If you missed my review of Václav Mergl’s “Krabi,” you will need a brief catch up. At a time when you could find a lot of talented and innovative animators behind the Iron Curtain, Václav Mergl still stood out. He wasn’t much like the animator most of us who are familiar with the era will […]
Read more "Laokoon (1970)"It happened so fast. One day, the digital effects in your new movie looked absolutely incredible. And the next? Well, they were already starting to look bad. Back in the late Nineties, and early Nothings, computer technology and CGI kept advancing at insane speed, with new animation looking outdated before it was even in the […]
Read more "A.Li.Ce (2000)"(aka, 13-y Apostol) I’m really beginning to think that late Eighties were not a good time for Science Fiction films in the U.S.S.R. In fact, I’ll say that The Thirteenth Apostle is probably the worst Russian Science Fiction film I’ve ever seen. It is also probably the worst adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s work. And, believe […]
Read more "Trinadtsatyy apostol [The Thirteenth Apostle] (1988)"Honorable Mention In 1934, pioneering Japanese director, Yoshiro Edamasa, made a film in which a giant statue of Buddha stands up and takes a walk through Japan. The film was lost during World War II and all that remains of it are a few black and white photos from a magazine article. It was perhaps […]
Read more "Daibutsu kaikoku [The Great Buddha Arrival] (2018)"A lot of people think Highlander II is one of the worst movies ever made. I quite enjoyed it. And, yes, probably for many of the reasons that people hate it. Of course a lot of people will tell you that it doesn’t make sense. But that’s ridiculous. Everything in this film can easily be […]
Read more "Highlander II: Renegade Version [Highlander II: The Quickening] (1991)"(aka Space Men Appear in Tokyo, The Mysterious Satellite) I finally saw the original Japanese version of this film. It is amazing what a difference that can make. Frankly, I didn’t think much of this one when I saw the American dubbed version of this film, bundled in a set with several other public domain […]
Read more "Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru [Warning from Space] (1956)"(aka Da zai nan, Hong Kong Calamity, The Big Calamity, Guan Gong da zhan wai xing ren, Kuan Yu Battles with the Aliens, and probably a lot more I’ve missed) There are some films so insane that you can’t NOT watch them. War God is just about the Platonic ideal of unmissable insane films. After […]
Read more "Zhan shen [War God] (1976)"Fred Olen Ray has a well earned reputation for making bad films. If you have any doubts on that score, check out The Alien Dead, which somehow avoids having any aliens, dead or alive. I’ll concede that some of his films aren’t all bad, like Deep Space, although I might be more lenient towards it because of […]
Read more "Biohazard (1985)"Every now and then, you find a movie which just doesn’t have the faintest clue what it is. This is one of them. It has the uneasy distinction of being one of the first movies Charles Band‘s Empire Films turned out — and it features virtually everyone who would go on to be one of […]
Read more "Ragewar [The Dungeonmaster] (1984)"
rivets on the poster 