Movie Review: "The Killer 4 Pack" (2014; MVD Visual/SGL Entertainment)

...as an ardent and embraced lover of genre films...especially those produced independently, and on nothing less than a shoestring-budget (...I've found that they tend to try harder, aspiring to be something great, despite their limitations), this viewer...every year, about the May time frame...harbors a desire...a dream...a fantasy, to attend the Festival de Cannes, in France, and exclusively, albeit waywardly partake of the genre film offerings, often featured there. Just wander about the film festival, taking in and 'binge-watching' (...man, don't you just love these social 'terms of the moment') the newest of the new, and some often nostalgically celebrated, as far as the realm of horror and dark fantasy, both big-budgeted and micro-budgeted alike...

...alas, this viewer's own financial limitations have, at least for the time being, curbed any possibility of one day attending the internationally renowned film festival (...understandable, as word has it, the cost of attending the yearly fest, is one of those 'ouch' level of expenses...Yikes!!); still, such obstacles hardly gives cause to cease and desist the dream itself. And as amiable consolation and substitute for what cannot be, but might be, one day...well, there's always the much more compact and convenient venue of home video. Browsing the store shelves...or perhaps more succinctly, the item entries listed over at Amazon or Ebay...one cannot help but express a measure of exhaustion, in filtering though the countless multi-movie collections, out there. Public domain trash, side-by-side with mainstream pairings and couplings. Bargain basement bounty...titles, merging over titles, blurring into more and more titles. It would be so easy to miss the occasional jewel, or jewels amongst all of this generic colored glass...tarnished jewels, to be sure, but jewels, nonetheless...

Movie Review: The Fortune (1975, Twilight Time)

Directed by Mike Nichols

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

It's the Roaring twenties, and lovable con men Oscar (Jack Nicholson) and Nick (Warren Beatty), intend to separate sanitary napkin heiress Fredericka “Freddie” Quintessa Bigard (Stockard Channing in her big screen debut) from her many millions. Freddie loves Nick, but Nick is already married – and so she weds wild-haired Oscar instead. Mindful of the Mann Act – transporting females across state lines for immoral purposes was taken very, very seriously back then – the trio head for Los Angeles, California. Settling into a crumbling apartment block, much like the one in The Day of the Locust (1975), things quickly go south. Freddie rarely puts out, Oscar is not keen on finding and keeping employment, and Nick is a bit of a washout as a used car salesman. The three get on each other's nerves big time, until Nick and Oscar decide that outright homicide is the way to speed things along. Their rotten luck follows them in this regard as well …

A bit of trivia on The Fortune is the fact that the role of Freddie was originally offered to Bette Midler. Things were going just swimmingly until Midler asked Mike Nichols what pictures he had done previously. Nichols, one of the hottest tickets in Tinseltown at the time, was justifiably miffed. Hadn't she heard of his previous successes, such as The Graduate, Carnal Knowledge and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? As Julie Kirgo points out in the liner notes to this Twilight Time release, limited to 3,000 copies, The Fortune had a very respectable pedigree. Stars Nicholson and Beatty, coming off major motion pictures such as Shampoo and Chinatown, cinematography by John A. Alonzo, a script by Adrien Joyce and a stunning debut performance from Channing. It all went for naught. The film failed to click with audiences and critics, and The Fortune failed to make one at the box office. Vaguely remembered today, it’s stuck in a big pile of films about the 1920s and 19302 made by Hollywood in the Seventies – Locust, The Great Gatsby and Chinatown among them.

The Many Faces of Emmanuelle: A NSFW Photographic Journey

I love erotic fiction. One of my all time favourite novels is Emmanuelle (or Emmanuelle: the Joys of a Woman). Most believe that it was written by Emmanuelle Arsan (real name: Marayat Rollet-Andriane) but there are plenty of rumours of it being written by her husband (Jacques Rollet-Andriane).

The reader is experiencing the story through the point of view of the title’s character, which has sex with a variety of people. It was originally published in its country of origin in 1967 and in English a few years later (it was first published anonymously in 1959, but it didn’t became the phenomenon that it meant to be in the ‘60s and ‘70s.), just when the first wave of commercial adult films was thriving and that shouldn’t be too surprising as the novel’s structure works like one.

The book was adapted by director Just Jaeckin into a film, Emmanuelle (1974), with Sylvia Kristel in the starring role, and was met with enormous success both in its production country (France) and internationally. It led the way for numerous erotic films to flood the market [Jaeckin also made Histoire D'o (1975) which was also based upon a provocative novel], and it was only a matter of time before various sequels materialized (official and unofficial). And then there was the Black Emanuelle (note the difference in the spelling). And so the legendary character was played by many attractive young actresses. This article is about them, the performers that brought Emmanuelle to the big screen.

Movie Review: Exile Nation: The Plastic People (2014)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Charles Shaw

The subject of illegal immigrants and deportation in the United States remains a raw, very complex issue. The topic has bubbled up like lava in such states as California, Texas – and especially Arizona, where law enforcement has taken a nearly “no tolerance” policy towards illegal Mexican immigrants. As the searing documentary Exile Nation: The Plastic People points out one in five Mexicans will at one time work, visit or live in the U.S.

Which brings us to the documentary at hand: The United States recently began a tough, no-nonsense policy of deporting illegal immigrants found breaking the law here, dumping them across the border in Tijuana. Many of these deportees, who do not speak Spanish, wind up homeless and take up residence in Tijuana’s dreaded “La Zona Norte,” a place of knee-high rubbish, no jobs, less opportunities and nonstop substance abuse. A humanitarian crisis that is rarely acknowledged, La Zona Norte stands as a stark reminder of the failure of U.S. deportation policies.

Movie Review: Gaming in Color (2015)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Philip Jones

Gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender and questioning people – henceforth referred to as GLBTQ who play video games form a distinct minority. Gamers or “geeks” – a highly derogatory term in this reviewer’s term – “geek” was originally a term used to describe degraded sideshow performers specializing in biting the heads of chickens, such as in the novel and film Nightmare Alley (1947) – suffer from negative stereotyping, as do members of the GLBTQ community.

At first glance, the two stereotypes would be at odd with each other. Male homosexuals are supposed to dress well, take care of their looks, and form very sophisticated networking skills. Gamers, on the other hand, are seen as being antisocial misfit, neglectful of their appearance that lay into the Nintendo for several hours a day in their parent’s basements. A big part of the gamer community is GLBTQ, but this group feels marginalized. The readily available games to them have very few GLBTQ characters, and the gaming community at large, mostly straight males, are largely homophobic. “Gay” to these adolescent males not only describes someone’s sexual identity, but anything bad, ineffective or worthless.

Movie Review: Diving Normal (2013)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Kristjan Thor

Based on a play, Diving Normal is a most unusual love story. Set in New York City, graphic novelist Fulton (Philipp Karner) falls for the beautiful blonde Dana (Susie Abromeit). For while, their romance blossoms, but Fulton’s neighbor Gordon (Scotty Crowe) begins to make awkward overtures to Dana. Verging on the autistic, Gordon begins to invite Dana on a series of strictly platonic dates, which consists of her watching him make high dives at the local gym. Things proceed awkwardly until Dana finds out the exact relationship between Gordon and Fulton. Dana falls back into her former patterns of substance abuse, until the men offer their own style of intervention.

Diving Normal is a very difficult film to analyze. It’s questionable that Dana would be seen with Gordon, as his character’s elevator doesn’t appear to go all the way to the top floor. Very quiet and reticent, Gordon’s character is on a tentative relationship with reality in general, let alone a gorgeous blonde. While dealing with a host of important issues, Diving Normal wisely – if unsatisfactorily offers no solutions. The audience is left in a bit of a lurch.

Movie Review: King of Herrings (2013)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Eddie Jemison and Sean Richardson

Friends are like a crab bucket. A bucket is full of happy crabs, but once one of them tries to climb above the stale camaraderie, all the other crab will stretch out their claws to pull the more ambitious ones down to their level. This truism is very noticeable in the new indie comedy, King of Herrings. Lensed in deep black-and-whites, King of Herrings has garnered favorable comparisons to Woody Allen. This reviewer sees hints of director Martin Scorsese and playwright Paddy Chayefsky as well …

King of Herrings focuses on a group of working-class Joes who bond together in dive bars and coffee shops in a less-than glamorous part of New Orleans. Ditch (Eddie Jemison) is the group’s leader, a manic prick with a terminal case of small man complex. He bullies and berates his friends mercilessly, and they love him for it. The gang is a motley group of losers: Leon (Wayne Pere), known as “the Robot” speaks through an electronic voice box. Gat (David Jensen) is pushing 60 years of age but dresses like a twenty-something hipster. Into this circular dead-end world of semi-employment and cars with $100 bluebook value are two very desirable women: Evie (Andrea Frankle), rushing into marriage to make her forthcoming child legitimate, and the angelic Mary (Laura Lamson), a hopelessly romantic, naïve seamstress. When one of the gang, the Professor (Joe Chrest) begins his sexual advances on Mary, by ostensibly trying to sell her “magazine subscriptions,” the sparks begin to fly …

Movie Review: Pretty Peaches (1978)

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by Alex DeRenzy

Die-hard daddy’s girl, light and bubbly Peaches (Desiree Cousteau) is none-too-pleased with her father’s (John Leslie) coming nuptials. Fleeing the tacky ceremony held at a rundown wedding chapel-cum-casino, Peaches lets off some steam by wildly driving her jeep off road in the surrounding Nevada wilderness. Bumping her head and falling unconscious, she awakes – after being raped, more or less by stag flick standby Joey Silvera. Peaches, her attackers, her papa and his new bride (Flower) wind back and forth through the film’s running time until a climactic – literally, swinger’s party. Peaches regains her memory and the story ends happily, kind of, sort of.

“Why do women fake orgasms?” infamous skin flick director Alex DeRenzy asks in a taped interview shortly before his death in 2001, included in this Vinegar Syndrome release as an extra. “Because they think that we care!” he declares. This reviewer isn’t giving too much away by saying this isn’t the only “hot” bit of chat the still spry 66-year-old DeRenzy reveals. He also goes into great detail about another one of his most infamous features, Femmes DeSade (1976). You’ll think you’ve been granted an audience with Satan himself when DeRenzy explains that whats and wherefores of that sick little title!

Movie Review: Salvador (1986; Hemdale/MGM/UA/Twilight Time)

...ya' know?? It's often quite interesting and intriguing, the evolution of a filmmaker. The inaugural hits...the initial misses...and that marked milestone of a film, which carries said filmmaker to greater heights, even to the point where, for good or for bad, whatever comes after, is still quite anticipated and well-received by viewing critics and audiences alike. For most, one's introduction to a specific filmmaker is typically something wrought well-after that aforementioned milestone, and after having been privy of latter, higher-profile work, curiosity prescribes...even sometimes demands one to back-pedal to that now-renowned and revered filmmaker's earlier work...

...cutting to the chase, let's just throw the name out there, 'kay?? Ready, go...Director Oliver Stone. Bam!! Right away, what comes to most folks' minds are the high-profile films of keen political rhetorics, observations and engagements, whether such things are observed and/or depicted in the exploitative media ("Natural Born Killers"), in a war-torn battleground ("Platoon", amongst others), in the high-rise financial arena (...can you say, "Wall Street"), on the grassy football gridiron (...a la, "Any Given Sunday"), or heck, even in the obvious of politically-driven locales...namely Washington, D.C., itself (..."JFK", "Nixon", "W.", etc.), Of course, there are those moments of filmmaking escapism...for lack of a better word...'breaks' in the political rhetorie, so to speak, as director Stone etches out the smaller, eclectic, more character driven stories (...of course, we're talking "Talk Radio", "U-Turn", "Savages"...the

Milk my Snake: The Anaconda Franchise

The news are all over the internet that the Lake Placid and the Anaconda franchises (that have produced four films each) will mash-up for a crossover flick, and I just realized that although I’m a big fan of the former four movies, I had not seen the later four. Well, I could not go see the upcoming movie without knowing the absolutely important stories that preceded it so here I am reviewing these snake oddities.

Anaconda (1997)

The first 35mm film reel I ever got my hands on was the trailer for Anaconda (1997) which was given to me by one of the best tutors I had back when I was a student at the film school. I still don’t know what to do with it since I don’t have a film projector, but I hold on to the item because of the sentimental value that it has for me.

I remember that it was a big deal when Anaconda (1997) opened in the movie theaters here in Greece, and it was even a big event when it was broadcasted for the first time on television. Well, it cost $45 million to make, and people in the late ‘90s seemed to not know how unoriginal it was [Jaws (1975) was made more than two decades old and popcorn audiences have proven to not know their film history] and as a result it grossed more than $136 million world-wide.

Movie Review: Open Relationship (Digital Playground - 2015)

Reviewed by: Rick L. Blalock   - December 1, 2015

Starring :
Romi Rain
Alix Lynx
Eva Lovia
Josie Jagger
Reena Sky
Staci Carr
Danny Mountain
John Strong
Ryan Driller
Seth Gamble
Toni Ribas

Synopsis
Maggie (Romi Rain) and Roger (Danny Mountain) are a sex-crazed married couple... but there is more to their marriage than what meets the eye. After a fulfilling day of separate sexcapades, the duo reunites at an erotic party, and their evening culminates in a surprise climax.

(Runtime - 3 hr. 49 mins.)
———————

In this new DIGITAL PLAYGROUND release, titled OPEN RELATIONSHIP, the story centers around married couple Roger and Maggie.  They are a couple, that despite having a good relationship, neither one of them are exactly satisfied sexually.  Because of this, the couple openly pursues other avenues for sex.  Roger finds fulfillment at his workplace with a co-worker, while Maggie, seems to find the same in a strapping young college student.  However, for as much as they do knowingly stray outside their marriage, their sexual liaisons don't end there, as you can likely find both of them at local masquerade sex parties.  It is at such party that things end up, where the husband and wife dare to explore the boundaries of their sexuality.  Of course, this is all before going home to each other at the end of the night, having no guilt on their conscience.

Cinema Head Cheese: Podshort! - Road Hard (2015)

Kevin Moyers and Sam Poe discuss Adam Carolla's new movie about a comedian returning to the road.

Click here to listen or right click and choose "Save Link As..." to download.

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Cinema Head Cheese: Podshort! - The Babadook (2014)

Peggy Christie delivers a twenty minute review of the recent horror film, The Babadook. Complete with shuffling noises and a quick rager about computers.

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You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com or tweet us @CinHeadCheese.

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Movie Review: Atari: Game Over (2014)

When I was a kid, video games made their mark in a huge way. I always loved going to arcades and dumping quarter after quarter into anything from Pac-Man to Gauntlet to Tron to Spy Hunter. Arcade games were found in bowling alleys, convenience stores, laundromats and, of course, stand alone arcades. To have the opportunity to bring these things home was a godsend to a kid like me. The first company to build a system for these games was Atari, and there was a 2600 in thousands of lucky homes. For some reason, Atari died off and was usurped by Nintendo, Sega and other systems. Most of the blame, until now, has been thrown onto one infamous game based on a favorite movie alien.

A legend has floated around for years that after the dismal failure of Atari's E.T. game, they buried millions of copies in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Director Zak Penn decided to investigate this claim, along with the entire story of the rise and fall of Atari. The company started simply enough with Pong. If you don't remember Pong, it was a very simple paddle game that resembled tennis. More games were created with the same simple 8-bit technology, and new designers joined the fold. Howard Scott Warshaw was one of them. He was the creator of the popular Yar's Revenge, which hosted the very first Easter egg in gaming history.

Movie Review: Under Fire (1983)

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell


Nicaragua, 1979: The populace is under the iron-fisted rule of President Anastasio Somoza. Photographer Russell Price (Nick Nolte) is on the scene to capture scenes of the burgeoning civil war for the American mainstream media. It’s not all work and no play. Price has his eye on the gorgeous journalist Claire (Joanna Cassidy) who’s in the process of breaking up with the egotistical Alex Grazier (Gene Hackman), indifferent to the death and upheaval around him as he plots his career as a news anchor. The trio is pulled into the conflict when it becomes obvious that they can’t remain neutral to the fascistic forces of Somoza and the Sandinista rebels. Throwing their purported, professional objectivity into bold relief are the actions of cheerfully amoral mercenary soldier Oates (George Romero discovery Ed Harris), who guns down unarmed civilians for quick cash. Using his photographic skills to prolong the rebel’s efforts, Price and his friends face an even bigger quandary: Are they merely unseating the old boss, who in the words of The Who, “is same as the old boss?”

Movie Review: Riff Raff (1991) and Raining Stones (1993) (Twilight Time)

Honestly, fellas, I don’t know how well I can review these two movies. For one, they aren’t typically what I enjoy watching. Sure, a human interest/drama/comedy film can be interesting or at least, entertaining (like Philomena or Lizzie Borden Took an Axe). But for another reason, I couldn’t understand 98% of what these fookers were going on about in the films. The heavy cockney British accents DO NOT make for easy listening. So I gleaned what I could from every 100th word I caught and the accompanying acting. Here goes nothing.

Riff Raff and Raining Stones are two films from Ken Loach. Apparently, he’s well known for creating movies about the poor/working class and their struggles with every day life, particularly during political change.

Riff  Raff focuses on Stevie (a very young Robert Carlysle whose Scottish brogue is near impossible to translate), a drifter who finds work at a construction site. He squats in a nearby empty apartment, with the help of a few of his coworkers. The construction site has appalling safety conditions: read none at all. Anyone who brings that up is immediately sacked. 

Stevie meets Susan, a lacking in talent singer but they hit it off. After moving in with him, he learns she’s a druggie. Maybe something you could have learned if you knew each other AT ALL before moving in together. After that relationship falls apart, one of Stevie’s coworkers dies on site. The obvious reaction to that is for Stevie and his buddy to burn the location down.

The Dirty Harry Films: Do you feel lucky punk?

I was recently reading Robert Greysmith’s books on the Zodiac killings [Zodiac & Zodiac Unmasked] and got so fascinated by the story that I watched Zodiac (2007), even though I don’t like David Fincher’s movies (and this was not an exception). Anyway, the meat of the story was that this person was killing just for the hell of it!

A few years ago I had seen The Zodiac Killer (1971). I still have the Something Weird DVD, but I didn’t revisit it, as I don’t remember it being particularly special. But I read that Dirty Harry (1971) was based on the real life murderer and chief investigator, and since it is one of those films that you have to see (because everybody has), I decided to not only give it a go, but review the entire franchise that was build on the success of the first movie. After all I love Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s westerns, so how wrong could I go?

The Dirty Harry films are action cinema masterpieces and should be praised as such. They may seem a bit problematic today as the cop worshiping scenario looks occasionally cheesy or at least dated, but they work perfectly as escapism adventures.

The Dirty Harry films proved very successful at the box office (well, not the last flick in the franchise, but the first four). Every Dirty Harry flick was made by a different director. Those five were Don Siegel [Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)], Ted Post [Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)], James Fargo [Caravans (1978)], Buddy Van Horn [Pink Cadillac (1989)], and star Clint Eastwood.

Just when you thought you wouldn’t read any more Jaws reviews…

I like independent film politics, you know, the stuff Lloyd Kaufman is preaching. And Roger Corman has said in some interviews that it was Jaws (1975) that killed the independent genre productions because the majors found out what they were doing and turned into something bigger and better. This reason alone was enough for me to stay away from this evil film by Steven Spielberg. The fact that I don’t like his movies in general didn’t help either. I didn’t even find depth in Schindler's List (1993). And I regret spending my cash to see the boring Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001) and the ridiculous War of the Worlds (2005) in a movie theatre.

But now the time has come. I finally decided to watch every film in the entire franchise. As the above paragraph reveals I am not an expert (quite the contrary I would say) so this article should be read as a reviewer’s journey and nothing more than that.

Wikipedia tells me that the first film was based on Peter Benchley’s same-titled novel, which in turn was based on some shark attacks from 1916. The success of the novel and then the first film (considered by many to be the first high-concept blockbuster flick), spawned sequels, video games, theme parks and merchandize of every kind; which generated hundreds of millions of dollars. Go ahead and read the reviews of the four films.

 

Movie Review: SexWorld (1978)

Directed by Anthony Spinelli

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

It would follow that Michael Crichton’s sci-fi epic Westworld (1973), a theme park for adults with anything-goes pleasure androids would eventually get the triple-X treatment. It took director Anthony Spinelli and his organized crime cohorts three years to mount SexWorld, but the twain between mainstream and porno would never meet. Whereas Westworld jettisoned James Brolin and Richard Benjamin on a futuristic hovercraft, the lower middle class folk ferried to SexWorld have to settle for a smoky ol’ bus, with a “SexWorld” banned hastily stapled to the side. As smut scholar Robin Bougie would note in his essential volume “Graphic Thrills: American XXX Movie Posters, 1970 to 1985,” there was no substituting Hollywood with Inglewood this time around.

Fright Nights Horrorant Film Festival 2015 – Part 2 The Features

Do you remember last year when I did a big-ass reportage (in four parts no less) on the 1^st Fright Nights Horrorant Film Festival? Yes, Greece’s sole annual and international Horror Film Festival. Well, what do you know, since then I became a columnist for their website. And what do you know; I am now a member of the Jury that will give the Short Films Awards!

Now that the 2^nd edition of the festival has wrapped, I present you the reviews of the features that I watched. I tried to watch as much celluloid as I could, but not everything because first there were two screens (running different films simultaneously) and then I am (still) a human being. I think. Enjoy!

Thursday 12^th of March 2015

This day kicked off with last year’s award-grabbing The Battery (2012), and Les Diaboliques (1955) which was part of the French Horror Special. On Screen 1 The Babadook (2014) was the official opening film, while on Screen 2 people watched Phantasmagoria (2014). The night ended with Domo (2014) on Screen 2, but I was having a blast on Screen 1 the film reviewed bellow.

Another (2014)

This is the first feature film by writer/director Jason Bognacki (he made shorts previously) and it is about Jordyn [TV actress Paulie Redding] who is the devil’s daughter, which works as having an alter ego which is sexier and has more abilities.

The first half is very much a film that if it was directed by Dario Argento it would now be praised as a masterpiece. The second hand is more about the supernatural but in such a dreamy fashion that Jess Franco would be proud. The finale is very Roger Corman, and that can only be a good thing.