Plot: A lesbian couple bring along a third wheel on their vacation, but when their car breaks down they are forced to spend some nights at a large rural estate run by a weird mother and son. They have sex sometimes, are painted in the nude, and eventually get murdered.
Analysis: A note: Bloody Sex (AKA Sexo Sangriento) was only accessible to me in unsubtitled Spanish. While I have much greater facility with this particular language than some of the other recent foreign films I've covered, some of the nuance of the plot was still lost on me. Not that the plot is anything other than an excuse to string together softcore lesbian sex and erotically charged murder sequences.
As we've gotten deep into the trenches of the 80's slasher, we've encountered a couple of these more pornographically-minded slashers before. Results vary (Killing of the Flesh is protracted and boring whereas Momentos de Prazer e Agonia is merely protracted), but the bottom line is that they have almost no chance of being satisfying slashers because they aren't going to bother spending money on good murder sequences when they know naked women are going to get people in the door anyway. They always have a shot at being good softcore porn, but unfortunately Bloody Sex fails to match the lurid promise of its title.
Frankly, there's not even that much sex. Not that I'm complaining per se but, like, commit to your thesis! The second a woman starting having a flashback to a sex scene she'd experienced earlier is when I began to worry about this movie not having enough meat on its bones. This is about 20 minutes in, mind you.
The horror setup here is a decent enough riff on the Psycho thing, with an excellent cavernous mansion providing as much atmosphere as you could ever ask for. However, there's absolutely no mystery involved. The kills take a hellishly long time to get started, and as soon as they do, the film hardly takes a breath before revealing exactly who is committing the murders. Plus, the only thing resembling tension is a handful of the cheapest fake scares from the horror movie playbook, so that's frustrating as hell.
The one truly kind thing I could say about the film is that it has a killer score. I'm well aware it's just library music that they pulled from other sources, but they chose well. The sinister synths swell and swoon on the soundtrack, making you almost feel like you're watching something atmospheric and moody, which is more work than any other department is putting into this thing.
Killer: Multiple members of the family, but mostly the Mom
Final Girl: One of the Lesbians
Best Kill: OK, I hesitate to say it is "good," but because it is interesting and not very common, the woman getting stabbed in the vagina is certainly something.
Sign of the Times: This was about the last year, down to the minute that anyone was interested in ripping off Psycho rather than Friday the 13th.
Scariest Moment: Bloody wounds have been painted onto one of the tasteful nudes.
Weirdest Moment: The film ends on a quote from Algernon Blackwood.
Champion Dialogue: N/A
Body Count: 6
Lesbian #1 is killed offscreen.
Random Older Man Who Might Be the Dad is stabbed.
Lesbian #2 is stabbed in the vagina.
Mom has a knife thrown into her chest.
Son is decapitated.
Scary Old Man is axed in the head.
TL;DR: Bloody Sex is a slow and plodding movie that is neither bloody nor sexy.
Plot: A killer stalks a small Indonesian island and, one by one, kills off a group of men who are hunting for sunken treasure and a trio of camping teens.
Analysis: A note: Srigala AKA Wolf was only available to me in unsubtitled Indonesian, so some of the nuances of the plot were lost on me. However, considering that the film is quite obviously a rip-off of Friday the 13th, it wasn't too hard to guess at what was going on.
Actually, let me backtrack. This movie was billed to me as a Friday the 13th rip-off, but other than some POV shots and a Crazy Ralph analogue, there wasn't much in the first 2/3 of the film to sell me on the idea of it ripping off anything other than Bay of Blood, which Friday was already doing. However, the second the kills start kicking in (right at the beginning of the third act, making the film preposterously draggy), it lurches into the Friday template so devotedly that I could have quoted the English script word for word. It copies everything, down to the random reveal of a middle-aged woman as the killer, the boring three-act chase scene that ensues, and even the closing scare gag. Thankfully they at least cut the seven minute scene of Alice making coffee, so they had one good instinct here.
However, copying the kills of Friday the 13th not only without Tom Savini but apparently without an effects team at all, is a no-go. The murders are all relegated offscreen, into silhouette, or achieved with the mildest smear of stage blood. It's an embarrassing dearth of interesting murder sequences, which were the one thing other than the score that propelled Friday into the stratosphere. The score of Srigala sucks too, come to think of it. At every turn, Srigala fails to capture the eminently copiable charms of the film it's trying to recreate.
Occasionally, some regionalisms sneak in to liven up the proceedings, like a completely unmotivated boat chase that is the most exciting moment in the entire film. Or the sequence where the girls are fighting over a hot dude and begin to go full kung fu movie, striking poses before leaping toward each other. But these moments are few and far between, and there's only so much that the studly Indonesian star Barry Prima in low-cut collars can assuage my pain during the rest of the leaden proceedings.
Killer: Indonesian Mrs. Voorhees
Final Girl: Pink Girl
Best Kill: The guy who gets his head slammed in a car hood, because that's the easiest to accomplish with minimal special effects, and an incredibly relatable, flinch-inducing feeling.
Sign of the Times: While they failed to rip off most of Friday the 13th, they nailed those teeny tiny shorts that all the men wear.
Scariest Moment: Pink Girl has a dream that zombies emerge from the lake.
Weirdest Moment: Boss Man has a car bearing down directly on him, so he throws a rope at it.
Champion Dialogue: N/A
Body Count: 8
Scuba Man is killed offscreen.
Yellow Girl is axed in the head in silhouette.
Cuck Guy has his head slammed in a car hood.
Shirtless Scuba Guy is harpooned.
Boss Man is hit by a car.
Hot Guy is killed offscreen, presumably stuck with arrows.
Flashback Guy is killed offscreen.
Indonesian Mrs. Voorhees is stabbed in the chest with her own knife.
TL;DR: Srigala is a rip-off of Friday the 13th that is doing everything so demonstrably worse that there's no reason to watch it.
Plot: After businessman Girdharila is murdered by his cousin Dhanpat Rai, he himself is murdered. Girdharila's daughter Sapna and her lover investigate, as people at Dhanpat Rai's mansion begin to die one by one.
