Topic: The little known movie review depot

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: The Cold (1984)

Genre: Horror
Director: Bill Rebane           
Rating: Unrated
Length: 1h24
Video: Full Frame
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Tom Blair
Jim Iaquinta
Carol Perry
Stuart Osborne
Don Arthur

Plot:
Nine people are invited to a secluded mansion at the request of three millionaires. It seems the millionaires have invited these people to participate in a game, wich involves their deepest fears, for a prize of $1,000,000. Each guest must face and survive their encounters in hopes of winning the money.

My Thoughts:

Can I say that I live an overdose of Bill Rebane's movies, 3 in 2 days (I've not written a review of The Demon of Ludlow, because this movie is just stupid)... The basic idea of this movie is good since this is a reality show long before their creation, but this is the only good comment that I will make. The acting is incredibly bad : one of the girl had absolutly no acting talent she's in the film because she had agreed to do the nude parts. There are absolutly no characters building, most of them die and we have no idea of who they are. I'm sure that this movie had no script : the story change continuously even the end make no sense since this killer is never mentions or seen in the movie before the end.

Probably the stupidest movie in this boxset.

Rating :

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Genre: Italian Cannibal
Director: Ruggero Deodato         
Rating: Unrated
Length: 1h37
Video: Widescreen
Audio: English
Subtitles: None

Stars:
Robert Kerman
Gabriel Yorke
Francesca Ciardi
Perry Pirkanen
Luca Giorgio Barbareschi

Plot:
Banned and heavily censored the world over, here is a film that surpasses its reputation as a shot-gun blast to the senses. CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST presents the "found footage" of a group of four documentary filmmakers who experience brutal death at the hands of a savage South American tribe of flesh-eaters. This footage is so intense, so graphic and so unflinching in its realism that the director and producer of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST were arrested upon its original release and the film seized.

My Thoughts:

This movie as you probably already know is one of the greatest one ever made for me, it's even one of the only 2 movies that I've rated with a perfect 10 on imdb. The fact that almost 30 years after it was made it remains as controversial today show all the greatness of it. This movie is made with 2 different parts : the search for the lost documentary footages and the making of this documentary. The search part take most of the running time, but this isn't the reason why I like this film so much. In fact, most of it is dub and not really different than any others jungle movie made before. The power of this movie reside in the documentary footage and how it's easy to manipulate the picture to make them tell what we want them to tell. The actors did a real good job to bring the viewer to hate the characters they represent even if this character is the viewer who wants always more. They do their job so well that at the end we are almost happy to see them die so atrociously. I know that many people can't stand the idea that real animals are killed in that, but this is necessary to show how the documentary team is : the pleasure they have to kill a turtle or a pig is nothing in comparaison with what they do to the native tribe village or to the native girl. Personally at the risk to not be popular (but this isn't a populary contest) the animal violence is not something that I care really for, I've never understand why the occidental civilization make such a big deal with that. Thousands and thousands of human die each day in armed conflict everywhere, am I suppose to cry for the fate of a cow or a dog? 

Rating :

[Najemikon]

Thousands and thousands of human die each day in armed conflict everywhere, am I suppose to cry for the fate of a cow or a dog?

If the animal is being killed merely for entertainment/sport/fun then it is obscene. Loss of human life on one side shouldn't excuse loss of basic human decency on the other.

I haven't seen the film and have no real desire to, but there is never, ever a single excuse to kill something for the sake of the film or the story. If it's a real documentary showing people acting for themselves, not the camera, and they kill animals or even each other, then keep filming, because it's just nature. If a director tells an actor to kill something because he needs to shock the audience then him, his actor and his film can fuck right off! It just shows a lack of talent, laziness or both because editing can achieve the same conclusion.

[richierich]

I have Cannibal Holocaust, but have never being able to pluck the courage up to view it.
I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to gory movies, having to hide behind a cushion at the worst parts of some extreme films.

On Jimmys basis that he rates this a perfcet 10, I will have to steel myself and give this a spin, and i will blame him if I have nightmares 

[Jimmy]

Jon the animals in the movie were to be kill anyway by the native since this is what they eat, the only one killed for the sake of the movie was a spider and honestly who care for a spider. I don't see any difference with this and a film crew that goes in a slaughterhouse to film what happen there or filming a chinese restaurant practice. I've gone hunting and fishing a lot of time when I was younger and I don't think that I'm an indecent or bad guy. Sure everything caught was eating at the familly table and to be honest a fresh bunny or partridge taste great.

Rich if you have the same dvd that I have you can watch it without the animal parts. But I've no idea of how the movie is without them.

[Najemikon]

Jon the animals in the movie were to be kill anyway by the native since this is what they eat, the only one killed for the sake of the movie was a spider and honestly who care for a spider. I don't see any difference with this and a film crew that goes in a slaughterhouse to film what happen there or filming a chinese restaurant practice. I've gone hunting and fishing a lot of time when I was younger and I don't think that I'm an indecent or bad guy. Sure everything caught was eating at the familly table and to be honest a fresh bunny or partridge taste great.

I haven't fished or hunted but I'm not a vegetarian and no, of course that doesn't make you a bad guy. If we were discussing a documentary about hunting that's fine too. Another exception might be City of God; I seem to remember a chicken being killed and one escaping, but this was real footage of real people simply used with dramatised film so I can accept that as well.

You have confused me though! Easy done. "the animals in the movie were to be kill anyway by the native since this is what they eat". So is this part documentary using real natives? If so, I had no idea and although I still have no wish to see it, I can accept its methods.

[Jimmy]

If a director tells an actor to kill something because he needs to shock the audience then him, his actor and his film can fuck right off! It just shows a lack of talent, laziness or both because editing can achieve the same conclusion.

A lot of others director had done the same thing and they don't get any critics because of this. Just to give some names : Francis Ford Coppola, Umberto Lenzi, Bernardo Bertolucci, T.F. Mous and Sam Peckinpah. Some of them are certainly talented and they have used this in highly praised movie.

So is this part documentary using real natives? If so, I had no idea and although I still have no wish to see it, I can accept its methods.

The movie was filmed in the Columbian jungle in a very isolated location. The natives in the film are in majority the "primitive" tribe living there, like I've said the animals are part of the native regime (they have to eat too). Just two animals (one turtle and a pig) are kill by the actors, but for the movie they have to be kill by them and those 2 were eaten too by the natives after (nothing was kill just to be trash after the filming). I can understand that this isn't a movie for everybody, even myself I found it hard to watch but not necessarely for the animal scenes.

Edit : By the way this "sport" is more cruel than anything shown in this movie

[Najemikon]

If a director tells an actor to kill something because he needs to shock the audience then him, his actor and his film can fuck right off! It just shows a lack of talent, laziness or both because editing can achieve the same conclusion.

A lot of others director had done the same thing and they don't get any critics because of this. Just to give some names : Francis Ford Coppola, Umberto Lenzi, Bernardo Bertolucci, T.F. Mous and Sam Peckinpah. Some of them are certainly talented and they have used this in highly praised movie.

I suppose I mean killing animals for the sake of a plot point. Remember Turner and Hooch? If they actually shot Hooch, that would be wrong!  I'm trying to think what examples these are though and I can't think of Peckinpah's. Regards Coppola, I can think of two; but the horse was already dead (The Godfather) and like the example that started this, the water buffalo sacrifice in Appocalypse Now was going to happen anyway as they were real natives.

Edit : By the way this "sport" is more cruel than anything shown in this movie

Oh absolutely. I've argued against blood sports for years, and still do, because despite the ban in England, there is still strong support.

[Jimmy]

I'm trying to think what examples these are though and I can't think of Peckinpah's. Regards Coppola, I can think of two; but the horse was already dead (The Godfather) and like the example that started this, the water buffalo sacrifice in Appocalypse Now was going to happen anyway as they were real natives.

For Coppola this is the one in Appocalypse Now.
For Peckinpah this is in The Wild Bunch this is the scorpion in the anthill and the chicken shooting in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

[richierich]

Saw one of your reviews on the home page Jimmy for an Emmanuel film, with a little note at the bottom that cracked me up...

edit : In one of the scene Emanuelle is on an island that is a market where the rich women can buy some young men to please them. I find this degrading and not correct to show those men like they were just some sexual object


Very funny 

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

Genre: Science-Fiction
Director: Larry Blamire           
Rating: PG
Length: 1h30
Video: Widescreen
Audio: English
Subtitles: English, French and CC

Stars:
Larry Blamire
Fay Masterson
Andrew Parks
Brian Howe
Susan McConnell

Plot:
Remember the good old days when anyone with a camera, a few thousand bucks, and more ambition than talent could schlep up to Bronson Canyon and quickly make a cheap sci-fi/horror movie? Well, they're back! The LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA is an affectionate, meticulous re-creation of those notoriously cheesy clunkers, as a gaggle of beloved stereotypes pursue "that rarest of all radioactive elements - atmosphereum."

My Thoughts:

This is not an obligation to have seen a lot of classic sci-fi B-movies from the fifties/sixties, but at least you must appreciate them since this movie is an hommage to them and what a great hommage. It's really easy to imagine that you are watching a Roger Corman, Ed Wood, Ron Ashcroft or Del Tenney movie. All the ingredients are there : the silly dialogue, the pseudo-science, the bad man-in-suit mutant, the Plan Ninesque alien, the cheap special effect (the skeleton is a plastic lab one and the ropes are clearly visible), the cliché story, the dance number coming out of nowhere,the bad acting... Evidently all of this is done voluntarily and that's why this film is so great.

Sure this is not an in your face comedy (to use a more polite word that the one I've in my head), but this is one of the funnier that I've seen in the last 10 years. It's impossible to not laugh at many of the dialogue lines, just some exemple :

"I yell not from the volume required by great distance but from happy excitement."
"I don't know. Nothing I can put my finger on. Not something I can see or touch or feel. But something I can't quite see or touch or feel or put my finger on."
"Ranger Brad, I'm a scientist, I don't believe in anything."
"Seriously, Betty, you know what this meteor could mean to science. If we find it, and it's real, it could mean a lot. It could mean actual advances in the field of science." 

If you get your hand on it take it you will not regret it. This movie is exactly what an independant low budget production is suppose to be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe9Fs10IIk0
Rating :

[Jimmy]

MOVIE / DVD INFO:

Title: The Last House on the Left (1972)

Genre: Crime
Director: Wes Craven           
Rating: Unrated
Length: 1h24
Video: Widescreen
Audio: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish and CC

Stars:
David A. Hess
Fred Lincoln
Jeramie Rain
Sandra Cassell
Lucy Grantham

Plot:
Easy going Mari Collingwood and her fun-loving friend Phyllis are on their way to a Bloodlust concert to celebrate Mari's 17th birthday when three escaped convicts kidnap and torture them. But Mari and Phyllis are fighters, and although they are drugged and beaten into unconsciousness, stuffed in a car trunk and driven into the woods for even more brutality, they are still alive…. But for how long?

My Thoughts:

You realize that you have a lot of movies the day you find that you have not watch a favourite one since a long time and I've not watch Last House for at least 3 years... This film is certainly more known than what I usually reviewed here, but I've decide to give it a go anyway.

Like I've said this is one of my favourite and to add to the nostalgy this is the first "hard exploitation" film that I've seen when I was 16 years old a long time ago. I will say immediately my problem with this dvd, even if it's suppose to be the complete version this isn't : the canadian vhs version is the complete one. Not that more scenes are in it, but the violence is harder (the killing of Phyllis is longer, more of the suicide of Junior is seen,...). But the vhs is Pan & Scan so we can't have everything.

The acting is really good with some exceptions but just to name a few great performances : David Hess and Fred Lincoln as the bad guys and Sandra Cassell and Lucy Grantham as the victims. Wes craven does a nice job to make us like and care for the girls immediatly. Perfect scenario, dark and grimy just like I like my movie. This movie had probably one of the most touching dying scene that I've ever seen in a film when Mari decided that she had suffered enough, make her prayer, go in the lake to drown herself and end being shot by Krugg. Even if you don't like this genre of film you will agree that this scene is a masterpiece (Jon I'm talking to you ). The soundtrack is very good too, it's really sad that this disc is impossible to find since some songs like "Now You're All Alone" and "Wait for the Rain" are really wonderfull. Evidently I don't like everything in the film, the humoristic moment with the sheriff and the chicken driver are unecessary and harm the message and the mood of the film. 

Another fun fact that not everyone know (I must have some unknown facts to respect my topic theme ) is the connection with the adult movie industry and this film. Fred Lincoln was one of the regular actor in the golden age movies before he became a well known adult movie director, Lucy Grantham had made many loops for Sean Costello, Wes Craven had worked as a crewman in many adult movies (even if he denied it) and Sean Cunningham had directed a couple of adult movies in the beginning of his career (even if this isn't listed in his credit).

It's evident that I recommand it and please don't loose your time with the unnecessary remake due this year or the awfull David DeFalco ripoff made in 2005.

It's kind of sad that Wes Craven had lost his magic touch more and more with the time.
 
Rating :

[Najemikon]

Even if you don't like this genre of film you will agree that this scene is a masterpiece (Jon I'm talking to you ).

 


I detest this film. I've often said it's the worst I've ever seen and part of that is because the murders are done so well and the basic story is very good. You may immediately think that having a couple of exceptional scenes or a decent actor means it can't be the worst, but what I look for in a film is consistency; delivering on a promise. It wouldn't have mattered if the murders weren't as good or the actors all shit if the second half of the film made any sense at all. It's bollocks and I found it insulting that I was expected to like this garbage. The way the parents reacted was simply ridiculous and there was zero tension and even less skill from the so-called director.

I mentioned the term decent actor earlier. Actually, I think only the two girls stood out as anything near decent. The gang were an absolute joke and I wasn't convinced by the parents for a moment. I don't think we could agree less on this film, Jimmy, because I thought the sheriff and the chicken scene was the best bit!

Because of these points, I'm really looking forward to the remake! The new version of The Hills Have Eyes was great, so hopefully we'll get something similar. There's a remake of Nightmare on Elm St. coming as well! All things being equal, I'd have liked to have seen a Hitchcock version of this story. That could have been special.

[Achim]

I detest this film. I've often said it's the worst I've ever seen [...]

Funny thing here is, it just may be that Wes Craven may be one of the first to agree with you here (going by the interview from the disc.

I did somewhat like the film, but merely as the exploitation film it was. I agree that the remake for Hill Have Eyes was great so I just may give this one a try too

[addicted2dvd]

Even though I don't detest it... like Jon... I wouldn't say I liked it either. To me it is a below average movie. I would probably give it a rating of about 2 out of a possible 5. I think the premise of the movie is a good one... I just don't particularly like the way it was carried out. I think the major problem for me was the way the parents react to finding out who they are and what they did... it just didn't work for me.