Watched I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns For A Coffin tonight.

I'm absolutely disgusted with myself for not having seen a Sartana film until today. This film was absolutely tremendous. Soon as the end credits finished I went and bought the Complete Sartana Collection box set off the back of how good this film was.

Westerns are a genre I have a real indifference to. They all look the same to me. But now? You can shove your Sergio Leone films and everything else Western-related up your bum, Sartana is an absolute UNIT. What a guy. What a film.

Final score: 26,418/10

Watched Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) the other night

I tend to avoid films Chris Pine is in, I just don't like him. But I have seen the modern Star Trek films and the modern (but earlier) Wonder Woman movie. I was a little surprised at how terrible he looks in this new movie, to me he appears to be around 10 years older than he actually is

I just hate them. I'd rather watch ten episodes of Star Trek TNG in a row then watch a single one of these new Star Trek films. Star Trek TNG is great and so are DS9 and Voyager.

Watched Tenet the other day. I didn’t understand s**t but it was good. I will watch it again.

That's not really a measure of how bad they are. There's a lot of things I'd rather watch Star Trek over, too.

How about "I'd rather watch ten BAD episodes of Star Trek TNG in a row"?

Brilliant film. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Not sure if it was just.me but the sound mix is a bit odd. I had to enable Clear Voice a couple of times to hear the dialogue.

Just viewed "ALIENS" special collection with tons of extra footage.
Great movie to revisit as 2020 winds down.

Happy New Year to everyone in the membership worldwide !

Watched them once myself, never again.

Whereas there are some TNG episodes I will just randomly watch again. I need to give Voyager a proper watch. DS9 rules.



Great film. Nice to see you around, firehorse.

Watched Phantasm for the first film of 2021. Quite enjoyed it but was a bit baffled throughout until the end made more sense of things.

I think it demands a rewatch too as there were things I think passed me by first time seeing it. I love the idea though that given what the boy has been through, it's really about.....I won't spoil it.

Some of the framing and tracking shots in this film were spectacular. It had a real Italian vibe going on too imho. Perhaps a Ruggero Deodato or Fabrizio di Angelis style.

And that music score! Oh my! I want that in Hi Resolution. Remastered to within an inch of it's life! It's one of the greatest scores I've ever heard. Seriously.

Also some of the scenes later on just droooooooonnnnneeed so nicely my subwoofer was having the time of it's life! That goes to say the new DTS-HD MA track on the Blu sounds glorious. Took a look on eBay to see if the soundtrack was available and YIKES!

The extras aren't much to shout about but there is a nice TV show recording from 1979. Looks like it's from a local public access channel in Miami perhaps? Well worth watching as you get some great insight in to the film. For example, I learned that the guy that invented the flying bullet/ball in the film actually died in real life before he got to see his handiwork in the finished film. He died just before it screened. The bullet thing would become iconic too. Also the director talks a lot about the weird happenings on set. Example, people dying during production, one of the sets burning down and so on. Fascinating stuff.

Never seen any of these films before but I understand they pick up where the previous film left off apparently? Well I'll be watching all 5 in this box set!

Off to a good start. Phantasm has 'classic film' potential (imho), I just need to watch it again to appreciate how I understood the underlying theme of the film that is buried in it throughout.

Oh and the Italian cinema poster is whopper isn't it?

I saw "L'aldila" and immediately thought of the Lucio Fulci film. I wonder if that one was at all inspired by Phantasm?

Also speaking of Italian posters, ever seen the one for The Silent Running? They got real cheeky with that one

The re-title was 2002: la Seconda Odissea & that was really cheeky.... & quite funny to boot!

I've not seen The Beyond. It's on my list though. Yes the 2002 A Space Odyssey title is brilliant. I wonder if Warner Bros ever sued?

Still thinking about how great the Phantasm soundtrack is. It's like something Goblin would have made. And the scene in the hidden room later on, with the barrels, my poor little subwoofer was buckling under the wonderful drone score.

That was a great scene too. The crypt in general just gave me the creeps. And the bit when Mike is hiding in the coffin and yer man almost finds him.

POO ALMOST CAME OUT.

Great film. Loved it.

I saw Phantasm at the drive in when I was six. I think one reason I rarely ever like any horror movie is because I saw Phantasm so early. Bladerunner was only a few years later...experiences like that give you [impossibly?] high standards for life, I think.

Interstellar (second viewing).

Love part of the movie and the "science" but I still cannot get over the ending. I would have loved a re-edit that skip the "bookshelf-gravity-by-them" subplot and instead just focus on the two differnt plans A and B to try and save humanity.

Watched a double feature the night before last.

First up was pure Selleck goodness with 1984 hyperfilm Runaway. Gene Simmons is great fun in this one and of course the film was released aroundabout 'peak Selleck', or the final phase of Selleck ascendancy to hyperstatus.

His moustache is absolutely tremendous in it but had yet to reach privet hedge status which he achieved while filming Magnum, of course.

Runaway is all a bit dated and naff today but it's still a fun film. I hadn't seen it since some time around 1992-94 perhaps? It was on telly one evening. I didn't even catch the whole film (bloody ITV News At Ten ). I was also more interested in watching Margaret Collin in her short lived cop show Leg Work which was re-running again after the movie, followed by back to back episodes of V, Tour Of Duty and MUTHAFUNKIN' RENEGADE STARRING BOBBY SIX KILLER!! BRANSCOMBE MUTHAFOOKIN' RICHMOND!!!

Anyway. Runaway is great. Sorry for tailing off there.

Rounded off the evening with a film from the Universal Classic Monsters set I got this week too. Popped in the 1931 Bela Lugosi version of Dracula.

It was alright. I wasn't really that impressed with Lugosi's interpretation (or creation?) of the Jedi mind trick. I've seen harder stares from Paddington Bear.

Yer man who played Drac's sidekick though was a real creep. Loved him! Jonathan Manners I think his name was? He was an absolute lunatic! I wouldn't be surprised if they slipped some Angel dust in his highball's between filming takes!

The whole film though it looked beautiful, just wasn't very interesting. The first twenty minutes may as well have been.called Dracula Fills In Paperwork: The Movie. The complete lack of a score just did nothing for me. The sets and matte backgrounds were beautiful though and some parts were gorgeously shot. It's just the film as a whole didn't gel for me. The acting felt terribly forced with a real sense of theatre in it's delivery rather than any sense of natural flow. It just felt like I was watching the local WRVS cobbling together a stage play down the local community hall.

I heard the Spanish version is better, which was filmed on the same sets at exactly the same time (and is in this box set). In happier news the Mets signed Lindor and Carrasco, so at least the hot stove has been more exciting than the 1931 version of Dracula.

LFGM!! WS 2021

(I hope this post ages well)

p.s Leg Work was f'ing BRILLIANT. I can't believe it only lasted one season. Why do US networks keep doing that? They did it recently with neXt too. FFS! Stop cancelling good shows. Remember Wonderfalls? No, neither does anyone else because it was cancelled!

That was Dwight Frye, sadly often typecast & sadly died aged just 44.

Look for him in Frankenstein when you get round to watching it, he is brilliant in it & I think you will enjoy that one much more than Dracula.

Be sure to watch The Bride Of Frankenstein fairly soon after as it is rather special. Look out for Ernest Thesiger playing Doctor Pretorius, a class performance.

Ah cool thanks for the tip and the info! I was thinking of David Manners who played that aul lad's daughter's boyfriend. His trousers in that film are absolutely spectacular by the way. Amazed he could hear anyone.talk over them.

I'm probably going to watch the Spanish version next and then just work my way through the other 7 discs in order. I see what you mean by Frye being typecast, and how sad that he died of a heart attack at just 44. Too young.

Watched a stack more films today and yesterday. Wicked City and The Mummy (1932) today. Frankenstein (1931), Boo!, The Cat Creeps and TT3D yesterday.

Watched Wicked City on the Blu I received today. Heartbroken the UK dub is not on it, but the rest of the disc was actually alright and not a collection of loose, watery stools.

Picture quality was absolutely excellent. The source used here must have been very well looked after. It's razor sharp and looks rich and colourful. I only listened to the Japanese 2.0 track which was nice and bouncy. Taki's voice is quite baritone as well, hadn't noticed that until now. There is the odd occasion that voices seem to get consumed in the centre but enabling clear voice helps a little. For the most part though it sounds great and looks even better.

The film is a bit laden with misogyny by today's standards but that aside it still holds up elsewhere. I always loved the lush blues and reds that soak the fibres of this film. Glad to have seen it again.

Never seen the sequel but popped in that disc too and watched the trailer. One to watch soon.

The Mummy was great fun! Boris Karloff was very good as the pharaoh, quite menacing. David Manners appears in this one too and was really good. Bonus points in that the poor git didn't have to wear those hideous shorts he wore in Dracula this time!

The 8 blu ray box set is great so far. All the films are beutifully restored. The booklet you get with it is really interesting too, full of great pictures and juicy facts and articles. After watching The Mummy, I read in the book that Boris Karloff's makeup took 8 hours to apply and 2 hours to remove. He was quoted as saying it was the most torturous experience of his career! There's also a letter from the US movie censor telling the director to remove all blasphemous references of the word God from the script! It's a great booklet. I'm reading about each film after I watch it. 3 down, 5 to go! Definitely buy the set if you can. I think The Mummy is my favourite so far.

Frankenstein was good too but The Mummy took it up a level imho. The sets were lovely on Frankenstein but the acting was still a little too WRVS down the community centre for my liking. Also compared to The Mummy, the makeup in Frankenstein was a bit cacapoopooweewee.

The mallet on yer man who played Frankenstein! It looked like his slap was forged from a papier mache dome of scrunched up copies of The Daily Sport. The Mummy was leagues ahead. Both films I enjoyed more than Dracula though they do all seem to suffer from 'hard stare syndrome'. Again, if I want to see a hard stare I'll watch the Paddington films (both of which I watched over Christmas as it happens)

Boo! Is a crap clip film that tries to be funny but is the only way to see the sole surviving 2 minutes of footage from the lost film The Cat Creeps. The rest is a poorly edited and dreadfully narrated clip show of sorts from the 1930's.

TT3D was alright. Good if you like bikes or the Isle of Man TT races. Guy Martin does seem to like pulling the stomach off of himself though!

I actually just watched wicked city last week and demon city shinjuku.
They were OK to me, not the best of anime, I also try to stay away from the erotic or whatever you would call anime's like WC.

I guess I'm more of a sucker for mecha, romance, real life anime and similar.

Recently watched the original Back to the future again.

However I watched it with the still with sound option on at 1/90 setting. So basically I watched it like a slide show with sound staying the same but the frame switching about every 3.5 seconds (This is a PAL release after all).

Maybe I should watch more films with this option on. It makes for an unique experience after all.