Today's fan mail

Anonymous said...
Who gives a FUCK about your cat, you stupid fat twat!! Movies is what we come on here for. Do not get it twisted like we are your friends, and post personal shit, dilweed. We've got our own lives, and just want a few movie tips. If you can't handle that than get fucked... July
16, 2010 8:10 AM

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Zeder (1983)":
Oh my fucking god, Fred!!! Why are you getting lippy with Jack?? Don't you know he's way out of your league?? You'll never be on his level, you fat clown!! Never fucking ever!!! lol He's a REAL collector, and has mucho respect in the underground. You best believe people only come on here because he's here. You're just some douche bag who rambles on about bullshit, and you had no right to talk down to him. He was 100% correct, and you got all butt hurt for no reason!! You're every bit the scumbag everybody says you are. Fuck this blog. I hope you rot, you delusional cum gargling queerbait.

White Fang (1973)

I've said it over and over again, Lucio Fulci was so much more than gore-movies from the eighties. Nothing wrong with them, I love them and respect them to 100 %. But people tend to forget that the Maestro was an excellent director even without zombies and duck-talking serial killers. My first experience with White Fang was in Sigtuna where I went to school. The driver of the bus, Bertil, obviously understood that I even at such a tender age just was in love with the movie picture. So one day he brought a Swedish x-rental of White Fang and gave it to me. It was quite different than the other similar adventure-movies I've seen at the time, but it stayed with me and over the years I really wanted to watch it again - but with great quality and in widescreen. And I finally did.

Missaele plays Mitsah (which sounds like Pizza everyone someone yells it on the movie), an indian boy who together with his father discovers a wild dog. The boy and the dog becomes friend, and even the father - after a lot of thinking - decides to trust the dog. After an accident, Mitsah needs medcial attention and they go together to Dodge City where a nun has open a hospital. Also in the city is the journalist Jason Scott (Franco Nero, more handsome than ever) and his friend Kurt Jansen (Raimund Harmstorf) - both of course extremely good guys. The only problem is that the village is run by the sleazy and evil Charles 'Beauty' Smith (John Steiner) and his henchmen, and he really wants White Fang to be his own fighting-dog... Scott and Jansen takes it upon themselves to clean up the trash and bring some order in town!

It takes a Fulci to bring life to Jack London's White Fang. This is a much darker and crueler story, and though it's a movie directed towards families and "young adults", it's both violent and cynical. Fulci is not afraid to show the darkness of mankind and do so with a graphic punch. I think kids can, even in the seventies, stand much more than parents or censorship claims, and if I ever get a kid - this is the movie I would show. It's really nothing bad with it. It's such a slick and beautiful production (the only scene that stands out as corny is in the beginning, where we see a lot of studio-sets dressed to look like outdoors) with a magnificent cast. Everyone is wonderful, but Fernando Rey as the alcoholic Father Oatley is character with many layers and Rey makes him come a alive so well. There's a fantastic scene in the end where Oatley discovers something, a tragedy both for him personally, and the city and he goes on a ranting-rampage and breaks down out in the street. Powerful.

My biggest worry was that the story about the boy would be to dominating and cute, but it never happens and every relationship in this movie feels real. One interesting thing, that's been pointed out by other critics, is that the story is much about how evil privatization is (and I agree to a certain point). John Steiner's character is obviously a symbol of capitalism and Scott and Jansen are defenders of communism. I can see why Fulci was attracted by the script.

But White Fang is most of all a dark, intelligent and dramatic adventure-movie. Another proof of Fulci's genius and talent as a director and storyteller.

And yes Jason, I have this one and the sequel to you :)

Kitek the Cat

Our cat Kitek.

Zeder (1983)

A masterpiece. Maybe one of the most original Italian horror movies ever made, and it don't even have gore! Amazing. Zeder is more of a conspiracy thriller, with a vague giallo-feeling and a few of the living dead showing up doing what they like to do, so if you expect something else you should go home to your mother and cry like a baby or something instead of reading this.

Gabriele Lavia plays Stefano, a struggling writer who one days gets a second hand electrical typewriter from his girlfriend. After the ribbon almost breaks, he takes it out from the machine and by curiosity he starts reading what the person before him wrote. What he finds is two letters, one of them about something called K-zones, places where people somehow can obtain immortality. He traces the machine to a priest, but suddenly he finds himself deep into a conspiracy of people who want's to protect the secret of eternal life...

