SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (2021) ****

I’m going to try to be as non-spoilery as possible here.  Just know that this is the Spider-Man movie you’ve been waiting twenty years to see.  I can’t imagine any Spider-Man fan walking away disappointed from this one as it gives you enough Spider-Man action for three movies.  For my money, it is the best MCU flick of all time and is just as good, if not better than the Raimi sequels.  If it isn’t the best Spider-Man movie ever made, it’s certainly the most fun.  

This movie does what Into the Spider-Verse flirted with, but didn’t quite accomplish.  It embraces the legacy of Spider-Man and takes the previous installments of the past franchises and melds them perfectly together.  The previews already showed you footage of the Spider-villains from the Raimi and Webb series crossing over through the multiverse and into the MCU.  That’s really the tip of the iceberg.  I don’t want to spoil what happens in the second half of the film, but what I can tell you is that what you think is probably going to happen happens and it’s just as good, if not better than you’d expect.  

In the last film, Mysterio blew the whistle on Spider-Man and told the world he’s really Peter Parker (Tom Holland).  This makes his life a living hell, and in perfect Peter fashion, he tries to fix things and only winds up making it worse for himself.  He asks Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell to make everyone forget his alter ego, but when he tampers with the incantation, it causes a rift in the multiverse and everyone who’s ever known Spider-Man’s true identity crosses over.  

If there is one minor quibble it’s that it takes a while to get going.  I have a feeling director Jon Watts is really invested in the Peter/MJ/Ned triumvirate and wants to continue their storyline.  All that is fine, but their friendship scenes early on get the movie off to a slow start.  Once the action gets going though, it never stops, and their banter and interactions with Peter throughout his trials are sweet, so it’s easy to overlook the pokier scenes early in the film.  

Once Strange casts his spell, buckle up.  There’s a whole lot of Spider-action here as Spider-Man battles foes with familiar faces (although not to him).  During the most chaotic of action sequences, one thing stands out:  Tom Holland is a terrific Spider-Man.  He holds the movie together whenever it threatens to veer off path, and the empathy he shows to even the most dastardly of villains is touching.  Like the best Spider-Man movies, Peter gets kicked down and still manages to find the will to keep fighting back.  This movie really has an emotional core that Far From Home lacked and that Homecoming hinted at.  I’m not saying I got choked up or anything, but okay, it choked me up.  

And the parts I can’t talk about?  They will leave you cheering, applauding, and pumping your fist triumphantly.  In short, this Spider-Man is amazing.

Marvel Cinematic Universe Scorecard: 

Spider-Man:  No Way Home:  ****

Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  ****

The Incredible Hulk:  ****

Iron Man:  ****

Thor:  Ragnarok:  ****

Avengers:  Endgame:  ****

Ant-Man and the Wasp:  ****

Spider-Man:  Homecoming:  ****

Iron Man 3:  ****

Captain America:  Civil War:  *** ½

Ant-Man:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy:  *** ½

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:  *** ½ 

Avengers:  Infinity War:  *** ½

Black Panther:  *** ½ 

The Avengers:  ***

Captain America:  The First Avenger:  ***

Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  ***

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings:  ***

Captain Marvel:  ***

Spider-Man:  Far from Home:  ***

Thor:  ***

Thor:  The Dark World:  ***

Iron Man 2:  ***

Doctor Strange:  ** ½ 

Black Widow:  ** ½  

BLOOD TRACKS (1985) * ½

I’m always up for a good rock n’ roll-themed horror flick.  This is not a good one.  Heck, it can’t even deliver on the basic thrills the subgenre has to offer.  

Swedish rock band Easy Action goes to a snow-covered mountaintop to shoot a rock video.  There’s an avalanche, and the film crew is stuck snowbound on the mountain.  Eventually, they are attacked by a crazed mountain family.  

The first big miscalculation here is that Easy Action isn’t the main focus.  They lip synch half a song (the title tune) during the video shoot, but it’s not goofy enough to be fun and not good enough to be legitimately entertaining.  They look like decent enough guys.  I can only imagine how cool it would’ve been if the whole movie revolved around them in the snow in their big hair and spandex outfits fighting off the hillbilly killers.  

Another misstep is the fact that the action shifts from the snowbound cabin to a nearby abandoned factory about halfway through.  While Blood Tracks isn’t good, at least the snowy location set it apart from other rock n’ roll horror flicks.  Having the bulk of the film take place in a thoroughly generic warehouse just makes the second half even more of a chore to get through.  Very few horror films seem to take place in wintry climates.  Maybe Blood Tracks is proof there’s a reason why more horror flicks aren’t set in a winter wonderland.  

You can tell the filmmakers were going for a rock n’ roll Hills Have Eyes kind of vibe.  The problem is the characters are closer to Pod People than Trick or Treat.  The endless scenes of them scouting locations, wandering around in the snow, and splitting up to look for other crew members who have already been killed off are dull and repetitive.  The prologue explaining the killer family’s origins was totally unnecessary too, and the tacked-on narration to further connect the flashback to the events in the present day is laughable.  

There’s an OK severed head, but for the most part, the gore is weak.  Sometimes, it looks like it was trimmed to receive an R rating.  Other times, it’s just too dark to see what the hell just happened (which goes for many of the stalking and/or would-be suspense scenes).  The one legitimately cool moment happens at the very end when the main killer has his hand chopped off and as the heroes make their getaway, he cauterizes his stump on a red-hot shovel, effectively setting things up for a sequel that thankfully never happened.  

AKA:  Heavy Metal.  AKA:  Shocking Heavy Metal.

CARTELS (2017) ** ½

Steven Seagal kills a drug lord named Salazar (Florin Piersic Jr.) during a raid on his palace.  As it turns out, Salazar was merely faking his death so he could be a rat for the FBI.  When Salazar’s pissed-off crew come after him, it’s up to Luke Goss and a team of U.S. Marshals to protect him.  Predictably, double-crosses on both sides ensue.

The framing device where Seagal interrogates Goss is mostly an excuse for him to sit down and not do a whole lot.  Although Seagal’s not front and center most of the time (Goss does a lot of the heavy lifting during the middle section), he’s in it more than you’d think. Seagal looks a little more portly than usual, but he appears to be in decent form whenever he’s in the thick of the action.  He even seems to be a bit more invested in his performance than usual, which is kind of surprising given his recent work.

This was the tenth collaboration between Seagal and director Keoni Waxman, who delivers a few crisp action beats.  The opening raid sequence gets things off to a decent start.  It’s here where Seagal gets a legitimately badass moment when a guy on fire is flailing about and Steve blows him away with a shotgun.  His final brawl with Georges St-Pierre (who plays Salazar’s right-hand man) is one of his best screen fights in recent memory.  Waxman also stages a solid motorcycle shootout in a parking garage, and the part where a bad guy gets his arm blown off during a gun battle was pretty gnarly.  All of this doesn’t make Cartels what we would traditionally call a “good” film, but it helps set it apart from many of Seagal’s latter-day DTV efforts.

The fact that this is a better than average Seagal DTV actioner is a bit of a mixed blessing.  It’s competent and watchable, and yet it lacks that certain goofiness that makes some of his flicks so endearing.  There is one truly chuckle-worthy moment though when Goss tells Seagal something he doesn’t like and Steve retorts with, “I WASN’T BORN ON A TURNIP TRUCK!”  I wish there were more choice dialogue like this to go around.  If that was the case, Cartels might’ve eked by with a *** rating.    

AKA:  Killing Salazar.    

CURSE OF THE BLIND DEAD (2021) ***

I’ve always been a big Tombs of the Blind Dead fan.  While the series never produced what you would call a horror classic, all of them have their moments and are loaded with creepy atmosphere.  Not to mention the fact that they boast some of the coolest monsters in horror history.  The shambling, blind zombie Templar Knights that hunt solely by sound have always been a favorite of mine, and for whatever reason, they never really caught on with mainstream modern-day audiences.  

Maybe all that will change with this reboot, Curse of the Blind Dead.

