Well, well, well, hasn't it been a while? At some point I will return with a consistent posting schedule, I've several articles in the works, which when I have ample time, promise to finish. Until then...

I recently watched this rather poignant slice of biker-adjacent, post-Manson exploitation; was super cool seeing a 25 year old Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) & Eastwood regular, Albert Popwell chewing scenery. The Peace Killers is well worth the price of admission.

After a few weeks off, I'm back again for another round of Title Card Tuesday. This week, it's Abel Ferrara's neon cesspool, Fear City. I don't think I'll ever grow tired of watching Tom Berenger beat the living piss out of the sadistic scumbag in that grungy alley.

Penned by the dynamic exploitation duo of Wes Bishop & Lee Frost, Jack Starrett's occult horror-action-road movie pits Peter Fonda & Warren Oates against a murderous gaggle of Satan worshippers.

This week's choice is an attempt at trying to capture an animated title card, scroll to the bottom to see it in action! Jack Hill's undeniably influential grindhouse classic, Switchblade Sisters.

This week's choice is the outrageously fun Lee Frost exploitation-actioner Policewomen.

All over the place and a little bit of everything this week, going from unnecessary sequels, gory remakes, creature features, to stone cold classics and more. Read or don't!

Films watched between Monday 09/01/2023 and Sunday 15/01/2023.

Monday 09/01/2023
Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge (2022)

Director: Alexandra Barreto, Anthony Cousins, Aaron B. Koontz, Jed Shepherd, Rachele Wiggins

It's rare that I come across a movie that I actively start to hate during its runtime and rare still that I become hateful towards movies anyway, but fuck me this was a right mess. I'm sorry, I got a lot of love for anthology movies; horror or otherwise, but this gets worse with each segment and the wraparound was teetering on complete nonsense. Add it to the "wholly unnecessary sequels" list and swiftly move on. The first Scare Package (2019) was watchable, not outstanding; it had one or two interesting segments and wasn't entirely unlikeable. It was middling, bordering on tedious, but watchable. Maybe I really missed what they were aiming for with Rad Chad's Revenge, I thought it was straight up unintelligible garbage, like getting a temporary lobotomy that lasts for an 1hr and 38mins. Avoid.



Tuesday 10/01/2023
Suspiria (1977)

Director: Dario Argento

Revisited this one with Emm; I love watching this kinda flick with someone who's new to it all, I never know whether they'll fall in love with it or sit there wondering "what the fuck is going on?" and "just why is it all so colourful?" Unfortunately Emm's opinion, as valid as any, fell in the latter camp; too slowly paced for her liking. Admittedly, it doesn't have a strong narrative, it's an interesting story, but you only get glimpses of a greater picture. It makes up for it by  completely oozing with atmosphere, style, and a hair-raising Goblin soundtrack. Essential viewing for any self-proclaimed horror fan.



Wednesday 11/01/2023
Eye of the Tiger (1986)

Director: Richard C. Sarafian

Checked this one out on Amazon Prime and it had such a dreadful transfer that I almost gave up on it, needless to say I persevered through and what I saw, I quite liked. I'm guessing it was taken from a shitty DVD source. It's a fairly good little '80s action film, starring everyone's favourite unhinged hero Gary Busey; supported by Yaphet Kotto and William Smith as the film's antagonist, Blade. Worth checking out while it's available on a streaming service, I wouldn't be too surprised to see this crop up at some point via Vinegar Syndrome as one of their a VSA titles.



Thursday 12/01/2023
The Warriors (1979)

Director: Walter Hill

At last! I got around to checking out the Imprint blu-ray which contains the highly coveted Theatrical Cut, be gone those blasted comic book inserts! I must admit I was a little worried about revisiting this as I'd not seen it for many years, I was concerned that I would find faults which I may have overlooked as a teenager. Mercifully that didn't happen and I can safely proclaim that love it as an adult just as much as I did as a teen. From the opening sequence to the beach showdown, The Warriors never lets up. Full of memorable characters, gangs, and action sequences there's rarely a dull moment. Watched with Emm who also dug it, "he's from Sex and the City!"
"Can you count suckas?" Five stars and zero bullshit.



