April 2014's Crop of Crap

1. Superman (1978 ) - guess what my superhero obsessed 5 year old boy got for one of his birthday pressies. It stands up well.
2. The Ghost in the Shell (1995) - rewatch with my Anime obsessed 11 year old... (see Feb.)
3. The Blood of Ghastly Horror (1972) - a truly awful mess of a film which I have watched before but didn't quite believe.
4. The Invisible Man (1933) - I had one of those penny drops, 'oh! I've never seen THAT before' moments while watching this tonight. I have seen The Invisible Man before but only noticed the unmistakable (very early - for Hollywood) anti-fascist elements of it till tonight. At the centre of the film Griffin, the invisible man, gives an impassioned and very bonkers rant about having the power to rule the world through fear - "even the moon is afraid!" - while gesturing like Hitler and finally thrusting out his chin and folding his arms in a unmistakable imitation of Mussolini. Recoloured the whole film for me. I liked it.
5. Thunderbirds Are Go! (1965) - a tremendously dull film turned into a real gigglest with the kids. Daughter Number One's cry of "No! MY left!" just before a vehicular collision and cataclysmic explosion had me in hysterics. She wants to be Lady Penelope. Number One Son loves the collapsing palm trees. Mrs JM and Middle Daughter were just bemused by the whole experience. To round the night off I danced like a loonican (while no one was looking) to the Rezillo's song.
6. Mars Needs Women (1967) another incredibly dull movie from Larry Buchanan which sits somewhere (both in story and quality) at the midway point between Teenagers from Outer Space and Earthgirls are Easy. The highlight for me of Mars Needs Women's confused and fumbling story-telling was the seemingly endless sequence early on in the film where the USAF send up jets to find the Martian space ship. (Though the strip-tease dancer's bum was a goody.) For what seems like three hours we get to watch three men in military uniforms stare at a tannoy speaker, various shots of the speaker itself from two or three different angles, and shots of a jet plane in a disjointed miscellany of stock footage. As we watch these elements rotated in turn past our eyes for minute after endless minute, various distorted voices have conversations about not being able to fly above a certain hight. Then the plane lands and another piece of stock footage of a different plane is wheeled out and it starts all over again. (Oh the excitement!) A lot of this film is like that.
7. The Evil Beneath Loch Ness (2002) - Hooooeeey. Okay, My DVD player smells really bad. American researchers discover the Loch Ness Monster and get thrown in Jail by the 'Constable' in charge of the Loch Ness Coast Guard (sic). Obviously the 'Constable' has never seen Jaws. But then he is played by Australian actor Vernon Wells whose greatest moment was probably playing Wez in Mad Max 3. So, bunch of adequate actors struggle manfully to breath life into a really dreadful script - but there is not a lot you can do really with page after page of endless: "What's going on down there? ... talk to me! Can you hear me?" dialogue. You know those scenes in Alien where the thingie is showing up on the scanners but no one can see it and everyone is freaking out and telling each other that they don't know what is going on? This movie was that for 90 minutes but played very very slowly. Underwater. Another outbreak of 'You can't get to there from here' (see Restless Natives in March) in which our hero gets to Loch Ness from Glasgow (I hope he was coming from Glasgow) via the Ballachulish Bridge (visible from my garden - when it's not raining) and the Corran Ferry. Actually you could get to Loch Ness that way but you will have needlessly added a lot of miles to the journey. One of the highlights of the hyperactive 'Making of' featurette is the moment when the costume designer (who glories in the name of True Cross) says, with a dead straight face: "We did a lot of research on the internet, and we talked to everyone we knew who was Scottish... I rented Braveheart."
8. Terminal Invasion (2002) - Bruce 'the Chin' Campbell and Chase 'I was in Star Trek DS9' Masterson save the world from shape changing aliens and just about rescue a TV movie that may have been intended as a pilot. Not very good but not very dreadful either. Just about worth the 33.3p I paid for it at a car boot sale.
9. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004) - visually ravishing but I had no idea what was going on for most of the time.
10. The Princess Bride (1987) - For the umpteenth time. I love this film.
11. Voodoo Man (1944) - a dreadfully dull piece of poverty row bilge directed by the incredibly prolific William "One-Shot" Beaudine. His directorial credits on IMDb start with a short in 1915 and ends over sixty years later with 77 episodes of the Lassie TV series.
12. Killers From Space (1954) - the first half of a dreadful double bill shared with Daughter Number One as we avoid going out into all that horrible sunlight and outdoors stuff by drawing the curtains and watching a couple of real Sunday Afternoon Stinkers. Killers from Space was directed by Billy Wilder's less successful (and far less talented) brother, William Lee Wilder working from a script by his son Myles.
13. Cosmos War of the Planets (1977) - Incomprehensible Italian space operatics that just gets crappier and funnier every time I see it. I really can't think why I keep rewatching it:
    
    
    
    
    Two of the cast trying to work out why
    anyone would want to watch their film.
    
    
    Don't take my word for it. See for yourselves: https://archive.org/details/Cosmos_War_of_the_Planets
14. The Driller Killer (1979) - another of the 'Video Nasties' knocked off the list. Ho hum.
15. Humanoids of the Deep (1996) - a leaden-paced TV remake that makes the original look like a classy piece of work - and the original starred Doug McClure! I will admit to watching the latter half of it on Fast Forward.