When a Stranger Calls Back - 1993

 Goddamn it I was off by one year in my guess!  I guessed 1992.

I watched and was impressed a while back when I watched When a Stranger Calls.  This film, though I had never seen it, shocked me with just how much a true horror movie it was, and it's grim and more realistic view of a serial killer.  So then, why not watch the made-for-TV sequel movie that came out 14 years later?

Well, it's a bit of a decline, in case the words "made for TV" didn't clue you in.  When a Stranger Calls Back takes the same idea, basically does it again, but instead of upping the stakes, it sort of turns them down.  Then as if to over-compensate throws you one of the most insanely incongurent end sequences of all time.

WASCB has some act issues for sure, such as the long, long middle section where essentially nothing happens, except that the plot pieces that have happened happen again.  Basically, a woman is watching a kid in a house while the parents are away, and someone comes knocking at the door saying his car is stalled down the street.  He asks the babysitter to call a tow truck.  Picking up the phone, she realizes the cord has been cut, and this guy continues to terrorize her.

WASCB isn't bad by any means, and the scenes of the door interaction and then figuring out that maybe the killer somehow got inside are truly scary.  It's just a little bit slow...  and like I said, it's not a bad ending, especially if it was in a different movie, it just does not belong in THIS movie.  

I'll still give this 3 stars though.

Toxic Zombies - 1980

Also known as Bloodeaters, Bloodeaters: Butchers of the Damned, The Dromax Derangement, and Forest of Fear.

I've been craving zombie movies lately, and this came up as a suggestion when I finished Zombie 3 on Tubi.  Guys, get on Tubi, it has the most cult films I have ever seen on one platform.

Toxic Zombies was the vision of one man, a man with a bizarre story to tell:  Senior Vice President at a corporation Charles McCrann.  This guy was a corporate America big wig who worked in the fucking Twin Towers and died there on September 11th, but that was 21 years after he wrote, directed, produced and starred in this fucking weird ass zombie movie?

The movie starts promisingly.  A girl bares those big ol titties and rubs em down with water while people wander through some marijuana fields.  Awesome.  The idea is that out in the mountains somewhere theres this illegal weed farm, and these inbred rednecks dump some sort of experimental toxin all over their weed crops, and it ends up turning them into zombies.  Naturally.  

This movie is a blast.  It was labeled as a Video Nasty, again, and so I'm working my way through the list of those that exist.  It also had a weird history, obviously, and when things are this strange, they usually as a total wtf situation.  This one joins those ranks.  

It's not bad either!  I mean to an average movie watcher they'll hate it but to us, to me, it's good!  It's a good culty smokey drive in horror movie with dumb zombies and some good kills and it comes from the heart!  I wonder if Charles McCrann was happy with it?

I'll give it 4 stars.

Mistress of Atlantis - 1932

Part two of oldy-timey excursions on this set is this set, after The Lost City, this too is about Atlantis. 

In this bizarre remake, a group of explorers is wandering through the Sahara desert, as people do, and they find a mysterious entrance to Atlantis. Turns out Atlantis is run by a evil acting queen, and now they have to conflict with her in their quest to escape and survive. 

This movie does have a strange look to it, probably from the age, where people move in unnatural ways, choppy and odd, which really helped it. Especially with the Atlantians, it gave them an otherworldly and demonic presence.  

Otherwise, this is a often done plot, though I suppose this was one of the first in actuality. I wonder what the big deal with Atlantis was in the early 1900s? 

This is a bit slow and it's a product of its time. I can't slam it. I again wonder the usual stuff, like how well known this is, what it's individual legacy is. Will anyone ever rewatch it, relish in it?

I did find a review on IMDb where someone raved about it though, and frankly, that kinda stuff makes my heart swoon. Its not for me really, but I'm glad there's someone out there where it IS for them. 

I'll give it 2 stars. 

UFO: Target Earth - 1974

 Also known as Target Earth. 

This boxset is going to have some peaks and valleys, I can tell already.  I'm about to start on a string of bad 30s-ish sci fi related movies on the set. 

UFO is a clearly experimental 70s alien movie, very much leaning into the weirdness, you dig man?  There's a lot of really strange moments of bizarre sounds or screen effects or the actors clearly being given the direction to "look weird and disturbed".  The entire end is a 2001-ish colorscape of "trippy", "Pass the bong" teehee oddity, but you know what?  I loved all of that.

Unapologetically 70s, this movie just is what it is and it has no other era it could have been made in. 

Plotwise, I mean it's like, waaaay out there.  This guy is receiving strange signals from space and wants to find out what it's all about.  He gets this psychic woman and they trace the sources to a lake.  It turns out there's aliens in the lake, and they can only communicate through him.  That's about it, and it's also blessedly short at just around 75 minutes.

I would say that a lot of people might now love this as much as I did, but it is so wonky and out there it immediately gets in as a cult film.  I'll give it 4 stars.

Unknown World - 1951

 Also known as Night Without Stars.

Ok I just want to say if this had still had the name Night Without Stars, it would be a example of better name than movie. Unknown World fits it well because it's generic, bland, unnoticeable just like this movie. 

Most of this movie takes place in a grey room where "conflict" ensues, and if that sounds boring...well, it is! It's quite boring. 

Some stuffy scientist is out to prove some theory about hiding from radioactive age now that the atomic age is upon us, so he gets some guys and heads into the earth with 4 other bland people. 

There's the girl, the two guys who have conflict, scientist, and some other guy, and they have a few obstacles and explore the inner earth, and honestly that's about it. There's not much to this. 

It's a very middle of the road dramatic 50s movie with a slight sci fi edge to it, and that's about it. I don't mention these types of things unless they're really quite bad, but this is: the audio is so muffled that I missed a ton of what is said in this movie! It's remarkably bad. 

Overall, it's lifeless. 1.5 stars 

Ring of Terror - 1962

 I'm going through this new boxset right now, and it had a MST3K film in it, Ring of Terror.  Fuck it dude.  I'm a veteran of these boxsets and I voted that I could just rewatch the MST3K version. 

Ring of Terror is not one of my favorite MST3K films.  I cannot imagine this movie without the treatment these guys did on it, it's just a bad bad movie.  This was the episode that gave us the long-running "Puma!" callback they did for a while, that and the constant jokes about the age of the actors are the best jokes from this MST.

Ring of Terror aside from that is an insufferably long, slow movie about college medical students who are joining a frat and must pass their initiation tests.  There's a few of them thrust into this, and each one is tested to their own strengths and weaknesses pretty much, and that's basically all there is to it.  

The truth about the MST3K "old" jokes is very true.  According to what I can see here, some of the actors playing college students were in their 30s or even 40s.  That's problem number 1.  Problems 2, there is just not enough here to make this even marginally interesting, let alone scary.  This is like a supposed thriller drama with absolutely zero thrills and very sparse drama even.  

If I had watched the movie without MST aid it would for sure be a zero.  The MST version is barely a 2, its not my fave episode.  So, yeah, zero for this clunker.

They - 1974

 Also known as Invasion from Inner Earth and Hell Fire.

Bill Rebans makes another appearance on this set after The Alpha Incident.  Now, in that review, I talked about how surprised I was that I was liking a Bill Rebane film after my previous knowledge of him from Monster A Go Go, and hey maybe thats just his worse film and its all up from there?  Cause a few minutes of research reveals I also kinda liked his movie Rana early on in the blog.

They is similar in feel to The Alpha Incident in minimalism.  Alpha was all basically in one room with minimal amount of actors and happenings, and this movie is as well a lot in one room, or shot outside, with a minimal amount of actors and happenings.  They both suffer from essentially similar problems as well, in that to keep minimalism going you need a good script, and both don't quite have an adept enough hand, but also have plenty of entertainment value nonetheless.

Early on in They, a couple of isolated people way out in the middle of nowhere are only tenuously connected to the rest of the Earth by a radio, a radio which they begin to hear strange reports on.  It seems the world is descending into chaos, and all sorts of crazy happenings are going on.  When they fly to a nearby town, they're told not to land, and the air traffic guy literally throws himself onto the tarmac to stop them from doing so.  Seems there is a crazy new disease spreading, and it's basically total chaos.

This movie had some interesting factors rewatching in 2023.  The elephant in the room here is that it felt reminiscent of Covid, especially my experience, where I lived in the backwoods of Idaho and mostly heard about things going on in cities and around the world, where my own experience was seeing nothing and having my daily life change very little.

It felt more like they had something to do with the characters in this over Alpha Incident, but this movie still had some lags, and I think it also had a few plot holes.  There's a recurring bit where the people in the house gets calls from a weird alien voice over the radio, and I guess it's not a spoiler to tell you, we never figure out what that was all about.  Its hinted at for sure, but then again there is never a clear resolution to what happens in the movie at all, and the ending is a great wtf moment for sure.

I liked this and I thought the music especially was awesome.  I'll give it 4 stars.