End of year push…

Updated on September 9, 2008 By Ken Begg 18 Comments

Well, since I’m basically done dick this year, and with 2009 looming (2009!), it’s time to ramp up some on the whole reviewing thing. I’m out of town next week, but then fully intend to roll up the sleeves and get typing.

I owe a couple people sponsored reviews from like two years ago (which is why I dropped sponsoring), so I’ll kill those off. However, it doesn’t hurt to poll and see what people would be interested in reading about. Titles or just types of movies can be suggested, although I make no promises. Obviously things actually available on DVD would be a plus factor.

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  • Blake Matthews

    Nymphoid Barbarian or the original Prehistoric Women.

  • OTL

    Are there still Challenge of the Superfriends episodes left to cover? (Plus, of course, all those Hitchhiker episodes…)

  • Ericb

    Superfriends definitely, and though it’s not really a genre I’ve realised that I always enjoy recaps of movies where either the “protagonist” is a bit of a jerk (or morally suspect) or there’s at least one prime a**hole in the group of protagonists. “Our hero ladies and gentlemen.”

  • I was actually thinking of finishing up the Superfriends series and publishing it via IUniverse or something as a book. (Assuming that wouldn’t trigger a lawsuit from DC/Warner or something.) If I go in that direction, I may hold off on putting up with, what, five remaining shows until after Christmas when I hawk the book.

    More Hitchhiker definately, though.

  • Food

    Good stuff! I love your Hitchhiker reviews.

  • bt

    Ken, I think you would really love the “pied piper” episode of Wonder Woman from season 2. Martin Mull hypnotizing Jan Brady with a hypno-flute. It’s great stuff.

    They have a great scene from it here:

    http://www.wonderwoman-online.com/cbs1.html

    Note that Mull’s choice of torture for Diana is a spinning chair. Plus he leaves the room just before the spinning chair turns her into Wonder Woman. How conveeeenient.

  • fish eye no miko

    I’ll add another vote for Hitchhiker. Also, I know you’re not much of a horror movie fan, but it’d be great if you could do something appropriate for Halloween. Or… oh, even better! A really bad Christmas movie in December? That’d be awesome. ^_^

  • GalaxyJane

    How about “Never Too Young to Die”?

    Gene Simmons as an evil poisoned-fingernailed transvestite AND the Stargrove theme song, how can you go wrong?

    NOT on DVD, but I’ve got a VHS copy floating around somewhere…

  • Mr. Blue

    I am rather partial to the reviews of classic and influential movies- ala the “Jaws” review of a while back.

  • fish eye no miko

    Mr. Blue said: “I am rather partial to the reviews of classic and influential movies- ala the “Jaws” review of a while back.”

    It’s my understanding that Ken’s reason for reviewing Jaws was to show the deterioration of the franchise (he followed his review of Jaws with reviews of the sequels). I suppose if he could find a good movie with bad sequels (like that’s hard), that might work. But this is a Site mainly dedicated to bad movies.

  • Gareth

    I’m aware that I might be in the minority here, but I enjoy the reviews of more recent bad movies (Battlefield Earth, Johnny Mnemonic, the excellent Rocky series review etc). The fifties and sixties bad horror movie reviews don’t really do much for me, but thats probably just my Gen Y self absorption speaking. As Ken has said, bad moves nowadays tend to be more blandly bad than uniquely bad, but I still think there are rich veins of cheese to be mined.

  • fish eye no miko

    Gareth said: “I’m aware that I might be in the minority here, but I enjoy the reviews of more recent bad movies (Battlefield Earth, Johnny Mnemonic, the excellent Rocky series review etc). The fifties and sixties bad horror movie reviews don’t really do much for me, but thats probably just my Gen Y self absorption speaking.”

    Eh… I’m older than Gen Y and I love old horror/sci-fi/etc. movies; yet I still kind of agree with you. Along with everything else, newer movies rarely have the excuse of budget or ignorance (for example, no one living in the 50’s knew what space travel really would be like). So when more recent movies get mocked, it’s more fun because there’s no reason for certain kinds of mistakes to be there, and yet they are.

  • Aussiesmurf

    I second the request for more recent movies that have been generally seen and dissected. Some suggestions :

    David Lynch’s Dune.
    Gigli.
    Hudson Hawk (a Vanity Project if ever I’ve seen one).
    The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
    Cutthroat Island.
    Elektra.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    I’d like to resurrect the idea of the Alien series. As several of us posted on that thread, there’s a lot of interest in Beggian analysis of good films along with the bad.

    And I second (third?) the more recent films. My favourite bits are usually the hippie-bashing, but a close second is when you predict everything that’ll happen in these by-rote clones within the first few minutes or how badly they rip of films X, Y, and Z. I’m fascinated by the way they ape the moves without knowing what makes them work. Sometimes creative people seem not to understand what makes their own films work when they try to re-capture the magic.

  • Jimmy

    Like other shave said I’d be happy if you keep up with the Hitchhiker reviews.

    Other than that I’m probably more interested in more recent stuff as well- somehow picking on the older stuff doesn’t seem as much fun.

  • perletwo

    I got one for ya. Coming back to DVD on Sept. 30 is a little movie from 1981 called Possession. Stars Sam Neill just before playing grown-up Damien in Omen 3 and Isabelle Adjani just before an epic nervous breakdown. You get two people going absofrickinlutely nuts, attempted suicide by electric carving knife, several gory murders, tentacle pr0n, a dead dog, and a random spy wearing a turquoise suit and hot pink socks (because if you wanted to stay inconspicuous in 1980…). All this and lovely cold-war Berlin scenery too, how can you resist?

    I love this movie so so much, it’s grand comedy. Amazingly, in 1981 people took this turkey seriously and it won the Golden Palm at Cannes!

  • Actually, if you want a series to mirror the Jaws set of reviews, might I suggest “Planet of the Apes”. Admittedly, the first was no Jaws, so it had a shorter distance to fall, and I suppose it doesn’t quite reach the depths of exploding rubber sharks, but it does manage to plumb some pretty deep depths in the later episodes. Plus you have two additional benefits: First, Ricardo Montalban in the later series, always a fun actor to mock. Second, the tie in TV series, which is quite easily mocked as well.

    Well, just a thought. It has been adequately mocked by amateurs for decades, but I would truly enjoy a professional drubbing of Planet of the Apes and its successors.

  • Flint Paper

    Well, why not make it a huge, overwhelming project that’ll definitely ensure that you don’t get a day off until next June? Done as per the Jaws analysis: the entire Alien franchise, up to and including the recent Alien/Predator films, crossing over with the Predator films’ own analysis and why the two franchises should have worked together if ANY THING ELSE HAD BEEN DONE INSTEAD OF WHAT THEY GAVE US. Which I think is pretty much what Hasimir Flenring suggested above. But consider this my tuppence.