COVID-19 Isolation Movie Round-Up: For Grown-Up Eyes Only!

I'm no stranger to staying in a small room for an extended amount of time, or staying in "isolation" for extended periods. As such, I'm not going all that crazy from having to stay home due to the Corona Virus outbreak rampaging through cities. This has allowed me to do a lot of things that I have wanted to do for a while! I have been playing video games, watching a lot of movies, and plowing through some TV shows that Storm and I have been wanting to check out. I thought I would give a quick rundown of the most recent things on my watched list.

Let's start with the movies, and I think we will begin with my most recently watched, and work backward.

The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

Dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis

This was an interesting watch, but ultimately a little boring. This was Lewis' fifth gore flick, coming after his more talked about Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) (as an aside, one of my Cystic Fibrosis doctors, Dr. Caplan, was a fan of this flick. We talked about it one time while I was hospitalized at the Cystic Fibrosis Center in Atlanta during my teens.), and the oft mentioned A Taste of Blood (1967). A provocateur, and no stranger to making a splash, Lewis pioneered the gore side of the exploitation genre and shocked audiences with the violence they would see. By today's standards, these flicks seem rather tame, but at the time they were something new and, for many, appalling.

This one is about a mother and son that own a wig shop and rent a room out to college girls. As you may guess, the room is a front to get college girls to come to the shop. Once there, they are pushed into the basement and scalped. This is how the wigs are made from "100% Human Hair". The scalping scenes are admittedly pretty good, and especially once we see the electric knife come into play. Unfortunately, the rest of the flick is a hodge-podge of scenes involving our main character chasing leads and looking for the killer. Her boyfriend in a rather lame chase scene. And a lot of scenes of college girls hanging out in their dorm room.

If you enjoy H.G. Lewis, check this out if you haven't seen it. Otherwise, you can probably pass on this one.

I watched this on The Criterion Channel.

Carving Magic (1959)

Dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis

Now this, on the other hand, was a lot of fun. Produced by Dallas Jones Productions and sponsored by Swift and Company, this is a short educational video on how to carve various types of meat. This 20-minute flick stars William Kerwin (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!) and Harvey Korman (The Munsters, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety) in his first film, as well as Martha Logan - Swift and Company's "Home Economist".

This starts as two couples hanging out and ends with the host showing everyone a film he has been watching on how to carve meats. We watch the film with them, and get all sorts of tips on how to slice different cuts of meat, their similarities and differences, and the methods used for the different "groups" of meat.

If you are into H.G. Lewis, check this out. If you are into meat, check this out. If you like odd-ball educational films, check this out.

This was viewed on The Criterion Channel.

Hardcore (1979)

Dir. Paul Schrader

Paul Schrader's Hardcore is a flick that I have wanted to catch for a while now, but didn't have much in the way of making that happen. Until it popped up on The Criterion Channel, that is. This is one of the films that prompted me to sign up for a free trial. And without it, I may not have viewed the previous two films in this post!

Hardcore stars George C. Scott as divorced Calvinist businessman Jake Van Dorn raising a teenage daughter. She leaves Grand Rapids for a Calvinist youth convention trip in California and goes missing. Jake hires a private detective Andy Mast (played by Peter Boyle) to track her down and bring her home. When Andy comes back to Jake with an 8mm stag film starring his daughter, Jake decides to leave Grand Rapids and track her down in California himself. This quest leads him to team up with a prostitute to search the seedy underbellies of Los Angeles and San Diego, against all odds.

This was a really good flick that examines belief and the lengths we will go to defend those beliefs, much like Schrader's other flicks, such as Taxi Driver and Rolling Thunder. Jake needs to find his daughter and confirm that she didn't willingly go into the world of porn and prostitution, and Niki has a clear need for a father figure. There are a couple of scenes in which their differences in their views on life are discussed, debated, and reckoned with. Unfortunately, the ending leaves a lot to be desired and descends into action tropes. None of the human themes explored earlier between Jake and Niki come to a satisfying conclusion. Instead, we are left with a "Hollywood" ending.

Overall, I would still highly recommend checking this movie out if you like Paul Schrader or think the plot is interesting. 

I viewed this on The Criterion Channel, but it has since been taken off the service.