TYTD Reviews

2005 Would see Wallace & Gromit head to the big screen for their first feature length outing in ‘Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ and it really does kind of feel like the culmination of nearly 15 years worth of trial and error in animation coming to near beautiful fruition.

The plot finds our lovable pair taking a turn at pest removal, specifically a sharp incrase in the appearence of bunny rabbits. These fluffy monstrocities are wreaking havoc on the local populations allotments and greenhouses ahead of the towns annual fruit and vegetable competition! ‘Anti-Pesto’ is the name and humanely removing bunny rabbits from gardens via a giant vaccume is their game!

While tending to a HUGE job on the estate of the RIGHT honourable Lady Tottingtons, Wallace strikes on an idea, what if he uses one of his OTHER new inventions (a machine that allows you to brainwash yourself or others) to brainwash the rabbits he’s captured into NOT liking vegetables,meaning they could all be re-released and the gardners and growers need not fear teeth marks in their giant carrots!

Well, of course the plan kind of backfires, when Wallace and a test rabbit called ‘Hutch’ end up having a bit of a ‘Runaway Brain’ moment, slowly turning Hutch into a Hutch Wallace hybrid, and turning Wallace into the most deadly Were-Rabbit!

Gromit cottons on fairly early to the situation, but with the town beying for the creatures blood and Wallace not being really aware of his near beastly side, will the pair find a way to restore law and order, or will Wallace find himself being stalked by Lady Tottingtons deviois suitor Victor Quartermaine?

And…I kind of felt myself in a bit of a love hate relationship with this one. Ultimately, it left me a little frustrated.

On the one hand, the script *feels* like a Wallace & Gromit script, which may sound obvious, but it IS a good thing that it does, ‘A Matter of Loaf & Death’ showed us what can happen when you make a Wallace & Gromit film without really fully throwing yourself behind the concept. This wholeheartedly WANTS to pull the audience into the scenario, and I think it largely succeeds with that. However, that doesnt mean its not without its flaws…

For a starters, as the longest running entry in the ‘Wallace & Gromit’ franchise, clocking in at 84 minutes and change, it really doesnt feel a comfortable fit. This felt like it should have been a 60-70 minute feature at most, and unlike ‘Vengence Most Fowl’ which is also feature runtime, this feels every bit as long as those 84 minutes are. It has some moments that are genuinely slow and not in a slowburn, pleasent way…in a ‘We have to stop the film to explain a bunch of stuff, so sit tight for 10 minutes…’ kind of way. Which really does hinder the pacing and causes the act structuring to feel a little wonky on the first and second acts…It manages to stick the landing with a genuinely well paced out 3rd act…but the build to that, I found to be a bit of a struggle.

Equally; this is really the start of the more ‘on the nose’ references to other films. ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’ would do this to frankly painful degrees. But here, we have references and parodies to ‘An American Werewolf in London’ , the Universal adaptation of ‘The Wolf Man’, ‘The Fly’, several Hammer films get a nod here…and…while they are a *bit* better handled here than in ‘Loaf’ I still really dont want to watch Wallace and Gromit to see it parody other movies, sometimes to an almost 1:1 degree. I watch these films for the charming ‘Northern England’ comedy that I appreciate because im a Northern Englander. I dont want them doing stuff that wouldnt feel out of place in a ‘Minions’ movie…

To that end, I need to talk about ‘Hutch’ as a character, While a vital mechanism to the plot. and the character did make me properly laugh once. AS a character he feels terribly out of place here and emblematic of a wider problem this film has. Which is that it essentially cherry picks several moments from the shorts and redoes them, but not as good as they were handled in the shorts. Hutch essentially being a redux of Shaun the sheep from ‘A Close Shave’, theres a plane sequence that harks back to the various plane sequences from ‘A Close Shave’…the breakfast machine from ‘The Wrong Trousers’ is referenced MULTIPLE times and at one point, is actually ANOTHER key plot device for the film. Its bad enough that this film has bad parodies of good movies in it, but when its stooping so low that its essentially REDOING it’s OWN ‘best bits’ but not as good…Well, I took umbridge with that…

This is also the first time that the wider town that the pair live in is explored. Wendy was obviously introduced in their last outing, but up until this film, she was the only other human character we’d seen…Here, we have a whole village! and apart from Victor and the Vicar, they’re all TOTALLY unremarkable and really quite rather dull…In fact, Victor and the Vicar only really work as characters because Victor is playing an amalgum of Christopher Lee Hammer/Amacus roles and the Vicar is essentially a parody of Dr. Pretorious from ‘Bride of Frankenstein’…Its nice to see archtypes like that on screen again…But Im still not sold on if they work here.

Beyond the script…I really dont have a lot more to say honestly, the direction and cine here is pretty good! Not *quite* the same calibre as the shorts or ‘Vengence’ but, its a studio production, with studio money and given the time and effort that goes into making these things, I have to say even when it doesnt feel particualrly ‘inspiring’ its still BLOODY impressive.

The performances are all pretty solid, Peter Sallis probably gives his final ‘good’ turn as Wallace here, and Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes both delight as Victor and Totty respectively. they bright, give great vocal ranger performances and the animation marries up to their delivery perfectly. Thats not to do a disservice to the rest of the cast who are all fine enough, but I do feel like the above are really the ‘best’ of this.

And finally, the soundtrack! which…well! it’s ‘Wallace and Gromit!’ big brass band orchestral pieces from tail to snout, its well timed, sounds inkeeping with everything that came before it…it’s probably not a *great* sign that, if you had told me this score was just made up of tracks from the shorts with no original music, i’d have believed you (given this was an entirely original scoring…) but hey it fits the bill and does the job…I cant complain.

