Bite Me, Tony

An unlikely but persistent memory of my childhood in the 60's is the provocative television ad for a now relatively-obscure Italian movie titled " Paranoia" . Soon coming to a theater-near-me, "Paranoia" presented itself as a sex-thriller starring Carroll Baker, a former Method actress-cum-sex goddess who'd recently abandoned an unloving Hollywood for career opportunities abroad. Rated X, the movie ad suggested all sorts of interesting perversities being explored onscreen by Baker and her two young co-stars and, although I knew I'd never see the actual film--even my open-minded dad had his limits--I was completely fascinated by the shocking images leaping from the TV screen in between episodes of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" and "The Mod Squad".  Cut to 2020, and the Severin Films restoration and release of the Carroll Baker/Umberto Lenzi collaborations in one glorious, blu-ray box-set. How could I not rush to purchase this unexp...

Self-consciously artsy and needlessly confusing,  Portuguese film director Joao Pedro Rodrigues' "O Fantasma" is, nevertheless, a remarkably assured debut effort chronicling the psychological disintegration of a sexually obsessed young garbage collector living on the squalid fringes of turn-of-the-21st-Century Lisbon. Sergio is a rootless, carnal being, barely verbal, animalistic, and driven by impulses and urges that seem to spring more from instinct than intellect: it's telling that Sergio seems to prefer the company of his dog, whose actions he seems to mimic in his interactions with other humans. The few people Sergio actually does communicate with are co-workers with whom he maintains a tense, fragile bond that always seems to teeter on the edge of violence. When Sergio is on the job, he routinely sifts through other people's garbage, often finding masturbatory tokens (men's underwear, motorcycle gloves, a shiny, latex catsuit) for later gratification. Wh...

"Another Man's Poison" , director Irving Rapper's 1951 British melodrama features Bette Davis and then-husband, Gary Merrill in the second of three film appearances they made together, the first being "All About Eve", the third "Phone Call From a Stranger". Taken as a trio of siblings, with "Eve"as the brilliant, much-loved high achiever and "Stranger" the smart, slick youngster, "Poison" reinforces the stereotypical (if inaccurate) image of the problematic middle child. To be sure, "Another Man's Poison" has problems aplenty, none the least of which is the scatterbrained screenplay; it's hard to believe both Val Guest and esteemed dramatist Emlyn Williams (who also co-stars in this) had a hand in writing (and re-writing) this nonsense. Based on a play called "Deadlock" by Leslie Sands, the film feels stage-bound and often static, the majority of the action taking place in the main room of a...

So, it appears that I've been more than a little remiss in keeping up with this blog. I notice my last post occurred more than a year ago. Ye gods, time flies when you're..... Well, never mind. We all know what kind of year 2020 has been, although I really don't have an excuse for being MIA any time before March of this year. I fell down on the job. Let's leave it at that. Thankfully, as of this writing, neither C nor myself have come down with COVID-19, nor have any of our immediate families. While I can't say that all our friends have been so lucky, so far they're managing to hang in there. But, what a cluster fuck this has been! From the government's abject failure to adequately respond to this pandemic to the unspeakable selfishness of some Americans refusing to wear a mask to Trump's hourly assaults on democratic institutions, the news has been bleak. Adding fuel to the fire are the ongoing murders of unarmed civilians by police officers, and the la...

"It's a strange world, isn't it?" Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) in Blue Velvet . David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece,  Blue Velvet begins innocuously enough: it is a beautiful summer day and two firemen are perched aboard a 50's-style firetruck as it does a slo-mo glide past richly blooming rose bushes and white picket fences. Nearby, a robin bounces jauntily while a middle-aged man hoses down his lawn. And, after the firetruck has passed, we see the middle-aged man grab his neck and collapse to the ground, the water shooting from the hose in arcs as he writhes in the grass. A toddler strolls into the frame as Angelo Badalamenti's lush score wells up, and this intrigue suggests that all will not be well from this moment on.  Until now, the beatific street looks like Anytown USA: the peace and serenity are idyllic. But it's a town called Lumberton, located somewhere in the same twilight zone as Twin Peaks, towns where most of the decades of 20 th Cent...