PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Kapone Oi Ni Naku 1985 Capone Cries A Lot

Kapone Oi Ni Naku is a 1985 Japanese film that's also known as Capone Cries A Lot. It's based on a novel by Sueyuki Kajiyama, the script is by Takeo Kimura and Atsushi Yamatoya, the director is Seijun Suzuki.

I'm a fan of Suzuki's films, I especially like his yakuza crime films of the 1950s and 1960s. It was Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill that first drew me to Suzuki. Both films star Joe Shishido who's a favorite actor of mine. Both films have been in the Criterion collection for a long time.

Suzuki has a bit of a backstory, he worked for Nikkatsu from 1956 to 1967. It was Branded To Kill that got him fired from the company, he sued and they blacklisted him for 10 years. In 1971 Nikkatsu changed to producing pink films, violent and sexy films, that kept them going until 1993 when they filed for bankruptcy. They did leave behind some interesting Yakuza films and some of them are turning up on home video. I've little any interest in their pink films though I have seen a few.

The studio had been at odds with Suzuki for a couple of years, they claimed his films were too over the top and surreal. Some say, the last two films he made for Nikkatsu, Branded To Kill and Tokyo Drifter, are  masterpieces. They're certainly something to watch.

Kapone Oi Ni Naku is certainly something to watch but it hasn't got the impact that either BTK or TD have. KONN is set in the 1920s, the story starts in Japan and then moves to San Francisco. A singer travels to America seeking his fortune.

It's pretty slow moving. It's a comedy but I didn't find it all that humorous. There are plenty of interesting locations and sets.

I'd seen that cave in some other Japanese movie I had seen recently. Others might find the enjoy the story more than me. There's a link to the movie on YouTube in the title at the top of the post.

Student Bodies 1981

Student Bodies is a 1981 horror comedy that's sort of funny and sort of dumb at the same time. Some jokes work and others don't. I found it on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, the channel has already been taken down. There always seems to be some guys who post movies they shouldn't, when they get the third strike, it's big red bar time.

Mickey Rose wrote the script and co-directed with an uncredited Michael Ritchie. It's Mickey's only directing credit, mostly he wrote films and television episodes. He wrote Take The Money And Run and Bananas for Woody Allen and a few other films I've liked, or almost liked: The Candidate, Smile, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough, Fletch, The Golden Child and The Positively True Adventures Of The Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. I only have a couple of them on DVD but that's OK.

In Student Bodies there's a serial killer loose at Lamab High School. The killer, nicknamed The Breather, is played by Jerry Belson, he's credited as Richard Brando in the film credits. Jerry was mostly a writer, he started in 1964 working on The Danny Thomas Show, after that he wrote for The Bill Dana Show, Gomer Pyle: USMC, The Lucy Show, I-Spy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Love, American Style, The Odd Couple and more. He wrote one of my favorite John Astin movie, Evil Roy Slade, it's a bit of silly fun but highly enjoyable for me.

On SB Jerry was Exec Prod and Michael Ritchie got his credit for producer changed to Allen Smithee. I guess he didn't like the movie too much, maybe that's why he's an uncredited director. I didn't think it was too bad, about average, there are a lot of jokes and if one wasn't that funny, here's another one shortly. There's a lot of self referential stuff going on, title cards pop up during the movie to give info and crack a joke or two. The movie moves along briskly, something that I always enjoy. It was fun to watch even if it's not much more than average to me. I'd watch it again someday but I doubt that I'd buy a copy.

Vibes 1988

I didn't notice back in February that there was a new Blu-ray of Vibes. It's a 1988 romantic comedy with paranormal and supernatural stuff going on. I already had a DVD of the movie but this is one of my favorite movies so I decided to splash out and buy the Blu-ray anyway. Like the 2009 Sony DVD the Mill Creek Blu-ray has no extra features.

The movie opens with a couple of guys, Ramon Bieri and Michael Lerner, being lead through the jungle by a guide. They come to a heap of stones which turn out to be an ancient pyramid. The men shoot the guide when he tries to stop them from breaking open the stone peak. Once the stone is chipped off, it reveals a pyramid of glowing light. Ramon touches it and starts speaking in tongues, Michael grabs him and an electrical arc tosses him aside. Ramon disappears into nothing and we cut to New York.

Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum play psychics who meet at a conference held by Julian Sands. Cyndi can speak to a dead lady named Louise and Jeff can hold an object and tell you it's history and who had hold of it. Cyndi gets a visit from Peter Falk, he's got a story about a lost son and he needs a psychic to find him. He's got 50 grand to pay for help, Cyndi recruits Jeff and the trio set off for Ecuador.

Peter's story quickly unravels, it turns out that he thinks there's a lost city of gold in the mountains. Turns out Michael Lerner was his partner, they go visit him in the hospital, where he dies. Googy Gress plays a creepy physic that's teamed up with Julian Sands to get to the pyramid first. They know there's more than gold there. They all converge on the pyramid and there's a bit of gun fire, speaking in tongues and flashing lights, some of them don't make it back down the mountain. Finally after all their bickering Cyndi and Jeff get together only to be interrupted by Peter Falk.

The story was by Deborah Blum, Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, Lowell and Babaloo wrote the screenplay and Ken Kwapis directed. It was panned by critics and didn't make any money. It cost $18 mill and didn't make back $2 mill. Even though there's been a DVD for the last 11 years that couldn't have been a big money spinner, in 2014 Sony let Mill Creek have the DVD rights. Still, I've always liked it. I know it's not a great movie and not all the jokes are good but it's fun and the baddies get theirs. I'll certainly watch it again.

W 1983

W is a 1983 Filipino film about some scummy drug gang lords and the cops after them. Willy Milan wrote and directed. The film is also known as W Is War, W: La Vengeance Des Sauvages, Kersantti W - nykyajan Mad Max (Sergeant W - Modern Day Mad Max), Vendicator W, and Firestorm - Die letzte Schlacht.

That's all the baddies on the VHS cover. The head baddie is called Nosfero and he's the guy in the fancy uniform with the red sleeves. He has a pigtail growing out of the side of his bald head. He's a violent lunatic with a leather clad army of thugs. Don't worry, they're easily killed.

 

W in the title refers to W2, that's the code name of the cop investigating Nosfero. The drug gang have a base and that's eventually where W2 and the force attack. The first hour of the 90 min movie has various smaller encounters between the cops and the gang plus too much melodrama with W2 and his wife, the last half hour is nearly all battle time. That battle tries to capture the look of Mad Max 2 but doesn't quite pull it off. At least they have plenty of extras for the fight scenes. Lots of explosions too.

 

There's a link to the movie in the title above. You might get a kick out of it, for any number of reasons. I think it tries to emulate the over the top Hong Kong action crime films of the time but it's hasn't enough money or talent behind it. There were enough odd moments that it kept me going to the end. It's not available on DVD as far as I can see. There had been a VHS release, which is now pretty rare. I read of a DVD release but did not see any listed anywhere I normally look. The VHS isn't even listed on eBay. Luckily there are people who post such thing to YouTube and the like. It's often much better to see a movie before buying it. This is that sort of movie.

Friday Night Movies 767

First up is the 1982 film Parasite, it's directed by Charles Band from a script by Alan J Adler, Michael Shoob and Frank Levering. It's a bit in the future, the cities have some sort of corrupt government, but there's not much going on out in the country. A scientist, contaminated by a parasite in the work place, runs off into the desert. He stops at a small town and infests several of the townies before most everyone is killed. An agent of the gov is on his trail but like most everyone in the film, he's incompetant and winds up blown to pieces in the desert. Cherie Currie, of The Runaways fame, plays one of the locals, she dies too.

Robert Glaudini plays the scientist, he survives, and so does Demi Moore in one of her early roles. Sadly, it's not that good. I was getting dulled to sleep about the half way mark, it did pick up a bit after that. The actors are all over the place, quality wise, and they don't have much interesting dialog. Things the characters do, often make little sense. Stan Winston was one of three credited for the special effects, I don't know what he did, but hardly any of it was inspired. I'm not going to be picking up a copy, I had already downloaded a copy off of YouTube. That'll do if I ever want to see what happened again. I doubt that will come up anytime soon.

36.15 code Père Noël is a French film from 1989. It was released in the US as Game Over. It's very much like a creepy death-filled Home Alone, except it's much better. It's not really a comedy but I was getting some laughs. The writer and director is René Manzor, this is his second film and he's still at it. He directed an episode of Highlander and a couple of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that were set in France. The rest of his work is mostly unfamiliar to me.

