SURVIVOR (2015) * ½

Milla Jovovich stars as a security expert working for the American Embassy in London.  Right away, she notices a lot of suspicious scientists have been coming into the country under her watch.  However, no red flags have been raised.  She then goes to her superiors who curtly dismiss her.  When she survives a bombing meant to silence her, Milla winds up being the prime suspect.  She then goes on the run and must clear her name before the baddies catch up to her. 

Director James McTeigue usually brings a sense of style to his films, as anyone who’s seen V for Vendetta or Ninja Assassin can attest.  Sadly, Survivor is a thoroughly bland and generic thriller.  Despite his presence behind the camera and the participation of Milla as the heroine and Pierce Brosnan (who looks bored) as the villainous bombmaker/master of disguise, it’s pretty much a dud from the first frame. 

It’s not bad enough that the plot is overly formulaic, but a lot of the movie just looks cheap.  Oftentimes, it feels like something your grandma would watch on Ion TV.  To make matters worse, the supposedly sad scene where Milla mourns the loss of her friends is unintentionally hilarious.  As she sits at her desk, she solemnly looks at their photo while stock footage of 9/11 is superimposed over it to hammer home the fact they died.  It’s totally amateurish. 

At least the flick has a good supporting cast.  Robert Forster, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett, and Roger Rees all appear, but they seem to be on autopilot.  Even the usually fetching Milla doesn’t seem to want to be there, and Brosnan is badly miscast as the bad guy.  The movie’s shorthand for “characterization” is sometimes amusing though.  For example, we know Milla doesn’t play by the rules because she rides a motorcycle to work.  Unfortunately, that’s about as deep as the screenplay gets.

IMMACULATE (2024) ***

Sydney Sweeney stars as a hot nun who travels to Italy to live in a convent that doubles as a hospice for old dying nuns.  She isn’t there but a day or two before she’s having disturbing dreams and puking at inopportune times.  That can mean only one thing:  She’s pregnant with Jesus 2.0. 

Immaculate is kind of like a nunsploitation version of Rosemary’s Baby.  Actually, it’s more like the antithesis of Rosemary’s Baby.  Either way you look at it (and I’ll try not to delve too deeply as not to spoil the best moments), there’s some good shit here.  In addition to that Polanski classic, the film also draws inspiration/rips off one of the most memorable scenes from Mark of the Devil.  It’s like I always say:  If you’re going to steal from someone, steal from the best. 

Immaculate is a great vehicle for Sweeney.  I mean we have one of the hottest women in the biz playing a sexy pregnant nun?  What more could I ask from Hollywood?  She delivers a fantastic performance too.  Her final moments are especially memorable as she switches gears from nubile nun to horror movie Final Girl in a blink of an eye.  In lesser hands, this sudden switch could’ve been comical, but Sydney plays it to the hilt, making you really root for her. 

The film straddles the line between tasteful and tastelessness.  I kind of wish it dipped its toe a little more into the latter at times.  That said, you know you’re in store for a good time when five minutes into the movie you see Sydney Sweeney dressed in a nun’s habit sitting on the toilet peeing.  If that doesn’t scream “Instant Recommendation”, I don’t know what does. 

Oh, and I guess I should mention I saw this during the film’s brilliant marketing gimmick where they sold tickets for $6.66.  (Unfortunately, it came to $6.99 with tax, but oh well.)  I can’t say Immaculate was great exactly, but it was certainly worth each and every one of those 666 pennies.

SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING (2023) *** ½

Tobacco Force is a superhero team who fights monsters and aliens by combining their forces to give the beasts cancer.  Although they just scored a decisive victory against a turtle monster, their boss (a drooling rat) sends them off to a retreat for a mandatory team building exercise.  There, they tell each other scary campfire stories to pass the time and ultimately have to confront what possibly could be the end of the world. 

Smoking Causes Coughing is another slice of certified cinematic craziness from Quentin (Rubber) Dupieux.  It’s a weird amalgam of inspirations, and yet somehow, it always feels refreshingly original.  It’s simultaneously a foul-mouthed, blood-soaked send-up of Japanese Tokusatsu and a gory tribute to Tales from the Crypt.  This kind of out-there mash-up is bound to be uneven, but the film’s refusal to be classifiable (even though it proudly wears its influences on its sleeve) is rather amusing. 

