Week of Saturday, April 14 thru Friday, April 20, 2007

Saturday, April 14, 2007
Second of the Grindhouse Two-fer from Blue Underground
Bone - 1972 aka Beverly Hills Nightmare

Bone looks familiar. Ahhh, he's Mr. Big in Live or Let Die, and Parker in Alien, Yaphet Kotto. He's good, but boy is this weird. In fact, it just gets weirder and weirder. OMG! Dianetics and Scientology reference. I've never seen the book "Scientology - A New Slant Of Life" by L. Ron Hubbard. Interesting.

I'm beginning to wonder even if there was a Bone. Is it all a hallucination? A delusion? Hard to say. Great acting, though. Very well done, if a little freaky.

Commentary with Larry Cohen and Bill Yastic(?). We learn a lot of interesting things here. First off, this was Larry Cohen's first solo effort. And Rick Baker did the makeup of the dead bodies in the cars at the beginning. An 18 day shoot for $225K.

The story of it's theatrical release is REAL interesting. One of those stories that we listen to commentaries for. And another extra is an interview with Jack Harris (big time producer, started with The Blob), whom Larry Cohen did not have much nice to say about, and who actually did not have a lot good to say about the movie.

The final extra is footage from the first attempt, with different actors. Not as interesting as I'd thought it would be.

Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Lost Room - 2006
Disc 1

I can't say what made me pick this up from Blockbuster. And it's two discs. But BOY, am I glad I did. Within 17 minutes of the first episode, I'm hooked. What a great concept. A hotel room where some kind of cosmic event happened, and now every item in it has been imbued with unusual, supernatural powers. Very cool stuff. Whatever happened to SciFi channel stuff being crap? When did THAT change? This is great stuff.

I only saw one obvious green screen that didn't look right. Don't know why they'd do that. But aside from that, these 4 episodes are WAY cool.

Imagine Lost and The Twilight Zone, but (hopefully) with an ending.

Monday, April 16, 2007
The Lost Room, con't.
Disc 2

Final two episodes. And it does, in fact, have a great, clean ending. With room for a sequel/series. Hey, SciFi. Get hot! This could rival Heros, if you work it right.

Extras include an Inside The Lost Room featurette, which is interviews with cast and crew.

Did I mention how good Kevin Pollack was in this? This makes the second serious movie that he has absolutely SHINED (SHONED?) in. He really is under appreciated.

Best part of the making of is the section on how they did the Glass Eye affect.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Deep Red - 1975 aka Deep Red Hatchet Murders

Gaillo by Dario Argento. I've been told this is his best. I liked Phenomena (the bug one with Jennifer Connelly and Donald Pleasence), so I was interested to see how much better this one would be. It was beautifully photographed, I'll give you that. I've come to the conclusion that Dario would have made a better cinematographer than director, because the pacing is slow. This could have been about 20 minutes shorter, easy.

I have seen this, it's in one of the box collections, only under the Hatchet name. Tales of Terror, bought almost exactly 4 y ears ago (4/30/2003) #180 in my collection. For those who haven't perused my collection, take a gander at:
http://www.intervocative.com/dvdcollection.aspx/DirkMaster

This version must be built from multiple prints, as we keep jumping from English to Italian, even within a scene. Kinda irritating, and I thought I was having DVD problems initially. The Goblin soundtrack is awesome, however. Kinda reminds me of Mike Oldfield at times. Hmmm, The Exorcist came out two years earlier. Wonder if they were influenced by that soundtrack. I think they must have been. It sounds WAY too similar. Also, later on, it sounded a LOT like Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Extras included a 25th anniversary featurette, which was also subtitled. Nice. Lots of interesting interviews, including all the members of Goblin, how they got together, and how their association with Dario started. Also, Dario's relationship with Bill Lustig.

Finally, for those of you with real sharp ears. Yes, David Hemmings is the narrator in Rick Wakeman's seminal album, Journey to the Center of the Earth (the sequel of which was narrated by none other than Patrick Stewart!).

Wednesday, April 18, 2006
Night of the Comet - 1984

Ahhh, classic 80's horror. Lots of comedy bits, lots of "Big Hair" music. Ya gotta love it. And look at this cast!
Reg - Catherine Stewart (the girlfriend in Last Starfighter)
Sam - Kelli Maroney (Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Chopping Mall)
Hector - Robert Beltran (Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager)
Audrey - Mary Woronov (70 movies, including Prison a GoGo and The Devil's Rejects)

This was juicier than I expected. Not too bad, actually. Not great, but nice. Kinda sweet, actually.

Stinger - 2005

A mutant insect, submarine movie from Sweden. First off, a disclosure. I served on submarines for 6 years in the 80's. So I'm VERY hard of sub movies. Every little miss irritated the crap outa me. Even big budget ones like Hunt for Red October are just too inaccurate for me.

That being said, it's obvious that they really didn't put any time researching subs. I mean, they fire fully auto machine guns while submerged. Guess they're not too worried about puncturing the hull. In fact, with the except of the crummy CG of the exterior, you could easily think this was taking place in a warehouse. There's no watertight hatches, no fire fighting equipment every 10 feet,no narrow passageways. It doesn't look ANYTHING like the inside of a sub. And the CGI for the exterior look like they were done with a Amiga 1000.

The audio is really uneven too. Pity there was no subtitles.

Pretty awful. Plenty fun for bubbleheads to make fun of.

Thursday, April 19, 2007
Hundra - 1983

From Spain comes this blatant Conan ripoff. But hey, we have boobsign within 5 minutes. And these have to be the stupidest barbarians ever. If you have a village of nothing but beautiful women, would you kill them all? I thought not.

Nice softcore orgy scene, but the way. Lots of sexploitation films not this good. Later on in the movie, a fat chick sits on a bad guy's face and smothers him. Now THAT'S Eurosleaze for ya!

The soundtrack kicks butt. Ahhh, here's why. Ennio Morricone! Excellent!

Everyone in this universe is a really crappy fighter. It's not that Hundra is so good. It's that everyone else can barely hold a sword properly.

Commentary with Matt Cimber (Director), Laurene Lando (Hundra) and the producer of the DVD. Matt and Laurene have an odd relationship. They're cutting each other up a lot. Kinda uncomfortable at times. It was interesting to learn that Beast (the dog) wasn't a trained animal, but a crewperson's pet. Does an amazing job for just a pet. I mean, jumping on a horse is hard, even for a human. Ask Laurene, who had trouble landing on a horse in one scene.

Laurene's a firecracker. I mean, any woman who claims she has a bigger penis than Arnold Schwarzenegger. She's also taking credit for cinematographic effects. She's kinda bitchy too. Well, maybe she just has an odd sense of humor.

Other extras include Hunting Hundra, interviews with everyone. Yikes, now that we see Laurene, she's really hit the wall. There are lots of historical details. We learn that it had a $900K budget (looks like more). Ended up spending over a million, as they decided to loop the entire thing. But they saved money as they used all the sets and costumes from Conan.

Fun movie, skip the extras unless you're a student.

Friday, April 20, 2007
The Yesterday machine - 1963

Black and white, with a real classic look and feel. Judging by the voice work, I'd say the entire thing was looped as well. But you'd think that if it was looped, the voice acting would be better. It's terrible. I mean, the lines sound like they are from Plan 9 or Orgy of the Dead. Yep, that bad. These folks couldn't deliver a believable line if their lives depended on it.

The best thing about this movie is the tagline. Here's a tagline that screams for a remake. "Somewhere in time, Hitler lives!". See, you should be able to create a great movie from that.

Alas, this isn't it. And there's not a single extra. Hey, if you're looking for a prime MSTie candidate, this movie SCREAMS for a treatment.