TYTD Reviews

*Sigh* Best of the Best 4: Without Warning. Y’know…when I started this franchise I was so bright eyed and hopeful. The first film was a decently made and interesting Team sports movie, it wasnt perfect, but it felt fresh, interesting, fun. The sequel drifted away from the sports theming somewhat, embracing a more martial arts/action drama vibe, but it still worked, it was still watchable!…I barely made it through Best of the best 3…

And so, we arrive at Best of the Best 4…a film that…well, to me its at least a BIT better than 3. But it seems to have swapped active irritation for…just, numbness.

So as a cards on the table moment here, I honestly don’t know how to feel about the script for this thing, the last film gave me strong feelings of gutteral hatred towards it, I was frustrated with it’s structure. It’s weird “power scaling” of Tommy, it’s choice to portray the racists the way they did, the whole thing felt annoying to me. This film? Its probably one of the most bland and generic scripts I’ve sat through in a LONG time. And the handful of moments that did invoke a feeling from me, were largely negative. I don’t know honestly whats worse, feeling a strong dislike towards something, or a peevish total non interest because of how bland and uninteresting the thing is.

Philip Rhee when interviewed about the film commented that he basically only took the job of writing and directing this picture because the Weinsteins offered him a TON of money to do it. And that in hindsight he regretted making this. I can honestly see why, What we have here is 90 minutes of flatly paced, rigidly 3 act structured, bland story telling that amounts basically to a runaround between Tommy and a group of Slavic gangsters trying to recover a microdisc. A dated plotline for 1990 let alone 1998, at that point this kind of story telling was positively ancient.

Tommys character here has been almost completely whittled away to nothing, he’s gone from being an emotional powerhouse, who’s nice until it’s time not to be nice with an underplayed charismatic streak, to being just an emotionless slab who only gets angry when the script remembers he has things to be angry about. At no point does it feel like he actually genuinely cares about the seriousness of the situation. The gangsters are also equally bland and generic with only Yuri, the little brother of the head of the operation getting ANYTHING resembling a character profile that isnt just “They’re nefarious Russian sorts.”

The script introduces plot points as if they’re going to be important and then never really addresses them. They give Tommy a dead wife who’s only function seemingly is to act as a mcguffin to force Tommy to bake a cake for his daughter (seriously.) They bring in a friendly shopkeeper who Tommys known for years, just to act a a mcguffin to get the microdisc to Tommy, then they kill both him AND his daughter off for literally no reason. At one point, Tommy gets “Drugged” by one of the agents working for the russians who Tommy *Thinks* is a good guy, they imply briefly some flirtation, maybe even the startings of a relationship, which got me thinking she may change sides in the 3rd act…but NOPE, they drug him (including a weird trippy drug scene which again, comes out of nowhere and doesnt add anything to the main plot) and then seemingly they forget they ever raised the romantic implications, just having her be a generic baddy for the rest of the movie.

That same woman is then also tied into a *hinted at* relationship with Yuri. Which is never really developed either beyond two scenes, one in which he *presumably* shags her in the traffic control room near the beginning of the film and one near the end of the film where she walks in on him having a threesome with some russian fluesies. Neither of which are elaborated on I might add…, and in the final act when she gets killed in one of the STUPIDEST ways i’ve seen in a movie like this for a while. Yuri gives not one fuck. It’s hard enough to get an audience to emotionally invest in your characters when you’re actually trying. It’s impossible to do that if you don’t even care what your characters think of each other.

The whole thing seems to swing violently between not knowing if it wants to be a gritty and serious action thriller, or whether to throw a bit of hammy OTTness in there, and it tries both and ends up achieving neither, it’s flashy, but the stupid moments undercut the gritty realness, it’s hammy, but the gratuitous gore (more on that later) means it cant really hit that sweetspot of silliness that these kind of films can do so well.

My personal biggest gripe is how they decide to end the movie (im spoiling this, I don’t care.)…with the baddies on a plane full of stolen money speeding down the runway, all but guarenteed to getaway, Tommy grabs the bomb with only 4 minutes on the clock, hops into a fire engine and speeds off down the runway after them. Not only is that fire engine able to OUTRUN a SPEEDING AEROPLANE on the midst of takeoff. But Tommy has enough time to speed past it by SUCH a magin, that he’s able to get out, get onto the fire engines cherry picker, extend the picker to it’s highest setting. AND have enough time to figure out the PRECISE strength, angle and height he’ll need to throw the bomb to get it to land inside a cavety where the planes landing gear is EXACTLY at the point that the baddies pull the landing gear up, and in just enough time for the bomb to go off JUST as they’re flying over a beach.

When that happened on my initial watch I literally verbally shouted “Oh FUCK OFF!” what an absolute load of bollocks this film tries to shove off onto its audience it’s honestly quite unbelievable. And frankly one of the worst endings to any of the films in this franchise. I mean, say what you will about Best of the best 3, at least the ending could have THEORETICALLY happened.

It’s not all bad, theres a decent bike chase scene in the 3rd act that impressed and had some decent explosions, theres a decent fight scene at the gangsters house where Tommy stumbles in on a group of the Slavics wounded henchmen recuperating from a previous Tommy attack, leading to an extended fight in which bandaged and poorly henchmen Tommy has already taken out, get beaten up again but this time with sticks. But outside of that…this things just a totally forgettable slog honestly.

Even the dialogue isnt all that interesting, theres no real quips, no memorable exchanges, anything notable here is really more in the delivery and what lines have been written are stilted, overly wordy and only really serve to try and push the film to 90 minutes rather than giving the plot any kind of meaningful progression or bounce.. It’s just such a dull experience to make it through. 90% of the movie is Tommy wandering around a city calling people, and the rest is the Russians sending people after Tommy, who takes them out with no effort. Thats literally the whole movie, barring the fucking plane bollocks.

On the Direction front, it’s professional. It looks like how a studio grade movie should look. and thats. It. and it barely manages to achieve that. I cannot stress how little interest it seems Rhee had here in delivering anything other than the bare minimum. yes , it does look better than a lot of the lower end offerings of this decade, yes, its still very impressive to be able to successfully pull together all of the elements that make a studio grade movie look and work to the standard they look and work as. But it never breaks above that, it never aims to be any better than “it’s good enough that the studio can put it out legitimately without having to hush it away”

Now, some nice things that come with a slightly higher budget and studio backing is that the stunt sequences are a lot higher quality than previous entries, as mentioned theres a bike chase scene that gets pretty explosive and immersive that I quite enjoyed, and because they have more money to play with, it also means that the film can afford to be more gratuitous than previous entries. Which means in this film you get to see people get shot in the head in all it’s explosive pulpy gory glory and people get their arms broken by bending them in directions they’re not supposed to bend in, which again, did catch the eye and DID give the impression that the film was working with a bit more money than it was previously used to.

The problem? Is that those kind of gore shots wern’t really in tone with the other best of the best movies that have never really “gone” there before. Couple that with the fact that those kind of shots only happen a couple of times across the whole runtime and you end up with something that does feel out of place and tone with not only this movie, but the rest of the series. I mean, this is a film where in a 10 minute window, Tommy has a heart to heart with his 5 year old daughter about how they’re going to make a birthday cake together and have an awesome birthday party which then breaks into clowning around shenanigans, only THEN, 5 minutes later, to cut to a cop having the inside of his skull examined by a shotgun blast. It’s just. a bit tonally uneven.

Even the fight choreography isnt all that great here, we’ve gone from slow motion close ups of sweaty men trying to prove they’re the best of the best, to just, ultra generic masked shot fights with little to no soft contact connections and a lazy edit job to hide the hits and kicks even more. Almost no efforts gone into the choreography, theres maybe 2 fight scenes in the whole film that are even vaguely worth paying attention to, and even they’re just passable. I dunno, its just, kind of sad to see someone who’s so passionate about martial arts as a medium half arse the emotive draw these fights can have just to get it done and in the can.

On the plus side, one thing I can say is Phillips handling of direction of the cast is ever improving, here cast members use props, move around the set space utilising it well and they seem to have worked closely with Phillip to get their deliveries down. Their performances may vary, but at least how they deliver their lines is solid. So thats something I guess…

For me? The cines fine. Just about, composition is solid, theres a good variety of shots making up sequences and the edits are actually pretty tight on some of the more action oriented chase scenes with good utilisation of the footage shot. I kind of liked it and thought they even handled some of the effects shots pretty nicely. It’s not great, in fact it’s just kind of “Unremarkably” acceptable. In fact, the only thing I kind of didnt like so much about this one was the lighting choices, which just seemed a little…off.

Nothings particularly underlit, they just do some weird stuff with the lighting, like coloured gels in Tommys apartment, a total lack of controlled lighting on location scenes, which just leaves things looking a bit washed out and bland. There’s chiaroscuro implemented in places that don’t really need it, and in places that really WOULD have benefitted from chiaroscuro they just went for flat lighting that doesn’t really do anything other than show our cast moving about. Its a real shame honestly because I think the cine is probably this films strongest element, and they’ve kind of fumbled it a bit in the one place that could have taken it from good, to great.

Performance wise, their are two noteworthy performances here, one is Earnie Hudson playing Detective Gresko, a role that absolutely caught me off guard because, Hudsons largely known for playful, charismatic and sarcastic roles but here, he’s playing out of type as an abrasive, aggressive and no nonsense detective who’s a bit of a dick to everyone he comes into contact with, and over the course of the film as he falls into the circumstances that play out, he softens up, ending the film in a more typical role. I loved him in this and find it astounding that noone else has given him roles like this since, because I think he absolutely aces the part and genuinely brings some of the best moments of the film to the surface with his portrayal. He’s fab.

The other is Thure Riefenstein as Yuri Slava, who brings a MORE than unhinged menace to proceedings and arguably has some of the best screentime in this thing. Hes animated, grandiose, a little bit hamtastic, think Boris in Goldeneye and your not a million miles from home. He puts 50 thousand volts up this production like you wouldnt believe, it’d honestly be a poorer offering without him.

The rest of the cast are on autopilot, with Rhee himself as Tommy bringing a VERY disappointing turn to proceedings, he struggles through the script, gives almost non of the energy or passion he did in previous entries and at times gives readings that feel like he’s barely even remembered his own script. It was very underwhelming, and while the supporting cast members bring just about acceptable performances to the table, they’re so underwritten and lacking character development, that you might as well have 6-10 balloons with faces scribbled on for all the interest they actually PUT into the role, it’s terribly disappointing honestly…

And finally; The Soundtrack. Its nothing special, thats probably about all I can say on it honestly, its stocky, generic 90s action movie fodder, if you’ve seen pretty much ANY action movie 1989 to 2001, you’ve heard tracks similar to whats presented here. And it only goes to further punctuate the total “BLEH” that this film is. GOD I wish I’d brought booze with me for this review…

Best of the Best 4 was released in the UK as a big box rental tape in 1998 and was distributed by CIC on behalf of Paramount. It received a DVD release in 2008 courtesy of 4Digital media before finally getting the bluray treatment in 2016 by 4digital as well, though it didnt end up getting a solo release (for obvious reasons) so…the only way of owning a HD release of this is by buying “The complete Best of the Best Boxset” compiling all 4 films together…which…now i’ve seen them all, ima take a rain check there. Picture quality is decent enough, they’ve remastered it rather solidly. Though extras are a little thin on the ground. Still…it’s best of the best 4…what do you expect!?

In summary, UGGGHHHHH. Its SO by the numbers its painful, if you’ve gotten to a point in your life where your watching “Best of the best 4” as a means of escapism and you think thats acceptable? I’d maybe go reach out to a neighbour or local librarian. Im sure they’ll be able to get you the help you need.

And with that! We’ve finally put to rest, Best of the Best and answered the age old question, was this franchise the best of the best…no. No it bloody well wasnt…Till next time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/best-of-the-best-4-without-warning/1/

1980’s “Scared to Death” is a movie that i’ve kind of inadvertently ended up covering, last year a regular viewer recommended checking out a film called “SynGenOr” because they said it would suit the tone of this channel down to the ground. So I looked it up and found that it was actually kinda sorta loosely connected to todays movie. And what I mean by that is that, SynGenOr basically WANTED to be a sequel to “Scared to Death” but because “Scared to Death” at that time was SO obscure and low budget, they didnt want to run the risk of ostracising potential audiences by tying it to a forgotten movie made 10 years prior that was out of circulation. As such, I kind of felt like it made sense to cover “Scared to Death” BEFORE SynGenOr because…while they’re largely unconnected, I am nothing if not a bit of a completionist and I like to try and do these things properly.

So! Scared to Death! A movie that damn near bankrupt director and writer William Malone, im not kidding the film cost $74k to produce and he ended up selling everything he owned including his car to get it made. So, with SO much on the line, you’d think that this HAD to be something incredible right? Well…

Scared to Death follows the misadventures of “Ted” and as the film opens, Teds just quit his job as a detective to pursue a career in writing (with maybe a lil freelance detective work on the downlow) As he’s leaving the station however he backs out into the car of a lady called Jennifer. Ted tries to leave the scene but Jennifer is adamant he needs to stay because the cars a “vintage” and she wants the police to document the hit. After some backing and forthing that gets a bit surreal, Ted gives Jennifer a business card with his new office address and phone number and tells her to reach out to him there.

Which she does, she says theres at LEAST $1200 of damages to her car, and without missing a beat Ted heads into a back room and returns with an envelope containing $2000 which he tells her to keep. This changes the tone of the relationship immediately and the pair soon warm up to each, Ted even goes so far as to ask Jennifer out, which she politely declines, but is flattered all the same.

And it’s while this is going on that the main thrust of the film begins to take shape as a mysterious person or “Being” has been stalking the streets of L.A attacking anyone it can find, leaving them either dead or comatose. At the time we join the film we see the creature claim its 10th and 11th victims in relatively quick succession with the police currently hot on the case. Overseeing this is a chap called “Lou” who’s good friends with “Ted” and over a game of chess, the pair briefly discuss the case before Lou has to head back to work.
We then pick back up with Jennifer, returning home from the grocery store. When she arrives at her house, Ted appears to have left her a handwritten note apologising once again for the incident and leaves her a big bunch of flowers. Jennifer’s charmed and heads back over to Teds place to leave a note of her own saying that she’s reconsidered Teds offer and would love to go for dinner some time.

Which they do! Later that evening Jennifer arrives at Teds offices and the pair decide to head back to Jens house for a couple of streaks before engaging in little * bouncy bouncy* and while THATS going on, we then cut to two sanitation workers who’ve been asked to do some investigative work in a nearby sewer system. One of the pair heads down only to come face to face with a colossal creature! He very quickly gets the old “Lights out, falling down with the no breathing and the hammana hammana to the chest” his co-worker becomes impatient that this guys been down their for so long and decides to head down there himself to see what the fuss is, but before he’s even made it halfway down the ladder, the creature tries coming for him too, ultimately getting dragged down into the sewer to his demise. The next day, Teds and Jennifer are now seemingly working together…for some reason…when Lou drops by to update him on the murders and, in doing so, he tries to subtly ask if Ted’ll come back to the force to help them figure out whats going on. Ted flat out refuses, but does offer to be something of a sounding board if Lou needs to vent.

Once again the creature strikes! This time attacking a group of teens roller skating around a multi story car park, with the only survivor of the attacks being left in a state of sheer shock and rendered mute. Lou and the team begin to investigate the scene, when Ted shows up out of the blue. He randomly kicks off at his old boss who tries to get him kicked out, and Lou has to take him to one side to calm him down and try to update him in a VERY coded way about what’s happened here. Jennifer’s also at the scene and says that she’s head from a lady called Sherry who’s reluctant to talk to the cops, but has information that might be beneficial to the case that she’ll only share with people who will give her a chance.

Jenn heads over to the rendezvous point to meet Sherry, but sherrys late for the meeting. Jennifer wanders around the rendezvous spot and accidentally meets the creature who attacks her on site! Ted gets a call from Lou informing him that Jennifers in a coma at the hospital after having an epileptic seizure from what they think is a brain tumour. Ted races to the hospital only to have what Lou said confirmed and that Jennifer cant be seen at this time..

Ted heads back to the office and immediately goes to hit the bottle, but Lou arrives just in time to talk him out of it. Around this time Sherry makes it to the office and asks if Ted and Lou will hear her out, The pair are somewhat reluctant, but at this point they’ll take anything if it helps get the case back on track. Sherry explains that she was a college graduate who worked under a Dr. Amberdean, a geneticist who’s main project was an attempt to develop a new lifeform. And; he succeeded, creating a dangerous creature that survived by drinking Spinal fluid, the doctor was convinced that, should the creature reach maturity, it would pose a serious risk to human life. Unfortunately; he died of a heart attack before the creature could be killed and the last documented notes on the creature are unclear as to it’s status..

The reason Sherry brings this up? Well..one of the side effects of the method with which the creature drains it’s victims spinal fluid is that it can make the victim appear as if they’ve had an epileptic seizure or have symptoms in line with having a brain tumour. Ted and Lou cant quite believe what they’re hearing, but they ask if Sherry knows of any way to kill the creature and all she can tell them is that she has copies of all the notes made while working with Dr. Amberdean back at her lab, in the meantime Lou goes to confirm with the coroner if all the victims have low spinal fluid levels and symptoms in line with seizures or brain tumours…which they do.

Armed with this information, they just need to figure out how the creature is able to move around the city undetected. But just as they’re gearing up, news comes from the higher ups saying the case has been closed down, likely because they want to silence any public panic. Unswayed Ted and Lou decide to investigate solo and thus we enter the final act! As Sherry finds her notes and a creature in the process, Will The gang manage to stop the SynGenOr? Will Jennifer wake up from her coma!? And when the gang find out that the SynGenOr can reproduce A-sexually, will they manage to stop a wave of creatures from enveloping the L.A streets!? All this and more will be answered if you check out, Scared to Death.

And what a conflicting movie I’ve been given to talk about today. Frustrating is probably the best word to describe it, because I really want to like this thing, I really do. But it doesnt half go about doing things that really put a strain on my feelings towards it. Chief amongst the reasons is the script itself. Which is just…problematic. For a starters, it’s a script of two halves quality wise, with the opening of the film being actually quite dry and repetitious, basically the first 30-50 minutes of this thing could best be described as “Ted does some wisecracking with Jennifer or Lou, and occasionally we see “The creature” stalk and kill some women, but without actually showing the kill on screen” it’s neat enough when it’s first established, but as it starts rowing through the motions again and again it quickly becomes apparent that they’re stalling for time, Which left me impatiently clock watching.

But! From around the time of the roller skate murders, the film DOES pick up a bit and the 2nd half, in my opinion gets enough momentum under it’s belt to deliver an interesting story that does have some nice twists and turns. I just wish they’d spread that out a bit more into the opening half. Equally not helping matters are the massive plot holes and conveniences this film has that either don’t get resolved or are just forgotten about. Jennifer is set up as a main character for this film but around 50 minutes in she gets attacked by the creature and disappears for the rest of the movie, only turning up at the very VERY end of the film for a jumpscare that did NOT win any favours with me, and we never actually get any kind of resolution for her. They just kind of go “Oh! She woke up from the coma btw!” completely missing that the point of announcing that, generally, is for some kind of express purpose, even if it’s just a reunion with Ted.

Instead we get half a film with Jennifer and half a film with Sherry, and it’s hard not to look at Sherrys involvement in the film and not think it was done out of convenience because the actress playing Jennifer either couldnt or didnt want to appear in the rest of the movie. Teds connections to the police force are referenced heavily, but never really followed up on, theres no resolution there, nor is there any resolution on the police randomly deciding to close the case. The way its inserted into the script kind of implies the police are in on the SynGenOr being a thing and that maybe they’re having some involvement in it’s attacks. But…nope. They just say the police are closing the case and it never gets referenced or bought up again.

It’s ability to reproduce A-sexually also isn’t really played out to its fullest potential either. They mention its something the SynGenOr can do, literal MOMENTS before they find a massive clutch of baby SynGenOrs (which they then promptly kill) and then that aspect of things doesnt really get bought up again. I know its a standard trope of these kind of films…y’know? The whole “You killed it! But it had a baby!” line is as old as the 40’s and 50’s in terms of sequel bait. But here? It’s so half hearted. They really don’t try to integrate it into the plot at all. Quite literally they have 1 shot where they say its a thing, 1 scene where they destroy a load of baby SynGenOrs and one POV shot implying theres more than one SynGenOr at the end. And thats the whole involvement of that plot element…all within the last 10-15 minutes I might add….

The film draws heavy inspiration from two, at the time, recent horror films “Halloween” and “Alien” and there are references to both LITTERED through this thing. With some of them bordering on letigeously similar, such as the POV shots of the creature wandering around the suburbs peeking into windows, or shots of some of the victims being “gooed” up onto the wall as a source of food for the creature and it’s offspring. I mean, theres Homaging, and then theres flat out stealing, and this film quite regularly gets PAINFULLY close to crossing that line. Regular viewers will know my distaste for films that cite more mainstream features in their movies. And while nicking some of the scenarios and cine here is a BIT better than just flat out having the characters say “Oh! Have you seen the movie Alien!? Well this creatures reminding me EXACTLY of the alien from that movie with the Alien called “Alien” it’s still not a great look.

Pacing here is a bit iffy too, with an opening half thats a SUPER slow burner that drags on setting up it’s characters, scenarios and situations, before swapping to a near breakneck 2nd half where we’re thrown a million pieces of exposition at once and because theres no time to develop those ideas, it results in the inconsistencies and plot holes mentioned previously. The three act structure isn’t as solid as i’d like it to be, the first act is pretty hard defined as is the third act. But placing where the 2nd act begins and ends is somewhat tricky. Theres no clear shift in tone, theres no moment where you can clearly see the film bed in. the 2nd act of this film feels exactly the same as the first act of the film, just with a few more creature appearances. Thats not good because you need that clear distinction between your acts in order to subconsciously tell the audience where the films up to.

A good first act establishes the characters, introduces the core scenario and moves the characters into a position where that core scenario is going to impact them in some way, the 2nd act then shows the characters engaging in that scenario while developing their personalities and even potentially establishing a character arc, unless your characters are Beavis and Butthead, it’s important that your film gives your characters purpose and growth so that they end the film in a different position to how they started. Usually either a significantly better or worse place which is usually established in the 3rd act where our characters, having engaged in the situation, are then set up with a finale that resolves the situation, or resolves their character arc. Possibly teasing more in future if there’s interest or scope to do so.

This films 2nd act meanders as it doesn’t know what to do with it’s core cast. It would have probably made more sense to introduce Sherry’s thread earlier at the beginning of the 2nd act rather than the end of it. In doing so they could have set up the SynGenOr a bit better without having to rush out all the crucial information in an exposition dump in the 3rd act AND they could have slow cooked that “corrupt police” angle a little bit more and possibly played them better into the 3rd act, which would have tied more stuff off and led to a more satisfying resolution. Instead they just kind of elongate the opening act, but quicker and a bit more violently. So we get 4 attacks instead of 2 and not a whole lot of plot development right up until the end of the Act when Sherry finally becomes a key point of the plot. Which leaves things a bit lumpy and uneven in my opinion.

The dialogue dances a VERY fine line as well, in places (particularly Teds dialogue) it’s charismatic, fluid and feels really solid, it kind of reminded me of the dialogue in “The Stuff” in the sense that it’s long flowing almost Woody Allen esq monologues that are peppered with sarcasm. But outside of those occasional glimmers, whats here is rough. A lot of it is exposition dumps, and not very well handled exposition dumps at that, most of the rest is stilted and fairly bland dialogue that fits the bill of B-movie horror perfectly well, but that in many ways is the problem. They clearly know how to write interesting dialogue because Ted and Lous pieces are both fairly solid. I have NO idea why they decided to put so little interest into the rest of the cast’s pieces. It’s baffling honestly.

The script was Co-written and Directed by William Malone, he has 18 directing credits and 6 writing credits in a career spanning 29 years, highlights include TV contributions towards “Tales from the Crypt” and the 1999 remake of “House on Haunted Hill” with his best know writing credit likely to be “Universal Soldier: The Return” His last credit was in 2008, and he hasnt been seen since. Also on Co-writing duties we have Robert Short, he has 5 writing credits, this was his first and i’d say probably his best known of the five with his last one in 2002. He’s mainly known for his work in visual effects, of which he has 23 credits with highlights including “Star trek: the motion picture” and the reboot movie of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E”

And on the direction front…well, there honestly isnt a lot to say, generally when judging a films direction, your looking both at how the director was able to manage the production in order to deliver a coherent product, AND for bonus points how the director was able to produce a work that leaves their mark on the picture. An identifier that says “This is a work of THIS director specifically” what we have here from a direction standpoint however is a film thats predominantly lifting shot types and scenes from Alien and Halloween, and whats left outside of that is at best “acceptable” if not a touch bland.

I can understand why the direction here is played so safe. Malone sold his life effectively to get this movie made, and he specifically chose to make a horror movie because he knew it was a fairly safe bet and that you could generally make something that looked good with very little budget. That coupled with the fact he previously had work in producing halloween masks for a company meant he could keep costs low on getting the main monster costume produced because… he just made it himself.

The guy put a lot on the line and wanted a safe return, so it’s understandable that the direction here would predominantly be cribbed from successful films of the last 2-5 years and whatever looked about right to put the key messages of the film across…I get that. But it doesn’t ultimately lead to an end product that I can really praise. It’s effectively cheating off someone else’s homework, and while that’s fine if you don’t get caught. If you do, it’s problematic. So in terms of creating a distinct vision it’s a big thumbs down from me.

Direction of the cast does fair a bit better, the cast are responsive, move around their set spaces decently enough and utilise props effectively, but there are plenty of points in this thing where it feels less like the director wanted to show the BEST of the cast on screen, and more like they just wanted the take. Which is understandable, but not a great viewing experience. The results….aaaaare about as interesting as you could imagine. Which again, does nothing to help really sell the film to audiences and leaves things rather lifeless for large chunks of the runtime unfortunately.

What I can say is the cine is probably the best part of this film, YES a lot of shots are stolen from other movies, but the composition in those shots can’t be faulted. In places, the lighting and use of Chiaroscuro is phenomenal for the budget. Honestly, given the money they were working with i’m amazed the thing looks half as good as it does and the only negative criticism I have about the movie is the flat profile some shots work with during the longer exposition scenes, it would have been nicer to either add a little more to the depth of field in those shots, or used more cuts to help at least make them a bit more engaging to the audience.

The only other thing I picked up on is an age old problem of movies from this era, and thats that quite a few of the night shots are massively underexposed, meaning we as an audience are effectively drenched in darkness with no idea what we’re ACTUALLY supposed to be looking at. Theres a blatant example of it at the beginning of the movie, but as the film goes on and the lighting gets more visually interesting it does pop up from time to time as a bit of a problem as the dimly lit sewer sets become increasingly frustrating to make out.

Performance wise, there are two stars of this thing really and that’s John Stinson as Ted and David Moses as Lou, the pair are constantly charismatic, have some of the best lines in the film and always try to keep animated and high energy throughout the production. They have phenomenal chemistry together and are probably the 2nd best thing about this film outside of the cine. Positively solid performances and totally memorable!

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast, Toni Jannotta and Diana Davidson try amicably to match the energy of their on screen counterparts as Jennifer and Sherry respectively, but neither get enough time to fully bed into the roles before they’re pulled away from us. They’re notable, just. The rest of the supporting cast drop below even that and are just SO bland. Don’t even get me started they’re cookie cutter extras who are there to look a bit scared, do their screamy bit and maybe talk to the main cast for a couple of lines, they’re totally unremarkable for this genre and it’s a real shame as its stuff like that that helps lift a mediocre film into a great one.

And finally; the soundtrack. Which is actually surprisingly solid as well! It’s an experimentally synthy piece that suits the tone of the film perfectly, it sets the tone and mood which results in even some of the more inane shots being given just a bit more of a sinister edge. Its a good solid work that stands out (which is odd given the film’s dedication to conformity within the genre) and one that, while I wouldn’t want to listen to in isolation, I absolutely enjoyed as part of this film.

Scared to death was released in 1980 and Malones first distribution sale not only managed to pay off the costs of the film but netted him a tidy profit when he agreed a play deal with Malasia for $90k. It struggled initially to find distribution in the states before the rights eventually landed with “Lone Star Pictures” who distributed the movie to most drive ins across the US (Something Malone was unaware of when he attended the premier in texas expecting a proper theatrical experience and effectively arrived in a back lot wearing a tuxedo).

It would arrive on UK shores in 1981 and was passed uncut in may of that year, later receiving a VHS release by Avatar in late 1981, unaffected by the 1984 video recordings act it remained in circulation until it finally received a DVD release also by Avatar in 2002 which is the copy i’ve used. It’s rough on the Picture quality and the sound quality is up and down as well sounding hissy and tinny. The only extras to speak of are a trailer and an interactive menu with scene select so, it’s quite the budget release. Luckily! In 2022 Vinegar syndrome re-released the film with a ground up remaster on bluray and it looks delightful fixing almost all picture and sound quality issues with the previous release. While it isnt perfect, it’s the best this films likely to look AND it has a making of, location tour and a new cut of the film that supposedly tightens it up a bit alongside a couple of other extras to help sweeten the deal, which works for me!

I Think had I paid the $30+ it would have cost to import the Vinegar Syndrome version of this film over to the Uk I’d have probably been harsher on it. At that price point i’d have considered myself robbed for this film. But the version I ended up picking up cost me £3 and for that, I feel I can be a lot nicer about it. Its far from perfect, with an opening that was slowburn, decent cine and direction that’s been screwed over by a dry and repetitive script, and a second half that finally allowed the script to come into its own, but left the direction and cine high and dry after such a promising opening. Nice lighting, some decent performances and a good soundtrack help to just about get this movie over the line in my opinion, but ultimately this was a feature I could have taken or left. I’m more than curious to see what the new Directors cut offers in terms of tightening the film up a bit, but it’ll be a while before I go back to this one to check it out. I’m not gonna say avoid this one. But I wouldn’t say it was a priority watch.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/scared-to-death-1980/1/

So it’s come to this 1987’s Miami Connection, a film that, in a tale as old as time was an obscure action picture with a crazy background that bombed at the boxoffice and was considered lost for years, but then got rediscovered and re-established as a cult classic for audiences to fawn over, going even so far as to have had a luxury TRIPLE disc 4k bluray release in recent years… A collaborative effort between director Woo Sang Park and Y.K. Kim the story goes that the pair bashed out Miami Connection (predominantly shot and ACTUALLY based in Orlando Florida…go figure) in a flurry of inspiration driven creativity. Y.K Kim was a somewhat famous martial artist in the Florida area with a string of successful Tai-kwon-do studios, in fact he was so loved that when the idea of a film came up, the local government in Florida at the time basically gave him full access to the city, to shoot in any public space without the requirement of a permit.

And so! With a script that appears to have largely been written in binge sessions and carte blanche to shoot where they like, the pair got to work! With Kim bringing in students from his Dojo to play most of the main cast members and extras. The filming for ‘Miami Connection’ was a thrilling rip roarer of a business…aaaand then it all kind of went tits up. Y’see…Woo was only in the country for a brief time and returned to Korea almost immediately after filming wrapped. That’s all well and good…except for the fact that some of what was shot needed to be RE-shot…and, so the legend goes, at a backer led private screening to show funders what their money had paid for, the original version had a totally different ending which almost ALL of the backers STRONGLY disliked. The resulting negative feedback left the film in a bit of a state of turmoil because Y.K wasn’t a filmmaker. In fact he’d done NOTHING in terms of working in film up to this point apart from starring in this movie as Mark.

So…he learnt. He took books out, read up on film theory and how to operate cameras, and with a skeleton crew he covered off the reshoots and rewrote/shot a completely new happier ending that the backers were more comfortable with. You’d think that would have solved the problem right? well…Miami connection was released to a limited number of theaters, entirely distributed, promoted and fully funded by Kim himself (rumoured to be in the millions…but i’m sceptical about that) and the film. Bombed. HARD. NO ONE went to see it, The critics who COULD be bothered to attend screenings trashed the thing as garbage and the film failed to secure any kind of widespread home distribution, leaving Kim MASSIVELY out of pocket and essentially holding an unsellable film.

Jump to 2009 when a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse by the name of Zack Carlson was browsing around on online auction sites and spotted a 35mm copy of some movie called “Miami Connection” that he’d never heard of on sale for a mere $35. Carlson picked the film up on a whim and after checking it out, put it on for a screening. Some people came, they loved it, so he screened it again, more people came…and slowly, but surely the film developed a VERY active and invested fanbase.

Zack wanted to try and get the film out there to more people, and managed to find and contact YK.Kim who was still deeply hurt by the films flop, didn’t want to talk about it and thought that the calls from the Alamo Drafthouse were crank calls. It was only after much effort and negotiation that Kim came round to the idea that this may not be a prank and shortly thereafter the film was released to the world for the first time as a limited home release. The results of which saw the film’s popularity EXPLODE.

The plot of ‘Miami connection’ isn’t exactly the most coherent. Its base plot of “Good guys are targeted by ruthless bad guys, With the power of friendship conquering all” is probably one of the oldest types of story archetypes in writing. The problem is this film goes off in EVERY possible direction while trying to tell that plot. Whether it’s just the guys randomly eating breakfast in their shared house for 10 minutes, or the Miami Ninjas riding hogs into town for a silly amount of time, the whole thing could not feel more made up on the fly and odd if it tried.

The key driving force in this film is that Jeff, working on behalf of the Miami Ninjas, wants Dragon Sound off his turf…for some reason. It’s implied he thinks they’re either dealing on his patch, or he thinks that their “nice guy” attitudes will ultimately lead to confrontation and an uncovering of their shady business. But that’s never confirmed through the runtime, and Dragon Sound seem almost as confused as the audience for the most part as they aren’t selling drugs nor do they have ANY clue who Jeff and the Miami Ninjas are outside of Jeff being Jane’s “Shady” brother.

And it’s weird gaps in knowledge like that which plague this film chronically. SO much of the film is basically just “Don’t read too much into it, just go with it” and that can be refreshingly liberating almost as much as it can be frustrating. As soon as you accept that there are going to be plot points in this that don’t really go anywhere or are just happening because the films underunning then things become MUCH more tolerable, but if having a consistent plot that makes sense and ties everything up in the end is your bag, I think you may be in for a rough ride.

The act structure for this pictures all over the place, there’s a clear opening and closing act, but the 2nd act isnt defined anywhere near as well as it should be. There’s no real change of pace, it just kind of feels like the first act keeps going and going until the trigger point that signals the 3rd act happens. And that can be frustrating because, as an audience member the act structures help to signal where the viewer IS in the picture through subliminal coding.

The first act is *Supposed* to be slower as we’re introduced to our core cast, maybe throw a couple bumps in to help keep people interested. But it’s expected by the audience that first acts take their time in establishing things. Because, as we’ve seen with movies like “Halloween Night” and “Boarding House” just infodumping 20 characters onto the audience in a 5 minute window and then expecting them to just “get on with it”. Seldom if EVER works and often leaves the viewer feeling turned off by the thing before its even really begun.

The 2nd act should have a marked change of pace, things should speed up a bit, we’re familiar with our characters and the scenario that’s been presented, now’s the time to hit the gas and get right to the heart of the action, if you don’t rev up here, or WORSE you somehow manage to rev down and go slower STILL. Your audience will get impatient wondering what’s going on and why it’s taking so long to actually have a point or be interesting. This should then lead to a 3rd act and like any good orgasm, things should be warmed up, cranked to max speed and firing on all cylinders as we arrive at the point the previous 60 or so minutes have been building to.

Once you’ve hit that peak you have options on how to close the film, you can either warm back down to a satisfying but steady conclusion, or you can go out with a bang keeping that high paced speed rolling. But the important thing is that you pick a lane and stick to it because if you don’t put everything and the kitchen sink into your 3rd act, audiences who…lets be honest are generally not the most forgiving people in the world, will forget any goodwill they had for the opening of the film and wonder why the movie they’re watching suddenly gave up and ended crap.

