Goldbeater

An ordinary day at the Cloud Nine music bar – Al the barman (Robin Morse) converses with customers, Steve the journalist (Richard H. Cutting) is looking for a scoop, Sir Bop the inept music manager (Mel Welles) is struggling to find work for his musicians, Shorty the brash and cunning regular (Dick Miller) comments on what is going on and, in the last act, two criminals (Russel Johnson and Jonathan Haze) arrive to somewhat spice up an otherwise rather unspectacular storyline. Characters abound (I only listed a fraction of them) and each has a bit of exposure time. Now, that series of diverse characters is quite enjoyable and gives life to the desertic plot. This low-budget rock ’n’ roll odyssey of an evening in a bar was designed mainly to attract teenagers to drive-in cinemas. Still, despite its naivety, it offers quite a charming message about the fight of David and Goliath (compared to King Kong in the film) and is rather funny, even if not much happens in it.

When you combine a swamp environment, crocodiles, an escape from prison, a police infiltration of a girl gang, buried loot, girl fights and a romantic storyline, don’t expect to come up with a masterpiece. Moreover, the acting and – especially – the script are terrible. Unfortunately, it’s not funnily silly, it’s more akin to Laurel and Hardy working on a house – a painful and embarrassing mess.

A very weak and cheap war film by Roger Corman who seems to consider the image of American soldiers on skis to be attractive enough not to bother about finding good skieractors (seeing them snowploughing in the context of an action flick is hilarious). Corman himself played one of the German soldiers and his crew even had to face a mini avalanche during the shooting. That’s all for the interesting part. Charles B. Griffith’s screenplay is plain dumb and lifeless – his work is exciting only when there’s some humour to lighten things (A Bucket of Blood, The Little Shop of Horrors), he is not gifted at all for serious films. Besides, the characters are somewhat interchangeable due to their similar appearance, so you mix up not only the American soldiers with one another, but also the American and German soldiers altogether, often resulting in utter chaos and spoiling even the few action scenes in the film.

Another cheap B horror from the ’50s produced by the Corman brothers, this time featuring people wrapped in bags and covered with giant suckers who are supposed to evoke overgrown leeches. The script is dull (Leo Gordon is a solid actor, but a miserable screenwriter), and the acting is tragic – the fact that I consider Bruno VeSota’s performance to be the best says it all. What’s more, in the final scene, it’s as if the actors didn’t receive any instructions from the director, so once they triumph over the leeches, they just stare into space stupidly and then part ways. It’s bad, really bad.

In the context of TV productions of the ’90s, this was a solid piece of filmmaking focused on the rules and clichés of crime fiction. Unfortunately, it’s not as sophisticated as it could be regarding the theme, finally slipping towards an ordinary ‘whodunnit’ detective story. With a more elaborate screenplay, it could have offered a pleasant meta-level – but it didn’t. Bill Condon, however, is a capable director, and with the charming Pierce Brosnan in the leading role, he couldn’t have made a big mistake.

Probably the most critically praised and the most socially conscious film by Roger Corman and, at the same time, his first piece to significantly fail financially. And the latter is the only thing Corman never managed to swallow, choosing to go back to B flicks and never attempting any other similar A-theme anymore – which is a real pity. Despite the low budget, he managed to create a decent drama with a dense atmosphere of hatred, depicting a powerful story about human evil, with a very convincing William Shatner shining at its heart.

In the times of the rising Star Wars mania, Universal Pictures decided to bring to the world their own clone story of cute talking robots, therefore releasing Heartbeeps. That way, the viewer got the unique opportunity to see the comedian Andy Kaufman, known from Miloš Forman’s biographical flick Man on the Moon, in the main role of a Hollywood production. Director Allan Arkush, creator of funny low-budget comedies, now moved on to his first high-budget production, which became perhaps a tad too much for him to handle (one might wonder why several obviously failed takes were even left in the film). The screenplay was written by a somewhat inexperienced John Hill, and that’s our stumbling block – the film revolves around some kind of aimless quest for the meaning of life, and was probably intended as a light philosophic work, but didn’t turn out that way. The effort to lighten it up is in itself counterproductive and the resulting humour is sometimes childish, sometimes weird and sometimes just not funny at all. Interestingly, this fact is acknowledged in the script and the characters admit several times that their jokes are plain bad. This relative self-awareness makes for a slightly better experience. The happy ending is a little forced and a darker closing would enrich the film with a different dimension and quality. Despite all that, I don't want to resort to a rating below average. With all its weak points, it is a piece of filmmaking that will move you and make you smile and has a strange sweetness to it (‘It suffers from terminal cuteness’, as Roger Ebert aptly put it). If I was to watch it as a child, it may have even made me cry. And it was primarily made for child audiences. Adult viewers at least get to enjoy a bizarre flick with amazing music by John Williams!

I was delighted by the live dubbing at the Shockproof Film Festival – it was lots of fun and enhanced the screening with added value. However, this film needs a separate review, aside from the event, and I must say that on its own, it is barely watchable. The Apple is a tawdry, kitsch and megalomaniac dud meant in dead earnest, yet feels completely laughable and atrociously phoney. Menahem Golan created a loony piece of filmmaking in which the dumb plot culminates with the worse futuristic motifs of the ’80s combined with a sprinkle of criticism of music show business and biblical parables, inflicting a final slap to the viewer’s face in the form of a deus ex machina ending (literally). The simply written songs and rigid acting are a given (Vladek Sheybal is really entertaining nonetheless). And where’s the originality? A similar criticism of music showbiz framed within a story of a musician who sold his soul to the devil has been previously seen in De Palma’s musical Phantom of the Paradise – and, needless to say, with a filming quality orders of magnitude better. [Shockproof Film Festival 2018 – Autumn Special]

The genre of this relatively soft and unscary ghost film stands in between a family drama and a child-friendly horror flick. I have to say that time passes quickly, the script isn’t bad at all and the whole thing is fun – at times the viewer can play and look for the hidden ghost silhouette in the background. Other than that, there’s no real innovation and no surprises. This flick is fine as a distraction, but it has no bigger ambition than that. And the title is a bit confusing – this is not a film about witches!

I cannot judge if, as claimed by a viewer in one of the interviews at the end of the film, this is really better than Cries and Whispers. But what I can say is that both of these ‘unique artistic pieces’ made me suffer similarly when I watched them. The ratio between the scenes I want to remember (with funny lines like ‘I guess there’s just two kinds of people…’) and those I’d rather forget is quite uneven. Nothing against the display of obscenities (after a few minutes, everything starts to seem normal in the context of the film), but I have to say it was much less entertaining than what I had expected. The storyline is really trifling and some scenes are downright empty and too long to be fun. Chances are I won’t become a fan of John Waters’ early work.