DVD Review: Starcrash (1978)

Beautiful Caroline Munro as space-bikini babe, Stella Star!  Gold-clad Christopher Plummer using mystical powers to "halt the flow of time"!  Kung fu fighting Amazons, acrobatic Troglodytes, and lightsaber battles with stop-motion robots!  The Hoff firing frickin' laser beams from his eyes!  Is Starcrash the greatest movie ever made?  Probably not, but it's awfully good fun.  Second best of the late seventies Star Wars rip-offs, behind Kinji Fukasaku's mind-blowing Message from Space (1978). 

Italian writer-director and sci-fi buff Luigi Cozzi weaves a wild yarn full of in-jokes and genre references.  The magnificent super-spaceship "Murray Leinster" (named after the s-f writer/magazine editor) goes missing and is sought by the Emperor of the Stars (Christopher Plummer) and his cape-swishing arch-enemy, Count Zarth Arn (erstwhile Maniac (1980) Joe Spinell).  Fleeing the Galactic Police, interstellar rogue Stella Star and her bubble-permed, mystical sidekick Akton (faith healer-turned-trash film star (yes, really) Marjoe Gortner) stumble on some survivors who babble about "red monsters."

DVD Review: Forest of Death (2007)

If nothing else, Forest of Death proves it's possible to make a supernatural thriller that isn't particularly scary, but still compellingly odd.  Following their jointly directed triumph Re-cycle (2006), the Pang Brothers went their seperate ways this year.  Oxide Pang made the psychological thriller Diary, while sibling Danny takes the helm here. 

The film opens with a young girl driven to slash her wrists amidst the eerie, mist drenched greenery.  Local rumour has it the mysterious forest induces suicides and shock deaths, the next being a police inspector who succumbs to a heart attack while investigating a crime scene.  Detective Ha (Shu Qi) takes up the case, pursuing an arrogant triad rapist.  In a radical move, she teams up with maverick botanist Steven (Ekin Cheng), who believes the living forest thrives upon, records and stores human pain and suffering.  Steven has invented a machine that can talk to trees (Shades of Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon!), while May (Rain Li) his selfish, tabloid TV reporter girlfriend angles for a scoop. 

In the movie's most effective scene, Detective Ha and Steven use the forest's powers to goad a confession out of the rapist, while the trees traumatize the assembled reporters with the victim's pain.  But bodies keep piling up.  Ha discovers some suicides have been missing for decades, their corpses neither decomposed nor aged.  Meanwhile May, tortured by professional failure and a suspicion that Ha and Steven are having an affair, is lured into the forest. 

DVD Review: Les Maîtres du temps (1982)

The second of René Laloux’s widely-spaced sci-fi trilogy, Les Maîtres du temps is the weakest of the three, having neither the trippiness and allegorical smarts of The Fantastic Planet (1973) nor the visual inventiveness of Gandahar (1988). Nonetheless, as a children’s film (the other two have distinctly adult themes and imagery) it shows an admirable moral probity and has a serviceable if rather pedestrian story.

The cold open sees an imperilled spaceship crash-land on the remote and inhospitable planet Perdide. The occupants are a father and his young son. The father, Claude, sends an emergency distress call and gives his son Piel an interstellar communicator before dying of injuries sustained in the crash.

DVD Review: Gandahar (1988)

The third and final animated feature in René Laloux’s sparse but luminous career is often compared unfavourably to his groundbreaking The Fantastic Planet (1973). In fact Gandahar is a compelling, moody, visually stunning work which though flawed evokes a genuine sense of the alien and the dreamlike.

Warrior Sylvain has been tasked by the Council of Women to discover the cause of a recent spate of deaths and abductions in peaceful, agrarian Gandahar. He travels across the ‘circumscribing oceans’ and discovers a race of mute, murderous androids who have been petrifying Gandaharians and spiriting them through a mysterious door. And the mystery deepens: for each body brought through the door, another android marches out.

Before solving the puzzle – an unusually satisfying and cerebral solution for animated SF – Sylvain has time to meet beautiful blue-skinned Airelle and a race of deformed mutants, both of whom are of help in his quest. Indeed, the imaginary menagerie of alien creatures is one of the film’s highlights.

Coming to DVD: Warner Cult Camp Classics

Warner Home Video is releasing a huge batch of campy cult classics on NTSC Region-1 DVD next week that are sure to entertain B-movie fans. The films are available in four different collections and each collection contains 3 different movies.

Cult Camp Classics 1 - Sci-Fi Thrillers: Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958), Giant Behemoth (1958), Queen of Outer Space (1958).
Cult Camp Classics 2 - Women in Peril: The Big Cube (1968), Caged (1950), Trog (1969).
Cult Camp Classics 3 - Terrorized Travelers: Hot Rods to Hell (1966), Skyjacked (1972), Zero Hour! (1957)
Cult Camp Classics 4 - Historical Epics: The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), Land of the Pharaohs (1955), The Prodigal (1955)

Many of the films have never been released on DVD before and most of them will be presented in Anamorphic Widescreen for the first time. Some titles will also include Audio Commentaries and Original Theatrical Trailers. Each volume retails for $29.98, but they are currently available from Amazon for a low pre-order price of $20.99.

