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Despite it being heralded as “SCIENCE-FICTION’S GREATEST THRILL!” in the movie’s tagline, you can assume pretty accurately the quality of the motion picture you’re getting simply by seeing the title “Fire Maidens of Outer Space”. However, if you're counting on laughable 1950s sci-fi cheesiness to make it worth checking out, there’s a good chance of disappointment.

“SCIENCE-FICTION’S GREATEST THRILL!”? Thrill as characters move from one location to another... and then go back to the previous location... again and again... and again. Unsurprisingly, this film is bereft of a variety of locations to make it interesting. However, the film’s need to send its characters back and forth from room to room in the most unmotivated ways is on par with the action sequences of Scooby Doo... only the limited animation on Scooby Doo feels more dynamic than this stilted festival of relentless film padding.

If the sets were even slightly interesting, this wouldn’t be as unbearable, but the production design is about on the same level as a bad stage play. The sets are so unconvincing that it took an embarrassingly long amount of time for me to even realize characters were on a spaceship early in the film.

Also, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I’m starting to suspect that Fire Maidens of Outer Space might not the Bechtel Test. This, of course, actually surprises no one. Still, the film isn’t winning any awards for being feminist (even by 1950s standards). Laughably, though, it even falls apart at its attempt to market itself on sex by not having any of the titled Fire Maidens appear until almost halfway through the movie.

Nope, the first portion of the film is a bunch of similar-looking white guys in milkman uniforms sitting around an unconvincing spaceship set controlled by only two levers. A good chunk of that is spent looking at the equivalent of a screensaver that’s supposed to give us the impression that they’re traveling in space. Even some of the worst of 1950s space films do a better job at convincing the audience they’re in space. This is remarkably low effort even by the standards of its genre.

The only actor in this film who gives anything resembling an actual performance is Owen Berry, as Prasus, and he’s not in the film for a significant amount of time.

The film also leans into Atlantis lore in a way that makes the whole thing feel like a sword and sandals movie more than a Sci-Fi movie. Although even without the weird script left turn to Atlantis lore, the whole thing is structured similarly to the plot structure of a Hercules film. This wasn’t a selling point to me as those are some of my least favorite types of films.

There are some real clunker films in the 1950s, however, so far this one ranks personally as third worst, following Hercules Unchained in second and Rocket Attack U.S.A. in first. That’s a pedigree of bad that the film works very hard to earn.

My fear going into Thunderbolts* was that we were going to get a Marvel pallet swap version of DC’s The Suicide Squad that failed to bring anything new to the table. The questionable quality of the last entry into the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World, only heightened this fear. Thankfully, the film mostly avoids this pitfall and surprisingly has a narrative voice that has been missing in so many of the recent Marvel flicks.

Unfortunately, the film also features a 3rd act cop-out that undercuts a lot of the narrative voice... so that the film can be a theater-friendly, four-quadrant, investor-friendly film. Thankfully, that shift doesn’t break the entire film, though. Still, it’s frustrating to see the ingredients for a five-star film all up there on screen, only to find the film gets cold feet when it has the opportunity to go somewhere much darker that might have been fascinating.

However, I understand the perpetual 2nd act nature of comic book storytelling and blockbuster film franchises excludes a lot of opportunities for films to really dig into consequences and pyrrhic victories that I want from these narratives. It’s inherently part of the deal of loving these franchises that if you love those kinds of moments, you’re going to be left out in the cold more times than you would like. Such is the devil’s bargain of big corporate art to some degree or another.

Thankfully, though, there’s a lot of good filmmaking leading up to that third act and some of the most significant work in actual characterization we’ve gotten in a long time in the MCU. Your mileage will probably vary depending on how much you like the characters to begin with.

I can’t say I’m as on board with Florence Pugh’s portrayal of Yelena Belova as the rest of the internet seems to be. She’s not bad in the role, which is good, as most of the film rests on her shoulders. Still, I’ve been unable to muster up the enthusiasm for her that I’ve seen from other people. If you adore her, though, there’s going to be a lot to love here.

Honestly Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barns is the only character I’m significantly invested in the film. It’s nice that they gave him some of the coolest set pieces, as well as an interesting plot angle, albeit one that feels pretty improbable. Still more MCU political intrigue, please.

The rest of the cast feels a bit like placeholders to me, but none of them are bad in their roles. I’ve never cared for David Harbour’s Red Guardian being played for comedy as hard as the writers on these films do, but I feel like they deepened his character just enough to make it less annoying for me.

Unfortunately, the trailers, marketing, and knowledge of the comics spoil a lot of the plot twists, so I couldn’t freshly experience many of those aspects, and that was a bummer, although not the fault of the film.

It is nice to see many plot elements of the Disney+ shows get wrapped up in this film, although I’m curious how that will land for those who didn’t watch the referenced shows.

Most positively, though, I did feel like there were a handful of really quality moments in the film that hearkened back to some of the best, more grounded elements of Phase 1 of the MCU, and I hope this is a trend for the franchise. I would love to see it regain more of its footing.

The film benefits from the low bar that the last several films in the franchise have set, but it gets so close to seriously terrific that I can’t help but think what might have been with a few tweaks here and there. Sure, we should judge films based on what they are instead of what we want them to be, but it’s impossible to completely drown out the “but wouldn’t it be cooler if” part of my brain while watching this one.

I’m hoping for the less invested viewer, this won’t be nearly as significant an issue, and the whole film can just be a lot of fun for people less picky than I am. That said, it seriously outdid the very low expectations I had going into it, and that made it worth seeing.

This review may contain spoilers.

A Lorenzo Lamas 1993 direct-to-video action film. If you were alive in the 1990s, that’s probably all the description you need to have a very accurate idea of exactly what you’re going to get here.

The whole movie is cliché to such a degree that the second I saw a character in the trunk of a car, I knew precisely what the last action set-piece would be, even though they got him out of the trunk and it looked like what I predicted wasn’t going to happen for a moment.

The clichés are so thick that the film even pulls out the classic 1st act "fridging" of a pregnant woman (and the character’s brother) just to motivate the protagonist. Although Lamas' total lack of emotional reaction to the death of his Brother, Sister-in-law, and yet-to-be-born niece or nephew is unintentionally quite funny due to how off it is.

Lamas is playing a character that is only different from his character on the TV series Renegade by the most marginally small units of measurement that one could imagine.

Annoyingly, they seem to be oddly committed to not using the term bounty hunter through most of the film. It makes you wonder if it was for copyright reasons, or the filmmakers thought the idea of a “bounty tracker” was somehow cooler. Either way, it’s laughably clunky.

The third act introduces down-on-their-luck teen characters almost out of nowhere who have no reason to be in the plot... besides the fact that it's hard to write a lone wolf character when he has nobody to talk to. They needed to pad out the film with some potential hostages for the final action set-piece, so it's shoehorned in quite oddly.

My friend, with whom I was watching it, got a few laughs out of the constant sounds of the villains’ leather outfits. The cliché unnecessary troubled youth made me laugh. The film’s biggest selling point is how much it plays into the tropes and is completely the direct-to-video action film you expect it to be.

It’s not completely incompetent. It’s on par with most 90’s syndicated TV action series. Just don’t expect anything new from it. with expectations set low, there’s a good chance you’ll at least laugh and experience a little nostalgia for this very specific type of film.

I can’t imagine it being all that enjoyable for people who didn’t grow up with this kind of film, though.

As a former video store clerk and a fan of all things terrible in cinema, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve given up on a film without watching it to the end. Considering that, about a decade ago (maybe more), I made my first attempt at watching The Beatniks and only got about a fourth of the way through the film. I finally watched the whole film tonight, and in retrospect, I don’t regret the initial choice of giving up and moving on to something else.

This is a film filled with deeply unlikable characters with no redeeming qualities, simply being annoying for most of the film. Worst of whom is Peter Breck with a performance so over the top as the character Bob ‘Moon’ Mooney that I think even Nicolas Cage might ask him to tone it down a little.

Still, what turned me away initially and is the biggest sin of the film is that its title is completely false advertising. This isn’t a film about Beatniks, this reads too much like a moral outrage "the kids these days are out-of-control" straw man scare tactic film rather than a legitimate crime film in most parts.

There’s also a shoehorned fictional music biopic plot in here that halts the movie to a standstill whenever it seems to gain momentum, by throwing in crooner songs that are distinctly not like anything beatniks would listen to.

Even at a short 78-minute runtime, the whole experience feels like it took 3 hours or more to get through. It’s drudgery to watch.

Maybe it was more transgressive when it was released, or maybe the songs were more of a selling point, but there’s almost nothing here for a modern audience.

This is concentrated boredom. Good luck trying to stay awake during it if you try to watch it.

Even though I tried to see it in theaters, I eventually missed out on Captain America: Brave New World until today. I’m glad I didn’t bother to go out and see it. While it doesn’t hit the lows of The Eternals, Black Widow, Ant-Man, and the Wasp, and Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s also not far out ahead of them either.

This is annoying because I like Anthony Mackie as Cap, and I was one of the few people who enjoyed Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I think there’s a lot of potential for the character of Isaiah Bradley. Even the premise of re-exploring Thaddeus Ross’s past could have gone somewhere interesting.

Even the setup of paying off The Eternals with an adamantium world crisis isn’t terrible. If this were played more like a political thriller, like it starts out as, I think, it could have been a lot of fun.

Instead, we get what feels like a plot by committee that devolves into 3rd act mess. That mess feels suspiciously like it was made that way in a slew of re-writes and edits to try to meet film goers expectations instead of saying whatever the film originally set out to tell.

The best evidence of that is in the usual overworked FX artist only given enough time to churn out a video game cut-scene level of polish for many of the effects work. What’s more surprising, though, is how obvious the ADR re-recording of dialogue is in many parts of the film.

The third act ends up laughably lifeless with these problems. It dives heavily into cliches. If I didn’t know better, it almost feels like a parody of its own franchise.

Made worse yet by the unfortunate elephant in the room, that with the loss of William Hurt the role of Thaddeus Ross had to be recast. That role of Ross was defined to a tee by William Hurt. I don’t think there’s an actor who could convincingly fill those shoes with the right mix of comic book silliness and gravitas. Like everyone else, I love Harrison Ford. However, he’s miscast trying to pick up this character. It doesn’t work. All I can see is Harrison Ford and his previous characters. Besides all the writing woes in the third act, this was never going to work for me.

Even the worst Marvel movies don’t line up a dump truck of money into a film like this to make something that’s unwatchable. There are good action scenes, there are moments of terrific acting. The first two acts are pretty decent. I just wish they had spent more time figuring out what they were trying to do with the film, long before working on it, instead of the rushed “fix it in post” feel that a lot of this franchise has adopted.

If this genre is going to survive, it needs to find out how to get back its heart instead of just being an attempt to reach as many quadrants of a demographic as it can hit.

Also, there's a strange, incredibly brief cameo in this thing that looks like a CGI body double when that was completely unnecessary, and if that's the case, "we couldn't get this actor for a few hours of shooting" seems like a tremendously poor reason for a CGI body double.

I’m in six films deep with Bert I. Gordon’s filmography. So far, Tormented stands out in many interesting ways that make it easily the best of Gordon's films I’ve seen (so far). Although I’m unsure if the step up in quality here comes from Gordon’s directing, as much as I think it comes from the films I believe he’s trying to emulate. Specifically, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which had come out two years prior. If you’re trying to copy a film stylistically, at least he’s trying to copy from one of the best.

However, nobody here is going to be fooled into thinking they’re watching the next Hitchcock either. Tormented is filled with a lot more over-the-top melodrama. It doesn’t have enough locations to keep the whole thing from dragging at many points in the plot. There’s enough that’s formulaic and predictable that you’re probably not going to be shocked by many of the plot twists.

Still, there’s just enough weirdness here to hold your attention for a good portion of the movie as well. Also, there’s the structure for a much better movie here. Where the film has something going for it is when you’re questioning the sanity of its flawed noir protagonist. How much of this is happening and how much of this is him losing his sanity, is a fun question. Unfortunately, Gordon eventually spoils the fun of this ambiguity by placing everything in well-defined categories that leave nothing to the imagination.

I want to see a version of this film that throws out (or radically alters) the scene with the blind character at the lighthouse, as that completely kneecaps the ambiguity that is the best part of the film.

I feel a modern filmmaker like Jordan Peele could easily take the structure and plot of this film and make it into something that’s incredibly suspenseful and mind-bending. The lost potential Tormented has is the most disappointing aspect of it.

However, the film having any potential to lose puts it far above Gordon’s other work, like The Magic Sword, King Dinosaur, and The Spider.

As a sucker for films with noir elements and characters with a potentially short grasp on sanity, this was an easier watch than it should be considering the film’s pedigree.

Sacco & Vanzetti is a stark & unflinching film. As it speaks to how politics and justice are intertwined, I can’t help but think about how politics and film are similarly intertwined (especially for films of this nature). Not being particularly well-versed in the historical events it’s based on, I’m unsure how to judge it as a political statement. Disentangling it as a film apart from politics seems quite a task. Especially when viewed in relief to our current political climate.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film’s storytelling is that Bartolomeo Vanzetti, as a character in this film, is played almost unsympathetically. Considering the crux of the storytelling seems to set up Sacco & Vanzetti as protagonists, it is far more interesting that Vanzetti is played with a stubborn conviction that makes him almost unlikable. Gian Maria Volonté is terrific in this role.

The filmmaking itself is particularly notable. There’s a harsh aspect of the editing and cinematography that matches the harshness of the story. The film feels like it is decades ahead of its time in a lot of aspects of how it displays its filmmaking.

One aspect that might not work for everyone is that the soundtrack has several Joan Baez songs, and if she’s not your favorite, it might weigh down a few of the scenes. Also, the score is especially scarce compared to modern filmmaking. The lack of score in many scenes often does add to the verisimilitude, but I feel like a little more scoring wouldn’t have hurt in a few parts of the film.

There are also a few re-recorded lines in the English version of the film that don’t match up to the scenes their in well in the English version of the film, but it’s a minor distraction.

Ultimately, I think a lot of how the film will land for you will depend on how you see the politics of the film. It’s challenging to watch & feels like a bleak reminder of how complex the issues of justice are. It makes an excellent case for how our politics can make us turn a blind eye to justice and how fallible and complicit to injustice our world can be.

There are so many moments where (if the narrative here is accurate) you feel like we’re all trapped to repeat the inherent flaws of mankind. However, there are small glimpses of hope and human determination, so hopefully, there were things we learned from these events.

If you’re looking for a complex and challenging film that’s not at the top of the film-going consciousness, this is worth checking out. If you’re looking for something lighthearted to get you out of doomscrolling out of concern for the state of this world, I guess the one bright spot here is that we’ve apparently been here before. That said, I would probably recommend something a bit lighter. This is a heavy film.

Heading into Martial Law II: Undercover, I tried to recall a single aspect from the first film, but my mind was drawing a complete blank. Even watching the trailer for Martial Law didn’t jog my memory much. I looked up my previous review and saw “the cinematic equivalent of Styrofoam packing peanuts or a white noise machine.” That wasn’t encouraging, either.

Unsurprisingly, even though the sequel feels like a slight improvement, this feels like more of the same. This is a by-the-book early 90s direct-to-video action flick in most aspects. Fairly unremarkable but nothing offensively terrible either. Outside of the action, there’s some interesting cinematography. The actors and stunt people range from competent to very good at what they do.

Unfortunately, the action is coordinated in a fairly bland, predictable way. The action cinematography is also shot too tightly (presumably for coverage) and underplays the talents of people like Cynthia Rothrock, even when their martial arts are impressive.

The score feels primarily like library music and clashes with a few of the scenes. Although it’s a bit nostalgic, as you feel like you’ve heard most of it a million times before (even if that is in a dentist’s waiting room or a mall food court).

A lot of the movie feels monotone. Many of the villains seem cast for their ability to do stunts, and it borders on endearing, as this is pretty common for this era’s action films. Evan Lurie’s performance as Tanner stands out as the foremost example of this. He certainly has the intimidating physique for the role, but they gave the character far too much dialogue, and most of it lands with a thud, but it’s also unintentionally comedic in an enjoyable way.

Recasting Chad McQueen for Jeff Wincott as Detective Sean Thompson is a bit more of a step down than I was expecting it to be. It’s a small qualm, but Wincott is styled here to look like a '90s action film villain rather than a protagonist. I kept having to remind myself that he was the good guy, and it became distracting.

Unless you severely dislike 90s action flicks of this ilk, you probably won’t feel like the film is a total waste to watch. However, I doubt much of it will stay with you much more than an hour or two after watching. Still, it's worth showing up for the under-served amount of Cynthia Rothrock you get here, though.

This review may contain spoilers.

Black & white space sci-fi from the 50s can be incredibly hit or miss, even when you are digging into it for something you want to enjoy for its camp value. So much of this era is marked by dull tedium or charmless repetition. Thankfully, Manhunt in Space hits almost every cliche in what you would expect from a sci-fi serial from this era (while still retaining a “this is so cheesy it’s charming” camp appeal).

This is a compilation of a space serial TV series from 1954, so you’re not going to find anything terribly elaborate here. Manhunt in Space doesn’t redefine the genre or stand out remarkably. However, its limited sets are well-made, and the actors fit the bill for a sci-fi serial. They add “space” as a prefix to everything to make it more epic in a way that gives a modern audience a good chuckle.

There are also a few anachronisms that make the whole film far more comedically enjoyable than I think was the intention. Primarily, the hero’s “sidekick” being named Winky for some reason made me laugh every time it was uttered in a very serious tone. The mixture of the “space” prefix abuse with the word phone as “space phone” was another good laugh.

Moments of genuine comedy also elevate the otherwise simplistic plotting. A moment where the hero fools the villain and the villain loses an invisible spaceship, manages to land comedically far more effectively than I expected it to. There are even some stunts that border on slapstick that are genuinely entertaining.

This was never going to be high art, and the problems with the genre (and its origin as a TV show) keep the “film” from reaching a cult top of the cheesy old space sci-fi status for me. However, it’s still a breath of “enjoyable enough” fresh air from a genre that has so many nearly unwatchable landmines to the point where it left me with a grin.

Go in with low expectations and the ability to enjoy something silly and dated and you’ll probably have a good time.

It may sound obvious, however, constantly napping might be one of the worst character traits you can give a heroic character in fiction. Hercules and the Captive Women is the film in which this character trait is most significantly focused on. That’s to the film’s detriment because it makes Hercules out to be an indifferent bystander to his own story. Through most of the film, his son Hylas feels far more heroic. It makes you wish the film focused on Hylas.

Essentially, this is more of the same if you’ve seen a Hercules film before; nothing here will be novel. The structure is mostly man (or in this case demigod) walks into a set piece, does something slightly superhuman (usually involving lifting), then he moves on to the next set piece, wash, rinse, and repeat. Nothing is novel, nothing stands out for the vast majority of the film.

There are at least two scenes where they try for something epic in the scope, but it’s so late in the game in the wash, rinse, and repeat cycle that by the time they show up it’s hard to get past the apathy to care.

I watched this as an attempt to go through every feature film Mystery Science Theater 3000 had on their show, so I’m incredibly relieved that this is the last Hercules film I’ll have to watch for quite some time, because so many of these films are unbearable watches. I will say this one is slightly more tolerable than Hercules Against the Moon Men and Hercules Unchained, but not by nearly enough.

The one positive note is that I think this has the best costuming of any of the Hercules films I've seen. That is, however, a low bar. At least the soldier helmets are neat.

I’m not a Swords & Sandals fan in the first place, so if that is your genre, maybe I’m missing an aspect that draws fans of the genre to these stories. However, I simply don’t grasp the appeal.

I hope that underneath the bad localization and bad film transfer, maybe there’s something to Hercules and The Captive Women (when not poorly dubbed) that could shine through my mediocre reception. I, however, have never felt more done with a movie “franchise”.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

Well, I’m back on the filmography of Bert I. Gordon with The Magic Sword from 1962, and as this is later than many of his previous films I’ve seen, I wish I could say this is significantly better and he’s grown substantially. I can’t say that, though. Instead, this film is emblematic of everything I dislike from the Sword-and-Sorcery genre. Most significantly, that way, because it’s simply a dull & tedious movie.

The film's dullness stems from how its protagonist (Gary Lockwood as Sir George) has very little agency in his heroics. Instead, he succeeds via deus ex machina, plot contrivance, and through an annoying adopted sorceress helicopter mom character played by Estelle Winwood. Winwood tries her best, but she fails to deliver the comedic relief that I believe they were trying to use her for.

George’s soul motivation seems to be that this is a Sword-and-Sorcery film, there’s a princess, and saving the princess de rigueur for this genre. The total lack of any scenes between the princess and George leading up to the third act makes George appear to have the most childish understanding of love, and that makes him deeply unlikable as a protagonist. The film in its entirety suffers from its grade-school trope-filled approach to love & heroism. That makes it difficult to find anything here to relate to.

The final dragon set piece of the film is probably the most well-produced part, but it’s undercut by the protagonist failing to be legitimately heroic while he’s essentially saved by his mom.

Gordon’s primary marketable talent as a filmmaker seems to be that he knows how to do a forced perspective shot. I wish his talents went more towards storytelling, though, because it feels like an afterthought here. At least The Amazing Colossal Man had some campy overacting to make that deficit feel more tenable. The Magic Sword fails at even being campy fun, though. It’s a rough watch.

When I first saw the film, Hercules Against the Moon Men ranked eighth on my list of least favorite films of all time. Too much of that initial negative assessment probably stemmed from disappointment that the titled Moon Men were mythological rock creatures and not flat-out goofy aliens as the title implied to me.

Still, at some point, I most likely swore I would never watch it again after the first viewing. However, at some point, I made the incredibly foolish decision to review every full-length film that was on a broadcasted episode of MST3K after watching (or re-watching) the film and that leads us back to the review you’re reading right now.

After this ill-advised re-watch, I’m willing to say I was too harsh on the film. The film far more deserves its place as the 33rd worst film I’ve ever watched (Out of 1465 films). So yes, after reconsideration it is still a half-star movie at best. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Still, Hercules Unchained usurped the title of worst Hercules film taking the 8th spot from Hercules Against the Moon Men.

Yes, if you’re sensing a trend here that I don’t like Hercules films, you’re right, I don’t. I also don’t care for the entire sword-and-sandal genre. It doesn’t help that I saw the film in a terrible state, poor dubbing, faded print, bad audio, and possibly the wrong aspect ratio.

However, as I said in my Hercules Unchained review, I think there is a fundamental flaw in a lot of these Italian Sword-and-Sandals films based on Grecco-Roman mythology. That flaw, the filmmakers assume familiarity and ion for the source material from the audience when that isn’t universal and grows dimmer and dimmer as we replace that mythology with modern mythology along the lines of superheroes.

I find it difficult to get invested in the life of a demigod mythological character whose primary appeal is “he’s the guy from ancient mythology”.

The one place where I will say Hercules Against the Moon Men is an improvement over Hercules Unchained is that at least this rendition of the character seems to care more about doing the right thing than the Steve Reves interpretation did.

However, that minor difference being the most noticeable improvement indicates a lot of what we get here is essentially more of the same things this character and this genre is known for. Primarily, Hercules moves from one action set-piece to the next with little motivation given and faces them with the same primary bag of tricks he always does: He’s strong, he bends metal, he lifts heavy things, and some woman is always trying to seduce him.

There’s little to sink your teeth into outside of tropes that even pro-wrestling does better.

There are also some significantly confusing motivations for the ing cast and the choices they make in the film that don’t make much sense outside of that the script called for it.

Although I have no desire to re-watch the film for a third time, I wish I could have seen a non-dubbed color-corrected version of the film with better audio because I suspect that the film would have been much more tolerable than the butchered mess I watched. However, I suspect there isn’t a level of restoration to the film that would bring it to the point where it works for me. Still, take that into when you weigh my opinion of the film and seek out the best version of the film you can find.

I am unsure if a better preservation of the film exists that cleans up the film quality and audio, but I would be hard-pressed to recommend the film to anyone in the state I watched it.

On a technical note, I’m very curious if entire sections of the film’s backing music were removed from the version of the film I watched because this score is incredibly scarce and that added significantly to the boring nature of the experience I had.

It may no longer be the worst Hercules film I’ve watched and it might not be in the lowest 20s of every film I’ve seen. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t find it insufferable. It just didn’t hurt me as much on the second go around.

Going in with lower expectations and having seen several far worse films in the interim have made me realize that the “deep hurting” label that the MST3K episode gave it might have been ever so slightly misaligned. The film is just the slightest bit farther from the bottom of the terrible movie well than I realized... but it's still fairly far down. Don't go all the way down for it without bringing some survival equipment. I suggest playing Darude's Sandstorm along with the film during its final set-piece to lighten the tedium.

On many levels, No Retreat, No Surrender is certainly a film that follows trends for a quick cash-in. It’s squarely in that mid-80s hype over martial arts. It makes Van Damme’s villain Russian for little reason besides “it was the 80s and that was the style at the time”. However, its missteps in trying to hit the beats of movies like The Karate Kid and Rocky (while also weirdly trying to be a Teen movie) are strange and unpredictable enough to make you continuously question, “Where is this film going next?”

There’s a novice madcap unpredictably here that freshly ironed, focused, tested to within an inch of its life, theatrical releases of today have a hard time reaching in precisely the same way. That's the film's central charm.

While the film’s unpredictability certainly holds your attention for most of the run-time, it doesn’t entirely hide many of the film’s structural flaws, which remain glaring.

The film has the attention span of a fruit fly. It throws out several antagonistic characters while wanting us to care most about Jean-Claude Van Damme’s villain, who barely shows up in the film outside of the introduction and resolution. Instead of making us care about Van Damme, though, it spends an inordinate amount of time setting up other villains. Villians whose plots essentially go nowhere of interest. In the third act, it even dares to think we’ll be particularly invested in a showdown between villains without earning a reason for the audience to care about their fate.

Much of the plot also feels essentially like side quests in a video game. The longest subplot is one of the most bizarre training subplots I’ve seen in a film. Even worse than the fact that it’s strange, is that it unintentionally leaves us questioning the protagonist’s, Jason Stillwell’s, sanity.

Making it weirder, the reason the film wants Jason trained is for a plot twist much later in the film that we’re not aware of. “It’s an action film, people train in action films” seems like the only motivation that has been spelled out for Jason when the training scenes happen. When we’re finally given a reason for those screens to have existed, it’s so late in the film that the resolution feels unsatisfying.

While being all over the place is a frustrating aspect of the film, at the same time there is an amount of humor in the “oh I guess we’re here doing this now” scattershot and unpredictable nature of the film. You could probably make a movie night guessing game of “what’s going to happen next” that would leave you guessing incorrectly more often than you would expect.

At least most of the fighting is fairly good. There are several moments here and there with interesting fighting direction in many scenes.

There’s one bar fight camera move that I particularly enjoyed. If it was more focused on filmmaking like this and less on trying to shoehorn a coming-of-age plot that borders on after-school special territory, I think you could have had a decent (if more derivative) film here.

As I’ve said before, here the real draw is a general confusion that leaves you asking “What is going on” & “This makes no sense” while laughing hysterically. If you don't find appeal in baffling filmmaking choices, though, you might want to skip this one.

Watched on Monday March 17, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

The 1956 film Indestructible Man comes so close to being a downright good Noir film. However, its mistakes also lead to inadvertent comedy that makes the film an entertaining watch even when it misses the mark in blatantly obvious ways.

The most glaring issue for me is that while the film feels like it would fit much better into the genre of Noir crime drama, instead, it departs from that to be a monster horror film. Yes, the “plot twist” spelled out in the title is that Lon Chaney Jr. plays an “Indestructible Man”. A monster brought back from the dead via a quick bit of mad scientist electrocution along the lines of Frankenstein.

Oddly, while most monster films hinge completely on the gimmick of a monster, I feel like this would be a much more interesting story without the sci-fi twist. A murderer who somehow survives his execution and is out for revenge is a solid premise. Adding that he’s somehow indestructible feels like a completely unnecessary punch-up here.

The underlying noir plot has legs, though. Although it is somewhat hampered by excessive narration. I’m still a sucker for bad noir narration so I find it charming even knowing it's not technically "good". However, I will say it’s overdone here to a point where it starts feeling a bit like a Naked Gun-style self-parody. If you can laugh at the over-the-top nature of the narration you’ll probably have a good time with the film. If excessive narration annoys you, though, this might be a film to avoid.

Also, while much of what I'm about to critique may have been due to the bad audio quality and SD format I watched the film in, two of the male leads in the film (Max Showalter and Ross Elliot) are so similar that I found it difficult to distinguish between the two characters they played. The friend I was watching this with also shared this confusion. I ended up finding it comical, though.

Forgive a moment of me being incredibly juvenile here, but naming Max Showalter’s lead character Detective Division Lt. Dick Chasen was another thing that kept me from taking the movie seriously. Could they have at least gone with Richard like the R. in sign on his office indicated? I’m too childish not to laugh at that choice. Even my grammar software wants to correct his name to Rick as I write this. Come on writers.

Ultimately though, it’s silly aspects like this that make the film feel like an enjoyable B movie. Sure it doesn’t stand entirely on its own merits, but it’s aged via the cultural context of noir & crime movie parodies like Naked Gun into something that’s amusingly entertaining.

Also, there’s a lot of standout location shooting here compared to a lot of the low-end single shooting location drive-through double feature fare of movies from this time. Having a chase with an indestructible man through the Bradbury Building decades before Blade Runner is really cool to see. The Angels Flight trolley is a cool set piece for an action sequence. You can tell real thought and effort went into the location work on this film and it pays off.

The editing even has a few standout moments that punch above the movie's B-movie genre.

Lon Chaney Jr. plays an effectively creepy antagonist as well. I honestly think just letting him be a murderer instead of a monster would have worked just as well, if not better. He does, however, feel like one of the slowest murderers in film (which is expected from an undead killer, I guess) but he certainly takes his sweet time.

It’s certainly not perfect, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film. Because it’s in the public domain, you don’t have to risk money on it. You can watch the entire thing off of its Wikipedia entry. So why not give it a chance, especially if you’re into old cheesy crime dramas and noir films. I believe at least you’ll find some charm or amusement in it, if not enjoy it entirely for what it’s trying to be.

This review may contain spoilers.

Fight to Win (1986) aka The Magic Crystal is an entertaining film. It’s also completely all over the place, to a point of absurdity that I find it difficult to convey why it’s entertaining at this moment (outside of the Martial Arts on display). Likewise, I find it difficult to pinpoint whether it’s an “objectively good” film outside of its genre.

To be clear, I’m talking about Fight to Win (1986), the Cynthia Rothrock martial arts comedy about a set of characters going after a mysterious rock from Athens, Greece (It was only titled this in the Philippines on the Riftrax version). I’m not talking about Fight to Win (1987), the Cynthia Rothrock martial artist comedy about characters going after three ancient Chinese statues. I don’t know why you would get those confused, it's simple enough.

Speaking of confusion, the difficulty of pinning down which Cynthia Rothrock martial artist comedy you’re even watching is an apt analogy for experiencing this film. That level of confusion on display in the film is why I find it difficult to pin down the film’s “good or bad” quality.

While I’m a novice to this genre, I believe many Martial Arts films (especially from Hong Kong) tend to focus on entertainment ahead of plotting and characterization. Still, Fight to Win has such a reckless zeal to “get to the good part” that it absolutely rushes by explaining itself to the audience at a lightning pace. This would probably be more galling if the action wasn’t well done. However, even if this isn’t Hong Kong at the absolute top of its game (I'm not the best judge here), it’s still really entertaining action filmed well.

If it was just "entertaining action filmed well", though, this review would be over. You expect good action from a Hong Kong action comedy. A breakneck pace isn’t that surprising. What is surprising though is an absolutely baffling choice to shoehorn a legally distinct E.T. “inspired” plot right into the middle of the film and then end the film with a good heaping helping of Indiana Jones plotting.

Still, weird filler is not entirely unheard of in this genre either. However, the breakneck pacing mixed with the genre’s constant shifting, topped off with bad localization, and dubbing sprinkles in a level of weirdness that’s almost mesmerizing (that is when it’s not also being a somewhat shrill kids’ movie at the same time).

There are even brief moments of horror storytelling tropes here as well. Not to mention ancient alien science fiction. I can't understate how all-over-the-place this film is.

You could yell at the film to pick a lane, but it seems committed to all lanes at the same time and I’m unsure if that’s the wrong choice because ultimately it makes for entertaining filmmaking.

It might be a result of getting too jaded to films from watching too many of them, that's biasing me somewhat, but I respect how relentlessly mad-capped the film decides to be and its determined unwillingness to try to make the audience follow along. It might not be “objectively” superb storytelling, but it’s got the market cornered on “fascinating to watch”. Not to mention it’s a simply unpredictable ride. That has to be worth something.

If you’re looking for a comfortable film, that’s easy to follow, prepare for disappointment. If you’re looking for something absolutely out there in how different it is, there’s a lot to like here.

I had a good time… even if I’m still not entirely sure what I just watched or what actually happened in the plot. This one is weird but a lot of fun if you're willing to go along with it. Those more familiar with the genre will probably be far more used to its approach. At least that's my assumption.

One would be hard-pressed to find a C-list 80s space sci-fi movie that is more manic and all over the place than Battle for the Lost Planet. It almost feels like an improv troupe created a sci-fi movie live on stage. The guerrilla feel of the filmmaking has its moments where, through sheer determination, it hits some genuinely unique notes. Even on rare occasions it vaguely reminds me of what made early Sam Rami films so charming. That’s the primary upside to this kind of film.

However, the whole thing moves at such a breakneck pace, whipping through tonal changes, that it also feels like whiplash for too much of the film.

With just a modicum of additional cohesiveness, this would be on my short list of the greatest “so bad it’s good” films. With a few more likable or unique characters, this film would shine. If the camerawork was a little more stable, the camp value would have been more on display. If the edit and storytelling had a little more breathing room, that could have been an improvement too.

Of course, if you tweaked the film that much, it might not feel as uniquely like this film as it is, so it’s certainly a trade-off, regardless. Still, I was rooting for it the whole time to reach that moment where it felt like The Miami Connection and it didn’t entirely obtain that level of distinction.

What you do get here, though, is a wonderful level of low-grade mid-80s camp and weirdness, so it’s certainly not a waste of time if you’re a fan of weird, obscure 80s sci-fi oddities.

It may be a cheap-looking film that’s all over the place with effects on par with the more embarrassing moments of old Dr. Who, but there’s still enough apparent effort and care put into it, worth giving a chance even if just for its absurdity.

I’m not sure I can easily convey exactly what you’ll be getting into in a way that will feel satisfactory when you get there. However, if you don’t mind taking a chance on it (ready for some disappointment) you might end up with a good enough time to justify its runtime.

Honestly, I think I’m still scratching my head a little trying to wrap my brain around what I just watched. At the least, that’s better than boredom.

1959’s Hercules Unchained has a plot device called the Waters of Forgetfulness that erases Hercules’ memory. It’s a terrific metaphor for the film itself. So little of the film does anything interesting that you’ll find it challenging to much of the film.

Sword and sandals films are one of my least favorite genres, so I didn’t expect to enjoy Hercules Unchained, regardless. Still, the film found a way to go so far below my negative expectations for the genre that 1964’s Hercules Against the Moon Men is the only film in this genre I think less of.

I think at the time, and being it’s an Italian film, there’s a presumption the film makes that the audience is so familiar with the source material that they can forgo setting up much of anything for the audience. While I did go over Greco-Roman mythology in grade school, I didn’t retain enough knowledge of it to make this film make much sense.

Even if I had more context, though the delivery is mostly joyless. There is almost no humor in the entire film. The majority of the film is just a series of loosely related vignettes that have about as much storytelling to them as the worst video game cut scenes.

Hercules himself is somewhat of an insufferable protagonist as well. So much of the film’s threadbare plot isn’t even moved forward or resolved by him that he feels like a complete afterthought at times. That’s a problem when he’s your marquee hero for the film.

The film borders on feeling like it’s almost vindictively trying to waste your time by going nowhere interesting.

There are decent sets, maybe some of the acting is more interesting when it’s not dubbed poorly into English (like in the version I watched).

Still, this one has landed at #9 on my top 10 worst films of all time list. It might be better for people who love this genre emphatically. There isn’t a world where it was made for my tastes in film, that’s for certain.

Also, could the writers have bothered with at least one scene of him breaking free from chains to live up to the title?

This review may contain spoilers.

Watching the 1985 sports drama Spiker feels like getting hit directly in the face with a volleyball. Not because it gives you a gritty and grounded depiction of the sport. No, Spiker is just incredibly disorienting and leaves you questioning what just happened.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been left so confused by a sports movie in my life. This is also up there with some of the most confusing films I’ve ever seen. That confusion isn’t caused intentionally because of great scripting. That confusion is caused primarily by the film’s inability to decide what it wants to be and ends up being directionless for the majority of its runtime.

Not to mention it straddles a very confusing line in establishing if it’s trying to be a biopic about the 1984 Olympic volleyball team or a fictional volleyball movie about the lead-up to that Olympics. I’m sure with more research I could probably find that out more precisely. However, that also feels like an enormous waste of time.

My apathy toward learning more about the film through my own efforts stems heavily from the film’s inability to make its characters interesting or likable. The film is filled with one-dimensional tropes, but very few characters that you want to get behind.

Oddly, I’m left questioning if that’s intentional because most of the character’s story arcs end either with failure or are left oddly unresolved.

That’s not to mean that a story of the hardship of sports and the agony of defeat couldn’t be compelling. However, the film spends so much of its time following the typical story beats for a sports drama, that the abrupt derailment of many of its plot elements comes off as incredibly jarring.

I would be more interested in having the “hows and whys” of how this film came to be if offered to me in a documentary. Personally, that’s more interesting to me than the story the film is trying to portray. Still, I wasn’t interested enough to spend time researching that on my own.

I could almost see the film being viewed through an avant-garde lens as artistically interesting. Mostly in how it refuses to resolve itself satisfyingly. Almost as if that’s the point of it. If the film intended to say that sports are a random series of events that are ultimately unimportant and don’t ever cleanly resolve. Well, I could almost respect that. I find it hard to believe that interpretation was the actual intent behind the film though.

On the plus side, the low-level brain fog Spiker creates while watching was oddly interesting to me. It left me wanting to understand what was going on throughout most of the film and if maybe I suffered some sort of concussion before watching the film.

There is an absolutely bonkers pivot in the plot to cold-war sports drama at one point in the film. This pivot would make sense in any other 80s sports film. However, the pivot shows up and departs so briefly and in such an unresolved fashion that it feels like a completely different film stapled into the middle of this one.

Yes, if you’re coming to the film simply for the 80s vibe, this one does feel sufficiently 80s too. There are prerequisite montages. The film even ends in an abrupt montage. However, we all know there’s a king of 80s volleyball movies that eclipses Spiker in almost every way. Spiker is no Top Gun.

If you want your 80s volleyball movies to leave you confused about the line between fiction and non-fiction sports movies, and even what a sports movie is supposed to be. Spiker does a great job filling the demand for the dozens of people in the world who may be looking for it (presumably).

I can say that if you enjoy the humor provided in confusing and odd cinema, this one is probably well worth your time. I can’t stress enough how much of the film is off just enough to make it entertaining. It’s the uncanny valley of 80s sports dramas.

Watched on Sunday February 23, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

A bunch of insufferable characters standing around on one or two sets talking eless, uninteresting pseudoscience without forwarding the plot even by a millimeter is a standard of 1950s B-grade horror films. The Killer Shrews, unfortunately, follows this formula to the letter, and its only redeeming moment is how goofy it gets in the last 10 to 15 minutes of the film.

Unfortunately, no amount of silly puppetry, dogs poorly costumed as shrews, and a bunch of people randomly deciding their best strategy to survive killer shrews is to weld together a bunch of barrels and walk it to a beach like a tank can save this film.

The writers put in no effort giving us a reason to care about any of the characters. For the entirety of the film, we know next to nothing about them and even when they do have some form of characteristics, it’s the kind that shuts down proper storytelling. A protagonist who doesn’t ask questions because it’s “against [his] principles” brings absolutely nothing to a story.

I know it’s a trait of the genre to have problems that could have been easily solvable if characters acted with common sense. Still, the utter lack of any sense of self-preservation by these characters makes it so you are left thinking, “None of this would have happened if you had just left at the beginning of the film.” Yes, that would leave us without a film. However, that underlying stupidity of all the characters just makes you just want to root for the killer shrews at some point.

Once a character dies while typing, there is a bit of comical terribleness from that point on that is watchable for how stupid it is. So if you feel compelled to watch at least some of the film skip to that scene. But do yourself a favor and don’t struggle through all the tedious table settings because it is simply as dull as it gets.

Also, in the few moments the film tries to be about something, it gets uncomfortably close to eugenics. If you wanted to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt that at least they tacked on a cheesy moral point, you’re essentially robbed of that as well.

This is simply put, a bad film that can't even live up to its pulpy B-movie title even in the cheese department.

This review may contain spoilers.

I think with a modicum of effort you could convince me that 1985’s Sunset Strip is some sort of arthouse parody of early '80s action films. The entirety of that comes down to the fact that not a moment of dialogue in this film sounds natural by any stretch of the imagination.

It's dumbfoundingly remarkable how every line in the film feels out of place & just a bit off. It's almost surreal to the level of a Lynch film. This leaves you with a film that feels incredibly amusing and entertaining even if that wasn't the intent.

The plot itself is muddled and feels like an afterthought. It repeats the same beats over and over and over, especially when it comes to chase scenes. It reaches a level of absurdity that it provides a curious level of amusement inadvertently as well.

Best of all, the movie is scored with a ton of what sounds like the most stock library music possible, that (for the majority of the film) does not match the scenes it's backing. My favorite moments in the film are when the diegetic music sounds like nothing normal people would actually listen to.

The plot should be your typical framed for murder and on the run Hollywood stock plot from the mid-80s. But while our protagonist does seem to be athletic. He also just kind of jumps around like an idiot half the time and is the absolute worst at hiding from the people pursuing him.

It's particularly funny when he's bounding across the top of cars in a junkyard to get away from his pursuers when he could have just hidden himself far more easily. There's also the most lackluster job of hiding in a dumpster in film history.

The protagonist's inability to hide decently makes the majority of the film about him running either on foot or on a bike, and it just cycles over and over again on that concept.

There's is an absurd amount of driving scenes that are at least very well shot but aren't particularly interesting in their action.

The film is just odd enough that it left me laughing through almost the entirety of it. I'm sure that wasn't the intent but if you go in open to viewing it as an unintended comedy there's a good chance you'll have a good time.

If you expect it to be a great action film though you might be in for a disappointment. Even in the direct direct to video market of the mid-80s, there were better low rent action films at the time.

Still, there's enough '80s nostalgia and general weirdness to make this worth watching.

There's just a certain indescribable charm to bad '80s films that I'm a sucker for. No other decade captures this specific brand of wonderfully terrible film quite the same way.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from watching a mountain of some of the worst films ever made over the past several years is that compared to the entirety of film, Roger Corman’s films he produced have a level of competency that many other of his contemporaries in B movie making lacked.

That’s not to say Attack of the Giant Leeches is an overall hidden gem of a film. There’s still enough not to like that it’s ultimately going to have a limited appeal. Still, there are some core storytelling aspects here that are so often lacking in this genre.

First off, the characters are well defined. Sure, they are caricatures and many are over-the-top in the melodrama department. However, you don’t spend the entirety of the film wondering who the characters are and why they’re acting the way they do. It sounds like a small victory, but that is a cardinal sin of this genre that Giant Leeches avoids.

This is an exaggerated and silly movie. What I like though is that even in the silliness it tries to treat the characters as if they matter and the stakes at hand are meaningful.

There’s a foothold in the storytelling that allows you to forcefully suspend a lot of disbelief and just go along with it if you’re willing. I even have a feeling this could be a fun retro watch in a theater if there was ever any opportunity to see it there.

Sure, the monster effects are subpar and it takes forever for them to get paid off, but it’s not an absolute bore along the way.

Also, even though the monsters look silly, they still manage to make them feel genuinely menacing in the act of blood-sucking their victims. The general concept feels like it could even still work to some degree.

Even the ending (although it felt far too abrupt), felt interesting in ways I wasn’t expecting.

There are still some slow moments that you would expect from a film of this era, but overall the pacing is fairly competent.

I feel like this might be a good pick for a casual Halloween party movie. It might even play better in a social setting. There are many worse options in the genre by far.

1982’s Time Walker receives the classic Film Ventures International treatment of a new title card, opening credits, and a poor transfer for the film to become Being from Another Planet in the version I watched, and like much in this world of re-titled D flicks the product feels subpar even by direct to video or TV movie standards.

This is a derivative hodgepodge of other much better films that offer little to set it apart. It feels like a roundabout mockbuster that took a hard pivot into trying to be the next ET of 1982 at the very latest stage of its production. Most of the film is an uninspired mummy film that balances far too precariously on the concept that the Ancient Aliens premise the film was riding on would be far more compelling and less groan-worthy than it is.

The one draw for fans of the bottom dregs of filmdom is that it stars rejected William Riker hopeful Ben Murphy. Mr. Murphy stars in one of my favorite poorly re-edited TV series “films” Riding With Death. He’s as close as “Being from Another Planet” gets to having anything vaguely resembling screen presence outside of brief moments with Shari Belafonte.

Unlike Riding with Death, nothing here has a cheesy so bad it’s good 80s action show charm. Being from Another Planet instead permeates with staleness. Very little of it is bad enough to be amusing (outside of how stupid the mummy looks during the early appearances in the film.)

There’s also at least one moment of filmmaking so bad that what I believe is supposed to be a dream sequence instead feels like an out-of-order editing mistake. There’s no indication in the film of how we are supposed to interpret the scene and the next part of the film actively feels like it’s contradicting that scene. It’s surprisingly jarring how poorly the film communicates what’s going on.

This one might be worth it for die-hard Ben Murphy fans (if they exist), however, I assume this film is going to leave no lasting impression on anyone else.

If you trained an AI on nothing but action TV made exclusively by the Canadian film industry in Vancouver, I’m certain you would get something resembling Max Havoc - Ring of Fire.

Nobody’s favorite straight-to-DVD “action hero” Max Havoc is back for some reason. This time with much fewer interesting fights and far fewer blink-and-you-miss-it B-level celebrities. You get Dean Cain as your solitary well-known actor here and that’s about it.

Also, the move from Guam to Vancouver (posing as Seattle) cuts down significantly on the bikini-clad exploitation aspect, making the film feel even more completely divorced from its predecessor.

Instead, you get so many TV cliches thrown in a blender that there are times when the whole thing vacillates between the tone of an action show, a hallmark special, and a bad religious film.

While in that blender of cliches, it also feels like the entire thing lost several key scenes establishing character motivation. This leads to scene after scene, where the character’s motivations turn on a dime for no reason.

There are also moments where the characters who are chosen to interact with one another seem antithetical to the logic of the scene. The most likely conclusion you are left with is that either this was butchered on the cutting room floor, they ran out of time, or they simply missed the necessity of establishing those motivations.

Not only do you get unestablished motivations, but you also get a lot of weird establishment of unfired Chekhov’s guns. This reestablishes the rushed & unfinished feeling of the whole thing.

It’s baffling and frustrating to watch. Although I guess there can be a fun meta-game of guessing the cliche while you’re watching it. Trust me, you’ll probably pick better action cliches the the film does at least half the time.

At least you get the professional filming competence of TV production in Canada you would expect from an action TV show. Selling it as a legit film is less reasonable though. Especially being the commercial act breaks complete with fades are rampant here.

There’s very little to make any of it stand out, but it’s not terribly obnoxious. It’s essentially empty calories in TV film form.

Those expecting a maximum amount of havoc may find the title misleading though.

If you need the perfect example of what the Troy McClure short films on the Simpsons were parodying, this is an excellent choice.

It feels like the result of grant money that had to be spent with no one having any idea of what point they were trying to reach with this. It's about water, but it finds little substance in which to approach the topic.

I'm sure this was one of the films teachers put on when they didn't feel like working that day.

This review may contain spoilers.

It takes a special kind of film to prompt you to put together a list of the worst things the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has ever given an Oscar nomination to. Somehow, peoPLe Soup managed this feat.

What boils down (in essence) to a bizarre Alan Arkin family film somehow bafflingly was shown to a broader audience. Apparently, an adaptation of a short story Arkin had written. This story might have worked on paper or with charming acting and a more cartoonish approach. Instead, the approach taken here feels more like some bizarre Lord of the Files, children that have run amuck, horror story.

We get two of Arkin’s children mixing random food to make a concoction that turns them into animals for some reason. There is little to no motivation given for any of the events in the film. That abstraction adds an air of unintended creepiness to the whole endeavor. Throw in borderline psychedelic randomness and I found it viscerally unpleasant to watch.

Looking over the films of 1969, I’m left with the feeling that there’s a lot of potential for digging into what exactly happened in the film industry that year that made so many films from it abysmal and unpleasant to watch. I know it was a tumultuous time in world events, but it still surprises me how little of film from that year, in particular, I’ve found any level of enjoyment in.

Maybe you just had to be there to make sense of any of it. All I can add to the conversation without the context is that this is a particularly low moment for the Academy Awards from a modern perspective.

If you want to watch something that’s confusing and upsetting, I guess this would fit that bill but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.

Watched on Sunday February 2, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday January 10, 2024.

If you’re already considering watching a film called Teenagers From Outer Space, I’m guessing you aren’t looking for Shakespeare or Citizen Kane. Considering the film is in the public domain, there’s really no reason from a money perspective not to see it. So it comes down to whether it is worth your time. I would say, that If the title didn’t scare you off, you’ll probably enjoy this on at least enough levels to make it worth your time.

It should be obvious, though, that the film isn’t high art. It is, however, quite campy in some of the best ways. This film is filled with completely over-the-top performances right alongside some seriously dull deadpan takes. The juxtaposition leads to some great unintentional comedy.

If you had to reach a broad generalized idea of what a 1950 B Movie Alien Invasion Film was in your head, you would probably think of a film very much along the lines of Teenagers From Outer Space.

To some degree, the whole film is an inadvertent self-parody.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have a few moments where it does some neat stuff too. The FX gag of people being degenerating to the point their skeletons look nifty (if not completely convincing).

Besides the Teenagers from outer space who are billed as the main villains & protagonists, we also have a giant space lobster that thankfully isn’t the focus of most of the film. All the better, it wasn’t the focus of the film. Due (in no small part) to the scenes of the silhouette, & forced perspective of the space lobster being fairly poorly pulled off. Although the DIY feel of the special effects still has a certain charm in how bad it looks. It’s still pretty hokey.

There is also a goofy underlying naivety to many of the main characters that make a lot of the film fun to watch.

I will say, I feel like some of the film had to have inspired some beloved science fiction later down the line. There are moments when the film feels like a goofy early prototype of Terminator 2. If the T-1000 was an alien with a death ray surrounded by helpful 50s stereotypical Americans, you would kind of end up with something like this (only without a giant lobster probably).

It’s stilted, it’s over the top, and the characters act like the cliches that they probably helped inspire. However, it’s ultimately entertaining and fun albeit through a very circuitous route.

“Thrill-crazed space kids blasting the flesh off humans!”

Indeed.

The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch came with mixed emotions for me, mostly because it’s essentially the equivalent of a star-studded DVD extra and doesn’t completely stand on its own.

This reaction is essential because of my expectations going in. There’s something about finding an obscure piece of comedy in your early 20s that none of your friends know about that feels special. The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash was one of those for me.

Picked up in a bin of heavily discounted clearance sale VHS tapes while working at Blockbuster Video, I treasured my “discovery” of the original film (especially as a Beatles & Python fan). Finding its follow-up and having no way to watch it felt devastating. But now that I’ve finally procured both on DVD… The Rutles 2: Can’t Buy Me Lunch couldn’t have possibly lived up to my expectations (even if I knew its reputation for not being as good going in.)

Much of this follow-up is constructed from clips and unused takes from The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. It’s couched in a bed of new interview material about the Pre-fab Four from just about every big-named star 2003 can provide. There’s some fantastic stuff in the new interviews. A blink and you miss it, Catherine O’Hara, part being my particular favorite. But also Conan O’Brien and Robin Williams are going to be ringers in this lineup and, of course, they kill.

It still ends up feeling like a bunch of fans of the original having their moment to play in that sandbox more than the first one had an odd sense of authenticity (even if it was a mockumentary).

If you're into the first film, The Beatles, or comedy legends, there are a lot of reasons to watch it regardless of the shadow of expectations you might have. Just seeing so many celebrities is worth the price of ission. However, I wouldn’t approach it with an expectation that it can completely stand on its own. This is essentially fun bonus material.

If you’re scrolling through Tubi looking for an action film with fighting in it (and you don’t require much more), then Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon will probably fit the bill well enough. You won’t walk away thinking that you’ve seen anything fresh. The experience won’t likely stay with you. However, the fighting and action sequences are done well enough that it’s close to a C-Tier movie.

If you watch it expecting something unconventional, groundbreaking, and with excellent storytelling, however, prepare for disappointment. The plot is cliche to the point that you can predict which characters will die half an hour before they do.

A few well-known actors like David Caradine, Richard Roundtree, and Carmen Electra are in the film. However, it’s apparent they didn’t have more than maybe a day or two of shooting with each. Carmen Electra’s role especially is a blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it affair.

The cast that has screen time feels like they’re mostly picked based on looks or ability to perform stunts. Although at least the people who can do stunts seem to be pretty good at stunt work.

The more objectified cast that don’t have stunts aren’t the worst actors I’ve seen in films but they’re not great, even by action TV standards.

The film tries hard to milk its location shooting in Guam, without finding many interesting ways to do that. I’m guessing it got subsidies from shooting there. This is made funnier, being the primary hotel that they seemed to have shot at and mentioned the most, seems to be out of business now.

It could be the long string of terrible 50s & 60s films I’ve been watching recently, but I would have to say this was mostly a pleasant enough meaningless piece of film ephemera that I don’t hold much ill will towards.

The worst part of the film, though, is that it does a pretty poor job of conveying where scenes are happening in relation to each other. It feels like it was all filmed in one location, but at times you’re supposed to believe that one location is more than that one location. This leads to scenes where the protagonist leaves a dangerous location only to go back to that location for no apparent reason.

Also, characters reference other characters without really introducing you to them well enough. If anyone who’s seen the film can tell me who the oft-mentioned character of L.J. is, I would be grateful. I was never able to determine that myself through the film’s runtime.

Essentially, the film is completely disposable, but it also doesn’t feel like a chore to watch either.

WHY… SHOULD… I… CARE?!?!?! This was my internal refrain for so much of the runtime of City Limits. The film commits the biggest sin of science fiction, assuming your audience understands how the world works & who the characters are. Yes, some opening narration from James Earl Jones tries to staple over the mess slightly. Unfortunately, the voiceover is woefully inadequate.

Almost none of the characters’ motivations are fleshed out more than simply stating that there’s a thing they want and they’re doing what they do because they want it. Honestly, you're lucky when you are even able to get that shallow amount of character motivation here.

I know I review a lot of bottom-tier movies so I should expect this, but I’m so tired of using the word lethargic to describe films. City Limits drove me to a thesaurus so I wouldn’t hate my writing in this review. The words listless and languid are certainly properly descriptive here. Still, it's hard to capture this brand of sleepy storytelling.

One part managed to grasp my attention. Of course, it was James Earl Jones’ performance. He’s impossible not to love in even the worst movies. Unfortunately, he’s barely in this film. Although he does get the one action sequence that feels fun to some extent at least.

The rest of the cast and characters are forgettable. It feels like the film wants to have a John Carpenter vibe at brief moments, but has absolutely no conviction to make any of it weird enough to be anywhere near that interesting.

The movie also features one of the most civil post-apocalyptic bike gang wars I think I’ve ever seen in the film. This effectively robs the film of any potential tension or stakes & makes the whole a practice in languid storytelling that sits on a launchpad waiting to do anything interesting.

Nothing is off-kilter enough to be fun here, even in a negative way. It’s just dull. It left me anticipating the ending more than I should have. I’ll be happy if I never have to revisit it.

How do you make biker post-apocalyptic films this dull?

Watched on Wednesday January 15, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

The Giant Gila Monster has all the structure for a decently made middle-of-the-road 1950s B-film. The acting is competent, the cast is likable, and most of the camerawork feels like a studio system by-the-books film. Unfortunately, the plot spends most of the film perpetually stuck in a holding pattern and does almost nothing of interest to build around that competent scaffolding.

Much of the frustrating boredom is generated by the film’s struggle to accept the title of Monster Film. It feels almost completely disinterested in that aspect and instead feels like it wants to be a teen-centered crime drama.

Have you ever wanted to watch a police procedural where 90% of the story is investigation via primarily unemotional dialog? Do you want that procedural to be set in a less interesting version of Mayberry where essentially the only characters for most of the story are one police officer, a tow truck driver, the town drunk, and an angry father with a missing child?

Do you want to experience the single most tedious part of small-town living? People standing around talking about the goings on in town. Maybe this is your film then.

The screenwriting rule of “show don’t tell” is nonexistent here. The majority of this film is standing conversation after standing conversation, reiterating what the audience could have easily ascertained on their own. How many times does an audience need to be told about tire skid marks before it feels redundant? I lost count, but I feel like this plot point resurfaces at least 5 times. The redundancy feels absurd, being the film already established the cause for the audience.

Speaking of “the cause” of the endless investigation in the film. A “Giant Gila Monster” that never feels “giant”. The effects work of this film (mostly forced perspective) are so simplistic that the “monster” just feels like a regular lizard for the majority of the film. Maybe seeing a lizard (giant or normal size) in the 1950s was a novelty of its own merits. There’s just no way to sell it to a modern audience as anything but a very slow-moving lizard lazily moving along at a snail’s pace. [Also the bait and switch that the “Gila monster” is played by a Mexican bearded lizard is an irksomely disappointing piece of trivia.]

Ultimately, the monster seldom interacts with anything in the film outside of walking along slowly. Without the headline monster being of any interest, the whole film becomes disinteresting to an absurd level. I was more interested in an unresolved F plot (I mostly made up in my head) about the ongoing saga of whether the protagonist would get his headlight changed or not. I was grasping at straws to find anything entertaining here.

Speaking of the protagonist. There’s the slightest modicum of tension over the father of a missing daughter suspecting that the protagonist is somehow nefarious. The film, on the contrary, relentlessly hammers home what a swell and upstanding man the protagonist is. It comes off like Hays Code capitulation to avoid making the cool street racing teen character seem like he’s a criminal.

The protagonist’s music is essentially church worship music, and he’s earning cash to help a poor disabled girl. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he taught his girlfriend how to speak English while volunteering at the Salvation Army & while rescuing stray puppies.

I enjoy that the film doesn't go the disaffected youth are all awful route, but I think they over course corrected.

There’s also a caricature town drunk that lacks the charm of a good physical comedic actor that it needed. It’s also an archetype I’m glad film & television moved away from. "Let’s laugh at alcoholics for being alcoholics" as a standard plot trope (especially regarding small-town America) gets less and less fun the more we learn about addiction.

I assume the film being in the public domain in the US might be one of the few things worth looking over The Giant Gila Monster for. Monster movie buffs may have a soft spot for it as well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be terribly quick to recommend it to that many people. It’s also a bit too competent to enjoy for being a terrible or odd film. Maybe the made-for-TV remake is more interesting? Maybe I'm not cut out for 50s giant monster films in general.

This review may contain spoilers.

If you’re reading this review and have even a 1% interest in watching Kill or Be Killed, please stop reading, and just watch it. Most of the fun comes from how unexpected so much of the film is. I don’t want to ruin that for you. If it doesn’t hook you right away, trust me, let it cook. It also comes in at 90 minutes, so it’s short enough to risk watching, regardless.

From this point on, I think I’ll be significantly spoiling the film simply by talking about it.

It might sound like I’m exaggerating or making up what this film is. I assure you that’s because this film is practically impossible to describe. Anything that sounds like exaggeration probably isn’t.

Kill or Be Killed is a manic fever dream of a film. As far as I can tell, it involves a post-war discount store knockoff of Sean Connery playing a disgraced Nazi karate coach. The coach is convinced he was cheated out of his Olympic victory due to the opposing coach bribing his opponents with diamonds (I think). He’s also obsessed with winning back his reputation and honor from that loss… Sorry buddy being honorable and having a good reputation went out the window with the whole being a literal Nazi thing!

Regardless, his solution ends up being obtaining a supply of diamonds in South Africa so he can recruit his own Nazi karate super-team in hopes of recreating that Olympic tournament. So he can get back his former “glory”?! This team includes our protagonist (who somehow missed the “I’m working for a Nazi clause in his contract?!?). Our protagonist’s only true motivating factor is his love interest. So It eventually turns into an escape film at some point.

There’s also a little person who works for the Nazi coach but is actually on the protagonist’s side. He might be the best part of the film. He’s played with a lot of charisma & charm. This is kinda weird being he’s the Nazi’s henchman, but whatever this film doesn’t make any sense.

Eventually, sides get flipped for the protagonist and the whole thing ends in a Karate tournament, even though that is not vital to the film’s resolution. Also, there’s a “sail car” sequence at one point. Not to mention one of the most bonkers car

No, I swear, I am not hallucinating this film. This all actually happens. There is no way to describe this film and sound sane.

This is all made even weirder by breakneck pacing and crazy editing. Despite also having odd moments that stretch out scenes that don’t need it. Yet it all comes in at a 90-minute runtime.

You would think this chaos would be unwatchable. Instead, it throws off your expectations at such a reliable pace that it becomes significantly more fun to watch as it progresses. It’s quite mad-capped, to the point where it feels like a comedy. I seriously doubt that most of the comedy is intentional, though. Trying to parse where it is and isn’t intentionally funny only adds to the entertainment of the film either way.

Even if the film’s eccentricities fail to win you though, the action (while not entirely up to Hong Kong standards) is quite well done. The martial artists in the film are talented and entertaining. Even the crazy editing doesn’t distract from the action to where it’s not fun to watch.

It’s my honest assumption that this film isn’t just “so bad, it’s good”. It’s simply flat-out good despite having every ingredient necessary to be a terrible film. I’ll say, it may not be your cup of tea but I don’t think it would be easy to finish this film bored.

This should be in the hall of fame of cheesy, poorly conceived, Martial Arts films that don’t originate from Hong Kong on anyone’s list.

I know I just saw it for the first time. However, I’m comfortable saying, If Die Hard is a Christmas movie, Kill or Be Killed is my favorite Olympics film.

This review may contain spoilers.

The film delivers on the promise of its title.

I have to start this review with the caveat that I didn’t watch 1969’s Marooned as the film by that title but instead watched the Film Ventures International cable TV butchering of the film entitled Space Travelers, so maybe Marooned as it was originally filmed was a more enjoyable experience. All I have to judge it on at this point, though, is the (no doubt) inferior version of the film.

That said, I have doubts that restoring the proper aspect ratio, changing the cutting, and removing the weird additional score could make this film much better.

I understand that this was at a time in filmmaking when making films with more verisimilitude and naturalistic performances had a level of novelty, and the film was growing as an art form. I’m sure it was groundbreaking to take this kind of approach to a subject matter that filmmaking had previously treated with a more fantastical approach. I would even say this film very well could have inspired many films after it. I don’t want to dismiss the film entirely out of hand.

However, removed from the context of the time it was released, this film is a great argument against naturalistic acting, strict adherence to realism, and a desire for verisimilitude. Everything in the first two acts of the film comes off incredibly dry. You go an absurdly long amount of time before characters get established. Good luck in trying to Gene Hackman by his character’s name instead of just calling him Gene Hackman.

Instead, you get a lot of meetings… meetings with a similar level of excitement to an office meeting, even if the stakes are much higher. I’m baffled by how they managed to make so much of this film dreadfully tedious considering the high stakes behind the events in the film.

The film is at its core essentially the same as Apollo 13. However, where Ron Howard gives you a glimpse into the characters and the stakes by involving the families on the ground. Space Travelers is so focused on mission control that you are seldom given reason to care about anything that’s happening.

I also wish I could at least recommend this film as something to see because at least it stars a young Gene Hackman, and he’s always interesting in film. Unfortunately, this is Hackman playing what’s probably the most pathetic character in his career. The fact that I kinda wanted the character to die at the end of the film isn’t damning of Hackman’s performance, which is still interesting. However, it is a critique of how irredeemable the writers let the character (who I think they still want you to care about by the end of the film) become.

Even the end of the film manages to be unsatisfying and anti-climatic (at least in this version, I don’t know how the original ends). Much of the plot remains unresolved and there appears to be a weird unestablished deus ex machina that might have been set up, but if it was, I missed it because of boredom with the film.

If you are patient enough to enjoy methodically and mostly uneventful films because you like being “within the moment” with the characters, maybe you’ll find something to enjoy here. The cast is good, the acting is stronger than you usually get in this genre. There are a lot of fundamentally well-executed aspects of filmmaking here. However, if you need something character-driven and you need to connect with characters to enjoy a film, the absolutely sterile approach to this will probably make it an excruciating watch.

This film is primarily best for John Sturges, Gregory Peck, and Gene Hackman superfans. However, I would recommend Apollo 13 to everyone else over this in an instant. Also, I highly suspect the original version of the film is far more palatable, so maybe start there instead of this weird hijacking of IP with questionable copyright status butchering of the film.

At the least, don’t go into this expecting a big payoff, it’s not that type of film.

Watched on Tuesday December 31, 2024.

Watched on Tuesday December 31, 2024.

Watched on Tuesday December 31, 2024.

This review may contain spoilers.

I won’t lie to you. Being Master Ninja II is just more repackaged episodes of the short-lived 80s TV show The Master. I wanted to write: “See my Master Ninja I review for details” and call it a night here. It's frustrating that this is billed as a "sequel" because the distinction here is insignificant.

80s action TV shows were super formulaic, this is certainly more of the same. If you saw the first "film" you’ll know exactly what you’ll get here. To be fair, if you’ve seen an 80’s action TV show, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting as well.

One of the few things that feels different here is that it feels like the show got network notes on trying to make Lee Van Cleef more likable. The attempts to do so read more as creepy instead. I could do without seeing him lovingly handle a gerbil, thanks.

They’ve also toned down Tim Van Patten’s (as sidekick lead) level of smarminess a bit. Although it’s still ever-present in his over-the-top narration.

Like most of these repackaged “film” versions of TV series, the narrative isn’t cohesive between episodes and so the pacing is jarring and frustrating.

The first half is a typical “save the woman who’s unionizing from the evil businessmen who are trying to stop her,” plot. Then it jaggedly shifts into a “senator’s daughter is being kidnapped, are you a bad enough dude to rescue her,” plot.

This is made stranger by George Lazenby slumming it on broadcast TV as a discount store Bond knockoff, only played by an actual Bond actor. It’s more forgettable than it should be and when you realize that it’s Lazenby you feel bad for him here.

Less notable in the first episode is the guest star Crystal Bernard, best known for the TV show Wings. She gives a good enough performance though considering how cut and paste the character is.

Although parts I & II are essentially, the same thing this one didn’t hit as much of a nostalgia sweet spot for me as the first one did.

This is largely forgettable, but not obnoxiously bad. In a world of 3 channels, I probably would have watched this as a series. Trying to sell it as a "film” heavily strains credulity.

This review may contain spoilers.

My dad was a sucker for movies that took place in the states he lived. So it’s no surprise I watched The Night They Saved Christmas growing up in Alaska & that I have memories of him being fond of it. The memories of the film outside of a few visuals, though, were certainly dim after a few decades. Returning to this film in 2024 is a weird mix of nostalgia and questioning how (with my ADHD) I managed to sit through this TV movie as a kid.

Considering it’s a TV movie, though it does do a few interesting things. Primarily, the fact that it was filmed in the North Slope, Utqiagvik [at the time Barrow] Alaska adds an interesting flavor to the whole thing. It’s one of the more accurate portrayals of Alaska I’ve seen on film. Although the sunlight on December 24th is patently inaccurate, filming in the pitch dark isn’t exactly conducive to a Christmas film, so it’s easy to excuse.

Also, the film aspires for some epic scope considering it’s an 80s TV film. There’s a considerable amount of effects work and matte paintings. It’s not the most convincing effects work, but it’s impressive for TV.

The story itself starts fairly slowly. It’s got moments of tedium and melodrama suited for daytime television. It feels at times like they were going for drama more than Christmas and it’s weird. Oil mining and finding where to drill isn’t a thrilling opening hook. You add in the complication that their explosive work is a threat to Santa and we all basically know where this is going.

What’s frustrating though is how the characters have to make absurd leaps in logic to get the plot to where it’s going. The most egregious of these is making Jaclyn Smith’s character Claudia absolutely abandon logic and put her children in a potentially life-threatening situation because she believes she’s dealing with a practical joke instead of one of Santa’s elves.

It’s a fairly common trope in Christmas movies to have Elves reach out to an unbelieving adult who learns “The Meaning of Christmas™”. However, what kind of mother allows a man claiming to be one of Santa’s elves to take her and her kids out into the middle of the arctic on a repurposed World War II ATV… only to have second thoughts *AFTER* going quite a while in it. I know she thinks it’s a prank, but this could be a guy with a serious mental disorder or a drug & alcohol problem… This is Alaska… there are a lot of weirdos in Alaska!

I know, it’s just a Christmas movie and I should suspend my disbelief and enjoy “Christmas Magic™". Still, they could have done more to make her seem apprehensive or make the situation look less sketchy in the film and they didn’t.

Once the film reaches the North Pole, the whole thing turns into some weird sci-fi Santa silliness. I get the fun and the humor you can have in trying to “explain Santa” in a Christmas film. When it is done tongue in cheek, it can be a brief moment of levity. A lot of films (including this one) overindulge in the concept to the point where it starts to become like the annoying technobabble of Star Trek. In this case that analogy reaches its peak because Santa has an actual transporter pad.

It’s frivolous fun (to a point) but the audience doesn’t need an explanation for everything. When you get this granular though, it starts to raise more questions than it answers. Then the whole bit falls apart as tedious at a certain point.

At least Art Carney plays a pretty enjoyable Santa though. There are a few fun moments with him. I can almost look past the fact he was in the Star Wars Holiday Special, not hold that against him, and enjoy him here. To a good degree, we’re fortunate that he’s not peddling “holograph wow” & I don’t have to have nightmares about Grandpa itchy from watching *this* holiday film.

It’s not the worst Christmas TV movie you could watch by any stretch of the imagination, but you can certainly feel it’s not up there in the Pantheon of the greatest Christmas movies. If you’re looking for a Christmas film, that’s more obscure, though you could do far worse. Nostalgia for the 80s’ and nostalgia for life in Alaska helps in the enjoyment of it though.

The Castle of Fu Manchu is a truly dreadful film. Although I’m unfamiliar with the source material personally (outside of a vague awareness that the character's orgin was rooted in "yellow peril" fear mongering & xenophobia at the time of the character's creation.)

Despite my lack of knowledge, I would still find it hard to recommend The Castle of Fu Manchu, even to fans of Sax Rohmer’s novels and anything based on them. I hope this is the worst adaptation to be associated with Romer’s work because I can’t fathom how it could get worse than this.

The lead antagonist comes off as a bottom-of-the-barrel dreadfully uninteresting villan and dull James Bond villain reject as well. Worse yet, the film essentially asks what if you didn’t focus on the Bond villain but instead focused on the most mundane aspects of his henchman?

This might be more tolerable if the film put in any effort to establish any of the characters in a significant way in the first half of the film. Instead, there are characters whose names you probably won’t get down until the third act (if you're lucky.). It also takes an uncomfortably long time to figure out who the protagonist is supposed to be... If you can even claim the film has a protagonist.

The film errs into the stiff upper lip aspect of British society so hard that it constantly feels like none of the characters ever emote. This might be more tolerable if more of the characters who are supposed to be Asian weren’t played by British actors. Unfortunately, even the titular Fu Manchu is played by Christoper Lee. As much as I like Christopher Lee & wanted him to be the bright spot in this dreadful film, he simply wasn’t.

Lee’s acting choices are slow and boring. Nowhere near his best acting in this case, even outside of the aspect that he’s a British man playing an Asian which is a bag of worms I don't feel like unpacking in this review, but it certainly won't sit well with many for multiple reasons.

The movie focuses a lot on opium, which makes sense for the era when it is set… still, even taken as a crime drama about drugs, it drops the ball and instead makes you wonder if you're on opium instead of watching a film that features it.

There are also plenty of really terribly edited parts of the film that add to more confusion about the characters that we were already so unfamiliar with. One of the worst sequences is so rapidly edited for no apparent reason that it's almost headache inducing.

This film is insufferable in so many ways.

However, its biggest flaw is still in failing to establish anything or make you care about what is going on.

I’m unsure if there’s ever been a restoration to the film, but the version I watched had some significant issues with lighting and over-saturated colors as well. There are several scenes where I had no way of knowing what was going on simply because I couldn’t see much more than a few vague outlines. I Hope that issue is primarily because of the version I watched. If it's endemic to the film regardless of the version, I would certainly judge it more harshly.

On a side note, what is going on with villains in this era and their obsession with weird forms of water and ice created through experimentation? Was there a hotbed boom in research towards manipulating water into new forms at the end of 1969 (and going into the 70s?) I’m authentically curious. Where did this trope come from?

Although it may not seem like it, I usually try hard to find at least a few positive aspects of even the worst films I watch, but The Castle of Fu Manchu has made the search for that here tremendously difficult. Maybe watch the film for franchise completion… but again I probably wouldn’t recommend even that.

This film significantly rubbed me the wrong way. I’m unsure of what else to say.

First, to address my fellow Sonic the Hedgehog fanboy sycophants, Live and Learn is in the soundtrack, Shadow has a gun, and the moon… well, you know what happens to the moon. What more do you need?!? But let’s not kid anyone, we would see this film even if it was absolute garbage. Many of us suffered through the sheer existence of Sonic 06’ & Sonic 4. How could this film possibly hurt us worse than that?

All that out of the way… I might have gone into the film with expectations set a little higher than I should. What we got was good. Very little of it was a disappointment, and some aspects exceeded expectations. However, I’m not sure this was my favorite film in the franchise.

The biggest problem with the first two films was an overreliance on the human characters & pointless plot cul-de-sacs. The third film laudably tries to steer away from that. Unfortunately, it feels like it’s trying to fill that void in the plot with a lot of massive spectacle. The big action set-pieces are done well enough. However, a few of them feel slightly longer than I would have liked. I would have preferred if that screen time had focused more on time with Sonic and his animal friends.

That’s not to say there aren’t some enjoyable character moments. Every animal character feels decently well served. Edris Alba continues to steal the show as a comedic straight man with his version of knuckles. Ben Schwartz has won me over with his interpretation of Sonic (although I feel like a Jaleel White cameo is begging to happen in this franchise, come on you cowards). Long-time voice actor Colleen O’Shaughnessey returns to her role as tales like she’s played in games and animated series, so obviously no complaints there.

I still don’t entirely have my feelings about Keanu Reeves as Shadow the Hedgehog pinned down precisely. It veers into the stunt-casting territory but there is a delightful meta aspect to it considering how the early 00s “forced dark & edgy” the character is and how much of that draws from Reeves as an influence. The long shadow (pun not intended) that The Matrix puts on action characters in film and games often annoys me, but it’s at least an interesting Ouroboros to observe here. Positively, he seems game to roll with the silliness so I respect that. I’m sure his name on the marquee didn’t hurt this getting made though. In the end, it’s not like my nerdy dream of voice acting talent getting roles like this is in line with the modern state of animated blockbusters.

That said, there’s a lot of respect for the source material here. Plenty of Easter eggs. Even a few fun needle drops of the game series music, which I loved. The brief moments with classic sonic music didn’t fail to hit the nostalgic target they were meant to. Still, I would love to see the film franchise (and other film franchises based on games) lean more into the music from the franchises they are based on. It’s weird how films feel averse to doing that.

As much as I disliked the shoehorning of human characters into the narrative in the last two films, I was a little bummed by how short Natasha Rothwell brief cameo is in the film. Not that I loved that character, but Natasha Rothwell commitment to fully commit to the comedy despite how trope-filled it was on the page was something I sincerely enjoyed in the last two films. Her brief shoehorning into the film just comes off as weird here.

Also, Krysten Ritter as Director Rockwell felt like a baffling casting choice to me. She felt so out of place in her role. It’s not a major part of the film, but if they’re building her up as a potential replacement villain for Jim Carry in future films, I’m not sure how well that would pay off.

Speaking of Jim Carry, yup he’s here, yup he’s playing two characters, and yes, your enjoyment of him will probably hang on if you love his over-the-top comedic mugging or not. As well-cast as he is & as much as I enjoyed him in the last film, it’s wearing a little thin on me for this outing. I don’t know who else you would cast in that role now though, as he’s completely defined it in live action.

If you’re looking for a movie for fans of Sonic & video games, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a no-brainer. If you’re looking for a decent action comedy, it’s pretty good as well. Families should have a good time too, although the really young ones might find it scary. If you’re easily annoyed by simplistic storytelling and busy action set-pieces (or if you just can’t stand Jim Carry) this might be one to avoid. However maybe if you open your heart you might be able to find a place for it. Live and learn my friends!

Watched on Wednesday December 18, 2024.

This review may contain spoilers.

At Your Fingertips: Sugar and Spice is an absolutely demented “educational short” that feels like something a serial killer in a horror film would watch, rather than a fun activity for children. It doesn’t help that the soundtrack adds to it being unsettling.

The concept alone (making sculptures out of sugar & water) is enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who’s ever had an ant problem. Not to mention, it just feels like food waste.

When the short sells these “creations” as something you can eat (despite having molded them out of cut-up toy footballs) you know you’re in an era when they didn’t care much about child safety, so of course this was made in the 70s.

This feels like one of those things the lady on TikTok whose catchphrase “everybody’s so creative” would respond to. It also feels like the weird slop videos you see alongside republished videos on TikTok. The one thing it doesn’t feel like is educational.

There is a select group of educational shorts that left me angry, this easily makes that list.

