5 November 2008 – 7:12 am +0800
This is a silent movie (of course, given the year), and as such will be of limited interest to most people. However, it is worth seeing at least once.
The main reason to see it is John Barrymore’s performance as the two titular characters. While saying that he pulls off Hyde without [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged ACTING, altruist, distinct characters, dr jekyll and mr hyde, drug, horror, horror film, horror show, john barrymore, makeup, Mill Creek, nita naldi, performance, pleasure, premises, public domain, self denial, silent movie, soul, surrender, temperance, temptation, transformation, woman
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3 November 2008 – 8:13 am +0800
Suppose you were in charge of a government operation. The purpose of that operation, for the moment, is to transport some hazardous material cross-country, without drawing attention to it. Suppose further that you don’t have much knowledge of how dangerous (or not) this material might be. And that it came from Mars, [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged 1970s, Alpha Incident, andromeda strain, backstory, boring, buck flower, cheapie, girl, government, government operation, hazardous material, hick, hillbilly, jiggle, low rent, Mars, pressure changes, Ralph Meeker, real actor, scientist, station, tense days, train, train engineer, train station, viking probe
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27 October 2008 – 7:52 am +0800
I’ll bet you didn’t know that Peter Falk was a badass.
This film was interesting, and would make an excellent companion piece to Roger Corman and Charles B. Griffith’s Bucket of Blood. They were produced the same year, a continent apart (Bucket in Los Angeles, Brood in Toronto), and both examine the beatnik life in [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged badass, beatnik, bohemian, bucket of blood, cafe, charles b. griffith, companion piece, control, death, heart attack, horror, horror film, intelligence, jazz, messenger, murder, palate cleanser, peter falk, power, roger corman, saul bass, telegram, Toronto
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26 October 2008 – 10:47 pm +0800
Ah, Gamera.
One of the major joys of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was the onslaught of Gamera movies (dubbed courtesy of Mr. Sandy Frank) in the third season. I saw every one they did, and have since seen at least one Gamera film that eluded them (the dubbing of that one provided, somewhat more competently, [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged american actors, atomic bomb, bad movie, brian donlevy, detonation, Evolution, fighter jets, flick, gamera films, gamera movies, giant monsters, Japan, japanese children, kaiju, lighthouse, Mars, Monster, mystery science theater 3000, precambrian era, sandy frank, soviet fighter, turtle
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25 October 2008 – 2:55 pm +0800
Produced and directed by Roger Corman, but without a script by either Richard Matheson or Charles B. Griffith. That should be enough to tell you, assuming you are a bad movie lover, more or less what level this movie is playing at.
If not, then allow me to clue you in. It means that [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged amazing discoveries, bad movie, bee farm, board meeting, monster movie, quarter revenues, queen bees, roger corman, royal jelly, scientist, susan cabot, wasps
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23 October 2008 – 10:39 am +0800
A bunch of people get lost in the fog, and somehow all end up at the same dark, mysterious, not very large mansion, which overlooks a graveyard near an abandoned village. They spend most of the time rehashing (or flashing back to) their personal lives, and some of the time getting stalked and killed [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged fog, gothic, graveyard, italian, mansion, narrative, personal lives, vampire, village, zombies
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22 October 2008 – 8:50 pm +0800
Christopher Lee.
Peter Cushing.
And… Telly Savalas?????
Yes, Telly Savalas. His role is more of a glorified cameo than a full part. It is, however, quite glorious.
Somewhere in remote China, around about 1910, Christopher Lee has dug up something that will set the scientific world back on its heels, a body that he thinks is a [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged Beijing, brain, brains, Britain, cameo, China, christopher lee, corpse, Devil, Dinosaur, drawing, film, horror, missing link, monk, Monster, movie, murder, peter cushing, police, police inspector, russian nobility, scientist, Shanghai, siberia, station, stowaway, telly savalas, thief, train
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21 October 2008 – 12:22 pm +0800
This movie kicks ass.
Really, need anything more be said?
OK, I guess I could go on a bit.
Years ago, I had a religious experience when I read Roger Corman’s autobiography, How I Made 100 Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime. This movie gets heavy mention in it because a critic once [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged american gangster, bad movie, comedy, creature from the haunted sea, film, gag, last woman on earth, monster movie, monster suit, robert towne, roger corman, screenwriter, script, voiceover
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21 October 2008 – 10:18 am +0800
This was one of the movies I had watched a few minutes of, and thought it looked “sort of awesome“. And it is, in a very bad-movie sort of way.
First of all, the cast. It’s one of those casts that could only happen in a 1950s film. Raymond Burr as the lead [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged bad movie, crone, Curt Siodmak, eye candy, familiar faces, illegal plant, Larry Talbot, lon chaney jr, poisonous snake, police inspector, Raymond Burr, script, servant girl, servant girls, superstitions, Wolf Man, Woody Strode
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20 October 2008 – 2:05 pm +0800
Well, no.
The title, infamously, was applied to this movie because the producers needed something that could be, by some stretch of the imagination, given a title to go on a double-bill with the movie they had in the can, I Drink Your Blood. So they decided on this title, then went searching for a [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged bad movie, bikini, exposition, goat, horror, horror of party beach, hot babe, human sacrifice, male viewers, natural talents, oatmeal, voodoo, voodoo ceremony, zombies
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20 October 2008 – 12:34 pm +0800
It’s a Japanese Kaiju movie, and not one that anyone really remembers.
And it plays like a Japanese Kaiju movie, one that nobody would really remember.
It’s not really worse than many Kaiju films. It’s certainly not better than a lot of them, either. It’s just kind of there. Mostly entertaining, but with a [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged american title, bad movie, blackface, Dinosaur, egg, Gappa, grindhouse, Japan, japanese actors, japanese monster, kaiju, men in suits, monstrosity, prehistoric planet, pterosaur, roger corman, tropical island, tropical paradise, two monsters, village
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20 October 2008 – 8:25 am +0800
Wow.
I missed this one when MST3K took it on, and, watching it flat, I’m really, really sorry I did. It almost riffs itself, and I can only imagine the insane joy that Mike and the Bots took in ripping this one to shreds.
A truly incompetent movie can be a thing [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged bad movie, bath towel, Coleman Francis, MST3K, russian scientist, strangulation, thing of beauty, tor johnson, voiceover, yucca flats
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7 October 2008 – 10:49 am +0800
Gaudy title1, competent little flick.
I Bury The Living opens by competently setting up the situation — Richard Boone has been made chairman of a cemetery for a year (it’s a responsibility that’s passed around the family, for some reason that I missed), and is walked through the duties and responsibilities he’ll have. In the [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged burial plot, car accident, demise, edgar allen poe, flick, horror, horror movie, richard boone, simpsons character
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6 October 2008 – 10:53 pm +0800
This is almost like a real movie.
The Poverty Row movies I’ve reviewed have, even the good ones, been old-fashioned in ways that American International Pictures-produced drive-in movies are not. Poverty Row movies, at least the horror ones, tend to be set-bound, stagy, and drag on for long stretches in individual scenes, following one character [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged aip, bad movie, burial expenses, drive-in movies, flick, horror, Mill Creek, screaming skull, showmanship, strange things, william castle
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5 October 2008 – 10:02 pm +0800
[Two hours to go, but I made it. Seven days in a row --- Woo Hoo!]
So there’s these two girls, supposedly models1, out on a pathetically tiny boat in the Atlantic Ocean, involved in some stupid publicity stunt at the behest of their agent/manager/I’m not quite sure just what he’s supposed to be, actually. [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Also posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008
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Tagged bad movie, cuties, ghost ship, helicopter, high seas, horror, horror movie, Italian horror, jerk, meteorologist, publicity stunt, small craft, smoke machines, spanish galleon, special effects, Templar, tiny model, zombies
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