Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on November 24th, 2007
Time for another entry in the Wish List, my lament for sorely absent DVD releases. Today: Paperhouse, to date available only in Region 2 and 4 imports, which is a real tragedy. Allow me to explain.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 22nd, 2007
Severin unleashes three more entries from Italy’s long-running sexploitation saga, and the result is another fascinating collection. The quality of the movies themselves up and down, but the good stuff is very good, and the collective result is something that is completely fascinating. Exploitation fans should be over the moon.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 21st, 2007
This collection of SpongeBob cartoons has a distinct musical theme, underlined by the main offering, “Atlantis SquarePantis,” a 2-part episode that just aired. SpongeBob and friends travel to Atlantis on a song-powered bus (but of course!) and witness the many marvels of the lost city. Their tour guide is Lord Royal Highness (voiced by David Bowie). The action is cheerfully episodic, and many of the song sequences are very funny (one highlight being Sandy’s ditty which occurs with the cast transported into a 1991 video game). The other shorts are pretty fun, too, with the highlight being “Sing a Song of Patrick,” wherein the starfish writes his own pop tune, with hilariously catastrophic results.
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Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on November 17th, 2007
So I’m in the middle of working my way through Severin’s latest Black Emanuelle box set, and a screening of Black Emmanuelle/White Emmanuelle (actual title Black Velvet) has prompted these musings, which I inflict on you here rather than in the review itself. Now, European sexploitation movies from the 70s aren’t exactly the deepest experience going, but there’s plenty of food for thought in this film, even despite (or because of) its flaws.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 14th, 2007
As a woman commits suicide by leaping to her death on the English seacoast, her daughter in Italy has a vision of her fall. Years later, the now-grown Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill) is married to a wealthy businessman, and is suddenly plagued by visions again. Following the evidence, she discovers the skeleton of a young woman who has been walled up in her husband’s ancestral home for years. He is immediately arrested. Virginia works to prove his innocence by investigating the other mysteries of her visions, but she is letting herself in for more than she bargained for.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 12th, 2007
After going all the way back to the 20s with the last entry in this series, now Cult Epics gives us a collection from 1960s, a period that marks the beginning of the end for this kind of pornographic short. Theatrical hardcore is just around the corner, and things will never be the same. In the meantime, though, things are remarkably the same. Other than some clothing styles (in those brief moments when clothes are actually on), it’s interesting to note that there is very little to distinguish these twelve entries from those of any other decade, a point driven home by the bonus short from the 1940s, which doesn’t feel very different from the rest of the offerings. Artistically, there is not much going on here (surprise, surprise), but the star rating indicates the fact that, despite this, there is some clear archival value here.
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Posted in Brain Blasters, Regular Columns by David Annandale on November 9th, 2007
Many a month back, I talked about some essential reading material for fans of the cult/exploitation scene. Time (past time, actually) for an update on that subject, because there’s a recent book out there that, while taking nothing away from the excellent Sleazoid Express and Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!, at the same time sets the bar impossibly high for anyone else wanting to contribute to the field.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 8th, 2007
Roger Corman is fond of saying that only one of his movies ever lost money. It was this 1962 release (shot in 1961), and it is his bravest film, and still arguably his most powerful. William Shatner plays Adam Cramer, a white supremacist associated with the “Patrick Henry Society” (read: John Birch Society), who arrives in the southern town of Caxton on the eve of racial integration of the school. The demagogue whips up the hatred of the white townspeople, leading to cross-burning, church-bombing, and worse.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 7th, 2007
Stop me if this sounds familiar: in a far-northern community, night lasts thirty days, which makes the area highly hospitable to vampires. Yes, Frostbitten shares a very similar premise to the excellent 30 Days of Night. And while the Swedish film predates its American counterpart, it is more recent than the graphic novel. At any rate, the similarities pretty much end there, as Frostbitten is more interested in comedy than its cousin, and is also nowhere near as good.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 6th, 2007
Hmm. A vision of elaborate torture in washed-out tones on the cover. A three-letter title. Gee, could Gag be inspired by Saw? Perhaps, but fortunately not in any slavish way, limiting its connections to the idea of extended torture, and that’s hardly something Saw invented. As opposed to the Saw franchise’s increasingly risible plot convolutions, Gag keeps its setup simple: a pair a burglars break into a house where they first discover a man chained to a bed, and then are captured themselves by the resident nutjob. The ensuing drama is a claustrophobic one, with the main characters trapped in the torture room at the mercy of a lunatic who has a definite, if mysterious, goal.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 5th, 2007
The name of this double-pack is slightly misleading, but that is not to suggest the film and television mini-series on offer are in any way bad. Quite the contrary, in fact. It’s just that they aren’t exactly “action” films per se. So don’t pick this up hoping for something in the vein of The Road Warrior. Instead, these are brutally intense dramas with strong action elements. Both titles are excellent.
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Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on November 2nd, 2007
It must stop! Somebody has to take a stand, and I guess that somebody has to be me. But surely I will not be alone. Surely I will have comrades aplenty in my march to justice. Surely the day of victory cannot be too far over the horizon. With courage and determination, we can stamp out the scourge. What scourge? Surely I don’t have to spell it out. Surely you know I am referring to the twist ending.
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Posted in Random Fun by David Annandale on October 30th, 2007
Okay, title got your attention? Good. Now the disclaimer. I was thinking of calling this piece “Ten Horrors From the Path Less Travelled,” but that would have been a bit precious. I’m not going to pretend that the serious horror fans out there are unfamiliar with these titles. Nor is this list meant really and truly as a “Top Ten” (see, two lies already in my title). But consider this a reminder that there’s something other than the umpteenth rental of The Exorcist or latest iteration of Saw out there for your Halloween pleasure. So here, chronological order, are ten fine films for the season.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 30th, 2007
Ron Howard’s move from sitcom star to director began with playing the lead in this Roger Corman-produced car chase flick, after which he would move to behind the camera to direct Grand Theft Auto. Here he plays the son of the local sheriff. In an effort to impress the girl of his dreams (Christopher Norris, and yes, that’s a woman’s name), he steals a stock car, and he and his friends then lead the authorities on a merry chase. As is typical of Corman productions, this works hard at delivering, on a stringent budget, exactly what its audience wants.
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Posted in Brain Blasters, Regular Columns by David Annandale on October 26th, 2007
I know that some of what I’m going to touch on today is going to overlap with past topics, and so I beg your indulgence. But recent DVD releases have prompted some thoughts on the phenomenon of double-dipping. This is not something that is by any means exclusive to the cult movie scene, but plenty of it goes on here. Consider the umpteen “definitive” editions of Halloween that Anchor Bay has trotted out. But I want to look at a three cases, two of which are admittedly mainstream (though not unrelated to this column’s field), with the third representing an overt stab at cult immortality.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 26th, 2007
Mario Bianchi’s film is a 1982 remake of the recently reviewed Malabimba. The spirit of a newly deceased woman possesses her daughter, and proceeds to wreak havoc in the gothic castle that is the family’s domicile. Of course, given that the father is a murderous drug-addict, there isn’t that much for the possessed teen to do, as far as the plot itself is concerned. Curiously, this effort is less lurid than its predecessor (barring a couple of insanely OTT performances), with less nudity and taboo-busting, and also a rather less interesting deconstruction of respectable society. Plotting and motivation are haphazard at best. Still, it’s a not-unentertaining late-period Italian gothic, blessed with handsome sets.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 25th, 2007
There are plenty of reasons to be grateful for public domain rules, as they make plenty of movies easily available that wouldn’t be otherwise. But there are pitfalls as well, and there is no clearer example of this than what has befallen George A. Romero’s classic film. The great man barely saw a dime from his work, but all and sundry can fiddle with Night of the Living Dead as they see fit, and here is a textbook case. The basic premise is intact: young woman and her brother visit cemetery, are attacked by zombies, and heroine winds up part of a besieged group. Sid Haig lends his presence to liven things up a bit, but he have any real role to play until the movie is almost half-over, by which point many viewers will be sunk in boredom. The zombie attacks are tediously realized, and this is easily the most gore-free version of the story.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 19th, 2007
Connoisseurs of Eurosleaze will be pleased with this nasty little variation on the gothic. In an isolated castle, a fractious, failing aristocratic family has gathered. There is no more money in the family, except indirectly: one brother, now in a vegetative state, is married to a rather wanton woman, who now holds the purse strings. The matriarch suggests that her other son marry her, even though his brother is still alive. The man is properly horrified by the suggestion, and he is also still in mourning for his wife. But then something – the spirit of his wife? a demon? – invades his teenage daughter, who then starts acting out sexually and recreating scenes from The Exorcist.
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Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on October 19th, 2007
When, in the 1950s, television became widespread and began to take a serious chunk of the audience away from cinemas, the movies fought back in a number of ways. Gimmicks were rife (hello, William Castle). Colour became standard. Widescreen arrived. But other than colour and widescreen, every other innovation turned out to be a brief novelty, never to be seen again. There was once exception, a gimmick that was more popular than most, never became a standard, but refuses to die, resurfacing again and again after periods of dormancy, and that’s 3-D.
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Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on October 12th, 2007
One of the great oddities of film from the 1960s (or, indeed, ever) is a modest little horror film by the name of Incubus. Emerging in 1965, it was shot in Big Sur, and tells the mythic tale of a young soldier returning home to become the target of a female demon. His innate goodness, however, winds up seducing the demon instead, and the titular male demon vows revenge, specifically targeting the soldier’s blind sister. This is already a somewhat odd tale for a mid-sixties American horror film, and the fairy-tale setting is even more unusual. But the real oddities are yet to come. The lead is played by a William Shatner (in his last film before Star Trek). And all of the dialogue is in the artificial language Esperanto.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 12th, 2007
So here we have another double feature of episodes from Movie Macabre, with Elvira this time taking on Maneater of Hydra (1966) and The House That Screamed (1969). The former has the disconcerting spectacle of Cameron Mitchell appearing not only as a baron (ookaaayyy) but being dubbed. He’s experimenting with plants on his remote Greek island, and a group of tourists run afoul of one of his results. Given how long it takes for the titular plant to show up and relieve the dullness, one starts to wonder if the title doesn’t refer instead to one of the hot-to-trot tourists.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 11th, 2007
Apparently, someone out there really wanted to see another entry in the Species franchise, surely one of the most poorly conceived series ever. But here we go: Miranda (Helen Mattsson) is a college professor (yeah, right) who suddenly experiences a mysterious blackout, during which she transforms into monster in a rubber suit and slaughters the hospital staff. Her uncle, Ben Cross (no doubt dreaming sadly of the days when he starred in the likes of Chariots of Fire), reveals to her that the is in fact an alien/human hybrid, and the two set off to Mexico to find an ex-colleague of Cross’ who might be able to help. This unsavory sort has been making even more hybrids, which leads, in a roundabout way, to all kinds of trouble.
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Posted in Brain Blasters by David Annandale on October 5th, 2007
Bert I. Gordon. Now there’s a man who knew no shame. Here was a director who combined the hucksterism of a low-rent William Castle (who wasn’t exactly living on the Boardwalk of Monopoly board of producer-directors, if you catch my drift), the willingness to pile on the spectacle of an even lower-rent Cecil B. De Mille, and the technical competence of a slightly (but only slightly) higher-rent Ed Wood. Here was a director who not only did his own special effects, but for some unfathomable reason thought they were good enough to show for extended periods of time. Perhaps he thought his back-projection techniques in The Amazing Colossal Man, Attack of the Puppet People and Beginning of the End (grasshoppers!) were actually impressive. They weren’t. But they had a certain goofy charm.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 4th, 2007
Scientists Edward Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and Crawford Tillinghast (Jeffrey Coombs) successfully construct a machine (dubbed the “Resonator”) that links our world with another, hostile dimension. Pretorious gets his head bitten off by something summoned by the machine, while Tillinghast is incarcerated in an asylum. Psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) believes Tillinghast’s story when she discovers his pineal gland is growing enormously, and she has him released into her custody to recreate the experiment. Baaad idea.
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Posted in Brain Blasters, Regular Columns by David Annandale on September 30th, 2007
Returning to Sinister Cinema’s roster of Drive-In Double Features this year is an offering that distinguishes itself by the rarity of the two films in the pairing, and so it is my bounden duty to bring this to your attention. The two films in question are Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959) and The Magnetic Monster (1953).
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