EMMANUELLE: QUEEN OF FRENCH EROTIC CINEMA (2021) *** ½

This is an absorbing, informative, and at times, touching documentary about the creation of one of the most popular and influential softcore films of all time, Emmanuelle.  We learn about the movie’s inception; everything from producer Yves Roussett-Rouard buying the rights to Emmanuelle Arsan’s scandalous memoir to the hiring of noted photographer Just Jaeckin as director, and the discovery of the iconic star, Sylvia Kristel.  The tumultuous shooting is also discussed as the low budget crew were shooting without permits in foreign countries where nudie moviemaking was frowned up.  Finally, the documentary revels in the filmmakers’ success as Emmanuelle paved the way for an entire genre of erotica.  

The interviews with Roussett-Rouard, Jaeckin, and star Marika Green (who played Emmanuelle’s lover, Bee in the film) are insightful.  The many scholarly interviewees are equally enlightening as they are able to connect the dots and formulate why the movie was such a global phenomenon.  (Which basically boils down to sexual liberation, the loosening of censorship laws, and of course, Sylvia Kristel.)  In fact, Emmanuelle:  Queen of French Erotic Cinema is so well done that it’s almost a letdown that they only go in-depth on the first movie.  The sequels are quickly glossed over, and the legions of rip-offs are derided.  (The unofficial Emanuelle series are only shown in a series of lurid poster art.)  Maybe someday somebody will make the definitive documentary on the Emanuelle rip-off series.  I can at least hope.  Till then, this is a great doc on the first flick.

What elevates Emmanuelle:  Queen of French Erotic Cinema above most skin flick documentaries is the final section devoted to Kristel.  It’s here where we see a montage of clips culled from talk shows, interviews, and behind the scenes footage where the (male) hosts continuously ask tactless questions about nudity, backhandedly shame her, and generally act like pigs.  She answers all their questions in a professional manner, but the sadness in her eyes speaks volumes.  Even though she found success outside of the Emmanuelle films, for better or worse, she would forever be Emmanuelle in the eyes of the press.  While she appears nude throughout the documentary in scenes and ad slicks for the film, it's her wounded, sad eyes during these interview segments that leave the longest lasting impression.   

BLOOD-O-RAMA SHOCK SHOW (1994) ****

Here’s another fun horror trailer compilation from Something Weird.  It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.  It features more classic trailers than you can shake a stick at.  There’s an art to making the perfect collection of previews, and with Blood-O-Rama Shock Show, Something Weird cracked the code.  It might fall just shy of their immortal Something Weird Extra Weird Sampler, but it’s top notch in just about every regard.  

I’ve seen probably over a hundred or so trailer comps over the years, and this one left me dizzy from all the amazing coming attractions that were crammed into the two-hour running time.  Most of these things usually start running out of steam at about the ninety-minute mark.  Blood-O-Rama Shock Show made the running time fly by.  When it was over, I kinda wanted to watch it again.  If that isn’t the true testament of a great trailer compilation, I don’t know what is.

Things kick off with a swell trio of trailers from Hemisphere Pictures:  Blood Fiend, Curse of the Vampires, and Mad Doctor of Blood Island.  Later in the collection, they turn up as part of various drive-in quadruple features, which is a great way to show how these films were repackaged (often under different titles) and rereleased to an unsuspecting moviegoing public.  There’s a great sampling of genres (vampires, zombies, and cannibal movies), eras (mostly ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s), and quality, which adds to the fun.  Along the way, we get a taste of Something Weird’s catalogue of titles (Sins of Rachel, The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare, and She Freak), some Grade A schlock (I Dismember Mama, Shriek of the Mutilated, and The Corpse Grinders), a handful of true classics (Vampyres, Dawn of the Dead, and Basket Case), plus many films from Herschell Gordon Lewis (Color Me Blood Red, The Gruesome Twosome, and The Wizard of Gore) and Andy Milligan (The Body Beneath, The Rats are Coming!  The Werewolves are Here!, and The Ghastly Ones).  All told, a horror fan’s dream come true.

The complete collection includes:  Blood Fiend, Curse of the Vampires, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, The Murder Clinic, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, Andy Warhol’s Dracula, Make Them Die Slowly, Tender Flesh, Sins of Rachel, Color Me Blood Red, The Body Beneath, The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare, She Freak, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, I Dismember Mama, Lila (AKA:  Mantis in Lace), The Gruesome Twosome, The Wizard of Gore, Sacrifice! (AKA:  Man from Deep River), Shriek of the Mutilated, The Flesh and Blood Show, Mark of the Devil 2, Private Parts, Blood Feast, Chiller Carnival of Blood (a quadruple feature that includes Blood Demon, Blood Doctor, Blood Fiend, and Blood Brides), Invasion of the Flesh Hunters, Dawn of the Dead, Basket Case, Mansion of the Doomed, The Blood-O-Rama Shock Festival (Blood Fiend, Brides of Blood, Blood Creatures, and The Blood Drinkers), Night of the Lepus, Caged Virgins, the iconic double feature of I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin, the classic triple bill “Orgy of the Living Dead” (containing Revenge of the Living Dead, Curse of the Living Dead, and Fangs of the Living Dead), Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, The Corpse Grinders, The Gore Gore Girls, The Thirsty Dead, Disciples of Death, Meat Cleaver Massacre (narrated by Christopher Lee!), Night of a Thousand Cats, Don’t Open the Window, The Worm Eaters, Dawn of the Mummy, and Deranged.

SUPER HORRORAMA SHRIEK SHOW (1994) ***

Super Horrorama Shriek Show is a solid trailer compilation from the good folks at Something Weird.  It features nearly two hours’ worth of horror trailers, with a couple of spook show previews, intermission ads, and old commercials tossed in there to spice things up.  They are presented in chronological order (for a little while at least), which is cool because it gives you a sampling of the various trends throughout the years.  You also get a nice variety of horror stars such as Lon Chaney Jr., Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Michael Gough, all of whom pop up several times.  

The first half is devoted to trailers from the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Because of that, much of the early going is rather tame, but hang tight.  The trailers definitely get bloodier, gorier, and racier as they go along.  The relatively harmless stuff from Columbia (The Werewolf and Curse of the Demon) and Universal (Curse of the Undead and The Leech Woman) eventually gives way to the more adult offerings from Hammer (Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell) and AIP (Deathmaster and Count Yorga, Vampire), before concentrating on Blaxploitation (Blacula and Abby), undisputed classics (The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and slashers (My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th).  

Many of the trailers from the ‘70s featured in the second half are short and sweet (sometimes fifteen or thirty second spots).  While I would’ve liked to have seen the full previews for these films, they come at such a fast and furious pace that it’s hard to complain.  Since many of the ads are so brief, it gives us that much more room to cram more of them in there.  Sure, many of the trailers have cropped up on other collections before, and a lot of the prints are beaten all to hell, but connoisseurs of trailer compilations will have a lot of fun with Super Horrorama Shriek Show.  

The full trailer rundown includes:  The Return of Dracula, The Werewolf, Curse of the Demon, The Man Without a Body, Indestructible Man, The Cyclops, Fright, Horror Hotel, Giant from the Unknown, Curse of the Undead, Macabre, The Tingler, The Leech Woman, The Woman Eater, Blood of Dracula, House on Haunted Hill, Tales of Terror, The Premature Burial, Black Zoo, House of Fright (AKA:  The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll), Horror of Dracula, Horrors of the Black Museum, The House of the Damned, The Old Dark House, Night Creatures, Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Berserk!, Circus of Horrors, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Captain Kronos:  Vampire Hunter, The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth are in My Neck, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (AKA:  The Satanic Rites of Dracula), The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, a double feature of Night of the Witches and Dr. Frankenstein on Campus, Tales from the Crypt, The Chosen, Raw Meat, The Legend of Hell House, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Incredible Melting Man, The Children, The House Where Death Lives, Something is Out There, Rabid, The Car, Tourist Trap, Burnt Offerings, The Changeling, Terror in the Wax Museum, Point of Terror, The Tempter, Axe, Deathmaster, Rattlers, It’s Alive, Don’t Open the Window, Willard, Count Yorga, Vampire, Equinox, Seizure, a double feature of The Velvet Vampire and Scream of the Demon Lover, Humanoids from the Deep, Blacula, Sugar Hill, Abby, The Sinful Dwarf, Eaten Alive, My Bloody Valentine, Terror, and Friday the 13th, as well as a handful of ads for upcoming Something Weird releases.

