Horror Watch Party: Burnt Offerings (1976)

Watched:  06/01/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Dan Curtis

I liked this one!  A haunted house movie filmed in the country house I'm familiar with from A View to a Kill.  But Burnt Offerings is in the mode of haunted house film I quite like, from The Haunting to The Shining.  But maybe a lot more indirect than those films?

The cast is small, but contains Burgess Meredith (briefly), Bette Davis, Karen Black, Oliver Reed and Anthony James.  Also, the kid who grew up to become Jeff in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.  

I have also realized talking about the movie any more will spoil it, so I'm gonna shut up.

Watch Party Watch: The Apple (1980) - @#$% this movie

Watched:  05/07/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First (and last)

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Menahem Golan

Well, I've now seen The Apple (1980), the sci-fi, near-future dystopian musical religious and political allegory.  And while watching, this is roughly how I felt:

Friday Night Watch Party - The Apple

We are going out on a high note!  By going for the lowest note.  Universally reviled, and from what I've seen, this looks truly, truly terrible - we're watching this sci-fi musical whatever it is.  

Anyway, this if the final Friday, so join us in the dark future of 1994 for a rock'n'roll fantasy that is sure to, uh... anyway.  It's a movie! 

Day:  05/07/2021

Time:  8:30 Central

Amazon Watch Party Link Here 

Watch Party Watch: Teen Witch (1989)

Watched:  04/30/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1980's

Director:  I don't care

We're wrapping up our Friday Night Watch Parties this coming week, and maybe that's all for the best.  For - I may never top Teen Witch (1989) as an offering.  It's all downhill from here.  

It's one thing when people make a movie and try and it doesn't live up to expectations.  It's another when you can tell someone was pushing out garbage to take advantage of a place in the market and literally seemed to not care how the movie turned out.  And that's being generous, because the alternative with Teen Witch is to accept that adults made this film and this was their moonshot, and then we have to wonder: do you know how movies work?

Friday Night Movie: Teen Witch

Announcement:  

We'll be wrapping up Signal Watch curated Friday films soon - at least in a "you can expect Ryan to organize this every week" mode.  I will do a movie this week and next week.  After that, in the future, we'll do it again from time to time, maybe even monthly, but not every week.  Certainly we'll be back for Christmas and Halloween.

Keep your eyes on twitter or this blog.

I genuinely appreciate the Friday night movie club and y'all trusting me to curate a collection of often terrible, terrible films.  Y'all have gotten me through a really, honestly, difficult year, and I can't thank you enough.  I hope it's helped.

As the world re-opens and things shift around a bit, I kinda need to reclaim my evening time - even Friday evenings.  (I used to go to the gym!  I used to leave the house! I think we can all envision a world where these things can happen again!)  

SO, let's try and go out with some high quality films.

THIS WEEK:

A movie that always makes me think "I bet Heather would unconvincingly defend this movie", it's Teen Witch!  

What if a sort of unpopular girl who was picked on by teachers found out she had amazing magical powers and DIDN'T use them to burn prom to the ground - but instead made her friend rap?  Casually bent the laws of time and space and obliterated free will in others?

That's THIS movie.

(see, how much will you really miss me doing this to you?)

Day:  Friday  04/30/2021

Time:  8:30 Central

Amazon Prime Link 

Watch Party Watch: Voodoo Woman (1957)

Watched:  04/26/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Edward L. Cahn

So, Voodoo Woman (1957) is a low-budget picture released through API that's more or less a jungle horror adventure aimed at teens, I think.  

The plot gives us the ruthless Marilyn (Marla English) who wants GOLD in the jungle, I think.  Anyway, she dupes a local barkeep into funding her as she talks her would-be boyfriend (Lance Fuller) into going out there, along with a hired guide/ tough guy (Touch Connors).  But - whoops - they're headed for a village where voodoo magic is melding with mad science as colonialist scientician Dr. Roland Gerard (Tom Conway) is working with local tribes people who perform voodoo to (a) prove you can transform a person into a sort of Voodoo Monster, and (b) use science to keep them in that state.

I won't bother you with more details.  It's a movie that is rigidly against more than three set-ups per scene, doesn't make much sense, but has both an AMAZING monster suit for the titular Voodoo Woman and Marla English is terrific as the scheming evil-lady at the center of the picture.  

Go in expecting a movie-serial-level production and you'll be fine!  

Watch Party Watch: Crawl (2019)

Watched:  04/23/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  second!

Decade:  2010's

Director:  Alexandre Aja

This is the second time I saw this.  It was a good movie for a crowd with lots of go-to jokes about injuries minor and fatal.

SimonUK and I discussed my love of movies about animals eating people on a prior podcast about Crawl.  

Watch Party Watch: Yog - Monster from Space/ The Space Amoeba (1970)

Watched:  04/19/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Ishirō Honda

This movie is not about an amoeba from space.  

I don't remember anyone calling the thing that does show up "Yog".  

It is about a sort of pile of glowing animated dots from space.  But that's not really an amoeba, is it, movie?

The blob of lights keeps infesting local beach creatures which turns them into rampaging kaiju, which creates a hard time for our friends who want to build a hotel on a remote island.  

Anyway, it's a lot of quality nonsense.  

Friday Night Watch Party: Crawl (2019) - let's watch alligators do what alligators do!

Well, we're back on the "let's watch animals eat people" thing, but a much newer movie!  And in Florida!

Let's watch people be somewhere they shouldn't and alligators looking at it as a buffet.

Day:  Friday - 04/23/2021

Time:  8:30 PM

LINK HERE TO WATCH

(I believe you can actually hear Barry Pepper yell "My leg!" in the trailer around 1:04)

Friday Watch Party: Beautician and the Beast

Fran-Mania Friday!

Join us as we celebrate Fran Drescher taking her successful TV concept and doing basically the same thing as a movie.  I assume.  I've not seen this movie.  But I'm a late-arriving fan of The Nanny, and so why wouldn't this be just as good?  It's got Timothy Dalton, and I love that guy.

So, let's hope this movie is pretty good!  Even without CC, Niles, Maxwell, Sylvia, Yetta, Val and the kids.  Let's hope a repressive dictator is just as funny.

Day:  04/16/2021

Time:  8:30 Central

Amazon Link here and now!

Noir Watch Party: The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Watched:  04/13/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Second

Decade:  1950's

Director:  Fritz Lang

We'd watched The Blue Gardenia (1953) some time back, and this time I'm inclined to be kinder to the film.  It's still not my favorite, but with Anne Baxter, Ann Sothern, Richard Conte and Raymond Burr and Fritz Lang directing, you kind of expect a bit more.

Anne Baxter gets a Dear Jane letter from her solider-boy boyfriend who has met a nurse overseas, and tells her he's getting married.  She does as anyone might do, receives a call for her roommate (Ann Sothern) looking for a date, takes up the fellow on it, and meets up with Raymond Burr.  Because it's 1953, Burr is not a nice guy, and he gets Baxter drunk and takes her back to his place to take advantage of her.  

Baxter wakes up at home, unsure of what happened, but she's left her shoes at Burr's apartment, which is embarrassing enough, but also: he's been killed with a fire poker.  So.  She seems to have totally murdered a dude and left her shoes behind.

Conte plays a local reporter - a social crusading type in search of headlines, and he begins the search for the woman they dub "The Blue Gardenia".

Fritz Lang wasn't one to shy away from a good thriller, of course, and this film puts the audience in the curious spot of identifying with a woman who just killed someone, with pretty good reason, but by social mores of the 1950's - if she's arrested, who knows?  Could be the gas chamber.  And if she's acquitted for self-protection?  One can assume she'd be "ruined" by attacks on her character for having made the terrible decision to cozy up to Raymond Burr.  The film doesn't explicitly say anything about a woman's place in society in 1953, but it's not hard to understand what the assumed rules are, and how Lang and the writers used those notions to build a better mousetrap for our protagonist.  As the audience, we know it's unjust, but...

Unfortunately, Conte is written as a bit of a dingbat, apparently buying a whole lot of "I have a friend who may have done a thing" storytelling, that I'd assume anyone as old as 14 would recognize as "and I assume this friend is you?"  But it's not how it's played off.  

The movie generally *looks* great, with Nicholas Musuraca listed as Cinematographer, and who had plenty of prior experience he brought to bear in this film.  

Again, the movie is fine - it just wasn't one I'd had any particular penchant for the first time I saw it, and that was more or less how I felt on round 2.

Watch Party Watch: Danger Diabolik (1968)

Watched 04/09/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1960's

Director:  Bava

I mean, man, you had to be there

Watch Party This Friday - It's Gonna Cost Something - Danger Diabolik (1968)

Next Monday is my b-day, so I'm picking a movie for this Friday with no consideration for others, and all of y'all can deal with it.  

But I am a fair and just ruler of the Friday Watch Party, so I wanted to let people know in advance - it will cost a few bucks.  One does not simply stream Danger: Diabolik for no extra cost on Amazon Prime.  So, get your moneys together.

If you've not seen Danger: Diabolik, it's more or less the story of a super-villain in a world with no super-heroes.  So, it's just a whacked out dude with a secret HQ and a costume tearing shit up for about 100 minutes, and to a goofy score that will lodge in your head forever.

Directed by Mario Bava, and filmed in Europe doubling as maybe America? it's a super funky answer to the super spy craze and seems like something Amazon should be developing as a show.

Day:  04/09/2021

Time:  8:30 Central

Where:  Amazon Prime Watch Party

LINK HERE

Watch Party Watch: They Came From Beyond Space (1967)

Watched:  03/30/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1960's

Director:  Freddie Francis

Meteors fall to Earth, specifically Britain.  Scientists are dispatched to check them out - minus an American who just happens to mention having a silver plate in his skull.  I *think* the story is that alien brain waves were living inside the rocks?  Anyway, the alien psychic waves transfer over to the brains of the science team and build a little fort from which they begin shuttling people to the moon to make more brain transfers with more aliens.  And there's a plague?

I fell asleep for part of this movie, but not much, and it's been a week, but I can't really piece it all back together.  I do know the heroes wind up wearing goofy helmets and going to the moon where a badly made-up Michael Gough awaits them (wearing a robe, because: alien).  

I can't recommend the movie as "good", I can recommend it as "this is whackadoodle".   It's Jenifer's selection from last week, so here's her words on the topic.

I will say - the poster promises something the movie absolutely refuses to deliver upon, but I have heard Amicus and Hammer both made the posters first to get financing, and then made the movies.  And, somewhere along the way, whatever they had in their heads about folks with sleek helmets, catsuits and space ray flamethrowers got turned into this.

Amazon Watch Party Watch: Piranha (1978)

Watched:  04/02/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  1970's

Director:  Joe Dante

You can't discuss Piranha (1978) without pointing out that it's the first film by director Joe Dante- and is already very Joe Dante.  And that it's also written by indie film director and writer John Sayles.  

Here in Central Texas, we also always mention "you know, they filmed this partially around San Marcos".  But I didn't know the final bit occurred at now-defunct water park Aquarena Springs, which was a feature of summer-time-life for the strip between Austin and San Antonio along I-35 for decades, and then - somewhat inexplicably, went belly up while I was in college as parents decided it was no longer hip, I guess.

But, yeah, the movie is about a skip tracer looking for some kids who went missing (the young lady who played Louisa in Sound of Music), and who winds up pairing up with an alcoholic to learn a mad scientist has been breeding particularly nasty fish in a tank near his house.  And, whoops, he and Louisa accidentally release them into the local river that people live on, contains summer camps, etc...

And, of course, this being a horror movie, things go poorly.  

The movie includes Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Dick Miller, Paul Bartel, and for some reason, Barbara Steele.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun, the fish make buzz-saw/ bee sounds, and you see some pre-80's Texas.  

Here's a link to a trailer for a doc on Aquarena Springs, and they kinda talk about Ralph the Swimming Pig, which was something I desperately wanted to see in 4th grade, but didn't see til 7th.  You know what?  It lived up to the hype.

80's Watch Party Watch: The Secret of My Success (1987)

Watched:  03/26/2021

Format: Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade: so, so 1980's

Director:  Herbert Ross

I have no affinity for The Secret of My Success (1987).  I saw it upon its theatrical release in 1987, where I was carded as a 12 year old entering a PG-13 movie.  My friend's dad had to come into the box office and tell them it was fine.  So, thanks, Mr. P.

I also remember both the seduction of "Brantley" and the immediate revelation he'd been seduced by a distant sorta relative.  And the use of Yello's "Oh Yeah".*

And, of course, Helen Slater, who I didn't realize was Helen Slater until college or so.  And - the ruse which is the core of the film, which I thought I understood but missed something.  But I am here to tell you here in 2021 AD, I do not understand what Brantley was doing.

Friday Jamie Birthday Party Selection: Secret of My Success

 

Forewarning:  this one costs a few bucks to watch, so we'll understand if you bow out

Jamie puts up with A LOT, so if this is what she wants to do for her movie selection, we're fine with that.

This was the movie I assumed was gonna by filthy when I showed up at the movie theater to see a PG-13 movie and they *carded me*.  It's kinda not dirty, is crazy 1980's in many ways, and - most importantly - co-stars Helen Slater in business attire.

The no-nonsense shoulder pads that say "I can do a merger or take out Jim McMahon"

• Day:  Friday 03/26 - Today
• Time:  8:30 Central

Link here for Michael J. Fox

80's Watch - Watch Party: Footloose (1984)

Watched:  03/20/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Herbert Ross

Gee, why don't the young people want to stay in small towns?  How did we get to this divide between rural America and urban America?

I mean, Footloose (1984) is a story that seems ridiculous, about a town where "dancing" was made illegal (something that seems so slippery and un-First Amendment-y that it's breathtaking) and one not-even-rebellious teen who's mere existence as an "outsider" is so problematic adults are out to literally destroy him, that all of this seems absurd.  Except that this stuff was very real and happened.  Baylor University in Waco, 90 minutes up the road from my house, didn't allow dancing until the late 90's. 

So, yeah, small towns where no one was going to do much but stop to fill up with gas actually would and did have goofy rules.  This was Satanic Panic time that would culminate in the PMRC and Dee Snider of all people taking down a bunch of crusty representatives looking into literally regulating the music industry.  It was also the time of MTV, and I can just see a movie studio exec looking for a story that will appeal to a wide audience - but bring in those kids who like the MTV, and be very music-video-friendly.  

Friday Watch Party: Footloose (1984)

Day:  03/19/2021

Time:  8:30 Central

Click here to fight "the man" 

Next week is Jamie's birthday, and thus I'm picking a flick she requested a bit back.  

Let's explore the urban/ rural divide as a kid from "the city" winds up in Bumfuck, BFE and is confronted by future OAN viewers.

We're gonna remember that even a crusty old minister can't keep us from gettin' down.  So get ready to DANCE.  Everything else is bullshit!

Watch Party Watch: Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (1986)

Watched:  03/15/2021

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Leonard Nimoy

Until Lower Decks and a few one-off episodes, one of the few attempts at light comedy/action in the Trek franchise, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home  (1987) caps off the trilogy that started in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, bringing our crew finally back to Earth after giving us the thrill of seeing them wandering the streets of 1986 San Franciso as a slightly disheveled away team.

I am 85% sure I've written this one up before, so I won't do it again.  It's the one with the whales.