Analysis: A note: This film was only accessible to me in unsubtitled Hindi, so there are huge swaths of plot I had no way of understanding. As such, this review will focus on visuals and atmosphere, of which the film doesn't offer much to chew on. This film was directed by the Ramsay brothers, who previously collaborated on the Bollywood slasher Saboot, which focused on the murder, revenge, and general drama between people fighting for control of a family-run mill. This film continues to be a meditation along those lines, adding a heavy dose of Bollywood family drama to the first half of what ends up being a pretty standard slasher setup.
Unfortunately the first half is aesthetically unpleasing, so if it succeeds anywhere, it must be the script that I couldn't understand. Every scene is presented with flat, even lighting and a tendency to keep the scene in a master shot wherever possible. The initial musical number is also desperately bland, as the romantic leads flail their arms around in the rain. The only thing that livens up this part of the film are the brief moments where the Sapna seems to hallucinate a much better movie, with musical dream sequences including dancing skeletons, a ghostly disco, and a surf rock breakdown.
Thankfully the second half is a lively bit of slasher mayhem. There are some solid kills, including a Saw-esque trap where a man is hooked up to fuse box that electrocutes him when somebody comes into the room and turns on the light switch. There's also a faux-Argento touch that involves a stabbed woman falling into a bathtub and sloshing sudsy water all over the floor. The kills come thick and fast for a brief period that did win me over to the film's side, though it was still a hell of a slog to get to them in the first place.
Killer: I honestly have no idea
Final Girl: Sapna
Best Kill: A woman has a noose slung around her neck and she is instantly dragged into the air and hanged from a tall tree.
Sign of the Times: The fact that after Saboot was a failure as a slasher, they went right ahead and made another one the next year.
Scariest Moment: The hostel seems to be run by a Torgo-esque figure in a blazer and no shirt.
Weirdest Moment: Did I mention the dancing skeleton surf rock number?
Champion Dialogue: N/A
Body Count: 8; this number is probably off by at least one, because I have a sneaking suspicion that one late kill is just a flashback retelling of a kill that occurred earlier.
Girdharila is thrown off a balcony.
Dhanpat Rai is killed offscreen.
Woman is stabbed in the back.
Man is electrocuted.
Woman #2 is hanged from a tree.
Man #2 killed by trees or something.
Woman #3 is shot.
Sombrero Man Who Might be Dhanpat Rai in Flashback is strangled.
TL;DR: Sannata is a passable slasher by the standards of the Ramsay brothers, but those are pretty low standards.
Plot: The girls at Madam Lan's (Ni Tien) brothel are being murdered by a necrophiliac who is stalking the streets of Hong Kong.
Analysis: A quick note: Like many of the most obscure foreign films I've covered, this Hong Kong slasher was unsubtitled and thus I missed any and all context of the script, so my rating should be taken with a grain of salt. Usually foreign slashers are straightforward enough that this is barely a problem, but there are definitely some obvious twists and turns in the plot that completely escaped me here.
The first half of the movie is more concerned with forcing you to consider how gross it might be to be erotically attracted to a corpse covered in writhing maggots rather than actually being a slasher movie. It's certainly less icky and misogynistic than the same film would be in the hands of, say, Maniac director William Lustig. But it's still not not those things. Once the slasher formula fully kicks in, it's a mostly agreeable one. The killer's face is covered by a scarf, which isn't particularly exciting, nor are the tempera paint kills he doles out. However, what is exciting is the giant-ass knife he wields, which is so huge that it's exactly scraping the line where it might reasonably be called a sword.
All in all, it's a pretty wan affair with too much time devoted to police activity (there are three separate stings in quick succession in the third act, murdering the pace even better than the killer could have), though I admire how much it foregrounds a cadre of gossipy old ladies as what - for lack of a better term - might reasonably be deemed protagonists. There is also a rather lovely aesthetic sensibility in many scenes, as its mist-drenched sets are stabbed with huge blades of light. The set design is also exquisite, and any scene that is content to explore the brothel's ornate interior is better for it.
Killer: Scarf Killer
Final Girl: Madam Lan
Best Kill: There is a particularly kinetic moment when a man investigating an abandoned building is attacked by the killer, who has been hiding in his back seat.
Sign of the Times: The random kung fu scene that breaks out for all of 25 seconds in a movie that is otherwise entirely devoid of martial arts.
Scariest Moment: Madam Lan drops something, and when she goes to pick it up, a hand appears from under the bed and drags her beneath.
Weirdest Moment: The killer rubs an artfully arranged corpse up and down with what looks like a big fluffy white oven mit.
Champion Dialogue: N/A
Body Count: 9; not including the naked wormy corpse lady who presumably dies before the events of the film.
Cop is stabbed in the gut.
Girl is killed offscreen.
Man is stabbed to death in his car.
Red Herring has his throat slashed while underwater.
Woman has her head beat in with a rock.
Cop #2 and
Cop #3 die indistinctly during a chaotic police sting scene, but there sure are huge bursts of blood from whatever happens.
Man #2 is strangled with a scarf, possibly in a flashback.
Scarf Killer is shot by a firing squad.
TL;DR: Corpse Mania is prettier than it has any right to be, but its deviations from the slasher formula are too gross to be appealing.
Plot: A series of killings occurs in the Long Island area as a pair of gangsters force their leader's son Jack (Fred Borges) to help acquire meat for a tribe of leper cannibals. On the case is Detective James Cameron - no, the other one (John Smihula).
Analysis: Contrary to appearances, this film was directed by a human man: Nathan Schiff, who we'll somehow be encountering again in his 1985 film They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore. You're immediately clued into exactly what kind of film you're in for with the opening production logo, which looks like it was scrawled with a blunt crayon by a not particularly artistically inclined squirrel. The filmmakers seem aware of light as a vague concept, and love to play around with it. Sometimes it's a patch in the center of the frame that nauseatingly lurches from top to bottom. Sometimes they remember they need some more in the scene and get some by tipping the handheld camera up into the sun. Sometimes they just light the characters with a flashlight and call it a night. They at least seem to have someone consciously making decisions, which the sound department cannot boast. The film's soundscape, which boasts absolutely no room tone between patches of fuzzy dialogue, is sometimes overwhelmed by the sound of the camera rolling.
