2007

S7.E81 ∙ Manos Hands of Fate (1966)

Thu, Oct 20, 2011

MANOS THE HANDS OF FATE (1966) by Hal Warren starring Tom Neyman and John Reynolds. I'm convinced everyone in tonight's film suffers Attention Deficit Disorder. They continually flub lines, miss cues, stare into the camera, or aren't even aware that they're on camera for the first few seconds of many shots. If you watch carefully, you'll also see the occasional clapper-board or director Hal Warren mouthing the word 'cut' a few times just before transitions, and there's a cavalcade of uncomfortable silences while actors wait for their cues. So take the batteries out of that remote control and put them to better use, as we sit back and enjoy the 1966 root canal known as Manos The Hams Of Fat.

0 /10

S7.E83 ∙ Goth Kill (2009)

Thu, Nov 03, 2011

by J.J. Connelly starring Flambeaux and Erica Giovinazzo. The aptly-named Nick Dread is burned at the stake for being nice to witches, and is immediately sent to Hell where he makes a bargain with the prince of darkness - no, not Ozzy Osborne, the other one who has horns and all his teeth. Nick offers to murder people deserving of damnation and, in return, he'll be reincarnated continually until he has a hundred thousand souls, at which point his next death would become final, and he'd claim his prize. So our hero - or anti-hero as the case may be - has an eternity to complete the job and there are no consequences for failure. I'm not exactly sure what the prince of darkness gets out of this - I must ask him next time I see him.

0 /10

S7.E84 ∙ Horror Express (1972)

Thu, Nov 10, 2011

My old sparring partner Chris Lee discovers a frozen Missing Link and brings it back to Europe aboard the Trans-Siberian express. Unfortunately, the monster thaws out to find himself classified as baggage, which only makes him very, very angry. Most horrifying of all, no-one - and I mean absolutely no-one - gets a refund on their return ticket. I know, it's quite shocking, but that's why The Schlocky Horror Picture Show is screened at this late hour. Let us now be amazed by two of Britain's greatest actors, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee - and some bald-headed bastard - in Horror Express, one of the best Hammer horror films not actually produced by Hammer.

0 /10

S7.E85 ∙ First Spaceship on Venus (1960)

Thu, Nov 17, 2011

by Kurt Maetzig starring Günther Simon and Lucyna Winnicka. Originally released as The Silent Star and, although based on the novel Astronauts by Stanislaw Lem, the award-winning author denied any connection to his book, as it had been adapted by a committee of vodka-fueled Marxists and an office shredder. It's a real pity, as Lem's books have been translated into forty languages and have sold over 27 million copies, including Solaris, which has been filmed no less than three times - three times more than absolutely necessary. In fact, my old friend and fellow author Ted Sturgeon once told me that Lem was the most widely read science fiction writer in the world.

0 /10

S7.E86 ∙ Phantom from Space (1953)

Thu, Nov 24, 2011

by Willy Wilder starring Ted Cooper and Tom Daly. If you're a fan of fifties science fiction, Phantom From Space is definitely worth seeing at least once. I'm not suggesting this is some sort of forgotten classic - it's very much a B-grade film, albeit one that has a few good ideas. The acting might be flat and the special effects are rather cheap, but what it does have is lots of stock footage of jets being scrambled and high-tech radio cars with gigantic aerials - they're a lot of fun, especially if you turn it into a drinking game like I do.

0 /10

S7.E87 ∙ Zontar the Thing from Venus (1966)

Thu, Dec 01, 2011

by Larry Buchanan starring John Agar and Tony Huston. With a reported budget of only $35,000, it's amazing this movie even exists. Larry couldn't afford to go for a lot of futuristic looking props, and instead had to rely on surplus electronics, with the odd benefit that his high-tech gear actually looks more realistic. There's no denying that Larry's films are marred - or made distinctive - by his inexperience and inability to figure out where to put a camera or when to cut away to another angle. Yet somehow, forty years later, here we are watching them over again - like aircraft accident footage - trying to work out what went wrong.

0 /10

S7.E88 ∙ Horror Hotel (1960)

Thu, Dec 08, 2011

by John Llewellyn Moxey starring Christopher Lee and Valentine Dyall. It may not be a masterpiece, but it's definitely a gem worth discovering. Horror Hotel has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho due to some structural similarities. Both films begin by establishing an attractive young blonde as the primary character, leading the audience to assume that she'll be the protagonist for the remainder of the story. In both films, the blonde travels to a isolated location and checks into a motel run by an eccentric manager. Furthermore, both films were made the same year.

6.6 /10

S7.E89 ∙ Lost World (1925)

Thu, Dec 15, 2011

by Harry Hoyt starring Wallace Beery and Bessie Love. Willis O'Brien was the first to combine animated dinosaurs with live-action footage of human beings by separating the frame into split screens but, as work went on, his techniques grew better and he could soon combine live-action and stop-motion footage in the same part of the screen. The special effects were so convincing to twenties audiences, Arthur Conan Doyle showed a test reel to Harry Houdini and The Society Of American Magicians. Next day the New York Times ran a front page article about the monsters stating, "If they were fakes, they were masterpieces!"

0 /10

S7.E90 ∙ Silent Night Bloody Night (1972)

Thu, Dec 22, 2011

by Ted Gershuny starring Mary Woronov and John Carradine. This is a rather engaging body-count movie that's ahead of its time. The similarities to Black Christmas (1974) are definitely there, from the mysterious phone calls, the Christmas setting, point-of-view shots and general stalk-and-slash mayhem. Writer-director Gershuny dips his lid to classics like Psycho (1960) and The Old Dark House (1932), while looking forward to the splatter films of the late seventies and eighties, which makes this something of a turning point in the genre, and even establishes some of the rules quoted in the recent Scream.

0 /10

S7.E91 ∙ SnowBeast (1977)

Thu, Dec 29, 2011

by Herb Wallerstein starring Yvette Mimieux and Sylvia Sidney. Snowbeast features the phenomenon of the seventies, when Bigfoot mania was all the rage. Bigfoot was relatively unknown until 1967, when Roger Patterson filmed the supposedly genuine Sasquatch - wearing sneakers. I'm sure you've seen the pictures if not the film footage itself. After that, Bigfoot's popularity soared higher and faster than Evel Knievel ever did. The media was flooded with news stories relating recent sightings of the creature while books devoted to the Big Hairy One were all over the place. From the Loch Ness Monster to Sasquatch, the Yeti and the Yowie, people gobbled it all up.

0 /10

S7.E92 ∙ Dominique (1980)

Thu, Jan 05, 2012

Produced by the mediocre Milton Subotsky and directed by the fair-to-middling Michael Anderson, prepare to be haunted for a hundred minutes by Dominique (1980), also known as Dominique Is Dead - which should becomes pretty obvious before long - and you might want to pump up the volume a bit and turn down the colour - there's a lot of whispering and more harsh lighting than a high school rock eisteddfod.

0 /10

S7.E93 ∙ Voodoo Dawn (1998)

Thu, Mar 01, 2012

by Andrzej Sekula starring Michael Madsen and Rosanna Arquette. See what happens when you don't check tourist warnings before going on holiday? Mind you, the words 'dismemberment' and 'zombies' are not to be found in Lonely Planet guides - I know, I've looked. Voodoo Dawn is a real shocker - in more ways than one. It gets right to the heart of the bottom of the original zombie legend, with a rather eerie look at black magic in the deep South. I hope you've dressed for the occasion, with some dense clothing for dense swamp populated by some very dense people.

0 /10