davidh777

Damnit, shadokitty, and this on top of your dad's struggles as well?

shadokitty

Good news sort of. She's coming home today, and when the biopsy came back on my dad's colon, it was negative, so the tumor was completely removed of cancer. Just have to wait for my dads prostate biopsy to come back now.

davidh777

shadokitty

Ash, while I have yet to see any more Steve Reeves this challenge, I have enjoyed my exposure to never before seen peplum in the Mill Creek Warriors set. I think that is one of, if not my favorite of all my Mill Creek sets. I also have the Warner Archive channel on my Roku, but haven't paid for the sub yet, as I only have $3 in my paypal account right now.

mrcellophane

I had quite a day yesterday and ended up getting three more films watched. I was stuck generating emails all day at work and watched The Loves of Hercules and Left Behind. Then I went to weekly movie night with friends, and we watched The Room. You know you've had a bad day when a film starring Kirk Cameron is the best film you've watched all day.

The Loves of Hercules is poorly dubbed, paced, and acting crap. There is a surprising amount of man flesh on display (including lots of legs and lots of slave guys in revealing outfits). Unfortunately, this was not enough to make up for the terribleness around it.

I probably don't have anything interesting to add about The Room, a film that seems to be discussed again and again by many others. It's definitely a "so bad its good" film and shows us lots of different ways not to make an effective film.

That brings me to Left Behind, a earnest bad movie about the Rapture and subsequent upheavals. So I have a history with this particular franchise; when I was a young teen, I read a majority of the books (as well as the supplemental young adult books), and my grandparents gave me the film for Christmas. Now, the church I grew up attending did not like the series which differed largely from their conception of the end times. So I read them simply as disaster fiction, usually skipping over any preachy conversion parts. Anyway, all of this is very silly to me now, but the earnestness of the story still drew me in, even though I'm a hell-bound heathen.

coyoteblue

Saw Stunt Rock (1980) tonight at a showing with a tragically small but enthusiastic crowd. For once a movie lived up to its trailer. Brass balls indeed.

Mondo Kane

Yup. That was a favorite from a past challenge.

pacaway

Can I get a ruling on Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2?

Shack

Ick. Oh, you mean, for the challenge.

Von Trier is art stuff (I haven't seen these, only earlier stuff). Although it is exploitation through and through, I would say it's not at the heart of this challenge. But just one opinion; I can be overruled.

pacaway

Kind of exactly how I was looking at it. I really want to count them though, since I sat through both in a theater last night. I think they are wild card worthy. I think I'll do that.

shadokitty

Watched the first two movies in the Mill Creek Sci Fi Invasion 50 movie set. Debating stopping there, as so far have been very underwhelmed. Seen an awful 90s sci fi/thriller last night, Brain Twisters, and a slightly better horror movie this morning called The Head, a German horror movie that reminded me of The Brain That Wouldn't Die. It doesn't seem as cheesy B movie goodness as the Sci Fi Classics set though.

Greg MacGuffin

I watched God's Gun, a Golan-Globus production from the mid-70s, with Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, Sybil Danning, and Leif Garret. Not a great flick, but I enjoyed it. Does anybody know where I can find a decent quality copy? The DVD I watched was full-frame and in pretty bad shape.

ntnon

Good. Any good news is welcome at these times, and that's certainly a positive sign.

ntnon

What constitutes a 'proper' Drive-In..? We saw Frozen on a big Drive-In-y screen at the park alongside maybe 500 people. So we had the open air, crowds, food & cat-calls experience, but it wasn't technically a "Drive-In" because we were on the grass, not in/alongside a car....

So is it the technical facility or the experience that makes a Drive In..?!

ntnon

Invasion of the Bee Girls was fairly standard alien-bodysnatching-small-town-fare. Replete with great jumps of logic - the scientist who has such an out there theory he won't share it until later, and the throwaway remark about insects that leads the policey person to watch a documentary on bees... - but probably the thing that winds up disappointing the most in this (and similar) films, is that there COULD (maybe) have been some tension and mystery involved, had the title not given it all away...

Gangs, Inc. was surprisingly good for being a brief, fairly formulaic film. While there was nothing terribly surprising in how it unfolded, the idea of the plot seemed quite novel and interesting.

Little Rita in the West was very odd, but fairly good. Dubbed in English, but with the songs retained in [Italian?], was a little jarring, not because of the infrequent bursts of song, but because it wasn't followable (to me)... although what was most interesting was then watching Dollars/No Name and Sartana films immediately afterwards, which threw new light on some of the 'jokes' in Rita: not liking the laughing gunfighter, various costumes, etc.

Did I mention The Pirate Movie..? Really, really very odd. But highly enjoyable! The cover implies nudity and sauciness, but the film is instead a Gilbert & Sullivan homage/parody/update/adaptation. Musical, satire, camp comedy... with lightsabers, Indiana Jones, Inspector Clouseau and all kinds of other strange asides. The commentary with Ken Annakin was interesting too, but would have worked far better as an interview. It touched on the film on occasion, but was more about Annakin's career and filmography, which while interesting, was not really what I'd hoped for - I wanted more comments on the music, the "cameos" and the rest. I was interested by the role of Ted Hamilton who was excellent as the Pirate King, and was noted also as the producer and driving force, but seems not to have made many more films. Sadly.

shadokitty

I have a question about something that may have been a movie, or may have been a TV Show. Sons of Hercules is on the Warriors 50 movie set, but it seemed more like an ep of a TV show. I can't find anything about it on IMDB.

BobO'Link

^In the 60s a group of the peplum films were offered in a syndicated TV package called "The Sons of Hercules". It had a really cool theme song and I watched it every time it came on.

I found a Wikipedia page on the series. It says 14 peplums were offered in the package.

shadokitty

So the ones on my set do count then?

Edit.

I see why I didn't find it, I was looking up Sons of Hercules, and not Land of Darkness.

Ash Ketchum

Lots of good stuff on that set, including a bunch of Rocky Jones feature compilations of TV eps., BEYOND THE MOON, THE GYPSY MOON, SILVER NEEDLE IN THE SKY, plus the Ken Utsui Starman Japanese sci-fi serial chapters from the 1950s EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE, INVADERS FROM SPACE, et al. Those are amazing and are very similar to the Rocky Jones episodes.

Also recommended on that set:
BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN (Russian sci-fi)
THE DAY TIME ENDED (low-budget U.S. sci-fi from 1980)
FUGITIVE ALIEN - Japanese TV sci-fi repackaged as films for U.S. TV
HUNDRA - has music by Ennio Morricone - I have the soundtrack album
IT'S ALIVE - low-budget Tommy Kirk/Larry Buchanan collaboration
THE MANSTER - made-in-Japan sci-fi shot in English with a partly western cast, a U.S.-Japan co-production

shadokitty

Thanks for the tips Ash. I'll give the set another chance then.

caligulathegod

Been out all day. Just saw a live production of the Who's Tommy. I love legitimate theater. Anyway, That is close enough to a drive-in for 2014.

As far as the artsy films, I think Lars Von Trier is safe. If you know your John Waters, you know that he was obsessed with Fassbender and Goddard and the real artsy stuff. It's Artsploitation.

BobO'Link

Absolutely! All were feature films before being packaged under that special title for TV airings.

BobO'Link

You should! It's not as good a set as that first you mentioned but there *are* some pretty fun titles amongst the dreck.

There's a *very* good copy of the Vincent Price film The Bat (1959).

There are also fair copies of Mission Stardust, Night Fright (John Agar), and The Brother from Another Planet, but in FS - it's good as a "screener" copy. I'd pretty much just avoid most of the post 1970 films and watch the earlier stuff. Most of those 70s, 80s, and 90s films are pretty bad and unfortunately that's 3/5 of that set.

malazar

I finished off the checklist today. It was definitely a fun aspect of the challenge that made me explore some territory I don't usually tread on. Now to finish off the last few days of the challenge with as many appropriate things I have been meaning to watch as possible.

caligulathegod

Glad you enjoyed the Checklist. You are in very rare company.