Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

I had a vacation March 12-20, but when I came back, work was a trash fire, so we're doing a double this week.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Rifftrax Live: Night of the Living Dead
Freaky (2020)
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Vampyres (1974)
8 1/2 (1963)
Leprechaun (1993)
Leprechaun 2 (1994)
Leprechaun 3 (1995)
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
Toby Dammit (1968)
Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)
Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)

Rifftrax Live: Octaman
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
Rifftrax: Catwomen of the Moon
Rifftrax: Honor and Glory

I liked Freaky a lot, although I had less trouble buying Vince Vaughn as a teenage girl than I did as a slasher-style killer.

I hit a stopping point in the Fellini box set. I worry that I spent money on a box set for a director that ultimately isn't for me. Don't get me wrong, I liked La Dolce Vita up until the last vignette and I still love 8 1/2. I just don't think the set is bringing me the joy that, ironically, the Ingmar Bergman set did.

Vampyres is a lesbian vampire film that desperately needs a plot. sol_se and I kept waiting for the plot to kick in. Eventually we realized it just wasn't going to happen and we resigned ourselves to finishing the movie.

On St. Patrick's Day, I remembered that I had a triple feature of Leprechaun movies. They are quite bad. We decided that Warwick Davis is actually playing three separate leprechauns with three separate sets of rules, perhaps in three separate continuities. Of the three, the second one is probably the "best", although it has some rapey subtext, so I can't recommend it. So basically don't do what I've done.

We watched all of Zach Snyder's four-hour cut of Justice League more-or-less in one sitting. I probably like it better than the theatrical release, although I have objections to some of Snyder's decisions, most of them centered around Superman. Snyder does not understand the character on any level.

You may have noticed a lot of Rifftrax. I just put in for a subscription to Rifftrax Friends, which is their streaming service. Yeah, everybody has a streaming service these days. They just have so much of their catalogue on there, it made more sense than waiting for stuff to pop up on Pluto or Amazon Prime.

The fact that I don't have a Godzilla icon is tragic, but I'd have to cut something like 39 other icons in order to upload a new one, owing to the fact that I still have old icons from when I had a paid account.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Rifftrax: Gammera the Invincible
Variety Lights (1950)
Rifftrax: Bermuda Triangle
Lucky (2020)
Color Out of Space (2019)
The White Sheik (1952)
Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
Satanic Panic (2019)

Two things happened in the last week that are probably going to alter the content of the movie lists for at least a little bit. First, I bought Criterion's Essential Fellini box set on sale. It's fourteen of Fellini's greatest films. I'll be watching all of them in order, except I'm skipping La Strada because f**k that movie. Second, sol_se subscribed to Shudder, the horror-dedicated streaming service. We already have something like 40-50 movies in our shared queue.

Variety Lights says it's co-directed by Fellini, but the other director basically just put his name on it to give him a leg up in the film industry. Still, it's Fellini's script and it follows some of Fellini's particular interests. It also features Fellini's wife in a major role. I liked it, but it was tricky to get through because the protagonist was kind of a terrible person.

Bermuda Triangle was awful. Just awful. The Rifftrax team worked really hard to make it work, but they were stretched a bit thin during the interminable scuba diving scene.

Lucky has an interesting concept. Every night, a man comes and tries to kill the same woman. If he's killed, he simply disappears to reappear the following night. sol_se and I were ready to dig into the mystery, but eventually the film came out waving a big flag that said "ALLEGORY FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN". Overall disappointing.

Color Out of Space is very good. It's also disturbing as hell. Nicolas Cage goes full Cage, so your mileage may vary.

The White Sheik is Fellini's first full directorial effort and I was not expecting much. It's just not a film that really comes up when you talk about Fellini, so I figured it was probably him still working out the kinks. It is, to some extent, but it's also a very easy watch. There's very little that really wows, but the story is solid and keeps you interested.

We're still slowly working through the Godzilla box set from my birthday. We're firmly in the weeds now. At least Godzilla vs. Hedorah isn't as bad as Son of Godzilla.

Satanic Panic probably should have been a better movie. It's fine. It does what it wants to do and it does it in less than 90 minutes. I'm not sure what choices they could've made to improve the film, but I do feel like there were missed opportunities.

Spent a lot of time this week watching Dimension 20: Escape from Bloodkeep on Dropout.tv (sol_se has a subscription). It's very funny RPG shenanigans.

I also watched Making the Cut because apparently I like fashion competition shows now?

Here is the list of movies watched:

The Tall Target (1951)
Where Danger Lives (1950)

The Tall Target is a highly fictionalized tale of the attempt on Abraham Lincoln's life in the days leading up to inauguration. I had some trouble watching, entirely based on the fact that the hero resigns his police commission before attempting to go save the day, giving him no authority and making his "work" difficult to watch.

Where Danger Lives is a neat film-noir featuring Robert Mitchum doing what he does best: getting lead astray by a dangerous woman.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Rifftrax: Night of the Shorts - SF Sketchfest 2015
Rifttrax Live: MST3K Reunion
Cruel Gun Story (1964)
Locked Down (2021)

Not a lot this week. Cruel Gun Story is a Japanese noir, part of a series on Criterion Channel. It's a pretty good heist-plus-double-cross movie.

I enjoyed Locked Down, although I don't have a lot to say about it. Anne Hathaway is a delight.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)
MST3K: Prince of Space
MST3K: Parts the Clonus Horror
MST3K: The Mole People
Life of Brian (1979)
Rifftrax: Fun in Balloonland
Gojira (1954) (with David Kalat commentary)
Tenet (2020)

She Done Him Wrong is part of a collection of Cary Grant comedies on Criterion Channel (subscribe today!), but it's really Mae West's show. Everything thing she says is innuendo of one variety or another.

Tenet is kind of a brain scramble. I liked it! I'm pretty sure some of it doesn't hold up upon further reflection, but I'm trying to avoid that.

Working through some Christmas-y movies with sol_se for the most part.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek Deep Space 9 (2019)
MST3K: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Bell Book and Candle (1958)
The Howling (1981)
WW84 (2020)

I cried like a baby at the end of IaWL once again. Never fails.

The DS9 doc was weird, but ultimately enjoyable. I thought it was a little odd that it was put together by the show runner, though.

I stand by my assertion that A Muppet Christmas Carol is a top-tier Dickens adaptation and Michael Caine is one of the best Scrooges.

Bell Book and Candle starts on Christmas Eve, so it counts. It's that other film about Jimmy Stewart's obsessive love for Kim Novak.

sol_se bought me The Howling on Blu-ray for Christmas (as well as the special edition of Curse of Frankenstein) because she loves me and wants me to be happy. Still a great movie. Very formative for teenage me.

I think I liked WW84? They spent more time on the emotional beats for Maxwell Lord than they did for Diana, which is an odd choice. There's nothing to approach the battlefield scene in the first one. I think this is probably one that's going to get worse in my mind as time goes on, but for the 2.5 hours it was playing, it kept my attention.

It's December, apparently!

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Our Man Flint (1966)
Holiday (1938)
Much Ado About Nothing (2012)
Scanners (1981)
Whip It (2009)

sol_se hadn't seen the original Little Shop of Horrors, so we watched it. It's a difficult film to judge, because it is so tossed off, but it's fun.

I gave in and bought an HBO Max subscription and Our Man Flint was the first thing I gravitated to. It's a spy spoof starring James Coburn as a secret agent who has all of the answers all of the time.

Holiday, another delightful Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant team-up, was on Criterion Channel, so I had to show sol_se.

I'm pretty spoiled by the Branagh version, so I found Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing middling. Some of the actors just could not get their heads around their dialogue.

HEADSPLOSION

In honor of Elliot Page, we watched a film in his earlier oeuvre. It was fine. Both sol_se and I felt it could have been more tightly edited. Elliot was quite good, though.

This week was interesting for a number of reasons beyond the election and Destiel. sol_se started a new job that is... not aligned with my job time-wise. She's also set-up in the living room on video, so I have to stay out, which is interesting because we only have the living room and the bedroom (and the kitchen and bathroom, but these are not really hangout spots). So I'm basically waking up three hours earlier and then fucking around without access to video games for 4-5 hours. On Fridays, when she works and I don't, it's 8 hours (9 less her lunch). Luckily, I had an old TV lying around that I wasn't using. Combining sol_se's Fire Stick and a new, very sketchy DVD player (the box doesn't say DVD anywhere), I have myself a little entertainment center in the bedroom. I'll be watching a lot more movies solo now, I think.

Movie I've seen before are in italics.

L'assassin habite au 21 (1942)
Piranha (1978)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Alucarda (1975)

L'assassin is an early Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique) film. It's a lighthearted romp about finding a serial killer! I found it very amusing.

The new DVD player is Region-free, which I tested out with my Region 2 Piranha disc. Great fish-ploitation from Joe Dante.

Sol_se expressed some interest in revenge-horror, so we watched the Phibes duology. They are both very strange films and Vincent Price is clearly having a ball.

We recently gained access to HBO (not HBO Max) and Death Becomes Her was on. I could have sworn I'd seen it before, but as it turns out, I had not. It's a lot of fun.

Alucarda is a film very dear to me, so I showed it to sol_se. I think this might have been a mistake. Watching it with her, I could only see all the things that were wrong with it. She didn't really care for it, either. Oh well.

Finished Assassin's Creed: Origins and hopped right back to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. Bad story choices aside, I'd really missed Ancient Greece. I really think this is one of my favorite games in recent memory.

I've been slowly working through Season 4 of The Good Place during lunch on Sunday-Monday-Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday are reserved for Batman '66 (my bat-time, if you will).

I played a very weird D&D one-shot with settiai DMing last night. Still not entirely sure what I made of it. Didn't cast a single spell or get into any combat at all (which is probably for the best, because my character was built for hugging).

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)

We finished off the Hammer Dracula series with the one non-Lee entry, the horror/kung fu mashup Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. As usual, it's Fine. It doesn't have the best parts of either genre, so it kind of muddles along. Of the eight "major" Asian characters, only two have actual lines, which is ridiculous for a movie made in Hong Kong with Hong Kong financing.

I was going through a box of old DVDs when I ran into Wait Until Dark and even though it's not strictly horror, we watched it anyway. Still a very effective little thriller and Audrey Hepburn is splendid as always. Alan Arkin does a real uncomfortable sociopath.

Slumber Party Massacre is a curio in that it's a slasher film written by a feminist icon (Rita Mae Brown) and also directed by a woman. It's not a particularly outstanding example of the genre, alas. The killer, for one thing, is a real non-entity, despite his hilariously phallic weapon of choice.

sol_se  wanted fashion in her horror, so asked about Blood and Black Lace, which we watched on Amazon Prime. It's a giallo, an Italian subgenre of mystery-horror that was, in many ways, the forerunner of the slasher film in America. As with all films directed by Mario Bava, it's very striking visually.

Given our deep dive into Dracula last week, I thought we should do the same for the Hammer Frankenstein series. Peter Cushing (or PCush as sol_se likes to call him) is one of the best actors of all time, fight me. Curse of Frankenstein remains my favorite in the series, but I gained a new appreciation for Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, which fires on all cylinders (with the exception of one regrettable scene that sol_se and I agree Did Not Happen). We skipped Horror of Frankenstein because no Cushing (and also $4 on Amazon).

For those curious, we are currently 27 films deep in our plan to watch 31 spooky movies in October.

Sorry I missed last week. Work was crazy busy to start the week off and then by the time it calmed down, it felt too late. So we're covering two weeks today.

I've mostly been playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (although I've kind of quit due to some disappointing forced plot elements). sol_se and I have finished Star Trek Season 2, but are kind of on a break from the show accidentally. We're trying to watch a horror film per day in October, although I think it will be more like we will watch a horror film for each day in October. So, some days may have no movies, but there will be 31 total by the end of the month.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Lured (1947)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Enola Holmes (2020)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Black Sabbath (1963)
MST3K: Pod People
Re-Animator (1985)
Bride of Re-Animator (1990)
Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

So Lured is early Douglas Sirk, stars Lucille Ball and George Motherf**king Sanders, with highish billing for Boris Karloff. It was okay. The plot didn't make a lot of sense, it had that weird thing where people who barely know each other get engaged, and Boris Karloff isn't throughout the film, just in one little bit.

In a turnabout of the way things usually are, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is a classic Hollywood film that sol_se had seen but that I had not. It's a lot of fun. Marilyn Monroe is a comic genius, frankly, and Jane Russell is extremely horny throughout the film.

Enola Holmes is pretty good. I did not care for the compulsory heterosexual agenda, but Millie Bobby Brown is an engaging lead. I've also come around to being pro-Henry Cavill, his take on Superman aside.

Not much to say about Star Trek III except that Uhura got sidelined and I do not stand for that.

Sol_se loves a good lesbian vampire film and The Vampire Lovers is definitely in that category. Ingrid Pitt makes for a very seductive vampire. Plus Peter Cushing can never be a bad thing.

We watched the first episode of Monsterland and found it somewhat disappointing. It's definitely good, but also very depressing. It's not the spooky stuff that the trailers intimated. To get to a properly spooky place again, we watched Black Sabbath, a trilogy of terrifying tales from Mario Bava. It definitely did the trick.

I finally showed sol_se Re-Animator after talking it up for some time. She loved it and we immediately set about watching both sequels, one of which I had not seen. The quality of the series generally declines, but all three films are enjoyable to one extent or another.