RENO 911! THE HUNT FOR QANON (2021) **

I was a casual fan of the Cops spoof, Reno 911! and enjoyed the big-screen version, Reno 911!  Miami probably more than most.  Amazingly, it’s been over fourteen years since their last movie, so I was hoping Reno 911!  The Hunt for QAnon (which went straight to Paramount+) would’ve made up for all that lost time.  Unfortunately, it’s kind of a mixed bag.  While it’s fun to see everybody in their roles once again, there really aren’t a whole lot of laughs to be had.  

The plot probably wouldn’t have even cut it on a thirty-minute episode of the show.  Lieutenant Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) and his cronies in the Reno Sheriff’s Department are tasked with giving a summons to the leader of QAnon.  He learns the organization is about to have their annual Booze Cruise, and the police force travel incognito aboard the ship hoping to get a glimpse of the mysterious leader.  

The stuff on the boat is extremely hit and miss.  With a topic like crackpot conspiracy theorists, there is plenty of low hanging fruit to be squashed here.  However, Lennon and company don’t exactly go swinging for the fences.  In fact, with such a prime target, it’s kind of disappointing to say that the filmmakers let QAnon off pretty easily.  The celebrity cameos are OK (Patton Oswalt garners a couple of chuckles in a sizable supporting role), but honestly, I was expecting more (both in the way of cameos and laughs).  

It's a shame too because the opening is a lot of fun.  It’s in these scenes where the Reno police force have to come to terms with the changes in policing brought about by Black Lives Matter and anti-cop sentiment in general.  I think it would’ve been a lot funnier if that had been the film’s primary focus instead of the stuff with the cruise.  (The scene where the cast performs an extended cover of Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” is particularly cringe-inducing.)  Despite the promising start, once the ship sets sail, the movie gets lost at sea.  

DUNKIRK (2017) ***

Christopher Nolan’s WWII movie, Dunkirk is a simple, straightforward war picture.  It’s primarily a tale of survival as its focus is on soldiers trying to stay alive on and along the coastline of the French town of Dunkirk as they are fired upon by German airplanes that perpetually strafe the area.  We meet characters on the land (soldiers pinned down on the beach), in the air (a pilot, played by Tom Hardy, who tries to keep the skies clear of enemy fighters), and at sea (a boat captain played by Mark Rylance who along with his sons, rescue downed pilots and beleaguered soldiers), all of whom fight for survival during the siege.  

The back-and-forth storytelling approach is almost mosaic in nature and yields uneven results.  The strongest passages are set upon Rylance’s boat.  He‘s an able-bodied seaman who is too old to enlist, but pitches in to help rescue soldiers.  His voyage gets complicated when he picks up a pilot (Cillian Murphy) who has no intention on returning to Dunkirk.  The stuff involving Hardy is fairly decent too.  The sequences of the soldiers stranded on the beach don’t work quite as well, mostly because none of them ever really stand out and become real characters.  I’m not saying these stretches of the film are necessarily bad.  They just pale in comparison to the other sequences.

Most of Nolan’s films are big and twisty in nature.  It’s almost as if this time the twist is that there are no twists.  In fact, the only real Nolan touch is the garbed dialogue and droning soundtrack.  Oh, and I guess the fact that Hardy wears a cumbersome mask for most of the movie, which means it would make a good double feature with The Dark Knight Rises.  

Given the fact that it was a WWII movie directed by Christopher Nolan, I was anticipating Dunkirk to be a bit bloated.  Much to my surprise, it moved along at a steady clip.  The thing that prevents it from being one of his best is that the dramatics tend to get a bit repetitive as the film goes on as many set pieces are merely variations on a theme.  (Cowardly characters find their courage, ill-equipped characters knuckle up, guest stars stand around and frown, separate sets of characters face drowning, etc.)  Although it might be a lesser Nolan movie, it remains a solid war flick.

WITHOUT A PADDLE (2004) **

Three buddies (Matthew Lillard, Seth Green, and Dax Shepard) who have gone their separate ways come together for their childhood friend’s funeral.  They make good on a boyhood pact to look for D.B. Cooper’s treasure, and the trio goes out into the wilderness searching for the lost loot.  Along the way, they encounter a territorial bear, lose their canoe, and run afoul of some murderous redneck pot farmers (Ethan Suplee and Abraham Benrubi).  

Without a Paddle is an odd duck.  It goes from drama to comedy to action, often in jarring fashion.  It doesn’t work, mostly because it feels like it’s checking off a grocery list of genres rather than telling a straightforward story.  The early scenes of the friends reuniting feel like Stand by Me 2 and the scenes of the friends getting tangled up with the drug farmers feels like a dumb stoner comedy.  The stuff involving two sexy treehuggers particularly comes out of leftfield.  The fact that there are no less than five credited screenwriters leads me to suspect the script passed through too many hands who tossed in too many ideas and never settled on a cohesive tone.

It would be a different story if it was funny.  Unfortunately, it never stays on one particular tangent long enough to develop much comic momentum.  There’s an unfortunate Matrix sight gag, which really helps to date the movie, and lots of references to Deliverance, which makes sense as Burt Reynolds shows up late in the game as a grizzled old mountain man.  

The movie remains watchable throughout, if only because of the chemistry between Lillard, Green, and Shepard.  They are at the very least amusing, even if the flimsy script and tonal whiplashes often let them down.  If it wasn’t for their performances, Without a Paddle would’ve truly been… well… without a paddle.  

KATE (2021) **

Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Kate, an assassin on the verge of retiring.  Before she can even pull the trigger on her last job, she starts coughing up blood and wheezing like she’s got the ‘rona.  Turns out somebody poisoned her, and she only has a day or so to live.  Kate then spends her remaining hours hunting down the son of a bitch who slipped her the Mickey.  

Kate is pretty standard stuff.  It’s mostly a collection of cliches redressed and repurposed.  Not only is it a One Last Job movie, it’s a Yakuza flick, a Grizzled Mentor film (with Woody Harrelson as the grizzled mentor), a Solve Your Own Murder mystery (you know, the whole D.O.A. thing), an Assassin Befriending a Young Girl drama (like The Professional), and an If Your Grizzled Mentor is Played by Woody Harrelson, Chances are He Will Double-Cross You picture (like Solo:  A Star Wars Story).  None of this would’ve really mattered if we cared about the character, but we never really learn what makes Kate tick, other than the cliched “I’m a coldblooded assassin, but I won’t kill kids” angle.  

Nor would it have mattered if the action was crisp.  While the shootouts, hand-to-hand, and weapon fights are a hair better than most modern-day actioners, they don’t exactly knock your socks off or anything.  There are one or two good moments sprinkled about (like the fight in a cramped alleyway), but most of the time, the camera placement is less than optimal and the choreography leaves something to be desired.    

I like Winstead a lot but having her play a character whose main trait is to be sickly didn’t do her any favors.  I think she can be a tough and likeable action heroine.  It’s just that she needs to pick a better vehicle for her talents.  Harrelson has some good moments with her early on.  Whenever he’s on screen, the movie fitfully comes to life.  The rest of the time, Kate is a competent, albeit uninvolving revenge flick.