It is nearly two years since Turner Classic Movies ended the TCM Underground programming. I still miss it. Going through the DVR that is getting replaced, though, I found a few things I recorded through TCM Underground that I still had not watched. To relive the experience of an unusual double feature between Friday night and Saturday morning, I used those recordings for one more this night. It consisted of the early New Line production ALONE IN THE DARK (1982) and WILLARD (1971). It looks like Willard has been on the DVR for over six years! Better late than never, I guess.
Alone In The Dark is an odd-ball film that bounces between straight horror and parody of early '80s horror trends. Dwight Schultz, of A-Team fame, is a psychiatrist beginning work at an unusual mental asylum run. Convinced that Schultz killed the previous doctor, three patients (two of which are Jack Palance and Martin Landau) get out to avenge the supposedly murdered man.
Willard was full of many surprises, particularly regarding the acting. Bruce Davison shines as the troubled title character who befriends a horde of rats, and Ernest Borgnine is truly scary as the boss from hell. Willard also gets sad by delving into all the crap that life can throw at you. It easily fits into the Revenge and Animals categories for Junesploitation.
THE BIG COMBO (1955, dir. Joseph Lewis) – For the 1950s, this is a surprisingly brutal crime drama. A bulldog cop goes after a ruthless gangster (Richard Conte) who is not going to accept the police attention politely. There is a torture session, a bombing, and several machine guns killings to liven up the proceedings. The noir element especially comes through in the legendary cinematography of John Alton, who created many memorable shots here out of limited resources.
VIVA KNIEVEL! (1977) – This film exists solely to exploit the momentary fame of stunt rider Evel Knievel. He surely is no actor. Despite the widescreen ratio, the script, music, and visual style are more similar to the popular American shows (Charlie’s Angels, Kojak) of the time than a movie . The corny script and dialogue had me chuckling quite a bit, actually. Having a fondness for 1970s-era entertainment goes a long way in finding any kind of value in Viva Knievel.
THE PROWLER (1951, dir. Joseph Losey) – When a woman calls the police to report a prowler, it brings one of the responding policemen into her life. What follows is a noir story of an affair, murder, and paranoia that is watchable but noticeably falters by the conclusion. The script was the main issue.
LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) – Though far from being an original story, it is the Melville style that elevates The Red Circle into being a great film. Alain Delon is a criminal just released from prison with a plan to rob a Parisian jewelry store. The Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte is his partner crime. Of course, the police are not out of the picture, either.
It is hard not to laugh at something in Viva Knievel. The funniest aspect for me was a subplot of the estranged relationship between Knievel's drunkard mechanic (played by Gene Kelly of all people) and his son. It feels so shoehorned into the script that it becomes a separate film within the film.
Godzilla Minus One (2023): 4k disc just came in. Still a masterpiece. The irony of it winning an Oscar the same year as Oppenheimer won Best Picture is still funny to me.
Argo (2012): I'm not a fan of Ben Affleck's acting most of the time (sorry Rob), and this is one of those time. But give me a decent spy thriller and I'm in. Apparently, Kyle Chandler specializes in Spy Biopics because he was in Zero Dark Thirty the same year.
Megalopolis (2024): What can I say, I liked it. It's big and it's weird, and I like it when filmmakers go hard. It doesn't always work, but I'll definitely rewatch it at some point.
Saturday Night (2024): This just solidified how I thought these people were... a bunch of drugged up, self-centered assholes.
Backdraft (1991): I'm not a fan of the Baldwins (other than Alec and the one that's a fake Baldwin), but between Kurt Russel trying to punch fires and Robert DeNiro trying to f*** fires, we got a winning combination totaling a pretty good movie.
Also, the ZAZ Collection Set 4k came in just in time for the weekend. Guess what I'm watching today...
I know it's still pretty early, but what is the plan with the next FThisMovieFest? Is it still going to be through Twitter/X? Not trying to be controversial but fuck Musk. Also, Twitter was not allowing me to post during the last fest which was a bummer.
Patrick said it won't be on Twitter, but didn't specify anything more. A lot of the F family have moved to Bluesky (myself included), so that seems like the best guess.
How is your OSCAR Best Picture project going, Mikko? I see that you have been going through a lot of Loony Tunes cartoons recently.
I have been on Twitter/X this month for Noirvember. It does seem like activity on the platform has noticeably decreased the last two weeks. Thinking about setting up a Bluesky account now.
Hi Casual! I'm on the home stretch of my Oscar project, 47 movies down and only four left until I've seen every Best Picture winner (a little proud of myself for keeping on schedule). I've enjoyed most of them, if not for the movie itself, then its place in cinema history.
And yeah, I bought a DVD set with 150 Looney Tunes shorts, and I'm determined to watch them all by the end of the year. Some have been amazing, some not that much, and some have been really dated (obviously).
I'll probably write a little about it when I get done in December. Yeah, a few of them have been either a slog to get through or objectionable by today's standards (or both), but they're in the minority.
Beautiful women, beautiful waves, beautiful Hawaii. It's full of every Sport/Romantic movie cliche possible (The girl surfs the big wave, wins a spot with the sponsors, and the NHL quarterback falls for her!) but I really liked it, especially as it has loads of great water/waves/surfing footage. It felt like it was made with a sincerity and love for the sport. It has a really great credits too, just showing footage of ordinary people and kids surfing. I had a big smile, credits: https://youtu.be/43zjm2wZDlk?si=dogcZWpHRk1o9f-b
So of course I had to watch Blue Crush 2 (2011). A direct to video movie with zero connection to the first (other than surfing) and a serious step down in quality in every way. On the other hand, it was shot entirely on location in beautiful S. Africa, and still had the waves and the vibes. I can't say I didn't tear up a bit when she caught the "big wave" at the end.
I haven't posted since SMM. I had planned to watch all the Puppet Master movies, but finally was super busy and not much time was left for movies. I did watch 8 of them though. I was loving my little killer puppet friends by the end, but you have to suffer through a lot to get to a few good scenes. PM 2 and 3 were both good, PM: The Legacy (8th one) is basically a clip show of the franchise, which means it's full of puppet action and is a lot of fun. After that they franchise starts to lean hard into Nazi themes (just based on the title and posters), so I decided to stop there.
Overall it was a good SMM. Wish I had more time to watch movies. I had wanted to watch a couple Wes Craven movies and I did not. Didn't make time for a Giallo either. Late Night with the Devil (2024), Ravenous (1999) and Bram Stokers Dracula (1992) were the highlights of the month. Also watching Alien and Aliens with my son.
RED ONE (2024) This is basically just Men In Black, but with Christmas stuff in place of aliens. It had some fun goofs, but was otherwise mindless. I'm concerned, though, about how the movie raises the question of how maybe it's not cool that Santa keeps a "naughty list" and those children don't get presents, but then there's no follow-up on that. Gotta save something for RED TWO, I suppose.
THE VAMPIRE HAPPENING (1971) Oh it's happening, all right.
GLADIATOR II (2024) I'm sure this movie could be nitpicked to death, but I for one thought it was great. Just an old-fashioned, bombastic sword-swingin' good time at the movies.
THE FALL GUY (2024) I knew this would be an action/comedy going in, but I wasn't prepared for just how over-the-top silly the comedy is. Normally I like silliness, but this is pushing it.
STREETS OF FIRE (1984) "Let the revels begin, Let the fire be started, We're dancing for the restless and the brokenhearted..."
Extreme Measures (1996): a long time ago, back when the internet wasn't what it is today (actually barely existed), there was a song from industrial band Velvet Acid Christ that was sampling this movie on their 1998 album. Finding very specific information about a song or a movie was almost impossible, so all those years I stayed ignorant. That is until recently when I unearthed my old CDs and started listening to it again. Took me 10 seconds to find the information. I never saw this movie before, but I wasn't disappointed. The movie fits perfectly in the experimental-medical-drama that was going on back then.
A Knight's Tale (2001): This came out when I was studying cinema in college. I saw it and dismissed it because I was obviously better than this. What a moron I was. This is just pure fun and we didn't know how lucky we were to have Heath Ledger on our screens. And Alan Tudyk, before Firefly, and before he became the voiceover master that he is today.
I had the same reaction to A KNIGHT'S TALE when it came out and did not get the hype about the leads. Then I loved it when I finally saw it again a year or two ago, and was impressed with Heath Ledger. He was playing it serious. Have you seen Alan Tudyk in 28 Days? He's so funny.
I had a fair amount of fun with this Xeno outing. As with pretty much every franchise ever, its hard to do something new/original this deep into the game and for the most part that holds true here. The flick cherry picks ideas from Alien and Aliens but has fun in doing so. I was also pleasantly surprised that it took a little of the black goo lore from Prometheus/Covenant and worked it in. In the end its kinda forgettable popcorn fun and 20m too long but a solid bit of atmospheric space horror.
Got through rewatches of Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, and then we did Into Darkness.
One of my earliest theater-going memories was going to see Search for Spock when I was around 5, and is the only time I remember going to the theater with my grandfather. I don't remember much else about that experience, but it's still gives me an extra bit of fondness for a movie that otherwise largely an extended epilogue to Wrath of Khan, but with Dollar Store Saavik. I still kinda like it regardless although it's a bit unforgivable that Uhura gets left behind while everyone else heads off to Genesis.
The Voyage Home played pretty well for the gf. We're both born and raised in the Bay Area, so seeing 1980s SF in a Star Trek movie will never not be entertaining, and it's just a fun movie in general. Also they get to spend a full movie rolling around in a Bird of Prey.
Then I figured, why not get Into Darkness out of the way now. It's still not a good movie. I was going to say that it's hard for me to have a bad time watching any Star Trek, but then a bunch of bad ST episodes (and Nemesis) flashed through my head, so I guess that isn't entirely the case. It's hard for me not to get some enjoyment out of watching this cast though (if they want to have Urban play Bones in SNW also, I'd be ok with that).
Fun Movie Reference: was revisiting the always great Die Hard With a Vengeance today. Man i love that flick SO much. Theres a scene where McClane is telling Zues about what he was doing during his suspension. I audibly gasped and rewound to make sure i heard it right. He said he was "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain kangaroo" ....thats the exact line and song that Butch (also played by Bruce Willis) says in Pulp Fiction!! Even moreso he's talking to Sam Jackson who acted with him in Pulp!? Cant believe i never saw this before...such an amazing nod to a previous flick they shared.
Bondelero! (1968) This is a western with James Stewart, Dean Martin, Rachel Welch and George Kennedy. James Stewart disguised himself as a hangman to save his brother, Dean Martin. Then they kidnap George Kennedy's girlfriend, Rachel Welch. The only notable thing for me is how often I see this same kinda western with James Stewart with the same themes, even when it really wasn't working at all anymore. Sometimes that's fine, like it's comfy and familiar. But it gets goofy for me when the leads look too old and/or miscast.
This is one that I have not seen, Meredith, but I have watched plenty of 1960s movies that use tired stories and actors that are getting a little too old for their roles. That is why 1970s New Hollywood happened.
Good weekend to everyone.
ReplyDeleteIt is nearly two years since Turner Classic Movies ended the TCM Underground programming. I still miss it. Going through the DVR that is getting replaced, though, I found a few things I recorded through TCM Underground that I still had not watched. To relive the experience of an unusual double feature between Friday night and Saturday morning, I used those recordings for one more this night. It consisted of the early New Line production ALONE IN THE DARK (1982) and WILLARD (1971). It looks like Willard has been on the DVR for over six years! Better late than never, I guess.
Alone In The Dark is an odd-ball film that bounces between straight horror and parody of early '80s horror trends. Dwight Schultz, of A-Team fame, is a psychiatrist beginning work at an unusual mental asylum run. Convinced that Schultz killed the previous doctor, three patients (two of which are Jack Palance and Martin Landau) get out to avenge the supposedly murdered man.
