Before I begin, I want to apologize for not being as active I probably should have been.  I’ve been dealing with my father’s passing last month and it’s been really tough just to get motivated to do anything.  That being said, I appreciate the people who been patient with me over the course of the month, so thank you.  For this post, I’m bringing you a couple of interesting pieces of news from a Galaxy Far, Far Away.  The first of which is apparently any upcoming Star Wars spin-off films are being put on hold.  Why?  Well, I’m guessing, but the performance of the Han Solo film may have had something to do with it.  The film only garnered a little over 100 million dollars on it’s opening weekend against an apparent 300 million dollar budget.  This would make Solo the worst-performing Star Wars film.  I’m not entirely surprised.  The production of the Han Solo was fraught with problems including the firing of directors Lord and Miller with most of the film completed.  They brought in Ron Howard to do extensive re-shoots to “fix” the issues made by Lord and Miller, but in doing so, nearly doubled the film’s budget.  As we’ve seen with movies like John Carter, when you have to do extensive re-shoots that balloon the budget by at least double if not more, the film is going to suffer in many ways and almost always bombs at the box office.  The truth of the matter is, is that I was not actually expecting Disney to step in unless Episode IX failed at the box office, but it seems like Disney is going to take any chances with the final episode in this new trilogy.  So, for anybody expecting a Boba Fett or Obi-wan Kenobi film:  You’re probably not going to get them any time soon, at least if my sources and various news sources are to be believed.  My opinion on this, is that again, I’m not surprised.  When Disney announced the spin-off films that were going to be released between the episodic films, I was very doubtful that it was going to last very long.  Rogue One was fantastic in my opinion, despite its apparent issues behind-the-scenes.  I didn’t even hate the Han Solo film, I just wasn’t impressed with it and felt that it was not a film that needed to happen.  There were other stories out there that they could have focused on instead of worrying about origin stories for classic characters and events.  The audience doesn’t really want that, and Solo’s performance is evidence of that.  I honestly want original stories in the Star Wars universe.  It can be done, if Disney and Lucasfilm are willing to take certain risks.

Speaking of risks, according to sites such as Star Wars News Net, Disney and Lucasfilm are no longer going to be taking risks on unproven directors.  The interpretation of this bit is that Disney and Lucasfilm only want to deal with directors who know how to handle a large budget, like J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson and Ron Howard.  One one hand, this makes good business sense, as unproven directors are not predictable and don’t necessarily have experience in dealing with massive amounts of money involved in making films like these.  On the other hand, you need to look at where Star Wars came from.  When George Lucas finally completed and released the original film in 1977, most film companies were not willing to take chances with him and his film.  20th Century Fox decided to step up and take chance with Mr. Lucas and Star Wars.  The rest is film-making history.  So, I understand Disney’s trepidation when it comes to unknown directors.  I get it, but if you’re not willing to take a chance and let somebody do something with it, you will end up with a disaster like Solo.  You need to have a little bit of faith that a new director could bring something new to the table.  I’ll be honest, I would have really liked to see what Lord and Miller could’ve done with Solo if they had been allowed to finish it on their terms.  Would it still have ended up flopping at the box office?  We’ll never know.

In conclusion, I don’t think that Disney’s going to wait around and see if Episode IX fails at the box office or not.  They’re doing everything right now to make sure that doesn’t happen.  They also want to make sure that Rian Johnson’s new trilogy has a shot at being made.  Again, the fate of Johnson’s movies will depend on Episode IX’s performance.  I could be wrong, but it seems like Solo basically slapped Lucasfilm in the face with a force-sensitive fish and made them step back and realize that maybe releasing a Star Wars film every year wasn’t the best of ideas.  I’m a huge fan of Star Wars, as I’ve said so many times before, and I really want each and every film in the franchise to succeed, but periodically one needs to fail so that Lucasfilm and Disney can do better.  Solo was a mistake.  It never should have been made in the first place, but I hope that it is a learning experience for Disney and that their focus on Episode IX will lead to a movie that people will remember in a positive light for years to come.  That’s my hope.  As Yoda once put it, “It’s difficult to see; always in motion is the future.”

