Kevin Kline! Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio! Susan Sarandon! Alan Rickman! Rod Steiger! Danny Aiello! Harvey Keitel! In The January Man, all of these actors except for Rickman thoroughly embarrass themselves in an utter mess that doesn’t know what kind of movie it should be. A crime drama? A comedy? A romance?It’s been… What? A year and a half since that happened? I’ve been missing that, let me tell you! Anyway, here’s the new stuff:
Gawain and the Green Knight (1973), which you might alternately think of as the beta test for Sword of the Valiant, or as Monty Python and the Holy Grail without the jokes…
The Green Knight (2021), in which the same old story gets a much more thoughtful (and also much more engagingly odd) treatment…
Halloween H20 (1998), in which, incredibly, we finally get a really good Halloween sequel…
The Last Dinosaur (1977), in which the title refers more properly to Richard Boone than to his Tyrannosaur nemesis…
and…
Rolls Royce Baby (1975), in which Erwin C. Dietrich borrows Lina Romay from Jesus Franco, and then just has her ride around the middle of nowhere in an old-timey limousine, picking up hitchhikers to screw.
And here’s another up-from-the-studs rebuild:
The Journey: Absolution (1997), which was my first brush with David DeCoteau way back when.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
The penultimate movie of Steve McQueen, Tom Horn was dismissed by critics at the time, but really deserves another look. Plus, it has two possible great titles for a producer who wants to make a porn parody of it.Aug 4
The indie movie Me & Will definitely has its heart in the right place, so much so there was a large part of me that wanted to recommend it. But ultimately there was a larger part of me that saw its weaknesses.Here’s what went up last night at 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting:
Army of the Dead (2021), in which what happens in Vegas damned well better stay in Vegas…
Crocodile (1979), in which Sompote Sands evidently couldn’t quite complete the shift of gears between ripping off “Ultraman” and ripping off Jaws…
Devil’s Express (1975), in which Brooklyn karate gangs battle each other for dope-pushing territory and an ancient Chinese demon for the fate of humankind…
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), in which screenwriter Daniel Farrands attempts to revitalize a floundering, superannuated slasher franchise by reconfiguring it as an “X-Files” clone…
and…
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), in which the studio walks that back with a quickness after the original cut gets curbstomped by preview audiences.
Also, I’ve finally grown sufficiently embarrassed of some of the reviews from my first few years of operation to rewrite them practically from the ground up. So far I’ve identified a dozen reviews in need of such treatment, and I expect I’ll discover a few more before I’m through. Here’s the first installment on that project:
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), in which Hammer Film Productions were just trying not to get sued, but accidentally touched off a revolution in world horror cinema…
Die, Monster, Die! (1965), in which American International Pictures entrust Daniel Haller to do for H.P. Lovecraft what Roger Corman had already done for Edgar Allan Poe, but the venture doesn’t go nearly as well…
and…
First Man into Space (1958), in which an also-also-ran British studio perfects the art of impersonating cheap American crap.
El Santo rules the wasteland-- and also 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting.
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.Jul 15
What makes The Siege Of Firebase Gloria stand out from most other 1980s Vietnam War movies is its good script, professional acting, and its ability to deliver a great amount of very intense action.
Apart from its once in a lifetime cast (including Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Cameron Mitchell, David Caruso, Neville Brand, Ralph Meeker, and Larry Storch), about the only interest to be found with the drive-in movie Without Warning are some striking resemblances to a major Hollywood studio movie released seven years later.Jun 25
Just a look at the poster art with its captions gave me an idea that I would be in trouble when actually watching Mixed Company, but I was still unprepared for a “family movie” that turned out to be unbelievably vile and reprehensible. For once, the notoriously draconian Ontario Board of Censors made a sane decision.
If you are looking for cinematic insanity, Mad Mission 3 (a.k.a. ACES GO PLACES 3) is just what the doctor ordered, especially since this insanity happens to be extremely entertaining with its mix of bizarre comedy with some outrageous action.
Keith Bailey is the proprietor of The Unknown Movies Page.