ATTACK OF THE CLONES: Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
There is no way I can be objective about this movie. It is everything that movies should be in one film. It’s a revision of The Magnificent Seven, which in itself is just a cover version of The Seven Samurai. It has John Saxon as a face painted baddy whose body is falling apart. George Peppard plays […]
ATTACK OF THE CLONES: Starcrash (1978)
After the Star Wars became an international sensation, Luigi Cozzi (the batshit insane Hercules movies with Lou Ferrigno, Contamination and more) was able to round up a decent budget to make a film called Empire of the Stars, which eventually became this film. Cozzi battled against food poisoning of the cast and crew and even a Communist worker revolt […]
ATTACK OF THE CLONES: The Black Hole (1979)
The Black Hole is more than just the first Disney movie to be rated PG and to feature swearing (as well as one of the most expensive they’d produced at that point). It’s also a dark film, one closer to Event Horizon than Escape from Witch Mountain. The USS Palomino is near the end of its long […]
ATTACK OF THE CLONES: Message from Space (1978)
At nearly half the budget of Star Wars — $6 to $7 million dollars — Message from Space was the most expensive movie in Japanese history up until 1980. At the time, it was routinely panned by the critics. Yet watching it nearly 40 years later, I was struck by just how ambitious, fun and strange it […]
ATTACK OF THE CLONES: The Humanoid (1979)
There are times that films feel like gift packages wrapped up for just me and my insane taste in movies. Let me tell you all of the ways that The Humanoid makes me want to fall to my knees and give thanks: It’s an Italian ripoff of Star Wars directed by Aldo Lado (Who Saw Her […]
FULCI WEEK: Demonia (1990)
Sicily. 1486. A bunch of villages descend on five nuns — suspected of being witches — and drop the witch hammer on them. Each is crucified and then nails are driven into their chests. Blood sprays everywhere. Fulci is pleased. Toronto. 1990. Liza is at a seance where she sees the crucified nuns and collapses, […]
FULCI WEEK: Touch of Death (1988)
If Touch of Death was simply the poster filmed for 70 minutes, it’d be such a better movie than what I just watched. Lester (Brett Halsey, Demonia) is a cannibal serial killer who meets, dates and eats various women, sometimes giving parts of them to his pigs. He also talks to a tape recording of his own voice […]
FULCI WEEK: Murder Rock (1984)
Lucio Fulci wanted to make a giallo. But then Flashdance happened and the producers knew Keith Emerson (yes, the Keith Emerson from Emerson Lake and Palmer) and the result was…Murder Rock! Or Murder-Rock: Dancing Death! Or Slashdance! Or The Demon Is Loose! We start at the Arts for the Living Center in New York, where Candice (Olga Karlatos, the […]
FULCI WEEK: The Devil’s Honey (1986)
Also known as Dangerous Obsession, this movie was intended to be Lucio Fulci’s comeback after more than a year of dealing with hepatitis. It’s a return to the giallo (or at least sexually related drama) that he was creating in the early 70’s instead of the gore that he’d become infamous for throughout the 80’s, but […]
FULCI WEEK: The New York Ripper (1982)
The New York Ripper is the hardest, roughest, bloodiest and sleaziest of Lucio Fulci’s films. That’s saying a lot. It has a lot to live up to, with the horrors that had come before. If you backed off of the gore and roughness of the film, you’d be left with a somewhat decent detective film. […]
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