1. Pippi Longstocking
2. Frosty the Snowman
3. Santo in the Treasure of Dracula
4. Gamera vs. Guiron
5. How to Irritate People
6. People Soup
7. The Sidehackers
8. Moon Zero Two
9. Marooned
10. The Castle of Fu Manchu

1. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day
2. Planet of the Apes
3. The Love Bug
4. Danger: Diabolik
5. The Hellcats
6. Yellow Submarine
7. The Shakiest Gun in the West
8. Romeo and Juliet
9. The Bat Woman

1. The Producers
2. You're in Love, Charlie Brown
3. The Jungle Book
4. War of the Monsters
5. Catalina Caper
6. Doctor Dolittle
7. Yongary, Monster from the Deep
8. The Million Eyes of Sumuru
9. Gamera vs. Gyaos
10. The Wild Rebels

1. North by Northwest
2. Donald in Mathmagic Land
3. The Shaggy Dog
4. Sleeping Beauty
5. Attack of the Giant Leeches
6. House on Haunted Hill
7. Teenagers from Outer Space
8. The Wonderful World of Tupperware
9. Santa Claus
10. First Man into Space

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas
2. The Railrodder
3. The Sound of Music
4. Father Frost
5. Prince of Space
6. Gamera, the Giant Monster
7. Fun in Balloon Land

1. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
2. The Nutty Professor
3. The Sword in the Stone
4. The Pink Panther
5. Jason and the Argonauts
6. The Slime People
7. The Crawling Hand

1. Rabbit of Seville
2. Woman on the Run
3. Cinderella
4. Treasure Island
5. Rocketship X-M
6. Are You Ready for Marriage?
7. Speech: Using Your Voice
8. Appreciating Our Parents

1. Rabbit Fire
2. Fathers Are People
3. Alice in Wonderland
4. The Home Economics Story
5. The Blonde Pick-Up

1. Rabbit Seasoning
2. Singin' in the Rain
3. Cracked Quack
4. Posture Pals
5. Cheating
6. Radar Men from the Moon

1. Duck! Rabbit, Duck!
2. Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century
3. Duck Amuck
4. Peter Pan
5. Snow Business
6. Project Moon Base
7. Shane
8. Robot Monster

1. Rear Window
2. On the Waterfront
3. Manhunt in Space
4. Robinson Crusoe
5. Animal Farm
6. Circus on Ice
7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

1. Guys and Dolls
2. Rebel Without a Cause
3. The Court Jester
4. One Froggy Evening
5. Lady and the Tramp
6. This Island Earth
7. Aquatic Wizards
8. Cindy Goes to a Party
9. King Dinosaur

1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
2. Indestructible Man
3. It Conquered the World
4. The Ten Commandments
5. Design for Dreaming
6. The Beast of Hollow Mountain
7. The She-Creature
8. The Mole People
9. Mr. B Natural
10. Fire Maidens of Outer Space

1. What's Opera, Doc?
2. The Deadly Mantis
3. Plan 9 from Outer Space
4. Untamed Youth
5. Old Yeller
6. The Amazing Colossal Man
7. The Black Scorpion
8. I Was a Teenage Werewolf
9. The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
10. The Unearthly

1. Vertigo
2. Weasel While You Work
3. South Pacific
4. Daddy-O
5. The Spider
6. The Crawling Eye
7. Manners in School
8. The Screaming Skull
9. Teenage Cave Man
10. War of the Colossal Beast

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Hyde and Go Tweet
2. Swiss Family Robinson
3. Tormented
4. The Magnificent Seven
5. The Leech Woman
6. First Spaceship on Venus
7. Pollyanna
8. Peter Pan
9. The Loves of Hercules
10. Rocket Attack U.S.A.

1. West Side Story
2. The Parent Trap
3. The Absent-Minded Professor
4. One Hundred and One Dalmatians
5. The Mask
6. The Phantom Planet
7. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
8. Reptilicus
9. Invasion of the Neptune Men
10. Gorgo

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Manchurian Candidate
2. The Brain That Wouldn't Die
3. Jack the Giant Killer
4. Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol
5. Santo vs. the Vampire Women
6. The Magic Sword

1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
2. A Hard Day's Night
3. The Iceman Ducketh
4. Peace, little girl
5. Mary Poppins
6. My Fair Lady
7. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
8. The Horror of Party Beach
9. The Time Travelers
10. The Last Man on Earth

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
2. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
3. Ebirah, Horror of the Deep
4. Women of the Prehistoric Planet
5. Agent for H.A.R.M.
6. The Christmas That Almost Wasn't
7. The Bubble
8. The Projected Man
9. The Deadly Bees
10. The Wild World of Batwoman

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Rocket Attack U.S.A.
2. Hercules Unchained
3. Fire Maidens of Outer Space
4. Robot Monster
5. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
6. War of the Colossal Beast
7. Teenage Cave Man
8. The Killer Shrews
9. The Blonde Pick-Up
10. The Unearthly

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My breakdown of films that were used for MST3K ranked by the quality as a film independently from the riff. (Only the films I've seen so far obviously)

1. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
2. RiffTrax Live: MST3K Reunion
3. Indestructible Man
4. It Conquered the World
5. Attack of the Giant Leeches
6. Danger: Diabolik
7. To the Stars by Hard Ways
8. Hobgoblins
9. Robot Wars
10. Time Chasers

...plus 176 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Fire Maidens of Outer Space
2. The Star Wars Holiday Special
3. Space Thunder Kids
4. eXistenZ
5. Invaders from the Deep
6. Marooned
7. Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars
8. Moon Zero Two
9. Robot Monster
10. The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Showdown - The Nice Guys

"As the tagline for the comedy Friendship says: “Men shouldn’t have friends”. Prove ‘em wrong with this Showdown! Turns out, the cure to male loneliness is coming up with a list of ten of your favorite movies about guys being buds. These amigos can range from superbad boys to GoodFellas—either way, they’re hitting the mean streets in search of excellent adventures together. So have another round Goonies, outsiders and other guys, and never stop never stopping! For inspiration in selecting your midnight cowboys on their midnight runs.

1. Fight Club

   2

2. High Fidelity

   4

3. Clerks

   16

4. The Iron Giant

   30

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

   40

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

   41

7. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

   51

8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

   54

9. Zoolander

   74

10. SLC Punk

    87

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Loki
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

   157

3. Thunderbolts*

   457

4. Secret Invasion

   574

5. Deadpool & Wolverine

   604

6. The Marvels

   636

7. Captain America: Brave New World

   678

8. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

   694

1. Iron Man
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Avengers: Endgame
4. Avengers: Infinity War
5. The Avengers
6. Loki
7. Captain America: Civil War
8. Spider-Man: Far From Home
9. Guardians of the Galaxy
10. Spider-Man: Homecoming

...plus 53 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. A Glitch in the Matrix
2. Eternals
3. The Flash
4. My Valentine
5. Black Widow
6. 8-Bit Christmas
7. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
8. Thor: Love and Thunder
9. Captain America: Brave New World
10. Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Thunderbolts*
2. Captain America: Brave New World
3. Flowers

Every film I saw that came out in 1993 ranked.

1. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
2. Jurassic Park
3. CB4
4. Iria: Zeiram the Animation
5. A Far Off Place
6. Demolition Man
7. Falling Down
8. Iron Monkey
9. Much Ado About Nothing
10. The Sandlot

...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Brain Damage

   1113

2. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny
3. Fun in Balloon Land
4. A Talking Cat!?!

   1341

5. Mac and Me
6. Kill or Be Killed

   450

7. Magic Crystal
8. Birdemic: Shock and Terror

   1412

9. The Star Wars Holiday Special
10. Gamera vs. Guiron

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Birth of a Nation
2. Jungle Goddess
3. Vulgar
4. The Castle of Fu Manchu
5. The Wild Rebels
6. Ring of Terror
7. Superdome
8. The Starfighters
9. The Sidehackers
10. The Boondock Saints

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Castle of Fu Manchu
2. The Wild Rebels
3. Mighty Jack
4. Ring of Terror
5. The Starfighters
6. Marooned
7. Manos: The Hands of Fate
8. Moon Zero Two
9. The Sidehackers
10. The Wild World of Batwoman

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Star Wars

   6

2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

   10

3. Alien

   37

4. The Empire Strikes Back

   39

5. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day

   76

6. How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

   85

7. Miracle on 34th Street

   111

8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

   142

9. A Clockwork Orange

   168

10. It's a Wonderful Life

    203

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1977 ranked.

1. Star Wars
2. Roots
3. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
5. Oh, God!
6. Slap Shot
7. The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It
8. Death Promise
9. Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
10. Pete's Dragon

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1970 ranked.

1. The Aristocats
2. Gamera vs. Jiger
3. At Your Fingertips: Grasses
4. Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Every film I saw that came out in 1971 ranked.

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Sacco & Vanzetti
3. And Now for Something Completely Different
4. The Omega Man
5. Fiddler on the Roof
6. The Cat in the Hat
7. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
8. Bedknobs and Broomsticks
9. Gamera vs. Zigra
10. The Touch of Satan

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1972 ranked.

1. The Godfather
2. Snowball Express
3. Magical Disappearing Money
4. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Every film I saw that came out in 1973 ranked.

1. Soylent Green
2. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
3. Robin Hood
4. Charlotte's Web
5. The Stranger
6. Godzilla vs. Megalon
7. Beyond Atlantis
8. What Is Nothing?

Every film I saw that came out in 1974 ranked.

1. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too
2. Young Frankenstein
3. Blazing Saddles
4. It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
5. Herbie Rides Again
6. Krasner, Norman: Beloved Husband of Irma
7. Huckleberry Finn
8. The Land That Time Forgot
9. Where the Red Fern Grows
10. Benji

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1976 ranked.

1. Taxi Driver
2. Network
3. Rocky
4. I, Claudius
5. Kill or Be Killed
6. The Shaggy D.A.
7. Freaky Friday
8. Logan's Run
9. Riding with Death
10. At the Earth's Core

Every film I saw that came out in 1975 ranked.

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2. Jaws
3. The Apple Dumpling Gang
4. Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown
5. Death Race 2000
6. Escape to Witch Mountain
7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
8. Rollerball
9. Mitchell
10. The Giant Spider Invasion

Every film I saw that came out in 1991 ranked.

1. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
3. A Brief History of Time
4. The Rocketeer
5. Flight of the Intruder
6. JFK
7. The Silence of the Lambs
8. My Girl
9. Oscar
10. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Redemption

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Doom Generation
2. Space Thunder Kids
3. Nothing but Trouble
4. Gumby: The Movie
5. eXistenZ
6. Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey
7. Baby Geniuses
8. Mr. Magoo
9. The Boondock Saints
10. Drop Dead Fred

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1987 ranked.

1. Evil Dead II
2. Predator
3. RoboCop
4. The Princess Bride
5. A Garfield Christmas
6. Miami Connection

   347

7. 3 Men and a Baby
8. The Running Man
9. A Muppet Family Christmas
10. Christmas Comes to Willow Creek

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1986 ranked.

1. The Mission
2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
3. Top Gun
4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
5. An American Tail
6. Magic Crystal
7. Rad
8. Labyrinth
9. The Transformers: The Movie
10. Flight of the Navigator

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1990 ranked.

1. Home Alone
2. Back to the Future Part III
3. Memphis Belle
4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
5. Total Recall
6. Dances with Wolves
7. House Party
8. Kindergarten Cop
9. Pretty Woman
10. The Mind's Eye

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film I saw that came out in 1992 ranked.

1. Army of Darkness
2. Aladdin
3. Reservoir Dogs
4. Wayne's World
5. Star Trek: The Next Generation - Chain of Command
6. The Muppet Christmas Carol
7. Newsies
8. Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation
9. Batman Returns
10. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Cabin in the Woods
2. Fargo
3. Moulin Rouge!
4. Jurassic Park
5. Serenity
6. Dunkirk
7. 8 Mile
8. Hollywoodland
9. Casablanca
10. Garden State

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny
2. Gumby: The Movie
3. Hercules Against the Moon Men
4. The Blade Master
5. Teenage Cave Man
6. Hercules and the Captive Women
7. The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent
8. Drop Dead Fred
9. The Magic Sword
10. The Loves of Hercules

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Birth of a Nation
2. Teenage Cave Man
3. The Magic Sword
4. Glitter
5. Earth Girls Are Easy
6. Bed of Roses
7. There's Something About Mary
8. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. P.S. I Love You

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.