Category: Journal Entry

Velvet Smooth A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Velvet Smooth (RiffTrax version) – A Movie A Day #80

I love Mystery Science Theater 3000. I started watching the show during Mike’s reign as the main host, so Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy became my favorite hosting trio. So naturally, I became a huge fan of RiffTrax when they started up a bunch of years ago. I go to the live shows (via theater), and I regularly watch their streaming movies and shorts online. I also regularly watch old episode of MST3K. And by “regularly,” I mean at least weekly if not more often.

If you’re not familiar with RiffTrax, it’s a site where Mike, Bill, and Kevin do comedic commentary tracks over movies and shorts where they generally riff on the content. They also have guests including former MST3K cast members do riffs. It’s one of the greatest things on the internet, and you should definitely check it out if you haven’t already: https://www.rifftrax.com/

All that said, I’ll watch anything they put out. It’s just a bonus when the movie ends up being something I’d watch without the RiffTrax crew sitting there with me. Velvet Smooth isn’t a good movie, but it is something I would absolutely watch on its own.

Velvet Smooth is the title, and it’s also the name of the lead character. Ms. Smooth is some sort of detective (I think). She’s called in by King, the leader of some sort of crime syndicate, when his criminal activities are disrupted by some other criminals. Guys in masks are going around and kicking and punching all of King’s men, so Velvet Smooth is tasked with finding out who’s behind it. Velvet gathers her small crew of kung-fu-fighting females, and the three of them start shaking down the streets. 

I’ve been intrigued by the blaxploitation era for a long time, but I haven’t seen nearly enough films in the genre. Velvet Smooth isn’t the most well-made movie in that canon, but is absolutely fun to watch. The fight choreography is laughable, and that’s really the biggest draw for me. The plot and acting are fine, standard fare, but the fight scenes are glorious. People clearly miss punches and kicks only to have their opponent take a fall, assailants politely wait their turn in the background before attacking, and the interactions look like a first-time half-speed run-through rather than the final, filmed scene. I love it. 

I also had to roll the movie back at one point, because I saw, for a spit-second, what I thought was a cameraman. Sure enough, in a scene fairly late in the movie, there’s a full shot of a camera guy just standing there. Other movies from the era have had similar production issues, Dolemite being a great example of having the boom mic in what seems like half the shots of the movie. But Velvet Smooth did even better and got a full-body shot of a cameraman in the film while he was holding the camera and shooting the scene. It was great.

As much fun as I had with Velvet Smooth, the RiffTrax crew helped make it even better. I know I’ll be watching this many more times in the future.

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Rabid (2019) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Rabid (2019) – A Movie A Day #79

I had heard mixed things about this remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 movie of the same name, but I ended up renting it after all the brand new movies for the week had been checked out (yes, I still rent physical media). So Rabid might have been a backup plan for the night, but it’s not like I didn’t want to see it. I usually enjoy body horror quite a lot, and the movie looked promising. I’d heard of the the directors of this new version of Rabid, the Soska Sisters, but the only movie I’d previously seen of theirs was See No Evil 2. It was fine. But really, one movie isn’t enough to really know what a director’s films are like. So, I didn’t know much about what to expect from Rabid.

Rabid is about a woman, Rose, who works for a fashion designer, but she dreams of being a designer herself. Rose keeps to herself and lacks confidence in all aspects of her life. After a night where her confidence is built up only to be shattered by people close to her, she suffers an accident that leaves her disfigured. After deciding to undergo an experimental operation, Rose’s body and face are better than ever, but there are some side effects. Rose develops some unusual cravings, and people that come into close contact with her eventually turn into violent, raving (i.e. rabid) maniacs. 

The movie really focuses on Rose and her experience rather than the violent murders happening throughout the city. I liked that part about it, but overall I thought it was just okay. As the body horror aspect of the movie increased later in the film, it started to look a little silly at times. A lot of the effects were good, but some important ones weren’t. I also thought there was great potential for some strong commentary from a female perspective, but that part felt like it took a backseat to the plot and all the blood. It was an okay balance, but again, it was just okay. It felt like it wanted to be a cross between Raw and The Neon Demon, but it ended up feeling more like a pretty good low-budget gore movie.

There were some memorable bits for me though. Phil Brooks (CM Punk) was in the movie, and seeing him so on a maniacal rage and just face-first through a window was pretty great. Also, Brooks’s wife, AJ Mendez Brooks, showed up late in the movie as a catty fashion model. That was fun. And I did enjoy most of the movie. I just don’t think I’ll be seeing it again.

I thought I had seen David Cronenberg’s original, but watching this version, I realize I hadn’t. That’s something I’ll need to remedy soon.

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Diecovery A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Diecovery – A Movie A Day #78

Diecovery is a low-budget supernatural horror movie from Thailand in 2003. I picked it up a while ago in a 2-DVD pack along with another Thai horror movie, Taxi Tonight. Neither movie looked particularly good when I bought them, but I really enjoy getting cheap, multi-disc movie packs. Most of the movies you’ll get in these packs are decent yet forgettable, but occasionally you’ll come across some real gems. Diecovery is not one of those gems, but I liked it fine.

The title aside (which I don’t like at all), Diecovery feels like a nice homemade horror movie. It’s like something my friends and I might have done over a weekend when I was younger. By that, I mean that there are nice ideas, but a lack of budget and experience kept the movie from ever really rising above the many, many other cheaply made horror movies out there.

The story follows a young married couple as they take a delayed honeymoon away from the big city. They go to a resort in the “wilderness” of Thailand (I put that in quotes because they are in the woods, but they’re barely outside the city). The resort holds a dark secret though. Years earlier, a woman was killed and buried on the grounds by the resort’s owners. The specific details around her death and its cover-up are unraveled as the mystery unfolds, but the end result is that the resort is cursed. That leads to supernatural happenings (and a few natural happenings) that get more and more sinister.

It’s a ghost story in the vein of The Grudge or many other vengeful spirit movies. So yeah, I liked the ideas, but what actually made it to the screen sometimes comes across pretty silly. The woman’s death is confusingly edited, and it’s abundantly clear that her dead body is a very floppy dummy. There are some computer effects that look real janky. The acting is mostly about the quality you’d expect from something so cheap, but you know, I did think the two lead characters were engaging. They worked well as a couple, and I enjoyed watching them. That, plus the fact that the ghost (when she finally showed up) looked pretty cool is about all I really need. 

Diecovery isn’t great, but I had some fun with it. I’d watch it again.

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Demons A Movie A Day Journal Entry (with introduction)

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An Introduction

I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided to try to start blogging about all the movies I’m watching for my A Movie A Day challenge. Naturally I’ll need to keep them fairly brief since I’ll hopefully doing at least one every day, so I’m going to treat these more as personal journal entries rather than straight-up reviews. That means these will be completely subjective musings about my personal experiences while attempting to watch at least 366 movies in 2020. That will also allow me to blog about the same movie more than once without just posting the exact same thing when I inevitably watch the same movie over and over again. I might be watching the same movie, but the experience will always be unique. That’s good, because the very first experience I’ll be writing about involves a movie that I’ve seen bunches of times and will see bunches more!

Demons – A Movie A Day #77

March is my birth month, and even though my actual birthday is closer to the end of the month than the beginning, I wanted to start with a movie I knew I’d love. It was also the Sunday night before another long work week, and that was just one more reason to start it off right. For me, a good start will always involve Italian horror, the 80s, movies, demons, and lots of gore. Lamberto Bava’s Demons has all of those things in beautiful excess.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Demons, but the number is pretty high. There are definitely other movies I’ve seen more often (The Evil Dead, and The Crow being tops in my rewatch list), but I’ve seen Demons enough to know the music cues and sparse dialogue by heart. As many times as I’ve seen it, it never gets old.

The movie is about a group of people who get magically trapped inside a movie theater while watching a film about people getting infected with some sort of demonic curse that causes them to attack and infect everyone around them. With life imitating art, the people in the theater also get infected and attack each other, turning more and more of the theater-goers into grotesque monsters. It’s essentially The Evil Dead, only it’s in a movie theater rather than a cabin in the woods. Plus, with more characters than Sam Raimi’s masterpiece, the blood and gore flow more freely and frequently. Well, I suppose that’s an arguable point, but regardless, Demons is really, really bloody.

Another reason I wanted to watch Demons is because I’ve been thinking about covering some Italian horror movies for my podcast/web site The Last Theater. I’ve been trying to decide which movies I want to start with, and I’ve been circling around Demons and some other films that have strong connections to it. For one thing, the director, Lamberto Bava, is the son of great Italian director Mario Bava. Lamberto Bava worked as an assistant director on some of his father’s films, and he worked in the same role on a couple movies I’ve wanted to cover for a long time: Cannibal Holocaust and Tenebrae.

Also, there’s another great director I’ve been wanting to talk about on The Last Theater, and he’s actually an actor in Demons. Michele Soavi directed a trio of fantastic movies between 1987 and 1994, and I’ve been thinking of doing some sort of director’s spotlight on him. In Demons, Soavi plays a mysterious man wearing what looks like a chrome Phantom of the Opera mask. I actually just learned that recently, so I wanted to watch the movie again knowing that Soavi is in it.

There’s so much to love about Demons, and I love that I’m still learning more about after so many years of watching and rewatching it. I love it, and it was a great way to start the month.

 

 

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