DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE! (1980)

[Update 06/07/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Nicholas Worth's performance made this film. He's sweaty, fat and crazier than a shithouse rat.  If the makers of the film had any sense they would have cut most of the police detectives scenes and replaced them with more moments of Worth running around with his shirt off screaming to his dad's ghost, working out, crying and stalking/attacking women.

I got a little ahead of myself. There's a serial killer going around the city attacking women and raping them as they die, then he poses them and takes pictures. The police are clueless, but when the Strangler kills a woman live on the radio while on the phone to a female psychologist they get the lead they're looking for: he's obsessed with this doctor and looks at her as his grand prize.

We, the audience, know the identity of the Strangler right from the beginning and, like I said, he's bat shit crazy and a lot of fun to watch. I was really rooting for this dude to kill more and more, but then around the 45 minutes mark the story is sidetracked by the police efforts.  It's as boring as watching blood dry on roadkill. Eventually they get back to the Strangler.

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE! is a good example of the gritty late 1970's/early 1980's sleazy cinema that is probably impossible to make today. It's almost like a time capsule with all of is amazing street scenes and eye-popping fashions. Outside of Nicholas Worth's disturbing performance the movie is just OK, but worth a watch if you're into this kind of stuff.

STAR TIME (1992)

[Update 03/15/2023: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Eighty-five minutes was too long for this movie. Thirty-five would have been better.

Henry Pinkle is a fucked up dude. He's obsessed with a TV show and when it's canceled it pushes this goofball over the edge and suddenly an imaginary friend pops up right as he's about to commit suicide. The imaginary dude (played by one of the inhuman teaching monsters from CLASS OF 1999 tells Henry that he can be a star and gives him an ax and a baby mask. Henry kills some people (nearly all of it is done off screen or told through news reports) and becomes famous, but before long his 15 minutes are up. And I wish this movie had ended at least 15 minutes earlier. At first I was enjoying the build up, but that was it. The murder scenes were lame and the majority of the movie was spent with Henry talking to his imaginary friend or Henry talking to his case worker. If this had been a short film I'd recommend it, but as it is it's just way too long with not enough action. At least fellow early 90's forgotten serial killer movie RAMPAGE had some amazing kill scenes before it shit the bed by become a lame court room drama for the last 45 minutes. Skip it.

WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH (1974)

[Update 10/09/2022: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

The movie opens with a hitchhiking scene that kinda reminds me of Jack Lemmon's hitchhiker/free love encounter in SAVE THE TIGER...except this time the freelovin' hippie chick is picked up by a coked-out hot rodder. She instantly wants out, but he ain't hearin' it and races off down the highway until he finally crashes. She then wanders off, down to the beach, passes a group of naked hippies playing with a dog (I kept wonderin if the dog was going to bite somebody's dick off, but it never did). Finally she wanders onto a private beach and falls asleep. The owner of the beach comes down from his house and invites her inside. She does. Later that night she hears a noise coming from the basement and goes to investigate. She finds the dude chopping up meat, but what kind of meat?

Fans of modern day horror will probably find this movie too slow, but I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, it's a little boring, has a low body count and never really goes anywhere but it's watchable. The scenes out on the 70's streets were especially interesting, from a time travel point of view.

Would make a interesting double feature with MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH.

THE SWORD OF DOOM (1966)

Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a master swordsman who might possibly be a bloodthirsty sociopath.  One day while out on a leisurely walk he overhears an old man who's traveling with his granddaughter (she ran off to get some water) praying to Buddha to let him die so he will quit being a burden on his granddaughter. Ryunosuke answers his pray by walking over and slicing the dude's back open. He walks off. Another traveler (a thief) walks up right when the granddaughter finds her murdered grandfather. The thief feels pity on the girl so he takes her in as his own daughter.

Later, Ryunosuke is suppose to fight a non-lethal fencing duel against a samurai from a rival clan. The wife of the other fighter is terrified that Ryunosuke (who has a reputation for being a psychopath--ya think?!) will hurt her husband. Ryunosuke tells her if she gives up the pussy he'll spare the husband, she agrees so he ravages the shit out of her, but since he's a supreme asshole he lets the husband know! The next day at the duel the husband is understandably pissed and uses an illegal attack. Ryunosuke kills the dude with one blow.

The other samurai clan goes nuts and attack him: 40 to 1. Ryunosuke doesn't care and (in a scene that predates the hammer scene in OLDBOY by 37 years) he walks down the path, filmed left to right in pretty much one shot as he slaughters them all! Leaving a wake of bleeding corpses behind him. And that's just the first 20 minutes of the movie!!! I'm not going to go into the rest, but it's beyond badass. Pretty much he just kills everybody. The End.

I cannot say enough good things about this movie. The story is amazing, the acting by everybody is excellent and the direction by Kihachi Okamoto and cinematography by Hiroshi Murai is some of the best I've ever seen.

The movie is based on the novel "Dai-bosatsu tōge" by Kaizan Nakazato. I've looked all over but I cannot find a English language version of the book.