REVIEW: Avere Vent’anni (aka To Be Twenty)

Young, Sexy and Pissed

Two free-wheelin’ young ladies, Lia and Tina (Italian sex starlets Gloria Guida and Lilli Carati), meet and realize they are both “young, beautiful and pissed off” (as they like to tell everyone they meet), so they decide to pair up and enjoy the simplicity and freedom of the hippie lifestyle in 1970’s Italy. They hitchhike their way to Rome to find a popular commune they’d heard about, where they could stay for free and have all the free love they want or so they would think. When they arrive, they discover that the men are all too stoned to get it on, and that the gals are expected to pay for their lodging. Not having the desire to become cleaning women, the girls are forced to use their natural charms to earn their keep. This only angers the other chicks of the commune who want to be — ironically — liberated from their hippie female roles.

Life at the commune gets even worse as the police raid the joint looking for drugs, and Tina and Lia are sent packing by the fuzz. Back on the road the lovely pair again seeks fun and free love, only to run into a gang of thugs at a roadside cafe. What follows is one of the most horrific and shocking endings in the history of cinema.

This is the notorious film from the Italian crime/thriller director Fernando di Leo that shocked everyone with its no-holds-barred climactic ending that seemed to come out of nowhere. For the duration of the film the audience is treated to what appears to be a simple comedic sexual romp of a pair of sex kittens who just wanna have some fun. Within all the sexual hijinx, though, di Leo has of social and political commentary peppered throughout—nothing to beat you over the head with, but nonetheless it’s present and up for interpretation. There are the hippie women who rebel by displaying their maternal prowess; there’s the commune host who acts more like a salesman than a hippie guru; but most provocative is the back-story of the two heroines, Lia and Tina. 

Both girls proclaim to be free wheelin’, free lovin’ hippies, but each sexual exploit is met by some kind of personal issue. Tina, the more adventurous of the pair, wants boys boys boys! But never seems to want them if they actually want her. She’s really into the seduction part. And then there’s Lia, who divulges that she doesn’t even really like sex, despite her many lovers—both male and female—she’s only into the attention. She learned when she was real young that sex gets attention—even if it’s from some salty old neighbor who molested her—she was into the attention. 

The girls never do find what they’re looking for, and they don’t get the answers to the unasked questions that seem to puzzle them. What they do find is a world that spins around on its own, never living up to their personal expectations, and uses and abuses them without them ever really realizing it. They naively and selfishly pursue their own whim, keeping the rest of the world at an arms length, avoiding the consequences of their rebelliousness and their sexually free lifestyle. Only until they come across a bunch of macho men who have their own problem with keeping within ethical boundaries do they get their wake up call. When the two worlds collide, the horrifying outcome is undeniably ruthless and unsympathetic, but certainly doesn’t seem so out of place with the underlying unspoken commentary. Avere Vent’anni is a twisted little flick with an ending that shakes the viewer up and demands their attention.

Luminous Film and Video Works has released this gem all wrapped up in a nice package, bundling together the two contrasting versions of this film onto two discs—the original Italian version with all the sexual romps intact, as well as the brutal climax in full; and the American version that plays up the guise of sex comedy to full proportions (playing down the violent climax), because us Americans can't handle too much titillation.  We're so silly.

PEEPHOLE REVIEW: Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

Who's Watching!
Laurence Harvey (best known for his work in The Manchurian Candidate) stars as Jason Henry, a lecherous photographer with an inhuman "hunger" for young girls. He shares a lavish mansion – as well as some inappropriately passionate kisses – with his sister Grace (familiar 70s TV actress Joanna Pettet) in the quiet seaside town of Arrow Beach. When a free-spirited hippie chick named Robin (the crystal-blue eyed Meg Foster) decides to skinny dip on Jason Henry's private beach, the gentlemanly letch invites her in for a hot meal, a warm bath (thank you) and a comfy bed. This nubile young houseguest doesn't sit well with Jason's cagey sister, who tries to hide her brother's dark, dirty secret behind a locked cellar door. But what would a horror flick be if the curious young guest didn't wind up trapped in the labyrinthine basement, hunting down the source of a strange whacking sound? The answer falls somewhere between Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It's a curiosity why Laurence Harvey picked this project, also known as Tender Flesh, for his directorial debut. The role of the cannibalistic ex-Korean War Vet turned fashion photographer gives the accomplished actor plenty to chew on – and he does a fine job with it – but his direction falls a bit short of matching the intensity of his performance. There are moments of horrific promise, like a sequence that flashes from an unsuspecting Robin eating a "steak" to shots of the victim who supplied the prime cut from his shoulder. And whatever Harvey did to get the brilliantly riled-up performance out of Stuart Whitman (as an embittered Deputy) was perfect. Unfortunately, Harvey became ill after shooting the film and was sidelined during most of the editing, leaving the studio in charge of the final cut. As a result, most of the movie's more horrific moments are left on the editing room floor (a flashback hints that Jason Henry's taste for human flesh was the result of a war-time plane crash, but we never get the gory details), and the sum total of murders seen on screen reaches a whopping one, leaving Arrow Beach more heavy on performances than gore. Still, for fans of obscure 70s "shockers," it’s well worth the 84 minutes.

It's a very rare gem, but you can find it at Luminous Film & Video Wurks

REVIEW: After.Life (2010)

Happy Birthday Suit Christina Ricci!
There's been a pleasant resurgence of genre flicks that have opted out of the once trendy twisty-turny-try-and-fool-ya plot gimmicks, and are delivering simpler stories that build suspense. The emphasis is a swing back to the story, and away from the storyteller.

But, let me welcome back another horror staple, a once prominent element of horror flicks that sadly went missing in the post-Scream era. Nudity!! It's returned in such a fashion that it's almost a movement. A revolution! Okay, yeah... some movies were a tad overzealous and blatant in their displays (the Friday the 13th and My Bloody Valentine remakes). But, either way... welcome home.

Afterall, what are we so uptight about, still? Nudity is on network TVs across the world, while we still giggle and peek (giggle giggle).

The story follows Anna (Ricci), a young woman unable to find the joys in life. Then suddenly-- she's dead. After a horrific car accident, she "wakes up" while Eliot the funeral director (Liam Neeson) is preparing her body for her own funeral. Anna is convinced that she's still alive, but Eliot explains that her confusion is not all that uncommon, and he's heard it many times form the bodies he's prepared over the years. Creepy, eh?

Well... the premise on paper if a lot creepier than the action in the film. It's not for the lack of the performances. Neeson is as good as he always is, giving the creepy mortician a shade of sorrow [it should be noted that filming had already wrapped on After.Life a few months prior to his wife Natasha Richardson's fatal ski accident, but her tragedy oddly resonates throughout the film and his performance]. Justin Long (on his quest to be in every movie ever made) plays Anna's grief-stricken boyfriend, with the standard long-faced confusion. But -- hello Christina Ricci!
It's difficult to judge a movie like After.Life, when the young starlet decides to parade around full frontal for the entire second act. Did I really enjoy the movie as a whole, or did I just enjoy watching Christina Ricci putting herself on display? The fact is, the nudity was a bit more enjoyable in the end.

The script was clean of overt cleverness, but it lacked genuine creepiness. Eliot's weirdness is already evident in the fact that he "speaks" to the dead. And the element of suspense lies in whether he is telling Anna the truth, that she is really dead and is not being held hostage. But, his wall of snapshots, cataloging the cast of bodies he's prepared and helped usher into the afterlife, is too deliberate and hokey. However, the relationship he broaches with a young student of Anna's (Chandler Canterbury), a budding ghost whisperer himself, seemed a more interesting avenue to exploring Eliot's character.
Director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo (who also wrote the script with Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk) has an interesting style, using colors or word phrases as motifs. The environments in which Anna lives in, and where Eliot works, are sterile white, brightly lit, or shiny clean. Red is a symbol of death -- or is it life? These are the bits where the direction is solid. But, the building of suspense or mood-- and again, this may have just as much to do with his script -- is lacking.

