If it does not involve pro-wrestling, this is Russ Stevens's effort to create the one stop blog for movies that are cut to the ideal run-time, 90 minutes. This blog may feature films that may range from 71 minutes to 1 hour 40 minutes, but 101 minutes and up are too long. An hour and a half can justify cutting a film into two chapters and a book into three. Hobbits and Katniss have too many ending, consider this an effort to stop that.
Films Researched for this Episode: Dark Star (1974), Saw (2004), Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), Saw V (2008), Saw VI (2009), Saw 3D: The Final Chapter (2010), Jigsaw (2017), and Hellboy (2019).
Imagine
if that franchise could have had a flick that was under 97 minutes
long. As I write that, I realize how that explains the confusion in the
series's use of parsec. Distance. Time. Both of their measurements are length.
At this point, the only "Star Wars" feature that would qualify for NinetyForChill.com - The Website
(or the Blogger since I am taking a few shortcuts despite my Web-Designer
Certification) is 2008's animated feature "The Clone Wars". IMDb
says it clocks in at 1 hour 38 minutes, but I will bet a digit or my
left ball ("That it ain't no good until the good are appalled". I cannot
resist a Supersuckers reference.) that the length will be rounded down
on the DVD box.
Perhaps a podcast for a later date should be about
cinematic features for animated TV shows. Is "DuckTales the Movie:
Treasure of the Lost Lamp" on Disney+? It has always been tempting to
just grab a copy from my retailer since Disney is not overly proud of
that one (Just like the mid 80's films, the way they treat
pre-renascence is criminal).
As much as I would love to talk about Ziro the Hutt and Stinky the Huttlet, that is not what I and Joe Golwitzer (@quidpro_joe on Twitter and Instagram) chatted about yesterday.
Joe
use to be my manager at the retailer I work at, and thanks to Amazon,
we probably had more times than we should to talk about movies. He is a
fan of cinema who is doing his damnedest to own and/or watch all of the
Best Picture Academy Award winners, so his taste in features maybe
considered better than mine or he is more dedicated to becoming a more
respectable cinephile than I. He is quite the respectful horror movie
fan with "Halloween" being introduction to horror and he had recently
seen and loved "The Thing". This lead to our original intention to do a
podcast about John Carpenter's sub 99-minute movies.
I
decided for the sake of the podcast and my guests not being nearly as
anal as I to up the NinetyForChill.com ceiling to 1 hour 39 minutes. This
only applies to the podcast.
When it
comes to 99-minute Carpenter, Joe realized that he was not as verse in
that filmography as I was. So we decided to go with the second
suggestion that I offered which was the "Saw" franchise, the sequels
more specifically. Only "Saw III" runs too long for the pod's
parameters, but with that being my least favorite, I figured it would
not get too much love.
We still swoon
over Carpenter, which makes my late Saturday viewing of "Dark Star" and
related drunkenness worthwhile, and work in the issues with how computer
generated gore simply will not do. It allows us to transition to some
David Cronenberg chat and my pitch for Jeff Goldblum to be the next
Jigsaw apprentice.
With the original
feature being released at the peak of "The Boondock Saints" fandom, we
do reminisce about how that has aged poorly. We also discuss the need
for these frequent sequel franchises. I also slip in a visceral "Castle
Freak" review and tell the audience from "Jurassic Jeff Jezebel Owes Me Eight Bucks" how my experience with Neil
Marshall's "Hellboy" turned out.
We are
both big fans of the last great horror franchise and we are happy to do
all the excess thinking that the "Saw" audience should avoid. Hope you
enjoy.
It is a good thing that I have started "NinetyForChill.com - The Podcast" because I have blown my annual resolution of eating something with Buffalo seasoning everyday. The main issue with this is that it throws off my diet. I did not buy much food because I would need to eat out every other day to make it work.
Without the resolution, I come home and want to make food because the fictional rule has been abolished. This is really just an issue on Thursdays and Fridays, the days that AEW does not offer content. My apologies for not finding "A Shot of Brandy" to be must watch content. When I leave work at 6:15 pm, there is not really a lot of time to prepare food in time to watch wrestling. Those are good times for Glucerna and cereal.
