Ignore the fact that GKids released this one. It definitely isn’t for kids. Although that would be a lot more obvious had it been released in the U.S. under its original name. A few years ago, Studio 4C, who have long been noted for their strange and unusual animated films, released Tekkonkinkreet: It got a […]
Read more "MFKZ [Mutafukaz] (2017)"You’re having dinner at home with a few guests and your old friend and neighbor, Don Carlo, shows up talking about how he plans to destroy you all. Good ol’ Don! I suppose it would be a socially awkward moment — if anyone noticed, that is… So, naturally, Don goes off to his mad scientist […]
Read more "Doctor of Doom (1979)"Honorable Mention (Well it might be Science Fiction, if you stick around long enough. Wait and see) Kevin Smith made a Bigfoot film? Well…not quite. He only produced it. It is in his View Askew Universe, and was produced by View Askew Productions. Two of his friends, Malcolm Ingram and Matt Gissing, wrote and directed, […]
Read more "Drawing Flies (1996)"Dripping water. A pot of tea, a screw lying loose on the floor, moths trapped inside the light fixture, clothes in the washing machine. Space travel is slow, time-consuming, and there is little to distinguish one day from the next. But that doesn’t matter if you are a robot. Yoko Suzuki is an android whose […]
Read more "Hiso hiso boshi [The Whispering Star] (2015)"Someone described Juan-Carlos Olaria, the director of this film, as a Spanish Ed Wood. Which, of course, was one of the main reasons for watching this one. The Man from Ganimedes offers a very strange narrative: a writer who churns out pulp Westerns and Detective Thrillers for a set price is suffering from writer’s block. […]
Read more "El hombre perseguido por un O.V.N.I. [The Man of Ganimedes] (1976)"Honorable Mention (…Well, part of it is science fiction. If you squint hard enough.) The same year that Ghostbusters came out, Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd appeared in a comedy written and directed by one of the best writers from Saturday Night Live, Tom Schiller, in his feature film debut. But you’ve never seen it. […]
Read more "Nothing Lasts Forever (1984)"(aka She Was a Hippy Vampire) This is probably Jerry Warren’s best film. Yes, I know I said that about Frankenstein Island. And, yes, I know that isn’t saying much. But what we’ve got here is so strange and so… Okay, I can’t help it, it’s the right word: …”Batty”, that it defies any rational explanation. […]
Read more "The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)"It’s amazing how many films which arrived amid paeans of praise have since vanished. It is even more remarkable that some of them debuted at the elite Cannes Film Festival and have since been long forgotten. But there have been a few, and what’s more, a few from Cannes’ glory days during the French New […]
Read more "Manden der tænkte ting [The Man Who Thought Life] (1969)"“Seth Ickerman” — who is really the French directing duo, Raphaël Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard — first came to my attention with the “trailer” for a film called “Ickerman,” which featured a dazzling combination of a high-tech future, a touch of Film Noir, and a lot of movie nostalgia. I still hope they will get […]
Read more "Blood Machines (2019)"It’s always a pleasant surprise when someone locates some forgotten but interesting little film and makes it available once again. In this case, Garagehouse Pictures turned up this minor gem, an independent film directed by a young man who would become a special effects expert, which no one noticed during its brief UK theatrical run […]
Read more "Foes (1977)"