Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

A tale of emancipation and the death of religion.

A near perfect blend of practical and CGI effects, senseless violence and subtext, artiface and reality, the big spectical and the internal dialogue.

The Handmaid's Tale for the 21st century.

---

Immortan Joe,
V8 be your name.
No water come,
your law will be done,
on the road, as it is in Valhalla.
Give us this day our gasoline,
and forgive our weakness,
as we suck a new blood bag.
And let us not die soft,
but go out with our grills chromed.
Forever and ever mate.

— The Warboy's Prayer

---

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

— Ephesians 5:22-33

---

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

— Timothy 2:11-15

---

"Abandonment of slavery is also the banishment of the chimera of security. The world will not change overnight, and liberation will not happen unless individual women agree to be outcasts, eccentrics, perverts, and whatever the powers-that-be choose to call them."

— Germaine Greer, "The Female Eunuch"

---

"This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries. At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.... The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter."

— Jimmy Carter, "Losing My Religion for Equality"

---

"I am one of the Vuvalini! Of the many mothers! My Initiating Mother was K.T. Concannon! I am the daughter of Mary Jabassa. My clan was Swaddle Dog!"

— (no longer) Imperator Furiosa

Letterboxed Review

Giallo Buying Guide

I've added a new Buying Guide for Giallo films on DVD and Blu-Ray. So far there are 51 films in the list and I may add some more in the future.

You'll find a link to the Buying Guides in the "Pages" section in the right-hand column and I've also included a link in this post that goes directly to the Giallo list.

I hope you find it useful and if you spot any errors or know of better releases, please let me know.

Cube (1997) & Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

Cube (1997)

Seven people trapped inside a large Rubik's Cube discuss religion, chaos theory and nihilism, while dodging devilish traps and personal insecurities.

Cube is an existential sci-fi horror film with passable acting, clever set design and some good ideas.

The long dark night of the soul on a budget.

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

Ten people trapped inside a large Rubik's Cube discuss bugger all, while dodging cut-price CGI traps and the need to kill an irritating old lady.

Cube 2: Hypercube is a terrible sci-fi horror film with some truly horrendous acting, dull set design and no idea what the term quantum really means.

The long dark night of my soul on a larger budget.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)

We have Christmas traditions. We buy and decorate the tree on the first weekend before Christmas day, even though most places have already sold out due to people starting their celebrations in November. We put the kids stockings on their bed during Christmas night, after 1am, even though they're aged 22 and 14. The stockings always have an orange, an apple, chocolate money and a pair of socks in them. We eat croissants, fresh coffee and orange juice for breakfast. I pick up our parents and presents are exchanged. I cook a large meal with all the trimmings for the family. We always, as a family, walk the dog after lunch. And every single year we watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

And things would go wrong.

When I was a kid we would cut our own tree and every year it was too tall for the front room. One year we bought a short tree only to cut the ties and have it explode outwards and take up half the front room. There would be arguments over the silliest things. I have sledded, whilst drunk, down a hill and across a road. Of course every year the lights would fail due to a blown bulb or fuse. Every single year something would fuck up, but it didn't matter. Not in the slightest, because Christmas is bigger than all that and that is precisely what National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is all about.

Possibly the most accurate Christmas movie ever made.

Merry Christmas everybody! Hallelujah! Holy shit, where's the Tylenol?

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976)

I watched the 88 Films Blu-Ray in Italian with English subtitles.

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man is great title but will the film live up to it?

Directed by Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, House on the Edge of the Park), with a screenplay by Fernando Di Leo (Milano Calibro 9, The Boss) and starring Marc Porel (Don't Torture a Duckling, The Psychic) as Fred and Ray Lovelock (Almost Human, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) as Tony; a pair of plain clothes police officers who belong to "The Special Squad". They don't care about the rules and if anyone at city hall doesn't like it, they can swivel! Backing them up is their boss Adolfo Celi (Thunderball). How's that for an exploitation pedigree!

There really isn't much of a plot. There's a basic storyline in which our two heroes try to take down the local kingpin who, meanwhile, is trying to discover their identities. That's not really very important as it's all about how they get to that end point. It seems that there's a shoot-out, car/bike chase, punch-up or sex every 10 minutes.

The film starts with Lovelock (in full-on Robert Redford mode) getting a "backy" from Porel on his motorbike to some groovy sounds. They both look so clean cut. It's almost like a younger and more handsome Ratso giving Joe Buck a ride. This is a real pair of handsome fuckers! However, this no ordinary bike ride and the dynamic duo foil a nasty mugging and take off after the scumbags and into what is probably the best vehicle chase scene in Italian cinema history; impressively chaotic and destructive. No cardboard boxes or sheets of glass were harmed although a poor guide dog doesn't fair too well.

From here on in the film is a wild storm of sex and guns.

Often compared to Dirty Harry, to me Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man is more like those boy's own, buddy cop movies and shows from the 1970s: Starsky & Hutch, The Professionals, The Sweeney, and the freeze-frame ending was straight out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I've also read about the homoerotic subtext, but I believe that the two leads are more like two little boys who just never grew up. The women in the film treat them as boys and not men. The city is their playground where they play "war" against another gang of boys (note the target practice scene in the quarry at 01:12:00). When you think about it, most of these type of films follow the same pattern of men as boys and I don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with that at all. Fred and Tony may be sociopathic boys, but boys nonetheless.

Yes, there's a fair amount of chauvinism but this is tempered quite brilliantly by the attitudes of the women. During one scene they ask their boss's secretary with which of them she'd like to sleep; she replies with an unexpectedly brilliant comeback. A little while later there's a scene where both Tony and Fred are screwing a suspect's sister, the woman is dominant throughout and exhausts the men. Finally, their libido's nearly gets them killed. Most progressive and un-Italian!

The performances are terrific with a real chemistry showing between the two leads. There's a cool and funky soundtrack that's all full of horns, Rhodes keyboard and loads of groove. The film is immaculately shot with really impressive camera-work during the action scenes and some excellent gore effects with loads of Humbrol red blood. The dialogue has a natural touch and doesn't sound at all forced. It's also nicely witty in places.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray has an excellent picture and sound. The subs are pretty good and seem to follow the dialogue with only the occasional spelling or grammatical error. The only extras are a trailer and some stills, but both English and Italian soundtracks are included.

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man has high octane thrills, handsome fuckers with guns, bike chases and explosions. It's loud, crude, funny and energetic. One of the finest buddy/cop movies ever made.

Letterboxd Review

Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

I watched the Shameless DVD with the original Italian soundtrack and English subtitles.

Young boys are being murdered in a beautiful Italian town and it's up the local carabinieri and a reporter to discover the rotten truth that lurks beneath its idyllic surface.

Don't Torture a Duckling stars the beautiful Florinda Balkan, previously seen in Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin, the equally stunning Barbara Bouchet (The Red Queen Kills Seven Times), and Tomas Milian from Umberto Lenzi's violent poliziotteschi, Almost Human.

The film starts as it means to go on with a spooky opening scene of Bolkan's character, Maciara (an alleged local witch) digging up the skeleton of a young child in the hills outside a medieval Italian town. It's here that Fulci starts several juxtapositions running throughout the film, with the old stone buildings of the town and the new motorway overpasses that lead to it.

Fulci doesn't hang around and the suspects are introduced almost immediately; as well as Maciara there is Barra, a local peeping tom and Bouchet's character Patrizia, a rich young thing who loves to flirt with young boys.

The police are not totally ineffectual for once, although they are very quick to jump to conclusions and seem intent on solving the murders as quickly as possible no matter who gets hurt on the way. Running parallel to their investigations are the enquiries made by Martelli, a newspaper reporter played by Milian. Both methods run counter-productive to each other with the police leaping from suspect to suspect using overwhelming force, supposition and aggression, thus causing tension and breeding suspicion in the town. Whilst the quiet detective work of Martelli at first seems more effective it also has its problems; the most obvious being his rearranging of a crime scene to create a better photo for his newspaper.

The tone of the film is not unlike the rural horror films of the sixties. Duckling is shot through with the old: the crumbling town, witchcraft, the medieval trappings of Catholicism, dark churches, skeletal statues, ritual and litany intersecting with the new: the motorway overpasses, radio soap operas, the modernity of Patrizia's house and lifestyle. Juxtaposition and duality abound: rich/poor, old/new, tradition/modernity, outward appearances/inward morality, Christianity/Paganism, logic/superstition, innocence/sexuality, tolerance/persecution, light Patrizia/dark Maciara.

Very nicely shot and filled with close-ups and medium shots which, as well as giving the film an air of claustrophobia also does a great job of internalising the collective grief of the town. Some of the fast edits are excellent, with the same character moving from one location and time to another without any jarring at all.

There are several shocking moments, unusually involving the discovery of dead children and there are some very good, infrequent gore scenes of the type that Fulci is justly famous for. The scene where Maciara is attacked is extremely well done and very similar to the violent chain whipping from his later film, The Beyond. Also, the duck motif (obviously in the name but also as a child's toy in the third act) pops up again in Fulci's later exploitation classic The New York Ripper. Overall, for once Fulci is extremely restrained and forgoes his usual exploitative touches.

The film features an atmospheric soundtrack by the prolific Riz Ortolani (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye, Cannibal Holocaust) although I wasn't too sure about the rock and pop tracks used during the persecution of Balkan's character. It does fit with the theme of duality but it is more than a little jarring.

The children are great and full of devil-may-care attitude, daring do, cigarettes, catapults, grazed knees and add a real air of realism to the film. Balkan is all wild hair and wide staring eyes - she really does look like she stepped out of Witchfinder General. Milian is very good as the dogged reporter but is a little underused in the first two acts. Really though the film belongs to the women and children.

The picture is okay but a little blurry or dark in places but really deserves a proper Blu-Ray release. Watch it as a double bill with The House with Laughing Windows or Who Saw Her Die.

Don't Torture a Duckling deserves its reputation as a gialli classic.

Letterboxd Review

Return of the Living Dead (1985)

A rewatch with the kids.

Burt, Ernie and the rabid weasels bring on the zombie love yet again!

            B
           U R
          T I S
         A S L A
      V E D R I V E
     R A N D A C H E
    A P S O N O F A B
  I T C H W H O S G O I
N G B A L D T O O H A H A

Original review

Who Saw Her Die? (1972)

This is the Shameless DVD that I'm watching. Apparently this release is very slightly longer than the Blue Underground DVD. Both are have a dubbed English soundtrack.

I'm a big fan of the social commentary lurking behind Aldo Lado's 1975 rape revenge flick, Night Train Murders (L'ultimo treno della notte) and his 1971 gialli Short Night of Glass Dolls (La corta notte delle bambole di vetro), and I'm hoping that Who Saw Her Die? will similarly deliver the goods.

Made a year before Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Lado's Who Saw Her Die? shares similar themes of grief and guilt. Even the famous sex scene is here, admittedly in an abbreviated form but it still shows the outpouring of grief through sex.

In France, a young girl is viciously murdered whilst sledding by a mysterious black clothed killer. We are immediately asked the question "Who Saw Her Die?" in thick red lettering seen through the killer's black veil. It is simultaneously an open invitation for the viewer to solve the crime and also an indictment of our passivity as bystanders. Is it our fault that she died? Easily the best and most intriguing title sequence I've seen in a gialli.

The action then shifts to Venice and sculptor Franco (played by George Lazenby, who only two films earlier was on top of the world playing James Bond) and his young daughter Roberta. The wife/mother is absent and we learn that the couple have drifted apart. Instead of rushing headlong into the killings, Lado takes his time and introduces us to the film's characters. We lean about them, their backgrounds, motivations, relationships. We start to care about them.

From this point on the suspects and red herrings are laid on thick and fast. Is the killer the man who was scarred in a fencing accident, the friend who takes a little too much interest in the young Roberta? The decadent art dealer? Someone else entirely? The tension is then really cranked up with multiple failed attempts to kill Roberta until finally the inevitable happens. The killer strikes again.

From here on we follow Franco on a frantic hunt through labyrinthine alleys as Venice shifts from being beautiful and filled with laughter to a dark place that is twisted, confusing and frustrating. Meanwhile the killer shifts their attention from children to anyone who may have seen Roberta die.

The last 20 minutes of the film will have you on the edge of your seat as suspect after suspect is dealt with, until the final shocking reveal.

There is great cinematography from Franco Di Giacomo (Il Postino) and Ennio Morricone's soundtrack of children singing is evocative and fits both the film and its themes well. Lazenby is terrific as the grieving father and his performance far surpasses that of his 007. Nicoletta Elmi, who plays his daughter, is a little star who obviously had great chemistry with Lazenby and later appeared in both Dario Argento's Deep Red and Lamberto Bava's Demons.

As for the social commentary: it does seem that Lado, yet again, has it in for the bourgeoisie. It may not be as overt as in Night Train Murders but it's there nonetheless. The victims are daughters of upper middle class families (the first has a nanny, the second's father is a sculptor). Venice itself being an affluent and bohemian location. Conversations about art, money, travel are heard throughout the film. Even something as simple as the white clothes that the father and his friends wear display social position - no poor person could afford to wear something that could get dirty so easily. Also many of the main characters are portrayed as morally bankrupt and corrupt; of course there's one thing more corrupt to a socialist than the bourgeoisie but I don't want to give the game away. Finally there's also a strong hint of the type of conspiracy found in Lado's Short Night of Glass Dolls.

Who Saw Her Die is, like Short Night of Glass Dolls, not too bloody but what blood there is is of that bright red Italian stuff that looks like Humbrol enamel paint, and either you love it or hate it. I love it.

The quality of the Shameless DVD was very good with a sharp and colourful print (apart from what seems to be the occasional splicing fuckup), and a soundtrack that doesn't overpower the clear dialogue. In fact the dialogue is far better than the usual badly translated dubbing we get with Italian films.

I may be biased due to my Lado love but I really enjoyed this film and think it has a lot to offer. A top notch gialli!

Letterboxd Review

Dark Power (1985)

The film starts with a young boy, aged about ten, walking through the woods with his toy bow and sucker-tipped arrows being chased by a pack of dogs. What! A boy aged ten in the 1980s should have made his own bow and nail tipped arrows and also had a belt full of pipe bombs! To be honest the dogs look more cuddly than vicious and I'd have been more afraid of being licked to death than mauled. Anyway, the snivelling and ill equipped boy is saved from his canine fate by an old beardy boy scout with a bull whip... Ladies and gentlemen I give you Lash Larue. Get used to the whip because he sure likes to use it! It was like party time at Madam Cyn's house during Parliament recess!

So the story is that an old man who kept some Toltec evil buried under his house dies and it's up to Lash Larue to put that genie back in the proverbial bottle. Unfortunately the house is soon let to four nubile young women and a creepy, racist brother. After that we just have to wait for the rather ridiculous killing to start.

The first half of the film almost like a show-reel for Lash Larue and that damned whip of his. Enough with the fucking whip! Plus his wise old man shtick gets a little tiring after a while.

There's a fair amount of "everyday racism" and a few n-bombs and I was hoping that the perpetrators were to be quickly dispatched as punishment. No, it took far too long. In fact it took way too long for any of them to die. Every one of these little bastards seemed to have stepped straight out of a shitty Porkies rip-off. At one point one of them flosses her teeth! Why do that on camera? Why not have a shit as well? Please stop it!

The four Toltec zombies are terrible with some of the worst masks and outfits I've seen in a horror film. Their bows seem to have strings made from underwear elastic, most of the killing scenes are pretty disappointing, and the comedic zombie routines were utterly misplaced. And that fucking xylophone that played when ever they were on screen drove me nuts! Plus that house must have the best sound insulation ever to stop the girls inside from hearing the zombie shenanigans going on outside.

Then, at long last Lash Larue and that fucking whip turns up to save the day. What do we get? Fucking "cavalry charge" music! That's right, a bearded white man turns up to save the poor women from the Native Americans with a trumpeted charge and a whip! Oh dear. A little while later, during a very, very, very dull bull-whip duel, he even calls one of the zombies "boy". As far as saving the day goes I don't think you could get any more racist unless there were a few burning crosses on the lawn.

Dark Power's biggest problem though is that its nearly 50 minutes until you see any blood! Simply inexcusable!

Unfortunately the picture on my Dead of Night DVD was bright and clear with reasonably clean audio, although the soundtrack does tend to drown out the dialogue a little.

Rubbish. Do yourself a favour and pass this one by. Anyone want to buy a DVD?

Letterboxd Review

Freak (1999)

From the deepest darkest recesses of my DVD collection comes Freak, a film, apparently so obscure that only two people on Letterboxd have watched it.

Reading the synopsis on the back of the case:

"It was twenty-five years ago that the horror began; a hideously deformed, physically deformed and brutalised 9-year-old boy murders his tyrannical and abusing mother. Now the horror is about to start all over again..."

This all sound very familiar! Come on, how bad can it be?

The film starts, as in the description, with a young boy being treated like shit by his mother. The mother is suitably nasty and after giving birth to another child tosses it in a brazier to burn. This seems to be what tips her son over the edge and he brutally kills her by bashing in her head with a large rock. Off to the loony bin with you young man! Nine years later (not the 25 reported on the DVD case) he escapes whilst in transport and heads home and straight into the path of a young woman and her kid sister.

Freak is a pretty atmospheric film, with subtle Dutch angles, low shots of the boy's spooky house, shadows and a good soundtrack. Much like Halloween (an obvious influence), Freak is definitely all about atmosphere and tension, although the aforementioned mother killing scene is nicely gruesome.

There are a few silly plot-holes - like why would someone have a shotgun and shells rolling around in the back of an open pickup, and why didn't the killer take it with him? Also, just like in Halloween, the killer mysteriously knows how to drive a truck even though he's been locked up for the past nine years! There is also some unnecessary exposition from a psychiatrist's tape recording. The previous scenes covered most of it quite well enough and I felt it wasn't really needed.

At one point there's a very, very brief shot (less than a second) inserted into a scene of the protagonist being chained up in a van. I assumed this was an editing fuck-up but after watching in slo-mo I discovered that the insert was of the child being chained by his mother. A nice touch, just a shame they didn't make it a little more obvious by increasing the length of the edit by a second or two. These brief flashbacks are a frequent occurrence throughout the film (luckily they are a little longer) and work very well in tying the killer's mental state to the abuse he suffered as a child.

The performances range from quite good to adequate and Amy Paliganoff plays a great Laurie Strode like, proactive, female lead, but the real star is Spider the ferret! I have a real soft spot for ferrets and their floppy ways. The killer is played by the film's director, Tyler Tharpe.

Freak is a nicely atmospheric and effective low budget slasher heavily influenced by Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while still retaining its own distinct feel. It's only 75 minutes long and occasionally it does drag a little in places. It could have done with a little more plot substance and a little more tension during the long driving sequences. Some parts are a little out of focus and fuzzy, some are over-saturated and some are very dark. I guess most of these we caused by a limited lens and film choice (I got the feeling that it was shot on various film stocks). The sound is pretty muffled in places and has some occasional unwanted background noise due, I guess, to badly placed mikes.

Not bad at all and it's available on Amazon for £0.01!

Letterboxd Review

Black Belt Jones 2 (1978)

A giant diamond has been stolen and it's up to ex-CIA agent Lucas to get it back. Fists, legs and boobs abound!

Black Belt Jones 2 stars Jim "Enter the Dragon" Kelly and Tao-Liang "Flash Legs" Tan and is directed by Tso Nam Lee who also gave us the Brucesploitation classics Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger and Fist of Fury 2. This cheap flick combines a little Blaxploitation, martial arts and a basic crime thriller plot in one cheesy package. Note, however, that it has nothing at all to do with the original, Robert Clouse directed, Black Belt Jones.

My DVD came from Moonstone and seems to be transferred from a dirty film source in a pillar-boxed 4:3 ratio. The dialogue is pretty badly dubbed and it also has those wonderful "THWACK" sounding contact noises. Just the way I like 'em!

The film and the action starts immediately... I mean straight away, like the film had already been running for 10 minutes and I'd somehow missed it. No trailers, no menu, just...

Gang leader: "What do you want?"
Tin-hao: "Is that one-eyed bastard here?"
Gang leader: Who the hell are you? You dare call our boss that?
Tin-hao: You bums obviously don't know me!
Gang leader: Oh I know you! You're one of Lu's men, the one they say can kick like a mule.
Tin-hao: Well, if you know who I am, then that's the best that can come out!
Gang leader: Watch out, you're on our turf now.
Tin-hao: I couldn't give a shit who this area belongs to. Where I am always belongs to me.
Gang leader: Well then, maybe I want to find out if that's the truth? Hippy!

To be honest I wasn't sure about the "Hippy" as that part of the dialogue was a little garbled but I like the idea of someone calling a Saturday Night Fever dressed Tao-Liang Tan Hippy.

Jim Kelly's acting ability hasn't improved since Enter the Dragon and in fact it seems to have somehow gotten worse (this could possibly be due to having to dub his own voice). Then again, who gives a fuck? He's tall, black, cool and cocky as fuck, even though he does look like a tennis pro on occasion. His karate based fighting is pretty good and in the later scenes really quite impressive, but it plays second-fiddle to Tao-Liang Tan's explosive legs and ultimately it's the Asian actors who shine in this film.

Korean born Tao-Liang Tan is great as Tin-hao, your typical gangster with a sense of honour. His fighting is excellent with some terrific leg work. Interesting fact: Tan taught Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon.

Chan Sing plays Lu the gang boss and has an impressive presence and a great moustache. I'd say he's the best actor of the lot.

Hong-Kong favourite Bolo Yeung even pops in for a few scraps and an argument with a ship's chef over some pet rabbits. The highlight however is when Yeung taunts Tin-hao with some atrocious singing!

The plot of Black Belt Jones 2 is simple enough with a few plot twists to keep thing interesting - just enough to hang 90 minutes of kung fu action onto.

The soundtrack is flute led funk with lot's of groovy percussion. There's also a couple of Suzi Quatro tracks in a strip-club scene!

The final fight scenes are really very good, with some great choreography; they're athletic, fluid, well filmed and they use the environment and props well, with Tao-Liang Tan versus Chan Sing being the stand out of the whole film, although Kelly's big fight proves he was no slouch either. Sure there's the usual problem of punches and kicks not connecting enough but overall I was really impressed!

Black Belt Jones 2 is nicely paced, has competent camera-work and editing, some ropey dialogue, strippers, boobs, a few hairy bushes, great action scenes, tattoos that appear and disappear at random, an hilarious chess analogy, a Crank 2 style drug fuelled striptease, and a bizarre rape scene with Formula One stills inserted into it.

Don't expect a restored Asian classic with 5.1 sound and lots of  extras (scene selection is all you get with the Moonstone release). This is a pretty good action film with little slack that'll keep you entertained for its 90 minute runtime. Far better than I thought it would be.

Recommended!

"Your Chinese legs aren't bad"
"Why, thank you. How does defeat taste?"

Letterboxd Review