Reviews

The neutron bomb made plenty of headlines throughout the 1970s (as well as inspiring songs by Los Angeles punk bands The Controllers and The Weirdos), but this remarkable Canadian short subject makes it clear that the weapon that leaves buildings standings while eliminating people (and any other living things) was already in development - and no longer a secret - at some point during the previous decade. Filmed in deserted Montreal locations, 23 Skidoo makes this very plain when we see a hastily abandoned and incomplete type-written story about the neutron bomb amidst its scenes of barren big city emptiness. A chilling and eerie 8 minutes.

This entirely credulous 36-minute long 'documentary' turns to such experts as ancient Egyptian scribes, the writings of 'researcher' Charles Fort, and astrologer Sydney Omarr to prove the existence of flying saucers and space aliens who have visited planet Earth. Though 60 years old, the film relies on the same theories we still hear today (e.g., the Air Force is hiding the truth from us), suggesting that little has changed in the intervening half century. Strange Sightings also keenly stirs some spiritual nonsense into its stew of silliness to convince the viewer that we have had extra-terrestrial visitors. Ridiculous but entertaining.

Do you enjoy watching people ice skate? More to the point, do you enjoy watching people ice skate for ten minutes accompanied by rinky-dink piano plunking and twist music? If your answer to either question is 'yes', then Patinoire is definitely your film. To his credit, director Gilles Carle somehow convinced the National Film Board of Canada to ante up for some Technicolor stock, so while his film is pretty boring for those who of us have absolutely no interest in ice skating, it looks great nonetheless- a bit like a particularly well preserved home movie, but one shot on 16mm instead of Super 8.

For those who enjoy speculative fiction, it doesn't come any more speculative than Star Force. Consisting almost entirely of stock footage and very cheap special effects and narrated by someone named Sidney Paul, the film assesses the risk of an attack from outer space - heck, from within our own solar system! - as quite high. It COULD happen, insists Paul as director Wheeler Dixon 'entertains' us with endless shots of moon craters, blurry photos of supposed UFOs, and badly tinted animated sequences. As someone who paid to see Hangar 18 in 1980, I can assure prospective viewers that Star Force makes that film look like a big-budget masterpiece. If YOU paid to see THIS (96-minute long!!!) piece of exploitation garbage back in the day, you have my deepest condolences. You still deserve to get your $1 refunded.

Released in the United States with the helpfully explanatory title The Four Days of Snow and Blood, 226 is a superb historical drama from the reliable and sadly unheralded Japanese director Hideo Gosha (Onimasa, Bandits vs. Suicide Squadron). Gosha's films are always precise, beautiful to look at, and riveting; 226 is no exception. Taking its name from an attempted military coup that began on February 26 1936, the film details the machinations and bloody fallout from the attempt - and the blinkered attitude of its participants, who thought they were working on behalf of the Emperor by overthrowing the corrupt civilian government then running the country. A terrific history lesson on par with Kihachi Okamoto's 1967 classic Nihon no ichiban nagai hi (Japan's Longest Day).

A Brazilian historical drama set in the middle of the 19th century doesn't seem like the likeliest of candidates for an English-language dubbing and American theatrical release, but within minutes of the start of Na Garganta do Diabo (Iguassu The Devil's Throat) the reason becomes obvious: topless women. Am I being too cynical? Maybe, but the prominence of first reel breasts might have caught the attention of a keen-eyed American distributor with his eyes on the 'arthouse' circuit. As for the story, it revolves around the misadventures of four army deserters as they make themselves at home on a Paraguayan farm. Needless to say, the farmer (and his two daughters) aren't too happy to see them, and complications ensue. Taking its English title from the famous waterfalls that feature prominently in the film, Iguassu was beautifully shot by Rudolf Icsey, who also lensed the infamous Macumba Love in the same year.

What a curious film this is: a mixture of potent propaganda and lustful yearning; the former personified by Marcia (Obdulia Plasencia), a working-class girl grateful for the ten previous years of revolution, the latter by Akira (Masahiko Tsugawa), a rather clueless Japanese sailor who spends the bulk of the film chasing the ladies (including, of course, Marcia). Director Kazuo Kuroki foregoes the (typically Japanese) widescreen lens and sticks to black-and-white stock: as a consequence Cuban Lover hearkens back (intentionally or otherwise) to Mikhail Kalatozov's 1964 epic Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba). The film inter-cuts its fictional segments with speeches by Fidel and Che, and we're given the impression that the entire population is behind them. Meanwhile, Akira is an unrepentant horn dog who is also pretty clueless concerning the experiences of the Cuban people. I guess the message is you can have a revolution and sex at the same time. Viva Fidel!

Is this the best - or at least, the most enjoyable - anti-drug film of them all? I'm seen a lot of these films over the years (thanks Something Weird Video!), but this one really stands out. Start with its brevity: at four minutes in length, it cuts to the chase. There's no fat in Case Study: LSD, just meat - specifically, hot dogs, if you consider hot dogs meat. And what a hot dog it is: an anthropomorphic weenie purchased on Market Street (San Francisco?) represented by a troll doll, purchased by a young lady on a bad trip who regrets her decision to bite into the sandwich (yes, a hot dog is a sandwich) despite its protestations that it has a wife and seven kids at home to take care of. Someone must have been tripping when they cooked up THIS story! Oh, and there's no Sonny Bono, despite IMDb's listing. Sorry, Sonny fans - you'll just have to listen to Pammie's On a Bummer to overcome your disappointment.

Even Martin Scorsese can't make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is the massively overrated David Johansen, who never was a great singer and now is much worse. Built around an embarrassingly bad performance from the Big Apple's Cafe Carlyle, the film is nonetheless worth seeing for footage of the New York Dolls performing on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and The Old Grey Whistle Test. It's unfortunate Johansen is the last Doll standing - both Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain's post-Dolls recorded legacies are far superior - but sometimes life isn't fair. If you're a Johansen fan, you'll probably love this film; others will find their patience tried.

Alexander Ptushko is to Soviet cinema what Ray Harryhausen is to American: a master of fantasy film-making conversant with stop-motion photography and other special effects. Ptushko's films were butchered for American screens (the wonderful Ilya Muromets, for example, was horribly re-edited for US kiddie matinees as The Sword and the Dragon) but have been available since the turn of the century in worthwhile, Anglophone friendly DVDs from the Russian Cinema Council (RUSCICO). This 30-minute semi-documentary (presumably made for Soviet television) blends scenes from Ptushko films with late-80's footage of two children stumbling their way, Narnia-like, through the director's vivid cinematic imagination. It's a decent if dated introduction to one of the greatest of fantasy filmmakers: at the very least, it will whet your appetite for more Ptushko!

I'm not easily offended, but this is a genuinely repulsive film - even by the standards of Nikkatsu's pinku eiga output throughout the 1970s. Most of those films (or at least, the ones I've seen) may be exploitative, but they generally wink at themselves, cannot be taken seriously, and are clearly designed as entertainment. A Wife to Be Sacrificed is decidedly un-entertaining, cannot pass itself off as an art film (Nagisa Oshima this is not) or personal statement, and doesn't provide the satisfaction of rape-revenge films such as I Spit On Your Grave. In short, it seems to be an excuse to depict the torture and sexual abuse of a woman who ends up apparently grateful for her mistreatment. Other reviews mention how well made and beautiful this film is, but the print utilized on Kimstim's DVD presentation is dark, smeary, and displays frequent speckling and reel change markers. This is a grindhouse film of the worst kind.

Do you like gladiator movies, Timmy? If you do (and who doesn't!) you should dig up a copy of this Italian tribute to the muscle-flexing super-studs of the second peplum era (roughly 1955-1964). Clocking in at an all too brief 46 minutes and change, Uomini Forti (Strong Men) takes a look at the American bodybuilders who came to Italy and made their fortune in the sword-and-sandal genre, including Mark Forrest, Ed Fury, Gordon Mitchell, and Steve Reeves. While the film is held together by interviews with industry vets (including Rosalba Neri and Mimmo Palmara) and movie excerpts, its primary value is provided by generous excerpts from Italian promotional material that will be new to Anglophone viewers. Luce's inexpensive DVD comes with English subtitles but no additional extras.

Anglophone audiences got Tora! Tora! Tora! In 1970, but two years earlier Japanese audiences got Rengô kantai shirei chôkan: Yamamoto Isoroku (Admiral Yamamoto). Admiral Yamamoto takes Pearl Harbor as its jumping off point to tell the wartime story of Japan's most respected naval commander. As with most Japanese war flicks of the 1960s, this one features outstanding model work and exciting action scenes, while being anchored by a typically fine performance from Toshiro Mifune in the title role. Historically, I don't know how accurate Admiral Yamamoto is - while the details of the military exploits of the Imperial Japanese Navy are largely accurate, one wonders if it overdoes its hero's anti-war bonafides. I guess I'd better read a Yamamoto biography and find out if he really was as sensible and thoughtful as he's depicted here.

You've never seen another film quite like Rehla ilal kamar (Journey to the Moon). The film starts out as a standard silly Ismael Yassin comedy, takes a trip into territory previously occupied by Cat-Women of the Moon, and then swerves into a bizarre tribute of sorts to Island of Lost Souls. There's dancing, romance, slapstick humor, and hideous mutants in this tale of three Earthlings sent to the moon, where they meet a 'mad' scientist, his beautiful daughters (not clear on this point, but the ladies must have come from somewhere), and the survivors of an atomic war who will help our protagonists return home. Completely wacky and thoroughly entertaining.

When Night Falls on the Reeperbahn is a genuinely weird movie. Shot on location in Hamburg (we see the docks, plus an all too brief glimpse of the Top Ten Club), the film imagines a world where LSD usage is rife amongst the local younger generation, who are being fed a diet of the psychedelic by the Owsley-like son (Fritz Wepper) of wealthy industrialist Voss (Herbert Tiede). Young women are being dosed and turned over to a cabal of Voss's wealthy colleagues, who use them as love toys. Some of them subsequently end up dead, and reporter Sonntag (Erik Schumann) is determined to get the story and reveal the sordid truth. There's a ton going on here, and the film pushes the boundaries of what was likely allowed in mid-60s West German cinema: there's a surprising amount of nudity, lots of references to what's going on inside men's trousers, and of course plenty of drug references (the film makes the common mistake of describing LSD as a narcotic). It's a sordid affair that dresses up a right-wing message in a sensational package; perhaps a precursor of the Schulmadchen Report films that were just around the corner.

This well-made but heavy-handed piece of Ukrainian propaganda asks the question: what would it take to turn a peaceful hippie dropout into Rambo? The answer is the murder of his wife by Russian (or Russian-supporting) paramilitaries during a border incursion into the highly contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Apparently based on a true story, the film tells the tale of. Mykola, the aforementioned pacifist who does a 180 and somehow learns how to dis- and re-assemble an AK-47 in 18 seconds. The story seems far-fetched but who knows...stranger things have happened, I suppose. If you've suffered through recent Russian agitprop such as 2013's Stalingrad, Sniper White Raven (as the title appears on screen) can serve as either a pallet-cleanser or corrective. It's nothing special but not bad.

I rarely review 'popular' films, because who needs another opinion about something hundreds of others have already expounded upon? Though I never intended to watch MTSWSO, I changed my mind when rock critic Robert Christgau - whose writing I've admired for decades - declared this his favorite film of 2022.

Within two or three minutes, I knew I was going to part company with Mr. Christgau; within five, I knew this was going to be a film I would actively dislike. Apparently based on a short film that became popular online, MTSWSO stretches across a yawn-inducing hour and a half. To make matters worse, Marcel's grating, irritating baby voice drones on for the full 90 minutes, while 'real-life' director Dean Fleischer Camp makes for the dullest of sidekicks (and is an unimaginative 'documentarian' to boot). The penultimate nail in the film's coffin is a sub-plot about Marcel's efforts to meet 60 Minutes talking head Lesley Stahl (what, no People Magazine cover story?); the final nail is Marcel's rendition of The Eagles' execrable soft rock hit Peaceful, Easy Feeling which gives me a nauseous, uneasy feeling whenever I hear it.

I'm giving the film a 3/10 because Isabella Rossellini is good as Marcel's Nana, but honestly...how on earth did this film receive an astonishing 98% on Rotten Tomatoes? I have to think there's group-think at play amongst the professional critical class, who universally adored MTSWSO and probably didn't want to be churlish and reveal that the emperor - er, shell - wore no clothes. So I'll take on that role: this film is as hollow and pointless as an empty seashell.

If you're a resident of Wausau, Wisconsin and filled with civic pride, you should find this 'actuality' about the city during the early part of the 20th century riveting stuff. If you're not from Wausau, well, the film (which is included on Flicker Alley's 'We're In the Movies!' disc) looks absolutely gorgeous, which is impressive considering that it spent most of its existence in a film canister in someone's garage (as detailed in the documentary When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose, also included on the disc). Featuring some wonderfully rich tinting, The Lumberjack introduces us to some of Wausau's leading citizens and takes us on a trip to the local sawmill. Thankfully, it's only 16 minutes long.

Lithuanian-born Regimantas Adomaitis stars as Ignaz Wolz, a revolutionary who learns his political theory in the trenches of World War I and can't abide the strictures placed upon 'the revolution' by the organizers, intellectuals, and bureaucrats dominating the leftist political scene in post-war Weimar Germany. This colorful, well-acted feature would be better if it could have spent less time sounding like an undergrad level discussion about the factional battles fought within the SPD and the development of the KPD and the Spartakists, but it's still quite watchable. History probably felt quite settled in 1974 East Germany, which probably explains the relative generosity of the film's attitude toward anarchism. Of course, history wasn't quite done with the DDR yet.

For some reason, IMDb lists this film with a 1983 release date, but the Filmmuseum DVD lists it as 1974 and it was almost certainly shot concurrently with director Alexander Kluge's full-length feature of that year, In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod. Biermann-Film (its title another little mystery that probably only makes sense to Germans) is only three minutes long but features some of the same locations, such as the Palmengarten, seen in the longer Kluge film. It offers different footage of riot police and water cannon facing off against squatters and is accompanied by a man (Biermann?) singing a folk song about the can't-come-soon-enough nature of communism. An interesting curio.

This low budget British second feature has one advantage over scores of similar films of its time: it was shot on location in South Africa, not just on a grotty back lot. Two unlucky souls are brought together by fate: Ricky (Tony Wright), who owes £1500 in gambling debts, and Maria (Sonja Ziemann) who's about to go blind. To make matters worse, Ricky's best friend Joe (Helmut Schmid) has been assigned to kill him if he doesn't make good on his debt. In order for them to get out of their mutual predicaments, the duo cook up an insurance scheme. Ivor Slaney's bold, brassy score steals unashamedly from Elmer Bernstein's theme from The Man With the Golden Arm, but what more can you expect from an Eady money cheapie?

It's not a perfect comparison, but I couldn't help but think of Albert Lamorisse's 1956 Oscar-winning short Le ballon rouge while watching Spacerek staromiejski (A Walk in the Old City of Warsaw). Instead of having a character chasing some inflatable plastic, however, director Andrzej Munk focuses on a school age girl who traverses the city and discovers all sorts of new and unusual sounds along the way. There's no dialogue as the cheeky lass interrupts a man's phone call and sprays a traffic policeman with water during her travels. It's nothing special, but not quite as annoying as the cloying Red Balloon.

Perhaps I'm completely seeing things in Aether that don't exist, but as I watched it I began to wonder whether or not Patrick McGoohan had ever seen the short - and whether or not it was an influence on his famous television series 'The Prisoner'. As unlikely as it seems, the red bouncing ball and the long runs on a deserted beach - plus the overall sixties stylishness of the attractive woman in the vintage motor car - reminded me of the time spent by McGoohan in The Village trying to escape Number One's clutches. A short, sharp little film with some daring innovations (love the paint pouring over the frame!).

...keep matches away from children. That's the singular message of this absolutely grueling, one minute long public information film directed by John Krish. If I had seen this film as a child, you can be damn sure I would have made sure my parents disposed of every match in the house. Krish's camera travels through the remains of a burned out house, accompanied by a disturbing soundtrack of echoing voices, then concludes with a single title card narrated by a disembodied voice urging us to Please Keep Matches Away From Children. As horrifying as the grimmest horror film, Searching (if that is indeed its title) will stick with you.

Shot silent in 1929, this crude Warners comedy was given a soundie makeover the following year. Today, only the second reel exists, but that's not why you're watching Half a Hero: you're watching to see 6-year old Billy Barty hammer a bad guy's toes! Yes, the diminutive Barty was already deep into his career and showing impressive acting chops. Okay, so he's a 6-year old portraying a 2 or 3 year old toddler, but he already looks like a natural. Also on offer here: a monkey riding a bicycle. The film plays like a Popeye cartoon without Popeye, but come to think of it...Barty would have made a great sailor man!