2024 the best films of 2004 review


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(as of Nov 06, 2024 22:12:08 UTC - Details)

When anything makes money, it brings about imitators. One of the best cases of this was Amicus Productions.

Back in 1957 and ‘58, there were two immensely popular British horror films, “Curse of Frankenstein” and “Horror of Dracula. Everyone saw them, and they made a pile of money, leading to Hammer Films becoming a household name. Two men, Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, formed a partnership in a deliberate plan to rival Hammer’s success. Their plan became action, and in 1962, they released their first film. Like Hammer, not all of their movies were horror, but they leaned heavily that way. And they had some real successes like “Tales from The Crypt,” “Dr. Who and The Daleks,” and “The Land That Time Forgot,” which are still well known to this day.

Although not as prolific or successful overall as Hammer, Amicus did pretty well for itself for about sixteen years. They made everything from serious drama to ridiculous musicals; we’ll look at all of them here. Most of the “Horror Guys Guides” series focuses on only the horror films of a particular actor or studio, but this one will look at everything Amicus produced, as well as a couple that they didn’t but with which they still have a connection. There weren’t that many connected ones, and they’re all noteworthy, so why not?

This book takes each Amicus film and closely related non-Amicus films and examines them all individually. We watched every film recently, specifically with the intent of writing this book. Each entry lists the writer, director, principal cast members, run time, alternate titles, if any, and then a full synopsis with spoilers of each story. And we top them off with my commentary and occasional bits of interesting trivia.

Some are definitely worth checking out for yourself. Some maybe not so much. The fun will be reading all about them and catching up on the ones that you missed– maybe even the ones you’ve never heard about at all.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CKTQHMKN
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 9, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6699 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 178 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ B0CKVBKYPX
Reviewer: Charles Floyd Rhodes
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A complete guide to 34 movies that is unevenly written
Review: On the plus side, all 34 movies, either from Amicus are from Milton Subotksy and his kin, are covered, and even a movie that is still being promised in addition to the 34. If you want a book that reviews It's Trad Dad!, Just for Fun, The Birthday Party, A Touch of Love, and the obscure 1972 horror film What Became of Jack and Jill?, this is the book to get. Each entry has one picture, basic credits, a cliff notes style synopsis, and commentary that sometimes offers context, historical background, behind the scenes info and always opinion. While the plot write ups are usually well written, a few are hard to follow, and one weakness is that the authors usually will not tell us who played who. In the case of Luau, a story in Tales that Witness Madness, the write up is so poor that it had the feel of something that was reconstructed from poor note taking. In contrast, the synopsis for The Beast Must Die is not poor, but by not IDing who played who, with the exception of a few stars, the authors fail to give the movie much context, other than commenting on it's gimmick, the werewolf break. At other times, they do comment on how 1960s and 1970s scientific devices looked in movies such as The Terrornauts, They Came from Beyond Space and The Mind of Mr. Soames and thye do comment a tad on how the Doctor Who movies compare the the teleserial version and the science in those and in At the Earth's Core. While the bands in It's Trad Dad! and Just for Fun are named, the ones in The Monster Club are not. I also do not see any comparison of the EC cartoon book stories to their movie adaptations and none for the print sources for The Terrornauts, They Came from Beyond Space, At the Earth's Core, The Land that Time Forgot and The People that Time Forgot, and in the case of EC and Edgar Rice Burroughs, this is almost inexcusable. Still, most of the entries are well written, a few of the movies are obscure, thus I can grant this 4 stars.

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