It starts in fine franchise fashion giving us another origin story of the scary sightless slayers.  This time, they are about to sacrifice a baby on a Satanic altar when they are ambushed by an angry mob of villagers who burn out their eyeballs before burning them alive at the stake.  Then, they pull the rug out from under us during the opening credits.  It seems that somewhere between the Medieval times and today, WWIII broke out and turned the world into a post-apocalyptic wasteland!  

I love shit like this.  It’s really ballsy when a franchise horror flick shakes the genre up a bit.  Chucky went to military school.  Jason went to space.  Setting The Blind Dead in the post-nuke subgenre was an inspired touch.

A father and his pregnant daughter are making their way to the woods when they are attacked by some nasty customers.  Some dudes with bows and arrows show up to save their bacon and welcome them into their commune of post-nuke survivors.  As it turns out, the compound’s leader, “The Maestro” has his own sinister intentions for the young girl.

While this blending of The Road and the Blind Dead doesn’t quite work, there’s enough potential here to keep you watching.  I’ve seen criticism that people were annoyed that it takes a long time for the Blind Dead to show up.  However, this is keeping with the old movies as they usually took their sweet time before the Blind Dead did their thing.

Once they do show up, the carnage is pretty sweet.  There’s multiple bloody birthing scenes, spine ripping, cheek hooking, stabbing, gut ripping, and face cracking.  I probably could’ve done with the part where the Blind Dead rip a baby in half, but I think they just put that in there to show these new Templar Knights don’t fuck around.  Honestly though, it was much faster paced than I was anticipating as the film pretty much doesn’t let up once it gets going.  The ending is pretty fucked up too.  I dug it.

I just wish the Knights retained the cobwebby look of the original Blind Dead.  These new guys just look like they’re wearing zombie masks from a Spirit Halloween closeout sale on November 1st.  Also, they pretty much drop the whole post-nuke theme once the Blind Dead are awakened.  Then, it becomes another running around a castle while zombies try to kill us movie.  Not hating, just stating.  

While they don’t take full advantage of the “be very quiet or they’ll get you” gimmick, they don’t exactly piss it away as there are a couple of good stalking sequences.  One dumb thing is that one of the Knights gets a blurry, black and white POV stalking shot.  I guess this guy isn’t one of the Blind Dead.  Maybe he’s Glaucoma Dead.  

Curse of the Blind Dead is not a classic by any means, but a good gory updating that fans will appreciate.  I’d say it’s about as good as the other sequels in the franchise.  What more could you ask for?  You’re either the kind of person who will fist-pump at the sight of the Blind Dead riding horses in super slow-motion or you aren’t.  I know what camp I fall into.  

AKA:  The Curse of the Knight Templar.

HIDEOUT IN THE SUN (1960) **

Hideout in the Sun was Doris Wishman’s first film.  Even though she was only credited with writing the story and producing, she also co-directed.  It has a few touches that would soon become her hallmarks, namely lots of nudity and tons of shots of feet, but other than being notable for her first feature, it’s not very good.  

Two thieves make a daring getaway after staging a bank heist.  When they learn the cops are watching their getaway boat, they decide to take a hostage and head to a nudist camp to lay low while the heat cools off.  While the one guy barks orders and worries about the cops, his partner and the hostage enjoy all the amenities the nudist camp has to offer.  

The first half hour or so is really slow going.  The cops and robbers stuff is a chore to get through.  The obvious Wishman touches aside, it’s dull and tedious.  Things improve once the action switches over to the nudist camp.  It’s here where things lighten up a little and the movie starts to have some fun with the silly premise.  

Among the nudist activities featured:  Swimming, volleyball, sunbathing, nature walks, picnicking, birdwatching, badminton, drinking from a water spigot, sitting in a fountain, sniffing flowers, and my favorite… NUDE ARCHERY!  Hawkeye, eat your heart out.

It’s easy to see why many nudist movies had as little plot as possible.  This one is so plot heavy in the early going that you might doze off even before you get to see one naked lady.  Credited director Larry Wolk was probably responsible for the dull stuff.  I can’t say that for sure, but I want to say it just because I’m a big Wishman fan.  So, if you can make it past the boring crime plot, the nudity in the second half is pretty much nonstop, so that’s something at least.

The title tune (sung by Ralph Young of Sandler and Young fame) is a straight-up banger too, which is good since they play it often.

AKA:  Beauties in the Sun.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #31: TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS (1968) ***

(Streamed via Raygun)

Well, here we are.  I’m two months late, but I’ve finally come to the end of my thirty-one-horror-movie-watching project for the month of October.  Whenever I do these projects, I inevitably wind up watching a movie that looks like a horror flick but isn’t really.  Such is the case with Tower of Screaming Virgins.  As great as a title as that is, and the fact that it features murders aplenty, it is more like a gothic swashbuckling melodrama (?) sort of thing.  

The tip-off that it isn’t going to be a true-blue horror movie is in the opening credits where it is revealed that it is based on a story by Alexandre Dumas.  You know, the guy who wrote The Three Musketeers.  That also explains the scenes of our hero prancing around with a sword and sticking it to the authority figures.  Once the action switches over to the titular tower, things get a lot better.

The tower is the source of concern to the villagers in the surrounding area.  It seems young men are being lured there by a sexy Queen and either never return or are later found dead floating in the river.  Our hero winds up at the establishment and is happy to learn it is stacked to the gills with topless women.  He investigates and learns the luscious ladies are luring lads to an early demise at the behest of the Queen.  Since our hero and the Queen have a romantic history together, he decides to get involved in the palace drama.

The ladies of the tower look great, and I’m not saying that because they run around topless.  What I mean to say is that I admire their look as they wear a cool red mask to cover their face while exposing their body for God and everyone to see.  They might’ve been the inspiration for Kekko Kamen as their appearance is quite similar to that sexy Japanese crimefighter.  

Tower of Screaming Virgins is a lot of fun for an hour or so.  The odd scrambling of genres make it feel like an Errol Flynn movie directed by Jess Franco.  It’s in the third act where things settle down and it becomes more focused on swordfights and palace intrigue than topless women luring men to their doom.  At least the big twist ending is kind of sick and helps to tie everything together neatly.

AKA:  Tower of Sin.  AKA:  She Lost Her… You Know What.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #30: TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1959) *

(Streamed via Pub-D-Hub)

A meteor crashes in the snowy wilds of northern Sweden.  Some American scientists, including a horndog lothario geologist, investigate.  They eventually discover the meteor is actually an alien spacecraft.  Hopes of a peaceful first contact are dashed when the giant hairy alien stomps around, cause avalanches, kills people, and runs off with a pretty ice skating champ.    

Directed by Virgil (The Mole People) Vogel and written by Arthur C. (The Human Duplicators) Pierce, Terror in the Midnight Sun is jam-packed with a whole lot of nothing.  The non-stop padding includes a longwinded Swedish nightclub performance, stock nature footage of Sweden, and long sequences of people skiing, ice skating, and walking endlessly through the snow.  Whenever something threatens to happen, Vogel cuts away and gives us more dull scenes of people skiing.  

Some amusement can be had from the scientists debating about the meteor’s “skid marks”, but this is a fucking slog from start to finish.    While the monster is OK (it looks like a pig-faced Bigfoot), the forced perspective scenes that try to make him look towering are laughable and the avalanche scenes are phony as fuck.  These shoddy effects aren’t enough to make it worthwhile for even the most die-hard B-movie fan.

A few years after its initial release, Jerry Warren got his mitts on the movie, re-edited it, added new footage of his usual stock company (including John Carradine and Katherine Victor), and rereleased as Invasion of the Animal People.  Usually whenever Warren does this, the results are abysmal.  While I haven’t seen that version with my own eyes, one thing is for certain, Warren’s movie can’t be much worse than this one.

Despite the fact I have been showcasing various Roku channels for this column, I really haven’t gone into much detail about them.  One cool thing about this channel, Pub-D-Hub, is that they play trailers and drive-in intermission shorts before and during the movie.  The mid-movie break featuring old school commercials were certainly welcomed and helped alleviate some (but not all) of the boredom.  

AKA:  Invasion of the Animal People.  AKA:  Space Invasion of Lapland.