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Tag Archives: Roger Corman

Sharktopus

June 28, 2012
Film Reviews
4 Comments

Sharktopus: S-11 (50% shark, 50% octopus. 100% Deadly!) is a mutant military experiment gone wrong that escapes, unleashing a killing spree down the Mexican coast. Almost every montage of establishing shots are beyond naff, and look stolen from Joe Blogg’s home video camera. Despite a wacky premise, the story never goes anywhere interesting – and more disappointingly – it contains not a single original idea; ditto the script. The deaths are soft, and get very samey after the first few – splash splash, blood blood, scream scream… it just chugs along and after an hour I was dangerously low on interest. The only thing this has over most other b-movies is an insane level of skin on show; I wouldn’t doubt if this was the biggest employer of sexy extras in 2010, and a notable boost to the bikini industry sales figures – you’ve got to applaud the cinematographer for his efforts… Sharktopus is just like the title suggests; cheap, schlocky, and scraping the barrel for ideas – it’s crammed with bad acting (even for a B-movie), a high body count, buckets of blood and a dull, shirtless hero… so it ticks all of the boxes, yet its rigid adherence to the standard B-movie formula is what kills it off.

Score: 3/10

[Below is a tiny sample of the bikini gals that get a line – or scream]

Almost forgot about Sharktopus there

Corman’s World

June 16, 2012
Film Reviews
3 Comments

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel. What do Francis Ford Coppola, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Dennis Hopper, Joe Dante, Robert De Niro, David Carradine, Pam Grier, and Ron Howard (to name but a few) all have in common? …give up? They all got their first break from one man; Roger Corman. Much like the majority of his movies, Corman’s career feels like fiction; as a story reader at 20th Century Fox he singled out the script for The Gunfighter, added some suggestions and got no credit for the film’s success, so he left the company in 1955 and self-funded his first movie – he hasn’t stopped working on films ever since. The biggest weapon in this film’s arsenal is Corman himself; he’s fascinating and a very watchable presence – intelligent, unassuming, genuine, happy, modest, energetic, amiable…  to be honest, I’d have been happy with a more in-depth 90 minute conversation. His relevance and importance through the decades is truly eye-opening, which is nicely contrasted with Corman’s penny-pinching / budget maximisation methods that have seen him direct and/or produce well over 300 movies and almost never make a loss. The doc does lose some steam and focus around the hour mark, and in patches it feels like a sugar-coated, rose-tinted fanboy piece, but they’re minor complaints. Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel does a decent job of covering the highlights of an amazing +50 year career in 90 minutes, letting the audience know how his surname embodies an entire genre. Most importantly, I sat with a smile on my face for most of the runtime

Score: 8/10

The man. The Legend. Roger Corman. Doesn’t look like an exploitation master!