Force Five (1981)

Anyone else remember this US made martial arts flick?  It's been ages since I have seen it on a videotape rental,and I'm only about ten minutes into it, but it seems like it will be as fun as I remember it to be.  It was on whatever Siskel and Ebert's show was back then, and I think they both enjoyed it for what it was.  At least Roger did, as I remember him talking about the traditional sounds the kicks and punches made in the movie.

RIP Lemmy and Motörhead

Lemmy Kilmister, bassist and singer for the metal band Motörhead passed away today of an "aggressive cancer". I know he had been failing for a while now, as reports of his health were all around the internet. It's a sad day, as he played the music he liked, never caring much about mainstream commercial success.

more on Xenorama #19

Since I'm adding this here fine movie to Xenorama #19 I figured we needed a few frame grabs to go along with it, and so here we have them.  There are so many cool shots in the movie that using only a few is hard to do, but I narrowed it down to some really cool shots.  I left out most of the ones that had been seen before, and all of the cutesy nonsense with Gepetto and the Blue Fairy, because zzzzzzz, of course.  What we want to see is monsters and aliens, right?  That's what I thought!

Star Trek "Balance of Terror"

I really hate original versions of movies being fiddled about with with CG these days.  I mean, as long as the originals are around to watch I really don't care about "special editions" whether they are colorized or have extra scenes or "improved" effects.  But since these new versions of Star Trek are the only episodes shown now I haven't watched them in a long time.  I just cant support these alterations.  I have really missed this show, though.

Kamen Rider Stronger

This is one series I never thought I'd like much, but it turns out to be one of my favorite of the first five original series.  It was the "last" of those and it wraps up the series quite nicely, and there's a lot of emotion in it as well.  Once I had learned more of the background to the show I really wanted to see it in a subtitled form.  Thanks to the fine people at KIT Subs they have the entire run done now.  It's taken a while, but since they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, one would really have to be a jerk to complain about it.

Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take it

I was reminded of this song (and video) today from an experience a few years ago at a bar. It's one of the better hair metal songs of the time, and the video is pretty funny, though that got the band in some hot water later on. Parents seemed to think a metal show would be family friendly for some reason after this video.

Mightor vs Devil Dinosaur

I just got the Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor DVD set from Amazon the other day, and like all their Hanna-Barbera shows it looks great.  I think the only other classic superhero cartoon I don't have is Samson and Goliath, but as I don't want the Space Kidettes I think I'm stuck with my DVDrs that I made, at least for the time being.  Oh, I'd also like the Three Musketeers and the Arabian Knights from the Banana Splits show, but I haven't seen those available yet.  And yes, all I want are the cartoons, not the nonsense of the live action parts, thank you very much.

Great Mazinger Opening

The opening theme songs to several Super Robot series are just astounding. Great Mazinga has one of them. I think I may like it more than Mazinga Z's theme, in fact. I love most everything about Great Mazinga, and think the design is actually better than Z's as well. I do think Z is the better series, mostly due to the cast and Koji Kabuto himself.

Marine Boy in three DVD sets

I finally got Marine Boy "season" 2 yesterday, which means I now have all 78 episodes in three DVD sets and all in amazing quality.  I'm amazed (and happy) that these three sets take up less room than two standard VHS tapes, since I hauled around about 16 of those tapes (in cases) for years and I can carry these three sets in one hand.  Even when I had the DVDrs of the show it was 16 of them and they still took up a lot more room than these do.  I am really pleased that Warner Home Video decided to release all three "seasons".

Yoda, by Weird Al

I'm not excited by the new Star Wars movie today. Being burned by four movies and a TV special, I have no desire to see it, nor do I have any reason to give JJ Abrams any money at all. But I do love Star Wars and really enjoy Empire, so don't get me wrong about that. And this song is one of my favorites, which proves more prescient than ever now...

Three Fantastic Supermen (1967)

I am thankful the days of murky nth generation VHS tapes are gone, and you can find fan dubs (and subs) of wonderful movies that were enjoyable yet barely watchable due to the quality of said tapes.  This happens to be one of them, the first in a series of several movies starring the same costumes if not all the same actors.   I'd never even heard of it until the mid-90s and then got to see this plus several of the sequels, most of which I don't remember much at all.

Heat Miser & Snow Miser

Since this snow is piling up outside I figured this was an appropriate song for the day. So many of those Rankin-Bass shows had incredibly catchy songs that stick with you long after the show is over. This is just one example. And it's no secret which Miser would be my friend.

Ultraman Great

I recently watched the compilation Ultraman Great movie and quite enjoyed it.  It's called Ultraman: The Alien Invasion and it's taken from the first six episodes of the Ultraman: Towards the Future series  It does a decent job of condensing the story into a coherent whole and still giving us plenty of monster and hero action throughout it's 95 minute or so run time.  They did wisely leave out the Tasmanian Devil episode altogether.  It's a decent episode, but there's really no way you can see it and not think that monster is related to Bugs Bunny's rather dimwitted foil.

The new Godzilla

So this poster is out, along with a thirty second teaser trailer. I'm not impressed.  While it looks way better than either US version, it's not that much compared to the original Japanese ones.  Still, it's just a head shot so the rest of the suit could help improve my thoughts of it.  I don't care much for the tiny eyes at all, nor the crocodile mouth, but again, it's a vast improvement over GINO or Bearzilla.  I'm still hoping it's going to be a suit augmented by some slight CGI, it seems to be the case (as has been reported elsewhere (thanks August!).  As far as "greatest, worst nightmare", well mine is another boring movie like the last two, which is something the world never needs from Godzilla movies.

Microman montage

This is a montage of Microman/Micronauts commercials set to a catchy theme song. Man, I sure wish this had been a TV show done in this style from back then. I think I've seen a cartoon version that might have been made, but it's been so long I don't remember. It sure is an exciting and well done promo for these cool toys.

Tin Tin and the Golden Fleece

I've been watching this fun film for while now, off and on.  I wasn't very familiar with the character, other than knowing he is immensely popular in  Europe.  I have done a bit of research on the comic it's based on so I would know a few of the characters.  This is one of the first movies to feature the character.  I never saw the recent US movie, since I didn't hear much good about it, why bother?  Probably might be worth a rental, or a couple hours off Netflix at some point, but I've quite enjoyed this movie as I've meandered my way through it.

Amazing 3

Here's the English opening and closing of a cartoon that I'd never heard of until the mid-90s. I got a VHS tape of four episodes and it's pretty fun. I'd like to see some more episodes, since that tape has long since disappeared. The quality, as one might expect, was not very good, though back then you didn't mind so much.

Chinese Hercules (1973)

This is an interesting movie.  Yang Sze is not the hero, so the villain gets top billing here.  He is easily one of the most recognizable Chinese martial artists ever, possibly just under Bruce, Jet and Jackie.  He appeared in tons of films in this time period, and I believe he was always cast as a villain until late in his career.  I wonder if it was his idea to adopt the name "Bolo" from Enter the Dragon since he's almost always called that in his movies.  Heck, he even made into the fun Fight! Dragon series, which features him in the opening.  I need to finish watching that show.

Phenomenauts: Science and Honor

I discovered this band around the same time as I did with the Aquabats, and they share many of the same attributes, science fiction, superheroes who love the Earth and the like. This is one of my favorite songs of theirs, "Science and Honor". It's a good code to live by.

JLA: Crisis On Two Earths

I recently re-watched this movie (this time on blu-ray) and I liked it a lot more this time than I did before, five years ago.  It helps knowing it was supposed to be a bridge between the JLA/JLU series.  I still wish that they had been able to use the voices and character designs from that most excellent series, but this is not bad at all.  The story flows well and the acting is good.  It is nice to see Hal there, with the League, so I definitely approve of that.

Young Justice: Invasion

This is the second season of this fun series. It takes place five years after the first season, which is an interesting idea in theory, but I know I would rather have seen the characters grow and find out just why things happened, though by episode 5 they have explained how some things happened and why.  It does work, but I would rather have had five more seasons of the show to watch rather than this sort of thing.