8 1/2 (1962): After forcing myself through a couple of his films, I've come to a solid conclusion: Fredrico Fellini is the second most boring "great"/"legendary" director of the 20th century (Il Duce? Ingmar Bergman, the director who gave the terms "artsy" and "foriegn" films an undeserved bad name). It's not quite as boring as La Dolce Vita, and the plot actually makes sense this time round, but that's like saying that pepperoni doesn't quite spoil your breath as bad as garlic does. The movie makes too much of a big deal out of the fact that it doesn't have a plot: the main character is a director who can't finish the movie he's supposed to be filming. We don't even see the movie set until the final scenes, as the director spends all of his time procrastinating and going through his mid-life crisis. The famous dream in which he finds himself surrounded by a slavish harem of all the women he's had is justifiably celebrated - but to tell you the truth, sometimes I had trouble discerning between one sultry brunette after the other in this movie. Everybody wears sunglasses and tries to look and act self-consciously 'moderne', but hey that's Italy for you. I suppose Fellini gets credit for establishing the self-absorbed, psychologically introspective film genre years before Baby Boomers started going to group therapy (Woody Allen, f'rinstance, owes a great debt to the man), but when is that supposed to be a positive influence?
Grade: C
Eating Raoul (1982): Was 1982 really any different than today? In most ways, no, but this weird little film deliciously underscores the most significant shift in American culture in recent decades: this film found release during the final year before AIDS made its entrance into the mainstream. The Blands, played by director/scripter Paul Bartel (an eerily dead ringer for a certain former professor of mine) and Mary Woronov, are a square couple who share a distaste for sleazy "swingers" and a dream for opening a fine cuisine resturaunt. After accidently killing a potential rapist, the Blands plot to lure "perverts" (which they essentially define as any man who wants to have sex) to their apartment, kill them off, and take their money to finance their resturaunt. The premise wears pretty thin quickly, and the bizarrely intentionally bad acting and complete incongruity of the plot starts to bug me, too. At this date, the film's primary value is that of a time capsule -- it's too badly dated to work as a satire of modern life anymore, but as a satire of the Me Generation's hedonism of swingers' parties and hot tubs, it's a decent history lesson.
Grade: C+
The Evil Dead (1982): A low budget (and it definitely shows -- it's hard to be scared by paper maiche heads exploding) horror film completed as a student project by Sam Raimi, the first installment in the Evil Dead trilogy is by far the weakest -- in fact, it might put you off from seeing the two sequels (but don't, 'cuz they're much better). It's a rather standard horror film, perhaps better than average and more self-consciously gross-out than usual, but still -- it's just a horror film, the most despised genre in moviedom for good reason (perhaps because you can count all of the halfway decent horror films in history on one hand. OK, maybe both hands, but definitely no more fingers!) The plot unveils predictably: five college students spend a weekend in cabin in the middle of the woods, where they find some old tape recording of a professor who has discovered some ancient tome that invokes the spirits of the Evil Dead when a certain passage is spoken -- which occurs when the tape finishes the message. Playing by the rules of such a plot (teenagers stranded in the wilderness, c'mon, you've heard this setup before) all but one of the students dies during the night (all horror movies must have at least one token survivor - Hollywood hates unhappy endings). Raimi must be given credit for achieving some amazing cinematography on such a crappy budget (keep a close eye on the camera angles - very novel) and there are sporadic moments of interest, but like most horror movies, it's not all that scary and there are looong stretches in which nothing much seems to happen. Far and away the best scene is when a girl gets raped by trees - but one really cool scene does not redeem most of the rest, though there are a few other moments of interest.
Grade: C-
____________________________________________________________________________________The Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987): Alright, now we're talking! In a strict sense, this isn't really a sequel, but more of a remake of the first film: the plot's nearly the same, as the only survivor of the first movie, Ash (Bruce Campbell) returns to the same cabin with his girlfriend. Raimi's success has enabled him to work with a real budget, which automatically makes this film a quantum leap in watchability over the original -- and did I say that all horror films are way too slow? Well, this movie feels like it's on fast-forward - there's a dizzying amount of action going on throughout the entire movie, with only a few breathers between scenes of Ash getting the crap beat out of him by demons. And there's a crucial second element added to the horror stew: humor, which makes this appealing to more than just chainsaw slash buffs (not that they're left unsatisfied - there's plenty'o guts'n'gore). The scene where Ash's disembodied hand runs around the room, eluding him, attacking him, and giving him the finger, ranks as one of the classic bits of slapstick - the first thing that comes to mind is the Three Stooges, not Friday the 13th. And howabout this classic bit of dialogue: Ash to mirror: "I'm fine." Mirror to Ash: "I don't think so. We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound fine?" Enormously entertaining, and definitely not just for horror buffs - I hate horror movies, but I liked this one, so that should say something.
Grade: A-