David checks in with another Indian Western

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
Therein probably lies the reason that many of the older Bollywood films, that many would consider B-grade, are worth investigating. Here I am foolishly trying to apply conventional film analysis to a Bollywood film, and what’s it doing? It’s screwing right out from under me. It can’t be pigeonholed and broken down like some piece of pre-fabricated, production line entertainment. They aren’t made that way. Earlier, I compared Wanted: Dead or Alive to Leone’s westerns and the Trinity films, and while those influences are definitely in this film, it is still a very different beast to those cited films. Fistful of Dollars never had mirror balls and chorus lines of cowboys grooving away to a disco beat.

The final installments for Reader Revenge Month:

The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

The Bloody Judge (1970)

Before he was an adult, actor Jackie Earle Haley starred in prominent movies like Breaking Away and The Bad News Bears. In recent years, he has made a big comeback starring in movies like Watchmen and Little Children. The Zoo Gang comes from neither of those periods – it comes from the time when Haley, a few years after he turned into an adult, was struggling to get acting jobs, and not getting quality projects. It’s not as bad as the Albert Pyun movie he later appeared in, but… well, it still should have been locked up in a cage.

TEENAGE CATGIRLS IN HEAT

The title is inspired, but this film is an awful conglomeration of events that, though they are meant to produce a coherent plot, ultimately result in an incomprehensible mess. I did laugh when it rained cats on the tin-roofed farmhouse. “Meow!” **BANG**

Lesson Learned:
Random naked women account for 65% of all traffic accidents.

Toyol (1981)

It’s not a particularly good movie by any means, but there’s something undeniably creepy about Toyol. And that’s aside from the fact its title monster is the spirit of a dead fetus.

For week 3 of Reader Revenge Month, we’ve got two oversized scaly monsters:

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)

Python (2000)

LADY TERMINATOR

So, have I mentioned that I love Lady Terminator? LOVE it. It’s dialog is ludicrous. It’s action is frenetic, and also ludicrous. It’s gore is gratuitous to the point of being… well, ludicrous. Everything about it is so much more than it needs to be that it takes one past the point of feeling satisfied to feeling engorged. So generous is its bounty that to merely sing its praises seems like inadequate thanks. Like the Queen of the South Seas, it should be worshiped, with palms upturned to the heavens and mouth agape. We should give our bodies to it, and let it make of us soulless meat puppets for the purpose of whatever unholy errands it sees fit. In short, Lady Terminator is just a really, really awesome movie.

With Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2 about to be released, it seemed like a good time to review an unknown movie concerning superheroes. The Specials is the movie I chose for this occasion. I have to admit that I find many superhero movies overblown. What attracted me to this particular one was that it concerned superheroes in a more realistic world, and that these superheroes had problems many of us could identify with. Another promising thing about the movie was that it was written by James Gunn, who has written entertaining movies like Tromeo & Juliet, Slither, and the remake of Dawn Of The Dead. Though he also wrote the Scooby-Doo movie, so I prepared myself for the possiblity that this one would be equally not so special.

Week 2 of Reader Revenge Month finds me covering movies of widely divergent genres and levels of quality:

Django (1966)

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

NEON CITY
I was surprised by Neon City. I didn’t expect much from it, but it really entertained me. I like sci-fi films that have nothing to say, and I like sci-fi films that are so preposterously ham-fisted with what they have to say that it becomes absurd. Neon City is the rare sci-fi film that has a little to say and says it well. Not a whole lot, but just enough to give it that extra bit of depth. Mad Max was really the opening salvo in the Reagan era post-apocalypse boom, even though it’s more outrageous sequel became the template. It’s debatable whether or not Neon City is the last film in the trend, but regardless, it’s fitting that it would be among the last and is, in spirit so much more similar to Mad Max than it is Road Warrior.

THE EDUCATIONAL ARCHIVES: SEX & DRUGS

“The Educational Archives” is an entertainment goldmine filled with old classroom training films. This particular assortment contains an Italian man who canna have no bambino until he gets his syphilis fixed, a girl whose LSD trip results in a talking hot dog, and sanitary napkins so large that only three of them fit into a shoebox.

Lesson Learned:
Using a table saw while you are high on pot is a BAD IDEA.

This week starts my Reader Revenge Month, in which I watch and review movies chosen by eaders in the earlier months of the year.  This week gives us a nature-gone-wild movie which is surprisingly tame (see what I did there?)…

Frogs (1972)

…and a surrealist political farce in a made-up language. Seriously, what’s not to like?

Frontier (2001)

In Sakura Killers, we have ninjas that don’t dress in traditional black, but in brightly colored outfits instead. The movie appears to have been made with two different film units, and the footage from both units awkwardly edited together. Also, the one star of the movie who has some name value only appears occasionally, and never in the movie’s main action. Ah, you are thinking, this must be another Godfrey Ho concoction! Wrong – Godfrey Ho had nothing to do with this movie. Yes, it appears that this movie got some of its inspiration from the works of Godfrey Ho. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? If you think that’s bizarre, wait until you see the movie for yourself.