved over the last in that it felt like they pushed the characters ahead instead of spinning the wheels like the last one. That said, instead of just making Luke unlikable they also made pretty near every other character infuriating in their actions. Which is either brilliant writing in that it fits their patterns as established, or an unfair challenging of the audience’s patience. Main plot is Rory and Lorelai dealing with the end of last season blow out and Luke having a life changing revelation. Which are interesting plot points for sure, but had me tearing out what little hair I have left when watching them make one bad decision after another. Jess comes back for a couple of episodes and ends up being the voice of reason. Who would have thought? After all that, I’m curious to see how they wrap it all up in the next and last season.

066 03/10 The Night of the Spanish Fly (1976) 2/5   This one was the co-feature on the DVD with The Night Bird (reviewed last post) and was certainly the weaker of the two. Go-Go Wieners have been unknowingly laced with a potent spanish fly that causes the hot dog loving women of a metropolis to become overwhelmed with desire! It’s a fun plot to type out but the execution kills it with a jokey annoying voice-over setting up and rambling over uninspired sex scenes with a mostly unknown cast. I found it plodding and uninspired.

With this post I’m halfway though the Herschell Gordon Lewis boxset. I might take a time out and spend the week back in Silent Movie Land with the Mack Sennett set since My plan was to watch one disc (two films) from the HGL and spend the rest of the week watching the silents. I’m not getting in the time to do that, and I feel like I need to give my brain a break from genre films. Especially when the next pack of filth from Vinegar Syndrome is on it’s way. So maybe next post will be a little different?

Don’t hold your breath….

Movie A Day!: Extra Oscar Lounge!

Another tough week of struggle out here in the west. Weather seems to be torturing us into death by being both too cold and then warm in the same day. I’ve felt like I’ve been coming down with a cold for the past two weeks. I think it’s the barometric pressure kicking my head in. I’m ready for winter to end.

056 02/26 The Extra Girl (1923) 2.5/5   Mabel Normand stars in this Mack Sennett comedy about a young woman who wins a contest to go to Hollywood for a chance to be a star after her rural parents refuse to allow her to marry her mechanic boyfriend. Lots of intrigue, not many laughs in this silent feature. Mabel was an incredible talent but this one doesn’t give her too much to do despite a plot that goes all over the place and allows her to do a bunch of stuff. It just never really works out aside for the chase sequence with the loose lion.

057 02-26 89th Academy Awards (2017) 3.5/5   The night we have all been waiting for! The one where the starving artists we enjoy on the big screen are finally fed via airdrops of food! It really is a beautiful sight, millionaires enjoying Jr. Mints. they really are just like us!. This one ended up being pretty good. Show moved about as quick as these things can, only one of the bits (tour bus) went on too long and there was an epic fuck up with the best picture award going to La La Land instead of Moonlight, so that was fun. I had no horse in the race so nothing stuck in my craw or had me orgasmic in delight. It was just a mostly nice show and Jimmy Kimmel did a good enough job as the host that I wouldn’t mind seeing him do it again.

058 02/28 Gilmore Girls Season 5 (2005) 3/5  I’ve reached the part in the series where old is new and I’m hitting the episodes I missed the first go round. This season was a let down from previous ones. Lorelai finally gets with Luke, and the writers do a thing where they turn Luke from the greatest guy/only decent guy on the show to a rage-aholic asshole. Rory is still in college and is now interested in Logan, a rich kid prick and it all makes the season a bit insufferable compared to the heady joys of season 3. It’s still good though since the performances and writing continues to stay true to the characters (aside from Luke), and while the Gilmores are floundering it gives space for Kirk and Lane to steal the show.

059 03/01 Color Me Blood Red (1965) 3/5   Herschell Gordon Lewis wraps up the “Blood Trilogy” with this one, a comedy about a bonkers painter who discovers that blood is the perfect colour of red and gets inspired. It’s basically a rip-off of the superior in every way Roger Corman film Bucket Of Blood (which is probably more famous for being the one that wrapped production in time for Corman to crank out the cult classic Little Shop Of Horrors over the 2 day weekend before he had to return the rental equipment), only on the cheap and with more gore effects. This one suffers from the typical Lewis corner cutting. Rather than stop the camera and doing a second set-up, he’ll do things like let it run while a second actor gets ready and then pan and focus to shoot them and it just slows the film down to a crawl. Which is saying something when the film is about 70 minutes long. There’s a reason why he’s considered a hack, and it already starts to show in this one. That said, it’s still fun, and I always watch it since it’s billed as the third film in the trilogy so my mental illness dictates that I have to watch it after Two Thousand Maniacs.

The weird thing watching the Blood Trilogy in this day and age is how chaste they are. I don’t think a single swear is uttered and despite Lewis and Friedman coming from the Nudie Cutie circuit there is no explicit nudity. There’s just buckets of gore all over the place. It’s probably what saved them from the censor to some degree. Still a fun watch even if they are dated, and Two Thousand Maniacs really is a classic. After Color Me Blood Red Lewis and Friedman will split up, but both will keep on making films on their own.

060 03/03 The Night Bird (1977) 2.5/5   The Night Bird is the hot underground disco club that was built for sex. This one was an odd hardcore title in that it plays like Saturday Night Fever meets Mean Streets. The first half is actually pretty good but it falls apart in the end. It sets up an emotionally cracking lead that never plays out, instead you get a never ending orgy sequence that is cut with disco dancing. The quality of this one is first rate so it’s a bummer it never gels into something more.

061 03/04 Something Weird (1967) 3/5
062 03/04 A Hot Night at the Go Go Lounge! (1966)2/5
An odd pair of Herschell Gordon Lewis cheapies. Something Weird is exactly as titled. A guy is electrocuted and ends up with psychic powers, joins a witch that tricks him… there’s murders as well… a guy gets attacked by his bed sheet… and I’m out. You can’t describe it. It’s a comedy, it’s a murder story, it’s psychic flim flam and an LSD scare film all at once. You have to see it to believe it. The craziest thing is it’s actually pretty accomplished in form compared to most of Lewis’s films.

A Hot Night at the Go Go Lounge! is a nudie short in which the first half seems to be footage from other films and the last half featuring surprisingly plain topless dancers. More of a curio as opposed to something worth seeking out.

I try to mix up what I watch, to find a balance, but I’m finding that the weeks are getting away from me so I end up not getting anything in other than genre films. I might have to take a time out to feed my brain.

Movie A Day 2017! 20-27: Clever Lemmy

After a year of no exercise, I did one part of my old regime yesterday and now I can hardly walk. Isn’t this stuff supposed to make you feel better? Why is it always misery to work out? I wish I had the bug that sees people looking forward to getting up at 6am to go for a run. I have always found exercise a chore. Even gym class in school was something to endure so you could do something fun like watch a movie or listen to music. I’m going to try to stick with it. I have to improve. Based on the news week we just had the future is going to see us needing to shit in holes and figuring out how to turn furniture into weapons. I’m not ready.

Here’s what I watched last week.

020 01/22 A Clever Dummy (1917) 3/5   Ben Turpin stars in this one as a janitor trying to impress a lady so he pretends to be an experimental mechanical man made for the vaudeville circuit. This one was pretty good, most notable for allowing Turpin to shine in the lead. Turpin portrays a robot brilliantly in this one (more accurately he’s a clockwork man) and it ends with a great chase. Worth checking out since most people are probably like me and mostly know Turpin as an extra in other people’s films, if they know of him at all.

021 01/22 Doug Stanhope: Beer Hall Putsch (2013) 4/5   Stanhope isn’t for everyone, but he is for me. Dark, cynical stand up on here that resonates with some truth when it’s not being silly. If you’re a fan you’ll love it. If not, there are better starting points. (Before Turning The Gun On Himself from 2012 would get my vote.)

01/22 Dr. Mario (1990) NES 2.5/5   Once Tetris became all the rage everyone and their dog started putting out puzzle games to capitalize. This was one of Nintendo’s entries. Dr. Mario chucks pills into a jar of viruses and you have to match up the colours to make them disappear. I suck at it so I’m rating it low. It’s actually a fun and novel challenge, I’m being a miserable prick about it.

022 01/22 Hearts and Flowers (1919) 3/5   Another comedy with Fred Sterling chasing after Louise Fazenda after thinking she’s going to get an inheritance. What sets this one apart is a sequence where Sterling’s jilted girl dresses as a man and goes for Louise herself. A fun play on gender that was a bit surprising.

023 01/23 Gilmore Girls Season 3 (2003) 4/5   Another season of my girls! This one finds Rory stressed with graduation, figuring out college and boy trouble out her ass. Dean and Jess come to a head in a fantastic brawl that sadly did not result in both of their deaths. Lorelai bounced back from Max by dating a coffee shop entrepreneur who might be the limpest dick yet to cross her boyfriend-path. The highlight of the season again goes to Lane and her pursuit of rock stardom and a non-Korean boyfriend under her oppressive mothers regime. This season also hosted one of the finest episodes of the series; They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They? Which sees Lorelai rope Rory into a endurance dance contest in an attempt to dethrone Kirk as champion. It’s brilliant and like the episode of Dean and Jess’s fight really shows how great the writing on this could be by incorporating 3 plots lines into one show and making them all work. It’s tight stuff and makes it worth watching.

024 01/24 Down on the Farm (1920) 3/5   Ambitious slapstick with the usual formula of a guy pursuing a girl in the hopes of a payoff. Mack Sennett seemed to really love that one. The real joy in this film though is in the farm dog that does some genuinely clever tricks like fill a bucket of feed and then take it to some pigs, and later saves a toddler from falling in a river. If it wasn’t for that dog I would have rated it lower. I really hope they didn’t beat that dog to teach it those tricks.

025 01/26 Don’t Weaken! (1920) 3/5   A newly rich barkeep hosts a boxing match to give a fresh dance teacher the once over. Pretty typical slapstick for the era, this one give Fred Sterling a chance to do some great physical work but aside from that there’s not much elevating this one from the norm.

026 01/28 Marc Maron: Thinky Pain (2013) 4/5   Maron’s podcast is so good that it’s easy to forget how great a stand up comedian he is. This one was great. All of his stand up is great. Deep neurosis on display, I really have to watch his TV series.

027 01/29 Lemmy (2010) 4/5   Documentary on the metal legend does a good job of showing the man behind the myth. I found it kinda sad. Off the road Lemmy comes off as mostly lonely, knocking around LA with not much purpose. Put a bass guitar in his hand and he’s one of the Gods. Worth checking out if you have any interest.

I’m never going to finish the Mack Sennett silent film set I’m going through. It’s taking me a minimum 2 nights to watch a 20 minute film. I watch them when I go to bed. It could be the most exciting film ever, but the pleasant soundtracks on these films put me to sleep. It’s really screwing up my viewings! So expect more next time.

Movie A Day 2017! 09-15: Golden Globes Girls

It’s inauguration week in the USA! What new horrors will 2017 release after the never-ending popular culture death knell that was 2016? Who cares! It’s movies we’re about here on the rarely read Movie A Day blog! Here’s what I tucked into this past week.

009 01/08 The 74th Golden Globe Awards (2017) 2/5   This show is only ever as good as it’s host, which means it was terrible since Jimmy Fallon is pretty much unwatchable. The real take away for me though is how completely out of touch I am with the modern day movie business. It’s crazy. I haven’t heard of 80% of the movies and shows up for these awards. Some movie blog writer, eh?

010 01/08 Come Deadly (1973) 2.5/5   This one was maybe the scuzziest film yet out of the Bizarre Art boxset. A murderer is on the loose, raping and strangling theatre folk. I can’t help but think someone saw a giallo, decided to make a hardcore version for a hundred bucks and this was the result. It doesn’t work as a suspense or a porn, but the theatre troupe “Hey guys, let’s make a movie!” no budget feel has its charms.

011 01/08 Mania (1971) 2/5   This one decides to show up “Come Deadly” by cutting the rape aspect and instead having the murders happen after consensual sex scenes, the features an incest subplot to keep everything gross and scuzzy. A strict headmistress and her son are running a boarding school for troubled girls and the girls are getting killed. Tries to set up a red herring despite showing the face of the murderer during the second killing. Ugly stuff that’s a bit too inept to be sleazy fun like “Come Deadly”.

012 01/10 Gilmore Girls Season 2 (2002) 3.5/5   Running the series before watching the Netflix update. This one finds the series getting a more serious tone as Rory discovers the joys of boy trouble as brooding “Jess” is introduced and Lorelai continues to be mostly self absorbed. The show is so well written it’s hard not to get caught up in it. Sean Gunn as the ever annoying “Kirk” is really starting to stand out. That said, all the men prospects for the girls are insufferable dip-shits. I’ve basically turned into their dad where “No man is good enough for my girls!”.

013 01/11 Daughters of Darkness (1975) 2.5/5   The weirdness continues with this one. A young writer rents a room from a Satanist hippy chick and gets enthralled by Satanic forces. Sort of. This is one of those old porns that are so cheap and bad while being so ambitious that it goes around the corner and ends up being pretty good.

014 01/13 The Unholy Child (1973) 2/5   The Bizarre Art Theatre set comes to a close with this one. A Navy man returns home to find himself stalked by a mysterious man. Flat out boring porn offering that never delivers outside of how awful it is.

This boxset is easily one of the weirder things I’ve watched. The appeal is there for nobody. The porn “action” is atrocious, the acting terrible, the plots are horrible, and the look is cheaper than dirt. They have a “Hey gang, let’s make a porn film!” vibe which makes zero sense. It all adds up to being pretty fascinating stuff. My only complaint with the set is there’s no notes, no explanation, you put the disc in and it starts playing. I want to know more! Where do these come from? Why do they exist? Who thought they were a good idea? You guys didn’t even hear about the Bigfoot one, I watched it before Jan 1st.

015 01/14 Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2011) 4/5   Harryhausen is easily the most influential special effects man in the history of film, having perfected stop-motion animation. This documentary is the perfect round up of Ray’s career featuring himself and others talking about his films and process. It’s packed with clips both from the films and behind the scenes. If there’s any complaint it’s that it nearly all professional and doesn’t get much into his private life. Which may be fitting for a man whose life was largely spent alone with models. Great stuff, another must watch for film fans. The Arrow Academy disc I’m watching is feature packed. 

I’m at 15 films on Jan 15th, not bad! As new readers can see, I cheat a bit. Obviously the Golden Globes isn’t a movie. It is fucking long though so I count it. TV series get counted as a film when I watch a season. DEAL WITH IT!

Know a film friend with time on their hands? Any comments, shares, tweets etc are appreciated.