Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) *1/2

Where should I start: the ridiculous script, the bad acting, or the complete exploitation of women?  Director Russ Meyer’s cult film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), is an adventure in everything that I despise in a film.  That said, it is not a horrible movie—it just really pisses me off.

The ridiculous story, penned by Meyer and Jack Moran, is about three go-go dancers who like to wear extremely tight and low-cut clothing and drive around the Mojave Desert in small sports cars laughing maniacally. The leader is Varla (Tura Santana), a karate chopping psychopath.  Her main sidekick is Rosie (Haji), a lipstick lesbian who I couldn’t figure out whether she was supposed to be Mexican or Italian.  The weak link in this sinister triangle, is Billie, an oversexed blonde who is constantly disobeying orders.  When they meet up with Tommy (Ray Barlow) and his girlfriend Linda (Susan Bernard) in the desert, things go too far and Varla ends up snapping Tommy’s neck.  Why in the hell they didn’t snap the beyond annoying Linda’s neck is beyond me, but for some reason they take her along on their next adventure—trying to rob an old crippled rancher.

There’s a reason most people outside of the cult film scene have never heard of any of the actors who appear in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!—they were all horrible actors.  I’m sure Meyer was trying to create cartoonish characters when he put this movie together, but at some point it just passes the point of kitsch.  Of particular grievance is Stuart Lancaster as the lecherous crippled old man and his aptly named son The Vegetable (Dennis Busch). Watching these two attempt to deliver their inane lines went beyond the pale. 

But the absolute worst thing about Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was the complete exploitation of the female form.  The film begins with the three women dancing in a go-go club with beyond disgusting men urging them on, and it only gets worse from that point on.  I am not exaggerating when I say I kept waiting for one of Varla’s nipples to appear out of the front of her low-cut shirt—you see everything but the nipple.  Billie gets two outfits—both of which you might see on any night on the Sunset Strip.  Oh, and I forgot, we get to see two of the women take showers in the middle of the desert.  Once you get past the slutty clothes, then you move to the sexual innuendo that is not only aimed at them but that comes out of their pouty mouths as well. Yes, they give as good as they get, but it is still unpleasant to hear no matter if a male or female is saying it. 

All that said, I can’t rate Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! as one of the worst films that I have ever seen.  It is an area of movie limbo for me.  It was bad on all levels, but still somewhat watchable. I expect this has to do with the fact that there is some semblance of a plot and that the characters are just so outrageous that you can’t help but watch.

Overall, I definitely would not rank this as one of the films I had to see before my death.  Everything about it is bad—yet, somehow still watchable. And, the theme song by The Bostweeds is pretty memorable.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) *1/2

No, I don’t like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  I’m sure I have offended countless sci-fi fans and cinephiles, but I don’t care because I find the film beyond boring. Yes, there are several interesting visual images, and for 1968, at the height of the Space Race, it was ahead of its time, but that doesn’t mean I have to revere it or recognize its perceived “greatness”.  The only thing I do like about it is the music—and even that contributes to the overall tedious effect the movie has on me.  If you fall asleep every time you watch something I think that sends a clear message. 

Based on sci-fi author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a plodding look at humankind’s relationship with the universe.  There is a monolith that keeps popping up: on Earth at the dawn of man, on the moon, and on Jupiter.  I expect all of these “sightings” are supposed to be tied together, but having not read Clarke’s series I have no idea how, as the film gave me no conclusive answer. I’m a historian by trade, but I minored in philosophy, so I kept asking myself if Kubrick chose to open and close his movie with Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” because he was trying to make some sort of nihilistic statement about Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence and the Übermensch. I suspect this is the case.  Okay, I somewhat understand what he was doing, but what about the average person on the street who never read Nietzsche or Clarke, do they get it?  Probably not, but I don’t think Kubrick cared, either. 

I have been told that people liked to drop LSD and then go watch this—I can see that.  There is an abundance of vast spatial dissonance and towards the end there is a plethora of psychedelic images, so I understand how this might appeal to Dead Heads.  For me, these images did one of two things: made me sleepy and/or gave me a headache. I’m not a special effects geek, and so while it is obvious that Kubrick and his crew were way ahead of their time, it does nothing for me.  Maybe I lack the ability to be awed by these endeavors because so much has been seen and discovered since this film was released.  Still, I can’t see how Pauline Kael wrote in 1968 that 2001: A Space Odyssey was "a monumentally unimaginative movie.” There is plenty of imagination, but, for me, that’s not enough to make me like it. 

Minimalism has its place, but too much of it in a film can leave viewers feeling completely detached.  That is the effect that 2001: A Space Odyssey has on me.  Sparse, minimal dialogue; sterile set designs; and, a complete denial of human pathos makes for bad cinema in my book.  To makes things worse, when Kubrick does attempt to make an emotional appeal he does so with the supercomputer HAL (voiced by Douglas Rain), who is represented as both creepy and evil.  Is Kubrick making a statement about emotions?  Is there no room in his future world-view for feelings, and if you do have them does that make you deficient and/or deviant?  For a humanist like myself, that is an unbearable bitter pill to swallow.

The one element of the film that I liked was the music. Kubrick wanted to create a non-verbal experience, and you will notice that he uses music throughout the film except in the rare cases where there is actual dialogue.  While he bookends his movie with Strauss’ “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, he also creatively uses Johann Strauss’ “On the Blue Danube” and György Ligeti’s Requiem.  Still, even though I found Kubrick’s musical choices inspired, I also think they contribute to my desire to fall asleep every time I watch his movie. 

Overall, I don’t dig this film.  To me, it is boring and lacks any emotional appeal.  Yes, there are a number of enticing visuals, but that just isn’t enough for me. Plus, the creepy baby at the end gives me nightmares.

 

The Last Wave (1977) *1/2

As the world debates the issue of climate change it is somewhat interesting to watch a film like The Last Wave (1977), which touches on the idea of a cataclysmic weather pattern wiping out humankind.  Still, I was very underwhelmed by director Peter Weir’s would-be apocalyptic endeavor.  I enjoyed both Weir’s Gallipoli (1981) and Dead Poets Society (1989), yet the unresolved ending of this movie did not sit well with me. Perhaps this is my own short-falling,  but I like my conclusions to be less perplexing than what I got at the end of this. 

Richard Chamberlain plays David Burton, an Australian lawyer assigned a legal aid case involving the murder of an Aborigine by a group of other Aborigines. As Sydney becomes deluged by torrential downpours, David finds himself having both dreams and visions of a coming apocalypse.  Hail, black rain, and even frogs fall from the sky as David attempts to wade through both his legal and personal trial, all the while trying to uncover the tribal secrets that led to the murder in the first place.  Along the way he develops a spiritual relationship with one of the defendants, Chris (David Gulpilil), who sheds light on the Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime (when spirits created the world).  David also becomes the main adversary of the tribe’s shaman, Charlie (Nandjiwarra Amagula), who knows David is a Mukuru, which is some kind of prophet from another world.  To fully understand what he is envisioning David must descend into an underground tribal shrine which explains the origins of the world.  By the end of the movie, it is difficult to know if David is in a state of reality or Dreamtime. 

It’s not everyday that you get to see a film cast with actual Aborigines.  David Gulpilil is probably the most well-known Aboriginal actor ever, appearing in such films as Walkabout (1971), The Right Stuff (1983), Crocodile Dundee (1986), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), and Australia (2008). In all of his roles, this one included, he exudes an unusual presence.  His gaze is always steady and his bearing seems almost otherworldly.  His Aboriginal counterpart, Amagula, is a  virtual unknown except for his work in The Last Wave.  He was a clan leader that the then-Aboriginal Cultural Foundation director told Weir was the “one man who has enough wisdom, enough breadth, enough understanding” to play the role of Charlie.  He brings a highly unusual element to the film—he is both creepy and ethereal.  While I am not a fan of the overall production, I did enjoy watching the work of these two men.  I am always fascinated to learn more about other cultures, and I think with their help, Weir did enlighten his audience about some Aboriginal practices. 

There’s another reason I didn’t like this film besides the ambiguous ending: Chamberlain. He’s sooooooo boring!  He does not do well in films with extended pauses, and there are many in this. In my opinion, he lacks the necessary charisma to do non-verbal scenes.  His stares off into space just seem void of any emotional depth, and when you are the star of a film with countless dream sequences you kind of need to be able to express something more than a look of vapidity. 

In the end, I just can’t get past, well, the ending of The Last Wave. Head scratching at the conclusion of a film is just not a good sign. 

Alphaville (Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution) 1965 *1/2

This is what happens when a director thinks he’s brilliant and people take him at his word. 

French director Jean-Luc Godard is an ego-maniac who is often identified as one of the preeminent members of La Nouvelle Vague (New Wave).  Yet, unlike other stalwart members such as Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Jacques Demy, Godard never learned how to play well with others. As such, he destroyed a very valuable friendship with Truffaut and often found himself without financial backing for his cinematic visions.  Personally, I find it to be a universal crime that Truffaut died relatively young at the age of 52, but Godard, at 81, still continues to make films.  I’ll take a Truffaut movie over a Godard one any day. 

Alphaville (1965) is a satiric science-fiction noir that attempts to say something about the dehumanizing effects of modernization.  Literally transported from author Peter Cheyney’s books and countless French films,  Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is the “hero” of the picture.  A chain-smoking secret agent who sports a trenchcoat and a fedora, Godard’s Caution is nothing like the detective you would’ve seen in Cheyney’s novels or you might of watched in the earlier Lemmy Caution films.  As such, fans of both were outraged when they saw what Godard had done to their beloved character.  Gone was the optimistic strong detective; and, in his place audiences found a bitter nihilistic man who they viewed as depressing.  I’ve never read any of the novels or seen any of the earlier films, but I can attest to the fact that Caution is a downer. I never once found myself rooting for him nor did I ever see why any woman, let alone one played by Anna Karina, would be attracted to him.  In Lemmy Caution, Godard created a new type of character: the anti-anti-hero. I, for one, was not impressed.

The story is classic Godard—which means the plot is thin (to say the least) and heavily reliant on rambling, nonsensical conversations.  Caution is on an intergalactic mission (he’s from the Outlands) to find a missing agent (played by Akim Tamiroff) and the creator of Alphaville, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon).  Once he accomplishes these things he is then supposed to destroy (by quoting poetry!) Alpha 60, a tyrannical supercomputer that has banned such words as “love” and “conscience”, and orders the executions of those who cry or show any real type of emotion.  Caution’s mission becomes somewhat complicated when he becomes fascinated with von Braun’s daughter (Karina). It sounds sane enough, but that’s because I, not Godard, wrote the plot synopsis—it’s anything but logical. 

Improvisation works in certain situations (such as comedy), but I don’t think it should be recommended when attempting to make some semblance of a science fiction film.  I read once that Godard asked his assistant director, Charles Bitsch, to write a screenplay for the film after producer André Michelin demanded he have something to show to prospective German backers. Bitsch, who was quite unfamiliar with the Caution books, wrote a 30-page treatment which Godard didn’t bother to read before he passed it onto Michelin.  None of Bitsch “screenplay” ever made it to the screen and the German backers demanded their money back.  This is what it was (and still is) like to “work” with Godard. 

Still, if you can look past the pretentiousness of the flashing lights and signs that are supposed to be meaningful (but just irritated me), there is one nice thing about the film: its excellent cinematography at the hands of the great Raoul Coutard.  The principal photographer of such stalwart films as Z (1969), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), and Jules et Jim (1962), Coutard knew how to capture strikingly memorable images.  I suspect the primary reason I like such Godard films as Contempt (1963) and Breathless (1960) is because Coutard was the cinematographer.  The most impressive thing about Alphaville is the opening four-minute sequence of the film, where Caution enters his hotel and the camera tracks his every move from the entryway to his own hotel room. It is an unedited tracking shot that follows him through an elevator and winding corridors--a miniature version of Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil (1958). Visually, it is a stunning picture, but everything else, in my opinion, is lacking. 

And, speaking of Welles, I think he said it best in his analysis of Godard: "His gifts as a director are enormous. I just can't take him very seriously as a thinker—and and that's where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a pin." For someone who thinks he has so much to say about society Godard has a really poor way of conveying it.  If you, and perhaps a few others, are the only one who can decipher what you are trying to say, how useful is it really?

Paranormal Activity (2007) * 1/2

Two words describe this 2007 film from writer/director Oren Peli: absolutely horrible.  I don’t care who gave it 3.5 stars out of a possible 4, I found the whole 90 minutes to be a complete waste of time.  Someone had the audacity to tell me I would be terrified because of how scary this was supposed to be—the only thing that frightened me about it is that there are actual people who think this is a horror movie.

The story is about a twenty-something San Diego couple who start videotaping (handheld and on a tripod) their every waking moment and every sleeping moment to capture whatever paranormal activity is happening in their home.  The couple is annoying and by the end of the film you hope whatever is haunting their home kills them both. The handheld camera work makes you nauseous and you pray the camera will be dropped and broken—thus ending your headache and queasy stomach. 

Paranormal Activity is the most profitable movie ever made. First made as an independent film on a shoestring budget, its film rights were bought by Paramount Pictures for $350,000 and it made over $190 million.  As if this isn’t startling enough, it has also launched a franchise and as I write this they are making the fourth installment.  Why anyone would want to watch any movie that aims to replicate this one is beyond me. 

Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes) 1933 *1/2

This 1933 documentary by Luis Bunuel is strange, but not unwatchable. Filmed in a poor region of Spain known as Las Hurdes Altas, this documentary presents the dire conditions faced by the region’s inhabitants through a surrealist lens. Hence, why I found this movie disturbingly strange at times. I just don’t know how one can effectively use surrealism to document the true hardships of a people without violating the documentarian’s unspoken code of neutrality—perhaps Michal Moore is a fan of Bunuel?

The English title of this film is Land Without Bread because bread was nowhere to be found in Las Hurdes—it had to be brought in as a luxury item. Tucked away in a mountainous region, Las Hurdes Altas has poor soil that yields very few crops. The one foodstuff they have an abundance of is honey, and even this isn’t very good—unless, of course, you want to smear a sickly jackass with it and watch bees swarm.

Like in most Bunuel films, the Catholic Church is portrayed as decadent and unmoved by the plight of the poor. Using one of his favorite cinematic tools, juxtaposition, Bunuel goes from depicting malnourished, impoverished people to showcasing the lushness of an abandoned convent.

As a completely isolated region, Las Hurdes Altas suffers from not only bodily starvation but intellectual starvation as well. There are no arts to speak of, and the people practice inbreeding, which in turn contributes to a number of mentally challenged and handicapped people. As I watched Bunuel’s portrayal of these people, I kept asking myself if he could find them why hadn’t the 20th century somehow nudged itself into this horrible place? I suppose that was Bunuel’s point: no one cared if they lived in almost medieval conditions.

I often find it difficult to believe that Bunuel came from a wealthy background. He has an almost searing hatred of everything bourgeois and traditional. In addition, his depiction of his homeland (Spain) is often extremely vitriolic. This, no doubt, contributed to his expatriation under Franco.

Under a half an hour long, Las Hurdes is a disturbing look at a people and region that time forgot. Through shocking images, such as decapitated chickens and countless shots of filth and disease, Bunuel forces his viewer to see, in his words, “hell on earth”.

Vampyr (1932) *1/2

If only the scythe had come before I watched this!

Some critics regard this 1932 gothic horror film Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s greatest work and one of the greatest horror films of all time. I don’t know if I’m actually an expert, but I have to strongly disagree. I think his The Passion of Joan of Arc is truly a good film, but I hated Vampyr. The way Dryer incorporates imagery is interesting, but the story was just too all over the place for me.

Based on the Sheridan Le Fanu short story”Carmilla,” the film follows traveler David Gray (Julian West) to a a provincial village outside Pairs, where a series of supernatural murders are taking place. Thinking the villagers ignorant and superstitious, David soon learns what happens in this village is no joking matter.

A series of strange (and at times unexplainable) incidents befall David. Whilst sleeping at an inn, David is awakened by a man (whom he doesn’t know) who places a packet in his room that reads: To Be Opened upon My Death. Later, David follows shadows to an old castle where other shadows are dancing. This is where he sees a doctor (Jan Hieronimko) and an old and not so attractive woman (Henriette Gerard), who we will later learn is Marguerite Chopin, but more importantly, both are vampyrs. As he walks to a nearby manor David sees the man who left the package in his room. Suddenly, the man is shot dead and David is ushered into the manor by servants. He is invited to stay the night and he meets Gisele (Rena Mandel) and her seriously ill sister, Leone (Sybille Schmitz).

After finding Leone lying unconscious outside the house with bite wounds, David remembers the mystery package. When he opens it he finds a book about vampyrs. As he reads it he realizes Leone has been the victim of one of these demonic creatures. When it is determined by the doctor that Leone must have a blood transfusion to survive, David offers his. This drains David of all his energy and he settles down to restless sleep. He awakens suddenly, sensing danger, and goes to Leone’s room to find the doctor about to poison her and Gisele missing. David pursues him to the castle, where he has a vision of being buried alive. After this unpleasant vision ends, David rescues Gisele, but the doctor gets away.

When a servant reads in the vampyr book that the only way to kill a vampyr is to put an iron bar through its chest, he and David go to Marguerite Chopin's grave. When they open her grave they find her creepily laying there and they kill her with an iron bar. They then track the doctor to a mill and somehow suffocate him to death with flour—I guess this kills vampyrs, too? The vampyr curse is lifted and Leone is saved. And, in one of the most bizarre endings I can think of, David and Gisele somehow end up in a boat on a fog-laden river and then find themselves coming into a bright clearing. Was it all just a dream? Your guess is as good as mine.

There are no explanations to what transpires in this movie; things just happen. The imagery of the menacing scythes, eerie fog, and silhouette shadows are captivating, but that’s the only thing I found appealing. Dreyer definitely creates a very austere and sterile setting: it looks and sounds like a gothic horror movie. Yet, I was just too confounded by the strange narrative that Dreyer chose to follow. My rule about film is this: if after watching a film you ask yourself at the end, “What the hell was that?”, then it wasn’t good.

Some like, and even love, it—I did not. I most assuredly could have died without having seen it.

Earth (Zemlya) 1930 *1/2

If only the hero of this film, Vasilly, were alive today I could have bought him every man’s Christmas dream gift at the Cracker Barrel—a John Deere hat and t-shirt.

This 1930 silent film, directed by Alexander Dovzhenko, is about a Ukrainian village’s quest for a tractor. Need I say more? Made during one of Stalin’s 5-Year Plans, this is a celebration of modern farming methods and an indictment on private ownership. The landowners (kulaks) in this village become upset when the peasants, using their collective tractor manned by Vasilly, bring in a strong harvest. The kulaks take their revenge by shooting Vasilly as he is walking home one night. Rejecting religion, as all true Soviets do, Vasilly’s family says no to a Christian burial and instead carries his body through the fields. When the murderer celebrates his accomplishment by dancing across graves, rain begins to fall on the crops (Dovzhenko’s heavy-handed way of showing tears). Later, the clouds fade and the sun remerges to shine on the earth again.

Besides tractors, what else is this film about? The cycle of life, I suppose. People die and babies are born. Crops grow and then are harvested so that the people can live and the next cycle of crops can be planted. Are you yawning, too?

This film is considered one of the greatest Soviet-era silent films ever made. I can’t agree, seeing as I found both The Battleship Potemkin and October 100 times more watchable than this. The Nazis destroyed the negative of this film during WWII, but an original release print was saved—yet another crime against humanity we can blame on them.

The Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom) 1929 *1/2

No, I don’t mean the one who asked you to do a screen test in the San Fernando Valley.

Dziga Vertov directs this experimental 1929 silent documentary (and Soviet propagandistic) film. There is no linear plot or narrative and there are no actors in this 80 min. film. There are many people who like this film because of the many cinematic techniques used by Vertov. I am not what you would call an “arty” person, so films like this one just don’t interest me—they just give me a headache. I just don’t like to watch footage played backward or fast motion shots.
The life of the common Soviet citizen is on display here. Machines, and how people interact with them, are somewhat glorified in many shots. In addition, the omnipresence of the camera is strongly stressed by Vertov. The best example I can think of from this film is the shot of a baby emerging from between a mother’s legs.

Vertov belonged to a group of filmmakers known as the Kino-glaz (Cine-Eye), who wanted to rid the world of fiction in film—to them the documentary was the only valid film style. To say that many filmmakers of the time hated this group would be an understatement. Before watching this film audiences had to read a statement from Vertov that said the film was “directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature." In my opinion, if you need a warning like this in the beginning of your film there might be a problem.

This is the second of the 1001 movies I had to see before I died that I wish I hadn’t.