TODAY I WATCHED (Movies, TV Shows) 2020

Today on my first time on the elliptical since Sunday because I hurt my lower back doing yard work Saturday, I started "The Giant Gila Monster".

This is one of the more rarely-shown "giant monster movies" from the 50s that I saw growing up.  For some reason every cheesy "Creature Feature" program at the time skipped this one and now I know why.

In most flicks of this type from that era you at least see the "lead creature" actually appearing in the set pieces.  Not this one.  You see the next victim going about their normal behavior and cut to obvious stock footage of a random Gila monster slowly crawling around or doing what Gila monsters do like flicking their tongues.  Then suddenly cut back to the person or persons designated as "next victim" and they're either screaming and looking up at something or just randomly flipped into another plane of the local geography.  Either way the "final scene" is an totally unconvincing fake claw coming down out of a new camera frame that doesn't even have the victim in the shot.  In other words you keep seeing repeated shots of a zoo Gila monster crawling around followed by repeated shots of that obviously fake claw coming down on nothing.

"AVOID!"

The Open House on Netflix. It was incredibly lame and one of the worst movies I have ever seen! So bad that i recommend it to others to see how bad it is. Full of plot holes and a lame ending.

Or, if you do not want to see it you can watch this which pretty much tells you how bad it is and reveals what happens. I actually liked it better than the movie.

Yesterday 'Heavy Metal' and the DC Comics series 'Titans: Season 2'

Long Weekend (1979)



A bickering couple go on a weekend camping trip in a remote area near the beach. Their callous disregard for nature soon comes back to haunt them as they start facing increasingly dangerous animal attacks. A rather interesting Australian entry into the nature strikes back film genre.

Beyond The Door (1974)



An Italian rip off of the Exorcise and Rosemary's Baby. A woman ends up pregnant with the devil's child and starts acting Linda Blair-like possessed. An agent of the devil,whose pact is about to expire, is assigned to insure the baby is born. A lot better than I expected, once you get past the beginning with the odd stilted dubbing and the dialogue, especially with the children.

Finished "The Giant Gila Monster" (finally - geez what a boring 74 minutes that was!)

Today on the elliptical I started another 50's B-movie "classic":

"The Killer Shrews"

I've seen this one before but it was literally decades ago when I was growing up. As I remember the titular creatures they actually look like dogs with shaggy pelts strapped onto them.  I deliberately didn't look up any clips on Youtube because I'm really curious to see if the creatures are as silly-looking as my teenage memory recalls.  I can't wait for them to make their first appearance!

^^ The hero in "Shrews" is played by a young James Best, later known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on "Dukes of Hazzard."

Of course you've seen this flick FF. 

When I post my latest movie viewing on other forums people either don't react or say something like "Where do you find this crap?"

But of course, FF has seen all the cheesy 50s crap out there.  That cracks me up!

Savage Weekend (1979)



A group of friends on a weekend getaway become stalked by a masked killer in this early slasher. I've seen a lot better movies.

Food Of The Gods (1976)



On a remote island, a strange white substance bubbles out of the ground on a farm. The farmer and his wife begin feeding it to their chickens, causing the offspring to grow giant sized. Unfortunately, rats and wasps get into the feed as well. A vacationing football player ends up stuck on the island and fights with a group of people to survive. A childhood favorite of mine, this one has not held up well. Some poor special effects (especially the wasps) and I noticed that the filmmakers actually were killing the "giant" rats by pellet guns (simulating shotgun blasts) and drowning. Kind of took the luster off the movie.

tohostudios wrote:

Of course you've seen this flick FF. 

When I post my latest movie viewing on other forums people either don't react or say something like "Where do you find this crap?"

But of course, FF has seen all the cheesy 50s crap out there.  That cracks me up!

Yup, I've seen "Giant Gila Monster" too. My wife got me one of those cheapie "50 Horror Classics" DVD box sets of 50s/60s public-domain stuff for my birthday about ten years ago. I never did make it thru all 50.

That's sort of what I'm watching now except it's only 12 movies on 3 DVDs.  So far I've watched Attack of the Giant Leeches, The Giant Gila Monster and now Killer Shrews.  This also has The Brain That Wouldn't Die which I already watched during this binge of 50's dreck because I have it as a standalone DVD. 

Ever seen The Wasp Woman?  That's on here too and I think I saw parts of that growing up but that's the only other one in this collection I'd consider watching.   Surprisingly this set also has Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" which I've never actually seen but I don't feel like going that far back in time.

Fat Freddy wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

Of course you've seen this flick FF. 

When I post my latest movie viewing on other forums people either don't react or say something like "Where do you find this crap?"

But of course, FF has seen all the cheesy 50s crap out there.  That cracks me up!

Yup, I've seen "Giant Gila Monster" too. My wife got me one of those cheapie "50 Horror Classics" DVD box sets of 50s/60s public-domain stuff for my birthday about ten years ago. I never did make it thru all 50.

Ha! My sister bought her husband one of those about a decade ago, and after the kids would go to sleep they would watch one. I don't think they made it through their box either. A few B movie blogs/ sites I used to check out where "3B Theater" and "Movies About Girls" and both were pretty cool. The 3B Theater one (the name was something like any movie is better after 3 beers) was especially good and very well written. This was about 10 to 12 years ago and I would track down some of these "so bad they are good" flicks on youtube or from the local library. The author used to attend the once a year 24 hour film fest on the campus of Northwestern. That article was always a good read.

Between these sites, USA's "Up All Night" and HBO and Skinemax, I too have seen a lot of crap! Ha ha.

tohostudios wrote:

That's sort of what I'm watching now except it's only 12 movies on 3 DVDs.  So far I've watched Attack of the Giant Leeches, The Giant Gila Monster and now Killer Shrews.  This also has The Brain That Wouldn't Die which I already watched during this binge of 50's dreck because I have it as a standalone DVD. 

Ever seen The Wasp Woman?  That's on here too and I think I saw parts of that growing up but that's the only other one in this collection I'd consider watching.   Surprisingly this set also has Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" which I've never actually seen but I don't feel like going that far back in time.

I don't think I've ever seen "Wasp Woman" but I'm pretty sure it's in the box set I have. You see the same movies in all of those public-domain collections, haha.
"Metropolis" is in the set I have too, which I always thought was weird, cuz it's a science-fiction film, not a "horror" movie. (At least I think it is -- I've never seen it either.)

I have the 50 Horror Movie box set as well as a 50 Sci Fi movie box set. I haven't made it the whole way through either. Some of those movies were a chore to get through.

Tonight I watched "The Menagerie" parts 1 and 2 from the Star Trek ToS collection.

I have mixed feelings about these episodes.  We all know that most of the footage in these episodes consists of stuff shot for the "Star Trek" pilot and the way Roddenberry tried to meld them into a new "wraparound" story with his new "Star Trek" series is admirable.  But it's also not entirely effective. 

For one thing, the Spock from the pilot scenes is waaaaay more emotional than the Spock supposedly being court marshaled in the wraparound story. 

But my biggest problem with the story is the "logic" that the now paralyzed Christopher Pike could somehow be better off with the illusion that he could walk again and be with the beautiful but also similarly disabled in real life woman he met on Talos IV thirteen years earlier.  How does the illusion of being a whole and beautiful person actually make your life more enjoyable of you can't actually physically be that way????

That's always bugged me about these episodes.  But kudos to Roddenberry for at least finding a creative way to use the pilot footage in Star Trek ToS.

007 wrote:

I have the 50 Horror Movie box set as well as a 50 Sci Fi movie box set. I haven't made it the whole way through either. Some of those movies were a chore to get through.

My 12 disc set must be a subset of the one you guys are referring to but I have half a dozen of those kinds of collections too.

The "cult horror movie" one I have I only bought for one movie, "Don't Look In The Basement".  I'm sure you've all seen it in all it's glorious 70s cheesiness and yet I didn't have this "classic" in my collection so I bought one of those public domain horror collections and that's the only flick on it I've ever watched.

"Up the airy mountain, down the rushing glen, we dare not go a-walkin' for fear of little men."

I always thought that was just some old woman's lunatic rambling in the film but it's actually from a real Scottish poem called "The Faeries" by someone named William Allingham.

That scene from the movie (and the fact that the woman who quotes it ends up with her tongue cut out) has always haunted me.

"Silent Rage" (1982)

Chuck Norris is a small town Texas sheriff who must protect his lady love from a seemingly indestructible psychotic killer, created by a science experiment gone wrong.
An odd mix of the action and slasher genres, "Silent Rage" never quite finds a balance between the two sides, but the non-stop violence kept me entertained. Essentially it's Chuck Norris vs. Michael Myers (it even borrows/steals the last shots of the original "Halloween" for a climactic scene!). I loved this movie when I was 13, but it hasn't aged very well.

Zombie Island Massacre (1984)



If you think this is another in a long line of Italian zombie rip off movies like I did, you'd be wrong too. A group of vacationing tourists in the Caribbean take a guided tour to a neighboring island. While there, they witness a voodoo ritual. A couple can't bear to witness a goat sacrificed and wander off into the woods, where their bludgeoned to death. The remaining tourist return to the tour bus to find the driver missing and the bus disabled. Soon, their tour guide also disappears and they try to make it to a house with a phone, all the while being picked off by someone or something. Not a great movie by any stretch but the unexpected direction it went in made it at least interesting.

"Extraction" (2020)

India's biggest drug lord hires a mercenary (Chris "Thor" Hemsworth) to rescue his teenaged son, who's been kidnapped by a Bangladeshi rival. Bullets fly, people die, cars crash, stuff blows up.
There's not much plot in this Netflix original, but the action sequences and stunt work are top notch and the body count is astronomical. Not a classic but a decent enough butt-kicker for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Watched another stink bomb on Netflix over the weekend called "Would You Rather". had no idea what it was about so I thought I would give it a try. It's about a man who will give money to people if they perform certain tasks. Like "would you rather hit this guy with a cane or stab that person with an ice pick". It was very predictable and I knew who would "win" and the ending of the movie was not a shock either.

Another thing that was distracting was Rob Welles. He plays "Ricky" in Trailer Park Boys" (and this must be why it showed up on my feed because I blazed thru all of those last month). I had no idea he was in it until I started the movie and all I could think was "Ricky just fell for one of Julian's stupid plans for money".... And then there is a character in the movie named Julian.

Anyway, was lame so check it out when you have nothing else to watch.

Penny Dreadful:City Of Angels

tohostudios wrote:

Finished "The Giant Gila Monster" (finally - geez what a boring 74 minutes that was!)

Today on the elliptical I started another 50's B-movie "classic":

"The Killer Shrews"

I've seen this one before but it was literally decades ago when I was growing up. As I remember the titular creatures they actually look like dogs with shaggy pelts strapped onto them.  I deliberately didn't look up any clips on Youtube because I'm really curious to see if the creatures are as silly-looking as my teenage memory recalls.  I can't wait for them to make their first appearance!

Coincidently, I just watched the MST3K episode of "Shrews" the other night. I can't image sitting through that flick without Joel, Tom and Crow adding their comments. And yea, Freddy, Sherriff Roscoe was quite the handsome leading man back in the day.

"Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana" (2019)

In the early '90s, underground cartoonist Mike Diana was hauled into a Florida court over the disturbing images of sex and violence in his self published comic book 'zine, Boiled Angel. After a brief trial, Diana was the first (and still the only) artist ever to be successfully prosecuted for obscenity in America.
 
This intriguing documentary (directed by Frank "Basket Case" Henenlotter and narrated by Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys) examines how Mike's right to free artistic expression clashed with the local community standards, via vintage news footage of the case and interviews with legal experts and comic book historians.

I'm not gonna lie, Mike Diana seems like a weird fella and his comics were indeed quite gross (some of the examples shown in the film are definitely not for the faint of heart), but in the end, I don't think he was guilty of anything other than bad taste... which last time I checked, was not a crime.

Murder In The Front Row. The documentary on the Bay Area thrash metal scene.

I also watched some of the footage from the Keep It True Festival special that was shown on youtube.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

Finished "The Giant Gila Monster" (finally - geez what a boring 74 minutes that was!)

Today on the elliptical I started another 50's B-movie "classic":

"The Killer Shrews"

I've seen this one before but it was literally decades ago when I was growing up. As I remember the titular creatures they actually look like dogs with shaggy pelts strapped onto them.  I deliberately didn't look up any clips on Youtube because I'm really curious to see if the creatures are as silly-looking as my teenage memory recalls.  I can't wait for them to make their first appearance!

Coincidently, I just watched the MST3K episode of "Shrews" the other night. I can't image sitting through that flick without Joel, Tom and Crow adding their comments.  And yea, Freddy, Sherriff Roscoe was quite the handsome leading man back in the day.

It's actually WAAAAY better than "The Giant Gila Monster" - that has to be the most boring movie with no payoff at all I've sat through in a long time; it makes "Tarantula" look like Oscar material.

The shrews still look like dogs with pelts wrapped on them on the long shots but the close-ups and dummies they used for dead shrews actually aren't too bad.