Inception (2010) is Christopher Nolan’s latest entry in the “plastic reality” subgenre, which encompasses both virtual reality worlds like The Matrix (1999) and shared dreaming scenarios like Dreamscape (1983). Also, there are flashbacks; I did mention it was Christopher Nolan, right?
Sliding under the deadline like Indiana Jones sliding under some slowly closing stone door that resets every time the camera cuts away from it…
At 77 minutes, this movie rarely takes time out from cheap exploitation, and while the “creepin’ around looking for a monster” scenes are more tedious than tense, Forbidden World makes up for it in grand fashion by delivering bucket loads of exploding faces, vomiting aliens, naked women, and the most ludicrous/offensive way to kill a monster that I think has ever been dreamed up. Forbidden World delivers pretty much everything I could hope for from a Roger Corman film. He knew what we kids wanted, and in the 1980s, what we kids wanted was stuff we kids probably shouldn’t be seeing. And bless him, Corman gave us that in spades with this movie.
Roger Corman was once asked why he made movies. He answered “Because that’s where the money is.” Actually, that’s what bankrobber Willie Sutton said about banks, but that way the quote doesn’t have anything to do with Roger Corman, so it would be pretty silly to even bring it up.
Because I couldn’t think of anything better to do, I mused upon Corman’s career as a director and producer, then looked at Swamp Women, one of the first films he directed, and then finally turned my gaze upon Avalanche, one of the man’s few real turkeys. It was a turkey that made money, though, and for Oscar winner Roger Corman, that was the sweetest award of them all.
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If there’s such a thing as “a typical Roger Corman film”, this might well be it: a low budget, a game cast, a clever concept, and some ludicrously adorable monsters.
ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957)
Following the disappearance of a team of scientists from a small Pacific island, where they were investigating the effects of nuclear fall-out, a second team arrives to find no clue to their predecessors’ fate, beyond some mysterious notes in a journal. But as gruesome accident piles on top of gruesome accident, the researchers realise that a terrible force has been unleashed on the island – a force intent on revenging itself upon any human being who ever tied on a bib and went for the finger bowl…
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I mean, sure I’ve been busy all through November with NaNoWriMo (and find myself slipping toward failure at the end — or, at best, non-success), but even such commitments have to take a back seat to a roundtable honoring our patron saint.
Although with the movie I chose at random, “honoring” might be an overly strong word…
I know that after that avalanche of Roger Corman reviews, you seriously need a dose of good taste. That explains why I am reviewing the Richard Chamberlain-starring adaptation of The Count Of Monte Cristo, which also stars Tony Curtis, Trevor Howard, and Donald Pleasence. Never say that The Unknown Movies doesn’t look out for readers of The B-Masters Cabal page.
Gives Me Chills, Pt. VIII.
Nov 24
I had a couple to choose from this week, but I think I have to go with the one that’s an action cop thingie, rather than the one that’s straight horror because, well:
I understand how impoverished a microbudget production is. Really I do. But snapping pics on the set with your cell phone still isn’t nearly as good as having a real production photographer. Honest.
(What? You want to see the horror cover that was the runner-up? Fine. Click here.)
OMFG, PONIES!
Nov 21
Once more, I delve into a place where man should not go, and it’s full of ponies.
Why do all of the ponies have tramp stamps? Why do I care if the Smooze gives them PMS? WTF is up with the Bushwoolies? Why am I watching this?
Review Snippet:
One of my biggest complaints about the ponies is that all of them have tramp stamps. No, I’m not kidding. Each and every My Little Pony has a design on both sides of their hindquarters that corresponds to their name. So, the name and tramp stamp are connected. North Star has a compass rose on each cheek, Shady has sunglasses for a tramp stamp, and Sweet Stuff has muffins tattooed all over her butt. What would you think of a girl with muffins on her fanny who wants you to call her “Sweet Stuff?” I’ll tell you what you’d think, and it involves sneaking out before she wakes up and never calling her again.
Lesson Learned:
I need to watch more movies with radioactive mutants, killer robots, and RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOTS.
The first science fiction film directed wholly and declaredly by Roger Corman opens with the inevitable happening – what was inevitable for 1955, anyway.
In the wake of nuclear war, a handful of survivors hole up in a house huddled in some lead-containing Californian hills, where they ride out the apocalypse by talking, arguing, talking, contemplating reproduction, talking, fighting, talking, swimming, talking, drinking, talking, mock-stripping, talking, murdering, talking, smoking, talking, mutating, and talking.
I’d like to say that from time to time a hideous atomic mutation wanders in to liven up the proceedings, but that would only be a half-truth.
One of the most frequently seen of Wild Wild Planet‘s design elements is the sprawling model that stands in for Gamma City, the futuristic Earth metropolis that the Gamma One crew calls home. Again, the model fails completely to trick the eye, looking more like a space age train set, or a high school science fair diorama depicting a city of the future, than the awe inspiring super city it’s meant to represent. But nonetheless, Marghereti’s insistent employment of it as a means of orienting us within the story (he seems to cut to a lingering establishing shot of the model between almost every scene) combines with the complimentary, set-bound artificiality of the actors’ environments to successfully envelop us within the film’s quirky enclosed reality, thus making us that much more receptive to the various and sundry eccentricities of the story itself. In this way, the feel of the movie overall struck me as being not unlike that of the sci-fi marionette adventures of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, which similarly disarm skepticism by drawing their viewer into a meticulously constructed, Santa’s toy shop version of reality.