Fuck Off James Cameron

I really can’t stand when people in the movie business get to acting like what they do is really so damn important. It’s movies, guys! You’re entertaining us, keeping our minds off the woes of life, and treating us to some good times. That’s it. Sure, you’re opening our eyes from time to time, exposing us to the things we don’t always pay attention to, but should. Sure, you’re revealing to us worlds outside our own. And most importantly, you’re doing it all while providing us the besest looking faces and most beautiful bodies imaginable! So, um... thank you for that.

But... What irks me is when I read about some blowhard saying blowhard stuff, like all of a sudden, they are the most important thing ever, just because they made a film that a bunch of people went to see. Shite like the interview in Vanity Fair, where blowhard James Cameron makes it known to all us peasants that he is the one, the only, the savior of cinema, and that no one else can or should be do anything other than exactly what he’s doing. Apparently, he thinks he owns the rights to making movies.

One of the more ridiculous arguments he makes, while bashing other 3D dreck, is that Piranha 3D has cheapened the world of 3D cinema. Huh? If anything, Piranha would be cheapened without the 3D!

Here’s a snipet of what Sir James in his Vanity Fair interview:

Was there any sense of nostalgia when the Piranha movie came out last weekend?
Zero. You’ve got to remember: I worked on Piranha 2 for a few days and got fired off of it; I don’t put it on my official filmography. So there’s no sort of fond connection for me whatsoever. In fact, I would go even farther and say that... I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year—Tron: Legacy—is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.

Does this guy ever have his fat swollen head so far up his own hairy Na’vi blue ass, or what! Jimmy, they’re just movies. C’mon, it’s like you never heard of a genre 3D movie before. The technique was practically invented for films like this. See if these ring any bells: House of Wax, Bwana Devil, Thirteen Ghosts, It Came From Outer Space!! Hell, didn’t the 3 Stooges make a 3D comedy, too? So, let’s not get all pinched up in the nether regions, alrighty? Or, wait -- you didn’t invent 3D yourself, did you? It Came from Outer Your Ass, no? Oh. Well, forgive me. The way you’ve been hissy-fittin’ around, I thought maybe you had.
Look, 3D is, afterall, just a gimmick. It always has been, and it always will be just a gimmick that makes all the eye candy just a lot more eye-gasmic. It adds nothing whatsoever to the worth or value of the story. Citizen Kane would not be a better story if the snow globe fell (seemingly) right into our laps. The saga of the Corleone family would not be more meaningful if we were convinced that Sonny’s blood had splattered all over our clothes. The testos-tremotions of Brian’s Song would not be felt anymore than it already was had we seen the tears spitting forth from the screen from Billy Dee Willams’ eyes. It’s just a gimmick. It’s just for fun!

And gimmicks are something you know quite well -- right Jimmy? You know what I think cheapens the medium? Raking in enough money from your movie about your virtually built world -- which could now afford you to construct your own actual world -- and then turning right back around and re-releasing your precious Avatar just weeks after it’s bowed from theaters, and tossing in a few extra scenes --which weren’t important enough to put in the first time around, even though you had total control over the entire film -- and then making the fans pay yet another 12 bucks (before they then have to shell out, no doubt, top dollar to buy the Blu-Ray disc set... which, by the by, will then have subsequent “Special Edition” sets to roll out out every Christmas time for the next 10 years.

Really, it’s just showbiz. So dry up Jimmy. It’s not like you’re saving the world with your work anyway! Oh wait. I forgot -- you and Kevin Costner have come up with the solution that will rescue us all from that tragedy of the BP oil disaster. Sorry I underestimated you... But anyway... your argument that bad horror movies, enhanced 3D, will cheapen the medium is tantamount to a chocolate syrup maker complaining that the introduction of sprinkles has cheapened the ice cream sundae
So, just go play with your 3D toy, and quit your bellyaching. Go dip into your Titanic well for the umpteenth time, so you can bilk your audiences some more with your digitally enhanced retreads. Titanic 3D! What next? True Lies 3D? Rambo: First Blood 2:3D?

Well... Look, as long as you give Kate Winslet’s nude scene the extra 3D bonanza effect, all will be forgiven.

