Saturday, January 24, 2009

Late Night Something Weird Triple Feature!

I am so tired right now, tired to the point where both writing and keeping my eyes open both have become a struggle. But, as the Spanish say "sleep is for the dead" so I will stave it off a bit longer. Please forgive the low quality of the following writings as a result.
First off I'd like to say thank Cthulhu for Something Weird Video. Their tireless devotion to the very crappiest of crap movies makes my heart happy. Here's the movies on today's triple feature DVD with my own vague-type ratings.

The Zodiac Killer (1971)
Right off the bat the film purports to be based on the real life Zodiac murders but pretty much throws all realism (and seriousness) out the window by having the murderer kill a woman on a street in broad daylight while wearing Groucho Marx glasses as a disguise. If you've read anything about the serial murders that took place in California in the late 60's and still remain unsolved to this day, you'd know that there's a pretty good movie that could be made of the events. Unfortunately this is not that movie. It is, however, good grimy fun for drive-in aficionados like myself who seem inexplicably drawn to poorly made stuff like this. I was trying to think why I like these movies so much and I couldn't come up with a very good reason. Maybe I'm missing a chromosome or something. This would get a C but gets an extra point for featuring what may be the worst wig I've ever seen in any movie ever. And for the dirty cameo by poor Doodles Weaver (look him up). B

The Sex Killer (1967)
This is possibly the cheapest movie I've ever seen. Where the Hell does SWV find this stuff? There isn't even any credits, it opens with a title card that looks like it was drawn on posterboard! Basically it looks like someone's home movies, but with boobs. Lots and lots of boobs.
Plot (such as it is): In lovely NYC, a shy young man who works at a mannequin factory(!) can't seem to get a girl to "ball him" (the movie's words, not mine) so he buys a pair of binoculars to watch topless cuties sunbathe from the rooftops. Then he starts killing them and having his way with their bodies. They never show him doing the dirty with the fresh corpses, but it's still a rather icky thing to put in a movie that was obviously made to be shown in adult theaters at the time.
It's pretty much just an excuse to show topless girls and as such, it does it's job. C+

Zero in and Scream (1971)
Hoo boy! And I thought that last movie was dirty! This is basically soft-core porn with a very thin plot surrounding it. See, there's this guy who's killing people after they have sex with his high powered rifle and...um...thats pretty much it. Other than that there's nude dancing girls, a stripper orgy party, lots of pool sex,and lesbians. It's all too weird to be arousing in the least bit though. I especially loved the highly inappropriate soundtrack, most of which sounded like it was stolen from 50s monster movies. What the Hell kind of porn movie music uses a thremin? A very strange one thats what.
Also, like Sex Killer, this was obviously meant to be shown in adults only theaters and be titillating (what a dirty sounding word!), but it's so violent and even ends with a rape scene, so what the heck?
How do you rate a movie that seems like it was pulled out of your dad's or grandpa's secret stag film stash? Well, there is sort of a movie here, which gets an F. The odd sex sequences get a C since they were sort of well filmed for that sort of thing.

I made it sound like I didn't enjoy these pieces of sleaze, but I really did. Their low low budgets make them seem like strange unsettling documentaries and the acting is so bad it's funny. Plus there's that strange pull I mentioned before, that odd inexplicable love of trash that....I'm almost falling asleep. To wrap this up, hooray for Something Weird!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen to that.

Did you check the story bible yet? I plan on writing a few stories. And tomorrow, I'll be getting something that'll improve my artwork, so more sketches will appear, don't you worry.

Also, if you want, I'm working on a story that hasn't been posted yet and I wanted your opinion. Let me know if you wanna hear it!

Kurdt said...

Reading it right now!

Kurdt said...

Commented! I'd love to hear your story. I'm not like a teacher or anything that'll try and pick it apart, but I suppose I could give some general critiques.

Anonymous said...

Well, should you be curious, some of the grammar was purposefully bad.

Like Logan points out, ain't ain't a word.

Anonymous said...

Make "I'll post it in a week" "it's on as we speak, although I don't have any doodles of my own for it yet."