John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness,” the second leg in the “Apocalypse Trilogy” is a horrifying film about the apocalypse and one of the many Carpenter films where good fights evil and evil wins. Again. And again. It’s interesting that “Prince of Darkness” is almost a precursor to the found footage film boom of the mid aughts, as director John Carpenter stages a series of dream sequences void of cinematic flare. Through fuzzy hand held cameras, he manages to stage numerous horrific dream sequences signaling the coming of the anti-god, and the anti-Christ, all the while using it as a means of expressing how imminent the apocalypse is. The thirty second dream sequences are much more horrifying than most found footage films I’ve ever seen.
Memoirs of a Gay Porn Critic
I’m a gay porn critic.
No, not really. I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I used to review porn, but that’s beside the point.
A long time ago I got in to a bit of a verbal war with their Asylum Entertainment’s most noted director who engaged in a back and forth with me for a long time, and even took exception to my bashing of his films on a major independent film website. Often I spent my days on another message board on my online haunts discussing the terrible movies coming from the Asylum, and often times I was inundated with attacks from people in the studios.
Monday Movie Pause: Honest Trailers: World War Z (2013)
Not that Honest Trailers needs the promotion (we’re huge fans), but I appreciate their destruction of “World War Z,” a movie I hated not just because it was an adaptation of the book in name only, but because it was tame, boring, poorly written, and turned a story about humanity coming together in to a jingoistic video game. Thank you, Honest Trailers.
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels: The Complete Series (DVD)
Pretty much all of the later series from Hanna Barbera included a group of snot nosed teens solving crime along with some odd sidekick. After “Scooby Doo” the company repeated the successful formula thirty times with varied results. Often times it was incredibly awful like “Jabberjaw” and sometimes it was fun like “Space Ghost.” One of the last Hanna Barbera shows to feature that awkward laugh track addition, “Captain Caveman” mixes the studios odd fixation on the stone age, with crime solving teens, and the whole “Scooby Doo” formula to create a pretty decent animated adventure show.
Marine Boy: The Complete First Season (DVD)
The 1966 Anime import comes to DVD in its complete first season, ready to be scooped up by Anime buffs, everywhere. Similar in vein to “Kimba” and “Speed Racer,” “Marine Boy” was taken to America to air with a dubbed voice track, editing, and a new theme song. In its American form, “Marine Boy” is a fun and harmless animated series that really acts upon basic ideas of story structure while giving audiences some rousing entertainment.
The "Wonder Woman" Pilot (2011)
Well if anything Adrianne Palicki is gorgeous. But it’s tough to really root for a super heroine who walks as if she’s desperately trying to maintain her top. Which she really is. Poor Palicki is given such a poor costume that her glittery top looks like it’s going to slide down and show off her skin any moment. Plus, the costume just looks so damn confining and uncomfortable. And then we meet Diana Themyscira who is Wonder Woman on the side fighting crime, capturing villains and refusing to turn them over to authorities because “they’ll lawyer up.”
Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch!: The Complete Animated Series (DVD)
“Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!” is best left for nostalgia fans and animation collectors. While it’s by no means the worst of the Hanna Barbera animated shows, it’s yet another of their derivative titles. If you think you’ve seen “Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!” before then you have. It was called “Yogi Bear.”