Unknown Origin (1995)

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Unknown Origin DVD CoverWell, here we go again! It’s the year 2020, man has trashed the planet, and the only hope is undersea labs run by big evil corporations!

If that sounds like the set up for producer Roger Corman‘s Lords Of The Deep to you, then you are not only correct, but also have my sympathies for apparently having been subjected to that waterlogged abomination.

But Roger is all about second chances! Because a second chance costs half as much as an all new first chance! Thus, this not very intriguing or original premise is also the jumping off point for another of his company’s movies, Unknown Origin. Continue reading “Unknown Origin (1995)” →

Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)

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RevoltofthePraetoriansPosterThe historical record of the assassination of the Emperor Domitian being a combination of mundane palace intrigue and anti-Domitian bias clearly wasn’t the stuff of a sword and sandal fetish film starring tanned hunk Richard Harrison so it was left to first time director Alfonso Brescia to make the story much more well hung with action, all in the patented Italian style of the era. So it is then that Domitian finds himself being beset by a commando raid of jugglers lead by a midget!

It is a testament to the greatness of both the film and Brescia (Cross Mission, Beast in Space) that such an event not only didn’t seem silly, but entirely necessary! After all, those jugglers carried clubs which could be used to clout unfriendly Roman guards to unconsciousness while storming the secret passage that ran underneath the palace! Continue reading “Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)” →

Star Hunter (1996)

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Star Hunter DVD CoverIn all the cosmos there exists a being who lives only to hunt! A being that craves the bloodlust of going after the roughest and toughest game available in the known universe! It is the master of every weapon ever invented! It has knowledge of all the tactics of the greatest strategists of all time! It is supported by all the latest technology and has the ability to regenerate itself if it is ever injured during one of its interstellar safaris! And it has just broken out of the prison planet it was locked up in! And is headed straight to Earth! For the ultimate battle! Against some second string high school football players, a couple of cheerleaders and a lady school bus driver!

Far from being the stinky space junk you would normally expect from producer Roger Corman (see Dead Space, Star Quest, and Starquest II), Star Hunter teaches kids important life lessons that are usually missing from these 1990s straight to video efforts. Continue reading “Star Hunter (1996)” →

Taur the Mighty (1963)

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Taur the Mighty Italian PosterThe Italian sword and sandal flicks of the early 1960s got in a lot of reps and built up an impressive quantity of work. It doesn’t take a student of the genre to determine that this quantity didn’t exactly translate into quality of any degree. For the most part, the majority of them were interchangeable variations of some bodybuilder posing and rumbling around rickety sets, busting up extras, poorly costumed monsters, and engaging in laughable feats of strength. In short, these films were terrible. But even so, there was one thing you could say in their favor. At least they weren’t Taurible!

For starters, Taur can’t even get his own name right! The VHS cover refers to him as Tor, the onscreen title of the film calls him Taur, but everyone in the movie including himself, says he is Thor!

Even with that identity crisis though, at least he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of Harry Baird’s character, Ubaratutu! As silly as Ubaratutu is as a name, it was the least offensive part of the character! Continue reading “Taur the Mighty (1963)” →

Air Marshal (2003)

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Brett Prescott has great hair, gleaming white teeth, and a pregnant wife back in the United States. In short, he’s the best of all that’s really rad about America.

He’s also ex-special forces and currently an air marshal charged with making sure the friendly skies stay that way. Unless, you’re an Islamofacist looking to make a name for yourself by terrorizing the passengers of an air plane. Then Brett Prescott goes to work making sure that little things like getting whacked in the back with an ax don’t slow him down from doing stuff like avoiding missiles and cruise ships at the last possible instant. Continue reading “Air Marshal (2003)” →

Gentlemen of the Night (1964)

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Pino Mercanti’s Gentlemen of the Night takes all that you love about the Renaissance-era talkathons (guys in hose, chicks in low cut dresses) and livens it up with dudes in masks and hoods who have secret society meetings to discuss setting up another secret society.

In their defense, the bad guys are doing all this discussing and planning to counter the threat posed by bored nobles who are discussing and planning a revolution to free the Republic of Venice from the goofy-looking, sour-faced simp in charge! Continue reading “Gentlemen of the Night (1964)” →

Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)

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When I first heard about the concept of spending five whole frigging weeks in one balloon, I thought it had a high potential for turning quite tedious after the initial rush of being able to drop coins and spit on people on the ground inevitably wore off early the first afternoon you were airborne.

Of course all that potential was fulfilled (and then some) once those five weeks in a balloon proved to include future Branson, Missouri headliner Fabian performing the film’s odious theme song on a concertina during a pitstop at a desert oasis in a sequence that Jules Verne only wished he was imaginative enough to concoct! Continue reading “Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)” →