Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Amityville 3-D

3-D! About every generation or so 3-D makes a rousing return to cinema, but never seems to rise above gimmickry. Then, after a few years it recedes back into the mists, waiting to appear again, after the moviegoing public forgets how annoying it is to wear those damn glasses. The second wave of 3-D movies came to audiences in the early 1980s, when this film is from, and, like the first wave in the 1950s, the ’80s saw the technique’s most prominent use in horror films.

It’s no surprise that horror is the genre that would give something like 3-D a spin. After all, horror films are the descendants of carnival fun houses, where showmen would use every trick in the book to put a scare into the rubes. It’s also a perfect fit for a genre that features deadly weapons, severed limbs, and spurts of blood all flying about the screen. Anything that brings the action closer to the viewer is a good thing, right? Right?! Continue readingAttack of the Franchise Sequels: Amityville 3-D”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Disaster on the Coastliner

I miss movies like 1979’s Disaster on the Coastliner. Once upon a time, before they started getting killed by cable, American TV networks used to fill empty spots in their schedules with homegrown shitty movies. Turn on one of the networks on a Sunday night and there was likely to be some quickie disaster flick or an epic miniseries adaptation of a Gore Vidal or James Clavell novel. This stuff was absolute garbage but also absolutely unmissable. Shogun, North and South, The Thorn Birds, The Big One, The Day After...on and on. The networks developed a short-form storytelling pedigree that they seem to have abandoned overnight. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Disaster on the Coastliner”

The Empty Balcony: The Final Countdown

When I decided to watch The Final Countdown, I was expecting to get a Shitty Movie Sundays review out of it, but the movie failed to live up to expectations. It is not a shitty movie. It’s not great, but it was good enough to keep me interested. I remember seeing the film as a kid, a long time ago, and I remembered that the premise was incredibly wild. Add in the fact the film has faded into obscurity, and I thought I had a winning combination of shitty. Continue readingThe Empty Balcony: The Final Countdown”