Stop Driving Us Crazy [1959]
Destination Earth [1956]

It begins with driving footage. Then it rains. It all goes downhill from there. Watch along and contemplate all the myriad ways the captives could have escaped the crazy zoo keeper.

Steve was wrong! Last week's XL5 episode was not our fifth and final for the miniseries. This one is. We go back to our regular shorts format next week. The screwed up! The moovy didn't play on the stream. We were already way into XL5 when Steve realized his mistake. It works well on this video...

a 1953 American exploitation film written, directed by and starring Ed Wood (credited in his starring role as "Daniel Davis"), and featuring Bela Lugosi and Wood's then-girlfriend Dolores Fuller. It was produced by George Weiss who also made the exploitation film Test Tube Babies that same year.

The film is a docudrama about cross-dressing and transvestism, and is semi-autobiographical in nature. Wood himself was a cross-dresser, and the film is a plea for tolerance. It is widely considered one of the worst films ever made. However, it has become a cult film due to its low-budget production values and idiosyncratic style.

In our ongoing efforts to provide the best ways to watch Groovy Moovies we have changed around the website a little bit. The GUIDE has them all. Just click on the episode image and you will find all the information there. At the bottom is the YouTube link. You can also watch them all from our YouTube channel directly.

Smappie had to miss the stream and it was a real shame. We were sure he would have really liked the plant man.

To begin, I haven't looked up if this common movie trope has already been noted anywhere. Partly, I want to avoid finding out that I am not the originator. It is mostly because I really like my term for it. If I learned of a better term for it I would be devastated.

The Hollywood Hop™ is when an actor adds a little extra something before they begin to run. You see this commonly in gymnastics. More often with the vault. Before take-off the athlete will do a high steppy sort of bounce. Some will then do a slight preemptive lunge. Then a hop as if they had misstepped and had just gotten back into sync.

Maybe this is part of the criteria for judging in gymnastics. There are a lot of things I do not understand in sport and it could be the same as the arms flapping on the horizontal bar. The fact this woman just did a triple back flip on the narrow beam without injury is more impressive that how graceful she waves her arm while balancing. This is one of the myriad reasons I am not athlete. Also, I'd look terrible in a leotard.

In moovies, however, this kind of Olympic styled lunge/bounce/skip is annoyingly common and wholy unnecessary. It has become a peeve because it happens so often.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the real clincher for me. Linda Hamilton's hop was so extreme that I knew it needed a name. (Maybe I should have called it the Hamilton Hop?)

From the beginning, we never expected the moovies we were to watch would be award-winning or blockbuster movies. Our choices were limited to the public domain. Many of these we knew were B movies and not known for quality.

I am more forgiving with movies than the rest of the gang. I have in the past tried to like the movies I was supposed to like. Those highly acclaimed films that had won academy awards or garnered rave reviews or spoke of in high regard by film buff friends were, I assumed, were the ones I was supposed to like if I were to consider myself a film aficionado. It was a struggle.

It took many years for me to finally come out. I was confused and consistantly second guessing myself. When the end credits rolled I would think, "Everyone said this was a great film. Why did I not enjoy it?"

 It turns out I am not an film aficionado or film snob. I like to be entertained. Some movies entertain me. Some do not. 

A film maker associate of mine refused to discuss movies with me after I had admitted that I did not enjoy watching The Godfather series, but did enjoy Godzilla [1998] with Matthew Broderick. Gangster films aren't my preferred genre. Watch the humans running in terror from a skyscraper monster? Get me some popcorn!

I won't say that The Godfather wasn't a well made film. It was. I just couldn't enjoy it. There are well made, highly regarded movies I do enjoy. I have nearly memorized Citizen Kane. Years ago, I nearly wore out my VHS of Singing in the Rain. To Kill a Mockingbird still hits me emotionally. Not so great movies can do the same.

In fact, Godzilla [1998] still tugs the heartstrings at the end of the bridge scene. I'll admit, the egg hatching afterward was a bit of a groaner, but it didn't ruin the moovy for me.

I have also seen a lot of moovies that were bad. I mean gut-wrenchingly, mind-numbingly, so-horrible-I-get-physically-ill bad. Yet that is the fun. If it's a genre I like, but I can the strings on the UFO, I don't mind too much. At least it's not a Taratino movie.

The gang also plays games. It was gaming, mostly, that brought the gang together. It seemed only fitting that we should do game streams.

You can find Melon on his Twitch channel twitch.tv/MrMelonsuce on Sundays and Tuesdays (with Steve). On Fridays he plays alongside Smappie's channel twitch.tv/smappie. From time to time members of the Groovy Moovy Gang will join in.

The gang is contemplating more game streams. If you have suggestions do let us know.

NOOS!

We are constantly trying to improove the gang's website. We now introduce the new version of our news/blog/ezine format. It's a little change, but it will help us a lot in the future.