The Mazerunner. Well, waking up in a strange place is a fairly common theme in recent years, and this movie follows through with lots of action after the MC comes to in the Maze. Giant insects vs. a bunch of guys and one girl. It fudges out a bit at the end, setting up a sequel I guess. Worth a look, the cgi is good.
Over the last week I've watched The Godfather trilogy. It's been about ten years since I've seen these movies and it was good to watch them again. I know Sofia Coppola got stick for her acting quality in part 3 but I didn't think she was all that bad and still don't after this re-watch.
The Woman In Black (2012) Looking at the reviews for this one, it would seem that I'm in the minority when I say I wasn't that impressed.
Here's why: many have called it 'a good old fashioned ghost story that doesn't do blood and gore'. I've got no problem with that - in fact, I welcome it. Unfortunately though, it's a film that relies far too heavily on many other modern cliches rather than blood. It's a movie packed with fleeting glimpses, shadows and very loud minor chords tailored to try and make the viewer jump. If you remove the many (many) minutes of such scenarios, there's just not a lot left over. It also has a twee ending.
The People That Time Forgot (1977) So, so sequel to The Land That Time Forgot. Doug McClure (why do I keep wanting to call him Troy McClure?) makes an appearance halfway through.
Not brilliant but a decent method of lazing away an afternoon.
This French/Canadian co-production (in English) is a lame supernatural chiller with very weak echoes of The Exorcist. We begin in the 1940's. An unseen mother has taken her young son away from her husband and their daughter. Dad tells the girl "Your mother is a b****" and drives off with her. They get killed in a car wreck. In the 1970's the son goes back to the old family home with his wife and their daughter Cathy. (His old servants are still there after three decades. Who the heck was living there all this time? We see no other relatives.) The daughter finds an old rag doll with its eyes sewn shut. She seems to be possessed by the dead girl, who has a real grudge against girls and women (although males aren't safe, either.) A bunch of supernatural stuff happens, mostly incoherent, and people get killed.
At the very end Cathy's mother rips the doll's eyes open and everything goes back to normal.
The plot isn't an inherently terrible one -- the doll is a decent supernatural idea -- but the execution is very poor. The acting is bad. The actress playing Cathy's mother is particularly annoying. (The character is supposed to be recovering from a nervous breakdown, and I guess the actress thinks that means overplaying her emotions.) There are some laughable scenes, as when one character is killed by a blast of blue light, or when Cathy's face gets covered with what appears to be mud in an attempt at scary makeup. The music is really bad, with lots of electronic bleeps that would fit better into an old science fiction movie.
Beyond the Time Barrier (1959 B&W), The Time Travelers (1964 C), and The Angry Red Planet (1960 C). The first two made me realize that Plan 9 has some good aspects. Plan 9 actually has decent pacing and the acting ranges from almost not entirely incompetent to interestingly awful. What really sinks Plan 9 and makes it merit its infamy is the completely stupid storyline and the hilariously awful production values. Beyond the Time Barrier is sort of like an extended inferior Twilight Zone episode in which a guy in a space jet goes just so fast in just such a way to zip into the future to arrive at the usual "underground scientists vs. the mutants after the plague". The leaden pace resulting in a sort of stupefied boredom is the main thing that sinks this (along with spectacularly but boringly bad acting) though, if it were properly paced, other failings would rise.
The Time Travelers is sort of the same movie except that here, our heroes are a band of the stupidest people ever and whose acting makes P9's folks look like Olivier. They're supposed to be looking into different times via a magic TV but then walk through "not a [closed] window, but a[n open] door" into the future so that, after one idiot runs off and the next idiot chases him and the next idiot chases him and finally the idiot girl chases all of them, they arrive at the (you guessed it) future of "underground scientists vs. the mutants after the war". The only thing on the plus side is the silly visual gimmicks such as a guy holding a circular gizmo and giving it a shake so that it turns into a square and other such technologies of the future, as well as the swinging hippy love pads and music makers and suchlike.
The Angry Red Planet could be seen as pretty awful (usual bad acting, etc.) but I got kind of used to the bad acting like you get used to the initially blinding red of the scenes set on Mars (the bulk of the film is in color; those parts are shot in "Red & Pink"). The only shock would be to see some good acting, just as the returns to the inside of the spaceship were shocking after the red. Other than those Mars scenes, the production values aren't half bad and even aspects of those like the "rat bat spider nightmare" are interesting. Also an interesting story structure as we start with the return from Mars and then get I think three chunks of memory flashback from a survivor intercut with the present effort to save another crewman (whose identity we soon figure but don't immediately know). Anyway: three men and a woman (scientist - biology, of course, whose father was a scientist, of course, who's flirting with and being flirted with by the expedition leader, of course) journey to Mars and find There Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and get the sort of Moral Message that practically only The Day the Earth Stood Still can overcome. Also, there's the "grunt 'comic' relief" used in Destination Moon (I liked that he was reading "Super Fantastic Science Fiction Stories" on his way to Mars, though.) Still and all, it was kind of neat and way better than the other two.
Oh yeah - best line in probably all three movies was from TARP when the Mars ship is remote-piloted back to earth and they're wondering if anyone is still alive and are checking for radiation (not worried about biological contamination which is especially ironic). Tiny mild spoiler for the first few minutes, though nothing you don't almost immediately know:
The girl stumbles out of the spacecraft and a guy says, "The girl!" and another guy says, "Forget radiation! Let's go!" and they all dash off. Now there's a man with his priorities straight.
This was all part of a 5-buck 4-movie DVD I got because I wanted to see The Man from Planet X (1951 B&W) which, as I said in July, I liked in a weird way. Overall, I guess it was worth it.
Surprisingly entertaining supernatural Western. Joe Don Baker plays the wonderfully named Wishbone Cutter, a Confederate captain during one of the last battles of the American Civil War. An dying soldier tells him about some "stones" hidden in a remote cave. (The soldier is played by Slim Pickins, and the character's name is Virgil Cane, and they actually play "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" on the soundtrack!) Cutter teams up with his half-Cherokee buddy Half Moon O'Brian and a young university scholar (who is along to identify the "stones.") (Not to kill the suspense, but it's pretty clear that these are diamonds.) Along the way they come across some massacred settlers. The lone survivor is a young woman (Sondra Locke at her most ethereal.) As they make their way to the treasure they are stalked by unseen beings who kill with black arrows. There are also more mundane Western encounters with bushwhackers and the like. The film builds quite a bit of suspense, and there's a nice twist at the end. Lots of gorgeous outdoor settings, too. Recommended.
I often go to IMDB to read about the films mentioned in this thread, just to learn a bit more about them. I just wanted to mention to anyone thinking of checking out Victoria's latest review-movie at IMDB that they list the film as The Shadow of Chikara. This was Sondra's second film to be released after The Outlaw Josey Wales, and came out right before The Gauntlet (the latter two films with Clint E.); this was a good period for her (and she really was ethereal during this period...really lovely). CC
Road If you liked Senna or Closer To The Edge then you've just simply got to watch this. It tells the story of the two generations of the road-racing Dunlop brothers from Northern Ireland. It chronicles the triumphs and tragedies that made them among the finest motorbike road racers in the world and I seriously challenge any racing fan not to have a lump in their throat by the latter part of this fantastic piece of film-making. One I will watch again and again.
Beyond the Time Barrier (1959 B&W), The Time Travelers (1964 C), and The Angry Red Planet (1960 C). The first two made me realize that Plan 9 has some good aspects. Plan 9 actually has decent pacing and the acting ranges from almost not entirely incompetent to interestingly awful. What really sinks Plan 9 and makes it merit its infamy is the completely stupid storyline and the hilariously awful production values. Beyond the Time Barrier is sort of like an extended inferior Twilight Zone episode in which a guy in a space jet goes just so fast in just such a way to zip into the future to arrive at the usual "underground scientists vs. the mutants after the plague". The leaden pace resulting in a sort of stupefied boredom is the main thing that sinks this (along with spectacularly but boringly bad acting) though, if it were properly paced, other failings would rise.
The Time Travelers is sort of the same movie except that here, our heroes are a band of the stupidest people ever and whose acting makes P9's folks look like Olivier. They're supposed to be looking into different times via a magic TV but then walk through "not a [closed] window, but a[n open] door" into the future so that, after one idiot runs off and the next idiot chases him and the next idiot chases him and finally the idiot girl chases all of them, they arrive at the (you guessed it) future of "underground scientists vs. the mutants after the war". The only thing on the plus side is the silly visual gimmicks such as a guy holding a circular gizmo and giving it a shake so that it turns into a square and other such technologies of the future, as well as the swinging hippy love pads and music makers and suchlike.
The Angry Red Planet could be seen as pretty awful (usual bad acting, etc.) but I got kind of used to the bad acting like you get used to the initially blinding red of the scenes set on Mars (the bulk of the film is in color; those parts are shot in "Red & Pink"). The only shock would be to see some good acting, just as the returns to the inside of the spaceship were shocking after the red. Other than those Mars scenes, the production values aren't half bad and even aspects of those like the "rat bat spider nightmare" are interesting. Also an interesting story structure as we start with the return from Mars and then get I think three chunks of memory flashback from a survivor intercut with the present effort to save another crewman (whose identity we soon figure but don't immediately know). Anyway: three men and a woman (scientist - biology, of course, whose father was a scientist, of course, who's flirting with and being flirted with by the expedition leader, of course) journey to Mars and find There Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and get the sort of Moral Message that practically only The Day the Earth Stood Still can overcome. Also, there's the "grunt 'comic' relief" used in Destination Moon (I liked that he was reading "Super Fantastic Science Fiction Stories" on his way to Mars, though.) Still and all, it was kind of neat and way better than the other two.
Oh yeah - best line in probably all three movies was from TARP when the Mars ship is remote-piloted back to earth and they're wondering if anyone is still alive and are checking for radiation (not worried about biological contamination which is especially ironic). Tiny mild spoiler for the first few minutes, though nothing you don't almost immediately know:
The girl stumbles out of the spacecraft and a guy says, "The girl!" and another guy says, "Forget radiation! Let's go!" and they all dash off. Now there's a man with his priorities straight.
This was all part of a 5-buck 4-movie DVD I got because I wanted to see The Man from Planet X (1951 B&W) which, as I said in July, I liked in a weird way. Overall, I guess it was worth it.
Beyond the Time Barrier (1959 B&W) - great set design though, and not that bad, considering it was shot in Texas, in a week, back to back with another film (the title of which escapes me but it contained an invisible guinea pig).
The Time Travelers (1964 C) - I think you're being a little harsh on the this one - but then I do have a real soft spot for Ib Melchior (who also wrote the odd Journey to the Seventh Planet, the even odder Angry Red Planet and wrote the story Death Race 2000 was based on.) His films may not be great and do have incredibly dated, safe elements (the comic relief in The Time Travellers is particularly awful including a straight to camera, fourth wall breaking moment that's up there with the worst of them). But at the heart of all his films there is a kind of understanding of the SF ethos that is rare in films of the time. I get the feeling the guy actually understood SF but was hampered by having to pander to the 'suits' holding the money. The stage magic tricks you mentioned being used as technologies of the future were up there on the screen 10 years before Clarke's Third Law: 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. Not a bad claim to SF immortality.
Beyond the Time Barrier (1959 B&W) - great set design though, and not that bad, considering it was shot in Texas, in a week, back to back with another film (the title of which escapes me but it contained an invisible guinea pig).
Beyond the Time Barrier (1959 B&W) - great set design though, and not that bad, considering it was shot in Texas, in a week, back to back with another film (the title of which escapes me but it contained an invisible guinea pig).
Yeah, I meant to mention the triangular fixation of the scientist-city. That was visually interesting (though I wonder how many of them had headaches from banging their heads on apexes). If you consider all that, perhaps it's not that bad but I never know that sort of thing and just have to go with what's on the screen. No grading on a curve! Besides, no curves on a triangle (though there are curves in the triangles).
(Incidentally, that girl makes no errors in her delivery of flawless dialog - as she comes from a society where everyone is a deaf-mute... except the two leader guys... who talk way too much.)
The Time Travelers (1964 C) - I think you're being a little harsh on the this one - but then I do have a real soft spot for Ib Melchior (who also wrote the odd Journey to the Seventh Planet, the even odder Angry Red Planet
Well, I did sort of like TARP so I won't dispute that he had something.
the comic relief in The Time Travellers is particularly awful including a straight to camera, fourth wall breaking moment that's up there with the worst of them
Yep, that's always a good move. I did find it interesting that the blonde's lower "artful obstruction" was larger than the upper. That scene goes with the "love pad" scene (which, hey, is on utoob) which also features Mr. Fourth Wall and Ms. Playmate. Actually, the scene taken by itself (plus your pic) makes the movie look pretty good.
***
And now for something completely different...
I watched Double Indemnity (1944) and it's fantastic. It took a long time to get past the father of My Three Sons being a fast-talking wife-stealing murderous, um, insurance agent and, however they may try to explain it away, I never did get past Barbara Stanwyck's awful wig (which made it very difficult to believe she was someone anyone would instantly fall in lust with and be willing to kill for) but this was filled with great performances delivering brilliant (Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder from James Cain) dialog with a good plot, beautifully shot, and excellently paced. Because it's done in voiceover flashback (under the Hays code) there's never any suspense in fact, but there's vicarious suspense in that the characters don't know they're in a Hays code flashback and the bad craziness they're in is really hammered home. The deal is that, when MacMurray pays a call on a guy whose auto insurance is about to lapse, he finds just the wife at home, who appears at the top of the stairs clad only in a towel (supposed to be a kind of "Ursula Andress comes out of the water like Aphrodite" sort of scene) and one thing leads to another. Just suppose Mrs. took out a double indemnity accident policy on her husband who just happened to suffer one of those rare accidents that paid off the double jackpot? Actually, I say there isn't a lot of direct suspense but, for me at least (and kicking myself for missing one), there are some twists and complications revealed in the course of the movie. Anyway - just a really really good movie about really really bad people. Though there is a sort of good guy. How ironic is it to cast Fred MacMurray as the bad guy and Edward G. Robinson as the good guy? Works brilliantly. Robinson almost steals the show and his character makes the two sides of MacMurray's character work perfectly and the good side of MacMurray makes Robinson's work.
Listen to the subtly shifting tempo and emphases in Robinson's delivery, especially in the lines from "Yeah. Now look, Garlopis" to "my little man tells me" in this clip.
Brilliant. Highest recommendation. In terms of the subgenre, I think The Asphalt Jungle may be better yet and a few others in the ballpark, but this is still a Can't Miss.
Took my son to see 'Penguins of Madagascar' yesterday. He loved it. I spent the entire movie trying to place the voice of the North Wind team leader, to discover that it was the voice of Smaug Benedict Cumberbatch (from 'The Hobbit - The Battle of Five Armies', which was the last movie I took my son to see).
My wife and I both want to see 'The Imitation Game', another Benedict Cumberbatch movie.
Those among us who have enjoyed other works from the hand of director Mikels, such as The Astro-Zombies or MST3K favorite The Girl in Gold Boots won't be surprised to find out that this is another low budget, campy offering. With the exception of a few outstanding scenes, however, it never reaches quite that level of silliness. With a little tinkering -- well, OK, a lot of tinkering -- it could be cut down into a mediocre episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
We begin with credits that are nearly impossible to read over a bunch of swirly colors over the image of a woman's eyes. These credits go on a while. As I've noted before, in a low budget film with a minimal number of speaking parts, you're still going to have all the "actors" listed in the opening credits, even if they were just standing around in a crowd scene. All the while we hear some science fictiony whooshing electronic music, which seems hardly appropriate.
After this, we jump right into a Satanic ritual. Head witch Mara recites some typical black magic mumbo jumbo while her hulking manservant Toruque looks on. Meanwhile, a bunch of scantily clad young ladies dance around some guy who is tied down on an altar-like thing on the ground. Like so many Satanic rituals shown in the movies, the dancing looks more like a class in modern interpretive ballet than anything scary. The odd costumes the women are all wearing are worth a mention. They seem to consist of a sort of sheathe, open on both sides, worn over a bikini bottom. There's a fair amount of skin on display, but less than you'd see at any beach. Well, after a lot of dancing, the women wield some swords or spears of some kind and stab the guy to death.
Title check: Blood orgy? Yeah, I suppose. She Devils? Kind of, I guess.
After this dramatic opening, things calm down a bit. We find out that two bad guys want to hire Mara to kill the Rhodesian ambassador to the United States with black magic. This suggests the possibility of an interesting spy/horror crossover, but not a lot is done with this plot. During this scene we get my favorite line of dialogue. (Mind you, there's a lot of overwritten dialogue, and the movie takes itself very seriously.) When Mara is asked to demonstrate her power, she shouts (the actress always shouts her lines):
"LOOK! [long dramatic pause] And WATCH!"
Alternating with the assassination story are less exciting scenes in which Mara does various New Age stuff. She lets people see the future in a cysrtal ball. (In an odd scene which leads to nothing else, a woman sees herself being strangled.) She lets people see their past lives in a mirror. (These involve women seeing themselves being tortured and killed for witchcraft in the Bad Old Days. This movie wants to have it both ways, with folks being falsely accused of witchcraft in the past, but Mara being a real, powerful, evil witch. By the way, these scenes set centuries ago sure show a lot of modern-looking haircuts, clothing, and buildings.) She leads a typical seance. During this sequence, she is possessed by an Indian spirit guide, who speaks in the most stereotyped pidgin English you've ever heard.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Back at what seems to be the main plot, the ambassador drops dead. The bad guys decide that Mara is too dangerous, so they set out to kill her. One of the bad guys sneaks into Mara's castle-like home (I assume this was filmed in Mikels' own castle-like home) and shoots her, killing her manservant and one of the random She Devils who always seem to be hanging around. In a remarkable demonstration of how truly powerful Mara's witchcraft is, she comes back to life as a blob of light, then as a black cat, then as herself, none the worse for having been murdered. She then revives her manservant, but just uses the dead She Devil as a source of blood for some ritual or other. Of course, she gets revenge on her killers.
Well, we still have a lot of time to fill up, so we go back to the default hero and heroine I have not mentioned at all, since they are not very interesting. They talk to our movie's Van Helsing, an expert in the occult, who gives the pair some long lectures in Witchcraft 101. The fellow also seems to be a white magician himself, as we'll find out in our exciting climax.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Mara leads the She Devils in the same ritual we saw at the beginning. The intended victim this time is our hero (I think; the fellow is so bland that I may be wrong.) The Ven Helsing character shows up with some of his white magician buddies, who we haven't yet seen up to now (I think.) They stand outside Mara's castle which is now blazing with evil light. They wield Christian white magic (one calling on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and one holding a cross.) Hilariously, beams of light shoot out of the Van Helsing's fingers. This reminded me of nothing so much as the goofy climax of The Manitou. This causes the castle to shake, and Mara and the She Devils are destroyed.
Blood Orgy of the She Devils has a reputation for being deadly dull, and there's no question that there are many boring, talky sequences. However, I found it amusing enough to hold my interest. If nothing else, there's a lot of magic, black and white, thrown around in this flick, unlike many cheap witchcraft movies where the supernatural element is minimal.
Dracula's Daughter (1936) Gloria Holden looks perfect in the title role as she plays the tormented vampire trying to rid herself of the curse. It's a great looking movie that just fails to deliver. After a quick try at overcoming the curse, Holden's character more or less goes down the line of 'Ah well, it's back to neck biting for me' - which is a shame because I felt that the attempts to overcome her problem of vampirism could have been developed a bit more.
Set straight after Tod Browning's Dracula, this is a sequel that promises much at the beginning but ultimately fails to deliver and things are quickly wrapped up an hour and ten minutes in. However, it is not a bad film and definitely should be an addition to any connoisseur of neck biting.
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) makes an appearance halfway through. 
