It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a movie come in that’s caused SUCH confliction in me over whether I love or hate it. But with 2012’s “The Amazing Bulk” I think I may have to reset the clock. Because this film? Well…it’s… “Distinct” I think that’s the nicest way I can describe it. The film initially started life as an attempt to cash in on the “Asylum” phenomenon of making movies that vaguely knock off other movies. In this case it was initially intended to be a spiderman knock off of all things featuring a female version of the webslinger under the title “X-Spider” when that fell through though, director Lewis Schoenbrun decided to instead have a stab at another of Marvels much loved properties. Wolveri-

Equally, because I’m keen to address the elephant in the room up front, mainly because I think it would be TOO easy to just dunk on this for its looks. YES. The entire movie, barring stock footage, was shot on green screen using either stock backgrounds or prebuilt digital assets, generally with the aim of building up the sense of depth within the shot when it quite literally would just be a couple of people stood in front of a screen. And I mean that to the fullest extent. Tables, desks, book shelves, items on real tables (where they could afford real tables) are all digitally generated and layered into the shot.

But, with ambition comes limitation…and the limitation here is…well… he’s basically used whatever he could get his hands on in order to create this. Meaning quite regularly art styles are mismatched, some items are in higher resolutions than others meaning they look way more prominent in the shot compared to other things, which is problematic when people usually use prominence within the shot to denote importance, and it’s because of this haphazard “thrown together” look that the majority of people who review this feature basically open with “Look at this crappy piece of crappy crap” and never actually move on from the fact that it just looks dreadful. Which…I get it, but I feel that almost plays down the other elements of this film outside of that.

From my perspective? This gave me very strong “Tim and Eric” vibes. And in particular it reminded me very strongly of the Gregg Turkington “On Cinema” venture “Deck of Cards” (I’d wager heavily that their style on that movie was inspired by this movie) and, I kind of dig that “Weird hodge podge” style so long as there’s entertainment to be had from it. Whether intentional or not, If it made me laugh and kept me watching, no matter how bad it looks, it’s kind of done one of the key jobs of film making…to entertain.

The film follows frustrated and very sleepy scientist Hank Howard, and for some reason thats never fully explained, we open at around the half way point in the movie as we follow a prostitute wandering the cold CGI streets looking for a client. Dipping briefly into a back alley for a smoke, she’s accosted by a mugger called Scully, who offers her a light, and then shoves a gun in her mouth with unclear intentions. All this is cut short however as we’re then, completely cold, introduced to the titular “Amazing Bulk” the great purple bollock of power itself. Who terrifies Scully, causing him to accidentally kill the prostitute, before turning the gun on “Bulk” only to get taken out himself, causing the purple bollock to waddle away in what can only be described as scenes reminiscent of watching a man about to shit himself clutching for dear life as he tries to find a bowl.

We then enter into an extended title sequence in which…TOTALLY random imagery giving a vaguely knowledge driven slant is just thrown onto the screen seemingly without rhyme or reason. Which WILL be a recurring motif throughout so buckle up for that one.

We then flash back 24 hours and we’re finally introduced to Hank and his co-worker who are trying to develop some kind of super serum on behalf of the military that’ll allow them to turn their soldiers into unstoppable, stamina machines who could punch tanks unconscious and basically take over the world.The testing has been going on now for around 4 years and in that time every serum they’ve tried has failed. What do the failed serums do? Well; seemingly they make CGI rats disappear in a puff of blue smoke and that’s about it.

The pair are exhausted and frustrated after years of trying and failing to get ANYTHING resembling results. And it’s here that Hank’s partner ribs him about having cold feet about his partner Hannah, the pair have been together almost as long as the experiments have been going on and Hank STILL hasn’t proposed to her. But Hank confirms he IS planning on asking and has bought a ring. But he needs Hannahs Fathers permission to do it. Unfortunately; Hannah’s father is a general in the military and MORE importantly is currently the guy Hank reports to as the military are funding the super serum project. And despite being a scientist, Hannah’s father STILL treats Hank as if he’s a jobless bum because he hasn’t been able to create the ultimate super soldier serum right out of the gate with no prior research or experience in the subject.

Anyway; shortly after this chat, Hannah shows up at Hank’s workplace and convinces Hank to leave work early to go have some fun, they hop in the car and…oh god. Anyway while out, Hannah randomly asks Hank if he wants kids someday, Hank says “Not right now” and is concerned this is Hannahs way of telling him she’s pregnant, but Hannnah confirms that she isn’t but kind of takes away from the way Hank reacted that his work is currently more important to his life than his future family. (none of this matters by the way, it’s just killing time)

Later that Night Hank has been invited over to the general’s house to have dinner, and Hank decides that this will be the perfect opportunity to get the generals permission and then pop the question to Hannah later that night. Unfortunately things don’t quite pan out as expected as, while down in the TOTALLY CONVINCING wine cellar with the general, Hank asks the question and the general is IMMEDIATELY apoplectic at even the thought of it and basically flat out refuses to allow Hank to pop the question. This devastates Hank and he pretty much immediately leaves the dinner date, confusing Hannah in the process.

It’s here that a kind of…B-plot develops as we then cut to a medieval castle that I can only assume exists in a pocket dimension just outside of the city limits, where we’re introduced to one Dr. Werner Von Kantlove…cards on the table, I don’t know what he is. He isn’t really a mad scientist, he doesn’t really fit the bill as a nefarious political influencer, he doesn’t seem to have a job of any description and even though he has connections to organized crime units, he doesn’t seem to BE a crime influencer himself. He’s just a big campy daft man with a LOT of money who likes launching missiles at things with his girlfriend/wife/mistress “Lolita” who’s purposefully played as a young and naive character.

So…I don’t really know what his drive or purpose is, i’m just going to go with “This is a silly world and somehow this mans managed to get more money than god and access to a silo of missiles” ANYWAY; one of the first things we learn about Kantlove is that he’s impotent, and as such, he vents his frustrations by launching missiles at much loved and treasured international landmarks such as the sphinx, big ben and the Taj Mahal. He also has a short temper and will happily kill his own guards if he thinks they’re taking the mick out of him.

Meanwhile; we then cut back to Hank and Hannah who, after enjoying some time at a local fairground decide to grab the subway home where they get jumped by Scully who takes Hank’s wallet, Hannahs earrings and the engagement ring Hank was going to give to Hannah at the fair. BEYOND depressed about the situation, Hank takes Hannah home and decides to take his frustrations to the lab, Which Hannah misinterprets as Hank preferring to spend more time at the lab than with her, so she leaves in a huff. Hank returns to the lab, and after working on the serums some more he finally ends up with a purple looking concoction that he hasn’t seen before. He trials it on a houseplant and it goes from nearly being dead, to fully revived and thriving. So…Hank decides to speed up the testing phase and injects himself with what’s left of the serum. And after the bog standard “Jekyll and hyde” style transition, Hank is wooshed into a tornado and transforms into the Bulk!

We then see the opening of the film again, but from Hank’s perspective where we also see him take back Hannahs engagement ring. Back at Kantlove castle we meet two gangsters who’ve turned up to have a meeting with Kantlove in which they present him with a ring they got from Scully, it’s Hannahs engagement ring. It turns out that Hank only got the box back. In a move that only really exists to give Hank a bit of an excuse to interact with Kantlove and Lolita in later acts. Anyway; the next day; Hank wakes up in his apartment covered in purple and the police knocking at the door, Hank lets them in and the pair discuss the robbery and double murder that happened the night before and after exchanging information the cops head back to the car. But one of the cops is adamant that he thinks Hank is the murderer.

He has a couple of hints leading towards it, one being that Hank knew about specific details on the murders that havent yet been made public. The other being that when the cop shook Hank’s hand he ended up covered in purple stuff, the same purple stuff that was found splattered all around the crime scene. Shortly after they see Hank literally leave his apartment and head RIGHT into the crime scene, checking to make sure no one was looking.

So…they go to corner him, and, in a fit of anger, Hank transforms into the Bulk and what can only be described as a 5-10 minute CGI running on the spot carnage filled chase ensues as the bulk runs through the city knocking over anything he vaguely comes into contact with while the police chase him on foot and, for some reason a news copter which was just in the area decides to join in too. It all ends in disaster, as one of the cops gets accidentally murdered, and the news copter flies a little bit TOO close to the bulk who takes it out with a mighty cgi swing of a fist. After that, the bulk turns back into Hank and the surviving cop promptly arrests him, winding Hank up in a federal jail.

While in there, the general turns up at the jail to transfer Hank to a secret facility where he presents him with an ultimatum. He explains that while he’s been unconscious (during the transfer) that they’ve managed to synthesize an antidote from Hank’s blood that’ll cure him of his random purple bollock-ness. He tells Hank that he’ll give him the antidote AND give Hank his full blessing to marry Hannah on the condition that he helps the military on an urgent matter. Y’see; Kantlove’s decided he’s fed up of shelling landmarks and now wants to destroy the moon. As in…launch missiles at the moon to make it not there anymore. The general says if Hank can go to Kantloves castle and take out Kantlove or stop the missiles before they launch, the antidote and blessing are his, Hank reluctantly agrees.

And so we encounter the final act in which Hank must Storm Kantloves castle and stop the missiles from destroying the moon! In a frankly ludicrous finale! Will Hank succeed!? Is the general being *COMPLETELY* honest with Hank about his intentions!? And…why did they make Kantloves Dog CGI? What was the point? Everyone knows someone with a dog…just use a real dog. It doesn’t even do anything THAT unusual…USE A REAL DO- all this and more will be answered if you have the constitution to make it through “The Amazing Bulk”.

And honestly; when it comes to the script on this thing. I’m having to do some soul searching because I’m struggling to decide whether I think it’s hilarious or if I genuinely and sincerely hate it. I can only liken the plot of this film to feeling like it was written while intoxicated. It has a broad idea of what it wants to do, but it doesn’t seem to know what order to do it in, what works and what doesn’t and while the main plot itself is INCREDIBLY simple, it somehow manages to overcomplicate itself to the point that it almost borders on farce. There’s a loose act structure here, which is always a good starting point. But a lot of time is given to the 1st act and establishing everything meaning the 3rd act ends up a little bit short and feels like it’s having to cram a lot in, ultimately ending on a somewhat disappointing fizzle rather than a grand daft bang. As a result, the pacing also suffers because the script’s plot developments happen so inconsistently it means that the film has to keep stopping and starting just to get the exposition out of the way.

I think parody gets too easy a ride these days honestly, too many people will excuse a bad film if it has a few goofy visual moments and I think that does a disservice to the actual art of parody. From a script perspective, the Amazing bulk…for the VAST majority of the runtime isn’t really a parody. What the film instead relies on is weird and goofy visuals combined with a couple of weird and goofy performances. And apart from one VERY brief exchange in the script where the general tells Hank that Kantlove wants the super serum to cure his Erectile Dysfunction, there’s basically nothing here that I would say was intentionally written to be funny. It goes into camp cinema infrequently, but there’s a difference between “Camp” and “Comedy” and If this film had a legitimate budget and had shot on sets and locations, I don’t think it would be considered parody. I think it’s only really when the post elements came in that that humor found itself.

What I can say is that, Dialogue wise, that drunken disarray that acts as the tent poles for the plot seems to have transferred perfectly. We have inane dialogue on hand that’s rambly, stilted and littered with weird “Isms” that made me snort laugh. I realized fairly early on what the dialogue reminded me of. It ALL sounds like dialogue that Tommy Weisau would write for the room. Don’t believe me? If you have a copy, go and watch it. Get a couple of lines of dialogue, pause the movie and say them out loud in a Tommy Weisau voice. IT’S UNCANNY. And honestly? It kind of endeared me to it in a weird way.

All the characters just mow through their lines like squirrels on the highway with no real care given for how they need to be delivered or what exactly is being said. And in an almost woozy move, for some reason, the writers and director have decided to litter the film with references to Stanley Kubrick’s movies, with multiple music cues calling back to “A Clockwork Orange”, “Dr. Strangelove” and “2001: A space oddity” Kantlove is clearly a play on “Strangelove” his partners LITERALLY called “Lolita” and there are numerous references to dialogue from Kubrick’s films and visual cues to 2001 throughout. it’s not like the plot has anything to even really do with Kubrick movies. I literally just think the writers and director really liked Kubrick movies and decided to just shove a load of references in “For the lols”. it’s…BEYOND bizarre. Ultimately; this is a poor script, no mistaking it. Stoner fodder at it’s finest. But It does have moments where it shines and that dialogue is SO delicious to me as someone who enjoys the Wiseau style of delivery. While it may be rife with padding and over-explanation, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh a few times at this and that I didn’t, to some degree, enjoy it…even if it is the ramblings of the bizarre.

The script was written by Keith Schaffer and Jeremiah Campbell. Jeremiah has 16 writing credits, his last was in 2013 and looking at what credits he has I’d say I think this is probably his best known work. Keith has 4 writing credits and again this is probably his best known…Both of them seem to work in the kind of B-movie horror and sci-fi that is my stomping ground, so I doubt this will be the last time I’ll see them.

The film was directed by Lewis Schoenbrun, he has 6 directing credits and this is also probably his best known work in this field. He’s really more of an editor, holding various post production roles and having over 50 credits to his name including “UHF ” and “Mystic Pizza”. And as a fun fact and an aside on this, Lewis fully financed this film by himself, as he didnt want to “compromise the vision” he had for the film…I can’t quite believe that was ACTUALLY his given reason…but there you go. In fact the only other person who DID have any kind of involvement in this film outside of the cast and crew is David S. Sterling…as in Sterling Entertainment David S. Sterling…As in “Camp Blood” David Sterling…and as soon as I found that out…my feelings on this film suddenly made ALLL kinds of sense.

