tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20045419689189294552024-03-13T14:47:04.900-07:00Movies You Should (Die Before You) SeeScrapings from the bottom of the cinematic barrelSteve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-4628514095600083252013-10-16T22:16:00.001-07:002013-10-16T22:22:56.348-07:00The horror... the HORROR!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKnOtzDewSs/Ul9vMnB-s4I/AAAAAAAAMeU/vbRZWfaA_AA/s1600/alison-gold-chinese-food.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKnOtzDewSs/Ul9vMnB-s4I/AAAAAAAAMeU/vbRZWfaA_AA/s400/alison-gold-chinese-food.png" /></a></div>
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Pop song "Chinese Food" and its video features Alison Gold, a blonde teeny-bopper, what looks like her schoolmates, and Patrice Wilson, the freak who helped bring Rebecca Black's "Friday" to the world. Usually, music videos are posted to my Cinema Steve blog, but this is so awful it could only belong here.<br />
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I like Chinese food, but this song may well put me off it for a while. And one has to wonder if Panda Express will be filing suit over the damage done to their brand.....<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wWLhrHVySgA?feature=player_embedded" width="410"></iframe>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-15621989412208377332013-06-01T20:05:00.000-07:002019-06-05T17:29:40.050-07:00We all have to start somewhere....<b>Hangmen (1987)</b><br />
Hangmen
Starring: Rick Washburne, Keith Bogard, Jake Lamotta, and Sandra Bullock<br />
Director: J. Christian Ingvordson<br />
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When renegade CIA operatives target a government agent (Washburne), his teenage son (Bogard) and his son's girlfriend (Bullock), they find their violent tendencies are exceeded only by the Vietnam veterans who rally to defend their old war-comrade.
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"Hangmen" is bad on every level. Bad photography (marked by waaay too many extreme close-ups and dull long shots); lame action scenes that rely on slow motion and lots of blood-spurting squibs (and which illustrate the importance of the foley artist and sound effects t in movie making); a script so nonsensical that even the filmmakers couldn't keep track of what was supposed to be going on from one scene to the next (it's rare to see a movie so totally free of continuity control); and dialogue that was exceeded in its horribleness only by the acting of those delivering it.
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This movie's remarkable for having a plot that is less interesting than most 1st-person shooters, and a bodycount that is compreble to them. It's also a landmark film in that never have such a concentration of inept renegade CIA agents been assembled in one movie for the purpose of killing people for no real reason while pointlessly disguised as New York City cops, ambulance drivers, or firemen. Finally, the film is also noteworthy for featuring a young Sandra Bullock as the hapless girlfriend of our hero-by-happenstance. While she is by far the best actor featured, her performance either illustrates that the director of the film was the George Lucas of his day (he could coax a bad performance out of anyone), or that acting is like any craft... the more you practice, the better you get.
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(Note to Bullock fans: One DVD editions of "Hangmen" has her as the only actor featured on the cover, and it gives her top billing. Don't be fooled. She is a supporting actress here, with an important but small role.)
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-81125115802228655142013-05-25T01:30:00.000-07:002013-05-25T01:30:24.896-07:00Dull film made worse by insipid dubbing<b>Spirits of Bruce Lee (aka "Angry Tiger" ) (1973) </b><br />
Starring: Michael Chan
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Director: Shang Lang<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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When his brother is robbed and murdered while buying jade in Thailand, jeweler and kick-ass martial artist Chen-Wai Chang (Chan) sets out to find and punish his killers.<br />
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"Spirits of Bruce Lee" is a waste of time and space. It's populated by uninteresting characters portrayed by handsome but unremarkable actors and actresses, and it moves at a glacial pace from predictable plot point to predictable plot point. Even in 1973 this boring and overlong film must have been a sleep-aid for some, and a welcome make-out opportunities for teenagers at drive-ins and second-run movie houses. The only way to get through this movie without boredom killing you as dead as Bruce Lee--barring making out or dozing off--would be to consume copious amounts of spirits (Bruce Lee Spirits or otherwise.)<br />
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This film is one of the few in this set that has no qualities that give any reason for you to watch it. It's possible the original Chinese version is slightly better than what comes across in this obnoxiously dubbed film that features one of the greatest collection of annoying voices to ever be assembled in one place, but even it can't possibly be worth the time it takes to watch. It's rare that I think <a href="http://moviestodiebeforeseeing.blogspot.com/search/label/Godfrey%20Ho">Godfrey Ho adding some random ninjas</a> could improve a film, but I think taht would have been the only thing that could have saved this paint-by-numbers, half-assed martial arts melodrama..<br />
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By the way, can someone explaine the "Brucespoitation" thing to me? Did movie-going martial arts fans in the mid- to late 1970s really go to see any piece of crap that had Bruce Lee's name in the title? This movie can't be described as a tribute to Bruce Lee (or even anyone who was involved with making it it's so awful), nor does there seem to be any similarities to any of the movies Lee made plot-wise or theme-wise--except in a single, minor point that one really has to stretch to even consider a similarity. I simply don't get the selling point. Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-35271199977807634062013-05-06T01:29:00.000-07:002019-11-17T19:14:28.887-08:00'Skinned Alive' will disappoint almost everyone<b>Skinned Alive (1990)</b><br />
Starring: Scott Spiegel, Susan Rothacker, Mary Jackson, Floyd Ewing Jr., Lester Clark, and Barbara Katrz-Norrod<br />
Director: John Killough<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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When a family of crazy cannibalistic taxidermists (Jackson, Rothacker, and Spiegel) are stranded over night in a small town, they see no reason to stop their ongoing killing spree.<br />
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"Skinned Alive" is a clumsily constructed horror comedy that features a talented cast doing their best with a weak script and a special effects crew that either didn't have enough money or enough skill to stretch the money for decent gore effects. There are only two instances in the film that will have you squirming in your seat due to the splatter/ick factor... and that's entirely too few for what this movie seems to want to be.<br />
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And the fact I say "seems to want to be" illustrates the biggest problem with "Skinned Alive", Watching it, I got the sense it wanted to be a cross between "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Spider Baby", but it lacks cohesion, so I'm really sure if that's what writer/director Killough was going for, or if that just my mind trying to bring order to the chaos.<br />
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If you're looking for a gory splatter-fest, "Skinned Alive" does not deliver. It doesn't even deliver on the promise of the title, as the only person who comes close to being "Skinned Alive" is a character who inexplicably kept coming back from the dead, in a manner that I couldn't determine whether it was supposed to be a joke or just a symptom of bad continuity. IF you looking for an intense and horrific viewing experience, "Skinned Alive" won't satisfy you either, because it unfolds in an entirely too random fashion, with too many characters being present for no good reason and the pace being too choppy and uneven for any tension to build in the film. The only possible audience for this film who will be satisfied are those looking for a Bad Movie Night experience; that this movie is perfect for.<br />
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With the horror falling flat, many of jokes being so lame they can't even be described as un-funny, the overall package of this film is pretty bad, despite the fact that most of the featured actors do a good job in the sense that they are hamming it up big time. Those over-the-top performances make the film more fun to watch than it otherwise might have been... and why it would be a nice addition to a Bad Movie Night. (Producer J.R. Bookwalter would have done everyone a favor if he had made this film part of the "Bad Movie Police" line-up from a few years ago. He might even have found that endeavor to be more successful than it was if he had.)<br />
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-3992847613122856342012-11-22T23:59:00.000-08:002019-11-17T19:22:09.694-08:00Day of the Turkey Review: The Swamp of RavensA series of events (followed by a fabulous Thanksgiving Day spent with friends) kept me from writing as many reviews as I had planned today, but I should be able to get this one in under the wire, before Thanksgiving Day turns into Black Friday.<br />
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<b>The Swamp of Ravens (1974)</b><br />
Starring: Ramiro Oliveros and Fernando Sancho<br />
Director: Manuel Cano<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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A mad doctor is exploring gene therapy to "cure" the condition known as death and to show its relation to evolution. Or something like that...<br />
