Barry Mahon was a prolific filmmaker, oddly vacillating his directing chores between cheap sex movies like Fanny Hill Meets The Red Baron and Run Swinger Run! and cheap kiddie flicks like Jack And The Beanstalk (also on this DVD from Something Weird), and Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny. This two pronged approach Barry took to his career puts us in the unfortunate position of not knowing exactly what his movie The Girl With The Magic Box is about. With The Wonderful Land of Oz though, Barry is clearly aiming at the cut-rate kiddie matinee market, but manages only to hit his poor son Channy Mahon. Continue reading “The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969)”
Category: Fantasy
Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982)
If you recall the magical doodads Indiana Jones was after in his various adventures, they all had some kind of superpower that was supposed to awe us. The Lost Ark melted dudes who stared at it, the Holy Grail was like a fountain of youth and really kick ass dose of Neosporin and nobody remembers anything about the Temple of Doom or that crystal skull.
For my money though, the most fearsome of these jungle Maltese Falcons infused with voodoo magic juice isn’t one those top of the line cinema treasures, but one of its economy-class import imitators, the Golden Cobra! And you know why? Because anyone with a home theater can identify with what happens to our heroes in this film! Continue reading “Hunters of the Golden Cobra (1982)”
Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988)
Why pay a couple of mercenaries $125,000 up front to get a magic tablet when you just send your own man along to betray them and steal the tablet? Especially when you’ve already gone to the trouble of having one of them break the other out of prison? And even more especially since the only unique skill set either of the mercs bring to the job is an ability to shoot stuff which is only exceeded by their talent for swearing?
Couldn’t all the hired thugs you have on staff at your compound have done that? And without the nasty habit of hunting you down for revenge after the double cross? (Please tell me it wasn’t to avoid paying the remaining $125,000 you were to remit upon delivery of the tablet.) Continue reading “Raiders of the Magic Ivory (1988)”
Mysterious Island (1961)
It was a simpler, more action packed time. A time when giant crabs walked the earth. And so did really big birds. And huge bees, pirates, the Civil War, Captain Nemo and even packs of wild goats!
It all begins on a dark and stormy night (This movie has everything!) when three Union POWs are planning their elaborate scheme to bust out of the joint. Captain Cyrus Harding, Herbert Brown, and Corporal Neb Nugent have tricked up the staircase that leads down to their cell and once the guards come down with a new prisoner they make a break for it.
Once free, they escape in a giant hot air balloon the Confederates were using to observe enemy troop movements. They also lift off with a rebel soldier who knows how to fly it. You can tell he’s from the South because he talks like he has much more than a pinch between his cheek and gum. Continue reading “Mysterious Island (1961)”
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Gulliver is a simple doctor who just wants to help people (and make a lot money, too!), but all his patients pay him in chickens and cabbages. Obviously, he wouldn’t be complaining so much if they were paying him in sexual favors or stock tips or something, but you know what cabbage does to the innards, so this isn’t exactly a job that is going to keep the missus happy.
In fact, his woman, Elizabeth, wants to buy a broken down cottage in the bad part of town, but once Gulliver is there, he manages to bust up the door and she falls down on her face. Gulliver determines that there is no way he’s going to have his old lady live in a rat trap like that, so he does what any self respecting male with a ball and chain would do in that situation. He signs up for a sea voyage of fun and frivolity to the East Indies! Continue reading “The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)”
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Giant birds, crabby cyclops, dragons, skeleton warriors, and a snake woman? Just another day at the office for Sinbad the Sailor. Throw in an evil sorcerer, a mutinous crew, and having to not only rescue his fiancee, but also find some way to un-shrink her and you can understand why this particular Sinbad set about his seventh voyage with very little humor and cheer.
Director Nathan Juran knew that when people were going to a movie about Sinbad and his legendary seventh voyage that they were expecting plenty of scenes of guys chucking spears at stop motion clay figures of various mythological creatures. There was plenty of time for Sinbad to talk and philosophize about the meaning of what it is to be a carefree sailor on his previous six voyages. Actually, I think the movie really picked up at the end of his sixth voyage because we first meet Sinbad and crew while they’re floating around in some ocean or other in search of land. Continue reading “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)”
Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)
Though Senator Robert Fraser tells Captain Nemo that he can’t possibly stay in his underwater city of Templemere because of pressing government business topside involving European arms sales, it’s safe to say that after the tedious tours of his undersea kingdom that see Nemo harassing his pet octopus, preaching his unrealistic isolationist philosophy, and showing the models of his future projects that Fraser was more likely just simply bored out of his mind by this salt water addled old fogey!
Fraser meets Nemo after Nemo’s men rescue him from a sinking ship along with a few other passengers. Fraser and company are taken to Nemo’s secret underwater city where Nemo advises that they will spend the rest of their lives there because he can’t risk one of them tattling on him to the surface dwellers about Templemere. Continue reading “Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)”