This time, our reviewers were hard at work, tackling films from 1911-1920. Short films continued to be made available to the public but some of the films became quite longer. Film editing was more creatively employed in storytelling on film.
The Deadly Art of Illusion, x2
F/X DIRECTED BY ROBERT MANDEL/1986; F/X2 DIRECTED BY RICHARD FRANKLIN
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: FEBRUARY 1, 2022/KL STUDIO CLA...
Ten 2021 Movies That I say are Good.
Wow, I really dragged my feet on this one. In fact, I’ve dragged my feet with the uneasy friction of an escaped men...
Filmmaker Julia Ducournau Takes us on one Unrelentingly Disturbingly Unique but Ultimately Heartfelt Ride
DIRECTED BY JULIA DUCOURNAU/FRENCH/2021
BL...
With its gargantuan dancing ducks and toga-wearing teens, Village of the Giants reputation as the kookiest teen movie of the 1960s should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. That it’s based on renowned science fiction author H.G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth only makes the whole thing all the kookier. Gordon took another crack at the material in 1976 with AIP’s Food of the Gods, a boiled-down adaptation of only the first part of the author’s larger work. Although the director tended to stay in his lane as a maker of giant creature nonsense, by that time, he and every other genre filmmaker were preoccupied with ripping off Jaws and upping whatever exploitation ante that they could. Village of the Giants, for all its massive shortcomings, still manages to stand tall as the go-to go-go sci-fi feature of its bright day… hailing from a time just before the world had reason to freak out over bigger problems.
The Village Detective: a song cycle tells of a mysterious canister of 35mm movie film rescued from the ocean floor by the crew of an Icelandic fishing vessel. The decades-submerged celluloid within proved to be four reels of a 1969 Soviet crime-comedy called The Village Detective (Derevensky detektiv). Having been down there for years, the film itself had taken on all kinds of peculiar chemical degradations. Although The Village Detective, directed by Ivan Lukinsky, is not considered any kind of rare or lost film, the physical damage to this print puts its discovery right in the wheelhouse of experimental documentarian Bill Morrison.
The many musical performances, both in-world and integrated, are good (particularly a tightly coordinated split screen number) and the music itself is even better. Director/producer Val Guest, for all his potshots taken at the coffee shop “rebellion” of the youth set, does a formidable of depicting the budding scene and the neon-y, urban and modernized world surrounding it. The film is never better than when the kids get to groovin’ on the dance floor. It’s the newfangled widescreen frame a-hoppin’ and a-boppin’. Clearly, the espresso- or, er, “expresso”- is freely flowing!
Jim co-founded ZekeFilm in 2011. He's been writing about films since 2003 for outlets such as ScreenAnarchy. He is the current President of the St. Louis Film Critics Association, and an adjunct instructor of film studies at Webster University. He's also worked as video editor and Art Director for professional film and video productions. He also co-hosted the long-running comedy podcast, The Wonder Show. He is a life-long St. Louisian living with his wife and four children.
