Unsurprisingly after all this time, we’ve got some catching up to do. First, what’s actually new:
Annihilation (2018), in which something out of space renders Florida even more screwed up…
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), in which the preferred way to rip off Star Wars is once again to rip off The Seven Samurai even more…
The Beguiled (1970), in which Clint Eastwood has a complicated convalescence…
The Dragon Lives Again (1977), in which the afterlife needs heroes, too…
Five Element Ninjas (1981), in which only a ninja can destroy a ninja, even in China…
The Shape of Water (2017), or La Cuve de Noces…
Truth or Dare? A Critical Madness (1986), in which you never realize how much time people in cheap movies spend driving around until some sick bastard gives that activity its own theme song…
and…
What We Do in the Shadows (2014), in which the only thing more aggravating than having three roommates is having three roommates who live forever.
And now here’s a bunch of other stuff that I was unable to announce here due to technical difficulties:
The Blood Waters of Dr. Z (1971), in which the first step on the road to World Domination is obviously to turn yourself into a catfish…
Centurion (2010), or The Hills Wear Woad…
The Crazies (1973), in which the Proper Authorities enforce Murphy’s Law with an iron fist…
Deranged (1974), in which you just know all the neighbors will tell the folks from the TV news that he always seemed like such a nice, quiet fellow who kept to himself a lot…
Eaten Alive (1976), in which the neighbors are going to get bleeped when the TV news airs their remarks about the culprit…
Future Hunters (1986), in which Sirio Santiago rips off the whole 1980’s in one fell swoop…
The Horror of Party Beach (1964), in which Del Tenney runs with a ball that AIP uncharacteristically dropped…
It (2017), in which a pretty crappy horror movie keeps getting in the way of a pretty great coming-of-age drama…
Lisztomania (1975), after which you’ll never hear anything by Richard Wagner quite the same way again…
She Demons (1958), in which Richard Cunha rips off damn near the whole 1950’s in one fell swoop…
Swamp Thing (1982), in case you forgot how crummy comic book movies used to be…
Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope (1975), in which the wolf-man never turns into a wolf, but somehow that’s kind of okay…
and…
Wonder Women (1973), which I promise you is none of the movies you’re imagining as you read that title.
#1 by Josh on April 4, 2018 - 6:44 pm
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Annihilation appears to be based on the first novel in a trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. I’m still unsure about what exactly happened, but it was a fascinating read nonetheless.
#2 by Blake Matthews on April 4, 2018 - 9:05 pm
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“La Cuve de Noces…”
Heh…something that mainly people who follow Braineater’s reviews will get.
#3 by Braineater on April 4, 2018 - 10:01 pm
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Excellent lineup. Welcome back! Sorry, too, for the technical difficulties.
Is it wrong of me to want to edit the internal monologues of Dr. Z into the Gill-Man love scenes in Shape of Water?
#4 by Richard on April 5, 2018 - 10:51 am
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With respect to those “cheap plastic spaceships” in Battle Beyond the Stars….
The wannabe writer kid whom Corman tapped to make the spaceship models did such a good job that Corman named him Art Director for the entire film.
That was James Cameron’s first screen credit.
#5 by El Santo on April 5, 2018 - 11:14 am
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I remember Cameron saying that his first day on the job involved stapling dozens of cardboard egg cartons to the walls of a set. I kept my eyes peeled this time around for any set that looked like it could have been decorated thus, and eventually concluded that he must have been talking about the control room for Gelt’s ship.
#6 by Alaric on April 5, 2018 - 12:49 pm
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20 new reviews?! This is going to take me a while (especially since I’ve got other stuff to do, too)…
#7 by The Rev. on April 6, 2018 - 4:44 pm
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How spoiler-laden is the Annihilation review? I was already thinking I might want to see it; my quick peek to see your rating makes that more likely.
I’m forever indebted to Andrew Borntreger for giving me the name for Five Element Ninjas. I’d seen it in high school on USA’s “Kung-Fu June” event, and remembered the movie quite vividly; when I finally saw it again a few years ago, I was amazed that I’d how much I still remembered, and how clearly the memory was. However, I could not remember the name, and no one I talked to knew what I was talking about, or did but also couldn’t remember the name. Upon reading the character listing for his review, I was overjoyed to realize that was the movie I’d been hunting for. And I enjoyed it as much the second time as I did the first.
#8 by ronald on April 7, 2018 - 12:54 pm
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Hi, how are ya, glad to see ya. 🙂
Something I occasionally wonder (I’ve got lots of other stuff on my mind too): If most “coming of age” films involve “sexual awakenings” (I’m not actually sure I ever had one of those myself, yet I’m mistaken for a productive member of society on a regular basis…), why don’t “right-wingers” go into frenzies whenever one turns up? I mean, such films support the idea that it’s normal and healthy for teenagers to have sex and what kind of godless commie message is THAT? 😉
#9 by El Santo on April 7, 2018 - 1:20 pm
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I made a point of keeping that one as un-spoilery as I could make it while still leaving me enough ground on which to discuss what I thought about the movie and why. There is one thing in the review, though, that you might wish you hadn’t read: I mentioned the movie’s biggest and best scare, and although I didn’t say anything about how, when, or why it comes up, I included enough clues that someone who’s given to lateral thinking could probably intuit those things.
#10 by The Rev. on April 10, 2018 - 5:57 pm
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Well, guess I’ll hold off on that review then. I’ll try to see it this weekend.
#11 by ronald on April 7, 2018 - 6:35 pm
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An aside on Ed Gein:
As some here may know, Gein had an extensive collection of “men’s adventure magazines,” a genre that some here may further know often included tales of cannibalism and Nazism and other unwholesome stuff (how the Wertham-lites of the era resisted the temptation to blame such magazines for Gein’s madness is one for the ages).
It’s a harsh blow to the forces of morbid trivia that Gein’s collection was destroyed and not even a list of its contents made (or at least preserved). I mean, seriously, what were the cops [not] thinking? Even back then, serial killer memorabilia was, as they say, a thing. Imagine how much money someone could’ve gotten for those even back then, much less right now. 😐
Incidentally, IIRC Gein murdered “only” two people (which was of course two too many), which means that strictly speaking he wasn’t a serial killer, although many include him on lists of such malefactors. What he did with dead bodies (most of them already dead before he got hold of them) gives him that certain something that puts him in the ranks of the most infamous, though.
#12 by ronald on April 7, 2018 - 8:31 pm
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Eaten Alive (1976)
The Starlight is a lonely, eerie, menacing sort of place… a…family checks into the Starlight. The woman… the man…the little girl…[whose] first impression of the Starlight Hotel comes when Judd’s crocodile eats her dog.
MANOS…
#13 by ronald on April 8, 2018 - 2:26 pm
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“19th-century Hungarian composer Liszt Ferenc, better known by the Germanized version of his name, Franz Liszt. 1886.”
“Never heard of him! Wrong number!” — Bugs Bunny, “Rhapsody Rabbit” (1946)
#14 by ronald on April 10, 2018 - 7:47 pm
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It mildly intrigues me to think that Bruce Le’s character in “Future Hunters” is the same as the character from his WTH appearance in “Pieces.”
Battle Beyond the Stars review: “Go watch Humanoids from the Deep, and see if any of that music sounds at all familiar.”
Shouldn’t that recommendation come with a warning of some kind? 😉
The Shape of Water review: “acquiring a taste for his body”
Are you sure that’s the phrase you want in this context? 😉
#15 by Tom on April 10, 2018 - 8:37 pm
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Comment…
#16 by ronald on April 14, 2018 - 1:02 pm
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Future Hunters (1986) “In some way that is never remotely explained, the spear holds the power to alter the course of history and avert the end of the world”
(blink)
I can but presume that you’ve never before heard of the Spear of Destiny.
It’s imbued with the literal blood of Christ. What’s to explain? That’s not just magic, that’s GOD MAGIC and *nothing* trumps GOD MAGIC.
“Just don’t ask me how a wooden stick is supposed to have survived for untold hundreds of years in so soggy an environment.”
(blink)(blink)
Okay, I won’t ask you, I’ll tell you.
It’s GOD MAGIC. Besides, even a lower-case magic stick could reasonably be expected to survive for thousands of years.
No kidding, I’m genuinely stunned here…
#17 by supersonic man on April 16, 2018 - 1:06 am
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“Rarely have I seen a filmmaker in such total command of his worst impulses.”
Man, I’ve kind of had a small desire to see Lizstomania rolling around in the back of my mind ever since it first came out. Now I may actually look for it.
#18 by El Santo on April 16, 2018 - 4:58 pm
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Yeah, but what are you supposed to do with it to stop a nuclear war? There’s plenty of supposed GOD MAGIC lying around all over the world (fragments of the True Cross, the Shroud of Turin, enough Foreskins of Christ to build a whole Emergency Backup Jesus if you sewed them all together), but apparently none of it was worth a damn in 199X when they shot the nukes. And for that matter, the Spear of Longinus itself clearly wasn’t worth a damn the first time around, since its presence on Earth did not, in and of itself, prevent the apocalypse in Matthew’s original timeline. So how is Michelle supposed to use it once she has the thing in her possession? Wave it up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, and then do the semaphore for “BA?”
#19 by ronald on April 16, 2018 - 10:35 pm
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It works like a magic staff. Point, Think, STUFF HAPPENS. 😉
#20 by Alaric on April 17, 2018 - 7:19 pm
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The “Recent Comments” links section is acting kinda funny.
#21 by RogerBW on April 21, 2018 - 11:43 am
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She Demons (1958)
“It’s the endless cycling of escape and recapture” – ah yes, something that several Doctor Who stories also suffered from. When you need to fill a few minutes, have our heroes captured and then let them break out.
The Horror of Party Beach (1964)
“when the atomic waste hit the dead men’s bodies, it had the rather unexpected effect of reanimating them as blood-drinking gill-men” – a well-known hazard of Movie Radiation.
Future Hunters (1986)
“Thanks to poor deathtrap design” — ah, so often the problem.
Annihilation (2018)
This has been served particularly badly by its trailers, which make it look like a rip-off of Arrival only with more violence and one-by-one murders in the traditional cheap nasty horror style.
#22 by Jared on April 26, 2018 - 12:46 pm
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I kind of want to see The Blood Waters of Dr. Z now, if only for the “Calendar o’ Crazy” that you described.
Also, I feel I ought to thank you, in that it was by reading your review of Dog Soldiers that I discovered the Collector’s Edition Blu-ray via the ad at the bottom. So, thank you.
#23 by Elizabeth the Ferret on April 29, 2018 - 2:35 am
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*emerges once more after years of quiet lurking, ready to murder souls an drink eyeballs….* Or just to point out something on your site, El Santo. One of those two, anyway. For the Beguiled, the link works just fine from the main page, but in the alphabetical list, you have it as a 2017 movie and the link for it doesn’t work.
#24 by Chris on June 30, 2018 - 9:31 am
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Nice cross-discussion about James Horner in Battle Beyond the Stars. For me his motifs were still exceptional in Star Trek II, Krull, and Aliens, though if you’re looking for a closer score comparison, Star Trek III and Aliens might be a better match, and he plucks Ripley’s theme directly for Patriot Games. IMO it’s his 4-note villain motif that got annoyingly way-overused since then, though. I think it first showed up in Willow, but you hear it in The Mask of Zorro, Troy, and Avatar too. I was dreading watching The Magnificent Seven remake more over hearing those posthumous 4 notes than the remake premise itself, and sure enough, there it was again.
#25 by maggiesmith on February 1, 2022 - 12:01 pm
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The Shape of Water. Don’t insult Rumble In the Bronx, which as far as I know is the only movie to feature shots of the famous Bronx Mountains.
#26 by Blake on February 4, 2022 - 12:09 pm
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I think the first Michael Bay-produced Ninja Turtles movie had them sliding down a snowy mountain and then suddenly in NYC.
#27 by maggiesmith on February 9, 2022 - 9:44 pm
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About Ed Gein. Every so often, over the years, he would be taken to court to determine if he was sane enough to stand trial. Of course, he wasn’t . During one of these jaunts, someone asked him how he liked the hospital. “It’s all right.” he replied. “Lot of crazy people there, though.”