Forums - Other Streaming

The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians (1981)

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 04:45:56 +0000

I was looking for something to watch after doing yardwork all day and pretty beat. The TV in the living room is signed out of most streaming services for some reason, so I poked around Kanopy and found this 1981 film:

It's a story of a mad Baron absconding with an opera singer. Her fiancée, the Count, is searching for her and ends up in a remote village with a castle which seems to hold her. You can watch the entire film in Czech with subtitles (which is how I watched it) here on YouTube:

It's silly and clumsy slapstick, not unlike Hundreds of Beavers,but I enjoyed it. It's directed by Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, tho there's little stop motion animation in this.

--tg

Magical Mystery Tour

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 03:36:15 +0000

I've never seen it, just clips from various musical numbers. I've searched on various streaming platforms, but none had it, except as a rental. It never occurred to me to check YouTube.

This seems to be the film in its entirety, except that the musical parts are cut a bit...I would have guess that this was to avoid YouTube's copyright bots, but songs are mostly intact, long enough that Inwould guess they would still trigger copyright take-downs, and annoying enough to make the music bits less enjoyable.

I knew that the Bonzo Dog band played Death Cab for Cutie in this (giving a later band its name), but I did not know that the suitor of Ringo's aunt was named Buster Bloodvessel (singer for Bad Manners). I'd never seen the Blue Jay Way bit...that had some cool ideas.

I know the whole thing was a mishmash. Paul said let's go film stuff and capture what happens and unfortunately nothing did. Editing this into something cohesive must have been a bear.

I can now check that off my list.

--tg
PS: the walrus was NOT Paul.

The New Legend of Shaolin (1994)

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:18:56 +0000

Miao Xie’s first film and he steals the show from Jet Li. Bald Eagle plays the burn scarred villain - Gigi got to interview him. Sun Jiankai is another villain, an evil monk, and I’ve interacted with him a few times. The important thing to note is it’s directed by Wong Jing & Corey Yuen. Wong is always goofy making films on his own terms. Yuen’s fight choreo is crazy, always warping physics with wire tricks.

There’s this side story about a mother & daughter scamming team. It’s played for laughs. There’s a whole sctick about how the mom loves to eat chicken ass (the literal translation). I remember seeing this with ED and him being amused at these antics but they fell flat on me. Chingmay Yau is cute as Red Bean but the romance arc doesn’t work. There’s also 6 Shaolin kids that are annoying, although their fight choreo isn’t bad for kids. Their costumes are heavily padded and thst looked like it works like foam sparring gear. There’s an ass joke when one of the kids is pantsed in a fight and his nekkid ass winds up right in someone’s face which was uncalled for. And there’s a scene where the mom scammer tries to pour an aphrodisiac drop down a string from the ceiling, but here Jet blow it back into her mouth and she gets all horny and winds up raping the master of the hoise (he’s a heavy sleeper and believes it’s a dream).

Then there’s Bald Eagle’s (Ji Chunhua) chrome tank. WTH? That’s so Wong Jing.

Not overly D00M reccomended but worth the review for Xie. He even does his signature move where he rolls down off his adversary’s back.

Seen here:

My Father is a Hero (1995)

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 06:08:53 +0000

Went back for this to revisit Miao Xie. I remember liking Xie and Jet in this but it’s a mediocre film overall. There’s the scene when Jet kills a pack of police shepherds which is clearly fake but disturbing. I remembered that scene quite well - it stuck out. Jet smokes a lot. Hong Kong and China are peripherally captured as smoky too, which reinforces my memory of it. Jet & Xie have good chemistry and Xie’s martial & acting chops are firm already. Where this film fails iz the middle when Anita Mui comes in. The action drops and there’s a drawn out death scene that’s way too long and melodramatic. Jet’s character is a hero but a bad dad with a great son.

I watched a version on YouTube where the English dub was a few minutes abead the scenes. That was super annoying but it clued me into when the next fight would break out. I mightve had a better experience if I had just muted the sound. The dub was confusing too because I couldn’t pin the rubber voices to the characters. But it was amusing in a surreal way. I can’t say it completely ruin it because I watched it through despite this issue.

Not that D00M recommended.

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia (2017)

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:14:03 +0000

I could've sworn I saw this movie before but when I searched it out here and on KFM, I found no reviews by me. I think I thought this was a different film. Watching it, it seemed completely fresh but that has happened to me several times with movies I've seen already. Whatevs. I watched it again to see Miao Xie's role in it, which is minor. took me a while to recognize him and he does nothing of note.

