All posts by Rod Lott

Comedy

Werewolves Within (2021)

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With Werewolves Within, the big takeaway isn’t that it’s funny, but that it’s based on a video game. By that standard, it shouldn’t be good at all. And yet it is. Heck, even by regular movie standards, it’s great.

In quaint, quiet Beaverfield, there’s a new federal forest ranger in town: Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson, TV’s Veep). His arrival coincides with the discovery of a torn-up corpse that has residents on edge. It’s hardly the last body that’ll turn up — and specifically, at a local inn, where Finn and about a dozen others find themselves trapped due to a spell of bad weather — or, as bumblefuck Marcus (George Basil, Desperados) puts it, “streets is all storm-fucked.” Oh, and some of the guests believe a lycanthrope is to blame.

From Keystone-shaded pipeline drama to sabotaged generators, director Josh Ruben (Scare Me) and first-time screenwriter Mishna Wolff (ha!) give their cast a heckuva lot of obstacles to play against. In look and feel, Werewolves Within suggests an old-fashioned drawing-room mystery, but did Miss Marple ever have to face geysers of goo? Luckily, unlike too many of its horror brethren from the same litter, this film doesn’t forget to wrap a story around the gore or neglect to imbue its characters with personalities — not even the most hapless of victims.

Who survives or doesn’t is negligible when the cast is this well-stacked, making for a thoroughly winning ensemble with crack comic timing. Supporting Richardson are such reliable talents as Saturday Night Live vet Michaela Watkins, I Love You, Man’s Sarah Burns and, as Beaverfield’s mail carrier and Finn’s romantic interest, internet troll magnet Milana Vayntrub (aka Lily, “the girl from the AT&T commercials”). There are many more, each having a hand in making the movie to be the light, enjoyable and bloody romp it is — complete with The Free Design joyously buoying the conclusion. Oh, and maybe a lycanthrope. —Rod Lott

Documentary

The Witches of the Orient (2021)

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Unless you’re a pinko commie, hearing the phrase “Olympics upset” should conjure memories of 1980’s “Miracle on Ice” — or at least the 2004 Kurt Russell movie about it — when the U.S. men’s hockey team out-pucked the Russians to surprise gold. Less known (for now) is a similar story of victory over the USSR, this time by the 1964 women’s volleyball team from Japan. The players’ global accomplishment capped an extraordinary streak of 258 consecutive wins — a feat so mighty and magical, it earned them a moniker adopted by a new documentary about the team: The Witches of the Orient.

As the septuagenarian surviving members relate to French director Julien Faraut (John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection), being part of the Nichibo Kaizuka volleyball team was less fun and games, and more conscription: After a full day of factory work, the young ladies hit the gym until midnight, then did the same all over again, often operating on a mere three to four hours of sleep.

After this context, Faraut delineates the team members’ individual personalities behind the often-demeaning nicknames (Fugu, Horse, et al.) given to them by mercurial coach Hirofumi Daimatsu. In present day, as the women relay stories from their grueling path to the 12th Olympic Games, the film incorporates relevant clips of a Witches-inspired anime series, as well as historical footage set to an atmospheric but uptempo electronic score by K-Raw and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle. Although lengthy, these marvelously edited musical sequences work to the doc’s enormous benefit, pushing it beyond 30 for 30 territory into modern art. (I need this soundtrack album, although it doesn’t exist.)

Taking up Witches’ final third is, of course, a condensed version of the Land of the Rising Sun’s on-court attack against the Iron Curtain at the Olympics. Quite simply, this is one of the most captivating half-hours in sports-doc history. Hosted in Tokyo, those Games represented the loftiest of stakes for Japan as a crucial step in post-WWII rebuilding. That burden is evident by the sheer aggression and swiftness of the Witches’ strike-and-spike strategy to conquer their Soviet Union counterparts, revealing our heroines as an even more formidable threat than Faraut has shown us thus far.

When they win, the pride, humility and exhaustion shining from their faces is COVID-level infectious. That their gold-medal moment comes free of ego makes the scene — and the film — all the more moving. —Rod Lott

Comedy

Munchie Strikes Back (1994)

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Munchie strikes back in Munchie Strikes Back, in which the butt-ugly alien introduced in 1992’s singular Munchie is now voiced by a thoroughly desperate Howard Hesseman (Private Lessons). In this third entry in Roger Corman’s plural Munchies franchise, Munchie is sent by the gods to befriend Chris, a boy whose dad is dead and whose mom (Lesley-Anne Down, The Pink Panther Strikes Again) just got fired after refusing the sexual advances of her boss, Carlisle. Points to her, considering Carlisle is played by The Seduction’s Andrew Stevens, playing a character different from his Munchie role, yet in the exact same way.

Munchie and Chris (Trenton Knight, The Skateboard Kid 2) become instant pals, even though Munchie — given the ineptness of his puppeteers and the limitations of a Corman budget — stays partially hidden behind beds and in trash cans. Together, they play a Death Race 2000 video game, rig a lawnmower to run amok and cause counterfeit money to rain from the sky. When Carlisle starts nosing around, Munchie sticks firecrackers down the man’s pants, while Carlisle retaliates using potatoes.

In this kiddie film, returning director Jim Wynorski (Sorority House Massacre 2) teaches his young audience some 1990s-style values:
• Money is everything.
• Destruction of personal property is okay if it’s your next-door neighbor’s.
• Car wrecks are really way cool.
• Prune-faced gnomes are to be loved.

In the end, Munchie is sent to help Bill Clinton, as the credits threaten a fourth installment that never came to be: Munchie Hangs Ten. The series should be commended for its commitment to its own mythos, in that each movie contains a scene in which Munchie is captured in a garbage bag. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

Puzzle (1974)

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Puzzle’s title refers to the amnesia of Peter (Luc Merenda, Shoot First… Die Later), a man who recalls nothing about himself eight months after a car accident. Shortly after the film begins, he’s fortunate enough to learn that he:
• has a wife named Sara (the splendiferous Senta Berger, Killing Cars)
• was a con artist who pissed off a lot of people
• is in possession of something for which said people are willing to kill

But whom and what? The movie’s very name clues viewers in that the best way to experience Puzzle is to go in knowing as little as possible, so you can investigate as much as Peter. To encourage that, I’ll reveal no further plot. Besides, you already know Chekov’s principle that if a chainsaw is left carelessly on the kitchen table in Act 1, it’s going to come in handy in Act 3, right?

Hitchcockian on paper, Puzzle comes well-constructed by co-writer Ernesto Gastaldi, who’s penned more great gialli than you have fingers, including Torso, All the Colors of the Dark, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, et al. If the screenplay can be faulted for anything, it’s that having so few characters makes the perp obvious sooner than director Duccio Tessari (The Bloodstained Butterfly) may have liked. Still, the film’s best sequence arrives after the reveal, with suspense simmering toward a strong boil as three separate elements in a room rather ingeniously threaten to place Sara in mortal danger. Tessari pays it off with intense slow-motion shots that make up for questionable close-ups of mouths (complete with crumbs on lips) early on.

Co-stars include Anita Strindberg (Lucio Fulci’s A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin); Bruno Corazzari (Fulci’s The Psychic), whose allergy-ridden character dispenses Kleenex as he does story points; and child Duilio Cruciani (Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling). As usual with the giallo, the setting is so magnificent, Puzzle appears to have been made with the assistance of Italy’s tourism council. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Action

Strike Commando (1986)

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Strike One to SAT Eagle! Strike One to SAT Eagle! As Sgt. Michael Ransom, Strike Commando star Reb Brown establishes a four-step schtick for not only his wronged-soldier character, but for the apex of his filmography. It goes a little something like this:
1. Walk a few steps before halting with purpose.
2. Recite the first name of thy enemy with anger.
3. Emit a scream as prolonged as possible …
4. … as you unload a machine gun in a back-and-forth motion to an excessive degree — ideally in equal time to item No. 3.

It works every time. He executes this bit several times throughout Strike Commando because it’s what Sly Stallone’s John Rambo would do, and Strike Commando could not exist without that big bowl of First Blood Part II. As staged by Italy’s primo cinema imitator, Bruno Mattei (Cruel Jaws), Ransom vows revenge on his traitorous superior, Radok (Christopher Connelly, 1990: The Bronx Warriors), for sabotaging a midnight mission in Vietnam that left all Ransom’s buddies dead.

“They all demand justice!” Ransom cries, clearly in a presumption on his part.

Radok thinks Ransom is no longer alive, either, but our hero somehow survives and somehowier slowly floats his way under miles of dirty water to the safety of a village whose populace greets him in mass whiteface. There, Ransom befriends a “Frenchman” (Luciano Pigozzi, the Italian Jack Elam, reuniting with Brown after Yor: The Hunter from the Future) and gains a li’l buddy in the boy Lao (Edison Navarro, Mattei’s Double Target). Lao quizzes Ransom on all things Disneyland; the American tells his young charge that at the park, popcorn and ice cream grow on trees. The fuck they do!

As with everyone Ransom so much as glances at, these poor saps soon are drained of their lifeblood as well, with Lao’s expiration an absolute classic of ’80s he-man cinema. With these deaths at the doing of Russian meat slab Jakota (Alex Vitale, Beyond the Door III), Ransom gains two opponents, and our one movie is all the better for it, affording us a thrifty montage of Ransom undergoing various acts torture; as viewers of the DVD-multipack-bin “favorite” The Firing Line know, these are the type of scenes in which Brown gives it his all.

While he lacks acting skills, Brown gives the movie something — something I failed to notice until watching Mattei’s 1988 follow-up, Strike Commando 2, in which Ransom is played instead by human blank Gwendoline’s Brent Huff. With this switcheroo, the sequel is such a snore, it needs a CPAP machine. Venture no further than original-recipe Strike Commando and all of its Rebness. As Joni Mitchell warned — and we ignored, so Counting Crows and Cinderella had to remind us — you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Also, there’s cockfighting. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.