I GAVE THIS MOVIE ITS TITLE! Sort of... Well, no fuck "sort of." HELL YEAH, I DID.
I've actually never seen the movie, but I just wanted to toot my own horn a little for attention.
See, after the first movie was such a surprise hit, SyFy immediately ordered up a followup. So they put out an announcement of a contest to title the second movie. All you had to do was go on Twitter and enter. So, I came…
In "Best Of" horror lists, this movie consistently ranks somewhere around number 25. But I don't care what anyone says, it will always be my #1 favorite horror film. I first encountered it around 23 years ago when I worked at a mom-and-pop video store in Manhattan. I was in the midst of getting my film education from the dusty shelves full of VHS tapes. I had always been fascinated by ghost stories and had already had one of my…
A pretty standard made-for-television murder mystery with the stars and crew of a prime time soap opera being bumped off. The reveal does something possibly novel at the time that has become sort of a standard misdirection in horror. And the very last shot attempts a meta concept that simply does not work. But it's watchable fluff, especially with an appealing lead in Suzanne Pleshette, who plays the show's creator and head-writer.
This James Bond-lite sort of flick shows what Al Adamson could do with a (slightly) bigger budget and a less-trashy premise. It may be less-than-polished but on the whole, it's super-entertaining and may have led to bigger and better things for Adamson if it had been a success in its original form. It starts out with a bang with a psychedelic title sequence and a terrific theme song by none other than Nelson Riddle. That alone may be Adamson's biggest…
Anyone who follows me knows how much I adore old television movies, mostly from the 1960s thru the '80s, and this one is a prime example of why. There are just some really awesome films out there that are frustratingly difficult to see. Yes, you can watch shitty, blurry prints on YouTube of some of them. But the vast majority of TV films are MIA on physical media, streaming, and digital download. Of course, I couldn't care less about the…
I want to know where this has been all my life. It's a truly fantastic and fiercely unique Japanese attempt at making a Disney movie and it succeeds in many ways but it has enough odd Japanese touches that let you know you're not watching a run-of-the-mill American film.
Where it succeeds the most is in its character designs, especially the villains. Madame Hecuba is one of the most terrifying animated villains I have ever encountered. Her resemblance to Yzma…
