Category Archives: Capsules

Capsules

CAPSULE: PETEY WHEATSTRAW (1977)

2 Comments

Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-in-Law

DIRECTED BY: Cliff Roquemore

FEATURING: , Jimmy Lynch, Leroy Daniels, Ernest Mayhand, Ebony Wright, Steve Gallon, G. Tito Shaw, Ted Clemmons

PLOT: Comedians Leroy and Skillet borrow a large sum of money from the mob to put on a show. Unfortunately for the duo, rival comedian Petey Wheatstraw’s show is the very same week. When Petey refuses Leroy and Skillet’s request to change the date of his show they use more aggressive tactics. The young brother of one of Petey’s entourage is shot and killed by Leroy and Skillet’s goons, who then shoot all of the attendees at the boy’s funeral. Lucifer is on hand at the tragic event to make a deal with Petey. Petey and his friends will get to live and enact righteous revenge if Petey agrees to marry Lucifer’s ugly daughter and give him a grandson. Petey makes the deal, but he has no intention of keeping his end of the bargain. Will Petey be able to outsmart the Devil?

Petey_Wheatstraw

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Selling your soul to Satan plots are practically as old as film itself. This fact alone does not disqualify Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-in-Law as a contender for the List. But while Wheatstraw is a potpourri of genres—a comedy, crime, action, horror film that is completely ludicrous and full of wacky hi-jinx—there are only a couple of “what the hell?” moments. Generally speaking, it is funny and not particularly weird.

COMMENTS: Rudy Ray Moore was an American stand up comedian who recorded his first comedy album, “Below the Belt,” in 1959. In 1975, Moore used the proceeds from his comedy albums to finance his first film, Dolemite. Moore plays the title character Dolemite, a ladies’ man skilled in kung-fu, hell bent on defending the ghetto. Dolemite spawned the sequel The Human Tornado, my personal favorite Rudy Ray Moore film. Moore only made five films throughout the Seventies, and thanks to his presence they are all pretty entertaining. Moore is funny, foul-mouthed, charismatic and energetic. Moore is not an actor, he is a comedian, and he brings his comedic persona with him to his films. He is also one mighty fine dresser. If you can’t enjoy Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-in-Law for its humor, you should at very least appreciate Rudy Ray Moore’s sensational wardrobe! Moore dons about a dozen super Seventies ensembles over the course of the film.

Petey Wheatstraw opens with a flashback of his birth during a storm; exiting his mother’s womb as a seven-ish year old boy, he attacks both the doctor and his own father. Petey, like Dolemite, is also a ladies’ man, a master of kung-fu, and a defender of the ghetto. In an early scene Petey teaches three junkies a lesson while the neighbors gleefully cheer him on. The movie keeps a good pace with goofy antics at regular intervals, but most of the funniest bits happen after Petey makes the deal with the devil around mid-film. Once the plastic devil horns, the guys in tights, and Lucifer’s magic cane make their appearance, things get livelier. After Petey discovers the power of the magic cane he uses it without abandon. He grants one woman a wish to prevent her from stabbing her cheating husband to death:

Petey: Don’t kill him ma’am. I have one wish I will grant you. What might it be?

Angry wife: He’s a dog! He’s a damn dog! Just turn him into a little black puppy.

Petey: That wish will be granted.

You can look forward to a she-demon orgy, but don’t count on seeing more than a couple of bare breasts. There are some poorly executed fight scenes with a bunch of demons with bad makeup in tights and capes that were absolutely hilarious! Every fight scene in the film is quite ridiculous and thoroughly amusing. Moore has some funny lines and priceless expressions that alone make the film worth watching.

I always walk away from a Rudy Ray Moore movie with at least one awesome quote. Bar none, my favorite from Petey was “Romance without finance is a damn nuisance.” So true, Petey Wheatstraw, so true. I enjoyed the heck out of Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-in-Law; it is good old-fashioned entertainment that made me laugh regularly. I definitely recommend picking up the 2016 Vinegar Syndrome release which contains both the Blu-ray and DVD. This copy is worlds better than the Xenon Pictures (“The Dolemite Collection”) version I had previously owned on DVD (see comparison below).

