(aka, The Star Diaries) This is frustrating. Here we have a brilliant and extremely funny Science Fiction television series, one which ranks right up there with the best science fiction comedy series ever made, like the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf, and yet… No one knows about it. Not in the […]
Read more "Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot [Ijon Tichy: Space Pilot] (2007)"There are some movies where it comes as no surprise that Troma films decided to distribute the film, even though they didn’t actually make it. I mean who else in their more or less right state of mind would ever decide to distribute a film like Nightmare Weekend? I’m not sure there is any right […]
Read more "Nightmare Weekend (1986)"I am really beginning to wonder what in the world motivates some of Quentin Tarantino’s movie recommendations. Some of them seem to be sincere. He’s pointed out a few oddball little seen films which deserved a bit more attention than they’d ever got, but some of them… Well, I’m open to the idea that they […]
Read more "The Jet Benny Show (1986)"One of the films I’ve watched which I have never reviewed on this site is Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Nor am I likely to, any time soon. You see, it is a film which is so inherently strange and inexplicable that any attempt to explain it is going to be difficult, if not […]
Read more "Content: The Lo-Fi Man (2023)"(aka, Third Planet After the Sun) I doubt if anyone is exactly surprised that there haven’t been many Bulgarian science fiction films. To be fair, there have been a few, but for the most part no one has ever heard of them in the West. And they are rather hard to find. Particularly when we […]
Read more "Treta sled slantzeto [The Third Planet] (1972)"Some short films are like an entire feature film packed into a small package. And that is perhaps the best description of Specimens: it may only be fifteen minutes long, but it feels like some lost Sci Fi feature film you know you’ve seen but can’t quite remember. Mind you, you probably haven’t ever heard […]
Read more "Specimens (1982)"Honorable Mention How in the world do you even begin to talk about a film like Battle Heater? There are some many things that it is — or almost is — that it’s hard to know where to start. Hama (Akira Enomoto) is an electrician who gathers all sorts of electronic junk, repairs it and […]
Read more "Batoru hîtâ [Battle Heater] (1989)"I’ve been looking for this one for a while. Back in 2011, Jeff Waltrowski released an interesting microbudgeted faux-Thirties film called It Came from Yesterday which riffed on the old adventure serials. Jeff himself starred as Professor Jack Cranston, genius inventor and the head of the crime-fighting Electric Club, which was a sort of cross […]
Read more "Project: Valkyrie (2002)"(aka Revenge of the Defenders, Daitetsujin Wan-Sebun. Literal Translation: Iron Robot 17) It was such an Eighties thing. Take a Japanese children’s TV series and distill all its weirdness into an hour and a half so you could sell it as a movie. Simple, right? Even when it is 35 half-hour episodes. Well, it’s actually […]
Read more "Brain 17 (1982)"The Killer Robots are back! For those of you coming in late, they have been playing and recording music for a long time, wearing these impressive home-crafted robot suits in a style best described as “Retro-junk.” If you really aren’t sure what that means, look at the big wire shoulder ornaments on Strobo (Samuel Williams)’s […]
Read more "Robotica Destructiva (2023)"
rivets on the poster 