The B-Masters Cabal » Movies in General

Scads o’ monster flicks on TCM in June…

kbegg — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:51:01 +0000

TCM SPOTLIGHT: Drive-In Features: Monsters, Mutants and Martians – Thursdays in June

There was a time when summer meant packing up the car and heading to the drive-in for a night of fun and frights with monster-movie double feature. Although most of the country’s drive-ins have died out, TCM is bringing the drive-in to the living room with a month of great double bills each Thursday night.

The excitement begins June 2 with two pairs of Japanese monster movies making their TCM debut: the original Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) and Rodan (1958), followed by Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster (1965) and Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1970). (In keeping with the theme, TCM will present these films as American drive-in audiences would have seen them, with the Japanese dialogue dubbed into English.) The night also includes the TCM premiere of The Valley of Gwangi (1969), featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen. Also scheduled: Dinosaurus!

June 9 is packed with creepy creature features, including the outstanding Them! (1954) and the TCM debut of The Cosmic Monsters (1958), Tarantula (1955) and The Wasp Woman (1959). Also scheduled: The Black Scorpion and The Giant Claw.

TCM gets large on June 16 with the premiere of The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) before handing things over to the ladies with Zsa Zsa Gabor in Queen of Outer Space (1958) and Yvonne Craig in Mars Needs Women (1968). Also scheduled: Village of the Giants, The Cyclops, The Manster and The Killer Shrews.

On June 23, monsters are on the rampage with such titles as It Came from Beneath the Sea(1955) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), both featuring effects by Ray Harryhausen, as well as the TCM premieres of The Giant Behemoth (1959) and The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955). Also scheduled: The Monster that Challenged the World and The Creature from the Haunted Sea.

The month ends with June 30 double features focusing on blobs, including the seminal classic The Blob (1958); radioactive creatures, such as The Magnetic Monster (1953); and killers from space, including The Thing from Another World (1951). Also scheduled: The H-Man, X the Unknown and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. The program caps with a showing of the TCM documentary Keep Watching the Skies!

Horrible News: RIP Yvette Vickers…

kbegg — Tue, 03 May 2011 13:07:42 +0000

The body of early Playboy Playmate and cult film icon (the memorable bad girl of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches) Vyette Vickers was found in her Beverly Hills home yesterday. Horribly, the body was literally mummified, indicating that Ms. Vickers had passed away and remained undiscovered for up to a year. She would have been (approximately) 83 at the time of her passing. Rest in Peace.

Nude Kickboxing Rides Again

KeithA — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:19:26 +0000

NAKED FIST
Naked Fist is a terribly silly film, but for some reason I love it. Even after watching it about 5 times (and poring over bits of it frame-by-frame while trying to edit the damn thing together), I still find it ludicrously entertaining. Oh sure, a lot of it is amateurish, the acting is by and large terrible and the plot full of holes, but it’s never dull. There’s an action scene about once every ten minutes and these are fairly well done. They don’t hold a candle to what was being done in Hong Kong or Taiwan at the same time, but are still better than what you’d find in an American film of this vintage, or even subsequently. There’s very little of the ‘stand still while I kick you’ style later popularised by Jean-Claude Van Damme films, and it’s notable that Naked Fist predates the whole ‘underground martial arts tournament’ craze that exploded in the wake of Bloodsport.

And no nude kickboxing, but there are shirtless gold monks…

18 BRONZEMEN
Those wacky Shaolin monks. If legend is to be believed, they came up with any number of ways to school young acolytes in the Ways of Kung Fu. These were ingenious, esoteric and usually very, very fatal to any student who hadn’t quite mastered the techniques required. No legend is more mysterious than that of the Bronze Men. Any budding monk would have to pass through the halls of these dreaded metallic automatons, using all his speed and skill to avoid their deadly crushing blows. But is there some scrap of truth in this ancient and terrifying myth?Um, no.

In keeping with our theme…

Nathan Shumate — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:06:30 +0000

~~I know, I know, no one has posted their Corman tribute reviews yet (mine’s coming, honest), but I couldn’t let this pass without note:~~

~~Happy 82nd birthday to Roger Corman!~~

Update: Someone fed me bad information. Why? Why would someone do that? Don’t they know that every time someone falsely celebrates Roger Corman’s birthday, a kitten dies? DON’T THEY?

(It is, however, Ennio Morricone’s 82nd birthday. So the cake and streamers don’t have to go entirely to waste.)

Some taglines are best left unused.

Nathan Shumate — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:13:15 +0000

Announcement:

I am sick to death of horror/thriller posters that use some variation of “Some secrets are better left buried” for the tagline.

Thank you.

More noms.

Nathan Shumate — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:54:49 +0000

My occasional crash-course survey of the cannibal genre continues with Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978), in which a schlocky Italian director makes exactly the kind of movie that people mean when they speak derisively of schlocky Italian cinema. But hey, at least Ursula Andress looks good.

Every town has an Elm Street.

Nathan Shumate — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:02:36 +0000

The trailer for the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake is up, and it looks commendable.

I appreciate that this movie takes him back to his frightening, nightmarish roots — the ones he exhibited for about four-fifths of the first movie, and which were subsequently buried under the gimmickry and one-liners of the sequels.

I’m a little worried, though, about the implied revisionism, since it seems from the trailer (though it could be negated in the full feature) that this Freddy Krueger is an innocent, murdered without cause by vigilante justice. That’s absolutely the WRONG tack to take with him. Despite all of the pop-culture charisma that Robert Englund exuded in the role through its many installments, the original Freddy Krueger was the worst kind of human monster: He raped and killed little children. To instead make him a wronged outsider whose revenge is therefore justified in some degree is wrong wrong wrong. Yes, standard issue Hollywood revisionism which makes the good guys bad and the bad guys innocent, but still wrong.

But I may be reading too much into it. I’ll have to wait and see.

And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you…

Nathan Shumate — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:27:34 +0000

Darkstone Entertainment
(via)

To Liz, with Love…

kbegg — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:55:36 +0000

OK, on the face of it, not a movie that Liz in particular would seem to be interested in, correct?

Ah, but look closer my friends….

That’s right, Albert Pyun is now such an industry giant that he gets to “present” movies made by other directors!

This is a proud day for world cinema.

Relive the Full Moon experience (in a good way).

Nathan Shumate — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:59:00 +0000

For some bizarre reason, The Full Moon Archives Music Collection is available on Jamendo.com, which is a Creative Commons site mostly populated by indie artists trying to drum up some interest with free downloads. That’s right, guilt-free music downloading! This collection contains everything from classic Richard Band themes like The Pit and the Pendulum and Doctor Mordrid (here mislabeled “Doctor Morbid”) to title tracks from Evil Bong and Gingerdead Man 2.