A surf-rock band I recall running across in the mid-1990s, The Aquabats have been reborn as superheroes in these utterly insane adventures, drawing more influence from ’70s-era Asian monster matinees à la Infra-Man than anything else. In each half-hour, our costumed quintet fights some rubber-suited creature (Manant and the Floating Eye of Death among them), […]
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The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Like Boggy Creek, 1976’s Sundown states it is based on a true story. Unlike Boggy Creek, Sundown actually is. Better late than never, it makes a simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray release courtesy of Shout! Factory. Set in postwar Texarkana, the film depicts the fear that gripped that the heretofore optimistic town of 40,000 after a […]
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Police Story / Police Story 2
It’s the next one that does. Fast-forward at least a decade later. In college, a friend showed me a VHS tape of an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a British documentary miniseries. Chan was that ep’s subject, and clips from 1985’s Police Story — and maybe even 1988’s Police Story 2, if memory […]
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The Big Boss / Fist of Fury / The Way of the Dragon / Game of Death
The first two, I forever have confused and will continue to confuse with one another. Both are directed by Lo Wei and boast cartoonish credit sequences. But only one includes flying dogs, and that’s The Big Boss (also known as Fists of Fury, plural, to further complicate things). That film has him uncovering a murderous […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXVI
Besides, fans of MST3K only need know that another collection exists, and they’re sold. The latest, Volume XXVI (aka 26, if you don’t like maths), may not have any classics among its four-ep offering, but any episode is worth owning. Among this batch, my favorite is the most recent: 1988’s Alien from L.A., a sci-fi […]
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The Factory
Skipping theaters and debuting on DVD free of digital bells and whistles, the Dark Castle Entertainment thriller exactly lacking in famous faces, with John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter in the leads as partnering police detectives in snowy Buffalo, N.Y. Mike Fletcher (Cusack, The Raven) is an 18-year veteran of the force obsessed with a longtime […]
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The Protector / Crime Story
Glickenhaus’ The Protector casts Chan in one of the Asian superstar’s three mid-’80s, ill-fated attempts at conquering American cinema, with the other two being The Big Brawl and The Cannonball Run. While this 1985 film is nowhere near the greatness of the product Chan churned out back home, it’s worth the while. It’s also now […]
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The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
The film fills in the details of Holmes’ three-year spell of assumed death — “Only the facts have been made up,” teases a title card — by pairing the great detective with the great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Arguably more notable is that Solution is the first dilated-pupils depiction of Holmes, the only to tackle head-on […]
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I Am Bruce Lee
For example:• He was a child star in Hong Kong — the Macaulay Culkin of his day and place.• He was a 1957 cha-cha champion.• In college, he was obsessed with General Hospital.• He was quoted as saying, “My obsession is to make, pardon the expression, the fuckingest action motion picture ever made.” That film […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXV
While none are classics, the four episodes collected here make for a terrific representation of the comedy series’ range, as our host (Joel Hodgson or Mike Nelson, depending on the ep) and his trusty robot friends rip bad movies a new one from the corner of your screen. They can lampoon no-budget sci-fi (1986’s Robot […]