THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022) ****

We have seen numerous movies centered around the ending of a romantic relationship between a man and a woman.  The Banshees of Inisherin is a rare and special film as it is about the dissolving of a (presumably) lifelong friendship between two dudes.  If anyone has ever been dissed by a friend, it will definitely hit you in the feels, as the kids say.

The simplistic way writer/director Martin (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) McDonagh sets the stage is a master class of brevity.  He gives the audience the maximum amount of information about our main characters with the shortest of brushstrokes.  When Colm (Brendan Gleeson) tersely announces he no longer wants anything to do with his friend Padraic (Colin Farrell), it lands a real blow, despite the fact that we just met these two characters.  The wounded look of Padraic’s face tells us everything we need to know.  And then some.  

Surely, Colm was only joking?  Why, what reason would he just up and quit being Padraic’s friend?  Since the two live on a tiny island in Ireland, it’s hard not to run into each other, especially at the pub.  When Padraic presses for a reason, Colm’s reply is so blunt that it shocks him and the audience.

The way Padraic tries to go about his business while the pain and heartbreak of losing his best friend eats at him is gut-wrenching.  The way Colm double-down on his ultimatums to be left alone is downright jaw-dropping.  The way McDonagh tiptoes between hilarious banter and back to devastating drama is a real thing of beauty.

As good as Farrell and Gleeson were in McDonagh’s In Bruges, they somehow manage to excel past those lofty heights.  The rapport and chemistry (or perhaps, anti-chemistry) between them is a sight to behold.  Their scenes together showcase them both at the top of their craft and when they’re working with McDonagh’s wonderfully witty dialogue, it makes you cherish their bickering even more.  

At its heart, the film is about stubborn men acting like stubborn men.  However, there are times when we see the ripple effects of their ongoing feud throughout the town.  Could the town (or perhaps the country, as the civil war is happening over on the mainland) be a better place if two men were able to set aside their differences?  

The Banshees of Inisherin is a special movie.  As much as I liked McDonagh’s In Bruges and Three Billboards, this one is a masterwork.  It’s easily one of the best films you’ll see all year.

SUPER ATOMIC SCI-FI THRILL-O-RAMA SHOW (1995) ***

Something Weird’s Super Atomic Sci-Fi Thrill-O-Rama Show is a breezy, fun, and entertaining romp.  It collects two hours’ worth of sci-fi trailers from the ‘50s to the ‘70s.  What makes this collection so much fun is that it contains a good ratio of B movies (Phantom from Space, Attack of the Crab Monsters, and Superargo and the Faceless Giants) to more prestigious pictures (Forbidden Planet, The Time Machine, and even 2001:  A Space Odyssey). 

As is the case with many of these Something Weird trailer compilations, there are a bunch of trailers here that have turned up in their other collections.  (I’ve lost track of how many times I have sat through the trailers for Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Return of the Fly, and The Mole People.)  That just goes with the territory when you’ve seen as many of these things as I have.  Even then, there are some trailers here that don’t normally turn up on these kinds of things, like Fire Maidens of Outer Space, UFO, and The Atomic Man.  Also included are a few double feature highlights, such as The Navy vs. the Night Monsters being paired with Women of the Prehistoric Planet and a 3-D double bill of Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space. 

Most of the repeated trailers are reserved for the first hour or so.  It’s in the second half where the compilation really hits its stride as it’s here where the color trailers begin to dominate.  The ads from the ‘60s (Barbarella, Fantastic Voyage, and Five Million Years to Earth) are a lot of fun, and impressive run of ‘70s favorites (Demon Seed, Rollerball, and Death Race 2000) are particularly terrific.  Movies that later appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000 are also well-represented in the form of Phase IV, The Giant Spider Invasion, and Laserblast.  All in all, Super Atomic Sci-Fi Thrill-O-Rama Show is a rather super compilation.

The complete line-up includes:  The Phantom Planet, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Phantom from Space, UFO, The Atomic Man, Return of the Fly, The Abominable Snowman, Children of the Damned, Them!, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Friday the 13th UFO Show ad, Attack of the Puppet People, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invisible Invaders, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Valley of the Dragons, The Thing from Another World, The Flesh Eaters, a 3D double feature of Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space, The Day Mars Invaded Earth, The Cyclops, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, The Brain Eaters, The Astounding She-Monster, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Enemy from Space, Intermission ad, The War of the Worlds, Forbidden Planet, Invaders from Mars, The Time Machine, Mysterious Island, On the Threshold of Space, Atlantis: The Lost Continent, Rodan, King Kong vs. Godzilla, The Day of the Triffids, The Mole People, Monster from Green Hell, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, The Monster That Challenged the World, The Crawling Hand, intermission ad, Superargo and the Faceless Giants, Planet of the Vampires, a double feature of The Navy vs. the Night Monsters and Women of the Prehistoric Planet, Barbarella, Five Million Years To Earth, Fantastic Voyage, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, Demon Seed, Rollerball, Futureworld, Death Race 2000, The Last Days of Man on Earth, Day of the Animals, Phase IV, Empire of the Ants, The Giant Spider Invasion, Laserblast, Message from Space, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

TRAILERS #6: HORROR/SCI-FI EXPLOITATION (1992) ***

Trailers #6:  Horror/Sci-Fi Exploitation is another solid Something Weird trailer compilation.  While it contains many titles from previous collections, most of the repeats appear here in a slightly different form, either as part of a double feature or as a re-release trailer.  Highlights include the preview for the Captain Video serial (which advertises a color sequence), Mickey Rooney as a mad dog killer (“I now pronounce you DEAD!”) in The Last Mile, and it was cool seeing Robot Monster turn up under its alternate title, Monster from Mars.  I think my favorite trailer was Common Law Wife, in which no scenes from the movie are shown.  Instead, we get a guy walking around a cheap motel room who tells us what we'll see in the film.  He also says, “You don’t have to say, ‘I do’ to be married!”  There’s also a great preview for The Killer Shrews hosted by a “doctor” who tells us, “Report to the authorities any sighting of a giant shrew!”  

There are also plenty of fun double and triple feature ads.  We get a double bill of A Bucket of Blood and (Attack of) the Giant Leeches, the double feature of The Vampire’s Coffin and Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy features a cool, multicolored Hypno-Wheel, and the triple feature ad for The Vampire, The Return of Dracula, and The Monster That Challenged the World has an awesome tagline:  “Most Nightmares Last Six Seconds.  Can You Stand One That Lasts Six Hours?”

This had the potential of being one of the best Something Weird trailer compilations.  Too bad it makes the mistake of playing the same trailers twice, which is a shame.  It’s one thing to show the same trailer from compilation to compilation, but I have to take off points for showing repeat trailers within the same volume.  In fact, it probably would’ve gotten *** ½ had it not been for all the repeats.  

That said, I did enjoy the run of “Attack” movies (Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Attack of the Puppet People, and Attack of the Crab Monsters) that occurred midway through.  There are also plenty of ads for Toho films (King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla’s Revenge, and Mothra vs. Godzilla), juvenile delinquent flicks (Teen-Age Crime Wave and Curfew Breakers), and Ray Dennis Steckler (The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies and The Thrill Killers). 

In addition to all the trailers, the first few minutes of the unaired pilot of The Munsters are dropped in there for no real reason.  It’s random as hell, but it is neat seeing Joan Marshall as Herman’s wife “Phoebe” as she is much sexier than Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily Munster.  Oh, what could’ve been!  

The complete line-up is as follows, Bride of the Gorilla, Voodoo Woman, Gun Girls, Girls in the Night, The Oklahoma Woman, Cat-Women of the Moon, She Demons, Curse of a Teenage Nazi, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Alligator People, a double feature of War of the Colossal Beast and Attack of the Puppet People, The Hideous Sun Demon, Night of the Blood Beast, and double feature of The Vampire's Coffin and The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy, a double feature of The Screaming Skull and Terror From the Year 5000, Macabre, Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere, Monster from Mars (AKA:  Robot Monster), The Electronic Monster, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Invaders from Mars, The Blob, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Monster on the Campus, A Bucket of Blood, Twist All Night, Little Shop of Horrors, Common Law Wife, House on Haunted Hill, The Killer Shrews, Revenge of the Creature, Black Sunday, The Tingler, The Unearthly, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, a double feature of The Screaming Skull and Terror From the Year 5000, Five, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Attack of the Puppet People, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Them!, The Killer Shrews, Tarantula, The Black Scorpion, Daughter of Horror, The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Munsters Unaired Pilot "My Fair Munster", King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla's Revenge) Mothra vs. Godzilla, Terror of Mechagodzilla, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, The Thrill Killers, The Man from Planet X, The Last Mile, Teen-Age Crime Wave, Curfew Breakers The Mole People, Daughter of Horror, The Monster That Challenged the World, Terror in the Haunted House, Day the World Ended, a triple feature of The Vampire, The Return of Dracula, and The Monster That Challenged the World, Frankenstein, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Screaming Skull, War of the Colossal Beast, The Black Scorpion, The Mysterians, and The H-Man.

THE NORTHMAN (2022) *** ½

When he was a boy, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) saw his Viking king father (Ethan Hawke) murdered before his eyes by his asshole uncle (Claes Bang).  He took off to the hills while his uncle stole his father’s kingdom and married his mother (Nicole Kidman).  Years go by, and the now buff Amleth returns to fulfill a Viking prophecy and get revenge on his father’s killer.

The Northman is a gripping tale of Viking vengeance gussied up by director Robert (The VVitch) Eggars’ dreamy, arthouse visual style.  The best moments of the movie come when Eggars leans heavy into Viking voodoo, mysticism, and black magic.  There’s a cool scene involving a shaman and a severed head, a sweet battle where Skarsgard is forced to fight a living skeleton to claim the sword he is prophesized to vanquish his enemies with (this sequence convinced me that if they ever do King Conan, Eggars is the man to direct), and Bjork pops up as a freaky “Seeress”.  The fiery finale between Skarsgard and Bang is impressive too.

Sometimes, Eggars’ approach is a bit too ponderous and slow for its own good (especially in the second act).  However, whenever he finds his groove and melds his artsy inclinations with sword and sorcery shenanigans, the film really cooks.  There’s a particularly good twist that sets up the third act that deftly plays with the conventions of your typical revenge thriller and Eggars does a nice job muddling the waters so that Skarsgard’s quest for revenge might not be as cut-and-dry as he thought.  

The cast is strong all around.  Skarsgard makes for a solid, brooding hero and Anya Taylor-Joy is exquisite as a slave girl-turned-love interest.  Ethan Hawke also has some good moments in the prologue as Skarsgard’s doomed dad and Claes Bang has a quiet intensity as the villainous uncle.  It’s Nicole Kidman who steals the movie though (and chews the scenery) as Skarsgard’s mother.  

DORIS DECEMBER: A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER (THE “LOST” VERSION) (1983) * ½

A cloaked figure (he’s kind of like a half-assed Crypt Keeper) appears in a snow covered cemetery to tell us the story of Mary Kent (Diane Cummins).  He says if a person is struck by lightning in a certain part of their brain, it can give them “Satanic powers”.  That’s exactly what happens to poor Mary.  

After surviving the lightning strike to the cranium, Mary begins hearing voices that urge her to kill those who have wronged her.  When she finds her boyfriend Frankie (Frankie Sabat) is cheating on her with her best friend Sandy (Sandy Sabat), the pair are later found with their heads chopped off.  Then, her brother Billy (Bill Szarka) steals money and blames it on Mary.  It doesn’t take long for him to get bludgeoned to death and buried alive in a shallow grave.  Another heartless friend is axed in the bathtub.  Mary eventually finds herself pregnant, and when her parents want her to give it up for adoption, they are later found hacked up.  

So far, so not bad.  About halfway through the movie, Mary dies while giving birth.  We then flash-forward to her daughter Vicki (Dee Cummins) celebrating her sixteenth birthday.  Her mother’s voice soon begins haunting her, and eventually convinces “Crazy Vicki” to kill those who have wronged her as well.  

Apparently, the story goes that the original version of A Night to Dismember was burned by a disgruntled employee at the film lab.  This forced writer/director Doris Wishman to hastily assemble a new version on the fly using nothing but outtakes and deleted scenes.  Others claim that the star of the version that was eventually released (porn star Samantha Fox) paid Doris to put her in the movie and she used the money to film new scenes with her.  That would explain why so much of the original footage was scrapped and why Fox is nowhere to be found in this version.  Lucky(ish) for Doris fans, the original “Lost” version was found and uploaded to YouTube, which is where I finally caught up with it.

I watched the released version a few years ago and it was godawful.  It is by far Doris’s worst effort.  However, it’s been a while since I saw it, so I can’t say how much the two versions really differ.  One thing is for certain, it’s a Doris Wishman movie through and through.  There’s weird narration and voiceovers, out of synch sound, sunset footage recycled from Satan was a Lady, awkward phone conversations, the familiar apartment setting, scenes of women looking at themselves in the mirror, a death in a bathtub accompanied by an overly bombastic score, a solarized sex scene, a negative image dream scene, and of course… FEET!

While The “Lost” Version is better than the one that was eventually released, it is by no means good.  The first half is coherent, but it doesn’t exactly work.  At least the body count is healthy, although Doris really goes overboard with the shots of shadows of assorted weapons silhouetted against a white wall.  The murders are all appropriately grungy looking, and there is one truly priceless line of dialogue to be found.  (After Mary flips out, her mother asks, “When did you menstruate last?”) 

The second half (which seems to be heavily inspired by Carrie) is a real chore though.  There’s a lot of pointless slow-motion scenes and extraneous narration to help cover some of the big gaps in time (and logic).  While it’s noticeably weaker than the first half, this stretch of the film does have some decent gore.  It’s a long time coming, but the heart-ripping, head-crushing, finger-hacking finale is pretty good.  I probably wouldn’t have been so hard on it if it wasn’t for all the damned slow motion.  If Doris played all these scenes at their regular speed, the movie probably would’ve been sixty minutes instead of eighty.

Here’s the review of the version that eventually wound up being released:  

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER  (1989)  ½ * 

(Originally posted October 31st, 2019)

Doris Wishman is my kind of filmmaker.  She goes out there and makes the movie her way.  You can look at one frame of a Doris Wishman film and know it was made by Doris Wishman.  If it’s got lots of close-ups of feet, no synch sound, and looks like a series of people’s last known photographs, you can bet your ass it’s a Wishman flick.

When Wishman is cooking, she often hits it out of the park.  Anyone who’s ever sat through Let Me Die a Woman, Deadly Weapons, or Nude on the Moon will attest to that.  However, her misses are about as bad as they come.  (The Amazing Transplant, anyone?)  That’s why it pains me to say A Night to Dismember just might be her worst flick.  

It’s not really her fault.  You see, according to legend, some disgruntled lab employee burned the film print.  Wishman then had to scramble, cutting the movie together using odd ends, discarded footage, and whatever scraps she could find.  She added some newly shot footage, and then cobbled it all together and released it on an unsuspecting public.  

Trying to follow the story will give you mental whiplash.  It revolves around the bizarre murders of a troubled family.  Things kick off with a gruesome ax murder in the tub, but then the murderess slips and falls on her ax.  Most of the time, the editing is so rapid fire that simple scenes are hard to figure out.  Shots are repeated, slow motion is used for like, two seconds, shots alternate from night to day, and there are long negative scenes; all of which are usually accompanied by overbearing, out of place library music.

A narrator constantly runs his mouth to try to make sense of the plot.  (It’s really nothing more than your standard let’s-drive-a-relative-crazy plot, but the way it’s told is just confusing as fuck.)  This movie has more narration than The Creeping Terror and Monster a Go-Go combined.  Occasionally, we do hear a snippet of dialogue or two, but it’s clearly just Wishman’s voice dropping in a few lines here and there.  

I like Wishman.  That’s why it hurts to say this flick is a disaster of epic proportions.  Still, it’s a miracle it exists in any way, shape, or form considering the circumstances.  That alone is a testament to Wishman’s tenacity.  

Recently, a print of the original version was miraculously found.  I don’t know if my nerves could stand to watch that one so soon after subjecting myself to this.  Judging solely from the evidence here, I’d say they burned the wrong movie.

DORIS DECEMBER RANKINGS:

1. Deadly Weapons 

2. Let Me Die a Woman

3. Love Toy

4. Bad Girls Go to Hell

5. Double Agent 73

6. The Immoral Three

7. Indecent Desires

8. Come with Me My Love

9. My Brother’s Wife

10. The Hot Month of August

11. The Sex Perils of Paulette

12. Another Day, Another Man

13. A Taste of Flesh

14. Nude on the Moon

15. Diary of a Nudist

16. Too Much Too Often

17. Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls

18. Hideout in the Sun

19. Satan was a Lady

20. Blaze Starr Goes Nudist

21. The Amazing Transplant

22. A Night to Dismember (The “Lost” Version)

23. The Prince and the Nature Girl

24. Passion Fever

25. Keyholes are for Peeping or Is There Life After Marriage?

26. A Night to Dismember

Well, that brings Doris December to a close.  If you still can’t get enough retrospectives of cult directors, be sure to keep your eyes peeled as I will be ringing in the New Year with another set of reviews spotlighting a B movie auteur.  Join me for Janua-RAY when we will be celebrating all things Ray Dennis Steckler!

