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.
#1 by Blake Matthews on December 23, 2008 - 7:31 am
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I found The Magic Sword to be fairly enjoyable fluff. I also liked that the dragon got some decent screen time, compared to the short-lived screen appearance of “Godzilla/Anguirus” in Hercules. It’s a cliché to say this, but the tone of the movie is what more fantasies should be: fun. It doesn’t take itself too seriously but it isn’t some attempt to “modernize” the genre.
#2 by JessicaR on December 23, 2008 - 11:26 am
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I get you on wanting to vacation in Greece, I had to watch the excreable Mama Mia! a few days ago and the goregous Greek coast location shots kept me sane.
#3 by Baron Scarpia on December 23, 2008 - 3:54 pm
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Jessica –
I had to watch the excreable Mama Mia! a few days ago
You have my heartfelt sympathy.
#4 by KeithA on December 24, 2008 - 1:30 am
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Something about Buckaroo Banzai really works for me. Like Sky Captain, I know it’s pandering directly to me, but every now and then, I don’t mind being pandered to. It could also be that I was one of ten people who saw the movie in the theater.
Speaking as an experienced traveler: the Greece you will go to will not look like the Greece in Mama Mia. But Greece is still worth shooting for, provided the entire country isn’t in a state of upheaval. Some of those islands — man! Unbelievably awesome. Athens looks like Jersey but with ancient stuff.
And I love Magic Sword!
#5 by JessicaR on December 24, 2008 - 4:52 am
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Yeah, right now Greece is like Israel, I really want to go but I don’t want to end up being beheaded on a video that makes the rounds of YouTube, sadly India has joined that list. But who knows, someday maybe.
#6 by supersonic on December 24, 2008 - 6:32 pm
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I think the million loose ends in Buckaroo Banzai, including the nonexistent sequel, are exactly what’s best about it.
Very nice review of Summer Lovers.
Heh – I assumed that “excreable” was merely a typo for “execrable”, but it turns out to have a very suitable meaning: “Capable of being discharged by spitting.”
#7 by KeithA on December 25, 2008 - 10:22 pm
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I think the million loose ends in Buckaroo Banzai, including the nonexistent sequel, are exactly what’s best about it.
I’ll explain later why there’s a watermelon there.
I once heard a rumor that the whole “World Crime League” sequel announcement was a joke, that a Doc Savage movie or book or something had once ended with more or less the same glorious declaration, and so they put it in Buckaroo Banzai without any intent of ever actually making it. But that could just be the crazies talkin’.
#8 by HP on December 26, 2008 - 1:46 am
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I believe I must’ve seen Summer Lovers shortly after it first appeared on Cinemax, in 82 or 82, when I was about 20 years old.
There’s nothing worse than sitting down for an Emannuelle ripoff and finding yourself watching a movie instead.
#9 by HP on December 26, 2008 - 1:46 am
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82 or 83. I’m on a borrowed keyboard.
#10 by lyzard on December 27, 2008 - 11:01 pm
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I always thought that about Chief Inspector Bellaver from Scream And Scream Again, except, well, you know…
#11 by Anarquistador on December 28, 2008 - 9:43 pm
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[quote]The island forms an interrupted ring of steeply sloping ridges around a lagoon centered on the volcano’s cone (there must have been an incredible eruption a few thousand years back),[/quote}
Santorini did in fact suffer a ginormous volcanic eruption somewhere around 1600 BC, that all but obliterated the island and the civilization that was already there. The eruption also threw up a cloud of dust and ash so huge that it negatively affected the climate in the Eastern Mediterranean for years afterward, and caused atmospheric disturbances observable as far away as Beijing. Many historians believe that this event was the inspiration for Plato’s account of the Atlantis myth.
#12 by lyzard on December 28, 2008 - 10:04 pm
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The B-Masters Blog: everything from smut to Plato.
#13 by Tom Meade on January 3, 2009 - 12:41 am
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Is the site down or is that just me?
#14 by El Santo on January 4, 2009 - 2:07 pm
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“Is the site down or is that just me?”
It seems to be working now. I’ve noticed that my hosts seem to have server problems once in a while, most often lasting for an hour or two; I can’t get into my site e-mail, either, when that happens. You get what you pay for, I suppose, and I’m paying very little.