Month: October 2020

Big Meat Eater (1982)

BIG MEAT EATER (1982)
Article 5019 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-15-2015
Directed by Chris Windsor
Featuring Clarence ‘Big’ Miller, George Dawson, Andrew Gillies
Country: Canada
What it is: In a class by itself

Aliens hatch a plot to get hold of a supply of radioactive balonium located under a block of a small town that features a butcher shop in which a homicidal obese Turk has been newly hired by the mild-mannered butcher and a house inhabited by Russian immigrants including a savant who is trying to become the first man in space. It’s a musical.

You know, there are some movies where the question of whether it’s any good or not seem irrelevant because you’re still marveling over the fact that the movie even exists. There’s something about the tone of this movie that suggests parody, but of what? Alien invasions, serial killers, small-town life, corrupt politicians, ethnic stereotypes, the cult of progress, amateur talent shows, blues and new-wave music….all of this gets fed into the mix at one point or another, and if it hangs together at all, it’s probably only by dint of the fact that it’s all in the same movie. The overall rating for this on IMDB are 5.1, but the individual ratings are all over the map, ranging from those who think it’s a brilliant piece of regional film-making and those who think it is pure dreck. I will say this much, though; it’s not obvious and it’s not predictable. It’s also most likely not sane, either. And in its own freakish scattershot way, I must confess to having been somewhat hypnotized by this one; I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It’s a question mark, but sometimes I like question marks.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Bermuda Triangle (1979)

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1979)
Article 5018 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-14-2015
Directed by Richard Friedenberg
Featuring Brad Crandall, Donald Albee, Lin Berlitz
Country: USA
What it is: Documentary

Stories about strange disappearances and sightings in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle are reenacted.

What sets this one apart amid the rash of documentaries/pseudodocumentaries about various phenomena from the 1970s is that this one primarily uses the technique of reenactments of the stories being told. I will give this much credit to this technique; in comparison to just having the stories told to us, it is much more entertaining. Notice I said “entertaining”, not “convincing”. If anything, it makes the stories less convincing; when a UFO sighting in which the story talks about “strange lights in the skies” gets translated visually as a clearly delineated flying saucer shooting rays out from its underside, the viewer’s reaction is much more likely to reject the whole story outright. Plus, when you’re bombarded with theories such as “portals from other dimensions”, “flying saucers with death rays”, “time warps” and (my favorite) “antigravity rays from lost Atlantis”, it’s very easy for your skeptic meter to fly off the chart. Once again, I’m no expert on the Bermuda Triangle or the accounts of events that took place there; I just watch movies. All I can say is that this movie was one of the more entertaining of its type that I’ve seen, while perhaps making me even less inclined to believe the stories than I might otherwise be.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire (1981)

THE ARCHER: FUGITIVE FROM THE EMPIRE (1981)
Article 5017 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-13-2015
Directed by Nicholas Corea
Featuring Lane Caudell, Belinda Bauer, Victor Campos
Country: USA
What it is: Epic fantasy, TV-Movie style

Several tribes band together to do battle with an empire run by a magician with a band of snake men. When the tribes are betrayed, the leader’s son becomes a fugitive, inherits a powerful bow, and sets out on a quest to seek a magician who can help him.

This is an unsold TV pilot, and knowing this about any movie potentially gives you a warning, to wit – there’s a strong possibility that some major plot element will remain unresolved so that the series it would have spawned would have somewhere to go. Unfortunately, that usually means that the movie by itself will inevitably be a little disappointing because it will feel incomplete. Given this, there are parts of this one I quite like; TV rarely tried for epic fantasy in those days, and this one has some nice flavor, a sense of humor, and the requisite sense of wonder, even if it is sometimes cheaply done. On the down side, there’s a certain problem inherent to the whole genre of epic fantasy; it’s so full of standard plots and cliched situations that if you don’t have some specific element that sets it apart from the many examples out there, you run the risk of doing little more than walking through overly familiar territory. And, sadly, that’s the problem here; there’s nothing to really set this one apart or make it special. Other than that, its main problem might be that there’s some truly monumentally bad over-acting from time to time; the movie is strewed with chewed scenery. In short, it has its joys, but it’s nothing special.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Amuck! (1972)

AMUCK! (1972)
aka Alla ricerca del piacere
Article 5016 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-12-2015
Directed by Silvio Amadio
Featuring Farley Granger, Barbara Bouchet, Rosalba Neri
Country: Italy
What it is: Sexy crime movie

In order to find out what happened to her female lover, a woman takes the last job her lover had – as the secretary to a writer whose wife is addicted to strange sex games.

Every once in a while a movie has the dubious distinction of making me realize that I’ve seen a certain plot set-up one too many times. It isn’t necessarily the fault of that movie itself; it just happens to be the one where my brain says “Enough!” That’s the case here; I’m really sick of the concept of someone trying to solve the murder/disappearance of a friend/relative/lover by putting themselves in the same situation that caused the friend/relative/lover to die/disappear in the first place. In almost every case where that plot is used, the heroine (and it’s almost always a female who tries this) needlessly puts herself in danger and hasn’t adequately prepared herself for that danger. That’s the basic story here, and I really find it hard to sympathize with a character who is being that foolish and short-sighted.

This movie is supposed to be a giallo, but I don’t think that’s a good fit; there’s very little blood here, and it seems a lot more interested in getting as much nudity and sex into the story as it can. In short, it’s mostly a sexploitation crime movie, though there is a truly repulsive scene where an eel is killed and gutted onscreen for what seems to be purely shock value. Beyond that, the closest it gets to any fantastic content is when the wife comes down with what amounts to an “attack of ESP” where she becomes possessed by the spirit of a dead woman, though in all honesty, it seems to be a ruse designed to mislead another character. There is one good suspenseful scene when the heroine investigates a cellar, but most of the rest of the movie is sleazy variant of an overly familiar story. I’m afraid I didn’t really care for this one.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Lucifer Complex (1978)

THE LUCIFER COMPLEX (1978)
Article 5015 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-11-2015
Directed by Kenneth Hartford and David L. Hewitt
Featuring Robert Vaughn, Merrie Lynn Ross, Keenan Wynn
Country: USA
What it is: What happens when you don’t quite have enough footage for a full feature and someone comes along and fixes it

A guy in a cave watches footage of a spy uncovering a Nazi plot in 1986.

I’ve been unable to get any other confirmation of this, but the John Stanley guide says it looks like an unsold TV pilot was padded to feature length and then sold directly to television. Two thirds of the movie is dedicated to a story about a spy played by Robert Vaughn uncovering a plot by Nazis to start a Fourth Reich through the use of cloning. All the big names in the cast are in this section, and I believe this part was the pilot. The other third has a guy wandering around an island and then sitting at a computer in a cave watching this movie along with lots of stock footage. The two-thirds of the movie with Vaughn is pretty bad; it’s cheap, unconvincing, silly, and it’s easy to see why it wouldn’t have sold if it was a pilot. But at least it works up a modicum of energy, which is more than the island/computer footage manages to do; this latter footage is almost totally worthless. Worse still, it’s that footage that kicks off the movie; the first 25 minutes of the movie is one of the driest, most interminable stretches of cinematic wasteland that you are likely to encounter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many people watching this movie gave up after a few minutes. The movie apparently garnered some criticism for the Nazi/clones plot due to its similarity to THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, and though it’s tempting to point out that since this movie had actually been made two years earlier in 1976, it actually predated the other movie, but that would be overlooking the fact that it still fails to predate the Ira Levin book on which the latter movie was based. At any rate, this movie is a waste of time, and I have to say that despite the fact that I’m a fan of Keenan Wynn, he has a seriously embarrassing role in this one.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Little Prince (1974)

THE LITTLE PRINCE (1974)
Article 5014 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-10-2015
Directed by Stanley Donen
Featuring Richard Kiley, Steven Warner, Joss Ackland
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Allegorical fantasy musical.

A pilot, his child-like sense of wonder squashed when he was young, becomes stranded in the Sahara desert. There he encounters a little prince from a distant planet, whose confusion about his love for a rose causes him to set out to learn about the world.

I’ve not read the fanciful novel on which this movie was based, so I can’t make any comparison as to how successful it has been adapted. I do sense, however, that the choice to make this a musical was a compromise to compensate for the fact that the book may have been unfilmable. I remember when it was released, but I don’t recall it having been a big hit. One of the user comments on IMDB ponders as to why this movie has never become a perennial children’s favorite, but I suspect the reason it hasn’t is because it really isn’t a children’s movie; it’s central themes seem to be of more interest to adults. My wife, who has read the book, also told me that there is a dark undercurrent to the book that is lost in the conversion of the story to a musical. Maybe that’s why the movie feels less than satisfying, though the fact that the songs aren’t very memorable has something to do with it. Nonetheless, there are some interesting performances here, particularly from Bob Fosse as the Snake and Gene Wilder as the Fox. I do get the feeling that if I ever opt to experience this one again, I’ll go for the book.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Ghosts That Still Walk (1977)

GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK (1977)
Article 5013 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-9-2015
Directed by James T. Flocker
Featuring Ann Nelson, Matthew Boston, Jerry Jensen
Country: USA
What it is: Ghostly possession movie

A psychiatrist/hypnotist investigates the case of a boy who is suffering from strange pains which seem to have no physical cause… and whose relatives undergo traumatic, near-fatal experiences.

Don’t let the title fool you; it may sound like it’s pseudodocumentary on parapsychology, but it’s just a straightforward horror film. Still, I’m not sure the ghost does all that much walking; he spends most of the first half of the movie tooling around in a motor home he has taken over. I’ve encountered director James T. Flocker before, and if the ratings on IMDB are any indication, this is the best movie I’ve seen from him yet. Which is not to say that he doesn’t have the usual set of problems; the script is weakly written, the acting never quite achieves competence, and he seems to have no ability to tell when his scenes have run on too long. Yet, there’s a creative spark here that can’t be obscured by these flaws; there’s something original and engaging about his ideas. And this movie does have one very effective sequence in which the motor home is attacked by big rocks that seem to be moving of their own accord, and given what must have been the miniscule budget of this movie, I’m amazed that he pulls off the special effects; I’m really at a loss to explain how he did it. Granted, it does go on too long (like the other scenes in the movie), but I’m still a bit impressed. It’s moments like these which really make me wish that Flocker was a better director than he was.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

GALAXY OF TERROR (1981)
Article 5012 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-8-2015
Directed by Bruce D. Clark
Featuring Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction horror

When a spaceship doesn’t return from a hostile planet, a rescue ship is sent out to find and rescue them. However, what’s to keep them from suffering from the same fate as their predecessors…?

This is one of those movies about which I’m not really sure what I feel. On one level, I admire how much was done with a fairly low-budget; it actually looks pretty decent. I also marvel at the number of familiar names that pop up; on top of the ones listed above, it was produced by Roger Corman, features Freddy-to-be Robert Englund and the always welcome Sid Haig; the latter has only one line of dialogue and one of the most memorable death scenes in the movie. It also features future director James Cameron in a number of different capacities. I also like that even though it was no doubt inspired by ALIEN, it isn’t a slavish imitation of that movie. Still, on its own terms, I’m not sure I really care for what it is; despite a semi-mystical ending, the movie seems little more than an excuse for lots of horrible, gory killings at the hands of various assorted beasties. On that level, the movie is the equivalent of a slasher film and is probably best enjoyed on that level. Still, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed, though I will admit that some of the attacks are memorably grotesque.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)

THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1976)
Article 5011 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-7-2015
Directed by Harry Winer
Featuring Ivan Marx, Peggy Marx, Yukon Frida
Country: USA
What it is: Cryptozoology documentary or pseudo-documentary

A tracker tells of his obsession of finding and photographing Bigfoot.

I am not a cryptozoologist. Nor am I a debunker of cryptozoological theories. I am merely a guy who watches movies and writes about them, and my given genre ground just happens to include movies about Bigfoot, whether they purport to be documentaries or not. I will admit that I’m the type of person who thinks it would be cool if Bigfoot really did exist, but I make no claim about whether that is so or not. Therefore, when I say that I found this movie to be one of the more interesting documentaries I’ve encountered on the subject, it’s not to say that it’s the most convincing; it’s more to say that it was entertaining and personable. Instead of emphasizing evidence for the existence of the creature, it concentrates on one man’s desire to track the creature down and photograph him, with the belief that the resulting footage will be proof enough. And, on the level of storytelling, I was entertained. However, I do take note that the script credits two writers, neither of which is Ivan Marx, the man whose story is being told, a detail which does cast a bit of doubt on the proceedings. Furthermore, I was curious enough to do a little research on Marx, and he is definitely a controversial figure in the world of cryptozoology, and if an article I read from Peter Byrne about him is any indication, then his Bigfoot footage is not to be accepted as authentic. I will, however, make one comment of my own. The most entertaining part of this movie involves footage of the one of the most impressive moose I have ever seen. It is a very clearly photographed moose, and nobody doubts it existed, as far as I know. In contrast, the Bigfoot footage is relatively murky and lacking in detail. If the Bigfoot had been as well photographed as the moose, maybe it would have been more convincing.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Land of Doom (1986)

LAND OF DOOM (1986)
Article 5010 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-6-2015
Directed by Peter Maris
Featuring Deborah Rennard, Garrick Dowhen, Daniel Radell
Country: USA
What it is: Recycled ROAD WARRIOR ideas

It’s after the apocalypse. A cynical young woman teams up with a man who still believes in the old values to find a save haven from a roving band of sadistic raiders. They encounter eccentrics, plague victims, and many people wearing studded leather.

This movie borrows as much as it can from THE ROAD WARRIOR, runs over to STAR WARS and borrows the Jawas, and surrounds it with a rather loose plotline about the cynical woman learning to love again no matter how many scuzballs she encounters. The plot is non-stop mixture of captures, escapes, fights, and cliche-ridden conversations on such topics as when it’s okay to kill someone. It’s one of those movies that you end up only half-watching because you don’t expect anything really new to happen, and sure enough, your expectations are met. The best thing about it is the stunning Turkish locations. The worst thing about is that sets itself up for a sequel, an act of either utter cynicism or supreme optimism, depending on how you view it. And though I suppose it is possible that someday a sequel could be made, I don’t think anyone is holding their breath for it.

0 CommentsLeave a comment