THE KLANSMAN (1974) ** ½

Some movies are worth watching solely on the strength of the cast.  The Klansman has a doozy.  Lee Marvin is the small-town sheriff in the pocket of The Ku Klux Klan who is torn between looking the other way and doing the right thing.  Richard Burton is the town recluse who speaks out against The Klan and helps organize demonstrations.  O.J. Simpson is a one-man black militant army.  Cameron Mitchell is a hateful racist deputy named Butt Cutt!!!  I mean how am I not going to watch it?

Directed by Terence Young, The Klansman is too ham-fisted to work as a drama and not exploitative enough to function as camp.  Young approaches the material as pulp, which is okay, I guess.  It’s overwrought and melodramatic, but it’s well-intentioned enough not to be totally offensive.  I don’t think anyone was exactly expecting a sensitive portrayal of race relations in the deep south in 1974, especially with a cast like this.  

I’m sure many will scoff at The Klansman for its clumsy attempts at making a “message”.  Even more will lambast it for its rampant insensitivity.  I for one sort of dug it.  I mean where else are you gonna see Cameron Mitchell and Richard Burton getting into a Kung Fu fight?  Folks, I live for moments like this.

Richard Burton, clearly drunk, and sometimes forgetting that his character has a limp, is a sight to behold.  Hollywood legend goes he and Marvin were so drunk during the filming that they don’t even remember meeting one another.  I can’t say it shows as much on Marvin (who coasts on cool intensity alone), but you can almost smell the vodka on Burton.  For his performance alone (and the aforementioned Kung Fu fight with Mitchell), I’d say The Klansman (which was co-written by the great Sam Fuller, who was furious his script was drastically rewritten) is worth watching.

AKA:  Ku Klux Klan.  AKA:  Atoka.  AKA:  KKK.  AKA:  The Burning Cross.

MOTORPSYCHO (1965) *** ½

Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho is an early example of a biker picture.  Like most of the formative films in the genre, the bikers are portrayed as sex-crazed, speed-driven lunatics.  These guys are anything but Easy Riders.  It’s one of the first Rape n’ Revenge flicks too.  Unlike most revenge movies, it features two people affected by separate incidents joining forces to get revenge.  

A trio of bikers go around the desert terrorizing couples, beating up men and violating their women.  They set their sights on a vet named Cory (Alex Rocco in his film debut) and his wife Gail (Holly K. Winters).  After they rape Gail, Cory goes out for revenge, teaming up with a badass Cajun woman (Haji) whose husband was killed by the roving gang.

Motorpsycho is tough, violent, and mean-spirited.  Meyer delivers the violence in his usual manner.  He films it all with his eye-popping comic book style which really hammers home the dirty deeds of the characters.  Like his immortal Faster, Pussycat!  Kill!  Kill!, there isn’t as much nudity as you’d expect.  However, Meyer delivers the goods like only he can.  There’s a scene where Rocco gets bitten by a rattlesnake and he forces Haji to suck out the poison that will make your jaw drop.  It’s so overacted and overdone that it achieves some sort of mad genius.  That is to say, it’s a Russ Meyer movie.

Motorpsycho not only blazed the trail for biker and revenge movies, it also contains a character who’s a Vietnam vet who suffers from PTSD.  I can’t be 100% sure, but this might be a cinematic first.  It just goes to show what an innovator Meyer was.

Rocco is excellent.  You can tell he was destined for greatness because he really commands the screen.  You instantly side with his character and root for him.  Haji is equally terrific.  She’s incredibly sexy, undeniably feminine, but tough as nails.  She’s enormously fun to watch, overacting to the hilt, calling men “PEEG!” and spitting on them.  She also gets a tender monologue about her tragic past that really shows her range.  I also enjoyed seeing Coleman Francis as Haji’s old coot husband. 

Though it stops short of attaining the classic status of Faster, Pussycat (the ending is somewhat of a letdown compared to what came before), Motorpsycho is unmistakably Meyer through and through.  It’s full of breasts, violence, colorful dialogue, and more breasts.  In short, it’s highly recommended. 

AKA:  Motor Mods and Rockers.  AKA:  Rio Vengeance.

LOGAN LUCKY (2017) *** ½

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is an unassuming guy from West Virginia who loses his job.  Desperate for cash, he ropes his one-armed brother Clyde (Adam Driver) into a scheme to rob the Charlotte International Speedway.  They bust “Joe Bang” (Daniel Craig), a demolition expert out of the can to help them with the job.  Naturally, complications arise, and the gang is forced to pull the heist during a big NASCAR race.    

