Friday, January 22, 2010

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGENANCE (2002)

Ehh, kinda boring. There's a few exciting moments, but I could easily trim off 20 minutes of filler. So you got this deaf mute dude who has a sick sister. She's on the waiting list for a kidney, but she's sick as fuck, so being a little simple, he goes to an organ dealer. They take his money he's saved up for his sister's surgery, steal his kidney and leave him naked in an abandoned building. That's pretty shitty, but the real bad luck happens next when he gets a frantic message from the hospital saying they have a donor kidney and all they need is the money for the surgery within few days. He flips out and with his Communist girlfriend they kidnap a wealthy dude's daughter. At first, things are going according to plan, but soon everything goes to shit and here's where the vengeance comes in.

Overall it's kinda entertaining, but I felt zero connection to any of the main characters so I really didn't give a f what happened to any of them.  Also why would they even sew him up?  Why not just harvest all of his organs? The most interesting thing for me was the look of the movie. Chan-wook Park is definitely talented and lucky for us he seems to get better with each film he makes.

Not a bad movie by any means. I just think it should have been shorter with better character development. Good performances by everybody. Worth watching once.

Part 2 - Oldboy (2003)
Part 3 - Lady Vengeance (2005)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

MOON (2009)

[Update 07/18/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]




















Tuesday, January 19, 2010

STEEL ARENA (1973)

[Update 08/24/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

I tried to get into this one, but I just couldn't. The idea of a hotshot moonshine runner becoming a daredevil is fantastic!  Too bad what you're imagining right now is better than what actually happened. There's only one moonshine running chase scene, then the daredevil outfit he hooks up with does a bunch of lame horseshit tricks like jumping a car into other cars or my favorite: driving one wheel up a ramp and then just tumbling over. Well, goddamn anybody could do that!

The acting is lame as hell and the budget was probably low as hell..I hope it was, cause it didn't show up onscreen! The only reason to watch this turd would be for the stunts, but they suck so you'd be better off spending 90 minutes looking up car jump/wreck videos on YouTube.

Director Mark L. Lester would go on to make the classics COMMANDO and CLASS OF 1999.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

ILSA, THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA (1977)

I remember back when I was a professional assassin I executed thousands, maybe millions, of people but never once did I fill a waterbed with gasoline and shoot a red hot dart into it. Come to think of it, I never converted an egg beater into a penis-grinder either. Goddamn it Ilsa, you win again!!!

ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS is, of course, the best of the Ilsa series and TIGRESS OF SIBERIA is my second favorite. The other two weren't as imaginative. This time around, the film opens at a Siberian prison camp in 1953. Ilsa is the boss and during the day she tortures/kills the prisoners in horrible ways (electrocution, ice water, man-eating tiger, chainsaw arm wrestling, head-crushing with huge hammer, etc.), then at night she had the guards fight over her and the two winners get to fuck her and her fat tits. The losers are then pretty much raped by the unattractive female guards.

When Stalin is killed, the guards burn the camp (with all the prisoners locked inside) and split. Jump forward to Canada in 1977 and Ilsa is running a whorehouse. The women are held captive with the thanks of Ilsa's brainwashing techniques. Then one day, a prisoner who escaped the Siberian torture camp alive walks in the door of Ilsa's whorehouse. Ilsa kidnaps him and starts torturing him again. With the help of her high-tech fear-monitoring computer she discovers that his biggest fear is having Ilsa bite his dick off...Yikes! You'll just have to see for yourself what happens next.

NSFW posters

Part 1 - Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975)
Part 2 - Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
Part 4 - Wanda, the Wicked Warden (1977)