Continuing to fill up the Rubber Soul Roundtable…
THE MAZE
There are a lot of times when I don’t remember a movie (sometimes mere hours after watching it), but I remember a particular scene or vague theme from the movie. All I could remember about Treasure of the Four Crowns was the scene where fireballs on ridiculously [...]
It’s time for the latest Video Binge over at Cold Fusion, which is an entire month of first sequels to movies I’ve previously reviewed. Can’t you just feel the electricity in the air?
First up is 666: The Beast (2007), which is a sequel to a knockoff of a remake of a knockoff. Which [...]
It’s time for another chapter of That Was Then, This Is Now, in which Chad Denton of The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and I take a look at Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel, The Lodger, and some of the films adapted from it.
Warning: All three reviews plus the discussion that follows contain explicit spoilers of [...]
Todd chimes in with the first of Teleport City’s contributions to the Rubber Soul roundtable:
HANUMAN AND THE SEVEN ULTRAMEN
When I’m writing about a movie, I’m much less interested in telling you how good or bad it is than I am in justifying the time I spent watching it. As such, I’m looking for those points [...]
If I wanted to craft the worst metaphor you’d see all week (on this site, at least), I’d say the following:
“Dark Corners (2006) demonstrates that now matter how gorgeous and durable your collection of yarn is, it doesn’t mean a damned thing if you don’t knit the stuff into a sweater.”
But, of course, I have [...]
Be-Sharam
If you wanted to, it seems like you could draw up a sort of family tree of the films Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan made during his late seventies to mid eighties prime, tracing each of those movies’ origins along three very distinct lines, each leading back to a particular career-defining blockbuster that provided the template [...]
Casus Kiran
It’s hard to write about these old Turkish superhero movies–especially those directed by Yilmaz Atadeniz–without making reference to the Republic serials of the 1940s. The problem with doing so, however, is that many of you young people out there, with your newfangled transistor radios and souped-up hotrods, will have no idea what the hell [...]
Paid to Kill (1954) a Hammer film noir with some actual noir content! Also suspense, betrayal, and a huge company with a meaningless name!
Nathan Shumate is the proprietor of Cold Fusion Video Reviews.
Six black slaves rise from the grave, grab up some weapons, and begin killing white people, in another zombie romp from director Umberto Lenzi. Features include, “Waking the Dead for Dummies,” “Zombie Film Cliche List,” and another music video from Grady. Jessica gets all the best lines…
Watch or download the video on Vimeo.com
Steve Billups is [...]
TOOFAN
All of this is a shame not just for the audience, who must suffer through Toofan’s vast stretches of unengaging filler, but also for Amitabh Bachchan, who so desperately needed for the movie to be a hit. Because, as I’ve indicated, Toofan contains all the makings of a very entertaining film; it’s just that those [...]
EVENT HORIZON
I didn’t see Event Horizon when it was released. I’m not sure why. I mean, it’s a gory film about a spooky spaceship. I think, however, in 1997, I saw maybe three film the entire year, and that was when I went out on dates with a lovely Southern belle. Somehow we [...]
Blood Oath (2006) is one of the new crop of indie slasher flicks, so you know you’re going to get a thigh-deep heap of “homages” to movies that were forgettable when they originally showed at the drive-in, and characters who are are periodically lobotomized so that they’ll behave as only characters in slasher flicks behave. [...]
The Moonstone
The Moonstone marks our first real foray into a universe in which we will be spending a lot of time as I work my way through this latest round of Netflix Diaries: the Poverty Row thriller. An understanding of what Poverty Row was — if not an actual appreciation for its product — is [...]
Iron Claw The Pirate
In the course of doing my usual rigorous research in preparation for bringing you the most carefully considered review of Iron Claw the Pirate possible, I came upon some information that seemed to suggest that it was the second film in a series of Iron Claw movies. That made sense to me, [...]
For some reason, it was just one really good movie after another this update cycle. So naturally, I had to break the streak by watching something produced by David Friedman…
Bummer! (1973), which would be indistinguishable from a 1930’s vicesploitaion movie were it not for all the ugly clothes, ugly hair, and ugly music…
The Little Girl [...]
Dark Heroine Muk Lan-Fa
The Jane Bond films, in most cases, were cheap, hastily-made affairs, and The Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa is no exception. With its monochrome photography and Spartan sets, the film bears as much similarity to the Republic serials of the forties as it does to the spy films of its era, and [...]
You may think that my review of The Glass Tomb (1955) is simply another in a string of examinations of the American/British noir coproductions of Robert Lippert and Hammer Films. But no, I have ambitions in this review. Lofty ones. It is now my personal mission to add to the lexicon of B-movie enthusiasts the [...]
So, my ongoing game of Bad Movie Word Association led me from Richard Jaeckel in a rip-off of Jaws directed by William Girdler to Richard Jaeckel in a rip-off of Willard directed by William Grefé. I was expecting a bit of idiotic fun. Instead I got something horribly akin to a shark snuff film.
THE JAWS OF DEATH (1976)
Liz Kingsley is [...]
HAUSU
Collectively these girls inhabit a world straight out of a seventies Saturday morning cereal commercial, one in which people rise to greet the day with arms outstretched to the sun as cartoon rainbows play across the horizon to the strains of treacly soft rock. As Obayashi presents it, you wouldn’t be at all surprised if [...]
CAPTAIN BLOOD
Watching Flynn in this role, it’s hard to believe this is his first time as a leading man. He handles the role with astounding proficiency. It is impossibly not to cheer for Captain Blood, and the script provides Flynn ample opportunity to deliver stirring speeches about freedom and tyranny, punctuated by scenes of guys [...]