The Firing Line (1988)

The film begins with a group of guerillas being attacked by overwhelming forces and all but annihilated.  Only one female guerilla survives to escape back to their base, while the commander of the unit and a second woman are captured alive.

That might sound like a pretty exciting way to kick things off, but there's literally no dialogue or anything else to give context to the scenes of nameless extras running through trees and dying when there's an explosion nearby them.  Even the fact that they are guerillas has to be inferred from their mismatched outfits, mixture of male and female troops, and lack of heavy equipment.

Then the dialog starts and people try to act, and you wish they'd let you infer the whole movie.

In any case, the rebel leader is brought before the American advisor who orchestrated the attack.  Said American is a stand up guy, of course.  But as soon as he is gone the authorities murder the rebel leader and then rape and murder the other captive.  Surprise!  The government is evil!

Well, duh.  It's the 80s and they have US backing.  Being anti-communist was much more important than not being brutal thug, especially in Central America, where this appears to me.  Google Rios Montt some time, if you doubt me, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Enjoying some R&R and flirting with an allegedly beautiful woman, Our Hero runs into a cynical journalist who sneers at the suggestion the rebel will get a fair trial, what with him being dead and all.  Our Hero ditches the woman and sets out to discover if this is true, and soon finds himself on the wrong side of the government he was just helping.

His escape ends up encompassing his earlier date for not every well-explained reasons, and the two of them end up in the jungle where they naturally hook up with the guerillas and engage in a series of poorly staged battles and one of the most perfunctory romances I have ever seen on screen (and I have seen a lot of perfunctory romances, let me tell you).

If you imagine a Schwarzenegger film from the same period, but with a lead who has 5% of the charisma and a script that's about 10% as good, you've pretty much got this film.  The main entertainment value comes from the frankly atrocious editing.  Hint to the film-makers: if you choose to show a character's face while we can hear them talking, you should choose a shot where their lips are moving.

Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

I loved this movie when I was 15.  After all, it had nerds triumphing over cool kids, and a bunch of naked bosoms.  It was like geek catnip.

I picked up the DVD about 7 years ago, because it was cheap and I had a rush of nostalgia.  Then I remembered some of the stuff in it, and felt bad.  Which is why it hasn't been watched until now.  But we'll get to the bad stuff in a bit.  Let's give credit where credit is due.

Because this does have some stuff going for it.  It has a surprisingly talented cast (seriously, what are Anthony Edwards and John Goodman doing in this?), and some refreshing inclusiveness, what with there being a gay nerd.  I mean sure, he's an over the top stereotype gay man, but at least he's there and not one of the bad guys.  Heck, the film's even mildly amusing: the script's jokes are generally pretty juvenile and obvious, but the actors have a pretty good command of physical and visual humour, and make a lot of it work better than it should.

Unfortunately, there are some major issues with the movie.  After the various persecutions of the cool kids finally become unbearable, the nerds decide to fight back.  I can overlook the 'comical' scene where they douse the football team's jockstraps in some version of deep heat.  Sure, it'd be recklessly dangerous in real life, but in a film I can pretend that's not true.

Installing cameras in the cheerleaders sorority house so they can spy on naked women, though?  That's way over the skeevy line.  And lets not even get to the part where one of them tricks a woman into sleeping with him (he's wearing a mask, and she thinks it is her boyfriend).  And these are the 'heroes' remember.

So yeah, there's a whole heaping mess of wrong in this. Even for the 80s, which were not exactly an enlightened time in cinema.

A Shriek in the Night (1933)

This film stars Ginger Rogers - pre Fred Astaire - as one of a pair of rival reporters after the same story.  There are no prizes for guessing that the two newsies will be a couple at the end of the movie.

We begin with the death - whether accident, suicide, or muder is unclear - of a wealthy businessman with shady friends.  Reporter Pat Morgan has been investigating the dead man for some time, and has spent the last three weeks as his secretary in attempt to learn more of his connections to organised crime.  Unfortunately, her scoop gets snatched out from under her by her rival Ted Rand, and she loses her job.

This doesn't exactly endear Ted to Pat (nor to me, since it's a rather jerky thing to do), but it does later lead to a rather nice Gift of the Magi moment later in the picture, so I will retroactively forgive it.

Alas, shortly after the Gift of the Magi moment, the film - which until then had been moving along in a quite satisfactory manner, if one overlooks the rampant racism and slightly less egregious sexism - stalls pretty badly.  It just feels like the momentum drains away.  Which is a shame, because the actual story behind the businessman's death isn't a bad one when it is finally revealed.  Alas, the movie doesn't do a good job of sustaining interest until we got there.

If you want one of those comedy/drama 'rivals who become lovers' kind of films, there are plenty of better examples.  This is interesting only because it is an example of the early work of a woman on the verge of becoming a star (Rogers would first team up with Astaire later the same year).

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

This is one of the scores of ultra-cheap movies Roger Corman produced in the 50s and 60s, often two or three at a time.  In this case, it was filmed alongside Ski Troop Attack, which I reviewed about six months ago.  The two films share the same four principal male cast members, though this one also has a fairly significant female role.

The basic plot: a group of criminals pretend to be tourists at an alpine resort, and book a cross-country skiing trip to an isolated cabin with local instructor Gil Jackson.  The crooks plan is to commit a burglary, then ski up to the cabin and ... lay low for a while, I guess.  Exactly what they are going to do isn't ever very clearly explained.

Anyway, the boss crook has a lady friend who is clearly taken with Gil, which causes some tension even before they set out on their journey.  Also causing tension is the wild story of one of the lesser crooks.  You see, this fellow took a local girl out for a date, but came back without her.  He claims some thing grabbed her, when they went for a look around a local mine, and he certainly seems pretty wild-eyed and shaky from whatever happened.  But his story is so preposterous it couldn't possibly be true, right?

Well this is a movie, so of course it could, and after arriving at the cabin, Gil and the crooks find themselves the target of the monster's hunger.  Not that a man-eating creature will stop Gil and Gypsy - the aforementioned lady friend - from their budding romance.  Said romance isn't badly done, actually.  Easily the best part of the film.

At its core, this film has exactly the same script as the later Creature from the Haunted Sea (which I reviewed in November).  Unlike that film's spoof approach however, it plays things as a straight critter-thriller.  If I didn't know before hand that the two films were both re-writes of the same script (originally shot as Naked Paradise), I probably wouldn't have picked up on it.

I'd say overall that this is technically a better film than Creature from the Haunted Sea , which perhaps makes it unfair that I give this a 'not recommended' when the other film got a qualified recommendation ... but the later movie had an irreverant attitude and silliness that allows me to overlook its flaws.  This one drags a little, and the monster - while not as clownish - is still not very scary.

Worth checking out only for afficiandos of ultra-cheap 50s monster films.

Pleasantville (1998)

I must confess, I sat down to watch this DVD with only tepid enthusiasm.  I saw and liked Pleasantville when it was at the cinemas - that's why I own the DVD - but I've never really felt in the mood to re-watch it.  I only did so now because it was the last remaining movie that I bought before 2007 and had never watched.

So it was (appropriately enough) a pleasant surprise to find myself really enjoying the film.  It's not a subtle movie, at least on the surface, and the ending leaves one rather important question unanswered, but it does what it does very well.  And there is perhaps a layer going on under the surface.

The premise is simple enough, if a little exotic: two squabbling siblings, one a dork, one a rebel, find themselves sucked into the black-and-white millieu of a Leave It to Beaver-esque TV show.  They take the place of two of the principal characters, and must attempt to navigate their new surroundings until they can find a way out.  Fortunately, the dorky male sibling has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the show.

Unfortunately - or so it appears at the time - his rebellious sister isn't interested in sticking to the saccharine sweet and G-rated script.  She introduces sex to the high school kids, for whom hand-holding has been the 'big one' to date, and inadvertently begins a cascade of cultural changes that slowly see more and more of the townspeople turn technicolor(tm).

This phenomenon is used for the movie's subtle-as-a-brick attack on racism, with 'no coloreds' signs appearing in shop windows as those who are still black and white rally against the new element within their society.  The book burnings and other antics are also a pretty clear critique of censorship and attacks on free speech.

But there's also a little more going on in the film, I think.  Dorky brother's initial efforts to stop his sister from 'ruining' the town stem out of the fact that he sees the other people here only as characters in a story.  As he gets to know them and like them, his efforts to stop her cease, and he becomes the greatest agent for change.  And there's something in that: the message that we can best understand and work with others when we start seeing them as fully rounded individuals. "Imagine other people complexly", as author John Green would say.

So yes, I really enjoyed this: solid performances all round, and a fun script which is only slightly marred by its refusal to provide the answer to one rather obvious question (you'll know what it is when you see the movie).  Worth your time.

Urban Gothic Season 1 (2000)

The back-of-case text promises that this show takes British Horror "out of the museum and into the city", which I'm pretty sure is a nicer way of saying "not just re-heated Hammer Horror scripts, we promise".

Does the show deliver on the implication of something new and different?  Well, from Hammer, certainly.  There's definitely a focus on urban settings, and on stories involving working class or socially-disaffected characters, especially teenagers and young adults.  One of the episodes might be described as "Grange Hill goes slasher movie", for instance.  Also, there's a lot more ethnic diversity in this show than in anything Hammer ever did (but then, that's not a high bar to clear)

More important than newness and difference: is it any good?

Wellllllll ....

It's uneven.  It's not helped by a weak start, either: the first episode in particular is a poor one, I think.  That said, even the stronger episodes tend to have issues with their execution.  I feel like the weekly anthology format probably was a little beyond them: it's tough to have to introduce characters, set stakes, and have a satisfying conclusion at the best of times, let alone while packing it into 22 minutes.

So what we tend to get is stories that don't feel like they've been 'fully cooked'.  Several of the episodes have interesting premises, but almost every episode feels like the scripts could have done with two or three more drafts to iron out all the issues.  They aren't always huge problems (though they sometimes are: the end of the Grange Hill episode I mentioned above is a terrible one, for instance), but they are noticeable.  An example: the werewolf episode relies on certain points on the lycanthropes exhibiting similar behavioural traits to lions.

One would think that if you specifically identify them as werewolves, that their behaviour should be wolf-like, no?

Some people might appreciate the rough and unpolished outcomes, but I wish they'd had more time to develop their scripts.  If they had, I probably would have felt comfortable giving them a qualified recommendation.  As is, check it out only if you have a thing for horror-themed short stories.

The Girl from Chicago (1932)

Blaxploitation was a 70s phenomenon, but in the earlier days of the movie industry we had 'race films', which starred African-American casts and were marketed to African-American audiences.  As with blaxploitation films of course, many of these were financed (and the profits pocketed) by white-owned companies.  But there were a couple of exceptions, the most successful of which was the Micheaux Film Corporation.

This is a Micheaux film, made on a shoestring budget with a mostly non-professional cast.  If the internet is to be believed, that was typical of the studio's output, as is the inclusion of several song and dance numbers to 'pad' the running time.  Frankly though, one of the dance numbers was probably the best part of the movie, as irrelevant to the plot as it might have been.

The movie starts with Secret Service agent Oscar White returning to the US after several months working with Scotland Yard.  I'm not sure any of that's very likely, but then this film also has White's romance being reported by the society pages, so realism isn't high on the agenda.

So White gets sent to look into some nefarious activities in Mississippi, where he meets a girl from Virgina and they fall in love.  The film helpfully has a text scrawl to tell us about the blossoming of the romance, since it neglects to y'know, actually show it.

White's not only girl-chasing though, he's also bad guy chasing, which he does with such success that he gets his man about half way through the film.  You might wonder what the film is going to do, if the lead has got the girl and the villain by the 30-minute mark, but not to worry -- the girl helpfully introduces a whole new subplot and so it is off to Harlem for the completely-unrelated-to-the-first-act-second-act.  In which White tracks down the killer of a numbers banker (not actually a thing the secret service does).

You might have mentioned that there's no mention of Chicago in any of that summary, and I don't recall it being brought up in the film either.  Where the movie got its title - other than Micheauc being based in Chaicago - I'm not exactly sure.

This is interesting only as a historical curiousity (well, and for that one neat dance number, though you can find better online if that's your thing).