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Reviews
Monster House (2006)
Plagiarized?
Has Joe R Lansdale been credited for writing this? If not, this is just plain plagiarism from his short story "The Shaggy House". Except that in that story the people who found out about the monster house were two old men, not kids. Either that or his children's book. I quote Joe R. Lansdale from the foreword to "The Shaggy House":
"Another story inspired by THE NIGHTRUNNERS.
In the book there's a scene where one of my characters sees the house where he is soon to live for the first time, and I gave a sort of over-the-top description of it that I thought worked quite well in context, but there was something in that description that spurred me to consider the house from another angle, a less grim one. What came out was this short story. It's a gonzo hoot with an echo of Bradbury and a lot of tongue in cheek.
My title was "Something Lumber This Way Comes," which my friend Bill Nolan, to put it mildly, hated. He suggested this title. Since I used the other title on a variation of this story which became a children's book, I agreed. Secretly, I still prefer the original title."
end of quote by Joe R.Lansdale
I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale (1973)
I basically agree
I gave this one 9 out of 10, so I kind of agree with the Marquis de Boston, i.e. this is a very good giallo. But this is not the only European film that got ripped off and stolen by the Americans. Every single murder scene of the first three Friday the 13th -films were carbon copies of Mario Bava's murder scenes that he made 10 years before the first Friday the 13th in a film called Ecologia del Delitto or Bay of Blood. John Carpenter made a career from ripping off Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace and Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso in his breakthrough film Halloween. He even stole Goblin's music. Nowadays the Americans are trying to do the same to Asian films, i.e. remake every good Asian film with American actors, because American people are too stupid to read subtitles. Why don't you learn to read, Americans? Oh yeah, you don't have to, because you're the greatest. And your vice president doesn't even know how to spell potato. No offence to you, Marquis of Boston, but I wish Canada invaded the USA pretty soon. They can at least play hockey.
Giornata nera per l'ariete (1971)
thou art wrong
Giornata nera per l'ariete does not mean The Black Days of the Ram. It means "A Black (sombre) Day for the Aries". Aries like in the horoscope or star signs, you know? Did you sleep through your Italian and Latin classes? And I consider this to be an above average giallo. Here's some more rams for you:
Notable persons born under the Sign of Aries (Tropical Zodiac) include: Harry Houdini, Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Haydn, Paul Verlaine, Joan Crawford, Francisco Goya, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, William Shatner, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Baudelaire, Vincent Van Gogh, Charlemagne, Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, Henry Mancini, Muddy Waters, Butch Cassidy, Diana Ross, DJ Premier, Redman, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis, Eric Clapton, Steven Tyler, Thomas Jefferson, René Descartes, Booker T. Washington, Elton John, Eddie Murphy, Method Man, Marcel Marceau, Hayley Mills, Gerard Way, Francis Ford Coppola, Casanova, and Leonardo Da Vinci.
Chi l'ha vista morire? (1972)
way above average giallo
I just watched this one, and I have to say it's way, WAY above average giallo. Directed by Aldo Lado, the director of "The Short Night of Glass Dolls" (which took place in Prague), this one takes place in Venice, and the photography is as beautiful as ever.
One thing in this one that's almost entirely lacking is humour. This one is serious, people.
*SPOILER ALERT* The little girl who is the second victim of the killer... it's really nasty, because you've already seen her playing with other kids, interacting with her daddy... she's not just a piece of meat to be killed in another giallo. That sets the tone for this film pretty much, and this giallo is not funny, it's serious. But it's great if you get into it.
Horror (2003)
The Amazing Kreskin
I Googled "Kreskin", and it said somewhere that although born George Kresge, his legal name is now really The Amazing Kreskin. His credit cards say T.A.Kreskin. *lol* Such cheek! And he really is a stage magician by trade, not an actor. Maybe that explains his stilted performance in "Horror", which is his only film. He's just doing part of his stage show on film.
Oh yes, I found the site. It's just a review of his show so I don't know how trustworthy that trivia is. Anyway, it says so here: http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/kreskin.html
T.A. seems to have impressed that particular reviewer (Neil Slade), or maybe he was just drunk. According to him about 98% of the audience were beer-drinking young adults, as the show was sponsored by a rock radio station. But he couldn't have been, he was with his mom...???
This was really just some fun trivia on The Amazing Kreskin (Rev.Salo), but I didn't know how to put it in the trivia section.
Walk the Line (2005)
good, but inaccurate
I really liked this film, but there are some issues: 1. Jerry Lee Lewis recorded his first single "Crazy Arms" b/w "End of the Road" (Sun 259) way AFTER Johnny Cash already had hits with "Folsom Prison Blues"(Sun 232) and "I Walk the Line"(Sun 241). And it WAS NOT a hit!!! Jerry Lee's first hit was his second single "Whole Lotta Shaking' Going' On" (Sun 267) in 1957, and by that time Johnny Cash already had a contract with Columbia Records, as far as I know.
2.Johnny Cash was never a Rock'n'Roll star, I doubt that he ever performed "Rock'n'Roll Ruby" live... a brilliant rock song but better performed by Warren Smith or Johnny Carroll. Or "You're My Baby", Roy Orbison with his band did a good version, but Cash just could not rock.
Genre (1996)
Fun-ny!!
Tummy-aching funny! The rabbit gets all of my sympathies, getting his ears ripped off, being fed Ebola carrots, abducted by little green aliens, etc... Don Hertzfeld's cartoons are so anarchistically (if there is such a word) funny that they can only be compared to someone like Tex Avery or Bill Plympton. There's a rabbit that has to go through a series of film genres, from romantic film to porno film etc.. and when the drawer runs out of imagination, he makes up his own genres, like sci-fi musical or porno disaster film... which the rabbit has to endure.
If you watch this one, you must also see his "Ah, L'Amour" (absolutely hilarious, a guy innocently asks women for a date or not even that, just how are they doing, and gets flayed, chainsawed, stabbed in the eyeballs,etc), "Lily and Jim", and "Rejected".
"Lily and Jim" is about a blind date gone horribly wrong... "Rejected" is supposed to contain some commercials that were commissioned by some companies from Don Hertzfeldt but rejected at sight..:D Which is not true, it's a fictional film, but very funny as such:D. "I live in a bucket!"
La casa dalle finestre che ridono (1976)
Rare? Yes, and why?
I agree about the excellence of this film, but why is it rare? Because IT WAS NOT AVAILABLE for years until it was re-released on DVD in Italy in 2001 (25o anniversario restaurata e rimasterizzata!). "My colours.." :D The director Giuseppe "Pupi" Avati said he was too scared to do another horror film after this one (even with the success at various film festivals), so his next film was a comedy "Tutti defunti... tranne i morti"(1977). His next horror offering was Zeder (1983), and it was a good one, but not very successful at the time. The story tells of a painter (Stefano), who is invited to a small rural village to restore a giant fresco in the local church painted by a local recently deceased artist/village madman.
La cérémonie (1995)
adult little girls with shotguns
This film starts with a quiet woman, Sophie, landing a house-keeping job with a rich bitch. Nothing too exciting about that. Well, then she befriends a postal bitch, Jeannie, (=a woman with a job at the post office who opens and reads all the mail coming her way). The two then form an unholy companionship and start holding a grudge against everybody, especially Sophie's employers. They start acting like little girls who have a secret (and it seems both of them have, they are arsonists that haven't been caught). They don't seem to have a lesbian relationship, more like some little girl bonding thingy against everyone. I don't want to reveal everything, in case someone reading this hasn't seen it (I did warn about possible spoilers), but the ending still comes as a bit of a shock surprise. 9/10 from me.