Tuesday, August 07, 2012

July 2012 Viewings

Not a ton of viewings this month, but a good mix of 80s classics (LIFEFORCE, HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP) and a couple newer flicks. Full reviews of THEATRE BIZARRE and KINSKI/PAGANINI will be appearing in WENGS CHOP #1 and ER #51.

THE THEATRE BIZARRE
Entertaining (if occasionally uneven) anthology with segments from David Gregory, Richard Stanley, Tom Savini, Buddy Giovinazzo and more.

KINSKI/PAGANINI (Theatrical and Director's Cuts)
A big, hot, steaming bowl of incompetent served up by my favorite actor of all-time who writes, directs, stars and, in the case of the director's cut, edits this catastrophe. And, no, the extra 14 MINUTES in the "version originale" do nothing to improve upon the equally dreadful "theatrical" version.

THE ENFORCER
Got sucked into this on AMC after watching the end of MAGNUM FORCE. "San Francisco is the only city with a cop like Dirty Harry." Even cut and with commercials it's a surprisingly fun watch. I saw this about a zillion times on PRISM as a kid.

LIFEFORCE
Tobe Hooper's Cannon-fied Top 10 1980s Trash Masterpiece featuring a topless (and bottomless) Mathilda May, sweaty Steve Railsback, ultra-cool SAS dude, Captain Picard and much more. As much as I dig Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD, I love LIFEFORCE (from the summer of 1985) even more. (Despite the fact Klaus Kinski was supposed to play Falada but was replaced. Or dropped out. Or acted like a dick.)

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP
A cable classic from the 1980s that still holds up today. Find out what all those fish men *really* want with our women in this boobs and beasts masterpiece.

HALLOWEEN 2
The disc from Netflix was FUBAR at about the 80 minute mark so I didn't get to see the end, though from what I heard and read it ends about how I expected. Curiously more watchable than Zombie's almost unwatchable first effort at a Michael Meyers flick, though that's not saying much. Only watched it to prepare for listening to Louis and John's take on it at DAMAGED VIEWING.

SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS
What I had hoped would be a triumphant return to Martino Time did not go as expected. I knew very little about SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS and often confused it with CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL, a 1971 Martino giallo with George Hilton and Anita Strindberg. Instead, it's a deathly dull horror-mystery that comes off like Martino aping a watered-down Fulci flick (complete with a totally derivative Fabio Frizzi score) in which the atrocious Elvire Audrey blunders around trying to figure out who killed her archaeologist hubbie (a cameoing John Saxon). You'll figure out the killer within roughly ten seconds of their screen time.

No comments: