So! Heres a review you lot probably wernt expecting. In fact it was rapidly approaching 6 months ago that I first sat down with the director of this film Kenneth Hansebraten to request whether I would be allowed to talk about this project. Luckily for me the gentleman that Kenneth is he more than Obliged and that is how this review ended up here and now.
I originally uploaded this one in April 2018 at Kenneths request. However after a day or so he politely asked me to make this review “Unlisted” until such a time that this short was released officially (So as not to spoil too much of it) as it stands this film has now seen a release and sold out (In a record 39 minutes!) a testimony to it’s success I can assure you.
As a rule I’ll only review films I find if they genuinely peak my interest. and I have to say Dead world does just that. it’s a brilliant little movie and I highly recommend if this ever gets a second run release that you go and hunt it out! it’s a tremendous piece of cinema and I really look forward to Kenneths follow up to this! Im sure he’ll knock it out of the park!
This episode was uploaded “Christmas week” meaning it landed literally days before Christmas day itself. Its quite normal at this time that youtube enters a period of low traffic. Logically you’d think the opposite would be the case as everyone is cooked up at home for the holidays (Which havent even begun at this point) you’d think everyone would be clambouring for distraction on sites like youtube. But you’d be wrong.
Rather surprisingly (And it was a bit of a shock to me) the week christmas happens on and the subsiquent 2 weeks after it are some of youtubes quietest times of the year. I have to assume this is because people are out at parties, enjoying time with the family or just plain too busy to watch stuff. But it kind of caught me off guard and was a bit of a learning experience.
“Christmas evil” would mark the end of my 2nd season. And I really wanted to send the year off with a bang. I’d ummed and ahhd about what movie would be the best one to act as a send off to 2017 and to round my 2nd season off, and I settled with “Christmas Evil” because quite by chance I stumbled on it at random and it actually seriously impressed me at how deep and unusual it was for what is effectively a christmas themed slasher film at it’s heart.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the film writing the script for it was an absolute joy. and at the time I thought it was one of my best pieces (As I work to a schedule i’d planned and edited this episode in late october/early november time ready for it to go live on the 22nd of December) I scheduled an upload for it as I was going to be away from my house from the 22nd to the 24th and went out to spend the run up to christmas with my partners inlaws.
And then…Nothing. And I mean absolutely nothing. The video went live on the 22nd of December and it wasnt until the 26th that it gained it’s first “view” and that was me just checking the video to make sure there wasnt some glaring issue that was preventing it being played…It currently stands as my least watched video review on my channel as of May 2018 it has a grand total of 9 view (3 of which were me as a result of adding end screens and info cards and again a few months later to add translations)
I genuinely dont know why this video just failed immaculately out of the gate but there could be any number of reasons why it failed to pick up. I’ve read in some places that if your video doesnt make 20% of the number of subscribers you have in views within the first 24 hours that it can be dumped by youtubes SEO Algorithm. I’ve also read that youtubes SEO is less favourable to content with trigger words in the titles and descriptions (Words like “Evil” are trigger words) equally it could have been just left too late. uploading a christmas video on the 22nd of December is leaving things a bit to the last minute and it could legitimately be the case that people were just fed up of anything christmassy by that pont.
In either case i’ve thrown everything I can at this video and nothings seemed to have done the trick. I’ve changed the tags, I’ve edited the description, I’ve shared it and shared it and shared it, I’ve tweaked the titles (And tried them in all caps and without caps) I’ve changed the thumbnail…literally short of re-uploading it I’ve done everything I possibly can with it and nothing has changed its status.
It’s “Delisted” it didnt meet its expected targets and because it’s been shown to be an underperformer youtube have effectively taken it out of there search engine. go and try to find it in a youtube search. you wont be able to. it’s only with overly specific search terms like “Christmas evil TYTD Reviews” or “Christmas evil Red triangle reviews tytd” that anything will pop up…even “Christmas evil TYTD” brings nothing up.
Im not angry about this mind; im just a bit sad about it more than anything (as I imagine many people would be if they put a week of evenings into assembling an edit only for automation to decide its not relevent within 24 hours) Im more upset that the film itself is as underrated and relatively unknown as it is rather than the fact people cant hear me tell them why they should go and see it.
At some point in the future I’ll probably cut my losses and re-upload this one wholesale just to see if it helps it get re-listed. but in the mean time here it is the last TYTD Reviews/Red Triangle episode of 2017…and things only seemed to pick up from here on in.
(I’ll let the review do the talking about this underrated classic. but I seriously cant wait for a good UK Bluray of this one)
Here we have the most watched video on my channel…At least as of the time of writing it is…it’s currently my most watched video by a country mile. Quite how it’s achieved over 1000 views in less than 6 months I cant say…Before my youtube analytics decided to cark it I was able to find out that the majority of the traffic that was going to it was coming from Brazil. So I have to assume that either this forgotten christmas kids movie has had a second life out in Brazil or theres something in my SEO that is driving traffic to this video in the same way that Im driven to the cake section of an all you can eat buffet.
It’s not even particularly an all that great movie. Out of all the films I’ve spoken about on my youtube channel I could pick half a dozen movies that haven’t broke 50 views on my channel that have little to no recognition and desperately should be seen…and yet the 90’s kids movie thats just trying to cash in on 101 Dalmations is the one thats the most well received…I mean; Im glad that one of my videos has been viewed that much, but at the same time I do have to say “Why!?”
I found this movie in a charity shop along with the next film I reviewed (Santa and the three bears) and I paid 50p for it. I’d never heard of it before then and it took me a ridiculously long period of time to try and find it on amazon because its mislabeled on there…at least it was at the time when I was writing my review.
The company who produced this short went on to produce another animated kids short which Im considering talking about this Christmas just so I can have the set. It was a bit of a weird time during the christmas period last year because the first week of December fell on a friday that meant it was the 1st/2nd of December and because it was so early in the month I didnt want to just jump right in with the christmas cheer right out of the gate. so this came out a bit later in the month than was initially scheduled but It formed the opening part of my Christmas specials which would run right up to the 2nd series finale which I believe was a few days before new years day.
This isnt the best christmas film ever made but I could very easily see how people could be nostalgic for a movie like this…even though I dont get it myself. I can empathize with the people who do have those fond memories of sitting with the family during winter and sinking this with the christmas feeling in full force.
(I still cant quite believe that the people who animated this did the original concept art for Crash Bandicoot and Spyro…its a crazy world my friends…)
I kind of find it hard to justify movie sequels like “Cyborg 3” (Or “Cyborg3” or “Cyborg Cubed” if your feeling fanciful) and I say that not because I dont like film franchises that run on pretty much endlessly, but rather because the connection that this film has to any of the other Cyborg films is thin to the point of almost being see through…
“Cyborg 3” has two connections to the other Cyborg films and thats about it…our pregnant protagonist is apparently a character from “Cyborg 2” albeit recast and tonally different from her previous portrayal and I believe theres a recurring bad guy as well. That being said if your looking at the Cyborg franchise I dont think theres very many series out there quite as disjointed as this one. The original Cyborg being a moderately well recieved sci-fi action thriller starring Jean Claud Van Damme, its sequel being more of a science fiction driven “Blade runner” esq affair. and this movie basically being Poundland Mad max. realistically you could watch the first film and have absolute no interest in the other two they’re that different from each other.
As it stands for me, this movies one of those “So bad its good” type affairs. Malcolm mcdowell is heavily touted as being in this film but realistically he only appears in about 5 minutes of it before dissapearing never to be seen again. The cast are week and the effects are ropey. But it really has its own charm about it that I think edered me to it honestly.
To me, I think this film would be best taken as part of a triple screening. maybe the first or final film in a triple screening if I was being specific. Its not good enough to be the “Main feature” of a bad movie triple feature, yet at the same time I could very easily see it being the warm up act to a genuinely entertaining “Good/bad” film…or the warm down from a “Good/bad” film.
I suppose what im trying to say is that it’s entertaining. But not enough to warrent watching it all by itself. It’s certainly not worth seeking out all by itself. There are significantly more entertaining “Mad max” style knock off films out there. Though I think my review of this sums up why quite nicely.
(90’s CGI rainbow space baby will occasionally crop up in my thoughts…So I guess in that sense it’s given me a long lasting memory…*Shudders*)
Well, I can honestly say It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film quite like “Crazy Guy with Super Kung-fu” (Also known as “Yu tou dai lao ben tu di” in its original language) The closest film I can compare this to would be “The Dragon lives again” and I first watched that film in 2009. So it was a very welcome change to watch a martial arts film that didnt take itself seriously, played more for comedy than it did the action pieces, and didnt fall flat on its face in the way “Descendants of wing chun” did…
But this film isnt all prat-falls and bad jokes. Theres actually some really well choreographed fight scenes thrown into the mix and it appears that the same company who dubbed “Wing chun” also dubbed this film as several voices and styles of delivery are painfully present here…in particular theres one voice actor in many of these films who sounds to me like a spot on “Carry on” era Kenneth Williams…
This voice acting cant be serious. I know it cant be serious. because if they genuinely thought that giving these films the voice styles they did would make the movie look and sound cool then they’re viewing a different version of reality to my own.
There are moments in this film that are just downright surreal. See the scene in my review with the homless person dancing around the restraunt singing about how the buildings condemned. its not completely out of place with the rest of the film tonally, but I do have to wonder what on earth was going on in the film makers minds when they stitched this one together.
Though weird and suffering from the effects of combining two genres that shouldnt go together (Super serious kung fu action and Campy “Carry on” comedy) I actually quite enjoyed this one. So much so that it actually earned a place on my “Do not chuck” shelf. Which is home to my blu-rays, DVD’s and tapes and contains all the classics and rarities that I simply will never even consider throwing away. I think this would be a good b-picture to “The Dragon lives again” in many ways…something to warm the audience up and give them a good kicking into the kind of mindset that would get on with the likes of “Dracula vs Popeye” It’s dirt cheap on amazon and I’d say go and check it out if you can. I dont recall it being groundbreaking, but its still an enjoyable picture.
As a final note. This is another review I wasnt 100% happy with. I had to record it in a different place to where I normally record my audio, it was the middle of the night, and I had to be quiet; So I dont really feel like I got the best out of the recording that I could have…equally there are a few structuring issues with this one that I feel had I given it a bit more time I’d probably have been able to rectify…Still, you live and learn! I still pretty much say everything about the film that I wanted to in this, but I may come back to it some day just to tidy it up a bit…
(“LOOK AT THIS OLD CHICKEN!, YOU COULD SEE IT’S A GRANDFATHER!” – Crazy homeless man with clackers – 2017)
From the worst movie I’ve ever seen to frankly one of the most unmemorable films I’ve ever seen. In all honesty I can only recall three things about this movie:
*John Rhys-Davies camping it up to an astounding degree
*A scene featuring a “Terminator” knock off slowly destroying a car and then a person
and David Bradley getting involved in a high speed car chase.
Other than that and some very fleeting memories of an opening combat battle which has a man fully on fire I literally couldnt tell you one thing about this film. In fact arguably had I not reviewed this film I may have forgotten that i’d watched it all together.
…
…
Okay so I’ve just rewatched my review of it to see if it jiggled anything out of my memories. It did nothing…I seem to have enjoyed it more than I remember at the time of writing so I may well be misremembering how I felt. But I can only honestly tell you how I feel about it now. And how I feel about it now is that I dont have a strong opinion about it either way it’s a “Grey zone” movie in my mind. I mentioned in the review that I think it could work well as a B-movie or as part of a double or triple feature. And I actually think this is probably the best way to describe this film. Its by no means an “Essential watch” but if your using it to subsidise another film (Like say “Terminator woman” or “Robocop”) then I think it could work really well…I’ll probably do the sequels to this at some point in the future…If I can remember to…
(You wont believe how hard it was to source a film poster of this movie for this review…I ended up using the VHS cover because it was the only “Medium” sized image I could find”)
The Words “Worst movie ever made” are thrown around a lot these days…sure there are some people out there who’ll rag on the latest blockbuster or who’ll go onto netflix and find some new release that “Sucks harder than anything thats ever sucked before” and in there world it must be nice to watch the new Marvel film or some indie piece of cinema and think “This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen”…
I wish I could relive those days…I really do. I wish I could go back to a time when I could watch “A Nightmare on elm street 4” and think it was the worst movie in the world. they seem like the “Good old days” comparitively. in 2009 I saw what I thought at the time was the worst movie ever made “Dolla Morte” a Production by Bill Z. Bub. And I hated myself for having it as the worst film i’d ever seen. for multiple reasons, but mainly because it was intentionally trying to be a bad movie. something that nowadays I disqualify films aiming for the “Worst movie ever” title for. Its not so bad it’s good. it’s not even so bad it’s bad…it’s so bad it’s boring. boring, and edgelord-esq with all of the bark and non of the bite. I was ashamed that I had to tell people this was the worst movie I’d ever seen because I felt it gave it some kind of mythical “Challenge” status which it really didnt deserve.
But in 2017 quite by chance I stumbled upon “Let’s ruin Dads day” and it fundamentally changed my opinions on film and the viewing experience forever. Y’see, Let’s ruin dads day isnt just a “So bad it’s bad” movie…it’s a “So bad it could actually harm you” movie. Completely unbeknownst to me I discovered that Kids movies are effectively a portal to actual Hell. when they’re good kid’s films are charming nostalgia trips that are entertaining and amusing in there own right…theres a reason why the Disney movies and films like “The Pagemaster” and “The Goonies” stay in the public conciousness as much as they do. But Bad kids films? Bad kids films are almost the opposite of that. irritating insufferable nightmare rides that purposfully Cauterize parts of your soul and mind to the point that you genuinely lose all faith and love in the craft of film.
Since starting these videos I’ve only explored a handful of kids movies and every one thats been bad has far FAR outweighed any adult oriented bad movie 10 fold. I would happily sit through “Dolla morte” or “Jesus: the total douchebag” or any of the american pie spin off movies for hours and hours and hours rather than watch even 5 minutes of a genuinely bad kids movie. And “Let’s ruin Dad’s day” to me at least at this point in time is the absolute worst kids film of all kids films. Not only because it actually irritates from a scripting, directing, acting, cinematography, musically, editing, lighting, animation and sound design standpoint. But because it actively promotes ideas and scenarios that in real life would typically end with your kids either kidnapped, on drugs or molested. This film both actively and subconciously is telling your children that it’s okay to take rides from strangers and that meeting up with people on the internet is a perfectly okay thing to do. And I have to assume that the reason this film is the way it is is because its produced with the angle of opening up a dialogue for parents to talk to there kids about stranger danger…But the DVD gives no hints that this is the case and any parent buying this for there kids would have no idea that this was its intended purpose unless they watched it, understood and took on board why some of these plot elements are dodgey, wrote a plan of action of how to broach the subject with there kids. And thats all before the sprogs even set eyes on the film.
What im saying is its unrealistic to assume that parents would pre-watch this and that even if they did it would be unlikely that they would think anything of the plot points in this film. But to a wide eyed child this could well be the movie that makes them get in a car with strangers, or agree to meet someone they dont know in real life…and thats horrific. combined with the frankly atrocious technical aspects of this and the rehashed trite script work. Let’s ruin dads day is not just a bad movie. it’s a dangerous movie. And I seriously cannot emphisise that enough.
(Even the DVD cover is obnoxious, generic and poor quality…jesus.)
Also; Because im a nice person, I realised a while ago that Let’s ruin dads day has absolutely shocking representation in google images…the highest resolution image of the cover was frankly insultingly low. So I bought a copy, scanned it into my computer at 8k and tweaked it on photoshop so there would be a hi res copy of the cover people could use going forward…See below…your welcome.
So begins the first of my video Halloween special series! Where every Halloween (Admittedly theres only been one so far…but hey! you live and learn!) I try to upload a series of videos either based on a monster theme or based on the season of Halloween itself!
Last years theme was “Of the dead” and dealt with 5 films featuring those architypical returners of the dead themselves, Zombies! Zombies as a trend have been dead now for years…quite possibly even a decade at this point. Zombies and Vampires have both pretty much been quite literally done to death since the turn of the century and I cant envision anything bringing them storming back to the mainstream public conciousness any time soon…
However! I’ve really wanted to talk about the initial 3 Romero zombie movies now for years and I thought with it being Halloween and there being so much to discuss about these specific zombie films…Well, the planets kind of aligned for me on this one.
The biggest problem I remember having with this review in particular was deciding which version to actually talk about…I’ve found that the ’68 versions been quite literally done to death and the 90’s versions decent but seems to be relatively underrated…One thing I definatley didnt want to do was 2 seperate videos talking about both films seperately but then; How do I cover them both and make it work?
I decided ultimately to cover both films as there own thing but to contrast them off one another when I felt I had something interesting to say about both or either one in particular…And while I feel I maybe could have gone a bit more in depth on the 60’s version in hindsight…at the time I just felt like it had been given enough of a platform over the 90’s version which just didnt seem all that well known…
(For the record: I still prefer the 90’s version over the 60’s version…I just find it has so much more to offer…)
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) )
TYTD Reviews 