This is deep in the yaoguai genre with lots of flying about, taoist magic and dated CGI effects. It's Yuen Woo-Ping revisiting his 1982 rant-aisa The Miracle Fighters, which I must seek out and watch because I don't know if I've seen that either. I liked it, but it's so overblown with magical stuff, like a superhero movie. It kinda gets lost in itself, overdone, but I enjoyed it for what it was. The story was amusing with a love quadrangle, and the yaoguai genre is one of my favs. Tsui Hark also had a hand in this, so it's deep in the Fant-Asia zone.

The film was highly regarded at the time, mostly for its costumes, sets, effects and its overall design style. Those don't hold up, at least the effect don't. CGI has gotten scary good. This was back when it still looked like CGI. The fights were a lot of flying about and tossing various missile weapons. I did like all the demon unmasking. It had it's moments and there was a sequel, which I'll probably check out someday.

Not overly D00M recommended.

Seen on YouTube here:

Ninja Vixens: The Kagero Squad (1990)

Sat, 09 May 2026 15:29:26 +0000

The title of this film is translated to be more prurient than it is. IN Japanese, it reads 'woman invisible' which may conjugate to kunoichi somehow but I don't quite know how Japanese conjugation works.

It's about a squad of female ninjas that infiltrate a political coup and restore order to a fiefdom. The ninjettes (official DM tern for kunoichi) dress like geishas and work their way into the usurping gang's midst, mostly within their gambling/whorehouse because that's what Japanese baddie do. They have these armulet globes that when activated, shoot out weak (90s? more like 70s) special effects of butterflies. My favorite scene is when one of the nineties, dressed in a normal kimono, is captured by random wannabe rapists. She unleashes the butterflies, the rapists freak out, and then she dispatches them all with swift kicks to the nuts. The main ninjette doesn't show her prowess until she strips down to her ninjette uniform that shows her thighs in fishnets. There's a lot of thigh exposing, but not quite enough to earn the title 'vixen'. Note that there are posed breasts, also kinda random. The lead ninjette is cool. Fight choreo is mediocre at best - dated in style and execution.

Not overly D00M recommended. This is the start of a trilogy and I'll probably watch more.

Seen here:

Baian the Assassin M.D. (2023)

Fri, 08 May 2026 11:20:22 +0000

Baian is an acupuncturist assassin who kills with a long needle to the base of the skull. It’s a slow, brooding and beautiful movie, one of those jidaigeki films where every frame is composed like a ukiyo painting. It took me a while to get into it. There’s some fight choreo, including a nice scene where one character has to take an a gang of attackers, but mostly it’s about intrigue and suspense. There’s a lot of eating, a strange focus on food, and drinking sake with loud slurps and gulps. That was somewhat distracting but served as a grounding mechanism. The ending mcguffin was intense. Did not expect to go there and it made the journey worth it.

There’s a part 2. It’s based on a novel and there’s a previous TV interpretation. I’ll probably give the sequel a go.

Not overly D00M recommended but a good story so far.

Seen censored on YouTube (there a sex scene that blurred ai all you get is a few minutes of mowing. ignore the John Wick comment in the title -that’s so misleading).

Casino, but it's Looney Tunes

Mon, 04 May 2026 16:38:27 +0000

--tg

Ducks (short)

Mon, 04 May 2026 06:20:39 +0000

—tg

Red Blade (2018)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:25:55 +0000

A teen gal in a school sailor suit gets bullied because her dad takes the fall for a company and goes to jail. She retreats into a comic book about ninjas. But then she falls into that world to study ninjitsu with two other girls in medieval Japan. They are orphan sisters bent on revenge. The threesome wear kawai ninjette suits that leave their thighs bare because that’s a ninjette style. But then it turns out that the murderer of the other two ninjettes’ father is the boss of the noob ninjette’s dad who made him take the fall. It goes from a hallucination delusion to a story about multiple realities.

There’s a big ninja fight at the beginning where the girls’ sensei kills a lot of ninjas. It’s not too sanguineous beyond the ol’ spit blood & die, and the choreo is serviceable. All sword fights. Later the girls use kama, kunai & rope. Then at one point, the master does an amazing kumitachi cut thst looks very real. He’s got serious skills. The final fight is good in a crazy way, lots of barrel rolls and wild acrobatics. Ultimately it was enjoyable. But not really D00M worthy.

Seen on YouTube

Neko Ninja (Ninja Cat 2017)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:01:02 +0000

Billed as an action comedy, this falls short. A ninja disappears with a secret ninja scroll about transmogrification leaving a young son, a ninja in training. When that son reaches adulthood, he finds a cat that he believes is his father. Meanwhile his ninja clan is out to get him, his dad, and the scroll. The goofball ninja gang following him are like the keystone cops, but not funny enough. There’s 2 ninjette hawtties thst carry a lot of the plot and one bizarre dwarf ninjette. The fight choreo is weak. But the cat is cute.
Not D00M recommended at all.
Seen on YouTube.

Red Peony Gambler (1986)

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:36:16 +0000

This is a classic femme fatale icon of the yakuza film genre. Red Peony Oryx is the daughter of a yakuza boss that is killed, so she walks the road of vengeance. It's got style, like many of the chanbara films of the late 60s early 70s - cool, classy, stoic, with oafish villains and somewhat stilted choreography and scenes that were probably shocking in the day. In this one, there's a close up of a yakuza man cutting off his finger, obviously a prop finger, but well actualized for that era. Ultimately it all hinges on Red Peony, Junk Fuji, a timeless beauty that exemplifies elegance. She has a red peony tattoo across her shoulder, yakuza style, and wields a flute that conceals a dagger and hairpins (because all female martial artists wield hairpins). The film is a tad weighed down by the content repetition of the fact that women aren't permitted to live the yakuza life, but Red Peony does anyway in an unapologetic way. What works really well is that Red Peony never stoops to wanton sexiness. There's constant blather about her beauty from the male characters, but she remains poised throughout.

This film launched a 7 film franchise. The next two installments are available on Hoopla, which is where I watched this. I may watch another. This is my first taste of the franchise, something I've been meaning to check out for years.

However I was having some issues with the sound, which kept coming off track just enough to get really confusing with the timing of the subtitles. It may be my AppleTV which is making a new clicking noise across platforms - sometimes the sound drops out completely and must be restored with a reboot.

Taboo

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 02:27:36 +0000

This 2017 series is now on all the free w/ads streamers: Tubi, Plex, PlutoTV. it might even be on Kanopy w/o ads (which would be much better). I've had this on my watch list for probably 5-6 years, but never got around to it and watched it on Tubi. It's a period drama: early 1800's England (dirty Londoners, lots of mud and muck). Only 8 episodes. Good cast, good writing/acting. Lots of intrigue and plot twists.

The story begins with a funeral of a Mr. Delaney. During the service, the long lost, thought dead son (Tom Hardy) enters and throws a wrench into the entire estate transfer. The late Delaney senior owned what is now Vancouver and the adjacent coast, by way of treaty with the natives. Everybody wants it. The East India Co, the Brits, the Americans. Hilarity ensues.

This is a Ridley Scott production, and I've been on/off about some of the others (eg: Prometheus), but this was very good. Very Masterpiece Theater.

Really recommended.

--tg

Second Life (2024)

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:02:37 +0000

I was randomly surfing YouTube like I do and this popped up. It stars Philip Ng, who I know personally, and Yuen Qiu, who you may remember as the Landlady in Kung Fu Hustle, or the Karate girl in You Only Live Twice, or as I think of her, one of the seven Little Fortunes alongside with Jackie Chan, Sammy Hung, etc.

Phil plays a gangster who quickly rises up in the ranks, but then is double crossed at a party where he is blinded. Yep, another blind master. Yuen Qiu is a Kung Fu master/Chinese doctor, who kills a gang boss that set up her cop husband, and gets set to jail. She quickly takes out the jail shot caller, who dominates the toilet paper market, and has a baby, who gets taken away by her jailers. That's all in flashback. Enter Phil, years later, who is tasked to impersonate her long lost son, in a long game revenge play, but then a genuine bond develops. Oh, and she has Alzheimers.

It play snout like a Kung Fu dramedy, with some crazy juggling fight scenes and amusing over-the-top assassins (a villainess with switchblade-spiked high heels is particularly entertaining). I am biased, of course, because I always enjoy seeing Phil on screen. He gets few emotional scenes too and it's good to see his range. Yuen Qiu seems typecast now as landlady types, older women with fantastic Kung Fu, and that works. It's good to see an older women kick a lotta ass. She still moves very well.

Mildly D00M recommended.

Seen here on YouTube:

In the blink of an eye (Hulu)

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:21:29 +0000

https://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFo...0#pid82680

3 separate story lines: a Neanderthal family getting by, a present-ish day anthropology grad student (Rashida Jones) getting by, the human caretaker (Kate McKinnon) of a spaceship delivering human embryos to a new world. I have nothing good to say. McKinnon and Jones are not bad, but not particularly great, IMHO, and don't help here. I think Neanderthal "Thorn" puts in the strongest performance. I fell asleep on the first attempt.

I can not recommend this.

--tg

People have compared it to Cloud Atlas which I found equally boring, so that's fair...