Category: TYTD Reviews

Kiss Meet the Phantom of the Park (1978)

Season 5 Episode 1! and this is the final season of 2018! yep! this one will take us right the way up to the end of the year. It comes with a massive pro and a massive con in the sense that this is the season where both everything is pretty much scheduled and planned well well in advance. But at the same time because everything is scheduled in so early it means effectively for 2-3 months of this season I’m almost totally inflexible in terms of just adding films in to review.

This is because of both Halloween and Christmas both of which take up about 4-5 weeks worth of episode slots leaving September (Which is a 3 week runner this year) and November (Which admittedly has 5 weeks in it…but 3 of those have had to be scheduled as well due to conflicts in the last season and ongoing projects)

It means that while im very grateful that I can sit here in September and tell you exactly what episodes are going to be running pretty much right the way up to the end of the year. it can get a little bit boring because I know everything that’s coming up and equally I know I cant really deviate from that schedule because seasonal capitalising and all that…

Luckily September is a very flexible very free month! and i’ve decided to do 3 very different style films while I have the chance! So kicking things off Here’s “Kiss meet the Phantom of the Park” a 1978 made for TV movie that genuinely bewilders me even now. Why did they bother making it?…I mean I know they had their comic persona’s but even then who sat down with the band and managed to convince them that this would be a good idea? they surely must be a genius of their field.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down to watch the sort of spiritual follow up to this movie “Scooby doo and Kiss: a Rock and Roll Mystery” and somehow one of two things happened…firstly they somehow managed to outweird this movie…I really dont know how…but they did. And secondly…THEY SET THE THING BACK IN A THEME PARK!…Why!?…Why did they think this would work again!? apart from (And this is the only reasoning I can ascertain) the idea that parents who grew up with “Phantom of the park” will be like “Oh hey!! yeahhhhh!!!!!”…

This isnt the greatest film in the world…hell this isnt even really a mediocre picture…but I think the review will put it into better words than I can type here.

 

(All the other posters are inferior. THIS. This is the coolest poster Kiss have ever been involved in…It says nothing about the film…but it doesnt need to…it’s awesome.)
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Lady Terminator (1989)

It’s collaboration time again! this time with a good friend of mine Raymond. This has been many months in the making we wern’t entirely sure of the best format to present this one in. I like Raymonds video style. he always finds a very entertaining angle to his reviews and he’s arguably one of the most thorough critics in his field when it comes to finding out info.

In the end we settled that I would give way on my channel to him and vice versa for me! as a result this weeks episode is a majority Raymond based episode! it’s a corker and im very proud that the months of scripting and working we did together finally came together and paid off.

Over on Raymonds youtube channel you will find a review for 1993’s Terminator woman in which I had the pleasure of turning up (I’ll be posting that one on here as well seperately)  but in the mean time here is arguably one of the strangest movies I’ve spoken about in a while.

With this video we finally draw a close on season 4. it’s been the longest season to date and while making it I had my doubts…though looking back. im kind of happy I went the way I did with this one…next week will pretty much be quiet so Join us in September for the first episode of Season 5! which will take us right up to the end of the year!

(This is technically a part 2 of 2 I’d advise you go and watch “Terminator woman’s” review first also this is a fairly meh poster…its too busy and blocky)
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Shogun Saints (Boxers of Loyalty and Righteousness) (1972)

A second article in one day!? yes I am spoiling you all! So! I’ve cocked up basically…when I plan my seasons I always try and do 3 TYTD episodes followed by a red triangle. This is for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is that their are more TYTD style films in the world than their are Red triangle ones. Red triangle episodes also take much longer to produce than TYTD episodes due to the amount of information that goes into them. And generally? I quite like keeping the red triangle episodes as once a month episodes purely because it’s like a nice little treat for the end of the month.

This month however I messed up. I’ve had a lot of work on my plate both in my personal life and behind the scenes on the channel and as a result I misread my schedules and ended up with 1 episode too many in this season…I usually try and aim for 18…though based on my current counting it’s now closer to 19 if not 20…rest assured next week their will be an “As scheduled” red triangle episode but in the mean time here’s one more TYTD episode to keep you going.

This ones a bit of an oddity…apparently it’s a quite rare film to own on video tape…it was part of the haul I secured a number of months ago and honestly? It’s very unmemorable. I dont want to come across as egotistical or vein in any sense but honestly? I’d say if you’ve watched this review of the film you’ve pretty much seen everything worth seeing from the movie. it’s not at all memorable and when I need to free up some space in a few months time I’ll most likely end up flogging this one…it’s about as much fun as a quite tame kung-fu movie can be…meh..this film is meh…

 

(the label on my VHS copy of this keeps falling off and the spindles that are supposed to hold the tape inside the carton artn snug enough to hold it…as a result doing the “Packaging shot” for this episode was a total nightmare…with either the label falling off while on the turntable, Or the whole tape falling out of the carton and taking the box with it as they hurtle towards the ground…cracking fun I can assure you.)
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Armed Response (1986)

Well this one went on a bit of a journey to arrive at it’s upload day today if Im being honest. I never really went into the full details of how I ended up with “Armed Response” in my possession. So! dear reader. It’s not much of a tale to tell but here it is.

about 4 months ago my partner messaged me to say that she’d seen a few VHS tapes in a box going on Facebook marketplace for about £5 and that she’d messaged the seller for me to ask if they were still available and suggested I go and check out the listing to see if it was worth pursuing. I jumped on Facebook and there was indeed a box of tapes going for about a fiver and the top of the box had Terminator 1 and 2 in a special presentation tin…I thought to myself “Well…for a fiver it’s worth checking it out just for the terminator tapes” so I waited a day or two and didnt hear anything back from the seller on my partners end so I decided to send a message…the guy responded in 10 minutes. First asking if I was serious and then telling me I could come and get them as soon as possible.

Overlooking the blatant sexism that had occured (My partner was Pissed let me tell you!) I waited till the nearest weekend and then with my sister we hopped to the next town over and found a small bungalow devoid of anything apart from a few dust sheets, an arth and fireplace, and what I can only describe as a trunk full of VHS tapes, with another medium sized box on top of that. It was rediculous. I actually had to ask the geezer selling these if he was genuinely getting rid of them for £5…when he said yes I practically bit his arm off and both me, the seller and my sister hobbled the short distance out of the bungalow into the back of my car.

I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for with this haul. as can be seen here in this live stream where I literally spent about 90 minutes just unboxing the “Trunk” sized box.

Armed response was one of the highlights of that stream, purely because the cover itself is just so weirdly surreal. I literally had no idea what was on this tape but this cover and the fact it had Lee van cleef and David Carradine in it pretty much guarenteed that I needed to get round to this one as soon as possible.

How was it? Well I’ll let the review do the talking:

(I love everything about this cover…the colours, the weird disembodied floating blue and orange head, Carradine with half his face cut off…even subtle things like the vietnam choppers…this is a true masterpiece of VHS coverart.)

 

ALSO! Once again im coming to the rescue here! trying to find a clean and hi res version of this artwork online is bloody impossible! seriously theres maybe 1 or 2 examples of it and non of them break 500 pixels…SO! Much like the cover for “Let’s ruin Dad’s Day” Here is a super Hi-res scan of the Armed Response VHS cover (For the UK release) in all it’s heavenly glory.

 

Armed Response - Fixed

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Bikini Model Academy – (2015)

…I got nothing for this one. Eveything I want to say about this film is in this review. the only thing that I would like to add is watching this review back after 2-3 months since I finished it. I would like to point out that I mention how much nudity and sex is in the film at one point without really stating why. it was a deleted line from the script and I was supposed to deliver it with a bit of a different inflection to what ultimately made it into the final cut. my goal was to say that basically for a film thats so desperate to be porn its arguably one of the tamest films to feature live breasts that i’ve ever seen and heres exactly why it is that tame. However it ends up coming out in this review like Im basically saying “THERES ONLY 4 BOOBS AND 2 SEX SCENES. SAD FACE! GOING HOME!”

I would also just quickly like to say that this got flagged up for copyright and was blocked…this time by a 3rd party content id bot…so not even an actual company could be bothered to police the IP of this thing…not that I blame the filmmakers for that…if i’d made this film I’d rather send a bot out to flag it down than have to watch this film again…

This is an objectifying, boring, and slightly mysoginistic piece of work in my opinion. I showed it to “Friend of the show” Ben one night while we were slowly getting drunk on the finest spirit based whisky drink ever manufactured. and he concurred…you may find out more about that conversation at a later date. but for now. all I can say is; Im sorry for what your about to experience. Really. Truely I am.

(What is Gary Bueseys face even doing in this poster!?…)
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The Strangeness (1985)

So this week we’re looking at “The Strangeness” a 1985 indie horror flick thats probably the last recommended film I’ll review for this year. Thats not to say that I dont want requests or recommendations coming through! no no! I love it when people tell me about strange crap I’ve never seen before. But we’re rapidly approaching Autumn and with it a block of specials that pretty much means that as of today (the 2nd of August 2018) I can pretty much tell you the entire schedule of whats to come review wise from next week through to the first week of January. This is because depending on how the Halloween poll goes (that closes in 2 days by the way! just for your information!) I’ll be doing either 5 videos on the theme of general halloween spookiness or 5 films on the history of vampires. but they’ve already been decided…equally all of Decembers films have pretty much been organised and locked in at this point as well…which only leaves 3 weeks in september and 4 weeks in November to fill! And the 3 weeks in september are all but locked down right now as it is! honestly; I have 1 slot unaccounted for at this point and it’s in November… and thats likely to fill up pretty quickly as time pushes on!

So yes, basically if you recommend me a film or make a request between now and the end of the year please dont be diheartned if I dont get round to it dramatically quickly. It will get done I guarentee it! it just may take me a little while…

In the mean time though. please enjoy this strange strange film…I dont really have too much to say about it beyond whats already mentioned in the video. it didnt thrill me…but I wasnt disgusted either!

 

(What I will say is this VHS cover is VASTLY superior to the current DVD cover…I dont know what this VHS covers about but I know I want to see the film BADLY!)
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Octopus 2: River of Fear (2001)

This is one of those moments where I think I nailed my exact thoughts on this one perfectly through the video review.

Octopus 2 is not a good film. But just writing that really doesn’t do a service to just how craptacularly awful it is…while we’re not exactly in “Let’s ruin dad’s day” territory. We are worryingly close. Which does concern me…

All I can really tell you about this is that they stopped at Octopus 2 and having suffered through this movie so that you can get an idea of why you should avoid this like a plague rat all I can really say is, just don’t do it.

EDIT: So! todays been eventful! I originally wrote this post quite quickly while on a break at work and very shortly after I wrote it I recieved an email from youtube telling me that this video had been blocked worldwide by “Lasso Entertainment” for a 1 minute section that had been clocked as containing there “Visual content”.

Now; Apart from the fact that “Lasso Entertainment” dont even own the rights to “Octopus 2” this video is covered by fair use as I only use a small portion of the overall movie to help justify my opinions on the film. I use non of the audio (Not that that really matters) so I find it very difficult to see why they think it’s okay to hit me with one of these strikes. I naturally contacted Lasso almost immediately to try and get this resolved but they refused to respond to me and as a result i’ve had to reupload this video with approximately 1 minute and 1 second cut out. I can only apologise and hope that fewer of these kind of incidents happen in future.

(I much prefer the UK DVD cover for “Octopus 2” the US poster makes it look way more interesting than it actually is…)
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She (1984)

Well, We’ve hit another recommended episode this week and this one was brought to my attention by Raymond; A man who’s been doing this a hell of a lot longer than I have who’s genuinely been one of the most welcoming guys I’ve met on youtube. his channel really doesnt get a whole lot of love but he deserves to do better than he does. He really does.

I feel like I’ve warmed to “She” a bit more since watching/writing the review for this one…it’s not that I think it’s any better with the distance of time behind it but rather I think i’ve warmed to it’s style a bit more and what it’s aiming to do. I still pretty much stand by what I say in my video review, I just think some of those positive points shine a little bit brighter in hindsight.

Im hoping to work on a collaboration with Raymond sometime soon and he’s been very supportive in helping make it so. So you may not have seen the last of him on my channel just yet.

(I still say the Universal Monsters are the better elements of this film)
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Phantom from Space (1953)

I was expecting better from “Phantom from Space” when I first popped it on. One of the joys of having an ongoing review series on youtube is that theres a constant feeling that I need to keep things varied. For example; I dont want to have too many action movies grouped together, or martial arts movies, or horror movies.

Doing that can make things a bit stale and unless I do themed months (Like last years Halloween run or this years “Alternative Doctor who” season) I always try my best to create a bit of distance between similar genre inspired films.

It’s been a good while since I did an old B-movie. Ring of Terror would be my last dip into the world of rubbish public domain 50’s and 60’s cinema and that was over 3 months ago! So I thought it was probably time to dust off the old “Mill Creek entertainment” sets and pick out another classic to spotlight.

“Phantom from space” was a title that immediately jumped out at me. it sounded spooky, ominous even. I was having visions of space based phantasms flying through the skies picking off members of the public and generally being very scary. The reality was much less so (As the review will testify) but I have to admit to having a bit of a “Guy with a sore tooth” fixation on old sci-fi movies like this. I hate them. I absolutely cant abide them unless they’re genuinely groundbreaking (Like “The Day the earth stood still” or many of the Toho movies) but I just keep coming back to them and I really cant shake them.

As it stands I still have about 120 of these movies left to cover so do expect more public domain oddities in future but for now I can only apologise for the boredom im about to unleash.

(NORMAL VIEW!!!!….NORMAL VIEWWW!!!!!!!!)
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Tunnel Vision (1995)

Im going to be honest here, in hindsight I was very dissapointed with Tunnel Vision. I’d reviewed 1 or 2 Hollywood DVD releases in the past (Like Cyborg Cop 2 and The Bogey man) but this was the moment that I fully realised that Hollywood DVD was not to be trusted. I assume these were the kind of fodder you’d find in service stations or poundlands. They’re the cheapest of the cheap movies, given a slightly glossy box art and shoved out the door at a discount.

Its a clever tactic and there are hundreds of titles to choose from. The problem is all of these films range from “They’re okay” to “My eyes the goggles they do nothing!” Tunnel vision lands in the latter of this catagory and the sheer cynicism on display in putting the Lovely Patsy Kensit (Who’s genuinely lovely) on the box in an attempt to make it look like she’s going to be a major leading force in this (When in reality she plays the sidekick…and even then she doesnt really come into her own till the final act) is pure bull in my opinion. It totally soured my experience of this film (Which could have been probably quite reasonable had they just been honest with me and ran with the main male cop on the front of the box) I cant even really say this was a “HollywoodDVD” thing because the original film poster for this film (Which looks awful) also had Kensit front and center in some vein attempt to make it look like she’s the hero/star.

This isnt the absolute pits. but in all honesty I’ve seen much better. Though based on some of the reviews I have coming up I’ve also seen much much worse from HollywoodDVD.

(Theres something oddly satsfying about this poster…the UK DVD box art is atrocious…)
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