ACT OF VIOLENCE (1948)

[Update 02/16/2022: Need to fix the screenshots.]

Van Heflin is living the ideal post-WWII life. He has a beautiful young wife, a little baby, a growing business and the respect and admiration of his fellow small town citizens. But it all came at a price: a bad decision he made in a Nazi prison camp. Only one other person in the world knows about what he did...and that man has finally come for his revenge.

At only 82 minutes, ACT OF VIOLENCE moves along at a brisk pace. Add on top of that the impressive cast, director Fred (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY) Zinnemann and the only noir by legendary cinematographer Robert Surtees and you've got a pretty good movie.

Rumor has it that Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck were originally going to be the leads and that would have been awesome, but I really like the way things turned out. I'm a big fan of both Heflin and Ryan and it was a lot of fun watching Ryan charging around like the Terminator stopping at nothing to kill the increasingly unstable Heflin who resorts to more and more desperate measures to outrun his past when actually the real danger is the guilt inside of him.

Mandatory viewing for film noir fans.

Film crew visible in reflection.

THE VISITOR (1979)

[Update 7/2/2019: I want to revisit this movie. Maybe I missed something. Need to fix the screenshots also.]

It's probably safe to say that the makers of this films were baked out of their fucking skulls.

From what I gathered, John Huston is a super old wizard or something and a shitload of years ago he kicked some dude's ass and that dude somehow spread his seed all over the universe. So now Huston is going around capturing this dude's offspring and returning them to some room where they hang out with some blue-eyed hippie that looks like Jesus.

Huston's latest travels bring him to Atlanta where he's tracking down a little girl and her killer falcon. She shouldn't be too hard to find though, just look for the foul-mouthed little girl with the glowing eyes who's busy throwing other kids through windows, tossing somebody into a large aquarium, shooting her mother in the back (leaving her paralyzed), kicking people down the stairs and causing all kinds of bizarre freak accidents.

As far as THE OMEN ripoffs go, this one is definitely one of the strangest and most discombobulated. And I'm not saying that in a good way. This movie is a mess. The story is silly, the special effects are shit, the music doesn't even belong in this type of film, there's little violence and the pace is almost torture. The only thing saving this movie from being a complete piece of shit is the cast. How the filmmakers talked so many talented actors to be in this movie I have no idea. They must have blown their entire budget on getting names on the marquee when they should have been concentrating on the script.

Good for a few laughs, but beyond that forget it. That poster is awesome though. It reminds me of the one from TERRORVISION.

IN TROUBLE (1971)

[Update 02/28/2021: need to redo this entire review and fix the screenshots.]

Made in 1971, but not released in America until 1974.

Despite the title THE JOY OF LOVE, this film is actually a gritty, depressing "report" film about the horrors of illegal abortions!

During the opening credits we see a well-to-do woman getting an abortion.  Followed by some short stories.

1) the trial of a young woman who has already given up a child for adoption. She gets pregnant again and goes to an old lady for a kitchen abortion. Naturally the procedure is all fucked up and the young lady hemorrhages and nearly dies. Now the two women are in court.

2) a 13 year-old girl is kidnapped and gang raped, The doctors tell her she must have the baby, since the law forbids abortion.

3) A local slut has been banging a bunch of dudes and she tells them she's pregnant. They try all kinds of crazy things to cause a miscarriage: riding a motorcycle on a bumpy road; jumping out of a barn; alternating cold and hot bathes and so on. Trouble is she's not really pregnant just looking to extort money out of the guys.

4) The trials and tribulations of a mobile illegal abortion clinic.

5) A secretary is molested and impregnated by her sleazy boss. He sends her to London for an abortion.

6) A husband takes his wife to a slimy doctor for an illegal abortion. Once the doctor gets her alone he drugs her, takes a bunch of pictures of her pussy, rapes her and then performs the abortion to buy her silence.

7) A free-spirited teenage girl bangs a boy and gets pregnant. She begs the local doctor to give her an abortion. He does and she gets sick, so the local priest comes along and talks shit.

... finally we get back to the court house where the judge sentence the old woman who performed the botched abortion (from the first story) to 3 years in prison and the young woman who nearly died to six months. The judge leaves the courthouse where, on the ride home, his wife (the woman from the opening credits) tells her husband that she just had an abortion. “The female revolution has begun.” the narrator announces.

For what it is, it's not a bad film. Everything was filmed well enough, but outside of historical curiosity I cannot think of a single reason why anybody would want to watch this movie. I do find it pathetic though that even though this movie is over 50 years old the subject matter is still relevant.

ROBOT (2010)

[Update 03/23/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

A supergenius scientist creates a robot, Chitti, that can walk and drive a car and breakdance and help Aishwarya Rai cheat on her medical exam and even talk to mosquitoes, but he doesn't have any human emotions. The regulatory board that oversees that kind of bullshit says that Chitti must be destroyed because he's too dangerous. One insane example of his lack of human understanding is when he saves a woman trapped in an apartment fire...wait for it, wait!...because she was naked. Yep, according to humans, it's better to died a agonizing slow death in an inferno than be saved without any clothes on. Stupid robot!!!!! Eventually Chitti does learn some human emotions like wanting to fuck the scientist's girlfriend, so he's destroyed and his remains dumped in the junkyard. Along comes an evil scientist and rebuilds Chitti to be a military grade Killbot and kill he does, by the fucking hundreds! He even has evil lightning bolt shaped sideburns.

The basic idea of ROBOT is fun, but this motherfucker's nearly 3 hours long!!! It's too goddamn much. Plus, the feel of the movie is all over the map: there's a suicide, multiple attempted rape scenes (including a massive gang rape), crossdressing, rapping (in English), a wedding, a karate class, baby tossing, baby delivery, a fashion show, wholesale mass murder, cooking, singing, dancing and much more. An episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force has a more linear story than ROBOT. I wanted to like this movie and for a few minutes I did, but by the end I was just fucking exhausted. I know that that rapid fire insanity plus musical numbers is standard operating procedure for some Indian films, but it didn't work as well in ROBOT.

Long story short: it's an entertaining flick that's hurt by the long running time. Also, I was very confused as to why Aishwarya's neighbors, who attempted to gang rape her, never got in trouble. I mean they literally kidnapped her and tried to rape her, but then later on you see them standing on their balcony pointing and laughing at her.  Also, at one point Chitti, who's made of metal, punched a guy down to the ground, crammed a pole down the guy's throat and then pole vaulted (!!!!!!!!), but the guy lived!

Worth a watch, just for the pure insanity of it all, but be sure to leave all of your logic at the door.

Part 2 - 2.0 (2018)