Mad Doctor of Blood Island
Madigan
The Massive
Mill of the Stone Women
Mitchell
Monstrosity
The Mutilation Man
Ma
Barker's Killer Brood (B&W,
1960)
Pretty violent movie - two guys are gunned down and a third is burned
alive before the credits even come up. Infamous criminal mastermind Ma
Barker teachers her boys not to be sissies by breaking their violins and
teaching them to rob from the church collection plate instead. Then they
move on to robbing carnivals, which Ma is proud of, but her husband is
appalled at the way she's raising them. She teaches them (the hard way)
that the only crime is getting caught. And it's all because she was ashamed
of having to wear hand-me-down bloomers made from flour sacks when she
was a kid! In a few years they're pulling armored car robberies and machine-gunning
all the guards ('cept the ones Ma runs over in her car). Then they team
up with Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, and other
criminal big shots. One of the Barker kids even has Alvin "Creepy"
Karpis for a cellmate (Creepy kills the guy's pet hamster 'cuz he likes
to hear things squeal when they die). O' course they all get theirs in
the end, but not before causing mass amounts of mayhem - bank robberies,
forced Russian Roulette (before Deer Hunter was even thought up),
kidnapping, plastic surgery (including fingerprints being carved off with
no anesthesia), and shoot-outs). Supposedly this movie was put together
from a TV serial, but that's hard to believe, given the amount and degree
of violence, which is pretty heavy for 1960. Cheap-looking but doesn't
stop moving and delivers the goods... funny in spots due to the extremity
of Ma's criminal zeal. -zwolf
The Mack (C, 1973)
AKA The Mack and His Pack
After getting out of prison a guy named Goldie (Max Julien) sets out to
become the coldest, most successful pimp in history - the Jesus of pimps.
His brother is a black militant who's trying to make things better for
the community and doesn't like what Goldie's doing. Neither do a couple
of corrupt, racist cops, because he's getting away with it and defying
them. Goldie also trains his ho's to steal as a sideline, and takes them
to the Planetarium where he delivers weird cult-leader mind-control speeches.
They also go to Player's Balls and Player's Picnics with other pimps and
hos. When any rivals give him problems, he deals harshly with them; one
guy gets locked in the trunk of his car with a dozen big rats. Another
is forced to stab himself and has dynamite shoved in his mouth. But all
of this builds up some mighty bad karma. One of the biggest blaxploitation
films and one I avoided for years because the poster and presence of Richard
Pryor led me to believe it was some goofy comedy. It's definitely no comedy,
and Pryor's not trying to be funny. Max Julien does a great acting job
because you sense inner conflict throughout (possibly because Max's mother
was a very religious woman and he would never have made this movie if
she'd been alive at the time), and there's unspoken depth to his character.
A lot of the dialogue has ended up in rap songs, and Ice T claims he used
to have a TV and VCR in his car, with only one tape - this one. Plotwise
it's pretty ordinary, but Julien does elevate it - hard to explain, but
it's there. -zwolf
Mad Doctor
of Blood Island (C, 1969) AKA Blood Doctor, Grave Desires,
Tomb of the Living Dead
Second in Eddie Romero's infamous "Blood Island" series, which packed
drive-ins for years. Several visitors to the titular island become potential
prey for a very freaky-looking chlorophyll monster (a guy named Don Ramon
whose chlorophyll disease has turned him into a real mess - a fuzzy, oozy,
rotting fanged-and-clawed abomination so horrifying that the camera can't
even focus properly when he's around - it zooms in and out slightly, just
enough to give you a headache). One guy's there to study the disease,
one is trying to get his mother to leave the island and find out what
happened to his father (who, unfortunately, is Don Ramon). And Angelique
Pettyjohn (who later went on to Star Trek and porn) is there looking
for her father, who's an old drunk. Meanwhile, Dr. Lorca is still conducting
experiments with his monster. It's pretty uninvolving when the monster's
not around, but he sure does wreak some havoc when he is, tearing people
literally to shreds, leaving extremely graphic piles of severed limbs
and internal organs and blood (some green and some red - it's beginning
to look a lot like Christmas!). This was groundbreaking gore and still
more vicious than most - it's worth sitting through the tedious plot to
see it. The monster would return in Beast of Blood. Patrons of
theaters and drive-ins were given vials of "green blood" (colored water)
to drink to protect them from contamination by the monsters onscreen.
You can make do with Kool-Aid at home. -zwolf
Madigan
(C, 1968)
Cop movie directed by Don Siegel - need I say more? Okay, if you insist...
Richard Widmark is hard-nosed, doesn't-always-go-by-the-book detective
Dan Madigan, and Henry Fonda is his displeased boss. Madigan and his partner
goof up an arrest of a guy wanted for murder (he takes their guns and
escapes) and are given 72 hours to recapture the guy. As if that wasn't
enough stress, Madigan's police lifestyle is causing a strain on his relationships
with his wife and his mistress - he doesn't have enough time to spend
with one woman and he's dumb enough to try to keep two. Gritty semi-documentary-style
police procedural,, plus slice-of-life drama with the solid atmosphere,
dialogue, and action scenes you can expect from a master like Siegel.
Nice warm-up for Dirty Harry. -zwolf
Mad Love (B&W, 1935)
Peter Lorre is Dr. Gogol, a talented surgeon... and an accomplished creep.
He attends a theatrical horror show every night because he's obsessively
in love with the lead actress (or at least with watching her be tortured
in the show). Lucky for her, she's already married to a concert pianist
named Stephen Orlack (Colin Clive, the guy who played Victor Frankenstein),
so Gogol has to make do by buying a wax statue of her from the theatre
lobby, and satisfies his bloodlust by watching guillotine executions.
When Orlack's hands are crushed in a train wreck, Gogol grafts on new
ones - the hands of a murderous knife-thrower who was recently decapitated.
Orlack notices that his new hands like throwing knives and he thinks they
want to kill, so Gogol capitalizes on this, knifing Orlack's father and
posing as the dead knife-thrower (an utterly creepy-looking get-up with
metal hands and a big neckbrace to hold his supposedly-reattached head
on, his voice a whispery hiss), framing Orlack for murder and trying to
drive him mad in hopes of getting Orlack's wife for himself. Extremely
bizarre, atmospheric, shadowy horror film with plenty of craziness in
the second half... Lorre really goes brilliantly over-the-top. The director,
Karl Freund, went on to work on the I Love Lucy TV series. The
story was originally made as a silent in 1924, The Hands Of Orlac.
-zwolf
Mafia Vs. Ninja (C,
1984)
Alexander Lou comes to Shanghai hoping to earn a living with his fists.
Instead he shovels shit for ten bucks a month and then has to fight off
thugs to keep it. About that time a local gang decides to sell out to
the Japanese and kill their old boss, since he doesn't approve of their
criminal activities. Alexander and his pals save the boss from an attack,
and then Alexander's nearly tricked into delivering a bomb to him. Since
the assassination attempts haven't worked, the Japanese send in ninja
and a black fighter and Italian knife thrower. They do all kinds of amazing,
gimmicky tricks. Alexander, who's now working for the boss, has his work
cut out for him, especially when the boss is killed and the organization
wiped out. But Alexander promised the dying boss that the Japanese would
never sell drugs in Shanghai. So he and his friend keep up the fight,
wasting ninja and goofy swordsmen and even finding time to deliver a well-deserved
comeuppance to some racist nightclubbers. Basically it's a fairly serious
story but with laughably cartoonish characters, and with legitimately
good fight choreography mixed with unbelievable gimmicky ninja-power stuff,
accomplished via hilarious special effects (wait'll you see the grass-clumps
on strings that are supposed to be burrowing ninja!) and cheapo gore.
This all adds up to something that's a hell of a lot of fun even if it's
not all that dignified. And - oh yeah - there's no Mafia in the movie...
-zwolf
Manhunter (C, 1986)
Tense modern noir film from Michael Mann, director of TV's Miami Vice.
A detective who's a specialist in tracking down serial killers is called
out of semi-retirement to find a nut called the Tooth Fairy (because he
leaves bite marks on his victims). The detective is on the edge and learns
about the killer by thinking like him, which makes him almost go insane.
A well-made police procedural that goes into great detail on investigation
tactics. Riveting enough, but not much action. No gore. The versions broadcast
on TV contain extra footage, which mainly consists of the detective's
relationship with his wife, and a visit to the family who would have been
next. Based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, and if they
had called the movie Red Dragon it might have done better at the
box office, because the novel sold well. Most notable to most viewers
as the first appearance of Hannibal Lector, the scary guy from Silence
Of The Lambs, although he's got a minor role here and is played by
Brian Cox, not Anthony Hopkins. -zwolf
Mania (B&W, 1960) AKA The
Flesh and the Fiends, The Fiendish Ghouls, Psycho-Killers
Atmospheric British re-telling of the true story of Burke and Hare. Peter
Cushing plays lazy-eyed Dr. Knox, who takes delivery of grave-robbed corpses
for dissecting, to train medical students in anatomy. It's crime for a
good cause, since what they learn will save lives. The problem is, the
two scurvy creeps who've been robbing the graves decide to up their profits
by killing people - the bodies are fresher and there's none of that strenuous
digging. Donald Pleasance (in a top hat) is one of the brutal killers...
murder doesn't bother him but he has a morbid fear of rats. His friend
Burke rents out a room, and most of the would-be lodgers end up as victims.
Meanwhile, Knox is highly arrogant, calling other doctors quacks and making
enemies. One of his students is slumming with a bar girl, and everybody
ends up regretting everything. A convincing atmosphere of squalor pervades
this period piece, which could almost pass for a Hammer film. Strong stuff,
with some graphic violence. Some of the lowlife accents can be a bit hard
to make out in spots, so pay attention. Luckily, that shouldn't be difficult...
-zwolf
Manos, The Hands of Fate
(C, 1966) AKA Lodge of Sins
When an El Paso fertilizer salesman named Hal Warren tried for a
career change and went into movie-making, he ended up still selling shit.
In recent years, thanks to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 exposure,
this has usurped the Plan 9 throne as worst movie ever made. Hal
bet friends he could make a popular horror movie for $19,000, and, sadly,
probably gave it his best shot, using a script he wrote himself, starring
himself as the inept dad, and using a silent hand-held camera that could
only hold 30 seconds worth of film at a time. The dialogue (and repetitive
jazz noodling soundtrack) were dubbed in later, badly. A small family
- idiot dad, a mom whose only emotion seems to be a constant state of
panic attack, a little girl who's always whining about something, and
a poodle named Peppy - get lost and end up at "the Master's house," a
shabby little place looked after by a guy named Torgo. Torgo is a unique
creation, played by a drug addict with family problems who committed suicide
by O.D. soon after the movie was made (two other cast members killed themselves,
too). He's supposed to be a satyr, but the movie never explains this,
so you wonder why the hell the thighs and knees of his pants are stuffed
with loads of padding. He twitches and flinches and spazzes and blinks
like he's on dope, has a hillbilly hat and beard, and wobbles around like
a drunk trying to walk and crap his pants at the same time. When he talks
it's kind of goatish, and he often repeats himself. He made the costume
himself, and it included cloven hooves, but those never really make it
onscreen, because the whole movie's framed really badly. It's worth sitting
through this tedium just to see Torgo. Finally they meet the Master, a
bossy "not dead the way you know it" goof who sleeps on a rock
in the back yard and wears a robe decorated with giant hands. There's
a big "hand" motiff to the movie. "Manos," o' course, is Spanish for "hands,"
Torgo carries a staff with a hand on it, and the Master eventually burns
off one of Torgo's hands, after having his wives (truck-stop whores in
nightgowns who are chained to columns when they're not wrestling each
other) kill Torgo by... well, touching him a lot, I think, or maybe just
handling him roughly. It doesn't look deadly... hell, it doesn't even
look like it'd raise a bruise. But, hey. Then, there's a surprise ending.
A lot of this is extended (minutes at a time) shots of fields going by
through a car window, or people standing around doing nothing. There's
a pointless subplot (if anything about this film qualifies as a "plot")
involving cops hassling a young couple who keep kissing. This was added
because the actress in the car (who's one of the suicides) broke her leg
and couldn't do her original role, and they didn't want to just cut her
out... Truly bad, so bad it's haunting, and already a legend. The only
thing missing is a dance craze inspired by it... "Do the Torgo!" I wish
the DVD included a version without the MST3K bits, but I have to
admit it'd probably be too slow to sit through without them. I'd still
like the chance, though... too bad they didn't make that an extra feature.
The MST3K commentary is funny, but you might want a chance to do
your own, y'know? Essential terribleness. -zwolf
The Manster (B&W,
1960) AKA Nightmare, The Split, The Two-Headed Monster,
Kyofu
A reporter (who's a bit of a dork) visits an amiable mad doctor in Asia,
who slips him a mickey and then injects him with a mystery serum. At first
all it does is make him more of a partier, but soon one of his hands becomes
a hairy claw and he becomes angry, has blackouts, and kills a Buddhist
priest and a couple of women. Then he finds an eye growing on his shoulder,
which finally grows into an entire head (making this the first two-headed
monster flick). His real head gets pretty monstery-looking, too, and the
extra one has teeth sticking several inches out of its mouth. The police
try to catch him/them, but he manages to evade them and finally splits
into two separate beings! Pretty memorable, even if the scientist's caged,
mutated wife is creepier looking than the two-headed thing. -zwolf
Mantis Fists and Tiger Claws
(C, 1977) AKA Mantis Fist and Tiger Claws of Shaolin
An expert martial artist finds his long-lost sister through the well-established
kung fu movie device of the each-has-one-half-of-a-jade-medallion trick.
She's working as a prostitute in a brothel, and he wants to buy her freedom.
The only problem is that the gangsters who run the joint think he killed
one of their friends, so in a battle over a wine bottle and an attack
by a guy with a spiked plate on his back, our hero is poisoned and beaten.
Going into hiding, he recovers with some help. And that's when things
get really, really weird. Using a spinning butterfly knife, one of the
good guys squares off against a bad guy who uses a dart-throwing spear,
while something - apparently a were-mantis, half-mantis and half-human
- is slaughtering dozens. You see giant mantis legs waving around in point-of-view
shots, and finally the whole monster, which you have to see to believe.
Yep. Pretty good kung fu that hangs one big tire-smoking, hubcap-slinging
left turn for the last reel into wacky-horror land. The DVD has French
and Arabic subtitles because it was the only copy found of a film that
would've been lost otherwise. Good thing they could recover it under any
circumstances, and since it's on a DVD with another movie called Duel
of the Brave Ones and the whole shebang'll only set you back around
eight bucks, you can't go wrong. -zwolf
Mantis in Lace (C, 1968) AKA Lila
A topless dancer named Lila is introduced to LSD by a wimpy guy with a
dangly earring. While they're having sex in Lila's cluttered warehouse
room, she hallucinates blurry colors, patterns projected on faces, things
like that. She freaks out, stabs her lover with a screwdriver, then hacks
him up with a meat cleaver that just happened to be nearby... all because
she thought he was a bunch of bananas, and she hates bananas.
Next she picks up Stuart Lancaster (the dirty old man from Faster Pussycat
Kill! Kill!) and thinks he's a doctor, so she chops him up and then
laughs and says, "You look so funny like that!" While she's tripping
and trapping, the police are looking for whoever's leaving all these bodies
around. Their investigation takes them to a lot of topless joints. Titties
make good padding for these kind of movies. Meanwhile, Lila uses a hoe
to kill a fat guy (or maybe it was a cantaloupe or a pinata). The story
part of the movie would take about ten minutes; it's all padded to the
point of preponderance by very softcore sex (which looks more like "making
out") that goes on for ten minutes at a stretch, and if you're into endless
footage of a girl sucking her belly in and out then this will be your
favorite movie ever. It's really not much of anything unless you're fixated
on titties, but it does have some nice Lazlo Kovacs cinematography amidst
the tedium. One of Harry Novak's Box Office International's weaker efforts.
There's supposedly a shorter, more horror-oriented edit of this film,
which would be a lot better, but the people at Something Weird are a bunch
of horny little boys, so the DVD is all just jiggle. It has lots of extras
to make up for that, though. Still, as is, it's a tiresome film with an
undeserved reputation for greatness. -zwolf
Man Wanted (C, 1995) AKA Wang
Jiao de tian kong
Simon Yam stars as an undercover cop who's been on an assignment for years,
becoming buddies with a crimelord named Feng. After Yam finally busts
the crime ring (which feels like a betrayal, since they were such good
friends), Feng is presumed dead... but resurfaces a year later, asking
for Yam's help and saying that he understands that he was just doing his
job and there are no hard feelings. Yam decides to continue the friendship
but warns Feng that he'll arrest him if he steps out of line... but he
doesn't realize that Feng is setting him up for a frame-job that will
involve both of the women he loves. Action-packed Hong Kong crime drama,
a little more underplayed than John Woo's stuff, but still excellent.
