Monster of the Day #3465

Robot Harvey Weinstein lives!

Happy Friday everyone! August is here. (!) Watch something stupid this weekend.

  • Eric Hinkle

    I think that is Captain Future's robotic sidekick Grag, so he's most likely protecting the young lovely from some slobbering slime beast from the darkest depths of space just offscreen.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Tonight's blue-ray feature was "Raw Force," which I have a vague memory of Ken reviewing, but it definitely got on the radar when Len Kabasinski and RLM watched it. And when Vinegar Syndrome had their recent sale, well…I mean, I–

    It's a very weird film. VERY weird. There are cannibal monks, the Burbank Karate Club, lots of beautiful women, an 80's Una Merkel, LOTS (and I mean LOTS) of nudity, zombies, a zombie who looks like the "Geteven" guy, and lots of kung-fu fighting. Cameron Mitchell actually acts, never sits in a chair, and is occasionally effective.

    From the villains, you expect Band-aid Face to turn against Hitler (…yeah) when he learned that it was about food and not sex, so I guess that's a missed moment. Sure looked like that was in the plan. The film ends with "To be continued" so who knows.

    It's mostly a comedy, kind of, with serious and sometimes gruesome action scenes, and the image and sound (for the most part) look terrific. Good for Vinegar Syndrome.

    A question, though. Why is it in kung-fu fights, when the hero has the advantage, why doesn't he just kill the bad guy? Instead, it's like, "Oh, you fell down, I'll let you get up and resume your fighting stance. I coulda just killed you, but you know, those damn rules."

    I'm not sure who to recommend this to, but if there is someone to recommend this to, well, I recommend it to you, dear sir or madam. Most heartily.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Tonight's blue-ray feature was Vinegar Syndrome's release of "Liquid Sky." Released in 1982, there has never been a more "1982" film ever. Imagine every video from David Bowie, Lou Reed, Duran Duran and New Order boiled down into a syrup and run through a 1982 version of a video AI generator and you've got a good idea of what this film is. In other words, it's loud, colorful and full of drugs.

    It's basically a view of the 80's New York No Wave club scene, with aliens and a German scientist added in. There's a strong heroin theme running through the film, with the aliens getting a heroin high when people have sex (which results in the aliens killing said people). And there are a lot of people having sex, so those aliens are probably very happy. The German scientist reminds me a lot of latter day Werner Herzog.

    It's not a film for everyone. You need to be okay with a LOT of self-indulgence, which again is very 1982. Anne Carlisle deserves a lot of credit here. She's really great (in a dual role, too). Kind of a shame she never went into stardom.

    As mentioned, your mileage will vary a lot. I'm guessing a lot of folks will find it loud and boring, and it is both of those. I guess I have a sentimental view of it. Vinegar Syndrome have done a wonderful job with this. It's your call if they wasted their time.

  • The Rev.

    Taking Ken's advice I watched <b>Delta Delta Die</b> because it came on a streaming channel on my Roku and the cast got me to give it a chance. Sorority is "full" (apparently only four members and the head mother) of cannibals, former member teams up with snooping college student to investigate, you know the drill. Almost no gore to speak of, which is astonishing. A bit of nudity, but not as much as I expected. I thought it was an edited version due to two odd cuts right where nudity seemed about to happen, but a few minutes later there's full frontal (both sexes, and honestly you see more of the guy by a fair margin). I'm kind of curious about this, but not enough to pay for the DVD or rent it from Amazon to investigate. Dumb ending you can see coming five miles away. At least it was only 75 minutes. The only bright spot was said cast. While Tiffany Shepis wasn't given much to do, Brinke Stevens and the late, lamented Julie Strain looked to be having a ball and were thoroughly amusing. Julie's sister Lizzy is also in this. She wasn't as entertaining as her sister, but did a better job than everyone that wasn't a lauded B-queen.

  • The Rev.

    Checking something. [b]Am I supposed to do it like this?[/b]

  • The Rev.

    Okay, guess I need to stop doing those tags.

  • I think Disqus changed something, because I seem to remember the tags popping up when you bolded something and now they don't

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Tonight's blue-ray feature was "4D Man'" from the same team that brought you "The Blob" a year earlier. It's a solid b-movie about a guy who finds a method that allows him to walk though walls, though when he does so, the process ages him; luckily he has vampire powers which allow him to de-age using other people's life force. He's nowhere near as gorgeous as Matilda May, so there's that. Image and sound are excellent as one would expect from Kino Lorber. I wouldn't call it essential viewing but it's a fun watch.

  • Ken_Begg

    Did I suggest this movie?! Because I'm pretty sure I've never seen it.

  • The Rev.

    I meant your regular weekend advice to watch something stupid. I'm sure you would never see this. And I'm not recommending it to anyone unless they really want to see the complete works of one of the three listed B-queens.

  • Ken_Begg

    Ah, gotcha, sorry.