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

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Raggedyman

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 →

Project Nightmare (1987) is bad and you should watch it

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Raggedyman

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.
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Dark Planet (1997)

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Raggedyman

Dark Planet is directed by Albert Magnolia, who also directed Purple Rain, Sign ’o’ The Times, and Tango & Cash. As such, it’s fair to say his carrier has been “varied” and that if you watched this without never having had me tell you that you’d call me a filthy liar. Then again, Michael York is also in it, so clearly a lot of people had cars to fix when the casting for this project was doing the rounds.
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The Creation Of The Humanoids (1962)

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Raggedyman

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.
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Class of 1999 (1992)

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Raggedyman

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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Prayer Of The RollerBoys (1990) – Nazi skaters, naff off!

Posted on September 14, 2021 by Raggedyman

It’s sometime in the future, approximately a couple of years after the environmental apocalypse, and due to overwhelming personal debt generated by the Baby-Boomers, America is now owned by a variety of other nations. Obviously, that makes no sense, but neither does a movie’s antagonists traveling by rollerblade; something that requires the kind of well-maintained streets and pavements post-collapse societies normally don’t offer. Still, this is not a movie that’s going to let such things get in the way of having a good time.
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Scanner Cop 2: The Showdown (1995) Laxative combat and you!

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Raggedyman

For a movie that is the sequel to the spin-off of a film that people mostly remember for the exploding head sequence, I shouldn’t have expected much. David Cronenberg had demonstrated his potential as a writer and director with 1981’s body-horror classic Scanners, but by the time this Steve Barnett film came out 14 years later, his entire involvement was as a bit of advertising copy and a small payment. But whilst Scanners: The Showdown fails to be a worthwhile watch by any conventional standards, it does hold some very valuable lessons about how to screw up a decent central premise.
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Double Dragon (1994)

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Raggedyman

In the history of films based on video games, Double Dragon will always be the one that people go “oh, they made that? Really?”. It had the misfortune of coming out a year after the first videogame movie, Super Mario Bros, and a month before what is still one of the most heavily promoted, Street Fighter. It also had about a quarter the budget of either, and no big-name stars. But, much like the game itself when I was a kid in the arcade, I had to give it a go.
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1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Posted on July 21, 2021 by Raggedyman

Italian cinema has brought us many marvels in its time, including a range of Mad Max, The Warriors, and Escape From New York rip-offs. The wonderfully titled “1990: The Bronx Warriors”, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, written by committee, and produced by frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator Fabrizio De Angelis, took the bold decision to try and do all three at once. The resulting film with the Italian flair that Hollywood stole for its Westerns and the cost-cutting technique of having the multinational cast all speak in their native tongues, is predictably low-budget craziness. But for all its flaws, of which there are many, it has a vibrant charm and bucket-load of ideas that will get you through to its straight-up ridiculous ending.

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