The Bloody Pit #80 - Cult Movie Memories

I'm proud to welcome a new contributor to the show this month. Robert Monell is a writer I've admired for years for his smart and enthusiastic analysis of European Cult cinema. His byline in a fanzine always meant a level of quality in both the writing and the thought behind those words. His openness to different styles of cinema played a role in making me comfortable as my tastes in movies grew and changed over the decades. Also, Mr. Monell's excellent blog I'm In A Jess Franco State Of Mind pushed me to be less rigid in my view of Uncle Jess' work and, along with Tim Lucas' work in the field, opened my perceptions wider than I might have thought possible. Or wise!

I asked Mr. Monell to join me for an episode of the podcast and he surprised me by immediately saying yes. It turns out that he wanted to discuss the changing state of cult film collecting over the years and, since I have been of that tribe since I was a teenager, I thought it would be fun. We start with the heady days of VHS collecting and track our habits all the way through the exciting Blu-Ray announcements that seem to issue forth every other day. Along the way we end up admitting to illegally copying rented tapes to add to our home collections, baring to the world my Laser Disc shame and reminiscing about our first DVDs. Damn! We're old! Along the way we digress into talking about a number of films including Mr. Monell's favorites of last year and the mysteries of the bizarre Euro-Cult effort WHITE FIRE (1985). Sometimes easy streaming availability is a curse!

If you have any comments or questions the show can be reached at thebloodypit@gmail.com of on the FaceBook page. I hope to be able to talk to Mr. Monell again later this year so feel free to quiz him on anything related to his writing and I'll pass things along. Thank you for downloading and listening!

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What I Watched in January

As a rule, I'm not a fan of the Hollywood produced biopic. I find them all to follow the same general formula regardless of the actual facts leading those with some knowledge of the subject to be frustrated by the liberties taken. But, as a lifelong Queen fan, I was excited to see a feature film about the band's legendary lead singer Freddie Mercury and the various trailers showing the amazing Rami Malek taking on the central role made at least one viewing a requirement. Malek has been a favorite of mine for a few years now because of his excellent lead performance in the addictive USA Network television series Mr. Robot. His skill is often breathtaking on TV and I wondered if he had the ability to translate to the big screen, especially playing someone with so large a stage persona as Mercury. I didn't need to worry. Even if the rest of the film was a waste BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY would be worth seeing for the fine performances of the entire cast with Malek only being the one with the most screen time.  Indeed, the film succeeds as a fictionalized version of the story of Queen and a 'hit the highlights' tale of the rise of Mercury from working stiff to rock god.

As with all biopics there is a lot of fudging of detail,streamlining of circumstances, warping of timelines and smoothing out of events to create a more conventional narrative and emotional third act but it works. I think all fans of the band still feel that Freddie was taken from the world far too soon. His ability to touch the most human part of us with his beautiful soaring voice made him a beloved music icon who seemed capable of nearly anything. His death still hurts and this film knows that, in a way, we all still miss him. I'll admit I cried watching this movie as I watched the arc of his life move toward it's early end. I loved Freddie Mercury and I still regret that he's gone. If nothing else, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY allowed me and a roomful of strangers to weep for our loss. To mourn for a friend we never met but who lives forever in our hearts. I'll accept the historical inaccuracies to be able to feel his talent vibrate off that screen and be reminded that once, for about twenty years, such a person shined and I was lucky enough to live at the same time as he did.

The List 

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018) - 8
WAY OUT WEST (1937)- 6
I AM SARTANA, YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH (1969) - 7
WHITE FIRE (1985) - 4
IT'S ALIVE III: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987) - 6
THE EXORCIST III (ORIGINAL CUT) (1990) - 8
TEACHING MRS. TINGLE (1999) - 4
SYMPTOMS (1974) - 8 
RED SPARROW (2018) - 6
HOUSE OF TERRORS (a.k.a. Kaidan semushi otoko) (1965) - 7 
THE CANADIANS (1961) - 5 (gritty Mounted Police tale)
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (2018) - 9 (Welles' finally completed final film)
THE TWO WORLDS OF JENNIE LOGAN (1979) - 6 (TV  movie by Frank de Fellita)
TWILIGHT PEOPLE (1972) - 4 (poor Dr. Moreau rip-off)
DINNER AT EIGHT (1933) - 8 (smart drama amongst the wealthy)
FAIL STATE (2018) - 8 (documentary on the for-profit school loan scam)
SINFONIA EROTICA (1979) - 6 (Jess Franco de Sade tale) 
SNOW DOG (1950) - 5 (Canadian Mountie tale)
THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) - 9
MAN MADE MONSTER (1940) - 6 (rewatch)
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1983) - 8 (rewatch)
THE MINOTAUR (1960) - 6 (I'd love to see this restored and widescreen)
RAW DEAL (1986) - 4 (flat, silly Schwarzenegger crime film)
JOE KIDD (1972) - 5 (mediocre western - feels like a lot of it is missing)
THE INN ON THE RIVER (1962) - 7 (krimi goodness)
PHARAOH'S CURSE (1957)- 5 (mostly dull)
ROB ROY, THE HIGHLAND ROGUE (1953) - 7 (Disney's version of the tale)
DAUGHTER OF DRACULA (1972) - 6 (rewatch)
UNBREAKABLE (2000) - 9 (rewatch)
THE BODY DISAPPEARS (1941) - 4 (silly, obvious attempt at an invisibility comedy)
KRULL (1983) - 4 (rewatch) 
ATLAS (1961) - 4 (Corman low budget sword & sandal 'epic')
THE DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z (1966) - 8 (rewatch)
CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM (1940) - 6

Poster Art and Lobby Cards - THE DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z (1966)

Trailers From Hell - MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1978)

Brian Trenchard-Smith explains why this Hong Kong produced King Kong rip-off is worth your time.

KRULL (1983)

I have once again watched this film. I have only strange reasons.

KRULL (1983) is one of those big budget 1980's science fiction /fantasy films that I managed to avoid until the 21st century. About 10 years ago I finally decided to see this picture, rented the DVD and discovered that my instincts had been correct about it all along - It wasn't very good. And it was also not very memorable as is easily seen by the fact that 10 years later I realized I needed to see it again because it had almost completely faded from my memory. And I had bought a Blu-Ray of the damned thing for $5. I'm a loon! 

This is an odd film in numerous ways but I'll divide up my impressions into two columns. First, the things that I can praise about the film.

1. This is an absolutely gorgeously photographed movie. It is wonderful to just gaze at the widescreen photography by the great Peter Suschitzky. His work here is stunning and the equal of his fine efforts on the films of David Cronenberg.

2. The movie is shot on breathtakingly beautiful locations in Italy and the Canary Islands. The valley's, mountains and plains provide a travelogue of this fictional planet that makes me wish it was a place I could visit.

3. The sets are very well constructed and realistic. They are all quite detailed and very visually interesting. Each of these artificial locations has a different feel and look that adds color and detail to scenes that often need them. Whoever was in charge of the set design and the construction of these pieces should be commended for doing excellent work.

4. The cast, for the most part, does an excellent job the entire way through. In my opinion, veteran character actor Freddie Jones takes top honors. He's lucky in that the screenplay actually gives his character the opportunity to stretch out and cover a lot of emotional ground. I'm used to Freddie Jones being very good (often better than the material that he's working with) and he really shines here giving a nuanced and sympathetic performance in a role that allows him play against a number of different types of characters. Alun Armstrong is also very good and is one of the few characters in the movie that actually has some kind of story arc. He does a great job and is clearly giving this role 100% from beginning to end. In a better world (or at least in the film with a better script) this performance would have gotten him dozens of similar rolls in movies. There are also fun turns by other young actors at the beginning of their film careers. Liam Neeson makes a good impression in one of his earliest feature film roles and actually has some good scenes as we run across one of the his wives in an amusing sequence. The excellent Robbie Coltrane has all of about four lines of dialog. He does what he can with the role but one suspects that most of his performance that left on the cutting room floor. Lysette Anthony playing the lead heroine, is beautiful and does a fairly confident job with the rather limited role but it is obvious that she was dubbed by someone else. The film has several moments of out-of-sync dialog when she is speaking her lines and it appears that actress Lindsey Crouse was tapped to 'Americanize' the role. I suppose that it was decided that having only the hunky star sound American was a little odd but it's sad to have Miss Anthony's voice taken from her.

5. The special effects in the movie are very good throughout with only a couple of instances of FX that have poorly aged. That's one of the benefits of non-CGI work - it still looks good decades later! The miniature work is impressive as well and are very well matched to the various sets. Indeed, all the practical on-set FX are very well realized.  Plus, any movie that sports a stop-motion animated giant spider has got me on its side to a certain extent, or at least has my respect. I do suspect, though, that the actors in the scenes with the giant spider were unaware that those sequences were going to have a giant spider in them.

And now for the things that I did not like. Woo boy! 

Unfortunately, the things I dislike about the film can be summed up as 'pretty much the most important part' - the script! It is weak, weak, weak! And in the areas where it's weakness could be forgiven the direction doubles down on the flimsier aspects every time. Sadly, the filmmakers of KRULL were convinced that they were making an EPIC. You can sympathize with them to a degree since the story has all the surface details of an epic fantasy story - heroic prince, lovely and brave princess, vast evil army aligned against their happiness, big bad villain attempting to possess the princess and destroy her world, etc. But the narrative is not strong enough to hold up these classic mythological tropes. It mostly comes off as thin and stretched with the first half of the film having long periods of ponderous boredom. The prince played by Ken Marshall is given very little character beyond being the hero. He has no growth in the story, learns nothing and is simply a cipher in place to lead the fights. The script has him grinning like a boy on an adventure right after the death of his father and kidnapping of his bride making him seem a little oblivious to the supposed deadliness of the situation. Let's just say 'tone' is not something the script gets right. Also, I could never figure out how the villains decided to use swords rather than their powerful firearms. Why didn't they just blast everyone?

Of course, some of the film's dullness may be down to the clear fact that some of story was hacked away to get the running time to two hours. There are several characters that get nearly no time onscreen after being introduced which becomes very silly later when we're supposed to care that they are in danger or get killed. It points even more to the fact that this was shot as an epic tale but chopped down. It might be interesting to see the deleted scenes for this film just to discover if it might have been slightly better. But, as I think the movie is too long to sustain it's slight story as it is, I suspect a longer cut would be even more dull.

KRULL is a pretty film but completely forgettable. Maybe I should read the Alan Dean Foster novelization?

Trailer - THE DIABOLICAL DOCTOR Z (1966)

Prepping for the next Beyond Naschy episode! 

Star Trek Discovery

When it was announced some time ago that there was going to be a new Star Trek series I was excited - up until I learned that it was to the be the flagship show for a new streaming service that I was never going to pay for. I have a couple of streaming sources already and I'm simply not willing to pay for another one just to see a single show. But for Christmas I was gifted with the Blu-Ray set of the first season so I finally settled in to see what Star Trek: Discovery was all about.

Wow! This is the best Trek series since the original. Seriously.

I should state for context that I am a huge fan of Star Trek but have found the various sequel series to be of little lasting interest. Both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine took two or three seasons to stop stumbling around in dullness and each series had a near crippling flaw (or two) that makes revisits painful. Honestly, anyone that can defend the Holodeck episodes or the never ending Ferengi idiocy can hold forth anytime. I won't be listening. I never made it beyond the first couple of episodes of Voyager or Enterprise for different reasons. Voyager was following the TNG template of boring me to death for twenty minutes of each episode and Enterprise couldn't stop showing how shiny and sexy everything was. Good-Bye.

I won't be spoiling any surprises here, as I hope others can see this series as cold as I did. Discovery avoids one of the past series' bigger problems by only producing fifteen episodes in the season. This means that every show adds to the overall story without having to slow down for side stories. The one episode that could conceivably be argued as unnecessary to the whole still adds amazing detail to various characters and provides enormous laughs. At that point in the season this tonal break was a welcome relief before the final run of incredibly tense developments. I was so impressed with this season of Trek that I kind of want to rewatch it immediately with foreknowledge of the endpoint. The various breadcrumbs laid out were masterful and I suspect I missed a few hints along the way.

After finishing off the season in about five days (!) I decided to learn what the general consensus on the show was. Turning to the internet I found that I am apparently in the minority of at least the loudest voices. I learned that the show's main character had no personality, that the writing is terrible, that the actors don't know what they're doing and that the entire production is a disaster and a stain on the good name of Trek. OK.

While I know this new show does some cosmetically controversial things - Klingon redesign, new technology, advanced use of the transporter, etc. - as a major fan of the original show I had no trouble rolling with these modernizations of elements of the franchise. At the very least, this is the second time the Klingons have been altered so it's no big deal. If I was able to accept the first radical redesign back in 1979 then the new experimental engines on Discovery are also no big deal. I feel these changes keep things fresh by not being bound to the past's limited look. Never before have I been so impressed with a new show and then learned that it was so reviled. I guess Trek fans and I may have parted ways permanently. 

I suppose that for a generation that holds the blandness of TNG up as their most beloved Trek series, something as spicy as Discovery must be unpalatable. That's a shame. In the 1990's DS9 found itself competing with a better written and smarter show in Babylon 5 and shifted it's style of storytelling to move forward. Now the better plotted, smarter show is an actual Star Trek prequel and fans can't handle the future because they are mired in nostalgia. Seems that is the repetitive nature of SF fandom - Love followed by deification followed by ossification followed by unyielding dogma. I've seen it over and over so I shouldn't be surprised but I am disappointed. I just hope this show survives the sad fandom backlash. I truly fear the next thing that would be created to conform to the complaints leveled against this fine effort.