DEATH SHIP (1980)

Fuck this old turd of a movie. I remember getting burning by this piece of shit back in the 1980’s, when your mom would only let you pick one (maybe two) movies to rent to last you the entire weekend…and that cover looked so goddamn wicked with the crusty old ship with the ghost face, so you get the movie home and it fucking blows! Like, literally nothing happens for the entire movie! A cruise ship is hit in the middle of the night by a haunted ship; a few boring survivors climb off a raft onto the death ship and that’s it. They just walk around looking at spider webs and empty hallways for the rest if the movie. It was Hell. And your entire weekend was ruined! Why didn’t I just rent HALLOWEEN II or TIME BANDITS again! I was so stupid when I was a little kid. Idiot. I hate young me.

Fast-forward however many hundred years since it’s been since 1983 and I rent the fucking movie again! Surely, it's better now that I'm a handsome adult with a girthy, veiny, pulsating brain to think with. Annnd...I swear to Satan, it’s even worse now that it was back then! How did this movie even get made? There’s three writers listed in the credits, but there isn’t a story.  Is there an actual script for this movie somewhere or did they just film some actors walking around a ship and then cobble it into a movie?

Watch it if you want. I don't give a fuck what you do. I'm just ashamed to admit that I've watched this movie twice in my life. How embarrassing. That cover art is dope though. Maybe I should watch it again just to make sure.

Side note: while the movie is a complete turd, it was interesting to see George Kennedy and Richard Crenna in action. I think a lot of my anger for this movie still comes from it pissing me off so bad (with its boredom) as a kid.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

Solely based on the lurid posters and DVD cover, you would think that WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS was a straight up pre-PSYCHO horror movie about a serial killer preying on innocent women. But, just like how Jesus says in Matthew 7:46: “And Jesus said unto Asmodeus, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’”, so should you not judge WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS by it’s artwork.

After a mildly startling opener featuring a poor woman who just wants to take a bath without getting murdered, we’re introduced to media mogul Robert Warwick who’s so attached to his job that he has his literal death bed in his office! He has two regrets in his life: one, his shitty douche of a son (played brilliantly by Vincent Price) and two: not officially naming faithful TV anchorman Dana Andrews as the person to take over his empire when he croaks…which he does like 5 seconds later. His death puts Price in charge and his first order of business is pitting his main bosses into an all out war with each other. And that includes one dude who’s long-dicking Price’s own wife! Goddamn! Added to all this (don’t forget we still got a serial killer running around) there’s a subplot about Andrew’s fiancé, Sally Forrest, who also works at the news network and happens to live across the hallway from Price’s wife’s fuck shack! And, if that wasn’t enough, you have writer Ida Lupino getting in the middle of everything. It’s awesome.

As always, I went into the movie totally blind and I ended up having a lot of fun. I was straight-up shocked by the star-power in the movie (both in front and behind the camera) and very impressed by the maturity of the script. Overall, I found WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS to be a great discovery (to me, at least) and recommend it to fans of older Hollywood. The only thing that really stood out as a negative was Sally Forrest's hair.

Not part of the review, but a few interesting(?) things that I discovered while reading about the movie: the original 1953 novel, named "The Bloody Spur" (no clue what the fuck that means) was written by Charles Einstein who is the half-brother of both Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein! The killer was played by John Drew Barrymore, who is the son of John Barrymore and the father of Drew Barrymore!