Shameless Self Expression

Vic Winner is riding in a stagecoach with four women (Rosanna Yanni, Haydee Politoff, Mirta Miller, and Ingrid Garbo) in Romania, when the coach loses a wheel. Before long, the stagecoach driver has had a fatal accident with the horses, too. Finding a property nearby, they are granted refuge by the genial Dr. Wendell Marlowe (Paul Naschy). However, Marlowe isn’t really Marlowe. He’s actually Count Dracula and his five guests are in for a helluva stay. My first experience with cult figure Paul Naschy, this 1973 horror outing from director/co-writer Javier Aguirre ( “Hunchback of the Morgue” , also with Naschy) is pretty underwhelming. It’s basically a Spanish attempt at a Hammer Dracula film, but nowhere near as good as what Hammer churned out on even their worst day. It’s got hot chicks (and plenty of early 70s boobage on display), a solid performance by Naschy playing an interesting character, and an interestingly sad and downbeat tone. What it doesn’t have is much of anythi...

Hitman with a terminal cancer diagnosis Ben Foster is sent on a job by boss Beau Bridges. Job goes to pot (he was clearly set up to fail), and somehow Foster ends up with a new driving companion, 19 year-old hooker Elle Fanning (and her 3 year-old sister), as he plots his next move. Robert Aramayo plays a young crim who tries to get Foster to come on board with him. The exchange doesn’t go well for the former. At all. Perhaps star Ben Foster really wanted to work with French actress Melanie Laurent, no matter what the project was. What possessed the latter to choose this adaptation of a Nic Pizzolatto (creator of the “True Detective” TV series, writer of the flat remake of “The Magnificent Seven” ) novel to be her English-language directorial debut is puzzling to me. Scripted by the author himself, it’s a disappointingly clichéd road movie with noir touches that goes nowhere new, and does so slowly. It’s pretty sluggish and boring to be honest. Foster and Elle Fanning are mu...

Andrew McCarthy is a somewhat self-conscious and quiet country boy attending a prep school on a scholarship. There he befriends his prankster roommate Rob Lowe, and gets up to all kinds of nonsense. Later McCarthy ends up meeting and romancing Jacqueline Bisset, a rich older woman he meets on a night out, trying to lose his virginity at Lowe’s urging. You can probably figure out where this all ends up. The various students are played by the likes of Alan Ruck, Casey Siemaszko, and a young John Cusack. Stuart Margolin and Cliff Robertson play humourless authority figures, the latter a rigid father figure to one of the students.   Virginia Madsen turns up briefly as one of McCarthy’s earlier (and unfortunately botched) attempts at sexual conquest. Entertaining mixture of “Animal House” and “The Graduate” from 1983 featuring a bunch of up-and-coming 80s talent and a well-utilised Jacqui Bisset. It’s lightweight, but likeable and well-done with perhaps Andrew McCarthy’s bes...