Cognitive Science Movie Reviews

I remember seeing this moving as a small child and it stuck in my memory all these years. It took me an intense internet search to get the name of the movie again. If you love the old black and white horror movies...add this one to your collection. It be a good rainy night movie for the family.

How do you address the issue of an over-populated world?

Small Private Island + Wacky Scientists + Gorgeous Blonde Daughter + Handsome Sea Captain + Jealous Drunkard + Hurricane, PLUS...SEVERAL MUTANT GIANT POISONOUS BONE KNAWING SHREWS...Equal one heck of a disaster flick!

Pretty remarkable for 1959.

=^..^=

this is one of those movies that you and your friends can laugh and poke fun at and have the time of your life watching.This is one of my favorite funny horror movies ever-----get it!

The first movie is great fun but what really makes it stand out are the incredible songs by Deborah Holland {from Animal Logic and her own awesome, solo work}! "Cant stop cryin" will stay with you the rest of your life, trust me, I've been looking for the soundtrack for over a decade! If you want some great campy fun, get this. If you want some really great music, buy it now.

As one of the first films in the genre of Cyberpunk I think it deserves a place on any sci-fi lovers shelf. It's full of unique fun ideas on a low budge. Dennis Cristopher is outstanding as well as Dana wheeler Nicholson. And the film makers did a good job of keeping the film moving and involving.

Eve is a veeery realistic-looking android babe with some nifty military hardware including a hot bod, and a nuclear bomb. What a woman! But when things go awry in her testing phase during a bank robbery, Eve winds up lost in the big city. Now, the rescue team, which includes the real (human) Eve and Gregory Hines, must find and disarm her before she goes "kerblooey." Of course Eve is programmed to protect herself at all costs, and virtually any-sized problem she is presented is met with her own brand of "Six Million Dollar Man"-esque ultra-violence, resulting in the destruction part of the film's title.

Great movie. Very underrated. The scene with the policemen in their yellow rain slickers gives me a big woodie!

I've been looking for a decent transfer of THE BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN and finally found this DVD. The colors are beautiful and there is hardly a scratch or hole in the print to be seen. The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, a bit flat but completely clear. Finally, the film is presented in the original 2.35:1 letterbox format and NOT in 1.33:1 full screen.

Not only does it contain EL ALAMEIN, but also contains the 1951 MGM picture GO FOR BROKE! starring Van Johnson. It looks and sounds pretty good, but not as good as EL ALAMEIN did. Both films contain a 6-chapter search feature.

Both films are excellent and this is definitely worth buying.

Just bought this for my husband's birthday... he loved the two films... he teaches history and is an NUT. I found them very enjoyable also, surprisingly. Go For Broke is the story of the 442nd Regiment... a group of GI's who were of Japanese descent. They were sent to Europe in WWII to fight the Nazi's... the story revolves around their battles and the drama of the interaction with "white" US combat units.

The Battle of El Alamein was a real treat. It is in Letterbox format, and unlike Go For Broke is in color... which is absolutely striking. The film is dubbed but is very interesting in that it tells the story of combat in the North African desert - FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ITALIANS!!!

Marengo did a great job on these films and if you like war movies I highly recommend this double feature.

I was disappointed by the two main features on this DVD, both of which I give 3 stars individually, while the extras as a whole get 5 stars, especially thanks to the amazing "Morality in Crisis".

The problem with these films is that they are way too sympathetic to juvenile delinquents and avoid becoming too over-the-top. The fun with old j.d. films is when they really exaggerate the problems with youths and show them to be almost a different species from adults instead of young confused teens reacting to equally clueless adults. However, these films give a relatively balanced portrayal of both the teens and the adults. This is a good thing for those trying to be educated, but a bad thing for fans of old exploitation movies looking to be entertained. Furthermore, the adults in both films are just too level-headed to be funny. There is also very little action, except for some actual mild prison riot footage near the beginning of Jacktown. Both films are very talky. They are still interesting films and are naive to a degree. And "Lost, Lonely and Vicious" has a lead character clearly based upon James Dean. But the DVD is mostly worthwhile because of the value of getting two films plus the extras on one disc.

In contrast to the main features, "Morality in Crisis", made by the Bible Institute of LA, is an alarmist load of fun full of misinformation about what the Bible says about private morality. The best part of this short involves an very overweight police Sgt. who can barely speak because he's so nervous in front of the camera showing off samples of the police department's stash of drugs, and there's a scene in which the short's host unintentionally gives j.d.s tips on how to make homemade weapons.

Another short, "Little Miss Delinquent", which I believe was filmed in Toronto, is also level-headed and balanced, but still manages to be of great interest thanks to the absolutely amazing performance by the lead female. Unfortunately, there are no credits given and I have no idea if she continued with an acting career, but I'd be interested to find out.

There are also some great trailers for films which appear to be much more entertaining j.d. films than the main features.

If you already own the better j.d. films available, such as Ed Wood's "Violent Years", this makes a nice addition, but there are better films available.

Not really "JD" flicks in the typical sense (the leads are a few years out of their teens and there is only a modicum of the usual dragging, gang fighting, drug dealing, and groovy hep-talk of archetypal JD efforts such as High School Confidential or Teenage Doll), Lost Lonely and Vicious and Jacktown are of interest more as examples of regionally-produced, low-budget 1950s/60s indies, and quite entertaining on their own terms. Jacktown, (shot in Michigan) the more serious and moralistic of the two (the credits are heavy with thanks to law enforcement agencies), opens with the birth of Frankie Stossel, accompanied by Dragnet-style narration: "What you are about to see is based on fact, only the names have been changed . . ." Flash-forward: Frankie is 22, with no job, hanging out at a bowling alley, participating in petty crimes, or lounging in his parents' back yard listening to "that awful rock and roll" and reading scandal magazines. After being busted with an underage car hop in his back seat ("All right, young lady, I think you better put your slacks on"), he's sentenced to Jacktown, "the world's largest prison," (site of a huge prison riot in 1952, shown in newsreel footage) where he's mercilessly harassed by the other cons because "morals charges is against their religion." In an odd reversal on the old prison movie cliche, inmates scold a black prisoner singing the 'Jacktown Blues': "OK, OK, we got your message!" Frankie's skin is saved by the understanding Judge Wapner-look warden, but he's soon involved with the warden's virginal daughter Margaret (Patty McCormack from The Bad Seed, the only 'name' actor in the movie). The warden tries to separate them, but Frankie slips away from his guard while on an outside detail, steals a car (accidentally kidnapping a 4-year-old), and shows up on Margaret's doorstep. Will Frankie keep running, or can Margaret convince him to return to Jacktown to face the music? The movie gets off to a fairly gritty, realistic start, but veers a bit toward soap opera melodramatics once Margaret shows up. The general atmosphere is of a 1950s "docudrama"; some of the actors seem to be nonprofessionals, and the tone at times recalls a Coronet Instructional film. A diverting and painless 62 minutes.
While the advertising art for Lost Lonely and Vicious promises a more lurid, salacious film, it's essentially a Hollywood psychodrama (shot in Tuscaloosa, Alabama) concerning up-and-coming movie actor and neurotic jerk Johnnie Dennis (a loose parody of James Dean) who's "obsessed with death" and has a habit of reckless driving. Johnnie's crew of wannabee actors Walt, Pinkie, and Darlene, cranky ballet dancer Buddy, and silent hulk Pig, hang around a seedy drug store (where the patrons dance to an ocarina-playing geezer), complain about their casting directors and agents, and leer at the female clientele. An Edwoodian ambiance is established immediately by obvious stock footage of Tinseltown landmarks, the poverty-stricken drug store set (which looks more like Tuscaloosa than Schwab's), amateurish acting, and loopy narration ("In this town of make-believe, the truth behind the scenes is also filled with drama . . ."). Johnnie, who has just gotten a starring role in a picture after years playing bits, is trying to end an affair with his knockout dramatic coach Tanya (Lilyan Chauvin), who swears she's only interested in his career, and who owns a Bizarro-look self-portrait Johnnie painted portraying himself as a corpse with a skeleton hand ("he brings death into his paintings"). Try to follow Johnnie's convoluted logic as he argues with Tanya about not attending the premiere of his movie. Between acting jobs he gets his kicks chicken-running with Walt and lurking about at the public library, where he reads a book about death and the mind ("a dark continent of motive and desire"). After nearly running down pretty drug store clerk Helen (Barbara Wilson), he stalks her at the library, 'kidnaps' her and takes her on a joy ride that ends up in a pond, takes her home and meets her dad, and delivers a strange monologue about trees (the leaves make "a funny little laughing sound" in the wind). Unfortunately, where Johnnie should be brooding, sullen, or intense, he more often comes off as maudlin, whimsical, or just plain wacko. Rather than offer any explanation for Johnnie's bizarre behavior, the script serves up comical pseudo-existentialist psychobabble instead; Tanya: "I don't understand you, Johnnie." Johnnie: "Who does?"; Johnnie says he was "lost" in the library for two days ("it's a big place") because he "had to look up something." Finally, after a climactic brawl with Walt behind the drug store, Johnnie tosses the ghoulish self-portrait in his car and roars off into the night, while flashbacks dissolve across the painting. Will Johnnie's morbid "death wish" spell his doom? Or will he be saved by Helen's love? Definitely a twisted curio item with enough cheesy atmosphere, bizarre plotting, wooden acting, and goofy dialogue to satisfy undemanding fans of low-budget '50s schlock.
Surprisingly, the source prints for both features, save for some light speckling, occasional visible grain, and a few seconds of light lining, look great, exhibiting overall excellent brightness, contrast, tonal scale, sharpness, and shadow/highlight detail. The extras are very solid, with a terrific dud-free trailer collection (Cool and the Crazy, Cry Baby Killer, Jacktown, Lost Lonely and Vicious, Eighteen and Anxious, Joy Ride, Teenage Wolfpack) and three fun shorts, Crisis in Morality, Hell Is a Place Called Hollywood, and Little Miss Delinquent, which all tie in somehow with the features. 'Crisis' purports to demonstrate the links between every social vice and lack of religious (Christian) faith; a little dry at first but fairly entertaining. 'Hell', which would make a great lead-in to Ed Wood's Sinister Urge, presents the story of a Midwestern beauty contest winner who lands a movie part, stays in Hollywood hoping to become an actress, and eventually falls into bondage and smut picture modeling in order to make ends meet. Little Miss Delinquent is a generic but superior 'bad girl/clueless parents' short produced by the Film Board of Canada in cooperation with Warrendale, "a remedial center for adolescent girls." It's got better acting and production values than your typical industrial film, though whether you find it amusing or merely unsettling probably depends on whether you have any teenage daughters. Also included is another fine Something Weird 'Trash-O-Rama' audiovisual gallery of miscellaneous exploitation art and radio spots (featuring a nice repro of the way-bizarre one-sheet for The Lonely Sex, among many others). For my money, one of the best, most consistent SW DVD packages (though the extras still have the crummy logos on them); fans of 1950s youth-oriented cheapies can't go wrong.

Volume 18 in "The Twilight Zone" DVD series offers an interesting combination of two space stories with one about the Civil War. "I Shot an Arrow Into the Air," written by Rod Serling and based on an idea by Madelon Champion, relates how the U.S. spaceship Arrow One disappears off the radar screen and crashes. Three of its astronauts survive the crash and find themselves on what they take to be an asteroid with only five gallons of water between them. Corey (Dewey Martin), decides the only way to survive is to kill the other two. Another spaceship is featured in the hour-long "Death Ship," written by Richard Matheson and based on his short story. The E-89 investigates something shining on the surface of a planet and discover what looks to be their own wrecked ship and dead bodies. Lieutenants Mason (Ross Martin) and Carter (Fredrick Beir) become convinced they are dead, but Captain Paul Ross (Jack Klugman), will have none of that. "Still Valley" by Serling based on Manly Wade Wellman's short story "The Valley Was Made Still," stars Gary Merrill as Paradine, a Confederate scout who stumbles upon a town filled with Union soldiers all standing frozen. An old man (Vaughn Taylor) has used a book of black magic to work this miracle. The old man is dying and begs Paradine to take the book and use it to win the war. This is another disc where none of the episodes qualify as a classic Zone story. Its chief virtue is seeing Jack Klugman once again on the show, but for once playing a strong and very determined character.

"I shot and arrow into the air". Three astronauts crash land on what they think is another planet, and one of them kills the other two for water.

"Death ship". Three astronauts land on another planet and see a duplicate of their ship, with their dead bodies inside it!

"Still Valley". A civil war scout comes upon a town where everybody is frozen in place. It turns out they are under a spell by an old man with a black magic book.

This is actually a really good movie. It's a made for T.V. movie. I saw it for the first time on Lifetime, which isn't a station I would normally watch. It's a movie based on alien abductions. A mother and daughter are confronted with this. At first, it starts with the daughter's loss of time and memory. Later on in the movie, the mother goes to counceling and finds that she was abducted as well. The plot thickens, but I would really hate to give it away. This would probably be a good movie for anyone interested in aliens. I'd say for the price of the DVD $$$go for it. There aren't any extras on this DVD, but I would assume there would be on the one that will cost you a little more $$$

The beautiful Markie Post Rules as a mother of a daughter who is repeatedly abducted by aliens.It's a must see movie!!

This is the television movie that stirred up a lot of trouble for CBS in 1994. Despite repeated disclaimers every commercial break, many viewers really thought this was real. Sound familar? It should. The style is loosely based on Orson Wells' War of the Worlds radio cast, where the story is told through breaking news coverage.
I worked at a CBS affiliate and scared people kept calling wanting to know if it was real.
Anyway, this is a fun movie. It is not HAMLET and is a bit over the top at times. But if you get into the spirit of things you might occasionally feel a chill go up your spine.

As the reviewer below mentioned, this made-for-TV movie is loosely based on Orson Welles's famous radio broadcast in 1938. The broadcast was based on the classic 1898 novel "War of the Worlds" in which seemingly-invincible, octopus-like Martians invade and lay waste to England before suddenly dying from a simple Earth virus. Welles took this sci-fi story and turned it into a disturbingly realistic, minute-by-minute radio news broadcast of Martians landing in the New Jersey countryside and then moving towards New York while destroying everything in their path. Welles intended for the broadcast to be a ratings-boosting Halloween "trick", but many people thought that it was a real news story and panicked, packed up their cars and families and headed for the hills to escape the Martian "invaders". In "Without Warning", CBS-TV attempted to do what Welles did on CBS radio decades earlier: present a frighteningly realistic TV News broadcast of an alien invasion of the Earth. The two-hour movie is presented as a genuine news broadcast - there's the typical TV newsroom you see on CNN or Fox News; there's the team of anchorpeople giving updates (to add to the realism Sander Vanocur, a real reporter who's covered Washington politics since President Kennedy, was hired to play the anchorman); and there's the "live" satellite feeds from around the world as the evidence rapidly mounts that the Earth is being visited by not-so-friendly aliens. And the story is at least as frightening as the Welles version so many years ago. Originally, reports come in of a large UFO that's been shot down by the Air Force; an entire town in Wyoming suddenly disappears, with empty cars lining the streets and people's half-eaten dinners sitting on their plates; a zombie-like little girl is found talking what appears to be "nonsense" (it's actually a message from the aliens), then a missing skier in Europe turns up spouting the same gibberish; then large asteroids are spotted heading for the Earth's major cities, poised to destroy them; and the US military in a hurried press conference announces their plan to destroy the asteroids before they hit the Earth. I won't give away anymore of the plot (the ending is a real chiller), but this fast-paced film grabs hold of you quickly and doesn't let go until the very end. I saw this movie by accident when it originally aired, and although I wasn't "fooled" (I'm a big fan of Orson Welles' original broadcast, so I knew it had to be fake), this film nevertheless is chilling to watch in its realism. If there ever is an alien invasion of the Earth (which I doubt), then this movie probably gives an accurate portrayal of how the TV news media would cover it. Highly recommended!

Complete and utter camp, The New Women is a must see for anyone into cult B-movies. Full of hilariously bad lines, weird sci-fi twists and kooky characters, it wears its love of John Waters and Russ Meyer on its sleeve. It stars Mary Woronov ("Eating Raoul") as Lisa LaStrada whose husband is cheating on her with the town slut. At her sister's BBQ, she starts boozing it up for the first time in 3 years and spirals down into a despair the likes of which only Devine has ever surpassed.

On her way home from the party, a weird rainstorm hits. It causes the entire world to go into a sleep from which only the women awake days later. What will Lisa do? Why, take her cheatin' husbands' job as town sheriff and unsuccessfully attempt to stop the rampant looting and chaos, of course.

And it gets loonier. It eventually turns into a road movie when Lisa, her sister, the town's senior citizen floozy, and the local feminist all jump in an RV and head to Elysium, a new society that was made by women for women. On the way, they meet hippie chicks, biker babes and scientists who want to make sure the human race continues. There are enough zany shenanigans here to satisfy the guiltiest of pleasures.

A fagulous midnight movie, now available 24/7 via DVD release! Todd Hughes' premier full-length feature stars cult phenomenon Mary Woronov in her best role since _Eating Raoul_, and a sumptous performance by Sandra Kinder (_Twin Peaks_: "Want to know our specials? We don't have any."). The always enchanting Roma Maffia and buzz-cut butch pin-up girl Jenny Shimizu also appear in this mind-melting take on the apocalypse. It's like a strong cigarette: your head spinning is the POINT, sweetheart.

Within THE NEW WOMEN's opening minutes, at least 10 ways to love the feature film emerge. You've got a sumptuous, rural noir road trip. You've got femmes - fatale, frisky and fierce. You've got film references that range from '40s noir to '50s sci-fi to '60s chixploitation to '70s apocalypse, and that crackling, smart dialogue we haven't heard for decades. While the film's core is feminine nuance, the film's look is a rhapsody of texture.
THE NEW WOMEN gives you that rare aesthetic density, a funky, sophisticated humor and a provocative voila! Riffing off the feisty, all-female melodrama George Cukor pioneered in THE WOMEN, this film likewise exults in an all-girl milieu, but amped with a sci-fi premise. The film's humor is sharp and ingenious, and the women are by turns frenetic, profound, campy and coy - full-bodied females that straight cinema could care less about.

War of the Monsters, aka Gamera vs. Barugon, is one of the showa (60s - 80s) Gamera series' highlights. The film is perhaps the most serious entry in the series and is the first color Gamera film.

However, the DVD from alpha video isn't quite up to task of showing this classic kaiju film in all of its brilliance. The worst problem on the disc is the print of the film. The film is in color, but you might not know that unless you knew it was beforehand. The colors are so faded on the film, it could be thought that it was filmed in black and white. Yet, this film can not be found on region 1 DVD anywhere else, and for 7 bucks, I highly recommend you pick it up, despite its faults.

Gamera escapes from the rocket that was supposed to take him to Mars. Barugon and Gamera both look tight. No child cheering Gamera on through the whole movie. Gamera's scariest look of the Showa series. A great film for all ages. 10 stars out of 5

What a fun goofy movie!
This should be required viewing for everyone that loves stuffy movies... it should cure them!
Arre!