Real life priorities reared its ugly head again. Blogging took a hit and so my review of Walter Hill's classic thriller Southern Comfort, Picks of 1996, and a feature on the lost Carry On films were put on the back burner.
Fortunately, I managed to cover a film I originally thought I had seen, but hadn't until now: Sam Peckinpah's neo-Western Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was unquestionably the highlight of the month for me.
Film:
The Trollenberg Terror AKA The Crawling Eye (Quentin Lawrence, 1958)
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)
Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981) ♲
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1982)
Cast a Deadly Spell (Martin Campbell, 1991)
Bloody Tennis (Nikias Chryssos, 2026)
Dr Who Meets the Scorpion (Richard Roberts & Philip Roy, 2026)
Gator Face (Padraig Reynolds, 2026)
Ice Cream Man (Eli Roth, 2026)
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun, 2026)
Television:
Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon (Tom Clegg, 1980) ♲
Mastermind (2026/2027)
♲ Rewatch
Dada Debaser Notes:
- Similar to the Richard Quatermass films, The Trollenberg Terror was another TV sci-fi series adapted to film. Sadly, no physical copies of the series exist today, which is too bad as the multiple plot threads might have been more effective in that format than in the feature film. Not even the legendary screenwriter Jimmy Sangster could sort that mess out. Great aliens, though. They remind me of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons.
- Imagine Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but instead of Looney Tunes being mixed with Film Noir it's H.P. Lovecraft. You get Cast a Deadly Spell; a film with magic, gremlins and raining blood being the norm in 1940s L.A. Enjoyable film, with a great cast (Fred Ward, Clancy Brown, Julianne Moore and David Warner), but I wish the concept was taken more seriously instead of being so tongue in cheek.
- Gator Face is essentially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre substituting the Sawyer family with a bizarre, Christian offshoot of alligator worshippers. All the attractive actresses die very early on.
- Diane Lane and Ray Winstone deliver outstanding early career performances in the punk drama Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. It's a shame the rest of the film isn't on their level.
- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is yet another symptom of horrendous millennial writing and over done meta narratives in an effort to over intellectualise film making. It's not even a slasher film. Bored me to tears, and it's the worst thing I've seen Gillian Anderson in since that one she did with Danny Dyer.
- Ice Cream Man doesn't really deserve the hate it's getting from slacktivists; but I also don't like it enough to waste time defending it, either.
- Bloody Tennis is essentially a mash-up of Challengers with Suspiria. Very uneven, but it might grow on me if I ever catch it again. Why practice on a clay court for Wimbledon, though?
- Apart from being better than anything we got from the Chibnall and RTD2 eras, the best thing about that new Doctor Who fan film is it making me laugh when a zombie Adric appeared on screen.
6 comments:
💀 @ zombie Adric. Should have just got Ian Brown to play him.
The aforementioned fan film managed to get Matthew Waterhouse to voice him.
Unfortunate that Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma looks so lousy, as the puritan and conspiratorial discourse I've been seeing about it is nuts, even by modern internet standards -- would have been nice for the subject of such rabidity to at least be decent.
Enjoyed your review of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, looking forward to your write-up on the lost Carry On flicks once life settles down a bit for ya!
Ι was kind of hoping TSaDaCM would work its magic on me in a similar vein to Her Private Hell. I think what bothered me about Schoenbrun's film was its whole commentary on slashers, particularly the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp franchises, felt misconstrued and hipsterish. Worst of all, was how bogged down it got with the themes of sex and death to the point of grinding film to a halt. There's only so much I can take from Gillian Anderson moaning about losing her virginity for what feels like an eternity before I start to resent the film. TSaDaCM's more abstract elements felt clichéd, too. Berberian Sound Studio did them so much better, imo!
Always loved THE TROLLENBERG TERROR, aka THE CRAWLING EYE. Outrageously unpleasant monsters doing outrageously unpleasant things to hapless humans in an unusual setting is can't miss entertainment.
I watched The Trollenberg Terror owing to Janet Munro’s appearance in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, one of my favourite sci-fi films of the 1960s that I blogged about recently. Although the former is considerably less serious than the latter, I found the goofy looking aliens entertaining; particularly during the finale.
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