Monday 3 June 2019

126 - fantasy

The   Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935- B/W)- More  TV-themed revuery.  Slim Ethel   Merman is disconcerting.
See also the Big Broadcast (1932) with Bing Crosby.

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939  - B/W) - Karloff would  do  this again and before.  Typical 30s/40s mad science fluff.

The Body Disappears (1941 - B/W) -    Sporadically appealing invisible comedy.


Here Comes Mr. Jordan  (1941- b/w) - Sentimental comedy  remade  as the almost workable Heaven can Wait (1978- rewatch).

Night Monster (1942 -B/W) - Tedious old dark house seriousness.

Ghost Ship(1942 - B/W) - Lewton thing that has to resort to voiceover for creepiness, or people think it'llbe like the Long Voyage Home.

The Seventh Victim (1943 - B/W)  - Lewton is overrated. This is a  proto-slasher that really wants to be Hitchcock. If  DePalma was  in the  40s..

I Love A Mystery (1945 -B/W) - Tonally   off  radio mystery adap. Sequels The Devil's Mask (1946) andThe Unknown (1946 - B/W) are much the same, noirish  Scooby Doos.

Bedlam (1946- B/W) - Hokey Lewton-Karloff period suspenser.

THE FLYING SERPENT (1946 - B/W)  - George Zucco and a wild parrot.PRC  fluff.

UnknownIsland (1948)  - Colour poverty row thing  with an ape-man/"sloth" and a dinosaur.

Rocketship X-M (1950 - B/W)  - Lloyd Bridges stars  in a shonky cash-in on Destination Moon, with added melodrama and tinted-orange desert.

Destination Moon   (1950) - Though in colour, this early George Pal effort hasn't aged well. The  highlight  is Woody Woodpecker.
Conquest of Space (1953) is  more of  the same.

Five (1951 - B/W) - I appreciate the effort,but this  post-apocalyptic five-hander would work better  in half an  hour.

Superman and the Mole Men (1951- B/W)  - Not my thing. Serial-like pilot for the TV series.

Mr. Drake's Duck  (1951 - B/W)  - Manic nonsense with  Douglas  Fairbanks Jr. and Jon Pertwee (billed  over  Wilfrid Hyde-White) doing his silly yokel voice in one of his meaty sidekick  roles, when he tried to be a film star.

Lost Continent (1951 - B/W) - Another rubbishy lost  world film, with Cesar Romero and a rocketship in a land tinted green.

Flight to Mars (1951)  -  Nothing that hasn't been seen before or since,  surprisingly lush,  in color, when Cameron Mitchell wasn't the sign of a semi-amateur production.

The Whip  Hand (1951 - B/W) - Commie-fighting western.

Invasion USA (1952 - B/W) -  More anti-commie war dreariness with Dan O'Herlihy.

BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA (1952 - B/W) - Cruddy slapstick with   a Martin and Lewis tribute in the jungle.

Untamed  Women (1952 - B/W)  - One Million Years B.C.rehashing post-apocalyptica.

The Magnetic Monster (1953 - B/W) -  Noisy Ivan Tors military nonsense.

Killer Ape (1953 - B/W) - Racist comic strip jungle trash with Johnny Weissmuller as Jungle  Jim.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953 - B/W) - More jungle shite.

Phantom from  Space (1954 - B/W) - Forgettable alien larks.
The Neanderthal Man (1953- B/W) - Mediocre Cave-western  with Frida Kahlo mutants.

Project Moonbase (1953) -  More faux-scientific crud.

The Atomic Kid  (1954 - B/W)  - Idiotic  Mickey Rooney military comedy for Republic, written by Blake Edwards.

Target Earth (1954 - B/W) -  Living room drudgery. Not to be confused  with the even worse mockumentary  UFO: Target Earth (1974).

Riders to the Stars (1954)   - Color Ivan Tors educational adventure, directed by and starring Richard Carlson, plus young pre-Brit  TV grot  Dawn Addams.

Devil Girl from Mars (1954 -  B/W) - Being a film set in Scotland, John Laurie pops up. Not a good  film  by any means, but with  its kinky subtext, oddly hypnotic.
Stranger from Venus (1954 - B/W) - A more tedious version of the above,gender-switched, with Pat Neal and  Helmut Dantine as a bargain-bin Klaatu.

Tobor the Great (1954) -  Tiresome sub-CFF kiddy folderol involving  a  robot and a rocket.

The Rocket Man (1954 -   B/W) - Dopey CFF/Disney-ish kidcom by Lenny Bruce!

Revenge  of the Creature  (1955- B/W)/The Creature Walks Among Us (1956 - B/W) - Cheap cash-ins.

The Beast With A Million Eyes (1955 - B/W)/The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) /Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954 - B/W)- The  same shade of undersea Corman dreariness.

Tarantula (1955 - B/W) - I  am not a fan, even though Leo G. Carroll gives his heart and soul.

The Day the World Ended (1955- B/W)   - Unexciting Corman melodramatics.

Bride of the Monster (1955 - B/W)/Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959  -  B/W) - I admire Ed Wood, but I don't get him.

Timeslip (1955 -  B/W) - Typically dreary 50s UK thriller with radioactivity thrown in.

The Beast of Hollow Mountain  (1956) - Shite proto-Valley  of Gwangi.

Creature with the Atom Brain (1956 - B/W) - Bad zombie-gangster  film.

King Dinosaur (1956 - B/W) -   Shonky  garden-shot giant reptiles folderol by  Bert I. Gordon.


Indestructible Man (1956- B/W) Sleazy,unlikeable Lon Chaney thriller.
World Without End  (1956)  - The other adaptation of he Time Machine with Rod   Taylor. Chintzy colour space-saga. The ludicrous Queen of Outer Space (1958)  is at least in the same universe.



Not Of This Earth (1957 - B/W) - Typically simultaneously energetic yet dreary early Corman. See also The Last Woman on  Earth (1959) and The Wasp Woman (1959 - B/W),The Undead  (1956 - B/W, actually that's  a fun medieval fantasy, maybe Corman's best of this era) and Voodoo Woman (1957 - B/W).

From Hell It Came (1957 -B/W) - Fun  monster-tree, but a jungle slog.

Missile to the Moon (1958 - B/W) - An even worse Cat-Women of the Moon.

The Lost Missile (1958 - B/W) -  I somewhat fancy Robert Loggia, but this military-themed war scare flick is a pile of irradiated dung.

Invisible Invaders  (1959- B/W) - Dreary 50s proto-zombie apocalypse.


I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1959 - B/W) - Almost a self-parody   without jokes. The highlight is the gruesome end. Too noirish for my  liking.

The Incredible Petrified World (1959 - B/W) - Dreadful  excuse to reuse stock footage.

CAPE CANAVERAL MONSTERS (1960 - B/W) - Even worse than one can imagine, and this is from the director of the legendarily awful Robot Monster  (1953 - B/W).

The  Atomic Submarine (1960- B/W) - Basic two-star naval mission with a giant squid, but compared to the above, decent.
See also AlexGordon's other undersea dirge The Underwater City (1962), so bad it  was erroneously released in b/w.

Man in the Moon (1960-  B/W)   -Less a space comedy, more a slightly-sexy comedy that hasn't aged.

12  to the Moon (1960 - B/W) -  Unengrossing melodramatics.

The Amazing Transparent Man (1960 - B/W) -   Misleading advertising.

Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962 - B/W) - Dreadful but indescribably  strange   Vincent Price sorta-adventure. Has only one yellowfaced character, an ageing dwarf courtesan.

Invasion Of The Star Creatures (1962 - B/W) Duff, dull, sub-Bilko comedy.

The  Slime  People (1963 -  B/W) - Literally unwatchable.

The Crawling Hand (1963 - B/W) - Not to be confused with The Creeping Terror (1964 - B/W), but the same (lack of) quality.

Alphaville (1965 - B/W) - A  load of lazy bollocks.

Lightning Bolt (1966) -Anthony Eisley, a decent lead playing an arsehole tries  to stop a  Spanish Leo McKern and his army of poundshop provo Diaboliks in this charmless Margheriti Eurospy.

 Sins of the Fleshapoids (1966)  - Proto-Waters amateurishness.  

Agent 505: Death Trap Beirut (1966) -The araldite Frederick Stafford plays another intolerable arsehole spy   in this shonky You Only Live Twice precursor.

Around the World Under the Sea (1966) -More tiresome underwater slowness from Ivan Tors.  Has Shirley  Eaton  in her post-Bond sojourn, alongside the terrible "we-really-want-to-be-British"spy  film  The Scorpio Letters (1967).

Stereo (1969- B/W) - Cronenberg    arseholery.

Latitude Zero (1969)- Finally saw this. The most inventive kaiju? Probably.   Though still bogged down  in  silly, absurdist  nonsense.  Has supposedly  Victorian tech  that is not steampunk but very mod.


On the Comet (1970) -  Some beautiful Zeman material, but sadly it  mostly bores.

THX1138 (1971)  -  George Lucas'  1984 fanfilm. Finds its footing too late.

Punishment  Park (1971)  - It feels like a World in Action, so it convinces. But not enjoyable.

The   Incredible  Invasion  (1971)  -   Awful, faux-German    Mexican steampunk  Karloff necrophilia.

Watched the  five   Superbug films  (1971,  (1972, (1973, (1975, (1979)    -  Germany's answer to the Herbie films, about a computerised Beetle. Silly, sporadically charming, with a robo-spider toolkit and a lead called James Bondi.

The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler (1971)  -Dreadful  videotaped medical thriller.

Garden of the Dead (1972) - Amateurish rubbish involving cowboys,  graves, zombies and fog.

The Dracula Saga  (1972)  - Typically nonsensical monster  rally from Spain. What it lacks in Paul  Naschy, it makes up in with Narciso Ibanez Menta, a cyclops  and delusions of grandeur.

Schlock  (1973)  - John Landis' debut is enthusiastic but just  not  especially entertaining. Good ape work.

2069 - A Sex Odyssey (1973) - Snowbound/Chromakeyed sex awfulness.

Who? (1973)- Utterly  ridiculous  cyborg-spy-in-a-metal-mask nonsense.

Flesh  Gordon (1974)  - Not just not worth it for the stop-motion, but  rendered useless by De Laurentiis, Hodges and co.

Dr.  Black, Mr.Hyde (-1975) - The  one laugh is the Pieces-like kung  fu interlude. Bernie Casey gives it  his all,  but it is amateurish.

Percy's Progress  (1975) - The   all-star sequel nobody asked for.Bernard  Falk   and  Dame Edna Everage (newly knighted) appear as themselves (so this is in the Bazza-Howling-Gremlins-Captain Invincible-Walter Paisley-Looney Tuniverse). Vincent Price is a Greek tycoon.

Fantastic Comedy (1975) - Romanian Come Back, Mrs. Noah.


The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - Oh fuck off. Ironic that Richard O'Brien,  singing about Flash Gordon, would ultimately be in Flash Gordon. But not even Charles Gray can save this.

The Bionic Boy (1977)  - Amateurish Filipino cash-in.


Spider-Man (1978)/Spider-Man Strikes  Back (1979)- Below-average  TV  folderol packaged to cinemas.

Deathsport (1978) - Mostly ropey, but enough world-building  and interesting touches (David Carradine's mum being  this Anakin Skywalker-type  legendary hero  murdered by  Richard Lynch) and interesting action not  to make  it worthless.

Americathon (1979) - A  cluttered, all-star dystopian comedy. Elvis Costello, MeatLoaf and  the  BeachBoys  contribute. Chief Dan George plays America's richest man, head  of NIKE - National Indian Knitting Enterprises,  Fred  Willard starts his run of rubbish comedies,  and Richard  O'Sullivan USA himself,  John  Ritter  is  the absurdly young  president, and  Harvey  Korman  is a bigender sitcom star.

Ratataplan (1979) - A  surrealist, charming,  irritating Italian thing from actor/former Mr. Rossi animator Maurizio Nichetti. Very Vision  On. Features  a Giorgio White.

Space Firebird 2772 (1980) - Nicely  done anime, similar to Space Battleship Yamato (1977). But  anime has never  appealed much.

La Dinastio Dracula (1980)- Sub-Naschy    Mexican horror.

The Bushido Blade (1981) - Bland unexciting Yorkshire TV-Rankin/Bass-Toho  coproduced   Samurai film.  Yorkshire/Tyne-Tees are probably why there's a minstrel show in it.

Memoirs of a Survivor (1981)  -  Dreary,  pervy timeslip  fantasy set in a Quatermass  Conclusion-type  future.

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) - Dreadful, cheap non-event, basically  Goodnight Sweetheart in reverse. Amazing video art, though that  I stared many times at my uncle's house.

Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie (1984) - Wig action for Pleasence.

Iceman (1984) - I remember my  mum switching onto this,and thinking  it silly. I kind of agree, though  the ending is moving and  brilliantly staged  though contusing.

Ghostriders (1987) - Regional produced Texan horror-western. Not good, releasedby Prism. Looks shot on video. Weirdly co-stars a childhood friend of my dad.

The  Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998) - VeryTV-ish  but  perfectly nice Bradbury  adap.


Car Wash (1976)- An  amiable but  not exactly rib-tickling comedy,  that for non-American audiences, is merely  a vehicle for a theme song.

BeatStreet (1984)- Again a  valuable document of a time in African-American society, but  not  a great film. Basically a  revue.

A Chorus of Disapproval (1989)-    Odd Winner-Ayckbourn comedy. Delightfully   strange Anthony  Hopkins,     but a  weird beige  atmosphere befitting the  late 80s  film industry.

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