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Reviews
The Stupids (1996)
Bad, bad, bad.
Holy cow, what a disaster. It's painful to watch so many actors try so hard to be funny, and completely fail.
I would, first of all, like to commend the rocket scientist who decided to introduce a plotline about international terrorists into a movie for children. In addition, Tom Arnold's performance is horrible; someone should have told him that there's a big difference between comedy and simply making weird faces into the camera. The film is almost completely devoid of imagination or wit (but I will confess, to my shame, that I got a mild chuckle out of the exploding-airbag bit).
Overall, this movie is as entertaining as watching eggs boil--and less amusing.
I Drink Your Blood (1971)
Wonderful early '70s nonsense.
This just might be the worst movie I've ever enjoyed watching. Very probably inspired by the then-recent Manson murders, the film deals with a pack of itinerant hippies who descend on a small town, terrorize the locals, go berserk when a kid infects them with rabies (they literally froth at the mouth).... and then things really get ugly.
This is not a quality production, but it's carried off with a good deal of manic energy. And you have to like any film that features:
(1) a multi-cultural band of hippies called SADOS (Sons and Daughters of Satan), which includes (a) an old Asian woman with Tarot cards and (b) a crazed, pistol-waving Native American who says things like "Remember, children, that Satan was an acidhead."
(2) an unusually cheesy score ("ooooWEEEEoooo") that sounds like something off one of those Halloween records they sell to kids.
(3) Lynn Lowry (who's not in the credits!), future star of David Cronenberg's "Shivers," who whacks off another woman's hand with an electric knife.
(4) Lots of fake-Satanic rituals performed by the aforementioned band of hippies. (Though I'm not happy to report that at least some of the animal-killing scenes seem real, including the let's-kill-all-the-rats-in-this-deserted-house sequence.)
(5) The coolest band of rabid construction workers ever captured on film.
Check it out.
The Lickerish Quartet (1970)
Wanna see something REALLY pretentious?
Metzger's porno-existentialist film (or something like that)deals with a family of three, living in a spacious castle, whose comfortable lifestyle is upset by the arrival of a mysterious woman who may or may not be an actress in one of the stag films the husband likes to watch. A woman who may or may not even be real.... But what IS real, anyway...?
Sounds fun, right? Not really. I had the opportunity to see this in a theatre last year (1998). There was nothing but dead silence from the audience all the way through.
Yes, the film is interesting, as all really weird flicks tend to be, but it's also almost unbearably irritating. The acting is clumsy, and the director's painfully obvious desire to make Art (instead of just plain "art") weighs down the whole production. And, good golly, that dialogue: "Your virility is just as illusory as her virginity!"
There's some cool visuals, though. Especially the weird scene in the library wherein the male and female leads make out on the floor, which for some reason is covered with dictionary entries of sexual terms set in large bold type.
Don't you miss the '70s?