B-Movie

Halloween Bloodbath

It seems like I haven’t really had enough horror films featured on Chopping Mall lately. Which is a shame: horror films are really what this blog is all about. Even the name comes from a horror film. Perhaps there’s no better time than Halloween to catch up on some splatters, slashers and spooks. So here is Chopping Mall’s extra special Halloween Bloodbath Horror Film review! Here we go….

Aerobicide

Now this was really quite something. It’s a while since I’ve watched anything that screamed 80s any louder than this. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything more 80s. This is a film set in an aerobics class, with pumping disco music throughout, enormous haircuts, occasional moustaches and lots of lycra. This could almost be a museum piece: look at what people wore in those days!

Mould

OK, so just few days ago I was wowed by the poster for Mould* and decided that I’d almost certainly have to watch it. I must admit I wasn’t actually expecting very much: once you’ve seen a number of 21st century B-movies you tend towards pessimism. Most recent films that aim for the schlocky, low-grade style of classic 70s and 80s films do so in such a self-conscious, post-Planet-Terror, we’re-so-very-hip-and-grindhouse way that they’re ultimately pretty disappointing. To my surprise, Mould* resisted all that and played it straight-faced and gorey and, as a result, was a whole lot of fun.

Island of the Fishmen aka L'isola degli uomini pesce

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote (or watched, for that matter) anything as gloriously silly as Island of the Fishmen. Whilst I have seen it before, it was only once and somewhat over a year ago, so I thought this re-imagining of Dr Moreau’s isalnd was ripe for another watch. And what a (ahem) treat it is!

It opens as you might expect a tense serious monster film to: the sea is still, several injured men look silently at the camera and a gull screeches overhead. Something has gone very wrong here, but we just don’t know what! Maybe this will be, despite the name, a slow-building tense affair, all hinted-at flashes and unsettling curiosities….. OH WAIT, NO! MONSTERS HAVE ARRIVED!

Stonehenge Apocalypse: What's the disaster genre about?

BOOM! BLAM! SMASH! KABOOM!

There’s something so captivating about the end of the world. Pretty much ever since someone thought “hey, who needs a plot when I have special effects?”, the apocalyptic disaster has been a mainstay of the cinema world. It’s pretty much the ultimate one-upmanship in cinematic disaster terms (speaking on a terrestrial level at least). Why blow up a car when you could blow up a house? Why blow up a house when you could blow up a whole street? Why blow up a whole street when you could… And so on and so forth until someone says: “Let’s destroy the whole damn WORLD!”. And everyone high-fives him/her for their brilliant idea and they all go down the pub to have a drink and to bask in how awesome they are.

Sherlock Holmes or Have The Asylum Upped Their Game?

[Screenshots and pictures coming soon]

Nowadays, with golden age of the b-movie so far behind us, with double screenings a rarity and everyone so enthralled to the big-budget CGI of Hollywood, the b-movie has become a self-conscious postmodern creation. No longer does it just happen to be bad, trashy, sleazy or cheesy; the b-movie style is actively sought, a nostalgic re-creation of the kind of films that were once so important and are now generally obsolete.

Terror on the 40th Floor

Sometimes, a review just doesn’t tell you whether you want to watch it. Sometimes, writing a review just isn’t appealing.

With these two things in mind, I present to you the ultimate im gimmick-y blog posting: the first 30 minutes of the film, blow by blow. There’s no spoilers (there’s hardly a plot), but hopefully it’ll give you an idea of whether you want to watch it (you don’t).

Angel Blade

The last thing I posted here (see below) was a rant/argument about how the “b” in “b-movie” didn’t mean bad. Sadly, as is so often the way when you try to make an argument, the next thing to come along so totally undermined my point that I’d have quite happily pretended it didn’t exist. But I shan’t, if only because admitting that there are exceptions to any argument is a good thing to do.

The 'B' in B-Movie Doesn't Mean Bad: A Rant.

As you can probably tell from just the briefest glance at this blog, I watch a lot of what would commonly be called ‘bad films’. Before we go any further, it should be made clear that this is a misleading and unfair label for these films. Films today tend to break down into depressingly few categories. They are either Big Budget, Independent, ‘Art-house’ or Foreign. Anything else tends to get labelled as bad. What’s even more disappointing is that, in the vast majority of cases ‘independent’, ‘art-house’ and ‘foreign’ often run together. So we’re left with: Big-Budget-Small-Brain-Blockbusters (the kind you eat popcorn with), Arty/Weird/Intellectual/Foreign/Independent (the kind you sip red wine with) and ‘the rest’ (the kind you drink lots of beer with).

World Gone Wild

After wading through a lot of horror recently (especially Vampires!), I was begining to feel the need to turn my gaze to something a little different. At this point, I usually sit down to choose between my other two favourite genres; is it to be Spaghetti Western or camp 80s Dystopian thrills?

I chose the camp 80s dystopia and World Gone Wild certainly didn’t disappoint.

Made in the 80s? Check.
A desert world where water has become the most precious commodity? Check.
Adam Ant as a bad guy? Check.
Killer frisbees, motorbikes, gunfights and moonshine? Check, check, check, check.