Barbarians, swords, sorcery and sandals - Part 1

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.













Red Sonja (1985)

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%

The Blade Master (1984)

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%

Ironmaster (1983)

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%

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

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%

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

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 (1983)

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.

The undead love

Dellamorte Dellamore - The Cemetery Man (1994)

I've never been a fan of Michele Soavi, but I think this one might be his best movie. It's a story about Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), a caretaker of a cemetery somewhere in a small Italian town. Francesco has a problem, the dead buried on the cemetery seem to come back to life after a while and he needs to kill them again with the help of his mentally challenged helper Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro). But that's not all, one day he meets She (Anna Falchi) a griefing widow who he falls in love with. The problem is that Francesco doesn't go out that much or meet any people, the undead keep him too busy for that, so the love becomes quite complicated, especially when She ends up dead. The style of this movie is a surrealistic horror comedy love story or something like that. It has a bit of everything in it and that's a good thing as it surely doesn't get boring. Rupert Everett is good and his character resembled a lot like Clive Owen's Dwight in Sin City (2005), I bet Robert Rodriguez has based at least a bit of that character to this one here. Though who knows as the comic book came out the same year, maybe it was Michele Soavi who based it on the Frank Miller's character, but as it's so different I kind of doubt it. Who knows and to be honest it doesn't even matter. Can't say the same about the rest of the cast, though Anna Falchi was quite pleasing for the eyes. The style as in most Soavi's movies is again great, the cinematography by Mauro Marchetti was at times simply brilliant. There's plenty of comedy and enough twists to keep a constant "what the hell is happening?" expression on my face. So in the end this is a great little horror comedy, well worth watching.
78%

Spider-Man born yet again

The Amazing Spider-Man(2012)

My first reaction to hearing that they are making a reboot of the Spider-Man series was why? After seeing this movie I'm still wondering why? It's not a bad movie, that I can say right from the start. I just can't understand why would they make another origin story of it as it's already been made 10 years earlier in Spider-Man (2002), which was good enough already? The only reason I can think of is money. The sequels to the previous series didn't bring in as much money as the first one, so I guess they thought the origin story is where the money is and judging from the box-office scores they were right. Just out of principle I should bash this movie down to the ground as nothing more than a calculated money maker, but then again it's actually not a bad movie. Comparing to the previous origin story, this movie doesn't do many things better but it also doesn't do many things worse, so it's basically the same movie just different. Ye I know I'm starting to sound like a schizophrenic, it's good but it's not, it's the same but it's not. But really, if you take the previous origin story out of the history of the movies, this would be a very good movie. Didn't really like the new Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield, I mean he wasn't bad, but he surely wasn't great either. The lizard wasn't exactly great either as the main villain at least at the start, he does grow on you and I especially liked ending of it all which was a positive surprise. Also the part of Peter Parker growing with these powers, learning to use them and especially the dilemma of whether to become a villain or a hero was a bit rushed. Other than that I can't find anything to complain about this one. But as I just can't shake the feeling of dirty businessmen stealing my money, I can't rate it ignoring the previous one. Won't give it a zero even though something tells me I should, so it'll end up somewhere in the middle of the scale.

50%

The Hobbit, white beard and the 13 dwarfs

The Hobbit: An UnexpectedJourney (2012)

I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy when they came out, but for some reason I was never really looking forward to seeing this one. Maybe it was the more children's book nature of the original novel and when I read that they are milking every last drop of it with 3 movies from one book which is shorter than any single one of the LOTR books. But I tried to put aside my prejudices as there was still many things I wanted to see in it.

First lets get the technical stuff out of the way. I saw the 48FPS 3D version of the movie and I must say the 3D was surprisingly good. I still think it's a useless gimmick, but this was one of the clearest 3D picture I've seen, so there's been some progress, unfortunately those damn glasses are still a nuisance. The 48FPS on the other hand I'm not exactly convinced on, it felt a bit TV-like, kind of lifting the veil from the movie magic a bit too much. I paid way too much attention to little details which was definitely not a good thing, makeup mistakes, set borders and bad paint jobs were a bit too visible. I kind of doubt that they would slack on those departments, I guess they aren't any different from the LOTR movies, but on those you don't pay any attention to them. So it comes down to the new technology, the old technology needs to evolve a bit more before it would be a viable option to use to capture a huge fantasy movie like this which relies so much on makeup and a mix of physical and virtual sets.

Enough of the tech talk and on with the movie itself. Unfortunately it's not great. It's way too uneven to be a solid entertaining experience following a formulaic nature of introduction-setup-action-introduction-setup-action, rinse and repeat. Way too often the characters get into trouble and just as things look grim out of nowhere comes the salvation, mostly by Gandalf. First time it was ok, but around the third time it became a total joke already. This in addition to the overly comical rollercoaster like action sequences then took out the element of danger from the movie. I know it's more of a children's movie than LOTR, but that's no excuse for doing it poorly. Another thing it was lacking was drama, whenever there's a chance for some deeper drama it seems to turn into almost camp-like nonsense. Why? Is it again because it's a children's movie? Yet there's quite a few heads chopped off on the action scenes, but can't go into dramatic character elements. I just don't understand the reasoning. But it wasn't a totally bad movie. I absolutely loved the Gollum scene, best part of the whole movie, though getting there was not easy. At times it did feel like the long lost brother of LOTR and it tried to take me on an adventure, but too often I just got slapped to the face. All in all I guess it was worth watching, even though it could have easily been an hour shorter. And even though there's quite a bit happening in this movie it still felt like an overly long prelude to something I'm not really sure I want to wait for anymore.

55%

Road rage is a serious problem

Drive Angry (2011)

Nicolas Cage is back from the dead and he's angry and he's driving cool muscle cars. He's after a devil worshiping cult who has kidnapped his granddaughter and killing everyone that gets in his way. He ends up traveling with a hottie played by Amber Heard so there's some eye candy. And if all that wouldn't have been enough, they are being chased by an Accountant from Hell. Now that's what I call a story. Name of the game is kicking ass, burning rubber and at times having sex while doing either. The story and the concept were so hilarious that I really wanted to love this movie, but unfortunately it's not a great movie. First of all it tries to be cool, but it really isn't and you're left with this awkward feeling where you wonder were they just having fun embarrasing themselves or did they really think they're cool. All the great stuff were just ripoffs from other movies and that was a huge disappointment. It felt like the director didn't have a single original idea, just mixing all the stuff he thought was cool. That's not always a bad thing if the movie is done with style and the right attitude, but unfortunately that wasn't the case here. The CGI effects were from bad to absolutely horrible, but luckily there are some proper physical effects in there as well. What I liked about the movie was the ridiculous story, William Fichtner's performance as The Accountant, some of the dialog and the cars. Actually those were enough to keep me entertained, but still the movie had potential for so much more than what it's offering.
52%

This movie would have needed some adjustment

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

This movie is about an "agency" that controls the path people take in their life. Kind of like making sure they meet their fate like they are meant to by a pre-determined plan. Well the plan gets mixed up when a man meets a woman by chance and falls in love with her. Then the bureau men are sent after him to correct things back to the original plan, but the man of course doesn't like the idea and tries to fool the plan. That's the story in simplicity, even though there are quite a few other things going on as well, but the core of it is quite simple. Actually so simple I felt a bit offended about the message this movie brings out. Did we really need a movie to tell us that we have a free will to do things the way we want to do them? So the story is quite rubbish, dressed in a fancy sci-fi idea but in reality it just states the obvious like it would be some sort of a big revelation. And even though I kind of liked the idea of a huge conspiracy that controls everything, but the movie just takes it a bit too over the top making it way too silly. The romance in between all the nonsense was quite good though and the chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt seemed to work very well. Too bad all the other stuff around it was very shaky. It's not a bad movie by any means, it looked quite ok, it kept me somewhat entertained and I liked the basic idea but the way it was told took it to routes it should have left alone. So it has it's moments as a romantic flick, but just don't expect any intelligent sci-fi thriller of it.
51%

Owls on a war path

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)

Decided to watch this one as it was the only movie by Zack Snyder which I hadn't seen yet. Well to be honest I knew I wasn't the target audience for this and that really showed. I thought the story was quite simple and even stupid at parts, but I guess the kids will get more out of it. Then again this was surprisingly violent, not in a nasty graphic way but those owls with knifes as claws clashing to eachother surely weren't teletubbies. So dunno if this is for the youngest audience either. Anyway the movie looked great and most of my enjoyment came from looking at the beautiful animation of it all. There were tons of slow motion as usual for Snyder and his "style", if you can call it that, surely was visible. Didn't get bored, mostly because of the looks of it all, but still didn't really get anything else out of it either.
50%

Life after death

Hereafter (2010)

Clint Eastwood has been a busy man these past few years, delivering a film a year in average. And most notably all of them are quite good and some even quite great. This one is certainly not in the great department. I mean it's a very solid drama, what else would you expect from him and it's surely not bad, but it feels a bit powerless. The style is very muted and the characters feel numb. At some points that works great, but to be honest it did get a bit tedious at times. The movie tells three separate stories, one about a French journalist who nearly dies in a tsunami, second is about an American blue-collar worker who can connect with the dead and the third one is about a young English boy who loses his brother. We follow how they deal with death each in their own ways. The journalist story is the weakest of the bunch, it has the best events with the tsunami and quite a bit of depth to the story, but yet it feels a bit superficial. The "psychic" is quite a good story with tons of interesting dilemmas. The Brittish school boy story is however the best of the lot, it brings out laughs and tears being by far the most touching and entertaining of them all. How they all bind together in the end is a bit cheesy, but wasn't that bad. So it's a good fantasy drama for open minded people, but you don't have to believe in life after death to enjoy it, at least I enjoyed it.
75%

Rhino's and boobies

Prehistoric Women (1967)

This one from the Hammer Collection is by far the worst Hammer movie I've seen. But it's actually so bad it becomes quite fun. A jungle guide kills a cheetah and gets captured by a tribe of natives who want to sacrifice him. But while the ritual is taking place, the man touches a horn of a sacred rhino and is sent to another world. This world has only women, brunettes who enslave the blondes. Him being the only man, he of course is quite wanted on both sides. This movie is utter nonsense and so badly made it makes it quite campy and fun. The acting is pretty much horrible, the effects are goofy, the story is ridiculous and the ending is something quite confusing in all it's stupidity. So the camp values are high, but it's still not a great bad movie. Even though at parts you can laugh out loud, there's still quite a few scenes that just make you yawn. So it's an average campy fun bad movie. The picture quality on the DVD was ok with no subtitles and only a trailer as an extra.
51%

She who should have been left without a sequel

The Vengeance of She (1968)

Another one from the Hammer Collection. This was supposed to be a sequel to She (1965), but they decided to do a remake of the story with a bit of a twist. This time it's a woman who is haunted by a man giving her dreams to go to a lost land in Africa. The movie pretty much assumes the viewer has seen the original as it really doesn't bother to explain things, so unless you've seen the original you're going to have a hard time making any sense of this. The leading lady, Olga Schoberova, looks stunning but can't act one bit. Rest of the cast isn't exactly shining either. The dialog is about as intelligent as in an average pre-school theatre act, so the bad actors really don't mess up much. I didn't really like this movie much, the start was quite good, but then it got dull and never really came out from it. A bad sequel/remake of a below average movie, not really worth wasting your time for this. The picture quality on the DVD was ok and there was a trailer on the disc as well, no subtitles as usual.
17%

Prehistory by Hammer, or how the blondes met the brunettes

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

This is another movie from the Hammer Collection and I have to say I quite like it. The idea of it is completely ridiculous, set in this somewhat prehistoric time where men and dinosaurs live together. There is not much of a script as the movie has only a few lines of dialog in the beginning as the announcer tells us what's going on. Rest of the movie is just grunting and some other voices that appear remotely to be somekind of language. Though there are the occasional English word here and there, most likely unintentionally. Also all the people look quite modern, despite their outfit and the beard for the men. Especially it's funny that the women seemed to have makeup back then. But hey it was a good excuse of getting hot women in tiny rags on film. Anyways, the weak plot and the campy bits aside, the movie is quite stunning. It's one big adventure through this fantasy land where the turtles, lizards and spiders are as big as houses and all sorts of dinosaurs are out to get you. The stop motion effects from Ray Harryhausen are alone worth the watch, add to that the beautiful scenery and of course the beautiful Raquel Welch and you have tons of eye candy. Sure some of the effects are quite bad in modern standards, but still some of them work surprisingly well even today. Wether it's the camp values or the eye candy, this movie is surely entertaining. The picture quality on the DVD was not the best, but still not horrible either. Again there were no subtitles, but there were two interviews as extras, one with Raquel Welch and one with Ray Harryhausen.
81%

A woman to die for

She (1965)

First movie from the Hammer Collection is not the most recognizable Hammer film. Sure there's Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in it but the style is not Hammer. Made with a fairly large budget, though most of which probably went to getting Ursula Andress to star in it, the movie surely looks great. Funny thing about Ursula Andress, the movie was marketed with slogans like "the most beautiful woman on earth" and yet she is outshined by Rosenda Monteros in this one. Though of course the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but maybe would have been better not to cast two "goddesses" in this one. Nevertheless the movie is about a man called Leo, played by John Richardson, who gets kind of posessed about this woman, Ursula Andress, who asks him to search for a lost city to get what ever he wishes for. He then embarks on a journey to find the city with his two friends, played by Peter Cushing and Bernard Cribbins. There are many twists on the way and the promise of wishes coming true turns out to be not what they expected. Even though there is a dark undertone to the movie and it has some tragic events, it's still quite light entertainment. The start was quite interesting but the actual journey got a bit boring and when they reach their destination I was fighting to keep my interest up. Luckily the ending got me into it again so I didn't fall asleep. All in all the movie offered very little in addition to the great looks and some nice individual scenes. For the DVD itself, the picture quality was not the greatest, very grainy with some shots full of dust particles. Also there were no extras or subtitles.
48%

Let the remake in

What a surprise. Another americanized remake of a good European film. This time the Swedish horror hit Let the Right One In (2008) got remade for the people who can't read subtitles. I'll first give a few words about the original before going to the remake.



Let the Right One In (2008)

This movie hit me hard when I saw it two years ago. My friend had to literally drag me to see it. Vampires have become quite lame and the subject is drained so empty that I really couldn't believe this would be anything but recycled crap served for the children. How wrong was I... Right from the first scene it took a grip of me and didn't let go. When the end credits rolled I just sat there wondering what just hit me. This is a brilliant little story about a young boy who gets bullied around in school, has no friends and his family is falling apart. He becomes friends with the new girl next door who turns out to be a vampire. Doesn't sound like much but it surely is. This is an absolutely brilliant movie where the mood is quite unbeatable. Kåre Hedebrant and especially Lina Leandersson do a superb job on their roles as the young boy and the girl and the rest of the cast is not bad at all either. This is one of the best vampire movies I've ever seen and a brilliant drama too.
90%



Let Me In (2010)

The biggest positive surprise this movie gave me was to see that the legendary Hammer Films is back in business producing horror movies. That aside the remake did offer very little. The storyline is made a bit more compact leaving out some of the smaller characters of the original, but the running time of the movie is longer than the original. That should mean it gives more depth to the main characters, right? Well unfortunately not. The characters remain surprisingly shallow. The boy is quite great and Kodi Smit-McPhee fits the part perfectly. The girl however was quite a miss, Chloe Moretz was brilliant as Hit-Girl on Kick-Ass (2010), but she wasn't a good choice to play the vampire in this one. Missing the depth of the original character makes her part seem mostly just posing. Other than the little compacting of the story and of course the new setting to fit the english language there's not much different compared to the original. Some of the scenes are almost identical. The mood is great in this one too and aside from the worse girl part there's not much to complain. Can't call it a bad remake, but still if you can read subtitles just watch the original as it's better.
70%

Pasolini's view of the world

I actually had only seen 2 films by Pier Paolo Pasolini before, Teorema (1968) and Salo - 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Couldn't remember much from either of them, except that Salo was seriously fucked up and Teorema was some sort of weird drama. So I decided it's time to check some of the others as well and got the 5 movie Pier Paolo Pasolini Collection to see if there's something in there. It's not the definitive collection of his best work, just some notable ones. But it should give some idea wether the rest of the movies are worth checking out.



Mamma Roma (1962)

This is Pasolini's second feature length film. It's a drama about a middle-aged prostitute who has saved up enough money to quit her old job, get a new "proper" job, a new apartment and most of all get her son back. Well things don't of course work out as planned. This is a solid little drama with a good cast and a lot to say about the way the world was heading back then. It has a quite nihilistic feel and even though the people seem to be singing a lot, they might not be exactly feeling fine. So the basics are working quite well for this one, but unfortunately it didn't work as well as it could have done. Actually I got quite bored at times, even though this is not a long movie. That says a lot about the pacing of the movie. Solid effort none the less and surely promised more to come.
67%



The Decameron (1971)

This is the first part of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, the other two you can see below. This one was just a mix of short stories piled together without much sense to it. Some bits of comedy and some nice criticism towards the church but mostly the movie focuses on stories were it can show some tits and asses. Nothing wrong with that, I love movies which criticize religion or politics, especially funny ones, and I like tits and asses, but the problem was the pacing. The movie manages to get utterly boring before it gets funny again. The few good moments this movie had were so far apart it's really not worth watching for those either.
36%



The Canterbury Tales (1972)

Just like the first part this also is a mix of short stories, but this time there is at least some attempt to bind them together with this man who is writing them down. Well again the criticism is very present and we get quite a lot of tits and asses. This time the comedy is a bit more present and is quite dark at times, surely a plus for that. Also there were a bit more of those good moments so it worked better than the first part. But again the pacing is off and the slow storytelling gets very boring at parts. The ending was quite hilarious with the devil pulling out stunts even goatse would be envious, but getting there was a bit too boring.
47%



Arabian Nights (1974)

The third and final part is the most complete of them all with a proper storyline behind it. It's also the easiest to watch without falling asleep. So the pacing is a bit better and the comedy is fairly ok to keep you entertained. Tits and asses pop up frequently also to keep the interest up. Far from a masterpiece but still was worth the watch. Though I think I won't be watching it again any time soon.
59%



Salo - 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

What I remembered from this movie were that there's some gay sex, people eat shit and nails and that there was some old hag telling dirty stories. Oh and lots of skin. I remembered it to be repulsive and offensive. Well it's all of the above and then some. The biggest surprise I got from watching this one again was the comedy. I really didn't remember it being any funny, but damn this is like the grimmest dark comedy ever made. It's so over the top in fascism, nihilism and shock factor that I just had to laugh at it. Simply hilarious. Under the exploitative surface it's actually a parody about fascism and basically people with power. I mean a scene with the bishop fucking a young girl with the president jumping in to fuck the bishop in the ass while the magistrate is jerking off a boy tells a lot. Sure this parody could have been told in a bit more easily approachable way but still it's quite great for what it is. Surely not for everyone, but once you get the point it gets quite hilarious.
79%


Watching these 5 movies still didn't make me a fan of Pasolini, but maybe the rest of his movies are worth checking out as well...

Not the Coca-Cola Santa for sure...

Rare Exports (2010)

Was supposed to go and see this earlier before christmas, but as things got a bit hectic I had to postpone it. Luckily it's still running for almost sold out audiences so I got the chance to see it yesterday. First little about the movie, it's an independent production based on two shorts by the writer/director Jalmari Helander. I know it's a pain in the ass to try and get an independent movie in theatres in Finland so just because of that alone this movie was worth watching. Even better than that this seemed to be quite out of the ordinary crap the Finnish movie studios are producing. The problem with Finnish movies is the lack of ideas and the scare of taking risks, that results into all movies being just the same formulatic crap as the others. A story about a murderous santa claus buried in the Korvatunturi mountains is surely something else. So the movie definitely scores on originality. Though the quite brilliant story is dressed in somewhat formulatic nature with the usual downfalls of Finnish movies, but it manages to be so original at parts that it doesn't really matter. The cast is absolutely brilliant, even the child actor was quite ok. The trio Jorma Tommila, Rauno Juvonen and Tommi Korpela are superb. Even the smaller support roles are done very well. The look of the movie is quite suiting and the surroundings are great. The comedy is ranging from quite ok to absolutely hilarious and the movie never got boring. I have to say this is one of the best Finnish movies ever made and even though it has it's flaws I'm going to give it a good score. Maybe it's the support for independent productions or what ever, but even without that this movie would have scored high.
90%

Toystore gone berzerk

Yatterman (2009)

What do you get when you combine a classic children's anime series with the twisted mind of Takashi Miike? You get a visual frenzy with more sexual refenreces than your average sexploitation flick. The story is about two toy store keepers who fight for justice with their robot dog against the evil group of Doronbo with similar robots and gadgets. Both are looking for the pieces of a mystical skull which could possibly bring an end to the world. The story is painfully formulatic, the groups fight, destroy eachother's robots only to fall back to build a bigger robot for the next fight. It surely suffers from that, but actually that didn't bother me too much as this movie is tons of fun, either it's genuinely funny moments or moments that are so over the top cheesy that they are simply hilarious. Also the movie looks great, kind of like a toystore gone berzerk. The main problem is the length of the movie, as it's quite repetative it tends to get a bit boring at times. I also was a bit puzzled wether this was a children's movie or an adult fantasy. It has tons of sexual references and for example I can just imagine all the kids asking their parents what was the dog doing to the female robot. They might have some explaining to do, or then it's just my dirty mind. Anyway it was fun and weird enough to watch but as a bit shorter version it would have been a whole lot better.
56%

The horny beast

The Beast (1975)

I have to say I'm quite speechless after seeing this. It's a fantasy horror tale with sex and bestiality. If you're into either of the last of those you will get something out of this one, but the fantasy is left to a guy running in the woods in a gorilla-bear-rodent costume and the horror for me was at the start when you "enjoy" horses having passionate sex with a sweet soundtrack. All the Finns can be proud as Sirpa Lane is the lucky woman who gets to make sweet love to this creature. It's badly acted and the direction seems to be a bit lost. Luckily the ladies were very nice and there are some bits that were so bad it was quite hilarious. But not really enough to keep the interest up for the whole of the movie.
33%

A Korean vampire story

Thirst (2009)

Chan-wook Park is one of my favourite directors, mainly because of his brilliant vengeance trilogy, so his take on a vampire movie was surely interesting. Well it is original in it's own way like I expected, but then again it's also filled with the same cliches as every other vampire flick out there. Kang-ho Song plays a man of faith who takes part in an experimental drug test against a deadly virus in hopes to selflessly do service for the greater good. The test ends up killing him, but a blood transfusion miraculously saves his life. He soon finds out weird things about himself, highened senses, fast healing, strange lust for blood and being burned by the sun. So he has been given vampire blood by mistake and turns into one himself. This new state he's in doesn't fit with his believes as a priest, so there we go to the big dilemma. The movie is filled with brilliant moments and truly great scenes, but as a whole it's not that good. It's way too long for the content it has and tends to stand still a bit too often. Also I would have liked a bit better treatment of the whole vampire thing, this was surely a different kind of vampire movie, but yet all the cliches were there. So a bit more of a fresh touch would have been needed. It's still quite good as it is, but could have been so much better.
71%

An imaginative imaginarium

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Saw this in the theaters and loved the visuals on it so decided to give it another try on Blu-Ray. The strong point of this movie is of course the wild weird imaginative wold of Terry Gilliam and the looks of it. But also the cast is quite stellar. Everyone praises Heath Ledger's last performance, but it's not the best performance in this movie. The best is by far Tom Waits as the devil himself, he does an absolutely brilliant job. Ledger's death is covered quite nicely with changing the looks of the character every time he enters the "imaginarium". His stand-ins Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all do a good job as well. Though Colin Farrell has the juiciest bits of the story so he gets to really let it loose and does a great job at it. So the cast is great and the movie looks good, but there's still something missing. It's the story. This is a fairy tale for the grown ups, but yet the themes are a bit too childish for my liking. Certainly entertaining without any dull moments, but as the movie tries to be a bit deeper than just the beautiful skin of it, it doesn't really deliver to it's full potential. Well worth watching, but left me wanting for a bit better.
79%

Not exactly a baby step for the early feature animation

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

Next movie I watched from the BFI films was the very first feature length animation in the history of cinema. It's a silhouette animation based on the One Thousand and One Nights story, made by Lotte Reiniger. It took her 3 years and over 250.000 frames to make, painstakingly moving the silhouettes by hand for every frame. The movie was a huge flop when it came out and was pretty much forgotten for decades. I just can't understand why as the movie is simply mind blowing. It wipes the floor with pretty much any of the early animations and even most of the new ones too. The first word that came to my mind during the movie was wow. And when I thought about it afterwards the first thing that came to my mind was wow. Wow is actually the best word to describe it as it's just pure eye candy, stunningly beautiful artistic masterpiece. And even the story is quite well portrayed with the comedy, action and suspence coming through clearly despite the unconventional method of displaying it. As the title says it's not exactly a baby step for the early feature animation, not by far, more like a giant leap to a whole new direction. Wether it's the curiosity to see the first steps of animated films or just the need to be entertained with a great movie, this is a must see for everyone.
100%