What Emmanuelle Movie Did You Just Watch?

[gravedigger]

THE ROAD- surprisingly not as oppressive and depressing as the book. Viggo is good but I didn't care for the kid very much. He seemed more naive than I remember from the book.

[Ben Thomas]

Last night, I went to an all-night 'Sleazeathon' of semi-exploitation movies - 6 films in 12 hours. We saw:

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
A Bay of Blood
Mandingo
Act of Vengeance AKA Rape Squad
Jackson County Jail
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Living Dead was terrible. Awful dubbing, a range of bizarre, ill-fitting regional accents, no actual action in Manchester and all of its good elements and beats are stolen wholesale from Romero's Night. However, it was fun to laugh at a lot of the time and set a fun atmosphere so that no-one got offended by some of the later stuff. Only memorable tits were the one that gets torn off by a zombie. Towards the end, a drunk snuck in to the screening and fell asleep across the aisle from me.

A Bay of Blood (a Bava joint) was loads of fun. Essentially a cabin in the woods thriller, this had some awesome kills and a constant sense of trying to outdo itself. The final twist (and there are several) is one of the greatest WHAT THE FUCK endings I've seen in ages. Plenty of tits in this one, and some shaven bush. Towards the end, the drunk woke, threw up (a lot) and shat himself before being shown the door. That was a first in a screening, for me. He somehow managed to get back in before the next film, but was thankfully politely escorted out again.

Mandingo, while well-made and interesting, didn't really belong on the lineup. It's more a melodrama than exploitation. I'm glad I saw it and James Mason's Louisiana (?) accent is up there with Teddy KGB, but it was the longest film of the night and I would have rather seen something... well, sleazier. Plenty of slave tits in this as well as Susan George's.

Act of Vengeance AKA Rape Squad was the most fitting film of the night. Wall to wall tits and bush of an excellent standard, this wanted to have its cake and eat it in terms of being a female empowerment film - 5 rape victims start a rape squad to catch the rapist the police aren't - while still having prolonged closeups of molestation and pointless nudity. Very entertaining and dirty feeling film with some hilarious dialogue, not least from the rapist's audio journal.

Jackson County Jail is Classic Corman. A young, incredibly handsome Tommy Lee Jones helps a woman escape a small-town jail - after she is raped by one of the cops on duty, obviously - and they go on the run. This actually was the one film to show some emotional impact as a result of rape. There's still some pretty uncomfortable closeups of groping in that sequence and the rest of the film is a straight-up action film, with shootouts, car and foot chases and the most ridiculous car explosion this side of Top Secret!, but I really liked this and would happily watch it again. Good, solid fun.

We closed out with Argento's first film and I didn't really like it. It's well shot and edited, but its a pretty standard murder mystery rather than exploitation. This really needed some whackier kills and more pointless tits and bush.

All in all, a great night though. For me, Bay of Blood, Act of Vengeance and Jackson County Jail are the winners and I'd watch them again for sure.

[BillyG]

Watched Drag Me To Hell last night, after all our talk of it. There's some weird pacing to it, very GO GO GO GO or nothing going on at all in it, but still love it.

[IggytheBorg]

Saw Lone Survivor last night. I liked it. Very tense; I was on the edge of my seat thru most of it. A coupletimes when gunfire erupted out of nowhere after a lull I actually jumped. Even most horror movies can't do that. Makes you develop even more respect for our black ops guys than you already had, seeing all the shit these guys went thru. Couple of truly cringe-worthy moments.

[Matt]

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT

I liked it. It's a perfectly acceptable matinee movie with some good acting and some nice, tense spy stuff. Somebody needs to show Branagh how to direct a fucking action sequence, though...he needs to fucking stop aping Greengrass, because he simply does not have the aptitude for it.

Dumping this in January was a mistake. This would have done great business in December over the long holiday weekends when people were looking for things to do.

[gravedigger]

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY- sometimes less is more. The first hour and a half feels like 10 hours. I thought it picked up quite a bit after they got out of Rivendell but, man, it took a while to get there. I was impressed at how much the CGI on Gollum has improved but I don't know why they didn't apply that detail to the rest of the computer characters. And one of the wargs at the end totally looked like a terror dog from Ghostbusters.

I liked it well enough to check out the second movie but, man, it's still completely stupid that they're stretching this book to NINE HOURS of film.

[Matt]

The current one is so much better it's scary. A huge leap in quality.

[BillyG]

Yeah, the second one is legit good and I didn't have ANY pacing issues. It's not even that long of a film to begin with.

[Matt]

If I had to rate the Tolken films, it would be thus (with 1 and 2 being so close that it could swap on a whim):

1. TDoS
2. FotR
3. RotK
4. TTT
5. AUJ

[IggytheBorg]

You'd put the Two Towers that low? W/ the battle of Helm's Deep and all?

[Matt]

Don't get me wrong, I like the top 4 films in my list a lot. I rate TDoS and FotR higher than the others because they aren't merely collections of battle scenes (like TTT and RotK) and feel like fun D&D adventures. I prefer RotK over TTT because, even with its length and long ending, it has a better flow to it. TTT gets bogged down with the ent stuff.

[Abraham Smashington]

The Two Towers is the SLOWEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME.

[Captain Russ]

THEN THE ENTS ARE DOING THEIR JOB, ASSHOLE!

[Trejo]

YOU'RE NEXT - I think the hype killed this one for me. Well maybe killed isn't the right word, I enjoyed it but wouldn't say I loved it. Friend said it was one of his favorite horror films of all time; wouldn't crack my top 30. Interwebz said it was hilarious; chuckled at one part.

Gore was okay, nothing you haven't seen before. Neither plot twist all that surprising. LOVED the score. Crushed on Aussie girl. Backstory was pure cheese. The part that had me laughing?

  Spoiler: SPOILZ YO 

When the 'evil' brother is stabbing the asshole brother to death and says "why won't you just DIE, this is hard enough for me already"

Another film I'll have to rewatch for a "pure" viewing without the expectations from everyone's hyperbole. Certainly worth checking out though if you're on the fence

[Matt]

Holy shit, can't stop laughing at Trejo's avatar.