Archive for Bills Bizarre Bijou

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou: THE BABY (1973)

Posted in 1970s Movies, 2012, 70s Horror, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Controverisal Films, Disturbing Cinema, Family Secrets, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , , on March 1, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

THE BABY (1973)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made.  If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it.   Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you, so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open.  Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes.

Don’t you miss the Seventies?  Movies were made and distributed to theaters and drive-ins all over the country that were shocking, icky, monstrous, fun, and morally ambiguous, usually all in the same film.  You couldn’t make a movie like these today, let alone find a way to get them shown to people in real cinemas.  At least, not without being arrested.  And we’re only talking about the PG rated ones!  Such a film is 1973’s THE BABY, a psycho drama / black comedy / social issues film / horror / slasher / camp-fest.  Let’s face it; the damn thing’s not going to fit into one labeled box.  And that’s part of what makes me love it so much!

Anjanette Comer (THE LOVED ONE-1965, FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN-1971, DEAD OF NIGHT-1977) stars as Ann Gentry, a fresh-faced, enthusiastic welfare case worker who has begged to be put on the ‘Baby’ case.  When she goes to the run-down house to investigate for the state, she finds a young man simply called Baby who has, in his twenties, gone far beyond being mentally challenged,.  He can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself, and Ann believes he is being kept in this advanced stage of retardation by negative reinforcement doled out by his mother, Mrs. Wadsworth (the great Ruth Roman of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-1951, THE WINDOW-1949, THE FAR COUNTRY-1954, and numerous television credits.)  Mrs. Wadsworth is an odd duck, all right.  Boozily flouncing around, she proudly informs Ann that the whole family lives on the welfare checks Baby earns for them.  If you think the mother is a nut-job, wait till you meet the two adult daughters.  Marianna Hill (Cleo Patrick on the 1966 BATMAN TV series, MESSIAH OF EVIL-1973, and BLOOD BEACH-1980) is Germaine, a statuesque gal with crazy piled up hair that makes her look as though she’s on her way to a midnight meeting of the local coven.  She also has Sapphic tendencies toward Ann and likes to sneak into Baby’s room to breast feed him at night.  Ewww!  The other daughter, Alba, is played by Suzanne Zenor, who had small roles in films as varied as PLAY IT AGAIN SAM-1972, THE WAY WE WERE-1973, and the Joan Rivers/Billy Crystal fiasco RABBIT TEST-1978.  She always has an odd facial expression, as though she smells something rotten in the room, and she likes to “discipline” Baby with a cattle prod.  Yes, there’s definitely something nasty going on in the Wadsworth domicile.

Marianna Hill as Germaine in THE BABY.

Ann is determined to get Baby out of the hands of these three clearly insane women.  First, she attempts to prove that Baby has normal musculature and tries to get him to walk.  She then attempts to get Mrs. Wadsworth to take Baby to a psychiatrist or a group home.  “It’s not like an asylum,” she chirps.  “It’s more like a spa.”  Mrs. Wadsworth stands firm, finally tiring of Ann’s snooping around.  So, she reports Ann to her boss, claiming some horrible action that gets Ann thrown off the case.   By now, our chipper little case worker is completely obsessed with Baby, to a point where you begin to wonder who the craziest person in the room is.  After all, Ann is living in a huge mansion with her manly mother-in-law and she claims that her husband has had a terrible accident.  Where’s the husband?  What happened to him?  And why does the mother-in-law look and dress like a prison matron?

Baby has a birthday bash in THE BABY (1973)

 

Mrs. Wadsworth invites Ann to Baby’s birthday party, so she can see for herself how the family interacts in a typical social environment.  Well, if this is typical, I was brought up all wrong!  Everyone is smoking doobies, everyone is disco dancing to wild wah-wah guitar music, everyone is collapsing onto sofas in groups of two or three and kissing, all while Baby crawls around their gyrating legs with cake icing on his face.  At one point, Germaine is hit on by Dennis, a party guest, who then switches his fixation to Alba.

Dennis-“You have beautiful skin.”

Germaine-“Are you a dermatologist?”

Dennis-“No, just a skin freak.”

Dennis is played by the wonderfully sleazy character actor Michael Pataki, who graced such films as THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA-1971, THE BAT PEOPLE-1974, DRACULA’S DOG-1978, THE ONION FIELD-1979, and ROCKY IV-1985.  He’s hilarious in this scene.  All the time he’s flirting shameless, Mrs. Wadsworth and her girls drug Ann and drag her into another room, where they tie her up and plot how to kill her.  Dennis remains oblivious.

Ann escapes, and she takes Baby with her, kidnapping the young man, taking pictures of him standing on his own, and sending the photos to the Wadsworths.  The women are infuriated, and they arm up and head off to Ann’s mansion where the final showdown – and the final secrets of the plot – will all unravel.  Will Baby end up with Ann or the Wadsworths?  Why has Ann been so obsessed with this case?  And what’s up with the weird masculine mother-in-law?  The ending is shocking and horrifying in a way the rest of the movie isn’t.  In the final scenes, when we discover exactly what is really going on, we are forced to question everything we’ve seen thus far, and the final shot is one haunting freeze frame.

Mama loves her baby! Ruth Roman in THE BABY

Yes, THE BABY is a freaky movie that will simultaneously delight and disturb you.  On one hand, the movie is campy as all get-out, filled with great one-liners you want to immediately repeat.  But no one can say these lines like Ruth Roman.  Rolling her eyes, gnashing her teeth, her cigarette always in the corner of her white-trash cussing mouth, and her hair always getting higher and higher, she is the poster child for Munchhausen Syndrome.  Or Joan Crawford Acting School Syndrome.  She gives it her all, growling, barking, screaming, and petting Baby in an entirely inappropriate manner.  She really makes the movie horribly hilarious.  But, on the disturbing side, we can’t forget Anjanette Comer, who creates a very disturbing character, one who has her own set of issues and a horrifying agenda, all masked by a beautiful face and a great set of gams.  The battle over Baby between these two formidable women makes the movie fun in a way that may make you want to take a shower later.  You won’t easily get the movie out of your head.

The director, Ted Post, made a name for himself in television, directing episodes of 1960s and 70s shows like GUNSMOKE, COMBAT, RAWHIDE, and THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  He also made great creepy TV-movies like DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE, OR MUTILATE (1971) and DR. COOK’S GARDEN (1971).  He also directed the very good BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES in 1970.  THE BABY relies on his television roots.  It looks flat and the color palette pretty much seems like sun-washed California, all quite serviceable if a bit pedestrian.  It has the subdued look of an ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK.  It’s the script by Abe Polsky (REBEL ROUSERS-1970) that brings this one to life.  You have to wonder what kind of crazed mind came up with this sick plot.

Despite the obvious budgetary constrictions, THE BABY emerges as a taut thriller, a campy twisted comedy, a horror film, and a disturbing look at what people will do when they are desperate.  God, I do miss the Seventies!

THE BABY gets three and a half giant hair-dos out of four.

© Copyright 2012 by William D. Carl

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou Presents: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

Posted in "So Bad They're Good" Movies, 1970s Movies, 2012, Asian Horror, Bad Acting, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Drive-in Movies, Ed Wood!, Low Budget Movies, Mad Doctors!, Plant Monsters!, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , , on February 16, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970)

(A.K.A. VENUS FLYTRAP, BODY OF THE PREY, THE DOUBLE GARDEN, and THE DEVIL GARDEN)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made. If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it. Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you, so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open. Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes!

Now this is what I’m talking about! THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1970) is a movie that’s almost incomprehensible to modern viewers, an assault on all that is good and decent in quality motion pictures; a viewing experience so weird and wacky that it boggles the mind. You want to expose your friends to how entertaining a terrible movie can be? This is the stinker to show them the true wonders of crap cinema!

The movie starts with poorly matted credits, and we get a little excited. This stars John Ashley, Angelique Pettyjohn, and Ronald Remy. . . hey, what a minute. These are the exact credits for THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, the green-blooded zombie exploitation hit from 1968. They’ve used all the wrong credits, so it’ll take some digging to identify any cast and crew members for this turkey. Luckily, that dialogue is instantly identifiable. Even in the first scenes, when rocket scientist Dr. Bragan is worrying about the fate of his newly lunched space probe, we get classics like:

Dr. Bragan: How in the hell can anyone be so stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?

Dr. Stanley: Dr. Bragan, there could be a possible error in our calculations.

Dr. Bragan: Could be? Could be, Dr. Stanley? There is no room for ‘could be’s’ in this project. You see this? A mathematical error the width of this small coin in space could represent the distance between New York and Tokyo. A ‘could be’ in space could throw our rocket a million miles off its targets. Dr. Stanley, ‘could be’s’ I cannot use! Gentlemen, I want the facts! The facts, do you hear? Paul, you take these ‘could be’s’ and make the necessary corrections and bring me the reports. And get these (motions to other scientists) things outta my sight. Get them outta here!

Yes, friends, the words bear the unmistakable stamp of the wonderfully untalented Ed Wood Jr., writer and director of such joyfully bad films as PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1955), and the inimitable GLEN OR GLENDA? (1953.) By the late 1960s, our favorite cross-dressing director had fallen on hard times, and Ed Wood Jr. was writing soft-core (and even some hardcore) pornography. He brought us delights such as ONE MILLION AC/DC (1969),TAKE IT OUT IN TRADE (1970), and the delightfully titled THE SEXECUTIVES (1967). Somewhere between his naughty nudie movies, he managed to whack out a script entitled VENUS FLYTRAP, which was purchased by Japan’s Toei Studios and was anonymously directed. Nobody on any website I searched appeared to know who directed THE REVENGE OF DR. X. It wasn’t even good enough for Alan Smithee.

They did wrangle an aging matinee idol from yesteryear, James Craig, who often stood in for Clark Gable and still sported his pencil-thin moustache in 1970, when DR. X was filmed. Craig had an interesting career spanning from the 1930s to the early 1970s. After establishing himself as a handsome, rugged actor, ala Gable, he starred in several real classics, such as KITTY FOYLE (1940). THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943), KISMET (1944), and OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES (1945). By the Fifties, Craig was working on television shows like DEATH VALLEY DAYS and HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL while still churning out fun B-Pictures like THE CYCLOPS (1957). In the novel MYRA BRECKENRIDGE, Gore Vidal named him the most desirable film star of yesteryear. By 1970, he not only starred in THE REVENGE OF DR. X, he was also in the grade-Z movie BIGFOOT(1970) and the Nazi Biker flick THE TORMENTORS (1971). Yes, oh how the mighty have fallen!

As we saw earlier, Dr. Bragan is a NASA scientist who has a meltdown while waiting for his probe to arrive at whatever space-place it’s aimed for, so his Japanese assistant, Dr. Nakamura, tells him to take a vacation in Japan. Bragan packs his car and drives to the airport —by way of North Carolina, if the signs are right! Stopping for repairs at a rural gas station, he is aided by a friendly white rube in black-face who has a special fondness for snakes. While he fixes the doctor’s car, Bragan discovers a Venus Flytrap and takes it with him. No, there doesn’t seem to be any constraints on transporting a large carnivorous plant across the ocean and into a strange, alien environment. Once he arrives in Japan, he is picked up by the beautiful and, unfortunately completely untalented Noriko, Nakamura’s lovely cousin. They decide to set up Bragan’s laboratory at her father’s old place where there is a greenhouse. You know, because all space physicists are also botanists in their spare time. The road getting there is rough, including passing a volcano which is spewing lava and ash hundreds of feet into the air. Nariko informs the unshaken scientists that “the volcano is never really dangerous.” Hello? Lava? Falling rocks? Okay, I’ll eat my popcorn and watch.

Norika emotes!

The house is a sprawling mansion with a huge greenhouse tended by a Japanese mute hunchback who plays Danse Macabre on the giant pipe organ in the living room. Doc X (Note: not once in the movie is Bragan referred to as Dr. X, despite the movie’s title!) replants his beloved Venus Flytrap in the greenhouse and begins to go a little crazier. He decides he needs to mate his plant with another carnivorous plant that walks around on the ocean floor. He believes even Charles Darwin could respect such a creature, that even Darwin secretly believed humans to have evolved from plants. Luckily, Noriko knows several nubile women who like to pearl dive topless, and they get the walking plant for the scientist, who marvels over its beauty. It’s a huge tube with long roots to walk with a more scraggly tubers sticking out of its top. When he gets it back to his lab, he injects it with new glands and vitamins so he can make the plant “as human as the human element itself.” What what what? All the while, the thing whimpers like a puppy. Plants can cry? I am learning so much from this movie that I never knew before. Yeah, okay, shut up Bill and eat your popcorn.

A mad scientist, his hunchbacked assistant....and, oh yeah, Noriko.

Noriko: But, Doctor Bragan, that’s impossible.

Bragan: Don’t tell me anything’s impossible! I refuse the word ‘impossible!’”

Suddenly, the Venus Flytrap is six feet tall with shiny red papier-mâché mouths and the whole greenhouse looks like Frankenstein’s lab. There is a pulley system which Bragan uses to heft the mutant Plantenstein to the roof during a storm and there are lots of those metal shocking things that go buzzzzz bzzzzt buzzzz. Animated lightning crackles on the set as Bragan screams at the storm, “Your mother was the Earth! The rain your blood! The lightning your power! Ah hahahahahaha!”

The resulting creature must be seen to be believed. It’s as if someone who’d watched too many Ultraman episodes was given a fifty dollar budget at Hobby Lobby. It’s a rubber suited monster with pipe cleaners sticking out of its head, flytrap hands and feet, and a scowling skull face. And, yes, the zipper is plainly visible, even in the grainy print I witnessed.

PLANTENSTEIN ATTACKS!!

Bragan starts sleeping by the creature, and the mute hunchback begins raising puppies in the greenhouse (uh-oh!), and Noriko begins fighting with the good doctor.

Noriko: You must eat, Doctor Bragan. You must keep your strength.”

Bragan: I can watch after myself, thank you very much! I’ve been doing it for quite some time already.

Bragan attempts to feed the monster one of the puppies, but Norika gets upset. Puppies are off the menu! But, apparently, woodland creatures like mice and squirrels are fair game, and the plant creature grows even larger and makes duck-like quacking noises when it moves. Every time it feeds, the screen goes red. Bragan even goes to a local hospital at night (on a mountaintop?) and steals blood from people getting transfusions to give the Plantenstein its protein supplement for the day. It attacks the hunchback (who, in all fairness, was teasing the monster with a white bunny treat), and the doctor takes the plant’s side.

Noriko: You are no longer Dr. Bragan, brilliant scientist. You are Dr. Bragan, madman.

Bragan: There is nothing wrong with my MIND!

Finally, the creature breaks its bonds and goes rampaging down the hill toward a local village. You know, the one right underneath the lava-spewing, non-dangerous volcano. Soon, villagers take to the streets, carrying pitch-forks and torches. Bragan, using a baby goat as bait, lures the monster to the rim of the volcano, and the scientist and his monstrous creation tumble into the lava stock footage together, while the adorable goat bleats and watches. Just like the end of THE MANSTER(1959)!

So, Ed Wood Jr. wrote it and a fallen star headlined it and apparently nobody directed it, yet you can’t take your eyes off the damned thing! Nor your ears. The music isn’t credited to anyone, and it’s pretty obvious that stock library music was used by randomly putting a needle down on a record and recording. It never stops! And it is rarely appropriate for the scene. Most of it involves xylophones, oboes, and wooden blocks, and the whole doggone thing reminded me of the percussion band we had in music class in the third grade! It’s hard not to laugh when comical xylophone music is playing over footage of an argument or 1960s beach style pop is heard every time someone drives a car. It’s so schizophrenic that an idiot savant seems to have scored it.

Be warned, in no way does THE REVENGE OF DR. X resemble a good movie—and that’s a wondrous thing! James Craig acts as if he’s portraying the dastardly villain tying ladies to railroad tracks. Noriko spouts phonetically learned speeches with no inflection whatsoever. Men in rubber suits attack small children and puppies. Volcanoes can’t hurt anyone till they have to. Inappropriate music, NASA stock footage, snakes in a barn, Ed Wood Jr. dialogue . . . it’s bad movie heaven!

For normal moviegoers, 1 out of 4 non-dangerous volcanoes. For people like us, 4 out of 4 non-dangerous volcanoes. You know you wanna see it!

THE END (..OR IS IT??)

© Copyright 2012 by William D. Carl

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou – BLACK EYE (1974)

Posted in 1970s Movies, 2012, Action Movies, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Blaxploitation, Crime Films, Detectives, Hammer Films, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , , on February 2, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

By William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

BLACK EYE (1974)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made. If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk-till-dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable—then I’ve seen it and probably loved it. Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you, so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open. Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes!

Fred Williamson was a famous football star, playing for both the Oakland Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs.  He was also one of the first black action heroes, a muscular, lithe, handsome presence onscreen and off.  He was a hit with the ladies, but he didn’t degrade them in his pictures.  Nicknamed ‘The Hammer’ in his gridiron days, he could fist fight with the best of them, and even better, the cat could act.   The Hammer was nobody’s whipping boy.  Instead, he built a long career by playing smart guys, detectives and cowboys and gangsters with real soul.  Williamson was first noticed in the TV show JULIA, co-starring with the lovely Diahann Carroll.  This was followed by a string of classic blaxploitation films, including HAMMER (1972), BLACK CAESAR (1974), HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973), THAT MAN BOLT (1973), and THREE THE HARD WAY (1974), where he shared billing with two other hot African Americans, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly.  A textbook classic of its kind, THREE THE HARD WAY is a wild ride, but it’s been seen by everyone and is readily available.  You all know I would find something else to discuss here, right?  You bet your sweet…Shut your mouth!

BLACK EYE (1974) is like a Sam Spade plot gone horribly left of center.  In it, Williamson plays Shepherd Stone (natch), a down-on-his-luck private detective with little money in his pocket and an office in the back of a local pub.  He’s been thrown off the force, see, because he kept beating up pushers.  His beautiful girlfriend who lives downstairs (played by the luscious Teresa Graves—a regular on LAUGH IN, she later starred in the TV drama GET CHRISTIE LOVE and the movie OLD DRACULA-1975), is a bisexual who’s started dating an older white woman who owns a modeling agency, played by the great Rosemary Forsyth (SHENANDOAH-1965, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?-1969  and 2001’s GHOSTS OF MARS).  After interrupting the girls in flagrante, he shamefully returns to his run-down apartment.  But first, he hears a noise in the flat of his neighbor, a hooker who has several side businesses going.  When he investigates, he finds her dead, and an Aryan/Nordic type of man attacks him with a gold-tipped walking stick,  the top of which is sculpted into a dog’s head.  The blond man gets away, and our hero calls the cops, who promptly ask him to help them on this case.  You know, since he’s already involved and all.

Shepherd Stone is also asked to look into the disappearance of a young girl by her father, played by Richard Anderson (FORBIDDEN PLANET-1956 and he was Oscar Goldman on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN).  These two cases lead Stone to a sordid porno studio, sordid parties of the very rich, sordid broken-down carnivals, and the local church where the girl was last seen.  The church is run by a slimy preacher who may or may not be running a cult, but is certainly running some kind of scam.  Meanwhile, everyone wants the gold dog cane that the blond killer had in the hooker’s apartment.  Once owned by a famous silent film star (BLACK EYE opens with cool silent black and white footage of this actor, making me wonder if I was watching THE ARTIST (2011) again), this cane has been used to smuggle pure heroin into the country.  But by whom?  And who’s willing to kill for it?  The crooked preacher?  The porno producer?  The old gay man who collects movie memorabilia?  Soon, bodies are piling up everywhere Stone turns, the cane gets stolen twice, and everyone beats up everyone in several nifty bare knuckle brawls.  Complete the picture with a decent, bouncy car chase through a bodega slum, lots of sexual innuendo (“You’re a woman.”  “I’m a whole lotta woman!”), a mass baptism scene complete with a hundred hippie Jesus freaks, and a few good twists to the plot by the end.

Fred "The Hammer" Williamson in BLACK EYE.

BLACK EYE (he’s black and a private eye, get it?) was directed by Jack Arnold.  Yes, that Jack Arnold – the director of such classics as THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), and TARANTULA (1955).  Arnold’s career went south after the 1950s, and he was relegated to directing television shows like PETER GUNN, RAWHIDE, and (say it ain’t so) GILLIGAN’S ISLAND.  In the 1970s, he directed several blaxploitation features, including BLACK EYE.  It’s a long strange journey, but he still keeps the pacing fast, the dialogue snappy, and the people beautiful, baby.

Our feature was written by Mark Haggard (director of THE FIRST NUDIE MUSICAL-1976) and Jim Martin.  It’s not Shakespeare, or even Hammett, but it’s a fun little flick that plays a little dirty while still maintaining a PG rating.  If the plot seems overcomplicated, that’s because it is.  I’m still not sure how one woman fits into the whole bizarre plot, but it doesn’t take away any enjoyment from the movie.  In fact, the whole convoluted thing goes down easy with the popcorn and beer.  Dashiell Hammett himself once claimed he never knew who killed one character in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941).

And this isn’t a writer’s picture, or even a director’s.  This one belongs to the walking charisma that is Fred “The Hammer” Williamson.  With those hangdog eyes, those long sideburns, and that just-eaten-the-canary grin, he is a hero for the time.  He doesn’t use a lot of slang, and he only fights when he must (or when he catches a dope pusher in an arcade), and he’s entirely on the side of the cops, so he doesn’t really fit into the blaxploitation hero paradigm of the early 70s.  He isn’t a pimp or a crook or a gangster.  He’s just a regular Joe, fighting the man to get an honest day’s pay and fighting a predatory lesbian for his woman.  In fact, the whole matter-of-fact handling of the bisexual and lesbian characters in the movie is very evenly handled, surprisingly advanced for its time.  BLACK EYE doesn’t judge.  It’s just the facts, ma’am.  But The Hammer rises above it all and makes it much more enjoyable than it ever should be.  Williamson’s still acting.  In fact, he has four movies scheduled to open next year, including a remake of the brutal 1982 movie, FIGHTING BACK.  Long may the King reign!

BLACK EYE is available in a nice print from Warner Archive on DVD.

I give BLACK EYE three sordid porn studios out of four.

© Copyright 2012 by William D. Carl

Fred Williamson hangs out with some hippies in BLACK EYE

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou Unveils THE BEST FILMS OF 2011

Posted in 2011, Best Of Lists, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , on January 5, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou Presents

Our Feature Presentation

MY BEST OF 2011

By William D. Carl

2011 was a nice year for movies, and I saw more than my usual share of terrific films.  It was also good year for comic book films, giving us CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR, and X-MEN:FIRST CLASS, as well as a bounty of bizarre treats.  Below, I’ve listed my top ten films for the year, those I felt achieved something wonderful, creative, and artistic . . .

  1. HUGO—Scorsese made the first movie that demands to be seen in 3-D and a real reason for film fans to rejoice.
  2. WAR HORSE—Spielberg’s best film in years with visuals you may never erase from memory.
  3. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS—Woody Allen’s tribute to the city of lights is a fizzy piece that demands you go to Paris and lose yourself.
  4. TREE OF LIFE—Brilliant, confounding, demanding, and obscure…I know I don’t get it all, but I still adore it.
  5. DRIVE—Ryan Gosling channels Steve McQueen and Albert Brooks is scary as hell.  A brilliant cross between art film and action flick.
  6. MONEYBALL—who knew a baseball movie without any baseball scenes could be so fabulous?  Entertaining with a tight, flavorful script.
  7. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES—what science fiction should be and rarely is—intelligent, funny, shocking, and even heartfelt.
  8. CRAZY STUPID LOVE—a terrific cast brings a sweet, emotional romantic comedy to life.  Plus, it’s actually romantic!
  9. ARTHUR CHRISTMAS—the only animated film all year to impress me.  Way funnier for adults than for kids, with the best elf vs. lion African footage ever.
  10. BARNEY’S VERSION—beautifully acted film that says more about love and loss than any hundred sappy Nicholas Sparks sob-fests.  Paul Giamatti is fantastic.

Honorable Mentions go to : BRIDESMAIDS, THE LINCOLN LAWYER, BEGINNERS, and THE DESCENDANTS.

*****

This being Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, I also offer up my list of top ten bizarre flicks from the year.  These won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but they’re all more fun than they should be, and I loved them all.  Bizarro Awards go to:

  1. ATTACK THE BLOCK—this is how to make a summer movie.  Big, furry bear-like aliens vs. streets hoods.  Some of the funniest and raunchiest dialogue of the year.
  2. TUCKER AND DALE VS EVIL— Hilarious take on cannibal redneck movies, where the rednecks are the good guys and the clean cut kids are monsters.
  3. THE LAST CIRCUS-Franco’s Spain breeds an emotional war between two circus clowns.  Alternately beautiful and stomach churning, this is a great horror/political film.
  4. THE SKIN I LIVE IN—Almodover’s movie about rape, sex changes, mad scientists, and truly twisted sexual relationships is eye candy for the smart set.  Disturbing.
  5. RARE EXPORTS—Finnish tale of the evil demon Santa Klaus and his minions.  Darkly funny and gorgeously shot.  A real hoot after some spiked eggnog.
  6. MELANCHOLIA— Lars Von Trier takes on sibling rivalry in a shocking movie that plays out like WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE meets the first hour of THE DEERHUNTER. It will haunt you.
  7. CHILLERAMA—the return of the anthology film, which features gay were-bears singing and dancing, a giant sperm cell mating with the Statue of Liberty, and a gibberish-spouting Hitler.  Not for all tastes, but if you’re game…
  8. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN—brightly colored, garish, violent, and fun, this revenge flick does everything right to recreate the grindhouse feel of those exploitation flicks of the late 70s and early 80s.
  9. AMER—the giallo gets an arthouse makeover with eye-popping colors and awesome music.
  10. RUBBER—a rubber tire discovers it can make people explode if it concentrates hard enough and goes on a killing spree, while a live audience observes it in the wild.  Yes, you read that description right, and the movie really is that twisted.

Overall, a great year with some real standouts and plenty of bizarre bijou fare!  Here’s hoping 2012 is just as good.

© Copyright 2011 by William D. Carl

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