Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) kills two of his co-workers, his wife and takes his two daughters to a cabin in the woods in plans of killing them also, but is stopped by a ghost living in the cabin. The two daughters are left in the cabin for five years and are being taken care of by the ghost they start calling "mama". Then Jefferey's brother Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau again) manages to track them down and take the daughters into custody with his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). But "mama" doesn't like her children being taken from her, so some cheap scares and plenty of explaining the ridiculous plot follows. I must say I kind of liked the start of the movie and the premise looked good, but unfortunately this movie fails miserably on the one thing it sets out to do, scare the viewer. All the "horror" in this movie was nothing but cheap scares, there was not really any tension building at all. And the "mama" character was unintentionally funny with the wacky face and ridiculous poses. So every time she jumps out from the dark to scare you, you're just left wondering should you laugh or cry. Though I must say the children were quite creepy, especially at the start. So it's a downhill slope from the good start towards the ending which was nothing short of idiotic. Sure there's some good things in the movie like the acting for example, most of the cast is quite great and I liked the flashback sequence shot from "mama's" point of view, but those were not nearly enough to save this movie. So in the end it's a "horror" movie which isn't scary and with a ridiculous plot, that's not much to go with. 33%
If you know how this movie was made everything should tell you this is nothing but cheap exploitation made for the dumb audience to get a quick fix of some sword swinging action. Robert Houston got the idea to re-cut two movies from the Lone Wolf and Cub series into one short action filled romp. Namely these two Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972) and Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) with a tiny bit from the third one as well. All that dubbed into English and with a new swinging soundtrack. So it doesn't sound good on paper, but even in fear of getting some mortal enemies from the fans of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, this is better than the first two parts together. First of all this movie gets the setting up of the story done in a fast and effective way, unlike the original series where it tends to drag on for way too long. Second this movie adds a whole new dimension to the story with the narration by the Cub, which of course is done to explain some of the missing parts, but it actually works wonders for the depth of the characters. And the dubbing, it's one of the best I've seen in any movie dubbed from one language to another. Apparently they used deaf people to read the lips and try to guess what they were saying and then basing the dialog into words that fit the story and the mouth movements. Quite ingenious if you ask me and it works brilliantly. Now most of you who know me and my hate towards remakes and cheap copies are probably wondering how the hell can I like a movie like this which takes a piece of classic cinema art and "destroys" it. Well I see it as a remix, just like in music, most of the time they are not exactly great, but sometimes they can be even better than the original and this is one of those.
Anyway this movie tells the story of Shogun's decapitator, Lone Wolf, who with his son, Cub, seeks revenge on the Shogun who murdered his wife. The Shogun uses all his power to send out ninjas, warriors and assassins to stop the Lone Wolf, but a great samurai warrior with a vengeance on his mind is not stopped so easily. The story is very simple, but there's surprisingly much depth to the characters, mostly because there was so much material to go with I guess it was relatively easy to build strong characters out of those. There's no shortage of action and the body count goes absolutely crazy towards the end. But still there's drama and tragedy behind the showers of blood and decapitated heads. The movie is simply beautifully shot, some of the frames are works of art worth placing on your wall. Too bad the Brittish DVD I watched was from a print that had seen it's better days. There are also a few scenes that are just pure brilliance on the psychological side as well, for example the warming up scene after escaping the burning boat. And call me crazy, but I like the rather simple soundtrack too. Actually the only thing I don't like about this movie is that it credits only Robert Houston as a director while ignoring Kenji Misumi who directed the original movies. Sure Houston cut this version, but still some credit to Misumi who made the amazing source material would be welcome. Anyway I really like this movie and even though I've seen it many times by now it still works wonders. That's a sign of a true classic. 91%
First a bit of a disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of martial arts movies, I mean I surely don't hate them but the fighting is not enough for me to make a good movie. So when reviewing a genre defining classic like this I'm sure to anger some fans of the genre because of my ignorance. My expectations were of course high because I had read and been told this was one of the best in the genre, so the premise for the movie was maybe a bit unfair. Anyway, after seeing it I surely didn't hate it, but it didn't really blow my mind either. So this is a story of San Te (Chia Hui Liu) who gets mixed up in a fight between the patriots and the Manchu, two rivalring groups in the Canton area. His friends and family ends up dead so he swears revenge and seeks the help of a Shaolin temple and their knowledge of martial arts. He seems to be a natural talent and ends up going through the different chambers in a record time to become a master. Surprisingly I quite liked the story, it's very basic and simple, but what can you expect from a movie like this so it worked rather brilliantly. Also the movie looked great with some very nicely framed shots and the restored print on the DVD did it perfect justice. The music was not that great, but didn't bother me either, though the sound effects did get a bit annoying after a while, them being extremely repetitive. The acting was also surprisingly good and surely the cast were extremely good at what they did fight wise. Some of the stuff they do is just mezmerising. But the biggest flaw of this movie is funnily enough the training, it goes on way too long. Sure that's the part where all the skills come to show, but really it could have been cut in half with the same effect for me. I mean I'm not a fan of training montages for sure, but it just got a bit tedious with it's duration. Anyway, I wasn't bored and was quite happy to see this one as I had heard about it quite often. I guess for fans of martial arts this is pretty much a perfect movie, for me it was "just" a good movie. 72%
I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.
Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws. 40%
From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back. 10%
Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie. 48%
This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes. 36%
Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future. 65%
Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...
Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness. 50%
That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.
Where the previous movie from Ben Wheatley was only serving small portions of dark comedy, this one is all out pouring it. Tina (Alice Lowe) is a bit of a nerdish woman whose over controlling mother seems to think she was responsible for the death of her dog and that giving birth to Tina in the first place was a mistake. So family life is not easy for her. She then leaves for a road trip with her new boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram) with plans of seeing such magnificent sights as the pencil museum, the tram museum and the Blue John Cavern. The seemingly boring trip takes a turn to a very different direction when Chris kills a man. Soon enough they end up on a killing spree across England. The comedy in this one is dry and pitch black, just the way I like it. It's a satire about the dull every day lives of couples and serial killers. A mix you'd definitely not expect, but it works surprisingly well. The movie has a very nice realistic look, the shots are not overly staged so the realism comes through nicely, which of course works brilliantly with the crazy story. The cast was great, especially the main couple, both do a brilliant job. All in all I really liked this movie, though I do understand this might not be for everyone. It doesn't really set up any of it's jokes, they just come and as the subject matter is very dark it might get people puzzled wether it's ok to laugh or not. The dialog is filled with brilliant lines which could just as well be on some comedian's stand up act, the delivery is just different. This is one of those movies you either like or hate, as in the humor works for you or it doesn't, there's really no middle ground on that. For me it worked. 85%
Had this one on my shelf for quite some time before I ended up watching it. Heard some good things about it when it was playing on the festivals so decided to buy it but never got around to watch it. Then a friend of mine said I should watch it and the director Ben Wheatley's latest movie Sightseers (2012), and so I did. I really hate trying to describe the story of a movie like this which evolves from one thing to another and yet another. But as it's told in the back cover and in the trailer as well I guess you can't really avoid it and luckily there's more to this movie than just an intriguing story. The movie reminded me of The Wicker Man (1973) in quite a few ways. Obviously the last 15 minutes or so, but also the weird feeling of the movie and the tension building from the start to finish. Not to forget the surprisingly good dark comedy. Of course comparing this to one of my all time favourite horror movies is not exactly fair, but it actually holds on quite nicely by itself. The acting is also great, so there's many things right in this movie. But there are some problems, can't go into too much details to avoid spoiling it, it's the ending mostly and some of the events leading to it. I liked the idea of it, but the actions leading to it didn't seem to make much sense and especially the outcome was weirdly predictable but still didn't really seem to make any sense. I mean the movie clearly wants to leave something for the viewer to think about, but the thing is that more you give it some thought the more ridiculous it seems. Maybe this movie needs a second viewing to get the whole point of it. But wether it's unintentionally confusing or intentionally complex didn't matter that much as this movie plays with tension quite masterfully. It's after all easier to forgive the flaws of the plot if the movie works on an emotional level and this one worked quite well. 72%
In the future I guess Django will eventually become synonymous for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), which has very little to do with this movie, apart from the name and a small cameo by Franco Nero. So this is my feeble attempt to bring some life to this classic so that it's not totally forgotten. This one has quite a many similarities to Sergio Leone's classic A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a mysterious stranger comes to a small town torn between two groups of criminals and kicks the hornet's nest. So the basic idea is quite a clear copy, but so was A Fistful of Dollars (1964) from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), so it's a bit easier to look past that. Otherwise this is a movie that stands surprisingly well with the others. Sure, it doesn't quite raise to the same level, but still well deserves a spot in the history of spaghetti westerns. Franco Nero is brilliant as Django, the coffin-dragging gunslinger. And speaking of the coffin, what's inside results in one of the most memorable scenes in the history of spaghetti westerns. At this point of his career, before he became the second big name in spaghetti westerns, Sergio Corbucci coming from mostly comedies implemented a lot of humour into the story. That humour is the key why this movie works so well. Had it taken itself too seriously it would have just turned out to be a sad ripoff from a popular movie, but as it doesn't it gets to have a voice of it's own. Don't get me wrong, it's not all laughs, there's still surprisingly good drama in there as well. And another thing that sets this one apart is that Corbucci's West is not the same dry and hot West of Leone, it's a muddy, dirty and cold God forsaken land. That creates a nice contrast on the comedy and drama. Sure the plot is rather predictable and some of the acting is quite bad, but those are things you should already expect in a spaghetti western. The theme by Luis Bacalov gets stuck to your head and some of the shots by Enzo Barboni are quite brilliant. So all in all it's a great spaghetti western and does what is expected brilliantly. 85%
Well I decided to make this blog so I can write something about the movies I watch. I'm not going to update all the movies I've seen here as it would take me ages to do that, but the list will grow as we go along. I'm not going to write huge novels about every movie, just what I felt about it, sometimes it can be summed up in few words and sometimes you need more of them. Anyways I hope someone finds this helpful and all feedback is appreciated.