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"The Swamp of Ravens" is an atmospheric film that sets out to be a modern-day take on the Frankenstein legend, with its protagonist being some sort of medical doctor or scientist bent on identifying the factor that separates life from death. Sadly, its story is so muddled, the motivations of the characters so confused, and the characters so ill-defined that you're going to be left wondering what the heck you've just watched by the time its over.<br />
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For example, the scientist SEEMS to have accomplished some sort of scientific breakthrough, given that his assistant is apparently a re-animated corpse... and the "failures" he tosses in the titular swamp outside his secret research shack are likewise undead and lurking just below the surface. Or are they? Are the presence of zombies in the muddy waters just figments of the mad doctor's imagination? They kill a vagrant, so maybe not. But then why isn't he trying to figure out what's animating them?.Is he trying to make the soul/awareness of his subjects stay with the body beyond death? Whether the writers knew or not, you won't by the time the film is over.<br />
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Although the film has plenty of atmospheric shots and stylistically presented violence, the creepiness of it all is undermined by perhaps one of the most wildly inappropriate soundtracks I've ever come across. Have you ever seen one of those British sex/manners comedies like the "Carry On" series? Well, that is where this music belongs, not in a film about a mad doctor who is a sexual sadist who turns his girlfriend into a test subject in a fit of jealousy. So, as far as the technical aspects of the film go, it's one point its favor and five points against.<br />
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Oh... a minor nitpick: There are no ravens in the film. The swamp in question seems to be home to a flock of turkey buzzards, but no ravens. Still, the shots of the buzzards are pretty creepy... and I suppose "The Swamp of Turkey Buzzards" doesn't make for a very attractive title.<br />
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-74785483608892129842012-10-31T02:35:00.001-07:002019-11-17T19:43:51.070-08:0031 Nights of Halloween: Guru the Mad MonkAs part of this year's wrap-up this year's <i>31 Nights of Halloween at Cinema Steve</i>, here's a film you should be happy to not have seen.<br />
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<b>Guru the Mad Monk (1970)</b><br />
Starring: Neil Flannigan, Judith Israel, Jacqueline Webb, Jack Spencer, and Paul Lieber<br />
Director: Andy Milligan<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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An innocent woman (Israel) gets trapped in the web of lies, murder, and madness spun by the priest in charge of an isolated church and prison (Flannigan) and the vampire witch that is his ally (Webb).<br />
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"Guru the Mad Monk" might have been suitable Halloween viewing if you were looking to have a Bad Movie Fest as part of your celebration. It's got a creepy location, a hunchbacked assistant to a vile villain, witchcraft, a vampire, a damsel in distress... everything you need for a classic cheesy horror movie.</div>
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Unfortunately, the director took these elements and made one of the dullest movies you ever will have suffered through if you check it out. It has a few moments of tension and growing horror, but invariably those are ruined by weird cut-aways, awful dialogue, or the atrocious acting on the part of the cast--which are so bad that I was starting to think that Judith Israel was a great actress, until I took a step back and realized she only seemed to be because everyone else around her is so awful. She's passable... but given the rest of the cast, she seems like she could out-act any Hepburn you care to mention.</div>
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The Two Stars I've given it are perhaps generous, but they are based on the occasional bit of creepiness that the film manages to conjure up, as well as the unintentional comedy (mingled with a glimmer of horror or two) that we're treated to in the films final 10 minutes when we discover exactly how unhinged the title character really is. Getting to those 10 minutes means sitting through 40 minutes of unevenly paced, badly acted dreck.. and only the most motivated or desperate to be entertained viewers will make it that far.</div>
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"Guru the Mad Monk" is one of the films featured in the "Pure Terror" 50-movie DVD set. As such, it's harmless filler that you can save for last.</div>
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-50285377038026834492012-09-16T12:33:00.001-07:002012-09-16T12:36:19.253-07:00The film that launched a thousand riots<b>The Innocence of Muslims (aka "Desert Warriors" and "The Innocence of Bin Laden") (2012)</b><br />
Starring: A Bunch of Really Terrible Actors<br />
Director: Alan Roberts<br />
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars<br />
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After a Christian doctor's cilinic is looted by an angry Muslim mob in Egypt, he reflects on the life of the Muslim prophet Mohammad (or something like that).<br />
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Muslim movie critics don't stand for no shitty biographical movies about their beloved prophet, as demonstrated by the burning of American embassies and the brutal rape and murder of an American diplomat. Their rage is completely misdirected, but understandable... not so much because a religious figure is put in a bad light, but because this film is so awful that I feel awkward even referring to it as a film. I don't think I've seen so much incompetent directing, badly framed scenes, horrible green-screen use, bad sound mixing, awful dialogue, and craptacular acting crammed into 13 minutes ever before.<br />
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Seriously... this is a film that should be viewed by no one. To describe it as amateurish is an insult to amateurs. I've seen at least one person say "It's like Ed Wood decided he hated Muslims"... and I have to disagree. Even on his worst day, Ed Wood showed more skill as a writer and a filmmaker as anyone involved with "Innocence of Muslims".<br />
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In fairness, all I've seen is the 13-minute highlight reel/preview that was posted to YouTube... but if this is the best bits of the film, I think 13 minutes is all I'd be able to stand. <br />
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In the entire thing, there's only one scene that is remotely well done--the one where young Mohammad is being seduced (?) by some woman who may or may not be doing it to drive away demons. (And I think the only reason I find the scene appealing is because it's so strange.)<br />
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Even that 13-minute preview is inept, assuming it was put together in an effort to promote the film and not intended to just be a collection of disjointed nonsense.<br />
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Ultimately. though, the most noteworthy thing about this piece of garbage is that it features what is perhaps the smallest "mob" ever put into a movie.<br />
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I'm not even going to bother embedding the YouTube video in this post. If you want to see for yourself what has psychopaths in the Middle East and Asia all stirred up, you can go there and do a search for yourself. However, I think you should just take my word for it and spend those minutes taking a walk or petting your cat or cleaning your bathroom. Any one of those activities will be more worthwhile than watching highlights from "Innocence of Muslims".Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-5228044213446093662012-09-06T03:51:00.000-07:002012-09-06T03:59:38.857-07:00'Catholic Ghoulgirls' is a sinCatholic Ghoulgirls (2005)<br />
Starring: Ally Melling, Vanessa Kessinger, Meghan McDowell, and Mark Brown<br />
Director: Eamon Hardiman<br />
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars<br />
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Kasey (Melling), Becky (Kessinger) and Maria (McDowell) are three rebellious Catholic schoolgirls who spend their days ditching class, smoking in alleys, and sneaking around with their boyfriends. So when zombies attack their town, it stands to reason that they kick monster but with swords and Kung Fu moves.<br />
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That's a concept for a fun and trashy movie. It's the concept behind <i>this</i> movie, but while this is plenty of trashy, it's not much fun.<br />
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I think this film safely ranks among the most incompetent efforts I've ever had the misfortune t sit through. The story is so unfocused, badly structured, and overloaded with irrelevant characters that you'll have a hard time following it even if someone handed you a diagram and list of characters... and that's only the beginning of what's wrong with this film.<br />
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The direction is awful, the acting is so bad it can't even be described as amateurish, the camerawork is pedestrian (and sometimes out of focus), scenes are more often than not underlit or overlit, the editing is sloppy, and the sound mixing is so bad that you often can't hear the dialogue because of the soundtrack music or what should be ambient noise.<br />
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I always try to find something nice to say about a film, but I can't think of a single thing when it comes to this one. Maybe if writer/director Eamon Hardiman and executive producer James Hudnall had seen fit to have Hudnall write the script (assuming this is the same Hudnall who once wrote comic books for Eclipse, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics) at least the script would have been more coherent.
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-82872883705736377092012-06-26T11:33:00.001-07:002012-09-06T03:43:53.035-07:00Everything is padded but the lead actress's boobs<b>The Bewitching (2006)</b><br />
Starring: Beverly Lynne, Tezz Yancey, Lysander Abadia, Steve Reaser, and Kevin Campbell<br />
Director: Gary Sax<br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars<br />
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When a witch (Lynne) decides to violate the commandments of her Coven and travel to our dimension to engage in "pleasures of the flesh", three friends (Abadia, Reaser, and Yancey) are in for a night of hot sex, horror, and confusion.<br />
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What passes for the plot in "The Bewitching" is really just an excuse to string some softcore porn scenes together, primarily showcasing the very attractive body of Las Vegas-based adult entertainer Beverly Lynn (and she comes complete with a subscription-based adults-only website). The picture chosen to illustrate this review showcases the film's greatest assets.<br />
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In fact, Lynn is one of only three actors whose performance seems to approach that of professional level--the other two being Lysander Abadia and Tezz Yancey. And even so, she appears stiff when sharing the screen with Abadia, who has been a bit-player on numerous television shows... with her main acting skills revolving around the activities taking place in the hotel room and bed with various cast members. Everyone else are amateurish in the extreme.<br />
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And that may be good enough for those who are really hard up for a little light porn. Lynn is quite good at what she does, and she hasn't mutilated herself by inflating her chest to the point where her boobs are the size of her head like so many actresses in these sorts of movies have done (or like one of the ladies who disrobe in this film to display her unfortunate impants).<br />
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Unfortunately, even if what you are looking for is a little light porn, you might still find yourself bored... and possibly even a little irritated. Gary Sax is a director of very little talent and he doesn't know when enough is enough. If it's not obvious by comments made previously, Beverly Lynn is basically "my type" and I still reached for the remote to fast-forward at about the halfway point of every sex scene, because they grew repetative to the point of actually repeating the same footage more than once. Maybe if I was 15, I wouldn't mind... but I have better things to do with my time these days.<br />
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Sax also doesn't know how to start and end scenes, how to pace dialogue scenes, or.... He's basically made a movie that showcases everything you SHOULDN'T do when making a movie. And I think ultimately would-be filmmakers are the best audience for "The Bewitching"; they should check it out and take careful note of everything that's wrong with it, and then avoid those mistakes. Worse, many of the weaknesses in the film might have been fixed if a little more time or care had been spent in editing.<br />
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-76750554336598915362012-06-18T08:45:00.002-07:002012-06-18T08:50:54.626-07:00A documentary that fails to mention it's a hoax?<b>Alien from Area 51: The Alien Autopsy Footage Revealed</b><br />
Starring: Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield<br />
Director: Philip Gardiner<br />
Stars: One of Ten Stars<br />
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In 1994, Fox got huge ratings with "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction", a Jonathan Frakes-hosted documentary that purported to show genuine footage of an autopsy performed in late the 1940s, supposedly on the corpse of an alien that crashed his/her/its ship in Rosewell, New Mexico.<br />
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In 2006, the men who once claimed to have purchased the alien autopsy footage from a retired U.S. Air Force cameraman, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, admitted that the footage was hoaxed as part of the promotional efforts surrounding a fictional comedy based on his efforts to market the material. He named names of other hoaxers involved, explained processes, and claimed that the original footage HAD at one time existed but had been degraded so he was forced to "recreate it" with a phony alien body and phony doctors in a phony laboratory. <br />
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Now, in 2012, along comes "Alien From Area 51", a documentary that promises to reveal information about government cover-ups and the Santilli/Shoefield film. Directed by Philip Gardiner (who was also <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/search/label/Philip%20Gardiner">two films I've recently reviewed over at Terror Titans</a>, and both of which narrowly avoided being reviewed <i>here</i>) this is a film that will benefit viewers who were too young to have seen the alien autopsy footage Back In The Day and those who don't want reality to creep into their conspiracy theories about world governments covering up alien visitations and alien invasions. Because this is a "documentary" from the Michael Moore School of Documentary filmmaking, in that it offers one-sided views of the topics it covers, offers assertions rather than facts, and recreates reality to fit the narrative the filmmaker wishes to present.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CVLG73qFDds/T99OMarqoOI/AAAAAAAAJ-4/0G6Sl5BhLw0/s1600/alienaut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="298" width="383" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CVLG73qFDds/T99OMarqoOI/AAAAAAAAJ-4/0G6Sl5BhLw0/s400/alienaut.jpg" /></a><br />
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"Alien from Area 51" seeks to reset the clock to 1994 by letting Santelli and Shoefield spin a tale about the history of alien autopsy footage that completely disregards the 2006 revelations and even parts of the original narrative about the pair supposedly came by the material. In the interview with the producers here, the footage is no longer a "recreation" using a prop body and actors in an apartment, but a pain-stakingly detailed restoration of salvageable parts of the decaying original that had been made by taking still shots of the individual frames and reassembling them into the movie that was the basis for the Fox program.<br />
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That, along with Santelli and Shoefield's ideas about whether aliens exist and questionable anecdotes of visits from Chinese government officials to their London offices, make up the bulk of the film. It opens with a basic primer on the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash story (augmented with manipulated outtakes from <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2012/02/dark-watchers-is-almost-worth-watching.html" target="blank">"The Dark Watchers"</a>), and it closes with Santelli and Shoefield's supposed find in its restored glory. There are no counter viewpoints here, nor is there any explanation for why the narrative here doesn't match Santelli's 2006 account.<br />
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I'm not entirely sure what Gardiner was trying to accomplish with this film, nor am I sure that anyone should bother watching it other than the hardest of the hardcore UFO enthusiasts.... and then only so they can know the latest "truth" about the supposed alien autopsy footage. It would have made a fantastic bonus feature on the DVD of Gardiner's <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2012/02/dark-watchers-is-almost-worth-watching.html" target="blank">"The Dark Watchers"</a> (which contains many of the themes touched on in this film) as the two films would have complemented each other, but as a stand-alone product it is not worth most people's time or money.<br />
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Rent the film online, or order it on DVD.<br />
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(Full disclosure: This review was based on a distributor-provided screener copy that most likely did not completely reflect the final edit of the film. For example, the version I watched had an obvious opening titles sequence but the text had not been placed.)Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-5402338343555998002012-06-14T01:04:00.001-07:002015-09-16T18:59:27.847-07:00A Franco foul-up that's kinda saved by unintentional comedy<b>Neurosis: The Fall of the House of Usher (aka "Revenge in the House of Usher" and "Zombie 5") (1982)</b><br />
Starring: Howard Vernon, Robert Foster, Lina Romay, Jean Tolzac, Olivier Mathot, and Françoise Blanchard<br />
Director: Jess Franco<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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Dr. Alan Hacker (Foster) travels to the castle of his old professor, Dr. Usher (Vernon) where he quickly learns that his old teacher has gone mad. Aside from claiming that he is 200 years old, Usher is obsessed with resurrecting his dead daughter by giving her blood transfusions from girls he’s kidnapped. <br />
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With "Neurosis" (as the film was called in the on-screen titles even though the DVD case told me I was going to see "Revenge in the House of Usher"), Jess Franco manages to make himself look worse than usual. Not only does he do a half-assed job of adapting the classic Poe story "Fall of the House of Usher" but he uses 15-20 minutes of footage from one of the few good movies he's made--"Awful Dr. Orlof"--as a flashback sequence so the viewer can compare what he did in 1964 with what he did in 1981. 1981 Jess Franco does NOT look good when compared with 1964 Jess Franco.<br />
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The fault in using the old footage is embodied first in the character of "Morpho", Dr. Usher's blind (one-eyed?) assistant who is more in love with Usher's semi-undead daughter than even Usher. Morpho's make-up in the 1981 footage is pathetic when compared with the 1962 footage... when it should have been the other way around, given the improvement in the art in the two decades that passed between the production of the two films. Secondly, the old footage is simply better over all cinematography-wise. The shots are better composed and framed, more interestingly lit, and just more dramatic over-all.<br />