Miami Connection Opens strong, it sets the characters up, builds its world and begins to establish a scenario and then…it just kind of idles around that area with the occasional garnish of “So bad it’s good” style delivery or brief scenarios that aren’t all that relevant punted in for good measure. It means that around the hour mark, when the film should be moving into its 3rd act. I was still wondering when the 2nd act was going to start. As we get locked into a repetitive cycle of Dragon Sound getting challenged to a fight, them being confused, a fight happening anyway, the band getting the upper hand for a bit until the baddies leave or someone breaks things up, rinse, repeat.

I’m not saying there isn’t fun to be had with that. But that idling really stalled the viewing experience for me, it tanks the pacing (which was already screwed..but more on that shortly) and just made my mind wander a bit until the 3rd act suddenly jolted 50k volts into this thing. Which is fine, but when the credits rolled and the best thing I could think was “Well..it opened and ended well” that kind of leaves a rather large hole in the middle of this movie.

The pacings shonky as well. Like I mentioned earlier I don’t know how much of this script was planned WELL in advance and how much was just “We have a gap in the runtime we need to fill” or “I have an idea, get the camera.” but there’s no natural flow to the sequences in this film, scenes just kind of happen…one minute you can be watching bikers in a bar drinking beer and throwing topless women around like sacks of oatmeal, the next it could be one of Dragon sound eating a baloney sandwich in a park talking about intercontinental friendship, the next it could be the owner of a club beating up a previous act, the next it could be someone reading the mail for 5 minutes. Stuff just kind of happens in the order it happens in because that’s just how the cards have fallen.

The repetition makes it even harder to really manage the pacing problems because, if Jeffs gang “jump” dragon sound at 10 minutes in, when they jump them again at 25 minutes, 45 minutes and an hour in EXACTLY the same way, intercut with shots of John doing his taxes or Mark just working out. Well, it doesn’t exactly instil me with the idea that these guys were making a clear and defined vision here…

Again though; that ISN’T to say that fun isn’t to be had with this thing, there are PLENTY of over the top crazy goofy and just plain odd moments that I thought were good fun and the film does have some real charm running through it that did endeare me. The on/off ramblings about friendship were a definite highlight for me personally and, well…im always a sucker for a slightly creaky picture. I may not 100% get on with the script, but I absolutely get on with the sincerity behind it.

On the direction front, it’s not bad! Not bad at all! Woo has managed to just about cultivate an interesting and largely professional looking project. Even if the script may be lacking, quite often the visual direction will help pull the film’s socks up and point it in the right direction, with the dragon sound music videos and the end sequence in the forests being definite highlights. It’s far from an engaging and “studio” grade experience. But compared to similar movies, with similar scope and budget. This thing does a really solid job that made me want to come back for more.

Direction of the cast by contrast is a bit more of a mixed bag with most of the cast being made up of students from Kims studios who’d never acted before in their lives before this. It’s fair to say this is a bit of a crap shoot as to who’s able to act and work to director instruction and who’s here basically to make up the numbers and try their best to not completely throw the film out of whack. For the most part, it’s about fine. Almost none of our core cast feel particularly “natural” in front of the camera, they almost all feel awkward, a bit stilted and unsure about what’s “in frame”.

This is particularly noticeable in the fight scenes themselves which absolutely have no sense of ‘mojo’, almost like when someones learning a dance routine for the first time, the fight choreography in almost all instances didn’t flow naturally. It’s almost like you can hear the cast members going “Move 1…okay onto…move 2!…okay!…now move…3!…ace! Right move 4!..” which really affects the vibe and pulls you as an audience member RIGHT out of the action. While they do use soft contact here to help make the punches and kicks look at least a bit believable, sometimes they choose the wrong angles in the edit and the result makes those punches and kicks feel like they have all the weight of a feather behind them.

Throw in some random effects filters such as frame dropping or slow motion and you end up with fight scenes that just feel WAY too heavily planned, being handled WAY too awkwardly by a cast of characters who aren’t looking or feeling confident and, up until this point, weren’t even actual actors.

The cine was somewhat lacking too for me…while I thought the music video sections were handled VERY well. Everything else just feels kind of flat. We see the same shot types over and over again which was disappointing, experimentation is pretty much left to video effects and given how much of the marketing emphasises “cool neon 80s!” In its branding there’s not really a lot of that on show, instead most scenes are either day for night blue, or just kind of beige and brown. Composition is uninspired with basic framing applied and seldom anything else, they don’t really follow traditional shot setups and it feels like the crew knew how to do two lighting setups, Day for night and “floodlit” because that’s all that’s here really.

Performance wise…look, no one gets out of this with much in the way of dignity. The only standout performers for me in this were Kim and Maurice Smith as Jim…and it’s not because they’re brilliant performers. It’s because they’re the cast members who I feel would most fit into an episode of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. The rest of the cast range from muted to awkward and just plain weird! Sometimes it works…sometimes it doesn’t. But on the whole, if you’re not one for cheesy oddness in your action movies…firstly; what are you doing watching 90% of commercially available action movies?…but secondly!…this maybe isn’t your rodeo.

And finally; the soundtrack! C’mon man! It’s Dragon Sound! 80s pop rock at its finest, seriously if you want the quickest way to figure out if this movie is for you, go boot up a spare tab and look up their track “Friends” it’s one of the first songs in this movie and it’s INCREDIBLE. Very much in the camp of “The Shimmy Slide” in terms of some of the most iconically funny and weird (but damn good) music ever put to film. And that pop rock edge envelops the whole movie. Seriously this is one HELL of an OST and I seriously regret not nabbing it on Vinyl when I had the chance!

‘Miami Connection’ Somehow managed to get a VERY limited VHS release at some point in the very late 80s or Very early 90s (though even collectors arnt 100% on exactly when that release came out) it was distributed by a company by the name of “Liberty Entertainment Group” and after that it fell into total obscurity until 2012 when it was issued on Bluray by Drafthouse films. That quickly went out of print and started going for silly money, and throughout the 2010’s the film would get multiple releases as “Limited edition” VHS throwback style issuings.

Finally in 2022, like buses we got not just one but TWO separate releases of Miami Connection within months of each other after a near decade long drought. One being from Umbrella Entertainment, which was just a standard blu ray release, and the other being a 3 disc 4k blu ray box set released by Vinegar Syndrome (which is the version I own) and this things just gorgeous. While I personally didn’t see *THAT* much difference between the bluray and 4k versions, I put that more down to a bloody good job having been done on the bluray release than a shoddy job being done on the 4k disc. When you consider that the original negative for the film was destroyed in 2004 and that this was a bit of a patchwork restoration. It’s understandable that this wouldn’t exactly be immaculate. The first two discs contain 1080p and 4k versions of Miami connection alongside commentaries, making ofs and much much more. The 3rd blu ray disc contains an early cut of the movie with alternate scenes, and other oddities which is perfect for the average die hard Miami connection fan who wants to try and see the film from a new perspective!

Ultimately; While Miami connection is an absolute hoot with some really fun moments, solid direction and just daft and over the top performances that charmed and enthralled. It wasnt one that ultimately won me over. I enjoyed it, I’d watch it again…but I didnt out and out LOVE it. Your milage may vary however and I hope that what both me and Triv have said here will help you make an informed decision! But, for me? While I had a bit of a soft spot for Miami connection, I didn’t feel like I out and out LOVED it in the way that many other fans of this movie do. It absolutely had its moments and the soundtracks amazing. But that second act is SUCH a hodgepodge of repetition and the cine varies in quality so much throughout that pound for pound, I just think there are better strange action movies out there. This would probably pair really well with something like “Day of the Panther” as a double feature, but it wouldn’t strictly be something I think I’d watch on its own…not for a while to come at least

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/miami-connection/1/

2018’s “Dead Heading” also known as “How I spent my weekend watching a woman explore a holiday inn” is a 2018 “Horror”, “Thriller” and I feel the need to use quote marks on those genres here because there’s neither frights nor tension to be found anywhere near this thing. The brainchild of David Easton, a (seemingly) british filmmaker (I can’t confirm that) who dabbles in independent filmmaking, and, rather unfortunately, we once again find ourselves staring down the barrel of a movie that’s had most of its marketing made up in order to try and shift copies. First and foremost, the air hostess on the front cover, I’m pretty sure isn’t in the movie, and if she is, she isn’t wearing that outfit, nor does she have red eyes at any point, NOR does she brandish a kitchen knife…oh she does wield a knife briefly…it’s a steak knife. Which is quite a step down from the full blown “halloween” staple.

There’s no fire in the film…at all, The tagline is “Evil on a Plane” Even though there isn’t barring about 5 minutes at the VERY end…and even then it’s not so much “Evil” more, a woman sat on a plane thinking menacing thoughts. The whole box art would imply that this was going to be some kind of slasher movie set on an aeroplane, with all the drama that can come with that. Given the pose of the woman on the front of the box and the ample cleavage on display, one could maybe even infer an element of “Basic Instinct” to proceedings. This is not the case.

The back of the box doesnt fair much better. All the imagery of planes? Well..there are shots of airplanes in this movie…stock footage of airplanes. The main image on the back of the box? Is only seen in a 1 second burst as a flashback. The shot of the housekeeper and the FBI agent happen at the VERY end of the film and both are also very brief flashbacks to boot! The shot of the terrified guy in the flat cap? A dream. And the shot of the woman doing a strange sort of “Kissy ” face? Yeah she’s in the film for collectively like…5 minutes and adds nothing really to the plot.

Even the blurb on the back of the box is somewhat misleading as it really emphasizes the plane based nature of this slasher…we only see Anna (our main character) ON a plane for collectively 5-10 minutes, about 5 minutes at the very VERY beginning and about 3-5 minutes at the very VERY end. I’m telling you this because, I dear viewer, found out all too late that this was in fact a terrifically misleading box made up to shift copies and that the actual film? Well. When I tell you that afterwards I went to letterboxed to see what other people made of it and got a barrage of Americans who were in a state of shock, confusion and disappointment because they’d picked it up for $1 at the dollar tree on the grounds of “How bad could it be?” only to find out JUST HOW bad it COULD be… Well I hope you treat this review as the warning I never received for this thing. #Deephurting

The film follows Anna, a cabin crew member on a flight from New York to London who’s fed up of her job, At this point, she’s been through three 7 hour flights this week alone and after a particularly hectic flight in which she was felt up twice, “Accidentally” broke a guys nose and spent a more than significant period of time stopping a girl from throwing up her lower intestine. She’s burnt out, exhausted. And just wants to check into her hotel room for the afternoon and get some sleep.

When Anna gets to the hotel however, the stresses don’t stop there, apart from a slightly letchy flight crew trying to hook up with her, she finds that she’s missing off the booking list and as such hasn’t got a room for the night, after properly kicking off, she eventually DOES get a room. And it’s from here that the film really kind of deteriorates. Because, y’see, this is an ultra low budget film. The film makers basically just booked out a room in a holiday inn (possibly two rooms…) and the rest of the movie really is footage from inside of those rooms. Occasionally at quieter points of the day, they’ve been allowed to film in the bar/restaurant part of the holiday inn, which believe me. Is a treat in this film…

So! She checks in, and… at this point I check out…I don’t quite know how to explain this but we basically spend between 10 and 15 minutes with her as she just checks her room out top to bottom. She goes to the toilet (and doesn’t wipe) burns her hand making a cup of tea when the kettle wasn’t even turned on, she gets a bath (no nudity), texts her fiance Simon, watches TV briefly, goes to sleep, wakes up in the early evening, reads the restaurant menu aloud, gets dressed, goes down to the restaurant, reads the menu AGAIN, orders a steak and chips and a large red wine, heads over to the bar part of the restaurant. Almost gets chatted up by a guy, but catches him before he starts and basically offers him a kiss if he’ll give her his glass of wine and leave her alone (which he does). And then she settles into reading.

And it’s here we meet “John” who catches Annas eye from across the bar, he’s also reading a book and drinking red wine, and he ushers Anna over offering to buy her a drink and have some light conversation, he explains that he’s a software developer who’s recently out of a relationship because he wasn’t ready to start a family. Anna explains that she’s a member of cabin crew and the pair really get on, in fact they get on a little too well…John wants to shag her. The pair drink late into the night and as things wind down, John shoots his shot. Only for Anna (who WOULD if she COULD) to shoot him down because she’s “Taken”. The pair embrace, say their goodnights and Anna heads to bed while John hangs around the bar.

