Showing posts with label Freestyle Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freestyle Party. Show all posts

Monday, January 15, 2018

Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party, Volume 2 - The Mike's Favorite Blu-Rays of 2017

The beginning of the new year is a time for lists, and if there's one thing I love as much as double features...it's lists. They're like longer double features with more features and more double, unless they have an odd number. Then it's like double and a half, I think. I'm not good at math. The point is this -  I think it's kind of fantastic that lists exist.

I will at some point make a list of my favorite movies released in 2017, but I'm not gonna do that yet. There's a simple reason for this: The Shape of Water isn't playing in my neck of the Iowa yet, and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm gonna make a list of movies I love without giving a movie that turns The Creature from the Black Lagoon into a noir love story a chance to get on that list.

The next idea I had was a list my favorite blu-ray releases of 2017, because blu-rays are a thing I buy a lot. A really cool thing about physical media in 2017 is that there are already a whole  lot of movies that are already on disc. Which means that companies really have to do some digging and work hard to find something collectors are going to go out of their way to find. Which means that a lot of one-of-a-kind blu-ray releases occurred this year, and that's a darn good thing.

As I was preparing this list, one of my favorite writers, Stephanie Crawford, tackled the same topic over at the delightful F This Movie! website. Because her list and mine would have overlapped a lot - Suspiria, His Girl Friday, Streets of Fire, Effects, Re-Animator, and Liquid Sky were all insta-buy-and-loves for me - I decided to link it here and let you see that list too. Her great list also allows me to focus on 10 films that didn't make that top 10, which means you all now have 20 movies you can buy.

I know! It's a list double feature! You are welcome.

As if that wasn't enough - and enough is never enough! - I'm also going to suggest double feature partners for each of the movies on my list. Yes, that's gonna be a lot of movies. If you don't like movies this list might not be for you.

The Mike's 10 Favorite Blu-Ray Releases of 2017

Honorable Mentions: Band of the Hand (Mill Creek Entertaiment), George A. Romero Between Night And Dawn (Arrow Video), Heat: Director's Definitive Edition (20th Century Fox), The Hidden (Warner Archive), Into the Night (Shout Factory), The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Criterion Collection), The Old Dark House (The Cohen Film Collection), One Dark Night (Code Red/Kino Lorber), Slaughter High (Vestron Video), Snapshot (Vinegar Syndrome), The Vagrant (Scream Factory), The Valley of Gwangi (Warner Archive)

10 - Demon Wind (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome has been great at finding and restoring obscure genre flicks for a few years, and they might have been even better at finding and restoring adult titles in 2017. That's not to say they did a poor job of finding genre titles, because Demon Wind is the first of three movies they landed on this list. 
I didn't know Demon Wind before it was announced by Vinegar Syndrome this summer, but finding this low-budget Evil Dead 2 wannabe in 2017 was a real treat. It's a raw movie compared to Raimi's work, but it's a different kind of raw. The acting is a little goofier, the effects have some issues, and at times it seems more like a traditional demon/zombie flick than the inventive trilogy Raimi created. That's all fine and good - if we use the Evil Dead trilogy as a standard measuring stick for horror movies we're gonna be disappointed by most of 'em - because Demon Wind still feels charming and unique, and lands a few great in-jokes that poke fun at horror films of the era.

Double Feature it with: Demon Wind has some obvious connections to horror classics, and I even see some ties to John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. But the look and tone of the film remind me of another goofy demon flick from the same time frame, Highway to Hell. Get lost with some bubbly-faced demons for a night, you'll thank me later. 

9 - Slither (Scream Factory)

James Gunn brought the Guardians of the Galaxy to the big screen twice in the last five years, and with his current power position in one of Hollywood's biggest franchises it was the perfect time to revisit Slither, his 2006 horror comedy about a town and its residents being overtaken by alien slugs. If you've seen the movie, you know it's funnier than it sounds, thanks to an A-list cast and some incredibly sharp dialogue.
Since this is a relatively recent film, Scream Factory had plenty of bonus features available to choose from. It seems like they picked all of them. Fans of Gunn and his Troma roots will find a lot to love about how this movie was made, and casual horror fans should enjoy the film's gore and humor. It might seem too soon to look at Slither as a cult classic, but I think this movie's going to stick around for a long time - and this blu-ray is going to help make that happen.

Double Feature it with: Slither works best with the 1980s horror comedy that its creatures most resemble, Night of the Creeps. This is only one of the influences on Gunn's film, but I think a then and (almost) now double feature of the two films would be a blast.

8 - Kill, Baby...Kill! (Kino Lorber)

Kill, Baby...Kill! has long been a holy grail for me as a collector, as the only decent DVD edition of the film was part of a box set that went OOP and jumped in price many years ago. I had seen the film, one of Italian master of horror Mario Bava's best offerings, a few times on a public domain DVD set, but seeing it restored on Kino Lorber's US blu-ray release was a highlight of the year for me.
The Kino blu doesn't look perfect, but I think that's a good thing for a film from 1966. You can tell it was hard to get the film to look this good, but it's nice that the restoration didn't  tinker too much and make it feel inauthentic. There are a lot of good blu-rays of classic Italian horror out there (being able to type that just made me a little aroused), and though this isn't one of the best looking discs you'll find it is probably one of the most important we've seen in a while.

(P.S. - Yes, I know I'm cheating and this was an honorable mention on Stephanie's list that I said I wasn't gonna steal from. But I HAD to.)

Double Feature it with: Bava's Blood and Black Lace, made two years before Kill, Baby...Kill!, might be the best looking horror movie of all-time. It was one of 2016's best blu-ray releases, and I see no reason why we shouldn't put the two classics together as a double feature now that they're both on blu-ray. Get down with Italian horror!

7 - One Million Years B.C. (Kino Lorber)

"The lovely Raquel," as Morgan Freeman once described her, gets a 4K update on this stacked disc from Kino Lorber, which features both the European and American cuts of the Hammer Films produced dinosaur epic that's full of Ray Harryhausen's magical monsters. The two cuts are nothing new - 20th Century Fox had them together on a bargain DVD for years, but the new image transfer on this disc is absolutely stunning to anyone interested in fur-clad men and women or dinosaur destruction or any of the other treats this cult classic offers.
One Million Years B.C. isn't one of the most important films of the 1960s, and the fact that it gets this kind of a package in 2017 is a special treat for kids like me that grew up in awe of Harryhausen's creations. My only wish is that the film featured a version of Raquel that's taller than the dinosaurs, as featured on the film's cover, because THAT would be one hell of a movie to see. 

Double Feature it with: Warner Archive restored another old-fashioned dinosaur special effects classic, The Valley of Gwangi, this year. Since I already listed it as one of my honorable mentions, it makes perfect sense to bring it back here. If you know a kid who likes dinosaurs and hasn't been too tainted by modern special effects yet, get both of these movies and watch their eyes grow. 

Hmmm...that might be a good idea for later in this list too. (Hashtag: foreshadowing.)

6 - Willard (Scream Factory)

A killer rat film with a revenge twist, Willard is one of the few American horror hits of the 1970s that for some reason never made its way to DVD. So when Scream Factory announced that it - along with the sequel, Ben - would make its debut on blu-ray - that was a pretty big deal. I didn't know much about the film until Crispin Glover starred in a remake in 2003, and I'd been waiting to see what the fuss was all about for a long time.
When I got the chance to watch both of these films this year, I was very pleased with what I found in Willard. Young Bruce Davison - who grew up to be quite the character actor - wasn't quite compelling yet, but acting opposite the likes of Ernest Freakin' Borgnine and Elsa Freakin' Lancaster protects him from a lot of potential problems. The film's rat actors are well-trained and surprisingly sympathetic. The movie's dated and feels a little bit like it was made for TV, but there's a charm to be found in that. This one was worth the wait.

Double Feature it with: I mentioned that Willard feels a bit like a made for TV, and I think it might be fun to pair it with my favorite made for TV horror of the 1970s, The Initiation of Sarah.  You'll get a male lead for one, a female lead for the other, and nice doses of bullying and revenge via mind control in both.

5 - Red Mob (Vinegar Syndrome)

If I had been snatched at birth by Russians - they steal elections now, who knows what they were capable of in the 1980s! - and then allowed to make a movie when I was 12 and The A-Team had just premiered in Mother Russia, that movie would have looked almost exactly like Red Mob.
This is kind of a cheat pick - Red Mob was offered only briefly as a limited edition on Vinegar Syndrome's website, and is being released to the masses later this month - but for my money this is one of the most unique special edition releases we've seen released in a long time. I don't know who the person is who sits in a room somewhere and says "Hey, I've got an idea - let's dig up this Russian action epic from the early '90s and make it pretty!" but whoever that guy is deserves a raise. This movie is excessive in all the right ways, which makes it pure entertainment. And yeah, I'm bumping it up the list a lot just because it's so crazy to me that this blu-ray exists.

Double Feature it with: I'm not sure what the American equivalent to Red Mob might be. It's got a little bit of Commando and a little bit of Red Dawn and a little bit of every other '80s and early '90s action movie in it. I might go with a Rutger Hauer flick to give the double feature a European feel, so let's say we double feature Red Mob with the Hauer vehicle Wanted: Dead or Alive, which also could use a blu-ray update.

4 - The Unholy (Vestron Video)

Do you like horror films about priests losing their faith? What about tempting redheaded demonesses? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, The Unholy might just be the '80s horror movie for you.
The reboot of the Vestron Video label has provided a lot of '80s cult hits on blu over the last two years, and The Unholy was met with less fanfare than a lot of their other titles, particularly this years releases of The Gate and Slaughter High. What lifts The Unholy above these other titles for me is how dreamlike and surreal this film is, especially in the final act. Cuban born director Camilo Vila's film shares a lot of style with some of the great Italian horror films of the '70s and '80s, and this visually impressive film benefits more from the upgrade to blu than some of the other titles from the label. It's not a tight film, but it's haunting and seductive. I'll take that in a demon vs. priest film every day.

Double Feature it with: William Peter Blatty's not-quite sequel to The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration, ticks a lot of the same boxes that The Unholy does. It doesn't rely on sex appeal and temptation as much as The Unholy does, but it does a great job of making the characters question their faith while keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat with great visuals and a twisting plot. Watch it first, then end the night with The Unholy's smutty finale.

 3 - My Chauffeur (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome brought a horror film, an action film, and now an R-rated '80s comedy to this list. My Chauffeur is led by some great '80s talent - Valley Girl's Deborah Foreman and Flash Gordon himself, Sam J. Jones - and features a bunch of unique and entertaining side performers including Howard Hesseman and Penn & Teller.
Stuck on bargain DVD megapacks for decades, My Chauffeur finally shines with all the brightness of Foreman's charming smile on this blu-ray disc. It's a raunchy little romp that allows Foreman to show off her comedic talents throughout, and it's hard to believe she wasn't a bigger star of the era based on the few films she did shine in. Plus it's got one hell of an incest joke. If that doesn't sell you on the flick - OK, you might be more normal than I am.

Double Feature it with: As a child of the 1980s, I have a great fondness for the comedies of this era. My Chauffeur falls into a different category than a lot of the family comedies I saw growing up, thanks to its R rating and adult humor, much like one of my favorite movies - Secret Admirer. These movies don't have a lot in common in plot, but both do a great job of finding juvenile humor in adult situations.

2 - House: Two Stories (Arrow Video)

We're staying in the '80s again, this time with a packed two-disc box set from Arrow Video, led by House - which I think holds its own against the best horror comedies of its era. This is a goofy haunted house film from Friday the 13th Part 2 director Steve Miner, with a witty script (co-written by the great Fred Dekker) and winning performances by the cast (Night Court's Richard Moll is having so much fun haunting this house). It's paired here with its sequel, House II: The Second Story, which takes the saga in a crazier direction and pulls no punches while mixing '80s teen horror with random Aztec curses.
Both of these films had been through some difficult times on DVD, and Arrow's restoration of them here makes me so happy. I never even bothered to see House II, due to the DVD release being pan and scan, so the opportunity to see it for the first time as a double feature with the original that I love so much was one of my favorite horror viewing moments of the year. Add in the fact that Arrow always goes all out with special features, booklets, and a beautiful box to hold the discs, and this was nearly my favorite thing I purchased this year.

Double Feature it with: This is already a double feature, so why don't we double feature it with another original horror of the time and its sequel. I see a lot of parallels between House and Fright Night. And Fright Night also has a zany sequel (Fright Night Part 2, which just landed on Amazon Prime after near a decade out of print on DVD!) that's worth seeing too. A House/Fright Night week should keep any '80s horror fan happy.

1 - The Lost World (Flicker Alley)

Nearly 70 years before Jurassic Park - not quite an era, but a good chunk of time - special effects master Willis O'Brien brought the first dinosaur epic I remember seeing as a child, The Lost World, to silent cinema screens. Teaming with director Harry Hoyt and a cast that included future Oscar winner Wallace Beery and his amazing beard, O'Brien brought hid stop-motion animation talents to the production and created iconic images that helped future generations fall in love with dinosaurs. (As they should.)
For more than ten years the best way to see this film was as a special feature on a disc featuring a big budget remake from the 1960s (which is pretty entertaining too), until Flicker Alley released this disgustingly cool restoration of the silent classic in September. The studio, whose purpose is to preserve film history, also does an amazing job of supplementing the film with information about O'Brien's work, including commentaries, deleted scenes, and short films he made before The Lost World. But the coolest extra on the disc might be the test footage from an unfinished follow up film - Creation - which inspired producers to hire him to create the title character for a little film called King Kong.

If we're looking at the most important blu-rays of the year from a film history standpoint, it's hard to argue against The Lost World. It brought back an important piece of visual effects history and made sure that future generations will always be able to see how Willis O'Brien made things happen in the early days of the movies.

Plus it's got dinosaurs. Really, really cool dinosaurs. And that's a good thing too.

Double Feature it with: This is kind of obvious, and I already said it. The dinosaur action here ties in beautifully with the undeniable magic of King Kong, and spending the night with these two classic monster movies from O'Brien sounds like a perfect double feature to me. It's like they say, sometimes the simplest answer is also the correct one.

I hope you find something great for your collection this year, whether it's a disc from this list or Stephanie's. (Seriously, you need that Suspiria disc!) It's still a great time to be a movie collector, and here's to all these studios and the great work they're doing to make sure that some of these obscure and unique titles will never be lost in time. They had a great year, and I'm sure they'll keep it up in 2018.
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Friday, September 22, 2017

Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party, Volume 1

Some weeks do not lend themselves to great thought. Unfortunately for yours truly, this is one of those weeks. So we're about to shake the pillars of heav....well, just of this site, really.

Fun The Mike fact: I started writing about movies online way back in the fall of 2002. My first assignment was a weekly roundup of new DVD releases with a couple of capsule reviews and a lot of zaniness. These columns were probably my favorite thing I've ever written (possibly because they no longer exist and I can't go back and see them now), and I've often wanted to go back to doing a kind of rambling column where I just wing it and let my heart tell you things my brain might not usually let me say.

So, welcome to the Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party. I'm gonna talk about some movies and throw out a whole bunch of double feature suggestions, with some help from some fine folks from around the globe. That's right - be ready for THE LIGHTNING ROUND.

You've been warned.

What's up at the Theater?
Over the last two weeks I had the chance to take in two of the most high profile horror films released in a long, long time. For starters, I just need to reiterate that - YES, THESE ARE BOTH HORROR FILMS. Don't be a genre snob. Just don't. It's not nice.

It
2017, Directed by Andy Muschietti

Horror fans have been waiting a long time for the big screen adaptation of Stephen King's It, and it's safe to say that the energy level among them was off the charts a couple of weeks ago when this thing finally hit the big screen. You could almost taste the love in the air; it was like Christmas but with a big scary clown whose lap no one wants to sit on. Hell, that's not even true. Some of you lady horror fans out there have some unique tastes - and I'm OK with that. You do you.

I left work early on a Friday afternoon (don't worry, I did my time) to catch It, and I enjoyed the experience a whole bunch. For starters, this update of King's novel - which moves the story's first half from 1958 to 1989 - feels genuine with its nostalgia act. Comparisons to Netflix's smash hit Stranger Things are obviously out there - based on the setting and shared star Finn Wolfhard - but I'm the kind of guy who will take King's writing over pretty much anything else. And the best thing about It is that it certainly feels like a Stephen King story. 

There are some changes to King's story - that's going to happen any time you adapt one of his books - but I'm pretty confident in saying that It sits alongside the best adaptations of King's work, mostly because director Andy Muschietti and crew were given such a long rope by Warner Bros. and New Line when making the film. Though the film only covers the first half of the It story, it is still allowed to run nearly two and a half hours. The script makes sure every one of those minutes count. The young cast is great, and Bill Skarsgard gives a turn as Pennywise that will be iconic on its own strengths. The scene where he entices young Georgie early in the film erases all memories of Tim Curry's (rightfully loved) performance in the 1990 miniseries, and his first appearance to The Loser's Club in a dark garage made me jump. I am not a big jumper!

The film has some definite flaws - especially in the final battle - that I won't go in to here, but I will say that I felt the film's strengths outweighed them in a big way. The biggest strength is how it handles the young characters, and how it attacks the experiences and feelings that led them to label themselves as The Losers Club. The characterization of the real life predators that live in the town of Derry - ranging from bullies to abusive fathers to imposing elderly librarians - are haunting, and it certainly helps anyone who's ever been bullied to relate to these young idealists. I had my share of traumas from some real life predators growing up in a small town, and I felt a lot of peace watching The Losers Club build the strength to face off with their demons. 

The best thing a horror movie can do, in my eyes, is to make us uncomfortable and make us afraid while at the same time reminding us that we can beat our fears because we are strong enough to defeat them. That's the central theme of It, and this adaptation hammers that message home. I don't care what else the movie's doing after that, because if it achieves that goal it's clearly doing enough to make me look at it as a huge success.

If you're going to the theater this weekend, It is clearly the movie I'm recommending you check out. If you're going to the theater looking for a double feature, you're in luck too. Because there's another horror movie out right now that, if nothing else, is worth talking about.

mother!
2017, Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I'm not gonna review Mother - I know I'm supposed to write mother! like I did above, but that's gonna confuse the heck out of me if I do that every time - as much as I'm just gonna talk about Mother, without any spoilers of course. And I'm darn sure not saying that It and Mother make a good double feature under any other circumstances, they go together like lamb and tuna fish.

(I just snuck a Big Daddy reference into my commentary on Mother. I don't know if I trust me either. But roll with it. It'll probably be fine.)

Darren Aronofsky's Mother - the film, not the lady - is first and foremost a film that makes me happy because of its existence. You can go to a movie theater and see a comedy with someone from a TV show any week or a drama about an animal or a war or an animal in a war (Thanks, Spielberg) any week. You can not go into a theater and see a movie like Mother any week. You simply can't. You guys know I live in Iowa, right? We've got 12 screens in town. We were lucky to get The Beguiled or The Big Sick here. And yet here's Mother, opening on 2300 screens across America, starring a bunch of Oscar nominees, and making viewers as uncomfortable as a dead squirrel that got dropped on the banquet table at Thanksgiving dinner.

Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem star as a married couple living in a beautiful secluded house in the middle of beautiful nowhere where there are no roads coming in or out and no cell service (don't worry though, they've got a land line!). He's a writer, she's responsible for keeping the house nice after it burnt down before. Then some people - starting with a couple played by screen legends Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer - show up. And things get uncomfortable for her. Really quickly.

I'm not going any further with the plot of Mother, but I will tell you that the two hour film becomes a nightmare for Lawrence's character. And it's a damn cool one to watch. Aronofsky knows how to direct insanity, and the camera moves around the house following the lead in such an uncomfortable way for most of the film. The film's sound design! I swear this might have been the best sounding in theater experience of my life. Surround sound does some good work for most movies, and some big movies - like Christopher Nolan's acclaimed summer hit Dunkirk - really excel in that department. But Mother sounded like the house was moving around me. I don't do drugs or drink - really, I'm naturally this weird! - but I felt that house in that theater.

(Random side story: About an hour into Mother a huge thunderstorm broke out in my town. I could hear it through the walls and ceiling of the theater. I was pretty sure it was a storm - but I wasn't ruling out the thought that Aronofsky and company put that storm under the soundtrack of the movie. I spent several minutes trying to figure it out. I'll never forget the moment that storm kicked up and I thought the movie was coming alive around me. It brought my heart to life.)

And it was just an hour into Mother when my heart started to soar because I was lost in its wonderful nightmare. It got crazier from there. A lot crazier. And then it told us what it was talking about in the final minutes - or at least told us as much as it was willing to in those final minutes - and that kinda brought the movie back a notch. After a whole lot of thought the allegory that is at the center of the film makes perfect sense - Aronofsky has even gone on record explaining it - but I kind of wish it didn't. This is such a wonderful nightmare of a film - it made me paranoid and uncomfortable in the best "I'm safe in a move theater so I can feel these things and still walk out of here fine" kind of way - and I wish it was just left as a nightmare after the fact. Who gave Aronofsky the right to make sense out of a nightmare? Who wants that? Just let us think about it for a while and make it our own. 

I guess it is Aronofsky's nightmare, after all. I just wish he'd kept his explanation to himself. I'm gonna watch Mother again and again and enjoy just how intense and insane it is at times - there's a sequence where it even makes us look at comedienne Kristen Wiig as a monster from some other place! - and I just wish I didn't have the writer/director's answer to it hanging around in my mind. What are movies for, if not for the viewer?

What's up on Home Video?

Snapshot - 1979, Directed by Simon Wincer

The coolest thing I've seen on blu-ray lately is Vinegar Syndrome's release of Snapshot (aka One More Minute, aka The Day After Halloween, aka Any Other Damn Title Some Greedy Distributor Of Its Era Can Think Of). Vinegar Syndrome has become one of my favorite niche labels over the last couple of years. Their commitment to restoring random grindhouse titles from the 1970s and 1980s (as well as pornography of the era, but you all know I WOULD NEVER) is something no one really ever asked for but also something people like me who love wild, weird movies from the past should have been asking for their entire lives if they had only known what they were supposed to be asking for.

Snapshot first came to my attention because of one of those alternate titles I listed above, The Day After Halloween. Anything "related" to Halloween is sure to get me to look into it, so when I heard there was a foreign flick out there that sounded like it was trying to capitalize on what John Carpenter created in 1978 I got really curious. Thankfully, like a good genre fan, I read some stuff about the film before jumping on it, and found out that not only does the film not have anything to do with Halloween....it's not even a slasher film! I KNOW!

What sounds like a bad thing about a film that wants to be like Halloween turns out to be a good thing when you realize the film isn't actually a film that wants to be anything like Halloween. What Snapshot actually is is the story of a young Australian woman who decides to try modeling, and who ends up getting her photo used for a full page magazine ad. The two problems that arise from this are a) her face appears in the topless photo against her wishes and b) someone is stalking her and she can't figure out which creepy dude in her life it is.

The film plays out as an uncomfortable mystery, and while it doesn't really hum with intensity all the time it sincerely feels like there's a sleazy entity waiting around any corner in her world. It builds at a slow pace to a couple of strong final reveals, and the journey that the lead, played with an innocent charm by Sigrid Thornton, goes on wraps up quite nicely. It's not the kind of film that will rewrite genre history, but seeing it in a shiny new package from a studio that has taken such good care of it makes me smile a lot.

Let's say we want to pair Snapshot up with a double feature, since that is kind of the gimmick of this site. Here's a quick bullet list of things about it that stick out.
  • That sleazy grindhouse smell. (OK, you can't smell it...but it feels like you should be able to.)
  • Models and creepy stalkers
  • A girl who's really just not having a good time at all even though thanks to them creepy stalkers.
Which brings me to....

The Centerfold Girls - 1974, Directed by John Peyser

We're doing a grindhouse style double feature here, which obviously makes me think of the Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature, Grindhouse. When that film came out it paired Rodriguez' fast paced, ultra violent Planet Terror with Tarantino's slower, more talky, but eventually violent Death Proof. Snapshot is more of a Death Proof paced film, so if we want a double feature partner with more carnage and more violence we need something like The Centerfold Girls. 

The Centerfold Girls is also about the danger of being a model, but it's far more direct in its approach than Snapshot is. Here we have one man - Andrew Prine of The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Grizzly and a whole lot of other cool stuff - who decides to put on a nice suit and some nice shoes and go kill each of the women in an adult calendar, because that's what God would have wanted him to do. He articulates his beliefes quite nicely, actually. But before we talk any more about the film, here are those shoes. 
I thought they was relevant to share.

Unlike the slow paced Snapshot, The Centerfold Girls feels more like an anthology film. The killer sets his sights on multiple girls, but is picking them off one at a time in different settings, so really the film is broken up into three pursuits. Each of these are effective in different ways - the first segment is as brutal as The Last House on the Left, the middle section feels slightly Italian, and the third stars my favorite grindhouse bombshell of the '70s - the gorgeous and talented Tiffany Bolling.

The Centerfold Girls is a tough movie to watch - that first segment treats its centerfold so poorly that we're almost relieved when she runs into the killer - and it certainly has that same icky feeling that's at the heart of Snapshot. It's probably a better second half to this double feature than Snapshot would be, especially when the star power of Prine and Bolling collides in the film's final act.

The Centerfold Girls is actually available on a double feature blu-ray disc from Gorgon Video, paired with my favorite Tiffany Bolling film, Bonnie's Kids. This disc came out on my birthday last year, which makes me believe that someone out there loves me. And that's nice.

Now...let's talk about you guys. That's right. It's time for.....
THE LIGHTNING ROUND
Yesterday I asked the fine folks who follow me on Twitter to name some movies they love, hoping I've seen them. A few people stumped me, but a few didn't. 

How this works:
1) Someone suggests a movie
2) In one paragraph or less, I pick a double feature title to go with that movie.
3) Everybody dances!
(Maybe there won't be dancing.)

Here's 12 flicks people suggested to me, and 12 double features you might (or might not, it's your time) want to watch:
I haven't seen The Last Starfighter in way too long. But I love Catherine Mary Stewart. Let's pair this one with Night of the Comet.

This is an easy one. I adore Fright Night so much for it's Rear Window-with-vampires charm. Another great '80s neighbors and killers movie goes perfect with it. That movie is The 'Burbs.

Man, Kurt Russell in a cannibal horror western is a tasty treat. Love this movie. I'm gonna pair it with another dusty horror, the Civil War zombie flick Exit Humanity. More people need to see that.

Dude. You obviously wanna double John Wick with John Wick Chapter 2, but let's take that out of the equation, just for fun. I'm a BIG fan of Keanu Reeves' directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi. You might want to play it first and then end on Wick though, because Wick can't be followed by anything but Wick. Wick begets Wick, I believe that's how the proverb goes.

This is another one with a natural double feature (Dazed and Confused), but you all know I'm unnatural.  Everybody Wants Some!! (the second film in this post who's title ends with an !) is a little sweeter and more romantic than D&C - and that kinda reminds me of Greg Motolla's Adventureland, which I think a lot of people slept on unfairly. (I had to think about this a while, thanks Ted!)

Re-Animator always makes me smile. Because it's so gross and so funny and so cool. You know what else is those three things? Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn.

Lifeforce is a reallllly hard double feature. There's nothing like it. So I'm gonna go with another movie from the same era that I used to get confused with it because both titles start with L - Leviathan. (I never said all of these double features would be winners! But you should still watch both of these movies.)

Let's go with a super '80s sci-fi double feature here. Dune and Brazil. Make it wild. Pick whichever version of Brazil you like.

Ahhhh, the 1970s. When you could want to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders and someone would give you money to make a movie called Satan's Cheerleaders. God bless the 1970s. Let's go with another Vinegar Syndrome title - Malibu High. Not much Satain, but this much cheese in one double feature seems like a great idea.

Man, I gotta tell you guys - I haven't seen Fight Club in over 15 years. Was never a big fan of it at the time. Been meaning to give it another shot, just haven't got around to it. But hey - let's do Office Space and follow it up with Fight Club. Show the progression of how bad being a guy in a white shirt and tie can be when you're fed up with life.

Alright, another Rear Window homage! Y'all love me today, clearly. I adore Body Double. It's about as great as sleazy De Palma can be. I kinda want to pair it with another De Palma, even though that's too simple. But do I go with Sisters or Femme Fatale? You know what - let's make this a TRIPLE FEATURE and throw Body Double in the middle. Bring a towel.

Alright, everybody stop what you're doing. We gotta break format here.

I'm breaking my own rules for The Lighting Round, but we gotta pay tribute where tribute is due. Last week we lost the great Harry Dean Stanton, who passed away at the age of 91 after living a life that saw him become one of the coolest dudes in the history of movies. The dude just had it. I don't mean the "it" that studios talk about it, the thing that makes you look good on magazine covers and make money selling tickets. I mean the "it" that makes someone look at an actor and say something like -
"That guy right there. That guy gets it. That's the guy I want to be like."

Man, I love Harry Dean Stanton. My best suggestion after Repo Man is to watch anything else he did. Look at that man work. The odds are he'll make your day better and make you smile. Because he had that kind of "it."
We've used the word it in a lot of different ways today. Are you sick of me? That's fair. Let's call it a day. There's 14 double features here when I usually only give you one. I don't believe it either.

Come back next week when we'll get back to normal and finish up Alfred Hitchcock Month! And keep an eye out for the next time we decide to do The Lightning Round and have one of these Freestyle weeks, you could be part of it!

As always, thanks for reading. I could do this without you guys - but I'd really rather not. You have "it."
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