Before Larry Cohen's Killer Babies

IT’S ALIVE-1969-This infamous horror film was made by director Larry Buchanan right after completing a batch of direct to TV remakes of AIP '50's horror films.

Two tourists, Norman (Corveth Ousterhouse) and Leila (Shirley Bonne) from the city get lost on a back road somewhere in Texas. They wind up being held prisoner by a loony farmer (Buchanan regular Bill Thurman) who has a prehistoric monster living in a smoky cave under his house. A helpful paleontologist named Wayne (Tommy Kirk) tries to help but gets captured too. The monster (Thurman doing double duty) is goofy and rubbery with fangs and ping pong ball eyes! Thurman’s over the top acting is the real highlight of this awful film (“Perhaps you know of my creature? It’s great and powerful! My greatest discovery!”) but it also features Ann McAdams (later in DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) as Thurman’s abused servant who narrates a long flashback.(with no dialogue; just her narration and some incidental music) which explains how she became the farmer’s servant.

In one scene she tries to escape by throwing some liquid in Thurman's face but right before that happens you can see his face is already wet! The scene they used must have been take 2!

Former Disney teen star Tommy Kirk was at the nadir of his career having already starred in Buchanan’s MARS NEEDS WOMEN in 1967. A few years later he’d star in Al Adamson’s BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. I’ve read the plot seems to be based on a short story by Richard Matheson.

Buchanan (who provides some un-credited narration during the credits) made the Bergman influenced (?) STRAWBERRIES NEED RAIN next.

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Don't Be Fooled By The DVD Photo!

UNREST-2009-Stupid meandering talky movie about pre-med students dissecting cadavers. One student, who everyone refers to as doctor (Corri English) believes the cadaver she’s working on is possessed. And she’s right. For some reason the corpse is from Brazil but is possessed by an Aztec demon. Director Jason Todd Ipson leaves a lot of plot holes during the boredom.

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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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My Diagnosis is Shit!

DIAGNOSIS: DEATH-2010-This a weird New Zealand horror comedy (I think).

A corrupt high school English teacher (Raybon Kan) goes for a special drug trial after being told he has incurable cancer. While there he meets another patient, a female high school student (Jessica Grace Smith). They are given a special drug and hallucinate a lot. After much talking it becomes clear they are being used as guinea pigs in an experiment. The ghost of a dead author who killed her child has something to do with it too ... or is it just the drugs? It all seems to be the work of a deranged nurse (Suze Tye).

Director Jason Stutter made something called TONGAN NINJA (also with Kan). I could have been sleeping instead of watching this nonsense!

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Japanese Spagetti Western

SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO-2007-This strange movie is really too much for words! It's like a Italian "spaghetti western" but all the roles are played by Japanese who speak in English ("I don't want to run from the shit anymore") sometimes in weird voices. Everyone acts fairly crazed and there is a lot of bloody violence. But since this organized insanity was directed by Takashi Miike (ICHI THE KILLER, ZEBRAMAN) it is kind of understandable.

The basic plot is like it's Italian counterpart. A gunslinger (Hideaki Ito) gets in between two warring "clans" and plays both sides against the other to his own gain. But after that it's a very weird but well filmed gore fest with over the top acting, stunts and SFX.

A useless pre-credit sequence featuring Quentin Tarantino as a Clint Eastwood/Man with No Name character against a very phony background seems tacked on to interest Western audiences.

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Shark Shit

BLUE DEMON-2004-A husband and wife (Randall Batinkoff and Dedee Pfieffer) team of marine biologists are doing experiments with great white sharks. They are also going through a divorce in this stupid sci-fi horror movie that is either a very bad comedy spoof or a very unintentionally funny drama.

They get involved in a government operation called "blue demon" using genetically enhanced intelligent sharks. Jeff Fahey is a cardboard caricature of an army general and Danny Woodburn is their boss who provides the only entertaining highlight in this annoying junk from director Daniel Grodnik (making his film debut) which "borrows" heavily from JAWS, PIRANHA and any number of other shark related direct to video nonsense shown on the SYFY channel every month.

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No, It's Not!

EVERYTHING'S DUCKY-1961-Two dumb sailors (Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett) who are stationed in the desert are assigned the task of freeing the former pet duck of a deceased scientist. It turns out the duck can talk so they try to find a way to make money off it but this only leads to trouble when the duck (named Scuttlebutt) gets drunk! Scuttlebutt might also hold the secret to the dead doctor's missile experiments. The Navy wants to remove the duck's brain and the two spend the rest of the movie protecting him.

It's all pretty silly and a romantic sub-plot really slows things down. Perhaps Columbia Pictures thought they were creating a new Abbott & Costello but we don't even get Brown & Carney. Speaking of A & C, Gordon Jones (Mike The Cop on their TV show) has a supporting role as a superior officer. Roland Winters is their captain and Jackie Cooper has one scene as a psychiatrist. Also with Richard Deacon, singer Joanie Sommers (whose voice seems to be dubbed...??), Elizabeth Macrae and Alvy Moore.

It was the first full length feature for director Don Taylor after a lot of TV shows. Hackett and Rooney were teamed a year later in IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. Of course years later Hackett portrayed Lou Costello in the terrible TV movie BUD AND LOU...

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