The B-Masters Cabal

Yes, at long last… it’s Amityville: The Awakening (2014… no, 2015… no, 2016… no, 2017! We mean it this time!).

So was it worth setting the alarm for this Awakening? Oh, of course not. It’s not as painfully bad as its multiple reshoots and reschedulings might have led us to believe, but the final product is so depressingly generic that I found myself wishing I were watching Amityville Death House instead. Give me enthusiastic incompetence over dreary corporate-approved indifference any day!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT: Amityville: The Awakening is free to watch on Google Play from now until October 28, 2017.

UPDATE: Sure enough, Amityville: The Awakening was released to theaters for a very limited run on October 28, and its nationwide gross was… $742. This sort of thing just makes me mad.

The made for television movie I Will Fight No More Forever more than deserved a theatrical release.

PM Entertainment was much better at making action movies for adults rather than for children, and The Power Within is proof of that.

…wherein we are caught, an unconscionable thing.

 
AMITYVILLE PLAYHOUSE (2015)
 
In which…

…

…

…

…actually, come to think of it, nothing happens.

The sports comedy Fast Break takes a familiar premise and makes it funny and exciting.

That giant turtle movie you all saw on TV as kids and has haunted you for decades since is The Bermuda Depths. You’re welcome.

There are WTF? Films that break you in a good way: movies that expose you to new ways of thinking. Movies that broaden your perspective. Movies that give you a new appreciation of the human condition. This is not one of those. This is the opposite of one of those.

Since this is my first review of 2017, as I recover from a terrible case of writer’s block, I’ve decided to take the easy way out for this Roundtable. I’ve decided to review one of the least WTF-worthy (but still mind-boggling) movies of a director who doesn’t seem to have made any other kind of film: Sompote Sands’s Yak Wat Jaeng vs. Jumborg Ace.

(PS — my real WTF! review will be coming in the next couple of days. I’m also working on reviews to fill in the Roundtables I’ve missed.)

 

 
THE UNKNOWN (1927)

…in which an armless man who earns a living as a circus performer by throwing knives with his feet falls in love with his beautiful young assistant, who has a deep-seated phobia about men’s hands.

Why, yes—this is a Tod Browning / Lon Chaney collaboration; how did you guess?

You don’t need a medical degree to diagnose the Golan-Globus horror movie X-Ray (a.k.a. Hospital Massacre) as suffering from badmovieitis.