THE APARTMENT (1960)

Office worker Jack Lemmon has an apartment that he allows his superiors at work to use as a fuck shack, remember this still is in the day of hotel detectives. He hopes all of this trouble will get him a promotion. It does, but it also plays hell with his personal life, especially when he finds out that his slimy boss (Fred MacMurray) has been droppin' absent-minded Flubber loads all over the girl he has a crush on in his own bed!  What a horrible life. Lemmon has practically sold his soul to Greed, but despite all this he's still secretly in love with the girl.  Jesus Christ!

The script by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is brilliant and the performances by everybody, especially Lemmon and MacMurray, are outstanding, but yet I don't think this film should have beaten out PSYCHO for the Best Picture Academy Award, not that PSYCHO was even nominated! THE APARTMENT is an excellent film and even after numerous watches I still love it, but PSYCHO is just legendary.

Touching performance by Lemmon, strong script with some excellent dialogue, beautiful b&w photography, Fred MacMurray in a darker role and notable for it's openness about suicide and adultery.  Highly recommended.

Ray Walston!

STRIPPED TO KILL (1987)

[Update 11/22/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Deleted the screenshots and removed a huge part of the review. Will fix when I can.]

What a massive disappointment this movie was! Based on the cover I mistakenly thought that this was a slasher movie set in a strip club filled with smoking hot strippers stripping. I was wrong. It's actually a mediocre police mystery/drama about a murdered woman who happened to be a stripper. In order to find the killer, the cops put a female detective undercover as a stripper in the same rundown shithole that the victim danced in.

Part 2 - Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls (1989)

CRITTERS (1986)

A band of outlaws break out of prison. While on the run from the authorities, they attack a secluded homestead out in the country.  Now, it's up to the family (and two bounty hunters) to repel the invader's attack. That sounds like the description of a hundred different Western movies, but it's actually the story to CRITTERS, a low-budget sci-fi horror/comedy from the 1980's about some furry little meanies that love to gobble up anything they can...including humans!

There's many things to like about CRITTERS (fast pace, funny moments, good acting, etc.), but one of the things that I enjoyed the most is the strong character build-up of the family during the first act. They all seem like genuinely nice people, so then, when the attack happens you actually care about what happens to them.  What an amazing concept!  I wish more horror films would do something like this.

Anyway, if you haven't seen CRITTERS, then I think you're missing out on a good movie. There's no nudity or gore, but it's a fun film that I love to revisit.  Check it out!

Double-feature with GREMLINS.

Fun fact: Two of the characters in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS watch some of CRITTERS on TV. Here's a link to some screenshots.

Part 2 - Critters 2 (1988)
Part 3 - Critters 3 (1991)
Part 4 - Critters 4 (1992)