TYTD Reviews

Watched on Thursday June 15, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/bride-of-the-monster/1/

Watched on Tuesday June 13, 2023.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/glen-or-glenda/

With ‘Hairsprays’ 35th Anniversairy upon us and its big return to cinema screens in celebration. How could I not get myself down to the local multiplex to check out what is likely to be the only John Waters movie im EVER going to see in an actual brick and mortar cinema.

Some people consider this film the ‘turning point’ for Waters as a film maker, his last ‘great hurrah’ as a film maker and the film that marked the end of his more raw and aggressive era of film making. While I feel it was a bit premature to mark THIS as his ‘last hurrah’ It must be said that ‘Hairspray’ is definitely something of a different beast to his earlier work.

A scathing commentary on segregation culture and a satirical and VERY tongue in cheek nostalgic look back to Waters own adolesence in the early 1960s. This films a total trip, but it doesnt stray *too* far away from the Waters format that won him a firm place in my heart as one of my all time favourite directors.

Following ‘Hair hopper’ turned champion of equality Tracy Turnblad, ‘Hairspray’ follows Tracy and her friend Penny as they pursue their love of dance via the Baltimore local dance TV programme ‘The Corny collins show’ Eventually winning over the hearts of the shows ‘Council’ and winning herself a place as a host on the show! But when mean girl Amber Von Tussle and her family start to feel like they’re being squeezed out of the limelight and a racist network owner Arvin Hodgepile enforces segregation at the hop. Its down to Tracy, Penny, her family and friends to turn Baltimore on its head and show the world the power of DANCE!

And while im really more of a fan of Waters ‘rogue’ years (His short films through to ‘Desperate Living’) this one, is probably the film I most enjoy from his post 70’s film making career. Theres a lot of Waters DNA in this thing from moments of apoplectic aggression, overly wordy insults and moments of pure shock and gross out. But rather than letting that run rampent, this film marries that up to some actually really solid lampooning of 60s culture, commentary on segregation, society and its all held together by a really well handled and sincerely funny little teen drama about following your dreams and standing up against injustice and meaness for the sake of meaness.

This is a very sincere film. Probably the most honest and sincere work Waters has ever produced. It has heart. The scripts genuinely funny, has a wonderfully acidic tone that gets in your face enough to give you the Water zeal, but not so much that its overbearing, its really solidly paced with easily some of Waters best (least sweary) written dialogue. It has a solid 3 act structure, it works through those act transitions seamlessly and very much strikes off in its own direction away from the ‘Grease’s and ‘Footlooses’ of the world.

If I was being a little bit picky. I know this is a dance centric production. I know its wrapped up in that early 60s scene. But I did find some of the dance scenes went on a little bit longer than I personally would have liked. I cant fault the choreography, but if ever there was a point I began to lull a little, it was the extended dance scenes.

Direction wise, its arguably some of Waters best. given Direction for Waters is more of a ‘Cast heavy’ affair, with actual visuals coming as an after thought of functionality. Its clear he’s learned a lot from his time in the studio system by this point, we have a film that OOZES early 60’s flare and looks DAMN good doing so. it’s hardly the most dynamic production in the world, but given that prior to the studio years, Waters was literally shooting on off cuts of 8 and 16mm film on whatever he could get his hands on…usually in the woods. and his previous studio efforts were solid, but a little on the flat side. This absolutley has a bit more life in it. Though still maybe falls a little bit short of well and truely embracing the audience.

Direction of the cast on the other hand? is PHENOMINAL. John’s always been good with people and here I feel he manages to not only pull out Divines best performance of her entire career, but gets an absolute show stopping set out of Ricki Lake, Ruth Brown, Debbie Harry, Jerry Stiller, Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick and Clayton Prince. The cast are positively supercharged as they bounce from scene to manic scene with sheer delight, and if the physical direction of the scenes were at times a little on the slow side. it absolutely CANNOT be said that the cast wernt raring to go the second they said action. High energy and simply wonderful. This really was a delight to sit through.

The cine is equally delightful, again I feel this is the perfect balance of John Waters work, taking high quality film making and basing the movie in the rougher parts of downtown Baltimore. It allows John to get a little nasty here and there, but it results in a film that takes what he’s been working on as a film maker for the prior 20 years and really get the absolute best out of it. A Balancing act he seemed to do a fair bit of soul searching to reclaim in the 90s.

But here, shots are set up nicely, theres plenty of b-roll to help keep scenes ticking over at a pace that can just about keep up with the actors. theres a wonderful use of garish and pastelle colours in REALLY trying to give this film that 60’s tint. For my money, it could have worked a little more with depth of field to help make the scenes feel a little more involved. A lot of this film looks VERY flat, whereas with just a little more consideration for the depth of the shot there probably could have been some truely wonderful takes in this thing.

Throw in an all 60s and late 50s all killer, no filler soundtrack AND arguably one of the best on screen cameos John Waters has ever done as a psychiatric doctor. And I’d be hard pressed to dislike this film, its just too well made, sincere and fun. One that often gets overlooked by myself honestly (shame on me) I really must watch ‘Hairspray’ more often. Its surprisingly refreshing even 35 years on.

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

‘Bad Channels’ is the oft forgotten about title in ‘Full Moons’ early slate of releases. It has yet to make the jump to a HD scan, it hasnt had the sequel fortune of it’s peers and other than a tie in reference to it in ‘Doll Man Vs Demonic toys’ it appears that it was something of a blip on ‘Full Moons’ resume…and having sat through it now…I do think it’s been a bit mistreated over the years…But I CAN kind of see why.

The plot itself is ironically a bit one note. As we join a news team covering the launch of a new DJ slot on a radio station hosted by one DJ Dangerous Dan. A Shock Jock known for controversial and over the top radio stunts. After its revealed Dans rigged a station competition to secure the news interview. all hell breaks loose, that is until aliens land at the station, take it over, and begin using the broadcast signals to capture women for some kind of…unknown experiment.

And while the film has a rather unusual pitch, it’s plot execution is kind of the thing that lets it down. We have a slow open as we establish everything going on in this films world, that gives way to the aforementioned abductions…Which are kind of cool, but VERY repetative to the point that after the first one…You’ve pretty much seen them all. it repeatedly hits the same beats over and over again up to the final act when Dan realises that hes still broadcasting, and decides to try and warn people of the abduction…they obviously dont believe him though because he’s a shock jock.

The pacing on this things uneven, the tone and humour are kind of a mishmash that doesnt feel quite sure if it wants to be an out and out comedy, or something a bit more serious with comedy elements. The characters are horribly written in terms of depth or complexity. What you see in their first 30 seconds on screen is about as good as it gets really.

The dialogues hammy, awkward and stiff, they tell WAY more than show and while I love the idea of a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario being married up to these strange alien abductions. It feels like the wrong elements were focussed on within the script and theres this constant nagging feeling like the films holding back from really going out there and delivering something a little bit different from the norm. I liked the idea, I just wasnt much for the execution.

I cant really fault the direction and cine, its very heavily styalized, it fits in with a lot of what Full Moon was doing around this time. and technically its pretty sound, but I do rather feel that there isnt anything that particularly makes this stand out as its own unique work, it doesnt feel any different from say ‘Sorority babes in the slimeball bowl a rama’ or ‘Demonic Toys’ the aliens of the piece dont feel like they were made for this movie, they feel like they were just pulled out of cold storage from an earlier piece. Its passable, but it left a lot to be desired.

Same with the cine which is pretty compitent for the most part, it looks the part, has decent composition and B-roll for sequence building, the editings maybe a *little* bit loose, but its not the worst i’ve seen by a long shot, it just…lacks any kind of punch. Any kind of ‘WOW’ factor that would take it from being just okay to something a bit more memorable.

As for the performances…they’re bordering on Troma levels of over the top campiness…and that isnt strictly a good thing. While it works in places, it does somewhat feell a bit relentless at times, and that did annoy me a fair bit. Sometimes its good for a film to slow down a little bit to help give the plot a bit of a chance to breath and the audience time to process. No such luck here as a constant manic energy is just kind of…pelted at the audience from start to credits…

Oh and at least 10 minutes of this films titles and credits.

Add in a rocky soundtrack thats alright, but again nothing *too* out there and you have a film that, to me at least? DESPERATELY seems to want to be quirky, but ABSOLUTELY has NO idea how to really even begin to do that. It does what it THINKS will win people over, but it just kind of left me impatiently clockwatching.

I think it’d be a fine time killer flick. Something to pop on if you wanna pass 80 minutes easy enough, but there are SO many better ‘Full Moon’ movies out there to catch over this one. and even MORE NON ‘Full Moon’ movies too!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/bad-channels/

A strange beast to be certain, ‘The Creeps’ is a ‘Full Moon’ feature that bucks the trend of the time. While the company was in a bit of a decline period around this time turning out half baked scripts and flat out stealing from other movies to save a buck making their own. ‘The Creeps’ stands out as a bit of a novel idea that…While not executed particularly well, is at least somewhat entertaining in places.

The plot is…prety odd, I think it’s fair to say. Mainly centered around a young woman who works as a receptionist for a private library and archive holding some of the oldest copies of classic literature known to exist. Enter our ‘Mad Scientist™’ for the film, who enquires about the oldest known copies of ‘Dracula’ amongst other works.

After clearing security he’s shown the texts and a short time after leaving the facility it becomes quite clear that the scientist has stolen the texts. Turning to a private detective who…operates out of and works in a VHS rental store. the pair discover that the scientist is performing one HELL of a bizarre experiement, using these original unaltered texts, he’s able to perfectly recreate the characters from the books in real life!

Naturally as you can imagine, our protagonists go snooping at his lab, get captured, and inevitably during the first attempt at running the experiment something goes quite wrong, rendering our great literary monsters to a fraction of their former selves.

And…probably the main thing that drew me to this film is also one of its more problematic aspects. in essence this film only really exists for it’s gimmick, which is that all of our classic monsters (Dracula, The Mumm, Wolfman and Frankensteins Monster) are played by an all dwarf cast.

They do a remarkable job and are genuinely endearing. Unfortunately the script does make a habit of making a lot of the humour about the fact they’re short…I’ve seen way too much exploitation in my time to be able to know for sure if this was made with sincerity or not, and the fact the alternate title for this is ‘Deformed Monsters’ only makes me more conflicted in what this thing is trying to do. But even if I did think I knew, I wouldnt be the person to make a call on that. Thats down to the Little people community ultimately. I can only go on what I see and I felt uneasy around this thing truthfully.

Outside of that though we have a reletively tight script that runs to a nippy 74 minutes, has decently spread out act structuring, an unusual and decent enough plot and despite the fact it is a bit bloated in the 2nd act and a bit one note across the whole runtime, I think theres enough here to enjoy that I didnt end up clock watching or *too* bored.

The dialogues a little flat, it’s not the sharpest or most charismatic script in the world. But you do get the feeling that it IS at least trying to make an engaging and interesting work. It may not fully succeed on that front, but I appreciate the attempt.

The direction is really rather nice given this was the start of ‘Full Moons’ lower budgeted/lower caring era. I caught the (fairly) recent HD remaster of this film and it looks very filmic, has a clear style and mode of execution in mind, its vivid, colourful and clean planned. I actually really kind of liked how this thing felt. It reminded me of the old 90’s Goosebumps TV series…and in essence if it wasnt for the liberal nudity and occasional swear it COULD realistically be a Goosebumps episode!

direciton of the cast too is clear, concise and animated. they utilise their set spaces well, they animate as best they can. While the performances are a little on the wobbly side (more on that shortly) it’s clear they’re actually trying to do something decent here. Which I really respect.

As for the cine? Well, for the most part it’s clean, well composed shot wise and sequences just about have the balance right of key shots and B-roll usage. this has a pretty tight edit behind it, that gives the film room to breath, but doesnt feel like it’s struggling to hit feature run time. It gets in, revs up, gives you what you paid to see, and gets out. Nothing more. nothing less.

The performances are, for the most part okay, our monsters really are the stars of the show, and while they dont really get to do all that much (which is a real shame given how decent their costumes are given the scope and budget) they absolutely bring a presence with them and they seem to be really having a ball with their roles.

Our protagonists for the film however, arnt quite so lucky. they’re a little bit on the dry and awkward side. they’re nowhere NEAR as bad as the majority of ‘Full Moons’ output from this time or later. In fact; by ‘Full Moon’ standards they’re some of the best performances the studios produced. But in terms of the medium of film? they’re a bit dry, a bit flat. they move around, but could move more and whereas I was hoping that getting them to animate more might curb their more stilted deliveries…if anything it made them worse because now they were vibrant and stilted. eesh.

The score was done by Carl Dante, and I for one am DELIGHTED that they finally gave Richard Band a holiday after his work in scoring literally everything full moon did from 1989 to the present day. Dantes work isnt THAT different from Richards. But it was diffent ENOUGH that I actually really appreciate the varience. Dante’s work suits the tone of the film, is synthy but not *too* cheap sounding and punctutes the scenes wonderfully. its solid.

The first time I caught this film I thought it was garbage, on a rewatch? it’s still not perfect, but it is a lot better than I remembered it being and I could actually see myself checking this one out again in future. its a tad problematic and a bit awkward in places. But I really think this is probably one of Bands best directed films…and given the quality of some of the stuff he’s put his name to, I think thats something to be appreciated. In either case, i’d absolutely recommend checking this thing out at LEAST once.

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

Another Day, another latter day offering from ‘Full Moon’ that has the germ of an actually pretty decent idea at its core myred down by the usual issues of underfunding, cost cutting on things that shouldnt really be cost cut on and a fundamental failure to understand the potential behind the pitch leading to a sloppy production that at BEST has a couple of decent moments peppered throughout.

What this film pitches – After several hundred years of not really interfering in human ‘ways’ a group of mythical Celtish beings decide to visit earth for some fun, with a loose mission to locate and put an end to an evil force. They arrive in the midst of a beauty contest where the winner will be a signed spokesperson for a luxury product. Inevitably the girls insecurities cause friction and backstabbing and when these mischevious demigods arrive on the scene and start claiming souls…Well…noones safe.

What this film delivers – 70 minutes of women being increasingly catty with each other occasionally punctuated by THE shallowest attempt at heartstring tugging i’ve ever seen (REPEATEDLY) while 3-4 actors in VERY poor makeup with AWFUL Irish accents try to force their way into the movies plot (unsuccessfully) by randomly killing some of the girls for little to no reason. With the last 15 or so minutes actually bothering to approach something of a coherent tied up narrative.

The scripts not the worst i’ve ever seen, but its BEYOND repetative, is bland, lacks any kind of distinction or character. Its badly structured with an opening and closing act that lasts about 5-10 minutes a piece and a 2nd act that eats up the rest as it sets up the scenario then idles for 50 minutes.

it’s tonally all over the place as we cut from totally random scene to scene with no real solid structure in place, it has a VERY underwhelming ending, and it fails really to set any kind of high stakes for us to get invested in. Dont get me wrong; it DOES put stakes on the table. But we dont learn what those actually are till about 15-20 minutes off the end. So for the bulk of the film, it really does just feel like a chugger.

The characters are largely interchangable, play on stereotypes, are 2d, very artificial (basically they become whatever the scriptwriter wants them to become on a moments notice) with no real bite or charm to edeare you to them. The villains of the piece (or rather the neutral parties of this piece) are the aforementioned Celtic creatures. and they’re equally as bland and uninteresting as the main cast. Our main monster, a Leprachaun gets arguably the most rounded out character, but theres nothing really to bump him above any of the other cast really and he could best be described as ‘Normal man with a magic stick’, the other monsters LITERALLY are one note. Theres one that grunts and is horny, theres one that grunts and screams, and theres one who says totally basic lines that do nothing for the production.

The directions not the worst i’ve ever seen, it meets the barest of ‘pass’ rates in terms of how it looks and in terms of style, but it’s again a VERY bland affair. This period of ‘Full Moons’ in house work was VERY cookie cutter in style, they managed to create a look that is simultaineously acceptable technically, while vaccuous to the point of near contempt.

In business, its the ultimate goal of corporations to find that sweet spot where they can sell you things with horrible technicalities and flaws, but they’re tolerated by the consumer because ‘it’s not THAT bad’. Thats what ‘Full Moon’ perfected in this era of their productions. Films that absolutely arnt GOOD. but they’re not SO bad that NOONE wants them.

Its a bland film on that front, kind of dead behind the eyes, only really existing to put Bands name on another movie and get more products into the ‘Full Moon’ storefront.

Direction of the casts a mixed bag too, Im not sure if there just wasnt a clear communication line between the director and the cast, but theres a LOT of scenes of people just standing in rooms, not moving or interacting with anything in the set, shot as a mid close up two shot. the deliveries are kind of on the dry side, dryer than i’d have expected for ‘Full Moon’ (And THAT’S saying something.) It just…feels like a movie with no soul. I mean, yeh…they’re saying their lines and yeh, they do move a *little* bit in the set. But theres nothing here that helps draw distinction, nothing that communicates to me that these are people REALLY experiencing these events. It just screams ‘Paycheck gig’ in all the worst ways.

Same goes for the cine, it’s not BAD…but it aint great. Shots are reasonably composed, the edits a little looser than i’d have liked, but its better than it could have been, they use colour acceptably to help create tone and vibe and sequences, if anything, are a little OVER heavy on B-roll…which is a novel complaint from someone used to people having NO B-roll.

Thats not to mention the practical effects which are just REDICULOUS. The image on the poster of our Leprachaun villain looking like he’s been possessed by Pzuzu? He literally never looks like that in this whole film. Throughout, he looks like a man dressed in a $20 rental costume from Party City with a clearly fake beard and wig, and jam smeared all over his face (im not kidding, it looks like raspberry jam.)

All the other creatures are either a mix of puppets, or not particularly great looking latex masks, theres a minor bit of CG work with one of the creatures to make his eye look like its moving…but it doesnt work as an effect and only makes the mask look cheaper.

Most of the visual effects are basic filters from the editing package and they REALLY seem to like the ‘Warp’ and ‘Bubble’ effects in that package because they use them a lot here…

Performance wise, The cast feel flat, uninterested actresses halfhearting their way through lines they arnt really interested in, with only a couple of times (where they were clearly having a good day) where they get to showcase some actual interest and volition. otherwise. they’re dry as tindersticks and the whole thing feels like it could tip into just straight out porn at any minute.

And the soundtrack? Richard Band…Again. doing the same Richard Band Score he’s been doing for 20+ years at this point in time. You’ve heard one of them, you’ve heard his whole catalogue. Dull, stocky, not my vibe.

All in all? this is ‘oatmeal’ of ‘Full Moon’ movies. a bland and somewhat flavourless sludge of…matter, that had the potential to actually be kind of fun or interesting. But instead went all in on nudity and aimlessly wandering about not really achieving much. Not my thing, I probably wont watch it again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/unlucky-charms/

I was expecting heading into ‘Dr. Alien’ that I was going to get a cheap and cheerful porno affair with maybe a couple of minor plotlines basically existing to make the sex scenes make a bit more sense. And I couldnt have been further from the truth.

While there is a LOT of upper body nudity present here. I could best describe this ‘vibe wise’ as “Imagine if Rick Sloan made a teen sex comedy” Because. Thats basically this film in a nutshell. Its a camp as christmas, over the top, bizarre experience that feels like ‘Hobgoblins’, ‘Weird Science’ and ‘The Nutty Professor’ all got put in a blender and the end results were poured over a SUPER low budget, though, to it’s credit it works with what its got effectively.

Dont get me wrong, this things no masterpiece. In essence its a goofy, cheesy way to kill 85(ish) minutes in a very pleasent and upbeat way. But it wont be winning any awards anytime soon.

The scripts solid enough, We follow a college freshman on his first day back to campus. A few days prior his science teacher got hospitalised after a car accident he says was caused by ‘UFOs’ which everyones pretty suspicious about. Replacing him in the classroom is a new Blonde Bombshell of a science teacher who…seems overly interested in reproduction and is desperately looking for a volunteer to help with some ‘extra credit’ studies.

Enter our freshman, who accidentally ends up putting himself forward and is injected with a strange serum that turns him from dweeby dork to charismatic lethario in less than 10 seconds. As you can imagine it turns out the new science teacher isnt all she seems and sexy hijynx commence.

And I actually really got on with this thing, its total brain rot cinema, but in the best possible way. it’s FUN! it’s not trying to be high art or mainstream fashionable, it’s trying to be a goofy little comedy thats working to try and win over people in the home video market looking for goofs and plenty of T&A. And it makes NO apologies for being that.

The scripts lightweight, nippy and zooms across its 3 acts pretty nimbly, the plots a tad repetative, but the dialogues so odd and charismatic that I was kind of happy to see similar scenarios play out a couple of times just to hear some strange dialogue. It has a clean act structure and it gives us just enough character depth that we feel invested in the world this scripts made, without going SO deep that it becomes too complex or messy.

I was STUNNED to see that David Decoteau directed this, but then after some thought it actually kind of made perfect sense. I personally think it’s my favourite Decoteau movie i’ve ever seen. While its not his best from a technical standpoint (that would be Puppet Master 3 for my money) it’s still visually very interesting, the character direction is rock solid, its nicely styalized and David seems to have worked with all aspects of the production crew in delivering a package thats not exactly going to change the world, but is BLOODY good considering how low on resources they were through this thing.

The cines solid as well, shots do dither a little bit in terms of compositional choices and how they’re cut together in the edit. But Id say there was more hit than miss here and theres even some nice experimentation with both the structure of the edit and in terms of the use of practical effects (Which again actually dont look too bad for a film of this kind of budget).

Theres some rock solid performances here with Billy Jayne as the freshman ‘Wesley’ working a HUGE range performance wise and actually really holding up as a leading man in this thing. I dont *quite* think he fully won me over as lead material here. But I still thought he did an excellent job and showed a real physicality and animation that I thoguht was quite impressive.

Judy Landers as the otherworldly Miss Xenobia equally delights, she doesnt get *too* much to do here, but when shes on screen she really does sell the idea of having a vague understanding about earth culture, but not fully grasping it.

Stuart Fratkin and Raymond O’ Connor equally delight as Wesleys best friend ‘Marvin’ and Miss Xenobia’s assistant ‘Drax’ both playing comedy foils to our leads but both from opposite ends of the spectrum. With Marvin being an easy going, ‘surfer’ type who wrankles Wesley up no end. And ‘Drax’ being incredibly muted and even more ‘fish out of water’ than Xenobia on all things earth culture. They really support the main in a big way and I feel the film would be a poorer experience without them.

In fact, the whole ensemble here are just really quite solid, they’re all clearly enjoying themselves, they’re animated, bright, and campy. they deliver their lines with relish and only adding to that, some nice little cameos from Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer only further sold me on this production.

Throw in some mixed to decent 80s synth pop that must have been MASSIVELY out of place for 1989 but fits the tone of this thing perfectly and you have a movie that was about 5 years out of fashion when it came out, but is a near PERFECT 80’s sex comedy in retrospective. Some damn fine work from Decoteau, I had a ball with this thing, and I think if you are okay to switch your brain off for a bit and just let this big daft mess wash over you, you’ll probably have a blast with it too!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dr-alien/

A bizarre low budget creature feature that seemingly wants to be anything BUT a creature feature. Theres a VERY clear reason why the ‘Godmonster of Indian Flats’ was a mainstay of the ‘Something Weird’ Library for so many years.

It’s plot, a bizarre mesh of 66% a somewhat ‘wicker man’ esq thriller about a rich businessman rocking up at a small previously abandoned town in the Indian flats thats been restored back to it’s 19th century ways by an eccentric land owner with intentions to buy the area. Only to then find out that theres devious goings on just under the surface and the town may not be all it seems.

Mashed together with a 34% plot (and I swear im not making this up) around a shepard who wins it big at a casino on his first ever attempt completley by chance, ends up attracting the attention of some of the folk who LIVE in the 19th century throwback town on the Indian flats, they take him back to the town and rob him, and while drunkenly returning to his flock, he gets hit with an extraterrestrial show of lights and gasses that mutates one of his sheep into a hideous blob of congealed cells.

This attracts the attention of some scientists who wish to study the creature as they work in cellular research. So, they incubate the specimine and within a couple of days, the blob has mutated into a hideous goat monster.

SOME HOW, these two plots connect and intertwine, but i’ll be damned if I know for sure how…But the results are QUITE far from dull it’s fair to say.

The scripts totally inconsistent, the main plot of a black businessman rocking up in an all white town and meeting the prejudice and weirdness that comes with that has it’s more racially motivated tones softened by the other subplot around the shady dealings of the town and of course the GIANT WALLOPING SHEEP MONSTERS larking about and…well not really doing very much. I honestly feel for the guy in the monster costume. wearing 100lb’s of wool in the desert is absolutely not worth the paycheque.

Despite the uneven pacing and strange plot structuring of this thing, I find it offers a unique texture that I can honestly say I havent really seen before in cinema. It’s kind of like a mash up of ‘Sssss’ and ‘2000 Maniacs’ it shoulnt work, it DOESNT work. and yet, I felt totally compelled to see this thing through to the finish to see just exactly how weird this thing would get (and the answer is VERY weird).

The directions nothing particularly to write home about, its a bit flat and aimless, theres no sense of a personal touch present and apart from the occasional flourish on the cine front it doenst particularly show itself to be a film that utilises the multiple aspects of it’s production particularly well. I can absolutely say it just about does the basics. But thats not really anything worth shouting about.

Same goes for the cine really, theres a couple of interesting uses of practical effects here and there, but compositions seem to be largely shot for function and barring literally 2 scenes in the 3rd act of this film which DID seem to get a bit of a bump in terms of production quality, the majority of the film could best be described as lifeless, bland and fairly by the numbers on a technical level. it’s not good, but there was nothing that jumped out at me as truely awful.

Sequences are edited together quite loosely, this thing could have easily been 10 minutes shorter, the lack of the actual Godmonster for most of the movies runtime is dissapointing and with so much going on, producing a cohesive edit that manages to tell the story effectively and coherently was always going to be a struggle.

as for the performances. TOTAL HAM. everyones playing it goofy, as well they should! But I do feel theres a certain lack of animation from most of the cast and the ones who do put the effort in, never really get the chance to really truely go out there.

It also has to be said that, while I absolutley sympathise with the guy in the Goat costume who was basically steamed alive for the half a day he filmed for. He doesnt really animate all that much, and he spends at least 2/3rds of this movie sat unmoving, in a tank. it would have been nice to have had a bit more of a lively creature and…y’know…the vibe that this creature feature ACTUALLY WANTED to have a monster in it wrecking up the place.

Mix in a score thats oddly melancholic and string arranged and you have a shonky but mesmorising feature that I didnt hate, didnt love, but I could absolutley see myself watching again. Your milage may absolutely vary on this thing. But if you like your cheesy movies, this thing would be prime MST3K fodder and is absolutely worth trying at least once i’d say.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/godmonster-of-indian-flats/

After a few years of hearing nothing but good things I decided to finally give ‘Rad’ a try. I figured that kids films can be kind of hit or miss, but with enough positive endorsements, I put this one expecting a pretty cheesy but enjoyable time…and thats pretty much what I got. No more, No less.

Its a basic tween/teen plotline…In a world in which bikes and stunt biking IS the be all and end all of living, a local business man with alterior motives sets up a 10k biking challenge to anyone who fancies themselves a winner. inviting several pro cyclists to take part in the challenge. But when a plucky local boy whos SO good at BMX’ing rocks up and wants to take part, well the powers that be will try everything in their powers to stop bikey man from biking a bike to win 10k to spend on a bike…or something.

Basically, the long and short of this movie is, if you’ve seen anything like ‘Footloose’, or ‘The Wizard’…you’ve seen this movie. The scripts SUPER 80’s fueled and hits every teen ‘team sports’ movie trope its possible to hit in a 90(ish) minute runtime. Its evenly paced, slows down a little bit in the middle, but is ultimately just a fairly by the numbers team drama movie made interesting and eccentric by the bike gimmick.

It’s technically proficient on the direction and cine front, it has a mixed ability cast who range from ‘barely able to string some sentences together’ through to full blown hamtastic electric performances…It’s got a really killer soundtrack…

I dunno, I wish I kind of had more to say about this one really, I was expecting something as OTT and nutty AS movies like ‘The Wizard’ or ‘Robot in the Family’ and it just…isnt…it’s actually kind of flat all things considered…perfect riffing fodder for sure if you want to get some beers and a few friends around for a screening. But it’s not as colourful or lively as other schlocky titles like ‘Miami Connection’ outside of the biking motif, it isnt as enthralling as many other weird films from this time. I didnt hate it by any stretch…I just kind of thought it was passably okay.

I honestly dont really know what I was expecting, maybe that it’d have been a bit more styalized, or had a bit more weirdness going on, or some stranger performances…or just…something a bit more bombastic than what was presented. But as it stands…I’d absolutely check this thing out again, and if you havent seen it i’d wholeheartedly recommend it. But temper your expectations. A lot of people have billed his as ‘one of the greats’ in terms of cheesy 80s b-movies…and I feel thats a bit of a stretch. I dont really feel this thing broke new ground.

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

At the request of a viewer of my youtube channel, I ‘Hunted’ down a copy of ‘Hungting Season’ because he said he’d be interested in hearing my thoughts on the movie. And the moment I put the film in and saw the ‘Sterling Entertainment Presents’ logo, I realised that i’d been bamboozled into sitting through another incredibly dull ‘Camp Blood’ esq picture.

And im really not wrong in that assessment, this film was made the same year that both ‘Camp Blood 1 and 2’ were shot back to back (near enough) in pretty much the same location, using pretty much the same ‘stereoscopic 3d’ kit that the ‘Camp Blood’ movies used. Hell, for as much as this thing LOOKS like the ‘Camp Blood’ movies, im genuinely surprised it didnt have Brad Sykes name on it.

The plots the most basic thing i’ve seen in a good while, a young couple go hiking in the woods, they set up camp in an area known for hunting, some hunters randomly appear, seriously injure the boyfriend of the couple and rape the girl (Sarah). Sarah manages to get her boyfriend to a hospital, her and a sheriff go back to investigate the crime scene, and find the hunters permit on the ground. Leading Sarah to take up bloody vengence against the hunters who violated and assaulted them.

And that basically then leads to a 50 minute sequence of some hunters wandering around in the woods, while Sarah wanders around in the woods and very occasionally the pair meet up, have a brief dust up, before returning to montages of walking. all leading to one of the STUPIDEST plot twists in cinematic history and one of the most underwhelming endings to boot.

This is a poor POOR excuse for a movie. the script feels like the writers had a friend tell them the plot and some of the backstory to ‘I spit on your grave’ after a few beers, and without looking into it anymore than that, they just decided to try and remake it.

Hell the pullquote for the poster of this thing is ‘I spit on your grave, for the new millenium’ and that simply couldnt be further from the truth. It would be more accurate to say ‘Someone trying to remake ‘I spit on your grave’ but with almost no budget, and they dont wanna offend anyone’.

Theres no context or build up to the rape scene itself, it just happens seemingly completely at random, is almost entirely softcore and lasts for about 1 minute before we’re straight into the tamest ‘revenge’ portion of a rape revenge film i’ve ever seen. Bizarrely the film inserts a CRAP ton of nudity into the film AFTER the rape scene, but clothes stay pretty firmly on DURING the rape sequence itself. it’s almost like the films trying to overcompensate.

The pacings dull as dishwater, its a *slight* step above ‘Bigfoot vs DB cooper’ in terms of the fact that, at least this film has a couple of attempts at gore shots mixed in with the endless walking scenes. Theres not really any kind of act structuring, the cast just sort of…wander about until they’re picked off with no rhyme or reason and the plot for the film almost seems like a framing to get the characters wandering around in the woods…rather than the plot ACTUALLY having a consistent point across the runtime.

It just feels really lazy and slapped together, it has no depth, no deerp contextual meanings, no subtlety, no subtext, it doesnt feel like its trying to say anything particularly, theres just…no passion in this thing, it’s dead behind the eyes, just making titilation for titlations sake…only it doesnt have the gonads to ACTUALLY try and be a bit more ‘edgy’ or creative in how it portrays what it wants to show.

The dialogues also SO stiff, awkward and stilted. It’s got no fire behind it and when married up to a cast who are ALL frankly dire. (Literally only Cindy Pena is worth talking about as ‘Sarah’ our main protagonist…and even then, she’s only ‘okay’ nothing standout) it produces a film that borders on the insufferable in places both in terms of just how dull it is, and how poor the casts performances are.

Surprisingly the cine and direction are the least of this films worries. Its absolutley not great. but for an SOV film being produced by the company that unleashed the original ‘Camp Blood’ onto the world around the same time, i’d say this was a *bit* better comparatively. Sequences do have something of a structure, they bothered to get some decent B-roll here, most of the shots have a compositional focal point, the shot lists seem to have been at least somewhat considered (it isnt just shaky handheld footage of people wandering around cut seemingly at random like with ‘Camp Blood’)

They actually use some minor CG effects here, they go a bit overboard with the gore. for SOV, this is still a pretty poor offering, but it’s absolutely not the worst i’ve seen, and in some places I was actually kind of impressed on a technical level.

Of course, this film suffers from the same issues that a lot of ‘Sterling’ productions from around this time suffer with. They chose to shoot the film on a rig that allowed the film to be presented in an early form of ‘Stereoscopic 3d’ as such, the camera sits inside a device that splits it’s frames out into two seperate fields, which; when played back using the appropriate kit, *SHOULD* give the illusion of 3d.

However…it doesnt. instead using this rig basically just means the film has multiple technical problems. For a starters, the actual stereoscopic element *WOULD* work, had they not screwed up the encode. The result is one field presents normally, but another field is jittery, pixellated and skittish. meaning with 3d glasses on, it looks almost exactly the same as with them off, only one layer is garbled nonsense for 70% of the runtime, while the other layer plays like the 2D version.

Thats another problem though, because they didnt bother to do a proper 3D > 2D downconverion…instead, they just removed one of the field layers. Meaning the image has 50% less detail associated with it, leading to a smeary, blocky, pixallated image that looks awful even in DVD quality and looks abysmal when it’s blown up on a 4k TV, so lord knows what a bluray remaster would look like.

The rig itself also causes several technical issues with the picture, the main offenders being that the ‘hood’ of the rig is constantly kreapt into the shot so theres a dark fringe that fluctuates in size across the entire film. it also has somekind of glass front to it, which has effected the colour and exposure, meaning the picture image is washed out, drab and overexposed for the most part. its just…an awful way to present the movie, and im sure with the proper time/money/consideration, you COULD do a proper 2d downconversion that looked pretty solid…but that isnt going to happen for these movies.

thats not to mention a totally forgettable cheap and nasty soundtrack thats so bland it almost vanishes into the audio mix.

This wasnt a bad film, its just a forgettable one. almost all of my one star rating is simply down to the fact that one a technical level, its not the worst for the genre and they actually did try to put a bit of effort in on a couple of scenes. But on almost every other level its either bad, poor quality or TOTALLY forgettable.

Not worth your time hunting it down, the only people I think would have a good time with this thing are people who enjoyed the aesthetic of movies like ‘Camp Blood’ and want more in the same style vein, but dont care if the plots crap.

Hard swerve, do avoid.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/hunting-season-2000/