All in all? I think out of all the films, this ones kind of the middle of the pack. If you’ve never seen a Wallace and Gromit movie, it’s probably a rock solid introduction, as if you start with the shorts, your likely to feel a bit spoilt by the time you hit this one. This? isnt their best outing in my opinion, but has more than enough good stuff going on in it that It feels at home with the better entries in the series. I really quite enjoyed it, I just wish it was shorter. and I kind of wish i’d checked this one out sooner, given its been 20 years since it came out…ah well, we live and learn. Worth checking out i’d say! go grab some cheese and crackers and enjoy the bunny carnage!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/wallace-gromit-the-curse-of-the-were-rabbit/

The only fingers that should be massaging this murderer belong to the long arm of the law! And by ‘massage’ I mean ‘Firm grip with no sign of parole!’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/tim-and-tonis-guide-to-couples-massage/

What happens when you mash together ‘The Village of the Damned’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ and ‘The Toxic Avenger’?! well! You get ‘The Children’ a regional cult horror classic that mixes campy surrealism with a genuinely unsettling premise.

The plot? Well, due to deregulation, two slackers at the small backwater town of Ravensback’s local nuclear facility completely forgot to secure one of the radioactive pipelines, which in turn causes a rupture, leading to thousands of liters of radioactive mist to seep deep into the surrounding woodlands. By the time the leaks at ‘Critical mass’ its chucking out time at the local elementary school, and while taking the kids of Ravensback home to their parents, the school bus drives head on into a cloud of the mysterious deadly fog. Transforming the children into mindless pale zombie like beings with jet black fingernails who’s touch causes any living recipient to burst into a radioactive smoke and fry alive.

A short time after the incident, the ever clement ‘Sheriff Billy’ passes by the now abandoned bus. He decides to investigate, but only finds the school kids possessions and the hat of the bus driver. Concerned; He decides to visit some of the parents in the area to see if the kids have made it home, only to find that a majority of them are in fact missing…Leading to the beginnings of a suspected manhunt to find the kidnappers who’ve taken the children.

Little do the townspeople know, the children have only one thing on their minds, and it involves rendering the majority of the town a burnt up radioactive slag heap. Thus kicking off 2 remaining acts of cat and mouse drama where the Sheriff and townsfolk try to piece together why their fellow citizens are suddenly and abruptly winding up dead in random places looking like they’ve fallen into a nuclear reactor, and how this could possibly tie to the dissapearence of the children!

On the bluray release for this, theres an introduction from Lloyd Kaufman who (tongue in cheek) suggests that the same radioactive chemicals that create ‘The Children’ are the exact same ones that made Toxie from ‘The Toxic Avenger’…and the more I think about that, the more I actually kind of do want that to be the case. The idea that the barrels of toxic waste Melvin falls into in ‘Toxie 1’ are from the cleanup operation from ‘The Children’ not only feels kind of satisfying, but given they both use identical effects for the radiation burning. It feels like this film slots in quite nicely, and that Toxie is some kind of spiritual sideways sequel/spin off to this. I mean, these kids just got a lungful, Melvin got swirlied in it…

Given this was a first time watch, I cant say hand on heart that I absolutely LOVED ‘The Children’…Its quite slow burn and the kills in it are spaced out a little far from each other. But what this film does have going for it is a very unusual and unsettling vibe that really helps carry the thing for the majority of its runtime.

The scripts plot itself is fun, killer kids movies can kind of go either way, but ‘The Children’ seems to know what side of the fence it wants to sit on in terms of tone, and that really helps keep things quite light and able to shift between some more humerous comedic moments and very dark sequences.

I really enjoyed just taking in the ambience of this film honestly, strange choices like having characters like the identical, balding, horny twins ‘Frank & Hank’ were just, oddities you didnt really see that often in films like this at this time…Not unless it was a fully fledged comedy horror.

The characters themselves get a pretty nice range to work with, they almost go for a ‘dream-like’ quality to the characters, everything feels a bit…off for lack of a better word. the characters behave in the same way characters would in a dream, saying things in strange tones, doing things that dont feel like they make sense , but they KNOW it doesnt make sense adn they’re going to take you along for the ride anyway.

In fact, other than the aforementioned pacing issues (long drawn out sequences of folks just chatting about random stuff that doesnt really help progress the film), and the fact the film seems to spend a bit too long in the second act trying (and fumbling) to set up all the chess pieces for the finale. I actually really quite enjoyed this. Its a film that knows what it is, knows what to aim for and, for the most part achieves it.

The directions pretty nice, the directors seeming ‘go to’ for suspense is quick cuts married up to slowed down footage. ‘Friday the 13th’ did this quite a bit and came out about a month before this film did, I get the feeling there was inspiration from that on this to a degree. But honestly? Who can say. ‘Gentle’ is probably the way i’d describe the direction on this one. It only really goes manic during the actual kill sequences, and outside of that, it kind of feels like Sheriff Billy is giving us a tour of Ravensback. Which means lots of very nice and idillic sequences of the surrounding woodlands and the mountain ranges…Does this creative style suit a horror? I dont 100% think it does. But! that IS what gives this film a bit of distinction, because its the contrasting ‘tour guide’ vibes to the direction married up to shots of childred irradiating their parents to death that makes it feel so dream like and strange.

To that end, the cine is solid. as mentioned it all feels a bit ‘Tour guidey’ but the location work is largely rich, deep and well composed. Its nice to see a film barely out of the 70s not afraid to embrace colour and the coding therein. But rather upsettingly, it looks like only the first 2 reels have survived in a condition that allows the remastering process to get the best out of them. With the later reels becoming increasingly more damaged and ‘red’ to the point that all that lovely colour and depth is lost, and we end up in a reddy brown murk up to the end credits.

As for the edit? its rock solid pretty much, a couple of pacing issues on cuts is about as bad as it gets, the film (for the most part) breaths easy on sequence structuring, and it seems like a good amount of B-roll was captured for this one. Which I think was essential, especially for the kill scenes to help really bring them to life.

As for the performances? Gil Rogers and Martin Shakar as Sheriff Billy and one of the childrens father John Freemont play a fantastic double pairing. Billy is a warm and professional character type, we spend most of the movie with him and because he’s given a good range to work with. we as the audience warm and want to invest in him. and Gil plays that with JUST the right kind of charisma to really help sell you on the portrayal. He’s delightful. Martin by contrast is approaching things from a much more fraxious position (as his kids missing) but equally gets a decent range to work with, and essentially pairs up with Billy well, getting to effectively play deputy the Sheriff, allowing him to do things that the Sheriff cant legally do, but will look the other way in this case. He’s fab.

I dont generally comment on child actor performances, so I’ll keep my opinion on the children in ‘The Children’ brief. But I liked what they did, and I think they did it well for the most part. As for the supporting cast? Excellent. just, excellent. This feels like a pretty nicely fleshed out town. I could believe all these characters actually existed. they’re all given just enough complexity to make them interesting, but they leave enough unsaid that makes you really want to know more. Its the perfect position to leave your audience in, because I really DO want to know more about ‘Frank & Hank’ or the diner waitress, or the general store lady. they all have a charm to them that really makes me wish we’d spent a bit more time with them. which is just the right place to leave it.

And as for the soundtrack? It sounds like a rip off of the ‘Friday the 13th’ score…again, the two films came out with about a month gap on each other. But ‘Friday’ would have likely started advertising WELL before this thing got a release, so I could FULLY believe they scored this with ‘Friday’ in mind to try and get ahead of what they believed would inevitably be a ‘good thing’.

And, for the most part it works! it feels a bit cheaper than the ‘Friday’ score, but its largely orchestral and synth pieces that drop in exactly when they’re needed, are perfectly punctuated across the runtime…and while I dont personally gel with this score, I cant deny that it does absolutely work for this film, and that its been handled well.

I really quite enjoyed ‘The Children’ I feel with a couple more watches it could easily gain another half star on the overall rating. I think it would pair up quite well with something like ‘Village of the damned’ or maybe even something a bit harsher like ‘The Beast Within’

Definitely worth checking out if you like creepy children in your horror, and an absolute must see if you like cult horror with a slight surreal edge.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-children-1980/

A movie so ahead of its time that the ‘Found Footage’ genre at this point basically consisted of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ and ‘The McPherson Tape’. ‘America’s Deadliest Home Video’ would predate even the GENRE titling of ‘Found footage’ by *at LEAST* 5 years. And the fact that it comes out as such a fully formed idea right off the bat is honestly quite impressive.

The film came about when the director was working in an edit studio and stumbled on a VHS tape consisting of 2 hours of unedited vacation footage of a young couple heading to Vegas to see a concert. He got so wrapped up in the story of this raw footage, that he started to wonder if there was something to the concept of making a movie that felt just like the tape he’d found…and thus, this film came to be.

The film is presented in its entirity as a ‘found footage’ piece and follows ‘Doug’ a young ‘CRAZY’ guy who’s just picked up his first video camera, and is just messing around with it. Unfortunately while messing around, he accidentally finds out his wife is cheating on him, so in a spur of the moment act of impulse, he steals their van and decides to go on a cross country journey of self discovery.

And its all very twee and by the numbers for a while until, while stopping off at a quarry to recount memories of his father. Doug accidentally sees something that he shouldnt. and winds up hostage to three armed and VERY dangerous criminals who are in the midst of a spree.

When the gang realise that Doug isnt an immediate threat, AND that he has one of those new fangled video cameras with him, the group decide to take him along on their crime spree as a bit of fun. And slowly they begin to warm to him a bit, and Doug begins to open up to them…Its a bit of an unconventional realationship as the gang still continue to murder him regularly, but they also rely on Doug to help film their sprees for prosperity and eventually even try to involve him in some of their fun.

But actions have consiquences, and soon tension begins to mount within the group, things get taken too far and we hurtle into a 3rd act where emotions get the better of our group, and things turn bloody.

I tried to go into this one as blind as possible, and came away somewhat pleasently surprised as a result. The whole film is essentially presented as if someone was just stop/starting a camera while doing a travelogue, and barring one moment right at the very end of the film where they kind of spoil the illusion by having the camera cut into footage being shot by a professional camera team. I think they recreate that feeling of ‘vacation’ footage really well, with only minor flaws really.

The scripting is rock solid, really nice fluid plotting, the act structuring is messy, but here it works in the films favour, presenting the carnage with unknown gaps of time in between meaning we never really know how long this is going on for.

In fact, for the most part i’d argue that if I HAD just found this on a blank tape in the wild and I had NO idea what this was, at least initially I’D have thought it was real…which is pretty impressive honestly.

There are however some tells, the dialogue is probably the biggest issue, some of the lines are a little *too* polished in places to feel like they were spur of the moment. there are conversations that read like a Tarantino script, which…if this was aiming to be theatrical, would have been fine. But here mark clear tells that this is staged. The total like of flubs or fumbles too dont help the films case as noone speaks clearly and perfectly 100% of the time…

The characterisations are solid, but a little *too* convenient. everyone stays in their character lanes a little *too* closely, we have a group of people in a very stressful situation, but they all maintain the archtypes we’re introduced to in the beginning and they dont really move out of those typings for the full runtime, which is a bit of a shame as, its well known that stress can cause people to be unpredictable and act off character, which would have almost certainly enhanced this film. I mean, whats here still works fine. And there are enough twists and turns throughout to genuinely keep folks interested. But I just wish there’d been a bit more range.

To that end, another thing that works in this films favour, but may not ultimately lead to the best viewer experience is that the pacing is a bit scattershot and by the end of the 2nd act it all starts to feel a little bit repetative. for the most part the film moves at a real clip and keeps a good pace, but there are moments where they slow down, I assume to give the audience some time to sit with the characters when they arnt being goofy or psychopaths actively. And I feel like those moments could have done with another pass through to really get them optimised…They’re nice moments, but they dragged quite a bit at times and it left me slowly gliding over to my phone while they just…did their thing.

Beyond that? the directions immaculate. In fact, i’d go as far as to say this is probably one of the most convincing and best looking ‘Found footage’ movies of the genre. shots are clearly carefully planned and structured to look as close to a novice messing around with a camera as possible. That may be taken as derogatory given this was a professional film maker behind the lens. But I cannot stress enough how hard it is to make something look INTENTIONALLY like a novice is working a camera when your a trained professional. It takes real skill, because, if you actually GOT a novice to try and make this, they’d overcomplicate it. Its one of those moments where you need to be an expert of the craft to be able to understand the mechanisms that ‘keep it simple’.

