Words Seem Out Of Place

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Slasher University is definitely one of the dopier slashers of its era, but there's still enjoyment to be had reveling in its endearing amateurism. It feels like a student film padded out to feature length. In fact, 65 minutes of it were filmed in 1981 by director Richard W. Haines, with additional scenes shot the next year to bump it up to a brisk 78 minute running time, then sat on the shelf for several years before Troma Entertainment unleashed into an uncaring world in 1984. As often happens with films like this, though, it eventually turned into a word-of-mouth underground classic. The plot, paper-thin as it is, involves a string of gruesome murders on a non-specified but totally Catholic college campus, and one plucky new teacher's quest to unearth the identity of the mystery killer - which is so hard to do because everyone on the faculty is acting suspiciously, especially the priests. In between death scenes, we're...

I've made it my mission to hunt down and watch all of Dame Joan Collins's pre- Dynasty cult films. From crime dramas to horror to erotic thrillers, she starred in some delightfully trashy flicks in the 1970s and early 1980s, and I'm going to watch them all.   So, consider Dame Joan—or, as I like to call her, Joan Fucking Collins—numero uno on the list of reasons why I recently streamed  Poliziotto senza paura, a  1978 Italian  film set in Vienna and directed by Ste lvio Massi .  Various international titles include Magnum Cop,   Fearless ,  Fearless Fuzz ,  and  Fatal Charm.  IMDb describes the plot like so: "An Italian private investigator tries to get to the bottom of a suspicious kidnapping case with the help of an exotic dancer." I like to describe it as a combination police procedural/screwball comedy/erotic thriller. The dubbing into English is hilariously bad, leaving many characters sounding like stand up comics deliverin...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. "She's the Godmother of them all ... the baddest one-chick hit squad that ever hit town!" "They call her Coffy and she'll cream you!" Starring in Jack Hill's exploitation classic  Coffy (1973) effectively established Pam Grier as the most badass woman of 1970s cinema. She'd already staked her claim in previous films, but with Coffy Grier cemented her eternal star status. The story of a nurse by day, vigilante justice seeker by night, Coffy allowed Grier ample opportunities to show off her ample assets - and I don't just mean that bodacious body, although that is certainly on full display throughout the film. Quentin Tarantino famously loves Grier so much—often listing  Coffy  as one of his favorite film—that he built the love letter Jackie Brown around her talents. He even cast her Coffy costar Sid Haig* in a knowing nod to their past genre glories. It's no surprise why; Grier is...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. The Escort (2016) is a thoroughly modern romantic comedy for the "selfie generation," as one character labels millennials in the film. It's a breezy and brisk jaunt through the minefields of modern romance. Our guides are an unemployed writer using sex to fill the emotional void at his empty core, and a Stanford-educated prostitute with great business sense and exquisite taste in evening wear. Early on, the film notes its debt to other hooker with a heart of gold films like Pretty Woman , but departs slightly from the formula to explore current issues and preconceptions affecting milliennials. The film has at least a little to say about a lot of topics, including sex workers, sex addiction, cyberbullying, feeling washed up and cast aside in your twenties, and more. Full disclosure: I am not a millennial (Gen-Xer in the house), so while I can't vouch for the accuracy of the generational portrayal, it at least feels h...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Qualities one might hold against certain movies, like total implausibility and chaotic cinematography, are actually what make Night of the Juggler (1980) such a weirdly memorable cult film. From the start, the film floors it into high gear and rarely ever slows down for a breather. James Brolin, still rocking his 1970s wild man hair and beard, is an ex-cop who witnesses his young teenage daughter being abducted right in the middle of a crowded New York City park. The kidnapper, played with unsettling intensity by Cliff Gorman, is a bigoted, cackling lunatic who also happens to be an idiot—he thought he was kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy elite member of society; instead he's nabbed a middle class truck driver's kid. Brolin immediately gives chase on foot, and we're off to the races. Brolin runs, and runs, and runs, and runs some more, seemingly cutting a path clear across Manhattan and into some neighboring boroughs f...