Frank Henenlotter directs Rick Hearst, Jennifer Lowry and Gordon MacDonald in this horror comedy where a young man conjoins with a charming parasite who gives him addictive hallucinations and just wants to eat the brains of others in return.
A cult gem from the video store glory years. Aylmer the parasite is one charming dude. Softly spoken, intelligent, confident of his upper hand. The violence he causes is manna for us practical FX gore hounds, the comedy he engenders is deftly silly, the trips he injects into your mind are memorable low rent fantasias. He’s the bargain basement punk answer to The Little Shop of Horror and Gremlins. I’ve never seen a Henenlotter production yet that doesn’t look like it would give you all the Hepatitises yet makes you laugh and repulse with unbridled glee. Shame no studio ever gambled and gave his red light district brand of nasty a budget he could have really fucked around with!
Paul Verhoeven directs Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan and Gina Gershon in this sex and showbiz romp where a troubled young drifter grafts and grifts her way to Las Vegas stardom.
I’ve never met anyone who has actually watched Showgirls and doesn’t love it. Is it everyone’s dirty little secret? It tries its best to be an unwatchable mess but it is too fast and sharp and gaudy and thrusting to do anything but enthral. A ridiculous potty mouthed pantomime.
Nomi (an OTT Berkley) is brash, disloyal, erratic. Her awful shock dialogue rarely fits the conversation, her actions are almost exclusively violent outbursts. She is not sympathetic, certainly not appealing. We follow her only as she is the star of this show… we are given no other options. And only in this 130 minutes long world. No one is chasing down Berkley’s next film. We only care as Nomi – the bi-polar thumper with rhinestone pasties for armour – threatens and thrusts her ways through dance numbers, stripshows and sexual encounters relinquishing the focus to no-one else. She exist solely as a showgirl in waiting, waiting to push her way onto centre stage. She cannot navigate the “real world” of even this highly artificial movie. Like a jiggling Larry David she’ll pour petrol onto a social bonfire, like a curvaceous Jake La Motta she’ll turn any business transaction or career opportunity into an chance to tell someone to go fuck themselves. All she can do off-stage is obliterate bridges and leave noses bloody. Self-sabotaging but focussed, vile but talented.
She can learn entire dance numbers moments after being shown the first steps, she will fuck her way to the top but no one other than the top is attractive. She’s not a whore, she owns herself, you have to be able to make her a queen if she is gonna give it up to you. Her attitude to her sexuality is complicated, muddled even. Listen, if you are sincere you bought a ticket to watch flesh and fucking, and if you are cold then you wanted ironic awfulness. So accept it, sex… it ain’t gonna happen sweetly in this world. Love conquers nothing.
On her march to power she loses sight of those who are loyal to her and the ones who at very least have the decency to exploit her to her face. Her Cheetah Club employers (sleazier than the Stardust but honest in what the deal is) are her adopted but rejected family, her roommate her unspoken lover. Not only does no man gets to own her, admirably she never succumbs to or seems at all interested in a studio mandated romantic interest. YOU! GO! GIRL!
You can’t get a fix on this destructive force of nature… she’s more like Con Air or Twister rather than any human character that has ever been presented on screen. A mid-90s CGI wrecking ball with no chain… smashing through side characters and subplots just trying to make it the end credits or unmade sequel with little care for three acts structures or emotional development. You can’t tame it, just marvel in her destructive wake. All she wants to do is headline a show in Vegas. She just wants to dance with her boobs out and her vagina bare. The spectacular dance numbers (whether around cheap pole, elaborate cabaret stage or dressing room rehearsal) are wonderful. Not in anyway sexy. Neither is the walloping routs of actual fucking. Lots of skin is displayed but little seduction or desire is generated. Only Gina Gershon’s glamorous cowgirl Bette Davis to Berkley’s Anne Baxter has any natural allure or moments when she can be nude and not look like tanned meat in a freezer.
If it wasn’t for a nasty final act gangrape, bunged in somewhat callously to catalyse some kinda conclusion, then all the misbehaviour, choreography and glitter of Showgirls would make it a perfectly acceptable epic for teenage girls. Sure there’s gratuitous nudity and swearing but there’s also chimps, and outlandish costumes, and big stage showstoppers, and girl power bonding, and life lessons about avoiding fit men who only want one thing. The message it haphazardly teaches about self worth and not trusting employers and pretty seducers are blunt. Yet maybe more valuable to impressionable women than what Disney or Molly Ringwald films program into them at an early age. Here the princes are rapists, the Blanes are looking to make you their white slave. Don’t be true to yourself, do whatever it take to beat the fuckers who see you only as a soft commodity.
Is Verhoeven’s much derided tits and tribulations extravaganza an intentional satire? Sure, if you want. He rarely makes a work that doesn’t have edge and sophistication. Whether dealing in violence or sex or both he knows he can overpower the viewer with so much hard edged transgression that on first watch they feel they’ve only witnessed a hypersleazy receptor frazzler. And any great directors can make horrendous mis-steps. But Showgirls ain’t it. It is its own beast. The American Dream as random pornography. The 1930s “let’s put the show on right here” musical as a totalitarian rise to power.
Verehoeven knows the only individuals that can win a game as rigged as Vegas / Showbizness / free market capitalism are violent sociopaths. To beat the grind of such a sharp racket a woman needs to gyrate hard and break ankles and fuck only the right dick. Never feel owned. Never get pregnant or emotionally attached… or known. Not be ashamed to use the looks and moves she has at her disposal when they have genuine currency. The director of Godess helpfully lays down the law of this jungle. “I got one interest here, and that’s the show. I don’t care whether you live or die. I want to see you dance and I want to see you smile. I can’t use you if you can’t smile, I can’t use you if you can’t show, I can’t use you if you can’t sell.”
Nomi might not be attractive or relatable to us but we sure relish seeing her trample over all the bullshit of an uncaring, venal, male America. She’s Patrick Bateman for the ladies. The mad psycho who’s transgressions and fantasies we never want to live out but love seeing play out. Watching a sledgehammer break the nightmare system is a great Saturday night in. Don’t worry about your inhibitions, leave your good taste at the door!
Michelangelo Antonioni directs Monica Vitti, Alain Delon and Francisco Rabalin this arthouse classic where an Italian beauty considers a new lover during a stock market crash.
Stunning but obtuse. Given to a vibe where nothing seems to happen but urban alienation or misanthropic beauty. It would be fair to say the tentative, bitter courtship that plays out between Vitti and Delon is sold as a poor investment for our energies. As always, the downside of taking a languid look at ennui is it can be boring. Sure, this allows Antonioni to create blanks. Voids so the viewer can fill in their own importance and meanings into the dead space. Look and mood over plot and interaction. There are sequences that are powerful. The chaos of the overcrowded stock exchange is overwhelming and fused with foolish purpose. They make for dynamic juxtaposition with all the lulling around deserted streets and sulking with outdated compatriots. Antonioni creates a world past its sell by date… a 1962 alternating between dying in its sleep or thrashing out its last gasps. The trickling pace allows us to link scenes with others. The break-up we open with in the modernist apartment feels like the exact negative reel of the sequence where Vitti visits Delon’s old world family home. The art and decor might be from different eras but the frustrated dance that happens is step-for-step in reverse. What point is there to go in if everything has already played out? Natalie (as always far smarter and perceptive that I) pointed out the film’s protagonist sees so little variation or hope in the future that she is essentially gives up in engaging with the present. Romances aren’t worth consummating, rendezvous aren’t worth making. The market has crashed there’s nothing left to anticipate. No destiny has value. This maybe explains the paranoid, doom-laden final montage. The sexy young movie stars abruptly leave the stage. We see the sun set in a series of eerie and disconcerting shots. The streets we have toured, grow deserted. The city becomes a ghost town. Maybe an apocalypse has quietly happened. Nothing is resolved.
Victor Fleming directs Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton and Ray Bolger in this fantasy musical where a teen is transported via tornado to a land of witches, munchkins, yellow brick roads and emerald cities.
Just timeless movie magic. Every Technicolor moment iconic. Every beat sweet with heart and sour with unusual risk. Judy Garland is beautiful and as pure as a glass of milk. Girl sure can hold a song. She’s the stuff of dreams. One of my faves. Watched in a triple bill with Return to Oz and Oz: The Great and the Powerful.
Rob Zombie directs Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison and Judy Geeson in this demonic horror where a radio DJ’s life is taken over by a coven of executed witches.
A little more subdued than their gore fests, this is just as messy and distinctive as all the Zombie family output. So the plot and tone is undisciplined and unruly, so Sheri Moon isn’t exactly anyone but Rob’s choice of a leading lady, so the look is so dirty that you are scared you’ll get hepatitis just glancing at it. There is imagery here that brands itself on your brain. Real horror freak show stuff imprinted on your brain! That repugnant atmosphere is something no other horror director can sustain for a movie entire. This does lack some of the blunt force humour that the Zombie household “lighten” their films with. But even that can be sick and grating and overpowering at times. Listen… I’m clearly conflicted about these movies. I’ve never seen a Rob Zombie movie I unreservedly loved but equally I would watch them all again in a heartbeat. This move away from torture into the supernatural leaves a raw hangover of fear. What do you want from your horror movies?
Kar-Wai Wong directs Norah Jones, Jude Law and Natalie Portman in this U.S. road movie where a dumped woman crosses the states witnessing different forms of heartbreak.
I first saw this in an arthouse cinema in Berlin with a water fountain in front of the screen that stopped spouting when the movie was due to start. Flawed but beautiful. The heightened emotions on display are a bit too comic book to be seduced by. The acting is broad and unconvincing. Jude tries an accent. Natalie doesn’t land it as a fifty-something, casino living, bleach blonde. Norah Jones is pretty and wistful but adds nothing to a blankly written lead role. The steamy trifle is however utterly gorgeous. Darius Khondji’s cinematography absorbs every artificial light, creating a kaleidoscope of warm colours. Cat Power’s The Greatest appears on the soundtrack as a pleasing recurring motif. And the pies look delicious.
Steve Mitchell directs Larry Cohen, Fred Williamson and Michael Moriarty in this documentary about prolific low budget moviemaker Larry Cohen.
Black Caesar. Q-The Winged Serpent. The Stuff. Every Larry Cohen movie I’ve seen is an absolute blast. Yet so few are available on DVD or via streaming that I have to comfort myself with this exhaustive retrospective. You can tell from both his interview footage and his expansively unpretentious oeuvre that Cohen was bursting with chutpaz. The other talking heads openly call him out on his bullshit and fibs but with a warmth that suggest they’d have rather been taken for a ride with Larry than any studio head. It is a very affectionate biography littered with eye popping clips. I can’t tell what I want more; Larry Cohen’s unique career or a box set with all the gems I haven’t seen.
François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell direct Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis and Rich Sommer in this throwback thriller where the neighbourhood kids begin to suspect the nice cop across the road is a child serial killer.
Rear Window or Disturbia or The ‘Burbs for the Stranger Things generation. That’s everyone now, right? For an hour this plays out exactly as you might underestimate it to. Sommer’s too-nice-guy suspect is neatly inscrutable, the girl next door is a fantasy Betty, the messed up kids bicker at the arcade and around their BMXs convincingly. Nice evocation of The Goonies or The Monster Squad, the filmmakers fealty to that vibe shows they know their original sources and not just what Eleven and The Underneath cribbed. But the kills don’t come, and we seem to be marinating in an overused nostalgia rather than ramping up the romp. Then the mystery sharpens and things take an incredibly bleak and nasty turn. Wow! The final act plays out exactly as if a group of defenceless teens caught the attention of a killer rather than the wish fulfilment victory an Amblin Entertainment might sate us with. To shift the larks into pain and despair on a dime is a bravura move. Not exactly crowd pleasing though. Neither tone fully delivers what you want but Summer of 84 is a curiosity worth seeing how you feel about. If it had come out in 1984 it might now be a cult classic.
Henri-Georges Clouzot directs Elisabeth Wiener, Laurent Terzieff and Bernard Fresson in this dark drama where a dominant art dealer seduces a curious housewife.
I’m not that into geometric op art or posh S&M but I’ll quite happily say this is one of the sexiest and gorgeous films ever made. An utterly convincing journey of seduction, oblivion and experimental montage. Wiener and Terzieff’s simmering, often unspoken chemistry crackles.
Lamberto Bava directs Nancy Brilli, Bobby Rhodes and Asia Argento in this Italian horror sequel where the screen-hopping monsters infect a skyscraper.
A gorehound’s Die Hard: made somehow years before John McClane even dirtied his vest. This borrows the dripping corrosive blood of Alien, the disaster ensemble structure of The Towering Inferno, the infection rate of Dawn of the Dead. Seriously, this is like watching a 90 minute game of hide and seek or tag where the downside of being caught is mutating into an impressively rabid grotesque. It is admittedly bittier than the already quite random original. There are about 10 subplots that either end abruptly or toddle off without true resolution. One partygoer is left locked outside the glass cage waiting to ward off some unwanted punks… for little audience gain. A middle aged couple visit a Christmas market with no instances of monstrous possession to report. If you’ve come for narrative sense you’ve come to the wrong shop, brother. If you’ve come for bodybuilders throwing dumbbells at drooling undead loons or glamorous call girls losing it in elevators… then, boy-o-boy, do I have the kaleidoscope of nasty for you! I’m surprised given the quality of this series we never got a third VHS freak out.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 