TYTD Reviews

This one feels like a more gentle ‘Black Mirror’ or something by Chris Morris. It follows a recently released prisoner trying to make ends meet as a supply delivery man, but old habits die hard and he’s been skimming supplies and selling them on for personal profit.

He eventually stumbles in on a recording session with a band and gets a hold of one of their demos, and while on a run to a record label, decides to drop it in as a chancer.

The label love it, and want him to promote the single, but that’s when the problems begin when he finds out the band ended permanently literally the day after the demo was made. Leading to him having the great idea to make the band ‘whatever the person listening imagines they are’ complete with fancy dress costume outfits and a photo fit music video, it all begins to spiral.

It’s good! A nice balance between comedy and serious acting a twinge of the dystopic about it and a lot to say about disposable pop culture. Definitely one to check out if your looking for the best of the ‘comic strip’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/private-enterprise/

Watched as part of a larger project im currently working on…So to keep it brief.

This is a HELL of a picture. debauched, sadistic and twisted in the most delightful ways. Robert Sickinger puts his extensive knowledge of set and cast direction to the best of use here in realising the twisted harem of a mad man.

Dancing the line PERFECTLY between steamy eroticism and hardcore, its a minimalist piece (1 set and 1 location shoot for the most part) that feels rich, sumptuous and downright impressive honestly. While the location footage doesnt *quite* manage to capture victorian london. the set work is very impressive.

The English accents are quite impressive, though they do wobble in places and a couple of the cast basically dont even bother. But thats fine, this films quite acidic in tone and still rather controversial nearly 50 years on. Its geared more towards a BDSM audience. So your milage may vary, but I thought this was technically impressive and it astounded me that the director only ever shot one more film before returning to an on/off career in the theater. Wild.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-naughty-victorians-an-erotic-tale-of-a-maidens-revenge/1/

It’s ‘The Comic Strip’ take on Psychological thrillers this time around as we follow the story of a middle class woman marrying into aristocricy (becoming the new Mrs. Saunders), and her increasing paranoia due to the mansions housemaid Consuala, who refuses to let her do anything and acts maliciously complient to her every request.

Its a fine enough execution of the psycho drama style of film making, the jokes are pretty fun too, but there wasnt a lot of gut laughs here. Some funny moments…but nothing that truely stood out.

Honestly; It feels almost like this special only really came about because Adrian Edmondson and Jennifer Saunders ACTUALLY DID get married in mid to late 1985…Which does kind of add an extra layer of comedy to proceedings…But also made it feel like this wasnt exactly a stretch for the troupe…

Its fun, but I cant say its a classic…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/consuela-or-the-new-mrs-saunders/

‘Psycho Paul’s Film Festival’ is a bit of a cinematic oddity…25 copies of this film were made back in 1990 (10 of which remained with the films director…at least…thats whats implied in the extra features of this release). and until VHShitfest got involved and put this out on Bluray, that was kind of the beginning and end of it…Having now seen it, I kind of understand why.

In essence. This is a ‘starter film’ as in, this is a film made by a group of people (in this case Paul Van Dan Elzen, his brother and his mum) Who hadnt really made a movie before, experimenting with the medium to see what they could and couldnt do…As such, it doesnt really follow a lot of conventional film making process or coherency.

The setup is that ‘Psycho Paul’ is a film maker, he’s present in the film as a host introducing various films he’s made that he’s showcasing in THIS film in a ‘Festival’ format…

That does kind of make it sound a bit grander than it is. In real terms, this is Paul and his family shooting several short films in their living room/kitchen and in front of a black backdrop, in the middle of winter. parodying low budget SOV cinema and doing breakaway gags here and there, such as intermittent commercials to buy the props seen in the short films for ludicrous amounts of money (an example being a characters shirt being offered for sale at the low low price of $777,777,777.77)

The shorts themselves all have really simple premises, such as ‘Evil Ex-Wife must die’ which is literally just Pauls Mum shot in front of a black screen shouting ‘NO! NO! NO!’ repeatedly with it periodically cutting away to Paul in a reverse shot flailing a knife and an electrical chord around…Or ‘Vomit Master’ which is just Pauls brother faking throwing up for 20 minutes (probably…it felt that long…).

A point of slight confusion is raised almost immediately with a note from VHShitfest, who’ve put an opening caption at the beginning of the feature that says that every single tape to do with this film (all 10 copies of the finished film, the master tape and the raw footage) were heavily mould damaged. So they’ve had to ‘reconstruct’ the feature as best they could…Im not sure if that means they followed the original finished edit and just recreated it, or if they totally remade the film using the raw footage…But this things an hour and 40 minutes long and feels like it goes on for longer than the Lord of the Rings Extended cuts.

Thats probably the biggest problem this film has all together, Everyone involved in shooting it had either limited or no experience in film making. Meaning the rules of film making are generally an after thought. Scenes just run on and on and on with no rhyme or reason…and they’re not even entertaining. They almost feel like they’re looping the same footage repeatedly for 10 minutes before changing to something else.

The parody stories are super basic and due to it being the middle of winter and them having no budget for this thing, All the films look and feel exactly the same, use the same locations and the same cast…making it feel even more incoherent.

Theres almost no consideration for levelling off the camera, creative direction or storyboarding. everythings just setup and shot however they wanted to do it that day. Sometimes…it works, i’d say theres half a dozen shots here that are genuinely REALLY cool and look and feel awesome…But for the vast majority of the sequences, its wonky, badly composed reverse shots, intercut with experimentation in colour bleeding and video feedback (by pointing the camera at a television screen) They experiment with audio feedback too…which again, works maybe once or twice…but for the most part is just super annoying.

Having studied film at a high school, college and university level. I have an appreciation for this film. Its intimate. It feels like im watching someones first forays into film making, and god forbid my first works ever get an international release because they’re only marginally better than this. As such, giving this thing an (admittedly limited…but still international) release I feel is ACTUALLY insane.

I dont know who’ll really truely love this film. I appreciated it as it gave me warm fuzzy nostalgic flashbacks to shooting my first movie on no budget out of my old bedroom at my parents place…and I could imagine other budding film makers who cut their teeth in the VHS or DV days will feel similar pangs of familiarity.

But for non ‘filmie’ viewers, or people who DIDNT grow up with that experience. I think they’ll have a dreadful time. It’s WAY too long (this should have been half an hour…if that) its messy, rambly, inaduible for large chunks of it. It really truely feels like they’ve distributed someones test footage. Some people will get it, Some people wont…I do…but that doesnt mean I ‘like’ it.

One for the film making/video art crowd. If you fall into one of those two catagories, I’d say it *might* be worth your time because, as an experimental work it DOES have one or two genuinely interesting moments in feedback play…for you non video art folk though? This isnt your rodeo I dont think…I certainly wouldnt recommend it unless you were DEEP into experimental cinema or SOV culture…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/psycho-pauls-film-festival/

So…when it comes to low budget horror, a lot of the time im convinced that they’re made predominantly to show naked women under the guise of a more ‘acceptable’ genre than ‘Adult’ films…and I think a lot of people will (sometimes rightfully) defend lower budget horror films that do this as being more than just titlation…whether its because of some nice(ish) direction and cine, or some scripting that takes it above and beyond the average porn flick.

But my belief that ‘Evil Toons’ LITERALLY WAS just an excuse to film women in states of undress and little else, is a hill im willing to die on. Because thats basically all that happens in this thing.

Capitalising on ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbits’ hybrid visuals of cartoons and live action (but on a SIGNIFICANTLY reduced budget) Here’s Evil Toons plot…IN IT’S ENTIRITY.

We open in the past as a mysterious man (David Carradine) is cursing at an old book…at which point he hangs himself (which…in retrospect…ooft.) Flash forward to the present day of 1992 and 4 girls have taken a job cleaning an old mansion house ahead of it’s sale for 100 dollars for a days work.

The girls are staying at the house overnight, they explore the house and find a daggar, then someone sends them the same book Carradine was seen with at the start of the film in the form of a mysterious parcel. They open it, look at the book in disgust and dispose of it while one of the girls strips.

The dollar store necronomicon however comes to life and summons a demon! who possesses stripper girl aaaaaand the rest of the film is literally just her running around the house in various states of undress, VERY occasionally killing people (off screen) while the other girls ALSO run around the house in various states of undress…for well over 60 minutes.

Thats the movie. Theres quite literally nothing else here. The ‘Evil Toon’ (theres only one in the whole movie) is on screen for less than 2 minutes of limited rotoscoping near the beginning and thats it. Realistically, this would have struggled to fill 20 minutes, letalone 70 and once the initial setting up has taken place (basically the first 20 minutes) it devolves into a runaround that takes us right up to the ending 3 minutes.

NOTHING happens in this thing. and if it wasnt for the fact that im fairly nostalgic for this kind of late 80s/early 90s low budget horror stuff, i’d actually be angry this thing wasted my time. I cant even say its humourous because the dialogues SO vanilla and generic.

it looks pretty nice from a direction and cine standpoint for a low budget picture…But thats about the nicest thing I can say. the soundtrack sounds like royalty free music, the titles misleading and the plotting, pacing and tone is abominable. The acting is low quality even for low budget film making and even a breif reprise with Michelle Baur isnt enough to really win me back.

The very definition of ‘not as good as the sum of its parts’ when you have David Carradine and Michelle Baur on your cast list and Gary Graver and Fred Olen Ray on your crew and THIS is the best you come up with?…Eeesh. Avoid. its a tempting pitch on paper, but its BEYOND dull and they’re REALLY stretching the rules of ‘Advertising standards’ with the marketing on this one…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-toons/

As a rule, I generally try to avoid catching films as soon as they come out because ‘hype’ for them can often skew the situation meaning that 9 times out of 10 I come away dissapointed. In the years i’ve taken this approach I’ve generally not had any issues. But sometimes leaving a film long enough for the ‘release hype’ to die down can lead to another problem ‘legacy hype’. When something builds up enough goodwill amongst people that theres a lot of positive feedback, which is then turned INTO a problem by modern algorithms that are designed to try and guess what you like and funnel those views directly into your face.

This film is unfortunately one of those situations. I missed my chance at the Al Adamson boxset a few years back (one of my biggest non purchase regrets really) But initial word was that this film as an astounding assembly of the life of Al Adamson and arguably one of the best documentaries of the year.

I tried not to follow the hype, and after a couple of years some of my peers ALSO flagged up that this documentary was ‘INCREDIBLE. UNBELIEVEABLE!, ASTOUNDING’ and frankly a must see. Severin put the film out as a solo offering (paired with one of Al’s other movies as B-Feature)

So last Black friday, while it was at a really good price, I snapped it up…excited to see this modern redefinition of documentary cinema as at least half a dozen friends and two dozen folks online had basically said it was one of the best cult documentaries ever made…aaaaand it was fine. Had noone said anything, or had I just had a sly recommendation for it from people rather than the ‘ITS LIFECHANGING’ vibe people kept telling me, i’d have probably been warmer to it…But the reality is ‘Blood and Flesh’ is just a pretty well put together documentary thats kind of like a sandwhich.

We open with a lengthy piece on Al’s life, how he got into movies and the events leading up to his first picture…then about an hour and 10 or so is literally just talking head interviews with the cast and crew of his movies as we systematically go through all of the 32 films that were featured in the Al adamson set…with VERY light pepperings of Al’s private life thrown in here and there (which I thought was a bit of shame really as I was kind of hoping for a bit more about the man rather than the movies) and the final 20 – 30 minutes turns into a ‘true crime’ special as they deal with the grizzly end to Al’s life. and thats…about it.

As a documentary its fine enough…Like…I cant say I didnt enjoy it. But this kind of documentary film making has been the standard now for about 15 years at least…most boutique labels these days do this kind of style of documentary whenever they cover an auteur llower budget film maker, Stecklers had one, Milligans had one…I cant say this is bad…but there are people out there implying this is one of the great documentaries of our era…and its just…not.

While the interviewee’s are delightful engaging and border eccentric at times (which I loved) The angle is firmly on ‘Al the film maker’ and it very rarely strays from that. Theres also a huge gap in the narrative near the end of the film where they discuss his latter films (Carnival Magic/Lost) which were made in 1983/84, and then suddenly we time jump to 1992 and the death of Al’s wife where the documentary implies that THAT was what made Al quit film making, neglecting that he had actually stopped making films about 11 years prior…It would have been nice to find out what happened in those 11 years, the film alludes to him getting into other business ventures during this time and travelling a lot…But it doesnt elaborate.

They vaguely allude to Als final project, a UFO documentary that was never completed because Al ‘supposedly’ met a half alien/half human and got cold feet about the people involved in the project…but the interviewees who DO know more about that wont elaborate and the documentary just kind of drops it in front of us tantilizingly and then quickly hurries it away…you cant just casually drop into your film that Al met aliens and then hustle it away and start talking about his Ranch in Indio. Even looking online, noone seems to know anything about the incident, or even tangentally what it could be referring to…its just such an odd thing to not expand on.

The pacings a little slow for my taste, while some of the anecdotes are really engaging, some are a little dry, it kind of felt like some films didnt have a lot of history behind them, so they just had to go with ANY story that they could pull out of people for the time. They also gloss over a lot of Al’s more ‘Adult’ films, which is a shame because they easily look like some of the more demented offerings that i’d have actually been quite interested in seeing…

Beyond this though, theres a lot of good to be had here. The film makers clearly knew their stuff and Al seemed to keep quite a good archive and paper trail, and the film makers have used it well in crafting a wonderful tapestry of behind the scenes footage, clips from the films and paperwork to help flesh out Adamsons film making years really well.

Its got a clear (if not slightly generic) directional vision, the cine is and framing used to help add context is really nicely handled and the editing and scoring is top notch too.

I think the unfortunate thing about this documentary for me at least, is that it doesnt feel like a standalone thing, it feels like something someone would watch if they hadnt seen an Al Adamson film (or had maybe only seen the really well known ones) and was about to crack open and work through the Adamson Severin set. A set thats now LONG out of print, stupidly expensive and unlikely to be reissued, with *most* of the 32 films ONLY available via that set or from sourcing older even MORE expensive VHS and DVD releases.

It acts almost as a sampler in that sense, something to get you intreagued about checking out the works of Adamson…works that, as of the time of writing, noone can see without dropping $400-600 on the masterpiece set 2nd hand.

In the future, his films may get another outing, and I sincerely hope they do because this documentary does a great job of selling them…But for now this just feels a bit like a part of a bigger thing thats missing a lot of its parts. One where i’d say, if its on streaming. Go for it, if your interested in Adamsons films, Go for it. But dont go out of your way to import a copy, and if your thinking of checking this out to learn more about Adamson as a person, you may not get what your looking for.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/blood-flesh-the-reel-life-ghastly-death-of-al-adamson/

Broadly considered to be the ‘Silver Award’ of the Cannibal subgenre. There really isnt many Cannibal films out there that could legitimately be considered better than ‘Cannibal Ferox’ a poster child of the Video nasty era, It REALLY stressed the limits of taste and decency in its time, and even today would make many uncomfortble.

The plot follows a PHD student, working on her dissertation into the history of Cannibalism, with her main goal being to prove that its a myth. In particular, she intends to prove this by travelling to a remote tribe in the Amazon that have the strongest living evidence of Cannibalism. Her thinking is that if they get there and they either dont exist, or if they DO exist but arnt cannibalistic. Her theory will be proven correct and her work becomes justified.

However, things start to derail fairly quickly as while part way on their journey, their jeep gets stuck in the mud and they lose a large chunk of their survival equipment. Around the same time 2 other explorers emerge from the scrubland, badly hurt and talking about being attacked by cannibalistic tribes. Gloria (our PHD student) is sceptical. But decides to continue on her journey to see for herself. After several gory and unpleasent incidents of Animal cruelty, they arrive at the village, there’s a frosty reception for them and it slowly becomes apparent that ‘Mike’ (one of our found explorers, an aggressive sod and a MASSIVE Cocaine fiend) MAY have done more than just ‘fled from a cannibalistic tribe after an unprovoked meeting’…

I feel the best way to sum my feelings up on this one is ‘Its like Cannibal Holocaust, but not as good’. It feels to me like they were making this film, Cannibal Holocaust came out, the film makers saw it, and decided to amp up the exploitation and hideousness.

The paralells with ‘Holocaust’ are many, in essence the plots share similar beats. Both films featrure horrible people upsetting predominantly passive tribes by being aggressive and violent towards them, and both films spend an elongated period of time showing EXACTLY what happens if you take part in that kind of behaviour or support anyone taking part in that kind of behaviour.

Ferox has a bit of a trade off on its hands…I dont think its *quite* as nasty as ‘Holocaust’ but it INSTEAD trades that, for being much MUCH crueller to our main cast. In ‘Holocaust’ the main characters were iredeemable…even the nicest member of their crew was bad. Which made it justifyable to the audience when they got punished.

Here, we have pretty squeaky clean people ultimately getting VERY badly punished. Mike and Pat as characters are obvious for the ‘Cannibal Torture’ treatment, because Mikes pretty awful throughout and does a LOT of drugs and Pat gets pulled into Mikes world, but Glorias only crime really is being arrogant about what she *thinks* she knows…and Rudy’s only crime as far as I can recall was beating up Mike. yet EVERYONE gets punished…VERY harshly.

Holocaust has the edge in terms of more memorable scenarios and visuals. But Ferox ‘feels’ colder both in terms of its cast and how theyre treated.

The script on the whole is fine, we DO have a clean 3 act structure. Though its VERY saggy in the middle. the first acts relatively tight, but once they meet Mike and co, things slow down to a crawl as we spend a LOT of time wandering around the jungle until they find the village and then a LOT of time i the village while Gloria tries to piece things together…

Its slow and a bit trudging…and as someone who isnt entirely smitten with graphic violence towards animals. When that’s the ONLY thing punctuating these long saggy breaks in the action…it was a bit dissapointing.

The 3rd act however does bring everything back up to a solid pace as we enter an act almost entirely focussed on Revenge. Leading to a wonderfully bleak ending that feels a little less natural than some of the Cannibal films…but otherwise ends things about as solidly as they could be ended.

I do have some gripes about the script, filming is split between New York and the Amazon. While I totally get using New York as a locational base for Gloria and her studies. Theres this weird B-plot that isnt really integrated all that well in which some cops in New York are looking for Mike, and they end up getting his landlady involved, and then the cops and the landlady end up heading to the Amazon to try and find him…It was really bizarre and honestly? apart from using it as an excuse to grab footage of New York landmarks…they seemed almost entirely pointless to the main drive of the film.

Also…as an aside, when they do get to the Amazon, the setup thats given to the audience is that the cops/landlady are going to find and possibly rescue our travellers…they have one scene in the Amazon and then they’re literally never seen again.

Tonally this things bleak, NOT for the feint of heart, its oppressively dark for most of the runtime, and if utterly depressing cinema with largely unlikeable characters and HUGE amounts of unpleasent animal murder is your bag, you’ll probably quite dig this one.

The direciton and cine are actually pretty gorgeous all things considered, we have Umberto Lenzi firing on all cylinder’s here delivering a genuinely interesting piece. I dont feel like he *quite manages* the degree of emotional investment that ‘Deodato’ managed with ‘Holocaust’ but instead that cold distance that Lenzi puts between us and the horror helps ampliphy the feeling of isolation. Which I feel helps deliver a Cannibal picture that is of the ‘ilk’ of ‘Holocaust’ but strikes out very much to the beat of its own drum.

Compositionally this things lovely with some excellent ‘on location’ footage, colour use is rich and highly enjoyable. its a visual feast…if you happen to like nightmares. The editing is pretty rock solid, particularly for this genre which is known to struggle with coherent sequence building…id argue that it may even be the best edited Cannibal movie ive seen.

Its a creative picture in that sense that has a lot to offer somebody looking to see the more technically proficient side of the ‘Video Nasties’.

The performances are all terrific, with a slight tinge of hamminess coming from the V/O crew and the onset cast its JUST the right tone to help give a little light to the darkness. they’re all highly animated and absolutely NOT opposed to properly getting stuck into the blood, guts and oompska.

Add all this to an ASTOUNDING score which is arguably one of the best of the subgenre AND one of the best of Italian exploitation of the day. and you have the makings of a pretty solid production.

‘Cannibal Ferox’ absolutely wont be for everyone, nor would I want it to. While I personally feel that it lacks the emotional depth, pacing and authenticity of ‘Holocaust’. What IS here is a wonderfully bleak production that manages, even now, to shock and immerse it’s audience into its deeply unpleasent but beautifully shot world. I have a real soft spot for ‘Ferox’ its not perfect. But if your looking for ‘good’ examples of exploitation cinema or video nasties…you likely wont find better.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/cannibal-ferox/

“GATOR ATE MY BABY!”

Before he made arguably he most beautiful film ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, Ruggero Deodato began to test the waters of the mondo cannibal genre, and ‘Jungle Holocaust’ very much feels like that, someone testing the waters and feeling out what they can and cant getaway with.

Im convinced i’ve seen this film before, but for the life of me I cant remember when or where. Which means the most likely answer is I saw it when I was in university while VERY much under the influences…Which is probably the best way to watch these kinds of Cannibal movies honestly…

The plots simple enough, a group of business people are flying over a remote region to have a meeting with their partners for a rigging proposition when their plane encounters trouble and has a rough landing, while the planes being repaired the gang decide to explore the crash site and almost immediately half the crew are killed, and the other half are split up with our lead ‘Robert Harper’ being seized by the cannibals and taken to a cave where he’s stripped, tormented and dumped in a pit/cell.

And…the bulk of the rest of the movie is pretty much Robert being tortured, escaping with one of the tribes women, encountering all manner of horrible things such as extreme animal mutilation, cannibalistic tendancies and a scene that made me laugh for how blunt it is, in which a woman gives birth on a river bank unaided, sees that it’s a girl and just…casually tosses her into the river where a gator eats it.

The actual plotting of the films fine enough, but this is a lot more of a slow burn than ‘Holocaust’ with the middle act sagging awfully. Theres plenty of ‘shock’ moments, but nothing as intense as what would come after it. This was really the early days of the mondo cannibal flick however, so it still needed a fair bit of time to warm up.

I do feel that the film somewhat overstays its welcome, at 91 minutes, this could have easily been an 80 minute feature and been better for it. The animal mutilation, while not as graphic as Holocaust is still quite unpleasent and is likely to put a lot of people off.

the dialogue (by which I mean the dub) is fine enough, a bit dull honestly, the Voice actors are playing things relatively straight, and most of the dialogues basic, and once the gang get split up its pretty much grunts from then on till the end credits.

visually, its a bit flat too. Deodato seems to be feeling out his style within the genre here and while there are absolutely some genius moments on display (pretty much everything inside the cannibals cave lair is VERY well handled and feels quite unsettling) the location work when they’re out in the open is a bit incoherent and frustrating. And not in a ‘Oh! it makes you feel what the characters are feeling! confusion and uncertainty!’ kind of way…in a; ‘Im pretty sure they’re recycling footage at this point, and everything looks samey’ kind of way.

Composition is rough around the edges. I feel like this style is used to its best effort when Deodato turned to faux documentary. Because with a linear narrative feature like this, it just feels a bit rushed, messy and unpleasent. Composition is quite hit or miss, and I dont feel they got the best out of the wonderful colours of the jungle either…Not to mention the edit, which. is. ROUGH. with sound that drops in and out infrequently awkward cuts and shocking pacing on sequence structuring. This isnt a polished product. it feels like a ‘best job possible givent he circumstances’ edit, rather than one that was planned.

The performances are all actually not to bad for low budget italian films of the time. Massimo Foschi as Robert gets a LOT of range to work with and for the most part pretty much nails EXACTLY what was required for the role, really pushing himself and not being afraid to get dirty if needs be. Me Me Lai as ‘Pulan’ the tribeswoman who helps robert escape in someways had the hardest job of this shoot because she had to look fairly glam (this IS an Italian exploitation film…there HAD to be a glam italian cannibal girl…thats just how these things work) while being entirely limited to grunts, groans and screams. Shes superb here really knocking it out of the park and arguably even outshining Massimo in some scenes.

The rest of the cast more than fit the bill, given how low quality these Cannibal movies can and will get from this point onwards, I think they’re actually pretty above average all things considered. and the speaking supporting cast, while shortlived here, I feel do more than an adiquate job, I really cant flaw them.

While the soundtrack is unremarkable, its not offensive…so thats a good thing, though the quality of the audio recording here is a bit problematic in places. Again; its no as bad as I know these films CAN get…but its not great.

For me (and to keep it simple) This ones better than a LOT of the Cannibal exploitation films that were pumped out between the mid 70s and mid 80s…but I wouldnt class it as ‘one of the best’ its definitely in the uper half of quality, with an interesting and (for the time) unique plotline, some genuinely unpleasent sequences. Good, solid acting. and direction and cine that…while a bit hit and miss at times, does deliver a reasonable amount.

Its a slow burner, so do be prepared to clock watch after a while, with better pacing and maybe a little contrast in tone, this could have been great. As it stands, its just ‘good’ which is a shame…but folks, we all gotta start somewhere!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/last-cannibal-world/

A comment on counter culture (almost infact a counter to counter culture culture in itself) ‘Fritz the Cat’ is an oddity of a film, in the sense that it was made in 1972 (inspired by the works of Robert Crumb) but is set in the far out mists of time that was 1965-1968…Its not time specific, but the hippie/woodstock/free love movement is in full swing and beginning to be ridiculed during the time the events of this film take place, so im guessing it closer to ’68 than it is ’65…

Essentially we take a trip with Frtiz, a quote ‘egotistical man child’ careering around New York, passing himself off as a poet and revolutionary artist. Though in reality he’s just looking to score and to see what he can get from society. Thats not to say he’s an irredeemable character…just that he’s a false one, and that we as the audience are set up to expect him to be unreliable in the face of self interest and satisfaction.

And…the movie…in essence is just that, a scathing takedown of that particular cross section of white heterosexual ‘hippie’. The sort who’ll fein concern and interest in the protection of minorites or vaguely gesture goodwill to people…While not actually doing all that much to actually make the situation better beyond words. Which is illustrated by the one time in the film where a chance to ACTUALLY change things comes up, and he realises he’s NOT that invested.

Robert crumbs artwork here is replicated with relative love, his artistic style is always a delight (if not somewhat more questionable these days) and the animation teams did a fantastic job of bringing his style to life with wonderfully strange results.

It looks good, it sounds good. Its absolutely dated by modern standards, but I had a bit of a soft spot for Fritz, early adult animation that wasnt just straight up porn was a rarity at this point, and without Fritz its quite likely a lot of YA and adult animation (such as 80% of Adult swims output) likely wouldnt exist, or would be WILDLY different.

Worth catching at least once, I cant comment on it’s rewatch value. But I have no regrets. Would probably be best enjoyed in an alcohol fueled fug.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/fritz-the-cat/

Another watch for a larger project thats on the way; so to keep it short.

I think I prefer this one to the original. It brought up an old arguement I’ve had before with films like this where I get stuck between whether its better to like a film that has an original(ish) idea thats quite badly executed. Or a much more stable picture that lacks originality as a result.

This one kind of falls into the latter, its nailed the eroticism (something the first film was VERY hit or miss on) the direction, cine and pacing all get MASSIVE overhauls that yield better results, but some of this feels just like they’ve reworked scenes from the first film into a new format and tried to pass it off as new content.

That and I dont think my eyes will ever *truely* recover from the ’16 year old, voyeur, gerontifile, three way gangbang scene featuring a animate stuffed animal’ which somehow TOTALLY missed the mark and came across like an NSPCC advert directed by Gary Glitter…EASILY the worst thing i’ve seen while researching for this larger project (and I saw ‘Sex in the Comics’ a few days ago.

Beyond that though, this is definitely a heavy technical improvement over the first film..still a little wobbly in places, but of the two. I think this one just pips it for me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/fantasm-comes-again/