Holocaust 2000 (1977), in which you’ve never seen a Beast (or a number thereof) like this before…
Satan’s Princess (1989), in which the want of giant, back-projected bug-monsters is sorely felt…
Secret Ceremony (1968), in which that faint scratching noise you hear in the background is V. C. Andrews taking frantic notes…
Streets of Fire (1984), in which a sickly-looking Willem Dafoe and the lead singer of Fear kidnap Meatloaf’s distaff spiritual doppelganger, and only her Snake Plisskeny ex-boyfriend can save her…
and…
Terror (1978), which is every inch as drab and forgettable as its title.
#1 by Naomi on August 29, 2011 - 7:56 pm
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I was just reading a forum thread about the 1989 arcade game Final Fight, which mentioned how similar the game is to the movie Streets of Fire. The plot correlations may be coincidental (a lot of games from that era have the same basic plot of “beat up waves of bad guys to rescue your girlfriend”), but the setting is also similar and the main character is named Cody. Interesting.
#2 by lyzard on August 29, 2011 - 9:03 pm
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and I used to make a hobby of collecting insaniac apocalypse exegesis literature
Of course you did. 🙂
#3 by RogerBW on August 30, 2011 - 1:59 am
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Secret Ceremony comes out sounding impressive, but grim; one feels that the situation can’t end well.
Are you familiar with the ongoing deconstruction of the Left Behind series and other works in that genre? http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/category/left-behind/ is one starting point – caution, time sink.
I think you’ve nailed it on Holocaust 2000 – like Hideaki Anno using Christianity in Evangelion, de Martino is throwing in whatever seems interesting at the time without trying to make sense of it. But it’s interesting that he didn’t consider the basic demonic child plotline to be enough to carry a film – there has to be the reactor complex as well
(Would The Omega Code and its gloriously bad sequel come into this genre? They’re apocalyptic, and while mostly lacking demonic children they do have the antichrist as a young man…)
Terror reinforces me in my opinion that if anyone’s ever stupid enough to give me money to make a film I’ll go all-out: it may be rubbish, but at least it won’t be boring.
Streets of Fire felt to me at the time like a Jim Steinman vanity project – as I later learned he wasn’t involved in the production, but there’s the same feeling of a bunch of unknown faces being used to front someone’s distinctive vision.
Apparently a few years ago Albert Pyun was working on a sequel. It’s still nominally in production: http://www.roadtohellmovie.com/ .
“Resolutely lackluster” is a splendid phrase: I can see the director saying “no, no, this scene is too interesting, can you do it again but think about your mortgage”.
#4 by Jen S on August 30, 2011 - 12:39 pm
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Wow, Secret Ceremony sounds amazingly–wow. Something. I’m intrigued, not least by the characterization of Mitchum’s Daddy Dearest. It (at least from your description) has a lot in common with the literary Humbert Humbert from Lolita–a dazzling tour de force of a man whose id and superego are fighting a truly massive battle. The way H. uses his erudite mind to cover, plead for, excuse and castigate his truly sick urges sounds a lot like your descriptions of Mitchum’s “really, it’s for their own good, if you kinda squint and tilt your head” justifications.
#5 by Braineater on August 30, 2011 - 1:42 pm
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His “restless and anatomizing casuistry”? You might want to check out his other obvious inspiration, Count Cenci:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/PShelley/cencitp.html
#6 by El Santo on August 30, 2011 - 12:57 pm
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Yeah, Albert is very much Humbert Humbert with the serial number filed off. Only he’s Robert Mitchum instead of James Mason (or Jeremy Irons), so there’s a well-hidden undercurrent of the old Harry Powell/Max Cady physical menace to him as well. Oh– and let’s not forget the profoundly disturbing Amish beard while we’re at it. He’s got one of those, too!
#7 by lyzard on August 31, 2011 - 4:25 pm
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Oh, now that’s freaky… I have seen Secret Ceremony but too many years ago to have any distinct recall of it…or so I thought, until you said “profoundly disturbing Amish beard”. THAT I remember.
#8 by El Santo on August 30, 2011 - 1:03 pm
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Meanwhile…
“Are you familiar with the ongoing deconstruction of the Left Behind series and other works in that genre?”
I gave Slacktivist’s Left Behind dissections a try, but I burned out by the end of the first one. If I’m going to make that kind of time commitment to bad fiction, I might as well just read the damn books myself.
#9 by Gentle Benj on August 30, 2011 - 11:18 pm
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Yeah, the Left Behind books are so utterly, uniformly wretched that picking them apart page-by-page is a tremendous waste of time. Then again, Slacktivist is pretty much Cognitive Dissonance Central, so…
#10 by maggiesmith on May 9, 2022 - 4:07 pm
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Satan’s Princess : “her good looks have been Southern Californiaed out of her” . I know what you mean. The first time I saw Jennifer Lawrence was in Winter’s Bone, in which she wore little or no makeup and her hair was what I suppose is it’s natural ash blond colour. I was shocked next time I saw a picture of her transformed into a typical Hollywood Bimbo : bleach blonde hair, thick black eyelashes, pounds of makeup. She had totally destroyed her individuality.