Here is a serial I've known about since I was a kid and never saw. It has one of those neat gimmick concepts of a singing cowboy fighting robots from an underground lost empire. While it should be fun as a serial, when it's crammed into a movie form it's just too spotty to follow. Plus the print is horrendous and just about unwatchable.

Skip this and try to find the serial.

Labels: Dollar DVD, sci-fi, Westerns

Tales of Tomorrow - Vol. 1:

Now here is something different. EastWest has released four episodes of the now public domain TV series, Tales of Tomorrow. This like many early TV shows was shown in an anthology format with a different cast and story each week. There were also quite a few stars here such as Leslie Neilson, Lon Chaney Jr., Brian Keith and Thomas Mitchell. Many of the rest were Hollywood character actors and bit players.

As with much early television this was produced with a budget of nothing and the kinescoped prints do nothing to hide the cheapness of what was supposed to be Martian terrain and saddest of all when Leslie Neilson uses a geiger counter the clicks come from what sounds like someone hitting two drumsticks together.

The cheapness could be overlooked if the plots were decent but the plots just didn't have the
writing that later series such as the Outer Limits, One Step Beyond and, of course, the Twilight Zone would be forever remembered for.

Watch it as a curiosity but nothing else.

Labels: Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD, TV Shows

Chase Step by Step / The Super Gang: Again I make a trip to the dollar store and get a few more public domain kung fu films.

Chase Step by Step, despite what the generic description on the back says is not about a kickboxer seeking revenge. It is actually about a couple of circus performers who are assigned to protect a shipment of gold. Unfortunately while the fights are mildly entertaining the film ultimately fails at being anything close to be worth your time.

The Super Gang: Now here's a piece of crap if I ever saw one. I know some out there go nuts for every Bruceploitation film ever made but I for one am not one of them. Personally I found this film quite boring and at times a strain to keep awake. Not really what I was looking for tonight.

To sum it all up, this disc rots.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD, Hong Kong

Shaolin Deadly Kicks: Yet another typical kung fu movie of good guys and bad guys. After a gang of thieves break up their treasure map into eight pieces and scatter. A lawman goes to hunt them down one at a time to get the pieces. This film, based on that plot description, could be a western but instead, it's a kung fu movie.

I seem to be a total sucker for dollar DVDs with Kung Fu movies. I tend to pick up anything that appears to have some sort of period kung fu to it. A lot lately have been stinkers but this one wasn't that bad, although the plot was a bit boring at times. In fact if I had been director, I would've ended the film after about an hour.

Still, for a dollar kung fu movie it's not that bad.

Labels: Bad Movies, Dollar DVD, Hong Kong, Kung Fu

Scruff: What Will We Do With This Dog? Every once in a while I find something really good in the dollar bin. Most of the time I find mediocre rubbish. When I picked up Scruff, I found something far worse, I found total suckitude.

Scruff is about a dog who gets lost and is found by some new people and he learns about animals ... or something. In all honesty, I gave up after about 15 minutes.

The animation was terrible. The characters looked as if they were drawn in Paint and they lacked any fluidity to their movements. Sadly their mouths had a hard time lining up with the voices which was ok as it distracted me from the putrid voice acting.

Digiview has been releasing several titles from the BKN Kids line. Unfortunately while this one sits on shelves, Pocket Dragon Adventures is still awaiting a second volume and I, for one, can not wait for more Roswell Conspiracies.

$1 of boredom is a dollar not well spent. I am skipping this and Volume 2. Both are officially purged from the backlog. So now I am left to wonder if this is worse than Princess Gwenevere & the Jewel Riders.

Labels: Cartoons, Crap, Dollar DVD

Black Dragons: Bela Lugosi stars as a mad doctor intent on killing people who wronged him. Of course, the twist to this is that these people are not just any old people but they are Japanese men he made, somehow, to look like doughy white guys. The film is filled with plot holes and the whole film makes absolutely no sense with a "terrible shocker" at the end which I won't give away.

