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The Worst Witch (1986)
So; Halloween 2020 is upon us and this year being an “Off” year we’re once again going for a grab bag of halloween goodies to help kick your month off with a bang! and while all of the movies chosen this year arnt really connected. I have decided to have a bit of a loose theme.
I wanted to try and do more “Family Friendly” movies this halloween. I know a lot of my viewers are parents and quite frequently they struggle to find good horror to show their kids without having to dip into their “adult” collection. So I thought i’d try to help out this year. All the movies featured will be movies that more or less the entire family can tune in to! I really wanted to make it a bit more all encompassing, after all Halloween is supposed to be a time for spooks and scares for all ages!
So here we have “The Worst Witch” the ORIGINAL Worst Witch. and arguably one of the most enjoyable adaptations. probably suitable for younger children (I’d say 5-9 year olds) but theres a TON of campness to help keep Adults on board. I really dug this one…and if certain events around a certain author who ALSO wrote a very popular series about witches and wizards have left you feeling a bit cold. then This series might just be what you need.
Decoder (1984)
This was one of those movies I’d litereally never heard of until it was right on top of me. I first heard about it around the time I was looking for a decent copy of “Liquid Sky” and when I finally did find it on Vinegar syndromes site this was sort of sat roughly next to it in the “Recommended” section looking all moody and totally my kind of jam…unfortunately that was at the time that I sank nearly $200 into VS sale items (With shipping it pushed it closer to $230) so I decided to leave it…but that didnt stop me picking it up at the very next sale! and im totally glad I did.
It’s a wonderfully weird film and one that i’ve never really experienced before. it’s super hard to explain, but it’s almost like a film that leads more with sound than it does vision. and the pair marry up in such a way that normal movies and TV programmes just…dont. I can only describe it as it feels like a “Whole” experience. like; if one of these elements was missing the film just would be incomprehensible.
So with the next Vinegar Syndrome sale on the horizon. I say; go and look up “Decoder” it’s probably not for everyone. but if you dig it…ohhhh boy you’ll REALLY dig it.
Robot in the Family (A Robot Called Golddigger) (1993)
Theres not really a lot more that I can say about this movie that I havent already said in either the 100 or so minute commentary myself and my friends did for this series or the below review. This film broke me and then remoulded me into a harder more analytical man. And I dont think I can ever truly go home again.
What I will say is that if you do choose to watch this (And if your into Bad and cult films I definitely recommend you do) dont say I didnt warn you. it’s one of the strangest and most unusual films I have ever sat through.
EDIT: I also realised that this was one of the “VHS Only” tapes that only had low (ish) res images of the cover online…so here’s a Full HD version:
Truck Turner (1974)
So! We’re back! Season 8 non the less! and let me tell you now. Im pretty bloody exhausted. Having spent the entire summer pretty much backing and forthing with renovations and builders (A blog on that will be on the way shortly) I finally got the media room up and running and decided to finally get going on exporting all the season 8 episodes i’d worked on (8 epiosdes) ready to schedule in, upload and forget about.
Life had other ideas. Basically; my harddrive decided to die. Normally this would be devestating as, because I was planning to do backups once things were back up and running, to switch my harddrive on and find it’d basically died BEFORE I could back anything up. meant I’d effectively lost 2-3 months work with 1 week to launch day.
That at least WOULD have been the case if someone hadnt clearly been sent to “Guardian Angel” me. y’see…while I’d lost the original exports, I did still have partial access to the drive. I could view everything on there and I could even transfer off some of the small (KB) files and VERY mercifully for me, I’d saved not only all the original Premiere pro edit files for all the episodes i’d worked on, but i’d also saved *almost* all the raw elements that made up the edit. So I simply bought a new drive, migrated all the raw elements over (It still took nearly 2 days to do that) and then on the new, fully working drive, re-exported all the video files from there. *Boom!* I was back up and in business…there were a couple of minor losses. any episode that used VHS footage predominantly had to be recaptured back in and adjusted so the cuts all matched and there were one or two raw .jpg’s and .png’s that i’d misplaced during the transfer which meant I had to do a couple of substitutes. But yeh; everythings pretty much back on track.
Ultimately; I lost about 3-4 days of editing time due to this harddrive error, but considering I could have literally lost everything I could myself exceedingly lucky. ladies and gents. im normally a very careful man when it comes to backups. and the story that happened here should be a warning to each and every one of you. ALWAYS. MAKE. BACKUPS. because next time, you may not be as lucky as I was.
ANYWAY!; New season! season 8! it’s a shorter run due simply to a mixture of the renovation work overrunning and the harddrive failure. it was originally planned as an 18 episode run + a collab. thats now been knocked down to a 16 episode run and im not 100% sure about the collaboration. But we’ve still got plenty in store to take you all the way from now until the end of December! So put on your dancing trousers and get down to the totally and utter king of funk and soul “Isaac Hayes”
This is one movie, I CAN dig.
The “Reanimator” (1985) Comedy Dining Experience
We’re back! and after a string of on and off tests with Dischord, Skype and other “Over the internet” type recording devices. This may be the last Comedy Dining Experience we do while socially distancing. It was a decent enough experiment. but somethings not quite right connection wise. Whether it’s my Wi-Fi, Bens Wi-Fi or the fact that Ben could only get into calls via his phone to record these commentaries, it just didnt act or feel right (As the sheer amount of drop out and quality bouncing will testify)
We recorded 3 commentaries this way, Our “Robot in the Family” commentary was done almost entirely remotely and just about held together. But we also attempted a commentary for “Robocop” with the team over at “Inside the Nutshell” (Now rebranded to “Heros, Horrors and Cats”) Which was basically unusable. there was WAY too much drop out and a weird ghosting effect on the call which meant that more often than not the films audio bled into the recording louder than our microphones and out of sync by a couple of seconds. it got messy. and while I did spend on and off time trying to salvage something from it, ultimately when my Harddrive recently yeeted itself, the recording went with it (RIP)
Reanimator was not only one of the last commentaries we recorded over the internet, but it was also one of the last ones I edited before the aforementioned harddrive yeeting. so please be patient with it, but also thankful that it exists at all.
As it stands; I dont honestly know what the next move is for this series while theres still death on the march. Myself and Ben are currently looking into workarounds and other alternatives. But its more than just arranging the safety side of things, we’ve actually got to have a day or so free at the same time to meet up and actually record it.
Now the upshot is that we do have commentaries recorded right up until the end of October. We recorded commentaries for “You Only Live Twice” and our “Halloween Special” back in March, literally 2 weeks before the country fully locked down. But from November? we’ve no idea. one work around is potentially putting the bond marathon on hold and doing a couple of “Special guest” commentaries to fill the gaps in till myself and Ben can get back together. but honestly? we just dont know at this time.
Anyway! We’ll probably figure something out. and in the mean time REANIMATOR! WOO! so sit back and enjoy low quality garbled audio of me and my main man with the plan ranting about Hitler being security at the Arndale shopping center all punctuated with the occasional “Nope. didnt hear that man. you dropped off.”
Enjoy.
The Burning (1981)
So! during this crazy crazy summer we had I decided to wing one more episode out to kind of…wrap the whole season up. Indeed the idea to do a season of “Summercamp Slashers” had been on my mind since I first started making reviews. I liked the idea of seeing through the summer months by setting a tone of “Fun in the sun” style camping, canoeing and killing.
the original plan was to do Sleepaway Camp 1 and 2, The Burning, one of the Friday the 13th movies and maybe throw in a lil curve ball…something like meatballs maybe. But, as the idea grew and the years went by it became more and more apparent that there was more than enough material to just spend a summer at the various sleepaway camp films. But that then created a bit of an issue for “The Burning” now a somewhat orphaned summercamp movie as I’d also decided, if I was ever going to cover the friday the 13th movies, I’d want to do them as a group rather than toss one randomly in here.
So working closely with the most excellent host of the Survivors guilt youtube channel. I decided to loosely bundle it in as a way of capping Season 7 off with a Red Triangle episode, another notch on my “Video Nasties” retrospective and the chance to actually get to the meat and gravy of this one.
I had already briefly spoken about it as part of my “B-movie hall of fame” series not too long ago. but I dont think I really got into the nitty gritty…that series was more “Quick overview > What I thought of it > Next review” type fodder…and as you all should know by now I do like to get fairly bedded in with these reviews.
So! as a nice summer treat and a little bit of a one off. here’s “The Burning” Season 8 has just got underway and theres plenty of weird and wonderful movies to come! but for now I’ve gotta get back to the cutting room. And dont forget to check out Survivors guilt he’s really very good!
The “Thunderball” (1965) Comedy Dining Experience
Once again! we’re back and I hope you’ve bought your phone with you because believe me, you’ll need it for some of this. As myself and Ben take a look at the 1965 Bond slog that is “Thunderball” a film that revolutionised the world of Underwater cinema. And while I can be grateful to it for probably enhancing movies like “Jaws” I also cannot escape from the fact that this is over 2 hours long and mainly consists of people swimming, fighting and choking underwater.
So I hope this commentary helps to eliviate what is otherwise, probably the dullest action spy thriller you’ve ever sat through.
TYTD Reviews 