Equinox and beyond...

What were you doing at age 17? Fast Forwarding through a VHS of Eurotrash to the saucy bits? Searching for a pub that ignored your fresh face and served you without ID? Or were you, like the makers of Equinox, applying the German holistic-art concept of gesamtkunstwerk to stop-motion animation? In 1962, accomplished pianist, student of classical literature, precocious little shit, and special effects enthusiast, David Muren joined an effects-nerd collective advertised in the back of influential American magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland. Together with part time film journo Mark McGee and animator Dave Allen, Muren and gang experimented with various effects in their back garden for years. Honing their skills before finally deciding (via an injection of cash that was due to be spent on Mullen's education) to make the leap into making a full length feature.


Armed with a 16mm Bolex camera, a crew of friends and a script by cthulu-nut McGee they set out into the woods and over the next 2 and a half years of weekends, school holidays and light evenings, they filmed the story of a wholesome group of young kids who head out for a lovely day in the country, get given an evil book by a cackling old man (Mullen's Grandad), which then unleashes creatures from the very pits of hell. These hell-pit creatures were then constructed and lovingly animated in a makeshift studio in Mullen's dad's shed: making The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural, quite literally, a Backyard production.


Although intended as a way to exercise their special effects skills, and perhaps get a few bucks from a late night horror tv show, The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural was spotted by Jack H Harris, producer of The Blob, who saw the marketability of the kids vs. demons flick, and got his mate Jack Woods, a professional sound editor, to shoot some extra footage to pad out the film to a sell able length. He added and edited in a whole new plot line about a creepy mounted policeman, starring himself as the leering law man.
This new fuller version of the film had the title shortened to just Equinox and went on to be a success on the drive-in circuit.


While a little-watched film, Equinox's legacy is undeniable. Mullen went on to revolutionise special effects, working as visual effects supervisor on the Abyss, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park and all pivotal films in the development of CGI, and shaping many of our childhoods, working on the visual effects for the proper Star Wars trilogy and E.T. He won 6 Oscars and is the only effects artist to have a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Dave Allen went on and had a career producing fantastic, and characterful, stop motion such as the little Batteries Not Included aliens, the Young Sherlock Holmes graveyard confectionery attack, the Puppet Master's puppets and the Demonic Toys. McGee carried on writing and directing genre fare such as Sorority Party Massacre II and Bad Girls From Mars.


Of the four main stars, only Frank Bonner, the slightly more devil-may-care male lead, carried on working in show business. He made himself a healthy acting career with various American TV sitcoms, including a regular gig as one of Screech's fellow teachers on Saved By The Bell: The New Class. Jack Woods went back to sound editing and ended up working on such sequels as Critters 2, Look Who's Talking Too and Naked Gun 2 1/2

But legacy: Schmagacy. Is this flick worth a watch or what?

Fuck yes.


Even if you are not charmed by the effects of yesteryear there is still tons to enjoy. The characters were obviously created by a bunch of bookish young men with little real world experience. The men in Equinox, tackle the increasingly bizarre situations with hilariously stoic good sense while the women are pretty young things who will wander off and get into trouble when there's not a man around to tell them what to do. Evil Dead fans will have a field day. With it's teenagers find necrotelecomunicony thing and unleash all manner of terrors plot, Equinox can easily be viewed as a prequel. Deadites will also see echoes of Sam Raimi's camera work in some of the scenes, most obviously in an early crucifix-related freakout scene early in the picture.

So, whether you want Evil Dead 0.5, a chance to see hoe today's top FX bods got started, or just an enjoyably clunky creature feature, Equinox will show you a good time.

Join us as we visit this classic tomorrow evening at the Mucky Pup.

In space no one can hear you laugh...

Star Crash has got less of a cohesive plot than a series of random happenings one after another. Luckily for us, these are really cool moments. As such, the plot is best recounted in the rushed manner of a schoolboy who’s had too much e-number-heavy fizzy pop while at the cinema.

“They’re-in-space-and-then-they-get-chased-by-the-space-police-who-are-robots-and-a-green-man-then-they-go-to-prison-and-then-they-are-rescued-by-the-space-police-who-are-now-good-and-they-go-to-fight-the-evil-king-but-they-crash-and-there’s-kung-fu-cavemen-and-giant-robots-then-they-are-in-a-giant-robot-fist-then-it-all-blows-up-and-it’s-wicked”


“Breathe, Little Billy, breathe”

Made in the post-Star Wars, sci-fi crazy, late 70s, Starcrash was conceived, written and directed by Luigi Cozzi, (who’s most noteworthy other credit is as director of the Italian language version of Godzilla, cobbled together out of the original Gojira, the Americanized Raymond Burr version and some cheaply colourized World War Two footage). Often criticised for being a cheap Star Wars rip off, Starcrash was actually written before A New Hope was released. Visionary Cozzi struggled to make a film that lived up to his original aspirations, however budgetary constraints and a constantly nagging studio demanding he “make it a bit more star warsy” was bound to lead to problems. This uphill battle was not made easier when prop failures and poorly exposed film of some of the exciting climaxes of sequences resulting in unusable and ultimately lost footage, and thus plot strands that never really pay off. However, Signore Cozzi deserves a tip of the hat in recognition of managing to piece together an thoroughly enjoyable cinematic experience from what was left.


Starring Caroline Munroe (who readers of a certain age will fondly remember as the slave-girl from 7th Voyage Of Sinbad) as the clothes-phobic intergalactic smuggler Stella Starr, Joe Spinner delivers the wide eyed pantomime villain Count Zarth An (following small parts in Taxi Driver and the first two Godfather films, he fancied a bit of proper acting) , and drunken heartthrob David Hasselhoff as the space prince.


For such rushed shambles, the production design is gorgeous. From the opening shot of a charmingly obvious miniature space ship (I’m sure I spotted some sprues from an airfix kit stuck on the side) cruising through an every-felt-tip-in-the-packet, spacescape (reputedly made by literally hanging fairy lights in front of some black cardboard, no Star Trek style poring over NASA’s star maps for these cats) to the final scenes in front of the Alien King’s snazzy throne the Italian eye for design shines through.


Special mention must be made of the score, composed and conducted by the great John Barry who sadly passed away this month. While he is quite rightly best remembered for his bombastic Bond scores and heartbreaking work on Midnight Cowboy and The Deer Hunter, he was also willing to put the graft in on less prestigious projects. Echoes of his better known work can be heard throughout, most clearly during an “entering the villain’s lair” sequence to my ears, and the whole thing sounds lovely.

Most importantly, it’s got a fist shaped space station, a comedy-accented robot, a mechanical giant with tits, and a lightsaber-wielding android tackling two bionic swordsmen. Get in touch with your inner 9 year old, load him up on cheap orangeade, and enjoy.

Float through the stars with us on Monday the 7th at the Mucky Pup More info here

X - Read all about it!

Roger Corman, renowned producer and director has made 346 films in his 55 year career including Death Race 2000, Rock N Roll High School and this year's SyFy original Sharktopus, ever the busy bee, eh? Unlike many prolific film makers, very few of Corman's films lost any money, due in part to a brilliant eye for talent. His films have included work by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson, albeit, while they were cheap and inexperienced. but also due to his knack of coming up with a marketable title, poster, or tag line and working backwards to make the film from there. For example, X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (also known as simply "X") lives up to it's lurid title.


This is the story of Doctor Xavier who, with a name like that, was never going to live a normal life (X: The Contented Ear-Nose-and-Throat Specialist may not have been such a successful film), having grown bored of the visible spectrum, he develops an eye serum that will allow the user to access the entire wavelength spectrum, see the ultra violet wavelength, x-rays and beyond. When his serum kills a laboratory monkey, Doctor X, perhaps a little foolishly, blames the ape and decides that the only suitable test subject is himself. It all seems to work and X has a high old time perving through ladies' dresses. Unfortunately, he starts seeing through the fabric of reality itself, and seeing things that mortal man was not meant to see.


X, Man with the X-Ray Eyes, stars Ray Milland, proud bearer of a snake-and-skull tattoo and quickest-ever acceptor of an Academy Award (Just a quick bow before buggering off with his best actor Oscar for Lost Weekend). Perhaps a little older than any leading man you'd get today (Milland was in his late-fifties when he made this picture) he carries the picture solidly, showing the strain put on Xavier as he goes earnest professional to shrieking in the face of cosmic horror via a smirking peeping Tom. X also features legendary insult comic Don Rickles, a favourite of Frank Sinatra's, in one of his first acting roles and a cameo from a startlingly young Dick Miller (Mr. Futterman in Gremlins and that bloke what sells The Terminator his Uzi 9mm).


As is often the case with low-budget sci-fi, some of the effects are a little creaky, such as fading to a drawing from an anatomy textbook when Dr. X is peering into someone's organs, but others are so ingenious that they stand up to this day, the use of time lapse footage of a building site in reverse as X looks through it's walls being a particular favourite.

Despite being made for only $300,000 over 3 weeks, X still manages to be a very effective sci-fi chiller with some lovely 60s psychedelic imagery and a genuinely shocking finale. They don't make them like this any more.


Join us for another night of drunken silliness as we celebrate a Corman masterpiece on Monday the 6th, December at the Mucky Pup in Islington.

Bronx Warriors Pre Screen coverage

In anticipation of our screening of Bronx Warriors on Monday the 1st, November at the Mucky Pup in Islington, we present to you a little write up -


A suspiciously well-groomed man and his leather waistcoat lead a crew of rough diamonds across near-future New York City, battling gangs with outlandish, but strict, dress codes. Meanwhile the authorities decide that a maverick sociopath is their best hope and send him into lawless near-future New York City on a rescue mission. Sound familiar? It should.
1990: The Bronx Warriors (aka 1990: I guerrieri del Bronx) is part of the proud tradition of Italian cheekily-similar-to-a-recent-blockbuster Cinema.

Back in the heady post-Jaws, pre-multiplex, late 70s/ early 80s, anything was possible. Given a low enough budget and a quick, thrifty, plagiarism-schmlagarism, approach to film-making, knocking out a film with a similar title and theme to a recent box-office smash could turn a profit. The Italians seemed particularly adept at this: Producing spurious classics such as the bogus space opera Starcrash, the Conan-a-like Gor and the Escape From New York/ The Warriors mash-up we are discussing today. Whilst primarily designed to sneak a bit of reflected publicity and dupe the occasional sucker into the wrong cinema, these pictures are more than just flim-flam. While the cinema-goer may not be watching the film he thought he was, he still expects a solid 90 minutes of entertainment. Here is where The Bronx Warriors delivers.


A well-to-do heiress runs away from her responsibilities, as the future head of an evil arms corporation, into the dark concrete jungle that is the Bronx. Now abandoned by the law and one big turf-war. Her life of privilege has left her unequipped to cope with the rigours of living in the Bronx. Luckily she wins the heart of Trash, the leader of some rough-and-tumble yet noble bikers who enjoy gang-fights and decorating their vehicles with Halloween tat, and they take on the world together. Evil Inc. cannot understand why she'd chose the free wheelin' life of an outlaw over selling arms. They send in Hammer, a particularly evil man, who, while chewing on hyper-macho tough guy dialogue, sneaks around trying to escalate the simmering tensions between the gangs into all out all-out warfare. And then it really kicks off... cue battling street-thugs, shaky alliances, betrayal, love, loss, "You fuck! It could be a pile of shit from someone's asshole!", "Shut up, fag-face" are among just some of the beautifully crude exchanges. All the while, set to a futuristic score by Walter Rizatti which mixes the usual 80s action synth score with panpipes, church organ and a choir to great effect.


The film is made up primarily of unknowns and peppered with a couple of more familiar faces. Our hero, Trash is played by Mark Watson, a man director Enzo G. Castellari spotted working out at his local gym. With the well muscled, smooth body of a Tekken character bearing the grumpy head of an teenage metal head, Mark Watson was an unusual choice to play the leader of a bunch of grizzled future-bikers (many played by genuine motorcycle gang members) and his incongruous presence adds to the fun. Brawny veteran bad-ass Fred Williamson delivers his role as Ogre, the self proclaimed King Of The Bronx (NOT the Duke Of New York, totally different), with gusto and sports the most awesome moustache in a career full of awesome moustache-having. Vic Morrow, in his last role before being tragically killed on the set of The Twilight Zone movie, takes a similarly lusty approach to the cruel, murderous, law man Hammer.

Fans of spotting the cracks in movies will have a ball with this one: including such delights as an unexplained drummer, drumming away, during a meet between rival factions, a spectacularly non-threatening tap-dance gang, and clearly visible traffic in a supposedly abandoned wasteland. Some may jeer at this film's flaws. but I ask them this: Name me a film, where when one half of a shaky alliance turned to another and said "I've got a surprise planned for you", right at the point when a betrayal would make total dramatic sense, have you been genuinely surprised by the outcome? This unashamedly exploitative movie surprised me, skip-back-a-chapter-on-the-DVD-because-I-couldn't-believe-what-I-saw surprised me.

Wilfully unoriginal, but a blast to watch, 1990: The Bronx Warriors is, to quote eccentric-cinema.com, "The fake real thing."


Buy Bronx Warriors from Shameless Screen Entertainment here
Many thanks to Shameless for allowing us to screen Bronx Warriors.