Tag Archives: movie reviews

GHOSTWATCH (1992): FILM REVIEW

Ghostwatch 1992GHOSTWATCH (1992) – This was a British made for t.v. movie that aired on Halloween Night in 1992. Ghostwatch is a nice – albeit boring – little novelty item for the way it anticipated the paranormal “reality” (LMAO) shows of today.

The telefilm also can’t help but put viewers in mind of the Paranormal Activity series and countless other Found Footage horror movies. Ghostwatch involves much older technology of course but for once, since the make-believe t.v. crew is filming their investigation of a haunted house, it MAKES SENSE for people to be filming everything.  

The casting for this production was well-done in that it contains virtually NO recognizable faces. Usually when watching BBC items from back then viewers can’t help but play Spot the Doctor Who/ Sherlock Holmes/ British Murder Mysteries Actor. Continue reading

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HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) FOR BACK-TO-SCHOOL TIME

For back-to-school time here’s my review of the 1960 Juvenile Delinquent classic High School Caesar. 

high-school-caesarHIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) Category: Bad, youth-oriented 1960 movie that is incredibly campy   This movie may have a 1960 release date but it is the most classically campy example of the Juvenile Delinquent movies of the 1950’s.

That genre spawned many “so bad they’re good” films like High School Hellcats, Untamed Youth and many others featuring fast cars, silly slang and misunderstood or just plain malevolent teenagers. High School Caesar renders itself even more laughable than other Juvenile Delinquent films with its wonderfully absurd premise.

Yes, this movie takes its cue from the Edward G Robinson gangster movie Little Caesar and depicts the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency as if it’s a High School ROTC version of organized crime.

The title character is a kind of leather-jacketed Don Corleone overseeing a high school operation involving hallway protection rackets, rigged student elections and a black market of stolen exam answers. Continue reading

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3 LABOR DAY MOVIES

The Labor Day Holiday is taking on greater significance the more that the white collar criminals called Democrats and Republicans sell out the working class. Bought and paid for office-holders from BOTH political parties are content to screw over the working class.

MatewanMATEWAN (1987) – This John Sayles film examines the 1920 Matewan Massacre in the West Virginia coal fields. The workers were attempting to form a union and the owners – the kind of people that the one percenters’ beloved New York Times has proclaimed to be “the conscience of the country” used hired thugs to harass – and even kill – the laborers.

On top of that the owners planned to bring in replacement workers who would work for less money and would not expect “luxuries” like worker safety measures and the like.

It’s like today as DemCorp and RepubCorp embrace Corporate Fascism by helping bloated rich pigs usher unlimited numbers of illegal immigrants into countries around the world in order to bring in people who will work for lower wages and without “luxuries” like sick leave and such.    

PaydayToday’s rich pigs have added a new wrinkle: pretending to be showing “compassion” and lecturing the working class and the poor about the glories of a borderless society. Ultimately this will even overload Social Programs to the point where they all collapse from lack of funding.

AN IMPORTANT REASON FOR HAVING BORDERS IS PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THE LONG-HELD PRINCIPLE THAT A COUNTRY CAN HAVE SOCIAL PROGRAMS OR OPEN BORDERS BUT NOT BOTH. Borders also help in disease control and crime control, but the one percenters and bloated rich pigs never have to worry about either. Continue reading

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THE GOLDEN BAT (1966): FILM REVIEW

Golden Bat

The Golden Bat: the ugliest superhero in the world.

THE GOLDEN BAT (1966) – Ogon Batto is the name of this film in its native Japan. The movie was based on the title character, Japan’s very first comic book superhero who debuted in 1930. That 1930 date puts him years before Superman and Batman in the west!  

At any rate for the 1966 movie Japan’s perennial action star Sonny Chiba played the leader of a group of science-oriented commandos in what looked like aluminum foil suits. Chiba and his gang have fancy aircraft like England’s Thunderbirds and their debut mission finds them trying to save the Earth from collision with a rogue planet called Icarus.

Chiba’s outfit has constructed a giant laser cannon to destroy Icarus before it can reach our planet. Trouble is it needs a final component to be found only on a lost island. When Sonny Chiba’s Mighty Aluminum Foil Power Rangers explore the ancient city on that island they uncover the tomb of … the Golden Bat! Continue reading

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NEIL BREEN’S LATEST FILM: TWISTED PAIR (2018)

neil breen 2My fellow Human Breens will be thrilled to hear that the one, the only Neil Breen (PBUH) has released his latest cinematic effort. He once again wrote, starred and directed. This addition to the Breeniverse is titled Twisted Pair and features Neil sharing the starring role with the only man who could possibly hold their own with him on the big screen: himself.

As if one Neil Breen pompously setting straight the human race about what moral lepers we are wasn’t enough we now get Breen Times Two or Breen Squared or however you would prefer to describe it. Neil portrays identical twins Keith and Kale, who merge with a form of Artificial Intelligence, gain super powers from it and then set out to save humanity from itself. Same ol’ same ol’ in other words.

We get some Sheer Breenius right off the bat as the twins are listed in the credits as Keith and Kale but are referred to as KANE and Kale in the dialogue. Don’t ever change, Neil.

Anyway, Keith (Or Kane) and Kale are “Identical Neil Breens/ All the way/ They walk alike/ They fly alike/ They even give tiresome lectures with an air of moral superiority alike/ … What a Twisted Pair!/ You will lose your mind/ When Neil Breen/ Is Two of a Kiiiind!” 

twisted pairConflict is the essence of drama, of course, and though Keith and Kale just KNOW they are the Supreme Breens fit to reform humanity the twins disagree about the way to approach their mission. The two members of this Breen Trust clash when one of them decides the human race must be browbeaten into submission while the other decides that the human race must be SAVAGELY browbeaten into submission. Fifty Shades of Grey takes on new meaning here.

Anyway, in Twisted Pair the number of computers destroyed may be larger while the body count and the women’s breasts may be smaller but otherwise it’s pretty much Breen-ness as usual.

Remember the tagline to the Christopher Reeve Superman movie: “You’ll believe a man can fly.” Well in Twisted Pair you WON’T believe how hard you’ll laugh when you see Keith and Kale fly. If you’re a heathen who’s not familiar with the Breen Scene my look at his first four films can be found HERE 

The Twisted Pair trailer is below:  Continue reading

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THE CLONES (1973): MOVIE REVIEW

ClonesTHE CLONES (1973) – This neglected sci-fi item from the 70s was directed by Lamar Card & Paul Hunt, based on Hunt’s story. The Clones falls into that category of films that I always refer to as “X-Movies” because of the way they put one in mind of the paranoid and conspiratorial air of the best X-Files episodes.

Michael Greene, who played Secret Service Agent Jimmy Hart in To Live and Die in L.A, stars as Dr Gerald Appleby. Gerald is a scientist who has been cloned and finds himself vying with his clone for ownership of his life, career and girlfriend when the duplicate begins impersonating him.

clones 2Gregory Sierra, best known to trivia buffs as “And Gregory Sierra” for the number of times he was credited like that in various television shows and movies, plays Nemo, a government agent tasked to keep the clone project a secret and bring in the escapee.

Helping him out is fellow agent Sawyer, portrayed by Otis Young (Blood Beach). Sawyer suffers a crisis of conscience during this coverup assignment.  Continue reading

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THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977): BRUCE LEE EXPLOITATION

Dragon Lives Again

The Dragon Lives Again

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – CategoryBrucesploitation with an enjoyably absurd twist   

Even for the bizarre sub-genre of Brucesploitation films this movie is out there! The film starts with the recently – deceased Bruce Lee arriving in the afterlife, where the concubines of the King of the Dead gather around to gawk at the bulge in the pants of the late martial arts superstar. (Just in case you thought NO opening could be more tasteless than the one in The Clones Of Bruce Lee ) In a bit of alleged comic relief the bulge turns out to be caused by a weapon, not Lee’s organ. (Corpse schlong jokes! Who doesn’t love them?)

As head-shaking as that bit is at least it’s coherent, unlike virtually everything else that happens from this point on in the movie. And the time-honored tradition of Brucesploitation films having  leading men who don’t even look like Bruce Lee is well-represented in this flick, but at least here they try to explain it away by talking about how a person’s face and body change after death.  Which, of course, makes no sense since this is supposed to be Lee’s soul, not his body. 

Anyway, Bruce somehow persuades the King Of The Dead to grant him a chance to return to the world of the living, and is told he can return if he outfights all the other inhabitants of this odd netherworld. 

