All posts by Louis Fowler

Thriller

The Boys Next Door (1985)

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The need for incel-inspirational cinema is at an all-time high and, sadly, there are only so many Jokers to go around. It’s probably the perfect time in our frayed culture to finally recognize the virginal granddaddy of all sex-denied psycho-bro flicks, 1985’s The Boys Next Door.

Starring two perfectly cast Brat Pack heartthrobs (Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield) as a pair of dudes who are sick of all the fuckin’ foreigners, fuckin’ homosexuals and fuckin’ women diseasing up their Angelino wonderland. Before you can say “Don’t tread on me,” they’re laying waste to various minorities groups all over town, mostly with an ill-advised tiger-blood smirk.

Sometime between Suburbia and Dudes, this socially irresponsible gem was surprisingly directed by Penelope Spheeris for, of course, New World Pictures. While the movie aims to have “social relevance,” it’s actually somewhat troubling as Spheeris (and screenwriters Glen Morgan and James Wong of X-Files fame) seemingly wants us to sympathize with the plight of these young white males as they shoot, stab and slam the heads of every non-straight white male they encounter.

That’s not very punk rock, guys.

Released at the absolute height of the Reagan-era “Make my day” attitude that was once a loaded gun barrel of pure machismo, today, in light of the normalization of these hateful atrocities all over America, this pair of jerk-off jokers are probably better left in their smelly dorm rooms, trolling message boards and leaving racist YouTube comments. —Louis Fowler

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Horror

Dracula (1979)

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Frank Langella is a lusty Dracula and he wants to suck your … blood?

While the scenes of hellish lovemaking in this 1979 retread by John Badham, especially when scored with the appropriately lush music of John Williams, are a thing of blood-drenched beauty, it’s too bad the rest of the film is a Gothic snooze that’ll have you poking your heart with stakes just to stay awake.

With all the swagger of a 500-year-old demon in a hot discotheque, the bare-chested Dracula makes his way to merry ole England, exsanguinating a boatful of hardened seamen along the way. Never one to go soft, as soon as he makes it to shore, he begins his reign of erectile terror, preying upon the fair lasses of London, including a romp with Mina Van Helsing (Jan Howard) and Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan).

However, when the legendary vampire hunter (and aged boner-killer) Professor Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) discovers what’s going on, he launches an all-out attack on Drac and his ladies of the night, putting an end to the vampire’s libidinous cooze-cruise through Britannia, in a sun-drenched immolation that is the film’s masterful nonmasturbatory moment.

As Dracula, Langella truly is in his swarthy element, portraying the ancient Vlad as a demonic dude that just want his ding-a-ling dunked a few times, which I can understand. Few films have ever truly prodded the erotic beast that is Bram Stoker’s strokable creation, and in Dracula, it’s exploited to its most rigid climax.

But, sadly, every scene that is not focused on Dracula and his conquests are, for the most part, a dreaded bore that make me sensually massage the fast-forward button, that blessed love child of the night who makes viewing tepid movies a true contingency of purely copulative horror. —Louis Fowler

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

RoboCop (1987)

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Dead or alive, Hollywood is set to make a new entry in the cybernetically stifling RoboCop franchise in the next year or so; thankfully it won’t be a sequel to the lamentable 2014 remake, but instead a direct sequel to the 1987 original. So … yay?

With the mainframe of direct hope that this could be the sequel that we’ve all hoped for — even though RoboCop 2 really isn’t all that bad — I plugged in and had a bowl of high-protein mush as I watched, for the first time in nearly 20 years, RoboCop, directed by the masturbatory filmmaker of Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven.

Sometime in the near future, the city of Detroit is a rabid hellhole of violence and oppression; the only difference between then and now is that the guns can blow entire limbs off in one shot. To help control the unrest on the streets, megacorp Omni Consumer Products takes the body of blown away (and blown apart!) cop Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) and turns him into the law enforcement of the then-future, RoboCop.

Aided by his spunky partner (Nancy Allen), this metal-plated pig takes to cleaning up Old Detroit, including the violent criminals who murdered him, led by total dirtbag Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith); he’s a classic ’80s villain who uses the phrase “Bitches leave!” to clear out a room of high-haired hotties about to have a threesome with corporate scum Miguel Ferrer.

Viewed with a far more socially bitter set of eyes than when I was an idealistic youth, RoboCop is one brilliantly hilarious film, riding the thin line between sharp satire and flat-out comedy. Inspired by the British comic-book lawman Judge Dredd, the American RoboCop is definitely given a comedic Reagan-era spin, a fascistic fantasy that fuels a supremely macho parody — one of the reasons why it still feels mostly undated.

But is it a cohesive mélange of conservative criticism that can work in the stranger-than-fiction 2020s? Probably not, but I’ll buy it for a dollar to watch anyway —Louis Fowler

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Horror

Paganini Horror (1989)

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According to Wikipedia, Niccolò Paganini was a brilliant violinist — a stringed virtuoso who shocked the early 1800s with his nimble wrist and indelible skill. Also, in the case of the film Paganini Horror, he apparently sold his soul to Satan, a deal that results in terrible horror flicks usurping your name a few decades later.

A trio of somewhat hard-rocking chicks are looking for that “hot” sound that will take them to the top of the charts; they believe they’re going to find it by using a lost composition by the very late Paganini, sold to their producer by a badly dubbed Donald Pleasence. They’re wrong, of course.

As Pleasence goes to a tower and throws the money he made off the deal to all of Italy, the gang decides to record in Paganini’s old estate, where a small girl recently threw a radio in the bathtub where her mom was lounging. While I hope she got sent to timeout for that, concurrently a metal-faced killer is stalking the band as they try to record a “fantastic video clip” in the style of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Gleefully, when the producer (or is he the video’s director?) discovers a room with a comically large hourglass in it, the film goes right into a most bloody scherzo, defying description as the remaining rockers run around the mansion, cashing in a one-way ticket to hell, complete with a wholly nonsensical ending I hoped Pleasence earned an easy-enough paycheck for.

With a couple of decent power ballads, some powerful jump-scares and, of course, the participation of Daria Nicolodi, Paganini Horror is a trashy little film, one that for years I thought starred Klaus Kinski; turns out that’s Kinski Paganini, a film even Werner Herzog thought was “unfilmable,” so I really want to watch it more than this. —Louis Fowler

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Documentary

Häxan (1922)

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Certain films feel more like a devilish fever dream than an actual movie made by human hands; the silent film Häxan is definitely one of those wholly unholy flicks.

Filled with the most satanic of imagery this side of heaven, this Swedish silent film — purported to be a historical study of witchcraft — opens with at least two full acts of drawings and woodcuts as the title cards tell the malicious tale of fiendish covens that gather in the middle of the darkest night to give Beelzebub a gentle kiss on his pert bottom, as well as other diabolically sexy goings-on.

And, as interesting as all of that is, Häxan earns its demonic name from the spooky reenactments that feature, of course, ol’ Nick Scratch and his dirty little pranks on poor humans, such as dumping gold coins all over an impoverished woman’s bed. What a dick!

But really, it’s the story of the Inquisition and the holy men who led it that is perhaps the most frightening part of this film. Like a malevolent game of telephone, the trail of witches and their accusers is as long as the Prince of Darkness’ curled tail; the various medieval torture techniques are also displayed here to cringeworthy effect, many looking far too real.

With the Dark Lord essayed by director Benjamin Christensen himself, he seems to have cast the most destitute and elderly of Sweden as the tortured fools of the tumultuous time, bleary-eyed, scab-covered and missing most of their teeth. It’s a haunting recitation of evil — or what they, at that moment, thought was evil, including the woefully disturbed and sadly handicapped.

If you are averse to silent films, however, in 1968 Häxan was re-released as Witchcraft Through the Ages, an edited version which manages to be even creepier, thanks to William S. Burroughs’ cronish narration and an absolutely unsettling score by Jean-Luc Ponty. Now you can’t tell me that the archfiend didn’t have a hand in that … —Louis Fowler

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