This is depressing. I just saw a seemingly endless list of other post-Apocalyptic films by Cirio H. Santiago. What is far more depressing is that several of them were actually earlier than The Sisterhood, so he had practice before he made this one. And perhaps most depressing of all is that he kept making them […]
Read more "The Sisterhood (1988)"This has to be the shaggiest shaggy dog story ever told. For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase, a shaggy dog story is a long, complex, overly detailed comic story which ends up with a goofy non-sequitur twist that makes nonsense of everything we just heard. Which is exactly what we have here. I […]
Read more "Explorers (1985)"It’s like this: There’s this alien overlord, with the massively original name “Lord Doom.” Things haven’t gone so well for him lately, so he’s trapped deep beneath some dark world. But that’s okay, he’ll just take over the Earth. He sends the mercenary Kraa to destroy our opposition and pave the way for his invasion. […]
Read more "Kraa! The Sea Monster (1998)"What a weird and witty little movie! Bernwood (Paula Brancati) is a professional skeptic, who churns out lots of videos exposing one conspiracy theory or another. One might even be tempted to call her an anti-conspiracy nut. But that changes when she encounters an old man named Anderson (Richard Fitzpatrick), who promises her solid evidence […]
Read more "Majic (2019)"(aka Gigantis the Fire Monster, Godzilla’s Counter Attack) Somehow, it comes as no surprise to me that Toho managed to get this film into the theaters six months after the original Godzilla. It is without question the least of all the Godzilla films. Not the worst. No Godzilla film has ever been as bad as Godzilla […]
Read more "Gojira no gyakushû [Godzilla Raids Again] (1955)"This is not a superhero film. Not even close. It’s Flash Gordon with gills. It’s all there: a fantastic new world full of wild, fin-covered “flying” vehicles, rayguns, and a strange collection of new races — crab men, mer-men and those savage mutants from the deep. And the story? Yep, that’s familiar, too. Outsider hero […]
Read more "Aquaman (2018)"This seems to have been my week of watching borderline SF films, with viewings of such films as a ghost story turned alien encounter (High Desert Kill); a wacky screwball comedy with a mad scientist (The Boogie Man Will Get You); and a shaggy dog Gothic horror with a bogus bit of science at its heart (The […]
Read more "Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942)"This is a shaggy dog story. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a long and overly complicated story with a sudden absurd twist at the end which makes nonsense of most of the story we’ve just heard. In fact, I would be hard pressed to say whether this film or […]
Read more "The Maze (1953)"I am a little amused to note that by 1942, Boris Karloff’s run of mad scientist films was already ripe for a bit of mockery. Self mockery, at that. His character in The Boogie Man Will Get You could easily be seen as a distillation of all those mad scientists he’d played: the kindly, genial and […]
Read more "The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)"There was once an era when TV movies could be as good as those in the theaters — and a few (like Duel and The Night Stalker) actually bordered on greatness. Generally, I figure it was over by the early Eighties, but one does occasionally find exceptions, particularly when we are looking at those made […]
Read more "High Desert Kill (1989)"
rivets on the poster 