Goldbeater

This is very much an amusing  B-movie critique of corporations and consumerism, which was far less horrific than I had originally expected. The director Cohen's distinctive style somehow holds everything together, and the idiosyncratic Michael Moriarty as "Mo" is quite a bizarre, wisecracking, and entertaining character. It is all kind of endearing and childishly naive, in short, this movie is a comedic curiosity that can not be taken at all seriously, even though it is obviously trying to get a message across.

Love Camp 7 is a trashy and tiresome Nazi exploitation B-movie, and only audiences on the fringes will have a good time watching this, those who take pleasure in watching women humiliated, licking the boots of sleazy SS officers, which is still the least humiliating thing they have to do in "Love Camp 7". Somewhere in the background is a petty empty-headed storyline, which absolutely bears no importance, because the heart of this movie is made up of torturously long perverse and sadistic scenes that are not necessary to the plot. Sometimes it does make you laugh with inane lines like, “I cannot guarantee you that you will love Love Camp Seven but I can guarantee that you will love in Love Camp Seven.”. Otherwise, it is a rather lifeless and repetitive movie that is topped off by a dash of action in the last five minutes, which is really not enough after the slapdash hour and a half before it.

I won't say anything bad about the special effects - in my opinion, the appearance of the triffids in this movie is solid when keeping in mind the options in 1963, the moving plants do not look ridiculous at all. What does seem ridiculous, however, is the storyline, in many scenes, it is terribly naive and uninteresting, but is also divided into two parallel narratives, which are not related to each at all. The whole storyline with Kieron Moore and Janette Scott had been added to make the movie longer, so it ends up completely different from John Wyndham's novella and fabricates a really stupid happy ending. In terms of being faithful to the original literary masterpiece and its quality in general, the 1981 British miniseries is much better.

Taken from today’s point of view, it seems more like a cold procedural drama than a nerve-racking thriller - it is also supported by restrained (albeit stellar) acting performances and contains zero appeal to the audience’s emotions. It is absolutely incomparable with the emotional impact of later similar movies like Apollo 13 and Gravity. Technically, however, this movie is beyond reproach. The Oscar-winning special effects are great, although it could be compared, critically, to 2001: A Space Odyssey, released only a year before with more fascinating special effects. But the special FX in this movie were still amazing for their time - I can imagine how impressed movie-goers were in 1969. Unfortunately, in other respects, this movie does not really deliver what the audiences are hoping for in terms of proper drama.

This is a remake of the director's older movie Las Luchadoras contra el médico asesino. It's about a doctor who would do anything to save his seriously ill son, and thus in desperation transplanted the heart from a gorilla heart into him. The ape-man then goes on a rampage, runs away, and kills several random people - in particular, naked women. Naturally, professional Mexican wrestlers get mixed up in it, as usual. This was a relatively violent gory movie in 1969, and includes ripping off people’s heads, gouging eyes out, and a realistic organ transplant, which, after all, put the movie on the "video nasties" list. However, in all other respects, it is a purely below-average crap version of Frankenstein, which is often inadvertently comical (the ape-man makes really weird grunting noises, and other strange sounds during his attacks, including snorting noises). The sound-design (especially the musical score) that accompanies the most crucial scenes is a downright tragedy - perhaps due to the editing out of violent gory scenes due to censorship issues, and then being put back into the movie, but the poorly edited music is really intrusive. The acting performances were also dreadful, but it was all more or less as I expected.

A hotel, voyeurism, perversion. Private Parts is a very slow mystery-thriller directed by Paul Bartel and features nice camera work by Andrew Davis (who would become the director of The Fugitive). The middle of the movie drags a bit - early on in the movie there is a rather unexpected murder featuring a decapitated head, and then nothing happens for a long time except the ominous discovery of some dark recesses in an old hotel and its strange guests. It soon becomes a relatively light-hearted and original homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, with the pretty captivating score by Hugo Friedhofer. However, it does not provide any major shocks or real horror.

This is an unpretentious B-movie horror featuring three security robots, which break free of their constraints and start wiping out anyone they come across. It is a combination of everything the "low" genre has to offer - from a party with horny teenagers to one exceptionally cool headshot. In terms of plot, it is more or less average, but it is especially entertaining due to its constant references to pop culture: Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov reprise their roles from Eating Raoul at the beginning of the movie, Dick Miller reprises his role of outsider Walter Paisley from A Bucket of Blood, the central couple watches Corman's classic Attack of the Crab Monsters on TV, and, last but not least, in many scenes movie posters hang on the walls, for example, the director's debut The Lost Empire. Chopping Mall is built on coarse humor and fun pop culture references, without them, it is really just straight-up junk.

This is another amazingly stupid horror from the workshop of Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, who this time, try to convince us that rats keeping themselves to themselves and showing no interest in aggression are supposed to be murderous monsters, so at any moment a member of the crew throws them into a shot or pours buckets of them onto the heads of the actors (audiences who can not tolerate the careless treatment of animals in movies should avoid this movie). The real disgusting rats in this picture are the characters, who you would like to rid the world of. However, the speeches they give are real pearls - for example, the group discovers a heavily mutilated corpse and is surprised that it "shows no signs of violence". Also, you might not take anything away from this movie, except the line "computers and corpses just do not go together". However, you still will not have figured out what role the diabolical computer actually played in the movie.

This is a typical New World Pictures B-movie about a nonsensical car race, in which you would need a magnifying glass to find some semblance of logic. However, the real way this movie differs is the slight nuances with the parts of the supporting actors - in addition to the usual actors Roger Corman's production company would normally use, Corman himself plays a District Attorney, the directing duo Allan Arkush and Joe Dante play two young car mechanics, and Jonathan Kaplan is an all-night gas station attendant. The biggest treat in store for audiences, however, is the scene where there is a short meeting, in which director Paul Bartel himself shares a bucket from KFC with Martin Scorsese and Sylvester Stallone playing mafiosos. This is an entertaining slapstick comedy, which although is not as good as Bartel's previous movie Death Race 2000, is still greatly entertaining.

This is a pleasant Christmas fairy tale. This type of drama-comedy, where two people from different walks of life are forced to learn from each other and rethink their attitudes, is probably always a sure-fire hit. It seems quite superficial and there is no real drama in the whole movie, however, it is still an all-around positive and relaxing movie with the great Viggo Mortensen, whose third Oscar nomination I would like to finally change into an actual award.