Thursday, April 05, 2012

Lots of overlooked movies

I was going to do this on Tuesday, but I just haven't had time for this kind of thing lately as I've been teaching at the university (creative writing? what do I know about that?) and it seems to take away the energy and everything. So, the thing was that I spent weekend at the cabin with six friends of mine watching movies all the time and drinking booze and not much else. Here's the list of the film we watched, with my starred reviews and Wikipedia and other links. Any of these could be a contender for Todd Mason's Overlooked Movies blog meme!

William Witney: Master of the World (1961) **½ (Vincent Price, Charles Bronson, Jules Verne and Richard Matheson, but still pretty dated)
Allen Baron: Blast of Silence (1961) ***½ (here's my earlier blog post about the film)
Jack Sholder: Alone in the Dark (1982) ** (could've benefited from sticking to the weirdness it starts out with)
Eli Craig: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) *** (quite funny at times)
Mario Bava: Rabid Dogs (1974) *** (pretty suspenseful and nasty [see the photo], stays cinematic even though set inside one car for about 80 % of the running time)
William Klein: Mr. Freedom (1969) ***½ (very funny political oddity, very outrageous and purposefully stupid and in-your-face)
Peter Bogdanovich: Targets (1968) **** (pretty effective and well made early portrait of a mass killer, Boris Karloff is great in this)
Narciso Ibanez Serrador: House that Screamed (1969) *** (slow-moving but effective piece of erotic Euro-horror)
Neil LaBute: Wicker Man *½ (might've been something if Nicholas Cage didn't chew up the scenery so (in)famously, still - or because of that? - very funny)
Elliot Silverstein: The Car ** (always wanted to see this, but isn't actually much, the titular car is quite good)
Antonio Margheriti: Cannibal Apocalypse ** (sounds great, but doesn't amount to much of anything, the beginning in Vietnam is good, though)
Tommy Wiseau: The Room * or ***** (unbelievable narcissistic crap, poorly done, weirdly written and very strangely acted, very, very, very funny almost all the time)

We also started Manos, the Hands of Fate, but it was so goddamn awful we had to stop 15 minutes in. Plus we watched several short subjects, like Jacques Drouin's animations and Tex Avery and episodes of  Family Guy etc. So, you can pretty much gather we had a good time!

4 comments:

Todd Mason said...

I will happily snag this for next Tues.

Todd Mason said...

You're too kind to THE CAR.

Juri said...

Probably yeah, but the premise is something I'd like to see well done. Ah well, maybe not, when I come to think of it...

Juri said...

Shall we say *½ is enough.