The Best Japanese Tuna Commercial from 1978

"It's Clobberin' Time!"

Check out the Trailer for DOOMED! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's "The Fantastic Four." Have always wanted to review this along with all the other old Marvel flicks like the Captain America series, Nick Fury, the Hulk TV movies etc. Figure everyone has seen them but what the hey, maybe we will since we love comics and movies and everyone else is doing it. But probably not.

THE P.A.C.K. (1997)

Just came across this gem, what better way to fight for humanity than with your fists. And a bazooka. 

It's Wet and It's Dry

Sweet baby lord

Splash, Too (1988)

I know what you're gonna say. "You think you can just walk back into my life, after the way you just disappeared, no calls, no letters, nothing?!" Well, yeah, I mean, I was going through some stuff, had to clear my head, needed some time alone. But I'm back! And I brought you something! "You brought me this piece of crap TV movie? Not even a straight to VHS gem or anything?" No, but...I...it's...the sequel to your favorite Tom Hanks movie..."WHAT A TOONER & HOOCH 2?!" .....

Ok so, no, but they did make a Splash, Too. So if you recall, at the end of Splash, Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah are swimming to an underwater kingdom, and Hanx was told he can never return to New York once they go there. So while you'd expect this would start with them in said underwater kingdom, it opens with them on a desert island. Apparently they've been living isolated and alone on this island together, not underwater in a merkingdom. AND now Madison, played by Amy Yasbeck has magic powers to turn any water surface into a crystal ball-type pool where you can see what's happening anywhere in the world. Andy, played by Todd Waring is homesick and even though he was told he can NEVER return to New York, apparently they can. So they go back.

This whole movie is a terrible set up to what one presumes would have been an I Dream of Jeanie type TV show, because that's what it feels like. It's got horrible jokes, a wacky neighbor and the terrible premise of Andy needing to help his brother save his business and Madison finding purpose by trying to save a dolphin that's being experimented on. And this being the pre-big budget TV days you can't expect much in the way of effects.

I've already said more about this than it deserves, unfortunately. I mean, it's kind of "cute" in a way, but ultimately it's just plain dumb. It's boooooring. It's barely watchable, but if in a pinch (however that would happen) you could make it out of this sane. 

VHS Cover of the Day: El Canibal aka The Manhunter (1980)

Computer Beach Party (1987)

Die Hard: The Musical

Have I mentioned that I'm a Die Hard fan? No? That's weird, well I am. And also actors making music. So when I caught wind of this, I had to share.

Our very own Special Agent Johnson has an album of Sinatra standards, just released this past fall. Robert Davi, whom you may know better from Maniac Cop 2 & 3, The Taking of Beverly Hills, The Goonies and/or Predator 2, is also apparently a student of the great American Songboook. I just happened to be cruising iTunes radio stations when I caught a bit of a program that was mentioning his album and had clips of interviews and a handful of tracks from his album. I was surprised, dude has pipes. Check out this great interview promo clip where he also discusses his first viewing of Die Hard with Arnold Schwarzenegger:

If you're interested, you can pick up his album, Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance on Amazon.

Trivia: Davi's first film was with Sinatra, Contract on Cherry Street.

So this news got naturally got me thinking about Die Hard and Bruce Willis also released an album of blues songs back in the '80s, called The Return of Bruno. I'm not really sure who in his circle encouraged him to go forward with that particular project, but he followed it with 2 other albums in '89 and '99 respectively that I haven't heard. But one thing you might not know is that Bruno was accompanied by a kind of ridiculous HBO special of the same name. Now I mean, I'm a Bruce Willis fan, he's the only reason I would check out the new G.I. Joe movie, but his singing is just kind of average I guess. The special, however, totally sells it:

You can get the special on lovely lovely VHS for only $20 at Amazon!. I would put a download of the album/special on here, but now I'm all paranoid with the recent squashing of such activities. I'm sure with a little sleuthing you all can find them as well.

And possibly more familiar is Alan Rickman's (aka HANS GRUBER) singing role in Sweeney Todd, as Judge Turpin.

So all of this is to get to the point that I would like to propose, Die Hard: The Musical. How terrible/awesome would that be?! Actually, instead of all the endless stream of crime dramas premiering every year on network television, I wish someone would do a Die Hard show with a young McClane fresh on the force. That would be cool too. Actually anything more Die Hard. Die Hard. Yes.

The Dead (2010)

At this point in the game, I think it’s safe to say that zombie fiction, be it books, movies, or comics, is the new ‘thing’. The niche once occupied by teen vampire fiction is now almost solely filled with tales of the undead. The clever and well-written Zombie Survival Guide has spawned dozens of copycat attempts at cashing in on America’s obsession with zombies. The Walking Dead is breaking cable TV records left and right, and there’s at least three cars in the parking lot of my college library with bumper stickers reading ‘I Heart Brains’. Everybody loves zombies.

That being said, I’m skeptical of any zombie movie that comes out these days. I think the last new one I watched was Undead and to say I was disappointed is an understatement. I simply don’t trust anything coming from a genre that is fueled by people trying to make money off of a popular idea. It doesn’t make for good art.

I first read about the Ford Brothers’ zombie film The Dead in an issue of Famous Monsters in which the makeup artist was being interviewed, and I admit at that point I was mildly intrigued. The zombie design was traditional yet innovative: fresh wounds, whiteout contact lenses, bloodied clothing, etc. Nothing new or amazing but just enough pizazz to stick out from the pack. Flash forward two years, and I grab a copy at Target last week. Why the hell not, right?

The Dead takes place in sub-Saharan Africa just after a Romero style zombie apocalypse. We are treated to brief shots of zombie induced mayhem as the undead hordes lay siege to an African village: shambling wrecks of human beings attacking and eating their kin, things being set on fire, guns going off as inept military personnel try to contain this horrific outbreak. The main character is an American military operative named Murphy who catches the last plane out of the area. Unfortunately, the plane crashes and now he has to make it out on foot. He joins up with a stoic African soldier named Dembele who is trying to get to a military base ‘up North’ to find his son. The film follows them as they make their way through a countryside turned on it’s head by the zombie outbreak.

If this film has a fault, it’s that it is almost too ambitious. Now, I’ll take ‘too ambitious’ over lazy film making any day of the week. The problem is that I think the Ford brothers lack the filmmaking experience to create the film they intend to. Attempts at creative cinematography, while appreciated, just come off as forced and quasi-pretensious. The storyline about Dembele’s son and Murphy's family 'back home', while trying to inject a sense of humanity into the story, just fall into almost corny territory and is distracting from the horror of the situation their in. And the ending, while meaning to be Romero-ly ambiguous, is just confusing and rushed.

That being said, this was a good film. The gore was tasteful and well-executed, with actual prosthetics being used most of the time instead of throwing buckets of CGI blood left and right. Also, the violence was contained and not everywhere for violence’s sake. Storyline was not sacrificed for gore and a high body count. Yes, there were scenes of gratuitious violence. But it was necessary for the story and not just thrown in for a gross out factor. Not all of the camerawork was hokey and dreadfully serious; at times it created a sense of aching isolation and vastness. The nighttime shots of the savannah were particularly striking, especially with a peppering of zombies wandering about in the sunset. The dialogue was sparse and realistic in the sense that you felt you were watching how two military men would actually act in the situation. No jabbering on about bullshit, no tough guy antics about getting the job done. Just two guys trying to get something done. The utilitarian and grim aspects of surviving are examined in a detail I haven't seen in a zombie movie before. At one point, the radiator of their car gives up it's ghost in the middle of the savannah, and they are forced to choose between having drinking water and continuing on foot through the desert or using that water to fill the radiator and driving for who knows how long without water. Hastening their decision is the fact that a couple dozens zombies are steadily making their way to them. It's the little things, folks.

And most of all, this film was scary. The zombies didn’t run, or shriek, or commit any of the other sins dozens of horror films are guilty of. They just shambled about silently, dead eyes fixed off in the distance, wandering about until some poor bastard gained their attention. Any time they came wandering out of the bush at night was creepy as fuck, and the scenes of them silhouetted against the sky at sunset was genuinely eerie.

I’d give this film a B-. In a world awash with counterfeit bullshit, this is a refreshing look at what a zombie movie ought to be: a stark and minimal look at a world cast into madness and our attempts at survival in said world.

Iron Sky (Trailer)

Iron Sky is billed as the best motherf*cking movie about Space Nazis from the dark side of the Moon you’re likely to see.

Ridiculous French TV Interview with Rambo Look-alike

Dangerous Minds:

"Here’s an extremely amusing interview with “Rambo” look-alike Wayne Scott on a French TV news show filmed some time in the 80s. There’s even a pretty terrific dance routine towards the end."

Watch it all the way through, you'll thank me and thank yourself.

Harrison Ford Watches “Indiana Jones” Trilogy For The First Time

Apollo 18, or: Something Something, Jesus What A Boring Movie

So some of you may have noticed a distinct absence on my part in the past few months, and for that I apologize. I’ve been quite busy with the three G’s: grad school, girlfriend…and…Grimlock action figures…yes.

Anyway, after watching the film I’m about to write about the other night, my good friend Greg strongly suggested I write something about it on here. I’ve been itching to write again in a non-academic setting, so I figured, “Fuck it. Write away, Lore.” And here we are…with me writing away…

I first heard of Apollo 18 a few months back when it’s theatrical release date was pushed back even further and people were rather upset about it. It was apparently something that had been long awaited by the online horror blogging community. Who knew. Watching the trailer, I have to admit I was a little stoked about it. The idea was cool enough; a horror/sci fi take on why, after several manned missions to the moon, we decided fuck it, no more going back there. But I was weary of it being a ‘found footage’ style film, which is in my opinion is the late 2000s version of that fast bullshit shaky effect that was pioneered and perfected in Jacob’s Ladder. Still, the idea was intriguing enough to keep the desire to see this film in the back of my mind. After receiving a Target gift card from my aunt for Christmas, I decided what better time than now to check this film out.

The plot is this (SPOILER ALERT): apparently after the “last” Apollo mission, (Apollo 17) NASA decides it’s a good idea to send up another mission (which is conveniently classified for DoD purposes, thus keeping all the historically minded viewers from saying, ‘’hey, that mission never happened!’) to set up an early defense warning system against the Russians. Because, you know, somehow a warning system ON THE MOON would warn us that the Russian were attacking us.

They discover that the Russians have already landed there, and are dead. Some creepy tracks show up, there’s some spooky noises, an American flag goes missing, blah blah blah. Turns out the reasons the Americans were sent up was to set up devices not to monitor the Russians but instead to monitor signs of aliens. Some more unfortunately predictable stuff happens, there’s yelling, talk of ‘them’, and then there’s an ending that I think is supposed to freak us out but again is just kind of predictable.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There were parts of this film that were genuinely eerie. The scene where alien tracks are found outside the lunar lander is really fucking creepy. The part at the end where one astronaut is fleeing a swarm of creepy weirdo aliens also made me uncomfortable in the best way. In fact, the entire idea of this film is unsettling. And the horrors of this movie aren’t merely of the fantastic and monstrous. Towards the end, we are treated to a glimpse of the cold and utilitarian nature of the scientific community when an astronaut is treated to hearing about the decision by the Secretary of Defense to fucking leave him on the moon to die and lie to his family by saying he blew up in space. That is some heartless shit. Unfortunately, a good horror film on paper does not a good horror film in reality make.

What Apollo 18 suffers from is a great concept executed in a piss poor manner. Like a lot of ‘found footage’ films, instead of appearing raw and uncut like such footage would actually appear, it just looks like a movie shot in a deliberately poor manner, but with just enough professional glitz and gleam to ruin the illusion of spontaneous footage that is discovered. In fact, there were times when I wondered to myself, ‘both characters are in frame…who is shooting from a handheld camera?’

In a similar vein, what was kind of the deal breaker of this film for me, there are scenes where one character is looking directly into the camera and starts doing the Jacob’s Ladder headshake. No joke. In a real time, non-hallucination setting, that happens in this movie. It’s like the filmmakers weren’t content with using the rough documentary style and had to dabble in bullshit that nearly ruined horror films a few years back. Likewise, there’s a scene where a character is taking pictures using a flash camera in a totally dark crater, showing flashes of the landscape before showing a mummified cosmonaut. Such a technique would be awesome in a regularly shot film. But in this style it just came off as too convenient and unrealistic.

What starts out as an interesting idea just dissolves into a confusing, boring, and lackluster film that is muddled, trite, and at almost an hour and a half way too long. By the forty five minute mark, I was checking Twitter, checking Facebook, kinda falling asleep. You get the idea. It’s like the filmmakers had maybe a half hour of great footage and tried to dilute it and stretch into an hour and half. What was a great idea becomes hackneyed and tedious, and instead of being scared consistently we are scared sometimes and bored for the most part. There were too many unanswered questions (what took down the American flag? Why was the Apollo lander shaking? What made the horrendously creepy tracks?), and honestly the reason we never went back was a bit of a let down. Basically, there are moon rocks that turn into space spiders and “infect” us and kill us and whatnot. Seriously. Fucking spiders in space. That make you crazy. Hey filmmakers, um, Chris Carter and the rest of the “X-Files” crew want the season 1 “Ice” back.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie. I mean, I didn’t even spend my own money on it and I’m sort of pissed I bought it. I won’t make the comparison to Paranormal Activity that I’ve heard, because aside from the attempt at being a found footage style film this has nothing to do with Paranormal Activity. It’s just a really boring, really unfocused, really poorly executed horror movie.

Siri: The Christmas Horror Movie Trailer

Wow. I'd pay to see this.

Cool Vintage Russian Sci-Fi cartoons

If you follow us on YouTube you would have seen these before, but if some of you losers do not, here are some really cool vintage Russian animations based on Ray Bradbury stories. If you don't speak Russian, hopefully you're familiar enough with the stories to at least follow along. Thanks to whoever first put these into the digital universe, we are but a vessel.

Watch the Original Karate Kid Film as a Rehearsal

Do you love the 1983 film The Karate Kid, but wish it had been more raw and unproduced...like to the point where it looked like it was shot on an old camcorder? Well, your wish has come true. Someone has strung together the full film, in sequence, using only rehearsal footage. I know! Finally, right?

2016 - Ghana Movie Trailer

Prepare for your mind to be blown!




Via

Hollywood Parties of the '80s and '90s

Really awesome blog, Vintage Everyday has a set of photos from, as the title says, various Hollywood parties in the '80s and '90s. Some look absolute batshit crazy, some have S&M, some have pancakes and still others have Vincent Price in a tux looking befuddled. Here's a just a small set of the great shots you can find over there.

Skinemax by Smash TV

"Skinemax is Koyaanisqatsi for a generation raised on late night television and B-movie VHS tapes. It's long form entertainment for short attention spans. An hour long VJ odyssey, it will move your body and warp your mind."

Blackboards in Porn

"Celebrating pornographers who go the extra mile when set dressing classroom porn and actually write something on the blackboard. What do they write, and is it correct?"

http://blackboardsinporn.blogspot.com/

Also as a side note... my wife found this site. But what's crazy is my wife is terrible at using the internet. In fact she is just terrible at using computers in general. So, she was EXTREMELY excited when she showed me this. It's even stranger that she found it first because it involves porn.