Viewings: July 2023

The hype machine has been all about Barbie vs. Oppenheimer, but I'm all about Uschi Obermaier as Red Sun is the film discovery of the month.

Runner-up is Stephen Sayadian's sequel to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). A surreal trip with the colour palette of a packet of Liquorice Allsorts.

Should be back to film junkie status again soon, hopefully.

 

Film:

Violated (Walter Strate, 1953)*

The Naked Witch (Claude Alexander & Larry Buchanan, 1961)*

Red Sun (Rudolf Thome, 1970)*

If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do? (Ron Ormond, 1971)* 

Never Say Never Again (Irvin Kershner, 1983)

Stagefright (Michele Soavi, 1987)

Dr. Caligari (Stephen Sayadian, 1989)*

I Don’t Like Mondays (John Dower, 2006)*

 

* First time viewings. 

Dada Debaser Notes:

• As far as psycho-sexual killer movies go, Walter Strate's sleazy noir Violated predates similar and more well known titles like Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960) by several years. Nowhere near on the same level of those two films, but decent nonetheless.
• Just under an hour and yet The Naked Witch is still too long. Dull and inept film. The only memorable things about it are Bernard Herrmann's score from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) being borrowed and Libby Hall looking like a much curvier Vampira.
• It's an inferior remake of Thunderball (1965), but my recent rewatch of Never Say Never Again didn't irk me as much as previous times. Still Sean Connery's worst James Bond outing, regardless.
• Since her incarceration, notorious school shooter Brenda Spencer went from looking like Axl Rose to Tangina in John Dower's documentary about her.
  
• What happens when an exploitation film maker like Ron Ormond teams up with a Southern Baptist preacher like the Rev. Estus W. Pirkle? You get a laugh a minute Christian propaganda movie, that's what!
  

If Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?

Ron Ormond, 1971