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Showing posts from October 13, 2019

Review: Fortress (1985)

Rachel Ward is a small country town teacher with a class of kids of all ages. They are set upon by a group of masked robbers (Peter Hehir, David Bradshaw, Vernon Wells, and Roger Stephen) who spend much of the film chasing after and terrorising them. However, the teacher and her students eventually decide to try and turn the tables. Wendy Playfair (who played an unlikely criminal on TV’s “Prisoner” ) plays an elderly victim, whilst amongst the kids we find Sean Garlick, Rebecca Rigg, Beth Buchanan, and a young Asher Keddie. Terry Donovan appears at the end as a cop. Everyone has one. It stays with you forever, even if the minute details may escape you the effect it had on you lingers. Perhaps it was something you saw at 3AM in the morning. Perhaps like me, you saw it as a kid. We all have that one film that we saw once many moons ago and it has somehow stuck in your mind all this time. Having not seen it in the years since you might even question if it wasn’t a movie but a ni

Review: Blackenstein

Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone) asks former mentor Dr. Stein (John Hart) to help her Vietnam War-injured lover Eddie (Joe De Sue). With limbs blown off by a landmine, the good doctor obviously has his work cut out for him. However, with Dr. Stein’s mastery of transplant surgery, there may be hope. Enter evil lab assistant Malcomb (Roosevelt Jackson) to mess things up, resulting in the hulking, lumbering monstrous title character. Every bit as bad as you may or may not have heard depending on your interest in Blaxploitation, this 1973 horror turd from director William H. Levey (the terrible horror pic “Hellgate” ) isn’t even the right kind of bad movie. Scripted by producer Frank R. Saletri (his one and only film credit, tellingly), it’s the kind of thing that thinks naming the doctor Dr. Stein is the height of hilarity. Ugh. Nope, this one just sucks to the point where you can’t believe the name Al Adamson isn’t in the credits somewhere. The sole source of humour her