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Spooks! (1953) [Halloween Horror Month]

The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry and Shemp) run the Super Slueth Detective Agency (yes, the typo is part of the company’s name) and their specialty is “Divorce Evidence Manufactured to Your Order.” They are hired to find a missing young woman and their strategy is to canvas the area where she disappeared by disguising themselves as door-to-door pie salesmen handing out free samples. When they hear her scream from a seemingly abandoned house, they gain entrance and find they are in the lair of the crazed scientist Dr. Jekyll, who with his fearsome henchman Mr. Hyde are planning to transplant the young woman’s brain into a gorilla that they are keeping in a cage.
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Jaws 3D (1983)

With all that we now know about marine parks, Joe Alves’ “Jaws 3” isn’t just a terrible film, but it’s also one filled with awful undertones. The cast of “rah rah America actors with white teeth spend the majority of the mostly dull “Jaws 3D” obliviously trying to turn the newest discovery of a massive great white in to a new attraction. Meanwhile the writers and producer seem to turn “Jaws 3D” in to an almost pitch video for the Jaws ride in Universal. After “Black Fish” in 2013 we learned so much the heinous treatment of these poor animals, and how there are aren’t any real winners or losers.

There is just a mangled shark, imprisoned dolphins, and loyal scuba expert Matthew.

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BAD MOVIE MONDAY: AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983)

It’s almost impossible to explain to the “kids” today what the short lived but intense fascination that studios had with 3D back in the eighties was all about. Because I was there at the time and I still don’t know what it was all about. If you’re not hip to eighties stuff, let me explain. Between 1981 and 1983 there were around a dozen movies shot in 3D. Among those released were: Coming at Ya, Parasite, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. Jaws 3D, Friday The 13th Part 3 in 3D, along with today’s film Amityville 3D. Truth be told, it all seemed like a pointless waste of money.

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30 Years Later, I’m Still a Big Fan of “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare”

You could probably make a great argument that the only reason why I love “Freddy’s Dead” is because of the memories attached to it. Back in 1991, Freddy Krueger was still a household name, and him dying on film was a big deal. My dad took my brother and I to see “Freddy’s Dead” when it premiered and it was the first (probably only) 3D movie going experience I’d ever had. We had a great time, and then afterward we went to have pizza and we were allowed to blow quarters on a Simpson arcade in the pizzeria. We then went home to watch “Eerie, Indiana.”

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When the World’s Fair Changed the Movies

Many of the most significant changes in film technology and presentation did not occur in a commercial theater, but in the specialized venues of World’s Fair exhibitions. On this episode, historian Charles Pappas, author of the new book “Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs, and Robot Overlords: How World’s Fairs and Trade Expos Changed the World,” discusses how World’s Fair audiences came to experience a very different approach to film – as well as learning how live TV broadcasting got its foothold in the 1939 New York’s World’s Fair.

The episode can be heard here. Please note: There is a very brief technical glitch in the beginning of the episode. We apologize for that audio oops.

“The Online Movie Show” is produced at the Platinum Wolfe Studios.

Shark Night 3D (2011)

Sara Paxton, Sara Paxton, and Sara Paxton. Now that you know why I saw “Shark Night” in the first place, let’s skip the excuses. And it’s only apt, since “Shark Night” should really be called “All the Boys Love Sara Paxton.” It feels like the studio only had sharks in a lake as a concept for a film and basic outline. They then discovered they were casting Sara Paxton, and they basically built the film around her. What starts as a goofy yarn about sharks in a lake, transforms in to Sara Paxton vs. Sharks in a Lake. The film is a love letter to Paxton and her absolutely unique sex appeal. She’s a country born small town ideal college girl who everyone wants. Guys flirt with her, girls hang around her, and even her own dog refuses to leave her side. She engages in a high speed chase with the local sheriff who happens to be her friend and he laughs off her fleeing, flirts with her, and has a beer! Even after she and her friends are hunted by sharks while their friend bleeds to death from a bitten off arm, the men still try to get Paxton’s character in to the sack.

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Jackass 3D (2010)

“That’s the story of Jackass there! Pissing in the wind!”

Sure, “Jack Ass” May have stumbled with the first film which was just so many layers of pure awful.

Knoxville (pictured) getting mauled. For fun!

But with the sequel, Johnny Knoxville and the guys sort of learned their lesson in spite of its success and turned their antics in to performance art of a sorts. They’ve taken the art of acting like morons and turned it in to a form or pre-orchestrated and carefully planned nihilism that is both very funny and always has something of a point to make.

Take for example the sheer ludicrousness of Knoxville dressed as an old man making out with his under aged (an obviously aged actress pretending to be a teen) grand daughter and no one at all reacting to the display of the two kissing and nearly dropping down to the floor humping. It’s insane how by now Knoxville has figured out that he’s never going to be anything but the man behind “Jackass” so he’s taken that and made it in to a form of art where it’s often a new kind of silent film.
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