Review – The Secret of Kells

Normally my crap sensor dials itself up to "high" every time I start watching an animation that makes use of oversimplified drawings. At an early age I learned from DePatie-Freling that the line between "stylish" and "cheap" was all too thin. But this charming movie swiftly won me over. To be sure, the visuals should have been fairly easy to produce on a computer. But the style consciously imitates Medieval illuminated manuscripts, particularly the Book of Kells. And on top of the care taken with the visuals, the characters are engaging and the story entertaining. What a delight it was to stumble across this rare piece of evidence that a little thought goes a long way. I was even willing to cut it some slack when the plot and the music turned a little RenFest-y. Add to queue

Review – The Zombies of Sugar Hill

I don’t have a particularly good excuse for liking this movie. It doesn’t differ in any significant way from any other “blaxploitation” movie from the early 70s. The opening credit song is particularly typical (“Supernatural voodoo woman / Does her thing at night … She do voodoo on you”). On the other hand, it does feature some fun zombie stuff. I liked their weird eyes, and I thought the cobwebs all over them were also a nice touch, making them look more like dusty, reanimated corpses and less like rotting messes. Baron Samedi also puts in an appearance, complete with the great granddaddy of all “pimp sticks.” I was also fond of the relentlessness of the revenge plot. After gangsters kill Sugar Hill’s husband, she summons the powers of darkness to grant her vengeance. There’s no agonizing over the morality of massacring one’s enemies. There isn’t even a “boss level” where the bad guys briefly stand a chance. Nope, it’s just one rotten person after another paying for their misdeeds. My personal favorite was the guy the zombies fed to a sty full of pigs. Mildly amusing

Review – Countess Dracula

The legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory (or Bathori if you want to go all European about it) gets Hammered into one of the studio’s typical bare-bosomed vampire chick movies. Of course none of this has anything to do with Dracula, nor does the production feature many of the usual cast of Hammer actors (notably absent are both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing). At least we get Ingrid Pitt as the bloodthirsty countess struggling to find enough virgins in the local village to drain of their youth-sustaining blood. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Beware! The Blob

As much as I’d love to feast on a low-budget horror sequel directed by Larry Hagman (not to mention the weird punctuation in the title), this movie and I abruptly parted company around seven minutes in when the monster kills a kitten.

Review - Fear of the Dark

As with several other movies from this “era,” I lost the original review in a hard drive crash and now barely remember seeing it. As I recall, it’s a run-of-the-mill horror flick about a young boy having trouble convincing his older brother slash babysitter that the monster in his closet is actually real. Mildly amusing

Review – Cropsey

Once again indie filmmakers come up with a great idea that goes nowhere. This starts out as an exploration of the connections between childhood boogeyman stories – in this case the Staten Island local version of the Cropsey legend – and Andre Rand, a real-life child killer who stalked the area back in the 80s. Where the production focuses on its stated purpose, it’s actually quite good. Unfortunately, in fairly short order this switches from a thoughtful contemplation of the relationship between reality and legend and turns into yet another dull criticism of the justice system. Did Rand really do it, or was he an innocent mentally ill person who made a convenient hook to hang some convictions on? Compared to a thoughtful consideration of childhood terrors, the question isn’t all that interesting to anyone other than Rand himself. Mildly amusing

Abandoned – Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

Try as I might, I just couldn’t focus on this movie. It’s supposed to be hilariously terrible, but I found myself having more success ignoring it than laughing at it. 30 minutes

Abandoned – Act of God

Yep. Them’s guys what dun been struck by lightnin’. Eight minutes

Review – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Here we have the great-granddaddy of all weird-ass experimental films everywhere. On the down side, it's kinda hard to follow. A plot summary -- evil carnival showman turns homicidal somnambulist loose in a small German town -- doesn't even come close to doing justice to the story. Fortunately, the good part of the movie isn't the script, it's the visuals. The set work in particular brought me mindful of Lovecraft's many references to "non-Euclidian geometry." Anyone interested in the history of the horror movie or in German expressionist cinema needs to make this a stop along the journey. Worth seeing

Review – Cool World

Imagine Who Framed Roger Rabbit? redone by Ralph Bakshi and you’ve got this picture without even seeing it. A detective (Brad Pitt) spends his days making sure that animated characters from toon land don’t “hook up” with anyone from the real world, which interferes with the plans of one of the sexier toons (Kim Basinger). The movie fails primarily because it has no obvious audience. It’s too nasty (though not explicitly pornographic) for kids and too stupid for anyone else. See if desperate

Review – The Ten Commandments (1923)

The first half of this silent classic from Cecil B. DeMille is actually quite good. Naturally it doesn’t measure up to his later retelling of the story of Moses either in depth of character or complexity of plot. But the seeds of the Hollywood epic are nonetheless being sewn with authority here. What a shame, then, that the second half of the picture is so terrible. After rushing through the biblical portion of the show, the rest of the production is turned over to a slow, dumb, Goofus-and-Gallant tale of a prodigal who goes about breaking most of the Big Ten (plus several more just for good measure). If you want to walk away feeling good about this movie, I suggest hitting the “stop” button as soon as the setting turns modern. Mildly amusing (which is actually half a “worth seeing” and half a “see if desperate,” so it averages out)

Review – Sorcerer

For a movie called Sorcerer, this sure doesn't have many sorcerers in it. Instead we get a lengthy trek through the South American jungle over bumpy roads in a truck full of unstable dynamite. Oh, and Roy Scheider is driving. Truly this is a vivid vision of Hell. The opening sequences show how a small group of non-South-American individuals ended up in South America. That part was okay. But once the back stories were established, the picture slowed to a crawl and never made it back out of first gear. See if desperate

Review – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Makers of big-budget effects vehicles take note: if you don’t include a script or interesting characters or something besides cinematic tricks, someday your movies will end up looking like this. As a historical artifact, it’s worth a look. If nothing else, it allowed the Williamson brothers to showcase some pioneering underwater cinematography. The story, on the other hand, should simply have stuck closer to Jules Verne’s novel. By the time Nemo (Alan Holubar) is painted up in awkward “brown face” and given a tedious back story, well, it’s just more than a silent production can bear. Mildly amusing

Review – Krull

All present and future lovers of movies on SyFy, bow down and pay homage to this movie. Without productions like this blazing the trail back in the 80s, sci fi / fantasy crapfests might never have evolved as a sub-genre. The plot is some mish-mash about trying to save the universe from the forces of darkness. But of course the real draws are the unbelievably terrible effects (which still manage to be better than a lot of the more technically sophisticated CGI of the generations that followed) and of course dialogue bad enough to peel paint. Mildly amusing

Review – Jarhead

I dislike movies like this for challenging my illusions about the elite forces of the US military. I’d like to believe that Marine Corps snipers and their peers are highly-trained experts who bring a degree of professionalism to their jobs. However, here they’re portrayed as little more than everyday mooks you’d see flipping burgers for a living, getting drunk at the ballpark and lying around their parents’ basements watching porn. At least at its primary function – a recruiting ad – it does a great job of selling everyday mooks on the notion of joining the Corps. See if desperate

Review – Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

If you like seeing Bo Derek naked as much as husband/director John Derek does, then this is the movie for you. If you have any interest in a coherent retelling of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, seek elsewhere. This is one of those soft-side-of-softcore pictures where the nudity is so frequent that it becomes tedious. For example, after Jane is taken captive by the savage bad guys, the scene in which they give her a bath beggars the meaning of the word “thorough.” The picture borders on interesting only when it’s being somewhat disgusting, such as when a chimp decides to take a quick slurp on one of the heroine’s boobs. See if desperate

Review – Waiting for Armageddon

Oh ha ha, here’s another pack of right-wing religious nuts we can make fun of. Talk about low-hanging fruit. This time around a documentary crew turns its cameras on evangelicals obsessed with the notion that the End Times are upon us and the Rapture is imminent. Off the group goes to Israel to explore the future-historical sites they believe will play a key role in the Apocalypse. Mildly amusing

Review – Advise and Consent

If you’re a fan of cerebral political thrillers from the 1960s, this Otto Preminger movie belongs on your must-watch list. The President’s new nominee for Secretary of State (Henry Fonda) becomes a political football between rival players in the Senate, especially the Majority Leader (Walter Pidgeon) and a smarmy, Southern member of the opposition (Charles Laughton). Overall the picture is a thoughtful exploration of the question “when it comes to dirty tricks, how dirty is too dirty?” However, the small details are fascinating as well. I specifically noted Betty White’s brief appearance as a female senator from Kansas (several years before Nancy Landon Kassebaum became the first elected female member of the Senate). Worth seeing

Review – The NeverEnding Story

Wow, I thought this thing would never end (and that isn’t just a clever twist on the title). I haven’t read the books upon which this was based, but many of the folks who have report being disappointed by the movie adaptation. I’m not surprised. The movie is disjointed and weird, apparently more of a showcase for elaborate puppetry than a serious attempt to tell a story. Mildly amusing

Review – Dracula A.D. 1972

To the already-extensive list of crimes against civilization committed by hippies, add “resurrected Dracula.” Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing square off briefly, but the rest of it is a stale tale of Satanic ceremonies gone awry. See if desperate

Review – The Incredible Mr. Limpet

What a sad swan song for the Warner animation studio. A nebbish (Don Knotts) with a fish obsession wishes so fervently that he could be a fish that he actually turns into one. Which is fortunate for the Navy, because the newly-animated loyal American proves invaluable in the hunt for Nazi subs. Plus he can make an extremely annoying noise – a “thrum” – that sends the Germans scattering. Mildly amusing

Review – Nomads

And it got off to such a great start, too. The set-up tells Inuit legend of evil spirits that wander the tundra seeking to waylay people traveling alone. They could have done so much more with the notion of nomadic demons dwelling on the fringes of society. But no. Instead we get Pierce Brosnan as an anthropologist who develops an obsession with a street gang. If they’re demons, they’re the kind that dress like what punk rockers must have looked like to filmmakers who didn’t get out much back in the 80s. Casting Mary Woronov and Adam Ant as the forces of darkness didn’t exactly add to the scare factor. Mildly amusing

Review – Burn, Witch, Burn

I have the same problem with this movie as I do with the old TV series Bewitched: if you found out your wife was a practicing witch who could actually do magic, why the hell would you tell her not to? A woman who can zap steak dinners onto the table and Cadillacs into the garage? What’s not to like? And in this case the question is even more urgent, as the practices to which hubby objects so strongly are the only things keeping him from being torn apart by evil spirits conjured by a work rival. Originally released as Night of the Eagle (which makes it sound more like a war movie), this dreary little English horror picture plays more like an episode of The Twilight Zone than an actual feature. Mildly amusing

Review – Death of a Ghost Hunter

Rare indeed is the movie so thoroughly spoiled by its own coda. Usually such end-of-picture tack-ons merely result in a little extra unnecessary running time. But this time a fairly spooky tale gets over-explained to death. My affection for ghost chasers expired back when I outgrew Scooby Doo, so this picture didn't exactly start out on my good side. But the strange, illogical nature of the haunting slowly won me over. The picture also has a level of writing and direction uncommon for low budget productions. But then dang it all they have to spend the last 20 minutes providing a thoroughly repulsive explanation for the whole thing. See if desperate

Abandoned – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2008)

I thought perhaps the presence of Dougray Scott and a couple of other recognizable names might herald something better than yet another transformation of Stevenson's classic into a cheap excuse for a slasher movie. Nope. 16 minutes

Review – Necrosis

A cadre of the usual 20-something suspects rent a cabin in Donner Party country. At first it seems like this might turn out to be a reasonably spooky evil haint picture. But then ... Well, I won't spoil it for anyone who might actually want to endure the experience. Suffice it to say that it's dumb and mundane, nowhere near as good as it could have been. See if desperate

Review – Von Richthofen and Brown

This is one of the weirdest movies Roger Corman ever directed. Not that it's objectively strange. Indeed, anything but. It's a straightforward telling of the rise and demise of the Red Baron. That's what makes it such a peculiar entry in Corman's catalog. The man is a legend in the movie business for producing schlocky pictures on budgets so low they were virtually guaranteed to turn a profit. By that standard, a movie with this many expensive, well done aerial combat scenes would have been an unusual risk to say the least. Still, it pays off. The parts on the ground aren't all at thrilling, but the planes more than make up for it. They even manage to make a point or two about the increasing barbarism of war. Mildly amusing

Review – Survival of the Dead

At least it wasn't as disappointingly dreadful as the previous entry in Romero's dead set. That's thanks in no small part to the decision to abandon the pseudo-documentary format and return to a straight narrative format. Sadly, what I suspected at the end of Day of the Dead continues to prove true: Romero already took the zombie thing as far as he was going to, and subsequent productions -- however entertaining -- simply don't add much to the saga. This time around Army freebooters link up with one of two feuding factions trying to eke out a post-zombie-apocalypse living on an isolated island. Mildly amusing

Review – The Vampire Lovers

I wonder if Sheridan LeFanu would have written Carmilla if he'd known how many bad pseudo-lesbian soft-core romps it would inspire. Perhaps back in 1970 this parade of bare bosoms and girl/girl kissing was quite the boundary-stretcher. Now, however, it seems stiff and un-erotic as a department store mannequin. Hammer was much better when it made movies for their own sakes rather than concentrating on tempting fate with British film censors. Mildly amusing

Review – The Descent Part 2

At least this time around they used the monsters a little more. Of course there's still plenty of annoying cave shenanigans. This sequel follows so close on the events of the first round that they could almost be the same movie. So if you got a kick out of The Descent, prepare to be kicked again. Mildly amusing

Review – From a Whisper to a Scream

If I could somehow give a couple of pieces of advice to the folks who made this before they even got started, the thing I'd tell them first and foremost would be to avoid hiring Vincent Price unless they actually need him to do something. All they use him for is to play a librarian who supplies vague brackets to the four short tales that occupy the bulk of the running time. And of course my second recommendation would be that the stories themselves not suck. Or at the very least don't lead with the worst one in the lot. See if desperate

Review – Master of the World

This time around it's an airship rather than a submarine. Otherwise this is pretty much 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Vincent Price plays the mad genius who wants to use his superior technology to destroy everyone else's ability to wage war, and Charles Bronson heads the cast of captives trying to thwart him. I might have liked this better if I hadn't ever seen the submarine version of the plot, but Captain Nemo's story is so much better than this one that this go-around is sort of pointless. Mildly amusing

Review – The Final Option

The actual story of the Special Air Service's raid on the Iranian embassy in London would have made a much more interesting movie. Instead, this is a crass attempt to cash in on the publicity surrounding the daring real-life rescue mission to plug a mediocre action picture. The raid itself is entertaining, but that's only the last 15 minutes of the movie. The rest is tedious nonsense about a former commando inserting himself as a mole in the ranks of a stupid pack of anti-nuke liberals who don't seem like they could organize a performance art piece let alone a serious terrorist attack. Overall this left me wondering if such opponents were even worth the attention of an elite fighting unit. The movie was released on the other side of the Atlantic as Who Dares Wins, the motto of the SAS. Mildly amusing

Review – Old Hag

Here's a horror movie for the cell phone generation. A small group of losers work the night shift in a mostly empty warehouse in one of those anonymous industrial parks. One evening they take delivery of a box containing the mortal remains of a serial killer. On the minor plus side, they do twist the plot slightly at the end. Unfortunately long before they got there they’d already jabbered on so long about nothing in particular that I'd long since lost any ability to care about any of the characters or anything that happened to them. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Ghost Machine

I kinda liked the set-up. Virtual reality simulation designers figure out a way to tap directly into brain waves for a VR experience that's impossible to tell from actual reality. Ah, but of course they decide to test it out in an abandoned prison. Anyone who's ever seen a cheap horror movie – or an episode of Scooby Doo for that matter – knows the simulation is going to end up infested with a malevolent ghost. So around midway through I sorta lost interest. See if desperate

Review – Drop Dead Fred

Any inner child film festival should feature this picture prominently. A woman (Phoebe Cates) recently separated from her husband and otherwise down on her luck suddenly finds herself rejoined by the title character (Rik Mayall), her mischief-making childhood imaginary friend. Most of the screen time is taken up with Fred causing trouble from minor pranks to major disasters while the protagonist takes the blame. Overall the production is mo entertaining than it should have been given that most of the humor is more than a little obnoxious and the ending far too sappy. Mildly amusing

Review – The Donner Party

Here's the problem with the Donner Party story: in theory tales of cannibalism in extreme survival situations should be fascinating. But their dramatic structure doesn't fit the movie mold. If everything was going great for the settlers and then suddenly they all decided to eat one another, that would make for a standard – if somewhat stupid – slasher picture. But the logic of reality is less cinematic. The result of staying true to the truth is a long, dull story about a handful of folks stuck in the middle of nowhere getting colder and hungrier and colder and hungrier until finally it drives them to extremes. I'm glad they passed up most opportunities to sensationalize, but I don't think I'd sit through it again. Mildly amusing

Review – Quest for Fire

Apparently ultra realism isn't all that great an asset in a caveman movie. After their precious fire goes out, a tribe of prehistoric folk sends three of their number in search of a fresh spark. The trio has several adventures along the way, including conflicts with other tribes both more and less civilized than their own. The production is notable primarily for its unflinching devotion to portraying every gritty reality of life at the time, including plenty of unsavory caveman sex and not a word of any known language. I was drawn in primarily by the language angle, as whatever the characters did speak was designed by author and linguist Anthony Burgess. Frankly, it wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped. Mildly amusing

Review – Leaves from Satan’s Book

Okay, here's the deal: every time Satan corrupts a soul, he has to spend 100 more years in Hell. Bur for every one who slips his grasp, 1000 years get knocked off his sentence. So the better he does his job, the worse he gets punished? Wow, and I thought my job was a pain in the butt. This odd little bit of silent cinema appears to be Carol Theodor Dreyer's attempt to produce an Intolerance-esque quartet of intermixed tale with a similar theme. The contemporary segment is set during the 1918 Finnish resistance to the Red Menace. Ripped from today's headlines (or at least it was back then). Mildly amusing

Review – Madhouse

Alas, poor Vincent Price. Stuck in another crappy horror movie. This time around he's playing a washed-up fright flick star whose career was ruined when he either killed or didn't kill his fiancée. But when he attempts to make a comeback by taking a role akin to the kind he used to play, the low-budget production's body count starts to mount. Have his inner demons returned? Is someone else committing the crimes and framing him for them? Does it really make much of a difference? Mildly amusing

Review – Innerspace

In general I enjoy director Joe Dante' work, but something about this one just leaves me cold. Perhaps it's that plot-wise this is a sitcom version of Fantastic Voyage. A ne'er-do-well Air Force pilot (Dennis Quaid) takes the helm of an Explorers-looking pod that's miniaturized for experimental injection into a rabbit. But thanks to some meddling industrial spies, he ends up injected into a neurotic grocery clerk (Martin Short). Some of the effects work is kinda cool, but it can't overcome the production's overall silliness. Mildly amusing

Review - Fame (1980)

Looking back from the age of American Idol, it's funny how almost sweet and innocent this seems. To be sure, any movie about fame-hungry teenagers is going to feature a hefty dose of self-important desperation. But there' also a measure of likability thanks to characters who have at least some dimension. I'd worry that my mercy to this cliché-ridden musical was prompted by nostalgia, as I was a teen myself back when this came out. But then I never saw it until years later, and I don’t particularly miss the era as a whole. Mildly amusing

Review – Scarecrows

A squad of douchebag criminals ends up stranded in the middle of nowhere after one of their number double-crosses them and absconds with their loot. So it's their dumb luck that the nowhere they end up in the middle of happens to be inhabited by evil scarecrows. But honestly the scarecrow element doesn't really play much of a role. They might just as easily have been killer traffic signs or satanic desk accessories. No matter what guise the forces of darkness adopt, their MO is always the same: slaughter the douchebags while they bicker among themselves. See if desperate

Review – Donovan's Brain

Funny how the word "brain" in a movie title is an almost infallible indication that it's going to be a mad scientist picture. And this one certainly doesn't disappoint on that count. An expert in keeping brains alive after death finally gets what he's been wanting – a human subject – almost literally dropped in his lap when the freshly-dead body of a plane crash victim is brought to his isolated desert lab. Things go wrong when 1. the donor turns out to have been an evil man and 2. The brain has the psychic ability to assume control over the doctor's will and force him to misbehave. The concept is clever enough, and the actors – even the future Nancy Reagan – do what they can to overcome the picture's relatively low budget. Mildly amusing

Review – Night of the Scarecrow

Thanks to an infestation by the evil spirit of a long-dead Satanist, this thing is scaring more than crows. Indeed, he's taking revenge on the descendants of the townsfolk who imprisoned him in limbo centuries earlier. The production banks on its ability to impress audiences with bush league gore and a smattering of cheap sex. In other words, it's fairly indistinguishable from hundreds of other movies of similar ilk. Mildly amusing

Review – Catacombs

For a movie about demonic infestation, this one’s remarkably calm. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the evil spirit chained up in the basement, this monastery would be an ordinary, everyday community of religious men. But then a female teacher shows up to do some research, the demon gets loose, and things go downhill from there. The natural-to-the-verge-of-dull atmosphere made the supernatural intrusion more effective than it would otherwise have been. It’s a shame more low-budget horror filmmakers don’t take advantage of this simple trick. Mildly amusing