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!
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!
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.
This was one of the earliest films I found while going out Hauling. I’ve literally had it sat in my “To Review” pile for AT LEAST 4 years, but its almost always been one of those movies that has *JUST* missed out of being covered every season for the last 3-4 seasons. It was the cover of the DVD release that really drew me to this one. I just find it simultaineously TOO polished and a bit TOO awkward.
Anyway; heres Gooby. a movie that left me feeling more underwhelmed than anything else, it was too good to be laughably bad and too bad to be acceptably good. it just flutters around the “Meh” grey-zone.
Promo material for this film is SUPER thin on the ground. I really wish there was more stuff to pick through.
Basically; I subjected Ben and Laura Blind to “Things” because im a sadist who enjoys dumping people into ice baths and watching them wail (in a filmic sense)
After the screening Laura vowed to never do a blind commentary again and Ben wouldnt make eye contact with me. Im not allowed to blind screen again for a while and collabs with Laura have to be to a certain standard going forth.
Personally; I think they should both thank me, given that they’ll now almost certainly never see a film worse than this…unless I find it.
So; for this one, we basically nicked the “Black spine” concept from Red Letter Media…yes its a blatent steal. No im not feeling guilty for having done it, No, RLM didnt invent this idea and yes im happy to keep doing it. My co-host mind…is VERY much less inclined.
I chose Mac and Me because I thought it would be a fun little watch. I wasnt sure if Ben had seen it before and this one fits the Comedy Dining Experience bill perfectly, too well known to really deserve reviewing. too obscure outside of the US to ignore and too blatantly an advert to have any merit in breaking down. it’s the perfect movie to get some people around with some beers to take the piss out of it. I cant speak for Ben. But I had a real blast with this one.
Okay; so in my rush to try and catch back up with updating the site with all our latest stuff I kinda sorta forgot to update our comedy dining experience section. I know, slap on the wrist, naughty boy, dont do it again. Well, I can only profoundly apologise for my neglegence and try and fix it by blasting through a few of these all in one go to try and catch back up.
And kcking things off, we have a fan request courtesy of one mr GDAWG. Bens wanted to do Beatles movies for years. So this really has been a planet aligning moment for all involved. So pop on your beatles cut. grab your left handed bass and check out this very clean old man as we take a deep dive into one of the more bizzare moments of the beatles career.
Season 9 was one of those seasons that feels “Right” to me. I mean that very much in a spiritual sense. theres no real metric that can be used to measure whether something is objectively “good” or “bad” but what I mean is that to me, it feels like all the pieces fit together perfectly, it feels like each review contrasts or compliments the other. with every season I do I often feel like there’ll be at least 1 or 2 episodes out of the two(ish) dozen I make where I either dont feel I got a grip on exactly HOW I wanted to present the review, or I’ll feel like technically I was a bit off the mark.
But this season, every review I feel like I got exactly what I wanted out of it, we had some stinkers, we had some hidden gems. but, to me, it feels like the work I’ve put in to slowly reshaping the series somewhat (Work that first began waaaaay back in Season six) has finally matured into a format that, for now at least, im pretty happy with. I feel a lot more confident about this run of reviews than I have with any other previous run, and I feel a lot happier with my work load management and attitude towards how I run the process. genuinely, the last 12 months worth of writing and releases have been some of the most enjoyable I’ve done in the 4 and a bit years of working on the channel.
Personal highlights of this season for me were “Nutbag” a film that genuinely caught me off guard for just how amazingly bad it was. this is one of the few times where BBFC suggested edits have actually massively enhanced what would otherwise be a fairly drab affair, Deathrow Gameshow a film that totally surpassed my expectations, and I feel utter remorse that I didnt crack this one open much MUCH sooner as it’d been sat on my “To Watch” pile for WAY too long. My special video essay on a recent Bootleg Video Nasty haul was a definite highlight for the year and got quite a few people talking about their own experiences with Nasty’s which was nice. and the opportunity to collaborate with old friends like Raymond and new faces like G.G Graham were frankly an absolute delight.
This season for me will probably be fondly remembered as a time capsule of a 6-8 month period where things, while still rather grim beyond the walls of my house, were alright. and I hope that comes across in these reviews.
And so we’ve arrived at the end of another season of TYTD Reviews. and ironically one of the first scripts I planned for the series WAAAAAY back in October 2020 ended up being the closer on this season nearly 9 months later.
I was first put on the case of the Wakaliwood scene during the summer of 2020 when a discord I frequent mentioned it as being something that’d really be my kind of happening. So; when the black friday sales came up for Vinegar Syndrome and AGFA I picked up their frankly next level package of “Who Killed Captain Alex” and “Bad Black” and it proceeded to totally blow me away.
I knew then and there that I wanted to cover one (or both) of these movies in the next season of reviews. The original plan was to review “Who Killed Captain Alex?” and then follow it up with a “Comedy Dining Experience” commentary for “Bad Black” but due to scheduling, planning issues and other boring things that always get in the way of a good time, we couldnt make it align up. which is a shame. I still plan to do SOMETHING with “Bad Black” I just dont really know exactly what just yet.
But yeh; Here’s the last review before our summer break. we’ll be dropping comedy dining experiences throughout July and August and there may still be one more surprise in store before we start on Season 10. all I’ll say for now is I hope you all have a happy and safe summer. and we’ll see you back for the next full season in August.
This is one of the few instances where the poster LITERALLY tells you everything you need to know about the film perfectly.
My relationship with Rick sloan the film maker is a bit of a bizarre one. In the sense that I first saw a Rick Sloan movie about 10 years ago at this point when I stumbled on the MST3K riffed version of “Hobgoblins” I thought the film was impressively awful in a “So bad its good” kind of way and I really got a kick out of it. But then; at the time that I saw “Hobgoblins” it was very much apparent that almost NON of Sloans other films had managed to make it over the atlantic. And; with no way of getting my hands on anymore even via illicit means (because; lets be honest. WHO is torrenting Rick Sloan movies!?) I just kind of accepted that “Hobgoblins” would probably be the only Rick Sloan film i’d ever watch and I left it at that.
Jump forward 9 years and I took out a subscription to “Full Moon Features” online streaming service (which; as an aside, if your a fan of B-movies, horror, exploitation or other strange stuff…they dont just host Full Moon films on there. they actually have a pretty decent chunk of Severin films and Vinegar Syndromes output too!) anyway; I took out a subscription and it turned out they had almost ALL of Sloans filmography ready loaded and good to go.
It was there where I first saw “Blood Theatre” Rick Sloans earliest film currently available. and I fell head over heels for it. In fact; I intended to review it in this very season until I realised that i’d already got a couple of horror movies in my roster for this seasons run AND that next season (season 10) is looking quite horror heavy as it is! SO! after watching Blood Theatre, I went over to Vinegar Syndromes website and bought the Bluray. which; as it turns out is a double feature with this film! so; realising i’d landed myself with a double feature. when it turned up I decided to check this one out first…and; in many ways, it’s almost AS enjoyable as Blood Theatre. but with it *Technically* being a sci-fi movie it fit in much better with this seasons run.
After watching this I went back to Full Moon and tried Sloans “Vice Academy” movies, but I just couldnt get into them, I find that he works best when he’s writing for genre’s that arn’t comedy. because he has a bit of a zany comedic tone to his work it makes all his genre attempts have a nice campy edge. but when he writes for comedy he ramps things up to the next level and it just becomes a bit irritating to me.
I also tried to watch his sequel to “Hobgoblins” but in a rare instance and a breaking of my own rules of “Thou shalt not hit stop till the credits” I had to bail on “Hobgoblins 2” this was made in the 2000’s and was VERY clearly made at a point where Sloan had well and truely realised people liked him making bad movies. so it was intentionally gross out and awful and…I just couldnt make it past the halfway point. I tried dear reader, I really did. but sometime films are even too bad for me.
Anyway! I hope to cover more Sloan in the future! and as for “The Visitants” it’s good! I really liked it. and I hope you like it too!
As for whats going on in this film poster? your guess is as good as mine. It’s bizarrely mezmorising.
TYTD Reviews 