LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SHAFT (1971) ****

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 18th, 2007)

“Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?  SHAFT!”  Damn right!  Shaft was the first breakthrough Blaxploitation movie of the ‘70s and it’s still as badass as ever.  Richard Roundtree is simply awesome as the tough talking, hard hitting private eye John Shaft who gets hired by a gangster named Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his kidnapped daughter.  While Gordon Parks’ direction in the opening scenes and during the climax is tip top, he unfortunately lets the pacing drag during the film’s saggy middle section.  But Roundtree carries the film with his intense magnetism and makes for a great ‘70s action hero.  He definitely is “one bad mother”.  Isaac Hayes’ outstanding Oscar winning score is one of the greatest in movie history.  The movie was a big hit and gave way to many imitators, and opened the door for more Blaxploitation action flicks. Roundtree returned for two sequels, a TV show and a 2000 remake which starred Samuel L. Jackson.

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 (2024) **

You know, for a movie called “The Strangers”, it seems awfully familiar. 

Directed by the great Renny (Cliffhanger) Harlin, Chapter 1 is supposed to kick off a new “trilogy” of Strangers movies.  I don’t know how they are going to string this thin premise across three movies.  There’s barely enough plot here for one flick, let alone three. 

The plot is similar to the first movie.  The key differences is that instead of focusing on a husband and wife contemplating breaking up, we have a happy couple as the leads, and instead of the Strangers invading their home, it’s a crappy Airbnb out in the woods.  Other than that, it’s the same flick. 

I didn’t even really like The Strangers the first time around, but it was OK for what it was.  While the sequel, Prey at Night, wasn’t much better, it at least it had a faux ‘80s vibe going on that I appreciated.  This one has to be the most generic slasher since the ‘80s, which is a bold statement, but one I think I can stand by. 

What makes it so disappointing is the fact that Harlin is usually a fun and kinetic director.  This time out, he left his style and sense of fun at home.  I will say he keeps things moving.  It’s never dull, but it never really cooks either. 

It doesn’t help that the two main characters are two of the dumbest people to ever have the misfortune of being in a horror movie.  This should’ve been over at the twenty-minute mark had it starred anyone with half a brain cell.  All the girl had to do was turn around to find one of the Strangers standing behind her.  Even better, she should’ve introduced herself to the Strangers and then they wouldn’t be strangers anymore, and then we could’ve all gone home. 

This movie offered up some of the biggest unintentional laughs I’ve had in a theater in some time.  That’s why I can’t find it in my heart to give it any lower than **.  The nearly full crowd I saw it with were roaring with laughter too, mostly at the sheer idiocy of the couple and their priceless reaction shots that evoke more chuckles than chills. 

As bad as it is, I’m hopeful that Chapter 2 (which is already shot and ready to be released) could work.  Hopefully, Harlin has gotten rebooting the first movie out of his system and he can finally do something new with the material.  After all, this is the man who gave us A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master, Die Hard 2 and Exorcist:  The Beginning, so he definitely knows his way around a sequel. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE (1974) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Lady Snowblood:  Love Song of Vengeance kicks off with a great, long, unbroken tracking shot of Lady Snowblood (Meiko Kaji, who is excellent once again) hacking up a bunch of bandits with her sword without even breaking a sweat.  There’s also a similarly breathtaking shot minutes later when she goes toe to toe with some cops.  And all this before the title even pops up on the screen!  Unfortunately, this is about where the movie tops out, but it still remains a solid sequel through and through.

This time out, Lady Snowblood is arrested for her crimes in the first movie.  She is rescued from the gallows by a crooked government official who wants her to spy on a revolutionary.  Gradually, she is swayed into joining his cause.  Later, when he and his fellow anarchists are found murdered, Lady Snowblood springs into action. 

Love Song of Vengeance is a fun samurai flick, but it is a noticeable step down compared to the original Lady Snowblood.  The biggest debit is that it’s more or less a political intrigue thriller.  While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it lacks the punch of a typical revenge flick.  Since Lady Snowblood has already satisfied her need for revenge, it’s missing the urgency of its predecessor.  Furthermore, it feels like she gets sidelined once the plot focuses on the revolutionary and his estranged doctor brother.  Still, the sword fights are fairly graphic as we get a pretty good knife in the face effect and a gnarly punctured eyeball scene. 

This isn’t a bad flick overall.  Far from it.  It’s just that the original casts a long shadow.  I also wish Kaji had more to do during the middle section.  While the film is bookended with some great swordplay, it certainly loses some spark once she becomes a bystander to the action.  The film also sports a fine electronic-inspired score, although I personally missed the theme song from the original. 

AKA:  Lady Snowblood 2:  Love Song of Vengeance.  AKA:  Web of Treachery.  

1,000 SHAPES OF A FEMALE (1963) * ½

An art dealer wants to put on a show dedicated to the nude female form in Greenwich Village.  After he scours the bohemian coffee shops looking for the right artists to showcase, we see the artists at work as they hire models to disrobe and pose for them.  It all ends with a big art show, and it isn’t long before it turns into a swinging party. 

Basically, the stuff with the art dealer just exists as an excuse to string together a series of scenes where an artist paints nude figure models.  Director Barry (The Beast That Killed Women) Mahon delivers these sequences in a workmanlike manner.  Most of these scenes are lukewarm at best, but I did like the parts when the artist used his models’ bodies as his “brush”.  

The performers include plenty of familiar faces from the ‘60s exploitation circuit such as Gigi Darlene, Darlene Bennett, Byron Mabe, and Olga herself, Audrey Campbell.  Despite a solid cast, the majority of 1,000 Shapes of a Female is pretty dull.  The performances by folk musicians are only there to act as padding and are sure to grate on your nerves.  At least some of the wry narration is good for a chuckle.  (Like when they try to draw comparisons of nude paintings to the works of the old masters.)  Speaking of narration, this is one of those movies that features narration that overlaps the dialogue and/or gratuitously explains to the audience the action on screen.  This shit gets annoying after a while.

The scene where an artist uses darts to pop paint-filled balloons for his work is kind of amusing, but the film needed more of these nutty touches to make it worthwhile.  Inexplicably odd moments (like when the models swap recipes while posing nude) help ensure there’s no chance of titillation whatsoever.  That is, unless you have a nude figure model and/or body painting fetish.  I guess.

AKA:  1,000 Female Shapes.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: LADY SNOWBLOOD (1974) ****

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

Quentin Tarantino ripped off this movie when he made Kill Bill Vol. 1.  Not only did he copy the vibe of the main character for O-Ren Ishii, he used the same chapter structure, stole the look of the snow-covered opening scene, and he also used the awesome theme song.  Like most films Tarantino cribs from, it got a second life on home video.  Now that more people have seen it, it’s rightfully recognized as one of the most badass lady samurai movies ever made. 

The awesome Meiko Kaji (from the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies) stars as Lady Snowblood.  Using her trick sword that doubles as an umbrella, she sets out to get revenge on the men who killed her mother.  Lone Wolf and Cub had their baby cart full of weapons.  Zatoichi had his cane sword.  Lady Snowblood has her umbrella sword.  It’s a cool way to make her enemies think she’s just a dainty gal out for a stroll before she dispatches them with authority. 

Kaji is terrific in this, especially in her quieter scenes where she just broods with vengeance.  The opening scene sets the stage nicely as Kaji uses her sword to hack off limbs and cause arterial spray to decorate walls.  In fact, all the sword fights wind up painting the room red at some point or another. 

Lady Snowblood also contains one heck of an origin story that is told in a mixture of highly stylized flashback and a series of still photographs, as well as a particularly brutal training sequence (made even more so due to the fact that it’s a little girl being trained).  The plot also wonderfully complicates her quest for revenge as she winds up becoming acquaintances with her targets’ offspring.  There’s also a great moment when she learns that one of her intended victims is already dead, which pains her to no end.  Little touches like this help to make Lady Snowblood stand head and shoulders (not to mention severed limbs) above other revenge pictures. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEATHDREAM (1974) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

Andy (Richard Backus) is killed in Vietnam and his over-grieving mother (Lynn Carlin) “wishes” him back to life. He returns home the next day, but he’s not quite the same. He’s quiet, withdrawn and he spends a LOT of time in his rocking chair. Dad (John Marley from The Godfather) knows something’s wrong when in a fit of rage Andy strangles the family dog. He gets their family doctor (Henderson Forsythe) to do a check-up on Andy and when he discovers he has no pulse or heartbeat, Andy stabs him to death with a syringe and extracts the doctor’s blood and shoots it up. Meanwhile Andy’s sister Cathy (Anya Ormsby) tries to get Andy to go out with his estranged girlfriend (Jane Daly) and they have a double date at a drive-in. It turns out to be a date from Hell as the rapidly decomposing Andy murders his date, strangles his sister’s boyfriend with a drive-in speaker, and runs over some poor kid with his car. The tragic ending where the zombified Andy begs his mother to put him in his grave so he can finally find peace is as heartbreaking as it is creepy.

This is probably Bob (A Christmas Story) Clark’s best film ever. He drenches the film in a spooky atmosphere and knows how to creep his audience out. He brings real dimension to the scenes where Andy’s family unit disintegrates, and the final drive-in massacre is one for the books. Backus is incredibly eerie and ominous as Andy. With his cold stare, incessant rocking and hair-raising line readings, Backus delivers one of horror history’s greatest villains. But he’s really more of a victim. He never asked to come back to life and he’s only dealing with it in the only way he knows how.

Clark doesn’t overdo it with the wartime allegories, but they’re there plain as day (especially the scene where Andy shoots up the doctor’s blood), and they give Deathdream an added depth and dimension countless horror films lack. Alan Ormsby wrote the multilayered and thought-provoking screenplay and also collaborated with Clark on Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Deranged. He also provided the excellent make-up effects, along with a young Tom Savani.

AKA: Dead of Night. AKA: Night Walk. AKA: The Night Andy Came Home. AKA: The Veteran. AKA: Whispers. 

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Deathdream is what the kids refer to as a straight-up banger.  It fires on all cylinders and once it takes hold of you, it never lets you go.  I also love how unhinged the many supporting characters are from the talkative mailman to the stuttering line cook to the cop who won’t stop fiddling with the blinds.  Watching it now as a parent, it hits slightly different and cuts even deeper, especially the heartbreaking final scene.  In short, it’s an all-timer from top to bottom. 

4K UHD NOTES:

This was my first disc from Blue Underground, and it’s without a doubt one of the best 4k transfers I’ve seen.  The film simply looks flawless as the nighttime scenes are appropriately dark. but not too dark.  The picture is consistently sharp, and it looks brand spanking new while still preserving the ‘70s drive-in aesthetic.  For horror fans, this will be a must own. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ARMY OF DARKNESS (1993) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 30th, 2009)

Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets whisked away to medieval times where he is immediately enslaved and sentenced to die in a pit fight with some Deadites.  He easily kicks loads of ass and pretty soon everyone is calling him “The Promised One”.  In order to stop the Evil Dead from haunting the King’s castle, Ash has to go on a quest to retrieve the Necronomicon.  Whilst removing the book from its unholy cradle, Ash fucks up the magic words (“Klaatu… Barata… Cough… Cough… Cough!") and it doesn’t take long before the dreaded Deadites are trying to break down the castle walls.  Luckily, with a little 20th century know-how Ash is able to fend off the Army of Darkness and return to his own time.  (If he can ever get those words right.)

Army of Darkness is the best film in The Evil Dead trilogy.  This is not a popular opinion.  I know I am in the minority on this one, but for me this is the most balls out fun movie in the series.  Not only is it the best of the Evil Deads; it’s also one of the greatest movies ever made.  (It’s Number 4 on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of All Time List in between Fight Club and Halloween.)  This movie rocks and it rocks HARD.  It’s ten times funnier than most comedies and features enough movie in-jokes to make your head spin.  (Everything from The Three Stooges to Jason and the Argonauts to Gulliver’s Travels to The Manster to The Day the Earth Stood Still is referenced.) 

In addition to the wide range of film references, director Sam Raimi mashes up a whole bunch of genres and hits the PUREE button.  There’s horror, sword and sorcery, comedy, and even a little romance too.  Army also features more action than you can shake a stick at.  Throughout the movie Ash battles monsters in the pit (the part where he leaps in the air and his chainsaw lands on his stump is priceless), gets attacked by miniature versions of himself, fights his evil double, gets sucked into a vortex, gets assaulted by an evil book, and goes to war against an army of skeletons.  Raimi films all of this with his usual manic energy and the results are one Hell of a breathtaking, non-stop, hilarious, good time.

Most reviews I’ve read of this film always whine that there isn’t as much blood as the previous films.  Umm… HELLO didn’t you see that great big geyser of blood when that one guy got pushed into the pit?  That scene alone featured three times the amount of blood than the first two movies combined.  This scene also gives us a pretty good severed head and a disembodied hand, so I don’t want to even hear these petty gripes about the lack of gore. 

What makes Army of Darkness standout from the other films in the series (besides the bigger budget that is) is that Ash actually has a character arc in this one.  He just isn’t being repeatedly assaulted by the undead (well he is, but still).  He goes from being a loudmouth, to being a coward, to finally, a hero.  Bruce plays all of these facets of his character extremely well; particularly in the scenes where he acts like a complete jackass to people. 

This movie also has the most quotable dialogue than any film ever conceived by the human mind.  If you don’t quote the following lines aloud in casual everyday conversations, then there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with you:

“Well HELLO Mr. Fancy Pants!  I got news for you pal; you ain’t leading but two things right now, Jack and Shit.  And Jack left town!”

“All right, you primitive screwheads listen up!  You see this?  This is my BOOMSTICK!”

“Now I swear… the next one of you primates, even touches me…”

“First you wanna kill me… now you want to kiss me… BLOW!”  (This is particularly effective on first dates.)

“Yo, She-Bitch!  Let’s go!”  (Again, great to use on a first date.)

“Gimme some sugar baby!”  (Likewise, a golden statement for a first date.)

“Good… bad… I’m the guy with the gun.”  (Good for a night in Compton.)

“That’s just what we call pillow talk, baby!”  (In fact, nearly everything Ash says in this movie could be said on a first date.)

“Say hello to the 21st century!”  (Which is fitting since we’re actually in the 21st century now.) 

And of course, the immortal, “Hail to the king baby!”

You can tell that Raimi was particularly proud of his dialogue because during the closing credits, his (along with his brother Ivan) screenwriting credit appears before his directing credit.  I’d be proud of that shit too.  Raimi went on to direct the Spider-Man trilogy.  They were great and all, but none of those movies captured the sheer awesomeness of this flick.  It’s truly one of the greatest movies in the history of the human race.

Army of Darkness is Numero Uno on The Video Vacuum Top Ten Films of the Year 1993.

QUICK THOUGHTS:

What else is there to say about Army of Darkness?  It’s one of the greatest movies of all time.  It’s in my personal Top 10.  This is one flick I can put on just about any time, anywhere. and immediately be sent to my Happy Place.  In a word, it’s “GROOVY!”

4K UHD NOTES:

The transfer by Scream Factory is typically excellent.  The picture is sharp and clear and even the darker scenes really feel crisp.  Sure, there’s an occasional muddy shot here and there, but this is the best I’ve seen it look and I’ve seen it easily a hundred times over the past thirty years.  Heck, even some of the wonky green screen effects look pretty damned good now.  What more can an Evil Dead fanboy hope for?