I can't edit it anymore, but Reggie Nalder also played Van Helsing in the hardcore/comedy Dracula Sucks (Phillip Marshak/1978).
Latest Movie That You Watched!
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In 1974 there was even a musical/comedy Dracula starring Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson, directed by well-known horrordirector Freddie Francis.
It seems everyone was inspired by Dracula in the seventies.
Anyway, on with the films. Watched another Dan Curtis tv-movie.
Trilogy of Terror 2 (1996)
This is a strange mixture of remake and sequel. The only fully new story is the first, The Graveyard Rats. This is a pretty cool story. It seems a lot of the stories in anthologies of this kind are based around an unfaithful couple, a large sum of money and a really unpleasant, mean and nasty person who will be killed. This one too.
The rats of the title look really fake, but the soundeffects are quite good. It also has one of those gruesomely unlucky endings for the protagonists.
The other two stories are a remake of 'Bobby' from the other Curtis anthology Dead of Night. This one is just about the same as the original with much of the same dialogue, and I don't understand the inclusion of it, especially since the third story is a direct sequel to the African doll story from the first Trilogy of Terror. By no means is it bad, but it just does nothing new, apart from a new look for the monster at the end.
The third story, as in keeping with the other two films, is again the best. The burnt African Zuni fetish doll is taken to a museum and brought to Dr. Simpson (actress Lysette Anthony, who just like Karen Black in the original plays the lead in all three stories) to be examined. The environment of the museum makes it different enough from the original and it is just about as much fun as the original, even though the effects are again simple.
Overall it is a good sequel, I just don't see the point of doing one as an exact remake and the other as a sequel.
Autopsy (aka Sun Spots or Macchie Solari) (1975)
This was released in the same year as the masterpiece of the giallo (stylish Italian thriller) genre Deep Red, just a couple of months before.
It stars Mimsy Farmer, who is one of my absolute favourites in the genre. Her look is somewhat different to the women you usually see in giallo - I would say with her short blonde hair she looks more modern than most of the actresses in the genre. There is something about her face and the look in her eyes that is really unique - I can't say what it is, probably just great acting. She is unforgettable in the last scene of Four Flies on Grey Velvet.
This film doesn't feature the usual black gloved killer which is emblematic for the genre (in fact a good deal of gialli don't feature black gloves, but Deep Red and some other of the top ones do, so they became the symbol for giallo).
Farmer is a pathology student who works at the morgue while there is a lot of violence and suicide going on in Rome, blamed on the sun (hence the title). She happens to write her thesis on the differences between real suicide and disguised murders. She also has hallucinations about the bodies in the morgue coming alive. When a woman who was in a romantic relationship with her father turns up dead and in her morgue, and when her father goes missing, she teams up with the brother of the victim, who is a priest (also a regular feature of gialli - not surprising considering the films are Italian) to find out what's going on.
The film falls somewhat in the middle, neither the worst nor the best of the genre. Even though it seems quite easy to guess who the killer is, the film still managed to be surprising in that aspect to me. But because it lacks much on screen violence it also seems to lack a certain urgency to stop a killer who's making more and more victims (which are the usual mechanics of the genre).
In fact the most shocking are not any murders, but rather photos of medical anomalies seen throughout.
So, while Farmer is worthwhile as usual, ultimately I wouldn't point at it as one of the true highlights of the genre.
It seems everyone was inspired by Dracula in the seventies.
Anyway, on with the films. Watched another Dan Curtis tv-movie.
Trilogy of Terror 2 (1996)
This is a strange mixture of remake and sequel. The only fully new story is the first, The Graveyard Rats. This is a pretty cool story. It seems a lot of the stories in anthologies of this kind are based around an unfaithful couple, a large sum of money and a really unpleasant, mean and nasty person who will be killed. This one too.
The rats of the title look really fake, but the soundeffects are quite good. It also has one of those gruesomely unlucky endings for the protagonists.
The other two stories are a remake of 'Bobby' from the other Curtis anthology Dead of Night. This one is just about the same as the original with much of the same dialogue, and I don't understand the inclusion of it, especially since the third story is a direct sequel to the African doll story from the first Trilogy of Terror. By no means is it bad, but it just does nothing new, apart from a new look for the monster at the end.
The third story, as in keeping with the other two films, is again the best. The burnt African Zuni fetish doll is taken to a museum and brought to Dr. Simpson (actress Lysette Anthony, who just like Karen Black in the original plays the lead in all three stories) to be examined. The environment of the museum makes it different enough from the original and it is just about as much fun as the original, even though the effects are again simple.
Overall it is a good sequel, I just don't see the point of doing one as an exact remake and the other as a sequel.
Autopsy (aka Sun Spots or Macchie Solari) (1975)
This was released in the same year as the masterpiece of the giallo (stylish Italian thriller) genre Deep Red, just a couple of months before.
It stars Mimsy Farmer, who is one of my absolute favourites in the genre. Her look is somewhat different to the women you usually see in giallo - I would say with her short blonde hair she looks more modern than most of the actresses in the genre. There is something about her face and the look in her eyes that is really unique - I can't say what it is, probably just great acting. She is unforgettable in the last scene of Four Flies on Grey Velvet.
