I’ll confess it. I like Frank Sudol’s weird little animated films a lot more than I should. I first encountered him in the anthology film, Monsterland (2016), to which he contributed a funny but gory animated short which went on a little too long. I then caught his feature film, Shock Invasion (2010), a gleefully black […]
Read more "City of Rott (2006)"I never thought I would see this film. And now, not only have I seen it, but I’ve seen two different versions of the film. When I first heard of it, under its original name, Savannah Electric Monochrome Dystopia (which I still prefer!), it was almost a myth, one of those tiny independent films you […]
Read more "Savannah Electric Monochrome Dystopia [The Savannah Resistance; Savannah Electric] (1985)"I just cannot believe this was a student film. Or, for that matter, a short film. The visuals are stunning. Sure, some of it was finding good locations, or redecorating them in surprisingly effective ways. But even big budget films struggle to look this good. It was made by a German film student named Michael […]
Read more "Ausgestorben [Extinct] (1995)"(Literal Title: UFOs in Zacapa) Before we get started, there’s something here we need to point out: O.V.N.I. is an acronym for what we would call a UFO. It’s used in several languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese and even Spanish, which are close enough to each other that the acronym is the same in all […]
Read more "Ovnis en Zacapa (2015)"Short films are so hard to find. There was a bit of word of mouth going around about this film and director Michael Pohl’s earlier short film, Extinct, when I first started looking for films online. And here it is, about Fifteen years since I first started looking for Vortex, and over Twenty years since […]
Read more "Vortex (2001)"I’ve got a real soft spot for The Last Man on Earth. It’s far from perfect, but the first half hour or so is as close most movies ever come. But a year after it came out, Mario Gómez Martín directed this interesting short version of the novel that inspired the Vincent Price movie, Richard […]
Read more "Soy leyenda [I Am Legend] (1967)"I’m not sure you can really call this one an “animated film.” Well, the little puppet characters do move at times — or so it seems But most of the time they just stand there. In fact, a surprising amount of the movement in this film is accomplished with cuts, or camera movements, or something […]
Read more "H.P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror and Other Stories [H.P. Lovecraft no Dunwich Horror Sonota no Monogatari] (2007)"(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)"(Honorable Mention) When you go out in search of the lost and forgotten treasures of Science Fiction cinema, you end up following a lot of strange byways and cul-de-sacs. What led me to this one was Jeff Lieberman, a director who made a few interesting films in the late Seventies and Eighties. He has a […]
Read more "Blue Sunshine (1977)"You have to admire his bravery. A lot of directors run away the moment anyone starts talking about their early work and it isn’t much of a surprise. After all, most early efforts were made long before their creators had any clue what they were doing. Most of them end up cringing the minute their […]
Read more "The Brain Leeches (1978)"
rivets on the poster 