Tangerine (2015)

After watching director Sean Baker's 2017 white trash epic "The Florida Project", I've been wanting to see more of this man's grounded realist sleaze films, and Hulu provided his prior directorial effort, much to my enjoyment.

This film is named so because it's set in Hollywood on and around Sunset Boulevard, and the color scheme of this shot-on-iPhone movie has a strong orange hue to it. Right away, you're introduced to your main characters, which are two transgender black women, in which Alexandra tells Sin-Dee that her pimp boyfriend is cheating on her. Sin-Dee just got out of a short stint in prison for prostitution and this news really pisses her off. She sets out on a mission to find her pimp Chester and the woman he was seeing... starts with a D? Daniella, Desiree, whatever... Who gives a fuck. She'll find her, and she's pissed. But what will she do? Watch the movie and find out just what she does, if anything.

There are a lot of black transgenders in this movie. I find them all rather amusing though, and there's a subplot involving prostitution with one of the guys from 'Chuck' that's pretty interesting. But also in this movie is an Armenian taxi driver who we quickly find out has a thing for these black trans hookers despite having a family of his own (and a hot wife no less).

We have bit parts by the great Clu Gulager and his son John, that dimwitted "Buy More" employee from Chuck, and most enjoyably, James Ransone as Chester the pimp. He's not in much and only comes in toward the end, but this guy steals the show. He fucking nails it, and that whole bickering ending had me in stitches.

This is a strangely endearing movie about LGBT trash in the hooking scene, but it's sleazy and funny and dramatic all at the same time. Another win for Sean Baker.

Tenebre

Back when I was just getting into horror, I was diving into the hardcore stuff, which tended to be Italian sleaze from the 70s and 80s. Dario Argento was always a cool son of a bitch to me though. I loved Suspiria and wanted to dive into some of his other stuff, so I remember catching this one on YouTube back when YouTube was relatively new. Of course, the movie was split into about 10 parts because they had a limit of 10 or so minute videos max, but I'd watched a lot of what would end up being my favorite horror flicks that way.

Tenebre or Tenebrae (whatever the fuck that means) is a giallo about a writer who deals with a killer who kills in ways that refrence the author's latest book. The plot and relevance as to why the kills and targets are chosen is never an important factor, because these Italian films were never strong on the story. They were often strong on the style and vibes and how they could find a good way to kill someone to a good piece of music... often, in Dario's case, a Goblin soundtrack.

Somehow, these ingredients always seemed to work pretty well. There was something exotic and weirdly hypnotic about it, and Tenebre is no exception.

I've seen this movie a handful of times, though the specifics never seem to stick with me. Maybe that's because the story itself isn't that great, but maybe I was always drunk while watching it. Who knows. However, this movie has grown on me over the years, and I think it's one of Argento's best. That damn dog scene... and the inclusion of the late great John Saxon... and that bizarre ending... Dario loved to make his endings a fit of psychotic rage, and I like how these movies can just end the way they do.

Oh, how I miss those eccentric Italian horror movies...

The Giant Spider Invasion!

How have I not seen this movie before? I first heard of it recently when I saw rifftrax was going to make fun of it, but I didn't want to hear their commentary. I wanted to see the movie in its pure unedited form.

This movie is kind of perfect. I got that vibe as soon as it started that it was made for me. It's got a shitty title card, awful effects of the meteorite or whatever crashing into earth, and then what happens? We get carried away in the diamond-farming plot of an asshole redneck. This bit must have been an inspiration for the Jordy skit in Creepshow, because there are parallels galore.

So besides a farming dude who's cheating on his wife and hitting on his daughter or whoever that young lady is supposed to be, we also have a couple of bland scientists and a sheriff. Meh.

There's a lot of buildup to it. You see a lot of regular-sized tarantulas crawling out of these egg/rocks, a lot of spider webs, and then a few bigger puppets, but then you get the grand daddy spider...

Even when this fucker is standing still, his legs are moving about randomly. I like how when he moves, you never get a good look at his bottom half, because that's probably where you'd see a car underneath it, because these effects are pretty stupid.

Now this spider will eat a few cows, but it also eats a few people. Most of the gore is spit out mangled corpses, but there is a fair amount of blood. Even a single pair of titties. Are not these the criteria for a trash epic? Nudity, gore, rednecksploitation, space mumbo jumbo, and bad effects?

You know they put effort into this movie. Most of it is pretty watchable too, but the bad effects help make it all better by ruining it, and this movie is somehow pretty amazing.

Mountaintop Motel Massacre '83

Like Blood Shack, this is another movie that features a character on the dvd cover art who isn't in the movie at all. They depict a wild-eyed psycho lady, but the killer in this movie is much more mild.

Damn, do I love the horror selection on Amazon Prime. This is a movie that's long been on my watchlist after having seen the Anchor Bay dvd advertised so regularly back in the day, but that misleading cover art made me a bit iffy. Frankly, the image of the woman trying to get through the door didn't do this movie any favors, so I'm glad that the actual movie wasn't like that.

This movie has a great aesthetic to it. It has a lot of autumnal imagery to it with the seasonal colored trees, almost like FleshEater in a way, and despite it's title of being on a mountain, this is actually more like a bayou junkheap setting with references to Louisiana. That imagery does wonders for what is sometimes a boring movie, but somewhat hypnotic at the same time.

A bunch of travelers stop at this grim motel as the rainy night gives them a reason, and the psycho old lady with a history of mental illness sneaks into their rooms through trap doors, putting snakes, rats, and roaches in there before she starts picking them off with a sickle.

Underneath that trap door is a series of tunnels that bears a strong resemblance to the lair of Madman Marz. The film itself almost shares the cheesy yet nightmarish quality of that film. This would be a great movie to get high and zone out to.

Film Aficiando

A heads up if people don't know. Film AF is shutting down July 30th. So anyone who has there DVD/Blu-ray collections on there and needs to export it need to do so by then. Although not sure what exporting it and just turning it into a list on excel or word document will do as it kind if defeats the purpose of that site.

Arpie (1987) - mind melting Italian freakout

Deepstar Six

You might remember me rambling on recently about how 1989 was a year for undersea mayhem with The Abyss and Leviathan... Well, there's another one. Deepstar Six, directed by Sean Cunningham. You know, the director of Friday the 13th? Well, this one even has a score by Harry Manfredini!

I would have to say for sure that this is the weakest of the bunch. They set this in the "near future" even though there's nothing outlandish about it really. Some undersea exploration team is supposed to build a missile base or something for the navy, but they discover a cave... "Blow it up!" says the boss man, but the other lady says to explore it! They try to get in there before it all goes south, and they unleash some weird crustacean monster who kills everybody.

This one didn't have anything particularly new to offer, so I'll explain some of its merits. The film features Miguel Ferrer, who always seemed to play an asshole, but he did it well. He must have been an asshole in real life to play it so convincingly. It also dealt with de-pressurization and featured a good way of taking advantage of that. Gnarly shit.

The monster was pretty goofy and the characters were bland, so I can't say much else about this one. It came out first though (January), then Leviathan (March), and then The Abyss (August), so they all got better as they went along.

Unfinished Chop Top movie? All American Massacre

With Buckethead as Leatherface???

Well this is a very interesting...has anybody heard about this? I'm surprised I haven't. I would love to see it finished someday.

The Beast Must Die (1974)

This is an Amicus horror mystery about a wealthy dude who collects a group of suspected werewolves into his secluded mansion so he can narrow down which one of them is the real deal.

When the movie begins, it narrates that it is a detective movie and prompts you to make your guess in this whodunnit. Towards the end, it gives a brief intermission to ask you to make your final guess, and I actually narrowed it down, but I didn't pinpoint who until it became blatantly obvious.

The cast is pretty good. Our lead is some black dude with a variety of outfit choices, one of which is an uncomfortable one-piece leather suit that seemed pretty random to me. Then, you have Peter Cushing as the werewolf expert, Charles Gray (Rocky Horror's criminologist), our lead's girlfriend/assistant, a big red herring Paul Foote, a beautiful dame named Davina, and finally... Dumbledore himself Michael Gambon as Jan the man with the stache.

I was a bit disappointed that the werewolf wasn't a special effects deal, but simply a big fucking dog. Either way, it was an okay movie with a seriously dated 70s score. Not too bad. If you saw it... did you guess who it was?

What Movies Did You Watch as a Kid?

I'm talking the first movies you were ever exposed to. What were they, and do you still think of them fondly today?

I was born in 1988, so that'll give you an idea of what movies were available in my youth. When I was young as fuck, it was in the age of VHS tapes. I fondly remember a few titles that I'll ramble on about.

One Christmas, my brother received a double feature of Terminator and Terminator 2. We watched the fuck out of those, and even though they were rated R, our parents didn't care because the movies were so damn good.

Other prominent movies of my youth included The Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 and 2, The Adventures of Milo and Otis, The Return of Swamp Thing, Ghostbusters, and Honey I Shrunk the Kids. I just watched that last one with my 4-year-old nephew and he had a blast with it. Very immersed the whole time. I still find it funny that Stuart Gordon co-wrote that movie, may he rest in peace!

Now, these are the earliest movies I remember watching religiously. Shortly after that, I went into a obsessing about other movies, but that's perhaps a discussion for another time. So how about you? What are the first movies you remember watching non-stop as a kid?