This is one of the most fondly remembered BBC TV movies in their long and varied history. And I feel like a bit of a grinch because I just don’t share the enthusiasm that it has generated. Somewhere in in the more perfect future of 2130, after a devastating catastrophe that no one quite understands, […]
Read more "The Flipside of Dominick Hide [Play for Today: The Flipside of Dominick Hide] (1980)"A group of thieves carry out a daring jewel robbery, and go to meet their fence in a deserted factory. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that the gangster they’re dealing with plans to rob them. Or that the United States Army has been conducting some rather nasty off-the-books experiments in that old factory. Which, unfortunately, have […]
Read more "Junk: Shiryô-gari [Junk] (2000)"If you had to slap a convenient label on this film, you might call it the Destination Moon of the Soviet Union. Like any other hasty label, that really doesn’t sum this film up: after all, it didn’t inspire a long string of other films and usher in a wave of new Soviet Science Fiction […]
Read more "Polyot na Lunu [Flight to the Moon] (1953)"3-D. I don’t know why everyone keeps coming back to 3-D. It seems that there is a fairly regular cycle of 3-D movies: someone invents a new 3-D technology, or perhaps just puts out a few new 3-D movies, and the theaters are suddenly full of films with things coming at you. It happened in […]
Read more "V-World Matrix (1999)"Some short films are like an entire feature film packed into a small package. And that is perhaps the best description of Specimens: it may only be fifteen minutes long, but it feels like some lost Sci Fi feature film you know you’ve seen but can’t quite remember. Mind you, you probably haven’t ever heard […]
Read more "Specimens (1982)"I’m never quite sure what to expect when I come across yet another elegant, beautifully made science fiction film, from Mainland China, loaded with action and special effects. After all, there have been so many of them lately. And quite a few of them have impressed me. I’ll admit that. You can even find some […]
Read more "Po meng youxi [Dream Breaker] (2018)"Honorable Mention How in the world do you even begin to talk about a film like Battle Heater? There are some many things that it is — or almost is — that it’s hard to know where to start. Hama (Akira Enomoto) is an electrician who gathers all sorts of electronic junk, repairs it and […]
Read more "Batoru hîtâ [Battle Heater] (1989)"I’ll admit it, I watch some pretty strange films. Take Computer of Death, for example. Here we have what amounts to an attempt at a Greek copy of Tron. Only it must have been made for less than you’d spend for a used car. You see, Paris Vellis is a genius computer expert. We know […]
Read more "Ta kompiouter tou thanatou [Computer of Death] (1987)"I’ve been looking for this one for a while. Back in 2011, Jeff Waltrowski released an interesting microbudgeted faux-Thirties film called It Came from Yesterday which riffed on the old adventure serials. Jeff himself starred as Professor Jack Cranston, genius inventor and the head of the crime-fighting Electric Club, which was a sort of cross […]
Read more "Project: Valkyrie (2002)"Honorable Mention It has always seemed strange to me that Peter Lorre, who had a long career of playing interesting and often sinister characters, somehow got labelled as a horror icon later in his career, in movies like The Raven, or that episode of Route 66 he did with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr. […]
Read more "Mad Love (1935)"
rivets on the poster 