The Indie Film Cafe Movie Reviews!

Alright, IFC lovers, its time to enter Richard Elfman‘s  Forbidden Zone, but only if you dare!  Fortunately, we here at Indie Film Cafe was made of stern stuff, so that not even the weirdest, strangest, wackiest oddball moosical ever created can keep stinker professionals down – check out our latest PODCAST see see cow the devil we made it through this one!

Our story involves the Hercules family, an assorted cast of singing oddballs who get caught up in a strange dimension leading from their basement, through a series of pipes and guts, and out of a sphincter with some  poop pillows, and into a crazy world lead by diminutive King Fausto, and his charming bride Queen Doris! Hervé Villechaize (“Man with the Golden Gun”, tv’s “Fantasy Island”) plays the tiny regal ladies man and ruler of the Forbidden Zone, which, well frankly defies description – let’s just say it is a pretty weird place.  Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman, Richard’s then wife) pops in and runs afoul of Queen Doris, played to the hilt by Susan Tyrrell (“Big Top Pee Wee”, “Cry Baby”).  Chicken Boy Squeezit (screenwriter Mathew Bright, who also plays sister Rene), also floats about.  The whole weird mess is buoyed by a great soundtrack, ranging from 40’s French cabaret moosic to Cab Calloway, to New Wave (Oingo Boingo), and is entirely based on the late 70’s stage show of the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, which Elfman (and brother Danny, who did the moosic AND had a great turn as the Devil) cowcocted and performed.

Well, the kids at Indie Film Cafe awarded a range of scores: a 7 from the MooCow (who’d seen it before a few times), while first-time witnesses Johnathan (9) and Lenore (8) barely survived the experience, and their scores reflect it.  That’s a total stink score of 24, and a Stinky Average of 8.0!  Definitely a lotta stink to this strange flick, but also a lot of fun and faboo moosic as well!

We have the color trailer HERE.   Git yer hooves on a dvd copy at Uncle Amazon.  The Ultimate Edition includes the soundtrack (which you need!), which cowtains both the original black & white plus the new color version — all in sterling hi-def and state-of-the-art sound mix!  You can get the soundtrack only on compact disc (remember those?) HERE, and the REAL old school folks can get it on vinyl HERE.  Get the awesome POSTER while it is still available on Ebay, and a whey-kewl tee shirt HERE.  Great news!  A long-awaited sequel is in the works, and Richard Elfman himself promises it will be bigger, badder, and bolder than the original – check out the Media Kit for moore info!

The Sixth Dimension is a weird, wonderful place, but we here at Indie Film Cafe encourage you to hold your breath, and your nose, and dive right in – the waters are fine, and undeniably wacky!!!
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Want a fun little Sci-Fi indie that might be short on budget but is long on fun?  Look no further than J.R. Bookwalter‘s Polymorph, when a blob of green alien goo stuck in a meteor crashes into a group of nerdy interns fighting some sleazy drug dealers in the woods.  The moovie stars  James L. Edwards, Ariauna Albright (“Witchhouse”), Tom Hoover (“Chickboxer”, “Dead & Rotting”), and Sasha Graham (the Tarot Diva), and features a quickie cameo by indie producer Michal Raso (“Gladiator Eroticus: The Lesbian Warrior”, “Spiderbabe”, “Bite Me!”).  Edwards (“The Dead Next Door”, “MILFS VS Zombies”, “Chickboxer”), who also wrote the script, stars as Dante, who wasn’t even supposed to be there that day at the Quick E Mart – errr, wait, I is cowfused yet again.  Well, check out the Indie Film Cafe‘s latest podcast HERE to check out all fuss!

While the bright green graphics of this “Reservoir Predator” are fairly cheesy, the story is fun and the dialogue sharp, and the moovie is fairly well acted and shot.  Its part of the wonderful underground Tempe Entertainment group, which released early moovies from J.R. Bookwalter, Todd Sheets, and Chris Seaver, among udders, from the late 80’s and into the 90’s and beyond, and headed by Bookwalter himself.  Sadly, Tempe is gone now, but hopefully fans can still get their hooves on indie moovie on line for a while.  Polymorph should be on your list of flicks to get!

We all enjoyed this frisky little indie – like moost underground genre flicks it has its share of stink, due mostly to low budget and overly high expectations – and it generated a fairly good Stink Score, getting a 5.5 from the MooCow, a 4 from Moody, and 3 from IFC resident scientist Lenore!  That’s a total Stink Score of 12.5, and a Stink Average of 4.2 – well done indeed!

We gotst trailerage right HERE.  Buy it or stream it on Amazon.  You can also use Alibris to track down a copy too.  Copies also show up from time to time on both Planet Store and Ebay.  Bookwalter’s moovies do show up from time to time in underground film festivals such as Horror Boobs, and you can catch interviews with the man if you search as well.  James L. Edwards has teamed up with IFC’s own Johnathan Moody on Mama’s Boy, a short horror film which will be cowming out soon!  You can check out a fascinating interview with James at Extreme Horror Cinema.com.

We here at Indie Film cafe love to celebrate indie and underground moovies, both the good and the stinky, and we encourage all of you to experience them for yourselves, if for no udder reason than to see what is being created outside the Hollywood box – and we think Polymorph is one you should definitely check out!
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Welcome to Part II of Operation Catch Miss Lenore Up by showing her stinkers from earlier in the season, and this time we showed her Chris Seaver’s Karaoke Kid – her first Chris Seaver moovie!  Annnnnd she was not generally impressed – not nearly as stinky as Actium Maximus, but also not nearly as memorable, and therefore rated as a 6.5.  Check out what she has to say on our latest podcast HERE.  I am sure there will be moore Christ Seaver shenanigans in the future for Lenore!
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Well, as Doc says in Todd Sheet’s classic Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City, here we go again!  Yep, while Mr. Moody is a busy bovine we decided it was time we got one of our favorite guest reviewers, Ms. Lenore Miller, our astronaut and science expert caught up on some of the moovies she missed, and to kill two birds with one heavy rock like object, we decided to show her ones which only had 2 reviews – this way we can have all the moovie scored with 3 reviewers, and make the Stink Scores moore even.

And soooo, without further ado, we find ourselves back at possibly the worst moovie if Season 2 thus far – heck, we figure might as well start at the bottom and work our way up.  I’d say it can;t get much worse than this, but long-time Indie Film Cafe listeners know that is never the case.  Anyhoo, poor Lenore was subjected to this bewildering mish-mash of a moovie, and actually enjoyed it, while clearly recognizing its distinct stinky bouquet.  Check out her observations (and the MooCow’s!) on our latest podcast HERE.

Here’s a hint, folks: it hasn’t gotten any better….
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If the Bird is the Word, then the Word is STINKY!
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This terrible monster bird moovie is fun on many levels – the moost obvious is the lame, fake-looking bird puppet which floats around the cheap sets, without ever flapping it wings (like it was on a string, perhaps?), attacking model trains and toy cars.  Apparently the ridiculous bird puppet comes from “some god-forsaken anti-matter universe”, and it’s here to build a nest & lay eggs in New York City.  Seriously.  Check out the latest Indie Film Cafe PODCAST to hear us moan and groan and put up a squawk, ’cause this turkey is really bird-brained…

Well, they try to kill it but, alas, the big bird is too tough and all the planes are destroyed.  So its up to doughty flyboy Jeff Morrow and cute math wiz in a skirt, Mara Corday, to say the day with their rear-end firing masonic atom gun.  One of the last films from prolific B moovie veteran Fred F. Sears (Don’t Knock the Rock, Durango Kid, The Werewolf) before he died, The Giant Claw laid a box office egg and was notoriously laughed out of the theaters.

Special guest host Lenore Miller is a scientist who is interning for NASA, and she joined us for our huge flapping disaster of a flick.  Moody and the MooCow scored it 8’s, while Ms. Lenore chimed in with a 5 – That give us an overall Stink Score of 21, and a stinky average of 7.0 – a veritable  bounty of 50’s stink – and hay, it was better than Snow Shark!

Check out the loud and annoying trailer HERE.  Someone posted the blu ray copy on YOUTUBE, god bless them.  Add the dvd to your stinky moovie flock from AMAZON.  Or get it as part of a 4-pack Sci-Fi Creature Classics pack HERE.  The German blu ray can be found here.  2 awesome posters can be found at THIS SITE – the MooCow wants them both!

“We shot the film before we ever got a look at this monster that was supposed to be so terrifying. The producers promised us that the special effects would be first class. The director – Fred Sears – just told us, ‘All right, now you see the bird up there, and you’re scared to death! Use your imagination.’ But the first time we actually got to see it was the night of the premiere. The audience couldn’t stop laughing. We were up there on screen looking like idiots, treating this silly buzzard like it was the scariest thing in the world. We felt cheated, that’s for sure, but they told us afterward that they just ran out of money. They couldn’t afford anything but this stupid puppet. But it was just terrible. I was never so embarrassed in my whole life.” – Jeff Morrow, in an interview prior to his death in 1993.

The Angry Video Game Nerd rated the bird puppet monster as his favorite giant movie monster of all time.  So there’s that.  But we here at IFC say check it out!

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