Reviews

Near the end of the battle at Borodino, theres an image of Napoleon sitting down on a chair not unlike one used by a director during filming as he observes a vast formation of his men moving across the landscape, and in this moment he comes as much a stand-in for Bondarchuk as the character the dire...

Barker displays the most directorial verve when he shifts to the action elements, and the film plays in part as a rebuke to the sadism of macho action pictures from the era.

One is a nude scene of a character whose fate is to be killed by her sadistic biker boyfriend, which I found a little too distasteful for this kind of movie (even if the biker might be played by the best actor in the movie) and this whole subplot is oddly divorced from the alien-related proceedings.

The films dramatic arc rests between these three characters, and the second act of the film locks into a pattern of men following Julia into the attic and getting killed, not unlike the bulk of the third Friday the 13th movie where characters keep going into a barn to get killed by Jason.

(All three elements are equally important in this hypothetical scenario.) Naschy's performance has some of that bozo quality, but at the same time, he clearly realizes that he comes up short as an actor against Shigeru Amachi and gladly shifts the dramatic crux of the movie over to the Japanese char...

(This is one department where it feels like Damiano is pulling from his usual genre, leaning on stylish decor to class his movie up just a touch.) The movie was shot by Joao Fernandes, a prolific cinematographer of hardcore movies and occasional collaborator of Damiano, and he bathes the movie in at...

I was unimpressed by the one other film Id seen by Findlay, The Oracle, but while this shares a similar artificiality in style and crude scenes of horror (candy red blood and disjointed editing figure in both), the notes of soap opera and pornographic content make this feel dynamic in ways that ...

But hey, check out those sweet water-bikes!) It does help however that the movie matches the belligerence of the thoroughly unappealing protagonist, who spends much of the movie doing the Kubrick face (head lowered, glowering above) so that it's a shock when you realize he in fact has a terrible mus...

I think my original take on the movie is basically accurate, but partly because Ive been feeling easier to please and longing for familiar comforts these days (even if those familiar comforts are grimy exploitation movies like this one) and partly because the parts that do work weigh heavily eno...