THE NIGHTINGALE (2019) ****

Most people would be overjoyed to quarantine themselves away for weeks at a time and do nothing but watch movies 24/7.  I mean, Hell, I pretty much do that anyway.  “Social Distancing”?  I’ve been socially distant long before it became chic.  

Well, it just so happens that the one month the government tells everyone to stay indoors and don’t do diddly is the month that life decides to kick me in the nuts.  I won’t go into detail or anything.  Just know that my month has played out like a Lifetime Movie, and not one of the good ones involving demented oversexed au pairs.  No, this one involves the threat of perpetual unemployment, the death of a family member, a loved one having a cancer scare, and getting rear-ended in traffic on the way to the hospital.  It’s been one of those months.  That’s not to mention all the COVID-19 shit going on in the world.  Because of that, these already stressful events are magnified, making going out to accomplish the simplest of tasks even more difficult.  Thankfully, my family’s been spared from the Coronavirus (so far), but I have to tell you dear readers, I don’t know how much more I can take.  

What I’m saying is that after a month like that, I needed a pick-me-up.  I needed to give myself over to the healing power of cinema and watch a movie that would brighten my mood.  That would uplift my spirits.  That would reaffirm my place with the human race.

Unfortunately, I watched The Nightingale.  

I’m not saying this is a bad film.  Far from it.  It’s just I didn’t realize I was getting myself into.  You know the term “Feel Good Movies”?  This is probably the best “Feel Bad Movie” of the decade.  

It’s all about Clare (Aisling Franciosi), an Irish woman, who along with her husband (Michael Sheasby) work as slaves to an arrogant British officer named Hawkins (Sam Claflin).  When he’s denied a promotion, he takes out his frustrations by killing Clare’s husband and newborn baby, all the while he and his men take turns raping her.  They then go off to an Army post and she follows in hot pursuit, accompanied by an Aborigine guide named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) who’s just as prejudiced against her as she is of him.  Eventually, a mutual respect grows between them and together, they hunt down the men who shattered her world.  

So, basically what we got here is I Spit on Your Walkabout.  

Like I said, this was a tough sit.  In fact, it took me a couple days to get all the way through.  It’s brutal, uncompromising, and a real punch to the gut.  I give director Jennifer Kent, already a legend for directing The Babadook, a lot of credit for making this movie.  After that film became a cult phenomenon, I’m sure she could’ve taken the brass ring and directed a Marvel flick or some other Hollywood bullshit.  Instead, she made a difficult, unsettling, horror/western hybrid that features a lot of subtitles, thick accents, period costumes, and an unflinching eye for gruesome detail.  

This is unquestionably a masterpiece.  I just wish I saw it under better circumstances.  (Rape, racism, and infant murder isn’t the sort of thing to lift one’s spirits.) No matter how repulsive the subject matter got, and no matter how shitty my week has been, I still stuck with it to the bitter end.  (I had to divvy it up over a couple nights though because it eventually became too much for me.)  Kent’s style is masterful and with this film she proves that she is one of the best directors of the century.  Not only that, but she’s the rare filmmaker that makes nightmare sequences truly nightmarish.  Most directors just toss them into the mix to pad the running time.  Kent’s nightmare scenes help reinforce the main character’s fragile mental state to the audience.  Not only that, but they make you feel like you’re experiencing a dream in real time.  The effect packs a real punch.

I guess on one hand you could say that my problems were small potatoes compared to Clare’s.  That didn’t cheer me up though.  I did admire her resilience in the face of adversity.  Still, even when she and Billy give the bad guys their eventual comeuppance, it isn’t pretty, let alone satisfying.  One guy suffers one of the slowest, most antagonizing deaths I’ve seen in some time.  When he finally kicks the bucket, you let loose a sigh of relief instead of a rousing fist pump.  The other deaths are quicker, though just about as messy.  