EVIL DEAD Gettin' the Blu Ray Respect

It’s 2010 – Time For Another Visit to THE Cabin…

THE EVIL DEAD Blu-ray™

FROM ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT

HD bow of horror classic includes two new HD transfers

personally supervised by writer/director Sam Raimi

and an all-new audio commentary

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – Easily one of the most requested titles for Blu-ray™ from Anchor Bay Entertainment’s unparalleled library of horror films, Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult classic The Evil Dead will officially make its high definition debut on August 31^st with The Evil Dead Blu-ray™. For the release, two all-new 1080p anamorphic transfers in 1.85 and the original director-composed 1.33 aspect ratio, have been prepared and personally supervised by director/writer Raimi, presented in high-resolution Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio, as well as a brand new commentary track with Raimi, producer Robert Tapert and star Bruce “Ash” Campbell! In addition, many of the bonus features, released on previous DVD editions, will once again be available on a special, limited edition DVD included with the Blu-ray™. SRP is a very collectible $29.99 and pre-book is August 4^th.

The Evil Dead is one of the most influential, landmark horror films of all time. Five college friends, including Ash (Campbell), drive to a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend of fun. Little do they realize that their fun will soon turn to fear, as an unstoppable supernatural force has been unleashed, surrounding and trapping them. One by one, they fall victim to the demonic forces at large, resurrected as murderous demons which can only be destroyed by dismemberment. Only Ash is left to combat the evil before it consumes the world. It’ll be a fight to the death … and to the undeath.

The Evil Dead Blu-ray™ (Disc 1) contains an all-NEW audio commentary with

Writer/Director Sam Raimi, Producer Robert Tapert and Star Bruce Campbell. A

standard DVD (Disc 2) contains the following bonus features, many returning for

the first time in years, and available only for a limited time:

• One By One We Will Take You: The Untold Saga of The Evil Dead
• The Evil Dead: Treasures from the Cutting Room Floor
• The Ladies Of The Evil Dead Meet Bruce Campbell
• Book of The Dead: The Other Pages
• Discovering The Evil Dead
• Unconventional
• At The Drive-In

So pick up The Evil Dead on Blu-ray™, steal away to your favorite secluded cabin and see this horror classic like you’ve never seen it before!

PEEP-HOLE REVIEW: Burning Bright (2010)

"He Only Likes the Pretty Ones"This little flick was simply fun to watch. I'm a great big fan of the old 70s TV Movie of the Week, and Burning Bright reminded me a whole lot of those classic small screen gems. Girl in peril forced to make life altering decisions amidst horrific scenarios!

Briana Evigan (last seen slicing through Sorority Row) plays a young woman torn between moving on with her own life after her mom's death, or staying home to take care of her younger brother. Her decision is a huge one, because her little brother is severely debilitated by his autism, and, although he doesn't comprehend it himself, he needs her. If she takes on this responsibility, she will lose out on a full-ride scholarship, and her life will be caring for her kid brother, since her step-daddy has shown no interest. He's more enamored of the idea of starting up a wildlife attraction on their huge estate. In the midst of this personal turmoil, a hurricane is threatening to hit.
As the skies open up, and the winds thrash the house, the girl wakes up to find that she and her kid brother have been shuttered it by the groundskeepers. That's not so bad, though. At least she know's she's safe... until she hears a strange sound, and then finds that a tiger is roaming free in the hallways. The next hour of the film is pure perspiration. Director Carlos Brooks and Screenwriters Christine Coyle Johnson and Julie Prendiville Roux cast aside the popular need for clever piled on plot twists and keep the story moving with urgent success. From first encounter with the ferocious animal, the heroine and the audience are constantly covered in sweat. There's no hidden surprises or mystery to resolve -- the story is direct and nerve battering. This one would be impossible not to enjoy.

PEEP-HOLE REVIEW: Night of the Living Dead:Reanimated

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009 Wild Eye Releasing)Fans of George Romero's cult classic flesh ripper are gonna be pleased to see this one. The folks at Neoflux Productions came up with a clever idea, to gather a cast of animators and illustrators to "reanimate" the B/W original, replacing the films live action footage with animation, all laid over the original soundtrack.

This one is purely for the fans, though. Not that anyone would get sick of watching the 1968 gruesome flick, but NOTLD:R gives horror fans a chance to see the 40 year old creeper with new eyes, as (re)imagined by some of the coolest artists out there.