THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1976)

So, were at the second flick in the chilling movie pack and all I can say is WOW! This is a documentary about a guy named Ivan Marx and his hunt for the ever elusive Bigfoot. Marx supposedly got exclusive footage of the beast back in the 70's and it is some of the most famous footage of the beast. It has been called a hoax by many experts and it does, indeed look like a guy in a really bad monkey suit. The quality of the pictures are so bad that it only seems to add to the feeling of the hoax. Now, Marx only had a few minutes of this footage so the rest of the 77 minute running time is a lot of nature photography and Marx' droning narration.
This flick reminds me of those Sunn Classics like In Search Of Noah's Ark and it's ilk. I liked the grainy 16mm feel to the entire proceedings and you do see a side of 70's America that has vanished from the country and it works really well as a cinematic time capsule. The truly horrific scene would have been of these two squirrels. They are playing on a dirt road and kissing and being cute and then one gets hit by a car. The other one tries to drag the wounded one off the road to safety to no avail. Then the hawks show up. The wounded one manages to crawl to hole to safety narrowly escaping being a bird's lunch. The only way they could have gotten this shot would have been to chase the wounded squirrel with a camera. I think the squirrel was running from them instead of any bird that never shared a shot with the animal. If you like nature footage then you will like this flick. Any wild animal you can think of in North America is represented here.
Listening to the narration you can hear a man who started out being one of the best trackers in the world and then got consumed by this obsession with Bigfoot. You can even hear him lament about having to rely on second hand information to track this elusive beast. A tracker prefers to work with what's in front of him, not what people tell them so you can feel for this man's increasing sense of frustration.
Overall, the film seems disjointed. One scene runs into another fro not apparent reason. My wife, Martha said it looked like this guy did a nature documentary, added the Bigfoot shots and then did an entire narration to loosely link the Bigfoot plot line with what we were watching.
I would have to agree with her.
Ivan Marx died five years ago and the secret of his footage died with him. Most experts agree that it is fake, but his widow, Peggy Marx insists that what he filmed was real. Ivan Marx even made a sequel called BIGFOOT, ALIVE IN '82 where he is assaulted by a Bigfoot and has to shoot at it to save himself and his wife.
This is the only documentary in the 50 pack and it is definitely odd enough that it warrants at least one viewing. The bizarre, disjointed imagery of a nature documentary coupled with the constant, droning narration of a man who has lost it make for fine viewing.

DRIVE IN MASSACRE (1976)

It seems that there's a drive in in California that used to be the site of a carnival owned by a guy named Van Heusen. He tore the place down and built a drive in in its place. Van Heusen eventually left to retire in Hawaii. To run the joint while he enjoyed his retirement, Van Heusen had one of his former barkers, Austin Johnson, run the drive in. Johnson hated the job.

Then the killings started. The opening scene of a couple making out is interrupted when the guy decides he needs to watch the beginning of the picture. As he he reaches out to grab the speaker, a sword slashes down and takes off his head. His girlfriend starts to scream and she is cut short by a sword through the neck.

Well, now the cops are worried. They can't have someone using a sword to whack the patrons of the theater. But who could be the killer? The manager, Johnson doesn't care about his customers. He thinks they are the scum of the earth, but he loves to take their money. Could it be Germie, the odd little fella whop picks up the place and used to be a sword swallower in the carnival? Maybe it's the pervert who parks next to people while they are making out and smacks his meat around outside of their cars? The red herrings are pretty thick in this flick, but they start dropping as quick as the slaughtered theater patrons.

Both of the cops on the case seem to be members of the Joe Don Baker School of acting and we have a hard time believing that either of them could catch a cold.

There are a few plot points that seem a little fuzzy. The major one is rthat the killer whacks the second couple and leaves the sword behind. This doesn't seem to stop him from killing again. Exactly how many swords does this looney have? And, while we're on the subject; Who thought of swords. These are big, heavy civil war cutlasses. Not an easy weapon to use in the first place and it seems out of place in the film. I think it might have been more interesting if the killer had used various things around the drive in the kill people. You know, strangle them with the speaker cord, drag a body to the swing set in the front, cool stuff. Hell, the snack bar alone has ten or eleven forms of lethal just lying around. But instead we get a sword.

The effects are passable for the time period. A movie that concerns itself with a California drive in in the 70's comes across as a little chaste with only one magnificent set of breasts and not for very long I might add.

This is the first of the 50 flicks in the box set I mentioned earlier in the blog. As a start it was okay. Cheesy, but not quite cheesy enough. I will give the producers props for the ending. Pure exploitation and a good way to play a flick that was geared for the drive in.

CHILLING 50 MOVIE PACK

It finally arrived! I was totally unprepared for the design of this thing. What they did is make a DVD case like you expect, but then they have the front secured with Velcro and when you open it it has twelves stiff, cardboard sleeves that give a brief description of each movie. I do not have a lot of these already so I keep my promise and review each and everyone of these bad boys. And for those of you keeping score, here's the list of flicks;

THE ALPHA INCIDENT

BAD TASTE

BELL FROM HELL

THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER

BLOODY BROOD

A BUCKET OF BLOOD

CATHY'S CURSE

THE COLD

DEATH RAGE

DEEP RED

THE DEMON

THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW

DEVIL TIMES FIVE

THE DEVIL'S HAND

DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON

THE DRILLER KILLER

DRIVE-IN MASSACRE

FUNERAL HOME

THE GHOST

GOTHIC

HANDS OF A STRANGER

HAUNTS

HORROR EXPRESS

HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND

HOUSE OF THE DEAD

I BURY THE LIVING

I EAT YOUR SKIN

JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER

LADY FRANKENSTEIN

LEGEND OF BIG FOOT

MAN IN THE ATTIC

MEDUSA

MESSIAH OF EVIL

METAMORPHOSIS

THE MURDER MANSION

NAKED MASSACRE

OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES

PANIC

THE REVENGE OF THE DOCTOR X

SCREAM BLOODY MURDER

SHOCK

SILENT NIGHT BLOODY NIGHT

SISTERS OF DEATH

SLASHED DREAMS

SNOWBEAST

TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST

VIRUS

WAR OF THE ROBOTS

WEREWOLF IN A GIRL'S DORMITORY

THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN.

Now, I'm not doing these in alphabetical order. I'll do them as the mood approaches. Some of them, like Argento's DEEP RED that has been written to death will get a much shorter entry unless I can come up with a unique slant. So get ready for tomorrow folks.

This will either be fun or torturous. For now I'm going with fun.

Gotta go!

A Quick Note

For my birthday I got some cash and have purchased various things. There are two things that have not hit the comics stores yet, but I will get them when they do. One is a comic called The Mice Templar. I'm a huge Templar Knight freak so I must have this comic. The other is Marvel reading my mind again and releasing a Devil Dinosaur omnibus. This will be the most awesome thing ever. I can hardly wait.

In other news; I bought one of those 50 packs of flicks recently and as soon as it arrives I will begin the watching and reviewing of each and every flick in the set. Sound ambitious? Yup, sounds that way to me to. What was I thinking? So, sorry for the lull.

Go here to read my other blog

douglaslanawaltz.blogspot.com

Seeya!

MOONSHADOW

I remember back in 1985 I was a severe Marvel Zombie when it came to comics. I even bought a lot of their Epic line which was the Marvel equivalent of the Vertigo that DC has. Anyway, Moonshadow tells the tale of ...well Moonshadow. Seems that his mother, Sunflower, was kidnapped by these creatures known as The GL'Doses. The picture shows one of these on the cover. And, no it's not the kid with the flute, it's the big roundy thing. Seems that the GL'Doses operate without rhyme or reason. They travel the galaxy and once in a while they kidnap creatures and place them into their intergalactic zoo. It is here that Sunflower finds herself. After being there for a while she also finds herself getting married to one of the GL'Doses. The honeymoon is a quick one, the marriage is consummated and nine months later Moonshadow is born. Now, the zoo is not a very friendly place. Most of the creatures there look at Earthlings as some sort of pariah so Sunflower, Moonshadow and their cat, Frodo spend a lot of time by themselves. Moon's discovery of a neighbor, Ira leads him to discover things that most people would never want to know. Ya see, Ira is a six foot tall furball with a bowler for a hat and a rabbit tail. He is also a hedonistic madman. Moon craves his friendship so much that he brings him acres of porn from his huge library. Moon's father gave him a complete intergalactic library and Moon absorbs the romantic literature of Earth. His view of things is highly romanticized.
Then his father reappears and tells him it is time to leave the zoo. On a ship called The Decrepit the crew of Moonshadow, Sunflower, Frodo and a very unhappy Ira are propelled into the void.

And the adventure begins....

Vertigo was kind enough to release a quality trade paperback of the original twelve issue miniseries in 1998. The one problem with reading this series is the prohibitive cost. The trade paperback is forty bucks and the price on the back issues from Marvel is prohibitive as well. Does that mean you shouldn't read this? No. This is epic storytelling at it's very best The story by J.M. DeMatteis is both funny and heart wrenching. This is on a level with the best of Neil Gaiman. Add to that the watercolors of Jon Muth and you get a comic book experience that borders on true art and transcends comic storytelling that still has to be surpassed.

Maybe you could con your local library into carrying this. Most librarians would love to have something this pretty on their shelves and I don't know about your library but the ones here in Kalamazoo have quite a few comics on the rack lately. I think this a good thing.

Regardless Moonshadow is one of those things that I would consider must reading for any true comic aficionado. Oh, and one last caveat;

For some reason, Vertigo released the trade paperback with a one shot sequel to Moonshadow that explains what happened to Moonshadow after he was done spinning his tale. It's superfluous and meaningless. While the very end of it was a neat concept the execution left a lot to be desired and was vastly inferior to the original series.

PRIMEVAL

Sure, I realize that this is a relatively new flick for me to include in these pages, but it fits so well into the exploitation mode that it isn't even funny. First, came the advertising campaign that led you to believe that it was some kind of serial killer flick. Then, you discover it's a giant croc flick and it's based on fact. To make it even more interesting, we get some local political intrigue as well. What it boils down to is this;
Our lead reporter hot shot Tim Manfrey (Dominic Purcell from Prison Break) has screwed up a story real bad. This forces him to go with wildlife journalist Aviva Masters (Brooke Langton) after a giant, 25 foot croc that the locals in Africa have taken to calling Gustave. Seems he's been a naughty boy and now the newspaper that Tim works for has a plan to capture the damned thing. Of course, Gustave lives in an area of Africa that is a political hot spot with a civil war going on. The leader of the rebels even has the stones to call himself Little Gustave. So, Tim And Aviva, along with token black guy Steve Johnson (Orlando Jones) are off to Africa to catch a croc. Along the way they pick up expert tracker, Jacob Krieg (Jurgen Prochnow). Why is it that there are never any black expert trackers in Africa? Instead we get psycho German guys all the time. Are they breeding there after being left behind in Africa during WW2? Beats me.
Anyway, a lot of people were pissed when this thing played like a serial killer movie in the previews and then turned out to be a killer croc flick. All I have to say to them is learn your history.
In the old days the preview of a film could rarely have anything to do with the actual film. You went because the advertising campaign was cool and you hoped the flick could live up to it's name. Sure, a lot of the times this didn't happen, but you watched the flick anyway.
In the case of PRIMEVAL, it was pretty good. For a few reasons. It took real life events and copied them into a pretty standard plot. But then it added the flavor of the war torn country as a backdrop. One minute you're trying to escape from a giant croc and the next you're getting shot at by both sides of a civil war. This gave it a sense of reality that you don't get in your killer animal flick. Usually, these flicks center solely on the giant critter and that's all you get. In this case, it's just a part of the story.
In a year of remakes, blockbusters and nonsense it's good to get a flick that just delivers a solid piece of exploitative entertainment.

KILLDOZER!!

I will have to admit that I never read the novella that this movie of the week was based on by Theodore Sturgeon. I read the comic book that was based on the movie, but I'm pretty sure that that doesn't count.

Anyway, we have a crew doing construction on an island off the coast of Africa. Pretty obvious that it's the coast of California, but who are we to quibble? So, this meteor crashed onto the island and has been there for quite some time. Since this flick is called KILLDOZER you know it won't take long before this huge bulldozer hits the rock from space and then this alien entity takes over the dozer and man is it pissed! Clint Walker is phenomenal in his role as the foreman of the crew. He thinks there's a rational explanation for the dozer coming to life...for about a minute. Sure, the first guy getting whacked, Robert Urich, by the way in one of his first roles, could be a coincidence, but when it proceeds to chase people with no one driving, he gets on board pretty darn quick that something is horribly wrong here. Neville Brand is, well he's Neville Brand so you get that and it's always fun to get Neville Brand in a flick.

There are some terrible lapses in logic in this flick. The token black guy tries to escape from the onslaught of the machine by crawling into a metal drainage pipe. Metal drainage pipes are tissue paper to a bulldozer and this one is no exception. The big battle between the dozer and a steam shovel is pretty awesome because you know they didn't have any special effects going on. It was two guys banging this giant equipment together and making a lot of noise.

And how can this giant thing manage to sneak up on so many damned people? Are construction guys just stupid or is this just a failure of my suspension of disbelief to launch properly? whatever it is, this is just campy and cheesy enough to work very well regardless of the above mentioned weirdness.

I can't believe with all the retro stuff coming out on DVD that ABC hasn't gotten off the pot and released more of these things on DVD. They could make a set with this and DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and SATAN'S TRIANGLE and that creepy one with William Shatner and the house full of kids out in the country. ABC made some awesome made for TV flicks back in the day and it would be a good time to bring those puppies back for all of us to enjoy.

On a final note; I will be reading the novella that Killdozer is based on and I just learned that there's a band with that name. I'll have to check those out and get back to everyone and see how they are.

Oh, and the dozer never talks regardless of what the comic cover at the top says. Although that would have been pretty cool if it had a scratchy, spooky kinda voice.

More later.

I'm outta here.