Category Archives: Movie reviews

SLASH Festival 2023 Slash Shorts

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I had the opportunity to watch some of the SLASH Filmfestival 2023 shorts and here’s what I think:

From the FANTASTIC SHORTS COMPETITION – CHAPTER I

Hole (2023): Directed and written by Hwang Hyein, JeongMi (Lim ChaeYoung) is a child services worker in South Korea who comes to check on Jun-seo (Kwak SooHyeon) and Jun-hui (Son JiYu). They’ve been missing from school and no one can find their parents. The secret soon comes out, as a manhole opening has appeared inside their bedroom.

A dark and strange movie from the very first moment. This feels like a movie that should be a full feature and I hope that happens.

Magdalena (2022): Czechoslovakia, 1971. A Slovakian woman (Susan Angelo) is trapped by her past as it seeks to destroy the new life that she has worked so hard to build for her family. 

Director Michael Lazovsky, who wrote the story with Max Hersh, based this story on his Jewish grandmother’s experiences growing up in communist Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Storyboarded on an iPhone, shot in Los Angeles but yet looking like the sterile world of a Communist country and made by someone whose family lived these lives, Magdalena is a very rough watch yet a film that looks completely gorgeous. What a perfect short!

Demon Box (2023): After festival rejections pile up, director Sean Wainsteim revises his intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide and the Holocaust. After ten years of painful work, it has become a dissection of the movie he wanted to make and may end up being more of a film than he intended.

This film is almost too honest and I mean that as a compliment. It made me feel uncomfortable, reminding myself of how I feel about the stories I heard growing up and how I joke about the continual negative darkness that came out of them, how it feels like everyone always has cancer and everyone is always dying.

If you feel like putting yourself through that journey, as well as Wainsteim’s, watch this.

 

The Old Young Crow (2023): Liam LoPinto has created this movie — which has some animation and some live action — about an Iranian boy befriending an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.

We hear the story told by Mehrdad (Naoto Shibata as a young one, Hassan Shahbazi in his older age) who remembers the Japanese woman and how he learned about grief and loss. It’s an incredible mix of media that creates this film, a joy to watch and experience. As I always say, I cannot and will not live these lives, so the chance to do so through film is so important.

From the FANTASTIC FUTURES:

Remove Hind Legs Before Consumption (2023): Even in a hopeless insect food farm — where millions of crickets are being bred, frozen, packaged and fried — one cricket survives and escapes.

Leslie Herzig, Finn Meisner and Lukas Wind have come together to create a violent and yet heartwarming film that teaches us that yes, even a cricket can do something important.

Also not that I was planning on eating tons of friend crickets but this movie has convinced me not to do so because they have souls. I feel bad for all of the one that I have chewed on before I watched this.

Chef Gustav (2023): This movie is simple but a lesson worth learning: never ever mess with a cat in the kitchen. You will be murdered.

This looks like near stop motion but I’m certain it has to be computers. However it was made, I love that orange cat and believe that it is innocent of all of this bloodshed, even if I saw it with my own eyes.

The Law Of The Jungle Gym (2023):Somehow, lunch and tag on the school yard gets transformed into the end of the world. This is some of the finest animation I’ve seen in some time and I was struck by both how realistic and unreal it is. I have no idea where this ideas came from, but Yoon Hei Cho, who seemingly did all of this themselves, is beyond a talent. Mindblowing.

On the 8th Day (2023): A gorgeous blast of color and fabric, an apocalyptic 3D short that drew me in with its cuteness before destroying every moment of it, then sending its purple people lilting upward into space. I can’t describe it more but it made me emotional.

Perfect City: The Bravest Kid (2023): In the second part of the Perfect City series, a paper boy has a horrific dream in which a gigantic iron knife hand and a series of other sharp objects are chasing him all the way to his bed. The even worse realization? His parents are not paper, but also knives. I can’t even imagine seeing this when I was a kid, as I would have been awake all night.

Director Shengwei Zhou also made Perfect City: The Mother which is just as strange as this, which is a compliment. This is the type of stop motion animation that I haven’t seen since the days of Liquid TV, which is much missed.

The Third Ear (2023): Sammy (Devin Burnam) has an issue. In his job as an art model, he often likes to look at the work that artists create from his body. But what if they draw him incorrectly? Does he really have an ear in the back of his head? 

Director and writer Nathan Ginter has created something really intriguing here, a quick and fun tale of a man’s fight for his own self-image.

The Hand That Feeds (2023): Irina (Anca Cipariu) is a single mother who moves in with her former mother-in-law Trudi (Inge Maux), who constantly cooks meals and gives her gifts. Yet something feels wrong. 

Directed and written by Helen Hideko, this makes you feel the unease that Irina feels as she attempts to create her own life within the one that Trudi has. This leads to visions of absolute terror that begin to tear at her and she feels a rage that she can’t explain.

I get the feeling that if I were a mother, this movie would totally trigger me.

The Taster (2023): Sometime in the future, in Romania, Ozana (Silvana Mihai) is chosen to work as the new taster girl for the occupying forces. On her first day, she breaks the most important rule. And that’s to never look the leader in the eye. Soon she finds herself alone and face to face with the man destroying her country.

Director and writer Sophia Bierend has created a future movie that is based in reality, such as the idea that the world’s ecology is destroying and the Danube is one of the few places that can produce food for the powerful.

Into this horrible world, Ozana is cast, made to taste each of the meals for the leader. If she dies, he will know that someone is trying to kill him. She must not make any friends. Just sit and eat. She hasn’t even had a solid morsel for two years, as she lives on a nutrient formula. So this position allows her to be part of the world of the elite, even if all she’s doing is possibly dying for their dining enjoyment.

SHORTS BEFORE FEATURES:

La Vedova Nera (2023): While cycling through the streets of Marseille, Alfredo (Siro Pedrozzi) crashes his bike. He goes into a porn cinema for help and finds an old giallo playing that creates the scene for a predator who either wants him for his body or murder or, well, both. 

Directed and written by Fiume and Julian McKinnon, this film looks absolutely astounding. The title means The Black Widow, which easily feels like a callback to the animal-themed post-Argento giallo of the early 70s. Beyond just being a homage, this feels like a creative team that intimately understands the genre and uses it to tell their own movie. There are hints of the past intricately woven with today.

I can’t say enough about this short. More work from these filmmakers now!

Chomp It! (2023): In a society founded on social hierarchy and privilege, two crocodile men ople are trying to cool down at a swimming pool. One of them is seemingly of a different and special kind; the other is unable to control his desire.

Shot on 16mm and directed by Mark Chua and Li Shuen Lam, I think that this would mean so much more to me if I understood the weirdness of life in Singapore. As it is, the colors and look of the film — I mean, a child’s riding machine powered by a heart? — are incredible.

Every House Is Haunted (2023): The realtor told them the house was haunted but as the title tells you, every house is haunted in its own way. Maya (Kate Cobb) and Danny (Kevin Bigley) move in anyhow, because to find a house like this, in this market, well…

And she’s used to not even knowing what she wants any longer.

Director and writer Bryce McGuire shows us that not every ghost is evil and not every living person is alive, if that makes sense. I really enjoyed the effects in this, as well as the way that Maya found a way to bond with the spirits that live in her home.

Content: The Lo-Fi Man(2023): Brian Lonano, who co-directed this short with Blake Myers and wrote it, just wants to tell you about Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Yet he’s been replaced by the new and improved Brian Lonano (Clarke Williams) who is now a streaming content aggregator and influencer, asking you to smash that like button and ring the bell so you get the updates. Breaking free from the mouse-eared androids that have him locked up, he battles the Content Seeker by, well, kind of becoming Tetsuo and joining up with film revolutionaries Kino, B-Roll and Wild Track.

We live in a strange place now, a reality where you can get almost every movie you want but may not have the time to watch it. Or maybe you do and when you want to break it down and discuss it, you get lost in the machine of likes and shares. I try to keep my mind open to both sides, as sure, it’s nice to have the most perfect quality home media ever, as well as streaming materials and everyone deserves the opportunity to find and appreciate pop culture in their own way. But man, if I see another listicle or YouTube video that posits theories like “maybe all the shot in the Eastern Bloc SyFy sequels in the 90s were high art” or ten slashers you never saw before and #3 is The Burning, well…

2023 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 4: Scenic Route (2013)

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4. WORKING REMOTELY: One that takes place out in the cut somewhere.

Directed by Kevin and Michael Goetz and written by Kyle Killen, Scenic Route — AKA Wrecked — is about Michael (Josh Duhamel) and Carter (Dan Fogler) broken down in the California desert, an event created by Carter so that he can finally hash it all out with Michael.

For most of this movie’s running time, these two lifelong friends either fall to pieces or come back together, often just moments between those diametrical events, while trying to figure out how to get the truck running again.

Shot in twelve days all in the same location with both leads occupying all of the screen time other than flashbacks and the ending, this was a real test for both actors, including Duhamel appearing with his hair cut into a mohawk. It’s really unlike any role I’d seen either in before.

You can watch this on Tubi.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: Taxi Hunter (1993)

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One of the most infamous movies branded with Hong Kong’s Category III adults only rating, Taxi Hunter is the story of Ah Kin (Anthony Wong), a man who was quiet and kind until he loses his pregnant wife to an unprofessional taxi driver.

If you’ve seen Herman Yau’s Ebola Syndrome, you know the levels of craziness that he can bring to the screen. Now, he puts the Taxi Hunter on the hunt, testing drivers to see if they meet his level of professionalism. If they don’t meet his grade, they die.

The problem? Well, other than all the death and destruction, his brother-in-law Yu Kai Chung (Yu Rong Guang) is a cop who may be forced to kill Ah Kin to stop his path of yellow cab serial killing.

If you’re ready for taxi chases, gunplay and, well, pregnant women being dragged by taxi cabs to their bloody doom, well…you still aren’t ready for this movie.

The 88 Films release of Taxi Hunter has commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, interviews with writer Tony Leung Hung-Wah, action director James Ha and Anthony Wong, a trailer, an image gallery and a reversible cover with new artwork by Sean Longmore and the original poster. You can get it from MVD.

WELL GO USA BLU RAY RELEASE: Creepy Crawly (2022)

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Directed and written by Pakphum Wongjinda and Chalit Krileadmongkon, this Thai horror film had moments that almost made me nauseated, which I feel is the best feeling I can get from a scary movie.

Inspired by the story of Battambang from the reign of King Rama V, Creepy Crawly — originally The 100 —

A travel influencer is kept quarantined in a hotel that has seen better days. Beyond just dealing with COVID shutdowns, she also has a rare blood disorder that she’s kept a secret from everyone. Along with her brother Fiew and a martial arts master named Leo — as well as his sister and their deaf father — all of them must come together when the centipedes that live in the hotel get smart and decide that the time to destroy humans is now.

Not only are these centipedes out to kill just about everything — a rat attack earlier is stomach decimating — they also are all led by a monstrous one-legged killing machine that can possess people.

I’m usually one of those people that prefers real effects to CGI, but I really liked the effects in this. I mean, centipedes that overtake people and become part of them? Incredible.

I had so much fun with this movie. Even thinking about it now as I write this, I kind of want to watch it again.

You can get more data on this movie from the official Well Go USA site.

WELL GO USA BLU RAY RELEASE: Gangnam Zombie (2023)

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In this South Korean movie, directed by Soo Sung Lee, the people of Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district are under attack by a quickly expanding zombie population. In order to protect these citizens, a former taekwondo expert by the name of Hyeon-seok (Ji Il-joo) battles past his injuries and takes on the undead.

What can you say about a movie that starts with a cat attack being the origin of a zombie assault, as the first undead emerges from the water in Gangham and starts devouring raw meat?

Hyeon-seok goes from working an office job at a streaming company and an unrequited love for Min-jeong (Park Ji-yeon) to being the hero that saves her from the undead. Blame their boss Tae-soo, who keeps his staff there and thinks that by filming the zombie attack, he can finally make some money.

This is a high energy blast of walking dead insanity, all set inside a mall — shouldn’t most zombies be filmed there? — and even having some ideas I’ve never seen before, such as zombies with dentures being unable to transfer the disease.

