Tag: reviews

Shogun Saints (Boxers of Loyalty and Righteousness) (1972)

A second article in one day!? yes I am spoiling you all! So! I’ve cocked up basically…when I plan my seasons I always try and do 3 TYTD episodes followed by a red triangle. This is for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is that their are more TYTD style films in the world than their are Red triangle ones. Red triangle episodes also take much longer to produce than TYTD episodes due to the amount of information that goes into them. And generally? I quite like keeping the red triangle episodes as once a month episodes purely because it’s like a nice little treat for the end of the month.

This month however I messed up. I’ve had a lot of work on my plate both in my personal life and behind the scenes on the channel and as a result I misread my schedules and ended up with 1 episode too many in this season…I usually try and aim for 18…though based on my current counting it’s now closer to 19 if not 20…rest assured next week their will be an “As scheduled” red triangle episode but in the mean time here’s one more TYTD episode to keep you going.

This ones a bit of an oddity…apparently it’s a quite rare film to own on video tape…it was part of the haul I secured a number of months ago and honestly? It’s very unmemorable. I dont want to come across as egotistical or vein in any sense but honestly? I’d say if you’ve watched this review of the film you’ve pretty much seen everything worth seeing from the movie. it’s not at all memorable and when I need to free up some space in a few months time I’ll most likely end up flogging this one…it’s about as much fun as a quite tame kung-fu movie can be…meh..this film is meh…

 

(the label on my VHS copy of this keeps falling off and the spindles that are supposed to hold the tape inside the carton artn snug enough to hold it…as a result doing the “Packaging shot” for this episode was a total nightmare…with either the label falling off while on the turntable, Or the whole tape falling out of the carton and taking the box with it as they hurtle towards the ground…cracking fun I can assure you.)
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Dead World (2017)

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!

(I LOVE this poster by the way!)
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Armed Response (1986)

Well this one went on a bit of a journey to arrive at it’s upload day today if Im being honest. I never really went into the full details of how I ended up with “Armed Response” in my possession. So! dear reader. It’s not much of a tale to tell but here it is.

about 4 months ago my partner messaged me to say that she’d seen a few VHS tapes in a box going on Facebook marketplace for about £5 and that she’d messaged the seller for me to ask if they were still available and suggested I go and check out the listing to see if it was worth pursuing. I jumped on Facebook and there was indeed a box of tapes going for about a fiver and the top of the box had Terminator 1 and 2 in a special presentation tin…I thought to myself “Well…for a fiver it’s worth checking it out just for the terminator tapes” so I waited a day or two and didnt hear anything back from the seller on my partners end so I decided to send a message…the guy responded in 10 minutes. First asking if I was serious and then telling me I could come and get them as soon as possible.

Overlooking the blatant sexism that had occured (My partner was Pissed let me tell you!) I waited till the nearest weekend and then with my sister we hopped to the next town over and found a small bungalow devoid of anything apart from a few dust sheets, an arth and fireplace, and what I can only describe as a trunk full of VHS tapes, with another medium sized box on top of that. It was rediculous. I actually had to ask the geezer selling these if he was genuinely getting rid of them for £5…when he said yes I practically bit his arm off and both me, the seller and my sister hobbled the short distance out of the bungalow into the back of my car.

I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for with this haul. as can be seen here in this live stream where I literally spent about 90 minutes just unboxing the “Trunk” sized box.

Armed response was one of the highlights of that stream, purely because the cover itself is just so weirdly surreal. I literally had no idea what was on this tape but this cover and the fact it had Lee van cleef and David Carradine in it pretty much guarenteed that I needed to get round to this one as soon as possible.

How was it? Well I’ll let the review do the talking:

(I love everything about this cover…the colours, the weird disembodied floating blue and orange head, Carradine with half his face cut off…even subtle things like the vietnam choppers…this is a true masterpiece of VHS coverart.)

 

ALSO! Once again im coming to the rescue here! trying to find a clean and hi res version of this artwork online is bloody impossible! seriously theres maybe 1 or 2 examples of it and non of them break 500 pixels…SO! Much like the cover for “Let’s ruin Dad’s Day” Here is a super Hi-res scan of the Armed Response VHS cover (For the UK release) in all it’s heavenly glory.

 

Armed Response - Fixed

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Bikini Model Academy – (2015)

…I got nothing for this one. Eveything I want to say about this film is in this review. the only thing that I would like to add is watching this review back after 2-3 months since I finished it. I would like to point out that I mention how much nudity and sex is in the film at one point without really stating why. it was a deleted line from the script and I was supposed to deliver it with a bit of a different inflection to what ultimately made it into the final cut. my goal was to say that basically for a film thats so desperate to be porn its arguably one of the tamest films to feature live breasts that i’ve ever seen and heres exactly why it is that tame. However it ends up coming out in this review like Im basically saying “THERES ONLY 4 BOOBS AND 2 SEX SCENES. SAD FACE! GOING HOME!”

I would also just quickly like to say that this got flagged up for copyright and was blocked…this time by a 3rd party content id bot…so not even an actual company could be bothered to police the IP of this thing…not that I blame the filmmakers for that…if i’d made this film I’d rather send a bot out to flag it down than have to watch this film again…

This is an objectifying, boring, and slightly mysoginistic piece of work in my opinion. I showed it to “Friend of the show” Ben one night while we were slowly getting drunk on the finest spirit based whisky drink ever manufactured. and he concurred…you may find out more about that conversation at a later date. but for now. all I can say is; Im sorry for what your about to experience. Really. Truely I am.

(What is Gary Bueseys face even doing in this poster!?…)
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The Strangeness (1985)

So this week we’re looking at “The Strangeness” a 1985 indie horror flick thats probably the last recommended film I’ll review for this year. Thats not to say that I dont want requests or recommendations coming through! no no! I love it when people tell me about strange crap I’ve never seen before. But we’re rapidly approaching Autumn and with it a block of specials that pretty much means that as of today (the 2nd of August 2018) I can pretty much tell you the entire schedule of whats to come review wise from next week through to the first week of January. This is because depending on how the Halloween poll goes (that closes in 2 days by the way! just for your information!) I’ll be doing either 5 videos on the theme of general halloween spookiness or 5 films on the history of vampires. but they’ve already been decided…equally all of Decembers films have pretty much been organised and locked in at this point as well…which only leaves 3 weeks in september and 4 weeks in November to fill! And the 3 weeks in september are all but locked down right now as it is! honestly; I have 1 slot unaccounted for at this point and it’s in November… and thats likely to fill up pretty quickly as time pushes on!

So yes, basically if you recommend me a film or make a request between now and the end of the year please dont be diheartned if I dont get round to it dramatically quickly. It will get done I guarentee it! it just may take me a little while…

In the mean time though. please enjoy this strange strange film…I dont really have too much to say about it beyond whats already mentioned in the video. it didnt thrill me…but I wasnt disgusted either!

 

(What I will say is this VHS cover is VASTLY superior to the current DVD cover…I dont know what this VHS covers about but I know I want to see the film BADLY!)
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Braindead (Dead Alive) (1992)

Im ashamed that I left watching “Braindead” till as late in my life as I have. It’s not really considered a mainstream horror in the same way that the “Nightmare on elm streets”, “Friday the 13ths” and “Halloweens” of the world are…in a sea of slashers where the closest thing to compare it to would be “The Evil Dead 2” Braindead stands out by a country mile as a truely shocking and twisted slice of Dark horror comedy.

It had always been on the outskirts of my film viewing horizons. I’d seen clips from it over the years but for one reason or another i’d just never got round to watching it…I was still trying to get the “Classics” under my belt…missing by a country mile the classic I could have been watching all along with this beauty!

I decided when I finally did down this movie that I had a choice…I could either watch it in pristine bluray quality (Bootleg but definitely enjoyable) or I could watch it for the first time in mangled VHS-vision…I chose the latter and I really dont regret my choices. The general nastiness of this film is enhanced tremendously by the nasty, grainey and semi chewed up fuzz that VHS provides…I actually own the Rental copy of this movie…It came from a video shop in Rhyl (It still has all the stickers from the shop on it and everything!) and watching it back through the murk you really get a feeling for the history that this tapes been through in order to arrive in my collection. I really do treasure it…Until peter jacksons 4K remasters of these movies come out it’s the closest I’ve got to watching this film in it’s intended condition…Though equally if they were to do what they did with the “Nekromantik” Bluray and include a polished up Super clean cut…alongside a trashed “Grindhouse” cut I’d be terrifically grateful…

I’d love to see Jackson return to these kinds of films…controversial, shocking, and brilliantly wicked fun…I know he probably never will but I can dream!

 

(Also this is one of those films that has never quite been able to get it’s promotional marketing quite right…this is the best representation of the film I could find (The rental cover) and it says absolutely bugger all about the film itself…It just looks really cool…)
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)

Okay so this morning I woke up to find that today’s episode (much like last week’s episode) has been blocked worldwide…this is a problem…I’m deciding whether or not to do a blog or a video about this because it may end up becoming a real issue for my channel if this keeps happening…in the mean time I’ve removed the video from this post and once it’s fixed and reuploaded I’ll relink it here…needless to say I’m livid…more to follow…

So! Its been a good few months since my “TMNT: The movie” review and I couldnt in good faith leave you guys with just that movie alone! So here’s the sequel! In all honesty I never saw this movie growing up. and in many ways I think it was probably for the better…I dont have that level of personal nostalgia over the live action films; that level of investment in them that may make me a bit bias towards how good or bad they were…had this been the 80’s cartoon series I may be telling you a different story right now, but the reality is that I always try to approach any film I review with an open mind. I leave any baggage at the door where I can and I try and talk about the film in a way that both gives you my opinion on it while at the same time being objective enough that you can get a feel for the tone yourself.

I’ll be honest, I wasnt the biggest fan of this film (Though the review will tell you more) but I do have to aknowlege that theres good stuff in here. I dont think any film is absolutely irrideamable…well “Almost” any film…but I have a soft spot for the turtles and I like the iterations of it that I like more often than not for the writing and tone. the turtles have gone for every major audience demographic going since there inception in the 80’s so theres something really for everyone out there if you look hard enough (Yes I know theres ninja turtle porno’s…no I wont be talking about them…this year…)

But I digress! for now! here’s Ninja Turtles

(The poster for this one isnt as good as the first turtles movie poster…I mean…it’s not bad…but I think the other one did it better…)
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Octopus 2: River of Fear (2001)

This is one of those moments where I think I nailed my exact thoughts on this one perfectly through the video review.

Octopus 2 is not a good film. But just writing that really doesn’t do a service to just how craptacularly awful it is…while we’re not exactly in “Let’s ruin dad’s day” territory. We are worryingly close. Which does concern me…

All I can really tell you about this is that they stopped at Octopus 2 and having suffered through this movie so that you can get an idea of why you should avoid this like a plague rat all I can really say is, just don’t do it.

EDIT: So! todays been eventful! I originally wrote this post quite quickly while on a break at work and very shortly after I wrote it I recieved an email from youtube telling me that this video had been blocked worldwide by “Lasso Entertainment” for a 1 minute section that had been clocked as containing there “Visual content”.

Now; Apart from the fact that “Lasso Entertainment” dont even own the rights to “Octopus 2” this video is covered by fair use as I only use a small portion of the overall movie to help justify my opinions on the film. I use non of the audio (Not that that really matters) so I find it very difficult to see why they think it’s okay to hit me with one of these strikes. I naturally contacted Lasso almost immediately to try and get this resolved but they refused to respond to me and as a result i’ve had to reupload this video with approximately 1 minute and 1 second cut out. I can only apologise and hope that fewer of these kind of incidents happen in future.

(I much prefer the UK DVD cover for “Octopus 2” the US poster makes it look way more interesting than it actually is…)
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She (1984)

Well, We’ve hit another recommended episode this week and this one was brought to my attention by Raymond; A man who’s been doing this a hell of a lot longer than I have who’s genuinely been one of the most welcoming guys I’ve met on youtube. his channel really doesnt get a whole lot of love but he deserves to do better than he does. He really does.

I feel like I’ve warmed to “She” a bit more since watching/writing the review for this one…it’s not that I think it’s any better with the distance of time behind it but rather I think i’ve warmed to it’s style a bit more and what it’s aiming to do. I still pretty much stand by what I say in my video review, I just think some of those positive points shine a little bit brighter in hindsight.

Im hoping to work on a collaboration with Raymond sometime soon and he’s been very supportive in helping make it so. So you may not have seen the last of him on my channel just yet.

(I still say the Universal Monsters are the better elements of this film)
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Gandahar (Light years) (1988)

I first watched Gandahar about 3 months ago and im still about as lost for words about it as I am to this day. Seriously. Where do I even begin to process what I saw in this epic Pure unadulterated slice of sci-fi…and this is pure sci-fi. theres no mistaking that. it’s pumping through this movies veins.

It’s such a wonderful piece of art from a time when Hand drawn animation was just beginning to wind itself down and the “Adult cartoon” genre was fizzling out into hybernation for the better part of 15-20 years when it would inevitably be revitalised by the likes of Adult Swim, Fox and MTV.

My review of this movie will speak more for it than anything I could ever type here. I feel that even typing this basic mop up post above this review is in some way cheapening the effect of this movie. it’s a tremendously powerful picture. So much so that this is the longest single review I’ve done for my channel to date (Clocking in at a whopping 33 minutes and 38 seconds) and the worst part is. I feel I could have said more…as it stands…well, I let me do the talking…

 

(In 1000 years my youtube channel will be deleted and 1000 years ago it will be restored…)
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