Doomsday Machine: Terrible Movies #221

How many costumes do you need in space? Do you need to take a shower immediately after liftoff? And are BarcaLoungers standard NASA equipment? These and many other questions remain unanswered by the poorly shot, poorly lit, poorly written, and poorly acted film Doomsday Machine, and I don't care to know the answers after all. Here's the plot: There's some sort of cataclysm that's going to befall the Earth, but the jargon over the various military loudspeakers make it difficult to discern what the heck is going on. One thing's for certain, though, and that thing is that women in 1971 are just as capable as men in space and they weigh less and conveniently make for clumsy sexytime on your way to Venus. So after some stock Apollo footage and a couple of lines by Casey Kasem, the cast leaves a bad matte painting of the Earth in 3 or 4 different spaceships equipped with seats that look suspiciously like this:

and change into their space sweatsuits, do a little space cooking, and get picked off one by one by various outer space misadventures. There are many instances of not-so-special special effects, one of which involves cast members with bleeding eyeballs being suspended by strings. It's completely baffling and awful from beginning to end, and I wished a cataclysm would befall the Earth so I could stop looking at it. I watched it on Youtube, and I have no idea why. Here it is if you're a big fan of spaceship recliners, but don't you have some laundry to do or something? Those space sweatsuits won't fold themselves:

The Chicken Of Tomorrow: Terrible Movies #220

The Chicken Of Tomorrow is a short film about the advances in chicken-related agriculture in 1948. It features the images of thousands of plucked chicken carcasses dangling from hooks and usage of the term Evisceration Machinery Line. Did you know the average chicken produces 154 eggs a year? Neither did I. Somehow, The Chicken Of Tomorrow is simultaneously boring and fascinating and would probably make a very fine stock. I watched it on Youtube. Here it is:

Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women: Terrible Movies #219

Mamie Van Doren stands around wearing a clam-shell bikini in this slow moving outer space adventure. After two minutes of voice-over narration describing spaceships and another two minutes of waves crashing on rocks, we learn that in future 1998 a manned trip to Venus occurs but that doesn't sound like a particularly good idea because of all the bad animation of spacecraft taking off. The voice-over narration continues, usually over terrible wooden dialogue but that's totally OK because the screenplay sucks. Then, there's lots of sciency beeping noises to remind you that it's 1998, and some dude in a astronaut suit is attacked by a plant with giant tentacles and everyone drives away in a levitating AMC Pacer. Some prehistoric chicks sunbathe on rocks around the 38 minute mark, then they talk using mental telepathy, go for a swim in the ocean and eat fish as a foggy pterodactyl dangling from a string attacks for some reason. It's just awful, and I often hoped to be crushed by a bus so I could stop watching it. Avoid unless you like watching footage of people standing around looking at rocks, or looking at the ocean, or looking at some fish, or looking at a lava-covered robot, or looking at a dead rubber pterodactyl. I watched it on Youtube because there was nothing to watch on Netflix. Here you go, but don't say you weren't warned:

Terror In The Midnight Sun: Terrible Movies #218

A spaceship crashes in Sweden, then a chick goes ice skating for some reason and later everyone goes skiing in this film containing very little Terror In The Midnight Sun. Playing more like a Swedish tourism commercial with tons of scenic shots of airplanes flying over snow-covered mountains; there is also shaky camera-work, confusing accents, wooden acting, camera shadows, phonetic line-reading, and reindeer closeups. Absolutely terrifying if you're scared of old-timey supermarket music. I watched it on Youtube, and it was dreadful. Here it is, but you really shouldn't watch it:

Vampyr: A Good One #147

Featuring long tracking shots, excellent camerawork for the era, and striking Expressionistic imagery; Carl Theodore Dreyer's film Vampyr kicks a crapton of ass. Experimental and creepy; it has many awesome closeups, a boatman with a scythe, and a skeleton's hand clutching a bottle of poison. Required viewing. I watched it on Youtube. Here it is:

Time Bandits: A Good One #146

In an effort to expand the cultural horizons of the minions in the art department of Deathrage Industries, I decided to allow them to watch the classic film Time Bandits in lieu of a lunch break and docked their pay because they clearly were not working. Since the film contains nose picking, time travel, spitting, violence against poor people, floating disembodied heads, exploding henchmen, machine gun fire, sword battles, ogres, aquatic giants with ships for hats, foreboding castles, fireballs shooting from eyeballs, fingers that shoot bullets, tanks, knights, cowboys, archers, spaceships, and The Living Embodiment Of Evil Incarnate who changes into a lethal knife-wielding amusement park ride; I figured they would enjoy something like that because I surely would. They were decidedly unimpressed, so I fired them, and by "firing" them I really mean I shoved them off the roof of the building. Can't get good help nowadays. I watched it on Netflix Instant Streaming, and I'm now taking applications. Here's a poor people punching clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=167IhlXnN2Y

Godmonster Of Indian Flats: Terrible Movies #217

A guy wearing a vest made out of sheep herds sheep then strikes it rich at the slots in Reno in this haphazardly edited horror film, then a hooker steals his cash while a trio of banjos serenade and when he gets upset about this turn of events he gets roughed up Occupy-style by the local fuzz. Suddenly, there's a sheep-related hallucination sequence for some reason where the film crew barely off-camera hold up wriggling sheep for their close-up which then results in bloody straw covered sheep embryos because it's in the script. There's a visible boom, a parade, some strangely dubbed voices, odd animal sounds, a faux dog funeral, a pie eating contest, a nonsensical script, a ketchup covered steak the size of a hubcap, and a papier-mache godmonster puppet made out of sheep with an uncanny resemblance to Snuffalupagus. It's slow-moving and awful (the movie and the godmonster) but recommended if you like stuff that sucks. I watched it at Youtube. Here's an explodey trailer that blatantly rips off Hitchcock if Hitchcock didn't know how to make movies: