Ah, the 80's, a time in which companies were so desperate for product to release to video stores that they would take multiple ripoffs of the same film. Here we have Fred Olen Ray's attempt to drop the Alien series into a cop movie by way of the government experiment gone awry film ( Read more... )

A low-end Alien clone from Roger Corman, Galaxy Of Terror is an odd little duck. A space crew led by Zalman King (in his pre-Red Shoe Diaries days) lands on a planet to investigate the disappearance of another ship. Their ship crashes on the planet, and after they recover from the crash, they find the remnants of the other ship and their crew. ( Read more... )

I like to think that I'm decently well-read, though my tastes do run towards sci-fi and police procedurals. However, I have never actually read Moby Dick. I am, of course, familiar with the story, thanks to the churning cesspool that is pop culture. Between the Animaniacs version and Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, I'd say I know about as much ( Read more... )

I love The Asylum. Love, love, love. The mockbuster house responsible for such fine films as Snakes on A Train, I Am Omega, and a Sherlock Holmes film involving dinosaurs, robots, and holograms also makes gloriously bad monster movies. This film is no exception ( Read more... )

Early 70's no-budget drudgery directed by Harry Essex, writer of the sci-fi classics Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Basically, there's a big giant sun creature, who's rolling around the back country of California stalking people who have little rocks that are pieces of the the sun creature's kids. The characters are ( Read more... )

The mis-titled American Grindhouse is a decent, if unspectacular, documentary about exploitation films through the years, featuring John Landis and Joe Dante, among others. It more or less rehashes most of the other documentaries made about exploitation films in previous years, though some of the interview subjects are entertaining. The most ( Read more... )

Italian horror films are very much a hit and miss situation. For every Suspiria or City Of The Living Dead, there's a Rats: Night of Terror or The Black Cat (the 1989 Cozzi, not the Fulci). Massacre, directed by Andrea Bianchi, definitely qualifies as a miss, and a pretty big one ( Read more... )

A Town Called Panic is a riotously funny Belgian kids movie based on the TV show of the same name. It's made with toys, crudely stop-motion animated, and it's basically 75 minutes of non-stop ridiculousness ( Read more... )

I watched the whole thing, and I'm still not sure it wasn't an elaborate prank. What starts out as an interesting documentary about a slightly unhinged French guy obsessed with street artists turns into a sort of commentary about how easy it is to prank the art world and gullible people. Thierry Guetta is a French emigre and shop owner who ( Read more... )

Yes, I know I skipped a couple. (They were: #29 - The Slayer (1982), #30 - Samurai Resurrection, and #31 - Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures.) I'll get back to them eventually. But I wanted to do a bit about this joyously ridiculous piece of straight to video trash ( Read more... )