… though they’re more of a Teleport City thing anyway.
Bikini Bloodbath Carwash (2008) is the sequel to the previously-reviewed Bikini Bloodbath, and manages to be less persistently irritating while still giving most of its time to dumb humor and bad jokes, with both the bikinis and the bloodbath jointly coming in as second priority. (People send me these DVDs, folks. I don’t seek them out.)
Actually, that’s not strictly true: I’m sure I can’t match Nathan’s endurance of DTDVD zombie films; but when it comes to Full Moon Entertainment, I yield to no man!
This first sequel in the franchise that built an empire lulled me into a false sense of security with some superior puppet action, elbowed me jocularly in the ribs with its “scientists”, then delivered a death blow by turning into a wholly unwanted re-make of The Mummy.
Dec 12
SUPERARGO VS DIABOLICUS
I have to admit, though, that I haven’t always given Superargo the fair shake he deserved. In fact, there was a time when I was quick to drag his name through the mud. Ironically, that disrespect on my part was the indirect result of Superargo’s initial success. For not only did Superargo vs. Diabolicus meet with enough positive public response to merit a parody in the form of Fantastic Argoman, but to also lead to a sequel, 1968’s Superargo and the Faceless Giants. Now, I watch a lot of movies and, as a result, there are occasionally times when I think that I’ve seen a movie that I actually haven’t. I have, however, seen Superargo and the Faceless Giants, and it left me considerably underwhelmed. So underwhelmed, in fact, that I began to use it as a low-water mark — an anti-Diabolik, if you will — when judging other Italian superhero movies. “Goldface, the Fantastic Superman“, I might say, for instance. “May be no great shakes, but at least its better than Superargo and the Faceless Giants.” In time things degenerated to the point where my attacks became more ad hominem, and I would simply go on about how lame Superargo himself was, comparing him unflatteringly to a much more swanky peer like Argoman or Flashman.
ALSO OF NOTE: Teleport City’s shorter Shrimp Chip reviews now automatically appear on the front page and have finally been integrated into the gretaer family of reviews. This means that we’re updating almost every day, twice daily. Latest Shrimps include Hellraiser III, IV, and V; Bullet to Beijing, The 10th Victim, Quantum of Solace, and The World is Not Enough.
The Unknown Movies’ latest review is the drama Paper Mask. No, it is not The Asylum’s knock-off of a certain Jim Carrey blockbuster. Nor is it a tell-all story by something closely associated with Michael Jackson’s public appearances of the last few years. It is instead a British drama posing the question: What if a non-doctor managed to con his way into working in the emergency ward of a hospital? You’ll never want to have to go to the hospital again after seeing this movie.
In The Bride and the Beast (1958), a young woman — well-adjusted except for perhaps an over-strong attachment to angora — discovers a certain spark with the gorilla that her new husband, a big game hunter, keeps in the basement. The gorilla feels the same way, leading to an unconventional wedding night. Throw in hypnosis, reincarnation, and a helluva lot of stock footage, and you just have to ask: “Did Ed Wood write this?”
Yes. Yes, he did.
Dec 8
After a few weeks spent doing all sorts of work that, if successful, means you will hardly notice it has happened, we’re finally back in the saddle, and man did I pay the price for my absence:
SHAITANI DRACULA
In 1948, French artist Jean Dubuffet coined the term art brut, a term which became “outsider art” when critic Roger Cardinal imported it into the English language in 1972. As Dubuffet himself describes it, art brut can’t be created by anyone who functions as part of regular society, even regular art society, and so this form of fierce and feverish creativity remains the sole purview of madmen and terrifying backwoods hillbillies who make sculpture out of cat skins, metal drums, and human skulls. Or, you know, something like that. One gets the feeling, however, that if a potential creator of outsider art suddenly found himself in possession of a movie camera, some plastic Dracula fangs, and half a dozen cheap novelty wolfman masks, the resultant film that would come from that fertile and lunatic mind would look something like Shaitani Dracula, a creation so far beyond the pale of anything we can recognize as a movie that one can only assume no sane human was involved in the production, and the entire thing somehow simply sprang fully formed out of one of those Victorian era madhouses where the patients all wander around in a big open room, giggling and possessed of various degrees of “crazy” hair.
Dec 3
Look, it’s an X-ray vision movie. It’s an X-ray vision movie with a male teenage protagonist, even. Shouldn’t there even be a hint of hijinks in X-Treme Teens (2001)?
That’s right, folks. I’ve hit the 1000-review mark. Here’s the stuff that pushed me into the next order of magnitude up:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), in which we see why it took El Santo almost two years to give the TV series a try…
The Faculty (1998), in which parasitic aliens attempt to take over an old John Hughes movie…
The Frighteners (1996), in which Michael J. Fox has the best scam ever…
The Giant Claw (1957), in which words just flat-out frigging fail me…
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), in which our pals at Hammer Film Productions say, “Metaphors? We don’t need no stinking metaphors!”…
and…
Lady Frankenstein (1971), in which the battle of the sexes yields a victory that nobody was expecting.