Two new movies

So, I was browsing in Barnes and Noble the other day, and, as I am wont to do, I gravitated towards the Criterion Collection shelf. It occurred to me, looking at those DVDs, that they are adding movies to that thing much faster than I'm seeing them. There are a lot of good movies in the collection, and I've been introduced to a number of movies that I absolutely love by it. I figure I should try to catch up a bit.

So, I went home and decided I would watch the first movie I hadn't seen in the collection (by spine number) that was available on Netflix instant view. That movie turned out to be Flesh for Frankenstein (1973).



The Criterion Collection, if you're unfamiliar, is full of very artsy movies. This movie is not remotely artsy. It's a schlocky B-horror movie. But then again, it was produced by Andy Warhol and, with his name attached, a Campbell's soup can is considered art. So there you go.

There is of course, great fun to be had in cheesy horror movies, and this movie has some great cheesy gore. The highlight: one of my favorite decapitations to date (hmm, that feels like a vaguely creepy thing to be saying). The head is incredibly fake, and doesn't really look like the actor. And it seems to contain more blood than could reasonably fit in several entire human bodies.

The movie also contains one of the most poorly cast actors I've ever seen. His name is Joe Dallesandro. Researching it online after the fact, I found that the director (Paul Morrisey) cast him in a lot of his movies; I'm not sure how he was in those. As for this movie: The rest of the cast (while none of them are Oscar bound) seem pretty, well, German. And they could believably be in the nineteenth century. Dallesandro appears to have walked into a Gothic castle out of 1973 Brooklyn. I giggled whenever he talked.

There is a lot of sex in this movie. It's largely about sex. It has one of the most awkward sex scenes I've ever witnessed (It could give the nitrous-oxide rape scene in Blue Velvet a run for its money). I'll say this much: it taught me an important lesson about life, death, and gallbladders.



After that movie, I decided to continue with my Netflix instant queue strategy. The next criterion movie that fit was another Paul Morrisey horror movie, but, wanting a change of pace, I moved on to the next. That Was The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). But, due to uncooperative "Netflix for the Wii" software, I was unable to watch that one. Then Netflix recommended Stagecoach (1939) to me, and I watched that instead.



I am, for the most part, not huge on westerns, and I don't like John Wayne very much. But this seemed like one of those classic, really important movies on the canon list of "movies everybody should see". I feel like that sort of thing is particularly important for somebody with a stated goal of seeing every movie ever made (I like to believe six impossible things before breakfast, and then write a blog about one of them). Anyway, as it turns out, I really enjoyed it.

High art? Of course not. It's a western. It's cowboys and Indians. Fun with guns and horses. But it has high entertainment value. The cast of characters is good, And it's very well directed. I actually particularly like the character of Doc Boone, which is played by Thomas Mitchell as much less of a single note character than you'd expect the bumbling town drunk in a western to be.

So, to some up: You should definitely see Stagecoach. You should see Flesh for Frankenstein if you want to have some good cheesy fun, but also be slightly uncomfortable.