Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

No need to focus if you just keep zooming in and out.

The only Francos I've seen are Count Dracula (liked) and Bloody Judge (don't remember). Would those be considered among his "good" ones?

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Haven't seen Bloody Judge.


I understand Count Dracula is one of the more faithful adaptations of the novel, so I suspect those more familiar with it than myself might get more out of it. I didn't think it was bad, but it doesn't "move" the way his best films do.

I remember thinking "well, that's one way to get around the censors."

I wonder if I should give him and Rollin a chance. While I liked Rollin more, almost entirely due to Fascination, they both frustrated me in similar ways. They both purport to be erotic directors but they seem remarkably quaint in their conception of erotica. Softcore seems to be too rough a description for the nude, gentle kissing (that one can hardly see in Franco's films).

Then the horror elements seem to usually be draped over the erotica as dressing, rather than integral to the vibe of the flicks. This places them in a no man's land for this type of flick where they're neither sexy nor scary enough to justify their admittedly short run times.

I think it was JJ who described them as dream like and moving in a somnambulist pace... But my dreams are usually not quite so tedious for most of their runtime or, I guess quite similarly, I forget them.

I don't think I could even say what titles I've seen...


It stinks as I fancy myself a lover of Eurotrash cinema but this feels like a willful blindspot on my part.

Should I give them another shot? See if my tastes have changed? This was over a decade ago that I made my attempts...

I doubt Rollins will seem any more frightening or sexy. His movies don't really commit to being branded as one or the other (certainly not horror). But personally, I like Rollins mostly in that he steps around being either a director of horror or erotica. It's good to have these kind of movies that exist in this no man's land. It creates a tension between what it actually is and the expectations an audience has towards what it should be. Gives them an unsettled tone.


And Jinnistan was correct in calling them sleepwalkers. They don't have an awful lot happening in them, but neither do a lot of my favorite dreams, where nothing happens but every thing just somehow feels off. This is the state Rollins captures. There is an eerieness at the center of his movies, between the more overtly horror elements and the delicate humping.


Now, do I think Rollins is great? Nope. But I find his movies mostly really interesting. And I've found surprisingly few of them to be bad, even though he seems the kind of director who should have lots of unwatchable shit (ie. Franco)

I think they're worth another shot. I was so so on Franco before, but really warmed up to him these past few months, through a combination of revised expectations, pandemic-induced-increased-patience and better context for his career. I would like to into Rollin again soon as well, but gelled to him pretty well previously.


Dreamlike is a tough thing to define, and the films and filmmakers that get the label can differ greatly. (I think Fulci's almost free associative approach to gore best evokes my nightmares, at least the ones that don't involve forgetting to wear pants or shoes.) I think Franco at his best has a certain fluidity, in how the story moves and images connect to each other. If you're planning to dive back in, I'd say the pairing of Vampyros Lesbos and She Killed in Ecstasy are the best place to start.


I'd need to dive back into Rollin to better explain, but I think he has a certain lightness of touch, more deliberate than Franco. To me they evoke the feeling of waking up just before dawn, when you're not fully alert. That being said, I think his best movies have either Brigitte Lahaie or Francoise Blanchard, who I think are good enough actresses to give his movies a certain charge, especially the former.


As for the nudity, I think it helps you understand that both of them have more explicit films. Rollin used to direct hardcore porn alongside his horror films (which is how he ended up working with Lahaie). Franco had hardcore content in some of his films, sometimes as inserts for releases in different markets, but sometimes for the "official version" as well and organic to the material (Doriana Gray is an example of the latter). So the nudity and nuzzling, when it's limited to that, is a concious choice, likely because they find it an intriguing visual. Also, I'll say that as Franco was in a relationship with Lina Romay up until the end of their lives, even when he gets really graphic when shooting her, three dynamic is less "get a load of these ****!" and more "get a load of my beautiful wife/partner!", which I find rather sweet.

I should add that I enjoyed both Zombie Lake and Oasis of the Zombies, which almost nobody likes, so my advice should be immediately suspect.

I disliked Zombie Lake enough to immediately disregard any and all of your opinions. Not just those about Franco and Rollin.

All. Of. Them.

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This poster makes Oasis of he Zombies look really exciting, which it is decidedly not. Just another reason to like the movie.

You like Zombie Lake, but thought Blood Beat was boring?

Also, half the fun of Zombie Lake is seeing how weird a fit Rollin's style is for a zombie movie. I suspect I wouldn't like it very much if I hadn't seen a bunch of his other movies first.

According to my extensive scholarly research (skimming Wikipedia for less than a minute), Spiritual Kung Fu was filmed just before Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, the two films generally regarded as Jackie Chan's breakthrough, but released after due to producer and director Lo Wei's money troubles. In that sense it provides interesting context for the development of Jackie's onscreen persona. In Drunken Master, his presence has a fully formed quality, exhibiting a lot of the same characteristics we know and love and associate with many of his best films. (I have yet to see Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, although I pinky swear that I'll get to it in the not too distant future, now that I've acquired a region free Blu Ray player and have sampled some of the fine product released by 88 Films, a label that's been putting out great releases of Jackie's films on Region B Blu Ray.) In Spiritual Kung Fu, we see some of the same goofy, mischievous charisma he would later exhibit, but these feel like early cracks into the slab of marble of the classic action-comic Jackie Chan hero. Which means that he's still a very enjoyable presence, but the effect is like encountering the work of a musician you like in one of their earlier bands.

Similar to Drunken Master, this essentially takes the piss out of the wuxia genre, in particular taking aim at the solemnities of Shaolin monks. In this sense, this made for an interesting double feature with King Hu's Raining in the Mountain, another film concerned with intrigue in a monastery, albeit played much straighter. Based on this, one might think the "Spiritual" in the title has to do with actual spiritual enlightenment, as Hu's film is. But Lo means it literally, with Jackie being trained by a group of five ghosts who each teach him a style of martial arts inspired by a different animal. The ghosts are strangely child-like, well meaning but capable of mischief, with red, mop-like wigs, and rendered ethereal by some crude superimposition effects. (They are often accompanied by some electronic beeping and booping, like a spectral Kraftwerk track.) One might be inclined to find them a little cute, at least until Jackie chases them into their hidey hole and pees on them in an attempt to smoke them out. Also involved are a lady ninja who Jackie, fascinated by the first woman he's apparently ever seen, decides to challenge to a fight on the condition he can feel her up if he wins, as well as a series of mysterious murders. Somehow James Tien is involved.

I understand Jackie Chan considers this one of his worst movies, and while I disagree even based on my limited experience, I can understand why he might feel this way. His character is treated rather poorly by the monks, subject to unmotivated punishments that perhaps echoed his feelings of exploitation by Lo, who held him in a lousy contract and tried to muscle him into staying with the help of the Triad. (Evidence of that exploitation can be seen in a sequence where Jackie stuffs snakes or eels down his pants, footage of which would be reused to patch together Fearless Hyena 2 after Jackie left the production partway.) But at the same time, the loose, episodic structure feels less plodding than Lo's better loved films with Bruce Lee, and the goofy supernatural hijinks kept me consistently entertained. The film peaks as it should with the climax, which frequently shifts the axis of the action so that the fighters' fists are flying towards us, an effect exaggerated by the welcome use of fisheye lenses. And while we think of the Jackie Chan character as a generally nice guy reluctant to use violence, he says some pretty ice cold shit in this: "You can enjoy it in hell!"

Tbh the Jackie Chan and Doris Wishman collections have basically justified the Criterion Collection subscription fee already.

Gonna try to make it a Jackie and Doris year.

Sammo Hung has directed all three films from my collection dvd. Winners and Sinners, My Lucky Stars and Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars.
My Lucky Stars has some good elements that stand out from the rest. I should try and see a new film from him.

I watched those a few years ago. The Jackie Chan scenes are 10/10, the rest...eh, the humour is a bit too crass for my taste. My Lucky Stars has the best climax (and it's on the Criterion Channel, so tempted to revisit it soon), although I liked the Sammo and Cherie Chung relationship in Winners and Sinners.

It is very immature stuff, the comedy elements, which is a big part of the films.

Very true. I also like hanging out with Jackie and Sammo, but prefer these other guys in smaller doses, which makes it a challenge for me when they're the focus, even if I have enjoyed some of these actors in other movies (Stanley Fung, Richard Ng).


Also, Sibelle Hu can be pretty cool in her girls with guns movies, so an extended comedy set piece where the male leads essentially grope her was a disheartening watch.


We'll see how it holds up on a rewatch lol