Zeder is all about mood. There's very little gore and special effects, but the story is so spellbinding and cool that it's hard to stop watching. Stefano (another one of Lavias excellent performances) might be clueless most of the time, but he's sucked into something so much bigger, so much more dangerous that he can't understand it. Everyone seem to be involved, or? A girl wants to give him information about what's behind it all, but gets brutally stabbed by someone before she can give him the info. The priest who the typewriter belonged to, dies one month before he finds him and left is his strange blind sister. Stories about nudists who buried their dog at a K-zone is told, and it echoes Pet Sematary quite a bit - but the story is still very different.

It's hard to explain Zeder with out telling a lot of important details and twists that you should experience yourself, and I don't want to spoil it for you. But I must say that this is one impressive movie, a thinking mans zombie-movie (which can be fun sometimes...). It would have been fun with gore and more, of course, but that's just not Avati's "thing". He want's to tell us everything, and as little as possible. A mystery movie with to many answers.

Zeder is out on Italian DVD from Fox, which is the best released. Sure, you can buy Image Entertainment's crap-release or some even crappier bootleg, but in that way you'll never experience Zeder the way it should be experienced. I hate bad quality (that's why I abandoned VHS so fast, which even with good quality tapes looks shit) and I'm not one of those who are into nostalgia that thinks that "b-movies" should be watched in shit-quality. No, every movie - good or bad - deserves to be seen in a shape as good as possible. So the only way you can see Zeder is by buying the Italian DVD.

2 x Jean-Paul Belmondo

I'm home sick right now and took the time to dive into the world of Belmondo, the über-famous French movie star, stuntman and comedian that graced the screens for many years. Much has been written about him and his movies, so I will just write a few words about what I've seen. First out was...

... The Animal from 1977, a broad comedy with Belmondo playing two parts. First the slightly failed, but cool, stuntman Mike who just been dumped by his girl, stuntwoman Jane (Raquel Welch) and is forced to start working as a monkey at a supermarket and continue his hilarious fraud to get money from the wellfare department. His luck seems to change when an international movie production is coming to Paris, it's the superstar Bruno Ferrari that will shoot his new action-adventure there and he needs a stuntman! Mike sees his change to prove to Jane that he's a successful stuntman and hopefully get her back too!

The Animal is a very funny movie, but also very light and with very little depth. The comedy is sometimes, as European movies from the seventies, quite non-PK and this means that Mike imitates a mentally handicapped man in a wheelchair to get his wellfare money and Bruno Ferrari (also played by Belmondo) is the typical sissy stereotype of a gay man! But most people are stereotypes here, from the womanzing Italian director to Mike's own macho-attitude as a stuntman. It's an expensive movie that also looks expensive, and the set-pieces with stunts and comedy is big and crazy. A lot of laughs, and I can recommend it with out any hesitation.

Ah, and we're also treated to cameos by Jane Birkin, Johnny Halliday and Claude Chabrol too + probably a bunch of other French superstars that I have no idea who they are.

Fear over the City (1975) is the total opposite. No laughs here, but a serious attempt to make a French Dirty Harry-movie with Belmondo as Jean Letellier, a very tough cop that threatens people with death and violence a bit to often. A serial killer is terroizing the city, he's murdering women and teases the police with letters and phone calls. Letellier is of course after him, but at the same time he wants to catch a dangerous bank robber that nearly got himself fired from the force!

The only bad thing with Fear over the City is that it's a bit to overlong. It don't have the same energy all the time as The Animal for example (or like the original Dirty Harry), but it's still a masterpiece of European crime-cinema. The most famous thing about this movie is the chase-scenes which is among the best I've seen, and they all look terrible dangerous. Belmondo do most of the stunts himself, which makes it look even more terrifying, and when he runs around on top of roofs, almost falling down, it looks very realistic. One chase is almost thirty minutes long and ends on top of a subway-train! The killer himself is a nasty guy (with one eye too!), and the perfect enemy of Belmondo.

These movies are very different, but was a perfect double feature. What amazes me is the stunts that Belmondo do himself. It really looks dangerous, very dangerous! In The Animal there's a lot of smaller stunts which seems even crazier than the ones in the movie their making. Belmondo has a rare talent that he can handle both slapstick and brutal action in the same excellent way. I'm impressed.

Jesus Christ Saviour (2008)

Klaus Kinski as Jesus. You've seen the few minutes of rage that opens up Werner Herzogs My Best Fiend, you've seen the clips on YouTube. You've seen nothing!

In 2008 Peter Geyers reconstruction of Jesus Christ Saviour, the name of Kinski's show, finally appeared in cinemas and on DVD. I don't know if this was a big thing in Germany, but very little has been written about about this fantastic movie outside the country. It was just by coincidence I found about it, and of course I ordered the DVD directly from Amazon.de.

For the first time we're getting a look into what really happen that night at Deutschlandhalle in November 1971, and it shows an emotional man getting hurt by the fucking idiots in the audience. I'm not usually the one that sits and talk back to the TV, but this time I had a hard time stopping myself from trying to keep quiet. Kinski tries, I think two or three times to start the show. With thirty memorized pages in his head, he demands, like all actors on stage, concentration and respect. But he get's nothing. People, or idiots, start hurling insults at him, talking back, stops listening to him, screaming rude things and at one time one fucking guy comes up one the stage and wants to take the microphone from Kinski. Kinski orders the guards to take this intruder away, and the audience starts calling him (Kinski) a fascist! God damn, who's the facists here?

But Kinski is working hard, one time after another he continues the show (still wearing a very ugly shirt), working his way thru the complicated text and some improvisations here and there. He really tries not the get provoced, and on a couple of occations he stops, standing quiet to focus - to not get angry and scream back at the retards in the audience. You can see in his eyes how his whole dream is falling apart, how he's desperate is trying to get back into his text again. There's sadness, more than anger. Finally he have to stop the show, and all those 5000 in the audience leaves...

Now, this could have been the end - but if you sit back in your sofa and waits until after the credits, you'll see one of the most powerful things I've seen in a documentary. Around one hundred people is waiting for him at the stage. He comes out, walks down to them and PERFORMS THE WHOLE FUCKING SHOW AGAIN, just for them... After a few minutes of disorder, they sit there, quiet and concentrated and Kinski can perform his show, over ten years in the making and planning.

Fuck, I wish I had a time machine to be able to go back to be one of those lucky, serious people who really wanted to listen to him. Kinski is sad and exhausted, but do what he came there for... and leaves.

Such a master-actor, such a fucking professional. I would like to see any other superstar do that now.

With this DVD you'll be able to see a big part of his Jesus-show, and it's a pity he never could tour with it - because it's a damn fine one man show. Intelligent, emotional, a brilliant analyze of the historical character of Jesus, a rebel.

Jesus Christ Saviour is a MUST in any Kinski-fans collection.

Dark of the Sun (1968)

Jack Cardiff was one of the best cinematographers that ever graced our little earth, but he was also a fine director - which he proved with Dark of the Sun (aka The Mercenaries), a very gritty and brutal war-adventure from 1968. For the first time on DVD, from Triple X in Thailand, it's far from a perfect release (widescreen and anamorphic, but weak picture quality and still has the same old cuts that has been following this movie for years), but gives the world a chance to see what a great flick this is.

Rod Taylor is Captain Curry, a mercenary that takes on himself an almost impossible job i Congo - to save 50-60 people belong to a diamond mine, but also and most important - diamonds worth 50 million dollars! He brings with him the local warrior and soldier Ruffo (Jim Brown) and an alcoholic doctor (Kenneth More). Because of some very bad luck they're also forced to bring with them old nazi officer Heinlein (Peter Carsten) and his private army. After a few minor setbacks, they finally arrive to the village - only to find that the diamonds has been looked into a huge safe that will open automatically in three hours! And it's impossible to open it any other way... and at the same time the rebels are on their way to the mine, and Heinlen is getting more and greedy...

Okey, it's cut and the quality is like VHS - but this dosen't stop this movie from being a fantastic war-adventure with both strong action and emotional content. Jack Cardiff never stays away from the brutality of war, and what's left after censorship is graphic and disturbing. Shot on Jamaica, it looks fantastic with cool jungles, a even cooler train (which much of the action revolves around) and spectacular and realistic action-scenes. Rod Taylor is one of the most underrated leading men I know (together with James Franciscus, Bradford Dillman and Rock Hudson) and sheds a lot of realism to his character. His chemistry with Jim Brown is perfect, and Brown makes one of his finest performances. To be honest, everyone in front of the camera is excellent.

Train-movies has always been one of my guilty pleasures, and Cardiff utilise this location to perfection. Most of the stuff is made without back-projection (except a few longer dialogue-scenes) and it actually seems like Rod and the others are jumping around this train with explosions and gunfire all around them. Very impressive. There's a couple of major action scenes, all very good. I guess the sneak-attack on the rebels orgy is the most famous one, and I guess it's where most of the censorship was done too. But it's hard to notice, it's so good damn fantastic anyway.

You'll have everything here: explosions, graphic violence, action, fine acting, a good story, cool locations and music. It's a movie that someday MUST have a restored DVD release (or Blu, even better!), reconstruction like it should be watched. I'm sure this will happen, but until then I'll stick with my Thai-DVD!