Jump to content

Fat Freddy

More than 25 Posts
  • Posts

    17,243
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Fat Freddy

  1. "Return of the LIving Dead" (1985) Two dorky warehouse workers accidentally release a toxic chemical that re-animates corpses, leading to an invasion of brain-eating zombies from the local cemetery. Hilarity ensues. A tongue-in-cheek parody of the zombie genre with a great cast, cool makeup and gore effects and a punk rockin' soundtrack. This flick is so "80s" it hurts!
  2. "Stunt Squad" (1977) A ruthless criminal syndicate holds an Italian city in a grip of terror, till a tough police inspector forms the "Stunt Squad" - an elite unit of motorcycle ridin', straight-shootin' cops who are authorized to use any means necessary to bring law & order to the streets. So yeah, this is yet another entertainingly schlocky "polizotteschi" flick, full of dudes with rad '70s mustaches, lots of gun battles, frequent vehicle chases/crashes/explosions, and occasional splashes of cheesy gore. These movies are like potato chips, you can't watch just one!
  3. "Beast With a Gun" (aka "Mad Dog Killer" and "Ferocious," 1977) A quartet of prison escapees rape, murder, and rob their way across the Italian countryside until a tough police inspector (Richard Harrison) makes it his personal mission to bring the gang's leader (Helmet Berger) to justice. Yet another trashy, sleazy slab of Eurocrime, featuring the usual awkward dialog and poor dubbing, comically over-the-top violence, frequent plot holes and a decent amount of female eye candy (courtesy of Austrian beauty Marisa Mell of "Danger! Diabolik" fame). Tons of cheesy, ass kickin' fun.
  4. "Battle Beyond the Stars" (1980) When a peaceful planet is threatened by a galactic conqueror, they send a young emissary out into space to recruit mercenaries willing to help them fight the bad guys. Roger Corman's "Star Wars" knock off is essentially "The Magnificent Seven" set in outer space, with surprisingly lavish (by Corman standards anyway) sets and effects and a cast full of familiar faces like Robert Vaughn, Sybil Danning, John Saxon, George Peppard and Richard "John Boy Walton" Thomas. It doesn't have an original bone in its body, but "Battle Beyond the Stars" is enjoyably cheesy comic-book fun. Useless trivia: a young James Cameron, later of "Terminator" and "Titanic" fame, was a special effects technician on this movie. Corman recycled special effects shots, set pieces and even bits of the musical score from "Battle" in other movies for years afterward, including "Space Raiders," "Forbidden World," and his doomed "Fantastic Four" adaptation.
  5. Oh yeah, the Italian movie industry was always quick to jump on whatever the big movie trend was at the time and made plenty of knock-offs. When Westerns were big, they made Westerns. During the James Bond craze in the 60s, they made spy movies. So when cop movies like "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection" were the hip thing in the early 70s they made a ton of cop flicks. If you are an Amazon Prime member there are tons of Eurocrimes on their streaming service. I must have about two dozen lined up in my watch list right now, haha. Most of them have aged pretty badly (or were never very good in the first place), but they're so ultra-violent and sleazy that I got hooked on them pretty quick, haha. There's a way- cool documentary about'em called "Eurocrime: The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the 70s" which is a great introduction to these movies and is damn entertaining in its own right:
  6. "Violent Cops" (aka "Crimebusters," 1976) A soldier (Henry Silva) and a detective (Antonio Sabato) team up to investigate how common Italian street thugs are getting their hands on military-grade machine guns. Naturally, this leads to lots of shoot-outs, vehicle chases, and fist fights. In other words, this is a pretty typical '70s "poliziotteschi" flick, i.e. short on plot but loaded with cartoonish ultra-violence. Entertaining junk.
  7. "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017) In the latest "Star Wars" epic, Rey tracks down Luke Skywalker for help discovering her Jedi destiny, then battles the evil Kylo Ren. Meanwhile Finn and Poe fight to save the remnants of the Rebellion from a final all-out assault. "Last Jedi" got tons of hate from fanboys who were apparently pissed that the film didn't live up to the personal fan fictions they were carrying around in their heads... but I thought it was great fun and it still made about a bazillion dollars at the box office. So either I'm easy to please, or the haters simply need to get off of Twitter and YouTube and get out of the house more often. Bring on Episode IX!
  8. "Amityville 3-D" (1983) A journalist who specializes in debunking supernatural phenomena moves into the famed house at 112 Ocean Avenue, planning to write an article on his experience. Naturally, this turns out to be a spectacularly bad decision for him and his family. The third "Amityville" installment was released a year after Spielberg & Hooper's "Poltergeist" and borrows heavily from its plot, but it isn't nearly as much fun. The 3-D gimmick adds nothing to this slow moving flick full of cheap scares and even cheaper special effects. Useless trivia, "Amityville 3-D" features early-career performances by the then-unknown Meg Ryan and Lori ("Full House") Laughlin as a pair of teenyboppers!
  9. Church rummage sale pickup: Gryn - Capital Punishment (1995) - a self released disc by a Kansas-based groove/thrash metal band. Given the time period, it sounds pretty much like I expected - local yokels copping the Pantera/C.O.C./Sepultura/Prong vibe. For 50 cents, I'm not gonna complain too much
  10. Yeah, the soundtrack is better than the movie. :D
  11. "Dr. Butcher, M.D." (1981) The Americanized cut of 1980's Italian splatter-fest "Zombi Holocaust," in which an investigative team from New York travels to a South Seas island that's home to flesh-eating natives and a crazed doctor whose experiments on the locals have created a race of zombies. Whatever name this movie goes by, it's the same ridiculously gory nonsense. Fun to watch in a WTF sort of way but not a must-see by any means.
  12. ...and geez, I've been slacking on updating this thread. I never posted my last batch of Stormspell Records reviews: "Steel Assassin," aka "The Mystery Band" https://spinditty.com/genres/Can-You-Help-Identify-Stormspell-Records-Mystery-Band Terravore, "Unforeseen Consquences" https://spinditty.com/genres/Terravore-Unforeseen-Consequences-Album-Review Siren, "Up From the Depths: Early Anthology & More" https://spinditty.com/genres/Siren-Up-From-the-Ashes-Early-Anthology-and-More-Album-Review "Stygian Oath" EP: https://spinditty.com/genres/Stygian-Oath-Album-Review
  13. New entry! I don't collect vinyl but every time I'm in my local Goodwill scrounging for CDs I always flip through the moldy old LPs just to see what kind of weird sh** will turn up. Here are a half dozen album covers that made me go WTF? https://hubpages.com/entertainment/Weird-Thrift-Store-Record-Finds
  14. "Last Action Hero" (1993) Thanks to a "magic ticket," a young film buff suddenly finds himself transported into his favorite shoot-em-up film franchise, where he fights bad guys alongside his hero "Jack Slater" (Arnold Schwarzenegger). This flick wants to parody the cliches' of action movies and while it isn't always successful, it's got enough in-jokes amidst the butt kicking and stuff blowing up to keep viewers entertained. The behind-the-scenes drama of making "Last Action Hero" has become a legendary Hollywood cautionary tale, involving major budget overruns, frequent rewrites, disastrous test screenings, and last minute editing. To add insult to injury, it opened a week after "Jurassic Park" in the summer of 1993, which totally crushed it at the box office. Ahh-nuld's film career never completely recovered.
  15. Geez, I was never much more than a casual Pantera fan, but the man could definitely crush those drums and the "Cowboys From Hell" disc is still an essential 90s metal listen. R.I.P. sir.
  16. "Who The F**k Is That Guy?" (2017) A documentary profile of Michael Alago, an '80s NYC club kid and music geek who went on to become a powerhouse A&R executive. This is the guy who was barely old enough to drink when he signed Metallica to Elektra Records, then went on to work with a host of other artists/bands across the genre spectrum. Various members of Metallica, White Zombie, Metal Church, the Misfits, the Cro-Mags and many more provide commentary on an interesting guy who's definitely led an interesting life.
  17. "Lightning Bolt" (aka "Operation Goldman," 1966) A secret agent is assigned to investigate rocket sabotage on Cape Kennedy, and discovers a plot to dominate Earth by a beer-baron super villain with his own secret headquarters at the bottom of the ocean. Yikes! This campy, cheesy-but-fun Italian spy flick is one of the better James Bond knock offs of the mid '60s, with cheap but effective sets and effects and lots of pretty girls.
  18. "Detroit 9000" (1973) Two Motown cops - one white, one black - are assigned to solve a theft from a political candidate's campaign fund, mixing it up with pimps, hookers and smugglers along the way, in this ultra-violent blaxploitation action flick. Silly but entertaining.
  19. Bumpin' this classic, because it's Chili Dog season. Pat's Dogs, if it still stands, should be like Graceland for Cinderella fans. All hail Brittingham!
  20. Not a "buy" haul, but some sweet trades... Laaz Rockit - Know Your Enemy AC/DC - Blow Up Your Video and For Those About To Rock... Warlock - Triumph and Agony Motorhead - Snake Bite Love Ratt - Out of the Cellar (replaces old copy which was a scratched, skipping clusterf***) Junkyard - s/t Slayer - Haunting the Chapel D.A.D. - No Fuel Left For the Pilgrims Nirvana - Incesticide
  21. Nope. I come to music forums to get away from the non stop political B.S. that has infected everything else on the internet.
  22. Nice! After watching the L7 doc, Amazon recommended this one: "Betty Blowtorch and Her Amazing True Life Adventures" (2006) Another cool doc about a badass all-girl rock band! This flick tells the chaotic story of L.A.'s Betty Blowtorch, a late '90s femme punk/metal combo who were just starting to turn heads with their sleazy tunes and in-your-face 'tudes. Unfortunately their career was cut short when lead singer and ring leader Bianca Halstead (aka "Bianca Butthole") was killed in an auto accident while on tour in late 2001. I didn't get hip to B.B. till they were already broken up (their "Are You Man Enough?" album is a stone cold classic BTW) but this doc's mix of interview footage and clips of the gals throwin' down on stage and off filled me in and let me know that I missed out on one hell of a kick-ass band!
  23. "L7: Pretend We're Dead" (2017) Cool documentary about the rise and fall of the all-girl '90s punk band, who were buddies with grunge royalty like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins, etc. but were never quite able to make a mainstream breakthrough. Lotsa cool vintage live clips and road stories. These gals were and still are badass.
  24. Pretty Maids - Future World Krokus - Headhunter
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.