Jabootu plans…

Updated on August 27, 2009 By Ken Begg 33 Comments

As people know, I haven’t exactly been a ball o’ fire on the posting front for…oh, about six years now. However, I’m hoping to get myself back in a writing frame of mind. By Monday night (the end of the month), I’ll have posted my contribution to the current B-Masters Roundtable.

Meanwhile, for Halloween party favors I bought one of those 100 movie deals from Mills Creek. Going through the individual cardboard envelops holding the 24 dvds, I noticed a lot of obscure titles I’d never seen before. Admittedly, we’re going to be talking a lot of lame, full frame presentations and perhaps truncated prints. I mean, we’re talking a 100 films here for like $20.

Still, I have the discs, so I may as well run through them before I hand them out. I’d like to get in at least a movie or two a day (blog-length reviews), although one week I’ll be in Kentucky and unable to post. Maybe I can get a couple ahead and have Paul hit the post button while I’m gone.

Anyway, I’m hoping writing again on a daily basis will get me back in the groove. I sincerely want to thank all you wonderful folks who have hung around during this prolonged dry spell, and even moreso the many who have continued clicking on my Amazon links to provide me money that I clearly haven’t warranted in a quite some time now, if ever.

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  • Kirk

    No T-Fest video nugget?

  • Yeah, my memories of that are already receding into the blur-inducing fog of old age. We’ll see.

  • mporcius

    The brief daily reviews sound like fun.

    And I have been enjoying your site the last six years, so don’t beat yourself up about spikes and troughs of activity or peaks and valleys of inactivity.

  • Brendan F.

    Hopefully Jabootu also wishes to reinstate the several missing reviews that still have links (such as HORROR OF PARTY BEACH).

    Ken, by all means, check out THE BLACK HOLE. It may be a personal favorite of mine and several others’, but it has Jabootu’s claw marks all over it.

  • Holy crap! Missing reviews? Man, that eats up a lot of time. And now they’ve got to be broken up into at least two pieces (WordPress doesn’t allow articles that long anymore.) So I’ll work on this, but it will be messy, and take awhile. The old reviews as they are reposted willl also appear as the ‘latest’ review on the front page.

    Anyone know what else has a link but is missing?

  • I actually have a lot of those Mill Creek movie sets. Whenever there is nothing on TV (as there usually is) I throw one in. Most of them are dreadfully bad and should be perfect for your site. I can’t wait to see your opinion on such gems as ‘Voodoo Black Exorcist’ or ‘Mesa Of Lost Women’.

  • You certainly can’t argue bang for buck. I’ll see what’s in that set, although I think I have a better (Image?) copy of Mesa of Lost Woman already. Liz Kingsley just reviewed that this week, by the way.

  • Anders S

    One easy change would be to get “Television” up on the front page, or to integrate it into Nuggets. It took me years to find cheestacular stuff like the Raquel extravaganza.

    More ambitious: compare Segal’s best with his worst.

  • FYI, WordPress can both backdate posts (allowing you to put the restored reviews back in chronological order) and date posts into the future, allowing you to pre-set reviews and have them come out on schedule (I did that on a couple of my sites while I was on vacation). No plugins required.

  • Tork_110

    Someone has to say it: More Super Friends!

  • fish eye no miko

    Ken Begg said: (WordPress doesn’t allow articles that long anymore.)

    Is that why you’ve started doing that> I was wondering.
    That… kinda bites… d-:

    BTW, I bought Silent But Deadly on your recommendation, and I love it! I’d never even heard of Lio before (I haven’t read a daily paper in years), but between the descriptions and the price, I took a chance, and I’m so glad I did! Thanks, Ken!

  • Nathan, thanks for the word! That’s great. I’ll try that. (Although I’m sure I’ll mess them up a few times.)

  • Fish Eye — Glad (but not surprised) you liked the book. It’s very fun stuff. I can’t wait for the third volume to come out.

  • Hasimir Fenring

    Tangentially related, is there any hope that Gangrene Widescreen will produce more YouTube videos? That’s some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever seen.

    Related how, you ask? Check out his review of Voodoo Black Exorcist, whose villain isn’t a)involved with voodoo, b)black, or c)an exorcist. It’s even got a catchy original (I think) song!

