Recent viewings

[FatFreddysCat]

"Stuck!" (2009)
http://youtu.be/bRHpUxYwSs0

Wrongly accused of matricide, an innocent Southern belle is sentenced to hang and is sent to await her fate on Death Row in a womens' prison full of bizarre inmates (including former Go-Go Jane Wiedlin!) and brutal guards.

This ultra low budget, shot-in-B&W, campy on purpose (at least I think it was on purpose) ode to '50s style "Women in Prison" flicks wants to be sleazy and shocking ala John Waters (longtime Waters associate Mink Stole even plays one of the inmates) but it never seems to figure out whether it's supposed to be a spoof or not. 
Avoid.

[BoyScoutKevin]

Earlier I posted some in-jokes to be found in "Zootopia." Here are some more.

Anne of Green Gables
Breaking Bad
CBC News
Emmett Otter's Big Band Christmas
Lehman Bros.
Lucky Charms
Master Charge
Once Upon a Time
Popsicle
Star Trek
Trader Joe's
Uber
Urban Outfitters
1st National Bank

Of course, not every joke that looks like an in-joke is actually an in-joke. What some see as an in-joke reference to "21 Jump Street" was actually a coincidence on part of the wrtiers.

[lester1/2jr]

Baby Blood (1989) - I haven't seen a straight up grindhouse/ vhs horror type movie like this for a long ass time. It's unpretentious but may be interpreted by some as "arty" because there's only one central character and it's a French woman, but it's not (arty). Also the woman is unfathomably hot. She's got the Barbara Steele / Karen Black horror queen thing down cold. The pacing is a little slow mostly due to there being just the one character but it's a great movie in many ways. If you can hang with stuff like "Don't Look in the Basement" and can also appreciate say Street trash you might "feel me" on this one as we used to say in the late 90's.

A woman is married to a "sadistic circus owner" as the description I guess aptly put it. Somehow, some sort of horrible mutant thing bursts out of an animal and goes into her vagina. Deciding it likes the accomodations there it then starts to take over her life. this consists mostly of ordering her to murder people. theres no real sci fi element its not going to take over the world or anything, its just awful and wants to cause havoc. Most of the budget appears to have been spent on getting the actress to take her clothes off and some occasional heavy duty Tom Savini type gross out and supernatural effects.

there's one scene where she murders a guy then slips, it looks like she really slipped, on some blood. As she does so her boob pops out of her nightgown and, flustered, she takes a frying pan and turns out a light by smashing it. It's the best 10 seconds I've seen in recent memory and worth the price of admission in itself.

4.5 /5 once again

[alandhopewell]

 I forgot to mention that the script for REVENGE OF DR. X was based on a treatment written in the 50's by (WAIT FOR IT!) Ed Wood, which would explain the on-codeine dialogue.

     I'm not even going to try to explain SLASHED DREAMS; just watch.

! No longer available

     As far as I know, THE BLOODY BROOD was Peter Falk's first film, and a real odd low budget piece, worth a look.

! No longer available

     These also came from the CHILLING CLASSICS set.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Spectre" (2015)
http://youtu.be/z4UDNzXD3qA
Daniel Craig's fourth go-round as James Bond sends 007 from Rome to Austria to Tangiers, hoping to expose the head of a vast criminal conspiracy known only as SPECTRE -- who are planning to take advantage of a major shift in worldwide intelligence-gathering methods. As usual, stuff blows up, vehicles chase each other around, dudes beat the crap out of each other and Bond hooks up with a hot chick.
Not as good as the preceding "Skyfall," but I'm a Bond fanboy so it was still quite entertaining. Worth a night's rental.

[FatFreddysCat]

"From the Orient With Fury" (1965, aka "Fury on the Bosphorus")

http://youtu.be/xyjLqI-9GKo

This is the second film in the the low budget '60s Eurospy series starring Ken Clark as agent Dick Malloy, aka "077." An international criminal gang has kidnapped a scientist who invented a disintegration ray (seriously!), so Malloy and the inventor's daughter have to track him and his prototype weapon down before the bad guys can use it for nefarious purposes. 
Aside from the eye candy quotient (Mamma mia, those Sixties chicks!) this flick was pretty dull. The action/fight scenes are comically over-choreographed and the English language dubbing sucks, as usual. The first "Malloy" movie ("Mission Bloody Mary") was no great shakes, but compared to this one it's solid gold.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Special Mission Lady Chaplin" (1966)

http://youtu.be/Px-n05RzQk8

This was the third and final go-round for Roger Moore-lookalike Ken Clark as Agent Dick "077" Malloy, and it's the best in the series. When a sunken nuclear submarine mysteriously disappears off the ocean floor, Malloy is ordered to discover what happened to it - and its full load of nuclear missiles. The "Lady Chaplin" in the title is played by Italian hottie Daniela Bianchi of "From Russia With Love" fame, a femme fatale who acts as a go-between for the missile thieves and their buyers.

This one loses steam in the last 30 minutes when it suddenly gets needlessly complicated (as so many Italian B-Movies do) but for the first hour or so it's pretty first-rate spy movie stuff. The first two films in this series were "meh" at best so I guess the third time was the charm.

[claws]

Demonic (2015)

Six young people are documenting their visit to an old house with a bad history. They want to capture ghosts on cam, but soon enough an evil force with deadly intentions takes over.

Told partly in flashbacks with a tough detective investigating, Demonic tries to cover sub genres like haunted house, occult, possession and found footage. You would think this Dimension release produced by the Weinsteins, James Wan AND Blumhouse would provide quality horror entertainment, but thanks to a shabby script that defies common sense and logic the viewer is left with bland chills and mild scares. 3/5

Unfriended (2014)

Six friends spending the evening on skype encounter a unknown user butting in on their conversations. Seems like they can't get rid off this person, who might be a hacker pretending to be a friend who committed suicide one year prior.

Supernatural online terror with a computer screen as the only setting. It makes for an unusual viewing experience for sure. Unfriended almost feels like an experiment until it crosses over into familiar horror terrain, and it actually works. It is good for what it is, but not great. 3.5/5

[lester1/2jr]

Le Corbeau (The Raven) (1943) - not the Edgar Allen Poe story. Instead it's a Criterion collection movie about a mysterious character The Raven who writes letters describing the secret sins of everyone in town. His/ her main target is Dr Germaine, a guy with a bit of mystery himself though he appears to be on the up and up. He's big with the ladies and the two prettiest women in town are in love with him: a married blonde woman with Yulia Tomyshenko style hair crown and then a noir ish disheveled sort of opposite from the first woman one. Every guy needs two hot chicks following them and hanging on their every word, I always say.

The thrust of the thing is trying to guess who the Raven is. They do a good job engaging the viewer with this. I couldn't figure it out but I never can. If the movie has one flaw it's that its pretty much impossible to give an educated guess on this matter because a lot of the characters aren't developed enough to know that like this woman is the mother of the guy who hung himself in his room and might therefore have a special animus for so and so. I got the ending but had to go to the wikipedia entry to clarify who the figure leaving the scene of the crime was.

good stuff in general though. liked

4/5

p.s. the whole thing is also a subtle dig at the gestapo or something and was banned for like a year

[alandhopewell]

     MEDUSA (1973)
     Also from the CHILLING CLASSICS set, this strange bit o' beef stars George and Alana Hamilton, Luciana Paluzzi, and Cameron Mitchell; it's a 70's drug caper/mobster/psychothriller that has "Late, Late Show" written all over it....

! No longer available

    Highly recommended by that l'il ol' cineteratologist, ME!

[lester1/2jr]

The Thriller Killers - decent Ray Dennis Steckler movie. There are two okay looking girls in it and ridiculous cheap fight and (too long )chase sequences, but it's not as colorful as Rat Fink a boo Boo or Incredibly Strange Creatures. Cash Flagg aka Steckler is in it though and its always good to see his goony face on the screen.

2.75 /5

[Rev. Powell]

A SCANNER DARKLY (2006): In the near future (or an alternate future), about 20% of the population is addicted to a powerful narcotic known as "Substance D"; while investigating a small-time group of users, an undercover cop falls under the drug's paranoiac spell and loses his grip on reality. I have never gone through meth psychosis with my pal Robert Downey Jr., but I can only imagine this is exactly what it would feel like. Based on a Phillip K. Dick novel and rotoscoped for extra oddness. 4.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

THE BOXER'S OMEN (1983): A part-time gangster, part-time boxer (his employment status isn't clear) is chosen by a sect of Thai Buddhists to fight a black magician. Not much in the way of story, it's basically a series of magic duels (involving reanimated crocodile skulls, and worse); the outrageous visuals and wild occult rituals make this a superior exotic exploitation film. 4/5 (but I could easily see someone rating it 5/5).

[SynapticBoomstick]

Into the Grizzly Maze (2014) - Sat down to watch movies after dinner and this came on right after The Edge had wrapped up. Being that TiVo told me it was a killer bear movie, I didn't expect anything special as I didn't really remember hearing about it. It actually wasn't too bad. The bear itself is most obviously not actually in the shot with the actors for nearly the entire movie when viewed on a 4k television but it's a magnificent beast just the same. There were also a good amount of shock moments that both weren't stupid and actually shocked, beautiful locations (you've never seen so much moss!), and enough log cabin interiors to make me happy.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Zombie Holocaust" (aka "Doctor Butcher MD," 1980)
http://youtu.be/XvcdlA2hMFg
A team of medical researchers are investigating incidents of cannibalism in a New York City hospital. Eventually they end up on the tropical island that's home to the tribe of flesh eaters, and encounter a crazed doctor whose unauthorized surgical experiments on the natives have created a race of zombies.
This cult Italian fiesta of gory, random gut munching flesh ripping nonsense has no social redeeming value whatsoever, but it's still entertaining as hell in a "WTF?" car-crash sort of way.