The things I get myself into… Okay, anytime you try some long-lost film, you know the odds. Most films made by someone you never heard of, in a city without a major film industry are going to be terrible, or worse. We know that. And, yes, M. Night Shyamalan managed to do his best work […]
Read more "Video Wars (1983)"Perhaps it would help if I started with a minor digression on the Quatermass movies. Now I’ve written extensively about them over the years — for example, in these essays at IRoSF and Clarkesworld — and have reviewed both the TV and Movie versions of Quatermass 2 (1957) and Hammer’s version of the first serial for […]
Read more "Quatermass and the Pit [Five Million Years to Earth] (1967)"It would help if I started off with a few comments about Ansel Faraj. Faraj was one of those kids who dreamed of becoming a film director when he grew up. However, instead of going off to film school, he made movies. A lot of movies, actually. I first encountered him in his 2014 film […]
Read more "The Last Case of August T. Harrison (2015)"Hoo Boy. Some of these films, I tell you… Now I suppose it’s worth noting that this one was directed by Kenneth J. Hall, a long-time special effects guy who worked on a lot of movies, including Critters but is also remembered for directing a rip-off of The Wasp Woman for Fred Olen Ray called […]
Read more "The Halfway House (2004)"It is always odd when you see a movie (or book or comic or whatever) which is caught in the middle of a major upheaval. Think of the early sound films with their awkward too square aspect ratio and everyone huddled around the camera in every shot so they can be near the microphone. […]
Read more "Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953)"Look, it’s a question of time and place. When a mysterious boy who seems to be from the future or another reality appears suddenly in England’s West Country and says he is looking for a mysterious intersection of all the lines of power called “the Juganet,” I instantly guessed what it was. After all, I’ve […]
Read more "Sky (1975)"[Warning: Spoilers Ahead] They should have called this one “Rosmary’s Yog Sothoth.” The Dunwich Horror was actually AIP’s third H.P. Lovecraft adaptation in seven years. Mind you, Roger Corman was hoping to start a Lovecraft series of films — as he had with Edgar Allen Poe — when he made The Haunted Palace, based on […]
Read more "The Dunwich Horror (1970)"As far as I can figure out, Not of This World was produced for Syndication by Paramount, a few years before the earliest version of UPN. At the time they were busy syndicating shows to their various affiliates, which leads me to suspect this one might have run in late night or Saturday non-Prime Time […]
Read more "Not of This World (1991)"Galaxina has a reputation as one of the worst films out there. There’s something in that, but perhaps it isn’t entirely fair. After all, the film looks remarkably good for a low-budget 1980s science fiction film, with a dramatic space police ship with very organic lines, whose interior is strange, sparse, and filled with the […]
Read more "Galaxina (1980)"Look, this one is strange. Mind-bending poetic French Art Film strange. Which means it is very strange by anyone’s standards. And yet, in its own elusive and somewhat hypnotic way, I found that I quite liked this one., It’s hard to summarize this one as there is so much plot and so many characters with […]
Read more "Le trésor des îles chiennes [Treasure of the Bitch Islands] (1990)"
rivets on the poster 