MC_Lovecraft Watches Lots of Movies!

[SolipsistSerpent]

Hm... Have you considered adding a "let's watch" or "in which I watch" tag to this thread? It might get you a hair more traffic, though you might not care either way.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Hm... Have you considered adding a "let's watch" or "in which I watch" tag to this thread? It might get you a hair more traffic, though you might not care either way.

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the input, I'll slap a tag on there shortly!

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Tonight I watched a classic of Italian sci-fi/horror schlock: Planet of the Vampires (1965).

Directed by Mario Bava, one of the masters of the nascent horror genre, and penned in part by Ib Melchior, who casts a similarly large shadow across the field of cult cinema, Planet of the Vampires is a perfect example of the insane production style that made Italian cinema of this era so iconic. Like many Italian productions of the time, the cast all delivered their lines in their native tongues (Including English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese), with the actors generally not understanding anything that their co-stars were saying, and then the dialogue was dubbed over in English. The dubbing is frequently terrible, and some of the line readings in particular are just bizarre. Cast this multilingual madness against a backdrop of psychedelically swirling colored fogs and sets lit in bold pinks and blues, and what could be seen as an over-long Twilight Zone episode begins to take on a unique and fascinating character of its own.

There are some great miniatures in this film, and a number of cool composite shots that stitch together miniatures, constructed sets, and matte paintings with some forced perspective to create the illusion of massive scale. Not all of the sets look great. The spaceship interiors, primarily the bridges or control rooms, are perplexingly empty and hard-edged spaces with a surplus of floor-space but little that looks obviously functional. In contrast, the sequence where Captain Mark (Barry Sullivan) and Sanya (Norma Bengell) explore an alien spaceship is filled with fantastic props and sets, including some enormous alien corpses that definitely inspired the similar sequence in Alien (1979) where the crew of the Nostromo explores the Engineer's ship. I have no explanation for the bizarre, high-collared gimp suits worn by most of the cast for most of the film, however, except that maybe they were meant to evoke the raised collar of Lugosi's Dracula in some way? There are no actual vampires in this movie, so it would be kind of a bizarre choice, but so was naming the film after a different monster than the one that actually appears in it.

The film takes its time in the beginning and the first half is honestly pretty dull. The discovery of the alien vessel marks a distinct upward shift in quality, and the remainder of the film moves along at a respectable, if not exactly hurried, pace. It honestly could have easily been cut down to a 40-minute Twilight Zone or Star Trek episode, but the sedate pace lends a certain moodiness to some of the scenes that almost balances out the long stretches of boredom in the first half. Once the crew finally started firing the laser guns (which appear to actually be little flamethrowers!) they had been carrying around for the whole film I was locked in until the conclusion.

The plot itself is engaging and inventive, and although there are no actual vampires in the film, there are a fair number of "undead", and a decently clever twist that leads into a fantastic conclusion which I will not spoil for you. I'm giving Planet of the Vampires 3/5 stars. The charmingly weird dialogue, visually striking design, and use of dangerous pyrotechnics to avoid having to hire an animator balance out the stilted, charmless performances by much of the cast enough to make this an enjoyable watch for fans of 60's sci-fi horror and spaghetti-genre films in general.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

It's not often that I find myself genuinely unwilling to finish watching a movie once I've started it, particularly one that I paid actual money for, but today I got about 22 minutes into Samurai Princess (2009) before remembering that I have free will and I didn't actually have to subject myself to what turned out to be an intentionally gratuitous exercise in juvenile gross-out "horror" on par with Two Girls, One Cup in terms of watchability.

The 22 minutes that I did watch were essentially a montage of poorly edited, shot-on-video sequences of people being messily dismembered, sexually assaulted, and their bodies eaten and violated, complete with very lifelike corpses and cartoonishly over the top blood and gore effects. The rudimentary gestures at storytelling were very much an afterthought against the landscape of literally nonstop pseudo-snuff spectacle. I'm a huge fan of schlocky horror films, and I adore good practical effects, so when I tell you that this movie is unwatchable, know that I wanted in my heart to enjoy it. The fact that the practical effects (and only the practical effects) are done so well genuinely makes this film more offensive; absolutely all other creative considerations were put aside in favor of a maximalist approach to dismembered body parts per-frame, and the result cheapens the artistry that went into creating those effects.

Don't bother with this one. It's not interesting. It's just a joyless exercise in empty, pointless transgression for transgression's sake, and I'm mad that I spent a whole dollar on it at the flea market. Half a star, just so I can say I rated it, and we'll say that that half a star goes only and specifically to the props team, and nobody else involved with this dumpster fire.

---

After the nightmare that was Samurai Princess, I cleansed my palate with an old favorite: Best in Show (2000).

I love Eugene Levy, but my favorite part of this movie is always Fred Willard's commentary at the Mayflower dog show during the second half of the film. You can just tell that they had him sit there and just fire off a stream of nonstop jabber at Jim Piddock for probably hours, and Piddock looks genuinely tired and annoyed at points. It has me in stitches every single time.

The mockumentary format has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, but there is something about the pseudo-reality of a bunch of comedic actors riffing and improvising around a ridiculous premise that I find immensely fun to watch. There are so many jokes per minute that even if some of them don't land, we've already breezed on past them to some newly ridiculous situation elsewhere. It's a good time.

I had forgotten how much time is spent on the humiliation of Eugene Levy's character in this, which is maybe the most mean spirited of the plotlines, although Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock emotionally abusing a weimaraner comes pretty close. It does give us a reason to feel invested in him when he has to step in for Catherine O'Hara to show their dog at the climax of the film though, which turns that moment into a little smidgen of heart in an otherwise pretty self-assuredly heartless movie.

I always enjoy Jennifer Coolidge, although it can be hard to tell if she's in-character or just on tranquilizers sometimes. I'm honestly not sure what we're supposed to make of her relationship with Jane Lynch, and she ends up feeling like the least developed of the competitor characters in the end. Lynch herself is great, and I fully believe that 'butch lesbian competitive dog-handler' is the role she was born to play.

Will Sasso is a person that I never remember exists until I see him in something and then remember that he's been in tons of stuff over the years. It always blows my mind how many folks came out of MAD Tv.

My only other thought is that nothing dates this move more than the fact that there are exactly two non-white people in the entire thing; one of them is a maid and the other is a cashier (Hironobu Kanagawa, who has been in basically everything that has filmed in Vancouver since the early 90's). This is an excessively white movie. To be fair, dog-shows are also pretty overwhelmingly a caucacious activity, but the utter absence of even a token black dude stuck out to me on this viewing in a way that it hadn't in the past.

Beyond that, there are a lot of cute dogs in this movie. Hubert is the best one. Hubert gets 5/5 stars, and Best in Show gets 4/5 because not all early 2000s humor has aged well, and they could have at least given Aries Spears a call, but Parker Posey with adult braces still makes me feel funny, and Fred Willard is a timeless treasure.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

This weekend I watched Werner Herzog's Into the Inferno (2016), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and Speed (1994).

Werner Herzog is one of my favorite human beings. Everything from his manner of speaking, to the subjects to chooses for his films, to the truly unique perspective he seems to have on every aspect of life is fascinating to behold. I'm convinced that if he were to make a film about paint drying (which another filmmaker actually did, also in 2016), Herzog's take on it would be sublime in some unexpected, and yet deeply insightful way that would leave you looking at paint in a new way for the rest of your life. Into the Inferno doesn't so much upend your understanding of volcanoes as nestle it into a context that is both larger and yet also smaller and more personal; Herzog isn't out to impress you with the scale and power of volcanic activity (although he succeeds at this as a natural result of his art), he is instead attempting to impart a sense of the specific ways that people all over the world, who live in close proximity to these volcanoes, understand and relate to them as part of their immediate universe.

If this were simply a documentary about volcanoes, or even about the myths and beliefs surrounding specific volcanoes, it would be fascinating enough, but this film spills messily over the edges in a few places, to explore elements as disparate as the excavation of one of the oldest human specimens ever discovered, to a peek behind the curtain of North Korea, that most secretive of hermit kingdoms. Seeing volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer searching for bone fragments in the dust of the Earth's hottest desert with an exuberant Tim White, bio-paleontologist, was an unexpected joy.

I watched this one with a friend who recommended the film in particular because of the North Korea segment, which did turn out to be fascinating. The founding myth of the country, and the narrative of Kim Il Sung's guerrilla war is deeply tied to a massive volcanic crater lake in the North of the country, where foreign scientists are allowed to come and collaborate with North Korean volcanologists in a way that extremely few foreigners are allowed to interact with any portion of North Korean society. It's not a large portion of the film, but it is a rare peek at a culture that has developed in enforced isolation for decades, and Herzog masterfully ties the cultural exploration into his larger thesis in a way that makes it feel completely natural to be watching footage of a North Korean subway station in a documentary about volcanoes.

I'm giving Into the Inferno 5/5 stars. It's just a very well-made film by a singularly interesting filmmaker, covering a deeply compelling subject matter.

---

Today I caught a couple of films at my local theater that I have seen previously, but only on television, and never in one complete sitting. The first of the was The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

Wes Anderson has frequently stated that he makes movies for the weirdos and the outsiders, and few of his works feel more driven by that ethos than this, his third film. A powerful love letter to dysfunctional families, unconventional love, and problematic taxi companies, this film is as saturated with Anderson's meticulous style as anything he's ever done. A little brighter and less mean than Rushmore, but lacking the almost magical-realism of The Life Aquatic or The French Dispatch, Tenenbaums charts a sort of middle course, hewing closely to the French New Wave inspiration that drives so many (all) of Anderson's best fims.

On previous viewings of this film I had been most interested in, and focused on, the relationship between Richie and Margot (Luke Wilson and Gwyneth Paltrow), and saw it as the central relationship of the film. On this viewing, however, it was very clear that the title is not a red-herring, and the development of Royal Tenenbaum's (Gene Hackman, who I have never appreciated as much as I probably should, he's really very good in this) relationship with his estranged family is the frame into which all the other relationships fit, to complete a portrait of love struggling valiantly to shine through deeply imperfect people.

Anjelica Huston is fantastic as Etheline Tenenbaum, and Danny Glover is at peak Danny Glover here. Both of the Wilsons are great, and this is one of my favorite Ben Stiller performances; it's just the right degree of cartoonish without losing the emotional core of his character.

I should say that if this film has one significant sour note, and this may not be universal, it is that it plays the death of a dog for an ironic laugh. The dog's death is not on-screen, but it is violent, which is something I personally find distressing, and it isn't really necessary for the scene in which it happens to work. Owen Wilson's character endangers Chaz Tenenbaum's children in the same crash that kills the dog, and that ought to provide enough reason for Chaz to attack him, as he does in the film, without upping the offense to literal puppy-kicking levels of assholery.

That said, this is a hilarious, stylish, remarkably timeless film, and I'll only knock off half a star for killing the dog, leaving it a clean 4.5/5 stars.

---

After The Royal Tenenbaums I caught a showing of Speed (1994).

This is a very solid action movie. Everyone remembers this film for the bus sequence, where Sandra Bullock has to keep it above 50mph or the bus will explode, but that's just the second act. The first and third feature an elevator and a subway train respectively, also rigged with bombs, making this film feel a lot like Die Hard: Public Transit, in a good way. At this stage in his career I don't think Keanu quite had the charisma of John McClane, but he does a serviceable job as Jack Traven, action hero. Sandra Bullock turns in a respectable performance as well, as Annie, the commuter roped into driving the bus after Sam, the driver (Hawthorne James), is shot by another passenger. The romance between the two feels tacked on at the last second to tick a box, but isn't overly distracting for that. It's obvious that the real love story was between Jack and Harry (Jeff Daniels) anyway.

I will watch literally any movie with Dennis Hopper in it, and this one does not disappoint in the Hopper department. He's just so good at being a raving lunatic. He might be a great actor too, for all I know, but to me he will always be King Koopa from the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, and he brings the same kind of manic energy to this role as he did while menacing Bob Hoskins the year before. It's great.

I don't have too much more to say about this one. It's a fairly conventional action thriller, some of the jokes land and others don't, but true to the name of the film, it keeps on moving at a brisk pace until it arrives at a satisfyingly explosive conclusion. I'll call it 3.5/5 stars.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

I've never seen Speed but your review reminded me that I've considered it a few times, maybe I'll look it up.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

I've never seen Speed but your review reminded me that I've considered it a few times, maybe I'll look it up.

Click to shrink...

It used to come on TV all the time back in the day, so I've seen chunks of it many times, but this was the first time I've seen it all the way through. It holds up pretty well, and I think seeing it on the big screen added a lot to the experience; explosions are just better with a full theater sound system. If you've got an Alamo Drafthouse nearby they might be showing it this month.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

I saw Love Lies Bleeding (2024) in the theater a couple of days ago, and haven't had the time to write it up until now.

This is a gross, sexy, feral animal of a film, with notes of Faster, Pussycat, Rambo, and Requiem for a Dream (complete with a banging Clint Mansell soundtrack). Katy O'Brian is a vision wrought in sweat and sinew, and her chemistry with Kristen Stewart is undeniable. Their firecracker romance is the driving force at the center of this film and while both women's performances are utterly captivating, there is little substance to either of their characters. It is a performance carried almost entirely by physicality and vibes. That lack of real depth to any of the characters is definitely the film's weakest element, but it is one for which this kind of movie is tailor-made to compensate with oodles and oodles of style.

Ed Harris is gloriously off-putting, and sports perhaps the most ridiculous mullet in a movie filled with ridiculous mullets. Dave Franco is in here too. I don't care much for him as an actor but he fills the role well enough. Jena Malone rounds out the central cast, and gives a performance that had my guts twisted up in knots at one point.

I'm still mulling this one over. As a Queer romance it feels somewhat underdeveloped, but as a neo-noir exploitation thriller it hits a lot of the high points of the genre. I think that I wanted the film to spend a little more time exploring the interiority of Stewart and O'Brian's characters than it did, but I don't think the result is lesser for not diving into more character-driven territory. I've seen other folks decrying that there isn't much of a social or political message on offer here either, which was also my initial reaction. On reflection, however, I think that centering a queer relationship without making queerness the overriding theme of the film actually does the film credit. This is undeniably a gay movie, but that really isn't its defining trait.

I'm going to give this one 4/5 stars. I was captivated the entire time, but I do wish there was a little more meat on the bone here.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Huh, never heard of it, but I like the title. I was going to say "oh, the writers must be big fans of Fuel's Hemorrhage" but it turns out it's also a type of plant, according to a quick google.

I've seen other folks decrying that there isn't much of a social or political message on offer here either, which was also my initial reaction. On reflection, however, I think that centering a queer relationship without making queerness the overriding theme of the film actually does the film credit. This is undeniably a gay movie, but that really isn't its defining trait.

Click to shrink...

Not always making it the point every time it shows up in a piece of media is nice, I think. It's normalizing.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Huh, never heard of it, but I like the title. I was going to say "oh, the writers must be big fans of Fuel's Hemorrhage" but it turns out it's also a type of plant, according to a quick google.


Not always making it the point every time it shows up in a piece of media is nice, I think. It's normalizing.

Click to shrink...

It seems like it didn't get a lot of press leading up to the release, but I heard about it on the radio, and the premise of Kristen Stewart romancing a female bodybuilder, with a title like that, was enough to get me to see it without knowing anything more.

That's an interesting connection with the flower (and the song). The title is also, uh, very literally descriptive of the actual events of the movie, as well. It's a very bloody movie.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

That's an interesting connection with the flower (and the song). The title is also, uh, very literally descriptive of the actual events of the movie, as well. It's a very bloody movie.

Click to shrink...

Well, when I see a title that's a phrase I like to look around and see if it's one that's popped up anywhere else because authors do like their references, like "Things Fall Apart" being from Yeats.

 

[Arizona]

I'm reminded more of Elton John than Fuel.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REfKNbNndzo

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

A few days ago I saw Monkey Man (2024).

Right off the bat, I'm going to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and that I continue to enjoy Dev Patel's wonderfully entertaining career. That said, there are so many elements of this movie that were clearly cut for time (or, if some of the rumors are true, to water down the political themes somewhat) that what is left feels obviously incomplete.

I'm going to get into spoilers here pretty much right away, so if you have not seen this film yet, I encourage you to stop reading and do so.

First, the praise: Dev Patel is a gorgeous man and every shot of this film is just as beautiful. This is a very, very stylish movie, despite the omnipresent filth and grime throughout. The blend of action, pathos and humor is handled well and the movie avoids tonal whiplash while still stepping from very dark material to lighter elements frequently. In particular, the leering and corrupt Alphonso (Pitobash) makes for a classic comedy-relief buffoon, and his tricked-out Tuk-Tuk provides both laughs and thrills. Overall, the very best part of this movie is the music, and particularly the fight music selection. Every fight scene is paced out nearly flawlessly to an eclectic spread of absolute bangers. At one point our simian protagonist has a brawl in a bathroom stall set to a psyched out version of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, and it's just excellent.

There is also some unexpected Trans representation, in the form of a monastery full of trans women worshiping the dual aspects of Shiva and Parvati, who even get in on some of the old ultraviolence before the movie is over.

Unfortunately, the weakest part of this film is the character-building. It's one thing to have a nameless protagonist and a script that is conspicuously light on dialogue when you are making a mindless 80's beat-em-up, but this is a movie that clearly has things to say about poverty, injustice, gender, and the caste system. The most that we really learn about this community is that they exist, which is really the most that can be said about most of the characters in this film, including its protagonist, and all of its antagonists. We are drip-fed just enough information by the third act to understand that Patel's character has good reasons to be seeking revenge, but we never get a real sense of who he is as a person, which is a problem, because identity and finding your true self are major themes of the work.

I have a strong suspicion that a lot of content was cut from this film, and that a lot of it was mostly dialogue and chunks of the already lengthy fight sequences. I'll give a few examples to demonstrate why I think this may be the case.

While not every film, or even every action film needs a love interest, this film very clear sets one up for our protagonist only to let that plot thread go, without even giving it a moment's attention to drive home that Monkey Man was deliberately choosing to forego romance to focus on revenge or something; it just gets dropped until Monkey Man gets a last glimpse of the potential love interest at the climax of the film, and it doesn't elicit any particular feeling because that relationship was never developed.

Relating to the climax: there is a very pointed shot during Monkey Man's preparation montage when he bleaches his monkey mask to a golden-white color reminiscent of Hanuman, and then 30 seconds later he removes the mask and it is never seen again. I am convinced there was at least one entire action sequence with Dev in the golden monkey mask that was cut from the final film.

Similarly, at the monastery, Monkey Man goes through a psychedelic experience with a substance that causes extreme pain. Later, during the preparation montage, he can be seen packing the same substance into fireworks, which he does fire at several people during a fight, but there is no indication that the magic pain drug had any effect on anyone, and in fact very little focus is drawn to the fireworks in that fight, leading me to suspect that was another element that was cut down until there was very little left of the original idea.

During most of the later fights there are jarringly noticeable cuts, to the point that I suspected it was a stylistic choice in one sequence where Monkey Man is fighting on top of a bar and visibly shifts position from one frame to the next at least twice, but given how much content appears to have been removed, I'm honestly not certain it was intentional.

The most egregious piece of missing content, whether it was shot and then removed, or never included in the film at all, is the moment that ties together Monkey Man's vendetta, the trans monastery, and the film's ultimate villain.

See, and this is big spoiler territory, Monkey Man's whole mission of revenge is against a chief of police who murdered his mother and burned down his home when he was a child. This is a very clear and understandable motivation. Later, we learn that the police chief was and is working for a popular Hindu religious figure, who is in turn backing what appears to be some kind of nationalist political party. This is where the information begins to thin out. Visual cues that the guru and political party are corrupt and authoritarian abound, but Monkey Man is never characterized as particularly socially conscious, or even aware that there is a bigger fish beyond the man he is seeking to kill. Until we reach the very end of the film, that is, and the guru is presented as the Big Bad that Monkey Man was gunning for all along, and this is simply never established as a thing. It makes sense that he would connect the two, and feel ill-will towards the guru, even to the point of murderousness, but we do not ever seem him connect those dots. He just behaves as though he already has, probably because he did it in a deleted scene.

From what we are given, it seems that we are meant to understand that the guru's religious sect, and the party he is backing, are responsible in some way for both the death of Monkey Man's mother and the larger social conflict that includes the repression of trans people at the monastery, but the connection is very tenuous. The police chief is working for the guru, but we are shown enough evidence that the police are simply hateful and corrupt, that it is necessary to establish that the specific acts of violence that drive this movie were ordered, or driven, by the guru and the political party, and this confirmation is never given. It's hard to convey, but there are a number of logical gaps that have seemingly obvious explanations which are, somewhat pointedly, never actually given. And not in a 'show-don't-tell' way. Important information is just glossed over, to the detriment of the film's apparent message.

There is simply not enough dialogue on this movie, about anything. I'm not asking for Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk exposition in every scene, but a single acknowledgement that Monkey Man understood the social context surrounding his mission of revenge would have gone a long way. As it is, this feels like a movie that is constantly on the cusp of saying something important, and then instead of saying it abruptly cuts to something else, somewhere else. Each of those 'somethings' is brilliantly put together, and a blast to watch, but it all adds up to something that feels as though it has squandered an opportunity at real greatness.

I'm going to give this one 4/5 stars. I am probably being far too harsh on a film that, as far as I know, did not actually market itself as a deep commentary on social injustice in India, but as a fun action romp, but Monkey Man so frequently flirts with really impactful ideas without ever committing to exploring them, that I can't help but feel disappointed anyway.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

The other day, I met up with a friend, and for some reason we put on the Anthony Hopkins/Alec Baldwin survival thriller; The Edge (1997).

My favorite part of every plane-crash-in-the-mountains movie (of which there are a fair few) is the initial gorgeous panoramic views of the plane flying across some majestic landscape. This film is serviceable in that regard, but not extraordinary. The aerial footage of the Alaskan wilderness is beautiful, but brief, and somewhat perfunctory.

This film centers on Anthony Hopkins as a billionaire with a knack for remembering trivia, and an academic interest in survivalism. Alec Baldwin plays the dickish photographer who wants to bang Hopkins' wife (Elle Macpherson). The plot is extremely straightforward, and every beat is aggressively foreshadowed, such that there are very few surprises or thrills in this thriller.

I adore Anthony Hopkins, and don't particularly care for Alec Baldwin, so I was hoping to at least glean some satisfaction from their conflict, but both actors honestly just seem kind of bored and tired for the entire film, including the parts where they are being actively attacked by a bear.

I did enjoy seeing Harold Perrineau, of Lost and the Matrix sequels, although being the only black character in a 90's thriller, his fate was unfortunately obvious from the first moment he appeared on screen.

Overall this was a decent movie to shit-talk with an old friend, but I doubt it would have held my attention otherwise. There are enough ridiculous moments that it's not unwatchable, just not very interesting. I'm giving it a probably over-harsh 2/5 stars.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Hm... A more interesting movie where a younger man has designs on Anthony Hopkins' character's wife might be Fracture. It's not great but it was better than you made this sound.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Last night I watched Orson Welles' F for Fake (1973) with a friend.

Hilarious, bizarre, and almost grotesquely self-indulgent; this film feels less like a sober meditation on the nature of fakery and the value of art, and more like Orson Welles having a blast dicking around Ibiza with his much younger girlfriend (Oja Kodar) while regaling you with the twists and turns of his latest hyper-fixation. I'm not even sure if I mean that as a criticism.

Broadly, the film relates the story of Elmyr de Hory, a profoundly talented art forger, as well as that of Clifford Irving, a biographer who wrote on Elmyr, only to later be exposed as a fraud himself, having faked an 'authorized biography' of Howard Hughes.

In practice, the film consists of numerous sequences where Welles, Elmyr, and Irving are just hanging out at various parties, painting, and ruminating on the concepts of expertise, commodity value, and 'getting one over' on those you perceive to have undervalued you, as Welles delivers a near-constant expository monologue in the spaces between these observations. The rest of the film is shots of Oja Kodar's ass, intercut with close-ups of men (unaware they were being filmed) ogling Oja Kodar's ass. These two elements are given roughly equal time.

The most apparent thing about this film is that Welles had entirely too much fun making it. He is visibly radiant with joy as he trots around Ibiza and Rome in a full-on cape and fedora ensemble, or shoots himself as a flat-black void, only his eyes illuminated, to deliver the purplest of prose, or holds forth at a dinner party attended by charlatans, fakers, and frauds (seemingly being the only one at the table actually eating a meal). It's hard not to get swept up in the floridly romantic view that Welles takes of Elmyr, and to a lesser extent, Irving, when he spends so much time just basking contentedly in the decadence of their lifestyles.

The clarity of storytelling suffers somewhat for Welle's meandering and self-indulgent approach, and perhaps also because of the way that the final film was assembled from footage shot for an earlier documentary, several of Welles' ongoing projects featuring Kodar, and at least two rounds of additional shooting overseen by Welles as new information about Irving's Hughes hoax came to light during production. The final product is certainly entertaining, particularly if you are a big Orson Welles fan, but it lacks the tightness of a really well-done documentary film, leaning instead into an almost prescient format reminiscent of daytime-TV classics like Beyond Belief (Welles has big Johnathan Frakes energy at several points in this film, and I'm curious whether Frakes had seen F for Fake before and maybe taken some inspiration from it for his role there), or Ripley's Believe it or Not.

I'm going to give F for Fake 3.5/5 stars. The voyeuristic sequences with Kodar are just so long, and essentially unrelated to the rest of the film, that they feel exceptionally gratuitous. I would also have liked to hear the perspectives on fakery from anyone who was not, themselves, an admitted fraudster, and this is not something we really get at any point. Instead the film presents an extremely focused and sympathetic thesis on art forgery and the dis-utility of 'expertise' with a few pointed nods at the world of art as a speculative asset, without ever diving much deeper than the surface with the criticism presented. If Welles had been a little bit less fixated on Kodar's ass, and more on the story he was telling, I think this could have been a truly great film, as opposed to 'merely' a fun and entertaining one.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Today I re-watched Caddyshack (1980).

Harold Ramis' first film is a classic, but definitely not the high point of his career. I watched this one a lot as a kid, and loved it for all the reasons a kid would; there are boobs, Bill Murray eats a candy-bar poo, and at the end the whole golf course explodes. All of those elements still work, and Ted Knight's performance has honestly only grown on me, but it's a little bit hard to overlook how poorly a lot of this movie has aged.

The first 20 minutes or so are honestly just boring. What jokes there are are mostly awful racial humor and Chevy Chase insulting everyone (like, his lines aren't even jokes? Is the humor supposed to be that you expect him to say the polite thing, but then he doesn't? That's maybe 2/3rds of a joke at best. Write a punchline, Chevy). The film takes its time introducing us to our protagonist, Danny (Michael O'Keefe), and he's fine, I guess? There are some class-conscious elements to his story that make you want to root for him, but then he's just kind of a boring scumbag for the rest of the movie.

Luckily, this movie seems to pick up steam as it goes along, and overall the humor and the pacing improve consistently throughout the runtime. Rodney Dangerfield's iconic performance is pretty hit-or-miss, with a lot of his jokes being almost incoherent ("I almost got head from Amelia Earhart" after nearly being hit by an airplane), but I think I honestly like his character more now than I did as a kid. Any plot that features rich dickheads competing amongst themselves in performative snobbery, like golf, normally turns me off, but if one of them is a flamboyant buffoon who drives all the other richies up the wall, I'm here for it.

The last 20 minutes or so are solid stuff, from Ted Knight's bug-eyed quotability ("Well? We're waiting!") to Dangerfield proclaiming "Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!", most of the actual laughs sneak in towards the end. Bill Murray is still the best part of the movie, and the cutaways to his disgusting hijinks really carry the first half in particular.

I think I would care more about Danny and his law-school ambitions if he didn't cheat on his girlfriend halfway through the movie and never tell her about it despite offering to marry her in literally the next scene. Maggie (Sarah Holcomb) is honestly the only 'nice' person in the whole movie, and she deserves better than Danny.

Overall this is about as low-brow as it gets, and fairly emblematic of the 80's screwball comedy. I'll give Caddyshack 3/5 stars, because I was entertained about 3/5 of the runtime. And because Chevy Chase sucks.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Hm... Sounds like rewatching Ferris Bueller's day off and realizing the kid is a giant asshole and grifter who takes advantage of everyone else's generosity, but not quite as bad.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Last night I watched the next installment of the Hammer Dracula series, Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), and then followed it up with This is Spinal Tap (1984) because my copy of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) seems to be damaged beyond playability.

Prince of Darkness is a solid Hammer film, and even a solid Vampire film, but it is a very lackluster Dracula film primarily because this is one of the installments where Christopher Lee hated the dialogue so much that he simply refused to read it, and the titular monster does not speak for the entire duration of this film (although he does hiss a couple of times). Lee's physical performance is still fantastic, particularly in the scenes immediately following his resurrection, where we get to see a weak and depleted Dracula slowly regaining his power and his charm as he feeds.

The film opens with a flashback sequence covering the destruction of Dracula in the original film, which is a little disappointing both because they used the censored version rather than the exquisite melting-wax-flesh effect that was included in some releases, and because it is the only time we get to see Dr. Van Helsing, and therefore Peter Cushing. Instead the role of veteran vampire-slayer and keeper of the lore is filled by Father Sandor (Andrew Keir) and our party of victims/Dracula hunters are similarly all original characters.

I particularly enjoyed Phillip Latham as Klove, Dracula's devoted manservant. It did strike me as a little funny that in the original film (and most adaptations) Dracula's castle is notably empty of servants, and the monster himself must perform their duties surreptitiously when he is hosting his victims, but in this version Klove seems to have taken up residence and begun serving Dracula some time after his master's death. Poor Drac finally gets some help with the chores, and he's too dead to enjoy it.

Suzan Farmer and Barbara Shelley gave decent performances as Diana and Helen Kent, wives to the brothers Kent, Charles and Alan (Francis Mathews, Charles Tingwell). Shelley in particular is given the opportunity to display some range as she transforms from the frightened and uptight British housewife into the malevolent and uninhibited vampire spawn of Dracula halfway through the film. She even gets to speak post-transformation, which puts the lie to screenwriter Jimmy Sangster's account that he never wrote any dialogue for Lee because "vampires don't chat."

Francis Mathews' Charles takes up most of the focus of the film, and he does a serviceable job as a dogged and irrepressibly English protagonist, although he displays about as much grief as a wooden spoon over the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law (see: irrepressibly English). All four of the central characters are cast in the same mold as the Harkers from the novel, but with little of Mina's steadfastness or charm on display.

The plot is straightforward, but takes the time to establish some additional vampire lore, and make use of it. As far as I can recall this is the first time that either the weakness to running water or the need to be invited in to a home by someone already inside have been introduced in this series, and both play significant parts in the climax. There is also a Renfield-like character present; Ludwig, who eats flies and does Dracula's bidding.

I have mixed feelings about the final confrontation. On the one hand, running water as a vampiric weakness is under-utilized, but on the other I didn't realize that Charles and Dracula were supposed to be standing on a frozen moat and not some kind of cement drainage ditch until Sandor yelled out "Ice" and then shot holes in it.

I'm going to give Prince of Darkness 3.5/5 stars. Not a bad film, but one that didn't make the best use of the talent on hand.

---

This is Spinal Tap was the directorial debut of Rob Reiner, and one of the first 'mockumentaries.' It's also just a deeply silly, ridiculous, kind of meaningless film.

With a non-stop torrent of bizarre, mostly-improvised dialogue, and a solid slate of visual gags, I always find myself laughing out loud at least a couple of times on any given rewatch of this one. The humor is mostly pretty shallow stuff, but there are enough clever moments sprinkled throughout to make repeat viewings worthwhile. It might just be me, but "These ones go to 11" is always good for a chuckle in my house. "I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation" also gets trotted out a lot around here.

The songs are all style-parodies in the vein of a heavy-metal Weird Al, and a couple of them are legitimate bangers. Big Bottom and Gimme Some Money are probably my favorites.

I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's good. Fred Willard is in it, and he's always good. If you like Rob Reiner's stuff, you'll like this. 4/5 stars, only because Reiner's co-writer Christopher Guest would go on to improve the formula substantially for 2000's Best in Show.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Oh wow, I didn't even know just refusing to speak any of the lines you're given and still keeping the starring role in a movie was even a thing actors could do (I imagine most actors on most movies couldn't but I didn't know it had ever happened).

It does make on wonder just how bad the dialogue had to be for a pro like Lee to refuse it.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Oh wow, I didn't even know just refusing to speak any of the lines you're given and still keeping the starring role in a movie was even a thing actors could do (I imagine most actors on most movies couldn't but I didn't know it had ever happened).

It does make on wonder just how bad the dialogue had to be for a pro like Lee to refuse it.

Click to shrink...

I think that there was a perfect storm of Lee being a huge star at the time as well as locked in for multiple pictures by contract, so they couldn't really just recast him, and if he never delivered his lines there wasn't anything they could actually do about it. For the first couple of scenes it actually adds to the tension of seeing Dracula as this much-reduced, but still deadly figure, because you are just hanging on his every move, waiting for him to speak in that imperious baritone and reassert his position as the ultimate apex-predator, but then he never does. If Lee had deigned to speak just once, at the climax, I think it could all have been played off as an intentional choice, and a mostly successful one, but the way it shook out makes the film feel incomplete. The rest of the dialogue is nothing special, but not particularly objectionable, so I am also curious what specifically Lee took such great issue with.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Today I watched the Spanish-French zombie flick Zombie Lake (1981).

This is possibly one of the weirdest zombie movies I've ever seen. It's my first Jean Rollin film, and if the rest of his stuff is this bizarre I might have to seek out some more of it.

The film begins with an extended skinny-dipping scene featuring full frontal nudity (there's a lot of that, including a second skinny dipping scene with more girls later in the film) and an attack by a single zombie in a Nazi uniform emerging from a lake somewhere in France. I should mention that I watched the English dub of this movie, and only realized this once this scene was over, because it features no dialogue at all, just ten minutes or so of uninterrupted nudity set to music.

The first attack is followed by another, a washerwoman, and the townsfolk parade the second victim's body up the street, her dress flapping up to expose her underwear in a way that felt genuinely bleak and sad. One of the townsfolk, I think the girl's father, seems embarrassed as her restores her modesty. We never see the body of the first girl (after she is killed, we see plenty of her prior to the attack) but this one has had her throat bitten out, and her blood seemingly drained, making these zombies seem kind of like weird lake vampires. Various characters refer to them as ghosts at several points too, and the word zombie is only used about two-thirds of the way through the film.

The zombies are also Nazis, I don't know if I mentioned that, but it becomes important.

We get some backstory on those Nazis, and the lake, and the townspeople, when a plucky reporter comes to town and bribes the mayor with a rare book. It turns out that during the war the townsfolk were partisans and they threw the bodies of an ambushed Nazi convoy into the lake, and now sometimes the bodies of the dead Nazis come out and hunt for blood, possibly because of a lack of child sacrifice since the times of the Inquisition.

The mayor's explanation takes the form of an extended flashback, which also features a storyline with details he cannot possibly have known, about one of those Nazis having saved the life of a girl in the village, fathered a child by her (in an extremely boring softcore scene. This was the lowest point of the film. I did not sign on for Nazi romance, nor the stilted consummation of such), and died while wearing an amulet worn by her. This was extremely weird information to include in his story, but it turns out to be very important for us to know about, almost immediately.

It turns out that the Zombie Nazi remembers the house where the village girl lived. She died in childbirth, but her daughter is now a little girl and still living there. While his buddies are murdering a busload of naked female basketball players, Zombie Daddy returns to the house and has a tender moment with his daughter, returning the amulet worn by her dead mother. He leaves her peacefully, and she never seems afraid of him.

After the second skinny-dipping scene, this becomes almost a completely different movie. The storyline with the Zombie Nazi and his daughter becomes the focus, and even the style of the film visibly changes to a much moodier, almost German Expressionist vibe. At one point Zaddy (Zombie Daddy) has to fight off one of the other Nazi Zombies to protect his daughter, and the fight looks like something Fritz Lang might have directed. The film is completely desaturated, except for bright red smears of blood, and the green facepaint reads much better in "black and white." During the fight the film keeps cutting to a medium shot of the daughter, dressed in bright colors, against a bright white wall, and the contrast is genuinely thoughtful and deliberate. This is probably the high point of the film, for me.

As this relationship is developing, the Mayor has unsuccessfully reached out for help from the authorites, first from some dickhead cops who barely resist their deaths at the hands of the Lake Nazis, and then from the reporter who's been snooping around. In what becomes a moment of fridge horror later, one girl does survive the Lake Nazis, and runs half naked into a pub full of men, to warn them of what is happening, before passing out and being carried upstairs somewhere, never to reappear, and certainly not mentioned to either the cops or the reporter who later come check out the bar.

Eventually a posse is formed to destroy the undead for good, after the reporter gives the mayor the idea to try napalm, and it turns out that they have tons of the stuff just laying around. She doesn't survive to see them try it though, because she's very stupid and walked directly into her death.

The little girl is distraught over the imminent destruction of her undead Nazi father, but the mayor talks her into helping, and she eventually agrees for the price of "a whole lot of fresh blood" for purposes she refuses to divulge, which is weird, because she just uses it to help her be bait for the mayor's plan anyway. She lures the lake Nazis, including her father, into an old mill, and they have a sort of Nazi Zombie soup kitchen with the open metal bucket of blood that the mayor has provided for the girl, and a single bowl, while she just kind of chills nearby for a bit. Eventually she dips, and it's time to rock and roll.

The townsfolk roll up, not with what I had been imagining; those backpack-tanks and spray-gun flame-throwers that you've seen a million times, but what looks like a repurposed industrial pump, or possibly a vehicle-mounted flame-thrower taken off of its mount. The thing is massive, and a satisfying amount of time is spent just watching it pump huge streams of flame into the structure of the mill, intercut with flaming zombies kind of apathetically shambling to their final rest.

We get a nice moment with the girl, where she accepts the destruction of her father as something he probably desired, and then it's curtains.

What a wild ride. The first half is pretty rough. If you aren't in it purely for the nudity there's not a whole lot going on, and if you are, the second half is going to leave you cold, but once the plot gets going this starts to look almost like a real movie. There are elements, particularly in the color grading and sound design, that are just fantastic. There are other elements that feel absurdly lazy, like the number of times we see the same footage of the zombies shuffling into and out of the lake between every single attack. Some elements are hard to place, like the seeming disregard for continuity, with scenes happening at night, but shot during the day, and vice-versa, which I began to suspect was a stylistic choice when they showed a clock tower at noon, in bright sunshine, to establish a scene that was absolutely supposed to be happening at night, as established by the dialogue in the immediately previous scene.

I try not to think about what score I am going to give a movie while I'm watching it, because it's distracting, but I probably revised the final score upwards a couple of times as elements that had initially seemed bizarre, like the extended sympathetic Nazi romance flashback in a nudie-horror movie, began to pay off in ways I had not foreseen. If I didn't already have an interest in German Expressionism, I'm not sure I would have appreciated the more unorthodox storyline and visual style as much, but if this is also an intersection of your interests, you might enjoy this one too. It's definitely not a traditional zombie movie, and I would not seek it out purely for the undead carnage, which is sporadic, cheap-looking, and not really the focus for most of the film.

I'm going to give Zombie Lake 3.5/5 stars, which is a lot more than I thought it was going to be during the deeply unsexy softcore Nazi sex scene, and rests mostly on the stylistic vibes I picked up in the latter half. It's hard to say if I recommend seeking this one out, but I did enjoy it, overall. Probably not something to put on at the halloween party though.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Tonight I watched a strong contender for the best (or at least the coolest) Zombie film ever made: The Return of the Living Dead (1985).

Everything about this movie is fucking delightful, from the disclaimer at the very beginning which informs us that all of the characters and events depicted in the film are totally real, and that the film is based on true events, to the spectacular and wide-ranging practical effects, to the fact that Linnea Quigley's character, Trash, gets naked almost immediately and stays that way for the entire rest of the film. The script is tight, the jokes are punchy, and the music slaps. I just can't get over how good this movie is.

The basic setup is that the events of the George Romero film Night of the Living Dead (1968) actually happened, and that that film is a highly censored version of the true story, with certain details deliberately altered by the US government. The remains of the undead from the 1968 outbreak were mistakenly shipped to a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, and have been there ever since. Shenanigans occur, some punks show up, and the chemical agent responsible for the original outbreak is released once again, in 1984.

This is a fun, lively, campy, good-time of a movie, but underlying the manic energy driving every scene is an extremely bleak irony; unlike most zombie movies where there is ostensibly hope that the tide can be turned, a cure found, and the day saved, we the audience are aware from almost the very beginning (and the characters are not) that these undead cannot actually be killed, and that the protagonists' efforts to destroy them only serve to accelerate their spread. Every action the heroes take throughout the entire film makes things immediately worse, and instead of playing as miserable and bleak, the film leans into the dramatic irony and plays it for laughs, piling on to this initial premise with each escalation in the stakes.

One of the great things about these zombies is that they are intelligent, and surprisingly talkative. For example, Freddy (Thom Mathews), who was also the third Tommy Jarvis in the Friday the 13th movies, is one of the initial victims of the released chemical. His transformation and pursuit of Tina (Beverly Randolph) through the funeral home is coded as this over-the-top abusive relationship, complete with zombie-freddy gaslighting Tina through a locked attic door, and it's so much more interesting than just having a shambling mute chase her through the dark. There's also a running gag with the zombies calling for more emergency responders as they eat each group that shows up. Zombies with personality are severely underrated, is what I'm saying.

The living members of the cast are all pretty great too. As mentioned, Linnea Quigley gets naked and dances on top of a mausoleum (a scene that I had watched in grainy youtube format probably a thousand times during my adolescence, long before seeing the rest of the actual movie), the leader of the punks, Suicide (Mark Venturini) gets philosophical about fashion while the aforementioned nude Quigley writhes against his chain-wrapped form, and Spider (Miguel Nunez Jr) remains exactly the correct level of freaked the fuck out for the entire film.

I love this movie. It gets 5/5 stars. If you have any interest in cheesy horror, excellent practical effects, or shamelessly sleazy titillation, you will also love this movie.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

Today I watched Valley of the Dolls (1967).

This is a very different kind of exploitation film. While sex and promiscuity are major themes of the film, there is almost no actual nudity, no violence, and the women at the center of the film are not exclusively victims of male abuse. I went into this one with radically incorrect expectations, based on the number of parodies, pseudo-sequels, and references to this film in raunchy sex comedies over the years. This movie is not that, but it is a legitimately very good film instead.

The story centers around three young women trying to break into show business, first on Broadway, and then in Hollywood. Our primary lead is Anne Welles (Barbara Perkins), a naive girl from New England with a sort-of fiance back at home. Upon her arrival in New York she secures a job with a law firm specializing in theater contracts, and comes into contact with aspiring performers Neely O'Hara (Patty Duke) and Jennifer North (Sharon Tate).

From there we follow the ups and downs, the romantic entanglements, and the drug-and-insecurity fueled mania of these three women, and the people who abuse and are abused in turn, by them.

Lyon Burke (Paul Burke) serves as the primary love interest for Anne, and his commitment to infidelity is a major driver of her arc. Lyon is sometimes a sympathetic character in the moments when he seems to genuinely care for the wellbeing of the women in his life, but he remains self-serving to a fault throughout, and embodies the kind of unctuous misogyny of the era so completely that his charm never fully rings true.

I should mention that there is some upsetting homophobia about halfway through the film. It's largely used to demonstrate Neely's increasing instability and insecurity, but there are a bunch of slurs tossed out in a relatively short period in a way that was jarring when experienced in 2024.

While I wouldn't say that Sharon Tate's performance was particularly noteworthy, her character and storyline are by far the most impactful part of the film, for me. Anne and Neely both become awful people, in different ways, in response to their treatment by others, but Jen remains kind, naive, and sweet right up until she takes her own life. Her story touches on the desperate unfairness of disease, and the burdens of being the sole provider for loved ones who cannot take care of themselves, while painting a portrait of a woman whose value has gone unrecognized as she is outshone by the crueler, more ambitious women that surround her.

The men in this film are pretty universally loathsome, but many of the women are as well. Combined with the extremely unsubtle ending song, the ethos of this movie seems to be essentially an indictment of 'The City' and the kinds of people who decide to run off there to seek their fortunes. It's kind of a weirdly reactionary film in that regard, and I wonder if it didn't attract so much attention from parodists and other more irreverent filmmakers in part because of that sort of schmaltzy moral condemnation that underlies at least Anne's storyline, but arguably Jen's as well.

I have to admit that when I threw this on at 11am on a Monday, I was not expecting there to be nearly as much going on as there turned out to be. It probably took me a good 40 minutes to get into the right frame of mind for this movie, but once I got there I started to really enjoy it. Lee Grant has a relatively small part, but I thought that she was fantastic, and it's her scenes with Tate and Tony Polar (Tony Scotti) that really anchored the film for me.

I'm going to give Valley of the Dolls 4/5 stars. I know it was the 60's, but I'm always going to knock off a star for homophobia that goes unchallenged, or at least unexamined in a film. The cinematography was gorgeous throughout, but particularly during the bits set in Anne's New England home town. The plot was complex and engaging, and the performances were great. I would definitely recommend this one, although if you were, like me, looking for something a little lower-brow, maybe check out Russ Meyer's kind-of sequel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), which I intend to put on next.

 

[MC_Lovecraft]

I followed up the original 'Valley' with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and I have to say that I seriously underestimated both of these movies.

This one opens with a disclaimer that it is not, in fact, a sequel to Valley of the Dolls, but that it deals with similar themes of exploitation and abuse in showbusiness. Unlike the first film, this disclaimer transitions directly into a sequence where a figure in a scarlet cloak, wielding a sword, chases a fat Nazi through an opulent Hollywood estate. The film eventually returns to this sequence at the climax, but it is initially given no context and no explanation.

The film is once again centered around three young women, this time members of a rock band who head to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Kelly (Dolly Read) is the lead singer and the central protagonist. Casey (Cynthia Myers) and 'Pet' (Marcia McBroom) round out the band, and the three girls share a camper van with their manager and Kelly's erstwhile boyfriend Harris (David Gurian).

The general themes of the first film largely carry over, with the individual storylines framed as cautionary tales about selfishness, naivety, and sexual frustration, but this film is also very much a product of 1969 and the Summer of Love, and much of the focus is placed on the tension between the wild lifestyles of the young and the weird, and the more conservative elements of society. In case the specific morals were unclear, the film helpfully gives us a narrated conclusion for the entire main cast, spelling out their personal foibles, and the growth they had to undergo to move past them. That was probably the low-point of what was otherwise a thoughtful and complex film. The studio should have had more faith that their message got through on its own.

This is definitely a weirder movie than the first, revolving as it does around the kind of wild sex-and-drug scene that existed in L.A. at that specific moment in time, and the more 'hip' attitude that it has carries over to some of the editing and cinematography, which bordered on the experimental at times, in ways that I generally appreciated.

While there are homophobic slurs used in this film, it is decidedly not a homophobic work. There are multiple characters with complex, sexualities, and the helpful narration at the end even informs us directly that these relationships are 'not evil'. While elements could certainly have been handled better, the fact that there is a transgender character at all in this film from 1969, and a major one to boot, is pretty cool.

Specifically, the character of Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell (John Lazar) transforms during the climactic, peyote-fueled party, into his alter-ego, the sexual superheroine Superwoman. Z-Man is already weirdly hot, with his mod haricut and outrageous sideburns, but the imperiously psychotic Superwoman is something to behold. Technically this is another instance of queer-villainy, but the film takes significant pains to illustrate that Superwoman is not evil because she is a trans woman, but because she has withdrawn into her own ego so deeply that she is disconnected from reality. It's an indictment of selfishness, not queerness, and I think that it works way better than it really ought to.

There is a lot more nudity in this one than the first, and the sexuality on display is heightened, but it's still less horny and a lot more intelligent than I was expecting. It's also a lot more violent, although most of this is contained to one scene, with some solid practical gore on display.

Both of these films feature complicated, well-rounded characters that do not fit easily into the categories of heros and villains, and that is not at all what I was expecting when I set out to watch them. I think that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls just edges out its predecessor, both in the tightness of the script, and by being a much more overtly queer film. I'm going to call it 4.5/5 stars.