Horror

Sheitan (2006)

Leave a comment

sheitanAsked of its audience in Sheitan’s opening shot, “You ready?” Having already seen the French film, I can answer for you: No, you are most assuredly not ready. You have no idea what’s in store for you, but the next title card may provide a solid hint: “Lord, don’t forgive them, for they know what they do.”

“They” are the gaggle of vaguely young and utterly obnoxious friends who spend the evening of Dec. 23 clubbing and tripping balls. Horniness gets the better of them, which must be why they agree to go the remote country home of the alluring Eve (Roxane Mesquida, Rubber), whom they just met. Initially, it appears the guys have only three items of concern: hangovers, goats blocking the dirt road and competing for Eve’s attention and affections, which is to say her vagina.

sheitan1But then they meet Joseph, the home’s caretaker. Played by Vincent Cassel (Brotherhood of the Wolf), he possesses overly boisterous hospitality, yet casual racism, a shit-eating grin, a wavering dedication to hygiene and hairpin shifts in mood. His behavior immediately strikes the kids as off-center, to put it mildly. After that, director and co-writer Kim Chapiron (Smart Ass) makes sure to erase “mildly” from his film’s vocab. As Joseph’s true nature is revealed, things escalate on the thermometer of wrongness with the speed of a steroid-ridden rabbit. We would expect nothing less, considering the home’s living room is adjacent to a workshop filled floor-to-ceiling with plastic doll parts.

Sheitan (the title translates to “Satan”) is something of an eye-opener on multiple levels, starting with Cassel. Those of us used to seeing him as wiry and stature-short in his American films (e.g. Black Swan and Ocean’s Twelve) will be taken aback by how burly he appears here, yet his commanding presence isn’t all physical. Cassel embodies a master class on malevolence that penetrates the viewer’s psyche in order to fuck with it for the film’s increasingly anxious entirety, right down to a shocking subliminal frame that interrupts the roll of ending credits.

Ultimately more disturbing than scary, Sheitan toys with you with a calculated menace. Chapiron and company are shrewd enough to front-load the film with laughs so that you’re caught off-guard by the whiplash turns they take. The humor continues, but grows tonally to match the darkness of a rotting lung, making you question if all the sick bastards truly reside on one side of your TV screen. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Martial Arts

Bloodsport (1988)

Leave a comment

bloodsportJean-Claude Van Damme’s first lead role sends the Muscles from Brussels to Hong Kong, to compete for glory — and a big-boy sword — in a real Bloodsport. For a supposedly super-secret tournament, everyone speaks freely, openly and publicly about the kumite (pronounced koo-muh-tay), a full-contact, anything-goes competition held every five years among martial artists worldwide.

For reasons never shared, Frank Dux (Van Damme, Welcome to the Jungle) has to go AWOL from his U.S. Army post to get to the overseas contest, so he’s constantly having to evade two military cops tasked with hauling him back. Both of the cops are dumb, yet only one of them is played by Forest Whitaker (Taken 3). Ditching them proves a cinch, as does the kumite itself; Frank shatters a world record in his first-ever round. Look, Ma — nothin’ to it!

bloodsport1The cumulative combat scenes make Bloodsport worth the watch, as they showcase a variety of fighting styles. Amid many others, we witness one man circling his opponent like a crazed monkey; the backfiring, beer-soaked machismo of Frank’s fellow Yank (Donald Gibb, aka Revenge of the Nerds’ Ogre); and the brute intimidation of the legendary Bolo Yeung from Enter the Dragon, whose template this film flagrantly swipes. Of course, we can’t leave out Van Damme’s own patented splits or his character’s genius move: the slow-motion nut punch. That attack alone redeems the star’s (I hesitate to call him an actor) curious dress and overall appearance as every collar-popped preppy villain in every ’80s teen comedy. Like those guys, Frank succeeds in bedding the hot blonde (The Burning’s Leah Ayres, as a journalist yearning to break the kumite story).

Directed by Newt Arnold (Blood Thirst) and scripted by Sheldon Lettich (who went on to write four more Van Damme vehicles, including Double Impact), the Cannon Films hit bears the predictability of an orange-vested highway worker waving a flag to alert drivers of construction just ahead, past all those blinking lights. But, hey, those guys operating the machines are delivering kicks to the face and clenched fists to the testes! You better believe I’ll slow down for that! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Mystery

Gorilla at Large (1954)

Leave a comment

gorillalargeWhile the exact year escapes me, I recall with fondness that time in grade school when one of Oklahoma City’s local UHF stations was televising a 3-D movie marathon. It took some heavy pleading on my part to convince my mom to drive the quarter-mile to the nearest 7-Eleven, where a pair of those cellophane-lensed cardboard specs — one red, one blue — could be yours for something like 50 cents.

She gave in, and I happily awaited the four nights of cominatcha cinema whose lineup remains burned in my brain: 1961’s The Mask, 1977’s kung-fu Dynasty and two flicks from 1954: Creature from the Black Lagoon and Gorilla at Large. Try as I might, I don’t think I made it past the first commercial break of the latter. I didn’t deserve Gorilla then, but I deserve it now.

gorillalarge1And so do you. Directed by Harmon Jones (Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title), the novel whodunit is as if King Kong were the idea of Agatha Christie. Despite its off-putting name, the Garden of Evil carnival boasts two star attractions: Goliath, hawked as the “world’s largest” gorilla, and Laverne (Anne Bancroft, The Graduate), the trapeze artist whose gimmick is to swing perilously over his caged habitat.

When a man is discovered murdered at said cage, suspicion falls upon Goliath … but wait, didn’t the carnival’s owner (Raymond Burr, Airplane II: The Sequel) just order a gorilla costume for the barker (Cameron Mitchell, Blood and Black Lace)? A police detective (Lee J. Cobb, preparing for his Exorcist role) noses around to find out; look for eventual Delta Force colonel Lee Marvin as a patrolman!

Although unapologetically a B picture, Gorilla at Large has more to offer than talentspotting future A-listers. Many of Jones’ shots possess a depth of field even projected flat, and his camera soaks up the color of the carnival backdrop. That’s not just there for show, either, as great pains are made to incorporate various attractions into the script, from the tilt-a-whirl and merry-go-round to the roller-coaster finale. The most memorable sequence finds The Bride and the Beast’s Charlotte Austin is pursued through the mirror maze by a gorilla — whether real or fake is immaterial at that moment of suspense. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Action

Tango & Cash (1989)

Leave a comment

tangocashLiterally the last action film of the ’80s, the Guber-Peters Company buddy copper Tango & Cash seemingly rounds up every element that defined the genre that decade, and packed them into the first 10 minutes. To wit: Renegade cops! Guns! Car chases! Cocaine! Tits! Mullets! Mullets!! Mullets!!! Complete and total disregard for life, limb and property! Russian comic relief! The snyth-pop music of Fletch’s Harold Faltermeyer! The scary-potato face of Maniac Cop Robert Z’Dar!

Okay, so I lied. All that can be found in the first nine minutes. Only upon closer scrutiny do we notice the absence of two things: running/jumping from an explosion and a slice of beefcake via a hunk’s bare buns. Rest assured, both “rear” their heads before director Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train) ends the film — in a freeze-frame of a high-five, natch.

tangocash1Respectively coming off Lock Up and Tequila Sunrise, Stallone and Russell respectively play rival cops Lt. Raymond Tango and Lt. Gabriel Cash, respectively buttoned-up and a loose cannon. Both winners in the war on drugs — or at least as far as their L.A. beats are concerned — the men are framed for murder by rat-loving criminal kingpin Yves Perret (Jack Palance, playing his character as if he were still in Tim Burton’s Batman), simply to move the story forward and give Tango and Cash something to do — namely, go to prison, simply so Tango and Cash can break out of prison. You get the picture; its idea of audience-pleasing comedy is dressing Russell in drag and having Stallone declare that “Rambo is a pussy.” Ha, get it?

At once as familiar and embarrassing as a lunch of SpaghettiOs, Tango & Cash does sport a couple of surprises, the first being that our heroes are like James Bond in that they have their own Q, as savant-as-ever Michael J. Pollard (Bonnie and Clyde) constructs such useful gadgets as the guns that pop out of Cash’s cowboy boot heels. Speaking of 007, future Bond girl Teri Hatcher (Tomorrow Never Dies), in an early role as Tango’s troubled kid sister, Kiki, proves to have quite the impressive stripper moves. She also may be the screen’s only clothes-peeler to a perform a drum solo in the middle of her routine. Well-played, Ms. Hatcher, well-played.

Kiki’s rhyming throwaway comment of “grime, crime and slime” nearly could be Tango & Cash’s plot synopsis, but definitely works as a tagline for this high-calorie high colonic of a movie. Same goes for Tango’s utterance of “good old American action,” because no one makes mindless violence as the USA. USA! USA! USA! US — whaddaya mean Konchalovsky was born in Moscow? No wonder this production was so troubled. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Jules Verne’s Mystery on Monster Island (1981)

Leave a comment

mysterymonsterislandIf a mystery exists in Jules Verne’s Mystery on Monster Island — one does not — the characters are not cognizant of it. Please forgive them, for they are very, very stupid.

And so is their movie, for which Pieces auteur Juan Piquer Simón pillow-smothered Verne’s 1882 adventure novel Godfrey Morgan into a live-action cartoon. Don’t get your hopes up when the names of Star Wars’ Peter Cushing and Superman II’s Terence Stamp topline the opening credits; both distinguished thespians bookend the film like veritable Cryptkeepers. (Expect even less from Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy, who croaks in the first scene.) That leaves the heavy lifting of the featherweight narrative to no-names Ian Sera and David Hatton.

mysterymonsterisland1Simón’s four-time leading man, the Screech-like Sera (Pod People) plays Jeff Morgan, one of those aristocratic sorts who wishes to see the world before settling down. His uncle (Cushing) bankrolls a yearlong, not-so-extraordinary voyage for the young man aboard his ship, and orders the fussy etiquette professor Artelect (Hatton, The Pirates of Penzance) along as Jeff’s slave, more or less. It’s as if Jeff were traveling with Sesame Street’s Mr. Noodle.

Rather quickly, the ship gets wrecked after an attack by walking fish creatures, leaving Jeff and Artelect stranded on an island where, despite a language divide, they befriend a native man (Gasphar Ipua, Simón’s Sea Devils) in a loincloth and constantly encounter title-hencing monsters, including dinosaurs, seaweed heaps and giant caterpillars that spew God-knows-what. No matter the critter, Artelect quakes in fear and screams, “Monsters! Monsters!” (He also shouts this upon spotting a pig and a fully stationary skeleton; in other words, he redefines “annoying.”) Eventually, our heroes get wise enough to Home Alone the hell outta that jungle by crafting such defense mechanisms as banana cannons and coconut catapults.

The monsters are laughably cheap and unconvincing, seemingly with fewer points of articulation than a corncob voodoo doll. Simón attempts to justify it through a story “twist,” but since Verne’s book was beast-free, I’m not buying what Simón is selling there. At the same time, I wouldn’t want him to change a thing, especially with regard to the creatures’ appearance; the more “real” they would look, the less entertaining Mystery on Monster Island would be. As is, it’s another Simón disasterpiece. Dig in! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews