The movie The Baby is one of the strangest American cinematic productions to come out of the 1970s. Which of course means it is greatly entertaining and unlike any other movie you’ve ever seen.
Three more of John Gardner’s James Bond novels reviews. This are fast-paced but really creepy in FOR SPECIAL SERVICES (Bond beds the daughters of his best friend AND his worst enemy), silly in ICEBREAKER, and boring, terrible, and nonsensical in ROLE OF HONOR. Thrill as you read 40 pages of James Bond learning to program in COBOL!
007 IN THE AGE OF CASUAL FRIDAY
Keith Allison is the chief Bacchanologist at Teleport City.
A Pile of New Reviews
Dec 5
Our trip through Space: 1999 history continues…
Space: 1999 – The Future is Taupe
This new take on the concept would feature the inhabitants of a moon base being hurtled out into space after a cataclysmic accident on Earth blows the moon out of orbit. Unfortunately, Anderson’s sleight of hand with his idea for UFO 2 didn’t fool ITC president Lew Grade, who remained unconvinced after the mediocre performance of UFO that a new Anderson science fiction series would be any more successful.
Space: 1999 – A Galaxy of Stars
One of the other things I love about revisiting the show is seeing so many faces that are now familiar but were, in 1979 or 1980 or so, unknown to me. Space: 1999 benefitted it seemed from the collapse of the British film industry in the 1970s. This collapse left a lot of A-list actors scrambling for work, and that means that a show like Space: 1999 was suddenly able to afford to hire some of the most recognizable faces in British cinema.
And some Swedish Ninjas…
In fact, it was his first ninja movie, Misja ninja or Ninja Mission, that gave the previously obscure and largely unknown director of “Swedish westerns” his boost into the sort of high profile superstardom that caused him to be showered with such accolades as “an embarrassment to Sweden,” “Sweden’s Roger Corman,” and “fucking Mats Helge.”
And the first of John Gardner’s James Bond novels
That said, overall the book is as about as good as Casino Royale and about as flawed, though in different ways. For the most part though, I enjoyed it just enough not to mind the flaws — as was the case with Casino Royale. License Renewed is not the sort of book I would go to war for — if you were bored by it or actively hated it, I would understand — but I thought it was perfectly acceptable. If you, like me, were interested to see where Bond would go after Fleming (and Amis) and now that it was the 1980s, then License Renewed isn’t going to let you down, but it’s not really going to excite you either.
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Keith Allison is the chief Bacchanologist at Teleport City.
The New Zealand movie Utu is an uneven but overall compelling south of the equator western of sorts that is based on actual incidents.
The Legend of Hillbilly John (1973), in which a hippied-out version of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John goes to training camp for a battle with Satan…
Miami Connection (1987), in which a hard rock band made up of tae kwon do devotees battles a rival band, a drug-dealing street gang, and an army of biker ninjas…
Siren of Bagdad (1953), in which an underachieving magician joins forces with a deposed sultan to get the latter his throne back, mainly because it seems like the best way to reclaim the harem of dancing girls whom the usurper bought from the bandits who stole them from the sorcerer…
Twixt (2011), in which a hack horror novelist lucks into an opportunity to become slightly less hacky in a town full of nasty secrets…
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), which I can just about promise you is unlike any other version of the familiar story that you’ve seen…
and…
Zombieland (2009), in which a dork, a redneck, and a couple of female con-artists seek shelter from the undead apocalypse in a cheesy amusement park.
I blast it to pieces
Nov 25
The PM Entertainment production Shotgun has to be the worst movie the company ever made, somehow being even worse than East L.A. Warriors. It’s not just bad, it’s surreal in its ineptness.
The Unknown Movies’ annual Christmas-themed movie pick this year is Jack Frost. Not to be confused with the Michael Keaton movie of the same name, this horror/black comedy feature film will warm the heart of any Scrooge or Grinch.
I break this curfew
Nov 5
The hostage drama Curfew is a frustrating mix of effective and incompetent material. Despite some good moments, in the end it’s not worth coming home in time to see.
UFO Identified
Nov 4
After our assorted forays into Haunted New York History and an occasional Paul Naschy werewolf movie or two, November at Teleport City is all about science fiction and spy television. And we’re kicking things off with a history of Gerry Anderson’s SPACE: 1999. The Space: 1999 Story – In the SHADO of the Moon takes a brief look at the career of Gerry Anderson and the development of the show that would serve as the eventual origin of Space: 1999 – UFO. There will be silver miniskirts.
Keith Allison is the chief Bacchanologist at Teleport City.
Between October 31st and November 1st there’s a weird dividing line: at midnight, the whole USA suddenly turns its attention from Boris Karloff to Bing Crosby; the ghosts and monsters of the whole past month suddenly disappear, and it’s nothing but nauseating wholesomeness until the end of December. Before this happens, here’s something genuinely horrific to help bring a close to Halloween 2013…
More than a decade after the unexpected success of The Blair Witch Project, most of the follow-ons from Myrick and Sánchez’s film have mimicked its “found footage” aspect without stopping to consider what else could be done. Here are a handful of films which actually take a thoughtful approach to reconsidering the role of the camera in horror movies:
Atrocious (2010) — A Spanish film that at first looks like another pointless Blair Witch retread… until you get to the very end, and realize the film makers have done something really clever;
La Casa Muda (2010) — Not a found footage film, but a movie whose technical gimmick helps subvert its real intentions;
Silent House (2011) — The American remake of the Uruguyan La Casa Muda, which tries to take the (to say the least) controversial subject matter of the original and make it less ambiguous and more acceptable for an American audience… and in doing so, made it far worse and even ghastlier;
And…
Lovely Molly (2011), directed by Blair Witch‘s Eduardo Sánchez, a near-masterpiece that taught me I cannot trust what I think I’m seeing… especially when I’m watching the director’s interview.
This started as a fun reviewing project, and quickly turned sour. I was going to add a fifth movie for contrast, a Bollywood remake of Blair Witch that decided to omit the whole “found footage” aspect. But to my surprise, these first four films I’d chosen all turned out to have a harrowing common theme — the brutalization of children — and considering the disturbing nature of this common theme, the last film seemed jarringly out-of-place.
Finally, since this set is obviously more Trick than Treat, here’s a grim little Jess Franco outing that seems positively cheery by comparison:
1964: El Segreto del Dr. Orloff (aka Dr. Orloff’s Secret, Dr. Orloff’s Monster, Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll…)
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.