Horror and Sci-Fi films old and new, weirdo trash, arthouse, forgotten gems, well loved classics, and I'm watching the original Dr Who from the beginning.
Standard issue 1950s Sci-fi, with little to recommend beyond the hilariously goofy godawful puppet used for the titular character.
The plot is about a giant bird attacking cities around the world. There's no point trying to describe it, so I'll just show you a picture:
As usual with this genre, there is far too much talking and padding out the running time with stock footage. There's some gobbledygook about antimatter to explain the creature, but trying to understand it is a waste of time.
There is a doom laden apocalyptic tone at the end as the bird smashes up New York, but by then it's too little too late.
Not only does the title The Day Time Ended bear no relation to the events on screen, the events themselves often bear no relation to the other events in the film.
The plot, as far as I discern, sees a family moving into their new solar-powered home in the middles of the desert. The bad news is their house in right in the centre of some sort of time vortex. Beyond that, God only knows. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is clearly a big influence that the filmmakers were trying to cash in on, with cute kids, time travel, inexplicable events and alien abductions. The script feels like somebody wrote down every sci-fi trope they could think of, put them into a hat and drew them out one by one, regardless of how much sense they made.
In the right hands - or even the wrong hands - this sort of approach can work, with a delirious energy meaning never a dull moment for the viewer. Director John "Bud" Cardos had previously made some low budget exploitation gems such as nature-on-the-rampage classic Kingdom of the Spiders, but he can't make this mess come to life. The special effects are cheap and cheesy, especially the stop-motion aliens, and at least provide a distraction from the wooden human characters.
The finale is left open-ended and if anything feels like this is a pilot for a TV show that, thankfully, never went anywhere.
One for the Bela Lugosi (or Mother Riley) completists,
Mother Riley meets the Vampire is a strange hybrid of English Music Hall and
American low budget mad scientist movies.
Arthur Lucan had been playing Mother Riley, an Irish washer
woman who gets herself into assorted scrapes and adventures, on stage and
screen since the 1930s, but, possibly due to the parochial nature of the
character, the films had not really caught on internationally had much success
outside of the UK. Enter Bela Lugosi, who had travelled to the UK for a stage
version of Dracula that flopped, leaving him penniless and desperately needing
money to get back to the US. Producer George Minter must have seen him, even in
the twilight of his career, as a big enough name to drum up some business at
the American box office.
The sinister Von Housen (Lugosi) has two notable character
traits: he is hellbent on seeks dominating the world with an army of 50,000
radar-controlled nuclear-powered robots. He also reckons he's a vampire and has
several young women abducted, including one who has a map to a uranium mine
that he needs for his robot army. Granted, his army is currently 49,999 short,
and to make matters worse, his only functioning robot has been shipped to
Mother Riley's store by mistake.
The result is two different film styles that don't really
gel together, but it's more entertaining than not. Lugosi seems to be enjoying
himself, and, as always, is great fun to watch. Lucan brings a sense of
knockabout slapstick and some well delivered occasional salty quips ("May
the saints shower you with sailors on shore leave!"), but his constantly
shrill delivery means a little goes a long way. Modern audiences may mostly be
reminded of comedy character Arthur Atkinson from the Fast Show, with
comparable baffling catchphrases and contemporary references.
A unique entry amongst the biker films of the late 60s and early 70s, The Pink Angels feels like a zany send up of the genre. The stereotypes may seem a little jarring to twenty-first century eyes, but there is a good-natured feel to the film and a sly humour undercutting the standard machismo, all of which is ruined by the revolting final scene. The meandering plot involves half a dozen bikers heading across California, accompanied by endless time-padding montages of them riding their choppers, a la Easy Rider (with a sub Easy Rider twee folk-rock soundtrack). At first, they seem like a standard bunch, with long greasy hair, denim jackets and Nazi memorabilia. However, these have more in common with Priscilla Queen of the Desert than Easy Rider as, rather than a drug-fuelled orgy, they're all on the way to a drag convention in Los Angeles. They much prefer food fights to fist fights, and when women throw themselves at them, our heroes are more interested in the dresses they are wearing. The gang may be little more than limp-wristed stereotypes, but they are also by far the most likable characters in the film. In addition, they do not seem in the slightest bit phased or intimidated by the cops or fellow bikers who try to harass them. Indeed, much of the humour comes from the pranks the Angels pull on them, pranks designed to undercut and mock their machismo. Sadly, the film is ruined by a sub plot involving a man dressed in a General's military uniform who seems to be heading up a shadowy militia organisation, unhappy with the sort of degenerate sixties scum who they think are taking over the country. His scenes seem disconnected from the rest of the film and suggest they were shot at a different time, possibly as an afterthought. This sub-plot leads up to the genuinely distressing ending, jarring and tasteless, given the light generally light-hearted tone of the rest of the film.
The Hand has a grisly premise and a seedy atmosphere but the film loses its way with a talky confused script, uninteresting characters, and poor acting.
Starting in 1940s Burma, the story sees three captured British soldiers being interrogated by the Japanese. When two of them each have a hand chopped off, the third agrees to talk. Cut to 1960s London and a policeman makes a gruesome discovery - a tramp who is missing a hand - is there a link back to the events in the Far East?
The majority of the film is taken up with the police investigation involving Inspector Munyard and his sidekick Sergeant Foster, two solid, characterless, permanently smoking detectives. The investigation mostly consists of the two of them talking, going to places, talking some more, and then smoking, which does not make for gripping cinema. It is not helped by the poorly written script, which feels like a great central premise that nobody knew how to write a pay-off for. The fractured, hard to follow storyline feels like certain key expositional scenes were either not written, not filmed, or cut out.
Having said that there is, for the time it was released, occasional brutal (if off screen) violence, and some surprisingly coarse language. The Hand also has a rather pleasing ambience of Trad Jazz, fog and Brylcream, so if those things appeal, come for the story, stay for the atmosphere.
The Plan 9 from Outer Space of 80s British slasher movies, Bloody New Year can be called many things, but it can never be called dull.
After fleeing a menacing gang of gypsy bikers at a funfair, a group of teenagers/ young adults find themselves trapped on an island. Taking refuge in a hotel, they find it seemingly abandoned, and untouched since the New Year’s celebrations of 1959. But is it abandoned? Why do the group start disappearing one by one? And what are people from the past doing in the present?
Clearly made on a low budget, with little time or money for retakes, special effects or discussions on character motivation, it would be all too easy to sneer at a film like this. I suspect it is likely that director Norman J Warren had to contend with interfering producers insisting on seeing "scenes where X happens, like in Y film", hence at times the film is obviously aping the likes of The Evil Dead, Lamerbero Bava's Demons or the likes of Lucio Fulci's more delirious and disjointed zombie films. Sure the acting is lousy, the situations the characters find themselves in baffling, and their lack of reaction doubly so, and the end result is never going to knock Citizen Kane off the BFI best film list. There is an interesting idea buried somewhere in the film, involving a government time travel experiment gone wrong, an idea that, properly developed, would have lifted the film beyond a standard slasher.
However, fortunately, what we get instead, while goofy and incoherent has enough energy to be always fun, and never boring, thanks to the sheer audacity of some of the twists and turns of the story. Do not attempt to make sense of things, just sit back and enjoy the ride. Bloody New Yearby FLIXUMovies
