In "The Mind Machine" (S1/E8) bullets don't faze Superman.
But when the bad guy throws his gun...he ducks!
Later, though, in "Czar of the Underworld" (S1/E22), not only does he NOT duck...
...he even seems to enjoy it!
Originally posted on 7/13/18
I neither own nor claim any rights to this material. Just having some fun with it. Thanks for watching!
Originally posted on 9/30/12
During the initial TV run of the World War II drama series "Combat!" (1962-67) I couldn't get into it because it was too grown-up. During its syndicated reruns, I was going through my "pacifist" phase and couldn't stand to watch anything war-related unless it was blatantly, even stridently anti-war. Now, however, I'm blazing my way through Image Entertainment's 5-disc DVD set COMBAT! FAN FAVORITES 50th ANNIVERSARY like Patton making a beeline to Berlin.
Without a doubt, this is some of the best stuff ever done for series television. Gritty, realistic (as far as I know, anyway), and unflinchingly adult, the adventures of Sgt. Saunders (Vic Morrow), Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason), and their battle-weary squad of American infantry veterans in post-Normandy Europe puts us right in the middle of all the action and lets us share some of the emotional and existential turmoil that haunts these soldiers every perilous step of the way.
No flag-waving here--these are simply stories about hot, tired, and, most of all, scared soldiers doing a grueling job and trying to stay alive on the front lines. The streetwise Kirby (Jack Hogan), Lousiana bayou denizen Caje (Pierre Jalbert), gentle giant Littlejohn (Dick Peabody), and compassionate medic Doc (Conlan Carter) wade into the fray with guns blazing yet struggle to retain their humanity, always coming across as three-dimensional human beings and never simple action figures.
Originally posted on 11/11/18
Like many horror fans, my first look at the "Chlorophyll Man" was in Dennis Gifford's celebrated book, "Pictorial History of Horror Movies." Now, with Severin Films' Blu-ray release of BEAST OF BLOOD (1970), we get to see the movie behind that picture in all its gruesome, exploitative glory.
The finale of the "Blood Island Trilogy", which includes "Brides of Blood" and "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" (along with the 1959 prequel, "Terror Is a Man"), this lurid shocker is pure grindhouse goodness for horror lovers who enjoy wandering the dark territory of the grotesque and bizarre.
The story picks up right where "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" left off, with Dr. Bill Foster (the great John Ashley) leaving Blood Island on a boat which, unbeknownst to him, contains a stowaway--none other than the dreaded Chlorophyll Man himself. When this creature attacks in a frantically-staged scene, the ship ends up sinking and Foster is the only survivor.
Originally posted on 11/10/18
The middle entry in the American-Filipino "Blood Island Trilogy" that started with "Brides of Blood" (and its sort-of prequel "Terror Is a Man"), MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (Severin Films, 1969) moves the dial much closer to eleven with more blood (much of it green), more gore and severed limbs, more grotesque monsters, and, last but not least, more sex and nudity. In other words, more exploitation for our twisted viewing pleasure.
This time the boat to the island carries Dr. Bill Foster (John Ashley of "Brides of Blood" again), investigating reports of a green-blooded maniac on the island; Sheila Willard (Angelique Pettyjohn), a woman searching for her long-missing father; and a young man named Carlos (Ronaldo Valdez) returning to his old village in hopes of persuading his widowed mother to return to civilization with him.
What all of these people have in common is Dr. Lorca (Ronald Remy, THE LONGEST HUNDRED MILES, FLIGHT OF THE SPARROW), a research scientist who may or may not be an insane crackpot performing horrifying experiments on anyone he or his henchman Razak can get their hands on. The local natives provide a steady supply of subjects, several of whom now roam the jungle as hideous chlorophyll plant-monsters attacking people and disemboweling them.
(This review has appeared online in 2007 and again in 2012.)
SICK NURSES (2007) is a mind-boggling horror flick from Thailand that plays around with all those Asian ghost-story cliches and offers some of the most flabbergasting, over-the-top death scenes I've seen in quite a while. It's a wickedly fun tale of revenge, summed up pretty well by Michael Madsen's "Budd" in KILL BILL: "That woman deserves her revenge...and we deserve to die." But Budd got off easy in that movie, because if he'd been in this one, he would've ended up worse off than Paula Schultz.
Dr. Tar (Wichan Jarujinda) is a celebrated young doctor who's engaged to the lovely nurse Tahwaan (Chon Wachananon). But when she catches him fooling around with another nurse--her own sister, Nook (Chidjan Rujiphun)--she goes ballistic and threatens to expose the dirty secret that he sells bodies on the side. As the rest of the nurses hold Tahwaan down, one of them stabs her to death. Exactly seven days later, right before midnight, the ghost of Tahwaan returns to the hospital to wreak bloody vengeance upon Dr. Tar and the other nurses.
This is one weird, gory, surrealistic movie. Tahwaan's ghost is jet-black with piercing eyes and long, long black hair, which she uses for all sorts of fun things like cocooning people or hanging them from the ceiling. And that's just for starters. She can also turn your arms and hands black and take control of them, causing you do commit grave and usually very ironic injury to yourself. A bulemic nurse who spends most of her time binging and purging ends up stuffing herself with some extremely unhealthy items until her jaw-dropping demise, while a couple of cute twins who deeply admire one another's beauty are eventually compelled to lay into each other with hacksaws. As for Nook, who is pregnant with Dr. Tar's child...well, you can imagine her ironic fate.
The setting is what must be the emptiest hospital since HALLOWEEN II--there isn't a patient in sight--and the nurses all seem to have their own private, girly bedrooms and don't ever actually do anything except scamper around in sexy uniforms. It's more like a big giddy sorority house run by SCTV's Johnny LaRue than a hospital. This doesn't matter, though, because once the terror begins, logic would just get in the way.
At first it seems as though there's barely any story at all, but little scraps of the narrative fall into place along the way, mostly in flashbacks, to make things interesting between bursts of bloody horror. And there's an awesome twist ending which, I must admit, I didn't see coming at all. It doesn't make total sense, but that's one of the endearing things about this movie--it's so freakishly entertaining that it doesn't have to.
The simple premise is similar to dozens of killer-on-the-loose borefests we've sat through over the years, but here, lots of visual style and a truly imaginative sense of the bizarre set it apart. SICK NURSES benefits from an enthusiastic young cast (composed mainly of lovely young ladies), impressive gore effects with a minimum of bad CGI, and an attitude that's as gleefully sick as those titular nurses.
Originally posted on 2/27/08
Hayden Christensen's character, multi-millionaire business tycoon Clay Beresford, Jr., dies on the operating table in AWAKE (2007). That may sound like a greviously inconsiderate spoiler on my part, but it happens about a minute into the movie. After that, the story is told in flashback by his surgeon and best friend, Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard, CRASH, HART'S WAR).
[digression] You wanna talk spoilers? I just watched the trailer that comes with the DVD, and it contains one of THE major surprises of the whole story. The damn thing should have one of those *SPOILER ALERT!* warnings that people post on forums before they spill the beans about something. It's almost as bad as seeing a trailer for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK that has Darth Vader saying...well, you know. So whatever you do, don't watch the trailer before you see the movie! [/digression]
Anyway, Clay seems to have it all--millions of dollars, a wildly successful business that he inherited from his late father, and a lovely young fiancee' named Samantha (Jessica Alba) who's dying to marry him. Only two things keep him from achieving total bliss. One, his domineering, overprotective mother, Lilith (Lena Olin, ROMEO IS BLEEDING, "Alias") who suspects Samantha to be a golddigger and is vehemently against the wedding. Two, the fact that Clay has a bad ticker and is about to undergo a heart transplant.
Oh, and last but not least, three--Clay is that lucky one in 700 patients who experiences "anesthetic awareness", which means that he's wide awake during the surgery even though he can't move. This would have to be a pretty horrific ordeal for someone undergoing a heart transplant, and we suffer with him through every harrowing detail from the first incision to the application of the rib-spreader and beyond. Through it all, we hear Clay's agonized thoughts as he tries to separate himself from the pain and find solace in his memories of Samantha. But before it's over, something totally unexpected happens (I repeat...do NOT watch the trailer first!) which puts an entirely different, disturbingly sinister spin on the whole procedure and turns AWAKE into a corker of a psychological thriller.
You may be one of those people with an uncanny knack for figuring out what happens next, but I didn't see this one coming at all. It's a doozy of a twist, and it won't be the last. For the rest of the movie, we see Clay's disembodied spirit (or astral projection, perhaps) roaming the halls of the hospital, trying to somehow communicate his dire predicament to anyone who might help. We also see him passing through various memories as a spectator and trying to glean information from them that might make sense of what's going on.
Scriptwriter and first-time director Joby Harold fills the early part of the movie with a succession of formal, almost Kubrick-like compositions--at times you can almost see the proscenium arch--that are obviously intended to represent Clay's ordered, structured world. I was pretty sure that this would be contrasted later on with a more free-flowing, off-kilter style as things began to spin out of control, which is exactly what Harold does to good effect. His direction is low-key but visually interesting, serving the story well without drawing attention to itself.
Harold has a fine cast to work with, including old pros like Lena Olin, Arliss "Tough Break For Hand Job" Howard (FULL METAL JACKET) as the much more experienced surgeon whom Clay's mother would prefer to perform the operation ("My hands have been inside presidents," he tells Clay at one point), and familiar face Christopher McDonald as the last-minute replacement gas-passer Dr. Lupin, who's a bit too tipsy to notice that crimp in the tube as he's administering the anesthetic injection. Jessica Alba acquits herself well as Samantha, and Hayden Christensen, unhampered here by George Lucas' awkward dialogue, is allowed to give a more natural performance than as the future Darth Vader. (Even a line as potentially sappy as "You think my new heart will love you as much as my old one?" comes off well.) Terrence Howard is, as always, a solid presence, as is another familiar face, co-producer Fisher Stevens, as Dr. Harper's somewhat hinky surgical assistant.
The DVD's bonus features include a director's commentary, the infamous "trailer that you shouldn't watch first", deleted scenes, a storyboard-to-film comparison that I skipped because I couldn't care less about storyboard-to-film comparisons, and a "making of" featurette. Presented in letterboxed widescreen format with Dolby Digital sound, the movie looks and sounds dandy to me.
The basic premise of a man remaining conscious during a heart transplant was intriguing enough to draw me into this story, and the doubletake-inducing plot twists that popped up unexpectedly along the way really had me going. It's a pretty original story idea that's fully explored and filled with drama and suspense all the way to the exciting conclusion. My typical-movie-reviewer assessment: (Joel Siegel voice) "You're sure to stay AWAKE during this operation!" Just don't watch that trailer first.
Originally posted on 4/28/09
In case your TV has been living under a rock for the last couple of decades, there used to be this show on the Sci-Fi Channel called "Mystery Science Theater 3000", in which a human and two robots were forced to watch bad movies which they heckled mercilessly. It was a wonderful idea that generated many memorable episodes and lasted for eleven years, until it finally ran out of steam and got cancelled. Either that, or the show simply didn't get the appreciation it deserved from the Sci-Fi Channel, which is now known as "SyFy" because the people running it these days don't know their wormholes from their asteroids.
Anyway, when the show folded, Mike Nelson took the "making-fun-of-bad-movies" concept, shaved off all the sci-fi elements, characters, and the movies themselves, and started making downloadable "riffs" for people to play while watching their own DVDs. This has now evolved into Legend Films' new series of ten "RiffTrax" DVDs with which viewers may now watch the film with or without commentary by Nelson and former MST3K co-stars Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. I recently got to watch their take on George Romero's 1968 horror classic, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and found it to be alternately hilarious, mildly amusing, and boring--much like the original MST3K.
If you're a serious fan of the film, the DVD gives you a nice-looking copy to look at even when you aren't in a laughing mood. The thing about NOTLD is that, for me, it's still so engrossing that I get caught up watching it and the riffers start sounding like those drunk high school guys who won't shut up in a movie theater. The parts of the movie that are still powerful, of which there are many, don't take that well to riffing, and often the guys are clearly looking for something to make fun of when there isn't anything.
Originally posted on 6/28/11
Anthony Hopkins the writer-director just may be as nutty as Hannibal Lecter. (Hey, that rhymes!) Or so it may seem while watching SLIPSTREAM (2007). It's one of those movies about making movies that people who make movies like to make in order to show us what a crazy world they live in by taking it to the extreme and making it even more crazy. You're never sure what's real, and what's a dream, delusion, or rift in the time-space continuum. Which doesn't always make for an entertaining or even vaguely coherent film--but in this case it's both. I think.
Summarizing the plot is difficult, but here goes. Anthony Hopkins plays a screenwriter named Felix Bonhoeffer who may or may not have been involved in a traffic-jam-rage shooting, may or may not have a cute, perpetually-chatty blond companion named Tracy (Lisa Pepper), and may or may not have been urgently summoned to a diner in the desert near Las Vegas where filming of his latest script has been halted due to the sudden death of the star, Matt Dobbs (Christian Slater) on the set. Felix must write Matt's character out of the script while the ineffectual director (Gavin Grazer) and balls-out nuts producer (a very funny John Turturro) try to salvage the project.
Meanwhile, Bette Lustig (Fionnula Flanagan) is either a woman on her way to Las Vegas to visit her sister-in-law or an actress in the film, while Bette's niece Gina (co-producer Stella Arroyave) is either Bette's niece or Felix's wife. Michael Clarke Duncan plays either a bartender named Mort who gets whacked by a gangster named Ray (Slater), or an actor in the movie named Phil Henderson, or a highway cop whose partner is played by Slater. Jeffrey Tambor is wonderfully geeky as either Ray's gangster crony Geek, an actor named Jeffrey, or a doctor named Dr. Geekman.
Also appearing in the people-studded cast are Christopher Lawford as Lars the cheerful cinematographer, Camryn Manheim as volatile script girl Barbara, S. Epatha Merkerson as either a waitress or an actress named Bonnie, William Lucking as Det. Buzz Larabee, and Kevin McCarthy in a wonderful appearance as himself, reacting with pleasant surprise when Felix mentions to him that he was the hero of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. "I was?" Kevin beams. "How do you like that!"
It's never made quite clear what's going on (until the last second) but we suspect that, due to work-related stress, something's not quite right in Felix's mind. At least that's as close as I could figure for most of the movie. It's all like a deluxe "Twilight Zone" episode that Rod Serling might have written after someone slipped LSD into his coffee.
From the very beginning, SLIPSTREAM is a continuous stream of engaging oddness, ranging from neat little looping effects and subliminal flashes that foreshadow the future, comment on the present, or simply baffle, to full-blown Oliver Stone/NATURAL BORN KILLERS pastiche. This may sound terribly arty and indulgent, but it's all great fun in Hopkins' capable hands. No shot is left untouched--Felix's perceptions of reality are always being tweaked in some way large or small. The movie looks like it was edited by a guy with two turntables and a microphone, while the soundtrack often seems like something John Lennon and Yoko Ono might have created after warming up with "Revolution 9."
The diner scene is my favorite. Slater and Tambor (as gangsters Ray and Geek) slide into a booth and then quickly set about terrorizing everyone in the place, including Bette and Gina, who have stopped off on their way to Vegas, and Merkerson's Bonnie (the waitress, not the actress). The ways in which they screw with everyone's heads just get wackier and wackier, especially when they start imitating Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo. At one point Geek discovers an old autographed photo of Kevin McCarthy on the wall, which sets them both off on an aggressively nostalgic, guns-drawn, in-your-face INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS rant. (It's their favorite movie.) This sequence alone would make a great short film--one which might even weird out David Lynch a little.
Occasionally, the goofball momentum does lag a bit, and there are moments in which it all seems a tad too self-conscious. But these are few and far between, and for the most part it's pure baffling fun all the way to the end, when things get just clear enough for you to finally be able to nod and say, "Ah...so that's it."
Unless, that is, you sit through the credits, which feature a rewind of the entire movie from last to first frame accompanied by a dazzling piano performance by Anthony Hopkins himself, until the final seconds reveal the real, no kidding "Ah, so that's it" ending. So there are actually two endings to SLIPSTREAM--one for the people who stop watching the movie when the credits start rolling, and one for those of us who dig hearing Anthony Hopkins jamming his distinguished butt off on the keyboard. (He also composed the film's score, by the way.)
You may have a low tolerance for movies like this, and indeed I wouldn't blame you if five minutes of this one made you want to rip the DVD out of the player and Frisbee it off an overpass or something. But I liked what Anthony Hopkins was trying to do here and admired the way he did it. So if you're slightly nutty yourself, you just might go coo-coo for SLIPSTREAM.
Originally posted on 9/12/15
If you still wax nostalgic over those wonderful old prime-time "Peanuts" specials, you may want to check out the 2-disc DVD set from Warner Home Entertainment, PEANUTS: EMMY® HONORED COLLECTION, which contains eleven half-hour cartoons from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
All are Emmy nominees (two are winners), and each one features that familiar crude drawing style and limited animation that have somehow always been ideal for bringing Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strip to life.
These later cartoons, however, tend to lack that sweet, indefinable magic that the earlier classics such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966) had in such abundance. Most also lack the delightful cool jazz music by Vince Guaraldi that most people know by heart.
Originally posted on 10/19/17
It's funny how computer-animated cartoons that would've amazed people and won technical awards back in the 80s have become such an everyday thing now. Still, I sometimes get a kick out of seeing one of these CGI cartoons with the colorful 3D-ish characters and elaborate backgrounds that remind me of moving Viewmaster reels. And if the story is engaging enough, all the better.
Disney Junior's SPOOKLEY THE SQUARE PUMPKIN (Cinedigm) meets those criteria well enough for a TV production, at least for me anyway. The characters are expressive and likable, the settings eye-pleasing, the songs enjoyable, and the story by children's book author Joe Troiano is sweet, simple, and comfortingly predictable.
It all begins when a square pumpkin is discovered in the pumpkin patch of Holiday Hill Farm. This causes grave unrest among the more intolerant in the garden, embodied by a George-and-Lenny pair of pumpkins ("Big Tom" and "Litte Tom") joined by a weirdly umbilical-like vine and very vocal against any pumpkin who isn't properly round as they are.
Originally posted on 11/7/15
Petulant, petty, puerile, cowardly yet arrogant, incredibly vain, and prone to violent temper tantrums, struggling would-be actor Caesar Denovio is once again the "Ren" to lovable slob Otto's "Stimpy" in their latest laugh-packed horror comedy, CAESAR AND OTTO'S PARANORMAL HALLOWEEN (2015).
As the hapless half-brothers, Dave Campfield and Paul Chomicki first hit the screen in a reality TV spoof that was aptly titled CAESAR AND OTTO. After that, they veered into slasher territory with CAESAR AND OTTO'S SUMMER CAMP MASSACRE and CAESAR AND OTTO'S DEADLY XMAS while paying homage to classic horror in the short films CAESAR AND OTTO IN THE HOUSE OF DRACULA and CAESAR AND OTTO MEET DRACULA'S LAWYER. Here, they're back in action facing more supernatural perils in their most fast-moving mashup of the horror genre yet.
The story starts off running with a hysterical spoof of HALLOWEEN that SCARY MOVIE wishes it had thought of. In addition to the ghastly sight of Caesar and Otto dressed in drag so that they can score high-paying babysitter jobs, we also get a jab at Dr. Phil thrown in for good measure. And this is before the credits have even rolled.
Originally posted on 3/14/09
Up till now, I'd only seen Wes Craven's 1972 horror-movie debut LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT once, when I rented the VHS tape back in the 80s, and for the life of me I couldn't remember a damn thing about it. Which I found somewhat strange considering its reputation as a ghastly, hardcore horror ordeal that so many found hard to watch and even harder to forget. Now that I've seen it again, I can understand why I originally found it unmemorable, but I'm still at a loss to explain its profound effect on others. To me, it's just a fairly decent cheapo murder flick, despite whatever perceived historical significance it may have. Have I really become that desensitized, or what?
Sweet young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel), who just turned 17, is on her way to a rock concert with her more worldly friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), when they're kidnapped by sadistic escaped convicts Krug (David Hess) and Weasel (Fred Lincoln), their wretched moll Sadie (Jeramie Rain), and Krug's junkie son Junior (Marc Sheffler), who'll do whatever his pop tells him to in order to get his next fix. The bad guys dump their captives into the trunk and head for the hills, but their car soon breaks down on a secluded road. They take Mari and Phyllis into the woods, where the girls are humiliated, raped, tortured, and murdered.
Posing as stranded travelers on a business trip, they're taken in by a friendly couple who offer them food and accomodations for the night. As it turns out, however, John (Richard Towers) and Estelle (Cynthia Carr) are Mari's parents, the Collingwoods. And when they discover that their houseguests have just murdered their daughter, the mild-mannered mom and dad find their own killer instincts fiercely kicking in. Naturally, more bloody violence and mayhem ensue.
Originally posted on 9/16/11
Back in the 80s when I was compulsively renting more videos than I would ever be able to remember, two of Wes Craven's more notorious horror classics passed through my VCR and then went swirling off into the recesses of my mental abyss. A while back I revisited one of them, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and found it to be a disappointment. Now comes the other one, THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977), also enjoying a new DVD release, and this time the revisit is a welcome experience.
Craven seems to have improved as a filmmaker between these two flicks, and so has his choice of actors. The look of the film still betrays the low budget and Craven's inexperience, yet there is some style and he does a good job of staging scenes within cramped confines (car, camper trailer) while also taking good advantage of the Mojave desert's wide open spaces. His cast is better here, too--while their thespian skills aren't always up to par, they handle the more hotly emotional material with abandon.
Naturally, the older cast members are the most skilled. Veteran actor John Steadman, best remembered by me as "Pop" in the original THE LONGEST YARD, plays Fred, proprietor of a "last chance" gas station in the middle of nowhere. Russ Grieve and Virginia Vincent (I WANT TO LIVE!, THE RETURN OF DRACULA) are Bob and Ethel Carter, who stop by for a fill-up before taking their family into the desert while vacationing after Bob's retirement.
The attack on the Carters' camper by Pluto and his equally animalistic brother Mars (Lance Gordon) is one of the film's most harrowing setpieces and demonstrates to the viewer that no character is safe from brutal death. The unnerving capper to the scene is the kidnapping of Lynne's infant daughter as a future feast for the cannibals.
HILLS kicks into high gear when the surviving Carters decide to fight such savagery with a little savagery of their own, proving surprisingly adept and creative at the task even as certain aspects of it are a terrible affront to their humanity. They're aided in this by Jupiter's daughter, Ruby (Janus Blythe in a fine performance), who rebels against the brutality of her family and puts her own life in danger by helping the strangers.
Jupiter's final assault on the campers is a thrilling sequence in which they counterattack with amazing ingenuity, but it's the grueling hand-to-hand fight between Doug and Mars which really punctuates all that's gone before (the very last shot is stunningly good). Here, Craven gives the film one of the most effective abrupt endings I've seen, akin to a writer dotting his last sentence with a sharp jab of the pen.
The DVD from Image Entertainment's "Midnight Madness" series is in 1.85:1 widescreen with both Dolby 5.1 and original mono sound, and the film looks pretty good for its age. No subtitles. Extras consist of a trailer and a chummy commentary with Craven and producer Peter Locke, which appears to be from an earlier release since they thank Anchor Bay at the end. The two offer lots of good behind-the-scenes info including how difficult it was to secure an "R" rating due to the film's graphic violence and disturbing themes.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked THE HILLS HAVE EYES upon seeing it again after so many years. What Craven and Locke accomplished on this trip into the desert with their low budget, small crew, and limited resources remains an impressive achievement that rises above other films of its ilk to provide chilling, suspenseful, and freaky fun.
