SAVAGE STREETS (1984) 2-Disc Special Edition

I saw SAVAGE STREETS when it came out back in 1984, and for no good reason I've held it in considerable esteem ever since. It's a pretty much by-the-numbers revenge exploitation flick about a bunch of overage-looking high school "bad" girls led by Linda "cross up the snatch" Blair who run afoul of a cheesy gang of thugs called the Scars. This bunch of meatheaded dudes drive around and antagonize the general public for kicks while influencing a nebbishy nice kid (Johnny Venocur) who joins their ranks in an attempt at becoming "cool," but the young man's journey takes a disturbing turn when his Alpha male cohorts decide to revenge themselves upon Blair and her girlfriends by kidnapping her adorable and innocent deaf younger sister (scream queen Linnea Quigley) and violently gang-raping and beating her on a grungy high school bathroom floor (not a sequence for the faint of heart or easily offended). Once Linda finds out what's happened to her sister (to say nothing of the sadistic murder of her soon-to-be-married best friend), she gears up in a black jumpsuit, gets her hands on a crossbow and goes a-huntin' for the testosterone-drenched gang scum. Needless to say, their fate ain't pretty.

SAVAGE STREETS is a garden variety and ever-so-'80's revenge opus made notable by its ludicrous dialogue, flagrantly too-old "teenagers," an incredibly bleak and nasty tone, and the presences of a slumming Linda Blair and John "Dean Wormer" Vernon, and while I find it fun for its sheer crassness value, there are certainly much better examples of the revenge flick genre to be had (the original DEATH WISH comes to mind). So why put it out in a 2-disc special edition? I have no idea, and the extra material is in no way worthy of a second disc. There's a so-so "making of" segment that has some fun insight from Blair (commenting on what I believe was her first topless scene) and Quigley (whose character endures one of the worst rape scenes this side of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE , a sequence that had to be considerably trimmed to garner an R rather than an X rating), but the commentaries are pretty uninteresting, particularly the one featuring the incredibly annoying wishes-he-were-as-amusing-as-he-thinks-he-is Johnny Venocur.

So if you do decide to pick up SAVAGE STREETS, skip the second disc and watch it the way it was meant to be seen: in a dank basement, surrounded by a gaggle of liquored-up and like-minded sleaze junkies. You could do a lot better, but you could also do a hell of a lot worse. And unless she's made of very stern stuff, DO NOT convince your girlfriend to sit through this one. That rape scene's a potential relationship-ender, and if you ask me the revenge doesn't even come close to being severe enough for the damage done to a cutesy-sweet girl who looks like she should be a regular on SESAME STREET.

WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY (1971)

Looking at this DVD's packaging, wouldn't you think it safe to assume the movie in question contained some decent bloody swordplay of the type quite common to films of this genre and era? Plus the star of the damned thing is none other than Meiko Kaji, renowned for her work in the FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION series and the superb LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973), so an expectation of violence is fully understandable. What's definitely not understandable is why this failed combination of a women's "weepie" and tepid yakuza drama even got made in the first place. It offers nothing of substance to any of the audiences it seeks to appeal to.

The plot centers on Nami (Kaji), a self-described "wanderer...a nobody," who's just gotten out of jail after serving a three-year stint. The minute she's out, she returns to Tokyo'sGinza area, a district once comparable to Times Square in its gloriously seedy days, and gets a job as a hostess at a rinky-dink bar. From there it's a dull soap opera focusing on the trials and tribulations of Nami and her co-workers, all while Nami secretly gives over a large portion of her wages in support of a mysterious woman who petitioned for the reduction of her sentence, a kind move that makes absolutely no sense when we find out the sick woman is the wife of ayakuza boss that Nami and her gang murdered. There was no indication of the woman being in any way mistreated by her husband, so why would she bother to have her husband's murderer released early? If anything, in a story like this, one would expect the wife not to rest until she had attained violent and gory revenge for her hubby's untimely demise, but no such luck here.

As that bullshit plays out, there are also subplots involving the bar's owner and her kinda/sorta but not really romance with a quasi-yakuza guy who has a heart of gold (trust me, you just won't care), another quasi-yakuza guy with a heart of gold who recruits girls to be hostesses at Nami's bar who becomes Nami's friend (also not worth caring about), and a group of evil yakuza who manage wrangle the deed to the bar away from the owner because she owes four-million yen on the place and they have suddenly become partners with the corrupt banker who loaned her the money to open the place. That plot element is accented with the other hostesses at the bar discoveringNami's status as a ex-con, and when they fuck with her about it she finally displays some of the violent attitude we'd been waiting for since scene number one. Unfortunately, that display ofbadassery is short-lived as Nami falls in line after a mere slap from her boss.

The movie lurches listlessly along in an unsuccessful attempt to get us to give a shit about any of its characters, finally reaching the make-or-break moment whenNami, earlier established to be an expert at cheating at cards and pool hustling, challenges the evil yakuza assholes to a game of pool with the deed to the bar going to the winner; if Nami loses, her uncle's pool hall and land go to the bad guys, as well as the deed to the bar. Nami wins the pool match (which is ridiculously interrupted when her opponent gets a marvelously over-acted case of the shakes and stops to shoot up some Crank), but the bad guys, being sore losers, kill the bar owner's lover in a drive-by, soNami and the other yakuza -with-a-heart-of-gold get their shit together and storm the bad guys' headquarters (where the crooks are watching a porno movie, no less). Now clad in a prim kimono,Nami , from out of nowhere, wields a sword and appears to have considerable skill with it, a bit of information that we are in no way built up for, so when the ass-whuppin' finally has the decency to occur we just can't buy it. It also doesn't help that the final fight is actually boring and blood-free, something I did not think possible when one has a room full of about twenty people, several of whom are armed with swords, knives and firearms. When all is said and done,Nami and her friend kill everybody and are almost immediately arrested as a maudlin song plays on the sound track. THE END.

There. Now you don't have to sit through this utter waste of time. The only reason I bothered with this at all was out of a fondness for Meiko Kaji — who, despite her looks and considerable genre charm, could not save this dud — and so I'd have any pertinent story background before I tackled the sequel, WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY: SHE-CAT GAMBLER (1972), a film that caught my attention by having my man Sonny Chiba as its co-star. After seeing the first film in the series, I have serious doubts as to whether the sequel can possibly be any good, even with Sonny in it, but it's sitting there atop my DVD player, so I'll get back to you soon with a review of that one.

Poster from the original theatrical release: even the poster's a snoozer...

THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1954)

NOTE: This piece originally ran on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS back in June of 2009.

Way back in the days when British humor was very much a “safe” and staid animal, a series of cartoon illustrations by renowned cartoonist Ronald Searle launched a minor dynasty of anarchic humor. Searle’s original concept was a skewering of the British private school system, focusing on the fictional St. Trinian’s school for girls, and his sense of then-transgressive humor was very much akin to our own homegrown Charles Addams, or even the yet-to-come National Lampoon. St. Trinian’s itself was a haven for budding sociopaths and children of highly questionable breeding, and a training ground for all the things young British girls were never supposed to get up to — especially not during the post-WWII, pre-rock’n’roll Britain — such as drunkenness, gambling, torture (with medieval implements), arson, mucking about with automatic weapons, smoking (of tobacco and, well, you know), witchcraft/Satanism (which comes as little surprise since Satan himself was depicted arriving for parents’ day), profanity, sports hooliganism, flagrant promiscuity, and outright murder (of innocents, each other, the school’s rivals, and even their teachers). This was quite radical stuff for pre-punk England and was apparently very shocking during its day, but it struck a chord and become something of an institution, so much so that Searle sought to distance himself from his creation by penning the following statement in 1953:

ANNOUNCEMENT

ST. TRINIAN’S is gone. Encouraged by the success of recent atomic explosions in the Pacific, the school Nuclear Fission experts threw themselves into their experiments with renewed enthusiasm and with the help (thanks to certain old girls) of some newly acquired top secret information, achieved their objective at midnight last night. The remains of the school are still smouldering. By some miracle the statue of our patron saint, scorched but uncracked, still stands where once the ripple of girlish laughter could be heard on a clear frosty morning. The fate of the teaching staff is unknown, nay, will never be known, and a few young ladies are believed to have survived. Early morning reports from various parts of the country bring news of blackened figures trotting through sleeping villages, but bloodhounds have failed to pick up a scent — however radioactive. This blow from which St. Trinian’s cannot recover (the building fund has been embezzled anyway) may bring a sigh of relief to many a parent and a quiet tear from true lovers of healthy girlhood. Let it suffice for us to say (before we draw a veil over the last broken limb) we are proud that the name of St. Trinian’s has echoed through this land.  R.S.

But, much like Ian Fleming’s completely and utterly failed attempt at killing off James Bond in the novel of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1957), the miscreants of St. Trinian’s have proven unkillable and spawned a series of movies that continues to the present day all stemming from 1954’s THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN’S.

Widely hailed as one of the all-time classics of British comedy, the first entry in the series introduces us to the school and its girls, a largely faceless group who serve as a wild white rabble not too far removed from what one would imagine the most savage of headhunting tribes might be like had they been transplanted to the English countryside and played for laughs. When first we see them, the girls are returning from school break and as they return the locals board up their windows and flee, all of which is apparently par for the course when living so close to the posh dumping ground of estrogenic delinquents. Even the local police dread the girls, and the board of education turns a blind eye to the school’s flouting of the law and general decency following the disappearance of two of its inspectors (who, unbeknownst to the board, have taken up residence at St. Trinian’s in order enjoy the attentions of its horny teachers and older students).

The story proper is rather slight, intending to amuse the audience more with the overall symbol of the school's very existence being a "fuck you" to British propriety than giving the girls much by way of true character, so the focus is mostly on the school's headmistress, one Miss Fritton, played in drag by Alistair Sim, one of the most beloved of the old school English thesps.

Not Bea Arthur: Alistair Sim as Miss Fritton.

Miss Fritton is considerably more sweet and traditional than her charges, so she's at a bit of a loss when faced with the school going under due to lack of funds (she accepts checks for student tuition that are post-dated as far in advance as four years), but salvation rears its head when her sleazy brother, Clarence (also played by Sim), arrives and announces that the daughter of an Arab sultan has come on board as a new student. The princess' father owns a can't-miss race horse named Arab Boy that Clarence seeks info on in order to further his own illegal betting endeavours (he wants the horse to lose), so he blackmails his sister into re-admitting his expelled daughter to St. Trinian's so she can be his intelligence gatherer.

From there it's the loosest of plots involving Miss Fritton betting what remains of the school's cash on Arab Boy to win the money that will save the school's ass, and the war between the older girls who are working on Clarence's behalf and the younger girls who are on the side of Miss Fritton and the school. That totally predictable plot's pretty much there to serve as something resembling a narrative so as to appease the more persnickety members of the audience while the rest of the film allows viewers a very amusing look into the everyday goings on at St. Trinian's, shenanigans that are kind of like ANIMAL HOUSE only with the anarchic fraternity brothers being a pack pre-collegiate females.  We get to know the avaricious, dissatisfied, drunken (and in one case hiding out from the law) teaching staff and also witness the doings of the younger girls, a violent if industrious lot who brew commercial quantities of gin in the school's science lab for sale by the hilariously sleazy and shady cockney quasi-crook Flash Harry (George Cole). There's a chaotic Parents' Day thrown in that corresponds with the return of a small army of the school's "old girls" (previous graduates), as well as a devastating field hockey match, and it's all quite amusing, but to today's viewer it will most likely be seen as a case of the film's reputation as being its own worst enemy. It's good, but I really think this is one of those you either had to be there for in the first place, or else have grown up with it. By the standards of the average American viewer this is pretty tame when stacked up against U.S. comedies from the same period.

The thing that strikes me most about THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S and its iconic status is how staid it is for something once considered shocking. I'm sure that's a matter of what one culture would find transgressive while another would not necessarily, and much of the film's humor reminded me of such 1960's American sitcoms as BEWITCHED and THE ADDAMS FAMILY. In fact, St. Trinian's would have been the ideal school for Wednesday Addams to attend, and there's even a teacher who's a dead ringer for Carolyn Jones as Morticia Addams. Anyway, it's fun and definitely worth checking out, but don't expect anything that'll really knock you out. And in case you're wondering why I bothered with THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S in the first place, I wanted wanted to see the movie that served as the template for the 2007 remake, a film I saw the latter half of on cable during my recent visit to England. I finally got around to watching the remake last night, so expect a look at that flick sometime soon.

ST. TRINIAN'S (2007)

NOTE: This piece originally ran on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS back in June of 2009.

Much closer to the spirit of what creator Ronald Searle was going for with his series of 1940's-1950's cartoons about "the worst girls school in the world" than earlier cinematic incarnations, this seventh film chronicling the appalling (by pre-1960's British standards) misdeeds and chicanery of the girls of St. Trinian's private school could use a bit more of Searle's twisted vitriol, but as a twenty-first century series reboot it does a pretty damned good job, and I only have a couple of minor quibbles with it.

The setup's pretty much the same as what I encountered in the first film in the series, THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1954), only this time the roles of the school's headmistress and her scumbag brother (re-named Camilla and Carnaby Fritton here) are played by Rupert Everett and he's a gas as a far less innocent version of the headmistress than Alistair Sim's take on the character.

Rupert Everett as St. Trinian's headmistress, Camilla Fritton.

Once more the school finds itself in the financial shitter and drastic measures must be taken to acquire the half-million pounds needed to keep it from going under, measures involving a complex MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE-style art heist (of Vermeer's seventeenth century painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring") that's all the funnier for being masterminded and pulled off by a bunch of delinquent schoolgirls. If it sounds like lightweight stuff, it is, but it's very entertaining fluff from start to finish and it achieves the sense of twistedness that films like both ADDAMS FAMILY movies strove for and failed to conjure (although I have to give it up for the Thanksgiving play sequence in the otherwise worthless ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES). Let's face it: stories about horrible behavior, offensiveness and such are always more fun when the protagonists/perpetrators hail from a group normally held up as the epitome of sweetness and wholesomeness, and a British girls school is indeed fertile ground from which such characters can sprout.

While the school's overall student body is still very much one large hostile tribe, now with era-appropriate sub-divisions and hierarchies, this time around the tribe is given several memorable faces to represent the assorted Goths, Chavs, Emos, geeks, et cetera. The girls are all fairly broad caricatures/stereotypes, but we get to know them and root for them — my favorites being the red-headed, bespectacled leader of the geeks and the blonde pre-pubescent twins who are described as "England's answer to the Sopranos" — and when the heist takes place you'll really want them to succeed (the savage field hockey match is also a riot). Rupert Everett's a hoot as Miss Fritton and his horse-toothed drag look is hilariously horrible and especially cringe-inducing during the semi-romantic scenes between Fritton and her long-ago lover now turned enemy, Colin Firth, as the minister of education whose latest political agenda is to expose and shut down St. Trinian's.

My favorite character in the whole film, however, is Russell Brand's modern era version of series mainstay Flash Harry, a sleazy Cockney criminal opportunist who enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the girls as both a mentor in illegal doings and as the seller of their highly dangerous, classroom-brewed and blindness and death-inducing "Trinski" vodka (the toxicity levels of which are tested by a hard-drinking Russian student named Anoushka). He's a pisser here and is nearly as funny/appalling as the Eurotrash rock star asshole he memorably played in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. Oh, and the bit where the girls come up with a line of designer tampons because "women don't just want to feel beautiful on the outside" nearly made me snarf my beer out of my nose.