You see, this isn’t just any bland version of the afterlife our hero finds himself in. It’s kind of a Valhalla of cult movie characters and Bruce spends the rest of the movie fighting all of them in various combinations. Continue reading

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FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977)

Friday the 13th The Orphan biggerFRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.

Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward.

Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin.

The young man’s Aunt Martha arrives to take care of him (and yes, obscure movie buffs, she sometimes does dreadful things). Turns out Martha was dating David’s father before he callously dumped her to marry her sister. Martha takes her resentment of the father out on David and even chews him out about a cough he inherited from dear dead Dad. I’m sure you can tell where all this is headed. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season

MAVERICK (1994): MOVIE REVIEW

MASCOT COWBOY 2FRONTIERADO IS COMING UP ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 3rd! As always the Frontierado holiday (now celebrated on 6 continents) is about the myth of the Wild West, not the grinding reality. It’s just like the way medieval festivals celebrate the era’s romantic aspects, not “the violence inherent in the system” (for my fellow Monty Python fans).

MaverickMAVERICK (1994) – Richard Donner directed and Mel Gibson starred in this excellent tribute to the 1950s and 1980s Maverick television series. The original series starred James Garner as slick-talking gambler/ gunslinger Bret Maverick AND, in old-age makeup, as “Pappy” Beauregard Maverick, the gambler and con-man patriarch of that family of rogues.  (No relation to the real-life Maverick family of Texas, for whom “maverick” cattle were named.)

Maverick was just as often comedic as dramatic and nicely anticipated the many deconstructions of Old West mythology that were to come in the decades ahead. Sometimes the program was daringly farcical as in episodes like Gun-Shy, a spoof of Gunsmoke, and Three Queens Full, a Bonanza parody set on the Sub-Rosa Ranch (as opposed to Bonanza‘s PONDErosa). The storyline featured Maverick encountering a Ben Cartwright-styled rancher and his three less-than-straight sons, hence the episode’s title.

The original series centered on Garner’s Bret Maverick (and later other Maverick family members) vying in cardplaying and con-games with assorted rival gamblers, gunslingers and con-men. Efrem Zimbalist Jr – in his pre-FBI years – played Dandy Jim, one of the recurring members of Maverick’s Rogue’s Gallery of foes. 

Elaborate schemes and multiple double-crosses often kept viewers guessing who would come out on top til the very end, since Bret sometimes ended up on the losing side. 

The constant betrayals and double-crosses were part of the charm of the television series and were perfectly captured by the 1994 big-screen adaptation of Maverick. This thoroughly enjoyable film is often dismissed as just another of the pointless movie adaptations of tv shows that began to flood theaters back then, but that is far from the truth.

Maverick 2Mel Gibson portrays Bret Maverick since by 1994 James Garner was too old for the role. Jodie Foster co-stars as rival gambler Annabelle Bransford and the iconic James Garner provides memorable support as a lawman. 

NECESSARY SPOILER: Many people that I’ve discussed this movie with said they avoided it or stopped watching it once they realized Garner was not portraying a member of the Maverick family. In reality – as we learn near the very end – he IS. He may have been too old to play Bret this time around but he reprised his role of Pappy Beauregard from the original series. Pappy is just POSING as a lawman and his son Bret obligingly plays along without blowing his Pappy’s cover. Continue reading

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1776: FOURTH OF JULY MUSICAL

1776-musical-movieIt may be my fondness for mythology that makes me love to watch particular movies around particular holidays.  I say that because many of the well- known myths were recited on ancient holidays when their subject matter was relevant to those holidays. The stories helped accentuate the meaning of the special events and that’s the way I use various movies.

At Christmas I watch countless variations of A Christmas Carol, around Labor Day I watch Eight Men Out, at Halloween The Evil Dead and the original Nightmare On Elm Street, Thanksgiving Eve I do Oliver! and for Frontierado (which is just a month away now) I do Silverado.

Since the actual 4th of July is loaded with activity I always show 1776 on the night before. It’s a great way to get in the mood for Independence Day. It’s a musical but with brilliant dialogue portions and the story involves the political maneuvering  surrounding the Original Thirteen Colonies at last announcing their independence from Great Britain, more than a year after  the shots fired at Lexington and Concord started the war.

The story is excellently conveyed and is moving, comical, invigorating and poignant all at once. As long as you know which parts of the tale are depicted accurately and which are complete b.s. it’s a terrific way to spend each 3rd of July. Continue reading

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