Recent viewings

[Rev. Powell]

THE TELL-TALE HEART (1960): A shy librarian named Edgar kills his best friend over a woman, and is driven mad by the sound of a beating heart coming from under the floorboards. The new sexual frustration plot devised here to draw Edgar Allan Poe's short story out to feature length really isn't very interesting or much in Poe's spirit. 2/5.

[JaseSF]

Future Shock (1972): Documentary narrated by Orson Welles somewhat based on the book by Alvin Toffler about the speed of progress and technology getting ahead of people causing some great anxiety and stress and changing the world at a speed perhaps too fast for some people.

This is pretty interesting to watch in retrospect and realize that many of the changing trends just starting back then have become more acceptable now (such as equal rights for women, gay marriage, polygamy, artificial organs, artificial insemination, growth of the machine in terms of popularity of computer and robot), others still seem rather fanciful (cryogenics, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, death of marriage and traditional families). This is also pretty weird at times especially the opening sequence which looks like something from a 1970s bad movie. Also this feels dated today especially all the footage of huge computers that took up entire rooms.

Still some of what's stated here does hold true so as to the disposal society we've come to live in, one of instant gratification, plastic wrapped, fast, keeping up with the latest trend. Disposal society, even to some extent disposal people. I'll give this ***1/2 out of ***** stars. It's somewhat relevant and fascinating to watch the speed of change that worried some in the 1970s (what must they think today then yet this also feels quite dated, a bit too fearful of the future, and just downright weird at other times).

"Our modern technology has achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety, a time of stress. And with all our sophistication we are in fact, the victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims of shock ... of future shock." - portion of opening narration from Orson Welles

Here's the full thing from youtube which is where I watched it:

FutureShock_OrsonWelles

Also watched Teenagers From Outer Space (1959) from the Sci-Fi 100 Movie Pack.  Teenagers is just as much fun as I last remembered it. It features a good alien named Derek (David Love) trying to outwit and stop his evil alien people, who believe themselves the supreme race, from destroying Earth by turning it into an harvesting field for gigantic monsters named gargons. The evil aliens send Thor (Bryan Grant) to try and bring back and capture Derek as Derek is the son of their nefarious leader but Thor has a thirst for killing and loves to use his disintegrating ray gun to blast everything in sight to bones and would love to do the same to Derek as well. Derek however comes to like the Earth and even begins an unexpected romance with an Earth girl named Betty (Dawn Bender) that he meets and who helps him.

Sure this has cheesy lines, perhaps the most ridiculous giant monster in history (lobster anyone?), the skeleton disintegrations aren't fully convincing, and the ending seems to happen much too easily. Nevertheless, I always find this one so much fun to watch mostly for the cat and mouse chase game between Derek and Thor and Thor being such a nasty, heartless villain (does this remind anyone else of similar in Logan's Run and The Brain From Planet Arous?). Love the ray guns, love the good vs. bad alien elements, the epic romance qualities. Sure this is bad but it's so bad it's good sci-fi. On that level, this rates a **** out of ***** stars for me.

[claws]

Haunt (2013)

Family of five move into new home that is supposedly haunted . After they settle in the 18 year old son befriends and falls in love with a neighbor girl, and together they discover a strange box that was built to communicate with the dead. Soon enough they make contact and all sorts of paranormal activity starts to happen.
Nicely shot spook show with creative looking ghosts. There are several subplots with one going nowhere (they just abandoned that plotline halfway through without reason or explanation) which is too bad because it was one of the more interesting ones. Biggest surprise was seeing Ione Skye again (playing mom) who sort of left her mark in a few 1980s movies. Haven't seen her in anything since Wayne's World back in 1992. Anyway, 3.5/5

Resolution (2012)

Meth addicted dude squatting in a cabin in rural country is chained to the wall by his best friend in order to overcome his addiction. Five tough days are lying ahead of them, interrupted ever so often by local drug dealers, preacher men and the landlord. Soon enough the best friend finds disturbing things in the surrounding area, placing him and his chained buddy in mortal danger.
Psychological thriller not played dead serious, but not a comedy either. Acting and characters are above average, making this low budget indie flick way better than expected. 4/5

[Jack]

Prometheus (2012) - watched this again.  What can I say, I'm a huge Alien fanboy and I love this movie A bunch of ancient cave paintings are discovered on earth, and the pictures all seem to point to some distant star system, so a ship is sent out to investigate - to meet our makers as it were. But things turn out a little differently than our intrepid explorers imagined. Characters were okay; not even close to being on the same level as the first two Alien movies but then few movies are.  Noomi Rapace does a good job in the lead and Charlize Theron creates a rather interesting character as the mission commander. Everybody else is just kind of there. I thought the plot was very intriguing and the action sequences were out of this world. 5/5.

[Trevor]

Peter Jackson's THE FRIGHTENERS with Michael J Fox: I liked it and it was quite creepy in many places. Jeffrey Combs was great as the whacked out FBI guy. 

[lester1/2jr]

Bottom - this is Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson's show after The Young Ones. It's not as good as Young Ones but definitely has it's moments. It's basically Rick and Vyvyan as thirty somethings in a similar crappy apartment. Mike even does a cameo. The situations are a little contrived in places and there's a whole lot of Rick and no the other guys but when it's funny it's classic. There's some serious slapstick and humiliation. two geniuses no doubt 4/5

edit: also Edmonson's character is named Eddie Hitler haha

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Wolverine" (2013) Logan heads to Japan to honor an old debt and winds up tangling with ninjas, the Yakuza and the Silver Samurai in this sightly overlong but otherwise satisfactory butt kicker, loosely based on Wolverine's first-ever solo adventure from 1982.

[Jack]

Re-Animator (1985) - a young doctor has come up with a formula to revive the dead, which has the unfortunate side effect of turning them into murderous zombies, but hey, nothing's perfect. Anyhow this causes quite a few problems and it's all played out in cheesy low budget fashion. This was okay I guess, the characters weren't very interesting and other than the action scenes the rest of it just kind of dragged. Barbara Crampton looks damned nice topless though. 3/5.

Gangs of the Dead (2006) - some guys from two different gangs are buying drugs, but then a zombie apocalypse occurs. I thought this might be fun because the characters wuz all gangstuhz, but no, they never rose above paper-thin cliches. The plot was just your run-of-the-mill people stuck in a building surrounded by zombies thing. 2.5/5.

[claws]

Re-Animator (1985) - a young doctor has come up with a formula to revive the dead, which has the unfortunate side effect of turning them into murderous zombies, but hey, nothing's perfect. Anyhow this causes quite a few problems and it's all played out in cheesy low budget fashion. This was okay I guess, the characters weren't very interesting and other than the action scenes the rest of it just kind of dragged. Barbara Crampton looks damned nice topless though. 3/5.

I was sitting here staring for five minutes with my mouth wide open. I'm relived you thought it was "ok" 

[claws]

Dread (2009)

Three students working on a "fear study" school project face real terror when one of the students takes things too far.
Gross-out shocker with sadistic tendencies. Not bad if you (still) like the Saw movies. This one comes with decent production values and acting. Watching a torture porn-ish movie in 2014 already felt a bit dated (first time viewing) though. 3.5/5

The Abandoned (2006)

American film producer born in Russia returns 'home' after 40 years to collect inheritance: the old abandoned house of her mother she never knew in the middle of nowhere. Upon arrival she's trapped in a supernatural loop where she encounters a twin brother and undead doppelgangers.
Heavy layered psychological horror where you have to figure out the plot. If you enjoyed Triangle (2009) you will most likely get a kick out of The Abandoned. 3.5/5

[Jack]

Re-Animator (1985) - a young doctor has come up with a formula to revive the dead, which has the unfortunate side effect of turning them into murderous zombies, but hey, nothing's perfect. Anyhow this causes quite a few problems and it's all played out in cheesy low budget fashion. This was okay I guess, the characters weren't very interesting and other than the action scenes the rest of it just kind of dragged. Barbara Crampton looks damned nice topless though. 3/5.

I was sitting here staring for five minutes with my mouth wide open. I'm relived you thought it was "ok" 

Yeah people really seem to like that movie, I guess I'm missing something 

Particle Fever (2013) - documentary about the Large Hardon Collider, that 17 mile long underground circular tunnel near Geneva where they smash subatomic particles together in hopes of finding the Higgs Boson. The big questions are A) does it exist and B) how much does it weigh? If it's heavy, it would tend to confirm the multiverse theory, and if it's light it would point more towards the super-symmetry theory being correct. As it turns out, it does exist and it's about halfway between the two theorized weights, so more research is necessary. They're doubling the power of the thing and have plans to start a new round of experiments next year.

This did a good job of bringing the viewer into the world of these physicists, some of whom have been working on this thing for a good chunk of their careers (it took 20 years to build). Their excitement over experiments finally being performed could be likened to the NASA scientists getting the signal back that one of their Mars rovers has landed safely. The physicists were pretty interesting characters overall. Only complaint is that it's pretty obvious the documentary makers were hired to do a 90 minute show but they only had about 60 minutes worth of material. 3.5/5.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Ghost Shark" (2013) Genre legend Richard Moll co-stars with an all growed up Mackenzie ("7th Heaven") Rosman (!!) in this supernatural SyFy schlocker about a spectral shark chomping on the residents of a seaside community. Given the utterly absurd premise, this flick is actually better than it has any right to be.

[lester1/2jr]

Survival Quest  (1989) - The guy who did Phantasm which I haven't seen did this and it's as goofy a movie as I've seen in a long time. A bunch of people go on some sort of Outward Bound type forest excursion and run into a some militia types. Along the way they learn how to share or something. It's so silly you see them doing rope swings and the old guy is scared so they cheer him on and give each other high 5s when he does it. Seriously, why is this so goofy?

No one is very interesting so it's hard to care whether they live or die. Even the militia guys are goofballs. I wish a bear had eaten them all. There was another tv movie with the same plot I've seen but this was actually better. While it's PG rated life lessons with mild adventure combo is dated it is watcheable in a way. We all need variety on our lives, I suppose. It's just odd to see a prominent horror director make something that has MST3K level laughability.
3/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Sharknado 2: The Second One' (2014) - in this sequel to last year's cult hit, the heroic Fin and April are visiting New York City when weather history repeats itself, leading to more of the usual toothy mayhem. "2" is bigger, louder and crazier than the first film, and it's riddled with in-jokes and celebrity cameos. My 11 year old and 7 year old sons dubbed it "AWWWWE-SOME" and declared it better than the original. I have to agree!

[claws]

Jack's viewing of Re-Animator inspired me to finally watch my Blu-ray of

Bride of Re-Animator (1989)

Several months after the bloody events at the Miskatonic University Hospital, Doctors Herbert and Dan find the origins of the green neon serum that re-animates the dead. Herbert continues his morbid experiments while Dan is emotionally and physically entangled with two women: a terminally ill patient and Francesca, his new girlfriend. Soon enough a Detective pops up asking all sorts of questions, plus the still re-animated head of Dr. Hill is preparing for his big revenge.
A slight step down in quality compared to the original, but still crazy, bloody and fun enough to please the genre fan. I watched the German Blu-ray and the quality is leaps ahead of the grungy US DVD. 4/5

From Beyond (1986)

Experiments gone awry in a villa owned by Dr. Edward Pretorius and his assistant Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Combs), leaving Pretorius dead without a head. Authorities place Tillinghast in an insane asylum, and then in the hands of Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) who tries to recreate the experiment so they can find out what really happened. Bad idea.
Shape-changing monster show with gross out effects, From Beyond is classy Sci-Fi Horror B-Movie madness. Though some of the (miniature) creatures come off a bit dated, and there's some unintentional humor in the final quarter. 4/5