If you haven’t seen the blog RUPERT PUPKIN SPEAKS, you’re missing out on some good stuff. He’s one of these rare individuals who knows his shit but is still relentlessly passionate and positive about movies, recognizing that at any given time there are way too many gems that you haven’t seen out there to fixate too long on hating the new Starbat prebootquel or whatever. Some of his passions include obscurities available from the Warner Archive and collecting weird movie novelizations.
Alot of his material is lists of recommendations from various guests, and every October he has an avalanche of underrated horror lists. I love reading these and have found some good ones from them, and I’ve always wanted to do one myself.
Well, he never invited me, so this year I just asked him if I could do one. And I guess he is a gentleman, so he said yes.
note: As you can see in the intro I tried not to overlap with anybody else’s lists, but I think P2 and maybe something else ended up on other lists after mine was submitted. But what can you do?
THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE is a Dario Argento movie I hadn’t seen before. This is his directational debut, so it shows what he was up to before the ones I’m most familiar with, DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA and INFERNO. He’s not yet the sicko artiste who made those three, but you can see him headed in that direction.
Well, shit. I hope ESCAPE PLAN isn’t the last gasp for straight ahead R-rated theatrically released movies from the ’80s action icons. I guess Schwarzenegger has another one in the works called SABOTAGE. And there’s always the off chance that an EXPENDABLES sequel could be made where they’re trying harder and it mostly works on its own merits, not just nostalgic references and goodwill. We action fans all kinda hoped the EXPENDABLESes would remind the rest of the world that they used to love those types of movies and reignite their popularity, so we could all go see them on the big screen with the loud speakers and with a big crowd excited to experience it together and maybe afterwards there would be some high-fiving, possibly some push ups.
This has been a source of mystery for a couple years now, the weird sounding horror-western that Wesley Snipes filmed right before he got convicted. In fact the prosecutors tried to accuse him of running when he flew to Namibia to film it. Were they just trying to fuck up his life, or did they really believe he was crazy enough to start over there, become the African DTV Roman Polanski? I mean, that would be kinda cool though.
Have you guys seen this? THE WIZARD OF OZ? I think it’s pretty well known. Last month they had a one-week re-release in 3D Fake Imax, so I took the opportunity to see it then and I thought I should write a little about it. If you have the 3D getup at home the converted version is now on blu-ray if you’re interested.
I hope this isn’t oversharing, but my first Dario Argento movie was PROFONDO ROSSO, which we call DEEP RED here in the states. I don’t think I knew anything about it when I rented it on a mysterious, seedy looking VHS tape that called it “DEEP RED HATCHET MURDERS.” That’s not the worst title because it is, in fact, about a series of murders, though some of them are done with knives and not hatchets. So the “hatchet” part is kinda misleading. The plural on the “murders,” though, that part was dead on. There’s a bunch of them.
or JUST THE TWO OF US: THE MOVIE
I didn’t like SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE, but man, SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II is not SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE caliber. This one is a Jim Wynorski joint, so I guess it’s not really meant to necessarily be a real movie. This is one of the five movies he did between 1989’s RETURN OF SWAMP THING and 1992’s 976-EVIL II. Another one was SCREAM QUEEN HOT TUB PARTY under the pseudonym Arch Stanton. He has his thing he does. He churns them out and has fun and they usually have a little likable goofy humor in them, and then there is the rest of the movie.
What if in the near future “unemployment is at 1%, crime is at an all time low, because one night a year” – on March 22nd, for a 12 hour period – “ALL CRIME IS LEGAL!”
