// Category Archive for: Underground/Cult

Skating The Edge With Aeon Flux

By Kai Shuart

At first blush, television seems a grossly distorted lens through which to examine philosophical questions. Every television show that comes through our tablets, computers, and (decreasingly) television sets is so overblown, and, well, downright Hollywood, how can it be the catalyst for examining the deeper questions of life? It’s entertainment; it’s only supposed to hang around between the time the opening credits start and the closing credits end.
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Ten Reasons Rock & Rule Is Here To Slay

By Less Lee Moore

Back in the ’80s, USA’s Night Flight, a late-night “variety” show, played a mix of weird videos and cult movies on weekends, essential viewing for kids who thrived on that kind of stuff. It was Night Flight that first introduced me to the wonders of Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage), Smithereens, Ladies and Gentlemen…The Fabulous Stains, Urgh! A Music War, and Rock & Rule, an animated, epic sci-fi musical.

I’ve been watching it for more than 20 years now and Rock & Rule is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Here are ten reasons why.

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Alien 2: On Earth

By Ann Clarke

Midnight Legacy films, for some fucked-up reason only known to them, felt the need to re-release the Italian film known as Alien 2 Sulla Terra. That translates to Alien 2: On Earth. After wasting 84.25 minutes of my life watching this . . . I have to wonder why they even went through the trouble.
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Mockbusters: The Limitless And Lazy World Of Rip-Offs

By Eric Weber

“Gremloids?”
“No, Mom. Gremlins. It’s about these creatures that take over a town. It’s really good.”
“Gremlins?”
“Yes. There should be this sort of . . . lizard monster on the front of the box.”
“Ok. Well, I’ll see if they have it.”

It was my thirteenth birthday and I was planning on having some friends over to watch one of my favorite movies. However, when Mom came back from the store and dropped the craggy, sun-bleached box on the dining room table, I thought I was going to cry.
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It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature: Tarantula, Piranha, Inseminoid

By Less Lee Moore

This article originally appeared in The So Bad It’s Good Movies Fanzine, Issue #2.

Godzilla (1954) is perhaps the first horror movie to depict the dire consequences of tinkering around with nature, and it inspired decades of thematic impersonators. Although it warned of the dangers inherent in the H-bomb, as environmental and sociopolitical concerns transformed, so did the types of movies which addressed these issues.

American films from the 1950s, such as Them! (giant killer ants), Beginning of the End (giant killer grasshoppers), and The Creature From The Black Lagoon (killer fish/man/beast) all point out how “tampering in God’s domain” (to paraphrase MST3K) can really screw things up.

But what about the womenfolk? How do they fit into this? From Tarantula to Piranha to Inseminoid, let’s look at what happens when we try to fool Mother Nature.

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Fight For Death: Zardoz

By Less Lee Moore

“The gun is good but the penis is evil.”

Whenever John Boorman’s bizarre, rambling, dystopian epic Zardoz is discussed, this is the line that is always mentioned. This line and the image of Sean Connery sporting mutton chops, a braided ponytail, red bandoliers, thigh high pirate boots, and red, diaper-like underpants.

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Doctor Who‘s Elisabeth Sladen: An Appreciation

By Cait Brennan

As Doctor Who fans prepared to celebrate the launch of its most anticipated series yet, the show lost one of its most enduring stars. Elisabeth Sladen, who portrayed Sarah Jane Smith, died April 19, leaving behind generations of fans and a legacy as one of the most popular characters in science fiction history.
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The Notorious Bettie Page

By Less Lee Moore

Called “the greatest pinup model that ever lived” by pinup photographer Art Amsie, Bettie Page was nothing if not an enigma. The now-iconic images of her alternate between sweet, sassy cheesecake shots and those fetish photos and films that were brought before the Kefauver Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in the mid-1950s. It is this contrast and conflict that director Mary Harron examines in her 2005 film, The Notorious Bettie Page.

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A History Lesson, Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984

By Less Lee Moore

My interest in this documentary on some of the bands in the mid-80s L.A. punk scene was piqued by the inclusion of Redd Kross, which, as anyone who knows me will attest, is my all time favorite band. Not because they are necessarily the best band in the world, or the most famous, or the most infamous, but because they forever changed my life for the better, a topic too lengthy to get into here, but which is, unsurprisingly, completely relevant to a discussion of A History Lesson Part 1.

This is not your standard glossy, let’s-explain-why-punk-rock-is-so-important documentary. It’s comprised of old footage shot by Dave Travis, a fan and friend of the bands featured—The Meat Puppets, The Minutemen, Twisted Roots, Redd Kross—interspersed with current interviews from members of those bands. The immediacy and importance of all the bands is captured in the grainy footage, and rather than coming across as embarrassing, it’s completely invigorating.
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Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide To Punks On Film

By Less Lee Moore

Any marginalized subculture bristles at being misinterpreted on film. Then again, the punk subculture is by now so fragmented and unrecognizable, one hesitates to even attempt to define it, much less depict it on the screen.

Yet best friends Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly spent five years documenting each and every appearance of punks on film. They were inspired to undertake this monumental task after re-watching Penelope Spheeris’s quasi documentary Suburbia and then shortly thereafter, seeing Joysticks, a video arcade comedy from 1983, for the first time.
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