Andrew Bujalski: Funny Ha Ha & Mutual Appreciation

Funny Ha Ha (2002) follows recently unemployed Marnie who spends her days hanging out with friends, trying out unsatisfying temp positions, and trying to get with an unavailable love interest. It is dreary and certainly not a comedy. Mutual Appreciation (2005) is slightly better, focusing on Alan, a musician who moves to New York to pursue his rock and roll career. They could both be Dogma films and feature naturalistic performances and dialogue that has an improvisational and realistic feel with awkward pauses, circumlocutions and apologies but unfortunately none if it is at all interesting. They completely reflect a banal, mundane and boring reality without making any kind of point. They are both like a remake of Reality Bites by Mike Leigh or Linklater circa Slacker. It’s about as meaningful as actually hanging out with some nice but uninteresting average 20 year olds or watching Big Brother or Coffee and Cigarettes. They are part of a film ‘movement’ known as mumblecore, which is a fitting moniker, though it is worrying that there are other films as unimaginative as these out there.
0.5/5

The Shout (1978, Jerzy Skolimowski)

“Get out of here Anthony or I’ll shout your bloody ears off.”

Based on a short story by Robert Graves, Alan Bates plays ruggedly handsome weirdo Crossley who relates a story to Tim Curry while they are at a cricket match for patients at an insane asylum. In the story he meets Anthony (John Hurt) outside a church and invites himself to lunch at which point he makes Antony and his wife (Susannah York) feel uncomfortable by saying things like “No, no children. None that survived anyway. Under Australian aboriginal law, either parent has the right to kill their offspring within a few weeks of birth. Always I chose to exercise that right.” Bates stays at their house where Antony makes his living composing dodgy 70’s electronic musique concrete (supplied by Tony Banks of Genesis). Bates tells Anthony about a death shout that can kill any man, of which Anthony is first skeptical, and begins to weave an erotic spell on Anthony’s wife. While the supernatural element is incredibly silly the acting is superb and I found the relationship between the three leads highly compelling.
3/5

Candy Mountain (1988, Robert Frank)

A road movie from the Jarmush school of filmmaking, written by Rudolph Wurlitzer who also wrote Two Lane Blacktop. Julius (O'Connor) a talentless musician and perhaps the most uninteresting character of all time tries to trace legendary guitar-maker Ellmore Silk, convinced Silk has the power to make him rich and famous. The movie is a series of encounters as he goes from person to person each of whom gives him the address of where they think Silk is. They all tell Julius that Ellmore isn’t interested in money. There are a lot of cameos from musicians Tom Waits, Leon Redbone, Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer and Dr John. A toothless guy uttering “life ain’t no candy mountain” and Laurie Metcalf attacking her wheelchair bound husband with a guitar are the only memorable scenes. It's not possible to ruin the ending so here it is- Silk has already signed a deal with someone promising to make guitars for them, and Julius’ meandering journey, just like the film, was a massive waste of time, though Julius is slow to realize this.
1/5

Daisy Diamond (2007, Simon Staho)

Similar to Lilya-4-Ever, except without the comedy value. Noomi Rapace plays Anna, a single mother trying to make it as an actress, failing countless auditions, trading sex for parts and eventually turning to prostitution and pornography. The post-modernism in the film gets rather tiresome but all the acting is superb. The film features frequent references to Bergman’s Persona. The first half of the film is hampered by a highly annoying perpetually crying baby. By the end it’s rather like a po-faced exploitation film, depressing rather than fun, with two clear morals, never have children or try to make it as an actor.
3/5

Death Laid and Egg (1968, Giulio Questi)

This was the directors’ only giallo film. After the opening credits of beautiful microscopic close-ups of living organisms it all goes down hill. Marco has married Anna for money, which comes in the form of the chicken farm. Marco is having an affair with Anna’s cousin Gabriella and regularly kills prostitutes in hotel rooms. The storyline is confused and the film features dubbed dodgy voice actors (no option of subtitles) and annoying cacophonic instrumental music. The film is somewhat cheesy and a scene involving the ludicrous death of a dog crosses over into comedy. Headless wingless chickens are grown so they won’t need feeding and will have more meat. We get to see as one character with moral objections smashes one of the chickens into a mess of gristle. Although frequently strange the film is mainly uninteresting.
2.5/5

Rapeman (1993, Takao Nagaishi)

“Rapeman’s motto is: Righting wrongs through penetration. We have a responsibility to uphold. Think about the children at the Sunflower Orphanage”.

One of the most un-pc films since Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, based on the manga, a school teacher sets up a business called Rapeman Services, which is co-run with his uncle. He gets paid by men to rape women as punishment for various wrongdoings and then donates the money to an orphanage but gets caught up in a political plot. The film is not pornographic or sleazy and the rape scenes are not at all disturbing as the film is aimed at comedy. It’s cheesy and bad in a good way but there aren’t enough laughs or a good enough story to sustain interest. It led to a whole series of sequels.
2.5
(picture is of Rapeman 4 cover)

Emanuelle in America (1977, Joe D'Amato)

Emanuelle in America (1977, Joe D'Amato)
Part of the Black Emanuelle series of films, told in a trashy jocular manner reminiscent of Deep Throat, this film follows an investigative journalist and massive nymph played by the beautiful Laura Gemser. She goes undercover as the member of a harem to get proof of weapon smuggling and then hooks up with a kinky aristocrat. There is so much sex in the film, both hardcore and softcore that at times it will get rather dull unless you are watching for masturbatory purposes. While covertly taking pictures of aristocratic women having sex with rent boys, Emanuelle stumbles across some porno torture footage that leads her to a snuff-film ring. It is only at this point that there is a sense of narrative urgency, but unfortunately this storyline is quickly dropped. While this footage of gang rape and torture is genuinely disturbing, and the film is immensely sleazy (at one point a woman jerks off a horse) there is never an atmosphere of anything other than silly fun 70's porn. It was one of the first movies to deal with snuff films, being preceded only by the eponymous Snuff. The endings randomness is on par with Blow Up and offers no closure, although this rather fits the episodic structure of the film.
4/5
Released uncut by Blue Underground

Llik Your Idols (2007, Angelique Bosio)

I had not seen any films from the New York No Wave scene so thought that this DVD would be a good place to start. Zero budget films devoid of any ideas other than trying to shock, starting in the 80s, after John Waters, Jodorowsky, Salo, the Mondo genre and Giallo films this ‘cinema of transgression’ was already tame and dull when it was released. The only good thing about these films was the soundtracks, featuring bands like The Swans and Foetus. Taking the form of clips and talking heads, the two directors primarily associated with the scene, Nick Zedd and Richard Kern are featured heavily and are the focus of the film, with the other interviewees including actress and musician Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore of frequent soundtrack contributors Sonic Youth and artist Joe Coleman. Zedd is arrogant, self-important, pretentious, stupid and stuck in adolescence. Everyone else is slightly less moronic though none offer anything particularly interesting. A number of directors associated with this ‘movement’, while clips are shown, are neither particularly discussed nor interviewed.
1/5

People Who Do Noise (2008, Adam Cornelius)

Documentary about noise musicians in Portland, Oregon. The focus on a single city is obviously a budgetary one. Portlan, while having more noise artists than most cities, is hardly to noise what New York or London were to punk. There are only a couple of bands I had previously heard of (Smegma, Daniel Menche, Yellow Swans). We get some entirely average noise performances and some mostly boring interviews with people it’s hard for even the biggest noise fan to care about. A film about the roots and development of noise with its key participants would be awesome, but chatting to nobodies rather than Merzbow and Whitehouse is just frustrating.
2/5

Anguish (1986, Bigas Luna)

Rather relies on seeing it in a cinema to be entirely effective, in that the entire movie is set during the screening of a hypnotising film within a film. Basically imagine the beginning of Scream 2 stretched to fill an entire movie, but with some gruesome eye gouging. The director went on to make serious art house films. This one however is likeable but lightweight.
3/5

Tenderness of Wolves (1973, Ulli Lommel)

The film is based on the actual case of Fritz Harrmann, a.k.a. the Werewolf of Hanover, who was a homosexual child molester. He was convicted in 1924 of two dozen murders, but speculated during his trial that he may have killed 30 or 40 people. It was produced by Fassbinder and directed by his protégé Ulli Lommel. All the characters have a quiet intensity with a sleazily repulsive Kurt Raab, who wrote the screenplay and plays Harrmann. While its nice to have a film that avoids condescending trite moralizing the film, this art house take on horror doesn’t seem to do anything but disturb, and I’m left wondering if there was any motivation in making the movie other than prurience. The director would go on to make numerous straight-to-video horror films based on real serial killers. The film is lurid though not overly gory by today’s standards, and the settings grimy. The story is simplistic but full of macabre elements and all out perversity that more than keep the interest.
4/5

The Collector (1965, William Wyler)

About a man who kidnaps a girl and keeps her locked in his basement. The minimalism of an entire movie set in a single house with two characters creates an atmosphere so oppressive and claustrophobic as to make the film unenjoyable. Terence Stamp is disconcertingly menacing and reminiscent of Christopher Lee. Samantha Eggars character however can be slightly frustrating. The film, while sticking firmly to the novel avoids the books main problem of entirely repeating itself, though suffers from not having the relief of the prisoners diary reminisces, though flashbacks certainly wouldn’t have been appropriate in the film. Their is some talk about class consciousness, but the film is obviously about obsession, loneliness and love. The ending is suitably sinister but it is ultimately less effective than its source material.
3/5

Cure (1997, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

Tokyo detective Takabe (Yakusho) investigate a series of murders in which the victims are found with a large X carved into their chests. Their killers are apprehended with no motive for their crimes. The stereotypically short-tempered detective finds a link between psychiatry student, Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), and one of the killers and concludes that Mamiya, who did extensive study on hypnotism, has been planting the idea of the killings in his subjects' minds. The broody catatonic Mimaya comes off as a pretentious stoned teenager and he frustrated me throughout. He is able to take control over people simply by holding a cigarette lighter in front of them. The fact that he can hypnotise people is meant to say a lot about free will. I had heard of hypnotism before I saw this movie…
With its visual style and unbearably slow pace it wants to be an existential art house flick but the dialogue lacks intelligence and the characters lack development. The almost non-existent ambient soundtrack doesn't help. After a static two hours were left with an unsatisfying ending.
0.5/5

Cigarette Burns (2005, John Carpenter)

A cross between 8MM and The Ring except it lacks either of their style and is even cheesier than In The Mouth Of Madness, of which it is also reminiscent. The storyline involves a purveyor of rare films enlisted by rich collector Ballinger (Udo Kier) to track down a print of the mythic La fin absolue du monde ("The Absolute End of the World"). The films premiere and only showing is rumoured to have ended in bloodshed. What could have been an intriguing look at morbid cinephilia is unfortunately made supernaturally ridiculous from the get go and we see way too much. The soundtrack is like a rubbish version of Goblin, which matches the Tales From The Crypt vibe of the film. It would have benefited greatly from some subtlety.
2/5

Dust Devil: The Final Cut (1993, Richard Stanley)

As a big fan of the director’s cyberpunk debut, Hardware, I was disappointed by this movie. The film is like a B movie version of the scene in Natural Born Killers where they kill the Red Indian. However, what starts of in this film as mysticism soon turns into a full on supernatural serial killer reminiscent of the Denzel Washington flick Fallen and a lot of other trashy horror movies. The idea is made more interesting by the fact that he only kills those who are about to kill themselves and that he then begins to develop a strong emotional connection with one of his potential victims, as her husband hunts for her. The films biggest problem is Robert Burke as a brooding hitchhiker, reminiscent of a castrated Rutger Hauer. He is neither threatening nor mysterious. There are some cheesy stereotypical horror moments, a dodgy voiceover of new age babble and the film is devoid of scares or even a creepy atmosphere. Bizarrely for such a niche film it has been released in a 5disc DVD edition.
2.5/5

Hanna D: The Girl from Vondal Park (1984, Rino Di Silvestro)

The storyline is clearly inspired by the po-faced downer of a movie that is Christiane F, that of a school girl developing a drug addiction and turning to prostitution. This however, starts off as the most camp and exploitatively brilliant film ever but soon gets repetitive and runs out of ideas until a thoroughly rubbish happy-ending entirely out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the film.
4/5

