Movie of the Week: Humanoids from the Deep

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Two hours of pure TV Hell are available for your Holiday viewing enjoyment. You may want to claw your own eyes out, but it's at least a hundred times better than "Revenge of the Sith". Happy Life Day to all.

(a well-researched article from the archives of Vanity Fair can be read here, and unsurprisingly the Star Wars Holiday Special has its own website.)

The Adventures of Pondo Sinatra

I just watched The Party Animal in its entirety (again) after waking up at 3 a.m.

Movie of the Week: Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula

Haven't seen this one yet, but have been wanting to for awhile. It just turned up on youtube. Singer/dancer Nai Bonet stars in a film she produced herself, shot on location in New York city in 1978. Gloria Gaynor sings the disco theme song, there's the Munsters' own Yvonne DeCarlo as Jugulia Vein, poor old down-on-his-luck John Carradine as Dracula, and a substantial role by legendary nutcase Brother Theodore.



Truth be told, the only reason I'm selecting this as movie of the week is so I'll have a reason to embed this Nai Bonet Scopitone:

Movie of the Week: Deadly Friend

I saw this for the first time a few days ago, and can't decide if it's great or terrible. Maybe you can help me figure it out.

It's worth a laugh, at least, but this was Wes Craven's followup to Nightmare on Elm Street, a movie that gets under your skin. It seems he's not even trying to suspend disbelief. For example, the Deadly Friend herself, a girl who's died and been re-animated with the brain of a robot, looks like my friends and I did when we acted out Shields and Yarnell at the playground in the third grade. How is this not supposed to not be absurd?

Everyone says, "skip the movie, just watch the 30-second basketball scene on youtube and be done with it". I'm not so sure. The ending is at least as ridiculous as the basketball, for one. To say that just the basketball makes the movie exceptional doesn't give it nearly enough credit; from beginning to end it's one of the dumbest films I've ever seen, but it has a certain appeal.

The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield

Under the working title "Jayne Mansfield Reports Europe", the actual footage following the famous sex symbol around Paris and Rome was shot in the spring and summer of 1964, with additional filming in New York City later the same year. Existing footage from two of Mansfield's previously shot films Loves of Hercules (1960) and Primitive Love (1964) were later inserted into this mondo-doc. Following Mansfield's death in a 1967 auto accident at the age of 34, portions of her narration for this film were recorded by a "sound alike."

Movie of the Week: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks

This week's feature isn't embeddable, so click the above poster to open the youtube page. It's uninterrupted and presumably unedited (I own the DVD, so I haven't seen this version). This got a PG rating back in '75, but the nudity and necrophilia and general sleaziness make it not safe for work. Otherwise, lots of retarded monster fun. It's the Très Chic Freak of the Week!