Jul 31
It’s time for another B-Masters’ Roundtable! Drop in throughout the month of August as we celebrate the dawn of cinema, the time when a picture truly was worth a thousand words.
It’s SHHHHHH: A Silent Movie Spectacular
This month at the B-Masters’ Blog!
Jul 23
Felidae
The German-made animated feature Felidae has, at least at first glance, the slick commercial look of the type of Hollywood productions we’re used to seeing from the likes of Disney and Don Bluth. If you’re anything like me, that might prove to be a bit of a stumbling block, because, being that I’m no big fan of mainstream animation, that’s not the type of cinematic experience I tend to seek out. And indeed, during its first few minutes I had some serious doubts about whether I was going to enjoy Felidae. Then came the moment when the film’s protagonist, a feline detective by the name of Francis, stumbles across his first horribly mutilated kitty corpse, and I quickly realized that there were quite a few shades of difference between Felidae and Fievel Goes West.
The following is from a press release for the Second Annual B Movie Celebration, September 26th thru 28th, 2008. (Looks like they could have used a copy editor, but…)
*****
The Celebration will feature screenings of over 50 classic B movies, 20 Educational seminars and the World’s Largest Beach Party, featuring the music of The Moon-Rays. And we really need your help getting the word out.
The Celebration will feature screenings of over 50 classic B movies, Many in glorious 35mm. Our Line Up, which has been curated by B Movie Legend Jim Wynorski. The films includes:
SHOGUN ASSASSIN
FORBIDDEN WORLD
DEATH RACE 2000
HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD
THIS ISLAND EARTH
TARANTULA
CARNIVAL OF SOULS
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
NIGHT OF THE COMET
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
THE GIANT BEHEMOTH
QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE
WORLD WITHOUT END
RUSS MEYER’S UP
FROM HELL IT CAME
ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS
NOT OF THIS EARTH(the black and white original)
THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD
EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS
WITHOUT WARNING
SCREWBALLS
GALAXY OF TERROR
HOUSE
THE CRAWLING EYE
ATTACK OF THE 50FOOT WOMAN
PSYCHO
JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET
INVISIBLE INVADERS
ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES
TERMINAL ISLAND
NIGHTHAWKS
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND(61)
ONE MILLION B.C.
INVADERS FROM MARS(53)
TO TRAP A SPY
HOLD THAT GHOST
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN
TWINS OF EVIL
THE VAMPIRE LOVERS
LUST FOR A VAMPIRE
THE TIME MACHINE
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Plus The First Edition of Summer TromaDance
A Lifetime Achievement Award to Stuart Gordon
From his 1985 debut as a cult director with Re-Animator to his 2002 H.P. Lovecraft film “Dagon” Stuart Gordon has consistently delivered quality horror to the masses, and is now considered by many of us to be one of the most important exploitation film-makers of the past 30 years.
Other great guests
Tom Savini, Jim Wynorski (of course), Conrad Brooks from Plan Nine From Outer Space , Tom Holland Director of Fright Night, Andrew Stevens Producer, Independent Horror Director Jim O’Rear and many many more.
The Best Hosts, Mister Lobo, Queen of Trash, Will The Thrill, Monic Tiki Goddess
The World’s Largest Beach Party With the Moon-rays
The planets greatest B- Movie surf band will turn this small Mid Western City into a rockin Hepcat beach party. The Moon Rays were born of a concept brought on by the recording of the theme from WGN’s Creature Features TV show andf the rest is legend. Join them in Franklin Indiana September 27th as we see summer out with a bang,
For more information
For further information please go to www.bmoviecelebration.com
Hey, cool! Another DVD release I can embarrass myself over in public!
On October 28th, Grindhouse will release a double-disc Collector’s Edition of Juan Piquer’s Mil Gritos Tiene La Noche / Pieces. This will be uncut and widescreen anamorphic, with an optional Spanish soundtrack featuring the original score by Librado Pastor.
After Metropolis, this probably only counts as a minor miracle, but who’s complaining? Severin Films will be producing the first official DVD release of Mario Caiano’s Amanti D’Olltretomba / Nightmare Castle, starring Barbara Steele, after a good quality, uncut negative of the film was discovered in a storage vault in Rome.
This just in! On July 29th, Warners will be releasing a trio of science fiction double-bills: World Without End + Satellite In The Sky (I’ve always felt that was a good place for a satellite); When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (yo, Keith!!) + Moon Zero Two; and Battle Beneath The Earth + The Ultimate Warrior. The bad news for those of us who don’t happen to live down the street from the Brothers Warner is that these releases will be Best Buy exclusives. Thank Jabootu for eBay.
Jul 17
The further and further I explore into these strange lost worlds, the worse and worse it gets…
THE MIGHTY GORGA
What we have here, folks, is a bona fide classic. This is the sort of film that separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. Anyone can laugh their way through Plan 9 from Outer Space, and most who would read this site can get through far worse. But The Mighty Gorga is a true challenge. Pretty much everyone agrees that it’s the worst King Kong rip off ever made, even worse than the 1976 King Kong where the monkey die and everybody a-cry, or that one where Linda Hamilton brings King Kong back to life so he can save the future from the terminators. Pretty sure it was something like that. But forget it. The Mighty Gorga is so much worse than any of those that it’s hardly worth mounting a comparison. The is bad filmmaking at its most potent. Bad movie moonshine, if you will. It tests the viewer on every level, really makes you earn that scene where the witch doctor beseeches Gorga and Gorga fights a plastic dinosaur toy. But the reward, should one endure, is not unlike the plastic treasure the cast discovers at the end of the film. In fact, one could argue that The Mighty Gorga itself is an allegory for the trials of watching The Mighty Gorga, making it one of the very first “meta” films that are so common today. Or it could be a movie about a guy in a ratty monkey suit.
Jul 14
Kill, Panther, Kill
At some point someone behind the scenes must have said, “Look, I know that this is basically just a cops-and-robbers story that we’re telling here, but, being that this is a Kommissar X film, we should at least have a frogman shoot at Joe Walker with a harpoon gun.” And so at this point a frogman emerges from the river beside where Walker and Emily are talking and shoots at Walker with a harpoon gun. Walker overpowers the frogman and demands to know who sent him, but — in another turn of events that seems to have come from an entirely different movie — the frogman himself is harpooned by an unseen accomplice before he can answer. Rowland arrives on the scene, and the two trail the accomplices to a nearby gym, where the first of two pretty great fight scenes in Kill, Panther, Kill! takes place.
Jul 11
There are a zillion DVDs slated for upcoming release, but here are the ones I’m currently most excited about. Which probably tells you more about me than you need to know.
So in chronological order and/or descending degrees of classiness:
On July 22nd, Criterion will re-release Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr in an expanded 2-disc edition. The film will be in 1.19 “pillarbox” format. Supplementary material will include commentary from film scholar Tony Rayns, a documentay by Jorgen Roos about Dreyer’s career, a visual essay by film scholar Caspar Tybjerg on Dreyer’s influences, a radio broadcast by Dreyer on film-making from 1958, new essays on the film itself from Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman, notes by Martin Koerber on its restoration, an archival interview with Nicolas de Gunzburg, the original screenplay, and a copy of Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”.
September 9th will see the long-awaited release of Classic Media’s double-disc presentation of Rodan and War Of The Gargantuas. The Japanese (English subtitles) and Americanised versions of both films will be included, along with the documentary “Bringing Godzilla Down To Size”.
After numerous delays, Code Red DVD will release the widescreen, uncut (European) version of Chi Sei? / Beyond The Door on September 22nd. Extras include two commentaries, one featuring Ovidio G. Assonitis and the other Juliet Mills (!!); a video interview with Richard Johnson; the featurette “Beyond The Door: 35 Years Later”; and the original trailers. (Edit: – now I’m hearing September 16th.)
And last, and least, but no less dear to my heart, on September 30th Dark Sky Films will release their latest “Drive-In Double Feature”, Barracuda plus Island Fury.
THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT
It turns out that the Nagas are so advanced that they, completely isolated from all cultural influence in the rest of the world, have evolved to dress and fight exactly like medieval Japanese samurai, right down to the katanas, flag bearers, and big kabuto helmets with gruesome face masks. Despite all those advances, however, they still live in caves and are ruled over by a fat, hooting, grunting dude in a fur loincloth. It’s as if the nation of Japan decided one day that they wanted to be ruled over ruthlessly by George the Animal Steele. But instead of ripping open a turnbuckle cover with his teeth, Sabbala pencils in Charly and Ajor for sacrifice to the…wait for it…yep, the angry volcano god. Then he throws McBride and the biologist, Norfolk, into his skull wall prison. In the prison, McBride is finally reunited with Tyler. And now, with a couple of two-fisted, good ol’ American boys on the job, these merciless rulers of Caprona’s crappy non-dinosaur infested southern region are primed for a beat-down.
Jul 7
MURDER PLOT
As the sixties neared their close, the Cantonese language film industry was in steep decline. Given that its product was mostly limited to a local audience, it simply couldn’t compete with the comparatively lush production values seen in the Mandarin productions coming out of Cathay and Shaw. In addition to that, the new style of action films being created over at Shaw — specifically the violent, fast-paced and decidedly male-driven films of Chang Cheh — had come to be favored by audiences who’d grown weary of the strictly female-centered films that had previously dominated Hong Kong’s screens, and which were the bread and butter of the Cantonese industry. Given that the figure of the female warrior is even today still something of a kinky novelty in Western pop culture, this is something that’s hard for me to get my head around, but it seems that HK audiences of the sixties were basically saying, “Aw Jeez, not another heroic female swordsman, for Christ’s sake! How about a guy for a change?”
I’ll be out of action until august due to band-related commitments (a short tour of the Northeast, followed by a hopefully-also-short hunt for a new guitar-player), but I wanted to leave you all with at least a bit of new material to show for the summer so far. To that end:
Marihuana: The Weed with Roots in Hell (1936), in which we see that at least one participant in the mid-30’s dopesploitation boom had some vague idea what he was talking about…
Prey for Rock & Roll (2003), in which a burned-out 80’s punk chick airs her mid-life crisis in movie form, and some of it hits pretty close to home…
The Sensuous Nurse (1975), in which greedy heirs hire Ursula Andress to screw their rich, old uncle to death so that they can sell a controling interest in the family business to Jack Palance…
and…
Wolf (1994), in which Jack Nicholson discovers that lycanthropy just might be the secret to getting ahead in the publishing business.