Gods of the Deep

Sometimes I look forward to watching a movie and sometimes I toss a dart and hope I hit something good. This week's dart hit:

Gods of the Deep (2023).

To be fair, I don't actually know if 2023 is correct. IMDB says it is, but Letterboxd says 2024.

This is a Lovecraftian movie, as in based on the Cthulhu Mythos started by H. P. Lovecraft. In fact it wears it on the sleeve, and dove head first in the Mythos pool. I wish they would have resisted the temptation to call the company Pickman, but this is something a lot of Mythos movies do. I don't know if it is a loving homage or a way to try to look clever, but movies like Gods of the Deep are not subtle in anything they do.

A deep sea probe finds a strange hole at the bottom of the ocean between Antarctica and South America. This area is deeper than the Challenger Deep and the hole is clearly not natural. The owners of the probe, the Pickman Corporation, as in Lovecraft's story Pickman's Model (1927). They contact Doctor Jim Peters (Derek Nelson), an eminent astrobiologist at Miskatonic University to help go down there. The Pickman Corp. has developed a new high tech sub that can handle the incredible pressures. A small team goes down there and things get... squiggly.

Gods of the Deep is a British horror/sci-fi movie with a low budget. I couldn't find how low, but the cutting edge submarine is visibly built from corrugated roofing, PVC piping, thin acrylic and all the hazard tape you could ever want. That's not to say all the effects are bad, they aren't. In fact some are actually good, just as some are pretty bad. To their credit, they stayed within what they could portray in one fashion or another. Not all low budget movies do that.

What keeps Gods of the Deep from being a failure are the actors. They all do a hell of a job selling the entire thing. You believe that they see what they are seeing no matter how it looks. What is funny is that I could swear I have seen four members of the main cast in other movies, but according to IMDB, I haven't seen them in anything. Spooky...

So, do I recommend this movie? To Mythos fans I do. Everyone else should probably find something else to watch. These fans should also have a certain love for cheese or they won't have a good time. Gods of the Deep should be a failure, but for the actors and the fact that they did the best they could. They tried hard and somehow pulled off a win. Gods of the Deep is not a good movie, but it isn't a bad one either. I had a good time, but I doubt I'll watch it more than the once.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

What Have They Done?

This week I took a shot in the dark and watched:

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974)

Co-written and directed by Massimo Dallamano, this movie is labeled as a Giallo and Poliziotteschi combination. Personally I think the Giallo part is fairly minimal, and only really comes to play with a killer in black biker leathers, but technically the terminology stands.

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? opens with the police finding a young girl that has hanged herself. What puzzles the police is that she is completely naked. Inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) is on the case together with assistant district attorney Stori (Giovanna Ralli). Soon they discover a sordid prostitution ring that pimps out teenaged school girls to rich old men. The biker in black runs around with a meat cleaver killing, and little by little, the case gets darker and more dangerous until certain unpleasant realities leads to a grim ending.

The subject matter is of course really unpleasant, but the movie handles it well. There is nothing seductive about any of it, not even the brief scenes of nudity that are scattered around the film. Speaking of nudity, the hanged body in the beginning is clearly a puppet, and a badly made one at that. I thought at first that they went with a prop to spare the characters actress, but she shows up in a flashback scene completely nude anyway, so I don't get the bad prop. There are many ways of faking a hanging without endangering the actor.

The director, Dallamano, has twelve directing credits on IMDB and 45 cinematographer credits so it is clear where his expertise lay. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with his direction, but that the entire movie has the look of someone who really knows and cares about cinematography. There are so many great scenes in What Have They Done To Your Daughters? that it becomes pointless to try listing them.

The actors are all really good, being mostly veterans. They know what they're doing and I have zero complaints on that score. The score is fine, and the effects are excellent. Speaking of effects, there isn't all that much gore here, but when it shows up it is There with a capital T. Because the blood is used sparingly, it becomes more shocking, which is nice.

What I found most enjoyable about What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is that I couldn't predict this movie at all. At this point I have seen a lot of both Gialli and Poliziotteschi movies and they, like so many genres, tend towards certain patterns. What Have They Done To Your Daughters? doesn't outright break the rules, but it circumvents a few of them very nicely. What is also really nice is that the villains, the people running the teens, make mistakes. They screw up and that is a refreshing experience. The tendency is to portray the people running conspiracies as infallible. Not so here, and on top of that, the cops are very competent.

So, do I recommend this movie? Oh yes, definitely! Despite the vile subject matter, What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is a top notch thriller that doesn't shy away from the nastiness but also doesn't glorify it. Thriller fans of all kinds should have a good time here, not just Gialli lovers. The movie hints at being based on a true story or at least based on similar events in real life. I don't know about that, but it does add an extra layer of grime on top of the existing slime.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

It's not even the 13th precinct.

I decided to knock another movie off the “I'll watch it some day” list, and watched:

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Written and directed by John Carpenter, Assault on Precinct 13 is one of those movies that have been floating around in my periphery for decades. It has always been mentioned with a certain reverence like, “it's alright, but it's no Assault on Precinct 13”... At least that is the impression I had about the movie.

The movie opens with a group of gangers being gunned down by the LAPD in South Central. We learn that this gang, a mysterious multi-ethnic gang called Street Thunder has stolen a cache of weapons that include assault rifles and suppressors. The leaders of Street Thunder swear a bloody vendetta against the police and (for some reason) the citizens of LA.

We meet Highway Patrol lieutenant Ethan Bishop, who is asked to run the last night shift for a precinct that is moving. It's the final night and everything should be quiet. Suddenly a prison transport bus arrives as one prisoner is very ill, and that is when a man hysterical with fear runs into the station. He is being chased by Street Thunder and it becomes a desperate fight for survival until help can arrive, if it can arrive.

Assault on Precinct 13 is incredibly solid, and I think it's because there was one person at the helm, not a room full of people who all wanted their ideas to shine. The movie is perfectly balanced and if anything would have knocked that balance askew, the movie would have failed miserably. As it is, it is a tense and fun movie. It is competently shot, but it is the actors and the dialogue that really shines. They have great chemistry and it all works so well.

If you are the kind of movie watcher that wants everything explained, then I'm sorry but you're going to be disappointed. What I wrote about the gang is pretty much all you get to know. A fun fact is that no ganger says a single word. Carpenter has admitted that one of his influences for Assault on Precinct 13 was Night of the Living Dead (1968) and he wanted the Street Thunder thugs to have a somewhat zombie like style.

When the movie was released in the US it received a lukewarm reception, but it got an incredibly warm reception in the UK, which spurred a popular reception in the rest of the world, leading the US critics to have to revisit their critique. The UK distributor was called Michael Myers, and a grateful Carpenter wanted to do something nice for him, so he used the name in Halloween.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes. It is a solid action/thriller that despite all the shooting doesn't dwell too much on the killings. Well except for one scene... It's solid and the actors really knock it out of the park. It's not one of Carpenters best but it is good enough. I'm glad I watched it, and I might see it again one day.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!

 

Having the flu is not fun...

Okay, so I've been sick for the better part of the week, so I haven't been able to think coherently let alone watch anything or come up with some original content for this blog.

So to give my poor head a break I give you a documentary about people living under Las Vegas. Enjoy that and I'll see you next week!   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHbdLEAeJ8E

 

 

Kill List

I can't remember where I learned of this movie, but I watched:

Kill List (2011).

Married couple Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring) are having problems. They are low on money and are fighting constantly. Jay has been out of work for a while, but when his old army buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) comes to dinner with his girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer), things might change. The kicker is that Jay and Gal are hitmen. They kill people for money and Gal has a client lined up who pays well. Then things start getting weirder and weirder.

A movie about a couple of professional killers is always going to be somewhat dark, but Kill List is something else. At first it seems almost too realistic, with Jay's and Shel's arguments, but as soon as he and Gal go about their business the tone changes and things get really weird. It goes from unpleasantly realistic to horror and you don't know when it did that.

Kill List is a “along for the ride” kind of movie. The destination isn't that important, and in fact I guessed the ending. Don't expect explanations or for anything to really make sense, as I said, it is all about the journey.

The actors are good, I have seen many of them in other roles, and the cinematography is nice. The director, Ben Wheatley, does a really excellent job capturing the bleakness of the urban sprawl. Everything seems cheap and unpleasant. Houses that should be nice seem tawdry and fake. It is all painted with a pale, grim and disturbing brush. You get the feeling that nothing and nowhere is safe. It is almost as if everything is fake, that every location is staged and what you see is just a backdrop. And in a sense that is true, it is a movie not a documentary, but the feeling works within the movie itself. Had they screwed that up, whether it was intentional or not, the movie would have been awful. They do pull it off though.

The sound is a mixed bag. Rather than music, it's sound. Droning sound that drills into your head and makes you uncomfortable. Perfect for a movie like this, but the actors have a tendency to mumble a bit and there were times where I couldn't understand what was being said. Not that you watch a movie like Kill List for the dialogue, good as it is.

A word about gore. Most of Kill List isn't that bloody, and you do expect a bit of splatter in a movie called Kill List after all, and there is quite a bit of blood from time to time. But there is one scene in particular that is very graphic, so be warned.

So, do I recommend this movie? To horror fans I do! Kill List is never going to be considered great, but is is good. You think you have it figured out and then it takes a turn, and then another turn until you're spiraling towards the end. As mentioned, I did guess the ending, but that didn't matter as the road there was good enough. Non horror fans should find something else to watch. I wish I could say more about Kill List, but that would spoil everything, and I refuse to do that.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

Past its prime?

I was in the mood for a classic, so I watched:

The Taking of Pelham OneTwo Three (1974).

Four heavily armed men, Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman) hijack a New York subway train and demand one million dollars in one hour, otherwise they execute one hostage per minute. Against them are Transit Authority Police Lieutenant Garber (Walter Matthau) and basically every cop in New York City.

This movie was adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Morton Freegood writing under the name John Godey. The name Pelham One Two Three means that the train left the Pelham station at 1.23 pm.

Apparently this movie is a huge classic, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 98% and a 7.6 on IMDB. It is counted as one of “those” movies that are always rated extremely highly, and I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a fine movie. The actors are excellent, the story is good and the cinematography works. Apparently filming was a nightmare due to the dust, the noise and the ever present threat of being electrocuted by the third rail. Yes, the power to the third rail was turned off, but no one wanted to trust that it was really turned off... The crew looked like coal miners at the end of each day. Serious film making in other words.

The problem is, at least for me, that the movie doesn't give you a chance to care about the victims. Sure, they are innocent, but the movie spends more time getting to know the hijackers, than anyone else. We also spend a lot of time with the rail managers and the Transit Authority police. If the movie was right then being a loud, angry and cantankerous man was essential for running a subway. There is a lot of angry yelling in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but I didn't care about the hostages one bit.

I guess that the movie was groundbreaking in '74, and there have been so many movies since that a lot of the magic has dissipated. I had a good time, sure, but I was also glad when the movie was over. I read famous critic Roger Ebert's review and the way he talked about The Taking of Pelham One Two Three makes me think my view is correct. It was a golden movie then, but it isn't now. Most of the surprises were pretty obvious, and the story was predictable enough once the film got going.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, I guess so. As I said, there isn't really anything majorly wrong with The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but like Bullitt (1968) the magic was there for those who saw it back in the day. It is absolutely worth watching, and I'm glad I did, just temper your expectations accordingly.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Informative Entertainment

When I play certain games like World of Warcraft, I like to have something on in the background to listen to if not directly watch. One such source is The Joe Rogan Experience.

I'm not a fan of Rogan as such, but he does love talking to interesting people and today I have two such episodes for you.

The first one is with rocker turned director Rob Zombie, in which they talk about horror movies, New York back in the day and much much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDLeJ5Rasuo

The second one is with British comedian Jimmy Carr. I have seen a lot of Jimmy's stand-up and he hosts a lot of comedy panel shows that I'm a fan of. This is the first time I've seen him just sit down and talk. They discuss comedy, history and a great deal more. Unfortunately I couldn't find the whole thing on Youtube so Dailymotion will have to do.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8oo4hj

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!