Absurd (1981)

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There’s no question that Halloween is a cherished American movie, occupying a place in our hearts alongside such classics as Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Bad Boys II. It’s a pretty much perfect melding of suspense, violence, atmosphere, music and floating Steadicam shots. And how many of us haven’t caught ourselves at one time or other uttering such famous Dr. Loomis quotes as “Death has come to your little town, sheriff.” and “This isn’t a man.”

But what if someone could take all that was rad about Halloween and add the only thing missing to it? That guy would be a freaking genius, right? That guy would be freaking Joe D’Amato! Continue reading “Absurd (1981)” →

The Mooncussers (1962)

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The problem with The Mooncussers is that it manages to steal copiously from Treasure Island which isn’t really an awful thing to do since that was a great Disney movie and I’ve always said that if you’re going to steal, you should steal from pirates because it isn’t their crap to begin with.

It’s just that if you’re going to re-use the entire “pirate pretending to be good guy actually deep down has a soft spot for the kid” gimmick, your pirate should be convincing in being a pal to this kid and the kid probably shouldn’t be wearing a red silk shirt for a good portion of the movie. Continue reading “The Mooncussers (1962)” →

I Remember Mama (1948)

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To: Kathryn Forbes

From: MonsterHunter Publishing

Re: Your Submission

We are in receipt of your stories about your mama that you’ve gone and turned into a movie. Since we aren’t in the practice of actually reading, we were forced to watch the movie version of your book, Mama’s Bank Account. Frankly, we are not convinced of the complete veracity of your tales. Is the audience really expected to believe that a simple woman from Norway could overcome such soul-shattering odds as a sick kitten or a child with an earache? We can only assume that you felt your mother’s war against indigestion and the time she had a bad haircut was simply too much for the audience to handle. Continue reading “I Remember Mama (1948)” →

Demons 2 (1986)

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When we last saw the demons, they had begun their plot to take over the world by overrunning a free showing of a cheesy Italian horror movie at one of the local theaters in Berlin. The movie ended with the city beset by all sorts of demons-related violence and the survivors of the movie theater assault were headed off in a jeep to find safety in the country.

It would be safe to assume then that Demons 2 would turn it up a notch and depict the epic clash between man and demon as they battled for control of the entire world, right? Uh, no, but would you settle for a bunch of demons overrunning an apartment building? What if I told you that the apartment building had a weight room? Continue reading “Demons 2 (1986)” →

Night Hunter (1996)

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I’ve never seen any of the Blade movies. It’s a toss up as to which I’m less interested in – vampires or Wesley Snipes.

These vampires are always swishing their romance novel cover long hair around, resplendent in their European finery and prone to mucking about with goblets and come hither looks any normal woman would laugh off.

There’s also usually talk about vampire families that date back hundreds of years and how powerful they all are. If they’re really so powerful, why are they generally unknown to the world at large and getting killed by vampire hunters who couldn’t possibly have all the resources that these supposedly old, well-connected families have had centuries to build up? Continue reading “Night Hunter (1996)” →

Automatic (1995)

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It’s Terminator meets Die Hard meets Frankenstein meets an Olivier Gruner movie! And that means exactly two things: lots of scenes of guys crawling in air shafts, elevator shafts and sliding down trash chutes and that I’m turning on the closed captioning so that I have a fighting chance to understand just what in the hell Olivier is muttering about this time! Don’t worry though if you’re like most of Olivier’s fans and can’t read because Olivier does most of his muttering in this one with futuristic guns and futuristic android kung fu! Continue reading “Automatic (1995)” →

Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)

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A lazy way to start this review would be to ape the writing of the children’s book series that this movie takes its title from. You know what I’m talking about. See Dick run. See Jane do whatever it is she did. See Spot take a dump on the carpet because he’s too dumb to know any different. That sort of thing.

I could tell you in that fashion that this movie isn’t very funny and personifies the word “slight” in describing the impression it will leave on you when you’ve finished it. I thought about being that lazy, but then I decided to take the even lazier route and do that at the end of this review. Continue reading “Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)” →