DORIS DECEMBER: SATAN WAS A LADY (1975) **

Satan was a Lady was Doris Wishman’s first foray into hardcore pornography.  Up until then, she had made many “roughie” movies, but none of them crossed the line into full-on penetration.  I tried to be as forgiving as I could seeing as Doris was just getting her feet (no pun intended) wet in the genre.  Even with that in mind, it’s kind of tough to sit through in some places.

Terry (Annie Sprinkle) catches her little sister Claudia (Bree Anthony) engaging in pre-marital sex with her fiancé Victor (Tony Richards).  She then goes running into the arms of Bobby (Bobby Astyr) for a little bondage action.  Later, it’s revealed Terry is also romancing Victor behind her sister’s back.  

Other than Sprinkle’s bondage scene, the sex scenes are mostly cliché (there’s even a part where lovers bang on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace for God’s sake) and unsexy, which is the main problem, seeing as this is a sex flick and all.  It doesn’t help that one of the scenes plays out in a long loop, unapologetically replaying the same footage again and again.  Even with the engaging presence of Sprinkle, they are mostly lackluster.  It’s telling that the best part of the movie is Sprinkle’s solo scene where she pleasures herself.  I have a feeling Doris did very little directing on this sequence.  She just put the camera down and let Sprinkle do all the work.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Annie’s sex appeal, Satan was a Lady would’ve been completely forgettable.

This isn’t one of Wishman’s best, but there are plenty of her trademarks on display:  Awkward phone conversations, odd dubbing and voiceovers (that’s Doris’s voice as the characters’ “thoughts”), the recycling of stock footage from her old nudie movies, pointless scenes of people walking in Central Park to help pad out the running time, a long negative image sex scene, and of course, feet (although, quite honestly, not as many as I was expecting).  It’s all pretty much plotless and dull until the completely random Diabolique-inspired twist ending occurs.  Since there had been so little plot leading up to the big reveal, it was hard to care about the outcome either way.   

DORIS DECEMBER: COME WITH ME MY LOVE (1976) ***

I bet you guys and gals thought Doris December was over.  Well, after watching twenty-two Doris Wishman movies in three days’ time, I just needed a little break.  Before the month is out, I plan on watching a couple of her forays into the world of hardcore smut.  First up is Come with Me My Love.  

In 1925, a jealous husband (Jeffrey Hurst) catches his wife (Ursula Austin) and her lover in the throes of passion.  Enraged, he guns them both down before turning the weapon on himself.  Fifty years later, a woman who resembles his dead wife (also Austin) rents the apartment where the murders took place.  Before long, the ghost of the husband is not only seducing her, but also killing anyone who makes love to her.  

This is actually a decent little horror porno, made all the more interesting by all the trademark Doris Wishman touches.  Wishman’s films always had a handmade feel to them, and this one is no different.  Her fingerprints are all over this one.  (She obviously dubbed the “voice” of the ghostly whispering.)  If you’re hoping to see Doris’ signature cinematic flourishes on display, Come with Me My Love doesn’t disappoint.  She gives us random shots of feet, inexplicable narration, shoddy voiceovers, predominantly one apartment location (when Austin goes to Annie Sprinkle’s apartment, she remarks it looks exactly like hers) gratuitous shots of clothing hitting the floor, long scenes of characters looking at themselves in the mirror, bathtub scenes with an overly bombastic score, and awkward phone conversations.  There’s also an instance where Doris reuses footage from one of her previous films, in this case the sparking ring scene from Double Agent 73 to simulate the sparks during the bathtub electrocution scene.  Her penchant for negative shots also crops up again during the (overused) shots of the “ghost” spying on Austin.

Surprisingly enough, Doris does a more than competent job on the sex scenes as they are above average as far as ‘70s smut movies go.  (The stereotypically ‘70s porn music is particularly good.)  Editing was never Wishman’s strong suit but Come with Me My Love is put together rather well.  There’s a real rhythm to the cutting during the sex scenes (especially the group ones) that help enhance the sensuality.  Many of these scenes even have a sense of humor about them (like when Vanessa del Rio says she’s giving her boyfriend “something to eat” and the camera cuts to him going down on her), which helps make them even more engaging.  

It also helps that the story is simple but effective.  Besides, there’s enough sex and violence here to satisfy fans of either the XXX or horror genre.  Even though some may look down on it because it’s a porno, Come with Me My Love remains one of Wishman’s best efforts.  

AKA:  Come with Me, My Ghost.  AKA:  Stay with Me My Love.  AKA:  With Me My Love.  AKA:  The Haunted Pussy.