Recent viewings

[Gene Worm]

I've been watching a bunch of good films recently, but I have seen some amazingly bad ones too! I think I'll go ahead and talk about those.

The Valley of Gwangi: Clean and fake cowboys try to capture purple dinosaurs in a forbidden valley and send them into a circus for profit. However, the creepy desert gypsies (yes, desert gypsies) release "Gwangi", a purple T-Rex-like thing. The sound effects were particularly terrible. Who knew that elephants and burning dinosaurs both make a horrible screeching sound?

The Giant Behemoth: London is attacked by a radioactive paleosaurus that can't decide if it wants to be stop-motion clay or a bath toy. I saw it a while ago, and I finally got to see it again!

The Hideous Sun Demon: With a title like that, I expected to see an awesome movie... but the truth is... I found it horrifically boring. Basically, a man gets turned into a monster by the sun but he is fine and normal with the moon out (like a reverse werewolf). Boring love story between the said man and a woman who is described on the back of the DVD box as a "Sizzling blonde babe with gravity-defying assets" ( ). The monster kills a few people, and a dog, but he gets shot and thrown off a building by a police officer.

The Black Scorpion: Saw the MST3K version a long while ago, and getting to see the original was awesome! Giant scorpions and even their larvae, which are... bizarre looking. Can't say I didn't love it!

Man, I love all these movies. To me, Gwangi is a pretty damn good movie. For the time and era, the special FX on most of these was actually pretty top notch for low budget films...

Oh, same here. I could watch these over and over again. Gwangi (and probably the others) were actually most likely pretty big hits during their time. I really enjoyed all the films. Not sure about the Sun Demon just because of how slow it was, but the rest I loved!

[indianasmith]

So I drop in at Hastings this afternoon to see if they have sold any more of my books, and also to check out the new releases.  I'm browsing down the shelves and this title jumped out at me: LITTLE DEAD ROTTING HOOD.  How could any self-proclaimed B movie lover NOT go for that one - especially since it's released by . . . drumroll please:  THE ASYLUM!

So the movie came home with me, and I was moderately entertained.  It seems that the Keeper of the Forest is getting old (played by Marina Sirtis, who is indeed getting old, sadly!) and needs to pass her powers on to her granddaughter.  She does this by allowing a wolf to kill said granddaughter, then buries her red cape and sword with the granddaughter's body, and opens her wrist and bleeds out on top of the grave.  This causes the granddaughter to come back from the dead with the supernatural power to kill the werewolves who are attacking the town left and right all of a sudden.

So you have multiple wolf attacks, gratuitous nudity, blood, more wolf attacks, a very badly rendered CGI "den mother" (and not the boy scout kind!), rednecks with flamethrowers, scarey caves, a mysterious diary written in blood, and a huge firefight at the end.

I expected pure B-movie cheese, and boy did I get it! 4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Night of the Demons" (1988)

http://youtu.be/XKzuj2eavtU
	Small | Large

A group of teens throw a Halloween night party at an abandoned funeral parlor, and accidentally awaken the demonic spirits locked away in its crematorium. Needless to say it turns out spectacularly bad for everyone involved.
This minor cult classic takes a while to get goin' and in spite of some decent makeup/gore and some nice T&A, it's pretty much endless scenes of idiots running and screaming through dark corridors for most of its run time. I've seen worse but I've seen lots better. Skippable.

[Alex]

Working our way through 4 seasons of Grimm since we couldn't remember where we'd watched up to so we decided to start from the beginning, 11 seasons of M*A*S*H* and season 5 of The Walking Dead. Or at least I am working my way through The Walking Dead and Kristi is shuddering everytime she turns around to look at the TV just at the wrong moment and see's something gruesome happening.

[Rev. Powell]

"Night of the Demons" (1988)
http://youtu.be/XKzuj2eavtU

A group of teens throw a Halloween night party at an abandoned funeral parlor, and accidentally awaken the demonic spirits locked away in its crematorium. Needless to say it turns out spectacularly bad for everyone involved.
This minor cult classic takes a while to get goin' and in spite of some decent makeup/gore and some nice T&A, it's pretty much endless scenes of idiots running and screaming through dark corridors for most of its run time. I've seen worse but I've seen lots better. Skippable.

Bad movies are subjective, I guess. This is one of my all-time favorites!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Eraser" (1996)

http://youtu.be/31_OEhX30sY
	Small | Large

Arnold Schwarzenegger's a Federal Marshal whose latest assignment - protect a lovely government witness (Vanessa Williams) until she can testify - is complicated by a seemingly endless number of would-be assassins sent by a crooked defense contractor and turncoats within the Agency itself. Pretty typical Ahhh-nold shoot-em-up stuff, mindless fun.

[indianasmith]

Tonight I watched a French horror film from 1974 called THE DEMONIACS.
Honestly, this one was pretty weird.  Two pretty girls are raped by pirates, and when they survive, they are chased along the beach till they wade out to an accursed island where a hippy priest and a clown tell them that they can get revenge if they release the terrible entity that is imprisoned in the ruined cathedral there. They let him out, and sleep with him, and he gives them the power to wreak their revenge - although their powers mainly seem to consist of looking creepy and making old statues fall near, but not on, anyone who threatens them.  The ending involves more rape, then rapists attacking and strangling each other, and then the tide coming in.  Total downer.  Or should I say drowner?  But all the girls were pretty in that long haired seventies way, and spent more time unclothed than clothed.

3/5

[Rev. Powell]

ADAPTATION. (2002): Neurotic screenwriter Charlie Kaufman struggles to adapt Susan Orleans' unfilmable essay "The Orchid Thief" for the big screen, eventually asking for help from his doofus twin brother, who has just optioned a million-dollar serial killer script. One part Hollywood satire and one part self-indulgent experiment, Kaufman's self-referential, self-devouring script was the most intelligent and exciting screenplay of the decade, setting a dizzyingly high bar for future works of cinematic metafiction. 5/5.

GURU, THE MAD MONK (1970): A medieval prison colony priest abuses his power and threatens the love of a young couple. Andy Milligan's berserk script manages to fit in grave robbing, torture, a schizophrenic priest with a bowl haircut, dismemberment, a hunchback, historical anachronisms, and a vampire all in under an hour. Terrible, but somewhat amazing. 3/5 (maybe even higher for true bad movie aficionados).

[lester1/2jr]

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) -This started off like an off beat Twilight Zone episode and became something more like The Parallax view or other Nixon era conspiracy movie.

Frank Sinatra is a former Korean war soldier who keeps having a weird dream involving himself and his army buddies. One of his other friends has it too so they start to wonder if "something happened back there" a la Jacob's Ladder. As this is happening, the sergent of the units mother (angela Landsbury) is trying to get her dickhead husband on a presidential ticket. She mainly achieves her aims by accusing all the husbands rivals of being communists. I'm someone who actually kind of liked the original Mcarthy witch hunts but in her case its clearly a cynical attempt to gain popularity and prestige for her lesser half. This stuff emphasizes the DC backdrop/ setting.

Sinatra and the sergent guy go around trying to figure out what the deal is and both have cute blonde love interests. aspects of it may seem predictable or dated, but they were creating the mold here. It's hard to believe, but it actually was once an original idea to have a worried guy scan the crowd at a President's speech looking for a would be assassin who methodically puts together and loads his gun. It's well done but probably won't blow you away. it's interesting to see a film this early that has so many modern ideas though.

4/5

[claws]

L.A. Streetfighters a.k.a. Ninja Turf (1985)

A young Korean immigrant named Tony is the new guy at highschool. He immediately flirts with female classmate Lily by writing "Hi" on his shoe's sole (and yes, he has to lift his leg in order to show the writing), and later bumps into a Korean gang who "run the highschool" and demand he pays them "five dollars." Tony is rescued by Young who is the leader of yet another Korean gang, but Young and his gang are the good guys. The leader of the bad Korean gang challenges Young to a fight after school. Young wins the fight, Tony becomes his bro, Lily - who happens to be the sister of Young - becomes Tony's girlfriend, and both Tony and Young are hired on the spot by some random teen couple for (I assume) school security. After being paid $200 their first assignment is to watch over a Toga party where both fend off a party crashing gang of drunk hoodlums with beer bellies. After a Tony & Lily in love montage things get complicated when betrayal puts the friendship of Tony and Young to the test.

Oh my. This was quite hilarious and I just couldn't stop laughing. L.A. Streetfighters is your typical bottom of the barrel crapfest, with 30-40 year olds playing highschool students. The dubbing is mind blowing bad and monotone with awful, really awful production values, bad editing, bad lighting, you name it. This felt like a unintentional parody of a bad martial arts movie. In other words, it's pure genius. 5/5

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: TEEN-AGE CRIME WAVE: The experiment revolves around a couple of juvenile delinquents who take a family hostage in a farmhouse; on the Satellite of Love, Mike and the Bots praise doughy guys and spoof Mentos commercials, while in Deep 13 Dr. Forester repeatedly subjects TV's Frank to "mace mousse." They do a good job of riffing but the j.d, programmer movie isn't actually that bad, making for an episode that's entertaining but not especially memorable. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

Last night with my son:
"Toy Story 3" (2010)

http://youtu.be/JcpWXaA2qeg
	Small | Large

Buzz, Woody and the gang find themselves at a crossroads now that their "kid" Andy is all grown up and heading off to college. Rather than go quietly to the attic, the Toys allow themselves to be donated to a day care center - which looks like fun from the outside, but is run like a toy prison camp after hours by a crazed teddy bear.
Beautifully animated as usual, this is the best of the "Toy Story" series thus far. The ending may even bring a little tear to your eye.

This morning over coffee:
"The Curse of Frankenstein" (1957)

http://youtu.be/QxNVNGydx5U
	Small | Large

Peter Cushing is the mad Doctor and Christopher Lee is the Creature in the first film of Hammer Studios' long running Frankenstein series. which re-tells the monster's "origin story." Cool, creepy atmosphere and great performances all around. Charming, retro horror fun.

[dean]

The Wolfpack:

A family of shut ins in NYC explore the world through recreating movies. Strangely compelling doco on a really weird family and who have a real passion for the movies...

[lester1/2jr]

I've loved you for so long (2008) - This was pretty good if a little Lifetimey and a bit uneventful. I don't watch much stuff like this so it was good for variety's sake and makes me a more rich and variegated person.

A woman is released from prison after serving 15 years for murdering her own son. it isn't discussed much but the indication is it was some kind of euthanasia/ mercy killing because he was suffering. She's not particularly charismatic and in her worst moments is kind of like Edna Crabopple from the Simpsons. She comes to live with her sister and her family. There are awkward and uncomfortable moments because she is an ex con and because of the nature of her crime and long stay in prison as she tries to find a job and place in the world. French men seem kind of creepy. It reminded me a bit of 70's movies the way some of them behave.

the acting and writing are realistic and good but not all that much happens. the end was a bit of a headscratcher too as the big reveal seems to be something we already knew but at least she doesn't jump out and stab everyone to death like some of the "twist" oriented French movies I've seen. probably too mundane to get any awards or attention but I liked it well enough

4/5

[Alex]

Theatre of Blood: Vincent Price plays a stage actor who takes revenge on a bunch of critics who have constantly given him negitive reviews by killing them in ways inspired by Shakespeare. Lots of scenary is chewed on. Also stars Diana Rigg.

Labyrinth: A petulant Jennifer Connolly looks to rescue her baby brother from David Bowie's Goblin King. My favourite Jim Henson movie and one of a short list of musicals I don't mind watching.

Sleepwalkers: From a Steven King story. Cat people with low moral standards who survive by draining the life energy from virgins but are hated by real cats. Has cameo's from King & Clive Barker. My favourite part of the movie is a rather haunting tune from the soundtrack.