Manborg

Stop motion magic.

Manborg is a 2011 spoof/homage to cheesy action/horror/sci-fi from the late 80s/early 90s. So, it takes the most ridiculous aspects of films like Cyborg, Robocop, Hellraiser, Terminator II, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Hardware, Mortal Kombat, etc. and turns them into a brilliantly entertaining film that should satisfy fans of Full Metal Yakuza, Hobo with a Shot Gun, Tokyo Gore Police, Isle of the Damned and most of Troma's output. It's unbelievably good, a result of mixing conventional latex effects, stop motion, and comically bad laptop effects.

Manborg was originally a soldier in the last great war against Hell's armies, led not by Satan, but by the dreaded Count Draculon, a bio-mechanical demon created on a shoe-string budget. But of course, that soldier was killed in combat and made into a super-warrior, only to wake up in a futuristic time full of future cassettes and future locks and total world domination by Hell.

A blonde Peter Sellers plays a future Dr. Strangelove.

Manborg is quickly captured and locked up with several archetypal prisoners --Liberty, the Australian punker whose power seems to be to shoot two revolvers at once while dancing, Mina, the kick-ass knife ninja chick who has the power of going into anime attack mode, and #1 Man, the superstrong and disciplined martial-arts master. They are held captive by the evil Baron and his henchmen Dr. Scorpius and Shadow Mega, a hot cyborg woman, and forced to fight in an arena against Hell's minions and giant robot monsters.

Liberty, his sister Mina, and #1 Man. The good guys.

All of the usual action cliches follow: Manborg suffers from amnesia and can't explain himself, so he is not trusted by the other prisoners. But then he quickly masters his robo-human powers and becomes their hero. They break out of prison and go into hiding. Heads get blown off. Lots of scary skeletal and zombie-esque bad guys in Nazi-style uniforms. Liberty and #1 Man try to make a box of instant macaroni, blah, blah, blah. 

A jailer-bot and Shadow Mega. Bad guys.

The movie works great as a parody, but also contains a lot of really witty and bizarre additional humor, and some really great horror effects. Totally recommended if you like anything cool. It kept me entirely entertained the whole way through and I laughed out loud at least a dozen times. It's great. Made me happy.

RATING:

Funky Forest: The First Contact

Where to start with Funky Forest? First of all, it's Japanese. Secondly, it's a collaboration of three different film makers. Third, it's really really long. You'll be watching the first half thinking, "Okay, this is pretty weird and pretty good but this dance number is going on a little too long," and then you hit an intermission. That's right. This movie has an intermission, so get up, take a piss and fix yourself another gin and tonic, because the second half is going to blow you away.

The first half of the movie largely delves into the absurdities and foibles of normal human life. The second half causes you to suddenly realize that the story is actually taking place in the most bizarre version of Earth imaginable -- even weirder than actual Japan.

Sure, Guitar Brother is going to bring a smile to your face, maybe even make you snicker. But if you aren't laughing your ass off in wide-eyed amazement by the end of Do You Want to Go For a Drink? then you are seriously reading the wrong blog. I love weird, bizarro shit. The weirder the better. And this movie was so weird I could hardly believe it. Weirder than Eraserhead. And more fun to watch.

The Unpopular with Women Brothers

There are probably a few too many musical/dance bits, but just sit back and let them wash over you. You are taking part in Funky Forest. And you are never going to be the same afterward.

RATING:

Message from Space

The year is 1978. Someone in Japan saw Star Wars and wanted to recreate that level of sci-fi magic without doing any of the things that actually made Star Wars magical. That being said, Message from Space really is rather entertaining as a space opera in the tradition of the old Flash Gordan serials.  Naive, fun entertainment.

But it is not without its retro absurdities, so it is satisfying on many levels. It's extremely plot heavy; Wikipedia's synopsis is almost 2,700 words. I won't bore you with all that. I'll just say that the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it is very satisfying as a feel-good adventure movie. The costumes and airships alone are reason enough to watch Message from Space.

Imagine Star Wars with these characters.

Eight magic walnuts fly through the galaxy searching out heroes to save the world. Have fun figuring out why these eight in particular are chosen. A Princess Leia and her body guard (unhairy Chewbacca?) go in search of the heroes the walnuts have chosen. Vic Morrow plays a cross between Obi-wan Kenobi and Jack Flack from Cloak and Dagger. He finds his walnut in a glass of Scotch. A deposed prince played by Sonny Chiba is forced to fight against his own people to save the universe. Yeah, it's epic.

Darth Vader with lots of horns.

Then someone decides that the only way to save the world is to blow up the world.

Parts also seem like a pagan Christmas pageant.

There are plenty of awkward scenes: R2D2/Twiki on guard duty holding what appears to be a long flintlock musket. The heroes floating through space without space suits, collecting space fireflies in a meteor belt. Epic battles in which everyone has a laser pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. And Gredo wants to marry Princess Leia.

Memorable quotes:

"Earth is on the verge of annihilation. That must not happen."

"Forget about your medals, [R2D2/Twiki]. There are more beautiful dreams in space."

RATING: 

Dead End Drive-In

You know a movie is good when it starts out with several screens of text describing massacres and other man-made disasters that have led up to the collapsing society in which the film is taking place.

Dead End Drive-In is basically a cross between a demolition derby, a car show in the Home Depot parking lot, and a Halloween party where all the people are dressed as punks yet have never actually seen a punk in real life, but only in pictures drawn by a three year old. 

The economy of this new world revolves around fatal car accidents, which there seem to be plenty of in Australia where the film is set.The tow truck drivers pay off the cops in order to salvage wrecks, and then gangs of wild "car boys" show up to strip the wreckage to make super Mad Max-esque improvements to their own vehicles, many of these punks brandishing spiked clubs and wearing corpse paint.

Nunchucks were also observed.

There is also a main character and his girlfriend.

When the main character is not hanging out with his musclebound tow truck-driving brother, or being berated by his ethnic mother for not being musclebound enough, the main character likes to take his disturbingly cute girlfriend to a dangerous movie drive-in. In this way, we establish that young lovers in that mad, mad world are relatively the same as the ones in this mad, mad world.

Of course the worst thing that can happen to you, when your disturbingly cute girlfriend is riding you at the drive-in, is for a couple blokes to sneak up and steal the wheels off one side of your brother's car, which you are borrowing, and he'll KILL YOU if anything happens to it.  Even worse, turns out it was the cops who took your wheels.

(Whatever movie the drive-in is playing is totally awesome and I wish they would show more of it. A guy gets impaled by some kind of booby trap and a bunch of shit blows up.)

The drive-in has its own weird community living there, because apparently the government has made it illegal to leave the premises if you can't drive your own car out. At first it is kind of rad. There's graffiti and break dancing and post-punk music and popcorn. But the main character is too cool to just accept his fate. He smirks and rolls his eyes and won't give up on the idea of ever leaving this drive-in. It's been a whole day. He's just being unrealistic. And his girlfriend let's him know it. 

A girl with glowing tits gets out of a police van. A guy with a stutter insults the main character. Main character has to beat a dude's ass. Shit starts looking bleak.

Fights, explosions and car stunts follow. It's pretty damn rad.

RATING: 

Barbarella

Barbarella is hardly a secret. You probably saw the box a million times at the video store when you were a kid. A lot of people think they've seen this movie, or claim to have seen it, when in reality they've only actually watched a couple of scenes on Saturday Matinee, edited for TV. Still other people are aware that this movie has Jane Fonda in it, and she gets naked no less, and for some reason this makes them want to NOT take the movie seriously and NOT watch it right away.

Ms. Fonda in a million sexy outfits alone is enough reason to see Barbarella, but for those of you who need a little more convincing....

 

 

Okay, Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy takes place super far in the future when love rules and there's no violence of any kind in the "civilized" universe. Everybody has sex with everybody all the time, only you find out that "civilized" people screw by taking a pill and putting their palms against those of their partner, which is a total let down. Luckily Barbarella discovers old fashioned sex with a man who hunts feral children. This hunter wears sort of a bearskin cloak, and you can't tell when he takes it off. That's how hairy he is (Italian). They have sex on some kind of a wind-powered sled, and Barbarella is never the same again.

 

Barbarella is like the female James Bond of the superfuture and is sent on a mission to find Duran Duran, a renegade scientist who shares his name with the best rock band of the 80s. He's supposedly hiding out on an outlaw planet, so all that stuff about no violence anymore doesn't apply. Not only does Barbarella wear a million different sexy outfits, she also wields a million different super-cool, ultra-retro ray guns.

As can be expected, she doesn't just go from point A to point B with no space ship malfunctions.  Without getting into any sci-fi technical details (because the movie really doesn't), her flying saucer busts up, stranding her on the planet of the feral children. All the feral children are twins and they, of course, tie up Barbarella and sic their evil dolls with nasty, pointy teeth on her to rip at her sexy clothing, especially her stockings.

Luckily she is saved by the hairy guy who I told you she has regular sex with. He likes her because he can see that even with ripped stockings, Barbarella is a woman of class. Accompanying the gent are a couple of Black Guards, who are apparently made of leather shells and are hollow. At any rate, they can whip you real hard and they are pretty scary. They round up the kids in nets and drag them to the city, where they will be put to work doing... (plot hole).

 A whole bunch more stuff happens, like this:

Long story short, it's crazy, psychedelic, nonsensical and sexy. There's really nothing else for a film to be.

RATING: