So one big benefit of Amazonprime and some other demand services, is that you can get a fairly big library of "no name" films. Even some older classics that have just not maintained huge popularity over the years. I've started watching some of these to add some variety and see some new ideas or repeat ideas done a new way. I figure it would be neat if others were doing this (esp whilst on lockdown) and we can share what we find - who knows might find a few rough diamonds in the sea of options!
Recently watched "Terminal Force". It's a bit like Starwars meets Terminator with a female lead. Battle of good VS evil culminating in two being sent back in time to secure a gemstone that will ensure either destruction or peace for the future of humanity. A fairly "dark" film in terms of how many scenes are set in the dark. Not impossible to see what is going on, but they've certainly used dark sets and scenes to help their limited budget. Lots of explosions and general pew-pew shooting in the early part and some decent acting for a B. A nice story that doesn't go anywhere shocking or surprising, but its a nice adventuring romp with a sci-fi twist.
Enjoyable, watchable, nothing outstanding, just good fun.
I recently watched 'Voyage to the Planet of the Dinosaurs' on Amazon Prime. I'm going to guess it was known by a couple of other names since it was made. A manned mission to Venus is in trouble before it even lands, ending up in a mashup of rescue mission and exploration.
It's bizarre. It looks like it was made on a budget of £2.75 and then the film was marinated in a flooded cellar for a year or two. I've never actually seen MST3K but if this never ended up on that show, I'd be surprised. Highlight for me is when they command the mission's robot as if they're old-timey hypnotists. "John... You are under my control...! You must obey my orders...! John...!"
Looking back through my watch history... Jack the Giant Killer, 1962. Explicitly made as a kind of Harryhausen cash-in, made by the guy who directed Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and who worked on a couple of actual Harryhausen films. It looks as described: kind of sub-Harryhausen, but it's not too bad. It's got that corny, brightly-coloured '1950's historical' look, and a lot of the creature effects have a kind of charm and personality. I think that's helped by the huge eyes swivelling in their armature sockets.
Yog: Monster From Space. Classic japanese kaiju film. It comes in kind of in between. Looks nuttier than a fruitcake, but some of the creatures are entertaining.
Comettv just ran "Creature" from 1985. AKA titan find.
An unashamed little alien ripoff of no real import but a pretty competently made low budget movie for it's day. The effects were far above laughable and frankly look better than most asylum movies today.
Had some very well designed sapcesuits and ships. For a low budget alien clone it was one of the better ones.
This is apparently a B Movie made to be a spoof of B Movies! One that did so well it spawned a TV cartoon and several sequel films. I even recall seeing the TV series in the UK years ago (I think it was the second season since the Tomatoes were a lot bigger whilst the first is more smaller ones).
It's - erratic and totally and utterly nuts and yet there's a story as well - even though its nuts. It's like a series of sketches linked together, but with continuity. Totally fun and crazy.
Kinda sad they screwed up the title screen, making te original title vaguely eye shaped was pretty much the only good touch in the movie. Tragic but true.
Matt Swain wrote:Comettv just ran "Creature" from 1985. AKA titan find.
An unashamed little alien ripoff of no real import but a pretty competently made low budget movie for it's day. The effects were far above laughable and frankly look better than most asylum movies today.
Had some very well designed sapcesuits and ships. For a low budget alien clone it was one of the better ones.
Klaus Kinski was in that, no? If he was, I remember this movie for it's... clothing free scenes as well as the realization at age 11 or 12 exactly how important to me... clothing free scenes were.
If you liked reptilicus have you seen sid pink's two other scifi movies: The angry red planet and journey to the seventh planet yet?
I have seen the Angry Red Planet and its great gimmick, but not the other that I recall.
If you liked reptilicus and the angry red planet I do recommend you track down (Hint: it's not hard) "Journey to the seventh planet". It's better than reptilicus and at least equal to the angry red planet. You might want put a rubber ball on your mpouth to bite down on during the horrible theme songs, or be prepaed to scream loudly to drown them out, but otherwise it's good f you like the earlier movies. Stars Mr. B scifi movies himself, John Agar.
This is the theme to the movie, and again I recommend a rubber ball in the mouth to bite down on if you plan to listen to it.
https://youtu.be/EMYmtYF8MTQ
Since a few people here probably like warhammer 40,000 I wonder if people here like "the mutant chronicles" movie.
It was based on a game that was an attempt to create an alternative tabletop game to wh40k, and as such still had a strong 40k feel to it.
Yeah, cheaply made with low grade effects but had some top quality actors in it. I pretty much liked it all in all. A B movie with some A list actors. It looked like they added unnecessary and grossly fake cgi blood splatters into the movie post production, I don't know what they thought they were doing but they look fake and really detract from the movie.
I'm watching Hellraiser for the first time while painting some Grey Knights, and holy crap is this flick cheesy and awful, but I can't stop watching...
I challenge you to find a better live action film with a dragon as a protagonist/key character. Dragonheart 1 was a major film in its day pushing the CGI of its era somewhat. Sure it look dated now (though not that bad honestly); but for its time it was very top end.
I agree the sequel film took a massive nose dive and I've not seen the others, although the trailers make it look like some of the sequels might actually rise up again somewhat. Certainly film 2 feels more like the B sequel and the others too are the same I think.
Still got to see them one day.
Overread wrote: I challenge you to find a better live action film with a dragon as a protagonist/key character. Dragonheart 1 was a major film in its day pushing the CGI of its era somewhat. Sure it look dated now (though not that bad honestly); but for its time it was very top end.
I agree the sequel film took a massive nose dive and I've not seen the others, although the trailers make it look like some of the sequels might actually rise up again somewhat. Certainly film 2 feels more like the B sequel and the others too are the same I think.
Still got to see them one day.
Dragonheart was a De Laurentis production...... that there is B bona fides...... the first one was a mess of a script and production values BUT it did have some named actors and tech for the time. I even recall a big marketing push with toys and Fast Food tie-ins.
I will name one other movie with a Dragon that was not a protagonist but a key character.... Dragonslayer People should check that out if they are into Dragons on film.
The flames for Vermithrax's breath weapon were HAND ANIMATED.
Not content with that, though, the animators ALSO animated the lens-flares for the flames (there are reflections in the "camera glass" for the flames as there would be if they had actually shot real flame with a film camera.
Easier to do these days with cgi and mirroring, but a PITA to do back then, even if there wasn't actually any need to do it - it just makes the scenes look more "real".
Animated films that were a tribute (not parody or satire) of the adam west series.
A lot of us grew up watching batman reruns as a kid, it's old, hokey, campy and still kinda fun. Some of the social and political satire it poked at is still relevant today.
The movies had the voices of adam west in his final role :( , burt ward and julie newmarr.
They realy captured the spirit and style of the old series, but with a bigger budget. We see a "bat rocket" and go to an orbiting space station in the first one, and meet two face who was never on the series in the second.
Hokey kid safe fun, just the thing for the quarantine and family movie night.
Also, I watched DragonHeart 3: Sorcerer's Curse. I was disappointed because the quality jumped up so much, that it was better than 1 and 2! How is this possible? It was still a De Laurentis production?
This was a pretty solid film. Kind of made me sad.
One of my favorite B-films that I rewatch is Buckaroo Bonzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. The cast is fantastic, with Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum (being very, very Jeff Goldblum), Clancy Brown, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, Dan Hedaya, and the esteemed John Lithgow as Lord John Worfin. It's the best kind of campy, with a lot of, "of course that's the way things are" moments, and a fun sci-fi plot.
The humor is spot-on, with the aliens having ridiculous surnames (and John Bigbooté being very sensitive about its pronunciation) and a very poor grasp of Earth culture. John Lithgow chews the scenery like nothing I've seen before or since, and it's an AMAZING performance, with an alien mind in the body of an Italian scientist. He misquotes common phrases in a way that makes you wonder if it's his human host's memory was off, or if it's his alien lack of familiarity with it ("Character is what you are in the dark.").
There are also some very famous, quotable lines from the movie that make it seem like the writers were better than they had any right to be, like "No matter where you go, there you are." (If you haven't heard that before, take a week to catch up on your heritage!).
The movie was intended to be the first in a series, but development hell killed the sequel (and a poor box office showing). This may be a blessing, as catching lightning a bottle twice is not easy, and at least this way I can remember it fondly.
Other fun facts:
The rocket car at the beginning is an actual, functioning jet car. The special effects team asked for the budget to make it, and it turns out it was enough to just build the thing for real. I absolutely LOVE that.
The second movie was to also to include Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China. Few things make me happier than knowing that.
I am across a movie I haven't seen and frankly probably won't see, but it deserves mention here in a b movie thread.
One of the titles it was released under was "Tomb of the blind dead" and it was a gimmick movie. They used to do lots of gimmick movies in the 50's thru the 70's. Usually cheap movies with a gimmick that was meant to get people to come to the theater instead of watching tv at home.
Usually it was some sort of in theater gimmick, like having a cardboard coffin stood up in the lobby with a guarantee if you died of fright watching the movie the producers would donate the coffin to your family to save on funeral expenses.
Other movies had things like a paper skeleton hidden in the theater that would pop up with someone pulled a string.
A few had cheap souvenirs that you got with the movie. The movie "blacula" in theaters gave out "Vampire protection kits"
when you bought a ticket.
Which brings me to "tomb of the blind dead". It's gimmick was that the movie was so horrific with scenes of cannibalism and torture you might vomit while watching it.
Hence movie patrons were given a free vomit bag with their ticket.
Frankly when a movie brags about the fact it might make you vomit, that's a little too "extreme" for me.
Hey, if you want to watch it that's fine but I'm probably going to to give it a pass. I looked it up after seeing it on a review site and some of the reviews were ok, but still, a vomit bag? Really? Yuk.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think I’ve seen that? Trouble with that genre and era, they all kinda blur into one.
So, did you barf?
EDIT: I was just reminded of another b movie I'll give the rating of "worth watching once" to: "Moon 44". (hey, a lot of movies aren't even worth watching once. )
It's not a great movie, it's a cheap sfifi action movie with pre cgi SFX and some decent acting. It's also a movie R. lee Ermy should have been in but wasn't.
No science, don't bother asking technical questions, but does have some entertainment value. Hardcore violent criminal and tech geek do some bonding and die heroically together at the end. A fair midrange B movie.
IIRC it is not vomit inducing, but there maybe some extreme eye violence at one point....... pretty moody cinematography too.
Interestingly enough, the bad guys are Templar zombie knights..... again, I maybe thinking of the wrong movie.
Dragonheart 4 Again, a surprisingly solid flick. Why are 1 and 2 so bad?
Tombs of the Blind Dead (and it’s three sequels) has arrived.
Long weekend ahead, and I might take today as a half day, as I really cannot be arsed with work!
Automatically Appended Next Post: Started Tombs.
15 or so minutes in, we’ve had ominous action, a ‘scene you’re granny would not approve of’. Also, it’s subtitled. Somehow the lack of dodgy dubbing detracts!
Well give us your honest reviews, doc, along with a count of times you either vomited of had to make a toughness test to avoid it.
Meanwhile, here's some more B's to C.....(yuk yuk)
"12 to the moon". Yep it's cheap and monochrome, yet oddly enough had plenty of "color" for a black and white movie. It featured a mixed cast of people (Guess how many? Come on, try!) that was international and interracial. For the day it was made that was pretty progressive.
Basically 12 people from around the world go to the moon and find out they aren't the first beings on it. Really, it was damn good for its time.
"First spaceship on venus" "An eastern bloc movie in not so great color again featuring an international mixed race/gender cast. Not really bad, and acceptable scifi .
"Ikarie xb-1" "Released in america as "journey to the end of the universe" this too is a movie from behind the iron curtain. It's black and white but well made. A bit dry on "action", it's a lot closer to 2001 that star wars.
It mostly deals with day to day life on a starship travelling and relativistic velocities. Has a scene that could be called a slap at the west, but not really that bad. The drama kicks up near the end when people start getting sick and going insane. If you can find a good copy subtitled by someone who knew how to use a spacebar it's good SF.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: How would you rate those films on the Solaris scale of pacing, where one is very fast paced and exciting and Solaris is
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Normally I get a little tired of snark, but you message was too clever, funny and actually a bit too true to be taken as snark, it was actually amusing instead of annoying.