120 Days of Bottrop (1997, Christoph Schlingensief)

With the inspired premise of a director attempting to remake Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom (the most extreme film ever made), I was expecting something entirely demented. This film however, while only being 60 minutes long still manages to be dull. It is utterly incoherent and more non-sensical than David Lynch at his most pretentious and just seems like a bunch of people messing about. It’s weird and very random but with no humour, no interesting visual elements and surprisingly features nothing more extreme than a bit of nudity. In fact the only time I was shocked was when Independence Day was mentioned (with Roland Emmerich appearing briefly as himself) and I realized the film was about 20 years younger than I had guessed. Maybe something was lost in translation. Features Udo Kier. Bottrop btw is a town in Germany.
1/5

Hardcore (1979, Paul Schrader)

From the man that wrote Taxi Driver. The daughter of a devoutly religious Calvinist goes missing. He goes looking for her in the world of pornography and the sex industry. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it was made over a decade before the far superior 8MM. The film is entertaining enough but the ending is a severe anti-climax after some very vanilla sex.
2.5/5

Combat shock (1986, Buddy Giovinazzo)

Very noticeably a zero budget film but even with Hollywood money it wouldn't have been great as it's all just far too obvious. There have been a lot of films made about Vietnam post traumatic stress disorder. This must undoubtedly be the worst of all of them. Imagine Jacobs Ladder meets a drug addiction exploitation film with a rip off of Eraserheads mutant baby (except that makes it sound awesome!) The storyline is blatantly influenced by the band Suicides wonderful song Frankie Teardrop, in that the main character Frankie ‘shoots his wife and kid’. Incredibly gritty and depressing, it wants to be a serious film but was released by Troma studios. If you’ve ever seen a Troma movie, that is all you need to know.
1/5

Ms 45 (1981, Abel Ferrara)

The overused exploitation storyline, a woman getting raped and getting revenge (I Spit on Your Grave, Savage Streets and a hundred others), except in this film the she gets raped TWICE in one day. Rather than purely seeking out her attackers, she takes her fury out on men almost at random. The protagonist being a mute is a nice touch. It is low budget and the gore is unrealistic red paint. The acting is camp OTT and often falls into comedy with her neighbour being particularly ridiculous/hilarious, though the film also has some genuinely creepy moments. The cinematography is good, with the dénouement being particularly stylish. The soundtrack is also typical 80s horror but effective, with a bit of jazz thrown in. A hundred times more entertaining than the awful Driller Killer.
4/5

Mondo

Bootleg Video

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006, Lucifer Valentine)

It comes off like a cheap music video for a cheesy EBM band, except there’s no music and it lasts 70 minutes. I really enjoyed the trailer but if you’ve seen that you’ve basically seen the whole movie. All the gore lacks impact because we are not led to care about any of the characters minutely, to the extent that we can’t even say the film has any characters except the attractive and brilliantly sleazy Ameara LaVey (who is not related to Anton) as a self loathing call girl. She spends the film saying things like ‘It costs a lot of money to fuck me. Do you have it? Yea I’m a pretty expensive whore.’ For me she was the only ok thing about the movie. Everyone has thrown up at some point in their life. It’s really not shocking or interesting to watch. There are copious amounts of nudity including a 5 minute scene of stripping by LaVey. There is a complete lack of ideas in this film. In a world of Saw and Final Destination the gore is really uncreative. Completely devoid of scares, the film is boring and occasionally gross but compared to 2 Girls one Cup, Goatsee, Tubgirl, BME video, Mr Hands etc its not even interestingly disgusting, except maybe the bit with a guy throwing up blood onto a head that’s had its top part sawed off, but even that was carried on for far too long. It will probably appeal to fans of August Underground and other such shit. Unfortunately there is a similarly themed sequel also starring LaVey, ReGOREgitated Sacrifice.
0/5

Orgies of Edo (1969, Teruo Ishii)

The first of three stories involves a woman forced into prostitution, the next a woman turned on by unattractive men who has threesomes with dwarves. Her admirer disfigures himself so she will like him. The third features a sadistic and powerful man who has bulls with flaming horns charge into a courtyard of women wearing red who are forced to strip to avoid being gored. This one ends in a very graphic way which I will not ruin. Other than pink eiga/pinky violence films it is comparable Salo in its mixture of high production values, decent acting, well written dialogue and sadistic beauty. The most creatively perverse film I have seen in a long time.
4/5
Torrent with fansub by glopglop and lordretsudo (who did an awesome job)

Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966, Ray Dennis Steckler)

Like most Ray Dennis Steckler films it starts off as one genre, in this case a straight crime drama and ends up as something completely different. Lonnie Lord (Vin Saxon) is a rock & roll star whose girlfriend, Cee Bee Beaumont (Carolyn Brandt) gets kidnapped. Lonnie and his sidekick, Titus Twimbly (Titus Moede) step into a closet and emerge as Rat Pfink and Boo-Boo, two costumed crime fighters who look a lot like Batman and Robin, and go about rescuing Cee Bee. It’s very low budget and stars the director’s friends and family. Its silliness is fun for a while but its obvious slapstick comedy seems more appropriate for 5 year olds and just isn’t very funny. It does however have a great rockabilly soundtrack.
2/5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbhf9mjPO0

Chappaqua (1966, Conrad Rooks)

Features William Burroughs, and reminiscent of his life and writing, though based on that of the director. A young man is both and alcoholic and drug addict. We see him stumbling around and lying in bed in a drug clinic. There is no further storyline and the film spends the rest of its time trying to summon up a drug trip alternating from black and white to colour with some dated 60s visual effects like a really lame version of Natural Born Killers. For a film that tries so hard to be weird, psychedelic and dream like there is little interesting imagery and the cinematography is rather bad. A great soundtrack and counter-cultural cameos (Allen Ginsberg, Moondog, Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman, The Fugs) are the only redeeming features.
1/5

The Bed You Sleep In (1993, Jon Jost)

The main characters are Ray Weiss (Tom Blair), who operates a lumber mill battling against the recession in a small town, and his wife Jean (Ellen McLaughlin). A letter from his daughter, who is away at university, to her step mother accuses him of incest. He denies it and the wife does not know who to trust out of the two people she is closest to. With the most slack editing of all time, about a quarter of the film consists of footage of streams, roads, hedges and the timber mill in self indulgent lingering minute-plus takes in which nothing happens, the calm contrasting with the emotional turmoil. Tragic, mysterious, well acted and exceptionally dull. For people that thought Last Days was a good film. Similar to the far superior Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
1/5

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987, Todd Haynes)

The thought of watching a film made with Barbie dolls did not appeal to me, even if it is only 40 minutes long. This is, however, entirely deserving of its cult status. The voice acting, miniature sets and perfect dialogue meant I almost forgot I was watching (creepy) dolls rather than actors. It gives the film a somewhat unique and disconcerting aesthetic. The true story of Karen is simple, she got famous, developed anorexia, and eventually died, but it is perfectly rendered. The soundtrack is made up of Carpenters beautiful music and some incredibly creepy sound design. One of the most haunting, and yet campishly funny biopics ever made. While it is the music that caused the legal injunction, it is probably the fact that he is portrayed as both a closeted homosexual and a selfish jerk that led to her brother Richard taking legal action.
5/5
You can watch it on google video

Angst A.K.A Fear (1983, Gerald Kargl)

The very minimal and obvious storyline involves an ineffectual man (Erwin Leder of Das Boot) who has just been released from jail, where he had served ten years for murder. He immediately finds a house and kills the inhabitants. For the brief hour and 15 minutes runtime little else happens. However, it is implemented with a beautiful yet realistic style with brilliant cinematography by Academy Award winner Zbigniew Rybczynski and is intensely creepy to a nightmarish degree. The dark ambient music by Klaus Schulze of Tangerine Dream is also effective. Throughout the film the murderer narrates, telling us how he became so completely fucked up. It’s too sadistic for some viewers but not overly gory. I heard of this film through recommendations from Gasper Noe and this film was clearly an influence on I Stand Alone, which utilizes voiceover in a similar way. The film also reminded me slightly of Schramm and Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. Given a good storyline the group of people involved in this film could have made a horror classic. Unfortunately by the end of the film my interest waned and things were being dragged out for too long. It is still essential viewing for horror fans.
4/5
Unreleased on DVD. Available as bootleg or torrent only