One of the best things about your children growing up, is you can finally go to the cinema with them to see films you actually have an interest in seeing.
In comparison I had to suffer through the new Paw Patrol movie with 6 year old Jack last week, so I was very much looking forward to taking my daughter Sam to see The Marvels. It doesn’t seem long ago I was writing about her being a little girl. She’s…
Charles Band Filmography #053b
I’ve now seen two out of three segments from the unreleased 1988 anthology film, Pulse Pounders. The Evil Clergyman served as a follow up of sorts to Band’s Lovecraft output From Beyond and Re-Animator and starred his regular Lovecraft actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Trancers: City of Lost Angels was the first follow up to Trancers and ultimately ends up being a bridge between the original and sequel. Just like The Evil Clergyman the source of…
Not quite sure why I’m on a science fiction b-movie kick. Crash and burn is another Charles Band directorial effort too but it’s definitely not Trancers level stuff. Set in the now not too distant 2030, we see a typical dystopian future, an inhospitable climate, a collapsing civilisation and a totalitarian mono-corporate state that’s outlawed computers and robots.
Our hero, a Unicom dispatch rider Tyson Keen (Paul Ganus) is held up in a pirate TV station…
Jack Deth is probably one of my favourite character names ever. It’s such a silly, on the nose, 1940s hard boiled detective name and Tim Thomerson plays the detective exactly how his name sounds; dangerous, gruff, sardonic, but with a soft centre. It’s classic gumshoe and he’s fantastic at it.
Trancers feels like a comic book mashup of so many genres, science fiction, noir detective, zombie horror, 80s actioner. Jack Deth is a 2247 cop who’s…
Hang on… I’m still watching these? I’m sure I was only going to watch three of them. Now I’ve watched… not even sure what number this is… erm… too many. Anyway despite having already done an origin story, they’ve now done an origin story for that origin story or an originorigin story if you will, but to be precise this feels like an origin story specifically for films 4 & 5 because Sutekh is back into the…
Lovecraft, Lucifer and the Last days. Embrace the madness of your Cage… it’s Hooptober X.
Film 38 - The End
A quick Hooptober catch up review. The last review of Hooptober 2023.
Always destined to be the last film watched for Hooptober. An excellent reputation and yet the dramatisation of actual serial killers and their victims always sits different. It’s never something I look forward to. They have to be executed with a degree of reverence, an almost documentary approach.…
Lovecraft, Lucifer and the Last days. Embrace the madness of your Cage… it’s Hooptober X.
Film 37 - Leemoy
A quick Hooptober catch up review. Last non bonus film to be reviewed.
What a powerful mood piece. The extreme sense of isolation from the rugged Icelandic landscape, the rusted exterior of abandoned buildings giving an air of degradation and decay and a figure in red which will immediately recall Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. The cinematography is stunning and the…
I’ve been saddled with a stinking cold all week, hence the lack of film watching, as early night’s have been order of the week. Friday morning I felt particularly terrible but had two kids to look after (half term)… so watching a random kids Halloween film in bed that morning was the only way to start.
I’m not sure if I was giddy on all the lemsip but I thought this was a lot better than its lowly 2.3 average.…
One of my favourite Hergé Tintin stories. Incredibly atypical of the canon, eschewing all the usual action and intrigue for a character based comedy farce, with only the lightest mystery elements. After the problematic racist elements of the earlier titles, its condemnation of the poor treatment and prejudgment of the gypsies is quite refreshing. Hergé’s writing definitely matured and peaked toward the end of his career, Calculus Affair is a beautifully paced thriller, Tintin in Tibet a strong character drama…
Lovecraft, Lucifer and the Last days. Embrace the madness of your Cage… it’s Hooptober X.
Film 36 - Well, we're having a good old fashioned sleepover… With guns though.
A quick Hooptober catch up review
Swapped this werewolf horror-comedy in for the Screambox region locked and seemingly unavailable in the UK Shaky Shivers. Second year running an extra credit film is essentially region locked to the States via Screambox, a bit of a shame but I’m sure this ably fills…
Lovecraft, Lucifer and the Last days. Embrace the madness of your Cage… it’s Hooptober X.
Film 35 - It turns out the best anger management program isn’t counselling… it’s monster slaying.
A quick Hooptober catch up review
A fun old-school action comedy-horror that sees a rage filled Jack Brooks (Trevor Matthews) struggling with life; he has a traumatic past, an unhealthy approach to therapy and an ill suited girlfriend. Jack's Professor (Robert Englund) uses Jack to help fix the plumbing…