NOSFERATU (2024) **

Folks, there’s a reason why the publicity department isn’t showing you what Nosferatu looks like in the new Nosferatu.  Remember the iconic look sported by both Max Schrek and Klaus Kinski?  Gone.  I don’t mean to tell tales out of school, but once we finally got a look at Nosferatu, I about fell out of my chair laughing.  Spoilers ahead. 

This new Nosferatu sports a fucking Rollie Fingers mustache.  Seriously.  Burt Reynolds has nothing on my boy Count Orlak.  Once I saw him, I just couldn’t take the rest of the movie seriously.  I tried.  Honestly, I tried.  It’s just I didn’t know if he was going to suck someone’s blood or offer them a hoppy IPA with nutmeg undertones. 

We’re talking Hipsteratu. 

I mean, this isn’t the first vampire with a mustache in cinema history.  Lon Chaney Jr. had a dapper one as Son of Dracula.  Gary Oldman’s flavor saver wasn’t bad either in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Bill Skarsgard in Nosferatu is one Yosemite Sam looking motherfucker. 

It’s disappointing because the movie looks like a million bucks (although it cost much more).  Some of the drab color schemes work, especially when it’s been completely drained out, so it looks like the black and white original.  I dug the sequence where our bland hero (Nicholas Hoult) goes to Orlak’s castle as the lack of transition shots added to the dreamlike quality of the scene.  Once I finally saw the Count, I was wide awake. 

Guys, I don’t know.  Maybe after It, The Crow, and this we should put a moratorium on remakes and reboots where Bill Skarsgard plays pasty-faced dudes. 

I will say this for Skarsgard, I wasn’t expecting him to hang dong in this.  We’re talking Schlongferatu.

And, you know, for a movie in which almost nothing happens, it’s awfully exhausting.  Lily-Rose Depp blusters and sobs and screeches, but we never feel any sexual tension between her husband OR the bloodsucking Count, which is the big problem.  I mean, Bela Lugosi I can see a gal getting worked up about.  Gary Oldman, sure.  Heck, even the original Nosferatu is a hottie compared to the new guy, who looks like a freeze-dried Frank Zappa. 

Sigh, I still can’t believe they made a movie where Nosferatu sports a Fu Manchu.

Even Willem Dafoe is disappointing as the vampire hunter.  He has a moment or two where it looks like he’s having fun, but he’s never really let off the chain to chew the scenery.  He does get the best line of the movie when he says, “It would make Sir Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother’s womb!”

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BAD TIMING (1980) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Nicolas Roeg directed this odd and bewildering melodrama.  Art Garfunkel stars as an uptight professor who is banging the free-spirited Theresa Russell.  When she overdoses, he takes her to the hospital where he is questioned by cop Harvey Keitel.  Through flashbacks we learn she was married (to Denholm Elliott) and that she and Garfunkel had some serious ups and downs in their relationship. 

Roeg’s artsy-fartsy style works for movies like Performance and Don’t Look Now, but it’s a little cumbersome for a film that’s essentially a relationship drama.  Cutting back and forth between the present and the past seemingly at random is one thing when you’re filming a police interrogation scene.  It’s another thing entirely to intercut scenes of a couple having sex with graphic footage of a tracheotomy. 

The sad thing is Russell (who later went on to marry Roeg) is excellent.  It’s just that the flimsy script leaves her at sea.  You know in movies about the making of a movie, how the dialogue often sounds melodramatic and contrived in the film-within-a-film scene?  That’s how most of the dialogue in Bad Timing sounds.  Like something out of a movie within a movie. 

While Russell is fantastic (and has a couple of nude scenes), Garfunkel is anything but.  The movie might’ve survived had Russell been paired alongside a talent that was her match every step of the way, but the casting of Garfunkel is befuddling at best and a bit painful at worst.  I mean, there were so many other qualified actors you could’ve brought in who could’ve done a better job than Garfunkel.  Heck, there’s a bunch of better musicians who could’ve given a better performance.  For Christ’s sake, Paul Simon would’ve been a better choice than Art Garfunkel.  And the less said about his nude scenes, the better.  Keitel gets by from being Harvey Keitel, but his Sherlock Holmes schtick late in the game becomes tiresome. 

AKA:  Bad Timing:  A Sensual Obsession.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ABDUCTION (2011) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Before Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner fell off the face of the Earth, he tried his hand as an action hero.  Abduction was his first attempt.  It was directed by… (checks notes) Boyz N the Hood’s John Singleton!?!  A quick look at IMDb tells me that this was to be the late director’s final movie.  Which only goes to show that you probably shouldn’t direct a Taylor Lautner action movie is there’s always a chance it will be your final directing credit. 

