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Cosmos (2015)
Bizarre, inexplicable, senseless, well-made but un-fun, tririri!
A couple of guys show up at a guesthouse in the French countryside and inexplicable events begin to occur. The most troubling of these are the hangings in the garden - first a bird, then a chicken, then a piece of wood, then a cat. It all seems to point toward some meaning or intention that remains consistently out of reach in spite of an unending stream of word salad in which the characters invoke various philosophers and writers, make Donald Duck sounds, speak in pseudo-Latin gibberish, and utter puns that always manage to slightly edge around being funny. Slugs appear in the food. In one particularly memorable scene, the unhinged guesthouse patron spills a bowl of peas on the ground, and the characters crawl around and make a big mess while shrieking at one another. Everyone is sleeping with everyone. One character is writing a novel, but this proves another fruitless attempt to make sense of senselessness, as he should probably already know it will based on his repeated references to J.P. Sartre. Etcetera. There's no plot to speak of, so I'm trying to give a sense of the texture of the film.
It should be clear that this is a truly left-field piece of cinema whose main concern is the absurd. I feel that it's quite well made and that Zulawski is a talented director. But here my praise of the film must stop. It's useful to compare it to Possession, another Zulawski film that has proved his most enduring. Personally I found that film engaging and unique - certainly the outrageously grotesque visual imagery makes an immediate impression - but was annoyed by the constant stream of pseudo-intellectual dialogue. It didn't add anything to the film, except as a comment on the impossibility of making sense of any of the weirdness presented on screen. Perhaps on that level the constant rumination was effective, but I found it annoying and felt it was already clear that the images didn't make any sense, so the commentary was redundant. It would have been more effective to focus on the potent imagery, leading the viewer on an impossible search for meaning instead of having the characters verbalize the fruitlessness of that search for two hours.
Cosmos is more verbalization, more rumination, streams of it, mountains of it. The weird visual imagery in this film is more subdued. It's clear that the images of the hangings, the slugs in the food, are building on one other in some sort of weirdly nonsensical, jaggedly poetic way. But not enough is made of them. I personally found it frustrating to watch this particular film about absurdity and meaninglessness and found myself thinking about other films about absurdity and meaninglessness that somehow manage to be emotionally engaging instead of just absurd and meaningless. For instance, I would point toward the Spanish film Arrebato. It descends into similar wormholes of repetitive, addictive thinking and questioning of the unstable nature of reality while getting under the viewer's skin with disturbing images and a plot that builds toward the inevitable conclusion of existential obliteration. In this case, if the director has nothing to say but nothing, what is the justification for the film's existence? As I said, I don't doubt the skill with which this film was made. I simply question its necessity. And no one on earth is going to find it entertaining.
The end credits show the film set being taken apart. I don't think this is a spoiler: this is a film that works from the opening scene to disassemble itself. If that's what you want to see, go for it. I even had the thought, while I was watching this, that it is the sort of film that has multiple layers that will probably only be revealed on repeated viewings. But once was enough for me. If you want to see a film that does what this film does, only better, see Possession. For me, this is a film that will stick in your craw, nagging to be explained, and perhaps that's praiseworthy. I simply don't find it likable at all and therefore won't recommend it.
Death. Sex. Stains on the wall that might mean something. J.P. Sartre. I'm writing a novel. Icicle, bicycle. Peas on the ground. Tririri. If you want more, go ahead and see this.
Cards of Death (1986)
Scummy 80s horror/gore flick effectively builds an atmosphere of sadism and sleaze
Let's make this easy. In some cases, the title of a movie gives you everything you need to know. If you think that a movie called "Cards of Death" is likely to be up your alley, then go ahead and check it out. It features, yes, an evil and sadistic card game played by weirdo street-trash sleazebags in which the winner must kill the loser or be killed themselves. This is the basic premise of a raunchy, scummy shot-on-video horror/gore flick that is clearly of its time yet remains enjoyable if you can overlook its flaws, which are par for the course in a flick of this ilk.
Apparently this was shot and then shelved for 28 years except for an obscure Japanese VHS release. It's hard to say why, as I've seen plenty worse from that era. To get the bad and the ugly out of the way right off, the acting is less than stellar, the premise is basically completely silly, and the editing is jumpy, among other quibbles. But let's give this thing some credit. A particularly horrifying atmosphere of sadism and sleaze is built up from the opening scene in which a cop sneaks into the warehouse where the illicit game is being played and gets mutilated with a cheese slicer (yes, a cheese slicer) while a grinding synth score piles on the alienation, ugliness and doom. And this thing has a sense of deep, black humor, which it needs. Laugh at it for being ridiculous and of its time, but it's already laughing at itself (I mean, a cheese slicer?).
