Getting to Know My Neighbors

 ...through telephoto:

Today's Movies

David Cronenberg Movie Night

We've watched movies by almost all of the best modern horror directors. Romero, Craven, Raimi, Carpenter, Hooper, Bava, Argento, Barker, De Palma, Corman, Spielberg, Dante, Lynch and especially the one name you're outraged I missed. But there is one glaring, moist, mucus-y omission, David Cronenberg.

Barbara Steele was great at identifying promising young directors. We saw her in Jonathan Demme's first movie Caged Heat. Four years later she was in Joe Dante's first, I'm going to say, "real" movie, Piranha. In between she starred in some Canadian's first theatrical movie after a string of TV jobs, Shivers.



I have two memories from my childhood related to Videodrome. The first was just my impression while watching it, thinking this is the sickest shit from the dark corners of obscure horror movies. I never thought the person behind it would become a well-respected director making major motion pictures.



The second is me telling my third grade teacher that I'd seen the movie. I knew she was a horror movie fan, and that's why I told her, but she seemed disturbed that I had seen it. In retrospect, I was 8. In conclusion, my parents were the best!

Here's what happened last week:

Today's Movies

Sword and Sorcery Movie Night

Fantasy is not my favorite genre. It's why I've made no attempt to watch Games of Thrones or Spartacus or Xena. TV is a big commitment, though. I can spare 3.5 hours to watch Deathstalker II's breast-a-thon and Beastmaster's Marc Singer Dolittle the animals.



I'll also give them a shot because the directors of these movies are more known for horror. Deathstalker II is from Jim Wynorski, who made BMN movies Chopping Mall and Hard To Die.



If you're aware of those films you know we're not in for the most serious entry in the Deathstalker series. That would be Deathstalker V: Grandma Has Cancer. Oh yeah, there's a whole series. Mystery Science Theater 3000 did part three:



where Crow says at one point, "Aw, this is a sequel to something!". We're going to watch that something.

The Beastmaster was directed by Don Coscarelli who also made Phantasm (actually we ended up watching Phantasm II but he made that one too). It stars Marc Singer from V and, playing the young version of Singer's character, Billy Jacoby from Demonwarp and Bloody Birthday. I'm tempted to put the whole Jacoby family into the five-timers club because amongst all of them they've reached that mark. How about it?



Here's what happened last week:

Today's Movies

Roger Ebert's Guilty Pleasures Movie Night

Most people that use the phrase "guilty pleasures" then immediately reject it. "Why should I feel guilty about liking Beastmaster?" They express as much in the first Guilty Pleasures episode of Siskel and Ebert. Really it's just another version of enjoyably bad. Which has its own detractors. "If Savage Water is enjoyable, how can it be bad?" Does no one recognize linguistic nuance?

Roger Ebert did. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 1975 not least of all because he could... vocabulary... good. The aforementioned episode aired in 1979, another episode that included BMN movies The Last Starfighter and The Last Dragon was shown in 1987. Two more episodes, from 1981 and 1994, haven't surfaced online. Through recollections from people on the Internet, however, we know the  1994 episode included The People Under The Stairs, Evil Dead 2 and Tremors. It's the 1981 episode where we haven't seen any of the movies. That's where these two, Ebert picks, come from.

Kill and Kill Again stars that guy from Space Mutiny:



The director's following movie is called Bush Shrink. It was made in South Africa but was popular in America. Like a reverse Rodriguez:



In conclusion I don't know a lot about Kill and Kill Again.

I know a lot about Invasion of The Bee Girls though. I've seen it anyway. It's great and weird and hilarious. It's William Smith's eighth movie:


Policewomen
Red Dawn
Maniac Cop
Memorial Valley Massacre
Action U.S.A.
Uncle Sam
Slaughter in San Francisco
Invasion of The Bee Girls

The last thing the director did was a documentary called Computers Are People, Too! from 1982. Thank god for YouTube:



The writer, Nicholas Meyer, went on to write all the good Star Trek movies: II, IV and VI. Hopefully, to quell the invasion, someone gets a bunch of whales to talk to the Bee Girls.

Here's what happened last week (NSFW):

Shevenge Movie Night

 

Revenge is an easy theme. What movie doesn't have revenge? Revenge of the Nerds? Revenge of the Sith? Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise? No, can't think of one. Wait a minute! Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has no revenge in it. It's about the dissimilitude of observed versus true reality after metamorphosis. For this night I added she and revenge into a nonsense word.

Street Fighter movies L.A. Street Fighter and Lady Street Fighter are in the top 10% of movies we've seen at Bad Movie Night. In fact Street Wars and Street Trash are easily in there as well.



The point is the word "street" is highly indicative of a great movie. Just like "thunder", "gigantic" or "serpent".

   

Mad Foxes is one of those movies where nobody involved went on to do anything significant. José Gras was previously in Hell of the Dead. That's the best I can do. I just discovered this movie recently which gives me both hope and shame that there are still great bad movies out there that I haven't heard of.

Today's Movies:

 

 

Here's what didn't happen last week: