No.325 : What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974)

 

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? at the IMDb

Well if nothing else, at least this Italian effort secures the ‘Longest title’ award from this long running blog - eat that ‘W.’!

I found this on Amazon Prime and for all intents and purposes it looked like a badly dubbed exploitation flick and, to a great extent, it was. It did however try to veer into social commentary; moral high ground that crumbled somewhat when you have a look at that poster!

The film opens with a caption saying that the film serves as a reconstruction of the facts - the implication being that all the brutal murders and teenage nudity are nothing to do with them, but are due to those bad folks who wrote the script. They just made the film you understand.

The film’s stall is immediately set out as some policemen burst into a flat to find a naked teenage girl, who has been hung from the rafters. We meet Detective Silvestri, who is a dead ringer for Henry Cavill and new to the job lady DA Stori who has a bit of Sophia Loren about her. The death initially looks like a suicide, but after some fortunate detective work involving a peeping Tom, they decide the girl has been murdered.

The grisly death is soon all over the papers including a full frontal front page of the dead girl hanging from the rafters, despite her being only 15 - at least the actress was 20 at the time, but is was still unnecessary.  The girl gets identified and her mother reveals, in a naked daughter flashback, how she discovered the teen was taking birth control pills. Mum engaged a private eye to watch over her wayward daughter, but this lead cools when the cops find his car complete with his body in several pieces. These are comically put back together by the boys in the morgue with his wife insisting on a full look before screaming the place down.

All is not lost though as an audio tape is found that reveals lots of teenage girls are part of a prostitution ring that involves some influential people. Soon a motorcycle riding, cleaver wielding nutter is on the scene and every girl - and the cops are in danger. Who will survive the chopper onslaught?  And how high does the conspiracy go?

This film was a decent bit of exploitation slasher nonsense for the first hour, but it ran out of puff towards the end with the big finale looking daft and staged - well the big crowd behind the barriers was a clue!

Closing captions revealed that 8,000 girls go missing in Italy every year and nothing was being done. How kind of the producers then to make this kind of risible nonsense that would appeal only to the kinds of people they were looking to decry? Teen girls jumping around in the buff between scenes of gory, and at times comic, murder made for an unsettling viewing experience.

The main cast were decent albeit badly dubbed. The detection angle faded badly as the film progressed with the cleaver baddie being identified when they checked who had bought motorbike tyres recently, with one purchaser being listed as a butcher. Didn’t know Goodyear needed your CV to sell you a couple of tyres!

There were a couple of half decent chases but the villain was pretty ineffective and there was no real mystery or scares.

As a moral piece the film floundered badly, and as an entertainment it failed miserably. There were a couple of unintentional lighter moments but these were lost in a morass of suspect subject matter and unconvincing body parts.

Best Bit : Let’s Put This Guy Back Together  ‘W’ Rating 10/23

No.324 : White Oleander (2002)

 

White Oleander (2002) at the IMDb

When you carry out a Google search on ‘W’ films, one of the most prominent is ‘White Oleander’. For some reason I’ve always avoided it. It does have a heady IMDB rating of 7.1 and boasts a stellar cast of Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger as well as Billy Connolly; but it has never appealed.

Still, needs must, so here we go. To start with a ‘white oleander’ is a poisonous plant and the film concerns a girl’s journey through a succession of care homes after her mother (Pfeiffer) is put in jail after killing her boyfriend, Connolly - maybe he left one too many wee jobbies in the toilet for her liking? - the matter isn’t fully explored.

Our old friend the non-liner narrative is employed so a lot of stuff has to be pieced together, but we soon get the idea that a broken childhood is in play and that emotions and relationships are the main focus, which will need some careful analysis. You can see why this one was well down the ‘must see’ list!

To be fair the film does  keep a decent pace and your buy in is committed to early on. Alison Lohman is excellent as our main protagonist, Astrid, and you’ll probably know her from being the young Jessica Lange in ‘Big Fish’ and from ‘W‘ favourite ‘Where the Truth Lies'. The film is told from her perspective and, initially, her world seems all askew as her mother is carted off to the clink as she is placed into a succession of foster families. The first family host loads of troubled kids and they try to teach their charges the benefits of the good book. Alas the ‘good book’ seems to be the Karma Sutra as a lot of shagging and associated jealousy goes on, that sees Astrid cast out of this home and into several others.

Meanwhile Pfeiffer is writing to Astrid from prison to explain her actions and to beg forgiveness. We also get snippets of her explosive relationship with Connelly which don’t really ring true, but are fun all the same. Despite her miserable existence in a care home, Astrid does find some happiness in a fledgling relationship with Patrick Fugit, who still has his ‘Almost Famous’ haircut present and correct.

Things look up when Astrid (who at this point looks at least 20 - the actress was in fact 23) is placed with a new foster family - Renee Zellweger and her husband. This was never a promising placement as the husband was probably already having an affair, and when Zellweger goes to meet Pfeiffer in prison, we know things won’t end well. When Zellweger achieves the Guinness World record for ‘longest lie-in on record‘, Astrid is again back in the system - can she ever find happiness and freedom from her jailbird Mom who has a svengali type influence over her?

If you like ‘problem people’ this film will be a hit for you - I thought everyone involved was a bit whiny and needy, and I was glad when it was done. To be fair it was well made with the confusing and non-linear narrative well laid out, with Astrid’s suitcase dioramas being explained as the film progressed. I didn’t really buy her relationship with the boyfriend and Connolly was woefully underused - I don’t think he had a single line to camera - he's only seen in the background, being abused by Pfeiffer. Nice work if you can get it.

Pfeiffer was the standout as the chilling and controlling mother although she looked a bit too well scrubbed after years in the big house.

The main killing was only touched on and we have at assume Connolly had been fed too much of the titular plant. The point of the film was the mother-daughter relationship and it’s fair enough that the focus was on that. There just seemed to be several more interesting films going on in the background that were tantalisingly just out of reach for this viewer.

A decent effort that will no doubt resonate with many who have mother issues. I just felt it was a bit dull and unsatisfying.

Best Bit : Fun Times With Renee ‘W’ Rating 13/23

No.323 : White Fang (1991)

 

White Fang (1991) at the IMDb

Jack London’s book ‘White Fang’ has had half a dozen movie adaptations and you’ll be pleased to learn that we are just going to have a look at one of them. This review is for the 1991 version starring Ethan Hawke and directed by ‘Grease’ helmer, Randal Kleiser. It’s a Disney adaptation and probably the safest and most family friendly of the bunch. It does have a couple of slightly upsetting moments that may cause the five year olds in our readership a small pause before they decide that it’s OK, no one has really been hurt.

The film is set at the time of the Klondike gold rush. Hawke plays ‘Jack’ - presumably named after the author as there is no one of that name in the book - one of many prospectors seeking their fortune. Jack is heading to his father’s gold claim and is a complete novice who gets robbed as soon as he arrives in town by Ajax out of ‘The Warriors’. He manages to traverse the steep mountain pass that leads to the gold fields and hooks up with his Dad’s old pals, Largo off ‘Never Say Never Again’ and poor old Seymour Cassel who plays a wolf banquet.

The two journeymen gold hunters take Hawke on their trip to bury a dead colleague at his favourite spot. As they set off we also witness a pack of wolves killing a rabbit - one claims a paw which it takes back to its lair to feed to its young cub. We later learn that this is a wolf/dog hybrid is of course, our old pal, White Fang.

The lads manage to spill the body into a frozen lake and lose most of their gear. They are being stalked by a pack of wolves and soon Cassel becomes their dinner. Largo and Jack form a bond and soon they are at Dad’s old claim. Meanwhile White Fang has grown up and is being looked after by native American, Grey Beaver - I think I’ve seen that film.

Grey Beaver gets conned out of White Fang by Ajax who starts to fight the dog/wolf for cash just as Jack strikes it rich. Can White Fang and Jack get together and forge the bond we always suspected they had?

This was a decent offering that had a few moments that made me forget it was a schmaltzy Disney interpretation, of this tough frontier text. I liked it when the blue corpse escaped from the coffin and dragged Jack under the ice of the frozen lake - bet that gave a few kids nightmares. To be fair the animal action betrayed any sense that the film was realistic with the central casting animals failing to deliver a drop of blood. The action was OK though, with a grizzly fight being the most impressive.

The mining was well done and my experiences of watching a dozen seasons of ‘Gold Rush’ meant that I enjoyed the proto-trommel and shaker beds. The cast were serviceable but clearly second string to the animals and scenery. Hawke didn’t convince as Jack and his relationship with the dog seemed perfunctory at best. It would have worked better if he had raised the wolf as a cub rather than just picking it up after a dog fight.

Largo went through the motions and Cassel became a motion just 20 minutes in. The baddies were scenery chewing bad, although they did exhibit most of the ‘boo hiss’ qualities their thinly written panto baddie roles deserved. The murderous showdown ended tamely with Ajax getting a bite on the bum for all of his nefarious deeds.

The gold strike seemed somewhat unlikely as did the cast's plans to bugger off to San Francisco the day after striking it rich.

I never bought into the boy and wolf bond, but the film was well shot and hit enough marks to allow it a pass on the ‘turned out well in the end’ front.

Best Bit - Grizzly Attack - ‘W’ Rating : 16/23

No. 322 : White Boy Rick (2018)

 

White Boy Rick at the IMDb

 Time for some true life crime biography next in the shape of this depressing and skuzzy drama that depicts the short crime life of Rick Wershe, who spent 30 odd years in jail prior to his recent release.

I had never heard of the case, but seemingly our hero was the youngest ever paid informant of the FBI at age 14 and the longest serving non-violent prisoner in the US penal system. These things considered, I had little sympathy for our protagonist and as such did not have too much affection for his bio-pic. That said, it was a decent offering but not one to love; more of a morality tale to remind you to stick in at school and not get involved in the selling of guns and narcotics. Duh.

We open with the young Richie and his Dad, Matthew McConaughey, buying firearms at a gun show. No, not me at the gym, an actual event for the sale of firearms. The 14 year old Richie spots a fake Kalashnikov which enables is Dad to get a good deal from the dealer. They make even more profit when Richie sells on the guns to the local drug lords with the addition of silencers, that Mahogany fashions in his basement.

Mahogany dreams of owing a video store - it is 1984 after all - and doesn’t mind dealing with drug pedlars, despite his own daughter being addicted to crack, if it helps to achieve his goal. Richie’s ‘in’ with the drug barons catches the attention of the FBI and soon agent Jennifer Jason Leigh has Richie on the payroll. They convince Ritchie to buy and later sell drugs so that they can infiltrate the gang. This doesn’t go well for Richie who gets a bullet in his guts for his trouble.

With no other means of support and a new baby to provide for, Richie starts to produce his own crack. Inevitably he gets caught and his FBI handlers are as much use as a cock flavoured lolly pop when Richie goes down for life. How did it end up here and can he cut a deal to earn his freedom? Is he a victim of society or a death dealer who got his just desserts?

This was a decent period offering with a great cast, but the subject matter and viewpoint weren’t to my liking and to be honest, to my mind, Richie got what he deserved. He was well played by the slow talking, but likeable Richie Merritt, but I had no sympathy for the character or his choices. It was rote large that his options were limited but he was clearly a poor drug dealer and his motivations didn’t excuse his actions.

Matthew McConaughey was good in his now familiar role of the lowlife scumbag - see ‘Killer Joe’ and his series of ‘True Detective’, but he couldn’t rescue the narrative here. He was a gun dealer who bought into his son’s drug ambitions. I liked the line when he said he’d maintained a good family and Richie pointed out he had a drug addict daughter and a screwed up son. You could say this was just a slice of life in the 1980s but why was Richie deserving of a bio-pic? He was made out to be on a path with no exits, but to accept that would be just accepting his criminal choices.

The period was well realised and there was an excellent supporting cast including a never rougher Jennifer Jason Leigh and a frankly miscast Eddie Marsan as some sort of drug lord.

The film ended with captions suggesting that Richie had been harshly treated but the film failed to elicit any sympathy from this viewer. There was no suggestion that Richie didn’t know what he was getting into, and although he inhabited a world with few options that didn’t excuse him dealing in deadly drugs.

When you have no sympathy for the lead in a bio-pic it’s hard for it to succeed but overall this was a well realised and enjoyable film, albeit one with a skewed moral compass.

Best Bit : Bruce Dern makes Pancakes ‘W’ Rating 17/23

No.321 : When the Bough Breaks (1994)

When the Bough Breaks (1994) at the IMDb

We recently watched another ‘When the Bough Breaks and this 1994 version safely occupies the coveted ‘2nd Best ‘When the Bough Breaks’ award’ berth. Indeed if we find the 1947 version I can see this one moving into the bronze medal slot.

This and the 2016 version share only a title, with this effort being a detective thriller that makes no sense, and has no thrills whatsoever.

The film opens with a caption telling us we’re in Texas and it’s the 4th of July - regular captions chart the date as we head towards the 16th which is soon given some significance. Despite it pissing down road workers are digging a hole and teens are partying in the streets, but their endeavours are cut short when a pair of hands is discovered, flushed out of a drain. Cowboy hat wearing sheriff Martin Sheen is puzzled and can’t even offer a witty pun along the lines of ‘need a hand’ or ‘check out the second hand store’.

Instead he calls in FBI profiler Audrey (Ally Walker) who looks like she’s facing a chauvinistic department at first, but everyone turns out to be really helpful. She has Gillian Anderson’s hair off ‘The X-Files’ and as character traits she smokes a lot and is claustrophobic. She also has scars on her back for reasons that were unexplained. It may have been that they were laying character points for future sequels but happily those amounted to one straight to video offering only.

It seems that Audrey is the only one doing any work and she quickly establishes that a pair of numbered hands shows up every year and suspects a serial killer. Let’s hope so, or else a lot of villains must be getting handy. With some proto-internet skills she manages to identify a lot of the victims and soon tracks down a young mental patient who draws numbered hands on his walls. Gotta be a clue there surely? The boy chooses to be a mute, so slowly Audrey manages to get him out of his shell and the case starts to come into focus.

With July 16th approaching, and a girl already abducted, can Audrey solve the crime before another juggling career is destroyed for good?

This was an awful film that made no sense at all. The poster suggests a psychic element which isn’t covered in the film. It does turn out twins are involved but their psychic link is in full HD and never explored.

The detection was all over the place, including the uncovering of a red herring paedophile who drove about in an ice cream van wearing clown make up. Creepy as that sounds there was in fact loads of them working for a franchise. There must be a whole Texan generation of kids with an ice cream phobia! This was so ridiculous it was funny, with a flashback showing a child snared by a ‘free ice cream’ sign.

Despite his prominent poster presence Sheen does very little with all the work done by the dull and unengaging Ally Walker. I think she was let down in the edit however, as all her character’s quirks go nowhere and her breakthroughs were random and illogical.

I knew who the baddie was going to be early on as Ron Perlman was listed as appearing but didn’t show up until 70 minutes! His scenes were dreadful as was the whole finale which was lifted wholesale from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.

You could argue it was left to the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that would just excuse glaring plot holes and bad writing. Having the mute ‘boy’ played by an obvious girl was a mistake especially as she looked like a young Justin Bieber - why not just use real twins or indeed have the twins be the same sex?

Anyway, I won’t waste any more time looking for nits and plot holes as it’s clear that the production didn’t bother, so why should I?

Te film was unintentionally funny in places, but overall this was just an incoherent mess.

Best Bit : Clown Face Ice Cream - ‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.320 : What About Dick? (2012)

What About Dick? at the IMDb

I chanced upon this one on Netflix and thought I’d unearthed a gem given the stellar cast, but alas it was a rough in the rough.

The film is a live performance in the style of a 1940’s radio play complete with a man making all the special effects noises. A partisan L.A. audience laps it up but I didn’t laugh at all, at the puerile humour which is usually my thing.

Eric Idle wrote and starred in the film and plays a piano which charts the decline of the British Empire. He’s not a piano, but wears a piano key tie so that we remember he is the constant who relates and narrates the story whilst the cast ham it up as various characters.

The plot is wafer thin and serves only to get a few songs in as well as barrels of innuendo and funny voices. Tracey Ullman was probably the best value doing good voice work and clearly getting into the spirit of things. You also get Jane Leeves and Big Suze as a pair of sisters and Russell Brand as the titular Dick who manages to make the part his own, in his usual style.

You also get Eddie Izzard as an Indian manufacturer of rubber dildos and Billy Connolly as a police inspector cum private eye who has a lisping voice that he at least finds very funny. You also get Tim Curry and Jim Piddock who mostly just do funny voices and patch the whole thing together.

A couple of the songs were decent but the whole thing just seemed awfully lazy with characters called ‘Bastard’ and Dickhead’ for example. There were also old jokes on parade with the Indian Regiment called ‘The First Foot & Mouth’ © ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ and someone saying ‘I opened the door in my pyjamas - why was there a door in my pyjamas?’ - yawn.

The runtime of 80 minutes may seem short but it does drag on once you get an idea of the humour and writing on show. It’s a great cast who are clearly enjoying themselves; it’s just a shame they didn’t invite the viewer along.

Brand and Connolly were unintelligible in places and you have to wonder what the American audience made of them. Funny eccentrics I guess, but I was cringing at the mirth free and faintly embarrassing wacky antics on show.

It may have been a good night out after a few beers but as a Netflix offering it fell flat with a lot of the seemingly period humour already dated - Berlesconi ‘bunga bunga’ references anyone? Actually it would probably have been painful to see live as a lot of transitions were added in to show flashbacks as well as caption cards, which suggested the whole thing was edited down to afford the audience at home a small measure of mercy.

For me this was a self indulgent and unfunny mess that offered no laughs, but if you want to see some of your favourite comedians ham it up, fill your boots. You’ll just never convince me that saying ‘dick’ as a euphemism for ‘penis’ 200 times qualifies as entertainment.

Best Bit : Not Russell Brand’s Dick ‘W’ Rating  8/23

No.319 : White Girl (2016)

White Girl (2016) at the IMDb

A down and dirty slice of New York life now as we see what happens when you run about with drug dealers and party a bit too hard.

Morgan Saylor stars as Leah, a young student moving into an apartment in the seedy end of town with her slightly more prim roommate. Leah likes to party and is soon hanging around with the youths from her street corner in the hope of scoring some drugs off them. She makes a connection with Blue and soon answers her own question ’What sort of girl do you think I am’ by banging him on the apartment roof.

We know she’s a bit of a girl as she’s already been blowing her boss, Doug off ‘The Hanover’ films, for some lines of coke. She brings Blue to her office party and he realises that Leah’s middle class colleagues will pay $60 for the coke he is used to selling for $20. This suggests to him that this is a great market to exploit and he gets a load of cocaine on credit to service his new customers. Huge mistake. He is immediately busted, although Leah takes possession of the drugs.

She tries to get her man out of the clink but doesn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer. No worries, she can just become a drug dealer herself and get involved in a lot of seedy activities under the pretence of helping her banged up beau. The lawyer she engages does good work but is also a creepy rapist. Eventually he gets Blue out and the happy couple are reunited. Will they have a happy ending or are they destined to be forever apart?

This was a grim and nasty film that actually raised a few laughs with its levels of depravity. Leah was an absolutely toxic character and it was hard to care as she sniffed and blew her way through the film. There was a fun sequence where she gets the money to pay the lawyer and the dealer through dealing and a happy ending is offered - no chance - some tawdry action and a few spews later and she’s wondering what happened to her money and what’s that in my knickers?

The obvious theme here was a clash of cultures with the free spirited and middle class Leah getting down with the boys from the ghetto. She was obviously naive and despite the filmmaker trying to add in a love story and a few virtuous acts it was just horrible as Leah and her quickly corrupted room mate, went straight to the bottom.

I did like how all the men were despicable and only after one thing - to be fair Leah was offering it on a plate to most of them, apart from the lawyer who took what he wanted and had the cheek to present a big bill too.

The closing scenes in which Blue was released were through the fingers stuff, with the couple enjoying about two minutes of happiness before the inevitable miserable ending played out.

Morgan Saylor was excellent in the lead and must have saved the costume department a fortune as she rarely had a stitch on. The sleazy boss and lawyer were basically 'boo hiss' sleazebags and the street kids were leftover Fring employees from ‘Breaking Bad’.

The film will probably be heralded as a brave slice of life, but if it’s an accurate portrayal of college kids’ lives we’re all doomed. To be fair Leah’s summer of excitement was offset by her bland existence at the end and, you have to hope that she realises that she got off lightly in her flirtations with the dark side of life.

Best Bit : I’ve got a pound of coke and need $20,000 - Party!  ‘W’ Rating 18/23