Not every film needs to be brilliant. Instead, what we all long for, what the little kid in all of us is really looking for, is an all too brief moment of fun, a few minutes of cinematic escapism, with no need for earth shaking themes or heavy drama. We just want to be thrilled, […]
Read more "Portal Runner (2021)"The weird thing is that, if I told you that Hammer made an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in 1959, most of you would assume that it was a lesser-known horror film from the start of their horror cycle. Although, if you look at their three, completely unrelated […]
Read more "The Ugly Duckling (1959)"I had one of those strange moments those of us who watch a lot of movies often have. I knew I’d never seen the Spanish film, The Sea Serpent, from 1985, and yet that monster looked awfully familiar. I knew I’d seen that face on a poster for a movie which I eventually identified as […]
Read more "Serpiente de mar [The Sea Serpent] (1985)"More than anything else, Return of the Fly reminds me of those endless Universal Horror sequels of the Forties. Even though it was released by Twentieth Century Fox. I suppose it is inevitable: after all, you start such a series of films with some well-known novel (or in the case of The Fly, a short […]
Read more "Return of the Fly (1959)"I have never seen a Polonia Brothers film that recycled this much footage from another of their films. If you know who they are, then you realize this is no idle claim. They started out shooting their own homemade DIY Shot on Video films back in the late Eighties and early Nineties, became cult icons […]
Read more "Invasion of the Empire of the Apes (2021)"Honorable Mention Back in the Eighties, there was an almost ridiculously faithful TV movie adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue made for CBS. I say “ridiculously” because it followed nearly every detail of the original (except for an added romantic subplot but we knew they’d stick that in!) but replaced Poe’s […]
Read more "Death and the Compass (1992)"The general opinion on this one is that it is pretty terrible. I honestly don’t understand why. It may not be brilliant, or what anyone expected, but it is a pretty decent thriller film, even if it must have cost a ton of money for all the special effects that went into it. Now I […]
Read more "Hollow Man (2000)"(aka; Shark: Red on the Ocean; Monster Shark; Red Ocean) Back in 2010, amid a wave of cheap shark movies, there was brief moment of excitement over Sharktopus, a SyFy Network movie whose title had been chosen by the fans in a survey. I suppose it sounded like a good idea at the time. However, […]
Read more "Rosso nell’oceano [Devil Fish] (1984)"(aka, The Silence of Dr. Evans) This is one of those science fiction films which seems quintessentially a Seventies movie. Which seems rather odd when you remember that it was made in the Soviet Union, in the Seventies. Now I’ll admit this is because many of their films — like The Star Inspector [Zvyozdny inspektor […]
Read more "Molchaniye doktora Ivensa [Dr. Iven’s Silence] (1974)"(aka; Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg; U.F.O. Boy Abdulladzhan) “I watched a movie yesterday. It’s called “Stalker”. Andrei Tarkovsky made it. “I understood nothing. “But I liked it” And perhaps it will give you a clue to the gentle humor and keen understanding of film underlying Abdullajon if I point out that our unseen […]
Read more "Abdulladzhan, ili posvyashchaetsya Stivenu Spilbergu [Abdullajon] (1991)"
rivets on the poster 