Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Kyujketsuki Gokemidoro) Directed by Hajime Sato Written by Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumo Takaku 1968/Japan IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
[box] Gôzô Mano, the senator: The world’s in terrible shape. Trouble between nations grows worse with terrorism breaking out all over the place. Everything’s gone crazy![/box]
How could I pass up a title like this for some holiday viewing? Actually, I’ve seen it before and enjoyed it even more the second time!
As usual, aliens are determined to exterminate the human race. BUT we also get a plane hijacking, adultery, a Vietnam War widow, vampires and more!
This should be a godawful mess. And it is. But so, so fun! The rampant overacting is just the icing on the cake. Recommended to fans of this kind of thing. You know who you are.
Criterion Channel has the original language version with subtitles
2001: A Space Odyssey Directed by Stanley Kubrick Written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke from Clarke’s short story 1968/US IMDb link
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
[box] HAL: Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.[/box]
A mind-blowing visual and auditory experience does not quite compensate for the lack of a story.
This movie has something to do with a monolith and how it interacts with evolution, I think. It is divided into three parts. One is about the evolution of homo sapiens; the second is about a space flight to Jupiter; and the final is about, maybe, the evolution of the next generation of intelligent life. Or at least that’s what they tell me.
By far the best part is the second, in which the astronauts must interact with the on-board computer HAL-900. HAL seems to be developing a mind of its own. This stuff is witty and totally enjoyable. Then we segue into psychedelia. With Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood as the astronauts.
Stanley Kubrick on set. How did he make this movie without CGI?!
I saw this on original release. I didn’t “get it” then and don’t now. If you just sit back and enjoy some sensory overload, the movie is powerful. It’s not a favorite, though, because it has no heart.
2001: A Space Odyssey won the Academy Award for Best Effects: Special Visual Effects. It was nominated in the categories of Best Director; Best Writing: Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen; and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration.
What a year 1968 was! United States history was forever changed with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Vietnam War protests mounted as the fighting raged unabated. Amid ghetto rioting, there was some progress on the Civil Rights front with President Johnson signing the Fair Housing Act. Youth moved beyond “flower power” into a more revolutionary phase. 1968 also saw the Prague Spring followed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union.
Watts on fire
The film industry submitted to a new ratings system under the auspices of the MPAA. The voluntary system classified films according to their suitability for viewing by young people, in four categories: “G” for general audiences; “M” for mature audiences; “R,” no one under 16 admitted without an adult guardian (later raised to under 17 years of age); and “X,” no one under 17 admitted. The four criteria used in the ratings included theme, language, violence, and nudity and/or sexual content. Many parents thought films rated M contained more adult content than those that were rated R. This confusion led to its replacement in 1969 by the rating of GP (or General Public, or General Audiences, Parental Guidance Suggested). Brian De Palma’s Greetings (1968) was the first film in the US to receive the X rating.
The Academy Awards Oscar ceremony in April of 1968 was delayed by two days (and held on April 10th) due to Martin Luther King’s assassination.
A number of films were seized by US Customs ) on charges of obscenity, including the Swedish film I Am Curious – Yellow, Jack Smith’s avant-garde Flaming Creatures (1968), and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968, It.).
Billboard’s number one single of 1968 was the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”. The song spent a record nine weeks atop the Billboard charts.The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to William Styron’sThe Confessions of Nat Turner. Time Magazine’s Men of the Year were Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William Anders, who completed man’s first lunar voyage on December 27, 1968.
Poor Albert Dekker. Such a good actor, such a sad end.
For lovers of salacious LGBQT Hollywood gossip ONLY: US character actor Albert Dekker, known for his fine performances in films such as Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Killers (1946), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Wild Bunch (1969) died at the age of 62. He was found naked in his own Hollywood bathroom – hanged by accidental autoerotic asphyxiation. He was bound, blindfolded, gagged and handcuffed, with sexual obscenities scrawled on his body in red lipstick.
At the age of 69, Mexican-born, early silent film star actor Ramon Novarro, known as the “Latin Lover” (famous for Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ (1925) and Mata Hari (1931)), and also an alcoholic and homosexual, was found dead in his Hollywood bedroom covered in blood He had been tortured and then choked to death during an altercation with two male prostitute hustlers/robbers who assumed he had money hidden in his house.
Clearly something strange was in the Kool-Aid in 1968 …
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I’m not going to live forever so I’ve decided to restrict my views per “year” a bit. I’m especially going to ask myself “Is this worth delaying the next really essential watch?”. Only if it excites or at least interests me. Does this mean I’m not going to keep seeking out good “bad movies”. Of course not.
In the Year of the Pig Directed by Emile de Antonio
1968/USA
Emile de Antonio Productions
#502 of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die
First viewing
Made while the war in Vietnam was still raging, The Year of the Pig ïs an “advocacy film” intended to raise opposition to the war by appealing to both the emotions and the intellect. Although I generally hate to feel manipulated, I have to admit that the film is brilliantly effective in what it sets out to do.
The film traces the history of conflict in Vietnam through disturbing images, ironic use of music and sound effects, U.S. television news footage, sound bites from U.S. government and military officials, and interviews with scholars and war opponents. The basic message is that the U.S. cannot win the war because it is a liberation struggle supported by the majority of the Vietnamese people, North and South.
[box] “Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.” – General William C. Westmoreland[/box]
De Antonio was a committed Marxist and made no pretense of objectivity in this film. Since I agree with him about the folly of that war, the propaganda does not bother me as much as it otherwise would. And we certainly had a lot of propaganda on the other side for it to counter!
I had never heard of this film before. Thanks to whomever nominated it for the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Blog Club.
I’ve been a classic movie fan for many years. My original mission was to see as many movies as I could get my hands on for every year from 1929 to 1970. I have completed that mission.
I then carried on with my chronological journey and and stopped midway through 1978. You can find my reviews of 1934-1978 films and “Top 10” lists for the 1929-1936 and 1944-77 films I saw here. For the past several months I have circled back to view the pre-Code films that were never reviewed here.
I’m a retired Foreign Service Officer living in Indio, California. When I’m not watching movies, I’m probably traveling, watching birds, knitting, or reading.
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