300

300-

This movie is hilarious! I know this movie is suppose to be based on a comic book, still I find nothing believable in this flick! Starting with all the computer backgrounds, monsters and computer enhanced body parts, I find it totally impossible to have any kind of connection with anything on the screen.


Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, I hear they smeared his body with charcoal to make him look even more muscular. King Leonidas is an arrogant bully who screamed his way all through the movie. I left the movie theater with a sore throat, from all the yelling..everything is "FOR SPARRRTAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

Then there is King Xerxes, the evil evil evil transgender monster who wants to take over Sparta. When you see this character you don't know whether to laugh or cry...he is a combination of Dennis Rodman and Pinhead from Hellraiser. Compare to Xerxes, Tammy Faye Baker has the natural look!

This movie is one long video game, you just go from one violent battle to the next. The biggest problem I have with these CGI movies is that everything looked so perfect, a little too perfect, so perfect that it looks fake, you know what I mean? I sense no danger to anything the characters were going through and there are even moments when I have to ask myself is that a real actor or some computer generated image.

300 is one of those movies that is more fun if you watch it with a group of friends and you each take turns shouting sarcastic remarks at the screen! With so much yelling going on in this movie, they just might yell back at you!

BLUE HAWAII

BLUE HAWAII-

I don't know what it is or why that Hawaii is such a big deal, TV shows always have that very " special episode" takes place in Hawaii. From The Brady Bunch to Charlies Angels to Jeffersons all have that extended 2 hour special in Hawaii as if that stretch of beach is one and only in the world.

I'm not dissing Hawaii, I have never been there so I can't say anything bad about it, but if you put a popular place like Hawaii and THE KING together...is the best thing since the Reeses people put peanut butter and chocolate together! "Blue Hawaii" is by far my favorite because of the soundtrack. Songs like "I can't help falling in love with you", "The Hawaiian wedding song" and the one about Ito eats like....

Oh the wonderful world of Elvis! A typical plot, Elvis the rich son of a pineapple tycoon returns to home to Hawaii after serving in..what Viet Nam? Korea? Not sure but he comes home from the army. Coming back to his old beach bum buddies and his old girlfriend. Elvis' parents want him to take over the family business, but no Elvis is a down to earth all American, he would rather leave hom and live with bums to earn a living instead of free loading off his parents.
So he changes his name and got himself a job as a tour guide. What's his first assignment? He become the guide to an all girl tour group along with their horny middle aged spinster teacher!
Lots of music, lots of women, beautiful scenery, a misunderstanding with his girl and a big bar brawl to a wedding pretty much sums up this one and any other Elvis movie.

Angela Lansbury is wonderful as Elvis' southern belle mom, Sara Lee Gates. She plays the typical over baring nagging mother and Roland WInter is her hen-pecked husband.

Sarah Lee Gates: Now that Chadwick's home, I'm sure he's got all that foolishness out of his system, after the war.
Fred Gates: Sarah Lee, how many times do I have to tell you, he was not in a war.
Sarah Lee Gates: I know you're right, Daddy, but if I don't tell myself there was a war, I have a most depressive feeling
Chadwick's just wasted two years.
Her voice is so loud in the movie it nearly cracked my glasses and she does a lot of fainting in this it's delicious!

You also get to see Flyod the barber as Elvis mean boss, then there's the old school marm, Nancy Walters as Miss Abigail Prentice leading high school senior girls on a trip to Hawaii, first she's an all prim and proper teacher, once Elvis works his magic on her, she becomes a loose hussy and falls in love with Elvis' uncle, but not until after she made a pass at Elvis causing his girlfriend to run out on him.

The 3 high school girls of course all fall in love with Elvis except the stuck up and spoiled Ellie Corbett (Jenny Maxwell), she's too smart and mature for this trip, all she wanted was to have Elvis to help her to become a woman! So Elvis does by putting her across his lap!

CINEMANIA

CINEMANIA-

If you visit this blog often and have seen more than half of the films mentioned here, then you belong in a class of very special people, you are part of a minority called CINEMANIACS.

This is what this film/documentary is about, a handful of Cinemaniacs. Unlike the crossword puzzle geeks of "Wordplay", these Cinemanics all suffer from some sort of disorder; they are so obsessed with movies, that they cannot be away from the big screen whatsoever, they cannot hold a job or chose not to have one, they cannot have a stable relationship with someone not on the movie screen , some cannot afford to stay in their apartment but doesn't care.

The main characters presented here are; Jack, Eric, Roberta, Bill and Harvey. The film maker invite the audience into the lives of these cinemanics, we see their video collection, soundtrack collection, film memorabilia collection, programs from all sorts of film festivals and we learn a little bit of the problems and challenges of these folks.

Each one of them have very strong opinions and knowledge about every film ever made, from the title to the cast, from the directors to the technical staff, the story behind the film, the best quotes to the actual running time of the movie. One guy can just run the length of the movie right out of his lips as you name them, not just 2 hours or 3 hours, but actual numbers like 145 minutes and 20 seconds and so on.

You may not want to sit next to these folks in the movie theater, because they're not only obsess over seeing movies, but where they sit in the theater,as well as the size of the screen and the temperature of the theater. One guy says he would turn down wedding invitations, refuse any socializing, and even work his diet and motabolisim, because it may interfere with his movie schedule.

Roberta is probably the favorite of the Cinemaniacs here. She's an elderly lady who has a huge collection of programs from various film festivals. Once she sat topless in theater because it got so hot inside!

She was banned from returning to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's theater because she attacked the ticket person for ripping her admission ticket in half (you see Roberta collects all the tickets to every single film she's attended). A short while after she attempted to return to MOMA by putting on a disguise consisted of a wig and different color make up, however she was spotted right away by the theater staff.

Harvey owns a ton of movie soundtracks on vinyl records, all neatly put on shelf and categorized by composer, unfortunately he doesn't own a record player. Bill packs his meals to the theater so he won't waste time and money on food when he would rather spend it on watching some french film festival.

You might be able to relate to some of these characters, I know I do. I may have even seen an actual Cinemaniac in person. A Cinemaniac is the one you see every time you go the an art movie theater; usually they have poor hygene, they sit at the same seats, they often carry a little bag filled with movie magazines, allergy medication, a sweater to keep warm, all 3 meals packed and consist of peanut butter sandwiches, and all kinds of programs and schedules to the next movie they are going to catch.

Just look around the next time you are viewing something at an art theater, I bet you can spot a cinemaniac right off the bat!

INVASION U.S.A

INVASION U.S.A

Long before the days of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, the indea of an enemy invasion into the United States was just another action fantasy. However once this movie came along, it really was a wake up call to America, to see it could happen to anybody! This action flick stars Chuck Norris, as Matt Hunter, even his name sounds so MANLY!

This invasion was led by Mikhail Rostov played by Richard Lynch, yes this was back when the enemies were Russians with names like Boris and Nikko and Rostov. These terrorists came in by boat in the middle of the night by the shores of Florida, all carrying loads of weapons and foreign accents.

This axis of evil has selected the most American of all American holidays to attack; Christmas time! This band of terrorists travel around the suburbs driving a jeep, stalking the unsuspecting American families while their little kids decorate the Christmas trees in their front yards. Moments later mom calls everyon in for a turkey dinner, the evil men pulls up the drive way, pull out the bazooka and blast the happy home to a blazing inferno! Going down the entire block blowing up one house after another.

Our hero Chuck won't stand for it! He fights back with a vengence and not without humor, Chuck does a speed chase over the city and wrecks hundreds of cars on the way to return a ticking bomb to a terrorist in his car. Then this one man army takes on the most dangerous of battle grounds; a shopping mall in Christmas time!

Not since Jackie Chan in "Police Story 1" had I seen such a fun shopping mall fight scene. Good O' Chuck Norris drives a speeding jeep into Sears with both arms loaded with machine guns and shoots his way from one end of the mall to the other. Showcases of holiday decorations are blown to bits, mannequins topple and fall apart, crazed Christmas shoppers not only have to fight for their Cabbage Patch Dolls but they also have to run for their lives!

