I watched 6 movies last week:
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- The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight isn’t funny at all, which is a problem for a comedy. It’s much more interesting as a minor footnote to what was happening in Mafia movies at the time—the almost involvement of Francis Ford Coppola, the fact that Al Pacino dropped out to star in The Godfather and was replaced by a not-yet-famous Robert De Niro—than because of anything on the screen.
- The Beast Within isn’t remotely subtle—werewolves as a metaphor for alcoholic abuse—but it’s effective. Or would be, if it were a short film. It’s a solid metaphor, with good performances, seen through the dreamy, only half-understanding lens of childhood. The problem is, the movie overstays its welcome by more than half until and hammers that metaphor beyond recognition.
- It’s difficult to make a really good found-footage horror movie, but it’s got to be equally difficult to make one as bad as Solvent. The movie is obviously trying to do big things, like speak to generational violence and the lasting scars of right-wing Nazism, but it doesn’t necessarily have interesting things to say about them. Overall, it’s more than a little pretentious and unpleasant.
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- I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the ending of Backrooms, but the unnerving way it uses liminal space to create dread and terror up until then is genuinely masterful.
- The Vampire Lovers is less chaste and less coy about being about lesbian vampires than I might have expected, even for 1970, but it’s also a decent enough Hammer horror movie.
- Claudine is a little dated—less in the things it’s about and more in the 1970s way it’s about them—but Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones are really great together.
I also rewatched F/X, which was a lot of fun, and Witchfinder General, which…well, it has other strengths besides fun. It’s a little too dour and sadistic to really be enjoyable, but Vincent Price and the rest of the cast—most of whom arguably are in the movie longer than Price—are quite good, so it kind of washes out.