With that being said however, the cine is a bit of a mixed bag. I love the intentional fumbles, the wobbliness of the camera, the fact that non of the shots are straight and that the majority of the film is either handheld or balanced awkwardly on whatever is at hand, because…in real life, it would be pretty much. But there are handful of shots here that, much like the dialogue, are just a little too polished and well structured, and again, those moments really did pull me out of the film, because I noticed when the rule of thirds on composition was being set up (mainly because the film DOESNT do that very often) because inevitably it meant that something big was about to go down, and they needed to frame it appropriately, because NOT doing it may mean the shot was missed, leading to audience confusion…Like, I know WHY they did it. But it could have maybe been a bit more conspicuous.

Performance wise? for SOV? this is actually pretty solid! I was really impressed by all our players and thought they did a really good job! they have a great physical energy and (for the most part) delivered their lines in a believable way. The issue here came from the dialogue itself, which, as mentioned was at times a little too polished…meaning the deliveries felt a bit unnatural or theatrical for this kind of a production. Cant fault the cast really for that mind. But it did stop things from really getting up to the next level.

No soundtrack either for this (for obvious reasons) but the soundscape presented again is super naturalistic, feels solid and the dialogue is clean, clear and nicely captured. I didnt miss a word!

‘Americas Deadliest Home Video’ is frankly a must see of ANY fans of the SOV subgenre. and is especially important to see for any ‘found footage’ fans. While it IS imperfect, I think this is probably the strongest entry in the genre (at least up to the mid 2000’s) that i’ve seen. An immersive experience and genuinely entertaining. You can find this via ‘Terror Vision’ who’ve put it out on a jam packed bluray filled with goodies. And I highly suggest you nab a copy while you can.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/americas-deadliest-home-video/

Barely a movie. This thing is BARELY a movie, and almost certainly not worth the cost of the celluloid it was printed on. ‘Road of Death’ was one of the first films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and quite honestly, its a training exercise more than it is an ACTUAL movie.

The plot? HA!. well, the plot is split into 2 halves with the final 10 minutes or so uniting the film together. Bearing in mind this film is 73 minutes long.

So the first half an hour or so introduces us to a biker gang, the leaders got a new girlfriend and in order to formally induct her into the gang, they have to do the initiation ceremony…Which here means the entire gang have to run train on her, but once thats done, non of the gang will ever try anything with her again AND she’ll have the full protection of the gang from then until the end…that plotline, in and of itself, is half the movie…

Now you may be asking yourself, well surely theres some drama? some complex plotting that makes that situation have tension, and intreague and suspense?!…To which I say to you, This is ‘Road of Death’ a first time film attempt by the guy who’d go on to give us ‘Guy from Harlem’ and ‘Supersoul Brother’…So no. what i’ve written above IS all that happens for that duration, the guys ride their bikes around, and sit in the grass flipping quarters…thats it.

The second half of the film is a *little* bit more interesting and follows a group of hippies? (I assume they’re hippies) the guys are all in a swinging band and the girls are all about free love and being one with nature. They spend most of their portion of the film talking about love, the future and what plans they’re going to get up to over the next few days. A good chunk of this is set in a nightclub while the guys reherse their act (and believe me, you’ll SEE them reherse…A LOT.)

Theres a ‘love in’ scene in what looks like some kind of motel room, and then they head out to the woods to go skinny dipping…and that leads us to the last 10-15 minutes of the movie, in which the biker gang spot the hippies and decide to ‘rough them up’ and ‘raise hell’. The hippies all end up injured and traumatised by the event leading one of the guys to go get a gun and do some martial arts on the biker gang, leading to a 5 minute finale which is literally the only part of this film worth watching, ending both predictably and with a thudding dullness.

This felt like someone testing their camera equipment out, who just so happened as a byproduct to discover if he cut all this together, it could be something approximating a movie.

The script is almost non existent, theres barely any dialogue, and what dialogue there is is basica and feels heavily adlibbed. It really wouldnt surprise me if it turned out that Rene on set just gave them a scenario and told them to wing it.

The pacings glacial, with only the final 5 minutes picking up pace to a ‘pedestrian’ level. Non of the characters are particularly interesting or complex, the film completely forgets half the characters even exist in the second half of the film, its going for a largely serious tone, but because its SO bland and uninteresting it somehow manages the feat of having a clear tone, thats so feint its barely decipherable.

The direction is poor, theres a handful of interesting creative decisions but 90% of the film is just locked off mid wide and wide shots that dont really offer anything new. Direction of the cast is painfully safe barring the bike riding sequences, cast members are bolted firmly to the ground or a chair while talking and very little movement happens on camera, with most scenes opening with the cast already in place.

The cine isnt much better, generic compositions with minimal B-roll, badly edited together, colour usage is largely accidental without any kind of coherent themes. the edit itself is rough, with cuts happening seemingly at random and the film really REALLY struggles to stay in focus. Not helped by an incredibly rough around the edges film print sourced for its recent HD remaster.

The performances are borderline ghostly, I dont mean that they’re eerie. I mean that they’re so feint and generic that Most of the time it felt like the cast were reading their lines for the first time the second ‘Action!’ was called. NOONE here looks or sounds good its cinematic sludge.

And the soundtrack was SO good, I dont even remember if there was one…given everythign above, im assuming there wasnt.