  • Ku

    Kiss Meets the Phantom! Or do I have to do it on the Reader Review Board myself? Alas, I’m not that funny…

  • Second on the Super-Friends.

    I love all the reviews here, but those were my faves.

  • Patrick

    Third on the Superfriends. Then when you’ve done them all, you can go to a publisher and print the most kickass episode guide ever.

    But don’t feel bad about your dry spell, Ken. I’ve been rewatching old MSTs regularly since it went off the air, and somehow they never get old. And so it goes with Jabootu reviews.

  • Pilgrim

    I’ve bought several of those Mill Creek packs as well. Be prepared for some really bad prints on a lot of films. Some are almost inaudible/garbled, some have credit sequences excised/cut short, the usual. And of course no bonus features or anything. Still a nice way to get a lot of movies on the cheap.

    As for new stuff, everyone is already asking for Superfriends, so I’ll throw my vote in for Hitchhiker. Actually, more TV in general is good. It makes for shorter reviews (which are less painful on the reviewer), plus it means less padding and often a more insane plot. Plus it’s territory that’s still largely unexplored by the B-movie crowd.

  • roger h

    Mesa of the Lost Women

    guitar guitar guitar . . .

  • fish eye no miko

    I’ll second more Hitchhiker, please.

  • Marsden

    Superfriends! Your reviews are great, but they really stand out.

  • Mr. Rational

    I want more of whatever you have time to give us.

    And hopefully that includes BOTH Superfriends and Hitchhiker… ;-)

  • Jimmy

    More ‘Hitchhiker’ would be great.

  • zombiewhacker

    Ken, BTW, we missed you over at your old forums. They’re still pretty busy, surpisingly, even during the dog days of August. It would great if you could stop by once in a while and liven up some of the discussions.

  • GalaxyJane

    If we’re all getting votes, I second whoever mentioned “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park”. Truly one of the films that set me down the bad movie path to where I am today. Even better I suggest a Gene Simmons triple-feature consisting of Phantom, “Trick or Treat” and the absolutely bizarro crap-fest that IS “Never Too Young to Die”.

    Um, yeah, did subject my annual victims to that exact lineup one year. Reaction ranged from threats to never attend one of my parties again to requests for the lyrics to the Stargrove theme song. Yes, I found them, and yes I did provide them. Sigh…

  • BeckoningChasm

    Not to try and stop new content from Jabootu, but those 100- and 50-movie pack things are soul killers.

    On my own site, I did full-length reviews of every single entry in the “50 Sci Fi Classics” box, and I mainly did that so I could see the text and remember, oh yeah, I DID see that already.

    As I am too fond of saying, the only word in “50 Sci Fi Classics” that was not a lie was “50.”

    (Admittedly, it had Robot Monster in it. But that was about it.)

  • I dunno. One of the 50 packs I got had Messiah of Evil, Horror Express and Deep Red in it, and those are pretty damn good movies.
    Of course, that same collection has The Revenge of Doctor X in it, which is an affront to God and man. So I might have to concede the point to you on reflection.

  • I should note that I plan to stick to movies I haven’t seen, and that the reviews will be blog-length ones. Moreover, since I’ll be out of town and away from a computer for over a week in the middle of the month, that will provide a break. I imagine I’ll be able to watch several dozen of the movies at least in September.

  • If the Deep Red you got was not widescreen, you got ripped off. I thought I knew Deep Red, but upon viewing it widescreen it was like a whole different (and even better) movie.

  • I can’t remember if it was wide screen or not,but judging by the “stellar” output of the other movies I’d say no.

    And I’d prefer to think of myself more as “introduced to something I’d seek out from a better company” rather than “ripped off.”

    No matter how much more accurate the latter might be.

  • Cullen, I hear you, but I got 100 movies for $20! How much can I reasonably expect for 20 cents a throw?

  • BeckoningChasm

    Ken, I’m sure after watching these films you’ll say, “Man, even at 20 cents a movie, I was profoundly ripped off.”

    NB: Deep Red was not widescreen on my copy.

  • SuperVepr

    Fear not, Ken. I have suffered the ebb and flow of Jabootu for years and it just makes the new stuff even better. Whatever you write, I shall read.