Seek the Wolf in Thyself!
Hardcore science fiction is very hard to pull off from a role playing game perspective because realism tends to bore the average player. Yea, I know, there are those that prefer it and I can respect that. However, in my experience, the average player does not want to go through the mind numbing realization that…
Sci-fi is my thing, I make no bones about it. I love a good story of group of people exploring the unknown, finding alien monsters, and learning that the universe is much bigger than they thought. Browsing Netflix, I found yet another unexpected gem of a movie – Dark Space. It is a low budget…
Every once in a while, I come across a movie that came in under the radar; that might not get over 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, that I found well written and the story is well told and that I really like. I am not sure what that says about me but there have been some key movies that have done that for me. Pandorum is one of those movies. It was not well received but I really loved thsi8 movie. So much so, that I bought the movie. The Outpost is another. Sunshine is another, however that one has better reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Back in the early 90s, I got a copy of Nemesis from the local video store and watched it with a group of gamer friends as a movie night kind of thing. We were expecting just another terrible low budget B-movie with very little substance. We were pleasantly surprised by what is now considered a cult classic. It was a great action flick with awesome gun play and a deep story underneath it (although not very original). It turned out to be a very satisfying film. With actors like a very young Thomas Jane, Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Brion James, and using great sets like the Kaiser Steel Mill in Fontana, CA. and Yuma Territorial Prison State Park, how can you go wrong?
Browsing through available movies, I found a gem of a movie that I really connected with. I have been running Actung! Cthulhu all year at every convention I have been at this year, and I just finished reviewing both the Investigator’s Guide and the Keeper’s Guide. When I saw the title, I was immediately drawn to it. Also, I have focused so strongly on old cheese, I felt that some new cheese was needed. The problem is that there is so much new cheese to choose from. Anybody with a 3D rendering program and a few friends who can half-way act is putting together a monster movie of some kind. And the Syfy Channel is buying them up, no matter how bad they are. It is like they are throwing cheese at a wall and hoping something sticks to make a market for it.
Many of my gaming friends have mentioned Hawk the Slayer as a movie I should see. I had heard of it but never sat down to watch it at length. It is now considered a cult classic. So I found a copy and decided to see what the big deal was about it.
Once again, I delve into a movie from the vast library of Roger Corman; another fantasy adventure staying Lana Clarkson (from Deathstalker) and a whole cast other women in various stages of undress. Master of low budget and reuse, Corman as producer reused much of the set from Deathstalker, and well as costumes I recognized from other of his fantasy outings.
It’s pretty hard to find a bad movie I have not seen, unless it is a movie I have simply chosen not to watch. Eliminators turned out to be a movie I vaguely remember as a kid but never saw. There was something about that cyborg on his mobile unit that looked familiar to me. Starring some sci-fi greats like Denise Crosby (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Andrew Prine (Steven from V, the original mini-series), and Roy Dotrice (most recently from Game of Thrones), this movie had a lot of potential. It pulled in a ton of cool elements but never really explored them to their full potential. The acting was fairly poor as well, despite having such well known actors. This was obviously early in their career and they were still trying to find their feet. The name of the movie was an obvious attempt to cash in on Terminator, although it is a terrible name for it.
Through browsing various databases of cheesy sci-fi and fantasy films, I ran across one I did not recognize at all. I consider myself well versed in all things cheesy where movies are concerned, but this one caught me by surprise. However, after watching it, I was even more surprised.
Having the name Ivan Reitman associated to a film usually does not put it in the “B movie” category, but even the great producers have bad movies every once in a while. Spacehunter was one of several 3D movies that came out, trying to capitalize on the success of movies like Star Wars as well as Road Warrior. Combining elements of both movies, Spacehunter is a fairly simplistic story with pretty decent set design and production value but poor scripting as well as story writing.