Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

There is only one King of the monsters and he ain’t no gorilla…..

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Pretty hard disagree. I found Shin to be pretty exciting, about as exciting as any Godzilla film, and certainly more so than the American films. True that the latter have deeper FX budgets, but I still think Shin works fine on scale. The satire, as such, which I took as mostly aimed at Japanese bureacratic culture than genre, is not too distracting for me. I would only add that there's a couple of completely useless humans in Shin as well, but they wisely don't bring their Freudian baggage to the mix, as the lame familial dynamics of the American films seem so primarily dedicated to (pandering) pursuing. So, all in all, stop hating just because he looks like a demonically anemic snuffleupagus.








Urgh, we can do better than some styrofoam Swedes.

One of my favourite first time viewings this year was Runaway Nightmare, a movie about a pair of losers who find themselves in the middle of a conflict between a girl gang and the mob. Pitched on a strangely medicated wavelength, the movie posits that exploitation thrillers like itself and those it parodies represent certain fantasy scenarios, and tries to examine how the viewer would behave were they dropped into one. (The schlubs we identify with don't do well at all, but sometimes get lucky.) The filmography of Arnold Schwarzenegger often represents this kind of fantasy, all the more so because Schwarzenegger, with his towering stature and distinct vocal delivery, is far from an everyman, and combined with the superhuman feats performed by his characters, represents a certain aspirational quality. (The fact that he's also a great immigrant success story likely plays into this as well.) That being said, it's not as if his movies never challenged him, and Total Recall interrogates our identification with him and subverts the fantasy elements his movies represent. It's also, thanks to a scene where Ronnie Cox briefly turns into Rodney Dangerfield and another scene with 1.5 times as many boobies as normal, an R-rated movie that Arnie's younger fans probably shouldn't be watching.

For those viewers, Last Action Hero should do the trick. This is a movie where a school age Arnie superfan finds himself transported into one of Schwarzenegger's movies and has to team up with him to save the day. The only problem is that one of the bad guys (a delightful Charles Dance) may have figured out something's up and the stakes might carry over to the real world as well. The hero's crossover to the movie world happens after a traumatic home invasion, which gently poses the question whether we identify with these movies to fill holes in our lives. Wouldn't it your life be a bit a little less lousy if Arnie was your friend, or your dad? But then the movie subverts this dynamic by suggesting a symbiotic relationship between the film and the viewer, with Schwarzenegger growing aware of his lack of agency and the cliches that compose his identity. The movie proves surprisingly involving with this development, thanks largely to the casting. I mentioned in my review of Terminator 2 that the sheer unlikeliness of Schwarzenegger's presence gives him advantages not available to normal actors. Who else could we buy as a fictional character struggling with his artificiality? This means that it's all the more thrilling during the climax when he starts to break out of those limitations upon entering the real world.

McTiernan pitches a lot of the action in a tone we can call "Movie Magic", where we see high powered technique applied in a way that almost seems demonstrative rather than a genuine exercise, perhaps like a Disney World attraction where Michael Bay explains the work that went into the battle scenes in Pearl Harbor. (When I visited Disneyland Paris a few years back, I found that their equivalent of that ride features not Bay but Jeremy Irons and Irene Jacob. It's clear that the Europeans won this round.) It's a pretty deliberate choice, as the "movie" the protagonist finds himself in is supposed to represent the idea of one more than the real thing, and an effective one for sneaking in all kinds of jabs, but at the same time, the proceedings by design don't reach the immaculate thrills offered by, say, Die Hard. Being less exciting than one of the greatest action films ever made is hardly reason for lament, but the contrast is foregrounded.

Speaking of those jabs, are they ever densely layered. I'd caught a glimpse of this years ago and had been aware of the Stallone Terminator 2 gag, but really the fun starts with the opening credits ("A Franco Columbu Film"). There is no shortage painfully overwrought wordplay, delivered gleefully by one of the greatest one-liner machines in the movies.

There's the way the settings will unnoticeably transform like a movie set and Arnie will switch out the hard rock or metal album he's blasting in the middle of a car chase. One moment has Arnie playing chicken with another car with the expected results, and that moment is later nicely subverted when he attempts to do it in the real world. (There's even a wisecracking, sunglasses-wearing cartoon cat, who we're introduced to during a running gag about increasingly improbably police partners, which likely was intended as a nod to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but now feels prescient of the obnoxious turn children's entertainment would take in the following decade.) This reminded me of Hot Fuzz in that it's obviously the work of someone who has seen a lot of these movies and knows like the back of his hand how they work, and is able to lovingly satirize their tropes while capturing their essence. That movie grew on me greatly upon rewatches, and I suspect this might too.

Aw hell, let me dig up my review for Runaway Nightmare as well.

When I watched Frozen Scream last year, I thought of what Roger Ebert said in his Great Movies essay about Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. “It is one of those works that has proceeded directly to the status of Great Movie without going through the intermediate stage of being a good movie.” These words came again to mind as I watched Mike Cartel’s Runaway Nightmare. This is on the surface a more competently made film than Frozen Scream, but what makes them similar is that they exist on their own distinct wavelengths while bypassing conventional ideas of quality or polish. The movie is ostensibly a mix of a hostage thriller and a girl gang exploitation movie, but the effect is more hallucinatory and somnambulist than thrilling. This is an action movie under heavy medication. (Full disclosure: I watched this sober as I do most things, but those inclined to partake in certain substances might be wise to so when watching this movie.)

The plot is as follows. Two schlubby insect farmers in the middle of the Nevada desert spy two men burying a large crate nearby. When they go to investigate, the discover that inside the crate is a woman, who happens to still be alive. Being the decent yet schlubby human beings that they are, the decide to take her out of the crate and back to their place to recover. Fortunately for the woman and unfortunately for them, the woman’s associates, a gang of gun-toting gals, show up and take control of the situation, by which I mean take the two schlubs hostage while hiding out in their ranch. You see, the men who buried her were from the mob and apparently double-crossed them and stole a valuable case of platinum. Or maybe the platinum belonged to the mob. Or maybe she double-crossed them. Or maybe it’s not even platinum. The specifics aren’t important here.

Along the way, the gals (you will excuse my affectation here, I’ve developed a fondness for western wear over the last year and have begun obnoxiously leaning into the associated vernacular) decide to induct our extremely schlubby heroes into their gang. But that doesn’t mean they now like them. True, some of them want to jump their bones (and at least one can’t stop finding it amusing that they’re “bug farmers!”, letting out a shrill cackle without fail each time), but others want to kill or torture them (by playing such hilarious practical jokes as dropping nooses around their necks and firing guns in their general direction). And at least one of them wants to do both, as when she throws a knife at one of our heroes and then forces herself on him. (His friend walks in and offers the deadpan observation: “Boy, Ralph, that sure is kinky.”) And one of them might even be a vampire, or at least dresses like one, pretends to live in a painting and walks around with candles (at one point setting one of the heroes’ boots on fire). It’s not clear how aware the others are of her existence.

The less schlubby of the heroes, the one who seems to be getting threatened with less frequency, tells the other one to relax. “All you gotta do is to get to know them and they become your friends. These girls are just like everybody else.” (At which point one of the girls drives a motorcycle through their living room.) All the other one wants to do, however, is get some shuteye (ain’t happening), brush his teeth (even when a wild lesbian sex scene is taking place in the shower behind him) and maybe watch some TV (also ain’t happening, especially as one of his captors takes an axe to the television set). Truth be told, he seems more annoyed than terrified, and his protests seem more like frustration with rude house guests than fear for his life. He doesn’t even seem to mind it so much when they drag him along for a heist, but if they could turn the radio down a little, that’d be nice. (Of course they don’t, although a close-up shows the fast forward button being pressed instead of the volume dial.)

The tone here, as you might have guessed, isn’t exactly that of an excitement-filled exploitation movie. It contains a lot of the elements one would find in the genre, but plays them with bemused detachment. The more obvious, perhaps literal reading of the movie is that it represents a set of male anxieties, particularly around the fear of women, who in this film are as much a cult as a gang and are coded as feminists. Okay, “coded” is too subtle a word, as an Animal House style coda confirms that one of the characters went on to publish a feminist news magazine. (It was also jarring to watch this right after Dangerous Men, where the heroine seemingly goes around murdering endless waves of male predators as revenge for the death of her fiance. I guess between the two films I covered my bases.) Yet the movie doesn’t feel all that literal, thanks to its strange style. Cutting is elliptical, often ending sequences before they reach any kind of climax or catharsis, so to speak, abstracting the proceedings into non sequiturs in the service of off-kilter comedic beats or otherwise keeping us on our toes. The sense of awkwardness is enhanced by the framing, isolating the characters so that the space around them becomes amusingly uncomfortable and maybe even a little bit eerie.

This doesn’t translate into a narrative momentum exactly, as the movie isn’t eager to get anywhere and onscreen excitement is frequently undercut, but I found it quite enjoyable to spend time attuned to its distinct wavelength. Perhaps seen on VHS, this might have played as “so bad it’s good” schlock (apparently the original VHS release included shot-on-video inserts of nudity added at the behest of the producers), but on a beautiful widescreen transfer (available on Tubi or from Vinegar Syndrome) the effect is both very funny and subtly dreamlike, like a mirage in the desert heat. To me, a more intriguing reading of the film is that it’s essentially a satire of exploitation movies, interrogating the wish fulfillment involved in watching these movies. When the heroes do triumph, it’s by weaponizing knowledge of their tropes. (These guys are still schlubs however, so this happens extremely belatedly.) The movie asks, what would happen if schlubs such as ourselves found ourselves in the middle of a movie with shootouts, heists, crime syndicates, vicious girl gangs and the like? How would we handle ourselves? According to this movie, not very well, but we might get lucky.

Correct.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

You and your yetis.

I've been a member of this forum for over a year and I think that's the first time I've posted the Yeti song. Such restraint on my part.

So I've got The Toolbox Murders (1978) on my watchlist, but two of my Letterboxd friends have given it less-than-encouraging ratings. (Their names rhyme with Sockatansky and Frumbsroom.) What's the deal?

I apologize if it's been discussed somewhere already, but it's not showing up when I use the search function.

Been a few years since I watched it. I remember finding the slashering of the first half a lot more effective than the psychodrama of the second half. I'm open to a revisit to see if the transition works better for me this time around.

I remember the first twenty or so minutes being somewhat promising. Felt like it was warming up to become a second-tier sleazo character study (like Maniac or Don't Go Into the House), which I generally have a particular fondness for. I like being invited into the lives of anti-social degenerates, as long as there is a strong central performance and the film has a kind of lived in style about it. But it very quickly became clear to me that it is more a really undercooked thriller, without many thrills and very little style. And I can't even remember anything about the main character.


The film also kind of builds to a particular unpleasant moment (not that it is particularly violent, but it feels way too creepily voyeuristic), and while it is somewhat effective at making the viewer uncomfortable, it was also at that moment I checked out a bit. I have a weird line with sleaze. I can have a really high tolerance for upsetting imagery when I feel the point is be unpleasant (even if it is just for unpleasantness sake), but this particular scene feels more like a role-play wank job for the director, which made me not really trust where it was taking me....and it turns out where it was taking me was, as Rock says, kind of **** psychodrama.

Fair enough. On the watchlist it stays!

I assume you're referring to the





The victim is played by pornstar Kelly Nichols if I remember correctly, so "wank job" is probably fair.

Yup, that's the scene. Something about it made me feel queasy when I saw it as a teen, and nothing has changed in all those years.

Sounds like you didn't wanna





(No, I haven't seen it.)

Sure, sure.