The titular She Beast is a really great monster design. Unfortunately she is always filmed in blaring sunlight. Even the night scenes are shot with some of the least dark day-for-night cinematography I have ever seen. If hidden with a little shadow, the She Beast would have been an extremely effective movie monster. There is a little bit of gore and the attacks are definitely horrific but ultimately the tone of the movie is more deliberately comic than scary. That said, the characters are all fairly likable and, besides a five minute car chase, stays relatively entertaining until the end.
As one might expect, this movie is just an excuse to have car chases on tiny Italian streets in tiny Italian cars. The plot centers on a group of bank robbers who use driving tactics to outsmart the cops and how it’s going to take an exceptional driver to catch them. There are themes of honor and brotherhood on both sides of the law. But, for the most part, this is all about the crazy driving.
John Carpenter’s second feature is filled with bad acting and cheesy dialogue but for some reason this tense thriller works. It’s amazing how far a little setup and payoff goes. Cholo forever!
The third poliziottesco in the Years of Lead box set is a kinetic action film with amazing nighttime photography and hand-held camera work. The story centers on a group of five policemen who have formed an elite team of motorcycling cops that are able to get the criminals when the regular cops can’t. The head of the team is committed to taking down the bomb-happy crime boss who killed his wife. Like most Italian films of the era, the plot and characters don’t exactly take center stage. It’s all about the chases, shootouts, and explosions. On that front, this film delivers.
Stephen Chow’s directorial debut is a 007 spoof that has a couple of really funny moments and a lot more tonally awkward moments. It goes from clever Austin Powers-like gadget gags to children being gunned down in a shopping mall. This is all hung on a plot about dinosaur bones being stolen or something? I can’t say it’s a bad movie, but it just is all over the place.
Charlie Chan takes on a case of a murder of a showgirl at a California beach house and barely does anything and yet solves the crime. I think the most noteworthy takeaway about these old Chan films is the genuine attempts at comedy beyond the obviously tasteless racial stereotyping. Am I a bad person for laughing a few times? Probably.
Like the previous movie I watched from the Years of Lead box set, this is about a gang of three thugs who assault and kill for thrills. The high-falutin concept here is that these are children of wealth and power who act out as a revolt against the wrongs of their rich progenitors. If it’s any consolation, at least the filmmakers did not frame them as heroes. That job falls to the inspector and his policewoman lover. So far that’s a pretty solid setup but unfortunately the terrible script prevents this from being anything more than raw exploitation of the female stars. All sort of details are set up and never pay off. The clearest example of this is when we learn that one of the villains is a expert race car driver but then there is never a scene with her in a car chase. So much lost potential.
This is the first of the five movies in the Years of Lead box set that I have watched.The point of this movie was to showcase how there are just some bad apples amongst us who wish to hurt and kill for no apparent reason. It’s kind of like a dumbed down version of A Clockwork Orange. There is no real character development and, unlike Kubrick’s film, the story never really tricks us into sympathizing with the thugs, but it also gives us no reason to root for the inspector who is pursuing them. There are some memorable scenes of violence and 1970s computing.
There have been quite a few attempts to create isometric style action shooter games and they always come up lacking. Despite their horrible controls, the Crusader games seem to be about the best anyone can do. Alien Breed Impact fails mainly because it’s just so repetitive and dull. It’s the same thing over and over. The same enemies. The same dark corridors. The same “quests.” There needs to be more of a sense of exploration and discovery. As it is it’s just barely more interactive than a walking simulator with an occasional swarm of bugs to kill.