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As for the film overall, there is no logic to the story and the scenes appear to be strung together almost as random, with characters dropping in and out--like the horny stable boy; or important characters being introduced out of the blue in the third act--like Usher's wife, who may or may not be a ghost. We never do find out what she is or how she managed to creep around the castle without Usher's loyal housekeeper and would-be lover Helen seeing her (if she wasn't a ghost).<br />
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Speaking of Helen... if someone can explain her character arc to me, I will bow down to you as the superior reviewer. She becomes a completely different character all of a sudden. I could chalk it up to delusions on the part of Usher, but Dr. Hacker was the one who was primarily involved with her inexplicable transformation.<br />
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While watching the film, I actually did wonder on more than one occasion whether it was a satire of gothic horror films that misfired rather than a serious attempt at making a horror movie. If viewed as such, it suddenly becomes a mediocre movie instead of a terrible one. Certainly, the bad acting on the part of the men dubbing Robert Foster (as Dr. Hacker) and Howard Vernon (as Dr. Usher) gives rise to much hilarity... and the people responsible for voicing Lina Romay and the rest of the cast are almost as effective with their comedic stylings.<br />
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But I doubt this was intended as a comedy, so the film ends up here, with the rest of the cinematic trash. There are actually a few well-done scenes of horror sprinkled here and there throughout the film, but overall it's another cheap-jack Jess Franco Failure, with another of his trademark botched endings. (Free advice to filmmakers: If you're going to adapt "The Fall of the House of Usher" and you're going to have a building collapse... for God's sake, budget some miniature shots or buy some stock footage, because the way Franco does it here is a textbook example of what NOT to do.)<br />
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That said, the bad voice, the incoherent storyline, and the outrageously random behavior on the part of the characters also make this movie the exact right kind of trash for those who enjoy riffing as bad movies unfold. With the right group of friends, this movie can be a lot of fun.<br />
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-61746454389717949212012-05-12T01:24:00.000-07:002012-05-12T01:24:56.614-07:00Very little story to get in the way of the gore<b>Recycled Parts (2010)</b><br />
Starring: Girstin Bergquist, David Dartt, Joe Duffy, Brandon Brendel, Lisa Gail, Michael Dias, and Larry Sands<br />
Directors: Larry Sands, Erick Vega, and Bradley Young<br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars <br />
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Three unlikeable college friends (Brendel, Gail, and Dias) and two stupid ones (Bergquist and Sands) become victims of a madman (Dartt) who is abducting people and harvesting their limbs and organs for sale on the black market (or something like that).<br />
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First of all, this turned out not to be my kind of movie, so maybe I'm unable to appreciate its strengths, but sitting through this movie was a miserable experience. Regular readers know that I can't stand "torture porn" movies... and there's really not much else to this movie that gory deaths and screaming victims.<br />
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The best thing about "Recycled Parts" was that it was that it was so to the point that it lasted just one hour.<br />
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But during that hour, you get to see just about every variety of incompetent filmmaking you can imagine--from bad dialogue to bad characterization; from amateurish Foley work to uneven sound levels and inaudible dialogue; from badly lit scenes to badly framed shots, this film has it all! Hell, it even has a textbook example of the moronic "shock twist ending" that is so bad it actually ends up being one of the worst parts of the movie.<br />
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The only reason I'm not rating it Zero, is that the filmmakers did manage to creep me out with te Christmas-themed lair of the psychotic doctor's assistant Einstein (played by Joe Duffy). Then again, with three directors and five cinematographers, one would expect them to get SOMETHING right. Unless, of course, each director and cinematographer was brought in to work on a part of the film that didn't play to their strengths....<br />
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Perhaps if you're really, REALLY into films with less substance and class and creativity than the "Hostel" series, you might like this film. Everyone else should probably stay away.<br />
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(Full disclosure: Distributor Midnight Releasing provided me with a screener of this film.)Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-73189596326463340792011-11-24T09:44:00.000-08:002011-12-14T11:46:13.393-08:00Day of the Turkey Review: Skyggen<b>Skyggen: The Mind of a Killer (2005)</b><br />
Starring: Jemshaid Ashraf, Ralph Ferraro, Bianca Cheng, Michael Nahajski, and Gino Evans<br />
Director: Jemshaid Ashraf<br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars<br />
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A serial killer (Ferraro) is cutting a bloody swath through England's windswept North Country. Only Max (Ashraf) has lived to tell about him... but that's only because the killer is going to great lengths to frame Max for his rampage.<br />
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"Skyggen" plays, for most of its running-time like an inept homage to <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2010/09/hitcher-is-nightmare-on-open-road.html" target="blank">"The Hitcher"</a> but ultimately transforms into something more like <a href="http://watchtingthedetectives.blogspot.com/2009/12/identity-is-mystery-within-mystery.html" target="blank">"Identity"</a>.<br />
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The best part of the film are the first few minutes, even with the bad sound. After that it's all downhill, with badly framed shots, badly chosen angles, badly lit scenes, and some pretty bad acting. This was star/writer/director's Jemshaid Ashraf's first movie, so maybe he should have cast someone else in the lead and focused on getting the film's other aspects right?<br />
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BTW, that mysteious word in the title is Danish for "Shadow." Why a movie made in England, by English filmmakers, and starring English actors speaking English in an English setting has a Danish title is beyond my meager ability to comprehend.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTkUA9x46zU/Ts6Bl-WLJwI/AAAAAAAAHKE/EKmx7WfizDs/s1600/skyggen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="314" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bTkUA9x46zU/Ts6Bl-WLJwI/AAAAAAAAHKE/EKmx7WfizDs/s400/skyggen.jpg" width="186" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Russian poster for the English movie with the Danish title.</td></tr>
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-35252484683669003572011-11-24T01:44:00.000-08:002012-12-08T18:25:11.308-08:00Day of the Turkey Review: SlaughteredWith my eyes mostly recovered, I decided to expose them to some movies I had low hopes for in order to do a gimmicky impromptu Thanksgiving Turkey blog-fest between here, The Charles Band Collection, and Terror Titans. Welcome to <i>Day of the Turkey</i>!<br />
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The first selection, however, was far worse than I had imagined.<br />
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<b>Slaughtered (2008)</b><br />
Starring: Chris Smith, Arlisha Fogle, Aschleigh Jensen, Rebecca McQuen, and Cheri Lynn<br />
Director: Anthony Doublin<br />
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars<br />
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Harold (Smith) is a psychopath who murders nude models and posts gory images of his crimes on a pay/members-only website. As he goes about his business of booking small-time models and murdering them, the world's worst detective (Fogle) is hired to locate one of Harold's victims. But something else is closing in on Harold--the restless spirits of his victims. Is he truly being haunted, or are the ghosts just a figment of his deterioriating sanity?<br />
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"Slaughtered" is a movie so bad that the only good things I can say about it is that it's well-lit and the camera is in focus at all times. And I'd be appalled if those weren't quality, given that the writer/director of this should-have-been cinematic abortion is a well-established lighting technician and cameraman with several regular gigs on television series to his credit.<br />
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But as a director and a screen-writer, he is completely incompetent. <br />
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We have a central character--I can't bring myself to call him a protagonist--who is both loathsome and uninteresting, whose only defining characteristics is that he wears too much eye-liner and likes to kill women. Oh... and he's also a peeping tom who likes watching his models undress via a webcam before he... makes them undress and kills them. We never learn anything about Harold... who he is, why he is doing what he's doing, or any other stuff that might make him a little interesting. He never becomes more than a crazy goth in too much eye-liner.<br />
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We have a character who <i>should</i> be the hero, but who is so irrelevant to the plot that by the time she arrives at Harold's house, the movie's over... his last victim has freed herself and ghosts have exacted gory revenge on him. (Yeah, I just spoiled the movie. If you had watched it, you would have wished I had and saved you the misery.) She's also, as I mentioned in the teaser summary at the top of the review, the world's dumbest detective; while working on her missing person's case, she calls up the local police station and offers sexual favors in exchange for open missing persons cases. I've no doubt she's real popular around the squad room, since those sorts of things are not under lock and key... the police are trying to find those people. A Google search might have given her the same information as those files. And then there's the fact she spends much of the movie in her office (which looks like it might be a nook in her kitchen) trying to "hack" Harold's members-only snuff-port site. Why didn't get herself a pre-paid Mastercard, billed to her client, and just sign up for the site under a fictitious name?!<br />