Additionally, the villains in this film are great. I was never quite able to figure out their motivation for hosting the card game - while the players are all down-and-outers who apparently hope to win the cash prize and regain their lost positions in life, the hosts appear simply to revel in the sadistic enjoyment derived from forcing these people to debase and abuse each other. Anyway, the villains are Hog, a dude who likes to paint spiders on his forehead and drink the fresh blood of his victims out of a wine glass, and Tracy, an apparently Nazi-inspired dominatrix with a penchant for mutilating her "pets." Like I said, the acting isn't great, but I do think these two characters are drawn pretty effectively. And then there's the janitor who cleans up around the warehouse (my god, what a job that must be), a genuinely creepy dude whose main contribution to the film is sticking his laughing face into the camera at opportune moments.
I haven't mentioned the main story arc thus far because - well, does it really matter? Anyway, the cops are upset after one of their kind falls victim to the game and they try to track down the clandestine organization that hosts it. In the process, they pound the neon-lit pavement roughing up prostitutes and generally plumbing the darkest depths of Los Angeles 80s street life.
Like I said, some people are going to really enjoy this and others are bound to wonder what it's all about. All the questions are cleared up by the closing credits, over which the absurdly inappropriate "Cards of Death" theme song plays while ad-libbed physical slapstick comedy occurs in the background. I won't give away exactly what happens to avoid spoiling the ending of the film, but the blackly absurd humor leaves no doubts that this film intends not only to indict humanity for being stupid, ugly, and sadistic, but then to turn around and laugh at itself. I can't claim this is a great film, but the hour and a half passed by enjoyably enough for me, and Cards of Death this can be confidently recommended to fans of shot-on-video 80s sleaze/gore/horror. It's an able effort and it's a disappointment that W.G. MacMillan never made more like it.
Scary Movie 5 (2013)
Basically, an exploitation film for weed- and gangsta rap-obsessed 13-year-olds
I really don't know where to even start with this, so let's just get started. This movie is not funny. There you go - it fails as a comedy. In addition to that, it's dumb, mean-spirited, and in poor taste, and I think you're going to agree with me about that even if you like stuff that is in poor taste. I mean, this is basically an exploitation film for weed- and gangsta rap-obsessed 13-year-olds. It covers all the bases: sex scene involving clowns and ponies, sex scene involving pool cleaning machines, dildo collections being found by small children, things getting stuck up dogs' anuses, a scene featuring Snoop Dogg (or Snoop Lion or whatever he insists that people call him now) and a giant blunt, etc. Wow, this is multiplex entertainment in 2013?
I saw the first Scary Movie and thought it was pretty amusing in places. I'm also a huge fan of totally absurd slapstick comedies like Airplane and the Naked Gun movies. What is it exactly that makes this film so awful where the others, at least on some level, succeeded? I can't think of any way to explain it except this: watching Scary MoVie is the film equivalent of eating White Castle sliders for an hour and a half, washing them down with a gallon of Mountain Dew, topping it all off with seven pounds of cheesecake and then doing the Mentos and Coke thing (featured in this film, incidentally) so you can projectile-puke the stuff you just ate all over your friends who were expecting it and think it's funny. Truly, honestly, that's the caliber of stuff you're going to subject yourself to for 90 minutes if you insist on watching this.
The movie tries to make fun of Inception, Black Sawn, Evil Dead, etc., but it seems to me that you have to actually be smarter than something if you want to effectively make fun of it. Instead, they should make a movie that makes fun of all the Scary Movie movies. Honestly, they should be pretty easy targets. This movie does not have the minimum level of intelligence required to comment about anything at all. The best it can do is make "peehole" jokes and try to get the audience to laugh at monkeys flinging poo at the wall. No, it's really not funny.
I'm racking my brains trying to recall if there was anything at all good about this film. I do remember laughing at a couple of the gags. That sex scene with clowns and ponies was actually somewhat amusing - there, I said it. I'm afraid this review is going to come off the wrong way because it sounds like I refuse to watch stuff that pushes boundaries of good taste. Hardly, man. I even liked Videodrome, which Roger Ebert called "nauseating." The real problem is that this film uses boundary-pushing as an excuse to be stupid. In reality, it's about as intelligent as a stoned middle school dropout, incidentally the only type of person I can imagine enjoying this.
I was about to start getting depressed about the state of the world given that this kind of obvious dog dookie is considered entertainment, but it doesn't seem that other people found it all that entertaining either. I watched at least two couples walk out of the theater before the end of the film, so ultimately I'm concluding that there's probably some reason to have hope about the future of this planet. Thanks, Scary MoVie! Not that there's anything to be thankful for except that no one actually came up to me and hit me in the head with a shovel while the film was playing. They'll probably include that in part six.
976-Evil II (1991)
Too bad. This sequel to the amusing if ridiculous original is phoned-in, phony crap.
Okay. Although I doubt anyone has ever accused the original 976-EVIL of being a great film, the "phone line from hell" concept was at least original and the whole thing was entertaining despite being totally absurd in every way. Unfortunately, this film underplays its main asset - the evil phone line thing - and introduces a stupid and unlikeable villain, an evil teacher who's possessed by the phone line or something and who runs around slashing up teens while spouting one-liners that fall embarrassingly flat. Apparently the folks responsible for the film's story and script (amazing that all four of them couldn't come up with something better than this) didn't appreciate that if anything about the original worked, it was the ridiculous concept and the darkly humorous satire on religion and high school bullying. Here, all of that is either misused or underused. Instead you have a slasher film that hits all the bases (sex, mild gore, homework) while failing to actually succeed at anything. The acting gets a D-, the script qualifies for special ed, and the director needs a good old-fashioned spanking for ruining such an awesome concept.
If there's anything effective about this movie, it's the scene that combines It's a Wonderful Life with Night of the Living Dead. It's truly as awesome as it sounds. Otherwise, seriously, pass on this.
Pale Blood (1990)
An unpretentious, atmospheric, intelligent, B-grade vampire flick that totally deserves your attention.
First off, despite the video release date of 1991, it's hard to think of a film that screams "1985" louder than this direct-to-video vampire flick featuring the steamy, neon-lit streets of LA in the 80s. Honestly, watch it and tell me you disagree. That goth-punk band that keeps rearing its feathered mane throughout the film (Agent Orange, a real band from Orange County who are still putting out records) - is that not 3000% 1980s? Anyway, I digress... and I haven't even started the review, which I guess is probably bad.
So anyway, while this is a distinctly B-grade vampire flick, it certainly stands out among other films of its ilk. Where to begin? First of all, it features George Chakiris, who won an Academy Award for his role in West Side Story in 1961 (and never again appeared in anything legitimate for some weird reason), in the leading role of Michael Fury, vampire hunter. Mr. Fury slinks through the neon-bathed streets of nighttime LA stalking a vampire, or a killer who thinks he is one. Van Vandemeer (played by Wings Hauser), a sleaze-bag "video art" director who totally epitomizes bottom-of-the-barrel Hollywood, keeps getting in the way of the investigation. And then there is Michael's vampire-obsessed co-investigator Lori, who dresses all in black and hangs around her apartment at midnight watching Nosferatu on infinite loop. I won't give away any spoilers, but suffice it to say that nothing surrounding the trio is as it seems, and there are several unexpected twists and turns before the film finally slams to a surprising finale that recalls the intro in a very clever way.
Look, for a film that's obviously low budget, all this is very well-done. The acting is surprisingly classy, especially George Chakiris, who totally exudes grace and dignity and always stays perfectly aloof and serious and just acts totally cool in dealing with all the other morons the film pits him against. Why haven't we seen more of this man? Wings Hauser is also very convincing and appropriately scummy in his role as slime-ball erotic trash director.
Pale Blood is also super atmospheric. Without featuring any really stunning camera-work or anything of that sort, it manages to maintain a very specific, creepy, neon-lit atmosphere, especially in Michael's condo, the kind of weirdly abstract, ultra-modern sort of place that seems like the natural habitat of an aloof, nocturnal dude like him.
Finally, the plot is really pretty capably executed, including, as I said, a really awesome surprise ending, although there are indeed points that might elicit a slight groan (this is a B-movie, after all). So why hasn't anyone ever heard of this? I dunno, but it's not because it isn't any good. I'm guessing that there may have been some issues surrounding the film that caused it to be shelved for a few years after its production, which obviously took place sometime before 1990. If you still don't believe me about this, note that all the Agent Orange songs featured in the movie came out in 1986. I mean, if you'll tolerate B-grade cinema, you'll immediately appreciate all the dark humor, atmosphere, and unpretentious yet intelligent craft-work that went into this hidden gem.
Finally, a note about the location - if this was really filmed in Hong Kong instead of LA, as the IMDb credits indicate, it sure fooled me, and I live in LA... yet another curious point about this curious and enjoyable little film.