Tetsuo, the Iron Man

1993 mind warper

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular man accidentally runs over a guy who likes to stick metal rods into his legs. Later, metal starts growing from him including an awesome penis drill. He begins to become more metal than man, and not only will it hurt his relationship with his girlfriend, it might ruin his entire life.

"You want a taste of my sewage pipe?"

Like Eraserhead at twice the speed, a comical nightmare, or vile outsider art, this is very likely the strangest movie I've ever seen. That's saying something. There's not much dialogue in this, something else it has in common with Eraserhead, but at one point, a character says, "What's going on here?" and then, while breaking into tears, "What the fuck is this?" I can imagine that the majority of viewers would be thinking the same exact thing, and honestly, a lot of them would also probably feel like crying. I give it bonus points for sheer audacity, but there's also a thrill in the innovative camera work and effective imagery and atmosphere. Director (and star) Shinya Tsukamoto manages to create something that uniquely creates these moods that you really have trouble labeling. It's foreboding and troubling, but always with some dark humor built in. I'm not familiar with anything else he's done, but with what I'm guessing isn't much of a budget, he auteur-istically brings his wacko vision to life. Chases with lobster-clawed women, rocket heels, metal phalluses, metallic chewing noises, chipmunk laughs, hulking metal men, robot porn. It's demanding stuff, a movie a lot of people wouldn't be able to watch much of, but if you're in the right frame of mind and enjoy the wildly experimental, this could be your favorite movie ever.

Cory, don't watch this one. I'm putting it on the anti-five list.

Little Man -- "Man" movie #137

2006 comedy

Rating: 4/20 (Jen watched nearly the entire movie but said "Nuh uh" when I asked for her rating. I think she might have really enjoyed it!)

Plot: Calvin is a diminutive con recently released from the big house. His brother (I forgot his name but he's played by Tracy Morgan so his character's name is probably something like Tracy Corbin) picks him up, and they're immediately up to no good, stealing big ass diamonds and rapping. The diamond somehow winds up in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, and Calvin has to pretend to be a baby in order to get it back. And yes, it's just as stupid as it sounds. I can't figure out Jen liked it so much!

The bottom of the barrel seems like a good enough place to stop. Who knows what the hell you'll find if you managed to break through the bottom of the barrel and start tunneling through the earth. I suppose Jingle All the Way and Clifford with Martin Short and Charles Grodin is down there somewhere, worms maneuvering through the vacant eye sockets. The body of E.T. might be in the late stages of decomposition too, but only because some punk kid stole him, threw him in the back of a pick-up truck, kicked him around in an improvised soccer-like game played without goals and with more tackling, and then dumped him in close proximity to the barrel. The creepy Polar Express is down there, hopefully without a grave marker so nobody will ever find it again. But I definitely don't want to go beyond the bottom of the barrel, so we're stopping this "Man" movie experience at movie one hundred and thirty-seven, what I believe to be blog post (actual movie post and not any of that other perverted nonsense) number one thousand. I am 100% convinced that I now own the record for watching the most movies in a row with "man" in the title, but I'm also 100% that there will only be four and a half people, my faithful readers, who will ever know about it. I've wondered many times about how tedious this might be for my faithful readers and nearly abandoned the "man" movies to watch something like Space Balls or How Stella Got Her Groove Back, but I pressed on and on and on and finally reached what can only be described as a magical moment. No, I take that back. It can also be described as the greatest achievement in the history of mankind. I'm half serious. Come on, Ebert and Maltin! Let's see you pull this off! I don't even think you watch all the movies you review, Leonard, and there's no way you're going to put off watching the latest Werner Herzog movie to continue a "man" streak of this girth, Roger. That's right, bitches, I'm calling you out, throwing down the gauntlet, thrusting the pelvis. I might not be able to write a single meaningful word about a movie that I watch or know even a little bit about what I'm talking about, but let's see you watch even ten "man" movies in a row. Ten! And I watched one hundred and thirty-seven of them, some which I even paid attention to and didn't fast forward over. I won't pretend it was easy, especially with He Was a Quiet Man, Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story, Madman, and The Pumaman, but the really good ones (Man from the West, The Man Between, The Thin Man, Big River Man, Little Big Man, Fred Tuttle: Man with a Plan, Odd Man Out, Batman and Robin, The Elephant Man, Man in the Glass Booth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Wicker Man, Dead Man Walking, The Invisible Man, The Weather Man, The Man Who Would Be King, The Man Who Came to Dinner, A Man for All Seasons, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Cameraman, and Dead Man) made it all worth it. There are sure a lot of good movies with "man" in the title.

OK, so I didn't finish that Jack Frost movie. We'll go with one hundred and thirty-six and one-third as the official count. Still, I'd like to see Gene Shalit's mustache even come close to that number. And I bet I could kick Gene Shalit's ass in a fight simply because I've watched more kung-fu movies than him.

Thanks again for putting up with this, faithful readers. Now back to movies without "man" in the title.

Last Man Standing

1996 gangsta flick

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Yojimbo but with guns and fedoras and Bruce Willis instead of swords and kimonos and Toshiro Mifune.

This gangster film, apparently shot on a used but abandoned B-Western set, is a convoluted rehash of the "Man with No Name" idea, most recently rehashed in Sukiyaki Western Django and Lucky Number Slevin with none other than Bruce Willis, stolen thirty years ago with Clint and Leone for A Fistful of Dollars, and first used in Kurosawa's excellent Yojimbo even though he borrowed imagery from the American Wild West and a central character from Dashiell Hammett. So as the kids are saying today: It's all good. This nearly works but I kind of got lost in the plot, probably because there are far too many gangsters and none that I really cared all that much about. By the time Christopher Walken rolled in, I had already gotten to the point where I was checking my watch, the same point where I realized I didn't even have a watch on. It was probably shot off my wrist by one of the characters in this movie during one of the gangster's dozen (same amount as a baker's dozen for you squares out there) scenes where there's nothing but a flurry of gun fire mayhem and thick dust. There are a few times when characters are shot and fly backward fifty feet, some of them disappearing onto the set of Yojimbo where Kuwabatake Sanjuro looks at him in confusion before trying on his shoes. I know even less about physics and guns, especially firearms from the Prohibition Era, than I do about movies, but it seemed a bit ridiculous. Good thing they didn't have their backs to me because I'm not sure my trash guys will take dead bodies. They won't take old furniture! I like movies with beat-up, dusty towns like this and Bruce Willis, although he looked a little fatigued, was just the right guy for this, but this doesn't have nearly the character and voice that Kurosawa and Leone had. And unfortunately, it's just begging to be compared to those films.

I bought this for fifty cents early in the "man" movie challenge. It was probably worth that much.

The Man Between

1953 post-WWII thriller

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Former-Nazi Ivo Kern works for the Commies in post-war Berlin, aiding in kidnapping and transporting folks from the West to the East. They should have put a freakin' wall there or something! Kern wants out but finds it impossible. Meanwhile, Claire Bloom arrives from England to stay with her sister. A romance seems to develop, but Kern might be using the girl for shady reasons. Or will the two find love and hook up? Oh, those crazy kids!

I liked the second half of this film a lot better than the first, the part of the film where I had to think way too much. Things really get exciting when the characters are sneaking around the shadows of dilapidated Berlin buildings. There's a great score, brilliant cinematography with Third Man-esque broken-tripod camera angles, and terrific shots of a city landscape torn to pieces by war. The cinematography alone makes this worth the price of admission, but moody James Mason and innocent Claire Bloom are good leads. It all builds to one of those endings, a memorable final shot on a snowy street. The story, though parts are a bit confusing taken out of the historical context, is essentially a timeless one of love doomed by place and time. This isn't quite the film that The Third Man or Odd Man Out are, but Carol Reed sure knew how to make "man" movies. That's especially surprising since he had such a sissy name.

This movie supports my theory that films are better when the most of the shots are askew.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

2000 horror-comedy

Rating: n/r

Plot: Well, apparently a mutant killer snowman from a first movie is brought back to life after a laboratory accident. He travels, naturally, to a beach resort to get revenge on some really boring characters. After travelling as water, he manages to collect a carrot and charcoal in absurd ways and eventually, I'm guessing since I couldn't finish the movie, becomes an entire mutant killer snowman.

This is not just a movie that I couldn't finish. This is a movie that forced me to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After shutting this one down, I sat in a motionless, depressed funk for what I thought was a week and a half but turned out to be only seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

2005 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Efficiently proficient and prolific, Albert Pierrepoint followed in his father's bootsteps and hanged people for a living. When he's not delivering groceries, that is. And probably only people who had it coming. He didn't seem like the type to hang random people. Pierrepoint executed just over six hundred during his twenty-two years, and that was just when he was supposed to be delivering groceries! Eventually, the so-called "Babe Ruth of Hangmen" reconsiders his stance on capital punishment.

The director certainly takes a languid approach with this one, not only showing seemingly every meticulous detail in claustrophobic settings but showing these meticulous details over and over and over again. It delivers the point home and comes as close as I imagine it can come to helping a guy watching a television screen understand some of the feelings of the increasingly-troubled titular hangman, and Timothy Spall, without any of the pomp or tricks that people usually see in great acting performances, has a quiet magnetism. His performance is half the picture, and he gives Pierrepoint's story a realism and poignancy in a very natural way. Plus, I dig his cheeks and wonder if implants were involved. Still, this visually sucks you into a gloom, and after a while, the movie starts to seem much longer than it actually is. Its interesting subject matter and gripping internal conflict make this worth checking out.

The Man with the Golden Arm

1955 drug movie

Rating: 16/20 (Mark: 12/20; Amy 11/20)

Plot: Frankie Machine, a poker dealer just released from prison, dreams of drumming in jazzy night clubs to make ends meet and take care of his injured and whiny wife. He's got a friend who is half-man/half-turtle, a new suit, and his own brushes. He's also got the scrumptious Kim Novak. And pretty eyes. Oh, and a heroin addiction. I almost forgot about that one. When things don't work out with his drumming aspirations, mostly because he's not very good, he decides to become a James Bond villain and forges a gold cast around his left arm to use as a bludgeon.

I liked the way the camera moved in this one, a sneaky bit of style that never got in the way of the storytelling but added a little cool to the proceedings. Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak are fine; Eleanor Parker ain't; and there's an odd assortment of supporting characters who give this a quirky flavor, including a sluggishly-sauntering pedestrian extra with a hat who I swear I saw in nine different scenes. As a drug movie, this is understandably a little dated, but I still like it twice as much as most modern drug movies. Yeah, Requiem for a Dream, I'm looking at you. I thought the scene with Frankie Machine fighting through withdrawal rang true and liked the amount of edginess that they were allowed to have in this mid-50s production. This movie might also wind up winning the 2010 shane-movies award for "Best Use of a Dummy" which I'm sure would make Otto Preminger pee on himself in his grave. This movie goes on a little longer than it should, and I'm not sure I bought it all, but I definitely liked it a little more than I expected. Bonus point for some nice poker scenes.

Zatoichi and the Doomed Man

1965 Zatoichi movie

Rating: 15/20


Plot: Zatoichi meets the titular domed man in jail. The man, soon to be executed, informs him that he is innocent and pleads with the blind swordsman to get him some help once he's released. Zatoichi is sick of getting into trouble every time he helps somebody out, but eventually finds himself involved anyway.


Good entry in the Zatoichi series has plenty of swordplay but also has a more comedic tone than most of them. It's been a bit since I've seen this blind mo-fo in action, and I'd almost forgotten how much I like watching his movements, not just in the swift sword swipes and pouncing pirouettes, but in Shintaro Katsu's actions portraying a blind guy. And this reminds me of a dream I had and immediately forgot about. In the dream, Shintaro Katsu, not as Zatoichi but as himself, rides to my front door in a rickshaw. I'm sitting on a chair that I don't have that is on a porch I don't have. I'm wearing booty shorts and smoking an absurdly large red and yellow pipe with a goat's head carved into it. Orange smoke billows from the pipe, and I keep wondering how bad I smell, so bad, I fear, that the neighbors across the street might be able to smell me. Katsu tells me not to worry about it and points with a cane (again, he's not Zatoichi but does still have his cane sword) at my shorts. He says, "Your worries lie in those tight, lime-green shorts." When I don't say anything, he explains. "Don't come crying to me if somebody tries to rape you." Then, just like in all these nocturnal meanderings of my subconscious, the dream ends with my dream self weeping uncontrollably and my real self waking up in a puddle of my own urine.

Man from the West

1958 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Link Jones don't want to be an outlaw no more. But after being abandoned in the middle of nowhere with two others by the train they were riding following a failed robbery, he finds himself face-to-face with his old boss and forced to once again join the gang. He tries to balance feigned loyalty to his posse and concern for his fellow train passengers.

What a pleasant surprise this "man"/Mann Western was! I wasn't expecting much since I had never even heard of this one, but it's solid stuff. I've liked other Anthony Mann Westerns, but in this one, he's second to no one, not even Ford, in using landscape to help tell the story. Link, played stoically by a fatigued-looking Gary Cooper, is one of those characters who is in control in a situation there's no way he can control. As things look bleaker and bleaker, the landscape reflects that, becoming harsher and harsher--from civilized town to a rickety train to a dilapidated farmhouse to a ghost town to miles and miles of brown jagged rock. It's all beautifully photographed, as are the characters. Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tolbin looks like he just rolled off the set of a movie in which he's been shot at by Clint Eastwood while Leone looks on, and there's something raw and tense about his performance. I also liked Jack Lord as another of the baddies. They're definitely not the bad guys I expected to see in a late-50s movie. I think that's what I really liked about The Man of the West actually; it's not a glossy Hollywood Western but one not afraid to get some dust on the lens. There's a great scene with the death of one character. In other Westerns, other good Westerns even, this unfortunate character (second from the bottom on the cast list) would have caught the bullet, fallen down, and died. In The Man of the West, the camera follows him as he stumbles around and moans in extreme pain and then lingers on him from a few moments after he finally, almost mercifully, expires. Harsh stuff. There's another great scene with Julie London's character, a woman thrust into a damsel-in-distress type situation, in an uncomfortably humiliating moment, and Cooper, with a knife drawing a trickle of blood from his throat, forced to watch. Another Western would keep Link 100% chivalrous. Link would grit his teeth and curse the mean guys under his breath. But here, you read something else on his face. There's conflict, a part of the old outlaw Link who really might enjoy what is going on. There's a tense and introspective flavor and an unexpected darkness to The Man of the West that anticipates future Westerns. I liked it a lot.

The Man from Earth

2007 science fiction My Dinner with Andre

Rating: 8/20

Plot: At a professor's going-away party, he makes a startling announcement, revealing to his pretentious friends that he is 14,000 years old. They're not sure whether he's crazy or telling the truth.

Despite a fantastic, intriguing premise and the delivery of a science fiction movie without a single action scene or special effect, I hated almost every second of this movie. The biggest problem is probably that I just didn't want to hang out with a bunch of smarmy college uber-intellectual professor types for an hour and a half. There wasn't a single character I would want to spend any more time with no matter how many years they've lived on earth. Unfortunately, the actors playing them weren't very good either. It's probably unfair for me to criticize the production values of this thing, but from the opening shot, I thought I was watching a car commercial. Behind the dialogue, there's this nearly constant music, stuff that I would describe as light adult techno. The story's cool and the script is intelligent, but don't get me started on plot holes, plot holes that somehow manage to exist without there even being a plot. The dialogue is heavy with historical allusions, intellectual name-dropping, and after a while it gets tedious. By the time a bomb is dropped, the only reaction that makes sense is "Oh, puhleeeze!" I did enjoy some of this film's ideas, specifically the connections made between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, but this should have been a lot better.

Our Man Flint

1966 spy spoof

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Controversial super-agent Flint is called upon to save the world from super-terrorists who want to use an earthquake machine to wreak havoc.

Shane, of shane-movies, really has nothing to say about this movie. He apologizes for the inconvenience.

Man of Marble

1976 Polish movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A female film student works on her dissertation, a documentary about Birkut, a Polish bricklayer used in propagandii as a Socialist symbol. It's a swift rise and a painful fall, the filmmaker discovers as she interviews individuals from his past and searches for Birkut himself.

This is really long and as dry as marble, so a lot of patience is required. I suppose this could be a case where the movie is much better than I think it is, but I'm not Polish and I'm not a Communist and I'm not opposed to Socialism and therefore lack the context for this to make complete sense to me. I'm not qualified to write about most of the movies I write about, but I'm even less qualified to write about something like this. It do kind of like the structure, an almost Citizen Kane-esque gradual unveiling of a character. Except there's no sled. The scenes with the director aren't terribly exciting, but I do really like how much fake news footage, propaganda films, and other footage is mixed in. The stuff looks authentic, and the guy who plays the titular man does a really good job. It really gives it a sort of fake-documentary feel and a different flavor. So did the soundtrack, reminiscent of 70's blaxploitation funk. Some of the music is so bad that I'm sure there wouldn't be a lot of people who would oppose removing it and replacing it with something better. I'm far too lazy to look it up, but I do wonder how a movie this critical was even allowed to be created and shown to people.

Special shane-movies trivia: This is easily the least humorous Polish movie I've ever seen.

Nothing But a Man

1964 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A transient black railroad worker decides to settle down when he falls for the daughter of a preacher man. Like a lot of black men living in the 1960s South, he struggles in his efforts for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The title immediately brings to mind of the line that is in most versions of the ballads and tall tales about John Henry, probably not coincidentally another black railroad worker. To paraphrase: "A machine's nothing but a machine, but a man is a man." Here, we have a moving and realistic portrayal of a man, a man caught in a machinery of racism and prejudice in the deep South, and I really like how honest that portrayal is. This isn't a platform for director Michael Roemer to whine about conditions for blacks in the South during the early 60s; instead, it's an honest examination of both those conditions and a flawed man trying his best to pursue happiness within that context. This has, I think thankfully, more to do with relationships between blacks living during this time period, pervading low standards and a lack of male role models. Duff truly is nothing but a man--working as hard as he can to get buy, desiring more, making mistakes, growing because of those mistakes, moving on. It's a hard look at a struggling young marriage and a father who has pretty much abandoned a son. This is low-budget, having the feel of a 70s or 80s television movie, and the acting is really raw. It gets in the way and keeps this from being a true masterpiece, but I did like and appreciate this one more than Killer of Sheep. I really liked opening shots of railroad work with harmonica accompaniment and a scene showing a wild church service.

Zebraman

2004 superhero movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Teacher and big-time loser Shinichi spends his nights perfecting a Zebraman costume, his tribute to a thirty-year-old television show that only aired for seven episodes but that he is nevertheless obsessed with. After meeting a new friend, he starts to develop actual powers. Just in time, too, since aliens are trying to blow us up. Can Zebraman stop them in time or will the little green guys kill us all?

This usually doesn't trip me up, but the special effects in Zebraman, especially the computer animated stuff in the final third, fill the screen with such ugliness and ineptitude that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Almost literally. I finished this movie, and it felt like I had eaten bad special effects. A ludicrous and incoherent climax combined with those awful colors, swirls of runny action, and garbled bombast stomps all over all the good stuff from the first two-thirds of the movie. And there is a lot to like in the first two-thirds. I always like Miike's sense of humor, here not quite as sick as in some of his previous work, and the almost-but-not-quite satirical quality kept me asking, "Is this for real?" Broken down, it's a pretty straight comic bookish superhero tale though. There's a lot of heart, a
likable protagonist, and an off-kilter funk that gave this a unique flavor, even when scenes showing the original Zebraman television show reminded me of the Power Rangers, and the low-key moments clashing with goofy action sequences reminded me of Big Man Japan. But then Miike makes us watch absurdly cartoonish bobbleheaded aliens and green newborns, and it all just gets gross. I'm probably aware that the grossness is intentional, but it didn't make it any more fun to watch. This was a great idea, but one poorly executed.

Man of a Thousand Faces

1957 biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The life of silent film legend Lon Chaney, father of talkie film legend Lon Chaney Jr., from his childhood growing up with deaf parents to his career as a make-up maestro in Hollywood.

I can't say I ever really bought this one. Cagney does an admirable job, and I liked the behind-the-scenes reconstructions of Chaney playing some of his most famous roles. But this never really feels like an accurate portrayal of the man, and so much of the film seems incomplete and boring because the director breezes over so much. The fact that I was far more interested in finding out more about the life and work of Lon Chaney before I started the movie than I was halfway through Man of a Thousand Faces is telling. Also telling--halfway through this, I started wishing I was watching a Lon Chaney Jr. movie instead, maybe Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House or Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. This is melodrama that never grips, and storytelling that rarely moves.

Teenage Caveman

1958 Corman clunker

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A twenty-something-year-old teenage caveman with a stylish haircut breaks his tribes rules by venturing beyond the river, meeting dangerous creatures and putting his people at risk. Oh, snap!

Teenage Caveman is a crappy movie, made with a budget of ten dollars and fourteen cents and a director who apparently had a time frame of four and a half days. Most people, I reckon, are going to be offended because Robert Vaughn as the "teenage" caveman has better hair than them. I didn't realize cavemen used hair products. Corman makes an attempt to give this some depth. There's all this talk about the three gifts to man that had me scratching my head, and there's a pretty nifty twist ending that, if you decide to see this, I might have ruined for you just by telling you there's a twist ending. There's also a classic Corman monster, one that rivals the muppet from Creature from the Haunted Sea. Heck, given the amount of footage that seems lifted straight from other crappy movies, Corman might actually have used the same monster. This probably isn't a B-movie I'd recommend to B-movie aficionados.

Big River Man

2009 documentary

Rating: 17/20 (Dylan: 20/20)

Plot: Fifty-four year old Slovenian national hero Martin Strel has swum the Danube. He's swum the Yangtze. And he's swum the Mighty Mississippi. Now it's the Amazon's turn. This documentary covers his 66-day swim of the almost 33,000 mile river with the help of two bottles of wine a day and a funky mask. Along the way, he loses his mind and enters the 4th dimension.

I learned a lot about Slovenia from watching Big River Man. They enjoy horse burgers there. Horse burgers are a little like chicken burgers but made from horse. Slovenia itself is shaped like a chicken. Slovenia is the DUI capital of the world. There's a "Learn the English Language" recording that teaches Slovenians to say "I am a drug dealer." This is a documentary you'll watch and wonder if it's real or not. Strel seems fatter than life, and the film just seems too funny to be legitimate. In fact, Dylan and I stopped watching this to do a little research and found out that the guy is real and has completed these amazing swims. He's just got more than the average amount of crazy, the type of fellow that Werner Herzog wouldn't mind following around with a camera for a while. This documentary blends hilarity and adventure so well. You get the impression that Strel's navigator, a guy with no real training in navigation, and Strel himself are hamming it up a little for the camera as they gradually lose their minds, but there's something eerie as well as hilarious in the way the swimmer's mind is completely gone in the last stages of his Amazonian swim and in the time following the feat. I still have no idea what he was talking about when he claimed he had entered and was stuck in the fourth dimension, and there are great scenes where he fashions a goofy mask to protect the skin of his face from the sun, runs off with his navigator and is later found naked and unresponsive on a beach, smears mayonnaise on his head and tries to use jumper cables to electrocute parasites that have attempted to burrow into his skull. He also references an Amazonian penis fish that enters the body via the urethra. And when they do, according to Strel, "no more penis." This is an adventurous journey into dementia with some nice hippie environmental messages built in, and it's one of the most bitchin' documentaries I've seen in a long time.

The Amazing Colossal Man

1957 man-who-changes-size movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Poor Lt. Col. Manning. After being exposed to radiation during a bomb test, he recovers but begins growing. And growing. And growing! Soon, he finds himself as a sixty-foot bald giant in a diaper. The growth disturbs his mind, and he begins terrorizing Las Vegas.

A Bert I. Gordon joint, and like the other movie of his on this blog (Earth vs. The Spider), it's almost exactly what you'd expect from this sort of 50s B-movie with only a few scenes that make it worth watching. The science doesn't make sense, and the plot goes exactly where you think it will,. It's a plot with some plot holes that are more colossal than the colossal guy's diaper! But the acting and special effects, with the exception of some transparent colossal man body parts, aren't as terrible as a lot of these cheapo affairs, and although it doesn't have as much of an existential subtext as The Incredible Shrinking Man, it does get moody and philosophical. Manning's growth and the parallel transformation of his mindset probably works metaphorically in the context of 1950's fears, but I watched this in 2010, a time when people don't have anything to worry about. I was left with one big question: There's a scene where Manning, big but not as colossal as he ends up, goes on a picnic with his wife. No, they don't "do it" afterwards, you perverts. But in the background, you can see an automobile that the couple apparently drove to the picnic site. However, there's no way Manning would have fit inside the car. These are the type of B-movie questions that keep me up late some nights because they inevitably lead to other questions. For example, how does Manning, big enough to be moved from a hospital to a circus tent, dispose of his fecal matter?

After the Thin Man

1936 sequel

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20)


Plot: Nick and Nora return from their honeymoon, the retired private dick swearing that he's finished solving cases for good. But not so fast, Nick! Nora's cousin's hubby's been missing for weeks, and her family wants Nick to find him. The couple have no problem doing that, but the case gets a bit more difficult and dangerous when somebody murders him. Oh, snap! Nick has to discover the identity of the real murderer in order to save his cousin-in-law from the electric chair.

As with the first in the series, the banter between the couple is more interesting that any of the Dashiell Hammett mystery. It inspired the wife and I to entertain ourselves by pretending to be Nick and Nora. We glued a bunch of fur to our eleven-month-old and taught her how to bark. Then, we imitated the snappy dialogue of Loy and Powell. I played Nora.

Me/Nora: Let's go solve a mystery, Darling.
Wife/Nick: You drink to much.
Me/Nora: (Weeps uncontrollably and becomes unresponsive)
Baby/Asta: Woof!

It wasn't quite as good. And this one, although entertaining from start to eventual finish, is not quite as good as its predecessor. It tosses in Jimmy Stewart in an interesting role and an assortment of oddballs to populate Nick and Nora's house for a funny surprise party. The murder mystery and its subsequent solving is dopey and convoluted, but I think that's part of the appeal with these things. We'll get to the others in the series soon.

Note: It's hard to get glued fur off baby skin. Find an alternative.

The Man with the Screaming Brain

2005 B-movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A rich guy shows up in Bulgaria for reasons I don't care to remember and, through a series of seemingly random events, is murdered by a cute gypsy woman. His cab driver is killed by the same woman. A crazy scientist procures both corpses and fuses their brains together. The rich guy and the cab driver might not agree on a lot of things, but they both wouldn't mind getting their revenge on the woman who killed them.

Bruce Campbell--nearly the modern Hollywood tall tale character that Chuck Norris has become--wrote, directed, and starred in this, a labor of love that apparently took him 19 years to go from his screaming brain to my television set. Bruce Campbell is not a very good writer. He's not a talented director. And despite what I said about his Ash in Evil Dead II being one of the greatest performances of all time, he's not a traditionally good actor at all. I'll give him credit though. The guy knows his audience and what they want. This comically pays homage to both cheapo sci-fi movies from fifty years ago and to the rest of Campbell's oeuvre, and I can imagine a lot of Evil Dead II fanboys giggling with glee while watching Bruce's titular man doing and saying just the kinds of things that Bruce Campbell's characters usually do and say. The most entertaining scene takes place in a restaurant as Bruce is adjusting to life with the cab driver's brain being fused to his own. His left hand (controlled by the right half of his brain which belonged to the cabbie) is piling salad on a plate while Bruce screams, "Gross! Gross!" and tries to fight it. A following scene involves Bruce putting his scarred head into a filthy toilet because his cranium is burning. Unfortunately, that's sort of how I felt while watching this movie. Most of the humor seems written by a man with no brain, and the story, though lifted almost directly from a variety of B-movie sources, lacks the cheap charm and unintentional comedy of the classically bad. This isn't as much of a waste of time as My Name Is Bruce but anybody in the mood for this sort of thing, unless they're a Bruce Campbell obsessive, should look elsewhere.