Category Archives: Film

Cheap Thrills (2013)

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cheapthrills01Pat Healy and Sara Paxton from The Innkeepers.  That’s all I really needed to know to make this a must-see

Sadly, it also stars the odious David Koechner, doesn’t give Sara anything to do, and has directorial problems.

Pat Healy and wife are a cute couple with a new baby.  His day is off to a great start as he notices an eviction notice on their apartment door.  Then he gets fired from his job at the garage.  The obvious solution is to go to a bar.  There he sees an old friend Vince, who he hasn’t seen for 5 years.

Vince works in collections as a knuckle-breaker; also a dragger.  Healy inquires about joining that prestigious line of work, but doesn’t seem cut out for it.

Healy passes a guy doing some coke in the bathroom, and sees a $50 bill in the  toilet.  Being American dollars, this is very appropriate.  Coming back out, he sees Vince has joined Koechner and Sara at their table.  Koechner portrays the same overbearing, obnoxious character he always plays.  He buys the group a $300 bottle of tequila and offers $50 to the first one to down their shot.  The games have begun.

The fun continues innocently with bets on darts, slapping asses, hitting on hookers. At a strip club, a more serious challenge ends with Healy being being punched in his face, which brings out his inner Tyler Durden.  The bets escalate, leading to the only place this can lead to.  That’s not to say it’s not possible to have fun while zooming toward the inevitable.  But it is to say that there should have been a lot more fun getting there.

cheapthrills02Audiences, especially in the horror genre, have been burned so many times that the barest hint of quality often becomes over-praised.

It’s like when you are forced at gunpoint to listen to jazz and unexpectedly 3 consecutive notes form something resembling a melody.  Your heart beats a little faster in anticipation of an actual tune.

This is only an OK movie, garnering praise way above its pay-grade.  Pat Healy does great work as always, but the cast falls off steeply after that.  Ethan Embry as Vince is overwhelmingly adequate, nothing more.  Koechner is just a repulsive blowhard; that’s his stock character and I guess he plays it well, but it doesn’t make it pleasant to watch.

And poor, lovely Sara Paxton.  Did she read the script before signing?  Other than one cringe-inducing fully-clothed sex scene, she is given nothing do to.  I mean, literally nothing.  She is silent arm candy to a jerk.  This is far, far beneath her.

The tone and pacing also seemed uneven.  This was director E.L. Katz’s first joint.  It isn’t horrible, but it doesn’t quite work either.  The pacing is off, the cinematography just seems wrong, and the fine line between comedy and horror is not adequately resolved.

In conclusion, poor Sara.  It was nearly impossible to find a single good shot of her to capture in the entire movie.  All in all, a huge let down given the stars and reviews I had read.

Post-Post:

  • E.L. Katz was a producer on the low-budget Aggression Scale which I quite liked.
  • Writer Trent Haaga played Clyde in Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula.  Just the thought of that is so great that I refuse to watch it and be disappointed.
  • Even the poster above bugs me.  At first I thought the yellow shape backing the title shape was a theater ticket, but no; I got nothing.  Good maniacal shot of Healy; Koechner seems appropriately repulsive — a fair representation; Sara displays the same detachment she shows in the movie, so at least it is an accurate portrayal of how she is underutilized.  But what the hell does Vince find so high-larious?  OK, now the yellow backing looks like an open file folder — but why?  And why is there a single bill floating around?  That doesn’t exactly reflect the titular thrill, an out of control evening or coke-fueled insanity.  No one ever says “It’s all about a Benjamin.”
  • It is not uncommon to say some guys are baby-faced.  Healy is the only guy who seems to be infant-faced.
  • And Davey K, enough with the hipster hats — you’re 50!  Backwards baseball cap in the wash?

Shaded Places (2000)

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shadedplaces0220 movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part IX.

Called Shaded Places in this collection.  A search on IMDb turned up The Giving Tree.  The cover on IMDb has the title The Brutal Truth.  Not a good sign when your movie has more names than Frank Abagnale.

This was actually the first film in the big box o’ fun.  I skipped it (and film #2) due to universally dismal reviews and comments.  In the interest of completeness, I felt compelled to watch both before playing the back ten.

shadedplaces04This one was bad.  The worst in the collection so far.  Dreadful acting, forced awkward attempts at humor, stunningly awful ballads used as a score, leaden pace, barely detectable story, terrible possibly improvised, dialog.  The vets like Molly Ringwald and Christina Applegate are mostly bearable as they know how to calibrate their performances to this piece of crap.  Their screen time is limited, though.

Of the others, only the blonde bimbo pulls off anything resembling a character. Unfortunately, the script is so terrible I can’t even identify her character by looking at IMDb.  Is she Vanilla?  Is she Paula?  Is she Paulo?  None listed in IMDb.

I guess they were going for a Big Chill type of joint here, but failed miserably.  A group of friends gather at a place where a friend has just died.  Scenes are frequently backed with or intercut with singing.  There is even the sexy outsider — Meg Tilly in The Big Chill vs the unknown blonde here.  The Motown tunes are replaced by generic crap, real actors replaced by hacks.  An insemination is replaced by an actual birth.  I suspect the dialog includes a lot of improv, and this group just was not up to the task.

shadedplaces05Post-Post:

  • Try to remember the better times with Christina Applegate.
  • Finally figured out the blonde is “Zoey”.  She actually does provide a couple of laughs.  If that is her, she is named Tiffany Salerno, and actually got story and producer credits on this joint.  Sadly she has not one subsequent credit.  Not one.  If I magnanimously gave this movie 1 star, it would be for her (for onscreen, not production skillz).
  • So awful was this movie, that I actually laughed out loud at this shot.  There was about 5 genuinely funny seconds of reaction, then the script / improv quickly ruined this one oasis of quality.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

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50ftwoman00On TCM, the intro by Ben Mankiewicz points out that the movie cost less than $100,000 and was shot in a week.  He gleefully points out some of the shortcomings. Fine, they did the best they could.

We open with a newscast report sightings of a UFO in the Barents Sea, Cairo, Capetown South Africa and leaving Aukland NZ travelling northeast.  Using a globe that looks like the one I had as a kid that had a pencil sharpener in it, he estimates that it will reach California in just a few minutes.

Strangely, he seems to be in California, however his station KRKR is an actual station, located in Nebraska.

Shrewish heiress Nancy Archer is getting her kicks on Route 66 when she sees a huge sphere descend onto the road.  The car stalls and she takes off on foot as a giant hairy-knuckled hand makes a grab for her.  Meanwhile, her husband Harry is getting pretty handy himself with floozy Honey Parker in the local malt shop.  They are talking about how they can get their hands on Nancy’s fortune — that stay in “the booby hatch” might be the ticket.  Hmmmm, if only she made some outrageous hysterical claim.

She hoofs it back to town and tells the police the story of the 30 foot giant.  Harry blatantly slips the deputy a fiver to keep his whereabouts quiet while the police go to look for the giant.  They find Nancy’s car, but nothing in an extra large.

Back at Casa de Archer, Nancy warns Harry to stay from Honey.  She tries to tell him about the giant, how she could feel his hand on her throat, and that maybe he was after her diamond.  He carries her up to bed, and gives her a sleeping pill.

The next day on the news, Nancy hears a story describing her encounter with a “satellite” and its 30-foot inhabitant.  “Was he pink with big ears and tusks,” the impertinent newscaster asks.  After he mocks her rocky marriage, she hurls a scotch bottle glass through the TV (tellingly, not the half-finished cocktail glass already in her hand).  Half-full kind of gal, that Nancy.

She insists that Harry get his gun and take her to the desert to find the giant.  After hours of driving around, they do find the “satellite.”  Nancy gets out of the car and runs to it.   A bald giant starts pawing at Nancy.  Harry fires a few shots to no effect, then gets in the car and abandons Nancy to the hairy-knuckled brute.

50ftwoman03

Obligatory scale-establishing powerline shot

Harry returns to their home to pack a bag.  When the butler demands to know where Mrs. Archer is, Harry belts him, and they have a pretty well choreographed fight.  It ends abruptly with Harry grabbing yet another whiskey bottle — clearly the weapon of choice in the Archer home — and braining Jeeves with it.  He meets Honey at her hotel, but the deputy hauls them both in.

Mrs. Archer is found mysteriously at home.  When Harry tries to give her a fatal overdose of her medication, the nurse switches on the light and catches him.  She shrieks when she sees Nancy’s gigantic hand, and presumably proportionately gigantic body.  Not having a 7,000 gallon whiskey bottle to clock her with, Harry backs away.  How the rest of this enormous woman is able to fit in the bedroom is unexplained.

The doctor places an order to Acme Medical Supplies which oddly enough stocks meat-hooks, chains, block & tackle and an elephant syringe.

After finding some giant footprints, the sheriff inexplicably sends the deputy to the office to man the phones, and drafts Jeeves into service to find the giant.  They locate the “satellite” and are able to enter it.  Oddly, the interior, heavy on pegboard and thick with smoke, is scaled to accommodate a normal sized man.

In a scene reveled in by Ben Mankiewicz and IMDb, the giant grabs their car throws a completely different model of car to the ground.  To which, I say shut up.

Nancy wakens from her coma and begins screaming for Harry.  She bursts through the roof, raining debris upon her doctors.  “I know where my husband is!” she bellows.  In this scene, she also reveals a luscious mane of hair as opposed to the effect of gigantism on men, which is to make them bald.

Nancy, in a true 1st-wife move, pulls Harry out of the malt shop and kills Honey.  She makes the obligatory giant move towards the power lines and is killed.

Despite taking almost an hour for the 50-foot woman to appear, this is highly recommendatable.

Post-Post:

  • Satellite.  They keep using that word.  I do not think it means what they think it means.
  • The newscaster helpfully notes that it must have been a Boer in South Africa that made the sighting.  Perhaps because it was reported as a UFO and not a MOFO.
  • Yvette Vickers (Honey Parker) was Miss July 1959 in Playboy, photographed by Russ Meyer.  Sadly, when she died, her body remained undiscovered in her home for a year, leaving her mummified.
  • Writer Mark Hanna also wrote the screenplay for The Amazing Colossal Man released one year earlier.  You want to make a movie about giant people, he’s your guy.  Or was until 2003.
  • Director Nathan Juran also directed 5 episodes of Land of the Giants.
  • OK, I’m no better than Ben Makiewicz.

Enemy (2013)

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enemy00Now here’s a good candidate for movies boxed 20 for $5.  Not that it’s bad, it just is extremely slow and poorly shot.  OK, I guess that is the definition of bad.  However, it is partially redeemed by a fascinating (if unoriginal) plot and the performance of the increasingly reliable Jake Gyllenhaal.

A colleague recommends a movie to history professor Adam (Gyllenhaal).  In the background of one scene, he sees an actor who looks exactly like himself.  This set-up has been used in countless movies and TV shows. Fortunately it is a classic trope, often involving the nature of reality or identity, which never goes stale.  Unless it is the one about Peter Brady.

Adam tries calling the actor Anthony and has a very awkward conversation with his wife.  Later he has an awkward conversation with Anthony, which seems to be progress.

Then Anthony takes the initiative and calls Adam to set up a meeting.  Anthony’s pregnant wife snoops on Adam at his school.  Finally the stalking reaches its apex when Anthony takes Adam’s wife away for the weekend, and Adam pays the pregnant Ms. Anthony a visit and pretends to be Adam.

And there is this:enemy02No idea.

Anthony gets into an accident with Mrs. Adam, and Mrs. Anthony figures out that she is in bed with a doppelganger.  Then some really crazy shit happens that I can’t even begin to convey.

There is a really good Twilight Zone in here somewhere.  And not even a 4th Season TZ padded out to an hour.  This is a 30 minute episode slowed down to fill 90 minutes and shot all in sepia tones.  Only my suckertude for this kind of story kept me interested.

Post-Post:

  • Based on a novel entitled The Double by Jose Saramago.  Coincidentally, there was another movie released in 2013 also entitled The Double, based on a Dostoevsky novel.  Still not as confusing as The Returned.
  • I have another DVD based on a Saramago novel entitled Blindness.  That one was part of an 8 movies for $5 collection.  Hermano can’t catch a break.

King of the Zombies (1941)

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kingzombies0220 movies for $5.  What could possibly go wrong?  part VIII.

I went into this expecting something like White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.  In tone and quality, it was no White Zombie.  King of the Zombies is a comedy intended to capitalize on (i.e. ripoff) the success of Bob Hope’s Ghost Breakers released the previous year.  I can’t say how successful it was at the box office, but as a comedy, it is not a complete failure, except by all modern cultural standards.

Mac McCarthy is piloting a plane carrying Bill Summers and Jeff Jackson.  They have lost their way “somewhere between Cuba and Puerto Rico”, which is apparently what they called Haiti in 1941.  Running low on fuel, Mac says he must put the plane down in the jungle.  Jeff observes, “I knew I wasn’t cut out to be no blackbird.” Thus, Jeff is established as the comedy center in a Stepin Fetchit sort of caricature; he is even sitting in the back of the plane.

kingzombiemoreland0The model plane lands in the model jungle knocking over a few model trees on the way.  Despite all 3 men being thrown from the fuselage in the crash, they are unhurt.  Jeff, however, wakes up believing himself to be dead.  When Bill assures him they are alive, Jeff says, “I thought I was a little off-color to be a ghost.”

Anyway.

They find a house in the jungle and let themselves in.  The owner Miklos Sangre greets them and offers them drinks.  You can’t accuse the movie of not being multi-culti when the villain is an Austrian refugee with a Greek first name, Spanish last name, and German accent. Mac tells the owner that they picked up a strange radio broadcast as they were landing.  The owner says he must be mistaken, there is no broadcast.  The next boat is not due for 2 weeks,  but he offers them rooms.

Naturally, Jeff can’t stay upstairs with decent (i.e.white) folk, so he is escorted downstairs. Getting a glimpse of the titular Zombies, Jeff bolts back upstairs and begs his companions to leave.

Sangre introduces them to his wife who seems to be a Zombie, or at least a real cold fish.  And his niece who is not. Mac inquires about another plane which crashed in the area recently.  Sangre pleads ignorance, but will “ask the natives” in the morning.

Sangre is clearly modeled after Bela Lugosi’s character in White Zombie.  Lugosi was actually offered the role, but was unavailable.  The script still reflects his participation when Sangre says, “Zombies never eat . . . meat” mimicking Lugosi’s line in Dracula, “I never drink . . . wine.”  Although that doesn’t make sense when you think about it.

kingzombiemoreland01This is all Mantan Moreland’s movie.  Apart from a few quips from Sangre’s “help”, no one else has any laugh-lines.  It is easy to cry raaaaacism, but really, was Bob Hope a symbol of manhood playing so many cowards back then?  Didn’t Lou Costello play a a man-child idiot for decades?  Moreland became one of the first black millionaires, and was a pretty funny guy, often improvising lines.  Sadly, it appears that Hollywood was offended by his shtick and banished him in 1949; he did not make another movie for 15 years.

Someone would have to be having a pretty bad day for me to recommend them spending 67 minutes of it on this. In fact, I can’t imagine such a scenario.  On the plus side, I did finish it and had a couple of guilty laughs.

Unratable.

Post-Post:

  • Incredibly, Edward J. Kay’s musical score was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942.  He didn’t win, but then his competition included Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, and Bernard Herrmann for Citizen Kane.  Impossible to imagine Hollywood snobs today even admitting to watching a movie like this.
  • Mantan Moreland was considered as a replacement in the Three Stooges after Shemp died.  Anyone who saw the post-Shemp shorts knows that he could only have improved them.
  • Holy crap, I had no idea Stepin Fetchit lived until 1985.
  • Or that his son killed 3 and injured 15 as the Pike Killer shooter on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1969.
  • Available on YouTube, but why would ya?