THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Candidates for 1972

Well, here we are at my last full year in Brooklyn!  Things are about to get very chaotic soon, but for my eighth year of life, it’s still business as usual.  To be honest, I really don’t recall a lot about this year save that I’m pretty sure this was the year I ventured across Atlantic Avenue one time to visit my school friend Darryl, which was considered a Really Big Deal for me.

Anyway, your nominees are:

PRIME CUT

This past week commemorated Lee Marvin’s birthday.  Marvin was one of the great movie tough guys (and the first cinematic version of Donald Westlake’s legendary character of Parker in Point Blank), and this film sees him facing off against one of the greatest movie actors we’ve ever had, Gene Hackman, over a slaughterhouse.  From what I gather, it’s a really sleazy film, with people being ground into sausages and a good dose of sex trafficing.  It’s only the second film directed by Michael Ritchie, who goes on to make The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Fletch and The Golden Child.  This film had a rep, and I want to see if it’s earned.

SISTERS

Yeah...Brian DePalma.

I loathe Brian DePalma.  I find his work insufferably self-reverential--by which I mean he thoroughly, self-consciously lifts whole from other directors in a way that is the equivalent of screaming ‘Watch What I Can Do’ to the audience.  The only films of his I can tolerate that I’ve seen are The Phantom of Paradise (which I actively enjoy) and The Untouchables (which is inoffensive, save for the big ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence in the train station).  Some of his films, like Scarface, are so badly constructed that the message he’s trying to send us is totally misconstrued by the audience.

But...

I recently saw the documentary about him, and it has made me curious to visit some of those films of his I have not watched (because...well, it’s his), or films I did watch that I hated, and see if the information imparted by him has altered my opinion.  Sisters, DePalma’s first foray into the Norman Bates Mine, is one of his films I haven’t seen because, well, I was way too young to see it when it was in theaters and by the time I could, I was disinclined to give it the time.  I’m willing to give it at the least the time it would take to view it to see if my new knowledge of the director has changed my view of him.

BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX

This is kind of a cheat on my usual policy of only choosing films I’ve never seen, as I’ve seen parts of this Japanese adaptation of the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub.  You see, about a decade later some Americans mashed together segments from this and its two sequels to create the notoriously, gloriously gory Shogun Assassin.  I love Shogun Assassin, but I also recognize that it is a Frankenstein-ed, bastardized, campy version of what was a very serious movie series in Japan.  I want to see what the original intent of the filmmakers were, and where better to start than with the first entry?

THE GORE GORE GIRLS

Yeah...Herschell Gordon Lewis.

I recognize that this man was an innovator in the horror industry, but I don’t have a lot of respect for him.  Every time I have read or seen the man talking about his films in his own words, I am struck by how much contempt he seemed to have for his audience.  He is not a good filmmaker in any real sense of the word.

And yet....

This, the last of the films from his ‘classic’ cycle of gore-nographic epics, stars comedian Henny Youngman.  That’s the closest thing Lewis ever got to having a genuine star in one of his movies--Youngman was making regular appearances on Laugh-In at the same time this shabby little picture was making the Grindhouse rounds.  Even though I am positive watching this film will cause my soul to shrivel up a little inside, I have to know the extent of Youngman’s involvement in this.

There you have it.  Starting tomorrow, head over to my Twitter Page and vote for which of these four flicks you’d like to see me watch and report on next weekend.  Good luck, and please be kind and Retweet the Poll after you vote!