For more information please see Amazon.

Cult Clip: Liquid Sky (1982)

Liquid Sky is a great low-budget post-punk science fiction film made by the director Slava Tsukerman in 1982. The movie was one of the most unusual films to come out of New York in the early eighties and it offers an interesting look at the underworld of performance artists, androgynous models and heroin addicts in New York's East Village.

The plot involves strange aliens who come to earth and gather in areas of intense heroin concentration so they can feed off the highs of drug addicts. After the aliens land on top of an apartment building in New York inhabited by a drug dealer/performance artist named Paula and her female partner Margret, the aliens discover that the human pheromones created in the brain during sex are preferable to a heroin high.

Anne Carlisle gives a tour de force performance in a dual role as the sex obsessed female model Margret and a drug addicted male model named Jimmy. Carlisle also co-wrote the script with filmmaker Slava Tsukerman and his wife Nina Kerova.

Liquid Sky is currently available from Amazon on an All-Region NTSC DVD from Telavista that includes behind the scenes footage and 13 additional minutes. If you want to be transported back to New York in the early 80s, check out the trailer below:

Cult Clip: Planet of the Vampires (1966)

Mario Bava's terrific science fiction classic Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello spazio, 1965) inspired director Ridley Scott to make his creepy 1979 hit Alien, but Bava's film has an original flair and stylish sixties look that Scott just couldn't match.

Bava's film involves a spaceship which is lured to a mysterious planet. After the ship arrives there the crew members begin to go berserk and violently attack each other. When members of the crew start turning up dead things gets really unpleasant. Their corpses become possessed by an alien race that's on the verge of extinction and they need the bodies of the dead crew members to escape from their dying planet.

If you're in the mood for some good science fiction fun with plenty of scary moments I highly recommend giving Plant of the Vampires a look. The offical MGM NTSC Region-1 DVD release of the film has unfortunately gone out of print, but you can still find used copies of Planet of the Vampires selling cheaply at Amazon or on eBay.

- Kimberly Lindbergs

Inseminoid (1981)

A group of  "space archaeologists" are threatened after one of their number is impregnated by a big grasshopper......Understandably this causes her to go a bit mental and start hunting them down one by one.....which is nice, if not a little extreme.

Norman J. Warren does a bloodier, bad taste Brit version of Alien on a budget of £12.50 (and gets banned in Iceland for his trouble). Ineptly made, hideously contrived but incredibly entertaining....Inseminoid (aka Horror Planet) shows what space exploration would be like if it were run by Strathclyde Passenger Transport; Whereas the Yanks have shiny rockets, jetpacks and lasers, the British archaeology team show here have buckets and spades, Kwik Fit overalls and a chainsaw(?) amongst their equipment.....oh, and big 80s hair.

Cult Clip: The Mysterians (1957)

The Mysterians (aka Chikyu Boeigun, 1957) is a great Japanese science fiction film produced by Toho Studios in 1957 and directed by Ishiro Honda, who's mostly remembered for his Godzilla movies.

The story involves a group of aliens called the Mysterians who arrive on earth from the planet Mysteroid with their giant destructive robot and immediately demand three-square kilometers of land and some Earth women to breed with. Naturally they are refused and humanity declares war on the Mysterians.

The Mysterians was one of the first Japanese films shot in anamorphic widescreen. Toho Studios called their anamorphic system "TohoScope" and they specifically made The Mysterians to showcase this new process. You can enjoy some vintage TohoScope space action in this great trailer for The Mysterians:

- Kimberly Lindbergs

The Ed Wood Collection - A Salute to Incompetence

Filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. (1924-1978) is a B-movie icon and best-known for the cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. During his lifetime he had numerous jobs including cinema usher, U.S. Marine, circus “freak” and pulp novelist. Wood started writing and directing movies in the early 1950s, but he was generally ignored throughout his filmmaking career and sadly died penniless. In the 1980s he gained a reputation as the “worst director of all time” who made movies that personified the phrase "so bad they're good" and after Tim Burton made a film about Wood’s life (Ed Wood, 1994) starring Johnny Depp, his reputation and cult status became legendary.

On March 13th Passport Video is releasing The Ed Wood Collection - A Salute to Incompetence, which contains six of Ed Wood’s full-length films and an original documentary called The Ed Wood Story featuring exclusive interviews with Martin Laudau, Johnny Depp, Bela Lugosi Jr. and Dolores Fuller, among others.

Watch Nosferatu and Reefer Madness online - for free

All these online video sites, there's so many to choose from - not to mention sites that search them for movies, TV shows and clips - like Bringpopcorn.com.