Petey_Wheatstraw_dvd_vs_bluray_comparison
(DVD vs. Blu-ray comparison: click for larger version)

More images at Goregirl’s Dungeon!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Though you get the usual low budget issues and awkward fight scenes here as the prior two Moore films, the approach somehow fits the story perfectly with the dime store demons and stylized lighting creating a weird cinematic experience unlike any other.”–Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital (Blu-ray)

Capsules

CAPSULE: L’ IMPORTANT C’EST D’AIMER (1975) [THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO LOVE]

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Jacques Dutronc, Roger Blin, Claude Dauphin,

PLOT: Nadine Chevalier (Schneider) is an actress on the verge of being ‘over the hill’ and acting in films far beneath her talent. Servais Mont (Testi) is a freelance photographer who also shoots pornography for a local crime lord (Dauphin), paying off a debt. They meet on a film set and a definite connection is established and acknowledged; however, Nadine is married to Jacques (Dutronc), a film buff and dreamer, and is still devoted to him.

In love, Servais helps her by anonymously backing a play with a part for her, borrowing the money from a crime lord. But things do not work out as hoped, ending with violence and suicide—and a glimmer of hope at the end.

Ux9_yRDHZ5-CvCCtewQhIwowGk0@750x446

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Compared to Zulawski’s previous two films and the two to follow, this would probably be considered his first “normal” film, a romantic melodrama. However, no Zulawski film could be considered “normal”—the intensity is still there, but it stays within the confines of the real world the film establishes, rather than spinning off into its own universe. Plus, it has Klaus Kinski. The Important Thing Is to Love may not be full-on “weird,” but it’s worth a look on its own terms.

COMMENTS:  After the Polish Government effectively banned Diabel and kicked Zulawski out of Poland, he went back to France where he had studied and worked earlier before becoming a director. He worked as a script doctor and appeared in some films before being approached with this project, based on a novel by Christopher Frank, “La Nuit Americaine.”

At heart, the movie is a love story—well, a love triangle—but there’s plenty of room for some of Zulawski’s usual concerns: the cause of Art over Commercialism; the corruption and loss of innocence; friendship and betrayal. Also present is the use of doubling (note the open and close of the film); references to classical works (Shakespeare’s “Richard III” in this case); and, of course, staircases.

The best available release is Mondo Vision’s DVD, which comes in a special and a limited edition (the limited edition including an expanded booklet and a CD of the acclaimed score by Georges Delerue). The DVD also features a commentary by Zulawski and Daniel Bird, along with an interview with Zulawski. Audio is in the original French language, along with English and German dubs and English subtitles.

L’ Important C’est D’aimer was the second Zulawski film to get exposure in the West when it was featured on L.A.’s Z-Channel (as can be seen in Xan Cassavetes’ documentary Z-Channel: A Magnificent Obsession).

That Most Important... 1

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Though the films of Andrzej Zulawski are known for their boisterous energy and feverish excesses of sex, violence and the bizarre, his third film L’important c’est d’aimer (The Important Thing Is to Love) is tempered by a richly humanistic story and a shattering performance by Romy Schneider, which she considered to be (and many critics agree) her career zenith.”–Tim Lucas, Sight & Sound (DVD)

L'Important C'est d'Aimer (That Most Important Thing Love) [Blu-ray]

L'Important C'est d'Aimer (That Most Important Thing Love) [Blu-ray]
  • Interview with Andrzej Zulawski
Check Price
Capsules

CAPSULE: OBSERVANCE (2015)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: Joseph Sims-Dennett

FEATURING: Lindsay Farris, Stephanie King

PLOT: A man takes a job spying on a beautiful woman, for reasons unstated by his anonymous employer, from an abandoned building across from her apartment; it turns out All Is Not What It Seems.

Still from Observance (2015)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s obvious that a lot of skill and love went into Observance‘s production, but it’s too slow at the start, and too confusing and emotionally inconclusive at the end, to merit inclusion among the best weird films of all time.

COMMENTS: The title is a clue that there’s more to Observance than a simple voyeuristic thriller—although what exactly the “more” is isn’t clear even by the end. It starts out like Rear Window, with a man spying on a woman’s life in which he is helpless to intervene, but slowly moves into The Shining territory as observer Parker’s sanity comes into question. Nothing of consequence happens on Day 1 of the observation—the target makes lasagna, Parker makes his bed—which should, perhaps, be a warning sign to the viewer. As the film progresses, things get weirder and spookier, but in small increments. The slow burn technique can be effective; I wish this one had started burning faster, though.

The dream sequences, which relate to the sort of generic family tragedy that always haunt the backstories of psychological horror protagonists, are the best parts, invoking symbols like a pricked finger dripping blood, dead rodents, and black bile (all features which recur in Parker’s squalid lodgings). Meanwhile, things get stranger in reality, too: the observer is viciously scalded by his shower, grows sickly, hallucinates… By the time the movie is halfway over, however, you’re still not sure whether it’s going to turn truly weird, or whether the script will pull out a perfectly logical (if supernatural) explanation for these events. Lovers of the weird need fear not; the ending plunges down a rabbit hole, never to resurface.

The technical aspects—cinematography and sound design—are excellent. The opening black-and-white shots of a churning tide pool underneath a craggy outcropping are like something an Australian Ansel Adams might have come up with, setting an appropriately ominous and lonesome mood. The acting is in the competent-to-good range: if anything, the script doesn’t give the actors enough to do to show off their talents. Observance comes close to being a very good movie; as it is, the dream sequences work in isolation as pieces of abstract art, but don’t inform the thin narrative, or make us care overly about the eventual fate of the characters.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… the picture draws on everyone from Cronenberg and early Polanski to Shane Carruth in the construction of its existential mystery. While in the end many viewers will find that mystery frustratingly unresolved, many will be moved enough to talk about it…”–John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE NEVERENDING STORY (1984)

2 Comments

Die Unendliche Geschichte

“I was doing a tattoo in Seattle, and a girl came in and had the whole side of her buttcheek was the Auryn. So she pulled her pants off and asked if she could get a picture with me next to the Auryn, so I stuck my head right next to her butt.”–Noah Hathaway, star of The NeverEnding Story and tattoo artist, on the nexus of his past and current lives

DIRECTED BY: Wolfgang Petersen

FEATURING: Noah Hathaway, Barret Oliver, Tami Stronach, voice of Alan Oppenheimer

PLOT: An orphaned boy discovers an epic story about a young hero’s quest to find the cure for a mysterious force that is destroying the kingdom and killing a princess, only to discover that he is more integral to the story’s outcome than he had imagined.

Still from The Neverending Story (1984)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: A fantastical milieu is always good for unusual characters and settings, and the story’s propensity for bleak and even nihilistic ideas goes well beyond the usual expectations for “children’s fare.” However, the weirdness is mostly concentrated in the Mobius strip plot (which inspires the title), making the film primarily weird for the sake of itself.

COMMENTS: Director Wolfgang Petersen parlayed his success directing the global smash Das Boot into a seat at the helm of this movie, which would wrap as the most expensive film in German history. As regards what’s up on the screen, it shows. In our CGI-rich present, the effects may appear dated, but they are surprisingly effective and charming. Petersen creates a fully-realized fantasy world, from the crystalline castle of Fantasia to the dour Swamp of Sadness. The stop-motion, animatronic, and puppeteered creatures are also quite spectacular, with the fatalistic Rockbiter and the treacherous Gmork coming across as especially believable.

All those expensive special effects mean that the burden of acting falls almost entirely upon the two child leads. Noah Hathaway (previously sighted as Boxey on the original Battlestar Galactica series) is particularly strong, doing his best hero’s quest despite being prepubescent. Barret Oliver (soon to be seen as D.A.R.Y.L.) has a harder time, since so much of his role involves reacting to reading. He’s acting by himself opposite events happening to other people, which turns out to be at the heart of the movie’s bait-and-switch.

The true weirdness of The NeverEnding Story lies in this ultimate twist: the Nothing, an encroaching void that is destroying the world of Fantasia, is the personification of the apathy of a disinterested human readership, and the world can only be saved by the imagination of Bastian, the boy who stole and is now reading this very story about how the world is dying because he’s not imagining the story. It’s hardly a coincidence that the hero’s amulet, the Auryn, is a double ourobouros. The movie itself tells us that there is no real world/fantasy world dichotomy to unpack; it’s all fantasy, feeding upon itself. Which certainly goes a long way to explaining some of the story’s more puzzling mysteries, such as why Bastian’s unsympathetic, egg-swilling father (a very grim cameo by future Major Dad Gerald McRaney) isn’t out scouring the city looking for his son in the midst of a storm hours after he should have come home from school.

(Evidently, that metatextual mindplay is an even greater component in the source material. The movie draws on roughly the first half of Michael Ende’s novel, and the author was so incensed by the adaptation that he sued twice: first to stop the production, and then to have his name removed).

Ultimately, the film has major problems articulating what is really important. Characters are introduced only to have no impact on the story at all. A major death is wrung out for every tear it can muster before we’ve ever had a chance to meet the character or understand his importance to the hero. And the ending is a borderline travesty. Given the awesome power to create worlds, the most Bastian can think to do is turn the tables on his bullies and torment them in return. It’s an ending that works (my son laughed uproariously), but it doesn’t fit the philosophical, high-minded tone of all that has come before. Which is perhaps why it’s best to assume that the story never really ended.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… comes off as a Reading Rainbow episode covering existentialism… The NeverEnding Story’s virtues derive in part from its weirdness and uncompromising tone. Much of children’s entertainment instructs about self-actualization, but rarely is the message realized in a manner as respectful of its young audience’s intelligence.”
Mark Pfeiffer, Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema

Capsules

FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL DIARY, 7/19/2016 (THE LURE)

3 Comments

Yesterday, I only had one screening, of a film that’s already been discussed at this site. But, before I get into that bit of redundancy, I want to give you some advice that may seem obvious in retrospect but is still important to keep in mind: when you’re staying in a hotel in a strange city and you buy a bottle of wine (or in this case of locally produced ice cider) to drink for a nightcap, be sure to remember to purchase a corkscrew as well. Otherwise, you might end up accidentally gashing your finger while trying to pry the cork loose with various sharp objects, like I did. (What finally worked was pushing the cork down into the bottle using my Ego e-cigarette battery—except that after I succeeded the battery was also stuck in the bottle! To reiterate: remember to buy a corkscrew!)

Since I have a short report today, I’ll also fill up space by mentioning that, if you attend a Fantasia screening here in Montreal and you do not have pink or blue cotton-candy hair (women) or a lumberjack beard (men), and/or a sleeve of tattoos (either sex), you may feel like something of an outsider. But everyone here is super-polite, and treat us clean-shaven, untattooed freaks with the same dignity and respect as they do normal people.

The Lure screening was not sold out ahead of time, but the theater was again packed. Director Agnieszka Smoczynska had been scheduled to appear, but had to cancel for personal reasons. She supplied a short video introduction to the film instead, which was charmingly filmed with a couple of young girls in the background, jumping up and down and trying to catch the camera’s attention. She didn’t provide much new information on the film, but she did seem thankful for the opportunity.

Still from The Lure (2016)I encourage you all to read (or re-read) Alex Kittle’s review, since most of what I would have to say about The Lure would be redundant. The overall message of this movie is “never date a bisexual singing stripper killer mermaid, it will end in a heart-rending scene.” You’ve never seen anything quite like it. Because Alex synopsized the plot and themes so well, and because I agree with her assessment that this genre-busting future cult favorite has a real shot at making the List, I’ll just add a few scattered bullet point observations:

  • The mermaid tails here are much longer than what we’re used to seeing, maybe twelve feet altogether. It’s in keeping with the movie’s over-the-top feel: it keeps giving you more than you expect.
  • This is a very sexy movie—Ariel would blush.
  • The idea of sex with a mermaid is kind of disgusting, yet strangely alluring.
  • If the mermaids really are biological sisters, then there’s a hint of incest to go along with the bestiality. Still, the film never feels perverted (kinky, yes).
  • Marta Mazurek (“Silver”) was the lead, and she’s very appealing. I was more impressed with Michalina Olszanska (“Golden”), however, primarily because of the intensity of her stare. When she’s feeling malicious, you actually feel afraid looking into those eyes; when she’s aroused, you feel almost as terrified. Both of these actresses appear in the drama I, Olga Hepnarová, also playing at Fantasia (there, Olsanskaand takes the lead).
  • The musical numbers are mostly disco style. The scene staged in the shopping center was the only one that looks like a song-and-dance production number; most of them are smaller scale, like cabaret acts or music videos.
  • Poland has no tradition of musicals that I’m aware of.
  • Whoever did the subtitles took care to make the song lyrics rhyme in English—not an easy job for the translator, but a detail-oriented touch that’s appreciated.
  • I was a bit baffled by the song that featured the family hooked up to bags of glucose.
  • The Lure features the only musical number I can think of that takes place during a gory surgical operation. Mermaids do not require anesthesia.
  • The audience applauded wildly at the big final scene, indicating just how deeply they had come to identify with these alien sisters.

The Lure is highly recommended and had the audience buzzing, and I would be slightly shocked if it did not land a distribution contract soon.

On to tomorrow, when we’ll be watching a vintage Japanese propaganda cartoon and another oddball horror character story.