It took me a scene or two to recognize Hawkins’ second-in-command as Damon Herriman.  You may remember him as Dewey on Justified or as Charles Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  He takes playing a creep to all new levels in this one.

I’m sorry it took me so long to see The Nightingale.  If I saw it earlier, it definitely would’ve made the Top Five of the Year list.  I’m also sorry about dragging my personal life into the review, but I had to vent.  Hopefully, April is a tad kinder to me than March.  

Stay safe.  Stay indoors.  Stay healthy, people.

TRICK (2019) ** ½

After Rob Zombie parted ways with the Halloween franchise, director Patrick Lussier and his My Bloody Valentine 3-D screenwriter Todd Farmer were brought in to do the next installment.  Unfortunately, that project stalled out before the cameras had a chance to roll.  As a fan of not only My Bloody Valentine 3-D, but also the duo’s Drive Angry, I’ve always yearned to see what they could’ve done with the Halloween series.  Their latest collaboration, Trick kind of gives you a glimpse of what could’ve been.  

Like Halloween, Trick features a seemingly supernatural killer who appears on Halloween to carve up his victims.  Instead of Michael Myers, it’s a high school student named Trick, who snaps on Halloween, kills his friends, and is shot by a cop, played by Omar Epps before disappearing into the night.  Epps is kind of like the Dr. Loomis stand-in as every time Halloween rolls around, he tries to warn everyone that Trick will come back, but no one believes him until it’s too late.  Each Halloween, Trick hides behind a different mask.  (The pumpkin mask he starts off with is a lot cooler than each of his successive disguises.)  

In addition to Halloween, there’s also a bit of a Scream vibe going on as the hooded killer playfully taunts his victims with a knife before cutting them up.  The fact that Lussier edited the Scream movies and the cast includes not only Scream 2’s Epps, but Jamie Kennedy only adds to the déjà vu.  Admittedly, the film’s mythology is a bit lacking when compared to those franchises, although the final twist is clever enough.  

Even though it heavily trades on the slashers of the past for inspiration, Trick is a decent enough horror film.  The emphasis on the police procedural aspect helps make it feel more like a “grown up movie” than a common-denominator Dead Teenager Flick.  The gore and bloodletting are kept at an adequate level and the body count mounts up quite nicely.  

While it lacks the out-and-out fun of their previous outings, it’s nice seeing Lussier and Farmer getting a belated chance to flex their cinematic muscles again.  On the downside, it’s a tad overlong (it’s over a 100 minutes) and suffers from some instances of shaky-cam during the suspenseful sequences.  I exactly can’t say Trick is a treat, but I’m still glad I saw it.  Besides, it’s hard to completely dismiss a movie that boasts a shotgun-toting Tom Atkins. 

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ATTACK OF THE 5 FT. 2 WOMEN (1994) **

When Julie Brown wrote and co-directed this Showtime Original spoof of tabloid staples Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt, it had a ripped-from-the-headlines feel to it.  Watching it now, with some distance from the real events, it probably plays better than it did when it was first released.  Recently, Harding’s life was dramatized in I, Tonya, and Bobbitt became the subject of an Amazon Prime documentary.  What’s fascinating is that Brown’s treatment of the events may seem crass, but they aren’t too far removed from what really happened.  (At least in the Harding segment.)  I guess truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes.  

Tonya:  The Battle of Wounded Knee (**) tells the story of a white trash ice skater named Tonya Hardly (Brown) who is tired of perpetually being a runner-up.  With her dumbass boyfriend and nitwit friend, they conspire to take out the competition, Nancy Cardigan (Khrystyne Haje from Head of the Class).  Predictably, things don’t go as planned.  

It’s been a while since I saw I, Tonya, but I swear there are some scenes in that movie that are identical to this one.  Sure, there are plenty of groan-inducing jokes, and at least one funny sight gag (Tonya using her ice skate to cut a pizza).  It’s just that it’s more fun to watch the “real” bits of the story creeping through the obvious jokes and comedic set pieces.  Brown is an actress I’ve always admired, even if her shtick is kind of thin, but she commits totally to the role and is fun to watch.  

