Please, please, I'll tell you anything you wnat to know. Just don't make me watch anymore....No! No!.....Argh
shareI'm very fond of "The Wizard of Mars", but then again I have a weakness for all of David L. Hewitt's films. Why his name isn't mentioned in the same breath as Al Adamson's or Ed Wood's is beyond me; Hewitt's credits are much less numerous, of course, but his work is just as interesting. You can see what he was going for in "Wizard": there are some nice touches, especially the music and the neat little visual effects, and he establishes a distinctly odd mood from the minute Roger Gentry and company set foot on Martian soil. If Hewitt had been given a bigger budget, I think he might have pulled off a good film.
Someone will write a book about David L. Hewitt and his films someday, and I hope I'm around to read it :)
I know that Golden Turkey book of over 25 years ago started the craze, but why is there this perverse interest in poor films and untalented filmmakers. You can add to your list so many, Larry Buchanan, Joe D'Amato for starters, but why? When I was a fanatical film buff in the '60s and '70s, everyone had a specialty but we were all looking for greatness -appreciating the treasures of cinema all the way back to Melies and the French serials, the silent classics, the golden age of Hollywood during the factory years, the golden age of Foreign arthouse cinema, regional cinema, indies, you name it. But now it's all about bottom-feeding, not just in the fantasy/SF/horror vein, but escalating interest in all sorts of porn.
You used the word weakness, and perhaps that is the operative term. The pendulum will eventually swing back and young students of film will get back to the masterworks. And yes, along the way as a buff I saw ALL the junk you enjoy and many more! My count in IMDb is over 25,000 films seen & voted on, and I have an excel file of over 900 more that IMDb doesn't list at all (unreleased titles, obscure films, short films and of course, porn: IMDb's coverage of porn seems overdone, but is extremely haphazard -take even a legend like Viviana -the hottest star circa 1991, and most of her titles are missing).
"Perverse" interest? That's entirely a matter of opinion, lor. I enjoy Dave Hewitt's films because I enjoy them, period. I also enjoy the films of F.W. Murnau, James Whale, and Herk Harvey--which you might have realized had you taken even a cursory glance at my other reviews and forum posts. As it is, you waded right in with an unnecessarily high-handed tone. Do you know what they say about assumptions?
shareAmen, InjunNose! I am also a fan of Hewitt and think he is woefully unrecognized.
David does appear in one book I have read, the biography "Ib Melchior: Man of Imagination" by Robert Skotak. It is worth reading if you love this period of low budget SF films and want to find out more about Hewitt.
Thanks for the recommendation, auteurus! I just looked up the Melchior bio on amazon.com and it sounds great. I'm definitely going to pick up a copy.
shareLot, relax. Liking these retro horror/sci-dis isn't a life or death activity.
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