Yeah, so real life apparently decided it didn’t want me to watch any movies during the final quarter of 2011. I’m back now, though, with a moderately-sized update to whet your appetites for the double-gimongous B-Fest Review Roundup that will probably guarantee that I’ll be late for February’s roundtable, too…
The Art of Love (1983), in which– surprise, surprise– there’s a whole lot o’ screwin’ going on in first-century Rome…
The Car (1977), or, “Hermanos! The Devil has built a hotrod!”
The Craft (1996), in which shooting up the school is for suckers. Why bring a gun to class when you can lay curses on the popular kids instead?
Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972), in which we can count on Jesus Franco to remember that “Frankenstein” is the doctor’s name, even if we can’t count on him to make a movie that sane people would consider watchable…
Orca (1977), in which Captain Ahab is the whale…
and…
Repo Man (1984), in which unemployment can lead one to the damnedest places.
#1 by Ed on February 5, 2012 - 10:08 pm
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Ah, Orca. The first real bad movie I think I ever watched. Funny you should mention the “our monster is badder than a shark” thing since it is still done today to a certain degree. Or at the very least, as recently as Jurassic Park III. T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus, anyone? That one lasted less time than one of Mike Tyson’s fights when he was in his prime!
#2 by lyzard on February 6, 2012 - 4:19 am
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Been there. Sucked on that.
Damn – you reminded me all over again how much I love Orca. Come to think of it, I love The Car, too. Who knew 1977 was such a banner year for film-making?
#3 by Mr. Rational on February 9, 2012 - 2:18 am
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Who among us wouldn’t like to get into a staredown with a giant whale?
#4 by Blake on February 6, 2012 - 6:56 am
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Interestingly enough, the banner year for Hong Kong cinema was 1978. I’ve never seen any of the movies on this list of updates, although I’ve harbored a certain curiosity about “The Craft,” since one of my best friends, who didn’t like horror films, had it in his collection.
#5 by El Santo on February 6, 2012 - 8:09 am
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“I’ve harbored a certain curiosity about ‘The Craft,’ since one of my best friends, who didn’t like horror films, had it in his collection.”
That makes quite a bit of sense, actually. My perception at the time was that The Craft was a horror movie for people who were too squeamish for horror movies. These days, of course, that’s an entire genre, but it seemed novel to me in 1996.
#6 by RogerBW on February 6, 2012 - 11:48 am
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Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein: There are several US states where blind people are allowed gun licences, but I think this points up the American relationship with firearms more than it says anything about driving.
The Car: “But we can’t cancel the parade! It would destroy tourist season!”
Interesting that this film should have succeeded where most of the Jaws copycats didn’t – perhaps because, having abandoned the killer animal conceit, the makers felt no need to make any pretence of random selection or non-malevolence about the monster?
If you’re adapting Ovid, it’s a crying shame not to have at least one of the protagonists called Corinna!
The Craft: I agree that much of the concept in earlier rebel-films is restoration: putting the rebels into a good place in society so that everyone’s happy together, rather than allowing them to stay happily outside it. But the only alternative to being in the mainstream of society that most filmmakers can conceive is weirdness, and probably violence and death. (Just as most filmmakers have trouble portraying a romantic relationship that’s not one-man-one-woman; anything else is usually just there as an initiator for jealousy and murder.)
#7 by Jen S on February 6, 2012 - 12:30 pm
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Ahh, The Craft. The movie for all of us gals who dabbled in a little witchcraftery, got some kind of “result” or other (if you squinted hard) and scared ourselves out of any more such experiments.
One detail of the film I’ve always loved is the fact that the girls to to a Catholic school. This underlines several of the girls’ motivations: one, they clearly are rebelling against the strictures of an organized religion. Two, the well presented reality of a “uniform” being modified by its wearers to throw the idea of conformity or even a level playing field back in its delvelopers’ (no matter how well meaning) faces.
And three, the pretty clearly implied fact that not only are none of the girls believers in Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, beyond the most superficial tokenry, but none of thier parents are either! As you mentioned, Nancy is probably on scholarship, but she’s a this particular school because of its academics, not its religious background (her mother certainly doesn’t seem devout.) And Sarah’s parents are as close to literally invisible as it’s possible to be without being Claud Raines. You again get the feeling this was the closest “good” school to the house they happened to select and that’s where Sarah’s going. You only see Bonnie’s mom in one scene and Rochelle’s not at all, but it doesn’t take much to come to pretty much the same conclusion about them.
The fact that these girls were pretty much tossed into a system with which they had no affiliation or sympathy and then, for all emotional purposes, abandoned, was a big theme throughout the ninties. The benign neglect from loving-but-clueless parents that was shown in countless eighties films streamlined into something altogether meaner and darker in the next decade–the idea that kids were to be condsidered “responsible for their actions” at younger and younger ages, and that there were structures, in place of people, to fulfill any caring or nurturance needs.
When eighties kids rebelled in the movies, they did so against evil people. When nineties kids did, it was against the evil of structures, of emptiness and fragmentation.
#8 by craig york on February 6, 2012 - 12:39 pm
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Golly, its been ages. Hello, all! I happen to have the novelization of The Car in my modest library-the only real difference I noted was that you do catcha glimpse of the driver ( and he looks about like you’d expect ) It a little surprising that no one has evoked the spector of the only other killer car movie I can think of-
the adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine
#9 by Jen S on February 6, 2012 - 2:01 pm
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Ohhh! And The Wraith!
#10 by Cullen M. M. Waters on February 8, 2012 - 11:54 am
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There’s also an Albert Band movie called Crash! out there. I can’t speak for the quality save I remember seeing it in a drive through.
#11 by lyzard on February 8, 2012 - 1:29 pm
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Jose Ferrer and Sue Lyon – the one with the eee-vil KEY-CHAIN? Oh, yeah…
#12 by The Beerman on February 9, 2012 - 9:58 pm
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Beware the wrath of Akaza! Or, as I like to refer to ’em: a one-eyed gremlin dropping a deuce.
http://scenesfromthemorgue.blogspot.com/search/label/Crash
#13 by Tom on February 7, 2012 - 1:03 pm
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“(Just as most filmmakers have trouble portraying a romantic relationship that’s not one-man-one-woman; anything else is usually just there as an initiator for jealousy and murder.)”
I actually wanted to bring this topic up from a different direction, since in my experience of sex films (or films dealing primarily with sex, or whatever you want to call them) has been that that they almost always reach the conclusion that the solution to all the protagonist’s problems is to either turn gay, take-up polyamory, or both. I suppose a lot of that has to do with the target audience or something. Still, it seems like one of those conclusions that can only be reached so many times in so many ways before it gets old.
#14 by maggiesmith on March 23, 2022 - 10:43 am
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For some reason I was expecting The Craft to be a comedy.