Ladies and gentlemen, I have a VERY special post for you today.  Now, as you may or may not know, I’m a huge fan of the martial arts and martial arts movies.  These are some of the most unique action movies ever created.  Everybody knows who Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, and Jean-Claude Van Damme are, but there are many actors and actresses who have starred in some of the most fantastic martial arts films.  But for me, there is one who stands out the most and is a real trail-blazer for women in the martial arts and martial arts movies.  Today, I present to you my interview with The Queen of Martial Arts, Cynthia Rothrock!

The 1970s was a time of social and political upheaval.  The early parts of the decade were mired with the Vietnam War as well as the anti-war/peace protests.  They also had a president that resigned because he was going to be impeached and charged with a federal crime.  To say that the decade was chaotic is a major understatement.  It was also a decade of change.  There was a huge push against censorship in the media and news outlets.  The film industry was also affected by these changes and events.  The 1970s saw some of the greatest films that were ever made:  Star Wars, Superman, Enter The Dragon just to name a few.  There was one genre that really began to take on a different shape:  Horror.  The genre has been around since the beginning of cinema and gave us amazing movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and King Kong.  While the genre would continue to evolve over the decades before 1970.  In the 70s, horror took on a particularly mean streak that would last for decades.  To be fair, there were a lot of movies that came out of that decade which were b-level schlock and not very good.  That happens every decade.  What I’m going to do for this Halloween special of The Best is to go over the best and most controversial horror movies that came out during the 1970s.  Be aware that some of these movies are very graphic and can be very disturbing for certain audiences.  You have been warned.

1972: The Last House on the Left

Now, the first two years of the decade were filled with movies that were not particularly memorable.  It wasn’t until 1972 that we got to see how vicious the genre could be.  Enter Wes Craven and his first real movie: The Last House on the Left.  This was the film that put Wes Craven on the map.  The film was notorious for its graphic and sexual violence.    It was so controversial that it was banned in several countries and landed on the U.K’s Video Nasties list.  I remember seeing this one several years ago and it was pretty shocking, even by today’s standards.  But for 1972, this movie pissed people off.  It would not be the first time that Wes Craven would craft something so savage.  Oh, no.  He had a lot more up his sleeve.

1973: The Exorcist

1973 had some pretty decent horror flicks, but one stood out among all others: The Exorcist.  What is now regard as one of the greatest horror films of all time, was released to a suprisingly positive reaction, with some people hating the film.  It’s to be expected.  This is one of the most engaging horror movies that I’ve ever seen.  It handles the investigation into Reagan’s possession fairly realistically with priests telling the mother to take the girl to a psychologist first.  That’s exactly what would happen.  The film also gained a level of notoriety with some of its……graphically violent scenes.  There were some….scenes involving a crucifix which I will not describe her, but that along with the foul language coming out of Linda Blair’s mouth during the movie took a lot of people off guard.  While the film was definitely a success, it definitely came with a price.

1974: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs3981DoINw

Of all the horror films that came out during the 1970s, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, along with The Exorcist, was talked about the most.  Supposedly based on a true story(which it wasn’t), the followed a group of college kids as they run into the maniacal Leatherface and his crazy cannibal family.  There really wasn’t a whole lot of story here, but the images of Leatherface chasing down and killing the kids was shocking and brutal.  It was very controversial upon release with several people praising it for its intensity and technical prowess while others hated the film because of its brutal violence and gore.  You wanna know something funny about the film?  It really isn’t that gory.  One of the greatest tricks that the film pulled, even if it was unintentional, was fooling the audience into seeing something that really wasn’t there.  Yeah, there was a shot of a gross skeleton at the beginning of the film and we saw a girl get put onto a hook, but do we actually see people getting eviscerated?  No.  It was implied, but never really shown.  Even for 1974, it wasn’t that gory.  1974 also gave us the Christmas chiller, Black Christmas.

1975: Jaws; Salo, Or the 120 Days of Sodom

Jaws is an absolute classic.  It’s the movie that really put Steven Spielberg on the map and made us afraid to go into the water.  The reason the film worked so well was, oddly enough, because the shark they built was malfunctioning, so they had to improvise.  That’s where John Williams came in with his iconic score.  Every time the music played, we knew that the shark was going to attack.  It’s often been said that less is more, and Jaws is a perfect example of that.  It’s absolutely one of my favorite films of all time and it is perfect in almost every way.  The less said about the sequels, the better.

If you’re looking for a film about subtlety, Salo ain’t it.  This is easily one of the most bizarre and twisted films that I’ve ever seen.  I’ve only seen it once, and I have no intention of going back for seconds.  This is possibly the most controversial film on this list.  The graphic nature of what takes place during this movie is disturbing.  It is very clear though, that the film was targeting capitalism as a form of barbarism and how it treats the lower classes.  The director of the film, Pier Paolo Pasolini was found murdered in Rome 3 weeks before the film was released.  Some of the rumors of his death were a result of the film, but there’s no conclusive evidence.  While the film is very difficult to sit through, there is no doubt that the film has artistic merit.  It does.  It’s just not my kind of art.

1976: Carrie; The Omen

What can I say about Carrie that hasn’t been said before.  This is one of the best Stephen King adaptations of all time.  It’s one of Sissy Spacek’s most iconic roles.  The scene that everyone talks about is the prom sequence, and why not?  It’s one of the most chilling and spectacular sequences of the entire movie.  It also featured John Travolta in one of his earliest roles.  There is no doubt that Carrie stands as one of the best horror movies of the 1970s.

Now, this is one of my personal favorites.  The Omen features Gregory Peck in one of his best and unusual roles as that of a United States Senator dealing with a child that may or may not be the Antichrist.  What makes The Omen work so well, is the fact it’s ambiguous about the nature of Damien.  Is he really the Antichrist or are some people just believe that he is?  Throughout most of the film, it’s smart enough to avoid directly answering the question.  All the deaths that happen, seem to be of some kind of coincidence, until an intrepid reporter discovers an unusual pattern in his photos.  While The Omen is not the goriest film on this list, it does have a sequence that really shocked the hell out of everybody, and it involves a sheet of glass.  It is such an interesting film.  While the sequels, would definitely answer the question of whether or not Damien is the Antichrist, I prefer the ambiguity of the original film.  It makes it a lot more thought-provoking.

1977: The Hills Have Eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95C1wxkwMeA

The second Wes Craven on this list, The Hills Have Eyes takes an American suburbanite family and throws them into one of the worst situations you could possibly imagine.  Much like The Last House on the Left, this film was very gritty and unrelenting.  The level of violence in this film was very shocking to a lot of people.  In fact, in several countries, the film had to be edited down to make it more palatable for audiences.  While I personally think that the 2006 film is a better movie, there is no doubt in my mind, that this film was influential.  It became a huge cult classic and cemented Wes Craven as one of the greatest horror movie directors.  He would go on to write and direct a sequel in 1985, which he would disown, for good reason.

1978: Dawn of the Dead; I Spit on Your Grave; Halloween

The late, great George Romero was known as the godfather of the zombie film.  His first real zombie film came in the form of Night of the Living Dead.  It was considered to be one of, if not, the greatest zombie film of all time.  But, Mr. Romero would not stop there.  He would create a follow-up film that would not only be iconic in its own right, but would rival that of the original Night of the Living Dead: Dawn of the Dead.  Featuring a group of survivors that have found a mall to hole up in, they wait for rescue.  The film has some of the best gore you will ever see because of Tom Savini.  It’s well worth checking out.

I Spit on Your Grave(A.k.a. The Day of the Woman)

This is another one of those grindhouse, Video Nasty films that have permeated the 1970s.  This one was met with a lot of criticism.  A lot of people took issue with the fact that the female lead, Jennifer Hills, played by Camille Keaton, was sexually assaulted for the better part of an hour.  A lot of people also dismissed the film because of the level of violence that the main character uses against her attackers.  While some people had begun to start defending the film over the years, I Spit on Your Grave remains one of the most controversial and divisive movies ever put on film.  The film would eventually inspire a re-make in 2010 as well as an official sequel that was finished filming last year.

When it comes to slasher movies, they all owe their existence to this one little flick by John Carpenter.  Starring Jamie Lee Curtis in the role that would define her career, Halloween also starred legendary actor Donald Pleasance as Doctor Loomis, the psychologist that warned people about the evil Michael Myers.  While Halloween may not technically be the first slasher film(that would by Hitchcock’s Psycho), this was the film that redefined the sub-genre.  Iconic music crafted by Carpenter himself, Halloween was an exercise in terror.  It wound up being one of the most iconic movies ever made, and put John Carpenter on the map.

1979: Alien

While one could argue that Ridley Scott’s Alien is a science fiction film, it is also a horror picture and deserves a spot on this list.  Alien was a defining film for many reasons.  It launched the careers of Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver, who would become the face of the Alien franchise, at least the first four movies.  Not only did the film feature one of the greatest movie monsters of all time, it was also incredibly claustrophobic and dark.  It’s often been said that in horror movies, it’s not what you see that scares you.  Alien is a prime example of that.  Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, Alien is by far one of my favorite horror movies.

A lot of the films that I have presented here aren’t necessarily the most enjoyable of films.  Honestly, a film does not have to be enjoyable in order to be compelling.  A lot of these films were compelling in their own way.  The movies in this list are a reflection of the decade in which they were made, and as a result they mostly had something to say about politics or social issues.  While one or two of the movies hit it right on the nose, the other films were a little bit more subtle about their themes.  Regardless, these are the horror films that I feel defined the horror genre in the 1970s.  Some of you may disagree, and that’s fine.  I may do another one of these in the future, but it may take a while.  Anyways, what you guys think?  Is there something I left off?  Let me know.

Released: March 2007

Director: Martin Weisz

Rated R

Run Time: 89

Distributor: Fox Atomic

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Michael Bailey Smith: Papa Hades
Michael McMillian: Napoleon
Daniella Alonso: Missy
Jacob Vargas: Crank
Flex Alexander: Sarge
Jessica Stroup: Amber

When Wes Craven unleashed the original The Hills Have Eyes back in 1977, it sent shock waves throughout the genre.  The film’s unrelenting grittiness helped solidify Wes Craven as the next master of horror.  The film was regarded by fans of the genre as one of the best and brutal horror movies of the 70s.  In 2006, Alexandre Aja in conjunction with Wes Craven, released a remake of Craven’s film.  Not only did the film one-up the original in nearly every single way, 2006’s The Hills Have Eyes was elegant proof that horror movie remakes can be awesome.  However, when someone tries to follow-up a successful horror film with a sequel, it doesn’t always work.  Wes Craven released the original The Hills Have Eyes Part II back in 1985 and it was poorly received, shall we say.  Due to the success of the 2006 film, Wes Craven and company decided it would be a good idea to craft a sequel.  Just so everybody is aware, the 2007 The Hills Have Eyes 2 is not a remake of the the 1985 film.  No, the 2007 Hills is a sequel to the 2006 movie.  So, is The Hills Have Eyes 2 a worthy follow-up to Alexandre Aja’s film?  Short answer:  Not even close.

The survivors of the first film have alerted the authorities and military to the fact that there are mutated people living in the wastelands of the New Mexico desert, and the Army began to bomb these freaks out of existence.  Some have survived and are hiding in the mines.  Essentially, the film really begins with a group of Army trainees on a training exercise that they hilariously fail, and are sent by military command to somewhere else.  On the way, they have to deliver equipment to a group of scientists in secret location called Sector 16.  Upon arriving, they discover that the camp has been abandoned.  Searching the bunker and the surrounding environment, the group soon realizes that they are not alone.  The setup is not the worst thing in the world, and using the military would have been very interesting, if it was handled by better film-makers.  The story is basically a reason to see these guys get killed or worse.  In fact, one of the aspects of the story is that because the mutant population is dwindling, the mutants kidnap women to breed and rebuild their numbers while slaughtering the men.  Again, it’s an aspect that could really amp up the horror of the film.  Unfortunately, it’s never truly realized as the film’s writing is fucking awful.  What makes the writing and script worse, is that it was written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan.  It’s a HUGE step backwards.  The first film was fairly well-received in the horror community, but this…..this is dreadful.

The bad writing permeates pretty much everything else about the film, the characters in particular.  Oh, my god, the characters in this movie are TERRIBLE.  There is not a single likable soul among these characters.  Every single one of them is an absolute disgrace.  These characters are supposed in the Army, but apparently they skipped Basic Training.  I read somewhere that the film-makers behind this….”film” had absolute respect for the military.  Really?  Then, why are these characters so….STUPID?!  They go from making one stupid mistake to another, and I guess somebody thought that this was good character development.  WRONG.  You can’t connect with these characters, because they are so annoying.  One of them is a peace-loving nimrod named Napoleon and you have a short-fused dingbat named Crank.  The mutants also get shafted.  Their only purpose in the film is to kill the men and kidnap and rape the women.  That is the crux of their motivation.  That’s not good enough.  In the first film, you find out why the mutants do what they do.  It doesn’t make them any more likable, but they have motivation, and it makes them more terrifying.  Here….I’m sorry, not even Michael Bailey Smith as Papa Hades could salvage this.

Effects-wise, we can tell that KNB had some hand in this, but it is NOT their best effort, I can tell you that right now.  There are moments of some really gruesome effects.  The opening scene in which a pregnant women gives birth to a mutant baby is suitably disgusting and shown in detail.  But there really isn’t a whole let else that matches that.  There is definitely blood and gore here, but the way that it’s done is surprisingly bad.  There is definitely CGI being used in some of these sequences and the green-screen effects are painfully obvious, especially when some of the soldiers fall off a cliff.  The make-up on the mutants isn’t awful, but it’s nowhere near as varied as the previous film.  They all look the same here.

Is the film boring, though?  No.  It does move at a pretty good clip, and the kills come quickly and violently.  Unfortunately, it’s not enough to save a film that was half-baked from the beginning.  The director, Martin Weisz, was clearly out of his element here, and his filmography on IMDB indicates that he hasn’t done anything worthwhile since.  Most of the actors are forgettable, with the exception of Daniella Alonso.  This could have been a decent outing if Wes and Jonathan Craven had spent more than a month writing the script.  I’m not kidding, they wrote the script in a month, and it clearly shows.  I forget who said it, but somebody once said that you can make a bad movie out of a good script, but you can’t make a good movie out of a bad script.  The script for The Hills Have Eyes 2 was very bad.  The film, like any other bad movie, has its moments, but unlike the first movie, it doesn’t have a whole to say.  As said in my The Hills Have Eyes review, the most effective horror movies are where you connect with the characters.  Craven simply didn’t do that here.  As a result, it’s a movie that I can safely say that you can skip, and you won’t be any worse off.

My Final Recommendation: Run to the hills! Run for your lives! 5/10

A couple of days ago, I saw one of the most unique post-apocalyptic films in the past decade: A Reckoning.  Focused on one man who is apparently the only survivor of some kind apocalyptic event, A Reckoning follows this man through his daily routines until he decides to finally move on.  It’s one of the most compelling films that I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s something I would love for everybody to see.  Well, today I have a special interview for you: Andrew David Barker(A.D. Barker), the writer, producer, composer, AND director of A Reckoning.

Hi there.  Having just seen your film, A Reckoning, I have to say it’s one of the most unique and compelling post-apocalyptic films that I’ve seen in years.  The way the whole thing come together was just fantastic.  I would like to ask you a few questions about it.

1.  First off, what drew you to the world of film-making?

I’ve always loved movies, right from a very young age. I was born in 1975 so I’m very much of the Spielberg and Lucas generation. I by and large grew up in front of the TV. I loved going to the pictures – as we called it back then – and was just in awe of cinema. I grew up in Derby, a fairly down-trodden Midland town in the UK and movies were an escape.

When we were about 13/14, a friend of mine got a video camera, and that was it, we were off. Every Saturday we’d pile round his house and remake whatever the film of the day was – so we made stuff like Die Hard and Back to the Future in his back garden, if you can imagine that? We even made our own version of Teen Wolf! That sense of creating something with others, the collaborative nature of filmmaking, really stuck with me. In fact, it has never gone away.

I loved making A Reckoning. It was tough, and man was it cold, but it was never not fun. We had the entire location to play around in and the crew were great, and Les was great. His is an extraordinary performance. 

2. What do you think about the current state of affairs with the post-apocalyptic film genre?

 I’m not really sure, I haven’t seen one in a while. Although saying that, I think given the times we’re living in, we might be seeing some in the future.

I’ve always loved post-apocalyptic films. They have landscapes that appeal to me. I love derelict buildings and lands gone to ruin. It’s great imagery.

3. One of the most interesting aspects of A Reckoning was its approach to the whole post-apocalyptic feel.  There are some minor clues here and there that give you a tiny bit of an idea of what happened, but it’s never fully explained, yet felt like a deliberate choice.  Was the idea to keep the event as ambiguous as possible an idea at the very beginning of the project?

 Yeah, I wanted it ambiguous. I didn’t feel the need to fully explain it. Maybe the Lone Man doesn’t even know, and if he does, he has long since stopped caring about it – he’s just trying to get on with his day to day existence.

I wanted this film to exist in a kind of dream state. I wanted it to be and remain mysterious. This is a human being laid bare; a man clinging onto a long dead world. Normality no longer applies.

4. A Reckoning kind of feels like a very personal look at how someone would respond to an apocalyptic situation.  The psychological aspects of the film feel extremely real.  How important was it that the audience gets to see how The Lone Man deal with the situation in different ways?

I think I’ve always been interested in madness – in how far a person can be pushed until the mind snaps. For me, every set up, every situation, I just approached illogically, or as illogically as I could figure. I just tried to figure out how you could survive and what things you’d do to occupy your time. The Man tries to hold onto his old life – the habit and structure give him a centre. For a while, anyway.

5. Leslie Simpson’s performance was outstanding.  Did he really like the script at first, or did he need some convincing?

He did like the script and came straight on board, which was wonderful. I went up to his flat one weekend and we talked it through and then we were away. It came together really fast. I wrote the treatment in the September or October and we were shooting by the January of the following year.

Les was a marvel and I loved collaborating with him. We developed a good short hand very fast and we were pretty much always on the same page. He had this down and he really is incredible in it. To carry a film – a film with minimal dialogue – almost entirely on your own is quite something. How he’s not a big star now, I don’t know. Although I do know he’s now writing and directing his own short. He’s made a couple of really good short films.

6.  I really loved the visual aesthetic of the film.  It was beautifully bleak.  I also noticed that there was no CGI whatsoever, which is rare these days.  How did you manage to get the film to look as desolate and isolated as it does?

It’s the location, which speaks for itself. It was an abandoned RAF base, an entire village just left to ruin. There was no running water, no electricity, no health and safety! And if that wasn’t bleak enough, a few days into the shoot, the snow came, and boy, did it come.

I knew going in that I would have to be very flexible with the script and would have to adapt to whatever the elements and location threw at me, so it was designed to roll with the punches.

The snow makes the film look very grand, so we got very lucky there. We also lucked out with that red sky towards the end of the film. That’s all real. There are no special effects in the film. We couldn’t afford any.

7. Often, the human aspect of the post-apocalyptic genre is set aside for the spectacle.  How important was it to try and keep a very human and grounded story in a genre that has somewhat sidestepped those ideas? 

Well we couldn’t afford the spectacle. This film was done on a ridiculously low budget. Ten/eleven grand maybe. I basically worked to my limitations and I designed a story that was achievable for me to make. That said, even if I’d had the money, I’d still want to make a very human story. That’s what I respond to in stories. Spectacle is great and I can be a sucker for it, but I need story and character, without it you’ve not got much to go on.

8. There are a lot of interesting themes running through the film about loneliness, habits and learning to let go of certain things.  What are you hoping that the audience will take away from A Reckoning?

I just hope people see it and respond to it. I hope they think it’s something they haven’t seen before, that it’s a little different – that it speaks to them in someway. I don’t really know much more than that.

9. What do you have coming up?  Are there any projects or film ideas that you would like to tackle in the future?

I’m hoping to shoot something next year. I’ve been writing and have a couple of things on the go. I just need to find the elusive money.

One project I’d really like to do is adapt my novel Dead Leaves. I’ve written a script and really would love to do that one. It’s set in the early 80s, during the video nasty media storm we had here in the UK, about a group of horror film fans searching for a copy of the notorious “nasty” The Evil Dead.

But besides that, I’ve got a lot of ideas for films. There’s a lot of things I want to do, given the chance.

10.  Last question:  What is your favorite post-apocalyptic film and why?

Mad Max 2. That’s a seminal film for me. It’s one of the films that made me want to make films. It’s just the coolest movie. Every time I watch it I find something new, and also, it always makes me want to go out and shoot something myself. Thank you, George.  

I would like to thank Mr. Barker for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for us.  A Reckoning is one of the best movies of its kind, and blows a lot of big-budget blockbusters out of the water.  If you can find the film(legally, mind you.  No piracy.), you will not be disappointed.  It is truly a diamond in the rough.  It’s been a couple of days since I saw it, and I’m still thinking about it.  A Reckoning is truly a film worth seeking out.