Well, this one was a fun one! Barring one, slightly uncomfortble scene of female on male rape around 20 minutes in, ‘Body Girls’ is a light hearted adult film with a somewhat screwball sensibility.

The plot? largely revolves around a gym owner by the name of Jackie La Lay (A play on both Jack and Jackie La Laine the famous gym enthusiasts) The girls of her gym enter a muscle/beauty competition every year, and every year they win outright. But competition from the gym across the city has been causing them trouble, and now they’re upping the ante sending two goons over to mess with the gym equipment of the girls and to intimidate the judges!

And so the girls band together to protect the judges (and guarentee their victory using there…bulging talents…) AND ensure that the only people screwing around in the gym are doing so as part of their membership fee…

And I kind of want to put this film in the same group as ‘Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls’ as a film that really isnt taking itself too seriously and uses that bubbly lightheartedness as a form of eroticism.

The scripts ultra basic and the dialogue really isnt up to much cop, a lot of the improvised talking during the sex scenes is awkward and feels forced. But thats kind of off set by the fact that everyone seems to be in the zone and vibe for this kind of thing and director Bob Chinn seems to really know how to pull naturalistic physical responses out of his subjects. As such it all feels very nicely curated and well paced. it slows down maybe a little bit in the middle, but it never loses its thread or tone which is admirable.

Theres absolutely a creative vision to hand here and Bob, working with the frankly ASTONISHINGLY gorgeous Hyapatia Lee has managed to create a gorgeous artistic vision here, draped in a somewhat hokey premise.

The cinematography oozes sensuality, they get up close into the action and compositon is minded towards really enveloping the audience in the intense eroticism on show.

The performances are a tad dry, but again, its hearts in the right place and that works for me! Physically they nail it, which…for this kind of film is kind of the important part.

and the soundtrack is pure knockoff 80s-ness. I definitely heard soundalikes of ‘What a feeling’ and similar across this one. and the entire film is legwarmers and headbands as far as the eye can see.

A real blast from the past ‘Body Girls’ is SO painfully 80s it almost feels like someones trying to parody the era after the fact. But its a technically very well made production with a rock solid script and some fantastic performances, making it an enjoyable and fun watch, that I can happily recommend.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/body-girls/

One of the first horror movies ever produced to completion in Brazil. ‘At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul’ Is a more than significant picture in terms of the time it was made and the bounderies it pushed against. Indeed, if 1968’s ‘Night of the living dead’ was seen as controversial for a scene of a daughter hacking at her mother with a trowl and carrrying her entrails around (and collectively about 2 cupfulls of blood splattered out across the full runtime) Then a film featuring a molesty demon worshipper who gores first and asks questions later was always going to likely be a point of contention.

I myself first ‘experienced’ the ‘Coffin Joe’ series in the early 2010s when I got my hands on Anchor Bays ‘Coffin Joe’ collection. I never made it past the 3rd film in the series and ultimately sold the set on shortly thereafter…something I heavily regretted as the anchor bay set went out of print shortly thereafter, the price went through the roof and then news turned up that apparently the coffin Joe films were in such a rough archival state, that it would be unlikely that they’d EVER make the jump to HD…and given DVD’s decline, it was unlikely a studio would do another SD release…I figured i’d lost out on the chance to really give these films a proper appraisal.

And then about 4-5 years ago, Arrow video announced they were working on a ‘Coffin Joe’ set, that they’d managed to get ‘decent’ condition film prints of all the movies except for the first one…this one. Which was apparently in an incredibly poor state and as such an intensive restoration was going to be required in order to preserve it. 4-5 years later, I have the finished set sat on my shelf and revisiting ‘Midnight’ nearly 15 years after I last saw it, I enjoyed it more…But it has its problems…

The biggest one being its script, which feels INCREDIBLY inconsistent and doesnt seem to be structured in a conventional way…which is interesting to experience as an appreciator of film as a medium. Its terrible as someone who has to relay what this film is about and why I had issues with it.

So…the films around 85 minutes long and basically its almost entirely focussed on José Mojica Marins ‘Coffin Joe’ an undertaker in a small brazillian village who…is odd? thats the best I’ve got to explain him honestly…He makes it clear he doesnt believe in god, he laughs at the idea of demons…But he himself has SOME kind of demonic ability as, when he’s attacked or provoked, his eyes turn bloodshot red and he becomes a super agile, ultra strong killing machine.

The majority of the film follows Joe as he does such heinous acts as ‘eating meat on a holy day in front of a congregation’ or ‘cuts a mans fingers off after he refuses to give up his money when he loses a card game’. But really…this is all building to Joes ‘modus opperandi’.

Joe believes that a beings lifeblood is preserved in its lineage…Basically that, as long as you continue your bloodline and father a child every generation, you’ll be able to live on forever through the blood of your family. Hes a bachelor, living with a housekeeper who desperately wants him. But Joe is only interested in siring a son with the PERFECT woman. he wants his offspring to be the best it can possibly be.

and through the film he attempts to ‘take’ the fiance of one of his only friends in the village Antonio. After getting his fiance alone, he rapes her and explains that she will sire his son and continue his bloodline…only…that fails. and this then starts a series of events involving an old witch, several other women and an army of the undead that’ll slowly bring Joe to justice.

And this films biggest issue, at least for me? is that the script is just…SO inconsistent. A lot of these issues will sound like nitpicks, but they all add up into a whole that makes the film kind of difficult for me to outright love.

So for starters, The film is set in the present day of 1964. Joe is the ONLY person in the village who dresses like an unkempt victorian from the mid 1800’s, everyone else has nice modern suits and modern haircuts. At first it made me think ‘oh! Joe must be a LOT older than he’s revealing…maybe the bloodline stuff is literal and everytime he succeeds he LITERALLY extends his lifeline…’ But no…he’s just a semi-normal guy who hulks out when he gets angry.

The continuity is weird, the film opens with a scene of Joe smashing up his evening meal because he wants meat. which he cant have because its a holy day…so he heads out to go and find some. He also talks badly about his customers, threatening to start charging them double because he doesnt want to deal with them anymore….The issue here being, Brazil has a LOT of holy days…and its established that Joe and his housekeeper have known each other for a while…the outburst is treated as unusual…HOW? its like the film simultaineously wants you to believe that Joes been a long presence in this village, while ALSO wanting you to believe that all this strange behaviour is a new occurance… which, later plot points in the film reveal isnt the case.

Joe flat out murders half a dozen people in front of two dozen witnesses…and not one of them pulls a gun, or a knife, or ANY kind of weapon on him as self defence. I thought for a time that maybe this was supposed to be some kind of universe where guns didnt exist…But then at the end of the film, Joe goes nuts with a pistol for 5 minutes…Which raises the question…WHY did noone even THREATEN him with a gun at ANY point in this?

Continuity aside, the films structuring is odd too, BECAUSE we follow the story from Joes perspective, it means…other than one or two instances with the police, we never really get to get a feeling for our protagonists. Typically with a film like this, we’d follow a couple of protagonist outsiders who are a little creeped out by Joe as a presence. end up accidentally seeing or finding something they shouldnt and find themselves pulled into Joes world.

Here? following Joe means we just end up…watching him wander about for a bit, drink a lot of wine and murder a few folks. They try to soften Joe as a character once or twice by having him stop an abusive father from beating up his kid and by escorting a young woman home…But its kind of hard to say Joe is a ‘Complex character with good and bad sides’ whent he bad sides include rape, eye gouging, murder, and communication with demonic forces…

Dont get me wrong, I applaud the fact that the film decides to dollow the antagonist here, its an unusual but unique thing to do…I just think it could have been handled better.

Because of the continuity and structural issues, the pacings effected as well…The film feels like it opens in its 2nd act. It feels like we’ve missed something fundamental, as we pick up with Joe at a funeral thats in the middle of happening. the issues around the people around Joe simultaineously treating his deviency as a new development AND something he’s renowned for makes it feel like we as the audience have missed a key development into WHY everyones treating him as they do.

As such, it feels like the first and second act are kind of melded together for the first 70 minutes or so of the film as we kind of idle in the same gear for most of that runtime, occasionally spiking into something a bit more quicker paced when a fight scene happens. But it really only TRUELY gets interesting a more ‘high gear’ in the 3rd act…at least, in my opinion.

The scripts a bit uneven and really kind of feels like the writer wasnt entirely confident with how scripts should be structured or written. Thats not to say its inherently a BAD script, its enjoyable enough. its just that, if your coming to these films for the first time, you might find it quite a bit more difficult to just ‘put on and enjoy’ because it plays against a lot of commonly agreed formatting choices.

Contrasting that script problem however, we have frankly GORGEOUS cine and direction. stuff that would give some of the Universal monster movies a run for their money. José Mojica Marins alongside playing Joe ran direction duties on this thing and i’ll say this, at this point in the mans career, he may not have been able to write a consistent feature length script. But you better believe he can shoot a damn fine movie!

A SUPERB example of lighting here, everything is murky moody and eerie. it feels like a film thats fallen through from a different dimension. Shots are superbly composed, theres some very interesting and intricate fight sequences. a LOT of Joes character is shown through creative lighting and framing choices and the cast and crew seem to be very receptive to instruction as they give performances that utterly blew me away. They may not be saying anything particualrly mindblowing…But you better believe they’re saying it with HEART.

Equally, as mentioned. for 1964; this film is SURPRISINGLY gory. expect bloody gouged eyes, blood smatters during physical beatings, gory shots of fingers being chopped off, eye popping, EVERYONE gets covered in quite realistic blood at one point or another in this thing…which for 1964 is pretty unheard of. I mean…’Bloodfeast’ came out 12 months prior to this one with comedy ‘poster paint red’ blood and little to no ACTUAL gore…and that film got damn near condemned by the church for it…this film looks REAL…lord knows how people took it at the time….

Ultimatley; I have a complex realtionship with this first entry. it felt like a production that had a solid idea, but was uncertain on how to realize it. This would be the starting point of an (at least) 10 picture series. and a lot of franchises like this will often start a bit janky before revising what they want to be and crystalizing their idea (see: the friday the 13th movies, which took 3 pictures before they nailed the format).

So while the script was kind of a mood killer for me, the visuals, characters, performances, tone and soundtrack excelled SO much, I cnat really hate this one. its a total ‘mood’ film, one best enjoyed a few beers deep in the smokey haze of a 2am screening. rough, grim and unpleasent. its definitely a must see if your a horror or film enthusiast. but…just be prepared.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/at-midnight-ill-take-your-soul/

A somewhat frustrating short, ‘Coming West’ is a somewhat jumbled, hour or so long adult feature that on the one hand seems to know what it WANTS to be, without actually knowing how to BE it.

