This was another film that I had a vague interest in seeing when it played in theaters earlier this year, but procrastination prevented me from actually going out to the cinema. Red Tails is loosely based upon the real life WWII 332nd fighter group, better known as the Tuskegee Airmen. It was a fighter squadron comprised of African-American pilots at a time when the U.S. Armed services still suffered from racist segregation of black and white personnel. Continue reading →

I had seen the trailers for this film and it peaked a mild interest, but the knowledge that this was yet another found footage film kept me out of the theaters. Staying out of the theaters proved most wise, it is film is crap.

What follows will be a spoiler heavy review of the stinking pile of poo, so don’t follow if you have any care at all about the plot and think you might want to see the movie. Continue reading →

Sorry for the post being a tad late, life has been busy, and some of it actually in a good way. (The root canals while required were less fun.)

I have a general rule with both Mel Brooks and Wood Allen movies, the less they appear the funnier the film turns out to be. Young Frankenstein is my favorite of the films directed by Mel Brooks. The majority of the credit I feel would have to go to star and writer Gene Wilder. Continue reading →

So there I was, washing the dishes, softly singing ‘Double Feature Picture Show’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when I realized it have been decades since I had last seen It Came From Outer Space.
Sadly that movie is not one of the films in my collection. I have a good number of he movies referenced in that song, but not all of them. (As a side note, none of the songs films in the song were made by RKO.) Once the dishes were in the drying rack – though we have a dishwashing machine my sweetie-wife prefers them washed by hand – I went to my computer to see if Netflix had It Came From Outer Space on instant view, nope, disc only. Next I checked with Hulu Plus, nope though I almost gave in and watched Plan 9 from Outer Space with the RiffTrax commentary. My final check, Amazon Prime instant videos struck mithril, yielding not only It Came From Outer Space, but it was one of the free videos. Continue reading →

So the movie with which I return to the regular feature is Mars Attacks. Released in 1996 to a disappointed box-office, this is a Film I truly enjoy, but I suspect it was also going to be for a rather limited audience.

Mar Attacks, from director Tim Burton is a silly, nonsensical film of Earth subjected to invasion from Mars. It is based upon a series of trading cards from the Topps Company, which cause a mild sensation with their gruesome graphics and somewhat sensual nature. Continue reading →

So here is the return of my regular feature the Sunday Night Movie post. I very nearly queued up my copy of Village of The Damned, the original not the boring John Carpenter remake, but at th3e very last moment decided I was in the moody for lighter fare and reached for the musical comedy.

This film has an interesting history. It started way back in 1960 as an extremely low-budget film from the prolific producer/director Roger Corman. Hollywood legend has it that the original film The Little Shop of Horrors was created as part of a bet with Corman and another filmmaker as to who could make a feature film the quickest. (Wikipedia states production was all of two days.) The horror/comedy is best know as the big screen debut of Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient. Continue reading →

My most recent acquisition is the Criterion Edition Blu-ray of the classic horror/SF film,Island Of Lost Souls, adapted from the H.G. Wells classic novel The Island of Dr Moreau.

The novel has been adapted to the silver screen three times, most recently 1996 starring Val Kilmer and Marlon Brandon,  in 1977 with Michael York and Burt Lancaster, and this, the first time, 1932 under the title Island of Lost Souls.  After Universal’s staggering successes with Frankenstein and Dracula, and MGM’s profitable Freaks,Paramountwanted in on the horror market. They had limited success with Murders in the Rue Morgue, which played obliquely at the taboo or human/animal breeding. After acquiring the right to The Island of Dr. Moreau for $15,000Paramountplanned something wells had not imagined, a sexy, titillating horror film. Continue reading →

Thanks to George A. Romero and his cult classic Night of The Living Dead, Zombie for most people conjures up a revenant with a taste for human steak tar-tar, but before that movie zombie was entirely a different monster, one that evoked images of rituals in the dead of night,  tropical winds, and a slavery that reached beyond the grave. Continue reading →