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This mid-80s "teen romp" movie is probably the worst 80s film I've seen since Hobgoblins. Unless you are a 12 year old with an IQ below 40, you will hate this movie. It begins with some teens who try to save a public beach from being bought and taken over by the greedy mayor. One boy who is a computer geek tries to use his skills to win a race to save the beach for more teenage dance parties and sex-on-the-beach. The "actors" in this movie are so pathetic and unskilled that,... I'm at a loss of words, it is so bad. Every once in a while the director inserted a scene of some topless girls, but even the occasional boobies were not enough to rescue this dreck. Absolutely dreadful.

Planet of Dinosaurs is a very low-budget space sci-fi movie from the late 1970s, featuring absolutely no-name actors, stop motion dinosaurs and awful dialogue. These elements, combined with the "music" provided by a cheap Casio keyboard (it sounds a lot like the music in Pod People, an equally dismal sci-fi movie from the early 1980s), mean that it is in solid B movie territory! But it is still fun, in a weird sort of way. It definitely has that 70s feel to it! Nearly all the male actors sport thick moustaches and open shirts, and the ladies look like they're ready for the disco floor, too. Pamela Bottaro, who plays Nyla, is particularly fetching, especially wearing that sexy halter top in the last 30 seconds of the movie... wow!

Wow what a title, "I Married a Monster from Outer Space"! But as with other reviewers, I must agree that this movie really isn't nearly as bad as its title. It has many elements which will remind you of Invasion of the Body Snatchers - aliens take over the local people of small-town rural America, but you wouldn't know it because they take human forms. In this case, the aliens seem to like newly wed couples, and they are working on a way to successfully breed with humans to populate Earth with their species. For some reason, they completely ignore the local bar floozies who try to bed with them... hmmm... Of course, one astute young housewife realizes that not all is right in her marriage and in Morrisville, and she investigates. Don't let the title fool you into thinking it's an Ed Wood-style disaster because it isn't. It's definitely worth watching.

With a title like "Earth vs the Flying Saucers", my expectations were low. I expected poor acting, terrible special effects, bad lighting, etc... fortunately I was wrong. This is a surprisingly good movie! It does not drag anywhere - no boring side stories, no attempts at lame moral lessons for the audience; it moves right along from beginning to end. The "scientific explanation" for how their anti-UFO weapon works is a bunch of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo: "We try to interrupt their magnetic field by projecting a highly intermittent induced electrical field." Huh??? But if you can forgive this and the anti-UFO weapon itself, which resembles a satellite dish with a sheet metal cylinder welded in the center, then the rest is pretty good for 1950s special effects.

The aliens in this movie are not coming to enlighten us. Nah they want to take us over and colonize the place for themselves! The mean-spirited aliens intend to invade Earth and conquer it, and the final showdown is in Washington DC. Out-of-control flying saucers wind up crashing into the Washington Monument and the dome of the Capital Building even! Plus the aliens blast everything that moves with their ray gun. Who wins? The robot-like aliens or us? Watch it and find out!

Directed by the King of Schlock, Roger Corman, "Attack of the Crab Monsters" is about a group of soldiers and scientists who journey to a distant "uncharted" atoll to try to determine what happened to a group of US Marines who disappeared on the island some time before. The island is beset with "earthquakes" which they soon discover are caused by giant, atomic-mutated crabs. These nasty crustaceans have a taste for human brains, from which they acquire the knowledge of their victims.

This movie is funny on multiple levels. First, their transportation to this distant, uncharted atoll is in a 14 foot fishing boat powered by a 6 hp outboard engine - hardly something you'd take to the sea in for a long journey. We have the ever-present busty, tight-sweater-wearing love interest of the lead scientist. It has Russell Johnson, better known as the Professor on "Gilligan's Island" some 12 years later, and we have some preposterous monsters, in this case talking giant crabs. Still I found it mildly entertaining... I give it 4 stars.

The movie theater serial "Radar Men from the Moon" is a 12 episode action series, each episode of which lasts about 10 minutes I think. The basic plot is that a dying civilization on the moon wishes to take over the Earth, so they begin their preparations by sending a small advance guard to cause mayhem on our planet before the full-scale invasion. The US government assigns Captain Cody and his rocket pack to stop the evil henchmen before they can proceed further.

The dialog is kept to a minimum since this is an action series intended for the 7 to 13 year old crowd (those children are in their late 60s to early 70s now - scary thought) and it is pretty much one action scene after another. The cliffhangers at the end of each episode are miraculously resolved at the beginning of the next episode as the hero Commander Cody works a plan to outwit the moonmen and their evil earthling co-conspirators. Overall not a bad adventure series actually in my opinion, considering the limited budget and the limits on special effects at the time... they certainly didn't have computer graphics to insert back then.

But why "Radarmen" in the title? I don't remember seeing any radars. There are some ray guns and moonmen and spaceships and rocketpacks, but no radars. Hmmm... go figure.

This mid-50s low budget juvenile delinquency-themed film is about the very improbable story of four rich, bored, beautiful teenage girls (they look like their actually pushing 30 though) who get their kicks by robbing gas stations, trashing schools, and attacking young people on lover's lane. The characters (especially that of Paula, their leader) are very unbelievable - the scripting is wooden and amateurishly acted, especially the hammy "he/she shot me!" scenes which must go down in cinematic history as the fakest ever to appear on film. The filmmaker simply wanted an excuse to film beautiful, busty girls wearing sweaters two sizes too small and put them in a contrived juvenile delinquency story. My score is 8 for the super-tight sweaters minus 3 for the silly death scenes and a minus 3 for the horrible dialog equals a 2. No wonder this was used by MST3K...

High School Caesar is centered around Matt, a spoiled rich boy whose parents don't have time for him so he becomes the leader of a bunch of high school thugs. These punks extort protection money from students, sell tests to students, and engage in other parasitic behaviors. There are some wholesome students who resist Matt and his tormentors however, and as can be predicted, things come to a head between the two groups.

For a movie about a quasi-mafioso bunch of high school thugs, there is very little violence. Some kid gets beaten up at the beginning of the movie for failing to pay protection money, and a few other punches are thrown here and there, but don't expect to see any gang fights, shootings, stabbings, etc as you might think there would be in a movie of this genre. The main character Matt is actually not very believable... I would expect a gang leader to be more aggressive and less of a private cry-baby.

The 1950s produced a whole slew of schlocky sci-fi movies, but The Giant Claw has to be among the top 5 award winners. The film is about a gigantic bird which vaguely resembles a buzzard with teeth (!!) and multiplied by 100X the size of a regular buzzard. The beast attacks anything that moves, especially trains, military aircraft, panicky Frenchmen, and hot-rodding teenagers who disregard the sage advice of their elders. Despite the fact that the whole world is in danger, it seems that only three scientists are able to concoct a remedy for the situation to try to defeat the menacing winged beast.

The Giant Claw certainly fits in the so-silly-its-hilarious category. For fans of 1950s grade Z sci-fi, this is an absolute must-see. Watch for the stunning Mara Corday; talk about eye candy! Nice!

This is a rather enjoyable mid-60s Korean monster film, in which a Godzilla-like monster decides to give Tokyo a break for once and ravages Seoul, Korea (maybe the South Koreans would have cheered it on if it had attacked Pyongyang instead??? hmmm...). Anyway among the cast we have a young scientist / astronaut who along with his new wife and her annoying 8 year old brother, try to find a way to stop Yongary from flattening the better part of the capital.

The effects are quite low budget but passable for this genre of films. Whenever you see Yongary in a shot coming close to a large building or a bridge, you just know that structure has gotta go! Call it Yongary's plan for the urban renewal of Seoul. Yongary itself is quite obviously some guy in a rubber monster suit who had the joy of smashing his way through flimsy plaster-of-Paris building models.

If you go into the film with the understanding that this is a Korean Godzilla ripoff on a low budget, you will not be disappointed and you may enjoy it. Finally I wish to say that the character of Suna, played by actress Jeong-im Nam, was quite beautiful, especially in that red dress... wow

Test Tube Babies is a late 1940s exploitation flick about a boring couple who are unable to conceive. In spite of their wholesomeness they have a wild party at their house with lecherous men, silly drunks, and strippers! The couple seek a doctor's advice on their options for having a child.

This movie is hilarious for its unintended humor. In one scene the couple are in the doctor's office, and after being told that her husband is sterile and cannot father a child for her, the wife misunderstands the doctor and thinks that he is offering to do the deed! The scene with the wild stag party is unforgettable, especially the cat fight featuring two women wrestling around on the floor clawing at each other's clothes. My favorite scene has to be the one where the doctor comes out to speak to the nervous husband and advises him, "Pull yourself together and have a cigarette", then asks the husband to go buy some smokes for him, too! My how times have changed.

One star for the terrible wooden acting, one star for the cat fight and one star for hilarious medical advice = 3 stars from me.

Here is one of Arch Hall Jr's movies which his dad (Arch Hall Sr) produced and cast him in. Strap yourselves in for some jive-talking, Monkey-In-A-Hatband singing, car chopping fun! Arch Hall Jr plays Cruiser, the hot-rodding leader of a group of teenagers called the "Choppers". The boys cruise around the county in a chicken truck (!!!??) looking for brand-new cars to strip. For some reason this particular stretch of highway is where many drivers of beautiful new cars always seem to run out of gas. Hmmm... Anyway when the boys in the chicken truck find a car, they strip it for parts in a matter of minutes, while Cruiser stands guard at a distance in his hotrod looking for the "fuzz". The boys use enormous walkie-talkies to keep Cruiser apprised of their progress. Afterward they sell the parts to a crooked junkyard dealer. The cops are pretty much clueless about how to stop them until they hit upon the idea of setting up a decoy vehicle (why hadn't they thought of that a long time earlier?).

No Arch Hall Jr. flick would be complete without a guitar tune by Arch Hall Jr himself and this one is no different. This one features Arch Hall Jr singing "Monkey In A Hatband" and don't ask me what the song is about because I couldn't get the MIAH part.

Finally the moral of this movie is about how bad parenting is to blame for kids going wild and becoming juvenile delinquents.

This is a mid-1930s exploitation movie designed to "warn" good Christian girls and boys about the dangers of drinking, dancing, and premarital sex. For the 1930s these were indeed scandalous topics which today seem mundane. Ann, our central character, is corrupted by her fun-loving friend Eve. Eve introduces Ann to the evils of romance novels, smoking, dancing with boys and sneaking snorts of Daddy's brandy. Ann and Eve progress to dating men who are old enough to be their fathers. Finally the girls are caught at a drunken pool party where they are arrested and taken to the police station. While there, they are examined by a doctor (presumably for STDs) and given small cards identifying them by name as "sex delinquents"! Things go from bad to worse for poor Ann...

Wow a card identifying the girls as "sex delinquents" merely for attending a drunken pool party! Ann in particular wasn't even drunk and was still fully clothed at the party - no matter, the cops bust her too as a sex delinquent. I wish I had a card identifying ME as a "sex delinquent"... what a conversation piece that would be!

If you have trouble falling asleep some night, try watching "Ring of Terror" - it will put you to sleep faster than a handful of Ambien. This supposedly "thriller / shocker" movie is just unbelievably dull. It starts out with some cemetery groundskeeper stumbling around in the dark looking for his cat. We are treated to about 5 minutes of this dolt calling "Puma" as he shambles around looking for the cat, at one point even stepping on it. We (as part of the camera) are led around to view a few gravestones, and the groundskeeper tells us "Ah, I remember him!" The rest of the movie is a long, incredibly dull story about some gerontological med school students who are pledging to join a fraternity. The pledges must do various silly tasks, one of which is to raid the local morgue to retrieve something from a body.

This movie is a real snoozer, it isn't thrilling or terrorizing at all. The only other movie about pledging to a fraternity / sorority that I can think of which is as incompetent as Ring of Terror is Paris Hilton's "Pledge this!" (2006). Actually Pledge This is better because at least it has some nice boobs occasionally to break up the monotony - Ring of Terror has nothing going for it at all. Horrible in every way.

Twenty Million Miles from Earth is about an American spaceship which crashes off the coast of Sicily, killing nearly all of the crew save three survivors: two crew members (one dies soon afterward), a colonel, and a baby creature from the planet Venus. The creature gets loose of course and grows very quickly, causing it to spread mayhem in the city of Rome.

I expected hammy acting, bad creature effects and long drawn-out dialog that would go nowhere. Was I ever wrong! This is a surprisingly good movie! Considering that this was decades before CGI, the stop-action motion of the very detailed creature was admirable and believable. The acting was solid and nowhere did the story drag - it went smoothly from one well-planned action sequence to the next. There were a few times when the scale of the creature looked out of whack, and the size of the elephant also looked much larger than I think even an African elephant really is. Oh, and the fight sequence between the creature and the elephant was terrific! All in all, a surprisingly good mid-50s monster movie - seven stars from me.

This is a Roger Corman low-budget B movie from the late 1950s. Before you roll your eyes, though, this one is worth a look. The acting is solid, and the storyline isn't bad. Well, it's very slow to get started, but it gets there. Basically, a group of gangsters gets the idea of robbing some gold bars while in South Dakota, and they set off an explosion in a nearby mine as a diversion. The trouble is, they also awaken a giant hairy spider which is annoyed that the humans have disrupted its humble abode, apparently. The gangsters take off cross country with a ski instructor (who is simply their guide and is unaware of their connection to the robbery) with the spider in pursuit. A snowstorm forces them into a cabin, where they get picked off one by one by the spider. Actress Sheila Noonan, who plays the sultry girlfriend of the head gangster, is particularly fetching.

The Land Unknown is a low-budget black and white sci-fi film from the mid-1950s about an exploratory crew who stumble upon a "tropical" (and unknown) part of Antarctica. Supposedly, geothermal activity in this tiny area of Antarctica has melted through the ice cap and created this artificially warm, "tropics-like" area where giant carnivorous plants grow and dinosaurs amble about. The dinosaurs are giant lizards, a tyrannosaurus-looking creature, a plesiosaur-looking creature, some gigantic gila monsters (filmed in forced perspective), and some flying reptile things. Hmmm - no herbivorous dinosaurs? Anyway, our exploratory crew has helicopter trouble and is forced to descend into a cloudy maelstrom of clouds down 3,000 feet into this tiny "tropical" area. While they deal with their dying radio battery and hungry dinosaurs, they must find some way to contact the outside world to come rescue them. All the while, the heat and humidity cause their clothes to disintegrate, which was a delight to see on actress Shirley Patterson (a former Miss California) as her clothes gradually become more and more revealing.

Overall, if you can forgive the cheesy dinosaurs, it's a decent sci-fi / dinosaur flick, well worth watching if you like B-movies.

The Neverending Story is about a boy who is bullied at school. As an escape from the troubles of this world, he reads fantasy books (this kid would have loved Harry Potter, but 1984 was pre-HP days). The boy is chased into a dusty old bookshop, where the owner introduces him to a book called The Neverending Story. The boy "borrows" the book and returns to school, where he goes up to the attic (huh? I've never heard of a school with an "attic") to read the story. As he becomes more and more engrossed in the story, he finds himself a part of its events.

This a great movie. The storyline is very well done, and despite the lack of CGI imagery we take for granted in today's movies, the puppets were very well done. Wow... eight stars from me.

I just finished watching "Mountain of the Cannibal God", one of a 50 movie Mill Creek collection of "Drive-In Movie Classics". This version is titled "Slave of the Cannibal God", oddly enough - maybe because it is the 82 minute R version and not the original version. The movie is about a rich beautiful woman (Ursula Andress) who goes to the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea, where her husband disappeared while prospecting for uranium. She is accompanied by a professor (Stacy Keach) and her slimeball brother. A good bit of time is spent hacking their way through dense forest on some jungle island off of Papua New Guinea in search of the supposedly lost Puka tribe.

The movie is mildly entertaining, it's sort of like watching a more cruel version of Wild Kingdom at times. The version I saw has most of the more disturbing animal cruelty parts cut out, and more disappointingly, the nude scene with Ursula Andress is cut out. As compensation though, a pretty native girl (played by Luigina Rocchi) appears in a scene where she lifts her top off and shows off her nice titties for several seconds.

The Mill Creek version is poor quality, unfortunately. The colors are washed out badly, and there are several places where it is obvious that it is a dub from a VHS tape.

I like movies with Cuba Gooding, Jr, and I liked this one, too. The premise of the movie is that a down-on-his luck man enters a bar and begins drowning his sorrows in glasses of JD. He strikes up a conversation with a mysterious man at the bar (Cuba Gooding Jr) and after a few hours of telling his new friend about all of his woes, Gooding's character offers the man a unique solution: I'll kill five of your enemies for you. Thinking that it is a joke, he scribbles the names of five people on a napkin. Soon afterward the body count begins...

I thought it was well-scripted and well-acted. Some scenes were over the top - how could Gooding's aim (with a gun) be so excellent and the cops' aims be so bad, over and over again? The ending was pretty obvious midway through the movie but it was a good thriller anyway.

This is one of Boris Karloff's last films. It's a confusing train wreck featuring Karloff as Damballah / Carl van Molder, a sexy-as-hell snake dancer named Tongalele, a maniacal grinning dwarf, zombies, and lots of big snakes of course. The basic premise of the movie is that the island has been taken over by zombies and followers of a voodoo cult who worship their leader, Damballah. The local police force are more interested in finding the bottom end of a rum bottle than they are in stopping the activities of the voodoo cult. A superior officer of the police arrives on the island to clean things up, and he tries to enlist the help of a large plantation owner, Carl van Molder. Van Molder is uninterested in helping the police, telling them to leave things as they are, that they don't know what they're messing with.

It's campy but fun, I've seen a lot worse that's for sure.

Night of the Comet is an interesting mid-80s movie about a comet that makes a close fly-by of the Earth and turns 99% of the inhabitants of the planet into pink dust. There are a few survivors, however: a couple of teenage girls who slept through the comet's appearance, a teenage boy who missed it because he was 'makin it' with a girl in his van, and a handful of evil scientists who selfishly kept the apocalyptic aftereffects of the comet to themselves. The day after the comet's appearance, most of humanity is nothing more than a pink dusty memory laying next to their clothes, some semi-survivors who turned into zombies, and the previously mentioned humans too, of course. Once the girls realize that LA is pretty much deserted with the exception of a few zombies stumbling around, they decide to make the best of their situation and do some looking around. They go to the last remaining radio station still on the air and take over the programming themselves, then go shopping of course. Hey it's all free now, yeah? Unlike a lot of mid 80s teen monster flicks, there's no nudity and few frightening scenes in this movie. It's intended to be fun, and it succeeds at that. The acting is solid and the mid 80s pop music (such as Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to have Fun") brings back memories. Overall I enjoyed it. Six stars.

In yet another Larry Buchanan Z-grade train-wreck of a movie, "It's Alive" is about three people who get lost and wind up as captives of a deranged farmer. The whacko farmer locks them up in his cave exhibition, along with his lizard-man monster, to be served up as dinner for the farmer's green man-beast critter.

How is it that Larry Buchanan funded these rabidly bad movies? As with other films he directed, "It's Alive" suffers from bad dialog, bad acting, bad editing, bad lighting, bad stock music... you name it, it's bad. So bad that it's strangely fun to watch, though. It has a lot of the same themes as Manos: The Hands of Fate but it isn't nearly as mind-numbingly painful as Manos. If you're into bad sci-fi / horror flicks like me, then by all means waste an hour and a half of your life and watch "It's Alive". It's too bad they didn't have the Razzy Awards back in 1969 - Larry Buchanan would have certainly been a contender for worst director.

"Next" is a film about Chris (played by Nicolas Cage), a man who can see what will happen to him personally up to two minutes into the future. The only exception to that rule is a vision he has of a beautiful woman (Jessica Biel) whom he knows he meets in a particular diner at 8:09. Every day, twice a day at exactly 8:09 he is in the diner until one day she arrives.

Because of Chris' forecasting skills, he goes to casinos on occasion to supplement his salary from his regular job as a magician. His skills are noticed by an agent of the FBI (Julianne Moore) who wants to utilize his abilities to thwart terrorists who plan to set off a nuclear device in Los Angeles.

I found the movie entertaining and suspenseful. There are a few sequences where the CGI looks kind of fake but overall I thought it was very good. It was well-acted and well-paced. I almost always like Nicolas Cage movies, and man oh man Jessica Biel looks absolutely smmmmmoking hot! I recommend it; I give it seven stars.

Zontar the Thing from Venus is another low-budget Z-grade flick directed by Larry Buchanan. The basic premise of the movie is that Zontar (a "thing" from Venus) has been in touch with Keith, a scientist on Earth, and Zontar has convinced Keith that he will come to Earth and make everything all right. No more wars, fighting, crime, bad movies... etc. all of the world will live in peace and harmony once Zontar arrives, Keith believes. Keith has built a sort of closet-sized radio for listening in to the aliens, and it is through this device that Zontar communicates with him. Keith is just the 5th columnist that Zontar needs for his real plans... to take over the Earth. Keith only discovers a little too late, of course, that he was duped.

The film is inept, inconsistent and illogical. For example, Keith claims that Zontar has made all mechanical and electrical devices to be inoperable. Yet, guns still work and so do bicycles, both of which are clearly mechanical devices. Also, the sirens are wailing as people run around town in a tizzy - don't sirens need electricity to work? Oh well I guess Zontar overlooked some devices. Also, the military personnel assigned to protect Zone 6 - there's only 10 soldiers? Why would the military put a high-ranking general in command of a measly 10 privates??? And what was the point of flashing the image of a bikini model in the middle of the film? I had pretty low expectations when I sat down to watch this cinematic mess, and Zontar the Thing from Venus was exactly what I expected it to be - horrible and inane. Still it's slightly better than Manos the Hands of Fate and Monster A-Go-Go.