What was the last movie you watched?

[Pastor of Muppets]

I watched Black Klansman a few weeks ago.  I thought it was kind of a bland movie.  The premise of a black man and a Jew infiltrating the KKK is interesting, but the movie was just dull.  I found the Patrice character supremely unlikable.  There didn't seem to be any risk, or any stakes for any of the protagonists.  And nobody suffered any loss except for the antagonists.

There was a scene where the Klan people were watching Birth of a Nation and immensely enjoying it.  Now I want to see that movie to see what all the controversey is about.

[Cyrusso]

I watched Black Klansman a few weeks ago.  I thought it was kind of a bland movie.  The premise of a black man and a Jew infiltrating the KKK is interesting, but the movie was just dull.  I found the Patrice character supremely unlikable.  There didn't seem to be any risk, or any stakes for any of the protagonists.  And nobody suffered any loss except for the antagonists.

There was a scene where the Klan people were watching Birth of a Nation and immensely enjoying it.  Now I want to see that movie to see what all the controversey is about.

Really? I thought it was great fun. There was definitely a great deal of comedy, and even suspense, with the threat of Ron Stallworth or Flip "Kylo Ren" Zimmerman getting found out by the KKK.

Personally, I'd be super uncomfortable watching Birth of a nation, considering the ummmmm.... racism in it. Up to you though.

[stethacantus]

Brothers Five  ( 1970 )

Here is what Shout Factory has in their first two volumes of Shaw Brother's Classics:

Volume One:
The Assassin
The Thundering Sword
Golden Swallow (  previously released by Dragon Dynasty )
The Jade Raksha
The Bells of Death ( previously released by Image )
The Sword of Swords ( previously released by Funimation )
Killer Dart
The Invincible Fist
Dragon Swamp
The Flying Dagger
The Golden Sword


Volume Two:
Lady of Steel
Brothers Five ( previously Released by Well Go )
The Crimson Charm
The Shadow Whip ( previously Released by  Image )
The Delightful Forest ( previously released by Well Go )
The Devil's Mirror
Man of Iron
The Water Margin ( previously released by Image )
The Bride from Hell
Heroes Two ( previously released by Tokyo Shock )
Flying Guillotine ( previously released by Dragon Dynasty )
The Dragon Missile

Not as much double dipping as with the Arrow Shaw Scope sets. But a lot of these films are in the swordplay genre and not the basher genre.  It is the basher films which are better known in the United States due to them being syndicated for television in the 80s. Although for some unexplained reason Shout didn't acquire the rights to The One Armed Swordsman or The Return of the One Armed Swordsman, nor Come Drink With Me, of which Golden Swallow is the sequel.  At least Man of Iron is among the first two volumes.

Brothers Five is one of those films I was unsure of the plot for, even though I knew I had seen it. Too many films with "Brothers" and "Five" in the title. However, about ten minutes into watching it, I realized: "Oh yeah. It's this stupid film." Decades earlier a villa was taken over by a villainous clan with a leader named  Lung Cheng-feng, who is an unbeatable golden sword expert. The owner of the villa was killed and his fortune stolen. His five sons, ranging from infant to five years old survived and were taken away, where they ended up scattered and unaware who their family was, or that they had brothers. But before they were split up, they were all given matching scars on their hands so they could be identified in the future. Cheng Pei Pei plays Mrs. Leu, the daughter of the man who rescued the sons and sent them to live with different families. Before he died he asked her to find the boys, now all full grown men, and reunite them so that they can take vengeance.  It actually does not seem as hard as it should be. All five men still have the surname of Kao. And very plot convenient, all five men are individually on their way to the villa to fight Lung Cheng-feng for separate grievances each time Mrs. Leu runs into one of them, she begs them not to attack the villa on their own, but they do not listen and each are almost killed, and need to be saved by her. It becomes ridiculous how many times one or more brother shows up at the gate of the villa looking for a fight, only to get their ass kicked by one of Lung Cheng-feng's underlings. Mrs. Leu finally corrals all five brothers into an abandoned temple and teaches them a technique where they basically get together form a spinning upside-down pyramid, and for some reason Lung Cheng-feng cant defeat them when they are in that formation. An entertaining film. But very dumb.


Flood! ( 1976 )
Okay, finally began my Irwin Allen disaster movie set, and the first up is one of his made for television disaster films. While Irwin Allen spent a fortune on his theatrical films, when it came to anything he made for television, he was extremely cheap. His science fiction shows like Lost in Space relied heavily on recycling sets, costumes and props from older science fiction movies. He was just as cheap when it came to television films. In this film, where a town is devastated by a dam bursting, almost all of the flood happens of screen. what little we do see of flood waters hitting town is either a cheap split screen effect where the actors pretend they are in waist deep water that isn't really there, or stock footage of actual floods. As for a wall of water crashing through a town, none of that is seen. Not via a dump tank on a set, nor via models.  Most of the movie is an engineer trying to warn the mayor that the dam will break unless he opens the flood gates, and the mayor refusing to because it will drain all the fish out of the lake, which had become a destination for sports  fishermen. And the town needs that money the fishing resorts produce! Of course, the dam bursts despite the mayor insisting it is safe.  And random characters drown, mostly off screen. Thank god tat this only has a 90 minute running time, because it has none of the thrills of a theatrical disaster movie.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I watched The Tommyknockers which is an adaptation of a Stephen King novel.  It's really a miniseries, but it's 2 hours and 55 minutes long which is feature length so I'm gonna count it.

A novelist named Bobbie Anderson trips over something in the forest near her home.  She starts to dig it up.  Then weird stuff starts to happen to her and the townsfolk.

It was a good adaptation, but the ending of the book was so much bleaker.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I watched Black Klansman a few weeks ago.  I thought it was kind of a bland movie.  The premise of a black man and a Jew infiltrating the KKK is interesting, but the movie was just dull.  I found the Patrice character supremely unlikable.  There didn't seem to be any risk, or any stakes for any of the protagonists.  And nobody suffered any loss except for the antagonists.

There was a scene where the Klan people were watching Birth of a Nation and immensely enjoying it.  Now I want to see that movie to see what all the controversey is about.

Really? I thought it was great fun. There was definitely a great deal of comedy, and even suspense, with the threat of Ron Stallworth or Flip "Kylo Ren" Zimmerman getting found out by the KKK.

Personally, I'd be super uncomfortable watching Birth of a nation, considering the ummmmm.... racism in it. Up to you though.

The racism is kind of the point.  Something that notorious makes be super curious.  But I can definitely see why it would make a lot of people uncomfortable.

[stethacantus]

It's Christmas weekend, and I am not watching any Christmas movies, with exception to NBC's annual Christmas eve airing of It's A Wonderful Life which each year I end up watching the final half hour of. Here is what I watched instead..

The Crimson Charm ( 1971 )
Part of Shout! Factory's Shaw Brother's Classics Volume 2, and one of the Shaw Brothers films I have never seen before.  An elderly swordsman and his daughter come to the defense of a girl being raped by a gang of thugs and kill their leader. Turns out he was the son of the leader of the dreaded Crimson Charm gang, who in turn vow to invade the school of the swordsman on his birthday and kill everyone there. The massacre happens, and there are only four survivors. One of which is the swordsman's daughter who eventually succumbs to the internal injuries from the day of the massacre. The survivors, now hunted by the Crimson Charm gang, learn advanced martial arts and return to take revenge. A very basic revenge story that is surprisingly entertaining. Written and directed by Huang Feng, who along with Raymond Chow, Leonard Ho, Lo Wei, and Jimmy Wang Yu would defect from Shaw Brothers Studios shortly after this was completed, to form Golden Harvest Studios,  where he would discover Angela Mao and direct her best films. Another defector from Shaw Brothers who worked on this film in a bit part was Samm Hung, who was at the time graduating  from stuntman to action director/fight choreographer, and had small roles in this film and  last week's Brother's Five.

Fire From Below ( 2009 )
No SNL this week, so enough time for two PM films.  One again watched something from the 5 Disaster Movies set. This one a Kevin Sorbo film that seems more like a horror movie than a disaster film. Minors dig up a vein of lithium which immediately turns into a ball of fire and kills everyone at the mine. It then seps out of the mine and begins killing everyone in town. For most of the film, it acts as if it has intelligence, as it deliberately chases after it's victims before either turning them instantly to ash, or just burning them enough to kill them. Kevin plays a scientist recruited by the army to figure out how to stop the lithium monster before it turns into a nuclear explosion and takes out half the mid-west. Not that bad of a film for a low budget direct to video feature.

Fire! ( 1977 )
Another television film from the Irwin Allen Master of Disaster set. And amazingly the star of it is Alex Cord, who was also in Fire From Below. That is two fire themed disaster film starring or co-starring Alex Cord. A bit better that last week's Flood!. In this film the fire starts in the beginning of the movie, so you get the disaster from start to finish. And it appears that Allen actually set fire to bits of forest to make the movie. Most likely he took advantage of some controlled burns by the forest department. Although for most of the scenes where a house or building is on fire, the fire is added with cheap looking optical effects.

[stethacantus]

The shadow whip ( 1971 )
1971 was a traumatic year for Shaw Brothers. Their biggest star,  Cheng Pei Pei, was retiring from show business to be a housewife. Their biggest male star, Jimmy Wang Yu, let the studio know he was breaking his contract and leaving them by making an unauthorized sequel to The One Armed Swordsman called Zatoichi Meets His Equal  where, well, the One Armed Swordsman meets and fights Zatoich.  Technically not a sequel as the Swordsman was given a different name, but the first of many one armed characters Jimmy Wang Yu would do outside of Shaw Brothers Studio. Yu realized his contract with the Shaws didn't prevent him from making movies for other studios outside of Hong Kong. And for a few years, one of those studios would be Golden Harvest, a studio founded in 1971 by former Shaw Brothers execitives Leonard Ho and Raymond Chow. They in turn lured a lot of actors, directors and other crew members from Shaw Brothers to Taiwan where they could legally make films for Golden Harvest.  Needing to rebuild, Shaw Brothers would elevate some of their remaining actors to superstar status, and go into negotiations with former child star Bruce Lee who as an adult had made a few movies and television shows in Hollywood, and was eager to return to the Hong Kong film industry.  Unfortunately they would fail to offer Lee as much money as Golden Harvest was offering, and a year later Bruce Lee would be breaking box office records for the rival studio. The Shadow Whip was one of the last films director Lo Wei, actress Chang Pei Pei and some other top Shaw Brothers actors would make before leaving the studio, and completed in post production after they left. Cheng plays the neice of the martial arts master, The Shadow Whip, who has been in hiding ever since he was framed for a crime sixteen years earlier.  Unfortunately her whip technique gives away that she must have been taught by The Shadow Whip, and soon her hotel is under seige by both villains and lawmen looking to catch the reclusive master. A surprisingly entertaining film despite the turmoil going on when it was made.


Epicenter ( 2000 )
This week I complete the "Disaster Collection  5 Movies" set from Echo Bridge with a Traci Lords film ( who by 2000 was calling herself Traci Elizabeth Lords ). An action move could starring Gary Daniels in a role that surprisingly involves no martial arts. Daniels is a disgruntled employee for a tech company who steals the plans for some top secret government technology to sell to the Russians. Lords plays a CIA agent who wants to arrest Daniels and intercept the technology before the Russians get it. What results is an action film with bad acting and a dumb formula script, yet somehow a very expensive looking chase scene involving a runaway trolley.  About halfway through this direct to video film Lords and Daniels are in a shootout with the Russian agents when suddenly, we switch from it being a spy film to an Earthquake film, via footage from other Earthquake films, and the train crash footage from Speed. What? Oh well. Somehow this mess is entertaining enough.


The Poseidon Adventure ( 1972 )
The Poseidon Adventure was not the first of the 70s disaster movies. But it was the first to make so much money at the box office that the Disaster Movie became a fad. Airplane! was not the final move to come out of the 70s Disaster movie genre, but is still considered the movie that ended it. Both movies have one thing in common. Actor Leslie Nelsen was in both. So he was at the beginning and end of the 70s Disaster Movie genre.  Originally I was going to watch the movies in the Irwin Allen Master of Disaster box set in order, and when I got to Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, leave the set so I could watch The Poseidon Adventure first, because I don't like watching a sequel before the first film, even though I have seen both films years ago. Watching the Irwin Allen set was delayed by a week while I returned a used set Amazon had sent me. So I was to watch The Poseidon Adventure next week. But then I remembered that the movie takes place on New Years Eve, so decided to advance it to this week, as this is New Years Weekend.

There is a reason why this movie launched the Disaster movie fad. It is a really fun movie to watch. On New Years Eve, a cruises ship the S.S. Poseidon  is broadside by a massive wave and turned upside down. Most of the passengers were in the ballroom celebrating New Years Eve, so end up trapped together.  Ten of the passengers decide to leave the ballroom and make their way through the upside down ship wreck to the propeller shift which is the only place where rescuers can possibly reach them, as the ship slowly sinks and burns around them, and gradually kills off the survivors one by one. If you are going to watch one 70s Disaster movie, then they get no better than this one.

[stethacantus]

Delightful Forest ( 1972 )
The Water Margin is an epic Chinese novel which is believed to have been written around the 1300s, which tells the story of the 108 Mountain Brothers, a group of bandits who rebelled against the government. Delightful Forest only covers one of 1he 100 chapters. This being the story of how Wu Song became an outlaw. Sentenced to a prison camp in Mengzhou for killing the man who murdered his brother. he meets  the warden's son, who recruits him for a job.  The warden's son ran the Delightful Forest restaurant, an establishment which was a front for his protection business where all the business owners  in town paid him protection money. A wrestler named Jiang Zhong has taken over Delightful Forest and chased the warden's son out. So he hires Wu Song with the promise of vacating his prison sentence if he drives Zhong out. Wu Song does this, however, he is then framed by a corrupt magistrate in league with Zhong for robbery. While being transported to prison, is nearly killed by the guards. Vowing revenge, he goes to the magistrate's house to see him and Zhong celebrating wat they believed was Song's demise, and ends up killing everyone at the manor, leaving behind the words "Wu Sng killed everyone here" in blood on the wall. It is a decent lesser film from Chang Cheh which follows most of the chapter faithfully, only having to add fight scenes.

The Poseidon Adventure ( 2005 )
No, I haven't watched the same movie two weeks in a row. When I got the original Poseidon Adventure, I decided to get the other two movies as well. So why did hey make two versions of Poseidon Adventure in the mid 00's? After the success of Titanic ( 1997 ), a remake of The Poseidon Adventure was inevitable. Irwin Allen's estate would eventually choose Warner Bros. for the remake. However, The Poseidon Adventure had been based on a novel of the same name by Paul Gallico, and there was nothing to stop Halmark Entertainment from paying the Gallico estate to adapt the novel and rush their remake onto television a year before Warner Bros. could put their remake in theaters. One could probably count this as one of Halmark's thousands of Christmas movies as it begins with the Poseidon leaving port on Christmas Day, perhaps just to explain why there was a Christmas tree in the ballroom. The Christmas tree is one of many elements stolen from the Irwin Allen film. The most blatant theft being the man hanging from the table after the ship turns over who falls into the skylight and is electrocuted. The entire stunt is staged and shot exactly like the same stunt in the Irwin Allen film. There are a few things from the novel in this movie which were not in he 72 film, a few things created for this film, and a lot of stuff that originated with the 72 film. Seriously, Warner Bros. should have sued Hallmark for copyright infringement, because his was a blatant remake of the film, and not really a adaption of the novel. The one original thing this film has is the cause for the Poseidon to turn upside down. In the novel, an under water earthquake below the ship churns he water enough to flip it over. In the 72 movie, an Earthquake causes giant wave which broadsides the ship and turns it over. In this movie, terrorists plant a bomb which after it explodes, causes the ship to turn over. The deaths in this film range from predictable to ridiculous. On the ridiculous side are characters who just stand there and get killed. One character walking through a burning kitchen just stands there under a burning stove which is about to fall from the ceiling on him, looking at it while everyone yells at him to run. Another character climbing the smokestack ladder just stands there and watches as water races through an airduct at him and a few seconds later knocks him off. One character just shows up with no explanation and is among the group making it's way to the engine room, so there is  no drama when a couple of minutes later he falls through a floor and drowns. And as for predictable, the mistress. A sub plot created for this movie involves the Clark family join the cruise so the parents can try to rescue their marriage. However, dad decides to cheat on mom with the ship's masseuse, and after the affair is discovered, is told to leave their cabin. Dad is with the mistress when the ship turns over, and together they spend most of the film trying to find his family. Okay, we know the mistress has to die because we know in the final frames of the film mom and dad will have repaired their marriage, and the masseuse hanging around will just be a problem. Well, wouldn't you know, the final obstacle is a catwalk over an oil fire a few decks below. And the mistress is asked to cross it last. And as she is crossing it, the catwalk gives away, and guess who falls to her death. Predictable. You could se this death a mile away.  The original movie is thought of as dumb but fun entertainment. Well, this is a whole lower level of dumb. And as it was drawn out into a two part movie shown over two nights, and runs for about three hours without commercials, is padded out with a lot of stuff that does not contribute to the story other than padding it out.  It is entertaining enough not to be a total bore. But it is a low budget and drawn out remake of a far far better film.  BTW, I had remembered this airing over a single night on NBC, which it apparently did in an edited version. So was caught off guard that it was described on the disc as a miniseries, and was split into two separate 90 minute movies. So no time tonight for a second film, which I had hoped would be Hanging by a Thread on my Irwin Allen box set. Oh well.

[Cyrusso]

I can't imagine that the more recent version of Poseidon is somehow better than the older version. Maybe that's because I'm a cynical old bantha at this point(relatively speaking), but if there's one thing that movie remake history has taught me, it's that the remake is rarely, if ever better than the original.
I mean... Poseidon, Psycho, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm street, Total Recall, Robocop, Carrie, Footloose, The Stepford Wives, Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, The Karate Kid, Rollerball, Get Carter, The Fog, The Thing, The day the earth stood still(but yes, I know, that's only one or two examples)...in the cases of ALL those movies, the original was often vastly superior. With The Karate Kid, I admit maybe I'm biased because I fucking despise Jaden Smith.

The Black Hole(1979) - I have talked about this movie many times, but I still love it, and watching it today, it holds up very well, despite its numerous flaws in regards to its understanding of science, and not being consistent with understanding how the vacuum of space works. Yes, that's a HUGE problem, especially considering our heroes are literally in the VACUUM of space, somehow breathing, somehow talking to each other, and surviving, especially in such close proximity to a black hole.

When I was a kid though... these things, instead of sabotaging the atmosphere, were enhanced by an absolutely incredible production design, an absolutely beautiful musical score by John Barry(All the bond films, pre-1988), and a memorable story with robot characters I'll remember forever.

The acting is nothing to write home about, but it's still a haunting and fasciinating look at Disney, at a time when the idea of their first PG-rated feature actually meant something. Honestly... I'll take The Black Hole over Event Horizon, or Interstellar, which are not nearly as interesting or as fun to me.

[stethacantus]

I can't imagine that the more recent version of Poseidon is somehow better than the older version. Maybe that's because I'm a cynical old bantha at this point(relatively speaking), but if there's one thing that movie remake history has taught me, it's that the remake is rarely, if ever better than the original.
I mean... Poseidon, Psycho, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm street, Total Recall, Robocop, Carrie, Footloose, The Stepford Wives, Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, The Karate Kid, Rollerball, Get Carter, The Fog, The Thing, The day the earth stood still(but yes, I know, that's only one or two examples)...in the cases of ALL those movies, the original was often vastly superior. With The Karate Kid, I admit maybe I'm biased because I fucking despise Jaden Smith.

You can add Mean Girls to that list, with a remake by Tina Fey about to hit theaters. Although, much like The Producers, this is a remake that was first remade into a Broadway musical, so now has songs. Remakes of films that took a side trip as a Broadway musical aside ( at least Little Shop of Horrors worked ) Siskel & Ebert would discus remakes all the time, and question why Hollywood insists on remaking classics instead of remaking films that failed. Classis were perfect the first time around, and in no need of improvement. Bad films have tons of stuff that could be improved. They came to the conclusion that it was all about money. People remember the classics, so would pay to see a remake, where they would probably not want to see a remake of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Although, Siskel & Ebert's wish sort of did come true when 20th Century Fox remade the Phoenix Saga within the same X-Men franchise. There was once a good reason for remakes. Originally, it was due to the movie industry moving from silent films into sound films. Theaters would no longer book silent films, so studios could no longer rerelease their old hits. So sound remakes were necessary. I know that W.C. Fields and Laurel & Hardy  were remaking heir own films less than five years after the original silent version's release. Later, making a color version was a good excuse for another round of remakes. Eventually though, it was just as Siskel & Ebert said. A money grab by the studios. There are some rare cases where the remake is superior. But for the most part, you get a weak remake of West Sie Story and ask yourself "Why, Spielberg, why?".

[Cyrusso]

I would LOVE to Remake Plan 9... with the intention of making an even worse movie. Terrible script, equally bad sets, complete with shower rods and curtains, meant to simulate an airplane cockpit terrible acting... and the only problem would be stopping my actors from laughing their asses off while reading their lines.

Yes, an even worse prologue:

"Greetings, people of the human being race! The future is an interesting thing, because that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives! The following may not be true, it might be an exaggeration of events, but it is something that may really happen, a story that will and can be told for all the ages. Join me now viewer, for I am Criswell, and we are going to see what happens when Aliens devise a creative plan to conquer the planet known as Earth. After Plans 1-8 failed, the super advanced and hyper-intelligent alien minds who have mastered the art of interstellar travel, they decided upon... plan 9..."

[stethacantus]

The Devil's Mirror ( 1972  )
Best remembered as the first film Sun Chung directed for Shaw Brothers,  this hybrid horror and martial arts film is fast paced and fun. The evil three eyed witch and her bloody corpse clan have been kidnapping martial arts experts. The only way to stop her is with the Thunder and Wind mirrors witch when combined could release enough magic to kill her. However, the leader of the Golden Tiger Clan who possesses the Thunder Mirror refuses to combine them because the magic released could potentially destroy civilization. Meanwhile the Three Eyed Witch wants to possess the mirrors because if she wields them then she can use them to open the tomb of Emperor Wu, who was buried with an unbeatable sword and an elixir that makes whoever drinks it immortal. ( If Wu had an immortality elixir, then why is he dead? ) If the Three Eyed Witch can get into Emperor Wu's tomb and retrieve these, then she can rule the world forever. But she needs both mirrors, so hatches a plot to turn the two clans guarding them against each other. Despite the third eye, the witch is very sexy, and uses this to control a traitor within one of the clans. And she also owns a living corpse pill which rots the faces of those who are forced to eat it, and turns them into her unwilling servants. Sun Chung was an excellent action director, so of course this film is full of outstanding sword fights.


Poseidon ( 2006 )
Okay, so you are doing a remake of the classic 70s disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure, but Halmark does an end run and releases a second adaption of the book before your  remake begins shooting. So what do you do? You shorten the title. here, now no one will get hem confused with each other. I give Poseidon points for being almost completely different than the original movie. Different characters, no Christmas Tree, no guy dropping from the table into a skylight and being electrocuted, different hazards, except for a wave turning the boat over, this is a completely different movie. It is also faster paced than the original with a lot more action. Now for the problems with this film. While there are a some actual sets, a lot of the Poseidon itself is CGI, which by the color tones is obvious. The ship is designed with a lot of plate glass windows and cabin balconies, which makes you not buy that, once flipped over, the water does not immediately rush in. Especially just before the wave hits. Richard Dreyfuss character is on a deck and sees it, then runs into the ballroom through an open door. So the water didn't get through that same door? You bought the ship in the first film being airtight enough to keep the water out because it's windows were portholes and had hatches instead of doors which were all still locked due to a storm the night before. The biggest problem are the characters. Despite the first fifteen minutes of this movie introducing us to the characters who will be part of the group who will make the perilous journey climbing to the bottom of the ship for rescue, we learn nothing about them. The original movie did a lot in their first twenty minutes to flesh out the characters so that we cared about them as they made their escape. There isn't much character development throughout the film, so basically you don't care about any of them, and don't feel anything whenever one of them gets killed. So basically, like most modern effects films, fun while you watch it, but immediately forgettable once it is over. Perhaps we should talk about the choice of director,  Wolfgang Petersen. One would think he was chosen because of his great film Das Boot ( 1981 ), which would seem like a logical choice. However, I am sure the producers hired him based on The Perfect Storm ( 2000 ) because that was also an effects driven film with a CGI wave hitting a CGI boat. I always feel like in this day and age, giving a CGI film to an award winning director is a waste of time. The studio is not going to allow much creative control. and most of the film is going to be made by computer animators and not available until just before the film is ready for release. So basically the director can add nothing to the film, so you may as well hand it to a hack. Not that Petersen wasn't capable of making an effects movie without his imprint ( See The Never Ending Story ( 1984 ) ), but that is mostly impossible with a CGI film. And you are only left wondering what other film he could have been working on instead of this one. Clearly, this was far from his best.

I had intended to watch Hanging by a Thread from the Irwin Allen Master of Disaster box set, that way I could move on to the next film in the set Beyond the Poseidon Adventure next week. I figured, a 70s television film? Probably just 90 minutes. So I caught up on a few shows on DVR and planned to start it at  midnight Saturday, which turned into 12:45. But who cared? It was only going to be a 90 minute film. Perhaps shorter if it had been one of the ABC Movies of the Week which ram in a 90 minute time slot with commercials. But as I started the film, I hit the button that shows you the time line, an it said 3 hours 25 minutes.  WHAT!? It turns out this was at least a two part movie being shown over two nights. Why? It is a movie about a cable car that gets stuck. And someone thought it would be a perfect plot for two nights? Four hours with commercials? Well, I was not about to sit up to 4am watching a heavily padded 70s television movie, so finished clearing out my DVR instead. I figured Monday would be a holiday, so I could spend MLK's birthday watching it. That is until today I got the call that I would probably be working Monday. Next week I will watch Beyond the Poseidon Adventure no matter what. Maybe I will watch Hanging by a Thread in hour long segments each week night.

[stethacantus]

Never say a sequel is impossible. When 20th Century Fox wanted Charlton Heston back for a sequel to Planet of the Apes ( 1968 ), and he said "No." because he didn't want to be in a talking monkey franchise, and they kept pestering him about it, he agreed to return under two conditions. Condition one: that he have a minor role. Condition two: that the movie would end with his character detonating a doomsday machine that blows up the entire planet. To his amusement, Fox did produce a script for Beneath the Planet of the Apes ( 1970 ) where the last surviving talking humans had an Omega Bomb, capable of melting the surface of the Earth, and as he is dying, Col. Taylor accidentally falls onto the trigger hat sets it off. Heston agreed to do the film because, with he planet blown up, there was no possibility of any sequel, and they would never bother him about doing any ape movies again. Except, of course, Fox did do three more sequels. Two of the Apes manage to travel back in time, escaping their planet's destruction, and giving birth to the ape who would, in the next film, lead the ape army that overthrows human civilization. So much for making it impossible for any further sequels. Oh, and BTW, Heston agreed to be in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes reboot. So he ended  up doing yet another talking monkey film. This week we have two more sequels that should not have been possible by the way the first movies ended, and yet manage to exist.

Man of Iron ( a.k.a. Warrior of Steel ) ( 1972 )
The sequel to Boxer from Shantung ( 1972 ) released about six months later. While it should be no surprise that Shaw Brothers would rush a sequel to a surprise hit film into production and get it into theaters only a few months later, it would seem improbable for this to happen with Boxer from Shantung as all the characters in that film are killed, including the hero who takes out the villain as he is dying from a mortal wound. So how do you get a sequel out of that? By having the movie take place on the same street, only 20 years later. Man of Iron opens with the bodies of the dead characters from the first film being carted off by the police and a brief explanation of the events of the first film, before announcing the 20 year time jump to the 1940s. You would think Chen Kuan Tai is playing the son of the character from the first film, but he isn't. Basically, the same actors are back, playing similar characters. This was among my favorite Shaw Brothers films, and I was disappointed that it was among the films Dragon Dynasty acquired the rights to then shelved. Thankfully, while so far the Shout! Factory has chosen mostly wuxia  films for their Shaw Brothers Classics Collections, this one Basher film from Chang Cheh's street gang era was among the films. It would have been nicer if Vengeance,  The Savage Five or The Delinquent were also slipped into this otherwise wuxia collection, but hopefully the fact they were not was because some other company is about to release them and is currently holding the rights. To date only a fifth at best of the Shaw Brothers martial arts films have seen release on DVD or Blu-ray for Region 1, and I am hoping for the rest to finally be released, along wit the studio's other action films, sci-fi films and horror films. As for Man of Iron, it follows the typical street gang genre plot, culminating in the mortally wounded hero having to kill his way through an army of henchmen to get to the main villain he seeks vengeance against.  While I recognize that Boxer from Shantung is technically a far better film than this, and adding the beginning tie-in  was a blatant money grab by Shaw Brothers to make this film seem like a true sequel, I still prefer it more. he anti-hero is much cooler, and there is that fantastic ending to the second act where he is nearly killed fighting an ambush.


Beyond the Poseidon Adventure ( 1979 )
The Poseidon Adventure should not have a sequel. The first movie ended with the ship about to sink and noting that there were only six survivors. Irwin Allen's original plan for a sequel was to have the survivors from the first film get caught in yet another disaster. They were to be on a train going to Austria where they were to testify in a tribunal against the parent company of the Poseidon, who were responsible for the ship to be in that part of the ocean without the ballast tanks filled. Someone does not want the survivors to testify, so blows up a mile long train tunnel with the survivors in it, forcing them to find a way to escape. Allan instead opted to make The Towering Inferno Meanwhile, Paul Gallico, who wrote the novel The Poseidon Adventure, was asked by his publisher to write a sequel. Allen heard about the sequel book, and encouraged Gallico to write it so he could do a sequel film. Gallico died of a heart attack in 12976 before completing the novel, and the first draft became the novel. Ultimately Allen decided not to use most of the novel, opting to come up with an original story. Still. it should be pointed out that in the original movie, the Poseidon was sinking, and by the time the six survivors were rescued, the rising water had reached the engine room. So it is inexplicable that there are suddenly several decks not flooded in this film. Something else not in continuity with the first film. There is a storm the night the Poseidon sinks, while in the first film the storm had passed a day earlier, and the tidal wave that turns the ship over is caused by an earthquake. Many of the effects are cheap. The film opens wit our three heroes on a tug boat riding out the storm. This was obviously achieved with a mock-up of a ship on a rocking platform with a storm in back projection. I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with was off camera crew members throwing buckets of water at the tug to simulate it being hit by waves. It doesn't just look fake, it looks ridiculous. Michael Cane, Sally Field and Carl Malden play the film's heroes, the captain and crew of the tugboat who find the Poseidon minutes after the rescue from the first film and decide to go into it to legally loot the pursers office of valuables under the salvage laws. Also showing up is Telly Savales and his henchmen who claim to be a medical team looking for survivors. Together they go through the hole cut into the bottom of the ship at the ending of the first movie, and almost immediately run into a group of survivors. In total, they find eight survivors. Of course Telly and his men turn out to be exactly what they look like, a villain and his henchmen. They are looking to loot the ship of a cargo of uranium, and they want to kill the survivors because they want no witnesses. It is a dumb story with dumb characters and a dumb climax. It has some entertainment value. But this definitely is a film that should have been on MST3K.

[Cyrusso]

The ONLY time a sequel is impossible is when that sequel is Dead Reckoning, Part 2.

[stethacantus]

The Water Margin ( 1972 )
Already reviewed this film for it's DVD release:

https://forum.rifftrax.com/index.php/topic,5210.msg1010563/topicseen.html#msg1010563

Although much better quality image for the Blu-ray release, still has the same problem, which is Shout! Factory didn't include the American redubbed and re-edited theatrical release Seven Blows of the Dragon.

Hanging By A Thread( 1979 )
Three hours and fifteen minutes! That's how long they dragged this television film out to. With the commercials on it's original broadcast, four hours. Split into two nights, that is two hours for each. That is how long a film about a cable car getting stuck was padded out. To do this, the film had a lot of flash backs for the characters, similar to what you would get in an episode of Lost.  Among the flashback stories, how one of the men trapped in the car ended up testifying against the mob who were selling substandard tanks to the military, and an out of nowhere reveal that half of the people in the car once got a friend so drunk at their party that he fell off a horse and killed himself, and the rich guy in the group had the accident covered up. 70s television is full of padding. Reliving any of those 70s shows like The Six Million Dollar Man or Charlie's Angels and you will notice a lot of time devoted to establishing shots, vehicles driving somewhere, people walking down an entire hallway, and a lot of other stuff which you would think should have been edited out, but remained in the final edit so that the episode would span the entire hour. Sometimes watching a 70s or early 80s program can be tedious. The same thing happened in many television films.  That doesn't happen in this film. There is very little of that kind of padding. So Irwin Allen did come up with a script that actually filled he four hours and came up with a cheap low budget disaster. But I did feel fatigued by the final act. And I had broken this film up into watching Part 1 on Friday ad Part 2 on Saturday.