Friday Night Tweet-a-Long: Manos Returns (2016)

God help us, we're going back for more.

• Movie: Manos Returns
• Day:  Friday May 8th
• Time:  8:30 Central
• Place to watch:  Streaming on Amazon Prime
• hashtag:  #manosdos

Start at:  00:00:08 - you'll see a lady with blonde hair and her eyes closed.  Just pause there.  We'll say "GO" with the #manosdos hashtag when we're all set.



Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) is widely considered one of the worst films of all time.

Accordingly, I have seen Manos at least six times - at least once as part of an Elvira episode, along with Mystery Science Theater 3000, live broadcast with RiffTrax and at least once just by itself.

It's the kind of bad that leaves you feeling queasy and weird at the end of the movie, like you just listened to a madman rant for 90 minutes or accidentally drank some laudanum and are just coming back around.

I'm not a Masters-Level viewer of bad cinema, but I get around.  This movie, Monster a Go-Go, Birdemic and a handful of others were so bad, so inept in every facet of their production that they take on a quality of surreal outsider art.  There's no accounting for what went so incredibly wrong, but you have to admire that someone finished the thing and then said "yeah, the world needs to see this."

If you haven't seen Manos: The Hands of Fate and you've never heard of it, you move in better circles than I do, I guess.  If you haven't seen it and *have* heard of it - well, you're a goddamn coward.

I had planned to never rewatch Manos: The Hands of Fate in this lifetime or any other, and God willing, I will never sit down and re-watch the movie.

But....

In the mid-2010's, some intrepid film fans decided Manos could and would not rest easy.

This Friday, we're watching the sequel.  I know nothing about it.  Here's to embracing the lovecraftian madness waiting on the other side.                               

I'd tell you that you need to watch the original, but (a) if you haven;t by now, you won't, (b) I doubt it's useful and (c) I can only punish you people so much.

Here's the original trailer, anyway

Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla (2002)

Watched:  05/03/2020
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2000's
Director:  Masaaki Tezuka

This movie kind of kicked ass.

Sure, it's from the Millennium Series which is kind of confusing as the movies don't work in any shared continuity, but since we learn "all you need to know is Gojira from 1954", it's pretty dang easy to play catch-up.

Here's your plot:  1999, a series of monsters have been arriving in/ attacking Japan since Godzilla's first arrival in 1954.  A squad has been put together with advanced weaponry to take these monsters on, and has been pretty successful to date.  No more rampages like those of '54 (Toho also uses footage from Showa-era films as "documentary" footage).

But, whoops.  Here's a Godzilla again, with atomic breath and a terrible attitude about people.

Noir Watch: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)

Watched:  05/01/2020
Format:  Noir Ally on TCM on DVR
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1950's
Director:  Fritz Lang

This one hadn't really been on my radar, but with Fritz Lang directing - his final American film, no less - and starring Dana Andrews, and both coming off the heels of a movie I thoroughly enjoy, While the City Sleeps, I saw no reason not to give it a spin.  In some ways, and from an elevator pitch angle, the plotting is very similar to 1963's Samuel Fuller directed Shock Corridor, but Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) is a different type of movie, even if the two films definitely share significant DNA.

Happy May the 4th!

On this day, let us think upon my favorite Star War

Doc Watch: Never Surrender - A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)

Watched:  04/07/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  First
Decade:  2010's
Director:  Jack Bennett

I forgot to write this up a month ago when I watched it.  A really fun doc on a great movie, and with terrific participation from darn near everyone who was in it or worked on it.  And, as always, Sigourney Weaver is the coolest.

Anniversary Watch: Hiis Girl Friday (1940)

this poster does absolutely nothing to convey what this movie is about

Watched:  04/28/2020
Format:  Criterion BluRay
Viewing:  Unknown - fourth or fifth?
Decade:  1940's
Director:  Howard Hawks

First - I'm adding the director of a film to my list of stats at the top not because I particularly adhere to the auteur theory of cinema (we can talk more about that in depth sometime), but because it's a somewhat interesting stat, and easier to decipher than who produced a film.  You can look up writers on your own.  I'll retroactively figure it out for all the movies I watched in 2020, but this is at least my second Howard Hawks movie this year, and I thought it would be interesting to spot trends in January 2021 when I do my numbers round-up.

Tweet-a-Long Watch: Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Watched:  05/01/2020
Format:  Amazon Streaming
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1980's
Director: Jimmy T. Murakami, Roger Corman

I dunno, man.  It's Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).  It's a not-great sci-fi movie that hasn't aged particularly well. 

Mostly I had fun watching it with a whole bunch of folks on the twitters!  Thanks for showing up, every buddy!

One day we'll understand why that ship has a rack/ looks like a diagram of the female reproductive system.

Noir Watch: Night and the City (1950)

Watched:  04/30/2020
Format:  TCM on DVR
Viewing:  2nd or 3rd
Decade:  1950
Director:  Jules Dassin

I've seen this movie before, and, if someone asked me what I think makes for a pure distillation of one of my definitions of "film noir", ie:  a character who is deeply in over their head because of a character flaw - you have Double Indemnity and you have Night and the City (1950).  And it's possible Night and the City is the even purer dose of the idea - because unlike Double Indemnity, there's no sex tangled up in the question - this is just a broken guy who, as Gene Tierney's character Mary says "You could have been anything. Anything. You had brains... ambition. You worked harder than any 10 men. But the wrong things. Always the wrong things..."

The only mistress in this movie, which absolutely does have the "good girl" in the form of Tierney waiting on our protagonist, is his own sense of destiny and overconfidence in his ability to play the grift. 

But, man, fate is a bitch.

PODCAST: "The Killing" (1956) and "Asphalt Jungle" (1950) - Noir Watch! w/ JAL and Ryan

Watched:  04/03/2020 (Killing)/ 04/06/2020 (Asphalt)
Format:  BluRay
Viewing:  Unknown
Decade:  1950's
Directors:  Stanley Kubrick/ John Huston

More ways to listen

JAL and Ryan watch two noir classics. Both heists. Both starring Sterling Hayden. One directed by a young Stanley Kubrick, the other by John Huston. We dive into what makes them work, some terrific performances and which director was in his prime and which was sorting things out. It's a journey into movies that set the stage for every heist movie to come after.

The Signal Watch PodCast · 101: "The Killing" (1956) & "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) - Noir Watch 05 w/ JAL & Ryan

Music:
Noir Watch Theme - The Unsuspected Main Theme - Franz Waxman
The Killing, Main and End Theme - Gerald Fried
The Asphalt Jungle Theme - Miklos Rosza


Noir Watch Playlist:

The Signal Watch PodCast · Noir Watch

Live-Tweet on Friday Night (05/01) - "Battle Beyond the Stars"

On Friday night, join us for a live-tweet-a-long as we watch Battle Beyond the Stars, a movie I was led out of, totally freaked out, when I was five.

It is in no way scary.  I was a sensitive kid.


Watch at:  Amazon Streaming or other popular streaming sites
Day:  Friday, May 1st, 2020
Time:  8:30 PM Central
Hashtag:  #shiprack

We're going to start when I say GO on twitter.


Get queued up to about the 3 second mark on the movie.  Pause and wait on this image til you get the signal:

it is really hard to get a screengrab of an Amazon Prime video.  I am not spending time learning how to do it.  Your reflection may vary.

Then get ready to behold what happens when a small studios sees Star Wars, wants in on that money and decides "it's a western in space".  Then proceeds to rip-off a very specific, very famous western/ samurai movie.

But this movie has B-movie Queen Sybil Danning as a Space Valkyrie with the rad-as-hell mid-80's new-romantic band name of "St. Exmin".

I'm gonna fight on *her* team

Also stars George Peppard as the embodiment of my spirit, Robert Vaughn as Robert Vaughn In Space, John Fuckin' Saxon!, Sam Jaffe and the guy who played John Boy on The Waltons, Richard Thomas, officially killing his chances at making it to the big screen.  It also has a spaceship that, if memory serves, is trying to be both mother and lover to John Boy.

So, 8:30 PM Central time on Friday!  3 seconds in at that image above!