The film's saving grace is its extreme commitment to being itself. Nothing in it qualifies as "good" (other than maybe some excellent library music they plaster over certain scenes), but the chaotic nonsense of anything any character ever does provides a sheen of silliness that is sometimes rather appealing. We are presented with a world where characters can just randomly sprout a fu manchu mustache between scenes and constantly spout gloriously overwritten dialogue like "If we don't get our money, unpleasant things can occur," or "let me touch thy flesh one final moment." The Long Island Cannibal Massacre is pure chaos, slipping through time and place with no indication as to what it's doing (at one point the film - without warning - takes a brief sojourn to South Carolina).
This same approach is taken with the gore, which is delivered in incompetent spades. It's all very Herschell Gordon Lewis, reveling in turning people into goo with lawnmowers and pulling out guts that look more like balloon animals than intestines. They have no budget or vision, but there is a muchness to everything that is exuberant and endearing.
Killer: Zed (Paul Smihula) & Bruce AKA James Cameron (John Smihula), but also kinda Jack (Fred Borges) and his dad, who is credited as King Leper (Winston B. Anderson III)
Final Girl: N/A
Best Kill: James Cameron's extended murder is the best, mostly because of his Rasputin-esque aversion to actually dying.
Sign of the Times: Jack is constantly wearing sunglasses, has an enormous mustache drooping over his lip, and a feathered attempt at a fro. The late 70's are strong in this one.
Scariest Moment: Jack hangs his head out of the car window, and someone leaps up and grabs him.
Weirdest Moment: Jack's dad demands that he eat a dead girl, and he takes a bite out of her leg... through her jeans.
Champion Dialogue: "You're mad because I'm alive and you're all chopped up into little pieces."
Body Count: 11
Student has a lawnmower lowered onto her face.
Makeout Boy is hit with a tire iron.
Makeout Girl is garroted with a chain.
Cannibal dies of starvation.
Makeout Guy #2 has his head crushed with a cinderblock in a nightmare sequence.
Lori is killed with a knife, and that's as specific as I'm able to get.
Zed has his face impaled on what appears to be the metal pole from a street sign, which somehow causes the skin to be removed.
Dave is hit in the back of the head with the claw end of a hammer.
Penny is meat cleavered in the neck in flashback.
James Cameron has battery acid sprayed in his face, is stabbed in the face with a harpoon, is sliced in the leg with a shovel, is shot in the head, is stabbed a bunch, crawls around a lot, eats part of Jack's foot, and only dies because it seems like he's decided to.
Jack has his tongue pulled out, is impaled on a stick, is dismembered and slashed with a chainsaw, and is eventually decapitated with the aforementioned chainsaw.
TL;DR:The Long Island Cannibal Massacre is a piece of shit, but it's got a nice little bow on it.
Plot: Kirsten (Julie Austin) accidentally unleashes a mythical Nazi elf that wants to impregnate her with the Master Race, and only a drifter who just got a job as a department store Santa (Dan Haggerty) can save her.
Analysis: The primary defining element of Elves is that it's absolutely unhinged in every possible way, down to the fact that the title is a lie and there's only one elf. The film honestly wouldn't even qualify as a slasher except for the fact that it's a different movie every 20 minutes, and one of those is a supernatural slasher set at a department store. The other options on this sampler platter include high-octane action (or as high-octane as "guy notices dynamite in car, leaps out of car instead of just throwing away dynamite" can be), bonkers family drama (Julia's mom - who is made up like a Bratz doll - wants to punish her daughter for breaking the rules and going into the forest by closing her bank account and drowning her cat in the toilet holy shit - the mom is literally so evil that there's a hilarious scene where Kirsten's friends just assume she's her stepmom), and gangster movie (the Nazis are apparently just the mafia, who knew?).
The elf itself is at least rather scary-looking, but only when it's not in motion. They clearly could only afford to make a a shoulders-up bust of the elf, so it is never seen in full. When it is lurking in the shadows staring at its potential victims, it cuts a menacing figure with its mottled grey skin and sharp fangs. However, when it's asked to perform any action, it's clear that the mouth isn't articulated very well and it undercuts the tension something fierce. However, it's not like Elves had any tension to spare in the first place. Its ultimate charm lies in the absolute fever dream nonsense delivered by every character, setting, and object onscreen (including two genuinely funny intentional jokes, a department store display that reads "GUNS - Gift Ideas for Mom," and a professor who is teaching Dan Haggerty about Nazi mythology correcting his young son's grammar when he says "elfs.").
Killer: The Elf (not Elves, notably)
Final Girl: Kirsten (Julie Austin)
Best Kill: Poor, poor Agamemnon the cat is drowned in a toilet because Kirsten's mom is a psychopath with the makeup of a Bratz doll.
Sign of the Times: Any outfit worn in the department store scene, but particularly the purple cardigan paired with the yellow dress. Or maybe the unitard with a purple tutu.
Scariest Moment: Kirsten's little brother wakes up with the Elf trying to throttle him.
Weirdest Moment: Kirsten's little brother pervs on her while she's in the shower and insists that she's got "big fucking tits."
Champion Dialogue: "Life's a bitch, Eddie. First you're Santa and then you die."
Body Count: 9
Agamemnon the Cat is drowned in a toilet.
Coke Santa is stabbed in the crotch.
Blonde Guy has his head split by a Nazi.
Amy is shot in the head.
Brooke is stabbed to death.
Kirsten's mom has a radio dropped into her bathtub.
Ponytail Nazi is shot in the gut.
Grandpa is shot.
Trenchcoat Nazi is shot by the Elf.
TL;DR:Elves is reprehensible and weird and fascinating, though none of those things really add up to "good."
I've been doing the math on how many goddamn slasher movies I have left to cover and how much time I have in my life for writing things I'm not being paid for. Unfortunately, those numbers just aren't adding up, so for the time being Census Bloodbath is converting to this sleeker capsule review style (which will inevitably be almost as long as my regular reviews anyway). This will likely culminate in a bigger, more involved project down the road, but for now I hope you enjoy at least having something to read rather than the barren wasteland of nothing that my blog has been since I started writing for Screen Rant!
Year: 1981
Director: Stanley Sui-Fan Fung
Cast: Wei Pai, Nora Tsang Pui-Kei, Lee Yuen-Wa
Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Plot: Siu Fong (Wei Pai) is the hero of a small village, having protected them some years ago from a wicked gangster. Every woman in town lusts after him, though he only has eyes for Sin Sin (Lee Yuen-Wa). In spite of this, every woman that throws herself at him ends up dead, killed by a mysterious prowler with a skull for a face. Once Sin Sin's sister Fei Fei (JoJo Chan Kei-Kei) goes missing, he must clear his own name and track down the killer, his investigation leading him into combat with the sinister potter Seen Kay (Chung Fat) and the vengeful gangster Kam (Lee Hoi-Sang).
Analysis: This Hong Kong film is a unique beast, grafting the nascent slasher formula onto a more tried-and-true kung fu movie plot involving gangsters and lots of acrobatic punch-kicking accompanied by the sound effect of some poor foley artist slamming two by fours into a sack of beans or whatever. Although the slasher elements are much less well-rendered (there is hardly a drop of blood, though the excavation of a corpse that has been coated in clay and turned into a statue is suitably gruesome), at least the killer is designed to the rafters. The killer's face is shrouded by a black straw hat, but when he tips it up, he reveals - instead of a face - a terra-cotta skull. It's an incredibly imposing bit of costume design that does a lot to add oodles of atmosphere to whatever scene he finds himself in.
The kung fu sequences also embrace the cheesiness of late-era martial arts flicks in a kinetic and exciting manner (especially the scene where the gangsters try to impale Siu Fong on a rolling cart with horizontal spikes), though nobody would go out of their way to call them particularly inspired. The plot itself is really the problem. Even though there are some zany twists and turns, including an underground cavern with a hidden entrance in a coffin, a little person kung fu/pottery master, and a telenovela-esque series of third act reveals, the killer reveal is too obvious and the first two acts spin their wheels maddeningly between too few kills. All in all, this was a fun diversion from the world of American slashing in the early 80's, but this is a "fast forward to the best moments" kind of deal rather than "let's make a bowl of popcorn and sit down with The Phantom Killer."
Killer: Ah Kwai (Cheung Sin-Ming)
Final Girl: Siu Fong (Wei Pai)
Best Kill: It's more of a post-kill extravagance, but one of the victims gets turned into a statue, which is radical as fuck.
Sign of the Times: The fact that a kung fu film decided to spruce up its plot with the slasher formula in the first place.
Scariest Moment: The first time the killer lifts up his head and you see the skull underneath.
Weirdest Moment: The potter beats the shit out of Siu Fong the first time they meet, and then proceeds to be extremely helpful for the rest of the movie.
Champion Dialogue: "Even though my son is ugly, he's still got a girlfriend."
Body Count: 6; not including at least 3 thugs and 2 security guards who are attacked but whose fates are unclear.
Yan-mei is punch-stabbed in the neck.
Madam Suet is punch-stabbed in the gut.
Amah drinks poisoned tea.
Guard is hanged.
Sin Sin is killed offscreen.
Fei Fei is stabbed in the gut.
TL;DR: Phantom Killer isn't a particularly interesting movie as far as its plot goes, but when it comes to the film's signature blend of slasher and kung fu, it's a riot.
As our sojourn through the movies I missed in previous Census Bloodbath years continues into 1981, we're swooping back into Hong Kong slashers in a major way. Ai Sha, AKA Love Massacre, was directed by Patrick Tam, an influential figure in the Hong Kong New Wave who was the mentor for international directing superstar Wong Kar-wai. Unfortunately, the copy that's currently available isn't quite up to snuff to allow us to fully appreciate this fact, so please take that into consideration in this review. The print is a bit blown-out, and while it's easy enough to appreciate the color and framing and whatnot, the white subtitles are completely swallowed whenever there is a bright white at the bottom of the screen, which is almost all the time.
Curse a director who knows how to use negative space!
Love Massacre has an oddly complicated continent-hopping plot, which is not aided by the subtitles sometimes falling into a chasm for minutes on end. But what I got out of it is that Joy (Tina Lau) is a melodramatic student living in San Francisco. Her boyfriend Louie (Charlie Chin) wants to move to New York, but the idea of him leaving her causes her to slit her wrists on a very pretty lake. While she's recovering, her brother Chiu Ching (Kuo-Chu Chang) visits from Hong Kong and kindles an extramarital affair with Joy's schoolmate Ivy (Brigitte Lin). After Joy perishes in a car accident, Ivy gets closer to Louie which enrages Chiu Ching, who kills his wife and comes to San Francisco to get up to some stalkin' and slashin'.
When a romance this sizzling is interrupted, you really feel it!
The place where Love Massacre succeeds the most is, for obvious reasons, its general aesthetic. It's a beautiful film, from the opening shots that see a woman walking across sandy dunes, an isolating and alienating shot that sets up the plot quite nicely. He really does pump a lot of energy into using visuals to tell the story, which should seem self-evident when you're discussing a work of cinema, but after 8 million shot-on-video slashers really feels like a breath of fresh air. He uses superimposition quite well as a means of juxtaposition, drawing links between characters while highlighting their major differences at the same time.
There are also scenes that aren't quite so artistically challenging, like the POV shot on a roller coaster, but display an excellent sense for what might be the most fun to point the camera at. Tam also favors white backdrops interrupted by bold blocks of color, best represented by a dazzling museum scene that exists solely for this purpose.
Behold!
