The B-Masters Cabal
Back from the Grave and Ready to Party!A tale from the Wal-Mart bargain bin
Posted onJune 14, 2012
Recently I found for sale four movies packaged in one DVD case. This movie collection was priced at five dollars, and when you include the tax I had to pay, that means that averages out to one dollar and forty cents for each movie. In the case of one of the movies in the collection I decided to review – The Final Patient – I got ripped off.
Monkey Business
Posted onJune 13, 2012p>Running a little late with my roundtable review, but I WILL get to Gil Gerard’s carpety chest. Until then…
| BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA So, just how wretched? Does it deserve to top a “worst of all time” list? Yeah, it probably does. Like I said, I went in prepared, and with the film being something of a running in-joke it made it pretty easy to get through. Also, I only sort of half-assedly paid attention to it. And I would have said that yeah, it deserves to be on any well-researched worst-of list, but not at the top. And then came the “it was all a dream” ending, and that rockets Brooklyn Gorilla if not to the top, then certainly up into the rarefied airs of dreadful movies. It’s certainly worse than Magic Lizard, but I still like it more than What Happens in Vegasand Mission: Impossible 2. |
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| I AM NUMBER FOUR So despite my reservations I was left wanting more, waiting for resolutions that would have come in the adaptation of the sequel book, The Power of Six. Sadly the follow-up seems highly unlikely — one, because the movie didn’t make back its budget, and two, because Alex Pettyfer was also in the running for the biggest jerk involved with this project. He and Agron had been dating during production, but news broke of an acrimonious split the day after I Am Number Four hit theatres; basically the kiss of death for a movie aimed at the tween romance market. |
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| DAWN OF THE MUMMY Many films focus on the glamour of the modeling industry, but it seems that it’s only the horror genre that concerns itself with its dangers. Movies like Horror of Spider Island and Bloody Pit of Horror have shown us how, time and again, models and those charged with tending to them have been called upon to place themselves in harm’s way, like soldiers at the front. And perhaps no more credible presentation of that reality can be found than in 1981’s Dawn of the Mummy — even if that film also asks us to believe that an American fashion magazine would bankroll a whole crew travelling to Egypt just to shoot dresses that look like old lady nightgowns. |
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| STREET LAW I love writing about poliziotteschi purely because the nature of the films gives you so much to think about, all the while never once forgetting to drench you with ultra-bloody squibs, car crashes, and guys brandishing shotguns while shouting and wearing balaclavas. But they rarely let you relish the violence without also forcing you to contemplate the costs. Street Law, while I was viewing it, struck me as a very good example of the genre without being one of my favorites. The more I let it simmer in my mind, however, and the more I realized how complex and ambitious its philosophy was, the more my appreciation for it grew. |
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| DA KHWAR LASME SPOGMAY Simply calling Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay “a Pakistani film” would likely send any serious minded booster of that nation’s cinema into paroxysms of despair. The Pashto language film industry that produced Da Khwar Lasme Spogmay, which serves an overwhelmingly male audience in the country’s northern border region, is considered to be pretty much the absolute gutter of Pakistan’s film making culture. For Americans, you’d have to imagine meeting a person from a foreign country whose only exposure to American cinema was through seeing Manos: The Hands of Fate, and who tried to characterize the whole of the U.S.’s filmic output based on that. |
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You won’t desert this desert tale
Posted onJune 4, 2012
From Enzo G. Castellari, the Italian director of movies like Great White and The Inglorious Bastards, comes Tuareg – The Desert Warrior, starring Mark Harmon as the title figure. With a bigger budget than usual, plus a screenplay that gives the audience an unconventional hero, Castellari creates a B movie epic unlike any other movie in his career.
No, I’m still not talking about “The Night Stalker”
Posted onJune 2, 2012
Once upon a time there was a pilot movie for a series about a paranormal investigator, fighting the forces of darkness in a major American city. Our hero believes that a recent series of brutal murders may be connected to the supernatural… but can he get the authorities to believe him in time?
It may sound familiar, but believe me: it isn’t. The pilot in question is Dark Intruder (1965), starring Leslie Nielsen as a debonaire ghost-chaser in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. The show so far ahead of its time that it was turned down by all three major networks. Released instead to theaters as the bottom half of an obscure double bill, it came back from the dead occasionally as late-night TV filler through the seventies. Since then, though, it’s been ignored — which is a shame: its flaws are no worse than those of other TV productions of the time, and its strong points are considerable.
And thinking of San Francisco, time for some shameless self-promotion… Anybody in the San Francisco area who’s looking for something to do next week might check out a concert by the San Francisco Choral Artists: a program called “Poetry on Musical Wings”, a celebration of particularly successful unions of words and music. In addition to some of the usual suspects (Shakespeare, Rilke… that lot), they’re doing a very short, yet incredibly lovely setting by Oakland composer Michael Kaulkin of a poem by… (ahem) Me. Your not-so-humble Braineater. The music is serious, but the words are silly, and the result is… well, maybe you’ll hear for yourself.
The performances are on June 9 in Palo Alto; June 10 in Oakland; and June 16 in San Francisco. More information is here.