Maniacal Movie Poster Monday #135!

Heavy Metal  (Columbia Pictures, 1981)

I love this sci-fi/fantasy animated anthology flick - with stories taken from the long running magazine of the same name. The soundtrack is also a fave.








All the Way Boys  (Avco Embassy, 1973)

After the success of the Trinity spaghetti western spoofs - the stars and filmmakers teamed up again for this modern day comedy, which was released the previous year in its native Italy. I haven't seen it - but I like these guys, so I'm sure I'd enjoy it.











Some Girls Do  (United Artists, 1969)

The second of two 1960's Bulldog Drummond movies - there had been scads of them in the 1930's and 1940's. When they brought the character into the 60's it was to serve as a Bond ripoff - and this movie's robot girls was one of the sources for Austin Powers's "fembots." I haven't seen this one - but I hope to one day!








Until next post - when we start the fourth annual Halloween Horrorfest Post-a-Thon - you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Saturday Night at the Movies 9/28/13!

Who cares what picture we see?



I certainly think Judi Dench would - so why not this one:

Not one of my favorites in the series - but keep in mind the ones I like least are still three star movies - therefore it's always worth another watch - even tonight if you wanted to come over and check out the Blu-Ray with me!







Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Maniacal Movie Poster Monday #134!

Game Show Models  (Independent International, 1977)

I've never seen this softcore T+A movie that seems to offer the behind the scenes lives of thos attractive models on shows like The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal. I would love to see it though!











Dracula and Son  (Quartet Films, Inc, 1979)

This French vampire farce was made in 1976 and took three years to make it to the US. I haven't seen it - and I've heard the American dubbing job takes a frothy French flick and ruins it - but given the chance I would be all over this - I mean, it's Christopher Lee, you know?











Godzilla vs Megalon  (Toho Studios, 1973)

Another foreign movie that took three years to make it to America - this one played theaters briefly before being snapped up by NBC - they took the full length movie, chopped it down to fit an hour (or maybe an hour and a half - it's been over 35 years and my memory is getting a little fuzzy) and even that reduction was chopped down further by adding some hosting segments from John Belushi in the Godzilla suit he wore on Saturday Night Live at one time or another. With that and commercials, it felt like we were watching an extended trailer for the movie...













Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Saturday Night at the Movies 9/21/13!

Who cares what picture we see?


Earl Boen - I think...yes...yes, he would! So let's make it all about this one tonight...

I dearly love this sci-fi action flick. It fires on every cylinder and almost never slows down to even take a breath. Thank goodness the original casting - Arnold as Reese and O.J. Simpson (!) as the Terminator - didn't happen!



Of course, this movie's success led to a sequel - but it was seven years later. And then they waited another 12 years to do it for the third time. Thankfully we don't have to wait 19 years to make this a

 

 

Saturday Night at the Movies Triple Feature!

Let's pause for a very important message regarding your rights to watch television at no cost to you:

 

Now on to feature two!

Everybody came back - including James Cameron - and with a budget that made the original's look like a dry cleaning bill - they put together a massive and massively entertaining movie - which blows stuff up real good while actually giving you something to think about...incredible, I know!





Let's keep this lights on with a quick ad:

And our third flick for the evening:

All those years later - with Arnold in his mid 50's - and Cameron not returning, but turning the director's chair over to Jonathan Mostow - I wasn't sure this one was going to work.


It works!


Solid sci fi action - with Nick Stahl replacing insurance risk Eddie Furlong as John Connor - and a solid storyline that still manages to advance the story and make sense even with all the time travel and whatnot. Add to that new Terminatrix Kristanna Loken looking hot while being badass - and a plethora of incredible action and effects - this is another worthy sequel in the series.





Now, I know what you're thinking. "Isn't there a fourth movie in the series?" Well, technically, yes. But as it's a fourth movie with no Arnold Schwarzenegger that I slept through because it's so slow and self-important - I declare it skippable and don't feel the need to include it here.



The first three movies, though? Those are on Blu-Ray in the video vault and I'm ready to set them spinning back to back to back whenever you are - like even tonight, if you cared to come by!






Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

The Video Vault of Mora Tau 9/19/13!

How about some 1960's Batman - from the 1970's!

That's a 1973 public service announcement - with a secret. I'll bet you figure the first half of the secret out...but the second half may be harder...and no Googling! Feel free to comment your answer below!










Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Maniacal Movie Poster Monday #133!

The Curse of the Werewolf  (Hammer Film Productions, 1961)

Hammer's big werewolf movie - with a well cast Oliver Reed getting hairy and being scary as the title cursed fellow. In honor of the film's British origins - we go with the British Quad poster here.












Swamp Thing  (Warner Bros, 1982)

I really like this movie - an adaptation of the DC comics character - but I have to be honest - it's fairly ragged - almost as ragged as the late great Dick Durock's swamp suit after running around the marshy areas outside Charleston SC for director Wes Craven. But - you have some very cool actors, and Craven does some nice "comic book" swipes and dissolves - and this did give long time stunt king Durock an actual starring role - so it it still a solid recommendation.













Guns of the Black Witch  (American International Pictures, 1961)

AIP got this Italian pirate movie out on American movie screens just nine months after it played in Italy - in the same calendar year, even! American Don Megowan was imported to give the movie some oomph in America - but one has to wonder how much star power someone like Don Megowan was bringing to the table? (Don't get me wrong - I like the big lug - especially in The Creature Walks Among Us and The Werewolf...)












Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Saturday Night at the Movies 9/14/13!

Who cares what picture we see?



You know that Adrienne King does, and as we just celebrated the first Friday the 13th for 2013 - here's the choice:

I love this movie series. If you've visited this blog more than three times you probably landed on a post about it. This second movie was not my favorite back in the day - but continued viewings over the years have shown me the error of my ways - this is a solid sequel - and I have it on DVD three times - two box sets, and an "Ultimate Edition" standalone disc. If you were to join me we could check this one out in a heartbeat - and that could even happen tonight!





Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Space Savers!

Planet Patrol  (Pulsepounders Home Video, 1999)

Directed by Russ Mazzolla

Produced by Charles Band and Kirk Edward Hansen

Written by Benjamin Carr






Some people express much disdain for movies that pad their running time with footage from other movies. Personally, I love movies like that – it’s cool to me to see how well the second movie’s filmmakers blend the older footage into their movie; and it’s interesting to me to see how the storyline affects the reused sequences.



Okay, that bit of exposition brings us to today’s movie – one of the entries in Charles Band’s brief 90’s foray into family films under the blanket Pulsepounders name. Planet Patrol is a slightly updated riff on the old 50’s TV shows like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. The basic storyline finds the four members of the extremely youthful Planet Patrol battling Lord Doom and his minions across the far reaches of space.

Thank goodness spandex survives into the 23rd century!

Yes, it’s low budget and cheesy – but there’s also a certain amount of awareness of this. It’s also true that the acting ranges from okay to pretty bad – but again, that’s not unexpected in a movie like this – and dare I say, it’s not even unwelcome to some extent. In the end, this ended up being a fairly entertaining watch – for a few reasons. The movie is structured like it’s been cobbled together from three TV episodes – each runs 25 or so minutes and tells a complete mini-story of the Patrol besting Lord Doom’s latest evil plot – much like a half hour TV show minus commercials. I’m not sure if this was done to make it seem even more like those old 50’s shows – or if this really was originally meant to be a TV show and when the deal fell through Band and co. simply slapped the episodes into something resembling a feature film. It’s also cool to see a very young Alison Lohman among the cast – years before her more recent success in movies like Matchstick Men and Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell. Last but certainly not least – in fact, it’s the best reason of all – Planet Patrol is PACKED with footage from earlier Full Moon movies – I had a ball calling out the title of each flick this movie mined special effects from – the first “episode” uses shots of the Dave Allen stop motion animated minions from the Subspecies movies – as well as the actual Bloodstone prop – and the very cool dinosaur/skeleton battle from Dr. Mordrid. After that you get stuff in the other "episodes" from Kraa, Crash and Burn, and Robot Wars, at least, and possibly even more.



Now for a lengthy digression that may only be of interest to you (or indeed make sense to you) if you’re well versed in the production woes of some of the early Full Moon movies. If you don’t care about that read the next section with your eyes closed.



I actually found myself thinking it would have been cool if instead of the stop motion minions from Subspecies - they had used the original effects footage - which was scrapped from the vampire flick and replaced with the animated figures. The original footage featured Romanian acrobats in minion costumes on oversized sets. Apparently this didn't look good when they got all the footage back to California, because Charles Band ponied up more money to have those scenes reshot with stop motion animated critters - fewer of them of course than the acrobat version, which had a dozen or so guys jumping all over the shots.

Original acrobats in costumes up top.
Animated puppet below.

(The early trailers featured the original minions - so I did catch a couple of glimpses of them before they were excised from the movie.) So, this footage is laying on a shelf somewhere (I hope it is, anyway) and it would have been neat to use it in this movie - and it wouldn't have cost a penny more. Missed opportunity.



Wrapping this one up - if you enjoy goofy low budget movie thrills - there's enough on display in this movie (even though mostly from other movies) to warrant a look. If that's not your bag - this movie may not be either.






Let's Get Out of Here ?

At about 39:14, the bearded guy from the Kraa footage doesn't enjoy hanging around ladders to underground bases.







Eye Candy ?

The girls seem awfully young - so we will avoid the skeevy route and say no.

Buddha Man Sez:

"Planet Patrol comes from good stock....footage, that is!"

Thank you BM! Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Maniacal Movie Poster Monday #132!

Jigsaw  (Universal Studios, 1968)

This flick was planned as a TV movie, but NBC got nervous at the drug plot and the movie was released to theaters instead - well, a few theaters, anyway. Then NBC went ahead and aired it in an edited form. The most interesting thing is that the movie stars Bradford Dillman, Harry Guardino, and Pat Hingle, but after his Oscar  nomination look who they pushed to the forefront on the poster - Michael J Pollard!






Laserblast  (The Irwin Yablans Company, 1978)

Ah! Now here's a gem! Well, sort of, anyway. An early Charles Band production - and one of the first movies I ever rented. On BETA. (I will never get tired of rolling that little nugget out!) However, when I told Charles Band that face to face - on stage - he not only wasn't much impressed - he knocked me down a notch with his comeback. Want to know more about that? There's two posts from exactly three years ago - September 2010 - that deal with my experiences with Mr. Band and his films over the years. You can find them to your right with two clicks - and you won't have any trouble finding the pun post titles!











Savage!  (New World Pictures, 1973)

I want to see pretty much every New World picture ever - and this one is high on the list after seeing clips of it in Machete Maidens Unleashed! Besides, who doesn't love a movie title that brings its own punctuation to the party?












Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Saturday Night at the Movies 9/7/13!

Who cares what picture we see?



R.G. Armstrong probably would, if you asked politely. So this will be the pick:

I got taken to this movie at the drive-in by my parents when it was new - and I liked it as a wee lad. I saw it again on television a decade or so later, and again really enjoyed it. I haven't seen it since - but I have two different DVD editions - a standalone, and paired with another Peter Fonda car picture - Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. This movie mixes action and car stunts with suspense and some horror elements - and makes a rollicking cool flick. It's a solid cast, and they're directed by biker movie actor Jack Starrett a few years before played Galt and demanded they shave Rambo...dry...in First Blood.

Speaking of two editions - the poster came in two editions too. The one up top emphasized the horror side of things - but they did another version:

This one emphasizes the action. Both represent the movie fairly well, and both are cool.

In any case, the movie is in the video vault on those two DVDs, which means I should be able to have one spinning in the machine in moments - if you wanted to come hang out and watch it with me - even tonight!





Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!

Maniacal Movie Poster Monday #131!

A bout with a head cold had me knocked out all weekend - so here's a rush three posters with no words from me (for now!)

Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!