Cult Films

Don't let the beginning credits full of English names fool you, this is Italian through and through. There is a certain stilted dialogue and style that is always a dead giveaway, and this film has style in spades. Some of the most beautiful shots I've ever seen staged in a horror film. The score is divine as well. It starts slow and doesn't really pick up speed until the final act, but what you end up with is certainly worth waiting for, if not for the visuals alone. I didn't realize until researching the film after watching that the director Michele Soavi also made Cemetery Man, a sleeper hit for me that I discovered a few years ago. I will definitely be checking out the rest of his work.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

I forgot that at one time Jim Belushi was poised to be the next big action/comedy star, and Real Men is not a bad example of why that was. He definitely has charisma, and can even be funny at times. But the real star here is Ritter. His physical comedy and facial expressions make me really miss him. He's such a lovable guy that I'm glad I never got a chance to meet him because it would have broken my heart if he turned out to be a real dickhead IRL. This is goofy 80s fun, but one of its flaws is that it feels like a build up to something great but by the end it just peters out and doesn't really deliver.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

https://popcult.blog/2024/04/25/movie-review-mulholland-drive/

Also even though I'm not usually an Ebert fan, I believe his review and analysis is worth noting as well:

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/lost-on-mulholland-drive

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mulholland-drive-2001

I'm not affiliated with it in any way, just found it while searching for Cyber Tracker 2.

Non-stop ultra violent splatter gore. I was going to say this is really similar in tone to 2013's Hotel Inferno but when I looked it up I saw it was the same director, so there you go. The concept is kind of cool, an authoritarian cannibalistic society where criminals are slaughtered for meat to feed the citizens. It's like something right out of a Dark Horse comic. A few things I enjoyed, the lead has very unique facial features, but it's not fx, it's like a birth defect or something. But he's not treated as some kind of freak because of that, instead he's just a regular character. The ideas themselves are unique, and differentiate it from something like guinea pig or a beelzebub "movie". The green video color grading gets very old very quick, it's a cheap and lazy technique that makes everything look bad. Green lighting would have actually looked 10x better if you wanted a green cast and all you need is a light and a gel. The most obnoxious thing about this film though is that 99% of the entire movie is made up of extreme closeups. I understand the budgetary constraints with a project like this but come on, you cannot tell WTF is going on when you are zoomed in ALL THE TIME. There's not much of a story to speak of by I have a feeling that's not really the point so it gets a pass on that.

⭐ ⭐ 1/2 out of ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Wild and wonderful lo-fi insanity with shades of Deadbeat At Dawn meets The Ghoulies. Tough guys, whores, junkies, and just regular Joes duke it out with an aborted fetus that turns into a brutal monster inside an abortion clinic/whore house. What a premise. Pretty much all non actors but what they lack in talent they make up for in enthusiasm. The monster itself is pretty awesome for the budget and the fx are bright and bloody.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2 out of ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