Willard was full of many surprises, particularly regarding the acting. Bruce Davison shines as the troubled title character who befriends a horde of rats, and Ernest Borgnine is truly scary as the boss from hell. Willard also gets sad by delving into all the crap that life can throw at you. It easily fits into the Revenge and Animals categories for Junesploitation.
These are the rest of my watches for the week.
ReplyDeleteTHE BIG COMBO (1955, dir. Joseph Lewis) – For the 1950s, this is a surprisingly brutal crime drama. A bulldog cop goes after a ruthless gangster (Richard Conte) who is not going to accept the police attention politely. There is a torture session, a bombing, and several machine guns killings to liven up the proceedings. The noir element especially comes through in the legendary cinematography of John Alton, who created many memorable shots here out of limited resources.
VIVA KNIEVEL! (1977) – This film exists solely to exploit the momentary fame of stunt rider Evel Knievel. He surely is no actor. Despite the widescreen ratio, the script, music, and visual style are more similar to the popular American shows (Charlie’s Angels, Kojak) of the time than a movie . The corny script and dialogue had me chuckling quite a bit, actually. Having a fondness for 1970s-era entertainment goes a long way in finding any kind of value in Viva Knievel.
THE PROWLER (1951, dir. Joseph Losey) – When a woman calls the police to report a prowler, it brings one of the responding policemen into her life. What follows is a noir story of an affair, murder, and paranoia that is watchable but noticeably falters by the conclusion. The script was the main issue.
LE CERCLE ROUGE (1970, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) – Though far from being an original story, it is the Melville style that elevates The Red Circle into being a great film. Alain Delon is a criminal just released from prison with a plan to rob a Parisian jewelry store. The Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte is his partner crime. Of course, the police are not out of the picture, either.
That's funny, somebody talked to me about Evel Knievel this week. That's a sign, i need to watch something with him 🙂
DeleteAh, shoot. Saw that Viva Knievel was on Tubi, but finally it's the "RiffTrax" version.
DeleteIt is hard not to laugh at something in Viva Knievel. The funniest aspect for me was a subplot of the estranged relationship between Knievel's drunkard mechanic (played by Gene Kelly of all people) and his son. It feels so shoehorned into the script that it becomes a separate film within the film.
DeleteGodzilla Minus One (2023): 4k disc just came in. Still a masterpiece. The irony of it winning an Oscar the same year as Oppenheimer won Best Picture is still funny to me.
ReplyDeleteArgo (2012): I'm not a fan of Ben Affleck's acting most of the time (sorry Rob), and this is one of those time. But give me a decent spy thriller and I'm in. Apparently, Kyle Chandler specializes in Spy Biopics because he was in Zero Dark Thirty the same year.
Megalopolis (2024): What can I say, I liked it. It's big and it's weird, and I like it when filmmakers go hard. It doesn't always work, but I'll definitely rewatch it at some point.
Saturday Night (2024): This just solidified how I thought these people were... a bunch of drugged up, self-centered assholes.
Backdraft (1991): I'm not a fan of the Baldwins (other than Alec and the one that's a fake Baldwin), but between Kurt Russel trying to punch fires and Robert DeNiro trying to f*** fires, we got a winning combination totaling a pretty good movie.
Also, the ZAZ Collection Set 4k came in just in time for the weekend. Guess what I'm watching today...
FYI: ZAZ owes you a finders fee...i bought the set as soon as i read your post. (Top Secret!!!!)
DeleteHaha, nice. The transfers are good too.
DeleteIm waiting now to attack the Amazon driver when he pulls up with it...ha!...thanks!!!!
DeleteI know it's still pretty early, but what is the plan with the next FThisMovieFest? Is it still going to be through Twitter/X?
ReplyDeleteNot trying to be controversial but fuck Musk. Also, Twitter was not allowing me to post during the last fest which was a bummer.
My guess is they'll switch to Bluesky.
DeletePatrick said it won't be on Twitter, but didn't specify anything more. A lot of the F family have moved to Bluesky (myself included), so that seems like the best guess.
DeleteHow is your OSCAR Best Picture project going, Mikko? I see that you have been going through a lot of Loony Tunes cartoons recently.
DeleteI have been on Twitter/X this month for Noirvember. It does seem like activity on the platform has noticeably decreased the last two weeks. Thinking about setting up a Bluesky account now.
Nothing officially announced but they did make an F This Movie Fest feed on Bluesky so it seems like a strong possibility at this point.
DeleteHi Casual! I'm on the home stretch of my Oscar project, 47 movies down and only four left until I've seen every Best Picture winner (a little proud of myself for keeping on schedule). I've enjoyed most of them, if not for the movie itself, then its place in cinema history.
DeleteAnd yeah, I bought a DVD set with 150 Looney Tunes shorts, and I'm determined to watch them all by the end of the year. Some have been amazing, some not that much, and some have been really dated (obviously).
You will have to let us know what your favorite discoveries are, Mikko. I remember some of the 1930s winners were not pleasant watches for you.
DeleteI'll probably write a little about it when I get done in December. Yeah, a few of them have been either a slog to get through or objectionable by today's standards (or both), but they're in the minority.
DeleteRoss is right; while we're not 100% sure where FTMF will end up, we are 100% sure it won't be Twitter.
DeleteBlue Crush (2002)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful women, beautiful waves, beautiful Hawaii. It's full of every Sport/Romantic movie cliche possible (The girl surfs the big wave, wins a spot with the sponsors, and the NHL quarterback falls for her!) but I really liked it, especially as it has loads of great water/waves/surfing footage. It felt like it was made with a sincerity and love for the sport.
It has a really great credits too, just showing footage of ordinary people and kids surfing. I had a big smile, credits: https://youtu.be/43zjm2wZDlk?si=dogcZWpHRk1o9f-b
So of course I had to watch Blue Crush 2 (2011). A direct to video movie with zero connection to the first (other than surfing) and a serious step down in quality in every way. On the other hand, it was shot entirely on location in beautiful S. Africa, and still had the waves and the vibes. I can't say I didn't tear up a bit when she caught the "big wave" at the end.
Nice. I watched those a few months ago. I had almost the same thoughts
DeleteI haven't posted since SMM. I had planned to watch all the Puppet Master movies, but finally was super busy and not much time was left for movies. I did watch 8 of them though. I was loving my little killer puppet friends by the end, but you have to suffer through a lot to get to a few good scenes. PM 2 and 3 were both good, PM: The Legacy (8th one) is basically a clip show of the franchise, which means it's full of puppet action and is a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteAfter that they franchise starts to lean hard into Nazi themes (just based on the title and posters), so I decided to stop there.
Overall it was a good SMM. Wish I had more time to watch movies. I had wanted to watch a couple Wes Craven movies and I did not. Didn't make time for a Giallo either. Late Night with the Devil (2024), Ravenous (1999) and Bram Stokers Dracula (1992) were the highlights of the month. Also watching Alien and Aliens with my son.
RED ONE (2024)
ReplyDeleteThis is basically just Men In Black, but with Christmas stuff in place of aliens. It had some fun goofs, but was otherwise mindless. I'm concerned, though, about how the movie raises the question of how maybe it's not cool that Santa keeps a "naughty list" and those children don't get presents, but then there's no follow-up on that. Gotta save something for RED TWO, I suppose.
THE VAMPIRE HAPPENING (1971)
Oh it's happening, all right.
GLADIATOR II (2024)
I'm sure this movie could be nitpicked to death, but I for one thought it was great. Just an old-fashioned, bombastic sword-swingin' good time at the movies.
THE FALL GUY (2024)
I knew this would be an action/comedy going in, but I wasn't prepared for just how over-the-top silly the comedy is. Normally I like silliness, but this is pushing it.
STREETS OF FIRE (1984)
"Let the revels begin,
Let the fire be started,
We're dancing for the restless and the brokenhearted..."
I hear good things about Gladiator 2, and i'm a big fan of the first one. Can't wait to see it. Maybe this week
DeleteExtreme Measures (1996): a long time ago, back when the internet wasn't what it is today (actually barely existed), there was a song from industrial band Velvet Acid Christ that was sampling this movie on their 1998 album. Finding very specific information about a song or a movie was almost impossible, so all those years I stayed ignorant. That is until recently when I unearthed my old CDs and started listening to it again. Took me 10 seconds to find the information. I never saw this movie before, but I wasn't disappointed. The movie fits perfectly in the experimental-medical-drama that was going on back then.
ReplyDeleteA Knight's Tale (2001): This came out when I was studying cinema in college. I saw it and dismissed it because I was obviously better than this. What a moron I was. This is just pure fun and we didn't know how lucky we were to have Heath Ledger on our screens. And Alan Tudyk, before Firefly, and before he became the voiceover master that he is today.
I had the same reaction to A KNIGHT'S TALE when it came out and did not get the hype about the leads. Then I loved it when I finally saw it again a year or two ago, and was impressed with Heath Ledger. He was playing it serious. Have you seen Alan Tudyk in 28 Days? He's so funny.
DeleteI saw 28 Days when in came out, but not since. I guess i'm die for a rewatch
DeleteAlien: Romulus (2024 Hulu)
ReplyDeleteI had a fair amount of fun with this Xeno outing. As with pretty much every franchise ever, its hard to do something new/original this deep into the game and for the most part that holds true here. The flick cherry picks ideas from Alien and Aliens but has fun in doing so. I was also pleasantly surprised that it took a little of the black goo lore from Prometheus/Covenant and worked it in. In the end its kinda forgettable popcorn fun and 20m too long but a solid bit of atmospheric space horror.
Got through rewatches of Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, and then we did Into Darkness.
ReplyDeleteOne of my earliest theater-going memories was going to see Search for Spock when I was around 5, and is the only time I remember going to the theater with my grandfather. I don't remember much else about that experience, but it's still gives me an extra bit of fondness for a movie that otherwise largely an extended epilogue to Wrath of Khan, but with Dollar Store Saavik. I still kinda like it regardless although it's a bit unforgivable that Uhura gets left behind while everyone else heads off to Genesis.
The Voyage Home played pretty well for the gf. We're both born and raised in the Bay Area, so seeing 1980s SF in a Star Trek movie will never not be entertaining, and it's just a fun movie in general. Also they get to spend a full movie rolling around in a Bird of Prey.
Then I figured, why not get Into Darkness out of the way now. It's still not a good movie. I was going to say that it's hard for me to have a bad time watching any Star Trek, but then a bunch of bad ST episodes (and Nemesis) flashed through my head, so I guess that isn't entirely the case. It's hard for me not to get some enjoyment out of watching this cast though (if they want to have Urban play Bones in SNW also, I'd be ok with that).
Fun Movie Reference: was revisiting the always great Die Hard With a Vengeance today. Man i love that flick SO much. Theres a scene where McClane is telling Zues about what he was doing during his suspension. I audibly gasped and rewound to make sure i heard it right. He said he was "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain kangaroo" ....thats the exact line and song that Butch (also played by Bruce Willis) says in Pulp Fiction!! Even moreso he's talking to Sam Jackson who acted with him in Pulp!? Cant believe i never saw this before...such an amazing nod to a previous flick they shared.
ReplyDeleteGood catch, i'll never watch either movie the same way again
DeleteBondelero! (1968)
ReplyDeleteThis is a western with James Stewart, Dean Martin, Rachel Welch and George Kennedy. James Stewart disguised himself as a hangman to save his brother, Dean Martin. Then they kidnap George Kennedy's girlfriend, Rachel Welch. The only notable thing for me is how often I see this same kinda western with James Stewart with the same themes, even when it really wasn't working at all anymore. Sometimes that's fine, like it's comfy and familiar. But it gets goofy for me when the leads look too old and/or miscast.
This is one that I have not seen, Meredith, but I have watched plenty of 1960s movies that use tired stories and actors that are getting a little too old for their roles. That is why 1970s New Hollywood happened.
DeleteOh, I didn't know that, Casual. That makes a lot of sense. These movies got very very boring and tired.
Delete