‘The Slams’ (1973): Jim Brown kicks ass in violent prison exploiter
What better counterpoint to all that verkakte “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” noise than a violent, nasty blaxploitation/prison epic, starring big, bad Jim Brown?
What better counterpoint to all that verkakte “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” noise than a violent, nasty blaxploitation/prison epic, starring big, bad Jim Brown?
Yeah: so this old sci-fi movie is stupid…but 3D blue Smurfs swimming around for three and a half hours is worthy of serious discussion and $2 billion in ticket sales? It wouldn’t really be a William Castle movie if it wasn’t a little goofy; like so many of his other projects, there is a weird… Read More ‘Project X’ (1968): Cheesy? C’mon, dopes – William Castle thriller is more entertaining than ever!
What if you could travel back in time—say, 1984—to the height of the B-action/adventure ninja craze, and re-live just one moment of your misspent youth—a youth spent wandering the aisles of local mom-and-pop video stores (Hometown Video vs. All That Video for my childhood town of 3,000) and depriving yourself of sleep to catch that… Read More ‘New York Ninja’ (2021): Resurrecting 1984 with love
“The Swarm is coming!” I wish I could somehow convey how imperative and compelling and flat-out exciting those words were to me, way back in 1978, when they were so dramatically intoned in the trailer that seemed to pop up constantly on TV and at every other movie I went to that winter and spring.… Read More ‘The Swarm’ (1978): Is Irwin Allen’s disaster pic one of the worst movies ever made?
John Wayne would have been 115 years old this month (what do you want from me? You come up with these reviews after a 2-week bender).
Hey: there are red flags in even the best relationships. I should have understood that right away when I started dating my wife all those years ago. Now, I let it slide when she said The French Connection and Bullitt were “boring.” And I said, “Fine, whatever,” when she wouldn’t let me hang up my Shaft’s Big… Read More ‘Top Gun’ (1986): A lesson in mid ’80s Hollywood moviemaking
Tough, atmospheric Alistair MacLean thriller.
“Violence is their God… and they hunt in a pack like rabid dogs!”“Get out of their way…if you can!”
Recently having endured the latest—and I pray to God last—James Bond abomination (no, I didn’t pay to see it, and yes, that DVD screener was later used as target practice), I was in desperate need of some corrective movie therapy. Stat. So…since that particular abortion, No Time to Die, decided to lift elements of an earlier… Read More ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ (1969): The best Bond, the best Bond girl, the best Bond movie
He’s crude and he’s rude, and he’s another in a long line of Saturday Night Live underachievers at the big-screen box office. Now, you can catch MacGruber again on home video! Just don’t forget the celery…