Tag Archives: movie reviews

January 29, 2016 · 11:32 pm

THE REVENANT (2015): MICRO-REVIEW

Man in the Wilderness

Save your time and money and see this film based on the same events.

THE REVENANT (2015) – Man vs nature movie that, ironically, is far less true-to-life than Man in the Wilderness, a 1971 film based on the same real-life events from the 1820s. ESPECIALLY THE ENDING. Yet the ’71 version didn’t go to the same bizarre levels of hype about its “authenticity” that The Revenant’s marketing does.

Richard Harris played the man left behind to die and John Huston had the role Tom Hardy plays in the newer version. Catch Man in the Wilderness from the comfort of your own home. The only entertainment in the DiCaprio film comes from wondering if he’ll ever say “Yer durn tootin'” in that ridiculous voice he uses in the movie.      Continue reading →

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January 7, 2016 · 3:18 am

TRUMBO: IS THIS A JOKE?

This movie is further proof that American Liberals are the biggest hypocrites in history.

This movie is further proof that American Liberals are the biggest hypocrites in history.

TRUMBO (2015) – How about “Are you now or have you ever been a racist or imperialist or Islamophobic or privileged?” Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know how sick I am of the increasingly meaningless “Liberals vs Conservatives” paradigm. It’s just that right now American Liberals are far more pompous and hubristic and in need of being cut down to size.

Case in point: the movie Trumbo. Only American Liberals could be so lacking in self-awareness that they would – in this age of Political Correctness Police and SJW persecutors – trot out (for the millionth time) the story of Dalton Trumbo and some of the other figures who were black-listed during the Communist Witch Hunt of decades ago. For the past few decades Liberals have been the ones black-listing and inflicting draconian punishments on people who dare to hold different political opinions than they do.

We are still suffering under the “Racist” and “Privilege” Witch Hunts that American Liberals continue to pursue with the same sickeningly judgmental attitude and spurious statistics that Joe McCarthy was accused of. How many careers (and therefore lives) have we all seen ruined by the cold, merciless asses of the political left? Often over  simple remarks or organizations the victims belonged to or political contributions they made YEARS earlier. Plus Liberals accuse people of being racists as a scare tactic the way accusations of being a Communist were used back then.

Anyone under 30 (maybe even 40) who watches Trumbo needs to focus on the OBVIOUS parallels to the way American Liberals hound and persecute any behavior they choose to interpret as “racism” or more generally as “hate.” When you watch right-wing zealots obsessively looking for “pernicious communism” and “secret communist messages” in Trumbo’s screenplays make a point of noting the similarities to the way Liberal zealots obsessively look for “racism”, “xenophobia”, “imperialism,” “colonial narratives” and on and on through the entire list of their paranoid fixations.        Continue reading →

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January 3, 2016 · 6:50 pm

JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST (1974)

Jack the Ripper Goes WestJACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST (1974) – This hilariously lame horror western was also released under the titles Silent Sentence, A Knife in the Dark and A Knife for the Ladies.

Jack the Ripper Goes West is a horror western that plays like a failed pilot episode for a television series given its mere 51 minute running time. When a rash of Jack the Ripper style murders afflict the western town of Mescal their old-fashioned Sheriff Jarrod (Jack Elam) is aggravated to find himself forced to work with an out of town private detective named Burns (Jeff Cooper). 

If this was indeed once planned as a tv pilot (and the incredibly fake-looking buildings in the town might support that notion) the premise was apparently going to be the clash of old vs new methods of investigating crimes. Elam’s sheriff is an old-fashioned hip-shooting, hard-drinking, saloon-brawling man of the past. Cooper’s private investigator is a sophisticated big city criminologist intent on using modern methodology.   Continue reading →

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November 20, 2015 · 5:45 am

THE HUMANOID (1979): THE WORST STAR WARS RIPOFF

Humanoid 2With Star Wars Episode Seven coming out soon I figured I would examine the notoriously bad Italian ripoff of Star Wars. I know many people consider Star Crash to be the worst of the Italo-Ripoffs but I’ve always gotten more laughs out of The Humanoid.  

The many, many ways this movie steals from Star Wars will become clear as we go along. Let’s deal with first things first:

Richard KielRichard Kiel plays the title figure. His real name is Golob but the Darth Vaderish bad guy arranges for Golob to be the guinea pig for a treatment that transforms ordinary people into powerful “Humanoids”. As a Humanoid Golob loses his beard for some reason but – even more comically – the beard suddenly reappears when he is returned to normal late in the movie.

Humanoid 5Golob in his amped-up Humanoid form has super-strength, is invulnerable to harm and can deflect energy blasts that the Rebel Alliance-style good guys shoot at him. The bad guys plan to use a warhead to expose every man, woman and child on Earth to the bio-treatment, thus creating an instant army of billions of super-powered Humanoids like Richard Kiel. (Good luck controlling them since the treatment will reduce them to mindless animals like Golob.)   Continue reading →

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November 13, 2015 · 2:19 am

FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – REVIEW

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 1980’s 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 1920’s 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. Continue reading →

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October 17, 2015 · 2:56 pm

ELEVEN MORE BAD MOVIE CLASSICS FOR HALLOWEEN

Return of Dr X

Return of Dr X

My month-long celebration of Halloween continues! Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are very familiar with my Bad Movie page where I examine plenty of under the radar movies that are hilariously awful. Previously I ran a list of the top Eleven Neglected Bad Movie Classics for Halloween. That was such a hit here is a list of eleven more neglected bombs. My Bad Movie page features full-length reviews of each of the movies I’m offering a synopsis of here.

THE RETURN OF DR X (1939) – The notorious film in which the legendary Humphrey Bogart played a zombified mad scientist named Dr Xavier who was brought back from the dead by another mad scientist named Dr Flegg. Much of the fun comes from Bogie’s unmistakable disdain for finding himself in the kind of stinker that Bela Lugosi often waded through. Bogie’s Dr X kills Continue reading →

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September 28, 2015 · 11:15 pm

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

The Dragon Lives Again

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – Category: Brucesploitation 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 martials 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 Continue reading →

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August 27, 2015 · 7:58 pm

SCREAMTIME (1984)

Screamtime 1Screamtime is one of the forgotten horror anthology films from the 1980’s. Supposedly the three main horror tales were originally filmed as individual episodes of a British tv series. Depending on which source you use either the series was cancelled (or never picked up) OR the episodes were deemed to be of too poor a quality.

The trio of horror stories were then edited into movie format for theatrical release with a wraparound story set in New York City. The oddity of the hard-assed New Yorkers watching three veddy, veddy British horror tales is part of the fun of this lame but bearable film. VHS it ain’t. Hell, it’s not even Beta.  Continue reading →

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August 19, 2015 · 9:32 pm

R100 (2013): A JAPANESE CULT FILM

R100R100 (2013) The title means “Restricted for everyone under 100 years of age.” But that’s meant tongue-in- cheekly. Trust me, this is a J-film  that doesn’t compromise yet still won’t gross out more mild viewers.

It’s no secret that the Japanese churn out some of the most watchably weird movies in the entire world. Trouble is it’s often hard to get a lot of cinephiles to share these little gems with you because some people can’t stomach movies featuring grotesque bodily modifications, tentacled creatures committing rape or people eating aborted fetuses like dumplings.  

Even those people will be able to sit all the way through R100. This little honey is largely a conceptual assault instead of a parade of gore, and is actually milder than most R-rated horror films these days.

In fact the movie has more in common with horror than erotica despite its joyously off-kilter premise. That premise: a middle-aged Japanese salesman named Katayama signs a contract with a worldwide S&M business. That contract permits them to have their black-clad, whip-wielding beauties turn up at any time they please to smack around, kick and humiliate the protagonist. Continue reading →

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August 18, 2015 · 11:09 pm

THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969)

Mummy and the Curse of the JackalsBy request here’s an encore presentation of one of my most popular reviews of a bad movie.

THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969) – Category:A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following     Depending on which film book you read this movie either did or did not have any theatrical release but thankfully it’s available on video. Part of the bad movie fun is provided by how poorly lit some scenes are, even though that prevents us from getting better looks at 1960’s Las Vegas, where the story takes place. In this film Anthony Eisley portrays an archaeologist who, hilariously enough, can’t pronounce the word “archaeological” (he says “arkological”). He also refuses to clean the cobwebs out of his house for some reason, which can be pretty distracting in some scenes.

Like an idiot, he willingly brings the title “curse” upon himself and begins nocturnal transformations into a were-jackal so goofy looking he could pass for the mascot of a sports team. And check out Eisley’s pasty-white neck skin showing under the awkward jackal mask he’s wearing on his face. Eventually Eisley finds himself vying with the fattest mummy in human memory for the affections of an undead Egyptian Princess named Acana. 

Said mummy (who is so bulky you could swear they’ve got Tor Johnson wrapped up in those bandages) has a face that looks like a cross between Popeye the sailor man and the Toxic Avenger. Said Princess is under orders from the goddess Isis herself (in a joyously demented cameo appearance) to revive the worship of the ancient deities and provide them a home and a temple in the Mojave Desert.

Other characters include Eisley’s bland friend Bob and Bob’s blander girlfriend Donna, plus the man who may have appeared in more movies than Bronson Canyon itself, John Carradine, who plays Eisley’s one-time mentor. Continue reading →

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