Goodbye to Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy

 

 (wikipedia)

UTOPIA-(aka ATOLL K)-1951-In London, Laurel & Hardy (themselves) inherit a rundown yacht to take them to an island they also inherited. A “stateless man” Antoine (Max Elloy) goes along as their cook. There's also a stowaway named Giovanni (Adriano Rimoldi). They encounter a storm and are stranded on an atoll. Then a narrator explains how the 4 survive. 

In Tahiti, Cherie LaMour (Suzy Delair), a singer, planned to marry a Lieutenant but their engagement is broken. To get away, LaMour goes to the atoll too. After the men all try to impress her, her boyfriend shows up to survey the land. Uranium is found on the tiny island, so in order to keep the island for themselves they dub the atoll “Crusoeland” and make a constitution with Hardy as the president. When the rest of the world finds out about Crusoeland, which has no laws, no taxes and no jails, among other things, folks flock to the island. 

This political satire fails badly but the worst part is Stan Laurel who looks terrible having many health complications. Oliver Hardy also fell ill. The movie was a sordid production with language barriers and a shooting schedule of 12 weeks that ballooned to one year! There were at least 4 writers who worked on the script (including Stan Laurel who contributed gags). Communication was so bad between the team (who's last feature film had been in 1945) and director Leo Joanon that it's been said blacklisted American director John Berry was brought in to help. At least 8 versions exist and somewhere down the road the copyright on this version lapsed making it the most easily accessible of Laurel & Hardy's movies!

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Buchanan

THE CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE-1966-More Larry Buchanan madness with John Agar as a geologist looking for oil in the swamps with a trio of crooks. They run into the crazy experiments of Dr. Trent (Tony Houston; also the screenwriter) who is trying to make a fish monster out of a man! He feeds his failures to some stock footage crocodiles. Meanwhile the locals practice voodoo (called “snake worship”). Except for Agar the acting in this is quite comical. Especially Huston, an amateur ham who would make Shatner seem like Olivier! (“My beautiful indestructible fish man”). Francine York is Mrs. Trent and Bill McGhee (Ben in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) is a dim-witted servant. Buchanan regular Bill Thurman is one of the crooks and the swamp creature.

Buchanan throws in some interesting camera angles but otherwise it's pretty boring. Agar also starred (with Houston) in Buchanan's ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS the same year!

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Hell Is Right

STRAIGHT TO HELL-1987-More pretentious nonsense from director Alex Cox who seems to want to combine Sergio Leone with Alejandro Jodorowsky while throwing in non-actors and a few character actors: Joe Strummer, Sy Richardson, Courtney Love, Elvis Costello, Jim Jarmusch, Grace Jones, Dick Rude, Miguel Sandoval, Zander Schloss, Fox Harris and The Pogues. As with other Cox projects like WALKER and DEATH AND THE COMPASS it's mostly crap. The plot centers around a group of bank robbers, buried money and shootouts in a south of the border town.

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Howard's Kane

SOLOMON KANE-2009-Robert Howard's Puritan witch hunter is a violent, greedy idiot who believes his soul is damned and has symbols on his body to protect him from evil. Kane (James Purefoy) renounces his ways and lives in a monastery but the monks throw him out. Acting a like a cross between Hugh Jackman and Wilhem DeFoe he wanders the countryside in the 1600's. Flashbacks reveal his father (Max von Sydow) disowned him when he refused to join the clergy. After being beaten up he's taken in by a guy (Pete Postlethwaite) and his family. An evil sorcerer named Malachi (Jason Flemyng) kidnaps the daughter and kills the rest of the family. Kane scourers everywhere looking for her while Mal crucifies people who oppose him. Later he finds his father in a dungeon. He leads a group of villagers to their deaths then fights his own brother. After that he fights a demon that looks like the one in the video game Quake 2! He rescues the daughter and becomes a hero. 

Dark dirty shit from director MJ Bassett (Cable's ASH VS. EVIL DEAD).

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Happy New Year!

THE PHYNX-1970-In this groovy film the US government is over seen by number one, a guy with a box on his head and a painted on face. His main operatives Bogey (Mike Kellin doing a terrible Bogart imitation) and Corrigan (Lou Antonio) recruit by force 4 slackers (Michael A. Miller, Ray Chippeway, Dennis Larden and Lonny Stevens) to become the rock band The Phynx and infiltrate the country of Albania which has kidnapped many prominent US celebrities (I'll list them later). They are trained for combat by Clint Walker (from TV"s "Cheyanne" western series) and Harold “Oddjob” Sakata and Richard Pryor is in the kitchen. They learn music from Trini Lopez. A freaky looking computer picks their name. They are inspected by Dick Clark and then recorded and promoted by the drugged out Philbaby (Larry Hankin in an obvious take-off on Phil Spector). His assistant is played by Ultra Violet. Then Ed Sullivan is forced to have them on his show! Later when the group becomes famous James Brown presents them with a gold record! After a lot of drawn out shit (including scenes with Sue Bernard from FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, Sherry DeBoer, later in THE VELVET VAMPIRE and Sally Struthers in her film debut) they go to Albania (where Michael Ansara is a army colonel) and rescue the celebrities (by sneaking them out in carts full of radishes...)

The kidnapped group is quite eclectic: Rudy Vallee, Johnny Weismuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Patty Andrews, Col. Sanders, Leo Gorcey & Huntz Hall, Louis Heyward, Xavier Cugat, Andy Devine, The Lone Ranger (second series star John Hart) & Tonto (Jay Silverheels), Joe Louis, Butterfly McQueen, Pat O'Brien, Ruby Keeler and 1 or 2 (maybe three) others I forgot. George Tobias (in his last role), Joan Blondell, Martha Raye and Fritz Feld also have roles.

This Warner Bros/Seven Arts production was never released in the theaters (or barely) and rightfully so. It's a terrible conglomeration of satire, bad pop music and dumb acting wrapped around a plot influenced by The Monkees TV show. Hadn't the producers ever heard of SKIDOO? After years of obscurity it was finally released on DVD in 2012.

Amazingly the putrid songs the band plays were composed by Leiber & Stoller! One member of The Phynx, Dennis Larden had previously played (under a different name) in the band “Every Mother's Son” who had a one hit single “Come On Down To My Boat” in 1967.

Director Lee H. Katzin was an experienced TV director with only sporadic film credits (WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?) and seemed to survive this ordeal going on to direct LE MANS and many made for TV movies.

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Snore

SLEEPING BEAUTY-2014-Some genius at The Asylum decided to recreate the famous romantic fairy tale into a zombie gore film (Things like this are all the rage now). Unfortunately the makers failed on almost every count. The script and acting are terrible. The story is very drawn out and predictable but there are several zombie fights and a dragon like creature appears. It looks like something that will probably play on the SyFy channel with some of the gorier scenes cut out (maybe it already has!).

SLEEPING BEAUTY was directed by actor Casper Van Dien (who plays the king) and stars Finn Jones (GAME OF THRONES), Olivia d'Abo as the hammy evil sorceress and the director's daughter Grace as Princess Dawn, the sleeping title character. It was filmed in Bulgaria. Michael York narrates it.

Another film with the same name but having nothing to due with the famous fairy tale was released the same year.

The Bad Penny Finally Turns Up!

THE HELLCATS-1968-When a police detective investigating a drug dealing motorcycle gang is murdered, his fiance' Linda (Dee Duffy) and soldier brother Monte (Ross Hagen, a regular on TV's DAKTARI at the time) infiltrate The Hellcats, a bunch of weird drug using bikers with names like Six Pack, Hiney, Snake, Zombie and Scorpio. Their kind of leader is Snake (Sonny West). Linda and Monte hang out with the stoned gang and drink beer at a place run by an old man (Fredric Downs). Sometimes everyone talks in a strange incomprehensible slang. Snake and another guy have a chain fight. Monte breaks it up saying "Peace brothers. No more war...yet". Later Monte and Linda are roughed up by the dealers but it's scummy dirtbag bikers to the rescue!

There's a lot of bad acting, boredom and people riding motorcycles...and not much else. Future director Gus Trikonis is in one scene. One of THE HELLCATS producers was Anthony Cardoza (who worked on Coleman Francis' 3 movies) who appears as an artist who gets beat up. Co-writer/assistant director Tony Huston co-starred in 3 Larry Buchanan movies! Director Robert F. Slatzer (who made BIGFOOT in 1970) is Mr. Adrian, a drug dealer.

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Android Antics

ANDROID APOCALYPSE-2006-In the future, a domed city called Phoenix is surrounded by wasteland. Human like androids with no feelings do most of the human dirty work. An idiot named Jute (Scott Bairstow from the TV shows PARTY OF FIVE and WOLF LAKE) who hates androids and loses his job to one gets sent to a prison camp called Terminus for "killing" one. When the vehicle transporting the prisoners is attacked Jute winds up in the desert handcuffed to an android named DeeCee (Joey Lawrence from TV's BLOSSOM). Of course they team up to fight the evil androids chasing them. Meanwhile some mad android scientist experiments on humans in this boring Sci-Fi nonsense with no apocalypse that I could see!

Pro-wrestler Chris Jericho has a small role. From Paul Ziller, director of SNAKEHEAD TERROR and BEYOND LOCH NESS.

Thanks again to Tony and thanks to anyone who reads this!

Not Untold Enough

THE UNTOLD (AKA: SASQUATCH)-2002-A group lead by a billionaire bio-tech CEO (Lance Henriksen) goes looking for a crashed plane that carried his daughter and some kind of DNA machine in this inept boring Canadian horror film that borrows from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. They run into the legendary monster and Lance watches a video his daughter left behind. The group argue about the rich guy's real intentions and are terrorized by a hairy bigfoot creature (shown mostly in POV shots). The direction by the debuting Jonas Quastel is really annoying at times.

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More of The Same

ASYLUM-2008-More derivative psychological horror nonsense has a group of teens staying in a dorm that used to be an insane asylum for teenagers where the doctor did experiments on them. One teen (Sarah Roemer from DISTURBIA) who'd seen her father kill himself when she was little has weird visions. It seems the evil doctor has come back and is killing off the new kids. 

The director of this muck David R. Ellis previously made SNAKES ON A PLANE and FINAL DESTINATION 2 and was stuntman on movies like HOTEL FOR DOGS.

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Going Going Gone..

MONSTER A GO-GO-1965-Herschel Gordon Lewis needed a second feature to go with his latest production. (I think it was MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN) He bought an unfinished movie (“Terror At Halfday”) from the soon to be infamous Bill Rebane and added a narrator and some scenes with a seven foot tall guy named Henry Hite (in very lumpy facial make-up) and tries to tell the mysterious story of what happened to the astronaut of a space capsule that crash landed while returning from space.

It’s right up there with THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, THE CREEPING TERROR and others of that ilk.

The plot (?) makes no sense and most of it is just the characters talking, explaining or arguing. None of them ever interact with the monster and the storyline just inexplicably changes to suit the footage. The sound is bad and the night scenes are really dark! To justify the title one scene features some teens dancing at a club.

The not too bad rock music is by The Other The. MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 once used this on an episode where many people first saw it.

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I'd like to spit on the director....

Sometimes owning a video camera should be considered assault with a deadly weapon.

Evidence: I'LL BURY YOU...I'LL KILL YOU...I'LL SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE TOO (2000). The title alone says a lot.

Mainly this has nothing to do with the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. The makers of this crap were trying to be cute. We just called it that because we think we are so clever (and we want your money...). It's starts off with a b & w flashback to a chainsaw murder. The gore here looks like it was left over from the final added scenes in SNUFF! It's bad! 25 years later a group of "researchers" go back to the place where it happened and are eventually killed off by a army fatigue wearing killer. A redneck sheriff gives the group a hard time and all the acting is awful. The cast is so small that one actress does all the topless scenes and a minor character from the beginning is brought back to help the two survivors in the climax.

And for some reason when the identity of the killer is revealed he seems to be nearly invincible! This may have been just a stab at humor though parodying such killers as Jason and Micheal Myers. Do I dare give the makers of this junk that much credit??

The last name of the director of this is Koba. That was Stalin's nickname....

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