Out of these, I'd say "Ikarie XB-1" was closest. But even it had more interesting and active bits than Solaris. If solaris is a 10 on your scale, Ikarie XB-1 is maybe a 7, or a 7.5 if you're being critical. Ikarie translates out to Icarus, BTW.
First spaceship on venus has some interesting and surreal color images that at least give it a WTF factor and some of the visuals are amusing enough to get a laugh at. Plus it had a pre star wars kinda cute robot. No more than a 5.
12 to the moon actually had some plot and tension, some drama and enough interesting things happening to keep it from being boring. No more than a 3 on the solaris scale.
Honestly I'd love someone to remaster and do a great job subtitling Ikarie and first spaceship on venus, add in "planet bura" and make a "The stars are red" collection of soviet bloc SF films from behind the old iron curtain. I mean look, the soviet union was bad , but that doesn't make all their films bad. Just like not all movies made by an actor or director who did awful things are bad.
I would love to see a “Stars are Red” collection. Hope to see some of those movies you recommended soon, too.
One of these days I’ll finish Solaris. Unfortunately, I had picked that film for a movie night in college, and my wife was more angry than after I had picked the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
I'll recommend "Frankenstein unbound" as a weird but not bad mix of the Frankenstein mythos and science fiction. It's not a typical frankenstein movie but isn't bad, made on a low budget with high effort, people obvious put real work into this movie instead of throwing piles of case at it. Raul Julia was not an obvious choice to play Dr. Frankenstein, but he pulled it off.
Every movie has a story behind it, kid. Not all stories behind all movies are worth knowing, and there are some stories i wish i knew. But harbinger down has a story worth knowing and I'm going to share it with you.
Years ago a studio decided to do a very poor sequel to John Carpenter's "the thing" and got it pretty bad. I'm not sure they even paid attention to the original movie.
One thing they did do right, before ing it up, was to o the movie with practical effects like Carpenter's masterpiece.
Or at least that's what they said they were going to do.
They hired an fx team to do the movies effects with real models and props just like carpenter did. Then at the last minute they weaseled out and and brought in a cgi team to replace them with cgi.
The movie sucked, partially due to the bad story that wasn't consistent with the original, and partly due to not exactly Avatar level cgi.
Well, Amalgamated Dynamics was the company that did the original practical effects. They were not happy at being screwed. They released a bootleg youtube video featuring their effects with animatronics, makeup, prosthetics, etc. The response was so positive they decided to do their own movie and, thru kickstarter, they raised the funding.
They created "harbinger down", an in your face unashamed "the thing" ripoff. They used physical effects, only using digital imagery very rarely to touch up visible wires and such.
Was HD a great movie? Not really. Was it a good movie? Weeeeell, it was a good B movie.
Plus you gotta love the story of a little company of hard working guys shafted by a giant studio, and doing something about it.
I remember seeing Night of the Lepus as a child. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about an actor as a person who was not their character, a person who could be desperate for work.
I am so morbidly curious about that Batwoman film. I'd have to have confirmation that clothing stays on so I don't have to explain TOO much to the wife (or schedule the viewing when I'm not at home) and that there's either dubs or subs.
if that sort of thing floats your boat the.. oh boy.....
have you seen Turkish Star Wars ?
subtitles version
Film makes no sense whatsoever , even the initial fight in the first 5 mins or so you don't really know which ships the good guys are in, seems to change from moment to moment or scene to scene.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I remember seeing Night of the Lepus as a child. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about an actor as a person who was not their character, a person who could be desperate for work.
It took some nerve to make that movie. I will five the model makers credit for doing the best job they could. I never did get the 'thumpthump" sound effect they used for the rabbits.
Turkish star wars are the best star wars in my opinion. It at least provides entertainment and giggles, unlike the original material.
While I was at work and was going through a large amount of material from a closed down store here in town I came upon a movie, that at first look made me shrug and label it as a mediocre film with some half-decent director. Little did I know that I had stumbled upon a movie that actually impressed me. now I am not sure it falls under the B movie genre per se, but I had never heard of it before I found it.
Wer from 2014
I'm not a scarjo fan and I know the "10% of our brain" thing is mostly a myth, but I liked this movie anyway.
The cool idea in it is "What if it turns out that we are god?"
That movie was indeed very good, nice train of thought while watching the movie.
Wow, another fan! Yeah, I mean i tried to not be upset by the 10% myth, but knowing what I do about quantum theory and things like the experiment with a laser and two slots it seems that consciousness and the ability to observe ties into the universe in some fundamental ways. I could see it as a person becoming more aware of how observation affects reality and reaching a point where total awareness essentially equaled total control, basically becoming what could be called god.
Spoiler:
Also the idea that she went back in time, or possibly reached a point where she existed in all times, and essentially started humanity, made it even more intriguing.,
I'm not a scarjo fan and I know the "10% of our brain" thing is mostly a myth, but I liked this movie anyway.
The cool idea in it is "What if it turns out that we are god?"
That movie was indeed very good, nice train of thought while watching the movie.
Wow, another fan! Yeah, I mean i tried to not be upset by the 10% myth, but knowing what I do about quantum theory and things like the experiment with a laser and two slots it seems that consciousness and the ability to observe ties into the universe in some fundamental ways. I could see it as a person becoming more aware of how observation affects reality and reaching a point where total awareness essentially equaled total control, basically becoming what could be called god.
Spoiler:
Also the idea that she went back in time, or possibly reached a point where she existed in all times, and essentially started humanity, made it even more intriguing.,
Well, I know absolutely nothing about those subjects, but it still made my mind boil with interest in the way they presented it. I also liked how the director returned to form with this movie, I have been hoping for a another movie of this format since I saw it.
This is a daft, but oddly clever movie. And from the same pen as Pretty Woman....
Along the comedy lines, "Hell comes to frogtown".
Also, "Lobster man from Mars", which is i admit a ripoff of the idea in 'the producers". A corrupt hollywood studio exec (Is there any other kind of Hollywood studio exec?) has ran up a huge tax bill and needs a massive flop to write off his taxes or go to prison. A scifi fhan comes to him with what seems to be the answer to his crisis, a home made movie called "Lobster man from Mars", a guaranteed box office disaster.
Small local TV Studio which offers a regular horror programme, is stalked by a mystery killer!
Predictably a bit camp in places, but you know? This really is surprisingly good! 26 minutes to go, a body count of three, and still no real idea who the killer is.
I ran across one I had not seen before. It was called;
Phoenix: The Warrior
If you were thinking it was going to be a Sword and Sorcery film.... you are wrong. It is a Road Warrior-esque post-apoc movie. However, the "kicker" is that most of the men were killed by a genetically engineered plague in the Big War. Now the world is only populated by women and women warriors.
I think we can all see how this is an cheap 80's exploitation film trying to cash in on the success of Mad Max. If you have seen what these types of movies bring to the table, then you know exactly what to expect.
It is a Vincent Price film (what a fun actor he is to watch- but the films he was in are almost universally terrible).
It is a monster centipede that grows in your spine when you feel fear (for any reason) and dies back down if you scream. Eventually, scientists can extract it from a person so that it can do horrible things.
On a surprise note, the scientist in charge of the project clearly takes LSD for scientific research purposes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: "Creature from a Prehistoric Planet!"
It turns out that the planet in question is, in fact, just earth.
While I think the right thing to do with a Kaiju film is to show the monsters destroying the city a whole lot, you can still have too much of said destruction if nothing else is happening in your film.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope everyone here has seen The Happening.
I mean, how can you not? It is one of the great worst film classics of our time.
M. Knight does a perfect job of going completely forgetting how to make a movie on every level. I mean, he used to know this stuff, how did he forget?
I suspect it was the increasing free reign he was given as the films got the money rolling in, and the crew that previously stopped him tripping over himself had less and less say in curbing his more wackadoodly ideas
Turnip Jedi wrote: I suspect it was the increasing free reign he was given as the films got the money rolling in, and the crew that previously stopped him tripping over himself had less and less say in curbing his more wackadoodly ideas
Yup. He had a massive ego following his success. He walked away from Disney, even though they were offering him complete control and the money he wanted, because a producer criticised his script for The Lady In The Water.
So, even though they were still going to let him make it exactly as he wanted and weren't going to force him to make any changes, he walked away and went to Warner Brothers because someone felt his script needed further work.
And let us not speak of what he did to Avatar: The Last Airbender
It is a Vincent Price film (what a fun actor he is to watch- but the films he was in are almost universally terrible).
It is a monster centipede that grows in your spine when you feel fear (for any reason) and dies back down if you scream. Eventually, scientists can extract it from a person so that it can do horrible things.
On a surprise note, the scientist in charge of the project clearly takes LSD for scientific research purposes.
Yeah, that's the one where theaters hooked up little electrodes to seats to 'tingle' you at certain moments during the film. Can't understand why that didn't catch on.
The first and foremost problem with M. Knight's work is that he got a reputation for having twist endings. If you go to a movie expecting to be surprised, you won't be, right? So audiences expecting twist endings were universally disappointed either because he had them or because he didn't.
But his films started getting worse for other reasons as well.
- The Village had a lot of things to like about it- it was well written, well shot and well acted. Though not the best of thrillers, far from terrible. Focusing on the twist makes it seem like a much worse film than it is.
- Lady in the Water degraded further- for whatever reason, Knight forgot how to write dialogue before he started up this film. To an extent, this is because the film wants to fill us in on its lore and the character backstories, but it just doesn't work at all. A lot of it is also Knight complaining about how film critics don't like him, and it comes off as self important whining (though kind of funny too). There were a few redeeming moments (John Leguizamo is always good) but this film was a solid failure. The film just sucked too much, and people couldn't decide if the ending was a twist or not.
- The Happening took the flaws of Lady in the Water and expanded on them, while suppressing everything that Knight ever did right. He presents ideas in the worst way he could, character motivations are bonkers, dialogue is awful and even John Leguizamo's performance falls flat (seriously, it is hard to make him look so bad). Practically every line of dialogue is made of pure stupidity.
Imagine a zombie movie with no zombies, or the Birds without any birds. It is kind of like that. There high point of the film is when a character has a conversation with a house plant.
It is a Vincent Price film (what a fun actor he is to watch- but the films he was in are almost universally terrible).
It is a monster centipede that grows in your spine when you feel fear (for any reason) and dies back down if you scream. Eventually, scientists can extract it from a person so that it can do horrible things.
On a surprise note, the scientist in charge of the project clearly takes LSD for scientific research purposes.
Yeah, that's the one where theaters hooked up little electrodes to seats to 'tingle' you at certain moments during the film. Can't understand why that didn't catch on.
The tingler was a William B. Castle production. He made a whole series of "gimmick movies" which were meant to draw people back to theaters after television started spreading in the 50's. Color was the common way to get people away from the TV early on, but it was expensive. Castle made B&W movies but added gimmicks to lure people in. One gimmick was in the tingler, vibrator motors were hidden under some theater seats at random and during a key scene buzzed under the viewer's butt. Ir was called "percepto".
Castle had lots of gimmicks. In "house on haunted hill" a paper skeleton was hidden and rigged with an 'invisible' string. When a theater worker pulled it it would pull the skeleton up so the audience could see it while a skeleton rose on the screen. It was called "emergo".
Mr. Sardonicus gave the audience mercy cards to vote on whether the villain got a merciful end or not. (There was no actual merciful end for the villain.)
Gunhed. a 1989 japanese cyberpunk mecha film. I wanted it to be good, I really tried watching it a couple times and even forgave the low budget effects. But it was just too much of a mess to enjoy. Some nice visuals but usually things were just too damn dark to appreciate them. Some good moments but too much of it was just a confused, unlit mess.
Then again there's...
Hardware 1990. A much better kind of cyberpunk mad max like film, too bad it ripped off a comic called "SHOK!" and became successful enough to sue and keep tied up in court for a long time. It's eventual dvd release was delayed for years and years.
And I had a grognard moment. See, like probably a fair slice of Dakkanauts, I’m from the VHS Rental Generation.
Yet.....I for one have been letting the side down. My taste in film has not improved, like. At all. I’ll still put on all manner of god awful movies on Netflix or Prime.