It's about a ten year old boy who believes in Santa. A crazy guy is fired at the kid's mom's store for being a slapping Santa. The Santa learns of a late delivery to the mom's house and he sneaks aboard the truck. He kills the driver and the caretakers before breaking into the mom's mansion. She owns a big store in Paris and it's the last shopping before Christmas so she's at work until late. It's the poor kid and his feeble grandpa that have to survive until someone comes to help.

It's nicely dark and there's a nice sense of humor. The acting was fairly good, especially the kid and the grandfather. I'd consider getting a copy but the DVD is only from Germany and $25 on Amazon. I wound up with a copy, not that great looking, from YouTube. You can see it in the link above. You might enjoy it.

Friday Night Movies 765

The VelociPastor is a 2018 movie about a priest who becomes a velociraptor and kills baddies. It was written and directed by Brendan Steere. I don't know who did the poster but the dino that the pastor turns into does not look like that. It looks like this.

Wow, just fuckin' wow! I guess you can't expect much with a $35,000 budget. In many ways it's a lot like a Troma release. Not always a bad thing. A good bit of the movie is shot in the woods, the same spot is used for modern day China, modern day USA and 1960s Vietnam. It's in China that the Pastor gets hold of the magical dinosaur tooth that turns him into a dino. It doesn't always turn him into the complete creature, often it's just his hands that turn into claws. Still fine for killing scum.

The Pastor joins up with a prostitute to wipe out criminals and the police are on their trail. There's plenty of running about and yelling, some bad fights and worse dialog. It's got a bit of good sense of humor but not enough to make me like the movie more than a 5 on the IMDb. That's being a bit generous, as I did get a few laughs from the movie's more ludicrous moments. Unintentional laughs but you take what you can get. You can see it's IMDb score of 5.9 is heavily skewed by the 20% of the users that voted it a 10. Are they deluded or are they the director and his pals? Not one I would pick up.

Dangerous Men is another that I'm going to skip on picking up for myself. It's a movie that was made back in 1984 and it had a showing in 1985. The film maker John S Rad edited it for 20 years before finally releasing it in 2005. Rad rented 5 theaters in LA for a week and the ticket sales were $2238. John is really Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad, he produced, wrote, directed, co-edited the movie, and wrote the music. It got a video release in 2015 but John had passed away 8 years before.

It's a crime movie, with a rape revenge sort of story. Melody Wiggins and Coti Cook play a young couple, they're on the beach when they encounter a couple of bikers. The bikers plan to rape Melody but Coti puts up a fight and kills one of the bikers. The other biker kills Coti and distraught over his friend starts to walk away. Melody runs after him, convincing him to take her with him. She convinces him she wants a real man and he takes her along to a motel. She fucks him up good with a steak knife. On the run Melody gets a ride from an older guy who tries to rape her in the desert. She gets the advantage, strips him of his clothes and leaves him naked in the desert. The movie cuts back and forth between Melody and the naked guy int he desert for a quite a while. He's lucky to only get a sunburn on his nob. He could have been leaving other fluids on the desert.

Melody picks up a prostitute and pumps her for info on the dangerous streets and people. She kills some johns and a pimp. The cop is still on her trail. She's eventually arrested in a park and doesn't appear in the rest of the film. The action follows the cop as he busts a white biker named Black Pepper. It ends in a clumsy way.

The whole movie is just generally clumsy, poor dialog, story elements that make little sense, goofy music, bad acting, crappy fight scenes, all the sort of things that make people laugh at this non-comedy. The IMDb Trivia page has some interesting tidbits.

Jahangir Salehi died in 2007 and never lived to see the movie receive a full national distribution from Drafthouse Films in 2015. However, his daughter, when later interviewed, said she was not sure he would have understood the film's place as a "so bad it's good" movie. At a midnight screening he was able to attend before his death, he referred to everyone laughing in the theater as "just a bunch of drunk people."

The car which is pushed down into a gorge belonged to Jahangir Salehi's daughter. Even though she had paid for the car herself, Jahangir took the car without her permission and only told her she would never see it again. It wasn't until 20 years later when she saw the film that she learned what had happened to it.

Melody Wiggins, who plays Mina, the would-be main character, broke her leg during filming in the 1980s and refused to return to production after Jahangir Salehi would not cover any of her medical expenses.

Sadly it's just not good enough to enjoy much. How sadly deluded the director must have been. It gets a 4.4 on the IMDb and that seems high to me. I gave it a 3. You can see a copy on YouTube in the link in the title above.

Cobra 1986

Someone was nice enough to lend me a copy of the Shout Factory Blu-ray of Cobra, the 1986 Sylvester Stallone action film. Sylvester wrote the screenplay, sort of basing it on a Paula Gosling novel called Fair Game. George P Cosmatos is the director. The Blu-ray came out last January and it looks pretty good. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen the movie. I wasn't watching a lot of action films in the 80s, trips to the theater were limited and there was someone else to help pick the films.

Sylvester is a cop in LA, Bridgette Nielsen is a model that witnesses a murder. Brian Thompson plays the murderer, dubbed the Night Slasher, he's killed at least 16 people when we meet him. The Night Slasher and his minions come after her. Sylvester is put in charge of keeping Bridgette safe. He's got Reni Santoni and Lee Garlington on his team. We know Lee is secretly part of the Night Slasher's gang. They are a bunch of shit bags who believe they are meant to kill the weak. They mostly die like they are the weak ones. The body count is huge, well over 50 people take a dirt nap. It was picked on for being too violent but people put asses in seats to the tune of $160 million. The film cost $25 million.

I enjoyed it and would pick one up if it gets cheaper. There's a commentary with the director that wasn't too bad. There are interviews with the cast and a vintage featurette that were OK. The only thing that I didn't like much was the soundtrack, I sure didn't care for some of that 80s pop.

Hanna D: The Girl From Vondel Park 1984

Hanna D: The Girl From Vondel Park is a 1984 Italian exploitation movie that was filmed in Amsterdam. Rino Di Silvestro is the director and he co-wrote the script with Hervé Piccini. It's a bit of sleaze about a woman who gets hooked on heroin and turns to prostitution. There's plenty of nudity, hookers, scumbags, filthy streets and a good level of general sleaziness. There's just nothing special about it, an average bit of tat.

Flesh And Bullets 1985

Flesh And Bullets is a 1985 Carlos Tabolina film that borrows heavily from Strangers On A Train. It's one of the films in the Vinegar Syndrome 5 Films 5 Years Blu-ray set. Carlos directed nearly 50 films in his career, most of them porn, but this is a light hearted romantic crime film with some nudity. I just picked up a couple of Carlos's other pictures, both with John Holmes as Casanova, and hope to get to them soon. I also have Sexual Kung Fu In Hong Kong on another set to watch. Eventually.

A couple of guys meet in a bar in Las Vegas. They're both broke because of alimony and child support. They plot to kill each other's wives but wind up falling for them. Other things complicate the plot but it all works out in the end. There are small parts for Yvonne De Carlo, Aldo Ray, Cesar Romero, Cornel Wilde, Robert Z'dar and Colleen Brennan.

It was sort of funny but not too funny. It might be the most amiable film in the set but it's still below average. You can see if you like it much by clicking on the link to the film on YouTube.

Cheerleaders Wild Weekend 1979

Cheerleaders Wild Weekend is a 1979 Kristine DeBell movie. D W Gilbert and Jason Williams wrote the screenplay and Jeff Werner directed. Jason Williams played the main character in Flesh Gordon, a naughty version of Flash Gordon. He plays one of the kidnappers in CWW and the White Knight in Alice In Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy. The latter is Kristine DeBell's first movie and though it was released as an R rated film at first, Producer Bill Osco put the hardcore scenes back into the film and released it again. It's been on DVD and Blu-ray but it seems to go out of print quickly. Kristine was only did the one hardcore film and then managed to slip into film and TV without much trouble. She appeared with Jackie Chan in Battle Creek Brawl.

Cheerleaders Wild Weekend is about the kidnapping of some cheerleaders. Jason Williams plays the head of the gang and Kristine is one of the nice cheerleaders. Unlike most of the other cheerleaders she keeps her clothes on during the movie. Kristine has a commentary and an interview on the disc where she mentions she had a no nudity clause in her contract. There's still plenty of other nudity. Good thing, it's not that great a movie.

The baddies keep the girls hidden in a cabin in the woods. They want 2 million smackaroonies for the girls. Jason has an elaborate plan for the transfer of the money that works pretty well. If the cops are any slower on the uptake they would have caught Jason and his pal as they ran off. I enjoyed it but wasn't impressed at the film making etc. It's all pretty average or below. I gave it a 4 and that's kind of generous. Still, I got a laugh or two.