The Bride and the Beast is another film for which Ed Wood only wrote the screenplay. That he didn’t direct this particular opus doesn’t take away from its Woodian flavor in the slightest.
This film tells the tale of newlyweds Dan and Laura Fuller (Lance Fuller and Charlotte Austin). Dan is a hunter, basically […]
Ah, The Killer Shrews. One of my favorite episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 used this film and it stands up pretty well on its own.
The films tells of a young shipping boat captain, Thorne Sherman (James Best) who lands on an island with his mate, “Rook” Griswold (Judge Henry Dupree) to make a […]
The Raven was one of producer/director Roger Corman’s highest budget films and is certainly among his most star-studded. After years of making cheap, but highly profitable, films, Corman was beginning to feel that he could step things up and get some real stars. One of the best fruits of his labors is this […]
Incubus is, in many ways, a typical 1960s era pseudo-Bermanesque horror film. It deals with the story of a beautiful succubus* named Kia who tires of gathering souls of the already damned. She longs to capture the soul of a truly good man. Ignoring the warnings of her fellow demons, she pursues […]
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is the last of Disney’s classic “package” films. It, obviously, features two stories: Ichabod Crane’s from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Mr. Toad’s from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. The connection between the two is the stated desire to show one […]
I’ve previously covered 2005’s King Kong and wrote a full review here, but I thought this time around I’d do a kind of contrast and compare, tale of the tape kind of thing alongside the 1998 version of Godzilla. So let’s see how they stand up to each other.
Approach
Godzilla took the more common road […]
Night of the Ghouls is classic Ed Wood. In fact, it suffers from more classic Ed problems than just about any other film. It’s got the usual wacky dialogue, questionable acting by Ed’s usual bunch and Ed’s poor camera skills. It even has that old Ed standby; recycled footage. (In this […]
Mmmmmmmm. Orgy of the Dead. The slightly pungent smell of soft-core pornography is all over this one. This is Ed Wood’s first real foray into porn (though he dabbled a bit with The Sinister Urge). It also marks the beginning of his long collaboration with director Stephen Apostolof, a man who had […]
Okay, I’ve tried writing seriously, I’ve tried being clever, I even tried being ultra-cute. But no matter what I do I can’t seem to wrap my head around writing a review of Manos: The Hands of Fate.
It’s just so painful to sit through. Honestly, I couldn’t remember any of the major points I wanted […]
How the mighty can fall in the eyes of the public. It is a well known axiom that sequels are generally inferior to the original. Especially when the original is something of a genre-defining project. Such is the case with Ghostbusters and its put-upon sequel Ghostbusters II.
Ghostbusters was, of course, a groundbreaking […]
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 are two of Disney’s more interesting releases. Originally envisioned by Walt Disney as an “event” (one that you would dress up for, as if going to a real concert), Fantasia was a financial disaster for the company, almost bringing them to ruin.
And it wasn’t all that warmly received critically, either. […]
Much like Star Wars, it’s hard to remember how radical Jurassic Park was when it came out. Sure, there had been CGI effects before, dating all the way back to 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. But the scale (hah!) of what Industrial Light and Magic did with the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park changed the […]
The Venus Flytrap (more often found as The Revenge of Dr. X, listed on IMDb as The Double Garden) is a Japan-made sci-fi/horror film starring a down-on-his-luck James Craig as a scientist who tries to prove his theory of man’s evolution by creating a “human” plant. Typical b-movie stuff, of course, but this one […]
Viewed December 29, 2006
Hellboy is a film adaptation of Mike Mignola’s cult comic book series. It tells of a demon brought forth by Nazis to be the key to a worldwide apocalypse, but is instead captured by American military forces and raised as a force for good.
When we meet up again with Hellboy (Ron […]
Viewed December 16, 2006
Now, I’ve been surprised by better-than-average B-movies before, but Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (aka Lycanthropus) is the last one I thought had a shot at impressing me.
The classic werewolf story (immortalized by Lon Chaney, Jr. for Universal) has always been one of tragedy. That a film like this would choose […]
Viewed December 14, 2006
Okay, so we talked about how Bela Lugosi was willing to make cheap, quickie movies back in 1939. But where did he hit bottom, film-wise? Was it with Ed Wood and his posthumous appearance in Plan 9 From Outer Space? Nope. It was with the justifiably reviled Bela […]
Viewed November 14, 2006
Even if my pig-headed need to see every movie based on a comic book didn’t require it, I still would have watched Man-Thing because of the character’s connection to one of my favorite comic book characters, Howard the Duck. Now, Howard was the star of his own, highly celebrated film back […]
Viewed October 31, 2006
Halloween II picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of the original Halloween (1978). (It actually recaps that ending before continuing). Rather than following the more obvious choice of detailing another Halloween night, the action never makes it to the next morning, meaning that the events of both films cover […]
Viewed October 30, 2006
As the month of October drew to a close, I tried to squeeze in as many horror and horror-based films as possible. One of the films I meant to get to was Elvira’s Haunted Hills. I’ve always been a fan of Elvira (real name, Cassandra Peterson), having watched her show […]
Viewed October 27, 2006
House of Frankenstein sees the Universal Monster series crawling towards its end. Only House of Dracula reamains and it’s not looking too promising.
Well, HOF has one thing going for it, the return of Boris Karloff to the series. Unfortunately, he’s not playing either the Frankenstein Monster, nor his other major […]
Viewed October 24, 2006
Mark of the Vampire is one of two classic films in which Bela Lugosi seemingly returns to the role of Count Dracula, but does not bear that name. (The other, Return of the Vampire, is apparently even closer in feel than this one.)
Mark of the Vampire was directed by Dracula director Tod […]
Viewed October 22, 2006
Son of Dracula picks up the story of Dracula several years after the events of Dracula’s Daughter. Unlike that earlier film, however, it does little to try and maintain continuity. There is, for instance, no mention of the aforementioned Countess Marya Zaleska. In fact, things are left ambiguous as […]
Viewed October 19, 2006
Scared to Death has the distinction of being one of only two films that Bela Lugosi made in color and the only one to have a color print survive to the present day. The story of the film is told from the perspective of a corpse (who was, no doubt, “scared […]
Viewed October 17, 2006
Okay, so I get some of what Uwe Boll does. I get the whole make-it-cheap-and-fast thing. I get the whole cast-whoever-is-available thing. What I don’t get is the change-everything-about-the-storyline thing. After all, someone somewhere down the line had to have actually played the games that his films are […]
Viewed October 16, 2006
The Ghost of Frankenstein is the first of the Universal monster movies that I’ve seen that really disappointed me. A few good scenes and another quality performance as Ygor by Bela Lugosi make it worthwhile, but it’s just not on the level of the other films.
The story picks up several years […]
Viewed October 14, 2006
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is really much more a Wolf Man movie than it is a Frankenstein film. In fact, it seems to ignore the continuity that was established in the “Frankenstein” series, acting as if the monster had not been seen since the end of the original 1931 film.
Lon […]
Viewed October 13, 2006
Freddy vs. Jason is exactly what you think it is: no more, no less. It’s a virtual non-stop parade of death and mayhem, with only a light sprinkling of thought and character.
Now, this is a film that was developed by focus group, if ever there was one. There’s clearly no […]
Viewed October 11, 2006
Vampire Effect is, in many ways, a typical Hong Kong actioner with little originality or truly interesting aspects to make it stand out from a sea of lookalike films.
The story tells of a vampire hunter named Reeve (Ekin Cheng) who has not had much luck with assistants (they keep getting killed). […]
Viewed October 10, 2006
Scary Movie 4 is even more all over the board than the previous entries in the series both in the quality and the sources of its jokes.
The first odd thing about Scary Movie 4 is the filmmakers’ apparent insistance to maintain continuity with the previous film. The first twenty minutes of […]
Viewed October 8, 2006
Anyone who thinks Bela Lugosi was a one-hit wonder just needs to see Son of Frankenstein. Not only does it sport a ripping good story and beautiful sets, it features one of Lugosi’s greatest characters (and one that people seem to seldom remember he created): Ygor. But he’s no […]
Viewed October 4, 2006
Dracula’s Daughter is the surprisingly good follow-up to the classic 1931 film Dracula.
The story picks up almost immediately after the destruction of Count Dracula at the end of the first film. (Although John and Mina Harker have disappeared). Professor Von Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is found with the […]
Viewed October 3, 2006
Faust: Love of the Damned has got to be the worst comic book based film I have ever seen. Of course, the original Faust comic book was one of the worst comics I ever read, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.
