Yeah…so if I took the trouble to pay for a domain name and hosting, I should probably update more, huh? Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of what I watched this week:

Girl Boss Guerilla

Considered one of the best of the Japanese 70’s exploitation subgenre of “pinky violence” (read: boobs and violence), Girl Boss Guerilla definitely deserves its place in cult film history. The story centers around an all-girl biker gang from Tokyo on the move that ends up taking over Kyoto, until of course, the leader develops a love interest in the form of an amateur boxer and complicates things for the entire gang as their rivalry with the local Yakuza becomes personal. Very entertaining from start to finish and with some very funny and memorable moments; this one’s a keeper.

Aguirre: the Wrath of God

The second film I’ve gotten around to watching from my recently purchased Herzog/Kinski box set, Aguirre is the story of Spanish conquistadors in search of El Dorado, the fabled City of Gold. Werner Herzog is as known for his beautiful scenery as he is for his eccentricity and Aguirre is clearly one of the cornerstones in that legacy. The film itself remains interesting thanks to a good performance from lead man Klaus Kinski (this being the first of his fabled films with Herzog) and a brisk pace that leaves little time for your mind to drift. The only complaint here is that Anchor Bay dropped the ball on this DVD, delivering a 1:33:1 (fullscreen) transfer of a movie shot in 1:66:1 (a somewhat less common form of widescreen). Fullscreen is for Blockbuster customers and people that buy shit like “Big Mama’s House 2,” not anyone that actually takes film seriously.

Casino Royale

I’ve never been that big a fan of the James Bond movies, but then again I’m a little young for them and I haven’t seen any of them in years (and even then it was only a portion). So speaking not as a Bond buff but as your average theater-goer, Casino Royale is a damn solid action flick. Gone are the stuffy pretensions and over-the-top gadgets, here replaced with over-the-top stunts and a meaner, more cynical Bond than most folks are used to. It kind of loses some of its steam towards the end, and a few of the plot points are explained or referred to at such a brisk pace that it takes a minute to sink in, but overall it’s a wonderful relaunch of the series. I didn’t pay attention to who was on board directing, but thank God Quentin Tarantino didn’t get a hold of it as he originally tried to do. The last thing a relaunch of a series needs is more mindless pilfering from 70’s explotation flicks (Hey, I like Tarantino as much as the next guy, but really, is he so much original as he is gifted at combining his influences into one big eccentric jamboree?).

Darkness: the Vampire Version

This one’s been sitting in a big stack of promos for the longest time and I figured I’d finally give it a shot. Having only in the past few years gotten into cult film, I hadn’t heard of this one, though according to the boxquotes it has a storied past and cult reputation (but then again, many cult DVD studios will scrape around the absolute fringes of the internet for any great review they can find, even if it comes from some unemployed welder’s discontinued Geocities page). So after reading the plot synopsis, I’m going into this expecting some bastard child of Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend” and George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” but I’m only half-right, and not in the ways I expect. The vampires in the film don’t just suck blood, but also eat the living shit out of the people they attack, which generally isn’t the sort of territory a vampire film covers. The acting is groan-worthy in places, but having been in a few low-budget movies myself, I know that most directors are simply working with what they can get, so I’m nitpicking. The main plot involves a small town being overrun with vampires and only a handful of kids that were at a rock concert at the time are left alive to stick it out. The plot and acting are standard low-budget fare, but what really sets this one apart are the effects. During some of the more effects-laden scenes I had to remind myself that I was watching a 15-or-so year old low-budget movie (though the acting certainly helped in that regard). In particular, the last scene (which I won’t ruin) has some of the best gore effects I’ve seen on such a low budget.