Next, Richard (Vamp) Wenk directs He Never Gave Me Orgasm:  The Lenora Babbitt Story (**).  It finds Babbitt having a lunch meeting with an agent (Sam McMurray) to help jumpstart her career.  While eating, she relates the events that led her to severing her husband’s member.  

The tone is a lot more over the top than the first segment.  The big joke here is that whenever “Lenora” walks by a man, they instinctively cross their legs.  In fact, the whole thing is essentially one long dick joke, and it wasn’t particularly funny to begin with.  The best Dick in the movie is Dick Miller, who plays the detective who leads the hunt for the lost member.  We also get bits by Priscilla Barnes and Vicki Lawrence (as herself), which compensate for the rest of the film’s… err… shortcomings.

Overall, this is about what you’d expect from a Made for Showtime National Lampoon’s movie from the ‘90s.  In fact, it plays more like an overlong Mad Magazine parody than anything.  Fans of Brown will enjoy seeing her gamely portraying two broad characterizations of tabloid queens, but that’s about where the fun stops.

Wenk later went on to write the modern classics The Expendables 2 and The Equalizer. 

CRUISIN’ HIGH (1976) **

The Silks are a high school gang who are at war with a rival Mexican gang called the Rudeas.  When they kill the Silks’ leader, Punch (Derrel Maury) in a drive-by shooting, the hot-tempered Cat (David Kyle) takes command.  He orders retaliation upon the Rudeas, which leads to more dead bodies.  Cat idolizes his older brother, Joey (Steve Bond), who used to lead the Silks and is now serving a prison sentence.  Joey gets out of jail and tries to go straight, effectively turning his back on the gang.  This infuriates Cat, and he sets out to make Joey pay by killing his girlfriend (Kelly Yaegermann). 

Cruisin’ High is a ho-hum high school gang drama that feels more like a collection of clichés tossed in a blender rather than a straightforward narrative.  None of it quite works either, as it plays like a ‘50s Juvenile Delinquent flick (unsuccessfully) updated for the ‘70s drive-in crowd.  As such, it’s remarkably low on anything that would appeal to exploitation fans.  The violence is rather lightweight and the nudity is fleeting.

None of that would’ve mattered if the drama between the gang members was involving.  The conflict between the opposing gangs is negligible at best, and the stuff with the feuding brothers is introduced too late in the picture to make much of an impact by the time the finale runs around.  Director John (Day of the Nightmare) Bushelman doesn’t stage the gang violence particularly well, but the cinematography by Bruce Logan (who would go on to be the D.P. on Tron) is crisp and at least gives the scenes of gang rumbles, teacher intimidation, and classic cars cruising up and down the strip a touch of class.

Two years later, Kyle went on to play Judith Myers’ boyfriend in Halloween.

AKA:  Cat Murkil and the Silks.  AKA:  The Silks.

THE INVISIBLE MAN (2020) *

You know, in MY day when they made an Invisible Man movie, they MADE an Invisible Man movie.  Filmmakers really knew what the audience wanted to see back in those days.  They also knew exactly what a man would really do once he became invisible.  That of course, is go to the nearest girls’ locker room and spy on college girls showering.  If you don’t believe me, just go watch The Man Who Wasn’t There in 3-D, The Invisible Kid, and The Invisible Maniac.  You know, the classics.  

In this newfangled Invisible Man, there’s only one dang shower scene and the Invisible Man doesn’t even sneak a peek.  Then again, the woman in question is his wife, so he’s already seen her naked, but still.  

To make matters worse, he keeps harassing his wife and trying to drive her crazy.  He steals her bedsheets at night, makes her burn her bacon, and harms her loved ones by making it look like she did it.  Dude, you’re freaking invisible and you’re spending all your energy on your ex?  There are plenty of invisible fish in the sea.  

