Category: Comedy Movies

Finishing the Complete Twelfth Season (2022)

Season 12 was a season punctuated with several rather big moments for the channel, ones im very proud of. It was the season that helped us ease into monthly streaming, it was the season to feature our longest review (“Sweet Insanity” – Thanks to Peckingforgoodtv for being a good sport on that one!) it featured probably our most mainstream review (I Spit on Your Grave) and our most obscure review (Santa’s Pocket Watch)

It saw the wind down of “The Comedy Dining Experience” and probably our crowning achievement for the year, as not only did we smash through 150k views (for the 2nd time I might add) BUT! we also FINALLY hit 1000 subscribers after over 6 years of weekly uploads. It’s been a hell of a road, but its one im fiercely proud of, and one that I simply couldnt have done without the help of our wonderful viewers and the many friends and creators i’ve made along the way.

Latter in the year seasons (basically the September – December stint) are always a little less fun for me. Don’t get me wrong! they ARE still very fun, otherwise I wouldnt do them the way I do. But with the pressure to do spooky stuff at Halloween and Christmassy stuff at Christmas, it usually means that at least 8-10 of my 16-18 slots for the year are eaten up with a rigidly structured type of arrangement. one of the things I really love about the February – June/July run is the fact that it’s in total free flow. I can plan the season out months in advance, but all it takes is one release to creep into my radar and I can easily swap it into the schedules with no problem. With the September – December run, im not as carefree.

But this year was a little bit different, Being able to collab with so many wonderful people across this season really helped to keep things fresh and keep my interest on the ball. The fact this years halloween special theme was “Poundland Horror” meant I wasnt rigidly stuck to one genre for a full month and could relax into the season quite nicely. and even the christmas specials were perked up somewhat by being able to tackle movies like “Winterbeast” with George. It just made things a lot less dogmatic and more, just for the fun of it. Yes I didnt get to do everything I wanted to do this season, but I got like; 95% of it done, and thats good enough for me!

Of the two seasons that made up 2022, Season 11 was probably the most fun to work on, but Season twelve was almost certainly the most rewarding. The former was the last hurrah to my old system, and the latter was me basically relearning how to do my trade having upgraded all my kit over the summer. and Season 12b (Im not calling it Season 13, theres no way im cursing this thing right out of the gate) is going to be the biggest and longest season we’ve ever done to date! I honestly cant wait for you guys to see it when we premiere on Feb 3rd 2023!

All I can say is, Season 12 was a fun one, and I hope 2023 keeps that postive energy coming!

by tytdreviews

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle – (2020)

Not content with ONE dose of Ken Del Veccio madness in the form of ‘A Karate Christmas Miracle‘ I just HAD to keep digging and eventually wind up watching it’s spiritual sequel. Because of COURSE I did.

What I will say for this film is, across the board, its better than the first film technically. that still doesnt save it from being demented in my opinion.

I really hope they make this duology a trilogy some day, as Id love to get a nice tryptic going with these films. I dunno…maybe ‘A Ballet Christmas Miracle’?, ‘A Golfing Christmas Miracle’? hmm…how about ‘A Kickboxing Christmas Miracle’? that one could have legs (LITERALLY!)

In either case, the madness is over…for now, and I can finally get back to covering other christmas specials like ‘The Christmas Consultant.’ *shudders*

This poster is not as good as ‘A Karate Christmas Miracle’ in my opinion.
by tytdreviews

Santas Pocket Watch (Santas Time Piece) – (1988)

This films a total enigma, I honestly spent more time researching for it than the runtime of the film, the time it took to write the script, edit the script and edit the video for the review. theres literally almost nothing out there. But…this is the danger of what happens when things fall through the cracks. you end up with releases where theres not even a thread that could open up exploratory options. This films a total dead end and it’s a shame because its curmugeonly and charming in equal measures.

Dont get me wrong, it’s nothing amazing. But I feel it captures a warmth that you just dont see in a lot of contemporary christmas movies. So if you can find a copy (its pretty proliferated) and you can find it cheap, i’d say absolutely go for it!

I find it hilarious that the title of this film has next to NOTHING to do with this film.
by tytdreviews

Finishing the Complete Eleventh Season (2022)

Well! when it came to the 2nd half of our 5th anniversairy celebrations, I decided to try and do a bit of everything. Part of me wanted to cover movies i’d wanted to do for years (“Flight to Hell“, “Cannibal Girls“, “Camp Blood“) Some were movies i’d promised id do in the future, and then totally forgot to do in the future (“The American Ninja 4“, “Cyborg Cop 2“, “Alien Species“) and some were first time watches that arrived on short notice and genuinely caught me off guard (“Gatwick Gangsters“, “Night of the Demon“, “Dont go in the house“). Hell, we even rounded off the TYTD Reviews episodes by revisiting our very FIRST video for the channel “The Dragon Lives Again” hopefully finally doing justice to a film I’ve long admired and wished my review of could have been better.

It was a celebration of the old, and a look forward to the future of the channel. With this series marking a few milestones, it being the last season edited in 1080p,the last season edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, The last to use the branding we’ve been using now since 2020 across all fronts and the last season predominantly recorded on my focusrite condensor mic, a mic thats pretty much been what you’ve heard me through since AT LEAST 2020, which also made a few on and off appearences between 2017 and 2019 too.

What does the new season hold? well as seen in the review for “Dont go in the house” i’ve had a systems and kit upgrade on almost all fronts! including a new machine, a new mic, new lights for the packaging shots, new editing software and some other new tools to help give a bit more variety. As such we have new branding across all our main shows, we’ll be solely uploading in 4k going forward with better quality sound and visuals, faster processing power means it takes less time to export and convert reviews now, and as such it means we’ll be able to *hopefully* turn things around a bit quicker which’ll give me some time back to be able to enjoy a sunset or eat a well prepared meal!

There have also been some changes that are not quite as pleasent to announce, but here we are. After 2 years or so of monthly uploads and over 50 feature length commentaries, “The Comedy Dining Experience” will be swapping back to an irregular upload schedule, as it was when we first launched in 2018. Part of this is down to the amount of time it takes to edit the commentaries, part of it’s down to lower uptake than our other shows (we’ve had some episodes record less than 20 views after 3 weeks of being live in some cases) and part of it’s down to both myself and Ben just being absolutely ram jammed with stuff going on at the minute. Im in the middle of writing/recording and editing next years episodes (and I still have stuff to finish with Season 12!) and Bens recently had several good news stories that means he’s a lot busier than he was at the moment.

What this means in practical terms is that the Comedy Dining experience isnt going anywhere, it just means that, for the moment at least, it’s going to be on pause while we sort life stuff out, and when it does come back it’ll be likely an “As and when” affair rather than a regularly scheduled “thing” which will allow me more time to work on and refine our reviews, and it means we wont be oversaturating the channel too.

What it ALSO means is that we can do other fun things like monthly game night streams (we’ve done 3 so far and a pilot) AND it’s meant I can start an official Discord from which we’ll be hosting various watchalongs, games nights and other good stuff, alongside chats on everything from good and bad movies to music and weird youtube oddities, so do please tag along for that!

Season 11 marked a change in the wind for the channel, and with Season 12 currently rolling out weekly, I hope your enjoying the direction we’re taking the channel in, I had an absolute blast working on this season, I think it’s one of my favourites i’ve worked on alongside Season 10 and the chance to work and hang out with so many interesting people in collaboration has been an absolute delight. I couldnt have asked for a better 5th year on the platform.

by tytdreviews

The Dragon Lives Again 2022 Redux (1977)

Look…I had to okay? I just had to. My first review on the channel WAY back in 2017 was “The Dragon Lives Again” a film I chose mainly because it was (at the time) my all time favourite good/bad movie. and while I’ve grown and diversified in all the time i’ve been doing this, my love for this film has honestly not deminished one iota. I LOVE this movie, for its big, stupid, bizarre, copyright infringing heart and soul it manifests and everything it stands for.

Obviously with it being my first review on the channel and the 2nd ever review I wrote for this thing! (the first being a pilot episode I wrote and partially edited that…didnt feel right so I scrapped it.) after 5 years it waaaas beginning to look a little creaky. at the time I wrote the review I wasnt as honed on research as I am now, I didnt have nice lighting kits or a studio grade mic or a decent machine to edit on, I didnt structure my scripts, my work around pacing and my channel branding was frankly atrocious, I put ZERO passion into my delivery on the mic… (the things you learn as you grow)

I worked with what I could at the time, but generally I kind of treat my work at this point as two “eras” the first being Seasons 1-5 Basically everything from the first review up to “Jack Frost” which was a learning curve and as such things are very much a “Work in progress” and then from Seasons 6 to the this review I kind of feel like I had chance to stop, recharge, rework my content, improve my methodology and develop into something that today im beyond happy with. it feels like my work from Season 6 has led to now and my revisiting this video.

So much has been discovered about “The Dragon Lives Again” in the 5 years since my initial review went live, better quality copies of the film have surfaced, theres more information around how it was distributed, not to mention that theres generally just…a TON to talk about in this film that in my original review I absolutely failed to do. I didnt want to do a 2.5D remake of my original review like I did with “The American Ninja 2” because I felt more needed to be said. So this is a from the ground up redo. taking on what i’ve learned and putting it into one of the most comprehensive reviews of this movie that I could possibly aim for. we’ve come full circle and this era of TYTD is now coming to something of an end. I feel a lot happier about things with this movie now having proper representation on the channel, and I hope you enjoy it.

As for the future? well; in the time that this review was completed and uploaded i’ve upgraded my mic, my computer, my editing software and much much more. it’s a new beginning, and I hope you enjoy where we take the show going forward (Dont worry, we arnt shaking things up THAT much…consider it a polish and shine rather than a ‘ripping the heart out’ moment)

So! To ‘The Dragon Lives Again’ the film that launched the channel and forever may it sail!

The poster is SO badass, I just wish there was more high quality promotional material from this film available because as it stands ALL my editing work for promotional materials for this movie had to revolve around this poster and low res screengrabs…poo poo.
by tytdreviews

Phantom of the Ritz (1988)

This was actually a pretty rare opportunity for me, I often cover obscure and somewhat forgotten movies, but it’s VERY rare that I cover a film thats been forgotten so much so that it has an almost non existent online presence. I could find almost NOTHING on this movie in terms of interesting facts or trivia. I couldnt even honestly prove that this thing ever played in theaters.

The only thing I could confirm is that it got a US and UK vhs release and then after that it literally fell through the cracks of history and dissapeared seemingly forever. it currently has 78 ratings on IMDB. I think the only film i’ve ever covered with lower scores than that is “Riverbend” and even that now has risen to 118 ratings since I first covered it. I guess…what im trying to say is, this film is LONG forgotten and VERY unlikely to get a re-release. and I think thats kind of a shame, this isnt a fundamentally bad movie…it IS bad…but WAY worse have managed a dvd AND bluray release…so…if any distribution labels are reading this, maybe take a look at “Phantom of the Ritz” it’s a kinda sorta, not so bad movie thats pretty rubbish.

I love this poster work too….I mean, it says NOTHING about the actual film…but it does it with such a level of STYLE!
by tytdreviews

Cannibal Girls (1973)

So I’d been talking to Seth from “The Hellbound Horror Show” for a number of months on the possibility of collaborating on something in the near future. Seths been a champion of the channel now for quite some time and I really love what he does too, but it was finding JUST the right kind of flick that overlapped our styles just about right, and eventually we settled on a Cannibal double feature! We would do “Cannibal Girls” over on my channel and “Cannibal Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death” over on his channel at some point (TBA)

I had an absolute blast doing this with Seth and I really hope we can get it all together again in future! While the death of Ivan Reitman was incredibly unexpected and unfortunately well AFTER we’d already shot and recorded everything for this episode, I still tried to at least pay something of a tribute to the man himself with the opening memorial card.

Cannibal Girls is a great movie and I highly recommend you check it out. But dont just take my word for it here, let both me and seth talk you though this absolute slice of insanity!

(Seths youtube channel is available here)

Could you FIND a more perfect example of 70’s splatter horror and gimmicksploitation in one poster. No. no you cant. I rest my case.
by tytdreviews

The “Tommy” (1975) Comedy Dining Experience

This week! Dan and Ben take a look at *arguably* one of the better known Ken Russell movies and one of Ben’s all time favourites as we discuss “Tommy” an absolute blast of a movie that gets surprisingly dark for a movie that quite frankly is so high energy and colourful.

Im not joking. recording this with Ben reignighted my passion for Ken Russell movies, By sheer chance a week after we recorded this I managed to talk to a bootlegger who was able to provide me with HD copies of “The Devils” and “Lizstomania” and I also managed to grab “Altered States” and “Lair of the White Worm” frankly, im in on Russell in a bad way at the minute. But im LOVING it.

I was a fan years ago, but i’d forgotten just how wild and fun his movies could be. and I HIGHLY recommend checking his stuff out whenever you get the chance.

by tytdreviews