It’s not October without a review of an Amicus film, and this year I’ve got another Amicus Anthology here – the one with the title that grabbed my attention the most – The House That Dripped Blood. Unfortunately, it’s also probably the most disappointing I’ve seen to date.
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When it was determined that, no really, No Time To Die was going to be Daniel Craig’s last outing as James Bond, we then had the question of just how his Bond was going to go out. Most of the previous Bonds to date ended at the status quo at the end of their last outing – each film having an ending like all the rest of the bond movies. However, Craig’s bond films, however, have generally never quite been like any of the other Bonds. Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were films setting up the start of Bond’s career, and Skyfall and Spectre were very much about changing up the status quo (changing of the guard for M and the re-introduction of SPECTRE, respectively). So, there was a real question here of whether Craig’s departure would be about continuing the plot thread with a new actor picking up the baton from the last, or doing a mostly fresh-start of the continuity, as was done with Casino Royale.
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Fast & Furious is an attempt to course-correct after Tokyo Drift didn’t do as well as planned, moving the focus from “Street Racing Movie with crime elements” to “Crime movie with street racing elements” and bringing the characters of Dom & Brian back to center stage. Unfortunately, the film does this by cribbing from 2 Fast 2 Furious heavily.
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Any movie franchise, when it goes on long enough, will have its rough spots. For the Fast & The Furious franchise, Tokyo Drift is that film – or potentially the first of those.
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Legend of the Mountain is King Hu doing a ghost story. Not in the sense of a work of cover-to-cover overt horror, but more in the sense of a general vibe of dread, but never quite getting a heavy level of spookiness beyond a few moments.
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Silver Hawk is a film that feels a lot like it’s part of various SE Asian countries (not just Hong Kong, but also Taiwan) film industries’ making their own attempts to follow in the footsteps of the superhero films of the early 2000s – X-Men, the Spider-man movies, and the Blade films.
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Johnny Mnemonic is a very flawed film. It’s not a garbage film that other aspiring cyberpunk movies from this time can be, but it is a movie that significantly stumbles in its execution. That said, there are chunks of this movie that help make it still a pretty enjoyable film.
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A Touch of Zen is the third King Hu film I’ve watched so far, and the second of his films after he left Hong Kong and Shaw Brothers for Taiwan. The first, Dragon Inn, kept some of the framework of the Wuxia Western while using Taiwan’s more diverse scenery for great visual effect. A Touch of Zen, on the other hand, leans more heavily into the Wuxia side.
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Hammer Films has always had some form of sexual content in their movies, generally in the form of various generic barmaids with cleaving-accentuating outfits being menaced by some form of monster (usually Dracula, but occasionally a werewolf or Frankenstein’s monster. However, due to Hammer’s frequent clashes with the BBFC, never with actual nudity. Similarly, while critical discussion of vampire fiction has discussed a degree of homoeroticism, up until the 70s, much of what you got was male actors staring intensely into someone’s eyes before feeding on them – with probably the distinct exception of Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural. The Vampire Lovers crosses both of those lines.
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Amicus Films greatest strength as a studio has been, in their films I’ve previously reviewed (like Tales from the Crypt and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors) has been their anthology films. Their films were always fairly low budget, but the short form anthology film format allowed them to get good actors in for short narrative works. Scream and Scream Again shifts things by doing a more ambitious narrative, but one which stumbles out of the gate and is fumbled in its execution.
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It’s been a while since I reviewed a Shaw Brothers film – so it’s time to take a look at one of King Hu’s films with the studio – Come Drink With Me.
Continue reading “Come Drink With Me: Film (Video) Review”
Massacre Gun is the other kind of conventional Yakuza film – if Blind Woman’s Curse is all about the honor of the Yakuza Code triumphing over other dishonorable gangsters, Massacre Gun is about keeping to the code even, and especially if it means your death.
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When I was reviewing Yakuza films earlier on my show, after reviewing the Yakuza Papers series, and Outrage, I’d realized that I’d basically covered a bunch of deconstructions, without getting into what they were deconstructing.
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Since we’re spending so much time cooped up indoors, I give my thoughts on a Base Under Siege horror movie.
Continue reading “Phase IV: Video Review”
We have a new Star Wars movie, which means it’s time for me to give my thoughts on the film and what it incorporates from the old Legends continuity.
Continue reading “Legends of the Force Part 38: Rise of Skywalker”
With going through the numerous anime from last season that I watched, I have ended up being somewhat behind in my other horror film reviews for the year. So, I need to make up for lost time – with Futureworld, the sequel to a horror film I watched a couple of years ago, Westworld.
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The latest installment of the Legendary MonsterVerse has come out – how does Godzilla’s latest film fare?
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This week, the grace period is over, as John Wick Chapter 3 has hit theaters.
Please refrain from spoilers in the comments until July 2019.
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We get the first of the slated live-action films featured cute fuzzy video game mascots who can snark. Let’s see how this one fares.
Continue reading “Detective Pikachu: Film Review”
I haven’t necessarily seen a lot of pre-Hays Code films. A few of the classic Universal horror films pre-dated the code, like Dracula. However, the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls, is one that I’d been meaning to watch but I’d never gotten around to, until now.
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I learned about The Sentinel first through the book Paperbacks from Hell, where it was described as a book made in the wake of the success of The
This week I have a vlog review of the next film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Captain Marvel. Being that the film is still in theaters as of when this is going up, please refrain from posting spoilers until August 2019.
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When I heard about the upcoming release of Gundam NT (or Gundam Narrative) the thought I had coming in was that the film was going to be the kickoff point for the next chapter of the saga of the Universal Century. That, after the conclusion of Gundam Unicorn set up something of a new status quo, this would start a series of films that would basically lay the groundwork for eventually reaching F91, Crossbone Gundam, and Victory Gundam.
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When it comes to horror and documentaries, in the sense of horror films that are deliberately planned to be documentaries, you have two main stripes represented by two big names. On one hand, you have Legend of Boggy Creek, a historical reenactment heavy documentary about a Texarkana cryptid that effectively recounts a variety of local myths and legends in an uncritical manner. On the other hand, there’s Haxan, the film I’m covering today, which is not only a very early work in the documentary genre, it’s also a work that is also very critical of historical accounts of witchcraft.
