Roller Blade (Review)
Roller Blade
1986
Story by Donald G. Jackson
Screenplay by Donald G. Jackson and Randall Frakes
Directed by Donald G. Jackson
A post-apocalyptic future where you live and die based on how well you roller blade. Yes, Roller Blade is a classic piece of b movie insanity from the mind of Donald G. Jackson. You might think that means there are roller blades in the film, but you would be wrong, everyone is using regular skates, as this was years before in-line skates or roller blades became popular.
Director Donald G. Jackson spent a whole $5000 making Roller Blade and it went on to become very successful, earning over a million dollars through video sales. He made several additional roller blade themed movies, some of which were funded by studios. Some drama happened that’s more appropriate to discuss in the relative films’ reviews, but needless to say it despite the increase in budget, it was not a pleasant experience for Jackson. The large amount of Roller Blade related films has ensured the films a cult following, even as Legend of the Roller Blade Seven has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made.
Donald G. Jackson is known for being an advocate of Zen Filmmaking, a method of low-budget filmmaking that doesn’t use a script and focuses on using the energy of the cast and available resources to craft a film on the fly. Hence, many of Jackson’s films seem like they were made up by a group of friends on weekends, because they often are. Some of his more structured films such as Hell Comes to Frogtown are more focused, but you can see the roots of Zen Filmmaking here: The lack of focus or strong script, voice-overs instead of sync sound, characters that randomly become more important, and actors playing multiple roles.
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Voodoo Dollz: Lust Potion #9 (Review)
Voodoo Dollz: Lust Potion #9
2008
Directed by Fred Olen Ray (as Nicholas Medina)
Voodoo Dollz is a satirization of those awful movies where girls go to private school and there are secret witches and devil worshiping going on. Many of these films are from the 1970’s, thus have slow pacing, awful cameras, and look like everyone is high on Mary Jane. Thankfully, most of the boring stuff is dropped from this entry, and we get an erotic parody done up Fred Olen Ray style! Many of the familiar females make an appearance, and we get one, lone male entry – Alexandre Boisvert, aka Voodoo, thus giving us the title Voodoo Dollz. There is no Evan Stone, Bart Batram, Ted Newsom, or Jay Richardson. But the many many women means lots of lesbian encounters!
The movie has recently came out on DVD, but as I am poor I had to dub this off of the free cable that comes with renting. I bet you can’t figure out which channel it was on! Stupid logos. Is there even any action in this (of the non-sex kind?) Maybe three seconds of tossing candles. At least these films captured directly off of cable look better than the older screen captures from the SciFi Channel films I taped on vhs and then tried to screencap.
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Hey, man…there is a voodoo doll in the opening credits! I get it! Read more…
Vampire Vixens from Venus (Review)
Vampire Vixens from Venus
1995
Directed, Produced, and Written by Ted A. Bohus
Vampire Vixens from Venus (not to be confused with Vampire Vixens is the story about seductive alien women who come to Earth to steal brain juices from excited men. After running across it in a random movie rental nine years ago in college, I had been searching for it for years, and thanks to some luck I ran across a copy. Most memorable after all that time was the CGI was literally the worst I had ever seen in a film and may have been one of the first movies with a CGI character. The alien women have their alternate alien modes, which gives us a few instances of alien monsters killing men as well. Topping all of that is the movie’s bumbling cop hero character, who just happens to be British for no real good reason! It all adds up to a bizarre ride for what is essentially a skin flick, but is memorable enough due to the factors that make it so weird.
The film has some crude humor, but for the most part is just silly and doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously, which is a boon for these sci-fi sex movies. Some of the jokes are groan-inducing, while random silly things such as a guy in the town always dressed like Elvis are just fun (especially since the Elvis guy looks like an 80-pound weakling.) The creature effects here appear to have the same general style as other Ted A. Bohus films such as Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor or Nightbeast, but I haven’t seen any of them so I can’t compare further.
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Categories: Movie Reviews, Ugly Tags: CGI trainwreck, J.J. North, John Knox, Leon Head, Leslie Glass, Michelle Bauer, softcore, Ted A. Bohus, Theresa Lynn
