Mulgoe combines two very different types of movies: the lavish historical epic of the sort that the Chinese film industry has been making lately, built around political machinations, a serious threat against Imperial power and a heroic figure who steps in to support the Emperor at great cost –and the monster movie. I have to […]
Read more "Mulgoe [Monstrum] (2018)"As I noted in my review of Dr. Who and the Daleks, the first of the two theatrical Doctor Who films made by Amicus back in the Sixties, I was rather surprised to find that I enjoyed it far more than I had in the past and, in fact, found it a far more interesting version […]
Read more "Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)"What amazes me most about this one is that Larry Buchanan did not recycle the creature mask he’d used in so many films before. I mean, it stood in for gill men in Creature of Destruction and Curse of the Swamp Creature, and even put in a stint as a dinosaur still alive after millions of years […]
Read more "The Loch Ness Horror (1982)"Things are a lot harder than they used to be. At least if you are a mad scientist. These days you have to do a lot more research, talk about quantum mechanics or string theory and expect the legion of fanboys out there to complain if you get your formulas wrong. But back in the […]
Read more "The Devil Bat (1940)"(aka Dies Irae) One of the great joys of the endless search for interesting SF films is the accidental finds, those moments when a few odd comments or a stray reference send you after something you never suspected was out there. In this case it was an oddly out of place recommendation from IMDB and […]
Read more "Den gneva [Day of Wrath] (1985)"This was David Cronenberg’s first film and it is in many respects a dry run for Scanners. It is also seriously strange and arty. He got the Canadian government to give him a substantial grant to write a novel, but made this film instead. I really don’t know how they reacted, although I’m cynical enough to […]
Read more "Stereo (1969)"I have no clue what Roger Corman was thinking. This is not one of those films which makes a lot of sense. A cute little kid gets in the middle of a raid by Space Pirates and inadvertently ends up aboard the ship they steal. And it becomes every kid’s dream of becoming a pirate […]
Read more "Space Raiders (1983)"(aka Invisible Avenger) Sometimes things just don’t work out. Take the case of Tômei ningen: it was Toho’s second science fiction film, a more-or-less adaptation of the famous novel by H.G. Wells (more less than more!) with some moderately impressive effects provided by Eiji Tsuburaya. You’d have expected it to do well at the box-office. And […]
Read more "Tômei ningen [The Invisible Man] (1954)"Some movies just leave you asking what they were thinking. Take The Drifting Classroom, for example. This is a movie which hasn’t been seen much outside of Japan — and I really don’t know how hard they tried to market it here — but it is mostly in English, with burnt-in Japanese subtitles. It is […]
Read more "The Drifting Classroom [Hyôryu kyôshitsu] (1987)"The one thing that constantly surprises me is how far some people stray from where they started out. Take Luigi Cozzi, one of those Italian directors from the Eighties who is best remembered for making Starcrash, a totally bonkers Star Wars rip off, and Contamination, a moderately bad Alien copy. When I saw that his first […]
Read more "Tunnel Under the World [Il tunnel sotto il mondo] (1969)"
rivets on the poster 