Early Review of Jailbait/17 & Life: Jailbait (2013)

Early Review of Jailbait/17 & Life: Jailbait (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 91 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: After killing her stepfather in self-defense, Anna Nix is sent to a juvenile detention center. As she struggles to survive in a world of girl gangs and predatory guards, kind-hearted Anna must fight her dark side to stay above the fray.

Review: While still technically on my self-imposed Christmas Break from this blog, Asylum-Regular Jared Cohn (director of such Asylum classics as 12/12/12, Hold Your Breath, and one of my personal favorites Attack from Beneath, aka Atlantic Rim) asked if I would be interested in receiving a screener copy of his latest film for that company for early review, Jailbait (also referred to as 17 and Life: Jailbait) so of course I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately that was before I was plagued by a seemingly a never-ending stream of computer and Internet issues which prevented me from watching the movie or updating my blog for almost a month, but now with all those issues sorted out I was finally able to sit down and give this gritty prison-set drama/thriller a look-see.

And ohhh boy. Gritty is a bit of an understatement here. Jailbait is the kind of dark and gritty throwback to 1970s prison sexploitation flicks that makes you feel icky and dirty just watching it, and chances are if you're any bit normal and right in the head you'll feel like you need to take a shower right after watching it to wash off all the mental dirt and grit.

It starts right from the get-go with setting the tone that is to follow during the entire movie – lead actress Sara Malakul Lane plays a pleasant and shy cello-playing girl that ends up getting violently beaten and raped by her father, who she then accidentally murders while defending herself. It's this act that lands her in the prison that the main bulk of the movie takes place in, and things only get worse for her from there, having to deal with corrupted guards, brutal beatings by her fellow female inmates, continuous rape by the Warden, constant fighting and brawls with rival gangs, drug addiction, and having to go up against guards in full riot gear during scraps that get way out of hand (as well as plenty of other similar-style situations that I'll leave for you to discover on your own). It's almost hard to believe that in real life director Jared Cohn and actress Sara Malakul Lane are actually an item, because he really does not hold back on constantly putting her character through one horrifying deprecating act after another, and hardly a scene goes by that doesn't end with her naked. And what makes it all the more brutal and hard to watch is that everything that happens to her is portrayed and shot in a very realistic manner, almost at times feeling like it's on the verge of being a snuff film.

A movie like this is so gritty, disturbing, and filled with certain content matter that makes it certainly not for everyone. However if you like delving into the 1970s prison/sex exploitation movies of old, this is a great and faithful throwback to those kinds of movies so I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and you can even check it out for yourself on Tuesday, December 31st when it comes out on home video formats.

Personally though, for me, I'm not a fan of those kinds of movies and tend to not really give them a second glance because quite frankly, I just don't feel comfortable with a lot of the subject matter that usually comes with them. However, there's no denying the level of talent on display here in Jailbait (or 17 & Life: Jailbait if that's the version of the title they ultimately go with) - From Jared Cohn's stylistic directing that fits the tone of the movie very well and even helps hold it up a bit higher than what you would expect from such a film, to Scott Glasgow's moody and foreboding musical score, right down to Sara Malakul Lane's excellent ranged performance that without, there would have been no way her character, nor her character's mental journey and transition, would have been sold nearly as well to the audience.

In addition to her, most of the other actors here, especially when it comes to a couple of the more recurring prisoner characters like the ones played by Erin O'Brien and Jennifer Robyn Jacobs, and even the perverted Warden as played by Steve Hanks, also bring better-then-expected performances. Between all these people, the movie is given much more finesse then you would expect not just from a gritty sexploitation film like this one, but from an Asylum film in general. Yes it's a dirty, gritty, disturbing, and at times perverted film that deals with rape, beatings, and drug addiction among many other things, but it never once feels like it's reveling in that but instead approaches it from an almost respectful manner (well, as respectful as you can be, given the subject matter), and the whole package delivers a high level of tension that is sure to leave you on the edge of your seat and ends in a pretty worthy payoff by the time the credits start rolling. 

My only real complaint about the whole affair is the lack of actual plot. The movie moves from one uncomfortable-to-sit-through scene after another, during which we get to see the main character transform from who she is at the beginning of the movie to who she becomes during it, but there's not really any plot to speak of and most of the scenes, honestly, could be rearranged and take place in a different order and the movie itself wouldn't really be any different.

While it's no secret that I didn't care for 12/12/12, I thought Hold Your Breath was competently-made and Atlantic Rim (or rather Attack From Beneath) was one of the most fun times I've spent with an Asylum movie to date. However, putting aside my own personal preference of not really liking some of the subject matter here and speaking purely in terms of the filmmaking and the level of talent, Jailbait is easily the best from both Jared Cohn and Sara Malakul Lane to date and it makes me excited to see what these two do throughout 2014, be it together or separately.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take that shower.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

The 10 Best B-Movies of 2013

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Puppet Master (1989)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Full Moon Entertainment 

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: Andre Toulon, a puppet maker, discovers an ancient Egyptian potion and uses it to bring his creations to life but than kills himself in his hotel room before the Nazis can force him to give up his secrets. Decades later, psychics visiting the now-abandoned hotel tune into the existence of the monstrous marionettes and set off to discover the secrets that the hotel holds.

Review: Having recently obtained Puppet Master X: Axis Rising and in preparation of watching that entry for the first time, I've started my re-watch of the complete Puppet Master series, where I plan on doing up a review of each one. I actually wanted to have some of these done sooner but, as anybody who lives in Canada will already know, we here in Newfoundland have been going through quite a 'not a crisis' (as our political leaders would like us to believe, despite the opposite being true) which included week-long power outages, little to no heat, rotating blackouts, devastating snowstorms, and just all around one of the worst winters on record for us. Suffice to say having unreliable to no power made it difficult to get much watched or reviewed, but it's been a whole 12 hours now with power (a huge feat for this last week), so I squeezed this one in.

Now obviously this is the infamous and classic first movie in Puppet Master series, and one of few Full Moon movies to get a theatrical release.

And to be 100% honest, this is nowhere near my favorite in the series. Sure, it's better then some of the other ones by a long shot (Puppet Master Legacy, I'm looking at you...), and for such a low budget movie from the 1980's, the stop motion of the puppets is amazing (more on that below), but overall I just wasn't too impressed by the freshman effort in this long-lasting horror series.

To start, absolutely nobody in this movie is likable and therefore there's no character to latch onto and care about, so you just don't care about anything that's happening when they're front and center, which is the majority of the time. To make matters worse, it certainly doesn't help that the acting is so wooden and stiff, it's not even in the so-bad-its-laughable arena, it's just in the not-enjoyable-to-spend-time-with-these-people arena, which adds further disdain onto already-unlikable characters. I also didn't care for the fact that everyone was pretty hardcore psychic to totally unrealistic levels - there was just no need for that addition as it didn't really bring anything to the table other than a couple weird dream-like scenes, and it completely removed that feeling that most horror movies strive for to make it feel like what's going on in the movie could happen to anybody, including you. With that door shut, it removes the majority of the fear factor. I would have been fine with one character,maybe two, having that characteristic, but not every single one.

But if you can manage to overlook those things, there is indeed an enjoyable movie waiting for you. Perfect? Very far from it, obviously, but still enjoyable. For starters, the musical score on display in this movie and (even more specifically) the main theme itself is hauntingly beautiful and is sure to stick around in your head for a very long time after you've already finished watching. How this theme hasn't gone down in history alongside the Halloween theme and Psycho theme as one of the Greats is beyond me. In addition, the evil living puppets themselves are the other main catch to this movie and are without a doubt the single best excuse to watch the movie and sit through all that other crap I complained about above, because these fellas make it all worth it: They look good, they move realistically and, as mentioned at the start, the stop motion effects used to bring them to life are nothing short of fantastic work that you'd be hard pressed to find a finer example of even this day in age. It helps give them all all their own unique personalities, and even though none of the puppets even speak they still manage to have more character within them than any of the humans do.

While the majority of the fear factor is missing from this movie due to the unrealistic addition to the human characters, what little bit remains totally belongs to these little evil puppets when they're stalking or killing someone. The problem is, they so often take second-stage, hell, even third-stage at parts, to everything else going on in the movie, that it at times it tends to go very long stretches in between their appearances and its easy to forget they're even in the movie; you tend to find yourself getting bored, and its during those moments that the stuff complained about in the first couple paragraphs of this review come in the strongest.

Luckily, while the movie may not be as scary or creepy as it should be, it does do all the other classic 80's horror movie tropes very well – inventive death scenes, lots of blood and icky gore, gratuitous nudity, sex scenes, and of course sex scenes with gratuitous nudity that lead to inventive death scenes filled with lots of blood and icky gore. So there's still plenty of stuff here for horror hounds to get their fix with. I also really liked the setting of an empty closed hotel, and really liked how they juxtaposed the intro where the hotel was still open and doing great business with present (ish) day where it's empty and abandoned. It was a great contrast to attempt (and slightly succeed) at giving the setting itself a really uneasy atmosphere, and even though I didn't enjoy spending the runtime of the movie with this cast of characters, I did enjoy spending the runtime at this location quite a bit.

Add on top of that the quirky killer puppets and fun death scenes, and while Puppet Master may not be a knock-em-outta-the-park-winner, nor even the best this series has to offer, it's still a must-see for any fan of the genre and one I don't mind re-watching from time to time when I'm in the right mood for it.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Manborg (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Astron-6

Runtime: 63 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: A soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.

Review: Despite hearing nothing but great things for Manborg, it still took me almost two years to get around to watching it, solely because the one recurring thing I kept reading about it is that it was just like a classic Troma movie, and I know this is a very unpopular opinion among my B-Movie peers, but I actually hate Troma movies. I don't find them entertaining at all and the only ones I've even been able to sit all the way through were the first three Toxic Avenger movies (only the first of which I liked in any capacity) and the first Class of Nuke 'Em High. Luckily Manborg retains the micro-budget goofy charm that Troma is known for (and the one aspect of them that I enjoy) but steers clear of the over-abundance of inappropriateness and Troma's penchant for going out of its way to push people's buttons that I hate about those kinds of movies. I'm sorry, but I just don't find raping a blind woman and shooting her dog, having an overly-obese homeless man give blowjobs to buy a donuts, or people farting out geysers of blood all that funny.

But like I said, Manborg stays fairly well within the limits of what I find enjoyable, while taking it's measly $1000 budget and going straight to Fun Town with it.

The movie opens on demonic soldiers of Hell waging war on Earth and our hero standing up to their General, Count Draculon, before being killed on the battlefield. Next thing he knows, he's waking up several years in the future to a changed world, one that is now a post-apocalyptic dystoptian world where Hell reigns supreme and the human race is used as slaves and entertainment in the gladiatorial Arena located in the heart of Mega-Death City. Oh, and the world is not all that is changed as he himself is now half-robot. The movie follows him around as he tries to find answers to his new existence, while also helping in a small band of rebels' retaliation against the Demonic Empire.

Despite the movie being titled after the campy half-robot lead character, the trio of quirky individuals that make up the ragtag group of rebels he joins have equal amounts of screen time as he does, and are just as significant to the plot. We have the shirtless over-dubbed martial arts expert, the sleeveless jean jacket-wearing big-mouthed tough guy with a thick Australian accent, and then his equally-as-tough blade-wielding hot sister, whom of which Baron, the main lead usually-threatening Demon in charge of the prison facility, falls head over heels in love with and hilariously acts like an anxiety-ridden lovesick teenager when around her, which makes up the bulk of my personal favorite scenes in this movie.

Together, all these characters feel like they were created off of scrapped designs of rejects from the early Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter games, and I love that about them. Each have their own personal fighting style, be it martial arts, bladed weapons, or guns, and each have their own distinct memorable personality and wardrobe design (or lack there-of in one case, hahaha). Hell, while Manborg may be the title character and the thread that ties everyone else together during the movie, I actually found these three the more entertaining characters in the movie and could watch a spin-off featuring just them anytime.

Manborg has everything that Z-Grade Movie Lovers could possibly want - Insane wacky plot that is beyond silly when reading about it but somehow manages to fit perfectly and actually make sense while watching the movie, terribly-integrated ADR reminiscent of a badly dubbed 1970's Kung Fu movie that somehow adds to the character's personalty instead of being distracting, a pulsing1980s sci-fi synthesizer score, and cheesy green-screen background and special effects that would be right at home in an early 1990's Wing Commander video game cut scene. And while those things may not beeveryone's cup of tea, it does pretty much make the movie above being reviewed because all of those shortcomings that I would usually take points off for, are all done on purpose, with the intent to deliver a low budget cheesy, campy, Z-Grade sci-fi/comedy that acts as a homage to the 1980's low budget sci-fi rip-off movies of old, so how can you rightfully dock points when all of those things are done on purpose? And when they all add to a far more enjoyable experience than playing it straight would have been? Easy - you don't. Because at the end of the day my reviews are based more off the level of enjoyability then anything else and this, my friends, is one hell of an enjoyable flick.

In addition to those awesomely-bad aspects, the movie does surprisingly include genuinely good monster effects and prosthetic Demon masks that show a level of talent far above the $1000 price tag put on the budget of this movie. Sure, the giant monster beasties may look like something from the first couple of Doom videogames if made in the early 1990's on an Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn budget, but that's still fairly impressive considering thismovie's budget.

Whenever you're hankering for a throwback to classic 1980s Z-Grade Sci-Fi movies in the vein of Troma but don't want to deal with all the inappropriateness and uncomfortableness that comes with a Troma movie, you really can't go wrong here as this movie has everything you could possibly want from such a thing. If you were to create a character from a mix of RoboCop and the Terminator, give him friends that are rejects from Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, and plant them down in a universe that was created from combining Blade Runner, Doom 2: Hell on Earth, and Mad Max, and give the formula a budget lower than that of even the average Troma or Full Moon production, the end result would be the mountain of hot flowing cheese that is Manborg.

My only complaint is that the movie is only an hour long, which barely even qualifies as a movie. Hell, there are episodes of Masters of Horror (and pretty much any show that airs on HBO) that are longer then this movie. Of course though that complaint fully comes from the fact that I loved this ride so much that I wanted there to be more. Hopefully one day down the line we'll get a Manborg 2 that will satisfy that craving for more fun-filled Manborg adventuring! For only a thousand dollars to make, even if the director doesn't want to fund a Manborg 2 out of his own pocket, I'm sure he could take it to Kickstarter and receive the funds he needs, plus more, in record time. I know such a thing would certainly receive money from my bank account pretty quickly!

Oh, and remember folks - The power of the human spirit will never be obsolete!

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

The 10 Best B-Movies of 2013

 

Like with 2011 and then 2012, this is my Annual list of my personal favorite B-Movie releases of the last year. There is still plenty of movies from this past year that I haven't yet seen, so it's possible I've potentially skipped over a few diamonds in the rough due to that, since this list is based off what I've actually watched myself. Also, this list is solely based off what has hit home video formats and Video On Demand services in 2013, so movies that aired on TV stations like Lifetime or the SyFy Channel this year, but never came out on DVD, BluRay, and VOD services yet, does not count for this. I want this as a list of movies that you could potentially pick up yourself or have easy access to legally obtaining. Likewise, some of these movies may have aired on TV in 2011 or 2012, but didn't actually get released on home video formats or VOD until 2013, thus I count them as 2013 movies for that reason.

The following list won't be in any specific order, as I clearly love all of them for them to even be on the list to begin with, so putting them in any kind of ranking order beyond that is a bit moot.

- Age of Dinosaurs is not just The Asylum's best movie to date, it's also the most just plain fundinosaur movie I've watched in a long time. Never taking itself too seriously, we get tons of fun-filled dino attack scene after fun-filled dino attack scene that plays like a Best-Of compilation of those classic 'Dinosaur Attacks!' cards. Add to that some of the most impressive CGI to come from Asylum yet, in addition to well-crafted Carnosaur-esque practical effects and puppetry, as well as Treat Williams being Treat Williams, and you have a guaranteed shot at a fun time. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here. 

 - Found Footage is an easy genre to tackle, yet many movies fumble while trying. Europa Report may not be scary, or even a horror movie. In fact, it's more of a slow-burn character study drama than anything else, set within the plot of traveling through Space to another planet. But the way it handles the Found Footage aspect is among the best I've ever seen, plus the movie is actually really good and well-made as well. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Exceptional CGI special effects and good acting from some familiar faces dominates Spiders, a fun-filled creepy-crawly killer spider flick released early this year. Starts in with the action pretty quickly and hardly lets-up for its entire runtime. If you're a fan of Creature Features, especially giant killer spider ones, this is surely not one you want to miss. Especially once the giant mutant alien spider starts destroying the city - fun times! You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.
 
 

 - You didn't think I'd have a Best Of list without the most infamous of the 2013 B-Movies, did you? The cult phenomenon surrounding Asylum's Sharknado is arguably even more interesting than anything in the wacky movie itself. Still, by even 20 minutes in it's pretty easy to see why this obtained it's pop culture status, and that's because the movie is as insanely stupid... and awesome... as it sounds, and B-Movie fans are sure to love every minute of it. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 - Attack From Beneath, aka Atlantic Rim was Asylum's well-timed mockbuster of Pacific Rim, and while it may have had a teeny tiny fraction of that Hollywood movie's gigantic budget, it's every bit as entertaining. Acting and Effects are top-notch stuff for an Asylum production, and it was filled with a non-stop supply of hilariously-delivered one liners and fun popcorn action scenes involving Power Rangers-esque Mech Robots battling giant monsters. What more can you want in a low budget B-Movie? You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

- Having already hit Home Video everywhere else in the world last year, Grabbers, an Irish monster horror/comedy in the style of Shaun of the Dead and Slither, only hit American VOD services this year. You know you're in for a hilarious good time when a movie deals with a slimy tentacled alien invasion where the beastie of note is allergic to alcohol so the remaining townsfolk have to get totally and completely hammered at the local pub in order to fight it. Why this amazing little gem is having such a difficult time finding proper distribution in America, I'll never know.

- The only Christopher R. Mihm movie I don't yet have a review done for, but that doesn't mean that The Giant Spider isn't a fun movie worthy of a spot in his filmography. It just means, honestly, that I've been lazy. The Giant Spider is a great and hilarious black and white homage to the classic 1950's monster B-movies with the best style of effects seen in a Mihm movie yet. It's super short runtime also means there's very little of the movie where something fun isn't happening. Though due to the massive amounts of references to past Mihm movies I wouldn't recommend starting with this one, but for fans of his filmography, you do not want to miss it.

- After two comedic entries (one of which I loved, one I think is the worst movie ever made), the Child's Play series returns to it's straight-up horror roots with this new entry. It's smaller budget is very much noticeable, but that doesn't stop Curse of Chucky from being a very worthy return to form. Includes good kills, good Chucky lines, loads of tension, and some references to all previous movies, so mix those things with its return to its horror roots, and every fan of the classic movies should be happy with this one.

- Frankenstein's Army is one creepy WWII-set Found Footage horror movie that includes not only an interesting story, well-placed tension, and buckets of blood and gore, but also amazingmonster designs worthy of a theatrical movie, with excellent practical effects to bring those designs to life. However, Frankenstein's Army is a prime example of a Found Footage movie that I think could have been even better had it been a traditionally-shot movie instead of Found Footage.

- Not only one of my favorite B-Movies of the year, Big Ass Spider (previously Mega Spider) is one of my favorite movies of the year, period. Well acted, well-done CGI spider effects, a good story, and equal parts hilarious and just plain awesome. Out of all the movies on this list, this is the one that should have had a wide theatrical release because the overall quality and talent on display here is really fitting of that. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.



All in all, another great year for B-Movie fans, and seeing as how a grand total of three of these movies on my list are killer spider movies, it's safe to say that 2013 was the Year of the Spider for me and it was great seeing the shark dethroned for a year (even though there were a couple fun shark titles as well, such as Ghost Shark). And while these are just my personal favorite ten, there are still plenty of other good, fun, worthy B-Movies from this past year that fans can sink their teeth into as well.

Actually, below you'll find three such movies that almost made my list but, for one reason or another, just couldn't quite be included.

 HONORABLE MENTIONS

- Jurassic Attack still has not yet been released in America, other then on the SyFy Channel as Rise of the Dinosaurs. It also has just a few too many minor flaws that add up enough to prevent it from being included among the 'Best of the Best' for me, but it was still one really fun ride of a dinosaur adventure movie that I enjoy re-watching from time to time and that is certainly worth your time if you can land yourself a copy. You can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

 

 - Another SyFy-aired movie that has yet to be released, Grave Halloween was a big surprise for me as I found it to be far above the caliber of the Original Movies SyFy tends to air. Being more of a creepy, atmospheric, haunting kind of movie, Grave Halloween dealt with the infamous and spine-tingling real-life location of Aokigahara, Japan's Suicide Forest, which is a terribly depressing and creepy location even when not factoring in the ghost legends. However, as much as I enjoyed it as a whole, I do have major issues with a couple parts, including the entire climax.

 - The Dyatlov Pass Incident (or Devil's Pass as it's been renamed in America) has an amazing near-perfect first half that acts great as a "Dyatlov Pass Incident 101" of the real-life mystery that the movie is based around. It's also atmospheric as hell, creepy, mysterious, and well acted. That first half is among my favorite stuff of the year, especially when it comes to Found Footage. But it all utterly comes apart during the second half of the movie, which in turn just about ruins it all for me. To understand further as to why, you can read my full previously-posted review of this one here.

Manborg (2011)

Manborg (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Astron-6

Runtime: 63 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: A soldier, brought back to life as a cyborg, fights alongside a band of adventurers against demon hordes in a dystopian future.

Review: Despite hearing nothing but great things for Manborg, it still took me almost two years to get around to watching it, solely because the one recurring thing I kept reading about it is that it was just like a classic Troma movie, and I know this is a very unpopular opinion among my B-Movie peers, but I actually hate Troma movies. I don't find them entertaining at all and the only ones I've even been able to sit all the way through were the first three Toxic Avenger movies (only the first of which I liked in any capacity) and the first Class of Nuke 'Em High. Luckily Manborg retains the micro-budget goofy charm that Troma is known for (and the one aspect of them that I enjoy) but steers clear of the over-abundance of inappropriateness and Troma's penchant for going out of its way to push people's buttons that I hate about those kinds of movies. I'm sorry, but I just don't find raping a blind woman and shooting her dog, having an overly-obese homeless man give blowjobs to buy a donuts, or people farting out geysers of blood all that funny.

But like I said, Manborg stays fairly well within the limits of what I find enjoyable, while taking it's measly $1000 budget and going straight to Fun Town with it.

The movie opens on demonic soldiers of Hell waging war on Earth and our hero standing up to their General, Count Draculon, before being killed on the battlefield. Next thing he knows, he's waking up several years in the future to a changed world, one that is now a post-apocalyptic dystoptian world where Hell reigns supreme and the human race is used as slaves and entertainment in the gladiatorial Arena located in the heart of Mega-Death City. Oh, and the world is not all that is changed as he himself is now half-robot. The movie follows him around as he tries to find answers to his new existence, while also helping in a small band of rebels' retaliation against the Demonic Empire.

Despite the movie being titled after the campy half-robot lead character, the trio of quirky individuals that make up the ragtag group of rebels he joins have equal amounts of screen time as he does, and are just as significant to the plot. We have the shirtless over-dubbed martial arts expert, the sleeveless jean jacket-wearing big-mouthed tough guy with a thick Australian accent, and then his equally-as-tough blade-wielding hot sister, whom of which Baron, the main lead usually-threatening Demon in charge of the prison facility, falls head over heels in love with and hilariously acts like an anxiety-ridden lovesick teenager when around her, which makes up the bulk of my personal favorite scenes in this movie.

Together, all these characters feel like they were created off of scrapped designs of rejects from the early Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter games, and I love that about them. Each have their own personal fighting style, be it martial arts, bladed weapons, or guns, and each have their own distinct memorable personality and wardrobe design (or lack there-of in one case, hahaha). Hell, while Manborg may be the title character and the thread that ties everyone else together during the movie, I actually found these three the more entertaining characters in the movie and could watch a spin-off featuring just them anytime.

Manborg has everything that Z-Grade Movie Lovers could possibly want - Insane wacky plot that is beyond silly when reading about it but somehow manages to fit perfectly and actually make sense while watching the movie, terribly-integrated ADR reminiscent of a badly dubbed 1970's Kung Fu movie that somehow adds to the character's personalty instead of being distracting, a pulsing1980s sci-fi synthesizer score, and cheesy green-screen background and special effects that would be right at home in an early 1990's Wing Commander video game cut scene. And while those things may not beeveryone's cup of tea, it does pretty much make the movie above being reviewed because all of those shortcomings that I would usually take points off for, are all done on purpose, with the intent to deliver a low budget cheesy, campy, Z-Grade sci-fi/comedy that acts as a homage to the 1980's low budget sci-fi rip-off movies of old, so how can you rightfully dock points when all of those things are done on purpose? And when they all add to a far more enjoyable experience than playing it straight would have been? Easy - you don't. Because at the end of the day my reviews are based more off the level of enjoyability then anything else and this, my friends, is one hell of an enjoyable flick.

In addition to those awesomely-bad aspects, the movie does surprisingly include genuinely good monster effects and prosthetic Demon masks that show a level of talent far above the $1000 price tag put on the budget of this movie. Sure, the giant monster beasties may look like something from the first couple of Doom videogames if made in the early 1990's on an Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn budget, but that's still fairly impressive considering thismovie's budget.

Whenever you're hankering for a throwback to classic 1980s Z-Grade Sci-Fi movies in the vein of Troma but don't want to deal with all the inappropriateness and uncomfortableness that comes with a Troma movie, you really can't go wrong here as this movie has everything you could possibly want from such a thing. If you were to create a character from a mix of RoboCop and the Terminator, give him friends that are rejects from Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, and plant them down in a universe that was created from combining Blade Runner, Doom 2: Hell on Earth, and Mad Max, and give the formula a budget lower than that of even the average Troma or Full Moon production, the end result would be the mountain of hot flowing cheese that is Manborg.

My only complaint is that the movie is only an hour long, which barely even qualifies as a movie. Hell, there are episodes of Masters of Horror (and pretty much any show that airs on HBO) that are longer then this movie. Of course though that complaint fully comes from the fact that I loved this ride so much that I wanted there to be more. Hopefully one day down the line we'll get a Manborg 2 that will satisfy that craving for more fun-filled Manborg adventuring! For only a thousand dollars to make, even if the director doesn't want to fund a Manborg 2 out of his own pocket, I'm sure he could take it to Kickstarter and receive the funds he needs, plus more, in record time. I know such a thing would certainly receive money from my bank account pretty quickly!

Oh, and remember folks - The power of the human spirit will never be obsolete!

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Puppet Master (1989)

Puppet Master (1989)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Full Moon Entertainment 

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: Andre Toulon, a puppet maker, discovers an ancient Egyptian potion and uses it to bring his creations to life but than kills himself in his hotel room before the Nazis can force him to give up his secrets. Decades later, psychics visiting the now-abandoned hotel tune into the existence of the monstrous marionettes and set off to discover the secrets that the hotel holds.

Review: Having recently obtained Puppet Master X: Axis Rising and in preparation of watching that entry for the first time, I've started my re-watch of the complete Puppet Master series, where I plan on doing up a review of each one. I actually wanted to have some of these done sooner but, as anybody who lives in Canada will already know, we here in Newfoundland have been going through quite a 'not a crisis' (as our political leaders would like us to believe, despite the opposite being true) which included week-long power outages, little to no heat, rotating blackouts, devastating snowstorms, and just all around one of the worst winters on record for us. Suffice to say having unreliable to no power made it difficult to get much watched or reviewed, but it's been a whole 12 hours now with power (a huge feat for this last week), so I squeezed this one in.

Now obviously this is the infamous and classic first movie in Puppet Master series, and one of few Full Moon movies to get a theatrical release.

And to be 100% honest, this is nowhere near my favorite in the series. Sure, it's better then some of the other ones by a long shot (Puppet Master Legacy, I'm looking at you...), and for such a low budget movie from the 1980's, the stop motion of the puppets is amazing (more on that below), but overall I just wasn't too impressed by the freshman effort in this long-lasting horror series.

To start, absolutely nobody in this movie is likable and therefore there's no character to latch onto and care about, so you just don't care about anything that's happening when they're front and center, which is the majority of the time. To make matters worse, it certainly doesn't help that the acting is so wooden and stiff, it's not even in the so-bad-its-laughable arena, it's just in the not-enjoyable-to-spend-time-with-these-people arena, which adds further disdain onto already-unlikable characters. I also didn't care for the fact that everyone was pretty hardcore psychic to totally unrealistic levels - there was just no need for that addition as it didn't really bring anything to the table other than a couple weird dream-like scenes, and it completely removed that feeling that most horror movies strive for to make it feel like what's going on in the movie could happen to anybody, including you. With that door shut, it removes the majority of the fear factor. I would have been fine with one character,maybe two, having that characteristic, but not every single one.

But if you can manage to overlook those things, there is indeed an enjoyable movie waiting for you. Perfect? Very far from it, obviously, but still enjoyable. For starters, the musical score on display in this movie and (even more specifically) the main theme itself is hauntingly beautiful and is sure to stick around in your head for a very long time after you've already finished watching. How this theme hasn't gone down in history alongside the Halloween theme and Psycho theme as one of the Greats is beyond me. In addition, the evil living puppets themselves are the other main catch to this movie and are without a doubt the single best excuse to watch the movie and sit through all that other crap I complained about above, because these fellas make it all worth it: They look good, they move realistically and, as mentioned at the start, the stop motion effects used to bring them to life are nothing short of fantastic work that you'd be hard pressed to find a finer example of even this day in age. It helps give them all all their own unique personalities, and even though none of the puppets even speak they still manage to have more character within them than any of the humans do.

While the majority of the fear factor is missing from this movie due to the unrealistic addition to the human characters, what little bit remains totally belongs to these little evil puppets when they're stalking or killing someone. The problem is, they so often take second-stage, hell, even third-stage at parts, to everything else going on in the movie, that it at times it tends to go very long stretches in between their appearances and its easy to forget they're even in the movie; you tend to find yourself getting bored, and its during those moments that the stuff complained about in the first couple paragraphs of this review come in the strongest.

Luckily, while the movie may not be as scary or creepy as it should be, it does do all the other classic 80's horror movie tropes very well – inventive death scenes, lots of blood and icky gore, gratuitous nudity, sex scenes, and of course sex scenes with gratuitous nudity that lead to inventive death scenes filled with lots of blood and icky gore. So there's still plenty of stuff here for horror hounds to get their fix with. I also really liked the setting of an empty closed hotel, and really liked how they juxtaposed the intro where the hotel was still open and doing great business with present (ish) day where it's empty and abandoned. It was a great contrast to attempt (and slightly succeed) at giving the setting itself a really uneasy atmosphere, and even though I didn't enjoy spending the runtime of the movie with this cast of characters, I did enjoy spending the runtime at this location quite a bit.

Add on top of that the quirky killer puppets and fun death scenes, and while Puppet Master may not be a knock-em-outta-the-park-winner, nor even the best this series has to offer, it's still a must-see for any fan of the genre and one I don't mind re-watching from time to time when I'm in the right mood for it.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward