20 November 2008 – 2:17 pm +0800
This is the movie Vincent Price made right after The House on Haunted Hill, it seems, and you can sort of see why he agreed to be in it. It’s another gimmicky story, set mostly in one location, that seems like it should be having fun bringing the audience in on the joke.
Except that [...]
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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged american actors, atomic bomb, 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged amazing discoveries, bee farm, board meeting, monster movie, quarter revenues, queen bees, roger corman, royal jelly, scientist, susan cabot, wasps
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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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged american gangster, 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged american title, 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged bath towel, Coleman Francis, MST3K, russian scientist, strangulation, thing of beauty, tor johnson, voiceover, yucca flats
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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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged aip, 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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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged 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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4 October 2008 – 9:36 am +0800
A lot of effort was put into this movie, it’s easy to see that the people who made it really, really cared about it. Unfortunately, the resulting movie isn’t worth it.
As Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon opens, a reporter travels to Middle-Of-Nowhere, France, to interview the head of an asylum about his radical new techniques [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged 1970s, asylum, atmosphere, creepy atmosphere, effort, France, horror, horror movie, lunatics, Mexico, Mill Creek, movie, subtext, torture dungeon, weird stuff, weirdness, young lady
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3 October 2008 – 9:23 am +0800
This was a bit more enjoyable than the previous George Zucco Poverty Row picture, Dead Men Walk. Where the previous film was a shabby vampire movie, The Mad Monster is a reasonably non-awful mad scientist flick.
What Mad Scientist Dr. Cameron (who does, indeed, have a beautiful daughter) has done is theorized that animal blood [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged animal blood, backstory, beautiful daughter, cheapie, Frankenstein, george zucco, ghostly images, glenn strange, lon chaney, lon chaney jr, mad monster, mad scientist, movie, optical printer, poverty row, vengeance, werewolf
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2 October 2008 – 9:29 am +0800
I was expecting more from this one.
George Zucco apparently has a reputation as a bit of a ham, and this is a Poverty Row cheapie, and Zucco is playing twins, one good and one evil.
The sleeve copy, admittedly, was overdone:
The marvelously theatrical George Zucco plays a dual role as the dysfunctional Clayton twins [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged devil worship, dual role, dwight frye, evil acts, exposition, funeral and interment, george zucco, poverty row
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30 September 2008 – 9:07 am +0800
In The Invisible Ghost1, there is nobody and nothing that is invisible, and no ghost, except perhaps in the loosest metaphoric sense.
For a Poverty Row horror flick, it’s pretty darned good, with actual effort from both cast and crew clearly evident in just about every scene. This does not make it an objectively good [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged bela lugosi, film, horror, horror flick, joke, joseph h. lewis, monogram, monogram pictures, movie, murder, poverty row
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29 September 2008 – 11:30 am +0800
First off, even though this is included in various Mill Creek Entertainment horror packs, it isn’t a horror movie. What it turns out to be is an eccentric spy thriller. But, of course, it stars Bela Lugosi, so it gets labeled as horror.
After Black Dragons opens on a dinner party involving a number [...]
By Ian Michael Hamet
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Posted in Movies, Reviews, Spook-A-Thon 2008, Yesterday's movie
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Also tagged bela lugosi, black dragons, dagger, dinner party, embassy, film, flashback, government, horror, houseguest, Japan, japanese government, Megapack, Mill Creek, movie, murder, mysterious stranger, plastic surgeon, police, poverty row, review, spy, spy thriller, story, structure, thriller
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