NoWo600Wo #2: The “I haven’t had time to write for 2-3 weeks” edition

So, NoWo600Wo will also be an outlet for the times when I’m still watching some movies, but don’t have enough time to write about them. Here’s the rundown for what I’ve watched since the last review I posted.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin

What Blood and Black Lace got wrong, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin got right. This Lucio Fulci film is way tighter – the cast is kept small, everyone has a reason to kill for the most part, and it keeps you guessing until the end. And hell, there’s a detective who explains everything at the end. Bored, seemingly repressed housewife Caroline keeps having dreams where she kills her swinger neighbor Julia, and wouldn’t you know it, Julia soon ends up dead. There were two witnesses, a pair of hippies who were tripping out on LSD, who may or may not be able to clear Caroline, her husband, or anyone else that is suspected.

Bloody Birthday

This is the DVD that crapped out on us 35 minutes into the first viewing, and we had to get Netflix to send another copy. Unfortunately, the first 35 minutes are probably the most interesting thing in this movie. Three children are born during an eclipse, and in the weeks before their 10^th birthday party, they go on a killing spree. I imagine there are a lot of children born during eclipses, but you never hear of them going on killing sprees – one of the main characters who is heavily into astrology, and sports a bitchin’ Dorothy Hammill haircut claims that being born during an eclipse meant that the same parts of their personalities are missing. Yeah, okay. There is no massacre at the birthday party, so the title is a bit of a copout. The first 35 minutes of the movie feature a really long and gratuitous dance by a naked Julie Brown (the comedian, not the MTV VJ), and one of the children is played by Billy Jayne (nee Jacoby), who later went on to play Mikey on Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and still occasionally pops up in commercials. This DVD was also released by VCI Entertainment, the same company who gave us Blood and Black Lace, so the quality is supercrappy.

Five Element Ninja

I am sometimes subject to my boyfriend’s movie phases, and lately it’s been Shaw Brothers movies. So far, this has been the only one that has kept my attention. There is a war between kung-fu warriors and ninja warriors, with their bosses looking to control the martial arts world. During the opening battle, one of the ninjas is forced to commit hari kari, but poisons the kung-fu leader in the process. The kung-fu leader sends his average or less-than-average-skilled men out to fight the “Five Element Ninjas” – small groups of ninjas who each represent fire, gold, water, earth, and trees. Only one makes it to the final element, Earth, and poor Bloomers (as I like to call him), he basically gets stabbed in the balls several times by ninjas who are hiding underground. The ninjas later raid the kung-fu people’s compound and kill almost everyone there. All except one, who goes to his first teacher and learns the art of the ninja and the Five Element Ninja along with some other students, who go on to avenge. The Five Element Ninja fights are impressive, and at the very least, watch it to see their costumes and their weaponry. Although I will admit that the Water Ninjas are pretty disappointing, everyone else makes up for it.

Epidemic

Oh, Lars von Trier, you Danish nut you. Watching Epidemic takes a lot of patience, and this is from someone who usually digs movies about writing. Lars and Niels, played by Lars von Trier and Niels Vorsel are trying to write a horror screenplay loosely based on the Black Plague Epidemic. They do research, they visit Germany to hear a scary story from their buddy played by Udo Kier, and it takes up 100 minutes, although it’s interspersed with scenes from the movie they are writing. They present a 12-page synopsis to their connection to the Danish Film Board, a man who has a windbreaker fetish, and he basically says what everyone who has been sitting through this movie has been thinking. It is only in the last 5 minutes does anything kind of gross happen, but it’s nowhere near on the level of disturbing that the ending von Trier’s mini-series The Kingdom has, which also required a lot of patience to watch, because the 4-episodes, 4-hours copy I watched, nothing happened for 3 hours, then all this crazy shit happens in the final hour. So yeah, this movie isn’t very gory, and while it’s a little funny at times, it’s not a deep sort of art film.

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