Really Awful Movies: Ep 160 – Green Room

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A punk band gets offered a seemingly lucrative gig, after tanking it at a crappy restaurant in front of indifferent dozens. But the band in GREEN ROOM ( the Ain’t Rights) doesn’t know what’s comin’ to them, as they answer the bell to open for Cowcatcher, a band that has a sizable neo-Nazi following. What could go wrong?

Find out, and tune in to the podcast.

But first, try and watch Green Room. It’s probably one of the better horror films released in the last few years, featuring an excellent performance by Patrick Stewart as an evil goon, as well as the late Anton Yelshin, whose talents will be greatly missed.

Director Jeremy Saulnier is one to watch. We know this because of his superlative efforts, Murder Party and Blue Ruin.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 159 – Death Race 2000

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Movie poster for David Carradine film, Death Race 2000There’s a race. And there’s death involved.

In the then distant future, society is transfixed by a bloodsport, one that involves mowing down pedestrians in a cross-continental race. David Carridine, of the legendary familial acting dynasty, stars as Frankenstein, a popular and seemingly indestructible driver in Death Race 2000.

He has to do battle with other drivers, and points are awarded according to cohort deaths: running over babies and the elderly garner the biggest scores. Cheery stuff!

Actually, there’s a zany, over-the-top quality that was the hallmark of Paul Bartel films (he directs). But there’s more to Death Race 2000 than your run-of-the-mill roadster movie. The film asks a lot of pertinent questions too. Look out for Sly Stallone as Machine Gun Joe and Mary Woronov as Calamity Jane Kelly.

Gentlemen (and gentle-women), start your engines! And tune in for new episodes of the Really Awful Movies Podcast every Friday.

 

Really Awful Movies: Ep 158 – Un Chien Andalou

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On this week’s episode of the podcast, Un Chien Andalou. You’ve probably seen the poster, even if you don’t recognize its origins.

Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and infamous surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.

The flick was Buñuel’s first film and was initially released in 1929 with a limited showing at Studio des Ursulines in Paris, but became popular and ran for many months later.

Un Chien Andalou is not conventionally plotted.

The chronology of the film is um, rather…episodic. It’s rather disjointed, jumping from the initial “once upon a time” to “eight years later” without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic (somewhat of a contradiction in terms) in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes. As Roger Ebert put it, “Dreams were the nourishment of his films, and from his earliest days as a surrealist in Paris to his triumphs in his late 70s, dream logic was always likely to interrupt the realism of his films.”

 

Needless to say, this film uses a bunch of free association, and out of sequence chronology. It’s a real mind f*ck, as the kids would say.

Join us for some surrealism.