I have an extremely wide, inexorably catholic taste when it comes to movies, never having limited myself to any one specific genre, but those of the more offbeat kind hold a special fascination and delight for me. So here are my mini-reviews of a half-dozen films fitting this distinctive description that I've watched lately.
LAPSIS
My movie watch on 2 July 2022 was Lapsis. Directed by Noah Hutton and released in 2020 by Couple 3 Films in association with Purple & Gold Productions, Lapsis is a dystopian/parallel world sci fi feature satirising the manipulation and exploitation by high-tech mega-companies of their ground-level workers – literally ground-level in this case, For here they constitute cablers – people employed to run lengths of cable over the ground across mile after mile of countryside, linking together huge metallic cubes generating the quantum energy that powers everything of significance in this world. One new cabler, however, a delivery man from Queens, NYC, called Ray Tincelli (played by Dean Imperial), who is given the cabler username Lapsis and is cabling in order to earn enough money to fund specialist treatment for his younger brother (Jamie, suffering from a controversial chronic fatigue ailment called omnia, and played by Babe Howard), is being mysteriously and quite considerably overpaid for his work. So it’s not long before he and everyone else in his cabling group want to know why. That, basically, is the plot, such that it is, in a movie that for me was, at 108 mins, way too long to sustain my interest – sorry, but I can take only so much film footage of people walking through woodland running cable off a spool. And if you think that the long-awaited ending will be startling enough to warrant sitting through all of this tedium, forget it – because it's not. I'm aware that this movie has attracted many plaudits from critics and has even won a few awards, but for me, enthusiasm in Lapsis soon lapsed into ennui – end of. A strange movie in a stranger land. Click here to view an official Lapsis trailer on YouTube and you may agree with me – or not.
THE DEADLY MANTIS
On 8 October 2022, courtesy of the UK's Legend retro-TV channel, which specialises in rescreening vintage sci fi/horror movies and TV shows, I was finally able to watch (and record) a classic 1950s monster movie that I'd always wanted to watch but until now had never managed to do so – The Deadly Mantis. Directed by Nathan H. Duran, and released in 1957 by Universal-International, this captivatingly-offbeat b/w creature feature is all about a ginormous 200-ft-long prehistoric praying mantis that due to a massive volcanic eruption is released still alive from its longstanding sepulchre of solid Arctic ice dating back to ancient times, thereby enabling it to wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting modern world. Starring Craig Stevens as Canadian military officer Colonel Joe Parkman and William Hopper as palaeontologist Dr Ned Jackson who combine forces in their attempts to annihilate its titular terror, the movie culminates in this inimical insect's flight to Washington DC and then a climactic confrontation within NYC's Lincoln/Manhattan Tunnel between the monstrous mega-mantis and a special-unit US military detachment dispatched to destroy it. Close-ups of the mantis are impressive, scenes of it in flight rather less so, especially for anyone who has actually seen real mantises in flight. All in all, The Deadly Mantis is an absolutely typical B-type monster movie from that period that faithfully follows the tried and trusted basic storyline recycled endlessly in such movies, but still enjoyable despite – or perhaps because of – this, as the viewer knows right from the off exactly what to expect and can therefore wallow in the snug familiarity of it all. The Deadly Mantis is a nice addition to my monster movie collection – I might even seek out its official DVD release in case it contains extras. And if you'd like to view on YouTube an official trailer for this entomological epic, simply click here.
THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH
One of my movie watches on 20 October 2022 was the 2005 Eddie Murphy comedy sci fi flick The Adventures of Pluto Nash, directed by Ron Underwood and released by Warner Bros. I say comedy merely because that's how its publicity described it; in reality, I personally found it thoroughly tedious throughout. Indeed, when John Cleese (as a high-tech limousine's holographic chauffeur) is the funniest thing in it, which he was, you know you're in trouble! Its storyline centres upon a future in which the Moon has been colonised, and Murphy's character Pluto Nash is a reformed smuggler and ex-convict who now legitimately runs a successful lunar club – until it is blown to smithereens when he refuses to sell it to a mysterious Mr Big character named Rex Crater, forcing Pluto and Dina (Rosario Dawson), the daughter of a friend of Pluto who has been waitressing at his club, to go on the run. All sorts of mayhem results, none of it remotely humorous, sadly, but I admit there is a good twist when they finally uncover the elusive Crater's real identity. This movie was a massive box office bomb – let's just say I'm not surprised. Click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.
TERKEL IN TROUBLE
My movie watch on 27 June 2022 was the UK English dub (there is also a US English dub) of Terkel In Trouble, the first Danish computer-animated movie. Directed by Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen, Thorbjørn Christoffersen, and Stefan Fjeldmark, released in 2004 by Nordisk Film, and sporting a 15 rating, Terkel In Trouble is definitely NOT a child-friendly cartoon film. Indeed, with profuse profanity, gratuitous gore, and violence aplenty, it is far more Fritz the Cat than Frozen, that's for sure! It's all about a boy named Terkel, who finds himself in all sorts of bother at school, to the extent that eventually his increasing paranoia leads him to believe that everyone there is trying to kill him, even his best friend Jason – but perhaps they are! Various red herrings are thrown at the viewer along the way before the real culprit behind the decidedly dastardly persecution of poor Terkel is revealed – and their identity was not who I was expecting at all. Terkel In Trouble takes a while to get going, but its second half certainly makes up for this anarchic movie's slow start. The UK English dub boasts an impressive voice cast, including Adrian Edmondson (as Terkel), Olivia Colman (Terkel's chain-smoking disinterested mother Sheila), Bill Bailey (the on-screen narrator Barry), and Johnny Vegas (Terkel's ultra-violent Uncle Stewart, who works as an entirely unsuitable, wholly unsympathetic child counselor). Terkel In Trouble is an interesting and entertaining albeit decidedly offbeat animated oddity reminiscent of Beavis & Butt-Head – remember them? Click here to view an official trailer for the English-dubbed UK version of this movie on YouTube.
THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL
On 27 October 2022, I watched the not-overly-famous Hammer horror movie The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll. Directed by Terence Fisher, and released in 1960 by Columbia Pictures in the UK, by American International Pictures in the USA, The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll loosely follows the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novella's storyline, but with two major changes. In this movie, Dr Jekyll (Paul Massie, with beard and moustache to make him look older) has an adulterous wife Kitty (Dawn Addams), against whom – and also her younger, handsome, but gambling-addict lover Paul (played unexpectedly by Christopher Lee) – he secretly longs to exact revenge. And whereas in most Jekyll & Hyde movies, Mr Hyde (Massie again but this time fully-shaved to make him look younger) is ugly and frightening, here he is handsome and charming, far more so than Jekyll on both counts. However, it is the deceptive beauty and charm of unprincipled, unscrupulous evil, as everyone who encounters Hyde, not least of all his internal alter ego Jekyll, soon finds out, to their considerable cost (but most especially those against whom Jekyll seeks revenge!). These twists give this gorgeously-shot movie a novelty that captivates, no matter how many other J/H films you may have seen – and I've seem a fair few down through the years, ever since I read the original novella as a young teenager. Click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.
THE BROTHERS GRIMM
My movie watch on 28 October 2022 was the 2005 Terry Gilliam-directed fantasy film The Brothers Grimm, released by Miramax/Buena Vista. Grimm by name, grimmer by nature, as it turned out. For although it is ostensibly played for laughs by Matt Damon and Heather Ledger as said Brothers (Wilhem & Jakob respectively), who here are re-imagined as phony ghostbusters prior to their real-life folktale collecting years, the storyline and especially some of the visuals are decidedly grisly. So if, for instance, numerous close-ups of living, swarming layers of insects crawling over and into graves, horses' muzzles, and anything else that their multi-limbed bodies can find to scuttle across, or a horrific tarbaby-like oil entity that emerges from a well and promptly sucks off a child's face, or a decomposed but deathless centuries-old queen (Monica Bellucci) reposing Rapunzel-like in an isolated tower as she impatiently awaits her werewolf slave to bring her the blood of twelve abducted young girls is not your thing, this may not be the movie for you. The decidedly wobbly werewolf aside, the special effects are generally good and the plot is pure fantasy in every sense. It took me ages to put name to face for the actress playing outcast witch/wise woman Angelika, but finally the penny dropped, and I realised that she is Lena Headey, hitherto best known to me as the evil incestuous Queen Cersei Lannister in the smash-hit Game of Thrones TV show based upon the novels of George R.R. Martin. The Brothers Grimm is not a bad (even if somewhat mad) movie by any means, but is a little too twisted in places even for my usual taste in offbeat fantasy. Click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube, and make up your own mind.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
The Deadly Mantis was a bit comical for my tastes when I saw it in the 1980s. Yes, in flight it was hilarious.
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