Monster A Go Go!
July 11, 2011 10:29 PM   Subscribe

Monster Shack is a b-movie review site that also contains an extensive collection of classic movie posters, old news reel reviews and an Atari shrine.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn (15 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Aahhh! Waterworld is a B movie and Yvette Vickers was mummified by a space heater?!

I need a drink.
posted by troll at 12:50 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


I will say that he has excellent taste in Atari games.
posted by JHarris at 12:56 AM on July 12, 2011


Well, he's wrong about Defender. It was a major feat to get it onto the VCS in any form in the first place, and it's generally regarded as being pretty close in gameplay and feel if not graphics. It's no VCS Pac-Man.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:23 AM on July 12, 2011


I had 2600 Defender and was very good at it, but he's right, it's MUCH easier than arcade Defender (as are most games). They had to make a huge number of compromises to get it to run at all.
posted by JHarris at 4:58 AM on July 12, 2011


The reviews seem very derivative of The Agony Booth (reviewing a lot of the same old MST3K movies, etc.) but there are enough extra goodies to make it worthwhile.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:06 AM on July 12, 2011


My kingdom for a search function! (I'm trying to see if they have one specific movie.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 AM on July 12, 2011


@EmpressCallipygos

On the Monster Shack site? Top right.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 6:42 AM on July 12, 2011


The only thing I see on the top right is a small white box that doesn't fit all the way on my screen, and typing the name of the movie I'm looking for into it and hitting "enter" does nothing.

(Seriously, it's weird -- there's no scroll bar at the bottom, but there's clearly stuff off the edge of my screen. What gives?)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:48 AM on July 12, 2011


Dunno - I'm using Firefox 5, and that's definitely a search box!

What did you want to look for ?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 6:55 AM on July 12, 2011


"Blood Freak." It's from 1972, and stars Steve Hawkes and was produced by Brad Grinter.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:58 AM on July 12, 2011


Not a sausage I'm afraid.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 6:59 AM on July 12, 2011


(sorry, link was screwed up in my previous post) Empress, Blood Freak does appear on The Agony Booth
It's a Thanksgiving favorite around our house!
posted by ShutterBun at 7:39 AM on July 12, 2011


Yep, seen the Agony Booth one. And I own the DVD and have had three separate viewing parties, to the point that my friends have asked me to please knock it off.

(Blood Freak is kind of esoteric, but TOTALLY worth hunting down; I just kind of use "do they have a review of BLOOD FREAK" as a personal yardstick to measure bad-movie sites like this.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:53 AM on July 12, 2011 [1 favorite]



I had 2600 Defender and was very good at it, but he's right, it's MUCH easier than arcade Defender (as are most games). They had to make a huge number of compromises to get it to run at all.
posted by JHarris at 7:58 AM on July 12


Defender looks like that not because of the limitations of the technology but because of Atari' Corp.'s attitude that programmers and designers were basically labor, not creative people. Activision, a company created by ex-Atari programmers, labeled the cartridges with the names of the game's designer.

Activision released their Defender clone, Chopper Command, the same year atari released defender. Chopper Command didn't suffer from the intense flickering and crappy graphics of defender. Objects looked like what they were, behaved as expected, and the game ran fast.

Sometimes it isn't the technology or the programmers. Sometimes, most of the time, it's management.
posted by Pastabagel at 10:33 AM on July 12, 2011


He must be the only person ever to have liked Spike's Peak.

I built up an Atari collection a while back, and the only games I still play are Ms. Pac Man, Missile Command, Turmoil, Frostbite, and for some reason M*A*S*H now and again.

Oh, and also Freeway in 2-player mode, which is reason enough to buy an Atari.

Activision made some of the best games.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:49 PM on July 12, 2011


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