Sunday, September 26, 2010

HARRY BROWN (2009)

Standard urban vigilante story that rises above the rest thanks to powerful performances across the board, but especially Michael Caine who really carries the entire film with his low-key portrayal of a older man, alone in an urban hell housing slum filled with lowlife thugs.  After seeing these worthless shitbags literally getting away with murder, he can't take it any more and decides to get all DEATH WISH on their unwashed nutsacks.

The story is an unrealistic wet dream, but it's still a lot of fun. That said...what's up with the horrible looking computer blood effects?! It only happened a handful of times, but it looked so fake I ended up laughing during scenes that should have been shocking. And speaking of shocking, the criminal characters were assholes, but I wish the filmmakers had spent just a little bit more time to make them look like even bigger assholes to make the audience really hate 'em. That's just my worthless two cents.

Definitely worth a watch. Also, make sure to watch the deleted scenes.  I thought they were pretty good and added to the story nicely.

Friday, September 24, 2010

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.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

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.