The Curator of Schlock #382: Dark Crimes

20 Friday May 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #382 by Jeff Shuster

Dark Crimes

Jim Carrey tries the darkly dramatic.

A punk with a mohawk sat perched upon the concrete head of Charles Bronson in the ransacked building that was once the Museum of Schlock. I gave him a hard stare, but he paid me no mind, sticking two fingers in his mouth and whistling. About a dozen hooligans came forth, pipes and baseball bats in their hands. Some of them were wearing the 70s sports jackets I had on display for the movie Nightmare City. I paid six figures for those props! — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 2018’s Dark Crimes from director Alexandros Avranas. It currently holds a critics score of zero percent, but what do critics know? I can make my own decisions about which movies I watch. Looks like the audience rating twenty-nine percent. What does the herd know? The Wikipedia plot synopsis consists of four sentences, making me think that no one out there cares enough to write a detailed synopsis of this movie. And I am, of course, a professional.

Dark Crimes has a running time of 92 minutes which is good. I remember reading Screenwriting: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field many years ago. In it, Syd Field commented on the difference between American movie length versus European movie length. American movies tended to run at about two hours back in the 1970s while the European movies of that era run an hour and a half. I’ve heard it said that the average attention span of a human being is an hour and a half, so perhaps the European filmmakers were right.

I also remember an Ebert & Roeper episode where Richard Roeper bemoaned the length of modern movies. Roger Ebert stated that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short. At the time I was on Roeper’s side because I hated how Hollywood kept pushing movies well past the two hour mark. I groan at the prospect of watching the latest Batman movie because it’s nearly three hours long. Whither, editing?

Still, Roger Ebert had a point. At 92 minutes, Dark Crimes is still one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen!

Jim Carrey plays a Polish police inspector named Tadek. We first see him brushing dead hairs out of his scruffy beard before joining his family for some breakfast. He has bacon and eggs as his wife and daughter stare at him dispassionately. We learn that Tadek was benched for a desk job after some disastrous case. Anyway, a friend in the department gives him a new case to work on, the strangulation of a businessman that was left unsolved.

His investigations lead him to suspect a writer named Kozlov (Marton Csokas), a pretentious creep that makes wild proclamations to an eager press about there being no such thing as truth. Kozlov likes to write about grotesque, underground S&M clubs where the patrons get to indulge their abusive side. Tadek gets drawn into this sick world and before the movie is over, he’ll have lost everything, agape in despair, just as Jim Carrey should be.

There’s even a scene where Tadek finds the corpse of his dead mother with a twisted expression on her face. She died alone in her apartment after Tadek promised her she wouldn’t die alone.

Good times!

Skip it! Skip it! Skip it!

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #381: The Driver

13 Friday May 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #381 by Jeff Shuster

The Driver

Not to be confused with Drive.

I had come home or so I thought. I was prepared to get my life back to normal after my misadventures across North America, ready to resume my role as curator of The Museum of Schlock, but everything had changed.

The interior of The Museum of Schlock had been ransacked! Graffiti speckled the walls, the displays were in tatters, and the head of the Charles Bronson statue had been decapitated. Atop that concrete head sat a man on his makeshift throne: mohawk, torn jeans, spiked collar. He glared at me like I was trespassing, like this was his property. — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1978’s The Driver from director Walter Hill. If any of you have seen 2011’s Drive from director Nicolas Winding Refn, The Driver will seem familiar. Both feature a getaway driver who’s the best of the best at ferrying criminals from the hot pursuit of the police. But I don’t remember disliking the cast of characters in Drive as much of the ones in The Driver. Ryan O’Neal plays The Driver and admits in his taciturn way that nobody likes him.

All of the criminals in this movie are unpleasant and the cops aren’t much better. Bruce Darn plays The Detective that’s obsessed with catching The Driver. The movie opens with The Driver stealing a random car from a parking garage for a heist at a casino. Two robbers get into the car, but are late, allowing several bystanders to witness the getaway. What proceeds next is a tense chase scene on the mean streets of 1970s Los Angeles. There are about a dozen police cars hunting for The Driver like sharks in open water, but he manages to hide and outrun them.

There are enough witnesses that The Detective puts The Driver in a police lineup that consists of The Driver and no one else. The witnesses are unsure if he was the guy and the one witness that got a good look at him, The Player (Isabelle Adjani), says The Driver was not at the scene of the crime. Frustrated, The Detective loses his cool, goading The Driver into taking a swing at him so The Driver can get two years for assaulting a police officer, but The Driver doesn’t take the bait.

So it turns out The Player was paid off by The Driver to give false testimony. She’s a young and beautiful woman with a French accent who was once a mistress to a rich man before he bailed on her. The Detective harasses her in her apartment, alluding to her past life as a prostitute. The Detective’s obsession with capturing The Driver causes him to set up a sting operation that may be less than legal. He captures a convenience store robber named Glasses (Joseph Walsh) and makes a deal with him. Glasses needs to hire The Driver for a bank robbery and then deliver The Driver to the police.

Things don’t go as smoothly as planned as everyone in this movie is out for themselves, but I won’t spoil the rest of it for you. The Driver is worth a look, but good luck finding a copy. The Twilight Time Blu-ray goes for about $140 on Ebay.

I ain’t that rich.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #380: The Man in the Iron Mask

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #380 by Jeff Shuster

The Man in the Iron Mask

All for one and none for me, thank you!

My Canadian Odyssey had come to an end. I helped save dozens of rabid marsupials from getting slaughtered and gave a tearful goodbye to Edwige, my kangaroo companion of the last year.

And for all my effort, what do I get? The authorities drove me to the border and told me to get out. They were too cheap to even buy me a plane ticket back to Orlando.

Over the next few months I had many adventures and misadventures hitchhiking across America. I helped solve a murder mystery on the mean streets of Cleveland and was almost abducted by aliens in Reno.

But there’s no time to talk about that. Next week, I should be arriving back in Orlando, back to my home, back to the Museum of Schlock.

This week’s movie is 1998’s The Man in the Iron Mask from director Randall Wallace. This is based on the third of the d’Artagnan Romances by Alexandre Dumas. The actual title is The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later and contains 268 chapters. I planned to read it before this review, but I don’t know French! This is a mess of a movie. Half the dialogue is the all so noble Musketeers saying, “All for one and one for all.” Don’t try playing a drinking game with this one. You’ll be blotto before the credits roll.

The movie begins with Jeremy Irons telling the tale about a mysterious prisoner that was held at the Bastille, a man in an iron mask that was never identified. Jeremy Irons plays Aramas, a former Musketeer turned Jesuit priest. This story takes place many years after the events of The Three Musketeers. Porthos (Gérard Depardieu) is still boozing and wenching. Athos (John Malkovich) is retired and has a son, Raoul (Peter Sarsgaard). And D’Artagnan (Gabriel Byrne) now serves King Louis XIV.

King Louis XIV is played by Leonardo DiCaprio and I can’t help, but if memory serves, this movie was shelved and released right after Titanic became such a sensation. Louis is a bad king. The people of France are starving. His advisors tell him to release the food reserves held for the army, but Louis only allows the spoiled rations to be distributed. Louis also fancies the girlfriend of Athos’s son so he sends him off to the front lines to get blasted by a cannon.

Louis is becoming increasingly paranoid about mumblings about a conspiracy within the Jesuits to dethrone him. He asks Aramas to discover the man leading this conspiracy and execute him. Naturally, Aramas is the man leading the conspiracy to dethrone the king. It would seem that King Louis has an identical twin brother that he’s imprisoned at the Bastille. All Aramas, Porthos, and Athos have to do is switch them.

And wouldn’t you know it, the King’s twin brother, Philippe, is just as nice and thoughtful as can be, the polar opposite of Louis. He’ll make a better king for sure. Too bad, D’Artagnan, is wise to this plan and uncovers the imposter king. Why is D’Artagnan so loyal to the awful King Louis XIV

Because Louis is his son. We have to surmise he had an affair with the Queen behind the previous king’s back. And D’Artagnan doesn’t know about Phillippe is also his son because the Queen kept his existence a secret. Well, first she was told Phillip had been stillborn, but learned of his existence after the former king died. And I expect the former king had no idea that his sons were really D’Artagnan’s. Have you lost the plot yet? I have. Don’t worry. There is plenty of righteous valor to make you ignore this nonsense. And you get to see Gérard Depardieu run naked into a barn so it’s not a complete waste of time.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #379: Memories

29 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #379 by Jeff Shuster

Memories

Three movies in one.

I was in tears when Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government, informed me that Edwige, my kangaroo companion, would have to be transported to a kangaroo sanctuary somewhere in Gibraltar. I was allowed to ride in a truck with her to a port in Halifax. I gave her a deep hug before she was set to board a ship that would take her away from me forever. Edwige then broke from my embrace and kicked me in the face. I crashed to the ground and I could have swore Edwige was laughing at me as she hopped aboard the ship.

I’m going to wrap up Anime Month with yet another anthology movie, 1995’s Memories from directors Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo. I remember hearing of this movie during the early days of my access to the Internet. I was hungry for more animated anthology movies like Robot Carnival or Heavy Metal. Somehow I learned of this movie and waited patiently for it to come stateside, but a North American release would elude until about eight years later. Sony put out a fine DVD of this feature back in 2004 and Memories has recently received the Blu-ray treatment from Discotek Media.

The first short is Magnetic Rose from director Koji Morimoto. The movie features a group of space faring salvage men in the late 21st century. They receive an SOS call from an abandoned space station. Two of the ship’s engineers, Heintz and Miguel, go to investigate the abandoned facility which we learn belonged to a famous opera singer named Eva Friedel. The entire station station has lavish furnishings and art like something you’d find in an aristocrat’s house from the 19th century.

Holograms emit illusions of the Italian countryside and of a beautiful diva that enchants Miguel, a would-be lothario. Back on the ship, the crew informs Heintz and Miguel that Eva retreated to this station in the 2030s after her fiancé was murdered and she lost her voice and singing career. Eva left Earth for this station to drown in her memories and she now wants to draw in Heintz and Miguel. This is a creepy story and the idea that this ghost may be a combination of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology makes her no less terrifying. The score for this sequence comes from the opera Madame Butterfly and was covered by Yoko Kano of Cowboy Bebop fame.

The second short is Stink Bomb from director Tensai Okamura, a darkly humous tale of a biological weapon turned loose on the Japanese populace. Nobua Tanaka is a lab technician battling the flu when a coworker suggests he takes a couple of pills from a new experimental cold medicine left on his boss’s desk. The pills kill his cold and turn Tanaka into a walking bringer of death that kills anything that comes near him. His body produces a cloud of stink that wipes out anything that smells it. This story was inspired by the Gloria Ramirez incident, a cancer patient that had caused severe illness in the staff at a California hospital due to her self-administering dimethyl sulfoxide which her body converted into a deadly toxin that exposed the hospital workers (if I’m to believe Wikipedia).

The third and final short is Cannon Fodder from director Katsuhiro Otomo. This film is about a day in the life of a family whose entire purpose in life is to prepare cannons to be fired at the enemy nation of their society. In fact, the whole society’s purpose is to prepare and fire the many hundreds of cannons aimed at the enemy nation. Elementary school teaches the students about the essentials of gunpowder and correct trajectory. Class is based on what level you are on the cannon firing ladder. You want to be the one firing the cannon and not some loser cannon-loader. I have to marvel at how hideous and miserable the characters in this short look.

And that’s it for Memories. If you ever had an interest in anime, this might be a good place to start.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #378: Mary and the Witch’s Flower

22 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #378 by Jeff Shuster

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Kind of like a Ghibli movie.

The nightmare was over. Operatives from the Canadian government had infiltrated a marsupial slaughterhouse in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Edwige, my kangaroo companion, and myself were saved. All of the surviving animals were to be transported to animal sanctuaries. And then Larry, the Don Knotts looking special operative, gave me some bad news that hit me straight in the gut. I had to say goodbye to Edwige.

A few weeks back I reviewed Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, an attempt by a Japanese animation company to produce a movie in the style of classic Disney animation. The critics lambasted it and I felt the need to defend the movie because, at the very least, it was pretty to look at. But looks aren’t everything and, in retrospect, Little Nemo proved to be a hollow experience as the protagonist was a bit of a floater. This brings us 2017’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the first feature film of Studio Ponoc, a company formed by Yoshiaki Nishimura, the former lead producer of Studio Ghibli, a production company said to rival the Walt Disney Studios in terms of quality animated features for children and adults, Why did he leave Ghibli? Well, the studio shutdown following Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement, Miyazaki being one of the great living legends of animation. Unfortunately, this must have left many of the animators out of a job so they went with Nishimura to form a new studio and keep the style of Studio Ghibli alive.

On the surface, Mary and the Witch’s Flower has the look and feel of a top notch Studio Ghibli production. The movie is based on the children’s novel The Little Broomstick by English author Mary Stewart. Studio Ghibli had also produced movies based on English children’s novels such as The Borrowers by Mary Norton and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Studio Ghibli English dubs are also known for featuring top talent and Mary and the Witch’s Flower features Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent.

With all of these elements coming together, we should have a movie set to rival any that Studio Ghibli had to offer, allowing Studio Ponco to carry on the legacy. Unfortunately, the experience left me feeling flat. Yes, the animation itself is up to the level of a Studio Ghibli production, but our heroine isn’t up to the Ghibli standard. Sheila O’Malley of RogerEbert.com is spot on when she says, “There’s no real inner conflict in the character, informing her choices (consciously or unconsciously).”

I remember in Kiki’s Delivery Service how Kiki loses faith in herself or how Chihiro breaks down after surviving her first night in the bath house of the spirits in Spirited Away. I’ve heard that Hayou Miyazaki has come out of retirement to make one final movie, How Do You Live? After that, it may be the end of an era for this style of animated movie, much how classic Disney animation has faded away; so too may Ghibli.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #377: Short Peace

15 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #377 by Jeff Shuster

Short Peace

Don’t ask about the title.

I had collapsed in shock after witnessing a security guard get mauled to death by Tasmanian devils while trapped in a cage with a female kangaroo named Edwige. The devils ignored us, choosing to go after the other factory workers in the distance. Maybe it was a kinship toward Edwige and the other marsupials in this slaughterhouse for black market meats. Hours later, a team of soldiers led by Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government bearing a striking resemblance to Don Knots, freed Edwige and myself from our cage. — To be continued.

This week’s anime extravaganza is 2013’s Short Peace, another animated anthology of short films from directors Koji Morimoto, Shuhei Morita, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hiroaki Ando, and Hajime Katoki. One of these shorts, Possessions, was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The movie begins with a little girl following a rabbit into a chamber filled with wondrous delights that serves as a hub for the different worlds that await the audience.

The first short is the aforementioned Possessions. It begins in old Japan. A traveler caught in a forest during a raging storm. He enters a shrine to escape the rain, apologizes to whichever spirits reside on the sacred ground. Before he knows it, he’s in a room surrounded by fancy umbrellas, all complaining about their state of decay. The traveler marvels at their craftsmanship and proceeds to repair them with materials made available to him. He repairs garments as well, but then requests that the spirits let him out, but the spirits of the abandoned items turn violent. Will he survive the night?

The next short is titled Combustible, and as you can tell from the title, it’s about fire. The short begins with an illustrated scroll rolling out. The images spring to life and we get a tale of a bride wanting a man other than her betrothed. She’s in love with a member of the town’s fire brigade. In her despair, she accidentally starts a fire, infighting her home and the entire neighborhood.

The third short is Gambo, a tale of a bear and an ogre. The short begins with a defeated samurai asking the big, white bear Gambo if he’s a messenger from God or something to that effect. In a nearby village, a giant red ogre with a twisted face and sharp horns attacks the villagers and makes off with one of the young maidens to impregnate her with his devil spawn. Later, Gambo meets the daughter of the emperor who conveys her despair and gets him to destroy the ogre’s lair. A brutal fight between bear and ogre ensues. The samurai from the beginning of the film rushed to Gambo’s aid.

The final short is titled A Farewell to Weapons and is about a group of scavengers looking for valuables in an abandoned city after a future World War. An artificially intelligent super tank wakes up and gives chase. Realizing how deadly this weapon is, the men vow to destroy it. And that about sums up Short Peace. I liked how some of the shorts were cel animated while others incorporated CG into the traditional look of cel animation. For fans of animated anthologies, this one is not to be missed.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #376: Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

08 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #376 by Jeff Shuster

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

Is it anime?

You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils? I have. You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils while trapped inside a cage with a kangaroo named Edwige? I have. You ever watch a man get eaten alive by Tasmanian devils while trapped in a cage with a kangaroo named Edwige while blowing bubbles with sour apple flavored Bubblicious bubble gum? I have.

Jealous much?

This week’s movie is 1992’s Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland from directors Masami Hate and William Hurtz. At some point, I hope they make a documentary on the making of this motion picture as it had been stuck in development hell for about fifteen years. Producer Yutaka Fujioka wanted to enter the U.S. market with a feature length adaptation of a classic American comic strip by Winsor McCay. Names attached to this production include Ray Bradbury, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Brad Bird, and Chris Columbus to name a few.

From what I can gather, this movie was an attempt by a Japanese animation studio to create a feature in the American style of animation, something akin to what the Walt Disney Studios would make. Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland had an estimated budget of $35 million dollars, but only made $14 million at the box office. I have to say, growing up I’d never heard anyone talk about this movie. It most likely was overshadowed by the recent Disney offerings of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

I did a little digging and found an old Siskel & Ebert clip where they were not too kind to this movie. In Roger Ebert’s review, he states “Nemo himself has the IQ of an eggplant, but at least he doesn’t talk much.” Who is Nemo? He’s a 7 or 8-year-old boy with a wild imagination. When he goes to sleep, he dreams of piloting his bed through the summer sky and getting chased down by choo choo trains. Nemo also has a pet flying squirrel named Icarus because why not.

The circus is coming to town and Nemo begs his dad to take him, but Nemo’s dad is too concerned with grown up stuff like working and putting food on the table and a roof over their heads. I’m also not sure that Nemo deserves to go to the circus as he tries to steal a piece of his mother’s pie after promising not to. Nemo falls asleep and is awakened by a Professor Genius and his troop of circus performers. He presents Nemo with a gift from the Princess Camille of Slumberland, a box of fancy cookies she baked herself.

Professor Genius tells Nemo that he’s to become Princess Camille’s new playmate so off to Slumberland they go, in a dirigible no less. Slumberland is an amazing place with tall buildings and fireworks and fireworks shaped like buildings. He meets King Morpheus, a rotund fellow who makes him his heir and gives him a special key that can open any door in the kingdom. Nemo is told not to open the door with a dragon symbol on it. A grifter named Flip (voiced by Mickey Rooney) convinces Nemo to open the door and, wouldn’t you know it, the evil Nightmare gets out and kidnaps King Morpheus.

So Nemo makes stupid decisions while in Slumberland, but how many of us make smart decisions while in a dream? I didn’t like the main character. I didn’t hate him. Nemo is just kind of along for the ride along with the audience. Apparently, this movie was released in Japan three years prior to the American release and I’m curious as to whether the Japanese version had a different script. You can catch the English release on Amazon Prime streaming.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #375: Robot Carnival

01 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #375 by Jeff Shuster

Robot Carnival

Nine animators, One vision.

An army of rabid Tasmanian devils rushed the security guard and myself. I did what any sane person would do and ran for my life. Edwige, my kangaroo companion and two other kangaroos were locked away in cages. I slid the latch off of Edwige’s cage and crammed myself inside. I watched in horror as the Tasmanian devils lunged at the security guard, sinking their jaws into him. — To be continued.

This month is Anime Month on this humble schlock blog. I’ll begin with the feature that got me Japanese animation in the first place, 1991’s Robot Carnival. I don’t list a director as this an anthology film made of up many directors that includes a who’s who of the Japanese animation industry of the time such as Koji Morimoto, Hidetoshi Ōmori, Yasuomi Umetsu, Hiroyuki Kitazume, Manabu Ōhashi, Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Takashi Nakamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo. Each of these directors was given a task: create a short film involving robots.

Robot Carnival might be the closest you’re ever going to get to an anime version of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. No classical music here, but you do get an excellent electronic score by Isaku Fujita and Joe Hisaishi, the latter best known for composing the scores for the films of the great Hayao Miyazaki. Like Fantasia, most of these shorts have no dialogue, In fact, the short Nightmare is a direct homage to Night on Bald Mountain segment from Fantasia.

I first caught this movie on the Sci-Fi channel back in the fall of 1993. We were visiting a family friend over the Thanksgiving holidays and they had this wondrous device called a satellite dish that gave me access to channels I had never seen before. One of these channels was the Sci-Fi channel and they were showing a movie called Robot Carnival during an anime marathon. I would sneak watch when no one was around, absorbed in the state of the art animation I was seeing on screen. I wouldn’t get another opportunity to watch Robot Carnival until I got regular access to the Sci-Fi channel years later.

I picked up the VHS at a Suncoast Video in 1996. I watched repeatedly and worried about wearing the tape out, a common problem back the days before DVD. I was an early adopter, picking up my first player in 1998. I waited patiently for Robot Carnival to make its DVD debut in North America, but it would not get an official release until about seventeen years later. And when it did come out on DVD, the shorts were in the wrong order!

Allow me to explain. Depending on which version of Robot Carnival you watch, the shorts are presented in a different order. There is the Japanese original, the North American theatrical, and the North American laserdisc. When Carl Macek released the movie in theaters, he wanted the reel changes to occur in-between the shorts so as not to disrupt them. The Japanese producers allowed him to do this. I figure the laserdisc order was changed so as to disrupt the movie as little as possible when you needed to flip the disc. Yes, you needed to flip LaserDiscs over to watch the second half of the movie.

I learned all of this from the wonderful supplements on Blu-ray release from Discotek Media. And the great thing about the Blu-ray is that you have the option of watching the shorts in the original Japanese order, North American theatrical, or North American LaserDisc. The North American LaserDisc order even has a fake LaserDisc load screen. Obviously, great care was taken to make sure the fans of this movie can watch their preferred version.

I guess I haven’t said much about this motion picture because you need to just experience Robot Carnival for yourself. It is available to stream for free through several apps such as Tubi, Vudu, and Pluto TV. Jonathan Greenall of CBR calls Robot Carnival an “unsung anime masterpiece.” He’s not wrong so check out what was for the longest time my favorite movie.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #374: Leprechaun 4: In Space

25 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

Leprechaun 4: In Space

That is not how you title a movie!

Bad things were going down in a marsupial slaughtering factory in the Canadian Province of Saskatchewan. A bloodied factory worker had screamed about “devils on the loose” before breathing his last. Then came the howls from a shifting black mass of doom creeping in my direction. Dozens if not hundreds of rabid Tasmanian devils were headed toward me.

— To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1997’s Leprechaun 4: In Space from director Brian Trenchard-Smith. This is the one we’ve been waiting for, folks. I can’t think of any movie series that couldn’t be improved by sending it into outer space. This marks the last movie of the 90s era Leprechaun movies and the final movie in The Leprechaun Cycle. I remember catching this movie during its original IMAX run. Wow. You could count every whisker on Warwick Davis’s face!

Leprechaun 4: In Space begins with the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) trying to coax the lovely Princess Zarina (Rebekah Carlton) into marriage. This isn’t taking place on Earth and Princess Zarina is not an Earthling. The year is 2096 and the Leprechaun is now living on a planet of gold. He wants to marry the princess and murder her father so he can become king of her homeward. Zarina’s on board when he promises to make her rich.

On a starship, we have a group of space marines on a mission to kill the Leprechaun. If you cynically think this movie is going to be like Aliens, but with the Leprechaun instead of the Xenomorph, you would be right. The Leprechaun manages to fall on a grenade and explode. A marine named Private Kowalski pees on his corpse, which allows the Leprechaun’s evil spirit to swim up the urine stream into the marine’s twig and berries.

Meanwhile, there’s a deformed cyborg named Dr. Mittenhand (Guy Siner) that wants to use the DNA from the princess to grow himself a new body, Princess Zarina has blue blood with regenerative properties. Mixed with Dr. Mittenhand’s DNA, this will give him a new lease on life. He is the real villain of the movie, a mad scientist complete with German accent.

Meanwhile, Kowalski is getting hot and heavy with his girlfriend. The Leprechaun manages to crawl out of Kowalski the same way he went in, revoking Kowalski’s membership in the process. With the Leprechaun on the loose, it’s open season on space marines. There’s one scene where two marines enter a room where a special bacteria devours every living thing it comes into contact with. Naturally, the Leprechaun tears a hole in one of the marine’s hazmat suits, leaving him to get eaten alive until there’s nothing left but bones.

What else? The Leprechaun and Princess Zarina manage to mess with the DNA cocktail meant to restore Dr. Mittenhand. They combine it with some tarantula and scorpion DNA, turning Dr. Mittenhand into a freakish monster. Also, the Leprechaun gets hit with a growth ray that turns him into a giant. What will the marines do? This is the last movie in my Leprechaun box set. Do I spring for more? Let me sit on that one for a while.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #373: The Secret of Nimh

11 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Disney, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #373 by Jeff Shuster

The Secret of NIMH

I like cartoons. Stop giving me grief.

We heard the screeching, a sound of hellish death coming from beyond. The factory security guard brandished a taser and I wondered why we hadn’t run away with the rest of the factory personnel that had nearly trampled us. A factory employee, bloodied and limping, staggered toward us. He was missing an eye and his right hand covered the crimson stump that was now his left. The poor man collapsed, crying out, “They’re loose! The devils are loose!” — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1982’s The Secret of NIMH from director Don Bluth. I’d completely forgotten about this movie. The DVD release seemed lacking so I never snagged it. Yet I remember watching The Secret of NIMH over and over again on Showtime when I was kid. I was an animation snob then, cutting my teeth on classic Disney shorts like Silly Symphonies.

I have to give Don Bluth and his team of animators credit. After defecting from the Disney company, they went all out to create a feature on par with those created in the glory days of the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The movie centers around Mrs. Brisby, a widowed mouse and mother of four children, one of whom has pneumonia.

The sick child’s name is Timothy. She’s been advised to keep him on bed rest for four weeks or he may die. The only problem is the farmer’s plow is coming early this year. If Mrs. Brisby doesn’t move her family, they all will die.

This simple conflict sets up an amazing journey for our main character that brings her to seek counsel with the Great Owl, a terrifying giant with glowing eyes. He tells her to seek out the Rats of NIMH, hyper intelligent creatures who may know of a way to move her house without her son having to leave his bed. We learn that rats had been experimented on in a lab, injected with a drug that raised their intelligence to that of a human. And we learn that some mice had also been given this drug, including Mrs Brisby’s late husband, Jonathan.

The Secret of Nimh features an all star voice cast that includes Elizabeth Hartman, Derek Jacobi, Dom Deluise, Arthur Malet, Hermione, Baddeley, Shannon Doherty, Will Wheaton, and John Carradine. The movie’s score was composed by the great Jerry Goldsmith, who also scored Poltergeist that year. The Secret of NIMH had stiff competition that summer as it had gone up against such movies as Blade Runner, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Conan the Barbarian, TRON, and John Carpenter’s The Thing.

What stood out for me when watching The Secret of NIMH so many years later is how it makes a simple farm into a c world fillemplex with danger and mystery. A family cat becomes a fearsome monster, a farmer’s plow becomes a force of nature, and a rose bush becomes a city of marvels. I hope this movie gets a proper remaster some day as it stands as the pinnacle of animated feature films from the 1980s.