Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors

Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors is an entertaining documentary about early exploitation movies. A variety of actresses and movie-makers are interviewed, providing some insight into a past era.

Some shots from the movies are provided, with boobs, but it seems that they are taken from VHS masters. This is acceptable because this is a documentary, and also because there are uncensored boobs. Some documentaries censor the footage.

I have seen some of the movies, like Street Trash, so I enjoyed learning about the process of filming and later distribution. Every movie that I did not see is going to be purchased because of how interesting the documentary makes them. I really mean that. I am buying every single title that I have not yet seen.

I was fortunate to have seen a couple of documentaries about 42nd Street and how important the theaters were for this class of film. While some movies, like Re-animator, were more widely released, it’s still interesting how that tiny section of New York City cultivated the indie film community. I was too young to have been part of it. This documentary only references that part of cinema history. You will have to see something dedicated to that subject.

The style of this documentary is cordial and down-to-earth. You get to see people talk about myriad topics in an off-the-cuff manner, and their words are given lots of breathing room. If this were a more polished documentary, the talks would be cut up and the pacing would be artificial.

I liked this so much that I am going to watch it again as soon as I finish typing this review.

La Petite Mort 2

I am surprised that there is a second movie, whether it is a sequel or not. The first one was disappointing in many ways. That story led three average people into an underground sex club that had zero sex and no nudity. That made me think that the moviemakers were shy. This guess was supported by the behind-the-scenes footage in which a camera guy kept trying to take shots of a girl’s legs, and she scolded him each time, even pulling down her conservative skirt here and there. Didn’t the camera guy know that movies can have nudity?

Seriously, if the environment of the movie is a criminal sex club, why is there no sex? The moviemakers should have stuck with a topic that they could handle, like how to wear baggy clothes and have stupid gore. Yes, even if the movie showed a tit, the gore was ridiculous. In one scene, a girl had her scalp cut at the hairline. The villain was to scalp her, which might have been interesting, but that knife miraculously cut the skull open, exposing the brain. Why don’t ignore people spend twenty minutes with a biologist, trauma doctor, or some other person who could inform them that one cannot open a skull with a knife?

Horror is considered an idiotic genre by some, and this is one of the reasons why. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a person was hoisted onto a meat hook and seemed to only react as if he were suspended by a belt, seeming to only exhibit mild discomfort. I won’t go into the various things that should have happened, because I shut the movie off at that point and didn’t watch it again until after twenty years or so, and I still considered it stupid. It was also idiotic when, in Nightmare on Elm Street, the villain was revealed to be the offspring of a nun and one hundred maniacs. Did the writer not know that it only takes one sperm to conceive? That is another movie that I shut off immediately after that kind of idiocy.

My expectation for this new movie was very low, especially with the introduction of a woman who wore a skirt that her grandmother would have considered conservative. If the girl is supposed to be a sex-worker, shouldn’t she dress in more tantalizing garb? Again, if a person is afraid of nudity or women, perhaps a different environment should be chosen. The only horror in the first movie was that of the moviemakers who were terrified of nipples. Oh wait, there are nipples in this one, but they are male. A fat man with short hair and corpsepaint delights in gay bondage, which made me keep my eyes off the screen, so I have no idea what happened. Probably some stupid gore.

Not a single attractive person or anyone with on-screen charisma appeared yet. It was just a series of over-acting dullards. But I held hope that there would be some pay-off.

After much gayness and silly dialogue, there was a female victim, but she wore more clothes than someone in a blizzard.
It seems that the person who made the movie thought that he could make a cheap version of Hostel, but I had given up on deriving any entertainment from the movie so I didn’t care about what was happening on screen anymore. I just wanted it to be over.

There was one woman who was nude, with of course only brief glimpses of her flat chest. I had spaced out by this point so I don’t know what happened, other than cheesy attempts at skinning a silicone prop. Again, just a little research would have resulted in scrapping the idea of peeling a person like a banana.

The movie was too gay for me. I found myself looking away from the screen a lot because I just don’t swing that way. I can’t cite a single thing that I liked, and believe me, I tried to find something to compliment. I have no idea what kind of person would like this. It seems to have been written by a social retard who created characters he thought were cool, but no one who actually IS cool would watch. Sadly, I cannot give you any reason to give this movie a chance. I only watched the whole thing because I had to write a review.

House of the Dragon Season One

I must preface this review by revealing that I did not pay for this. A friend lent me the show without telling me a single thing about it. I did not pay for it because THE GAME OF THRONES insulted fans in the later seasons. I could not believe that anyone would give any related show a chance. I certainly didn’t, until I saw it for free, and I feel stupid for wasting my time despite knowing that it was pointless to invest any attention to any material from this franchise of betrayal.

The Game of Thrones was entertaining for the first four seasons, but the shows started feeling like television-writing, with heavy use of exposition. One example is when the fat-ass brought the woman who cuckolded him to his father’s home. During dinner, the fat-ass and father talked about a sword on the wall. I knew that the sword would be stolen or otherwise appear in the next scene or two, and sadly, I was right. “Exposition” is when characters say things to each other that is meant for the viewer, not each other. Well, that’s one definition, but the show degraded so far that ALL forms of exposition were frequently used.

There were many stupid behaviors that are also silly television-writing, like in the final battle when defenders left the protection of the castle walls and engaged the enemy. I can go on, but the point is that the battle was ridiculous.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON is much worse.

There is no nudity, even when characters enter a brother or some sort of medieval sex club. This tells me that the show was made for a particular audience rather than to tell a good story. It’s filtered for imbeciles.

Another whammy is that a group of people who are similar to albinos are played by Africans. I almost spit out my beer. Black people are playing albinos. Did the producers think that we would be fooled by the white-hair wigs? Seeing this makes it impossible to take the show seriously.

The race-swapping of characters is another indication that this is not a good story. The show exists to entertain a certain type of viewer, and I am not the target audience. When I watch loosely-based medieval fiction, I don’t want to see such a ridiculous straying from reality. Yes, it’s a fantasy tale, but it is a fantasy based on certain rules. I love the FRIDAY movies, but I don’t love race-swapping.

As I ranted about this in an online chat. I joked that casting directors in modern movies are actually human-resources managers who are adamant about afformative-action, and a member said something about Hollywood requiring something similar to human-resources. I think it has more to do with shows and movies requiring certain diversity and strong female roles, blah blah, or else the work will be ineligible for awards, but I don’t know if this is true. Whatever the explanation is, I am fearful of watching anything new because I don’t believe that modern shows or movies are focused on stories. It’s all propaganda and gimmicks.

Getting back to HOUSE OF GARBAGE, there is a wimpy man who is portrayed as a warrior. In typical television-writing, he can fight fifty men and barely get a scratch. Oh wait, he gets shot through the leg with an arrow, but he can still run toward his enemy after fighting ten million warriors who fight him only one at a time. Shouldn’t such silliness be left for afternoon television shows meant for teens?

That wimpy male is also pure evil, which is not something I want to see. It’s childish. Then again, the target audience of this show is not people who read or have social intelligence.

I could not finish the show. I wanted to quit after the first half hour, but I felt like I had lost so much money at a casino that I should play a little more with some hope of diminishing my loss, but each minute was like losing another hundred dollars. I ultimately had to stop. Even if George Martin personally appeared on screen and said, “Just kidding. Thanks for enduring this hell. For your trust, you get a hundred dollars, and now you can watch the REAL show. I hope you enjoy this prank.” I would not have continued.

I am deeply saddened that there will be a second season. I had seriously believed that the backlash to this show would be so venomous that the show would be canceled. I did not watch RINGS OF POWER or WHEEL OF TIME because I knew they would be garbage. Viewers rejected the bastardized shows, which sent a message to the creators. I held hope that more such backlash would force studios to respect the stories or to just abandon the projects if they couldn’t refrain from inserting propaganda and other nonsense. Humans have let me down.

When I was a teen, I started reading the fantasy books by Raymond E. Feist. There is a television deal for an adaptation, but I am not excited. I will not watch a single second unless I am assured that the show was made in the spirit of the books. I hold no hope.

Three Lost Bill Zebub Movies

Bill Zebub is offering three movies on a BD-R, with each disc hand-numbered and signed. It’s $35 in the USA, and all others add $20 for shipping. Email bill@billzebub.com to receive ordering instructions.

The movies are METALHEADS (from 2001), DOLLA MORTE, and FRANKENSTEIN THE RAPIST. These are early movies, so you should only get this disc if you are a big fan. The reason why these older titles are being offered on a disc is that fans have begged Bill Zebub to re-release these, but it is highly unlikely that these will ever appear on any factory-replicated disc again, being that they are only of value to the devoted fans who want to devour every piece of cinema in Bill Zebub’s history. The reason why there is no packaging is that there are fans who own the movies, some in mint condition, who should be able to sell theirs for $200 or more. Yes, when Bill Zebub’s movies go out of print, they drastically increase in value. Some have sold for $700 or more. No, these will not be available on any streaming platform.

Also, be warned that FRANKENSTEIN THE RAPIST is not actually a movie. Bill Zebub filmed test-footage to see what works and what doesn’t. It turned out that there was over an hour of finished scenes, so they were pieced together and were made available in a limited run of 1,000, with an honest synopsis that made it clear that this was not meant to be released. It DOES contain nudity because Bill Zebub really did want to see what worked, and his ideas of a Frankenstein movie had nude scenes. Some of that footage later was used in other movies because Sativa Verte and Nikki Sebastion were too amazing to be relegated to lost footage. You get to see more of those shots here.

Also, the 2001 version of METALHEADS was a practice movie that Bill Zebub shot so that when he was going to pitch his first-ever script to producers, they could see a demo movie so they could see some of the visual ideas. Bill Zebub paid the actresses even though this was just to be used as a visual example because he took the project seriously. Spending no money is equivalent to saying that you don’t respect what you are doing, and you don’t respect actresses. Speaking of actresses, Suzi Lorraine and Darian Caine participated in this. Again, Email bill@billzebub.com to order your copy.