I remain quite fond of Barbarella and Reform School Girls. I have mentioned this here before.
Stuart Gordon! What’s not to love? Apparently there is a sequel too.
She’s got some great soundtrack music. Siren from Great Expectations is one of my favorites. She also performed a song in the movie China O’Brien under the name Tess Makes Good. Supposedly she did it so she could make rent that month.
We watched Reform School Girls at a bachelor party eons ago; there wasn’t a dry eye in the house! ROTF! Wendy O. Williams was, what, 79 years old at the time? Great movie!
I might be the only one to love the 1984 version of The Razor’s Edge with Bill Murray.
Another Reform School Girls fan here! ![]()
I think “mediocre” might be praising it too highly, but Dinosaurus! has been stuck in my memory banks since I saw it when I was 6 or 7 years old. I guess for kids of a certain age, you never forget your first big-screen dino movie. When I saw it had been restored on Blu-ray I bought it in a heartbeat.
None of the following films are even near-great, yet they have all stayed with me long after I viewed them:
The President Vanishes (1934) – Rarely screened political thriller has square-jawed Secret Service man Paul Kelly investigating title disappearance as a cabal of big business leaders try to push the U.S. into another war to boost profits. Ridiculous and implausible(?), but fascinating.
Mme. Striptease (1956) – Early Brigitte Bardot farce, quite funny unlike most of her other films.
Omar Khayyam (1957) – Hokey history with dull Cornel Wilde in the title role, offset by great supporting cast including Yma Sumac.
The Green Helmet (1961) – Brit racing drama with all the expected clichés features perhaps the most cool cars of any film ever made.
For A Few Bullets More, a.k.a., Any Gun Can Play (1967) – Parody of Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns with Edd “Kookie” Byrnes and several memorable moments.
The Jackals (1967) – Remake of Yellow Sky (1948) set in South Africa. Vincent Price is excellent alongside his tougher than any male granddaughter Diana Ivarson.
The Last Valley (1971) – The 30 Years War in all its brutality, senselessness and waste. Hard to forget.
The Battle Wizard (1977) – Outlandish Hong Kong martial arts fantasy. Strange characters, bizarre plot, lots of crudely animated beams, a kung fu fighting gorilla and more!
Crime Spree (2003) – Inept French crooks are set up in America in this unexpectedly effective ensemble comedy.
Immortal (2004) – Wild and weird sci-fi.
Outlander (2008) – Good set-up, monster design and mayhem triumph over stock characters, a dull lead and predictability.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010) - Based on a French comic book, title character is a female Indiana Jones seeking to revive Egyptian mummies who may hold key to saving her sister from a near-fatal tennis accident.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – Pretty average sci-fi, but Tom Cruise dies repeatedly to give it extra appeal.
Shiwan Khan (played by John Lone). You seriously can’t tell the difference between a 5’7" Asian dude and a Bengal tiger who talks like George Sanders?
Highlander somehow managed to be more than the sum of its parts. The last time I watched it, years ago, I couldn’t help but think how cheesy it all was but I still loved it. It’s a compelling story and some of the transitions between the modern era and Conner MacCleod’s past were pretty smooth.
Yeah, but they knew exactly what kind of movie they were making with Army of Darkness! “That was just pillow talk, baby.”
I was wrong. In my defense I’ve been stuck in Denver almost all day wai5ing to pick up a friend at DIA (5 hours of delays! But should now land in another hour) and I’m on my phone. So I’m missing all sorts of auto correct BS. Doesn’t mean i wasn’t careless though!
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Just thought of yet another one. The Manitou, a cheesy Seventies horror flick based on a novel by Graham Masterton and starring Tony Curtis as a sham psychic who gets caught up in real supernatural goings-on involving a centuries-old (and more than a bit Lovecraftian) Native American medicine man being reborn on the back of a rich white woman’s neck.
I discovered it on Showtime when I was in my mid-teens and it stuck with me for several reasons despite its cheese level. I loved Curtis’s portrayal of the sham mystic. The movie made me a lifelong Masterton fan (at least of his horror novels–he also apparently wrote sex manuals), and I’d say it was a definite influence on my later career as an urban fantasy author. So I’d say it had an outsized effect on me despite not being a very good movie.
Great mention! I’m with you on Vanishing Point. I first saw it as the B-picture at a drive-in theatre, and I’ve never forgotten it. I considered myself lucky to find a DVD of it in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart a few years ago. Naturally, I bought it.
Now, if I could only find some of those other B-pictures from the drive-in I liked …
Reminds me of a made for TV movie in which somebody gets locked into a department store that had Doberman watch dogs.
I hunted this one down after becoming a fan of Jacques Tardi’s ligne claire comics serialized in Heavy Metal. It’s neat to see the characters come to life, but I think I like the comic more.
The green tea is complimentary.
Edge of Tomorrow is great, but I feel the best version of All You Need is Kill is Studio 4°C’s animated version that came out earlier this year. I think I like it even better than the original book!
I saw a lot of those after midnight at the town square cinema when I was living in Cambridge, England (1976–77). The place was usually packed with drunken college students on weekends.
Aside from soft-core porn like Flesh Gordon, Emanuelle, and Vanessa, I remember It’s Alive!, about a homicidal mutant baby, and The Last American Hero, where good-old-boy Jeff Bridges goes from moonshiner to stock-car driver while telling Valerie Perrine “You’re the purtiest girl I’ve ever seen!”
Okay, I nominate- Doc Savage, Man of bronze. ![]()
What do i win? ![]()
Is that the one where he literally dodges a bullet? ![]()
Mostly, sort of. It is a moment.
These great lines-
Mona, you’re a brick!
Have no fear! Doc Savage is here!
Same here. Xanadu has, for me, the combo of my longtime crush Olivia Newton-John, and music from one of my favorite bands, ELO. The other two, as noted, have music from one of my other favorite bands, Queen.
It was only recently that I discovered that Highlander’s director, Russell Mulcahey, had primarily been a director of music videos; he had only directed one other feature film before Highlander – which, if you view it as an extended music video, starts to make sense. ![]()
In the early days of MTV, if the screen was letterboxed, it was probably a Mulcahey production.
Every time I see this question asked across various platforms going back many years, Xanadu is one of the most common choices. I haven’t seen the movie myself but based on that I would argue that it isn’t a mediocre film at all.