Movie Review: Kick-Ass (2010)

Director: Matthew Vaughn


Stars: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage and Christopher Mintz-Plasse

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When I first saw the trailer for Kick-Ass, I was amped up and ready to go. I was ready for a funny and even cute little action flick. I never would have expected to connect with a movie on so many levels. Yeah, connect. It's not often that I get this kind of pleasant surprise. I remember watching Click, the Adam Sandler film about the magical remote control, and realizing that even though it was marketed as a goofy comedy, it was really a lesson in missing out on the little things. Kick-Ass isn't just a comic book movie. It's a story about a nerd standing up for himself, a single dad and his daughter, and a kid who will do anything for his father's approval. This is real life in a very cool package.

Cinematic Hell: Tentacles (1977)

by Hal Astell

Director: Oliver Hellman

Stars: John Huston, Shelley Winters and Bo Hopkins

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Tentacles, a low budget rip off of Jaws, made two years later with a giant octopus replacing the shark, appears to be about as Hollywood as you can get from moment one. The MGM lion roars, then Samuel Z Arkoff of American International presents John Huston, Shelley Winters and Bo Hopkins with a special appearance by Henry Fonda, all major names in 1977. Sure, we haven't heard of the director, Oliver Hellman, but there are always new directors in Hollywood, right? Well, this isn't Hollywood in the slightest, this is an Italian monster movie. Oliver Hellman is a pseudonym for Ovidio Assonitis, which sounds like a reason to stock up on anti-inflammatory cream but is really a hidden hint that this isn't what it seems, a terrible hint to be sure but the next one's even worse. In an attempt to tell us the secret to the film before we've even seen it we're forced to watch the opening credits unfold over a full sixty second shot of a taxi radio.

Cinematic Hell: Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966)

by Hal Astell

Director: Larry Buchanan

Star: John Agar

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Any dabbler into Cinematic Hell knows that the modern trend of remaking bad films into even worse films is hardly a new one. Back in the sixties Larry Buchanan built something of a name for himself by doing precisely that when American International Pictures decided to sell material to fledgeling television companies eager to pad out their late night scheduling. The company still owned the scripts to a number of old black and white Roger Corman movies they'd released, so they hired Buchanan to remake them for a television audience. Unfortunately Buchanan had only a third of the budget Corman had to work with, which was hardly substantial to begin with, and he had to shoot in colour too. No wonder these films are awful. He churned out eight TV movies for AIP, half of which were Corman remakes and half of which I've seen. This remake of Corman's It Conquered the World is by far the worst thus far.

Cinematic Hell: Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

by Hal Astell

Director: Jaime Nolan

Stars: Alex D'Arcy and Barbara Valentin

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You may have a picture in your mind of how a 1960 film called Horrors of Spider Island is going to play out, but you'll be wrong. You might be closer to the truth if you mishear the title as Whores of Spider Island but unfortunately not too much closer. Originally a German/Yugoslavian coproduction whose title translates to A Corpse Hangs in the Web, it ran 89 minutes long and contained quite a lot of nudity. Released Stateside in 1962 under the title of It's Hot in Paradise, all that risqué material is supposedly intact as it was an adults only release. Finally in 1967 it was trimmed down into this version, which supposedly runs 77 minutes but by the time it made it to the public domain box sets ended up as a mere 74. And whatever you think it's going to be you're wrong. Trust me. It's so bad that the director apparently took his name off the thing. He was Fritz Böttger but he's credited as Jaime Nolan and he never directed again.