(thanks, warnervod!)
Amusingly enough, this RFoTW post was going to be about Somewhere in Time, but I’d mistakenly typed in Time After Time as the title of that film when doing a search for the poster, looked at the results and remembered that while SoT is indeed a fine (and highly underrated) gem, TAT is more pure fun to watch and does a few more interesting things with its characters and plot as it takes them from past to present.
Adding some unique twists to the time travel and Jack the Ripper mythologies, it combines mystery, drama, action and romance with bits of comedy that work despite some first time director flaws in the ointment. Oh, and it’s a grand little science fiction film that works because you’re sucked in so quickly and completely forget the fantastic elements being so farfetched thanks to the story, characters and direction making it so real…
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Since we’re in the 17-year cycle of cicada “season” (and not a one has popped up around here thanks to it being too cold AND the fact that all that deep digging heavy landscaping work in the area over the past two plus years has probably mashed a few hundred million eggs but good), I figured I’d reminisce about this rather wild 1982 horror flick that’s either really good or really awful depending on your tastes. I paid to see The Beast Within on its initial release and along with a few friends, ended up sitting in a coffee shop afterward discussing how underwhelmed, amused and bored we were by this so-called shocker.
“There was NO body because there was NO murder!” is a great line, folks. Use it wisely, as it’ll either get you in or out of a lot of trouble depending on when and how it’s spoken. Anyway, I must be losing my mind because I really thought I did this one as a RFoTW already. But it was either a dream I had about writing it up (hey, it happens every so often!) or perhaps I’d referenced this great 1973 flick in another film article from a while back.
Forget that offbeat poster to the left, all the film’s stylish narrative tricks and fine ensemble cast doing some stellar work, folks. There’s one obvious moral to John Boorman’s Point Blank that seems to have escaped nearly everyone who dies in this film. That would be the following: If you owe Walker $93,000, stop talking so damn much, pay the man and stay breathing a bit longer. 
With 
OK, I don’t “hate” The Three Worlds of Gulliver at all, but as a kid, it did take me four attempts to sit through this classic family film without falling asleep. Sure, Ray Harryhausen’s “Superdynamation” effects and that lovely Bernard Herrmann soundtrack make this another perfect one-two punch for movie fans, but something about this flick has always rubbed me the wrong way.
Sure, it’s a quickly made post-Psycho cash-in with the added shock value of a character getting decapitated on screen (a rather nifty cheap effect if you’ve never seen this flick before), but thanks to a creepier tone and some nicely tense lensing by a young director named Francis Ford Coppola, Dementia 13 manages to be a pretty decent little horror film.
If you want to get your friends into classic movies, there are three ways to do so. Kidnapping them, strapping them to a chair with eye clamps and locking them in a room with a TV locked onto Turner Classic Movies isn’t quite the best idea, nor is lecturing them about how all modern films are terrible compared to everything pre-code or up to say, 1959. 
It’s actually pretty fun to watch early 50’s to mid-60’s sci-fi films for their historical as well as entertainment value because the space race was in full blast and Hollywood was finding out fast that NASA was making most of what they were doing obsolete. Granted, other than the opening few minutes, Nathan Juran’s excellent First Men in the Moon doesn’t need to juggle much in the way of realism other than making sure its 1964 astronauts (made up of members of UN countries!) making that moon landing were wearing gear that at least looked up to date. 
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 