Remember when Universal Studios made The Mummy with Tom Cruise and it was going to open the doors for a Universal Monsters shared universe?  Except no one went to see it, so they canceled it.  The Mummy was a big budget epic with a fun sense of adventure and cool special effects.  This is like a Lifetime Movie, but with an Invisible Man.  It should’ve been called Stalked by My Invisible Ex or Escaping Invisibility or Mother, May I Sleep with the Invisible Man? or some shit.  The budget was so pathetic that there are only like six special effects shots in the whole thing and even the most rudimentary effect (like a gun floating in mid-air) looked better in the Invisible Man films from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

It’s like they forgot how to make an Invisible Man movie.  Never mind the fact that he doesn’t spy on college girls showering.  The worst aspect is that it’s not a serum that turns him invisible, it’s a suit.  That means the formula doesn’t turn him crazy, he’s already crazy from the get-go, which is a gross miscalculation.  Universal Monsters always worked when there was a tinge of sympathy.  The Wolf Man didn’t want to turn into a werewolf, Frankenstein didn’t ask to be created, Dracula was just looking for someone to love, and the Invisible Man was the victim of a side effect of a poorly tested drug.  (Nowadays, there’d be a commercial listing the possible side effects, including coughing, fever, and turning batshit insane.)  Heck, even the Universal Monsters of the 21^st century were sympathetic.   

Another miscalculation is having the whole thing hinge on the wife.  Imagine if James Whale made The Invisible Man with Gloria Stuart as the star and gave Claude Rains one freaking line for 75% of the running time.  I get what they’re trying to say.  She’s trying to escape a bad relationship, and wherever she goes, he’s still with her, even if she can’t see him.  It’s Invisible Me Too.  It’s just that the handling of everything is so TV Movie of the Week.  Give me the Mission:  Impossible, but with a Mummy treatment of the Universal classics any day.  Either that or they should’ve taken the Guillermo del Toro route and sexed up the monster a la The Shape of Water.  You can’t tell me it wouldn’t been awesome seeing the Invisible Man knocking the invisible boots.  

This Invisible Man is also one of those Woman Takes a Long Pointless Walk Down a Hallway Only to Be Frightened by the Obvious Jump Scare movie.  There’s hardly a sound for minutes on end, then the soundtrack CRASHBOOMBANGSCREECHES to overcompensate for the predictably placed jump scare.  In fact, this is probably one of the quietest films I’ve seen in a long time.  So quiet in fact that the sound from the theater next door threatened to drown out what little noise was coming from our screen.  Heck, I started getting more caught up from the sounds coming from the wall than the sights coming from the screen.  

I can’t say it’s all bad though.  There’s one great scene where a woman is being a total Karen to her server in a restaurant and the Invisible Man has enough of her shit and cuts her throat.  You know you’re in trouble with a horror movie when your most sympathetic character is the waiter.

SEXPLORER (1976) ** ½

An alien the size of a marble lands on Earth and turns itself into a beautiful naked blonde (Monika Ringwald).  After wandering about nude for a bit, she gets some clothes at a spa and takes a stroll around London gathering information for her superiors whom she complicates with telepathically.  (Who needs a boom mic when you can just dub in whole conversations in post-production?)  She also winds up in a sex shop and gets a job as a photographer’s model. Eventually, our “Sexplorer” gets an up close and personal lesson on what human sexuality is all about, much to the horror of her superiors.

Apparently, this is Quentin Tarantino’s “favorite British film”.  If you squint hard enough, you can almost see what Tarantino likes about it.   While it’s far from the “best British movie” ever made, it’s definitely one of the best British sex comedies I’ve seen.  I’ve sat through many of these things in my day and when it comes to exploitation subgenres, they are near the bottom of the barrel.  Typically, they are devoid of laughs and aren’t sexy in the least.  This one has its fair share of humorous moments, and even manages to be sort of fun in some spots.  It’s not exactly a classic or anything, but it’s intermittently amusing enough that fans of ‘70s sci-fi softcore should enjoy it.