Anna heads back to her room, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by a knock at the door. It’s John, who’s brought an unopened bottle of Champagne and two glasses. Anna opens the door to him and John once again tries to convince her of a shag, she says no and he seems a bit crestfallen, so she invites him in for a drink and to continue the conversation. The film doesn’t give us enough information to know for sure whether Anna was considering cheating, or whether she was just being nice. The fact this scene follows on from a text conversation between Anna and her friend Angela talking about how Angelas going to cheat on her husband with some of the flight crew, kind of implies that Anna has it in mind.

Anyway, John goes in, the door closes, we cut to black and when we fade up a LOT of time has passed. Clothes, glasses and other fodder litter Anna’s floor and Anna slowly but surely wakes up, gets her bearings and starts trying to recover. But it quickly becomes clear something isn’t right. Like…she has a strange red iron tasting liquid all over her clothes, her duvet is sticky and John is lying very still, not breathing and IS FUCKING DEAD.

Anna panics, gets into the shower fully clothed and cries saying “Please god no, not again” implying this has happened before. Annnd…well; the rest of the film is basically just Anna in her hotel room, trying to figure out the best way to get rid of John, this is really where the thriller side of things kicks in as she not only has to get rid of the body, she also has to clean her room up because, well, it’s covered in blood and broken glass, she also has to get rid of all evidence that John was even IN the hotel AND she has to avoid being caught by the various staff of the hotel who seem almost drawn to her room specifically for no reason.

And that’s pretty much the plot, I’d elaborate and give you the blow by blow on exactly what goes down, but; to be honest it quite literally is just Anna cleaning the place up, avoiding staff and figuring out how to get rid of the body. And while the twist ending is passably decent, I won’t spoil it for you here…I want you to suffer as I did. In a yawning 90 minute sprawl, will Anna make it back home scott free? Will John survive being repeatedly stabbed in the chest with a steak knife? And why does this film bother with a cabin crew if they’re only going to have them in a couple of scenes and then bin them off? All this and more will probably be answered if you’re bored and need to kill 90 minutes on Deadheading.

And man oh man I am NOT kidding about the inactivity here, this film is SO dull. Not only do we get 25 minutes of a woman getting off a plane, checking in, having a bath and getting some food to tolerate, but the first “Kill” in this horror thriller doesn’t happen until 40 minutes in and due to either the budget, the risk of damage to property or some other random reason almost all of the blood is pre-stained or CGI. hell; in one shot they actually CG water into a shower head because they didn’t have a waterproof kit bag for their camera. With closeups being covered by a watering can being poured onto her head!

What gore is on display is largely CG, VERY unrealistic and done in VERY short bursts that are quite literally blink and you’ll miss it. And we see almost nothing. All the actual shots of violence, we end up cutting away from, theres one VERY brief shot of a 2nd murder (1 hour and 7 minutes into this 90 minute thing) where someone gets stabbed in the face and threy DO show it! But it’s CG again VERY brief and they mask as much of it as possible with cuts that really diminish its effectiveness.

And because the whole film is told in such a way that we’re jumping around in time, the horror element pretty much doesn’t exist, because…the thing with horror is, it kind of happens “in the moment” and relies on suspense like. You can show horror in a flashback, that’s fine as long as its self-contained. But showing us something horrible, then flashing back to show how that horrible thing happened, then flashing forward again to the horrible thing, doesnt really work because once you’ve seen the horrible thing, cutting back to show (or in the case of this film not even show…IMPLY) what happened just means that you’ve undercut your own chance for terror and suspense. And with that gone, all you’re really left with is a woman wandering around a hotel room, touching things and cleaning for an hour.

Im gonna sound like such a horror “bro” here, but fuck it. i’d have been able to overlook the total lack of gore or horror had their at least been some nudity or even a sex scene thrown in just so that SOMETHING happened in that first 50 minutes of the films runtime.

So…if this horror thriller has only the absolute barest amount of horror, no nudity for the “Steamy” factor and barely anything resembling suspense. What does it have? Well…not a great lot. The script is frankly dull as dishwater, theres a 3 act structure thats clearly defined with act 1 being everything from the beginning up to the murder of John, Act 2 being everything from Anna waking up and finding John Dead up to the point where she finally settles on her method for getting rid of him, and Act 3 being a bit shorter than the other 2 acts and basically comprising of her doing the plan to get rid of the evidence and the big final act plot twists leading into the credits.

The problem is, the pacing of those first 2 acts, while consistent in the sense that they both run to around about the same length, contain SO much padding to the point that I think anyone with their head screwed on will likely switch off after half an hour. The first act runs to roughly 40 minutes and I feel honestly it could have run to 20 and have done what it needed to do in terms of explaining what’s going on more than comfortably, and even then that would’ve been a quite dull 20 minutes. But it would have been 20 minutes less of the interminable boringness we ended up with. The only real point of interest in this opening act is Anna meeting John and Johns murder. Pretty much everything else could be lost with no real loss to the overall plot.

The 2nd act runs to about 30 minutes and again, it could’ve EASILY been halved and still felt padded. I’m not joking, this is the only film I’ve seen where the lead actress has a bath and 2-3 showers in less than an hour and 5 minutes. There are times in this script where I feel like it was written IN THE HOTEL ROOM and the crew were just sitting around looking for things they could get their lead actress to do using only what was available.

What I will say though (and this is pretty much the only nice thing I CAN say about this movie) the 3rd act does at least pick up the pace a little bit, and the final 20 minutes, while bloated, are decent enough and manage to get things up to a pace where I didn’t want to claw my own eyeballs out. But it’s all too little too late. If the reward for 70 minutes of patience is 20 minutes of lukewarm plot resolution that AT BEST is just about “acceptable” (in my opinion I might add) that is not a Job well done, that’s a failure.

I think this could have been a half decent 40-45 minute short film. Chopping out the superfluous scenes, really trimming the fat down, this could easily jump from a stinker of a picture to something I’d be tempted to watch again. But because anything less than feature run time doesn’t sell, we end up with this. A short film that doesn’t know what to do with itself, so it burns time until it can do what it needs to. I don’t think I’m expressing myself clearly enough here when I say that this thing was SO dull, SO dull…it was SO dull it actually made me appreciate what an hour and a half really feels like. like…REALLY feels like. I can’t sugar coat it.

Additionally; none of the characters are particularly endearing or likable. I’m not saying every film has to have a likable main character, but it does kind of help the audience empathize with them a bit more if they have SOME level of emotional connection. Even if their a bastard, WE as the audience need to care if they live or die. And we just don’t have that with our cast here. All the characters are written to be generally unlikeable people. Whether it’s John being manipulative and, in places, a bit rapey. Or Anna swinging wildly between the script wanting us to sympathize with her, only to then have her basically bully people, mock them, be overly sarcastic and just generally unpleasant. I never fully knew where I stood with the cast in this thing, and while that sometimes can be used to great success in setting suspense and unease. Here, it just made me fundamentally lose investment in anyone involved because they were so all over the place I didn’t know who to invest in.

On a closing note, I have to say the dialogues…not great. It’s a bit stilted, VERY repetitious and again, much like the actual happenings in the film, a lot of it just kind of exists to get us from point to point as slowly as possible. And that does have a detrimental impact on the characters. Y’see with short films the expectation on character establishment and development is relatively low. Mainly because, there isn’t a lot of time to establish your characters, so it works best to introduce them, breadcrumb some info about them across the narrative and then use that breadcrumbed info to give your character either a problem they have to solve or a solution based on what they know or who they are.

Feature films have a MUCH higher scope in terms of setting up character development both in terms of who they are, where they come from, what they believe and there’s a lot of emphasis in features to make your characters grow, learn and develop throughout. Now…Anna as a character would work in a short film because, when we’re introduced to her at the start of the film, there IS a little something extra going on up there personality wise. Which could act as a good mask to hide her more “Homicidal” tendencies. It would, up front, allow the audience to feel like there was something not quite right with her and would have kept things fairly nippy, so when the “John is dead ” reveal happens the audience can go “OH! SHE’S A BAD’UN!” and feel smart that they could sense something wasn’t quite right earlier on with her.

But in this elongated format we spend too much time with Anna just kind of, being normal. It means when the more psychotic moments do come out. It’s jarring, but not jarring in a “OH! She’s a baddie!” way…jarring in a “Why is she doing this? She’s just been messaging her fiance telling him how much she misses him and now she’s stabbing a guy in a hotel room…” way. And I think as well, the fact that the other characters in this film AREN’T developed nearly as much as they kind of need to be creates problems too. Like, John gets a meaty bit of screen time to develop himself, and I actually feel like I know more about him than Anna honestly, but he still doesn’t quite feel right and he exits the film with me feeling like there was more planned for him to do, that ultimately never got worked out.

Angela and the rest of the cabin crew are another example. They REALLY didn’t need to be in this. Like; either develop them properly and have them in the film, or cut them out. Because this weird hokey cokey business where Angela ISN’T in the majority of the film, but keeps popping up randomly via text and at one point appears to literally just use angelas toilet as a moment of artificial suspense? Yeahhh it doesn’t work for me. Either involve her and have her be another of Anna’s victims, or better yet have her help Anna in hiding the body. Or chop her out, because in this format, she’s not needed.

The script was written, directed, produced and edited by David Easton, he’s a bit of an auteur in that sense, having 5 directing credits and 3 writing credits. And of those 5 directing credits 2 are unreleased and of the 3 writing credits, 1 is unreleased. Deadheading is probably his best known credit and, as of the time of recording, it’s also his last directing and writing credit.

On the direction front, to me? It’s frustrating because it HAS no curation. Everything is presented in painful detail, it all looks very flat and because the location is a hotel room, and a lot of the budget hotels tend to try and keep things minimalist and uniform it means we spend a lot of time in rooms that all look vaguely the same, with very little of interest to help add definition to the back of shots…literally 90% of the backgrounds in this thing are of white walls or the bed. You may think that 10-15 minutes of exploring a hotel room isn’t *REALLY* that long of a time. but I can assure you, when you’ve sat through Anna touching light switches, opening cupboards entering and exiting the bathroom MULTIPLE times, with NONE of this being relevant to the plot, largely in silence. it’s insufferable..

The idea of a director is to curate all the elements that help to make a film work and to do so in a way that ACTUALLY makes the film work. That’s why directors are so often lauded. Here? They’ve seemingly decided to go for a better safe than sorry approach and they’ve just documented EVERYTHING. Presumably so they’d have more to play around with in the edit. But because they’ve been SO cavalier in just grabbing everything, it’s kind of meant there’s no solid steerage on presentation. We just…see everything. In places it may as well be raw rushes for all the curation we have. And that’s a problem, because if your film doesn’t really have the sense of purposeful driving towards a point, it’s meandering, and when that happens…people turn off.

Direction of the cast, was…actually not too bad. In fact I’d say that side of things DOES work in this film’s favor, the cast all seem switched on, in the zone and I think the director does a good job of talking them through their scenes and what needs to happen. They seem to bring a bit of themselves to the role as well, which is always a nice touch. Had the film been a tighter product the direction of the cast would have shined through even more so than it already does and probably would have been its saving grace.

The Cine reeks of “Student film” vibes. What I mean by that is that student films (or early attempts at filmmaking from people still learning the craft) tend to (understandably) not be quite as confident in their delivery. This is because the filmmaker hasnt found their “Voice” or style yet, and their are some common tropes that generally befall these kinds of movies…One of those tropes is hardcore ‘Shot stuffing’ when sequence building. A common practice where a sequence that should really only need 2-3 shots to convey what’s happening (for example; someone notices there mobile phone is ringing, they go over and answer the call) will instead be illustrated with 5-10 shots all VERY quickly cut together with “Match cutting” to try and show off how good at continuity and shot listing they are.

This film has TONS of examples of that, moments where a scene that should take no more than 10 shots to do from beginning to end, ends up taking anywhere between 25-35 shots that cut every 3-5 seconds or so. It’s disorienting and while it IS impressive that they’re able to deal with match cuts like that. It’s annoying, and ultimately adds nothing to proceedings. The secret to a good edit is to only cut where necessary. You want your audience to flow through your story and cuts are designed to help tell that story in ways that acting, cinematography and direction simply can’t do. Cutting at an epilepsy inducing rate because you have a lot of shots of someone going to the toilet and boy howdy do you wanna use them! Help’s no one. It just subconsciously makes the audience wonder why we need to see someone taking a shit from 5 different angles.

Shallow depth of field isn’t really used as much as I’d have expected, but I don’t know if that’s down to them not having the lenses to pull off a convincing shallow pull, or whether it’s because the cameras they had didn’t have the ability to soft focus. To me it looks like low end DSLR footage, possibly even domestic camcorder given the year this came out. Composition is largely fair standing, nothing breathtakingly good, they largely follow the basic rules of composition (off centering, the rule of thirds, the line, blocking etc) but it’s all a bit uninspired and some shots just look downright ugly. For example; the shots of the hotel room on the ultra wide angle lens, where it looks like they haven’t “Defisheyed ” it, or cutaway shots like when Anna makes a cup of tea where it’s underexposed, shakey and unpleasant.

All this combined with a lackluster color grade which, does at least TRY to make the film look a bit stylized but ultimately looks mostly washed out and untreated, even with some snazzy lighting kits and gels for added effect. It just…doesn’t look or feel quite as powerful as I feel it could and when combined with the above issues only exacerbated things further.

Performance wise, well…there’s only really two people to talk about and that’s Lisa Ronaghan and Bryan Larkin. Mainly because all the other cast members who turn up in this thing are barely in the movie and when they do, they’re not great…but hey, we’ve all gotta start somewhere. Lisa’s performance is fine, she does an acceptable turn as a leading lady in a “Horror” film. There are a few awkward deliveries here and there which I can put down to her putting on an American accent (she’s british) but, it’s a damn decent attempt at an American Accent (at least to my ears) it was convincing enough that I only found out she was actually british when I started collecting notes for this movie and found her demo reel. Her physical performance is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think she does about enough to carry the film, which given how bare it is, is quite impressive.

As for Bryan. He’s…okay. He gives a bit of a muted performance, and while that might work in certain circumstances, here? It just kind of makes him come across as a bit aloof, and as such he never really gets a moment to properly define his character. So he just sort of, gets through his bits decently enough and then exits. What I WILL say is the man can’t drunk act. He just can’t. He tries! But he just comes across as giving the same muted performance as when he was sober…just slower talking and more flailing. Sooo…yeh. It’s not a winner for me.

And finally; the soundtrack! It’s completely unremarkable. To the point that, in trying to remember it for the purpose of this review I had to go back to my notes and even after briefing up on my notes, I’m STILL none the wiser. I seem to recall it basically being drone noise. Occasionally punctuated with the odd spooky synth sting. which…I suppose being unmemorable in some regards is better than being bad. But it’s still not great when I couldn’t even hum you a bar from this thing.

Deadheading was released on DVD in 2018 by Echobridge acquisition corporation. It’s as barebones as it comes, just the film and a menu and that’s it. The Picture quality is fine enough. As far as I can see this is a US only release, it’s on streaming in the UK but I can’t find a UK physical release anywhere. Which I find quite funny, that a film that’s shot in the UK, Largely in a UK hotel with an all UK cast only got a physical release in the US and even THEN it only got a release in the US to populate Dollar stores and traumatize trash divers like myself. Eesh.

While I’d stop short of calling Deadheading one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It is VERY hard to like this thing, from the script being bloated and stretched WELL beyond its natural run time, to all the main characters being largely unlikeable, to disorienting editing and flat lifeless cine and direction that largely feels like every scrap was used rather than the choicest cuts. This was an endurance test to sit through. When I can confidently say this film is basically Barry J. Gillis’s “Things” but somehow LESS endearing, less interesting and even MORE pointless…I hope I convey my absolute dislike of this thing. And the fact it has such potential to be so much better is the thing that hurts the most.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dead-heading/1/

Y’know…going into 1989’s Blind Fury I was a little more than apprehensive. I mean you’ve got to appreciate, an 80’s action comedy movie mainly following a blind swordmaster played by Rutger Hauer is shaky ground as a pitch. I was flashing back to movies like “Soul Man” fully expecting to be submerged into 90(ish) minutes of horrifically offensive jokes about blind people, rejected naked gun visual gags, poor choreographed action sequences and an end result that would likely have resulted in my exile from youtube and ostracization from society.

But what this film actually IS, actually kind of surprised me…

The film follows Nick, a blinded army veteran who served in Viet Nam, in the opening of the film we see Nick back in 1969 serving in the army after surviving a helicopter crash that was *presumably* supposed to be taking him and his army buddies home, after wandering through the swamps for a while completely unaware of what’s around him, he’s captured and taken to a local village, where his wounds are treated, he’s recuperated back to good health and while there, some of the villagers decide it may be interesting or entertaining to train him how to wield a sword. At first he’s an amusement for the village, they throw fruit at him and generally try to wind him up a bit. But over time his skills sharpen, he becomes much more disciplined in the art of swordsmanship, he becomes able to focus his hearing allowing for him to be much more aware of things generally around him, and after some time and training he’s able to perfectly hit anything thrown at him.

It’s from here that some time passes and we pick back up with Nick 20 years on in Miami Florida, and Nick looks like he’s loving life wandering the byways and highways avoiding dog doo and mistaking crocodiles for dogs. He heads inside a local bar where a gang are, generally being unpleasant and after some shenanigans in which they ruin Nicks Burrito with extra hot sauce when he said he wanted mild and they try to steal a ladies purse (and possibly worse) Nick illustrates that, 20 years on, the skills he learn in Nam are VERY much still present and sharp as ever.

We’re then transported to Reno Nevada where a fellow by the name of Frank Deveraux is…hanging around. Literally. He’s in debt to a local casino by a fair wodge, and the casino responded to this debt owing by casually hanging him over the side of the top floor of the casino and basically threatening to murder him (or kidnap or murder his family) if he doesnt either pay back his debt or agree to work for the casino manufacturing VERY illegal drugs, for them to sell to clear their own debts. After the intimidation, the owners of the casino mention in passing that they think Frank will be more cooperative if his family are “Taken into the care” of some of the casino’s thugs…I mean, hired staff…and they mention that the Deverauxs were last known to be based in Miami.

And wouldn’t you know it; We then INSTANTLY cut to Nick wandering up a path towards the front door of the Deverauxs. After knocking on the door Frank’s wife…or should that be Ex wife Lynn answers and when Nick explains that he and Frank were army buddies she lets him in. Nick explains that he’s traveled here to see Frank and catch up on old times. But unfortunately only a short time ago Frank and Lynn divorced and Frank moved to Reno to go and gamble. Nicks is introduced to Frank’s kid Billy, who’s…a character. I think it’s fair to say, who shows a vague interest in Nick before clearing off to go do some kid stuff.

After a bit more catching up, there’s a knock at the door and two police officers appear claiming they need to speak to Billy as they believe he witnessed a crime and they need him to go with them to provide more information. Lynns confused as Billy hasn’t mentioned anything about a crime taking place and when the questioning gets a bit TOO deep for the cops they reveal they’re 2 henchmen from the casino led by a tall creepy type called “SLAG”. Within minutes, it’s all kicking off. Bullets are flying, limbs are being lopped off and by the end, the cops are either dead or mortally injured, Slags jumped through a plate glass window and Lynn lies dead on the floor with a gunshot wound to the chest. Her dying wish being for Nick to take Billy to be with his father Frank by any means necessary.

And so, Nick and Billy begin their journey to reno and many shenanigans befall the pair along the way, including tripping over in the mud, Billy realizing what happened to his mum and running away, Slag returning for an epic showdown in a cornfield and calming exchanges of words of wisdom under the stars. Eventually; they finally arrive in Reno and they head to an apartment where Frank’s current Girlfriend “Annie” is waiting for them. Unfortunately Annies being used as bait and the minute the pair enter the apartment Nicks knocked unconscious, the pair are grabbed, and the baddies speed off back to the casino.

Luckily for the plot, Billy is able to wriggle out of the rope they’ve been bound together with and upon freeing Nick the pair beat up the henchmen and take off on a high speed chase of EPIC proportions! Resulting in two VERY injured henchmen and an extended sequence in which the three escapees wander around a field aimlessly looking for Nick’s Cane/Sword thing. Eventually; they head over to a friend of Annies called Coleen to lie low at her trailer and plan their next move. Nick informs them he’s going to the casino himself to try and stake the place out in the hopes of finding Frank.

And what follows is a final act of thrills, spills brawls and crawls as Nick fights his way through casino floor looking for his friend, unveils a secret illegal *fixed* gambling racket AND faces a final showdown with Slag, in a frankly WILD finale that I won’t spoil here for you lovely people, Will Nick find Frank in one piece?! Will the casino get it’s luuuuuuurvly druuuugs!? And Did Nick REALLY hate that extra Spicy Burrito? I mean; his initial reaction was surprise and pain, but then he kind of drops being in pain like it was all an act…and I don’t know if it was an act or not, I’m SO confused. Anyway something something something slashy slashy BLIND FURY!

And honestly; given what I’ve been through so far with this run, I was NOT expecting a lot from this. At MOST I was expecting a “passable” experience with some poor taste jokes. But; honestly? This thing’s good. Decent even!. It’s apparently a *loose* western adaptation of one of the stories of Zatoichi the blind swordsman and I could certainly feel the influence present here in terms of narrative structure.

What we have here is a script that’s textured unusually. But not an unpleasant one. It’s tristar entertainment and with studio fodder there’s kind of a preset expectation that the basics here will be of a standard and in play (even pacing, a 3 act structure, character progression and development…a point.) all that good stuff. And well; basically yeh, all that’s here, we have a decently paced 3 act narrative that follows a basic rescue plot trope from start to finish with very little deviation. It’s a solid, if not slightly generic piece that decently rumbles along without too much in the way of issues.

What gives this film a little spice, just…something to kick it up from being a generic action movie is the tonal choices they’ve gone for, and particularly in the comedy style they’ve decided to work with. Y’see; the comedy in this film is…odd. I think they were aiming for sarcastic cool humor, y’know, the type of humor where the hero can quip, do puns, maybe even give a facial reaction that suggests humor. It’s not like ACTUAL gags. More intention in actions and the way in which lines are supposed to be delivered that makes the humor work.

Unfortunately for this script 2 factors are in play in the movie that derail this. The first being that there just aren’t enough moments where that kind of comedy is utilized, meaning comedy happens enough to be “A thing” but not enough to actually make it feel natural within the script. But then also not helping things is Hauers decision to play the humor in this script as goofy and cheesy as possible. It comes across as awkward, like it’s been rammed in there rather than feeling like a natural extension of the character. I’d lean towards studio intervention on the humor in this thing quite honestly, as, from what I can gather, the film was supposed to be a quite faithful loose adaptation of zatoichi..at least initially…and I could see a contrast of lighter and darker moments working quite well there.

There’s points in this film where it gets VERY bleak very quickly, and I could see those moments tonally gelling quite well with some lighter moments. But instead the VERY bleak moments are married up to just…daft moments. Like Haurer pulling faces, prat falling or acting incredibly sarcastic. The henchmen are written almost like cartoon characters and the whole thing as a result just, feels a bit off to me. Which…ironically has probably given it the distinction it needed to break away from being pigeonholed alongside all the other middle of the road action flicks from that time. The odd humor, the strange decision to make some of the cast have completely serious performances while making others loony toons characters has resulted in something that…to me is neither good nor bad. But it IS different.

The dialogue’s also a bit all over the place too…in an enjoyable way mind! But yeah…it starts off pretty standard really for movies of this fair…maybe a couple of light hearted hints towards humor but otherwise pretty sturdy and serious with the aim of establishing our characters and goals, but as the film goes on it slowly turns into a free for all, the dialogue begins to drift into the cartoonish…I mean, for my money it never *quite* gets there, despite getting bloody close on multiple occasions. But it does seem to just stray further and further away from what the initial set up was supposed to be until the end when it snaps back to reality. It gave me a bit of tonal whiplash to go from baddies grandstanding from their abandoned ski lodge mountain top lair to a quite touching moment between Nick and Billy.

When combined with a cast who largely mumble their lines because they’re action hero’s they’re supposed to be cooler than thou…so of course they’re going to only speak through pursed lips for a decent chunk of the runtime. It creates a situation where you have to strain to hear what our characters are saying in places and when you finally do make out what’s being said it’s usually some kind of nonsense that was SUPPOSED to be delivered as a withering pun, but has instead been delivered with a cheshire cat grin and a look like Haurs frontal lobe is out to lunch. Which again! Isn’t a bad thing! It’s just VERY unusual.

To be honest, if I was being picky, i’d say the only genuine criticism I’d level at the script is the ending itself. It doesn’t so much resolve more…stops. There’s no actual closure. Nick beats up one of the main henchmen in the movie while the ACTUAL baddies, the casino owners threaten Billy with a bullet to the head. There’s an altercation and we fade to black and on fading up it’s all resolved…with ZERO explanation for how Nick stopped the casino owners, where Frank vanished to or how they got off the mountain. We just crossfade away from what is arguably the main point of the films existence. Into a totally defused ending that felt tacked on, rushed and didnt feel like it matched the rest of the tone or pacing of the rest of the film by any measure. It literally feels like there’s a scene or two missing from the final cut. Which was a bit disappointing to me when the journey had been quite enjoyable.

But otherwise what we have here is a script that’s studio grade passable and just odd enough to take it above what would be considered a passable experience for the genre. It’s not something you’d be clamoring to watch again in a hurry, but I’d absolutely watch it again in future given the chance.

The Script was written by Charles Robert Corner, he has 17 writing credits with a project currently in active development! Looking at his list there was nothing that immediately caught my eye, so I’d say this may be his best known work…though he did write “Gymkata ” and I know that thing definitely has its fans. The film was directed by Phillip Noyce. Who has 64 directing credits with several in various stages of active production as of the time of recording! He’s australian born and he had some pretty decent hitters in his resume including “The Bone Collector”, “Heatwave” and “Roots”

And on the direction front, this is just a damn fine piece of work, it’s not mesmerizing, it’s not pushing the limits of cinema. But y’know what? Noyce has managed to create an entertaining feature here that seldom had me clock watching and kept things as visually interesting as possible across the runtime. Scenes pop with a liveliness that I thought was pleasant enough and while I wouldn’t go as far as to say Noyces style is distinct against the genre at that time. It’s clear that he worked very closely with the cinematographers to produce a work that DOES feel tight, to the point and most importantly its an end product that feels like the director gave a damn about what made it onto the screen.

Direction of the cast is good and solid too, with most of them being highly animated, very maneuverable around the scenes and settings and as mentioned there’s almost a cartoonish quality to it in places that definitely helps really amp up the end product in ways that other buddy action films or action comedies from the time couldn’t quite muster.

In particular, a lot of work clearly went into realizing Nick as a character for both Noyce and Haur. Haur himself actually claimed this was one of his most challenging roles of his career because he had to balance the sword play elements with his character having a serious affliction. Mercifully; I think Noyce and Haur get the balance about right between giving Nick weight in terms of what happened to him being a plot factor, but they do give him some layers to play with physically through his mannerisms and how he holds himself. Noyce really pulls the best out of Haur here and gives the audience a spectrum to play with that, by the time the credits came around, it really felt like you got to know Nick fairly well.

It would also be amiss of me not to mention the direction and choreography around the fight scenes, which is tight, works well and looks great. They utilize quick cuts in the edit alongside masked punches and sword swishes to help create some decent combat sequences that look great and can even get a little intense in places. It’s not without its faults mind. I don’t know if they were trying to do a recurring gag, but there were a couple of instances where they had Nick slash his sword at someone, they’d flail as if they’d been killed, only to then reveal they were actually alright and that Nick had either *just* missed them, or done something less drastic (like cut their eyebrows off or ripped their shirt) the first time it was funny, but after that It just left me kind of eye rolling and wondering if the film had underun or something?

To me? The cine is probably where the film shines, this production has visuals that it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DESERVE. I was honestly beyond impressed with pretty much the whole feature in terms of not only its array of composition, but in terms of the variety of shot types and interesting experimentation that the film worked with. The absolute highlight for me has to be the scene in which Billy finds out about his mothers death and heads off into the cornfield. It’s a scene that NOT ONLY manages to nicely balance humor and somber tones through the cine and direction, but it manages to create an atmosphere that feels tense, funny and entertaining all in equal measures all in rotation and it juggles this while effortlessly swapping between al the various tones creating a blend that you’d think wouldn’t work…but actually does surprisingly well.

Performance wise, I’ve already sung Haurs praise for his dedication in trying to give a believable turn in the role. He owns each and every scene he’s in, he expresses and emotes perfectly for the situations as they unfold and he brings some genuine depth to a character that could have easily just been a caricature. So serious kudos to him, he really does knock this one out of the park, giving a performance that again, this film ABSOLUTELY did not deserve. Randall Cobb also delites here as “Slag” the lead henchman for the Casino. He’s a solid menacing presence who was a PERFECT fit to put up against Haur in this thing, every scene he’s in is such a delight to sit through and his final scene in this movie is just astounding and worth the price of admission alone.

The rest of the cast actually pose an interesting problem because…well…they’re having to go up against very animated and charismatic performances. As such…They kind of just sort of blend into the background of everything that’s going on. They more than do what’s required of them, and I think the director got what was needed. But if you’re up against Haur and Cobb who are putting their absolute all into these roles. You’re always going to be somewhat overshadowed…they’re decent. But struggle to pull off anything truly memorable.

And finally; the soundtrack! And mild mumbles from the actors aside, what we have here is a decent acoustic sounding score that’s honestly unlike anything I’ve quite heard before. It has that actiony edge, but there’s a tinge of “World” music about it, a tinge of woodwind and percussion. And a smidge of rock in the mix as well. The results are quite delightful to listen to honestly, one of the better action scores I’ve heard in quite some time. So I’d say big win on that front! I’d love to hear it isolated some day!

Blind Fury was released on VHS in the UK by RCA Columbia in 1990 on rental, it would later receive a home video release by VCI and the cinema club in 1997. It had multiple DVD releases over here as well with the earliest being in 2004 and a reissue on DVD and bluray happening in 2018 courtesy of Fremantle.My version came courtesy of mill creek entertainment who released a limited edition “retro vhs” version of the release with a rather nifty slipcover. Extras are a little thin on the ground, but the picture quality is top notch, and I believe it’s still in print and goes for dirt cheap! So grab it while you can!

I thought Blind Fury was a hoot! While i’d stop short of saying I loved it, I could definitely recommend checking this one out. It actually stunned me when I found out this film didn’t perform too well at the box office. They were gearing up for a sequel just before the film got a public release, but despite positive reviews and two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert, it bombed at the box office in the US and as such the studio restricted it’s european release to only a handful of cinemas. The film managed to do quite well despite a brief cinema run in the UK, where Hauer was a known household name due to his appearances at the time in a very successful string of adverts for Guiness. As such, people picked the movie up based on word of mouth and Haurs appearance alone and subsequently it ended up being one of the top 10 VHS rentals over here for quite a few weeks.

While it’s nice the film did eventually find a bit of success, I think it deserved better than the hand it was dealt on this. With a quirky and tonally unusual script, fantastic direction and cine some more than reasonable performances and a HELL of a decent score, I think Blind Fury is a movie you really need to check out sooner rather than later. I could see it pairing up quite well with movies like “American Ninja 5” or maybe even something a bit out there like “Robot in the family”…So if you’re bored this weekend and looking for a pick me up. Maybe give this one a try!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/blind-fury/1/

2014’s Bigfoot vs D.B Cooper is aaaa….*scrabbles about wildly*…thing. It exists. It exists, and defies genre definition. It is anti-cinema, it has *some* VERY light horror elements, but isn’t a horror film, it predominantly features shirtless men stripping down to their boxers for candid shots, but it isn’t *strictly* porn. It has D.B Cooper and narration describing his infamous plane heist. But it isn’t a drama. I’d say I’d struggle to tell you what DID happen in the movie, but even that would be a fib because I can tell you EXACTLY what happened in this thing and the answer is; not a fat lot.

The film is the brainchild of one David Decoteau The man who bought us “Chickboxer” and “Final Scream”, and here; we’re looking at one of his “latter day” works, and…arguably one of his more sadistic offerings…i’d be kind here in saying that this “isn’t one of his best”. In fact; when “Red Letter Media” covered it on their show “Best of the Worst” they declared this film to be “The Worst movie that they had EVER covered on the show.” and now having sat through all 76 minutes of it, i’d be pressed to disagree.

What I’m going to do here is tell you EXACTLY what happens in this film from start to finish. Spoilers and all, not because I’m being mean and want you to find out how the film ends…but because if I don’t mention the ending there WILL be no talk about the plot, because frankly there’s practically nothing here.

So! The film opens in 1971 and takes place in Ariel Washington in some woodlands. We’re introduced to Bernie, Our (sort of) main character in this (but…not really because he doesn’t really do much) who’s future incarnation is also our narrator for the film, recounting the events of one fateful day when he was hiking in the woods. What follows is 11 minutes of Bernie walking in the woods while a guy in a frankly awful bigfoot costume skulks around (it’s implied it’s watching Bernie) intercut with random location footage and in between the lakes and hiking is 11 MINUTES of interspersed title cards.

After this; we then get an introduction to D.B Cooper basically setting up who he is and what he did, D.B (known as Dan) was a mysterious man who, in 1971 caught a flight and while in the air revealed to an air hostess that he’d bought a bomb on the plane and that his demands were for a parachute, a gun and a large sum of money. He then grounded the plane, evacuated the flight of everyone barring the pilots, took off again and while being tailed by two fighter pilots he jumped from the plane with his parachute, the gun and the money and disappeared, never to be seen again.

We only spend a brief time with D.B in the opening, basically picking up with him as he prepares to board the plane (mainly made up of Stock footage of airports) At this point we cut back to Bernie who, it’s revealed actually WASN’T just hiking randomly in the woods, he was actually heading to a house just on the outskirts of the forrest that he thought would be a good place to getaway for a few days and unwind. However; when he arrives, he’s greeted at the door by a shirtless guy who tells him that him and a load of other shirtless guys have all come up to the house to celebrate one of their crew’s upcoming wedding. With thanksgiving also coming up they’ve decided that, not only will this be a sort of Bachelor party, but they’re also going to hunt some Turkeys.

Bernie still seems a bit confused, but the guys basically offer to take him on board as part of the hunting/bachelor party experience and… after offering him a beer, Bernie accepts! We also see Bigfoot skulk about a bit more and then we cut back to D.B who’s now on the flight and threatens the stewardess with the bomb, giving her his demands on a napkin. What then follows is an extended sequence of 2 of the guys from the house jogging, they stop to get changed, but that’s it. Back at the house, the guys discuss exactly how the turkey shoot is going to go down and they agree to split into 2 teams of 3 and to make it a bit of a competition, but one of the guys isn’t up for killing animals, so they decide to be a team of 2 and a team of 3 instead. The two guys who went out jogging get back and everyone confirms the plan. What happens next, is insane.

As we as the audience are effectively held captive when, not once. Not twice, not three times. BUT FOUR TIMES we are FORCED to watch 4 of the actors in this movie do exactly the same thing, one after the other for 5-10 minute stretches. They wander around the house aimlessly, walk into a bedroom, strip down to their underwear, pillock about for a bit and then put their pants back on. FOUR TIMES. And the only reason I say it’s four times is because, really, IT’S FIVE TIMES. But the fifth time it happens is *SLIGHTLY* different. Because after the 4th time all the guys (apart from the bachelor) decide to finally get the hunt underway, so they head out of the house leaving the bachelor guy by himself. The same shenanigans happen AGAIN but this time he calls his wife briefly, goes to get a shower, fake jerks it in the shower, and then bigfoot who’s been on and off stalking the house for the last 45 minutes or so breaks into the house and kills the bachelor in the shower. But there’s no blood, no visible sign he’s even been hit and Bigfoot ISN’T EVEN IN THE SAME ROOM. THEY JUST FILMED AN ACTION SHOT ON A BLACK BACKDROP AND CALLED IT A DAY!

45 minutes in, the film once again remembers D.B cooper is supposed to be in this movie (albeit briefly) as he hops out of the plane to collect his demands and then evacuates the plane and takes off again (although, the stock footage still shows the plane as full, despite what the narration says). And what follows is basically the guys all titting about in the woods talking absolute bollocks that has NO impact on the story, but slowly, one by one the guys decide to go back to house for one reason or another (be it bathroom breaks or just not being arsed about hunting anymore) and one by one, as they get back to the house the same thing happens over and over AGAIN. They wander around the house a bit, and either find bigfoot who kills them, OR! They wander around the house for a bit, find one of their friends dead (but seemingly untouched) and when they try to flee the house (which takes AGES) they find Bigfoot who kills them. All in the same way, all in the same style.

After a while the only 2 people left are one of the bachelor bros and Bernie who tells the bro that there’s myths about these forests involving killer creatures, the bro laughs at him for believing a load of folk tales and when he isn’t paying attention Bernie whacks him with the butt of his gun, knocking him unconscious.And…if you can believe it, well over an hour and 5 minutes into this thing. We’re gonna get the first actual bit of plot beyond the dross we’ve encountered so far.

As, after having knocked the bro out, Bernie heads to a specific spot in the woods and it’s revealed that…BERNIE AND D.B COOPER ARE PARTNERS IN CRIME! And that Bernie served under D.B in Viet Nam. Oh. and the knocked out bro wakes up and almost immediately gets killed by Bigfoot. So…yeah he’s gone. Anyway! D.B and Bernie reconnect, and shortly thereafter the pair hear the bro being killed and rush over to see what the matter is, where they encounter Bigfoot…and…there’s no other way to say it really…D.B Cooper and Bigfoot have a VERY brief fight. Mano a bigfoot-o. And D.B seemingly wins. Killing bigfoot in cold blood. But! There’s a plot twist. As Bigfoot scratched D.B pretty badly and while Bernie thinks it’s a healable wound, D.B tells Bernie to run. When Bernie tries to help, D.B roars at him and it’s revealed that, like werewolves. If someone gets scratched by bigfoot and lives, they themselves become a bigfoot. Bernie flees and the film ends by saying that somewhere, out there RIGHT now…is D.B Bigfoot. Cut to black, end credits. Fin. what the fuck-.

And the thing is, I don’t really know what to do with this…thing? Because; it almost feels unfair to hold this thing up to the usual standards I cover for these movies. It’s just people jogging, walking or stripping down to their undies ALL SHIRTLESS for about an hour and 5 minutes of the hour and 16 minute runtime. So the debate I’m having is, do I judge this film by what it IS or do I judge the film by what it SHOULD be? Because if I’m judging it by what it SHOULD be, it’s arguably one of the worst movies i’ve ever seen. If I’m judging it by what it’s trying to do, then it’s not great. But it’s not bad.

I’m fairly convinced that there was no script for this, not in the conventional sense. There may have been a running order of events, something approaching a story outline. But; given how little dialogue there is in this film and given that; what dialogue there is seems to be badly improvised in terms of quality. I don’t honestly believe that there’s a page by page breakdown of what happens in this film available. If there is, it’s painfully thin and largely filled with action instructions. What IS presented here is essentially a 10-15 minute movie with an hour’s padding stapled to it, and really poor padding at that. I can handle some padding, hell, if the paddings well written, even if it’s not linked directly to the main story. If it’s well handled it CAN end up being funnier or more entertaining than the main film itself!

That’s not the case here, it’s just inane. Inane to the point that, I don’t really know who the TA is for this honestly; people coming to see ripped guys get naked WONT sit through the weird bigfoot/D.B cooper subplot, the jogging and the random wandering around the house when pornhub exists. Horror fans SURE AS SHIT wont sit through this thing for what horror’s on display. Even some of the more hardcore David Decoteau fans I know have neither the patience or inclination to sit through this thing because SO LITTLE actually happens in it.

The pacing is like drowning in glue, the padding drowns what little plot there is to the point that it makes the whole thing an absolute test in patience. So much so that, by the time the fight between Bigfoot and D.B finally happens (which IS actually quite entertaining and dumb in equal measures) I didnt care about it because I’d lost interest about 25 minutes in and was literally just watching at this point to get to the end of it. It’s just not worth it. It’s not worth watching an hour and 10 minutes of meandering for collectively about 5 minutes of, not even interesting, moderately dumb goofing about.

Theres no real act structuring, theres no lynch pin moments. The film just sort of vomits out this fluff, occasionally remembering that if it DOESNT put a few plot points in here and there, then it literally WOULD just be a “documentation” of people wandering around a wood in 2014, rather than an actual film that people have to PAY to SEE. I can’t even really talk about the dialogue because A: there’s not a lot of it, and B: what dialogue there is is dreadful, aimless, stilted and really properly feels like Decoteau just told them to talk bollocks and walk for a couple of minutes until they got the take. This thing makes “Chick Boxer ” look like War and peace, it makes “Things” look like “Avengers Infinity wars” it’s THAT slow and pointless.

The film was “Co-written” and Directed by David Decoteau who we’ve covered the filmography of a few times in the past, a fun piece of trivia about this movie though is that Decoteau marketed this film as starring Linnea Quigly who even appears on the DVD commentary track for the movie!…she’s not in this film. She has one line of dialogue that’s been dubbed in. She has top billing on this film. holy shit…The film was also “co-written” (used in the loosest possible way) by Harvey Shaiman. I can assure you, I pissed myself out of rage and laughter when I found out that THIS movie of all things had TWO writers…Stunned. I’m stunned. Harvey has 3 writing credits, and this was his last (and probably best known) work.

On the subject of direction, I’m again posed with the question “Do I judge this by film standards, or by what’s being presented?” because, if I lower my standards so far as to judge the film on what’s here, the direction’s pretty passable. You have an hour of people walking around and getting changed. David’s managed to effectively capture that and while it’s maybe a little bit lacking in terms of creativity (I personally feel the sequences could have done with just a few more cutaways honestly) for what this is, it doesn’t look awful.

Judging this on basic standards of cinematic integrity? This films dead behind the eyes from a directing standpoint. It’s flat, lifeless, and BECAUSE of the script it’s working with it’s horrifically restrictive on what it can really do. Honestly? The script should never have left Decoteau’s computer. Letalone got to the point it was directed and shot. It’s painfully by the numbers production that’s trapped by its own total lack of interesting or unique happenings. I’d rather go for a walk for an hour and 16 minutes myself, than sit through this. And I am NOT a walker by trade.

Direction of the cast is poor. But then, again. When the script basically just says “Bernie walks for 11 minutes and doesn’t say anything” how do you work with that? Seriously; how do you direct a cast member on that other than telling them to walk from point A to Point B? Nothing happens while they’re walking/jogging/exploring. The closest to cast direction we get in this film are the scenes where the guys strip to their undies. But that could best be described as David off camera shouting “Caress your Abs more!” and the final fight between D.B and Bigfoot…which again; is less a creative choreographed fight to the death and more a sighing “Well…people have made it this far, might as well make Bigfoot ACTUALLY verse D.B Cooper” it’s deathly dull with a total lack of creativity behind it.

The cine is much the same story as the direction. If I’m judging it from a bar on the floor “This is the script” perspective. They don’t do too badly. Composition is reasonable, they sometimes do some interesting shots, there’s a sense of variety, though I feel it could have really done more to make those sequences really sing. Even if it was just the occasional additional shot, the odd close up, the occasional cut back from a closeup to a mid. It’s those kinds of bridging shots that are really missing from this thing. But of what’s presented, if you put shit in, you’re gonna get shit out. And this is probably the best outcome for the sheer BOLLOCKS that’s been put in.

Judging it “with standards” however, it’s barely a movie, there’s an over reliance on stock footage and B-roll, and not even particularly attractive Stock or B-roll. They’re the most uninteresting bland shots compositionally that I’ve seen. Like. ALL this footage could just as easily be available on a stock site for free, and no one would bat an eye. It would have been nice to maybe have some dutch angles, some close up B-roll, to have ACTUALLY shot bigfoot in the woods and the house for the kill shots rather than shooting him on a black backdrop as a pickup shot and just inserting him in whenever they forgot or couldn’t be arsed to get the shot. It’s TERRIFICALLY slapdash in terms of it’s assembly, with the only positive thing I can say about being that at least they didn’t grade it to be washed out and drab like most horror/dramas of this ilk did and continue to do, AND at least they managed to shoot indoor AND location footage. Some films only do one or the other, but at least this has the woods AND a house to deal with. I know that sounds ridiculous but trust me, when you’ve seen some of the shite I’ve seen. Having 2 locations is a small mercy. Not that they do a tremendous amount with it.

There ARE no good performances in this film, it’s just hunk a dunk guys being hunk a dunks for 76 minutes barely saying anything and barely doing anything but strolling around, sometimes with guns, and even their death scenes when Bigfoot gets them could not be delivered more half heartedly if they tried. In fact, I don’t even think most of them ARE actors. From what I can see on IMDB, most of them only have credits in David Decoteau movies…making me think they’re actually models that Davids enlisted to be in his “happenings”.

Eric Roberts appear in voice over form here playing the older version of Bernie in a performance I can largely describe as “Yawning” (seriously for all the enthusiasm he puts in, he might as well be delivering the lines in between recording Cameo videos) The only performer in this who gets ANYTHING resembling what an Actor SHOULD get in a film is Terrence J. Rotolo as D.B Cooper. And even he isn’t amazing. He shines purely for the total lack of stars in this galaxy of shite. Seriously. This thing is SUCH a waste of harddrive space. I cannot stress that enough.

And finally; the soundtrack. It’s stock music, or at least, it SOUNDS like stock music. Stock music that’s been badly mixed against the on set audio. It’s heavy(ish) rocky sounding music that drowns out all dialogue whenever it’s blaring, has NO connection to the time or place this is supposed to be happening in and genuinely could not feel more “slapped on at the last minute and kicked out the door” than it is. The onsite audios botched too, everything sounds super airy, there’s very little if any ADR or foli work, it’s a sparse show that really does reveal how little effort was put into this production, and just how much contempt the filmmakers had for the audience.

Bigfoot vs D.B Cooper was released on DVD in 2014 by Decoteaus own distribution label “Rapid Heart productions” and it made me laugh because on the spine the films defined as “Sexy Horror”…it’s neither of those things. Extras are fairly sparse, we have a commentary track with David Decoteau and Linnea Quigly in which they basically just openly describe what’s happening on screen (it may as well be an audio description track for all the info you get out of it) and other than that and a trailer reel for Decoteau’s other movies…that’s it. There’s nothing else here. Copies of this are allegedly Region 1 locked. But I had no trouble playing it in my region 2 player soooooooo…it exists.

Bigfoot vs D.B Cooper is a SLOG of a production, a film that would test the patience of even the most reasonable film critic. I honestly don’t know who this feature is for. I don’t know who in their right mind would choose to watch this. it’s anti cinema and the only thing that stops me from full on raging at it is the fact that, Because I KNEW going in that they put nothing into this I can at least partially accept that I shouldn’t have expected anything good to come out of it. Had they set unrealistic expectations i’d have torn this thing a new’un no mistake. But because I know this is one of the flavours of cinema that Decoteau works in, I kind of can’t muster the venom to attack it too hard. This film truly belongs in the “Water is wet, The stove is hot” category of film making. If you KNOW what you’re getting into going into this, then it won’t surprise you to learn the films mostly bullshit. But I weep for anyone who finds this thing with NO idea what they’re letting themselves in for and I can only begin to imagine the pain they’ll find themselves in.

With a non existent script, dead behind the eyes cine and direction, non existent performances and a stocky and poorly mastered score with terrible on set audio. There’s so little here to analyze honestly that I struggled to even categorize what I just experienced. It’s just a terrible picture all round in my opinion and not one I wish to return to.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/bigfoot-vs-db-cooper/1/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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