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. I watched the Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents  again recently, for the first time in a very long time, and I have so many feelings now. It made me sad, for several reasons. Sad, because it's one of the more important '90s movies that for almost twenty-five years now no one  seems to talk about. How many movies have explored the African American experience in Vietnam quite like this one? Its  Deer Hunter style three-act structure works well, with the early, innocent youth scenes in th e Bronx segueing into the absolute horrors of war, culminating in coming home to find there's no real place in their old lives for these young men anymore. Then, poor decisions lead to even worse decisions, and it's all pretty devastating. Reviews were middling at best, and reading some of them today it's clear just how much some critics missed the mark. It's also sad that, in all these years, I don't think I've ever had...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Few cult films remain as notorious as Juan Piquer Simon's Pieces (1982). The film was seized and confiscated in the UK during the infamous video nasty era. And boy howdy is it a video nasty, all right. Sometimes I marvel at the fact Pieces even exists, and then I thrill to the knowledge that not only does it exist, but we get to watch it and revel in its bloody good existence. Pieces engenders great love and affection from cult horror hounds the world over precisely because of its gloriously gonzo style. The Italian-Spanish-Puerto Rican slasher- giallo extravaganza is absolutely insane. After the stunningly bizarre opening, set in the 1940s where ten year old Timmy is just playing quietly by himself—constructing a jigsaw puzzle of a stark-naked woman. His mother isn't happy about it, orders him to throw away the puzzle, and, well, soon enough Timmy's exacting revenge by hacking mom into pieces . Then we jump ahe...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Craig Zobel's chilling 2012 ripped-from-the-headlines  Compliance is hard to sit through. Unlike many films that claim to be "based on true events," Compliance  seems to faithfully recreate an astonishing true tale of victimization and abuse that actually happened in 2004. The film serves as an eye-opening social experiment that explores just how vulnerable we all are to authority figures like police officers—or, in this case, a man posing by phone as a police officer. On what seems like just another typical day at a fast food chain restaurant, things fall apart fast when this scam artist calls and asks to talk with the store's manager about one of her employees. What follows is a relentlessly unsettling story that will leave you squirming in your seats and probably yelling at the characters onscreen to stop it. The manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) is an easy mark: low on self-esteem and already resentful/jealous of the ...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Luigi Cozzi's space opera  Starcrash (1978) is one of the most entertaining entries in a genre that was red-hot in the immediate aftermath of  Star Wars . It's a cult classic for a reason, proudly flaunting its gonzo spacesploitation style with maximum gusto at every turn. Cozzi also enthusiastically flaunts the assets of 1970s sci-fi/horror/fantasy queen Caroline Munro. She captivates, as rough and tumble intergalactic smuggler Stella Star—one of the great heroines in exploitation cinema. When she isn't determinedly staring into space as if contemplating the great mysteries of the universe, Munro runs around in an outfit consisting of a bikini top with a vampire cloak collar on it—space fashion is avant-garde , y'all. Intensely strange '70s actor Marjoe Gortner tags along as Stella's faithful sidekick Akton. After they're arrested by the Imperial Space Police, we're treated to a full-on space women i...

