So much, I would rather watch an Arthur Askey movie.

So much, I would rather watch nose-wrestling.

So much, I would rather re-watch Murders In The Zoo without fast-forwarding through the Charlie Ruggles scenes.

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So—a couple of resurrected reviews for you (because if I have to suffer through them, so do you):

– THE GHOST TRAIN (1941)

– TWO LOST WORLDS (1951)

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And having at last gotten my hands on a replacement copy of MURDERS IN THE ZOO (1933), I have fixed up the screenshots. (Oh, don’t worry—I didn’t take the snakes away!)

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Hey, gang – some housekeeping to be going on with.

I have:

– slightly revised, re-formatted and tried to fix the screenshots for She (1911)

– slightly revised and fixed the screenshots* for À La Conquête Du Pôle (1912)

– re-formatted Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1912)

– re-formatted Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1913)

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(*You can see the monster much better now!)

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In honour of our resurrected blog, a resurrected review of a film about a resurrection:

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DEAD OF NIGHT (1972)

When Andy Brooks gets home from Vietnam, his family and friends can’t help but notice that he is somehow “different”.

They don’t know the half of it…

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I was, heaven help me, going to take a look at the new batch of pseudo-sequels; but I figured I’d better tidy up this mess first. As far as a mess like this can be tidied up…

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THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (2005)

In which a newly blended family moves into its dream home and—well, I’m pretty sure you know how this one goes.

The most significant feature of this version of the by-now venerable tale is that it allows the 1979 version to belatedly achieve its aspiration of looking like a respectable mainstream production…at least by comparison…

Well.

So much for good intentions.

Although I can attest that my good intentions did in fact lead straight to hell.

Sigh.

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CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON (1953)

In which the first expeditionary party to the moon, consisting of three people involved in a love triangle, a venal individual who only wants to exploit his experiences for profit and a young man looking for “the right girl”, encounter the all-female remnant of an ancient civilisation.

Unbeknownst to most of the Earthlings, the moon women intend to hijack their rocketship as the first step towards conquering humanity.

But fear not! – humanity will be just fine, as long as the male members of the expedition don’t have any “weak points”…

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As it turns out, a balloon on wires with stuck-on googly eyes. Bet they didn’t tell you that in anatomy class..

THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS (1957)

In which a “recognised nuclear scientist” is taken over by a giant transparent floating space brain, and immediately starts making plans for world domination. He also turns into a ravening sex-maniac.

Hmm…is it just me, or is a pattern starting to emerge in the reviews I’m resurrecting?

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A resurrected review from the earliest days of the site:

REEFER MADNESS (1936)

In which evil marijuana pushers turn clean-cut young Americans into sex-crazed drug fiends (see left).

Oh! – and this one’s a bit NSFW, although not for the usual reason…

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I’ve also reformatted and added screenshots to FRANKENSTEIN (1910).

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Ah, dearie me…and I had such good intentions. Unfortunately, they’ve landed me just where good intentions traditionally do.

I don’t know whether the rest of the world suffers from this particularly idiocy, but here, although they’ve long since stopped bothering about region-coding our actual DVD players, they still do region-code the DVD players in our computers; which means that over time I’ve ended up with three computers devoted to the serious business of screenshots: my old desktop for R1 discs, my new laptop for R4/R0, and – in the relatively short time since it was superseded – my old laptop for R2, which are a tiny but significant minority of the collection.

And now my desktop has gone and died, which threw quite a spanner into my house-keeping plans, since I can’t play R1 DVDs until I’ve come to terms with the prospect of buying a new computer just to take screenshots.

And yes, I do realise that this pretty much defines the expression “First World problems”.

In the meantime, thwarted in many of the plans I’d made, I’ve done what I always do in the face of too much choice, and gone back to the beginning:

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LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (1902)

I’ve gone back over this review and replaced the blurry black-and-white screenshots with images from the recent colour restoration, which allow much more of the film’s fine detail to be observed; as well as offering a salutary reminder that while the Italians may have taken it to new heights (or depths), it was the French who invented cinematic eye violence.

Thanks, fellas!

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Yes, yes, I know: not very original.

As I have whinged in various forums, the last few months have been difficult and frustrating, and I’m afraid the blog meltdown gave me far too easy an excuse to neglect the site even more than I was already doing.

Unfortunately the difficulties and frustrations are still making themselves felt, and show little sign of ceasing to do so; so in the interests of getting something done I’ve decided finally to tackle some of those many dead links that were the result of some earlier internet hosting nightmares of my own. I figure that some of those reviews are so old, and have been unseen so long, that they’ll seem like new material, at least.

So look out for {*fingers crossed*} regular housekeeping updates: revised reviews, new screenshots, fixed links, and other general tinkering.

At any rate, I’ve made a start.

What with?

What else?

IT’S ALIVE (1974)