Not Monster of the Day #22
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Not Monster of the Day #22

What Waits Below (1984). I'm not sure I'd even heard of this one. On the other hand, it has one of those generic titles that refuses to fix a movie in your mind. Basically, it's an American update of one of those Amicus "lost civilization" movies that they ground out after Land that Time…
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Monster of the Day #3703
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Monster of the Day #3703

Friday's Watch Party selection was Star Pilot, aka 2 + 5: Mission Hydra. It's delirious '60s Italian sci-fi nonsense, and I've been keeping it in my back pocket for a while. Warning: It may show up at a future T-Fest as well. Other than the usual inexplicable inability to find any attractive actresses in…
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Monster of the Day #3702
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Monster of the Day #3702

Look, obscurities like Cyborg Cop II are fine. It's fun to find new (to us) weird, often foreign, movies to share. But sometimes, you should remember to dance with the girl that brought you. I can't remember if it was because some of the kids were in attendance, but we decided to watch Ebirah…
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Monster of the Day #3701
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Monster of the Day #3701

There comes a point in these long weekend, probably 20 movies in, when memories really start getting fuzzy. I kind of remember Cyborg Cop II, but it's not like the it has the sort of tight narrative that etches itself into your mind. It's no classic, that's for sure. But it's that sort of…
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Not Monster of the Day #21
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Not Monster of the Day #21

Our last full day at T-Fest was Monday. Chad R and I have gotten interested in the work of Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession; All That Heaven Allows). Last time Chad brought some pre-Soap entries--a murder story in a monastery, a movie with Jack Palance playing Genghis Khan (!). For my part, I had obtained…
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Not Monster of the Day #20
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Not Monster of the Day #20

If Michael Flatley's Blackbird was sadly boring, the day was saved by the anti-boredom Ölüm Savaşçısı (1984). The guys behind Turkish Star Wars made this rogue cop film, including the star of Turkish Star Wars, that Tim Thomerson-looking guy. Here he plays basically Dirty Harry if he were brundleflied with Rambo. Now, to be…
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Not (?) Monster of the Day #19
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Not (?) Monster of the Day #19

If there's anything Bad Drama fans like, it's a vanity film. They are nearly uniformly driven by the ego of the person behind them, and then they tend to be weird and horrible. Chad R and I are the two big Bad Drama guys in our crowd, and for years we'd been looking for…
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Not Monster of the Day #18
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Not Monster of the Day #18

Mike and Jamie kicked in their own suggestion; 2012's A Fantastic Fear of Everything. It's Martin Scorsese's After Hours if the protagonist was crazy to start with. The movie is quite good and benefits from a typically great Simon Pegg as the paranoid central character. If you like manic black comedies that still have…
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Monster of the Day #3700
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Monster of the Day #3700

It's an old English tradition to tell ghost stories on Christmas. Hence the lyric in The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, "There'll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories..." M.R. James would generally write a ghost story for Christmas every year, eventually cementing his reputation as the greatest author of them.…
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