Ale

watched this twice in two days bc i was moderating a q&a with josiah howard about blaxploitation films. he made a reference guide of blaxploitation films and this is in his top 5 and he calls it the “plan 9 of blaxploitation movies.” it weirdly works better the second time around. like a lot of the independently made blaxploitation films, it feels like a person trying to make a movie based purely on memory of what movies should be like (which probably was actually the case for inexperienced writers, editors, and directors before the advent of home video). it leads to a lot of inconsistencies in the film’s internal logic both technically and in the story that take you out of the film but honestly it’s much more fun than the hollywood’s perfunctory professionalism that tries to make invisible all the labor that goes into filmmaking. you can really tell this was made by people.

this would be much better if it went down the terrifier route and accepted that the writing in a film like this should only serve as a vehicle for a gore film reel. instead we get a siege film propelled by the film equivalent of stealth missions. still, it was pretty epic to see an ape rip a bunch of people’s faces off.