paul_d_day Reviews

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)

Outstandingly Creepy and Haunting

[7/10 · 23 November 2012]

It's not that there are any huge plot twists to Poor Pretty Eddie. There aren't. You can pretty much predict what's going to happen and when. If you want plot, don't watch this.

If, however, you want low-level unsettling Southern Gothic that builds the tension, fear and dread until it's almost unbearable this is the movie for you.

Like Deliverance, this is an exercise in mood and tone. It's a great big eggshell of a movie, always just on the verge of shattering.

Poor Pretty Eddie is a kept man. He's a gigolo that found a broken down former girl singer and latched on to her. And she to him. It's somewhat of a trailer park Viginia Woolfe only much sadder and desperate. There's no future for anyone here. It's a never ending purgatory. Liz Weatherly, a jazz diva from New York, takes off on the spur of the moment to get some peace and quiet. Her car breaks down and there's the movie.

The most amazing element of the movie is the sound mixing. It goes off into truly terrifying flights of discordance like Tom Waits or Carnival of Souls. The climax of the movie rewrites the vocal to Amazing Grace so that it's unrecognizable and then piles on more and more sound until you can feel the oppression and fear that Liz goes through.

It's one of the most brutal films I've seen. And I won' watch it again. But I'm glad I saw it.

Psycho Holocaust (2009)

Uneven But Worth A Watch

[5/10 · 13 November 2012]

Maybe it's because I've been stuck on the time period, but I could have sworn the was a mid-70's movie. Instead, it's from 2009. I couldn't tell you whether it was an artistic choice or that the budget was non- existent. Either way, the vibe is there down to the washed out colors. As with a lot of 70's gore films, the acting is mostly atrocious. Buddy shines through, however, as the lead psycho. The special effects are, at times, laughable, such as the whip marks. the scalping was well done though. There's a scene on a river that you can't hear one of the actresses when she's speaking.

All of this should add up to a lousy rating and yet.... They've got the vibe right. A few scenes and images gave me that "holy s**t" feeling in the pit of my stomach. With a better budget and better actors, this would have been stellar.

Tenement (1985)

Not Even Good-Bad

[1/10 · 11 November 2012]

I'll be honest - I couldn't finish this. I'm not sure I've ever seen a b- movie try so hard to be pretentious. It comes of like Plan 9 meets Grand Hotel. A full 20mins gets taken up establishing the apartment building that will be terrorized. Worse, it comes with time stamps as if there's some sort of urgency in the blandness and horrible acting to follow. It's hard to know if the lead villain is Hispanic or a French guy doing an Hispanic. Another small quibble - why are villains all dressed up like BDSM submissives? One would think they'd want to dress a little more dominant.

This is a poorly written, directed and thought out piece of crap with literally nothing to recommend about it.

Dahmer vs. Gacy (2010)

Proof Of The Non-Existence of God

[9/10 · 2 November 2012]

I love this movie! Like the other reviewer, I'm rating it higher than it deserves to balance out the disturbing personal attack that tried to pass as a review. It's not perfect, but any movie that makes me laugh this hard deserves praise.

Ford Austin does great job with both Dahmer and Ringo. Bonnie Aarons is a pleasure to watch.

My main complaints - The faux-meta scene where the general and her staffer talk about how the plot of the movie would make a horrible movie..."worse than Plan 9". This kind of preciousness should be scratched from this and all movies. It's why I hate Troma.

Watch this and enjoy!

Psycho Cop Returns (1993)

Barks of Laughter

[7/10 · 28 October 2012]

I watched this immediately after the original Psycho Cop and, wow, what a difference a little self-awareness makes! The original incompetently plodded through horrible writing, acting (with the exception of Shafer)and pretty much anything else you could screw up in a movie. For the sequel, they watched the original, expanded on the strengths and actively ridiculed the weaknesses. I almost hate to call Shafer's performance "brilliant" but there it is. Another actor would play the role just for laughs, but Shafer, after delivering a punchline, keeps the character's cheerful psychotic complexity. Did I really write that?

This is just a fun, fun film that does a great job treading the line between the "THIS IS A COMEDY HORROR MOVIE ABOUT BAD COMEDY HORROR MOVIES" and just an enjoyable slasher film.

Vampegeddon (2010 Video)

Just Say No

[3/10 · 21 October 2012]

"I want mooooooore/Get on the floooooooor"

I considered just using the above lyrics as the full review for this horrible, horrible movie. They embody the lame, triteness and utter incompetence of it. I gave this movie a 3 to dissuade people from watching it as a good/bad movie. It's just flat out bad without the benefit ironic grins to save it.

I'll frequently get movies based on titles alone. It's a crap shoot. "The Nude Vampire" paid off. "Vampegeddon" came up snake eyes. This movie disappoints at every frame from the overly long and confusing pre- credit sequence in which the dialogue sounds dubbed to forced attempts at humor. Rather than characters, you get stereotypes of stereotypes including what I guess was meant to be a nod to Jay and Silent Bob...except Silent Bob won't shut up. Apparently, unless you're the head vampire, you're either retarded or can't find your inhaler which causes your to hyperventilate.

Here's the thing - The head vampire needs teens to call him forth yet they're given the means to do it by...another vampire. Plot point hole, meet Mac Truck.

This genre depends on suspending your disbelief. Or great special effects. Or lots of sex and flesh. None of that is here.

That said, you have to have a certain amount of admiration for someone that actually makes a movie, no matter how horrible it is.

I'll Never Die Alone (2008)

Astounding and horrifying

[8/10 · 30 September 2012]

Rape/revenge movies aren't supposed to be enjoyable. And this is not enjoyable but it's a great piece of film making and a great addition to the genre. For many, it may feel far too slow and even dull, but that's where the strength and power of the movie lies. As with Funny Games, the director refuses to rush through the mundane, forcing the viewer to acknowledge the reality simulated on the screen. An exploitation director wouldn't spend 3 minutes on burial, let alone on a long shot of it.

Adrián García Bogliano also takes defies convention by keeping the soundtrack minimal and ambient emphasizing the dull horror of not only the rapes, but of the revenge.

The huge accomplishment of this movie is in getting the words "subtle" and "rape/revenge movie" into the same sentence.

Shut Up Little Man (2011)

Ultimately, A Rationalization

[4/10 · 31 March 2012]

In the end, this movie felt like an excuse to milk the tapes for a little more fame and/or money.

The first 2/3rds nicely chronicle how the whole phenomenon took place. And it truly is fascinating. You get a sense of how strange, serendipitous and organic it must have been to have a personal project turn into a meme.

But the key word is "organic". Other people drove the Pete and Ray story. The partners, correctly, said "go ahead" since, in effect, it wasn't really theirs to control.

It's when they take control that movie inadvertently reveals that, rather than a sweet, hapless pair that fell into something, they've staked their identities on this one thing and they've become kind of self-important assholes.

When Eddie Lee made proclamations about "art" my first thought was - "Really? What other art have you created? Because an artist normally creates more than one piece of art and all you did was tape some guys screaming at each other. Other people picked it up and turned it into something. Duping tapes and giving them to people...well...that's not really art." After that, the pair goes on a quest to do the one thing that art should never do - explain itself. Tracking down Ray, the roommate, felt like a stunt. It was a fishing trip to solve the riddle of whether Pete and Ray were lovers. That's dull and pointless.

Art, imho, allows people to project themselves into and onto what they see. These two, Eddie in particular, seem to want to prove something that doesn't need to be proved. Wrapping up the film with the Pete and Ray dancing sucks everything that's interesting about the relationship out of it.

White Slave (1985)

Miserable

[3/10 · 19 February 2012]

From the opening and obvious lie that this is a true story to the closing bathos there's really no good reason to watch this outside of the stunning body of the lead actress.

The framework of the film is a court trial and it's about as interesting as it sounds. The meat of the story is told in flashback with occasional intercutting of sweaty Hispanic lawyers spouting the most trite legal blather such as "OBJECTION! This is irrelevant!" and then going back into the jungle. Even the anthropology sounds made up.

If you haven't guessed the ending by two minutes after Cathy's parents are killed then you really need to get out more.

I lost track of the number of times I said incredulously shouted "WHAT??" after one scene or another. The prime example: Cathy watches some white guys in a helicopter gun down some natives and turns to her noble savage lover (who she believes chopped off the heads of her parents)and cries out, "HOW CAN MEN BE CAPABLE OF SUCH THINGS?!" Um, chica? Your boyfriend allegedly committed the same act of violence.

Sadly, the film making and acting are at a level that's just slightly above competency so rather than being amusing, it's just dull.

This movie is best summed up by a line from one of the lawyers: "This just more cheap sentimentality."

Killing Car (1993)

The French Make Crap, Too

[2/10 · 26 January 2012]

In America, at least, any film that's not in English holds a certain cache. If it's in French, it's assume the filmmaker must be doing something different or trying to make some clever intellectual point. That's not the case here. This film is the French Plan 9.

It opens early in the morning in a junkyard where the owner gets shot. Rather than call the cops, his girlfriend pursues the shooter trading gunfire. Standard stuff, right? Wrong. Someone else is actually *working* in the junkyard. And continues to work as the two shoot at each other. The girlfriend runs into a forest...full of prostitutes. The shooter follows. The chase proceeds to a carnival that's getting ready to open. Bullets fly. And, again, the employees just kind of watch as one by one everyone is killed. No one even bothers to register the gun battle going on or the bodies dripping blood down the ramps of the rides. Again, fine, it's fiction. Really, really bad fiction.

But then it jumps the shark. This must be a helluva battle with unlimited ammo and incredible stamina because, suddenly, it's night time. It's not that the lighting just looks bad, the script literally has the actors saying it's night time. Why? Because they end up in a graveyard and graveyards are spookier at night.

That's the first ten minutes or so of the movie and it goes downhill from there until the final reel when the reason for all of this idiocy is revealed. And the reason pushes credibility past the point of no return. But not in a good way. Not in a way that makes you consider questions of human nature and revenge. But in a way that makes you wonder how this thing got greenlighted and why you can see kind of see why some Americans hate the French.

Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974)

Brilliant, Thoughtful High Brow French Art/Porn

[7 November 2011]

SPOLILERS...kind of.

There is so much going on in this movie it's hard to know where to start. The key is a line where the girl's lawyer says, "All who approach you are perverts, insane. But it's all in your little mind." Looked at in that context, the "plot" means nothing since it's more about thoughts than action.

That said, the central character, called only "The Prisoner" is arrested for the murder of her lover, Nora. The two are in a Domme/sub, BDSM relationship with The Prisoner portrayed as the Dominant.

Many characters take on double meanings. The police, it seems to me, represent the author, asking supposedly meaningless questions that would only make sense if you were creating a rich background life for a character such as The Prisoner. One of the cops, rather than documenting the crime, blatantly records the themes of the movie: "Themes of broken bottles". Bottles stand in for the wombs and this refers the broken mother/daughter relationship between...

...The Prisoner and Nora. Nora is her mother. The same cop that records themes rather than evidence, has a scene where he recites words while writing and researching something (probably the screenplay being filmed) in the bed Nora was killed in. This is crosscut with The Prisoner being show objects and free associating. The cop says "parricide". The Prisoner says "disassociation".

Throughout the movie, Nora seems the submissive except for one scene - when the Prisoner sells herself to a man looking for deviant sex. She takes them up to the room. Nora lounges in a window seat. Stepping back, the actual "plot" revolves around Mother Nora selling and sexually abusing her daughter.

Her court-appointed lawyer (read "protector") is played by the same actress that plays Nora. At first, Nora acts like the mother The Prisoner wants/needs - strict and no-nonsense. But, The Prisoner's insanity seduces Lawyer/Mom/Nora, or at least that's the scenario The Prisoner dreams up. The Prisoner ends up killing Lawyer/Mom/Nora in very similar circumstances.

Plot-wise, the police find that Nora was NOT killed by the prisoner. They come to tell The Prisoner this and find The Lawyer dead. "We'll have to start over", the cop says.

What the director presents to us is a portrait of The Prisoner, deep in the clutches of her disassociation, creating a world that's easier for her to live in - where she controls her mother, dressing her as a manikin and, just by thinking about it, causes people to die. It's complex, gorgeous and, if not actual porn, has enough nudity to satisfy that requirement if that's what you're looking for.

I Am Love (2009)

A Beautiful Soulless Movie About The Beautiful Soulless Rich

[4/10 · 30 October 2010]

In general, I enjoy movies about how miserable it is to be wealthy. Except when it involves the radical, inexplicable change of on of the leads.

You know from the washed-out out, sterile, brittle snow at the opening there's no life in this house. The director drives the point home with a sequence of beautiful empty rooms populated with photos, rather than people. Pretty much nothing really happens for the next hour until Emma and her son's best friend, a chef, have sex. And you know the change happened because suddenly there's a lot more color and bugs around. Ya know...nature. The fact that uptight Emma goes from closed-off capitalist to raging sexual libertine with such ease leaves me scratching my head. Perhapsthe filmmaker intended to make points about actions detached from emotions. But I don't think so.

What happens after this really doesn't matter. It's all melodrama and overwrought symbolism. It's gorgeous, sure, but the slow, deliberately stately pace sucks every ounce of life out it to the point where even the orgasms seem subdued.