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.

I LIVE IN FEAR (1955)

Made during the height of the atomic bomb scare (especially concerning to Japan were the Bikini Island experiments), I LIVE IN FEAR is the kinda incoherent story of a dude, Toshiro Mifune, playing a older head of a family, who is scared shitless of the idea of atomic bombs and radioactive fallout. He's pretty wealthy since he started a foundry years ago, but recently he's burned through the money building a fallout shelter. Now he's abandoned that idea and wants to sell everything and move to Brazil and take his entire family with him including his two mistresses, their kids and even a kid from an ex-mistress! His family has had enough of his crazy ravings and wants him declared mentally incompetent so they can prevent him from selling everything.

I like that idea a lot.  Unfortunately, when Kurosawa and company started writing the script they meant it to be a satire, but as they progressed they decided to change it to a tragedy! That was a bad idea and it shows. Not only is this Kurosawa's biggest box office bomb, but I thought it was way too slow. The other problem is I didn't like anybody in the film. Mifune just acted like a maniac completely out of touch with reality and his family came across as a bunch of greedy pigs. The entire thing was a bummer and time hasn't helped it at all. The movie would have been much better if Mifune's character was pulled back in a little to make his fears seem more realistic and less paranoid. But that's just my opinion, what do I know?

One interesting thing was Kurosawa had the entire cast run 20 days of full rehearsals before they started filming! That's crazy. Also Kurosawa used a three camera technique a lot during this movie.

Skip it.

THE RUNAWAY BARGE (1975)

[Update 10/05/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Coming in at only 72 minutes, THE RUNAWAY BARGE packs a lot into its short runtime. First off, you got some bootleggers secretly unloading a barge full of sugar, then Tim Matheson (and his "hippie" hair) reports for his first day of work on a huge barge called the "River King". His new co-workers are a whiley bunch.  They include the guy from the engine room who literally screams all of his lines right in the other people's faces, James Best (best known as "Rosco P. Coltrane), Jim "Jock Ewing" Davis as the captain and Lucille Benson who starred in a bunch of TV shows. Then he meets Bo Hopkins who talks nonstop for the rest of the movie.

Bo finds out that the woman he's screwing is bangin' another guy so he takes Tim onshore to straighten this shit out. Naturally the chick has an attractive friend and she instantly falls for the dreamy Tim. Right about the time he's about to knockboota he looks up and the River King is going down the river without them!!! They get on a gold motorcycle with a sidecar and race off after the barge. Along the way they talk some shit to the other guy Bo's girlfriend is screwing, Nick Nolte.

They race along the road (and off the road) and right when they get to a place where they can cut off the River King they run smack dab into the bootleggers! They get locked up in a shed and right before Nick Nolte (he's the leader of the bootleggers) can kill them Bo Hopkins girlfriend breaks them out and everybody starts chasing each other around in the dark. Well ol' Bo and Tim end up on a barge and untie it and start floating down the river to escape. They do, but while celebrating they realize the barge is full up with chlorine. Oh shit. I guess barges don't have anchors or radios or anything cause Tim and Bo just stand there and talk about how they're going to die when the barge hits the dam downriver. Then suddenly right before the barge crashes a little bitty tug boat, driven by the River King captain, whips in and stops them. He then leads out the window and starts talking shit about Tim's hair. The End.

Strangely enough I actually enjoyed the movie. From beginning to end it was always going forward so I never had time to get bored. If you can find a copy and you enjoy cheesy 70's made-for-TV movie I say go for it! It's not going to change your life, but you'll get a few good chuckles out of it.

For more 1975 TV weirdness check out THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK!

ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY (1947)

A man and his girlfriend are poor as shit and spend their one day together, Sunday, walking around being poor as shit and being depressed and then being really happy. The End.

"Though this film won me a prize for the best director of the year I don't think I made it nearly freely enough. I had a lot of things to say and I got them all mixed up - it certainly is not my favorite film." - Akira Kurosawa.

I couldn't agree with you more Akira. I like human dramas of this type (Vidor's THE CROWD comes to mind), but I didn't care for ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY at all. Visually it's fine, nothing special, but it works. Actually a few of the shots are really nice, most notable the train at the beginning. The biggest problem I had was the script. It's jumbled up and it gives no real reason for the happy ending. They're still poor as shit and yea, suddenly the dude has some self-respect (as shown by in the opening scene he picked up a half smoked cigarette off the sidewalk and smokes it, in the final scene he sees a half-smoked cigarette on the sidewalk and he smashes it out with his foot), but you ain't going to pay your fucking bills with self-respect and dreams. I don't know maybe I missed something, maybe it was some kind of allegory for post-war Japan . I don't know.

RIGHTEOUS TIES (2006)

So how do you ruin a revenge movie about a inhumanly tough gangster "slasher" who's arrested, refuses to squeal on his boss and is sent to prison only to have his gang do absolutely nothing when another gang attacks his parents which then forces him to lead a prison escape so he can get revenge on both gangs?!

Number one, about every 10 minutes you have some slow-motion scene with emotional, sappy music playing. Number two, to just throw in random straight up comedy moments in all over the place. Number three, you make the story way more confusing than it needs to be.

The idea for this movie is great! I love revenge movies, I love Korean gangster movies, I love prison escape movies! This movie has a lot of great shit going for it, but fuck this script is a piece of shit. Skip this stinker altogether. A few of the funny moments were actually funny and some of the action scenes were actually exciting, but as a complete package RIGHTEOUS TIES is a mess and not worth the time I wasted watching it.