If you like your horror movies to have lethargic pacing, almost nothing of real consequence ever happening, and a menace that doesn’t exactly exude horror, you might like Frogs much better than I did.Beep… beep… beep… beep…
The Bloody Brood (1959), in which Leopold and Loeb go both Beat and Canadian…
Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960), in which “Colossus” isn’t Maciste for once, and at least a couple of the laughs are deliberate….
Orgy of the Dead (1965), in which Ed Wood tries his hand at writing dirty movies…
Predator 2 (1990), in which four fair-to-inspired Predator sequels come together to form one kind of lousy one…
and…
Witchfire (1985), in which Shelley Winters belatedly shows that she could hag-ham with the best of them.
One of the last gasps of the legendary Crown International Pictures, Cavegirl shows a sharp devolution from their previous decade’s inane but tolerable sex comedies.
With seven directors working on it, it’s clear that The Dungeonmaster is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.Jul 21
The film noir genre is revived with The Hot Spot, which stands up well to entries from the golden age of cinema while giving things a contemporary spin.Jun 11
In Treasure Of The Four Crowns, Golan and Globus made their first attempt to ape Indiana Jones, but fell short. Very, very, very short.
Don’t let the casting of Arch Hall Jr. in the lead role throw you off – The Sadist is a real sleeper of a thriller.Not one of these reviews was like pulling teeth to write:
Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), which frankly looks depressingly timely again 67 years later…
Daughter of the Mind (1969), in which Ray Milland ain’t afraid of no ghosts, but the people he works for are very much afraid of Communists…
Forbidden World (1982), which is exactly the Alien ripoff you’d expect from New World Pictures…
Gretel & Hansel (2020), in which the title isn’t the only thing about the old fairy tale to get turned in a new direction…
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), in which Moustapha Akkad pushes his luck just a little too far…
The Invincible Barbarian (1982), which might well have been the very first Italian Conan cash-in out of the gate…
and…
2020 Texas Gladiators (1983), in which we ponder the prospect of a movie to which Joe D’Amato and George Eastman were unwilling to sign their usual pseudonyms.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
Feb 11
While Outlaw Blues is a fairly agreeable vehicle for Peter Fonda, it could have been a lot more than it actually is.2019 was for me a year of unwanted adventures, even leaving aside the whole “the world is on frigging fire, both figuratively and literally” thing. A slow downward spiral of depression and declining health during the first half of the year culminated in mid-summer with what didn’t feel at the time like a near-death experience, but absolutely was one, followed by a hospital stay of several days. The second half, consequently, was all about acclimating myself to some rather drastic lifestyle changes, some of which I’m still fine-tuning. And then there was a bunch of stuff that I’m not going to talk about for the sake of other people’s privacy; suffice it to say that it all sucked. So if anybody’s been wondering why I’ve been incommunicado lately, now you know.
All the foregoing also factors into a decision I’ve been wrestling with for a while. Now that my life is getting back into some semblance of order, I’m beginning to regain some of my enthusiasm for writing about weird movies on the internet, but the fact is I’m desperately tired of having my increasingly limited time and energy for doing so overshadowed by the requirements of the next B-Masters roundtable. So in the interest of keeping 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting alive and well, I’m going on sabbatical from the Cabal. I’ll be back once my batteries are recharged (I’m thinking roughly a year from now), and if nobody objects, I’ll keep announcing my updates here on the B-Masters blog. The reviews below will be my last roundtable contributions for a while, though:
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 1 (which you already know about, but just for the sake of completeness):
Black Emanuelle (1975), in which the title character is neither strictly speaking Emanuelle nor strictly speaking black…
Evil Dead II (1987), in which surviving the night in a demon-haunted cabin doesn’t actually improve one’s situation much…
From Hell It Came (1957), in which an isolated Polynesian tribe could use the services of a good lumberjack…
Goodbye, Emmanuelle (1977), in which our heroine starts to wonder whether this “free love” thing is all it’s cracked up to be…
and…
Martin (1977), in which George Romero gives us a much more satisfying answer to the riddle, “When is a vampire movie not a vampire movie?” than Val Lewton managed to.
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 2 (which you might already have seen on my site, but connectivity troubles prevented me from announcing here):
And Then There Were None (1945), in which Agatha Christie sure does know how to throw a party…
Get Crazy (1983), in which no show I ever booked went this far out of control, but most of them usually felt like they were about to…
Pink Flamingos (1972), in which you never can tell what some people will get ego about…
and…
Viva Knievel! (1979), in which a guy can’t even jump a Harley over 150 feet of lions and tigers in peace anymore!
20th Anniversary Roundtable, Part 3 (which I interpreted very narrowly to mean movies that I’d already tried to review, but never quite managed to make the words flow):
The Bat People (1974), which could almost have been mistaken for something from 1956, if you’d seen it on a black and white TV back when…
and…
The Dungeonmaster (1984), which has nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons, but oddly does tie in semi-subliminally with the early-80’s arcade boom.
20th Anniversary Rountable, Part 4:
A Cold Night’s Death (1973), in which even the best union can’t do anything about these working conditions…
The Eyes of the Panther (1989), in which there’s someone out there for everybody– even werecats…
The Seventh Curse (1986), in which our hero’s pecker arguably has the highest kill count in the film…
and…
Son of Samson (1960), in which Maciste returns to the screen after an absence of more than 30 years.
Meanwhile, I did manage to review a few other things, too, amid the scramble to keep up with the roundtables:
Blood Beach (1980), in which (say it with me) just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, you can’t get there…
It, Chapter Two (2019), in which splitting up the unreasonably huge book for translation to celluloid wasn’t such a good idea after all…
Rebirth of Mothra (1996), in which Toho’s other mon-star gets the Heisei treatment…
and…
Us (2019), in which some things really are better left unexplained– and the explanation had better be good if we’re going to get one anyway.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.