It’s not always successful.  It’s uneven and episodic to a fault.  The wedding reception scene isn’t funny and goes on far too long, and many sequences are pointless (like when the Sexplorer bangs a guy in a room full of balloons) or just plain dumb (like when she accidentally turns green). Still, it’s just corny and likeable to keep you watching.  The theme song is great too. 

I guess the best thing you could say about Sexplorer is how inspirational it was.  It’s easy to imagine the makers or Lifeforce and Species seeing this on TV late one night and blatantly copying the scenes of a hot naked alien chick absentmindedly sightseeing for their own screenplays.  If it wasn’t for this flick, those classics would’ve never been made.  That fact alone kind of justifies Tarantino’s claims.

AKA:  The Girl from Starship Venus.  AKA:  The Discoveries of a Virgin Beauty.  AKA:  Diary of a Space Virgin.

RAT PFINK A BOO BOO (1966) ****

Wikipedia defines an auteur as “an artist, usually a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.  The term commonly refers to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.”  If that doesn’t describe Ray Dennis Steckler, I don’t know what does.  He’s probably best known (and rightly so) for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.  This, however, just might be his magnum opus.  

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is what you get when you take a hard-hitting crime melodrama, a rock n’ roll musical, a dime-store superhero movie, and a killer ape flick, toss them in a blender, and put the setting on WTF.  Apparently, Steckler started out making the crime picture and became dissatisfied with the results.  To amuse himself (or more likely to cash in on the popularity of Batman and Robin) he had his main characters become half-assed superheroes mid-film.  He also padded out the rest of the running time with musical numbers and an attack by a guy in a (rather impressive) ape costume.  The results are Z movie heaven.

What’s interesting is that the early scenes are quite intense, given the budget and the fact that it was shot silently with the sound added in post-production.  Steckler manages to wring genuine suspense from the scenes of the trio of hoodlums mugging a woman in an alley, as well as the scenes where they verbally harass Carolyn Brandt (Steckler’s leading lady on screen and off) over the telephone.  He does a fine job on the musical sequences too (this is the guy who made Wild Guitar after all).  The editing of the performances is remarkably competent and would look right at home on MTV if it had existed in 1966.  

It’s when heartthrob singer Lonnie Lord (Ron Haydock, who also wrote the screenplay) and dim-witted gardener Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) become their crimefighting alter egos Rat Pfink and Boo Boo does the movie really take off.  The costumes look like they came out of a dime store, but that’s kind of what makes them awesome.  The fight scenes have a filmed-in-someone’s-backyard quality to them.  What’s astonishing is that they are staged and edited with a surprising amount of panache.  You also have to give Steckler credit for staging long motorcycle chases and parade scenes with no budget and zero permits.  It’s guerilla filmmaking at its finest.  (Speaking of gorilla, the ape suit is excellent and probably ate up whatever budget Steckler was working with.)

What’s more is that the film is only 66 minutes and it moves like greased lightning.  There’s no fat on it whatsoever.  Sure, Incredibly Strange Creatures is great and all, but it bogs down like a son-of-a-bitch in the second half.  This one is over before you know it and leaves you wanting more.  

Oh, and how about that title?  You might think it’s a weird play on “a Go-Go”, but it’s not.  The onscreen title was supposed to read “Rat Pfink AND Boo Boo”, and the person who designed the titles just forgot to add the “N” and “D”.  I wish there was a better explanation for it.  Then again, the oddball title just makes the movie that much more memorable.

Today’s bloated big-budget superhero movies could take a page from Ray Dennis Steckler’s playbook.  There’s more ingenuity on display here than in a dozen MCU films.  Do you think the Russo Brothers could make something this good if they had a Ray Dennis Steckler budget?  Who knows?  I’d rather imagine what Ray could’ve done had he been given just a tenth of a budget as those guys had when they did Avengers:  Endgame.

AKA:  The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo Boo.