Crazy, Stupid Love

Crazy, Stupid Love is the rare popcorn multiplex movie that I was able to watch in the theater without picking it apart the whole time. At the same time, I was not able to figure out every plot twist before it happened. It's just a very well-crafted story.

It's nice to see a comedy made of events that could actually happen to some people. They likely won't all happen to one interconnected group of people, but they possibly could. I guess that's a backhanded way of saying I'm sick of farces.

I don't want to say a whole lot because it's so new, but I will say this: Kevin Bacon once said in an interview that his career was never going to be such that people would say to themselves, "hey, let's go see the new Kevin Bacon movie." Well, I thought he was wrong them, and he is still wrong, because recently I have seen the new X-Men movie and Crazy, Stupid Love mostly because he is in them.

Also, as a longtime fan of The Daily Show (when Craig Kilborn was on and they did "news" reports about regular weirdos instead of talking about politics) I am very happy that Steve Carell is a movie star now. In fact, I am happy that all the people in this movie are movie stars because they all look like regular people, which is something we don't get enough of anymore. Even the female leads looked like people you might actually encounter on Earth and not as if they were grown in a lab.

This is not a spoiler, but there is a great bit about Dirty Dancing in the movie, which made me so happy.

Finally, did you know that Josh Groban is secretly a Jonas brother? It would appear so.

Death Spa, redux

Witch Bitch aka Death Spa follows Aerobicide by a year or two, but probably wasn’t technically a ripoff. Although, now that I think about it, both movies feature a dead woman stuffed into a locker. Other than that, and both movies being in gyms, there are few similarities. It just shows you how pervasive the aerobics culture was in the 80s. Also, back then, if you saw a woman out at the grocery store or something in her gym spandex, chances were excellent that she actually had the body for it.

I watched this damn movie again! I reviewed it for my brother site Midnight Showing; for this review and all kinds of other good stuff click here: http://midnightshowing.com/2011/08/death-spa/

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

Someone is killing (mostly) beautiful ladies by first paralyzing them with an acupuncture needle, then gutting them. The method ensures that they are aware of what is happening to them, and mirrors the way in which a certain type of wasp kills tarantulas. Police Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo Giannini) is trying to solve the murders while he struggles with feeling like he is unsuited for the job. The only thing the victims seems to have in common is that they all frequent the same day spa. What the fuck is going on?

Read more: http://initforthekills.com/2011/08/06/the-black-belly-of-the-tarantula/

Spookies (1986)

Nine people who don't seem to have much in common besides all having been kicked out of the same event earlier decide to party in an abandoned mansion, but they soon come to believe that playing with a Ouija board they find in the living room is the reason various monsters show up to stalk and kill them. Meanwhile, in another movie filmed in the same house, a possibly delusional old man believes he is controlling the party people's deaths with his chess board and his meowing, rotting, shapeshifting sidekick. Who is right?

The answer is E) all of them are right. Spookies is a Frankenmovie. The partiers and their monsters really were in one movie, which was unfinished. Later, a different director finished the film by adding the footage with the old man, the cat thing, an evil little kid, a stupid little kid, and the ghost of Laura Palmer.

But even knowing this, viewers are left with one huge unanswered question. How did all the victims from the party, who seem so at odds, know one another?

I think I can explain this. Duke, the Guido who got them all thrown out of the first party, was a D.J. at the club inside the Ramada Inn on Highway 49, Frenzy's. He met Linda on her first night waitressing there, and she wasn't very good at it, so he had her fired, then slipped a drug in her drink while consoling her (she didn't know he had her fired). He also knocked her up after she passed out, so to avoid paying child support he convinced her he loved her and they moved in together. Rich was the dishwasher who believed he was going to make it big as a ventriloquist comic, and Duke hung out with him because Rich had a steady supply of nitrous oxide thanks to playing D&D with the younger brother of Adrienne, a dental assistant. Adrienne, who spent two weeks on exchange in England in tenth grade (but retained the accent) met Megan at community college and convinced her to change her name to Meegan. Meegan introduced Adrienne to her former stepfather Dave and they immediately began an abusive relationship.

Because of the name change, when Meegan graduated and went to work as a transcriptionist for the law firm to whom Peter was the top salesman from his office supply company, Peter believed that she was sophisticated enough for him despite their thirty year age difference and he was making plans to leave both his first and second (secret) families for her at the time when they were killed. Carol won the Linda Blair lookalike contest at Steverino's Donuts on the college campus, and Lewis was the newspaper reporter who interviewed her. Lewis and Carol only thought they were thrown out of the first party and so got a ride with Peter and Meegan. Meegan and Linda thought they went to church camp together in sixth grade and reconnected over this mistake at the original party; when Duke got them all thrown out they decided to caravan to another party together but they would have made the awkward realization that they didn't know each other once they sobered up if they hadn't been killed.

You can learn so much if you just make up imaginary backstories for characters from bad movies. You're welcome.

Oh, and if anyone has a copy of the fan-made version of Twisted Souls, the original movie with only Duke, Peter, Linda, Meegan and the rest to share, please let me know.

Sweet Home aka Sûîto Homu (1989)

Synopsis: A camera crew goes into an abandoned cursed mansion to view a mural painted by the former owner, Ichirō Mamiya. The ghost of his wife, Lady Mamiya, does not take too kindly to the intrusion. TV producer Kazuo (Shingo Yamashiro), his assistant/love interest Akiko (Nobuko Miyamoto), and local kook Yamamura (Tsutomu Yamazaki) do battle with the ghost. Will anyone get out alive?

Continue reading: http://realmoftheuninvited.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/sweet-home-aka-suito-homu-1989/

Ghosts That Still Walk

Synopsis: Mark’s mother Ruth (Caroline Howe) went batshit insane a year ago while writing a book on Native Americans; before she had her breakdown she had disinterred an Indian mummy as part of her research. Now Mark (Matthew Boston) is having terrible headaches, which his doctor says are psychosomatic, and an unseen force tries to kill his grandparents, Alice (Ann Nelson) and Jerry (Henry Douglas). Is Mark possessed by the astral body of the Indian? Or is something even creepier and more dangerous happening?

Read the rest of my review here: http://realmoftheuninvited.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/ghosts-that-still-walk/

P.S. I watched Blue Velvet tonight for the umpty-umpth time, and my husband made as MS Paint drawing of fucking suave Ben which you can see here: http://msmasterpieces.tumblr.com/post/8412121059/bluevelvet

I saw something I never noticed before around the one hour mark of Blue Velvet: when Jeffrey pulls up to the brick factory building to begin his stakeout, there is a beautiful shadow projection of machines working and putting out smoke framed in a semicircle by Jeffrey's headlight. Lynch has never stopped captivating me in over 21 years of my being a fan.

The Legend of Cougar Canyon aka The Secret of Navajo Cave

My seven-year-old picked this out at the library today. When we got it home he said he had picked it out for me. He often does this with food and with Netflix instant watch. He does a lot of strangely sophisticated things and then goes back to picking his nose and playing video games. But you don't come here to read about my kid; suffice to say it is strange that he would pick at random a 70s nature documentary not even knowing of my love for such films.

At first I thought this was going to be a Frankenmovie, one of those movies cobbled together out of unfinished films and stock footage. But it turned out to be pretty decent for a cheap nature movie, even though the second part is more of a docudrama. The only problem I have with The Legend of Cougar Canyon is that a reviewer on IMDB claims the eagle eaten by the cougar at the beginning of the movie was held down by the filmmaker with a rope. I am not sure, and I can't find any documentation; I hope it's not true.

The first half of the the movie follows a hungry cougar trying to eat. He catches an eagle, then unsuccessfully chases a badger (I knew badgers were nasty but I didn't know they were BAAAD), fights over some food with a black bear, tries to catch and eat a boar, and finally has a rabbit for dinner. All the time the narration by Rex Allen is very fair to both the cougar and the other animals, stressing that the cougar is hungry and getting desperate, life is hard for predators, this is nature's way, etc.

Halfway through the film, we start seeing Navajo Indians going about their business and hearing a bit about their customs intercut with the cougar footage. Then we meet Steve (Steven Benally Jr.), a Navajo of about twelve, and his white friend Walter (Holger Kasper). They have a campout on the reservation and tell ghost stories. In the morning the boys aren't watching Steve's family's goats as well as they should and one gets away from them only to be stalked by the cougar. The rest of the film is spent on the race between the boys and the cougar to see who will get the goat.

Now, what elevates this above the usual crappy tearjerker animal story is that by the time we meet the boys we already feel sympathetic towards the cougar. Then, the boys' portion of the movie is narrated by Allen just like the cougar's, making man seem like a normal part of nature too. When the two sides are competing for the goat, you understand that Steve will get in trouble with his mother if the goat is eaten, but you also understand that the cougar has to eat. It's miles better than an entire movie about a Mary Sue of a little boy and a mean, evil cougar.

The Legend of Cougar Canyon was directed by indie filmmaker James T. Flocker, who only made six films. One of them turns out to be something I had seen a weird trailer for while watching 70s horror trailers on YouTube, called Ghosts Who Still Walk. So I've decided that tonight will be a Flocker double feature. Coming up next: Ghosts Who Still Walk. I understand there's a scene involving strangely moving rocks that was nightmare fodder for many folks in the 70s; we shall see.