Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
In today's review< I find that lab-based zombies, and meddling teens don't mix. As I attempt a #positive review of the 2005 film, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis
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Rebranding yourself can be a healthy process. Sometimes the old banners and styles have to give way to changing tides, sometimes you grow as a person, other times the world grows without you, and you need to change, or be left behind gathering dust. In 2005, the Sci-Fi channel created a new follow-up to the infamous undead, bringing the ghouls into the 21st century with Return of the Living Dead:…
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100+ Films of 1952
Film number 124: Red Snow
Release date: July 7th, 1952
Studio: All American Film Corporation
Genre: adventure
Director: Boris Petroff, Harry S. Franklin
Producer: Boris Petroff
Actors: Guy Madison, Ray Mala, Carole Mathews
Plot Summary: In the North Arctic, at the Bering Strait, cold war tensions rise when the U.S. notices Soviets testing a strange new weapon. A US Air Force pilot and a local Inuit man, who is also a sergeant in the army, are tasked with discovering what is happening and neutralizing it.
My Rating (out of five stars): **
Well, I can certainly give this film credit for being unique! It’s basically what would happen if you crossed Nanook of the North with a Soviet spy film. The ostensible hero is a white pilot, but the character with by far the most screen time is an Inuit named Koovuk. When the film opened with this text, my interest was especially piqued: “Dedicated to the men who stand watch on our frozen frontier, the men of the Alaskan Rescue Service... and to a G.I. whose skill and courage has long been unheralded- the loyal American Eskimo.” Would this film avoid racist stereotypes of Inuit people? Ummm... Kinda? And also not really? (Some spoilers)
The Good:
The Inuit people were generally respected here- a main purpose of the film was to highlight the fact that some Inuit people do brave work in the US Armed Forces, and we should honor it. There are some caveats about the way they are portrayed as a people, however...
There was a lot of real arctic footage used. It was almost exactly like Nanook of the North.
On a superficial note, Guy Madison, as Lt. Phil Johnson, was gorgeous!
There were some pretty adorable Inuit nose-rubs in this!
The Bad:
White people and Koreans playing Inuit people! Yuck. Most of the Inuit people in the film appeared to actually be so in real life, but a few of the larger roles were not. Especially egregious were the actors playing Koovuk’s fiancée and the bad guy in the tribe.
The aforementioned bad guy, Tuglu, was played by a Korean man, which was odd enough, but the character was so over the top, it was hard not to laugh. He had shifty eyes, a raised eyebrow, and I almost expected him to twirl a moustache! There was absolutely no suspense about who the spy was.
The movie seemed to have positive motives in portraying a different race and culture, but it also fell into the trap of “exoticizing” the people it was trying to humanize. It also made the Inuit people seem somewhat simple and child-like, which was off-putting.
Accents again! The “Russian” characters were ridiculous. Most of them just sounded like Americans, but some of them were wildly inconsistent and awful!
This reminded me of a recent film I watched, The Jungle, where it seemed like the writers made a bullet list of unrelated things they wanted to show and just shoehorned a plot into it. “Let’s have a hunting scene! Now an Inuit wedding ceremony! Now a dramatic ice floe! Now a polar bear chase!” etc
Because of the above, the plot was all over the place, and I found myself getting bored at times.
You could tell most of the movie was filmed silent and dubbed over later, and it looked cheap.
A scene where a polar bear was killed. I don’t know how real it was, but it was horrifying.
The dialogue the Inuit characters spoke was that awful movie dialect where they said things like- “Danger on trip. Koovuk be careful. Alak worry.”
The anti-Soviet message wasn’t overly heavy-handed for the most part, but a prospective defector at the end gave a cringy speech about his family being killed “for believing in God.” Get out your Bingo cards! “We’re better than Commies cause religion!”
The side romance between Lt. Johnson and Lt. Jane lasted all of maybe 120 seconds, so saying it was an afterthought is an understatement.
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Musical Monday: Hats Off (1936)
It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals.
In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is my weekly feature about musicals.
This week’s musical:
Hats Off (1936) – Musical #739
Studio:
Grand National Films
Director:
Boris Petroff
Starring:
Mae Clarke, John Payne, Helen…
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Shotgun Wedding (1963) Ed Wood, Boris Petroff EXPLOITATION
One of the great lost Ed Wood film from the 1960s, this is fun!!! Only goes for about an hour and the quality is pretty poor BUT it is enjoyable if this genre is your bag.
AND DON”T miss the really terrific dance segment at about 39:00. It is hot & hip
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THE UNEARTHLY (1957) Reviews and overview [revamped]
THE UNEARTHLY (1957) Reviews and overview [revamped]
‘Lured! – to the house of monsters… no escape from’
The Unearthly is a 1957 science-fiction horror film produced and directed by Boris Petroff [as Brooke L. Peters] (Anatomy of a Psycho) from a screenplay co-written by Jane Mann and John D.F. Black, with characters originally created by Edward D. Wood Jr. (director of Plan 9 from Outer Space; Night of the Ghouls; Glen or Glenda; et al).
The AB-PT…
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