Watched on Sunday April 30, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-4-the-return-of-michael-myers/1/

Living in the UK, I dont feel like ‘The Wizard’ had quite the same impact over here as it did in the US. Speaking to my US pals, this is a VERY nostalgic experience for them. Almost all of them have memories of seeing this in the cinema, or at the very least, picking up the VHS. The gamers in amongst them talk about the sequences involving the (then unreleased) latest Nintendo game “Super Mario Bros 3” as something of a ‘core memory’ from the time.

So having gone into this film completely blind barring a group of Americans telling me that it was SO weird, but a key part of their childhood, I really didnt have much in the way of expectations for this thing. But i’ve got to be honest, I had quite a bit of fun with this thing.

Its a pretty standard roadtrip movie as brothers Cory and Jimmy flee their respective parents with the aim of going to California. Along the way they meet up with a young girl by the name of Haley who, ONE; finds out that Jimmy is INSANELY good at video games, and TWO; tells the pair that theres an upcoming competition called ‘Video Armageddon’ with a $50k cash prize and the prestige of being the ultimate gamer.

The boys are intreagued, and thus a journey of life, love and self discovery begins! with Cory and Jimmys dad and a hired private investigator hot on the gangs trail with orders to bring them home. Will they manage to make it to the competion or wind up getting a game over!?

The scripts a little slow to get started but around 3/4 of the way into its opening act it finds its feet and from their we get a fairly lightweight zippy script that isnt particularly challenging, is DRENCHED in early 90s stylisation and is *largely* tonally pleasent.

It does have its faults, that opening act is a little sluggish, they keep details about what exactly is going on with Jimmy deliberately vague, but that does hinder the plotting a bit as it makes him a harder character to connect with. and while the tone is largely alright, theres a LOT of weird and uncomfortable moments in this thing. Mild spoilers but a sequence in which two truckers try to hunt the kids down and steal there money, followed a little later in the movie with a scene where Haley accuses one of the investigators whos trying to grab Jimmy of touching her breasts (when he hadnt) made me do a double take frankly that the film would even go there.

It’s also strange in the fact that, bring blunt. This is a near hour and three quarter advert for Nintendo, and yet; Nintendo arnt really the key focus of the film until the 3rd act. Yes; Nintendo consoles pop up infreuently throughout, the ‘Powerglove’ gets an airing and Super Mario Bros 2 is briefly glimpsed. But the main focus of the film is always on the kids adventure over the games and consoles themselves which almost take a back seat for most of the runtime. Even when they do pop up, it’s mainly for 3rd party titles like ‘Double Dragon’, ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and ‘Castlevania’ Honestly; this is more an advert for Konami than Nintendo.

Beyond that though, this is a somewhat wobbly, but charming movie that has memorable and quotable dialogue, well paced scenes and is absolutely every inch as cheesy and ‘of it’s time’ as it’s possible to be. I couldnt IMAGINE a kid born after 1998 watching this thing with anything other than utter bafflement and boredom. but for kids born between 1978 and 1998. I imagine it’ll give you a MORE than hearty nostalgia blast.

The direction and cine are more than of standard, it’s a studio picture and it feels every inch of it (On top of this being an advert for Nintendo and Konami, Universal Studios get MORE than a decent stint in this film to sell you a vacation) Everythings about as polished as it can be for a mid budget kids film, visually its drenched in kids culture 1988-1994 and the cine is rich. With largely solid compositional choices, decent use of B-roll and depth of field and lively camera that isnt afraid to get up to some panning or tracking action.

As for the performances, theres a wonderful energy between Fred Savage, Luke Edwards and Jenny Lewis. I try to avoid talking about child actors performances when writing these kinds of reviews. But I will say as a triptic? They brought a lot of energy to the picture, seemed to be having fun, and given a lot of the movie lives or dies by how they handled their scenes together they more than carry this thing.

Jackey Vinson as Lucas is a solid ‘baddie’. As is Will Seltzer as the private investigator Putnam. If anything the baddies in this film almost feel a bit out of place compared to usual kids film baddies. they go a little bit extra comparatively and I feel it only adds another strange layer to this wonderfully weird experiment of a movie.

All in all? I cant kid myself that this thing is anything other than an extended attempt at selling kids on an NES, the Powerglove and the near 100 games (at the time) that were available. It fails at the first rule of advertising however, which is that the focus should always be a call to action for your ONE product. it should be ‘BUY THIS!’ not ‘Buy this! and this! and this!’ As such, the advertising has a weird relationship with this film in the sense that, the film wouldnt make sense without it, but because SO MANY corporations want a piece of the pie, the message the film ultimately wants to send gets lost in the mix.

That being said, despite the clear intention of the picture. I had fun with it. It reminded me heavily of movies like ‘Mac and Me’ in terms of tone and vibe, in fact the pair would probably make for a hell of a double bill.

Is this thing gonna hold the attention of the average 21st century kid these days? ABSOLUTELY NOT. this thing might as well be dubbed into a foreign language with no subtitles for all the relevence its going to have to todays children. But if your a glassy eye’d nostalgic X0-something and looking for an hour and 40 gateway back to a time when cerealboxes had toys in them, restaurants had ‘smoking sections’ and making your food or drink ‘green slime’ coloured/flavoured was about as appitising as it got. I can almost guarentee you’ll have a fond time with this thing.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-wizard/

Y’know, it’s times like this that I kind of wish we could ressurect Mary Whitehouse and take her to the movies.

Evil Dead Rise sees the return of the much beloved franchise 10 years after it’s last cinematic outing (itself a quasi reboot/remake of the original 1981 classic) and I would argue its something of a triumphant return after Warner bros damn near dumped the thing on HBO max.

The plot revolves around a family in a small collapsing apartment complex. The complex is set to be torn down in a months time, so single mum Ellie and her 3 kids are getting things ready for a move. That is until her estranged sister who’s work requires her to travel arrives at the complex with quite important news. Before too many words can be exchanged however an earthquake hits the apartment complex revealing a (previously undiscovered) bank vault, inside which sits several mysterious records and a book with teeth.

If you’ve seen an Evil Dead movie before, you know it doesnt take long for limbs to start flying, squishy bits to start being gauged and all manner of grim and unhiged oomska. With the big question hanging over the movie being: Will whats left of the family survive a night against the deadites?

Right off the bat I feel the need to clarify, if you havent seen this movie, it’s much more in line tonally with the original ‘Evil Dead’ and the 2013 remake than it is ‘Evil Dead 2’, ‘Army of Darkness’ and ‘Ash Vs The Evil Dead’ This is a movie that, while it doesnt take itself BITTERLY seriously, is not the goof around that the other ‘Evil Dead’ films can be at times.

I was quite thankful ultimately that someone told me the vibe was more in line with ‘Evil Dead’ (2013) than ‘Evil Dead 2’ because had I gone in prepared for the latter, i’d have been dissapointed. What we have here is a *slightly* uneven but ultimately VERY gory thrill ride of a movie that absolutely has its moments, but didnt quite hit the mark for me.

The script is a bit on the lumpy side, with a 1st act thats a little bit too slow for my taste in terms of setting up the characters, establishing the setting, introducing the necronimicon and the whole ‘deadite’ thing. Which then gives way to a near breakneck 2nd and 3rd act that if anything goes too far the other way, characters arnt even allowed to breath letalone develop and in the 2nd act particularly we do end up in a bit of a cycle of deadite attacks and rests.

Equally, while the more serious nature of this film is more than welcome and I do think it does a tremendous job in setting and maintaining an atmosphere of unease, I personally did kind of wish the film would have gotten at least a *little* bit more playful with its characters. For the most part everyone involved is playing it largely straight The Deadites here have some fantastic lines at times, but apart from one or two moments where they mess with the humans, they dont really do much. It would have been nice to see them play around with possessing inanimate objects, gaslighting the humans and…well…causing chaos. There are chaotic moments. But they’re just that…moments. I never really felt the film lost control, nothing surprised me and a lot of the more ‘horror’ oriented moments relied on jumpscares…Which is just cheap and really didnt do it for me.

The gore kind of fell a bit flat for me too, especially based on whats come before it. With most of the more violent sequences either being stuff we’ve seen before in previous entries or Over CGI’d gumpf that felt forced and looked poor. There were a couple of practical effects moments that did have me squirming, but they were very few and far between and the rest? well it just didnt quite have the mania of violence and carnage that previous Evil Dead movies had.

Thats absolutley not to say though that this wasnt a fun watch! quite the contrary! If you can push past the first act you’ll find a rip roarer for the most part thats entertaining, adds to the existing mythos of the franchise and most importantly, manages to survive without Sam Raimi or Bruce Campbell gripping tightly to the reigns. THAT, in and of itself HAS to be applauded. I wont get into spoilers here, but what I will say is, there were a few continuity issues that cropped up in the 3rd act that undercut the ending a bit for me. But if this thing gets a sequel (and I sincerely hope it does) it more than gives some scope for this thing to really break out and flourish.

The Directions more than decent, it’s nice to see fresh faces tackle the franchise and I feel here, Lee Cronin has done a fabulous job in taking what Raimi laid as a foundation and added to it. it carries its own distinct style, puts the occasional nod to Raimis work in there but it isnt restrained by it. it’s more than happy to go off and do its own thing. While that does garner mixed results (there were parts of this film where it started to feel a little like a generic mainstream zombie movie and less like an Evil Dead film) those moments were mercifully brief and when this thing punches, it punches HARD. A really solid attempt at re-establishing the franchise and a more than solid foundation for a sequel to build on. I thought it was great.

The cine too is punchy, creative and vile in all the best ways. While I dont quite think this entry hit the stylistic highs of ‘Evil Dead’ (2013) it certainly holds its own, and barring a few scenes in one of the hallways that were a little over-dark making it difficult to make out what was actually happening. We had rock solid compostion, decent use of colour and lighting to create a vibrantly moody atmosphere that didnt so much steal from the other films, more recycle and upcycle what was there into a more contemporary vision.

The cast were astounding Alyssa Sutherland is probably one of the greatest deadite performances the franchise has seen. Dancing the line between aggressive, quietly terrifying and unhinged. She works a tremendous range, gives her all to the performance and is EASILY worth the price of admission alone. Its a shame most film awards overlook horror as a category, because she really was a force in this thing.

Gabrielle Echols is also fantastic as Bridget (Ellies Daughter), its almost criminal just how underused she is really in this film because, while in the first act her performance is a little on the dry side, by the time the 2nd act revs up she really hits her stride, totally gets into the swing of things and then the film shifts focus away from her. I’d have genuinely loved to have seen more of her in this movie honestly.

Equally; It would be amiss of me not to mention Lily Sullivan, who does a more than serviceable job as ‘Beth’ she doesnt *quite* get the range that Alyssa does in this, and as a lead, shes maybe a tad on the dry side. but she brings her own voice to the production. I didnt dislike her and when the 3rd act opens up she really embraces the role and clearly is having fun with it.

What I will say is, a lot of these performances do teeter just a bit into a generic TV acting style, the kind of performances you’d see in a TV movie (which…again, is probably understandable given WB were going to put this on HBOs streaming) While it didnt exactly ruin the experience for me, there were a few moments in this where things felt a little too safe, and I never really felt like any of the characters (based on their performances) were ever in any *real* sense of danger. in a film where the cast should (rightfully) be panicking when their mum is turned into a deadite, instead for a lot of the scenes, the cast just came across as quiet. not concerned. and thats a bit of a problem.

And the soundtrack? it’s oppressive. Im not sure if it’s the theatre I saw this at or if this is how the films actually mixed. but it’s INSANELY loud. like…kudos to them for mixing the vocals high enough that I could actually hear what the cast were saying (a major problem with a lot of modern films) but there were points here where it very much felt like the ‘score’ was just a sound technician cramming as much noise as he could onto the timeline and peaking the crap out of it. I have ADHD and there were several points where the films score got so loud that I ended up dissassociating and I could only hear static. it was crazy. AND it didnt work if the idea was to make me feel scared or uneasy, because I was so preoccupied thinking ‘This is BLOODY loud!’ that I couldnt focus on the spooky stuff on screen.

All in all? ‘Evil Dead Rise’ is a more than fine entry into the franchise. I enjoyed it, I could easily see this being a film that improves with rewatches, I could absolutely recommend it, is it the best Evil Dead movie? No. Absolutely not. it’s probably not even in the top 3. But it’s still an entertaining piece to experience, and I really hope (based on its current success in the box office) that they do decide to build on this, because theres a LOT of potential bubbling under the surface of this thing.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-dead-rise/

I didnt quite know what I was getting into when I checked out Stuart Gordons take on ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ I figured maybe a slightly more graphic take on the Roger Corman effort from the 60’s. This was not the case.

Instead Gordon HAS gone the route of Corman, in essence taking the original Poe story and wrapping it around a completley fresh take, largely focussed on the inquisition and it’s cruelty towards anyone they deemed to be ‘of sin’ and in particular of a young woman who begs mercy on behalf of a woman during a witch trial, only to find herself charged with witchcraft too.

It’s not bad all things being said, It could best be summed up as ‘What if someone made an exploitation adaptation of a Poe film?’ with gratuitous gore, people being set on fire, full frontal nudity and at least a couple of scenes of dry humping. it cant be said that this film isnt at least TRYING to be entertaining.

The scripts fine enough, the dialogues a little odd as they blend ‘ye olde’ type dialogue with zingers and more modernist language, which did kind of pull me out of the film a bit (I wish it had picked a lane) The bulk of the film is largely centered around the relationship between the bakers wife and the head of the inquisition who’s openly corrupt. Theres absolutely a sense of drama here and the tone and pace, especially for a ‘Full Moon’ production I thought was actually really quite solid.

Theres a clean 3 act structure that transitions nicely between the acts with a real smoothness, characters that are noteworthy all seem to get a decent bit of establishing and development (though, a couple of characters who arnt in the film very long, but DO steer a lot of the plot did come out a little underdeveloped I fear).

The only thing script wise I didnt much care for honestly was just the fact that it in places can be rather unpleasent. I know the whole point of the movie is that these are unpleasent people, doing unpleasent things at an unpleasent time. But that kind of thing usually works best with a bit of nuance, some light to contrast the dark. Here, it’s all dark, and as such I found it quite an oppressive watch. I cant deny it isnt entertaining and reletively well made. But BECAUSE its so oppressive it kind of stopped me out and out loving it. I think there needed to be a bit more there than ‘We establish half a dozen characters in act one and then slowly torture them to varying states of death for acts 2 and 3’

The directions rock solid, I wouldnt have doubted Gordon for a minute and here he delivers a piece that really feels professional, cinematic and heavily styalised. Theres a couple of nice homages to the Corman version of ‘Pit’ dribbed and drabbed throughout which I thought was a nice touch. But Gordon here has largely managed to bring a distinct and clear take on the story to the surface and i’d arguably rank it amongst some of his best quite honestly.

The cine too is relatively sharp, its a well paced edit with plenty of experimentation and B-roll to work with, shots are well composed. the colour pallet is a little bit too muted for my taste, but the style they’ve gone for is a muted piece punctuated with sharp contrasting colours to help offset it. It works in places, but i’d have personally been happier to see more colour in the offing honeslty. This is a bit above standard professional film work, and I was generally impressed for most of the runtime.

As for the performances? it’s a mixed bag. The bulk of the cast are good to wobbly honestly, delivering performances that seem uncertain. Some go with melodrama and that I feel is where the film shines best, others seem to think this is some kind of serious adaptation and they’re the ones who I feel suffer the most. That being said all the cast are at least animate and work with their set spaces to some degree and it’s clear Stuart Gordon worked closely with them to get the best out of them that he could.

The absolute showstealers here though have to be Lance Hendrickson and Rona De Ricci as the bakers wife and the leader of the inquisition. they BOTH seem to PERFECTLY get the tone this thing is searching for. Which is very fortunate as they’re the people we spend most of the time with on screen. they’re both super memorable, give melodramatic and over the top performances that are entertaining and genuinely fascinating to see. I loved them both in this, and they were easily the biggest reason to check this thing out.

Oh…and the soundtracks fine. nothing mind blowing, but it does the job. I know some people absolutley love this things score, im just happy to settle for “At least it doesnt sound like every other Full Moon film”. It punctuates the film at just the right moments and helps add emphasis. It’s not lifechanging. but it gets things done.

All in all, I thought this was okay, definitely recommended if your getting into ‘Full Moon’ and want to see some of their best offerings. While I personally probably wont catch it all too often due to just HOW opressive the film is in terms of themes and scripting. I thought it was a perfectly competent entertaining little watch.

Though it did get me thinking about similar match ups of exploitation film makers and classic literature. Im sure we’d all be down for Russ Meyer’s “Sense and Sensibilities”, Tinto Brass’s “Great Expectations” or David F. Friedmans “Jane Eyre”…hmm…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-pit-and-the-pendulum/

While not *technically* a ‘Full Moon’ production (This is an Empire pictures offering and Full Moon wouldnt be established till 5 years after this film came out) ‘Trancers’ is about as ‘Full Moon’ as its possible to get really, and given that this film has now been ‘rebadged’ to carry the ‘Full Moon’ logo at the beginning of the film AND that all the sequels to this film were produced and released by ‘Full Moon’…AND that this was directed by Charles Band AND it contains a lot of cast and crew who would go on to work more or less full time for ‘Full Moon’, Im just gonna go ahead and give this thing a free pass into my current and ongoing ‘Full Moon’ marathon.

The plots actually kind of original all things considered for the time. The films set in the 23rd century and follows rogue cop ‘Jack Deth’ who’s obsessed with taking down the remnents of the ‘Trancers’ almost zombie like remnents of people who are being controlled like human puppets by a psychically powerful criminal called ‘Whistler’, when the film opens Jacks on the trail of the last of the Trancers, but it quickly becomes apparent that Whistler is FAR from deceased. and has instead escaped back in time to 1985 where he’s inhabited the body of one of his decendents with the intent to kill the descendents of the legal teams who put him away, thus not only erasing them from the timeline, but all their reletives leading up to that point.

In the opening moments of the film Jack hands his badge in as the chief of police isnt too happy with Jack going off brief to try and take out the Trancers, but they manage to convince him back when Whistlers plan is revealed and it’s here the main plot of the film kicks in. Jack is to travel back to 1985 with some spy gadgets and bring Whistler back to future alive in order to stand trial. Jacks initially hesitent because he wants Whistler dead, but agrees and heads back into the body of one of his decendents, where he’s immediately met by said decendents punk girlfriend ‘Lena’

Between them Jack must find his bearings in 80s Los Angeles, locate whistler and prevent anyones bloodlines being wiped out. in a fairly firey and action packed production!

While I cant say I was absolutely smitten with this one, I did have a fun enough time with it. The plot is really quite original for the time given the likes of ‘Highlander’ were still 2 years away, I enjoyed the Neo noir aesthetic of the 23rd century and when the action shifted to the 80s that wonderful grimeyness reminded me a little bit of a lower budgeted ‘cheap and cheerful’ version of ‘Big Trouble in Little China Town’

The pacing is a little stop/start for my taste, it would have been nice to have things gradually ramp up and down depending on act needs. But i’ve seen films handle this kind of thing way worse, tonally it’s solid, it knows the kind of world it wants to build and how it wants the characters within that world to behave, theres maybe a few wobbly bits on the scientific accuracy of some of the stuff touted here, but if I came to Empire pictures for scientific accuracy, I might as well go to my plumber for tap dancing lessons.

Theres a more than clean 3 act structure that DOES transition between those acts fairly well. Its a short film, clocking in at a measly 76 minutes, which I for one am VERY grateful for. and while the pacing is bit inconsistent, I was also grateful that there wasnt too much in the way of padding. All in? this is just a fairly original, decently written low-mid budget script that gets in, does what it needs to do, and gets out. If I was being nitpicky i’d have maybe finessed a little more off the running time, another 5 minutes could have been lost with no major issues and it probably would have worked as a tighter piece all round, but hey. These guys were making all sorts of rubbish around this time. This is decent.

Directions rock solid too, again its inescapable that budget was clearly an issue as some of the set designs do look a little rough around the edges (putting drainpipes down the sides of an early 80s hatchback does not a future car make) But Band works with what he has as best he can and I was genuinely kind of impressed with what he and the team managed to pull off. especially in the 80s parts of the movie where they really help drive that griminess home in places.

Its also clear the cast were worked with closely (presumably because they couldnt afford for too many mistakes/redos) as they all give fairly professional clear and clean performances they work with the set space and are animate and precise with what they’re doing within the scene. Which I think saves this film in more than a few places, as it would have been so easy for this thing to devolve into head and shoulder shots of people firing exposition at each other for over an hour.

The cines solid too we have sequences where the camera isnt afraid to move around the set/location with a decent mix of shot types ,pans and tracking shots, it adds a real veneer of professionalism that does help smooth out the rougher aspects of the set design. Theres a nice use of colour with plenty of neon getting a showing and the sequences themselves are tightly packaged, with good amounts of B-roll.

I absolutely think this thing could have gone further with experimentation. But for whats there? we have a rock blood SOLID piece that does go above the average on delivery and even though it could have gone further, its trying, and I have a lot of appreciation for that.

Performances are all solid as well though for my money Tim Thomerson is easily the show stealer as Jack. he really works with those noir elements to help bring out a character thats 1 part ‘Maltese Falcon’ to 1 part ‘Blade Runner’. He works a more than decent range across the runtime of this thing, hes animate, lively and bang on on the delivery front throughout and I thought he was easily worth checking this thing out for alone.

All in all? This was a DAMN fine work, probably Charles Bands best work as a director (in my opinion, nothings topped this as of the time of writing at least!) While imperfect, if your looking for a decent original piece of Sci-fi that, may not necessarily WOW, but is satisfying, confident in its own ability, entertaining and able to hold your attention for the full runtime. Then ‘Trancers’ is almost certainly worth checking out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/trancers/

If your hankering for a big daft horror movie with very mild sci-fi elements. Well; in 1971, Al Adamson delivered in spades when he released ‘Brain of Blood’ to an unsuspecting public. a film that…well, it’s not great, but it’s at least vaguely trying something.

The plots a bit odd for this one I think it’s fair to say, it largely revolves around a doctor and his assistants who are working on an experimental procedure to transfer the brains of dying patients into healthy, but deceased bodies, with the aim of extending their lives. Natrually, the film focusses on the leader of a rich and powerful country who managed to pull his land up from the fringes of poverty into a powerhouse of economic growth. He also has terminal cancer and has arranged to be the doctors first *proper* experiment in doing a bit of the old ‘body swapping’

Things dont quite go to plan, stuff gets a bit crazy. it’s a bit of a monster movie, but not really and honestly? I kind of felt a bit ‘meh’ about this one in terms of Adamsons works that i’ve seen.

The plot isnt particularly well defined and it is, in effect just a bit of a runaround. It takes the first act and a bit of the Universal ‘Frankenstein’ adaptation, and bolts on literally half an hour of running around in the woods and a dungeon sequence, then calls it a day. As such its unevenly paced, doenst really set anything in the way of a distinct tone, has middling dialogue and largely coasts on gore, weirdness and the absurd to get it by.

Its easily 20 minutes longer than it needed to be, whether thats due to budget limitations meaning they didnt have scope to do anything other than running around in the woods and maybe a car chase, I cant honeslty say. But the end result is a cheap feeling film that just never really seems to hit it’s stride. it just idles for 86 minutes and then closes. In fact, if it wasnt for the weirdness, it’d just have been a very dry affair truthfully.

The directions a bit lifeless as well, Adamson usually has a quite distinct way of shooting movies like this, but it really feels like a film in autopilot for most of the runtime. it’s working to get the job done, but non of the elements on screen work particularly well together and even the cast seem a bit aimless in knowing exactly what to exepect.

The same can be said for the cine which is also fairly flat, they have some colour usage here to help at least make the beige hell seem a bit more vibrant but all the lighting is floodlit or flat profile, shots have almost no depth of field or experimentation to them and barring literally a handful of scenes that do feel a little bit more considered. This whole thing basically feels ultra slow, plodding and pretty muted on any kind of distinction.

Non of the performances are particularly memorable and the scores pretty much non existent. I just…I didnt really get on with this thing. Like, I didnt actively hate it, if it was on in the background I wouldnt take umbridge with it. But Its just very generic and not really worth going out of your way for. Not one I can recommend, if you want a film with a similar vibe that, in my opinion is better made. I’d say check out ‘Freakmaker’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/brain-of-blood/

I have a rather soft spot for the works of Al Adamson, and ‘Dracula Vs Frankenstein’ is one of those films that, despite its MASSIVE flaws (and it is VERY much riddled with flaws) Theres something tonally about it that just really won me over.

For a starters, the titles TOTALLY misleading. The implication from a promotional standpoint that this films going to BE ‘Dracula Vs Frankenstein’ but in reality that doesnt really happen until the VERY end of the movie and Dracula and Frankenstein arnt even really IN the movie for about 2/3rds of the runtime.

The film opens with Dracula recovering the body of the original Frankensteins monster from a graveyard before we cutaway to what is the ACTUAL plot of the film, as we’re introduced to a young stage performer by the name of Judith who’s sister Joanie has gone missing. After a chat to the police, Judith decides to head out to Joanies last known whereabouts, where she’s almost immediatley ‘spiked’ by a gang who think shes an undercover cop.

Just before this happens though we’re introduced to a couple of hippies who decide to hit a pier based fairground and stumble on an attraction known as ‘The Creature Emporium’ fronted by a carnival barking dwarf and supplied by the last in line to the ‘Frankenstein’ namesake, whos operating under a pseudonym to avoid drawing attention.

It turns out that Dr. Frankenstein, with the help of his mute and largely child like man servent Gorton has been running experiments on random women who happen to go under the pier at night. The Dr. sends out Gorton to decapitate them, then he brings the remains to the dr who sows them back together and reanimates them.

Naturally as you can imagine, it doesnt take long for Dracula to become involved and when he tells the Dr that he has his great grandfathers original creation in his possession. Well, as these stories go you better believe he gets ressurected and that both Dracula and Frankenstein then pretty much dissapear till the final 10 minutes.

Thats one of the biggest problems this film has really, it introduces the titual characters in the first 15-30 minutes, then has them pretty much dissapear (barring the occasional VERY quick cutaway) till the end! What a rip!

What is here though is fine enough fair, though it REEKS of ‘poverty row cinema’ this really wouldnt have felt out of place in the 40s as far as scripting goes. it’s a super basic 3 act structure, the pacings SUPER messy with plot points starting and stopping at random, theres no care to craft these elements together its just ‘Scene start, scene end, next scene.’ from beginning to end.

To that end, the ending itself is also a little underwhelming, I wont spoil it here, but it just kind of left me shrugging and asking if that was it.

Honestly? this whole things a bit of a runaround, but at least its a runaround that TRIES to have a bit of action thrown into the mix, even if it isnt the greatest or goriest in the world, this very much feels like a throwback to an age of cinema where you could getaway with cheap effects, low gore and women in peril as the main selling point. and in that sense I kind of found it a little endearing from a tonal perspective.

Direction is flat, lifeless and largely by the numbers. This is the kind of film that thinks having a coloured light in the shot suddenly makes it ‘Sophisticated’ Adamson was never known for particularly stunning visuals, he made films the same way Chef Boyardee makes gourmet Italian food. But I think that kind of works to his favour here as, given the cheap and cheerful nature of the script, the direction being basic and a bit all over the place only kind of enhances that feeling.

Same goes for the cine as well, which is also fairly flat, fairly lifeless and just…Bizarre for 1971, it’s a bit like when they did ‘The Munsters’ revival in the 90s. how this thing looks and feels visually feels SO out of time with the era it’s ACTUALLY being shot in. I find it quite mesmorising honestly.

As for the performances? This was the last on screen appearence of both Lon Cheney Jr. and J. Carrol Naish. Watching them both here, I was reminded of The scene in ‘Ed Wood’ where Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi laments the fact he turned down ‘Frankenstein’ before it became the next big thing. Its terrifically sad to think that THE Lon Cheney Jr. ended his career playing a mute psycho maniac who gurns his way through 70 minutes of the 90 minute runtime…But here we are.

The rest of the cast, by low budget 70’s cinema standards, do fine enough, they’re unremarkable though, nothing we wouldnt have seen from the low/no budget dregs of this era. they’re a little low on animation and they dont really use the set spaces as much as they could, but i’ve seen WAY worse in my time.

And as for the soundtrack? it’s a mixture of the most GENERIC late 60’s/early 70’s rock I’ve EVER heard in a movie before, almost comically so, combined with some of the original scores to the Universal monster movies (The Creature from the black lagoon was one I clearly picked out, but their are apparently more from other monster movies) it only really helps cement the rough and ready nature of this throwback flick.

All in all, this things a total mess, the script promises one thing and delivers another, and even then! the thing it does deliver is messy, quite incoherent, poorly plotted and paced with no real actual purpose or point established for the majority of the runtime.

The directions flat and lifeless as is the cine and the cast are a bit bland. and yet…I still kind of dug this one on tone and gaul alone. It absolutely ISNT a good movie by any stretch, but if your looking for a bizarre piece of cinema that seemed to be made with noone in mind but the director. This will more than tick the boxes. I’d say if your into ‘Poverty row’ cinema, or are into the kind of releases ‘Something Weird’ have put out over the years. you may actually kind of get on with this one. If you dont have the patience for that kind of nonsense waffle however, i’d say give this a miss.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-vs-frankenstein/

For full transparency, my review here comes from the place of someone whos played pretty much every mainline mario game released outside of Japan, almost all of the sideline games (party, tennis, golf etc) and has been a fan of Nintendos games pretty much right from the beginning.

So when I say that ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ is a pretty okay film, but that your milage WILL vary massively depending on if you’ve played these games and understand the lores and references. I hope that establishes the kind of film your getting into.

I was initially quite skeptical about the ‘Illumination’/’Nintendo collaboration. Im not a big fan of the ‘Dispicable Me’ movies and I have a mixed to negative feeling towards ‘Minions’ But I figured if Nintendo managed to keep a tight enough grasp on their IP as they have in the past when licensing their games out to 3rd parties, that things would probably be alright. And thats quite literally what this is.

Its basically an origins film charting Mario and Luigi, two brooklyn based schlubs who’ve just launched their first attempt at starting their own business in plumbing. They’re not very good at it, but when an opportunity presents itself that’ll give profile to their little business, they jump at the chance and wind up in a crazy ‘otherworldly’ trip to the ‘Mushroom Kingdom’.

On the way however, Luigi ends up getting split up from Mario and winds up in the clutches of the Evil king Bowser and his minions, who’ve recently stolen a ‘Power Star’ with the intent to either give the star to Princess Peach as a gift to initiate a marriage, OR, if she refuses the gift, Bowser intends to use it to destroy the mushroom kingdom. Peach is made aware of this and so, with Mario confused but largely going along with it, the pair head out to the ‘Kong’ Kingdom to try and get help to stop Bowsers army before its too late.

The script here, iiiiiis a little bit lumpy if im being totally honest. My biggest issue with the film truthfully is that a lot of stuff just kind of ‘Happens’ and we’re expected to go along with it. The film runs at a near break neck pace and in places it almost feels like a series of ‘minisodes’ that have been stitched together into a feature rather than a coherent 3 act structured film.

This is one of the few times where I kind of wish the film had slowed down by maybe 10 minutes or so, because there are a LOT of instances where a new plot element or layer is introduced that really could have done with a little more backstory, explanation or grounding. But instead we’re just kind of told to ‘roll with it’ as we career through this thing like a runaway truck.

It has a pretty basic story to tell, which it does fine enough, but I just wish they’d let the thing breath a little more because so much is thrown at you across the runtime that it quickly starts to feel a little messy.

Outside of that, if you’re a nintendo fan, this is a total nostalgiafest, barely a single scene goes by without SOME kind of nintendo or mario reference being stratetgically placed in the background, and we’re talking some really deep cuts at that!

It has a fine enough 3 act structure all things considered and it transitions fairly seamlessly between those acts, but I feel like the 3rd act is a bit rushed (its where most of the issues around more breathing space seem to come up) and the actual end scene left me feeling a bit hollow after all the awesome stuff that had come before it. it all kind of ends with a bit of whimper after a series of collosal bangs and that was a bit of ashame.

The important thing with a film like this is the humour, structuring and whether it would appeal to kids. and; I was honestly amazed, given that this is an illumination film at the RESTRAINT that was executed on behalf of the production team in not just devolving the whole thing into crass fart jokes. Nintendo must have had a total iron grip on the production because I cannot BEGIN to tell you my relief when I realised that this thing was ACTUALLY going to have some solid humour in it.

And it does! it’s not the greatest comedy of all time, but it’s gentle, had more successes than failures for me and I laughed out loud at least more than a couple of times. One thing I do have to say though is, they do a gag where they have a character do something funny in super slow motion, and it was funny the first time, but by the 10th time it’d happened within an hour I was about ready to throw my chair through the screen.

The structuring is a little messy as mentioned and there are a few moments that I personally thought for a PG rating (given that this is probably aimed at kids aged 5-12) were a little bit intense (mild spoilers here but a scene featured in the trailers for this movie in which Luigi is stalked in a graveyard by an army of Drybones put some 15 certificate zombie movies i’ve seen to shame in terms of intense spookiness)

Theres also some weird moments with tone and humour that were kind of odd in places, but I think all parties involved realised that while kids were the target demographic for this film, sweaty nerds like me would also be keen to catch this thing.

Is the film gonna win kids over? im honestly not 100% convinced. The screening I attended had a fair few kids in attendence and throughout the film I heard a fair few proclaimations of ‘IS IT NEARLY OVER!?’ and ‘WHO’S THAT!?’ Theres a lot of slow going moments in the opening act where they establish Brooklyn only to then pretty much NEVER bother with Brooklyn. and I think kids will probably struggle to make it through all the establishing, especially if a lot of it isnt all that relevent. Despite its current 800 million dollar gross at the box office I think it’s gonna be the parents who come away from this thing more satisfied than the kids honestly.

Art direction and cine are absolutley on point, we have no instances of ‘Ugly Sonic’ here which is fantastic, almost all the characters are very closely modelled on Nintendos most recent 3d mario character models, with some very minor tweaks to Mairo, Luigi and Donkey Kong to help match the aesthetic animation styles. Its decent! and I think they really manage to bring the worlds within the mario universe to life in a pleasent, entertaining and power packed way!

Perfomance wise, The single best decision this film has is casting Charlie Day as ‘Luigi’ he’s got that wonderful panicked nervousness behind his voice and honestly, even given Charles Martine’s efforts over the last few decades, I think Day does a fantastic job and I honestly just wished he’d had more on screen time (The petition for a ‘Luigis Mansion’ movie starts NOW!)

Outside of that Jack Black is fine enough as Bowser, he brings a nice menace to the role that wasnt expected, Anya Taylor-Joy is fantastic as Princess Peach and again, genuinely surprised me as I was expecting a bit more of a retreating personality here, but to see Peach kick ass and genuinely come across as a really well rounded strong female character (and not just a ‘damzel in distress’) I thought was very entertaining and a nice development on the character.

The weakest elements here for me are Chris Pratt and Seth Rogan as Mario and Donkey Kong. and it’s not so much that they’re bad, just…they dont really bring a lot of character to the performances, I didnt personally feel like they made their characters their own, it just felt like I was listening to Chris Pratt and Seth Rogan. it maybe would have been nice to see them bring a little more than just, ‘themselves but a bit peppy’ to proceedings.

And finally, the soundtrack. And if you’re a gamer. This things INSANE. almost the entire film is made up of medlys and deep cuts from ALL the mario games and even some Nintento products. From the Gamecube boot up screen jingle, to random tracks from ‘Wrecking Crew’ and almost every single mario game from the original right up to ‘Odyssy’ this clearly had a LOT of thought and patience put into it and it’s an astounding tribute to nearly 40 years of fantastic music.

All in all? yeh! it was okay! Its not without its problems, I think the inevitable sequel will likely fix a lot of that, but considering the people involved, this could have been a lot LOT worse. Im not convinced your kids will love it personally, but if you have a love for the games or you’ve grown up with Nintendo, Id say this was worth seeing once at least.

I think my partner put it better than I ever could when, as we left the cinema she said ‘That was decent, it’s not something i’d be clamouring to watch again, but if I saw it was on one of the streaming services Im subbed to, i’d put it on in the background for a bit of a nostalgia hit.’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-super-mario-bros-movie/

The Definition of ‘Middle of the road’ cinema, ‘Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys’ is basically a ‘free for all’ on ‘Full Moons’ part and I feel the it garners something of a set of mixed results. Where it works, it’s decent, nothing spectacular, but solid enough, where it fails? Well. It’s not quite as bad as ‘Puppet Master: Legacy’ but it’s absolutely heading in that direction.

The film basically unites 3 of ‘Full Moons’ IP’s at that time (I believe they didnt use ‘Puppet Master’ for this film as they were already tied up in a bit of a convoluted series of events in their own series at this point. But in it’s place we see characters from ‘Dollman’, ‘Demonic Toys’ and ‘Bad Channels’ unite in a story that picks up a few months after the events of all three of these series individual respective films. With tough intergalactic cop ‘Brick Bardo’ hitchiking across the US to try and locate Ginger from ‘Bad Channels’ as, the events of her own movie have left her shrunk to a mere 12 inches and currently living in someones kitchen drawer.

Meanwhile, Judith Grey is continuing to explore the strange goings on of the Demonic Toys, and after a tip off of someone breaking into the Lucky toys factory she sneaks in against her officers wishes to see whats going on, only to arrive *just* too late and a drunken homeless man gets murdered, with his blood being used to reanimate the demonic toys, who set about ressurecting their ‘master’.

Judith is let go from the force for disobeying orders and decides to follow a lead about Brick and Ginger, eventually leading to all three of them teaming up to take on the demonic toys in a 3rd act finale thats…well..it’s SOMETHING I guess…

I didnt hate this thing, but I think the broad opinion I have on this thing is basically that it feels like a cheap and cheerful rushed attempt at a cash in. Almost like they had all these elements just kind of lying around and decided, rather than waste them, to just shoot SOMETHING and try and squeeze as much profit out of the thing as possible.

The plots fine enough, its not as good as any of the films that preceeded it, but for a way to kill an hour, you could do a LOT worse from ‘Full Moon’ But thats not to say this is by any means a good film. Its SUPER overeliant on stock footage, which basically pads a good quarter to a third of the runtime, for an hour, its a pretty zippy movie, but its super basic, tonally kind of all over the place and I feel like it waters down all three of these film series in order to produce one mediocre offering. The act structuring is a little bit sloppy because of the stock footage usage, its use kind of throws the films pacing off at times as we stop to recount specific events from other movies.

Key plot points from those films are also glossed over like, What happened to Judiths kid?, what happened to Dollmans spaceship? or Debi, How did Ginger end up where she is? it could be seen as nitpicking, but a lot of these external films relied on these points as main driving elements. So to pick up a sequel where they’re largely glossed over or forgotten was a bit of a poor show to me.

The characters are also a bit out of character as well compared with the last films, Baby Oopsie has had a change of voice artist and a smartass psychopathic doll has here just been replaced with a crude, squeaky voiced pervert. Bricks softened considerably, has nowhere NEAR as wisecracking an attitude as he did in ‘Dollman’ and Judiths had a nuanced ‘firm but fair’ sterness replaced with just a flat out cold and aggressively blunt attitude.

The dialogue across the board has taken a significant step down in quality and crudeness is much MUCH more prominent. On the whole this feels like a step back in quality on the script front in almost every regard, it feels like they’ve taken some complex ideas and just dumbed them down to the point that ANYONE, whether they’ve seen the other films or not, will be able to get on board. Which neuters the film in terms of its ability to world build.

The direction feels a bit on the cheap side as well, everythings pretty much shot for function over style, it’s a blunt viewing experience that gets the job done, but lacks the distinct style that all these other movies brought to the table. it’s passable. But thats all it is really.

Direction of the cast is also kind of neglected a bit, we have the barest elements of these original characters here and they seem to have been given a basic scene walkthrough and not a lot else to work with. As such we’re relying on the performers (who all VERY much feel like they’re here for the paycheque and little else) to bring their characters back to life. Something I think they have a decent stab at…but with the script being tepid, they can only do so much.

The cine feels quite lifeless too, It had 3 films to pick a style to copy from, and they chose ‘Demonic Toys’ the least interesting looking film stylistically of the three. and it feels like a ‘Soundalike’ copy of that cinematography. cheaper, less arty, less interesting, flat underlit cine that again is here more for style over function. I cant fault it on a technical level because in that regard it IS passable. but again. thats all it is really.

OH! and *something something* Richard Band does the music *Something Something* Generic ‘Full Moon’ sound *Something Something* heard it in one movie, heard it a million times Etc. Etc…

I didnt hate this film, but I didnt love it either. by the skin of it’s teeth it managed to maintain a level of energy and narrative development that kept me on board, it’s passable. a scrape ‘C’ grade movie that, if you enjoyed ‘Demonic Toys’ you’ll probably quite like this one. If you liked ‘Dollman’ you’ll probably feel a bit underwhelmed and confused, and if you liked ‘Bad Channels’ you’ll probably just appreciate that Full Moon remembered this film existed.

By NO means an ‘essential’ watch, it’s totally skippable, but if you DO have an hour to kill and you dont have to overexert yourself to catch this thing, you may just have an okayish time with it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dollman-vs-demonic-toys/

A rather interesting beast, ‘Dollman’ couldnt have been more of a ‘right place, right time’ kind of feature. With ‘Full Moon Features’ still fairly in its infancy as a company, the decision to make this pint sized Science fiction action thriller about a 13 inch tall grimey cop who shoots first and asks questions later, who while chasing a perp winds up crash landing on earth and gets dragged into taking on a Spanish drug cartel in a rundown part of town to protect the non drug taking locals. Well…it’s certainly a change of pace from the kind of stuff they were turning out at this time thats for sure!

But what we have here, while not outstanding in my opinion, IS a lot of fun! The scripts got a nice sense of melodrama, but is equally quite coherent in the story it wants to tell, it has clean act structuring pretty solidly written characters who do undergo some growth across the runtime, the pacings nice and nippy and at just shy of 90 minutes it never really feels like it slows down all too often.

The dialogue feels quite fresh and charismatic, its got a thin veneer of self awareness about it, but not so much that it becomes grating (a problem a lot of more modern ‘Full Moon’ and ‘Troma’ films sadly deal with)

I cant say it’s faultless, the moments where this thing does slow down a bit are largely due to repetition, theres WAY too many scenes of our leading actor sat in a space ship in the front room of our leading ladies house just idling or reading a newspaper. Getting into VERY mild spoilers here also, but I didnt feel they really utilised the space villain in the best way either. They just kind of, heavily establish who he is, have him introduce a mcguffin and then get him out of the story as quickly as possible. He was an interesting character! and it would have been interesting to see him developed a bit beyond what we ultimatley got.

Direction wise, its good! I mean, I wouldnt say this was Albert Pyuns best work (I’d lean towards ‘Nemesis’ for that) but its good and solid, it feels thoroughly grimey in almost every sequence, which is a testamony to the crew. And the action scenes, while a little fragmented due to the limitations of available shooting options, due to the fact they had to make some key cast members look increadibly small compared to others, are still really quite impressive and put you right in the middle of the action.

This doesnt feel like a ‘Full Moon’ film at ALL, and thats probably the thing thats saved it from ending up as just another mediocre notch on there filmography list.

Even the cast direction is decently handled, with the cast being largely animate, a little hammy (but for me, thats a plus) and it’s clear they were given a solid rundown of what was needed of them, while also being allowed a *little* wriggle room to flesh their characters out in their own way.

The cines rock solid as well, again, we’re not really in blockbuster/mainstream cinema terratory, but sequences are largely well composed, maintain that grimy feel across the runtime and, while having the film look a little washed out would normally be a criticism for me, here I think it adds to the dinginess to create a film that feels very styalised in a way I havent seen since the low budget efforts of the mid 70s.

Again, thats not to say its not without fault. While the lighting setups are okay for the most part, a few scenes did feel VERY lazily thrown together in my opinion, there was real scope to make the spaceship shots have a nice moody chiascuro edge to them, and they dont really explore that, it’s basically just lit to look dim, and thats about it. Which is a shame. Equally; while some of the visual effects look alright, SOME have not aged well at all. in particular a severed head show in the opening act of the film for a GOOD long while is just, hilariously awful to see nowadays. It may have passed in the VHS era…but here, no dice.

Most of the cast are solid as well though the real star of the picture for my money has to be Tim Thomerson as ‘Brick Bardo’ the titual ‘Dollman’ he’s a no nonsense cop and Tim ABSOLUTELY nails that tone and attitude across the runtime. he’s brash, sarcastic, witty, bullish and stoney, and I think he handles the role expertly and makes it his own to the point that, I dont think I could see someone else play this role and do it justice.

All in all? colour me impressed. Its not the best action sci-fi movie out there, but if you just want 90 minutes of sincerly fun escapism and a bit of a goofy movie to boot. I think this will more than do the job!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dollman/