THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956) **

Guy Madison stars as an American cowboy in Mexico who falls for a pretty senorita.  Of course, she’s betrothed to the local bad guy, and you know it’s only a matter of time before she leaves that scumbag for Guy.  Complicating their relationship is the appearance a mysterious beast that lives in a nearby swamp.  It’s been eating livestock left and right, and when it begins to get an appetite for fat drunk comic relief sidekicks, it’s up to Guy to stop the beast.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain kind of plays like a half-assed Valley of Gwangi as it only has one cowboy and one dinosaur.  The stop-motion special effects are rather cheesy, but they do have a certain charm about them.  The color Cinemascope cinematography is crisp, so it makes the dinosaur look cooler than he would’ve been in black and white.

The problem is you have to wait an awful long time before you get to see the beast.  The lovey-dovey stuff with Guy and his would-be girlfriend really slows things down to a crawl.  The subplot with the drunkard sidekick and his whiny son also eat up a lot of screen time.  At least the scene where Guy gets into a brawl with the bad guy is a lot of fun.  Their fight lasts a long time and they pretty much wipe out half the town in the process.  I can’t say it’s as good as the fight in McClintock, but it’s certainly in the same spirit.

THE TIME TRAVELERS (1964) **

A group of scientists open up a time portal that allows them to travel over a hundred years into the future.  When the portal closes, they find themselves trapped in a barren wasteland where the humans live in caves and try to keep out mutants who wish to cause them harm.  The scientists of the future are working on a spaceship that will send them to a new Earth-like planet, and the arrival of the scientists from the past ruffles some feathers.  Reluctantly, they decide to help our heroes find a way home.

The Time Travelers has a colorful, mod production design that evokes the best work of Irwin Allen and The Planet of the Apes movies.  The scenes of the creepy robot factory (they look like a cross between Trumpy and C-3PO) are pretty cool too, and the some of the futuristic touches (like the hula dancing machine that looks like the prototype for Dance Dance Revolution) are neat.  Too bad the unsatisfying ending is a complete washout.

The film was written and directed by Ib Melchior, who also wrote Reptilicus.  Like that flick, the movie is at its best when the scientists are working together and trying to solve their problems.  However, the conflict with the futuristic scientists is predictable and dull, and the pacing slows down considerably during the second act.  The scenes of the nude women (well, they have their naughty bits hidden from the camera) add to the cheeky fun though.

AKA:  Depths of the Unknown.  AKA:  The Return of the Time Travelers.  AKA:  This Time Tomorrow.  AKA:  Time Trap. 

CRY WILDERNESS (1987) *

Jay Schlossberg-Cohen and Philip Yordan previously worked together on the insane horror anthology film Night Train to Terror.  Seeing their names in the credits made me hopeful that Cry Wilderness would deliver the same kind of jaw-dropping thrills that movie had.  Well, my jaw dropped several times throughout, but mostly because of how awful it was.

A little boy tells his teacher he’s close friends with Bigfoot.  Naturally, he gets in trouble for telling lies.  One night, Bigfoot comes to him in a dream (?) and tells him he needs to save his father.  The kid runs away from school to save his pops, who is busy tracking a mysterious creature in the woods.  Could the monster be his son’s imaginary friend?

Cry Wilderness is like an insane mash-up of E.T. and Harry and the Hendersons.  Like E.T., there’s even some gratuitous product placement, courtesy of the subplot where Bigfoot drinks Coke and crushes the cans “unlike any human could”.  Unfortunately, the film is closer in quality to Pod People than E.T.

We also have to wait a long time before we finally do get to the Bigfoot stuff.  When we do, it’s ruined by a truly terrible costume.  To make matters worse, it looks like it’s falling apart half the time.  

Most of the movie is heavily padded with a lot of boring nature footage.  The acting is also amateurish and often times painful to watch.  The less said about the ridiculous and stupid ending, the better.

REPTILICUS (1963) ** ½

Reptilicus was Denmark’s foray into the giant monster movie genre.  The thing is; it actually works up to a point.  The build-up to the monster’s first appearance is quite absorbing and the scenes of the scientists working in the lab are a lot of fun.  Once the monster shows up, all bets are off as Reptilicus is one of the all-time worst monsters ever shown on any screen.  Seriously, Puff the Magic Dragon would’ve been a more convincing villain.

Scientists discover the fossilized remains of a tail hidden inside the Earth.  They take it back to the lab where they keep it on ice and study small samples of its tissues.  When one of the scientists forgets to close the fridge, it thaws out and regenerates, turning into a giant dragon monster.  While Reptilicus attacks downtown Copenhagen, the army tries to figure out a way to stop it.

Reptilicus (the movie) looks great.  A lot of care was put into the laboratory scenes and the sequences where the citizens run for their lives are really well done (particularly the part where dozens of people fall off a drawbridge).  It’s just a shame that Reptilicus (the monster) is so shoddy looking.  Whenever he shows up, you just have to laugh.  It looks like a goddamn bath toy and the strings that work his jaw are visible.  There’s such a disproportionate look to the monster and the rest of the film that it’s liable to give you whiplash. 

The rest of the effects are even more piss-poor.  The shots of the monster puking up slime are awful, as is the scene where he eats a person.  It looks like someone cut out a picture of a human and put it in the jaws of the monster! 

The effects alone are worth a look as they will probably make any jaded monster movie fan’s jaw drop in disbelief.  However, you might be surprised by just how good the rest of the flick is.  If the monster scenes were credible in the least, Reptilicus might’ve been a classic.  As it is, it remains a fun piece of schlock filmmaking.

AFTER PORN ENDS 2 (2017) ****

After Porn Ends 2 follows a different group of former porn stars and catches up with them.  For me, this entry was even more powerful, mostly because I still/had crushes on several of them growing up.  I was also fortunate enough to meet both Ginger Lynn and Tabitha Stevens a while back, so it was good seeing that both of them were doing well.  I was also happy to see that both Lisa Ann (who played “Nailin’” Palin) and The Devil in Miss Jones’ Georgina Spelvin were living fulfilled lives.

Not everyone is as fortunate as they are.  Poor Chasey Lain tells about her horrible experiences escorting.  She also talks about her stint as a prostitute at the infamous Moonlite Bunny Ranch and tells how the owners cheated her out of a lot of money.  Now she is content to live out of the spotlight. 

Another sad case is Janine, who once was almost as famous for being in music videos and album covers as she was as a porn star.  When she failed to pay her taxes, she was sent to jail, which led to her losing custody of her daughter.  Her tale of going to court and losing miserably because of her occupation is eerily similar to the scene in Boogie Nights where Julianne Moore loses custody of her child. 

The craziest bit though involves Brittany Andrews (who has since returned to porn).  She tells about doing an anal scene which caused her anus to prolapse.  Even after the incident, people urged her to “try to make money with it” because it’s a fetish in some circles.  I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried!

If you’re a porno fan and have had slight crushes on any or all of these ladies, you really need to check After Porn Ends 2 out.  I thank each and every star for having the courage to come forward and be so candid about their past (and hopes or the future).  I hope the series continues as I’m sure there are plenty of other stars out there whose stories need to be told.  Not only is this film better than the original, it’s also one of the best movies of the year.

THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (2017) ****

If you watch The Fast and the Furious movies because you love to watch guys racing cars, then you’re going to love the opening scene of this eighth installment.  It begins with Vin Diesel stripping down a piece of shit car down to its nuts and bolts and fitting it with nitrous oxide in such a harebrained manner that it would make Wile E. Coyote nervous.  If you’re a fan of the racing aspects of the series, you may be disappointed as there are no more race scenes after that.  If you’re like me and are a fan of the franchise to see some wild ass action sequences, you’re in for a treat.  The Fate of the Furious is the wildest, craziest, most exhilarating film of the series.  It’s also its best.

I didn’t think they could top the last two Fast films, but F. Gary Gray (who had previously worked with Diesel on A Man Apart) did just that.  There are some action sequences in this flick that are so insane that even James Bond would be jealous of them.  In fact, I think the only way to top this one would be to pull a Moonraker and send the cast into space.  I’m not even joking when I say they could probably pull it off too.

I don’t want to get too into plot specifics because the twisty plot is part of the fun.  All you need to know is that Vin Diesel turns his back on his Fast and Furious family to work with a notorious hacker (played by Charlize Theron at her absolute slinkiest) to steal several objects that when all put together could spell doom for the entire planet.  The only way to stop them is for his tight-knit family to join forces with their arch nemesis, Jason Statham.

What I love about this series is that it’s essentially a male soap opera.  People die, come back to life, turn on their closest friends, betray the ones they love, and no one really bats an eye.  This is actually the second time in the series when someone has turned bad, and I’ve lost track of all the times that the “bad” guy has been made to join forces with the “good” ones. 

Ultimately, the “family” aspect of these films is what gives them their center.  Because no one is perfect in a family, Diesel’s circle of friends is more apt to forgive and forget when one of them (including him) goes rogue.  Even when Statham chooses his new path, it’s out of obligation for his family (including his mother, whose identity I would not dream of giving away because her reveal is one of the biggest joys of the movie).

It’s those crazy action sequences that give the film its kick.  There’s one scene that left my jaw agape for several minutes.  That of course was the scene where Theron hacks into a bunch of cars and takes control of them and causes thousand-car pile-up.  That is not an exaggeration.  There are a thousand cars and they do wind up piled on top of each other.  It’s amazing. 

Then there’s the scene where Theron takes control of a Russian submarine and commands it to shoot torpedoes at our heroes.  Naturally, The Rock, selfless man that he is, redirects the speeding torpedo with his bare hands!  Let’s see James Bond do that!

 

Everyone gets their particular moments to shine.  The Rock gets plenty of laughs and Tyrese Gibson has some good moments playing off Scott Eastwood, who plays Kurt Russell’s right hand man.  It’s Statham who steals the movie though.  He gets one sequence where he must save an infant that is as great as anything in a Transporter film.  It’s so awesome that you’ll be wishing he teams up with Diesel for The Pacifier 2. 

 

BLUE MONKEY (1987) **

A guy cuts himself on a rare plant and has an allergic reaction.  He is taken to a hospital where he pukes up a larva that rapidly grows into a giant bug.  It starts making babies like crazy and it's up to cop Steve Railsback to kill the sucker.  Meanwhile, the health department, fearing an outbreak, quarantines the place and shoots anyone who tries to escape.  They also threaten to bomb the shit out of the hospital if Steve can't kill the bug  Thankfully, there happens to be a giant experimental laser in the basement that just might do the trick.

Blue Monkey is more effective when it's concentrating on the giant bug killing people.  The whole outbreak subplot feels like filler and the movie slows to a crawl during these scenes.  The bug scenes would've been decent if we could've actually seen the thing. Director William (Funeral Home) Fruet bathes it in near total darkness for most of the running time.  (When we do see it, he kinda looks like The Deadly Mantis, but not as big.)

Railsback delivers a good performance and carries the movie on his shoulders during the slow sections.  John Vernon is pretty much wasted as the head of the hospital though.  When he shows up playing the guy in charge, you're ready to see him chew the scenery and be a total asshole.  Sadly, he's basically a good guy and isn't in it a whole lot.  Faring even worse are Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke as an expectant couple.  Their scenes aren't funny at all and only serve as more padding in an already overcrowded film.

ARSENAL (2017) ***

Arsenal is as good as you could hope from a 23 years later DTV sequel to Deadfall.  Like Deadfall, it is a solid neo-noir crime drama that is punctuated with hilarious moments from a scenery-chewing Nicolas Cage.  That film dealt with conmen working a big grift.  This one features a kidnapping gone awry.  Both films feature sturdy enough noir tropes that can sustain themselves during the Cage-less stretches.  I can’t exactly say it filled the big shoes left by Deadfall, but it is an entertaining thriller and required viewing for fans of crazed Cage antics.

The use of Cage’s character, Eddie King was a bit restrained.  He’s only seen sparingly throughout the early going of the film, and even when he is front and center, Cage seemed to be holding back.  Luckily for the audience, once he kills his brother (played by his real life brother and Deadfall director Christopher Coppola), Cage goes off his rocker and does so in glorious slow motion.  He also gets a funny scene where he writes a letter to his dead brother and the speech he gives about the effects of eating Drano is worth the price of admission alone.

Speaking of which, director Steven C. Miller does some cool stuff with slow motion in the final act.  He gives us a few Dredd-style bullet time shot of bullets whizzing around and going through cheeks and nut sacs.  He also delivers an awesome exploding head gag that is as good as anything you’d see in a Scaners movie.

The strong performances by Adrian Grenier and Jonathon Schaech anchor the film.  Their scenes of brotherly devotion keep you involved.  Even though you want to see Nic Cage completely lose his shit, you’re still rooting for the brothers to take him down.  John Cusack also shows up wearing basically the same get-up he wore in Drive Hard.  From beneath his sunglasses and baseball hat, he comes this close to phoning it in, but stops short.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  How the hell did Eddie survive his memorable death scene from the first film?  Honestly, I don't really care.  It's just good to have Nic back behind the moustache and false nose again.  Do I wish he went a bit crazier and went into full-on Deadfall levels of insanity?  Sure, but he still has enough memorable moments to keep you entertained.

 

Oh, and there's no reason for this to be called Arsenal.  There's one scene near the end where Grenier opens a safe and pulls out… one single gun.  That’s not much of an arsenal, if you ask me.

 

AKA:  Philly Fury.  AKA:  Southern Fury.

HYPOTHERMIA (2012) * ½

 

Michael Rooker stars as a sportsman who goes on vacation to a frozen pond to do a little ice fishing with his family.  Once there, he has to put up with an obnoxious father and son team who blare their music too loud and run their snowmobiles around.  When they are menaced by a monster that lurks just below the ice, they team up and try to capture it.

 

Hypothermia starts off as kind of like a low budget winterized version of Tremors, minus the laughs and fun.  It’s OK when the characters have to be wary of their movements on the ice (the monster can sense their vibrations), but the stuff with the victims having a psychic link to the monster doesn’t really work.  The red and orange POV shots of the monsters get on your nerves pretty quick too. 

 

It also doesn’t help that the filmmakers endlessly tease the appearance of the monster.  When we finally see it, it’s a helluva of a letdown.  While I like the idea of using a man in a cheesy rubber suit, it runs across the grain of the serious tone the filmmakers had already established.  Had this been a Troma film, the monster would’ve looked right at home.  Seriously, I’ve seen Larry Buchanan movies with more convincing creatures. 

 

At least the gore is decent.  We get to see a gnarly chewed-up corpse and there’s a juicy throat-ripping scene too.  Luckily, the running time is only 72 minutes, so you don’t have to suffer through it for too long.

 

Rooker’s performance is the only legitimately good thing about Hypothermia.  He classes up the movie way more than it deserves.  Too bad no one else in the cast comes close to matching him.

 

AKA:  Hypothermia:  The Coldest Prey.

GALAXY QUEST (1999) ****

 

I avoided this like the plague when it first came out.  The previews looked terrible and made it  look like a kid’s movie.  Besides, the ‘90s were full of bad Tim Allen movies, and I had no intention of sitting through another one.  One day, I happened to catch it on TV and I was almost instantly hooked.

 

Basically, it's Three Amigos, but with Star Trek, except they had to call it “Galaxy Quest” because they couldn’t get the original crew together.  In fact, there’s a small part of me that kind of wishes they got the original Trek cast.  However, everyone is so good (even Allen) that it's a moot point.  They create likeable characters that immediately grow on you.  While the characters aren’t too far removed from their Trek predecessors, they still feel fresh enough to make them feel like something new.

 

The film is a blast, mostly because it simultaneously makes fun of and embraces the conventions of the show.  By “conventions” I mean the clichés that always seem to crop up and go unnoticed by the crew (like the Captain’s tendency to lose his shirt while battling an alien).  Although, since a lot of the film takes place at a fan convention and pokes fun at (but lovingly so) the Trekkie culture, I guess it does the same for the literal conventions of the show too. 

 

Allen has never been better.  There’s a tinge of Shatner in his performance, but only the faintest wisps (there are a few dramatic pauses, but not nearly as many as I was expecting).  He creates a character that is likeable, poignant, and ultimately heroic.  I was actually shocked how good he was in this.  Alan Rickman was awesome too as the Shakespearian trained actor who must play second banana to Allen while wearing a funny latex headpiece.  Sigourney Weaver, whose boobs are hanging out half the time, is both sexy and funny as the crew member whose basic job is to repeat what the computer says and have her boobs hang out half the time.  Sam Rockwell and Tony Shalhoub have their own moments to shine as the other crew members.  Justin Long is also excellent as a nerdy Trekkie who is called upon in the end to help save the day with his extensive knowledge of the show.

 

The crazy thing about Galaxy Quest is that it captures the spirit of the show better than most of the actual Star Trek films.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this is better than twelve of the thirteen Star Trek movies.  Hell, I even got kinda choked up when Rickman said his most hated catchphrase to bolster the spirit of a dying crew member.  The only Star Trek that had that same effect on me was Wrath of Khan.  That is to say, Galaxy Quest is in some rather stellar company.

 

 

THE SERPENT’S EGG (1978) **

David Carradine stars as an alcoholic, out of work Jewish circus performer who heads to Germany to live with his dead brother’s ex-wife, played by Liv Ullmann.  Meanwhile, a cagey police inspector (Goldfinger himself Gert Frobe) thinks Carradine might’ve had a hand in his brother’s death, not to mention some other unexplained murders.  One night, Carradine heads to a brothel where he uncovers a secret headquarters that specializes in bizarre experiments.

Most Ingmar Bergman scholars and critics sort of look down their nose at this film and treat it as one of his lesser works.  They usually cite the involvement of Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis and the use of big name stars as the reason for its failure.  To me, this really wasn’t any better or worse than Bergman’s typical snoozefests.

What sort of makes this interesting is the setting.  It takes place in Germany just before Hitler’s rise to power.  We’ve seen plenty of Nazisploitation movies before, but this is a rare instance of Pre-Naziploitation.  There are some elements here that would make this fit right in with any offering of the genre (the morgue visit is pretty gory and the brothel scene is fairly graphic).  However, you have to wait an awful long time until you get to anything remotely gruesome or exploitative.

Carradine (the same year he was in Deathsport) seems a bit miscast, but he’s not bad as the sleepy-eyed acrobat.  I’m not even sure he could’ve saved this dreary mess even if he was at the top of his game.  Frobe is pretty good as the police inspector too.  In the end, it’s just too muddled and overlong to really work.

THE CHALLENGER (1979) ** ½

A guy goes around challenging Kung Fu masters in hopes of finding the man he holds responsible for killing his wife.  He crosses paths with a crooked gambler and they wind up getting into a fight.  Afterwards, both men have to admit they respect each other's style.  Eventually, the gambler agrees to help him on his quest for revenge.

The Challenger suffers from some hit-and-miss fight scenes.  The finale is strong and there's a solid fight in a pond.  The sequences that rely heavily on comedy are weak (like the scene where our hero shoves a bunch of chopsticks into a guy's mouth) and don’t generate many laughs.

It also doesn’t help that a lot of the comedy is misplaced or done in poor taste.  There’s one scene where the Kung Fu master bares his soul and tells the gambler all about his pregnant wife's murder and he pictures it in his mind as if it were a silent comedy.  (His wife is shown with a balloon under her shirt and it accidentally pops.)  Another weird scene involves the gambler grabbing a guy's dick during a fight and asking him, “Feels good, doesn't it?”

Speaking of dicks, I have to say the best scene is when the villain kills the female lead by punching her in the face with his crotch.  You don't see that every day.  For that and that alone, I can’t bear to give The Challenger any less than ** ½.

AKA:  Deadly Challenger.

JAVA HEAT (2013) **

With a name like Java Heat, I fully expected this to be about a couple of cops hanging out in a trendy coffeehouse.  Actually, it’s just a low rent direct-to-DVD actioner that takes place in Indonesia.  Honest mistake. 

Kellan Lutz stars as an Ivy League teaching assistant.  He attends a party in Java where he hits on an Indonesian princess.  Later on, she is presumably killed by a suicide bomber, but Lutz does some digging and figures out that the body in the morgue is an imposter.  He teams up with a detective (who quickly realizes Lutz is actually an undercover agent) to rescue the princess.

Java Heat is a ho-hum Stranger in a Strange Land thriller.  The xenophobic hero is uncomfortable in a Muslim country and doesn’t understand the local customs and culture.  (He chastises a detective for eating ethnic food because it’s not gluten free.)  It is adequate for the most part.  Lutz goes through all the motions your typical action lead would go through.  The action, while it suffers from the lack of a decent budget, is competent, but generic.  Memorable, engaging, and exciting, it is not.

Mickey Rourke plays the slimy villain who wears loud shirts, cheap suits, and speaks with an odd accent.  Sometimes he slurs his words so much that they have to use subtitles, even though he’s speaking English.  Okay, so maybe that part was slightly memorable.  Even though he brightens things up somewhat, he’s not in it nearly enough to make it all worthwhile.

AKA:  Good Evening.  AKA:  Good Night.  AKA:  Nightlife.

KILL THE SCREAM QUEEN (2004) * ½

Kill the Scream Queen is a neo-snuff movie that tries to be edgy and realistic, but only succeeds in being repetitive and boring.  It follows the exploits of a killer (writer/director Bill Zebub) as he lures women to an abandoned strip club, makes them disrobe for the camera, ties them up, rapes them, and kills them.  That’s about it as far as the “plot” goes.

 

Although it features a lot of nudity, none of this is remotely sexy.  It also contains a lot of blood, but it’s not scary either.  The skull mask the killer wears is pretty stupid too.  (It looks like Skeletor’s drunk cousin.)

 

For a movie called Kill the Scream Queen, the film is woefully light on actual Scream Queens.  The only legitimate Scream Queen in the cast is Debbie Dutch.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t stick around long enough for you to get your Scream Queen fix.

 

The movie is only 75 minutes long, but you’ll swear it was longer.  To pad out the running time, Zebub uses a lot of slow motion, puts in a lot of useless outtakes during the end credits, and spends a long time lingering on the artwork of the club (it looks like something off the side of a detailed van from the ‘70s).  Even though it’s cruddy in just about every respect, the sheer amount of boobs in this thing is enough to save it from being a One Star flick.

MAN OF THE EAST (1974) **

Terence Hill stars as an English dandy who travels to the Wild West to inherit his outlaw father’s home.  In his father’s will, he asked that his three bandit friends teach Hill how to become a man.  Meanwhile, he rides around on a bike, acting like a dork, which naturally catches the eye of a pretty young woman.  They fall in love and predictably, her father just so happens to want Hill’s father’s land.  The local tough guy has a crush on her too, which sets off a war between them.

 

Man of the East isn’t really funny enough to be a comedy (although I did like the scene where Hill mistook his horse for a gymnastics horse) and there’s not enough action to cut it as a western.  We get an OK barroom brawl, but nearly all of the comedic gags land with a thud.  It also takes an inordinate amount of time to unfurl its slim premise.

 

I did like seeing Plan 9's Gregory Walcott playing the ringleader of the bandits.  It's probably the same exact role that would have gone to Bud Spencer if he had been available.  He's okay I guess, but his character’s name, Bull Schmidt is the funniest thing about him.

 

Hill doesn’t do a bad job.  It’s just the material isn’t up to snuff.  It’s definitely not up to the levels of enjoyment of the Trinity movies.  Director Enzo Barboni (who also did the Trinity pictures with Hill) just allows the film to run on much too long.  125 minutes is just too sprawling of a running time for such a dumb little forgettable western.

 

AKA:  A Man from the East.

ERIK THE CONQUEROR (1963) **

I avoided this one for the longest time, mostly because I'm not a big fan of Italian peplum.  However, the combination of Mario Bava and Cameron Mitchell is tough to resist.  It’s not as good as their next collaboration, Blood and Black Lace, but it’s better than your average Italian Viking movie.  That’s not exactly saying much though.

The Vikings are betrayed by power-hungry English general and a battle ensues.  During the fracas, the two orphaned sons of the Viking king are separated.  Erik is found by the Queen of England and raised as her own.  Meanwhile, Eron is found by his own people.  When he becomes full grown, he becomes Cameron Mitchell and leads the Viking army into battle against England.  In the end, the two brothers (predictably) realize they’re flesh and blood and team up to fight the evil general.

Most of these Italian peplum movies look weird.  The color is always a bit off; almost as if someone’s been futzing with the color settings on your TV.  Since this is a Mario Bava picture, Erik the Viking looks beautiful.  The naval battles are atmospheric and Bava gives us a little of his patented horror imagery during an execution scene. 

The opening battle is pretty hardcore.  There's a particularly gnarly bit where a woman and her child get speared together.  After the solid start, things get kind of draggy and all the dance numbers, coronations, and romance shit don’t exactly help.  The third act has a few nice moments, like when Erik’s girlfriend is tortured with a spider.  It’s these little moments that make you wish Bava had injected a little more of his personality throughout the rest of the picture.

Mitchell does a good job here.  His performance is different than what you’d see in a lot of these movies.  With his broody swagger, he’s more James Dean than Steve Reeves.  He also has what has to be one of the longest death scenes in movie history, which is a perfect fit for his level of theatrics.

AKA:  The Invaders.

NEW BLOG! NEW LOOK! SAME OLD SHIT!

Hey guys and girls,

LiveJournal's been pissing me off lately, so I thought that after ten years of doing things the old fashioned way, I'd finally move into the 21st century and get on Blogger.  I'm still trying to figure it all out, so have patience with me as I try to get the new site up and running.

I still hope to be writing movie reviews with the same kind of consistency my readers are used to.  I am still hard at work on no less than FOUR new books, the first of which (a collection of all brand-new horror reviews) should be ready by the end of the year.

I plan on posting a handful of reviews soon just to test the waters and if I like the layout and format, I'll be sure to post even more in the near future. Thanks to all who have read my stuff, commented, and gave positive feedback over the last decade.  Here's to another decade of reviewing shit.

You can visit my old blog here:  http://thevideovacuum.livejournal.com/