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Charlie's French Cinema site is updated.

 

The Dreamers (2003)

It was a film from acclaimed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and it was also chosen by our voters as the best nude scene of the year. Review here. It's easy to get excited about high definition videos and captures from this film! I'll be spreading these out over several days, because the video files are large.

 

Here is the first clip (zipped .avi). Eva Green strips to "La Mer". The captures immediately below come from this clip.

In the second clip, Eva appears stark naked and removes the American's clothing - with some unexpected results. The caps below come from this clip.

Deadly Weapons (1974)

Here's another classic, although for different reasons. In this case, the movie is so bad that it should be sold in cheese shops instead of video outlets, but it does feature the unique talents of one "Chesty" Morgan, she of the 72 inch natural gazongas. Her chest isn't that sexy, but it certainly is a curiosity item. Once again, this will be spread out over several days. Here are the first two installments. (1, 2) (Large zipped .wmv files this time.)

 

BloodRayne (2006)

Uwe Boll, you magnificent bastard!

It has become customary for movie reviewers to refer to director Uwe Boll as the new Ed Wood. In at least one sense, the appellation is appropriate. Both men built reputations as the worst directors of their respective generations. Uwe's work is held in such complete contempt that each of his last three films is among the worst 35 of all time at IMDb, and he has made two others just as bad or worse!

1. (2.31) - BloodRayne (2005)  (34th worst of all time.)
2. (2.20) - Alone in the Dark (2005)  (27th worst of all time.)
3. (2.05) - Barschel - Mord in Genf? (1993)
4. (2.01) - House of the Dead (2003)  (17th worst of all time.)
5. (1.98) - German Fried Movie (1991)

Based on the interviews I have seen and read, Uwe is like Ed Wood in one other way. He is in complete denial about the inept nature of his creations. He told one interviewer:

"I think I made a perfect House of the Dead movie, because it really shows how the game is. It's a lot of fun, it's over-the-top action - it's not 28 Days Later, because the reality is that House of the Dead is about how it's a lot of fun to shoot zombies... It's cheesy entertainment with a lot of gore and a lot of violence, and it's super-fast."

He seems to think that he has been singled out for completely undeserved brickbats which have been hurled at his magnificent works by petty critics jealous of his financial success. He may have a point. Nobody in the world can quite figure out how Uwe manages to raise so much money and to get his films distributed theatrically when they are obviously straight-to-vid material, but the fact remains that he has managed to pull it off.

"And all my movies, no matter what reviewers are saying, are getting sold. I am number one in the market as far as paying investors back goes, and that's not because I make the best movies on earth, but I make movies for a minimal amount of budget compared to what major companies are spending, and the movies look good, and they go out theatrically, and they make a lot of money on DVD or Pay TV. (More than 1.4 million copies of the House of the Dead DVD have been sold in North America.) This is the main point - if the movie is really, really bad, why are a hundred territories buying it? It's tough to get my movies on screens in the UK and France, to give a couple of examples, but they do very well in cinemas in Spain, Italy, Russia, Thailand and the Middle East, generally spending a few weeks in the top ten of the box office charts. I can live with that situation. The average Hollywood movie last year had $65 million production costs, and $40 million promotions and advertising costs. My movies have $15 million to $20 million production costs, and $10 million P&A."

(Note: In the past. Uwe managed to raise a great deal of cash from German investors on the basis of certain loopholes in the German tax code. Investing in a film could justify a 1-to-1 write-down of the income subject to tax liability. According to Boll that loophole has now been closed.)

He did have some mystifying success with North American theatrical distribution for House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark, but the house of cards collapsed on BloodRayne. Boll tried to distribute outside of the traditional studio system, and the experiment failed. The independent distributor announced that 2000 screens would be locked up for two weeks, and sent out the appropriate number of prints, but only 985 of the theaters showed the film at all, and only 340 of those held it over for a second week after the film opened in 19th place nationwide. By the third week the theater count had tumbled to 56, and there was no fourth week.

So is the movie any good? Well, I will say this: it is self reviewing. Here is the plot description: "In eighteenth century Romania, Rayne, a sexy dhampir (half-human, half-vampire), prone to fits of blind blood rage but saddled with a compunction for humans, strives to avenge her mother's rape by her father, Kagan, King of Vampires (Sir Ben Kingsley). Two vampire hunters, Sebastian and Vladimir from the Brimstone Society, persuade her to join their battle against the vampire army. Featuring Meat Loaf, Michael Paré, and Udo Kier."

Is a review really necessary? How good could it be?

Well, to tell the truth, it's not as bad as the critics contended. In fact, I think the film looks kind of cool. It is not a good movie, but it is nowhere near bad enough to be 34th worst of all time. It's just not the kind of movie which would normally receive theatrical distribution in the USA, and the fact that it did get on 1000 screens, following fairly wide distribution for other Uwe Boll films, probably contributed to the particularly nasty reviews. Theatrical critics don't usually get to see this kind of film. If it had gone straight to video or cable, it would have flown in under the critical radar, and would never have landed on the IMDb Bottom 100. It probably shouls be scored in the 4s at IMDB, not in the 2s. In terms of BloodRayne's visual appeal, it is not fair to compare Uwe to Ed Wood. Wood's films are all jerry-built and cobbled together from whatever he could use for free. BloodRayne has some nice sets, some impressive exterior shots actually filmed on location in the Romanian countryside, and some crisp and clear photography. On the other hand, the critics do have some points when it comes to the silly premise, the bad acting, and the ludicrous dialogue. The script is so sloppy that one of the important characters (played by Billy Zane) just disappears without explanation, and his sub-plot disappears with him. For the record, I'd say BloodRayne is roughly comparable to the later entries in the Deathstalker series in terms of its script, but it is much "bigger" and slicker. If you liked those, you will certainly enjoy this as well.

 

Kristanna Loken

Various orgy chicks

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Dr Lamb (1992)

Dr. Lamb, aka Dr. Lam, aka Gou yeung yi sang, is the story of an actual Hong Kong serial killer, and tested the boundaries of the then-new Category Three rating. Taxi driver Lam Gor Yu grew up with a father who didn't waste much time thinking about him, a step-mother who picked at him constantly, and half-brothers and sisters who picked on him. When the Kowloon Kodak lab became concerned about photos of severed breasts and alerted the police, they arrested Yu, and finally beat him into confessing. Once he started talking, he didn't shut up, and admitted murdering four women, acting on orders from God to punish bad women.

After killing his victims, he would photograph them, sometimes rape their dead bodies, and mutilate them, always cutting off their breasts and pickling them. This was handled very graphically in the film with an expensive dummy, and we actually see him make an incision in the breast, causing blood to spurt. The film is mostly chilling, except for some humor injected to lighten the tone somewhat. Most of the comic relief was provided by policeman Fat Bing, and timid policewoman Emily Kwan.

As an example, Bing accidently breaks a jar with a pickled breast, and is temporarily blinded by the pickling juice. When he is told what it is that he is holding, a severed breast, it lands on the back of Emily Kwan. She goes crazy, and grabs Fat Bing, leading to a good Flubtitle:

<Insert Flubtitle 6>

That same severed breast makes an appearance in one of Lam's videos of his exploits, and it is anything but humorous when he cuts it off and drops it in the jar.

There are other worthy flubtitles here to enjoy.

I have no idea what aspersing in front of an aunt is, but it doesn't sound good.

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Exploding significant others can be a huge social problem.

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Read him his rights, Fat Bing.

This film was heavily cut for its Hong Kong theatrical release, even as a Category Three, and was also cut in most foreign markets. The DVD version I screened is nearly a director's cut, with most of the gore back in.

If extreme gore, or realistic serial killer films are your thing, you will want this in your collection. I have become rather jaded from venturing frequently into offbeat horror films, but some scenes in this one made me cringe.  It doesn't just relate the facts, it shows the actual horror of what this man did, and  Lam Gor Yu was played brilliantly by Simon Yam, whom you might remember from John Woo's The Killer. . The genre is serial killer films, and this is a C+. IMDb readers say 6.1.

 

 

Usang Yeong Fang as a hooker who berates the murderer for not getting it up. Ya gotta know that making fun of the Chinese Dr Lecter wouldn't be a good idea.

Wing-Fong Wong as a victim.

Siu-Ling Wong as a victim.

 

 

* Hastert also denied an ABC story that the investigation involves him,
too...He just happened to be spending the weekend cleaning out his office
freezer.