Black Dragons was one of Bela Lugosi's "Poverty Row" pictures. He made this film, like many others, during a low period in his life when he was addicted to morphine to treat the terrible Sciatica which left him constantly in pain. Yet throughout all this, Lugosi's charm and film presence shines through and he certainly gave his all, even for crap like this.

One side note, the film also stars a young Clayton Moore. If you ever wanted to see the Lone Ranger without his mask, here's your chance.

Labels: Bad Movies, Bela Lugosi, Cult Films, Dollar DVD

The Cosmos Conqueror: Over the last few months, I've been searching for the newest batch of IFD releases from Digiview. After finding two recently, they ended up at the top of the pile and I am so not disappointed.

This film, like the others has a rather thin plot. Aliens are again attacking the Earth. Lucky for us three kids got command of another alien robot, the "Robot King." Unlike the others, I did not detect any direct copyright infringement in the mech or character designs.

This one was definitely above average and I am more than satisfied with the last couple. Now I just need to find the other three.

Labels: Anime, Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Captain of Cosmos: They're BAA-ACK! Yes, just when you thought it was safe to visit the dollar bin, more Korean anime ripoffs come our way via Joseph Lai and the good people at Digiview.

In this release we see ripoffs from the Gundam universe in the form of character designs. Our hero in this film, Captain Leo of the Cosmos Warriors, bears a striking resemblance to Char when he has his helmet on and with it off, he looks just like Amuro. Now if that's not enough to get Gundam fans' heads spinning, they should know that the female lead alternates between Sayla and Kycilia Zabi depending on whether her helmet is on or not. The similarities stop there, I'm afraid as despite what the cover art shows, there are no Gundams or giant robots in the film at all.

The story in this was rather weak with an alien queen kidnapping humans to rebuild her destroyed planet and the Cosmos Warriors coming to the rescue. The evil queen has her army of robots and green centaurs apparently can fight but cannot think or build like the humans can. Forcing humans into slave labor the evil queen ends up capturing our heroes and the predictable happens.

What I will congratulate the Koreans on with this is that the plot actually seemed to be somewhat coherent as opposed to some others like Space Thunder Kids which flat out made no sense. I can't say I was enthralled with this DVD but I did get a good chuckle or two and it kept me awake.

I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend this one. Unfortunately I had to pick up my copy online at eBay since my local Wal*Marts have yet to pick them up for sale. Hopefully someone gets them in soon, or I can find the rest on eBay.

Labels: Anime, Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Rage of the Masters: From the dollar bin comes this rather bland Jimmy Wang Yu film. The plot is rather bland with a brother and sister seeking revenge and enlisting a great kickboxer to help them. Of course, the problem lies in the fact that he has promised his mother that he won't fight.

The film progresses through some dull scenes which, I confess, I did not watch with my full attention. The saving grace is the last half hour which has some pretty cool kick boxing and martial arts scenes.

It's crappy chop socky for a dollar so if that's your thing, go for it. If you really like it, there's a widescreen version available under the title, "The Destroyer."

I think the reason I haven't watched so many films lately lies from the fact that I regularly watch crap and this is just more of it. I've seen so many kung fu movies over the years that it's almost getting to be a genre that I can't watch anymore, at least not without some sort of comedy or class to save it.

Labels: Bad Movies, Dollar DVD, Hong Kong, Kung Fu

Silver Hermit From Shaolin Temple: Continuing with the weirdness, I decided to watch a classic chop sockey film. Unfortunately all I found in the dollar dvd bin was this movie.

Silver Hermit is a pacifistic martial artist who, along with three others, is invited to a contest to fight to win the hand of a young woman and thus inherit a prestigious martial arts school. Unfortunately for him two of them end up dead with one barely surviving. Of course he gets the blame and has to clear his name.

The film is rather dull at times, although the martial arts is pretty good. The problem stems mostly from the video presentation which is, as usual, pan and scanned plus horrendously dubbed. To top it off the film goes black at times and when you can see the picture, it's like watching it through a coffee filter.

I guess the only saving grace of the film was getting to cheer the opening credits when Joseph Lai's name came up. Yes, the same man who brought to you a monkey punching a snake! Unfortunately I still have yet to find the rest of his animated films even though I have heard they have been released.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD, Hong Kong, Kung Fu

Legend of the Eight Samurai: If there ever was a movie that Mystery Science Theater missed, it was this one. It has all the elements of a good MST movie. First it has incredibly cheesy dubbing. Secondly it has over the top sets and characters. Most of all it appears to be a film made by people who had absolutely no idea what in the hell they were doing.

This movie is about a princess whose family was wiped out by a crazy woman and a samurai who bears a resemblance to a bad Elvis impersonator and their legions of bad guys. Apparently 100 years before the movie a princess married a dog (or something) and she ended up shooting out these glowing crystals which would give rise to the eight samurai who would be able to save her.

On the bright side, this film does have Sonny Chiba, some generally laugh out loud unintentionally funny moments. The music is also pretty nifty and it does have that aura of late 70s early 80s when Japanese pop-culture was really at its strangest.

Still, when I give up on a movie half way through, that's usually a sign that the film is crap. Save your dollar.

Labels: Bad Movies, Dollar DVD, Japanese

Hercules Against the Moon Men: Take one crazy bit of Greek mythology and add in an Italian crew, mix in some crazy dubbing and a bit of science fiction and you end up with, well, a mess.

As I remember hearing somewhere, Italian cinema ran on fads and the "sword and sandal" fan ran for quite some time with many crappy films being exported all over the world. Of course, after this fad died down the more fondly remembered "Spaghetti Western" boom would begin.

Anyways, there's not much worth saying about this film except it is dull and uninteresting. Check out the MST3K version as it is at least watchable.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth / Prisoner of Five Boulders: EastWest, our favorite dollar DVD company released yet another disc of kung fu movies of questionable legality. We get an interesting mix here but nothing special.

Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth is a highly fictionalized account of his life and death starring Bruce Li. The film is rather dull and I found myself dozing off quite a bit.

Prisoner of Five boulders is another of the Mainland Chinese features that somehow got in the hands of some pranksters with a dubbing studio. The origin of the dubs on this is somewhat of a mystery but it is quite obvious they tried to follow in the footsteps of Woody Allen with his famous, "What's Up Tiger Lily?" and the old Pete Smith comedies. The problem is, this dub made me smirk a bit but it had no quotable lines and outside of hearing the emperor sing "Like a Virgin" I can't really remember anything happening in the film that was particularly funny.

When you spend a dollar on crap, you should expect nothing more.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD, Kung Fu

Fairy Tale Police Department: Case File #1: Going through Dollar Tree this weekend I happened across a new display. They had a few different DVDs in paper sleeves and I came across a cartoon series I had never heard of. I went ahead and picked up the two volumes they had and expected nothing. After all, I have been subjected to such mediocrities as "The Little Dinos" before and never did I really feel cheated out of my dollar.

This Australian cartoon is full of thick accents and silly stories of classic fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes. This is somewhat like Fractured Fairy Tales meets CSI. The two main characters are Christine: a by the books cop and Johnny Legend the self-absorbed clueless cop. Together they maneuver their way through cases making sure each fairy tale has a happy ending.

It's quite silly but a lot of fun along the way. The Austrailian accents were a bit annoying at first but they seemed to grow on me with each episode. The stories themselves were simple enough for children but still kept my interest, although they never did surprise me with any major plot twists or shocking endings.

All in all, this is definitely worth the dollar I paid and more. This is an easy recommendation.

Labels: Cartoons, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Colorado Serenade / Tioga Kid: Here's another double feature of Eddie Dean westerns that I picked up at the dollar store.

Colorado Serenade was a standard western which wouldn't have been too bad but the film quality was rotten. It was filled in Cinecolor which did not stand the test of time. Much of the film is washed out and the colors are faded. This made the film a strain to watch.

The next film on the disc was Tioga Kid. This was a bit more conventional as it was in black and white. The plot on this one was basically the old evil twin story. Eddie apparently had a long lost twin brother. Eddie of course grew up to be a lawman while his brother became the Tioga Kid. Of course this leads to many scenes of mistaken identity wrapped around a typical plot of horse rustlers.

All in all, it's worth a buck but nothing more.

Labels: Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD, Westerns

One Step Beyond: In 1959 two shows about the paranormal would debut. One of them was The Twilight Zone and the other was this show, One Step Beyond. While on the surface they seem to be similar shows they are quite different and while OSB is not quite, in my view, up to the level of the Twilight Zone it is certainly worth watching.

I bought this DVD due to its cover, or rather who was on the cover. Here was a classic TV show on DVD for a dollar with one episode featuring the late, great Charles Bronson. He plays the part of a boxer with a premonition of death wonderfully and the episode surely left me on the edge of my seat. The other episodes were alright but not really as interesting as the Bronson one.

The print on this DVD leaves much to be desired. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, this show fell in the public domain and while we may never have seen these shows again if they were still copyrighted, the prints are so worn that it is hardly worth anything but a dollar.

Labels: Dollar DVD, TV Shows

Harryhausen Shorts: Volume 1: EastWest DVD is a sort of enigma in the realm of cheap dvds. They have a handful of UPCs that they share over various releases and their copyright research is apparently, if any, is certainly not thorough. Yet, somehow they manage to find some very interesting things to put on DVD. This particular bit of animation history I picked up at my local Stop and Shop a while back and just got around to finishing it.

Included on this DVD are a couple of fairy tales told by one of the masters of stop motion animation, Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen is best known for his work on such films as Jason and the Argonauts, It Came from Beneath the Sea and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Here we see some of his early work which dates back to the late 40s. This is certainly an interesting peek into a few rarely seen films, their entertainment value is somewhat lacking.

Bottom line is, buy this if you love animation history or Ray Harryhausen. All others pass on it.

Labels: Cartoons, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Jack Frost: During the days of the Cold War very little traveled between the US and Russia outside of threats of mutually assured destruction and the like. With Communism reigning and Lenin and Stalin sticking with the belief that "Religion is opium to the people" made strides to erase Christmas (and Christianity) from the USSR. To do this, they used the character of Father Frost, a sort of Russian Santa, and moved his day of giving presents to the religiously neutral December 31st. And so as Americans were watching their Christmas movies, the Russians were watching their movie on Father Frost day.

The Russians got cheated. While we in America got such classics as Miracle on 34th Street, the Communists got this train wreck. While one may argue that we got turkeys like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, this film makes that look like a masterpiece.

So what is so bad about it? Well for one the story makes absolutely no sense at all. There is a cute girl named Nastenka who is being tormented by her stepmother and stepsister. She meets the braggart Ivan who, after forgetting to thank a mushroom man, gets turned into a bear and has to do a good deed. If all that sounds bizarre, it gets worse. There's a witch who lives in a house which has chicken feet and a group of dwarfs who sit in the forest pulling petals from flowers and robbing people. Of course we mustn't forget Grandfather Frost, our title character.

Actually, I would like to forget him and especially forget this film. I had seen it on Mystery Science Theater and bought it for a buck for that reason. I hadn't seen the episode in years but now that I've seen it without them, I don't know that I do anymore.

I see that Amazon has a more expensive version available. Either this thing is public domain or EastWest could be in trouble, which is no surprise. I can't imagine anyone besides me paying a dollar for it let alone 17! Avoid this film unless you are a masochist for bad movies.

Note: I got some of the information on Father Frost from various sources online. Most notable are: Wikipedia, Time and Sacred Texts

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Dinosaur Island / Globehunters: It came again from the Bargain Bin! More accurately the clearance bin from Wal*Mart where I picked up this double feature cartoon DVD brought to us from the folks at DIC.

Dinosaur Island was the main bit of interest for me on this disc. This direct-to-DVD movie is about four teenagers who are supposed to be in a sort of Survivor television show and end up crashing on a mesa covered with dinosaurs. The Lost World angle is strong and thus in some ways its hard to separate it from the classic story. In the end, however, it falls up short on the enjoyment scale and its runtime of 80 minutes is pretty much the maximum they could've done, although the ending did seem a bit rushed.

All in all, it's mediocre but not bad.

Globehunters on the other hand was rather boring and I gave up watching after about 15 minutes.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cartoons, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

The White Gorilla/Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla: More dollar DVD goodness from PC Treasures. This Target find features what can best be describe, as my Dad put it, a unique film. I had a better term for it: CRAP!

The White Gorilla has Ray "Crash" Corrigan starring in a film which is essentially a narrated silent film. When Crash tells the story of what happened to him, he basically makes it appear that he was a coward who watched the hero rescue the girl time and time again. This was because clips of him peeking out of a bush were clumsily edited into stock footage from a 1927 serial Perils of the Jungle. Despite 18 years between the two films the people who made White Gorilla thought we wouldn't notice or care, I suppose.

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla is another story. That film is a blast! Too bad the print on this DVD is unwatchable. Pick up the Alpha Video release like I have or the Digiview release which my brother bought for $1 and enjoys quite a bit. An interesting bit of trivia has this film under the name "The Boys from Brooklyn" so if you collect different prints of Public Domain films, there you go.

Sadly, I have absolutely no reason to recommend this disc at all. Save your dollar or buy some Snickers bars or something.

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Primetime Suspense: Here is a cheap dollar DVD I picked up at Wal*Mart as an impulse item in line at the checkout. I was staying with Mandi for the weekend and we ended up at Wal*Mart and I looked through the dollar discs there. So while it may not be the best DVD, it does have an interesting story behind it.

What we have here is a mishmash of public domain prints of old TV shows with new music put in. Since it is just a dollar release, I will be brief.

Sherlock Holmes: In this corny episode the great detective solves a murder involving a wild west show.

Dragnet: This is one of the more infamous episodes of Dragnet centers around a child molester. If you can't stomach that sort of thing, don't watch it. If you do, watch for the criminal at the end. If he looks familiar he ended up playing many roles including that of Uncle Jesse's grandfather on Full House. The music in this one has been replaced with annoying synthesizer music which totally ruins the episode. Where oh where are season sets of this classic show?

Gang Busters: Another old cop show. This one isn't really that special and is the sort of Hollywood style show that Dragnet tried to distance itself from.

My Hero: Now here's a change of pace! Here is a comedy starring Robert Cummings that has a sort of crime backdrop. This is the prize of the disc in my opinion. I have never seen this show on another Public Domain disc but here's hoping more episodes show up. What's unfortunate is while the episode is good, the video quality is horrendous and reminds me of a misused VHS tape.

Lock Up: This show is about an attorney who devoted his life to freeing the innocent from jail. The quality of the video was quite poor and was a bit of a strain to watch. It was pretty boring to me as well.

Decoy: This classic if not somewhat typical TV show was offset from the dozens of others due to the hero being a policewoman. It helps that she is played by the lovely Beverly Garland. The episode centered around an artist who copied a Van Gogh original and find out who made it as a fraud.

Lights Out: A rather dull show from early television. This one is almost unwatchable due to its boring narrative and kinescoped picture making it a strain on the eyes. The only real delight that was found in this was the advertisement for the then new 20 inch Admiral television. It's hard to imagine that people would trade in their 7 inch sets towards the purchase of a 20 inch but it happened.

Captain Gallant: This was a rather boring episode of a show about the French Foreign legion. I'm sure my brother would like this but I just could not get into it to save myself. For what it's worth, it had Buster Crabbe.

Labels: Dollar DVD

Classic Cartoon Collection: Cartoon Superstars: Here is another DVD from the collection I bought at Target last week.

The cartoons featured here are mostly typical public domain cartoons you've seen on umpteen other collections. I did buy this one almost exclusively for the Oswald Rabbit cartoon. While this is not a Disney Oswald, he is the black rabbit version and the cartoon is quite enjoyable.

The Popeye cartoon on here, Date to Skate, is a great cartoon but the macroblocking makes this almost unwatchable. The Casper one appears to have an audio problem but rest of the cartoons are passable quality based on a quick scan of them. I say if you are an Oswald fan like myself, pick it up. Otherwise pass on it.

Labels: Cartoons, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD

Classic Cartoon Collection: Comic-Strip Favorites: I've been trying to avoid the dollar DVD bins for some time with moderate success. However on my recent trip I couldn't help but pick up a few more. While I had not totally sworn off the dollar DVD, I had sworn off the public domain cartoon ones. However when I was browsing the Dollar Spot at Target and saw that this and another one had some rare cartoons I had not seen before I had to pick them up. Of course, this would not be so bad but due to not being able to watch DVDs like I used to, the backlog has crept back up to 170. No more buying for a while I suppose.

The rare cartoons on this disc I could not live without were a Krazy Kat cartoon, an Oswald Rabbit cartoon and a Katzenjammer Kids one. This disc provided me with my first Krazy Kat experience and I would certainly like to see more. The Katzenjammer kids was the real treat as the cartoon dates from 1918. It's crude at storytelling but it would be another 10 years or more before the art really took off at telling stories effectively. The Oswald cartoon was alright but it centered more on his dog than on Oswald.

The rest of the disc is filled with the same old crap found everywhere else. If you feel that three or four cartoons is worth a dollar, head on over to your local Target!

Labels: Dollar DVD

Return of the Scorpion / Rivals of the Silver Fox: Here is the last of my recent buys over at Yankee One Dollar and again I am presented with two mind numbingly bad films.

Return of the Scorpion is titled as if it were a sequel of some kind, although there appears to no other "Scorpion" films with which to link it to. Perhaps those who would choose English titles just thought it sounded cool. What we do have is a rather bland film with the same plot that all the other films have. Since no one watches these films for drama, I'll limit the rest of my comments to the kung fu itself.

The kung fu shown was rather nice with various styles on display. The fights were choreographed pretty much average compared to other films of the time. Of course we did have some nice talent such as Casanova Wong and Pan Pan Yeung (aka the female version of Jackie Chan) so we should expect a lot. If you want to skim the film for some good fights, be my guest but it is a bit too bland to recommend.

Rivals of the Silver Fox is more of the same kung fu drudgery that reviewing DVDs entails. I've often said that I would love to be a film critic if not for the fact that I'd have to watch a lot of awful moves. With my little hobby here I still have to but at least I can stop the movie halfway and consider it watched and rated crap. That's what I did with Silver Fox deserved or not.

Labels: Dollar DVD, Hong Kong

Duel of the Dragon / Infernal Street: Taking another stab at getting something off the backlog isn't always easy when the stuff you want to see is on double feature discs. Ah well ?

Duel of the Dragon comes from 1980 when Jackie Chan was just coming into his own as a star. Of course this film doesn't have Chan but it has the next best thing (or so they want us to believe) in the form of Jackie Chen. Like Bruce Lee, Jackie was bound to have his copycats I suppose and as far as the style of the film goes, it is much like a early Chan comedy, though not quite as good.

The film is your typical film with a mischievous pupil learning kung fu from his master, in this case his grandfather, and at first doesn't take it seriously and instead goes out having fun. This, of course, gets him into trouble but when confronted with a serious enemy he trains hard and uses his kung fu to get his revenge and justice is served.

It's all been done a million times before but here but at least it's fun. There are a couple notes about the film I should mention. First, Wu Ma makes a cameo early on in the film and he gets second billing on the disc and secondly, and this is not unusual, but music was ripped off of a couple spaghetti westerns for part of the soundtrack. The only cue I could recognize was the main theme from "Once Upon a Time in the West."

Finishing up the disc was the snoozefest, Infernal Street. The plot of this film was basically about some Japanese people who sell opium to Chinese people and how bad they were and stuff. Basically this film managed to be boring and potentially offensive to viewers. The kung fu is pretty good, so maybe people will ignore the plot and just watch the action.

Labels: Dollar DVD, Hong Kong

The Swordswoman in White / The Story of Red Temple Lily: Continuing with the pile of craptastic EastWestDVD's double feature dollar DVDs is this collection of kung fu films featuring women as martial arts heroes. I shall divide this review into two parts so as to give each film the justice it "deserves."

The Swordswoman in White is perhaps the most bizarre kung fu I have ever seen. The story is rather bland with the typical rebels against the corrupt government plot-line which has been done a million times before. I doubt I would write more than four or five sentences on this silly little film if not for one aspect. This film has the most comical dubbing I have ever heard.

Bad dubs are common for kung fu fans. Who can forget the old films where the same three people did all the voices and characters frequently used the word "reckon" all the time? Yet these films with their crappy dubbing were largely incompetent because their key sin was ignorance. Swordswoman's dubbing was not based on ignorance but instead was meant to be bad. Watching this is something like watching "What's Up Tiger Lily?" or "Kung Pow" except without any good jokes.

Second on our double feature disc is an older and more familiar style film, "The Story in the
Red Temple Lily." As is typical with EastWest, the title is presented incorrectly on both the disc and the cover.

This film is 100% typical of the Mandarin Kung Fu films made at the time and was actually quite dull despite having some nice female martial artists. In fact, the martial arts weren't really that interesting at all. The one interesting thing about the film is the fact that it features large prop birds that carry people around.

My final verdict is that Swordswoman is at best a guilty pleasure and unwatchable at worst. Red Temple Lily on the other hand is just plain boring. Therefore I would have to give a verdict of "not worth the dollar" on this release.

Labels: Dollar DVD, Hong Kong

Double Feature: Santa Fe Trail / The Outlaw: EastWestDVD strikes again with a new batch of double feature discs showing up at my local Yankee One Dollar store. I, of course, had to pick up a bunch of them and while I mostly bought Kung Fu releases, this disc caught my attention as a chance to finally see, The Outlaw. I already have a dollar version of Santa Fe Trail, so I skipped over that and started straight in with The Outlaw.

The Outlaw was made in 1941 and instantly had its now infamous run ins with the Hays office. Due to this controversy it was shelved for a few years and never saw a general release until 1946. Basically the controversy was around the fact that several characters commit sins which are never punished and it is implied that unmarried people have sex. Of course what most people remember was the huge controversy over Jane Russell's mammaries. Even today when one Googles Jane Russel we get images from this film.

With me being an avid lover of fine breasts, I naturally had to see what the big deal was. While Jane looks fantastic in this movie, her acting is a bit weak. Of course, just about everyone in this film, save for Thomas Mitchell, gives the impression that they can't act their way out of a wet paper bag. Also, for all the hype and controversy, the amount of cleavage shown is far less than extreme. I think Gone with the Wind showed more and dealt with more "adult" topics than this.

The Outlaw remains a part of Hollywood legend and is perhaps remembered for more than it should be. It is not a good movie by a long stretch and I can only recommend it to those who are curious at seeing a bit of history on film. Of course by history I mean the whole Jane Russell thing. The whole Doc Holliday, Pat Garrett, Billy the Kind story was so phony bologna that it was almost a pain to anyone who ever read three sentences about any of them.

Labels: Dollar DVD

Hollywood at War: Now this dollar DVD is unique in that it was not the same old public domain crap, but instead it was a nice documentary which was made up of a series called "The Home Front." They show clips of various films made for soldiers and citizens alike during WWII. It's a well made documentary at times in that it shows so much footage

One thing I do like is how they didn't whitewash the truth and accept the newsreels as pure truth but it also didn't follow the course of equating America with being as bad as the enemy as many others like to do. While Hollywood never was mainstream American life, I almost wish that the snobs in L.A. could get off of their self created pedestals of filth and remember that America is something much greater than their over inflated egos.

God bless those who defend our country and God damn those who try to undermine them. The traitors that populate Hollywood now should watch this and learn the right way to protect the freedom that they take for granted.

Labels: Dollar DVD

Casper & Bosko: There's Good Boos Tonite: After raiding the dollar bins at Wal*Mart for quite some time, I found this collection over at the clearance bin for all of $0.75.

The cartoons are good but it is really getting annoying to see Digiview releasing these same cartoons on disc after disc meaning a plethora of releases with a minimal amount of content. I have therefore decided not to purchase any more of these releases if I can help it.

Still, the trimensional animation about time produced by Rolex was really nice.

Labels: Dollar DVD