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Of course, the police in the area of California where the film takes place--Santa Barbara? I think it was mentioned at some point, but my brain was starting to turn off by that point, so I'm not sure--aren't much smarter. Nude models are going missing... nude models who are contacted via their promotional web sites, via email... nude models who have computers and email accounts where correspondence is stored. It seems to me that it wouldn't take more than a couple of vanished women with emails from Harold in their inbox to make the police interested in him and his little web-venture. That and the fact that he disposes of their bodies, fully intact, in dumpsters. Neither Harold, nor the cops, have apparently watched even one episode of "CSI". Or "Quincy, M.E.". Or even "Columbo." Hell, the world's dumbest detective looked at the email account of one victim and zeroed in on Harold.<br />
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Some of the laziest writing I have ever seen in a film that was supposedly made by a professional is on display here. The cipherous nature of Harold. the idiocy and plot irrelevancy of the character who should be the hero, and the absence of any apparent thought devoted to how Harold can be getting away with his serial killing are only the worst sins among a multitude.<br />
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Moving onto the direction... words fail me. Either Doublin managed to make scenes of girls getting undressed boring, or I need to have my testosterone levels checked. We're treated to three scenes of girls getting undressed and then getting dressed (before undressing again and being murdered), and the next one is duller than the one that went before. Even the kill scenes are boring, with only the first one having even the slightest impact, possibly because it was a bit unexpected. Usually with films like this, I'm disgusted or irritated--I do not like movies whose central and only theme is the brutalization of women and other innocent victims--but with "Slaughtered", each murder brought a greater degree of indifference.<br />
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Perhaps it has something to do with the acting, which was almost as universally flat as the direction. The fact that Doublin is a seasoned professional probably helped him keep the "playing to the back row at the community theatre"-style performances that usually plague movies of this kind. The actors here all seemed comfortable in front of a camera and aware of how to play to it... but one can also easily understand why very few of the cast have credits beyond this picture, or other films directed by Doublin.<br />
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"Slaughtered" is lurking inside several multi-packs from Maxim Media's Pendulum Pictures imprint. Wherever you find it, save it for last... or, better yet, don't bother with it at all. The only reason to watch it is to gain a greater appreciation for Mario Bava's excellent <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2010/01/life-sucks-when-murder-victim-wont-go.html" target="blank">"Hatchet for the Honeymoon"</a> and Robert Hammer's <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2011/08/dont-answer-phone-should-be.html" target="blank">"Don't Answer the Phone"</a>. Those films have many elements in common with Slaughtered... only they were made by directors who understand how to put a movie together.<br />
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-2657361145027669082011-11-17T09:13:00.000-08:002011-11-17T09:13:08.366-08:00No posts on any of my blogs this week.I am having really bad eye trouble. Hopefully, tomorrow's trip to the doctor will start to make things better.<br />
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I hope you'll check in at some point in the future.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VK1VlGwiJT0/TsVAbfrxQ3I/AAAAAAAAHGo/5yTd9Md2fJM/s1600/standby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="242" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VK1VlGwiJT0/TsVAbfrxQ3I/AAAAAAAAHGo/5yTd9Md2fJM/s320/standby.jpg" /></a></div>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-34996448323041945842011-11-04T02:15:00.000-07:002011-11-04T02:34:28.572-07:00'Ninja Powerforce' is powerfully bad<b>Ninja Powerforce (1988)</b><br />
Starring: Richard Harrison, Alan Cunningham, George Ajex, Shelia Lau, Nancy Yeh, and Barti Marcus<br />
Directors: Joseph Lai and Godfrey Ho<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
<br />
When ninjas become embroiled in a fight between two criminal gangs, Interpol sends in Gordon, their go-to Ninja Master (Harrison). Will he stop the gang-on-gang bloodshed? More importantly, will he survive the deadly confrontation with the Evil Ninja possessing the most impressive mustache in all the Orient (Cunningham)?<br />
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Poor Richard Harrison. At one time, he perhaps had a chance to be a semi-respected B-movie actor along the lines of Gordon Mitchell, but instead he became closely associated with the countless patch-work pictures that Joseph Lai, Godfrey Ho, and their compatriots created during the 1980 by by shooting scenes with Harrison and other actors doing ninja-y stuff and inserting the scenes into partially finished or simply unreleased movies that they acquired cheaply from failed production efforts. Harrison was invariably dressed in garish, outlandish ninja outfits, and he often sported headbands like the one he wears in this movie... because ninjas always want to make sure they're not mistaken for simple cowl-wearing freaks in satin outfits.<br />
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As Lai/Ho patch-work pictures go, "Ninja Powerforce" is fairly decent. Both the original movie that was sacrificed to create it (a gangster melodrama about two friends and hitmen for enemy gangs who pay a dear price when they try to go straight) and the ninja segments (which inserts a bald-headed Big Gangster Boss and his mustachioed Ninja sidekick, as well as Harrison and his Interpol boss, and lets them have nonsense conversations with characters in the other movie in between ninja hi-jinx) move along so quickly that you might not even notice how crappy it all is. Instead, you will notice the ludicrous dialog, the illogical and disconnected actions of every character in the film, and the laughably cheap sets and props used on the office set for the gangsters and Interpol officials alike... and you will find yourself chuckling if not outright laughing. The Mustachioed Ninja really is a sight that must be seen. (He's not being pictured here, because I don't want to ruin the comedy.)<br />
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This film actually teeters on the brink between a Two and a Three rating, making it one of the best efforts to emerge from Joseph Lai's IFD production house. I ultimately went with the lower rating because of the dizzying disorientation created by the interaction of the characters in the inserted Harrison footage and the original film.<br />
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In the original film, the hero is sent to prison for months, or perhaps even years, for almost killing his best friend. In fact, at one point, we are led to believe that said friend is dead. But, because of comments made by the Big Gang Boss and the Interpol Boss, it feels like the hero spends little more than a couple of days in jail, if that. (And yet over in the other movie, everyone is still behaving as though he was locked away for a long time.)<br />
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Given that these films are partially re-written through dubbing when they are assembled, it would have been nice if some thought had been put into making the film's internal chronology flow between the original work and the inserted segments. It would have made it a lot easier to enjoy Harrison and the Mustachioed Ninja assassinating people for little or no reason and battling each other in their garish outfits.<br />
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If you're looking for a film to add to a Bad Movie Night, "Ninja Powerforce" might just do the trick. If you REALLY want pain, perhaps make it a double feature with <a href="http://craiglgooh.blogspot.com/2011/11/nine-days-of-ninja-day-four.html">"Ninja Death Squad", another Godfrey Ho Special, which Craig Edwards reviewed today</a> as his contribution to the <i>Nine Days of the Ninja Blogathon</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://stevemillerreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/nine-days-of-ninja-2011.html" target="blank">The deadliest of blogathons....</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-26107657229999870672011-10-06T17:05:00.000-07:002011-10-06T17:12:08.203-07:00It's a Pit of a Movie<b>Bloody Pit of Horror (aka "A Tale of Torture", "The Scarlet Hangman", and "Crimson Executioner") (1964) </b><br />
Starring: Mickey Hargitay, Walter Brant, Luisa Barrato, and Ralph Zucker <br />
Director: Massimo Pupilo <br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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A photographer (Zucker), writer (Brant), and their publisher/editor head with four sexy models and a production assistant (Barrato) to a supposedly deserted castle to take racy pictures intented to illustrate the covers of horror novels. It turns out, the place is not deserted, but is the home of a body-builder (Hargitay) who has retreated from the world, and who wants nothing more than to live life alone... well, alone aside from the trio of professional wrestlers (who dress like pirates) that share the castle with him. Soon, people start dying, as the restless ghost of the Crimson Executioner is unleashed upon the world again.<br />
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This is one of those "why ask why?" movies. As in, "why ask why these people caravan for days, hauling all that photography equipment AND darkroom equipment (including paper stock and chemicals) to this castle when they could have done far better, cheaper and efficient shoots in a studio?" or "why didn't they start taking the arrows from the crossbow in the hugely elaborate, spider-themed death trap instead of crawling under the trip-wires?" or "are we supposed to like ANYONE in this movie?" <br />
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I've seen many, many horror movies were the victims being killed by the psycho/ghost/demon/whatever are set up as more or less deserving what they get (in a twisted poetic justice kind of way), but this film goes so far overboard in making just about everyone so unlikeable that the viewer doesn't care if they survive the slaughter. <br />
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To makes matters worse, the film is generally more boring than scary, and snicker-inspiring rather than terrifying. Further, every fight scene in the film looks like it was staged by Vince McMohan of the World Wrestling Entertainment network (hence my wrestling comment above); We also have really terrible actors performing scenes that have been dubbed by even worse voice actors. And the syncing to dialogue to image is worse than anything I've ever seen. And the film's score--my God. It has GOT to be among the worst ever used in a film released to the public, and that's not even taking the terrible editing into account. (It's not usual to loop the same short bit of music several times during a scene, but it is unusual to have a static "pop" at the start/end of the loop.) <br />
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'Bloody Pit of Horror' is a pit of a movie. The only remotely clever part of the film is the spider-themed torture trap mentioned above--and even it falls into the "why ask why?" category, because like everything else, there's no sensible reason for it to exist. <br />
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The only reason to watch this film is if you're getting together with a group of friends intending to watch bad movies and mock them as they unfold. For THAT purpose, this is a perfect movie. Watching Micky Hargitay make an ass of himself in a red mask is especially hilarious. Like so:<br />
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For everything else, it's barely worth the effort to take it out of the DVD case.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=DBBCBC&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=stevemillesdo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B003VOVW2C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-11641502189745699862011-09-25T19:11:00.000-07:002011-12-01T06:25:44.366-08:00'Bloodlock' should have stayed locked up<b>Bloodlock (2008)</b><br />
Starring: Ashley Gallo, Dominic Koulianos, Gregg Biamonte, Debra Gordon, Karen Fox, <br />
Dick Hermance, and Nick Foote<br />
Director: William Victor Schotten<br />
Rating: One of Two Stars<br />
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Young married couple Christine and Barry (Gallo and Biamonte) discover a sealed door made of titanium in the basement of the house they have just purchased. As Christine grows obsessed with what might be behind it, her husband and slutty sister (Fox) are having an affair... and the creepy neighbors (Gordon and Hermance) are plotting to get into the door and take possession of what's inside.<br />
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William Victor Schotten is a filmmaker who is learning is craft as he goes. This is evident from the two films from him I've watched so far... this one, the oldest, and the Rapture/Zombie tale <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/2010/12/sabbath-is-full-of-good-concepts-but.html">"Sabbath"</a>. Both date from 2008, but while "Sabbath" is far from perfect, it's a much, MUCH better film than "Bloodlock."<br />
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Heck, based on the difference in quality between "Bloodlock" and "Sabbath", I may have to get my hands on Schotten's most recent film--"Silver Cell" from 2011, because if he's continued that rate of of improve, he may just have created one of the <a href="http://stevemillerreviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Greatest%20Movies%20Ever%20Made" target="blank">Greatest</a> <a href="http://moviesinbw.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Movies</a> <a href="http://watchtingthedetectives.blogspot.com/search/label/Greatest%20Movies%20Ever%20Made" target="blank">Ever</a> <a href="http://terrortitans.blogspot.com/search/label/Greatest%20Movies%20Ever%20Made" target="blank">Made</a>.<br />
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There's no word to describe "Bloodlock" better than "inept." The pacing is wrong from the get-go and it only gets worse as the film unfolds... with sequences that could have benefited from a little a pause being raced through like they were running out of film, and sequences that should have been quick being dragged out. The script is disjointed and chaotic, with a number of tones drifting through the disorganized story like so much flotsam as the film moves from being a erotic thriller, to a gory monster flick, to a half-assed comedy. There was also clearly a lack of funding when it came to special effects and a lack of rehearsal time when it came to the fight scenes... and the inexperience of Schotten and his technical crew only makes these shortcomings more obvious because they were either unable to use cinematic trickery to cover for them, or unaware of the fact they were looking at inadequacies until it was too late to do anything about it. And, finally, the ultimate doom for the movie are the mostly amateurish actors struggling with flat, poorly written lines. (Dominic Koulianos and Karen Fox are not only called upon to deliver awful lines, but they don't seem to be all that talented to begin with. That's a mix that destroys almost every scene they're in.)<br />
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This is, however, also one of those films I wish I could say nicer things about, because hidden inside this mess are some gems. I like the pirahna-style design used for the vampires in the film, and I think something cool could be done with the psychic housewife-turning-monster-hunter. But in this film, both of these cool aspects are all but wasted.<br />
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The one thing I have to give Schotten (or maybe screenwriter Tom McLaughlin) is that he realized this movie was disjointed and messy. So clear was that realization was that the film ends with the old "it was all a dream" and then loops back on itself by repeating an early scene. If you have a movie that doesn't make any sense, I suppose that's not a bad way to try to say "We meant to do that!". My reaction to such endings are typically either an irritated growl at the lazy cop-out or a grin at the well-executed creepy moebius loop, but seeing it here at the end of "Bloodlock" just made me a little sad. It seemed to say that the filmmakers knew what they had here didn't amount to much of anything.<br />
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-76791837432409700512011-09-01T12:01:00.000-07:002011-09-01T12:05:23.451-07:00'Spy Hard': Where the suckage began<b>Spy Hard (1996)</b><br />
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Nicolette Sheridan, John Ales, Stephanie Romanov, Charles Durning, Barry Bostwick, Andy Griffith, and Marcia Gay Harden<br />
Director: Rick Friedberg<br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars<br />
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When I saw the names Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer in the credits, I should have known what I was in for. "But," I told myself, this is an older film and Leslie Nielsen is starring, so it can't possibly be as bad as their more recent efforts like 'Epic Movie' and <a href="http://moviestodiebeforeseeing.blogspot.com/2009/12/most-aptly-titled-film-in-history-of.html" target="blank">'Disaster Movie.'</a>"<br />
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Alas, I was wrong.<br />
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Even in their debut film, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer--only writing here, with the directorial chores being handled by Jason's father Rick--they sucked. In fact, this movie is a little worse than "Disaster Movie" because it doesn't even have a character as hilariously insane as the Enchanted Princess. It barely has any funny jokes.<br />
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A limp-wristed spoof of James Bond-style action flicks, the film's story-line sees Special Agent WD-40 (Leslie Nielsen) come out of retirement to save the daughter of his old partner and lover (Stephanie Romanov) from the clutches of megalomaniacal villain General Rancor (Andy Griffith). Along the way, we are treated to badly executed sight gags, poorly delivered slapstick routines, and numerous of the lame references-to-other-films-passed-off-as-jokes that Team Friedberg & Seltzer have become infamous for. The worst (or perhaps most iconic for Friedberg & Seltzer) of these is a dance scene based on the Uma Thurman/John Travolta dance in "Pulp Fiction"... it is random, pointless, and absolutely unfunny--the cinematic equivalent of non-biodegradable Styrofoam packing peanuts.<br />
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I watched this film in a mindset that had me very eager to be entertained; I was suffering from writer's block on two different projects (a werewolf story and a game featuring supermodels beating the hell out of each other) and I needed a movie to write about for the <a href="http://watchtingthedetectives.blogspot.com/" target="blank"><i>Watching the Detectives</i> blog</a>, and still I was so bored with what was unfolding before me that I barely made it to the end.<br />
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The best part of this film was casting Andy Griffith against type, but even that amounts to little more than Team Friedberg & Seltzer's random references to other movies. This can't even do the repetition gag properly--where the same joke comes back again and again in slightly different forms. In a Zucker-helmed project those kinds of jokes can be the funniest moment in the entire film, but here they are just eye-rollingly stupid.<br />
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-11744262643819013272011-08-16T14:42:00.000-07:002011-10-06T17:05:18.031-07:00I've no doubt Bigfoot has cursed this film<b>Curse of Bigfoot (1978)</b><br />
Starring: Bob Clymire, Augie Tribach, Bill Simsonson, Jan Swihart, Ruthann Manella, and Ken Koepfler<br />
Director: Don Fields (aka Dave Flocker)<br />
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars<br />
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After viewers are subjected to boring stock-footage, a cranky Bigfoot researcher (Clymire) relates the story of how he and a group of high school students inadvertently awakened a monster from ten thousand years (give or take a millennium) of magic-induced slumber.<br />
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"Curse of Bigfoot" is one of the most slip-shod movies I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. The fact that Bigfoot appears nowhere in the film is the least of the offenses committed by the filmmakers.<br />
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"Curse of Bigfoot" came about when director/producer Dave Flocker took a bad movie he'd made with his brother in 1958, chopped it up a bit, inserted what looks footage from a misbegotten educational film and a little bit of new film involving a high school teacher (Augie Tribach) preparing his class for a visit by his friend and Bigfoot expert Roger Mason. The goal was to bring "Teenagers Battle the Thing" up the minimum length needed for syndication to broadcast television and cash in on what I assume must have been a Bigfoot craze, because there seem to be quite a few films featuring the hairy beast from the late 1970s. The result is a film that stinks worse than a pile of Bigfoot droppings.<br />
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If you want to see an example of how not to do a day-for-night shot, this is worth checking out--you will see why you shouldn't shoot footage of the sun shining through the trees if it's supposed to be night.<br />
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If you want to see an example of how not to assemble a film from the carcasses of other motion pictures, then this is worth checking out--you'll see why you might want to reserve some time in a sound studio to loop some voice overs, so you don't have the situation where a character says in one scene that he is telling a tale that happened many years ago, but when the flashback starts, a narrator tells us the events happened last year.<br />
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If you want to see an example of how not to build suspense through padding your movie, then this is worth checking out--you'll see two yahoos wandering through a forest in a long, loong, looooooooong absolutely pointless sequence, and you'll get to see the world's most well-behaved teenaged boy and girl taking a moonlight stroll through a monster-haunted lemon grove in search of soda pop.<br />
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If you want to see a film that features examples of every kind of incompetent filmmaking you can think of, then this is worth checking out.<br />
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Somewhere in this fetid garbage pile, there are a couple of good ideas that hadn't quite been done to death in 1958 and which can form the basis for intriguing horror films even now--not to mention do form the basis for three out of five movies with the tagline "A Sci-Fi/Syfy Original Picture." The idea of ancient Native Americans subduing some monstrous creature and binding it in a cave through magical rituals is an intriguing one and the discovery and recovery of the creature is the only vaguely interesting part of the movie. A lot could have been done with this, in the hands of filmmakers who knew what they were doing, but it is unfortunately mostly squandered here.<br />
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My desire for the promise held in that ancient monster almost made me inclined to cut this movie some slack. Coupled with the fact that the one bit of serious thought that seems to have gone into the production resulted in the same actor playing the Bigfoot researcher both in the "present" and the "flashback" parts of the film. It's a nice bit of coherence that is otherwise lacking in the production, and it even lends a touch of realism as the actor, like the character he plays, has aged 20 years.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UyC0w0tgrcQ/Tkrj0YamWWI/AAAAAAAAGGE/W688tn01xtg/s1600/bobclymire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="299" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UyC0w0tgrcQ/Tkrj0YamWWI/AAAAAAAAGGE/W688tn01xtg/s400/bobclymire.jpg" /></a></div><br />
(Near as I can tell, the only film work that Bob Clymire was in this film and in the original "Curse of Bigfoot" production. I could find next to no information on him in the 10-15 minutes I bothered to spend on researching him, but I am curious what his connection is to this production and to the Field/Flocker Brothers. Perhaps this repackage was his idea?)<br />
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If you're looking for a teaching aid to demonstrate how <i>not</i> to apply a particular filmmaking technique or how to structure a film, or anything at all, then this is perfect. For everything else, you need to avoid it. And if you ever see it listed in a multi-DVD pack with viewer than ten other films, you need to rethink your purchase.<br />
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<center><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=DBBCBC&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=stevemillesdo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B003VOVW2C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-43406495010729050192011-08-04T00:02:00.000-07:002011-08-04T00:21:41.423-07:00The undertaker should get pals to bury this one<b>The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)</b><br />
Starring: Rad Fulton (aka James Westmoreland), Ray Dannis, Warrene Ott, Marty Friedman, and Sally Frei <br />
Director: T.L.P. Swicegood <br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars<br />
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A crooked undertaker (Dannis) and his psychopathic greasy-spoon-owning friends drum up business by invading the homes of beautiful young women and murdering them. The cooks take parts of bodies and serve them in the restaurant, while the undertaker overcharges the families for buring the remaining remains. It's a great scheme, until they target the secretary of private eye Jim Glass (Fulton) and twin sex-pots Thursday and Friday (Ott). <br />
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Writing that summary is about all the time I intend to spend on this movie. I almost feel apologetic that I made you read it. You've probably never heard of or seen this miserable failure at making a black comedy, and I encourage you to keep it that way. <br />
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To say this movie is crap is an insult to fertilizer. The One Star rating is very generous, and it's based solely on the fact that the film does have a couple of good gags... but they are the sort of gags that a 12 year old would think up scribbling in his notebook while bored in class.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=DBBCBC&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=stevemillesdo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B003VOVW2C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-63793449920254482282011-07-17T16:24:00.000-07:002011-07-17T16:36:56.968-07:00'Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank'... sucks<b>Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank (2005)</b><br />
Starring: Heidi Brucker, Danilo Mancinelli, Danny Kitz, Mira Rayson, Jacqueline Anzalone, Yasmine Vine, Danielle Kreinik, Christina Caporale, and Burke Morgan <br />
Director: Kirk Bowman <br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars<br />
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Samantha (Brucker) and other archeology students conduct a search for a witch's cursed jewelry box that was reported to be lost in the Burbank Mountains two centuries ago. When her boyfriend, Gary (Kitz), takes the box to spite her because she won't "put out", he unleashes a curse that starts turning innocent women into cannibalistic monsters who hunger for man-meat, preferably the fleshy part on the neck and arms. <br />
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Given my questionable tastes in entertainment, a title like "Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank" attracts me like a bear to honey (or, perhaps more accurately, like flies to a cow paddy). Unfortunately, this film doesn't live up to the promise of the title. <br />
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It may have babes and they do engage in some blood-sucking, but a film like this needs to be either concentrated comedy or full of horror-driven violence and mayhem. There is precious little comedy here, the violence is nonsensical and very, very fake, and the mayhem is non-existent. The film is a letdown in just about every possible way. <br />
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The problems with the movie stem first and foremost from its weak script. It's full of too many characters and they're all badly motivated. There's also plenty of standard bad low-budget movie padding sequences of characters driving around, walking around, and having pointless conversations that repeat plot points that have already been explained. <br />
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The padding is particularly aggravating in this film, because if the scriptwriter (who is also the film's director and producer) had written a couple of scenes that gave more details about Angela's Cursed Jewel Box or more on the history that two of the film's more interesting characters--Zack and Felicity, a young couple who are trying to find the box and destroy it, played by Danilo Mancinelli and Mira Rayson--the overall film would have been stronger. (I'm sure I understand why the attack scenes--the ones where a sexy babe transforms into a monster cannibal with badly made fangs in her mouth and starts ripping the flesh from the body of the nearest male--are as static and uninteresting as they are: The film's amateur cast and crew were obviously not up for shooting fight scenes. <br />
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However, all it would have taken would have been some comment from Zack or Felicity about how men are paralyzed by the gaze of a woman under the curse to make the attacks seem a bit more believable; NO ONE would stand there and allow themselves to be killed the way the victims do in this movie, unless some force was acting upon them. The men being killed don't even utter a sound, aside from some mewling noises in most cases. <br />
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What it lacked in violence and logic, the film could still have made up for with humor, but it mostly fails to do that as well. The only funny bits in the film revolve around a pair of cannibalistic Valley Girls (Jacqueline Anzalone and Yasmine Vine) who sit around discussing Roman sex toys while munching on a gardener they killed after being cursed. Everything else is played absolutely straight... and played badly, because the film has a cast of mostly amateur actors who are working with tinny dialogue and a weak script. <br />
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And that's really too bad. A movie with a title like "Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank" should have been something I got a huge kick out of. As it is, the best thing I can say about it is that it did keep me watching to the end (even if the "twist ending" ended up knocking the film from a low 4 rating down to a low 3 rating, due to the fact that it was first completely unmotivated and ill-considered in the light of everything that had gone before it, and it features one final example of a strangely passive victim).<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=DBC1C1&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=stevemillesdo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002KA5NPK" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=E3C5C5&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=stevemillesdo-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000QQDKYG" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-63951724545152301392011-06-14T16:34:00.000-07:002012-10-31T02:37:20.376-07:00This has probably been used in torture sessions<b>Dungeon of Harrow (1962)</b><br />
Starring: Russ Harvey, Helen Hogan, William McNulty, Maurice Harris, and Michele Buqour<br />
Director: Pat Boyette<br />
Rating: One of Ten Stars<br />
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A shipwrecked nobleman (Harvey) finds love and lepers in the castle of the insane, torture-obsessed Count DeSade (McNulty).<br />
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If anything, "Dungeon of Harrow" shows clearly that Pat Boyette made the right call when he stopped making movies in favor of a career as a painter and comic book artist; this goes double if it was Boyette who painted the artwork for the promotional poster for this film as it's the best thing about it. This film is Boyette's in every way--he helped write it, produce it, direct it, edit it, and even scored the music for it. The only thing that isn't terrible about it is the voice acting present in the narration, which was <i>also</i> done by Boyette, and which aleviates some of the pain of sitting through stretched-out scenes of actors wandering, sitting, or lounging around. <br />
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Every other actor in the film is as stiff and unnatural as the dialogue they deliver. Boyette was clearly going for an Edgar Allan Poe vibe with this movie, with the narrator looking back on horrible events, rampant madness, florid dialogue, and a storyline that will remind well-read viewers of "The Oblong Box", "Fall of the House Usher", and "The Raven" in equal measure.<br />
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Unfortunately, none of Boyette's actors have the chops to deliver the lines with the amped up melodrama present in the Corman Poe-inspired pictures from the same period and instead perform as though tye are under sedation for the entire film; I don't think there's ever been a movie about torture and madness with a more subdued set of performances ever released for viewing by the general public. Time and again, the lethargic actors turn what could and should have been frightening or dramatic into a test of patience so severe it would be out-and-out torture if forced upon a captive audience.<br />
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It's equally unfortunate that no-one seems to have taken the script further than a first draft, nor read it from beginning to end at any point during rehearsal, filming or editing. If someone had, they would have noticed characters behaving in contradictory and inconsistent fashions (not counting the batshit crazy DeSade), and several plotlines and characters appear and are dropped seemingly at random.<br />
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The film has two worthwhile and scary scenes--one where the Count believes he is being visited by a demon, and another where the main character is chained in the dungeon with an insane leper--but they are not worth sitting through the crap that surrounds them. <br />
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Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-90604954659885068212011-06-07T01:11:00.000-07:002011-06-07T01:13:51.574-07:00'UFO: Target Earth' is a misfire<b>UFO: Target Earth (1974) </b><br />
Starring: Nick Plakias and Cynthia Cline <br />
Director: Michael A. DeGaetano<br />
Rating: Two of Ten Stars <br />
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Alan (Plakias) and his psychic sidekick (Cline) search for evidence that a UFO has crashed in a remote, backcountry lake, and of a possible government cover-up. Viewer boredom ensues. <br />
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While the advent of the DVD made many worthy films once again available to the general public, a lot of films that deserve to simply rot away have also been retrieved from the abyss of time. "UFO: Target Earth" is in that last category. Watch it, and all you'll find when the film's over is a deep wish you could reclaim the time wasted. <br />
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"UFO: Target Earth" starts out trying to present a documentary feel, but by the time our heroes head into the forest in search of the UFO, the filmmakers have given up on that conceit. Instead, they present a film that sounds like an 11th grader's research paper and a 9th grader's poetry served as its script, with a couple elements badly mimicked from "2001" and 1970s occult culture tossed in. And they present it in the most turgid and mind-numbingly dull fashion. I'm sure the filmmakers thought they were being artsy... but the null-zone of talent surrounding this movie resulted in something that's just dull. <br />
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I don't usually say things like "worst movie ever" or "worst actor ever", but I feel fairly confident in saying that Plakias is in the running for the Top Ten Worst Film Actors Ever award. The guy is so wooden that he might as well have been replaced by a department store mannequin in this film. His facial expression never changes, his inflections never move up or down... every line is delivered with the vacant tone of a heavily medicated mental patient. <br />
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Plakias is only the worst of a bad bunch. There isn't a good actor anywhere in this film, although those playing interview subjects early in the film come close to giving something resembling good performances. Of course, actors can only be as good as the material they are working with, and the material here is damn awful. The film only manages one bit of true suspense, giving the viewer hope that maybe something entertaining will start occurring--when the psychic starts hearing creepy voices over the walkie-talkie--but it soon becomes apparent that the filmmakers were just teasing us. <br />
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Some films need to be seen to be believed, but this is a film that shouldn't be seen by anyone.<br />
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2004541968918929455.post-21084305522011573142011-04-26T04:00:00.000-07:002011-04-26T15:54:23.356-07:00'Witless Protection': A wit-free comedy<b>Witless Protection (2008)</b><br />
Starring: Larry the Cable Guy (Daniel Lawrence Whitney), Ivana Milicevic, Yaphet Kotto, Ivana Milicevic, Eric Roberts, Joe Mantegna, and Jenny McCarthy<br />
Director: Charles Robert Carner<br />
Rating: One of Two Stars<br />
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A dimwitted small-town sheriff's deputy with dreams of some day being an FBI agent (Whitney) becomes the sole protector of a key witness in a Federal corruption trial (Milicevic) when he separates her from her security detail in the mistaken belief they are kidnappers. Can a cop dumber than a box of rocks get a witness safely to trial when hitmen and both legit and corrupt FBI agents are hunting both him and his charge?<br />
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"Witless Protection" is one of those comedies where the main character is so stupid that he succeeds because the bad guys constantly under-estimate the depth of idiocy. Basically, Larry the Deputy is what Inspector Clouseau would be like if he had been raised on a steady diet of lead paint chips and "Hee-Haw" re-runs. Every joke and situation in the film plays to the lowest common denominator, so this is one of those cases where it's imperative to leave your brain in neutral while watching, or you won't find any enjoyment here whatsoever. (A plus to the movie not challenging even the slowest of minds is that the solitary plot twist it features does come as a surprise; it anything but a movie as stupid as this, you'd see it coming a mile away, but here it's unexpected.)<br />
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It's a comedy that probably was funnier on paper, because it's main character COULD have worked and COULD have been funny if the actor playing the character had an air of likability, or perhaps just a tiny bit of grace or class. Unfortunately, as funny as Whitney can be when doing stand-up as "Larry the Cable Guy," the persona simply doesn't work in this movie. This character is so stupid and so crass that it's impossible to buy him as any sort of law enforcement figure; the aforementioned Clouseau can fake his way through an investigation, but the character here will fool no one, because he's a lethal combination of idiocy and completely lack of social grace.<br />
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While everyone in the movie is clearly game and trying their best to make it work, and Yaphet Kotto and Eric Roberts are amusing as the baffled antagonists trying to outwit a high-functioning retard, the center of the film simply isn't up for the task.<br />
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</center>Steve Millerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11263633883997493518noreply@blogger.com0