On the Beach (1959)

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

“On the Beach” is not so much about the end of the world, as it is about a large group of people who have to come to terms with the fact that they will die very soon. As most of the world has been destroyed by nuclear radiation, survivors have huddled in a small town in Australia far away from the fallout. But they soon learn it’s headed their way thanks to wind currents, and there’s no stopping it. We then view the requiem of mankind, as government officials continue to struggle to find a way to solve the problem, and then face that there’s simply no solution.

From there on, we follow a small group or characters that have managed to find a temporary safe haven from the radiation and rather than submit to panic and terror, they use their last days of sealing old scars, confronting old conflicts, and saying goodbye to the ones they love dear. Among a brilliant cast of performers like Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, and more, Kramer visits various ideas about life’s regrets and unfulfilled potential we never reach thanks to death.

Most tragic of the dilemmas involves Peter Holmes who has a beautiful newborn daughter, and knows that she won’t be able to see it through a year. He and his wife Mary are constantly embroiled in the lingering reminder of apparent death, while Mary is in pure denial and is certain all is not lost, especially when a crew journeys into the city in a submarine to answer the Morse code SOS from an apparent survivor. The most interesting element of “On the Beach” is the idea of the inevitability of death, and how one must accept it as a phase of life whether it approaches sooner or later.

“On the Beach” is one of the few thrillers that never attempts to sugar coat what is inescapable, and Stanley Kramer further induces that theme as he features desolate cityscapes of the highly radiated San Diego void of any human life or corpses, as well as droves of people lining up at hospitals to receive their cyanide pills. Even moments of happiness like fishing and romance are blanketed with sheer dread. Director Kramer’s drama is a bleak and heart wrenching tale of the end of the world, and a beautiful masterpiece about humanity’s last days for better and for worse.

Sinister Squad (2016)

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Once again The Asylum tip toes all the way to the finish line to avoid copyright infringement, offering up their own third hand version of “Suicide Squad.” Relying heavily on public domain characters and concepts, “Sinister Squad” isn’t your usual terrible Asylum fare. It’s more lackluster and tedious with a lot of the cast seemingly pushed in to mirroring the personalities they saw in trailers for “Suicide Squad.”

So star Johnny Rey Diaz is so not the Joker as a green haired maniac with odd teeth named Rumplestiltskin, while Talia A. Davis is so not Harley Quinn, as the mad red queen who is hopelessly in love with Rumplestiltskin. These stock fairy tale villains are assembled by Alice (a very fetching Christina Licciardi) who is left with no choice to call upon these baddies when their own Carabosse, who is so not Enchantress, breaks out to enact her own evil scheme. She plans to unleash the evil Death (can’t copyright Death), who with his cult, wants to either dominate the world, or garner a final form on Earth to rule over the realm.

It’s never clear what Death intends to do with Carabosse working with him, nor is there a whole lot of explanation as to where a piece of Alice’s looking glass factors in. Either way, like most Asylum productions, “Sinister Squad” is set in one place, primarily Asylum’s studios, where the entirety of the movie unfolds. Every action scene, dramatic confrontation, fight sequence, shoot out, and magic battle ensues within the corridors of the warehouses owned by Asylum, adding to the bargain basement aesthetic the film tries to side step so eagerly.

Aside from Licciardi, the only cast member who really rises above the tedium is Nick Principe who has a good time adding some variety to such a broadly sketched character, and tries to turn the generally boring villain in to a memorable nemesis. “Sinister Squad” is yet another knock off from The Asylum hoping to make some quick cash from easily confused foreigners, and relatives looking for a cheap present on the way to a third cousin’s birthday party. Only the morbidly curious need apply.

Now available on VOD.

First Degree (2016)

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Phil Hall

Two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Roger Weisberg (“Sound and Fury,” “Why Can’t We Be a Family Again?”) helmed this intriguing documentary short on efforts by New York’s notorious Sing Sing Prison to reduce recidivism through higher education.

A primary force in this endeavor is Sean Pica, who first came to Sing Sing as a 16-year-old convict—he earned his Bachelor’s Degree while incarcerated and later returned to run the prison’s program in conjunction with Mercy College. Also interviewed is Jermaine Archer, a former drug dealer and convicted murderer who is banking on his degree to help facilitate a successful reintegration with the outside world. Also included here is graduation ceremony within the prison—and no less a figure than legendary singer/actor Harry Belafonte is the commencement speaker, offering an upbeat pep talk for the unlikely student body.

The film details how the program also provides job-hunting consultation involving work-appropriate clothing, resume writing and interview training. One graduate, Clarence Maclin, benefits from this last boost and is able to gain work as a social worker counseling juvenile offenders. There is also a financial consideration of how the investment in education proves to be more cost-effective: recidivism among graduates of the Sing Sing program is miniscule.

Sadly, “First Degree” has a troubling post-script: funding for this type of program has been shrinking over the years while the U.S. prison population is ballooning. Hopefully, this well-made and moving tribute to the power of education can help change minds and bring more money back to this worthy cause.

Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides (2015)

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Phil Hall

The directors of this documentary short—Lucy Craft, Karen Kasmauski and Kathryn Tolbert—are journalists whose fathers were U.S. service members stationed in post-World War II Japan and whose mothers were among the tens of thousands of so-called “Japanese war brides.”

The three Japanese women profiled here—Hiroko Furukawa, Emiko Fukumoto and Atsuko Onda—frankly acknowledge to their daughters that they did not marry strictly for romantic reasons, but because they were eager to leave the economic chaos of Japan in favor of the chance of a better life across the Pacific. However, their only knowledge of the American way of life came from movies and the mostly positive impressions of the Americans involved in the occupation period.

Although the U.S. military was initially opposed to these marriages—in many states, interracial marriage was illegal—it quickly realized that it was unable to prevent fraternizing between U.S. military men and Japanese women. The military switched gears and worked to educate the Japanese women on what they should expect in their American lives—albeit with lessons on baking cakes and wearing make-up.

But once they arrived in the U.S., the challenges faced by the women in their new country were significant. Their spouses’ families were not entirely pleased with their presence, while the wider society was not eager to embrace the mixed raced marriages. The women also faced numerous problems in assimilating into the behavioral patterns of their adopted homes, especially when it came to raising children—strict Japanese parental expectations were dramatically out of step with the more leisurely American approach to raising children, which created additional stress in their households.

At 26 minutes, the film barely scratches the surface on the lives of the directors’ mothers or the wider social upheaval created by the war brides. (The thoughts of the men that married them are not recorded in this film.) But, nonetheless, it offers an intriguing glimpse into a long-forgotten chapter of post-World War II history.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

It’s not often that filmmakers strive to set themselves apart from what’s been widely embraced by the horror community and manage to properly redefine a subgenre. Before “Return of the Living Dead” fans accepted the walking dead shambled slowly toward you and ate flesh, but Dan O’Bannon transformed his zombies in to undead crack heads. Said undead crack heads bolted toward their prey like lightning, were devilishly clever, and craved human brains as a source of nourishment. Though “Return of the Living Dead” has a remarkable sense of humor and will inspire a lot of uneasy laughs from the audience, it’s through and through a creepy horror thriller about groups of people fending off undead monsters from every corner while trying to escape Kentucky as it’s ravaged by brain eating ghouls.

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Devil Girl (2007)

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Emilie Black

In an isolated desert town, a girl travelling cross country after the death of her father has car trouble after a drag race. This forces her to stay in town for a while which means finding a place to stay, getting work, and mingling with the locals. She ends up dealing with a weird motel owner, a preacher with odd leanings, a clown-faced man, and a stunning devil girl.

“Devil Girl” is directed by Howie Askins who co-wrote with Tracy Wilcox Gillie. The story they put together here should be a great story considering its components, but instead of focusing on the titular Devil Girl, they relegate her to a few too short appearances, letting the film be about Fay, the girl on a road trip who ends up working as a stripper to survive. The story also has a clown who seems to have been added for shock and weirdness factor which he does bring , but for all his screen time, he has very little impact on the story until the very end where he could easily have a been replaced.

The characters are decently written but not given much of interest to do. The few twists and turns in the story are not quite enough to make it riveting or even all that interesting. Most of the cast gives ok performances with few stand-outs. Lead actress Jessica Graham gets the most screen time and gives a good performance through most of it but she does look absolutely bored in a few scenes, most specifically the strip club scenes where once can guess she was trying to convey discomfort or shame as she did get the job reluctantly. The one actress who really stands out the most and only gets a few scenes is Vanessa Kay who is the Devil Girl.

She has a very short time to make an impression but makes the most of it with a performance full of glee and charm, giving good reason for the movie to be named after her minor character. With a film called Devil Girl, one would expect more of a horror film but this is not it. There is a little blood and some special effects; the design of the Devil Girl is pretty and sexy, her outfit being nearly nothing but red paint, which leads to a stunning attractive presence on screen for the curvy actress. The main point of interest here, outside of the red hot girl, is the cars. A bunch of old school muscle cars, racing each other and being eye candy.

For all of its muscle cars and the sexiness of the title character, the film is quite bland, boosting a group of basic, expected desert town settings and a lackluster story. The film uses occasionally shaky camera and a lot of mild grindhouse looks to add to its story but it just doesn’t grab the viewer to make them care. The last act twist basically kills the entire film and story built so far.

The Belle of Samoa (1929)

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Phil Hall

Unless you are a die-hard aficionado of the films of the late 1920s and early 1930s, there is a good chance that you never heard of the comedy team of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough. This duo worked their way up from the rough-and-tumble worlds of circus entertainment and vaudeville before reaching Broadway stardom in the mid-1920s. When Hollywood jettisoned the silent movies in favor of “talking pictures,” Clark and McCullough were among the many Broadway headliners to find their way to Hollywood.

In 1928 and 1929, Clark and McCullough starred in14 shorts produced by the Fox studio. Sadly, all but two of these films are considered lost: “Waltzing Around” (1929), which exists in private collections and is available for exhibition at the moment, and “The Belle of Samoa” (1929), which can be found in an unauthorized YouTube posting. (The team later made short films at RKO, but most of their work for that studio is not easily accessible for contemporary review.)

The comedy of Clark and McCullough has been polarizing among many film scholars – some praise the duo for bringing a rough anarchy to the medium, while others bemoan the uneven distribution of comedy that favored Clark’s motor-mouthed antics while McCullough was often treated like a glorified onlooker to the mayhem. In some ways, the comics never truly found a comfortable transition from stage to screen, particularly Clark with his painted-on eyeglasses and his tendency to enunciate as if he was still playing to the last seat in the balcony. The theatricality of their act is clearly demonstrated in “The Belle of Samoa,” which is presented like a filmed record of a stage revue.

The film opens with the duo walking on stage wearing funny clothing – Clark has a fez and oversized coat while McCullough wears a porkpie hat and plaid pants – and immediately announce that they are in Samoa. They knock on a door and are greeted by a large, somber man wearing greasepaint make-up and a wild wig – this was the 1929 Hollywood idea of a Samoan native. The man is the guard at a sacred temple of the maidens of Samoa, and he tells the interlopers, “Speak softly.” Clark takes the instruction with flippancy, announcing, “Oh, it is a speakeasy!”

After tricking the guard with a gambling distraction, Clark and McCullough race inside and they find the temple consists of young women who are wearing exotic garb that seems closer to an Arabian Nights fantasy than a Samoan village. “All of these flappers are looking for a man!” Clark exclaims before a Samoan princess (played by Lois Moran, a popular film star of the era who was transitioning into talkies). Clark feels that McCullough is crimping his style and whacks him in the chest with a cane, to which McCullough moans, “Oooooh, my operation!” Clark then explains McCullough to the princess by stating, “That’s my valet – he look like a hill, but he’s really a valet.”

Just when it feels like Clark is wearing out his welcome, a curtain passes across the stage to signal a change of scene. For the next several minutes, the audience is treated to an extended musical sequence starring Filoi and her army of 60 Samoan singers and dancers. After this interlude, Clark and McCullough return to face death by beheading for defiling the maidens’ temple. The princess begs her father to spare the duo, and their salvation is rewarded by the princess performing a decidedly non-Samoan pop ditty while backed with her own small army of singers and dancers. At the end, everyone runs out on stage to take a bow.

Admittedly, “The Belle of Samoa” is no one’s idea of a classic. But it offers an idea of what Clark and McCullough’s Broadway offerings of that distant era may have looked like. Yes, the comedy is too corny and too politically incorrect for today’s tastes, but it moves with a rapid speed and a heavy sense of self-confidence that compensates for whatever it is missing in the aesthetics department. Clark muffs two lines, but recovers quickly and keeps firing away with his material. McCullough, however, is the real joy – he watches the proceedings with a slacker’s bemusement, and his cackle-voice delivery gives an odd charm to whatever he says. And while the Samoan musical segment requires a bit of patience, Lois Moran’s solo is fun and sexy – and it is a shame that she left films a few years after “The Belle of Samoa,” as she clearly possessed a star power that warranted a longer screen presence.

“The Belle of Samoa” is a hoary and somewhat creaky affair, but it is valuable as a reminder of where American comedy came from.