2149: The Aftermath (2016) is an interesting YA apoclaypse tale


Also known as ESC, Darwin, and Confinement, which are a fine collection of highly evocative titles, the trailer I saw for this appeared to be an attempt to cash in on Covid-19 fears, even though it was made a solid 6 years before The Pandemic kicked off. Which is a shame, as it’s far better than the kooky conspirasphere fable it was trying to pass itself off as. Then again, it’s a film that’s in a curious little world of its own so it’s not too surprising that they tried everything they could to market it.
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Winds Of Change (1978)


Metamorphoses (Japanese: 星のオルフェウス, Hepburn: Hoshi no Orufeusu, “Orpheus of the Stars”) is a 1978 Japanese animated anthology film, produced by Sanrio. Directed by Takashi Masunaga and based on Ovid’s book of the same name, it took 3 years and 170 Hollywood animators to make. But that bombed, so 7 minutes were trimmed, a Peter Ustinov narration got added, and the whole thing got re-edited around a disco soundtrack. Did that pull its fat out of the fire? Well…
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Deathstalker (1983) is a terrible film

“We shall committ many sex crimes together, brother”


Quite often the phrase “for its time” is used when trying to evaluate movies, but I’ve no idea as to when the use of rape as narrative punctuation was ever considered an acceptable thing. I also appreciate that saying such things is a strong opening for a review, but when it’s in the lynchpin of the first, second, and every subsequent scene in this sword-and-sexual-assault fantasy its discussion needs to be as prominent as writer Howard R. Cohen and director James Sbardellati made it.
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Day Of The Triffids (1962)

Because “Why not?”, and as it makes picking viewing easier, Trash Or Treasure is going through every movie in “Science Fiction – Double Feature”, the opening song for that trash culture classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This week

And I really got hot
When I saw Janette Scott
Fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills


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Elves (1989)


As is the tradition, the final movie of 2022 put through the Trash or Treasure group watching was the Christmas-themed low-budget shonk-fest with the craziest premise that could be found. This time we were promised monster elves, Nazis, and some chap called Dan Haggerty. There was also the prospect of impressive hairdos, because it’s from the late 80s and that Ozone Layer wasn’t going to massacre itself.
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Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies (2016)

I’m not going to pretend to have a vast knowledge of the Austrian horror movie scene and, until this film, I just assumed it existed rather than had proof it was there. So I was a bit surprised that writer-director Dominik Hartl made the first-ever Austrian zombie film, and decided to give it a try.
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Tarantula! (1955)

Because “Why not?”, and as it makes picking viewing easier, Trash Or Treasure is going through every movie in “Science Fiction – Double Feature”, the opening song for that trash culture classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This week

I knew Leo G. Carroll
Was over a barrel
When Tarantula took to the hills


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Final Exam (1981) is a bad film with some genuinly amazing ideas.

In context, this still makes no sense


This can easily be dismissed as yet another slasher that turned up on the coattails of Halloween and Friday The 13th, as part of The Golden Age Of Slashers. And it has all the hallmarks of such a film; it’s cheap, follows the tropes, and has a lot of so-so acting and directing. However, for all it’s many failings, writer and director Jimmy Huston needs to be applauded for making a film that really tried to do something different with the genre in several interesting ways.
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Miss Nobody (2010)

Working in an office is hell, so they make great places to center black comedies around. Most people can relate to them, so you’d don’t need to explain the premise, and most people know co-workers whom they would chuckle at the misfortune of, so if you rack up a varied body count the script is off to a good start. What can I say? Familiarity builds contempt and a lot of people are bastards.
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The Last Case Of August T. Harrison (2015)

Renowned curmudgeon and author HP Lovecraft is dead and, unlike many other popular franchise creators in a similar situation, his works are in the public domain. It’s a mythos that you can have great fun with so writer/director Ansel Faraj decided to make a genre-bending movie based that asks two important questions: “what if Lovecraft wrote about things that are real” and “what is a father was coming to terms with his son being…. an artist!”
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