I joined Full Moon Streaming!

I finally did it! After a lot of debate about whether or not Full Moon's new streaming service would be of any benefit to me, I took the plunge and signed up last night. I'm glad I did too because, as a subscriber to their previous Grindhouse Flix (which has now been retired and amalgamated with Full Moon Streaming), I got a massive discount on my initial 3 month membership.

I know my haters (and by haters, I really mean one jealous attention-seeker who shall remain nameless for now) think that I'm some kind of shill who gets lots of kickbacks and freebies from the movie industry, but I'm not. I've never asked anybody for anything, and I never promote anything on my blog which I haven't payed for and enjoyed. Suffice it to say that I had a great time enjoying my latest purchase until the early hours of this morning watching the Empire/Full Moon movies which I don't have on DVD yet. Eventually tiredness overcame me, but I got through quite a few.

Highlights of my first night with Full Moon Streaming included "Dangerous Worry Dolls" (2008), "Shrunken Heads" (1994), "The Evil Clergyman", and "Trancers: City of Lost Angels". The latter is quite short as it was originally meant to be part of a trilogy rather than a standalone movie, but I'm a huge Jack Deth fan and was very pleased to see it after all these years.

Because I moved to America nearly 6 years ago, I had to leave a lot of my things behind. Some of the casualties were my Full Moon VHS tapes which I've been trying to rebuy on DVD. Sadly, the lesser known titles aren't on DVD yet and probably never will be, so Full Moon Streaming makes up for it. Unlike Netflix, Full Moon Streaming works on Ubuntu too!

Always the innovator, Charles Band is putting the new Full Moon movies on this service first, which is another bonus. New releases will appear every Friday, and on October 29th, "Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong" will make its debut. In addition, there are all the Grindhouse Flix movies, Vidcasts, competitions, and "Hot Chick of the Week" features.

Even though I'm a hardcore horror fan, sometimes I just like to chillax with a fun Full Moon movie. They aren't exactly Oscar winners, but some of the performances are a lot better than you might expect, and the stories are always entertaining. I haven't reviewed many of them on this blog, so next month, I will be reviewing everything from Empire International Pictures through to the new Full Moon Features. That's if I can pry myself away from Full Moon Streaming for long enough to do so.

Empire of the 'B's - The Authorised History of Empire Pictures

Empire of the 'B's by Dave Jay, Torsten Dewi, and Nathan Shumate

According to the official Full Moon Features Facebook page:
"This book has been in the works for a very long time... Isn't the cover great?!?
In a few months, it will be available in the UK at bookstores, via http://www.fullmoondirect.com, Amazon, and at conventions!"

The MAD Movie World of CHARLES BAND

Here's the back cover:

Foreword by STUART GORDON

I can't wait to get my paws on a copy! How about you?

Update
You can now also buy it from Amazon: Empire of the 'B's: The Mad Movie World of Charles Band

The cheapest way to collect Full Moon movies

Everybody loves Full Moon movies, right? Those of us who are of a certain age whereby we really do remember the '80s and early '90s without the aid of rose-tinted spectacles grew up renting everything that Charles Band managed to get onto the shelves of our local video rental stores, and we thoroughly enjoyed doing so. As rentals turned into PVTs, we all went a little bit crazy buying up the big-boxed B movies of our teens. We never thought they'd be worth anything, we just had to have them, and we replayed them to death.

But time moves on, unfortunately. Our once great collections of VHS tapes are now rotting in their boxes, or being sold in yard sales, and we've got huge DVD collections instead. The trouble with collecting Full Moon movies again on DVD, though, has always been two-fold. First, there's just so damned many of their movies to buy, and second, a semi-cultish following has helped to keep the prices up. Both aspects are great for Full Moon of course, but not for anybody with limited funds (and space) who is trying to collect their products.

Maybe you've wanted to upgrade your Empire/Full Moon favourites to DVD, but thought it was too expensive to buy the box sets? Maybe you've missed out on a few of the newer Full Moon titles too? Well, thanks to a distribution deal with Echo Bridge Home Entertainment which has been going on for the last couple of years, there's actually no need to bankrupt yourself. For only $55 (plus tax) and a trip to Kmart, you can have all the good ones again, plus a load of crappier horror movies which you'll probably never watch.

Here's how to do it:

The first thing you'll want to buy is a big pack of "Puppet Master" movies. These are the most famous Full Moon movies, and you can't call yourself a horror fan if you don't have them. In their wisdom, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment have created two packs to choose from which are both priced at $5 each (except online!), so the only thing you need to decide is if you want the three "Killjoy" movies as a bonus.

If you choose not to buy the "Puppet Master and Killjoy' collection, you can get the "Killjoy" movies as part of the "Death comes in 3s" pack along with the first three "Gingerdead Man" movies and the "Demonic Toys" trilogy. What a bargain! Even if the newer Full Moon movies aren't to your taste, you can at least check them out for only $5. That's less than a bag of beef jerky and a fizzy drink to wash it down with!

You may also want to collect the triple pack of "Deadly Dolls" movies (which I've only added to keep my pairs of pictures even!) despite double-dipping on "Demonic Toys 2", but don't do it unless you absolutely must have the bonus "When Puppets and Dolls Attack!" featurette. You need to slow down in your excitement! I'll tell you why later.

Moving on to the more important sets, the first three "Subspecies" and "Trancers" movies are exactly what they say on the box. They are barebones versions with no frills or extras, but you can't go wrong for $5 each from the bargain bin. With only one more "Subspecies" movie, and three more "Trancers" movies left, you can complete each series by buying them from Full Moon Direct, Amazon, eBay, or anywhere else, and still know that you've saved money.

Remember our old friends the "Midnight Horror" collections? If you haven't already got them, you'll need these for "Evil Bong", "Demonic Toys", "Meridian", and "Decadent Evil" (in Volume 1), or "Evil Bong II: King Bong", "Demonic Toys 2", and "Doll Graveyard" (in Volume 2). You can also get the latter three and "Decadent Evil" in Volume 3, but let's not confuse things any more than Echo Bridge Home Entertainment already have done.

Finally, these two "expensive" $10 multipacks containing "20 Horror Films" each will provide you with the "Dangerous Worry Dolls" movie from the triple pack—which I told you not to buy—as well as "Seed People", "Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong", "Lurking Fear", "Head of the Family", "Dollman", "Vampire Journals" (a spinoff of "Subspecies"), "Netherworld", and "Doll Graveyard" again. Sadly, there will always be repetition with Echo Bridge Home Entertainment's horror movie collections, but on the bright side, only having one double-dipped movie can be considered negligible. For that reason, I've avoided listing "Castle Freak" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" which are also available in multipacks but not together.

As for the "When Puppets and Dolls Attack!" featurette, it'll be available on Full Moon's streaming site - http://fullmoonstreaming.com - which you can join for only $6.99 a month. Of course, most of the movies above will also there, so you may not want them on physical media either. At the end of the day, it's all down to how much of a collector you are.

Although there's a very slight possibility that more Full Moon movies may appear in Echo Bridge Home Entertainment DVD packs in the future, if you buy this lot, you will have 43 of them to start you off. 43 Full Moon movies! That'll keep you busy for a while!

Unlucky Charms (2013)

"Five girls vie for a chance to model diva Deedee DeVille's fashion line, but they're soon competing for their lives against four mythical beings, led by the mischievous Farr Darrig."

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, this typical Full Moon production with a shorter than average running time of 70 minutes (including drawn-out opening titles and end credits) isn't something which I was too eager to watch, but I'm glad I did just so that I could dismiss it as an updated version of "Spellcaster" (1988).

I'm sure that Charles Band is quite familiar with "Spellcaster" since his very own Empire Pictures produced and distributed it (and he is named as Executive Producer at the beginning!), but that's all that really needs to be said about that film. Apart from starring Bunty Bailey (the girl in A-Ha's "Take on Me" video) and having Adam Ant in a small role at the end, it's not exactly memorable. The subject matter of both movies is clearly similar but not identical, and even if it was, nobody cares. It's hardly a crime to clone your own products.

Without such "cloning", we wouldn't have a dozen installments of the "Puppetmaster" series, or the spin-offs which aren't much different. Charles Band is obviously not the only producer/director to do this either. Everyone from Bill Zebub to Roger Corman has frugally rehashed the same plots, dialogue, and ensemble casts in their z-grade "B movies", and I'm not going to condemn any of them for it. Hell, there are no new stories to be told anyway, so all any filmmaker can do is update the actors and locations.

Numbers 1, 3, and 4 please... in that order.

"Unlucky Charms" is only a quick satire which showcases some models/actresses, their boobs, and some cheap-looking effects anyway. It's not a serious horror movie by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it meant to be, but it's what Full Moon fans generally like. I'm still not sure which side of the fence I sit on when it comes to Full Moon. Some Full Moon movies have been very good, but most have been absolutely terrible. If pressed on the matter, I prefer the "Trancers" series, followed by "Subspecies", but I don't really care for any of their most recent titles.

Maybe the new Full Moon has become yet another hipster thing which I'm too old, jaded, and grumpy to buy into. I noticed a lot of people on Twitter talking about "Unlucky Charms" who I would never classify as "horror fans", so Full Moon must be doing something right for them. Ironic comedy will only take you so far though if the overall quality isn't there. Sadly, I've switched more Full Moon movies off through boredom than I've completed, but I did make it all the way through this one. How and why exactly, I don't know. Perhaps it was the boobs.

Although I can say that Seth Peterson is very good as Pirl, Nathan Phillips is competent as the leprechaun Farr Darrig, and beautiful Nikki Leigh is my favourite out of the models, I wasn't so enamoured by the rest of the cast or what they had to work with. It's not that anybody is absolutely horrible in their roles, but they aren't great either. Of course, nobody has to be pitch-perfect in a B movie, but it makes things far more entertaining if the cast can "do a bit" rather than just play dress-up... or take-your-dress-off, as the case may be.

"Unlucky Charms" looks good, has an okay-ish story, and it's quick enough over the ground to not be boring. It's just not very original, and if the moral of the tale is that looks aren't everything, it shoots itself in the foot with its own self-criticism.

Thus, while the plot may be amusing to anyone who loathes TV contest shows such as "America's Next Top Model" and would love to see those narcissistic bimbos destroyed by various creatures from Irish folklore, "Unlucky Charms" didn't do much for me. Give or take some magic, a few supernatural entities, and a sleazy MTV-style VJ, I really have seen it all before.

Only saying...

Ooga Booga (2013)

"Ooga Booga follows an innocent African-American boy who is brutally murdered by dirty cops, but his soul is magically transferred into an action figure named Ooga Booga. With his tribal spear and old girlfriend to help, he takes to the streets and trailer parks to find the men that ended his once bright future."

Having seen Ooga Booga's other appearances in "Doll Graveyard" (2005) and "Evil Bong" (2005), I was intrigued by what Charles Band had in store for us with a full length feature starring the puppet. I also wanted to see if Karen Black and Stacy Keach could still act since I haven't seen them in anything horror related for ages, but that's another story. It's been a long time since "Trilogy of Terror" (1975) or "Body Bags" (1993) which are, respectively, their most famous genre performances.

I know that I have a reputation for being all about the serious horror movies rather than the comedies, but before everyone jumps on the "You're a hypocrite!" bandwagon, I do watch other subgenres occasionally either by accident or just to see what's happening. I may be a hypocrite in some situations (like everyone else), but I'm not as bad as certain sycophantic "big name" websites or virtually deceased hillbilly podcasts. This isn't a popularity contest for me so if I choose to watch something silly rather than horror from time to time, that's my business which I'm now making yours for the sake of a blog post.

Anyway, with no idea what kind of entertainment I was going to derive from "Ooga Booga", I gave the Redbox kiosk my custom, made yet another pizza, and settled down for something a bit more uplifting than all the usual death... or so I thought. There's actually still a little bit of murder and bloodshed in "Ooga Booga".

Although the cynic in me is inclined to believe that the whole movie is a giant advertisment to sell replicas of the "Badass Dolls" because they're undeniably cool, "Ooga Booga" has a few genuinely funny moments in spite of itself. Unfortunately, the pacing is slow and the jokes are very far between.

Nobody does a particularly bad job, and the Ooga Booga doll is cute enough to steal the show in every scene even if he's only blinking, but everything feels sparse. The movie isn't short of racist insults, but many punches are pulled by the lack of real vehemence behind them which would make everything more offensive, controversial and memorable.

The main gag is, obviously, the homage to Karen Black's fight with a Zuni fetish doll in "Trilogy of Terror", but it doesn't have any impact even with the same actress in it. Making a parody out of something that was already unintentionally funny is a misplaced step too far in the "meta" direction, and it falls flat. The motivation of the Zuni fetish doll is completely different to Ooga Booga's revenge for one thing.

I must admit that I was expecting (and hoping for) "Ooga Booga" to be a lot more racist and un-politically correct than it turned out to be. While the racist epithets and imagery abound, the fun is really poked at the white stereotypes more than cashing-in on the "blaxploitation" angle. As such, I'm not really sure what to make of what I watched.

The bottom line is that "Ooga Booga" is neither pro-Black or pro-White even if the characters are one way or another. As a bit of cheap "filler" entertainment which lasts less than 90 minutes and only costs a dollar, there's nothing much to gain or lose from the experience.