Quick-hit movie* reviews for the masses. *This one isn't technically a movie, but it is the best-selling VHS tape in history, so let's do this. For decades now, Jane Fonda has been an American cultural icon. We can partially chart the evolution of American popular culture over the last five or six decades through Fonda's various and disparate phases—from beautiful 1960s ingenue, to interstellar sex goddess in Barbarella , to controversial 1970s anti-war activist, to an advocate for working women via the film 9 to 5 , and on and on. There's an article to be written about this, "The Jane Phenomenon," but that's for another time. For now, let's just bask in one of her most curious and culturally significant phases, as the 1980s aerobics queen in  Workout (1982). Workout  certainly helped usher in the '80s fitness boom. That's the star power of Jane Fonda in action. Today, it's almost impossible to properly contextualize the...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. The 1970s produced an exceptional number of smart, thoughtful dramas about women breaking free of troubled relationships (like Barbara Loden's Wanda)  and, usually with a kid or two in tow (like Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore ), embarking on a journey of self discovery. The 1971 American television movie   The Neon Ceiling is one of the best of the bunch, thanks in no small part to the legendary Lee Grant , as a mother running away from crushing suburban languor—and an appallingly indifferent husband—and taking her young daughter along for the ride. With no destination in mind, mother and child (played by Denise Nickerson) stop off at a remote gas station and wind up sticking around longer than expected. There they form a tentative, uneasy relationship with the station's eccentric and lonely owner, played with unnerving intensity by Gig Young—only seven years before the actor killed his wife and then t...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Okay, so this one isn't exactly a "quick-hit" review, but it's hard to stop gushing about this masterpiece. It's almost astonishing to realize now, but at the height of his powers in the 1970s through the 1980s, Brian De Palma was rarely recognized as the cinematic genius we now know him to be. Look at the murder's row of films he made—all in a row!—in the 1970s alone: Sisters (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Obsession (1976), Carrie (1976), The Fury (1978), and Home Movies (1979). Then he kicked off the 1980s with Dressed to Kill (1980), followed by Blow Out (1981), Scarface (1983), and Body Double (1984). Outstanding! Not a dud among them, in what has to be one of the great ten-film runs by any director in history. With Dressed to Kill , De Palma proved how wrong critics' recycled, snarky "Hitchcock" ripoff remarks were—he was an auteur of the highest order, a descendant of Hit...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. How come nobody told me about this bonkers British horror flick before?? The Devil Within Her (1975),  otherwise known as I Don't Want to Be Born , also known as The Monster, is, to put it mildly, highly entertaining. The plot: a sultry Dame Joan Collins is a former dancer (of the exotic variety) who marries a filthy rich (and utterly clueless) Italian, then gives birth to what might be a demon child possessed by the spirit of the angry dwarf whose affections she spurned previously. Normal stuff, really. It also stars Donald Pleasance a s Joan's doctor! He drinks a lot of tea and doesn't seem at all concerned about this demon baby thing. 1970s genre bombshell Caroline Munro breezes through the film like a fashion model on her way to another shoot. If you think babies are cute—and who doesn't, really?—this film might change your mind. It's one of the loopiest entries in the 1970s "fear of motherhood...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Few actors scorched the screen with the sort of intensity that Ellen Barkin brought to movies during the 1980s and 1990s. In a string of memorable and excellent performances, across various genres—from Diner (1982) to The Big Easy (1987) to Sea of Love (1989) and more—Barkin blazed her own unique path through cinemas during those years. Some actors are interchangeable; swap one square-jawed heartthrob or petite ingénue  out for another and hardly anyone notices. Barkin is not one of those actors. With only an arched brow or a sly smirk, she can shoot daggers, make you break out in a smile, melt your heart, or do all of the above, all at once. She occupies her own unique orbit, doing what she does better than any imitator ever could. She's smarter, hotter, and funnier than all of you, so just stop it already. Blake Edwards's mostly forgotten yet wildly entertaining gender-bending farce Switch (1991) offers a beautiful...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Greydon Clark's teensploitation paean to video arcades,  Joysticks  (1983) has to be one of the raunchiest films in a genre—1980s teen sex comedies—that was hardly lacking in raunch. Even the title is a smutty double entendre. In the early '80s the burgeoning video arcade scene was frowned upon by square parents everywhere as a scummy din of inequity. That sleazy subculture is parodied with loving care in Joysticks —even if the arcade in the film has 100% more topless women than I ever remember from the arcades of my youth. This is the film that introduced the world to the old "hot dog in the cleavage" shot ( yes, as stupid as it sounds ), along with strip video gaming, the eight-bit update of the venerable strip poker sensation. A high class production, obviously. In a film with every conceivable '80s stereotype (bodacious babes, bumbling nerds, out of touch adults, preposterous punkers), Corinne Bohrer ( Police ...