Friday 13/01/2023
Smithereens (1982)

Director: Susan Seidelman

New York City? Richard Hell? Punk rock? Yes please! I truly wanted to adore this, unfortunately it is a little uneven and rough around the edges, which sounds punk as fuck, but when it comes to narrative and editing it's a little disappointing. An extremely low-budget drama about a self-centred chick who moves from New Jersey to the Big Apple to ingratiate herself into the NY punk scene with hopes to move-on to Los Angeles. It offers an interesting exposé on relationships and how people can parasitically use others for their own self-gain. Worth it if you're a punk and adore '80s NYC.



Friday 13/01/2023
Death Race 2000 (1975)

Director: Paul Bartel

Another film I've seen a few times over the years, only I feel like I don't talk about it as much as I should. It's a movie which I thoroughly take for granted and watching it this time around really reaffirmed and cemented my love for it. It's kind of like a demented and dystopian take on Wacky Races; laced with social commentary and featuring a fleet of insane-looking vehicles, each fitted with distinctive weaponry. Produced by Roger Corman for New World Pictures, Death Race 2000 stars David Carradine as the enigmatic and fan favourite racer, Frankenstein, and a very early role for one Sylvester Stallone. Essential '70s exploitation.



Friday 13/01/2023
Deep Freeze (2002)

Director: John Carl Buechler

Not to be confused with the pain relief gel of the same name, also known as Ice Crawlers, this is a super low-budget movie with its creative tendrils firmly rooted in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). The plot is about a group of folk on an Antarctic base being terrorised by a recently unearthed and thawed giant trilobite.
Personal anecdote about this flick; I rented this as a teen with my dad from Blockbuster and we decided at the time that it was the worst film we had ever seen. It set the bar and become a unit for measure with our own ratings, from then on whenever discussing a film one of us hadn't seen we will say "it's not Deep Freeze bad". Watching it all these years later it's safe to say the movie is still hot garbage, but an enjoyable garbage and pairs wonderfully with pizza and beer, and hell, I've since seen Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge.



Friday 13/01/2023
Shakma (1990)

Director: Hugh Parks

I'd wanted to check this out for a very many years after seeing it mentioned over at Jayson Kennedy's Basement of Ghoulish Decadence. Think I watched this via YouTube of all places and it looked like total shit. The movie on the whole is a good effort, a baboon is given experimental drugs and runs amok in after-hours in a laboratory, while the young scientists and their professor play a live-action role-playing game. There's virtually no suspense, the performances aren't the best, but once that baboon starts going ape-shit (pun intended), I don't know, I just really got a kick out of watching him chase and menace a bunch of teenage science-nerds. Will be searching a disc copy for sure.



Saturday 14/01/2023
Monster Island (2004)

Director: Jack Perez

I watched this via Amazon Prime in the early afternoon before going out for a bottomless bunch with the work lot. We got absolutely stinking drunk, drinking through til the wee early hours of Sunday. Monster Island was surprisingly good, a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Going into this thing I was prepared to roll my eyes and cringe aloud. Starring Carmen Electra, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (!!) and Adam West, the movie apes every '50s b-movie trope, but what I enjoyed so much about this was how it reminded me of Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977), schlocky giant insect movies of the '70s more so than those of the '50s. Good time to be had with this one, so check it out while it's still available on there.



Sunday 15/01/2023
Shock Waves (1977)

Director: Ken Wiederhorn

I woke up on Sunday morning rattling from a raging hangover, I remember going for a shower and desperately fighting the urge to puke, a battle I somehow managed to conquer. I decided the best thing for me was to put on Ken Wiederhorn's Shock Waves to balm my brain. A movie I've seen a handful of times prior, but couldn't remember all that much about. What I found is that Shock Waves might be the perfect hangover movie, it's so languid and oneiric that when viewed through an alcohol induced migraine-delirium, through squinted eyes and moments of narcolepsy that it becomes extremely difficult to discern between dream and reality, leading to a most unusual experience. Aquatic nazi zombies, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine, need I say more?



Sunday 08/01/2023
Evil Dead (2013)

Director: Fede Álvarez

Caught this at the cinema during its theatrical run and can distinctly remember laughing out loud when Mia (Jane Levy) bisects the Abomination's head with a chainsaw during the finale, much to my then-girlfriend's chagrin, and I'm still not tired of seeing it. I really enjoy this movie and I struggle to agree with any hate I see for it. It's an update of a stone cold horror classic, it doesn't have to better than it, it doesn't even have to rival it, and it certainly doesn't detract from the original; it's moody, it's bloody, it's Evil Dead, what more do you really want out of it? I prefer this to Army of Darkness (1992) any day of the week, sorry nerds.

Seventh edition of the Film Diary; covering films I've watched within the span of a week, accompanied with a short review and rating. For those familiar with this routine, skip ahead, for anybody new to the blog, I will try to churn these out as quickly as possible, but there's never enough hours in the day. These reviews won't appear under the index of reviews as I prefer to keep that reserved for more lengthier entries.

Strange and short mix for the final week of 2022 - it's mostly filled with newer films I ticked off the ever-growing list.

Films watched between Monday 26/12/2022 and Sunday 01/01/2023.

Monday 26/12/2022
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Director: Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

An ultra mean seasonal slasher that I view religiously every year, along with Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974). The two titles are shining examples of the differing styles within the slasher genre. The latter is a Hitchcockian suspense film aping the "whodunit?" style, while the former goes for the jugular; an all-out festive bloodbath, with a nutcase dressed in a Santa costume hacking and slashing his way through a rural American town. Essential holiday viewing.
There is a longer review elsewhere on 42nd Street Cinema. 



Friday 30/12/2022
Day Shift (2022)

Director: J.J. Perry

Initially rated this two and a half stars, but since I don't do halves here it's being rounded down. I've also got to be clear and transparent with you, Emily had this on while I was writing up my Water Power review and I didn't give it my full undivided attention.
Vampires in L.A.! - it's nothing we haven't seen before and while the movie isn't terrible, for all the gloss and colour it feels so drab and hollow. Perhaps I'm not the right demographic that this is geared towards. The main takeaways for me: well choreographed fight scenes and a handful of genuinely funny comedic moments, backed up with a great hip hop soundtrack. At one point Snoop Dogg appears dressed like The Undertaker from WWE wielding a gatling gun, the inclusion of such a scene almost makes Day Shift worthy of your time.



Friday 30/12/2022
Alligator (1980)

Director: Lewis Teague

This movie is fucking great, eh?
A baby Alligator named "Ramon" is flushed down a toilet and mutates into an enormous reptilian behemoth, capable of erupting through the asphalt to street level. Most likely produced because of the ever increasing trend of "when animals attack" movies, and I'll be honest I'm an absolute sucker for 'em! I'm also giddy for anything that features Robert Forster; the guy was severely underrated, and there's a running gag throughout the movie about Forster's hair loss. Alligator is up there with the other giants of killer animal flicks.



Saturday 31/12/2022
Water Power (1977)

Director: Shaun Costello

What more can I say about it? It's one of the most unusual hardcore roughies from the Golden Age of pornography. A dizzying NYC sleazoid magnum opus, starring Jamie Gillis and C.J. Laing.
Recommend for all the porno-creeps and sleaze-freaks.
If you're interested there's a longer and more informed write up you can read here.



Saturday 31/12/2022
Bullet Train (2022)

Director: David Leitch

Checked this one out with Emily during our end of year binge.
Bullet Train is a movie made for those with short attention spans. Not bad or uninspired, just a tad predictable. Brad Pitt is enjoyable in the role of Ladybug, an "unlucky" assassin tasked with stealing a briefcase. Given it has a 2 hour runtime the pace is as speedy as the title suggests. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry are fantastic as Tangerine and Lemon, a brotherly duo of Cockney assassins. I think the bottle of Lidl-brand Irish Cream helped me enjoy this movie a lot more than I should have.



Saturday 31/12/2022
Bull (2021)

Director: Paul Andrew Williams

A near perfect revenger, hampered only by a weak conclusion. Keeping the spoilers and plot super-vague because I fully recommend this and want the keep the whole experience intact. The ending is a double-edge; it's kinda cool, but kinda lame, a twist on the traditional revenge genre trope, but ultimately not too satisfying. Neil Maskell gives a brilliant performance as the titular "Bull", an enforcer for a local gang, not since the early days of Ray Winstone have I seen anybody channel such an intense level of rage. Check it out.



Sunday 01/01/2023
Run Sweetheart Run (2020)

Director: Shana Feste

The final film from our end of year binge and the third watched via Amazon Prime.
Prior to our viewing, my Dad told me that he had ended up randomly watching this, I don't remember him having too much to say about it and I suppose I was a fool for not realising that he hadn't actually recommend it.
A supernatural-horror movie with a cool and strong feminist concept, that only fails because of a poor execution. I love it when a filmmaker wants to challenge the status quo or the viewer on more personal levels, but this felt terribly cliché and borderline cringeworthy. There's some cool moments nabbed from the exploitation heyday of the '70s; tough chicks performing martial arts and girl gangs, but the ending is so ham-fisted and unsatisfying that you're left feeling kinda glad it's all over and done with. A disappointment for sure!

A fun fact to get the ball rolling: I started writing this review a little over 10 years ago...

So, to kick off my first Western review here at 42nd Street Cinema, I thought I'd jump straight in with what's arguably the goriest Western to hit theatre screens. Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent's incredibly violent Spanish Western, Cut-Throats Nine / Condenados a vivir. Also known as Bronson's Revenge and Condemned To Live.

Starring: Robert Hundar (Claudio Undari), Emma Cohen, Alberto Dalbés, Antonio Iranzo, Manuel Tejada, Ricardo Díaz, José Manuel Martín, Carlos Romero Marchent, and Rafael Hernández.

This bleak and unforgiving gem arrived at a time when the Italians were considerably outdoing their American counterparts for violent Westerns. Cut-Throats Nine, a wholly Spanish production, appeared and simultaneously outdid every single one of them in one fell swoop. A truly visceral experience where you can all but feel the biting cold, smell the rusty reek of blood and the putrid odour of charred flesh.

Shot against a wintery backdrop of the snow-covered Pyrenees, the characters find themselves striving to survive by any means necessary in a frozen hellscape. The weather and season work in tandem with the desperation and hopelessness the characters face, along with providing a visual reinforcement of an omnipresent death.



AIP (American International Pictures) distributed an English-dubbed version to US theatres in 1973, and UIP (United International Pictures) distributed it in the United Kingdom. The poster employs a key exploitation trope that harkens back to the days of William Castle; a genius marketing ploy where it states patrons weren't to be admitted unless they possess a "terror mask" to help block out the violent scenes.

The plot concerns a wagon load of condemned men being transported from the gold mines at Golden Sand to Fort Green. Travelling with them is Sergeant Brown (Robert Hundar) and his daughter Cathy (Emma Cohen). The wagon is ambushed by group of starving bandits who believe the wagon is transporting gold. The mountain men kill two officers and search the wagon for the gold to no avail. They order the remaining men to return to the mine and come back with the gold, recklessly sending the wagon off by spooking the horses. With no one at the reigns sergeant Brown attempts to gain control of the horses and steer the wagon, realising the futility of the situation Brown and his daughter prepare to jump off, and leave the wagon to veer off-road and tip over.



Now free, but still tethered, the prisoners turn to the sergeant and his daughter, undeterred by the crash and still hoping to get his charges to Fort Green, Brown tells them they're taking the 400 mile journey by any means necessary. They gather the remaining provisions, load-up the two horses, and set off on foot across an unforgiving landscape. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Brown is on a personal crusade of vengeance; convinced that one of the shackled men is responsible for the murder of his wife.

I've read people referring to this as a horror, ahem. I can't agree with that, Cut-Throats Nine is crucially a survival film first and a Western second. There's little showdowns and even fewer "Get off your horse..." moments. It's mean; the characters are uncompromising, the elements are harsh. A grim and nihilistic tale without hope, heroes, or a heroine. The only character with any semblance of innocence is Brown's daughter Cathy and it isn't long before that innocence that is savagely taken from her, right before her father's eyes during a harrowing rape scene. Afterwards, almost catatonic, she takes-up with one of the prisoners with whom she seems to have genuine affection for, and it's during the final moments we learn of a cruel dramatic irony. This is the man Brown has been looking for, the one responsible for her mother / his wife's murder. There's no forgiveness, only selfishness and hate, they all might survive if they could only work together.



Marchent employs unusual editing techniques with very abrupt and dramatic freeze frames, slow-motion sequences, and intermittent snippets of flashbacks. As a result the narrative suffers, something that is most noticeable during a first time viewing, but once you are familiar with the story and the cast of characters the editing choices actually work very well.

Initially, the film moves along at a steady speed, but much like the characters on-screen it begins to lose pace and towards the end of the second act it's crawling. The tense and final act takes place inside a ramshackle saloon with Cathy, the remaining convicts, and a trio of cavalry guys. The ending is a sudden, distinctly '70s, gut-punch that leaves you reeling too.

I also don't want to be accused of overselling the violence because there's a lot of runtime without any of the red stuff flowing, but when it happens there's enough to satisfy any dyed in the wool gorehound; cut-throats, hangings, burnings, charred remains, roadside amputations, point blank executions, eyeballs hanging from sockets, and bloody disembowelments!