The Tower of Film: My Top 25 of 1964

For those who might think it is in poor taste for me to use the word "tower" so blithely in an article title on September 11, my answer to anything negative you might have to say about it is a deeply cold "Fuck you, it's my goddamned birthday."

Also, this tower is still standing. (And please don't cue the Elton song...) This tower stands as long as I do (or at least as long as I can breathe, if in fact standing ever becomes a true difficulty, then I shall watch sitting down). The Tower of Film is my term for the figurative monstrosity that has arisen out of the 12,000-plus feature films that I have watched in my now fifty-two years on this spheroid, with the very cream of the crop occupying the higher, more exalted positions on that tower.

The Tower of Film started out a few years ago as a different project which slowly evolved into its current state, once I realized the enormous breadth of the project and just how much I had underestimated its original potential. That first intent was merely to make sure that I watched the most important films that had been released within each year of my lifespan, but then went far beyond that I started accumulating an enormous database of films, which ultimately spanned over 6,000 films before I stopped pulling it together about three years back. (I have yet to update it to account for those last three years.)

Early on in the project, I decided to start going through the list and concentrated on the very first year within it, that naturally being 1964, the year of my birth. Using the website Flickchart to rank all of my films (to date, I have ranked 12,040 feature films – that I have views from start to finish, a prime criteria for candidacy on my part – on that site), I've discovered that I have watched 164 films from 1964. (Not every film that I have seen is on Flickchart yet, so there are some titles left out each year.)

After several years of ranking my films one against the other on Flickchart (I highly recommend it for movie buffs if you are at all interested in determining your favorite films of all time), I present now on this celebration of my 52nd year my Top 25 films of 1964:

[# | title | director | my ranking overall on Flickchart out of 12,040 films as of 9/11/2016]

#25 | The Pawnbroker | Sidney Lumet | Flickchart: 1,447
#24 | Nothing but a Man | Michael Roemer | Flickchart: 1,340
#23 | Fail-Safe | Dir.: Sidney Lumet | Flickchart: 1,336
#22 | World without Sun | Jacques-Yves Cousteau | Flickchart: 1,306
#21 | The Gospel According to St. Matthew | Pier Paolo Pasolini | Flickchart: 1,300

#20 | Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster | Ishirô Honda | Flickchart: 1,299
Some of you might be surprised that I am able to have a big, stupid, Japanese monster film appear on the list slightly higher than a far more sober and intellectually demanding Pasolini film (as well as a trio of steady, sharp dramas). I have two answers to that: 1) I am an atheist, and if I do have a god, it is only Godzilla, not the Jesus (though he seemed like such a nice boy...); and 2) Welcome to the world as occupied by my brothers and I, the world of Silly and Serious, where equal weight is given to items in both camps at the same time. I am deathly serious about my silliness, and can be most silly when it comes to matters of great seriousness. For me, Pasolini sits alongside Toho quite easily, and I can jump from one to the other in seconds. And my love for the Ghidrah film (though I prefer it to be spelled Ghidorah) is high enough where I could have placed this even further up on the list given my druthers. However, no one has given me any druthers in a good while, so the film sits in the list where it is for the moment.

#19 | Seance on a Wet Afternoon | Bryan Forbes | Flickchart: 1,162
#18 | The Masque of the Red Death | Roger Corman | Flickchart: 1,033

#17 | The Train | John Frankenheimer | Flickchart: 1,032
If I had been exposed to this Burt Lancaster film a few years earlier than I actually was it would probably rank even higher on this list than it does. I have always been a sucker for Lancaster, and this would have made me crazy had I seen it at twelve or thirteen.

#16 | Une femme mariée | Jean-Luc Godard | Flickchart: 1,004
#15 | Seven Faces of Dr. Lao | George Pal | Flickchart: 1,003
#14 | Gate of Flesh | Seijun Suzuki | Flickchart: 961

#13 | The Umbrellas of Cherbourg | Jacques Demy | Flickchart: 927
This might as well be called The Umbrellas of Charm-bourg, because once I saw it a few years ago, I knew that it was just so perfect. Where had it been all my life? (Though it is likely I would have hated it as a child...) This film has the greatest chance of moving straight up the charts for me on subsequent showings. It already has a tad.

#12 | Topkapi | Dir.: Jules Dassin | Flickchart: 883

#11 | Goldfinger | Dir.: Guy Hamilton | Flickchart: 645
I am going to admit here and now that as they age and as I do too, some of the older Bond films are slipping for me. Maybe it is because I am becoming ever more progressive in my attitudes with each passing year, but attitudes that I once either accepted, shrugged off, or embraced are harder for me to simply let pass. Still, I love the early Bond thug as portrayed by Connery (and still the best Bond for my money) and it is hard to ignore the famous set pieces, villains, punchlines, and hardware that have been ingrained in my head since youth. It has come down my list a bit in recent years, but it is still hanging in there. I do not expect Mr. Bond to die.

#10 | Zulu | Cy Endfield | Flickchart: 618
#9 | Becket | Peter Glenville | Flickchart: 542

#8 | Band of Outsiders aka Bande à part | Jean-Luc Godard | Flickchart: 370 
Only the second director to land on the 1964 list twice (the other being Lumet), I expect this Godard classic will bring the most debate from my fellow film buffs for being this far down in my Top 10. My defense is simple: I did not see it until after the age of thirty, I like other Godard films of that era better (Contempt, Week-End), and my Top 3, maybe 5 are almost impossible to surpass in my mind on a nostalgic level, being a child of 1964 (though, of course, I did not see any of them until I was a good bit older than a mere baby).

#7 | Woman in the Dunes | Hiroshi Teshigahara | Flickchart: 338
I bought the Criterion triple-movie box set of Teshigahara's films sight unseen just because Woman in the Dunes came highly recommended to me from about four thousand different corners, and the substandard print I found on YouTube was too fuzzy to understand. A most stunning film, though I liked his film The Face of Another even more. Just discovering Teshigahara for myself made the entire effort of spending months creating my database entirely worth it. If all of this had only brought me to discover his films, I would have been content. But I have found so much more.

#6 | Kwaidan | Masaki Kobayashi | Flickchart: 311
#5 | Mary Poppins | Robert Stevenson | Flickchart: 261
#4 | A Fistful of Dollars | Sergio Leone | Flickchart: 195

#3 | A Shot in the Dark | Blake Edwards | Flickchart: 136
While my love for Blake Edwards comes down to The Great Race from 1965, my esteem for Peter Sellers is built initially from my early exposure to this quite silly Inspector Clouseau film, the best of The Pink Panther series. It is only in the #3 spot for 1964 because two greater comedies were released in the same exact year...

#2 | A Hard Day's Night | Richard Lester | Flickchart: 15
I will never get this film out of my system, no matter what I do. Richard Lester is absolutely underestimated as a director and needs a serious career reevaluation. Entirely too influential, sometimes in ways that people who have never even seen this film will never know. Plus, the Beatles were great natural actors, and hilarious as well. That it is all wrapped about live (though staged) footage of the boys in their prime makes it even better, giving us a real time capsule glimpse of history in the making, while also making us laugh with pre-MTV video antics and trademark Lester wackiness.

And for me, though it is sometimes a close swap with the #2 in the list, there really is only one film that could possibly top my Top Films of 1964 list:

#1 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | Stanley Kubrick | Flickchart: 8
The film that I watch on my birthday more than any other (probably about twenty times or so, though I am skipping it this time). In my all-time Top Ten, my favorite Kubrick film, and my favorite Sellers film. Eminently quotable, endlessly ridiculous, and ultimately vital in the times in which we find ourselves. Quite simply the sharpest, wittiest, most dead on satire ever created.

---

Well, that's it. I am sure many of you will have disputes about favorite films left off MY list. See, that the gist of it... this is MY list. These are films that have either influenced me quite young, as many of the movies higher up on the list did, or that have come into my life later of which I have grown an abiding fondness. However they got there, they are my treasures, and on this birthday, it is likely that I will choose at least one or two of them to revisit to make my day brighter. I hope you do the same, especially if there are films that you haven't seen yet on here. You could do far worse (and probably will at some point, just as I do...)

Hell, I started the day watching The Crawling Eye...

Finding Decent Horror Left and Right... What's Your Problem?

The refrain that I hear from people all the time is "Why aren't there any good horror films anymore?" "There are too many remakes!" and "There are too many sequels!" run a close tie for second in reasons why people get out of the horror genre, at least in my encounters with those who persist in maintaining they are horror fans.

When I hear such statements (and the second and third ones are valid arguments), I take it to mean one thing: The questioners really aren't looking around very hard. It could also mean they are only paying lip service to being a horror fan, but I usually feel like the average person doesn't try really hard in considering such things in the first place. There are scores of horror films released each and every year, as have been for ages, and the bulk of the lot are not remakes or sequels. Yes, the quality varies greatly, like in any movie genre, as do the sizes of their budgets. And like any other type of movie, high budget doesn't necessarily equal high quality, and vice versa. What might be the biggest killer for fans of the genre are the obvious ripoffs of bigger, possibly better, and/or more popular films.

Here's the real catch for me with that "Why aren't there any good horror films anymore?" question. Every so often, I find myself thinking the same thing, especially if I have taken an extended break from my usual movie-watching crunch (for the last few years, I have averaged over two films a day). More than any other type of film, my first thoughts when returning to the fold is "I need to find a good horror film."

And I, like many of my fellow horror fans, find them all the time. We usually don't have to look too far to find something to give the junkie their fix. But we would prefer that it were quality junk. I think, for many of us, our souls get crushed a little every time Michael Bay announces he has purchased the rights to remake something with his mindless style. Or every time some fake "found footage" series puts out its umpteenth film in the cycle. (This is not to discount the fact that I have actually enjoyed some of the films in these examples, against my better judgment or over my usual objections.)

I thought that I would look at Flickchart the other day to see what horror films I had ranked the highest over the past few years. I have ranked over 11,600 films to date on that platform, and have really enjoyed using their Charts feature to find films that I still need to watch in various genres or, to use my recent postings about Christopher Lee as a big example, finding out which films from a particular actor, actress or director I am delinquent in seeing. [If you want to play along at home, you can check out my Flickchart profile here: http://www.flickchart.com/Cinema4Pylon.]

My Top 15 Horror Films for this decade are:

1. The Babadook (2014) Dir: Jennifer Kent
2. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) Dir: Eli Craig
3. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) Dir: Ana Lily Amirpour
4. Attack the Block (2011) Dir: Joe Cornish
5. The Cabin in the Woods (2012) Dir: Drew Goddard
6. Witching & Bitching [Las brujas de Zugarramurdi] (2013) Dir: Álex de la Iglesia
7. Berberian Sound Studio (2012) Dir: Peter Strickland
8. Spring (2014) Dir: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
9. It Follows (2014) Dir: David Robert Mitchell
10. You're Next (2011) Dir: Adam Wingard
11. What We Do in the Shadows (2014) Dir: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi
12. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Dir: Jim Jarmusch
13. White God [Fehér isten] (2014) Dir: Kornél Mundruczó
14. The Editor (2014) Dir: Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy 
15. The Final Girls (2015) Dir: Todd Strauss Schulson [Note: review posting here tomorrow.]