The first of the bizarre campfire stories is a tale about a woman who puts on a “thinking helmet” and realizes her husband and friends are no longer of any use to her and decides to kill them.  This one has a Cronenbergian type feel to it and features some good gore.  The next involves a man who becomes subject of a horrific workplace accident, but still manages to keep his spirits up despite his ghoulish predicament. This one is admirable for the way Dupieux continues to up the ante (way) past its obvious conclusion.

Overall, Smoking Causes Coughing is slight, but undeniable goofy fun.  Sure, the ending is kind of weak but at least Dupieux knew when to wrap things up.  Even at 77 minutes, it still feels a little on the long side.  However, there are more than a handful of hilariously over the top moments that easily make it a must-see for people who think they’ve seen it all.   

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024) ****

Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire is one of the best Monsterverse flicks.  It’s also one of the best Godzilla and/or Kong movies ever made.  The secret is that the human to monster ratio is about a 1.5:1, which is damn near perfect if you ask me.  Not only that, but the human drama propels the monster plot forward instead of stops it in its tracks, which is often the case in these things.  It also helps that the film is chockfull of kick-ass kaiju donnybrooks and giant ape slobberknockers. 

The plot is not necessary, but I’ll give it a whirl anyway.  Godzilla has awakened from his slumber (he’s been using the Coliseum in Rome the way a cat uses a pet bed) and seems to be powering himself up for an ominous cause.  Meanwhile, King Kong travels to the unexplored depths of the “Hollow Earth” looking for the last of his species.  He gets more than he bargained for when he comes face to face with the evil ape, Skar King who wants to lead his army of mad monkeys back to the surface so he can rule the world. 

Although Godzilla is somewhat sidelined for much of the picture, he does get to fight a giant sea serpent (as does Kong).  Once the King of the Monsters finally crosses paths with Kong, it leads to a great confrontation at the pyramids that plays like a giant monster version of the alley fight in They Live.  (No, seriously.  There’s even a “Rowdy” Roddy Piper-inspired suplex.)  The finale is one for the books.  It’s an all-out four-way tag-team brawl that begins with a terrific prelude featuring our monsters battling in zero gravity before touching down on Earth for some of the goofiest kaiju fight choreography since Godzilla vs. Megalon. 

That is to say, I loved every second of it. 

Oh, and did I mention Kong goes to the dentist?  When’s the last time you saw a giant ape have oral surgery in a movie?  Or that he gets a robot arm?  I mean, what’s not to love about this flick?  Sure, Kong may get more screentime than his co-star, but neither monster has a wasted moment (I liked the scenes of Kong bonding with a little ape dude), and we… shocker… care about what happens to both of them.  

This is about as far as you can get from last year’s instant classic Godzilla Minus One in terms of tone, style, and well… everything.  And that is perfectly OK.  Godzilla’s filmography is vast enough to embrace both approaches.  It’s a helluva great time to be a Godzilla (and Kong) fan.  

‘NEATH BROOKLYN BRIDGE (1942) **

A gangster (perennial tough guy Marc Lawrence) is looking to make a big score and he wants to use the East Side Kids on his crew.  Naturally, they don’t want anything to do with it, but the crook forces them to go along with the plan when he blackmails Muggs (Leo Gorcey) into thinking he’s committed a murder.  While the kids keep a woman who witnessed the murder at their clubhouse (disguised in drag as an East Side Kid), Muggs uses his ingenuity (or lack thereof) to outwit the gangsters. 

‘Neath Brooklyn Bridge is a middling entry in the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys series.  Gorcey and Huntz Hall are always fun to watch, but the gags aren’t as frequent or as funny as some of the gang’s later (better) stuff.  There are some amusing scenes sprinkled about (like when Hall tricks a fruit cart vendor into giving him free food), although it’s nothing that will exactly make you laugh out loud.  I guess that’s to be expected when Danny (Bobby Jordan) has a murder rap hanging over his head and Muggs is mixed up with shady underworld characters.  However, even the most grounded films in the franchise at least try to deliver in the yuks department.  The East Side Kids vs. hoods finale is also strangely lackluster and feels rushed. 

