She-Devils on Wheels (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1968)

4/10
I found myself with some birthday money to spend, so I bought a couple of collections of shlock legend Herschell Gordon Lewis' movies. I've seen and enjoyed Two Thousand Maniacs and The Wizard of Gore, and the sets are as cheap as the movies themselves, so why not. I popped in one I didn't know much about, She-Devils on Wheels. It's about an all-girl motorcycle gang who go about having orgies (kissing fests, really) and brawls and rough initiations. It was pretty much a dud - there's not enough here to titillate either on the sexy side or the gore side, and no real plot of any importance emerges to hold one's attention. I'm sure Tarantino had this in mind among others when making Death Proof, though.

Profound Desires of the Gods (Shohei Imamura, 1968)

7/10
2nd of the 3 Nikkatsu movies I'll be making it out to was Shohei Imamura's 3-hour epic. It's about an incestuous family who live on an island they founded, and their (and the villagers') turmoil when an engineer from a sugar plant in Tokyo comes to the island to supervise construction of a new mill. It obviously is a commentary of Japan at the time (it was released in 1968) and focuses heavily on technology vs. tradition, but I don't know enough about Japan of the time to make a lot of the connections. The film looks gorgeous, shot in lurid color and restored masterfully, but it's a marathon at 3 hours and sometimes it's a struggle to figure out who's doing what and why. Interesting and crazy as any Nikkatsu noir I've seen, in any event.

Le Revelateur (Philippe Garrel, 1968)

9/10
A 1968 film coming in at just over an hour featuring three actors (a mother, a father, a son), no dialogue or any soundtrack whatsoever, high-contrast black-and-white photography, and was apparently filmed with a majority of the cast and crew under the influence of LSD. Luckily I have a high tolerance for drug-induced 60's pretentiousness, so I found it quite fascinating in its own way. Can't way to see some of director Philippe Garrel's other wackiness from the same era, particularly La Cicatrice Intérieure starring Garrel's muse and partner, Nico.

Histoires Extraordinaires (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle & Roger Vadim, 1968)

7.5/10
A triptych of 40-minute films directed individually by Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini, all based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. Vadim's Metzengerstein starts out promising enough with Jane Fonda starring as the young Countess Metzengerstein who falls in love with a rival Baron (played by brother Peter) and accidentally kills him in an act of revenge, leaving her to cling to a mysterious black horse that seems to embody his spirit. The first half of the movie is weird and entertaining enough, with the Countess entertaining guests and holding (very mundane looking) orgies and festivities and whatnot, but the action screeches to a halt halfway through and the last half of the film is mostly Jane Fonda frolicking around with a horse until she decides to kill herself to reunite with the dead Baron. Okay then.
Malle's William Wilson involves the man of the title constantly haunted by a doppelganger of the same name, who usurps and prevents his evil deeds until Wilson (the original) fatally wounds the other. Told as he's dying that the original can't live without the double, and with no one believing his story, Wilson kills himself by jumping off a church bell tower. Brigitte Bardot shows up as Wilson's opponent in a decisive card duel that's far more entertaining than it should be, but overall this segment is pretty flat and uninteresting.
Fellini's Toby Dammit was long hyped to be the star of the show and it did not disappoint. Clearly sourced more from Fellini's brain than from any Poe work (it's based on his story Never Bet the Devil Your Head but it's hard to imagine it shares anything more in common than the title), this one centres around a celebrity film star named Toby Dammit who has indeed sold his soul, or at least his head, to the devil (magnificently cast as a young, attractive blonde girl) in exchange for the grotesque excesses of stardom. Visually stunning - I would be shocked if Terry Gilliam wasn't influenced by this when making Fear & Loathing - and constantly impaling the film culture as he did in 8 1/2, there is a lot to enjoy in this segment. Terence Stamp embodies the worn-out, drugged-out, apathetic Toby Dammit perfectly and the film manages to be genuinely creepy, something the other two never come close to achieving. Definitely worth seeking out in its own right.

Fando y Lis (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1968)

6/10
Jodorowsky's first film, still weird as anything though. Loosely put, the film follows a couple of lovers in a tumultuous relationship who embark on a journey towards the possibly nonexistent town of Tar, in search of perfection. It's kind of an extremely warped road movie, with one review I saw describing the landscapes as "bombed-out Fellini sets" which seems apt...I think I need more time to mull over it but it was certainly interesting.

Jodorowsky presented each of the films and, at 82 years old, has an impressive amount of intensity. He told some interesting stores, particularly about how he couldn't get Fando y Lis or El Topo made by any of the Mexican production companies except one that produced short films...so he was told to divide each movie into four parts so they could be released as four consecutive short films, which explains why both have four acts. And when introducing Fando y Lis, he had a particularly great line: "I hope you understand this movie, because I never could".

He also mentioned that the long-rumoured Son of El Topo movie is in the works, and apparently he's financing it out of his own pocket, but like any Jodorowsky project, who knows if it'll ever come to fruition...

Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968)

6/10
1968 curio starring the Monkees, written and produced by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. There isn't a plot to speak of - the four are thrown into a bunch of mostly surrealist sketches that last for about 5-10 minutes apiece, and then they're awkwardly segued into another. Music numbers abound, as well as cameos (Sonny Liston and Frank Zappa to name but two) and Help!-esque self-aware digs at the bands' commercialism and phoniness. The lazy stabs at the establishment, Vietnam, drugs, etc prefigure Rafelson and Nicholson's work with Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, but this is generally a mess. There are a couple of moments of inspiration, particularly the psychedelic opening under water sequence and a wild concert scene towards the end.
Predictably the film was something of a career killer...other Monkees movie projects were cancelled and their record sales took a dive thereafter. Kind of fascinating in a "what were they thinking" kind of way now, though.

The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1968)

7.5/10
More like a series of wonderful-looking "tableaus" from Sergei Paradjanov, there's quite a lot of eye candy to behold here. As a film I was expecting something a bit less...avant-garde so I think I'd enjoy it more with a second viewing.

Signs of Life (Werner Herzog, 1968)

6/10
Werner Herzog's first feature film...not very Herzogian stylistically but definitely as much in terms of content and plot devices (namely, the man on the brink of insanity). Peter Brogle does well as Stroszek (not to be confused with Herzog's other Stroszek) but watching the film with the benefit of hindsight, you can't help but feeling he's merely a placeholder for the kind of role Klaus Kinski would soon become synonymous with.

Hang 'Em High (Ted Post, 1968)

7/10
Good entertaining Clint Eastwood Western, not his best but not his worst either...it was fun to see him as the sheriff systematically tracking down the guys who wronged him one by one.

Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968)

7/10
John Cassavetes movie from 1965 I think, first one of his I've ever seen. Kind of interesting "case study" almost about the dissolution of a marriage. It basically deals with a volatile couple that get into an argument and the night after the husband demands a divorce. It's a very weird movie and I say that having seen at least a few weird movies...everybody talks in non-sequitors and the actors are laughing throughout almost the entire movie, despite how much everybody seems to hate their lives and their surroundings. It was interesting and I'm glad I watched it but not something I'm really in a hurry to see again.

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

8.5/10
Finally got around to seeing this monster...I'll freely admit that the end of the movie baffled me and I had to get on Wiki/IMDB to see exactly what was going on. But according to Kubrick and Clarke it's supposed to raise more questions than it answers, so I don't feel too bad. Usually I'm bad for falling asleep watching DVDs (and I caught myself starting to nod off on occasion) but for the most part I was awake and engaged, which is impressive considering all the nothingness in the movie. Spoilers: My only complaint was that I thought HAL "turned" too quickly...it would have been better if more of those 2.5 hours was given to HAL losing confidence in the mission/in the other crew members and then taking matters into his own hands But other than that I enjoyed it. Must have been a trip to see all those effects back in '68 when it first came out.

The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968)

9/10
Fulfilled everything I'm a sucker for in a Spaghetti Western - Corbucci at the helm, Morricone doing the music (even if it wasn't his best/most memorable work), off-the-beaten-path format (a Western in a blizzard? Hell yeah), a sketchy/shady/gimmicky anti-hero in Silence...and as an extra-awesome bonus, Klaus Kinski as the villain Loco. What's not to love? Well the dubbing wasn't great and the ending was a huge downer, though a bit of a nice change from the usual Western offerings...but overall I was pretty much destined to love it.