Shameless Self Expression

Innocent young Eugenie (Marie Liljedahl) has been eager to spend time with Marianne Saint-Ange (Maria Rohm) after they met at a party. Marianne is just as eager to spend time with Eugenie, it seems. Marianne is lover to Eugenie’s father (Franco regular Paul Muller), and asks for him to arrange for Eugenie to stay on her private island abode for the weekend. Dad reluctantly agrees but only after Marianne promises not to be too harsh on the girl. Whatever that means. Actually, since Marianne probably had her fingers crossed behind her back, what it means is that she and her creepy stepbrother   Mirvel (Jack Taylor) are going to spend the weekend corrupting the young girl through alcohol, drugs, and sexual shenanigans inspired by the Marquis de Sade. Christopher Lee plays the film’s narrator, who enters the story proper by the climax, along with a cameo by Jesus Franco himself in roles you’ll have to see the film to understand (And even then you might struggle with the specifics. It...

Damon Wayans plays an undercover cop whose cover is blown during a botched drug deal, seriously pissing off Adam Sandler, a drug runner and carjacker who works for a drug lord (James Caan) who is also a car dealer. Wayans had been using small-time Sandler as a way to get to the real target, Caan. Sandler, who had come to see Wayans as a trusted friend is pissed, accidentally shooting Wayans with a non-fatal shot to the head and escaping before he can be arrested. The shot was apparently accidental, but Wayans doesn’t believe that for a second. Several months of physical therapy and a metal plate in his cranium later, Wayans is back on the job and forced to deal with Sandler, who now agrees to turn state’s evidence and will only go into Wayans’ protected custody specifically. Needless to say Wayans isn’t happy about it, and he thinks Sandler is looking for revenge (and vice versa, really), but they’re gonna need each other to survive, as it appears Caan has sent some goons after San...

John Wayne plays the title reformed cattle baron who now stands up for the little guy and takes on a bastardly (which I didn’t even know was a word, I was only using it kiddingly, but MS Word seems to think it is a word, so it must be true!) rival Murphy, played by Forrest Tucker, who has just moved to Lincoln and set on taking over by any means necessary. Heck, Mr. Moneybags Tucker has even bought off local Sheriff Brady (Bruce Cabot). Chisum’s allies include a rather effete (and pacifist) Englishman, Tunstall (Patric Knowles), who is harbouring a young ruffian nicknamed Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel), attempting to educate the young outlaw (AKA William H. Bonney) and set him on a righteous path. Andrew Prine plays virtuous lawyer Alex McSween, who also aligns himself with Chisum. Ben Johnson is excellent as Chisum’s right-hand man and foreman, Pepper, and there’s also an (underdeveloped) appearance by Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), here seen as a bit of a drifter who competes with B...

We begin with a going away party for Tokyo-bound (Ominous Monster Movie sign, No.1) NY exec Michael Stahl-David, filmed (poorly) by his friend Hud (T.J. Miller), on Stahl-David’s brother’s (Mike Vogel) hand-held camera. An arrival by his ex-girlfriend and her new beau is soon followed by an even bigger disaster- an apparent earthquake. But when the partygoers venture outside, what they find is even more horrific- the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty. Oh, and a giant monster. Can’t forget the giant monster. Or it’s equally nasty offspring, for that matter.   Terrible 2008 mixture of “REC” , “The Blair Witch Project” , and “Godzilla” , wants to be an ultra-realistic (well, y’know...), hand-held, monster movie, but falls completely flat thanks mostly to the incompetence of director Matt Reeves, an associate of the film’s producer J.J. Abrams (having directed for Abrams on “Felicity” ) This was his feature film debut, and Reeves would later redeem himself somewhat wi...

SS guy Wallenberg (Helmut Berger) uses brothel owner Madam Kitty (Ingrid Thulin) and her girls (who aren’t really her girls, they are women recruited and trained by the SS) to help spy on his officers in the hopes of eradicating any traitors with loose lips. He also moves them to a specially organised brothel, and has the brothel bugged without client nor sex worker’s knowledge. Teresa Ann Savoy plays one such hooker who falls for a soldier (John Steiner), whilst John Ireland turns up as an Ex-pat American frequenter of Kitty’s place.   Before collaborating with Bob Guccione and Gore Vidal on the infamous “Caligula” , Tinto Brass unleashed this 1976 forerunner to the ‘Nazisploitation’ sub-genre of exploitation cinema. Scripted by the trio of Ennio De Concini, Maria Pia Fusco, and Brass, it’s just short of being worth a recommendation from me. It’s watchable as a curio, not bad as sexploitation, but clearly destined to have a very, very small audience.   It’s no...

Five students from different parts of the high school social spectrum are brought together to suffer weekend detention one one Saturday. Supervised in the library by arrogant and humourless Mr. Vernon (Paul Gleason), they are; Claire (Molly Ringwald) the popular ‘Princess’, John Bender (Judd Nelson) the snarky and antagonising delinquent ‘Criminal’, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) the soft-spoken ‘Brain’, Andrew (Emilio Estevez) ‘The Jock’, and Allison (Ally Sheedy), the practically invisible ‘basket case’. Although they are completely different kids who before this Saturday would feel they had absolutely nothing in common, they come to learn that this is not quite the case. John Kapelos plays the janitor, Ron Dean briefly appears as Andrew’s manly father. There has existed a critical snobbery towards 80s American cinema, especially in the comedy or teen movie genres. Just look at the old guard getting their noses out of joint at the John Hughes retrospective segment at the Oscars...