So, yeah, I enjoyed the ST. TRINIAN'S reboot, but I do have two problems with it:

• The assembly line "teen flick" soundtrack is virtually unbearable and many of the poppy tunes featured sound like the shouted-rather-than-sung stuff heard in those bad, sanitized remakes of pop songs aired on Radio Disney and the like. The sole exception is a pretty good all-girl version of the Undertone's punk classic "Teenage Kicks," but that's merely an oasis in a desert of sub-AMERICAN IDOL crap. I know this is geared toward tweener girls, but given a chance girls latch on to kickass stuff. In fact, I was introduced to Joan Jett, Fanny, the B-52's, the Specials and Led Zeppelin by girls under the age of sixteen, so I have faith in adolescent girls.
• I know it's supposed to be part of the joke regarding the school's older girls, but I get really creeped-out by depictions of hyper-sexualized underage girls (the image at the top of this post does not do this point justice and completely, perhaps wisely, excludes the group known as "Posh Totty"). The older girls, though obviously played by actresses much older than their characters, are decked out in gear that fuses the private school jacket and skirt uniform with the garter belts, stockings & "fuck me" pumps look, coming up with a jailbait-fancier's masturbation fantasy brought to life. That may also work as a less prurient fantasy image for the film's tweener female audience, but for me it's just flesh-crawl-inducing.

But I can overlook both of those in favor of enjoying a fun, anarchic bit of brainless fun. I have no idea if or when this film will get a U.S. release, but when it does turn up I urge you check it out. It's the kind of thing that could become a cult favorite on cable and run for years.

UP (2009)

NOTE: This piece originally ran on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS  back in June of 2009.

Before I get to the review proper, let me take a brief bit of your time to remind you that just because a film is animated that doesn't automatically make the film in question a "kiddie" movie. Such is the case with UP, and that's not to say that the material in the movie is in any way unsuitable for younger audiences, but rather that the themes explored in it have a lot to do with an understanding of the human experience that one acquires with a certain level of age and what one has gone through in life (I found RATATOUILLE to be much the same in this respect). Thus I suggest that before you take your kids to see UP you should carefully assess whether your youngster will get fidgety and restless during a film that doesn't get lively enough to rivet a child's interest until about two thirds of the way through its running time. The showing of UP that I attended was marred by several families who'd brought their broods to see it, and most of the children in question ranged from babe-in-arms infancy to about five years old, and these kids spent the entire film loudly testing their newly-realized vocal capacities by screaming, shrieking, making random sounds repeated over and over again at top volume, crying, and just about every noise kids can make. And you know it's bad when the slightly older kids in attendance said out loud that there were "too many babies and little kids" in the audience and that they were ruining it for everyone else. But at no time during this agony did I hold the kids responsible; it's their shitheaded parents who don't get that when you have children you have to accept that it'll most likely be several years before you can actually see a movie in the theater again, instead waiting for DVD or cable and seeing flicks at home where you they can attend to the needs of their little ones without fucking it up for the rest of the audience, people who also paid the exorbitant admission price and expect to enjoy the movie they paid to see.

Anyway, enough with my cautionary rantings.

UP, the tenth of Pixar's feature films, is simply excellent in every way it's possible for a film to be excellent, and its 3-D element is not necessary at all in order for the viewer to enjoy it. I've found that the majority of 3-D movies use that effect as a gimmick to disguise a film's plot deficiencies, MONSTERS VS ALIENS and BEOWULF immediately leaping to mind as examples, but UP stands on a very strong story foundation so no such fancy gewgaws or flash are needed in the least.

UP tells the story of Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Edward Asner to Oscar-worthy effect), an old man struggling with the crushing void left in his life following the death of his beloved wife, Ellie. The pair bonded during childhood over a mutual love of the promise of adventure in exotic places and hero worship of a famous explorer named Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), and from that inauspicious meeting we are shown the evolution of their life together, going from youthful innocence through marriage, their shared dreams (some of which tragically never come to pass), and Elie's death, all of which is portrayed in a moving sequence taking up about ten minutes of screen time and featuring more honest. genuine emotion than any film I've seen in years. If you don't care about Carl Fredricksen after what's witnessed during that sequence, you have simply no heart.

Cantankerous and lost without Ellie and facing court-ordered eviction from his (and just as importantly, Ellie's) home for a "life" at the Shady Oaks retirement community, Carl rigs up the house with a massive amount of helium balloons (presumably snagged from his job as a balloon vendor at a zoo, where he worked with his wife who served as a tour guide) and sets off on an airborne course to Paradise Falls in South America, the site where his (and his wife's) explorer idol vanished while on a quest to prove the existence of a rare flightless bird. The goal is to fulfill Ellie's wish of having her home on the peak of Paradise Falls, and while on the way Carl finds himself saddled with an unwanted and annoying traveling companion in the form of Russell (Jordan Nagai), an earnest but irritating scout in search of his "helping the elderly" patch, an achievement that will advance him to senior rank. As the two share a journey that smacks more than a little of the now quaint adventures scribed by Jules Verne, both unlikely heroes have their individual mettle tested and neither comes up wanting, faced with befriending and protecting the aforementioned rare bird (dubbed "Kevin" by Russell) and encountering a pack of dogs equipped with collars that allow them to speak. Among the dogs is Dug (Bob Peterson), the embodiment of all that is sweet and endearing in Man's Best Friend, and he soon proves to be another misfit who casts his lot with the two humans and the bird. More goes on from that point in the narrative — a LOT more — but I'll leave those details for you to discover for yourself; the bottom line is that I hold UP in the highest of estimation and urge you very strongly to see it.

