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By  Will Silver, on February 6, 2012, 5:20 am  My Name is Shanghai Joe [Il mio nome è Shanghai Joe] (1973)
AKA The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe, The Dragon Strikes Back, Knochenbrecher im wilden Westen (literally translates to: Bone Crusher in the Wild West), Shanghai Joe, To Kill or to Die
Starring Chen Lee, Klaus Kinski, Gordon Mitchell, Claudio Undari, Katsutoshi Mikuriya, Carla Romanelli, Carla Mancini, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, George Wang, Federico Boido, Piero Lulli
Directed by Mario Caiano
Expectations: High, this one looks great and I’ve heard good things.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Usually in films where two distinct genres are mashed together, the end result is less than it could have been. In My Name is Shanghai Joe, I am happy to say that everything comes together in the best, most satisfying way possible. It is a western first, then a kung fu film, but it truly delivers on both levels. It is also nearly non-stop action, with Shanghai Joe moving briskly through the baddies in one great scene after another. I always go into mixed genre films with apprehension, especially ones that mix two of my favorite genres, but My Name is Shanghai Joe does it so well that I had an absolute blast watching it and will definitely be watching this one again.
There isn’t much of a plot to speak of. Shanghai Joe arrives off a presumably slow boat from China in San Francisco of 1882. He quickly buys a stagecoach ticket East to Texas. At every turn, Joe meets up with some of the most racist fuckers ever put onto celluloid, spouting shitty Chinaman jokes one after another. After working his way through tons of these bastards, Joe finally pisses off the wrong dude, who in turn hires four assassins to track down Joe and take him out. These assassins, with such names as Scalper Jack and Pedro the Cannibal, each go down in interesting and fun ways. My Name is Shanghai Joe is a revenge film, but not one to linger on the pain or the regret such killing might lead another hero to contemplate. Instead most of the scenes follow this general framework: Joe enters, the bad guys say some racist shit and attack, Joe fucking annihilates them. It’s truly gratifying to watch and literally never gets old.
Continue reading My Name is Shanghai Joe (1973) →
By Will Silver, on January 31, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Linnea Quigley, Ken Abraham, Michael Aranda, Richard L. Hawkins, Ashlyn Gere (as Kim McKamy), Joi Wilson
Directed by David DeCoteau
Expectations: Low. Early DeCoteau has burned me before, but the poster looks fun.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
I think the best place to start a review of Creepozoids is with the typed narrative intro that informs viewers of the world they are about to inhabit. It reads as follows:
1998 — Six years after the superpowers have engaged in a devastating nuclear exchange,
Earth is now a blackened husk of a planet.
Tiny clusters of survivors eke out a miserable existence in the ruins of the cities, and bands
of deserters roam the barren wastelands… hiding from mutant nomads and seeking shelter
from the deadly acid rains.
This exciting and somewhat clichéd setup is already more story than director David DeCoteau’s first film, Dreamaniac, had, and for the most part Creepozoids delivers on the promises set forth in the text. During the opening credits our group of heroes traverse the burned out urban wasteland, looking to find some shelter before another round of acid rain showers the Earth. Luckily they find what they seek, but unbeknownst to them, they’ve all sought refuge in a government science installation tasked with creating a higher form of life. Since this is a sci-fi/horror film, of course “higher form of life” means a ruthless, unstoppable monster.
Continue reading Creepozoids (1987) →
By Will Silver, on January 23, 2012, 5:20 am 
AKA Mi amigo Mac, Mac – O Extraterrestre, Mac, a földönkívüli barát, Mick… mein Freund vom anderen Stern
Starring Christine Ebersole, Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, Jade Calegory, Vinnie Torrente, Martin West, Ivan J. Rado, Danny Cooksey, Laura Waterbury, Ronald McDonald
Directed by Stewart Raffill
Expectations: I have high hopes that this will deliver some B-Movie fun.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
OK, hear me out! If you’re a child of the 80s like myself, you most likely saw this movie when you were a kid and have some vague memories of how it did a horrible job of ripping off Steven Spielberg’s slightly more famous stranded alien film, E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Like fine wine, time has been very kind to our friend Mac and his zany adventures through the Los Angeles basin, resulting in one of the most unexpectedly fun re-watches in a long time.
The film opens on a distant planet in our solar system. Which planet is never revealed, but the foreboding presence of Saturn overhead suggests that it might be one of the ringed planet’s sixty-two moons. I guess now is a good time to state that it’s important that any sort of analytical or critical thinking must be turned off for the remainder of the film or used simply as comedy, as anything else will only result in sheer disappointment with this cinematic gem. OK, where was I? The planet is inhabited by weird creatures with eternally surprised looks on their faces, doing their best to survive. The dad (or Big Mac) busts into the soil and inserts a makeshift straw, sucking out the life-giving water inside. Due to their surprised facial structure, their mouths are always ready to go for straw-drinking, and with mouths like that I’d imagine the straw would’ve been one of the first tools this species invented… or maybe their world is populated with straw trees and in order to survive the creatures evolved and adapted to use the tools given them by the area they inhabited. It’s questions like this that we’ll never have a definitive answer for, as the promised sequel unfortunately never materialized.
Continue reading Mac and Me (1988) →
By Will Silver, on January 5, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Heather Thomas, Jeffrey Combs, Ashley Ferrare, Dar Robinson, Martine Beswick, Robert Quarry, Martin Landau, Huntz Hall, Troy Donahue, Michael Reagan, Tim Conway Jr., Dawn Wildsmith, Bruce Fairbairn
Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Expectations: Low. I’m expecting some low-budget action trash.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Prior to seeing Cyclone, I had heard the name Fred Olen Ray, but I had never seen any of his work. From the stories I surmised that Cyclone would be ultra low-budget and ultra stupid, but instead it was fucking awesome! It’s definitely low-budget, and high-brow motherfuckers will turn their noses up at its ridiculous plot, but in terms of entertainment value, this is one of the better films I’ve seen in the past few months. Seriously. Maybe this is just disappointment and indifference talking after seeing The Adventures of Tintin and Melancholia in the theaters, but Cyclone is actually a really well made and produced film, featuring incredible car stunts, explosions and a bevy of quality actors.
Cyclone tells the story of Teri (Heather Thomas) and her inventor boyfriend Rick (Jeffrey Combs). Rick has built an incredible motorcycle fitted with armor plating, laser guns and missiles, and now that it’s complete he starts receiving death threats. The couple goes out to celebrate Rick’s completion of the project, but instead of a champagne toast he receives an ice pick to the brain. Now Teri’s duty is to protect the Cyclone from falling into the wrong hands, but in a world inhabited by greedy people, there’s no telling who she can trust.
Continue reading Cyclone (1987) →
By Will Silver, on January 3, 2012, 5:20 am  Starring Rick Gianasi, Mary Fahey, Ron Reynaldi, Taunie Vrenon, Bill Peterson, Mark Umile, Stormy Spill, Doug Devos, Warren Ulaner, Mark Legan, Asie Kid, LeeAnne Baker
Directed by Tim Kinciad
Expectations: Low, but I hope for some good B-Movie fun.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
Mutant Hunt is another Tim Kincaid joint that delivers on the promise his previous films Breeders and Robot Holocaust built up: shitty plots with shitty acting. Where Breeders had little to redeem itself (unless ridiculously gratuitous nudity or women bathing in alien cum is your thing), Robot Holocaust was actually enjoyable in its shittiness. Thankfully, Mutant Hunt continues the upward trend and is easily the most enjoyable Tim Kincaid movie I’ve seen yet. That’s not to say it isn’t a piece of shit though.
I’m really not capable of summarizing the plot of Mutant Hunt. I seriously zoned out every time the characters spoke; my mind compelled me to think of something else every time they started speaking, something of a fail-safe system I guess. What I was able to pick up between battles with my mind dealt with an evil genius with a bunch of cyborg mutants that have been given a drug that makes them find pleasure in killing a human every six hours. After one robot mutant rips the head off of another (the movie has my full attention at this point), the fleet of mutants goes out on the street to kill some mortals. Somehow a few people band together to hunt said mutants, but I was unable to grasp why or how they were connected to the story overall. I know they were at some level, but like I said, I couldn’t fight that fail-safe on my brain.
Continue reading Mutant Hunt (1987) →
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