So yes, it's undeniable that the film is pretty to look at. But here's the thing. In general, it's not pretty enough to look at that it obviates the film of its incredible sins both as a slasher film and a melodrama. Hell, there are individual shots in Zoom In: Sex Apartments that are just as, if not more beautiful to gaze upon, so like... it's clearly not that hard to bring these particular visual ideas to life.
The less said about how the script functions as a drama, the better. The characters are given so little semblance of humanity that it's hard to care when they're being murdered, so why should anyone give a shit what they're up to in the meantime? Sadly, the superior filmmaking technique doesn't extend to the murder sequences, so they're extra empty. A filmmaker who is truly committed to making a murder sequence feel brutal and jarring can certainly accomplish that. Look at Angst, or literally anything made by Dario Argento before 1989. These scenes are just an afterthought, clearly thrown in to spice up the proceedings and hop on the bandwagon of the subgenre that was popular enough that American enthusiasts might even venture into watching a subtitled film (indeed, said subgenre is so popular that loser nerds like me are still seeking Love Massacre out 40 years later simply because the film belongs to it).
Love Massacre would certainly benefit from a really nice Blu-Ray transfer, but the bottom line is that the story it's telling is dysfunctional. Plot beats slip by with no clear connection to one another, culminating in a third act that doesn't so much draw the threads together as murder a bunch of the threads so we don't have to think about them anymore. I don't know that I would warn anyone away from the film. There's certainly enough on offer here to place it above the basement-level standard of many slasher films from this period. However, especially in 1981, there are literally almost two dozen films I'd point someone to first before recommending it.
Killer: Fu Chiu Ching (Kuo-Chu Chang)
Final Girl: Ivy (Brigitte Lin)
Sign of the Times: The girls have to find out about overseas occurrences from a newspaper. Ew.
Best Kill: One of Ivy's housemates has her head slammed in a door, which is pretty damn gnarly.
Scariest Moment: Ivy sees Chiu Ching sleeping in a coffin, and he slowly turns his face toward her.
Weirdest Moment: Chiu Ching paints a little kid's entire face purple.
Champion Dialogue: "When did you learn to smoke?"
Body Count: 9; character names will mostly be missing - I'm sure I could parse out who is who with careful study of the egregious subtitles (ie. massive contrast-editing on screenshots), but frankly the names don't matter much because none of the body count characters who die are relevant to the story in any meaningful way.
Joy is killed in a car accident.
Chiu Ching's wife is killed and dismembered offscreen.
Housemate #1 is stabbed to death.
Housemate #2 is strangled and hit with a teapot.
Housemate #3 has her throat slashed.
Housemate #4 is stabbed.
Housemate #5 is drowned in a tub.
Housemate #6 has her head crushed in a door.
Chiu Ching is stabbed.
TL;DR: Love Massacre is reasonably pretty, but not enough to overcome its wan melodrama and tepid slashing.
Well, here we are again. The end of another year. Now that wasn't so bad, was it? OK, it was pretty bad.
But hey, pop culture figured out how to keep itself getting made, so it's time once more for our annual roundup of the best and worst of film, television, music, and more in 2021! I will leave you with the usual warning that this is but an opinion! Me disliking something you like does not make you bad or wrong. I hate mint chocolate chip ice cream, so I'm used to being in the minority. However, I hope I can guide folks to some cool things that the world of entertainment had to offer this year.
On a personal level, I began to experiment with returning to theaters in July, double-masked and going to afternoon screenings on weekdays to avoid crowds. I'm currently rethinking my strategy in the face of this next phase of the pandemic and pulling back until at least the end of January, so time will tell what next year's Flashback will look like. Everyone's comfort level and personal safety is the priority, so I recommend waiting for any of these films that aren't already on VOD if that's what works best for you.
Thank you for reading, as always, and - to paraphrase one of this year's top memes (which finally made its way down to me, thus indicating it is well and truly over) - I hope this gargantuan annual blog post finds you well.
2021 Movies I Missed That I Wish I Had Seen Before Compiling This List: 12 Hour Shift, There's Someone Inside Your House, Saint Maud, Titane, Gunpowder Milkshake, Red Rocket, The King's Man
2021 Movies That I Missed, Don't Regret Missing, and Will Go Out of My Way to Continue Missing Until the End of Linear Time: Red Notice, King Richard, Mortal Kombat, Finch, Joe Bell, Stillwater, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Cry Macho, Army of the Dead, Home Sweet Home Alone
A 2021 Movie That I Turned Off Halfway Through and Thus Doesn't Qualify for This List, Yet Me Doing That Tells You Everything You Need to Know About It: Space Jam: A New Legacy
The Ten Best Films of 2021
#10 Slumber Party Massacre
This movie snuck in under the radar, because even the most hard-nosed horror hounds don't really keep track of SyFy's original content. However, maybe we should. Slumber Party Massacre is far from perfect and its comedic sensibilities don't land well with me, but it's a rather fun subversion of the tropes and structure of the slasher genre. Also, I will adore any film that harnesses the "female gaze" as well as this film in its ruthless, relentless exploitation of male bodies that honors the original film's most ludicrous excesses.
#9 The Vigil
The Vigil, which is a horror movie about an ex-Orthodox Jewish man hired as a Shomer to keep guard over a dead man overnight, is rather packed full of tropes. However, it assembles those tropes in an incredibly effective and spine-tingling manner, freshening them up by the mere fact that this is religious horror where you don't see a crucifix even once. The Jewish tradition will hopefully get more and better horror movies, but for now this one is an excellent - if generic - example of the craft.
#8 Minari
I want to commend this film for giving the Oscars everything they want without sacrificing the warm kindness that suffuses the entire narrative, even when it's at its most bitter and upsetting.
#7 Language Lessons
Language Lessons is doing something I have begged the found footage and/or screen life genre to do for over a decade: not being a horror movie. This story - as told through a record of video chats - of a gay American taking online Spanish lessons from a tutor in Costa Rica, is a rich and emotionally resonant exploration of platonic friendship, something which is almost never properly celebrated in film. Stars Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales, who co-wrote the film with Morales directing, forge a beautiful dynamic that keeps the film constantly feeling fresh despite being tied to a single visual format.
#6 I'm Your Man (Ich bin dein Mensch)
It's easy enough to sum up this film (about an academic who participates in a case study that assigns her with a humanoid robot designed to be a perfect partner) as a gender-swapped version of Her. And it pretty much is that, but more German. However, this film lives and dies on the chemistry between leads Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens (who is fluent in German, who the hell knew). Stevens especially is the backbone of the film, delivering an excellent physical performance - certainly the best onscreen android since Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina - that takes the particular set of skills he honed in The Guest and turns them up to 11, which somehow works perfectly for a romantic comedy. At least, a European romantic comedy.
#5Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas)
While I tend to prefer his melodrama of the 90's to his 2010's output, Pedro Almodóvar has crafted yet another fascinating and beautiful film with Parallel Mothers. It has a bookending narrative that I don't think melds particularly well with the central story, but both are tremendously powerful in their own right and it wouldn't be an Almodóvar film without a little messiness. It's a tremendously confident film from a filmmaker who's almost never not at the top of his craft, blending queerness, Spanish history, and motherhood into an intoxicating cocktail.
#4 Two of Us (Deux)
When I sat down to watch the French film about retirement-age lesbians, I steadied myself for a dour old time at the movies. And yes, there is plenty of harrowing European drama to be had here, whether it's the horror of the loss of one's faculties or the misery that comes with erasure. However, the film has a spark of whimsy that makes it play more like an action thriller than a weepy drama, and it's an outright delight to watch. It's a gripping film anchored by two stunning performances and made with the utmost arthouse care, but it never throws away a sense of popcorn bombast that really has no business being there, yet remains utterly captivating.
#3 The Night House
The Night House has some flaws in its overall premise, or at least it's far too easy to see a type of film it could have been that would be even better. However, it's the single horror film this year that has really sent a tingle up my spine. Rebecca Hall's barn-burner of a performance that brings out the realism of her character's grief by drowning it in spiky edges and bitter sarcasm rather than indulgent melancholy provides a heady cocktail when combined with director David Bruckner's crushing atmosphere and razor-sharp bursts of tension.
#2 Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar is nothing short of a miracle. It's a comedy that is uncompromisingly weird and goofy and stupid, and yet is possessed with boundless kindness and love for every oddball character that struts across the screen. Sure, it's ten minutes or so too long like all modern comedies, but when all those other minutes are providing such a potent cocktail of spy movie pastiche, random musical numbers, middle America satire, and sex positive shenanigans with a solid core of female friendship at the middle, it's hard to begrudge spending a little extra time in this universe.
#1 The Human Voice
I suppose I can't say I "missed" Pedro Almodóvar, considering the past three years have been his most fertile directorial period since the 90's. However, nothing in recent memory has felt as potently Almodóvar as this 30 minute one-woman short film following Tilda Swinton's final phone conversation with her ex, who has just left her (his first film in English, by the way!). This is his most direct adaptation of the Jean Cocteau play La voix humaine, which he has been building elements of into his work since the late 80's.
He finally comes together with this favorite play of his in an explosion of exquisite production design (the short moves from the most lushly appointed hardware store you've ever seen to an audaciously colorful apartment you could gobble up with a spoon, located in some sort of liminal space film set), and a career-best performance from an actress whose career is basically built from best performances. Now that I've seen Parallel Mothers and am able to compare, I think where this short film excels the most is in the fact that it doesn't need to tie itself to a narrative structure, allowing it to become an abstracted prism of all of Almodóvar's most potent stylistic instincts.
Best 2020 Film I Missed: Breaking Fast
Breaking Fast is one of those indie movies that so effortlessly proves how easy it is to make an intersectional diverse story that it reminds you how much of Hollywood's struggle to properly represent LGBTQ+ people and people of color is just their refusal to actually try. Breaking Fast is an effervescent Ramadan rom-a-com about a Muslim-American having a meet-cute and falling in love with a white American love interest over the course of the holiday, acknowledging the racial realities inherent to that kind of relationship but also refusing to let this light and sweet story become a stolid polemic. I'm desperately sad that I didn't catch this before making my end of the year list for 2020.
The Five Worst Films of 2021
#5 Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin
I won't rag on the fact that it has literally nothing to do with the other Paranormal Activity movies, because that was to be expected. However, you can't just claim to be a part of this universe and ignore the most basic, fundamental rules of found footage cinema. This film is chock full of cheap music stings and, even worse, extra coverage from angles that force you to remember that this is a work of fiction, because they would be impossible for the crew to accomplish with the amount of equipment they have.
#4 Cinderella
It oh so nearly wriggles its way into good-bad territory, though it ends up being dragged into the mud by some treacherously bad jukebox song choices, and insipid original numbers that force star Camila Cabello out of her register, groaning and grunting her way through the melodies as if she's in pain. It's not often that an untested pop star acquits herself better as an actress than a singer in her first motion picture, and that is far from being a compliment. Also, James Corden shows up because for anyone who likes musical comedy he's basically the It Follows monster constantly plodding at your heels.
#3 After We Fell
After the second film briefly brought up the quality by about 1%, the After franchise (which is infamously based on Harry Styles fan fiction) backslid with this epic journey through the arid desert that is the relationship between the bland Tessa and the pure evil Hardin. Every other character is recast due to COVID restrictions, adding a veneer of confusion to a project that doesn't have two plot points to rub together. It just endlessly hammers its single plot point, which is Hardin blowing his top at literally anything Tessa does, says, or thinks. Romantic!
#2 A California Christmas: City Lights
Even by the standards of the Netflix Christmas movie, this reaches cataclysmic heights of empty narrative. Real life bland Christian couple Lauren and Josh Swickard even ditch the bizarrely potent horniness that lent the first film any sort of flavor.
#1 Old
Old is a one-way trip to goof city. It's a fun enough high concept that was never going to have a particularly satisfying ending, but it's everything that comes beforehand that's the problem. M. Night Shyamalan's scriptwriting problems have never been more apparent, and he compounds them with the ugliest camerawork of his career, forcing important visual moments offscreen through a stylistic hailstorm of blurry images and uncomfortably cropped close-ups that end up showing exactly nothing.
