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:

Repo Chick

Repo Chick is a 2009 film by Alex Cox, but it's not a sequel (nor prequel nor postquel nor NyQuil) to his 80s film Repo Man. He still decided to cash in on the name here, and it's safe to say that if you like Repo Man and maybe latter-era John Waters or highly stylized comedies like But I'm a Cheerleader, you will probably like this movie. It's also got some nods to Dr. Strangelove.

This is a pretty good indicator of what this movie is like.

Someone called Jaclyn Jonet plays the titular Repo Girl. She's cute and wears a million cute outfits in this movie, but when I googled her has an exceptionally short filmography, though she does star in some TV series called The Boring Life of Jacqueline. Old Karen Black is in it. That's a pretty good sign. And an even older Francis Bay. Rosanna Arquette shows up, too. Along with Miguel Sandoval and Danny Arroyo.

Yep. A Pink Pith helmet.

It's also pretty evident that no actual sets or locations were used. Everything was green-screened, giving it a low-budget surreality. Like if you dreamt in bad superimposition. A lot of the backgrounds are from model train sets. At first you will cringe, but trust me, this actually works really well for the film.

Rosie Arquette standing in front of toy trains.

It's pretty interesting satire of pop culture, the post-housing market collapse economy and post-9/11 politics. Billboards that say "God Loves Golf" and "Eat Meat." There's a white dread who uses a horrible Jamaican accent. It really has it all.

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:

Cold Feet

If you are like me, in 1989 you weren't paying attention to comedy films that were ostensibly appealing to fans of country music and cowboy attire. But thankfully Netflix deemed to stream this film, and its cover art conveys exactly why you should watch it. Dayglo Country with Tom Waits, Keith Carradine and Sally Kirkland! But that's not all - Bill Pullman, Rip Torn and Jeff Bridges are in this too! It's a movie that's almost a good, clever comedy and almost a total abortion. So it will take some patience from fans of truly obscure cinema.

She paid good money for these things, so dammit, you are gonna see them. 

Okay, there's a plot to smuggle jewels from Mexico by sewing them into the belly of a horse. Once Carradine, Waits and Kirkland get to Montana--where Carradine's responsible, honest and gullible brother Bill Pullman lives--they are going to cut the stallion open and split the loot. But Carradine is not honest, and he steals the horse and splits. Waits is not exactly sane, so he comes after Carradine with Kirkland in tow. The two travel in a Winnebago and Waits spends most of his time pacifying Kirkland with food and protecting her from sex with radioactive miners. 

Yeah, that's Jeff Bridges as the bartender. He's in this for like two minutes, but he's a pretty memorable character. 

Tom Waits and Sally Kirkland wear so many great, late 80s outfits that you should probably watch this movie just to see them. Meanwhile, Carradine has reunited with Pullman, giving him a prize stallion (with secret jewels sewn inside his gut) and promising to straighten up and fly right. Of course, all the while, Carradine is making plans to sell the jewels and split. But Waits is just too clever and buys some really expensive boots from a local shop owner to pin down the whereabouts of Carradine. Then Waits makes a big mistake: he throws the expensive boots away, attracting the attention of Sheriff Rip Torn. 

Also, Carradine has a young daughter who has been at boarding school while he's been off doing his outlawry.  They all reunite at Pullman's farm, and then Waits and Kirkland show up, Waits wanting to kill Carradine, Kirkland wanting to marry him. Carradine agrees to marry, because he's a spineless weasel and he wants to stay alive. Waits agrees not to kill Carradine, and hijacks Pullman to lead him to the jewels. Torn disguises himself as a preacher to perform the wedding and arrest all three ne'er-do-wells based on absolutely no evidence. Aw, I guess it's a little complicated to relate here. So I'm just going to post more pictures of Tom Waits.

It's goofy and sometimes almost good. Watch if you love the idea of the cast members in a totally unrealistic cowboy comedy.

RATING:

Master of the Flying Guillotine

Okay, let me start by saying there are so many reasons to like this movie, both seriously as a good example of a Hong Kong Kung Fu film and as a campy, old action movie with some absurd moments. Additionally, for fans of post-punk and early industrial music, you get an amazing soundtrack. The background music sounds like it could be Clock DVA messing around in the studio before laying down their real tracks, and the main title theme could easily be a Chrome outtake from Half Machine Lip Moves. Oh, and this was released in early 1976, so it was ahead of its time punk-wise.

The guy pictured above is the Master of the Flying Guillotine, "the most gruesome weapon ever conceived!" He's so bad ass that he can punch the air! His fists make loud sounds on impact with even our gassy atmosphere! Don't fuck with this guy. He can jump straight up through a thatched roof!  He's got a weird hat on a chain that decapitates any person, statue or chicken he throws it at.  And did I mention he's blind?

This guy is the One-Armed Boxer. He's also a total badass, and can even walk on the goddamn ceiling, but he works for the Ming dynasty, so the Master of the Flying Guillotine wants to kill him. The Master is actually the antagonist in this film. And it raises the question: which handicap makes you a better Kung Fu master? It's an age old question, finally put to the test.

Despite his moustache, this Mongol Kung Fu master isn't a major character.

Some guy holds an open tournament for masters of Kung Fu from all over. This Mongol guy with a great moustache shows up, as well as a Thai boxer, an Okinawan kobojutsu user, and an India yoga master. The One-Armed Boxer brings his disciples to watch the event, but he doesn't want to attract the attention of the authorities, so they have to keep a low profile. It's not so easy to evade prying eyes when you only have one arm. I mean, how many one-armed guys can possibly show up to a Kung Fu tournament? At least three. The blind master kills the other two, because apparently he can hear the sound of having just one arm. He's going to kill every one-armed man he meets, just to be sure he gets the One-Armed Boxer. So, he starts fucking shit up at the tournament, and recruits a few of the foreign masters to help him track down the Boxer.

If you practice yoga and you can't do this, you are doing it wrong.

After this, there's just a lot of Kung Fu, just like the part of the film before this. You get decapitations, burnt feet, poetic justice, random pink-filter flash backs. All a lot of fun.

"He wasn't the One-Armed Boxer. He was a one-armed bum!"

RATING: