The Birthday Party 1968 Written by Harold Pinter and directed by William Friedkin. Something that turned up on YouTube, I was attracted to the director and some of the cast. It started out as a play, one that director Friedkin is a big fan of, which the Wikipedia calls a Comedy of menace. I hadn't heard of that genre before but I'm not really into this sort of film.
Robert Shaw is a guest at a boarding house by the sea. There's an older couple, Helen Fraser and Moultrie Kelsall, who run the place. Robert is the only guest, it's late in the season. Two men, Sydney Tafler and Patrick Magee, show up and take a room. Helen tells the two strangers that it's Robert's birthday party and Sydney tells her he'd be glad to help get the party going. As the party goes on Robert becomes more and more agitated at comments made by the two new guests. They seem to know him, from their shared past. It often seems like they share a criminal past but nothing is ever really revealed. The party goes on late and in the morning the two men lead Robert out to their car with the promise of getting him some medical help. Then the movie is over.
I don't know what the fuck was going on and I sat all the way through it. The two new guests certainly had a level of menace and occasionally I laughed. The acting is all top notch but the story leaves me in the lurch. I might not want to see it again. I'm not going out to get the DVD.
The Loch Ness Horror 1982 Another one that I wouldn't need the DVD of, not that there is one. Director Larry Buchanan co-wrote the screenplay with Lynn Shubert. Larry directed a whole lot of low-budget films that deliver a vague story with poor effects, so-so acting talent, and nearly no production values. The Nessie head on a stick was later used in a segment of the sketch comedy movie Amazon Women On The Moon. The image below is from that movie and it was later used as a meme based on a tag line from South Park. I need treefiddy!
It does have a monster, Nessie from Loch Ness. Lake Tahoe is filling in for Scotland. It doesn't really look like the area around Loch Ness but it's better than the quality of the Scottish accents. Wow, they are Dick Van Dyke bad. You know, from when he failed doing a cockney accent in Mary Poppins bad.
There are three subplots, Nessie detection, egg stealing and government cover up. It can barely support them, I'd have dropped the whole military bit and gone full on monster but Larry is a notoriously bad film maker who forges on with out talent or cash. Eventually it's over and I can movie on. You Can check it out in the title above for a copy on YouTube. Not much reason to watch it.
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