Lautner stars as a high school student who stumbles upon a picture of himself on a website for missing children.  He calls the missing kids hotline, which turns out to be a trap because the bad guys come after him and the people he thought were his parents die protecting him.  Taylor and his girlfriend (Lily Collins) go on the run.  Before long, the bad guys, the CIA, and the guys from the CIA who are also bad guys come after him. 

Basically, all this plays like a Young Adult version of The Bourne Identity.  Despite a decent hook, it quickly devolves into your typical man on the run (or in this case, teen on the run) cliches.  The title also makes no sense because Taylor’s character was never abducted to begin with. 

For a movie so generic and forgettable, it has a shockingly good supporting cast.  We have Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Sigourney Weaver, and Alfred Molina in the cast.  (They all must’ve been Team Jacob.)  They came to play too, which is nice, as their efforts make the film, at the very least, watchable.

I guess Singleton was trying his hand at a mid-budget studio action flick.  Even the rather lame 2 Fast 2 Furious had a sense of energy and silliness to it.  While competent and slick (the direction that is, the script is another matter entirely), it’s never quite engaging.   With a passable action star in the lead and a script that wasn’t so generic, this might’ve worked.  With Lautner front and center, Abduction just seems like something your grandmother would watch on Ion TV in the middle of the afternoon. 

CAVEMAN (1981) **

Ringo Starr and Dennis Quaid star as cavemen in this goofy prehistoric comedy.  They spend most of their days having to hide from dinosaurs and avoid getting beat up by the big and hairy John Matusak.  Ringo wants Matusak’s mate, Barbara Bach for his own, and when he unsuccessfully tries to woo her, he is cast out of the tribe.  Along with Quaid, another cave babe (a pre-Cheers Shelley Long), and her blind father (Jack Gilford), they find a new tribe and discover fire and music (on the same night, no less).  Eventually, Ringo brings everybody together to do battle with Matusak’s tribe and in doing so, learns Shelly’s the real gal for him. 

The stop-motion effects (by Jim Danforth) are really well done, even if the dinosaurs themselves are overly cutesy.  In fact, other than the oddball cast of familiar faces grunting and running around in loincloths, the dinos are the best thing about it. 

There’s no actual English dialogue (mostly) except when the cavemen say each other’s names as everyone speaks in grunts or in childish caveman language.  (Theater patrons were given a handy pamphlet with all the meanings of the caveman language when it was first released.)  It’s all kind of silly and harmless, though it’s rarely laugh-out-loud funny.  It would probably be perfect for kids if it wasn’t for the cringey scene where Starr gives Bach berries that make her fall to sleep and then he tries (and fails) to bang her. 

Starr coasts on the sheer fact that you’re watching everyone’s fourth favorite Beatle in a dumb caveman movie.  At least some good came out of it as he met his future wife Barbara Bach while making this.  Bach looks great in her skimpy pelts, even if she isn’t really given anything to do other than look great in a skimpy pelt.  No wonder Ringo snapped her up.  Likewise, Quaid is mostly wasted as he’s basically a third wheel, which is ironic since the first wheel hadn’t even been invented yet.  Richard Moll also shows up in a memorable bit as an Abominable Snowman. 

The director and co-writer, Carl Gottlieb (most famous for co-writing the screenplay to Jaws) also co-wrote Jaws 3-D, which also starred Quaid. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: AMERICAN NIGHTMARE (2002) ***

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on October 2nd, 2013)

Debbie Rochon is a psycho nurse who hacks up a bunch of teens in the woods. One year later, a pirate radio DJ does a show commemorating the slaying. The theme of the show is fear, and the DJ gets his listeners to call in and tell him their biggest fear. A group of friends in a trendy coffee shop call in and confess their fears, unaware that Rochon is listening in. When the friends go their separate ways, Rochon begins stalking them and picks them off one by one by turning their worst fears against them.

I first saw John Keeyes’ American Nightmare when it first hit video and thought it was pretty solid. Watching it now, it feels a bit dated (if it was made today, it would probably revolve around a podcast instead of a pirate radio station), although people still spend a lot of time sitting around trendy coffee shops on their laptops nowadays. But other than that, I like it quite a bit. Considering the crap that has been made since, it’s an easy call to say that American Nightmare is one of the best independent horror movies of the ‘00s.

Sometimes, American Nightmare feels like a horror version of Friends. The main characters sit around a coffee shop and crack jokes and make pop culture references. Once the action shifts to Rochon bumping people off, the flick really starts to cook.

And Debbie Rochon, it must be said, is quite amazing in this movie. In a career of great performances, this one is her finest. It’s a wonderful showcase for her many talents. She’s sexy, scary, tough, and menacing; sometimes all at the same time. The scene where she masturbates with a knife is really creepy and she has a great topless scene where she ties a guy up and guts him.

American Nightmare is at its best when Rochon is stalking and killing people. The ending however goes on a bit too long and the final twist doesn’t exactly work, but there is plenty to enjoy about this chiller. Plus, you get a cool cameo by Brinke Stevens (in her Evila costume, no less) too.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE HITCHHIKERS (1972) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

The Hitchhikers may not be as well-known as similar fare of the era, but it is a ripe slice of ‘70s drive-in cinema.  Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Beverly and Ferd Sebastian (who also made Gator Bait, a certified drive-in classic if there ever was one) it tells the story of Maggie (Misty Rowe) who learns she’s pregnant and hits the road to go to L.A.  She meets a bunch of oddballs along the way, most who either want to rob or screw her.  Maggie eventually winds up at the ranch commune lorded over by a man named Benson (Nick Klar) who lives with a bunch of grungy chicks he calls his “family”. 

Any similarities between Benson and Manson are purely intentional. 

It seems Benson has quite the criminal enterprise going.  He gets his “girls” to pose as sexy hitchhikers, and when a poor schmo pulls to the side of the road to help them, Benson and the gang spring on them and rob them like the highwaymen of old.  Unsurprisingly, he takes a shine to Maggie, and before long, he’s showing her the ropes of how to be a sexy hitchhiking thief. 

With apologies to Barbie Benton, I think Misty Rowe was the hottest of the Hee-Haw Honeys.  Her platinum blonde look and sexy demeanor makes her an ideal Drive-In Queen.  For whatever reason, other than a handful of Larry Buchanan movies, her career never really lived up to her early potential as this was a rather auspicious film debut. 

The Hitchhikers has some big swings in tone.  It goes from a carefree vibe to a buzz-killing rape scene.  There’s a depressing makeshift abortion that’s followed by an orgy.  Some will be turned off by that rollercoaster effect, but I found the “anything goes” tone to be indicative of its drive-in sensibilities.  I also dug the Folk Rock soundtrack that acts as a Greek Chorus over Maggie’s various trials and tribulations. 

The only real flaw is the lack of a concrete ending.  You would think that having a heroine shacking up with a Manson stand-in would lead to some sort of violent confrontation in the end.  However, (slight spoiler) the open-ended wrap-up means Maggie gets her happy ending, but at the same time, the audience really deserved some sort of satisfying conclusion.  Instead, the film basically peters out at the end.  On the plus side, it has healthy doses of T & A, courtesy of cat fights, skinny-dipping, and sex scenes.  Plus, Misty is terrific, so if for that and nothing else, The Hitchhikers is worth picking up. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SHOT ON LOCATION (1972) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on December 12th, 2024)

Rick Lutze is a sleazy movie producer who wants to double cross a rival in order to make his dream project.  His plan is to get an underage wannabe porn starlet (Sandy Dempsey) to seduce the competition so he can blackmail him.  Lutze then promises the young ingenue a part in their latest picture (a porno western).  Problems arise when the director accidentally casts the wrong actress in the lead role.  Things eventually work themselves out when everyone involved decides to have a big orgy. 

Some sources list Shot on Location as being directed by Ed Wood.  That kind of makes sense because there is a reference to Criswell.  However, the consensus seems to be it was directed by Donn (Alice in Acidland) Greer.  Either way, it’s a fun slice of old-time smut.  

The cast is particularly charming.  Rene Bond takes the acting honors as the production’s sexy secretary/script girl.  She looks terrific as always and delivers a top-notch BJ scene.  Dempsey really gets into her sex scene on the casting couch and is a lot of fun to watch throughout.  The big orgy sequence has a lot of energy too. 

I do wish they had taken advantage of the western outdoor setting though.  I mean you’ve got everyone in their Native American garb, you might as well put them to good use.  Oh well, at least the final pun works surprisingly well as it really ends the movie with a bang in more ways than one. 

The music is also good for an unintentional laugh or two.  One scene uses music from (what sounds like) the Barbarella soundtrack and others are accompanied by Muzak versions of “It’s Impossible” and “Those Were the Days”.  The dialogue is great as well and features some real humdingers, like when Lutze sees a starlet naked and says, “What I wouldn’t give to be a goose pimple!”  My favorite line though was “If you can’t join ‘em, lick ‘em!”

Greer later went on to direct the immortal Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle.