The Curator of Schlock #358: Season of the Witch

11 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Arrow Home Video, George A. Romero, Hungry Wives, Season of the Witch

The Curator of Schlock #358 by Jeff Shuster

Season of the Witch

Also known as Hungry Wives

I think my traveling kangaroo companion, Edwige, killed a Quebecer named Lickity Split in an illegal street fight. I collected my winnings and skedaddled before the cops showed up. Apparently, kangaroos punch really hard. I’m not heading back to that bar until the heat dies down.

This week’s Arrow Home Video is 1973’s Season of the Witch from director George Romero, of Night of the Living Dead fame. Apparently, the original distributer tried to sell the flick as a softcore porno called Hungry Wives.

The film never really found an audience and didn’t gain any attention until Dawn of the Dead became a hit. Hungry Wives was then triumphantly rereleased under the title Season of the Witch.

You could file this movie under the dissatisfied-housewife-turns-to-the-occult-to-spice-things-up-in-her-life genre. The housewife in this movie is named Joan Mitchell (Jan White) and she is 39 years-old. She has a free spirited daughter named Nikki (Joedda McClain) and a workaholic husband named Jack (Bill Thunhurst).

Joan is plagued by bad dreams usually revolving around her being locked in a dog cage by her husband or, more disturbingly, being given a sales pitch on the wonders of suburban life by her husband. Making matters worse, she regularly sees a psychiatrist who can’t distinguish shit from Shinola. And worse still, she’s joined by an insufferable gaggle of the other housewives and weekend parties with Mad Libs games. If I were her, I’d be bereft, too.

While talking to her friends, Joan hears about a new neighbor rumored to be a witch, a practitioner of the forbidden art of spells and magic. Apparently, this was a trend in the late 1960s America, according to the commentary by Travis Crawford on this superb Arrow Home Video release. Joan and her friend Shirley (Anne Muffley) visit this neighbor and Joan receives a beginners guide to witchcraft book. The two of them go back to Joan’s house where they run into her daughter and this obnoxious college professor she’s dating named Gregg. You get the whole Silent Generation versus Baby Boomer showdown between Joan and Gregg when he plays some head games with her friend Shirley. On the ride back to Shirley’s house, Joan has to listen to Shirley complaining about how she’s old and over the hill and that Joan will be there soon enough.

Joan returns home earlier that she should have because she overhears Nikki and Gregg having sex. When her daughter realizes she’s home, she storms off and moves out the next day without telling anyone. Joan’s husband slaps her around for not doing anything. The police get involved, but no one knows where Nikki is. I think it’s around this point that Joan goes all in on the witchcraft stuff, gathering up occult items and casting spells. She casts a spell on Gregg so that they can have an affair. All is going well, but then Joan starts having vivid nightmares about a demon masked stranger trying to break into her house. She then gets the bright idea of trying to conjure something. I won’t spoil the rest, but this is an interesting lost movie of George Romero’s.

Check it out.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, and episode 450) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #357: J. D.’s Revenge

04 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #357 by Jeff Shuster

J. D.’s Revenge

Time for another month of devil movies.

So I’ve set up the match between Edwige, my traveling kangaroo companion, and a Quebecer nicknamed Lickity Spit. I’ve been promised safe passage into Canada if Edwige knocks this guy out and I’m putting my money on Edwige. Literally, I’ve placed what’s left of my savings on this match. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

It’s Satan Month for this blog and I’ll be covering four films featuring the Prince of Lies or the closest equivalent. Tonight’s movie is 1976’s J.D.’s Revenge from director Arthur Marks. It’s a movie about ghostly possession. There are no bona fide demons in this movie, but we do get a fire and brimstone preacher ranting about Satan. Close enough.

The movie is about a college football player named Isaac Hendrix (Glynn Turman). Life is going well. He’s studying pre-law, has a job as a taxi driver, and a supportive wife named Christella (Joan Pringle). The two of them go out for a night of revelry with their friends which has them turn up at a stage show featuring hypnosis with audience participation. The hypnotist makes the participants think it’s really hot so they start to strip. Then the hypnotist tells them it’s really cold so they start to cover up. During this hypnosis, Isaac sees horrible visions of death and mutilation. The hypnotist snaps the participants awake, but Isaac is now possessed by the malevolent spirit of J.D. Walker, a hustler murdered in New Orleans back in the 1940s.

J. D. Walker’s ghost is on a mission to find his sister’s real murderer, after his sister’s vengeful husband mistook J. D. for the murderer and killed him (J. D.). Did you get all that? I was pretty confused from the get-go, but maybe that was the director’s intent. Anyway, Isaac acts stranger and stranger. He starts buying old clothes, straightens his hair, and experiences blackouts when he takes on the persona of J.D. Walker, hardened criminal and womanizer.

Seeking answers to what’s wrong with him, Isaac finds his way to a church run by the Reverend Elijah Bliss (Louis Gossett, Jr.), a prizefighter turned preacher. Reverend Bliss goes on about how we have to fight our inner demons and keep Satan from entering our house. Elijah’s brother, Theotis (Fred Pinkard), doesn’t like the looks of Isaac, but Elijah’s daughter, Roberta (Alice Jubert), is drawn to him. J.D.’s possession of Isaac takes greater and greater control of him. He wreaks havoc all over town before a final confrontation with his killer. Will J.D.’s soul be put at peace and his killer brought to justice? You’ll just have to watch. This a creepy little horror movie with a great dual performance by Glynn Turman.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #356: Dead or Alive: Finale

28 Friday May 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #356 by Jeff Shuster

Dead or Alive: Finale

This one don’t make no sense.

I met a swarthy gentleman at a bar called The Grizzled Grizzly near the Canadian border. His name is Jacque Baptiste and he says he’ll get me across the Canadian border if I’ll have Edwige, my kangaroo companion, compete in a street fight. Now I’m sure there’s an ethical dilemma here, but I also have those poor people in Saskatchewan to think about. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices.

Tonight’s Arrow Home Video release is 2002’s Dead or Alive: Final from director Takashi Miike. I don’t know if I can call it a film as it was shot on digital video. Arrow Video issued a statement that they cleaned it up as best they could, but this movie was shot in standard definition and standard definition ain’t high definition.

This movie takes place in the city of Yokohama in the year 2346. That’s the far future! There’s even this weird blimp flying over the city that looks like a flying fish or dragon. We never see it again, but it’s one of those wow effects that’s supposed to suspend my disbelief that this is Yokohama in the year 2346.

This is a bad future. The mayor of Yokohama forces all of the citizens to take birth control pills in an effort to not repeat the mistakes of the past. You see, there was a cataclysmic war that nearly destroyed civilization. I guess by preventing people from having children, you can prevent future wars from happening as there will no longer be anyone to actually carry them out. Still, some pesky citizens still insist on procreating.

A resistance has formed for those that still want to have babies. And it is up to the police to stop this resistance. Leading the charge against them is Officer Takeshi Honda (Riki Takeuchi). Helping the resistance is a rogue replicant named Ryō (Show Aikawa). What is a replicant you may ask? It’s a robot created before the great cataclysm. They are very sophisticated and can pass for regular people except they have super powers. For instance, Ryō can catch a speeding bullet in his hands and send it flying back to his opponent.

Later, we learn that Officer Honda is also a replicant. So are his beautiful wife and young son. His whole life has been a lie. We get a huge showdown between Honda and Ryō and get treated to some flashbacks of the first two Dead or Alive movies. And then the two replicants morph into a huge robot that resembles a part of the male anatomy that I won’t mention here. I think the idea is that they will confront the mayor, but the movie just kind of ends.

I can’t figure out if I’m suffering from an extreme form of culture shock or if Takashi Miike is just that weird a dude. I hear he’s currently in charge of a TV show about magical school girls so I guess he’s gone the family-friendly route. The Arrow Blu-rays are chock full of special features including commentary tracks by critic Tom Men. He’s from Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Okay. That’s all I’ve got. Time to dunk my head in a bathtub full of ice water and scream.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #355: Dead or Alive 2

21 Friday May 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #355 by Jeff Shuster

Dead or Alive 2: Birds

Gas shortage! Gas shortage! Everyone’s losing their shit over the gas shortage. I still have to figure out a way to get across the Canadian border with my unvaccinated self and my kangaroo compadre. Still, I lucked out. I found a gas station with plenty of diesel so I filled up about six Hefty trash bags to the brim and tied them up as best I could. They’re in the truck with the canning equipment. They should last me as I drive around aimlessly trying to figure out my next step.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 2000’s Dead or Alive 2: Birds from director Takashi Miike. If you were hoping for a direct followup to Miike’s Dead or Alive, you’ll be disappointed, especially since the last movie ended with what looked like a world-ending disaster. No, Dead or Alive 2: Birds is a standalone story. The only thing it has in common with Dead or Alive is its stars, Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa.

Okay. This seems to start out as another one of those Yakuza versus Triad deals. A low level assassin named Miyuki gets hired to assassinate an officer in a Triad gang…or was it a Yakuza gang? Same difference. As Miyuki sets up the shot, another assassin named Shuuichi kills his target. Miyuki still collects the money and runs before they figure out he wasn’t the actual assassin.

Miyuki takes a boat ride and gobbles down a noodle bowl while reminiscing about his childhood. Seems that he and his friends always saved the tofu at the bottom of the bowl for last. They would eat the tofu quickly at the count of three. Maybe it’s around then that he figures out that Shuu was his close childhood friend from the orphanage they grew up in. The two assassins meet each other again and they decide to take a trip to the island where they grew up. They visit the orphanage and stay with another mutual friend, Kohei and his pregnant wife.

And then the two assassins decide to help out with a children’s play for the locals. What? The play is about a lion in the jungle that subsists on chocolate and bananas. The lion runs into other animals, but there’s an eccentric tortoise that threatens the harmony of the group. I thought I was watching a movie about hardcore assassins and now I’m being subjected to some bad community theater.

Interspersed with segments from the children’s play are violent gang slayings in the newly unfolding war between the Yakuza and the Triads. Oh, and I think it’s revealed that Miyuki and Shuu aren’t really human. I think they’re either extraterrestrials or fallen angels. You see, feathered wings keep poking out of their back. They also make a point of sharing their assassination fees to help impoverished people in Africa. I guess that’s a sort of moral justification. If you kill criminals for money, but then use that money to help out the poor and oppressed, is it really evil? I think I’m getting a headache just thinking about the moral complications. That or it’s the gas fumes. Maybe a cigarette will calm me down. Where did I put my lighter?

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #354: Dead or Alive

14 Friday May 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #354 by Jeff Shuster

Dead or Alive

Not be confused with DOA: Dead or Alive.

So I make it to the Canadian border crossing and the guys in the snow fatigues start asking me all kinds of questions. Have I been vaccinated? No. There’s a vaccine for the virus? I haven’t really been keeping up with the news. Do I have a passport? Nope. I guess you need those when you’re traveling. Is that my kangaroo? No! Edwige is no one’s property. She’s my traveling companion. They made me turn around, but I’ll find another way in. Those poor people in Saskatchewan need me!

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1999’s Dead or Alive from director Takashi Miike. This brutal movie makes Miike’s own Black Society trilogy look tame. The movie begins with chaos reigning on the streets of Shinjuku. A naked prostitute clutching a bag of blow falls to her death from a high rise. A yakuza member with blond hair and a blue suit rips the blow out of her dead hands. While he’s employing the services of a male prostitute in a dingy bathroom, his throat gets slit by the hand of a rival gangster, blood spraying all over the face of the male prostitute.

Things settle down a little bit after that as we’re introduced to Detective Jojima (Show Aikawa). He and his family are going through a rough time as his daughter needs expensive surgery that the family can’t afford. She’ll die without the surgery, so he makes a deal with a yakuza boss named Aoki (Renji Ishibashi). This Aoki fellow is a bad man that likes to pick up women from hostess clubs and then drown them in inflatable pools filled with their own feces and urine.

Seriously, I hate this guy.

Aoki makes Detective Jojima to hunt down some petty crooks that robbed one of his operations in broad daylight. They are not to be arrested, but turned over the Yakuza so they can be dealt with as the Yakuza deals with people who’ve ripped them off in broad daylight. The ones that stole from them are a small gang of fearless criminals led by a black trench coat wearing malcontent named Ryūichi (Riki Takeuchi). He’s not a nice man. In fact, Ryūichi has the eyes of a cold blooded killer.

Ryūichi and his gang commit a brutal hit on the club belonging to Aoki’s yakuza outfit, wasting almost every member including those in higher leadership positions. They even kill Detective Jojima’s partner who went in trying to arrest them. Jojima shows up to the club well after Aoki and his gang have left the premises. Aoki is the one survivor of the massacre and he forgives the debt Jojima owes him as he is now the boss. Jojima thanks Aoki by shooting him dead.

Detective Jojima turns his sights to Ryūichi’s gang. He intercepts some heroine they’re trying to smuggle into the country. Ryūichi retaliates by rigging Detective Jojima’s car to explode. Too bad Jojima’s wife and daughter were the ones in the car when it it exploded. And just before his daughter was supposed to get that life-saving surgery, too. This leads us to a violent last showdown between Detective Jojima and Ryūichi’s gang. Seriously, this finale is worth the buildup toward it. Check it out!

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #353: Ley Lines

07 Friday May 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #353 by Jeff Shuster

Ley Lines

Part 3 of the Black Society trilogy.

Edwige and I spent the night in Butte, Montana. The hotel said no kangaroos so Edwige had to sleep in the truck. There was a Perkins in town so I got some blueberry pancakes and an orange Hi-C. I grabbed a piece of banana cream pie to go and fed it to Edwige.

The hotel was right next to a hog rendering plant. I had to fight the urge to vomit at three in the morning. I’m sorry. I don’t have an exciting adventure story to tell this week. I’ll be at the Canadian border soon enough.

So this is Miike in May Month for the Museum of Schlock. Speaking of which, I need to get back there. It’s been over a year since I hightailed it out of Orlando. Hopefully, the rats haven’t taken it over. Anyway, this week’s Arrow Home Video movie is 1999’s Ley Lines from director Takashi Miike. This is the third movie in Miike’s Black Society trilogy. This is a series of movies about Chinese immigrants living in Japan that get involved in criminal organizations.

The movie centers around three malcontents named Ryuichi, Shunrei, and Chang that get duped by a Chinese prostitute named Anita. Basically, she steals their wallets and locks them in an empty room in an abandoned high rise. Desperate to earn money, they start selling toluene on the streets for one of the Triad outfits in Shinjuki. Just one question: what the heck is toluene? Apparently, it’s an aromatic hydrocarbon that is sometimes used as an inhalant for recreational drug use. Be warned though, it can cause great neurological harm. So in other words, it fried your brains!

The three malcontents make friends with Anita the prostitute after she has a violent fight with her pimp after undergoing a nasty sexual encounter with a perverted salary man. I guess they look past the whole getting robbed business. Ryuichi wants to get a fake passport so he can get out of Japan and move to fun Brazil. The three malcontents and Anita buy their fake passports and an illegal firearm which they use to shoot up a Triad poker game and steal all of the money. They then get on a boat, set up a bicycle renting business in Rio de Janeiro, and retire rich, happy men. I’m kidding of course.

You see, you don’t shoot up and rob a mob poker game and expect to live to see your next birthday. Remember The Sopranos? The first guy to get whacked is Chang who languishes on for hours before finally keeling over. Honestly, I was wanting him to die already. Ryuichi and Anita wait at a train station while Shunrei gives Chang’s share of the money to his mother. On the way back to the train station, Shunrei gets run over by a van being driven by one of the Triad members. Ryuichi and Anita go to look for him. They see his splattered body right before the van starts to chase them down. Somehow, Ryuichi evades execution by causing the driver to crash into a dilapidated house and impale himself.

Anita and Ryuichi get on the train to get to a seaport and escape to Brazil, but you know it won’t be that easy. The final confrontation is well worth the wait. Neither the malcontents nor the mob get what they want. which is as it should be.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #352: All I See is You

30 Friday Apr 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #352 by Jeff Shuster

All I See is You

Worst movie of the 2010s.

So I decided to take a shortcut through Wyoming, but I’ve been stuck here for the last two weeks. It’s like I entered the Bermuda Triangle of the United States of America. I know I’ve stopped at the same gas station to at least ten times. I keep driving through miles and miles of amber waves of grain. I just want to get to Butte already.

I know I promised part 3 of The Black Society Trilogy, but I’ve been busy this week. I will make it up to you next month. There will be a whole lot of Takashi Miike going on next month. This week’s movie is 2016’s All I See Is You from director Marc Forster. It’s billed as a psychological drama. It may be the worst movie of the 2010s.

Blake Lively stars as Gina, a blind woman who depends on her husband, James (Jason Clarke) to take care of her. Gina was in a really bad car accident when she was a little girl that resulted in her losing both her vision and her parents. James and Gina live in a nice apartment in Thailand. James works in insurance. Gina gives guitar lessons to a little girl where they sing a song that goes something like this:

I like to double dutch
I like to swim
It makes me happy
It makes me grin
It makes me happy
And all I see is you
And when I’m happy
All I see is you

Anyway, there’s your title with that last line from this detestable ear-worm. You sang a bad song, Blake Lively. A bad song!

Things are looking better for Gina when she gets a cornea transplant in one of her eyes. The doctor says she needs to take some steroidal drops if the implant has any chance of restoring her sight permanently. Now that she can see for the first time since she was a little girl, she realizes that she’s a beautiful young woman and that her husband looks like a creeper. James asks her if he looks like she imagined him to and she says no. James prods her as to what she thought about when they made love in the past and she admits she thought about many different men.

In an attempt to put the old spark back into their marriage, they go to Barcelona where that had their honeymoon. James and Gina meet up with Gina’s sister and her obnoxious artist husband. They go for a night on the town, see a live sex show where the participants where pig masks. I guess this awakens Gina’s a lustful side that James can’t fulfill. They’ve also been trying to get pregnant because I’ve heard that can save a marriage. Too bad James learns from the doctor that he’s infertile.

I guess James figures that the marriage is doomed unless Gina becomes dependent on him again so he starts watering down her drops. Gina goes to the doctor to have the drops checked and he tells her they’ve been watered down. She gets new drops and starts taking them in secret while pretending to be blind around her husband. Oh, and Gina is finally pregnant because she had a brief affair with the local personal trainer.

James discovers a bunch of empty drop bottles at their new house realizing that Gina has indeed been taking them without his knowledge. He sees Gina and student at a local talent show where they play that stupid song while Gina looks directly at him. James ducks out of the concert, the shame and disgrace proving too much for him. He drives headfirst into an oncoming truck, killing himself. The last thing we see is Gina giving birth to a healthy baby.

The thing about bad movies is that there are always new ones to discover. All I See Is You somehow eluded me all this time. It makes The Boy Next Door look like Casablanca.

Don’t watch this, everybody. Heed the warning of the curator of schlock. This is very bad schlock.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #351: Rainy Dog

23 Friday Apr 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #351 by Jeff Shuster

Rainy Dog

Part 2 of the Black Society trilogy.

Edwige and I have been consuming a lot of beef jerky on our little road excursion. Edwige prefers the teriyaki flavor, but I’m more of a black pepper fan. Oh, and I learned that the Slim Jim company makes pork rinds. They come in Squealin’ Hot and Hogwild BBQ. What are pork rinds? Pig skins! Hmmmmmmm…

Tonight’s Arrow Home Video release is 1997’s Rainy Dog from director Takashi Miike. This is a movie about an ex-Yakuza enforcer named Yuuji (Show Aikawa). He actually got fired from the Yakuza. How does that happen? Do they bring you into the main office, tell you this isn’t working out, that you haven’t put your shoulder to the wind? Then you have to clear out your desk while being escorted out by security. You’re not allowed to talk to anyone on the way out and you may start bawling like a baby. The secretary you’ve had a crush on looks away as you walk past her desk. As you drive home, you realize you left the Death Wish II CD soundtrack in the CD Rom drive of your desk computer, but you’re too chicken to go back to ask for it.

Anyway, Yuuji is getting by as a working class assassin, killing assigned targets for quick cash. A woman stops by his crappy apartment with a little boy named Chen (Jianqin He). This little boy is Yuuji’s son and his mother is tired of taking care of him so she just leaves him there, making a fast getaway in a cab. Chen is mute and doesn’t say a word throughout the whole picture. He keeps following Yuuji wherever he goes whether it’s to shoot a man having lunch with his family or partaking in the services at a local brothel.

Yuuji starts hanging out with a prostitute named Lilly (Xianmei Chen) that kind of ends up taking care of Chen as a surrogate mother or surrogate big sister. Lilly dreams of moving somewhere else where it doesn’t rain all of the time. Yes, it rains all of the time in whatever city they’re currently living in. Chen eventually befriends a stray dog that’s drenched in the rain so I guess that’s where the title of the movie comes from.

So Yuuji assassinates a few criminals in the middle of a money exchange and ends up with a a whole bunch of cash as a bonus. He decides to high tail it out of town with Lilly and Chen, but a bunch of men start shooting at the cab they’re leaving in. A hit has been put out on Yuuji by the brother of one of the men he’s assassinated. The three of them hide out in a shack by the beach, trying to figure out what to do next. I won’t spoil the finale.

I enjoyed this film better than Shinjuku Triad Society. It had a melancholy feel to it and was less batshit. We will conclude with part 3 of the Black Society Trilogy next week with Ley Lines.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #350: Shinjuku Triad Society

16 Friday Apr 2021

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The Curator of Schlock by Jeff Shuster

Shinjuku Triad Society

Violence and more violence.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? This question has bothered philosophers for hundreds of years. I propose another philosophical question: if you’re driving a Mack truck and run a station wagon off the road because you couldn’t see it when you were changing lanes, does it really count as vehicular manslaughter, if there are no witnesses, hypothetically?

Tonight’s Arrow Home Video release is 1995’s Shinjuku Triad Society from director Takashi Miike. This is a very violent movie filled with female prostitution, male prostitution, shooting, slicing, drug use, organ harvesting, and brotherly love. I know what you’re thinking, “Yes, but what is Shinjuku Triad Society about?” Well, it’s about a Triad Society situated in Shinjuku, Japan.

Oh, you want more?

Okay. So there are Triads operating in Japan that have come over to the country from Taiwan. Our main character is Tatushito (Kippei Shiina), a rogue police detective that kicks ass and takes names. He’s also half Taiwanese and half Japanese, a factor that made him a bit of an outsider in Taiwan. In fact, Tatushito reminisces about how he and his younger brother were thrown in a pig pen every time a robbery happened in their small town in Taiwan. The people there still had resentment toward the Japanese over World War II.

Tatushito is busy hunting for Wang Zhi-Ming (Tomorowo Taguchi), the leader of the Dragon Claw (which is the name of a Triad outfit). Wang is suspected of the murder of a night patrolman. Seems the poor guy was slashed in the neck and wrist, blood was spraying everywhere. It actually wasn’t Wang, but one of the male prostitutes in his employ who was a bit on the psychotic side. Not that Wang is that well-balanced either. During a negotiation with another gang, he crushes a glass of bourbon in his hand to show how badass his is, but really, those glass fibers are going to get all in your palm.

Of course, the big shocker is that Tatushito’s younger brother Yoshihito is working for the Triad gang. He’s set up an organ harvesting operation where he steals kidneys and other expensive organs from new immigrants in Japan fresh from Taiwan. That’s messed up. The police examined some eight year-old with a nasty scar on his side from where the kidney was removed. Tatushito feels he is his brother’s keeper and is under pressure from his parents to look out for Yoshihito. His younger brother wants to be a hardcore criminal and warns Tatushito to stay out of his affairs.

Some violence follows. Wang takes out the Triad leadership in bloody fashion. I think he murders his own father. Tatushito confronts his brother and manages to beat him into submission and send him on a bullet train down to his parents. Tatushito then hunts down Wang and executes him which is against police procedure in Japan, but they can’t pin it on Tatushito and he gets a raise and promotion. Apparently, this is part one of a trilogy known as the Black Society trilogy. These are available in a fancy set from Arrow Video, complete with audio commentaries and other special features, if you are into that sort of thing.

Until next time.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #349: Greyhound

09 Friday Apr 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #349 by Jeff Shuster

Greyhound

Not the bus.

Edwige and I were about five days into our road trip to Canada when I realize I had made a horrible mistake. I left my box of Arrow Blu-rays back at Big Tom’s. I have to turn this rig around, but that’s okay. I subscribed to Apple TV Plus for all sorts of exclusive content like old Charlie Brown specials and a Justin Timberlake indie film. Oh, boy. Well there is a new Tom Hanks movie on there called Greyhound.

2020’s Greyhound from director Aaron Schneider skipped the theaters last year due to that whole global pandemic thing. Apple landed it as their big exclusive movie on their fledgling streaming service. This was much to the disappointment of Tom Hanks who wanted a big screen release for this movie he wrote the screenplay for based on the novel The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester. I typically don’t care for World War II movies, but this one was interesting. Maybe because it’s the first movie I’ve seen about The Battle of the Atlantic. Also, at a 91 minute runtime, Greyhound doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Tom Hanks plays Commander Ernest Krause, captain of the USS Keeling. Its radio call sign is “Greyhound.” Greyhound is part of a team of escort ships, protecting supply ships on their way to Liverpool. Captain Krause is in command of the fleet, but it’s his first mission, first time coming face to face with the dreaded threats that lurk within the waters of the “Black Pit,” an area of the Atlantic out of range of air support, where the ships are vulnerable to the dreaded German U-boats.

The U-boats are known as “wolf packs” because they hunt in groups. And they are pretty terrifying. We don’t get to really see the enemy in this movie. The creepy music blares, the sub pops up from the water with a red wolf’s head painted on the side, and before you know it, an oil tanker is torpedoed. You can see the toll this is taking on Captain Krause as he downs cups of flaming hot coffee while refusing to eat anything.

Every so often, one of the Germans figures out the Greyhound’s radio frequency and starts trolling the crew. The German officer says stuff like, “We hear the screams of your comrades and we laugh. The wolf always eats the hound. We will kill you. Awhooooooooooo. Awhoooooooooo!” Captain Krause changes the frequency, but the Germans figure it out again and keep trolling them. There’s loss of crew members, high stakes suspense, and a climatic finish.

I’m with Tom Hanks. This should have gotten a theatrical release. The spectacle of warships and submarines attacking each other on the high seas would have been worth seeing on the big screen. Also, Tom Hanks tends to keep the details as true to life in these war films. This would have been an immersive experience in a proper theater. Here’s hoping it might get a second chance for a theatrical run.

Photo by Leslie Salas.