The B-Masters Cabal

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And after a thoroughly ridiculous amount of pondering, my nomination for the first true killer animal film is—

THE NAKED JUNGLE (1954)

In which plantation owner, practising domestic tyrant and all-around self-declared superior male Charlton Heston gets a little more than he bargained for with the arrival of mail-order bride Eleanor Parker. Their inevitable conflict is, however, somewhat rudely interrupted by the arrival of what is at one point described as, “Forty square miles of agonising death”.

It turns out to be an understatement.

Fun fact: this is one of the films to which I attribute my hang-up about eye-violence…

In the 1980s, animation director Don Bluth seemed to be becoming a serious rival to Disney, with movies like An American Tail and The Land Before Time. But after those two movies, Bluth slowly descended into making movies that were mediocre in quality and box office grosses. A Troll In Central Park may have been his lowest point, because the American distributor lacked so much confidence in it that the movie received almost no theatrical release. Was this decision justified or not? Read on.

Well, partly anyway.  I’d already reviewed most of this year’s lineup, so I’ve padded the update with a couple of other things.  I imagine you’ll see at once which two are the odd reviews out.

Castle of Blood (1964), in which betting a ghost’s landlord your ass is just as bad an idea as betting the Devil your head…

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), in which being afraid of the dark is exactly the thing that one ought to do…

I, Monster (1971), in which Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dare not speak their names for some unfathomable reason, even though John Lanyon and Frederick Utterson have no such compunctions…

Island of the Doomed (1967), in which some people simply never learn about sticking their noses into a mad scientist’s business…

and…

The Stepmother (1971), in which half the audience spend half the film wondering when they’ll get to the not-quite-incest, and half the audience will spend the other half of the film wondering when that detective will finally get around to busting the protagonist for murdering his client.
 
 
 

What? A Vietnam veteran who is not a raging psychopath? Yes, in The Ballad Of Andy Crocker, one of the first movies to deal with Vietnam veterans returning to the United States, we get a balanced look at such a person. Though all the same, the title figure finds out it’s a long road… when you’re on your own.

In the spaghetti western The Bang Bang Kid, Tom Bosley (Happy Days) plays an inventor in the wild American west who has come up with a new gadget – a gunslinging robot. The robot happens to look just like its inventor, and… hey, how did you guess just now what happens in the movie’s climax? Well, an unsurprising climax is just one of the many problems this movie has.

Liz and Dick made some doozies together, but this one takes the cake. Come examine how one of history’s greatest cinematic bombs went Boom!