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Reviews
The Sadist (1963)
Brilliant but...
Hovey and Alden are excellent here and it is a shame that they made very few films as Hovey showed real talent and Alden was a great leading man. The acting is great but all concerned except for Arch Hall who is completely over the top and almost ruins the film. Fortunately there is much that is very good here. The script is tight with some good character arcing, the direction is surefooted and efficient and the cinematography is sharp. All of which belies the miniscule budget. It takes place in a single location which looks real rather than a set and has only 7 actors in total yet it looks very professional and makes the most of the desert light.
To me this is almost as good as Ida Lupino's The Hitch Hiker (although that film's villain is much more convincing) yet is hardly known. Not sure why, when all the reviews are positive, this film has such a low rating?
The Time Travelers (1964)
Why has this got such a low score when virtually all of the reviews are positive
This is a little- known gem which, if it was made 5 years earlier, would have been a classic of the genre. AIP sci fi films are usually risibly bad but this one is very good and they have done a fine job with a limited budget. The colour photography is sharp and beautiful. The performances are adequate, just avoiding going over the top. The effects, apart from the rocket which is probably too small to be realistic, are excellent and for the most part are physical rather than optical. The android having his head taken off and replaced without any cutting is fantastically well done and so is the android ripped apart by the mutants. The film also moves at a fair crack and has the odd plot turn that keeps the viewer on their toes.
Give it a go. You will not be disappointed.
Dorosute no hate de bokura (2020)
Headaches and belly laughs
Had to write this review after seeing this great little film. The story is basically an expansion of a Dr Who sketch done for Comic Relief from a few years ago (Matt Smith years).
It starts off with a very simple idea which becomes increasingly complicated. There are loads of holes in the plot but that doesn't matter as it moves at a great pace and you just buy into it. The complexity of the making of this film makes your head hurt with lots of pranks and curveballs thrown in to keep it interesting. It is charming, funny and very clever.
I won't say much more about it but if the performances seem a little bit OTT this is deliberate so that they match up with earlier versions of the same dialogue.
See it. You will be raving about it afterwards.
X (1963)
Ripe for a remake
The central idea of the film - what would happen if you could see through things - is what sells this film. It is essentially a variation on The Invisible Man - doctor performs experiments on himself and eventually goes mad.
The movie needs great special effects but this one just uses some dissolves into anatomical models and some polarising lenses. Considering the limitations, it is surprisingly good and you watch it so see how it ends (which would be horrible if a remake is attempted). The screenplay however doesn't really think it through and has some lame dialogue but also some brilliant lines. Someone who could see through things would effectively be blind as they would be bumping into things, not be able to recognise anything they are looking at and of course would not be able to recognise people. Is it also very likely that a doctor specialising in eyes would attend heart operations?
This is Corman at his best. Some of his films are unwatchable but not this one. It is about as good as it could be with the limited budget. A remake would have horrific CGI dissected people running around and a lot of nudity. Sound right up my street. Can someone make it please!
Scream and Scream Again (1970)
Shame
When I first saw this film I thought it was brilliant but time has not been kind to it.
Firstly the bad - The 3 stars never all appear in the film in the same scene and Peter Cushing has about 3 lines before being bumped off. There is rather too much time with slightly under par action sequences and not enough exposition (the chase of the Vampire killer takes up a large amount of the middle of the film) and I really could have done without the Amen Corner's songs in the club scenes. The ending is rushed.
The good - Alfred Marks is excellent as the police inspector and has some great funny dialogue. The Eastern Bloc villain is good too. The opening scene has haunted me since childhood (although its not terribly well done and is actually quite risible now) and the handcuffs scene still works.
But it is memorable.
The Haunted House of Horror (1969)
interesting cast
Not a great film but certainly not unwatchable. It's mainly interesting for fans of British TV of the 1970s as there are a lot of very familiar faces here - Richard O'Sullivan from Man About the House and Robin's Nest, Robin Stewart from Bless this House, Robert Raglan from Dad's Army, Veronica Doran (Eddie Yeats' wife in Coronation Street), George Sewell from just about everything from UFO to Special Branch. Even Allo Allo's Vicky Michelle can be spotted in the party scenes. Add to this 2 pop stars - Frankie Avalon and Mark Wynter and Dennis Price from Kind Hearts and Coronets and you have an interesting cast. The best performance came from Jill Haworth - an actress with great screen presence who should have been a bigger star.
The story needed a bit of work. It is not clearly explained why they did not go to the police or why they returned to the house.
I was a bit surprised at the gore - worthy of Peter Walker - and the scene where lovable Richard O'Sullivan beats up his girlfriend is genuinely shocking. However despite the title there are no ghosts and this is a whodunnit with the first victim being a real surprise. I also liked the way you couldn't tell who was holding the knife near the end. Nice touch.
I enjoyed it but I can understand why there are so many bad reviews.
The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
Disappointing
I saw this in the cinema when I was 15. It was the first horror movie I saw in a cinema and I raved about how brilliant it was for years. I think it was on a double bill with the Savage Bees and we watched half of it again before leaving the cinema, When I saw this was available on DVD I had to buy it and I'm afraid that clearly my memory played tricks on me because it is not very good. There were a few scenes that I remember vividly (the waterfall and the obligatory boob flash) but I had forgotten how turgid and slow it was. Whilst clearly influenced by 50s sci-fi movies like excellent The Quatermass Xperiment and The Hideous Sun Demon, there is no attempt to be a homage to these films. The melting effects are OK (and good for its time) but it despite an early scene showing him losing an eye, you can still see the actor's eye moving in the blacked out socket later. The sci-fi premise is misleading, this is essentially a slasher movie and a not very good one. The story makes no sense. Surely astronauts coming back from a mission to Saturn would arouse some media interest for instance? The acting is OK although there is too much emphasis on the doctor and not enough on the monster. The direction is lacklustre. There are a few scary scenes (the early scene in the hospital when he takes his bandages off and the stalking scenes are fine) but the rest is turgid.
It needs a remake, with the spaceman more gradually losing his mind and flesh to allow him to have some sort of character.
Final Destination 5 (2011)
Surprisingly good
FD4 was not terribly good so I wasn't expecting this to be much cop. However, I think is the best one since FD2. It has pretty much the same plot as all of the others and characters do not seem overly upset about their friends dying or act logically.. But you don't watch the FD films for the story you watch for the freak accidents and they are all pretty "good" and very gory. There is one in particular that I couldn't watch (being a bit eye phobic).
There are a lot of intentional laughs (from Isaac and Dennis) and a few unintentional ones too/ The CGI bridge collapse at the beginning is fantastically well done and worth the price of admission. Likewise the twist ending.
In summary - the series seems to have gone out on a high. Please don't make another one and spoil it!
Wyrmwood (2014)
A hoot
This starts off as a pacy low budget zombie apocalypse film with plenty of tension and decent-ish acting. Then about 30 minutes in - when Benny teams up with our hero - it switches style to become a raucous comedy. It then turns into Mad Max.
The make-up effects and digital effects may not be Hollywood quality but good enough . The swearing is pretty much constant but because it sounds more natural from Ozzie mouths it is funny rather than offensive and the comic acting is spot on (although the mysterious scientist is a bit annoying)..
I cannot understand why the overall rating is so low on this as I found it really entertaining with never a dull moment and many laugh out loud moments. Give it a try. It's not the best film ever made but I enjoyed it much more than the multi-million dollar World War Z.
Lifeforce (1985)
Dracula meets Quatermass
Mathilda May was gorgeous - certainly the best looking space vampire of all time. The jury is out about her acting though. Now for the review of the film...
The first half of the film borrows heavily from Dracula (Railsback is Jonathan Harker, FInlay is Van Helsing, the naked male aliens the Brides of Dracula, The Churchill is the Demeter and there is an asylum and a seemingly disused place of worship) and then morphs into the Quatermass Xperiment when the space girl escapes and finally turns into the mayhem of the finale of Quatermass and the Pit. Along the way we have some terrible dialogue, even worse acting (yes I'm talking about you Railsback), a plot that has gaping holes in it and variable SFX. The space scenes are pretty good, the animatronic zombies are superb and the burning London looking a bit cheap. It has to be remembered that digital effects did not really exist at this point in history so much of what is seen is real. There are some big names involved in this film - as well as a cast of well known faces, you have Dan O'Bannon (writer of Alien), Star Wars SFX maestro John Dykstra, music by Henry Mancini etc - yet none of them really comes out of it with any real credit. Hooper is supposedly regarded as a master of horror - although apart from Chainsaw 1, Salem's Lot and Poltergeist (which is debateable how much he was involved), did he really make many great films? This is hilarious rather than scary. All the jumps come from actors suddenly shouting their dialogue (Railsback and Stewart in particular) rather than suspense.
It is well worth watching but often for the wrong reasons.
Xing xing wang (1977)
Great fun
I had never heard of this film and hope that this review will go some way to telling other people about it. I found it on Amazon Prime when searching for a Godzilla film and expected to turn it off after 5 minutes. However, it gets straight into the action (unlike most Kong films which usually make you wait ages for the big man in a suit) and unlike most monster movies there is plenty of interest when the monster is not on screen. Firstly there is the comely Tarzan girl who wears an outfit so skimpy that she makes Dr Who's Leela seem frumpy. Then there are the animal scenes - a fight with a tiger is particularly grisly - and don't; miss the dancing with a real leopard. The Peking Man is pretty bad, even by 1977 standards, but is still better than the tatty ape suit in King Kong v Godzilla and even manages to open its mouth. The SFX vary from terrible to actually rather good. Certainly the model work is as good as the Godzilla movies in the 70s. There are a few other areas where it is actually more realistic than previous (and subsequent Kongs). Firstly the "show" is outdoors - not even the Palladium would be able to host a Kong show. The building at the end that the Peking Man ascends crumbles as he climbs it. I don't think the Empire State Building would have coped with a giant ape climbing up it! And the general trying to kill the giant ape did not miss the opportunity to do so just because there was a leather bikini clad woman on the roof.
Yes this film is very daft and hilarious at times but it is never boring being both sexy and gory and probably not one you should watch with your children. Recommended for anyone who enjoyed King Kong Lives, any Japanese Godzilla film or just monster movies..
Busanhaeng (2016)
Still some life in zombies
This is a great zombie film for several reasons. Firstly pretty much all of it is filmed in broad daylight so you can see what is going on. Secondly it's pacey without going completely over the top in the action scenes. Thirdly there is characterisation and not just gore. You care about these people and want them to live. Fourthly it is quite well acted (the little girl is fantastically good and will break your heart) and very well directed. Yes it is a bit silly and overlong and is more of an action adventure film than a horror. The infected have not died so are not really zombies and there is none of that "let's see how many ways we can destroy their brains" which seems to be the only raison d'etre of most zombie movies. The effects are great without dominating the picture with the hordes of infected pouring out of glass windows and doors extremely well done.
I will definitely seek out more Korean movies.
It Follows (2014)
Just about keeps the interest but no classic
Rarely does a film split votes like this one with people either giving it a 1 or 9 or 10 out of 10. I don't think it is good or bad enough to merit such extreme reactions. This is clearly very low budget (not always a bad thing with a horror movie) but it is quite slow, very derivative (the Ring, Let the Right One in, Cat People, Halloween etc) and rarely makes any real sense. For instance, if only the victim can see "It", then how could our heroine see her neighbour's?
There are a few good scenes - the swimming pool, the beach - but more or the overly long running time should have given us some background explanation of what "it" was (is it an allegory for AIDS?) or maybe they will give an explanation of it's origins in later sequels?
All in all, a minor film, occasionally well made, but no classic.
Cinderella (2015)
Not sure how it could have been any better
This film has a special placed in my heart as it was the first film I took my eldest daughter to the cinema to see. She was mesmerised the whole way through (standing up for most of it!). It is a fairly accurate direct remake of the Disney cartoon version but wisely reducing the screen time for the annoying animal characters and (perhaps not so wisely) removing the songs. It expands the earlier part of the story and shows how Ella became a servant to her stepmother and stepsisters logically. The sets, costumes and cast are all excellent and whilst sumptuous it is not completely over the top like the remake of Beauty and the Beast. Lily James is lovable but not in the sickly way the cartoon Cinderella was. Blanchette is fabulous, hissable but damned attractive at the same time. The ugly sisters are not ugly but provide some of the laughs. Madden is actually a Prince that is handsome enough for the role (loved his costumes) and as usual Bonham Carter steals the film in the 10 minutes she is on screen as the fairy godmother.
For once the live action remake is better than the cartoon original and I was teary eyed at least 3 times Those who gave this a low rating probably didn't see it in a cinema with a little girl.