I don’t feel like anyone who looks at my place here would actually go watch some of the movies I talk about and in general I would hardly recommend most of the things I see except for Oddity because it is the best and Bloody Hell because it rocks my lame ass (and Bring Her Back – oh yeah dad that was the real deal I LOVED IT ) but if for some reason the idea comes upon you to take a chance on Lady, Stay Dead – an Australian Grindhouse that Crown International would be proud of, the viewer should know that there is a scene of – um – er – man to woman violation – and while that is not the subject of the movie – I hate violence on women movies – it’s in there so – alert! And while it’s in there it should be noted that in its context, the man kind of looks like he’s trying to maybe move a refrigerator and then it’s over and that’s not taking it lightly and it’s not justifiable or anything but it’s not as visually disgusting as – say – Irreversible which my eyes can never unsee. But it’s there and apart from that let’s do some typing about this strange thing.

To open, a woman gets stark naked and goes swimming which I don’t think you see much anymore. Elsewhere, a man in his tight black underwear poses and flexes his muscles in front of a mirror. After that he plays a record and gets in bed with a mannequin dressed up to be the singer of the music he’s playing and he makes It with it including gratuitous mannequin butt squeezing. We soon learn that the singer is actually the naked swimming lady from earlier and she’s an up and coming actress living in some estate out on the beach and he’s the gardener she berates all the time to pick rubbish off of her lawn. Rubbish! I wonder if she’s talking about my writing? Anyway, we also learn about – through flashbacks of wiggling tied up nude women – that he’s probably a serial killer. And soon after that we learn that he is and after that unwanted sex he holds her upside down and drowns her in a fish tank which had to be one of the strangest kills I’ve seen in a long time. Just his head and her legs in the shot and I don’t know if it was some of that rubbish or some sort of crazy Australian high art.

Oh! Did I mention that before the refrigerator moving bit there was an extended sequence where the gardener takes a spot on the beach to peep on the lady doing topless stretches by the waves and he pokes a hole in the sand and gyrates on it? It’s more stupid than it sounds but being a man and having never done something like that I can’t imagine how uncomfortable or painful that would be. I mean I’ve been to beaches a lot in my life and I’ve touched sand and know what sand is and I know how it feels in your hands and sandals and in your swim trunks and hair and even in your eyes so I can only imagine the terrible feeling that would elicit on your dong. I mean – I can’t really no thank you mate. Which brings me back to maybe my perspective or thoughts about the early 80s Australian scene is naive or just wrong.

Which is funny. The other day my mom gave me a photo album of when her and my dad got married and I was looking through them one night and I found this old piece of paper addressed to me from 1981- which is also bizarre since I would have been just a kid and still pretty innocent and not doing much writing on Eric Undead and only really interested in Doctor Who and Star Trek and my comic books but I peeled it open and just look at it:

One, that’s such a strange font for a telegram. Two – what poor spelling. I wonder if the folks in Australia were on some ludes or something or maybe the telegram officer wasn’t receiving properly? How odd. Third – does anyone even now how many tries it takes to get Steve Loggins to get words correctly? Fourth – I just looked and this movie was made in Sidney not Melbourne so SHAME ON ME WHAT A SORRY ASS!

So The Dark Angel of Sydney has taken another life and after some serious apologizing he’s set to dispose of the body when the nice old man from the cottage down the shore comes to check up on things. We don’t have to think too hard to know what happens to him but the big part of the movie is that the singer actresses’ sister shows up for a visit. How is this going to pan out for everyone? Will it be a comedy or tragedy or and end up with some sort of blistering and satisfying climax where everything works out in nice angles and even sides? Or will it be worse than finishing your deodorant and toothpaste in the middle of the week instead of Sunday night like the Sacred Geometry our ancestors employed? One of the Big Three concepts my friend and I developed in our mid twenties to shape our lives as grown ups is “a man has to try something for himself to figure it out” and I don’t mean that hole in the sand thing from earlier I think I know how that would go but to get to the bottom of this we’ll have to finish the movie.

Now that the sister is here at the beach house, naturally, the gardener must stalk her. Wasting no time and after a nice soapy shower, she encounters the man who would like nothing more than a candlelight dinner with a bottle of white. Also naturally, to help this along he locks all of the doors from the outside, cuts the phone line and keeps flipping the power breaker screaming “on off on off on off!”. Literally. Totally annoying.

I feel like we could go into this all night: chainsaws, Molotov cocktails, someone throwing things up and over a two story balcony with precision accuracy, all the usual things I would expect from Australian film. A guy catches on fire, a guy gets run over by a motorcycle, etc etc. But I guess what we need to wind down to is – does the lady stay dead?

SPOILERS! She does. In fact there’s never any question about it since once she was drowned she only makes appearances as a frazzled haired corpse sooooooooo what the shit? I guess there’s this one part where he’s feebly strangling the sister and sees the other one and is concerned because how could that be happening but then he gets hit by the random motorcycle so that’s over quick. I guess she did stay dead so that’s good Titling.

FILED UNDER: PAINFUL SAND AND ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF

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