No good horror-related films in recent years, you still say? I beg to differ. I feel that this is a truly solid list for just over half a decade, and there are some others in that time frame that came really close to my Top 15. As you can see, no remakes or sequels are in the bunch, though I am not opposed to some being in here. I just didn't like any that have come out thus far this decade as much as I like the films here. 

The American remake of Let the Right One In, Let Me In, which I thought would be a groundbreaking film if only that superior original version didn't already exist (and so loudly and recently too, is in my #24 slot for the 2010s. If you study the numbers of the chart in relation to my full list of films, it is actually not that many degrees away being in the Top 15. The thing about Flickchart when you use it is that you rank all of the films in your full list (or in smaller lists against each other), so the rankings can be very fluid if you do it a lot. (Man, that sounded kind of dirty...) One day, I might decide that I like Let Me In a lot more than other films just above it, and then my whole list changes dramatically.

Another trend worth noticing is that there are no repeated directors in the Top 15. It's almost like creating a top-notch horror film has become a one-and-done deal. Are we long past the days when the genre's mainstream was ruled by a few true Masters of Horror? I don't think so. I think Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, a filmmaking duo, have some promise in going even further beyond what I have liked from them so far. There are always going to be people who want to be known as a Master of Horror (Ben Wheatley seems to be making a run at it; Eli Roth has the talent but squanders it on fratboy excess), but to return us to the halcyon days, or so we perceive it, of Romero, Carpenter, Landis, Dante, Hooper, etc.? It remains to be seen.

For comparison, since we are dealing in double the years, here is my Top 30 list for the first decade of the 21st century, 2000-2009:

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004) Dir: Edgar Wright
2. Let the Right One In (2008) Dir: Tomas Alfredson
3. The Descent (2005) Dir: Neil Marshall
4. Death Proof (2007) Dir: Quentin Tarantino
5. 28 Days Later (2002) Dir: Danny Boyle
6. Grindhouse (2007) Dir: Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino
7. Thirst (2009) Dir: Chan-wook Park
8. The Devil's Backbone (2001) Dir: Guillermo del Toro
9. Bubba Ho-tep (2002) Dir: Don Coscarelli
10. Trick 'r Treat (2008) Dir: Michael Dougherty
11. Splinter (2008) Dir: Toby Wilkins
12. Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) Dir: Takashi Shimizu
13. The Orphanage (2007) Dir: Juan Antonio Bayona
14. May (2002) Dir: Lucky McKee
15. Frailty (2002) Dir: Bill Paxton
16. Pulse (2001) Dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
17. The Devil's Rejects (2005) Dir: Rob Zombie
18. Antichrist (2009) Dir: Lars von Trier
19. Three... Extremes (2004) Dir: Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, and Chan-wook Park
20. The Loved Ones (2009) Dir: Sean Byrne
21. Ginger Snaps (2000) Dir: John Fawcett
22. Slither (2006) Dir: James Gunn
23. Black Sheep (2007) Dir: Jonathan King
24. Cloverfield (2008) Dir: Matt Reeves
25. The Host (2006) Dir: Joon-ho Bong
26. High Tension [Haute Tension] (2003) Dir: Alexandre Aja
27. One Missed Call (2003) Dir: Takashi Miike
28. Splice (2009) Dir: Vincenzo Natali
29. The Mist (2007) Dir: Frank Darabont
30. Dawn of the Dead (2004) Dir: Zack Snyder

This time, because the list is twice the length, one big remake is in the #30 slot on the list, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, which has lost a lot of steam with me since it first came out, though I still like it a lot. For horror purists who don't like their horror-comedies mixed in with what they would consider true horror, I'm sorry, but I don't play that way. I prefer use the term "horror-related" to cover my bets. I prefer to keep the range more open, though I did skip one film on my Flickchart list (Bela Tarr's stunning The Werckmeister Harmonies) off of my final accounting because, while it has horrific, hypnotic moments, it is not generally considered to be a horror film). 

One is at the mercy on Flickchart at the genres its small staff have decided to use, and sometimes a film you might generally consider to be horror might actually be sitting somewhere else. In making these two lists, I did not research it deeply enough to combine other subgenres -- such as "monster film," "ghost film" or "haunted house" -- to see if everything was caught. Perhaps I will do so in the near future and amend these lists.

Once again, there is not a lot of repeat business on this second list for directing names. Except in one major case. There are some who might grouse seeing that both Death Proof and the double-feature program of which it served as the second half, Grindhouse, are on here. I thought about leaving Grindhouse off for exactly the reason that it looked like I am doubling down. My reason for keeping it is that the solo Death Proof is a longer cut of the same film, while the Grindhouse program contains other items, such as the delicious set of fake horror movie trailers in the center, that make it a totally separate experience. even if I don't like the Robert Rodriguez half of the production enough for it to make this list on its own.

There are my lists, for better or worse, and I stand by them. For now. Because we are talking about Flickchart here, and the thing about Flickchart is that things can change fast on there. All you have to do is keep ranking. Just today, I saw the new Del Toro epic, Crimson Peak, and while I am still organizing my thoughts and notes on it, I did greatly enjoy the film and I am fairly certain that once a short period of ranking has occurred, that it will probably rest comfortably in my Top 15 for the 2010s.

And since I don't directly recommend films for people anymore, unless they fall into a very small group of about six people (none of them my wife), then you will have to use these lists as guidance if you are looking for me to help you find one of those decent horror films that don't seem to come out anymore. 

Just don't whine about it to me later, because I accept no responsibility for your lack of taste.

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 1

In resurrecting many of the old regular columns on this blog, my favorite was often Recently Rated Movies, wherein I would shorthand my usual long-winded blathering and comment oh so very briefly on a series of films I had recently seen and rated on IMDb. To begin this column regularly again, I am tying it into a project in which I have been engaged for the past three weeks. I have been employing the Charts function on Flickchart to create lists that show me which films of one of my favorite actors I have yet to see. Because I have watched so many films overall (11,000+), for there to be films for someone like, say, Boris Karloff, they would either have to be films I have intentionally putting off for one reason or another, films that were harder to find in the past, or simply something I had little interest in viewing.

I began the project with Bela Lugosi, and quickly knocked out eleven of his films in short order (luckily most of them are barely over an hour long), including the infamously terrible (and justly so) Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. I then leaped over to the aforementioned Mr. Karloff (there was some slight crossover), and not only also took down eleven of his films, including three out of four of his late ‘60s Mexican flicks (where all of his scenes were directed at the same time by Jack Hill and then inserted into the films proper), but also four of his Mr. Wong films from the late ’30s and early ‘40s.

And now, I am on the chart for the recently departed Christopher Lee. He has 133 films listed on Flickchart (overall, he has 278 acting credits listed on IMDb), and of those 133 films, until the other day, I had seen ONLY 68 of them. That leaves a massive amount of his films left to see, and I doubt I have the time left or the energy to see them all. Lee himself had a quote he was fond of repeating where he is regularly told by fans, “I have seen all of your films!” His reply, “No, you haven’t.” Well, now I have ticked nine more films off that list over the last few days.

[Editor's note: All films are rated on a scale of 9.]

The Puzzle of the Red Orchid [German title: Edgar Wallace: Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee | Alt. English title: The Secret of the Red Orchid]

Dir: Helmut Ashley

TC4P Rating: 4

When is it called for to have the very British legend Christopher Lee, with his deep and memorable speaking voice, to have his dialogue dubbed into English? Specifically, an American accent? When he originally recorded his dialogue for this would-be thriller based on an Edgar Wallace story (as many European films were in the ‘60s), it was reportedly into what I have read in some places as some rather decent German. That aside, it is incongruous to say the least to watch Lee in numerous scenes while hearing a ridiculously square and far too rigidly pronounced American accent pour from his lips (and obviously not matching what he is really saying), especially given that there is no attempt at all to try and match the timbre of his famous voice. 

A minor plus is that this film moves pretty fast, though the characters are involved in a mystery I don’t really care about while Chicago gangsters are kidnapping people in London. There are some fairly stilted attempts at comic relief, but like everything else in this movie, the dubbing also kills the chance for any humor to translate properly for the viewer. It’s not as horrid as you think it will be going into it, but it’s still a bit of a chore to watch.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

Dir: Burt Kennedy

TC4P Rating: 6

Let’s not get carried away here. Sensei Tarantino loves this film and has pointed to it as an inspiration for Kill Bill. It is easy to see why he loves it, and it is also easy to see the inspiration it served. But this is not a great lost classic. It’s merely a fairly decent western with an excellent male lead in Robert Culp, and some good, disgusting supporting roles for Strother Martin, Ernest Borgnine, and especially Jack Elam. 

There is also a dandy small part for Christopher Lee as the expert gunsmith that Culp and female lead Raquel Welch call upon to customize pistols with which Welch’s title character can exact revenge on the raping and murdering trio played by Martin, Borgnine, and Elam. The movie has some wit to it, and is engaging from start to finish. Welch is hardly believable in her gunslinger role, especially in what she is allowed to wear during the era in which they purport to be, though I mark this up to the ‘70s and the need for the studio to sell her remarkable exterior (if only they knew how). 

I do have a complaint about the blood, which gushes forth from numerous bullet wounds throughout the movie, as being too obviously fake. It rather galls me about the third time it happens. Other than that, watch it for a prime example of just how assured and captivating Robert Culp can be in the right role.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Dir: Does it even matter?

TC4P Rating: 5

Let’s talk about product. Pure product. Yes, I am one of those original Star Wars kids from 1977. I read the paperback (with the purple cover and the pre-film character designs by McQuarrie) numerous times before the film was released that summer, and I bought the comics, toys, LPs, trading cards, posters, blueprints, t-shirts, puzzles, games, prints, and what have you without a second thought. Like any other religious convert, I gave up my allowance on a weekly basis to the Force reverently for a handful of years, and it never once struck me I was being manipulated at all as I followed the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia and their pals through the next couple of films. Nor would I have cared if I did realize the manipulation at hand. I was in my teens, I loved what I loved, and I didn’t want to hear otherwise.

Though George Lucas has crippled my opinion of his creation due to his obstinate mishandling of it in recent years, I still maintain a soft spot for the original films, enough so that I am like everyone else who can’t wait to see what J.J. Abrams will bring us come winter. Likewise, I am equally excited about Disney’s plans for a new Star Wars Land in the park. While that might further define me as a “sheeple” in regards to blindly going along with the rest of the flock, the quality of the product is likely to be so high that I couldn’t resist if I wanted, lest I be branded a curmudgeon, hipster, or troll or some unholy combination of the three.