Logan Lucky is a kindred spirit to Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven movies.  (At one point, a news report refers to the robbery as “Ocean’s 7-11”.)  To leave it at that would be to sell it short.  In addition to a heist flick, Soderbergh gives us a daring prison break movie as well as an absorbing white trash melodrama, all wrapped up in one seamless package.  I can’t say it’s quite as good as Ocean’s Eleven, but it’s certainly better than the sequels.

It’s also a terrific showcase for the cast, who are clearly having a ball.  They deliver powerful performances portraying colorful characters that stop just shy of being caricatures and feel like real people.  Tatum and Driver are awesome together.  I hope someone pairs them together again soon because they make a dynamite team.  Craig gets to show a new side of himself, delivering a joyfully off-kilter performance.  Even the supporting players are perfectly cast.  Riley Keough is great as Tatum’s sister, Seth MacFarlane makes a memorable impression as an asshole racecar driver, and Hilary Swank is a hoot as she practically does a Clint Eastwood impersonation as a persistent Fed.

The film might go on a little too long.  It probably could’ve used some tightening up here and there along the way.  Still, there are enough little hilarious side bits and subplots (wait until you hear the list of demands during the prison revolt) that deliver more laughs than most whole movies.

RED CHRISTMAS (2017) ****

Neo-Ozploitation has been kind of hit and miss for me.  I can’t say I’ve enjoyed much of it from Wolf Creek on down to the recent Patrick remake.  Craig Anderson’s Red Christmas proves that Ozploitation is alive and well.  Not only that, it’s one of the best Australian horror films ever made.

Twenty years after a horrific incident at an abortion clinic, Diane (Dee Wallace, who also produced) prepares for a nice Christmas with her family.  A dark shrouded figure named Cletus (the awesomely named Sam “Bazooka” Campbell) arrives unexpectedly at the house.  In the spirit of Christmas, Diane feels charitable and opens her home to the bandaged vagrant.  When he reads a letter that offends her, she kicks him out.  Before long, Cletus is picking off the family members one by one with his trusty ax.

Red Christmas would pair well on a double feature with Inside as they are both pregnancy-themed Christmas horror movies.  It also has a bit of a You’re Next vibe as the gaggle of constantly bickering characters are quite amusing.  What makes it unique is that they feel more like real quirky people instead of characters trapped in a horror flick.  

The offbeat tone helps propel the film.  It starts out almost like a Troma movie before becoming a Lifetime Original with shades of the slasher genre thrown in there.  That is to say it never goes where you’d expect it to.  It’s simultaneously fun, disgusting, and heartbreaking, which is quite a feat.  All this could’ve wound up being in extremely poor taste, but the cast really sells it.

Red Christmas is anchored by the fierce and funny performance by Wallace.  This is probably her best role since Cujo.  Like that film, she must protect her family at any cost from a menace in a claustrophobic setting.  It’s Gerard Orwyer who steals the show as her son who has Down syndrome and is obsessed with Shakespeare.  He’s hilarious, has genuine screen presence, and I hope to see a lot more of him in the near future.  

Then there’s Campbell as the killer, Cletus.  Even though he looks like a leper version of Mumm-Ra from Thundercats and chops victims up with the best of them, Campbell brings a tender vulnerability to the role that’s unexpectedly touching.  You can’t help but feel sorry for him.  I for one hope he returns for a sequel mighty soon.

The editing gets a little wonky near the end (it looks like they either ran out of time or money), but the finale is truly devastating.  I haven’t even gotten to the showstopping murder set pieces (which I won’t go into as I wouldn’t dream of spoiling them).  I have a feeling this might find its way into my Christmas Horror marathon come December 25^th.  

INCONCEIVABLE (2017) **

Brian (Nicolas Cage) and Angela (Gina Gershon) are a wealthy couple whose child was conceived by in vitro fertilization.  When Angela decides to go back to work, they hire a friend of a friend named Katie (Nicky Whelan, who has a topless scene) to be their live-in nanny.  Brian and Angela decide to try for another baby, and they ask Katie to be their surrogate.  Unbeknownst to the couple, she has an ulterior (and deadly) motive.  

Inconceivable is basically an updating of the old Nanny from Hell trope from the ‘90s.  Actually, “updating” is the wrong word because nothing has been updated.  Merely rehashed.  The big twist is also predictable, especially if you’ve seen more than one Lifetime Original Movie.

It’s good seeing Gershon and Cage together again two decades after their appearance in Face/Off.  It’s particularly nice to see Gershon in a leading role.  If you came to the party hoping the third-billed Cage partakes in his usual Cagey activities, you’re bound to be disappointed as he’s relegated to the stock “husband” role.  Faye Dunaway has some good moments though as Gershon’s meddling mother in-law, who doesn’t trust the nanny as far as she can throw her.

This was the directing debut of Jonathan Baker (who also appears in a small role).  If you’re a fan of reality shows, you’ll know he was the asshole on The Amazing Race.  I don’t know about that because I don’t watch reality shows, but he has a workmanlike style and a straightforward approach that befits the standard-issue material.  More interesting is that the screenwriter was none other than Zoe King, daughter of Red Shoe Diaries czar Zalman King, who also wrote Poison Ivy 2 back in the day.

Inconceivable is competently put together.  The actors turn in respectable performances.  It’s just all rather unremarkable.  Ultimately, Inconceivable is forgettable.  

AKA:  Unthinkable.  

SUSPIRIA (2018) **

Director Luca (Call Me By Your Name) Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s iconic Suspiria is an odd duck.  It’s almost as if Guadagnino took a look at Argento’s film and did the exact opposite.  Gone is the original’s colorful look.  The color palette here is muted, mostly with a lot of drab browns and beiges.  Goblin’s searing, pulsating score has been replaced with Thom Yorke’s somber tones.  Argento’s bloody death sequences have been traded out for some relatively bloodless scenes (well, until the end that is).

Guadagnino’s approach is closer to a Roman Polanski psychological slow burn than Argento’s poppy, brightly colored waking nightmare.  I get that Guadagnino was trying to distance his picture from Argento’s so it could stand on its own.  It’s just that it’s so different that it makes you wonder why he didn’t just make his own movie unconnected to the original.  

The basic plot is the same.  Susie (Dakota Johnson) comes to a dance school and uncovers a plot by the secret society of witches that run the place.  Having Tilda Swinton playing the headmistress was a nice touch.  It’s just the theory is better than the execution.  I mean having Swinton playing multiple roles seemed like a sure bet.  Anyone who bets enough will tell you the house wins eventually.

There’s also a heavy emphasis on dancing, which is fine.  I guess.  Even though in doing so it makes the movie feel like a David Lynch remake of A Chorus Line.  There was no goddamn reason it needed to be over two and a half hours though.  I kept asking myself, “When is something going to happen?”  When it did, it was wild enough to keep me watching (and awake).  Mostly, it’s just a slog in between the good stuff.  Oh, and did we need the Epilogue that was nothing more than an Exposition Dump to stuff that really didn’t need to be explained in the first place?  

Another problem is the character of Susie.  There is nothing wrong with Johnson’s performance as she is only working with what she was given (which wasn’t much).  It’s that her sole focus is dancing, which makes her character wafer thin.  

I wanted to love Suspiria.   Although I love the original, I was receptive and open to a reimagining.  Guadagnino’s film just never clicked for me.  The slow burn is a bit too slow and the burn is more of a fleeting spark than a sustained ember.  The ending is a bit of a letdown too and isn’t scary in the least, unless you think the sight of old women’s boobs are immediately scary.

CRASHING LAS VEGAS (1956) **

The forty-first installment in the long-running Bowery Boys franchise finds Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall) trying to get enough money to save Mrs. Kelly’s boarding house.  When Sach receives a huge electric shock, it gives him the inexplicable ability to predict numbers.  Slip makes him go on a game show and thanks to his uncanny gift, the boys wind up winning a trip to Las Vegas.  They then set out to win a fortune in the casino, and naturally become targets for unscrupulous gangsters.

Directed by Jean Yarborough (who directed many Abbott and Costello comedies), Crashing Las Vegas is a typical Bowery Boys entry.  It features Sach getting into fantastic misadventures while Slip rattles off a series of quips and malapropisms.  The laughs are sparse for the most part.  The best stretch comes when Sach gets mixed up with a gangster’s moll played by Mary Castle (who has sort of an Adele Jergens quality about her).  The fantasy sequence involving the Boys in prison stripes playing a game of “Musical Electric Chairs”, is amusing, but it feels like it came out of another movie.  Even though it’s consistently inconsistent, it’s nowhere near the bottom of the Bowery Boys barrel.

Unfortunately, Crashing Las Vegas is memorable for all the wrong reasons.  This was the final appearance in the series for Gorcey.  Still hurting from the recent death of his father (who also appeared in many of their movies), he apparently drowned his sorrows in drink.  He spent most of the filming drunk and was fired from the movie halfway through.  He’s clearly hammered in some scenes (most notably in the casino and hotel sequences) and slurs his dialogue, which lends a depressing pall over the film.  

Look fast for Three Stooges straight man Emil Sitka in a bit part during the game show scene.