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:

The Visitor (1978)

Nothing to do with the movie. 

The Visitor is getting a lot of buzz as they've recently re-released it to theaters, which is where I saw it and it was AWESOME. Seeing something like this on the big screen is just indescribable.

Let me describe it for you.

There are very few films like The Visitor. First of all, just take a look at the cast: Mel Ferrer, Glen Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Joanne Naill, Sam Peckinpah, Shelley Winters and Franco Nero as space-age Jesus Christ.

Shocked speechless by basic information for the rest of the movie.

That's right. Django himself. As the savior of mankind. In space. 

Kardashians got nothing on Katy.

John Huston stars as some kind of galactic warrior who, along with his often misplaced theme music, tracks down the evil children (indirectly?) spawned by some space criminal who sowed his seed all over the universe. He is locked in combat with an eight-year-old Earth girl (played by 12 year old Paige Connor) and her evil pet falcon. How does he conduct this combat, you ask? By going up on a skyscraper roof top, where interpretative dancers cast their shadows on white sheets, and lights dance around like a low budget Close Encounters. In the psychedelic world, he turns her into popcorn or something.

This little girl spends most of her time wreaking havoc at basketball games, gymnastics meets, ice rinks and any other sporting event she manages to attend or compete in. She also cusses out old cops (who seem to be incapable of applying the breaks of their cars when blinded) and generally sasses baby sitters, house keepers and anyone else who can't escape her insidious presence. She's a low budget Damien.

John Huston as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

There's a weird cabal of rich white stuffed shirts who, for no reason ever fully explained, want to control the sex life of the evil girl's mom, using young Lance Henriksen to impregnate her and bring forth a boy child... for no reason every fully explained. They even resort to hiring evil futuristic football players with no faces to kidnap her and implant something in her womb. (SPOILER: It's a baby.) This gives her a great opportunity to reconnect with her ex-husband (Sam fucking Peckinpah) by seeing him for an abortion.

Hint: This is not a homoerotic incest scene.

Then, it sort of turns into The Birds. Birds were apparently the weapon the good aliens used to kill that space criminal guy, "fatally wounding him, in the brain."

Add together the Birds, Close Encounters and the Omen II... and throw in an Italian space Jesus.. and you've got The Visitor.

This movie is full of beautiful, arty, psychedelic scenes that make no sense whatsoever. The plot is so convoluted that it's brilliant. And the dialog... just see this damn thing, already. Or you'll never forgive yourself.

RATING

Killer Tongue

This obscure gem is a Spanish-British collaboration, set in New Mexico, USA, and filmed in Spain. It's dubbed in because it's shot using largely Spanish actors, except for the inimitable Robert Englund, who plays a prison warden with a bad toupee.

This is not his bad toupee. 

Nothing about this film is good in any conventional sense, but everything about it is great. It's basically the story of some criminals, a meteoroid, some nuns and some poodles. Some kind of object comes into Earth's atmosphere and crash lands in the desert, but not before a chunk flies off and into a woman's soup, giving her a Venom-like body suit and a long, vampiric tongue, and turning her four French poodles into drag queens that do her bidding, mainly by capturing people for her to eat.

She is pretty sexy, if that matters to you. Less sexy when her tongue is killing people or talking to her in a ridiculous New York accent.

There's also a very sexy nun, pictured here with the drag queens.

 

And seen here forcing a criminal to give a gas nozzle head. 

And that dude winds up dead. 

Ridiculous effects, absurd violence, strange and uncomfortable humor, brightly colored sets and costumes. It's really fun and totally bizarro and I can't believe it isn't more well known. 

RATING:

War in Space

If this poster makes the movie look cool... it's a trick.

War in Space was filmed in 1977 and is set in the distant future of 1988. It starts out pretty much what it must have been like to live in Japan in the late 70s. Butterfly collars and leisure suits abound. It's ostensibly a Japanese alternative to Star Wars, but this is just a trick (see: Message from Space for a real Japanese Star Wars).

My friend David Cawley informed me about this film. He's the sort of guy who really thinks a lot of old cheesy films are actually good, not ironically. He informed that this film is legitimately bad.

He's right.

It's a fairly typical alien invasion movie. Aliens want to invade. The people of Earth don't want them to invade. For some reason, there is a conflict. A bunch of Japanese guys and their pal Jimmy at NASA built a super space ship weapon to fight off the alien invasion when they thought it was going to happen a few years ago. But now it really is happening, and for some reason the super weapon space ship is still not ready. (Thanks OBAMA!)

The aliens, we discover, disguise themselves as humans. But if you peel off their masks, you see that they are not human at all. They have GREEN SKIN, and apparently never invented makeup. So masks was the only thing they could come up with to try to blend in and invade. Meanwhile, the aliens are also zapping the shit out of the Earth with their laser cannons.

There is quite a bit of spaceship-on-spaceship violence. Some bad subtitles add a bit of humor: "Shoot the ion rockets!"

Remember, this is the same year Star Wars was made.

Just wait till you see the caesarian Emperor of the Galaxy and his guard, horned Chewbacca.

 

But like I said, this movie sucks. It has some interesting elements, but if you are smart, you'll stop watching about 2/3 of the way through.

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: