Quarantine: Days 6, 7 and 8

DAY 6: VINEGAR SYNDROME SUNDAY

HORROR: BLUE VENGEANCE (1989)
A New York City cop/action movie with horror elements. The plot made this an instant purchase. An escaped prison inmate with paranoid visions and obsessions with a heavy metal band, tracks down the members of said band one by one.

B/B+

ACTION: RAW FORCE (1982)
Can a movie have too much? I kept thinking this to myself while the movie unleased gratuitous nudity, terrorists hijaking a cruise ship, and samurai zombies. It kept one upping itself. Normally this is a good thing. It's what you want in exploitation. It just didn't click with me as well as it did in other movies.

B

EROTICA: THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971)
Where the hell did this come from?

On the level of Putney Swope but even more formally inventive. The writer and director went on to write for Saturday Night Live. That should give you the type of freewheeling comedy you get here. Punched up with loads of sexploitation. There is a bit here with a coin machine that ranks up there with the best comedy from the decade.

Films like these are why I love Vinegar Syndrome.

A-

DAY 7

KNIFE + HEART
Gay porn. Giallo influences. De Palma influences. A dildo knife. It's got a lot going for it.

B+/B

I MARRIED A WITCH
The best of the 40s comedies were largely dominated by Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitsch. Rene Clair managed to churn this one out with the lovely Veronica Lake.

B+

DAY 8

KILLER CROCODILE (1989)

A Jaws rip off thru and thru. There's a period in the late 80's and early 90's where Italian genre filmmakers would nototiously take a popular property and exploit the hell out of it. Bruno Mattei did it with Shocking Dark (his riff on Aliens and Terminator 2). Claudio Fragasso did it with Night Killer (aka Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3). Fabrizio De Angelis gives us his Jaws rip off with Killer Crocodile. The clincher is a Riz Ortolani score that blatantly rips John Williams' score.

B-

THE DEVIL'S HONEY (1986)
"Saxo-mophone" -Homer Simpson

When Italian horror was on its way out, Fulci decided to turn to sexploitation. This was during a period where he split with his writing partner Dardano Sacchetti. Fulci had no one to reign him in. So his latter career took off in terms of craziness. This movie's first 20 minutes has someone playing a saxophone into a woman's vagina.

B

CLASS OF 1984 (1982)

"The future is doomed." A quote I fully expect to see scrawled in the margins of this screenplay. Watching the movie, I didn't know who to hate more: Stegman and his merry band of anarchists or the administration that turned a blind eye to their chaos. The kids are definitely not alright.
Belongs on the shelf between A Clockwork Orange and Over the Edge.

B+