Bad Cinema Diary TM
The “A” Pages from Abbott to Axe
ABBOTT & COSTELLO GO TO MARS (1953 - aka On to Mars; Rocket & Roll) dir: Charles Lamont; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Mari Blanchard, the Miss Universe Beauties. Two hapless workmen accidentally launch themselves in a rocket; they land in New Orleans and think it’s Mars. But then they’re hijacked by two escaped cons and end up on Venus -- but think it’s Los Angeles. They never do make it to Mars. Okay, the plot doesn’t really count. But this flick at least eschews the retreaded skits and night club song numbers in favor of a well-paced comic script full of good gags. The best moments come from just Bud & Lou clowning around, instead of contrived situations. Good old fashioned fun. ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE See the Jekylls & Hydes page.
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948 - aka Brain of Frankenstein; Abbott & Costello Meet the Ghosts) dir: Charles T. Barton; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, (Vincent Price’s voice in a cameo). Actually, it’s more like Abbott & Costello meet House of Frankenstein. The wolfman enlists the boys’ help in hunting down Dracula & Frankenstein’s monster, which have just been shipped to a sideshow copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM in Florida. Meanwhile, a mad doctor lady is plotting to stick Lou’s brain into the monster! Bud & Lou are in top form for this one, and Bela even gets into the spirit and goes along with the gags. Chaney, on the other hand, is still seriously playing the angst-oozing life of tormented Larry Talbot. Odd, I like the tone on this one even though I’ve always been a bit irritated with Universal’s later monster pictures, wherein they refused to treat the monsters seriously. But here, they’ve become cartoony celebrations of the originals -- a tribute rather than an insult. And the whole thing is a great way to have fun on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951) dir: Charles Lamont; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Nancy Guild, Arthur Franz, Adele Jurges, Sheldon Leonard. A pair of fledgling PI’s help a framed boxer clear his name -- said boxer having used the self-same invisibility serum made famous in the Invisible Man movies to escape the police. Predictable invisibility gags follow. A mediocre outing for A & C; fun, but not one of their best.
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE KEYSTONE COPS (1955) dir: Charles Lamont; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Fred Clark, Lynn Bari, (Mack Sennett cameo). In the silent movie era, Bud & Lou are wannabe filmmakers who get mistaken for stuntmen. The plot occupies less than half of the film, the rest is just a series of random sitcom gags that could have been written for any comedy team. It has a few good moments, but mostly it’s a waste of their talents. Fred Clark, on the other hand, gets a good role and the best scenes.
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER, BORIS KARLOFF (1949) Dir: Charles T. Barton; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Boris Karloff, Lenore Aubert. A simplistic murder mystery farce, but it’s saved by good gags & a good performance by Lou as the hapless bellhop who’s been framed for the murder. The title, obviously, banked heavily on Karloff as the co-star, but his role is actually quite small, with only one scene of any substance.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY (1955) dir: Charles Lamont; w/ Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara. While in Egypt, Lou swallows a sacred amulet and Bud gets framed for murder (by Lou, but it was an accident!). So they end up getting chased around by the police, a slinky criminal-broad, mummy cultists, and eventually the mummy himself. This one is pretty mundane formula -- it’s just a string of recycled slapstick skits sandwiched between song & dance numbers. Nonetheless, the gags are good, one of the dance routines is actually quite inventive, and the flick manages to be mildly amusing.
ABBY (1974) prod & dir: William Girdler; w/ William Marshall, Terry Carter, Austin Stoker, Carol Speed. No skin; no gore. A preacher's wife gets possessed by a Nigerian sex-demon, so she talks dirty and throws people around -- and then she is rather undramatically exorcised with a mixture of Christian and African iconography. Intended to be the blaxploitation version of Exorcist of course; it's a bit of a schizoid flick -- part of the time it seems to be making a stern effort at being seen as a respectable drama -- but spends the rest of the time layering on cheese, sleaze, and thickly sliced ham. Although it has quite a few boring bits, there's enough here to be a lot of fun. The worst part is really the ending, which is the most ordinary and unexciting thing they could think up.
ABLAZE (2000) dir: Jay Andrews (aka Jim Wynorski); w/ John Bradley, Ice T, Amanda Pays, (Cathy Lee Crosby, Tom Arnold, Edward Albert, Michael Dudikoff in bits). No skin; no gore. The blurb on the box promises us the pursuit of a deadly serial arsonist -- and indeed that’s the first five minutes. We get a terrific car chase scene and a fun performance from Ice T -- and that’s the end of that. The credits roll, Ice T disappears, and the flick dissolves into a randomly scattered collage of melodramas featuring kids playing with matches, corrupt businessmen, a pregnant lady, a crusading doctor, and the remarkably unrealistic exploits of noble firemen. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM Eventually, the movie reveals itself as a randomly scattered and remarkably unrealistic disaster movie when the refinery blows up and burns down the city. All the explosions and stunt-work shows that they obviously had a budget on this one -- they should have spent something on the script. This thing is so unconvincing and poorly written that it’s not just bad, it’s tacky. [Thanks to the sharp memory of reader Gunnar for pointing out that all of the special effects on this flick (and apparently much of the plot) were ripped from the earlier disaster flick City on Fire (1979); given the dreadful quality of everything besides the explosions, that does explain a lot.]
AB-NORMAL BEAUTY (2004 - Hong Kong) writ & dir: Oxide Pang; w/ Race Wong, Rosanne Wong, Anson leung. No skin; mild gore. A young art student, a victim of abuse and emotional starvation, stumbles across the perfect subject for her photography: dead people. The obsession quickly spills over into schizophrenia, but just when she thinks she’s found a path out of madness, she hits a few speed bumps and discovers that she’s not the only one in town with a dangerous fascination for the art of death. It’s a moody and effective psycho-thriller with a few unexpected twists. The overall impact is dulled considerably by an unimaginative ending and subtitles that only vaguely approximate English. But the cast & photography are excellent, and it’s graced by the best suspense flick score since Bernard Herrmann. If the script had carried more real impact, this would have been a classic; nonetheless, if you’re a fan of Hitchcock or giallo, it’s well worth checking out.
ABOMINABLE (2006) writ & dir: Ryan Schifrin; w/ Matt McCoy, Haley Joel, Christien Tinsley, (cameos for Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, Lance Henriksen). One bit o’ skin; some gore. Bigfoot goes postal -- a wheelchair-bound mental patient, a gaggle of tittering girls, and some colorful local characters try to keep from becoming a midnight snack. Although it starts with an attempt to mimic Rear Window, it does turn into a nice old fashioned monster movie. There is some padding and some artificial tension cheap-shots, but they can get away with that because of good characters, a great cast, and a nice level of copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM suspense. The only problem I had was with the critter himself -- oh, the effects for the ‘bominable were excellent, it’s just that he looked exactly like a cross between Jack Elam and Gossamer (that hairy thing from the Bugs Bunny cartoons) -- he made me giggle. Which I’m guessing wasn’t the reaction the filmmakers were hoping for. Oh, well -- it’s still a fun flick. the ABOMINABLE Dr PHIBES See Dr. Phibes. the ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957 - Britain - aka The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas; The Snow Creature) dir: Val Guest; w/ Forrest Tucker, Peter Cushing. An obsessed British scientist joins a shady hunting party that is seeking the secret home of the Yeti. And they find it, too -- but they slowly begin to learn that the roles of horrid beasts and civilized people have been reversed. It’s a capable little film, with some successes. However, it’s marred by excess padding, small & unconvincing sets (they only had one rock to climb, so they kept climbing it over & over from different angles), bad matte paintings, and the usual tepid British pacing. But the characters are good and Nigel Kneale’s script shows a little originality. A good enough flick, if you cut it some slack.
ABRAXAS: Guardian of the Universe (1991) writ & dir: Damian Lee; w/ Jesse Ventura, Marjorie Bransfield, Sven-Ole Thorsen, (Jim Belushi bit). No skin; no gore. Jesse Ventura plays this really dull super-cop of the galaxy who is 11,000 years old and is on a mission to Earth to stop a really dull renegade super-cop and save some really dull Earth- child who can think powerful thoughts. Dull thoughts, but powerful. The script is worthy of the Power Rangers and what passes for the story is handed out to us by a variety of voice- overs. The special effects aren’t good enough for your local Christmas pageant and the attempts at humor were so pathetic they gave me a pain like constipation. Although it isn’t badly photographed, it is filmed with all the grace and style of a security camera tape. The worst thing is, there’s enough skill here that the flick just isn’t awful enough to be funny. Okay, there are a few moments to snicker at, but it’s just a big empty 90 minutes that is maddeningly, screamingly boring! copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ABSOLON (2003 - Canada/UK) dir: David Barto; w/ Christopher Lambert, Lou Diamond Phillips, Kelly Brook, Ron Perlman. No skin; no gore. The last few survivors of humanity depend upon a precious drug for their survival -- but when a cop discovers that not only does a cure exist but that it exists in his own body, he becomes the target of the drug company that rules the world. You know, this thing is rather well made, it’s just that it lacks any imagination at all. The script is a by-the-numbers preachy dystopian corporate conspiracy sort of thing. The acting, direction, and photography are all flat, and there’s virtually no art direction -- the supposedly bleak, depopulated future actually looks pretty darn ordinary. The formula is capably executed here -- but there’s no worthwhile reason to have made the film in the first place and even less reason to actually watch it.
ACCION MUTANTE (1993 - Spain) dir: Alex de la Iglesia; w/ Antonio Resines, Alex Angulo, Frederique Feder, Juan Viados. No skin; some gore. In the future, Spain is terrorized by a group called Mutant Action. They’re a gang of physically challenged (and mentally incompetent) terrorists who attack anything to do with physical fitness & beauty. But when they kidnap a pretty young socialite on her wedding day and rocket into space, the leader turns on the gang, they mostly kill each other off, then crash land on a planet that hasn’t seen a female in years. It all comes to a head in a seedy bar with gun-crazy miners, horny fat teenagers, one Siamese twin with his deceased brother still attached, a smarmy news reporter, an insane businessman, a big bomb, and the Stockholm Syndrome. It tries to be a wacky Rock & Roll comedy spiced with gratuitous gore, but only succeeds some of the time. Nonetheless, it’s highly imaginative and seriously twisted and will definitely give you a kick in the head. ACT OF VENGEANCE See Rape Squad.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the ADDICTION (1995) dir: Abel Ferrara; w/ Lili Taylor, Christopher Walken, Annabella Sciorra (despite their prominent listings, both Walken & Sciorra are just cameos). A little real gore & nudity appears courtesy of documentary war footage. When a young philosophy student becomes a vampire, she embraces nihilism and cheerfully -- and philosophically -- turns her old neighborhood into a charnel house. This is a low-budget indie with superb black & white photography and an original script. Unfortunately, it’s a slow script and so packed with quotes from the philosophers that it might make sense to someone with a masters degree in western philosophy (but I doubt it even then). Many of the scenes are interesting but pointless -- I have to respect the filmmaking here, but the storytelling is totally screwed. It is certainly interesting to watch -- a vampire flick exclusively for pretentious philosophy majors. If you’re not a philosophy student, you may be better off thinking of it as a foreign language film without subtitles.
ADRENALIN: FEAR THE RUSH (1996) writ & dir: Albert Pyun; w/ Christopher Lambert, Natasha Henstridge, Norbert Weisser, Andrew Divoff. No skin, a little gore. In a near future threatened by plagues, new immigrants to the U.S. are walled into quarantine cities, which eventually turn into permanent ghettos. All of which rather clumsily covers the fact that this was filmed in some toilet of a Slovakian town. And none of which makes up for the fact that this flick has no depth, no background, & no plot. Pyun’s direction is less “artistic” and more fun this time, and the performances are great, but the sum total of the story is: cops chase adrenalin-pumped plague carrier through the ruins. It’s just one long chase/fight scene and very soon the tension gives way to boredom.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (1983 - Italy/France) dir: Martin Dolman (aka Sergio Martino); w/ Michael Sopkiw, Valentine Monnier, Anna Kanakis, George Eastman. No skin, a little mild gore. In a dopey Italian version of the post-holocaust world, the nuked-out ruins of New York are occupied by an army of Black-garbed Really Mean Bad Guys from nameless communist countries. The White-garbed Ineffective Good Guy army sends a champion autoduellist to infiltrate the town and rescue the planet’s last fertile female. And the good guys win because the bad guys never learned how to duck. Ooh, goodie-goodie -- this is one of those silly Italian movies where they just tossed in everything they could think of, and avoided boring bits by tossing in plot twists and fight scenes at random. It’s filmed in junkyards and on dopey sets with dopey characters wearing even dopier costumes. Cannibals, ape-men, cyborgs, midgets, and the Invincible Station Wagon -- the budget is actually sufficient to carry off the illusion, and the whole thing becomes a surprisingly fun live-action cartoon.
AGENT FOR H.A.R.M. (1966) dir: Gerd Oswald; w/ Mark Richman, Wendell Corey, Carl Esmond, Barbara Bouchet. A really lame, slow, pathetic attempt at a super-spy flick. Sometimes billed as a spoof, but don’t believe it. Some of the clichés are funny, but Bouchet in a bikini is really the only redeeming quality this film’s got. the ALCHEMISTS (1998 - British TV) dir: Peter Smith; w/ Grant Show, Ruth Gemmell, Edward Hardwicke. No skin; no gore. At a British pharmaceuticals research company, some honest new employees begin to dig into what they think is a bad batch of drugs. But they soon uncover a diabolical plot to create new diseases for profit. Despite the low budget and tepid pacing, this thing had all the material to make a smokin’ double-barreled suspense flick. Alas, it was just shooting blanks. It turns out to be a capable but pedestrian little TV movie that seeks nothing more than to be the perfect definition of “anticlimactic”
ALIEN SEED (1989) dir: Bob James; w/ Heidi Payne, Steven Blade, Erik Estrada. No skin; a little blood. This lady sort of gets abducted & impregnated by aliens (special effects consist of blurry flashbacks, strange noises, and glowing lights) but then somebody sort of kills her so now the aliens sort of plant their JuJu in her sister so now the Men in Black are running around killing everyone in order to stop the Second Coming. Sort of. The opening scenes make no sense, but that’s okay because it prepares us for the rest of the movie. Bad acting, a vacuous script, clumsy directing, a crappy soundtrack full of aerobics music, and some of the worst editing I’ve seen lately. For example: the young lady goes for a run; cut to the lady driving a car in the country, another car starts to pursue her; cut to interior shot of lady in car being pursued by another car through the city streets; cut to a shot of her car being pursued through the countryside; cut to a shot of the lady leaving her car; cut to a shot of the lady running from her car as it explodes. Um, yah, the bulk of the flick copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM plays out much the same way -- when they’re not having a chase scene. Lots of chase scenes. Lots of really long chase scenes. This turd is so boring and amateurish that there’s not even much satisfaction to be had in making fun of it.
ALIEN SPACE AVENGER (1989) dir: Richard W. Haines; w/ Robert Prichard, Mike McClerie, Charity Staley, Kirk Fairbanks Fogg. A tidbit o’ skin; a smidgen o’ gore. The 1930’s was a bad time for alien terrorists to land on Earth & possess four human bodies -- no plutonium to refuel their spaceship. So they wait until they can kick ass in the modern days -- and it’s up to a comic book artist & his girlfriend to save the world. Okay, it’s cute and there’s some talent here, but it never gets much further than that. They mix in bad puns, dumb-alien jokes, bloody gunshot wounds, and a little T & A and hope it’ll become a party movie. It works some of the time and the actors playing the aliens certainly have a good time. Mildly fun, if you’re not expecting too much.
ALIEN SPECIES (1997) prod & dir: Peter Maris; w/ Charles Napier, David Homb, Jodi Seronick, Marc Robinson. No skin; no gore. Little green men invade Earth! (They have spaceships just like in ID4, except with way-cheap-o CG effects.) While the world is paralyzed, our principal characters are crawling around in an abandoned mine being chased by toothy-beast soldier aliens. But it’s a good thing there’s always a science geek around who can hack the alien computers and bring down their force fields. Besides being depressingly unoriginal, this thing is a cinematic sinkhole of mediocrity -- the script treatment must have read, “Let’s film a bunch of stuff and put all our friends in it!” Aside from a couple of B-movie veterans they roped into the project, there’s no talent in evidence; they borrowed all their ideas; and having recently learned how to do computer animation, they stuck a bunch of that into it in the mistaken belief that it would be cool. They were so certain that people would demand to see the sequels that they don’t even bother to finish the movie; they just put up an ad for Alien Species 2. Which, thank the gods, has yet to be seen.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ALIEN TERMINATOR (1995) dir: Dave Payne; w/ Maria Ford, Rodger Halston, Emile Levisetti. A little skin, a little gore. An isolated underground lab brews up the usual unstoppable bloodthirsty mutant. The derivatives here go beyond just the title -- the theme music mimics Terminator as close as legally possible, and there are lots of overt plot similarities to Alien (lots, really). The monster suit is pretty pathetic, but is prudently kept from camera’s eye most of the time. That being said, this flick has a good set, some outstanding performances, & some decent action scenes, it’s just that the script was weak. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it, but it doesn’t stink.
ALIEN 3000 (2004 - aka Unseen Evil 2) dir: Jeff Leroy; w/ Lorenzo Lamas (barely in the picture), Priscilla Barnes, Corbin Timbrook, Megan Malloy. One tiny boob-flash; a little cheap gore. A budget-conscious (and therefore invisible) critter tears up park rangers and hikers. Some low-rent commandoes call each other dirty names and hunt for gold. It’s a crap-for- budget non-action flick built on at least two separate batches of footage, plus some flashbacks to Unseen Evil -- it’s amateurish throughout and the script is just baby-drool. The only thing of note here is a collection of the worst special fx you’ll get a chance to see outside of your kid nephew’s camcorder experiments. The monster should have stayed invisible; the monster suit actually isn’t bad, but the CG they use for most of the critter’s appearances is blindingly awful. Add in the toy ‘copters, cheap-ass miniatures and plastic guns, and the effects will at least give you a giggle. But they are hardly worth sitting through the rest of the flick, which varies from dull to annoying. Lamas (also billed as producer) goes well beyond has-been status here and joins the ranks of Conrad Brooks in the latrine pit of the cinema world.
ALIEN VOWS (1983) writ & dir: Michael Ricks; w/ Charleen McCrory, Don Luna, William Cook. A little skin; a tidbit o’ gore. Alien rapists with big heads and snappy turtlenecks want our women! Two scientists seem to know all about it but never do anything! Anyhow, the first part of the flick is just a crappy remake of I Married a Monster from Outer Space, except with tits & gore -- and very little intelligence. The copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM second half becomes an even dumber duel between the head alien rapist and the studly anti-alien-rapist dude (who’s supposed to be from a planet thousands of years more advanced than ours and so he looks like a reject from a 1960’s biker movie). It’s cheap, it’s dull, the script is irritatingly stupid, and editing decisions seem to have been made on the roll of the dice. Ow.
ALIVE (2002 - Japan) dir: Ryuhei Kitamura; w/ Hideo Sakaki, Ryo, Jun Kunimura, Koyuki. No skin; no gore. A condemned man is listed as executed, but is secretly redirected to a strange experiment involving psychological torture and murderous parasites. There a couple of Matrix-y superpowered fight scenes in here, but they appear almost as embarrassed guests in what is really a brooding and atmospheric flick about grief, madness and self-destruction. It’s more than a little obtuse, but it does have good music and great noir art direction. It’s a curious mix of artsy-farting with comic-book mayhem that doesn’t always make it work, but is still kind of fun to watch.
ALLEY CAT (1982) dir: Edward Victor; w/ Karin Mani, Robert Torti, Michael Wayne, Britt Helfer. Some full nudity. A cute Karate girl gets stuck between vindictive street punks and a corrupt judicial system, so she becomes Lady Death Wish. It takes a while to get rolling and the fight scenes are just passable, but there’s some fun characters, some laughs, good music, & a few nude scenes that more than make up for the slow pacing & disjointed events. For trash cinema, this one’s an awful lot of fun.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ALLIGATOR (1980) (1980) dir: Lewis Teague; writ: John Sayles; w/ Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Henry Silva. No skin; a teeny bit o’ gore. A baby alligator gets flushed down the toilet in Chicago. Naturally, it thrives in the sewers -- and even more naturally, it chows down on tainted dog carcasses that have been dumped from some illicit hormone testing program. So now we have a giant ‘gator crashing up through the sidewalk and chewing on people. Cool. If you liked John Sayles’ fun- with-clichés script for Piranha (1978), then you’ll have a blast with this one as well. It’s got decent effects, good cast & characters, and all the wonderfully silly stuff that you hope will happen does indeed happen. The snotty bigwigs are having a wedding reception -- thank God a thirty foot alligator crashes the party. I don’t think this one succeeds quite as well as Piranha, but it does hit just the right mix of run-and-scream action with tongue-in-cheek humor.
ALLIGATOR 2: The Mutation (1991) dir: Jon Hess; w/ Joseph Bologna, Dee Wallace Stone, Richard Lynch. No skin; no real gore. Illegal chemical dumping turns an ordinary sewer ‘gator (?!) into a gigantic sewer gator. Actually, its size varies a lot depending on which direction the camera is looking and whether they were using the fake alligator body or the humungous fake alligator jaws. Of course, it’s all the fault of the evil land developer (who will of course get eaten). The fx are barely passable at best, and the plot is predictable without providing any fun to make up for it. This flick is supported solely by its good cast and a lively (if unimaginative) script. Even so, it’s a barely tolerable waste of 90 minutes.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ALLIGATOR PEOPLE (1959) dir: Roy Del Ruth; w/ Beverly Garland, Bruce Bennett, Lon Chaney, George Macready, Richard Crane. A young lady’s husband disappears on their wedding night -- she spends months tracking him down only to learn that the experimental medical procedure that saved his life is turning him into an alligator-person! Yes, it has cheesy monsters, a dash of sleaze thrown in for spice, some awfully cornball dialogue . . . and it’s actually a decent little movie. The script is intelligent and, rarer still, the characters behave as if they have brains! The photography is good, including scenes of mad scientist labs and Beverly Garland running through the swamp in a shredded dress. And Lon Chaney, Jr. gets one of his best roles as the bitter, hook-handed, ‘gator-hating Cajun who gets drunk, shoots at alligators, and nearly rapes Garland. Okay, I don’t expect the movie to get a lot of respect, but I think it deserves more attention. I liked it, anyway.
ALONE IN THE DARK (1982) writ & dir: Jack Sholder; w/ Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau, Dwight Schultz. Tidbit o’ skin; no gore. Some wacky psychopaths escape the loony bin to terrorize the new doctor and his family. After a lengthy and not actually relevant set-up, we get the usual bag of “siege by psychos” bits, except slower than usual. And the black guy dies first. And then they introduce a new black member of copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the cast... yup, he’s next to die. Although the flick does score a meager few fun moments, it is a shame that such a grand cast was wasted on a contrived and disjointed tale that wastes every bit of its potential. I can’t even say it is worth it for the performances, as the characters are all the cinematic equivalent of paper dolls. I did at least manage to refrain from using the fast-forward on this one, but it was a very near thing.
ALTERED (2006) dir: Eduardo Sanchez; w/ Adam Kaufman, Catherine Manjan, Brad William Henke, Mike C. Williams. No skin; some gore. A few former abductees are still a bit peeved about getting probed by a UFO, so they're after some payback -- but spending a night hiding out with a wounded captive alien may just unravel everything. Sanchez is finally applying some of the talent I felt was wasted with Blair Witch; this is a much better put together film with a great cast and what starts out as a good story. However, some of the suspense scenes are dragged out way too long, there are plenty of vague hints at mysteries and revelations which remain merely vague, and the ending is pretty much a non-event. And although the character drama is quite well done, there is once again far too much time devoted to watching people yell at each other (Sanchez must have a fetish for that sort of thing). It's not a bad film, but the weakness of the script leaves it without much to offer.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ALUCARDA (1975 - Mexico - aka Sisters of Satan; Innocents from Hell; Mark of the Devil 3) dir: Juan Lopez Moctezuma; w/ Claudio Brook, David Silva, Tina Romero, Susana Kamini. Some full nudity; no gore. A young orphan girl with the name of “Alucarda” growing up in a convent simply can’t be destined for goodness. When she and her girlfriend become tools of the devil, that would have been bad enough -- but then the local clergy goes completely bonkers in their efforts to exorcize them. And soon enough, we’ve got a priest whipping himself raw, a blood-drenched naked vampire babe, the nuns are bursting into flames, and a martyr’s corpse gets used as a demon-busting crucifix. One thing this movie ain’t, is subtle. It suffers from the usual Mexican weaknesses, such as thinking “atmosphere” means weird sounds, a shadow on the wall, and a whole damn lot of close-ups of women screaming. But it pays off big time with whipping zealots, blood-spurting prayers, and butt-naked black masses. An over-the-top mess that’s just a bunch of old fashioned trash cinema fun. the AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957) prod & dir: Bert I. Gordon; w/ Glen Langan, Cathy Downs, William Hudson. Colonel Glen Manning is exposed to a plutonium bomb explosion and soon turns into a giant, whiny pissed-off bald guy who drinks out of a barrel and talks mean to his girlfriend. A classic of schlock cinema that, thanks to Bert Gordon’s direction and Glen Langan’s drama-school histrionics, thinks of itself as a great movie. The script actually has some good elements, but it’s bogged down with vapid, chatty dialogue and laughably bogus science explanations. And then there’s the not-so-special effects -- Gordon cut costs by doing single-process mattes, thus giving us a ghostly, transparent giant terrorizing Las Vegas. But I really love the bit with the giant hypodermic -- ook! It is a fun flick, even if only for the giggles. It even had a boring sequel: War of the Colossal Beast.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the AMAZING MR. X (1948 - aka The Spiritualist) dir: Bernard Vorhaus; w/ Turhan Bey, Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell. A young widow is haunted by the memory of her dead husband, until she finds solace in a compassionate psychic -- who is really just a slick swindler. But his schemes take a dark turn even he never suspected. The script, although just inventive enough to rise above the sludge, is plodding, the cast is run-of-the-mill, but the cinematography is outstanding. These mismatched elements combine to make an unremarkable gothic suspense that is at least mildly entertaining.
AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN (1959) dir: Edgar G. Ulmer; w/ Douglas Kennedy, Marguerite Chapman, James Griffith. Um, let’s see…there’s this loony rich guy who controls a foreign scientist, a redneck, and a gun moll through extortion & blackmail -- add to this party an escaped con and a plan to create invisible soldiers for the highest bidder -- this stew of course boils over and ends in a nuclear explosion. The whole thing holds together only weakly, and there is a lame attempt at a thoughtful ending, but it almost succeeds in adding psychological character drama to the plot. On the whole, it is neither bad enough nor good enough to be memorable. You might enjoy it, but a week later you’ll see the listing in the Video Guide and swear you’ve never seen it before. the AMAZING TRANSPLANT (1970) prod & dir: Louis Silverman (aka Doris Wishman); w/ Juan Fernandez, Linda Southern, Larry Hunter. Plenty o’ skin; no gore. A shy young man suddenly becomes a horny stud, rapist, & sex killer -- and it’s all because a back-alley abortionist gave him a new penis. It’s sort of Doris Wishman’s version of The Pee-pee of Orlac. The plot, however, is nonessential as it serves only as a vehicle for a string of rape scenes. It’s bizarrely edited and all the dialogue is post-dubbed; and it honestly looks like the editing was completed before the script was finished. Most of the time, we listen to other people talk as we watch the detective guy go through as many “concerned listening” expressions as he can copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM dredge up. It’s a loony piece of work, but some of the ladies are pretty fine and the drunken editing, if nothing else, will keep you amused.
AMAZON WARRIOR (1997 - Unknown Prods.) dir: Dennis Devine; w/ J. J. Rodgers, Jimmy Jerman, Raymond Storti. A few tiny flashes of skin, no gore. In a post-holocaust world of swords & fur bikinis, the last member of the Amazon tribe wanders the land seeking revenge for her slaughtered people. For something done on a shoestring budget, they manage to maintain surprisingly good production values. Unfortunately, that’s the most complimentary thing I can say. The acting is only passable, the action scenes are just good enough to avoid being laughed at (most of the time), and the plot has the pacing of a TV drama (that’s not a compliment). The film lacks imagination & energy -- it’s not good enough to be interesting (let alone exciting), nor is it bad enough to be funny. I have to give them credit for the effort, but they missed the mark.
AMAZONS (1986 - Argentine/US) dir: Alex Sessa; w/ Windsor Taylor Randolph (aka Mindi Miller), Penelope Reed, Joseph Whipp, Danitza Kingsley. A little skin; no gore. The bikini-bimbo warriors must save their people from the nasty sorcerer (he’s evil ‘cause he wears black and laughs a lot). But alas, the Cleavage Brigade’s own leader is a traitor -- how can they retrieve the sacred sword now? I know, let’s just stop everything for a T & A scene and everyone will forget about the plot! Yup, it’s your usual mixed-up barbarian mash with clumsy sword fights, cheap-ass magic spells, and some ghosts that honestly look like they were lifted from last year’s Halloween high school play. The costumes are cheap but revealing, the sets are minimal, the filming is bad, the acting is quite bad, the script isn’t even worth mentioning, and the music track sounds like it was stolen from an old soap opera. It’s a moderately enjoyable piece of trash, but there are many other bad barbarian movies that are a lot more fun.
AMERICAN GOTHIC (1988 -- UK/Canada) dir: John Hough; w/ Rod Steiger, Yvonne de Carlo, Michael J. Pollard, Sarah Torgon, Janet Wright. No skin, no gore, not much of anything else, either. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM Some schmucks get stranded on an island with an old loopy couple & their even loopier kids -- the hermits start killing the tourists, but wait ... one of the “victims” is the looniest one of all. With a great cast, a reliable formula, and an interesting twist, how could you go wrong? Well, for one thing, you could make it really, really dull. And then you could make sure there was not a single character that anyone would give a damn about. It’s too bad -- the wacky family all put in great performances, all for a movie with nothing to offer.
AMOK TRAIN (1989 - US/Italy/Yugoslavia - aka Beyond the Door 3; Death Train) dir: Jeff Kwitny; w/ Mary Kohnert, Sarah Conway Ciminera, William Geiger, Bo Svenson. One boob-shot; some gore. It's the same old tale of the nice American girl traveling in the old country and she really doesn't want to get married to Lucifer -- but this time, the devil possesses a choo-choo train to make sure his bride gets to the altar on time. It has good photography and great locations, but the script is just a half-hearted and lazy rehash of the usual spooky bits, and it relies solely on a string of gory but quite random kill scenes. Further diminishing it are some very cheap effects and a cast that clearly thought the movie wasn't worth much effort. The flick is so completely forgettable that it seems it must have been deliberately made that way.
ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO (1961) dir: Brooke S. Peters; w/ Ronnie Burns, Pamela Lincoln, Darrell Howe. No skin; no gore. When his brother is executed for murder, a young man spirals into despair & revenge, sucking his friends & family down with him. This is a stiff & curdled melodrama that tries so hard to be so serious. Given trite material, flat characters, and clichéd, expository dialogue, it has no real chance of succeeding. The only bright spot is that a few of the players are, surprisingly, quite good. On the whole, however, it’s just duller than dirt.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ANCIENT EVIL: SCREAM OF THE MUMMY (2000 - aka Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy 2) dir: David Decoteau; w/ Jeff Peterson, Trent Latta, Ariauna Albright, Russell Richardson. No skin; no gore. A nerd wakes up an Aztec mummy to get revenge on all the popular kids. So a portly mummy shambles randomly while what looks like a gang of rejects from a Grease audition wanders around reciting inane dialogue. This is a uniquely dull and dismal attempt at a movie; it fails on so many levels, one could fill a textbook with negative examples of film craft. What the movie really seems to be all about is people wandering around with flashlights; that accounts for 80% of the footage -- if that's your fetish, you'll be in heaven -- but for the rest of humanity, this is the cinematic equivalent of a kick in the crotch.
ANCIENT WARRIORS (2001 - US/Italy) dir: Walter von Huene; w/ Franco Columbu, Daniel Baldwin, Michelle Hunziker, Richard Lynch. No skin; no gore. A wicked industrialist is digging up the ancient caves of Sardinia in search of a tomb that contains the mystical cure that will save his life and at the same time he’s brewing chemical weapons for a terrorist strike, but then he pisses off the local retired Special Forces guy & his buddies so it’s the bad guys in the caves versus the ex- commandoes -- and at the last second some ghosts show up to scare Richard Lynch. Burp. Well, I’ll give Baldwin and Lynch credit for trying to have fun with their characters, but they’re drowned by a trite and melodramatic script based on an amazingly childish story provided by Columbu himself. And although bodybuilder Columbu has the looks of a rough, tough action star, he’s got the action moves of a tree stump -- and about the same range of facial expressions. This flick has the feel of a bad cartoon show and might pass for entertainment with the same sort of crowd that gets a thrill from the Power Rangers.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM AND GOD SPOKE (1993 - aka The Making of “…And God Spoke”) dir: Arthur Borman; w/ Michael Riley, Stephen Rappaport, (cameos for Soupy Sales, Lou Ferrigno, Eve Plumb). No skin; no gore. This is a documentary about two pretentious filmmakers who embark upon the production of a religious epic and just about everything goes sour. This is actually a “mockumentary” of course; it lampoons the vacuous Hollywood personalities in all phases of filmmaking, making fun of everyone from producers to caterers. It is passably amusing but only on the strength of its cast. Some of the caricatures are way too broad and some of the jokes are too far “in” -- and the script just isn’t as funny as it tries to be. Although I’m assuming that the more familiar you are with filmmaking, the more amusing the flick will be for you.
AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS (1973 - Britain - aka Bride of Fengriffen) dir: Roy Ward Baker; w/ Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Stephanie Beacham, Ian Ogilvy. The teensiest flash o’ skin; teensy bit o’ gore (cut in American version). In 18th century England, a young lady’s life becomes a nightmare when she marries into a house filled with dark secrets, ancestral curses, axe murders, and disembodied hands. She knows she is threatened by some hidden terror, but everyone who tries to reveal the secret to her dies a swift and mysterious death. This is a classy and stylish little spooker, yet with a nice dash of real wickedness. Although it is rather deliberately paced as befits a British film, it wastes no time in throwing the ooky-spooky bits at us. The sets and costumes are great and the cast is solid (even though Cushing and Lom really only have bit parts). It’s not a complete success, but it does a good job mixing the classy with the sordid, and is a nice atmospheric little chiller for those of us who can get into those things.
ANDRÉ THE BUTCHER (2005) dir: Philip Cruz; w/ Ron Jeremy (in what amounts to a cameo as the killer), Maury Sterling, Heather Jay Budner, Justin Capaz, April Billingsley. Tidbit o’ skin; mild gore. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM Take the usual unkillable killer, add some cheerleaders and escaped cons, now act all kooky. All right, this one does show some good talent, it has a few fun scenes, and some of the humor even works. But that’s it for the good stuff. This just tries so damn hard to be so cute, so trendy, and so winking-at-the-audience witty -- yup, it really is irritating as hell. The script & direction were lame enough that it wouldn’t even have been tolerable as a wrapper for the usual T, A, & Gore; however, the “meat” they delivered was entirely inadequate to make any wrapper tolerable. But when the flick took a supernatural turn and tried to send some sort of counter-culture bible message, it went beyond lame and became the sort of movie that can affect your digestion. Okay, there’s some good work here; but as a whole, it’s a wearisome waste of talent. ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA See Blood for Dracula. ANDY WARHOL’S FRANKENSTEIN See Flesh for Frankenstein.
ANGEL FIST (1993 -- Roger Corman, filmed in the Phillipines) prod & dir: Cirio H. Santiago; w/ Cat Sassoon (Karate champ & Playboy model), Melissa Moore, Michael Shaner, Denise Buick, Jessica Roberts. Moderate skin. An L.A. Kung Fu cop goes to the Philippines to investigate her sister’s death at the hands of terrorists. The script is flat & utterly implausible, and the fight scenes are poorly staged and filmed (there’s this full- contact ladies tournament wedged into the middle of the plot, and I swear you wouldn’t need to block some of the kicks those ladies were throwing, just call a cab & get out of the way). However, one of the fight scenes features our heroine topless -- that was a nice touch. Actually, the shower scenes in the locker room are the only thing to commend about this flick. an ANGEL FOR SATAN (1966 - Italy) dir: Mamillo Mastrocinque; w/ Barbara Steele, Anthony Steffen (Antonio De Teffe). No skin; no gore. When an old statue is retrieved from the lake, the villagers fear a legendary curse. Indeed, the demur young countess has become a savagely cruel copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM temptress, seducing and manipulating everyone around her. Lust, jealousy, envy, murder and suicide begin to take their toll on the town’s population. This is a nicely dark little suspense flick with a bit of a nasty edge to it. However, the script tries to get much too convoluted for its own good, and the ending is wrapped up with amazing convenience. But even with these failings, it’s still fun to watch and Steele is just deliciously wicked. Whip me, baby, whip me. ANGEL OF FURY See the Cynthia Rothrock page.
ANGEL OF H.E.A.T. (1982) dir: Myrl A. Schreibman; w/ Marilyn Chambers, Stephen Johnson, Mary Woronov, Milt Kogan. Some skin; no gore. A team of crack international agents must stop an evil genius from conquering the world -- that is, if they can stop having sex with each other long enough to do that. Porn goddess Marilyn Chambers steps down to an R-rating here; unfortunately, the caliber of plot & production values also seems a step down from the average porno flick. What tries to be a spy spoof is rather lacking in both spies and spoofs. Mostly, it’s a coma-inducing drone of padding, pointless scenes, non-events, dopey jokes, and blatant plugs for Lake Tahoe night spots. Apparently, the filmmakers believed that with Marilyn Chambers around, they didn’t need anything else to sell the flick... and there really isn’t anything else here.
ANGELS’ WILD WOMEN (1972 - aka Screaming Angels; Rough Riders) writ, prod & dir: Al Adamson; w/ Ross Hagen, Preston Pierce, Regina Carrol, Jill Woefel, Vicki Volante. A wee tidbit o’ skin; no gore. There’s half a rape scene and them some gals beat up the guys. After that failed attempt to repackage the flick as a “tough broads” film, we get the original footage. While the cycle guys are out partying and fighting, the cycle mamas get mixed up with an evil pot-peddling hippie (modeled vaguely on Charles Manson). And there’s something that smells vaguely like a love story in here, too. This thing was obviously built for the drive-in -- if you’re not necking 60% of the time, it’s just too dull for words. The sparse budget was apparently stretched by not including a script, and the flick was copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM stretched with vast expanses of padding... padding which is difficult to tell from actual plot scenes because they’re equally dull. Flailing about for a little notoriety, they make a point, several times, of showing that this was filmed at the “movie ranch” that the Manson gang made infamous. It really feels like watching a string of random biker set-pieces and then, none too soon, it’s over -- and there’s absolutely nothing in here to make the trip worthwhile.
ANGER (1988 - Hong Kong(?), filmed in Thailand - aka Angels with Golden Guns; Terror in a Woman’s Prison; video title: Virgin Apocalypse) dir: Pasan (Leung Poeh); w/ Eva Bisset, Gigi Bovee, Emma Yeung, Bill Lau, Danny Law. A few flashes of skin; no gore. A nearly indecipherable plot involving a slavery/prostitution ring -- there’s gobs of captive girls who spend most of their time fighting each other; there’s a detective on the case who is completely ineffective (the bad guys whack his pee-pee with a bamboo switch and dump him in a water tower); and, um, then the girls break out and go hunting after the criminals who run the operation. There’s a smidgen of imagination in this thing, but it really needs more nudity or violence to make it worth while. The only thing truly worth my time was the diabolical firecracker torture -- they wrapped a huge string of Chinese firecrackers around this guy’s naked loins and lit the whole string. Now that’s unpleasant. ANGKOR See Forbidden Adventure.
ANGRY RED PLANET (1960) dir: Ib Melchior (co-produced by Sid Pink of Reptilicus fame); w/ Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne, Jack Kruschen. The first rocket to Mars meets giant amoeba. This flick is so heavily padded it could survive a train wreck. For the first 50 minutes, lots of instruments & techno-babble substitute for the special fx (they even describe what they’re seeing out the window for the first ten minutes on Mars). The photographer manages to make Mars look alien by filming everything through a red gel filter (that way they can get away with copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM cheap props & crudely sketched backdrops). Eventually, we’re rewarded with some truly gonzo monsters (including the giant amoeba with the twirling eyeball). But then they tack on another ten minutes of drivel to make sure we’re bored.
ANGST (2003 - Germany/UK - aka Penetration Angst) writ, prod & dir: Wolfgang Büld; w/ Fiona Horsey, Paul Conway, Beth & Amy Steel. Some skin; no gore. “Feed me!” says her hungry, demonic vagina. When any man dares boink this young lady, they get slurped right up inside her and vanish. And let’s not forget the slutty/demur conjoined twin girls and the well-meaning dweeb who makes all the wrong choices in love. Not much in the actual plot department, it rests on its dry but twisted humor and frequent detours for exploitation set-pieces. There is some talent here and I’ll admit the flick does have its moments. But the dirt-cheap sound & video plus the A.D.D script that flops around like one of those TV anthology shows makes this thing much more of a chore than a treat. It would probably go over great at a frat party, though.
ANKLE BITERS (2002) writ & dir: Adam Minarovich; w/ Adam Minarovich, Michael Moore, Timothy Faye. No skin; no gore. The last of the vampires are all midgets so they get a magic sword that turns a big biker into a vampire so they can have their own tall vampire because the nice-guy tall vampire wants to kill them and so does this rich guy who makes a hobby of hunting vampires. But really, it’s all about that nice-guy vampire because -- you guessed it -- it’s all about making the writer/director/star look cool. They seem to have spoofable material here, but it sure looks like they thought they were making a serious picture. However, they wasted so blasted much time trying to look and sound so blasted kewl and squeezing all of their friends into the flick that they prove themselves just too impossibly dorky to make any of it work. A script scribbled on two squares of toilet paper, bad music, bad fake fangs, really, really bad acting, and that flippin’ cameraman was always trying so desperately for stylish angles and swooshy-motions... either that, or he was stoned the whole time. Where they try for funny, they fail painfully, but where they try for cool, they fail copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM hilariously -- so I suppose it’s not a complete waste -- provided you’ve got the patience for all that slow-motion strutting.
ANTHROPOPHAGUS (1981 - Italy - aka The Grim Reaper; Savage Island; Zombie’s Revenge) writ & dir: Joe D’Amato; w/ Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Vanessa Steiger (Serena Grandi), George Eastman. No skin; a bit o’ gore (depending on the cut). Some folks go to a Greek island only to find it mysteriously deserted. It’s because the crazy cannibal killer has already eaten everyone, and these saps just walked into his pantry. D’Amato scores some major stretch marks with this flick, but he also scores some really great shots despite the painfully predictable script. I’m not as impressed by this as some people seem to be, but there is some good work and some terrific set- pieces here. With a more intelligent script and much tighter editing, this could have been a great movie. As it is, it’s still well worth checking out for fans of classic run-and-scream horror flicks.
ANTIBODY (2002) dir: Christian McIntire; w/ Lance Henkriksen, Robin Givens, William Zabka, Gaston Pauls. No skin; no gore. A wacky terrorist has implanted a nano-detonator for a nuclear bomb inside his own body; the only way to save Munich is for the ex-FBI bomb guy with the troubled past to shrink down to nano-size and get on board an experimental nano-ship with a scientist nano-babe and go flying around inside the terrorist’s body, using nano-lasers to blast those nasty white blood cells while racing against nano-time to find the nano-trigger. And this is way different from Fantastic Voyage -- because back then, we didn’t have all these cool nano-words. Uh, huh. All right, on the up side, Lance gives a more relaxed & personable performance than we usually see, but that’s hardly enough to make up for the cast of European bit players mumbling their way through English dialogue some of them probably didn’t even understand. One pleasant surprise is the low-budget CG effects; actually quite good and fun to watch. But the script is not merely dumb as a post, which is expected, but is surprisingly unimaginative and dull. The story just oozes along in a drearily predictable fashion, leaving the idiotic, Star Wars-style battle with the white blood copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM cells as the film’s only real point of entertainment. As long as you don’t mind it being moronic drivel, it’s sort of cute. the ANTICHRIST (1974 - Italy - aka The Tempter) dir: Alberto de Martino; w/ Carla Gravina, Mel Ferrer, Arthur Kennedy, George Coulouris. A tidbit o’ skin; no gore. A crippled rich lady starts to lose her faith and begins channeling the spirit of her heretic ancestor -- after that, it turns into a rip-off of Exorcist topped with a heaping helping of Italian sleaze. It’s a cheap but enthusiastic production that mixes in incest, drooling lunatics, a portrait of Jesus with an erection, black mass/orgies, more incest, and a little ballistic vomit. The script & direction are, however, scattered and unfocused, as if no one could decide exactly what sort of movie they wanted to make. It’s not even remotely scary, but it’s more than silly enough to be amusing. Carla Gravina helps out by chewing the scenery with no shame at all, and being one of the few actresses who could mime French-kissing a goat’s behind with such unnatural enthusiasm.
A*P*E (1976 - US/S. Korea - originally in 3D - aka APE: Attacking Primate Monster; Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla; Hideous Mutant; The New King Kong; Super Kong) dir: Paul Leder; w/ Rod Arrants, Joanna de Varona (aka Joanna Kerns), Alex Nicol, Lee Nak Hoon. No skin, no gore, no shame. A giant gorilla terrorizes Korea! (According to the 10- second backstory we get, they caught him in Harlem and he escaped when they tried to transport him to Disneyland. Imagine that.) Watch as the combined U.S. and South Korean armies fail to find a 36 foot tall monkey. Watch as the monkey goes ga-ga for an American starlet. Woof. Words are inadequate to describe just how pathetic this movie really is. There’s a moronic script, bad acting, and scenes so shoddily executed Ed Wood would’ve left them on the cutting room floor. They seem to be trying for a little belated humor since many elements are a vague parody on the ‘76 Kong remake and its producer. But they honestly come off more like they’re trying for a serious remake than a spoof. Which, of course, is pretty funny in itself. The movie’s real saving grace is it’s very ineptness. Here you’ll see many of the most hilarious attempts at special effects ever put on film. And it’s not just copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM limited to the plastic model miniatures -- even the sound effects are awful. This thing isn’t a six-packer, it’s a double-kegger. the APE (1940) dir: William Nigh; w/ Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon, Gene O’Donnell, Dorothy Vaughan. An interesting tale of a misunderstood small town doctor obsessed with finding a cure for paralysis. In his desperation, he uses the escape of a circus gorilla as a cover for his hunt for unwilling spinal fluid donors. It is nicely filmed and very well played, and although you can see the ending coming from about five minutes into the film, it still makes a pleasant little suspense melodrama.
APE CANYON (2002) photo & dir: Jon Olsen; w/ Chris Henry, Clover Lutter, Anna McGriff, Mellisa Hannum. No skin; no gore; no shame. In the woods of the northwest lives the Sasquatch -- he spends his time beating up male campers and raping female campers -- and when he can’t find either of those, he masturbates endlessly. And it turns out that a woman’s true satisfaction and joy lies in being banged up against a tree by a big, smelly furball (it’s good that all us guys finally know that). One young lady in particular is so smitten that she spends her spare time wandering the wilderness calling for her musky rapist to return to her. Really, there’s about ten minutes of real plot here -- the other 74 minutes is just pointless nonsense. It is, however, quite funny pointless nonsense, provided you don’t mind the fart-joke level of humor -- I can’t even call it low-”brow” comedy, since it never gets above the crotch (and a messy crotch, at that). And although there’s plenty of forceful sex, it all occurs magically through full clothing (so Bigfoot apparently has a denim-piercing penis). The budget for this little production didn’t extend much beyond a trip to the costume store for the ape suit, but there’s more than enough talent on hand to carry the flick. The photography & music are good, and the cast is outstanding. It’s the sort of guilty-pleasure flick you’ll enjoy immensely -- and then refuse to admit that to anyone.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the APE MAN (1943 - aka Lock Your Doors) dir: William Beaudine; w/ Bela Lugosi, Louise Currie, Wallace Ford. An over-eager scientist experiments on himself and winds up half ape. He’s so bummed about it that he goes around with his murderous gorilla friend snatching spinal fluid from people. Meanwhile, the wisecracking reporter and the tough-but-feminine photographer are on the trail of the mystery. Yup, if you’ve seen 1940’s “horror” flicks, you’ve seen this one many times; it’s the usual recipe of comic banter and lightweight suspense. A great portrayal from Bela actually gives this a hint of class, but it’s hastily scripted, badly photographed, and ends with the dopiest gag I’ve ever seen on film. Aside from a few slow bits, however, it’s a decent enough little potboiler, and seeing a fuzzy Bela has got to be worth something.
AQUANOIDS (2003) photo & dir: Ray Peschke; w/ Laura Nativo, Rhoda Jordan, Edwin Craig, Ike Gingrich. A tidbit o’ skin; a smidge o’ gore. She knows they’re out there -- they ate her mom & pop -- she tries to warn people that they are returning -- thank goodness nobody listens to her. It’s cheap SOV filmmaking and what might have been just another trite recreation of the Critter Flick boilerplate (not to mention shamelessly ripping off Humanoids from the Deep). However, these folk showed a little talent & originality and jolted it with a good dose of black humor with nasty characters and a good cast to play them. It’s not a great flick, but it’s refreshingly subversive and it had me laughing.
ARACHNIA (2003) sfx, writ & dir: Brett Piper; w/ Rob Monkiewicz, Irene Joseph, David Bunce, Bevin McGraw. A tidbit o’ skin; mildest gore. The crash of a big meteor downs a light plane carrying a paleontologist and his students; in short order, they’re trapped in an old farmhouse and besieged by giant spiders from before time. The cast is adequate at best, the script is a featherweight piece of tripe crafted by pasting together bits from every other bug movie you can think of, and the special copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM effects are shabby and dirt cheap. Whether by accident or design (probably both), it’s dumb enough to be mildly amusing, but mostly it’s just tiresome.
ARACHNID (2001 - US/Spain) dir: Jack Sholder; w/ Chris Potter, Alex Reid, José Sancho, Neus Asensi. No skin; mild gore. When a stealth fighter sort of bumps into a UFO, a nasty alien spider is turned loose on a remote jungle island. Fortunately, a bunch of schmucks crash their plane on the island and... well, you know the rest. The characters are the usual assortment of squabbling cardboard cutouts who can be relied upon to make moronic decisions whenever something exciting needs to happen. The critter sfx, on the other hand, are outstanding. It’s too bad they’re wasted on a script that’s no more than a typical monster movie boilerplate. You should be able to predict the actions and fates of each cast member with pinpoint accuracy. And the director’s attempts to add (oooh!) dramatic (oooh!) moments lends just a touch of the absurd. Sadly, even the monster is devoid of personality, leaving nothing in the movie to root for -- except perhaps for the absence of a sequel. Durn -- I was so looking forward to a good giant spider movie...
ARAGAMI: RAGING GOD OF BATTLE (2003 - Japan) dir: Ryuhei Kitamura; w/ Takao Osawa, Masaya Kato. No skin; no gore. A wounded samurai is nursed back to health by a friendly fellow who turns out to be an immortal killer who is looking for an opponent strong enough to finally kill him -- but to win this fight, the samurai must himself become something more than human. Kitamura revisits some of the themes from Versus, but builds a more philosophic film with some good old- fashioned chanbara action. Although tongue is still in cheek here and there's some silly humor as well. Filmed as part of a challenge project where he was given one week, one location, and two actors to build a movie on, this is likely Kitamura's best since Versus.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ARENA (1988) (1988) dir: Peter Manoogian; w/ Paul Satterfield, Claudia Christian, Hamilton Camp, Marc Alaimo, Armin Shimerman, Shari Shattuck. No skin (almost); no gore. In the far future, one wholesome farm boy gets dragged into the seedy world of galactic pit fighting and tries to become the first human contender in 50 years -- but his toughest fight is against the slinky seductress and the crooked promoter. Um, yah, it’s the same script they’ve used for fight movies since the 1930’s. Except in space -- and duller. The plot is sluggish, the cast (with the exception of Alaimo) could have easily been replaced by cardboard standees, and there’s a whole lot of Halloween-mask aliens running around. It’s all so flat & unremarkable that it’s difficult to tell when they’re being serious and when they’re trying for camp humor. It’s a moot point, really, since they don’t actually succeed at any of it. Oh, it’s cute enough to be mildly entertaining, I suppose, but you have to be willing to waste 90 minutes of your life. the ARENA (2001) (2001 - US/Russia) dir: Timour Bekmambetov; w/ Karen McDougal, Lisa Dergan, Jennifer Murphy, Georgina Stoll. A little skin; mild gore. The bitter & loopy governor of a remote Roman province tries to civilize the local barbarians by putting on gladiator shows in a two-bit coliseum. But when the guys eventually prove a disappointment, he decides to put the brothel women into the ring. This decision not only seals his doom, but the rebellion of two bodacious gladi-babes proves to be the key event which triggers the ultimate downfall of the entire Roman Empire. I’m so freakin’ glad these movies are educational, too. But wait, what I’ve just described is not a trashy, clumsy exploitation flick; this movie actually had a lot of talent going for it -- and very little sanity, unfortunately. Somehow they decided this was good material for a dead serious attempt at a moving, romantic drama about some slave broad’s struggle for dignity in a cruel and oppressive society.
L’ ARMATA BRANCALEONE (1966 - Italy) dir: Mario Monicelli; w/ Vittorio Gassman, Catherine Spaak, (Barbara Steele cameo). No skin (almost); no gore. A two-bit, down-on-his-luck knight with a big ego and a disobedient horse teams up with some lame-brained peasants and they stumble their way through a goofy Italian version of the Middle Ages. Armed with the stolen deed to a castle, our hero, Branca Leone, uses a combination of luck and idiocy to achieve a string of triumphs -- none of which turn out at all like he had planned. The humor ranges from subtle to slapstick, the cast is good, and so is the photography. Not as farcical as Monty Python & the Holy Grail, it’s more like The Court Jester, and it actually works rather well. Still, it wouldn’t be particularly memorable were it not for Barbara Steele’s half-dressed SM whipping scene.
ARMY OF DARKNESS (Evil Dead 3) (1992) dir: Sam Raimi; w/ Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Grove. No skin, mild gore. It’s understandable why they didn’t just call this Evil Dead 3 -- they toss the horror movie idea to the winds and instead give us a comedy that’s like a crash between a bad roleplaying game and a good video game. It’s a hilarious demon-stomping romp with non-stop action & undead slapstick. Raimi’s directing shows marked improvement over Evil Dead 1, and the production values are superb. It sounds strange to say this, but this really is fun for the whole family.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE (1960 - Italy) dir: Anthony Dawson (aka Antonio Margheriti); w/ Rik Von Nutter, Gaby Farinon, David Montresor, Archie Savage. An unwelcome reporter butts heads with the butt- headed commander of a deep space station -- but they must team up to save the Earth from a runaway spaceship that is really hot. Um, yeah, some crap like that... I think. I have to tell you, the dialogue here was so moronic, I think it actually made me dizzy. And the acting was so stiff, it looked like the entire cast had overdosed on Kaopectate. Okay, it gets a bonus point for including a black crewman in a heroic role; but the effects, sets, and emotions on display are all absolutely minimal. I think this is as close as live action can come to imitating stick-figure animation. Woo. the ASTOUNDING SHE-MONSTER (1957 - aka Mysterious Invader) prod & dir: Ronnie Ashcroft; w/ Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey. Some nasty gangsters and their kidnapped cutie hide out at the mountain ranch of a heroic geologist. They are all terrorized by a glowing blurry babe from beyond the stars! Her touch is deadly! See the gangster die when She-Monster grabs his ass! The flick starts promising -- with some of the most flowery and pompous narration this side of R.O.T.O.R. Alas, a few minutes in, the narrator fails us and we’re left to figure out the rest of the movie ourselves. To call the script sparse would be overly generous -- they only manage to reach 62 minutes of film with a great deal of padding. And much of the script just consists of: “fleeing from the monster, they arrive back at the cabin.” Repeat that four times and you’ve got the last half of the movie. It’s no surprise that the director was a friend of Ed Wood’s -- and the flick succeeds wonderfully on the same level. There’s rancid characters, a truck-load of flubs to spot, and a lady with extraterrestrial curves in a body suit two sizes too small -- what more could you want?
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1967) writ, prod & dir: Ted V. Mikels; w/ Wendell Corey, John Carradine, Tom Pace, Joan Patrick, Tura Satana. A vague bit o’ skin (in a night club act); near-subliminal gore. They play this thing with the seriousness of Ben Hur, but all they got was schlock, so there’s a voice-over at the beginning of the flick that informs the audience that this is a spoof -- no, really, we meant it to be a joke all along. Anyhow, mad scientist Carradine gets kicked out of the government labs but still continues his experiments in making better astronauts through brain implants and organ replacements. Of course, his first subject is wandering the countryside slaughtering people. The bright young CIA agents try to stop the operation. Meanwhile, Tura Satana is an evil spy who wants to steal the secret of perfect zombie soldiers! And in between, we get a lot of expository scenes where Carradine spouts endless technoid drivel in an effort to teach his mute hunchback assistant his secrets. The hunchback is eager to learn, because off in a corner he has a girl in a bikini strapped to a table -- he apparently hopes to make a more, um, useful zombie. The opening scenes were so straight & dull, I feared that the whole thing was going to be dreary. But then there’s Satana lounging around, showing off her assets and talking tough, and then there’s Carradine constantly dribbling a stream of technobabble that would embarrass Geordie LaForge. It turned out to be kind of cute after all.
ASYLUM (1972 - UK - aka House of Crazies) dir: Roy Ward Baker; w/ Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom, Charlotte Rampling. No skin; very mild gore. The arrival of a new doctor at an asylum for the incurably insane provides a wrapper for an anthology of four superb and delightfully unsophisticated spooky tales. There’s axe murders, crawling body parts, mysterious strangers, and split personalities galore. It gets a bit too gimmicky for its own good in spots, but it has a terrific ensemble cast and a script by Robert Bloch. If you have fond memories of Creepy and Eerie magazines, you’ll adore this flick. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS See the Sword & Sandal pages.
ATOM AGE VAMPIRE (1961 - Italian) dir: Anton Giulio Majano; w/ Alberto Lupo, Susanne Loret, Sergio Fantoni, Franca Parisi. A loony melodramatic doctor and his loony melodramatic assistant use loony melodramatic methods to restore the disfigured face of a loony melodramatic girl. And that’s just the start of this unashamedly overblown example of Italian trash cinema. Their experiments aren’t entirely a success -- but the doctor loses his heart to the girl and decides to kill some other women to get what he needs to make her beautiful again. So, of course, he uses a serum to turn himself into a monster(!?). The second half of the flick turns into a sleepy little detective story but at the end it returns to good looniness. Schlocky fun with Italian loons. ATOMIC BRAIN See Monstrosity. ATOMIC MONSTER This was the 1953 re-issue title for Man-Made Monster.
ATOMIC RULERS OF THE WORLD (1963 - Japan) dir: Teruo Ishii, Akira Mitsuwa, Koreyoshi, Akasaka; w/ Ken Utsui, Sachihiro Osawa. Starman, the super-powered savior from space (wearing really clingy tights) must save Japan from evil round-eyes who are too fond of atom bombs. Even for something compiled from episodes of a goofy kids' show, the plot on this thing just spins in a tizzy whilst Starman accomplishes not much of anything. Still, it's never dull, and if you feel the need, it's awfully easy to make fun of (especially those tights... oog). the ATOMIC SUBMARINE (1959) dir: Spencer G. Bennet; w/Arthur Franz, Dick Foran, Brett Halsey, Tom Conway. In the “late 20th century”, the sea under the arctic ice is an important route copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM for atom-powered submarines carrying cargo & passengers. But when subs start mysteriously vanishing, the Navy’s most advanced killer sub, the Tiger Shark, is dispatched, only to find itself in a desperate battle with an undersea flying saucer (swimming saucer?) and its cyclopean pilot. It’s the typical sort of script -- it strolls along with some help from narration and predictable soap opera subplots. The flick does show a little imagination -- there’s some grisly bits (that actually seem out of place), and the notion of organic technology that was ahead of its time. It’s moderately entertaining, plus the cast’s unremitting seriousness gives it some heckling value. This is also an interesting chance to see a budget shrink before your very eyes. They spent some cash on the submarine sets. It still looks more like the interior of an office building than a sub, but it’s not bad -- lots of dials & gizmos & stuff. They didn’t have much money left over for the interior of the mini-submersible -- the poor pilot has to make do with two switches and a plastic spinny-disk tacked to the wall. They were entirely out of cash by the time they got to the inside of the flying saucer. The spaceship interior is just a big, dark empty space with a ramp sloping through it.
ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1983 - Italy) writ & dir: David Hills (aka Joe D’Amato); w/ Miles O’Keeffe, Sabrina Siani, Ritza Brown, Dakkar, Laura Gemser. No skin; no gore. Our hero is a man of big pectorals and small words -- he is a messianic warrior destined to free the oppressed peoples (all five of them) from the tyranny of the Spider King (and his vast army of about 11 guys in bad costumes). The script is completely vacuous and cliché-ridden; it’s little more than an excuse to trot out the usual barbarian-warrior set pieces. The whole film looks as if they put as little effort into it as possible. However, there is quite a bit of entertainment to be had in the bad dialogue, cheap props, and some of the most poorly choreographed fight scenes ever recorded. And it all climaxes with our hero battling a giant spider -- actually, we just see Miles waving his sword at the spider’s legs (which are just fur-covered cardboard tubes being waved about by an off-camera stagehand). Looking at it now, it’s quite funny -- but that wasn’t my reaction the first time I saw it. In the wake of the first Conan movie, distributors were snapping up anything with biceps & broadswords. So I innocently walked into a theater and got to see this on the big screen. It took a week for my sphincters to un-cramp.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ATTACK (1956) (1956) prod & dir: Robert Aldrich; w/ Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, Buddy Ebsen. France, 1944 -- a cowardly, ticket-punching captain is kept in command by a politicking colonel... when too many young men die because of it, a stressed-out lieutenant sets out to murder his own CO. Although the budget isn’t quite up to making the battle scenes convincing, it is remarkable subject matter for the 1950’s and the cast is dynamite. However, the script is thick & crunchy melodrama that has people stopping in the middle of combat to deliver florid monologues that Shakespeare couldn’t have stomached on his worst day. The performances are great, but the grossly unrealistic dialogue robs the plot of the impact it was meant to have.
ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) prod & dir: Roger Corman; w/ Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, Russell Johnson, Leslie Bradley. A group of scientists on an isolated Pacific atoll encounter “happenings way out beyond the laws of nature” (according to the film’s introduction). They actually encounter giant crabs and typhoon footage from some old Japanese flick. Things take a really weird turn when the crabs not only eat people, but absorb their intelligence as well. The characters behave randomly and the plot goes in circles for a while until it slams into an abrupt ending. Kinda fun, if you’re in the mood for a stupid monster movie.
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958) dir: Nathan Hertz; w/ Allison Hayes, William Hudson, Yvette Vickers. A giant space alien inflates Allison Hayes! If you haven’t seen this one yet, get with the program. Although it’s not nearly as much fun to watch as many other awful movies, it is an icon of badness. For a movie with such an outlandish premise, it’s actually rather dull. And with a premise that screams for it to be an effects movie, the fx are amazingly dreadful. Watch as William Hudson tries to convince the audience that he is being grabbed by a flimsy giant hand that looks like it was made with old inner tubes and poster paints. The only possible payoff in this flick is seeing the giant Hayes in a bedsheet bikini rip the roof off of buildings. Truly a classic moment in bad cinema. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959 - aka Attack of the Blood Leeches; Demons of the Swamp) dir: Bernard L. Kowalski; w/ Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard, Michael Emmet. Yup, giant leeches infest a remote swamp and proceed to slurp on hillbillies, while the hunky (and utterly wooden) game warden shows off his muscles and looks concerned. Well, we don’t want to show the monsters too much (‘cause they look a lot like guys in plastic trash bags), so first we’ll spend time on a cheap soap opera about some fat hick married to a cheating floozy (played wonderfully by Yvette Vickers), then we’ll show lots of shots of various people searching for the monsters -- searching and searching and searching and searching. Then we’ll have an explosion & run the end credits. Okay, okay, there is one cute scene where the critters keep their victims alive in the pantry -- er, underwater cave. The photography is dark, but passable, the monsters are quite stupid looking, and the cast somehow manages to play this whole thing with dead seriousness. Durn silly movie -- which makes it okay in my book.
ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (1963 - Japan - aka Matango; Fungus of Terror) dir: Ishiro Honda; w/ Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Horoshi Koizumi, Yoshio Tsuchiya. Some silly, rich Japanese people get stranded on an island. And then they’re stranded some more. And then they keep on being stranded. Oh my... they’re still stranded. Finally, they get around to eating the forbidden mushrooms and they start turning into walking fungus-heads! This flick spends the longest time taking itself very seriously. They weave a credible, albeit slow, drama of disintegrating personalities during a crisis -- and then they run & scream from the foam-rubber mushroom-guys. That part’s quite cute and is a fair reward for sitting through the rest of the flick.
ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958 - aka The Fantastic Puppet People; Six Inches Tall) prod, fx, & dir: Bert I. Gordon; w/ John Agar, John Hoyt, June Kenney. A quaintly cheesy tale of a daffy old doll-maker who just can’t stand to see the people he likes go away -- so he copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM shrinks ‘em into itty-bitty dolls and keeps ‘em drugged in glass cylinders until he wants to let ‘em out for a little tea party! Apparently, the script never quite got past the outline stage and if the ending seems a tad abrupt, that’s because it, along with the title & Lord knows what else, was changed at the last minute. And Bert even sneaks in an extended plug for The Amazing Colossal Man (this flick was originally double-billed with War of the Colossal Beast). The only thing not completely mediocre here is John Hoyt’s fun performance as the demented doll- maker -- he truly rescues the flick.
ATTACK OF THE SABRETOOTH (2005 - originally for TV) dir: George Miller (not that Australian one); w/ Robert Carradine, Brian Wimmer, Stacy Haiduk, Nicholas Bell. No skin; some gore. Genetic experiments and a tourist resort don’t mix... er, well, if you’re the 700-pound carnivore, I suppose they would seem to mix rather well. Anyhow, an attempt at a Jurassic Park style amusement resort goes exactly the way you would expect it to. Which is part of the problem; the highly derivative script escapes complete predictability only by virtue of the atrocious editing. Add to that a gang of characters so stunningly moronic that if they hadn’t been eaten, they would probably just have forgotten to breathe at some point. And while there is a tidbit of decent CG work on the cats, most of the fx are junk and some are glaringly awful. The cast is the only thing here that is above par, but I’m afraid they aren’t quite good enough to even crawl out from under a mess like this, let alone save it. It’s a painful embarrassment to toothy critters everywhere.
ATTACK ON THE IRON COAST (1968) dir: Paul Wendkos; w/ Lloyd Bridges, Andrew Keir, Sue Lloyd, Mark Eden. A failure-haunted Canadian commando officer puts together a desperate mission to destroy a key Nazi naval yard. But the Royal Navy doesn’t like him -- aaww… Well, we’re promised a war movie, but instead we get to watch Lloyd Bridges grimace through a “moving character drama” that oozes like an angst-filled pimple. I was thinking to myself, “There’s going to be a training death just about now so he can get all grimacey again --” and two seconds later, bingo. When we finally get to the big battle, it’s low-budget but nicely directed. Nonetheless, it is insufficient reward for sitting through the rest of this sludge. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM And the Germans really deserved to lose this one. What was described as “the Nazi’s most vital naval base on the French coast” is defended by two 88’s and some machine guns. They couldn’t even sink a tugboat (in the miniature shots, it’s a minesweeper, but the actors were on a tug). the ATTENDANT (2004) dir: Corbin Timbrook; w/ Robert Ambrose, Bogdan Banu, Onika Fiori, Dayton Knoll. A smidgen o’ boobie; mild gore. Six nice young people go camping in the deep woods. (Jeepers, why do they keep doing that?) They meet a creepy gas station attendant and then spend the next hour having lots & lots of buddy-chatter. Finally some unexplained ghostly-stuff makes them kill themselves rather abruptly. Okay, the undetectable budget and the hand-held SOV photography don’t actually mar this flick -- the cast is quite decent and the script tries for a little originality. But when you come right down to it, the flick is entirely about a bunch of young kids bantering and having a nice time. Absolutely nothing happens until the last five minutes, and then all we get is some undramatic death scenes. And after the credits, the filmmakers try to appear cool by tacking on some fake outtakes. Whoever thought that all this would actually amount to entertainment deserves to be soundly beaten with their own camcorder. the ATTIC EXPEDITIONS (2001) dir: Jeremy Kasten; w/ Andras Jones, Seth Green, Wendy Robie, Jeffrey Combs, (Alice Cooper cameo). Tidbit o’ skin; some blood. Without memories, a young man awakes in an asylum for the criminally insane, committed there apparently for the murder of his girlfriend. But as the loopy doctor inflicts torturous mind-games on him, he slowly begins piecing together his dreams and realities and a dark occult undercurrent is revealed. Alas, that’s not the premise, it’s pretty much the entire plot. The script proves very fond of convolutions but unwilling to come to any conclusions. Still, I must admit that it’s a fun ride, it just doesn’t take you anywhere. Keeping in mind that it doesn’t bear interpretation or analysis, it’s an interesting little flick -- except for that sinking feeling that all that vagueness was intended to lead into a sequel. copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM the AUDITION (1999 - Japan) dir: Takashi Miike; w/ Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki, Jun Kunimura. No skin; some gore. A lonely widower decides to hunt for a new bride by posing as a producer at a film audition. The young lady that captures his fascination has a mysterious past and very peculiar ideas about loyalty. The first half of this flick proceeds as a very slow suspense tale, but then it slowly turns poisonous and then the drug- induced hallucinations hit the fan and we’re up to our necks in sadism, child abuse, and dismemberment. The last half hour of the flick mutates into pureblood shock theater with an effective and unpleasant torture scene. The sedate pacing leading up to the squirmy climax is typical of similar Asian films, but the addition of hallucinations that border on alternate versions of the film means that the audience is treated almost as brutally as the characters. I can’t say I actually liked the flick, but it was fascinating and one of very few films that left me with a genuinely icky feeling.
AUTUMN BORN (1979 - Canada) prod, photo & dir: Lloyd A. Simandl; w/ Dorothy Stratten, Ihor Procak, Dory Jackson. Just a few flashes of Dorothy’s tender bits. Simandl’s first movie (and it doesn’t bode well) and Stratten’s second film appearance -- Dorothy plays a spoiled rich brat who is about to turn 18 and take over her dead parents’ business empire. To prevent that, the slimy uncle has her abducted and carried off to a slave training camp where she is subjected to all manner of sleazy degradation and psychological torture. Here we can see young Ms Stratten embarrass herself by getting whipped and then obsessing over a toy mouse. Yes, this thing has all the gutter-trash material to make it a fun ball of sleaze, but Simandl simply didn’t have the ability to capitalize on it. The lousy acting, dreary script, dull photography, and lack of nudity contribute a heavy dose of boredom which slaps a wet blanket on the whole thing. No taste & no talent -- quite skippable unless your life isn’t complete without seeing Dorothy Stratten getting whipped in her lace undies.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM AVALON (2001 - Japan/Poland - aka Gate to Avalon) dir: Mamoru Oshii; w/ Malgorzata Foremniak, Jerzy Gudejko, Darius Biskupski. No skin; no gore. In the bleak future, the new illegal drug is an addictive cyberspace wargame -- this lady’s the top player and she’s determined to find her way to the secret level, even though it will probably leave her a vegetable -- which is just about the effect this flick has on its audience. The photography & fx are pretty, but the script is a numbing drone of mindless mysteries that only pretends to have substance. The cinematography is all done in sepia tone with glow filters, there’s a lot of repeated footage and opera music (nice, but sleepy opera music), and then we have a director who thinks his audience wants great long scenes of people doing not a damn thing -- getting through this flick is like sitting through a two hour lullaby. Someone needs to grab the director by the hair and whack him with a stick until he realizes that people do not want to see how long he can stretch out a streetcar-riding scene.
AXE (1977 - aka Lisa, Lisa; Virgin Slaughter, California Axe Murders) writ & dir: Frederick R. Friedel; w/ Jack Canon, Ray Green, Frederick R. Friedel, Leslie Lee. No skin; no gore. The mean, murdering mobsters hide out at a remote farmhouse where they find a sweet young lady to take hostage. Sadly, the sweet young lady is a loopy nutcookie with a surprising talent for dismembering people. Oh, my -- when the opening credits are slowed to a crawl in order to pad the running time, you know you’re in trouble. Really, the idea isn’t half bad, the cast is decent and the photography is rather good. But the idea remains undeveloped throughout and everything is blurred by the incredible stretch required to pull ten minutes of script into a 65 minute feature. It may have its moments, but by the time it hits them, you’ll be too numb to notice.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards Bad Cinema Diary TM The Bad Cinema DiaryTM - 6th edition July 2009 This file is part of the Bad Cinema DiaryTM eBook; it is copyright ©2009 by Bruce V. Edwards, all rights reserved. The Bad Cinema Diary is copyrighted but provided free of charge. These files are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License; see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ For the latest editions and access to all the files, visit the Bad Cinema Diary at http://www.cathuria.com/bcd Icon Glossary:
Good Stinker -- These are the films where a good deal of the entertainment comes from filmmaking incompetence; fun to watch in spite of themselves.
Gooey Gore -- These films exhibit distinctly above-normal quantities of unpleasantly abused body parts.
Naughty Nudie -- Films with this flag feature frequent and/or explicit nudity (almost always female) beyond that normally found in your average T&A flick.
Butt Stompin’ -- These films feature at least one superior violent fight or shootout scene that will get the testosterone pumping.
Gold Star -- These are the flicks that I felt reached above their expectations or at least pleasantly surprised me; they may not always be actually good flicks, but I did find something in them worthwhile.
Blue Max Medal of Really Goodness -- These are flicks that I not only enjoyed, but I think are actually quite good films (not always the same thing).
Lethal Cinema -- These wretched viewing experiences go beyond being merely bad to become genuine sources of pain and regret; they should be avoided by all but the most masochistic trash cinema veterans. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
copyright©2009 Bruce V. Edwards