(aka, XIX) I should know by now that you just can’t rely on the advertising. Consider the movie 19: if you read the plot summaries of the film that are out there (and yes, the plot descriptions you find on a movie site are almost always written by the studio, particularly when every review uses […]
Read more "Nainteîn [19] (1987)"As I sat down to write this, I found myself thinking about all the best known films out there featuring a severed head kept alive in a lab, like The Head (1959), The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), The Madmen of Mandoras (1963), and, of course, Reanimator (1985), and realized that Professor Dowell’s Testament isn’t […]
Read more "Zaveshchaniye professora Douelya [Professor Dowell’s Testament] (1984)"Perhaps it would help if I started with a minor digression on the Quatermass movies. Now I’ve written extensively about them over the years — for example, in these essays at IRoSF and Clarkesworld — and have reviewed both the TV and Movie versions of Quatermass 2 (1957) and Hammer’s version of the first serial for […]
Read more "Quatermass and the Pit [Five Million Years to Earth] (1967)"Here’s another potent reminder of why I’ve always loved Soviet era Science Fiction films. Now I’ll admit that part of the reason is the same reason I’ve always loved foreign made Science Fiction Movies: that they are often free of the old cliches which infect so much of our own output. While it is true […]
Read more "Pokhishcheniye charodeya [The Kidnapping of a Wizard] (1989)"(aka, Pleasure Planet, Lunar Madness) [Spoilers Ahead] Who knew the future had Eighties’ Girl Bands? Not to mention big hair, wild New Wave fashions and an incredible club scene. Look, some of these movies, you look at them and wonder, what were they thinking? There’s an interesting movie here somewhere, but it just didn’t get […]
Read more "Vicious Lips (1986)"(literal title: The Monster of the Volcano) Honorable Mention Welcome to Mexico’s first Yeti movie. And it proves to be pretty much what you’d expect: brave hero, beautiful young girl, familiar horror elements we’ve seen in other non-Mexican films, and, of course, a big, silly-looking monster. A group of engineers are trying to construct a […]
Read more "El monstruo de los volcanes (1963)"(aka We Called Him Robert) One occasionally runs into some very strange things while exploring Soviet film. No, I’m not referring to the fact that the legendary mime, Marcel Marceau makes and appearance in the 1967 science fiction comedy. Western artists did, in fact, make appearances on the far side of the Iron Curtain at […]
Read more "Evo Zvali Robert [His Name Was Robert] (1967)"Okay, it takes a while to get going. In fact, we are over a half an hour into the film before that monster finally makes an appearance. But it is not exactly wasted time as we learn a lot about the troubled relationship between Lizzy and her alcoholic mother Kathy. They are on a trip […]
Read more "The Monster (2016)"[Literal Translation: If All the Women in the World… (Operation Paradise)] We’ve heard that art imitates life. And a parody is, of course based on the original work. But sometimes it works the other way. Take Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, for example: it’s a lighthearted parody of the James Bond films, right? […]
Read more "Se tutte le donne del mondo… (Operazione Paradiso) [Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die] (1966)"It’s only a step from “it was inevitable” to “you’ve got to be kidding!” Now those of you who lived through the Eighties can probably remember how, a decade later, several popular horror franchises suddenly moved their latest movies into outer space. Critters may have been the first, but such unlikely franchises as Leprechaun, Friday The […]
Read more "Amityville in Space (2022)"
rivets on the poster 