Fool's Views (6/1 – 6/30)

As we reached the halfway point of 2015, all the good things started coming in twos. Primarily in the form of Shout! Factory’s double dose of double features (already having graced fans with the “animals attack” quartet of The Food of the Gods, Empire of the Ants, Frogs, and Jaws of Satan, as well as the Carrie and Ghoulies two-fers). Not to be outdone, Arrow decided to lay the entire five-film Stray Cat Rock series on us, while a newly resuscitated Artsploitation served up Horsehead, House of 100 Eyes, and Der Samurai in one fell swoop.

In short, there was no rest for the wicked, and it was all we could do to keep up with things, considering we were then juggling Mockingbird performances and an ever-increasing class load in pursuit of my NASM personal training certification. Stamina was definitely the order of the day, with few opportunities to watch anything that wasn’t “assigned.”

The upside to this requisite reviewing is that I get to cut down on the apologizing for this particular installment (although we did finally make time to watch yet another double feature loaned to us back in November by Indy blood brother Craig J. Clark – the only two flicks that I didn’t review… because I didn’t have to).

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

AC deals with laptop issues in his usual calm, discreet manner.

CONTAMINATION (1980) Blu-ray Review

Contamination (aka Alien Contamination) (1980) d. Luigi Cozzi (as Lewis Coates) (Italy)

One of the more flamboyant examples of ’80s Italian rip-offs, director/co-writer Cozzi borrows heavily from Ridley Scott’s Alien but then literally explodes in directions you’d hardly think possible. When a mysterious ship comes floating into a New York harbor, a group of investigators headed up by Col. Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) and NYPD Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Mase) discover a crew that has been turned to a bloody mess and a cargo hold filled with strange pulsating eggs… much like the strange pulsating eggs soon discovered in a NYC warehouse. At this point, a previous space expedition to Mars is revealed, headed up by astronauts Hubbard (Ian McCulloch) and Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch), which also involved some alien eggs, and we’re off to the races, a trail that will lead us all the way down to a Colombian coffee plantation run by Perla de la Cruz (Gisela Hahn), who is growing a very strange crop indeed.