Tag Archives: Movie Review

MOVIE REVIEW: The Gorgon (UK, 1964)

One of the hardest beings from Classical Mythology (well, three beings, actually) to properly depict is (are?) the Gorgons. Three sisters, who were cursed with having living snakes for hair and being generally so ugly that to see them in full view would literally petrify you with fear. For obvious reasons, it’s going to be darned difficult to make any image of them that’s even close to the Real Thing.

Most artists have gone with making the woman “plain”, and using basic snake forms about six inches long to frame her face. Easier to do in animation than in live action.

Hammer Films, in this interpretation of the legend, decided to go with a headdress of balloon-like snakes that could be made to move through the use of air hoses. It barely worked. They did, however, make up for it – mostly – by limiting the Gorgon’s on-screen appearance.

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Movie Review: Jane and the Lost City (UK, 1987)

It’s 1940, and the British are in dire need of funds to keep their war effort going. Fortunately, they’ve just received a report of a “Lost City” somewhere in Africa that’s sitting on a fortune in diamonds. Unfortunately, they don’t have information on it’s exact location. Time to call in a crack team of adventurers to find it before the Nazis do!

The “crack team” consists of The Colonel (Robin Bailey), his butler / assistant Tombs (Graham Stark), and our titular heroine Jane (Kirsten Hughes). Opposing them at every step along the way is a team of Nazis, led by Lola Pagola (Maud Adams), with her “muscle” Carl (Ian Roberts), trained assassin Heinrich (Jasper Carrot), and expert on Africa Dr. Schell (John Rapley).

If this sounds like a mashup of Raiders of the Lost Ark and King Solomon’s Mines, you win. I don’t know what you win, but you win something….

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Big Clock (1948)

George Stroud (Ray Milland) is the editor-in-chief of “Crimeways”, essentially a print version of a “True Crime” podcast that’s earned a reputation (and its market share) for identifying the guilty before the police can. He’s trying to take a well-earned vacation with his wife, but his bully of a boss, Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), pulls him back to take charge of a new story – a model who did some work with another magazine in Janoth’s publishing empire has been found dead in her apartment. George is tasked with finding the killer RIGHT AWAY before they have to call in the police.

What Stroud doesn’t know – but we viewers do – is that Janoth is the killer. The model was his mistress, and he killed her in a fit of anger when she broke up with him. What Stroud does know is that after he believed he got fired and missed his train to head out on vacation, he went out for a couple of drinks to drown his marital troubles – and wound up meeting the mistress, visited a few drinking establishments with her (and doing things that made him memorable), and then saw her back to her place before heading off to join his wife. And all the investigating he’s doing is making it more and more likely that he’s going to be nailed for the murder.

A rather interesting set up for an early “film noir”, isn’t it.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Frankenhooker (1990)

If you dig in the heap of “Awful Movies That Are Still Fun to Watch”, you will undoubtedly come across The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962). It’s about a doctor whose radical ideas on transplants has him on the outs with the medical establishment. He gets the chance to Show Them All! When his girlfriend is decapitated in an accident. Fortunately, he manages to keep her head alive – now all he needs is a body to graft it to.

Weird idea, but not one that’s unusual. In competent hands, and with some resources given to it, one just might be able to create a passable movie on that premise.

Frank Henenlotter wrote that he came up with the idea for Frankenhooker out of thin air when his pitch for another movie failed. But the similarities between the two movies are too strong for it to have been a mere coincidence. Perhaps he saw the older movie and vaguely remembered the plot, or perhaps he knew that “Brain” was in the public domain, so he was free to riff on it to his heart’s content.

Anyway…..

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet (1969)

I know you’re asking (and if you’re not, you should be) “Why is this guy reviewing an old soft-core porn flick?” Well, one of my guiding principles here is that any movie worth talking about should have something in it to justify the conversation – even if the movie is an example of what not to do.

I also maintain that there is a difference between pornography and erotica: if you remove all the sex from something and what’s left still has some value and interest, then it’s erotica, not porn.

With that in mind, let’s NOT look at the nudity and simulated sex, and see if there’s anything left that’s worth a discussion. This will require winding up the figurative time machine and program in stops in three different eras.