-zwolf
The Man With The Golden Arm
(B&W, 1955)
The harrowing, shabby hell of a smack junkie is depicted in this Otto
Preminger classic, staring Frank Sinatra as "Frankie Machine," a hard-luck
card dealer who's freshly out of jail and de-toxed, wanting nothing more
than a job playing drums and to never touch drugs again. But the pressure
of his clingy, nagging, neurotic helpless wreck of a wife, who's stuck
in a wheelchair (or is at least pretending to be) due to injuries received
when Frankie crashed their car while driving drunk, soon helps the monkey
climb right back onto his back. His secret girlfriend Kim Novak tries
to be a positive influence while his wife and his drug dealer (an unbelievably
slimy Darren McGavin) try to drag him back down. And they're successful.
Gritty, daring-for-its-time drama with great characterization, sleazy
noirish sets, and stark black and white cinematography. Marlon Brando
was originally slated to play the lead role, but Sinatra jumped on it
first, which is probably a good thing, because he's perfect. I don't even
like Sinatra, but he made a couple of good movies with this and Suddenly...
and several companies have cheap (like five bucks!) double-feature DVDs
with both films. That's a deal you shouldn't pass up. -zwolf
Mark of the Devil (C, 1970)
One of the great things about the early '70's was that selling points
like "Likely to upset your stomach!" would guarantee that a
movie would be a big hit. "You mean this movie will make me puke?
Righteous! Gimmie a ticket! If it really makes me puke, I'll go twice!"
Yep, this is the infamous "V for violence" movie where they
handed out "stomach distress bags" when you bought a ticket.
Nice souvenir, but kinda unnecessary - there are plenty of gratuitous
torture scenes, but the effects aren't all that convincing. If you hurled,
it was probably time to change the butter vat in the popcorn dispenser.
Herbert Lom is a witchfinder general who tortures confessions out of women,
because he's impotent and thinks witchcraft caused it. Withered-faced
sicko freak Reggie Nalder also tortures witches, mainly for fun. People
are racked, burned, tarred-and-feathered, get their fingers chopped off,
are branded on the soles of their feet, stabbed with "witch-prickers,"
beaten, tongues are torn out, thumbscrewed, seated over fires, eye-gouged,
water tortured, and all that other stuff that Jerry Falwell would love
to be doing if he could get away with it. Finally the villagers have enough
of the witchfinders and stage an uprising, resulting in bloody revenge.
Some nice photography and a nice sleazy atmosphere, but for witchfinder
movies you're better off with The Conqueror Worm. Still, this is
worth checking out for the sick-minded, among whose number I proudly count
myself, and I'll give you five bucks to show this as a "historical,
educational film" to a church group. With Udo Kier from all those
Andy Warhol horror flicks, and people with the lovely names-that-form-a-sentence,
Herbert Fux and Gabby Fuchs. -zwolf
Martial Monks of Shaolin Temple
(C, 1983)
Godfrey Ho directed and Dragon Lee stars in this kung fu extravaganza.
The evil guy that Dragon fought in Dragon Claws is back, doing
more evil things. He destroys a Shaolin temple and kills an abbot. Then
a real scumbag with a (swear to God) Snidely Whiplash mustaches trumps
up charges against his enemies and then uses a ridiculously large sword
(it's so big it has a smaller sword inside it) to fight a vengeance-seeking
monk named Master of Shaolin Temple. Then Dragon fights some guys who
try to steal his backpack, then heads to town and does a show where he
pokes his head through some holes and lets people try to decapitate him
and win ten bucks. Dragon and a cute girl named Miss Poon (!) become Master
of Shaolin Temple's students, which leads to some slapstick silliness.
Then they meet up with the bad guys and there's a whole lot of crazy action,
including spear-fighting, nunchuk-fighting, and even some food fighting.
Never lets up, and not badly done. -zwolf
The Massive
(C, 1978) AKA Murder of Murders
A kung fu master thief leaves jade dragonflies at the scenes of his crimes
a trademark. Kam Kong investigates one theft, where everyone is knocked
out with an anesthetic and jewels are taken from them... except Lo Lieh,
who steals from himself to make himself look like a victim. Everybody
thinks he's the Jade Dragonfly, but then he ends up poisoned, and Chi
Kwan Chun, his brother, shows up to investigate his murder, even though
Kam Kong says that's his job. Then a hired killer known as "A
Light In The Dark" shows up, and Kam - as if he didn't have enough on
his plate - has to deal with him, too. Luckily, he's soon dispatched by
a masked guy who uses a bizarre nine-sectioning sword. Then Chi Kwan Chun
has to deal with a guy who has a pipe that fires poison pins, and finds
out that there have been numerous double and triple crosses involving
the stolen jewels, and no one is what they seem. Complex but coherent
plot and has a bit of a Shaw Brothers feel to it, and has good fights
(the DVD would have benefitted from letterboxing, but what DVD wouldn't?)
and some interesting weapons, including mailed fists and a spear with
a whirling point... plus some gruesome arm-breaking at the end. -zwolf
The Master Gunfighter
(C, 1975)
I saw this in the theater when I was 8 years old and thought it was a
little pretentious even then. Now I see it's even goofier than I thought,
although I still like it for its unintentional silliness. Tom Laughlin
tried to create a new mythic hippie hero along the lines of his successful
Billy Jack. But Finley, the master gunfighter/swordsman, just doesn't
quite work, despite all of his mystical gesturing. Of course, he's a guy
who just hates violence, yet engages in it every chance he gets, via a
samurai sword (in old California?) And a 12-shot LeMat pistol (which exists
but is an anachronism here). He is at odds with Don Santiago and his brother-in-law
Paulo Santiago (Ron O'Neal from Superfly) because they keep massacring
villages of Indians in order to steal gold shipments from ships they wreck.
The bleeding-heart plot is very muddled and suffers from mysticism getting
in the way of narrative flow, but the action scenes are okay, if familiar;
Laughlin does a lot of his taking off the hat, rubbing his head and face,
and the here-I-am-forced-again-to-do-this-unpleasant-thing-I-hate-to-do-each-of-the-ten-times-a-day-that-I-do-it
blowing out air stuff to show he's losing his temper... which is really
the only time he shows any emotion. -zwolf
Master of Death (C, 1975)
Kung fu retitle (according to the Ric Meyers commentary track it might
be a movie called Crazy Horse Intelligent Monkey, but it probably
isn't) with intense-looking Chi Kwan Chun studying kung fu for 18 years
prior to setting out after his family's murderers. But there are a lot
of people protecting the killer and so Chi's attacked everywhere he goes.
He plows through them all pretty easily, though. In between brawls, a
beggar girl busts some crooked gamblers in an unrelated side-plot that's
probably footage lifted from another film. Chang Tao shows up to beat
up some of Chi's beggar friends, before going after Chi himself. Then
Lo Lieh and Chen Sing show up for an intense climactic duel involving
a bladed flute that works with a helicopter effect. Why a bladed flute,
I don't know, other than it's unlikely you'd see one anywhere else. Solid
midline kung fu. -zwolf
Master of the Flying Guillotine
(C, 1975) AKA One-Armed Boxer Vs. the Flying Guillotine,
One-Armed Boxer II, Du bi quan wang da po xue di zi
Sequel to The Flying Guillotine (made by a different film company!)
and The One-Armed Boxer stars Jimmy Wang Yu as a one-armed
fighter who has to go against a blind monk who's highly skilled with a
very bizarre weapon - kind of like a bladed wok on a chain that can slice
the heads off of opponents - and who's working for the oppressive Ching
dynasty. Jimmy kills the blind monk's two pupils and becomes the target
of his vengeance. Unaware that he's being stalked, Jimmy takes his students
to watch a big tournament with fighters from all over the place. There's
a guy who uses his braid as a whip, a guy called Win-Without-A-Knife (who,
ironically enough, uses a hidden knife), a guy with iron skin, and - craziest
of all - a yoga master who can extend his arms like he's one of the Fantastic
Four! It's a very good special effect, extremely strange-looking. During
all this excitement, the blind monk shows up and starts aggressively seeking
Jimmy, who has to go into hiding and plan some pretty ingenious booby
traps to deal with the monk and his henchmen. Jimmy Wang Yu was the biggest
kung fu star before Bruce Lee, and despite little real fighting skill
and kind of a weak face, he still manages impressive screen presence,
and his movies are great to watch... and this is one of the best, with
a constant barrage of imaginative craziness. A classic. -zwolf
The Master Touch
(C, 1973) AKA Hearts and Minds, A Man to Respect, Uomo
da rispettare
Kirk Douglas is a master thief who gets out of prison and is immediately
contacted by the mob to rob a million dollar safe protected by a security
system called "Big Ben" - one of the hardest-to-crack security systems
invented. A fly could set it off, but they insist that he tackle it. He
gets a little help from a hard-fighting trapeze-artist friend, Marco.
Marco has a persistent beef going with a mob henchman whom he beat up
in a traffic altercation; this leads to several other fistfights and one
of the craziest over-the-top car chases you'll ever see (I can't even
start to describe what happens, but it's worth seeking out the movie for
- available in Brentwood's Crime Wave 10-DVD box set). Kirk discovers
an easily-exploitable flaw in Big Ben's programming and starts training
Marco to crack it. Then they go in, each taking a different location as
part of a convoluted plan, using high tech equipment and ingenious methods.
And of course there are complications... Head and shoulders above the
usual Italian caper drama, with most of the slam-bang action devoted to
the first forty-five minutes and the rest full of slower-paced but equally-gripping
heist stuff, and plenty of surprises. -zwolf
May Morning (C, 1970) AKA Alba
Pagana, May Morning In Oxford, Delitto a Oxford
Obscure but somehow infamous (I've only seen it mentioned in one film
magazine and they seemed to find it sickening, disturbing, and not something
they wanted to talk about) pseudo-horror drama about the 70's intellectual
scene at Oxford College. An Italian student who looks angelically-demonic,
like a satyr, stays in trouble with both the administration and the other
students. Nonetheless they want him on their rowing team badly enough
to give him special privileges. Perhaps abusing them, he sleeps with the
team captain's girlfriend and brings down the school's hatred on him.
He takes this in stride and decides to "weigh their shitness against
mine," and hangs around to watch a party that turns into a sort of
hippie-orgy, and it's there that he's planned his revenge... and has some
done to him as well. There's some unpleasantness but nothing over the
top, no blood or anything, just a kind of decadent aura of nihilism. It's
well-made but I don't know why that one guy found it so disturbing. The
trailer talks about "pagan rituals" and tries to make the whole
thing seem more of a Lord of the Flies / Wicker Man thing
than it is. Not very disturbing, but not badly done, very 70's. -zwolf
Mean Johnny Barrows (C, 1976)
Fred Williamson gets dishonorably discharged from the army for punching
an officer (the guy deserved it; he tried to blow Fred up with a mine
as a "joke") and has a hard time finding work, even though he won a Silver
Star in 'Nam and was a football hero. Gangster Stuart Whitman wants to
enlist him as an enforcer, but Fred wants to find honest work instead...
so he keeps drifting down on the skids. Of course he finally gets desperate
enough to take the mob's offer, after they're hit by some enemies who've
been running dope through the Black and Mexican communities (something
Stuart's nice-guy gangsters drew the line at). When Fred finally takes
the job, he goes about it cold-bloodedly. At one point he goes after the
baddies with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun in each hand (gotta love
it when movies actually live up to the poster art!). He also strikes impressive
kung fu poses, but then just brawls. Fred directed this one, too. It's
no masterpiece, but I always like Fred's flicks and this is better than
some (Black Cobra, fer instance). Roddy McDowell and Elliot Gould
have bit parts. -zwolf
The Mechanic (C, 1972) AKA
Killer of Killers
One of the best Charles Bronson movies. He's a meticulous hit man who's
turned contract killing into an art form: it's never simply a couple of
bullets in the head, cowboy-style. He studies his target and finds the
best way to take it out. He kills one mob chief and ironically befriends
the mob chief's son (Jan-Michael Vincent), who displays a strong interest
in becoming a hit man. Charlie could use an assistant (and he also seems
flattered and maybe a bit lonely), so he takes Vincent on as an apprentice...
only to learn that Vincent may have been contracted to kill him. Some
good action scenes and a classic final twist. Check it out. -zwolf
Messiah Of Evil (C,
1974) AKA Dead People, Return of the Living Dead, Revenge
of the Screaming Dead, The Second Coming
Bizarre, slowly-paced zombie film emphasizes nightmarish atmosphere over
gore. A woman, narrating from an asylum (depicted as a glaringly bright
hallway), tells of her visit to a small seaside town called New Bethlehem,
better known as Point Dune. She's looking for her missing father, who
had been sending increasingly-crazy letters before he disappeared. There
she finds complete whackos like Elisha Cook Jr. (who dazedly tells a story
about how his parents almost fed him to the chickens when he was born.
"I'm an ugly old man but I'm harmless!"), a gas station attendant
who fires guns into the darkness, a cross-eyed albino black man who drives
around all night eating live beach rats, and other freaks. Her father's
house is a strange work of art, full of stuffed dogs and cardboard cut-out
people and senseless displays. The town is empty and desolate, and people
gather around the meat counter in the supermarket late at night to eat
raw meat... and anyone they can catch. The rest of the late hours they
gather on the beach to wait for some kind of god that's supposed to rise
from the sea. It's not completely coherent and the editing is choppy,
but that serves to keep you off balance and make everything more surreal
and weird. Possibly weirdest of all is that this is from the same writers
who brought you American Graffiti. Strong images and sincere creepiness
make up for a lack of gore. -zwolf
Mill of
the Stone Women (C, 1960) AKA Drops of Blood, Icon,
Horror of the Stone Women, The Horrible Mill Women, Il
Mulino delle donne di pietra
French-Italian horror set in Holland. A historian named Hans goes to the
Mill of the Stone Women - a windmill containing a bizarre carousel of
female statues in poses depicting the dark side of women's history (Joan
of Arc, Cleopatra, witchcraft executions, a poisoner, etc.) - to write
a paper detailing its history. It's run by a professor and his mad doctor
friend who've secretly been using the mill to transfuse blood into his
daughter Elfie, who keeps dying and being revived. They get the blood
from kidnaped local girls, who become drained, petrified, and made into
part of the exhibit. Lonely, unbalanced Elfie starts an affair with Hans
on the sly, but Hans is in love with someone else, and this causes Elfie
to have a fit and die again. Hans runs away, but returns to confess, but
learns the horrible truth behind it all when he discovers that Elfie's
been resurrected. Slow-moving and difficult to get into (I've probably
fallen asleep more often attempting to watch this film than any other
movie), but it's a great horror film if you hang with it, including some
nightmarish scenes and a pervasive atmosphere of mental decay amongst
the petrified corpses, both in their jerky rinky-dink carousel and cluttering
the workshops in the back room. The finale provides some especially memorable
images. -zwolf
Mission Kashmir (C, 2000)
This Bollywood hit was big enough to get a U.S. video release. A police
captain loses a child because no hospital will treat him after an accident;
terrorists have issued a fatwah against the families of any doctors who
help the police. This enrages the police captain so much that he goes
after the terrorists with a vengeance, and accidentally kills some civilians.
He and his wife adopt the son of the dead civilians, but he eventually
finds out what happened and runs away and joins a jihad organization headed
by a terrorist mastermind so sinister he makes Osama Bin Ladin look like
Mr. Rogers. A misguided battle between adopted-father and adopted-son
ensues that leads to a plot that could result in the destruction of Kashmir...
and all of India. Contrived, to be sure, but very dramatic and compelling
and makes a strong point about the cycle of violence and terrorism. As
usual, contains lots of singing and dancing numbers, and top notch cinematography.
Recommended. -zwolf
Mister Scarface (C, 1976) AKA
Padroni della città, Big Boss, Blood and Bullets,
Rulers of the City
One of those much-maligned Italian gangster flicks that nobody except
me seems to like. Tony is a happy-go-lucky, dune-buggy-driving collection
man for the mob. He doesn't get much respect even though he's pretty good
at it (he seems to know Italian kung fu or something). Jack Palance is
Scarface, a crime boss so scary that one of the other mobsters says "every
time I-a see him, my asshole a-twitches!" Scarface gives Tony's boss
a bad check, and Tony - showing off - volunteers to go collect on it.
Via a bit of trickery, Tony collects, but once he has the money Tony's
boss panics and wants to give it back. But - too late - the incident sets
off a small mob war, with Tony and his friends targeted. Add some old
scores that need settling into the mix and you get lots of shooting, punch-outs,
exploding cars, chases, and other assorted mayhem. Pretty cool and a good
example of why I watch these things. The fact that most prints of this
are faded and going slightly reddish actually adds to the atmosphere...
-zwolf
Mitchell
(C, 1975)
Man, does this one have a reputation for being bad, mainly because of
Mystery Science Theater 3000, but if you watch it bot-less it's...
well, okay, it's still bad, but not one of the worst movies ever made
or anything. It's easy enough to make fun of, though, because Mitchell
(the cop that Joe Don Baker is portraying) is supposed to be an unlikeable
slob; it's supposed to be an anti-hero movie, but they overdo it a little,
making him a not-too-bright alcoholic who can't get women and reads a
lot of porn, isn't particularly brave or skilled, and gets by mostly despite
himself. He has a hooker (Linda Evans) visit him, and then he still almost
gets rejected and makes an ass of himself. Then there's a car chase (sorta)
where nobody ever seems to go over 40 miles an hour, and Mitchell gets
run off the road, anyway. Later there's another leisurely chase that leaves
Mitchell stuck in the mud, but they finally get up to speed with a dune
buggy chase that's ridiculous for another reason; they explode if they
flip over! Mitchell arrests his hooker girlfriend, ends up on the losing
end of several more fights, and succeeds mainly through stubbornness,
not skill. Still, I don't care what anybody says, I like Joe Don Baker.
His scene with the kid is hilarious and it takes acting skill to throw
such a convincing fit. Not really that awful, though it does lend itself
to mockery. Judging from the cornball theme song, at least some
of that was intentional. -zwolf
Monkey Fist (C, 1974)
This one looks a little strange because the filmmaking is especially bad
and the hero (Chan Sao Chung) is almost a midget. But he's supposed to
be the best monkey kung fu master in the world. To make things a little
more disorienting, the DVD is mastered from a non-letterboxed, glitch-filled
tape of a patchy print that occasionally switches back to Chinese from
the dubbed English. There's not a ton of plot - our hero almost gets press-ganged
into the army but refuses, then gets jailed for eight years. While in
jail, he watches a monkey through the window of his cell and imitates
its movements to teach himself monkey boxing. He also teaches a little
boy who comes to visit him. When he gets out he opens a school, but the
thugs who've been oppressing everybody (led by Kien Shih, AKA "Mr. Han"
from Enter The Dragon) mess with him and force a showdown. The
fighting's not too impressive and the choppy condition of the tape the
DVD was mastered from tests your patience, but apparently it's a rare
film and supposedly based on a true story, so... may be worth a look for
devoted monkey-philes. Easily passed over by most others, though. Ground
Zero should have put this out cheaper and backed with another movie. -zwolf
Monkey Shines (C, 1988) AKA
Ella, Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear
Another good George Romero flick, although most people didn't like it.
A paralyzed man is given a monkey to help him around the house. The monkey
has been given injections of brain fluid and is superintelligent, and
somehow, the man and the monkey form a psychic link. The monkey picks
up on the man's suppressed rage and becomes a homicidal maniac, utilizing
a straight razor as an instrument of death. Special effects by Tom Savini,
but most of them got snipped by the MPAA bastards, so don't expect your
usual Romero splatterthon or you'll be disappointed. If you're looking
for a very well-made, if almost bloodless, horror film, then give it a
shot. A similar razor-wielding monkey also showed up in Dario Argento's
Phenomena. -zwolf
Monstrosity
(B&W, 1964) AKA The Atomic Brain
A mad doctor named Otto Frank is trying to transplant brains; his experiments
are funded by a rich old lady who wants her brain put in a young body.
They bring in housekeeping candidates as potential body donors. One of
the girls is supposed to be from England, but her fake accent is so bad
that half the time she sounds Southern... ah well, Birmingham, England...
Birmingham, Alabama, what's the difference? He transplants the brain of
a cat into one girl, and transplants the crotchety old lady's brain into
a cat's head (how it fits, nobody knows) and this proves to be a big mistake.
Cheap little B-horror flick that's considered by many to be one of the
world's worst, but it verges too close to competence and is a little too
entertaining to qualify for that... but it'd still be really easy to make
fun of. -zwolf
Moonshine County Express (C,
1977) AKA Shine
Yee-haw, redneck actioner starring Claudia Jennings, Maureen ("Marsha"
on The Brady Bunch) McCormick (as "Sissy Hammer" - now
there's a name for ya!), and Susan Howard as the daughters of a murdered
moonshiner. They decide to keep the business going and look for revenge
against an evil crime boss (William Conrad, TV's Cannon). John
Saxon (trying to act Southern) helps run the shine for them. Typical.
Dub Taylor also stars. -zwolf
The Mothman Prophecies (C,
2001)
Richard Gere (infamous star of the unreleased and possibly mythical Gerbilman
Prophecies!) is a reasonable stand-in for David Duchovny in this reasonable
stand-in for an extended X-Files episode. Too bad I don't like
the X-Files... Gere's wife dies from a brain tumor after seeing
a strange moth man. Later he recognizes drawings of the thing in a town
that's overwhelmed with strange paranormal activity, all involving a mysterious
figure that calls itself "Indrid Cold." There are weird phone
calls and accurate predictions of disasters. Gere becomes obsessed because
he thinks his dead wife has something to do with it. Based on real-life
phenomena and it's occasionally creepy and always weird, but it's highly
overrated - it's not that scary and the big "payoff" isn't that
much of a surprise and is very anticlimactic. They also try to get "experimental"
with narrative structure, but they fail; there are serious flaws in the
storytelling, apparently put there as pointless additional weirdness.
It's interesting enough and worth seeing, but it's no big deal if you
miss it, either. -zwolf
The pairing of "sexy old man" & young policewoman, along
with the general big-budget spooky movie vibe, guarantee that this one
would make a solid double-feature with Signs, which should definitely
be the second film, as it's much better! -igor
Mr. Majestyk (C,
1974)
Charles Bronson is a watermelon farmer who wants nothing in life so much
as to get his crop in. He hires Mexican laborers, but a smartass extortionist
insists he use his crew, instead... and gets his ass kicked for
his trouble. This gets Charlie in trouble with the cops, and an escape
attempt by a hit man (played by typecast-as-a-hit-man great Al Lettieri)
he's in the lock-up with gets him in trouble with the mob. They chase
off his workers, shoot up his melons, and try to kill him, but Charlie
never was the kind of guy you could push around. Good action scenes (although
a bit crazy in one case - no way would Charlie be able to stay in the
bed of a pickup truck that was being driven so insanely... Tony Hawk woulda
fallen out of that thing!) and solid filmmaking and a plot taken from
an Elmore Leonard novel make this one of Bronson's best. -zwolf
Ms. 45 (C, 1981)
AKA Angel of Vengeance
Zoe Tamerlis (who looks like she could be Barbara Steele's daughter) is
a mousy, mute garment district worker who gets raped on the way home from
work one day. When she gets home, a guy who's broken into her apartment
rapes her, too. She kills him with an iron (bringing work home from the
office is a good idea!) and then dismembers his body in her bathtub, puts
the parts in trash bags, stores them in the fridge, and then starts parceling
them out in various places all over town (which isn't easy because her
crazy old landlady is obsessively nosy). She starts carrying the guy's
.45 automatic for protection, but all the males around her are jerks so
she starts hunting them all down on general principles. She gets empowered
by all this killing and starts dressing in leather and lipstick to attract
them. It's never explained where she gets all those bullets or learns
such marksmanship, but what the hell, it's still more stylish and has
more psychology behind it than Death Wish. Directed by the never-been-normal
Abel Ferrara in his usual I-don't-think-Scorsese-makes-NYC-look-quite-ugly-enough
style. -zwolf
Munster, Go Home (C, 1966)
Munster, go to HELL! Stupid, juvenile feature made from the equally stupid
and juvenile TV series. The Munsters visit England to claim an inheritance.
The servants in their castle set up skeletons and act like ghosts to scare
them off, which makes them feel right at home. They explore the castle
dungeons, foil counterfeiters, and drag race their car. Was made as a
TV movie, but went to theaters instead. I can't imagine anybody paying
to see it. The Munster's Revenge was another feature. Fans of the
series only. -zwolf
The Mutilation
Man (C, 1998)
Thank the gods for commentary tracks, for without them this DVD would
be almost entirely useless, because as much as I wanted to like it, it's
a profoundly dull mess, not much more than home movies of people walking
around. The plot would be intriguing if the pacing weren't so completely
leaden and if there wasn't such an inept narrative structure. A guy who
was abused as a child by his drunken father (Jim Van Bebber from Deadbeat
at Dawn, legitimately drunk and acting extremely crazy, guest stars
as the father) wanders a post-apocalypse wasteland (which never manages
to look like anything but vacant lots in Dayton, Ohio), putting on shows
of self-mutilation for whoever's willing to show up and watch. Lots of
flashbacks and hallucinations of a dominatrix-demon and an angel fill
the rest of the scant story. There's less than a half-dozen lines of dialogue,
and the rest is amateurish, dull industrial music. There's some cheap
gore and plenty of nudity but it's badly filmed, and the whole thing is
a profound bore... unless you run the commentary track, which is interesting
enough. The director comes across as a nice, enthusiastic, sincere guy,
and hearing him talk about the film is pretty engaging, even if the film
itself isn't. It's also funny to hear him point out a thousand different
mistakes, malfunctions, and mishaps that he left in because "they work
for the film" (and, I suspect, because he didn't want to throw anything
out, since he'd paid the lab fees on it). It's done with the best of intentions
and no money at all, but, alas, it's really really bad. Some of the acting
is okay, though, just lost in the poor filmmaking. Worth checking out
if you leave the commentary track on, though. -zwolf
My Brother Has Bad Dreams (C,
1977)
A very nerdy, very disturbed young man named Karl lives with his sister,
who has to look after him because he's nuts. He has a fear of cats and
talks to mannequins (and also attacks them with fireplace pokers and sleeps
with them), because he thinks they're his mother, who died fifteen years
earlier. Karl peeps at his sister and masturbates while she's getting
dressed, and he wakes up screaming from dreams about their abusive parents.
He also hoards mannequins to sleep with, because his sister doesn't think
it's a very healthy practice and keeps taking them away from him. Karl
meets a friendly biker named Tony and brings him home. The problem is,
Tony and Karl's sister fall in love, which makes Karl jealous... This
sparks really bizarre, creepy nightmares and homicidal rages, and pretty
soon Karl is burying bodies in the backyard. A weird, morbid low-budget
horror film that can make for pretty unsettling 2 a.m. viewing. -zwolf
My Name Is Julia Ross (B&W,
1945)
The title heroine takes a job working for a family in Cornwall and doesn't
suspect they're up to anything even though they're very pointed about
asking if she has any relatives. Turns out they're nuts and start keeping
her prisoner and try to convince her that she's the one who's crazy, that
she's actually named Marion and is married to the family's son. They tell
everyone else she's crazy so she won't be able to get help in escaping.
It doesn't stop her from trying, though... She learns that they plan to
kill her and make it look like suicide (even though the psychotic son
would rather stab her a few hundred times) so they can get the real Marion's
inheritance... and he already killed her earlier, y'see. Since everything's
going wrong for poor Julia, they just might get away with it. The kind
of suspenseful little B-flick that often outshone the A's. Remade in 1987
as Dead of Winter. -zwolf
Mystery of Chess Boxing (C,
1979) AKA Ninja Checkmate
A frog-faced guy named Apau wants to learn kung fu badly enough to put
up with lots of humiliating hazing at the school he enrolled in. The school's
cook likes his enthusiasm, takes pity on him, and gives him a little help.
He also picks up skills by adapting to the hazing. He'll need all the
skills he can muster to get revenge on the evil Ghost Face Killer, who
is a master of the Five Elements Style, so Apau is sent to study under
an old man who's an expert at playing chess. By combining more rigorous
training (hanging from ropes and doing brick-juggling) with lots of chess-playing
(to teach him calmness of mind and quick wits), he learns powerful kung
fu. Then he has to face Ghost Face Killer's Five Elements Style - fire,
wood, water, earth, gold - all of which interact with and against each
other, making him nearly unbeatable. Lots of skill on display in this
one, although it may be most famous for the hype it got when kung-fu movie-fanatic
rap group The Wu Tang Clan, whose first album was named after this and
who also feature a rapper named Ghost Face Killah. -zwolf
