Angel's Anime Rating Guide

Years ago, I saw a movie about aliens dressed in shiny outfits performing experiments on humans in what appeared to be a cheap motel. After poking around in the depths of the internet for a while, I came up with: Laboratory ... From Robert Emenegger (The Killings at Outpost Zeta), comes a tale of alien abduction. Six strangers from all walks of life are abducted from their homes by aliens and brought to a mysterious LABORATORY to be the subjects of gruesome alien experiments. Circa 1980, Laboratory , not to be confused with the Bollywood title of the same name from 2010, was part of a series of space-themed movies from the early '80s including The Killings at Outpost Zeta and Captive that had rather frequent rotation in the Philadelphia area back in the days when local stations ran all sorts of obscure movies instead of infomercials. Laboratory was as bargain basement, as low-budget films come, but, what stood out -- even today -- was the design choice to dress the aliens in...

Years ago, I saw a fascinating horror movie about people trapped on an island surrounded by flesh eating creatures in the water. I vaguely recall a scene in which one unfortunate victim appeared to have been eaten alive, but, in fact, this victim was already dead and a recording of the victim's screams was being played. I couldn't remember what the title of the movie was, but, after some poking around on the web, I came up with: The Flesh Eaters ... A hard-bitten, down-on-his-luck charter pilot (Byron Sanders) is hired by an alcoholic movie actress (Rita Morley) and her nubile personal assistant (Barbara Wilkin) to fly them to Provincetown. But mechanical problems and an impending storm force them to land on a deserted island habited by a German scientist (Martin Kosleck) harboring secret experiments and an even darker past. Featuring taut direction by Jack Curtis and punctuated by snappy dialogue from screenwriter Arnold brake. The Flesh Eaters has cemented its cult classic ...

Years ago, I happened to see a movie about rocks that killed people attempting to settle on an alien world, but, I couldn't remember the title. After a thorough search of the web, I came across an article describing exactly what I was looking for: The Killings At Outpost Zeta ... Outpost Zeta is a barren planet on the edge of the Milky Way, but it has strategic importance to the military establishment on Earth. Earth Base has sent several space ships to Zeta, but none have returned. So a top-flight team of six earth soldiers and scientists is dispatched to investigate the fate of the earlier expeditions. What they find are the corpses of the earlier crews, corpses with their insides sucked out. The killers reveal themselves as volcanic-rock monsters who exhale oxygen, and the Earthlings discover that a whiff of fresh air can mean sudden and horrible death. Will the Earth soldiers outwit the space monsters and survive? Slowly the action builds to a pulse-racing climax which will...

Recently, I remembered an old movie called Attack Of The Mushroom People aka Matango ... After a yacht is damaged in a storm and it’s boarders stranded on a deserted island, the passengers; a psychologist and his girlfriend, a wealthy businessman, a famous singer, a writer, a sailor and his skipper take refuge in a mysterious fungus-covered boat. While using the mushrooms for sustenance they find in the ship's journal that the mushrooms are poisonous, however some members of the shipwrecked party continue to ingest the mysterious fungi transforming them into hideous fungal monsters. One of the strangest and most horrific TOHO productions to date. Over the weekend, I was suddenly and shockingly reminded of Attack Of The Mushroom People , an old movie that I saw many years ago. According to Amazon , it was available of DVD a few years ago, but, now it appears to be out of print... Actually, despite the fact that Matango is supposedly out of print, I ordered it from one of my fav...

Recently, I came across  Tank Girl ... If you're into in-your-face visuals, outrageous action sequences and non-stop explosive laughs, this is your "rip-roaring power surge of a movie" (L.A. Weekly). The year's 2033 and since a humongous meteor hit earth, the world just hasn't been the same. No Movies, No Cable TV, NO WATER!!! A mega-villain, Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell), the leader of Water & Power, holds the world in his grasp since he controls all the H2O down to the last drop...or so he thinks. Two colossal enemies stand in his way: (1) The Rippers - an army of half-men/half-kangaroo people whose sole purpose is to bring down the W & P, and (2) a chick with a tank and tons of attitude - a.k.a. Tank Girl (Lori Petty). Kesslee had better get a grip on reality and his water jugs because not even a run in her stocking is going to stop her from saving the planet. Way back in the misty dawn of time, during the infamous Ultimate Otaku Fall Cleanup , I once ...

I picked up the re-remastered version of Metropolis recently. According to Wikipedia ... Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film was produced in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA). The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark. Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage. A 2001 reconstruction of Metropolis, shown at the Berlin Film Festival, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in that same year. In 2008, a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any ...

I picked up the Michael Shayne Mysteries box set yesterday. Why? Because it spoke to me and said "buy me"... This very welcome box set turns up the heat on one of detective films' cold cases. Created by Brett Halliday, Michael Shayne appeared in 31 books between the 1940s and '70s. He is not as popularly known as other screen shamuses, but he's good company. As portrayed by Lloyd Nolan (best known as curmudgeonly Dr. Chegley on the groundbreaking sitcom Julia), Shayne is not as hard-boiled as Sam Spade or as sage as Charlie Chan. But, as one shady character observes to someone whom Shayne has just pasted, "You know better than to mix with Shayne." He's a working-class mug ("His office is in his hat, his home is in his car," he remarks), usually "down on his luck" and short on cash. As Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940) opens, the furniture from his office is being repossessed. Still, Shayne has ethics enough to turn down ...