Thursday's trouble is that I do not have that wrestling to discourage cooking. On top of that, ramen is my Wednesday lunch because I have made it a tradition to watch AEW Dynamite with Buffalo wings as my meal. This means I am eating out during lunch and then making something fatty that night because what else am I going to do with that night? If you miss out on playing video games for a couple of weeks due to podcast work, remembering that they are available can be troublesome.
Friday's dilemma is that I usually need to take longer lunches to ensure that I am not getting overtime. The flexibility of the new part-time crews schedule prevents leaving early on that day to remedy that. Of course you should expect me to be out and about for those 70 minutes. Errands prevent me from sitting around for a half hour. Watching Smackdown (I should just say supporting the WWE), is not a priority, so the wrestling programming does not inspire me to sit in front of the TV.
I think all of my readers realize I am just bullshitting here. It is fair for them to expect me to have at least a dozen wrestling DVD's (more than likely a score) to watch and with the New Japan Pro-Wrestling World, I could just make myself a wrestling schedule. If anything, I am showing my age by wanting appointment TV. The point is, I need something to do, so I eat. The real issue that I have is that I can handle nearly any kind of body horror, so my late night movies will not allow me to purge my previous sins.
Stuart Gordon could be waistline savior for those who have a weaker stomach. Maybe after seeing a hole carved out of my wrist with pins sticking out of it (WRESTLING! YAY!!!), I can take about anything visually. Perhaps I need to rent some more French Extremism to shake this invulnerability, or I just need to stop cheering for directors to go for the bad taste reactions. Being a direct-to-video feature, "Castle Freaks" is a limited experience for fans of "Re-nimator" and "From Beyond", but makes sure to give the audience the shocks that you expect and push the boundaries of what they are allowed to enjoy. That does not necessarily mean the feature has is good, but if cat and boob mutilation perk your ears up, this film may be worth a view.
Castle Freak (1995, 1 hour 35 minutes).
The Riley family has fallen on hard times. It has been nine months since the patriarch, John, was drunk behind the wheel and was involved in an accident that took his five year-old son's life and blinded his 16 year-old daughter Rebecca. They may have gotten a break when they are informed that they had just inherited a castle in Italy.
Of course, this castle is considered haunted. The duchess who lived their never left the premises after her five year-old son died. This was shortly after John's father left her and returned to the United States with her younger sister. Stories of wailing at night that can be heard through the castle halls do not help the properties reputation.
John does not plan to relocate to Italy, he is just looking to liquidate the assets. The simplicity of this task is quickly lost after Rebecca wonders off during his inventory to follow a cat into the dungeon and crypt. Believing she heard someone, her investigation inadvertently unleashes the Castle Freak.
The home is quickly cursed by strange occurrences mainly centering around Rebecca. John's overbearing wife believes her daughter has an overly active imagination, but as John investigates these happenings, he starts to unravel a dark tale about his parentage and how the duchess's son never died even presuming that she kept him alive to torture the past 40 years. One can only imagine the anger and vengeance that seethe in the mind of this newly freed monster.
The title delivers exactly what it promises. "Castle Freak's" story really expounds upon the simple premise and is a classic in terms of body horror and the family-related horror that is becoming the current rage in cinema. Like the Italian horror legends, Stuart Gordon captures everything he wants you to see despite the 4:3 aspect ratio.
It is difficult to pin down anything this film does wrong. This is not high art nor is it cinema with a capital C. This feature is a solid, brief story which does harken back to the concepts of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft would give you a scenario and left the story to the audience's imagination. "Castle Freak" is not a Lovecraft adaptation like his two undeniable classics, but Gordon flushed this out from only seeing a poster in the producer's office (that producer being Charles Band of "Arena" fame). He saw a freak locked in a dungeon, and created a marvelous narrative.
The film benefits from the established chemistry between the lead actors, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton (who were also leads in the classics) and I think it is a shame that this is the last performance of Jessica Dollarhide who portrays the confident and caring Rebecca. You may complain about the Italian cast being there solely to become corpses, but that means no chemistry required. This is how no budget cinema thrives.
The most intriguing chemistry may come from how the Freak interacts with the starring cast. This maybe more of a story element, but from the beginning of the feature, you know the Freak has a reason for his actions. What is most important is the Freak trying to be human. It never works out, but he is not entirely evil.
If mutilated pets is not going to upset you, the Freak actions might. This feature likes to mix all kinds of vices, and the mixture is always messy. It may come off at chauvinistic, but I do not think you can argue the realism of the monster's actions. This would just be a French monster story that can be romanticized without them. Renting this title must mean you are here for the horrific. Do not complain about it.
"Castle Freak" is a horror movie for fans of the genre. Those who do not like graphic and nearly unthinkable violence need not view. That is sad because it is a brilliant take on stories like the Hunchback and the Phantom. Stuart Gordan could take any classic story premise and flush it out into something all his own.
This is a display of gore horror fans want without any unnecessary narrative to endure. "Castle Freak" is a classic from a horror master that fans of the genre owe to themselves to view.
The
film that is about to be reviewed is 1 hour and 46 minutes long. It is
being featured because it is the first sequel to one of the greatest
horror movies of all time, Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (Luca Guadagnino's 2018's re-imagining of this film is worthwhile as well). As I established in my blog, "Kickboxer: Retaliation" How to Warrant 110 Minutes and I, the Retarded Garland",
a sequel can deserve more time than its predecessor because we want the
previous world to be expanded. This is a far better example of the
concept than the "Kickboxer" franchise. With that said, I am still
shivering in anticipation for the conclusion to the latest Kurt Sloane
trilogy.
European directors
tend to want to capture everything on film. Many times, they shoot to
the point of boredom. Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" is beautiful,
but it takes forever to get going. Nothing of notes happens in that
film's first half. It is like watching a Monet dry. We appreciate it,
but we want to load it on the truck now.
Italian
horror and its godfather Dario Argento (perhaps the most subtle of
the genre's directors) have similar tendencies. Argento is in love with his vision (He is
never afraid to tell critics and actors that.), but the stories he
offers to express it can be hit or miss. Fortunately, he would rather
show a gimp being eaten by rats than a child on a carnival ride playing
hooky. If only Truffaut would have had the child ground in the
centrifuge's gears.
"Inferno"
is the story of the youngest and cruelest of the three mothers, Mater
Tenebrarum (Mother of Darkness). Rose is a poet that lives in an old
building in New York whom, after reading the book "The Three Mothers",
suspects she is living in that witch's home. She puts it upon herself to
explore the building's basement where she finds an underwater ballroom
with a corpse floating around in it. This leaves her desperate for her
brother Mark to return from Rome to help unravel the mystery.
Unbeknownst to Rose, Mark is dealing the mystery that is Mater Lachrymarum (Mother of Tears)
the most beautiful and powerful of the mothers. After receiving the
letter from his sister, he seems to be stalked by that witch, and his
friend are becoming her latest victims.
Can
these modern siblings solve the mystery behind these grisly
occurrences, or are they going to be additional casualties to the
ancient sisters' evil ways?
"Inferno"
does not offer much when it comes to story. The tale establishes that
all the characters are seen as disposable, so we will wait around to see
who makes it out alive. Any other narrative shortcomings are conquered
by Argento's directorial style, and his efforts in creating beautiful and nightmarish
visuals are remarkable.
The
submerged ballroom (His homage to his once one of a kind classic
"Suspiria's" use of bright and limited primary colors) and effects inspired by
Mario Bava, justify filming the entire feature in Rome. This effort is as
valid as Jeff Bridges's performance being the only reason to see "Crazy
Heart". Talent can conquer almost any limitations.
If
there is a genuine reason to be disappointed, it is that it may not be
shocking enough when it is compared to other Italian horror legends like
Lucio Fulci. There are no victims who fight back, and little worthwhile gore.
It is artistic, but not disgusting.
This is an Italian film. We deserve at least an image that reminds us of "Zombi 2". It must be why "Mother of Tears" was so over the top. Argento was apologizing for the lack of nightmare future in that film's predecessors.
If
you are a fan of sheer directorial talent, Dario Argento's "Inferno"
is a prime example of what can be done with only a premise. Argento is a
demanding auteur who may have been a generation too old to serve as an
ideal music video director. If only he could have got into that realm of film making if only to
bury Russell Mulcahy in the sands that his feature find so necessary to
feature.
My only frustration about the finished product this week is that I cannot figure out how Skimbleshanks managed to get a picture that was easier to edit with Snapchat (@catbusruss) than my queen kitty Evangeline. My best offerings never seem to get the respect that they truly deserve. Should I really be selling that chip on my shoulder?
Judging that I decided to promote my Letterboxd account on this edition of "NinetyForChill.com: The Podcast", perhaps. My handle on that site is cmdarth, so despite the focus on the world of sub 97-minute features, the wrestling businesses always seeps in. I may need to a CM Punk and Soska Sisters' combination podcast. After the Colt Cabana drama, someone should take his initials away. If CM Venom is not going to step up...
To Punk's credit, he knows how long a movie's runtime should be. His 2019 starring roles both fit into the NinetyForChill.com time standards. I guess I still cannot help but to admire him. But he is not what professional wrestling needs right now. What it needs is a "No Holds Barred" remake with Jurassic Jeff Goldblum.
This week, I chat with my older sister ThePoeticCritic to talk about her favorite (living) actor, Jeff Goldblum and his features that range from 91 to 96 minutes. Her immense knowledge and research (Thanks Mike and Mike at "Now and Then Movie Podcast") allowed her to give me a lot of incite into the story of one of the best character actors of the past 45 years. She also explains why half of my four-day Goldblum binge required some means of chemical escape.
Tje features that are discussed in depth on this podcast are the David Cronenberg classic "The Fly", Larry Bishop's mess of a debut feature "Mad Dog Time", "Shooting Elizabeth" from his European excursions, and "The Great White Hype" a funny fighting film featuring the fresh from "Pulp Fiction" Samuel L. Jackson. ThePoeticCritic also provides opinions about every other Goldblum feature that qualify for the NinetyForChill.com standards.
We also discuss the idea of raising the ceiling of 97 minutes to 99 minutes. I have made it clear that a three-figure film length will not be considered. A little editing never hurts.
Then again, a little editing is what "ThePoeticCritic" might ask for when it comes to a joke about David Cronenberg's role as Geena Davis's gynecologists in "The Fly". It may also apply to my reminiscing about Stuart Gordon's "Robot Jox", a film that places Michael Bays attempts at robotic comedy to shame.
And as always, I do take the time to mention the feature I have been trying to get out of development hell "Main Event off the Dead" a no to low-budget flick about indie wrestlers versus 80's gimmicked zombies. If you want a treatment or have any pointers on how to pull it out of development hell, send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com.
It looks like we have made it. My Blue Snowball microphone, a Zoom meeting room, and Audacity open source, cross-platform audio editor has allowed me to produce my first true podcast. If anyone is interested, I do have an old assignment from a 2009 ICC mass media class that elaborates on my liberal leanings and how they are necessary for colleges to truly benefit their students, but I do not know if you want to perceive me as even being more pretentious.
Ally Higgins from AllysAccessoriesShop comes on and does her best to express her affection for anime, an animation style she was introduced to during our three and three-quarter year long relationship. We started with Studio Ghibli's classics like "My Neighbor Totoro", "Porco Rosso", and "The Cat Returns" and move on to the flicks where they just drew too many pictures. Makoto Shinkai's latest releases get some love and we find out Ally's surprising love for Mamoro Hosoda's library.
Please pardon our little asides about her recent COVID-19 related quarantine, the discovery that her current significant other is a mark, the brawls between my cat Eva and her cat/my roommate Skimble, and the influences of the podcasts "ID10T" [A Christopher Columbus rant (the director/writer/producer, not the genocidal moron)] and "Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling".
What can I say except to those podcasts' pets, "What you gonna do when Eva and Skim run wild on you?" It is not a threat. The furry ones and I just want to take that over from the Hulkster. I suppose I need to start using "brother" a lot more.
At this time, I am looking for a guest for the next episode, and would love to have the next episode out next Tuesday. Want to talk about sub 97-minute movies? Send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com.
Just to cover all legalities, the opinions expressed do not reflect those of Best Buy, Inc.
