In the Comfy Chair, watching movies of varying quality...

Yesterday ended up being a little bit of a bonus for this Graeme… :o) My daughters wanted to spend some time with their Mum and I had nothing urgent to take care of (or if I did, I’d totally forgotten what it was, that happens more often than it should) so… I slept in for as long as I could (I didn’t beat any records but it was a good attempt) and spent the rest of the day either reading, watching TV or prowling my flat, trying to satisfy a craving for a particular food that I still can’t quite identify. Tell me I’m not the only person who does that?

Anyway…

I settled for a couple of Bao Buns in the end (I had to eat something…) but that doesn’t really make for much of a blog post here so, let me tell you a little bit about some movies that I watched...


‘Thrash’ (2026)

I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for ‘Shark’ and ‘Croc’ movies, at the moment, so when ‘Thrash’ popped up on Netflix, it was an easy decision to make for a little Saturday afternoon viewing. But…

Is it just me or do most Netflix specials not quite live up to how awesome their blurb sounds? The prospect of a town being flooded out, and then infested by sharks, sounds pretty cool but didn’t quite make the jump to looking cool on the screen. It just looked like a lot of choppy water with a very occasional ‘shark attack’ from where I was sat. Djimon Hounsou was wasted as a shark expert who spent most of the movie stuck on a boat away from all the sharks. And talking of sharks… I can suspend my disbelief a fair bit but apparently that stops when a Great White shark acts more like an overprotective Grandma… Rant over :o)


‘Deathstalker’ (2025)

Now this was a bit more like it. ‘Deathstalker’ knows exactly what it is (pulp sword & sorcery at its absolute daftest) and acts accordingly, albeit with a lot of heart to back it up. I love any movie that pits its hero against monsters from the ‘Power Rangers/Psycho Goreman School of Villains’ and there was loads of that here. I also enjoyed the game attempt to one-up ‘The Sword and the Sorcerer’ by sticking an extra blade on the hero’s sword :o)

Give it a week and I’ll be very surprised if I can remember anything about ‘Deathstalker’. I enjoyed the hell out of it, yesterday, though and that’s what counts.

‘Insidious Tales’ (2026)

Regular visitors here will know that I love a good horror anthology and every so often bad horror anthologies too :o) This time round though?

‘Insidious Tales’ wasn’t a bad movie per se, just not a movie that I could ever see myself going back to. It was just six short films, one after the other, with no wrap-around feature tying them together, and while I’m always happy to give anthologies the benefit of the doubt (not every tale will work for everyone), too many of the entries here didn’t quite hit the mark for me. I didn’t mind the one about the stranger, just standing outside someone’s house, but I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to remember the rest and I only watched ‘Insidious Tales’ a few hours ago. Some of that is on me but not all of it. You might get more out of ‘Insidious Tales’, I didn’t.

One out of three (one and half if I’m being generous, ‘Thrash’ had some decent moments) is a pretty poor return then but the utter ridiculousness of ‘Deathstalker’ made up for a hell of a lot. Lets see if I have better luck today.

Comments

  1. Bookstooge12 April 2026 at 12:20

    I vaguely remember the original deathstalker being serious. Was this new one trying to break into new waters, or just be its completely own thing?

    ReplyDelete

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