You can get the Well Go USA blu ray and learn more information on this movie on the official site.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Forbidden Planet (1956)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Forbidden Planet was first on Chiller Theater on October 12, 1963 at 3 p.m. It also aired on June 14, 1964 and February 27, 1965.

Directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on an original film story by Allen Adler and Irving Block, Forbidden Planet is a movie that is forever in the zeitgeist of what 1950s American science fiction looked like. It’s also the first movie to show hyperspeed travel, to have a robot with a personality — Robby the Robot — as well as the first to use an electronic soundtrack. It’s also kind of, sort of The Tempest, which is a big idea to get your head around.

After a year in space, United Planets starship C-57D wants to land on the distant planet Altair IV and see what happened to an expedition that landed there twenty years ago. One of the survivors, Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) tells them that it’s too dangerous for them but Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Neilsen) lands anyway.

Joined by Jerry Farman (Jack Kelly) and “Doc” Ostrow (Warren Stevens), Adams discovers that everyone but Morbius is dead. His wife may have died of natural causes but he claims an unseen force killed everyone else one-be-one. Other than his servant Robby, the only other living thing is his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis).

Proving that men will always be men even in the future, Adams finds Farman kissing Altaira and yells at both of them — him for his behavior and her for how she dresses. She looks too attractive! His men have been on a ship all alone for a year! And you know, when he sees her swimming, he kisses her too! And then a tiger attacks him and she has to shoot it with a blaster.

Morbius has been using materials that he found from the previous occupants of this planet, the Krell, making his brain twenty times smarter. There are also 9,200 nuclear reactions below the planet making it filled with energy, power that Adams wants to bring to Earth. Morbius gets angry and says that they don’t deserve it.

At the same time, that alien force kills Engineer Quinn (Richard Anderson, years before The Six Million Dollar Man) and Farman. It turns out that the same technology that increases Morbius’ brain power has also unlocked his id, unleashing a monster that kills at his subconscious command. This becomes even more obvious when Altaira tells Morbius she is leaving with Adams. Robby detects the creature approaching and his master commands Robby to kill it, but the robot knows it is Morbius and shuts down. After accepting the truth, the creature disappears and Morbius dies, just in time for his daughter to leave the planet which blows up real good.

To make up for the huge cost of this movie, its props were used again and again. The spaceship appears in the Twilight Zone episodes “To Serve Man” and “On Thursday We Leave for Home;” Robby is in The Invisible Boy and plenty of TV shows before he became a star on Lost In Space, including “One for the Angels,” “Uncle Simon” and “The Brain Center at Whipple’s” on The Twilight Zone, his head dome appearing on “The Bridge of Lions Affair” episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and even all the way to the 70s, Robby was Chuck on Mork & Mindy, as well as appearances on the shows Project UFO and Space Academy as well as the movie Phantom Empire.

This movie is so well-known that it’s the film within the Mystery Science Theater movie.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Phantom from Space (1953)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Phantom from Space was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 28, 1963 at 3 p.m. It was also on June 19, 1965; January 1, 1966; March 8, 1969 and February 6, 1971.

Director W. Lee Wilder formed a film production company in the early 1950s called Planet Filmplays to quickly make low-budget science fiction films with screenplays co-written with his son Miles. Directing was in the Wilder blood, as his brother was the much better considered Billy.

Other Wilder science fiction movies of this era include Killers from Space and The Snow Creature.

Do you know who gets there first when a UFO crashes? The Federal Communications Commission. Yes, they’re there when The Phantom (Dick Sands), an invisible radioactive alien, is on the loose before it gets trapped inside Griffith Observatory. He tries to communicate through tapping but it’s too late. He can’t breathe our air and ends up falling off the top of the planetarium to his death, despite Barbara Randall (Noreen Nash) trying to save him.

I kind of love the way that the alien looks but then again, I like how Robot Monster looks.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: The Crawling Eye (1958)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Crawling Eye was first on Chiller Theater on Sunday, November 24, 1963 at 11:10 PM. It also aired on February 15 and June 28, 1964; January 21, 1967; April 19, 1969; June 13, 1970 and June 5, 1971.

Known as The Trollenberg Terror in England, where it was made, The Crawling Eye has exactly what you want to see: a giant eyeball. If we didn’t have this, we wouldn’t have The Fog, as this movie directly inspired John Carpenter. See, great things can come out of a movie whose special effects consist of cotton balls stapled to mountain photography.

Originally a six-episode TV miniseries, this was remade with American Forest Tucker placed into the lead so that audiences in the states would have someone to root for. Or maybe they’d be like me, excited to see gigantic eyeballs come rolling along at the camera.

He plays UN troubleshooter Alan Brooks, who has traveled to the Swiss mountain of Trollenberg to learn why the heads of climbers are being torn off their body and why a mysterious cloud is seen in the wake of the bloody destruction.

Do you know how you defeat a giant eyeball? A Molotov cocktail. Horror movies make you smart, right?

THE IMPORTANT CINEMA CLUB’S SUPER SCARY MOVIE CHALLENGE DAY 3: Hawa (2003)

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3: A Horror Film That’s a Poltergeist Rip-Off.

Hawa is a 2003 Bollywood movie that has plenty of influences — well, outright things to steal — and got a review that said, “Self-respecting moviegoers looking for quality film rather than shameful sexual exploitation should steer far clear of this compost.”

I mean, a movie with shots cribbed from Poltergeist and a plot so close to The Entity that it even copies its sound design? Was this made for me?

Sanjana (Tabu) is a divorcee who can’t afford to live in the city any longer — to be fair, the hillside house she has is absolutely huge and gorgeous, so I don’t know how poor she is — that runs an antique shop. When a Tibetan woman gives her a locket, she soon sells it to be able to make her mortgage. On the way home, she finds that old woman dead and the couple brings back the locket because they keep seeing the woman.

Directed by Guddu Dhanoa and written by Sutanu Gupta and Sanjay Masoomm, Hawa starts slowly and you may think that it’s going to be classy, as Tabu is a major actress. Just hold on, because this movie suddenly remembers that it’s trying to be The Entity soon enough, giving you numerous scenes of human and sex couplings. And because the well on her property is filled with dead souls — not unlike the burial ground in Poltergeist —  Sanjana is dealing with more than one ghost. She even enjoys the demonic sex once, which upsets her so much that she nearly loses her kids to the demons.

There are even hints of Cujo, as the demons possess the family dog.

Unlike many of the Bollywood remakes that you may watch, there are no songs in this movie. I have no idea how that happened, to be honest, and wish that it did have something catchy. It does, however, take a lot of Charles Bernstein’s ideas from the score to the movie it’s stealing from.

Well, I mean, The Entity. Because just as I typed that, there’s a dimension that opens up and takes Sanjana’s daughter as if she were the Bollywood Carol Anne and a scene in the bedroom with winds and toys blasting around that my way walked into, looked at the screen and said, “Is this Poltergeist now?” There’s also an exorcist, a demon in the well and the kind of open door ending that would make Hollywood producers happy.

I’m easy, but I thought this was great. I say that because it’s the first Bollywood movie I’ve seen that felt and looked like it could have been made by Filmirage.

How about those Commando and Michael Jackson posters?

2023 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 3: Un orso chiamato Arturo (1992)

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3. TWILIGHT YEARS IN THEIR CAREERS: An aging American actor in an overseas production.

In the interview with Sergio Martino on the All the Colors of Giallo blu ray from Severin, he mentions that he only lost money on one movie.

This is that movie.

I watched Un orso chiamato Arturo as it was meant to be seen. On a YouTube link with a Rai Movie HD logo in the upper right corner, in Italian with no English subtitles and with someone else yelling translated Russian dialogue over the existing soundtrack.

George Segal was a big star from when he was in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 until the mid 70s. He was so popular that he would show up on The Tonight Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour playing banjo and singing. That led to two albums, the solo The Yama Yama Man and A Touch of Ragtime with The Imperial Jazz Band.

Notable films of his A-list years include Where’s Poppa?,  A Touch of Class, No Way to Treat a Lady, The Owl and the Pussycat and Fun With Dick and Jane. Segal even hosted the Oscars in 1974 along with Gene Kelly, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw.

Then things went downhill.

He told the Chicago Tribune: “In the first 10 years, I was playing all different kinds of things. I loved the variety, and never had the sense of being a leading man but a character actor. Then I got frozen into this “urban” character. About the time of The Last Married Couple in America, I remember Natalie Wood saying to me … “It’s one typed role after another, and pretty soon you forget everything. You forget why you’re here, why you’re doing it.” Then my marriage started to fall apart … I was disenchanted, I was turning in on myself, I was doing a lot of self-destructive things … there were drugs … I’m also sure I was guilty of spoiled behavior. I think it’s impossible when that star rush comes not to get a little full of yourself, which is what I was.”

By the 90s, he was a character actor. And for audiences today, well, he may be better known for his work on sitcoms like Just Shoot Me and The Goldbergs.

But for some time…he was a star. A big one.

At this point in his career, Segal was in movies like Look Who’s Talking, All’s Fair, For the Boys, Me, Myself & I and the Dolph Lundgren action movie Joshua Tree.

And this brings him to Italy.

Sergio Martino is a director I celebrate. His five-picture run from The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh to Torso may be the most consistent work of any Italian genre director. But by 1992, he was mostly making TV miniseries like Delitti privati in addition to direct-to-video action like After the Condor and erotic thrillers such as Craving Desire and Foxy Lady.

Martino would direct and co-write this movie with Nino Martino, who also wrote The Throne of Fire and Razza Violenta. It was produced by his regular partner, his brother Luciano and shot by cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando. He was behind the camera for a lot of Sergio’s work all the way back to All the Colors of the Dark, as well as working on Detective School Dropouts, Cop Target (a Umberto Lenzi movie with Robert Ginty in it. How did I miss this?), Ironmaster and Devilfish, He directed one of his own movies, La ragazza di Cortina, under the name Maurizio Vanni.

Segal plays Billy, a composer on a tight deadline. He soon meets Alice, who claims that she’s his biggest fan, but she’s really a spy. She’s played by Carol Alt, who took her supermodel career to Italy where she first worked in movies like Via Montenapoleone, I miei primi 40 anni (based on the life of Marina Ripa Di Meana), Bye Bye Baby (opposite Brigitte Neilsen!), Duccio Tessari’s Beyond Justice, Treno di Panna, Mortacci, La più bella del reame, La più bella del reame (with Bud Spencer and Jean Sorel!), Miliardi (a loaded cast including Donald Pleasence, Billy Zane, Lauren Hutton, Florinda Balkan, Alexandra Paul — the virgin Connie Swail! — and Sorel), a TV series named Il principe del deserto (Rutger Hauer, Omar Shariff, Elliot Gould, Brett Halsey; Italy was rich in 1991 at least for TV projects!) and a TV movie named Due vite, un destino with Michael Nouri, Rod Steiger, Fabio Tesi and Burt Young, not to mention a script by Dardano Sacchetti!

I’m saying that Carol Alt might be a supermodel but she worked with some of the bigger names of Italian genre and American action film.

The cast also includes Stefano Masciarelli (the mayor in Cemetery Man), Hal Yamanouchi (the only actor I know who can be in a Joe D’Amato movie — Endgame — and a Wes Anderson movie — The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), David Brandon (Peter from Stagefright, Ariel from Jubilee), Christina Englehardt (Demonia, Skinner) and when Segal wins the Oscar at the end of the movie — only The Lonely Lady and The Howling III: The Marsupials have cheaper looking award shows — it’s presented to him by Edmund Purdom. Of course.

This is supposedly a spy movie and, yes, Alt dressed like a geisha and clubs Yamanouchi with an oar at one point. There’s also a teddy bear named Arthur that is like a Teddy Ruxbin and holds a secret that everyone wants. At one point, the teddy bear is smoking a huge cigar and talking. It was basically shouting in Italian while someone translated it into shouting Russian and all the whole, poor George Segal is mugging for the camera, hoping that someone somewhere loves him.