Browse or search for obscure cult classics (and more recent films that probably aren't yet in the public domain). A quick search found full versions of insane propaganda movie Reefer Madness, the excellent Nosferatu and some 50s sci-fi cheese in The Day The Earth Stood Still (or even Plan 9 From Outer Space if you want something really bad) - all to either download or watch online.

Let us know what you find on the site - or simply watch the above if you happen be bored at your desk. It beats working.

Visit Bringpopcorn.com

A cult above the rest?

Being new to Cinedelica, I'd thought I'd say a quick hello and lay out my stall.

Hello.

Easy part done. Now for the tricky stuff. What is a cult? Or rather, what kind of stuff do I want to bang on about? For those of us in the know, who can cradle a copy of Curtains to our bosom, it doesn't seem quite right to champion the little films that made it big. Films like Halloween, The Blair Witch Project. A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Evil Dead. Yet these began life as little-known shockers, built with passion and independent money (Nightmare got New Line started). Now they're part of the big wide consciousness and generally considered a successful franchise (okay, except Blair Witch 2). Still, it seems a shame to let them go. So I won't. At some point in the future, I'd like to take a look at what got them off the ground. And at some of the people who are big names now, thanks to their passion and independent vision (Romero, Carpenter, Argento, Cronenberg, Craven et al).

 

Cult Clip: The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)

Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth is still as strange and baffling today as it was 30 years back. David Bowie, at the height of his powers, plays Thomas Jerome Newton - a humanoid alien who comes to Earth to get water for his dying planet. He starts a technology company to make the billions of dollars he needs to build a return spacecraft.

It's a film you'll either love or hate - but it's one that always demands your full attention. If you want to see it for yourself, the movie has just been reissued as a 2 disc special edition. Check out the original cinema trailer below for a taster.

Big Screen: The Man Who Fell To Earth at the ICA

Strange, more than a little confusing, but incredibly stylish - David Bowie's big-screen debut in Nicolas Roeg's 1976 movie The Man Who Fell To Earth gets a rare outing on the big screen, at London's ICA on Sunday 19th November and Wednesday 22nd November.

If you can't make that, we've been told that it's back out on DVD early next year - in special edition format, but as yet, no details of what makes it so special.

The Sunday showing is at 3:30-pm, while the Wednesday presentation is at 8:30pm. Well worth seeing on the big screen.

More from the ICA website

BBC does Science Fiction Britannia

Starting on Monday 13th November on BBC Four is the BBC's tribute to the weird, wonderful and quirky world of British science fiction - the Science Fiction Britannia season.

Details of the series are still not complete, but there's already some great highlights confirmed for the coming weeks. These include a classic Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story (Spearhead From Space) and Tom Baker's The Ark In Space, the excellent BBC version of The Day Of The Triffids (six episodes), Adam Adamant (plus a documentary on the show - The Cult Of...Adam Adamant) plus allsorts of specials about a diverse arrange of people and subjects, including Nigel Kneale, HG Wells, Iain Banks, Terry Pratchett, Doomwatch, Quatermass, robots, British sc-fi movies and the best of British TV sci-fi.

Expect more to be added to the schedule in the coming weeks. And don't forget to set the recorder.

Find out more at the Science Fiction Britannia website

DVD Review: The Daleks Boxset

Dr Who And The Daleks (1965)
Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150AD (1966)

It is rumoured you know that in the infinite vacuum that is outer space, no one can smell anything…zilch…...nothing!!

In the mid 60s though, two celluloid efforts from Amicus studios sent a strong pungent, waft of cheese across the galaxy, past Jupiter and Pluto…..and who knows, maybe even all the way to the planet Skaro. These movies, Dr Who And The Daleks and its sequel, Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150AD set a new benchmark in kitsch sci-fi - out-fromaged only by Barbarella a couple of year later.

The phenomenal success of the BBC series led to the big screen makeover after only 2 years, supplanting the rather crabby William Hartnell with the rather crabby Peter Cushing, adding dottiness as an afterthought.  Amongst other changes were the to-be-expected improvement in production values and a glorious leap into vivid TECHNICOLOUR from TVs grainy monochrome. Two main constants from the series were the Tardis and the comically scary intergalactic villains, the Daleks.

DVD review: Destination Moon (1950) and Invaders from Mars (1953)

Released this week for the first time in the UK on the shiny silver disc are two sci-fi classics that no serious fan of the genre should be without. Both were early pioneers of the science fiction movie format, but approached the world of the fantastic from completely opposite directions.

Destination Moon, widely considered the first serious sci-fi movie, was based on Robert Heinlein's novel and took a fiercely realistic approach to the concept of space travel. As the title suggests, the story revolves around the first manned mission to the moon - with the drama arising from the technical challenges of achieving such a goal (then still the stuff of a madman's dream, admittedly) rather than aliens and laser guns...