What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1971)

Umberto Lenzi does himself proud here. The director of exploitation classic Cannibal Ferox (1981) really turns on the sleaze in Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, treating us to four murders and three sequences of nudity in the opening 20 minutes. Setting his stall out from the get-go.

I always like Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. Based on a story from German Krimi writer Edgar Wallace, it has a linear plot that's easy to follow. Basically, Antonio Sabato attempting to track down a savage killer who leaves crescent moon shaped pendants on his victims. A failed attempt to murder Uschi Glas gives Sabato chance before the killer realizes she's still alive.

Lenzi's no-nonsense approach to film making benefits this thriller as the story races along. As well as Sabato and Glas, Lenzi assembles a first rate cast including the gorgeous Marisa Mell and Rosella Falk who has been in, and indeed been hideously murdered in several gialli. Falk's demise at the hands of Lenzi is just as memorable as it was in the hands of Luigi Bazzoni and Paolo Cavara.

A Giallo wouldn't be a Giallo without classy kills and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids gives us a taste of things to come in the next decade with a plethora of inventive murders ranging from drowning (Hi Rosella) to power drills. He directs them with flair and no shortage of suspense. The film also has it's fair share of intrigue and plot subtleties especially when it comes to Mell's character. I'd forgotten the twist with her and it came as a pleasant surprise.

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids - the title does mean something - isn't a top level example of Italian thriller cinema but it is a bloody (pun intended) good one.

[Frankie Teardrop]

MAY – There’s a scene where May stands in a shower cubicle, holding what looks like the showerhead but is in fact a phone. She tells the voice of her doll to shut up – apparently it does, not that we can hear it – she says “thanks.” Later, the camera cuts away to the bottom of the shower, where a cat lies dead. The weird alchemy of that sequence sums up everything I like about ‘May’. Here’s another – blind kids crawl across broken glass in a scene that can’t fail to summon feelings of panic. It’s set in a community pottery classroom where, just a couple of minutes earlier, one of the same blind kids made a clay ashtray! ‘May’ is unique. It’s a film where black humour and pathos co-exist with a jangling discord that’s always seeping between the lines. May is an awkward, doll-fixated recluse whose life looks like it might open up after she starts to date horror bro Adam. There’s an element of Carrie White and Tommy Ross about their stab at romance, if T Ross were an Argento-head and had the most erotic hands in the cosmos – May’s an expert on that sort of thing, in fact our dawning revelation that she’s only going out with him because of his pinkies is pretty disquieting as far as character arcs go. Her body-part obsession has to foreshadow a leap into full blooded horror at some point, but until its final Frankensteinian swerve, ‘May’ plays like an early noughts art-indie romance, with the grotesque skewing the studied cool through slow, steady drip-feed. If Lucky McKee holds the strange tone so brilliantly, half the draw comes from the performers. Angela Bettis magnetises as the wounded May, fragile and blank as her favourite doll, whilst Anna Faris co-reigns as feverish flirt Polly, always smirking as if she’s just heard the inside track on her own wild time. On top of all that, the Deal sisters-loaded soundtrack is so evocative. I’ve always liked ‘May’, but now I see it as one of its decade’s best.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER – An alien asks someone trapped inside a cocoon “what is love?” The alien has a squirmy tendril arm – f*ck you, Aristophanes! ‘Significant Other’ meditates on the nature of human connection whilst throwing B film moves. I liked the surprising bits – the tracts of clunky philosophising in a cave – but they are outweighed by a pretty standard run through of ‘couple on the brink lost in forest with predatory alien’. A lot of people seem to like it, so I won’t deny the obvious pluses; Maika Monroe is good, it’s all nice and brisk and there’s a few squishy bits to oil the cogs as well as interesting shades of ‘Annihilation’. Also, there’s a kind of joy in seeing a movie nowadays where a severed hand looks a bit rubbery.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978)

Third and final film in the Adventures of... saucy comedy series which sees plumber Sid South (Christopher Neil) have a week to come up with a grand to pay off gambling debts or he's for the chop. Given a load of plumbing jobs by gang boss Dodger (Willie Rushton) to help out Sid ends up with his clothes off with endless sex starved women.

I always think this is the most fun. It's certainly got the more sizable storyline in the series with Prudence Drage and Suzy Mandel heading up a bevy of seventies British totty.

Arthur Mullard is extremely watchable as the heavy pressuring Sid for his debt while Stephen Lewis pretty much assumes his character of Blakey from On the Buses. Although what Elaine Paige is doing in this i'll never know.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978)

Third and final film in the Adventures of... saucy comedy series which sees plumber Sid South (Christopher Neil) have a week to come up with a grand to pay off gambling debts or he's for the chop

He went on to be a record producer, who worked a lot with Sheena Easton amongst others

[MrBarlow]

Dune. 2021.

Frank Herbert's 1960s novel can be considered a brilliant read and can certainly pass the time away. David Lynch who was a fan of the novel did try to put Herbert's vision to the screen and failed, not by his fault but those above him. Is Lynch's version a classic, only the viewer can answer that.

Denis Villeneuve takes the director's chair for this and has managed to make the source novel adapt to the screen,
the story is somehow easier to follow than in the last adaptation, motives and actions are easier to see and follow. I felt as though the book had come to life here, even if there are a couple of changes. The acting right out from the start to end is impressive as is the costume design, make-up effects and the background score. The battle scenes are impressive and well choreographed. I'm very curious about the second part and how that will turn out on the big screen.

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[MrBarlow]

Night Of The Seagulls. 1975.

Thanks to Nos42 for pointing out this one my way, the final part in the Blind Dead movies by Amando de Ossorio and the Templar Knights, every seven years the knights awake for seven days to find virgins and use them for sacrificing, we got a doctor and his wife who are new to the area and really aren't welcome by the locals, try to meddle in a few things and come to regret it.

This may not be on par as Tombs Of The Blind dead but certainly entertaining, the acting by Victor Petit and Maria Kosti as the new couple is decent and they do appear as not the sharpest tool in the box but generally think on their feet when they have to. The background score seems a bit more eerie, along with the dark dense atmosphere that shrouds over the village that gives the movie a decent chill factor.

You know what it's like with these 70s Euro films and the dubbing, this is no exception, in some parts the dubbing seems a bit all over the place but all in all I have had plenty of entertainment watching these movies over the past few days and certainly happily return to them.

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[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by MrBarlow

Night Of The Seagulls. 1975.

If Rollin did a Blind Dead film then this would be it.

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

The Italian Job (1969)

This crime caper about a gold bullion robbery by Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) and his gang in broad daylight through the streets of Turin in three Mini Cooper cars has long been a favourite of mine.

It's funny with some laugh out loud dialogue and features an utterly thrilling last half hour of brilliant stunt driving that pre-dates the Fast and Furious franchise by thirty odd years.

It does amuse that Caine who in three previous films - The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain (1966-68) had played the no flash anti-Bond, British spy Harry Palmer - drove a silver Aston Martin in this and a sly wink to Bond has said Aston Martin crushed by a digger then flipped from the road and down a mountainside high up on an Alpine pass.

Oh and don't you just love how Noel Coward's Nationalist crime king pin Mr. Bridger runs Wormwood Scrubs from the confines of his (luxurious) cell.

A classic of British cinema which is simply so much fun to this day.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The Italian Job (1969)

*THE* quintessential 1960s British film

[Dave Boy]

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EXPENDABLES 4 (2023)

Umm.. okay, so very disappointed in this outing. One of the main things that stood out was the sometimes bad effects. They looked like they had not been finished and looked like some video game.
Some of the backdrops involving characters close up on moving vehicles looked like they had not been rendered properly and reminded me of back projection movies from years ago and the backdrop of the sea while on a ship looked really fake. What happened? Did they run out of money?
Megan Fox is completely miscast as a special forces soldier in charge of the mission and goes in to battle looking like a glamour magazine cover.
Overall, it comes across as just an so,so popcorn movie but it should have been so much better that this and if this is the finale then it's a sad end to the movie franchise.