Tag: une toile de francais

Shitty Movie Sundays: Lockout (2012)

The Luc Besson action grist mill turns them out like few others. Objective quality is hit and miss, but the movies he produces are flashy, in the same way the McDonald’s in Times Square is flashy. They enjoy a proximity to top tier glamor and glitz, but, in the end, it’s just fast food.

From 2012 comes Lockout, a film that so resembles Escape from New York that Besson and company were successfully sued for plagiarism. Co-directors and co-writers James Mather and Steve Saint Leger (Besson was also credited with a writing and story credit) might have been done dirty by that lawsuit. The analogues to Escape are many, but if John Carpenter could claim plagiarism for this flick, then the entire horror and sci-fi movie industry should operate under the constant threat of litigation. Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Lockout (2012)”

October Horrorshow: Devil Story, aka Il était une fois…le diable

What does a deformed slasher wearing an SS uniform, a black cat and a black horse, a ghost galleon, an Egyptian mummy, and an emotionally troubled young woman have in common? That’s not a joke. If someone out there knows, get in touch and I’ll forward the info to filmmaker Bernard Launois.

That’s more than a little facetious. All the events in Launois’s bizarre horror flick, Devil Story (French: Once upon a time…the devil), do tie together, but in more of a tangle than a knot. Thank goodness this site is more interested in the craft of film rather than interpretive criticism, because trying to unravel the mess that is this film’s story is futile. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Devil Story, aka Il était une fois…le diable”

October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La tour

Horror films are more than just about fear. They run the gamut of distressing emotions. Besides fear there is its more frantic cousin, panic. There is also disgust, grief, loneliness, and, of course, dread. Going beyond fear into these other realms of negative emotional experience can do a lot to rob the fun from a horror flick, but they also introduce realism and honesty into stories that, otherwise, have little more depth than a carnival funhouse. Today’s film dips far into a reservoir of hopelessness, so much so that the experience will linger in a viewer’s mind after the credits roll. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La tour”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Helga, She-Wolf of Stilberg, aka Helga, la louve de Stilberg

There’s been a fascist takeover in some country, somewhere. The revolutionary government, led by the evil President Steiner (Jean-Charles Maratier) is sending the wives and daughters of political opponents to Stilberg prison, a repurposed 19th century pile of architecture in the rural countryside. To watch over the prisoners and punish them as she sees fit, Steiner sends the titular beauty Helga (Malisa Longo), a true zealot and sadist. For the remainder of the film, viewers get to see Helga and her guards whip prisoners, pull their hair, tie them up in a dungeon, subject them to unnecessary gynecological examinations, sell them for a roll in the hay for the price of two bottles of booze apiece, and force them to receive Helga’s sexual ministrations. And that’s it. There is some insurgency stuff in the final act, but no one is watching this flick for its story. If one is looking for some vintage sleaze from the 1970s, here it is. Just make sure the drapes are closed. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Helga, She-Wolf of Stilberg, aka Helga, la louve de Stilberg”