St. Ives (1976)

He's clean. He's mean. He's the go-between.

St. Ives

For the second movie of Charles Bronson Week, I present to you J. Lee Thompson's 1976 mystery thriller, St. Ives.  This film is actually the first of nine eventual collaborations between Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson, and it disappointed me.

The film itself is pretty damn good and I'll get to that in a bit, but look at that poster.  I was expecting a sophisticated, debonair Bronson to be sipping scotch and smoking a pipe throughout the movie.  Sure, he's certainly a suave gentleman and he downs the occasional whisky and soda, but I didn't see one pipe in the whole damn movie!  That's just false advertising.

Luckily back in the early 1970s the Japanese got a hold of Bronson for a series of commercials for Mandom grooming products, which include a pipe smoking Bronson and a certain Japanese aesthetic. 

Anyway, back to the film.  Raymond St. Ives (Bronson) is a former crime reporter with a sordid past and a love for gambling.  And when he's not losing his money on football games or working on his failing novel, he does favors for wealthy, disreputable types.  An affluent and aging crime boss (John Houseman) had some personal diaries stolen and hires St. Ives to act the bagman and deliver $100,000 to the thieves in exchange for these personal ledgers.  Things don't go as planned.  When St. Ives arrives at the meeting place, a laundromat, he finds his contact dead and spinning in one of the dryers.  St. Ives is drawn into the mystery.  Well, first he's arrested on suspicion of murder, released and then drawn into the mystery of the stolen diaries.  He takes on the challenge of tracking down these missing books and solving the series of murders surrounding them.

"...And that was the second time I got crabs."

Once again, Jeff Goldblum makes an appearance in a Bronson film as an inept thug, although this time he doesn't get to rape anybody like he did in Death Wish.  In fact, this film doesn't have any sexual assaults at all which is strange for a Bronson film. Future Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund also makes an appearance as Jeff Goldblum's equally incompetent cohort.

This movie has the feel of an old 1930s crime drama plopped down in the 1970s.  I was expecting more of a pipe smoking Harry Callahan character but Bronson gives us something different - a more contained and intellectual smart-ass.  For me it works.  I found it to be a pleasant change from his typical assassin/vigilante characters.  The unraveling of the mystery and the sarcastic coolness of Bronson are the reasons to watch St. Ives.  If you're looking for nonstop vigilante action, you should look elsewhere.

Violence Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 1 out of 5

Get the Charles Bronson Double Feature: Telefon / St. Ives 
at TLACult.com

Death Wish II (1982)

First His Wife. Now His Daughter. It's Time To Even The Score!

Death Wish II

Welcome to Charles Bronson Week.  He was in something like 80 movies so I'll try to cover at least a few of them this week.  The first is Death Wish II.

In the original Death Wish,  New York architect and "bleeding heart liberal" Paul Kersey (Bronson) is at work when a group of thugs including Jeff Goldblum breaks into his home, rapes his daughter and kills his wife.  Kersey takes it upon himself to rid the streets of these scumbags with a nickel-plated .32 Colt revolver, and becomes a hero of the people of New York.  Because the crime rate was so drastically reduced and because the people would be in an uproar if Kersey was killed or arrested, the police let him go under the condition that he leaves New York permanently.

Death Wish II is completely different.  It takes place in Los Angeles and this time when thugs, including Laurence Fishburne, break into Kersey's home, his maid gets raped and killed and his daughter gets kidnapped... and then also gets raped, and because she is insane from the trauma of being raped in the original Death Wish , she runs through a window and impales herself on a fence.

"No!  This jacket is for Members Only!"

Paul Kersey becomes the leathery face of vengeance once again.  He rents a room in a crappy downtown hotel and walks the streets at night hunting down those drug-addled rapists who killed his maid and daughter and any other punks who get in his way.

News of the Los Angeles vigilante reaches New York and the police there know that Paul Kersey is up to his old tricks.  They also know that if he's caught by the LAPD, it will come to light that the NYPD knew of Kersey, had him in custody and let him go when he was killing bad guys in New York.  To cover their asses they send a detective to stop him.  Now Kersey is both the hunter and the hunted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again (or write it in this case), every Charles Bronson movie is a good one just because Bronson is in it, and Death Wish II is no exception.  He was a man among men.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 3 or maybe a 3.5 out of 5

Get Death Wish 2 at TLACult.com

Go for it, Jim!

Miami Connection

A Zoltan Review: Monsturd (2003)

This movie is exactly what you think it is... a poop monster flick.

It was produced on a budget of around $3,000 and sports an all amateur cast.  The filmmakers used every one of their friends and relatives to get this done.  With that said, I must admit that I kind of liked it.  This movie held my attention better than some real Hollywood blockbusters (this year's Sucker Punch springs to mind).

When an escaped serial killer collides with an industrial dump site in the sewers the perfect shit storm is achieved.  A heinous abomination is created in the form of a large bipedal stool monster.  It wreaks havoc on the citizens of Butte County and it is up to the alcoholic sheriff and his FBI love interest to save the day.  The feces hunt culminates in a furious battle at a local chili cook-off.

The production company, 4321 Films, managed to scrape together $500,000 for the sequel.  Wow.  Set at the Butte County Institute for Special Education, Retardead (2008), brings back some of the cast and characters from Monsturd in a story centred around evil experiments performed on some of the students.  They are transformed into flesh craving zombie savants.

If you are thinking of perhaps checking these films out, I would recommend watching them at the end of your night after you are extremely hammered from guzzling blackberry brandy and it is almost pass-out time.

Movie rating 2.5/5

Also, here is the trailer for a somewhat related film, Rectuma (2004).  Sweet mother of god...

Rent Monsturd from GreenCine

Two Boobies Are Not Enough.

I'm going to attempt to explain the Beasts in Human Skin rating system.  It's an attempt because usually it's just a judgement call, but there is some rhyme and/or reason to it.  People have commented that a movie wasn't worth watching because the Booby Rating was only a 3 out of 5.  Well, according to my system that's a lot of boobies so let me explain...

First, the Violence Rating.  This is entirely a judgement call.  I compare every movie to an action film like the 1977 (or 1978 depending on who you talk to) version of Inglorious Bastards.  It has a lot of action and deaths and explosions, but not a lot of blood and gore and would score a 3 out of 5.  So basically it comes down to this:

Violence Rating:
0.5 - 2.5:  Not much going on, maybe an occasional death and a little blood.
3:  Intense action movie violence or substantial blood
3.5:  We are entering exploitation movie territory
4 or 4.5:  Blood covers the streets and and falls from the heavens 
5:  Stomach churning gore

Now the Booby Rating is a little more scientific.

Booby Rating:
0.5 or 1:  No nudity, maybe some cleavage or a bikini here and there
1.5:  Lots of cleavage or bikinis or even some transparent clothing but still no boobies
2:  Boobies make an appearance but in a nonsexual way like skinny dipping or something
2.5:  There is at least one substantial sex scene and other booby sightings
3:  Several sex scenes and significant boobage
3.5:  Lots of sex, nudity and boobies but not so many boobies that I tire of seeing them
4 or 4.5:  There is so much nudity and so many boobies that it becomes normative. People are naked all the time.  Usually Pinky Violence, Pinku Eiga and some Gialli.
5:  Sexploitation
5+:  Hardcore scenes are shown.  An example would be Thriller: A Cruel Picture.

I also throw in a pipe smoking (the tobacco kind) rating if it's featured in a film because it's a hobby of mine, but nobody really cares about that.

So, there is the rating system.  I may modify it a little in the future, but not too much.  I hope this gives you guys and gals a better idea of what to expect when watching these films.  Later!

Snake Woman's Curse (1968)

From the director of Jigoku comes a perverse classic of Japanese horror!

Snake Woman's Curse

I know that many visitors to this site (not that there are that many visitors) like the campy or so-bad-they're-good movies that I write about here.  Obviously I like those movies too, but Nobuo Nakagawa's Snake Woman's Curse or Kaidan hebi-onna is not one of those films.  It's not cheesy in any way.  It's just a really good movie.  It's a tale of supernatural horror, a Japanese ghost story about karmic retribution and it features one of my favorite ladies from the pinky violence films, Yukie Kagawa.

During the modernization of Japan during the Meiji Restoration, a traditional farmer is indebted to a wealthy, self-centered (which is not a good thing in a Buddhist inspired ghost story) landowner.  Unable to pay off his debt, the old farmer works himself to the point of exhaustion, has a heart attack and dies.  His wife and daughter are then forced into the service and household of this dickish landowner and his even more dickish son.

The two women are treated as slaves in this new arrangement and the mother faces physical abuse by the landlord while the daughter faces the sexual advances of his son.  A snake is discovered in the house on a day that a special visitor is expected to arrive.  This is a bad omen and it must be killed.  The mother tries to save the snake's life and is thrown to the ground for her troubles.  She  hits her head and later dies from her injuries.

The daughter is tricked into walking alone along a deserted road where she is chased down and raped by the landlord's son.  The sexual assaults continue back at the estate and when she can take no more, she takes her own life.  Then the haunting starts.  The deceased members of the poor farming family cause the members of the wealthy, dickish family to hallucinate and eventually go insane.

Snake Woman's Curse is a beautiful, haunting, atmospheric film.  Most of the violence is done off camera and is left to the viewer's imagination, which I liked, and one genuinely feels compassion for these poor Japanese farmers who suffer at the hands of a "higher class" of people.  I know it won't appeal to everyone, but I think it's an excellent film.

Violence Rating:  2 out of 5
Booby Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Buy Snake Woman's Curse at TLACult.com


 
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Xtro (1983)

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