Recent viewings

[Alex]

The Void Take The 'Thing', mix it up with 'Event Horizon' add a (very) slight dash of 'Hellraiser' and 'Prince Of Darkness' and keep going. This one has a lot of influences, including a strong dose of Lovecraft. A sherrif picks up a man crawling along a road and takes him to a hospital which is then surrounded by people in white robes and hoods. The people trapped inside find themselves transforming into something else as they try to uncover what is going on. I'd give it a 3 1/2 out of 5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Executioner Part II" (1984)

A shell shocked Vietnam vet goes vigilante and starts killing muggers and rapists on the city streets. Yup, that's the whole plot.

This flick is legendary in bad movie circles for its total ineptitude in pretty much every department. The acting/dubbing/dialogue sucks and the "action" scenes are hilariously awkward. I've seen porno with higher production values and better performances than this.

Fun fact: there was no "Executioner Part I." The producers apparently hoped that fans of "The Exterminator" w/Robert Ginty would be suckered in by the similar sounding title and think this was a sequel to that film.

[Rev. Powell]

THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF TOM THUMB (1993): A tiny thumb-sized boy is born to a poor family, seized by an evil scientist and kept in a lab, and escapes to find a race of other tiny people before reuniting with his father. Done in stop-motion Claymation (even the live actors are stop-motion animated), this is almost a familiar fairy tale, but with surreal touches, an extremely bizarre art style, and a tone that wanders between slapstick comedy and psychedelic nightmare. Made for the BBC. 4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

The Brood - for some reason I don't feel like writing about this. it's David Cronenberg, it's not quite as good as the head exploding one but it's good. His wife goes to some weird temple with Oliver reed as a guru guy and does therapy. There are unforseen consequences that are hard to describe. It's got a bit of a grindhouse feel in places, mostly with the scary little kid aspect. it wasn't quite a home run but it was a stand up double maybe even a triple.

4/5

[Rev. Powell]

DESPERATE LIVING (1977): Mental patient Peggy and her maid Grizelda accidentally kill Peggy's husband and flee to Mortville, a city of outcasts built on a garbage dump where criminals are allowed to live as long as they submit to the whims of the fat queen (Edith Massey). The third entry in John Waters' "Trash Trilogy" sometimes gets overlooked because Divine is missing from the cast, but it's the best written and maybe the funniest of the three, full of memorable one-liners ("Look at those disgusting trees, stealing my oxygen!"; " I have never found the antics of deviants to be one bit amusing!"). 3.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

the Black cat - Lugosi vs Karloff at Karloff's house. Lugosi brings two travelers with him to the showdown. The cat is in it for like 2 seconds no idea why they named the movie after it. Karloff is an evil Satanist and lugosi is just creepy and the two travelers are like how did we end up in this ridiculous situation here.

old school
4/5

[Rev. Powell]

THE BOY FRIEND (1971): When the star actress breaks her foot, shy understudy and assistant stage manager Polly is forced to go onstage in the lead role for the struggling musical "The Boy Friend," on the night that a big Hollywood producer shows up in the audience. Turn down the color (and snip the widescreen) and you might swear this is actually a lost Busby Berkeley musical from the 1930s; Twiggy does surprisingly well in the lead role, and the musical format is perfect for director Ken Russell to indulge his penchant for outrageous costuming and set pieces. Incredibly, this G-rated fluff was his immediate followup to the incendiary THE DEVILS! 3.5/5 (for musical fans).

[lester1/2jr]

Fury Below (1936) - another solid re release from Alpha video. Like all of their stuff it's on youtube in about as good condition as it was on the disk.

A rich guy graduates college and goes to work in the office at his Dad's coal mining operation. As someone who works on the dock and has a few takes on the "office people" I certainly related to the tension here. There's some kind of weird push going on thats resulting in accidents in the mine and the new rich kid guy has to learn his job fast. He does this with the help of his not that hot love interest maybe that's why it takes him so long.

At 60 minutes theres no room for flab and it's a colorful, albeit in black and white, side of America we don't see all that much of in Hollywood. Some of it is even ...leftist! (sort of) A memorable scene is when a guy who has totally lost his marbles is rehired. He takes his shirt off, grabs a huge drill and laughs and drills while everyone else is like holy crap.

4/5 cool beans

[lester1/2jr]

Dark Manhattan (1937) - more alpha video action cuz why not. this is like the first all black movie ever made or something. It was played on TCm with I imagine a much better print than this. there's some prety bad acting but it's pretty much so a really early blaxploitation movie as others have noted. I mean in the actual sense of like the gangster type movies not the stereotype the label represents now. Like Buck Town or something

Everyone in the movie is black it's like a whole black city. It takes place in Harlem I guess no one cared there weren't any other races of people in it. The main guy Curly is good, the typical ambitious gangster who wants to like learn from hs boss but can't help undermining him and outdoing him. his tactics make him lots of money but get him in lots of trouble. an hour long I thought it was pretty cool.

from IMDB reviews

Ossie Davis, who introduced the film on the Turner Classic Movies Channel, mentioned the movie broke all attendance records at the Apollo theater in Harlem because overflow crowds were shunted to a theater two blocks away. Since there was only one print, each reel had to be rewound and rushed to the other theater.

3.75/ 5

[claws]

Gods of Egypt (2016)

A thief named Bek teams with fallen god Horus (God of the Air) in order to bring back his dead girlfriend Zaya, who is struggling to find her place in the afterlife. Horus wants his revenge on Set (God of the Desert) who seized the throne and enslaved Horus' love Hathor (Goddess of Love). However, Hathor is able to escape Set and joins Bek and Horus on their mission to destroy Set.

Epic fantasy sci-fi adventure set in an alternate version of Egypt. This film got lots of backlash for "whitewashing history" forcing director Alex Proyas to apologize in public.
Nonetheless Gods of Egypt was a box office flop and critics hated it. I thought it was enjoyable enough. It's about on par with the likes of Clash and Wrath of the Titans so you'll know what to expect. 3.5/5

[indianasmith]

THE AMITYVILLE TERROR - Unsuspecting family - and adult brother and sister and the brother's wife and daughter - move into a nice old Victorian home in a quiet neighborhood and bad stuff starts happening.  You see, the house has to be fed a new family every year or the angry spirits in it take it out on the community.  Teenage daughter Haley uncovers the truth - but will it be in time to save her family?    Fairly decent ghost flick; the aunt is sorta hot and occasionally nude; overall worth the price of the Redbox rental.  3/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"American Ultra" (2016)

A small town slacker (Jesse Eisenberg) is actually a top secret deep cover CIA operative - but he's so well programmed that he doesn't even know it, till a squad of assassins show up to erase him and his girlfriend (Kristen "Twilight" Stewart).
This flick was probably written on a 3x5 card but it's an entertainingly silly, ultra violent shoot'em up anyway.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four" (2016)

In the early 1990s, WAY before  Marvel Comics characters became sure fire box-office powerhouses, Roger Corman's studio co-produced a low budget version of "The Fantastic Four." Fanboy anticipation was high for the flick, but it was suddenly and unceremoniously shelved just prior to release, leaving the stunned cast and crew high and dry.
Twenty plus years later, this "FF" has still never officially seen the light of day - a victim of behind the scenes maneuvering between Marvel and the film's producers. Comic nerds will get a kick out of this enlightening documentary that unravels the bizarre saga of a missing piece of Marvel movie history.

[Rev. Powell]

REFLECTIONS OF EVIL (2002): A character study of a grossly overweight Hollywood street peddler, a tub of gluttony and suppressed rage, with a subplot about the ghost of his dead sister. Star/writer/director Damon Packard uses every low-budget gimmick in the books---distortion, chroma alterations, changing film speeds---and the result is a unique and personal mix of experimental techniques, B-movie aesthetics, and underground paranoia; the shame is that so many scenes drag on unnecessarily for so long, then repeat, and the film never figures out where it's headed until the very end. Cut out a half hour of fat and there's a good movie here, rather than just a curiosity. 2.5/5.

[claws]

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

Adventures of a college freshman having fun with his baseball teammates the weekend before semester begins, in the fall of 1980. Richard Linklater's "sequel in spirit" to his cult classic Dazed & Confused (1993) is charming and funny and has all the right requirements to become a cult film as well. I went into this with somewhat higher expectations that weren't always fulfilled, but then again Everybody Wants Some!! is an entirely different beast than Dazed & Confused, even though they share strong similarities. It's like Woody Allen directed Porky's (1981) combined with Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Urban Cowboy (1980). 4.5/5

The Gift (2015)

Mystery drama about a married couple moving into a new home. They meet an old school friend of the husband who turns out to be a bit socially awkward. Strange things start to happen as dark secrets from the past emerge.

Surprisingly decent Blumhouse production that keeps you guessing to the very end. Not an edge-of-your-seat thriller with cheap jumpscares, rather a quiet and at times touching film with sneaky suspense. 4.5/5