This is the fourth of Alvaro Passeri’s films I have seen. And so far it is the only one which disappointed me. Passeri was a veteran special effects expert from the Italian film industry who decided in the mid-Nineties to make his own movies. The five he created were all made on ridiculously small budgets, […]
Read more "Flight to Hell (2003)"(aka, Creature dagli abissi) It’s a hallucination. It has to be. It’s the only explanation I can find that makes any sense. No, I’m not talking about the absurdities of Plankton’s overloaded plot, or the scenes which cannot be forced to make any sort of logical sense. I’m talking about the existence of this film. […]
Read more "Plankton [Creatures from the Abyss] (1994)"As I continue my searches through the world of science fiction film, I find myself more and more impressed by the work of people with minimal resources who used their creativity, skill and sheer determination to put their vision on the screen. These days, our technology put almost anything on the screen, and yet we […]
Read more "The Shadow Out of Time (2012)"[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)"I’ll confess that I sometimes find myself wishing I liked some of these films more than I do. This is particularly true of no-budget DIY films which have nothing but sheer determination behind them. The sort of film which has no reserves of money or resources to pull it through. Or skill, for that matter. […]
Read more "Revenge of the Lost (2017)"What a lovely little film! For some reason, some of the best stop motion animated short films ever made came out of Eastern Europe in the SIxties and Seventies. I honestly don’t know why this was true, perhaps because of they applied their traditions of craftsmanship in making toys and dolls to creating the wondrously […]
Read more "Kybernetická babicka [Cybernetic Grandmother] (1962)"“The sky above Neo-Berlin has the color of a broken television.” A city, wrapped in darkness and smoke and drenched by eternal rain. Against this dark, grey background, we see blinking lights, dingy, badly lit signs in strange languages, and flying cars. It’s like it’s the Eighties once again and we’ve wandered into the one […]
Read more "Attack of the Cyber Octopuses (2017)"Okay, I’ll admit it. I just love this film. A lot. Probably far more than it deserves. And as this is one of Ray Harryhausen’s best films, that’s already quite a bit. I’m not sure he had a finer moment as an animator than the scene where lariat twirling cowboys go up against a dinosaur. […]
Read more "The Valley of Gwangi (1969)"I saw this one courtesy of a very worn VHS tape. And that is really the way to see it. You have to remember that Mark and John Polonia — the twin brothers from Wellsboro, Pa. — were the uncrowned kings of the direct-to-VHS SOV (shot on video) market. They became cult icons with their […]
Read more "Saurians (1994)"It would probably help if we started with N.G. Mount. He was a French Video Store owner named Norbert Moutier who made a series of absurdly cheap films, generally with horror and science fiction elements — and a healthy amount of gore. While he talked about them as a commercial enterprise and marketed them on […]
Read more "Dinosaur from the Deep (1993)"
rivets on the poster 