Time was, young ‘uns, I’d hired a movie based on the front cover. And even if it sucked more than a Dyson in high orbit, by jingo I would watch it to the end. Because I specifically paid for that film, even if it was the free one of a 3-4-2 deal. And I paid for it, I was damned well watching it. All of it. Credits, trailers, the lot.
And only rarely did I truly regret it. If nothing else, I’d enjoy taking the piss out of it with my mates as we watched it.
But....in this day of Abundant Awful, I change it. I’ll back up. Pick another crap film.
I need to change this behaviour. Because some poor sod treated that film as their Big Break. They put their heart and soul into it. Who am I to not witness? And I have discovered surprisingly worthy gems from pushing past the initial 20 minutes.
I miss the days of exctiting cover artwork. If it weren’t for the covers, who would ever have seen Chud, or Life Force, or It’s Alive, or Island of It’s Alive?
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I miss the days of exctiting cover artwork. If it weren’t for the covers, who would ever have seen Chud, or Life Force, or It’s Alive, or Island of It’s Alive?
Bob speaks true
bonus points if said cover was
a) done sub frezatta style
b) featured monsters, hardware or improbaly shaped ladies not actually in the film
c) tried the whole mockbuster thing but not for big films but other z-list boswellow
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I miss the days of exctiting cover artwork. If it weren’t for the covers, who would ever have seen Chud, or Life Force, or It’s Alive, or Island of It’s Alive?
Along these lines you had some gimmick vhs boxes, One for a mlvie called 'frankenhooker' (Dumb comedy some people liked) there was a raised bump on the boxvcover that if pressed played a voice chip that said "Wanna date?", a line from the movie.
I remember a vhs box that had some sort of zombie on it, the title was forgettable, that had green leds for eyes and when a bump on the box was pressed they flashed green a few times.
There were others, these are just what i remember.
Someone did a box of the original battlestar galactica dvds that was shaped like a centurion's head.
I guess with most media going digital download gimmick boxes are a thing of the past. Kinda sad, they were an interesting little gimmick. It's too bad they didn't make a gimmick vhs box for blazing saddled. Press bart's badge and a soundchip plays part of the campfire scene.
I think in the olden physical media days I stuck with all kinds of drek as getting something else meant going back to the shop bit of an ask if you are in situ with snacks and booze, in the clicky era whilst choice is massive it takes a lot of willpower to stick with anything under 6/10
Yeah, Mad Doc, times have changed. As Turnip Jedi says, there are just too many options. Tubi alone has a plethora of cheesy old B-movies. Sometimes they work out, but if you’re 20 minutes in and not feeling it, it’s just too easy to go back to browse and pick something else.
Back I. The VHS days I found a lot of fun movies just because nothing else was on. Nowadays, everything else is on. There’s a lot less incentive to see if a bad movie gets better.
(This is where I’d link to Richard Jeni’s bit about watching Jaws 4. Spoiler: it never gets better.)
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I miss the days of exctiting cover artwork. If it weren’t for the covers, who would ever have seen Chud, or Life Force, or It’s Alive, or Island of It’s Alive?
Someone did a box of the original battlestar galactica dvds that was shaped like a centurion's head.
They did two versions of that locally. One had an LED chaser in the "eye" strip - the battery went flat after about a month. The second version had some prismatic lenticular red plastic in the eye-strip instead.
A former house-mate of mine bought the limited release of Pink Floyd's "Pulse" album. There was a simple solution for it, turn the case around, so the spine was at the "back", but he was OCD as all get-out, and that would have played merry-hell with his alphabetised and colour-sorted cd collection.
Slow start(if you watch the american version, the european version was shortened), but the film is quite special. First time i saw it a year ago it left me in a very special mood.
Released at the same time as the first star wars and with a $21 mill budget, it could not compete against SW and became a financial disaster.
Slow start(if you watch the american version, the european version was shortened), but the film is quite special. First time i saw it a year ago it left me in a very special mood.
Released at the same time as the first star wars and with a $21 mill budget, it could not compete against SW and became a financial disaster.
A friend recommended the movie to me and I thought it was great. Definitely a film that deserves more attention.
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, but that doesn't make all their films bad. Just like not all movies made by an actor or director who did awful things are bad.
ing it up, was to o the movie with practical effects like Carpenter's masterpiece.
