The Marathon...

Right, seeing as I'd promised to review the movie marathon...24 hours of joy and happiness to the world. Ahhhh.

Lady Terminator The premise was vaguely, hot chick onto her 100th husband who still doesn't do it for her. So he pulls out a snake which wriggles up her privates and turns into a knife. So, in a logical step at retribution, she tells him that she'll wreck vengence on his great-grandaughter. Cut to 1980's, and cute anthropologist is hutning down the legend of the Queen of the South Seas. The anthropologist bit is quite important, cue "I'm not a woman, I'm an anthropologist". Lots of explosions, guns, bigger guns, death count, eye-rays etc. All good stuff. Great way to start the caffeine overload.

Streets of Fire It had Rick Moranis and Willem Defoe (the first of two Defoe sightings for the evening) in it. The director, Walter Hill, wrote/dir The Warriors, and there's a fuck of a lot of crossover in this one, including the same settings! Except the Warriors is good (ish). Streets of Fire is about a young singer who gets kidnapped, and her ex (Michael Pare) a solo grumpy bastard, heads out to save her. Lots of singing, with her songs written by Jim Steinman (or should that be recycled by...) and everyone else by the legendary Ry Cooder. It did look good, nice moody lighting - but script etc didn't live up to the photography. So kudo's to the DoP. In other news I see Hill has announced for 2008 a remake of the Warriors...wonder if Jim Steinman is free ...

Burial Ground Yay Yay a zombie flick. Even better an Italian zombie flick! With incest! How could it fail!! Unsurprisingly it didn't. Being Italian all chicks were hot, storyline was vaguely : professor opens crypt, gets eaten by zombies, who then start rampaging around the house. What was never really explored was how were there that many zombies down there (body count was high, hee hee) and what they lived on before let loose on an unsuspecting movie public. A good beheading scene, and the zombies are far smarter than the victims. I mean, you've got 10 very slow moving zombies, and you are standing *next* to the car. What would you do? Many victims, and many houses - everytime the going gets tough the kids move onto the next house. Where, quell horror, more zombies! The incredibly weird and ugly looking kid (with the hot mother) makes a move on her, he's quite smooth actually, suggesting weird kids might get more sex in Italy than I'd thought. Sadly she rejects him, so he goes and gets zombied and eats people. Woohoo nice swing on disaffected teenagers... I enjoyed this movie, cheap, crappy, although not enough sex.

Crank The only new release of the marathon. Drug dude is on some shit that if he slows down he dies. So keeps keeping his pulse up by violence, guns, drugs, sex etc. It was less mindless than I thought it would be. Great pacing, I'd almost recommend this one ;-)

Troll 2 Here's a radical thought, lets make a movie called Troll 2 with no trolls. That'll blow their mind man. It does have goblins tho'. Plot (as it is): small boy speaks to dead grandfather who warns him of goblins, boy acts mad. Parents dispair. Go to village for houseswop (Nilbog - geddit? geddit?!) people turn into plants. Weirdness ensues. Real bollox. No redeeming sex scenes.

Behind Locked Doors And onto the sex flix! Swingers, with great music, are having a ball in a barn. Bad swinger tries to do bad stuff to cute swinger, some random old guy intervenes and is invited to the party. Turns out he's a mad sex scientist (I write these words, i feel uncomfortable) and drains their car, or something, and they come to his house. Spooky! Sexy! Sadly no, potential for a full on deviant sex flick is never realised, but there are zombies. For some reason the plastic things came to life at the end. No I don't understand either. Eh it was fun, but the music was the highlight. Note to Ant: more sex next time...

Thunderbirds are go Now I'm not the biggest fan of thunderbirds, and I've seen some of the movies over the years and been grumpy by the end. But violate a duck this was utter crap. Basically a 30 minute plot (if that), stretched out to a 2 hour flick. When they said it would take 10 minutes to launch something, the fuckers were talking real-time! By far the worst/most painful movie of the marathon. Thank god for coffee and V ... I imagine removing genital lice with a branding iron would be more enjoyable than this movie.

Glorify God with TV I don't think anyone actually worked out what the title was to this one, but a great wee cameo (I have no idea how long it was) program about how to make your TV watching glorify the greatness of God. Hey I'm sold...I guess this ties in with the old TVs where phosphorus was on the inside of the screen...

The Hidden Slug alien inhabits bodies, other alien comes to kill it. There, thats your plot. Kyle MacLachlan (before Twin Peaks) was in it. Enjoyed this one, pacing was good and indestructible stripper with guns - will get my vote everytime!

Astrologer Ok, this one weirded me out. Basically government bad people good, which was pointed out many times. And then nothing was done with it. Bright guy, Alexi, is trying to meld astrology and science whilst managing the second coming which he's established is from his wife. Which is why he's not shagging her, in case it needs to be an immaculate conception. Riiigghhhtt. Although it turns out she's already dropped a kid as a *Teenage Mother*! Shocking stuff. Sadly no good sex scenes. Oh as everyone probably mentions, the director went on to do Exterminator.

To Live and Die in LA A William Friedkin penned flick, with Willem Defoe again as the bad guy -whoda thunk it eh? Wasn't quite as good as I remembered, but still bounced along nicely. Car chases were excellent, violence was good, cynicism was good, and the ending is refreshing. Recommended, which sadly stands out as an excuse to pan it for this marathon. It does have the very memorable line: 'If you want bread, fuck a baker'

The Holy Mountain This was it, nirvana. Hell I'd have paid my money for this flick alone. Why yes, I do like Alexandro Jodorowsky. Weird pseudo religious flick with bollox loads of religious iconography in it. Guaranteed to offend anyone too wrapped up in beliefs, but very very cool. Toads and chameleons as surrogates for the Spanish raping of the Aztecs (?was it?) was pretty normal as things went weird from there. You could argue it was a moving about 'finding yourself', you could argue it was an exploration of human religious thought, you could also argue it was an inspired piece of drug induced beauty. I'd push for the latter. I loved it, I spent most of the movie laughing as its very funny. I really can't recommend this one too highly. For those of you who haven't experienced AJ before, I'd recommend Santa Sangre as a reasonable entry point... After 20 hours of caffeine, alcohol and strawberries (heh heh) the timing of this was perfect. Thanks Ant.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers The remake with Donald Sutherland and Jeff Goldblum. I like it, possibly not as much as some people. But it is well done. Nice way to end the marathon.

Overall: less sex and violence than I'd hoped for. A more 'stable' lineup than in other years, but thank fuck for no painful karate movies! Seemed very 80s this year. But as you may have gathered seeing Holy Mountain would cover a multitude of sins :-)

I had a mother of a caffeine hangover on Sunday - stupid water sucking drug.

B xx