Ib Melchior:Inside Stories
This book was a long time coming. We’ve needed it for many reasons, not the least of which is setting the record straight. No one in Hollywood ever had to fight harder to get real science fiction in front of…
Angry Red Planet
The Angry Red Planet (aka Invasion of Mars and Journey to Planet Four) is a 1959 science fiction film starring Gerald Mohr and directed by Ib Melchior. Melchior was only given 10 days and a budget of $200,000 to make…
The Bursting Of A Movie Bubble
The indie film industry is cannibalizing itself. Manohla Dargis is right – there are too many films in the ecosystem. And this oversupply didn’t just happen. John Sloss warned back in 2007 that the industry’s problem was not a shortage of films, but a…
Harold Ramis, Thanks For The Laughs
Harold Ramis, a writer, director and actor whose boisterous but sly silliness helped catapult comedies like “Groundhog Day,” “Ghostbusters,” “Animal House” and “Caddyshack” to commercial and critical success, died on Monday in his Chicago-area home. He was 69. The cause…
Destination Moon
The 1950 film Destination Moon, based on the Heinlein book, is incredible for it’s accuracy of what was to come 19 years later. To show rocket physics in simple terms a Woody Woodpecker cartoon is used. Unlike some of the…
Dead Heads
A bloke wakes up in the middle of a zombie outbreak, we’ve all seen this before, but he doesn’t realise he IS a zombie! This movie was hilarious, a lot of references in it too, like when the car breaks…
Chiller Theatre
Chiller Theatre was a late-night horror and science fiction movie program on WIIC/WPXI, Channel 11, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It aired from September 14, 1963 to January 1, 1984. It was hosted by Bill Cardille, known to fans as “Chilly Billy“. It…
The Impact Of Dawn Of The Dead
The Dead Will Walk (2004) is a documentary on the making of Dawn of the Dead and the perspective of it’s impact from those who made it. This doco is also included in the special edition DVD of Dawn of…
The Paperboy
The most notable thing about The Paperboy was that it was written by David E Peckinpah, nephew of famous director Sam Peckinpah. Beyond that, it’s the kind of straight to video thriller audiences should be familiar with by now. The…
Incubus
INCUBUS is a most unusual, and unique “odd duck”; a gothic fairy tale screenplay filmed as an abstract horror movie, in the style of the European symbolists. Filming the script in an unknown language (“Esperanto”) assures that the film must…
Making Movies in Florida
The habit of bribing a manufacturer to move to Florida on grounds it creates jobs has been proven, time and again, a fool’s deal. Gifts of buildings, huge tax breaks and public expense to provide what is essentially private infrastructure,…
Vulgar Auterism
As late winter segues into early spring, movie fans are generally treated to the dregs at the bottom of each studio’s respective coffee pot: be they tonal misfires, bungled vanity projects or top-to-bottom exercises in abject misery, there’s often…
A Boy and His Dog B Movie Brilliance
1975’s “A Boy And His Dog” defies categorization, much like the outspoken author who penned its Nebula-winning source novella. Harlan Ellison has resisted the genre label for his entire 900+ short story career (“call me a ‘science fiction’ writer, and…
Run for the Sun
A pair of scribes find themselves on the run from a hunting party in this sweaty jungle thriller adapted from Richard Connell’s famous story, “The Most Dangerous Game.” Connell was a born writer. His dad owned a paper,…
Sharknado 2 Starts Filming
The first one was a huge hit and nearly caused a Twitter meltdown. And now the sequel to Sharknado has started production and it’s taking a bite out of the Big Apple. Ian Ziering and Vivica A. Fox…
Knights of Badassdom
IDIOTS MIGHT GRIN when they see a fiery-eyed, supernatural Peter Dinklage give a knowing smile while avenging his bloody death at the teeth and talons of a hell-spawned succubus near the end of Knights of Badassdom. (Whoops! Spoiler alert!) He’s…
Amazing New/Old B Movie Releases
Foreign Correspondent: four stars out of five — Alfred Hitchcock made so many great movies, some of the genius gets lost in the gushing praise for Psycho and North By Northwest — and all the other movies with big American…
Great B Movie Titles
Last week, fuelled by the prospect of watching a real film called Zombeavers, we set you an impossible task. Could you, an average layperson, come up with a B-movie title even better than that? You didn’t let us down. In…
Robocop Remake Abandons Much Of Original
Robocop isn’t a terrible movie. While that may not sound like a winning endorsement, the remake actually does a few things right. The original Paul Verhoeven classic is very much a product of the ’80s and uses ultra-violence as well…
Another Bad Vampire Movie: Vampire Academy
I’m not even going to try to resist: “Vampire Academy” sucks. Horrid performances by the cast, an outlandish script, abysmal directing and fourth-rate special effects–“Vampire Academy” is an absolute train wreck. Now believe it or not, I walked into this…