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Reviews
Range Ryder & The Calgary Kid (1977)
Very strange children's special from Canada.
I actually saw this firsthand.
This Canadian children's special aired on the US cable channel Nickelodeon a few times around 1982 to 1984. Two cowboy heroes discover a valley of dinosaurs in the old west. Shot entirely in a TV studio, both are played by kids (Mike Myers and David Ferry) who ride on plastic prop horses, often in front of a chromakeyed background. The dinosaurs are small puppets that look as though they may have been cobbled together from toys or plastic model kits. Visible seems and joints with equally visible wires moving them. The sets are a small single stage with dressing that is moved around a little and a lot of miniatures that are of the quality of a roadside tourist trap diorama. A good diorama, but still, not very scenic. A store-bought electric train is featured.
Very strange and obtuse programming. I suspect that only a very small child would find it interesting. But then if you like weird stuff then you wont be disappointed by this either. Both kids play it completely serious as though they are adult desperados.
This was in the pioneer days of basic cable and Nick had no commercials and relied largely on inexpensive programming made for them in Canada, such as "You Can't Do That on Television" or 1970s programs imported from Britain such as the original "The Tomorrow People", "Black Beauty" "Into The Labyrinth" and "Danger Mouse" which was the first ever sponsored program on the channel and inexpensive children's films as well as movies in the public domain. American PBS programs also aired as well as their own US programming often shot in TV studios for next to nothing. No one would appreciate this now, but it was great fun.
Too bad no one VHS'd Range Ryder. Maybe it will pop up on YouTube some day. One can only hope.
I have no idea if it was a serialized program cut together. It may very well have been. Nick was known to do this with other programming and in many cases did the opposite; take a feature length film and cut it into four or five "chapters" and air it over a week". If you are a hater, then you are definitely going to HATE Range Rider. But if you love the diverse and the bizarre, you are going to LOVE this. There is some sort of genius behind it.. or insanity. Imagine a producer at a local affiliate news station or maybe a 1970 children's show host seeing one of the live action Hanna Barbera programs like "Danger Island" or Sid and Marty Kroft shows like "Land of the Lost" and thinking "I CAN DO THAT! NO PROBLEM!" and you would likely end up
Hyper Space (1989)
Not bad. I Enjoyed it.
I was surprised by this Simitar release. It is actually pretty good. Not bad at all for a video release. I think Lynn Holly Johnson is so charming and Ron O'Neal is a class act. It is very similar to Corman films from the same era like Dead Space, Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World. Also reminded me of the ambitious but under appreciated ALIEN imitator "Creature" from 1985. There are few special effects but the drama is well played. Yes, it is predictable but once you reach a certain age you find everything predictable. I am usually only surprised if the ending is so bad it gets me peeved. I wasn't peeved by any of Hyper Space. In fact it was good enough that I am surprised it is not better known. I can find almost nothing out about this film. Its a simple space opera. But nothing remarkable. Good cast. The few effects are decent. The spaceship model sequences reminded me of the fleet ships on Battlestar Galactica 1978.
Jimmy, the Boy Wonder (1966)
An actual review of the movie. No gags or jokes.
I did not find this film as unwatchable as the other watchers posted here. I have seen other films from H.G. Lewis and He is capable of competent and actually entertaining film-making. Though he is known for "Blood Feast" and "2000 Maniacs",which I think is a very clever feature, he actually has a fairly large body of work in several genres. At some point he decided to create some fantasy films for children. Let me start right off by saying that the home video of Jimmy The Boy Wonder, that I viewed is from Something Weird. A company known for putting out rare and hard to find titles. It is safe to assume that the print from which they made this recording was likely in very poor condition and probably could not be helped. The video quality is very, very poor and there is much electronic "bleeding" in the image and color. These factors certainly hamper any attempt at an accurate critique of Mr. Lewis work. The credits indicate that Jimmy, The Boy Wonder, was shot in Eastmancolor, like his other film and they look great. I will give Herschell the benefit of the doubt about quality of its original visual presentation. It likely looked quite colorful and sharp.
The opening credits is some colorful artwork with some original music. Most of the movie seems to have been shot around the same Florida locations that Lewis is known for. Coral Castle, Cypress Gardens and probably his own back yard. The overall plot is a bit like The Wizard of Oz and I suspect that was the main inspiration for Jimmy. Many fanciful characters wear fantasy type costumes such as wizards and Indians and oddball fairytale types. It is hard to judge from the VHS but The costumes are pretty hideous. Generally too busy and often ill fitting. There are a few silly songs in feature and I actually enjoyed them. They seemed out of sync at times, but I have no way of knowing if this is true of every print, or just this one. The audio on the SW video is also very poor. There is a villain called "Mr. Fig" who is always trying to get people to slow down and waste time. I could not believe the similarity in appearance and voice to the bad guy Robbie Rotten on "Lazytown" who is always trying to make everyone slow down and be, well, lazy. This guy is almost a mirror image. Midway through the film footage of the unfinished French animated feature "The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird". Almost every character in the thing is dubbed by Herschell Gordon Lewis himself. The dubbing was so out of sync that it was actually disorienting. I don't know how anything this awful could even be created. Obviously HGL did not have the time to do a credible job. Mouths move and say nothing. Voices are heard when no one's mouth is moving and you can't tell who is supposed to be talking. every now and again some words actually match the lip movements and it actually startles you!!! It really is a shame because the animation is fantastic. I am at a loss to explain how the rest of the film was put together. I suspect the HGL may have utilized some local children's theater talent. I think that someone could, given the current technology, potentially restore or fix this film and make something enjoyable. But its not likely to happen. Is it good or bad. Well, I cant recommend it as anything more than a curiosity. Though it has a steady pace, is short, and not exactly boring, I don't think children would find it entertaining.
Memorial Valley Massacre (1988)
This one popped up out of nowhere.
This movie is in the public domain, so it keeps popping up in bargain collections, drugstores and on-line for download, often free and sometimes with phony copyright information. I first saw this film as the second half of a $1.00 double feature DVD with another Cameron Mitchel turkey. Apparently he would turn nothing down. I think it's hard to know what to make of this movie. It starts off with an electronically inserted title card (Memorial Valley Massacre) A pretty good sign that this movie, whether released or not, started out with a different title. Research turned up the the title "Memorial Day" as its filming title. That's not a very good title in that it does not indicate a horror movie. But then, perhaps this is not one. The word "massacre" is misleading also as it makes you expect buckets of gore. Its not here. At least not in this cut. Recently (2011) I found a title "Son of Sleepaway Camp" online for free download. I found it to be the same film only it is a bit different. Apparently re-cut for foreign markets (Or more likely the U.S. version was cut, as it is much tamer. While the U.S. version plays like a slightly daring "made for TV movie" (The most shocking thing is a quickly glanced nipple that probably went unnoticed during editing.) This other version seems faster paced than the "Massacre" version. The title "Son of Sleepaway Camp" is even worst than "Memorial Day". What the heck does that even mean? I no longer own the "Massacre" version so my ability to review is impaired. The title sequence looks like the "real" one. The titles are burned in rather than electronic. The order of events seemed different to me. As though the action and murders are pushed closer toward the end. Mitchel's role seemed longer to me as well. But I cant imagine having a single name actor in the cast and then cutting him out of part of it. The single love scene is the biggest difference. This version is "hard core"!!! It is far too graphic for an R or PG-13 rating. It would not even get NC-17. Be ware if you are purchasing this on-line for a teen viewer and it reads Rated R or any other rating other than X. I am not certain of which versions have what content. I know that it was fashionable to add sex to foreign versions, but I guess they may have cut the sex out for the "Massacre" version. That version did seem ridiculously tame to me when I saw it. THe most graphic murder has a guy set on fire and running around. Its an impressive stunt and is pretty rough. I know they shot it "slo-mo" to make it run longer but I still had to wince. I believe the final murder has some added guts in one version that the other did not, but I'm not sure which version that was. I am not sure I can recommend either version. Though the "Son" version seemed more like a horror movie to me. Did this thing play in US theaters? I had never heard of it or even seen it written about in Monster mags at the time (1988) like Fangoria or Gore Zone. (I was also unaware of Mitchel's passing only a few years later, so I'm not always on the ball.) Where the heck did this thing pop up from?