Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Burst City (1982)

Leave a comment

I like the apocalypse and I love rock ’n’ roll, so the Japanese flick Burst City already has a lot going for it. Set in the decimated outskirts of Tokyo, here we find dystopian punkers fighting the dapper yakuza in a war of loud, noise-crunching guitars and repeating guns in a low-budget battle for … well, I’m not exactly sure — control of the nuclear power plant they live near, maybe?

Every night, sullen teens gather to hear the music of bands like The Stalin, The Roosters and so on, in a somewhat peaceful assembly of fans looking to tear shit up. When the yakuza comes around aiming to start trouble — as well as two Mad Max-like weirdos on a motorcycle — all hell breaks loose and something of a war is started, with the corrupt police coming in for a rip-’em-up finale.

Listed as a landmark in “cyberpunk cinema,” Burst City has not much of anything “cyber,” but there’s plenty of punk as these underground hooligans with soul-destroying glares whip chains and sling guitars in an epic showdown I imagine Japan, at the time, was craving.

Burst City is the cinematic debut from the director of the enjoyably insane Electric Dragon 80.000 V, Sogo Ishii, who kinetically manages to capture the manic aura the punk scene in Japan had at the time, with a setting far ahead of itself. It’s an unique stroke of filmmaking mishmash that America would try to copy with numerous films in the 1980s, none of them very good. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Grizzly II: Revenge (1983)

Leave a comment

William Girdler’s Grizzly was such a profit-churner in 1976 that another outing for the killer bear was just a matter of time. But 37 years’ time?

Shot in Hungary in 1983, but held up first by money troubles and then pure indifference, Grizzly II: Revenge finally saw the light of day in 2020 — a gap the film touts as a positive with Selznickian aplomb. It’s only by the grace of God — or Suzanne C. Nagy (who confusingly credits herself as producer and executive producer) — giving director André Szöts’ only feature some finishing touches. Those amount to:
• shooting a musical performance in close-up and against black so she didn’t have to worry about matching backgrounds
• grabbing sound effects from YouTube
• adding visual effects as unconvincing as Birdemic’s
• and padding generously with stock footage from Adobe Stock, iStock, Shutterstock, Getty Images and more, to get this thing over the magic 70-minute mark

Her bananas patchwork is like nothing you’ve seen. Unless, of course, part of your day is hallucinating things like Raiders of the Lost Ark’s John Rhys-Davies in Crazed Davy Crockett mode, ominously growling lines such as “You got the devil bear!”

By an enormous stroke of luck, Grizzly II opens with a troika of pre-A-list celebs in Academy Award winner George Clooney, Academy Award winner Laura Dern and HIV winner Charlie Sheen, playing friends hiking their way to the big rock concert at Yellowstone Park. After setting up camp for the night, Clooney and Dern get frisky, leaving Sheen (who resembles Jason Schwartzman) as the third wheel. No matter, because five minutes in, the future stars are dead, killed by an uncommonly tall bear presumably angry for its poached cubs.

With the grizzly on the loose, out for vengeance and often depicted with a limited-articulation puppet, the park’s most principled ranger (Steve Inwood, Staying Alive) and its “director of bear management” (Deborah Raffin, Death Wish 3) think maybe having tens of thousands of people gathered for an outdoor concert isn’t the greatest idea. Coming from the Mayor Larry Vaughn School of Decision-Making, however, park boss Draygon (Louise Fletcher, Exorcist II: The Heretic) disagrees. The final scene is a riot, in both senses of the word.

If only Draygon listened to reason, many lives would be spared … but we wouldn’t have a movie. Then again, whether we have one now depends on your criteria for calling each scene complete, as Nagy has taken so many shortcuts to deliver her Revenge, the titular carnivorous mammal has no time to shit in the woods. Unfortunately, not enough are taken — shortcuts, not shits — where viewers will wish Grizzly II had: during Yellowstone’s would-be Woodstock. I mean, whatta lineup: Toto Coelo! Set the Tone! The Dayz! Landscape III! Korlátolt Felelősségű Társaság! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Cyst (2020)

Leave a comment

If Dr. Giggles and Dr. Pimple Popper merged practices, Cyst would be their collab. Short on budget and tall in imagination, this goopy, goofy horror comedy is a two-location wonder like the kind Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment used to make, minus the visual flatness.

In 1961, three patent examiners return a final time to the medical office of Dr. Guy (George Hardy, the dad from Troll 2) after a disastrous first demo of a machine he calls “The Get Gone.” For America’s acne-afflicted, blister-bodied, polyp-peppered and sore-saddled, Guy’s invention could be a godsend, as it promises “painless” skin removal. It lies.

Dr. Guy basically pisses on his own hospitality and Nurse Patty won’t allow it! Tired of his misogynist ways, the incessant bullying and torrents of milky discharge on her face — from patients’ squeezed zits (why, what were you thinking?) — the long-suffering Patty (a strong and stunning Eva Habermann, TV’s Lexx) is working her last day when she becomes the hero of this sebaceous story, seemingly torn from the time-yellowed pages of EC Comics’ Weird Science.

That shift happens after The Get Gone goes wrong and a cyst it slices off the back of the doc’s meek assistant (Darren Ewing, Troll 2’s tree boy) suddenly sprouts spidery legs and a thirst for human blood. From there, Cyst is a mess — on purpose, of course — with fluids shooting and spilling and oozing and killing as Patty takes charge to help her fellow trapped characters try to stay alive while the little malevolent, malignant mass grows to full rubber-monster stage. Not all succeed.

In his third feature as director or writer, the Texas Cotton-pickin’ Tyler Russell gooses Cyst along with a sure hand and a tongue so in-cheek, it gets mail there. The reverential injection of B-level camp is not only on purpose, but obviously encouraged behind the scenes, being produced in part by Greg Sestero (The Room’s Mark and ergo, author of The Disaster Artist). I somehow missed Sestero’s name in the opening credits, because I didn’t recognize him as one of the patent examiners.

There’s zero mistaking Hardy, however. Destined for eternal Troll 2 infamy even after he leaves this mortal coil, the real-life dentist turned accidental actor certainly has limitations in range. While the aw-shucksness that’s made him a horror-convention fan favorite isn’t present in this villainous role, Hardy’s dopey nature and above-amateurish delivery are — and they actually work for the unhinged mad-scientist persona. With Nic Cage-mannerisms aiming to leap over over-the-top, Dr. Guy is as anything-goes intent on securing that patent as a former game-show host to a second stint as POTUS.

But will lowbrow art imitate life, even in a nice, compact 69 minutes? To find out, give Cyst a good poke. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Documentary

Mean Man: The Story of Chris Holmes (2021)

Leave a comment

When you ask the many fans of The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years what their favorite scene is, they’ll probably say those involving an absolutely drunk Chris Holmes, the guitarist for W.A.S.P., nearly drowning in a pool as his mother sits on the edge leering. It is for me.

While I thought he died shortly after that glimpse of living the high life, but turns out he’s alive and kicking around in Europe, where he’s something of a draw with his new band. So that’s a relief, I guess.

In the documentary Mean Man: The Story of Chris Holmes, we learn that W.A.S.P. lead singer Blackie Lawless was an idiotic showman who had no real respect for Holmes; to be fair, almost every night Holmes would get blackout-drunk, culminating in losing his house and sleeping on the couch of his fellow rock buddies, as you’d expect.

Still, even after a couple of new bands and a W.A.S.P. reunion, he needed to express himself “artistically,” culminating in this new tour. From traveling to gigs, playing onstage and recording a new album I’ll never listen to, there are so many moments of inspired comedy, this almost becomes a true-life Spinal Tap.

While there seems to be a lot that doesn’t work for Holmes musically, I’m surprised how much actually does in his own life, at least what the camera shows us. He has a loving and understanding wife; he’s genuinely nice to his fans; and he seems, at least in his head, poised for something of a comeback.

If you can take the corrupt past of Holmes and genuinely separate it into this recent life, Mean Man becomes something of a rock ’n’ roll survivor story. That being said, I’m still not listening to any of his music, but I’m glad he’s still here and still pushing the envelope. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Lucky Bastard (2014)

Leave a comment

At the very least, Lucky Bastard approaches the found-footage trend from an angle I haven’t seen tried: inside the porno industry. Its “document everything” conceit allows us fly-on-the-fly access in HD as porn producer Mike (Don McManus, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension) persuades his supposedly hottest star, Ashley Saint (Betsy Rue) to, ahem, “do” her first episode of his Lucky Bastard series.

As one may surmise from the title, each installment recruits a fan to co-star, as it were, with the female talent — STD test results permitting, of course. After Mike wears down Ashley’s misgivings and protests, she agrees to have sex with the selected regular Joe — in this case, Dave (Jay Paulson, Black Rock). Well-meaning but socially awkward, Dave looks like the kind of guy whose Velcro wallet dutifully contains a punch card for Great Clips at the ready, perhaps adjacent to a condom he may never use.

In the run-up to rolling camera, their special guest does and says things that creep Ashley out — so many that she refuses to do the scene. He snaps, in what must be the world’s biggest case of blue balls. With LAPD footage of the grisly aftermath at a Van Nuys home, Lucky Bastard’s prologue tells us right away what the poster’s tagline only echoes: “This will not end well.” We just don’t know exactly how or when (although if you pay attention to the movie’s running time, you can make an educated guess as to when the sparks will hit wick’s end).

When the group stops for a quick lunch en route to set, Dave is so antsy to get depantsy, he complains to Mike that no one watches this portion of his Lucky Bastard series; they want to fast-forward straight to the sex. The movie Lucky Bastard, however, faces a contradictory problem: I wanted them to skip the sex for the storm.

Neither portion satisfies. Moving from the venerable (as an Emmy-nominated writer and producer of TV’s Law & Order) to the venereal for his directorial debut, Robert Nathan asks some interesting questions, like “What if a mentally ill man were chosen for an amateur porn shoot?” yet answers them with less curiosity. More attention seems placed on simulating (?) explicit acts — some pixelated despite an NC-17 rating — than sharing a fleshed-out story. To that end, one can claim Nathan’s picture is perhaps most porn-realistic in the one way a legitimate feature shouldn’t strive to be: dismissive of plot.

The three leads acquit themselves. Paulson is particularly convincing as the outcast powder keg; McManus, appropriately greasy and sleazy; and Rue looks every bit the damaged, button-cute part. Best known for her not-a-stitch performance in 3D in 2009’s My Bloody Valentine, she again demonstrates remarkable bravery in her immodesty, but this time for a project that neither deserves nor rewards her investment. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews