Champagne and Bullets was another one of those films that kept getting pushed back, missing out on being a part of previous seasons by a hairs Breadth. Originally scheduled for Season 10 it JUST missed out and ended up getting pushed back to Season 11, where it got as far as being recorded and put on the timeline ready to edit, before another film came in (Night of the Demon) that JUST pushed it out once again into this season.
A long time coming, I have kind of mixed feelings ultimately about Champagne and Bullets. I think it definitely has its moments, but on the whole, I can think of ‘entertainingly bad’ movies that appeal to me more. it’s still a good time for the most part and I can absolutely recommend checking it out, if you can ever find a DVD copy (the Bluray copies now long out of print and goes for silly money)
And so! another Halloween draws to a close and I chose this one to see us out, ‘Halloween Night’ is a VERY early ‘Asylum’ picture, trying to get a publicity boost off the ‘Halloween’ franchise (itself having a reboot upcoming in the form of the Rob Zombie movies at the time) AND given that this year marked the final part of the EVEN NEWER soft reboot of the Halloween franchise with ‘Halloween Ends’ it made sense to check this one out.
And you know what? it’s actually pretty okay! like…its nothing mindblowing, but of all the films i’ve covered this month, this would be the one i’d feel most comfortable coming back to at some point for a stable watch!
Short but sweet, I liked it! give it a go!
As for next halloween? well, I think it’s going to be a bit of a ‘Trick or treat’ grab bag of titles, I have a few already lined up, but it’s still early days!
That cover haunts my nightmares, I remember seeing TONS of them in film and music stores in the mid 2000’s
It wouldnt be a ‘Rip off’ movie month without taking a look at probably the most proliferated ‘knock off’ feature the 1995-2005 window could produce. David Decoteau’s ‘Final Scream’ a picture that looked at ‘Scream 3’ and went ‘Hey! thats been out for 12 months. Lets make an unofficial one of those!’ before being slapped with a lawsuit and being forced to change its name to ‘Final Stab’ (Itself, a reference to the movie series within the scream franchise that retells the scream films…this is…all getting a bit confusing.’
ANYWAY! the reason it’s so well known (at least in the UK) is because back in the VERY early day of DVD distribution, players were often sold bundled with a few packs of ‘Multi film’ box sets, usually containing the cheapest, lowest budget productions ever shot. and 9 out of 10 of those sets, came with ‘Final Scream’ bundled in with them.
All bein said? its not THAT bad of a movie. it has nothing to do with ‘Scream’ in any way shape or form. but it could have turned out a LOT worse than it actually did.
probably one of Decoteau’s better offerings. I’d say if you can get your hands on a copy for this (and it’s not going for stupid money, i’d say a tenner or less) then maybe check it out? just dont go into it expecting a knock off ‘Scream’ movie…it’s really more of a murder mystery haunted house flick than a reference laiden slasher.
This poster is SUCH a rip off. I kind of love it for that.
As we continue our deep dive into ‘Films that wish they were part of ‘Official’ film franchises’ We arrive at 2004’s “Dawn of the Living Dead” a ludicrous work that I still have total and utter mixed feelings about. It feels like a made up movie, like something that shouldnt actually exist. It feels odd. like a concussion. situations and circumstances have this overly woozy quality and a total miscasting of Joe Estevez (who I mainly know for ‘On Cinema‘ which adds a WHOLE other level to this thing). Just makes this whole thing a totally surreal watch for me.
Whether its actually any good? I cant say. I know I was so conflicted about it, I ultimately ended up putting it on my ‘Shelf of quite good films’ pending a rewatch (which’ll probably be next halloween now at this rate) I just…Im lost for words with this thing. and I think if you check the below review…you’ll see why.
Well! it’s our SIXTH Halloween special run (honestly, where does the time go!?) and this year we were going downmarket and dirty, looking at ‘knock off’ movies that were riding the coat tails of much more successful pictures. And this film was very much the inspiration for this months offerings. “Stranger: A Soulmate of Chucky” a film i’d wanted to get my hands on since AT LEAST 2007, maybe even earlier. As soon as a saw the cover and found out it’s intentions in DESPERATELY trying to appear to be tied to the childs play franchise. I just KNEW I needed to see it. It’s apparently quite hard to get ahold of these days, which makes me glad I grabbed mine some years ago when it was just “kinda uncommon” rather than “full blown rare”
Not only is this the start of a new themed month for halloween AND a movie i’ve wanted to watch for the best part of a decade and a half and review since I started the channel, but it also gave me the opportunity to work with a fellow cult film critic and genuinely good egg, Dan From Peckingforgoodtv. Honestly, his ’31 horror movies in 31 days’ halloween specials have EASILY replaced the hole in my life that was created when ‘Cinemassacres Monster Madness’ was wound down. I think the guys spot on with his reviews and is very sincere. and I highly recommend you check his stuff out.
In the meantime though! strap yourself in for 41(ish) minutes of analysis about a killer doll movie that isnt really a killer doll movie! YAY!
‘Footprints’ was a film that chronically fell into the ‘I’ll cover it next season’ pile. As far back as season 7 I’d intended to cover this one, but when it came to finalising the running order, it just didnt sit right with what was in the dock at the time, so…i’d cull it over to the next season and PROMISE to do it then…where it’d sit on the list again till the very last minute and then ultimately get culled back to the NEXT season and so on.
The fact i’ve actually finally got it out, AND the fact that it came out only a week or so after Severin Films announced a lovely box set which includes this film. was both coincidental and a very nice surprise.
I honestly always seem to forget just how interesting a concept this movie was and how surprisingly fun it could be. Im really going to have to dig it out again in the near future for a re-spin. It’s definitely not perfect. But it is one that I recall with fondness.
Seriously though, quite why the astronauts are in this at all is a mystery to me…oh well..
And so, we arrive at the end of our coverage of the ‘American Ninja’ sequels (dont ask about the original…we’ll do that one at some point, but lord knows when) and…well…it’s been a bit of a death spiral since part 2, But part 5 was kinda, sorta, not as bad as part 4! Yes, it isnt *technically* an ‘American Ninja’ movie, yes it has David Bradley in it playing a COMPLETELY different character from the last two films and YES, it was a bit of a hatchet Cannon job…but then, the best films they made WERE often cheap cash ins on bigger movies and balls to the wall action goodness.
In that sense, this film honestly excels and I would really rather consider it the *true* ending to the franchise, than have to sit through ‘American Ninja 4′ again…
So this review was blocked in most places, which is a pain. But i’ve split the video out into a US friendly and EU friendly version. which you can access here.
One of the first collabs of the season and we landed an absolute winner with Jonathan North, I was first put in touch with Jonathan via Trivial Theater who’s good friends with Jonathan and has appeared on his channel multiple times reviewing family friendly cult classics. Obviously given the nature of my content, I didnt want to scare the guy too badly with ‘Wicked World’ or ‘The Corpse Grinders’ So I thought i’d have him on to talk about a movie thats been on my ‘To Cover’ list more or less since I started the channel!
I love ‘The Giant Claw’ I unapologetically love it, its cheesy, goofy, easy on the gore but surprisingly violent and the titular Giant Claw doesnt get nearly enough credit for being as interesting a creature as it is.
While I dont think I won Jonathan over totally, he was kind enough to invite me onto his channel over Christmas 2022, which was very nice of him. and I of course would love to have him back some day.
Easily one of those films where the poster is doing a HELL of a lot of heavy lifting here.
When it came to an opening episode for season 12, it was really a case of the planets quite wonderfully aligning. I have a real soft spot for the works of Barry J. Gillis. Ever since I first caught his opening feature “Things” damn near a decade ago, I’ve been entertained and impressed with his work ever since and when AGFA announced early last year that they were reissuing Barry’s 2nd feature “Wicked World” well, it all fell into place. I’d just started work on this season at that point, and it arrived WELL in time for me to cover it.
So! given the draught of Gillis titles i’d covered on the channel, his big bluray debute of “Wicked World” really seemed like a no brainer! it has everything you could possibly want in a Gillis movie and more!
If you’d like to grab a copy of Wicked world, theres limited stock available via Vinegar Syndrome Here
And for you really wild cats out there, Barry actually has a new film currently in production and due out imminently with updates coming via his facebook page, which I highly recommend checking Here
Seriously, AGFA have done some lovely work here and the set’s MORE than worth the price of admission to me. one I can definitely recommend!
Well! when it came to the 2nd half of our 5th anniversairy celebrations, I decided to try and do a bit of everything. Part of me wanted to cover movies i’d wanted to do for years (“Flight to Hell“, “Cannibal Girls“, “Camp Blood“) Some were movies i’d promised id do in the future, and then totally forgot to do in the future (“The American Ninja 4“, “Cyborg Cop 2“, “Alien Species“) and some were first time watches that arrived on short notice and genuinely caught me off guard (“Gatwick Gangsters“, “Night of the Demon“, “Dont go in the house“). Hell, we even rounded off the TYTD Reviews episodes by revisiting our very FIRST video for the channel “The Dragon Lives Again” hopefully finally doing justice to a film I’ve long admired and wished my review of could have been better.
It was a celebration of the old, and a look forward to the future of the channel. With this series marking a few milestones, it being the last season edited in 1080p,the last season edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, The last to use the branding we’ve been using now since 2020 across all fronts and the last season predominantly recorded on my focusrite condensor mic, a mic thats pretty much been what you’ve heard me through since AT LEAST 2020, which also made a few on and off appearences between 2017 and 2019 too.
What does the new season hold? well as seen in the review for “Dont go in the house” i’ve had a systems and kit upgrade on almost all fronts! including a new machine, a new mic, new lights for the packaging shots, new editing software and some other new tools to help give a bit more variety. As such we have new branding across all our main shows, we’ll be solely uploading in 4k going forward with better quality sound and visuals, faster processing power means it takes less time to export and convert reviews now, and as such it means we’ll be able to *hopefully* turn things around a bit quicker which’ll give me some time back to be able to enjoy a sunset or eat a well prepared meal!
There have also been some changes that are not quite as pleasent to announce, but here we are. After 2 years or so of monthly uploads and over 50 feature length commentaries, “The Comedy Dining Experience” will be swapping back to an irregular upload schedule, as it was when we first launched in 2018. Part of this is down to the amount of time it takes to edit the commentaries, part of it’s down to lower uptake than our other shows (we’ve had some episodes record less than 20 views after 3 weeks of being live in some cases) and part of it’s down to both myself and Ben just being absolutely ram jammed with stuff going on at the minute. Im in the middle of writing/recording and editing next years episodes (and I still have stuff to finish with Season 12!) and Bens recently had several good news stories that means he’s a lot busier than he was at the moment.
What this means in practical terms is that the Comedy Dining experience isnt going anywhere, it just means that, for the moment at least, it’s going to be on pause while we sort life stuff out, and when it does come back it’ll be likely an “As and when” affair rather than a regularly scheduled “thing” which will allow me more time to work on and refine our reviews, and it means we wont be oversaturating the channel too.
What it ALSO means is that we can do other fun things like monthly game night streams (we’ve done 3 so far and a pilot) AND it’s meant I can start an official Discord from which we’ll be hosting various watchalongs, games nights and other good stuff, alongside chats on everything from good and bad movies to music and weird youtube oddities, so do please tag along for that!
Season 11 marked a change in the wind for the channel, and with Season 12 currently rolling out weekly, I hope your enjoying the direction we’re taking the channel in, I had an absolute blast working on this season, I think it’s one of my favourites i’ve worked on alongside Season 10 and the chance to work and hang out with so many interesting people in collaboration has been an absolute delight. I couldnt have asked for a better 5th year on the platform.
TYTD Reviews 