All posts by Rod Lott

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Watari, the Ninja Boy (1966)

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Watari, the Ninja Boy is based on a classic Japanese manga, which I could tell just by looking at the kid’s haircut. Played by Kaneko Yoshinobu (who was a different child ninja in the similar, superior Ninja Scope), Watari lives with his sickly grandfather, plays the flute, jumps around, swings on ropes, flies through the air, walks up trees and, in a musical number, even grows to Jolly Green Giant height to touch a rainbow of Skittles.

But mostly, with the aid of his trusty metal ax, whose blade is bigger than his head, Watari spends his days and nights warring against adult ninja and monster ninja who want to kill him. He also decapitates a black cat, but TBH, that pussy had it coming.

Watari undergoes a litany of traumas in these colorful adventures, including surviving an earthquake, sinking in quicksand, finding dead dudes floating in the river, seeing a naked lady and meeting a grown man with lots of eye shadow.

Needless to say, this is one weird kiddie matinee — one that begins with a blue-skinned ninja losing his tongue for breaking the law. It’s also confusing, what with all the Japanese names thrown around of this clan and that clan, and not knowing who belong to which. Even with the benefit of crisp English subtitles, I was all like, whaaaaaaaaa … —Rod Lott

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Action

Man of Violence (1970)

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With a title like Man of Violence, Pete Walker’s third feature gives no indication of its driving conflict: dueling British property developers. Smart move, Pete! Same goes for slapping your opening credits atop footage of a woman’s navel shot in such extreme close-up, it verges on the gynecological.

A real estate war may sound like a snore, but fear not, readers: These property bros aren’t above resorting to murder to get shit done. One side hires a freelance fixer named Moon (Michael Latimer, Hammer’s Prehistoric Women) to do their dirty work. The other side also hires Moon to do their dirty work. Moon being Moon, an opportunist crook, he plays both sides. After all, despite his tousled hair and a water pistol loaded with Heinz Tomato Ketchup, he’s got a taste for life’s finer things, and London’s clothiers don’t just give away collared tangerine shirts, luv.

The plot involves ax-clutching gangsters, a protection racket, a smuggling scheme — all a MacGuffin, as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps Walker felt the same, tasking the yowza Luan Peters (Hammer’s Twins of Evil) to deliver a chunk of exposition while undressing. (Like, are we supposed to pay attention? If so, that’s not playing fair.) Functionally, the story is more about biding time to get to the next set piece. My favorite among them might be Moon subduing a threatening passenger by braking so hard, the poor guy’s forehead smashes against the dash. Perhaps Schizo Walker felt the same, having Moon quickly drive forward and backward to brake again, over and over, making good on the film’s title. (Speaking of, its alternate one is, stupidly, Moon.)

A sign outside a club owned by one of Moon’s clients reads, “IF YOU DON’T SWING, DON’T RING.” The rhyme could double as a gatekeeper for viewers, too, as Man of Violence explores sexual kinks (hetero- and homo-) and spontaneously jet-sets to Marrakesh for the third act. This trip temporarily turns the movie into something of a freewheeling travelogue à la Harry Alan Towers’ 1960s espionage adventures (see Code 7, Victim 5!; Mozambique; Five Golden Dragons; et al.) — by no means a complaint. Walker’s conclusion bears so many twists, you’d think he’d installed a turnstile. It may be more complicated than necessary, yet also more clever. —Rod Lott

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Sex

Tales of a Salesman (1965)

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With Tales of a Salesman, we have a piece of unheralded cinema history: The lone movie shot in “Nudavision” and “Lusticolor.” To clear up any potential confusion, those labels just mean one thing: lotsa tits.

This nudie cutie follows Herman’s first day on the job as a door-to-door toilet brush salesman. Luckily, the milquetoast nerd gains unexpected help from a poltergeist who helps such paid-on-commission vendors. That’s both awfully specific and uncharacteristically kind for the spirit world. All this means is the poltergeist (read: the camera) sneaks peeks at the nekkid housewives on the block and makes horndog comments (via a wisely uncredited narrator).

So while Herman (David C. Reed, What’s Up Front) engages in tired pratfalls outside, the poltergeist scopes out a bare-breasted blonde struggling to move a couch, a skinny-dipping brunette, a sunbathing redhead and a brunette baking in her birthday suit. Then Herman, goaded by his supernatural guide, calls upon each woman and sells absolutely zip, due to mishaps like vacuuming a towel off a would-be client’s body or squirting cream on another’s face.

