Hal Astell leads us through an amputee ass kicking in this week's Cinematic Hell review of The Crippled Masters.
Any martial arts movie that begins with a horrific cry and a severed arm falling onto the ground can't be too bad, right? Well think again, this one is as bad as you could imagine, albeit bad in the most fun way possible. There are bad films that are endurance tests and there are bad films that are joys to behold: think Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space as the epitomes of the two. This certainly falls into the latter category because it's a real guilty pleasure. If you thought The Terror of Tiny Town was politically incorrect, how about this little gem from Taiwan, shot in Hong Kong, that features as its two stars an actor with no arms and an actor with shrivelled legs, who team up to become a killing machine. Well, why not? It's just like a version of Transformers with cripples instead of robots.
Why does Hal Astell keep putting himself through Cinematic Hell? We don't know, but we're glad he did for The Terror of Tiny Town.
You knew this was going to turn up sooner or later, right? There's just no way I could resist adding to the ranks of Cinematic Hell something that the title card suggests is supposed to be 'a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors,' but patently isn't, at least not how you expect. It was produced in 1938 by Jed Buell who owned Jed Buell's Midgets (given that this was the golden age of the studio system, 'owned' probably had many meanings), who constitute the entire cast. Yes, folks, this is a musical western with an all midget cast, many of whom you'll recognise because they went on to play Munchkins the following year in The Wizard of Oz.
Hal Astell's next review in the "Cinematic Hell" series is a little masterpiece known as Child Bride.
I knew that Manos: The Hands of Fate had been referenced by many people in the know as the real worst film of all time, including the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 who had effectively rescued it from cinematic oblivion. However when researching that film I found tantalising snippets about another movie that they declined to screen on their show, one that they once threw out in answer to a convention Q&A question as to whether they had seen anything worse. That movie was 1938's Child Bride, so naturally I had to add it to my Cinematic Hell viewing list. It was a US government funded movie intended to be shown as an educational piece in the Ozarks and other areas of the American deep south where it was seen as acceptable for grown men to marry young girls. And by young, I don't mean seventeen. This is a film that's in the public domain, available on cheap box sets everywhere but is still categorised at Wikipedia under 'films with a pedophile theme'. Be warned.
The newest review in the "Cinematic Hell" series from Hal Astell gives us a history lesson in the making of They Saved Hitler's Brain.
They Saved Hitler's Brain is one of the greatest movie titles in existence, one that just exudes badness in the most awesome way. I've wanted to see it for years but hadn't realised that it would highlight to me a whole new subset of bad movies that I didn't even know existed, the precise opposite of something that plagued me in England growing up. It's not difficult to see why some movies being shown on television would be cut for content, especially exploitation films. However I saw films on TV like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home that were cut too, films that contained absolutely nothing that might warrant censorship.
The fourth review in the "Cinematic Hell" series from Hal Astell takes us to madness... Reefer Madness.
Somehow I've managed to avoid seeing Reefer Madness up until now, even though I probably own half a dozen copies of it in various public domain box sets and I have seen a number of its peers. It's an important film, generally seen as the benchmark of the educational exploitation films of the thirties and forties, the standard by which they're judged. Unfortunately it's somehow neither particularly good or bad and so has attained its lofty and legendary status through a salacious history and a particularly delicious form of irony. Financed as a cautionary tale by a small church group, it is most popular with the very people it warned against, thus it amazingly achieved the precise opposite of what it aimed at and continues to do so over seventy years after its initial release. Beyond that irony, it apparently improves in quality the more stoned you are. To be truly entertained you need to be so high that it becomes topical humour.
Yet another brilliant review from Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" in his new series "Cinematic Hell" with a peek at Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I couldn't resist watching Plan 9 from Outer Space after Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's the film most usually regarded as the worst ever made, but there's really no comparison. Harold P Warren didn't know how to make a movie in the slightest, but Ed Wood did. Sure, he chose to do so in his own very outsider way but he was capable nonetheless, hardly the no talent hack movie history tries to make him out to be. Outsider art is an acquired taste that surely isn't for everyone, and Wood can only be fairly contextualised as an outsider, especially given that his films, which like Tarantino's movies are patchwork quilts of everything he had seen and thought was awesomely cool, are undeniably his. You simply can't mistake an Ed Wood movie for anything else, just as you can't mistake a Russ Meyer movie for anything else.
Reviewer Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" continues his new series "Cinematic Hell" with an in depth look at Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Ask any random moviegoer what the worst film of all time is and they'll generally throw back Plan 9 from Outer Space because they just don't know any better. It has to be the mostly widely seen really bad movie of its era, it features more outré celebrities than any John Waters movie ever made and it got special attention in the high profile Tim Burton/Johnny Depp biopic of its director, Ed Wood, so it's simply the easiest choice. Ask people who actually know about the really bad films, though, people like the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and films that make Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane (well not quite but you get the picture), and they'll come up with a whole bunch of other suggestions. The one that tends to sink through all the dross to the very very bottom is this one, Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's supposed to be a horror movie but Quentin Tarantino, who owns what may be the only 35mm print of the film, calls it his favourite comedy of all time. Now I've finally seen it, I can understand why.
Reviewer Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" unveils his new series "Cinematic Hell" with a look back at the cult classic The Beast of Yucca Flats.
How bad can a movie be when it begins with a surreptitious yet entirely gratuitious nipple shot? Well, the answer is really, really bad. This is the worst film I've ever seen, currently ranked 22nd on the IMDb Bottom 100, though bizarrely that still makes it the highest rated of the three features that Coleman Francis wrote and directed. It's a sheer joy to see it again, to remind myself of how truly awful it was while simultaneously torturing members of my family in the process. I simply couldn't think of a better choice to begin a set of reviews of the worst of the worst films to ever escape from Cinematic Hell and disgrace us with their presence. It's also hardly a coincidence that my hosts at Cinema Head Cheese have shot an unauthorised sequel almost half a century later, Return to Yucca Flats: Desert Man Beast.
The Cinema Head Cheese crew does the commentary for Teenage Mother featuring Fred Willard. This Code Red DVD Double Feature also includes Teenage Graffiti.
10k Bullets loves CHC: "This is another hilarious audio commentary that ends up being more entertaining than either of the two films included with this double feature release."
Click here to read the entire review.
CHC received a glowing review from DVD Talk: "...you get the feeling that you're sitting down watching a movie with some friends as they periodically spout off amusing observations about the movie and those who made it."
Click here to read the entire review.
Jeff, David, and Kevin delve into the Euro skin flick Secrets of Sweet Sixteen on this Double Feature from Code Red DVD.
The CHC trio dissects the spectacular ridiculousness that is Don't Go in the Woods on this Code Red DVD Double Feature.
10k Bullets says good things about CHC: "Fans of tongue and cheek humor are sure to thoroughly enjoy this audio commentary."
Click here to read the entire review.