First, let’s go back to the late 1950s to see what was going on in the movie industry. Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Lady Death (2004)

Things keep getting worse for Hope, a teenager in 15th century Sweden. Her dad’s a right proper bastard of a nobleman, and he’s forbidding her to leave his castle grounds, much less see her boyfriend. The locals are generally OK with him, as long as he keeps winning battles against whatever heathens are in the area.

Well, Dad goes a bit too far with his “recruiting techniques”, and soon enough, there’s an uprising. Dad pulls an ace out of his sleeve – he’s actually Lucifer himself! He makes his escape – but then the mob turns on Hope. She has to be an accomplice, and must be burned at the stake for her witchcraft!

Before she can die, two flying “things” come and take her away, bringing her to Hell. Dad / Lucifer will let her live, but she must worship him. Well, Hope isn’t having that – especially since Dad has the souls of her boyfriend and mother as prisoners. She winds up being banished to the farthest reaches of Hell (apparently, Dad can’t bring himself to kill her / let her die) – where she sets about plotting her revenge. Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Everyone in the Newton household in Santa Rosa is delighted that “Uncle Charlie” (Joseph Cotton), the younger brother of matriarch Emma Newton (Patricia Collinge), is coming over to stay a while. Especially Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright), the oldest child in the family, who seems about to die of boredom in the small town. Uncle Charlie has apparently been living a well-traveled life, filled with experiences of all sorts, and can always be counted on to shower the family with presents.

But what they don’t know while we do (because we’ve seen the “prologue”), is that Uncle Charlie is some sort of ne’er-do-well. He’s living in a rooming house where he has wads of loose cash scattered about, and is dodging two men who have “staked out” the place. And he’s heading to Santa Rosa not because he wants to see his family, but because he needs to get out of town post-haste.

Will anyone in the household figure out what Uncle Charlie’s really been up to before it’s too late?

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MOVIE REVIEW: Grabbers (2012, Ireland and UK)

It’s so common a trope that there’s got to be a name for it. A monster appears / arrives in a small isolated community. A few strange things happen, and then some people disappear. A few people in the community investigate, and discover the monster. For some reason, authorities outside the community cannot come to the rescue. So it’s up to our heroes to figure out how to defeat it and rally the community for the fight.

Movies from The Blob to Tremors have used it, and even movies outside the “monster movie” genre (like Jaws and Halloween) use at least some of the parts.

Given how common it is, any movie that uses it should be judged not on how well it uses the trope, but on the strength of any other ideas or sub-plots that are used. Continue reading →

MOVIE REVIEW: Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Seems every week there’s another article out about people being Concerned over the possible dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI for short). A lot of the tech people involved in developing it are asking for some government guidelines and regulation, Somehow, they can’t seem to slow down on their own. Can’t afford to let someone else get it first, you see.

The big worry is that somehow, any AI might determine that its goals are not in line with those of humans, and it will take over the world. The one movie that’s constantly referenced is The Terminator (1984), in which the military gave control of its weapons systems to something called “Skynet”, which became self-aware and turned against humanity. Some commenters might mention War Games (1983), where a supercomputer was given control of the US’ nuclear missiles and then, thanks to some glitches, thought that a simulation was a real attack…..

So far, though, I haven’t seen anyone mention what is probably the first of these “give a supercomputer control of the nukes” movies – the adaptation of D.F. Jones 1966 novel, Colossus: The Forbin Project. Continue reading →

MOVE REVIEW: Princess of Mars (2009)

It boggles the mind (well, mine at least) that it took nearly a century for one of the most important works in all of science fiction to be adapted for the big screen. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” novels, starting with 1912’s A Princess of Mars, have influenced everything from Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” to James Cameron’s Avatar. The novels have pretty much everything you’d want in a grand epic. Action, adventure, romance, and spectacle, all in an exotic (but still understandable) setting. Admittedly, depicting giant, four-armed, reptilian warriors on any screen would be a problem – but nothing that you can’t use an Artistic License to work around. Ordinary two-armed people in latex head masks will do fine.

That’s the method chosen by Asylum Pictures, the rulers of the “direct to DVD” domain, in their 2009 adaptation of the first of the novels. They must have gotten wind that Disney was going to throw megabucks at their own version, and figured “Anything you can do, we can do cheaper and faster.” With some $300,000 at their disposal, they set to work.

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