The supporting cast is unusually strong this time around, which helps somewhat. In addition to Lawrence’s fine performance as the lead heavy, we also have Reefer Madness’ Dave O’Brien as Danny’s older cop brother who tries to get the boys out of their predicament.  Noah Beery Jr. shows up around the halfway mark as Rusty, an older member of the gang who’s now a sailor on shore leave.  He sort of becomes the de facto romantic lead too, which was unnecessary if you ask me, as the romantic subplot gets in the way of the Kids’ jokes and antics.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: FEMALE MERCENARIES 2: THE MAD DOCTOR OF ZOMBIE ISLAND (2008) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 2nd, 2023)

I saw this listed on Tubi as Mad Doctor of Zombie Island, which sounded promising enough.  After sitting through a long prologue about a giant meteor crashing into the Earth (it looks like a wad of aluminum foil), two chicks getting into a Kung Fu battle, and a scene featuring the slowest death via quicksand in screen history, I was kind of flummoxed.  At about the ten-minute mark, the title “Female Mercenaries 2:  The Mad Doctor of Zombie Island” appeared, and it started to make sense why it didn’t make sense:  It was a sequel to a movie I had never heard of, let alone seen.  

Ten more minutes went by, and I was hopelessly lost again.  Characters come and go.  They die, only to reappear as clones.  I was starting to pull my hair out.  

Fortunately, at about the twenty-minute mark, the movie revealed its true purpose:  Gratuitous nude scenes, strangulations, catfights, and bondage.  If the filmmakers had cut the useless first two reels and gotten right to the good stuff, this might’ve skated by with ** ½.  Maybe.  All I know is that things got markedly better the less the actresses wore.  

Anyway, the “plot” has a mad doctor (who I assume died in the first movie) cloning herself on her secret island so she can continue her diabolical experiments.  Every time one of her prisoners dies, she clones them.  Sometimes she turns them into werewolves?!?  After she turns a couple of guys into zombies, their girlfriends team up to storm the island and get revenge.  

No wonder this was so weird.  It was one of those W.A.V.E. Productions where you can basically write your own fetish video and they film it for you.  I guess all the catfights and bondage stuff was OK, but I certainly don’t have a fetish for longwinded prologues and incomprehensible plots.  (Not that you would watch something like this for the plot, but oh well.)  All that stuff got in the way of the fun.  It didn’t help that the sound was bad, and a lot of the dialogue was muffled.  Still, the overly dramatic death scenes were good for a laugh or two.  I also enjoyed the long, lingering shots of the actresses’ butts when they’re lying on the floor dead.  

I’ve been meaning to check out the W.A.V.E. documentary, Mail Order Murder.  I see it’s on Tubi.  I guess I know what tomorrow’s movie is going to be. 

AKA:  Mad Doctor of Zombie Island.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: FEMALE MERCENARIES ON ZOMBIE ISLAND (1995) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 22nd, 2023)

In the year 2000, an asteroid (it looks like your grandma’s chair) hurtles toward Earth with the potential to wipe out all of existence.  Tina Krause’s solution?  Take a shower!

After the asteroid kills most of the population, sexy Doctor Pamela Sutch sets herself up on an island turning men into mindless zombie soldiers and performing brain transplants.  After she kills off most of the peaceful farming women on the island, the survivors swear revenge.  With some help from the zombie henchmen who long to become human again, they plan to overthrow the mad doctor once and for all.

Before I continue with this review, I have to get something off my chest:  There was no goddamn reason this needed to be 111 minutes.  The plot circles around and loops back on itself a lot.  The heroines are captured, then escape, only to be recaptured and escape again.  There are also long scenes where actors are forced to say an incredible amount of ridiculous exposition with a straight face.

That said, it has a scene of Tina Krause getting undressed, taking a shower, being chloroformed, and hogtied, not one but two long text crawls that look like they came out of a Sega Genesis game, and the world ends via piece of furniture, all BEFORE the opening credits start, so it’s not all bad.

Unfortunately, it seems like they added the opening after the fact as the rest of the movie is rather light on nudity.  I guess the filmmakers thought if they frontload it with a lot of T & A to lure you in, you’d forget what you were watching and why you were watching it in the first place.  Oh, did I mention this is a W.A.V.E. movie?  Questioning what the fuck you’re watching kind of goes along with the territory.

We do get some great gore along the way.  There are slashed throats, hilarious brain operation scenes, zombie attacks, and even some Kung Fu too.  I also enjoyed the fact that when the zombies eat people, it’s not raw like in a Romero movie.  They actually take the time to put their prey in a giant pot and cook them like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. 

What else can I tell you about this one?  There’s mud wrestling, bondage, discipline, electrocution, strangulation, wet T-shirts, catfights, and water fights.  I mean, a movie with all that going for it can’t be all bad.  It’s just way too long and much too slow moving in between the good stuff.