Comedy

Detention (2011)

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detentionDonnie Darko, The Breakfast Club, Scream, Back to the Future, Freaky Friday, Heathers, Christine, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (I think), She’s All That (probably), The Fly (?!?) — it’s probably easier to name the movies not referenced by Detention.

Luckily, this ain’t a parody à la the Seltzer/Friedberg “Insert Word Here” Movie production line of films which rank among humanity’s most awful crimes. Detention, rather, is barmy genius, an aggressive meta-mash of preposterous proportions that actually manages through vigor, intelligence and breakneck lunacy to be one of the most original teen movies of recent years. Think John Hughes via Crank, or an evil twin of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Detention1You’ll likely require a master’s in film studies to catch every pop-culture reference hurled at the audience at lightning speed. This is a Twitter generation film, tailor-made for an ADHD-esque attention span, so there are no pauses for reflection, only forward momentum that could grow tiresome for some (or trigger epileptic seizures from the frenetic editing), but which I found a blast and three-quarters.

Plotwise, none of it makes much sense. There’s a Bueller-style character (Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games), a beautiful wallflower klutz (Shanley Caswell, The Conjuring), a spaz, a hottie, a football star devolving into a mutant flyboy, a student who has been in detention for decades and a principal who both out-evils Breakfast Club’s Paul Gleason and proves that “comedian” Dane Cook plays an unlikable douchebag far more effectively than he does likable ones. There’s also body-switching, time travel, psychotic killers … it’s almost all films ever made in one gloriously messy craze-rave of awesome.

I cannot say all will love it; if you aren’t at least somewhat versed in the language of the genre, you’ll find it well-nigh incomprehensible. If you get it, however, you’ll see the movie beneath the artifice, and the love behind the camera. To put it weirdly, the cynicism on display is infused with a remarkable lack of cynicism. If you can parse the paradox within that Möbius sentence, you’re the right audience for this. —Corey Redekop

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Daimajin (1966)

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daimajinKnown to Americans under its dubbed title of Majin, the Monster of Terror, the Japanese fantasy Daimajin doesn’t really kick in until after the first 30 minutes, when the requisite precocious youth with bad hair is attacked in the forest by skeleton hands and superimposed bedsheets standing in for ghosts.

But that’s nothing compared to the havoc wreaked by the giant mountain god Daimajin. For the first half of the movie, Daimajin is simply a statue to be worshipped. But when angry villagers start hammering away at his head and cause it to bleed, well, who can blame Daimajin for opening up the ground so he can spit fire and swallow fat guys whole?

daimajin1What heretofore was a blank face as threatening as Holly Hobbie is replaced with a blue-green demonic kabuki glare with one wave of Daimajin’s stone arm. The big guy frees himself from his mountain home and goes to town to — in the finest tradition of Far Eastern genre cinema — smash some shit up.

The balsa wood flies as Daimajin destroys houses and randomly stops to impale citizens. At the end, he turns to dust, thus ending the carnage, but quite clearly driving home the moral of the story: Don’t stick steel spikes into the foreheads of a statue in the mountains unless you want it to come alive and fuck up your village. Got it? No one did, because two sequels immediately followed. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

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perfumeladyWith the complexion of tapioca pudding and a hairstyle eventually made famous by Princess Di, Silvia Hacherman (Mimsy Farmer, Four Flies on Grey Velvet) is married to her work in a science lab. Her cad of a boyfriend, Roberto (Maurizio Bonuglia, Foxtrap), wishes she would be less serious and play more tennis. He just doesn’t understand Silvia has a lot on her mind, not the least of which is The Perfume of the Lady in Black.

While at Roberto’s pad, Silvia first glimpses the image in a mirror: her late mother spraying the smell-good. As writer/director Francesco Barilli’s first feature progresses, and our heroine hallucinates, we slowly piece together the acts of awfulness that befell her mom when Silvia was a child — acts that may extend to Silvia herself.

perfumelady1They aren’t pleasant; revisiting them unhinges Silvia, sending her into a spiral of madness and regression. As this happens, Barilli gives his film a Rosemary’s Baby vibe, made all the more distinct by its apartment-building setting and the strange tenants who inhabit its rooms.

But Perfume is not really a horror film, at least not until the very end. It’s also not a giallo, despite that vague title, the occasional saturated color gel and the fate of Barilli’s characters. The path he takes to get there is a bit too bumpy for narrative’s sake; how much you’re willing to forgive its leaps may correspond directly to your overall enjoyment. There’s no denying this Lady has style; I just wish she made a little more sense, too. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960)

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playgirlsvampireBearing more than a passing resemblance to the Mickey-Hargitay-goes-bonkers B-fave Bloody Pit of Horror, Piero Regnoli’s Italian erotic-horror number The Playgirls and the Vampire plunks five easy-on-the-eyes dancers and their Norman Fell-esque chaperone in a spooky castle during inclement weather.

The castle’s host, Count Gabor Kernassy (Walter Brandy, Island of Lost Girls), is all too willing to have these lovelies shack up at his place for the night, but warns them not to leave their rooms under any circumstances. Doing as women do, however, one ignores this piece of advice and gets bitten by a vampire. The next night, she’s already become an official member of the undead, sporting sharp new teeth as she walks around in her birthday suit.

playgirlsvampire1With not much to do, the four remaining gals practice their dance steps, but each in a different style, reminding one of that rehearsal scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas. One decides to break out into an impromptu striptease. You’d think their goofball manager might take advantage of his position, but he’s perfectly happy sleeping next to a girlie magazine that he props up on a pillow and calls “Sweetheart.”

In the underground-catacombs climax, Count Kernassy and the vampire duke it out, with the latter becoming impaled on a conveniently wall-mounted spear. Via the magic of cheap animation, he degenerates into a skeleton — easily Playgirls‘ coolest scene. Only a smidgen less talk and a helping more of nekkid vampire chicks could make this obscure, black-and-white tale more fun than it already is. —Rod Lott

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Action

The Driver (1978)

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thedriverWhy isn’t The Driver mentioned in the same breath as Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon and other bona fide ’70s crime classics? It’s excellent and — sorry, Warriors fans — easily Walter Hill’s personal best as writer/director.

Never a great actor, Ryan O’Neal (Barry Lyndon) also is atop his game here because he has so little to say. With a stoic face and shirt unbuttoned to his chest, he plays a professional getaway driver, perhaps the finest for hire on the West Coast. We see why almost immediately, as an underground casino heist gives way to an incredible nighttime chase through the streets, alleyways and parking garages of L.A.

thedriver1At the scene, a woman (Isabelle Adjani, Ishtar) clearly sees the wheelman’s face, yet lies to the corrupt police detective (a scary Bruce Dern, Silent Running) about it. This so infuriates the cop that he plots a big-score bank robbery specifically to “catch the cowboy that’s never been caught.”

Moody, confident and quiet until tires squeal and sirens blare, The Driver is awash in so much atmosphere that lots were left over for others to soak up, most notably Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, the 2011 film whose taut opening pursuit in particular pays transparent homage. Until the end, I hadn’t noticed that Hill failed to give his characters actual names — they’re credited with crime-fic descriptors like “The Player” and “Exchange Man” — which only goes to show how engrossing this undervalued gem is. —Rod Lott

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