TheRetroCritic

Ah The Manitou ... How many movies do you know in which an old lady, out of nowhere, starts dancing, chanting, then hovering down a corridor before falling down a flight of stairs? Not many. This cult oddity courtesy of William Girdler, director of such hits as Project: Kill and Day Of The Animals , is certainly the weirdest movie I've seen in a while. And by "weirdest" I mean "most awesome". The film sees Tony Curtis play a psychic (of sorts) whose partner discovers a growth on her neck. Of course, the growth starts to expand until it becomes apparent that a foetus is living in it. Surgeons make attempts at removing it but in vain, as the lump holds no ordinary child but rather the spirit of an old Native American medicine man who is reincarnating himself through this random woman's neck. Why is that happening? Who cares!? It's happening and it's great. Curtis spends most of the movie trying to figure out a way to remove the blaste

There was an obvious way to adapt a novel geniusely called "The Space Vampires" : Planet Terror -style, with Grindhouse tongue-in-cheek mayhem and gallons of blood being thrown at you. Director Tobe Hooper, it turns out, was the right man for the job when it came to turning The Space Vampires into Lifeforce , a much more interesting take on a pretty silly premise. The movie sees astronauts reach a planet, fly through its space colon and uncover a bunch of giant bats and three naked people in glass coffins. The plan? Bring all that shit back to Earth, of course! Because war, disease and poverty aren't quite enough: we need space vampires in our lives. Soon enough, one of those alien beings wakes up and causes mayhem. Turns out, those good-looking weirdos from outer space can literally suck the life out of you through intense electrical make-out sessions and turn you into one of them. It becomes up to a total of two dudes with bad haircuts to try and sort out this whol

After The Polar Express , one of the weirdest-looking animations of recent times, Robert Zemeckis then decided to (wisely) go down the Pixar route and gave up on trying to get his characters to look as real as possible, instead keeping them stylized and cartoonish to a certain extent. This worked out ok for A Christmas Carol and this earlier, Halloween-themed effort which he produces. Monster House sees a group of 3 kids find out that the house across the street, where a scary old man lives, is not only haunted but alive and literally attacking people if they get too close. It's an odd but kinda genius take on the slasher genre as our serial killer isn't even flesh and blood but wood and brick! I love the design of the house, by the way, director Gil Kenan ( City Of Ember ) finds a whole bunch of clever ways to make it into a real threat for our characters: its walls become teeth, the trees around it become its arms and hands, it swallows anything that lands on its front

Tim Burton's own short Frankenweenie certainly had potential so a remake sounded good but risky. After all, Burton is being criticized these days for doing the same type of thing over and over and his work gets it in the neck for lacking originality altogether so an adaptation of his own short was always going to provoke critics. Not this time, though. Dark Shadows was enjoyable enough but there really wasn't that much to it, Alice In Wonderland did really well at the box-office but the feedback wasn't exactly positive. Well, it's Disney time again and, believe it or not, they finally got it right! And the irony is they got it right with a film based on a short they rejected back in the day for being too dark. If anything, this slick new stop-motion Frankenweenie is darker and infinitely more twisted than its low-budget little brother. Burton has assembled a vintage Burton cast this time with the likes of Martin Short ( Mars Attacks! ), Catherine O'Hara ( B

Watching Teen Wolf as a kid was a treat. I remember just waiting impatiently every time for the first full transformation scene with the dad showing up looking comically fluffy in the end. A fan of the cartoon series, watching the live-action feature was simply awesome. And you know what? I still love that shit! Is it dated? Of course! But that only adds RetroJoy to my RetroGasm. You've got all the cliches of an 80's sports flick, the typical teen movie metamorphosis-as-puberty thing and, of course, a whole bunch of werewolfy events. Like Fright Night , Once Bitten or The Lost Boys , Teen Wolf was an attempt at taking the monster movie genre and making it teen-friendly, reinventing the old genre in a light-hearted horror/comedy setting rather than handling it in the usual gothic style we all know and love. This, of course, was hit and miss depending on the film but Teen Wolf is one that worked. Michael J. Fox is Scott Howard, a regular kid for whom being what he call

The RetroCritic needs YOU ! So yeah, I'll be making a new short next February/March: think Ed Wood's Bride Of The Monster meets Bride Of Frankenstein . The short will be a springboard to my first feature Dr Vornoff vs The Martians! which I'm looking to shoot next Summer. So if you're at all interested in either film, check out the link below and contribute however you can, loads of rewards on offer! More info on the project itself on the Razorhead Films blog: http://www.razorheadfilms.blogspot.com And, as ever, if you want to help out in other ways here's the email: razorheadfilmsltd@gmail.com Thanks guys!

J.J. Abrams: clever, sometimes great writer, good filmmaker but most importantly genius promoter. The man could make you want to watch anything with a single poster or a teaser/promo. When it comes to marketing a gimmicky concept, you can't beat J.J.. Look at Lost : amazing build-up, uninspired first season. Cloverfield ? Brilliant promo, pedestrian film. Star Trek ? Huge expectations, decent-enough silly romp. There seems to be a pattern of disappointment following every great build-up and I'm sorry to say Super 8 is no exception. Some of the blame for Super 8's failure to impress could be put on Steven Spielberg who might have influenced the film positively (the kids are great and the film definitely has a lot of heart) but also doomed it to being just an E.T. B movie, nothing more. I'm not saying it's Mac & Me but still. Abrams himself should have known better. With a film like this, in which the main "attraction", in this case an alien, is

Basket Case may be a one joke movie, but what a joke it is. Guy carries around a basket with a monster in it (well...brother...long story) and the monster is sent off to kill a bunch of seedy doctors. It's a revenge movie with horror, drama, romance, monster rape: it's got it all! This first instalment is very low budget so expect something gritty looking and very DIY in its approach but there's plenty of fun to be had with the use of stop-motion animation, entertaining comedy side characters and loads of blood...oh and one of the longest (read: pointless) and most elaborate flashbacks you're likely to see. The mystery shrouding the basket itself during the first half hour is actually pretty clever in the way it's handled. The anticipation is nail-biting and the reveal: delightful! The murders are as wacky and colourful as you'd expect and although the story is pretty slight and the acting mostly dire it's all worth it just to get to the odd

As far as bad movies go, it's hard to do better than this little nugget. Unless you're Tommy Wiseau. Then again, compared to other equally terrible creations, 666 The Demon Child is actually very entertaining: plastic devil babies, giant eggs, old men with tattoos, archaeologists, still images of the sky, the same annoying sound of like 10 babies all whining in unison repeated A THOUSAND times!!! What's not to like? From the soporific opening in which an old Native American man walks for about 10 minutes before uttering the immortal line: "And now, it begins!" to the genuinely perplexing end "twist" (think the end of Godzilla except you can't actually tell what you're even looking at), The Demon Child is one of those cinematic catastrophes which has to be seen to be believed. Needless to say the acting is beyond terrible, the script and direction are abysmal, the lighting minimalist to say the least (one light?), the sound dis

Ed Wood directs this masterpiece of mediocrity which stars Bela Lugosi as mad scientist Dr Erik Vornoff and Tor Johnson as his lumbering disciple Lobo. And although entertainment-wise it's no Plan 9 From Outer Space , there is definitely plenty to enjoy here. For one thing the dramatic score is pretty unforgettable and is about as perfect as an OTT monster movie can hope for. Then there's Bela Lugosi who defines the word HAM but does so with so much style that he is actually rather good. The slight story is essentially just an excuse to include stock footage of an octopus and atomic blasts. Ed Wood certainly doesn't disappoint here as his titular Bride acts more wooden than the sets themselves, scenes drag on for what seems like forever and the plot digs more holes into itself than...something with lots of holes. Damn metaphors... Overall, although the pace is a tad more soporific than Plan 9, there are enough ridiculous moments and clunky lines to make Bride Of The