Recent viewings

[Doggett]

TROMEO AND JULIET (1996):  Troma's version of Shakespeare's beloved tragedy is just like the original, only with incest, Motorhead's Lemmy as a slurring narrator, bad punk hairdos, explicit nipple piercing, gratuitous nudity, fart jokes, cheezy gore, lesbian sex, Shakespearean porn CD-ROMs ("As You Lick It"), exploding crossbows, alien monster penises, punks caught in the windows of speeding cars, vegetarian propaganda, self-mutilation, outrageous costumes, references to other Troma movies, bad vaudeville routines, a popcorn pregnancy, a plexiglass isolation booth used for "time outs" when Juliet has sex dreams, 500 lb. male phone sex operators, urination, tattoo needles in the eyeball, Hitler statuettes embedded in brains, severed heads, car crashes, child abuse, opium dens, acid trips, cow-faced women, puking, pedophile priests, a "happy" ending, and occasional iambic pentameter. 4/5.

Really.  I think Bill should have sued them.


This movie had NO redeeming characteristics whatsoever.  Why did I watch it again?

What!!!
Are you mad!!!!

"NO redeeming characteristics whatsoever"

Didn't you read the Rev's glowing review 
Nothing short of a masterpiece.

[Andrew]

"The Invisible Ray" - Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are scientists.  Karloff discovers a way to capture cosmic rays to look back in time, and he also finds a meteorite of "Radium X."  Radium X is capable of curing just about any ailment, including blindness, but it is very dangerous.  Karloff is poisoned by the radioactive element and cannot touch anyone without killing them.  Lugosi creates a serum that counteracts the poisoning; unfortunately, treatments only last for limited periods, and the poisoning slowly causes dementia in the brilliant scientist. 

Karloff eventually loses his mind and blames his condition on his ex-wife (he abandoned her for his work, and because his Radium X poisoning scared him), her new husband, Lugosi, and some others.  He fixates on six church statues that, in his mind, represent this group of people.  After he kills a person by strangling them (and leaving glowing hand prints on their necks) he uses a raygun powered by Radium X to melt the corresponding statue.

There are lots of times with Karloff's glowing face or hands, and the build-up to his eventually madness and associated destruction is fun.  I still like Karloff and Lugosi in "The Black Cat" more, but this is a good feature to see if you admire both of them.

[Rev. Powell]

MST3K: MITCHELL:  The feature stars Joe Don Baker as a paunchy cop who’s pulled off John Saxon’s murder case and put on Martin Balsam’s even less comprehensible heroin smuggling case, all the while believing that Linda Evans is sleeping with him FOR FREE.  (Favorite riff, during a thrill-free car chase sequence: “This makes DRIVING MISS DAISY look like BULLITT.”  Meanwhile, back on the Satellite of Love, Gypsy mistakenly believes the Mads plan to off Joel, and tries to find a way for him to escape back to Earth.  Great riffing, and I still remember how shocked I was when Joel unexpectedly left the show in mid-season.  4/5 (5/5 for MST3K fans).

[Jack]

Anaconda 4 - Trail of Blood.  I actually liked Anaconda 3, it had some interesting characters and the lead babe ran around in a tight tank top for most of the movie.  This movie fails to live up to the lofty standards set by its predecessor.  Characters are as generic as can be, all of their personalities can be fully described with either the word "good" or "bad".  Same hot babe who starred in the last movie, and she is wearing a tight tank top, but just because the people who made this had absolutely no regard for their viewers, she wears a shirt over it for 99% of the movie.  Plot:  Some scientist is growing flowers which hold the secret to immortality, can cure all diseases, etc.  Golly gee, wonder where they got that idea from?  Good characters want to stop the project, because one side effect of the miracle drug is that it produces giant, man eating snakes.  Bad guys want to get some of the serum from the scientist, because their employer (John Rhys-Davies, in little more than a cameo appearance) is dying of bone cancer and wants this secret to immortality thing.  Gosh, would I be giving too much away if I said that when Davies finally takes the miracle drug, he's eaten by a snake seconds later?  There's just a complete lack of creativity, interest in the project, or talent of any sort displayed by everyone involved.  The only amusing part was when the main good guy gets shot in the shoulder, and recovers completely in about 30 seconds.  Then, minutes later, the lead good babe gets shot in the shoulder, and she recovers completely in about 30 seconds.  She even hangs from the roof of a truck, using both arms, to kick the main bad guy out the back.  Then he's, gosh, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Overall, as hum-drum an effort as you can get.  Just turn out another spec' movie for the Sci-Fi Channel, collect your paycheck, and consider yourself a film maker.

[Doggett]

Peter Pan (2003)
5/5
I love this film !
No point in explaining the plot, you know it.

Die You Zombie Bastards !
1/5
There are some naked chicks and the villian made me laugh once. That's about it...
No point in explaining the plot, there isn't one.

[Jack]

I'm currently attempting to listen to the Director's Commentary to Universal Soldiers.  This ranks right up there with enduring Manos, Hands of Fate.  The director was apparently under the impression that the audience would be able to hear the movie during his commentary, which of course we can't.  80% - 90% of the track consists of listening to him breath through his mouth.  He develops a throat whistle at one point.  We can hear him swallow with perfect clarity.  Lots of saliva sounds, you can basically hear every time he moves his tongue in his mouth.  On those rare occasions when he does say something, he tells us that the script was so bad that the actors rewrote major portions of it each evening after filming was completed for the day.  Then they added more stuff during rehearsal.  I'll give them an A for effort, though unfortunately a F for results.  He says that one thing he wishes he had more time for in pre-production was to research military techniques and procedures, as he has no knowledge of such things, and of course the whole movie is about soldiers. 

At one point he says that if anyone can identity the nationality of a certain actor, e-mail him and he'll give you ten free Asylum movies.  I can't imagine that anyone has ever made it this far into the commentary track - maybe I've got a good chance of winning? 

[Pilgermann]

Saw Coraline in the theater last week and I loved it.  The story isn't anything too remarkable, but it's full of visual wonders and I adore stop-motion animation in the first place.

I've been on a bit of a horror kick and over the last few days I've watched the following:

Witchfinder General -- A historical horror/drama that's fairly nasty as its reputation suggests, but not quite as harsh as I expected.  The violent elements look pretty fake when there's blood involved, but the cruelty is such that it kind of cancels out the phoniness.  If you're in the right mood it's a decent film.

Phantasm -- This seemed to be a pretty uneven movie with some parts being laughably bad, but it unfolds in such a bizarre and unique way that it's strangely entertaining.

Prince of Darkness -- Cripes, I've been meaning to see this for a while!  John Carpenter almost tapped into something truly special with this flick (the dream transmissions for example), but the last bit of the film didn't quite live up to the excellent parts before it.  Regardless of that it's really creepy, and it's now one of my favorite Carpenter flicks.

[Jack]

Agree about Prince of Darkness - the whole first part was awesome, but the ending just didn't really live up to what came before.

Dracula 2000 - Dr. Van Helsing owns some sort of high class antique dealership, and also has a huge vault in his basement.  One of his employees gets the idea that there must be something extraordinarily valuable in the vault, so she gets together with some professional thieves to clean it out.  But all they find is some old coffin    Yeah, things don't go well for the thieves.  Van Helsing and his young protégé track down ol' Drac' and his minions.  Some interesting Biblical subplots, really made it more absorbing than your usual vampire flick.  Jeri Ryan (7 of 9 from Voyager) shows up in a small part, and there's other hot babes as well.  4/5.

[lester1/2jr]

1990 bronx warriors-  the best italian rip off movie I've seen thus far.  great stuff with a gang of bikers roaming the Bronx of the future, now distant past 1990.    They have run ins with all sorts of weird gangs like the dirty strange hopping around Scavengers and these other guys with all this hockey gear who I can't remember their name.  Theres no sex and not as much violence as you'd expect but it makes up for it with attitude and cheap awesome vibe 

[Doggett]

TROMEO AND JULIET (1996):  Troma's version of Shakespeare's beloved tragedy is just like the original, only with incest, Motorhead's Lemmy as a slurring narrator, bad punk hairdos, explicit nipple piercing, gratuitous nudity, fart jokes, cheezy gore, lesbian sex, Shakespearean porn CD-ROMs ("As You Lick It"), exploding crossbows, alien monster penises, punks caught in the windows of speeding cars, vegetarian propaganda, self-mutilation, outrageous costumes, references to other Troma movies, bad vaudeville routines, a popcorn pregnancy, a plexiglass isolation booth used for "time outs" when Juliet has sex dreams, 500 lb. male phone sex operators, urination, tattoo needles in the eyeball, Hitler statuettes embedded in brains, severed heads, car crashes, child abuse, opium dens, acid trips, cow-faced women, puking, pedophile priests, a "happy" ending, and occasional iambic pentameter. 4/5.

I watched this and I agree.

also...

Shattered Glass.
It's about some annoying git who made up his stories for the New Republic magazine. Then he got caught, it's about how how his lies led to his downfall. It's great.
4/5

[Wag]

I've not viewed anything recently - I have not been able to fit any films in cos I've spent most of my free time on here since I joined 

[Torgo]

WATCHMEN  *** out of **** 

[Jack]

Detour (2003) - Basically a Hills Have Eyes remake, with kids coming home from a rave out in the desert.  Pretty good characters, they were wisecracking and very entertaining.  Except the white rapper guy.  If I ever hear anyone begin a sentence with the word "Yo" ever again, I swear I will disembowel them with a rusty meat hook.  Of course this loon lives to the end.  The story was standard:  Inbred mutants kill off the kids.  Oddly, only a couple of the baddies are mutants, the rest appear to be normal guys.  Just murderous.  This movie could have rated a 3.5/5 if it hadn't been for Mr. suburban homeboy making a joke out of every "terrifying" scene.  I mean, why don't they just have a Valley Girl saying "Barf out, gag me with a spoon!" every time one of her friends get slaughtered?  2.5/5.

[Doggett]

I've not viewed anything recently - I have not been able to fit any films in cos I've spent most of my free time on here since I joined 

That's what we want to hear, Wag.

JOIN US...

[Jack]

Crazy Eights (2006) - Some dismal characters get locked in an abandoned insane asylum.  They immediately abandon any hope of getting out, and sit around acting pathetic and withdrawn.  When one of them occasionally gets off their a$$ and wanders around a bit, they're attacked by some unseen force.  The attack itself is unseen as well.  This causes the others to have quiet nervous breakdowns, making them vaguely more pathetic and withdrawn than before.  That's pretty much it.  1.5/5.