America has long been considered the land of opportunity. If you had a dream, and a desire to make it come true, anything was possible. From 1967 to 1993, Cannon Films produced a distinctive line of low- to medium-budget films. But, while trying to make their versions of polular films they admired (or envied), they wound up releasing films that were spectacularly awful. That just about sums up this history lesson about the long defunct company. But, for a time, and not lacking any ambition, they certainly made a run at rivaling (or outright copying) anything coming out of the major Hollywood studios. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus – two strong,…

Of all the oddities found at Fantastic Fest, some titles seem tailor-made for the genre fans who flock to Austin every September. Now Wastelander Panda may come across like something between an Old Spice commercial and a love of anime, but, as ludicrous as it sounds, the story works. The plot – giant pandas making their way thorough an apocalyptic outback – is really kind of cool, and even more so if you just go with it. This 60 minute story is a fantasy piece that builds very well, and the episodic nature of the story keeps you wanting more. The future depicted in the savage world of the Wasteland universe…

Latvian horror film The Man In the Orange Jacket takes home invasion to a new level. Well, maybe not new, but different that’s for sure. It’s not as gruesome as the French slasher Inside. This isn’t even as disturbing as Funny Games. But this, another feature film just a hair over an hour playing at Fantastic Fest, starts with a bang and certainly doesn’t waste any time getting to the killing. The film is about a construction worker who kills the CEO and his wife in their Italian vacation home following a company-wide layoff. But once the so-called revenge has been extracted, things get quiet…a little too quiet. It’s then that Aik Karapetian…

A quick glance at the synopsis for the Greek film Norway is sure to grab your attention with this line, “a vampire who must dance to keep his heart beating”. Even if the film is an utter mess, it sounds like a train wreck worth the price of admission. Good news is that while the log line sounds ridiculously comical, this film, from the production team behind Dogtooth (one of the more captivating but odd films of the past 10 years) is weirdly interesting on many levels. It never gets where it’s going but still, writer/director Yiannis Veslemes has to be lauded for putting such a wildly unique spin on…

Genre films are wacky, weird, and wild, and there’s no shortage of them anywhere – film festivals, the Internet, even home movies. But deep down, a good number of these filmmakers probably dream of their film being a big Hollywood production. That’s certainly the case with the titular Elliot anyway. There are numerous films, genre or not, that feature an unlikely hero, or an underdog challenged with a dare-to-be-great experience. Really, you want the best or them, and at first glance, Kung Fu Elliot seems like that kind of film – it’s like the martial arts version of Napoleon Dynamite. Or the making of the film anyway. Elliot “White Lightning” Scott…

On the surface, a horror film involving boy scouts on a camping trip gone wrong might seem mundane. As slasher films are a dime a dozen, it really takes some effort and creativity to stand out from the herd. But this little Belgian horror film has more than a trick or two up its sleeve to keep things interesting, and there’s a lot of effort put into making an already threadbare concept something entirely thrilling. Cub is effective as both a thriller and a horror film, but it’s because it’s built more like the former that it succeeds so well as the latter. During their camping trip, a group of young scouts…