
Cult Of The Damned 1969 Kino Lorber DVD that was originally titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go. Written and directed by Robert Thom. Around 1960 Thom wrote a play for his wife Janice Rule. It never got produced so he changed it into a screenplay and sold it to Sam Katzman who got finance from AIP. They were the producers of the Thom scripted Wild In The Streets.
It's Thom's only directing job but he'd written several films that you might have heard of: All The Fine Young Cannibals, The Subterraneans, Wild In The Streets, Bloody Mama and Death Race 2000. Most people into genre films probably have seen the last picture but hardly any of his other work. Probably good in the aggregate. I've only seen the last three and don't plan to bother with the others.
Wild In The Streets is a bit of a cult classic but it's a big ol' mess of a movie. Cult Of The Damned is an even bigger mess and it's tedious to boot. WITS had a good song, The Shape Of Things To Come, and COTD has Angel, Angel, Down We Go. It's an absolutely appalling song and later in the movie there's another song, by the same band, that's even worse.
Holly Near plays the overweight and neurotic adult daughter of a rich guy and his wife. Jennifer Jones plays the mother and Charles Aidman plays the father. The parents are an awful pair of abusers and manipulators. Jordan Christopher is the lead singer in a band that was hired to play at Holly's 18th birthday bash and coming out party. Holly runs off with Jordan and his band. They have some adventures and Jordon seduces her parents. Lou Rawls, Davey Davidson and Roddy McDowall play Jordan's band members and friends. None of them are very interesting, they aren't the sort of people I would like to hang around with. All their tedious and pretentious antics are slathered in psychedelic claptrap and crap pop songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
The IMDb calls it a crime drama. What are they on about? See if you can spot any crimes, other than the film being presented to the public, by watching it. A link to a fair copy on YouTube is in the title above but be warned, the movie did crap at the box office and Holly Near called it "trash". To be fair to the film the family thinks Holly had been kidnapped even though there's no indication of it. Mom wants to go to the police but dad doesn't want any publicity, he's got his own detectives on the case. That's just the sort of writing that might have made the Los Angeles Times call it "a pretentious mess" although "it can never be said to bore." I say, "Oh yes, it can!" They tried releasing it the following year under the Cult Of The Damned title in a double bill with The Vampire Lovers. The Los Angeles Times said it was "a terrible piece of trash." It's the same LA Times reviewer, Kevin Thomas, which made me think that his first viewing might still be bothering him a year later. I thought it was also possible he's mad that they tried to fool the public with a re-title of the film. It's certainly something that annoys me. With all the trash talk I still wouldn't like to see the movie tossed into the circular file. It's good to see these sort of films, if only to appreciate a well made film.

Monster Hunter 2020 Written and directed by Paul W S Anderson. Based on a Capcom video game.
Milla Jovovich plays a US Army Ranger Captain, head of UN team that's searching for a team lost in the desert. Milla's team gets overtaken by a big desert storm that forces them through a portal to a new world with giant monsters. After the team is decimated Milla teams up with Tony Jaa, a native of the new world. He'd gotten separated from his own team of monster hunters when he was thrown from their ship. Ron Perlman is the head of Tony's team, he's in the opening scene and doesn't show up again until the third act. I would have liked more Ron.
There's plenty of monster fighting and it's loud and bombastic. At times I was wishing they had dialed it back a bit but there you go, it seems there's always a new 11. After Ron turns up we get a much better idea of what goes on in the new world and why there should be a sequel. It's got a nice look to it and a wicked sense of humor. The new world is a beautiful place, much of it was filmed in Namibia and South Africa, but it's filled with horrible giant bitey things, so, not much of a tourist destination in my mind. I enjoyed the thing and would watch it again someday. I'll put the Blu-ray on my Wishlist and keep an eye out for a nice price decrease.