Sex and Fury 1973 Film Review

“The Biography of the Woman Boss of Bad Girls...” [1]. A female yakuza film containing cult film fan favorite actresses Reiko Ike and Christina Lindberg, this film is a subgenre within subgenre within subgenre. The story follows Ocho, a gambling pickpocket swordswoman, who witnesses her father’s murder when she is a child. Twenty years later she is wandering around Japan searching for the three that are responsible. The only clues that she has are three Hanafuda playing cards that her father grabbed before he died. Like many Japanese Yakuza or Samurai films, Ocho gets involved with some other people along the way. This includes an anarchist and a white female spy. It’s a vengeance movie and there are swords, so what you can expect from this film is some violent displays of action with a fairly large amount of nudity.

This can be considered so many different subgenres of film. It could be sexploitation, samurai, yakuza, female yakuza, but it is commonly referred to as pinky violence. This was a series of Japanese films roughly from 1970 through 1974 that had a combination of “action, sex, violence and crime, and was dominated by ruthless and deadly delinquent females” [2]. This new subgenre had mostly been dominated by Toei studios, which by the mid-1960’s had begun to see an increase in the level of sleaze, “nudity, softcore sex and violent bloodshed” it was displaying in the films as a way to please an audience that was turning more to television [3].

Actresses Ike and Lindberg both had built their well known careers mostly off of movies that contained action and/or erotica in them. Ike was considered one of the pioneers of the Japanese Pinky violence genre, starring in four Terror Female High School films and five Sukeban or delinquent school girl films. Lindberg is known mainly for the Swedish cult film Thriller: A Cruel Picture, and also appeared in numerous Swedish erotica films. Director Norifumi Suzuki is credited with directing 56 films, which include Torakku Yaro and its 7 sequels, along with several other films in the Pinky Genre. He also wrote the script for Red Peony Gambler, which also ended up with 7 sequels.

Despite this being an exploitation flic, it is a beautifully shot with strong vivid colors and beautiful scenery. These were not amateur filmmakers throwing together some crap that has some tits in it; these were very talented artists with years of experience who simply were told they had to make a different type of film. There are many memorable scenes that will shock you, and then there are others that will please you from a cinematic end. Some scenes that are visually pleasing are the opening scene, where the father and daughter are walking on a road among a long row of orange and black bamboo stalks. Then there is the opening title sequence, which has Ocho displaying sword technique while in front of a large wall of Hanafuda cards. And one other scene involves a rape in a room that has a beautifully multicolored floor and the camera pans up and spins around; the colors are a great juxtaposition from the evilness of the rape.

If you like samurai, spraying blood, yakuza, or sexploitation films then you have to give this one a chance. And if you do like it, there are a large amount of other pinky violence films as well as straight period yakuza and samurai films worth checking out.

25 Great 80s Cult Movies That Are Worth Your Time

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/25-great-80s-cult-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/

The 15 Best Scenes in The Movies of Sergio Leone

Link to article on Taste of Cinema Website

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/the-15-best-scenes-in-the-movies-of-sergio-leone/

Kill Your Friends 2016 Review

 

“Lies. Betrayal. Murder. Just another day at the office” [1]. That‘s the tagline for this dark comedy neo-noir crime thriller, which is based on a screenplay written by John Niven. It is based upon a book with the same title that was written by Niven in 2008 and he used some of his experiences during his brief career in the music industry. The novel has been described as being one of the best British novels since Trainspotting was released. The film is a starring vehicle for Nicholas Hoult, who has gained a name for himself from his appearances in Warm Bodies, the new X-Men trilogy as the character Beast, and also in Mad Max: Fury Road as Nux.

Hoult stars as Steven Stelfox, a twenty-seven-year old A&R man working for London Records in 1997 during the big Britpop music craze when Oasis and Muse debuted. He is fueled less on making good music as opposed to moving up the career ladder, with the goal to be the head of the A&R department. Stelfox is the personification of what we think the music industry is like, he is fueled and driven by his greed, cocaine, sex, alcohol, and the party lifestyle. He doesn’t even care about making good music or finding interesting bands, he just wants to get the next hit single that will help him get promoted. When the industry starts to change and he is going to get passed up for the promotion that he wants, he sets out to kill the coworkers that are standing in his way. Without giving anything else away plot wise, there is no limit to what he’s willing to do in order to advance his career.

This film has been compared to American Psycho and Filth because of the main characters in all three of these are psychotic in some way, and yet we end up being really intrigued by them. Some reviews have said that Stelfox is just a straight rip off of the characters Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) and Bruce (James McAvoy). While they are all three psychotic and also all were originally created in novels first, there are differences in all three characters and their stories. Bateman lives a very wealthy lifestyle as an investment banker, but his violence and murders are more about his enjoyment in the acts of killing someone. It may have started out as rage over a coworker’s business card being more lavish and then evolved into more of a fantasy fulfillment.

 

Bruce is a detective that has a borderline personality disorder and is bipolar, who spends most of his time indulging in the excesses of drugs, alcohol, sex, and trying to turn his colleagues against each other. His wife and kid have left him and he feels like the promotion is the one thing that will bring them back. He ends up screwing up a murder investigation and is discovered to have been cross-dressing pretending to be his wife, which leads to a demotion. Bruce never kills anyone; it’s his reckless lifestyle and mental illnesses that end up bringing him down. Without giving much away to both of these movies, neither character ends up winning in the end. The major differences between both of them and Stelfox is that he kills people solely to improve his job status and he kind of makes out a lot better than the other two do in the end.

This isn’t going to go down as the best movie from 2016, but it may be considered one of the most underrated and end up becoming a cult film. The dark themes instantly make it one that is going to be somewhat controversial and will only have a certain niche audience, there is enough violence, nudity, and murder in it to turn some people away. Two things stand out though; Nicholas Hoult and the music. Hoult is a star and he is thoroughly engaging as this character, while narrating the story and occasionally breaking the fourth wall. Like Tom Hardy, this is the type of actor that you expect to be good in everything and want to seek out movies that he is in. The other thing that really stands out is the music, which is a mix of mostly popular British music from that time period including Blur, the Chemical Brothers, Oasis, and Prodigy.

If you liked American Psycho, Filth, or anything that Nicholas Hoult has been in then you should definitely check this one out. If I had to actually give a rating, then I’d say somewhere around 3.5 out of 4 stars. But that rating could also mean my sanity level is not all that there. So just as a warning, some of you may find this movie offensive and totally unredeemable.   

Works Cited

[1]	"IMDB," IMDB, 28 3 2016. [Online]. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2474958/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1. [Accessed 28 3 2016].

 

 

 



25 Cult Anthology Movies That Are Worth Your Time

Cult list of 25 anthology films from TasteofCinema article

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/25-cult-anthology-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/

25 Cult 1970's Film List

This is a link to article on TasteofCinema about 25 cult 1970's films.

 

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/25-great-70s-cult-movies-you-might-not-have-seen/

Gone in 60 Seconds 1974

“You can lock your car. But if he wants it...it's GONE IN 60 SECONDS”[1] Before there was Angelina Jolie and Nicholas Cage stealing 48 cars in the 2000 version of Gone in 60 Seconds, there was the not so Hollywood original released in 1974. It was written, produced, directed, and stars H.B. Halicki, who also did most of the stunt driving. Halicki stars as Maindrian Pace, an insurance investigator that also happens to steal cars. He makes a deal with a South American drug lord to steal 48 specific cars for him, all to be delivered to the Long Beach docks within five days. Pace’s only rule is that all of the stolen cars must be insured. Like the remake, all of the cars have female code names to mask their illegal scheme. Problems and disputes between the thieves come to a head way, when one of them calls in a tip to the police on where the final car will be stolen from. That final car is a 1973 black and gold Ford Mustang code named “Eleanor.” Pace steals the car but the cops are there and this leads to a forty minute car chase through six different California cities.

The film is by no step a masterpiece; there was virtually no script, the sound is poor, and the acting is not very good. They pretty much just made up things as they went along and most of the actors were friends and family, in order to save on production costs. What you do end up with is one of the longest and greatest car chase scenes put to film, with somewhere around 93 cars and a garbage truck being destroyed. There were multiple real accidents that occurred and were luckily captured on camera; including a police car overturning, an actor nearly being hit, and when “Eleanor” gets rear ended and hits a light pole at a speed of 100 mph. The final big climax has “Eleanor” jumping over a series of wrecked cars, covering a height of 30’ and distance of 128’ without the use of a catapult or special effects. Halicki injured himself on the stunt, compressing his spine in the landing[1].

Halicki was killed in 1989 during the preparation for a stunt for a sequel. While this version is nowhere near as slick and glossy as the remake and it has its flaws, this is still essential viewing for fans of car chase scenes.

 

Works Cited

[1]	"IMDB," IMDB, 14 3 2016. [Online]. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071571/taglines?ref_=tt_stry_tg. [Accessed 14 3 2016].

 

 

 

Top 20 Movies That Most Frequently Used The "f@&k" Word: The Redux Edition

Lists are fun. They create an open dialogue about topics that we love to discuss. In this instance, I’m talking about movies. They are essentially subjective, there can never really be a definitive correct answer or an accurate numbering. It’s based on so many different conditions, but mostly based upon our personal tastes and experiences that we’ve accumulated from watching cinema. But one that doesn’t lie is numbers. Numbers simply do not lie. Now you could always manipulate the numbers to your own advantage or to tell a story a certain way, but it's still a lie. So I recently saw a top 20 list that I was pretty sure was somewhat wrong and I went ahead and did some quick research to figure out that it wasn’t correct. It was the top 20 movies that most frequently used the word f@&k.  So I decided to present the original list, then what should be the twenty with the most frequency per minute of film time, then the top twenty with the total number of times used in a film.

ToDoMovies List: These are the movies on their list and the total number of uses of the word per minute of the films total running time.

Movie Title:                           1. Nil by Mouth	Per/min: 3.34
2. Wolf of Wall Street	3.16
3. Alpha Dog	3.11
4. Made	3.09
5. End of Watch	2.99
6. Narc	2.82
7. Reservoir Dogs	2.71
8. Goon	2.48
9. Casino	2.4
10. Jay and Silent Bob	2.38
11. Straight Outta Compton	2.35
12. Jarhead	2.26
13. Big Lebowski	2.22
14. my Name is Joe	2.19
15. Boondock Saints	2.17
16. Goodfellas	2.05
17. Do the Right Thing	2
18. True Romance	1.93
19. Pulp Fiction	1.72
20. Departed	1.56

This would be the correct top 20 of the total number of uses of the word per minute of the films total running time. This included removing movies that were comedian stand up performances and a documentary about the word.

Movie Title:                               Per/min:

1. Swearnet: The Movie 8.35 2. Nil by Mouth 3.34 3. Twin Town 3.21 4. Wolf of Wall Street 3.16 5. Alpha Dog 3.11 6. Made 3.09 7. Summer of Sam 3.06 8. End of Watch  2.99 9. Sweet Sixteen 2.95 10. Another Day in Paradise 2.88 11. Dirty  2.88 12. State Property 2 2.88 13. Narc 2.82 14. London  2.8 15. Reservoir Dogs 2.71 16. Grave Encounter 2 2.68 17. Empire  2.62 18. Running Scared 2.58 19. Gridlock'd 2.49 20. Goon 2.48  The original list is dramatically changed with at least half of it being removed from the corrected list. And then finally, this is the top 20 films with the highest total number of times the word is used. Some from the original list make it back, but not all of them. Movie Title:                             Total: 1. Swearnet: The Movie 935 2. Wolf of Wall Street 569 3. Summer of Sam 435 4. Nil by Mouth 428 5. Casino 422 6. Straight Outta Compton 392 7. Alpha Dog 367 8. End of Watch  326 9. Twin Town 318 10. Running Scared 315 11. Sweet Sixteen 313 12. Goodfellas 300 13. Narc 297 14. Harsh Times  296 15. Made 291 16. Another Day in Paradise 291 17. Pride and Glory 291 18. Dirty  280 19. I'm Still Here 280 20. Jarhead 278

25 Cult Occult Film List

This is a link to article on TasteofCinema about 25 cult occult films.

 

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/25-cult-occult-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/

25 Cult Cop Films

Link for my article covering 25 cult cop films.

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/25-cult-cop-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/

Col AKA Turkish Jaws 1983

This is a Turkish produced film that is considered Turksploitation, which were unauthorized Turkish film adaptations often using American copyrighted characters, movies, and television series. These films would often use soundtracks from the original films, and various clips from the films.

It is referred to as Turkish Jaws because of a scene involving the main character being attacked by a shark at sea, with the Jaws them playing. The story, what little there is, involves a contract killer that assassinates his old boss as payback for some kind of torture he did to him in the past. We see this in a series of super crazy, quick shots of him being tortured and then what looks like a group of zombies attacking him. It is super strange, but that’s just the flashback. So the organization he was involved in has put a contract out on his life and they capture him and throw him tied to some boards into the ocean. That’s where he has the epic and super memorable shark battle. He survives that and returns to kick some ass in the end. There’s also a sidekick and a pair of chicks in bikinis in the subplot that are supposed to serve as love interests.

The film stars Cuneyt Arkin and was directed by Cetin Inanc, who were both involved in making Turkish Star Wars AKA Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam 1982 and Turkish First Blood AKA Vahsi Kan 1983. Arkin is credited with starring in almost three hundred films, and was primarily known for his distinctive looks and use of martial arts. Inanc has directed close to 90 films, and is known for a mix of erotica and action films. They were both involved in many movies that in some form or other ripped off some other popular film material. This film was no different, fuck copyrights!

That is part of what makes these Turkish films so great, the fact that they blatantly use of borrowed material. The other part that is so great is the low budget feel and total insanity of most of these films. If you love low budget, drive-in, sleaze, and exploitative films, then these are worth watching. There is more than enough in this to keep you entertained; including Led Zeppelin songs, some disco song, the Rocky theme used for when he enters a room, a car chase, several martial arts fight scenes, women in bikinis dancing to music for no reason, the battle with Jaws to the Jaws theme song, plus tons of quick cuts and hyper editing to keep your head spinning.

The epic shark battle is the ultimate payoff and if anything else the main thing you need to witness. The actual scene is pretty short, but at the same time so memorable. The shark looks like it’s made out of cardboard or paper mache and in one sequence it has our leading characters arm in its mouth, chomping down on it. Well he is super badass because it just caused a flesh wound and e was able to kill it.  For us normal human beings, we would have been left minus one of our appendages.

The film might not be as hilarious as some of the other Turkish rip off films, but it is still very amusing. If you’ve never seen any of these Turkish films before, then you might want to start out with Turkish Star Wars or 3 Dev Adam first. Then if you enjoy those, move onto some of the others.