A painful movie to sit through, its a 73 minute flick that feels like 100. with an aimless and boring, dragged out plot. Poor direction, even poorer cine, performances that are dire in a way that cant even be enjoyed FOR their awfulness and a totally unmemorable soundscape. This would have been a half star had it not been for the final 5 minutes or so, and 2-3 moments that struck me as ludicrous across the runtime. That was *just* enough to stop me fully hating this movie. But by GOD it’ll be a cold day in hell before I click play on this thing again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/road-of-death/

‘The Guy From Harlem’ has a bit of a legendary status amongst lovers of bad movies and in particular, listeners to ‘Rifftrax’ who covered the film as their first ever ‘Blaxsploitation’ entry back in 2012. There seem to be a lot of folk who have a real soft spot for this film. So when AGFA announced that it was going to be releasing a mini boxset of films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and that one of those films would be a HD scan of ‘Harlem’ I took the plunge thinking watching it for the first time in HD would probably be the best way to catch it…and I was…underwhelmed.

The plot of the film follows the titular ‘Guy from Harlem’ a detective for hire as we follow him on two connected cases. The first sees our man acting as bodyguard to the wife of an African national meeting with diplomats in the States to try and broker stronger relations. He’s given the mission of keeping the wife safe and happy during the discussions, with only one rule. Do NOT try to bang the African nationals wife…

You can imagine what happens next…

Once thats over and done with our ‘Guy’ is introduced to his next case, the daughter of a fairly wealthy gentlman has been kidnapped by a mob group led by the nefarious ‘Big Daddy’. The aim? to rescue the daughter and exchange her for drugs and cash. and…well…thats kind of what happens.

This is one of those movies that trades on the awkwardness of the cast being miscast and the budget so low they cant even afford to properly dress the sets. The idea being that we laugh at our lead because hes a guy who clearly isnt comfortable playing the suave cool detective type, but he’s been cast as just that, and its funny to see him (and the other miscast actors) desperately try to fill the roles. They fumble the ‘cool guy’ lines, can bearly do the physical segments without nearly injuring themselves and from thence the humour arose.

But the problem I have with this one is that its just SO so dry…WAY too dry for me…Not helped at all either by the fact this is essentially two 45 minute films slammed together rather than one long coherent plot.

Its not witty enough to be charming, its not awkward enough to make your jaw drop, its not got the budget to be interesting enough to hold my attention. What this is is a first half thats 45 minutes of two people rambling awkwardly in a hotel room set, with the highlight being a scene where our detective punches a maid who is CLEARLY a woman in one shot, only for it to cut to reveal its CLEARLY a man in a dress as part of an assassination attempt (that bad cut did make me laugh).

While the second half actually has some action and fight scenes (really…REALLY badly shot fight scenes and fight choreography that feels like watching pool noodles fight.) but again, its essentially just folks talking either in the detectives office or in Big Daddys hideout…for 45 minutes…awkwardly…

And dont get me wrong, a bit of awkward acting, the odd weird line delivery, can be really funny, especially if its paced out and timed well…But this is non stop across the whole thing, and its exhausting.

The characters are all super flexible in terms of their character profile, they just kind of, mould into whatever the film needs them to be, whether they naturally fit or not. The tones aiming for straight cut seriouis. But the cringey weirdness ends up leaving it feeling like the answer to the question ‘What if Napolion Dynamite was real life?’

The directions flat, lifeless and bland, theres really nothing standout to me, the cine is ultra basic tripod shots for the most part with maybe 1-2 tracking shots thrown in?…But thats about it, colour use is basically whatever they could get their hands on, with little coherency or ‘coding’ put into the set design. it is very literally just thrown together.

The edit is rough around the edges with cuts happening way to late or way to early quite regularly. they didnt film enough B-roll to help keep sequence structuring fluid so the whole thing is just LONG stretches of mid wide shots cutting occasionally to a head and shoulder close up, and then back again…and thats it.

The performances are probably the only reason to stick around. Loye hawkins turn as our lead detective Al Connors could best be described as ‘So close to shaft, but just…ONE CLICK off’ which is JUST enough to make the entire performance awkward. He’s sincere! my GOD he wants you to believe he’s a super cool detective. But he just cant quite sell me on a single line that comes out of his mouth. and the vast majority of the time he comes across as ‘well intentioned, slightly trippy neighbour’ than ‘Badass detective on a mission’

Wildman Steve is here in a cameo playing Harry De Bauld the father of the Daughter who’s kidnapped in the 2nd half of the film. and he’s probably the most GENUINELY entertaining part of this movie, because he can rev up from a 1 on energy to a 10 in about 3 seconds. He does it so effortlessly and he has some of the best deliveries here…That isnt saying much honestly…But its the best we’ve got.

The rest of the cast get maybe a sentence or two to say every 5-10 minutes, most of it just exposition. they dont have a whole lot of physical presence. In fact i’d say a good 75-80% of the performances here are delivered while fixed firmly in place, or sat in a clearly marked chair to avoid them going off camera or missing the frame. for low budget indie film making from the 70s? this isnt *Too* out of the ordinary…but its sparse and absolutely on the lower end of the scale.

And as for the soundtrack? ‘The Guy from Harlem Theme’ is a bop…but everything else is just elevator music to me. I really didnt get into it. and the editing of the scoring was blunt to say the least. its basically either on, or off. No attempt to time a needle drop well at all.

I didnt outright HATE ‘The Guy from Harlem’…But I just dont see a whole lot here to really LOVE. To me? it just felt like an incredibly low budget blaxsploitation film that had a handful of entertainingly bad moments…But not enough to carry the production as a whole.

Who knows? maybe the Rifftrax riff is the ‘secret sauce’ to this whole thing, and a good set of riffers will take this 1.5 star rating up to a 4? It’s definitely piqued my interest to see what Mike and the gang had to say about this one. But unriffed? it was a slog, not one i’d recommend and not one i’ll be revisiting any time soon if I can help it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-guy-from-harlem/

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-six-thousand-dollar-nigger/2/

One that hits a little *too* close to home for me (seriously, the events of this film happened about half an hour away from where I was born) I had relatively high hopes for ‘The Black Panther’ going in, it touted a fairly accurate depiction of events without going to heavily into ‘exploitation’ terratory, and the fact this film carried with it a rattle from the Mary Whitehosue brigade to get it pulled from cinemas (which, effectively worked, as the film was pulled shortly after its release) had me VERY interested to see what it was up to.

As you can imagine, the film depicts the events of the infamous ‘Black Panther’, a chap by the name of Donald Neilson who was trained in the military and began a spree of burgalreys in the late 60s, which developed into robbing post offices in the early 70s, which in turn led to a string of GBH and eventual murder charges, before probably his most infamous incident, the kidnap and (allegedly accidental) murder of a 17 year old heiress he hoped to use as a blackmail piece, in order to take 50 grand from a wealthy family in turmoil.

Of course, non of this goes to plan, and via a series of borderline dark comedy incidents, Donald for one reason or another ends up fumbling things with horrific consiquences.

Donald Neilson by all accounts was a rather nasty piece of work, and his arrest in 1975 and subsiquent death in 2011 clearly made the country a safer place. But what I find fascinating about this film is that they dont shy away from the complexity of Donald as a human being.

Theres really two ways to interpret this film, one is as a man who was failed by society and had a crap childhood and adolesence trying to regain control of his reality and set himself up comfortably, without compromise for the rest of his life, and anyone who gets in the way of that be damned (family included).

Or, this can be read as the story of a deeply disturbed individual, who was further disturbed by his time in the army, who used the skills there to brutally murder and steal from dozens (if not hundreds) of people, who never took accountability for his actions and only showed remorse once his freedom was removed.

This film makes it clear that Donald didnt really WANT to kill anyone unless he felt he had no other option. But at the same time, it doesnt focus on any kind of aftermath of the murders either. In fact, this film really makes it feel like Donald felt nothing towards murder, even though hes quite reluctant to do it in the first place.

The film, I feel leans more towards the latter of the two situations, but I find it quite ballsy of the film makers to not shy away from that former interpretation. They show Donald as a complex figure, a brutal thug and murderer in one scene, but equally as a someone who does have a bit of compassion.

The script itself is pretty accurate to the police reports and court findings on the case, not a whole lot has changed in the time since this film came out and the present day (theres more evidence now to suggest Leslie fell to her death, rather than being murdered by Donald. And this film came out a year before Donalds wife would be arrested for forging postal cheques, something Donald made her do, but a court still found her guilty and sentenced her to a year behind bars) Which does rather keep this film feeling quite fresh.

At 98 minutes its maybe just a *smidge* over long, I think a round 90 would have given it a bit more a clip to its pace. But while it may be a bit slower boil than I personally would have liked, I have to commend the film for really trying to pull the audience into Donalds world and the situation. What really saves this film is the VERY even act sturcturing on hand. all three acts are pretty nicely balanced out, with decent amounts of action married up to exposition, it never feels like its getting too bloody OR too talky. And having that balance across the 3 acts, and having the 3 acts themselves transition rather seamlessly and smoothly, I feel really helps keep this thing afloat.

Given its based on a true story and they take very few liberties in showing what happened, I dont really have much to say in terms of the plotting. I think it does a fine enough job of it, and while they do shy away a bit from character motivations and more personal complexities (due largely to this case only being about 2 years old at the time this film came out) I feel like it does a quite faithful job of presenting these characters as they were.

The direction is a little on the stiff side, its about as 70s Britain feeling as its possible to get, with most of the film taking place either in the pitch black dark, or entirely backlit by archtypical british weather (Murkey, dreary grey skies and drizzle) Its the type of framing where you feel the cold through the screen. Sequences are largely static, with the occasional cut to B-roll helping improve the flow of scnenes. But given a lot of the Panthers activities happened at night, it does really quite limit exactly what they can do with the visuals here, with the lighting mercifully coming to the rescue in those scenes giving us some decen chiascuro pieces.

The cine is much the same, stiff locked off shots with only the occasional dolly or pan to help the effort. Composition is pretty rock solid and i’d say there are some very creative and inspiring shot choices on display here, particularly during the kidnapping segements. But for the most part, it is quite a flat production. and I really wish they’d taken more time for close ups and a bit more experimentation.

Performance wise, its basically a character piece for Donald Sumpter, who I feel fully captures Neilsons awkward and violent mannerisms. he works a perfect range, delivers a transformative performance and is both unpredictable, and at times thoroughly scary. I think he did a fantastic job portraying Neilson and is easily, on his own, more than enough reason to check this film out.

The supporting cast try their best to help set the tone and mood too, for the most part they’re pretty solid, but as the film follows Donald for the majority of the runtime, they feel more like accompanyments to his story, rather than complex and fully fleshed out characters in their own rights…in fact, from what I could see the only other character who gets a bit more than just ‘what was in the trial notes’ is Debbie Farrington as Leslie Whittle, she gives a genuinely terrified performance and looks every bit as petrified as was needed for this film, an incredible piece I think she was marvellous in this.

Throw in a fantastic instrumental soundtrack that marries orchestral pieces to semi-droning incidental synth music (I’d love to hear this isolated) and all in all? ‘The Black Panther’ is a genuinely compelling, if not a little slow movie.

While I think the script could have maybe been a bit tighter, it has strong performances, decent act structuring and it captures the feel of the time perfectly. It would probably pair up well with the much more fictional ‘Town that Dreaded Sundown’ But I can absolutely say this one is worth a look in.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-black-panther/

I dont feel I fully understood what I was getting into with ‘Dracula (The Dirty old man)’ most writeups for it that I found were a little uncertain of what this film actually was, but when AGFA and Something Weird bought the film to bluray, a cross section of film folk I respect got very excited so I decided to take a punt, and im kind of glad I did.

Something I should probably mention up front, mainly because its a key reason as to why this film IS as liked and infamous as it is, is down to the films audio. Or rather lack there of. i’ve heard conflicting stories. With some saying they didnt record ANY audio for this production on set or location, and some people saying that they DID record audio for it, but that it was so awful in terms of the delivery and background noise, they were essentially FORCED to redo the entire audio scape in post production…and they didnt really know HOW to do that in post production. leading to an end result that sits somewhere between ‘Franky & His Pals’ and ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

The plot follows Mike, some kind of real estate agent?…I assume? Who’s sent a mysterious message from an unknown seller who’s interested in purchasing and reopening a disused mineshaft in the middle of nowhere, and he’s called on Mike specifically to broker the deal. Mike heads out there, and on entering the mine he finds non other than the unliving, unbreathing lord of the undead Count Dracula!

