Viddy well this choodessny set of Clockwork Orange bubblegum cards, oh my droogy brothers and all you malenky devotchkas.

[Link: Orange Bubblegum, pg. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 4:24 PM | Permalink

The Bubblegumfink has been extremely busy of late, churning out set after fabulous set of faux-bubblegum cards like this incredible sequence from the cult film, Wicker Man. If Topps made stuff like this, I'd start collecting again.

[Link: Wicker Man Cards Set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Indie film, Monarch of the Moon, with it's square-jawed Rocketeerish hero, sinister Asian villianess, and ultra-cheesy special defects, looks like a fun tribute to old Republic film serials like Commando Cody and Phantom Empire. In fact, the film's distributor, Dark Horse Comics, even tried briefly to pass it off as a long-lost matinee classic. Here's the official website and trailer, but there's no word on whether it's coming to a theater near you.

[Link: Monarch of the Moon][via O Zombie Comeu O Meu]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Going through some of my old posts on alt.cult-movies yesterday, I ran across several mentions of the 1934 sleazefest, Maniac, directed by Dwain Esper of Reefer Madness fame, with craptastic cinematography by Glen, or Glenda's Bill Thompson. It's a truly amazing pre-Code exploitation film with a pseudo-psychiatric subtext that features mad scientists, incoherent soliloquies on the nature of madness, semi-nude showgirls, female wrestling, body snatching, and eating cat eyeballs! Sample inspirational dialogue: "Isn't the spark that moves the maggot the self-same spark that moves the man?" Deep.

I still have a copy on VHS, but I hadn't watched it since the early 90s. I did a little searching, and found the entire film online at the Internet Archive. The file's huge (366MB), but if you're a fan of cult film, it's a must-see. I've created a small preview clip you can watch to help you decide if it's worth it.

[Link: Maniac preview clip (4.8MB, .AVI)]
[Link: Maniac review from The Bad Movie Report]
[Link: Internet Archive download]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This trailer for the 1955 George Pal special-effects extravaganza, Conquest of Space, with it's Chesley Bonestell-designed rocketships, and a storyline inspired by Werner Von Braun's Mars Project, epitomizes retro-futurist design.

I loved this film as a kid, but never realized until today that its plot, in which a general attempts to sabotage a mission to Mars because of his religious beliefs, was based on a 1940s controversy over whether or not the Bible forbade humanity to leave the Earth. Noted Christian theologians like C.S. Lewis insisted that the vast distance between the planets was God's way of quarantining us from His other creations. Lewis even went so far as to write the Perelandra Trilogy to drive home his belief that space travel was nothing short of blasphemous, which is odd, because I've read the trilogy a couple of times and never got that message out of it.

Up until now, I've always had a lot of respect for C.S. Lewis, but I may have to re-evaluate that in light of this information.

Update: The original link to YouTube is dead, but you can still view the trailer at the Internet Archive. I've updated the link accordingly.

[Link: Conquest of Space]
[Link: Wikipedia entry]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)