Even Old Man River himself could be forgiven for wandering off into another room while one of the innumerable ballads that stops the film dead in its tracks gets crooned by one of the movie’s three main characters. Other than Old Man River’s theme song, the tunes featured here are a collection of dirge-like ditties about love that barley even rhyme, let alone ever approach being hummable. To their credit, the songs never manage to be catchy enough to get painfully stuck in your head, but that doesn’t really make the film go any faster. Continue reading “Show Boat (1951)”
Rascal (1969)
Time was, this country was one great big expansive opportunity to do whatever a person wanted to. There weren’t any rules and quotas set up by feminists, liberals, and activist judges because Big Government knew what was best for you. You needed to drive all over the upper Midwest during the summer to sell real estate and leave your kid at home by himself? Knock yourself out, bub! Just make sure you bring a big ass turkey home for Thanksgiving! Continue reading “Rascal (1969)”
Frogs (1972)
I’ve always considered Ray Milland’s less glamorous work in movies like Panic In Year Zero, X – The Man With The X-Ray Eyes, and Frogs much more important than roles like the Oscar-winning turn he did as a boozehound in The Lost Weekend. So many of our most beloved actors (and even more so, our hottest actresses) fade into obscurity and therefore into taxpayer-funded nursing homes once they hit their late thirties and start looking all wrinkly.
Ray though didn’t give a crap if a part simply required him to sit in a wheelchair, casting irritated glances at large quantities of fat frogs as in this film or even more amazingly, appear with Don Rickles when Ray had his x-ray eyes. If he was breathing, he was working. (Check his filmography – the credits run from 1929-1985. He died in 1986.) Continue reading “Frogs (1972)”
Food of the Gods II (1989)
Oh Dean White! Because of your hubris, the Synchronized Swimming Championship was ruined by giant man-eating rats! It goes without saying that I immediately filled out my college application to attend the Dean’s Hamelin University. (The name of the school was never mentioned, but the championship was being held at the eye-rollingly named Hamelin Olympic Athletic Facility.)
And if you’re wondering, “do I have sit through a lot talking and scientific mumbo jumbo before I get to the spectacular synchronized swimming climax,” Food of the Gods II knows that their audience is by definition people who loved seeing Marjoe Gortner blasting big ass rats in the original Food of the Gods and so delivers a steady stream of people getting chewed up in gory fashion by big ass rats. They even throw in an overgrown little kid who swears! (You clean that potty mouth up young man or you’re going straight to bed without eating your Food of the Gods!) Continue reading “Food of the Gods II (1989)”
The Food of the Gods (1976)
Morgan’s grandpa always told Morgan that one day the Earth would rebel against Man for taking a big dump all over the land. Nature would surely exact its revenge against humanity because this was the 1970s and “nature run amok” movies about hoards of rabbits (Night of the Lepus), plagues of frogs (Frogs) and outbreaks of William Shatner (Kingdom of the Spiders) were all the rage.
You know what Morgan’s crazy old grandpappy forgot when terrorizing Morgan with his left wing hippie eco-terror tales? That Nature may be pissed, but none of that matters when the giant rats, wasps and chickens attack a professional football player! Who gives a crap about a rat the size of a Volkswagen when you’re facing off against a psychotic 350 pound lineman every Sunday? Continue reading “The Food of the Gods (1976)”
D.O.A. (1950)
D.O.A. takes on its subject matter with a stark straightforwardness that literally shows the protagonist as a walking dead man. Frank Bigelow gets poisoned by some slow acting stuff that allows him to run around California for a week before croaking, all in an effort to find out who was behind his impending death. Is there a better metaphor for the futility of life than that? Continue reading “D.O.A. (1950)”
Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
Not as deliriously loopy as the similarly-themed Bloody Pit Of Horror, this movie is still able to generate some laughs that rapidly turn into groans with its tale of supposedly sexy dancers crash landing on an island inhabited by a giant spider. (There may have been a whole bunch of giant spiders, but all I saw was one frail looking thing hanging from some very visible rope.)
Gary hires a bunch of girls to go over to Singapore and dance. The hiring process consists of these women coming into his office and showing off their chunky legs to him and his female assistant. The girls are mainly distinguishable by their hair color, though there were two blondes so I had to go to the secondary identifier which was each one’s badly dubbed voice.