Drack makes Mike an offer, either he’ll kill him outright, or he can be given the power to transform into a Jackyl man at night with superhuman powers, but less willpower than he has now. Where he’ll be tasked with bringing the count beautiful women for him to perv on and drain of blood, and in exchange any woman the count doesnt want. He’ll give to Mike to play with.

Mikes hesitent, but reluctantly accepts and the Count transforms him into the beast, rechristening this monster ‘Irving Jackylman’…and from there? we, basically enter a 40 minute loop of Mike taking a pretty girl out, transforming into Irving and then contacting Dracula who teleports them down into the mineshaft, where he fixes them to a cross, pervs on them for a bit and then drinks their blood. But as the film progresses Irving realises he’s not getting a particularly fair share, and plots to oust the pesky pervy Count once and for all!

And, quite honestly, what makes this film as entertaining as it is is purely down to the redubbing. The script itself is a SUPER high level plot of Dracula commanding a monster to bring him girls…thats the entire movie. But the redub (which feels largely improvised) adds an entirely comedic layer to the production that I feel wouldnt have been there in the original audio.

Dracula sounds like Jackie Mason for the majority of the runtime, and the whole thing is filled with bizarre and awkward improvised lines, line readings that only vaguely match whats ACTUALLY being said on screen, and more often than not. the actors ARNT even talking, they just decided to dub weird and silly improvs over the footage. While I wont personally go as far as to say its hilarious, its mesmorisingly captivating because, you have NO idea what these guys are going to say next and they DO genuinely come out with some funny stuff.

As a knock on to that though, it means there isnt really a whole lot to talk about from a script perspective, I feel like (clocking in at just over an hours runtime) it paces itself about as well as it could, the stark contrast of late 60s grimey, seedy and scratched to buggery film stock combined with the upbeat border ‘beavis and butthead’ style riffing on itself makes it feel refreshingly ahead of its time. and I had a ball just seeing where the film would go next! (It was also while watching this that I realised a couple of clips that were easter eggs on the ‘Monsters crash the Pyjama party’ dvd release were from this movie!’

Direction wise, as mentioned it feels uncannily like ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ super basic scene building with minimal to no effect work, shots are barely in focus 90% of the time honestly and a lot of it feels like it was set up for function over form. Its rough, im not going to lie. But it at least vaguely holds together like a movie should, and even though the plot is repetative, the combination of riffing in the ADR and that simplicity just makes it get funnier every time Irving kidnaps someone.

Cine wise? its a mess, composition is basic at best and largely unfocussed (both in construction AND in the sense its super blurry) scene building is overly basic and they hang on mids and mid close ups for WAY too long, there really wasnt enough B-roll to help flesh this thing out. This combined with an edit that is impricise and feels very much thrown together, rather than considered does make this a VERY messy piece of work. But! in some regards that does lean into the films favour, making some of the gags and riffs even funnier because of how abrupt the edits are.

As for the performances…well theres only really two characters worth talking about here Vince Kelley as Dracula and Billy Whitton as Mike/Irving. I have NO idea if they got the pair back to redub their voices or if they just found someone uncredited to do it instead. But their physical performances are absolutely dire. they give either nothing, or everything and there is no middle ground…its great. And smoothing over that roughness is some super silly dubbing, Its clear by the time they were redoing the audio that everyone had realised this was never going to be taken as a serious sexy horror movie. hell, even if the comedy was intended from the get go, I dont think anyone would have bought into the other elements. And the pair embrace that, delivering 2 memorable performances that are frankly as strange as the movie itself.

As for the soundtrack? I may be misremembering. But Im pretty sure, what we have here, is a single ONE HOUR improvised jazz backing track dubbing the whole movie. there may be the occasional pause here and there. But otherwise, if you dont like Jazz with a hint of early synth work. then your gonna have a real bad time here.

I was honestly expecting this film to be a bit more ‘Pornier’ than it was. and was VERY pleasently surprised to find out that it was actually much more silly and comedic than it was erotic. I can absolutely see why Something Weird Video had some involvement in preserving and saving this movie, equally I TOTALLY understand AGFA putting it out. its a big daft film, it never quite hits the BIG big laughs. But if you like rifftrax or MST3K, and have a particular softness for ‘Manos’ I think you’ll be very pleasently surprised. Reccomended.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-the-dirty-old-man/

“How much piss do these convicts HAVE?!”

I picked this film up a while ago based souly on the marketing advertising it as one of the more notorious ‘Roughie’ pictures of the 70s. Which was enough of a batsignal to pull me in, but I didnt *quite* realise what I was getting stuck into…This thing is a mess. a dirty…DIRTY mess.

The films just over an hour long and has a plot so loose its hanging around its ankles. We open on a farm with a banjo weilding title theme song that sets up all the characters, Ma and Pa are farm owners, and Pa is restless for some action with Ma, meanwhile the farmers daughters Martha, Jane and Kate are fascinated with this whole ‘Sex’ thing and regularly drop by the house to catch their own parents ‘in the act’. The local farm hand ‘Fred’ is also on the scene and wants all three of the daughters, who tease him relentlessly for it.

And based on the first 10 minutes of this film, I thought I thought I was going to be in for a fairly generic ‘farm based’ adult feature with maybe a little rough housing and mildly incestuous themes (as is expected in farm porn) But it genuinely surprised me at just how depraved the film gets in places. As what follows is an extended sequence where the daughters rape and pee on Fred, who swears revenge. only; THEN, the film cuts to 3 new characters who are escaped convicts on the run. They find the farm house, find ma and pa and decide to incapacitate Pa, so they can have their own fun (against her will) with Ma.

things pretty much devolve from there into rape based, water sport rampant, sodomizing incestuous insanity from there on in. and while a LOT of this film made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the absolute rediculousness of this film on a technical and thematic level made it genuinely too funny to turn off.

For a starters, the film itself is chaos. We open with the intros to the characters, cut to ma and pas sex scene (which repeats the same 2 minutes of sex footage out of sequence for a full 8 minutes) with AWFUL…AWFUL ADR overdubbing that sounds like two furbys having a conversation through a tin can telephone.

The film then jumps BACK in time to reshow the ma and pa sex scene from the daughters perspective, but nothing new is added apart from some footage of the daughters looking through the window and reacting to the sex. we then get the Fred rape scene, in which the actress who rapes Fred is shown either bottom half being penetrated, or top half reacting to being penetrated, but you only see a full body shot once. it’s SO weird. at first I thought the actress had quit out and they’d had to get another adult actress in to shoot the penetration scenes, but then towards the end of the scene you do get ONE full body shot of her having sex, and then it cuts back to the weird ‘top half only reaciton shots’ or ‘bottom half being penetrated’ stuff…

We then jump WAY back in time AGAIN to go through the entire films run up to this point AGAIN from the cons perspective as they flee from the law, find the daughters raping Fred, head up to the house and find Ma and Pa at it, and decide to run a train on Ma.

and what follows from that is LITERALLY all over the place. Im fairly confident the film only existed as one sentence pitches on cocktail napkins. NOONE seems to know what their lines are or how to deliver them, the writer clearly had NO idea how to structure a script because, everytime he forgets to add in something about a character, the film just…BEGINS AGAIN, from that characters perspective to add in 1 extra scene where they clarify that the character DOES know something.

The tone is bizarre flitting between graphic and unpleasent depictions of rape to utterly surreal line deliveries that literally made me wheeze laughing. I dont know what Zebedy Colt thought he was doing here. But in terms of leaving a lasting impression. He has.

The directions incredibly high level, we’re trench deep in that period of 70s adult features where everyone looks ill, even the film stock looks ill and sickly. everythings starkly overlit, and everything has a dirty seedy green and brown vibe to it. 90% of the shots here are done for function over style, Colt makes, the BIZARRE choice to shoot most of the sex scenes in 3 different styles: Top half with actors and actresses clearly gyrating on nothing, but reacting. Bottom half – which is basically just awkwardly placed, murkey, unpleasent penetration shots. and probably the least appealing of the 3 options; extreme eye shattering closeups of genitles. Im talking top to bottom, left to right, barely focussed shots of butt holes, vaginas and penises looking unclean and unpleasent. I brought a yoghurt up with me to watch with my movies tonight, its staying in its pot now.

direction of the cast seems to be nothing more than telling them bluntly what to do ‘Do her doggy style and say something like ‘Do you like piss bitch?!’..and even then the cast dont *quite* nail even that. its just…obscenely rough around the edges.

And thats not even getting into the cine, as mentioned you have the 3 different shot types for the sex scenes. But this whole thing looks atrocious, its largely shot free hand, shots are hideously composed, have no colour coordination, no attempt at visual story telling, and because of the lighting everythings blown out and its a wonder we can see anything at all.

But easily, the worst…THE WORST. part of this movie, is its edit. I thought my DVD copy of this was broken, I honestly did. So…from the top. Because they didnt shoot enough footage of the sex scenes, they just repeat the footage over and over until the ‘pop’ shot. meaning 2-3 minutes of footage can end up running for 7-9 minutes. they didnt bother recording sound during the sex scenes, so they’ve had to ADR ALL the porn scenes. I hope you like the sound of a man slurping soup directly into a microphone thats recording WAY hotter than it needs to, because that WILL be blasting out at you at an unreasonably loud volume whenever a blowjob scene happens.

The ADR doesnt always match up with whats happening on screen either, sometimes its just actors pissing about in a vocal booth saying anything that comes to mind, no matter how ludicrous or strange. (This is an element I actually really like because they’re genuinely hilarious)

The editor seemingly didnt know how to cut a narrative together, so as mentioned, the film flip flops around in time showing the same sex scenes 2- 3 times from each of the characters different angles with very little difference between each run. Theres NO attempt to try and intercut these 3 plots into one coherent story. they literally do just, restart the film every time they want to add something in.

The film will randomly cut WAY too early (mid sentence during conversations) or WAY too late leaving people just standing around. At at least two points, the film abruptly stops mid sentence and just…sits on a dirty block brown screen for 2-5 seconds before hard cutting to a totally different scene. they frequently intercut flash frames from other parts of the movie randomly into the sequence. and the finale is quite literally a seizure inducing flash frame extraviganza of ALL the footage leading up to the end of the film haphazardly thrown together with no rhyme or reason…I felt like I’d entered the 2001: A Space odyssy time tunnel…I sincerely believe this film was edited in a blender.

The cast are all manic, WAY over the top and just plain weird, which again, Is something I really enjoyed because, their delivery choices and physical presences are all SO awkward and strange, it makes simple lines instantly quotable. Not a SINGLE decent performance in the entire movie…but you want a quotably bad performance? this films got you covered.

And the soundtracks mostly banjo tunes apart from the title track which has a bonus narrator added over the top for good measure. its cut about as well as the footage, so…yeh. its WILD.

Its rare these days that I get genuinely surprised by an adult feature, and with ‘The Farmers Daughters’ I wasnt expecting anything *too* surprising. But this films genuinely nuts. I have no other way to describe it. Its the ranting incoherency of a horny HORNY man who wanted to share his pent up frustrations with the world. I could see some people calling this work offensive, but I think ‘The Sam Raimi Defence’ applies here. In the sense that this work is SO over the top and rediculous that I dont think anyone could ever take it serious, letalone an advocation.

If your into ‘Roughie’ cinema or ‘adult films’ I’d absolutely say this is worth catching at least once, it’s in the same pedigree as films like ‘Batpussy’ for just how incoherent and fever dreamy it feels. You’ll feel fine for the first 10 minutes, but just be ready for that skillet to the side of the head! its a doozy!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-farmers-daughters/