On the direction front, im equally torn as to whether to praise the fact that SO much planning had to go into this production to even make it function, i’m talking getting actors angles right against the greenscreen, getting the framing correct, the lighting, making sure movements within the frame worked with everything else going on, Basically, while it looks like garbage, an ASTONISHING amount of work would have been required to pull something like this together. But contrasting that; I’m at a loss in terms of what ACTUALLY I’m able to say that’s good about this direction. Because the thing with shooting the entire movie on a green screen is that Lewis has been able to manipulate the footage HOWEVER he required within the edit to make it work how he needed it to. Which does rather call into question how much actual on hand direction was provided. I mean. It’s like shoots where they entirely film for coverage. How much can be claimed to be on the director if they just shoot everything flat and wide, then crop in during post to build a sense of direction?

I suppose in terms of how the direction works here, I should take a note from Al Passari and my experience of covering “Flight to hell” and I think the key metrics to measure here are “How distinct is the picture as work thanks to the decisions of the director” and “How well does the director tell the story through the visuals and what impact does that have on the viewer.” and in the case of the former, this is about as distinct as it comes. There is NO mistaking this film in terms of stylistic choices, scene guidance and structuring. I don’t think ANYONE would want to CLAIM they made this, and so in that sense it’s absolutely a very distinct picture that leads on that weird style and guidance.

In the case of the latter though, it’s dreadful. While I absolutely respect Lewis’s efforts in putting his vision on the screen. I feel because of the chronic use of stock footage, because of the mixed art styles and resolutions and because of the fact that the cast are limited by what they can physically do in a big green void. It comes across as terrifically impersonal. And at times largely impractical too. While it can’t be overstated enough that this does look cheap and nasty, Lewis would have HAD to have put in a frankly ludicrous amount of hours in to even get it looking like this. And I kind of have to respect that. But I’d be being disingenuous if I were to say that this film is successful in conveying feelings to the audience when compared to a film that chose to shoot on sets and on location.

I drew comparisons to the work of Tim Heidecker at the top of this review, and I mean it, this sincerely feels like one of the many weird 100% CG projects he’s done in the past only, whereas he plays it as an intentional decision for comedic effect, I feel Lewis here chose to do this more out of necessity and convenience than anything else. And thats problematic because it means I don’t know how much of it was as intended and how much of it came about through accidental fucking around and finding out.

The one certainty I CAN measure is direction of the cast, which is DREADFUL. And it’s totally understandable really. They have no idea what they’re supposed to be acting towards or what visuals are going to be dropped in after the fact. Quite often they’re just advised to do basic actions which, when green screened, look ridiculous. A lot of the cast look PAINFULLY aware that they look like prannys jumping up and down on a green screen set. So they quite often restrict their movements. Which makes the key’d footage look VERY odd. They seem lost, confused and don’t even really seem to know when the camera is rolling more often than not.

Same goes for the cine, it’s dreadful. Simply dreadful. Even with complete control over composition EVERYTHING is poorly framed, flat and lifeless, because of the green screening, “even” lighting had to be used throughout because otherwise there’d be green trim fringing on pretty much everyone and everything. While fringing is kept to a minimum, a decent color correction and grade would have really helped give this film a much needed boost and maybe even made the lighting a bit better. They didn’t bother with it. Meaning…you can see everyone, but no one ACTUALLY looks like they belong in the scenes they’re appearing in because they all have different lighting styles depending on when they were filmed during the shoot.

What is BEYOND hilarious to me is when they get the cast to walk or run through a scene. Because they’ve had to get the cast to either walk or run on the spot while they green screen in a moving background and then move the actors around the scene with digital movements. And it’s HILARIOUS, because none of them know how to naturally walk on the spot, they all end up looking like they’re marching, and because their pace rarely if ever matches the tracking pace of the background footage, it results in the goofiest most unnatural movement i’ve personally ever seen. It’s ridiculous. The constant insertion of weird CG characters is bizarre too. We have CGI pugs, rats, monkeys, there are CGI people who act in the background alongside the cast. It’s stuff like this that really makes me think Lewis just used WHATEVER he could get his hands on in the edit. Because good lord this thing is hectic.

Performance wise, literally the ONLY reason to watch this movie is Randal Malone as Dr. Kantlove. He’s FULLY aware of the kind of movie this is, and gives a performance that’s easily one of the most surreal and entertaining that I’ve seen in a good while. He’s over the top, hamtastic and simply fantastic. He’s also pretty much the beginning and the end of the good cast members in this production. Terence Lording gets a moment or two to shine as the general. But he’s ultimately a bit flat and the rest of the cast are about as “Smiley faces drawn on a balloon” level performances as it’s possible to get…in my opinion. They’re dull, dry, barely stumble through their lines, have difficulty working with the set space (presumably because they had NO idea what was actually going on) if it wasn’t for the fact that the dialogue written for them was so Wiseau-esq I’d say they were a dire. Not Camp Blood bad mind…but certainly heading that way.

And finally; the soundtrack! It’s also pretty dreadful! It’s basically as much royalty free classical music and sound effects as could be dregged out of the royalty free sites and dumped in no particular rhyme or reason on top of the film. It doesn’t feel considered, it doesn’t feel like it belongs to the film and it stops and starts with all the grace of a cement mixer with its breaks cut. Sound effects just happen to this film…for better or worse. The actual audio quality of the vocal recording is atrocious too, its open air, noisy, echoey and in some cases running hot. You can tell when they’ve ADR’d and when they havent because we’ll suddenly go from something approaching studio quality to it sounding like it’s been recorded in a steel bin. It’s quite painful to listen to.

The Amazing Bulk was officially completed in 2008, but remained unreleased until 2012 when it was released online and on DVD by…Tempe DVD. WHAT!? Right, that’s it i’m drinking… In 2015 it got a re-release on DVD courtesy of Wild Eye Releasing. And it’s not a bad package all things considered we have a commentary recorded in 2014 with some of the crew, amongst some deleted scenes and a behind the scenes on how they did some of the practical effects. Which I thought was quite neat.

To me? This film is Mark Pirro as realized by Al Passari on a budget of $20, and while that sounds like it’s ticking all my boxes, the end results are a movie that I feel isn’t quite the sum of its parts. While it absolutely is a wild trash ride and I do recommend you check this out if you stumble on a copy in the wild, I don’t think I’d actively tell you to go out of your way to check this one out. It has daft moments and IS entertaining periodically, but in the 2020’s? This is nothing you can’t catch on youtube or tiktok in a shorter, better managed form.

The scripts are insane, and I do admire the amount of work that went into the planning for the CG work, even if it’s less than stellar. But at the end of the day, the direction and cine is a really poor show, the soundtrack isn’t much to shout about and a few self aware and funny performances does not a good bad movie make. I appreciate that it’s a parody, but the thing about parody is, it can’t just be random imagery and funny faces. It actually has to have a point…and The Amazing Bulk? I don’t really feel has all that much of a point to make, In my opinion.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-amazing-bulk/1/

2008’s Bad Biology is a sexually charged Black comedy horror film with…”Romance” elements?…From the mind of one Frank Henenlotter, a man who’s name is synonymous with exploitation and over the top horror hyjinks, whether it’s the psychological exploration of fraternal love in “Basket Case”, a psychedelic exploration of the psyche in “Brain Damage” or just a lark involving attempts in resurrecting your partner after a bizarre and bloody accident using the exploded body parts of prostitutes to fill in the gaps with “Frankenhooker”. Henenlotters courted controversy and outrage with an almost gleeful hand rubbing for over 50 years at this point. And Bad Biology (at the time of recording) is both his latest offering and probably his most explicit.

I actually have a bit of a problem with this review in the sense of there isnt a whole lot I can show from the film itself on youtube. Well over ⅔’rds of the movie feature either women fully unclothed, closeups of fake vaginas or penises, softcore sex that dances the line from comic to…well, the closest you can get to hardcore without officially going there. It’s…a pretty wild ride. The film follows Jennifer, a commercial photographer for magazines and advertising agencies who’s…not quite built like other girls. Jennifer has 7 Clitorises. And as such has been left in a chronic and constant state of high arousal. Doctors have been investigating how such a phenomenon can occur, and even Jen isn’t entirely sure as she can only go off what the doctors have been able to find.

But thats not all, as a result of this chronic state of arousal, Jen believes she’s the next step in female human evolution, constantly driven to satisfy her urges, she claims that sex for her is pretty close to her way of feeding. In the same way someone might guzzle down a hamburger to satiate hunger. Jen explains that sex for her is what keeps her satisfied. Theres also…one other thing. Jen has an accelerated uterus, whenever she has sex with guys she picks up at bars to “feed” on, her fertility rate is 100%. As in, unless she uses a condom, she gets pregnant every time, and because of theacceleration, pregnancy to birth usually occurs within a few minutes, resulting in the birth of a malformed “Freak Baby” which Jennifer usually abandons shortly after birth (she says the feeling of giving birth turns her on and gives her a secondary orgasm, so often she prefers to have unprotected sex, just for the added “thrill”)

Jen also brings her photography into the bedroom, capturing images of the men she has sex with “Mid Act” and distorting the images into what she refers to as “Fuck Face Photos”…oh…there is one other thing I’ve forgotten to mention as well…Jen kinda sorta accidentally murders her partners during sex, the orgasms become so intense, she loses control of her thought processes and her body takes over causing her quite often to blugeon her partners to death. …oh! And one final FINAL thing, she also claims her body has been hand built by god and that she’ll continue to murder “insufficient lovers” until she finds the “right fit” and that her ultimate purpose is to “fuck god”.

In the opening of the film we see Jen chat up some scumbag in a bar before she heads back to his place and..well it’s the end for him. We also see Jen attend a sexy photoshoot at a junkyard where an onlooker catches her eye and…well the same thing happens again, after some time in which she writhes around on a stack of her “Fuck face” photos on her bed, we find out that up until 2 years ago, Jen was a virgin. After spending her entire childhood being chastised by her parents and examined over and over again by the medical community, she figured that noone could ever love her, that she was a freak.

Then she met a chap called “Ryan” and the pair fell for each other pretty hard, Jen always played hard to get however and upon revealing to Ryan that she was a virgin, he pretty much immediately “reassured her” and by that I mean, he briefly tells her he loves her no matter what and IMMEDIATELY tries to get into her pants. On getting down there though he takes one look at her downstairs mix up and freaks the fuck out. Breaking up with her there and then and immediately kicking her out of the apartment. And since then, shes treated sex as a means to an end, but she’s desperate to recapture having a loving emotional relationship with someone that goes beyond 10 minutes of fun and a lampshade to the head.

It’s at this point we’re introduced to our other main player for the movie “Batz”, He…has a similar issue. When he was a child the doctors accidentally cut his penis off. Rendering him pretty much impotent. They reattached it, but he was warned that getting hard would be difficult to impossible. To try and combat this, when Batz got to high school he began to take stimulants and steroids in an attempt to get a boner…and it worked! Sort of…but it came with problems too. Chief amongst them being that his penis grew to a frankly absurd size and girth and err…how do I put this? It err…it developed sentience. It has a mind of its own.

It constantly wants sex and has driven Batz damn near mad with its demands to bone, so much so that he’s constantly having to get drug hookups from dealers to help get hard so he can use a homemade industrial strength fleshlight to help sooth the savage beast. And when I say he’s using dealers to score, im not talking about standard drugs here, the list of medications Batz needs are apparently stuff that even medical professionals havent heard of. Quite often the best the dealers can offer are the Animal equivalents of these drugs as they’re used in animal breeding.

Batz lives in a run down mansion that he purchased on the understanding that he’d clean the place up and repaint it, in keeping with the requests of the housing association. However the cocktail of drugs he’s been using to stop his dick has rendered him seriously ill, to the point that he has uncontrollable bouts of vomiting and can barely leave the house. And it’s here really that our two characters’ worlds collide as a mutual friend of Jen and Batz recommends Batz’s mansion as being the perfect place for Jen to hold a photoshoot for her latest gig. Batz is reluctant to let people into his home, and asks the mutual for 500 dollars for the privilege (he needs dick drugs), On the day of the shoot, Jen’s decided to go for a somewhat abstract choice of subject, topless women with vagina faces.

Batz gets home and spots the topless models and after peeping for a little while, one of the girls clocks him and calls security, who are all set to beat the crap out of him until the mutual friend arrives and tells them he’s the home owner. After apologising, the model decides to wind Batz up by being a bit of a tease, which frustrates Batz tremendously. When the shoot comes to a close, Jen is all set to leave when she realises she’s left her phone back in the house, she heads back into grab it, but gets sidetracked when she finds a room full of phallic notation and pill bottles, She then hears Batz having an argument with someone, and finds Batz literally fighting with his elongated donger. And shes impressed. And quickly becomes quite obsessed with seeing that thing in action.

On the way out Jen took Batz keys and later that night she returns to his place to further investigate, documenting her findings on a video camera. But things nearly turn sour when Batz returns home unexpectedly with a prostitute, Jen hides in a closet and hears Batz try to ask for some understanding with his ‘issues’. The prostitute takes this in her stride, but once the pork python has been released it IMMEDIATELY goes in for the kill, with a pleasure packed punch thats so powerful it causes the woman to become locked into a constant powerful orgasm. Jen is practically in love at this point and when the prostitute doesnt come down off the orgasm after an hour of Batz not even touching her, he decides he’s got to get rid of her and takes her to a nearby alleyway to ditch her off, Jen follows and films the womans pained orgasmic screams and later takes it home for a little…onanism.

And it’s here really that we enter our final act, as Batz and his dingus begin to seriously fall out and Jen decides that Batz dick is the reincarnation of “God”, she plans to confront him the next night and satisfy her cravings once and for all…however, before she can, Batz Penis decides it’s better off without him and severs ties…quite literally! In a spunky finale that…well I have a strong constitution and even I was somewhat agog by what I saw, Will Jen get her shag? Will Batz get to lead a normal non horny life? And…how did the penis severe itself from Batz and not cause Batz to bleed out in the process? hmm…Well all this and more will be answered if you check out “Bad Biology”

And, honestly; colour me impressed with this thing. It would be WAY too easy to just write this thing off as exploitation fodder and nothing more, but what we have here is a GENUINELY surprising sharp piece of cinema disguised as disposable exploitation fodder. Its kind of hard really to get a clock on the script for this thing because, the vast majority of it generally revolves and resolves around the line “And then they fuck”. In a lesser film I’d have berated the script for its overeliance on sex to sell the movie, but…given that the whole PLOT of this thing is “Woman who’s chronically aroused meets a man with a sentient penis who can lock people into permanent orgasms” I think it would be a bit glib of me to have come away from this thing slamming it for being TOO overtly sexual.

I could pick on it if it were trying to be porn in horrors clothing, but what surprised me really was just how well the comedy elements of this script were handled. Don’t get me wrong, this is a bleak script, its a lot of frustrated, ill and sad people desperately trying to find closure one way or another, but theres a jet black streak of comedy running right through this thing that caught me off guard on multiple occasions and seldom if ever disappointed. The actual writing and dialogue for this film is WAY better than it deserves to be, with decently structured fluid and charismatic lines that gave pathos when required but also hit the perfect tone of humour.

The majority of the film is communicated visually or via monologues, so it’s kind of hard to comment on the script beyond the dialogue that is written, especially given that so much of the time is given up to fucking. But what I can say is the script has a nippy pacing, seldom feels sluggish and does have a clear 3 act structure with decent transitions between the three, even if those three acts are a little lopsided (Personally I think the second act is a little too long, and the third act a little too short)

I also have to say, the 3rd act, while DEFINITELY having a surprising ending that caught me off g rd, does get a little repetitive. With shots of Batz Sentient penis effectivley just going room to room and assaulting women over and over again, by the 3rd time it happened on screen I reckoned I’d seen everything I needed to see, that being said given the film clocks in at an hour and 25 minutes or so, I think had they done the “proper” option of just showing a quick cut montage of the dick going from apartment to apartment in a nice tight snappy edited package, the film would have probably just dipped under running time. It’s padding, but I guess it serves it’s purpose…

Thats another problem with the script, despite the sharp dialogue and “Unique” plot structuring. There is a LOT of padding fleshing out those acts to get it over runtime. The sex scenes always seem to run for just a little bit longer than necessary which, I can see the argument being made that these scenes ARE supposed to be uncomfortable and a bit awkward, they’re SUPPOSED to show the desperation of sex addiction and how it’s not a glossy romantic experience but rather, one of desperate necessity. While its all well and good trying to put that message across, I still feel like it went a bit TOO hard on drilling that message in (probably in an attempt to get the runtime up).

Sex aside, theres also just generic padding here, Jen exploring Batz house is protracted to the point that I nearly started to lose focus, scenes where Batz argues with the residents committee for 5 minutes or so for no particular reason, I mean…the association never turn up again, Batz doesnt do anything to fix his house, it just seems like a scene designed to waste time and get a couple of knob jokes in while they’re at it. Scenes of the vagina mask shoot just roll on and on with no solid end in sight.

It reminded me a bit of the review I wrote for “Final Scream” where I argued that Decoteau used “Pinch an inch” techniques, lingering on shots *slightly* longer than needed to quite literally pinch a minute or two here and there across the whole movies runtime juuuuust to nudge into a sellable feature length format. it’s unfortunately present here, which did rather diminish the experience for me. But on the whole, this is a very charged, dirty and daring production that I feel more or less hits the spot for me more than it misses, even if it does show signs of struggling to keep afloat at times.

The film was Co-written by R.A the Rugged Man, who…to the best of my knowledge is a rapper, he’s mainly an actor and producer, with most of his credits being towards his own music videos, this isnt his only writing credit, but it is his only feature credit. The film was directed and co-written by Frank Henenlotter, a marvel of the B-movie horror scene. While he’s not exactly hitting Corman numbers on the credits front, the 10 feature directing credits and 9 writing credits he DOES have across a near 50 year career in movie making are some of the most challenging and diverse exploitation pics to come out of that decade. Im not saying he’s never made a bad movie, Im just saying I have yet to see a Henenlotter flick i’ve actively disliked.

And on the direction front, we have a fairly professional looking low to mid budget shoot on our hands here, Henenlotters passion for bright pastel colours and practical effects shots contrasting with dank and grungy envionments really shines through in this film, only hear, I’d argue we’re actually seeing his type of stylisation at it’s most extreme end of the wedge with locations like Batz’s house looking positively exemplary of 2000’s grunge culture seriously these sets look like something out of the Saw movies, and contrasting that we just have those subtle splashes of colour here and there to really add distinction, from Jens powder pink sweater in the opening moments of the film, to the “Brain damage” blue hue of the steroids Batz injects himself with, to even more subtle things like the wig colours used on the models in studio shoots.

His management of the sequence structure is pretty exemplary, theres never a moment where I felt sequences lacked coherency and I feel that he’s been able to work with each aspect of the production to deliver a crafted package that, while definitely not to everyone’s taste, was absolutely to mine. A feat made all the more impressive when you realise that, at the time of filming, Henenlotter was battling Cancer and was quite literally attending radiotherapy sessions first thing in the morning, then heading to set for 9am to film for a full day. Which is just…my GOD the mans a machine. That’s passion to the art right there. In fact; the only issue I could actually really pull up is the direction of the cast.

Now; im not referring to the primary cast here. Our leading man and lady do a damn fine job. But theres just something not quite right about the supporting cast in this feature, they seem quite fixed to the spot, a lot of the performances come across as a bit porny (likely due to the fact they’re adult performers) and even when it looks like they’ve been given scope to improvise, they just…dont really do what i’d have expected a supporting cast to do. If your told to possibly improvise a piece in a scene, I’d have expected them to move about, maybe grab a prop and use it, possibly even think about a good quip or something to help give that scene a bit of emphasis. But instead whenever those moments do arise, theyl generally just gurn. Or will say something ultra generic or not really relevant to the plot at all. It’s the weakest aspect of the direction and I feel it probably could have been a lot tighter.

On the cine front, what we have here is largely very impressive, shot compositions follow the rule of thirds, it looks professional and there’s a nice attention to detail for most of the films runtime in creating a product that has that extra level of polish and sheen. Sequences have a decent amount of cuts and shot types within them to allow for an engaging viewing experience that doesn’t feel dithered and it’s nice to see some experimentation here with a mixture of digital and practical effects that don’t oversaturate the cines key compositional structures. Its just a really lovely piece of work and again, better than I could have expected.

There are a few things thought that did fall a bit flat for me personally, some scenes do feel a bit rushed on lighting and shot choices. The scene with the topless vagina faced women just looked a bit off grade with the rest of the film. It felt like there hadn’t been much thought put into how these scenes could be best shot, so they just did it freehand and hoped that people would mistake it as a stylistic choice. The whole film is bathed in a sickly warm yellowish light which really is the key feature of the grade, but that one scene in particular (presumably because of the wall colours and lack of structured lighting) just looked very pale and clinical against the rest of the films grade, which wouldn’t have been that big of an issue had it been a throwaway scene, but it’s the point where our main characters meet for the first time, which draws attention to just how out of sorts it feels against the rest of the edit.

Theres some minor lighting issues as well which result in a hit and miss experience, when the lighting is done well its exemplary and really helps give the film a BIG quality boost, particularly the chiaroscuro sections. But theres just some moments in this film where either the shot wasn’t quite angled right, or the lighting choices weren’t quite 100% where it just looks a bit rubbish in my opinion. There was one sex scene in particular where the shot was framed with Jen and a guy having sex in the middle of the shot, with heavy shadowy vignetting flanking the left and right of the frame and just this…column of chiascuro light beaming right down the middle of the frame, had the angle or colour of the light been slightly different it might have worked better, but what was presented…just looked quite ugly to me.

Thats another minor issue, some of the sex scenes themselves. I know they’re not supposed to be erotic (or at least, eroticism is a secondary to the desperation) but some of the scenes are just framed awkwardly, and not in such a way thats supposed to draw emphasis to Jen or Batz situation, they’re done in such a way that looks like it was the only place the camera could go to get the shot, or like there was something in the frame they didnt want seen. And as a result a handful of these scenes really drop in professional quality…in my opinion at least.

Performance wise, as mentioned this film belongs to Charlee Danielson and Anthony Sneed as Jen and Batz respectively. While their deliveries performance wise waver eeeeever so slightly into the cringy at times (how much of that is the performance and how much is the dialogue is up for debate) I felt they were two of the best people for these roles, they do their best to sell you on their characters and I think by the end of the film I was more or less won over by them. And given how much of the film is softcore porn, it was SUPER important that they get these roles right in terms of character and style. Which…im happy to say, to me? They aced it.

The supporting cast…not so much, as mentioned previously it’s a bit porny in style, due to all the adult performers involved in it. But that means you have this grungy, quite well thought out script about addiction, loss and love that ends up ultimately being hindered by lackluster supporting performances that just stops it from ever really coming into its own as a production. The extras are predominently bolted to the spot, do their lines in short bursts (presumably because they cant remember their lines) and go no further than enter stage/exit stage physical instructions…occasionally while holding a prop. So yeh…big disappointment there in my opinion.

And finally; the soundtrack; and the biggest problem this film has from a technical standpoint is the audio mix. I don’t know if it’s just the way the DVD I have has been authored or if it was just mixed this way, but the character dialogue, which is mumbly to begin with, has been mixed either only *Slightly* higher than the backing music, or equal to it. Which means you have mumbly audio I can bearly hear over the score. AND theres no subtitle options…so…there was a lot of pausing, rewinding and replaying this movie with the volume cranked right up to try and make out what was being said. Which was irritating and I feel kind of let the film down a bit, because if I have to keep stopping the movie to figure out what’s being said, it can really take you out of the moment for the broader picture.

The score itself is generic as balls too. If you’ve ever watched a full moon features production from 1997 onwards, you’ve heard the score for this movie. Theres just a distinct tone and style to Full moon scores that isnt really present in other films or stock music. And given Henenlotter and Band move in the same circles, it wouldnt surprise me if the music was either composed by or half inched by someone who’d done work for full moon in the past. It’s by the numbers, dead behind the eyes, “fills the void” type fodder which again, I think only really lets down what could have been a much more interesting auditry experience.

Given Henenlotters condition during the making of this film I think Bad Biology is an absolute miracle. this shouldn’t work as a film. But the script has tight and interesting writing, the main cast play their roles with sincerity and a tone that worked for me. The direction and cine largely looks great all things considered (ESPECIALLY since the thing was shot on 16mm offcuts and short ends…which could have ended VERY badly)

That doesnt however save it from having a few dings on the quality along the way, its a bit padded, some scenes fall a bit flat in terms of composition, the audio quality is mixed to poor and in my opinion some of the lighting choices are questionable. On the whole though? Theres WAY more to love with this thing than loath and i’d absolutely recommend it if you can get your hands on it, if you love Henenlotters other better known works, this is absolutely the next level of that. If your a horror fan, I think you’ll enjoy the gorefactor and even if your just a broad exploitation aficionado I think you’ll dig this (though maybe wish things were a *BIT* more explicit.) all I know is, it really got me hoping Henenlotter gets back to fiction film making some day, as i’d love to see what he could come up with next.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/bad-biology/1/

Day of the Panther is a 1988 Ozsploitation/Martial Arts/Action movie that reminded me once again of exactly why I started his channel and why I love doing what I do. Because; y’see. Day of the Panther is arguably one of the balmiest action productions i’ve encountered in a good while. And if you havent seen this movie, you REALLY need to change that as soon as possible.

Its actual production was almost as strange as the film, the entire concept of the movie was to create a vehicle for martial artist turned actor Edward John Stazak. Initially pitched as a single movie, plans quickly expanded to become a multi picture deal with Stazak taking on the role of a “cooler than thou” charismatic martial arts “Panther”. “Day of the Panther” and its equal/sequel “Strike of the Panther” were both shot back to back through 1987 and after the first few days of production the director (for whom this project was their first dallience into feature films) had to be replaced by a more experienced film director Brian Trenchard Smith. Production was turbulent to say the least, but both films were completed and released in 1988 across a 12 month window. And the results are…well. This films basically “Best of the Best 2” by way of “Garth Marenghis Darkplace”.

We open in Hong Kong and after a few sweeping cross fades of the city, we arrive at the “Temple of the Panthers” the main headquarters for the order of the “Panthers” an ancient secret organisation created to preserve good morals and positive societal standings, members are selected both for their incredible strength, agility and martial artistry. But also for their Zen like calm and dedication to a positive mentality.

Its here we’re introduced to Jason Blade (Seriously, take a shot everytime they say his name, you WILL be paraletic by the 2nd act) and accompanying him is his partner in fighting the tyrannies of crime and evil Linda Anderson. We’re also introduced via narration to one William Anderson, Lindas father, who explains that he’s spent his life working under the order of the Panther and today is a momentus day for two reasons. It’s his final day in the position of an “Official” Panther before he retires. But it’s also the day that Jason and Linda take their final test for initiation INTO the order. And with a moody and bizarre “Final test” in which the pair must brand themselves with the “Seal of the Panther” Both Jason and Linda are in and ready to fight the good fight!

While on foot patrol around the city they overhear what sounds like a dodgy deal taking place, $500k in exchange for a large amount of Heroin. The pair sneak into the meeting, take some photos of the guilty parties and head out to take the photos to the authorities when they’re spotted by one of the guards and a full scale turf war erupts as one faction thinks the other faction has double crossed them. Jason and Linda manage to make it out of the carnage and hop in a car where they race to the nearest airport.

Linda catches a flight out of Hong Kong to Perth to follow up on something one of the gang members mentioned in passing during the meeting and Jason hangs back in Hong kong to tie a few things off with the hopes of joining her. Before he can though, Linda calls Jason to say that she’s found out where the heroins being stored and processed and that she wants to go down there to get more evidence and maybe even take out the operation entirely. Jason advises hanging back and that he’ll be with her in a few hours then they can then go together. Lindas impatient though and abruptly hangs up on him.

Jason gets worried by this and pretty much races to the airport to go and catch up with Linda before she gets herself into serious trouble. Linda meanwhile’s already gone down to the site and begins staking it out, it doesnt take long for her to be spotted by guards patrolling the facility (the Panthers are supposed to be stealthy…jesus.) and a prolonged Chase and fight sequence breaks out in which Linda is chased by guys wearing halloween masks brandishing weapony, she goes across two facilities and a highway fighting these guys and just about manages to defeat them…until she runs into Baxter, the lead henchman of the person shipping the drugs, who beats the crap out of her before flat out murdering her.

Jason arrives in perth and is almost immediately clocked by our comic relief for this movie, two bumbling cops who’ve caught wind that Jason was heading in and have decided to stake him out after news of the full blown turf war in hong kong made its way to australia and Jasons been tied directly to it as a main suspect. They believe it was HIM who was organising the drug deals and murdering people and they fully intend to take him in…one bumbling fuck up at a time.

Jason gets to his hotel, books in and recieves a call informing him of Lindas murder. And naturally; he’s devastated. The police however immediately assume Jasons behind it and add it to his imaginary charge sheet. Jason decides to head over to a small temple in some backwoods where William is now residing in peaceful retirement. The pair connect and express sadness over Lindas death. During this time, Jason is introduced to Williams Niece Gemma and through them we also learn about our main villain for this film, one Damian Zukor. A man who’s pretty much taken over Perth, with operations in illegal gambling rackets, drug smuggling, bribery, you name it, Damians into it. He owns most of the police force, a fair few of the judges in the city and was responsible for the drug deal in hong kong …basically if Damian has a problem with you, he doesnt.

So! Jason tries to do the best thing he can given the situation, he rocks up at a boat showroom on the local marina where he knows Damian’s hanging out and asks him point blank if he can have a job on his naughty illegal operations business. Damien responds by sending a load of his thugs to kick his arse, but Jason beats them up while practically yawning, before re-asking Damien for a job before giving him his home address and then wandering off back to his hotel.

After the fight Jason decides to go and chill in the hotel swimming pool and spots Gemma again, the pair get a little hot and heavy on the words front before our bumbling cops arrest Jason and take him to the station on the charge of beating up all those blokes down at the marina and possibly murder too (it’s not made all that clear) ANYWAY; while down at the station the chief takes Jason to one side and basically tells him he knew that him and Linda were “special ops”, that he knows Jason didnt murder her, but he warns him against exploding Damiens activities as it’s a beyond dangerous business and better cops have tried and failed to nail him. Jason doubles down saying he’s asked Damien for a job and is basically just waiting for the phonecall. Jason leaves, and shortly thereafter the chief informs the cops to perform a 24 hour trail on him. He doesn’t want Jason out of sight.

Later, Jason gets back to the hotel and receives a phonecall from Damien, he’s prepared a boat for him, and would like Jason to attend a party. Jason gets over there and Damien more formally introduces himself (all the while the cops are trailing him poorly in a lil putt putt boat) Up front, Damien tells Jason that if he crosses him in ANY way shape or form, he’s dead… He offers him a “delivery” job. He’s to take a package to a drop off point and exchange it for a briefcase, the parcel contains heroin, the suitcase contains $500k. Jason heads over there only to discover its an ambush and the party he was supposed to be trading with attack him. Jason beats them up and escapes the building but drops the package. Which the cops then find and take back to the station as evidence that Jason’s drug smuggling! Only…it’s not drugs. It’s barely even flour.

Jason at this point realises Damiens set him up, so he heads back to Damiens house beating up anyone along the way who tries to stop him. Damien pretends his attempt to murder Jason was REALLY just a test to see how he’d handle a stressful situation. Which he passed! (yeh right…) anyway; as a reward for passing the “We didnt get to murder you” challenge Damien pairs Jason up with Baxter who is suspicious as FUCK about Jason and tells the pair they’ll be working together making deliveries and checking on the operations. Damien then heads off to go get laid…no really.

Anyway…blah blah blah extended gym sequence…blah blah blah blah blah Gemma asks Jason out…blah blah blah Jason cant because he’s working that night, and then he pretty much heads out to meet up with Baxter. And it’s here that the film really sets up it’s final act as the pair head to an amphitheatre that Damien owns for reasons that arnt immediately explicit. Baxter heads down to under the stage of the theatre and emerges with a mysterious suitcase and after some probing Jason becomes convinced that the drugs are either being made or stored there. That night Jason tells William and Gemma what he saw and they both inform him that the Amphitheater is one of Damiens biggest money spinners. He holds an annual gladiatorial tournament in which he invites a hundred or so contestants to fight it out to see who the “best of the best” is. William was invited in previous years, but declined. And for the last three years Baxter has won the tournament.

Thats because the tournament is rigged. Yes on top of it being a powerhouse for illegal gambling. Damien has been fixing fights and rigging his own tourny in order to increase his capital substantially. And this year he wants Jason to take part and beat Baxter (or rather…have Baxter throw the fight) to shock the gamblers and make maximum profits on his earnings. And…with that we enter our 3rd act, as Jason goes to the cops to tell them what he knows, but without concrete evidence they’re powerless to help him, leaving Jason to summon the panther within to save the day! In a thrilling silly finale! Will Baxter figure out Jasons true identity and take him out before he spoils all the fun!? Will Jason Blade find someone stronger than Jason Blade to fight and kill Jason Blade!? (Jason Blade!) And will the bumbling cops ACTUALLY get closure? Or will they just be forgotten about in the 2nd act? All this and more will be answered if you check out. “Day of the Panther”.

And honestly? I just had WAY too much fun with this one. Its got the perfect balance of weird and wonderful moments with solid structuring behind it to produce a movie that works as a technical piece, but is absolutely barking mad in terms of what it’s trying to tell.

The script is actually relatively simple. Guy infiltrates crime syndicate to take it down from the inside in vengeance for murdering his partner is one of the most generic action movie tropes the genre has produced. And because of that, with these kinds of movies, i’m more inclined to judge them on their execution rather than their originality. And man, this film executes the trope in a way thats just…PERFECT for the weird and cult aficionado in me. Theres a clean 3 act structure with nice smooth transitions between the acts, the pacing is breakneck right up to the 3rd act where it does start to wobble a *little* bit and begins to struggle with padding. But it sticks the landing for me and ultimately delivers an absolutely wild ride.

The film basically has 2 modes, serious action fodder and “Uneasy comedy” and it seems to violently flick back and forth between the two at random never *quite* settling on what it wants to be, and in some cases unintentionally the two cross over resulting in serious scenes that LITERALLY feel like they’ve been written and read like lines from Garth Marenghi. Some critics would scold the film for lack of clear vision in the script, they’d admonish the film for not “Picking a lane” but y’know what? It works, it creates a film that mixes heavy topics and high kicking action with moments that border on loony toons level comedy. The shot that sticks in my mind is the scene when Linda goes to explore the warehouse and, for NO reason at all they have her EXPLODE through a wooden wall to fight the baddy. She wasnt even NEAR a wooden wall, but, they wanted her to have a cool action shot and BY GOD. they’re gonna give her a cool action shot.

And that really is this movie tonally to a tee. It’s not about making sense ALL the time. It’s not about coherency (though, they do take care to not go COMPLETELY off the rails) it’s about telling a story. But not shying away from going completely batshit if they feel it’s possible to get away with it. And I love this film for that.

While the opening act is an absolute thrillride of high kicking action, bumbling incompetence and decent character and plot developement, and the second act is a slow burning, but rewarding character growth session intercut with some of that pounding action punch to remind us that this IS an action movie, my only gripe here really lies with the 3rd act. Which does seem to lose its way a little bit before ultimately just about managing to pull it back for the closer. While padding is present in the first 2 acts, it’s non intrusive, it’s not there to such an extent that you feel annoyed by the slowdown. In the third act, some of that starts to creep in. part of it is down to the fact it has to resolve both the Jason/Tournament plot line, the Damien being a bastard plot line and the Cops/drug bust plot line…and with the best will in the world, that shit takes time to do. But because this film isnt really clever enough to SHOW rather than tell, it means we do get sucked into longer form conversations that are insightful but do slow it down.

The other issue is that I think they realised if they just went straight to the raid of the theater, that the film would run under by about 10 minutes, so they had to create some subplots. Things like Gemma being kidnapped, Baxter breaking into williams house to look for clues about Jason’s true identity and other scenes that…aren’t exactly blatant padding. But just…weren’t as pacy as before. These two issues combine creating a third act thats gone from floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee to floating like a rock and stinging like…a rock. The endings a little bit open ended as well but…with them shooting “Strike of the panter” back to back with this, they knew a sequel was coming so I guess they kind of felt the need to wrap EVERYTHING up wasnt all that necessary. But as a self contained movie, it did kind of leave me wishing they’d just gone that extra step and properly tied it off…mainly because I don’t think they pick up where they left off in the sequel.

As for the dialogue, its something else, we’re talking fresh out of writing school level complexity. Dialogue that feels like it was written by a teenager. It tries SO hard to be cool and actioney. But because it’s trying SO hard, it just ends up coming across as cringey, awkward lacking ANY kind of distinction because it feels like it was written after someone binged their local video shops action section and when combined with performances that feel like “Fresh out of the gate/first time on camera” deals…Because they are. Well; the results are just spectacular to me. It’s not *quite* Champagne and bullets level weird awkwardness (We’re not in “Adiosy Bela Lugosi” territory JUST yet…) but it’s not far away from it, and that’s the scary part.

All in; barring a bit of a wobbly 3rd act, this film manages to capitalise on what works in its script and has somehow managed the alchemy of making what doesnt work so entertainingly bad that it’s looped back round again and become the main selling point for me. It’s simple, quirky and somehow totally mesmerising. It’s ace.

The script was written by Peter West and David Groom, Peter has 4 writing credits including the 2 panther movies, his last credit was in 2008 and really…he’s more of a stuntman with over 150 credits under his belt in that field. As for David? He has 2 writing credits, one for “Day of the Panther” and one for a film called “Dangerous Game” so quite literally when I say this feels like someones first attempt at writing…well…IT WAS.

The film was directed by Brian Trenchard Smith who was drafted in within the first couple of days of production after the initial director Peter West who, again had limited experience in the field, found himself struggling to maintain the set. Brian stepped in and basically had to gut the project, rebuild it and shoot on the fly saying, and I quote “If they didnt it’d be like pouring good money after bad money” He’d more than cut his teeth in the field by this point with 62 directing credits to his name as of the time of recording with titles including “Dead End Drive in”, “Turkey Shoot” and…”Leprachaun 4”…I mean…I’d say those titles went against him…but given the script, this was the best possible scenario.

Because the direction is PUMPED UP. We’re talking stylised, fast paced martial arts tomfoolery almost IMMEDIATLEY off the bat and from there it just keeps building and building until it quite literally doesnt have anywhere else to go. This is the perfect example of how, with less you CAN sometimes achieve more IF you have the right people on hand. Look at “The American Ninja 4” as an example, both this film and that one have similar “final fights” but how the directors chose to handle those scenes are night and day quality wise, Ninja 4’s final fight was largely shot wide, the director wanted to focus on the grandness of the scene, on the location, on the army of ninjas which…totally defuses the fact that this is THE FINAL FIGHT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR FOR 80 MINUTES! Almost punctuating the fact the director knew the scene wasnt much cop, they put a random explosion in there for what I can only assume was “Banter”.

Day of the Panthers final fight is a MUCH tighter experience, Brian gets RIGHT up into the action working closely with the cast on the choreography and with the cinematographers to deliver a fast moving, layered experience that focuses less on the location and more on seeing our characters FINALLY duke it out good and proper. Hell Brian seems to be having SO much fun with it he even starts weaving subplots into the finale, like William tracking Damien and Gemma avoiding recapture.

It’s clear Brian was experienced at what he was doing and the end result is a product that feels effortlessly confident in it’s ability to make something look and feel FUN. which I really have a lot of time for honestly. Even the slower more conversational scenes don’t feel too bad, like they could be better. But I didnt clockwatch at all for this entire film. Which I see as an absolute bonus here.

The fight choreography itself is a solid endeavour too, we run with soft contact and masked shots for the most part, it’s not the most mindblowing choreography in the world (though it absolutely has it’s moments) but its just a rock solid piece of work. Theres rarely any moments where the lack of focus on the direction means contact shots get missed. Weaponry gets implemented periodically with mixed to positive results and brian uses the direction to make every toss, tumble and smash FEEL weighty! You arnt just watching someone leap through a window, Brians work makes you FEEL like you’ve just leapt through a window. Honestly it’s a stunning piece of work.

On the cine front, Im a bit torn honestly. While shots do follow traditional compositional rules for shooting, and here IS some experimentation present, not to mention that there are even just some nice shot types like pans and tracking shots and crash zooms in play here. It does come across as somewhat lacking… That’s by NO means saying that this is an ugly film…I just, had moments here where I didnt get on with the creative decisions. Particularly with the conversational scenes where it would quite often be a 2 camera set up. A mid wide cutting to close ups of whoever was talking, often with under dressed sets. I mean; It does the job, but it just…felt a bit lifeless in places. Kind of, going through the motions so we could get back to the punching.

When the cine here is good, its border iconic, but a lack of consideration for the slower scenes expose a weakness here. Which is only enhanced by a choice to light the film largely using natural light with the occasional bit of filler to back up darker locations. The temple scene in the opening of the film is gorgeous with warm set lights, torch light and ambient darkness being used well. But night shots are a bit bland, shots in offices or on location really lack that level of pop and the whole thing just kind of feels…lacking. Maybe with a more stylised colour grade or just a bit more experimentation with coloured lighting gels would have sorted this, but yeh…Id say the cine was the weakest element of this production.

Performance wise, it’s bad in all the right ways. This is low BUDGET ozsploitation. LOW BUDGET OZPLOITATION starring a core cast that, at this point in time hadnt really done a lot. Which means a LOT of the performances only really have two modes. Muted, and muted but LOUDER. It’s quite the spectacle because, given the dialogue reads like someones college drama piece on the dialogue front. To see these australians fucking TEAR through the script with all the bluntness of a train cutting through rice paper is just…phenominal. It only enhances the ropey dialogue to a higher degree. To a point where its just. Hilarious and endearing to sit through. That goes pretty much for the entire cast. They’re all ridiculous and I love them all dearly for opting into this big dumb goofy action movie.

Edward John Stazak as Jason is astounding. Take that blunt dialogue and marry it up to some genuinely impressive martial artistry and a TOTAL lack of physical performance in any capacity outside of that very impressive martial artistry and you have a frankly bizarre performance thats two parts muted to one part John Travolta in Saturday night fever. Its astounding honestly.

Michael Carman is decent enough as Damien Zukor in this, he chooses to play the role quiet and confident which I think suits the tone perfectly. He’s hammy at times which is always nice to see in these kind of action flicks. I think he was a pretty solid choice honestly, as was James Richards as Damiens “Jaws” style henchman “Baxter” hes a strong silent muscle type, who despite actually having a lot of dialogue here, doenst actually feel like he gets all that much to actually say…which I found odd…in either case our trio of headliners suit this kind of fillm down to the ground and I absolutely loved them in this.

And finally; the soundtrack and my god this thing would give “Miami Connection” a run for its money. It’s synthy rocky and at times hair metally goodness that absolutely fits the bill for a film like this and the sooner they put the score out on download and vinyl the better quite frankly. It’s obscenely good for a film of this calibre. MUCH better than this movie deserved and I loved it loved it loved it!

Day of the Panther was released in the UK direct to video in rental shops in 1988 by Guild home video, it arrived on dvd courtesy of LLC in a “dumped on disc” format in either 2003 or 2004 and thats pretty much the end of the road for it, Umbrella entertainment released both “Day” and “Strike” of the panther as a double feature release on Bluray in australia in 2019, but…I don’t know if its out of print or what…but they want nearly £30 for it, with postage its over £30 which is WAY too much for a release like this…£20? And we’re in business..but £30 is way too rich for my blood. That being said if any boutique lables (Vinegar Syndrom, 101 Films Im looking your way) wanted to nab this for a deluxe release at a reasonable price. I think it’d be a day one purchase for me. It’s just…SO good.

I loved “Day of the Panther” it’s cheap, cheerful, eccentric and just downright awesome in places. While the 3rd act wobbles a bit and there are a few minor issues on the cine front here and there. This is a movie I can wholeheartedly recommend and I cant WAIT to check out “Stike of the panter” at the next available opportunity. GO FIND THIS FILM. if you havent seen it your wasting your time on inferior action movies. HIGHLY recommended and definitely worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/day-of-the-panther/2/

1976’s “Gone with the Pope” (originally titled “Kiss the Ring” OOH ERR) the former, more or less went without a hitch when it came to filming…it was afterwards that was the problem…y’see, in post; the money kinda sorta…ran out. Meaning the film remained unfinished and sat in storage for the best part of 34 years.

That is until the early 2000’s when Grindhouse releasing contacted the estate of Duke Mitchell to enquire about a release of “Massacre Mafia Style” but they were unable to locate the materials required for a restoration, the parties got talking and it was revealed that the footage for “Gone with the pope” was all still sat in a locker alongside a load of junk. Grindhouse offered to complete the film and release it and well…the rest they say is history.

It wasnt an easy restoration, What was found were all the original negatives (basically the raw footage) and a rough assembly cut that was missing reels 9 through 13 of 13. The audio was in various states of condition because Duke had fired his sound recordist early into the production because he didnt want to pay him and there wasnt even really a script to speak of. In place of a script there were notes, hundreds and hundreds of notes, scattered across notebooks, scraps of paper, envelopes and even napkins. It was…a mess to put back together. BUT! In 2010 they did just that, releasing via a swanky premier in Las vegas and then a DVD release shortly after in 2015. Bizarrely on the day of the premier an ACTUAL attempt to kidnap the Pope took place…once again proving that the universe DEFINITELY has a sense of humour… So; after 34 years. Was it worth the wait?

Well, the film follows Duke as Paul, a good guy in with the mafia currently behind bars, but due for release. On the outside some members of the mob discuss a “Situation” that they need sorting. They have 3 fellers in vegas and 4 in LA who have become a bit of a “problem”, and they need taking out of the picture. They cant think of anyone more professional than Paul to jump on it, So; when he gets out of jail he promises to set himself up ready to take care of some of his fellow inmates on their release and then heads out to reconnect with an old flame and it’s here that the offer gets made. $100k to whack 7 people in two states at the same time, any means necessary as long as no one can pin it on them.

Paul reluctantly agrees and heads out to Vegas to see his associate Georgiou, at first he has a spot of trouble finding him, but after snooping around the casino floors he eventually gets pointed in the right direction, Gorgieous not been doing so well as of late, but soon perks up when the offer of a bit of fun and 50k lands on his lap for taking out the 3 guys in Vegas. The plan is…a little bit of a stretch truth be told. Paul reckons the best way to avoid going back to jail and to get away with the whacking scott free is to get Georgiou to kill the 3 guys in vegas at the EXACT same time he kills the 4 guys in LA. with his arguement being “HOW CAN THEY PIN THE MURDERS ON ME! I CANT BE IN TWO STATES AT THE SAME TIME!”

Look, I don’t get it either, but the plan goes ahead and seemingly happens without a hitch, Paul gets away, splits the 100k evenly between him and Georgiou and heads back to spend some time with his partner. Later, the friends he promised to take care of get released and after a wild night to celebrate down at a local bar where they pick up a prostitute, pay her $400 and then don’t really do anything with her except be PHENOMINALLY Racist. Paul begins scheming for his biggest plan yet.

He asks his partner if he can borrow her late husbands boat, on the grounds of his friends being SO depressed and messed up that he wants to take them away from the city for a couple of months to clear their heads and set them on the straight and narrow. She agrees and Paul rounds up the guys, up’s anchor and they set sail. Initially planning to cruise around the coast of morocco.

What ends up happening however is they overshoot slightly and end up in Rome, and its hear that Paul reveals the REAL reason they’ve set sail in the first place. They’re going to kidnap the pope…stop laughing…they’re serious! The plan is to kidnap the pope and hold him to ransom, initially Paul wants to charge every Catholic $1 but when his friends say thats a bit excessive he revises it down to a mere 50 cents per catholic for the popes safe return.

His friends think he’s insane but Pauls deadly serious, and we get to see his plan roll out in real time. First, he goes to a priest responsible for the popes bookings while disguised as a priest, he initially requests an audience with the pope for him and his priest friends on behalf of a millionaire who’s gravely ill. The request is met with a polite “No.” at first, but when Paul drops $50k on the desk and once again reiterates that his millionaire is VERY generous and would be willing to donate a LOT more than whats been presented there to various charities if they’ll reconsider. Well, the priest re-assesses the situation.

Then for some reason, the film has what can only be described as a stroke and we’re thrust into a completely random 5-10 minute sequence (NOT shot in rome) in which Paul sees an overweight woman with a dog walking around, he talks to her, gets her to go back to the apartment where the guys are staying, he gets her to strip almost completely naked, PAUL then strips down to his underware and the two of them get into bed with one of the guys who’s also sleeping in his underware and a vest. Some kind of BIZZARE benny hill style threesomey play about happens and then, it’s like the film realises it’s gone a bit mad, and just…randomly decides to get back in to the plot.

So…it’s the day of the audience with the pope, the gang all slowly filter in, Pauls the last one through the door and on greeting the pope whispers to him to follow him and the guys into a back room briefly, before showing him a handgun in his jacket to prove he’s not bluffing. The gang take the pope into a dark backroom, strip him, and get one of the gang to swap clothes with him creating a pretty decent papel lookalike (often known as a pippin) this is all getting a bit “Golden Cleric Award” so to wrap up, they send the fake pope back to the audience session, while they sneak the real pope out the back. They get on the boat and start heading back to international waters, as the news breaks over the radio that the fake popes been exposed! And the heist is officially on, but as the boat trip continues, Paul becomes increasingly jittery and the pope begins to get the other cons to open up a bit more leading to a sense of uncertainty about the future…in a holy hell of a finale, Will the Paul get his tithe? Will the pope convert the cons!? And seriously, what was with that overweight woman sequence? Like…im pretty sure I didnt imagine it, its going to haunt me. What was its purpose, why is it there?..we may never truely know. Anyway; all this and more is available if you check out “Gone with the pope”.

And honestly, this ones a bit of an awkward one, we’re dealing with a movie that wasnt completed where the last 5 reels of the roughest assembly had long gone missing and a lot of the 3rd act had to be “guessed” at by the distributors in order to reassemble it into an order that at least kinda sorta made sense. But because this DEFINITELY didnt have a script (or at least, theres little to no evidence of a script) what we’re left with is really more a series of happenings. Indeed throughout filming for this it was noted that Duke would basically get an idea, roughly sketch it down on whatever he had to hand, shoot it, and keep rolling. So who knows if the movie was ever even really fully finished. Where this film ends could have literally been the middle of the 2nd act of this papel epic.

Because of the lack of a script I can only really go on what I visually see as a storytelling medium, and what there is is a pretty decent 3 act structure with clean transitions between those acts thats bogged down with a LOT of scene setting and padding. Particularly in the sections around vegas and the scenes in rome. I know they wanted to push that this was DEFINITELY Las Vegas and Rome. but they went way WAY overboard as we get WAY too many sequences of casinos, neon lit streets and almost painfully long lounge acts that are “Passable” at best. And the rome stuff was filmed by an external team, they didnt even film for that long IN rome but they sure as hell make sure you see every spire of every catholic cathedral they could point their lens at.

Inevitably with it being a reconstruction job without a script, using whatever footage they had there’s had to be a LOT of intense editing to try and make this thing work, but even with that being the case, this is unfinished…and as such there are a fair few plot inconsistencies, some scenes where the guys are just shooting the shit seem to only be in here for inclusions sake rather than having any driving force on the narrative, there’s a lot of guess work in the running order and, while it all kind of makes sense more or less. Even when cut together in a sensical order, its still a fairly incoherent first act that seems almost disjointed from the rest of the movie. Like…literally the only reason the first act happens is to introduce us to Paul and to give the audience a reason why Paul can afford to wave around $50k it has no connection to the rest of the film otherwise.

And while I wont spoil the ending of the film. What I will say is it takes a COMPLETELY out of left field turn that makes ZERO sense and ends things on something resembling a paranormal experience. OPEN ENDED as well, thus rendering the previous hour and 22 minutes utterly baffling in terms of how we ended up here. Honestly I felt it was a bit of a cop out, but I was so impressed with the BALLS of this movie to straight up be like “Y’know this mafia movie you’ve been watching for the last 82 minutes BAM we’re etherial now.” like…jesus…I couldnt help but laugh.

Equally; as most of the “notes” were largely written on driftwood Duke happened to have lying around, most of the film has improvised dialogue, Im assuming they went for the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” approach of having a broad idea of what was required within the scene and then they pretty much let loose with whatever they could think of in order to get the scene to the end point. Sometimes it works and you get genuinely harrowing and wonderful little moments of inspiration, other times it’s incoherent dryness that sounds like the ramblings of someone who’s been drinking neat scotch from the bottle since 7am. On the whole though I’d say it works more than it doesn’t and even the worst swing and a miss on the improv front is entertaining even if that wasn’t the intention.

The script was both Written and Directed by Duke Mitchell, who I forgot to mention also had success on the lounge and club circuit! Thats right guys and gals this man was a triple threat! He could sing, dance AND play some of the best mafiosa you’ve ever seen! He has two writing and directing credits for both this and “Massacre Mafia Style” Unfortunately he passed away in 1981 at the age of 55 after a battle with Lung Cancer. As an extra tidbit of information that I couldnt really fit in anywhere else, this film was predominantly shot over Autumn and Winter 1976, mainly shot on weekends and in a style that would make Ed Wood proud, Duke financed the film by offering to put people in the movie as extras or in minor roles depending on the size of their donation. It was also shot entirely on 35mm short ends and offcuts. Additionally, while 2010 may have been the premier of the “finished” film, it wasnt the first attempt to get someone to pick it back up, as a trailer for the movie was cut together in 1999 to show to distributors with the aim of finding a buyer. Noone picked the film up and the trailer too was all but forgotten until Grindhouse got in touch.

On the direction front, Given it’s largely made up on the spot with no guiding script. Colour me impressed. It may not be a focussed production, but Mitchell here has been able, on barely any cash at all, to produce something that feels like it could be released professionally. Now how much of that is down to Mitchells own work and how much of it has been saved via a savvy editor with modern cutting techniques, I cant say. But whats presented here feels like it’s built off the back of the experiences learnt from “Massacre Mafia Style” and even though it meanders in places. It more often than not looks the part of a post Godfather era picture.

Given the majority of the dialogue is improvised, the cast direction must have been pretty close knit, and assuming Duke got to pick his supporting cast members (and that they wernt just donors who paid the biggest chunks) he must have used his experience working in clubs and on stage in picking people who can handle themselves from an improv standpoint, they may not always come out with gold. But I have to hand it to Mitchell, he knows how to direct a cast to give him what he needs. It’s a tight set of coordinated performances here and seemingly everyone knows vaguely what to say, how to use their sets and where to go for how long and when.

As for the cine. Iiiiits a bit of a minefield honestly, where it’s good it’s phenomenal, with the whacking sequence between L.A and Vegas putting some big budget productions to shame in terms of how the shots are arranged, what shots are used, their composition and their pacing with the musical cues, it looks phenomenal. But, at the end of the day, this was an unfinished production and as such there are some parts of this film that are…less steller I think it’s fair to say.

Some of it’s down to rushed camera work to just get the shot and move on, thats quite prominent in places through this film, there are scenes that look and feel like they were shot for coverage rather than with a specific sequence in mind and as such they fall a bit flat, generally these are wides that just occasionally cut into a head and shoulder shot. It could be they were shot that way for time, it could be that Duke intended to go back and shoot some B-roll or cutaways. But in either case the 21st century editors only had what they could work with. Which does rather let it down a bit.

The other MAJOR issue is that some critical scenes have serious faults with the film, with several notable instances of incredibly soft focus or framing issues. Again; it’s to be assumed that these were noticed on the day and that, had duke had the money, these would have been reshot to make them actually not look like arse. But, unfortunately he didnt, so…these are the only shots we have for those particular scenes. Resulting in a distracting watch to say the least.

On the whole, where the cine works here it works very well, Duke seems to have a real knack of using effective lighting, particularly in club settings where a dank top lit setup with coloured light to offset the shots works its best. Everything has this wonderfully dim and smokey quality to it and quite honestly I really loved the eye for detail in just being able to capture specific details in the cast or the location. It may be a bit ropey due to the lack of reshoots. But even in it’s ropiest moments, it still manages to present a film that really fits the bill and tone a project like this requires.

Perofmance wise; Duke Mitchell IS this movie. His performance as Paul grants him a VERY wide range to work with and he sure as hell uses every inch of screen time to work it, giving a performance that I think is standout for low budget cinema of this age. Its an effortless performance that feels so natural coming from him that, i’d swear he WAS in the mafia given how he’s able to reel out that kind of spiel.

The rest of the cast too are all pretty reasonable. One of the big issues with there not being script is that the characters don’t really get any sense of clear development or arc. As such the performances all kind of feel a bit, in the moment. As in; the cast know their characters and *roughly* what they’re supposed to be like, but whether this is supposed to be happening at the start or end of the film is a total crap shoot. Meaning they cant really develop their characters progressively because they LITERALLY don’t know if what they’re filming in that instance is going to be near the beginning of their story or the end. It means rather than a neat progression. We get clunky gear changes as and when revelations happen. Which can be a bit jarring. Though; their performances all in I would say were more than passable.

And finally! The soundtrack! And its a bit of a mix of old and new as some of the score was already put in place by Duke in ‘76, but some of the film had holes where the score that hadnt yet been decided was intended to go. The result? As much of the original score has been preserved, and where possible, extracts from some of the lounge performances and unused audio cues that were discovered have been reinstated into the film to help keep things nice and smooth. Where there are gaps, Grindhouse have rescored the pieces using bands with similar sounds and feels to the bands in the score already. Im not going to lie, some tracks are more notably modern than others (some have a very distinct Goodfellas/Resevoir dogs slant to them) and in those cases it’s clear to see which were original 70’s pieces and which are new records. But on the whole, the scores delightful, one i’d love to own on vinyl as I think it works as well on it’s own as it does punctuating this film.

I should also note that, despite a warning that the audio quality is a little ropey in places, I honestly didnt really hear anything too offensive (I think my years of working with ropey SOV flicks where the audio was captured via the cast screaming into a bit of sandpaper has permanently lowered my bar for “acceptable audio quality”) but yeh…it wasnt as bad as I’d been led to believe and i’d say at least 95% of the thing is perfectly audible.

Gone with the Pope was released in 2015 on DVD by Grindhouse releasing, this is the version I own and it’s packed with extras including a commentary track, a making of, notes on the restoration, deleted scenes, B-roll footage, footage from the premier and much much more. This film also got released again by grindhouse in 2019 on bluray as part of the “Duke Mitchell collection” bundled up with “Massacre Mafia Style” and honestly; there isnt much more to say about it beyond that. It’s just a good solid release that I think really deserves a deep dive should you decide to pick this up.

Is Gone with the pope a hidden masterpiece that we totally lost out on? well…I wouldnt go that far. But i’d absolutely say it was worth picking up. What we have here is a movie that, probably would have been overlooked in it’s time, but having been rediscovered and restored using more modern film editing techniques, has yielded something that I feel, despite it’s flaws is quite enjoyable. Yes some shots are a bit ropey, yes some of the dialogues a bit questionable and stilted and yes, the total lack of reshoots or a script does make this film wander a bit, ultimately leading to an ending that does rather feel like a frying pan to the side of the head. But y’know what? I dug this, and I think if you can find it and you have just shy of 90 minutes to kill, that it’s absolutely worth your time checking this out. Just keep in mind it is a bit of a slow burner and isnt *Quite* the gorefest you might expect going in, and I think you’ll have a solid enough time with it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/gone-with-the-pope/1/

This review may contain spoilers.

Boardinghouse is a 1983 Shot on video Supernatural horror film completed in 1982 and shot in 1981. It’s also widely considered to be the first SOV film to have received “professional” distribution to the wider public. Though that title is somewhat hotly debated allegedly due to the strange way in which “Boarding house” was distributed. Y’see, with most motion pictures that came out in the “Home video” era, when their time in the cinema came to an end the production company would either put the film back on the shelf and leave it there forever, or take the film and transfer it to high grade video tape from which they would then strike home video copies for rental and consumer markets.

Boardinghouse ended up having the reverse done to it, the entire film was shot on video tape, but in order to get it into theatres, the distribution company “Blue star” took the master tape and instead telecine’d the footage (literally pointed a film camera at a flat screen high resolution CRT TV playing the movie) capturing it on to 35mm reels which could then be played in theatres. Which is the main reason it’s “Debated” as being the first SOV movie professionally released as *technically* it wasn’t distributed in the format it was made in, it was shot on video but sold on film. With some “SOV purists” citing 1983’s “Sledgehammer” as being the first “True” SOV film as that movie from snout to tail was entirely released on tape. Personally? Given what a pain in the arse shooting on tape back then would have been, im happy to let Boarding House have a free pass. If it looks like an SOV film, sounds like an SOV film and had all the pain in the arse hurdles that SOV films had to conquer to get over the finish line. It’s an SOV film.

The plot for Boarding House is, for the most part, absolutely incoherent. But I shall try my best to explain more or less what happens. Please do appreciate though that…this is a hot mess and that it’s going to be hard to give you the usual blow by blow I try to do with these things. The film opens with a message from “Horror Vision” who, in true William Castle style announce to the audience that the film they’re about to see shouldn’t be viewed by anyone with heart complications and that, throughout the film there will be special cues known as “Horror vision” that will signal appropriate moments to cover your eyes and plug your ears if you are easily scared, this includes a particular music sting and an awesome looking visual of a hand thats had a digital strobing rainbow effects dubbed onto it.

The film then begins proper, with computer visuals and narration informing us that we’re about to hear the awful case of the “Hoffman House”. We’re then treated to police files dating back to the 18th of September 1972 and our narrator explains that on that date, nobel prize winning doctor Don Hoffman and his wife, both leading authorities in telekinesis and psychic abilities, were found mutilated at their home after briefly leaving their 16th wedding anniversary party. Later on the 26th of September of that same year, their child testified their account of the murder and by December 4th they were committed to a sanitarium. Between 1972 and 1976 the house had 2 occupants, both of whom died in mysterious circumstances. One by drowning and one by blood loss after their hand was mangled by the trash compactor. The mysterious deaths continued through the late 70s and early 80’s until, in July 1982 a sole heir was located to take on the house.

We’re then introduced to our killer for the movie, as two doctors from the sanitarium discuss the Hoffman case, mainly as the child is due up for release, but they’re VERY hesitant to grant it. They head over to begin an evaluation, But before that can begin, a mysterious begloved figure draws one of the doctors into a store room and using telekinetik and hypnotic abilities, manages to get the doctor to strip naked, and hang herself. Another doctor rushes in to see whats going on and the mystery murderer uses their telekenesis to literally make the doctors guts explode out of his body, killing him brutally. Our murderer then escapes!

It’s at this point we’re finally introduced to James (sometimes known as Jim) a…im gonna guess, 40 something man. Who’s staked a claim on the Hoffman house with a sole mission, to set up his version of the playboy mansion. Y’see, the house has 10 bedrooms and communal living, cooking and dining spaces alongside an outdoor pool with garden. It’s a palace essentially. And James intends to fill the place with 20 something girls and NOTHING else. So; he starts advertising the “boarding house” as being a place for single ladies only. With prices starting at $100 a month in rent.

And, it’ll come to no surprise that the place fills up pretty quickly, with plenty of women interested in living in a palace for, in modern terms, $326 a month. Now here’s where it gets a bit messy, because the film introduces all 8 or 9 of the girls all at once with no real “defining” moment of introduction. They just rush out all the names in a minute or so and then expect you to remember them all. So for the bulk of this review, i’ll mainly refer to them as “The girls” but the key players who I CAN name check are Rock performer soon to be superstar Victoria, quiet and somewhat withdraw Cindy, boisterous Sandy and the mysterious “Final girl” into the boarding house “Debbie” who arrives well after all the other girls have settled in. James unfortunately informs her that all the rooms have been taken, but when Debbie explains she’s desperate, one of the girls suggests that the “kids room” which is currently being used as storage. James suggests it wouldn’t really be suitable, but Debbie jumps at the offer and moves in asap.

Around the time that Debbie moves in, it’s also established that James is attempting to learn the way of telekinesis in a frankly EYE melting scene in which he meditates in an office wearing nothing but a pair of budgie smugglers, pulling terrifying faces and making plants and boxes shudder…much like myself. It’s here that the film enters its main drive, as our killer from the sanitarium somehow makes it back to the Hoffman house and begins…manipulating things to cause harm. This is first shown when one of the girls; Pam, climbs onto a countertop to get a bottle from a top shelf only to jump down and impale her hand through an icepick that the killer’s mind controlled to point upright directly under her.

Sinister goings on strike again later when one of the girls accidentally cuts herself in the shower, which in turn causes the house to start bleeding and her face to morph into a melted monstrocity, but when another of the girls goes to check on her though, it looks like nothing’s happened. We’re also introduced around this time to a VERY strange looking gardener for the house who’s friends with James who creeps the girls out. Anyway; rather quickly, we’re introduced to Cindy, One of the girls who’s recently run away from an abusive relationship, her partners not only an arsehole, but a stalker too, who hires a private detective to try and track her down. While this is going on the girls and James decide the best thing to do is throw a crazy house party to celebrate everyone moving in!

We’re then more properly introduced to Victoria, who heads out to the airport to meet one of the co-founders of her band in order to discuss them playing at the house party and while that’s going on a mystery man called Harris arrives at the house to chill by the pool, after some grilling by the girls he quickly pops inside to make a phone call where it’s revealed he’s the detective Cindy’s ex partner hired. He confirms she’s definitely here and gives him the address, phone number and directions. While leaving however, one of the girls catches his eye and she takes him back to her room for *bouncy bouncy* After they’re finish up, Harris goes into the bathroom to clean up, but our mystery killer strikes again using their abilities to turn on a nearby hairdryer and drop it into the bath, killing Harris.

Some time passes again, and a B-plot forms when the girls overhear James listening to some freaky “Mind control” tapes. They get curious so they hatch a plan to send Victoria in to basically try and distract him, and while distracted swipe the tapes so they can get a better idea of what he’s been listening to. While doing her thing, James introduces Victoria to the world of Telepathy by moving a bar of soap around the bath using only his mind. She’s impressed, and after taking the tape back to the girls she decides to look into things herself.

What else happens…err…well! Theres a super spooky dream sequence thats quite well handled, Cindy’s abusive ex partner turns up to take her away from the house and we learn he sexually assaulted her. Victoria goes to the library and takes out a load of books on telepathy and begins experimenting with…mixed results. And while taking a nap, Cindy nearly gets shot in the head by our killer. After this incident; James decides to take Cindy out to the beach to get away from the stress and while there they get into a little hypno molestation preamble leading to questionable *bouncy bouncy*, but while at the beach. Our mysterious killer strikes again! knocking James out with a rock and using their scanner powers to make Cindy bleed out of every socket she has, before walking her into the sea to drown herself.

And so! With a psychic killer (cest qua cest?) on the loose and the night of the house party imminently upon the boarding house, will the killer strike again!? Will Victoria develop and use her powers for more than just petty bullshit revenge on the girls she doesn’t like? and…Will James get back into his budgie smugglers!? (GOD I hope not…) all this and more will be answered if you check out “Boarding House”.

And the lingering thought that hung over me as the credits rolled on this was “Hmm…that felt like i’ve just seen half a movie” and dear viewer I can tell you that that’s because the distributed release of “Boarding House” IS half a movie, i’m not exaggerating, the original cut for Boarding House came in at over 2 and a half hours. The distributors took one look at what can only be described as “The ‘Apocalypse Now’ of SOV cinema” and immediately shot back with “YOUR HAVING A LAUGH AINT YA!?” before lopping about an hour off the runtime and truncating any continuity issues with fades to and from black. It’s not that this film “feels” inconsistent. This film IS inconsistent because just under half of it was thrown in the bin! And at some point im going to sit through that 2 and a half hour version (because it exists) and see if it actually makes ANY kind of a difference to the plot. If I succeed in my mission, there’ll be an addendum at the end of this video.

What is left, from a script perspective, is borderline “delirious”, that’s the only word I can think of to describe what watching this feels like. It’s woozy, incoherent and strangely compelling. In the same way that Barry J. Gillis’s “Things” doesn’t quite feel of this earth, “Boardinghouse” too almost feels like it was pulled from some alien dimension where it probably made more sense. The pacing is positively baffling as we fade from random happening to random happening with no idea of how much time has passed. Quite literally this is a film of “Happenings” presented in a manner that feels like someone reconstructed “found footage” of a partially shot but incomplete horror movie that doesn’t have a script or any guidance.

As such, the act structures absolutely shot. We get about 10 minutes of introducing our characters and the scenario, an hour and 10 minutes of titting about intercut with nudity, simulated sex and a 40 year old man wandering around in budgie smugglers, And then 18 minutes of wrap up where they have to hold a house party, Have the Telekinetik killer wreck up the place a bit, reveal who the telekinetic killer is and deal with them, WHILE making sure the band they’re trying to secretly promo throughout this film gets enough screentime.

And that hour and 10 of titting about I referenced? Total. Filler. What I described to you earlier in terms of plot is just the key beats, except plenty of scenes of the girls lying around the pool talking bollocks, playing card games and talking bollocks, chilling in the living room talking bollocks. James talking absolute bollocks for an age and a half, and plenty of shots of the house with video effects superimposed onto it to make it look like ghostly figures are roaming around. That’s the bulk of this movie. Just idle chatter interspersed with the odd shot of boobs or the occasional kill, which varies in quality greatly ranging from some magnificently gory deaths I can’t show here, to stuff like Harris’s death which was so brief I can’t even recall if the movie picked up on the fact he died. like…It’s less than 24 hours since I saw this movie and I ACTUALLY can’t remember if anyone found Harris’s body. It never gets brought up again so i’m assuming not!

And the dialogue! Bloody hell! If Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau’s writing had a baby, it’d be this movie. There’s points here that are utterly inaudible. Sometimes it’s due to poor audio recording, sometimes it’s due to the cast mumbling their lines and It’s fascinating really because, they’ve managed to capture perfectly that feeling of talking to someone who’s drunk off their everloving tits and they’re just rambling nonsense at you, but it feels like it should make sense because they’re saying it so confidently…but when you ACTUALLY take on board what they’re saying you go “Hang on…what on EARTH does that mean!?” that’s this movie in a nutshell, non sequitur ramblings presented as clips pulled from a larger work.

That’s not to say this incoherent dribble is unpleasant! I enjoyed feeling concussed as we hurtled through this ghost train ride of a movie! It may make absolutely NO sense and meander from scene to scene, but it’s TRYING to entertain at least. It never comes across as having given up on itself…it’s padded to bollocks, but it’s entertaining padding (for the most part) and I didnt feel the need to clock watch at all which I see as an absolute win!

The script was Written and Directed by John Wintergate who also plays James in this film. He has 2 writing and directing credits. One for this film and one for a movie made in 1989 called “Sally and Jess” which, very kindly was also included on the Boarding house Bluray release I own from AGFA and Bleeding Skull. Which I’m frankly delighted about as it means I get to cover another John Wintergate movie in future! Other than that he hasn’t done much else, which is a bit of a shame as I’d love to see him have another crack and film making!

On the direction front, I’m actually kind of impressed. Given that this was one of the first attempts at shooting a feature film on domestic tape AND given that this was the directors first attempt at making ANY kind of feature film with only shorts and a few professional gigs under his belt beforehand. This is a surprisingly competent production, it’s not PERFECT by ANY sense! But I’ve seen studio productions that are less competent than this thing looks and feels, scenes are managed and structured quite solidly all with a clear level of distinction, there is NO mistaking this film having come from John Wintergate!.

Again; that’s not to say it’s perfect, some scenes feel VERY improvised, almost as if at some points they just went; “Hey we have 20 minutes free, I’ve just had an idea!” Given the portability of Video Cameras from that time (when compared to bulkier film ones) and given they could shoot and reshoot at will, I could absolutely believe they shot some stuff on the fly. While they were generally clearly following the conventional rules of filmmaking, it has to be acknowledged that this was a new frontier, and sometimes they really tried to capitalise on that freedom within the newfound medium.

I also have to say that direction of the cast is a bit of a mixed bag too. Some of it’s wonderfully crafted for someone with almost no experience in the field, with clear thought put into what shot types would work best in a given scenario and where the cast should be placed within a scene and what their movements should be in order to get the best results. But then in the same breath we’ll get some absolute dross, scenes where the cast placement is literally just them all standing in a line talking in a way that feels largely improvised. The pie fight scene was a good example of that as are the pools scenes. It’s almost like the director just said “Right, so you’re having a good time at the pool, GO!” which does kind of diminish things a bit.

On the cine front, it’s decent! Like…”caught me off guard” level decent, Yes some of the computer effects are a bit dated by this point and there are some clear signs that the director was new to the field, but; for the most part, the compositions are all solid, there’s a TON of experimentation due to how mobile the rig is, sequences are *mostly* constructed using a decent variety of shots and only rarely do we find scenes made up of 2-3 cuts with little else to show for it. There’s a professional veneer to this thing and despite the handful of sequences which do let the cine down; where it performs well, it surpassed my expectations and really is one of the better examples of SOV film making that i’ve seen, which is ASTOUNDING when I reiterate that THIS WAS one of the first feature SOV movies to be made. This would be like Van Gough turning out starry night on his first go and In that sense, It’s BEYOND impressive honestly.

Performance wise? Broadly speaking; its bad. But for 80s horror? It’s passable. I can’t surgarcoat it. John playing James and Kalassu playing Victoria are the best performers in this thing. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re naturalistic, but they do a somewhat amicably for most of the films runtime and kept me both entertained and engaged throughout. John struggles to do concerned or frightened acting all that well, but they both stand as just about passable.

The rest of the cast though? are some of the stiffest, poorly delivered, awkward and unintentionally hilarious performances you’ll see put to tape. So much of it borders on parodying 80’s slasher movies, a genre that wasn’t even fully underway at the time this was shot! It’s dry, lifeless, sometimes you can even see notes the cast have written so they don’t forget their lines, everything sounds “read” rather than performed. It’s awful and while in any other film I’d have been ripping into them for how bad it is; Here? Because of the woozy, disorienting vibe of the whole thing, I’m actually kind of into it, it just makes the whole thing feel even more unsettled and odd. Which made it work on a whole different level.

And finally! The soundtrack! Its not *too*bad!, part of it is rocky poppy style music produced by John and Kalassu’s band of the time, which I think works rather well against the “Young girls hop around a palace for 90 minutes, goofing around by the pool in skimpy costumes” without it ending up too stocky or generic. It just about strikes the balance right. The other side to the soundtrack however is experimental early synthesised caucaughanies that range from powerful and fitting to totally unlistenable. It’s SUCH a spectrum that I’m utterly lost for comment on it, because, when the contrast ranges from “Impressive” to “Why are my eyes uncontrollably bleeding!?” It’s kind of hard deliver a constructive line of feedback. You’d think the two different styles would work against each other, but they actually work quite well together, creating a unique soundscape for this film that genuinely surprised me it’s one that I’d love to own isolated some day. If only to annoy people with the synthy side of it!

Boarding House was released on VHS in the US in 1983, but was refused a video certificate for distribution in the UK in 1984 where it had been planned for a rental release. The video recordings act of 1984 had come into effect mere weeks before this film was set to be released in the UK and the BBFC took one look at this thing and basically said “You can submit it for classification, but we won’t approve it for one and without one you can’t release it.” In fact; It’s because of this that Boarding House TO THIS DAY, STILL hasn’t had a UK release on ANY home video or rental format (at least at the time of recording it hasn’t).

What I CAN say is in the US it did receive a dvd release from Code red in 2008, but that the “grail” release for this movie really came in 2021 when AGFA and Bleeding skull teamed up to put this film out as a 2 disc bluray and stunning is simply too small a word for the work these guys have done on this set. It’s miraculous, it’s…INCREDIBLE. What we have here is a 2 disc set where, on the first disc you get the choice to watch the film either as it was shown in theatres (scanned from an original 35mm print at 2k) OR you can watch the original home video release in all its fuzzy warm glory captured from the original master dubbing tape. There are 2 commentaries for the film alongside theatrical trailers, home video trailers and TV spots. That’s JUST on disc 1.

Disc 2 includes “Psycho Killer” the previously unreleased “Alternate” cut of “Boarding House” transferred from the original 1” master tape. Also included is John’s other feature 1989s “Sally and Jess” scanned in at 2k alongside an audio commentary and historic “Behind the scenes” footage, alongside a plethora of music videos shot by John and Kalassu. All wrapped up in a lovingly crafted slipcase that’s to die for, honestly; it’s gorgeous. It really is a DAMN fine package and one of my all time favourite releases that AGFA have done to date! Serious kudos to them and I sincerely hope 101 films manage carry this release over to their other current AGFA lineups in the UK!

Do I recommend “Boarding House?” ABSOLUTELY I do. Despite its clunky execution, It’s a WILD watch and one of the most entertaining SOV movies I’ve ever seen. While I know it won’t be for everyone. The total dream-like wooziness this film possesses just made it infinitely more watchable, it would be easy on a surface level to take one look at this thing and just write it off as schlocky nonsense. But bubbling just below the surface is an actually rather technically proficient for its budget, film that, even when presented with half the footage missing, STILL managed to leave a positive impression on me that I don’t think I’ll forget in a hurry. im astounded honestly that this thing works half as well as it does, it ABSOLUTELY should have bombed hard given the elements that went into making it, and yet somehow it’s mezmorisingly captivating, just bear in mind, it does have its faults in terms of performances and scripting and I feel, if you’ve had experience with SOV before and liked films like “Sledgehammer” or “Things”, you’ll probably get on with this one…

EDIT:
…Anyway, I managed to track down the 2 and a half hour cut, I’ve watched it all the way through aaaaand…*sigh* It’s never easy is it? SO! The extended cut is a beast unto itself. And quite honestly, for every positive thing I can say about it, there’s a negative that cancels it out. On the plus side, Yes. A not insignificant chunk of the footage DOES contain some additional plot points and explanations. Entire scenes appear to have been removed from the theatrical release that would have added LOADS of context, From small things like more footage of the killer escaping the hospital, to giving Harris WAY more involvement in the film, explaining how he got from being stood outside the front of the house to being pushed into a pool by the girls AND explaining why he was allowed on the 2nd floor when James specifically said “NO BOYS ABOVE THE 1ST FLOOR!”

The extra scenes do a lot to explain some of the bizarre and all over the place character developments, Victoria gets several scenes put back in, in which we see her…y’know; ACTUALLY be the lead singer in a band! We get more insight in the opening act about her character and who she is, we get to see her attend rehearsals with her band and we get to see why Victoria and Pam have a bit of a ta ta tet going on throughout (in the finished cut, Pam is a tiny bit bitchy and inconsiderate and Victoria loses her shit for seemingly no reason, whereas in the extended cut, we see Pam be WAY worse to Victoria which, when reinserted gives Victoria’s sudden meltdown in the 2nd act better pacing and kind of makes it make more sense.

We get a LOT more hints and context about who the killer is in the first couple of acts, which again; aids with the pacing, improves the reveal of the killer in the 3rd act (which…comes out of left field in the final cut) And there’s even just some nice small things, like extra scenes with Harris and Cindy’s asshole boyfriend in the first act that helps solidify who they are and what they’re up to WELL before they turn up in the final cut, where they seemingly show up out of the blue.

There’s even an alternate ending, which has an ACTUAL on screen resolution for James and Victoria AS WELL as explaining the weird title cards at the end of the finished cut that don’t seem to point to anything. The reason they don’t point to anything is because they cut out the context of what they were talking about in the final cut!

BUT! For every Yin, there is indeed a Yang…and boy does this film come with a Yang. While there is a LOT of decent extra footage inserted there is also a HELL of a lot more padding. More scenes of people just lolling around the house talking absolute bollocks. Which, given most of the final cuts made up of that footage is BEYOND annoying. I’d say of the *roughly* 1 hour of cut footage, half of its really interesting or important plot points or pacing improvements, the other half is absolute bollocks that clearly DID belong in the bin. Equally; and I don’t know if this was just my copy, but almost ALL the gore and nudity had been cut out in the extended cut. Which basically defanged any of the horror this movie tried to have.

The biggest shake up though? Is the editing. And I don’t know if I love it, or think it’s the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever seen. But, for SOME bizarre reason when assembling the extended cut. Rather than keep it conventional, They’ve decided to edit on what i’m assuming is Windows movie maker and they’ve, for some reason decided to ram LITERALLY EVERY TRANSITION CROSSFADE THEY COULD GET THEIR HANDS ON INTO EVERY BREATHABLE SECOND OF THE RUNTIME. It looks like the “Junior christian science bible learning show for kids” and it’s distracting more than anything else. Sometimes they use them to re-run clips from the movie completely at random and out of order, sometimes they use them to show the same clip over and over again for no reason, and they’ve made the WEIRD choice to randomly insert stills and clips from other parts of the film at random throughout the new cut.

It’s distracting, awkward, clearly done over the top of an analogue driven edit which clashes with the analogue effects. It’s positively psychotronic and as a means of ACTUALLY trying to watch this film, it’s godawful. But…and its kind of a guilty admission…as an art piece?…as something you just absorb and experience rather than critique? I thought it was bloody good fun! It’s something texturally different to the theatrical cut. It is JAAAAAAAAAAAAM to the theatrical cuts “Jam” and I kind of dug it for that.

In an ideal world, someone would do to this film what they did to “The Wicker Man” and make a “Final cut” of the film, reinserting the important missing scenes from the extended cut into the theatrical cut and trimming down some of the fat from the theatrical. I reckon you’d have a decent 1:35:00 to 1:55:00 with that brief and a decent editor at the helm. Maybe I’ve just found a summer project. Who knows? All I do know is; if you choose to check this movie out, go for the original home video presentation, it’s the version that looks the best in my opinion. If you’re hungry for more when you’re done, check out the extended cut for a mindblowing reimaging of total concussion cinema.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/boardinghouse/1/

A weird one to watch post the removal of ‘Roe V Wade’, ‘Tomorrows Children’ is a Health/Scare film revolving around a potential dystopic future in which women can be sterilized simply for being criminals or having a family tree containing faulty genes.

The film itself came about as a bit of a warning piece as World War 2 was gearing up as Nazi Germany had began to impose sterilization on criminals and people with disabilities as a form of eugenics. This docu-drama(?) is basically taking this initial awful law change to it’s most over the top dramatic conclusion.

Im not going to lie, at a time now where women in the US and the UK have to fight tooth and nail for the right to be sterilized, Its quite interesting to see a film that plays on the opposite scenario, in which women fight for their right NOT to be.

However, the film itself wasnt really my cup of tea, the script (following a young woman who wants to start a family being ruled unfit to breed because of poor genetics in her family tree and forced into Sterilization) could have had the potential to be a real emotional journey and a good philosophical piece. Unfortunately; this film was made during the hayes code. So instead the majority of the script is the woman dispairing over the choices of the court while several men run around repeatedly saying ‘This is lunacy! we’ve got to stop it!’ With the end result being a rushed happy ending with noting of consiquence gained or lost.

the pacing is sluggish, the tone is overly censored. Its a surface level film that doesnt really offer much past its initial text crawl as we spend 55+ minutes with bland and uninteresting one note characters who really dont get up to much.

In fact, the main reason I rated this one more than 1 star is because, for a health/scare film from the early 30’s. This one actually doesnt look to bad, theres some decent cine on show with some interesting lighting and shadowing across the runtime, sequences are nicely cut together with some interesting experimentaiton on crossfades at times. and the Direction shows a clear competency for film making at a time when it wasnt *quite* as common knowledge as you’d think.

It looks nice, but it’s surface level interpretation of the issue combined with a general atmosphere of ‘Whataboutary?’ just makes this thing fall flat. It’s great reference material if you ever want to show off visually the best elements of 30s health movies. But as something you’d actually consiously choose to sit and watch, you can do so much better quite honestly.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/tomorrows-children/

Jesus christ.

No. Actually. Jesus Christ. I feel like I need a shower after this thing, and then my shower will need an intense deep clean

A frankly yucky movie that claims to be a docudrama advocating for the abolishon of Child marriage (which is still to this day legal in WAY more states than it should be) The reality is that ‘Child Bride’ is a viciously dark exploitation picture, ESPECIALLY for 1938 and even more so today.

With themes of violence, rape, molestation, murder and Child marriage and underage sex. Had it not been for the director Kroger Babbs VERY careful skirting of the hays code, this film would have been banned outright.

There isn’t really much more to say honestly, the script is mixed to poor on plot points, dialogue isn’t it’s sharpest point. The actual title plot of the film doesn’t kick in till about 15 minutes off the end. The characters are largely unlikeable or strange. There’s a lot of plot convenience throughout and the ending comes out of left field and feels rushed and forced.

The cine is somewhat solid, but it’s mired in a mix of issues ranging from terrible print quality which, with the best will in the world isn’t going to help how this thing looks, and really poor editing, which rushes cuts and feels slapdash to say the least.

This thing holds together better than a good chunk of the health and scare films that were produced around this time (its a more solid production than say ‘reefer madness’) but that really isn’t saying much. An awkward, deeply uncomfortable and hideously bleak Watch. Its not one I’ll be keen to revisit with relish any time soon.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/child-bride/

The ‘B-Feature’ on Kino’s “Reefer Madness” Bluray release. “Sex Madness” Is a pretty generic Health film warning of the dangers of Venerial Disease’s, particularly Siphilis.

And if you thought ‘Reefer’ was low budget…hoo boy, let me tell you…there IS no bottom of the barrel as far as this things concerned. What we have here is a 57(ish) minute long dramatization following a woman as she contracts the (then) deadly disease, gets mistreated for it and pays the ultimate price for…doing the right thing…I guess?

This ones kind of all over the place plot wise, we’re introduced to around a dozen characters in the opening 5 minutes, but the bulk of the film only really revolves around 2-3 characters past that. Its trying to put a simple message across ‘Practice safe sex and caution’ But because we’re in the hayes code era, they cant show anything other than light kissing and close dancing and the word ‘sex’ itself seems almost a taboo for most of the movies runtime.

As such, it becomes increasingly difficult to show the dangers of VD’s when the best they can muster are some poor quality sketches of Syphilitic sores and the use of ‘Marriage’ as a euphamism for bedroom antics.

That being said I do have to say, the film isnt averse to some VERY strange and entertaining decisions. Examples being all the men in this film being buried under what looks like 2lb’s of heavy makeup at all times. a raunchy lesbian couple in the opening act who myteriously vanish 10 minutes in and are never seen again, some terrifically campy acting and strange line delivery that raised a titter and some VERY choppy editing that makes Ed Wood feel like Scorsese.

The bulk of the film is low quality even by Poverty row standards with an overeliance on stock footage and foli effects to help pad the runtime. The film almost certainly would have been twice as engaging at half the runtime and this things about as basic looking as it comes.

In terms of ‘health films’ of this era, it’s not one of my favourites. Though I will give the film credit in the sense that it ends on a terrifically bleak and genuinely quite shocking point for the time, though with it being the 30’s it couldnt stave off a bolted on ‘happy’ ending for too long.

I’d say this was marginally better than ‘Reefer Madness’ in the sense that I think the plot holds together a little better and theres more entertaining moments to be had with it (even if ‘Reefers’ entertaining moments are grander and sillier…) This thing feels a bit more coherent alltogether, and while its still a bit of a plodder and isnt exactly ‘pushing the boundaries’ of cinema, it was entertaining enough that I didnt outright hate it.

Totally not essentail viewing, worth watching if you pick up Kino’s ‘Reefer’ bluray release. but otherwise. give it a miss.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sex-madness/

I recently picked up a batch of Kino/Something Weird blurays and this was part of a double feature with ‘Sex Madness’…I’d seen the colourised version about 15 years ago in spotty ‘240p vision’ so I was curious to see if a HD screening would make for a better time.

Given its infamy, im pretty sure there isnt really a whole lot I could say about this that hasnt already been totally ground into the dirt multiple times by other critics. But this is basically one of the most infamous ‘Scare films’ of the 1930s and actually influenced State legislature around Weed and it’s criminalisation in the states. Which is all the more hilarious given just how factually innacurate this movie actually is when it comes to the effects of weed and it’s impact on people (though; to give them SOME credit…I dont even think the film makers could have foreseen just how much crime would come from criminalising it than regulating it…)

In either case, the films a total bust for me. What we have here is a 65 minute ‘play for today’ about the dangers of drugs. It has *SOME* good moments dotted here and there that are more entertainingly awful or funny for just HOW innacurate what they’re showing the audience is…but for the most part this is actually just a kind of dry and at times overly cheesy movie disguised as a health film, and not much else.

The characters are all bland ‘one size fits all’ types…which they had to be in order to better establish that ‘THIS SCENARIO COULD EVEN HAPPEN IN YOUR TOWN!!!’

The storylines vaguely interesting, but could have been twice as engaging at half the runtime. The pacings slow and plodding and the production work (broadly speaking) is poor, with a few choreographed scenes that did entertain being married up to sloppy cine, bad editing, poor quality sound recording at times meandering and confusing dialogue and inconsistent direction for both the cast and the team behind the camera in exactly what they wanted to show.

To put it bluntley…(heh…’blunt-ly’) To me at least? this is a movie thats coasted mainly on it’s infamy in terms of its exaggerations, and barring two or three sequences across the whole runtime where things DO get a little crazy or ‘out there’ its actually kind of boring for the most part. it’s largely actors dancing, rehersing shakespere or acting a bit shifty for 50 minutes of the runtime and not much else.

I’d say purely for it’s infamy in bad movie circles that it’s worth catching this film at least once. It’s mercifully short at 65 minutes and, for me personally; I’d say if you can find a high quality copy of the colourised version (which looks putrid and hideous and frankly delightful for a film like this) I’d go for that over the Black and White version. It just gives the film a bit more character and edges it ahead of the original release in my opinion.

If your interested in old PSA’s or scare films from the time, or you move in bad/cult movie circles and want to brush up on your history, check this one out. If your non of the above, steer well clear. it’s a slog. And all the bits worth seeing have (conveniently) been supercut into a 5 minute video on youtube. Which would more than save you time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/tell-your-children-1938/

Without question, one of the stupidest; dullest, weirdest movies i’ve had the misfortune to sit through. ‘Trick or Treats’ is perfect viewing for the individual who likes their films surface level and stuck in a single gear for the entire runtime.

I wish I was kidding when I say that the film is just over 80 minutes long and consists of 70 minutes of a babysitter being repeatedly pranked by an obnoxious little runt of a kid who’s into magic and joke shop gags, intercut with footage of a guy escaping an insane asylum and S L O W L Y making his way to the kids house. with 10 minutes essentially amounting to the most half hearted slasher movie i’ve seen in a good while.

That’s it. That’s the whole plot, they detour occasionally the asylum where the guy escaped from…but it doesnt lead anywhere. For a brief window they cut to an editing room to watch to editors cut a film together…that adds nothing to the film. This things a time sink. a way to effectively kill 82 minutes and LITERALLY have nothing to show for it.

The scripts locked in that single gear of:

*Babysitter goes looking for kid.
*Kid pranks Babysitter with very dull gag.
*Babysitter gets mad and asks kid politely to stop
*Kid runs off and goes quiet for a bit, leading to Babysitter looking for him.

Repeat that about 8 or 9 times and you’ve got this movie to a tee. tonally its got a bit of a campy streak running through it which is quite welcome, the dialogues atrocious to the point I actually kind of find it mesmorising and the characters themselves are all either fairly air headed or just dreary and unlikable. The pacing is one not across the runtime right up until the final 10 minutes when it suddenly ups the ante a little bit (but not enough to make it worth your time) and the extended sequences of our Babysitter wandering around the house, occasionally answering the door to trick or treaters is mind numbing to say the least.

the directions not *too* bad. they have managed to get camera and lighting to work together fairly well, the cast are a little stiff in front of the camera and dont utilise their set space as much as I’d have personally liked. But it looks professional enough and the distinct 80’s ness of the whole thing kind fo endeared me a little bit too it. The director here clearly had a specific vibe in mind for how this was going to look and feel and It made me oddly nostalgic to see these early 80s setups, colour schemes and lighting choices in action here.

The cine too isnt too bad either, shots are a bit on the basic side, but they’re composed pretty solidly, have a good amount of moody or semi interesting lighting and its got a good amount of B-roll under its belt which really helps bring the sequences together.

While the edit isnt the greatest in the world (I personally felt it was a little bit slack with some scenes rolling on a bit too long and some cuts being a little too soon) the B-roll doesn significantly help smooth the sequences over and the use of oranges and blues in the colour sceme choices does help give it a bit of a boost in terms of quality output. Its not winning any awards any time soon. But for a vibe; it’s on the right track.

Our cast, if anything, deliver EXACTLY what the director had in mind. It’s just a shame that what he had in mind were extreme personalities that clash like lemon juice and milk. Our Babysitter here is WAY too meak and mild in allowing Chistopher (our kid for this feature) to get away with the pranks he does. and that performance, while on point for what the script is trying to convey, is TERRIBLY irritating when you actually have to sit through it.

Christopher is annoying in the script and is played perfectly here, giving Alan from ‘Return to Sleepaway Camp’ a run for his money in terms of ‘Annoying characters I wish I wasnt aware of’. I dont often comment on child actors, but the kid playing christopher here really does go above and beyond in portraying christopher as rambunctious and SO annoying in equal measure. I think he nailed the brief. Even if i am suffering for it.

throw in…what im guessing is a half hearted attempt at a score (its tinny synth pangs intermixed with some gentle 80’s reimagining of 50’s rock and roll style twanging) and you have a film that…as a work of cinema, is downright abominable. with an irritating cast, weird visuals and a script that would test the patience of most, its up there; not as a bad movie, but as a pointless one. It neither gives nor takes away. it just exists.

In that sense its a FANTASTIC ‘head empty’ movie. The kind of thing you put on when your doing other things and just need some background noise you occasionally check into. In THAT sense this is good fun! Because realistically, what you have here is about 25 minutes worth of story stretched out to 82 minutes and if you DO decide to drift in and out of it, you’ll absolutely still know whats going on, but you wont have to worry about missing any crucial plot points…BECAUSE THERE ARNT ANY!

In short, one I cant recommend in good faith. But if your looking for TV noise. absolutely give it a check in, in that sense its great fun.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/trick-or-treats/