As you may have noticed, I have not posted any movie recaps in several weeks; as you also might surmise, I still watch movies, and thus I’m getting further and further behind in posting my reactions to them.
This post will be a Great Deck-Clearing, before I forget all about the earlier movies I haven’t written down.
Lost in a Harem (1944) – Not nearly as sexy as it sounds. Abbott and Costello, plus galpal singer Marilyn Maxwell, get snagged into succession issues in a made-up Arab country between the virtuous deposed nephew (who has the hots for Maxwell) and his nefarious usurper uncle. Along the way there are mistaken identity gags, crossdressing gags, a 7’4″ actor with enormous hands, PTSD (that’s comedy!), and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra playing themselves. Not one of Bud and Lou’s greatest, but fun if you like shtick.
Sword of the Valiant (1984) – I want to believe that there came a moment during the production of this movie that director Stephen Weeks realized, “This isn’t working at all. It hasn’t gelled. This is nothing but a long hard slog to make, and it will be a long hard slog to watch.”
Quantum of Solace (2008) – I know that this movie got a drubbing when first released, by I found it to be a necessary reassurance that the Bond franchise wasn’t entirely abandoning all of the features by which it had been known for decades.
Monster From the Ocean Floor (1954) – A surprisingly muted early Roger Corman effort, featuring a mutated amoeba vs. capable (for the budget) miniature effects.
Alien Warfare (2019) – I enjoyed this indie SF-actioner (one of the only movies set in Eastern Europe but not actually filmed there) right up until the aliens appear — they’re obviously humans in armor suits made of scrap metal, and the mammary glands visible in the shape of the armor for the one who’s immediately identified as “female” completely sacrifice any audience goodwill.
The Lazarus Effect (2015) – Effective little SF thriller about a rogue medical team working on a serum to bring back the dead. When one of their number is accidentally electrocuted during a desperate midnight experiment, well…
Abandoned: Somnus (2017) – Made by someone who said, “2001: A Space Odyssey was too expensive and not slow enough.”
Abandoned: Sky Sharks (2020) – I wanted to love this, but all the best moments were in the trailer.
Discovering Bigfoot (2017) – A mountain-man Bigfoot researcher combines his own solo footage with his trips into the wild with other notable researchers. Some of his footage is so clear and detailed it looks too good to be true.
UFO Abduction, aka The McPherson Tape (1989) – A pre-Blair Witch found-footage flick, as a family assembled for a birthday party sees a strange light land out in a field. Pretty good, as such things go.
Beyond the Mask (2015) – The concept of a Revolutionary War-era Batman-style hero is a good one, but this is hampered by too much CG taking the place of location shoots, plus a script which shoehorns a 21st-century nondenominational understanding of Christianity into the 18th century.
Blind Justice (1994) – Armand Assante is a blind gunman in a movie that starts off as an homage to spaghetti westerns but ends up just silly. Contains what is possibly the least chemistry in any romantic subplot, featuring Assante and former Civil War nurse Elizabeth Shue.
Raid (2018) – A based-on-fact Hindi thriller about an income tax team (no, it’s still a thriller) raiding the home of a corrupt but beloved politician, risking their careers and possibly their lives. Surprisingly good.
Real Steel (2011) – Once you swallow the premise of boxing robots, plus the “absentee father connects with his son by being a really bad parenting example” plot, it goes down okay.
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) – Famous for having a four-breasted woman on the VHS box cover (and in the movie for about two minutes), this sword-and-sorcery remake of A Fistful of Dollars starring David Carradine is too silly to take seriously, but not silly enough to enjoy as a guilty pleasure.
Ghouls (2017) – A Russian-made historical fantasy about a reborn vampire lord, the lone monk who’s there to oppose him, and the dashing young government official who falls in love with the local girl that the vampire wants for blood. Intriguing, if not always successful.
Hellraiser (1987) – I enjoyed this a lot more than I did the first time I saw it decades ago, although I still think that it’s too arbitrary to stand up to serious scrutiny (and Ashley Laurence is mostly wasted).
Abandoned: Scared to Death (1987) – I know this has a cool monster costume late in the movie, but it just wasn’t worth sitting through all the surly cop scenes, followed by the hero/heroine meet-cute.
All’s Faire in Love (2009) – I was astounded by how much bile spewed forth from every review I read of this, until I realized that they had seen it as a theatrical feature. Yeah, I would have felt gypped too. But as something free on Amazon Prime, this slight comedy about rivalries at a longstanding Rennaisance Faire is acceptable, I guess.
Abandoned: Red Sun Rising (1994) – Don “The Dragon” Wilson is half-Japanese, so shouldn’t he have even the simplest facility with the language? Or even be able to pull off the accent? Put him as a Japanese cop together with surly Los Angeles police detective Terry Farrell, who’s visibly embarrassed by being gruff and ethnically insensitive, and I just couldn’t take it when it looked like they were moving toward a chemistry-free love scene.
When I saw that logo for Fuse Box Films in the trailer for Sky Sharks, I couldn’t help thinking “Hey, that looks just like the old Golan/Globus logo!”
“Sky Sharks” looks like it would make “Iron Sky” look better by comparison.
Oh, it definitely would. I *liked* Iron Sky.
“Iron Sky” is one of those movies I like in spite of (or because of) its rough edges.
My son didn’t, in spite of the cast including Udo Kier.
I liked it. I mean…would I spend money to see it? (Eff, no.)
But on a recent night, bored, with nothing on worth watching? (A category that is ever-larger, sadly), Hells yes.
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And in Real Steel, the wee robot did a lovely job with the part of the Rescue puppy!