(aka, ALMOST HUMAN; DEATH CORPS) This is one of those eerie and effective minor films that stick with you long after you’ve seen them. A small boat on a pleasure cruise encounters a strange orange mist and a mysterious, rusting hulk of a ship. They run aground, the captain vanishes, and the passengers and crew […]
Read more "Shock Waves (1977)"(aka,Biggles) While Biggles won’t mean much to the average American viewer, he was a legendary children’s character in Great Britain, a dashing, World War One pilot who starred in over a hundred adventure novels by W.E. Johns. This attempt to film his adventures started out as a yet another copy of The Raiders of the […]
Read more "Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986)"(aka, Critters 2: The Main Course) It’s been a long time since I saw this one — almost thirty years — and I find that I like it better than when I first saw it. Actually, revisiting the first two Critters films has changed my perspective on both of them: I no longer think Critters is […]
Read more "Critters 2 (1988)"This was one of those films trying to cash in on Star Wars right after it came out. Not that the film itself seems that much like Star Wars (although that really didn’t seem to be that important when it came to attempts to cash in). However, the trailers did their best to emphasize the special […]
Read more "Laserblast (1978)"Shinji Aramaki, for those of you unfamiliar with his work, has made a series of incredible CGI anime, starting with Appleseed back in 2004. At the time, someone claimed that Appleseed wasn’t an Anime, but represented an all new genre of films. Well, that is a tad bit exaggerated, but it is true that his […]
Read more "Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)"This one has the distinction of being the first last Godzilla film. The big lizard’s official demise has been declared several times now (with Godzilla Vs. Destroyah and Godzilla: Final Wars), but perhaps this one was the most significant, because it marked the end of the first era of Godzilla as well as the natural death […]
Read more "Terror of Mechagodzilla [Mekagojira no gyakushu] (1975)"In the Nineties, a lot of the horror franchises decided to take their sequels into space. This made a lot more sense for the Krites than it did for, say, Leprechaun, or Friday the Thirteenth’s Jason Vorhees. After all, they were a deadly alien species, and only showed up on Earth in the first film […]
Read more "Critters 4 (1992)"( aka, Death Warmed Over) This one has the uneasy distinction of being the first horror film from New Zealand. Unfortunately, it suffers from the problem that so many firsts suffer from: the best thing about them is that they are a first. Dr. Howell has a dream: he wants to end death. Permanently. And […]
Read more "Death Warmed Up (1984)"In the digital age, it should come as no real surprise that a number of animators have created one-man films. One thinks of such efforts as Machines Don’t Cry (2006), Flatland and The Chosen One (2007), and of course, the hand-animated Nova Seed (2016). I have a lot of respect for those willing to take on the incredible burden […]
Read more "Archon Defender (2009)"What we have here is a Drive In movie, loaded with zombie creatures, a topless dancer, screaming girls (most of them in their underwear), gruesome heaps of body parts, a bit of blood, John Carradine as a mad scientist, and even Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!‘s Tura Satana. And despite all that, it is basically dull. […]
Read more "The Astro-Zombies (1968)"