Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #91: Six-String Samurai (1998)

Post-apocalyptic wasteland U.S.A, taken over by the Russians! Vegas is one of the only cities left standing, and if you want to make it anywhere, it'll have to be there. But it's tough to get in. Tougher to survive the walk. Our stoic hero is a rockabilly guitar-picker who's decided to make for his fame and fortune.

Packing little beyond his guitar, a torn umbrella to shield himself from the hot desert sun, and a fucking samurai sword to defend himself against Russian raiders, he sets out across the arid land. Oh, and Death is literally after him. Death and a bunch of his evil henchmen. This is a winning concept, but the ultimate result is a little on the underwhelming side. I found myself bored more than once, which usually means that I need a gang to watch the movie with, and some sake.

If you can set up that kind of situation, also be prepared for wretched acting, camp dialogue, breakout gypsy-punk sequences, and sword duels that sometimes manage to be pretty stylish.

So: Could have been the best movie ever, but doesn't too far along that track.

Creepy Pedro Reviews "Dillinger is Dead"

Italy is the strangest movie I have ever seen.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #17: The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)

I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into with this one, and rented it because of its evocative title and wicked cover art. The sort that should be painted on the side of a sweet van. Look:

Are you guys going to the Maiden show at the amphitheatre, by the way?

To my surprise, it was directed by Matt Cimber, the guy who directed one of my favourite 80s barbarian films (and there are lots of those if you need some of my suggestions :3). What I should have guessed from the really long opening shot of the seashore and the eerie, atmospheric theremin music I certainly determined once I heard the first bits of dialogue - this was going to be one wonderfully strange flick.

The dialogue is bizarre and great fun to listen to and see performed, and is of a style that could have very easily gone very wrong very quickly. Its grand phraseology and its archaic, perfectly elocuted language gives the film a dreamlike, mythological naivety that really highlights the psychotic state of mind the film's heroine is locked in. The heroine might be better described as an anti-heroine, since she is, in effect, also the film's villain. She's a deranged serial killer, stalking, torturing, and killing the most masculine men she can find out of revenge for the horrific sexual trauma she received as a child. The torture sequences are profoundly uncomfortable, though most of the dirty business happens off-screen. This is usually a good indication that there's some filmmaking talent being flexed. The most disturbing scene is undoubtedly the flashback revelation of the killer's own trauma, and here, the camera doesn't look away though you sincerely wish it would. The Witch Who Came From The Sea is abound with the ugliness of sexual politics, which is something that seems to be at the heart of a lot of Matt Cimber films. I love exploitation films best when they are either supremely crazy or border on the arthouse. This film pretty well does both.

It was originally conceived of and sold as an edgy arthouse film, but when it was given to theatres it was slagged by critics, nearly banned by the ratings board, physically re-cut by theatre owners, and mostly ignored by the public. When the movie poster was made less abstract and more fantastical, though, its success with the grindhouse audience exploded, and it seems to have held cult appreciation since.

So: If you can stomach the controversial bits, it's a gem of a cult film.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #6: Witchfinder General (1968)

A gem of a film based loosely on the life of the Witchfinder General, one Matthew Hopkins, a lawyer turned witch-hunter during the tumultuous upheaval of Cromwell's revolution. Hopkins roved from village to village exploiting the superstitious for good coin by inflicting cruel witch-finding tests upon anyone suspected of being a witch. So basically anyone kind of weird. Or anyone people just didn't like.

In the role of Hopkins is the inimitable Vincent Price. Now, this film gave him his 75th role, and by this point Price had understandably been coasting through his horror roles like a sleeping Cthulu through the epochs, but two things now awakened him:

1. The shock of having a director like Michael Reeves, who had wanted Donald Pleasence in the role and was furious over the studio's insistence on Price. Reeves refused to speak directly to him the first day, and when Price fell from his horse, reportedly didn't even check to see if the man was alright.

2. The level of the crew's competency was something Price hadn't expected. Everyone on set was dead-serious about making a good film, and the majority of the cast seemed to be delivering the kind of performances he could actually work with.

These two things sobered Price, and later, he conceded that his own performance in the film was probably the best of his horror career. His Witchfinder General possesses a quiet belligerence made more menacing by an aloof, emotional disconnection. That disconnection doesn't seem lazy, though. It seems carefully set, and most of it comes off through his enigmatic stares.

The level of torture and violence that initially got this film banned in places, by today's standards, manages to be bloody without being gory, and fiercely uncomfortable instead of indulgent. The watershed Bonnie and Clyde was released just a year earlier, and the kind of screen violence that was emerging held a new potency. Witchfinder General could actually be considered England's Bonnie and Clyde, as both pushed the boundaries and ended off on a violent down-note. Reeves ended WG with an improvised and unnerving final sequence that will ring in my memory for some time.

So: A fluid and stylish revenge tale with Price back in action. Check it out.