Finally, in a surreal dream sequence that shows no glimpse of the greatness in cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s near future (aka winning an Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Herman goes on trial for all these misdeeds. As punishment for one guilty verdict, the ladies (all topless, of course) inflate him like a bowtied, horn-rimmed Violet Beauregarde.

But did I mention there’s a poltergeist? Stupidity, inanity, nudity: They’rrrrre herrrrre … —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Micro Budget (2024)

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If your bucket list line-items “Hear Barney Miller utter the phrase, ‘knee-deep in pussy,'” I come bearing great news: Micro Budget allows you to cross that off. It’s merely one surprise in a movie that qualifies as a surprise itself. After all, “improvised indie mockumentary” doesn’t engender confidence these days, and its generic, Google-challenged title further diminishes hope.

Give yourself over to it anyway, because here’s even greater news: Micro Budget is capital-F funny — enough to threaten triggering a hernia.

Speaking of do-or-die to-dos, Ohio nobody Terry (Patrick Noth) has always longed to make a movie. His ever-patient, exceedingly pregnant spouse, Erica (real-life wife Emilea Wilson), supports her hubs so much, she’s agreed to uproot their lives to L.A. so Terry can achieve his dream before their firstborn arrives to forever postpone such folly.

Naturally, in tackling an ambitious disaster film, Terry has bitten off more than he can chew, much less get his big mouth around. Lucky for us, his cousin (director Morgan Evans, who co-wrote with Noth) is around to document it all the behind-the-scenes chaos. While shooting in a rented Airbnb home in Malibu, the cast members inquire about their motivation, which Terry answers: “A big, scary meteor coming to Earth.” The dialogue he’s given them is equally clueless: “I can’t believe Toronto’s gone. I can’t believe Drake died.” A running gag hinges on Terry’s inability to understand movies don’t have to be shot in order.

If Terry has no idea what he’s doing, wait until you meet the intimacy coordinator, a skeevy guy (Neil Casey, 2016’s Ghostbusters) whose first question arriving to set is, “Now, who’s porkin’?”

Bawdy and boisterous without slipping into hateful, Micro Budget boasts a solid lineup of comedians both known (Chris Parnell, Maria Bamford, Bobby Moynihan, sitcom legend Hal Linden) and deserve-to-be (Nichole Sakura, Brandon Michael Hall, Carla Jimenez, Jon Gabrus), as well as a superstar cameo I won’t spoil. There’s not a weak spot in the bunch.

If you can’t handle cringe comedy, move along, little ones. Not for nothing does the “Lights. Camera. Asshole” tagline adorn its poster. While Micro Budget isn’t quite as successful as Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, it’s the next best thing. This isn’t Pulp Fiction, Scorsese. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

The Ugly (2025)

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If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, where does that leave the blind? Im Yeong-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula), a sightless stamp engraver in his twilight years, found love with a garment worker he married. It vanished when she abandoned her husband and infant son 40 years prior.

Now an adult, son Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min, Decision to Leave) receives unexpected news from the police: Not only have his mother’s remains been found, but she didn’t disappear as assumed; she was murdered. This news arrives amid a crew shooting a documentary about the elder Im, so the producer (Shin Hyeon-bin, Beasts Clawing at Straws) helps Dong-hwan discovered what happened to the woman he never knew.

What they find on the surface is unimaginable cruelty from greedy relatives and asshole co-workers who nicknamed her “Dung Ogre.” All insist she was so hideous-looking — hence the film’s title of The Ugly — no photos exist. Most barbarous is the treatment from her piggish employer (Im Sung-jae, Emergency Declaration). Dong-hwan’s father sums it up with “What we see as beautiful, we respect; the opposite, we scorn.

The Ugly represents a departure for filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho, the creative conductor behind the Train to Busan franchise. Not particularly knotty in plotting, his film solves its mystery through simple sequential peeling of layers. With each successive interview, Dong-hwan grows further torn between wanting to know and afraid what he might learn next. Both leads are marvelous, but especially Park. In his incredible final shot, Sang-ho doesn’t leave us with a spinning top, but delivers the closure we need, only to rip open a whole new line of questioning. —Rod Lott

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