Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964)

Original title: San Daikaiju: Chikyu Saidai no Kessen

Director: Ishiro Honda

Writer: Shin'ichi Sekizawa

Composer: Akira Ifukube

Starring: Yosuke Natsuki, Yuiko Hoshi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Akiko Wakabayashi, Emi Ito, Yumi Ito, Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Hisaya Ito, Minoru Takada

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Three-Headed Monster battles Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan for the world!

Plot: After a meteorite unleashes a three-headed beast upon Tokyo, Mothra tries to unite with Godzilla and Rodan to battle the extraterrestrial threat.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Probably not.  I've got a better idea...

The new Godzilla movie is days away (I'm posting this a few weeks out from when I watched it) and I had the gang over for some Man In Suit double feature 60s madness.  I have a love/hate relationship with these kind of pictures.  I LOVE the monster action but hate the human drama.  These flicks invariably waste too much of our time on shit nobody cares about until the monsters show up and oh how quickly we turn into giddy fanboys when that happens.   There's next to nothing, monster-wise, until Godzilla shows up 36 minutes in and even then it's only a fucking tease.  He pops his head out of the ocean and does that classic scream and it's back to boring ole human junk.  It's like when you order at a restaurant.  Ten minutes go by and the server shows up, making you think you're super close to getting your food, but they only bring you the ketchup or something to tease you and they keep bringing things out little by little.  I hate that shit.  Bring on the fucking monsters!!!

Halfway through the picture Godzilla returns to do some clobbering but that's yet another tease.  It's at the 50 minute mark when he meets Rodan and the shit starts to fly.  We only get short segments of monster action but it's fucking fantastic.  And then there's the huge ass fight between Ghidorah against Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan.  FUCKING AWESOME!!!  It's epic and all kinds of fun. 

And really, you could probably cut the first half hour of human drama and it would hardly affect the actual story.  I figured out that the best way to enjoy these is to remove the monster action and edit it together into a Man In Suit greatest hits collection.  Just one more thing to add to my massive to-do list.  And, yes, it's worth sitting through the meal just to get the desert.

The Expose of the Nudist Racket (1938)

Director: ???

Writer: ???

Composer: ???

Starring: ???

More info: ???

Plot: Our fanciful, fast-talking narrator takes us through the daily activities of nudists.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

I can't find a single piece of information about this picture.  That doesn't matter.  That it exists is enough, I guess. The amusing narrator gives us his machine gun fast commentary, making this 10 minute short fly by.  These nudist films exist not for educating the public but to have an excuse to show nude women under the guise of education as nudity wasn't allowed in mainstream films.  This one, though, is hilarious.

 Say, watch out for that low-hanging fruit!

"Leap frog takes on an added zest!"  

You bet it does, fella!

Cousin Jed Rises Again (1970)

Director: ???

Writer: ???

Composer: ???

Starring: Lilly Foster, Orita De Chadwick, George 'Buck' Flower, Antoinette Maynard, Paul Scharf

More info: IMDb

Plot: When Linda Baby (Foster) and hubby Ken send for her long-lost cousin Jed, a Texas oil millionaire, to help them out of a financial hole, it’s Linda Baby's hole that gets all of her kinsman’s attention. Pretty soon, Maggie (De Chadwick), a cocktail waitress at the local pool hall, is enlisted to bring a few holes of her own to the madcap menage because Jed’s sexual appetite is as big as the Lone Star State and he’s drilling for oil round the clock!

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Boy was I surprised when I popped this in thinking it was a Hicksploitation picture and it turned out to be a fuck film.  I feel like I got the short end of the stick on that one.

Not that short end.  It's a typically weak softcore flick, clocking in at 53 minutes, that neither delivers the eroticism nor the story.  We were fast forwarding through the tedious sex scenes (but not too fast, see) hoping for something fun in the acting but it's not really there.  The twist at the end was cute but it's hardly anything that could justify everything that came before it.  The twist?

The guy they thought was Jed was just a swindler who, along with his girlfriend, sell their host's furniture and split the money with them.  Then the real Jed shows up.  Hahahaha.  Yawn.  I would have rather this been the Hicksploitation flick I anticipated.  That's what you get sometimes for watching a movie solely on its title and reading nothing about it beforehand.  Lesson not learned.  I'll do it again and again and again...

A Band Called Death (2012)

Directors: Mark Christopher Covino, Jeff Howlett

Composer: Tim Boland, Sam Retzer

Starring: Dannis Hackney, Bobby Hackney, David Hackney, Robbie Duncan, Victor Veve, Victor Twiggs, Bobby Hackney Jr., Julian Hackney, Urian Hackney, Steve Williams, Steve Comegno, Dylan Gambatista, Majora Florida Hackney, Earl V. Hackney Jr., Heidi Simpson, Tammy Hackney, Henry Rollins, Kid Rock, Elijah Wood, Alic Cooper, Don Davis, Brian spears, Mickey Leigh, Mike Rubin, Don 'Das' Schwenk

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Before there was punk, there was a band called Death.

Plot: Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death. Punk before punk existed, three teenage brothers in the early '70s formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hoped of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. Record companies found Death's music - and band name - too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made it way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossible ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band (hell...the first punk band!), and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

Great documentary and what makes the subject even better is that the music is so damn good.  We get the usual info you get in band/musician documentaries but what makes this one stand out is you've got three black brothers playing rock & roll/punk music, something that only Jimi Hendrix had been successful at as a black man.  And despite the success of Hendrix, this talented bunch of guys struggled to get signed but a large part of that was insisting on keeping the band's name of Death.  Then you get the incredible story of how their music resurfaced more than thirty years later.  It's quite an emotional story.  But none of this would mean much of anything if the quality of the music wasn't there.  It's solid and it's a damn shame the band didn't break in the 70s. What they had was special and I'm glad to know of their music. 

Across the Universe (2007)

Director: Julie Taymor

Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, Julie Taymor

Composer: Elliot Goldenthal

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther, T.V. Carpio, Spencer Liff, Bill Irwin, Joe Cocker, Bono, Eddie Izzard, Salma Hayek

More info: IMDb

Tagline: All you need is love.

Plot:  Musical based on The Beatles songbook. Set in the 60s England, America, and Vietnam. The love story of Lucy and Jude is intertwined with the anti-war movement and social protests of the 60s. Over 30 Beatles' songs are woven into the plot together with visual allusions to their timeless films.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

Well call me surprised.  I liked it.  It took about an hour in before I really started to dig it.  I love the Beatles and it's pretty damn impressive that Taymor and Co. were able to craft a story made from the Beatles' lyrics and turn it into something really neat.  There are some stunning visuals and set pieces.

I might not have dug all of the Beatles covers but there was a lot to like and they did a fine job of presenting this band to an audience who'd probably heard very little of the band or even at all.  Bono was great. Didn't see that coming.  His look and version of "I Am the Walrus" was great as was Eddie Izzard and "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite".  The picture is loaded with Beatles references that will keep fans entertained picking them out. 

The Cotton Club (1984)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writers: William Kennedy, Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Jim Haskins

Composer: John Barry

Starring: Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee, Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Fred Gwynne, Gwen Verdon, Lisa Jane Persky, Maurice Hines, Julian Beck, Novella Nelson, Laurence Fishburne, John P. Ryan, Tom Waits, Jennifer Grey, Joe Dallesandro, Woody Strode, Mario Van Peebles

More info: IMDb

Tagline: It was the jazz age. It was an era of elegance and violence. The action was gambling. The stakes were life and death.

Plot: 1928, New York.  Spirits are high and sultry jazz, lively dancing and ruthless gangsters rule supreme. In the center of it all is Harlem's Cotton Club.  Playing on stage is cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Gere), who dreams of the big time, but he's too mixed up with the club's owner (Hoskins) -- and his sexy moll (Lane) -- to get anywhere fast.  Add the frustration of tap sensation Sandman Williams (Hines), who can't touch his girl, the lovely lounge singer Lea Rose Oliver (McKee), and you've got a short fuse ready to go.  As tensions rise, so do tempers, and the legendary nightclub becomes a pressure cooker of jilted loves and mob jobs that blows the lid off one of the most shocking showdowns ever staged.

My rating: 8.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

I'm so unabashedly a huge fan of this movie it's not even funny.  I saw this in the theater thirty years ago and I was in love.  See, the music of the 20s and 30s is my bag.  Then there's my love for gangster pictures which pretty much goes hand in hand.  The Cotton Club is a place that I would love to spend an extraordinary amount of time in.  Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway.  Forget about it.  Those guys are huge in my book.  As a musician, this film has me.  The trivia says Gere played his own cornet solos but his fingering doesn't match the audio.  That doesn't mean he did or didn't but for someone who's a pro on the instrument it's important. Unfortunately Gere doesn't step up to the role.  He's OK but a better actor would've elevated it.  Everyone else is great.  I could spend a few paragraphs on just the cast but you'll know what I'd say when you see it.  The dancing is AMAZING.  Hines left us way too early at age 57.  Wow is this guy good.  The music is outstanding, both in the period tunes and with John Barry's score.  His love theme is perfect in tone and orchestration.  The picture's not perfect, it drags in a couple of spots and the ending just kind of ends leaving you with a feeling there should have been more before the wrap-up but for the music, dancing and everything else, I love this picture.  It takes me to a place I'd like to never leave.  It's a shame the DVD doesn't have shit for extras save a trailer.  It deserves better than that.

There's Always Vanilla (1971)

Director: George A. Romero

Writer: Rudy Ricci

Composers: Jim Drake, Steve Gorn, Mike Marracino

Starring: Raymond Laine, Judith Ridley, Johanna Lawrence, Richard Ricci, Roger McGovern, Ron Jaye, Bob Wilson, Louise Sahene, Christopher Priore, Robert Trow

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Every woman knows why the wrong man is irresistible!

Plot: A young man returns to his home city of Pittsburgh and moves in with an older woman whom he begins to rely on for emotional and financial support.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I dig Romero's style in the 70s.  It's the way he handled the actors and their dialogue. It's also his editing.  It's different and fresh.  The performances are very good and it's a shame that neither Laine nor Ridley did much acting afterward.  I just didn't dig the film that much.  It's slow and sometimes dull.  93 minutes felt like a lot more.  Maybe it's the bleakness of the relationship or that Chris (Laine) is such an asshole.  Michael Caine was a monstrous asshole in ALFIE (1966) but he was a deliciously nasty cad.  Chris is more laid back than Alfie so that could have something to do with it.  It held my attention so you get points for that.  The commercial shoots were fun and I love that bit of dialogue where Lynn (Ridley) is talking to a producer (I think) on a beer commercial set.  She says something like (referring to the beer), "Isn't that cheating, making the beer look better than it actually looks?".  He goes on about the beer is the reason why she's there, he's there, the crew, and everyone else making lots of money all because of that beer, so yes.  She goes back to brushing her hair and he pipes in with, "Isn't that cheating?".  GREAT scene.  The full movie is on YouTube below and you can find that scene about 7 minutes in.  It's definitely worth your few minutes and it's the best part of the picture.  It might not be that good of a film but Romero made some wonderful moments.