Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Raggedyman

Have you ever wondered to yourself “What would happen if The Dow Chemical Company had a bunch of money it had to spend in Yugoslavia, and decided to make a horror-comedy there so it would get the profits in the USA?”. Well, if so then we have a treat for you in this 1985 Rudy De Luca-written and directed movie that appears to hinge on a pun that also hinges on a 1940s jazz standard! It also also hinges on thinking Transylvania is a country, rather than a region in Romania, and that you don’t really need a script if you have enough talented actors. Continue reading →

Miss Meadows (2014)

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Raggedyman

Katie Holmes, aka “America’s Sweetheart in Dawson’s Creek”, had appeared in a couple of action films before this 2014 Karen Leigh Hopkins-written and directed movie. However, she had never appeared as a protagonist and certainly hadn’t been presented as Charles Bronson in a floral dress. This probably explains why this movie has managed to slip under the radar. Well; that and it being panned by the critics for the high crime of being a bit odd but not in the way they liked.
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The Sisterhood (1988)

Posted on March 9, 2021 by Raggedyman

The post-apocalyptic Mad-Max cash-in genre has always been a fertile ground for questionable cinema, as shown by this being the third of its highly specific kind put through the Trash or Treasure mill. Something about finding a gravel pit, throwing an assortment of fantasy, sci-fi, and BDSM costumes on low-paid actors, and then just having everyone run around whilst things explode for the smallest of reasons instantly creates potential for a good bit of nonsense viewing. So, when the trailer for this Thomas McKelvey Cleaver-written and Cirio H. Santiago-directed 75-minute movie decided to change the rules and be about a bunch of women shitkicking their way through the dark future, hopes were raised for it adding something new to the old clichés. Continue reading →

Debug (2015)

Posted on March 4, 2021 by Raggedyman

This 2014 Canadian sci-fi horror, written and directed by David Hewlett, sets its stall up in the trailer as a medium budget, medium concept bit of midweek fun. It doesn’t suggest anything ground breaking or radical, and it doesn’t lean too heavily on having scooped Jason Momoa for a lead role. For a film that doesn’t have enough critic reviews to get a Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic rating, it arrived into the watch pile with the due fanfare of it just turning up on the “customers have also watched…” rolodex between Jurassic Galaxy and 2099 The Soldier Protocol. Filled with duly tapered expectations, it turned out to continue it’s tepidity by being mildly surprisingly good.
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The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture (2019) is an expensive must have

Posted on February 22, 2021 by Raggedyman

I got my copy of this mighty tome back in July 2020, and that it’s taken me this long to feel I can finally give a solid review of its 430 pages, is testimony to how detailed and in-depth it is. Within the 50 information-rich articles is not so much an introduction to Cyberpunk, but more a state-of-the-art snapshot of some of the finest Cyberpunk Studies writing going around. Whilst the writing is not aggressively academic, the concepts and ideas discussed are given a weight and a reverence of serious critical analysis. The articles also demonstrate the most valuable facets of true fans of any genre: the joy of taking apart a favourite topic and evaluating it from every angle and in every light possible. Faults are on display as much as perfections, because it’s a part of the thing being loved, so needs to be part of a whole conversation.
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Space Amoeba (1970)

Posted on February 2, 2021 by Raggedyman

The classic Japanese monster movie has a pretty set formula: monster exists, monster causes moderate levels of destruction in far off place, mankind looks at it and goes “Shiiitttt!”, the monster moves to a highly-populated area and causes massive amounts of damage, and mankind somehow pulls its arse out of the monster-induced fire. Whilst this is absolutely perfect plot progression, especially if it has municipal destruction that you can really see the behemoth emote through, sometimes you just want something different. Some kind of large-scale annihilation je ne sais pas to spice things up.
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Exterminators Of The Year 3000 (1983)

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Raggedyman

It would be a lie to say this film was selected purely on its title. The cover and the trailer both suggested that there was a highly enjoyable Mad Max 2 rip-off to be experienced. The expectations were set to “all the violence, all the post-apocalyptic wasteland couture, but with none of the plot getting in the way”. When it became readily apparent that it was an English script performed by a mostly monolingual Italian cast the joy and hope that this was going to be cinematic mayhem, unfettered by any artistic responsibility, was just added to. With the bar set that low, how could we possibly be disappointed?
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Cannibals and Carpet Fitters (2017)

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Raggedyman

There is a long-standing tradition in folk-horror, all the way back to camp fire stories, of the weirdo family that lives in the middle of nowhere and eats anyone who inadvertently trespasses onto their hunting grounds. On an intellectual level it’s probably something to do with fear of the unknown and warnings against wandering too far away from the safety of the collective, but for B-movie fans it’s a very basic “hicks are inbred idiots” combined with the visceral thrill of transgressing one of the biggest cultural taboos. It’s morally reprehensible enough to make murder worse, it’s instinctively nauseating due to the fear of disease, and when done right it’s bloody funny.
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I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle (1990)

Posted on November 20, 2020 by Raggedyman

Sometimes you really can judge a movie by its cover, and I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is everything that you can expect from such a high-concept title. It’s a campy horror-comedy about someone buying a motorcycle, finding out that it’s a vampire, and then dealing with the fallout from that. It’s got blood, it’s got gore, it’s got actors that any British audience of the time would have recognised as “oooh, it’s them off of the telly!” and it’s got Anthony Daniels to make the rest of the world go “oooh, it’s them off of Star Wars!”. If you want something serious, either in concept or delivery, then you only have yourself to blame for your disappointment, and if you want to spend 101 minutes really ugly-laughing at a film then read on.
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