The Visitor (1978)

Nothing to do with the movie. 

The Visitor is getting a lot of buzz as they've recently re-released it to theaters, which is where I saw it and it was AWESOME. Seeing something like this on the big screen is just indescribable.

Let me describe it for you.

There are very few films like The Visitor. First of all, just take a look at the cast: Mel Ferrer, Glen Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Naill, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters and Franco Nero as space-age Jesus Christ.

Shocked speechless by basic information for the rest of the movie.

That's right. Django himself. As the savior of mankind. In space. 

Kardashians got nothing on Katy.

John Huston stars as some kind of galactic warrior who, along with his often misplaced theme music, tracks down the evil children (indirectly?) spawned by some space criminal who sowed his seed all over the universe. He is locked in combat with an eight-year-old Earth girl (played by 12 year old Paige Connor) and her evil pet falcon. How does he conduct this combat, you ask? By going up on a skyscraper roof top, where interpretative dancers cast their shadows on white sheets, and lights dance around like a low budget Close Encounters. In the psychedelic world, he turns her into popcorn or something.

This little girl spends most of her time wreaking havoc at basketball games, gymnastics meets, ice rinks and any other sporting event she manages to attend or compete in. She also cusses out old cops (who seem to be incapable of applying the breaks of their cars when blinded) and generally sasses baby sitters, house keepers and anyone else who can't escape her insidious presence. She's a low budget Damien.

John Huston as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

There's a weird cabal of rich white stuffed shirts who, for no reason ever fully explained, want to control the sex life of the evil girl's mom, using young Lance Henriksen to impregnate her and bring forth a boy child... for no reason every fully explained. They even resort to hiring evil futuristic football players with no faces to kidnap her and implant something in her womb. (SPOILER: It's a baby.) This gives her a great opportunity to reconnect with her ex-husband (Sam fucking Peckinpah) by seeing him for an abortion.

Hint: This is not a homoerotic incest scene.

Then, it sort of turns into The Birds. Birds were apparently the weapon the good aliens used to kill that space criminal guy, "fatally wounding him, in the brain."

Add together the Birds, Close Encounters and the Omen II... and throw in an Italian space Jesus.. and you've got The Visitor.

This movie is full of beautiful, arty, psychedelic scenes that make no sense whatsoever. The plot is so convoluted that it's brilliant. And the dialog... just see this damn thing, already. Or you'll never forgive yourself.

RATING

Shaolin Soccer

Now don't be fooled. Movies about soccer are almost always bad (except Ladybugs which might be the best movie ever. But fuck that Bend it Like Beckham shit). And if you are like me, you generally avoid sports movies.

This is not a sports movie. Well, it is, but it's more of a fantasy kung fu comedy. 

You can expect a lot of kung fu-nny antics like this.

There's two guys: Golden Leg, a former soccer pro who had his knee broken because he threw a game, and Iron Leg, a master of shaolin who seems to spend most of his time collecting cans, wishing for sneakers with no holes in them, and generally being a bum. It just goes to show you, kids, shaolin kung fu just doesn't pay...

You try to get a respectable job with only Shaolin Master as a credential.

...but maybe it can. If these two Legs can just get it together, Golden coaching and Iron shaolining, and beat Team Evil, then maybe everybody will wind up rich.

TEAM EVIL (SPOILER: They are the bad guys and they cheat)

It all gets complicated when Iron Leg sings a song of admiration to a girl with boils all over her face who uses her kung fu mastery to make delicious buns. There's a really bizarre and overly complicated rom-com sideplot here that winds up with the girl shaving her head and saving the day.

"What a beauty."

 If you liked Kung Fu Hustle, this film is just a good and a lot funnier. It relies on totally over-the-top special effects to turn an otherwise b-grade movie plot into a gonzo cartoon of destruction. It pretty much rules. Even my parents liked this one. Fun for the whole family.

RATING:

Zachariah

 

All I should need to say about Zachariah is that it is A) set in the Old West and B) it features Rock bands with electrified instruments.

Seriously. The James Gang. Country Joe and the Fish. The New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. And Jazz great Elvin Jones as a drummer who is the baddest gunslinger in the West.

Other interesting facts: It's loosely based on Hesse's Siddhartha. Apparently the Firesign Theatre adapted it for the screen. It features a young Don Johnson.

Zachariah, Job Cain and Matthew, the best gunshooters to ever shoot.

Some ladies wash and oil up Zachariah for the sex.

Zachariah is a nice guy. He has a friend named Matthew who is also a nice guy. Of course, they get hold of a gun and join up with some bank robbers, who are also Rock musicians. The robbers are better at rocking than they are at robbing, so Zachariah comes up with the idea to use a music concert to distract the townspeople, while he and Matthew rob the actual bank. It works! They get pretty rich together. But they both want more. And so they meet up with a super bad-ass gunslinger who kills any and all who challenge him.

Religious symbolism abounds.

Zachariah and Matthew swear they will always be together. It's almost homoerotic for a minute. In the very next scene they part ways. Zachariah has to go out on his own, fuck a really high class whore, farm with a blind man in the desert and "find himself." Derrrr.

Matt becomes a super badass gunfighter and eventually comes for Zach, who has since laid down his gun. Then something happens and there's a huge confrontation, denouement and end to the film. 

It's one of the few true examples of the Acid Western genre, alongside Greaser's Palace, El Topo, Four of the Apocalypse and Dirty Little Billy. It's got totally surreal moments alongside bizarrely stylized musical elements. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

RATING:

Kamikaze Girls

Kamikaze Girls is a Japanese movie starring two J-Pop stars. If you are into J-Pop you probably recognize them. If you aren't into J-Pop, it doesn't matter, so let's move on.

Kamikaze Girls is a Japanese movie about two cute girls. One is a rococo-obsessed Lolita who can embroider the hell out of shit. The other is a biker gang chick who seems like she would have made a good pair with Fonzie, except her bike is more of a Jetsons Bigwheel. She needs some really good embroidery done on her jacket. Somehow, the two become friends in spite of themselves.

Cute.

Cuter.

The quirkiness of the movie comes across in the way it is told. It's narrated by the rococo Lolita girl and she's clearly deranged, at least by non-Japanese standards. There's also an anime backstory segment, which is entertaining even if you aren't into anime and don't listen to J-Pop.There's some story of betrayal in there, too, but that's not really what I remember about Kamikaze Girls.

This happens.

And this happens.

And this guy is in it.

If you like quirky, highly stylized Japanese movies, there's no reason to not watch this ASAP. If you like cute Japanese girls, there's no reason not watch this ASAP. It's good, it's fun, it's heart warming and it's ridiculous.

RATING:

Killer Tongue

This obscure gem is a Spanish-British collaboration, set in New Mexico, USA, and filmed in Spain. It's dubbed in because it's shot using largely Spanish actors, except for the inimitable Robert Englund, who plays a prison warden with a bad toupee.

This is not his bad toupee. 

Nothing about this film is good in any conventional sense, but everything about it is great. It's basically the story of some criminals, a meteoroid, some nuns and some poodles. Some kind of object comes into Earth's atmosphere and crash lands in the desert, but not before a chunk flies off and into a woman's soup, giving her a Venom-like body suit and a long, vampiric tongue, and turning her four French poodles into drag queens that do her bidding, mainly by capturing people for her to eat.

She is pretty sexy, if that matters to you. Less sexy when her tongue is killing people or talking to her in a ridiculous New York accent.

There's also a very sexy nun, pictured here with the drag queens.

 

And seen here forcing a criminal to give a gas nozzle head. 

And that dude winds up dead. 

Ridiculous effects, absurd violence, strange and uncomfortable humor, brightly colored sets and costumes. It's really fun and totally bizarro and I can't believe it isn't more well known. 

RATING: