I hope Peter Cushing was a paid a lot of money to be in this Hammer Horror wannabe production. Good looking young men are being found dead all over the countryside and inspector Cushing in on the case!
Cutting to the chase, an entomologist has a sext daughter who is a were moth... yes you read that right. They also have male were moth ready to mature but it needs blood... virgin blood of course.
This film is a mess! The giant moth stuff is not as bas you might think other being stupid and looking 100% like a rubber suit. They kill the were moth daughter by lighting a fire which she immediately dives into! There are a few day for night shots, I think, it's hard ot tell since they are no different from the day shots except you see more trees and less blue sky?
None of this works. Peter Cushing is never bad but I only felt sorry he was in this.
A not so good hippy songwriter decided to spend time at a health farm and meets a young girl on the train going to the same place and they become a couple, of course. The health farm is anything but and they discover mad doctor Michael Gough, who really is too good for this role, is turning hippies (mostly muscular young men - the guy who is recruiting for the centre is portrayed as gay and preatory) in zombie save with a new lobotomy technique helped by the girl's aunt and what seems to be a legion of faceless helmet wearing motorcyclists and a fancy car with decapitation device and a handy head catching net attached for good measure. There is also a dwarf assistant. The actor playing him tried his best to be the break out star of the film and while he could be a worse actor he isn't given anything really work with to make his part even campy fun.
This film meanders and makes little sense, the doctor was in a fire and is now bound to a wheelchair and Aunty the assistant seems to have no reason to be helping him at all except maybe she has a sadist side to her? Other characters come and get lobotomized and no one seems to care, not their friends, lovers family... the characters are less connected with the others characters then we are!
Not much happens, the leads try to eascape several times and fail, almost get lobotomized and we discover the doctor is wearing a mask that hide his burnt face but there is no way on earth that would work or that mask would fit over the burnt face makeup which looks like the "pink slur" we often see as what chicken nuggets are made from. Also, he seems to have no trouble walking around nude when he is out of his disguise.
All but 3 of the cast are dead by the end and they joyfully put on the doctor's face mask and have a laugh at the expense of their dead friends. Apparently there was a sequel but I am NOT even looking for that!
What a mess this movie is! Christopher Atkins of Blue lagoon fame is Dracula? Sure, though his monk "buddy" is more Dracula like and is the actual bad guy in this film.
Not sure I can describe the "plot" most of the movie takes place in flashbacks, like 80% of it. This gives the excuse to show Atkins as the young hot Dracula with his soon to be burnt alive love having sex and swimming naked at some waterfall with full frontal. I guess they had to reference Blue Lagoon somehow. He has a monk pal who is also sexy and whips him when he is bad or immoral or something... it's VERY homoerotic.
Anyway they both become vampires and to be honest I couldn't follow the path to that with all the flashbacks and the friend coming across more as Dracula than Dracula as they carry their feud/relationship? into modern day with the obligatory reincarnation of Vlad's old flame. She ends up in a flaming car by Dracula saves her and... I can't even remember. No one is good in their roles though they all look hot which I think is the point, maybe the only point to make this in the first place.
The sequel to the 2018 Spriderman: Into the Spiderverse was a long time coming and at 2 hours, a long time to watch as well. While it did better at the box-office than the first film I think this one has at least one major flaw I cannot overlook.
To start with, I LOVED the first movie. It was breath fresh air in it pacing, style and animation. The story was gripping and managed to be exciting and heart wrenching at times. I thought it might be good, but it was great. The second film is lesser as one might expect but it still has eye popping animation and good character development, for the most part, of the main actors and uses the multiverse concept in interesting ways to move the story along and to add some unexpected twists. I can’t say the movie was boring in any way or cut corners animation wise or went in a direction that took away from the overall quality of the production. So what is the problem?
The problem starts with the villain who is barely there and milk toast. I am not sure if we are supposed to care about him at all, the personal life of Miles Morales was fantastic and keeps getting interrupted by a bad guy I have investment in. A bigger issue was the ending…or lack of an ending might be a better way to put it. There isn’t an ending! There is a sequel tease that makes no sense. If a they cut out some of the overlong senses at the multiverse HQ they could have wrapped this up in a few minutes and not made the movie any longer. The 3rd film was already has supposed to have been released by now but there is no sign of it as of this writing. In my opinion it ruins the movie, which I was liking the ride if was taking me on until it suddenly ended seemingly within minutes of a resolution. It felt like a cheat and a cheap ploy instead of a cliffhanger for the next instalment.
The is by no means a good movie, even at only 80 minutes it drags but it' isn't completely unwatchable for me. for one thing as. a stop motion animation fan it's has surprising competent stop motion aliens that are in the film much loner than one would think for such a low budget endeavour. The acting is very wooden but the there might be a serviceable story in there somewhere, we just never see it.
Billy is skinny bullied kid in a town of REALLY underfed locals. MST3K makes not of this in their version of the film which is maybe the best way to see it. Roddy McDowell picks up a quick paycheque in a roll that really goes nowhere but he doesn't phone it in completely. Billy finds and alien weapon left by some other kid who found it first or an alien race that looks much more human than the other aliens that come looking for the weapon a points throughout the film. The weapon and the amulet that lets you use it begins to transform Billy and he get revenge on those who bully him mostly by blowing up their cars. Oh and a billboard on the highway for "Star Wars" as well for good measure.
Eddie Deezon gets his cinematic debut as the nerd character he played throughout his career. he seems to have a good sense of humour of about it. This is a B Movie that meanders its way along and while not exciting, I did find I could sit through it. I won't say everyone will, I have seen alot of bad movies in my time!
Story: As I usually do, the original story had to be stripped down to its most simple and basic form. Lovecraft had the characters traveling internationally for their adventures and the hound chases them intercontinentally. As a one man band making animation, having too many elements, locations and characters will make doing the animation impossible accomplish practically. I felt the 2 characters were not likeable and Mike and I tried to get that across. The narrator is a bit pompous despite his degrading mental state as events unfold.
Production: My animation style is usually very stop motion inspired, this is as well but not as much previous efforts.
This was a challenge, more so than my other short films because my older version of C4D stopped working in my OS and I HAD to learn Blender or not make any more animations. I have been trying to learn it for a decade without any real success. Recently the software has been advancing in leaps and bounds, not just technically but also changing it’s interface to a much more artist friendly one that is closer to industry standards. My work has dropped to almost nothing so while that is certainly panic inducing and financially disastrous, I was able to put a full time effort into learning and since Blender is free it didn’t add to my money woes.
After 3 months I was ready to try and start production and gathered my research, worked on the script and started to make the sets and characters. I made a couple of plugin purchases ( OK more than a couple) to help me get the look I wanted which included a human character generator that works within Blender and also does the rigging automatically which saved me months of time. It is limited in that clothing options are all modern and no third party additions so far so I have to modify to give a pseudo 30s look to the costumes. I spent a HUGE amount of effort reformatting 100s of models from Cinema 4D to Bender friendly files but it was worth the effort. I was also able to easily ad fog, a gothic horror must that did not take hours to render each frame and I was very happy with the result.
I restricted myself with some technical choices to avoid getting overwhelmed on my first project so I didn’t learn how to export separate passes of elements that would normally let me do post motion blur and give me more control over the final images. I also rendered in the faster real time engine EVEE that Blender has developed and it was more than good enough for this. The full force render engine is really great but I would be rendering until next year if I used it, partly because I have to learn how to optimize it for my needs.
Conclusion: I love Blender! Now I finally have a beginner’s handle on it I think I go upwards from here. It is up to you if this is a step up or down from my previous work but it seems a step up to me!
Voici une version avec des sous-titres français :
Histoire: Comme je le fais d'habitude, l'histoire originale a dû être dépouillée dans sa forme la plus simple et la plus basique. Lovecraft a fait voyager les personnages à l'étranger pour leurs aventures et le chien les poursuit de manière intercontinentale. En tant que groupe d'un seul homme faisant de l'animation, avoir trop d'éléments, de lieux et de personnages rendra l'animation impossible à accomplir pratiquement. J'ai senti que les 2 personnages n'étaient pas sympathiques et Mike et moi avons essayé de le faire passer. Le narrateur est un peu pompeux malgré son état mental dégradant au fur et à mesure que les événements se déroulent.
Production : Mon style d'animation est généralement très inspiré du stop motion, c'est aussi bien, mais pas autant d'efforts précédents. C'était un défi, plus que mes autres courts métrages parce que mon ancienne version de C4D a cessé de fonctionner dans mon système d'exploitation et que je devais apprendre Blender ou ne plus faire d'animations. J'essaie de l'apprendre depuis une décennie sans aucun succès réel. Récemment, le logiciel a progressé à pas de géant, non seulement techniquement, mais aussi en changeant son interface pour une interface beaucoup plus conviviale pour les artistes et qui est plus proche des normes de l'industrie. Mon travail est tombé à presque rien, donc bien que cela soit certainement induisant la panique et financièrement désastreux, j'ai pu mettre un effort à temps plein dans l'apprentissage et comme Blender est gratuit, cela n'a pas ajouté à mes problèmes d'argent. Après 3 mois, j'étais prêt à essayer de commencer la production et j'ai rassemblé mes recherches, j'ai travaillé sur le scénario et j'ai commencé à faire les décors et les personnages. J'ai fait quelques achats de plugins (OK plus que quelques-uns) pour m'aider à obtenir le look que je voulais, qui comprenait un générateur de caractères humains qui fonctionne dans Blender et qui fait également le gréement automatiquement, ce qui m'a fait gagner des mois de temps. C'est limité en ce sens que les options de vêtements sont toutes modernes et qu'il n'y a pas d'ajouts de tiers jusqu'à présent, je dois donc les modifier pour donner un look pseudo des années 30 aux costumes. J'ai dépensé énormément d'efforts pour reformater des centaines de modèles de Cinema 4D à des fichiers conviviaux de Bender, mais cela en valait la peine. J'ai également pu facilement ajouter du brouillard, une horreur gothique qui n'a pas pris des heures pour rendre chaque image et j'ai été très satisfait du résultat. Je me suis limité à certains choix techniques pour éviter d'être submergé sur mon premier projet, donc je n'ai pas appris à exporter des passes séparées d'éléments qui me permettraient normalement de faire du flou post motion et me donneraient plus de contrôle sur les images finales. J'ai également rendu dans le moteur en temps réel plus rapide EVEE que Blender a développé et c'était plus que suffisant pour cela. Le moteur de rendu pleine force est vraiment génial, mais je le rendrais jusqu'à l'année prochaine si je l'utilisais, en partie parce que je dois apprendre à l'optimiser pour mes besoins.
Conclusion : J'adore Blender ! Maintenant que j'ai enfin une poignée de débutant, je pense que je monte à partir d'ici. C'est à vous de décider s'il s'agit d'un pas en hausse ou en bas par rapport à mon travail précédent, mais cela me semble être un pas en avant !
I would swear I wrote about this film a few months ago, but apparently I meant to and never did. I really liked it so I don't know why I would have forgotten but that is now rectified.
Miranda, a farm girl who dreams of romance and luxury finds herself invited to visit her rich distant cousin to be a companion to his little girl and she jumps t the chance. Once there she discovered his wife and daughter have very little to do with him. Vincent Price is the rich cousin and if you are expecting this to be a gothic horror treat, it just isn't. Sure is has one gothic horror element, a harpsichord playing when tragedy is about to strike and only the cousin's direct bloodline can hear it but that goes pretty much nowhere.
Where the film does go is into a murder mystery and family drama as Price's wife gets a cold but suddenly dies of it. The doctor he has come over, which price assumes is dumb turns out not to be. In no time The cousins are getting married after he confesses that his unhappy marriage was caused by the former wife not bearing him a son and she is pregnant shortly after the nuptials are over. Sadly, the infant dies shortly after being baptized of a heart condition.
Price becomes a lot less likeable after that, becoming a drug addict, abusive and it is revealed that, even worse, he is an atheist! Things degrade and Miranda becomes suspicious of the previous wife's death and enlists the doctor's aid to find out. They also seem to be falling for each other.
This is not a best film of all time sort of thing but it is pretty great, mostly because Vincent price is so amazing in the role. Gene Tierny deserves a better role and the doctor as well but who can outshine Price?
My documentary "The Picnic" is playing July 20, at 3:30 pm at The Brattle cinema in Harvard Square Cambridge! The doc is about the 50 years of the legendary comic book store I used to manage a very long time ago and is still there, very close to the theatre. Some of the interviewees will be in attendance as well!
This was a long, multi-year project made possible by donations of many people but particularly Denis Leclerc and Spike MacFee (the first employee of the Picnic who sadly passed in 2019.)
If you or anyone you know would be interested and can be there please show up, it would mean a lot to me, the store and those who are in the documentary.
While 2002 A Space Odyssey is rightly lauded for its ground breaking realism depicting space travel, Marooned is no slouch in the department either and has the advantage of being produced as man was really going to the moon for the first time.
The effects are excellent, not the level of Kubrick's epic film but more, if one can say this, down to earth. They are based on current NASA tech and design and the story of astronauts trapped in their capsule and slowly suffocating as mission command tried to find some way to help them. This film was still in release during the Apollo 13 mishap so what is shown was no hypothetical sci fi plot to viewers, it was really happening.
The cast is quite amazing, so many good actors giving very good performances and the entire production is treated with the gravitas it deserves considering men were very much risking their lives at the time. The whole thing reads as real life, including some heart breaking understated moments when the wife of one of the crew is given bad news.
As the situation in space gets worse, they are aided by soviet cosmonauts who have come to deliver oxygen as that is all the can do. A very hopeful message for the time.
At 134 minutes I did not find it slow moving, so some might. It was very well received but lost money on initial release and while it seems to be forgotten mostly It does not deserve to be.
