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Reviews
Ultraman (2004)
Cameo appearance by... Bruckner's 8th symphony
As I was watching the midair climax of the movie (which is a lot of fun, by the way), I couldn't help but think that the music sounded very familiar. It was starting to remind me very much of Anton Bruckner's 8th Symphony in c-minor. No sooner had I made this inner note to myself when the soundtrack actually started *quoting* the 8th, note-for-note! OK, OK, I know this has nothing to do with the movie, which is probably my favorite Ultraman so far... but I like commenting on musical trivia like this. (Another odd Bruckner quote comes in the opening credits of Victor Halperin's "Supernatural" from 1933, which uses a few bars of the Third Symphony in d-minor.)
Modern Romance (1981)
Albert Brooks was not at his best in this movie
I love Albert Brooks. I cannot stress that enough. I was let down by this movie. Maybe I missed something? He breaks up "again" with his girlfriend and spends the rest of the movie pining for her and acting obsessively jealous.
The whole Quaalude bit was just lame and not funny although when he puts on the disco record and says it's depressing was funny. Even though his girlfriend kept saying she loved and missed him I never believed it. I always felt she wanted to be somewhere else with someone else, so in the end when he asks her to get married and she says yes I couldn't believe it. I didn't feel Albert was up to his full neurotic obsessive potential, like he was holding back. O.K. movie but probably only bearable to Albert Brooks fans.
Village of the Damned (1995)
OK, it stinks. But...
I'm willing to admit Carpenter fell pretty much flat on this one. Also, release of this film (in my area at least) completely overshadowed that of "In the Mouth of Madness", which is one of my favorites, and which I think deserved more attention than it got.
I do have one thing to point out in "Village"'s defense, though: "March of the Children". I don't know if Carpenter composed it, or if it was his collaborator, but in any case it was worth it for me to sit through the whole mediocre film just to hear the March play out over the end credits. It alters between 4- and 3-bar phrases, making it unpredictable and unsettling. The Big Tune comes to a huge cadence on a triumphant major chord the first time it's played, and on menacing open fifths thereafter. If only the rest of the movie were so inspired...
Forbidden Zone (1980)
the best intentionally bad movie ever made
OK, where have you heard this before: there are these foul-mouthed little kids, who sometimes break into song for no earthly reason... They have a sexually ambiguous teacher; their classmates are sometimes killed in comic mayhem; and midway through their movie they go to Hell and meet Satan. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And yet, even though there's a Chicken Lover in the cast, this movie was made almost TWO DECADES before "South Park"!
There are some painfully slow stretches toward the beginning, as though the cast and crew hadn't quite settled into the mayhem. But those slow patches are more than made up for by the rest of the movie. The animation is fantastic (much better than it ought to be), and the sets, though cheap, work very well. Once the action gets going, the movie takes off and becomes one of the rudest, funniest, least predictable films I've ever seen.
The soundtrack is the best part of the movie (though the album is missing some really good stuff, like the playout version of the title song that they use over the closing credits). If you watch this movie and "Nightmare Before Christmas" back-to-back, you won't believe how much they have in common (listen for the "Dies Irae" in both, let alone the obvious Cab Calloway riffs)... Oogie Boogie's big number is almost a carbon copy of Danny Elfman's show-stopping turn as Satan.
There are so many wonderful things about Forbidden Zone: the way the opening number "One of These Days" spirals out of control... the "Bim Bam Bum" sequence, which has got to be one of the best moments in surrealist cinema... Herve Villechaize, an ear-eating frog in a tux, Bette Midler's husband in a diaper... and of course, "The Alphabet Song". And yes, the teacher and the Human Chandelier are the same person.
If you're not disturbed by Forbidden Zone, you weren't paying enough attention (I was furious when I heard them using the theme music in "Dilbert" ads). I'd love to have this on DVD, maybe with director's commentary... but as you know (sigh)... what can chickens do? Watch this movie if you're lucky enough to get a chance: love it or hate it, you'll never be the same afterwards.
Telmisseomding (1999)
Well-made and deeply disturbing
This movie has some pretty bleak things to say, metaphorically speaking, about love and relationships (of all kinds), and it's a workable suspense film, too. Part giallo, part procedural, part character study, it also has some surprisingly black-humored moments -- like the murder of one character by weight-machine, or the impossibly overstated catastrophe that follows the disposal of a victim in the middle of a highway (Hollywood 'thrillers' END with huge car crashes... this one has its big explosions in the middle, and ends with quiet horror).
Although there are plenty of nasty happenings in this movie, and a lot of bloody body parts popping up throughout, the really disturbing and frightening things are the implications of what's going on. It's pretty easy to guess who the killer is, though there are some good red herrings that distract the viewer's attention. However, it's absolutely impossible to guess the killer's motivation, and the REAL meaning of the whole film, until the last few moments.
I'm still unsettled from having watched this for the first time. I'm certainly going to go back and watch it again, probably several times -- because I'm going to have to live with this movie for a while before I can say I've come to terms with it. I especially want to be sure of my interpretation of the girl's last line to Detective Cho. Of course, I know it's supposed to be ambiguous, but I'm probably not going to be able to sleep until I'm sure in my own mind...
Body Puzzle (1992)
The Idiot Plot strikes again!
James Blish's definition of the Idiot Plot is familiar to Bad Movie fans: it's the sort of plot that would be dealt with in seconds by normal people, which only works in the movies if everybody in the cast is an idiot. Body Puzzle is a classic example of the device.
None of the "professional people" in the movie behave as though they knew anything about their jobs. The policemen do things that would have them booted off the force. There's a female psychiatrist who makes snap judgments on patients she's only seen for a few minutes, and shares these judgments with the police as though there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality. There's a medical examiner who makes pronouncements on the times of death that don't fit even remotely with the timeline of the movie (a lot of this is Bava's and the editor's fault, though). We have a lifeguard (it seems to me he's performing his duties a very short time after a kidney replacement, but I don't know about such things) who gets killed in broad daylight in a swimming pool -- but nobody notices! And there are no traces of blood in the water, even though the victim has been dismembered.
Then there's the final twist. It's a twist so jaw-droppingly stupid that I would never dream of giving it away.
I will give one bit away, though, to give a further example of how awful the movie is: the hero comes across a freezer chest. Suspense builds as he opens the chest, to find... frozen pasta! Ahh, but underneath the pasta he finds the frozen corpse we've been expecting. Now, at this point, we're expecting the killer to sneak up behind him and surprise him. Everything points to this happening: the camera angles, the music, the rules of bad movie making... so what happens? The killer jumps OUT OF THE FREEZER CHEST! He was hiding UNDER THE BODY, UNDER THE PASTA!! First, how did he get there without assistance, covering himself up with frozen stuff and then closing the lid; second, why didn't he freeze to death, trapped under all that ice; and third, how did he know the hero would stop by and open the freezer?
The mind boggles.