The Gene Generation (2007) Isn’t Great, But It Is Very Watchable

The film starts with ten minutes of exposition and the unlikely appearance of Faye Dunaway. Provided by Alex Newman in the role of “scientist who doomed the whole planet and feels really quite miffed about it”, it lays out the pros and cons of the next 80 minutes for all to see. Lots of ideas, lots of stylish 2ks cybergoth imagery, CGI that looks like it was originally a PlayStation cut-scene, and not quite talent to reach it’s highly ambitious goals. Frankly, it’s a bit of a mess; but there is an undeniable something that makes you carry on watching to see where it goes. Continue reading

The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby (2005)


Before we start, we need to address one key issue about this film: the historic Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier but Westle, who stars in the titular role, is a West Highland White Terrier. The Skye Terrier Club spoke to the press about this when the film was in production, That then gets complicated when in 2022, the president of the Canadian Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club claimed it for their preferred breed. Which is to say that some people take these things almost as seriously as this film took its subject matter, and that after am hour of research into this I can conclude that all the breeds mentioned are adorable. Continue reading

Ogre (2008)


Hey, anyone interested in an okayish mild-horror time filler designed to get everyone involved paid and some time on the SyFy Channel filled? Well, do I have a very middle-of-the-road bit of inoffensive tepid entertainment for you! Because much like the real world of bulk movie production, not everything you haven’t heard of can be joyfully bad or outrageously crazy. A lot of it just does the job it’s supposed to.
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Wyvern (2009

The entire description blurb for this is “They Find a Live Wyvern in small-town Alaska.” It doesn’t explain who “they” are, the l is needlessly capitalised, and my expectations were set accordingly. Then, in the first two minutes, we get a caption telling us the icy landscape is Alaska, and then a CGI wyvern turns up. I can’t think of better expectation management in a creature feature. Continue reading

A pair of shorts: Treevenge (2008) and Noiseman SoundInsect (1997)

These two have nothing in common; other than I want to share them with you and they’re both under 15 minutes long.

Treevenge is a film that asks “Ever thought about how bad it would suck to be a tree during the Christmas season?” and then puts your mind through the woodchipper with aboral based gore. It’s in turn surprisingly evocative, brilliantly observational, and brutally childish. It also knows exactly how much mileage you can get out of its gag premise and goes not a second over what can be made from it. Then again, the final shot is in majestic bad-taste so I’ve no clue what could follow it up.
Watch it here

Noiseman Soundinsect “tells of the battle between the Noiseman monster that robs the people of music and controls the town, and the boys and girls who have been freed from the noise spells by the truth of music” and I’ve no means to say otherwise as it’s approach to narrative is “impressionistic”. What I can say is that it’s held me captive each time I’ve watched it and it’s a wild, colorful ride. It’s also only available below until the 17th of March 2023 so go watch now!

I may do more of these, I may not. Let me know in the comments or with your likes.

The Raggedyman

Jack Frost 2: Revenge Of The Mutant Killer Snowman (2000)


Apparently, the title of this film was chosen as people kept on mistaking the original 1997 film by writer/director Michael Cooney for the 1998 Michael Keaton film also called Jack Frost. That was a touching romantic comedy, the one we’re interested in is a nonsense story about a killer snowman. Then again, both of the snowmen on the covers look sinister and I haven’t seen either of them so maybe they are as interchangeable as Hallmark movies. Continue reading

Santa’s Slay (2005)

Once again the nights are drawing in, the country is a death trap because it snowed for one day of snow, and Trash or Treasure is doing its annual Christmas Onslaught of seasonally themed exploitation movies. The first present out of the chimney is a 2005 “what if Santa was a psycho?” comedic effort from director and writer David Steiman, which stars Goldberg from back when he had just quit the WWE. It’s also got a sleigh drawn by a pissed-off buffalo, which has the cutest little nose.
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Monster Island (2004)


Jack Perez is hardly a household name and MTV Studios is hardly a benchmark in quality entertainment, so to find out that they got together and made a Straight-To-TV ironic-comedy monster movie in the mid-2Ks is to fill your heart with low expectations. That the trailer is heavily focused on cameos by Carmen Electra and Adam West, and stars some generic, moody-heartthrob bloke you’ve never heard of is to possibly fill you with more inertia. But at Trash or Treasure we make a giant-bee line for that kind of thing, and this film reminds us why. Continue reading

Ice Spiders (2007) is cheap, disposable, fun


Films made for the Sci-Fi channel have a reputation for cheapness, dullness, and zeitgeist abuse that is rivaled only by The Asylum mockbusters. It’s not that they’re bad, so much as they always make you think of a better movie that you could be watching. So, when sitting down to watch this film from the renowned Hallmark Channel Christmas romance director Tibor Takács (who also did the well-regarded The Gate back in the 80s), expectations were set to “please don’t suck”. Thankfully, these heady heights were surpassed.
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10 Items Or Less (2006) was a joyful watch


I can vaguely remember this making a splash as an indie darling when it first came out, with the buzz being split between the marketing gimmick of Morgan Freeman doing something quirky and the marketing gimmick of being officially available online at the same time it was in the cinema. It got a reasonable amount of sofa-based interview TV, made some noise as “a touching, romantic comedy”, and then dropped out of view. So when we picked it for viewing, based mostly on the title but also because of Morgan Freeman, and had very little expectations as to what would happen next.
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