COMING ATTRACTIONS: THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

Every now and then we like to remember why we started this blog to begin with, which is watching goofy old movies and talking about them. So, coming up later today, let’s all sit back, have a sip of something tasty through our neck holes, and take a fond look at one of Vincent Price’s classics…

COMING ATTRACTIONS: NINJA III: THE DOMINATION

You know, if you’ve only been reading this blog for a few months, nobody could fault you for not knowing it actually started out as a simple movie discussion site. Well, to show that we haven’t completely forgotten our roots, sometime over the next day or two, we’re going to offer up our take on one of the true milestones in cinema… Ninja III: The Domination. Prepare yourselves.

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COMING ATTRACTIONS: REVELATION ROAD 3: THE BLACK RIDER

For the past few months I haven’t done much for Aleteia other than review faith-based films and television shows. That’s fine, but sometimes I wonder why they don’t make some that appeal to my B-Movie sensibilities…

Well, how about that. A review is coming up in a day or three.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: ELYSIUM

I may be on break from Aleteia for a few weeks, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still watch a movie or two. I’ve managed to get a peek at Elysium and later on this week I’ll let everyone know what I thought right here on the ol’ home blog.

Yeah, it’s a little above our usual budget around here, but the subject matter fits in and it’s Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up to District 9, so why not?

COMING ATTRACTIONS: FREEJACK

Thanks to all the time I’ve been spending over at Aleteia watching stuff like The Heat we haven’t had a full-on movie review here for awhile. Well, something needs to be done about that. So sometime over the next couple of days, be sure to keep an eye out for our take on the Emilio Estevez/Mick Jagger sci-fi extravaganza… Freejack!

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COMING ATTRACTIONS: VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET & VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN

Well, today may be a day of fasting, but coming up tomorrow we have a real Valentine’s Day treat for everyone. After years of badgering, one of our most frequent commenters has finally consented to take a shot at reviewing not just one, but two count’em two whole movies. Sort of. But I’ll let her explain that. So join us as Xena Catolica drops by The B-Movie Catechism to ponder Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet (sort of directed by B-movie legend Curtis Harrington, whom we met years ago with Devil Dog) and Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women (sort of directed by Peter Bogdanovich, a future Academy Award nominee, though obviously not for this).

Alas, there doesn’t seem to be any official trailers floating around for either movie, but here’s a couple of fan made previews for Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet that are fun in their own right.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: GARGOYLES

With all the holiday hoopla and church events over the past month, we haven’t had a proper movie review in a good while. That’s probably not a good thing for a movie related site. So, sometime during the next week or so, keep a look out for the user requested review of the 1972 TV movie classic, Gargoyles! There’s no trailer, but this scene should give you a good feel for what the film is about…

COMING ATTRACTIONS: HUNTER PREY

While taking a little time off from blogging for the Thanksgiving holiday, it dawned on me that I still had a few “atheists questions of doom” to get around to addressing. So, what does a little seen low budget space opera have to do with incredulous atheists? Come back in a day or two to find out.

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COMING ATTRACTIONS: REPTILICUS

Well, it looks like my unplanned summer “vacation” is coming to an end and I can start blogging again in a couple of days. So why not celebrate our return with one of the worst of the worst. Yes, it’s high time the B-Movie Catechism brought you… Reptilicus.

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You may end up wishing I had stayed away.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: BAD DREAMS

Nobody requested this next review (why would they) but I’m doing it anyway. This actually started as a small Movie Of The Week post, but after I found myself still typing on it a week and a half later, I realized it was gonna have to be another long winded one (I don’t talk much, but once you get me started…). So, coming up next, it’s…

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OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN!

Forgive me. What with all the little calamities that I’ve been plagued with over the past half year (look’em up in the archives, I won’t bore you with a recap), I once again completely forgot that I had promised one of my readers a review. This time around, it’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, that tragic tale of “the super-octane girls who are old at twenty. If they get to be twenty.” I might have forgotten it forever if a recent post by Simcha Fisher at the National Catholic Register hadn’t started a small argument in the comboxes about movies one should or shouldn’t watch, which in turn jogged my memory about this one. So, since a promise is a promise, I’m going to get this review done in the next week or two, although it’s likely to be one that would have been better NEVER than LATE. Anyway, here’s a reprint of the original Coming Attraction post to remind everyone what’s coming up.

In case there’s still some of you out there who weren’t aware, I take requests for reviews, many of which come in the form of challenges. Of course, that can result in something of a mixed bag. Requests have brought us everything from Santa Claus Conquers The Martians to Satisfaction to I Spit On Your Grave. That’s a pretty wide range of (questionable?) tastes. But even so, there’s still lots of different kinds of movies out there I’ve never touched on. So it was no surprise a few weeks back when an email arrived suggesting that perhaps I was playing it safe and avoiding some of the darker corners of the cult movie universe, that maybe it was time I dealt with… Russ Meyer.

Fair enough, but which one of his movies to review? Obviously, about 80% of Meyer’s oeuvre is automatically disqualified for being nothing more than soft porn. I got some standards, after all. So after going through the list, I narrowed it down to three. Now while Mudhoney contains every theme typically associated with Meyer, there’s really not much to it, so I passed. Trashmeister John Waters called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! the best movie ever made, and it is the very definition of a cult movie, but after watching it again, I actually found it pretty tame compared to the rest of the director’s output and I don’t think that’s what the requester was going for. So that pretty much left me with Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, the first collaboration between Russ and Roger Ebert.

It goes without saying this is one review that won’t be for the kiddies. Wish me luck.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

In case there’s still some of you out there who weren’t aware, I take requests for reviews, many of which come in the form of challenges. Of course, that can result in something of a mixed bag. Requests have brought us everything from Santa Claus Conquers The Martians to Satisfaction to I Spit On Your Grave. That’s a pretty wide range of (questionable?) tastes. But even so, there’s still lots of different kinds of movies out there I’ve never touched on. So it was no surprise a few weeks back when an email arrived suggesting that perhaps I was playing it safe and avoiding some of the darker corners of the cult movie universe, that maybe it was time I dealt with… Russ Meyer.

Fair enough, but which one of his movies to review? Obviously, about 80% of Meyer’s oeuvre is automatically disqualified for being nothing more than soft porn. I got some standards, after all. So after going through the list, I narrowed it down to three. Now while Mudhoney contains every theme typically associated with Meyer, there’s really not much to it, so I passed. Trashmeister John Waters called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! the best movie ever made, and it is the very definition of a cult movie, but after watching it again, I actually found it pretty tame compared to the rest of the director’s output and I don’t think that’s what the requester was going for. So that pretty much left me with Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, the first collaboration between Russ and Roger Ebert.

It goes without saying this is one review that won’t be for the kiddies. Wish me luck.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: 4D MAN

Our next upcoming mega-review is the excellent, yet mostly forgotten, 4D Man from 1959. I think this is the last of the lingering requests out there, so if anybody has a movie they’d like to see me struggle to find some kind of meaning in, now’s the time to toss the title into the hat. I couldn’t find a trailer anywhere for 4D Man, but the following scene pretty much sets up the whole movie and throws in a few bars from the film’s catchy jazz score.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: JAWS - THE SHARKSPLOITATION EDIT

For our next mega-review (which, unlike the last one, will definitely appear in less than eight months) we’ll be watching something a little bit different, Jaws – The Sharksploitation Edit. Unfortunately, as this is a FanEdit, there is no trailer, just the nifty homemade cover art above. Don’t know what a fanedit is? Not to worry, all will be explained. And if you really need some trailers, just stay tuned for the next post.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT

For some strange reason, even though the blog was down for a few weeks, I seem to have actually picked up some new readers. That’s the Internet for you. Oh well, ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die. Or at least do. Because dying for a blog would be, well, stupid.

Anyway, for those of you new to the site, I happily take requests (or more typically challenges) for my longer mega-reviews. The only stipulations are that, with few exceptions, the movies should be low budget for their time period and preferably be something you could have caught at a drive-in.

Our next feature, Demon Knight, comes courtesy of our friend Xena Catolica who, as we’re learning more and more, paid to see some crazy stuff back in the early 90s. Enjoy the trailer, the review will be here… eventually.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

I rarely recommend that anyone actually watch the films I review here. I mean, the words “bad movies” are in the blog description for a reason. But the subject of our next mega-review will be the first one about which I can unjokingly say, “Don’t watch this movie.” I Spit On Your Grave is bad in the true meaning of the word. So why even review it?

Well, for one reason, long time reader Mr. WAC asked me if I would be willing to try and find some “truth” in one of the most depressing movies he had ever seen. I suppose he wants to feel he didn’t flush 100 minutes of his life down the toilet that is I Spit On Your Grave with nothing to show for it. I can’t make any promises, Mr. WAC, but I’ll do what I can.

Secondly, because I already saw I Spit On Your Grave a couple of times back in my less discerning days, I don’t really have to rewatch it now to talk about it. I doubt if I’d do it otherwise.

And third, I just recently found out that a remake is scheduled to be released this fall, a remake which the director promises has “upped the brutality and length of the tortures and kills” and has “a very voyeuristic quality and gritty realism”. Swell. Maybe by discussing the original I can stop someone from unsuspectingly dropping a few dollars on the new and improved version. It’s worth a try.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: VOYAGE OF THE ROCK ALIENS

Coming up next, our first ever musical! Why, oh why do I do these things to myself?

COMING ATTRACTIONS: SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM

Hopefully my long unintended Summer hiatus has come to an end and we can get back to business around here. Assuming I’ve got any readers left, be sure to stick around over the coming months as we have a number of firsts lined up, including our first musical. But before we get to that particular nightmare, we’re going to take our first crack at the venerable genre that is Blaxploitation. Coming soon, courtesy of a request from the even more venerable Mr. WAC, it’s 1973’s Scream Blacula Scream.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: GYMKATA

Sometime last year, in my review of Roller Boogie, I made this statement regarding roller skating champ Jim Bray. “For an athlete tossed in front of a movie camera for the first time, his acting is okay, nowhere near as bad as it could have been. One day, if I’m feeling masochistic, we’ll discuss Kurt Thomas in Gymkata and you will KNOW how bad it could have been.”

Thanks to a request by our old friend Che, that day has come. Egads.

(By the way, I was kind of shocked to look back and realize it took me over a month to deliver my last review. I have a new client at work who is going to keep me working through these rough times, but their time requirements are downright brutal. I’ll try and be quicker this time around, but I still won’t set any records. My thanks to everyone for sticking around even though my posting has had to slow up a bit.)

COMING ATTRACTIONS: WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD

I have to admit I’ve never read a Dan Brown novel nor watched the movie based on his work. I mean, when you’ve had an atheist tell you to avoid them because the man’s books are poorly written and his research is laughable and easily discredited, why bother? But I’m beginning to suspect there just might be a real Catholic conspiracy going on after all. I think my fellow Catholic bloggers are out to get me. First came the request to review Spellcaster, and now from our esteemed friend  Miguel Cuthbert comes an entreaty to see us take on Warrior Of The Lost World. Without the MST3K commentary I might add. Oh yeah. They’re out to get me.

Once again, no trailer for this beauty is available online, but some kind soul has posted the opening scroll on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Do your best to digest it all, there may be a pop quiz later.