THE BRAIN (1988)

 For some reason I often mix this one up with THE BORROWER, I guess because they both have dull unmemorable 'B' titles. They are also both examples of dumb horror that became popular with the kids in the 80s and 90s. This one seems like someone wanted to make a movie where one of those Madballs toys was the monster and then wrote a ridiculous plot about t.v. controlling people and a giant Madball(or I guess "brain" in this case)  at the center of the whole conspiracy. The whole thing moves at a terrible pace and they drag things out so much that by the ending you really want everyone to stop running up and down stairs in what seems like an endless chase scene but if by some chance you like your horror extra dumb and you did enjoy THE BORROWER, or if you just have weird 80s/90s nostalgia,  I imagine this would make a good double-feature for ya.

ROBOTRIX (1991)

 Clearly influenced by THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP this one is a good amalgamation of a naughty Hong Kong category III flick and your more typical action flick/Hollywood rip-off. There's really only 2 especially naughty scenes where things devolve into bloody rape, this time perpetrated by a nasty android fellow doing his best imitation of an Asian Arnold Schwarzenegger. There is some other blood spillage here and there, some pretty nice boobs are on display(though main large-breasted gal Amy Yip manages to only reveal some side-boobage) and the stupid sci-fi explanation sort-of makes sense, though just barely.  Of course this thing being made in Hong Kong they throw in some ridiculous hijinks by the police for comedic purposes. If you can deal with that this delivers some good exploitation thrills. Known in Japan as BUSTROID which I think really sums things up nicely!

                                                         A very James Bond-ish poster!:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE (1974)

 Pretty downbeat end of the world made-for-T.V. movie. This time it's the Sun to blame for resetting the clock on old Mother Earth by shooting out some people-disintegrating solar flares. Peter Graves, and his great voice, is our main survivor and the dad of a family left looking for their missing mom. Things don't work out all that well and you get a typically downer 70s ending though not as totally nihilistic as some of the theatrical sci-fi features around this time. I was too young to have ever seen this when it first played on television but apparently it upset a lot of young people that did catch it back in the day. So I guess if you're young and sensitive give it a look for some lasting/traumatizing memories.

                                            A.B.C. movie of the week!:

UNHINGED (1982)

 I've seen this 80s slasher twice now(once on DVD and once in an actual theater), why I watched it a second time I'm not entirely sure. I guess I forgot how crappy it was the first time. On my first viewing, because this was one of those notorious "video nasties" banned in England, and all that, I was expecting something a lot more gory and was disappointed on that level as there's a pretty low body count and not really much blood. The 2nd watch I went into with much lower expectations and even then I couldn't get past the extremely terrible acting, the annoying electronic keyboard soundtrack and the very dull slow-moving pace of everything. On the plus side there is some shower nudity and they throw you a twist ending. Might be more appealing to slasher fans who enjoy slowly built mood over bloodshed but I'm not sure how many of those there actually are.
 There is a 2017 made in England remake of this that I've never seen. I guess the original was more popular there?

DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS (1977)

 I've seen this tale of a demonic bed that eats people listed as surrealist horror. I think that might give too much credit to the filmmakers. It plays it straight, or at least as straight as you can play a movie about a people-chomping canopy bed, but then they throw in some clearly intentional comedic elements, like the carrot-chomping sounds the bed makes whenever it eats something or someone.
 Apparently this was filmed back in 1972, completed in '77 and then not officially released until 2003 when the director, George Barry, found out that bootlegs of his film were circulating and had a cult following, so he figured he's make a little money off of his only film by putting it out himself. Then comedian Patton Oswalt gave the film even more infamy by doing a whole bit about it on one of his stand-up albums.
 You get a pretty cool scene where a guy has his hands nibbled down to skeleton paws, a black lady who gets her legs chomped on but manages to escape the deadly bed and take up a really long time trying to drag her ass to safety before being lassoed back by an evil grabby sheet(DEATH LINEN? I smell a sequel!) and then some demonic exorcism nonsense to rap it all up. A bit stretched out for such a stupid concept but I do admire the idiocy of it all.
 There is a 2002 shot-on-video DEATHBED that Stuart Gordon produced that is sorta based on this but I've yet to catch that one.

MEAN DOG BLUES (1978)

 George Kennedy plays a badass warden who is in love with his ferocious doberman pinscher dog that he uses to hunt down and tear apart escapees in this 70s men-in-prison epic. Our main character(Gregg Henry) seems way too much of a pretty boy to be a very convincing tough guy but after being wrongfully thrown into a prison camp he has to learn how to deal with all kinds of not very friendly folks. Julio from SANFORD AND SON(Gregory Sierra) as a flamboyant gay prisoner is one of the few friends he makes. Scatman Crothers, as the unfortunately nick-named "Dog Nigger" Mudcat, has too small of a role and meets a grisly fate and Tina "Ginger from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND" Louise gets about as naked as I've seen her in anything(really just some side-boob but I'll take what I can get). While I'm generally more of a fan of women-in-prison stuff from this era this one is still a pretty cool grimy little-known gem from American International Pictures that moves along at a brisk pace.

KILL, BABY... KILL! (1966)

Caught this one at a drive-in theater recently as part of a zombie movie marathon. This isn't actually a zombie movie of any sort, the killer is the ghost of a little girl who goes around making people commit suicide by staring at them spookily. The reason it got lumped in with zombie flicks is because of it's alternate American re-release title of  CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD as part of the ORGY OF THE LIVING DEAD triple feature. The version they showed, strangely enough, didn't have any title on it though so I'm not sure how edited or not it was.
 While this is not my favorite Bava film, even his lesser stuff is done so well filmed that's it's hard to dismiss it completely. Erika Blanc shows up in an unusually not very sexy role. There's a good witch vs. bad witch-sort of ending. Some of the plot points, perhaps due to the editing of the version I viewed, doesn't make a whole lot of sense but then again ghost movies are not usually my thing anyway. If they are more your style this one might be more of a thrill. AKA DON'T WALK IN THE PARK, CURSE OF THE DEAD and OPERATION FEAR




                                                             Italian poster:

Japanese poster:

British poster:

Played with that movie with the invisible dinosaur monster!:

and on the famous ORGY OF THE LIVING DEAD triple feature!:

DEADLY HARVEST (1977)

 This one is an end of the world(thanks to climate change resulting in a global famine) epic that turns into a revenge flick as people form gangs and fight over remaining food sources. The two basic groups that are battling it out are a group of country folks/farmers and some marauding city slickers. A little girl's cow gets snuffed right in front of her and then a bunch of action scenes happen including a tractor vs. car fight. Not the most exciting movie despite it delving into the action genre a bit towards the climax but you do get to see a young(21 years old) Kim Cattrall way before she transformed into the slutty gal on SEX & THE CITY and PORKY'S, so I guess that's something.





I guess in the Spanish version they blame the famine on some nuclear explosion which is never referred to in the film itself!:

 

HOW TO MAKE A DOLL (1968)

 There's some pretty crappy movies made by cult director H.G. Lewis outside of his more well-known gore epics and sexploitation stuff and this is one of those. I guess you could technically label this one a sexploitation flick but there's not any nudity in it and it's really just a pretty tame(and lame) comedy. The plot is basically a proto WEIRD SCIENCE situation where a couple of guys use a computer to make women for themselves. Except that movie had a budget and executed the idea with a lot more talent. There is one character here, our main protagonist's mom(played by Elizabeth Davis from Lewis' superior THE GRUESOME TWOSOME), who sports some groovy late 60s style and has quite the hair-do that I found pretty amusing, besides her though this one is a tough sit. Stick with Lewis' more well-known fare for maximum cheap thrills. AKA HOW TO LOVE A DOLL


Goofy end credits!:

THE CURSE OF DEMON MOUNTAIN (1977)

 I picked this movie up on a 25 cent DVD recently so I wasn't really expecting much. I was happily surprised though that this is an interesting mix of a western and a supernatural ghost(or haint as they call them here) story. The film itself moves a bit slow and I figured out the little twisty ending before it is revealed but I have to give them props for trying something a bit outside the usual. Slim Pickens shows up briefly to set the search for diamonds into motion which sets off the story of 2 Confederate army soldiers(Joe Don Baker & Joy Houck Jr.) who run into some spooky goings on at a mountain. Sondra Locke does a really good job as the only female character that they run into and it all ends on a pretty downbeat note to remind you it's still the 1970s.
 This one has a whole slew of a.k.a.'s including THE SHADOW OF CHIKARA, DIAMOND MOUNTAIN, DEMON MOUNTAIN, THE BALLAD OF VIRGIL CANE, THUNDER MOUNTAIN and WISHBONE CUTTER(which sounds like the name of a some 70s prog-rock band)

 

1911 (2011)

 Probably the most amazing thing to me, after viewing other recent films from Asia, is that this historical epic about the end of the Chinese royal empire, is only a little over an hour and a half. The story here seems so big that I was sure I was in store for another 3 hour plus ass-numb-a-thon, but the gods have smiled on me this time. There's some cool war action scenes and I guess if you're a big history buff this might be more interesting. Not being an expert on the history of China's Imperial rule I wasn't even sure what was so bad about it from this movie except that they had ruled for a really long time. I guess I could just go read a history book but it seems like an important factor that sets things into motion here might have been mentioned. Jackie Chan, as a revolutionary fighter, is the complete opposite of what you might expect from his more common comedic roles and I dig the older more serious Jackie, He does get in one kung fu scene where he shows off some of his more familiar athletic tricks and he is credited as co-director though I'm not sure how much of that he actually did. Overall this might be a good one-time watch for history buffs but action movie fans might be a little overwhelmed and/or put-off by the politics and motivations.




Technically Jackie has been in more than 100 movies but I guess if you don't count a few it makes for a cool tagline!:

DEATH CRUISE (1974)

 This TV-movie starts out like a typical episode of THE LOVE BOAT with guest stars from CHARLIE'S ANGELS (Kate Jackson) and HAPPY DAYS (Tom "Mr. Cunningham" Bosley) making up the cast(unfortunately those shows were either just starting up or not a thing yet so I doubt those names were a big draw at the time). They even used the same boat from that show. Then a group of people start getting bumped off, mostly offscreen of course. Then, not very surprisingly, the last person left from this group turns out to be the killer with a little bit of a twist added. Not the most well-done mystery I've ever seen but if you're a fan of either crappy 70s TV-movies or wanna see THE LOVE BOAT done with some murder tossed in give it a look.

NIGHT OF THE SKULL (1974)

 I'd first had this movie described to me as director Jess Franco's version of one of those BLIND DEAD movies. This is not very accurate at all. This isn't any sort of zombie movie but is basically a murder mystery/giallo-type of situation with a killer who wears a hood and skull mask vaguely similar to the undead Templar killers in TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD. With that initial disappointment out of the way though this one is a pretty decent tale of revenge for inheritance and throws some decent twists into the proceedings. It's not very gory or sexy, which is unusual for Mr. Franco. Lina Romay gets abused and whipped by her family but unless there's some alternate version of this out there even she doesn't bare much skin.  Probably best for Franco and/or giallo completists only. AKA NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS

The thrilling conclusion!(though it makes no sense if you haven't seen the rest of the movie, or speak Spanish!):

This Spanish-language VHS makes it look like some kinda gangster film, which it isn't!: