quamp

I have to wonder why a country that doesn't regularly have Santa Claus in it would make a movie like this. In Mexico, it's the three wise men that leave presents for children in their shoes on Christmas Day. Anyway, we're shown a story about a Santa that lives on a magic cloud where he has children sing horribly to help him make presents for kids. Even worse was the demon Pitch, whose demonic bretheren dance but can't dance. Santa has help from Merlin the magician and a bunch of kids. Several children's scenarios are featured: first, three bratty boys who want to cause trouble, and Santa deals with them; second, a rich kid whose only wish is to have his parents be with him on Christmas. Santa helps out there too. Then third is the girl Lupita, a poor young girl who wants a doll, but her family can't afford to buy her one. Santa gives her one for Christmas after she decides not to steal one at Pitch's advice. The things that don't make this film work are plenty: first, few of the actors were familiar with Santa, and the writer had little information about jolly St. Nick either; second, everyone is obscenely cheerful, especially the narrator. Third, acting was incredibly horrific at best.

Fourth, there were several mistakes in the film (In the scene where Santa and two children are staring into the globe, look above Santa's head to see the boom mike. It's the scene right after the rich kid opens the presents to see his parents.)Lastly, some of the sets were obviously fake (the moving chimney is a prime example.)

Avoid this one unless you're watching the MST3K version.

This short film is quite dated in that it takes a look at children misbehaving. Compared to what children do these days, these kids look very well behaved. Anyway, there's a problem at a local school and they have to do something about it. What they actually do is not revealed, however. Some pretty bad acting that's inherent in most Centron productions shoots this one down.

Last clear Chance is a mercifully short film (although it feels like it lasts forever) about watching out for trains at rail crossings. About the only good thing I can say about this short is that it's in color. Everything else is just plain terrible. Bad acting, overly predictable script, and some stock footage shoot it down.

Some films are just plain silly beyond explanation. This is one of them. Words cannot do justice to the wooden acting, the stupid plotline, and the ever-predictable outcome. About the only thing that makes this film halfway worth watching are the scantily clad women (and the mute guy for you ladies) in it. The leader of the warrior women and Valeria are quite appealing to the eye. But that's about all this movie has going for it.

Some silliness in point: One scene, when they start to journey to the lair of the Dark One, they are walking away from a supposedly destroyed land. But we clearly see a 1980's New York behind them. About 2/3rds of this movie looks like it was filmed in a high school basement. The deadly sock puppets look about as scary as a sesame street monster. I have to agree with Latronic in that many 1950's trash b-movies did a better job than this. About the only one I can think of that didn't was Teenagers from Outer Space.

I think everyone can identify with the lead character Horace Rumpole. That's because he's a crafty, witty barrister surrounded by a bunch of stuffed shirts and idiots. There's Claude Erskine-Brown, the close confidant of Rumpole's who seems to stumble from one disaster to another; Phylida "Portia" Erskine-Brown, Claude's wife and about a third of his source of problems; Judge Gutherie Featherstone, a rather hapless man who gets caught up in a sex scandal right as he's trying to decide on a case in that matter; junior clark Liz Probert, played wonderfully by Leo's daughter Abigail McKern; the hapless Timson clan, who Rumpole constantly rescues from trouble despite their antics, and most of all, we should not forget "She who must be obeyed" - Hilda Rumpole. The cast was a superb choice and the writing was excellent. What was sad about this series is its ending - it's the kind of thing you don't want to end.

The Ring of Terror harkens back to a time when young people spent Saturday night at the movies and didn't care what they saw, because they were spending more time with each other than watching the film. This cheap, b-movie horror film concerns a young medical student who has to steal a ring from a corpse as part of a fraternity hazing. He dies in the process. When he does, you really don't care about that. Most of the people in the college look like they were held back 10 years or so. Another really bad thing about the film is the restaurant scene, where two fat people dance. It's some of the worst dancing I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of bad dancing.

Avoid this one if possible.

It helps to turn your mind off completely when watching this Italian/French production. Diabolik is an ever-too-perfect man with an ever-too-perfect girlfriend that goes around and does pretty much anything he wants. He turns a press conference into a laugh fest with laughing gas. He steals quite a lot of stuff. After a while, I found myself saying "This guy is a pompous jerk - I'd like to see him offed!" The scene I found the least credible was near the end. Diabolik gets covered in molten gold (Mind you, gold melts at hundreds of degrees no matter what scale you're using.) He is left encased in gold for almost 24 hours. Despite this, HE DOES NOT DIE. If a Diabolik II is ever made, I'd like to see this jerk get offed. He does not deserve to live.

This is the kind of movie, like Diabolik, that the French would find funny, but everyone else in the world would think is incredibly DUMB. Man, there sure were a lot of James Bond clones in the late 1960's, and finding them is really a crap shoot. On this one, chances are you'll not like it. A joint project among four countries (and a nice rule of thumb is the more countries involved, the worse the film.) by Monaco, France, West Germany and Italy, the film features none of those countries, but was filmed in the Netherlands. (I can't say I blame these countries for not wanting their country in the film.) Secret Agent Super Dragon himself reminds me of one of those perfect jocks who always got his way in school and nobody would even think of being against. I ended up hating him, and the film. Perhaps if he was more imperfect and human, we could root for him.

Man, Richard Kiel sure did have a couple of stinkers under his belt before becoming Jaws in the James Bond films. Eegah, Phantom Planet, and this one are some pretty good examples. In this film, Kiel actually speaks, and he sounds like a drunken and drugged up Kermit the Frog. Anyway, this film is about an alien (Kiel) who comes to Earth and tries to replace people with robotic duplicates so he can take over. The duplicates themselves seem real until pushed or hit hard, then they turn into terra cotta for some unknown reason. Silly plotline and some pretty bad acting shoot this one down. In the scene where Kiel frees himself from the wall, look in the upper right corner of the screen, under the arches. You'll see a cameraman and camera come into view briefly.

He really does his best to save this film. Basically an evil scientist needs a chemical found only in happy young women to keep his wife alive and beautiful. To get this, he sends brides poisoned orchids on their wedding day. Once the young woman dies, she's taken by the scientist and his henchmen and has the chemical extracted from her. What shoots it down is a script that really could have been better and some pretty shoddy acting from other members of the cast, notably the wife and the female reporter.

I've seen a lot of bad films in my time, and this one ranks right up there with the VERY worst. The Doctor's male organ has a face on it that looks like the doctor's face. This video is extremely sexist (every woman in the video has an impossibly huge chest, and seems willing and eager to fulfill every sick fantasy a guy can have) and in places, it's downright disgusting. Basically the video is about people who have sexual dysfunctions coming to this clinic to get cured. One guy cannot achieve orgasm, so they make him do so through... well, it's too sick to describe. Another time they say that two people do it 61 times in one night. Calculating that out, it's about 8 minutes per session! Needless to say, this video has a severe lack of reality in it. Another point: The doctor has unprotected sex with several women, then talks about the need for protection! Practice what you preach, doc!

Avoid at all costs. Suicide is better than this video.

This epilepsy-inducing opening shouldn't be watched by anyone with that disease. After that, we go through a rather boring journey through Puerto Rico in the early 1970's. They show us things like the symphony orchestra, the local art museum, several historic sites, and the like. They also talk about Puerto Rico's industries of the time, such as electronics, farming, and of course, rum making. The narrator is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Avoid if possible. This is the kind of thing teachers would use to bore their students.

This short film basically tells of Johnny, who cheats so he can stay on the student council. After getting caught, the student council kicks him off. It was about as exciting to watch as paint dry. Rightfully skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the film "The Wild World of Bat Woman" this short would be very forgettable without Mike and the bots.

How in the world could 25 people give this stinkmaster a 10?? Much like the rest of Sandy Frank's imports, this one is incredibly awful. Yes, it rips off the Planet of the Apes. There's a lot of incredibly bad special effects, the biggest one being the UFO. It looks like a wok turned upside-down. Eventually it lands just to show one of the apes that the last remaining human wasn't responsible for the death of his family, but rather, the ape was. That makes no sense to me whatsoever. Legend has it this was designed to be in 26 episodes and sent to the USA that way, but every syndication firm rejected it. Then they took 4 episodes and merged them into a film. I can't say I blame the syndicates for rejecting this turkey.

Like many people, I saw the glaring plot holes and continuity goofs in this film, and decided that they got too much in the way of things. Day is night here, and you couldn't have picked a nicer day to film this. The elements of humor (the two guys manning the radar, the gun-wielding hick)aren't really that funny. Some other things to watch out for are the zippers on the Eye Creatures' backs; one of the Eye Creatures wearing tennis shoes; and the sweater-wearing Eye Creature. In the end, you feel sorry for the hero and heroine not because of the situation they were put in, but because of the idiocy of this film.

*SPOILERS*

I'm sure back when this was released in 1958 it was much appropriate for its time. Back then films were slower paced to allow audiences to follow and analyze the story. Here a man moves into a house owned by his last wife that died mysteriously with his new wife. The gardener Mickey (played by Alex Nicol, who also directed he film) really is an underappreciated character. He gets a skull to indirectly warn Jenni that she is in trouble, since he knew that there was foul play in the first wife's death. He can't tell Jenni directly what happened, so he tries to scare her off with the skull. Jenni, we also find out, saw her parents die, thus causing a lifetime of mental anguish that lead to institutionalization. Like many audiences today, I found the pacing to be a little too slow for my tastes. But if you like slow-paced horror without a lot of gore, this film is for you.

*SPOILERS!!*

Everyone has an off day, but in this film it seemed like everyone was having an off day. The whole plot revolves around a spacecraft landing near a small town and some teenagers coming out of it. One, Thor, is a trigger-happy idiot and the villain of the movie. The other, Derek, is a soft-spoken guy who is just plain whiny. They bring with them a pet known as a Gargan, which is just a lobster in a cage (They probably blew the budget buying that lobster from a local seafood market.) The Gargan initially can't stand being on Earth, but then soon mutates into a giant creature. Meanwhile, Derek has left his space friends and gone into the city to tell the owner of a dog that his dog is dead. There he meets the Morgans, who have a room to rent. For some unfathomable reason, Grandpa Morgan gives the room to Derek despite the latter having no money to give him! Later on Thor comes after Derek, and gets shot in the process. Thor also shoots several people with his destructive ray that turns people into skeletons. (For some unknown reason, the bones stay connected even though the people are reduced to skeletons. It also looks like they used the same skeleton in numerous shots.)In the end, Derek gets a ray and shoots the giant-sized Gargan. Pretty much everyone in this cast was chosen for their good looks and not their acting ability, especially the main stars, David Lowe (Derek) and Dawn Bender (Betty.)

Avoid if possible.

It's not easy being a semi-talented person in a movie that has very little going for it. The whole premise of this movie - that the skeleton of a werewolf could infect people and turn them into werewolves is just plain silly. Sam the keeper couldn't decide if he was supposed to be comic relief, a psycho, or the kind old man. The ending where Natalie turns into a werewolf (or wurwolph as she says) really didn't make any sense. Worst of all was the theme song, which was a cacaphony of bad singers.

Avoid at all costs.

A Frankie Avalon movie without him singing in it? Apparently so. Then again, I'm not too sure that would have saved this film. Basically Frankie plays a James Bond goodie-two-shoes type that goes on an adventure against an evil woman named Sumuru that wants to take over the world so women can rule men. To this end, she and her army of women have become lovers, wives and mistresses to some of the most powerful men on earth. However, there's one lone hold out. To get near him, Sumuru's people frame Avalon for a murder and then tell him he's got to play ball or die. Avalon goes to the guy as a diplomat he was supposed to meet. After one of Sumuru's women kills the twin brother of this diplomat, Avalon and his pal try to defeat Sumuru. She has a device that can turn flesh into stone. It's about as exciting as watching paint dry. So are the rest of the gadgets, and the plot for that matter.

Avoid if possible.

*ONE OR TWO SPOILERS*

Man, this one was PAINFUL to watch! Like most people, I was disappointed that there were no monsters in this film. Most of the acting was vapid and uninspired at best, and at worst it was downright awful. The alien that appears in the story just meanders around. He doesn't really look that alien, just like he has a bad case of acne. The scene where the civil defense prepares to corner the alien drags on way too long.

The scariest thing of all is that director Bill Rebane is supposed to be running for either the govenorship or in the legistature of the state of Wisconsin. Let's hope he's a much better politician than a movie director.

I notice a number of people have compared this film to another film, Yusei Oji, a.k.a. The Prince of Space. I think that's rather unfair to Yusei Oji. This film is considerably worse. The kids were brats and seemed to be allowed to go anywhere they wanted. The Neptune Men looked very slow, clunky, and not very threatening. Still worse was the go-go scene that made the go-go in Monster A-Go Go look good in comparison. The hero was an even worse actor than Tatsuya Umemiya, who played the Prince of Space. The ending was overly predictable and very bad.

Avoid this one at all costs.

This short film was designed to scare drivers in the 1940's. It talks about how drivers in New Jersey are often careless on the road. Watching Arthur W. McGee speak is like watching paint dry. After we endure his way-too-long speech, we're forced to watch a dystopian version of It's a Wonderful Life. Only the actors here can't act. Rightfully torn to shreds on Mystery Science Theater 3000, this short is boring by today's standards.

Star Force: Fugitive Alien II tries to build on the Fugitive Alien series, but with the name Sandy Frank on it, you can be assured it stinks. Ken and the gang are back, but we wish they weren't. This time out, the Star Force has to contend with a sun about to go nova while the ship's engines break down. After that, Ken assaults a very silly-looking fort with the Star Force, and ends up going home again. Bad acting, bad plotline, and bad dubbing abound here. Exactly what you'd expect from a Sandy Frank import.

Avoid this one unless you're watching the MST3K version.

Ah, Sandy Frank. The name conjures up a whole mess of bad Japanese films. Not surprisingly, this is one of them. The whole premise is a good idea - a marauding alien meets up with a kid that has the same name he does (Ken.) and then refuses to kill the kid. (Just what is Sandy Frank's obsession with the name Ken anyway? Many of his other imports have a male character named Ken as well.) A scuffle ensues between the alien and one of his partners, and he accidentally kills his partner. Then the alien is considered a traitor and runs away. He's found by the Star Force in Space, who take him in. The aliens wear extremely fake looking blonde wigs. The forklift scene is unintentionally hilarious. There's also a blonde woman who loves the hero Ken but has to kill him because he killed her brother. But the main problem with this film is the very bad acting. I think it would do better as a remake with a better cast, and maybe Jackie Chan in the lead role.

Avoid unless you're watching the MST3K version.

The Radar Men from the Moon is a pretty typical fare of 1950's serials. The special effects are pretty cheap, the lunar rovers are obviously World War II surplus jeeps with painted plywood over them, and the like. The acting is only so-so. It does inspire the imagination of children, to whom I believe this was directed to. By today's standards, it's boring, cheap, and bad. There's also a hefty amount of stock footage in the first 9 episodes of natural disasters.