HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN (1963)

Lame story about a woman named Granny Good who runs a school for good girls (and by "girls" I mean 30 year-old women) out in the country.  The girls don't seem to do much studying or going to classes, instead they mostly just walk around topless.  The End.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, there's also a werewolf who runs a moonshine still in the basement.  What the hell?  Okay, that's actually hilarious, but outside of the basement werewolf moonshiner, the entire film (all 62 minutes of it) is painfully stupid.

Granny Good herself is a dude in old lady drag doing a horrible Jonathan Winters impersonation, the girls themselves aren't going to win any beauty contests, the acting (what little there is of it) can't really even be considered acting and the pace was torture.  Not the worst thing I've ever seen (actually the B-Side of this disc, KISS ME QUICK, was way worse), but outside of curiosity and wall-to-wall nudity I can't think of any reasons to watch this bizarre clunker.

SATAN'S BLOOD (1978)

[Update 07/19/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

The World's Most Gullible Couple are driving home from the park when a car (holding another couple) pulls along side of them at the red light. The driver says hey I used to go to college with you...follow me to my house! So, being idiots too stupid to live, they follow this other couple for the better part of an hour(!) to a secluded, walled-in estate way out in the middle of nowhere. Once inside, they start talking about random bullshit and take part in a seance.  Afterwards they go to bed.

In the middle of the night, strange Satanic shenanigans start to happen, but no matter how weird or dangerous it gets the main couple never leave. They talk about it plenty, but never do. Finally after people start to drop dead they decide to leave, but never actually make it past the driveway. It's totally stupid.

Plenty of nudity by the two non-attractive female leads, high school level blood effects, irritating story that leads to a twist ending that even M. Night Shyamalan would role his eyes at, zero scares, skip it and never look back.

THE PASSION OF ANNA (1969)

[Update 03/15/2022: Deleting review. Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

RED BEARD (1965)

[Update 05/30/16: this review sucks.  I will try to redo it soon.]

Set in the 1800's, Yuzo Kayama is a young doctor fresh out of school.  He plans on making a ton of duckets being a doctor to the shogunate, but is sorely disappointed when he's assigned to a public clinic. He immediately butts head with the head doctor, Dr. Kyojo Niide (Toshiro Mifune), also known as Red Beard. At first the new doctor just sits in his room drinking and pouting, but then he starts to loosen up as he hears the heartbreaking stories of the poor and observes their sad lives up close.

Over time, his heart thaws and after six months of guidance by Red Beard, the young doctor becomes not only a great doctor, but a great man, who is more interested in helping people who truly need help than making money by catering to the rich.

Simplistic view, yes, but still a beautiful movie.  It's also the last film of Kurosawa's great period and his final film with Mifune.