This one is bad. So bad that I have to wonder if it were intended as a pilot for a new TV series and when that failed, about thirty minutes of padding was added to turn it into a TV movie. Whatever the case, it’s bad. After twenty five minutes of a totally unrelated sequence […]
Read more "The Lucifer Complex (1978)"(aka Blood Type: Blue, UFO Blue Christmas, The Blue Stigma) This one really isn’t what it appears to be. After all, when one hears about a Toho film about Flying Saucers, one more or less assumes that it’s going to be one of their many special effects laden Tokusatsu films. Even the knowledge that it’s […]
Read more "Burû Kurisumasu [Blue Christmas] (1978)"I”m not a big fan of Soviet era animation. Now I’ll admit I haven’t seen much of it. And one does have to make exceptions for films like Fantastic Planet, which a French director made in Czechoslovakia because it was cheap. And, of course, there is The Fabulous World of Jules Verne and all the other incredible […]
Read more "Uzniki Yamagiri-Maru [Prisoners of Yamagiri-Maru] (1988)"Don’t be fooled by the descriptions. For most of its running time Demonwarp is just a fairly routine Eighties Slasher film. The fact that the killer is a Bigfoot (sort of, more or less, well, that’s what it looks like) really doesn’t change things that much. While George Kennedy gets top billing, he actually only […]
Read more "Demonwarp (1988)"I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for this one. I’ll admit it. I suspect the inspiration here may have been It Came from Outer Space: It starts about the same way, with a bright light falling from the sky and landing in the desert with a big explosion. We hardly need to be […]
Read more "The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)"Think Nouvelle Vague James Bond, directed by Jean-Luc Goddard and you won’t be far wrong. Picture elegant, misty black and white film; bleak modern architecture contrasted with Art Nouveau and carnival rides; a stunning collection of classic cars; and some of Antoni Gaudi’s best known works. The familiar image of an H-bomb blast runs backwards, […]
Read more "L’inconnu de Shandigor [The Unknown Man of Shandigor] (1967)"I sometimes find myself wondering what went wrong with some of these films. After all, they had so much to work with here! I suppose that’s why it comes as no surprise that this was a TV movie — or that it was a Canadian/Czech co-production. Now, just to be clear, we aren’t talking about […]
Read more "Downdraft (1996)"What do you know. They made a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark in Poland. It really isn’t a surprise, as everyone seems to have copied that film, with countless imitations from the US alone, including The Jewel of the Nile, King Solomon’s Mines and High Road to China, and many more from Italy (The […]
Read more "Klatwa doliny wezy [Curse of Snakes Valley] (1988)"Raiders of the Lost Ark has to be one of the most copied films of all time. You don’t have to look too hard to find copies made in the US — offhand one thinks of The Jewel of the Nile, King Solomon’s Mines and High Road to China, but it isn’t much harder to find […]
Read more "Sky Pirates (1986)"Honorable Mention (Maybe. I Think. Who can tell?) This is a seriously strange film. I have no idea what to think about it. But it has earned a mention here because it is a sequel — or more-or-less sequel, or some sort of strange alternate reality continuation or something even more tenuously connected — to […]
Read more "The Interrogation of Cheryl Cooper (2014)"
rivets on the poster 