When this was announced as the movie of the week, three people went “Oh, I think I’ve seen this” and none of them could remember anything about it. That is what’s known in the business as “foreshadowing”, and it give a decent sense of how this Stuart Gordon directed film ended up. This is impressive, given that the last film of his we watched was absolutely blinding From Beyond.
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One more unto the horror-series-that-won’t-die breach, and this time it’s the furry favourite of The Howling series. Eight movies over a 30-year time span (so far), all kicked off by the eponymously titled 1977 best seller which doesn’t actually get made into a movie till Part IV. Still, the first movie meant that director Joe Dante and producer Michael Finnell got to make Gremlins three years later, so it can’t all be bad.
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Now calm yourselves, for I must give you a warning. This film is silly. Very, very silly. It’s very obviously being daft by making a mockery of a lot of what would have been popular movies at the start of the 80s, especially the so-called “video nasties”. Thankfully the cliches and styles that it rips into are still with us after 40 years, so you should be able to get the majority of the jokes. Especially those about boobs and willies, you filthy degenerates!
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We finally reach the third and final part of the “Class of…” series of movies, with the Class of 2001. Well, the release title is ‘Class of 1999 II: The Substitute’, but that’s awful and the producers were cowards, so I’m just ignoring that. They also forgot to get Mark Lester involved, other than presumably the cashing of a nice cheque, but it’s still got enough markers of the original two to make this into a semi-coherent trilogy. Continue reading
Yes, I know this was the talk of the psychotronic town a couple of years ago. I was too busy watching other junk to get around to it, and I’ve got a weird (possibly anti-hipster) aversion to popular B-Movies, so that’s another cheap newscycle I missed out on. Anyway, I’m here and I’m sorry I missed the start of the party because, holy heck, this is one fun movie. Continue reading
Cards on the table, I’m a lifetime fan of the book Dune. Probably not the most committed of fans out there, but since I first found out the 1984 movie had a book to go with it I’ve read it roughly once every year. So it’s safe to say that I was really excited when I heard there was going to be another forlorn attempt at making The Film of The Book, and then when I found out if was Denis Villeneuve I was very excited to heard he’d be the person doing it wrong. Five years, $156 million dollars, and 156 minutes later and I’m happy to say that it isn’t the film or the book, and that’s great.
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Previously on Trash or Treasure, we watched Mark L Lester’s ode-to-armed-vigilante-killings: Class of 1984. Well, 8 years later he had another school-violence based story up his sleeve so envisioned, produced, and directed a cyberpunk follow-up, so it would be unfair not to see how things had changed in his mind.
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As someone who claims to like discovering new cinematic experiences, it does good to watch a film that really isn’t aimed at you from time to time. So, I ended up watching a musical that was causing a lot of fuss and wasn’t the one I’m trying to raise money for Crisis with. The end result was mostly enjoyable, but it was very far nearer a call than I expected.
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The modern Vigilante movie, kicked off by Dirty Harry and perfected by Death Wish, has always carried with them a right-wing political subtext about the nature of society and the need for the individual to step in when the system fails. Well Mark L Lester, writer, director, and producer of this particular American conservative propaganda piece, thinks subtext is a communist conspiracy. He also thinks coherent settings are cowardice and subtlety is for pinko liberals, and this film is all the better for it.
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If the title hasn’t given it away already, this 2019 film written and directed by Bernie Rao is ridiculous. It’s called “Killer Sofa”, it’s about a piece of home furnishing that kills people, and the main character is literally a recliner chair that the director picked up for one hundred New Zealand dollars. So, if you either aren’t already pumped up for this level of silliness or are going “but a recliner chair isn’t a sofa!” then this film is absolutely not for you. No one will judge you for that and it’s better that you leave now before you look confused as to why everyone enjoying it is giggling over a police officer having the last name of “Gravy”.
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