I get the sense that Steven Seagal and director Don E. FauntLeRoy wound up 2005’s Today You Die, looked at what an awesome opera of action violence they wreaked and Don said to Steve, “if that’s what we could do when you’re just an armored car driver, what would happen if you were the most decorated veteran of the first Gulf War?” And Steve responded with, “and I was the leader of an elite team of mercenaries?” Don says, “that just might be one of our best projects of 2006!” Steve is nodding his chins and Don seals the deal with “have you ever been to Cape Town, South Africa, Steve?” Read More

Before this movie started I didn’t even know what continent Damascus was on! If that’s the sort of detail that really matters to you when you’re watching a movie, Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus begins with a map with labels and narrator to walk you through it. For me though, by the time the guy was babbling on about the fourth different set of tribes fighting over some sandy armpit the civilized world quit caring about thousands of years ago, I just gave up trying to sort out what some guy named Thor was doing in the middle of it all. Unleash the glistening guns of whatever gargantuan grapple god this movie stars already! Read More

Kenpo legend Jeff Speakman is of course famous for his legendary Kenpo movie The Perfect Weapon. He is not famous for other movies such as The Expert, Scorpio One or Deadly Outbreak. I think I knew what the hell Kenpo was back in the early 1990s, but I don’t have the slightest idea what it entails anymore. Probably something with sticks and lots of grunting and kicking. Read More

In this beloved musical effort set against the backdrop of the 1903 World’s Fair, Judy Garland sings her way through a world where the most pressing problem of the day is the fact that the boy-next-door’s tailor is closed meaning that he can’t get his tuxedo in time for the big graduation dance. Read More

Giant of the Evil Island promises us so much. Like a giant. And an evil island. And director Piero Pierotti (Hercules Against Rome) delivers exactly all of it! Now you may need to be a bit flexible on your definition of what a giant is since the pirate Malek appears to be of normal size, though admittedly stocky enough that a little kid might think he was giant. But there’s no doubting the presence of an evil island since Piero has the good sense to actually name Malek’s island hideout as Evil Island! Read More

Massacre revolves around a bunch of murders happening during the shooting of a horror film called Dirty Blood. Dirty Blood looks like your typical Andrea Bianchi film, what with its murky visuals and murkier story line, but the bits and pieces of it we get to see being filmed make it apparent that it would probably be more entertaining than the real Andrea Bianchi movie we are actually sitting through! Read More

Among the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s various works, The Masque Of The Red Death stands out as one of the best, featuring superior production values (they flew over to England for a tax break and apparently ended up re-using the sets from Beckett), a particularly vile performance by Vincent Price as Prince Prospero, and a story that was more than the standard old dark house with degenerate families story that seemed to permeate these productions like the stench of a corpse moldering in a secret chamber somewhere in the living room walls. It didn’t hurt this movie any either when this midget burned alive a guy in a gorilla suit. That’s money in the bank every time. Read More

What was NBC thinking? A three part science fiction miniseries that didn’t feature space battles and evil aliens? That instead focused on Rock Hudson and Bernie Casey debating the philosophical implications of colonizing Mars? And ended up making the case against our exporting our culture everywhere we went? And more shockingly, featured The Night Stalker’s Darren McGavin in a cowboy outfit and a silly wavy-haired wig? Read More

The details are almost too terrifying to report: a $25,000 budget, a two week shooting schedule, Tommy Kirk, and a TV movie. That in a nutshell is what we have with Mars Needs Women, a movie that can’t hide the low budget, low star power, and the low wattage script that it suffers from throughout. Read More

Mission Stardust is an out of this world space race of bad plotting, deliriously inept special effects, and characters who seem intent on proving to one another which one of them is the stupidest. That interstellar stud Perry Rhodan ended up getting a nice dose of space booty at the end of the film while evil kingpin Arkin found himself chucked out an airlock merely proves that in life, it’s only results that matter. Read More