Reviews

If you love loud, shrieking noise, this is for you. It's obnoxious, unrealistic, nothing at all like and an insult to the '60s Girl Groups.

Expected to see the Supremes, enjoy their songs. Instead, it's a bunch of broads shrieking in the 'new' cacophonous style, as if to prove that loud noise and singing are the same thing.

At least I had the laptop to read while others watched this dog's breakfast.

Go ahead, call me an insensitive, uncultured, boor. You think I care? I don't. It is what it is. Were it up to me, I'd use the DVD for a mini Frisbee, or maybe scrape up dog droppings with it.

Would rather listen to a V-8 engine with the oil drained out, slowly grind itself to metal shavings than this dissonance.

The story line is almost as interesting as watching a dog throw up it's breakfast. Dreadful.

To see the present, go back thirty yearss, then another forty. Creeping socialism has been ongoing since the Red Decade of the 1930s, when Franklin 'The Arch Criminal' Roosevelt's marxist 'braintrust' brought communism to America.

Thomas Gomez does a brilliant, perfect job of portraying the murderous communist greaszeballs who've threatened and sweet-talked their way into every aspect of today's culture.

While this film was in theatres, seventy years ago, a close family member was early in their law enforcement career, shadowing dangerous criminals who worked the New York City waterfront. Gone sometimes days at a time, his wife never knew when he'd be home - if he'd be home.

He infiltrated deadly murderers who would kill simply to make a point. Who was our family friend targeting, the mafia? No, members of the communist party.

Joe McCarthy was correct, which is why the rotten marxist press to this day reviles him. Because he knew them for the communist stooges they've long been.

This film pairs beautifully with "I Was A Spy For the FBI" another classic expose of the marxist termites who've worked many decades to strip Americans of their liberty, wealth, and very lives.

The Left is hate. Revenge is its pastime. Genocide is its legacy.

Communists are liars, subversives, and killers. Handle accordingly.

Magnificent work of art and a fantastic way to start 2022, shown tonight, 01 JAN 2022, on Comet TV Channel.

Megalazone (r) plays rough, but when Jet Jaguar cunningly draws 'Zilla into the fray it's curtains for Megs.

Special effects must have taken forever to set up, the bursting dam and resulting floods, breathtaking.

The secret labs are much more interesting to behold than anything the lame Star Wars ever presented. Lots of realistic looking scientific devices complete with flashing lights, fascinating.

George Lucas could take a few pointers from this work of art.

Moral of the story: friendships win over enmity, everytime.

And don't mess with 'Zilla. He's tough, and he plays for keeps.

As should we all.

Good viewing to you.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasota Key, Florida 01 JAN, 2022.

Twenty two years after the release of Eyes Wide Shut, we're reading every day about the devil-worshipping kiddie raper Elites, aren't we?

Danny Peary, in his 'Cult Films' books series years ago correctly called this film an attack on communism, an allegorical expose of insidious commie tricks by which the reds gull the weak minded into going along with their genocidal 'utopian vision.'

People appear the same on the outside, but within there has been 'revolution within the form' to use a commie phrase. This means that external appearances are the same but inside, there's another person, a whole new 'socialist man' just itching to destroy civil society and all human and animal life.

The Venona Papers and the Mitrohkin Archive, among others released during the 90s well proved the massive effort on part of the soviets to use all necessary means to subvert America from within.

Job well done.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasota Key, Florida 26 May, 2018

Excellent portrayal of hippie/yuppies who gather in South Carolina Low Country ante-bellum mansion with encircling verandas, much like ou beloved Villa d'Amplitron, down here, Flahda.

They do so to attempt to grieve for some friend who croaked himself off. OK, so the guy's dead. Bury him before he stinks up the mansion and get on with it, OK? What? They hadda make a film about it? OK, let's review.

Early 80s was the Reagan Era and these hippie-dip yupsters should have been long gone. The Reagan Era was about prosperity and joy, not grieving for some old before their time degenerate hippie who offed himself. Boo hoo.

They weren't much then, despite what their publicists tell you today.

Today? Entirely too many of them are glutted with cash that came too easy, power they accrued all too rapidly. This film reads like a psychic X-Ray of their insipid conduct and ideological gassing off.

The marshlands serve as metaphor: a study in shallow.

Wouldn't it have been more rewarding to make a movie about the southern gentlemen and ladies who possess more breeding, character and wisdom in their little fingers than this bunch?

And for decency's sake, why didn't they include a scene in which they bury Jeff Goldblum's character in a shallow grave, out the marsh?

The best scene? The police officer who politely endures undue left wing snottiness. You wish he'd either lug the bunch of them, or just spirit you away from yuppieville.

But it's just a movie, so neither happens.

What to do? Watch it. It's an enjoyable film about today's kings and queens who couldn't care less whether you or I live or fall into a tire shredder.

That's what makes it special.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasoviet Key, Florida 01 February, 2014

Why watch this chunk of celluloid trash? Because it will help you to understand why so many otherwise intelligent people still fall for the false religion of looting and genocide known as socialism/communism.

The 'interviews' with 'survivors' - a polite way of describing decrepit 20s anarchists - who gas off about the virtues of communism is enlightening and chilling.

These mindwashed dupes tell you communism is peachy keen but for some strange reason don't mention firing squads, brainwashing, gulags, hanging people on meathooks in the basement of Lubyanka Prison, the Holodmor Famine in the Ukraine, contaminated drinking water, filth, corruption, beatings, true environmental disasters, and other routine features of communist third world toilets.

Ask anyone in Cuba, North Korea, or communist china - that's right I said it, 'communist china' - about the lovely paradise of the workers.

Take a look at these interviewees: old before their time, raspy cigarette voices, lousy teeth, chicken skin: don't you want to be a commie just like them? Yeah. Can't wait.

They're just bright enough to be dangerous and all they can do when not throwing bombs is lie, lie, lie, and thrust their dirty fists in the air in worship of marx, lenin, stalin and other human garbage who would repay their moronic loyalty with death.

You like stereotypes? Then you gonna love Reds. It has more stereotypes than a Chernobyl junkyard dog has three headed fleas: anti-communists are either stupid and toothless or 'rich, white' arrogant toffs. The communist rats are all lovely, wonderful, smart people who are always partying and enjoying life.

Which doesn't explain why they croak of easily avoidable fatal illnesses at unusually young ages.

To understand diseases, medical researchers must examine chunks of wino vomit, fly eggs, body lice, open lesions, necrotic tissue, decomposed bodies, and similar dumbfounding, unsavory artifacts.

Thus is the case with Reds, a film which was clearly hastily cobbled in reaction to the election of President Reagan, who gave Americans the best eight years they'd enjoyed in years, and since for that matter.

The Left is a pack of sore losers and horrible, vindictive winners. This is an anti-Reagan film which slyly attempts to sell communism to anyone stupid enough to buy it.

Within a decade of this film's release, the soviet union collapsed of its own weight.

Study this as you would a crime scene or a bacterial strain in a Petri Dish: to prevent future outbreaks of the genocidal disease of communism.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasoviet Key, Florida

17 July, 2013

This is one of the most beautiful, touching films ever made. The actors strive for dull yet achieve somnolence. The special effects demonstrate how little can be accomplished on a low budget. The dialogue will immediately impress you for its ordinariness and lack of synchronization with the on-screen 'action', to use the word loosely.

A drowning man cries for help but his cries don't match his lip movements. The mad scientist looks as if he's trying his hardest to not laugh upon finally seeing the monster at film's end. The actor is supposed to be emoting 'scared, terrified', but his facial expression immediately conveys glee, delight, as if his unspoken words might be, "I can't believe they're paying me for this."

The 'monster' is an extra who wears a silly rubber mask with Ping-Pong balls glued on for eyes, and things which resemble pencils stuck in the nostrils, very much in manner that schoolkids stick pencils up their noses.

During the last minute, a couple sharp looking private aircraft fly away, one of them carrying John Agar. We don't know where he's going, nor why. The film's auteur wisely leaves this interpretation to his learned audience, as if implying there'll be a sequel.

One can only hope. This is one of the biggest piles of dog droppings ever committed to celluloid and as such, a film near and dear to every connoisseur of bad films.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Bad Film Gourmand

04 June, 2013

You needn't view this fine family film at Christmas time to enjoy it. Its message transcends the seasons and speaks to the goodness people demonstrate, and the gift of the family arrangement God gave to us.

Set in the late Depression Era, the moral of the story is timeless and is clearly pertinent to our time.

Merely for its costuming, settings, and appointments this upbuilding film deserves an award. If you grew up during the Fifties, you surely will recall many homes which looked as do the lovely homes in this film.

Home decor is straight from the late thirties/forties and every bit of it is lovely. The 'floor mode' radio is quite authentic as are all the tobacco cannisters, green desk lamps, and the railway - everything.

Saw this film a couple years ago on THIS TV, and thought well enough of it to purchase it for the collection.

The father's devotion is demonstrated in the little things, making a sleigh for his kids, spending time with them.

If you've a heart you'll surely find it warmed by this fine story.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasota Key, Florida 26 December, 2012

Gorgo is a beautiful film whose conclusion will surprise you and warm your heart.

Greedy sailors kidnap Gorgo's baby for purposes of exploitation. They're men unconstrained by principles, made giddy by their ill gotten gains.

But families are not to be invaded. Bonds twixt mother and child are not to be trifled with even in the sea monster kingdom, so it seems.

Strange and horrifying consequences occur when a concerned Mrs. Gorgo comes ashore, expressing concern as to the whereabouts of her baby.

Why do the Giddy always think they can get away with it when common sense dictates that they can't. The exciting conclusion to Gorgo demonstrates that greed has often unforeseen consequences.

Gorgo also demonstrates that bonds among families run deep, and those who seek to break them do so at their own peril.

This is a beautiful movie with a joyous conclusion.

See it.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

10 November, 2012

Oh, you thought perhaps because in the opening scenes Detective Wallander appeared to be in much better physical and emotional shape, this installment would be sweetness 'n' light?

What? You figured, here's a whole new kind of depressive detective, one who bakes cakes, does jigs by the light of the midnight sun, and sings "Oklahoma!"?

Rest assured, the cavalcade of cadavers continues apace! Dainty shot of arm attached to torso washed up on a cold beach framed by grey skies. Cheery scene in which Wallander discovers human skull in his backyard.

Nice attempted homicide-by-sledgehammer by a perp who could be the grandson of Chuck Manson.

More gray skies. Brooding. Drinks. Brooding. Saskia Reeves' character Vanja Andersson, is elegant, mysterious, alluring as Wallander's girlfriend, a welcome Anglo-Dutch balm for sore eyes. A lovely lady and fine actress whose presence keeps one from reaching for the box of double edged razor blades....

Missed this series during its long absence from PBS, glad it's back and look forward to many more. They say the Nordic people are prone to brooding. A fine pastime, fun for the whole family. Wallander aptly demonstrates the fine art of brooding and solving the unsolvable simultaneously.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasovietskiya Ostrova, Fluorida 09 September, 2012

By all means, see this film if you wish to understand the moronic, disingenuous, commie-rat mindset which infested the 1970s.

'The film the oil companies don't want you so see'??? Yeah. Right. What would they care? Which oil companies? Time and President Reagan proved the premise of this film to be false, a self-serving propaganda piece perhaps crafted to make Jimmy Carter, look good and win a second term. This would likely have resulted in us speaking Russian, those fortunate enough to survive, wouldn't it?

The oil companies along with the American people in 1980 were enduring The Carter Glory Years, when both moslem radical and soviet thugs held America hostage, with the apparent approval of the commander in chief.

One of the ways in which these intergenerational, symbiotically related

head lice held us for ransom was by means of 'oil embargoes'. OPEC constantly engineered 'oil shortages' throughout the 70s, starting in the fall of '73.

The Carter Glory Years featured inane 'Big Bad Oil' fairy tales, invented by leftists and repeated by the uninformed. One tale was that oil companies were sitting on trillions of gallons of oil, awaiting a mysterious price hike. Another was the fatuous muth about 'the guy up in Maine who invented a seventy - the number steadily rose from seventy to one hundred to two hundred and beyond - mile per gallon carburetor but Big Bad Oil Companies and Evil Detroit stole his patent and destroyed his plans.

That's the false premise of this film, which explains why it's patently stupid, boring, and false. If we'd only stop and THINK about that which we hear, eh? Ask yourself, what oil company and/or car maker could get away with it? Answer: none. Ask yourself, what oil company and/or car maker wouldn't love to be the first to market a new car line with a two-hundred mile per gallon carburetor? Every one would love to do so, wouldn't they?

This fairy tale's silliness was compounded by the fact that by the 1980s, computer controlled carburetors were being supplanted by fuel injection. That said, a gallon of gas can push a given weight only so far and no more, no matter what some 'guy up in Maine' claims to have invented.

With Hollywood, if you want to know the truth, turn the lies in its movies 180 degrees around and you'll have it.

Interestingly, within a couple years of The Formula's release, President Reagan got government out of the oil business, and gas became plentiful and cheap.

This permanently angered The Left as well as sore loser Mr. Peanuts, but facts are facts.

Would you expect any different from Hollywood? Why? Didn't both Lenin and Stalin say, 'give me Hollywood and I'll control the world'? You think they just sat back went to sleep after saying that?

Marta Keller is beautiful to behold and George C. Scott is as always, a barely contained hi-voltage dynamo of psychic energy.

Boring? It's no different from British horror films in which the monster never shows up for curtain call but instead you listen - for two hours running time - to professorial British gents discussing the beast as they sip Port in the walnut panelled drawing room of a country estate located a discrete distance to the west of London.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Massive Critic at Critial Mass

Manasoviet Key, Florida

26 January, 2012

Caught first episode of this riveting investigative series on local PBS outlet last Sunday eve, 17 October, 2011.

Scotland's breathtaking vistas of verdant green lands are bounded by bottomless, troubling, indigo waters over which skies streaked by wet, grey, slabs of Cold War Fear stand unsettling watch.

Jason Isaacs is a lawyer by education which makes him a gifted actor, as he well demonstrated with his luciferian character in "Patriot", Col. Tavington. What was it about Colonel Tavington - his smirk? His sadism? - which made you want to bash his face?*

No matter. Mr. Isaacs has a gift for drawing you in to his character and the dark, subtly menacing world in which he always gets his quarry.

Mr. Isaacs' character, 'Jackson Brodie' presents as a brooding, prescient, cautious investigator. He's a man indelibly haunted by traumatic events which bored holes thru his heart, scarring it with the priceless gift of insight into human weakness - for those who wish to see it.

Investigator Brodie bears his leaden cross in silence. The pain is always there just beneath the surface. It binds him to his audience which uses its gift of insight borne of pain to wrest reality from illusion, no small task in a world riddled with the cancer of deception, the designer disease of the Elites.

Wry, understated humor punctuates throughout as corpses surface, weaving threads of intrigue throughout a tapestry of rain, oblique motives, and ultimately, arrest.

Though many of us love life in the warmth, there's something enticing about the dank, rainy, vistas which frame so many scenes. And why not? After all, why would one hang oneself in the glorious heat of the sunny Caribbean? Wouldn't it be more fitting to gas oneself off in the dark, bone-chilling, North Sea cold? You bet it would, nothing quite like it, frankly, is there?

Mr. Isaacs 'Jackson Brodie' peels back the layers of the human psyche for our enjoyment and edification. One can only hope to see more episodes which fathom the depths of corrosion to the human soul.

Delightful, joyous, cheery, intriguing. Don't miss it.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

milspec390@aol.com

24 October, 2011

* - 'something about him which makes you want to bash his face.'

c. Ingmar Bergman, "The Magician"

Let's put this film on a time line, in manner of good investigators. What was occurring in 1984? Well, President Reagan, having kicked the soviets and Castro back to their respective cages, had just won reelection and it was 'Morning in America'. American's were happy, and freedom was breaking out around the world.

The Leftists and their pantie-waist whining chorus were shrieking like a bunch of syphilitic banshees that President Regan would start a nuclear war. He didn't. As for home front, the screaming libs prophesied that President Reagan's pro-gun initiatives would cause 'a bloodbath from coast to coast'. They didn't.

Of course, liberals never object to Castro, chairman Mao, pol pot, every crack-brained sadistic mullah and other commie thugs hoarding all the guns, grenades, and nuclear bombs they can get their claws on, do they? Wonder why that is?

In 1984, America was free, jubilant, and prosperous, and the soviets, chic-oms, Castro's, and other global pests were nervous. The jihad-Marxist's 'students' who kidnapped and tortured American diplomats in the Tehran Embassy had most astutely realized, with Mr. Peanuts out and President Reagan in, their time was short. Very short. By their own admission. So, they released the hostages. Smart move.

So, when this magnificent and prophetic warning in cinematic form was released in late '84, many overlooked it because though the year was 1984, the reality of the film seemed a fading worry from a bygone dark age.

Until 2008, that is, when the spoiled-brat leftists who blew their minds on drugs during their 60s heyday returned and brought the dark ages with them, to make their last putsch for global tyranny.

This film, based on Mr. Orwell's book, reads like a PET Scan regarding the commie rats and their sadistic, insane, childish, moronic 'philosphy', which consists of to taking functional things of value and destroying them, as well as violating our liberty in order to discourage as many people from living, so as to 'save the planet'.

"Nineteen-Eight-Four is also a treatise which tells us how the Left operates. It's a treasure, one the inadequate Left surely can't bear to watch, knowing that history is against them and their idiotic 'revolution'.

If you find 1984 to be depressing, you're normal. Communism, socialism, and 'progressiveism' are depressing philosophies founded upon hate. They's why hate pimps like Lenin, Stalin, and crack-brain Marx endorsed it - because the Left is hate.

1984 tells us about the Left, in order that we may know it and never again be fooled either by it or the weak minded shills who fall for it.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

01 July, 2011

milspec390@aol.com

It's a Cold War Thriller, is what it is, this "Amazing Transparent Man". First thing you notice? Production values. No cheap Hollywood sets here. No painted back drops. No sir. Much, this masterpiece was shot up the Berkshires, they have all them Tanglewood concerts, Massachusetts, summer time. John Williams, all that.

The remote farm house where much of this was shot is a Gothic beauty - but with a special feature most homes lack.

Nicely appointed, with grandfather and banjo clocks and beautiful lathe turned ballusters on the staircase, this home has a feature that every guy who likes wires, tools, klystrons, amplitrons, beam tetrodes, and Anodic Flikes will just love.

Up the attic, there's a lab that, if ours were a just and inspired society, would be installed in every home - by law. Beneath the attic's slope ceiling lives the proverbial German scientist - is there any other kind, scientist? No. Why you asking dumb questions? - who sleeps in a bed tucked in a corner and shielded from the lab by a screen. What is the screen's significance? Does it symbolize eternal conflict between attic laboratories, X-Ray machines, and Chinese communist economic models? Or is it just the place where the farm owner who let the film company in to shoot this thing stuck his bed, and then told them not to move it? You decide.

This lab? You got nineteen inch rack cabinets beautifully studded with knobs, meters, and bright lights wired to what looks like a Picker X-Ray Machine of the era. High voltage cables wrapped in steel ribbon tubing supply the high voltage to the X-Ray machine's Roentgen tube.

Compelling thus far, yes? But insert 'the Major', a real type A geek who wants to create an army of invisible men to terrorize the world - very much like real life commie rats who infiltrated our society and corrupted every bit of it unseen - and you get riveting action!

Add to this 'Mr. Faust', the man-turned-lab-rat who disappears, then goes on a bank robbing spree. Now, while he's in the bank robbing it, you check out the interior. Notice the marble partitions of which the tellers' stations are built, the drapes, the gleaming halls and magnificent steel vault. Notice the bank guards in their sharp uniforms.

That was then. Today? Banks built on the cheap. Guards? A couple cameras, and maybe some guy the back room sleeping it off. No class today. None. That's what our so-called world has become - slobs.

I digress. OK - back to work.

Mr. Faust robs banks. His chica, the lovely Marguerite Chapman, drives the get away car, a late-50s model Buick distinctive for its Gull Wing fins.

What makes a great film such as "The Amazing Transparent Man"? Sumptuous visuals. Edgy dialogue. Futuristc techno-sets. All these comprise veritable masterpieces such as this one, which rightly takes its place among the masterworks of Truffaut, Wilder, DeMille, D.W. Griffith, Ray Dennis Steckler, Phil Tucker, and the auteur of multi-textural treasure troves of cinematic symbolism, Edward D. Wood, Junior.

