Someone suggested I do a holiday movie. So I did. Bet they wish they had been more specific, huh?
Archive for December, 2008
And Happy Samhain, too!
Dec 31
The first is that I get an extra seventeen hours at the end of every Roundtable – mwoo-ha-ha! The second is that I get the privilege of wishing all contributors and visitors to the B-Masters Blog a very happy New Year. Thanks to all those who dropped by (hey, lurkers! – resolve to de-lurk!), and especially to those who shared their thoughts with us. Here’s to another year of the living dead, killer dolls, murderers in skull masks, nature in revolt, zombie gorillas and manskirts.
(P.S. I don’t know who got “The Theme From ‘Shaft'” onto the NY playlist here, but thumbs up.)
Hey, you know that romantic comedy triple pack you had to bite your tongue and be polite about? There’s a bonanza of upcoming releases you can exchange it for!
Of course, the big news is that Dario Argento’s long, long, long MIA Four Flies On Grey Velvet is finally getting the treatment it deserves from Mya Communication (who appear to be a new incarnation of NoShame USA), which will be released uncut and remastered on 24th February. Mya will also be releasing—-oops! has released (27th December) the Argento produced and co-directed Door Into Darkness, four one-hour TV horrors, as a two-disc set.
Manskirts ahoy! Image Entertainment have announced The HERCULES Collection 
for 31st March, a four disc set that will gather together no less than nine pepla: Hercules, Mole Men Against The Son Of Hercules, Hercules The Avenger, Hercules And The Black Pirate, Hercules And The Captive Women, Hercules, Prisoner Of Evil, Hercules And The Princess Of Troy, Atlas In The Land Of The Cyclops and Giants Of Rome. There is some cause for concern in the comment that “most” of these films will be widescreen (I’ve been after a widescreen print of Hercules And The Captive Women for years, so I’d lay odds that’s one of the ones that isn’t), but you can’t argue with the price: $19.98.
Shriek Show will be issuing a remastered, anamorphic version of Alan Rudolph’s Barn Of The Naked Dead aka Terror Circus, starring AYCYAS! crush Andrew Prine, on 27th January. Meanwhile, El Santo’s good friends at Severin Films have recently acquired the rights to another former Video Nasty, Expose aka House On Straw Hill, starring Udo Kier, Fiona Richmond, and a great deal more of Linda Hayden than you might expect. Severin have also announced that their upcoming release of Nightmare Castle will include a lengthy chat-featurette with Barbara Steele. Still no firm release date for that one 
(“Summer 2009”), although the project seems to be well along the way. Speaking of Barbara, the good news is that new label Midnight Choir is releasing on 24th February a double disc of The Long Hair Of Death with An Angel For Satan; the bad news is that behind Midnight Choir is Johnny Legend, so caveat emptor.
Mondo Macabro, bless ’em, will be releasing The Bollywood Horror Collection Volume 2 on 31st March, serving up two more Ramsay Brothers efforts: Veerana and Purani Haveli. The former is a serious vampire story whose mix of sex and horror got the Ramsays into trouble; the latter is a haunted house story that allows the brothers to dabble in a bit of self-parody. Also early next year, Onar Films will release the Turkish giallo Kadin Dusmani aka Woman Despiser. BUY THESE FILMS, PEOPLE!! These guys need and deserve our support.
First Look probably don’t deserve our support, but… On 27th January, First Look will be releasing Sharks In Venice. If ever a film was sold on its title and poster, this is it; AIP would be proud of this one. (Also note the complete absence of star Stephen Baldwin’s name.) First Look will also be bundling five previous releases into the Shark Attack Pack: Shark Hunter, Dark Waters, Shark Zone, Blue Demon and Hammerhead; the set will be available from 6th January.
(Thank you, Nathan!)
Ten Little Werewolves
Dec 26
The next entry in the Howling franchise sees the action shifted to a Hungarian castle, where a group of tourists discovers that each of them is of the bloodline of the castle’s original family, and that one of them is a werewolf. This reworking of The Beast Must Die! has its moments, but there’s too much padding, and far, far too much darkness.
On the other hand, there are also boobies.
I have covered Albert Pyun. I have covered Andy Sidaris. I have covered David Heavener. I have covered Golan and Globus. I have covered Cynthia Rothrock (at least her non-Hong Kong movies). Now I sample a new source of cinema horror – The Asylum. The Asylum, for those not in the know, is a studio that produces cheap and awful knock-offs of major Hollywood studio movies. Their efforts include movies like The Day The Earth Stopped and Snakes On A Train. Can you guess which movies they are ripping off? How about with the particular Asylum movie I am reviewing this holiday season, Allan Quatermain And The Temple Of Skulls? Read and learn to be aware of The Asylum.
I may not have any Mickey Hargitay or zombie gorillas for you, but I do have a great, big dragon puppet and an entire movie that consists of little more than Daryl Hannah butt-shots.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension (1984), in which people who set out to make a perennial cult favorite get exactly what they wanted, to their enormous fiscal detriment…
The Magic Sword (1962), in which a young Gary Lockwood squares off against an old Basil Rathbone, and Maila Nurmi has to spend the whole movie hiding her face behind a crappy rubber mask in order to stop herself from out-hotting the damsel in distress…
Raw Meat (1972), in which what might be the biggest Donald Pleasence Weirdotm yet confronts a nest of cannibals in the London underground…
and…
Summer Lovers (1982), in which the writer/director of The Blue Lagoon pushes the envelope of non-smutty smut about as far as it will stretch.
Closing Out '08 With Class
Dec 22
It seems fitting that our final full review of 2008 features a zombie gorilla, an ax-swinging cutie, see-thru sari rain dances, and kungfu fights in the graveyard, because that’s pretty much everything that defined 2008 for me.
BHOOT KE PECHHE BHOOT
Bhoot ke Pechhe Bhoot starts with couple en route to spooky house, a trip highlighted by the requisite animated lightning that appears so often in pretty much every Indian horror film that, at this point, I think Indian filmmakers are required by parliament to give it top billing. While the couple pokes around in the mansion, there’s a puff of ninja smoke in the graveyard outside, and suddenly there appears…is that…is that a zombie gorilla??? Yes, a zombie gorilla appears. Son of a bitch. And, umm, and…well, he’s got sparklers for fingertips. Huh. How about that? So far, Bhoot ke Pechhe Bhoot is the greatest movie ever. As the couple continues poking around inside the house, the zombie gorilla appears out of nowhere in the same room, which causes the woman to, take a guess: A) she screams and runs back to the car, as any sane human would do, or B) she reacts as if a sad little puppy has just wandered in, walking toward it with that “how ya doin’, little fella?” tone of voice. Anyone who reacts to a zombie gorilla appearing out of thin air by cooing and walking up to caress it really deserves to get what happens to this woman, which is choked by a zombie gorilla while her boyfriend stands by making “Nah, I think it’ll be OK. He’ll tire himself out” gestures, once again reacting as if this was a puppy humping his girlfriend’s leg rather than a damned zombie gorilla that appeared out of nowhere to wave around sparklers and choke a woman.
The Battle Of The Bulges
Dec 20
Featuring my third Hercules in four movies, The Loves Of Hercules / Hercules Vs The Hydra sees Mickey Hargitay don the skimpy loin-cloth in his quest for the hand and heart of Queen Dianira of Oechalia, aka Jayne Mansfield, aka Mrs Mickey Hargitay.
Along the way, Hercules changes his women more often than his underwear, swaps British insults with a bunch of Italians, beats up the Greco-Roman equivalent of a pinata, and has a very close encounter with a most unfortunate cow.
Oh mammy, I'm the devil!
Dec 19
FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED
Man, this movie is goofy. Really goofy. It explores the darker regions explored by the comic book, topics such as corruption of the innocent, abuse, selling your soul, S&M, so on and so forth, but it’s done within a movie that is so silly, so juvenile, and stars a wisecracking demon in a rubber monster suit, that any attempt to be twisted, sinister, dark, or otherwise anything other than absurd is completely undercut by the schizophrenic tone. Yuzna, as we know, has a severe addiction to cornball comedy and wisecracks, but without the steady hand of Stuart Gordon or screenwriter Dennis Paoli to reel in the more ludicrous ideas, Yuzna is left to wallow in his own one-liners and baser comic tendencies. There is some attempt here to mine the same balance of comedy, terror, and sex as Gordon and Yuzna achieved in Re-Animator and From Beyond, but it fails miserably. Hilariously and miserably.
Also new this week: Michael Caine is old in Blue Ice; Eurospies get weirder than usual in Dick Smart 2.007; Michael Caine is slightly less old in The Jigsaw Man; and Blazing Flowers has the worst English retitling of an Italian crime flick ever.
Though nobody comes to this site to keep on the cutting edge of news, we would be remiss if we did not note the passing of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry yesterday at the age of 76. More than any of other luminaries whom we’ve lost in recent weeks — more than Bettie Page, more (I would argue) than Forrie Ackerman — Ms. Barrett-Roddenberry was an icon of the kind of genre fandom that has infused Western pop culture. As Nurse Chapel, she gave us occasion to see that the unflappable Mr. Spock was on occasion flappable (and gave hope to us socially-maladaptive types with bad haircuts that hot blondes would nonetheless throw themselves at us). As the universal voice of Starfleet computers, she infused our conception of computers with a personality that is still absent from our constantly used desktops (Clippy notwithstanding). As a partner to her husband Gene Roddenberry, she fostered a view of the future that, though inconsistent, maintained a certain spark that somehow attracted masses. As Lwaxana Troi, she brought a big shit-eating grin to Commander Riker’s face when she appeared naked for her own wedding, dressed only in earrings and a saucy smile.
Goodbye, Ms. Barrett-Roddenberry. You go not alone into the next realm; a part of the childhood of everyone in a broad demographic travels with you.