Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Martian children have all become seasonally depressed! The solution? Mars needs Santa!

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS is quite posssibly the best public domain christmas movie ever (unless you count that Frank Capra film with Jimmy Stewart...) and now you can download it at Arichive.org Feature Films! We here at AnimeHELL look forward to the direct to video release of the 2002 remake....

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year From AnimeHELL!

Look into...THE HYPNOTIC EYE!

I'm not sure exactly how I found out about THE HYPNOTIC EYE but from this discription I was intrigued:

Best Cable Access Show, The Dallas Observer, September 25-October 1, 1997: "The Hypnotic Eye is an addictive, giddy mixture of cult movie clips, trailers, toy commercials, weird music videos, and puppet high jinks. This brilliantly edited show (yes, we know it's on cable access, but we mean that just the same) is hosted by a giant eyeball and features such madness as William Shatner's cry-for-help rendition of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's "Rocket Man." Producer-editor-director Joe Riley doesn't merely wink at the audience-his reverence and sincere appreciation for pop culture shines through. This is one of the best hours on television, public access or otherwise."

That sounded a heck of alot like our wacky clip show. With some more searching I tracked down copies of Shows 5 and 6 from a video trade list. I was not disappointed. THE HYPNOTIC EYE is hosted by an Eye with unkempt hair:



A life sized Eye puppet with the voice of producer Joe Riley greets us at the beginning of Episode 5 and banters with his co-host puppet M.C. Tiny Bob. The host segments are very low key and feel unscripted. Which makes it all the more charming in a bizarro kind of way. We're then shown clips of old commercials, the trailer for THE STREET FIGHTER and the trailer and making of footage from Gamera 2: Advent of Legion. Pretty cool considering that this show aired in 1997. There's a video montage of a store in Houston called Giant Robot set to a score of The Ramones' I Don't Want To Grow Up. Yeah, it' alot like an AnimeHELL show, but without the Mental Health bits...

I'm not sure what happened to Joe Riley and THE HYPNOTIC EYE but I'm sure gonna try to track him down and see what he's up to these days and I'm certainly gonna look for more episodes of this show. And I'm even thinking about making my own lifesized Eye puppet for future HELLshows... 

SubGenius Videos now on DVD!

I was googlin' for a show called THE HYPNOTIC EYE when I found the SubGenius video page. And it looks like they've finally got around to selling SubGenius video on DVD. I'm getting mine... 

Lost and Found Video Night

Anyone ever heard of these guys at www.5minutestolive.com ? They look to me like your typical band of video "tape traders," and by that I mean the kind of "traders" you encounter at sci-fi/fantasy conventions that charge $20 for copies of Battle Royale they made. In fact, these guys ARE charging $20 for copies of Battle Royale they made, but they're also selling--er, I mean, TRADING, yeah that's the ticket--various Hell-related media. While I certainly won't be paying $20 for the Heaven's Gate tape, I did notice that they've got a set of compilations entitled Lost and Found Video Night:

http://www.5minutestolive.com/1D/vol1_3collection.htm

Some of it we've already got (in less than pristine quality), like Shatner doing Rocketman, Turkish Star Wars, Bollywood Don and his exploding briefcase (my copies of this were from DVD!), Der Fuhrer's Face, and so on. But most of it is stuff I've actually never heard of myself (Indonesian Sylvester Stallone sounds like it has promise).

The catch? You guessed it, pricetag. Until January 7th, it's $100 for 7 DVDs, which themselves contain about 10 hours worth of VHS captured footage. Unless of course, you can trade them something they're looking for:

http://www.5minutestolive.com/mc/wholesale.htm

Of course, none of that is stuff I've ever heard of. Still, it's always good to have more goofy footage in (hopefully) playable condition. Perhaps if nobody else has anything to trade with them over, we can split the costs?

In the meantime, I'll bite the bullet and download this MPG of "VD Attack Plan" starring Meatwad as Ignorance. 731 meg MPEG-1? How long IS this thing, an hour?!

Totally Lame Anime reviewed at Sequential Tart

Sequential Tart: Article - Anime Weekend Atlanta (vol VII/iss 12/December 2004): "One of the funniest panels I attended the first day was the 'Totally Lame Anime' panel, offered by AWA president Dave Merrill, Neal Nadelman, and Daryl Surat. Each presenter showed silly scenes from some of their favorite bad anime, along with commentary on the vapid dialogue, gratuitous exposures of breasts, and convenient miracle twists of plot. My second favorite line was from one of Dave Merrill's offerings, a scene in Apocalypse Zero, when a character actually uttered the phrase, 'if this is justice, I'm a banana.' But my favorite line in the whole panel was from panelist Daryl Surat. He introduced his lame anime choices, Angel Cop, Mad Bull 34, and Violence Jack as his own personal 'holy trinity of suck,' a comment which put a couple of people in the crowd on the floor. Merrill admonished the audience not to take it personally if their favorite anime is on the list of the totally lame. No one did; in fact, the howls and groans of the crowd kept drawing more and more people, and by the time I left it was standing room only."