Change Your Image
grotifer
Reviews
At the Earth's Core (1976)
Rubber-monster-tastic!!
Shame on you if you give this film a low rating. How can you not like a film that has Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, silly rubber monsters, fights, (and for the guys, that woman that was the baddie's henchwoman in The Spy Who Loved Me and one of the seventies Sinbad films, not wearing very much of whom my mother said "She wasn't picked for the colour of her eyes"), lava, silly wigs and a daft Victorian drilling machine very much like the one used in the old Thunderbirds series? Whoever watched this film and slagged it off was watching it for the wrong reasons. It may be crap, but is definitely good crap. They don't make 'em like they used to, sigh......
Robin Hood (2006)
Enjoyable pseudo-mediaeval romp!
I enjoyed this series, although I didn't like it as much as "Robin Of Sherwood", or the Patrick Bergin and Kevin Costner Robin Hood films from the 90s. The cast were generally very good, especially Robin, Little John, Alan A Dale and Much, and I also very much enjoyed Guy Of Gisbourne, who looks like an evil Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet. Keith Allen's Sheriff is a bit too OTT and anachronistic for my liking, and Maid Marion is a bit too heavily made up and common looking, although I think she is a reasonably good actress. Costumes, sets and locations met with my approval, not sure about replacing Friar Tuck with a Muslim transvestite. All in all, an entertaining, action packed series of good family entertainment! And who cares whether mediaeval peasants wore hooded tops and combat trousers anyway?
El retorno de D'Artacan (1990)
2nd series of Dogtanian, not quite as good as the first, but very good.
I enjoyed the first series of Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds very much as a small child but was rather too old to be watching the second series when it appeared some years later, because I got home later from high school not because I wasn't interested in seeing it. I bought it recently because I love a good swashbuckler and was very pleased with it. It isn't quite as good as the original series, but still pretty good for those of you who liked Dogtanian, Ulysses 31, Dungeons and Dragons and The Mysterious Cities of Gold. I'd say it doesn't look quite as nice, the backgrounds are much the same and I wouldn't say the animation was inferior, but somehow Dogtanian himself doesn't have the same charm and I think the characters have bigger heads in relation to their bodies and all the cardinals guards seem to be duplicates with no pigs as they had before, otherwise it looks much the same. I haven't read the Dumas novels so I can't speak for how closely it resembles the stories, however I felt they should have dwelt longer on the Man In The Iron Mask storyline, and Athos seemed more foolish than in the first series. Still it was consistently entertaining, I am glad I bought it, and I would definitely watch it again. The only thing that puzzles me is why, years later, Captain Widdimer is still employed by the cardinal when he has obviously proved himself so useless?
Murun Buchstansangur (1982)
Surreal British 80s animation which should appeal to The Smiths' fans
If I remember rightly (bearing in mind that it is many years, possibly 2 decades since I last saw it) my brother found this cartoon, on Channel 4, during the mid to late 80s and we both were hooked. Murun resembles a Mr Man in that he is just a greenish-brownish-grayish head with limbs but in all other respects it does not resemble Roger Hargreaves' stories at all. Firstly it was not aimed at small children but rather more at a student audience. Murun is a depressed character who seems to be very small, as I recall he entered his squalid home through a hole in the skirting board in someone's kitchen. Nothing exciting ever happened to him, and he had a boring sullen voice. He was keen on his neighbour who was a very pallid girl who although more human proportioned was not drawn as a realistic human being. She, on the other hand, had a boyfriend called "Nigel Clarke with an E", he was a sun-tanned convertible-sports car driving git (of far more realistic human proportion) who could do no wrong as far as his girlfriend was concerned and naturally Murun hated him with a vengeance. It wasn't clear why they were all the same height but Nigel drove a sports car while Murun lived behind a hole in a skirting board. I can't remember what happened in individual episodes but I would very much like it to come out on DVD.
Doctor Who: The Ark in Space: Part One (1975)
An excellent Tom Baker Doctor Who story with proper BBC monsters!
The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive on a space ship filled with humans in cryogenic suspension, and encounter large insects that are preying on the crew, before and after they are woken by the Doctor. This is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories, not just because it has Tom Baker in it, but also because it has some of my favourite BBC monsters in it. The large preying mantis-like creatures have been laying their eggs in the bodies of the crew and they start to mutate into giant caterpillars. These larvae look like sleeping bags covered in the larger type of bubble-wrap and sprayed green (no doubt because they are) and hilariously you can see the actor inside peeping through the mouth at times! If you like this type of ridiculous monster as I do you will certainly enjoy this story. I enjoyed the plot too, but not as much as the monsters. And the adult insect monsters are worth seeing too, but not as entertaining as the larvae.