As the Winter nights draw in I have hit the movies.
This weeks offerings have been:
TITAN FIND: a blatant A L I E N rip-off if ever there was one. Amazingly it was made a whole 10 years after the original - you would have thought its pulling power would have waned by then.
The plagiarism starts immediately and never falters. There's a chest-burster, an alien and astronauts trapped inside a confined space and home-made blasters. It was quite incredible.
Like a flatulent face-hugger it smothered me with that constricted feeling that only an appallingly tedious knockoff like this can create. I turned it off.
SLIPSTREAM: I have this flick on big box VHS but watched it on YouTube. Its selling point are the three main actors: Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill;
A L I E N S' private Hudson aka the late Bill Paxton and Jurassic Park's embattled gamekeeper to be, the late great Bob Peck. An auspicious trio with a not-too-bad screenplay about a global wind encircling a shattered society.
I enjoyed it to start with, especially the Mos Eisley-like settlement complete with cantina and music. I also liked the harder edge to Mark Hamill, a sort of older bitter Luke tinged a little dark side. I did think the ramshackle plane at the heart of the film was a bit weak though and lacked any screen presence. In the end I had to turn it off too.
CHAMBER OF HORRORS: OK, I've reached the highlight of my movie watching this week. I have been waiting for this flick to appear on You Tube for literally years and finally it has.
The last time I saw it was in the 1970's when we only had 3 TV channels in the UK and no other way of seeing films except the pictures [as we used to call the cinema.]
Chamber is one of those classic Sixties horror films: filmed in colour, well acted, a good solid story infused with suggested grue and gothic madness.
The plot concern's a deranged murderer with a prosthetic arsenal of hooks and cleavers, which he uses to good effect in discharging his foes with several well-placed chops. Sadly for the handy madman he is being tracked by two ameteur Sherlocks when they get time off from running the town's natty wax museum.
The feature which most people will remember however were two inspired marketing gimmicks, the Horror Horn and the Fear Flasher, together becoming an alarmed red screen which popped up just before any of the film's blood-letting, all suggested it has to said.
Seeing Chamber of Horrors again has been a real treat for me.
Have you seen any of these films readers?
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