King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Actors: Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, Eric Bana

Rating: 7 out of 10, Guy Ritchie directing an Arthurian story was bound to be fun and it was on certain levels. This is the first time we see Arthur growing up as a London pimp and crime lord but Ritchie does crime lords so well. His pell-mell editing style was a little forced in this type story but I still found the movie very entertaining but I think you have to be kind of geek to truly enjoy it, which, of course, I readily admit to. This is the first thing Charlie Hunnam has done that I liked him in. He genuinely surprised me while, almost equally startling, Jude Law disappoints. He plays the evil Vortigen and seems almost disinterested at times in a part where he could have chewed up a lot of scenery. The movie is all over the place but you expect that from Ritchie as he tries to find his voice in every movie. I don’t think he ever truly finds it here but I enjoyed his search.

MVP: Hunham as the semi-good king

Life Returns

Actors: Onslow Stevens, George P. Breakston, Lois Wilson, Valerie Hobson, Stanley Fields, Robert Cornish

Rating: 0 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films was really weird and that’s saying a lot. It’s a depression era film featuring a real doctor’s experiment to revive dead dogs. It would be hard to imagine this film making it beyond a bar room joke nowadays but in the 1930s this was looked upon as almost magical. The film was every bit as bad as you can imagine with the final scenes involving the actual experiment where a dead dog is brought back to life. Before that we have to sit through a depression era story of a hubris fallen doctor friend of Dr Cornish, who plays himself in the film. The friend’s son’s dog is euthanized and he swallows his pride to bring it to Dr Cornish to revive. It was all kind of creepy.

MVP: The dog, I guess.

Baby Driver

Actors: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal.

Rating: 8 out of 10, The film is very, very good with star turning roles for Ansel Elgort and Lily James. They play a young couple just discovering each other while he tries to extricate himself from life as a getaway driver. The criminals are a strength as both Jamie Foxx and John Hamm ooze menace while Kevin Spacey is up to his old tricks of stealing scenes. Music plays an important role throughout and maybe that’s where I fail because I have zero musical ability. It’s a cute story with some incredible driving but we’ve all seen that before. The last half of the movie truly rocks as Baby tries to balance both of his worlds and fails spectacularly. I know I’m all over the place here and while I really liked the movie I didn’t love it which is what I expected.

MVP: Lily James is luminescent as the object of Baby’s desire - Debora

The Bat

Actors: Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon, John Sutton, Lenita Lane

Rating: 1 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films wasn’t a sci film at all so I’m not sure how it ended up in this collection. It was a murder mystery but since sci veteran Vincent Price was involved I guess they thought they could sneak it by us. It also had Agnes Moorhead which caused me some severe Bewitched flashbacks whenever she spoke. A renowned author is summering in a remote mansion outside a small town where all the leading citizens are either embezzling or murdering each other and some wierdo is running around wearing a mask and a set of claws. Stilted dialogue and a preposterous plot dragged down the game acting as this wends to a very predictable surprise ending.

MVP: Vincent as the not so good doctor

The Manster

Actors: Peter Dyneley, Jane Hylton, Tetsu Nakamura, Terri Zimmern, Norman Van Hawley

Rating: 1 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films tells the story of an American foreign correspondent in 1950s Japan who interviews a mad scientist only to be identified as a perfect subject for the next experiment. The scientist had already used his brother and wife in prior failed jaunts down the evolutionary trail. It’s a little bit of campy fun as the reporter starts growing a second head on  his shoulder while running amuck amongst the geisha girls with his mad scientist enabler at his side. This was actually pretty well acted despite the incredibly stupid plot. The literal split personality ending had me laughing out loud.

MVP: Terri Zimmern as Tara the seductive assistant

Night of the Blood Beast

Actors: Michael Emmet, Ed Nelson, Steve Dunlap, Georgianna Carter and Tyler McVey

Rating: 0 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films was every bit as ghastly as the title would imply. A black and white Roger Corman effort from the late 1950s which tells the story of the first manned US space shot. In compliance with Corman’s usual frugal budgets the space agency is run out of a California hillside by a group of six people. The spaceship crashes upon return and the ground crew recovers the astronaut’s body only to discover it’s inhabited by a bunch of alien embryos. Momma monster soon follows, the astronaut wakes up from the dead, and the odd head is taken off. Monster effects were ludicrously bad but that is to be expected in this genre.

MVP: Ed Nelson as the very confused scientist 

Galaxina

Actors: Avery Schreiber, Stephen Macht, J.D. Hinton, Lionel Mark Smith, Tad Horino, Dorothy Stratten

Rating: 1 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films was one of the few of these films I had heard of. This was the last film of Dorothy Stratten before she was killed and despite being surrounded by non-stop idiocy she demonstrated some real screen presence. She plays a beautiful robot who falls in love with one of the crewmembers and uses their time in cryo-sleep to improve herself. The film is a not very clever attempt to lampoon everything from Star Wars to Star Trek to Alien but never approaches anything really funny. It was hard to look away though anytime the title character appeared on screen.

MVP: The doomed Ms. Stratten in the title role