Ryan Watches 50 Movies

Wow, it's been a long time since I watched a movie from my Drive-In Classics DVD set. I blame the rise of streaming video. With every movie ever made available at the click of a button, it's harder to find the motivation to watch Zombie Picnic or whatever when I know I could be watching a true classic. But here's something I watched recently, on DVD even. It's an obscure, low-budget movie. And it was part of a three-movie DVD I bought for about $2 at 7-11. So it's certainly in the spirit of this blog. The something in question is Puss in Boots , a 1988 film starring Christopher Walken as the titular talking cat. Yes, it's an actor playing a cat, but it's not animated, and in fact, there are almost no special effects at all. Puss starts out as a real cat, and then sometimes the camera cuts away or does a choppy editing trick, and then instead of the cat it's Mr. Walken. So he's really more of a Puss Who Looks a Lot Like a Man in Boots. For yea...

Disclaimer: The DVD I'm talking about today is not a horror movie, a drive-in movie, or a cult classic. It's pretty far out, though. Some time ago, I was digging through the $1 DVD bin at Walmart in Marble Falls, Texas, when I came across something amazing: A Milton Berle exercise video. The cover of Milton Berle’s Low Impact High Comedy Workout had a PhotoShopped picture of Uncle Mitlie in a tracksuit, smoking a cigar and holding a martini and... wearing a cowboy hat???, and I think you’ll understand when I say I knew immediately that I had to own that DVD, no matter the cost, which fortunately was only one dollar. How excited was I about this DVD? I was so excited that I took it home, put it on a shelf, and didn’t watch it for about four years. But on a recent Saturday, as my roommate Joe and I were looking for something to do, we realized the time had come to experience this workout once and for all. First of all, I love that this thing even exists. I have to wonder h...

A Shriek in the Night stars Ginger Rogers, and was released in 1933. That means it came out two years before Top Hat , which as far as I know was the first musical to co-star Rogers and Fred Astaire. I was genuinely curious to see if there would be any singing or dancing in this movie, but alas, there is none... only shrieking in the night. So, that's too bad. Forty-two movies into this project and I can't even get a musical number. What else can I do to make things more interesting? How about if I write the synopsis in verse? Okay, I'll try that. Synopsis (in verse) Mr. Harker falls out his window Down he plummets -- watch him go! Suicide? Murder? Or accidental? Detective Russell wants to know. Harker's live-in secretary Is quite a pretty dame She's also an undercover reporter! To her this whole thing's like a game Her name is Pat, and she works hard For all the news that's fit But when her rival steals her story She's so mad she could spit! His ...

The World Gone Mad from 1933 is pretty obscure. It's so obscure, in fact, that I couldn't find an image of the poster online. So I made this one. It's the world going mad. Remember last week's movie from the "50 Horror Classics" DVD set, Swamp Women , and how it wasn't really a horror movie? Well, guess what? The World Gone Mad is even less of a horror movie! I'm not sure what genre I'd put it... probably the "men in suits talking a lot" genre. Honestly, I had a hard time following the whole mess, but I'll try my best to sum it up for you. Synopsis Oh heck, where to begin? Okay, so there's this guy named Christopher Bruno, a crooked businessman who works in the Empire State Building. He has a meeting with his buddy Graham Gaines, and he has a very important assignment for Graham: Kill the District Attorney. See, the DA, Avery Henderson, is about to start an investigation that would uncover all the corrupt dealings they and thei...

All right, so... Swamp Women ! This is a 1955 movie directed by Roger Corman, and it's included in a "horror classics" box set, so let's see if I can predict what it's about: a hapless family on a camping trip encounters a tribe of fierce mutants: half-women, half-alligators! Yeah! That sounds awesome! And it's a Roger Corman movie, so it must be something like that. Let's check it out! Synopsis It's Mardi Gras! Or, rather, it's stock footage of Mardi Gras , and it's being watched by Bob and his girlfriend, whose name I never did catch. Bob's in New Orleans because he's an oilman, soon to be looking for a good place to find oil in the swamp. Something like that. Girlfriend begs to go along with him on his trip to the bayou, and he consents, partly because he enjoys her company, but mostly because he enjoys her makeouts. Meanwhile, a police officer named Leigh meets with her captain. They've hatched a plan to track down the ...