The B-Masters Cabal

Back from the Grave and Ready to Party!

Archive for category Help Needed

The Lost Reviews

Apr 19

Posted by Braineater in Admin Stuff, Help Needed, New Reviews | No Comments

As a result of the Great Server Crash of 2013, all the B-Masters’ posts from June 2012 to November 2012, and mid-January 2013 to April 2013, have been lost. Fortunately, these posts were links to the reviews… not the reviews themselves, most of which are still available. There are two major exceptions: Teleport City is currently undergoing a redesign and a site-move, so many of its reviews are currently off-line; while Nathan Shumate’s Cold Fusion Video was entirely hosted on the same servers as the B-Masters site, and is currently in limbo.

The following is a (not yet complete) list of the reviews that were announced here during those time periods:

1000 Misspent Hours

 

And You Call Yourself A Scientist!

 

BadMovies.Org

 

Braineater

 

Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension

 

The Unknown Movies

 

More to come, as the restoration work continues…

Will Laughlin is the Braineater.

A Dram for Japan

Mar 22

Posted by KeithA in Help Needed, Hoopla | 3 Comments

First, the details. Then, the waxing poetic.

NYCWhisky.com, Teleport City, and Ward III, with oversight from the Japan Society, are holding

A DRAM FOR JAPAN
A whisky tasting and auction for Japanese quake and tsunami relief

April 2, 2011, 5pm – 8pm
Ward III in Tribeca, NYC (111 Reade Street)

Tickets are $30, available through EventBrite: http://nycwhisky-japanbenefit.eventbrite.com/
Even if you can’t make it, you can still donate through that link.

100% of the money we collect goes to the Japan Society’s relief fund.

The event includes food, cocktails created specifically for the event, whisky tastings, and an auction of whisky, artwork, and other collectibles.

Updates on who’s pouring and what’s up for auction are here:
http://teleport-city.com/wordpress/?page_id=20342

If you can’t make it or don’t have the spare cash for a donation, no worries. You can still help out by spreading the word among friends and colleagues. Please circulate the teleport-city.com/wordpress/?page_id=20342 link as much as you want.

We also have a QR Code that points to the ticket and donation page, because sometimes technology is awesome. Folks can scan it with their phone and get pointed in the right direction without having to write down URLs and event details.

So I doubt I need to explain to anyone here how huge a role Japan and Japanese pop culture plays in the lives of us Teleport City lads. When the quake and tsunami hit, I was in Austin (Stomp Tokyo says hi, by the way) with a group of friends who’d just flown in from Japan that same day. I may be a cynic — at this point, make that nihilist — about American politics and politicians, but in regards to almost all other things, I am still a fervent idealist. Within hours of the news breaking, people mobilized via Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and various other methods to track down friends and loved ones, gather and disseminate news, and begin collecting money for relief effort. By the next morning, the Japan Nite contingent and SXSW organizers had a website, booth, and online donation mechanism in full swing.

An it struck me how quick, smart, and passionate us film nerds, music nerds, tech nerds, and assorted other freaks and geeks can be. Teleport City is no juggernaut of pop culture, but we have our friends. And I am a big believer in the notion that what we’re doing here, as curators of thoughts regarding strange and sometimes baffling films from all over the world, is a lot more than just goofing off. I also believe that this amazing network of fans of cult films, anime, weird music, travel, whiskey, toys, technology, what have you can mobilize and make a difference, if you’ll pardon the cliche.

This is the first time Teleport City has had the capacity and the professional network of friends to host an event like this, so we are admittedly rough around the edges and stumbling our way through. Japan’s Society’s willingness to vouch for us (after we signed some legal forms, of course) means a lot, and in general, the fact that we have so many friends in Japan affected directly by the disaster is going to make me feel totally cool with being a bit pushy when it comes to promoting this event.

So that’s that. Sorry if it’s rambling. I had a wisdom tooth pulled today, and for the first time in my life, I am on a prescription medicine.

If you want to do me  big favor, spread the word.

Crowdsourcing: Because you're smarter than the IMDb.

Mar 2

Posted by Nathan Shumate in Help Needed | 18 Comments

I’m contemplating a Robert E. Howard month sometime in the future.  However, I can discover only a few movies based on either the stories or the life of Howard, even with the help of the IMDb: both Conan movies, Kull the Conqueror (1997), Solomon Kane (2009), and The Whole Wide World (1996) — the latter a bio-pic, with Vincent D’Onofrio playing Two-Gun Bob.  If I squint, I can include Red Sonja (1985), even though it’s more based on a spin-off character created for the comic, and the “Pigeons From Hell” episode of the Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller TV show.

So unless I want to end up reviewing episodes of the Conan TV show, what else is out there which may not be referenced in the IMDb based on Howard’s work?

Bandwidth follies

Jun 14

Posted by lyzard in Help Needed, House-Keeping | 10 Comments

Hi, all. Just a note to explain my current situation. You may remember that I dropped out of sight last month – it’s about to happen again, if it hasn’t already. I have been targeted by an Italian streaming video site (http://italia-film.com) who have hotlinked to whole bunch of my posters as the access to their videos, and they are slaughtering my bandwidth. I can’t block them directly because they’re just acting as a referral point for their visitors. However, I have put hotlink protection on everything with a “stop thief!’ notice, tried to block the site’s main IP, and also replaced the chief offender, my Zombi poster, with another theft warning. I can only hope this eventually forces them to cut me off. If anyone has any other ideas about how to fight this, please let me know!

I may say that I am astonished to learn how many people there are in the world who evidently have nothing else to do but watch Zombi…

Crowdsourcing.

Mar 27

Posted by Nathan Shumate in Help Needed | No Comments

I don’t know if any of you are compulsive image hoarders like I am, but I’m hoping you’ve got enough cover archives that you can help me out.  I’m looking for good quality (300px wide or larger) poster or VHS cover scans of the following for a book project:

Addicted to Murder (1995)
Carnosaur (1993)
Cemetery of Terror (1985, aka Cementerio del Terror — Spanish version is OK)
Cyberzone (1995)
The Dead Pit (1989) — especially the VHS cover on this one
Deadly Reactor (1989)
Dragon Fury (1995)
Free Enterprise (1998)
Gunfighter’s Moon (1995)
Hostile Intent (1997)
Immortal Combat (1994)
Invisible Mom (1995)
Land of Doom (1986)
The Lost World (1998) — the one with Patrick Bergin
Nail Gun Massacre (1987)
Necronomicon (1994)
Rockwell (1994)
Sci-Fighters (1996)
Street Corner Justice (1996)
The Supernaturals (1986)
Terminal Rush (1995)
Vice Academy (1988)
Victim of Desire (1996)
Warriors of the Apocalypse (1986)

Yes, I used to own several of them, and got rid of them without taking good scans of the covers.  Serves me right.

I can make do with what I already have in most cases, but Dragon Fury is the most desperate — I’ve got (and can find) nothing but 120px images for it.

Either reply here, or contact me directly at nshumate@gmail.  Thanks in advance.

It's a disaster!

Jan 25

Posted by lyzard in Help Needed, Hoopla, New Reviews | 39 Comments

My friends, I need your help.

While I have no qualms about ‘fessing up to my passion for shark films, Exorcist rip-offs and manskirts, I am just a little shame-faced about admitting to an equal passion for disaster movies, whether the man’s-hubris kind, the nature-strikes-back kind, or the transportation-out-of-control kind – and worse still, particularly for the dreadful, last-gasp-of-the-first-wave ones, like Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out and Cave-In! But so it is; and today I make good on a long-standing promise to myself, and welcome disaster movies into the AYCYAS! reviewing fold.

How do you define a disaster film? The line between genres can be very thin, but to my mind the answer is, focus and attitude. Thus, Airport ’75 is a disaster movie; Die Hard 2 is not. The Poseidon Adventure is a disaster movie; Titantic is not. Earthquake is a disaster movie; San Francisco – despite having (in my opinion) the best realised film earthquake ever – is not.

The curious thing about the disaster movie is how long it took to find itself as a genre. After the first ever disaster movie, it was two decades before 1954’s The High And The Mighty inspired a crop of borderline, transportation-related disaster movies, Zero Hour! (1957), The Crowded Sky (1960) and The Last Voyage (1960) among them. The disaster movie as we know it today did not come into its own until Airport which, while not in fact a disaster movie itself, was certainly the catalyst for what followed.

So my first question to all of you is this: what other films, before Airport, would you classify as disaster movies? What have I missed?

My second question is more specific, and probably (unfortunately) much harder to answer. By now, pretty much everyone is aware that Flying High! / Airplane! is a twisted remake of Zero Hour! What you may not know, however, is that Zero Hour! was itself the remake of a teleplay called Flight Into Danger, filmed for and broadcast on Canadian TV in 1956, and starring as the reluctant hero – James Doohan. Since discovering this factoid, Flight Into Danger has become one of my film-hunting Holy Grails, although sadly I have discovered no evidence that it was ever commercially available, or even that it still exists. If anyone out there has any information, please drop me a line!

And now, our feature presentation:

d33-wave6bDELUGE (1933)

The great-granddaddy of all disaster movies, focussing upon a love triangle in the aftermath of a worldwide catastrophe, which climaxes with the destruction of New York City.

Some clichés have awfully deep roots…