Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975)

A similar concept to Rollerball and the later film The Running Man, except this has a surreal president, a camp commentator, a gimp version of Darth Vader. Drivers compete in a race where they earn points for running people over. Obviously extra points are given for old people and children. Women are actually capable of driving rather than just navigating as in the vastly different Paul WS Anderson remake. Produced by Roger Corman, the film features Sylvester Stallone in an early but annoying role but David Carradine is pretty great as a driver called Frankenstein. Trashy, cartoony, bizarre, inventive, gory and funny.
An influence on Mad Max.
3.5/5

Suburbia (Penelope Spheeris, 1984)

From the director of The Decline of Western Civilisation. The film starts with a small child being mauled. I can't remember why. Someone throws a bottle at a bus and says 'I hate busses'. All the live performances in the film suck. The characters are punks as antisocial morons and there is some racism and homophobia. None of them are sympathetic and all the parts are badly acted, including an early part by Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. They burgle from middle class houses and call themself TR, the Totally Rejected. More like Totally Ridiculous. It has a vibe similar to Class of 1984 but with all the enjoyment sucked out. The only exploitation-fun involves a girl being forcefully stripped naked in a mosh pit and the gang turning up at a teen suicides parents house with her dead body and then having a fight with her family at the funeral.
Go watch Jubilee, Made in England or Smithereens instead. Even Rock N Roll High School would be a more mature choice.
0/5

500 Days of Summer

Obnoxious pseudo-indie film. 'OMG you listen to million selling band the Smiths like me! We must be soul mates! Lets go to the park and yell the word penis like we're teenagers!'
Mawkish trash with lame indie soundtrack about two unlikable characters. Why is he in love with her?? She is annoying and not that pretty. If you are a teenage girl who likes films such as Reality Bites and Greenberg and listens to Belle and Sebastian then you'll love it.
0/5

Class of 1999 (Mark L Lester, 1990)

Non-sequel to Class of 1984. Whereas the earlier film made the rebellious kids the bad guys, in this film the opposite is the case. Three robotic teachers are implemented in a gang-ridden school by the government to restore discipline. Needless to say the Robocops go Judge Dredd on the students. It has a vibe reminiscent of The Faculty and Disturbing Behaviour and the cast includes Pam Greer and Malcolm McDowell.
Trashy B-movie fun.
4.5/5

Sweet Movie (1974, Dušan Makavejev)

The film consists of two separate narratives. It starts off well with a beauty contest for the vaginas of virgins with a billionaire marrying the winner. He reveals his gold penis and urinates on her while people watch through the window. She is packed in a trunk bound for Paris, where she meets and has intercourse with a Latin singer. The sexual act is interrupted by nuns who frighten the lovers into bulbus glandis. The second story involves a woman sailing a candy-filled boat down a river, with a massive papier-mache head of Karl Marx on the prow and a lover onboard who is from the Battleship Potemkin. She eventually does a seductive striptease for a group of children, then has sex with her paramour in a vat of sugar before stabbing him. A scene at a dinner table where people spit their food at each other, kiss, gargle, vomit and urinate stands as one of the most disgustingly off-putting I have seen. The film also features defecation and footage of remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims. For its time it must have been pretty shocking, it’s far more extreme than the terminally dull Flaming Creatures and is clearly influenced by the Vienna Actionists, of which Otto Muehl stars. Not surprisingly it was banned in many countries. It’s been described as a political comedy but I found it neither funny nor could I decipher any point to the proceedings. There are some interesting visuals but it’s far too randomly nonsensical to keep interest after the first 10 minutes.
2/5
DVD Released by Criterion

Torso (1973, Sergio Martino)

Released in Italy with the far better title Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence. A masked, hacksaw wielding killer is preying on female students at an Italian University. With each murder we see a brief flashback to a child’s hand mutilating a doll. The killer molests their breasts after death. Daniela starts to believe she is even more at risk because she recalls seeing someone wearing the same red and black scarf the killer used to strangle one of the victims. She can’t remember who was wearing the scarf but it is only a matter of time before she recalls his face. Her and her friends hole up in an isolated mountain top villa. Unfortunately the killer has followed them. Suspicion is mainly aimed at a boy who has a crush on Daniela. Towards the end the film improves, with Jane (Suzy Kendall) waking to discover all her friends murdered and watching them being dismembered. However, because she had featured so little until this point in the film, I found it hard to care for the character or her plight, though the scene still managed to be the most tense of the movie. Lamely, her survival rests on the intervention of a male hero. The murderer is revealed to be a random character from earlier in the film but we are given the full flash back of a child’s death involving a doll explaining the motive, which was my favourite part of the film. While it seems cliché now, the film came out before most American slasher films like Friday the 13th (though after The Last House on the Left) but while keeping that in mind, the storyline is still bad, the gore is unrealistic, the dubbing is poor and the film is cheesy and mostly ineffective in achieving scares, though it’s still a better film than most giallos. The music by Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis is stereotypical but effective.
Available for the first time uncut in the UK now thanks to Shameless Films but also available uncut in the US thanks to Anchor Bay
2.5/5

Nostalghia (1983, Andrei Tarkovsky)

Yet another self-indulgent Tarkovsky movie where very little happens. Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky) has travelled to Italy to research the life of a Russian composer who spent time there before committing suicide on his return to Russia. Gorchakov meets madman Erland who locked his family in the house for seven years for their own safety before someone broke the door down and they escaped. Gorchakov then spends about 10 minuted trying to carry a lit candle across a pool. There is a lot of beauty in the film but minimal story, pseudo-intellectual dialogue (as if every character in the film is a brain dead philosophy student) and the excessively long takes make it one of the most frustratingly dull films ever made. He would have been better off directing music videos for goth bands.
0/5