(1972)
Dir - George Schenck
Overall: WOOF
The only directorial effort from producer George Schenck, Superbeast was shot in the Philippines because who wants to spend more money than they need to when making disposable exploitation crap? Of course we have Vic Díaz, of course we have cheap monster make-up, and of course the movie sucks. Reading a plot synopsis would be a hundred times more exciting than anything in the actual finished product, which is saying something because the plot synopsis is a hundred times more dull than it sounds. Antoinette Bower is a scientist or something who travels to the Philippines for some reason and halfway through the movie she finally meets a guy who is hunting deformed people who are experimented on by another scientist. Bower looks as if she is appearing in the movie out of spite, but her costars are just as challenged when it comes to emoting, not that they have anything at all to work with. To say that nothing happens in this movie would be a grand understatement and it seems to have been designed for no one to be able to find a single redeemable quality therein. Mission accomplished then.
Dir - Michael Anderson
Overall: GOOD
A fun and dated sci-fi spectacle from a decade that produced its fair share of them, Logan's Run fuses dystopian and utopian ideas together with popcorn-munching glee. It was in development hell for a number of years before MGM finally got it off the ground with English director Michael Anderson, producer Saul David, and screenwriter David Zelag Goodman at the helm, adapting the 1967 novel of the same name by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Equipped with a hefty budget for its era, it presents a 23rd century that looks exactly like the mid 1970s, with one-piece uniforms for the guys, colorful and silky garments for the ladies, shots of toy monorails buzzing around the miniature city, a sparkling robot in an ice cave, loud furniture, a shopping mall converted into the youth-populated setting, lush architecture, holograms, electronic blips and boops on the soundtrack, and the famous carousel ceremony where citizens willingly levitate towards their doom. The plot is adherent to silly and inconsistent character behavior and rushed plausibility jumps, but its more dark themes about hedonistic indulgence and submissiveness to machines never get too heavy, with an upbeat ending that sends mankind off into a possibly enlightened era where everyone can rebuild, grow old, and still enjoy their indulgences.
Dir - Gregory Goodell
Overall: MEH
Overall: MEH
Before switching to television for the rest of his career, filmmaker Gregory Goodell scored Geoffrey Lewis to be a scuzzy mad scientist of sorts in the women-in-prison exploitation romp Human Experiments, (Beyond the Gate). Garnishing a spot on the U.K's video nasty list, it is a typically miserable watch since our protagonist is a wrongly convicted felon with no friends or family who was taken advantage of by scumbag men her whole life before being in the wrong place at the wrong time and sentenced to a correctional facility for a homicide that she did not commit. Once incarcerated, Linda Haynes gets gaslit, brutalized, and has her mental fortitude diminished to the breaking point, making this the antithesis of a "feel good movie". This is purposeful though since Goodell is going for downtrodden ickiness and he peppers the film with wretched characters, loathsome subject matter, and uncomfortable scenes, some of which are Italian-flavored in their lack of logic, (like a prison escape where Haynes is inexplicably overwhelmed by every manner of insects and copious amounts of them at that). Lewis misses an opportunity to villainously ham it up, but Haynes pulls out all of the stops as the anguished victim, plus it at least kind of works out in the end.
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