I have to admit it makes my day when I open a new DVD and find inside a short full-color mini-comic book. Not only is it a fun little extra, but it suggests that someone put in some overtime creating extra layers of depth to its world. More than most SF films do, perhaps. This […]
Read more "Sentinel 2099 SE (2018)"I have a soft spot for Time Travel films. But then, I’ve mentioned that before. Admittedly, they are remarkably hard to do right. Particularly if they’ve chosen to take the exceedingly difficult path of creating one involving multiple trips and lots of intersecting storylines. Which is what we have here. A young man with a […]
Read more "Time Perspectives (2019)"We’ve got one of those all time classic set ups: a tiny island off the Maine coast suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world: the ferry doesn’t show up, they can’t reach anyone on the radio and the phones aren’t working. And, of course, as this is your standard model horror […]
Read more "Island Zero (2018)"Honorable Mention This interesting TV movie marks Michael Crichton’s first directing job. We tend to forget that he actually directed a few movies — including the classic Westworld (1973), Runaway, and The Great Train Robbery — although this one is intriguing because he was filming his own novel, Binary. At the time he still planned to […]
Read more "Pursuit (1972)"There is a steadily growing sub-genre of the post-Apocalyptic film centered around groups of survivors hiding in a shelter together. One could point at A Quiet Place as one of the more successful examples although it isn’t quite as confined as most of them (or perhaps one might say that the family’s confinement isn’t purely physical). […]
Read more "Hidden (2015)"This one is notable because it was the first film directed by Fred Olen Ray’s son, Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray. That is the only notable thing about it. Fred has a certain reputation among bad movie fans for turning out a seemingly endless number of mostly terrible exploitation films, many in the horror, soft porn or […]
Read more "Reptisaurus (2009)"File this one under “you have to start somewhere.” In fact two well-known film professionals got their start with this one: its director, John Landis, would go on to make such films as Animal House and An American Werewolf in London; while the apeman suit was the first of Rick Baker’s monster creations to reach […]
Read more "Schlock (1973)"