The B-Masters Cabal

ESCAPE 2000

Prisoners at a futuristic government work camp are picked to become human game for politicians and their cronies. This is yet another version of “The Most Dangerous Game,” but it is entertaining in its excess. One of the rich hunters has a pet werewolf!

Review Snippet:
Upon arriving at the camp, the new prisoners discover that there are no rules besides complete obedience to the warden and his guards. Whatever Mr. Thatcher and Mr. Ritter say is the law, and disobeying that law is grounds for torture and execution. One unfortunate prisoner tries to escape, but fails to get away. He is forced to wrestle with an open container of kerosene while the guards pummel him. Once the doomed prisoner is completely soaked, Ritter sets him on fire. The man is so beaten, so defeated, that he does not seem to care. Even his screams as he burns alive are more automatic reflex than anything else. That’s the extreme nature of Camp 47. Being imprisoned there will kill you and so will attempting to escape, meaning that the only path to deliverance is death.

Depending on your view of the afterlife, that is either a catch-22 or a foregone conclusion.

Lesson Learned:
The legal term for an English person deported for committing a crime is “Australian.”

A slight variation on the review theme…

Magic Lizard is terrible. Mind-bendingly terrible. A black pit of terrible from which almost no enjoyment can be retrieved. So when it came time to review it, and given that several friend sites had already paid it it’s tribute, I thought it might be fun to launch a coordinated attack. So Sunday, March 4, Teleport City teamed up with fellow Magic Lizard neophyte The Cultural Gutter to watch Thai director Sompote Sands’ most horrifying creation. Joining us were two survivors of Magic Lizard, Die Danger Die Die Kill and WtF Film, who courageously — or foolishly — volunteered to be the Virgil to our Dante on this trip through Hell. Instead of writing a full review, the resulting commentary was logged via Twitter and looks a little something like this.

I’ve only had a couple of real-life nightmares in my sleep during my lifetime. But at least they were following some form of twisted logic, which is more than I can say for Nightmare Weekend. It is simply one of the most deranged movies I have seen in a long, long time. Though I must admit that its insanity was a lot of fun to behold, and fans of so-bad-it’s-good cinema will find a thick vein of unintentional comic gold here.

So, why Butterfly? Certainly not the most obvious choice. And my featured Fallen Star doesn’t even topline the picture.

That’s kind of the point, though. This is a movie in which the man who was Harry Lime, the man who panicked America with a radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, the man who produced, co-wrote, directed and starred in Citizen Kane for Pete’s sake, ended up playing support to Pia Zadora in a (supposedly) sexy, sexy movie about incest.

If that’s not a fallen star, I don’t know what is.

And no, that’s not Dr. Freex above.

Just a little house-keeping. Because in a Roundtable like this, only one appearance by Richard Burton – and one where he is not only unseen, but gives a fine performance – simply isn’t good enough.

And can I just say again— Man, 1977…

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977)

In which BAFTA award-winning actor Richard Burton, Golden Globe-winning actress Linda Blair, Academy Award-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Emmy award-winning actor James Earl Jones, AFI award-winning actor Max von Sydow and Cannes award-winning actress Kitty Winn come together under BAFTA award-winning director John Boorman in order to make utter fools of themselves.

For which I thank them.

(Warning: NSFW)

Teleport City’s latest entry in the FALLING STARS round table pays tribute to one of our Drinking Heroes, a man who made Richard Burton look tame by comparison. Witness Oliver Reed faking a Russian accent in the infamous Disney flop…

CONDORMAN

It puzzles me, given the churning sea of utter garbage that I so easily accepted as a kid, that I should have had such a vigorously negative reaction to — bordering on outright hatred of — Condorman when I saw it as a kid. hat was it about this movie that so anrgied up my blood? What did it do to me that I would continue to stoke those embers of rage well into adulthood, so much so that I made every effort possible to defame the film every chance I got. And you know I live the sort of life where the chance to defame Condorman in casual conversation comes up almost as often as discussion on the proper way to tie a cravat or how to remove an exquisite Czech woman’s cocktail dress with one hand while flawlessly pouring three glasses of champagne with the other (because her friend will be joining us forthwith).

Something is wrong on with…

Saturn 3 (1980)

… and whatever it is, it may have a little less to do with the romantic pairing of a young Farrah Fawcett and the 66-year-old Kirk Douglas than you’d think. Though Douglas’s insistence on doing his own nude scenes is the main reason I’m adding this entry to the Roundtable.

It’s not that it’s such a terrible movie. It’s a little like the design of its killer robot: the pieces don’t quite fit together properly; and for all the brains it took to bring it to life, it doesn’t have a very good head on its shoulders…

THE UNCANNY (1977)

In which author Wilbur Gray (played by BAFTA-winning actor Peter Cushing) tries to convince publisher Frank Richards (played by Academy Award-winning actor Ray Milland) of the Terrible Secret about the world that his research has uncovered—that far from being harmless domestic pets, cats are a force for evil, capable of controlling and manipulating the human race.

To paraphrase Basil Fawlty—

Name – Wilbur Gray of Montreal. Special subject – The Bleeding Obvious.

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In 1996, Cuba Gooding Jr. appeared in the hit movie Jerry Maguire, which won him an Oscar several months later. It would be understandable if anyone thought at that point that even bigger things were on the way for him, but something happened along the way. That something being his major studio star status slowly transforming into being an actor in direct-to-video productions. The Devil’s Tomb is typical of the bulk of direct-to-video movies Gooding has appeared in during recent years. It’s not only bad, it provokes its audiences into asking: Just what happened, Cuba?