The story, such as it is, involves an artist named John […]
Viewed August 19, 2006
H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau has been adapted to film three times, Island of Lost Souls being the earliest. Now, I’ve only seen the most recent, 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (with Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer and David Thewlis) and I can tell you, this 1933 version is […]
Viewed June 30, 2006
I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy Constantine as much as I did. Of course, that’s not saying much, as I’m no fan of Hellblazer, the comic on which Constantine is based. Maybe if I was I would like it less. I’ve certainly seen my share of scathing comments on […]
Viewed May 25, 2006
In the 1920s and 30s, when Hollywood wanted a version of a film for overseas, they would usually just shoot all the dialogue scenes multiple times in each language required. For the 1931 film Dracula, Universal tried a different tack. Director Tod Browning would direct the main picture during the […]
Viewed May 16, 2006
Wolf is a nice throwback to old school horror films, with just enough modern updates to keep things fresh. Some dodgy effects are more than compensated for by excellent performances by a top notch cast.
This film is, essentially, an update to the classic werewolf story made famous by Lon Chaney, Jr. […]
Viewed April 21, 2006
The Last Man On Earth has no business being as bad as it is. And for most of its length, it really isn’t. In fact, for the first fifty of it’s eighty-odd minute running time it’s a fairly tense film of isolation and horror. Vincent Price plays Dr. […]
Viewed April 9, 2006
Jurassic Park III is the first of the Jurassic Park series to not be directed by Steven Spielberg, the first not to be based on a novel by Michael Crichton, the first not to feature original music by John Williams and the first not to feature Ian Malcolm. Now, not having […]
Viewed March 23, 2006
By now, I should be used to M. Night Shyamalan’s peculiar ability to create a realistic and convincing world for his stories to illuminate, yet I was still surprised by Signs. I was completely taken in by the trailers and advertisements that seemed to indicate that Signs is a mystery, following […]
Viewed March 16, 2006
Hoo boy! I know I found myself somewhat defending Alone In The Dark earlier this year. There was some stuff in there that I thought was pretty good. The same cannot be said about director Uwe Boll’s previous video game adaptation, House of the Dead.
House of the Dead is […]
Viewed March 14, 2006
Hollywood Boulevard has a fascinating history, even for a film executive produced by Roger Corman. Apparently, Jon Davison, one of Corman’s producers at New World Productions, approached Corman and suggested that he could produce a movie for less money than Corman had ever spent. Corman gave him $50,000 and Hollywood […]
Viewed March 10, 2006
Scary Movie 3 (or more accurately, Scary Movie 3.5 - the “Unrated” version that I watched) is, obviously, the third in the popular horror movie parody series that began as a take on the “Scream” films. Less obvious is the complete shift of creative control from creator/stars Shawn & Marlon Wayans […]
Viewed March 8, 2006
Carry On Screaming is a visually impressive entry in the “Carry On” series, but I found it’s substance to be quite lacking.
The plot is not unimaginative, with it’s mad doctor turning beautiful maidens into store mannequins. The characters are straight out of the Hammer horror films that were so popular at […]
Viewed February 5, 2006
Almost immediately after Mary Shelley published her groundbreaking novel Frankenstein in 1818, it was being adapted for performance. The play Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein hit the boards in 1823, just five years later. (Although there may have been an aborted attempt in 1821.) Since that time the […]
Viewed January 27, 2006
One of the things Ed Wood fans often say concerning Bela Lugosi is that you can’t claim Ed dragged Bela Lugosi down by putting him into films like Glen or Glenda (1954) and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) when he had already made much worse films like Bela Lugosi Meets a […]
Viewed January 20, 2006
I have to admit that I’ve never really “gotten” Wallace & Gromit. Not that I haven’t found their previous shorts funny, just that they never really grabbed me. I still haven’t seen Chicken Run (2000), Aardman Animations’ previous feature which is supposed to be quite good, so I went into this […]
Viewed January 8, 2006
Beast from Haunted Cave has a classic Roger Corman backstory. Apparently, Corman was busy preparing for a war film, Ski Troop Attack (1960) to be shot in South Dakota. He figured that since he was going to be on location anyway, why not make another picture and double the output? […]
Viewed January 3, 2006
Okay, Alone in the Dark is a bad movie. It has a ridiculously convoluted plot, a lot of the acting is sub-par and none of it really comes together in the end.
That being said, I’ve certainly seen worse movies. I’ve sat through The Beast of Yucca Flats (1961), for heaven’s […]