(aka, “Italian Godzilla”, Godzilla: The Euro-Trash Version) A psychedelic Italian Godzilla film? Well…yes and no. In 1977, Luigi Cozzi, best remembered for his goofy Star Wars rip off, Starcrash (and the terrible Alien rip off, Contamination/Alien Cargo) got the job of preparing a version of the original Gojira for the Italian market. The only problem was that the distributor […]
Read more "“Cozzilla” (1977)"A lot of people think Highlander II is one of the worst movies ever made. I quite enjoyed it. And, yes, probably for many of the reasons that people hate it. Of course a lot of people will tell you that it doesn’t make sense. But that’s ridiculous. Everything in this film can easily be […]
Read more "Highlander II: Renegade Version [Highlander II: The Quickening] (1991)"There’s a moment early on that really defines this film. And, no, I don’t mean the fact that it starts with a woman screaming. Liz and her controlling boyfriend Jackson are planning a big party in which he will “spontaneously” ask her to marry him. They want everything to be perfect (and even rehearse that […]
Read more "An Ideal Host (2020)"Sometimes I wish I knew what a movie was trying to say. This is particularly true of Shifter. Here we have a young and awkward woman with almost non-existent social skills, who is very sensitive and easily hurt. But, in our age of movie revenge, how much sympathy are we supped to feel for her when she […]
Read more "Shifter (2020)"This was Jerry Warren’s first film. Which makes it much harder to explain why it was so much better than most — or perhaps, nearly all — of his films that followed. In fact, he followed it up with the exceedingly dull Teenage Zombies. Go figure. Now don’t get the wrong idea here: this is an […]
Read more "Man Beast (1956)"There is nothing I can think of which more clearly shows just how widely accepted flying saucers had become by the 1970s than this film: a children’s film featuring benevolent aliens. Of course it is a very Disney-fied take on UFOs, one which has a lot in common with the sort of films Disney was […]
Read more "Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)"How can I describe this?… He looks like a forty-year old Archie Andrews who never left Riverdale (or graduated, for that matter), complete with that signature bow tie. Which is hardly what we expect from someone who is supposed to be a teenager in a small Eighties town. I know, we’re not supposed to notice […]
Read more "The Visitants (1986)"There’s a basic truth no filmmaker can afford to ignore: It doesn’t matter how much you blow it up, or how tiny the buildings in your miniatures are. A fluffy bunny looks like a fluffy bunny and will always look like a fluffy bunny no matter how big you make it. The seems a singularly […]
Read more "Night of the Lepus (1972)"This one came with a thoroughly icky sort of reputation. Parasite was one of the films from that brief revival of 3-D in the early Eighties, using a new polarized projection system. This all too short craze produced such classics as, well…Jaws 3-D, Friday the Thirteenth part Three, Nightmare on Elm Street part 3… Well, […]
Read more "Parasite (1982)"Yes, we’ve seen this one before. At least, pieces of it. Little pieces of it. Lots of little pieces of it. Lots and lots of very familiar bits and pieces. Not that they were ever quite in this order before. But what the heck, it’s fun anyway. Now, before you risk watching this one, you […]
Read more "Star Runners (2009)"