When I think about Banshee Chapter, I keep finding myself saying “almost” or “nearly” or “not quite” over and over. It is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond. Well, almost. The original version of the script started life as a first draft of Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark, but obviously that didn’t quite […]
Read more "Banshee Chapter (2013)"[Literal Translation: If All the Women in the World… (Operation Paradise)] We’ve heard that art imitates life. And a parody is, of course based on the original work. But sometimes it works the other way. Take Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, for example: it’s a lighthearted parody of the James Bond films, right? […]
Read more "Se tutte le donne del mondo… (Operazione Paradiso) [Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die] (1966)"Monsters of Man was one of those films I’d been meaning to get to for a long time. That happens. I’d heard a few good words about it, and the trailers were excellent, but I never paid too much attention for one reason or another. But it is one of those solid action films which proves […]
Read more "Monsters of Man (2020)"Ah, yes, the mixed reaction. I’ve ended up watching several of Drew Maxwell’s ultra-low budget films lately. I was reasonably impressed by his Dark Nemesis (2011), and went in search of his other films. I was mildly surprised to learn that he also directed a film I’d already watched, the mostly okay but unmemorable Guardians, […]
Read more "The Sleeper (2007)"This is a strange one, folks. It is also not what you think it is. After all, most of the canned descriptions start with events which are not disclosed until most of the way into the film. Which, I suppose, is what you have to do to find a simple narrative which explains what this […]
Read more "The Rift: Dark Side of the Moon (2016)"Look, there is a basic rule every filmmaker trying to make a drug culture film should follow: Don’t make it while you are high. There are a lot of things — an incredible, almost unimaginable number of things — which may seem like a great idea when you are stoned that just don’t work once […]
Read more "Brainblast (1987)"Let’s see… A surreal Ethiopian Cyberpunk comedy shot on a nothing budget? Even better, we’re talking a strange and phantasmagorical film with a mind-boggling set of plot twists; a movie which is inventive, absurd and surreal; an endlessly complicated film which dances nimbly through countless layers of reality while inflicting one bizarre new situation on […]
Read more "Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)"This one was a pleasant surprise. I’ll confess I didn’t expect too much of it: it was produced by Robert Emenegger, who made a whole bunch of super cheap movies within a year or two of each other in the early Eighties. He also gave us Warp Speed (1981), a creepy haunted space ship movie which […]
Read more "PSI Factor (1980)"For some reason, 2016 brought two movies based on one of the goofiest conspiracy theories out there, that classic bit of internet paranoia, the belief that the Moon Landing was faked – and, that final, irresistible fillip that truly makes this the paranoid conspiracy theory of paranoid conspiracy theories, the suggestion that the great director […]
Read more "Operation Avalanche (2016)"
rivets on the poster 