'MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW'......A FANGIRL CONSUMED BY SLASER-OBILIA.......

            

My Heart Is A Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones (Pub. 8/31/21) Hey, beloved BQ visitors.....we're thrilled to bring you a rarity for this little ole blog.....

Here's a hot-off-the-presses, breaking news review of a red hot read that just hit the racks on this very day, With some mixed feelings thrown in, we pretty much did love this book overall, so here's the detailed (but spoiler free) complete rundown......

First important thing you should know........ even with the tantalizing subject matter of slasher movies and "final" girls, nobody should approach this book thinking it's going to be a fun, breezy, lightning fast, hot buttered popcorn treat to read.

                  On the contrary, it bears the heavy density (and sometimes obtuseness and pretension ) of literary fiction, a slow, tortuous journey through the troubled mind of its lead character.
                  And unless readers come to this novel pre-equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of the last 60 years of slasher/splatter films along with their casts and director credits, they might consider keeping IMDB cued up on a separate device for instant references as they read..
                  If you're willing to take the plunge (and as a lifelong hardcore movie buff we couldn't possibly resist), you're in a for a deeply thought out, deeply disturbing 10 course meal not only in slasher lore but in ALL the American ills  -  the mistreatment of Native Americans, the toxic economic disparity in today's society, systemic racism and horrific, hidden sexual abuse of children. 
                   Half Indian 17 year old Jade lives an internally solitary life as her lakeside community's oddball outcast resident juvenile delinquent.  As an escape from all of those who abuse, mock, torment and chastise her, she lives in her own private world governed by the tropes of all the slasher movies she knows by heart (such as the "Halloween", "Friday The  13th" and "Nightmare On Elm Street" series.)......films that she worships as practically Holy Scripture.
                  With proof of  the mysterious deaths of two young tourists, Jade's convinced herself that her town now plays host to a genuine slasher with a revenge-fueled agenda and that a blood-soaked body count is imminent - most likely during the town's big annual 4th of July celebration on the lake.
                    She's even picked out and anointed the girl she's designated as the Final Girl  - the traditional Last Girl Standing in every slasher movie. In this case it's the stunningly perfect Letha Mondragon, daughter of one of the ultra wealthy newcomers to the town who are building their own mini-kingdom of McMansions along the lake shoreline. 
                     Along the way to the expected spectacular slaughter bloodbath (which really has more in common with the 2010 remake of "Piranha" than a slasher flick), Jade tries to desperately orchestrate events according to her slasher precepts - including grooming and preparing Letha to assume her role of the Final Girl who steps up to do battle with the monstrous killer.
                     But as in real life and horror films alike, things go awry for Jade, leading her to confront  amidst literally a sea of carnage, all of the horrors in her life, especially the very worst of her inner torments. 
                    As we already mentioned in this review, this is no easy-peasy, walk-in-the-park to read, even though it will no doubt make you smile and nod at the hundreds upon hundreds of slasher-splatter film references (some going all the way back to the genre's roots in the 1960's Italian gorefests like Mario Bava's '"Bay Of Blood") 

"My Heart Is A Chainsaw" is a quite the staggering, ambitious effort, equal to any of Stephen King's 600 page door-stoppers. True, it does sometimes bear the labored overwriting that afflicts uppercrust literary fiction, but as a lifelong consumer of horror novels and films, we still found it a 4 star feast to behold. (****)>

'THE OTHER PASSENGER'..... QUADRUPLE INDEMNITY ON THE THAMES......

 The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish (2020)    Here's the eternal challenge to thriller novelists who lay out a story populated by unsympathetic, unlikable characters......the kind of people you'd go out of your way to avoid in real life......

                  The challenge -  to keep the book hopping with enough "WHAT THE ACTUAL F***!" twists that we the readers will hang in and stay on board with this unappetizing bunch of losers just to see who gets their just desserts or whatever........

                   In that regard, we'd say Louise Candlish makes a fairly decent job of it in this noir-ish tale of two sets of London based couples undone by a murder plot with triple-whammy surprises that boomerang back on more than a few of them.

                    Kit and Melia are unmarried  but cohabiting millennials living way beyond their means and up their eyeballs in debt. 

                    The strikingly gorgeous and desirable Melia sells real estate for her wealthy middle-aged boss Clare who also has an unmarried live-in partner Jamie. He's another middle-ager who's found himself downsized to working as a barista in a cafe so he's living in Clare's expensive mansion strictly at her pleasure.  And yet he resists her efforts to help him climb back up the corporate ladder with career counseling session.

                    Since Jamie and Kit become travelling pals on commuter boats running up and down the Thames river, they and their partners end up socializing, even though this oddly matched quartet are generations apart in attitude, outlooks and most importantly here.... income.

                   Jamie and Melia end up in a hot-and-heavy illicit affair.......and then Kit suddenly drops out of sight, which leads to a pair of London detectives showing up to quiz Jamie about the disappearance, since he was the last one to see Kit....alive. 

                     And since Kit and Jamie seemed to have a very loud, nasty argument witnessed by an anonymous "other passenger" on the boat with them, the two cops harbor more than a little interest in Jamie's side of the story.

                      Hmmmm.......more here than meets the eye, you think?  Oh, you betcha. 

                      That's all you'll get from us......since the fun of reading a book like this comes mainly from the amount of "you gotta be kiddin' me!" twists that start to detonate as the story picks up steam to head for the finish line.

                       Sure enough, author Candlish rolls 'em on out, one after another........with a final chapter that delivers one last perfectly ironic zinger of a finale. 

                      So if you're stuck on a plane, train or commuter boat for a couple hours, this one's  an entertaining way to eat up the time......3 stars (***). 

                      

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL 'TRUMPANZEES GONE WILD' EDITION!

               How would we ever start the weekend without the usual litany of lunacy.......

Baby Orange loses control of this Trumpanzees.......who boo him (yes BOO him) when  he dares to suggest they take the vaccine to save their worthless, miserable lives......

Watching this ludicrous, but inevitable scene unfold, we don't know whether to cringe in anticipatory horror or laugh out loud.......

All Baby Orange ever wanted from his MAGA morons was their undying adoration and applause....

He  never much cared what he said to get it,. And he never spent a moment worrying about the effect his toxic lies and hate-fueled rhetoric would have on his brain dead followers, who tossed away their sanity, decency and whatever morals they had left to embrace him. 

And now he's lost control of them.  He's now a panicked Dr. Frankenstein, trying to placate the lurching, shambling monster he's created. 

He gave them an alternate reality to live in......devoid of truth or any shred to common sense. 

And that's where they're taken up permanent residence, no matter what he says to them now.  They boo any mention of vaccines and masks.......which might keep them and their children from taking their last breath with a ventilator jammed down their throats.

Should we laugh at them or weep for them?   You figure it out.......we've given up trying......

Rudy Giuliani video'd  shaving while eating at an airport........well, at least he didn't drip hair dye into his lunch.......

South Dakota biker rally drives up the COVID infections, as predicted......Maybe these guys need a new song to replace 'Born To Be Wild'......a funeral march? 

Brooklyn, New York priest warns parishioners to avoid taking the vaccines.......since they contain aborted fetal cells........so we're guessing 'pro-life' doesn't extend to his flock, whom he expects to just suck up the COVID and die with 'Hail Mary' on their lips........

GOPers want to re-invade Afghanistan.......by all means. We support them 100 per cent. Just as long as they're willing to strap on body armor, pick up a rifle and join our troops themselves, standing at the very front of the platoon......in harm's way.......

'BURN WITCH BURN'.....ACADEMICS WHO NEED A SPELL CHECK......

 Burn Witch Burn (a.k.a. Night Of The Eagle) 1962      Now here's a snappy little thriller if you're itching to get into a Halloween mood early......and considering those temporary Halloween shops usually open right after Labor Day, then technically, the scary season's almost upon us. 

              It's a modest, but quite effective British-produced modern day witchcraft chill-a-thon with a screenplay, strangely enough, by two classic, American writers of sci-fi and fantasy,, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont..

              So off we go to a cozy little University campus where a psychology prof (the usually excessive Peter Wyngarde, tamping it down a bit here) finds out out his wife (Janet Blair) has been dabbling in witchcraft, casting spells to help his career along.

              A strong disbeliever in all things supernatural, Wyngarde demands Blair go cold turkey on the witchery. forcing her to dispose of all her accumulated spellcasting knick-knacks......

              Unfortunately for the prof, it seems Blair wasn't the only person on campus wielding a wicked wand....or caldron, or broomstick or whatever......

              Before you can say 'double double, toil and trouble', Wyngarde's flourishing academic career flies off the rails with a series of reversals of fortune, including a student's rape accusation against him and the rise in stature of a colleague prof , his rival for a higher position in the school.

               Wyngarde and Blair go through all manner of melodramatic angst until they finally realize who's flingin' the dark arts at them.  And once that big reveal's out in the open, we arrive at tge film's primary showstopper.......a nasty spell that brings a big stone statue of an eagle to life (or so Wyngarde is made to believe). 

              This  gaudy display of magic gives new to meaning to 'flipping the bird' at somebody as the newly enlivened creature comes flying off its rooftop parapet to swoop down at Wyngarde with a vengeance.  For a very low budget film, it makes for an exciting and creepy closeout sequence......and finishing up with a clever comeuppance for the real evil perpetrator behind all this.......

              For everyone who loves catching up with classic British horror films, here's one to most surely put on your Halloween watchlist.  Wyngarde's always fascinating to watch in action and Blair, a seasoned star of Hollywood musicals and comedies makes for a great out-of-the-box casting choice as the witching wife.  

               Now thought of as a cult classic,  it's a 4 star (****)  fright season pick for us. And don't forget to duck when that big bird takes flight........ 

              . 

              

'WHERE'S POPPA'....WELCOME TO THE WAY-BACK WORLD OF THE UN-WOKE.......

        

  Watching this film 51 years after its release, we often found ourselves shaking with laughter......but not at anything we saw on our TV screen, even though the movie practically gives itself a stroke  trying to be funny.......

             Our guffaws were purely unintentional, as we shook our heads in disbelief at some of the stuff in here.....scenes and attitudes that in today's world of Wokeness and Cancel Culture, would destroy the careers of anyone involved.......

Where's Poppa? (1970) directed by Carl Reiner and written by Robert Klane  stands apart from other old films featuring dark humor and behavior  now rendered out-of-date and offensive.

                  Reiner and Klane set out to make a movie that's intentionally outrageous, disgusting and offensive. They were fishing for gasps and jaw-drops from an audience by loading up the movie with as many taboo shattering sequences they could think of.......(or we should say.....what they thought of as taboo shattering sequences....)

                   The film so exhausts itself waving its freak flag, that after a few minutes into it, we could sense how phony, insincere and deliberately manufactured it was......the product of mainstream guys pretending they're rebels. .

                   Reiner and Klane were far from outlaw filmmakers......they were more like 12 year old boys making smutty prank phone calls to the neighbors, then hanging up. 

                   For 82 punishing minutes, the film subjects us to the tribulations of a sad sack, nebbish lawyer (George Segal, at the peak of his young leading man stardom). afflicted with a senile mother (the always grating Ruth Gordon) whom he periodically tries to frighten into heart failure. 

                  Oblivious to his hatred of her, Gordon responds by pulling his pants down to lovingly smooch and caress his bare ass - the movie's much heralded "tush scene".  You get the vibe here, right?

                   Segal gets no help from his equally manic brother (the overacting Ron Leibman) who's regularly stripped and robbed by a group of black muggers. Later in the film, the muggers manage to enlist Leibman into gang raping an undercover cop who's posing as a woman.......and who later sends Leibman a bouquet of flowers as a pleasant memory of their time together.  We made no attempt to figure that one out......(feel free to roll your eyes and groan....)

                  If those aren't enough nausea inducing moments for you, there's a little bonus moment the film throws in that still sadly rings true today......when Leibman, in a gorilla suit (don't ask), has no trouble catching a cab that's just sailed right past a black woman  who was trying to hail it. 

                  We won't go on......the film reeked of phoniness, a clumsy attempt to make a slick duplication of the some of the off-the-wall, independent satires in circulation, . like Brian DePalma's "Hi Mom" and "Greetings", and Robert Downey Sr.'s "Putney Swope"

                   And for true big studio, big budget outlaw movie-making, all 1970 audiences had to do was wait a few more months for Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley Of The Dolls" (with a script by Roger Ebert!  Check out our post on that from 6/21/18)

                As for "Where's Poppa"......of course now un-woke as hell.......and still a stale piece of crap all these years later. Zero stars (0).

                   

'WE WERE NEVER HERE'.....BQ CRASHES REESE'S BOOK CLUB.......

 We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz (2021)    After finishing this best selling new thriller, we pondered what possessed  book club powerhouse Reese Witherspoon to put her recommendation imprint on it........

              Hmmm......well, there's certainly female empowerment in this twisty tale of two BFFs, Emily and Kristen who suffer through an overwhelming amount of traumatic bad luck while touring Europe and Asia.

                During their Cambodia excursion,  Emily's overnight hookup with another travelling backpacker ends up in an attempted rape and an apparent rescue by Kristen......which leaves the guy dead on the floor. 

                  After the girls cover up the death (and corpse) they're off to Chile, where this time, Kristen's overnight hookup with another travelling backpacker ends up in yet another attempted rape.....and once again, a dead guy on the floor to be disposed of  before our shaken Gal Pals flee the country.

                   Through all of these series of unfortunate events that even Lemony Snicket couldn't conceive of,  it's established in Emily's narration that Kristen's the take-charge, Type A personality and Emily functions mostly as a follower living in her friend's formidable shadow.......

                   Once the girls are back in America together, the crushing burdens of guilt and fear of being caught  consume them, tearing away at a friendship that was already crumbling......with more than a few clues dropped that imply Kristen's psychotically stalking Emily and has more than few other suspicious deaths in her past.

                 Emily's budding relationship with a new boyfriend  drives her and Kristen into a wildly off-the-rails confrontation sequence that defines the final chapters........and so ridiculous that the book lost us completely......it smacked of something that soap opera writers come up with at the last minute to juice up the ratings and make viewers' jaws drop, no matter how senseless it plays out.

                   But we can only assume that, lucky for the author, Reese Witherspoon was cool with the ending......but we couldn't help wondering if Reese would go with this book's climax if she ever decides to turn it into a movie or a streaming series.....(we  doubt it....)

                  Intriguing and filled with dread throughout, we'll admit to enjoying most of the book as Guilty Pleasure read......but sorry, the what-the-hellapalooza  windup rendered the whole thing silly and we just couldn't get on board with it. 

                  So "We Were Never Here" may benefit from being a Witherspoon pick but for us......it just withered.....2 stars (**).

'BILLY SUMMERS' ....BQ BINGES SOME BESTSELLERS...

        

   High time we dropped the TV remote and hit the books.......

            So let's kick off the binge with the most red hot item on the current best seller lists.....

Billy Summers by Stephen King  (2021)   We always know summertime's winding down and the Fall's approaching when Uncle Stevie delivers his hefty Big Book Of The Year.......

                  This one's an earthbound crime-and-punishment epic, so the major horrors on display here come primarily from the rapists and Pedophiles who take center stage in the book's second half.....

                   In the first half, King boldly puts his own spin on that very, very well worn action trope......the weary, noble hitman who's taking on one last big assignment before retiring from his career of erasing scumbags who had it coming anyway......

                   Billy Summers, our hit-guy, comes with a backstory filled with terrible childhood abuse and a young adulthood spent as a Marine surviving bloody combat in one of our useless Middle East wars. His employers, a collection of slimy Las Vegas gangsters, depend on Billy's sniper expertise but think of him as kind of a dim bulb, since he's strictly a comic book reader abd slow on the uptake.

                  That's just Billy's clever ruse, a trick he uses to hide the fact that he's really one savvy assassin who's thinking ten steps ahead of his overlords.

                  So he has no trouble figuring out that he's completely expendable in their plan to have him bump off an especially nasty, extradited-for-trial psycho before the murderous slimeball  can spout damaging testimony on some powerful people.

                    What we did find hard to swallow here.......the gangsters, who probably think Billy's somewhere on the autism scale, set up an elaborate phony identity for him - as a fledgling novelist, of all things. Billy throws himself into their scam by actually writing a thinly fictionalized version of his own life story, though deliberately dumbing it down a little since the kingpins can access his laptop.

                     While this allows King to indulge in one of his great passions, writing about writers and  their creative process, it's a stretch to believe that Billy's bosses would fashion such a persona for him, given they think he's not all that bright. 

                      Sure enough, by the book's second half, Billy's on the run from both the cops and his employers  and a twist of fate (and Uncle Stevie) places  Alice in his path........a young girl who's been more or less dumped on his doorstep, drugged, brutally beaten and raped by her date and his two equally entitled roommates. 

                        From that point on, the book becomes a redemptive journey for  Billy and Alice, whom he slowly nurses back to health and attempts to heal both her physical and emotional wounds. This inevitably leads to two roads of revenge for odd couple......to first avenge Alice and next to hunt down the gangland creeps who so badly underestimated him,,,,and the real power-that-be behind them.

                        As always, King keeps a reader tearing through the pages to see what happens next and if you're one of his faithful readers, we can't promise any big surprises in the wrap--up, but you will find the finale hugely satisfying and heartfelt.  And yes, he never misses an opportunity to take some pokes at Donald Trump. (Speaking of Baby Orange's enablers, you won't have any trouble figuring out whom King used as the inspiration for his disgusting main villain....)

                         If you're a devoted King-ophile like us, "Billy Summers" is a 4 star (****) end-of-summer must read.  And speaking of hot bestsellers,  stop in here tomorrow 'cause we'll be diving into a twisty thriller that Reese Witherspoon added to her Book Club roster......

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "TRUMPANZEES GONE WILD" EDITION........

               Couldn't close out the weekend without the usual madness.....

Trumpanzee threatens to blow up the Capitol.......and told a judge he hasn't taken his "mind medicine" for two days.......at long last, the answer to the mystery of what makes Trumpanzees lose their minds and sacrifice their sanity, their morals, and whatever shreds of humanity they still clung to. They're all off their mind medicine.  Ah, that explains it.......

The "My Pillow" guy......yet another Trumpanzee who's been off his 'mind medicine' for quite some time now.  Can someone just prepare a special room for this guy......one padded from wall to wall with 'my pillows'?

The "Jeopardy" Jerk steps down from hosting.......we're so sick of this guy, the executive producer who anointed himself host after a lengthy parade of tryout auditionees, we'll not even mention his name. He's already had way too much publicity.   The bad news part of the story - Sony will continue the tryout trainwreck even when it's clear to everybody that they should've picked Levar Burton in the first place

Afghanistan........no one should escape blame here......we're talking 20 years of terrible decisions, all the way through four Presidential administrations......from Bush to Obama to Baby Orange to Biden. They all share the blame......starting with that feckless idiot W. and his Machiavelli-In-Chief, Dick Cheney, thinking they could turn the medieval Middle East into peaceful democracies (and keep the oil flowing).  The worst part of all this.....Biden's massive failure to comprehend what was going on will inevitably lead to the continued, toxic plague of Trumpanzees in local, state and federal government......

                And make no mistake about this...... in their lunacy, zealotry and idiocy, Trumpanzees are as dangerous to America as the Taliban is to Afghanistan........

'THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD'....FOR SHE'S A JOLIE GOOD FELLOW.....

 Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)......looks like one of those movies that was probably rewritten and re-shot repeatedly before finally limping its way into our blighted, toxic Pandemic universe.....

             We can see why it attracted Angelina Jolie.......as an opportunity to flex her acting chops and remind everybody she's more than capable of handling kick-ass action sequences.

              And as an action movie, it's got a few things going for it.......a truly hellish depiction of a raging forest fire and a pair of ruthless hitmen (well played by Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) eliminating witnesses to some vast criminal scandal.....(overseen by, of all people, Tyler Perry.. who knows, maybe the witnesses had damaging polaroids of him in full Madea drag....)

               The assassins' hit parade leads them to the wilds of Montana, where they start their very own forest fire to, we assume, better assist them in bumping off the young boy who might possess vital info from his late dad, the last poor sucker on the rub-out list.

                 Lucky for this kid he runs into Angelina Jolie, a fearless firefighter now relegated to a remote lookout tower due to her recent reckless suicidal behavior........caused by traumatic flashbacks of seeing children she couldn't rescue in time die horribly in a previous fire.

                With this set-up, you just know that our Angie's going to cleanse her tortured soul by going on the run with the feisty tyke, with the two of them desperately trying to escape both the hit-guys and the humungous fire the not-so-bright hit-guys started.......(it never occurred to these dummies that they'd end up stuck in the same fire as their potential victims......)

                 There's not much more to say about this movie.......other than its aspirations to become something more than a casual time waster to stream or rent don't amount to much.  We didn't mind sitting through it since it reminded us a little of those star-driven action thumpers that use to fill up the muti-plexes in the 1990's....(where it would've served well as a vehicle for  Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Shwarrzengger  or Stallone....)

                  2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2). Wait'll it pops up on some cable or streaming service that you've already subscribed to......no point in wasting any extra money on it.

'SPECIAL EFFECTS'......LARRY COHEN TURNS TO HITCHCOCK-ERY....

 Special Effects (1984)    As a would-be, aspiring (or perspiring) screenwriter ourselves, we've always been a Larry Cohen fanboy.......

              How could we not?  After spending decades grinding out countless TV episodes, Cohen fully emerged in the 1970's as the most ornery, inventive and downright crazy writer-director of the most ornery, inventive and downright crazy little movies ever seen. 

               And his films, especially his lunatic excursions into horror ,sci-fi, and fantasy are still beloved today as cockeyed classics....("God Told Me To", "Q-The Winged Serpent", "The Stuff" and of course the immortal "It's Alive" monster baby trilogy.)

               Long before Hollywood adopted the phrase "high concept" as a way to categorize script ideas with a singular, irresistible hook to them, Larry Cohen had already written dozens of such scripts......and somehow, on impoverished budgets, turned a bunch of 'em of them into movies. 

               Ever the idea man, his "Special Effects" script was his wild stab at the kind of twisted semi-Hitchcock homage that Brian DePalma was doing to carve out his own flourishing career. (with films like "Sisters", "Obsession" and "Body Double")

               But herein lay the problem in Cohen's work. Unlike the young new visual stylists like DePalma, Spielberg and Scorcese, he had no real talent as a director. As brilliant and original as his script ideas were, his direction of them was never better than that of a mediocre journeyman, a shlockmeister with no real ability to tell a story cinematically.

               Though Larry Cohen's films invariably came out looking slapdash, amateurish and raggedly put together ,what great nutty ideas they displayed......

                 "Special Effects" begins in a grungy New York porn studio decked out like the White House Oval Office . A heartland rube (Brad Rijn) tries to coerce his wayward young wife (Zoe Lund) to give up her quest to become an actress-model and return home to help raise their toddler son.

                 Fleeing her husband, she ends up in the arms of an egomaniacal film director (Eric Bogosian) , currently persona non grata in Hollywood due to the colossal failure of his latest effects-laden mega-budget turkey. When she unwisely mocks the director about this as they grapple in bed together, he films himself strangling her to death with a hidden camera.  After he's dumped the body in Coney Island, that leaves heartland hubby as the prime suspect. 

                  When the hapless rube is charged with his wife's murder, the mad scheming director arranges his release on bail, with the intention of using the poor sap to help him make a reality-based film on the dead wife's unhappy life and brutal death.........which will inevitably insure the rube's conviction for killing her. 

                  And in a twist of 'Vertigo' like fate, the actress recruited to play the wife is literally a dead ringer for the real thing.......and played, as you might already guess, by....surprise, surprise....Zoe Lund again.

                   Yes, it's every bit as off-the-wall and far-fetched as it sounds, but as always, Cohen's direction remains flat, ordinary and uninspired.  And unlike his "It's Alive" movies, which hugely benefited from a Bernard Herrmann score, the droning electronic music here only makes the film appear cheaper than it already is. 

                   There is one true wild card in play here......the star-crossed, doomed Zoe Lund, who was more like a startling performance artist than an actual actress. In her previous cult hit "Ms.45", she forever stood out as a rape victim who goes on a vengeful rampage.  There's no real skill or craft in her work, but with her huge expressive eyes and pouting lips, we defy you take your eyes off her. 

                  The level of barely contained madness in her work matched her real life, in which her recreational enjoyment of heroin addiction destroyed her health and killed her at age 37.

                   As for "Special Effects"......we'll admit we're biased, since we're such a major fan of Larry Cohen's screenplays.......even if his execution of them never quite matched the audacity of his 'high concepts'.   Though other directors may have easily exceeded him in cinema stylings, very few of them could equal him his creation of attention-getting stories.......

                   And that makes any Cohen film, including this one, an automatic 3 stars (***) for us....and more than worth checking out.

                  

 

                

'FREE GUY'.....THE LAST VIDEO GAME MOVIE YOU'LL EVER NEED.......

 Free Guy (2021)   The funniest part of our muli-plex experience watching this movie came from the 30 second Dolby Stereo clip that preceded it........

                In that little bit of film, the Dolby folks took us through a lovely sound safari through the leafy branches of a tree.......though which we could hear the delicate rustling of the foliage and even the breeze lightly windmilling a stray detached falling leaf.......

                  Thus ended the more subtle audio portion of the presentation.

                  Once the fanfare ended the 20th Century Fox logo (a company already gobbled up by Disney), "Free Guy" commenced, taking place inside a video game city modeled after the one in the "Grand Theft Auto" game.

                    And even we casual observers of video game lore knew what to expect here......a city in which the anonymous, disposable residents are continually besieged by psychotic bank robbers, raging supervillains and assorted lethal terrorists......all of these assailants equipped with enough firepower to invade another Middle East hellhole.

                     (So instead of gentle falling leaves, the Dolby soundtrack now features a continual 115 minutes of explosions and heavy caliber weapon fire.....making us consider a trip to the snack bar to ask for hot buttered Tylenol......)

                      Ryan Reynolds, doing his best cheerful goofball routine, plays 'Guy', one of the game's many expendable NPC's (Non-Playing characters), essentially a stick figure used to populate the digital landscape with random city dwellers......

                      Except he's not random any longer. His very clever game creators (Joe Keery, Jodie Comer) have, to their own stunning surprise, gifted him with free will and a mind of his own.....making him the first artificially intelligent entity in a video game. 

                     Suddenly lovestruck by Jodie Comer's game avatar Molotov Girl, Reynolds becomes a front-and-center character in 'Free City', confounding  the game's worldwide online players as well as the manic  videogame mogul Antwan (writer-director Taika Waititi, overacting as if he stepped out of 'The Lego Movie')

                   Without question, it's all funny, clever stuff and it never lets up for close to 2 hours.......which also becomes the film's biggest problem. 

                   It's just too much of a good thing.......and it pounds away at you long long after all its satirical points have been made repeatedly.......if it had only been about 20 minutes or so shorter, we might have even loved it to death. 

                   But it's designed to exist as a multi-plex spectacle, hurling out a non-stop assault of eye-popping digital effects and ear-splitting sounds........(we suppose we should thank God it wasn't some kind of 160 minute director's cut......)

                    We did perk up for the film's grand finale, tossing off pop culture gags in rapid succession.....(a far better way of juicing up the movie as compared to that tedious, laborious homage to "The Shining" that permeated Spielberg's "Ready Player One")

                    Through the years, we've never, ever understood Hollywood's periodic infatuation with making films based on video games......(the results were predictably soulless,  rotten and unwatchable......trying sitting through any more than a few minutes of "Super Mario Brothers").

                    But we'll hand this much to "Free Guy"....... by using all the current CGI technology to aggressively lampoon the gaming universe, its players and creators, it gave us loud, mostly fun afternoon at the movies.  

                     A little too long, maybe, but then we've learned to deal with sensory overkill at the multi-plex as a fact of life.  3 stars (***).....but pardon us if we still long for the days when a film's primary special effects were the actors' performances in a story well told.......

'DREAM GIRL'.....A NOVELIST WHO CAN'T TELL WRONG FROM WRITE.......

 Dream Girl by Laura Lippman (2021)......follows the twisting murderous tribulations of bestelling author Gerry Anderson, bedridden and recovering from falling down the long staircase in his plush Baltimore high rise apartment.......

             Gerry isn't a particularly likable kind of guy......his history includes a host of unpleasant experiences with the women in his life - multiple ex-wives, a controlling leech of an ex-girlfriend who lives off of famous celebrities, and various female creative writing students whose work he's bluntly criticized......or with whom he slept.

              And he chafes under the care of the current women in his life, his home care nurse Aileen and his assistant Victoria......

                All of this prepares us for Gerry to undergo and endure more mysterious misery than......well, that other best selling novelist from Stephen King's "Misery"......( this book seems to exist as a witty homage to King's riveting tale of a  famous writer trapped, tormented and tortured by a rabid fan.

                 Gerry's troubles commence when he starts receiving a letter and middle of the night phone calls from a woman claiming to be "Aubrey", the completely fictional character Gerry created for his most wildly successful novel, "Dream Girl".

                  Phone Call Aubrey always sounds vaguely threatening, as if she's looking to settle a score and angling for payback......but for what? And if, as Gerry keeps insisting, there no such person as Dream Girl Aubrey, then who's the stalking caller claiming to be her? And what does she really want?

                   For readers to choose from a list of possible suspects, author Lippman intersperses the here-and-now chapters with a wearying series of flashbacks to various times in Gerry's life......and all those previously mentioned women in his checkered past. These chapters wear out their welcome pretty fast and reduce the book's pace to slowwwwwww............

                    We gather this book aspired to dabble in Stephen King-like horror when it detonates its Big Reveal ,but  the twists struck  us as more darkly comical, bordering on absurd......with the bodies piling up one after the other and everybody involved getting what they deserve......more or less. 

                    Still, "Dream Lover" does finally end up as an entertaining read, liberally sprinkled with dozens upon dozens of witty pop culture book and movie references.  Just don't skim through the flashbacks, even though you may be tempted to......there's clues in them thar hills, especially relating to the final capping-off twist. 3 stars (***).

                 

'THE SUICIDE SQUAD'......THE PERFECT SUPERHEROES FOR A WORLD GONE MAD

The Suicide Squad (2021)    In "Unforgiven", a callow youth, having just shot someone dead, anxiously asks the veteran killer played by Clint Eastwood, "He had it comin', right"

               Mutters Clint, "Kid, we all got it comin'".........

                And just in time for Pandemic - The Sequel, here, at last, comes the comic book superhero movie we all had comin;........

                At last, the junk movie we've really, truly been asking for, in the darkest of the dark souls that none of us would dare to reveal.

               Not that ever stopped writer-director James Gunn.....who with this movie, firmly establishes himself as the Sam Peckinpah of the the cinematic comic book universes that have engulfed pop culture and clogged theaters in the last 20 years or so. 

                That's why we think of "The Suicide Squad" as the 'The Wild Bunch' of such films........a film in which all the genre tropes are upended, warped out of all shape and soaked in gallons of blood.

                Nihilistic, pitched at an insane level of intensity, populated with irredeemably obnoxious violent creeps and flooded with slaughterhouse gore. 'The Suicide Squad' arrives as truly a movie that matches our times.........

                 What better a movie to be released while Trumpanzees and assorted rabid dog anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers scream about preserving their God given right to fill up ICU beds with dying children gasping for breath?

                   What better a movie to be released while we sit back and watch the spectacle of a prehistoric Middle East country, a primitive land we spent trillions and oceans of blood to to try to tame, civilize and pacify, slip back into unimaginable savagery?

                  In essence the Trumpanzees and the Taliban are the real life Suicide Squads, so it's no wonder that a mere movie has to attain all new heights of utter madness and carnage to keep up with them......

                   No, we're in no way going to spend time detailing the accumulated lunacies of this movie .......you can get that from 3,000 other film review sites, blogs and entertainment newsfeeds.....

                   Other than to reiterate that here stands the superhero movie we richly deserve. And if you're feeling burned out, exhausted and downright bored with the ceaseless cascade of Marvel and DC movies and their interlocking storylines, heroes, timelines and whatever..........then here's the last comic book movie you'll ever need to see.......

                    Uh......until the sequel.......maybe.

                    If you've ever longed to see one of these films surrender all pretense to a moral compass and hurl itself into a life-sucking abyss of mindless depravity, then it's a 3 star experience...(***).

                   Says the Squad member dubbed 'Peacemaker'...."I cherish peace with all my heart. I don't care how many men, women and children I kill to get it...."

                   What more do we need to say?  "The Suicide Squad" functions both as a movie and a mirror to our current lives........

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL "DO YOU MISS ME YET?" EDITION......

               As always, more than enough madness to contend with, most of it due to the lingering stench of the previous four years........

Baby Orange asks America, "Do you miss me yet?"   After we stopped choking on our own hysterical laughter, we thought we owed this question a carefully considered, reasonable response........

               The following we would add to a list of other things we'd miss  equivalent to Baby Orange.....these include......

                 Explosive diarrhea..........

                 Testicular cancer.

                 Pus-filled adolescent acne pimples.

                 Genital crabs

                  Adolf Hitler

                   We could go on and on, but we think our point's been made..........

British mass shooter madman turns out to be a gibbering Trumpanzee......to absolutely nobody's surprise. Further proof that the living cancer that is Donald Trump carries across oceans to infect other involuntary celibate sickos......Baby Orange's primary demographic.

The rabid anti-maskers.......ponder, for a moment, the profound evil insanity of these people, who would rather see children struck down by COVID,  gasping out  their last dying breaths into a ventilator.  And we all know too well who spawned these brain dead Kool-Aid drinkers.....

..

Senator Rand Paul's wife bought up Remdesivir stock while he spread COVID disinformation......we've gotta give this worm credit......nobody, except maybe the idiot Trumpanzee governors of Texas and Florida, works harder to crown himself America's first official Village Idiot and Biggest Asshole In the U.S.  A true Trumpian achievement. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on the pandemic sure....."we can't live forever"......this question lingers with us......will there be anyone left who'll remember when the GOP was a legitimate, conservative political party before Baby Orange transformed it into a death cult populated with drooling loons like MTG?

                 

                 

'OFF BEAT'.....A SLIGHT TOUCH OF TOUCHSTONE.......

Off Beat (1986)     

            As we spent yesterday taking a deep dive into some of the movies we purchased for video store inventories, we were suddenly struck with a fond memory of Disney's great experiment with their subsidiary labels, Touchstone and Hollywood........

              Using the imprint of these labels, Disney, just like all the other studios, could feel free to pump out a steady stream of medium-to-low-budget movies that were most definitely not "Disney" films, but could still enter the marketplace of mainstream cinema.

               They could even be PG-13.....or (hold your breath)....even R-rated!

                The upside for Disney - it only took one or two of these minor little movies to strike box-office gold, since the Mouse House rigidly kept their budgets frugal.  Hence the possibilities to make a huge profit out of one or more of these tiny trifles were enormous......

                   "Off Beat" serves as a prime example of Touchstone product. It's an ever so slight comedy that a good stiff wind would blow away. But we always found it sweet, funny and overall delightful even if it found no favor with critics, audiences......or even videocassette renters.

                   Judge Reinhold (whom you could consider that Paul Rudd of the 1980's) plays quirky New York City library assistant Joe Gower, who literally skates through his job retrieving books requested by patrons. (Yes, on actual rollerskates......)

                   His best friend Abe, (Cleavant Derricks) a beat cop, would do anything to avoid participating in  a charity event that'll feature NYC police dancing with young kids, with all of them trained by a professional stage choreographer (veteran dancer-actor Jacques d'Amboise of "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers")

                   Abe and Joe brazenly arrange for Joe to pose as Abe and join the cop-kid chorus line in his place......leading Joe to fall for his new dancing partner, patrolwoman Rachel (Meg Tilly) and run afoul of  crude obnoxious misogynist Pete Peterson (Joe Mantegna), one of Rachel's follow officers. 

                  As you might guess, this also forces Joe into uncomfortable situations where he's mistaken for a real cop, participating in chases, shootouts and thwarting hostage-taking bank robbers (played hilariously by Harvey Keitel and Victor Argo)

                 It's all silly and not for one minute believable, but Reinhold's laid back goofy charm somehow holds it together......and it's a hoot and a half watching dance-master d'Amboise whip together an adorable production number with his unlikely platoons of previously dance-challenged cops hoofing up a storm along side the talented kids.

                And we don't care if the movie was hardly a blip on the 1980's movie radar.......though it may have become nothing but a Touchstone tax write-off, it still never fails to make us smile.  3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2).  

                  

RANDOM MOVIE ROUND-UP! BQ GOES ON A MAD, ECLECTIC, VIDEO-STORE BINGE!

             In remembrance (sometimes fond, sometimes not) of our younger days supervising and buying movies for various video stores (remember them?  Don't feel bad if you don't...)......we plunged into a non-stop viewing binge of films that have no relation to one another whatsoever, other than the fact that at one time or another we stocked them on those sturdy wire racks of videocassettes.....

              So here goes......don't look for rhyme or reason in this selection....(we certainly didn't....)

The Beast Within (1982)   At last a movie that addressed the pressing issue of man-sized Cicadas raping and impregnating women in the rural South.  And pity the poor offspring of this unholy, unwholesome union between a hot blonde and an overgrown insect.......when then the poor conflicted teen hits 17 years of age, it's his turn to have his face turn all bloaty and go full Cicada on yet another hapless girl. 

               Yes, it's as ridiculous and all-out nuts as it sounds......and we wouldn't have it any other way. 3 chirping stars (***).

Hanover Street (1979)   The tireless popcorn movie writer-director Peter Hyams tries re-creating a typical 1940's star-crossed World War 2 romance......complete with a lush John Barry music score poured over the film like a 200 gallon barrel of maple syrup. An American  B-25 pilot (Harrison Ford) falls into infatuated love with a British nurse (the generic, uninteresting Lesley Ann Downe) who's married to a an Intelligence agent (Christopher Plummer) about to embark on a dangerous behind-enemy-lines mission.

              Guess who ends up on sharing the harrowing secret mission with Plummer.....yikes. Hyams, who also specialized in semi-smartass dialogue, throws in Richard Masur as Ford's Bombardier crew member, spouting a stream of modern, sarcastic one-liners that sound lifted from a rejected first draft script of "Catch 22".  The whole thing's overwhelmingly corny and obvious, but to us, it was no less entertaining than Peter Bogdonovich's 40's pastiches like "The Last Picture Show" and "What's Up Doc"..3 stars (***)

Picnic (1955)   Thwarted hopes and dreams in the corn fed Heartland......based on a Broadway play by the master of such stories, playwright William Inge.. ("Bus Stop", "Splendor In The Grass").

             A rootless drifter (William Holden) wanders into a small Kansas town to look up a college chum (Cliff Robertson) and ends up romancing his pal's unsettled, restless fiance (Kim Novak) and shaking up the whole town in one way or another, revealing his own wayward turns of fortune as well as everybody else's........

              Holden's clearly ten years too old for the role, which needed a younger intense actor like James Dean (or someone equivalent)  but he makes the most of it and he and Novak strike some real movie star sparks. (Ah, that slow dance to "Moonglow") The rest of the cast plays it at the top of their lungs as they're still trying to reach the upper balcony on matinee day at the theater......

              Very traditional Hollywood product, but it's a kick (and visually jarring) to see the cast surrounded by hundreds of real Kansas extras recruited for the titular big town Labor Day picnic. They crowd around the actors looking like they're watching a zoo exhibit of exotic animals.....or a crime scene.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).

40 Carats (1973) & Only When I Laugh (1981)   Speaking of theater matinees, here's a couple of creaking, mechanical comedies that were originally designed to tickle the fancies of middle-aged matrons out for a Wednesday afternoon outing on Broadway.  

                The film versions of such things always seem to land dead on arrival, appealing to a long missing (and older) mass audience that preferred to say home and watch TV, which is where these  movies properly belonged.

                 "40 Carats" offered the odd spectacle of watching Liv Ullman the reigning queen of Scandinavian cinematic angst, enjoy a passionate affair with a young American (Edward Albert) who's 20 years her junior. Uh......okaaaayyyy/

                  The affair somewhat stuns, surprises ,scandalizes and to some extent, amuses her immediate family including her mother (Binnie Barnes), her 17 year old daughter (Deborah Raffin) and her rakish ex husband (Gene Kelly). A meeting with her potential in-laws goes awry, but true love prevails amid a non-stop flurry of tired gags......you begin to wonder how any of the actors managed to stay awake. 

                  We barely could. 1 star (*)

                  "Only When I Laugh" comes from that one man human gag machine Neil Simon, adapting his play "The Gingerbread Lady" about an alcoholic actress (Marsha Mason, Simon's wife) fresh out of rehab and attempting to rekindle a relationship with her teen daughter (Kristy McNichol).

                   As machine tooled as this project is, we didn't mind so much because Mason always found a way to make her Simon-ized characters seem real, even as they're forced to recite out a continuous stream of oh so carefully composed one-liners. (You can practically hear the sound of Simon typing them.)

                   The real bonus here was getting McNichol into the movie, who brings a natural, more realistic spontaneity and charm into the Simon-verse, where everybody can't wait for the other person to stop talking so they can pump out the next little quip.  For those two alone 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)

 

SHOWBIZ MADNESS WRAP-UP......BQ REVIEWS THE WORLD'S MOST UNIMPORTANT NEWS.....

               Here's a quick roundup of entertainment tidbits that nobody should give a rat's ass about......

The "Jeopardy" guest host scam......Nice one pulled off by executive producer Mike Richards.....who suckered us all into watching the parade of guest hosts all spring and summer long, with the belief that some of them were auditioning for the job as a full time gig.   Little did any of us know Richards planned all along to anoint himself as the permanent host.    We'll make it a true Daily Double on the clue "He's the slick operator who screwed over Levar Burton"  (Who is Mike Richards.....)

ScarJo Vs. Disney........ We tossed and turned all night, terribly worried that Scarlett could be cheated out of even more millions (over and above the 20 mil she already pocketed)......all because those greedy Mouse House bastards showed her movie on Disney Plus, which she doesn't get a piece of evidently......and we're sure those of you who had to take out a second mortgage to buy enough toilet paper for the next Covid Variant pandemic feel the same way as well, right?

                Disney, however, might want to second guess their move of going full lash-back Trump on ScarJo, revealing themselves for the mean-spirited moneygrubbers that they are.  Seriously guys.....accusing an actress of insensitivity to the pandemic while you can't wait to throw open the theme park doors to thousands of people? 

And speaking of comic book movies.......we're tempted to mutter "a plague on both their houses" regarding the studios and the theater chains locked in combat over showing the Big Tentpole movies simultaneously on streaming services like Disney Plus and HBO-Max.

We do feel some amount of empathy for the chains, since the Tentpole Junk has become their sole lifeline to keeping their noses above water in this worst of all possible Pandemic worlds......

But we can't scrape up a drop of sympathy for the studios, who now operate in an atmosphere so creatively barren and soulless that all they can do is grind out sludge like "Cruella", "Jungle Cruise" and increasingly exhausted, tiresome superhero movies.

The good news....we think.....is the diminishing returns that junk movies are bringing in, such as last weekends disappointing results of "Suicide Squad".  We're starting to entertain a thought that maybe the comic book well is running dry for audience tastes......hence the trend for these films to devolve into self-referential parody and mindless nihilism.

 Finally, one last really, really worthless showbiz tidbit.....the whiny mea culpas of Ryan Adams....we've yet to figure out how this grungy, scruffy little character ever ended up married to Mandy Moore......(and we're guessing Moore still wonders about it too....)

No doubt women everywhere enjoyed a short chuckle reading about Adams bemoaning his culture cancellation for his long history of sexual harassment.......losing his recording deals and possibly forced to live in his sister's basement. 

We feel for him with about the same fervor that we feel for Warner Brothers over their soft 'Suicide Squad' grosses......

'THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE' & 'STAR!'....THE PEAK AND VALLEY OF JULIE ANDREWS....

            

  With the one-two double whammy punches of "Mary Poppins" (1964) and "The Sound  Of Music"(1965), Julie Andrews achieved official status as a genuine gold-plated movie superstar.....

                Which, unfortunately for Andrews, whose primary talent was as a musical performer, coincided with the upheavals in 1960's cinema, popular culture and the rise of  youth as the driving force in audience demographics. 

                  Desperate for blockbusters and unsure of their audience, the studios, to their everlasting dismay, tried duplicating "The Sound Of Music"  with a catastrophic series of bloated, elephantine musicals. Overlong, over-budgeted and sometimes populated with actors who could neither sing or dance, these mostly unwatchable dinosaurs lumbered into the tarpits of box office failure........sending the studios into dire financial straits, which ultimately led to conglomerates swallowing them up whole.

                Julie Andrews, then the number one movie musical star, managed, through sheer charm and versatility of her talent, to make a success out of 1967's "Thoroughly Modern Millie", an overly precious, twee confection that reveled with winking self-congratulation at its gentle satire of 1920's fashion, attitudes and cornball music and dances.

                 Stretched out to 2 and a half hours, including an endless overture, the film quickly wears out its studied, elaborate cuteness no matter how strenuously Andrews works to keep it light and fluffy.  And unlike the usual expansiveness of those other 60's musical behemoths, "Millie" looked like a shot-on-the-cheap, strictly Universal backlot TV show, lit and staged like it was never meant for anything but the tube.

                Watching it in 2021, we could only cringe at its supposedly humorous plotline ,which involved girls drugged and sold into white slavery, with the help of cartoonish, stereotypical Chinese minions (played by veteran Japanese-American actors Jack Soo and Pat Morita)

                Coasting on its aggressive, campy flourishes, such as the pop-eyed screeching appearances of stage star Carol Channing,, Andrews wrung a box office success out of 'Millie' but a year later, she and her 'Sound Of Music; director met their musical Armageddon in the 20th Century Fox mega-flop, "Star!".........

\              "Star!" (1968), purportedly showing the life and times of English stage musical star Gertrude Lawrence,  clocked in at a punishing 3 hours,  stuffed with no less than 18 long, long completely stagebound musical numbers, all of them shot from a front-and-center fixed position.

                 To put it mildly, only immediate members of Julie Andrews and Gertrude Lawrence's family could stand to sit through the film and it landed in theaters as an instant legendary 50 megaton bomb.

                 The studio then went to previously unheard of lengths to salvage 'Star! including, we kid you not, slicing an hour out of its running time and titling it "Those Were The Happy Times".  (Your guess is as good as ours as to whom they thought would hold the slightest interest is seeing the film in that butchered condition. )

                   And watching it in this day and age?   Well, we didn't shake our heads in disbelief as we did when viewing "Millie".  The full 180 minute cut of the film remains tiresome and bland. It never once gets a handle on how to portray Gertrude Lawrence other than a  spendthrift diva with a host of wealthy suitors, played by Michael Craig, Anthony Eilsely, Robert Reed and Richard Crenna. 

                    (Surprisingly, Reed, the future 'Brady Bunch' dad, is the only one of these stiffs who seems to have a pulse and enjoys a bit of un with this limited screen time....) 

                   A few years after 'Star!', Andrews and her husband Black Edwards' ambitious World War I musical "Darling Lili" would help hammer one of the last nails in the bloat-musical genre..... you could say the very last nail was driven in by Ross Hunter, 'Thoroughly Modern Millie's producer, with his embarrassing, stillborn 1972 remake of 'Lost Horizon'. 

                   Of course, we still do and always did love us some Julie Andrews......but for these two back-to-back efforts that damaged her career as cinema's movie-musical sweetheart, we can only sing out 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2 for each.