Goldbeater

A very dull and unattractive wannabe adventure flick characterised by the absence of not only that adventure, but most importantly, of any enjoyable character, at least half-decent actors, or interesting dialogues. This is one of the very weakest and – rightly – forgotten pieces of Roger Corman’s work.

Sexually provocative and suffocating drama is indisputably Roman Polanski’s métier. And he chose the perfect actors for the only two roles (Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric both shine). He managed, in his eighties, to stage a captivating interplay of characters that won’t let you take your eyes off the screen from beginning to end.

As I’m not a huge fan of the first part, this sequel didn’t upset me that much. It’s definitely not as terrible as what rumours say. It’s just an average or sub-average comedy nobody asked for, except for the mercenary producers (including the infamous Jon Peters). As a result, Caddyshack II was a financial failure, a good part of the crew regretted their participation, and no other piece from the promising director of low-budget films Allan Arkush ever appeared in cinemas again.

Legendary actors James Stewart and Robert Mitchum clearly deserve separate documentaries of greater length and with far more complex contents. This is more of a starter with the most essential facts about their lives. The creators of this flick failed to justify why these two acting legends needed to be featured side by side in a single documentary though not having so much in common. Other than that, James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America is fine.

A British science-fiction horror flick from the rank of Hammer’s series about Bernard Quatermass, but without Quatermass this time. Instead, we have a murderous radioactive cosmic substance that emits noises akin to a panicked dosimeter. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t really stand out and takes a long time before revealing the looks of the space slime (a kind of inconspicuous predecessor to the American flick The Blob). Still, this solid sci-fi flick is more than watchable.

As much as I didn’t mind the horror-comedy schism in the first movie at all, this time, it’s going a bit too far. I mean, humour is actually lacking in this sequel and the whole thing is much too serious for such a trash plot (and especially for the murderer’s depiction). Not to mention the fact that the film takes really long to get going and for the first half, nothing special really happens, apart from some disturbing dreamy scenes (so cliché!) I need to say that in the second half, we finally get some singular gore scenes (even though they still mostly belong to the dreamy scene category), but they come too late to give the film a decent pace, and the rock ’n’ roll killer doesn’t add much to it. The ending doesn’t make much sense, but at this point, all expectations are gone anyway.

A solid slasher from the ’80s concerning a ‘power-drill killer’. Often, you’ll find yourself wondering if a given scene was really meant seriously or not, since the frequently used horror clichés and at least one hilarious line from the killer clearly transgress the genre boundaries into comedy territory. Hence the question: to what extent such a cross-genre approach was intentional? In any case, the film is entertaining and fills its purpose of harmless pastime. And it is much more stable than the truly crazy sequel with a rock ’n’ roll killer!

For someone who is used to horror films at least a bit, Beyond the Darkness won’t get even close to the shocking and extreme film it apparently meant to be back then. In more recent years, the theme of ‘love beyond the grave’ has been addressed in significantly more convincing pieces, for example both parts of Nekromantik. And if you strip away the perverse theme, all that is left is just another cheap disgusting Italian horror flick which fails to entertain and doesn’t go anywhere in terms of plot.

As usual, the myths around the genesis of this film are much more interesting than the flick itself. In short, it was allegedly made – as fast and as cheap as possible – solely for the producers to perform some sort of copyright-related castling, without any intention to release it. However, the creative team was not aware of that, so they went out of their ways to complete the film as best they could. Soon after, the material was confiscated – and possibly destroyed – and the film ended up buried for good. Yet, interestingly, during the post-production stage that preceded, someone had managed to make a pirate copy, which allowed the flick to live up to this day – even though it was never officially released. Wow! Anyway, it’s still sad – though understandable given the paradoxical creation process – that the result is a pathetic piece of crap with terrible acting, even more terrible screenwriting and a horrible technical execution. The only appreciable work here is David and Eric Wurst’s music track. This film is watchable only as a double-feature complement to the documentary Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s the Fantastic Four, adding some value to an otherwise complete filmic failure.

Despite the poster attracting you into a plain horror story, you’d better not expect any terror-inducing suspense. All in all, The Undead is a mild fantasy film about a hypnosis experiment gone slightly berserk. The subject of the experiment – a low-grade prostitute – ends up, with her consciousness, in the Middle Ages, where she is mistaken for a witch. I think the rest of the plot can be guessed easily. And, although I can’t say it’s downright boring (there are a couple of decent scenes), this flick is no masterpiece either.