cinema history class: lady terminator

Session: Babes with Bodies that Kill, Week 4
Movie: Lady Terminator (1989)
Directed by Jalil Jackson

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
An American anthropologist, possessed by the spirit of the South Sea Queen, is rampaging through Jakarta* to exact the Queen's revenge for an ancient insult.  Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Here's an example where some understanding of context matters. A central plot point at the beginning of the movie involves a snake that lives in the South Sea Queen's vagina. Later, it is living in the American anthropologist's vagina, and its entrance (through the cloth of bikini bottom, which is -- frankly -- a detail that I just can't understand) is what signals the possession. But while that is important as set up, it quickly fades to background. The rest of the movies is essentially a story of a rampaging invulnerable woman shooting things up while the heroes try to stop her. After watching it, I was wondering why they threw in the vaginasnake angle, since they surely could have come up with an alternate origin story to explain the rampaging woman. Keith's explanation that that's part of the local mythology helped me to understand what otherwise seemed like an unnecessarily prurient aspect of the film.

With that out of the way, this is kind of an obvious (though somewhat convoluted) movie. If you like car chases (and car explosions), gunfights, and some humorous drunken stupidity, then this could be the movie for you. You have to check your brain at the door, but if you're willing to overlook some issues of logic and some head-scratching WTF moments, it can be enjoyable.

But, as much as this movie is a silly and trashy good time, when it comes down to it it's just another snake-in-the-vagina movie.

Ratings:

Me: 7
Dave: 9
Ethan: 6
Joe: 9.5
Sean: 4 out of 4

*Truthfully, I don't know if it was Jakarta. But it was a large city, and the movie is Indonesian, so I'm assuming Jakarta.

happy zmedsday!! (lxiii)

pietrusza on the year of six presidents

Growing up, I was never a history buff. I'm still not. But with Ethan getting more and more into history -- especially when it deals with interesting personalities, I've found myself going with him to talks by biographers, historians and pundits. The latest -- that is, the latest that I attended with him -- was up in Plymouth Notch, Vermont (where Calvin Coolidge was born, sworn in as President and buried).

David Pietrusza was talking about the 1920 election, which he wrote about in his 2008 book, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents.* Ethan and I had seen him talk about the subject before -- a month or so ago we caught the talk in Northampton, Massachusetts. I'm not sure what I can say to recommend the talk enough -- especially since you can watch the video (that's me asking a couple questions at about the 51 minute mark). But, if actions speak louder than words, keep in mind that, having already heard him Pietrusza talk on the subject, Ethan and I drove four hours each way to hear it again.

*The six presidents referred to in the title (as Pietrusza explains) are Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Watch the talk (or read the book) to understand why.

cinema history class: deadly weapons

Session: Babes with Bodies that Kill, Week 3
Movie: Deadly Weapons (1974)
Directed by Doris Wishman

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Administrative Detail:
My apologies, but I could not find the trailer for Deadly Weapons on Youtube. It's on imdb if you want to see it here.

Plot:
After mobsters kill her boyfriend, Crystal hunts them down and kills them with her breasts. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

I used to have a friend who was a breast man. He loved large breasts. The larger, the better. The classic anecdote about him is that he once called a mutual friend in the middle of the night and asked him if he could imagine breasts being too big. The friend, half asleep, responded that, yes, he it could be possible for them to be so big that they are no longer attractive or even practical. "That," came the response, "is where you and I are different." He then hung up. I couldn't help but think of that anecdote as we watched Deadly Weapons, a movie that was little more than a vehicle to show off Chesty Morgan's (billed as Zsa Zsa)  freakishly large chest.*

This was an ugly movie. The cinematography was ugly, the people in it were ugly.** Even the sound was ugly. There was a little bass riff that kept playing to move things along. At first I kind of enjoyed it. But they went back to it too many times, and I just got sick of it.

That said, I should note in the movie's favor that there is a plot and even a twist ending. So from that standpoint, it's OK. But I just found it painful to watch.

Ratings:

Me: 4.5
Dave: 9.1
Ethan: 4
Joe: 9.8
Sean: 0 out of 4

*FWIW, it's all natural
**Actually, Harry Reems (billed as Harry Reemes) was slim and attractive if you're into hairy-chested men with mustaches. I'm not really, but credit where due.

cinema history class: invasion of the bee girls

Session: Babes with Bodies that Kill, Week 2
Movie: Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)
Directed by Denis Sanders

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Men are being fucked to death, and the authorities want it to stop. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

Invasion started off very strong. I enjoyed the way it began with short teasers alternating with bits of credits. It created some real anticipation and the promise of an exciting movie. A few minutes in, and I was in the zone. And it continued strong for a while, but somewhere along the way it lost its momentum. Even after that, there were still some exciting bits. But it never quite reestablished itself. So in the end it wasn't quite the movie that it started out being.

I did particularly like the way the script slowly introduces us to the concept that the killers have some kind of bee-related nature. The first time it's in the form of sound effects. As one victim is being killed, we hear a swarm of bees. Later, we see men through the bee women's compound eyes. Next up we see what their eyes look like. Eventually we see the process of bee-ification. And that's one of the highlights of the film.

Bottom line, I enjoyed this, but not as much as I thought it would when it started. And it was good enough to make me wish it were better.

Ratings:

Me: 6.5
Dave: 9.4
Ethan: 6
Joe: 10
Sean: 1 out of 4

happy zmedsday!! (lxii)

happy tunesday! ("how do you do" by mouth and macneal)

I'd never heard of Mouth and MacNeal until last Saturday night. They're kind of interesting in a 1970's way. And they are quite a contrast.

cinema history class: the naked witch

Session: Babes with Bodies that Kill, Week 1
Movie: The Naked Witch (1961)
Directed by Larry Buchanan & Claude Alexander

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Researching his thesis about local superstitions and folklore, a college student digs up and frees a witch who then goes skinny-dipping. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

This had a reasonably good, though arguably cliche, storyline. And it was reasonably coherent. But everything about the production betrayed its cheapness.

For starters, it was very short -- under an hour. And within that hour, there was a lot of filler. It started with several minutes of narration with the camera scanning over a Bosch-like painting of demons and witches. I'd say the extended skinny-dipping sequence was filler but if the main goal of the movie was to show nudity then, well, that sequence should have been longer. Of course, if you're watching this movie for nudity, you're gonna be disappointed. Maybe in 1961 (or 1964, which is when it hit theaters), T&A was harder to come by. The background music was very hit and miss; Sometimes it was spot on, but other times it made it sound like we watching in an ice-skating rink.

I was annoyed by the overuse of narration instead of dialogue. Keith explained that that was a money-saving maneuver. I mean, we're talking about a movie with an $8,000 budget. Even 60 years ago, that was very little.

We did discuss that there were little things that could have made the film much better without costing a lot. For example, it's never really explained why the student (he's never actually given a name) digs the witch up. They could have added some pantomime to indicate that, looking at her grave, he was overcome by some unseen mind-control (presumably from the witch herself). He looks at the grave, then turns away. Then he pauses and turns back. Then away. Then back at the grave he falls to his knees and starts digging. That would have made the whole sequence better. But they never did pay me to help write it, so...

I ended up being of a mixed mind. I really wanted to like this more than I did. And I wanted to pan it more than it deserved. In the end I gave it a kind of middling rating.

Ratings:

Me: 6
Dave: 9.2
Ethan: 3

democratic candidates 2020

UPDATED: I corrected a typo. Originally, the paragragph on Bloomberg said "Bernie" instead of "Bloomberg."

As the political season gets underway, I figure it's time for me to give my in-depth rundown of the men and women fighting for the Democratic nomination. Rather than try to cover all 4,581 of these candidates, I'll limit myself to the six who have something approaching a realistic chance of getting the nomination.

Joe Biden
The interesting thing about Joe Biden is that you can build his last name up from a one-letter word using the following rules:
1) start with a one letter word (it has to be a real English word, which means either "a" or "i";
2) add a letter either at the beginning of or at the end of the word you have, creating either a legitimate Scrabble word or the candidate's name;
3) If step 2 gave you the candidate's name, you're done. Otherwise, repeat step 2.

In the case of Biden, the successive words are: i, id, bid, bide, biden.

There have been five presidents whose names can be built up like that, none of whom were twentieth-century presidents. I also note that I am including Obama in that list, which depends on using the word "bama," which seems to be an insulting slang term for an unsophisticated hick -- derived from "Alabama." I doubt that "bama" is in the Scrabble dictionary, but I'm relying on dictionary.com.

Michael Bloomberg
If Bloomberg gets the nomination and wins, he would, at the moment he becomes President, be the oldest president ever -- older than Reagan when he left office. Which also means that, if he gets the nomination, he and Trump will be the two oldest candidates ever.  I guess that's also true of Biden, though I didn't mention it. See above.

Pete Buttigieg
If Buttigieg gets the nomination, then this will be the first time that the two major party candidates each have last names that contain informal terms for a person's backside. So the jokes will be writing themselves. If Buttigieg gets the nomination and wins he will be the youngest president ever. Also, he'd be the first president whose last name has multiple occurrences of three different letters.

Amy Klobuchar
If Klobuchar gets the nomination and wins, then we'd have a president named Amy before we have one named Marc. This is only relevant to me because my sister's name is Amy. I blogged about that a while ago. See here.

Bernie Sanders
See Bloomberg, only older.

Elizabeth Warren
If Warren gets the nomination, she'd be the second woman heading a major party ticket. And if she wins, she'd be the first woman President. I guess that's also true of Klobuchar, though I didn't mention it. See above. Also, Warren would be 71 years old -- the second-oldest major party candidate to ever seek a first term. The oldest was John McCain who was 72 on election day, 2008. And if she wins, she'll be the oldest to assume office.   I guess that's also true of Biden, though I didn't mention it. See above. It's also true of Bloomberg and Sanders and I didn't mention it explicitly. But it's kind of implicit in what I did say about him.

Policy
I have my own opinions about the candidates, their policy positions, suitability for office and which ones are better and which ones are worse. But I'm not interested in getting into all that on the intertubes. Try reading their website or watching debates. Or check out whatever media you trust.

cinema history class: my name is nobody

Session: Bring Your Own Spaghetti Western, Week 4
Movie: My Name Is Nobody (1973)
Directed by Tonino Valerii

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
An old gunslinger wants to retire, but a youngster wants him to go out on top. Hilarity ensues.

Administrative Notes:
It has become a class tradition to do a month of Spaghetti Westerns (or Spaghetti Western-related films) every January. It's a change of pace -- a palate-cleanser, as Keith puts it. This year, because several of us have suggested specific SpagWests, Keith decided to let us each pick one for this month's session. This week was Sean's pick.

Reaction:

Director Tonino Valerii did a good job of creating an homage to the best of Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. It had the breadth and grandeur of those earlier films, and the music of Ennio Morricone. This was just beautiful. It was very much an homage to Leone's films -- which brings it full circle since Leone produced it.

But, while all that's true, it's important to point out that this was also a bit of a parody, with strong comedic elements. And that's the only thing that bothered me about this -- the humor was a little too much at times. There were some points where it descended into Three Stooges territory. Most of the time, the humor wasn't particularly overbearing, but there were moments...

The story itself is a strong one, kind of a variation of the whole "fastest gunman" theme. Arguably combined with a story about an obsessive fan. And Henry Fonda's narration at the end really ties the whole thing together well. 

Ratings:

Me: 9.25
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8
Joe: 10
Keith: 9.5
Sean: 4 out of 4