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Living Space (2018)
A Dead Storyline
Nazi Undead is a horror story about two young sweethearts on a trip through Germany where they encounter the spirit of a dead SS officer. The beginning of the film describes the Nazi concept of Lebensraum, living space that was needed for the German people. The film asks the question what would happen if someone unwanted entered the German living space - unfortunately the film does nothing to answer this question.
The story begins with the young couple leaving from their hotel to drive out to a local castle for sightseeing. On a lonely stretch of road, they believe they have hit a young girl, after which their car fails to start (what is it with people in horror stories having their car breakdown on a lonely stretch of road?). They start out on foot towards a lone house, where they encounter the angry spirit of a deceased SS officer. It appears the basic premise is that during WW2 the Nazi officer believed his wife was unfaithful and that his two daughters were illegitimate. In a fit of rage, he kills them all and then turns the gun on himself. Why he has now returned and what the purpose of his haunting is remains a mystery throughout the movie.
Only minutes into the film, just after the couple's car breaks down, we are treated to rapid flashes of scenes of ghostly haunting - the Nazi officer and his murdered family. It is impossible to tell if these are replays of the past, future premonitions, nor if they can be seen by the characters or not. When the couple first enters the house the young man steps into a dark room and runs out only seconds later proclaiming, "there is a dead SS officer on the bed!". The ghoul in question is wearing the uniform of an Oberfuhrer. One would need to be a serious student in military history to recognize this person as an officer in the Nazi SS (holding a rank of Sr. Colonel). Would a young American millennial be able to identify this in a matter of seconds in a dark room? Not a chance. The confusion only grows from here.
The film progresses as the couple moves through the house experiencing scenes of hauntings and appearances of ghouls from the family. How much of this is real or not is impossible to tell. When you believe there is an end and one member of the couple is brutally killed, the characters then appear back in their stalled car as if nothing has happened. The story repeats, with minor changes in events. This cycle of rise, wash, repeat occurs multiple times. Each time the couple makes increasing bad choices. It seems that in every horror movie the characters make bad choices, like the slasher movies where the frightened teenagers arm themselves with flashlights and hide behind running chainsaws. At the end we flash back to the very start with the young couple leaving their hotel for a sightseeing tour. What just happened, was any of this real, and what is the point of the ghoulish SS officer, remains a baffling mystery all through the movie.
The characters exhibited over the top dramatic acting and engaged in actions and conversations that seemed to defy any logic for a person in a similar situation. While the portrayal of ghosts and ghouls was well done, their appearance made little sense. The two murdered girls appear standing together in their white nightgown multiple times. This had all the appearance of a bad remake of "The Shining". I was expecting these two girls to say, "Come play with us Danny", followed by writing "Redrum" on the wall. The one redeeming aspect of the movie was their skilled use of images and makeup rather than the cheap horror thrill of blood and guts. Unfortunately, this alone wasn't enough to save this movie, the story frankly made zero sense. It was as if the producers said, "Hey, we have ghosts, ghouls and Nazis. That's a winning formula!". Well not exactly. You need a story behind it, and this film didn't have any.
Robot Monster (1953)
No Robot Monster, No Story Either
Robot Monster is an example of the early generation of sci-fi genre films from the 1950s. Released in 1953 and produced with a budget of just $16,000, it has an unusually short run time of only 66 minutes. The short run time turns out as a blessing, as the pain of watching this bad film is that much less. The title is a bit of a puzzle. There is no monster, at least nothing in the conventional monster sense. The robot must be hiding, we see neither hide nor hair of him during the film. I suspect that the title was given so every boy and girl will shout, "daddy, daddy, I want to see the Robot Monster movie". Coupled with the fact that this picture was originally shown in 3D indicates the only way the producers thought they could con someone to buy a ticket and sit in the theater would be to use sleazy marking gimmicks.
The story starts out with your typical middle class 1950's perfect family on a picnic in a small grove near the woods. The next moment we are presented with a man wearing a cheap gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head. Why is he here and what is he doing? For a moment I felt that I must have dozed off from boredom and missed about 10 minutes of the movie. Alas, I had not - the plot simply made no sense. Watching all the way through the 66 minutes did nothing to help my confusion, there is no way to make heads nor tails about what is going on. It was as if 10 minutes of the film that explained everything had been accidentally dropped on the cutting room floor and never made it into the final production, which would also explain the short run time. Given that the janitor must have swept up the floor by now, the world will never know what this movie is about. It's one thing for a bad movie to have a nonsense script, it's another to not be able to make any sense out of the nonsense. The only tidbit I was able to ascertain was that aliens had used a death ray to kill all the humans on earth, except for 6 people hiding in a small encampment. I must say that for being the last humans on earth and surviving an alien apocalypse, these people are remarkable upbeat and chipper. With their freshly washed faces, clean pressed clothes, and professionally coiffed hairdos, they look as if they just walked off the set of Mayberry from filming an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Alien apocalypses are overrated.
Given there is no way I can further explain what in the world is going on in this picture, nor what this guy wearing the cheap gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head is doing, I'll focus the rest of this review on the production aspects of the film. For a grade-B movie, the acting is surprisingly decent. Not once did I snicker over amateurish line delivery. Given most of the cast is from Mayberry, that's not surprising. With allowances made for the understanding of space travel and technical ability in the early 1950s, most of the special effects are acceptable, outside of a couple shots with the proverbial toy rocket on a string. There were several scenes of dinosaurs roaming the earth as well as giant lizards locked in a life and death struggle. What this had to do with the movie is sure beyond me, but that's much in line with the general confusion that permeates this picture. At random times we hear sounds of electric arcs coupled with lighting flashes. This happens so often it appears the film was shot inside a thunderhead. Why this occurs remains a baffling mystery. The overall production quality is pretty much on par with your typical sci-fi movie of the period.
Some bad movies are so bad they are entertaining to watch. Not so with Robot Monster. While this is a bad movie, and well deserving of a 1-star rating, this film has no entertainment value whatsoever. In a word this movie is boring. Not just your run of the mill boring, but epically boring - so boring that while watching this movie you'll need to gnaw your own leg off just to give yourself something to do. You have read my review, which is already more of your life than you should have spent on this. There is no reason for you to watch this movie, there is literally nothing to see here. You'll end your 66-minute slog fest no wiser or entertained that you were when you started out. The only thing you'll have to show for your trouble is one less limb. I'm still left with the question of what that guy dressed in the cheap gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head doing and why is he here. The world will never know. Now excuse me, I need to finish gnawing off my leg.
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)
A Perfect Failure
Plan 9 From Outer Space has been billed as the worst movie of all time. I recently watched it to see for myself if this film lives up to its dismal reputation. I'm pleased to report it did not disappoint. The film, released in 1959, is the brainchild of Edward Woods, who had desperately sought to make a movie. Ed was told there was no way he could make a movie given the paltry budget of $60,000 that was available (for reference the sci-fi cult classic "Forbidden Planet", released in 1956, had a budget of $1.9M). Ed proved his critics right by not making a movie. While he did produce something on film, it certainly isn't a movie.
The failures start at the story line, which takes absurdity and silliness to a whole new level. This script is so bad that even stink would say it stinks. The dead are rising from the cemetery, and of course you can't have walking dead without aliens. Seems the aliens fear that since we humans are idiots, we will not only destroy ourselves but will shortly invent a new device called "Solaranite" which has the power to set sunshine on fire (of course!). Once we do that the burning sunshine will travel back and destroy the sun. Since the aliens have beachfront property and like their all year tans, they really want the sun to keep shining, so they are raising the dead (which turn out to be a grand total of 3) to defeat us poor hapless humans.
The film starts in a cemetery, supposedly located just outside of Hollywood. Oddly the cemetery appears to be comprised of scrub grass and snarled trees that seem more at home in the Scottish Highlands, but why quibble. The walking dead include Vampira (who plays a vampire ghoul), and a police detective (played by Tor Johnson) who is killed shortly after the start of the film and becomes a generic type ghoul. Vampira stalks about with her arms outstretched attempting to be scary, when the only scary part is the fear they'll show more of her. The third ghoul is played by the literal ghost of Bela Lugosi. Lugosi had signed up for the film before the script was developed. It is said that once Lugosi received and read the script he proclaimed, "this is a good day to die", and proceeded to do so, anything to avoid being in this awful movie. While Lugosi was dead before the start of filming, the producer had a short clip of Lugosi in his vampire outfit exiting a cave into a graveyard. They use this clip to cut to an amateurish scene of a stand-in double for Lugosi. Outside of the double being a foot taller, skinnier, and comprising a completely different body and facial structure, he is a dead ringer for the happily deceased Lugosi. This double, who now plays a combined vampire/Lugosi, stalks about with a cape drawn over his face and seeks to frighten young women, who somehow manage to pretend to be afraid rather than breakdown laughing at how silly this all looks. Just in case you missed it, don't worry, you'll be seeing that same short clip of Lugosi multiple times.
During the course of the movie you'll see a cadre of characters bumbling their way through the makeshift cemetery, their feet sliding on the artificial grass covering a concert floor. You'll notice the curtains that attempt to cover the wall of the garage, where this scene was obviously shot, and the bending of multiple cardboard tombstones. The police investigating the cemetery are in urgent need of a gun safety class. We see them rubbing the barrel of their revolvers on their check, pointing it at their heads, indiscriminately waiving it at anyone conveniently nearby, and in general using it to scratch anything that itches. Their knowledge of firearms is profound, as there are frequent references to loading clips into their revolvers. Silly me, I though it wasn't possible to load clips into revolvers, but these Keystone Cops have figured out a way.
The childish sets are legion. In the setting of an airplane cockpit, pilots are seated on folding chairs with flight yokes made from cardboard. Neither pilot makes any attempt to fly the plane, given the cardboard yokes aren't attached to anything it would seem rather pointless even to try. The stewardess enters through a shower curtain to talk with the pilots. How she does that without falling down laughing is beyond me. She then exits back through the shower curtain, hopefully there is an actual shower back there where she can attempt to wash off the smell of this movie.
By now of course the aliens are arriving, we see them depart from the mothership, which appears to be a hanging snow globe. The flying saucers look remarkable like hubcaps from a 1958 Edsel, artistically hanging from wires and superimposed over stock footage of greater Los Angeles. With the aliens approaching the military springs into action, sending battalions of stock footage from WW2. The army launches a massive artillery barrage, which also seems function as anti-aircraft fire. Sparklers are lit up next to the suspended hubcaps. This seems to frighten the aliens and the hubcaps quickly fly away. Perhaps they are seeking a newer model Edsel.
When the aliens do finally arrive, they are comprised of what seem to be the king and queen of hearts from Alice in Wonderland. They speak with the alien emperor, who oddly is dressed like Sir Lancelot. When emperor Lancelot delivers his lines, his eyes roll into the back of his head and he appears to be stoned out of his mind. This makes perfect sense to me, as the only way I could numb the pain of being in this movie and have any hope of delivering my lines without falling down laughing would be to get as high as a kite.
Entry to the alien ship is made through a garden shed that has a ladder on the side which serves no purpose. Within the ship are some tables from Sears and a pile of used electronic equipment that fell off a DuMont TV repair truck. Interspaced within the electronic gear is a flashing yellow light from a road construction barrier, likely picked up by the aliens in that detour around the asteroid belt. After a lecture from the alien king of hearts on our idiocy, we manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and destroy the alien ship, which we do by pouring lighter fluid on the hubcap and setting it ablaze.
There is far more than just ridiculous story line and set design. Scenes are cut and set without any sense of logic. Backgrounds and people inexplicably change from scene to scene. The same footage is used again and again, each time incorrectly stitched into the following scenes. Night turns into day, back to night, and then day again with alarming speed. Perhaps in addition the ability to burn sunshine we have managed to speed up the earth's rotation. The complete lack of any acting ability combined with set blocking and line delivery that is so amateurish, stiff and wooden, one wonders if the director was ever actually on the set. Perhaps the director, aka Charlie Brown, was called away to finish the school Christmas play. Abysmal acting is matched only by laughable dialog. Hopefully the writers of this script had their fingers sown together, lest they ever write again. An example of writing greatness includes blinding flashes of the obvious: When the vampire/Lugosi double is hit by an alien beam and turned into a skeleton, the actor nearby points to the skeleton and proclaims, "He didn't look like that before". Any other observations you care to share with us Ray Charles?
When the only redeeming aspect of a movie being it is 79 minutes long and not 80, fortunate for me as my anti-nausea medication was running low, you know you have something really special going. While there are many candidates for worst movie of all time, to reach this lofty level one must fail in every way imaginable. In this, Plan 9 From Outer Space achieves perfection. Every conceivable facet of movie making from story, scripting, acting, directing, set design, lighting, blocking, wardrobe, special effects, producing, soundtrack, etc. is an epic failure. While even the most incompetent among us will on occasion, even if by accident, do something right, this movie manages to do everything wrong. That's quite an accomplishment! Plan 9 From Outer Space is the worst movie ever made, a perfect failure.
The Dead Files (2011)
A Solid Paranormal Investigation Series
This paranormal investigation series focuses on the partner-team of Amy Allen, a professed physical medium, and Steve Dishiavi, a retired NY city police detective. Rather than investigating your typical haunted houses, this show takes on only cases of problematic hauntings, situations where the residents need to find a solution or move. The clients focused on the show are looking to the Dead Files cast as their last resort.
In a typical episode Steve, the NY detective performs the closest thing you can have to a factual police type investigation on the history and facts of the property and the persons in question. Steve does not perform any type of paranormal investigation, his work is used to validate the finding of Amy Allen, his on-show partner. Meanwhile, Amy arrives at the location in question and performs what she calls a 'walk though'. During her walk Amy describes her encounters with the dead and other spiritual entities that she meets, recording what the spirits tell and show her. According to Amy, she was born with an ability to both see and speak to the dead. No typical paranormal investigation is performed (i.e. voice boxes, photographs, audio recordings), the only physical item produced as a result of Amy's walk through is a drawing she has done by a local sketch artist of what she has seen (which of course no one but Amy has seen).
While other paranormal series study the phenomenon quite deeply, most present the results and leave it at that. This series takes a different angle of formulating workable solutions to the haunting events. At the end of each show Amy and Steve meet with their clients. Here Amy describes what she heard and saw during her walk and Steve provides historical corroborating evidence to support Amy's testimony. In each case Amy then provides her recommendations on how to resolve the paranormal issues. These may range from having various spiritual practitioners remove entities, cleansing or other rituals, and even at times to recommend the clients move.
The show provides a serious police-like investigation mode to a paranormal situation and avoids the typical jumping and screaming at every strange noise. Steve acts as the show's narrator and does an outstanding job, that old NY boy voice comes through as authoritative. The cases all involve clients who claim to be having serious and dangerous paranormal activities that threaten their health the lives, as such there is a lot of emotions expressed. Steve projects a warm and kind response to their client's situations. As Amy describes the encounters she has during her walk she often has strong reactions of how bad the spirits are, pain and sickness she is feeling, and typically a great concern for the clients that one or more of the spirits are dangerous. An obvious question would be, are the walks by Amy real or staged? Both the producers and Amy claim there is no hoax being portrayed. It does seem that what Amy describes from her walk has an uncanny degree of accuracy for what we learn later to be the historical facts and client testimony. You as the viewer can make your own mind up regarding how valid Amy's finding are. As no paranormal investigation is performed, the viewer is left with only the testimony of Amy and Steve's factual investigation for the validity and type of activity that is happening.
While the show is a pleasure to watch there are some downsides for which I gave my 8-star rating. During her walk-through Amy will often have over the top reactions and her descriptions seem very similar from one show to another. Almost as if she has a master script that she uses and makes minor modifications based on the specifics of each location. The ending reveal with the clients also seem to be on the same general script. This is likely a reason that I often have difficulty sorting out one episode from another, they have a very similar look and feel for content. Amy seems to have a vast wealth of knowledge of every spiritual situation as well as at times very complex 'resolution' processes. So far there is no situation that Amy didn't have concise answers and solutions for. How she has this in-depth knowledge is not explained nor does she ever seem to present something that is out of line with Steve's factual findings (which does push credibility to say the least). Steve for his part seems to assume without question Amy's unerring ability. It appears he sorts through his evidence to find the best-fit for what Amy has described, resulting in confirmation bias. The Travel Channel missed an opportunity to use Steve's police background to have him analyze the evidence like a detective and then have Steve and Amy together come to the most-likely conclusion of what is happening in each situation. Without that the series risks degrading into something akin to 'Amy the amazing psychic, as confirmed by Steve the all-knowing'.
There are several paranormal themed series out there. This one does stand out from the rest in its format of investigation and issue resolution, very unlikely you would confuse Dead Files for another paranormal series. Anyone who has interest in the paranormal would enjoy this series.
Destination Fear (2019)
Missed the Mark on Fear
Destination Fear has an interesting premise and a new take on the popular paranormal shows. They claim to be studying the impact of fear on a person; what happens when someone is afraid and how much fear can a person take. Unfortunately they have missed that mark by a wide margin.
The show is hosted by three young lifelong friends and brother/sister team. The hosts are very enjoyable to watch, you can tell right away they have a great chemistry together. A typical episode runs much along the line of other paranormal type series; you get the background of the site, do some investigation, and react to unexpected noises and events. They history and connection to current hauntings are done at a cursory level, and the paranormal investigations are rudimentary at best. Perhaps one might forgive this as the focus is supposed to be on fear. Unfortunately they have missed this mark completely. We do see the team jump and scream at strange noises, then again that happens on most other paranormal series. As far as investigating the human reaction to fear, there isn't any. The most we got was about 45 seconds of statements at the very end of the show around, "I was really scared"; comments that seemed to be added when the producers realized they hadn't done any fear study and they better put in something and hope no one notices. There seemed to be an attitude that they'll just show you clips and let you figure all this stuff out on your own.
Even with a fun loving and enjoyable cast and decent production values, there is very little here to watch. If you enjoy a ghost story around the campfire and like to be part of being scared along with a group of friends, this series may work for you. Anyone looking for a paranormal investigation or a study on human fear will find this series very wanting and empty.
I would doubt that this series will be renewed for another season.
The Curse of Oak Island (2014)
Season After Season of Nothing
I can't believe the History Channel series, "Curse of Oak Island" is not only still on the air but is one of the highest rated non-fiction cable shows. I watched it early on and it was always the same. Each episode would breathlessly threaten to find something - but so far in 7 seasons they haven't found nothing! Not a damn thing worth a hill of beans. The typical episode goes like this:
A self-proclaimed treasure expert has just found a previously undiscovered manuscript from the 15th century, which for unexplained reasons was created in Microsoft Office. This manuscript indicates that in 1492, while cleaning out the attic of Mary Queen of Scotts, 7 left-handed Canadian Freemasons discovered a vast Knights Templar treasure worth $500 billion dollars. The Templars put the treasure in the attic for safe keeping, then forgot about it as they were off doing a lot of secret Knight Templar things. We'll explain all these neat events as time filler in a future episode. The first thing the 7 left-handed Canadian Freemasons did was to put secret yet slightly confusing symbols on everything they had, get the treasure on a ship, and make a beeline for Canada.
When they arrived at Oak Island, they built a massive subterranean treasure vault under the island to such an extent that it would stun a James Bond super-villain. They put the Templar treasure in the vault, and then being Canadian, they sailed away and never returned. This makes perfect sense to me because this is exactly what I would do if I found $500 billion dollars.
The team is now digging at the exact spot of this treasure, as indicated by our high altitude, infrared, gallium arsenide, isosceles triangulator. After 12 episodes we have sunk a vertical shaft into the island an astonishingly 2 feet deep. We believe that we are very close to finding something, since the budget for this episode is almost gone. Yes, we see something shinny in the pit. We have our hands on it, it feels like the treasure, it must be...oh wait, it's just an old beer can. Come back next week and we'll certainly have a new find for you, the pull tab for that beer can can't be far away.
After almost 200 years of digging, over 40 excavation sites, most of the island dug up to kingdom come, and 7 seasons of high tech digging- all with nothing! This is an obvious hoax from the start. Nothing is here, nothing ever was here.
Who is watching this drivel?