August Movies - Week 4

Good Morning Ladies & Gentlemen,

Another week, another batch of movies...

August 24 – King of New York (1990)
 
This is a gangster movie that I had heard about… but had never seen. A drug kingpin (Christopher Walken) is released from prison and basically wants to take over the drug trade in New York… and his general Larry Fishburne is there to help him eliminate the competition… and detectives David Caruso & Wesley Snipes are trying to stop him. Here’s the twist… he wants to take over the drug trade to help the community… like build a hospital & keep out corrupt landlords and politicians and such. I mean… yeah… but yeah, this is a gangster movie… but it’s also as if Walken was a more level-headed Scarface… but with the Walken quirks which are amazing. Yes, it’s violent, racist & all the things you could want it to be… so yeah, if that’s your thing, check it out!
 
Rating – 9/10 – Not quite the legendary film that I was sold… but still pretty damn good. Really it just left me with more questions than answers about a lot of things…
 
August 25 – Beyond Atlantis (1973)
 
This was an MST3K watch… about some shady characters (including John Wayne’s son Patrick & the great Sid Haig going to an island to find a fortune in rare pearls… but the island natives are determined to keep the them… and it’s basically played as if the Philippines are the lost island of Atlantis but… most of them also have giant frog eyes or something? It gets weird… and then it gets weirder… and hijinx ensue. This comes from director Eddie Romero (Black Mama White Mama & Savage Sisters among others) so you kinda know what you’re getting into knowing that… and did I mention MST3K? That being said… it’s just a nutso watch… and the dialogue is pretty ridiculous in parts (Sid Haig specifically).
 
Rating – 7/10 – Not horrible… but kind of need to be in the mood for it… and not thing too much
 
August 26 – Robo Vampire (1988)
 
This movie comes from acclaimed director Godfrey Ho (he’s famous for taking bits of different Asian movies & just randomly putting them together to make crazy stuff) and this is no exception. One of the stories is about a cop who’s brought back to life through technology (like RoboCop on a budget of whatever’s in the closet). Another one involves vampires… but they are more like… zombies that bunny hop towards their victims & take them out with kung fu. Another one involves a druglord in the Golden Triangle and a kidnapping… and then they’re all kind of mixed together in a crazy mess with even obviously different film stocks, plot points, continuity & so on. As a movie, it’s kind of a trainwreck.
 
Rating – 9/10 – That being said… it’s a definite watch with friends if you’re looking for cuckoo bananas!!!
 
August 27 – War of the Colossal Beast (1958)
 
Another MST3K watch but it’s the SEQUEL to “The Amazing Colossal Man” in which a man grew Big McLargeHuge… and then fell off the Hoover Dam to his death. Why is there a sequel? Because HE’S BACK!!! He’s also had like… half of his skull crushed (to where you can see his skull I think?) and has brain damage so he is now wandering around Mexico eating people and destroying towns and such. It’s basically your typical 50’s giant person terrorizing the city movie… but it gets pretty hilarious when a bus full of kids are brought into the mix towards the end.
 
Rating – 6/10 – MST3K is the way to go…
 
August 28 – Shivers (1975)
 
Director David Cronenberg’s first feature film… and oh man is it a great indicator of the style that made him famous. There’s a high-rise apartment building on an island in the river by Montreal… and it’s full of yuppies & doctors. Well, one of the doctors was apparently working on a parasite that turns people into mindless orgy zombies because he thinks humans have lost their baser instincts… and hijinx ensue. Now, if you’re ever seen a Cronenberg movie… you know what you’re getting into. There’s going to be a LOT of gore… a lot of squishy sexy gory meat slapping kind of stuff… dialogue that would blow your mind if you were stoned enough… and the timing of this movie is interesting because it seems to have influenced horror for decades in the likes of “Alien” (almost blatantly ripping it off as “Shivers in Space”), “Nightmare on Elm Street” and just about all of the 80’s slasher flicks… and it’s just a good, weird trippy kind of horror flick. I’m not a huge fan of gore so… spoilers, there’s gallons of blood involved and… some other things that don’t age particularly well with regards to “lifestyle choices” or something (but I think that’s part of the message). If you like horror, give it a glance… and remember that there may be a lot of tropes involved… but this one came before a lot of them.
 
Rating – 9/10 – Not a gore for gore sake fan… but this does pretty well with walking that line
 
August 29 – The Sage of the Viking Women & Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957)
 
Yes, the title is great… and it’s a Roger Corman directed movie that was on MST3K about a bunch of beautiful blonde women (and Susan Cabot) going on a journey to find their missing men, who went out to war & have not returned in months. Now, there’s also one random guy left behind who must be having the time of his life but yeah… they leave by boat… get in a fight with a sea serpent in the middle of a vortex… and wash up on the shore of a foreign land… who immediately take them captive & find that their men have been there for a while too… and basically broken by slavery. Hijinx ensue as they try to escape. Now… yes, the movie is pretty bad… but there are bones here. Let’s do a female-positive Northman sequel about a bunch of Nordic goddesses going save their men… you know I’m in… but this movie is not that.
 
Rating – 7/10 – Check out the MST3K version but… not completely intolerable
 
August 30 – Final Justice (1984)
 
Joe Don Baker is a Texas Ranger named Thomas Jefferson Geronimo (stop laughing) who’s transporting a fugitive to Malta… but then the fugitive escapes… and hijinx ensues as Geronimo says juris-my-diction to your international law in bringing him to justice. Yeah, the movie is pretty ridiculous & it’s from director Greydon Clark (“Uninvited”, “Without Warning” “Angel’s Revenge” & “Black Shampoo”) so… obviously this was an MST3K watch. I’d recommend that version.
 
Rating – 7/10 – That being said… it’s quite ridiculous to see stereotypes put to celluloid in bad 80’s action

Only a few great ones this week... but what do we have in store for next week?!? Stay tuned!!!

​Steve