directed by sean macgregor
barrister productions incorporated
When setting out to watch this ’70s obscurity, I had no idea the sort of sleazefest I’d be enjoying. In one especially enlightening sequence, a bored and oversexed housewife emulates Of Mice and Men with the mentally challenged handyman, after which she is confronted by her daughter-in-law – the current paramour of an ex-conquest – and a breasts-exposing catfight ensues. The daughter-in-law subsequently goes to bed with the disputed boyfriend. Meanwhile, the other adult female on the premises is drinking heavily and badgering her shlump of a husband, played by Sorrell Booke. As this is happening, five deranged children who have survived a bus accident break into the secluded lodge-style home in which all of the above are weekending, and beat to death their pursuant erstwhile handler – in slow motion. This movie becomes quite unsettling as it unspools … but its creepiest component lies behind the scenes. Mid-seventies flash in the pan Leif Garrett plays one of the murderous kids (“Charlie”), as does his younger sister Dawn Lyn (“Moe”), and their mother (Carolyn Stellar) plays the sexpot, “Lovely,” who eventually is killed off, topless in the bath, by Moe. Hollywood family values – now that’s chilling.
why did i watch this movie?
With its focus on preteen sociopaths, it sounded pretty intriguing, and the multiplicity of names helped. (It’s also known as Tantrum/s.)
should you watch this movie?
Hey, it’s freely available courtesy of the Internet Archive.
highlight and low point
Before it hits its stride, Peopletoys seems as though it’s going to be as regrettable as that moniker, but once the obviously strange children are introduced to the mix, it gets a lot better. The killings are not very convincing and the blood is extremely fake, but the level of invention is pretty good. The kids seem strangely impervious to cold, though.
Sometimes, I watch a movie and I just wonder how it ended up exactly the way it did. Take this flighty little number: It plays essentially like a PG-rated family comedy, but it also includes some vaguely gory killings, flashes of nudity, a mislocated but frightening hallucination, and, unexpectedly, the band Sic F*cks. And Jack Palance, and Martin Landau, gleefully overacting as two deranged asylum escapees. Fans of the original NBC-TV series The A-Team will be glad to see “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock as the patriarch of the family in peril, and general film aficionados possibly will enjoy Donald Pleasence’s turn as the loopy, stoned head of the psychiatric institution turned porous by a power outage. Amusingly, the family never actually seems to be in the dark, thanks to the marvels of movie lighting. (Hardly anyone’s alone at any point, either.) Overall, a strangely effervescent experience given the subject matter.
A movie with a well-nigh perfect setup for a drive-in, this throwback-styled picture concerns a woman who kills a guy in a motel room and calls her estranged husband for help, after which they become targets of a murder cult. See? That’s a hard premise to best, and while director Keating’s effort doesn’t quite deliver – there isn’t as much disturbing content as might be expected, nor as much emotional impact; some of the imagery is pretty cheesy and some sequences feel like no more than padding – it’s an impressive enough attempt that I almost immediately sought out a few more films with his stamp. (Those being Darling and Pod, which I’ll get to in due time.) As I’ve hinted before, a sliding scale is employed here, and Ritual is the right kind of endeavor in my book. You can’t fail if you don’t try, people. Trust me on that one.
Whee! Hee hee! Yee-haw! This giddy space-station extravaganza is an FX-rich disaster film that shamelessly reminds one of numerous other similarly themed flicks (and actually is reminding this guy of 2011’s Apollo 18 right now as he’s thinking about it). You know the drill:
I finally got around to seeing this after having been asked multiple times if I had, and although I found it passable, I’m not quite sure why it apparently carries so much cachet within certain populations. A thoroughly Hollywood production despite its minimal budget, it’s slick, glossy and hi-tech, but DOES that reassuring façade really provide the security to which we’ve entrusted it? Isn’t that “heavy,” man? Truth be told, I was a bit disappointed that the “Purge” action itself wasn’t depicted as more of a free-for-all. [Insert Ted Nugent guitar lick here] Indeed, the main set piece elicited in me a metaphorical sigh: “oh, look, it’s Them.” (You may substitute Ils if you prefer.) And none of the plot twists ‘n’ turns were much out of the ordinary, either. But with all that being said, it was still a fairly satisfying entertainment. Haven’t yet seen the prequel or sequel.
Like, wow, man. Like, I hadn’t even planned on watching this movie, but as I was about to start viewing The Woman, which I had contemplated doing for quite some time, I suddenly discovered it’s a sequel to this one, of which I had previously been unaware. And! Yikes. Allow me to take a moment here to offer an aside: Offspring novelist (and screenwriter) “Jack Ketchum” is a very, very effective purveyor of terribly unsettling material, and is in fact the author of the rare novel I did not finish because I found it too emotionally disruptive (The Girl Next Door). Nothing that occurs in this film is all that unprecedented in our filmic experience, but it is profoundly disturbing nonetheless. Ideals such as “fairness” and “justice” have no place in Ketchumland, and sometimes the action provokes a sense of outrage. It may, in some minds, border on the obscene. Anyway, this movie is about a clan of cannibals living a prehistoric tribal existence and preying on unsuspecting suburbanites. It also harbors a subplot of extreme marital discord and disharmony. Abandon all hope.
The trailer for this movie made it look SO good that little likelihood existed for it to live up to the promise, but with that being said, The Void was still well above average. A look at one man’s experimental approach to an afterlife, wrapped in a siege flick, it disappointed me a bit in that at a certain point the threat of zombie archetypes loomed. That fate was avoided, and its metaphysical mumbo-jumbo also saved it to a degree. Certainly a suspenseful movie, I must detract a few points for evoking reminiscences of Jacob’s Ladder, and also for reminding me a bit too much of the Thomas Tessier novel Finishing Touches. It is, however, entirely possible it purposely provoked such meditations.
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 