I’ve made it relatively clear that I am a fan of genre films, up to and including exploitation films. I grew up on these movies and they have helped shape my future movie watching habits, so I have enjoyed quite a bit the recent bit of mainstream love for grindhouse films.
Now, coming on the heels of the outstanding Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood, comes a film devoted to the American exploitation films of the same time. Now the film does not look to have quite the same level of frenzied adoration as its Australian counterpart, but with its massive cast of interviewees it should prove to be a fascinating look at one of my favorite parts of cinema history.
Special thanks to The Documentary Blog for the heads up on this film.
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With The Crazies remake just around the corner, I figured it was finally time to watch this exploitation “classic” from George A Romero. While I’m not expecting much I figure it can’t be any worse then the last few Of The Dead films he’s put out.
When I started this column my main hope was to find interesting films that I had never seen before that I could review. I hoped that I would enjoy the majority of them, but I knew that in sampling such odd fare that it was inevitable that I would eventually encounter some duds. But I also held out hope, as naive as it probably was, that since I was watching primarily experimental films, that I would enjoy at least some aspect of these movies, no matter how terrible they might happen to be. I held out that hope until now. Until Mutant. I just wish this day had never come.
Two brothers, Josh and Mike (Wings Hauser and Lee Montgomery) from somewhere hip and cosmopolitan, are heading to a small southern getaway to engage in some much needed male bonding. It seems that have become estranged for some unexplained reason and this trip to a place that they hate, and hates them they back with equal fervor, will be the perfect place to solve all of their problems. That is, until the vampire acid zombies show up and ruin everything.
I’ve been trying to slog through Mutant for close to a month now. Considering I’ve watched any number of awful films in my day just what possibly could have made Mutant so difficult to sit through? The short answer is really rather simple. Everything. It is difficult to know just where to begin describing the failures of Mutant. It is the kind of colossal disaster that could destroy companies. Funny enough, Mutant did.
A huge number of new additions this week, I suppose that is what happens when the booking sheet isn’t sent out for two weeks. I’d list them off but it is somewhere in the neighborhood of ten films, which will just take me way to long to go through.
I will say this, the July 10th weekend is now looking like one hecdk of a weekend to go to the theatre. I’m recommending three of the films, and I’ve heard from several people that Jerichow is just as worthy of a watch.
The only other big addition is Inglorious Bastards, which is incredibly tentative right now to open at the Lagoon. And while I’m sure that is going to be a very wide release, that style of exploitation cinema really works better on a screen that isn’t in a giant multiplex. Though I do understand the subversive appeal of watching such a film along with tweens who have no idea what they are in for.
Though with all these new additions their is one film that dropped off the sheet, that being Mesrine: Part One. Hopefully it shows up again in the coming weeks as it looked very interesting.
I wasn’t what you would call a quick convert to the Church of Tarantino. I remember when Pulp Fiction came out and I fully admit to thinking the ad campaign for it made the film look stupid. My freshman year at the University of Minnesota I lived on the St Paul campus which had its own movie theater. While I can brag that I watched Clerks there before you even knew it existed, I turned a blind eye to Pulp Fiction when it played there. Even that summer, when I was home and working at a movie theater, I did my best to ignore the marketing for it. Why would I care about a bunch of has-beens and never-weres with bad haircuts?
Soon enough I learned the error of my ways. I watched Reservoir Dogs and was so impressed that I finally was rather intrigued at what Pulp Fiction was going to be like. Luckily, I knew several clerks at my local video store and they loaned me a screener copy of the film so I could see what all the fuss was about.
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