As a movie buff and collector, I’ve come across some really strange and bizarre films that your average film-goer has probably never even heard of.  Some of my favorite movies are pretty obscure and generally not well-known.  What constitutes an obscure movie?  Well, one definition of the obscure is something that is not discovered or known about.  While the term is used for many things, it often refers to films that people don’t even know were made.  These films are generally pretty hard to find these days, especially if you’re looking for a DVD or some kind of hard copy of the film.  The films that I’m going to discuss in this article are ones that have been either out-of-print for decades, or have been recently re-discovered after being out-of-print for so long.  So…as you can imagine, a lot of the films I’m going to cover here are going to be older ones.  These ones are going to go back decades.  There are a lot of them out there waiting for a collector or fan to stumble upon them.  Now, before I begin, I want to talk about why a film would go out-of-print in the first place.  There are a number of reasons, but primarily it’s about demand and whether or not the film continues to sell.  A film goes out of print when it no longer becomes profitable or there’s no demand for it, whatsoever.  It happens more often than you would think.  Thankfully, some modern technology like the Internet and YouTube have helped preserve these films, so chances are you can find them on YouTube.  But, there have been occasions when a film has been re-discovered and put on DVD and Blu-Ray for new audiences to see.  This usually happens with cult movies that only appeal to certain audiences.  So…with that in mind, let’s dig up a time capsule and see what’s been hidden from us for so long.

Dinosaurus!

Boy, here’s one my brother and I grew up with.  Dinosaurus! was a monster movie that was released back in 1960 featuring a T-Rex and an Apatosaurus.  After being discovered frozen at the bottom of the ocean, the dinosaurs are brought up to the beach where they are awakened by a bolt of lightening.  They begin to rampage around a tropical island sending the inhabitants screaming in fear.  I absolutely loved this film as a kid.  This was during my “dinosaur phase” that many kids went through.  It was just one of those really fun and amazing films that I loved as a kid.  Obviously, this was WAY before Jurassic Park became a thing.  Looking back it now, the effects are pretty silly, but it was just awesome to see that kind stop-motion animation.   They got the dinosaurs all wrong in terms of design, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the film.  Yeah, most of the main characters are irritating and some of the comedy pretty forced, but it really stirred up my imagination when I was younger.  The film has gone out of print, so your best bet to find a hard-copy of the film is basically eBay or some specialty websites that deal in rare and elusive films such as this.

Blue Monkey

I just reviewed this one a couple of days ago, and I still maintain that it’s a monster movie it is worth watching if you can find it.  It has a bunch of different names like The Invasion of the Bodysuckers or Insect.  The name that it was released in the US as was Blue Monkey, which is really bizarre since there are no monkeys involved here, just giant mutated bugs.  While the film was pretty much a rip-off of Aliens/Cocoon, it was still a blast to watch.  Steve Railsback, Don Lake, and Gwynyth Walsh all do a fantastic job in the film.  While some of the visual effects haven’t aged very well, the creature designs are still pretty creepy.  The film moves at a pretty decent pace and there’s rarely a dull moment.  It’s not the greatest film in the world and it’s not particularly original, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have fun with it.  Plus, this was the film that scared me out of going into any underground insane asylums.  I mean, those are creepy enough, but when you have a 12-foot tall insect roaming the halls, that’s a real deal-breaker.  While the film is known to be available only on VHS officially, I’ve seen websites sell the film on DVD between 10-30 bucks.  I don’t know what the image quality is on those, but if you can find the film, it’s worth checking out if you like monster movies.

The Villain(a.k.a Cactus Jack)

I love Westerns as much as the next guy, but sometimes you come across something that’s just so damned goofy, you have no idea what to make of it.  Enter 1979’s The Villain starring Kirk Douglas, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ann Margaret.  If there was a movie that is essentially a live-action version of Looney Tunes, this would be it.  It’s absolutely bonkers from beginning to end, with Kirk Douglas’s character just making a fool of himself time and time again.  I have to say that Kirk Douglas stole the show.  Yeah, Arnold was in it, but this is Kirk’s show through and through.  While I wouldn’t put it on the same level as Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, it’s well-written enough to keep you laughing until the end, which is one of the silliest endings I’ve ever seen.  This one is actually available on DVD right now, so it’s not out-of-print.  It is hard to find if you’re not online.  So…it’s not totally obscure, but it’s rare enough that it slips under most people’s radar.  It’s currently available on Amazon for about 5 bucks, give or take.  Check it out.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

You know, the 80s was particularly great decade for big movies, but there were also a lot of blatant rip-offs of better films.  Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is one such film.  Starring Peter Strauss as Wolff, he takes on a job that has him traveling to a nearby planet to rescue three women who have been captured by an evil overlord.  If this doesn’t scream Star Wars rip-off, I don’t know what does.  Wolff is clearly a total riff on Han Solo with Michael Ironside’s Mad Dog, a clear knock-off of Darth Vader.  Funny thing is, the film has some pretty decent visual effects, despite the fact that the film was intended for 3-D.  Some of the creature designs are pretty nifty and the sets are pretty damn cool.  It’s a lot of fun, it’s got some creepy moments, and the musical score by Elmer Bernstein is one for the record books for having the most cheese.  The film IS still in print and I have a copy on Blu-Ray, so like the film above, it’s not out-of-print, but it is an obscure little science fiction film that I think deserves more attention than it got.  Always remember Emergency Procedure Number 1: If it doesn’t work, kick it.

Gymkata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDzt-JVvYPg

Well, file this one under “Never should have been made.”  Yet, here we are with one of the dumbest, silliest and bizarre action movies to come out of the 80s.  If Gymkata was a kind of cheese, it would be parmesan.  The reason for that is that the movie is set in a fictional country known as Parmistan.  Where do I start?  Do I start with the fact that they cast 3-time gymnastics gold medal champion Kurt Thomas as the main character, or do I start with the incredibly absurd story and painful acting.  Don’t get me wrong, I thought Kurt Thomas did pretty well with what he was given as he could do his own stunts, but besides him and Richard Norton, this movie is just incredibly goofy.  A lot of the main action sequences center around Kurt’s gymnastic talent which includes the pommel horse, which has to be seen to be believed.  I’m not kidding.  While the film is kind of in print, it’s one of those incredibly forgettable films that most people would rightfully skip.  But for folks like me?  This is a goldmine.

These are just a handful of some films that I found pretty damned hard to find over the course of my life.  There are a lot more out there, but they can be found if you’re willing to look in the right places.  That being said, if you want to check out more obscure films, you should check out a couple of books by a guy named David J. Moore.  He’s the author of World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies and The Good, The Tough, and The Deadly: Action Movies and Stars 1960-Present.  Those are pretty damned good and go over a variety of movies that you probably never heard of, but should see.  So, do you know of any obscure movies that I should check out.  Be sure to comment below.

Released: September 1987

Director: William Fruet

Rated R

Run  Time: 96 Minutes

Genre: Horror

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Cast:
Steve Railsback: Det. Jim Bishop
Gwynyth Walsh: Dr. Rachel Carson
Don Lake: Elliot Jacobs
Susan Anspatch: Dr. Judith Glass

The 1980’s was a very unusually active decade for movies.  Obviously, we had some really huge movies released that decade: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Terminator, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday The 13th just to name a few.  There were so many movies released in that 10 year period that a lot of smaller and lesser-known films ended up being forgotten.  There were a number of cult-classics like Blade Runner, Evil Dead and other films of that nature, but when it came to horror movies, there were a great number of little gems that got lost in the shuffle, and while it’s mostly for a good reason, there were some small horror flicks that were genuinely pretty good.  In 1986, James Cameron released one of the biggest and best sequels of all time: Aliens.  If you guys thought that The Asylum was the first film studio to release blatant movie rip-offs, you would be wrong.  In 1987, there was a little-known but goofy horror flick that was obviously a rip-off of Aliens.  The film was called Blue Monkey.

Blue Monkey opens as an old man, Fred visits a local greenhouse where he accidentally gets stung by a new species of plant, only to quickly fall ill.  Shortly after, he’s whisked away to a nearby hospital where a police detective’s partner was also taken after being shot.  Detective Jim Bishop is currently waiting for news of his partner when Fred is brought in.  Fred convulses and there is a small object that comes out of his mouth is put into a secure room.  Later, Bishop and several doctors including Rachel Carson try to inspect this…organic object, only to find a nasty little critter inside.  Encasing it in a glass jar, the group tries to investigate what happened when other people start getting sick.  Meanwhile, a couple of kids sneak their way into the room and inadvertently feed this insect with an experimental growth hormone.  When the thing busts out, it’s up to Bishop, Rachel and insect expert Elliot to find this thing before it’s too late.  It’s a pretty basic setup for a monster movie and it gets the job done.  It’s very clear that James Cameron’s movie was an influence in MANY ways.  A character named Bishop?  Strange coincidence don’t you think?  Now you have a monster movie that takes place in tight and dark corridors, featuring a massive monster that you don’t really see until about half-way through the film.  It’s absolutely silly and not particularly great as monster movies go.

It’s funny:  As a kid, I wasn’t necessarily scared of the dark until I started watching movies like Alien 3, then I was kind of….concerned.  But honestly, the movie that really scared the hell out of me when it came to basements, despite the fact that I was living in one at the time, was Blue Monkey.  This was a dimly shot movie that took place in the corridors of an abandoned insane asylum, so you can imagine the terrors that could lurk around the corner.  This movie spooked the hell out of me when I was younger.  Looking back at it now, it still has a pretty creepy vibe to it that sends shivers down your spine.  Does the film actually scare me today?  No.  It’s far too hokey and cheesy to have that kind of an effect on me any more.  These days, creature features use a lot of CGI to animate their monsters.  During the 80s, this technology really wasn’t available or good enough to do that, so everybody had to rely on old-school tricks like miniatures and puppets.  In the case of Blue Monkey, a man in a suit.  Basically, the creature is nothing more than an overgrown praying mantis in terms of its design, but you have to admit, a ten-foot tall praying mantis would be pretty freaky.  Some of the smaller creatures are genuinely pretty creepy, but they are obviously puppets and such.  Some of the effects in the film were actually not half-bad considering the obviously low-budget nature of the film.  While the film definitely owes a lot to bigger and better films, it still manages to be pretty thrilling, and that’s not bad for a film that’s over thirty years old.

The acting is pretty much on par with what you would expect from a movie of this sort.  So…mostly not great, but you have a pretty solid lead in Steve Railsback as Detective Bishop.  It’s one of the few roles that I’ve seen him in that he plays a good guy.  Gwynyth Walsh plays Rachel Carson, does a decent job in the role, even though, she’s nothing more than a potential love interest for Bishop.  One of the guys that really steals the show is Don Lake as the nerdy insect specialist Elliot.  This guy pretty much rules the screen every time he shows his face.  He’s a really good actor and this was one of his more interesting roles that he’s taken over the years.  Overall, the acting isn’t too shabby, but it’s not Oscar-worthy at the same time.

While I definitely enjoyed this film, there were definitely some issues.  Some of the effects really don’t age that well.  There was a scene where the creature decapitates one of the patients and the obvious dummy is obviously obvious.  Again, with the film being of a low-budget fair, it’s not a movie-killer, but it does stand out, especially in today’s world.

Blue Monkey was one of many movies that really kind of disappeared around the turn of the decade.  It was on VHS for a good long while, and there was a DVD released at some point.  I managed to find and order a copy, but aside from that, the film is out of print, meaning it’s a very rare film if you can find it.  Is it worth looking for?  In my opinion, it is.  It’s one of the lesser-known gems in a genre that was already becoming over-crowded with slasher films.  I would really love to see this film get a proper Blu-Ray release with commentary and vintage special features, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of interest in the film.  I’m hoping to change that with this review.  Is it a great movie?  Nope.  Is it a good movie?  Not really.  Is it a fun B-movie?  Hell yes, it is.

My Final Recommendation: Don’t feed insects experimental growth hormones.  Nothing good can come of that.  8/10.

I know that the title of this post might seem a little like “click-bait,” but please bear with me on this.  I’ve been a massive fan of George Lucas’s Star Wars since the day that I could crawl.  Initially it was all about the flashy visual effects and Darth Vader.  But as I grew older, I began to understand the nuances of the stories that were being told and how incredibly epic the Original Trilogy was.  To this day, I still feel that the Original Trilogy is one of the most epic film series of all time.  I will never get tired of watching them.  It wasn’t just the films that got me hooked.  It was the whole universe that was created.  George Lucas wasn’t entirely ready for the huge success that his film would become.  It ended up being the biggest movie of 1977.  People lined up for blocks just to get in to see the film.  It was a massive hit.  When Empire Strikes Back opened in 1980, audiences were somewhat split down the middle because Lucas took a huge risk with the characters.  He wasn’t just satisfied with putting the Rebel Alliance on the ropes, with the Empire winning this round, he also revealed that Darth Vader was Luke’s father.  That blew people’s minds and remains one of the greatest film twists in history.  Ultimately, Empire would go on to become known as the best film in the entire series.  Return of the Jedi was not as good as the previous films, but it was still a damn good movie.

Between 1983 and 1999, the Star Wars universe exploded in ways that George Lucas could never have imagined.  Not only did we get books, but we also got comic books, video games, soundtracks and entire fan conventions dedicated to Star Wars.  During the mid-90’s, Lucas was preparing to create the backstory to the Original Trilogy with Episodes I,II and III.  While most people would point to the Special Editions of Star Wars as the point in which the film franchise went downhill, it wasn’t until The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, that we began to see that the franchise was not what it used to be.  However, at the same time, the Expanded Universe was thriving with games like Tie-Fighter, Dark Forces and Super Star Wars for the Super Nintendo.  It was clear to a lot of people, myself included that after Episode III, the future of Star Wars would not be in the hands of George Lucas, but the hands of fans and authors that worked so hard to create the vast amount of novels and video games that resonate so well with people today.

In 2012, Walt Disney Pictures acquired the LucasFilm company and with it the Star Wars license.  It was sold for the massive sum of 4 billion dollars, most of which was donated by George Lucas to various charities.  When Disney got their hands on Star Wars, we knew that more movies were coming.  What we didn’t know was that Disney would basically pull the plug on the Expanded Universe and make all those stories non-cannon, much to the dismay of many a fan.  To be fair, half of those stories were garbage.  We would essentially be getting a clean slate with Star Wars……or so we thought.  Instead of doing something original with the franchise, Disney/LucasFilm teased us with the announcement of Episode VII, which would eventually be released in 2015 with the title of The Force Awakens.  Here’s the thing though, the episodic movies weren’t the only Star Wars films that Disney was planning.  Oh, no.  Disney had grand plans for expanding the Star Wars universe in its own way with spin-offs.  The first of said spin-offs was Rogue One which released in December of 2016, a year after Episode VII.  The plan was to release a new film every year, as opposed to the old way which was three years between films in a trilogy.  Last December, we got Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, a self-professed Star Wars fan.  The audience reaction was literally split down the middle with people either loving the film, like me, or absolutely hating it.  It was not the kind of Star Wars film that people were expecting.  I sure as hell wasn’t expecting it to turn out the way it did, and that added to my enjoyment of the film…..at least for a while.

One of the other spin-off films that Disney had cooking was the origin story of Han Solo, the lovable rogue from the Original Trilogy and Episode VII.  Problems with the film’s production became very, very clear when the film’s original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were summarily dismissed from the film with 70 percent of it filmed due to “creative differences” with Kathleen Kennedy, the current president of LucasFilm.  Ron Howard of Apollo 13 fame was brought in to “fix” the film, as it were, with massive re-shoots.  There was also the issue of Alden Ehrenreich getting an acting coach, because he was not doing well enough with the role.  Now, before I point my finger at the person responsible for this whole mess, I would like to say that there were moments that I really liked in the movie.  It wasn’t a complete waste of time, but it was clearly a very substandard and generic film, and those are two terms that really shouldn’t be associated with Star Wars.  It’s been reported that due to massive re-shoots and the hiring of Ron Howard, that the budget of Solo ballooned to about 300 million.  Looking at the current numbers at Box Office Mojo, Solo has only managed to earn about 150 million dollars world-wide.  That’s 10 days after the film was released.  What that means is that Solo is the first Star Wars film to bomb at the box office.  It may have something to do with the fact that the film was released only 5 months after The Last Jedi.  People were still dealing with how to react to The Last Jedi, and now we have another to deal with.

Solo’s lackluster performance at the box office highlights a MASSIVE problem at Disney and LucasFilm:  They don’t have a plan for the franchise.  They’re making it up as they go.  The proof is in the pudding with The Last Jedi, as it basically tosses everything we learned in The Force Awakens out the window.  Again, I had no problems with the unpredictability of the film.  The problem is that the film had no direction in which to go.  Disney didn’t have an endgame planned for characters like Luke, Rey and Kylo Ren.  While most people had problems with the social commentary in the film, that wasn’t my issue.  My issue is with the decision to release one Star Wars film a year.  I was worried when they announced that plan, that something like Solo was going to happen.  I call it, “Star Wars Overload.”  Disney and LucasFilm are doing too much with too little time.  Part of what made the Original and Prequel Trilogies successful was the amount of time between films.  That built up anticipation, which was almost as intense as finally seeing the films, regardless of their quality.  That made them event movies.  Now, they’re going to be routine, and routine is…..boring as far as movies go.  Between the social commentary bullshit that was forced into the films and the complete lack of planning and direction, Star Wars is not in a position where it can suffer another failure.  Disney can, as they’ve got more money than God, but the franchise can’t handle another blast.  This is basically putting all the pressure on J.J. Abrams and Episode IX when the film releases next year.

I don’t hate the Disney Star Wars films.  Far from it.  I really enjoyed them, apart from Solo.  However, the difference between Disney’s Star Wars and George Lucas’s Star Wars is night and day.  Lucas had an outline and a direction that he wanted to take his films in.  While the Prequel Trilogies didn’t quite work the way he wanted them to, they still mostly worked story-wise because he had a plan and he followed through with it.  He had it all planned out decades ago, he just didn’t have the technology to achieve it until the late 90’s.  Say what you will about the Prequel Trilogy, at least the prequels had a cohesive story-line that made sense.  It all played out in a way that made sense.  Do we see that from Disney’s films?  No.  I have no idea where they’re going to go with the franchise.  Last I heard, they were going to allow Rian Johnson to write and direct a completely new trilogy of films.  Okay.  THAT sounds like a plan, but what’s their excuse for how these other movies ended up?  I’m pinning the blame on Kathleen Kennedy, whose need to pump movies full of social commentary is going to cause irreparable damage.  People thought that George Lucas was going to destroy Star Wars.  Oh, no.  It’s going to be Ms. Kennedy that does the deed if she doesn’t get things under control.  If Episode IX bombs at the box office, I can almost guarantee you, that Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, is going to step in and Ms. Kennedy will lose her job.  Ultimately, that may have to happen.  If it doesn’t, I honestly don’t know how much longer I can continue supporting Star Wars.  I will go and see Episode IX, but that may be the last Star Wars film I ever see.    I don’t want to see that happen, as I’m a huge fan of the franchise.  It means so much to so many people, that to see Kennedy dragging it through the mud like this, pisses me off to no end.  Those are just some of my thoughts on the situation.  Agree? Disagree?  Feel free to comment below.