The Virgin Spring (55 Years Later)

Score: 9 Out Of 10

         February eighth is the fifty fifth anniversary of "The Virgin Spring (1960)" being released in it's home country of Sweden, and believe it or not, I have just sat down and watched it for the first time. "The Virgin Spring" was directed by Ingmar Bergman and stars Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg and Gunnel Lindblom. The film is about a young women who is traveling with a farm hand to her church, but along the way she is raped and murdered. Her attackers, by way of coincidence (or possibly fate), come to be house guests of the their victims' family. No joke, this is the best movie I have seen in a long time. This film is so well acted and directed that one of the most powerful scenes plays out with only two lines of dialogue, yet is one of the most tense scenes I have ever watched. I also found it interesting that the sound cuts out twice during the rape scene. I am not sure if this was intentional but it did make the scene much more unsettling. 

         I was also fascinated by the amount of symbolism in this film, which was not in any way subtle and deeply religious. The film at it's core is questioning the existence of a higher power and by the end reaches some very surprising conclusions. Fifty five years after the initial release of this film it still holds up. If you have doubts about how good this movie is, just remember it is part of the Criterion Collection and it won the nineteen sixty one academy award for best foreign language film. The absolute best compliment I can give this film is that as soon as it ended I immediately wanted to watch it again and with another person so we could discuss how good it was.

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy

Twitter: @BMovieguy

Thale (Scandinavian Horror)

Score: 6 Out Of 10

          This movie has been on an off my radar for a while so I finally decided to sit down and watch it. "Thale (2012) was directed by Aleksander Nordas and stars Silje Reinamo, Erland Norvold and Jon Sigve Skard. The movie is about two men who are hired to clean up a crime scene and stumble upon a mythological creature. It is not long after the mystery of how the creature came to be begins to unravel. Honestly the film is not bad, but overall I felt it was to predictable. I kept guessing everything that was going to happen moments before it actually happened. Also, I had more fun reading the Scandinavian folk lore the film was inspired by than I actually did watching the movie. That is not to say that the film was bad, it was well acted, well scripted and well directed. One thing I found interesting was that through out the first half hour of the movie, the lighting kept moving from light to dark and back again. It made for a disorienting visual effect that really added to the suspense.

     

       Another thing I genuinely liked about this movie is that there is a nude woman featured through out the film. I know that sounds like a typical guy thing to say, but what I specifically liked is that the actress playing the role (Silje Reinamo) was not portrayed as being erotic. The nudity of that character actually played into the story in a logical way and was shot very tastefully. The only things that really bothered me here were the films pacing and the overall predictability of the film. Horror films are best when they have a lot of surprises in them and this one just lacked overall.

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy.

Twitter: @BMovieguy

Lust Of The Dead (A.K.A. Rape Zombie)

Score: 1 Out Of 10

         There were a lot of things that ran through my mind while I watched this movie. Why would someone make this? Why would someone agree to be in this? Why was this recommended for me on Netflix? I admit, I was completely flabbergasted for the entire seventy three minute run time. "Lust Of The Dead (2012)" was directed by Naoyuki Tomomatsu and stars Rina Aikawa, Yui Aikawa and Kazuyoshi Akishima. The film is about zombies taking over the world. The twist (as if you didn't see this coming) is that all the zombies are men and they only attack women. Instead of killing the women, they gang rape them. All of this is caused by climate change allowing radiation from space into our atmosphere, then the radiation affects the male genitalia in a way that turns us into zombies. After being raped, women are turned into evil spirits. That was a series of sentences so stupid I can not believe I just typed them. 

         Every thing about this film is just bad. The concept, the writing, the acting and the special effects (both digital and practical). I get that this movie was meant to be funny, but it opens up with a woman being raped and beaten by her husband. It is pretty hard to laugh at a movie after a scene like that. Seriously, there was not one person on set, maybe someone in the editing room or a producer who said, "wait, you want to film what?" Do not get me wrong, I admittedly have a pretty dark sense of humor but you have to draw the line somewhere. And once again, Why was this recommended for me on Netflix? Because I watched "Godzilla's Revenge (1971)!?"

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy

Daughters of Satan (Tom Selleck Vs. Witches)

Score: 4 out of 10

          When I was in high school I went through a phase where I watched a ton of movies (mostly from the 1960's and '70's) about Satan worshiping witches. Most of them involved the same few themes; people (mostly women) being burned at the stake, naked people (mostly women) being whipped and/or tortured and the numbers "666" being referenced in every way you could imagine (addressees, vehicle numbers, dates, etc.). So, was "Daughters of Satan" any different? "Daughters of Satan (1972)" was directed by Hollingsworth Morse and stars Tom Selleck, Barra Grant and Tani Guthrie. The film is about a guy who works for a museum who buys a painting of a few witches being burned at the stake specifically because one of them greatly resembles his wife. It is not long after that that a spooky mystery begins to unfold. so how does this film measure up to it's contemporaries? Honestly, not well. Most of the movie is pretty boring and predictable. There are a couple of nude torture scenes, but they even seem tame compared to other films in this genre.

            To be completely honest, if it were not for the nude torture scenes this whole movie could have passed for a long episode of "Night Gallery (1962)." There was also no real mystery to the story. By a half an hour into the film you can pretty much guess what is going to happen and how the whole thing is going to end. There are a couple of scenes that are pretty cool (and there is one scene of a mortician singing to a dead body that really had me laughing) but the movie as a whole is formulaic, unoriginal and just down right boring. Even Tom Selleck's amazing, seventies mustache was not able to save this one.

Love,

   The B-Movie-Guy

Twitter: @BMovieguy

P.s.

I could not find a trailer, so here's the whole movie. I'd tell you to enjoy but that's not going to happen.

Bloody Murder (How Not To Pay Tribute)

Score: 2 Out Of 10

            I have a question. At what point does your movie stop paying homage to another film, or film series, and just start ripping it off. This question popped in to my mind while watching "Bloody Murder (2000)" and I honestly can not come up with an answer. "Bloody Murder" was directed by Ralph E. Portillo and stars Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette and  and Patrick Cavanaugh. The movie is about a group of kids in their late teens who show up to work at a summer camp a couple of weeks before the children arrive, but it is not long before a psycho in a hockey mask starts killing them off. The first fifteen to twenty minutes of this film are a blatant rip off of the first few "Friday the 13th (1980-1982) " films. There is even a scene where a seemingly crazy old man warns the kids not to go up to the camp grounds. I mean, it is almost as if they are trying to trick you into to watching this by getting you to think it is part of the "Jason" franchise.

          The picture to the left is a screenshot of the films antagonist, Trevor. Lame, right? After the first act, the film does try to do it's own thing and build an original story, but that actually seems to make things worse. The characters are very generic and sometimes behave completely erratically, the dialogue seems completely unnatural and for some reason, about an hour into the film, the over all sound quality goes down. At first I thought it was my TV, then my streaming service, but nope, it was the movie itself. The ending of this film is also extremely convoluted. I get the feeling they rewrote the ending of the film a few times over then decided to shoot and edit every single one of the rewrites. So, was this an homage piece? Yes, but even if you are a huge "Friday" fan, I cannot recommend watching this movie. Do yourself a favor and just watch a "Jason" movie.

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy

Twitter: @BMovieguy

The House On Sorority Row (Not A Boobie Movie)

Score: 7 Out Of 10.

             I was settling in and browsing through Hulu (which is quickly becoming my new favorite place to watch movies) when this very poster caught my eye. I have seen it before and always assumed it was what my wife refers to as a "boobie movie" and started watching. "The House On Sorority Row (1983)" was written and directed by Mark Rosman and stars Kate McNeil, Eileen Davidson and Janis Ward. The plot (which should sound familiar as it has been done at least a dozen times) follows a group of sorority girls who accidentally kill their head mistress and hide the body. But it is not long before the girls themselves start turning up dead. So the term "boobie movie" does not really apply, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a pretty good slasher flick. The film is pretty well acted (I was actually disappointed to see that some of these girls have not acted in anything else) and the ending is something that I genuinely did not see coming. Although admittedly the movie had some slow parts, the pacing as a whole really is not bad.

             What really got me here is the way the film was advertised. I have seen this poster/box art in a few different places before and have always glossed over it because I thought it was just another excuse to show a bunch of naked girls on screen (there is some nudity, by the way) and that it what I really think hurts this movie. Had they sold it as a serious slasher film, I think we would today be mentioning it in the same conversations as "Friday The 13th (1980)" or "Halloween (1978)." Instead, we ignore it when trying to decide what movie to watch. I should also mention that this movie had a remake released in 2009 that I saw when it first came out. Given the choice between the two, the 1983 version is far better. It is better acted and better scripted, although, the 2009 film was better marketed.

Love,

   The B-Movie Guy.
Twitter: @BMovieguy

Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle Of Death

Score: 2 Out Of 10

          I was browsing Hulu  and saw "The Criterion Collection" and thought I would watch some thing really good. Then I some how settled for this stinker of a movie. I am still not even sure why I selected it. But I did. In hindsight, I probably should have stuck with my original goal. "Cannibal Women In The Avocado Jungle Of Death (1989)" was directed by J.F. Lawton and stars Shannon Tweed, Adrienne Barbeau and Bill Maher (I get that people are pretty divided on Mr. Maher, so let's leave politics out of this and just focus on the movie). The film is about a feminist professor who is hired by the U.S. government to try and talk a tribe of cannibal jungle women into relocating so they can protect the nations avocados supplies. She brings a dumb but pretty assistant and a male chauvinist guide (also kind of dumb)  along with her. So the film as a whole is not particularly funny (it is a comedy, by the way), but it does have it's moments and there is no shortage of scantly clad women. If you manage to watch this movie more than once color me impressed.

          The real problem with the movie overall is that almost all of the humor behind this film was derived from stereotypes about men and women and how we interact with each other. This concept would be acceptable if at some point the film used some of it's humor to say something insightful but instead it just sticks to the same old "men are from Mars and women ore from Venus" jokes that you have heard since you were a kid. I honestly got about half way through this movie and started wishing that one of the "Piranha  Women" would kill me. The best compliment I could think of to give this movie is that the tag line at least made me chuckle, but then I felt immediately guilty afterwards.

Love,
   The B-Movie Guy.
Twitter: @BMovieguy