Its a little hard to explain honestly, its better seen to understand it. But the plot probably will help to give some inkling as to what I mean.

So, the film is 54 minutes long and around 51 minutes of that runtime is shown as either a flashback or a dream (the film doesnt make it clear) we open in the present day of 1971 as a group of girls are out on a LONG road trip, when one of the girls begins to drift off, and we flash back to the days of the old west, where our girls are now playing estranged women who were kicked out of their town for stripping on stage and are now looking to set up a ‘cat house’ in the next town over.

One of the girls goes to wash herself in a river and meets an old friend by the name of Matt, who she has a MASSIVE crush on, and what follows is a fairly dreary 20 minute sex scene, where it isnt made clear whether this is a dream inside the old west girls head, or if we’re looking into the future…We then cut back to the present day for 20 seconds (for some reason) before cutting back to the western times where Matt and the girls introductions are cut short when a native american jumps the other two girls. Matt and co knock the native american out. and then another of the girls is going for a swim and meets up with Matt again, theres another 5-10 minute long sex scene, which then leads into a sex scene between another of the girls and the native american, which then leads into a further 15 minuite long sex scene between all the girls, Matt and the native american. Ending with a quick cutback to the present day where the girls on the roadtrip get the dream recounted to them.

its 54 minutes, i’d be amazed if there was more than 2 pages of dialogue in the whole thing, 99% of the film is ENTIRELY Foley of bubbling streams, chirping crickets and rustling grass. they forgot to redub some of the actresses lines so you see them delivering dialogue that cant be heard. they didnt bother with any kind of audio for the sex scenes themselves beyond a folky guitar melody.

Theres really very little to nothing here script wise to talk about.

Where this film DOES get a few good points however is in its direction and editing…thats pretty much the only thing it DOES have going for it. The sex scenes utilize some creative lighting in places and the director seems to know how to work with low/no budget to create at least a tinge of eroticism across the runtime. I mean, the total lack of script does kneecap this thing somewhat, but visually you actually FEEL like these characters WANT to be in the same room as each other, and it never really feels ‘clinical’.

Theres a few creative sequences across the runtime which looked pretty okay, and only enhancing that is the edit…which is imperfect, but did surprise me. On the one hand some of the scene cuts are VERY blunt. which is a shame because it can really pull the audience out of the action. That being said, theres some pretty cool match cuts in this one, which is a sign that the director DID have a vision for this thing thats a bit above the film makers of the time.

the performers are all fairly likable and give decent enough performances. the choice to shoot most of the film out in the open means the film stock being lower quality isnt *quite* as bad a choice as it could have been as the natural lighting is quite flattering to lower quality stock. the soundtracks innoffensive.

Honestly? Its a skippable film, I cant recommend it. its not got a whole lot going for it on the story front and the near total lack of on set sound is problematic. But it does seem to have a relatively firm hand on the rudder, theres clearly some creative thought thats gone into the direction and cine and I suppose if you were just looking for sex, this delivers that. A bit bland…but it had potential.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/coming-west/

One of the MANY adult films missed off Severin films ‘Ray Dennis Steckler’ compendium. im really not surprised that ‘Deviates in Love’ was omitted…the fact it was the B picture on one of vinegar syndromes ‘Peekarama’ doubleheaders should pretty much tell you everything you need to know about exactly how good this thing is.

The films split in half, with the first half following a voyeur neighbour as she goes from house to house peeking into the neighbours windows to catch them up to depraved acts such as BDSM,orgies and incest. With a continuous inner monologue from said peeping tom neighbour as she recounts that all the women she’s watching are her friends from high school and she basically ranks them out of 10 for how much she wants to bang them.

The film then promptly announces that she drank herself to death, and the second act is basically the SAME plot, only now there IS now peeping tom woman, its instead a women visiting her doctor because shes concerned shes a lesbian after getting turned on seeing all her friends banging their husbands/partners, again in various orgy/slightly rapey settings.

Ray Dennis Steckler is a miracle quite honestly, able to shoot out a couple dozen porn films a month and NOT ONE of them that i’ve seen to date even BEGINS to contain a PARTICLE of what I would call ‘eroticism’.

Its the same problem as all the other films he made around this time, EVERYONE looks ill, the lightings incredibly poor, the locations are equally dingey and sickly. the quality of the film stocks poor, the quality of the acting is poor, the composition of the shots made me get an ‘innie’, the scripting is lazy, with poor quality dialogue, bad pacing and repetative and monotonous sequences.

The themes are unpleasent and arnt handled particularly well. the direction is cold and offputting…Like…if you JUST wanna see people mash genitles together for an hour, THIS is your movie! but for anyone with even a MODICUM of fire left in their soul. this is as appealing as curdled custard.

OH! and you can add to the HUGE pile of issues with this one that either the only surviving print of this has been damaged, or the edit was atrocious, because large chunks of the film are missing…as in peoples dialogue will cut out mid sentence and then we’ll hard jumpcut to another totally random reel MULTIPLE times from around the mid point onwards.

If it wasnt for the fact that this one was a cheap pick up during Melusines valentines day sale this year, i’d have skipped this one. But honestly? its antiporn. Ray Dennis Steckler could shoot you as many adult movies in a month as you’d be willing to pay him to do. but the man just WAS NOT adept at shooting for eroticism. He is to adult cinema, what I am to open heart surgery…like, yeh, i’ll give it a go. But that wont stop the lawsuits.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/deviates-in-love/

A quite rare occurance happens with ‘Killdozer’ its a sensationalist film that ACTUALLY manages to deliver on it’s brief. The film promises a killer sentient bulldozer, and it delivers on a killer sentient bulldozer. In many ways you cant ask more of it than that…

The plot? Some construction workers are digging a cavern through a mountain on a small island just off the coast of Africa. When one of their bulldozers hits a strange metallic rock embedded in the mountainside. the rock glows and transfers some strange alien power into the bulldozer, causing it to take on a life of its own and to seek out bloody vengence!

And…thats the movie, the killdozer starts off by picking off any construction workers who just so happen to use it, but once the whole team realise that bulldozers got a mind of its own, it shifts into a bit more of a vietnam inspired style ‘survival’ picture with our crew huddling together and choosing their moments to try and mount an assault carefully.

Is it the perfect movie? No. The script gives you everything you’d want in a movie like this, but even with it only clocking in at 74 minutes, its still a *little* dry in places, I feel like a good character actor, or maybe just a little more eccentricity sprinkled in here and there would have really helped oil the wheels on this thing. They chose to play it less campy and more VERY serious…which is a bit odd considering this is a film about a load of 40+ year old men being headhunted by a killer bulldozer…

The dialogues fine enough, they’ve taken the naturalistic approach and theres some alright and believable backing and forthing here. The pacings a little on the slow side for 74 minutes, and the act structuring is a little bit soft. But It’s a TV movie…so whadda ya expect?

The premise doenst lend itself to a TV movie…not at this point in time, but it does feel more in the realm of the TV movie when it comes to the direction and cine. Both are a bit flat, they dont really get *too* creative here and the result is a film thats more than fine enough in terms of just getting the film up on screen, but I feel with just a few more cutaways, a bit more experimentation and a more considered approach to colour usage, it could have gone from ‘good’ to ‘great’

The performances as mentioned are all aiming for fairly serious, with only maybe a couple of twinkles of ham from the cast, and very subtle ones at that…I think they knew what kind of film this WAS…I just think they wernt entirely able to act on their impulses for this one.

In fact the only thing I think WAS majorly out of place was the score…which seemed to go for a kind of hallmarky ‘loss of a family member’ drama vibe of orchestral stringy arrangements…it maybe would have been interesting to have the score be a bit more fitting to the otherworldly premise.

I’d watch Killdozer again, I’d recommend Killdozer to folk. I bought it because I wanted to see a killer sentient Bulldozer and from about 15 minutes in till the end, I got to see a killer sentient Bulldozer. It has a nice atmosphere to it, an unique tone and directional choice…its a pretty solid movie. I think it’d pair up well with something like ‘God Monster of Indian Flats’ or even a bit of a curveball picture like ‘Alien’…as a B-picture mind! But yeh…this one was fun…I wish it had leant a little more into its premise, but I got what I paid for.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/killdozer/

So…I want to preface my review of this one by saying I watched this when I was a bit tired, I thought it would be a bit more accessable, it wasnt…And as a result im not 100% certain I really truely got to grips with it…As such my thoughts here are basically ‘as I found it’. and may well change in time.

With that being said, ‘Shredder Orpheus’ is an experimental/art housey type skate punk reimagining of ‘The Odyssey’ a famous greek tale following Orpheus as he navigates hell itself to find and reclaim his partner who’s taken up residency with Hades…Of course, with this being an art housey skate punk style reimagining, its not exactly as clean cut as all that and does have quite a few weird and wonderful moments throughout. But I think the biggest problem I have with this movie is just that it doesnt *quite* commit to the weirdness ENOUGH for me.

The promotional materials for it put the film on par with ‘Forbidden Zone’ for eccentricity…and, while there is a little bit of that present in terms of how it presents itself (hyper colourful, overly weird designed sets) it isnt really leaning into that from a ‘vibe’ perspective and…I’d argue actually probably has a closer relation to ‘Split’ (1989) or ‘Liquid Sky’ (1982) than anything else…In fact those 2 films go a little stranger and more over the top than this does really…So it’d kind of end up (in my mind at least) being the B-picture to those!

Its a fine enough production on the whole, but it just never quite manages to muster ANY of its aspects to take it well and truely over the line and into something special.

The scripts alright, it has a clean 3 act structure with smooth transitions between acts, but the pacings SUPER slow for an 80-90 minuite feature, the tone is non committal, it kind of leans towards wanting to be quirky at times, but never goes ‘full on’ instead always pulling back (I assume to try and maintain a level of professionalism)

The dialogue is a purposfully a little over stiff and there are some decent cult-ish moments here. But not enough to really stand out or make me sit up and pay attention…

While the very premise itself of (punk band mad max…on skateboards) sounds fun and weird, it just doesnt quite translate to something delightfully watchable. its just…there.

The directions a bit of a mixed bag too, while i’d say this film absolutely has a highly styalized and creative visionary at the healm, there were a lot of moments while watching this where I was just kind of left wondering aloud ‘why?’, why is this scene set up the way it is, why is there so much dead space on a lot of these shots, why are these characters having this conversation in this way now? whats the creative decision behind this kind of scene structuring? a lot of it felt like the answer i’d get back would be ‘Because we shot it, and we didnt wanna waste money by NOT including it…’

The cine is colourful and largely well composed in terms of actor placement, they DO try to get the most out of there set space, but as mentioned the amount of dead space around our subjects combined with an edit that seemingly did just throw everything down that was shot, kind of left this thing feeling a bit overstuffed and only emphisized the uncertain nature of what we were being shown and why…

Performances were mixed to poor. LOTS of dry bland deliveries, LOTS of long emotional pauses or just scenes of people embracing…I dont really have much more to say other than that…its not the worst i’ve seen, but equally it wasnt comedically bad either. I just found it a little over dry.

And this thing has an amazing soundtrack. punky rocky new wave stuffs a big win in my eyes!

all in all, Shredder Orpheus is a classic case of the sum of its parts not equalling the sum of its whole. It has a lot of good ideas, but they kind of fell flat to me, and while I didnt hate this thing, I struggled…I think the marketing that this was a weird and quirky film was what ultimately torpeado’d this thing for me. as had I known going in that the ‘comedy weirdness’ was VERY subtle and that, in fact, it was much more a neon soaked art house film with a couple of weird bits predominantly…then i’d have probably saved this one for another day.

As it stands, yeh, its worth checking out. But let the weirdness be a nice extra rather than the USP.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/shredder-orpheus/

Living in the UK, I never really got to experience the whole ‘Animatronic pizza place’ stuff that the US seemingly got hand over fist in the 80s and 90s. Here? animatronics were largely religated to clunky museum oddities or bizarre and terrifying fairground attractions. But i’d been aware of the ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ and ‘Showbiz Pizza’ animatronic bands for years and was hoping that this documentary would shine more light onto the phenominon. and…well, it kind of does?

This is one of those documentaries that, instead of just telling the story of the ‘Rock-a fire Explosion’ (the showbiz pizza animal band) explaining its creation, how it grew into a 200+ chain of restaurants, its money troubles and eventual merger with Chuck E. Cheese. We instead *kind of* chart the history of the restaurant, but really we focus more on a small circle of die hard ‘Showbiz Pizza’ fans sharing their memories of the restaurant, the animatronics and we even get to hang out with the original creator of ‘Rock-a fire’ and get a tour around his workshop.

And…thats FINE…but I feel like this films really quite a victim of the time it was made. Y’see, this film came out in 2009/2010 (at least, I think it did…theres an epilogue in the credits that runs as late as late 2009.) and thats the problem…

Because AT that point in time, the whole ‘animatronic animal band’ thing was a cheesy, niche and slightly cringy thing to be interested in. Kids wernt interested, investors thought it was kind of old hat. This documentary at the time it was made was aiming almost to kind of try and document the dying throws of what was quickly becoming a lost art.

Then, 5 years later “Five Nights At Freddy’s” would be released and COMPLETELY rejuvinate the whole ‘animatronic animal band’ thing, turning it from a cheesy kid friendly dated bit of nostalgia bait, into a mature adult horror series where the creepiness of the animatronics were changed from a fault, into a feature.

As such, it makes this film feel almost like its fallen out of a paralel world where these animatronics were LITERALLY rotting away in some overly humid abandoned warehouse, with a double digit ‘hardcore’ audience were clinging onto it for dear life.

Had this film been made even 5 years later, it could have approached its subject with a COMPLETELY different attitude and mindset, and taken the whole thing in a VERY different direction (likely being WAY more successful as a result). Instead, it spends most of the runtime essentially silently signalling that this documentary may well be the last coherent media piece to document a band who’d last been seen over 15 years prior.

As it stands, as a ‘people’ piece, its a fascinating time capsule, dealing with folks who genuinely thought this was the end of the line, and I feel we likely wont see that kind of mentality again for a good while. So in some ways its documented a completely unintentional aspect of this fandom and done it fairly well!

theres real emotion and passion in the fans and the rock-a fire’s creator Aaron Fechter. they’re all UTTERLY eccentric (I suppose you have to be) but they sincerely believe the concept will live on, and it is kind of satisfying to sit here in 2024 and see that they REALLY wernt wrong.

At the same time however, as a bit of a pandoras box warning for this documentary…my advice is maybe dont google ‘where are these people now?’ immediately after watching this documentary…As I did that and…well to cut a long story short, long term I dont think ONE person featured in this documentary made it into the 2020’s without either going VERY (bad) strange or ending up in serious debt/holding a serious criminal record…That taints this films somewhat bittersweet optimistic messaging I can tell you!

I kind of wish this doc HAD gone a little deeper into ‘Showbiz’ history beyond just the animatronics. they allude to TONS of animatronics that Aaron had made between the early 80s and mid 90s for showbiz, but they never really explore them outside of the core band. Aaron seems to have a lot to say, but its all been trimmed around in the ‘shaping’ phase of the edit which has left it feeling like we’ve only really got the absolute base elements present (which is honestly VERY surprising given the films only just cut to feature run time…like, they DID have scope and bandwidth to go deeper.)

Its VERY clear and careful to state that ANYTHING ‘Chuck E.’ will NOT be discussed in the doc, and the interviewee’s are VERY clear to pour scorn on the ‘the other place’ throughout. Which…when you pull back a bit and realise these were childrens pizza restaurants and that these interviewee’s are all in their 30s and 40s here…was bizarre to say the least.

Had it gone a little deeper, I think i’d have genuinely loved this documentary. As it stands the ‘people’ focus over the subject focus (which in my opinion was done to death between 2005 and 2015) combined with the bad timing PLUS the pretty depressing ‘2024 check in’ just kind of soured this one for me a bit.

I WILL however say that if you can get your hands on AGFA’s recent release of this, it’s ABSOLUTELY worth every penny, because; while the doc is pretty okay, the extra features are RAMMED with showbiz pizza stuff, trailers, recordings of shows, testing footage, archive footage. its basically all the stuff I really WANTED to see in the doc, and is definitely worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-rock-afire-explosion/

One of the more infamous ‘public health films’ of the 1940s, ‘Mom and Dad’ was the brain child of Kroger Babb and William Beaudine and managed to maintain its reputation by being one of the first ‘hayes era’ films to feature full frontal nudity…It achieved this however in the form of showing a live birth (almost entirely unedited and VERY graphic) alongside several images of both male and female full frontal nudity as victims of severe infections from Ghonnerea and Syphillis.

To say that, even by modern standards I was not quite prepared for just HOW graphic and bloody this film would get in showing a cesearian birth or several shots of gnarled and mangled genitles/heavily deformed babies, I hope that sets an expectation of what your letting yourself in for.

The film presents itself as an educational film aiming to educate the youth of today about the dangers of ‘relations’ with an opening caption claiming that ‘Innocence isnt ensured by ignorance’ and that ‘Knowledge is power!’ before telling the cautionary tale of Joan Blake, a young woman just about in her teens, who’s mother is totally against Joan learning ANYTHING about ‘that kind of thing’ and a father who’s basically relying on the mother to ‘fill in the gaps’.

As you can imagine, the film then inevitably gets right to the point when Joan heads to her highschools annual dance and meets and young man by the name Carl Blake. a slightly freer and looser spirit who drinks beer, jitterbugs! AND is into premarital SEX!

Well, Joan doesnt know about the birds and the bees and soon finds herself without Carl AND very much pregnant.

And, from there? the film basically kind of splits in two, with 50% of the runtime continuing the cautionary tale, but 50% being given over to a series of sexual health lectures detailing menstrual cycles, how conception happens, fertility, the birth cycle AND for good measure, how births occur and the risk of unprotected ‘relations’ and the ‘social diseases’ that can occur as a result.

And…I think what sets this film apart from the likes of ‘Reefer Madness’ and ‘Child Bride’ is that, this film feels INCREDIBLY awkward and clunky…But theres a real slathering of melodramatic ham thrown into the mix that ultimately was what kept me tuned in.

The script itself is kind of basic, the pacings pretty good to start with, but around the mid point theres a break in the film where a real world clinician was supposed to walk into the theater and give a lecture + Q&A on sexual wellness, before the second half of the film starts up (obviously, that doesnt happen in the home release…or i’d be wondering how a clinician got into my house at damn near 10pm on a Tuesday.)

Its the second half where the momentum begins to get a bit squiffy as the film gets bogged down in 20 minutes of a class watching a health film INSIDE the main picture (so we’re watching a movie inside a movie at this point) and then the film kind of realises that it DID have a plot before we went to an intermission, so it hastily writes up a resolution that left me feeling a little unsatisfied and ended VERY abruptly.

Honestly? this film, while trying to give the appearence of a professional and considered Hygiene film. Realistically comes off as if a slightly drunken dad was trying to explain sex to his kids, while REALLY not wanting to talk about ANYTHING to do with sex. thats the kind of tone and vibe this thing radiates. Which I found VERY strange, but VERY funny.

I will also say that the opening half has a LOT of padding in the form of lounge singers, dancers and gymnasts…I dont know why they’re there…I assume its to make sure the audience are still awake. But I found it to be a bit of a double edged sword, as…on the one hand they dont even TRY to pretend these moments arnt filler…But then at the same time, the sheer absurdity of having 3 happy clappy gymnasts bouncing around in the middle of a film that, some 30 minutes later, will be showing ACTUAL blood, guts and gore alongside imagery of rotting penises…Was something that I just had to bleakly laugh at.

The whole thing is ABSOLUTELY tone deaf. and its good intentions are the thing that ultimately saves it from becoming just a fairly dry sexual health film. It feels like exploitation cinema, and if John Waters and David F. Friedman are to be believed it ABSOLUTELY is. (I will not dispute this)

The film looks fine on a direction standpoint, its a little on the cheap side, but it still looks pretty sleek given this kind of cinema was often reserved for Poverty row. theres a clear and clean visual vision present here and the film does get quite creative at times. which was nice.

For the 40s, the cine is quite impressive too. A lot of it reminded me of Ed Woods ‘The Violent Years’ only…Eds film was 11 years later than this and didnt feature live births…But composition here is solid, they work a good range of sequence structuring…the transitions on the edit are a little slack which is a shame, but I think this easily holds together better than a lot of the health films that were doing the rounds at the time.

As mentioned, the performances are melodramatic, over the top hammy goodness. Everyones either a ‘Chipper’ 50s stereotype, or about a hairs breadth from throwing their pinny over their face, screeching and running out of the room. Its easily one of the better aspects of the film and definitely an element that kept me watching!

‘Mom and Dad’ I reckon would STILL turn some kids heads these days, and its absolutely NO wonder that it got banned for 11 years for what it shows. As far as PSA health films go? its one of the more graphic, more interesting and more entertaining. DEFINITELY not for the squeemish. If you like cheesy public information films, this ones definitely worth checking out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/mom-and-dad/

Probably one of the most unusual fumbles in recent corporate cinema history, the decisions that went into the making of ‘Rise of Skywalker’ Still to this day leave me kind of reeling as to exactly WHY they chose the direction they chose.

So, to my understanding, ‘The Last Jedi’ upset the fan base because it made the bold decision of actually trying to do something different with a francise that was (at that point) 7 films deep and had been trading on nothing but fan service for at least 5 of the entries up to that point. Was it perfect in what it wanted to achieve? No. But it set the groundwork to easily allow the ‘Star Wars’ universe (in time) to grow beyond its boundaries of ‘Good vs Evil with Overt Vietnam/Nazi references’.

Disney, noticing that the hardcore fans who were upset that a story DARE morally question its characters or the motives of the Jedi order decided TWO FILMS INTO A TRILOGY…that the BEST course they could have is to bring back JJ Abrahams (Because ‘Force Awakens’ was their safe gamble that paid off big time) and essentially get him to undo as MUCH as physically possible from what happened in ‘Episode 8’…

And so, we have this film. The closing part of the sequels trilogy that seemingly literally only exists to air lock the last film and set everything back to a ‘reset’ position so that in 5-10 years they can try this all again.

The plot? For reasons that make ZERO sense and have NO setup, Emperor Palpatine is back!..for some reason…and its retroactively revealed that EVERYTHING from the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’ up to now on the sith side of things has happened purely because the Emporer survived and built a weird clone lab/fleet of death cruisers in the bombed out basement of what was left of the second death star…

If you havent had an anurism by this point. the film then goes on to basically reset the characters from their place at the end of ‘Last Jedi’ more or less getting rid of Rose completely and resigning Finn to a position just above an extra, as the plot swaps to Rey trying simultaineously to find the emperor, deprogramme Kylo Ren AND learn who her REAL parents are.

While Kylo teams up with the Emperor with the ultimate aim being a total takeover of the emperors own army, christened ‘The Final Order’.

And theres lots of running around, and light sabre fights and references to the original trilogy…and we’re basically just back to ‘Force Awakens’ terratory of playing everything INCREDIBLY overly safe, cramming as many in references and MCU style gags in as possible…When I tell you that Richard E Grant turning up as a ‘special guest’ playing an admiral for the sith was the BEST part of this film for me…I hope that lets you know the dissapointment I was feeling.

The thing is, when I went to see this in theaters on its original run, I remember leaving the cinema kind of feeling a bit nonplussed…Not raging…But just kind of like ‘Welp…that was an ending I guess…’ But having watched this film now in close proximity with the other two ‘Sequel’ trilogy films, its ASTOUNDING that a corporation like Disney would have allowed this to be released. It borders on feeling disrespectful to the work Rian Johnson put into his entry in the franchise, but this film being the way it is makes the other two films NOT ONLY feel totally inconsistant tonally and thematically, but it puts the audience into a position where they’re forced to accept that non of this trilogy really matters now. they openly make the point of saying ENTIRE FILMS worth of lore can be rewritten and undone in less than half an hour with next to no effort. And thats insane to me.

My thoughts on this film are quite similar to my thoughts on ‘The Force Awakens’ really…in the sense that. This is a multi-million dollar corporate backed movie. It was always going to meet a standard. The direction and cine are fine to decent for the most part. But like ‘Force Awakens’ it rarely pushes any boundaries or challenges the viewer with striking work. The performances feel dialled back after ‘Last Jedi’ and now sit in this weird hybrid of cold with sudden sparks of animation. The score…Is ‘Star Wars’…

But for me? this was the film that kind of burnt out the last of the goodwill I had towards the franchise. ‘Force Awakened’ worked for me to a degree because, it’d been almost 10 years since the last run of Star Wars movies…the public were hungry for it, and at that point in time after a mixed response to ‘Phantom’ and a horrifying response to ‘Clones’ a ‘Safe’ star wars film that did just enough to curry good favour felt like water in the desert. This? This is curdled milk in cinema form.

The action scenes are CG heavy and nothing we havent seen in the previous two movies, the pacing is awkward, lumbered and overly slow. The tone is awkward, overly cold and lacking a sense of depth, the way the characters have been treated given the last 2 entries is frankly shameful…This film to me at least? smacks of the vibe that the studio knew this trilogy was DOA (in there opinion) and that they wanted it closed and gone as swiftly and safely as possible.

and on the rewatch, I felt that hard. A real letdown, It’ll be a LONG time before I give this one another spin…If I fancied watching some ‘Star Wars’ a couple of weeks ago…Im positively fatigued by this point…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker/

If one of my biggest gripes with ‘The Force Awaken’s’ was that I felt it played things ‘too safe’ and relied too heavily on call backs and references to try and secure an older audience while encouraging a younger one. Then ‘The Last Jedi’ is a film that inverts that.

A film that challenges (or at least attempts to challenge) what the point of ANY of these movies is about. A film that gets oddly philisophical about the nature of good and evil, dogma and morals. ‘The Last Jedi’ picks up with the rebels on the run from the ‘First Order’ and Rey trying to get Luke to both come and help the rebels defeat the order, AND show her a bit more about herself, and how to unlock her own Jedi powers.

The problem? is that Lukes become dissillusioned with the Jedi, the force…all that stuff, after a particularly bad experience. He wants nothing to do with Rey or any of her business and basically wants to be left alone to live out the rest of his days on an island as a hermit.

While this is going on, Kylo Ren is getting increasingly frustrated both at his inability to capture Rey or the rebels AND by comparisons being drawn to him basically being ‘baby Darth Vader’. Via the force Kylo and Rey communicate multiple times and slowly begin to exchange base level beliefs, softening one another to the others stances.

Oh! and Finn wakes up after being gravely injured in the last film, decides enoughs enough and tries to escape, only to be stopped by a rebel named ‘Rose’…the pair find themselves in a strange and cookie B-plot adventure at a casino involving freeing an army of puppy horses and getting acquainted with a Han Solo style scoundrel with a keen eye for lockpicking.

And…Honestly? there wasnt really a whole lot I actively DISLIKED about this one. I thought the script was a nice subversion of expectations, pulling away from the formula in some regards (it bottles it towards the end, but for most of the runtime, its nice to see the Jedi and Sith get played down as just cosplaying space police/nazis)

Its because of that challenging of convention that I can totally understnad why some of the more hardcore elements of the fandom actively hated this one. But realistically, while I cant say it nails every plot thread it touches, I’ll always champion a film that tries something different with successes and failures to show for it, than one that plays it safe hoping to cost on fan appreciation.

The script heres largely punchy, seems to ACTUALLY get the tone of the original films about right in terms of mixing darker more unpleasent moments with lighter SINCERE comedy thats more than just ‘suave one liners’ and awkward fumbling (See: The MCU). They maek Old Luke and Leia feel much more in character than the previous entry, its got a solid 3 act structuring and I feel the characters get the chance to be much more fleshed out and interesting than they were in the first film.

The downsides do unfortunately stop this one though from fully crossing the line into ‘Classic’ terratory for me. The chief amongst them being that the 2nd act gets WAY too bogged down in trying to create artificial tension. It quickly devolves into people just talking in quite nicely lit rooms, and not really saying a whole lot other than how awful the first order is or how powerful Lord Snoke is.

I feel like the finn and rose B-plot at the casino gets way overplayed and seemingly only exists because the writer/director didnt really know what to do/care about Finn, so they just shoved him into a seperate story for an hour and a half before reuniting him with the rebels. Which made me feel bad for John Boyega who seemingly was INCREDIBLY enthusiastic about his involvement in these films, had a decent hand in the first one, only to find himself basically put in the broom cupboard for most of this movie with not a whole lot to do with the main story.

I also quite struggled with Carrie Fishers turn here as Leia, I get the feeling Rian Johnson didnt really know/care about Leia as a character…so she seemingly spends 90% of the movie just looking a bit sad/lost and making wisened remarks about the force and keeping faith in your actions…OR shes there to basically do the whole shrugging ‘Dont look at me!?’ comedy bit when they wanted a younger/more atheletic actor to do something more action heavy. I feel it did her a disservice really and after her appearence in the first film seemed to give her a bit more fight, here she’s kind of dull really…

That does kind of feed into the key theme of this film though, which is the idea that relics SHOULDNT be idolized and SHOULD be left in the past. The ultimate end message resolving that to ‘The past is the past, you design the future, but that doesnt mean you cant take the good from the past with you INTO that future’.

This film really tries its best to wind down luke, leia, the falcon, han, chewie…all of the old guard. I feel that was the correct thing to do and and I think it was (mostly) done successfully…again im sure there’ll be many who disagree with me. and Its a real shame that this ‘changing of the guard’ wasnt doubled down on and cemented into the next film as I feel with the right kind of investment in the new characters we could have helped establish a new generation of heroes for the kids of tomorrow to appreciate more fully.

Instead, the next film pretty much returns to revearing these characters and underplaying the new crop. Leading us to the inevitable problem of stagnation later down the line…But thats a problem for another movie.

Outside of the script? I honestly have no other faults for this thing.

The directions gorgeous and probably some of the best visual and creative direction seen since ‘Empire’ theres some phenominal lighting and colour play across the runtime, this feels like an incredible leap in quality over ‘Force Awakens’ to me.

Direction of the cast is a big step up as well, allowing the cast to loosen up a bit, get a bit more raw and emotional and allowing them much more freedom to explore the set spaces and utilize props, the deliveries come across as (mostly) more naturalistic and believable. I honestly think this is one of the most stylish attempts at making a Star wars movie in at least the last 40 odd years.

The cine is rich, sumptuous, the CG elements are prominant but not aggressive, compositional choices are frankly INSANELY good. the edit is near frame perfect with just the right cuts and transitions hitting at JUST the right time.

The performances, loosened from their shakles are rock solid, very animate and physical, with just the right level of energy and charisma put into it. again, this is the closest to capturing the energy of the first couple of films that ANY of the sequels have managed before. Other than Carrie Fisher being left a little high and dry, I had no complaints from ANY of the on screen performances.

And the soundtracks awesome…its still Star Wars, but its used well here.

I have a real soft spot for ‘The Last Jedi’ quite honestly if it was 20-30 minutes shorter, gave Leia a bit more character and lost a few of the more pointless call back moments. This would BE my favourite Star Wars film. A film that challenges the franchise in a way that it hasnt previously, I really wish Johnson had stayed on for the finale honestly…But…its the 21st century and we arnt allowed to have nice things I guess…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/star-wars-the-last-jedi/