This film doesn't feature the usual black gloved killer which is emblematic for the genre (in fact a good deal of gialli don't feature black gloves, but Deep Red and some other of the top ones do, so they became the symbol for giallo).
Farmer is a pathology student who works at the morgue while there is a lot of violence and suicide going on in Rome, blamed on the sun (hence the title). She happens to write her thesis on the differences between real suicide and disguised murders. She also has hallucinations about the bodies in the morgue coming alive. When a woman who was in a romantic relationship with her father turns up dead and in her morgue, and when her father goes missing, she teams up with the brother of the victim, who is a priest (also a regular feature of gialli - not surprising considering the films are Italian) to find out what's going on.
The film falls somewhat in the middle, neither the worst nor the best of the genre. Even though it seems quite easy to guess who the killer is, the film still managed to be surprising in that aspect to me. But because it lacks much on screen violence it also seems to lack a certain urgency to stop a killer who's making more and more victims (which are the usual mechanics of the genre).
In fact the most shocking are not any murders, but rather photos of medical anomalies seen throughout.
So, while Farmer is worthwhile as usual, ultimately I wouldn't point at it as one of the true highlights of the genre.
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Went to see Avengers: Infinity War on Saturday. Yes, I am a geek. And, yes, enjoyed it very much... once I got my jaw up off the floor.
Captain America: The First Avenger--I've never been able to stay awake through this whole movie, up until this point. I finally made it through (I had to check something that happened in Infinity War), and it wasn't as boring as I originally thought. Still not my favorite Marvel movie, but not bad.
Infinity War again. I forsee this being one I see many times.
Thor: The Dark World--Another one that I saw when it came out, but which made very little impression upon me. Again, not half as bad as I originally thought. I still think they stiffed their villain (the wonderful Christopher Eccleston) by focusing on Loki, but I liked it much more this time (I actually remembered almost nothing from my original viewing, so it was like a first view).
Infinity War again. I forsee this being one I see many times.
Thor: The Dark World--Another one that I saw when it came out, but which made very little impression upon me. Again, not half as bad as I originally thought. I still think they stiffed their villain (the wonderful Christopher Eccleston) by focusing on Loki, but I liked it much more this time (I actually remembered almost nothing from my original viewing, so it was like a first view).
Network
This movie is absolutely today's world come to life. I watched it and was shaking my head most of the time for how prophetic it was. If you watched it long ago, I encourage you to watch it again.
Spartacus
I have seen bits and pieces of this over the years, but I never sat down and watched it from beginning to end. It was like 3 hours long and while I appreciate its grandeur, 3 hours wasn't necessary. Still, fun to watch the old Hollywood machine and its players.
This movie is absolutely today's world come to life. I watched it and was shaking my head most of the time for how prophetic it was. If you watched it long ago, I encourage you to watch it again.
Spartacus
I have seen bits and pieces of this over the years, but I never sat down and watched it from beginning to end. It was like 3 hours long and while I appreciate its grandeur, 3 hours wasn't necessary. Still, fun to watch the old Hollywood machine and its players.
I've seen this one a few times. It's amazing how close to real life that movie has become. Glenn Beck is one that seems very Howard Beale like.
I've seen this many times over the years and I always looked at it as sort of a -- not sci fi -- but sort of sci fi if you know what I mean. A future scenario that was just crazy. WE ARE LIVING IT NOW. Just watching it again made me look at it in a way I never looked at it before.
It was sickening and frightening.
One of Howard Beale's speeches:
....That sort of thing is not likely to happen again, because at the bottom of all our terrified souls we know that democracy is a dying giant; a sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept writhing in it's final pain. I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, most powerful, most advance country in the world, light years ahead of any country, and I don't mean the communists are going to take over the world because the communists are deader than we are. What is finished, is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourish of every individual in it; it's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished; it's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals, it's a nation of two-hundred some-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-that-white steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods.
and another:
All human beings are becoming humanoids. All over the world, not just in America. We're just getting there faster since we're the most advanced country.
All human beings are becoming humanoids. All over the world, not just in America. We're just getting there faster since we're the most advanced country.
If I remember correctly, they crucified Spartacus on Groot.
....bwahhhhhaaaahaaaaa......
I've never seen it, but the trailer actually looks quite good. They do that effect on the eyes of the dog where it looks like light comes out of it, which you see also in Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan/1984).
Considering Christopher Lee and Jess Franco's Dracula. What Lee said was actually that he felt this film was the closest to him portraying the character right physically, because he starts off old with a moustache and gets gradually younger throughout. He felt though the film was made for too little money.
Along those lines, watch They Live!
Now that's a movie more relevant then ever!! Except I don't need to put on the glasses to see the monster!
I haven't seen that one in years, that's the one with Rowdy Roddy Piper, right? The aliens are among us?
I haven't seen that one in years, that's the one with Rowdy Roddy Piper, right? The aliens are among us?
Yes.
I love the part where Roddy Piper says after leaving on the glasses for a while watching the monsters, "IT FIGURES IT WOULD BE SOMETHING LIKE THIS!".....lmao