Code Name: Wild Geese (1984)

When Will from The Exploding Helicopter podcast asked if I wanted to be a guest on his show, he suggested a few movies, and this was on the list.  As I had been looking to do more Antonio Margheriti, and get some more flicks with DTVC Hall of Famer Klaus Kinski, this seemed like the perfect choice.  As an aside, if you haven't been checking out the Exploding Helicopter site, and podcast, you really must--not to mention following him on Twitter, where he posts great gifs of some of the best exploding helicopters in cinema.

Code Name: Wild Geese has Lewis Collins as a guy who leads a rag-tag group of mercenaries in Asia.  USA DEA agent Ernest Borgnine contracts with Collins's crew to take out some heroin dealers in the Golden Triangle.  The problem is, they get all the way out there, blow up the drugs, only to have a henchman blow up their helicopter.  Not only that, but they discover another drug depot.  Now they need to destroy the second one, survive, and get home.  Oh, and there's also Klaus Kinski, he's never up to any good.

I had fun with this.  It wasn't the greatest, the characters weren't well developed, especially the star, Lewis Collins, whom I thought they could've done more with.  Also, despite having a consistent action quotient, it did get repetitive at times--how many times can you see guys being shot and falling from high up, or shimmying to death as they get sprayed with gunfire?  On the other hand, Margheriti's model-work was fantastic, including a great car chase, a train explosion, and blowing up buildings that he rendered from the actual structures they were shooting--in fact, this was so well-done, it took Will telling me they were models for me to catch it.  I also enjoyed Kinski, Borgnine, and Lee Van Cleef, who played the helicopter pilot.  I think you could do a lot worse for a low-budget military jungle actioner.

When I did the pod, I talked about a kind of Chekhov's Gun theory I have with Klaus Kinski: if you have Kinski in your movie, he has to eventually be a baddie, and that's what happened here.  It's not the Kinski on 10 that we love though.  He's kind of subdued, wearing jumpsuits, chewing up scenery.  Also, he's dubbed, I guess because his lines were in German in the original, and that tempers some of his punch as an actor.  I think as a Kinski enthusiast, it was fun to see him here, but it wasn't the full-on Kinski we love.

I wasn't familiar with Lewis Collins before doing the Exploding Helicopter pod, but Will being from England, knew all about him.  His show, The Professionals, didn't air here in the States, but I discovered in reading up on him on imdb, that he was up for the role of James Bond, I guess at the time Timothy Dalton got it.  After seeing Lewis Collins in this, I think he would've made a great Bond--or at least an interesting one.  I think Margheriti tried to tap into that here, combining a bit of international man of intrigue with grizzled war leader.  Again, like a lot of the character development, it was uneven, so we never got a full sense of either.

Anytime we get an Oscar winner on the DTVC it's great.  Usually it's Nicolas Cage or Cuba Gooding Jr., but Ernest Borgnine is another winner with a strong DTV CV.  One of the things I liked best about this was seeing his scenes with Kinski.  We know Kinski was very anti-Hollywood, and the Oscar is the greatest honor Hollywood can bestow on an actor, so I got the sense in watching him with Borgnine that he was like "Oscar huh?  I'm not impressed."  Borgnine for his credit was doing his thing, and even opposite Kinski there was a sense that he could care less and felt like he had nothing to prove.  One thing I appreciate about both actors is they treat acting like a profession, and if the money is right, they'll take the job and do their work.

Finally, because I was a guest on the Exploding Helicopter podcast for this film, I feel it's necessary to discuss the exploding helicopter action.  As I told Will, what impressed me here was how the exploding helicopter was integral to the plot.  Usually the exploding helicopter is a quick and easy way to infuse action into a film, but beyond possibly killing off a baddie in the denouement, it doesn't have any impact one way or the other on how the story unfolds.  When I think of movie tropes, the exploding helicopter is up there with damsels in distress and car chases as one of the most prevalent, but unlike those other two, for me it's the one that's tacked on the most, so to see it have that kind of impact on the characters was refreshing for me.

I found this on Prime, and thought it was a fun time.  It's not the greatest, but not the worst way to spend 90 minutes.  Thank you again to Will for having me on the Exploding Helicopter pod, and for everyone who hasn't checked out yet, definitely do.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087068

Schizoid (1980)

This is a movie I've been wanting to cover for a long time, but when I finally found it, I decided I'd wait and review it on Halloween. There was something about it when I first saw it on TV, when I was much younger in the mid 80s (we were all much younger in the mid-80s, weren't we?), the whole thing was just creepy, every character, every scene. I wanted to see if it held up to the test of time.

Schizoid is about a woman, Julie, who runs an advice column. After months of group therapy sessions, she's decided to divorce her husband, who also works with her at the paper. A big reason for this is her new love for her therapist, Klaus Kinski. At the same time, Kinski's other clients are turning up dead, stabbed to death with a pair of long, sharp scissors. Could it be Kinski? His daughter (the chick from Angel-- more on that later)? What about the creepy Christopher Lloyd? The only clues are anonymous letters, sent to Julie, describing murderous desires. Luckily Wilhelm from Seinfeld and Frank Fontana from Murphy Brown are on the case.



All right, so as an adult, this isn't exactly scary, but the creepiness factor still holds up. If you like gore and funny deaths in your horror (like I do), the innocuous stalking and scissor stabbing leaves much to be desired; but from Kinski down, that atmosphere of creepiness is so pervasive it infects every scene, movement, and conversation. I don't know if that does it for you, but if you're a Kinski fan (like I am-- inaugural DTVC Hall of Famer), this is some of his best work. Everything else is kind of dirtier, R rated Lifetime movie of the week, which is kind of cool to me too, but again, might not be enough for you.

Let's look at Kinski, who we haven't had on here in a while. The thing that has always fascinated me about him, was how he would do these films, where the selling point was always as much money as possible for as quick a shoot as possible, and you'd think with that mindset, he'd always mail these performances in, but he never does. It's not hyperbole to call him one of the greatest actors ever. In Schizoid, despite what the name suggests, he's not a raging maniac like we're used to in a lot of his Herzog collaborations. What I loved was seeing the brewing mania within his character as tensions in the story grew-- the way he smoked his cigarette, walked, talked-- it was much more subtle, but no less exceptional. As a DTVC Connoisseur (again, a tongue-and-cheek moniker, for our anonymous Unrivaled commenter), Kinski really is that rare opportunity to see acting greatness, even if the films he's doing it in aren't.



Equaling Kinski is Christopher Lloyd's role as the disturbingly weird maintenance guy in Julie's therapist group. He does a great job of making the people around him uncomfortable, and making us believe he's really doing that. It would've been easy for him to fall back on his Jim from Taxi routine, or the eccentric Doc he would later be known for in Back to the Future, but he didn't do either. The way he stared a little too long, the way he stood a little too close, the way his sense of humor was a little off, it all worked really well, and again, like with Kinski, it worked well in a way you'd never expect in a 1980 low-budget schlock thriller.

According to Wikipedia, the Golan-Globus takeover of Cannon was in 1979, meaning Schizoid would have been one of the first films they got their hands on. Golan-Globus and Klaus Kinski seems like it would have been a match made in heaven, maybe approaching the Kinski/Herzog collaborations, but I'm pretty sure this is the only film they made together. Perhaps the problem was Golan-Globus tried to get too big, which went against Kinski's career strategy of doing quick and small projects that paid quick. It's interesting to note as well that the fall of Golan-Globus is around the same time Kinski passed away. Two DTV luminaries leaving us for good, and as the 90s became the 2000s, that wave of DTV's Golden Age broke, leaving us with now with crap like Unrivaled...



As I mentioned above, this had plenty of other guest stars. There was the poor man's Karl Malden, Richard Herd, who played Wilhelm on Seinfeld. Then you had Joe Regalbuto, Frank Fontana of Murphy Brown (also Marvin Baxter in Raw Deal). That pairing might not work today, with the Boston/New York baseball rivalry as heated as it is (Herd from Boston, Regalbuto from Brooklyn). Mr. Kenner at Movies in the Attic will be excited to hear that Donna Wilkes, the star of one of his DTV faves, Angel, plays Kinski's daughter. Julie's husband was played by Craig Wassman, who has been in, among other things, the Lorenzo Lamas/Michael Paré stinker The Debt, and an Olivier Gruner film we haven't gotten to yet, Velocity Trap.

I don't know how well I can recommend this to everyone. If you prefer creepiness to savage gore in your horror movie (and let's be straight here, this is more suspense thriller than horror film), you'll probably enjoy it. There are some other aspects as a movie geek that I got down on, especially how in 1980, though this was meant to sell in the burgeoning video market, it was made to be watched in a theater, and there were a lot of devices that would startle someone at a theater that at home, especially with most people watching Mono TVs, don't work. If you're a 70s/80s nostalgia buff, this might work for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081459/

Venom (1981)

I first caught wind of this film on Netflix when I did a search of Klaus Kinski. I rented it, then found out it was released in the theaters in 1982, and made a little over $5 million. My cut off for inclusion in the blog is either $10 million or if I could take a date to see it at the local movie theater in Portsmouth, NH. I was three in 1982, so I don't know if it played there then. I'm probably straddling the line here, and I have a feeling after putting up this post that I'll have no choice but to give into the demands for a Cyborg review...

Venom is about a rich family living in London with a severely asthmatic young son. When the parents are away, the maid and chauffeur plan to kidnap the boy with the help of international criminal Klaus Kinski. Things go wrong, though, when the boy accidentally picks up a poisonous black mamba snake from the local pet store instead of the cute house snake he ordered. The snake bites the maid, and as they try to make off with the boy, a cop coming to warn the family about the snake mix-up is shot by the nervous chauffeur, leading to a deadly standoff with the police. This deadliness is only exacerbated by the black mamba.



This was a pretty blah film. It had a very Lifetime movie feel to it, which made it feel a little silly, and I think that's a good thing. There wasn't as much Kinski as I'd have wanted, but that seems to be the case pretty often. I would've liked more people getting bit by the snake, personally, especially when the movie is named Venom, and the snake features prominently on the cover. She goes missing for large portions of the film, and I can only assume this means she needed a better agent.

Kinski is pretty reserved, but pretty awesome. I didn't like that as a bad guy we knew he was going to lose the whole time, because he was a cool bad guy. That's weird, because he can make himself so unlikeable so easily, that I can't see why the filmmakers wouldn't've made him more unsympathetic. He was cooler than he was creepy, which was something I didn't know he had in his arsenal: more proof of his title as the German Marlon Brando. For those liking the Klassik Kinski, his death scene is a real tour de force. If you want to just see that without watching the rest of the film, I found it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3WoeEQnNK8



Kinski's adversary is actually pretty cool too. He's this Scottish police commander who really knows how to take care of business. Had they built the Kinski character better, we as the audience would've had a better time watching these two play some kind of deadly game of cat and mouse. As actors, too, they both gave strong performances, so it was a waste that we didn't get to enjoy the two of them more.

The snake in this is the black mamba, and we learn that it gets its name not because it's black on the outside, but because the inside of its mouth is. Kobe Bryant's nickname is the Black Mamba, and for the most part he's pretty deadly too. Luckily for me, the Celtics are great snake wranglers, and they managed to avoid the Mamba's dangerous bite. As far as I can tell, this film was the Celtics, because it made the snake pretty innocuous by leaving it out for large portions of time. Having a camera zoom through a heating duct with ominous music in the background does not a good snake film make.



Finally, my biggest beef with this movie was how they killed off the only hot chick in the movie within the first 20 minutes or so. Why would you do that? I understand that as a baddie she needed to go, but so soon? The women watching had plenty of male eye candy, it just didn't seem fair. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because most DTV films are rife with female eye candy for us, and the ladies are left with Van Damme's butt or Dolph's abs, which are great, but not much in the way of variety.

This wasn't too bad, but it wasn't too good either. You and your buddies aren't going to be able to yell at the screen and watch a bunch of people get bit in funny ways like Snakes on a Train, but if you ever see it on TV late at night, there's a lot worse you can watch. I just don't know that I'd spend money on it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084854/

Android (1982)

I don't remember when I first saw this. It's one of those that's always been around for me. I rented it recently from Netflix, and I think that's the first time I've seen it in at least ten years. There were things in it I noticed that I wouldn't have picked up on back then. I guess that's why it's always a good idea to re-watch these old classics.

Android takes place in the future or something on this desolate space station. Kinski plays a doctor doing research with his timid assistant Max. Three escaped convicts make it to the station, and Max lets them on board in an attempt to quell the monotony of his everyday life. Quickly the escapee realize Max is an android, and the doctor's a little off. The question is whether they can keep from stabbing each other in the back long enough to get off the ship and away from the Kinski-nator.

There are probably some sci-fi honks out there who think this is some kind of cinematic treasure, and for those cats, I feel very sorry for you. This really isn't very good: but it's plenty good to make fun of. As a classic, I'd put it more in the Zardoz category, as opposed to Blade Runner. When I was younger I think I knew how dumb this was, I just didn't make fun of it as much as I did now. Maybe I'm just better at mocking bad movies.



The set looked more like a health spa circa 1984, where maybe a guy in a headband and short shorts would be playing racquetball, and Crockett would interrupt his game to set up a fake coke deal. The guns looked like something out of the old Star Trek, which I actually think was pretty cool. The best might have been the "futuristic" water pitcher Kinski used when he was entertaining the one chick escapee. The thing was not an improvement on the water pitcher, but a step in the wrong direction. One of my favorite things in the bad sci-fi film: new designs for everyday devices that look cool but have no utilitarian function.

Klaus Kinski is probably the most difficult of the DTVC Hall of Famers to find movies to review. He passed away in 1991, way before the birth of DVDs, and actually as VHS was still coming into its own. Often I can only find his films if I pay too much for a video cassette on Amazon from a used seller, or if I'm lucky enough to strike gold plowing through a bargain bin at a Goodwill or something. That explains the unfortunately low number of his films reviewed here on the blog.



If you look at the imdb resume of a Rutger Hauer or a Gary Busey, doing five or six movies in one year sometimes, it's hard to imagine Kinski had he lived, even in what would've been his late 70s and early 80s, not putting out a similar work rate. He was willing to do any movie given A, the price was right, and B, he wasn't required to spend much time on the set shooting it. Without pioneers like Kinski, we probably wouldn't have the DTV market we do. The irony is that he's also probably one of the best actors in the history of moving pictures, considered by some to be the German Marlon Brando. As in all of his DTV movies, you can see that difference in his quality of acting versus his co-stars.

One element of this film I missed in my previous viewing was the seemingly ubiquitous Norbert Weisser. I think this is the first time he was in a movie I reviewed that wasn't directed by Albert Pyun. According to imdb, of his last three films, two were Pyun's, and the third was an indie flick with Christopher Walken, Josh Lucas, and Michael Caine, called Around the Bend. Might be worth checking out. Here in this film, I was disappointed, because he seemed cool, but was killed off by the asshole escapee in the group too easily. It was like he was better than the usual bit parts he does for Pyun, but the finish wasn't there. I guess I can't blame him for that.



The idea of the android has always been difficult for me to swallow. I think it's that the actors playing them usually overdo it (one of my fave actors Brent Spiner comes to mind, unfortunately). There's usually a lack of continuity too. Sometimes as androids they can't understand this or that, but then they can understand something else. Here, the kid couldn't grasp basic human interactions, but was somehow conniving enough to waylay the authorities coming to recapture the escapees. I just think the writers get lazy with these things, and make the androids as human as possible so they don't have to write in limitations that the actors have to adhere to.

This is worth putting in your Netflix queue. It's solid cheesy sci-fi that you'll find yourself and your friends laughing at. I also liked the Kinski factor, but that's just me. Seeing his head ripped off with bad special effects just made my night.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083557/

Star Knight (1985)

In the endless search for more Klaus Kinski films, I found this bad boy. Also listed among the stars is Scorsese and Tarantino mainstay Harvey Keitel. Kinski paired with Winston The Wolf? This had greatness written all over it, and I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger when I saw it on Amazon.

Star Knight is a Spanish sci-fi/fantasy film involving an alien visiting a medieval Spanish manor. The lord's daughter finds the ship while swimming naked one night, and falls in love with the one alien aboard, a man who looks like the lead singer of any 80s New Wave band. Kinski plays a mystic employed by the lord from time to time to help him out, and he talks to the daughter upon her return. While everyone in town believes the ship is a dragon, and the alien a warrior of evil riding it, Kinski and the daughter know better. Enter Keitel as a swordsman looking to become a knight and also looking to marry the lord's daughter. He promises to slay the dragon and kill the alien controlling it. He and the local priest give it a go, and hilarity ensues. They take the ship from the alien, and accidentally fly it into space, while the alien stays home and marries the lord's daughter.



This movie is remarkably horrible. This was like MST3K bad. Think Deathstalkers and the Warriors From Hell, only add in Keitel and Kinski, which makes it all the better. This passed the true test of a great bad movie, when it entertained people who usually don't like to watch the crap that I do. There was just no way you couldn't find this funny.

Kinski was Kinski in this. He's in it slightly more than in The Creature, so I'd say it's worth a look if you're a fan of his. He lives up to his standing as a card carrying DTVC Hall of Famer, especially in the way he wears his ridiculous outfits. We spent the movie trying to guess how much he made, what demands he had for the production, and how he might have gotten along with Keitel. His name was top billing, so I have to assume that that was a stipulation on his participation. I must say, he's pretty tame in this, though. No Cobra Verde style freak outs, so in that sense, it was a little disappointing. Overall, a Kinski-esque effort.



Keitel was a whole other story. Anyone who's ever seen Last Temptation of Christ remembers his role as Judas, where he kept his New York accent. In that role, it just seemed to work, and it was one of the more inspired decisions Scorsese made in making that movie, at least for me. In this, he also retains the New York accent, but speaks in this Shakespearian tongue that sounds hilarious. Everytime he had a line, he elicited laughs. "Thow haath fohrsaken me!"

Being a Spanish movie, the Spanish director and Spanish writer included an ode Spain's greatest literary figure, Cervantes, with a Don Quixote like character called the Green Knight. I think we were supposed to juxtapose his genuine chivalry with Keitel's self-interested brand. I dug it. It was especially cool when the alien donned his gear to fight Keitel at the end. The whole thing was a touch of class in a movie that desperately needed it and more.



The inside of the alien's ship looked like something out of The Dark Crystal or Krull, both movies I'd think a film maker wouldn't want to have his film in the same sentence as, or even worse, be accused of ripping off. From the outside, the ship reminded me of Close Encounters. I was worried Richard Dreyfuss might show up, and was thankfully spared that pain. Finally, when the ship left the Earth's atmosphere, for some reason it turned into an animated cat toy, you know the ones with the bell inside the wire cage ball. I know it's 1985, and technology wasn't the best, but someone had to think that looked worse than just continuing to use the toy model of the ship that we saw on Earth. I'm not complaining, because it was just another thing for us to find funny, just curious how that decision was made.

This movie is probably too poorly made to be worth buying for more than a buck or two. If you see it to rent, snatch it up immediately, because it's perfect for a bad movie night. It's the kind of thing MST3K would've made a great episode with, and now you and your friends have the opportunity to see what you can do with it. My friends and I are big Kinski fans, and on that score, I'd recommend seeing too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088870/

Cobra Verde (1987)

In reviewing this film for the DTVC, I'm taking a slight departure from the usual fare. This definitely was a film that was overlooked when Klaus Kinski and Werner Hezrog collaborated to make it back in 1987, so it's not like I'm covering a huge foreign classic like La Strada or Seven Samurai. On the other hand, this isn't just a bad movie, but a fairly sophisticated film told within the constructs of the West African Slave trade in the mid-19th century.

Cobra Verde is about a man, Klaus Kinski in the eponymous lead, who loses his farm living in Brazil, and is forced to become a bandit, terrorizing the local countryside in order to make ends meet. He's hired by a plantation owner, and quickly he impregnates the man's young daughters. In an effort to rid himself of Kinski, he ships him over to West Africa to oversee his slave trade. There, Kinski is imprisoned by the local king, rescued by the king's brother, leads an army of women against the king, and establishes a successful trade in African slaves. When Brazil joins the rest of the world in outlawing slavery, things fall apart quickly for our hero. The movie ends in an amazing death scene where Kinski struggles to pull his beached boat into the water.



This movie is fantastic. It deals with slavery in a very different connotation, where instead of the film being about slavery, it's told within the constructs of a world with that as it's reality. For me, I think that makes horror that was the African slave trade even starker than a film that's centered around it as its main subject. It's a very risky way to make a movie, because it doesn't come right out and say slavery is bad, which may offend some; but I feel it's pretty obvious from the lines of men marched in appalling conditions or women in pits waiting to be used for sex that there was nothing advocating or attempting to diminish the inhumanity of slavery in Herzog telling of the story.

If the solid storytelling doesn't grab you, then you've got Kinski, who's at his crazy best in this. For me it's one of his best performances. When he flips out as the king's men take him into custody, it's beyond fantastic. Even better, when he's taken away, his captors fill a gourd with water and stick one of his feet in it. So as he's carried into the king's court, he's got this gourd dangling from his foot. It's a testament to his ability as an actor that Kinski can pull that off.



Kinski's death scene was amazing. For those who find him ridiculous and love to laugh at him, there was plenty there as he wallowed in the surf allowing the waves to engulf him. For those who find him fascinating and love the method in his madness, it was sheer brilliance to watch his futile attempt to pull this over-sized boat from the beach into the water. For me, I'm one who likes both aspects of Kinski, so the scene had it all. In addition to the amazing Kinski-ness, Herzog included in the background a man he met who was stricken with polio. His legs have severely atrophied, and he's forced to walk on his hands.

There were other great tidbits in this, too. The king's brother constantly gives Kinski the Runaway Bride stare. Every time he was on screen, he elicited laughs from me and my friends. Seeing Kinski in the sailor's outfit, complete with the hat, was beautiful too. Earlier he walks around with no shoes, and a woman asks him why he's barefoot. He tells her he doesn't trust shoes. That's one of the best lines ever in cinema.



If you have the time and you're watching this on DVD, catch some of the audio commentary with Werner Herzog. I didn't get a chance to see all of it, but what I did see, especially in regards to Kinski, was entertaining. In one instance, the moderator asks him why a section of dialog was somebody other than Kinski's voice. Herzog tells him that Kinski wanted $5 million dollars to go back and loop the audio parts where his voice was off. That wasn't a joke. Most surprising to me was at the end, when Herzog tells the moderator that Kinski overdid his acting, and he gave the character an element of mania that Herzog didn't intend.

If you're a bad movie watcher, I'd give this a shot, even if it isn't exactly a bad movie. There's plenty to joke about, especially with Kinski being Kinski. It is in German with English subtitles, which I know turns some people off. I'm as huge a foreign film guy as I am a bad movie guy, so I never notice it, but I figured I'd put out the warning for those that don't like to read while watching a movie (or put the warning out for those that are illegally downloading it that you'll need a subtitle file).

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094888/

Timestalkers (1987)

Klaus Kinski is one of the greatest actors ever. He's in the DTVC Hall of Fame as much for his philosophy on making movies, as he is for the movies he did. By all rights he's a better actor than people we usually associate with the craft like Daniel Day Lewis or Robert DeNeiro, but he's not as choosy in terms of the roles he took. He did movies based on how quickly he could shoot his scenes and get paid. The result of this is when his films are duds, which they usually were based on his selection crieria, we don't mind as much as when an actor who takes himself more seriously has a bad picture.

Timestalkers has Kinski as a scientist from the future who's gone back in time to the Old West to kill another scientist's ancestor. Lauren Hutton plays that scientist's daughter, sent back to stop Kinski. William Devane plays a history professor in the 1980s who suspects time travel is possible, and Hutton recruits him to help her find the Kinsk-inator. Cliff Claven is Devane's buddy in the military. In the end, Devane and Hutton go back in time to save the day.



Other than Kinski, no one in this film fits their roles. Devane is too Nighttime Soap Opera to be believable as a gunslinging history professor. Lauren Hutton is way too 70s supermodel to be believable as a scientist's daughter, who's a scientist in her own right, coming from the future to save the day. Cliff Clavin is way too Cliff Clavin to be believed as a military officer. What this does is make the film feel a little off kilter in the scenes where Kinski's not there to rescue everyone with his solid acting prowess.

This lack of believability in the cast led to what I like to call the Destro Effect. The Destro Effect comes when the bad guy is cooler than the good guys, and hence forcing us to root for the bad guy to win. It never failed for me growing up and watching G.I. Joe. I was always so pissed when Destro was vanquished. I was equally pissed when Devane took out Kinski in this one. Ten Devanes aren't worth one Kinski.

Kinski is fantastic in this, as he is in everything. In the beginning, he's positively badass as a dude in the Old West hunting down another gunslinger. In 2586, he's positively the man, taking the stereotypical "everyone wears the same outfit" idea of the future, and making the clothes his own with the rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned collar. It's just so Kinski, and yet so great. He has this way of standing out, while at the same time fitting into the movie perfectly. They could've flipped the script and had him be a good guy, and it still would've worked.



This whole movie was built on the frail foundation of one poorly conceived premise. I'm not talking about the science of time travel: I don't really care about that. The issue was Kinski's plot to kill the other scientist's ancestor. It made no sense. Why not go back in time 50 years, and kill the scientist himself as a child? If a scientist is smart enough to develop a device that allows humans to travel through time, you'd think he'd come up with a smarter plot to get rid of his rival.

This movie isn't so bad. In terms of the Kinski factor, he's in it enough to make it good. It's got plenty of material to work with if you rent it with some friends to make fun of on a movie night. You could probably find it to buy for like a buck or two at a used video store. I'm not sure if it airs on TV anymore, despite the fact it was initially aired on TV in 1987.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094154/

Crawlspace (1986)

My buddy, who's a big Kinski guy, told me I had to see this. He summed it up as "Klaus Kinski as this creepy guy who crawls through ventilation ducts and spies on women." That did sound like must-see material.

Crawlspace has DTVC Hall of Famer Klaus Kinski as a landlord who rents his apartment rooms out cheaply to really attractive women. He spies on them, drops rats in on them, and occasionally plays Russian roulette. He also keeps a woman in a cage with her tongue cut out, and is a doctor who's fascinated by torture. I guess his dad was into it as an SS officer. Eventually Martin Balsam's daughter shows up and saves the day, doing a better job than her father did in Psycho.

What can I say about Crawlspace? It's sorta kinda harsh. Kinski comes up with all types of ways of disposing of people, and some of them look funny in their execution. The chick in the cage was a bit much for me. It was kind of extraneous and just there to make Kinski seem sicker. Maybe if the bad guy was someone else, that would be necessary, but with Kinski, he brings enough psycho to the role that women in cages are unnecessary.

This is some good Kinski, though. At the end he smears on some lipstick and eye liner and dons his dad's SS uniform. It was pretty sweet. My buddy was right, it was great to see him spying on the women and dropping little rats in on them. No one does creepy better than he did. I don't care how tough it is to find an apartment near campus, I'm not renting a room from him, especially if I were a good looking woman.

Talia Balsam isn't as much fun to have in a movie as her dad. I think the film makers should've had Martin Balsam dress in drag and move into one of Kinski's apartments. That would've allowed us, the viewer, to use the whole host of jokes from Mitchell, like "Martin Balsam: the doer's profile", or "I loved you in the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3." These are the kinds of little things that make a good movie great, and a great movie Casablanca.

If you're a bad horror connoisseur, you need this film. You should be able to find it at a used VHS store for like a buck or two. That's a good deal, believe me. I wouldn't, however, show this film to any friends who have a weak stomach for bad movies, because this one's out there. I'm probably on the fringe of the people who should watch it, but I love Kinski so much, any rough spots were smoothed out for me.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090881/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Creature (1985)

Perhaps no other actor embodied the spirit and virtue of direct to video more than DTVC Hall of Famer Klaus Kinski. He chose his films based on how quickly he could shoot his scenes and get paid. He may have been one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, but because his films were seldom recognized by the Academy, he's often written off as an eccentric. When offered the role of the German villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he turned it down after reading the script, saying is was "as moronically shitty as so many other flicks of its ilk." ("Klaus Kinski Trivia" http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001428/bio)

It is with this framework in mind that I approach every Kinski film, including The Creature. My buddy picked this up at a used video store last summer. He's an even bigger Kinski guy than I am; he and his girlfriend even have a Kinski magnet on their fridge. (They also have a Joe Estevez).

The Creature is about a group of American scientists sent to the Jupiter moon Titan by a corporation to beat out their German competitors to its resources. The crew crash lands, finds most of the Germans dead, and tries to take control of their ship to get back home. Kinski awaits them there, and they find out the Germans were killed by some mysterious extraterrestrial creature. The crew is picked off one-by-one, until the ones left can finally kill the thing. We think.

Kinski's great in this. He's creepy and mysterious, and we know it's just a matter of time before he puts his slimy hands on the females in the crew. He describes the depth of every one's peril with disturbing precision while he eats a sandwich. It's vintage Kinski.

Unfortunately, he's barely in it. When he's gone, we're left with a bad cross between Alien and The Thing--with no Wilford Brimley. I guess Kinski would've taken this role because he was in it so little, but where does that leave us, his fans? Up shit's creek without a paddle, I guess.

Don't pay more than a buck or two for this. The only reason to buy it is for Kinski, and he's in it so little, it's barely worth more than that. You may want to rent it, but again, with such a low Kinski volume, it may not be worth wasting a rental on. I don't know what would happen if this was on TV, because it's pretty gory. It may be edited, so be warned if you're into bad horror/sci-fi.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088961/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/