Cookie Monster is The Hulk in The Aveggies!

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The Avengers– excuse me, the Aveggies are vegetable maniacs as they battle the dastardly Bon Bon, who attempts to ruin the world’s supply of healthy food because he’s in deep with Big Sugar or something.

A super villain was prepared to destroy all the healthy foods in the world, until one hero, actually, several heroes stuck together to save the world’s vegetables! Together, Dr. Brownie, Onion Man, Captain Americauliflower, Black Bean Widow, Mighty Corn, and Zuchin-eye are…The Aveggies!

All your favorite Avengers from the first film are represented! Can Dr. Brownie – aka Cookie Monster – focus on the problem at hand long enough to turn into a giant green monster and eat the spaceship cookie sent by the nefarious Bon Bon? As the gif shows, yes, but it doesn’t come without some hard work trying to focus. And also some hilarious slams on Hawkeye. Captain Americauliflower gets his shield chomped, and Mighty Corn has his hammer devoured. It’s a sad day for miraculous weapons but a great day for people who like watching food-based weapons get eaten. And don’t worry, they throw in a shawarma joke.

It’s important that kids learn to focus on things in this ADHD world of constant interruptions, and using the visually busy framework of a Hollywood blockbuster to deliver that message is some grade A subversion. But it’s all about Cookie Monster getting his chomp on!

“Me always hungry” — Dr. Brownie

Check out Sesame Street‘s Avengers: Age of Bon Bon below!

Til Death Do Us Part is more marriage mayhem on Lifetime!

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Til Death Do Us Part Lifetime

And he said I wasn’t “Duff enough for death”, whatever that means. Can you believe it?

Once again, a crazed man is on the loose and endangering a woman! It turns out the crazy guy is her husband, in a twist that’s the plot of the entire film. Til Death Do Us Part features Haylie Duff marrying the perfect guy she barely knows (because he’s a doctor with a generic name), and he goes bonkers and bodies start piling up and his sister renovates the house without being asked. Basically, this is why you don’t get married to someone after only six months. Wait seven months like a normal person! Otherwise, your deck’s just going to get randomly renovated!

Also you’ll die.

Sandra moves to a small town with her new husband Dr Kevin Richardson – a man she only met six months ago. Kevin is everything she’s ever dreamed of and from the outside they look like the perfect couple. However, Kevin begins to exert increasing control over Sandra while his sister Jolene starts renovating their back yard deck. Sandra’s concerns heighten when one of her co-workers dies of a brain hemorrhage at Kevin’s hospital. As Sandra begins to investigate her ideal husband’s past, the man she loves puts her life in danger.

Til Death Do Us Part stars Haylie Duff (Napoleon Dynamite), Magda Apanowicz (The 12 Disasters of Christmas), Ty Olsson (Godzilla), and Rekha Sharma (Battlestar Galactica). It’s directed by Farhad Mann (Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace) and written by Gayl Decoursey (Out of Reach)

Til Death Do Us Part premieres Saturday, April 25th on Lifetime!

via Lifetime

Lake Placid vs Anaconda – Franchises Battle For Your Love on SyFy!

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Lake Placid vs Anaconda

Where are the buns? I was promised buns!!


SyFy is caught in a crossroads of trying to transform into a respectable source of original science fiction programming, while still having a backlog of creature feature films to unload. Even worse for them, many of these films are event films that normally would get a lot of fanfare. But true to form, SyFy isn’t promoting Lake Placid vs Anaconda much at all, and seems content for it to get swept under the rug.

The whole situation has been perplexing for the past two years. The monster movies still air a LOT on SyFy’s schedules, but they rarely add anything new. Lake Placid vs Anaconda is the first new film in months, and we won’t get more until July drops a whole week’s worth of new movies.

Lake Placid vs Anaconda is the fifth movie in both franchises, something that is surprising even as someone who follows SyFy flicks and knows about all the prior DTV sequels of both. It just seems so weird. And now they are fighting, which will hopefully make this the most awesome of all the non-J-Lo and non-Betty White entries of the franchises.

The co-CEO of a pharmaceutical company ruthless, Sarah Murdoch is determined to finish the work of her late father to find a serum capable of triggering cell regeneration; Unfortunately, in addition to an orchid, the other two elements necessary to perfect the serum is a particularly aggressive breed of giant crocodiles and anacondas, both of which Sarah is working hard to track down. However, its alteration with wildlife refuge releases both the crocodile’s and anaconda’s, that wind up threatening, among others, the daughters of a local college sorority, who went to the beach for a pledge event. With her twin brother and co-CEO Brian Murdoch actively trying to stop her, Sarah’s efforts lead to more horrible deaths, but several potential love between Brian and the new Sheriff, Reba, and many of sorority girls and their counterparts in the fraternity.

Hopefully the winner then takes on another random franchise. Or maybe we’ll get an Expendables-style team up of random franchises some day.

Lake Placid vs Anaconda is directed by A.B. Stone (his first feature) and written by Berkeley Anderson (Robocroc, Grendel, Dragon Dynasty). It stars Nigel Barber, Jeffrey Beach, Yancy Butler, Robert Englund, and most importantly —> Corin Nemec!!!!! I could watch Corin Nemec watch paint dry for two hours.

Lake Placid vs Anaconda airs Saturday, April 25th, on SyFy!

Intimidation (Review)

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Intimidation

aka ある脅迫 aka Aru Kyohaku
Intimidation
1960
Story by Kyo Takigawa
Screenplay by Osamu Kawase
Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara
Intimidation ある脅迫
An arrogant bank manager named Kyosuke Takita (Nobuo Kaneko – The Magic Serpent) is about to move on to the executive board, but gets enveloped in a blackmail scheme and must try to rob his own bank in a desperate attempt to come up with the funds. His sad sack childhood friend Matakichi Nakaike (Ko Nishimura), who Takita has used and degraded, becomes a scapegoat, and soon things devolve into a murderous mess. Intimidation serves up a slow-burning lesson of treating people well, but aside from the tense robbery sequence in the middle, there are few high points to recommend hunting Intimidation down immediately.

You can’t examine Intimidation without seeing the obvious class consciousness of the film. Takita is in the upper echelon of society, who married into money and is set for easy street. His friend Nakaike is stuck on the lower rung, his few opportunities were snatched away by Takita, or twisted around to make it seem Takita was solely responsible for them. Nakaike’s lack of confidence doesn’t help him, and much of his time is spent making excuses for his friend and doing things in the background like warming sake. The bank manager sees Nakaike as an unmotivated chump who they keep around only for Takita’s benefit, sort of ironic due to the manager’s later confession that he doesn’t understand all the loan paperwork that Takita has been handling for him.
Intimidation ある脅迫
Despite the class struggles, Takita’s downfall is he is an arrogant bastard. He’s so used to getting his way and shooting up the ladder of success that he doesn’t care at all whoever he steps on during his climb. Even people who are loyal friends that would have made great companions he treats with disdain, only using them for his own ends. His childhood friend Nakaike seems a complete tool, Takita talking down to him in front of the bank manager. Takita talks like Nakaike owes him everything, and he’s such a screw-up that he’d be on the streets if it wasn’t for Takita. Nakaike’s lack of confidence doomed him to forever be in Takita’s shadow. When Takita’s around, Nakaike fades away and Takita gets all the focus.
Intimidation ある脅迫
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Underworld Beauty (Review)

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Underworld Beauty

aka 暗黒街の美女 aka Ankokugai no Bijo
Underwolrd Beauty 暗黒街の美女
1958
Written by Susumu Saji
Directed by Seijun Suzuki
Underwolrd Beauty 暗黒街の美女
One of Seijun Suzuki’s first films (and the first credited as his pseudonym Seijun Suzuki!), Underworld Beauty shows hints of the creative sparks that would soon gain Suzuki a cult following in Japan and the ire of his studio bosses. But it’s mostly a straightforward and entertaining noir, elevated by the cast, so don’t be too disappointed when it goes by the numbers. It seems you can’t talk about Suzuki without using the term “fever dream”, so I’ll just use it in this sentence complaining about the term in this film that has among the lowest amounts of fever dreamness.

A noir flick that gets enhanced by the black and white photography, Underworld Beauty features a jewel thief gang member named Miyamoto (Michitaro Mizushima) who has just gotten out of the joint. He retrieves a gun and stolen diamonds from a hiding spot in the sewer, and sets out finish the job. But prison has given him a change of perspective, and he wants to give the diamonds to the member of the gang who was injured during the job (and saved Miyamoto in the process), Mihara (Toru Abe). The third gang member, who is now a powerful boss named Chairman Oyane (Shinsuke Ashida), is not too happy with this sudden display of honor, but is smart enough to hide his disapproval.
Underwolrd Beauty 暗黒街の美女
Mihara is now working in a noodle stall and ostensibly taking care of his younger sister Akiko (Mari Shiraki), who is on a wild streak down a dark path. She earns money posing nude for the mannequin sculptures (done by her quasi-boyfriend Arita (Hiroshi Kondo)), and going out drinking is her hobby. The attempt to sell the diamonds to a fence ends when armed masked men burst in on the proceedings, and Mihara swallows the diamonds and leaps off the roof of a building, attracting attention. He stays alive long enough to explain to the police that he slipped, but then passes on. The criminals are concerned the diamonds will burn when he is cremated, and soon the various factions go all The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with diamond fever.
Underwolrd Beauty 暗黒街の美女
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The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant – New RiffTrax VOD!

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The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant is the newest RiffTrax VOD! It may be the most ridiculous of the two headed transplant movie genre, with fierce competition from The Thing with Two Heads, which not only includes a racial element, but has a rocking soundtrack. The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant tosses any social commentary out of the window in place of pure weirdness and bad movie ridiculousness. What I’ve always wondered is why there isn’t a 3-headed transplant genre? Low-budget filmmakers, get cracking! But until they get off their lazy butts and revitalize the multi-headed movie genre with 21st century technology, we’ll have to settle for The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant and the RiffTrax commentary.

Buy it today at RiffTrax.com!

Bruce Dern has it all: A beautiful wife. An expensive house with a pool. A two headed monkey. Casey Kasem for a neighbor. And yet, he’s feeling unfulfilled, perhaps because—

What’s that? Oh, you’re right, we did kind of just gloss right over the unusual part of that sentence. Yes, Top 40 DJ Casey Kasem is Bruce’s neighbor. He’s always stopping by to deliver a long distance dedication or prattle on about some dead dog while Bruce is trying to do important stuff, like attach heads to a monkey or an idiot manchild.

For you see, Bruce’s entirely normal pastime is figuring out how graft additional heads onto things. Why? Why did Michelangelo paint? Why did Mozart compose? Man is compelled to create, and sometimes what he creates is as stupid as a serial killer’s head sewn onto a local hillbilly’s shoulder.

Needless to say, this does not go well. (Both being neighbors with Casey Kasem and the whole ‘manufacturing godless abominations in the guest room you converted into a lab’ thing.) Come for the mutant in overalls, stay for the wife in a cage, it’s all here in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant!

Incredible 2-headed Transplant Rifftrax