MonsterHunter

Things begin ominously enough when the unseen narrator starts droning on about how cool ants are and how they can do all this great stuff like push aphids around and dig up dirt between the cracks of sidewalks. They also have this super sweet gimmick where they spray pheromones on people to make them do their bidding! Sensing an opportunity to turn this dopey giant bug movie into a learning experience, I hit the world wide web to find out if pheromones could really cause giant ants to take over the world. It looks like they actually use this stuff to communicate with each other about dangers, sex, and the location of the right ant hill. I also made the mistake of looking into our own use of pheromones and found out that it is thought pheromones released from the armpits may cause women living together to have “synchronous menstrual cycles.” Whoa, thanks for sharing! Let see those ants beat that! Read More »

I’ve read a good portion of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing in my time and for the most part, I’ve found it enjoyable, in spite of the often times purple prose. Once upon a time I even read The Dunwich Horror story that this movie is purportedly based on. I say purportedly because I don’t honestly recall much of what went on in the story (nameless Old Ones attempting to invade this dimension I assume - that seemed to be part and parcel of Lovecraft’s writings), but I don’t recall ever sitting there thinking, “this would make a great movie with Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee.” Read More »

I don’t know where all the flying brains were in this movie. If you’ve got yourself an early 1950s movie about a killer brain, it either ought to fly around or have grown to gargantuan size, preferably both. The only thing the brain in this one does is sit in a bunch of dirty water in a fish aquarium! Read More »

And the winner for the Medalla Sitges en Oro de Ley Award at the Catalonian International Film Festival in Sitges, Spain for Best Director of 1974 is Robert Fuest for his malpractice on the deformed sequel to The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. In reviewing the DVD box, I note that MGM did not see fit to trumpet this triumph of Mr. Fuest. I hope that their failure to mention this award was because they knew he didn’t deserve it instead of the award being too long to fit on the back of the DVD case or simply because they had never heard of this award. And what was with this award being handed out in 1974? The movie came out two years before that! These are the laziest awards I’ve ever heard of. What’s next? Best Special Effects of 2004 to God for creating the world in seven days? Read More »

When you’ve got Hammer laying on the blood, gore and skin around this time, I’m not sure what the point was in making a movie like this. They want to bring the vampire into the modern world to see what would happen if some jaded city dwellers encountered a creature they thought only existed in myth. The only problem is that the movie is so small-scale, none of the potentially interesting culture clashes between the old vampire and the happening young kids and their big scary city happen. Read More »

This is one of those “raping swamp monster meets I Was A Teenage Werewolf” movies that was all the rage back in the late 70s and early 80s. Writer Tom Holland (Child’s Play) apparently thinks we’ll be entertained by seeing women raped by slimy creatures and teenage boys turning into really icky and horny monsters. He obviously has us humans confused with hentai fans. Read More »

I’ll admit it - I went and took a dump while Frankie Avalon was singing “These Are The Good Times” at the Pavilion run by old Big Drop (Don Rickles), but I can’t blame my sudden need to evacuate three days worth of cereal and tuna solely on Frankie. I suspect that just as much of the credit can been given to the several prior musical numbers in this movie, some more stool-loosening than others. (The songs performed by biker gang member Eric Von Zipper come immediately to mind.) Read More »

This is a sturdy entry in that genre of horror film where stuff is either way too big or way too small. In this case, you’ve got a bunch of people shrunk down by a mad doll maker instead of giant puppets running around killing people (like the title tricked me into believing I’d be seeing). Read More »

I always wondered why they never made any movies based on those John Carter, Warlord of Mars books that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote back in the middle ages, but after seeing an ancient Doug McClure and even more ancient (who’d have thought it possible?) Peter Cushing mucking around in the center of the Earth at some Burroughs’ created land called Pellucidar, I breathed a pretty big sigh of relief that John Carter and his planet-saving exploits were still relegated to my meager imagination. Read More »

One of the great truisms of our universe is that if Mars isn’t invading Earth, then we are invading Mars. Like a couple of feuding neighbors that dump dead birds in the others’ pools and send the Jehovah’s Witnesses to one another, both planets can’t seem to get by without trying to take a space dump on the other one. Hollywood caught on to all this interplanetary intrigue a long time ago and the whole genre probably peaked in the fifties and sixties with 1959’s The Angry Red Planet being a worthy effort distinguished by its serious tone, interesting message and the use of Cinemagic. Read More »