This movie has one of the most macho endings movies of all time since Rhett Butler tells Scarlet O'Hara to go to H*ll, this flick ends with Chuck blasting bullets non-stop at Rostov with both barrels! Take that Bin Laden!

HE-MAN MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

HE-MAN MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE-

This is such a great movie, because it's so 80's!! it follows the very 80's trend of Conan the Barbarian, Beastmaster and even Rambo...they all featured greasy muscle men flashing their weapons and man-boobs!

He-Man was a low budget Filmation cartoon that came out in the mid-eighties. The 80's probably had the worst selection of Saturday morning cartoons ever; Care Bears, Smurfs and He-Man...it wasn't until Pee Wee's Playhouse and Mighty Mouse came along, but by that time the Saturday morning cartoon tradition is alreay on its way out.

As for the He-Man movie, I have to say I really love it! From the very instant the low budget animated logo of Canon films came on the screen and that cheesey fanfare in the background, you get this feeling of sitting in a midnight show of some B-movie starring Chuck Norris. But this one stars Dolph Lundgren (as one of my friends once put it, you can feel your IQ getting lowere as you pronounce his name) as He-Man.

The live action He-Man had very little resemblance to the animated He-Man, for one thing the animated version he has sort of a Prince Valiant haircut, here He-Man has a mullet. Some of the main characters from the cartoons were missing but replaced by, get this, Billy Barty the only midget actor left since "The Wizard of Oz", as the dwarf Gwildor.

Gwildor is not even a character from the cartoon, they put him in because they needed somebody "famous" in the film....Barty's name was the lead in the opening credits!

But Frank Langella's performance as Skeletor was a combination of Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon movie. Skeletors army is made up of a bunch left over costumes from "Return of the Jedi", guys in black armor fumbling over each other because the suit is so heavy plus they could barely see through those heavy helmets.


You also get see a young Courtney Cox, fresh from her Bruce Springsteen "Dancing in the dark" music video. Here she's probably about 22 years old and way before she became anorexic. Courtney and her Star Trek Voyager boyfriend Robert Duncan McNeill, find a lost key from the magical dimension of Eternia. The 2 thinks the gadget is some sort of Japanese musical instrument and decide to use it to play at their senior prom. In the mean time He-Man and his friends has landed on Earth to search for the key, but Skeletor sent his army led by Evilyn (Meg Foster) are just a step behind them.


The fight scenes are a bit weak in this late-night-drive-in feature, it lacks the highly choreographed martial arts fights in action films today, or the super fake computerized action of today also, but it's fun the watch if you grew up watching the He-Man cartoons. There's a fun flying chase scene where He-Man flys across the suburban night, in the background you get to see a glimpse of Santa Rosa and the apartment building they used in "Blue Velvet".

Watching this film now 20 years after its release, it brings back a lot of fond memories as a teenager in the 1980's. Hanging around the fastfood joints like Billy Bob's BBQ where Courtney's character Julie works, or the music shop owned by Charlie (Barry Livingston of my 3 sons) decorated with wood paneling and large speakers on the wall blasting my vinyl collection of early 80's pop tunes!

In the end there's sort of a "Back to the future" kind of ending where history has been changed, and you also get to see Courtney Cox running around in her suburban neighborhood wearing a pink full flannel night gown from Sears!

JAWS

JAWS-

The first time I saw this Spielberg classic it scared the heck out of me, mainly is the severed head popping out atRichard Dreyfuss under water! But now over 30 years later, I truly enjoy this film for the effects and the of course the humor!

No need to go into much detail on the plot of this movie, I just really like how dated it looked with the leisure suits and the beach hicks. The scene when Mrs. Kintner (her little boy was eaten by a shark) goes up to Rob Scheinder she says : Chief Brody?
Brody: Yes?
She gives him a powerful smack across the face! I would give anything to witness something like that in real life!

The relationship between the 3 characters is hilarious! Richard Dreyfuss is not one of my favorite actors, his characters often remind me something out of a Woody Allen picture, very pompus, intelligent and very Jewish. Here in "Jaws" it's very refreshing to see that kind of personality in a boat trapped with a character link Quint, played by Robert Shaw. Shaw's character is like something out of a novel or an old 40's black and white movie, kind of those heros that speaks very few words but with a body full of scars to show for experience.

The conversations are great and rest of the towns people are really so down to earth. The fake shark seems kind of dated now that we have technology to bring dinasaurs to life, but it is still part of the charm of this film. At moments I do get that sense of terror and fear along with the main characters, which is something I don't feel today, not because of my advance age, but from the advance technology that make everything look so clean and sanitize that you can actually feel the blue screen the actors are standing in front of...how's that for realism?

INFRAMAN

INFRAMAN-

The original title: Zhong guo chao Ren (translation: Chinese Superman). Made in 1974 in Hong Kong. Today a lot of people love Hong Kong Cinema from; John Woo to Jackie Chan, from Ang Lee to Stephen Chow. This film pre dates all of those, it came the year after Bruce Lee's death. Still in mourning Hong Kong decided to take on the Japanese pop culture icon Ultraman. Hong Kong's very own Inframan or as they called it The Chinese Inframan had about the same budget as the Ultraman TV series in Japan. The costume consist of a motorcycle helmets, leather pants, plastic mask with bug eyes, and lots of animated lightning.

The plot is simple; evil Princess Dragonma lands in Hong Kong demanding the Earth to surrender to her, otherwise she will releas her army of monsters to attack. The monsters consist of a giant spider, giant cat, a tree/squid creature and set of weird twins with elastic power tools and by the way one of the monsters name She-Demon has a set of eyes out of the palm of her hands, (an idea that later used in "Pan's Labyrinth" only done in a much low tech and low budget way).

Inframan is played by Li Hsui-Hsien (Danny Lee) later Li reaches the height of his career starring opposite Chow Yun Fat in John Woo's "The Killer" as the cop named "Little Eagle". But here Li is just another Brue Lee wanna be in an ugly jump suit. Inframan has all the entertaining spoofs values of any typical Japanese giant monster movie. The fight scenes last forever, not much of a plot and very bad music. Everyone rides a motorcycle and even the alien army is made up of guys with motorcycle helmets.

All the good guys work for a science patrol, they have the ugliest disco outfits for uniforms. At on point the squid monster attack the base, each guy was being strangled by a giant tentacle. If you look closely you can see one of the guys' split his pants! I guess that's a blooper...but with a movie like this one it's hard to tell which is the blooper and which is part of the film...

A TRILOGY IN TERROR

A TRILOGY IN TERROR-

Is a classic made-for-tv movie, once again the wonderful people of ABC's movie of the week has brought us another gem in entertainment. This time it's a 90 minute trip in terror and laughter starring Karen Black!

This Trilogy is made up of 3 wonderful stories about 4 different women: "Julie", "Millicent and Therese" and "Amelia". We can skip the first two, basically one is about an old maid, the second is your typical evil twin story but "Amelia" is the desert to this three course meal!

Karen Black plays Amelia, she buys an old voodoo doll for her boyfriend. Nothing weird about that, lots of goth girls do that. The doll is a Zuni Warrior, it came with a warning label: the necklace around its neck should not be removed. Kind of like those warning labels that come with your pillows...Well somehow the necklace came off, that's when the fun begins!

You get to see Black getting into a big brawl with this tiny animated thing! She tries drowning it, strangling it, stuffing it in a suitcase! The best scene you see the little monster going after Black with a knife! She locks the little rascal behind closed doors, first he goes silent and then underneath the door you see the knife trying to slide through! It's hilarious!

This scene was once describe to me by a friend as the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen. However another friend used this scene to illustrate one of her cat sitting experience. The crazy cat tried to attack her with her paws coming through the bottom of the door, just like "A trilogy in terror" as she put it!

All 3 stories had a wonderful suprise ending and the cross-eyed Karen Black delivered a wonderful performance that should've won her an Emmy. This classic became so popular now that it even launched a sequel in 1995, also you can actually buy the Zuni Warrior doll online somewhere, with the warning label I'm sure, so whatever you do, don't let the necklace come loose!

THE CRUSH

THE CRUSH-

Was part of the "Stalking"- trend that took place in the early 90's, following success like "The hand that rocks the cradle", "Fatal attraction", "Single white female" and others. Alicia Silverstone plays chubby lonely teenager; Darian Forrester, her rich parents rents out the room over their garage to this geek Nick Eliot played by Cary Elwes. Darian falls in love with Cary, except Cary has a new girlfriend, so what does Darian do? Just like any other 14 year old, she tortures Nick and threaten to kills his girlfriend.
Some pretty lame moments but seeing this dumb yuppie getting harassed by a 14 year old has some good belly laughs, things like leaving him hundreds of voice mails, setting up traps throughout the house and so on is pretty hilarious. Except this little monster doesn't get what she deserves in the end.

Unlike the scene in "Hand that rocks the cradle" when Payten (Rebecca De Mornay) the psychotic killer, gets thrown out the window of the attic, not only she plundges to her death, but she lands on and through the spikes of a white picket fence! That's great! The audience kind of expect a truck to drive over her just to make sure she's dead...

Anyhow "The crush" has a dumb typical ending, we see Darian is now recovered at a psycho ward, she tells her doctor a young good looking intern, that she feel she is making progress and is feeling better everyday with his help. So what does the idiot doctor do? He says "Oh I know you will, I believe in you!' and gives her an encouraging smile.

The very last shot is Darian sitting in her padded cell looking at the picture of her young psychologist with a big smile!

CHINATOWN

CHINATOWN-

Now a lot of people are going to be mad at me for putting this classic movie "Chinatown" on a blog such as this, but as I said before this blog celebrates movie gold and movie mold so before you threaten to kill me, hear me out....Yes this is a wonderful movie with an outstanding performance by Jack Nicholson as detective Jake Gittes, and everything else about this film is terrific!
But you have to admit the famous "She's my sister! She's my daughter!" scene wins the MGM award!
Now, not a lot of people picked this up unless you are fluent in Chinese/Cantonese, but Jack Nicholson has really got the dialect down in the end scene when Jake rushes in to Evelyn Mulwray's (Faye Dunaway) house. The butler, played by Chinese actor James Fong, tries to stop him. Gittes shouts fluently in Cantonese: "JAWL HOI KAI DAI!" meaning "Go away you f*ggot!"

It has to be one of the best enunciation of the Cantonese language by an foreign actor; you can tell Nicholson wanted to learn that line perfectly so he can use it as much as possible!

Not since Rita Hayworth in "The lady from Shanghi" had I see an American speak so well in Cantonese, she asked one of the chinamen in the theater where in exit was. It was pretty delightful to see how well she spoke, much better than even some American born Chinese actors who butcher their own native tongue!

Just sidetrack for a moment and acknowledge the career of actor James Fong, it seems like he is the only Chinese American actor in the entire United States. I bet he's done more in Hollywood than Jackie Chan and Jet Lee combined. Fong has been seen in many movies and televsion appearences, from the 1960's TV's minor guests spots and commercials to 70's "Chinatown", to the 80's in "Big trouble in little China", to the 90's "Seinfeld" and currently in "Balls of Fury" with Chistopher Walken. Fong has played every Chinese character possible in Hollywood! Talk about being type cast.

Back to "Chinatown", it is a great piece of drama any way you look at it and some laughs too, like the when Jake Gittes tells his funny story : "So there's this guy's tired of screwin' his wife... So his friend says to him, "Hey, why don't you do it like the Chinese do?" So he says, "How do the Chinese do it?" And the guy says, "They screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit... then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting." So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin' his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads Life Magazine. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin' again. He says, "Excuse me for a minute, honey." He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin' sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin' again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, "Hey, whats the matter with ya. You're screwin' just like a Chinaman!"


.... Forget it, It's Chinatown.

THE MATT HELM SERIES WITH DEAN MARTIN

DEAN MARTIN AS MATT HELM IN:

THE SILENCERS
MURDERS' ROW
THE AMBUSHERS
THE WRECKING CREW

Although the movie titles and the character Matt Helm was based on the spy novels by Donald Hamilton, none of the elements of this fictional character was represented in this series of super spy movies, part of the James Bond craze of the 60's.


The idea of Dean Martin in a James Bond type role is good enough to make anyone laugh out loud! And that's exactly what everyone of these Matt Helm movies delivered! What's not to love? the Go-Go music, the psychedelic colors, the groovy gadgets, the crazy women in mini skirts and a lot of sexual innuendos!

What's really great is that Deno is probably over 50 years old here, much like Roger Moore as Bond. It's hilarious to see those beautiful young women just flock to this tired old man! It also obvious in some of these films he sees no reason to hide his old age...But having him pair up with hotties like Ann Margret, Stella Stevens, Elke Sommer or Sharon Tate, I don't see he needs to complain either..

Most of the action sequences you can tell Martin was using a stunt double, no suprise here. But the annoying thing is a lot of these movies the timing was pretty bad, it would take a second or 2 before Martin makes a facial response to something, the camera will be held to a shot of Deno with a blank look on his face, then he reacts and the audience are expected to laugh at that. Also the phony driving scenes are really bizzare, everyone can tell it's a non moving car with a panning background, but the car is shaking up and down like its treading over one speed bump over another. The company cars for the secret service must have really bad shocks or something, after a while the viewer needs to pull over from car sickness!

Of course it's nice to hear some of Deno's singing in each fantasy and love scene...one shot I really like, I think it was the "Ambushers" with Ann Margret, she;s wearing a dress that is made out of explosives, Matt Helm has to rip it off her then throws the dress at a picture to Sinatra and blows it up! Love it!

My personal favorite out of the series is "The Wrecking Crew", mostly because of the soundtrack by Hugo Montenegro, it has a bit of a Burt Bachrach/Swing Out Sister flavor. There are some great gadget in these films like a gun that shoot backwards, camera that launches smoke bombs, a round bed that flips over to the swimming pool...great outfits too like a woman wearing a bikini that serves as a telephone or a hat that is really a lit tiki torch!

In "The wrecking Crew" Nacny Kwan plays one of the villains name Yu_Rang, I love how every time she comes on screen you hear the little gong/Chinese music playing in the background, I think this is the only sfx still use today in many films and TV, like every Asian in the world walks around with their little oriental theme playing! However at the end of "The Wrecking Crew" during the closing credits the fans were informed to look out for the next installment of the series "The Ravagers", but the film was never made... This suggests to me that George Clooney ought to continue this film as Matt Helm in the same manner...with female leads such as Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, and Kate Hudson and so on...

REBECCA

REBECCA-

My friend tells me I would think this movie is another LAFF-RIOT, and she is totally right! "Rebecca" is a parody of itself! What a campy movie! Right from the start with the shot of the foggy drive leading to the haunted estate called Manderlay all the way to its final destruction, this film has the elements of every spoof from a Bugs Bunny cartoon to the corny Carol Burnett show.

Joan Fountaine plays a klutz who is married to Maxim de Winter (Lawrence Olivier), Maxim is a millionaire with a schizophrenic personality and mysterious past. Fountaine finds herself moving into this giant mansion that is haunted by the ghost of her husband's first wife Rebecca.

Judith Anderson is Mrs. Danvers the evil maid, her character is so evil that she should've been fired long ago. Mrs. Danvers was very loyal to the first Mrs. de Winter, so loyal that she kept everything in the house just the way the lady left it since the day she died. She even go as far as taunting the new Mrs. de Winter with the dead woman's belongings, Mrs. Danvers must be a closet lesbian to love her former mistress so much that she flaunts the see through nightie to the second wife saying things like: "Have you ever seen anything so so delicate? Look you can see right through to my hand!" She's great! She twitches her eye brows and stares at the poor new mistress from the corner of her eyes with not the slightest hint of a smile. It's so campy that's so great!


Olivier is considered one of THE best actors of all time and I can see it here as he over reacts to the slightest hint of Rebecca's presence, it just cracks me up! An Oscar for the man please! I think him and James Mason probably went to the same acting school, they both talk with out moving their lips!

This is another Hitchcock classic and has a wonderful supporting cast to the most minor characters that make the movie really amusing! Like the horrible Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper, Fountaine's character's employer. She played to mean old lady really well, like something out of an old Disney cartoon, like the evil step mother in Cinderella or something. Fountaine was her hired traveling companion or as she discribed it from the definition in the dictionary: Companion; friend of the bosom!

The movie was a bit on the long side over 2 hours, but It's a lot of tense moments, screaming and a laff a minute!

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?-


I'm not sure how much of a stir this movie caused back in 1967, a lot of folks say it was a great drama with a powerful and provocative message. I've heard about this film for years but until I saw it for myself ....I had no idea what a funny movie this really is!!

Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn plays the Mr. and Mrs. Drayton, an old couple of "Liberals", they are put to the test when their young beautiful white daughter wants to marry a black man. Tracey looks to be about 75 years old here, so it's hard to believe he has a daughter only about 20 years old. But since these two prehistoric hippy parents probably spent most of their earlier years protesting against slavery, prohibition and fighting for women's right to vote, it can be possible that starting a family came very late in life for the Draytons. Then they name their daughter Josephine but calls her Joey, how liberal and progressive of them.

The white daughter Joey Drayton played by Katherine Houghton is not too convincing as someone who is so in love with our black knight in shinning armour. At one point I thought she was doing this just to spite her parents, the way she kept insisiting on inviting parents of her fiance over and the "Oh my mom and dad would love this...and that...." I was expecting she wanted to prove a point that her left wing parents are just a couple of old fuddy duddies..


Anyway Isabell Sanford (Weezie from "The Jeffersons") plays Tillie the black maid, she was wonderful in this movie. She kept harrassing the future son in law; Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) the black man who came to dinner. Tillie thinks he's some gold diggin' N-word out for the Drayton's money and he's not even good looking! She's great! I love the scene when Joey has invited a whole slew of black dinner guests she adds another guest to the list, then she asks Tillie, "Guess who else is coming to dinner?"

Tillie: "The Dr. Martin Luther King jr.?"

Oh come on, it's refreshing to see liberals have to put their money where their mouth is! Probably a remake is in store with a same-sex couple coming to dinner....

WEST WORLD

WEST WORLD-

It is the original "Jurassic Park" both were written by Michael Crichton, any movie with the tagline : "What can possibly go wrong?" is a must see for me!

Rich people in the near future can live out their fantasies by taking their vacations at an amusement park with different time periods as themes. The best part of this amusement park is that you get to participate in gun fights in the old west , a sword fight in medieval Europe and an orgy in ancient Greece!

Richard Benjamin and James Brolin are 2 yuppies who checked into the Westworld. living in the old west, drinking with robot bartenders, sleeping with android hookers and picking gun fights with fake gun slingers.

So what went wrong? Westworld is all under control by a staff and computers the size of a warehouse. The computer crashes and causing chaos throughout the amusement park. The tech staff were all suffocated to death, while the tourist were brutally murdered by the robotic staff.

Yul Brenner plays the robotic Cowboy that has it out for Richard Benjamin. Basically Brenner is the 70's version of the Terminator, you shoot at him, set him on fire, freezes him , nothing can stop him, even left to just one little piece of metal he's still out to kill.

Richard Benjamin is pretty good as the whimpy 70's yuppie doing the "City Slickers" -thing. The thick marlboroman mustache and his whiny personality looks hilarious in a cowboy get up, especially the scene where he courageously kills the Brenner android as he was just coming out of the bath wearing only a holster and a towel!!

Best gag about this movie is when you see the robots are revealed once you remove the face from its head, at first it's a pretty scary looking effect. Later the same gag was used again as the famous Fembots on the Bionic Woman TV show in 1977.