Occasionally doing this show will turn up things that I either wish I didnt learn or something that will alter my own memories in a fundamental way. Thats what happened here with this Bob Godfrey compilation. As a kid I was a massive fan of “Rhubarb and Custard” I had a few video tapes with episodes on and I have very fond memories of sitting on my parents sofa with a big mug of hot chocolate just loving the weird and wonderful art style. those memories are still very firmly ingrained but now when I think of Childrens animator Bob Godfrey Instead of this happy childhood memory being the forefront of my thoughts on the animator. instead I think of shorts like “Henry 9 to 5” or “Biowoman”…
I know quite a few animators from my childhood who were involved in adult cartoons or animations but Godfrey stands out simply because of how unique his drawing style really was. its lively with squiggly line pretty much electrafying anything he put his pen to. it really brings life to his shorts and this compilation set is no exception. to me its what makes them as memorable as they are.
I dont think i’ll be revisiting this set again any time soon. But in many ways I dont think I’ll need to…the plots and style of these shorts are strong enough that there thoroughly embedded in my psyche from now on…So what I will say is if you have fond memories of “Henry’s cat” or “Rhubarb” from your childhood…be prepared to have that fundamentally altered in ways that are irreversable.
(I should think this goes without saying but yeh…this is pretty NSFW…)
When I think of “Direct to DVD” tat “Alien Intruder” is normally one of the films that springs to mind. I have a tremendously vague recollection of my grandparents buying a DVD player in the early 2000’s that came with 3-4 “Multi-film” DVD packs and Alien Intruder was one of the films included in that set…and while I didnt watch it then. watching it in 2017 for a review on this channel was certainly an experience…
Dont get me wrong I like my tat as much as the next man…but “Alien Intruder” was a bit of a different beast…it trancends bad movies and really becomes something all together a bit more special. The acting throughout is terrible, and the plots dire. but theres something about this film that’ll keep me coming back to it every few years. and no. its not the 2-3 nude scenes in the film (Though Billy Dee Williams having a moderate breakdown towards the end of this film is a defiante plus)
Honestly? this film has its moments but its hardly a cult classic in the making. My memories of this film extend as far as a few beach scenes, a guy being set on fire and a weird punch up set in the 1950’s. Scoggins is literally the best part of this film but her characterisation seems a bit all over the place truthfully…not the best bad movie I’ve ever spoken about but it may be one for you.
(“In space…noone can here you have a VR experience with boobies.” – This movie (2017) )
I have a real soft spot for the Hammer movies, they really have a charm about them. obviously there horror films are probably there most well known productions but Hammer had a quite diverse filming range outside of horror and sci-fi as well. The Nanny is a prime example of this really as its really more of a psychological thriller than anything really resembling a horror movie…I mean; I suppose the ending falls a little bit into the Macarbre but realistically the rest of this movie is about as close to a non horror as hammer could get really.
I think this is one of Bette Davies’ finest roles as the titular “Nanny” and she’s terrifically watchable as she flicks in style between the very sensible and well measured on the surface Nanny and the role she eventually ends up playing towards the end of the film.
I cover pretty much everything I can say about this movie in the review itself but I would also like to add that since publishing this review I’ve found it amazing how difficult it is to actually find much information about this movie. Mainly due to the fact that there was a CBS sitcom called “The Nanny” which ran from 1993 to 1999. I dont know how popular that show was but according to google it was more popular than this film…You can mark this one down as another “Underrated movie that doesnt get the amount of airing that it should”.
(Based on the “Bath” scene I can see why this one isnt played on Television all that often…still criminally underrated though…)
Deciding the structure of these seasons is always a bit of a difficult game for me. Typically I’ll try and fill the 18 episodes that I have per season with a good mixture of genre’s and film types because bad and cult movies really arnt tied to any specific genre and I know that there are people who subscribe to my youtube channel who only watch me for my Sci-fi reviews or only watch me for my Kids movie reviews. And thats totally cool; thats why I try and keep things fairly loose. As a result you’ll get a few horror films per season, a few science fiction, a few martial arts movies and the odd kids film or romance. It just helps keep things a bit more diverse while simultainiously being a bit broad.
One of the more difficult elements to manage with my channel however is how many mainstream or popular cult movies to cover in a season. Obviously I dont want to just talk about all the films everyone already knows about because…well everyone already knows about them. But at the same time (According to my youtube analytics at least) my more mainstream reviews are not only some of my most watched and popular videos; there also the ones most likely to make first time viewers subscribe. So I’ve kind of resolved myself to only talking about two; maybe three, popular films per season. both as a way to limit my own reliance on those kind of films and to kind of treat them as a “Special occasion” when I do talk about them.
Puppet master (To me at least) is an example of a popular cult film in the sense that it isnt as well known as your “Friday the 13ths” or your “Nightmare on Elm street” movies, but it is still fairly well known. It has a relatively large fan base and for anyone familiar with the more well known horror movies These kind of films could potentially act as a gateway for casual movie goers to explore stranger and more unknown movies that are largely obscured. I had never seen a puppet master movie until I watched this one for the purposes of this review and I still desperately need to get my hands on the sequel because I really enjoyed how this film decided to tackle its plot line. I’ve been told by multiple people since doing this review that the “Puppet master” franchise is one of the spottiest franchises still putting movies out. When its good its great!; when its bad it’s unwatchable. So I can only hope that my own experiences when I get round to the sequels will be plesent…
Also; speaking of my own videos for a moment. This is the first review to feature my first revamped intro sequence. I’d had a few issues with the original intro, Mainly that I felt it was a bit too basic and a bit low production quality. Which it kind of was to be honest. I made the original intro over 2 hours without any plans or storyboards. I literally just sat there and thought “I need an intro…” and took it from there…So I decided to actually do a bit more planning with this second intro. And while by contemporary standards I realise that its still very flawed, at the time I remember being over the moon with the results. It would only be used for this season at which point I decided to seriously overhaul the intro elements entirely. But this was really my first big stab at trying to fundamentally change how my videos looked and felt. It was also around this time that I really began monitoring the pacing of my videos and making sure that I spoke slower, calmer and really tried to “Up” just how methodical I was with writing my reviews. Its all change really! and from here on in I feel I made massive steps in my production processes.
(Im a sucker for “Blade” in this one I have to be honest. Hes such a cute little murderer)
With Love Camp 7 being uploaded to this site that brings a close to my first Season of reviews on youtube. I originally intended each season of my show to be 12 episodes long with a week break at the end of each season acting as a stop gap to allow me to gain a weeks worth of time with which to either write or edit more episodes without fear of having to upload 1 or 2 in that week. However when I did the maths on this it quickly became apparent that if I had settled on 12 episodes a season I’d very quickly run into silly amounts of seasons in a very short period of time. Not to mention that at 12 episodes a season there wouldnt be enough to fully fill out a 52 week run properly.
It was because of this that I decided from Season 2 onwards to make it an 18(ish) episode run meaning there’d be longer seasons and more scope to distribute the episodes in such a way to make them run through the year.
I like to consider my first season a kind of “Testing the waters” time for my format really. I wasnt really sure how I was going to tackle my style, delivery or how these should be precisely edited. With bigger more professional productions I’d usually plan that side of things out merticulously but with this first season I decided to just play around and see which bits worked and which bits didnt (Something I hadnt done since my days as an experimental film maker nearly 4 years ago)
This was a really fun season to make and while I dont specifically touch on very many (If any) mainstream titles I do feel like I cut my teeth here. Season 2 would bring in some quite drastic changes to the format but at this point we say goodbye to the original opening titles and a total refinement of both my scriptwriting and editing processes. By the end of this season I’d gone from writing notes on my hand an hour before I went to record, to making notes, formally scripting and actually refining my dialogue in my audio editor rather than just cutting the lot together and hoping for the best.
So here is the playlist link to the entire of Season 1; It may not be the best but it was definately a fun journey!
(The Journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step)
“Love Camp 7” is a bit of a strange one really…while I can see the appeal of some of the later Nazisploitation films; This one being held up by the BBFC as a film “Too shocking to release” even in 2018 is really weird to me…I mean it feature by the nazis (But nothing worse than whats in any other Nazisploitation film) It features Rape (But nothing anywhere near as graphic as “I spit on your grave” or “Irriversable”) and for the most part its actually just quite a dull viewing experience…the only angle I can see being played here is that where as most rape revenge films end with the heroine getting her revenge and killing the evil men. This film kind of ends a bit open. its fair to say the Nazi’s get a decent amount of commupence. But from my memories it doesnt end in a definitive way.
Not that I’d actually try to seek out this film even if it did see an official relase. Its a very boring and vanilla title really…As a piece of history its interesting because it still stands as one of the last remaining relics of the “Nasty” era of british home video…but beyond that? meh…I’d still argue that the worst Nasty I’ve see to date was “Cannibal Holocaust” and thats largely because of the real life animal mutilation thats included throughout.
Non the less I managed to secure an australian copy of this film and while the film may not be worth it This review did give me the opportunity to really talk about the “Video Nasty” era of domestic video and it helped me to better improve my own understanding about these kinds of films and just how baffeling some of there choices were…This also served as my first season Finale (I went for a much shorter 12 episode season run at first; rather than the now more typical 18-19 episode season run.)
(Again; It really must be said. a massive amount of these films were sold due to how they marketed the the film poster alone…I mean…Just look at it!)
So im writing this at a point in time where the websites kind of in a bit of a limbo of sorts. Its not yet publishing the newest content from my youtube channel but I am still posting some new content in the form of my Instagram pictures, Blogs and anything else that needs doing in order to make this site both interesting and useful. I wanted to make sure that before I officially announced this site to my youtube/twitter/Instagram/facebook followers that it was as up to date as it was physically possible to be (And if you are one of my followers and you’ve randomly stumbled across this site. First; Bravo! Second; let me know! I’d love to hear it!). This was mainly because no one wants to visit a half built website, But also because it’ll give people something to look at properly when I do announce this sites Launch formally. That being said it has kind of stirred a few emotions with me.
In a sense its kind of made me a little bit nostalgic for what was going on about 12 months ago. Back in April 2017 TYTD Reviews was just one of about 5 ideas that floated in and out of my head on a semi regular basis. To jump forward nearly 12 months and find that not only am I still producing content but that its taken me on a journey that’s led me to talking to some of my favourite movies directors. Inheriting a massive video tape collection and a channel that’s helped me make some really quite wonderful friends on message boards and youtube itself really makes me feel like I spent my time well this past year.
(Behold! the original first thumbnail for “The Dragon Lives again” Gaze upon its crapness in awe and wonder!)
I’ve decided in my “Video review” section (Particularly with my older videos) to add a portion of text above the video retrospectively talking about those early reviews now that I’m quite a distance away from them. And its been a lot of fun looking at my early (And frankly shocking) reviews and seeing how far I’ve come in developing my talking style, video designs and the fundamental changes that have taken place over the months. There have been some that I’ve already decided will need to be revisited at some point because I really have failed to do the film justice in these early videos. But it puts me in a somewhat nostalgic mind-set. When I wrote and recorded my first four episodes (An un-produced pilot episode, The Dragon Lives again, The Last man on Earth and The American Ninja 2) I didn’t make any notes while watching the movies, and I actually went to the trouble of driving my car over to an empty supermarket car park so that I could record in private. I remember it being vaguely cold and feeling terrified that someone was going to drunkenly wander across the car park in the middle of the night and find me with my Ipad mini illuminating my face with some chunky headphones on so I could check my levels. I’d prefer not to be mugged/stabbed…
Nowadays every film I talk about has a minimum of 5 pages of reference notes, a 4-5 page script and a day or twos total video editing time. Even having come from a film background if you really knuckle down when it comes to youtube videos you quickly learn a new style, pattern and language that’s quite alien to the professional film industry. Its been a very enlightening experience.
So Im backfilling my site with 1-2 old videos a day and as of the time of writing I’ve just written my article for “Bloody Muscle Body Builder in hell” I reckon if I keep this up I should more or less be caught up in time for the launch of Season 4. Which would be a rather nicely timed thing really.
In my real life; things are getting a bit stressful. I’ve been having a few issues at work recently that im really hoping to resolve sooner rather than later. I feel at times like I’m on the outside of my workplace looking in, rather than it being the other way around. I just feel a bit like I’m being purposefully isolated. And while I don’t mind the isolation to an extent I feel like it’s being applied somewhat maliciously by certain colleagues. Luckily Mrs TYTD, my family and her family have all been incredibly supportive of me during this time which has been very helpful in keeping my mentality and spirits high, They’ve really been amazing… and of course you guys (The people who watch my videos and actively seek out my blogs) have been a tremendous comfort to me during this time too! Every nice comment, thumbs up or share has really given me a morale boost so I really cant thank you all enough. As I say I hope this resolves itself sooner rather than later. Because frankly the issues im having have started to bore me a bit and I’d much rather just get on and keep my head down for a bit.
(Im in a weird place where this gif simultainiously perfectly sums up my current situation and yet at the same time it doesnt…and this is on an hour to hour basis at the minute…)
On top of this I’m also desperately trying to get my video Schedules back on track after an incident last month where I came down with flu for 2 weeks (Costing me approximately 3 maybe even 4 completed videos) it really knocked it out of me and realistically it was almost 3 weeks before I even sat down to watch a new movie to review. Luckily over the last few weeks I’ve been able to slowly catch myself back up and as it stands there are 3 episodes of Season 3 left to upload (Over 2 weeks) and 8 episodes of Season 4 fully completed (With 13 episodes written at the time of this publication) I probably overdo it on the pre-recording but I like the gap. Its sizable and it means I’m covered for every eventuality. Though it does mean my recommended film reviews take a hell of a long time to get published (Which I do sincerely apologise for).
Short film Spotlight is also giving me a bit of grief at the minute so far I have 5 episodes written, 2 recorded audibly and 1 episode fully completed. I was aiming to make this one my 2nd weekly show. But its becoming very apparent that I may have to make it fortnightly just to help keep my sanity in check. (There’ll be more on Short film Spotlight in an update video I’m planning on releasing at the same time I formally launch this website) its actually surprisingly difficult to produce 2 research heavy shows a week…even if only one of them is long form…But I hope you enjoy it when it comes out.
Its not all doom and gloom though! I’ve recently reconnected with an old musician friend of mine who is currently working on a reworking of the TYTD reviews theme for me (Which should debut with Season 5) which will mean I’ll finally have a theme tune that’s  100% royalty free. I’ve also been working with my friend to produce some new music videos for him which has been fun. I’ve added a links and affiliates page to my site and I’m very happy to say that he’s agreed to affiliate with me and my channel in principle. As soon as he’s figured out what site he’d like to promote through this websites affiliate links it’ll be added to the list.
I’ve also got a cracking nights entertainment lined up this weekend as I’m going to a comedy show  to see a very British comedian whom I’ve seen at least 4 times previously and whom every time I see him I end up almost passing out laughing. So yeh; that should be a laugh (No pun intended) I’ve also finally started going through my massive Tape collection and there’s some absolute GOLD in there. So keep an eye out on the channel because I will be covering quite a few of these over the next few weeks.
I suppose to summarise; I feel like I’m somewhat losing control of some aspects of my life while simultaneously really getting my life in order in other aspects. And its weird and unusual and a little bit scary at times because for the last 5 years or so there’s been a tremendous sense of stability. Change is good though. It helps you learn to better adapt to your surroundings. Its just a shame I’m usually too sleepy or too busy to be able to actively grab the bull by the horns these days…
(Of course; Heatons got me through a hell of a lot in my life. I think this track is a pretty good way to end this…)
I actually recall really quite enjoying this film. I mean; Its not anything particularly stand out brilliant. But what it is is a pacey and enjoyable little film that is very clearly inspired by the Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell productions that its subtitled name was quite literally borrowed from.
Having more recently acquainted myself with the likes of Peter Jacksons “Braindead” ( Or Dead Alive if you prefer)Â and the recent revival of the Evil Dead “Ash Vs Evil Dead” it does kind of put this film a little more into perspective when placed alongside its peers. I do rather get the feeling though that it takes its “Affectionate tributes maybe a little bit too far and more often than not it feels a bit like a fan film tribute to crazy overly gory movies than something that stands out in its own right.
That being said as I mentioned at the top of this its still a very enjoyable film and as I mention in my review it has a lot of things going for it:
(It really doesnt help that this film had an “on and off” production history starting in the mid 90s…that being said I think it definately adds to this films charm)
TYTD Reviews 