In this one we cover Gamera and the first 5 planet of the apes movies:
Plus some anime and movies:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Bodyswapping, floating cities, Abraham Lincoln in Space, and Spock in love, in this final wander through Star Trek The Original Series.
And a look at the best and worst episodes overall.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mark talks about King’s third published novel The Shining, and about Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), The authorised miniseries (1997) and Room 237 (2012), the documentary about the various fan-theories about the underlying themes of the Kubrick movie.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The two Aliens Versus Predator movies, and the kaiju Ghidorah, plus:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Space Hippies, an Immortal, tears that enchant and a black-and-white issue, as Mark is getting towards the end of Star Trek The Original Series, with episodes 11-20 of season 3.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this one, we cover the two Walter Hill iconic movies The Warriors and Streets of Fire, and for our Kaiju movie we cover Mothra Versus Godzilla
Other stuff covered:
Movies
Other Stuff
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mark and Sam cover the Predator movies and another Kaiju movie plus some games and movies:
Games:
Movies:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mark pulls a solo shift in this one, covering a whole set of movies:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Okay it lacks credibility and acting ability, but it makes up for it in the charm of the leading actresses – they may not convince, but they sure are fun in this violent, sexy, ridiculous romp among high-school gangs (and these girls look almost as old as the high-school girls in Grease).
You do have to ignore the aspect of ‘rape-as-how-gang-members-flirt’ aspect of it that really hasn’t dated that well, but the goofy costumes (the nerdy Crabs in particular reminded me of Bobcat Goldthwaite in Police Academy 2, but some of the other characters’ costumes were equallyhilarious), and combine this with the cheesy dialogue, ridiculous gangfights (AK47s at a roller-rink rumble, anyone?) and general exploitation stink, and you have a fun hour and a half.
Rather good comedy about something that i thought might be beyond comedy at the moment, the exploits of inept suicide bombers. I really wasn’t expecting it to be this good, and it’s a very British comedy to me, I wonder if it did well in places like America?
Man fights rat in a battle to the death. Yep, one rat.
The only good thing about the movie is Peter Weller, the internal reference to The Old Man and the Sea, and the music. The ideas behind is, and the majority of direction, is poor. There’s very little tension, the rat is not threatening no matter how many times you do a close up of a rat, and it just feels odd.
It’s alright to pass the time I guess.
Quite tiresome movie which I actually saw in the cinema the first time around, and kind of remembered fondly as a goofy cartoon with decent music, but this time around I found the terrible animation and mostly poor early 70s rock music just a grating experience. The only sections I liked were the story about the taxi driver, and the bomber crew/zombie story. The rest are just boring and embarrassing. It felt like pornography for 12 year olds.
It’s even parody proof, as it’s so ridiculous to start with.
A fun one from Abbott and Costello, and many of the routines in this one were redone a little more slickly in Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein 7 years later. This also benefits from some Andrews Sisters songs and some good comedy acting from Joan Davis.
A very odd movie, with a montage of world war 2 footage in chronological order with a soundtrack of Beatles covers (minus the really, really inhuman pieces of footage).
Some of it works quite well and is poignant, but others seem trite and insulting, but overall I quite liked it. I’d even buy the soundtrack.
The first 10 minutes take a little acclimation as you get used to the dreadful acting, but they are made easier by the gogo dancing clips, but once Tura Satana goads the guy into racing, the massive energy and sheer balls to the wall bravura of this movie carries it through magnificently until the end.
Russ Meyer sure liked breasts.
Goofy “boys own” adventure involving miniaturized people in a cool submarine craft that looks like something from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with some dated, though still cool, special effects, with a very A to B story.
Contains the magnificent Raquel Welch.
Pretentious flimflam of the highest order. An hour in, the film actually picked up dramatically and looking like it might have something worthwhile to it, but that ground to a halt after 10 minutes and went back to the tiresome, vacuous navel gazing that strangled the first hour for me.
Looked beautiful, but I’ve come to expect better from Bergman.
Second in our series of Stephen King books is Salem’s Lot.
Mark talks to Mike from the Chinstroker Vs Punter podcast about Salem’s Lot the book, the 1979 TV miniseries, the 2004 miniseries and a few other things relating this book.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Weak fare compared to the first one, but amusing in places. My favourite was Booger learning at the feet of the master Karate Kid-style. His sensei was Snotty. Needed more of that.
This is a lot of fun (very dodgy gender politics aside…), and is so 80s, and the 80s is awesome. Some great characters, especially Booger and Pointdexter.
I’d forgotten Booger Presley too.
Funny to see a young John Goodman as the pushy coach too.
Whacky Russian (and I mean Soviet Russia, not this namby-pamby post-Iron Curtain Russia) horror, with some bizarre, funny and quite memorable sequences… Old witch jumping on a guy’s back and flying him over fields, corpse-witch trying to break his mystic circle, assorted demons/vampires/skeletons attacking our poor hero… I even saw a trace of Evil Dead 2 and Pan’s Labyrinth anticipated in this movie. Rather fun, and odd.
Not a great comedy, but it has its moments, and part of the fun is spotting the references to Hitchcock movies. Most of them are completely obvious, but there’s some more subtle ones, such as Marnie.
There was one scene that was a genuine comedy great moment though, when the nurse and the evil doctor are being shot, verite, from under a glass table, and they keep putting things on it, forcing the camera to keep moving. That was rather an excellent idea.
Main Movies:
Our Kaiju movie this week is Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
We also talk about
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This is a second watch, and if anything it’s funnier the second time around. The hilarious deadpan, deadly pair go around the terrible attractions of the British countryside leaving a trail of death and destruction as they go, saying banal yet hilarious things.
This is my favourite Ben Wheatley movie, and I’m looking forward to what he produces next.
Reasonably engaging comedy with a few very good sections, and a lot of sections where there’s story but no laughs, in particular the last act. It is an enjoyable time though, and I particularly like the rather touching scene where the big bald guy everyone is scared of sings a plaintive version of Down in the Valley.
A solid, though derivative, entry into the haunted house/evil spirit/possession cycle that’s current, reminiscent somewhat of Insidious (and I’m ignoring that Patrick Wilson is in both), and supposedly based on true events, that works really well in act one, but gets less creepy and more gross-out as the story unfolds – so I think the first act is most successful.
However, it’s a pretty decent horror movie all around, with the only flaw in it being a section where the psychic investigators’ own daughter is somehow threatened at their home – this I think fractures the movies internal logic and feels more filler than intrinsic.
Otherwise, quite enjoyable.
Rather good WW2 action flick, with some great locations (it really did look like war-torn Europe during WW2), great costumes, and some crazy adventures of army criminals who get free when their convoy is ambushed, and figure they will head for the Swiss border, only to end up on a mission. Good story, good casting, and quite enjoyable, though maybe a tier below the best of the WW2 action movies (such as The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare).
This is a pretty action packed movie once we get to the half hour mark. That’s when we first encounter Tarzan. We see Tarzan swim faster than crocodiles, outrun hungry lions, fight leopards, gorillas and tribesmen, and he sure is an action man – he throws himself into fights and rescues with relish.
It’s also a story about Jane looking for a lover who isn’t so stuffy and inhibited as the men she’s used to…and she sure gets what she wants from Tarzan. This is surely some primal fantasy?
Wiessmuller has great presence despite only saying about 20 words (Schwartzenegger would pull the same trick many years later – charisma can take you far), and Maureen O’Sullivan is a sexy, girlish Jane.
There’s some dodgy racial angles to this – a tribe of pymies being blacked up dwarves…some with afro wigs with bones weaved in, anyone?
It’s also pre-Hays code, so we do get a stampede of elephants through the ‘pygmy’ village, which includes elephants throwing the dwarves around and stomping on them.
A great family movie, all round.
More Star Trek from Mark, including such gems as Spectre of the Gun, The Tholian Web, and Spock’s Brain
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Cliff Notes: oh wow, haaahahaha
This is dumb fun. I haven’t watched it since it first came out…yes, I paid money and saw this at the cinema…
Jeff Fahey’s character has been hitting with the same dumbstick as Harry from Dumb and Dumber (they share brainpower, dress sense and hairstyle) and we get a sadistic priest who likes whipping shirtless grown men, a nympho widow next door, and a wife/child beater on the other side. We get Pierce Brosnan looking skinny with a gold earring, spouting absolute pseudoscientific gibberish… for example, at one point he announces that Fahey learned Latin in 2 hours, whilst he himself took a whole year to master the Latin Alphabet…. yeah, the Latin Alphabet is the English alphabet without a distinct J or W…
We get some really creaky looking CGI that has a retro charm, and I admit I found the dopey moment when Fahey equated himself to a cyberchrist was kind of cool.
I appreciated the energy of it, but it was a right mess. And absolutely nothing to do with Stephen King’s short story of the same name.
Oh and Goeffrey Lewis was in it – this adds half a point to any movie.