But there is a difference between product of a remarkably high caliber and just mere product, rendered to the blandness of pabulum, still to be considered sustainable entertainment but absolutely lacking in real character or emotional depth. Even more interesting is when product of the second variety spews forth from the same factory creating the higher form. And thus, from that off-white void, crawls out Star Wars: The Clone Wars, animated to the far brink of what was accepted as popular animation in the year in which it was released (but no further), brightly colored, swift moving, and sporting the mind-numbing, political denseness that plagued the three most recent Lucas productions. However, it does have several presumably exciting battle sequences, mostly involving the younger Obi-Wan and Anakin, along with a young Padawan named Ahsoka (sadly, Lucas did not name an older brother for her as Supasoka, but I feel he would have), for those that have not already seen similar scenes in many, many other films. Therein lies the key to the film’s existence, both as product and as a part of Star Wars culture. It is also the same key that explains my reticence to embrace the later productions from my once beloved font of space opera entertainment.

I am no longer twelve years old. I might act like it at times. I may still adore most of the things I loved when I was that age. I may even still own most of the things I owned from that time (and I largely do). But I am no longer twelve. I am a 51-year-old man watching a film designed to attract actual twelve-year-olds to a possible entry point into the Star Wars universe, or to keep the kids already inclined to be inside that universe further entertained and to get them to buy the comics, toys, etc. that go along with it. Just like when I was that age.

So, I am no longer the target audience for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact, I am about thirty years past it. But it does not mean that I can’t watch the film, have an understanding of it, nor speak my piece on it. But I can't embrace it like I did those earlier films. It’s just really no longer mine. I knew this when it was released, and so I put off seeing it. And I only watched it last week because it was film highest up on the Flickchart list of Christopher Lee films I had yet to see, and if there was going to be a Chris Lee flick I hadn’t watched, it was not going to be a Star Wars one. And so watch it I did. Mr. Lee voices his Count Dooku character from the later films, and he does his usual excellent job. He is barely in the film, and the rest is taken up by the politics, battle scenes, and Jedi nonsense I mentioned earlier. What the ads should have read is "Come for the Dooku. Stay for the product."

Flickchart Comment #30: Career Opportunities (1991) vs. The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

vs.

I don't think it would be out of bounds to state that most of us who engage routinely in cinematic discourse live somewhat of a lie. The same could be said of anyone who delves into any art form deep enough to begin to believe that their selections within their chosen medium are bred solely from a studied and intellectual set of criteria. Sure, it's fun to puff oneself up with pretension and attempt to convince others that the reason one attended a certain film was because of the director's mise-en-scène, the subtleties of framing used by a particular cinematographer, or one's appreciation for the underrated mumblings of the film's scruffy, cult figure of a star.

But, sometimes it just comes down to the boobs.

Possibly the truest models of the range of my youthful lust, Career Opportunities and The Coca-Cola Kid both came out within my twenties, and I saw them both in theatres. I saw The Coca-Cola Kid first, in what would now be described as an "arthouse cinema," but which was really the only true form of alternative movie theatre in my hometown at the time (they also showed pornos back in the day, so it was only part-time in its art leanings). And I didn't go to The Coca-Cola Kid for the boobs, but rather because the film had garnered some decent press on its way to being released in the States, and I wanted to see something different than that which I had been practically force-fed up to that point in time by Hollywood. (OK, I wasn't force-fed -- I qualified it with "practically" -- but when you are a film fanatic, you takes what you can gets sometime, and back then, Hollywood flicks were pretty much, outside of video, the only game in town.)

When Kid came out, Eric Roberts was young and freshly scrubbed and rather oddly interesting in his acting choices, and for a brief period, could actually get people to plunk down into a movie seat (briefly). He wasn't that great, but he could get you to pay attention. (My personal favorite film with him is Larry Cohen's truly absurd The Ambulance, where he is teamed up in the over-the-top but low-budget thriller with the great Red Buttons.)

I went to The Coca-Cola Kid with the hopes of seeing a halfway decent film... and I came out with Greta Scacchi on my mind. I have fallen in love a hundred times or so looking at a movie screen, and in that tiny movie theatre in 1985, the immediate object of that desire was Ms. Scacchi, so different from that which I was used to, but absolutely adorable. She also happened to be naked in the film, which cut out a lot of mystery (chiefly, answering the question "Would she get naked in a movie?")

Scacchi invaded my brain enough for me to rent Heat and Dust (one of the first Merchant-Ivory films I saw), and see White Mischief, Good Morning, Babylon and Shattered in theatres. After Altman's The Player in 1992, I pretty much lost track of her, but as she has matured yet still retained her classic Italian beauty over the years, I have caught her in a role here and there. And each one reminds me of when I first saw her in The Coca-Cola Kid, which still holds up as a fine, offbeat comedy to this day.

Career Opportunities, like many of John Hughes' offshoots, really doesn't hold up in the same way 20 years after its release in 1991, nor is it of the same quality by any measure of the Scacchi/Roberts film. At the time though, fresh off dragging some friends to Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot the a few months earlier (which they hated), they at least agreed with me that the ample nude footage of Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen were to be commended. All we knew is that the teen star of Labyrinth, whose name we really had not committed to memory, had truly grown up.

Then the poster for Opportunities showed up, and while I am not necessarily all that focused on what Zappa termed "mammalian protuberances" (I am an elbow guy), if ever there was a poster designed to sell tickets to me instantly at that moment in the universe, it was the one for Career Opportunities.  If there was a guy in the theatre lobby in that period who saw that image and didn't dream of being in the same exact position that Frank Whaley was in that one-sheet (see above), then it would have been immediately evident the guy wasn't batting in even the same league, let alone team.

My friends, male and female, would have gone to the film even without the poster such as it was, since we pretty much were attending en masse any film with John Hughes' name on it. But, for the boys in my little gang, the poster made it a sure bet we would be there opening weekend. I distinctly recall being only mildly amused but roundly disinterested in the film outside of the actors, and Connelly's part in the film really can't be chalked up as a performance. Performance art, perhaps... but acting was not her strong suit in the early days of her career. In fact, despite her ample charms and the various means by which they are exploited in Opportunities (and yet, in a very PG way), her character was almost vapid enough to almost dispel the notion from my mind at the film's close that I adored her absolutely earlier in the film. Talk about a 90-minute stand.

Of course, I recovered my initial adoration once I was left to my own devices (ahem...) to reflect upon what I had seen in the film, and after The Rocketeer solidified my feelings later that year (playing the part named and designed in the original comic book after Bettie Page), Connelly became my gold standard for film beauty for a good decade. (At least until she read her Oscar speech a few years later from a piece of yellow legal pad paper. Improv is apparently not her strong suit...)

To recap: two beauties from my past, who have turned out to have lengthy, distinguished careers, starring in two movies that I watched a lot back in the day. In the end, as always, the overall quality of The Coca-Cola Kid tips the balance in its favor. See, it's doesn't always come down to the boobs. But it is a damned attractive way to reach such a decision.

Flickchart Comment #29: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) vs. Killdozer (1974)

This isn't really that tough a choice... as a lifelong Apes series fan, picking Escape (the third film) is a foregone conclusion. But, however ridiculous the title may seem, Killdozer holds far more cachet with me than one might imagine.

Both films were very important to me at the time of my life where I was slowly being morphed from a kid with no clear loves except for baseball (at which I was, and remain, a horrible player), conservation (I was an avid Ranger Rick reader in my youth) and being a general pain in the ass into a full-on science fiction and horror fan. My sources were few: with just the original three networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), a small local library, two bookstores and zero local theatres (we had to drive 14 miles to see Star Wars -- or any film -- when it first came out) at my disposal (and, of course, no VHS yet and the internet was still light years away), I somehow made the change. The media which inspired me most was clearly film, beginning with the original King Kong a couple of years earlier, but around the ages of 12 and 13, I had convinced my mother that it was just fine for me to stay up mega-late on Friday and Saturday nights and watch movies until about three in the morning.

It was on CBS where I used to watch both of these films, not long after their original release. My friends and I would often play at reenacting Planet of the Apes in those days, not because of the films, but because of the NBC Saturday morning animated Apes series that was airing at that time. Escape was actually my first Apes film. I would see the second, Beneath the Planet of the Apes next, and finally the original, which became one of my favorite films (and frequent nightmare producer). As did Escape, with its very creepy ending and the sadness of its last reel staying with me to this day. Seeing Escape first is probably why I have always taken the apes side in the series, seeing that it rather ironically turns the tables on what the first two films set up, as humans are the real villains in this one. Perhaps not when seen through the eyes of the entire human race -- the apes seemingly do have to die in order to attempt to prevent an unthinkably hairy future -- but then again, when have I ever agreed with the anything the human race thinks is the right way to behave?

Around this same time, CBS late night programming granted me regular viewings of films like Killdozer, originally a made-for-TV production. In addition to the Night Stalker and New Avengers episodes that preceded these movies at night, this is where I first saw the Beatles in Help! and Yellow Submarine, as well as dopey films that became weird favorites to me like Hello, Down There. Killdozer, while the film is not all that great, did engage me enough as a youth to make me begin paying closer attention to credits sequences, where I discovered the name Theodore Sturgeon for the first time. A trip to the library, and I was suddenly having my fragile little teen mind truly blown for the first time. I was already reading Burroughs and Silverberg -- probably far more suitable to my age -- but Sturgeon was something far different. Sturgeon led to Sheckley led to Asimov led to Clarke led to Ellison. Ellison was a particular favorite early on, and because of this, by the time I swiped my mom's copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was 14, I was probably prepared for the onslaught a little bit more because of watching a seemingly stupid little TV movie called Killdozer.

Flickchart Comment #28: I Tentacoli [Tentacles] (1977) vs. Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

The theme with this match-up seems to be one of rising, the well-known to be thoroughly "Abominable" Dr. Phibes literally doing so even in the title for the sequel to his far-superior first effort. On the other side, you have the hamhandedly filmed antics of a massive octopus rising to the surface to wreak havoc upon landlubbers in the Italian Jaws-ripoff I Tentacoli (known to Americans, especially those of us unfortunate enough to catch this as part of a double feature onscreen back in the day, as Tentacles).

All that rising to very little effect. If you like a lot of murkily shot underwater cinematography, then Tentacles is your octopus. Double bonus if you want to watch a lot of Hollywood stars -- Henry Fonda, Shelly Winters, John Huston -- slumming it up big time in what I hope was a decent payday for all of them. Winters' abrasive voice does its usual number on me (i.e. making me want to not hear her at all), and the fact that she and Huston play "Ned and Tillie Turner" just makes me want to gag all the more. And who leaves a baby carriage unattended by the ocean, let alone anywhere? (Well, I would, but I hate babies in general... actually, it's baby culture that I hate.) Killer whales are the heroes here, and if you watch this film back-to-back-to-back with Jaws 2 and Orca, your head might explode.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes was great fun, and I return to it time and again, but I have never been able to whip up quite the same passion for its sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Yes, the revenge-driven doctor indeed comes back to commit a string of murders (this time with an Egyptian theme) as in the first, all the while attempting to resurrect his dead wife. And there are some decently strange scenes, gratuitous Robert Quarry acting, and an intriguing ending. Vincent Price, as always, is a fabulous presence (especially in his unmasked and scarred Phibes makeup), but following the first one, this one pales just enough for me to consider it a rather generic entry.

It's miles better than Tentacles, though, with the camp factor of Phibes defeating the sleaze factor of the Italian film handily. Maybe even "ham"-handily...

Flickchart Comment #27: Trog (1970) vs. The Beast With A Million Eyes (1955)

You see, this is exactly what Flickchart is all about. Just the other day, I posted a comment wherein I chose Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, an fairly famous awful film, over Trog with Joan Crawford, which I found to be just a tad more awful than the atrocious King film. But every Trog can have its day on Flickchart. All you have to do is see that more terrible film of the two matched up against something which is truly dreadful.

Which is where we are with this match-up. Trog may suck beyond belief, but it at least has a handful of interesting scenes along the road to Crapville. The Beast with a Million Eyes, which betrays nothing of its true nature in the poster you see above, as there is no actual visible beast with all those eyes, might be considered the Chinese Water Torture of '50s sci-fi films. It is so deadening in its pace that you sometimes swear the DVD is on pause for a full hour. It will disappoint you at every turn, and it will make you wonder just how someone can create a script so utterly lacking in even the most basic logic or even make a halfway attempt at what might be recognized as an actual human emotion. (I didn't even mention how much the sound sucks on this film.)

Trog, despite how lousy you are, this battle is yours...

Flickchart Comment #26: Creature (1985) vs. Alone in the Dark (2005)

Back in the '80s, such was the impact of the original Alien upon myself and a few of my friends that we ended up seeing just about any knockoff of that film that hit our local screens. William Malone's Creature certainly fit the mold of Alien ripoff, making absolutely no bones about doing so, and it was thus that we ended up seeing it one night. Despite the fact that it hasn't an ounce of originality in its making, Creature became a part of the lexicon of our little group thanks to our then-infatuation with the actress Wendy Schaal, an infatuation we didn't really know we had until we saw this film (chiefly because we didn't know who she was). 

During moments of duress when it seemed her character was in imminent danger, a particular one of my pals would blurt out, in rapid fire speech, "Don't die, I love you!" This became her nickname from us, and any time we saw her in a film after that – she appeared in Joe Dante flicks like The 'Burbs (nice flowerbed booty scene) and Innerspace, as well as in Matthew Robbins' *batteries not included – someone that was not part of the original crew that saw Creature together would not quite recognize her and invariably say "Who's that?," and then one of us (often me) would go "That's 'Don't Die, I Love You!'"

Oh, yeah... the real reason I first wanted to see Creature, batshit insane Mr. Klaus Kinski, takes a while to show up in it, and he doesn't really help matters all that much quality-wise. It's slightly better than its pedigree might betray, but it is definitely not much more than a rote programmer, and I could mention a couple of Alien ripoffs I would much prefer to see, if only because their cheese factor is higher and more entertaining.

Still, it's a far cry above Uwe Boll's execrable Alone in the Dark. I have never played any of the video games on which this film is supposedly based, but then I have never read War and Peace either, and I have seen TWO different film versions of that book. So it matters little to me whether it sticks close to its source material (a contention from which a lot of the bile directed at the film seems to be derived) or not. The question should really be "How bad is this film?" and the answer can only be a resounding "Immeasurably so..." 

If you thought Denise Richards playing a nuclear scientist in The World Is Not Enough couldn't be topped in the "Department of Improbable Career Options for a Character Played by a Not Really Talented Hollywood Bimbette," then I dare you to try on Tara Reid as an archaeologist in Alone in the Dark and see how she fits. Want to see how deeply boring a film filled with "action" sequences can be? Welcome to what I call the "Uwe Boll Morass," where even the scenes not filmed in slow motion feel like even slower motion, like an elderly, crippled sloth crawling through molasses on top of quicksand. 

There is not a single step in this film that veers anywhere close to someone saying "Well, that wasn't too bad" and all Alone in the Dark does is make me want to buy Boll a blow-up doll and a flashlight, so at least something can shed even the slightest bit of light to him on something he is fucking up...

Flickchart Comment #25: The War of the Gargantuas (1966) vs. Don't Go in the Woods (1980)

To put it mildy, The War of the Gargantuas [Japanese title: Furankenshutain no kaijû: Sanda tai Gaira], a daikaiju eiga from Toho Studios in 1966, is a largely ridiculous flick.  Giant, furry goofball twins -- one green, one brown; one evil, one gentle -- are brought to life from the cells of the giant Frankenstein's monster from an earlier film [Frankenstein vs. Baragon] and then battle each other to the death, laying waste along the way to the surrounding countryside and then the city. There is gratuitous American actor placement (the then already washed up Russ Tamblyn), there is a giant octopus battle, the usual King Kong swiping-the-girl homage/rip, and lots of people getting eaten by the green Gargantua. It's basically a Godzilla film (much of the same crew and actors; likewise, the director, Ishirō Honda) except that the lead monsters are different, and it is a lot of very psychotronic fun.

The immediate reaction many will have to The War of the Gargantuas is "It sounds like a really terrible film!" Understood, but have you seen Don't Go in the Woods, a slash-by-numbers flick from 1980? Well, please don't... there is really nothing to see here. A lot of blood, not particularly well-filmed and absolutely without real fright or even mild suspense. It brings up the age-long battle when faced with two films that seem on the surface to both be terrible. Neither film in this match-up is actually anywhere near the "good film" territory, but there is a world of difference between a film like Woods, which does nothing so much as make pot-watching a much preferred mode of torture, and Gargantuas, which entertains in a very childlike manner, but entertains nonetheless.

My argument against Plan 9 from Outer Space being the Worst Film of All Time is that the one thing Plan 9 is not is boring; it is consistently so insanely bad that it becomes compelling. Gargantuas is nowhere near as badly made as Plan 9 -- it is competently filmed by actual professionals for a major studio -- but it is one of those films that makes you feel as though someone slipped something in your economy sized soda pop, so odd are the visuals (combined with the score) that assault you throughout the film. Woods has nothing going for it. The battle goes to both Gargantuas, whether brown or green!

Flickchart Comment #24: Trog (1970) vs. Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Warning: unless you are a true aficionado of dreadfully terrible movies, do not take the fact that I choose one of these films over the other one to be a go signal to renting and watching the winning disaster. The name of the game at Flickchart is to actually make a choice once you have watched these films (please don't choose a film if you have not seen it all the way through; you are only muddying the waters).

I first saw Trog, otherwise known as the last film of Joan Crawford, as a youthful lad of about twelve or so, and the fact that I remember little about the film beyond some fleeting impressions of the rancid makeup effects probably speaks to how horrid I found it even then. Cut to now, with a fresh viewing from about three months ago under my belt, and I can tell you that there is little here to see beyond a cookie-cutter lesson in how a cinematic legend goes about collecting her final big screen paycheck. It's take on the day-to-day struggles of British anthropologists probably makes it a worthwhile viewing... if you are a British anthropologist and need something at which to vent your frustrations for 90 minutes.

We actually waited in earnest for Maximum Overdrive to come in 1986, being that is was the only film directed by Stephen King, and we were (mostly) big fans of his in his heyday, and especially loved his short story collections such as Night Shift, from which the story Trucks formed the main basis for this film. What a tremendous letdown. Such a letdown that I all but avoided King adaptations until Misery came out, and even then, it didn't seem safe to go to it. That King warned people away from Overdrive for several years is really all that needs to be said, but I will take it over Trog for a few reasons: 1) future Trump ex-wife gets killed by flying watermelons in the opening credits, 2) the killer monster truck (seemingly in charge) has a Green Goblin face, probably to make it a little bit scarier than just a plain Mack truck confronting people (which sort of works, but me, I just like seeing the Green Goblin maniacally driving around), and 3) inventive deaths by flying soda cans, a toy police car (it kills a dog), and an electrocuting video game. It's all highly ridiculous, and not quite so funny when you realize someone lost an eye on the set.

Trog would have won this battle if Miss Joan had gone the extra mile and done a make-out scene with the troglodyte anthropoid in the film, but since she didn't, Overdrive takes the wheel...

Flickchart Comment #23: The Monster Squad (1987) vs. The Mummy (1959)

Passing a film legacy on to the next generation is a seemingly important thing. (Let's say for the sake of this piece that it is...) In these two cases, whether intentional or not, it is the legacy of the Universal monster franchises of the '30s and '40s being passed to two entirely different generations.

With their film versions of Dracula and Frankenstein already great successes (following an agreement with Universal to use their iconic horror characters), Hammer next made The Mummy (1959), more of a continuation of their Kharis series in the '40s and with little connection to the original film with Karloff in 1932. It's actually one of my favorite Hammer films, with excellent production values and the usual solid performances by Lee and Cushing. It also has character support by Raymond Huntley, who played Dracula onstage before Bela Lugosi. I especially like watching it back to back with Hammer's version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (same year, same director, same stars). Does it carry on the tradition of the earlier films. I doubt anyone really cared at the time. The trend for horror was cycling anew, and it was all about money. The world was being rattled by Shock Theatre at that moment on television, so it was certainly the right time to begin making films about these characters. That Hammer did a fairly grand job of it in their early horror years was really beside the point.

Fanboys are a different breed, however, and when The Monster Squad came out in 1987, it could have been a woeful story. Sure, you can have an obsession with something, and often the results onscreen do not translate to an audience. Not to fear with The Monster Squad. My friends and I ate it up when it came out (I went to it several times), and the chief reason is that director/co-writer Fred Dekker showed so much obvious affection and careful attention to these characters, you could feel the film's pulse thrumming lovingly in every single frame. Sure, the '80s kid acting is soundly atrocious, but we all ate up The Goonies around the same time as well, and looking back, the acting in that (especially by the adults) is even worse.

What was remarkable about Squad was Tom Noonan as the Monster (probably the best undead friend you could ever have); the underrated but superb makeup effects for the Wolfman; a endlessly clever script by Dekker and Shane Black; there is a teacher with a cat-like head; and the way it played at being a simple kid's movie but then shocked you all the more by turning rougher just went it needed to do it. The biggest thrill for me was the use of The Creature, whom I had never had opportunity to see on a big screen before (I have since seen the original film in such a way).

Love the Hammer version of The Mummy, but in nearly every way, I have to go with The Monster Squad. "Creature stole my Twinkie!"