This week on Alcohollywood’s Mystery Month, we travel back in time to the days before the Hays code for 1933’s horror film Mystery of the Wax Museum!
Intrepid reporter Florence (a speed-talking yet adorable Fay Wray) attempts to work out the secret behind a series of mysterious deaths in New York City. Her journey leads her to the newly opened wax museum led by the ever-so-tragic villain Dr. Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill), and the thrills keep coming! The last major motion picture filmed in the rare two-strip Technicolor process, the film has a strange quality to it, as the color is effectively painted on artificially, creating a pastel world that only slightly approximates color.
In our review, we chat it up about the film, this process, and our custom cocktail and drinking game rules – check it out!
This week on Alcohollywood, Mystery Month continues with the 1999 superhero comedy Mystery Men!
This campy tale of a group of misfit superheroes who attempt to save Champion City from the evil Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) is definitely interesting in concept - and helped by a great cast - but the script is incredibly spotty. Director Kinka Usher's schizophrenic direction and the poorly aged music and song choices don't help, but the film manages to find quite a few moments of self aware superhero comedy. However, none of this leads o a film that add up to more than the sum of its parts. Guest Jesse joins us for our review and drinking game, along with a quiz - check it out!
This week, we continue Mystery Month with the 2010 wire-fu historical action flick Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame!
In 7th century China, in the wake of a series of mysterious spontaneous combustions, Detective Dee (Andy Lau) is brought in to stop an assassination attempt of Empress Wu on the eve of her coronation. Director Tsui Hark and fight director Sammo Hung provide some great wire-fu action sequences among the convoluted plot that is typical of these kinds of Chinese epic modern films.
Despite the sometimes-confusing nature of the plot and the dry characters, there’s plenty of great action choreography and some insane images (watch for some deer-on-man kung fu action) to make it worth a watch. It’s available on Netflix, so be sure to watch with our review and drinking game below!
This week on Alcohollywood, we start Mystery Month, where all the movies have ‘mystery’ in the title! Starting off, we talk about 1989’s Jim Jarmusch film Mystery Train, a strange and hip anthology film featuring three stories of people (both native and tourist) navigating Memphis, Tennessee on the same night.
From a disaffected young Japanese couple seeking the home of rock stars, to a lost Italian woman trying to find her way, to a trio of locals out on a night of crime, the movie is an exercise in effortless meanderings. Throughout, Jim Jarmusch’s underplayed style out in full force, along with a great rock 'n roll soundtrack. Musicians like Joe Strummer and Screamin' Jay Hawkins interact with great character actors (Steve Buscemi, Rick Aviles) to create a weird soup of rock history homage and quirky character study. Check out our review and drinking game here!