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Reviews
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
A superb surreal horror film.
Largely considered the best in a run Edgar Allen Poe adaptations Corman made for American International Pictures, this film is gloriously flamboyant and over-the-top. Vincent Price excels as Prince Prospero, a Satanist who has converted many of the wealthy and upper class in the area. When a case of Red Death breaks out in a nearby village, they all take refuge in Prospero's castle, to both escape the plague and wallow in their excesses. But no matter how powerful you are or what deity you pledge your allegiance to, death will eventually find you.
Beautifully photographed by Nicholas Roeg (who, obviously, became a rather famous director in his own right) and utilizing sets left over from the filming of major period piece Becket, not to mention having twice the budget and almost twice the shooting time as he had on other films he made for AIP, Corman has said this had the best production values of any film he had made at the time. The colors are incredibly vibrant, especially Death's red cloak. Corman's camera-work is fluid and mobile and adds some grace to what could easily have been a total schlock-fest. The whole piece is incredibly surreal, from the symbolic presentation of death to a subplot about a midget and his small, dancing wife (played by a child, just in case the film wasn't weird enough).
Anyway, fantastic horror film and a great adaptation of possibly my favorite Poe story.
Mac and Me (1988)
Possibly the worst film I've seen.
Wow. The incredible level of suckage in this film is amazing. A brief synopsis: So the film starts out on a barren planet. There is a family of aliens roaming around trying to drink stuff out of the ground when they are able to find it. The aliens resemble skinny Mickey Rooneys, if he was naked with reddish skin and stoned out of his gourd. A NASA pod thing lands on their planet to take samples, accidentally sucking up the entire family who apparently have no bones. In what is probably the shortest mission in NASA history, the pod takes off and leaves about 45 seconds later.
The pod gets back to Earth, freeing the extra-terrestrial family into a science lab. The youngest alien gets separated from the family and ends up in the van of a family moving to a new home. The main kid in the flick, Eric, is crippled, adding a level of manipulation that probably had Disney drooling. But he's a lame crippled kid, not like the one at the end of Sidekicks, who I'd like to believe turned into a badass.
Anyway, the alien destroys the house, because he's a dick like that and everyone blames Eric. Distraught, Eric goes for walk (read: roll) out behind his house, where there's a hill. The brakes go out on his wheelchair (Meineke missing a prime ad spot in this product placement free-for-all) and Eric rolls uncontrollably downhill and plunges off a cliff from about 50 feet in the air. The alien (who I guess is the "Mac" of the title, must have missed that part) saves his stupid ass from drowning.
After having his life saved, Eric decides to try and take Mac's. So with the help of his neighbor, a gruff-voiced girl presumably around his age, they trap him in a vacuum cleaner which damn near kills the thing. Here's where advertising comes in. The kids save the alien by giving him Coca-Cola, utilizing the soft drink's well documented medicinal properties. With everyone happy and alive, they dress Mac up like a teddy bear and go to a party at McDonald's where everyone is dancing because McDonald's is awesome like that.
Some government guys chase them around (through a Sears) and they end up finding Mac's family in a mine in the desert. They were near death and with the help of some more Coca-Cola, that magical elixir of the gods, the kids heal the whole family. They then bring the aliens back to town where they cause a huge explosion that kills Eric. Yep. The crippled kid gets blowed up. But the aliens bring him back to life (surprisingly enough, without the use of Coca-Cola). So everyone now loves the aliens. And in the most retarded ending I've ever seen, they become U.S. citizens and drive around in a Cadillac.
But don't worry, the story isn't the only sh-tty thing here. The acting, special effects, cinematography and music are all awful. It is hilarious in its awfulness, though. But it still may be the worst film I've seen.
Koroshi no rakuin (1967)
There's some good stuff here, somewhere. It's just hard to sort out.
This is the story of a Japanese hit-man, No. 3 Killer. He really loves the smell of boiling rice, for some reason. I have no idea what that means, but I feel it should be mentioned as Suzuki inserts this fetish into just about every other scene. Anyway, the usually reliable No. 3 (I would assume anyway, considering he ranks third in what is bound to be a pretty difficult business) botches an assassination attempt when a butterfly lands on the barrel of his sniper rifle, obscuring the view of his target. Because of this he becomes the target of the famed No. 1 Killer. No. 1 decides to toy with his prey first, going so far as to move in No. 3 providing just about the only entertainment in the film.
Suzuki hurtles the story through space and time at an incredibly brisk pace (particularly in the first half hour), often refusing to take the time to set up locations and situations, causing a rather confusing sense of geography for many scenes. The action takes place in a similarly disjointed manner. Sometimes things happen so quickly, they seem like the filmic equivalent of run-on sentences. Or, perhaps a better way to put it would be that Suzuki is that guy we all know who tells stories too fast, jumping over and skipping around some of the small details, the little ones that help the story make sense. Perhaps, in a way, Suzuki is not interested in perpetuating the illusion of the motion picture and wants us to remember that we are just watching a movie. I personally think he's just being lazy. Though, he does seem to have some sense of composition, sometimes creating fantastic images. But just as often his use of blocking becomes irritating.
Eventually, Suzuki slows down a bit and begins to construct something interesting. Hell, when No. 1 moves in with No. 3 it becomes damn entertaining. But, by then, it is far too little, far too late.