Monday, September 26, 2022

PodCast 212: "The Hunger" (1983) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan





Watched:  08/08/2022
Format:  Bluray
Viewing: Unknown
Decade:  1980's
Director:  Tony Scott




Simon and Ryan bite into a legit 1980's cult classic that's big on mood, tone and lighting and shows rather than tells at every opportunity. If sexy vampires are your thing, we've got a cast that fits the bill, while also selling lifestyle porn and a great score. Join us for a movie that really makes it clear why you need a basement incinerator and an attic with plenty of storage space.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Trio in E Flat, Op. 100  - Franz Schubert
Flower Duet/ Lakme - Delibes


Halloween 2022 & all Halloween/ Horror Films

Saturday, September 24, 2022

PodCast 208 C: "Inhumans" (2017) - Episodes 5 & 6 - A Superheroes Every Day PodCast w/ Danny and Ryan

this show contains a shocking amount of loitering in the woods 




Oh, the Inhumanity! We reach the plodding 5th and 6th episodes, which feel like a whole lot of filler and not a lot of thriller. Once you get past realizing Dave is one hell of a right-on dude, you're in for more casual disregard for the sanctity of life, slow working drug dealers, and trying to remember Sammy is on the show. Oh, and Maximus is very, very sensitive. Mostly, the show is filling space and killing time til we can get to the final two episodes.


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Paint It Black - Valerie Broussard
Don't Fear the Reaper - Denmark & Winters 


Superheroes Every Day Playlist!

Friday, September 23, 2022

Comedy Watch: Out of Office (2022)




Watched:  09/10/2022
Format:  Comedy Central DVR
Viewing: First
Director: Paul Lieberstein

Not so long ago, I got my bivalent COVID booster shot, and it basically took my ass out all weekend.  At some point I'd decided to DVR the Comedy Central movie Out of Office (2022) as it seemed to have okay comedic actors in it, and you never know.  

Leslie Jones, Ken Jeong, Jay Pharaoh, Oscar Nunez, Jason Alexander, Cheri Oteri, many others, and - most important, Lily the AT&T girl herself, Milana Veyntraub.  I think we've all been pulling for Veyntraub for a while, but she never really shows up anywhere other than AT&T ads.  She was almost a Marvel at one point, but her turn as Squirrel Girl has disappeared into the bin of history.

This movie, written and directed by King of the Hill and The Office alum Paul Lieberstein, is truly a complete waste of a viewers time.  Everything is vaguely joke shaped in a way that you can imagine working if it was workshopped a bit or didn't feel like something pulled out of a Judd Apatow movie's reel of stuff that didn't even make the bloopers.  The lead (tragically Veyntraub) is breathtakingly unlikable as written, which translates to - this is just like sitting at work with your worst colleagues, not people you want to spend time with.  And, worst, it tries to find some schmaltzy closure about the friends we found along the way at the end, which is utterly unearned.  

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Happy Birthday, Sophia Loren



Happy Birthday to Sophia Loren, who may have been the one to first inspire the phrase "great googledy-moogledy"


Monday, September 19, 2022

PodCast 211: "Vampira/ Old Dracula" (1974) - a Halloween PodCast w/ SimonUK and Ryan




Watched:  07/26/2022
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing: First
Decade:  1970's
Director:  Clive Donner




SimonUK and Ryan take a bite out of a 1974 vampire movie neither of them had previously seen, starring David Niven as a Dracula whose seen better days. It's 1970's hipsterism mixed with Blaxploitation meets horror meets comedy meets a sad trombone moment in the last 45 seconds. Join us as we kick off Halloween 2022!


SoundCloud 


YouTube


Music:
Vampira - David Whitaker 



Halloween and Horror

Sunday, September 18, 2022

80's Watch: American Gigolo (1980)




Watched:  09/17/2022
Format:  Streaming Paramount+
Viewing:  First
Director:  Paul Schrader

After watching Cat People for our Halloween podcasts, and making my way through Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This podcast series Erotic 80's, I figured I should get around to watching American Gigolo (1980) a movie I'd successfully not seen for 42 years but never actively avoided.  

I was doubly enticed by a Georgio Moroder soundtrack and finding out the movie had Bill Duke and Lauren Hutton, and was excited to see both for very different reasons.  

I should have watched the movie years ago after catching a cab in Las Vegas with some pals and - as I am wont to do - I began chatting with the cab driver who revealed to us his dream of becoming a gigolo.  And he used that word (with what seemed like a Russian accent, but I didn't ask).  We stayed in the car way after arriving at the hotel and listened to him discuss his strategy and goals.  He really, really wanted to sleep with older women for money.  I hope he's out there now with someone named "Gertrude" just raking it in.  

Anyway, I was completely ignorant of the plot of American Gigolo (1980), but what I assumed it to be was not what it is.   Honestly, I assumed it was a melodrama entirely about the life and loves of a gigolo in LA in 1980.  Seemed like there was plenty there as hunky Richard Gere impeccably banged his way across the Los Angeles landscape until finding real love or something.  And it is that, but with 45% of the runtime caught up in a murder plot that, frankly, is intensely telegraphed from the minute it kicks into gear (no pun intended).

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but American Gigolo is also a movie that seems to live in a curious twilight zone of being frank about sex in many ways, but in comparison to, say, Body Heat which would show up a year later, it feels almost chaste.   Look, Lauren Hutton is...  a whole scene.  But I kinda wish the movie was just whatever was going on with Gere and Hutton.  

That said - this is a watershed film.  It isn't looking backward the way Body Heat would, it's leaning forward into adult-oriented fare but it also needs to serve an audience in 1980 who probably could have been interested in just the loves and issues of a gigolo, but would really get hooked by a crime story.  But I was kinda curious where the movie was going with Gere's alternately broken and abstracted sexuality which feels like it needs a lot more investigation than what it gets.

Everything you've heard about the hyper-stylization of the movie is true.  It's gorgeously shot and really does do its utmost to bring the various worlds of the Cali nouveau-rich and establishment rich as well as the occasional dive into other locales from gay clubs to political fundraisers.  It's a Playboy spread of the best in the lifestyle of the swinging gentleman, from cars to stereos to tasteful book collections and artfully placed desks.  

But now it almost looks quaint.  Miami Vice did this weekly on TV within a few years.  It's become a pastiche in other movies.  Still, it works.  And in no small part because the score on this thing (Moroder) - riffing occasionally on Blondie's Call Me is so f'ing great.*

All in all, the movie wasn't what I expected, and that took some adjustment.  What it did do, though, I think earns the reputation in some ways, less so in other ways (sexy ways).  But as a perfect artifact of "what set the tone for the 1980's?" you'd be hard pressed to find the thing better than this movie, which seems unaware the 1970's ever existed.  


*no one told six year old me blasting Call Me from the Chipmunk Punk album how the song became so mainstreamed  

Happy Belated Birthday, Cassandra Peterson




Happy Birthday to one of the greats of the Signal Watch faves pantheon, Cassandra Peterson!

This year, we read Peterson's memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark.  And, kids, it is a wild @#$%ing ride.  

Here's to Ms. Peterson living her best life.  

Ida Watch: Ladies in Retirement (1941)





Watched:  09/16/2022
Format:  Amazon Watch Party
Viewing:  First
Director:  Charles Vidor

Everything about this movie screams pre-WWII play.  More or less a single location/ set, daffy characters, moments of strong internal reckoning, a maid to be the dumb one, a ne'er-do-well relative, and a dowager-type causing trouble.

And I loved it.  

We picked this as a watch party before we dive into the monster season entirely on the cast.  Starring Ida Lupino, Louis Hayward, Elsa Lanchester, Evelyn Keyes, Isobel Elsom and Edith Barrett, I was entirely curious as I'd only seen mention of the film on Jenifer's blog before - and that was a faded memory.  It's now streaming on Prime, and I suggest you go check it out.  

And, man, is Elsa Lanchester ever good (and so underutilized by Hollywood).




Friday, September 16, 2022

Friday Watch Party: Ladies in Retirement




Before we get into the Halloween season, we need to check in on another Ida Lupino movie.  I know nothing about it, but here's what Amazon is saying it's about:


A wealthy woman's companion turns to murder to keep her deranged sisters from being committed to an asylum.

That's bananas, and I'm here for it.  Add in Lupino and the always amazing Evelyn Keyes (we'll do 99 River Street some time.  Amazing film.), and - of course - Elsa Lanchester, my imaginary movie friend.

It's mystery and murder on the moors!

Day:  09/16/2022 - Friday
Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific
Cost:  $0 if you have Amazon Prime

link live 10 minutes prior to showtime

Noir Watch: Hit and Run (1957)


Watched:  09/15/2022
Format:  TCM Noir Alley
Viewing:  First
Director:  Hugo Haas

Eddie Muller may or may not have programmed this flick for Noir Alley, but he did host it.  I don't really know how Noir Alley selections work, to be honest.

But he seemed delighted to show a poverty row-adjacent film and talk about Hugo Haas, the producer, director and star of Hit and Run (1957), a self-made man in cinema who only made a handful of films, but did it on his own terms, including casting himself alongside Cleo Moore, one of the lesser known blonde bombshells of the mid-50's.  And there's probably a fascinating movie or prestige TV show about the shadow world of these films and their distribution in an era where the studios were still running the show and for everyone else, it was the collision of art and commerce and doing what you could afford to do.

Hit and Run plays mostly like a local theater production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but like the local community theater producer had some ideas for revisions to juice it up a bit.  But, similarly, it features Cleo Moore as the blonde girl who, down on her luck, marries the most stable and financially sound guy in her world, even if he's older and they make a weird pair.  Rather than John Garfield wandering into the gas station, Vince Edwards (whom I like a lot, generally), is already employed there, so it's Moore who's the interloper breaking up a happy home.

This version leans (a) first into the idea that the blonde is not a willing participant in her romance with Edwards or his murderous scheme to take out her husband.  And (b) there's a previously unseen twin who appears to take the husband's place and stir things up.  Y'all, this is how you just keep plussing an idea.

Weirdly, both Moore and Edwards seem like they didn't get enough takes or just weren't that into it, and the energy level in this film, aside from Haas, is weirdly flat from beginning to end.  Which, in contrast to 1946's Postman, is weirdly odd.  But part of that is the ambiguity about what is really happening with Edwards and Moore - she seems to loathe him but melt in his arms when he forces himself on her - so what is she playing?  And Edwards is laconic and then suddenly is not.  It's weird.

There's some curious touches like a society for people to make fun of superstitions and the people who believe them, which seems mostly to be about drinking and shit-talking people you don't know, which may make me an honorary member.

And Chekhov's goldfish enter in the first act but don't really achieve any significance.  

It wasn't great, but I like all of the players - Cleo Moore has really grown on me - and was so weird as a parallax version of a well known film, I couldn't really look away.  But at film's end, I was probably more interested in the movie someone should make about Hugo Haas and Cleo Moore.