Best Worst Movie: Diana the Musical
First of all, yes this fully counts as a movie because the Broadway show's opening was delayed by COVID and this recording of the stage production (filmed with in the actual theater but with no audience) was the first way it was possible to see it, so I consider it eligible. And now it's the only way to see it because the Broadway show closed after 33 performances. This is because it is demonstrably, titanically, vaingloriously bad in nearly every way.
I do think the cast tries their hardest and mostly acquits themselves, especially Jeanna de Waal as Diana, who has a spectacular belt. It's just that the lyrics she belts are among the most ludicrous ever compiled into a single work. Just when you think a particular rhyme is the most garish and depraved combination of words to be found in the English language, the next one goes ahead and tops it.
Setting aside the fact that this is a real person who they are treating incredibly disrespectfully, Diana propels you on a flume ride through the barest wisps of a plot, assuming you know the whole story and won't mind being ripped from one moment to another across 17 years compressed into a sickening, oily concentrate. As for the dancing? I've seen better choreography improvised by drunk high school students, and there is nothing ironic or sarcastic about that statement. That's just a true story about my life.
Worst 2020 Film I Missed: Mank
If they had turned the lighting down by about two percent, you wouldn't be able to see anything in this movie, and I'd honestly prefer it that way. A desperately uninteresting slog through a truly unhinged Gary Oldman performance that doesn't cohere properly into any sort of recognizable human character.
Best Dramatic Actor: Udo Kier, The Blazing World
The Blazing World, which is essentially a low budget Pan's Labyrinth-infused riff on Alice in Wonderland, is a film I wish I had more patience for than I do. However, whenever longtime character actor Udo Kier is onscreen, his just-the-right-side-of-over-the-top performance provides an uncanny, crushing weight.
Best Comedic Actor: Jamie Dornan, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Jamie Dornan has had a rougher time shaking off the stigma of starring in Fifty Shades of Grey than Dakota Johnson, but that's also what happens when one of the next projects you make is Wild Mountain Thyme. Here, he gets the chance to lose the self-serious act and just play in the sandbox with two gifted comedic actresses, showing off exactly what sparkling, deadpan hilarious heights he is capable of.
Best Dramatic Actress: Martine Chevallier, Two of Us
This is certainly the movie on my Top 10 list that showcases the most capital A Acting, but Martine Chevallier's performances shines in her quietest moments. Playing a wounded soul trapped inside a body that no longer works the way she needs it to, she delivers rushing torrents of emotion with just the little flicks of her eye.
Best Comedic Actress: Lady Gaga, House of Gucci
Did I choose her because I couldn't decide between Barb or Star? Maybe. But House of Gucci, despite being resolutely un-campy, is massively improved by Lady Gaga's improbable accent that haphazardly slips between "spicy meat-a-ball" Italian and... who even knows? Bulgarian?
Best Dramatic Supporting Actor: Matt Smith, Last Night in Soho
Just for proving that the charismatic Brit has the ability to be fucking mean.
Best Comedic Supporting Actor: Skylar Astin, Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas
Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas was a resounding disappointment, leaning in on all of the show's most goofy flaws. And there's no way any actor could have sold the intensely stupid final scene that tries to explain the cliffhanger of the show's final season with a shrug of "well, that was weird, wasn't it?" However, Astin elevates every other scene he's in, taking an impossible character arc and making it seem almost plausible through sheer charismatic willpower.
Best Dramatic Supporting Actress: Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari
Is this the first time my personal tastes have aligned with the Oscars? Let's pretend this never happened. Yet it's impossible to deny the sheer charisma of Yuh-Jung Yoon, taking a stock Oscarbait role and applying the full force of her magnetic, fun personality to it.
Best Comedic Supporting Actress: Vanessa Bayer, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
As the dictatorial leader of Barb and Star's local Talking Club, Vanessa Bayer bubbles over with barely disguised glee at the ludicrously banal cruelty she is able to inflict on others. Every time she appears, she runs away with another chunk of the movie.
Best Cameo: Kyle Richards, Halloween Kills
It's long been a trivia tidbit that the actress who played babysittee Lindsay Wallace in the original Halloween went on to be a Real Housewife. But in this extended cameo, she acquits herself well enough to be memorable in a film that already features Jamie Lee Curtis, Anthony Michael Hall, and Judy Greer. That's no small feat!
Worst Cameo: The Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Forget the inherent grotesquerie of digitally resurrecting poor Harold Ramis for this stupid, stupid sequence, trotting out the original Ghostbusters cast 40 years later is just a grim reminder of how much time has passed rather than a fun nod to a classic film.
Best Post-Credits Scene: The Suicide Squad
I just really love Weasel, OK?
Best Opening Credits: Candyman
The upside-down shots of Chicago buildings seeming to emerge from the fog like trees from the earth are perfectly unnerving, as well as a fun literal mirror of the opening credits of the original film.
Best Score: Halloween Kills
As the kids say, John Carpenter snapped. He and his collaborators Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies have turned out yet another score that is significantly better than the movie it's bringing to life, reimagining the classic Michael Myers themes in a way that feels kinetic and dangerous.
Best Soundtrack: Single All the Way
I just really want to give props to a Christmas movie that has somehow found a way to assemble a group of songs that are neither overplayed nor extremely terrible (a goal that Hawkeye continuously failed to reach every single week). That's the gay touch, baby!
Best Original Song: "Hunter's Moon" Ghost, Halloween Kills
Am I goth now? Maybe. I love a propulsive drumline and a soaring chorus, so there you go.
Worst Original Song: "Million to One" Camila Cabello, Cinderella
Why did Camila Cabello write this for herself when it's not in her range? Somebody tell me.
Best Musical Sequence: "White Woman's Instagram" Bo Burnham: Inside
Not only is this an incredibly fun parody of the inanities of social media, it's got that breakdown in the middle where things get alarmingly real and the camera pulls out from an Instagram square frame to widescreen and back again as she readjusts back to feigning happiness for her followers. Just truly excellent aesthetic all the way through.
Worst Musical Sequence: "Whatta Man / Seven Nation Army" Cinderella
I want you to know how vile this scene is by reminding you that I could have picked anything from Diana the Musical or the Bollywood dance sequence from Eternals, which completely misunderstands what makes Bollywood fun. However, Cinderella just keeps vomiting up mysteries that will eternally haunt me. What compelled anyone to mash up these two particular songs, I'll never know. What I do know is that they neither make sense in context nor out. However, what grinds my gears the most about this abomination is the way that the tempos so conspicuously fail to gel.
Best Musical Sequence That Briefly Redeemed a Terrible Movie: "Sincerely, Me" Dear Evan Hansen
The scene where Evan Hansen and his barely-there friend are editing a series of fake emails that they will pretend were written by his crush's deceased brother (this plot is whack, no two ways about it) brings the film to life for a brutally short couple minutes. The way the sequence has the brother directly addressing the camera while continuously restarting as they change details is actually fun, something that Dear Evan Hansen resolutely refuses to be otherwise.
Best Monster: Funeral Home Zombie, V/H/S/94
I couldn't find a picture of the actual creature, but perhaps that's for the best. This particular segment is an excellent short packed with gloomy atmosphere and closing on a truly great reveal.
Worst Monster: Pig, Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Again, not to be the "boo hoo, don't change my franchise" guy, but why on Earth did they think this goofy-ass marionette pig was worth spending time with over Billy the puppet?
Biggest Laugh: Dun Dunbar, A Castle for Christmas
Netflix Christmas movies seem to be having an intramural competition to find the silliest thing they can get established actors to say out loud repeatedly. Naming the titular castle "Dun Dunbar" and constantly having that phrase come tumbling out of the mouths of Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes certainly takes the fruitcake.
Biggest Cry: Illness, Two of Us
I wasn't kidding when I called this film a delight. But it's still fucking hard when Madeleine's illness strikes, preventing her from moving out of the city with her lover, as they have planned for over a decade.
Biggest Scream: The Stereo, The Night House
No spoilers! This image isn't even from that scene. It's real good though. Despite the fact that you know without a doubt that a scare is coming, it still gets ya anyway.
Biggest Squirm: The Bread Slicer, Fear Street Part One: 1994
If this excellently brutal moment was the only thing worth watching about the Fear Street trilogy (which it isn't), sitting through all 5 hours would still be worth it.
Biggest Thirst: The Pillow Fight, Slumber Party Massacre
Remember when I mentioned the female gaze earlier? Well, it was about time cinema delivered a gender-swapped slumber party where hot dudes take off their tops and hit each other with pillows that are conspicuously unable to retain their feathers, no?
Best Title: Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar
Gotta love an internal rhyme that also actively encourages the person saying it out loud to recite it in the accents of the characters in the movie.
Worst Title: Needle in a Timestack
I mean... Do I even need to say anything?
Best Line: "Remember, don't keep the steering wheel too straight. Lots of tiny movements left and right." Sharon Gordon Fisherman, Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar
This is the villainous Sharon's advice to her child lackey Yo-Yo, and in one fell swoop it eviscerates decades of my favorite bad cinema trope: actors constantly turning the prop steering wheel left and right even though the rear projection/greenscreen/etc. shows the car going down the road in a straight line.
Worst Line: "There are a handful of people in the world who could make that swim, and you're not two of them." James, The Vault
This is the single line in the international heist film that most reeks of "a Spanish person wrote this and didn't ask anyone to check up on the translation."
Best Dialogue: He's All That
Cam: "What's in the bag?"
Brin: "Formal wear, or the closest thing I could find to it in your closet. Dude, it's a disaster in there. Why are there so many Skittles on the floor?"
Cam: "Because I spilled some Skittles."
The single line in the film that actually achieves the film's ostensible goal of being funny. It's so underplayed and out of left field, underscoring a perfectly "teenage boy" sort of worldview.
Best Poster: Malignant
Poppy colors! A double face design that captures the overall plot and tone of the movie while also being pretty cool to look at! No complaints here.
Worst Poster: Dear Evan Hansen
So much useless negative space. And also it gives you literally no sense of what the movie could possibly be about.
Top Five Movie Discoveries
#5 Waiting for Guffman (1996)
My boyfriend Ben and I had ourselves a little Christopher Guest marathon this year, and the first improv mockumentary he made - following a small town theater troupe putting on a play about the town's history - is certainly the kind of raucous gem that would lead producers to go "fuck yeah, you can make a movie about a dog show next, why not?"
#4 Love Me, Fear Me (2018)
This stop-motion short film is both a dazzling display of visual creativity and a chilling expression of the constant pressure to please others and the toll it takes on the psyche.
#3 Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was doing it, Toho was shoving all of their giant monsters into the same movie. Later films would prove that this isn't always a recipe for success, but this jam-packed outing that includes Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, and as many B-tier kaiju as possible is an absolute gung-ho delight.
#2 Yellow Submarine (1968)
I was a rabid Beatles fan in high school, so I'm shocked I never got around to seeing this back in the day. I'm glad I waited though, because this ostensible children's film needs to be witnessed with adult eyes. It's an astounding pop art vision that feels like your eyeballs are being electrocuted with pure creativity.
#1 Evil Under the Sun (1982)
I've been reading a great deal of Agatha Christie throughout the year (more on that later), but this is the only adaptation of her work that I've seen which actively improves on the source material. It maintains the core that makes her work so fun to read while improving the location and characters, tightening up the clues and the mystery plot in the process. Also it features a young Maggie Smith parading around in some of the most audaciously colorful costumes ever sewn, so this landed high on my list instantly.
2021 Crush: David Alvarez, West Side Story
Ariana DeBose doesn't deserve a Best Supporting Actress nomination, because it's the easiest thing in the world to pretend you're dating Bernardo. Hell, I'm doing it right now.
