At The Movies with Bryan, the Wannabe Filmmaker

The Beach Girls and the Monster is a horribly inept horror film and, more importantly, one of my all time favorite bad films. It attempts to crossbreed two genres - the horror and beach party movies and fails miserably at both. It plays like Creature From the Black Lagoon meets Beach Blanket Bingo.  The film doesn't waste time in claiming it's first victim, a giggling blonde conveniently named Bunny. Bunny is being chased on the beach by her boyfriend and hides behind a couple of rocks, located near a dark cave. Just then the monster slowly emerges from the foreground and strangles her to death. This scene is a missed opportunity. It begins promisingly enough with the camera stationed inside the a cave; everything in the foreground is in shadows while Bunny is standing in the background, outside the cave, in sunlight. The monster emerges from the shadows and can only be seen in silhouette. It then slowly creeps upon Bunny and then ATTACKS! Unfortunately, the camera then

King Kong is one of my all time favorite movies and is, probably, the best monster movie ever made.   It's just as exciting to watch now as it was when I was a twelve year-old kid. However, it's also one of the most written about movies in cinema history, meaning there's really nothing more I can say that hasn't been said already. The Son of Kong, however, has been fairly neglected by more film historians; if it is mentioned, it's usually in passing, and very rarely do they have anything positive to say about it. In his book "Movie Magic," John Brosnan has this to say about The Son of Kong: Unfortunately the film had none of the grandeur of it's predecessor, and the script, by Ruth Rose was abysmal. Robert Armstrong, who played the hero in King Kong, returns to the island looking for a comparable attraction, apparently not having learned anything from his previous experience, and discovers 'Little Kong.' This baby Kong would have made

A few months ago I composed   a list of my top 25 horror films  and had Friday the 13th, Part 2 ranked at number 25. I was initially going to leave it at that, but after having watched the movie again, I realized that there was much more that needed to be said. Friday the 13th, Part 2 is my favorite entry in the critically maligned series. Part 2, in particular, felt the wrath of the critics; Roger Ebert gave it half a star, while Leonard Maltin in his movie guide book rates it a BOMB. This isn't too surprising as there is nothing remotely original about Friday the 13th, Part 2 , it slavishly follows the formula of the first film: 1) Friday the 13th begins with a pre-credits scare sequence. In 1958, two horny camp counselors gets offed by an unseen assailant. In Friday the 13th, Part 2, Alice, the survivor of the first film, gets killed off by an unseen assailant. 2) The introduction of the secondary characters. In Friday the 13th, the first character we are introduced t