Good Trash

Phantom Town (1999)

Phantom Town (1999)
AKA Spooky Town

Starring John Patrick White, Taylor Locke, Lauren Summers, Jim Metzler, Belinda Montgomery, Gabriel Spahiu, Jimmy Herman, Jeff Burr, Iuliana Ciugulea, Dan Badarau

Directed by Jeff Burr

Expectations: Moderate.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Phantom Town may be a simple retelling of the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers story, but it’s overwhelmingly well-made, and will please all the B-Movie fans in your household. One night, a bunch of home alone kids throw a massive party for their friends. When their mother calls to check on them, they freak out! Hey guys, scram! Mom’s coming home! But this freak-out is nothing compared to the fear that sets in when Mom and Dad’s phone call cuts short as they drive into the mysterious town of Long Hand. They never make it home, so the kids go out the next night to look for signs of what might have happened. Instead, they find the Last Chance Trading Post, where an old Native American man tells them that Long Hand has been gone for a hundred years, and the only way there is to dream your way in. Whoa, man, that’s so heavy!

As is tradition in the Moonbeam films, young children who watch the film will get what is perhaps their first tastes of many things. Things like: the dread of waking up and realizing that your parents are probably dead, the concept of taking matters into your own hands by jumping in a car and sneaking out on your current guardians, the idea that you have a soul and that it can be taken, the thin line that defines one’s mortality, the existential question of meaning… y’know, all the common playground topics. I don’t object to any of these as I’m not a parent, but I can imagine parents these days getting twisted about this stuff being in a supposed family film. If anything, I think it would help kids deal with their fears of soul-stealing alien cowboys, but what do I know?

Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight (1994)

Starring Brian Cousins, Jennifer Nash, Michael Della Femina, Curt Lowens, David Kaufman, Alan Oppenheimer, Aharon Ipalé, Jake McKinnon

Directed by Jack Ersgard

Expectations: Low.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

I hope you like storylines that don’t make sense, title characters that aren’t the main characters and a whole hell of a lot of WTF fun, because Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight is chock full of all of those! Shot back-to-back with its predecessor, Mandroid, Invisible is a both a follow-up and a much different style of film. Where Mandroid attempted a traditional story, Invisible gives a big invisible finger to all that and decides to do exactly whatever it wants to. It’s not a very good movie, but if you’re ready for whatever it throws at you, it’s hard not to be entertained by it all.

This one is purely for those that have a good working knowledge of Mandroid‘s intricacies, though, as it never seeks to explain what happened in the previous film, or even to properly set this film up as its own thing. It just jumps right in, so if you’re not already on-board, they don’t have time to go back and pick you up. With a slim runtime of under 80 minutes, nearly every moment of Invisible is devoted to delivering incredible entertainment. It doesn’t always deliver on that promise, but when it does it’s ridiculously fun.

Meet the Feebles (1989)

Starring Danny Mulheron, Donna Akersten, Stuart Devenie, Mark Hadlow, Ross Jolly, Brian Sergent, Peter Vere-Jones, Mark Wright, Jay Snowfield, Doug Wren

Directed by Peter Jackson

Expectations: Moderately high. I expect to like this more this time.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Meet the Feebles is a film chock full of wild & crazy stuff to talk about, but the sheer amount of wild & crazy stuff is also what makes it so hard to find where to start. Meet the Feebles is a film out of deep, deep left field and it takes a certain type of soul to enjoy it. You’ve got to be pretty warped, and I’m actually pretty proud to say that I enjoy it more and more every time I see it. This is also the first film where Peter Jackson and special FX wizard Richard Taylor worked together, forging a collaborative bond that continues to this day on the Hobbit films. And speaking of The Hobbit, the guy that played the dwarf Dori, Mark Hadlow, was the voice of Heidi the Hippo, ~~Wobert~~ Robert and Barry the Bulldog all these years back!

But what is Meet the Feebles about? That’s a hard question to answer. Its plot is loose and episodic, telling the story of an entire performing company’s downfall as opposed to just focusing on a couple of its characters. There is something of a hero, and a couple of villains, but mostly it moves seamlessly and quickly through its characters to tell the overall story of the day’s rehearsal leading up to the live Feebles Variety Hour. Oh, and they’re all puppets except for the big characters which are played by people in suits.

The Secret Kingdom (1998)

The Secret Kingdom (1998)
AKA The Tiny Kingdom

Starring Billy O’Sullivan, Tricia Dickson, Andrew Ducote, Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Jamieson Price, Andreea Macelaru, Florin Chiriac, Constantin Barbulescu, Bogdan Voda, Eugen Cristea

Directed by David Schmoeller

Expectations: Moderate.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Like many Moonbeam films, The Secret Kingdom starts out with a fun premise and then drives it into the ground. Well, in this case they drive it under the sink, and I really shouldn’t be that harsh. Most of The Secret Kingdom is unadulterated WTF fun. The film opens in New Orleans, and surprise, surprise — it’s actually New Orleans! Later, the film transitions to the Romanian locales you expect from this era of Full Moon, but the series of events that opens the film would be fantastic no matter where they were shot.

The Secret Kingdom starts with a boy in his early teens, staring at his toy horseman. He compares it to the statue of the horseman in the square in front of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. He goes back to staring at the toy intently, and then walks around New Orleans. Some might call this the most exciting introductory scene to a movie ever, but I thought it went on for a ridiculous amount of time… long enough for me to think, “WHAT IS GOING ON?” Thankfully, it gets a lot more interesting, real fast. And by “interesting,” I mean that it dives deep into WTF territory.

Lockout (2012)

Starring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Vincent Regan, Joseph Gilgun, Lennie James, Peter Stormare, Jacky Ido, Tim Plester, Mark Tankersley, Anne-Solenne Hatte, Peter Hudson

Directed by James Mather & Stephen St. Leger

Expectations: Moderate.

Lockout isn’t a movie I watched because I expected it to be good, I watched it because I expected it to be fun. There was a time when I scoffed at every pseudo-science fiction film Hollywood churned out, angry that my beloved genre was getting such a shaft in the name of dumb action. But times have changed and I’ve softened on these types of films quite a bit, so when I saw the trailer for this film set in a space prison, I was game. It really doesn’t take much these days.

Lockout tells the story of a guy named Snow, who’s NOT supposed to be some sort of Snake Plissken-esque character. He’s tasked with infiltrating MS-1, a maximum security space prison to rescue the president’s daughter. OK, I lied, he is supposed to be Snake Plissken-esque. But where the story and the character are pure retread, its execution is a little more interesting than simple ripoff (or homage, depending on your point of view).

Story of Ricky (1991)

Story of Ricky [力王] (1991)
AKA Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, Riki-Oh, Lik Wong, King of Strength

Starring Fan Siu-Wong, Fan Mei-Sheng, William Ho Ka-Kui, Yukari Oshima, Tetsuro Tamba, Gloria Yip Wan-Yee, Phillip Kwok Chun-Fung, Lam Suet, Koichi Sugisaki, Frankie Chan Chi-Leung, Chan Ging, Chan Kwok-Bong, Chang Gan-Wing, Lam Kai-Wing

Directed by Lam Nai-Choi

Expectations: High. It’s been too long since I’ve seen this.

By 2001 AD, capitalistic countries have privatized all government organizations. Prisons, like car-parks, have become franchised business…

Just like real life!

Like Escape From New York, Story of Ricky tells the story of a man being sent to prison. But unlike Snake Plissken, Ricky holds the ability to literally punch through anything, and he does just that in nearly every one of his scenes in the film. And when I say anything, I mean it. The dude puts his fist through everything it comes in contact with: heads, walls, prison bars, stomachs, elbows, other fists… the list goes on. The amount of insanely over-the-top gore is off the chart, making Story of Ricky an absolute must-see.

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Starring David Carradine, Simone Griffeth, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Woronov, Roberta Collins, Martin Kove, Louisa Moritz, Don Steele, Joyce Jameson, Carle Bensen, Sandy McCallum

Directed by Paul Bartel

Expectations: High. It’s one of the most famous low-budget movies of the ’70s! Of course I’m excited!

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Do you have a buxom beauty of a navigator sitting by your side as you read this review? No? Well, then you’re doing it wrong! That’s the only way to successfully make your way through the Annual Transcontinental Death Race! Death Race 2000 is a movie that defies all expectations and delivers pretty much non-stop fun throughout. There are moments here and there that don’t hold up as well as they would’ve nearly 40 years ago, but that’s OK; Death Race 2000 more than makes up for it with heaped-on excess and wonderful satire.

Death Race 2000 doesn’t really concern itself with setting up the world, and we’re dropped right into the race’s opening ceremonies as the film opens. We’re introduced to all the crazy drivers and their wacky cars, and instantly I realized that this was not the dystopian version of the future I had expected, where American spectators rallied around a show that glorified vehicular violence. Instead, Death Race 2000 is a dystopian version of the future by way of Wacky Races, where American spectators rally around a show that glorifies vehicular violence. It’s a fine line, but it makes a world of difference.