Patrick Swayze

I Am The Last Omega Man Legend On Earth

Thought processes are a funny thing. Not so much funny ha-ha, more funny peculiar. Hancock, starring The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (aka Will Smith) is new out on DVD and we thought we should get jiggy with a series of films that ends with Smith's previous, er, blockbuster. Richard Matheson (Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Stir of Echoes) wrote his novel “I Am Legend” in 1954 and the films interpret his scenario in slightly different ways. All versions are set in the near future where a virus has wiped out most of humanity and left some survivors as vampire like creatures of the night, while one man patrols the streets killing the undead.

The Last Man On Earth (1964)
Vincent Price stars in the purest adaptation of Richard Matheson's book. Price spends his time playing music and killing pseudo-zombie-vampires and, unknown to him, the surviving humans, making him a 'legend' and he his feared by everyone. The film is slow but, with its unsettling visuals and claustrophobic feel, it plays like an extended episode of the Twilight Zone. And we love the Twilight Zone.

The Omega Man (1971)
Charlton Heston tries to live a normal life, test driving cars, watching Woodstock, playing chess in his apartment, and looking for the pale, daylight fearing, technology hating mutants so he can kill them with a variety of guns (hey, this is Charlton Heston). Heston's monotone monologues dominate the film, but the action and despair is increased making it the most accessible of the versions.

I Am Legend (2007)
Imagine thinking you were alone in a plague ravaged world, only to discover it is also populated by CGI wildlife and Will Smith. How depressing would that be? This film takes the title of book but not the premise of being a 'legend' (despite a sloppily added voiceover at the end that fits about as well as Ron Jeremy at a chastity convention). After Smith starred in “I Robot” (another film which had little to do with its source material), did he really need to do it again?

Madagascar Escape 2 Africa (aka Madagascar 2) (2008)

The penguins rock my world. They get the best lines. And they get chimpanzees.

Although Sacha Baren Cohen's lemur, King Julien, is mighty entertaining.

The Happening (2008)

Mark Wahlberg isn’t much of an actor. M Night Shyamalan isn’t much of a writer. What would the two be like together? Not as bad, or pretentious, as it could have been, but it is still not good. And, at 90 minutes, it was too long for the minimal ground the story covered. The Happening is another nature fights back tale as a plant generated virus is wiping out New York state and Marky Mark is on the run. The biggest surprise is that Shyamalan doesn’t try to surprise us with another attempted twist ending.

Marky Mark runs but realises there is nowhere to hide from his limited acting ability and a dull script...

Man About The House - The Complete Third Series

Magna Pacific has done us all a favour by releasing another season of the wonderful British sitcom ( I refuse to use the term britcom ) Man About the House... possibly the most successful sitcom of all time. It not only ran for 6 seasons, it also begat two successful spin-offs ( George and Mildred, Robin’s Nest - which have also just been released on dvd ) which together make up a trilogy not dissimilar to the Matrix, Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings. Although, it makes a lot more sense than the Matrix, has less racial stereotyping than Star Wars, and has far more hideous creatures ( the British ) than Lord of the Rings. It was even remade in America as Threes Company, which also had two spin-offs.
The show itself is a simple enough premise. After a big party, Chrissy ( Paula Wilcox ) and Jo ( Sally Thomsett ) wake to find Robin ( Richard O'Sullivan ) asleep in their bath. He needs a place to live, they need a flatmate, and the scene is set for a sitcom, or possibly a porn movie. The landlord, Mr Roper ( Brian Murphy ) is wary ( not to be confused with Duncan Waring, he was Doctor in the House ), so they say that Robin is gay and thus, there will be no hanky panky ( as if his sideburns and choice of kitchenwear didn't almost guarantee that already ). Mr Roper’s wife Mildred ( Yootha Joyce ) is not fooled and, in between berating her hen-pecked husband, targets Robin for her own ends. Sexual tension and sexual freedom collide.

See what life was like for your parents. See what London was like during the decade we dont like to talk about. And see just how bad fashions got in the 70s in stomach-churning technicolour. Man About the House remains fresh, funny, and sexy, even after all this time. You could do far worse than taking this in with a few drinks, a takeaway meal, and your cute housemate(s). It might even make for interesting fantasy role playing with your landlord. Well... maybe...

Barbarian Queen

Barbarian Queen has Roger Corman written or, perhaps, scrawled hastily all over it. A sword and sandal "epic" filled with boobs, blood, bondage, and... well... I'm sure there's a few minutes when there's other stuff on the screen as well.

Blonde nymph Taramis (Dawn Dunlop) is innocently picking flowers when she is set upon by ( according to the official synopsis ) a pair of Romans ( tho they are far more disheveled than any Roman I've ever seen, and I've seen "Rome" ), who unbuckle their rags menacingly in the film's first rape scene, whilst muttering such witticisms as "come here sweetheart" and "oooh mama". Unsurprisingly, this sets the tone of much of what is to follow.

Amethea (Lana Clarkson), the victim’s big sister, is indulging in a completely non-gratuitous ceremonial bath with her closest pals, when hordes of "Romans" storm the village, hacking and slashing their way through the somewhat displaced Argentinean peasant folk. Amethea somehow survives and vows vengeance against this tyranny and savagery. Says Amethea, "I'll be no man's slave and no man's whore! And if I can't kill them all, by the gods, they'll know I've tried!" And try she does...

Seemingly Amethea's whole body has been trained as a weapon, which becomes surprisingly evident when she is strapped topless on a rack ( of the torturing, not Pamela Anderson variety ) with escape impossible, if not for an attempted rape by her captor and the mighty vice like grip of her... er... vagina. I swear to god, I could not make this up. Held painfully in her "grip", the dungeon- master releases her bonds, before he is summarily dispatched into a handy tub of acid.

The film did however spawn a sequel of sorts, as Lana and her "abilities" returned for "Barbarian Queen 2: The Empress Strikes Back". However, as neither the scenario nor characters were the same as the original, the term "sequel" may be a bit of an overstatement. There was even talk of a third outing for the pulchritudinous Miss Clarkson, but that was put to an end with the starlet’s untimely death. Where was her "grip" or the tub of acid that nite at Phil Spector's house?!

Barbarian Queen is more an historical curiosity than anything else, but still curiously enjoyable

All ladies Do It

It's the DVD Purgatory weekend crew here again, and today we're talking about asses. And no, I'm not referring to sebastian and his review of Rob Zombie's "Halloween". Today we are here to talk about auteur, and bottom devotee, Tinto Brass. Brass (who also directed the infamous Caligula) is kind of like a grimier, hairier, less politically correct, Italian version of Russ Meyer... if such a thing is indeed possible.

On a base level, both men make very similar films, almost solely dedicated to their love of the female form. And each have their own quirks and preoccupations. For Meyer it is obviously breasts, the bigger the better. For Tinto Brass, the camera tends to focus at lower level (as the cover pictured above might suggest). It may be seen as somewhat dismissive or unfair to boil down all of Brass' cinematic creations to this singular level but, it is actually also fairly apt. Wikipedia claims, quite rightly, that Brass’ films often accentuate women's buttocks and hairy armpits, almost to the point of fetish, and that many of his films include unsimulated sexual acts, with the male actors usually using prosthetic penises. And who am I to question the validity and accuracy of anything in Wikipedia?

All Ladies Do It is the story of a good wife gone bad (or bad wife gone good, depending on your perspective). Diana (Claudia Koll), 24 and married for four years, writes to a magazine about her sexual adventures. And it all goes rather predictably from there. The film is a throwback to the great sleaze of the seventies, but fails to do much beyond making you furrow your brow at exactly what is going on. One reviewer likened Brass' work in theme (but almost certainly, not in design) to countryman Joe D'Amato's Emmanuelle series with Laura Gemser. That actually seems like unfair or unwarranted praise to me. It could just as easily be said his films are also reminiscent of that kid from school that used to tell you, in great detail, about the movies he'd heard his older brother talking about, or he'd caught glimpses of on SBS late at night.

Although occasionally titillating and (non-intentional) guffaw inducing, it's probably best left for historians and desperate fetishists only.

The Last Winter (2006)

If you want to see a good horror/thriller about a bunch of people stranded in in an isolated, frozen wasteland research station being killed off one by one, watch John Carpenter’s The Thing (starring Kurt Russell). If you want to see a bad version of that scenario, watch Ron Perlman in this travesty of a movie.

The Good...................TheBad...................and the Ugly

Doomsday (2008)

Scotland has been isolated since a plague 30 years ago (something like the virus in 28 Days Later), but it turns out not everyone died, and a team is sent in to investigate (in vehicles not quite as cool as the ones in Damnation Alley). The soldiers are captured by mohican cannibals who party to eighties pop music (a funkier version of Escape From New York), before escaping to a medieval castle where people don’t seem to party much at all (Reign Of Fire style), and escape from there to have a car chase with the original captors (you know we had to go Mad Max at some point). Writer/Director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) gives us another enjoyable, if highly derivative, film, Rhona Mitra is great as the feisty, hero, Bob Hoskins is there to add some class, and Malcolm MacDowell is, as always, juicy as a villain.

Starship Troopers 3 Marauder (2008)

Casper Van Dien (Dracula 3000) returns to the Starship Troopers franchise as the heroic Johnny Rico. There is something about these films, and the never ending battle with the bugs that I like, even if they have little to do with Robert Heinlein’s novel. Maybe it’s the rampant shooting and killing. Maybe it’s the sarcastic propaganda of songs like “It’s a Good Day to Die”. Or it might be that Jolene Blalock (Star Trek Enterprise’s hot Vulcan) is toting a big gun and a mean stare.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007)

John Carpenters 1978 horror classic has been remade, Rob Zombie style, which means more sex and violence and less suspense. The tension of waiting for Michael Myers to attack has been replaced here with a higher, more graphic body count. It’s a not a bad film, it’s just generic, including making Myers an abused child. But it does have Malcolm McDowell which is a bonus.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

46 years of Incredible Hulk comics and this is the best story they can come up with? Edward Norton deserves much better. The only spots I liked were the geeky bits – the mention of the super soldier project and Tony Stark (aka Iron Man, aka Robert Downey Jr) saying he is putting a team together. Although the first fight scene between The Hulk and Tim Roth was fairly entertaining for something that looks like a computer game.

And now the scenes we didn't see.

The Hulk sneaks back in to the USA.

And at the after party.

Iron Man (2008)

Billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) has a fondness for alcohol and inventing. He also hates arms dealers and builds a flying suit with its own arsenal that he uses to take out them and their terrorist buddies and promote American ideals. The film is a little gung ho, but it is also humorous and has a cool introduction to SHIELD and Nick Fury. Downey is well cast, or may just be playing himself.

Don't Look Now

Ok... so it's the weekend crew ( which is me it seems ) here at DVD Purgatory. And what's more, it's Halloween. So what have I just decided to watch? Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now".

Don't Look Now tells the story of a couple, Laura ( Julie Christie ) and John Baxter ( Donald Sutherland ) whose young daughter has recently drowned in a tragic accident. Their grief puts a sudden pressure on their marriage, and so they decide to take Donald's wig and moustache combo on a working holiday to Venice.

Although memorable for its complex story structure, eerie visuals, innovative editing style, and beautiful surroundings, it is widely remembered by all who have seen it for its crazy, over the top, "did they actually do it ?" sex scene. The scene was unusually graphic for the time ( and is actually pretty graphic even for these times - well, unless you've been previously watching a Larry Clark film ), leading to rumours that it was in fact unsimulated. Story has it that the scene was a last minute addition to the film by director Roeg. He felt there were too many scenes of the couple arguing, and thus... er... he took it the other way with some Caligula style lovemaking... and feet and armpit licking ( which I personally think, may have taken things just a little TOO far ).

Still, all things considered, the film has aged well. It remains genuinely beautiful and creepy at the same time. And like a fine wine, it is best enjoyed naked and with Julie Christie.