Another day, another apocalypse; this time in the form of Merrick; a boxing champion who had his career curtailed by one of those annoying diseases that wipes everything out for plot purposes. It’s written, directed, and produced by newcomer Benjamin Diouris, and the trailer makes it look low-budget. well presented, and a bit of a downer. Just the thing for a quiet summer’s viewing.
Continue reading
When the credits start and you see the same name, in this case, Harry Bromley-Davenport, for the producer, director, writer, and composer roles it is traditional in psychotronic circles to brace yourself for impact. In the case of this sci-fi horror fever dream, it won’t do you any good, as its wanton disregard for explaining itself to the likes of its audience means you are just not going to be ready for this face-thumper.
Continue reading
Of the many things that Josh Brolin did between The Goonies and The MCU that no one knows about, this David Winters directed mishmash of skateboarding and Romeo & Juliet is absolutely one of them. Featuring a whole load of people that you’ll half recognise whilst going “oh my lord, they look so young!” and with a guest appearance from The Red Hot Chillie Peppers, it’s so 80s it [Insert Horrible Thing About The 80s That Everyone Forgets]. But on skateboards!
Continue reading
Whilst this touts itself as “HG Wells’ The Invisible Man”, it’s fair to say that certain liberties have been taken in transferring the classic novel to the silver screen. It’s also fait to say that given the source now being 125 years old, and the basic “man goes invisible, then goes batshit” plot being intact, that the average viewer these days won’t notice. They also, with some rather impressively preserved copies being available at a crisp 2k, won’t notice any problems with the sound or images.
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
Claude Rains was The Invisible Man
I wasn’t sure how to write this review, but after I did a bit of reading I found out that the producers had no idea about how to make this film. Half of it is an interesting proto-slasher, directed by Michael Haworth and stating a giggle of up-and-coming stars of British Cinema (and Frankie Avalon on his way down). The other half is an interesting drama, using the backdrop of swinging London and mostly the same cast. Sadly, you can see the welds. Continue reading
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
Michael Rennie was ill, the day The Earth stood still. But he told us where we stand
It’s hard to write the intro to this Derick Martini movie because after watching it and thinking about it for three days I can’t begin to work out what the hell the film was trying to accomplish. It’s not especially strange, although it’s certainly off-beat, and it’s certainly not dumb. It just seems to be what happens when you get a bunch of really talented people together and forget to have anything to say for 98 minutes. Continue reading
Currently, this bit of obscure techno-thriller is sitting at 4.4/10 on IMDB. This is quite fair, as it’s quite badly and very cheaply made. But, when I watched it as part of the Bela Lugosi’s Shed Poor Quality Film Club, I unironically enjoyed it. It’s possibly because I spent most of the time working out the film director and writer Donald M. Jones was trying to make, or I just have an unquenchable thirst for proto-cyberpunk concepts. Either way, I wanted to share news of its existence.
Continue reading
As a long-time reader of The Fortean Times, and having a general interest in the more esoteric bits of social history, I was keen to find out what this dramatization of the Cottingley Fairies story would be like. I could remember it making some noise when it first came out, but that was mostly because it was a British costume drama that had some bits of CGI in it rather than because it was a great film. So I was also curious if was going to be bogged down with The Great British Worthiness that meant we had tried to pretend we never had a genre cinema industry after the 70s. Continue reading
Roll up, for an amazing example of what a psychotronic masterpiece of B-Movie filmmaking can be. Because I can’t remember the last time such a godawful film held my attention so utterly. This 1962, Wesley Barry directed, lump of sci-fi cheese swings between the profound and the pathetic faster than the Theremin vibrates in the soundtrack, and is worth every rotten minute of its nippy 75 minutes run time.
Continue reading
Trash or Treasure 