An Interpol agent and his entire family — minus their young son — are all killed. A wealthy industrialist who that agent once saved is in turn saved, made better, stronger and faster, then gets his revenge.
That boy, Sonny Lee, is now the Bionic Boy.
Bionic Boy takes place in the same universe as Cleopatra Wong and for that, I am forever grateful. They would even end up teaming up in 1979’s The Return of the Bionic Boy.
If this is your first foray into the cinema of the Phillipines, let me warn you. This kid is going to be put into more danger than ten showings of The Goonies put together. Also, he has no issues with killing every bad guy who comes his way, which seems pretty adult for a ten-year-old.
There is so much Moog synth in this and its punctuated by punches that sound like megaton explosions. I want every movie to be like this, to be perfetcly honest.
Look, if you’re going to do the work to make unliving body parts into unstoppable killers, do not make them stoppable by giving them the weakness of having a flashlight shined into their brains.
Ah, who cares! We should all dream for a life like Ted V. Mikels, who lived in a literal castle in Las Vegas, partying hard with his Castle Girls. The craziest of lives — in fact, many of his films — seem downright boring compared to his real life.
Working alongside Wayne M. Rogers — yes, the guy from M*A*S*H* — Mikels made this Cold War opus that also features John Carradine (who made 10% of the film’s budget) and an army led by Tura Satana, which is one I would definitely serve in.
Carradine plays Dr. DeMarco, who is using his Astro-Zombies to get revenge against everyone who called him mad by, well, being absolutely mad.
Shot on short ends at Peter Falk’s house, this film was often said to be amongst the worst ever made by critics. Well, it reached one impressionable youth in Lodi, New Jersey. Glenn Danzig’s band The Misfits would introduce this movie to their fans with the song of the same name, featuring the lyrics, “With just a touch of my burning hand / I’m gonna live my life to to destroy your world / Prime directive, exterminate / The whole fuckin’ race.”
This is the second Yasuzô Masumura movie I’ve watched this week, a director whose work that until now I’d never explored.
The next case of Akira Kido (Ken Utsui) will determine whether or not he has earned a promotion. In this film, unlike American movies, the case within court is all that matters.
With elements of noir, this movie shows the inside of a Japanese court room, where catching the murderer is only part of the tale. The rest is actually getting them convicted.
I love getting Arrow blu rays because I’m so often exposed to films that I would never otherwise watch. Japanese courtroom drama was not on my radar until I watched this.
You can get this blu ray from Diabolik DVD. It comes complete with another Masumura film, Black Test Car.
DISCLAIMER: This film was sent to us by Arrow Video.
Riko lives in Waikato, New Zealand, which is as close to the middle of nowhere as it gets. While nearly every day is the same, things change when two aliens land and become his friends. However, an alientologist has been hunting the extraterrestrials and wants to reveal them to the world.
Alien Addiction was written and directed by Shae Sterling, a veteran of more than 125 music videos for artists like Sheila E and Snoop Dogg, as well as a series of documentaries called High Octane. New Zealand still feels like, well, alien territory for most of us, so seeing how interplanetary visitors fit in there is a pretty fun concept.
Thirty three years after Bad Taste, it seems like aliens are coming back to New Zealand. These ones are more interested in friendship than they are with treating our planet as a galactic drive-thru, so that’s good.
The blue aliens are goofy looking in the best of ways and get high off of poop, so that right there should tell you what kind of movie you’re getting into here. You may have some difficulty understanding the Kiwi accents, so consider watching this with close captioning on.
Alien Addiction is available on demand and on DVD from Gravitas Ventures, who were kind enough to send us a review copy.
Yep! It’s time for more screeching horns n’ strings and shaky, washed out, black and white images (and va-voom, Wanda McKay!) in another dark and stormy night murder mystery.
The last time, we were at the Rogues’ Tavern, then the haunted Fal Vale Junction train station, courtesy of our reviews for The Rogues’ Tavern and The Ghost Train. Yep, it’s another group of weary 1930s-to-1940s travelers stranded after a bad storm (Dig those plastic trees swayin’ in the high winds! Don’t slam the door too hard, you’re shaking the set’s walls!) that washed out a nearby bridge and they have to hold up at the Black Raven Inn. Two people are murdered and the hunt is on for $50,000 in quick succession because, even when trapped and facing death, everyone still feels the need for greed.
You may know Wanda McKay from her appearance in 1942’s Bowery at Midnight with Bela Lugosi; another horror notable is 1944’s The Monster Maker; but none of us remember (do you?) her for being the Chesterfield Cigarettes girl, which was a pretty sweet gig back in the day. If you watch an old “poverty row” PRC or Monogram Pictures B-Movie from the 1940’s, chances are (sigh) Wanda was in it.
As for the big man, George Zucco. Wow. We’ll rattle off a few: Madame X (1937), The Cat and the Canary (1939), The Mummy’s Hand (1940), House of Frankenstein (1944), and Scared to Death (1947) — great, creaky films all.
Yeah, just another great public domain ditty saved by the likes of You Tube.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Also known as Monstrosity, this is one of the first movies where decay is given as the reason for the diminished intelligence of zombies. It also features plenty of people better known for other things, like narrator Bradford Dillman, Commerical pitchman Frank Gerstle and Marjorie Eaton, who played the original Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back before the special edition re-imagining.
In just 72 minutes, we learn an old woman who gets her pick of three servants to insert her brain into, thus getting a young body that will extend her lifespan.
This is the last film of Judy Bamber, who is also in A Bucket of Blood and Dragstrip Girl. The budget was so low that she provided Xerxes the cat, who was her housecat.
Ah, the late 1990’s, when teen comedies came back for a while. What a simpler time than today, trapped in our homes and constantly waiting for he inevitable next chapter of the end of all things. Or something, right?
This is where the career of so many of your favorite stars began. You can literally play spot the star here.
Figuring that the best part of teen movies were the party scenes, this movie is basically one long party scene. I guess that’s the way to do it, as hijinks ensue movies off a meager set-up are so much of what I watch.
While it takes it’s title from The Replacements song, it really doesn’t have much to do with the song (other than featuring it in the credits).
Ethan Embry and Jennifer Love Hewitt are the main stars here, star-crossed lovers who absoutely must come together for the good of the story. Along the way, there are many last night — when high school seemed like the end all, be all of our existence — moments that must have a resolution before college begins.
That said, this film smartly sets up that yesterday’s cool senior is tomorrow’s geek freshman. This lesson would serve you well for your entire life, reminding you that you must continually prove yourself.
Of course, Clea Duvall’s Jana is my favorite character, although I find the fact that she ended up hooking up with Steth Green’s Kenny to be out of character. That said, high school is about being out of character.
Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont would go on to make Josie and the Pussycats, a movie that’s way better than it has any right to be.
Back in 1992, the news cycle was dominated by Amy Fisher, a sixteen-year-old girl who had an affair with auto mechanic Joey Buttafuoco, the auto mechanic who had continually fixed her car. As their affair reached its close, she ended up heading to his wife’s house and shot her in the head twice.
Somehow, Mary Jo Buttafuoco survived and Fisher was named as the suspect, serving seven years in prison. In the pre-Twitter era, this was all people talked about in person, in the papers and on the relatively new idea of 24/7 news.
Back then — 28 years ago feels like a lifetime — three TV movies were made telling the story. This is what happened back then — news didn’t burn out in hours and we got to watch made-for-TV versions of stories ripped from the headlines. The three films were Amy Fisher: My Story with Noelle Parker in the lead (NBC, December 28, 1992); Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” Story had Alyssa Milano as Fisher and Lawrence Tierney as Joey’s father (CBS, January 3, 1993) and The Amy Fisher Story with Drew Barrymore (airing the same night on ABC). Of the three, the Barrymore version was considered the best — all things considered — and earned the highest ratings.
Now, writer and director Dan Kapelovitz (The Three Geniuses: The Re-Death of Psychedelia, the short Amazing Angelyne and the upcoming 48 Hrs. Literally) has taken all three films and remixed them into one overlapping narrative. Much like trying to combine the story of Fisher from The National Enquirer, The Examiner, The New York Post, Inside Edition, Hard Copy and Star Magazine and creating your own version of what really happened inside your head, the Rashomon-esque overlayering of these films.
What is the real story of Amy, Joey and Mary Jo? Is it the one that played out in the media, including brutal back and forth moments on The Howard Stern Show? Was it in the tabloids that I devoured? Or did these movies tell the right story? Is there a right story? Can multiple people play multiple roles in multiple movies and all combine to tell one story that has numerous touchpoints that are told through multiple lenses and points of view?
I don’t have the answers, I just like watching movies.
As someone who has never been a sixteen-year-old girl in love with a Zubaz wearing older man — confession time! — I can’t really understand why Amy did what she did. But I do know that love makes you do things that money, obligation and duty can never match. I’ve also never had a woman eat a pizza in a sexual way while looking at me. And I have no idea if that’s actually possible.
This movie makes me happy for repetitive drug tracks, for protagonists doing blow while cops trail them then a race through a cemetery pausing only to kneel on your mothers grave, for beepers, for fake Long Island accents, for Le Barons, for dudes swept up in killing the wives of boyfriends because they’re also having sex with the girl, for made-up movies that aren’t nearly this convoluted and for the fact that this exists at all, while hair metal ballads blaring while three different Amys shoot three different Mary Jos and three different Joeys have no idea what to do. That doorbell keeps on ringing over and over and over and as all three wives approach all three doors to confront all three mistresses, I find myself asking myself, “What is truth?”
The answer? As Joey tells Amy when she asks what their future is going to be, “It’s whatever you want it to be.”
I got to see this via AGFA and Fantastic Fest, which presented it in a limited edition stream through the Alamo Drafthouse. It was worth every minute. To learn where it may play some day again, you can learn more at the official site or read more about the film at AGFA’s site.
Sometimes, the right movie comes along at just the right time. This would be that movie. Today would be that day.
Memorial Valley Massacre — also known as Valley of Death, also known as Son of Sleepaway Camp (complete with the music cues from Sleepaway Camp and hardcore penetration footage) — was released beyond the golden years of the slasher, but damn if it doesn’t make me just as happy as if it had been released between 1979 and 1982.
Evil land developer Allen Sangster (Cameron Mitchell!) has just broken ground on the Memorial Valley Campground and wants some teenagers to build it for him. Nothing happens at all for the first hour, with just one murder — that said, it’s the murder of an obese rich kid on a quad that I was hoping would die painfully and oh yes, he did — but by the end, all manner of slashtastic violence is unleashed.
Did I mention this movie has a cave boy? Yes, much like Encino Man but with death, this wolf child lives in the woods and doesn’t like all these rich folks knocking down his trees.
Beyond Mitchell, this is a junk film fan’s dream, with John Kerry (Dolemite), William Smith (Red Dawn, Terror in Beverly Hills, so many more) and Karen Russell (Hellbent). It’s directed by Robert Hughes, who would go on to make Zadar! Cow from Hell, Hunter’s Blood and Lusty Liaisons II before directing episodes of Mighty Morphing Power Rangers.
Seriously, outside of Don’t Go Near the Park, this is probably my favorite prehistoric people in public lands killing people movie. That said, I only know two of movies of this genre and I love them both.
You can watch this on Amazon Prime or do the right thing and order the Vinegar Syndrome reissue, which is packed with extras, including a 4K reconstruction of the film and interviews with actor John Kerry and director Robert C. Hughes. Rent it now and be assaulted by its soundtrack, which seems way too chipper for the carnage that unspools over the last twenty minutes of running time!
Yasuzô Masumura’s films triumph the idea of the individual versus the needs of the many, standing in diametric opposite to Japanese norms. His 1962 Black Test Car tells the story of the battle between the Tiger Motorcar Company and the Yamato Company, particularly their newest sportcars.
Tiger was planning on a new car named Pioneer to set the world on fire, but the only thing ablaze is the test car. Now, Toru (Hideo Takamatsu, Ninja In a Business Suit) must discover the spy in his company and why Yamamoto’s new car looks so much like an automobile his company has lost.
There are no heroes in this film, only the relentless drive to make the company a success no matter the cost — money, love, human contact, basic decency be damned. It’s a strange film for American eyes, as it somehow is closer to the noir within a subject that few would consider, the cutthroat world of industrial automotive espionage.
Arrow Video keeps succeeding in finding movies I had no idea existed and suddenly making me care deeply about their existence. This is but another of those films.
You can get this blu ray from Diabolik DVD. It comes complete with another Masumura film, The Black Report.
DISCLAIMER: This film was sent to us by Arrow Video.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.