littledevilshortfilm Reviews

Inside Deep Throat (2005)

Prepare to get deep

[7/10 · 16 March 2022]

'Inside Deep Throat' is lightweight documentary on the infamous movie "Deep Throat" released in 1972, starring Linda Lovelace. The documentary blends archival footage with present day interviews of those involved in the movie, including the director, Gerard Damiano.

The filmmakers collected about 800 hours of interviews and archive footage and condensed this into 90 minutes of what is basically a review of the movie-making process and the impact it had when released, and what an impact that was.

Put together in a very short time and on an incredibly small budget, "Deep Throat" has become one of the most profitable movies ever and continues to provide a source of conversation, not the least of which is admitting one has actually seen the movie.

This is where the movie broke new ground having so-called prudes lining up desperate to see what all the fuss was about and sending the purists desperately trying to have it banned.

Meanwhile, as the movie was released, the documentary reveals that most of the profit from its phenomenal success was actually being syphoned off to fund criminals and their activities via a process know as "checkers and sweepers".

Prints of the movie were hand delivered and headcounts were taken at cinemas and the cash profit was collected with serious repercussion for those cinema owners who did not comply. What the documentary fails to reveal is where this money really went and it does feel like a vital piece is missing.

Original footage is shown, including a graphic and infamous moment with Linda Lovelace's character and the reason how she became known as 'Deep Throat'. Damiano also reveals that the title at one stage was going to be 'The Sword Swallower'.

Of course, Lovelace later went on to recant her voluntary involvement with the movie and she tells her side of the story.

A relatively harmless exposé of one of histories truly infamous movies, 'Inside Deep Throat' is a fairly innocuous peek into the behind-the-scenes action of a movie that caused a moral revolution in the USA.

Mutant (1984)

Very dated but well worth a watch late at night.

[5/10 · 16 March 2022]

Josh Cameron and his younger brother Mike decide to get away from it all with a drive through the countryside. However, their car is run off the road by rednecks and they are forced to hike into the nearby town of Goodland. Mike discovers a dead body in an alleyway but this is gone when they return with the sheriff.

They spend the night at a boarding house only for something to snatch Mike from underneath his bed. The next day, Josh goes searching for Mike. He and others realise that something strange is happening around the town.

They discover that toxic waste dumped nearby by the New Era Corporation is infecting the bloodstream of locals and turning them into zombies driven by a need to devour blood.

Soup for One (1982)

Very dated but worth a watch and it comes with a killer soundtrack.

[6/10 · 16 March 2022]

I was able to stream this online after a lot of perseverance. It's good and features one of my favourite soundtracks of all-time, especially Sister Sledge's 'Let's go on Vacation'.

The film follows Allan, (Saul Rubinek) a deeply neurotic and dopey looking television producer living in NYC whose unearned shallowness knows no bounds. He dates many women far out of his league in hopes of meeting his dream girl, and when he blatantly reveals his lack of interest in each and every one of them, that only makes them want him more and Allan begrudgingly beds each woman, because why not, right? Ugh.

Allan becomes so obsessed with looking for his dream girl that he somehow convinces a sketch artist to sketch her based off his description. Shortly after that, Maria (Marcia Strassman) enters Allan's life and convinced that she is his dream girl, he spends the rest of the film stalking her, annoying her and displaying so much aberrant behaviour towards her that she just gives up and accepts his many marriage proposals. However now that Allan has everything he wants - is he happy now? Spoiler alert: No, because Allan is a jerk.

After reading the above description, you may be thinking this just sounds like a typical Woody Allen rip-off and you would be very right. Although, there are also amazing things about this film that include:

• an opening sequence featuring disco dancing rats.

• an awesome disco soundtrack produced by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers (the co-founders of CHIC).

• a glorious cameo of the late and great Teddy Pendergrass as a nightclub singer.

• Christine Baranski and Andrea Martin making cameos as horny one-night stands.

• A scene involving actor Gerrit Graham and BDSM.

SOUP FOR ONE may have been just another generic rip-off when the film was initially released, however its chaotic absurdism is strangely appealing now and leaves it open to be re-discovered as a "cult" film.

Recommended.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

No! This needs to be less popular on IMDb!

[16 March 2022]

About a month before The Shawshank Redemption was released in theaters, director Frank Darabont showed the film to a crowd of film students at NYU. After the screening, a student surprised Darabont by saying he was insulted by the depiction of the "butch queer" Sisters posse that repeatedly rapes Tim Robbins in the film. Though the student was ceremoniously shot down by the teary-eyed (mostly straight) crowd, a sensitive Darabont managed a semi-apologetic response, pointing out that he had dedicated the film to his former agent Allan Greene, who helped Darabont get the directing gig at Castle Rock Entertainment but who died of AIDS shortly before the film finished shooting. I dismissed it then, but I should have known that Shawshank Redemption would become as beloved as it is now, ranking alongside other overrated "classics" like Casablanca, Schindler's List, and the genuinely terrible Star Wars as one of the greatest movies of all time (on IMDb's Top 250 list, the film currently ranks #3).

The appeal of the film isn't exactly inexplicable. Where Douglas Sirk and George Cukor made melodramas ("women's pictures"), and directors like Robert Aldrich and John Huston often made rock-solid noirs ("men's pictures"), Darabont does something in between, ingeniously (at least from a marketing perspective) crafting films for "the sensitive straight man" (you know: that strange breed of heterosexual dudes who don't have a problem telling a roomful of people they're about to "pinch a loaf" but are careful to leave an empty seat between themselves and male friends when they go to the movies together). Films like Twentynine Palms use the sensation of horror to plumb our country's hang-ups with sex and violence, whereas a film like Shawshank Redemption hides Big Issues behind cheap melodrama and noirish shadows. It's prison life as directed from inside a closet.

Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Darabont's film follows what happens to Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) after he's sent to prison for killing his wife and lover. From the soapy courtroom theatrics that open the picture to Andy's prison escape (how's that for a dramatic overhead!) and fuzzy-wuzzy reunion with Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) in Mexico, the film announces itself as Beaches for straight men. King's best stories, including his brilliant It, are bathed in the glow of adolescent innocence and sexual desire. It's an aesthetic and emotional philosophy Darabont understands and respects but erroneously applies to a story set inside a prison. Unlike the best prison dramas (like, say, Bresson's A Man Escaped, Jean Genet's Un chant d'amour, or any episode of Oz), sentimental twaddle like Shawshank Redemption (admittedly a few steps above a stinking pile of shit like The Last Castle) says zilch about life behind bars and human interaction.

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I don't mean to be cynical, but isn't prison life supposed to be a little less nostalgic than this? Shawshank Redemption is supposed to be a drama, but it's pitched somewhere between an intense thrill ride and romantic buddy comedy. When the evil Captain Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown) almost threatens to throw Andy off a roof, Darabont captures the moment with a dramatic overhead. Later, when the old man played by James Whitmore is paroled and discovers that he's lonely on the outside, he hangs himself in a halfway house. The moment would be touching if Red's trite narration didn't imply that life in prison isn't so bad after all. Freeman and Robbins are excellent performers, but just as the latter is forced to play a hollow saint, the former is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the story's trite Hallmark-isms. Red's race and social anxieties never register, and the one time he plays the role of "angry Black man," he's dutifully rewarded (how's that for irony?) with a get-out-of-jail card.

"Your ass belongs to me," says the evil warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton) when Andy arrives at Shawshank. Clearly Bogs Diamond (Mark Rolston) follows the same mantra. Twenty minutes into the film, when Andy walks into the mess hall, Bogs pops up his head and looks at the fresh-faced newcomer like a vulture that's spotted fresh meat...or the love of his life. Naturally, it's only a matter time before the redheaded leader of the Sisters gang fucks Andy in the ass. Except right before Bogs gives it to Andy, Darabont's camera politely pans away. "I wish I could tell you Andy fought the good fight...and the Sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that...but prison is no fairy-tale world," says Red over narration. The irony here is that prison is a spit-and-polished fairy-tale for Darabont, who would rather linger on an old man feeding a worm to a sick little bird than truly confront us with the humanity of an unjust world.

Darabont's version of King's story is gimmicky and schematic and panders to our most contrived sexual anxieties and base notions of revenge and guerrilla justice. By film's end, the heroic Andy has not only escaped prison, but every villain has been punished. Darabont's lead characters in Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Majestic all bring to mind classic James Stewart roles from It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Shawshank Redemption is drenched in movie nostalgia, but the story's fixation with movies and starlets like Raquel Welch and Rita Hayworth doesn't mean anything. Just as posters in the film disguise plot twists, the film's naïve sentimentality undermines serious issues of violence, rape, manhood, and male bonding. Indeed, after the Sisters are silenced, Darabont cranks up the unilateral act of hero worship: prison goes from being "mean and scary" to, well, "cute." Andy writes letters in order to get books into the prison library, starts doing everyone's taxes, and wins the hearts of guards and prisoners alike. Someone should bake a pie. Oh, wait, they do!

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Eleven years on... this still packs a punch

[8/10 · 30 June 2018]

Is this the Coen Brother's best movie? Not an easy question and far too many contenders in their filmography to choose from. This is my personal favorite. It is a slow burner and that's way it works. The cinematography is pristine, the performances are subtle and as the viewer, you know exactly who you're dealing with from the get go. The adaption from Cormac McCarthy's novel is a smooth one. It is pretty much verbatim and just as atmospheric. As a fan of the novel, I often wondered what Chigurh looked like. After seeing him portrayed by Javier Bardem, I cannot imagine anyone else in the role. His performance is chilling to the core. He is a killing machine that just so happens to bleed, yet still seemingly unstoppable.

Josh Brolin is excellent as the cowboy who makes a decision to take the money that doesn't belong to him and accepts his fate as soon as danger presents itself.

Tommy Lee Jones is the glue that holds the narrative together, and lest we forget the wonderful Kelly McDonald who if I told you was Scottish, you wouldn't believe me!

Overall, a fascinating insight into these three characters and their unique outlooks on the events unfolding around them.

A well deserved 8/10