20 December 2008

24 Hour Movie Marathon Pt 2

Back again, by now we'd hit the caffeine heavily and were approaching midnght (i think). We'd nibbled the strawberries, the grapes, the hummus. Yep healthy eating and caffeine overdosing. Go Team!

The Time Machine (1960) This is one of the truly great sci-fi movies, and it was great seeing it on the big screen. Who knows why they re-made it, as this version is the definitive. It's at times cheesy, deep, intriguing, sexist, visionary - perfect for the marathon. Good realisation of the book, with the usual 60's looseness. The lead, Rod Taylor, is very very good and holds the story together nicely. Speaking of which, it might be a bit hammy, but the story is nice and sets up a reasonably thought provoking discusion of free will.
Those of you who watch the Big Bang theory will recognise the machine and morlocks :) which is very similar to Mortlach ! Wonderful envisionaging of the time travel too - nice effects. Great movie that you need to watch.


Torture Dungeon (1970) Aahhhh Andy Milligan, one of the worlds most visionary directors ! i love his stuff, we've seen a bit over the years, Guru the mad monk, Blood and I think a couple of others. Shockingly bad!!! He is truely one of the originals and exactly wot I wanted to see. It's got all the hallmarks of Mr Milligan, kinda vaguely middle Europe mid Renaissance? setting (but shot in Staten Island from memory). Kings, Queens, lost children, idiots, but somehow this one wasn't living up to everything I wanted - not enough porn for a Milligan. As usual no coherent story (not that I could follow anyway), acting that makes porn stars look good, production values lower than a yoofs jeans - all wonderful. I can't find any clip of it online, so here's the trailer for The Mad Monk which we watched last marathon.


The Ruins 2008 The last of the premies! (heh heh) Four friends holiday in Mexico go to a hidden ruin. Very predictable horror which I really didn't enjoy. Boring. Some of the scenes involving 'the monster' where good, particuarly the infection aspects of the victims. Again DVD.
Acting was annoying and characters not very well developed. Worse than normal for a horror movie.

The Last Dragon (1985) How feckin' awesome was this! Motown Kung Fu. This was bloody marvellous. Young master is seeking the final level and goes on a journey of self-discovery. Kicking butt to an awesome soundtrack. Everything is wrong about this movie, and was perfect. We needed far more of this! Trivia time, the main chick is Vanity as in Prince's protege. She's now a hard-core born again (ahhh bet you thought I was going to say porn star!).



Gojira tai Gaigan (Chikyu kogeki meirei) 1972 We only got one reel of this - the final one where the big fight happens - nice four way between the monsters, two of which are space monsters!!! Fun movie, from what we saw, and crap dialogue. Not sure if I could have coped with 80 mins of it, but 20 mins was great!


Moonshiners Woman (1968) Ahhh a wonderful return tothe moralistic crap like Reefer Madness. Hilarious overdubbing by the narrator about the perils of the big city, money and drugs/booze/prostitution. Sign me up!! Painfully long to sit through and worth every minute of it!


And finally, we ended up The Road Warrior. Again good to see this on the big screen. Not much point reviewing this, given everyone has seen it !

Overall, it was good, but my major issue was that there wasn't enough crap. Too many classics, not enough porn/crud/bollox - which is, afterall, what you want to see at 2am in the morning on a caffeine high. Will I go again? sure. Will I complain to Ant about the level of quality? sure!

Love, B

1 comment:

Mr A. P. Salmond, esq. said...

Sweet! I remember seeing the Last Dragon in the cinema when it came out. I was obsessed with that film!