Drive Angry (2011)
I have a real soft spot for Nicholas Cage. Sure, he’s been in some shit movies, but he’s our generation’s John Carradine, taking role after role because he’s a working actor. Who else could give us the magic of “No, not the bees?” Directed by Patrick Lussier, who edited all of Wes Craven’s later films and […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Known in Italy as Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture Paperino, because Paperino is what they call Donald Duck) and La Longue Nuit de L’Exorcisme (The Long Night of Exorcism) in France, this was what Fulci considered his best work. It’s a giallo, which if you don’t know, is an Italian movie tradition — kind of like a detective story, […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
Emilio P. Miraglia followed up The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave with this giallo freakout — starring the magnificent Barbara Bouchet (Don’t Torture a Duckling) — that combines gothic horror with the high fashion we’ve come to expect from early 70’s Italian horror. A curse haunts the Wildenbrück family once every 100 years — two sisters […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: They Call Her One Eye (1973) AKA Thriller A Cruel Picture
The poster says it all: “The movie that has no limits of evil.” When people talk about grimy, evil pictures, this is the one they’re talking about. Quentin Tarantino called this “the roughest revenge movie ever,” and that’s including I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left, one would suppose. After all, Elle Driver […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
Sometimes, when you watch a horror film, you’re lied to by a title which promises you something that the film cannot or will not deliver. Not so with Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos. Franco promises you lesbians and vampires and he delivers. He also delivers plenty of late 60’s style and a space age jazz soundtrack that threatens […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)
If you were a well-to-do woman in Italy in the 1970s, chances are — based on the movies that I have seen — that you are about to killed, have killed someone, are having a lesbian affair, are on drugs or all of the above. Carol (Florinda Bolkan, Don’t Torture a Duckling) is one of those […]
Small Soldiers (1998)
A Joe Dante movie always like a conflict — a battle between blockbuster and personal statement, led by a filmmaker with keen commercial instinct, yet the heart of a non-conformist. Through it all, one walks away with the feeling that while the film itself may have some rough edges, there’s a true love for moviemaking […]
Conquest (1983)
Lucio Fulci is a divisive figure: either you worship every movie the man ever made or lent his name to — ignoring continuity errors, bad dubbing, dealing with multiple cuts and names of his films, all while explaining away ridiculous moments like a man patiently waiting for spiders to slowly eat his fake face — […]
The Rosary Murders (1987)
Is this a giallo? A neo-noir? A detective story? Let’s not play with labels. Let’s just see it for what it is — a whodunit where priests and nuns are the victims of a serial killer who leaves a black rosary on their dead bodies. Directed by Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls) and adapted […]
The Running Man (1987)
There are three things I want to immediately say that I’ve learned upon rewatching this film: Mick Fleetwood is playing himself, it’s aged worse than movies with a much smaller budget, and most importantly, so much of the dystopian future of this movie isn’t as bad as the world we live in right now. Wait […]
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