What surprised me most about UP is how the marketing for it gives you no clue whatsoever as to its themes and tone, making it look like a cute little kiddie picture when it is in fact a moving character study of isolated and lonely characters who touchingly find one another and find themselves all the better for that mutual discovery. The film's examination of loneliness and the overcoming of that loneliness, both situational and emotional, touched me deeply and I found myself openly weeping at certain points in the story. One of my co-workers, a hardcore Disney and Pixar fan, actually found the film too sad to be enjoyable and cried from start to finish, but she's a sensitive sort who prefers her cartoons within a certain set of established animation storytelling parameters, and what she got from UP was in no way what she went in expecting.

I found UP's deep emotional resonance to be not only refreshing but also quite cathartic, and when I left the theater my mind kept returning to it and mulling it over for several hours, and after very careful consideration I find UP placing as third in my ranking of favorite Pixar movies (number one being RATATOUILLE, with THE INCREDIBLES an extremely close second), and as the years go by I would not be surprised to see it move up even higher. I'm a very emotional guy and understand what this movie was talking about all too well, so when a movie speaks to me like this, I listen. UP speaks with a subtlety and eloquence missing from the vast majority of Hollywood's output, and the fact that it communicates as it does through the animated medium only makes it all the more precious. Don't miss it.

MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS (2009)

I'll just cut straight to the chase: this movie sucks ass. The trailer and clips available on the Internet are all you need to bother with because the movie itself is a slow-moving waste of time, replete with bottom of the barrel CGI effects that wouldn't have passed muster on HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS fourteen years ago.

In case you actually give a fuck about the plot, what happens is a giant octopus and a Megalodon — that's archeology/egghead-speak for "big-assed Great White shark lookalike" — are freed after eons of being frozen in a chunk of ice (in mid-combat, no less), and the second they get loose they go on a rampage of destruction that we're mostly just told about rather than shown. Instead we're forced to endure the goo-goo eyes being made between marine biologist/ace submarine pilot Deborah Gibson — yes, that Deborah Gibson — and a Japanese colleague, and it only gets more turgid and "who cares?" when the scientists are press-ganged into service by the U.S. military and forced to work under the supervision of Lorenzo Lamas as a military type who's such an obnoxious racist that he's easily the funniest thing in the movie (which isn't saying much). The scientists come up with a plan to lure the beasts to two different locations using species-specific pheremones, but that plan backfires when the mega shark makes its way to San Francisco and bites the Golden Gate Bridge in half while the octopus wreaks similar havoc in Tokyo, a could-have-been-fun bit that we're merely told about instead of shown.

Yes, this actually happens, and you just won't care.

Seriously, dear Vaulties, even during the brief moments when there's giant monster stuff, sometimes it's so poorly rendered in CGI that the image it out of focus, presumably so the animators don't have to expend the time and budget to actually make it look halfway decent. For example, there's a potentially terrific and still hilarious sequence in which the mega shark flies several hundred feet into the air and brings down a 747, but if you check it out for yourself  (about 2:23 into the clip) you'll see the shark and plane suddenly go out of focus as the plane explodes and all involved plummet into the ocean. That and the bit with the bridge are the only things in the entire movie worth seeing and they both add up to about a solid minute's worth of screen time, so it just isn't worth enduring the complete film. A huge disappointment in all areas, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, not even fellow giant monster junkies. Hell, even the made-for television SPRING BREAK SHARK ATTACK (2005) was more fun than this in every way. Fuck MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS right in the gills!

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)

After not having seen in it since I was a kid I finally made up my mind to sit through 1960's THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, the first and quite literal "westernization" of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece SEVEN SAMURAI, and while it's pretty good for what it is I definitely feel it's a textbook case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Is it just me, or does this look like a setup enacted by every kid who ever owned a number of old school G.I. Joe dolls or Johnny West toys?

Taking the basic plot of Kurosawa's original — a put-upon peasant village gets fed up with periodic raids from bandit scumbags and hires a team of skilled warriors, plus one aspiring tag-along, to handle their problem — and transplanting it to Mexico during the Wild West days, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN provided iconic western thrills with a terrific cast, but I wonder how well the film would have been remembered if not for that element. If not for the sheer awesomeness of Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and the rest, this would, in my opinion anyway, register as a very much by the numbers oater, dripping with many of the hokey touches that make many westerns of the period a bit of a chore for me to take. There's a lighter-than-appropriate tone to the material here that may just be the result of its Americanization, but I found much of the film far too "cute" for my tastes. And if I had to hear the downright oppressive theme tune one more time, I swear I was going to scream.

The cast does a terrific job and the enemy force is given more of a face than the ever-looming bandits in Kurosawa's version thanks to Eli Wallach in a Mexican role that presages his indelible Tuco Ramirez from Sergio Leone's THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966), but the whole thing reminded me of a modern-day Americanization of a foreign film insomuch as it severed a story from its indigenous roots, largely did away with the source's nuances, and slapped some red, white and blue on it in an attempt to make it less "foreign" or "remote" to an audience the distributors felt may not have given a chance had it played with subtitles or foreign faces. I can understand such thinking when THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN came out, since foreign films mostly ran in obscure "art" cinemas (which hasn't really changed all that much just shy of fifty years later) and the average American moviegoer of the time would have most likely balked at subtitles, but having seen SEVEN SAMURAI, I genuinely fail to see the need for this movie or any of the subsequent films that cribbed from Kurosawa's template, including the first of Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood "Dollars Trilogy" classics, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964).

I'm also greatly saddened by American filmgoers who love this film yet remain completely unwilling to see the vastly superior film that made THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN possible. There's a reason why SEVEN SAMURAI is universally hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made by any director in any country, and the story's appeal has nothing whatsoever to do with it being Japanese in origin. If THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN had been crafted with the same level of acting, scripting, direction, cinematography, and just about every other element of filmmaking I would not be writing this now. Again, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is in no way a bad movie, but why bother with John Sturges (who made a number of good films) when you have Akira Kurosawa at his very best? I do like westerns but I'm not rabid over them and the ones I genuinely love number less than twenty, and this film doesn't even come close to those in my estimation, so maybe it's just me.

MOVIES THAT STICK TO ME LIKE NAPALM

NOTE: This piece originally appeared on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS back in August of 2009.

Once again a Facebook quiz hands me fodder for a Vault post, and this one's right up my alley (and hopefully yours). The object this time was to think of the first fifteen movies that come to mind that will always stick with you, and that does not necessarily mean films you consider your favorites. We're talking movies that you just cannot get out of your head for whatever reason, so after you read this and come up with your own list, please send it it because I'd love to read which movies had a lasting effect on my dear Vaulties. Anyway, in no particular order and for better or worse, here's how I answered this one last week:

1. IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976) 

Proof positive that art and explicit/un-simulated sex can work well together, this film is an intense and disturbing look at the obsessive love affair between a former prostitute (now a maid) named Sada and a hotel owner. I first saw it during a revival showing while I was in high school and its escalating catalog of sexual outrageousness did not titillate me in the slightest, in fact it had quite the opposite effect. It doesn't take long for the audience to twig to the fact that Sada's out of her mind to a dangerous degree and her lover's no slouch in the kink department himself, so images such as Sada having a hard-boiled egg shoved up her cooch and having to "do as the hen does" to get it out when it becomes stuck, as well as her lover contemplatively licking his fingers after giving her some digital affection during her period, should not come as a surprise when they occur, but they have the power to unsettle because this is what would usually be termed a full-blown and classy "art" movie. There's plenty of other sexual wackiness on display, all of it quite clearly unsimulated, and it's amazing to see the the participants turn in excellent performances during all of it (especially that bit with the egg). But it's the film's ending that is utterly jarring, and it reduced my pal Eddie to a quivering wreck who curled up in the back seat of the car in the fetal position as we drove home after seeing it (this happened in the early 1990's when I saw it for the second time). Seriously.

2. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)

In a nutshell, this is the best version of H.G. Wells' THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU ever made and its blasphemous depiction of a balls-out-mad scientist's surgical experiments in genetic manipulation is still flesh-crawling over seven decades after its release. Banned in the UK for close to fifty years for its grotesquery, sadism and in-your-face suggestion of the possibilities of a sexual union between humans and animal-men — by consent or far worse means of achieving it — this is one sick, sick, SICK mamma-jamma and is the film the expression "the natives are restless" comes from. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

3. CAFE FLESH (1982)

This is a hardcore X-rated flick, but ignore the explicit porn. The concept and story are downright chilling, especially in the wake of the AIDS epidemic. Following the unexpected results of a germ warfare culture unleashed during WWIII, the human race is left virtually unable to be physically intimate without becoming violently ill, leaving only a small number of "sex-positives" able to get it on, and those unfortunates are rounded up and pressed into service to satisfy the unsatisfiable needs of the worldwide "sex-negative" audience. The title venue is where the film's creepy and depressing drama plays out as an emcee reminiscent of Joel Grey in CABARET (only about a hundred times more disturbing, which is really saying something) introduces several surreal pornographic scenarios that mix bizarre sets with utterly joyless sexual performances. None of it is erotic in the least and when taken as the "adult" science-fiction parable that it is, it's quite scary and Lynchian in execution. The explicit sex only makes the proceedings that much more sad, and the R-rated version loses a lot of the original's nihilistic strength, so stick with the X if you opt to experience this one.

4. FRESH (1994)

By far the best of the 1990's spate of "in the hood" movies, this one proves quite conclusively that the most dangerous and effective weapon is a keen mind. If you haven't seen this one, add it to your Netflix queue immediately. And, no, I won't tell you about the plot. (You'll thank me for that when you experience it for yourself.)

5. MATANGO (1963)

Released in the States under the idiotic title ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE, this story of the horrible fate that befalls a group of shipwrecked yachters is the creepiest movie Toho ever released and can rightly be described as a study in slow-burning madness and psychedelia. Short on action or gore, MATANGO delivers effectively where it really counts and is eerie as a motherfucker.

5. MANDINGO (1975) 

If you were horrified by the more vile truths about some of our fair nation's history that were made plain in ROOTS, don't ever watch this slavery-era soap opera. I find it to be an apocalyptic moment in the annals of bad taste cinema and as such I find it so over-the-top that it's frequently hilarious — the acting by Susan George and James Mason is impossible to keep a straight face through — but its frank depictions of the worst realities of slavery is no laughing matter and is indeed horrifying to witness. I don't think mainstream Hollywood has produced a major motion picture as vicious or offensive before or since, and if this were released today there would be full-on race riots in the streets.

6. A PATCH OF BLUE (1965)

A real tear-jerker, this is the story of a girl who endures so much awful shit that you'll want to reach into the screen and rescue her from the Hell that is her life. Selina D'Arcy (Elizabeth Hartman) is the sweet and innocent daughter of a horrible, aging prostitute (Shelley Winters, who won a well-deserved Oscar for her villainous performance), and her squalid existence is made all the worse by her having been blinded by acid while still a child. While her fat whore of a mother plies her trade (to diminishing returns), the virtually helpless Selina sits in the park and makes bead necklaces to help support the family, and it's there that she meets Gordon (Sidney Poitier), an older man who teaches her the basics of self-sufficiency. It's an innocent relationship and the first in which Selina has known kindness and friendship since she was a little girl, but Selina is now a young woman and problems begin when she falls in love with Gordon, who is black... This could have been a run-of-the-mill weepie but its narrative is powerful and at times overwhelmingly sad, especially Selina's unspeakable back story, so go into this one with a full box of tissues close at hand. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

7. TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934)

The second of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, this is loaded with sex and violence and will come as a shock to those who didn't think such stuff got made back in the days. I've covered this one before at length, so you can read that article for all the particulars. Just take my advice and Netflix this to see why it's still considered the best Tarzan movie ever made. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

8. STRAW DOGS (1971)

This is director Sam (THE WILD BUNCH) Peckinpah's meanest movie, and that's really saying something. In no way recommended for "date night," this tale of a wimpy American mathematician and his sexy young wife facing the scurvy inhabitants of the wife's home village in Cornwall is very, very nasty and lends credence to some critics' assertion that Peckpah's films reveal him as a misogynist, largely thanks to an emotionally complex and very questionable rape sequence that will leave most viewers quite put off. This is just about the last movie you'd expect Dustin Hoffman to have been involved in, but here it is.

9. CUT-THROATS 9 (1972)

One of the many violent and gruesome horse operas to follow on the heels of Sam Peckinpah's artistically violent and gory THE WILD BUNCH, this is the most disturbing, violent and unpleasant western of all time. It's a study in brutality for the sake of brutality, and it's so grubby and vile that I wanted to take a long, hot shower after seeing it. I'm light-years away from squeamish, but this is a film so overflowing with negative energy that I hope I never have to endure it again. And it was slow-moving on top of it all! Also, would you believe that when this was first released in the U.S. moviegoers were given a "terror mask" to shield their eyes from the film's gruesome anti-splendor?

10. MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE (1966)

Justly considered to be one of the very worst films ever made, this was fodder for one of the all-time classic installments of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, but I had the misfortune of first encountering it as a kid when it ran on Channel 9 and as a result was ruined for life. If you must see this, only watch it in the MST3K version. You have been warned!

11. AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1964)

Creepy, sleazy B&W Brazilian horror that introduced the world to Zé do Caixão, known in English as "Coffin Joe." Just trust me on this one, as it's too deceptively complicated to break down in short form.

12. DESCENT (2007)

Not the one with the chicks who meet something horrible while spelunking, but the one with Rosario Dawson, particularly the unrated version...Yeesh! I covered this one at length here, so check it out.

13. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS BEYOND THE MOON (1965)

I believe I was either three or four when my dad took me too see this and I will never forget how ominous the dark, empty theater seemed, a vast, foreboding space pregnant with possibility that my own experiences had not yet prepared me for. In later years I would accept that uncertainty as par for the course when going to the movies, the tension heralding either a glorious flight of escapist fare (like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK) or a total fucking dud, compared to which getting punished would have been preferable (FLESHBURN being a perfect example). As the film exploded across the screen, I had no idea that I was receiving my first exposure to the wild & woolly world of Japanese animation, but I did know that I loved the colorful images, solid story, and the genuinely dark undertone that simmered during the second half. GULLIVER'S TRAVELS BEYOND THE MOON is the story of Ricky, a homeless street urchin in an unspecified European (?) city who sneaks into a theater showing a film adaptation of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS and gets promptly thrown out on his ass by a surly usher after hearing the hero's inspirational words about sustaining himself through impossible odds with the power of hope. In short order Ricky is joined in his aimless wanderings by a talking dog and a living toy soldier, and this bizarre trio then falls in with Gulliver himself, now a misanthropic recluse who seeks to explore outer space in a homemade rocket ship. The heroes blast off into the void, running into Cupid — who grants them each one wish and is voiced by a grown-up Darla Hood of LITTLE RASCALS fame — and finding themselves embroiled in a conflict between two factions of sentient machines, one kindly and inquisitive, the other a warlike force of conquest-minded juggernauts who state their intentions in the song "Rise, Robots, Rise," a number so grim for a kiddie movie that I remembered certain images from it decades later like I'd just seen them yesterday. This truly dreamlike film ends with one of those "it was all a dream" scenarios, but it doesn't disappoint because Ricky's adventures were simply too fantastic to have been anything else, especially considering that the whole adventure may have been induced by a concussion he suffered during a hit-and-run car accident. Once impossible to find, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS BEYOND THE MOON is finally available on DVD, although in a shitty, washed-out transfer.

14. ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)

The ultimate tale of a woman utterly betrayed by her selfish husband.

15. GOJIRA (1954)

This first Godzilla film introduces the iconic monster as the anthropomorphized horror of the atomic bomb as relayed by the only people on the planet to ever actually experience such a nightmare firsthand. Incredibly bleak, its disturbing and depressing aspects are so severe that they couldn't even be squashed by the considerably tamer American version, GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS. Not what fans of the later entries in the series would expect at all, this is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

And here are my answers when asked a few weeks ago:

1. THE STREET FIGHTER (1974)

The film that gave 1970's martial arts movies their reputation as virtual bloodbaths and one of the most entertaining films in the genre, this one stuck with me for its still-shocking brutality and Sonny Chiba's ultra-intense screen presence. Go here for more on this epic of ass-whuppin'. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

2. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) 

Originally released as DAY OF THE WOMAN, this nigh-unwatchable gang rape/revenge Chernobyl of unpleasantness is not my idea of entertainment, but I will defend its existence and the director's intent. Most female viewers are strongly advised to give this one a miss and with very good reason, as is explained in detail here.

3. MANDINGO (see above)

4. THE FLY (1958)

A terrific (if improbable) sci-fi/horror hybrid, this one has an ending that fucked me up for life, and I bet it did the same to you.

5. A PATCH OF BLUE (see above)

6. THE ICE STORM (1997)

I grew up two towns away from where the events of this narrative take place, and I can tell you for a fact that the movie is a perfect evocation of the time and location of that horrible locale.

7. FORBIDDEN ZONE (1980)

A positively lysergic live action cartoon that's not for the kiddies, featuring Herve Villechaize, more impressively bizarre characters than any one movie has the right to include, and the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (that's band frontman Danny Elfman as Satan in the photo). This utterly sticks with me as a very surreal dream rendered visual outside the subconscious and it's one of my all-time favorite movies, though not for all tastes. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

8. DESCENT (see above)

9. THE STORY OF RICKY (1991)

Insane and extra-ultra-violent, this is one of the most faithful comics adaptations ever (it's adapted from the manga series RIKI-OH). And how could a movie not stick with you when it features a guy pulling out his own intestines so he can attempt to strangle the hero with them?

10. CHRISTIANE F (1981)

I saw this one in high school with my friend Cat, both of us lured in by its promise of seeing David Bowie perform (he has virtually zero screen time), and the heroin horrors it graphically depicted are single-handedly responsible for keeping me (and Cat) away from smack for life. Aggressively unpleasant from start to finish and quite scary to impressionable youngsters, this should be mandatory viewing for school kids from the age of ten and up.

11. GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)

Animated by the same people who gave the world the joyous MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (but not directed by Hiyao Miyazaki), this is a strong contender for the title of "Most Depressing Film of All Time." This makes SOPHIE'S CHOICE look like YELLOW SUBMARINE by comparison.

12. LISZTOMANIA (1975)

Ken Russell's utterly mad interpretation of the life and career of composer Franz Liszt , featuring (among a cornucopia of tripped-out and loony imagery) the Who's Roger Daltrey in a dress, sprouting a twelve-foot dick. Not for all tastes by any means, but I find its over-the-top cartoonish lunacy to be singular and irresistible.

13. SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980)

The perfect blend of incredibly beautiful cinematography and the goriest swordfighting in motion picture history, this masterpiece of carnage seamlessly splices the highlights of the first two LONE WOLF AND CUB movies and comes up with a winner. Another of my all-time favorite movies, this had a huge impact on me and made me want to learn how to swordfight, and not like one of those flitty Three Musketeers guys either! HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

14. IMPETUS FIRE 2 (1990)
Sadly there's no photo available for this one, and that may be a good thing. Also known as A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN AND HER EIGHTEEN TRICKS and the far less subtle STUNTS WITH CUNTS, this is a grainy and wholly un-erotic hardcore film wherein a Filipino woman does things with her vagina that will astound and amaze. I've shown this to a room full of lesbians and hardcore feminists and they were each utterly fascinated, some commenting "I never knew it could do that!!!" The woman in question is a performer in some grubby back alley live sex show, but at no point does she engage in straight sex; instead she puts her most sacred of orifices through some shit that will make your jaw drop as your hair stands on end in disbelief, including writing precise calligraphy with a vaginally-wielded sumi brush, breaking inserted pieces of whole sugarcane, firing darts at party balloons via a blowgun, playing a toy horn and many other feats of wonder. However there are two bits that permanently burned themselves into my memory:

1. The woman whips out a forearm-length piece of wood and whittles on it with a buckknife to prove that the knife is sharp enough to carve lumber, after which she inserts it blade-first into herself and moves it about, suffering no injury whatsoever. And this is achieved in one non-stop shot.
2. The knife thing was bad enough for all manner of psychologically disturbing reasons, but I was far more fascinated when she filled her Lady Place with at least fifteen live and wriggling tadpoles and spat them out one by one.

I defy any man on this planet to surpass this woman's skills with his Johnson and gong. IMPETUS FIRE 2 is a real brain-melter and can be had here.

15. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928)

An eerie and compelling silent film whose protagonist's image was ripped off shamelessly to create Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker. Seriously, just look at the sensitive and artistic hero's face. Straight-up nightmare fuel, right?