Monday, January 23, 2006

Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004 TV Movie)

Yeah, I know, I know. I'm not supposed to be doing TV movies. See, the thing is, I had no idea this WASN'T a Full Moon production. In fact, I discovered while watching the opening credits, its a Sci-Fi channel show. This explains why NONE of the puppets look like the originals. I went to a Full Moon Road Show, and they auctioned off puppets that were MUCH closer (looked like the real deal to me, and I was holding one). Why didn't these folks just buy some of them, instead of trying to make new copies of all the necessary puppets. You have the real thing available, do you use that? No, they have to try and clone them, and they look like crap, every one. If I was Charles Band, I'd be mad. I hope they paid him a BUNCH for the franchise rights.

Okay, with that out of the way, how's the movie? Well, I'm glad you ask. Cause it sucked! Corey Feldman trying to pretend to be a crotchity old man. Puppetering that looks like it was done by grade school kids. A plot that is so thin its translucent. No blood, no gore, no boobies.

And the disc sucked too. No subtitles, no commentary, no special features whatsoever. How the hell does Sci-Fi think this disc merits a SRP of even $9.99. But I guess I should have known that was a bad sign, right off the bat.

One beer out of five, and someone dropped a cigarette butt into that!

The Brain Machine (1977)

This movie had a pretty interesting premise. Something about a mind reading computer, I think. It goes insane for some reason, and tries to kill the test subjects of this other program that is intermingled with the psychic computer in some way. Sort of a cheap Andromeda Strain clone. It did have a weird soundtrack that kind of adds something. Unfortunately, things are never really made very clear, so what starts off as an interesting idea just stumbles into the mud.

Too bad the director doesn't have a lot of talent. Take a look on IMDB sometime, at the "accomplishments" of Joy N. Houck Jr. Add to that the fact that the disc appears to be a VHS transfer. You can tell during the credits. They are so fuzzy that they are barely legible. And no, this disc isn't from RetroFlicks. Its a Howco release. Oh, and you talk about stripped down discs? This one may take the cake. No subtitles, no commentary, no special features whatsoever. All of 4 chapters for chapter stops. What is up with that? As interesting as the movie might have been, the box cover is the most interesting thing about it, and it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the movie. I thought we stopped doing that in the old Continental days of VHS.

One beer out of five also