05.02.2025
HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (1987)
dir. Andy Sidaris, 96 min. English languagePut down that Uzi and get into the hot tub, it’s an Andy Sidaris movie. Undercover agent Donna (Donna Spier, Miss March 1984) and pilot Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton, Miss July 1985) are in tropical Hawaii when they discover a ring of murderous traffickers and something something diamond smuggling? Not important, but the crooks try to take out the babes with a variety of insane explosives and there’s a deadly genetically-engineered snake on the loose, so Donna calls in her hunk boyfriend (Ridge from The Bold and the Beautiful) and his himbo buddy to help the gals take care of business.
Director-husband Andy and producer-wife Amy Sidaris’ second film in their Bullets, Bombs and Babes trilogy has all of those things, and so much more. Every mode of transportation, every form of weaponry, every possible excuse for someone to take their shirt off are all packed into 96 nonstop minutes. Trashy, funny, playful and strangely exhilarating— if you’ve never seen Hard Ticket to Hawaii with a crowd then you haven’t truly lived.
12.02.2025
THE LIVING END (1992)
dir. Gregg Araki, 85 min. English languageBalancing the crippling ennui of the end of the world with an endearing solidarity and genuinely radical political affect, The Living End is perhaps Gregg Araki’s most unsung work. Coming before his defining Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, it follows two HIV-positive young men going on a death spiral road trip across the United states to find oblivion. Extremely frank depictions of violence and sex are intermingled with Araki’s frank analysis of the moral implications of his characters nihilism create a film that’s as driven by pretence and posturing as it is critical of them.
What shines through between the low budget stylistic affect, the almost intentionally severed dialogue, and the notably choppy edit is Araki’s willingness to create true organic contact with the characters and their dispassionate positions on their own increasingly out of control lives. The ethos of ‘BE GAY DO CRIMES’ has perhaps never been more neatly elucidated on the screen as it is here, driven by the Punk ethos and a righteous fury at the system that are deeply affecting and incredibly enjoyable to experience.
19.02.2025
FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965)
dir. Russ Meyer, 84 min. English languageThe masterpiece of exploitation auteur Russ Meyer, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a fast and furious trip to the dark heart of America. Go-go dancers and maybe lovers Varla, Rosie, and Billie have ditched the club to race their sports cars across the weltering California salt flats, killing with abandon and kidnapping a young woman along the way. The dames hatch a plan to rob the isolated desert ranch of an old man and his beefcake sons, but vicious in-fighting and inability to control their desires may be their undoing.
John Waters called this “beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made” and who are we to argue. It’s certainly one of the most iconic thanks to the dynamite stars: the bewitching (and IRL witch) Haji, girl-next-door bikini model Lori Williams and the one and only reform-school dropout and nightclub superstar Tura Satana. Not all of Meyers’ works can cross over to a contemporary audience, but this one goes beyond camp and cult into grindhouse transcendence.
26.02.2025
MIAMI CONNECTION (1987)
dir. Y.K Kim, 86 min. English languageA feature length advertisement for Taekwondo made by an Orlando, Florida instructor that languished in obscurity for nearly three decades before being inadvertently discovered in an unmarked film canister purchased on eBay and re-released to wild acclaim. The story behind the making of Miami Connection is almost as wild as the plot of the film itself, which involves a new wave band of Taekwondo practitioner orphans who run afoul of a biker gang and a separate gang of ninjas who also ride motorcycles that are both vying for control of the Miami cocaine trade.
This is the best kind of good bad film, one made with purely honest intentions combined with a technical incompetence that results in inexplicably deranged stylistic choices that the film treats with absolute severity. All the fun of independent low budget cinema combined with the ridiculous flair of late ‘80s fashion, the influence of the era’s Ninja craze, an editing format that can best be described as concussed, an incredible amount of memorably ludicrous dialogues, and a genuinely boppin’ synth driven soundtrack.
13.11.2024
TRASH HUMPERS (2009)
dir. Harmony Korine, 78 min. English languageA take on found footage that wasn’t supposed to be found, a home movie made by amoral outcasts for an unspeakable audience. No real narrative to speak of but a series of vignettes as the titular Trash Humpers (played and shot (on VHS) by Korine, his wife and some friends) roam the alleys and backlots of Nashville on a spree of antisocial behaviour: drunkenness, disturbing rituals, vandalism, lewd acts with garbage bins, and murder. Are they driven by their own personal desires, or simply acting in rebellion to societal norms? None of these questions will be answered but you will see someone fuck a tree.
This is Korine’s most polarising film, one that can be read as a reach for the same authenticity-at-all-costs ethos that is the lived reality of the Humpers. Without the pathos of Julian Donkey Boy or the carefully curated antifashion aesthetics of Gummo it’s just a movie about horrible people doing horrible things, but what Trash Humpers does have is a highly specific texture putting contemporary VHS nostalgia to shame. It’s also extremely funny and at times frightening, accessing the creeping fear of nighttime excursions turned bad-weird and the certainty that somewhere out there people are getting incredible kicks from things we'll never know.
20.11.2024
BLACK LIZARD (1968)
dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 86 min. Japanese with Eng subsDecadence, glamour and passionate pulp from the director of Battle Royale and Battle Without Honor and Humanity. Based on the novel by Ranpo Edogawa, Black Lizard follows the exploits of beutiful super criminal Mme. Midorikawa (Akihiro Miwa) in her quest for love and jewlery at all costs. Kidnapping, double crossing, ingenious disguises, human statues and great gowns, beautiful gowns.
The screenplay was adapted from Ranpo by author, attempted coup leader and problematic queer icon Yukio Mishima, who was an admirer of Miwa’s legendary drag performances in the underground Tokyo scene (Mishima pops up in a small role, shirtless as usual). It features his favourite obsessions of eros/thanatos and unrequited love, given the melodramatic verve he learned in Kabuki and Noh dramas. Miwa was the only person he could imagine playing this role and he was absolutely right: she is a mesmerising presence and a true star.
27.11.2024
FROM BEYOND (1986)
dir. Stuart Gordon, 85 min. English language.Lust meets Lovecraft in this psychosexually charged and Giallo inspired goopy classic. The creative team that unleashed Re-Animator re-assembled the following year for another searingly modern and luridly pulpy adaptation of one of famed horror writer H.P Lovecraft’s stories. When Doctor Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs) is institutionalised after being found next his bosses recently decapitated corpse it’s up to Doctor Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) to venture in to an attic laboratory and grapple with the Resonator, an otherworldly device that connects the human mind to an other world.
An exploration of the brain both inside and outside the body, the film is an incredible mixture of charged character drama and astoundingly composed gore cinema awash in flowing glossy colours and burning bisexual lighting. Barbara Crampton, usually relegated to supporting roles, has her first true star making turn here as the lead, commanding her wills and wiles in to a performance that transcends an already transcendent film.
04.12.2024
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)
dir. Tobe Hooper, 100 min. English languageAll at once more jovial and comedic and more gruesome and intense than its predecessor, Tobe Hooper’s Sequel to his 1974 masterwork is a strangely balanced piece that manages to maintain the rawness and unconscious social commentary whilst reeking of a distinctly 1980s excess. The film is a ride through a dilapidated funhouse, metaphorically and literally, with a distinctly adolescent charm that delivers its big characters and bigger set pieces with honest intention to entertain.
In between the wonderfully operatic performances, most notably from Bill Moseley as the indelible Chop Top Sawyer and wonderfully affected Texas Ranger played by a wonderfully affected Dennis Hopper, and imagery so flagrant it feels like self parody is a truly human understanding of violence that creates a wonderful contrasting tone that keeps the film nothing short of riveting as it explodes with colour and movement within the frame. Definitely one to fry the nerves, din the ears, scorch the eyes, and burn the brain. DOG WILL HUNT