May 14 - We're immobilised!

Atlantis Interceptors (1983)
Director: Ruggero Deodato
Format: DVD (Part of First Look's 5-disk Grindhouse Experience Vol 2 box set)

In the past couple of years I've seen exactly two movies that feature a Crystal Skull - the newest entry in the Indiana Jones series and this one. One was a steaming pile of crap, the other... was Atlantis Interceptors! And it was awesome!

This is exactly the kind of flick that this blog was made for. It's cheap, derivative, unrealistic, but so much fun!

Italian director Ruggero Deodato (CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, JUNGLE HOLOCAUST) takes a break from entrails and flesh-munching to helm this action flick, which has scifi thrown in for good measure.

A pair of mercenaries for hire - Mike Ross (Ryan O'Neal lookalike Christopher Connelly, 1990: BRONX WARRIORS) and Washington (Tony King, SHAFT) are cruising in their boat when they end up at a deep sea oil rig. It's being used by scientists who have discovered an Incan-looking relic on the bottom of the sea and are trying to refloat a sunken Russian submarine.

When they do refloat it, the weather goes nuts and a mysterious island comes to the surface as well, completely covered in a see-through dome. Seeking refuge on another nearby island with some of the scientists - including beautiful Gioia Scola (CONQUEST) and Ivan Rassimov (SHOCK, THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER) - they find it has been trashed by a gang of misfits who look like extras from THE ROAD WARRIOR.

Mike, Washington and friends engage in a lengthy firefight against the gang. Machine guns, explosions, flamethrowers, bad guys dying via spectacular dives (and strange echoey screams) - it's balls to the wall action!

The bad guys (who turn out to be from Atlantis - hence the movie title) kidnap Scola and our heroes go to her rescue, commandeering first a bus (see gang members leaping from a helicopter onto the roof of the bus!), then a helicopter.

The island offers more awesomeness, including a cameo from Michelle Soavi (when he was just an actor, prior to directing the likes of STAGEFRIGHT and CEMETERY MAN) and statues that shoot lasers out their eyes. We also get a humorous moment when our heroes come under the influence of the Atlanteans and Washington, leaning close to Mike, says: "Can't move, we're immobilised!"). Did I mention statues that shoot lasers out of their eyes?

The climax doesn't make much sense but is satisfactory enough.

Oh right! At the start to this review I mentioned a Crystal Skull. The leader of the Atlantean gang wears a clear plastic skull mask and is credited as Crystal Skull. His gang is just awesome - their costumes and vehicles are straight out of MAD MAX, BRONX WARRIORS etc and, like all good b-movie bad guys, they jump out and make a lot of noise when attacking, rather than just shooting, giving the good guys time to react.

If you're any kind of fan of 70s/80s Italian scifi action, or just b-movies in general, seek out Atlantis Interceptors. You won't be disappointed.

May 13 - BLACK FRIDAY double feature

Friday the 13th part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Director: Rob Hedden
Format: DVD

So today was Friday the 13th, Black Friday. It's a tradition in my house to watch, well, what else but a movie from the Friday the 13th series on this day. It helps that I'm an unashamed fan of the series.

I've watched parts 1-7 numerous times over the years, but I've managed to limit my exposure to part 8 to just a single viewing many years ago (when it first came out on video). I remember being so disappointed and disgusted by it back then, and that bitter taste has stayed in my mouth since.

Tonight I bit the bullet and gave it another watch. I'm not sure if it's because I had such low expectations or just because I was in the right frame of mind, but I actually enjoyed it this time around. No, not as a serious horror movie, but as an unintentional comedy.

First, the cast and crew. Director Rob Hedden's career since Friday 8 has consisted of made for TV movies. No one, and I mean no one, on the cast went on to become a big name (think about that - the earlier entries had Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover, Ron Palillo etc). The most success any of them had after this movie was pretty boy male lead Scott Reeves becoming a regular on soaps General Hospital and Young and the Restless.

The plot has a bunch of teens (what else?) who celebrate graduating high school by taking a cruise to New York City from near Camp Crystal Lake. Only they have an unwanted stowaway, ol' hockey mask himself, Jason Vorhees. And then... well, he kills a bunch of people. What else would you expect?

There are a few things that bother me about this movie, but none more than the way Jason is portrayed. Namely the fact that he seems to have the speed of a ninja. Sure, in the other films he always manages to catch up to whoever he's chasing without breaking his leisurely pace, but at least he doesn't flaunt the laws of physics. In this one, one second he's over there, the next he's over here - it's just not possible!

Plot holes? Ho boy, big enough to drive... well, a cruise ship through! Since when did Crystal Lake join up with the ocean? How did Rennie (Jensen Daggett - about the only decent actor on screen here) have a run in with a young Jason when he's been hunting teens as an adult (albeit an undead one) for decades now? And the ending - I don't want to spoil it, but it makes no sense whatsoever.

But, and it's a big but, if you manage to switch off the ol' brain and overlook the plot holes, if you embrace the unintentional comedy unfolding before you, you might just enjoy it. The bad acting, the fashions, the music, the flaws in logic... they're all worth a few laughs. Hell, it's the only way to make it all the way through this movie.


Zombie Strippers
Director: Jay Lee
Format: DVD

Zombie. Strippers. And if that's not enough to get you to watch, the two names at the top of the marquee are Robert Englund (NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST) and porn star Jenna Jameson. How could you resist?

Englund plays the sleazy owner of an illegal strip club that becomes the unwitting scene of a zombie outbreak. Jameson is his star stripper, who gets infected but rather than becoming a mindless shuffler, keeps on stripping, while munching on some manmeat in between pole routines.

Director and writer Jay Lee presents all this with tongue in cheek and really delivers for B movie fans. He doesn't hold back on the nudity and gore, dishing out bouncing titties and exploding heads with equal fervour.

The supporting cast is eclectic to say the least, with appearances by a former ultimate fighting champion (Tito Ortiz), a goth rock singer (Roxy Saint), a former child star (Whitney Anderson) and a production assistant from The Apprentice (Jen Alex Gonzalez).

The best laughs are for latin comedian Joey Medina (THE ORIGINAL LATIN KINGS OF COMEDY), who plays a Mexican janitor forced to clean up after the zombies go a-munching. The other comedy is very hit and miss, some of it coming off as just plain silly. But it doesn't spoil what is a damn good time for any B movie fan.

Think zombies and you want plenty of blood, entrails and headshots. Think strippers and you want hot women taking their clothes off. Combine the two and you get both. Ain't life grand?

May 12 - The Wrong Arm of the Law is back

Maniac Cop 2 (1990)
Director: William Lustig
Format: VHS (CBS Fox Video)

Two years after the original, director William Lustig and writer Larry Cohen are back with the continued adventures of the Cop with the Chop, the Wrong Arm of the Law, Matt Cordell (Robert Z'dar).

Picking up where the first movie's ambiguous ending left off, the seemingly-invincible undead cop returns to the streets of the Big Apple to kill off innocent people in gruesome (and often-times humorous ways).

Bruce Campbell and Laurene Landon are also back as our good guy couple, but their appearances are nothing more than cameos. Once they're gone we get new protagonists in the form of the brooding Robert Davi (THE GOONIES) and Claudia Christian (THE HIDDEN), who like Campbell and Landon play cops, although not lovers. Christian is definitely an upgrade over Landon's sub-par acting, and while I'm a big fan of Campbell, Davi brings a hard-boiled, gritty edge to things.

Often filmmakers can be tempted to simply repeat what worked in the original, offering nothing new, but to their credit Lustig and Cohen mix things up. They give their bad guy a sidekick, a sleazy serial killer played by Leo Rossi (HALLOWEEN 2), looking more than a little big Charles Manson-esque.

Other new cast members include Clarence Williams (THE MOD SQUAD TV series), Charles Napier (RAMBO) and Danny Trejo, the latter in a brief cameo.

As well as adding the serial killer sidekick, Lustig and Cohen take their original ingredients and increase the dosage - in this case amping up the levels of action (including one cool scene where Christian's character is handcuffed to a car which is sent down a hill), sex (lots more boobage than the original) and violence.

The comparisons to more famous 80s slasher series can again be made - Cordell is essentially Jason Vorhees with a badge, there's a cool scene at a shooting range where he looms out of the darkness in a very Jason/Michael Myers-like way, and the opening sequence of the film has a real Nightmare on Elm St feel to it.

My overall verdict is that Maniac Cop 2 repeats what made Maniac Cop so good, while also switching up a few things to keep it from getting repetitive. I can see why these movies have a cult following - as far as 80s B-movie action-horrors go, they're top notch.

Oh, and be sure to keep watching during the credits to hear the awesome Maniac Cop rap! With lines like "You can run him over, you can feed him poison, push him out a window, it only annoys him", we're talking movie soundtrack gold!

Pre-movie trailers on my VHS: Home Alone, Predator 2, Coup de Ville, Edward Scissorhands Marked for Death, Cold Justice.


Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993)
Director: William Lustig
Format: VHS (Triumph Releasing)

Completing the Maniac Cop trilogy, Badge of Silence treads familiar territory and unfortunately is unable to live up to the standard of it's two superior predecessors.

Robert Davi is back as Detective McKinney, who once again is embroiled in a mystery surrounding a series of killings. Well, it's a mystery to him. We know the culprit is undead cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar), now looking dark and crispy after his firey finale in the second movie.

The first two movies (the original in particular) feature interesting supporting casts made up of character actors and genre favourites. Sadly the best Badge of Silence can offer is a guy who ended up as a regular on Melrose Place (Doug Savant) and the teacher from The Breakfast Club (Paul Gleason). Jackie Earle Haley (Freddie Krueger in the abysmal Nightmare on Elm St remake) also features as a scumbag criminal who assumes the sidekick roll filled by Leo Rossi in part 2.

The filmmakers try to keep things interesting by introducing two subplots - one involving voodoo, the other a female love interest/obsession for Cordell - but the humor is gone, as are the crazy characters Cohen loves to write. The inventive kills continue and there's plenty of gun-play and a visually-striking ending, but watching this one back-to-back with part 2, it just feels like there's something missing.

Badge of Silence isn't a bad movie by any means, but is easily the weakest entry in the Maniac Cop series.

Pre-movie trailers on my VHS: Hard Justice, Red Scorpion 2, Bad Boys, Blankman, Oblivion, Brainscan, Nighttrain to Venice, Gettysburg

May 10 - You have the right to remain silent... FOREVER!

Maniac Cop (1988)
Director: William Lustig
Format: VHS (4 Front Video)

Robert Z'dar and Bruce Campbell in the same movie? Holy giant chins Batman!

Eight years after his gritty, low-budget slasher Maniac, William Lustig recycled that name, adding Cop to the end of it and... well, that's where the comparison ends. Maniac Cop is bigger budget, more polished and has more in common with Hollywood slasher series like Nightmare on Elm St and Friday the 13th than Maniac, while at the same time having more of an action slant.

The titular Maniac Cop (Z'dar, SOULTAKER) is a hulking specimen in a police uniform who walks the streets of New York killing innocent people. Another cop, played by Campbell (EVIL DEAD), is suspected of the crimes and along with a female cop love interest and a grizzled lieutenant has to fight to prove his innocence.

The killer is from the Jason Vorhees/Michael Myers school of horror movie villains - a hulking guy who never moves at anything but a snail's pace and is seemingly invincible. He even gets an ambiguous ending, setting up a sequel. However, one point of difference Lustig gets to play with is the fact his killer is a cop, the very person the victims are meant to be able to trust.

Maniac Cop also has more humor than most of the movies of its ilk, but that's hardly surprising when you see it was written by Larry Cohen. If you've seen any of the movies he has directed and/or written, like The Stuff and It's Alive, you know that he always operates with an undercurrent of humor. One of my favourite kills in this movie has a guy suffocating as his face is pushed into wet concrete. The next morning the police are there removing him with a jackhammer.

The biggest asset of Maniac Cop is its cast. Campbell is always entertaining, and plays it straighter here than in the Evil Dead movies. His support cast is an impressive assembly of B-movie veterans - including Tom Atkins (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS), Richard Roundtree (SHAFT) and William Smith (PIRANHA), although the later is wasted in a nothing role. Also keep your eyes peeled for an uncredited cameo by Sam Raimi as a news reporter.

My biggest complaint is that this movie lacks a clear protagonist. Is it Campbell or Atkins? Without spoiling the movie, one of them doesn't make it to the end credits, his demise coming rather jarringly.

But overall Maniac Cop is a nice offering from the tail end of the hey day of the 80s slasher - before this kind of movie became completely cliche and almost self-parody - with a great cast.

May 8 - Italian scifi and a sexy thriller

Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)
Director: Alfonso Brescia
Format: TV

2001 A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Star Trek, Barbarella - they're all ripped off in this, one of a string of Italian scifi offerings from director Alfonso Brescia (War of the Robots, Beast in Space etc), who is billed as Al Bradley.

The plot sees a strange signal arriving on Earth and a spaceship sent to investigate, finding a planet where an underground race is enslaved by a giant robot/computer.

There's campy fun to be had here - astronauts who wear 70s style jumpsuits and felt helmets with big round buttons on the side, aliens who are just guys covered in silver paint, an evil robot that makes Robby the Robot look like the T2000 and a spaceship computer ripoff of HAL called WIZ (which instantly makes me think of Michael Jackson dressed as a campy scarecrow).

As you'd expect from a cheaply-made Italian scifi b-movie, the special effects are worth a few laughs and the dubbing is atrociously funny. But that's what makes these movies so great, right?

The dialogue is generally bland but there are a few gems ("I ca-n't make it Cap-tain. The cen-tri-fu-gal for-ce has im-mo-bi-lised me!").

If Cosmos: War of the Planets moved at a quicker pace and the campy-to-dull ratio was higher, I'd recommend it. It's in the public domain, so chances are any DVD you watch will be as bad in quality as the TV screening I watched. Not that it'll wreck a good movie.


Double Jeopardy (1983)
Director: Ulli Lommel
Format: VHS (Syme Home Video)

Also known as Olivia, Faces of Fear and Prozzie. As far as I can tell, this one isn't available on DVD.

Ulli Lommel isn't a name I was familiar with before popping this horror/thriller into the ol' VCR. Looking him up, I discovered that I've seen a couple of his movies before - his 1980 hit Boogeyman and The Devonsville Terror, which came out the same year as Double Jeopardy.

From the looks of it his career in recent years has consisted of turning out direct-to-video movies about real life serial killers (The Zodiac Killer, The BTK Killer and DC Sniper among them), but in the 60s he was part of Andy Warhol's crowd (producing a couple of flicks for him) and in the 80s he became known for a string of horror/thriller movies starring his then wife Suzanna Love.

In Double Jeopardy, Love is a troubled young woman who as a child witnessed her prostitute mother being murdered by a john. Now grown up, she emulates dear old mommy's night activities in London, but has a penchant for killing any men she hooks up with, spurred on by the voice of her dead mother.

Then she meets and falls in love with an American (Robert Walker jr, Beware the Blob) who's in London to do work on the London Bridge. The movie takes a unexpected turn when it moves to the US, where the London Bridge has been rebuilt in Arizona (a real life event that apparently inspired Lommel to build his plot around it). Now in America, Walker's character meets a woman who looks just like his former love, but could it really be her?

There are a couple more plot twists before the end - nothing groundbreaking by any means, but Lommel does a competent job of mixing sex (Love spends a fair bit of time in the buff and is very easy on the eyes), mystery and psychological horror into an entertaining and unpredictable package, helped by creepy, moody music.

Note: The image with this review is the cover of my own copy of the VHS. It looks both cheesy and awesome at the same time!

May 7 - Biker chicks, a black cowboy and zombies

Today I watched a triple feature of movies on DVD from a real mixture of genres.


She-Devils on Wheels (1968)
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Format: DVD (Something Weird)

This is one of two biker chick exploitation movies released in 68 by Herschell Gordon Lewis (the other being Just for the Hell of It). Having moved on from the gorefests (Two Thousand Maniacs, Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red etc) by which he made his name, Lewis momentarily tried his hand at more traditional drive in fare.

She-Devils on Wheels follows the exploits of an all-female biker gang called the Hellcats, who race their bikes, use men as sexual objects (in a nice role reversal) and have to deal to a male gang that moves into their turf.

Don't expect much in the way of plot or acting (most of the women are genuine biker chicks, so they can ride their bikes but don't have much in the way of thespian skills), but the action is passable and some of the dialogue is great ("Go fumigate yourself craphead!"). The sex scenes remind me of when network TV cops visit strip clubs, in that there's no nudity (check out the fully-clothed orgies), and there's no swearing, making all of the rebellious carry-on a tad G-rated. Luckily there's a decapitation to keep it unseamly.

Obviously shot on a tight budget, She-Devils on Wheels has a certain charm to it but there are far better biker exploitation flicks out there.



Joshua (1976)
Director: Larry G Spangler
Format: DVD (El Paso Pictures)

I'm a huge fan of western movies and have seen all sorts of movies from that genre, but this is my first blaxploitation western. I'm aware of others from this particular branch of the blaxploitation tree (The Soul of Nigger Charley, The Legend of Nigger Charley etc), but haven't laid eyes upon one until now.

Director Spangler only has four movies to his name and two of them are black westerns starring former NFL player Fred "the Hammer" Williamson - 1973's The Soul of Nigger Charley and this one.

Joshua stars Williamson as a soldier who returns from fighting in the Civil War to find a gang of white outlaws have killed his mother. He hunts them down and... well, it's a western so you know the drill.

Williamson takes his lead from Eastwood's various silent gunslingers, offering only a few lines of dialogue. In fact there's plenty in Joshua to compare to the spaghetti westerns of Eastwood, Leone et al - long periods without dialogue, gritty characters and even an attempt at a Morricone-esque score (which is repeated over and over to the point of becoming annoying). Eastwood's great "they killed my family and I'm getting revenge" western The Outlaw Josey Wales was released several months before Joshua, and it's easy to guess that movie influenced Spangler here. Although on all counts Joshua is done with less style and finesse than any of the Eastwood vehicles.

Where other movies of this kind use a brooding atmosphere to their advantage, unfortunately Joshua just comes off as slow-moving and frankly a bit dull. Western fans won't find it a complete waste of time, but others would be well advised to give it a miss.



The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Director: John Gilling
Format: DVD (Midnight Movies double feature w/The Reptile)

From the UK's legendary Hammer Studios comes this tale of reanimated corpses and mystery in the Cornwall countryside. Directed by Hammer veteran John Gilling (The Pirates of Blood River, The Mummy's Shroud), it stars Andre Morrell (Hound of the Baskervilles, Quartermass and the Pit TV series) and Diane Clare (The Haunting) as a doctor and his daughter called to a Cornwall village to help with a spate of strange deaths. It is soon apparent there's more than science at work.

Released two years before George Romero changed the landscape for zombie movies forever, Plague benefits from the stunning sets of Hammer's Bray Studios and some top-notch acting. These zombies aren't the shambling brain-eaters of Romero's world. They're connected to voodoo, as zombies generally were before Night of the Living Dead, but are just as frightening - the first appearance of one on screen sends chills.

Secret corridors, voodoo ceremonies accompanied by tribal drums, dark old houses, untrusting villagers - Plague of the Zombies is a fantastic gothic mystery/horror and one of the best Hammer offerings since their Universal reboots of the 1950s.

The biggest budget of the three movies I watched today and easily the most enjoyable.

We're back from the grave!

After an absence of more than two years, I'm kicking some life back into this bad boy, albeit with a slightly new purpose.

My aim is to provide a capsule review (shortish, a bit of info and my broad impressions) for all of the movies I watch from here on out.

I watch movies on a variety of formats - DVD, VHS, computer (mainly for out of print and rare stuff), TV and even on occasion at the cinema. I will be noting what format I watch a movie on.

I'll also be searching for interesting artwork to go with the movies I review - old posters, VHS covers etc.

Let the fun begin!