If you see this film, you can stand erect, secure in the knowledge you are a true student of the genre. If you don't, you can't.

To see this film is to know the subtle differences which delineate mere movies ephemeral and cinematic treasures eternal.

Good viewing to you all,

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Critic of Critical Mass

Manasota Key, Florida

01 May, 2011

Happy Primero de Mayo!

How'd we get in the mess we're in? We ignored films such as The House on Telegraph Hill and when we did see them, we forgot about them, or else we figured, 'awww, that's only in the movies'.

Yeah. Right. Where'd Chandler get the ideas for his detective thrillers? From the newspapers, that's where. From life.

This is a classic case of art imitating life. It's all here. The mansion, the poisonings, the phones left conveniently off the hook, and most tellingly, most tediously, as the crime syndicate known as "The Zecchino Estate Grifters" proved time and again, the predator always paints himself as The Victim and tars those whom he targets as The Villains. That they pull this tiresome old gag is one thing, but that people who should know better still fall for it is enough to...well, it's enough to make you understand why they still pull it, isn't it? Why innovate when last year's stale old gags work?

The House on Telegraph Hill is an explicit Black & White blueprint as to the ways in which conniving, gutless, termites will kill anyone who stands between them and the riches they covet. It's also a fine object lesson in the ways in which, despite their endless repertoire of half-clever tricks, they inevitably they make fatal mistakes which topple them fall into the traps they so carefully set for others.

Richard Basehart makes you want to bash his face, in The House on Telegraph Hill. He lies, he poses, he snivels and whines like a psychopath and plays The Victim at every turn. He falsely accuses his victims of trying to harm him. He follows his intended victims and turns up in front of them, every time they try to summon help.

There's just something about his behavior that makes you want to bash his face, it's so bloody tediously predictable. Were this film set in our era, why I bet he'd even apply for a Restraining Order against his victims, and then sue them for Defamation, wouldn't he?

Richard Basehart's character is waging war,a war against those who rightly inherit. It's war and he knows it. Eventually, his lovely intended victim knows it as well and rather than bash his face - which is just what he wants - she uses her mind to alert trusted friends and as well to restrain herself in face of his endless provocations.

Why's she do that? So that in coming straight for her, he unintentionally falls straight into the trap he set for her.

Sweet.

Doubtless, he's convicted and sentenced to death.

Mmm, mmm, mmm....can't you just hear the pellets dropping into the acid vat beneath the chair, and smell the gas, as he rocks back and forth in that nice round steel room they have up at Q known as, 'The Gas Chamber', the place to which all two-bit connivers who covet what belongs to others will inevitably go?

A magnificent film which should be an integral part of the syllabus of every criminal justice curriculum.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Critic of Critical Mass

Manasota Key, Florida

24 April, 2011

A recommendation. Watch this film while trying to do something meaningful, time-sensitive, and pressing. You won't be able to do so, as the intense, gripping visuals on screen combined with taut, precisely metered dialogue will inevitably and quickly rivet your attention this masterpiece.

This is an important film, one which I had the privilege of viewing late one Sunday night recently on THIS TV movie channel. Hopefully, THIS will air it again, because as is the case with masterworks of layered subtlety, one must repeatedly examine the subject matter to discover all its nuances.

The great Lyle Talbot contributes mightily the intellectual psychodrama of this period piece.

Thespian Talbot's role as physician is deftly counterbalanced by what appears to be stock footage of cannibalistic spear-toting savages interspersed with imagery of Dinosaurs thrashing about, chasing the savages and women clad in loincloth all over what appears to be a desert wilderness outside L.A.

Yes, this is one not to miss. As astute reviewers here note, this film indeed proves that the late Edward D. Wood, Jr. did not direct all the lousy films, in fact he had quite a bit of competition during his heyday.

But given the inane, preposterous, utterly non-credible nature of this pile of celluloid trash, Mr. Wood would surely have lamented not having so done.

A sprawling epochal film of taste and beauty, layered with spears, loincloths, and girlies, one which will delight discriminating viewers for many a decade hence.

Please, if you see no other film this year, see "Untamed Women".

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Critic of Critical Mass

Manasota Key, Florida

18 April, 2011

Bunch us nine year olds saw 'Caltiki the Immortal Monster', late winter, 1964, scared us to death. Leave it to the Italians, them guys brought us DaVinci, Michaelangelo and the founders of Criminology and stlawart supporters of citizen firearms freedoms, Cesare Becaria and Cesare Lombroso, to scare us to death with this horrific gem.

You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Caltiki left me, my friend Cappy, now referred to as 'La Buonanima Billy', our pal Fort and the rest us all bad nervous back there, '64. The following summer of '64, another lifeflong friend, Judge Stephen, said that Caltiki scared him real good. That following autumn, new classmate, Reg, today revered as Maximo Aviator, expressed his portentious impressions of this masterpiece.

You think after seeing Caltiki on the Zenith Space Command Black & White TV, we'd go down cellar? No way. What? You nuts, something? Not on a dare, for fear big, fat, radioactive blob-ola, Signore Caltiki, was down there, the root cellar or maybe even the coal bin, just waiting for us to come down so it could inhale us and spit out our skulls, while it killed time by shuffling around and stuffing its pie-hole with Grandma's pickles - or maybe just Grandma herself. Had Caltiki no deceny? No. None whatsoever.

You remember that scene where Caltiki billows all over the room behind one them French door things? Whenever our parents would visit friends whose homes had them French door things, you think we weren't on edge, all sweaty, twitching? You bet we were. Wouldn't go near no French doors, ever, for fear La Caltikalazoni lurked hungrily behind it, just itching to grab us for a snack.

How about them eerie sound effects you hear whenever El Caltiki Grosso Romano went active and worked itself into a lather? At night, drifting off to sleep? We'd swear we could hear old Don Calteech and we'd jolt awake, listening intensely and in terror for any indication he might be downstairs, slurping water out the Guests' Toilet, figuring a way to come up and git us. Too vulgar to be believed.

No, you gotta see this guy here, Caltiki, you really gotta. Scared the living tar out us then as does it still today.

Caltiki the Immortal Monster is as well, a blatant and perfect Cold War period piece, a parable in which Caltiki represents the covetous, vengeful, all-devouring Monster known as World Communism, one which will be done away with at Armageddon. Do you take comfort in that thought? Me to. Most my buddies do too.

But that is another lecture in and of itself and for another time, yes?

See Caltiki. Make Don Calteech part of your Film Library. Sit up late at night, open the windows, gaze skyward, and wait for Osaluway or whatever was the name the comet them actors said would 'come in the night sky' and cause Caltiki to grow fatter than does my stomach after polishing off dinner aboard a cruise ship by slurping down coupla/three deserts. T

Now that is a terrifying sight indeed, is it not?

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Auteur Maximo

Manasota Key, Florida

23 February, 2011

The 'Critics', whose tender leftist sensibilities are oh so very, very 'tolerant', 'compassionate', and 'diverse', really disliked this wonderful film, didn't they?

Well, why wouldn't they? This film has everything that lowlife leftists despise, including an absence of profanity along with several scenes in which is portrayed, the battle between liberty and the greedy-gut, moronic, cowards who seek in vain to destroy it.

Critics surely recognized in this film's epic strokes, the epic battle which presently is occurring in real life between jealous, narcissistic, tinpot weaklings who fancy themselves entitled to lord it over the rest of us, and those who will in the end be free of them.

During one scene, an aspiring rapist locks Marion in a barn and sets about to rape her. In manner of the prototypical humorless dullards who comprise The Left, he piously scolds her, saying, 'No one should own four thousand acres of land." Maid Marion doesn't buy into his left wing guilt trip. She rebukes, saying she has five thousand acres. And then she allows him to draw near and shoves a nice dagger into his neck and kicks this piece of human garbage to the dirt.

Leftist critics would surely hate this scene, as they know better than any, it represents the end of all tyrants.

While this action occurs inside, outside yet more thugs lock helpless men, women, and children in a barn and set it ablaze. Hmmm....haven't we seen this barbaric act throughout history? Didn't we hear reports of it most recently in 2008, when Raila "Ray" Odinga, who stole the Presidency of Kenya, in a fit of pique locked hundreds of men, women, and children in a church, and burned them alive? "Ray" Odinga? Wasn't that the one who stole the election thanks to the kind tutelage of his stateside cronies in communism?

What exactly do these cruel cowards think will be their reward for their 'devious, deviant, and demonic' - there, I said it - actions?

Russel Crowe's Robin Hood character overtly describes Rights and Liberty during another scene in such manner that it becomes impossible not to see that this beautiful film is a parable on the time in which we live.

The Giddy, the Pious, the Cruel Thugs, and the rest of the banal stooges of the Left will of course smirk at this film. Let them.

The rest of us, who wish not to dominate, who aspire not to power, but who wish to be left free to do as we ought, ignore them, knowing exactly why liberty so threatens the Left.

A decade ago, the same effete, boorish, Critics sniffed derisively at Russell Crowe in "Gladiator". The American people as well as lovers of Liberty around the world, however, loved the film, understood its message implicitly, and as well, realized that Critics and others who scoff at liberty in the end will lose it.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

23 December, 2010

milspec390@aol.com

The lovely pageant of visual delights that is "Gone, Baby, Gone" will be captivate your eyes and enchant your heart. You'll swoon at the cavalcade of alluring, mysterious, vistas of central steam plants, smokestacks and rooftop ventilators. You'll love the sweeping scenes of 'The Poor Man's Elysian Fields', known to some as Everett, Massachusetts, home to Mrs. & Mrs. Leon Trett, two of many folksy, downhome friends you'll make while on this cinematic tour of The Real People.

Dear and gentle viewer, please be sure to savor the intriguing characters and the gentle-hearted scenes which they bring to life through the magic of their authentic performances.

Wouldn't you love to visit the Filmore Bar, linger in its warm, welcoming glow, and enjoy chatting with always witty, 'Big Dave', and his loyal customers? What better place to seek refuge from the night most inhospitable than Filmore's amberglow ambiance? 'Big Dave' has that natural ability to put anyone immediately at ease and bring out the best in all whom he encounters. What finer company could one seek?

Many have asked these questions, and have yet to receive an answer.

Wouldn't you love to while away an afternoon, enraptured in scintillating conversation, with that post-modern 'Addams Family', Leon and Roberta Trett, and their cryptic upstairs guest, Mr. Corwin Earle? You'll love the way in which Mr. & Mrs. Trett graciously welcome protagonists Patrick Kenzie and 'Bubba' Miller to their traditional Everett home decorated in regal, albeit muted, leitmotif.

Watch closely as lively Roberta demonstrates the finer points of home defense, even as businessman husband, Leon, tends to matters fiduciary with young Kenzie and Bubba, in utmost dignified, efficient manner. Harvard MBA's could learn much by observing Leon and Bubba resolve common 'business disputes' - and as well they should..

What film would be complete without Jill 'Dame Dot Rat' Quigg, who plays the unforgettable 'my best friend across the hall, Dawwwty'? Truly, though Ms. Quigg's on-screen time is brief, doesn't she leave an impression most lasting? Wouldn't you love to have Dot Rat babysit your germy little brood of noisy ankle-biters? Who among us wouldn't?

This, then, without spilling too many beans, is the wonderful, unforgettable essence rare that is "Gone, Baby, Gone", a gentle hearted tale, made special by so many adroit thespians, a film which I do hope you'll see. Thank you.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

'Dr. Z.'

Manasota Key, Florida

20 October, 2010

This is a powerful film and I hope you see it. Caught it here recently on THIS TV Network, so likely it will come around again.

The opening scenes of Gary, Indiana present as an arresting message of what happens to prosperity when do-gooders, Wowsers, Uplifters, Eco-messiahs, Carrie Nations, lunatics, and other chronic nuisances chase industry and jobs away in the name of saving something or other. Plants close and shortly rust. People quit their homes and leave them to face nature's relentless onslaught along with the thugs who move in and make them into Den's of iNiquity.

Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson, Ron 'Superfly' O'Neil, they're all here along with the great Pam Grier, Jim Brown - Captain Anders in 1968's "Ice Station Zebra", along with the late and very much missed Paul Winfield who evinced touching cinemagic in 'Green Eyes'.

Even if you don't enjoy films in general, let alone the Blaxploitation genre, anyone who's into UE, Urban Exploration, sometimes called Industrial Archaeology - and if you're not, you should be - you'll swoon as serial images of one decrevalent building after another after oxydizing blast furnace after abandoned ten storeys-high heat stoves march across your screen. Yes, Gary, Indiana in "Original Gangstas" is prime Urban Exploration territory.

The film's message is poignant as ever: Don't incite people, particularly those wise in years, to righteous indignation. It's an unwise practice to do so.

Be sure to watch for the David Lynch-esquire visual anachronisms, e.g. the film takes place in 1996, yet many police cruisers hail from the 80s as well as the 90s. The Gangstas drive cars whose model years span a fifty year period, thus keeping you off balance until the stunning conclusion.

The wry humor, "there goes the neighborhood", will catch you off guard as well, and send you tumb-bumbling off the couch, onto the floor, and scurrying to your video store for your own copy of "Original Gangstas". If you don't own a copy of this, you should. Now. So do it. Now.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

11 October, 2010

You want gore? 70s snuff? This ain't it, OK? "Sunshine Cleaning" is a tale of two chicas who start a crime-scene cleanup company and prosper at it. One is a single mom trying to raise her precocious little ankle biter, played by the same kid who was Adrian Brody's long suffering son in "Hollywoodland" - although my wife insists this is not the same kid. So, rather than get into some kind, big, fat brouhaha here, let me counsel you to double check the credits to be sure. Mom hopes while she's working, the kid don't blow up the house, something.

The other chica, her sister, is played by UK babe, Emily Blunt, renowned as the grown-up Ruthie 'pigface' Draper in "Dan in Real Life".

These gals clean what's left of crime scenes after the Meat Wagon guys haul off the crispy critters, floaters, gorkers, brain-splats, Trifecta Homicides, Quadruplex Murder-suicides, stinkers, and other stiffs. This means you can watch "Sunshine Cleaning" without worrying about throwing up all over your couch or your Cha-Cha pumps.

Now, you want, we got books in the Below Decks Library, such as Practical Homicide Investigation. You want to see what a guy looks like after he goes waltzing thru the plastic shredder? No sweat.

But this film is about two girl-o's who clean crime scenes on one level, as on another, they and their Dad clean the loose ends from their frayed lives, to arrive at a beautiful conclusion, one to do with how, when we pull together and put aside petty differences, we prosper.

"Sunshine Cleaning" is a beautiful film about a sweet family. Alan Arkin sparkles as the kind father who gives his all for his daughters and grandson.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasota Key, Florida 11 October, 2010

You like films about boxers, and like them guys? Then 'Hammer' sometimes promoted as 'B.J. Hammer' is for you. It's got boxers. The kind with the gloves what whale the snot out of one another while mob guys who wear them tinted 'psycho shades' all the time hang in the back and get rich, placing bets.

But Hammer, adroitly played by Fred Williamson, transcends to boxing genre to make this film worth watching again and again. Forget Rocky I through XVII. Stick with Hammer. He kicks the snot out of the competition.

You like Detectives? Well, you got plenty detectives and cops walking around this film. They offer advice to Hammer. He takes it. Look, pal, when detectives see fit to convey to you advice based upon their decades of experience, knowledge, and instinct forged in the crucible of streetwork, you graciously accept it and comply. Right? Am I right. You know I'm right. So quit contradicting me, already.

Now, a visual treat. The late Vonetta McGee in an early role. Yeah, you remember her as the mysterious repo secretary and double agent for the sinister Hermanos Rodriguez in 1984's 'repo man'. But here, she plays a great role as loyal mate to the protagonist, and a real beauty at that.

Saw "Hammer" over the weekend on THIS TV, so it likely will be airing again shortly.

Don't miss it, or else the detectives will have some questions to ask you. And you don't answer them right, Hammer might just wail the snot out of you.

So get straight. B.J. Hammer is the man.

Paul Vincent Zecchino Manasota Key, Florida 11 October, 2010

If The Shower fails to touch your heart in some way? Yeah, you maybe wanna go down hospital there, get yourself one them EKG's, see if your heart still beats, not. Why? Because The Shower tells a simple story of family and dear friends in same manner that Hollywood did many years ago, yet has not for some time due to its standing infatuation with the gods of efficiency, PC, and the same old leftist drivel.

The Shower is one of the sweetest, most powerful films to grace the screen here at Casa d'Amplitron. Having watched it again recently, it's all the more poignant as the cancer of centrally-planned New World Odor efficiency spreads like a syphilis rash across the globe and devours every last bit humanity, including the oasis known as The Shower.

You'll recognize The Shower's protagonist as one of the most expressive actors on the planet, who played lead in King of Masks. Unless, that is, you were busy watching high-grossing sensible films from Hollywood whose themes concern proper subjects such as surfboard decapitations, exploding helicopters, and face-booted bimbos barking like rabid Teamsters at geek-voiced capons attired sensibly in black rimmed glasses and Gothwear for the Young Condemned.

No, my review The Shower don't tell ya much, there, 'bout the it, see? And that's 'cause maybe you wanna go rent it, download it or whatever everybody's does their computers these days - which is not the case here at Casa d'Amplitron, where The Shower graces the below decks film library in respectable VHS format.

You want hi-tech vapid entertainment? Go watch some machetes-for-machismo-morons film, something like that.

Wanna see if your cardiac T-waves are still capable of breaking over beautiful stories of life, family, and friends? Go hit The Shower.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Aristocrat of Film Auteurs

Manasoviet Key, Florida

13 September, 2010

Orson Welles' Touch of Evil has it all. Lawyers. Corruption. Fatso candy-bar addict set-up artistes. Missionitis. Dangerous hooligans. Wormy petty crime bosses. Massive Chryslers with fins that would do a DC-6 proud and which explode. Dreamscape visions which wax nightmarish. Extortion. Player pianos. Complacence. Hero Worship....a wonderful prequel of our present day Edifice of Vanity.

Legendary incorruptible cop, Vargas, is on his honeymoon. He develops a severe case of Missionitis when a car bomb converts the Chrysler and its two passengers to pavement-splats. He should have walked past the oozy body fragments and waltzed his bride in for the ice cream he mentioned - or maybe a nice pizza. Nothing like a coupla/three homicides to whet ones appetite, eh?

But instead Vargas jumps right in to Hank Quinlan's fetid, bottomless, creek of evil insanity. Welles' is unforgettable here, isn't he? His Hank Quinlan is bloated, sweaty, with eyelids squeezed almost shut by heaps of suet which surround them. He resembles a malevolent toad whose parathyroid glands went far south of the border. Doesn't Hank Quinlan tell us much about the the origins of Jabba the Hut?

But Hank Quinlan lacks Jabba's homespun, folsky, good natured humor...Quinlan is a waddling bargeload of schemes, suspicious run amok, intrigues, treachery, hostilities, conflicts. He's past master of the set-up who founded the art of pulling evidence - so to speak - from thin air.

Vargas' wife is set up unawares as she's passed notes from blatant sinister types in clad leather jackets and entirely too much make up. She's unknowingly photographed with 'Uncle Joe' Granci's obnoxious youthful goon - don't you love it when Vargas at last gives this young yet unteachable moral cretin what for, real good?

Vargas becomes so engrossed in 'the case', he develops missionitis which jolly near costs his wife her life and him everything.

Irony of ironies, Hank Quinlan, master of the frame-up, is in fact correct in implicating the Mexican boyfriend of the deceased's daughter. But being correct - and straight for once - costs him his life.

Dark, surreal, visions of looming buildings descend to bright outdoor vistas of motels at land's end, making you pine for the security of the dumpy, putrid border town, where newspaper pages blow back and forth as fine accents to the overall picnic of moribundity.

Touch of Evil should be mandatory viewing for all citizens. It's dark vision is a PET Scan of human weakness, a Fab Fifties Blueprint for the global New World Odor Chamber of Vanities which like the strangled and wigless Uncle Joe Grandi's protruding eyeballs, presently stares us in the face, to the denials of many.

Paul Vincent Zecchino

Manasota Key, Florida

02 June, 2010