With my first update of the year, I’m formalizing something that I’ve been doing semi-regularly for a while now by introducing Movies Whose Times Have Come. Henceforth, this banner will gather together all my reviews celebrating the completion of our latest circuit around the sun by examining some old sci-fi flick set during the one that’s beginning. 2024’s Movie Whose Time Has Come is…
A Boy and His Dog (1975), in which Don Johnson’s Johnson is pressed into service by the leaders of a post-apocalyptic Good Ol’ American Small Town where the resident young men are having trouble getting the womenfolk with child.
And as for the rest of the update, we’ve got:
Chinatown Kid (1977), in which a fresh-off-the-boat bumpkin gets drawn steadily toward the center of a sprawling gangland conflict, first in Hong Kong, and then in San Francisco’s Chinatown…
Godzilla: Minus One (2023), in which the King of the Monsters’ first visit to Tokyo is reimagined as occurring in the late 1940’s, when Japan was still almost totally supine from its defeat in World War II…
and…
Warlords of Atlantis (1978), in which a pair of explorers and the sailors who mutinied against them fall captive to the extraterrestrial rulers of the Lost Continent.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
#1 by Alaric on February 27, 2024 - 1:11 pm
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Always great to see a new batch of reviews from you!
#2 by Hurdy Gurdy Man on March 7, 2024 - 5:20 am
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Excellent,in-depth reviews, as usual, my good Sir!
When you mentioned that you wold be writing up a movie set in the year 2024, at first I thought it might be Beyond the Time Barrier (1960), based on its plot on IMDb:
“In 1960, a military test pilot is caught in a time warp that propels him to year 2024 where he finds a plague has sterilized the world’s population.”
That turned out to be a wrong prediction, didn’t it? Now for some guesses based on the clues for the next update:
“one of the rare Blade Runner riffs outside of anime”: Natural City (2003)?
“one of the least-beloved sequels in the annals of blaxploitation”: the only one that comes to my mind is Drum, the sequel to Mandingo.
“my long-awaited rematch with the first film that ever made me say, “I think this might be the worst fucking movie I’ve ever seen.”: Admittedly, this is not easy to guess. However, I looked up your reviews which received zero stars from you and found this line from the review of Zombie ‘90: Extreme Pestilence: “it is no trivial matter for me to say that, as of September 28th, 2004, Schnaas’s Zombie ‘90: Extreme Pestilence is bar none the most pointless and idiotic movie I’ve ever seen.”
Could this be it? Maybe … or maybe not. Only you would know.
#3 by El Santo on March 7, 2024 - 9:47 am
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Let me give you a hint: Everything I’m reviewing for the next update was shown last month at B-Fest 2024.
#4 by Hurdy Gurdy Man on March 16, 2024 - 12:28 am
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Thanks! Shall await your reviews.
I don’t yet know if you consider requests or not. However, even if you don’t consider them, is it probable that you might consider reviewing a few of the following titles on your own volition in the future?
The Lost World (1960)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Lord of the Rings (1978)
Q (1982)
Gremlins (1984)
Red Sonja (1985)
The Bride (1985)
Creepshow 2 (1987)
Akira (1988)
Pet Sematary (1989)
#5 by El Santo on March 16, 2024 - 5:27 pm
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Well, I don’t do cartoons, so Akira and The Lord of the Rings are out, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t someday do any of the others. Gremlins, for example, is the centerpiece a theme update I’ve been meaning to do for some time, but keep putting off because I can’t make up my mind what the fourth movie should be. And Red Sonja is on the shortlist for “Reviews I Tried to Write, Part 3” whenever I decide to pull the trigger on that.
#6 by supersonic on October 25, 2024 - 9:33 pm
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“Deliberate or not, it occurs to me that a scientist from Victorian England getting a raging hard-on for the Ghost of Fascism Yet to Come is far and away the most credible thing in this otherwise whimsically ludicrous film” is one of the most perfectly El Santo sentences ever written.