Expelled Grey Matter

There had been an attempt at a Fantastic Four movie in the 1990s, but the ones that really mattered were the two from the 2000s.  Fantastic Four managed to rake in some decent dough so, despite horrible reviews and fan backlash, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer followed in 2007.  It didn't do as well, but well enough that another sequel was being talked about.  This was before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing.  The sequel, of course, never happened.  Chris Evans got poached by Marvel Studios for Captain America: The First Avenger , Jessica Alba decided to pull back from acting and Michael Chiklis went back to being a character actor on television, finishing up The Shield and playing a significant role in the fourth season of American Horror Story.  The problem was 20th Century Fox still wanted to make money off the franchise and only had until 2014, with a release date of 2015, to do so before the rights went back to Marvel, meaning that Disney (who had not yet

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has a cultural impact beyond just being a movie.  The quality of such a film to most people has no bearing on their enjoyment of it, which for many hinges on a theatrical showing involving audience participation.  A good example is The Room , which invited some of the same sort of ritual antics with a movie that is borderline unwatchable otherwise. It may come as a surprise that I am one of the few fans of Rocky Horror that has never been to a showing in a cinema.  Dressing up is not my thing and neither are crowds.  I pretty much know this movie by heart after seeing it so many times anyway, so the participation thing wouldn't be a drawback.  I just have a hard time fitting in with any crowd, even the weirder or more offbeat, and feel like I would be the odd man out like I would at almost any other type of party, which is what the viewings of this ultimately are.   That means I am left with judging the movie not on a midnight movie experience but, rat

Although The Burning is usually thought to be a knockoff of Friday the 13th like most of the slashers that came after it, this movie was written and in production long before Sean S. Cunningham's movie hit the theater.  They were also two different types of movies.  Friday the 13th was Cunningham's attempt to make money off the fame of Halloween , just bloodier and sexier.  The Burning , on the other hand, was an attempt by a young producer named Harvey Weinstein to break into the film business with his brother Bob and the first film from their new company, Miramax.   Based on the Cropsey legend that was told as a campfire story in the New York and New Jersey area, the only thing The Burning has in common with Friday the 13th  is the summer camp setting and that there is a killer about.  It has more in common with Madman , released the same year and based on the same legend.  Both movies were also in simultaneous production, though it was merely a coincidence, and both have dif

Alligator was a humorous knockoff of Jaws  with a giant alligator roaming the sewers of an unnamed city and snacking on anyone it could get its teeth on.  Written by John Sayles and directed by Lewis Teague, the movie featured a decent mechanical mockup of an alligator, tongue-in-cheek dialogue and great sense of fun.  At the end another alligator is flushed into the sewer.  These days that would be a signal that they were planning on a sequel but, back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was just a reminder that the problems just crop up again and again. The movie was popular on cable and on regular television as well.  It was one of those b-movies that had staying power so, at some point, a sequel was bound to happen.  Predictably, when it did, it didn't differ much from the original movie.  However, it was nowhere near as much fun, despite the fact that everyone involved at least tried.  David Hodges (Joseph Bologna) is a police officer known as El Solo Lobo by his colleagues and the co

Just looking at the poster is enough to prepare one for this movie.  The font is the same as Guardians of the Galaxy , so there was an obvious attempt at tricking nearsighted grandmas or someone not paying attention into purchasing this film instead of what they intended.  This is the type of title that shows up in the DVD bin at Family Dollar.  7 Guardians of the Tomb  is a sub-par adventure movie with killer spiders to add a horror element.  There are also character actors thrust into lead positions just to have American and Australian actors in a movie that, despite the attempt at being a mockbuster, was made for a Chinese market, both in mainland and for ex-pats.  It's got the same bland storytelling, corny jokes and emphasis on digital effects and spectacle as any film starring the Rock, meaning that it is something one can watch and follow the basic plot without having to pay attention to the subtitles.   Jia (Bingbing Lee) and Luke (Chun Wu) are the children of the founders

The Terror is more well-known as an example of Roger Corman's ability to churn out movies than for anything else.  While famous for the fact that it was made in four days, the truth was that it was only principle photography, which Corman directed, so that the sets from The Raven could be used as well as Boris Karloff in a main role.  In truth the movie took closer to six months to make, much longer than most Corman productions, as the rest was shot by second unit directors such as Jack Hill, Francis Ford Coppola and even star Jack Nicholson himself. Lieutenant Andre Duvalier (Nicholson) is separated from his unit in 1806.  Exhausted and nearly dying of thirst, he happens upon a woman named Helene (Sandra Knight) who shows him where to get water and then, mysteriously, walks off into the sea.  Duvalier tries to follow her, but his exhaustion gets the best of him.  He wakes up in the home of a woman named Katrina (Dorothy Neumann) and her servant Gustaf (Jonathan Haze), who both den