Tag: Richard Band

  • Zone Troopers (1985, Danny Bilson)

    World War II soldiers meet aliens picture isn’t good enough as a WWII movie or as an alien movie. There are some solid original ideas, but mostly there are just bad ripoffs of more popular sci-fi and adventure films. It doesn’t help a lot of the acting is real bad. Biff Manard’s legitimately great, but…

  • Puppet Master 4 (1993, Jeff Burr)

    Puppet Master 4 is in a race with itself. Can it deliver on the animate puppet action before the cast becomes too intolerable? Can it deliver before the stupid scenes get to be too much? No, as it turns out, it can’t. Puppet Master 4 doesn’t succeed. Not even a Frankenstein making-the-monster homage with the…

  • Puppet Master II (1990, David Allen)

    Puppet Master II opens with a mostly successful animate puppets resurrect their long-dead master in scary graveyard sequence. It’s a mix of stop motion and live effects; it just has a nice tone about it. Then the endless opening titles start up and the film loses track of that tone. The Richard Band music doesn’t…

  • Puppetmaster (1989, David Schmoeller)

    Puppetmaster has some great stop motion. The stop motion is nowhere near enough to make up for the rest, but there’s some excellent stop motion. The stop motion is so good, in fact, the lighting on it is better than Sergio Salvati’s lighting for the rest of the film. Salvati’s lighting is a problem. He…

  • From Beyond (1986, Stuart Gordon), the director’s cut

    I’m having a hard time with this one. The From Beyond movie poster and VHS box scared the crap out of me as a kid. Even now, having seen the movie and knowing there’s nothing as visually creepy in the film itself, the imagery disturbs me. Villain Ted Sorel apparently having his face melted off.…