The Hospital (Hiller, 1971) - Weird little film with a serious director, a serious author (Chayefsky, who wrote
Network and
Altered States), a serious actor (George C. Scott, great as usual) and pretty serious subject matters (the bureaucratic incompetence of the health system and other social problematics of the late 60s), but with a tone that's all over the place, from comedy to dark social assessment to quasi-horror thriller. The result is intriguing if not always interesting. 6/10
* If you're interested, I can give you a link to get a pretty good copy
Hubie Halloween (Brill, 2020) - Complete opposite here: a bland conventional film with a crappy director (looks like he's mostly just a friend of Sandler), a crappy writer (another Sandler friend), and mostly crappy acting (Sandler himself, terrible as usual). A few fun jokes doesn't save the film: un-rewatchable (in general, when you feel the need to add tons of bloopers in the credits, it's because you know the previous 90 minutes failed as a comedy). 2.5/10
Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (Davenport, 1995) - For the many regulars here who I'm sure are keeping track of my inspired comments, you'll remember that a few months ago I rewatched the original
Xtro (that I love) and its abysmal sequel. Now this one I hadn't seen before. It's even worse. Parts of it you just can't explain (the mishandling of perspective on some effects are mind-corroding). The guy tries to mate
The Predator and
Alien into his rubber garbage of a creature, and pretends to early 50s sci-fi relevance, ending the film on a "Watch the skies" title card. Contrarily to the second film, this one is so bad that it's good for a laugh (it's still not as funny as Davenport's interviews trashing his own films though). 1/5