PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 182

 

I hadn't seen The Man With The Screaming Brain in a while. It's a 2005 movie that was written and directed by Bruce Campbell. It's pretty goofy. Bruce plays a businessman who's in Bulgaria. He gets mixed up with a Russian cab driver and a crazy gypsy woman. Bruce and his wife are in a crappy relationship and after they have a big fight the wife leaves him. Bruce gets his head bashed in by the gypsy woman who also murders the cab driver. The wife pulls the plug on Bruce when the doctor tells her he's brain dead. Stacey Keach plays a mad scientist who has a regenerating process. He sends lab assistant Ted Raimi to collect Bruce and the cab drivers bodies. They put part of the Russian's brain into Bruce's head and re-animate the corpse. While this is going on the wife is killed by the gypsy woman. Bruce is re-awakened and he's pretty fucked up. His memory slowly returns and he's gifted by bits of memory from the Russian cab driver. The two brains unite in their hatred of the gypsy woman. The hunt is on. The wife's brain is put into a robot body. When she wakes she goes after the gypsy too. Even though everyone dies it has a pretty happy ending. Except for that gypsy bitch, she doesn't fair too well. The movie is shot in Sophia Bulgaria and the scenery is often rather interesting to look at. It's not a great movie but it's not awful either. It scores a 5.5 on the IMDb and that's pretty much about right. It doesn't take itself very seriously and that's something I like. It's going to appeal to the genre fan. For me it delivers enough sillyness to make me laugh and that's always nice.

Here's another movie lacking seriousness. In spades. Mars Attacks is a 1996 Tim Burton movie that's based on a series of trading cards. There's a huge big name cast and lots of special effects and CGI. It's amazing how far the CGI has come in 16 years. The movie meanders around as we meet all the people involved in the story. When the Martian show up they don't do anything until the big meeting in the desert. It doesn't go well and against the wishes of head of the military the president sets up a meeting between the congress and the Martians. That doesn't go any better. Human's are pretty stupid and short sighted in this movie. Plenty of iconic buildings get destroyed as the Martians trash the human's world. Some of the human's fight back but it looks hopeless. The tide is turned when they find the key to the Martians defeat is singer Slim Whiman. The Martian's are defeated and the world is saved. It's pretty silly but consider the source. It still makes me laugh occasionally.  

Friday Night Movies 373

Greg returned from attending various cons with a stack of obsure movies. He'd picked up Crustacean because of his interest in Circus Sideshow Freaks. I was interested in a guy with lobster claws for hands so we took a chance with this 2009 horror comedy set in the world of sideshow freaks. It's written and directed by L J Dopp who's an award winning director of commercials. Crustacean is his only feature film and he did an ok job for little or no money. He also wrote the music, which I enjoyed, and he's the production designer. Professor Nightwind has a fake mustasche and a freak show that travels around the country. Neither is anythng to write home about. The sideshow's main exhibit is Lobster Baby, now a grown man, who's got lobster hands and antennae growing out of his forehead. The lobster guy is real unlike most of the freaks. He doesn't talk so they don't know his story. The show's wandering takes them to Lemur's Holler where doom awaits. You hear the lemurs off screen but you never see them. Their cries are explained this way; before the civil war some lemur's got out of their cages and ran off into the woods where they've thrived. One of the local gals falls for Lobster Baby and the feeling is mutual. When some hillbillies let Lobster Baby out of his cage later things don't go well. The only two families in Lemur's Holler don't get along. Turns out there's been lots of inbreeding and they are related. Some of them aren't too bright neither. There's plenty of inbreeding jokes, along with other staples of redneck humor, and while not all the jokes are funny but there's a good number of them. The movie is made by fans of the genre and that they lack in talent and cash they make up other ways. Joe Bob Briggs says there are 35 breasts in the movie but all but one come from two woman. Hanna Harper and Marie McCray are both pornstars so you know they aren't shy about doffing their tops. They handle all the nudity but for one brief shot with one of the other women. Watch the 7 minute trailer below.

   

It certainly gives you a nice look at the film and some of the goofy things in it. It might be all of the movie you need to see. I enjoyed it for the most part even though I know it's not a great movie but it's got a good sense of humor and I usually like that.

Our second feature was the 2011 Tsui Hark film Flying Swords Of Dragon Gate. It's a remake of the 1992 Raymond Lee film New Dragon Gate Inn which is a remake of the 1966 King Hu film Dragon Gate Inn. The former was produced and c0-written by Tsui Hark. Jet Li is a freedom fighter who attacks the beheading ceremony where some of his fighters were about to get the chop. Jet makes his entrance after some giant logs come busting out of a wall and drop on the crowd. It's a 3D movie but we didn't see it that way. In the Ming Dynasty evil eunuchs head the East and West Bureaus. The powerful organizations, that only answer to the Emperor, are fighting amongst themselves. Some chambermaids in the Royal Palace have gotten pregnant by the Emperor. No one wants more heirs to the throne and they're sent off to be executed. One gal escapes and when she's caught she's rescued by a woman fighter. They travel together into the desert toward the Dragon Inn. The evil eunuchs send men after the girl. The bureaus are also looking for Jet but he's hard to find. There's a huge storm coming and the people who run the inn are sending their customers to the local military fort when our various players start arriving. There are Tartars hanging out drinking. Their chief is a tattooed cutie that could kick my ass three ways to sunday. The local head of the one of the Bureaus shows up just after the pregnant gal and her warrior friend arrive. A criminal couple enter the picture and after a while Jet Li returns. The groups dance around each other until things heat up and the action starts in ernest. The storm blows in and we learn there's treasure out in the desert. You know someone can get stabbed for that and soon the blades are flashing. There's plenty of action, some comedy and a fairly quickly paced story. The Variety review I read complained that there wasn't enough character development ala Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and another review said this:

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate follows Tsui’s wildly successful Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame in removing the pretension abundant in 21st century wuxia, ditching the serious tone and grand romanticism that characterized the post-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon genre landscape. Instead of epic tales of love and betrayal we get fab iconography and copious martial arts action, plus fun characters and loads of Tsui Hark’s dizzy, infectious energy.

Funny, huh. I do agree with Kozo at Love HK Film in his complaint about CT-HD. Way too little fun in that movie. It's gorgeous but it sure didn't make me want to watch it again. Ang Lee sucks as a story teller in my eyes. I didn't like any of his films that I've seen and wouldn't watch the rest of them. I'd rather see some fun move with some good fights and entertaining characters. FSODG would be a movie I'd watch again. It's not out here yet, Joe ordered a copy from overseas. but it'll show up sooner or later. I'd pick on up when it does.

Cat's Eye = Yuck!!

I was going through some of the free movies on cable and I watched this 1985 Lewis Teague anthology movie with some interesting stars. James Woods, Alan King, Drew Barrymore, Robert Hayes, Candy Clark, Mike Starr and a few others. Teague had directed Cujo before this and seeing that movie once was enough. After Cat's Eye he directed The Jewel Of The Nile, the sequel to Romancing The Stone. I liked both of those but think I only have the first movie. After that he didn't directed anything much I was interested in. One of his earlier movies was Alligator and that was fairly good. Fun in a low budget giant critter movie kind of way. I haven't seen it in years. I checked out NetFlix and put their copy on my queue. Not sure when I'll get to see it what with it being disc 118 on the list. John Sayles wrote the script for Alligator. It was ok, there's a nice bit of humor in some fun scenes. Robert Forester is the main hero. The three stories in Cat's Eye are tied together by the cat in the poster. He appears in each story and acts as a bit of a catalyst. The cat was a better actor than some of them.

All three stories in Cat's Eye are by Stephen King who's also credited with the screenplay. Now I'm a fan of King's non-fiction magazine pieces but I've never finished any of his books. I only tired twice but I'm not much of a written horror fan. They're supposed to be scary but I just couldn't see it. Mostly I was bored and I never finished either The Shining or The Stand. I have rarely not finished a book I've started. I bet there are less than ten books on that unread book list for the whole of my reading life. Anyway, the first story in Cat's Eye has James Woods signing up for a no-smoking program with Alan King's company. Some of you, who are older, might remember King from his stand up comedy routines on 60's and 70's variety shows. Occasionally he acted in movies. In this movie his stop smoking program uses aversion therapy, with a side dish of kilowatts, to make you quit. Here's the twist. If you smoke, and they'll know because they're watching all the time, it'll be your spouse that gets tortured. They'll toss her into a metal cage and zap her with electricity. You'll have to watch her get shocked, listen to her scream, watch her leap around. You know that won't go well when you get home later. A second cigarette and it'll be the daughter doing the electro-boogaloo. Third time, Alan King tells James, we'll rape your wife. They have an ugly evil man on retainer for that job. Fourth time, Alan flashes his gun, is the last time. At this point I found the whole premise so stupid that I fell out of the movie and yelled at the images on my tv. I should know better, that movie is too stupid to listen. You know I like me some dumb ass stuff but I just couldn't believe that anyone would go along with this program. It's level of stupidity is high, even for a horror movie. Alan and his crew bully James who tries to fight back but he's a weak ass pussy and he fails. I have no respect for that guy and sure enough he let's me down even more by signing up for Alan's weight loss program. It's pretty simple and less tortureous for the family. If you don't keep your weight down, they'll snip a bit of flesh off of your body to help remind you they're watching. Keep you on your toes, which along with fingers are perfect for the snip, snip, snip. There's not much of an ending. Very disappointing.

The other two segments are slightly better and that's only barely. They aren't even Night Gallery good and the whole movie rates a 6 on the IMDb. That's too high for me but there you go. In the 2nd story Robert Hayes plays a washed up tennis star who's goal is to run off with the wife of a gangster. What? Smack to the head! How stupid is that? Perhaps playing tennis makes you stupid. Of course the gangster kidnaps Robert and forces him to walk around the 38th floor of his apartment building on a 5 inch ledge. If Robert makes it he gets to live. The gangster will toss in a $50,000 cash prize and the gangster's wife. Living and cash are great but a gangster's wife makes no sense. No sane person would want a gangster's wife. Baggage like that gets your ass drown in a river. Robert does make it around the building  even though the gangster keeps trying to knock him off the ledge. A poor loser the gangster kills his wife. Robert flips out and after getting the upper hand he forces the gangster to do the same stroll in the clouds. Our bad guy falls off the building but the poor animation of the falling body ruins the scene. End of story two. The third story is a supernatural one with a little tiny demon. It's nothing special. Candy Clark plays Drew Barrymore's mom and the cat that appears through out the movie shows up to help her fight a little demon that came in to the house. By then I didn't care enough about the movie. I'd skip this one if I were you but if you want you can watch it here.

Science Fiction Sunday 181

 

I hadn't seen these two movies in ages. Barry Sonnenfeld directed both films that are based on a comic. I didn't like the few issues I read very much, the movies are much more entertaining. There's a new MIB movie coming later this month. In the first movie we learn that there is a secret world of aliens living on our earth. Tommy is one of the Men In Black who keep the aliens in line and undercover. Tommy's partner retires and he picks Will Smith to be the replacement. Lots of new things to learn and space critters to shoot. Luckily they have some big, and small, chrome plated guns. All shiny and blasty. The delightful Rip Torn plays the head of the secret organization. In the first movie from 1997 an alien bug critter comes to Earth and takes the skin off Vincent D'Onofrio as an ill fitting disguise. He's looking for a galaxy that is hidden on the earth. It's up to the guys to kick his pointy ass. Tommy retires at the end of the movie and returns in the sequel which came out in 2002. Some mad aliens are planning to blow up the Earth unless the Light of Zartha is returned. If it isn't returned it will blow up and destroy the Earth. What a predicament. Tommy was the agent on the case and Will goes to get him out of retirement. They have to get Tommy his memory back. Will falls for Rosaio Dawson and that doesn't turn out so well. It's a lonely life in the service. They still make me laugh after repeated viewings. I'll be keeping an eye out for the dvd of the third movie later this year.

Friday Night Movies 372

We watched the BluRay of Johnny English Reborn. It came out last fall but I missed it. I had seen the first movie which came out in 2003 and enjoyed it for the most part. Johnny English is a frustrating character. I find it hard to watch some of his bumbles. Rowan Atkinson plays a bumbling spy. You might have seen him in Mr Bean or in the Black Adder series. Johnny has been been banished from the MI7 for a really bad bungle. He's learning martial arts in a monastery in Tibet for the last 5 years. The head monk guy sends him back to MI7 for a mission. Gillian Anderson is his new boss. She wants Johnny to figure out who's trying to kill the Chinese premier and stop it. Johnny gets help from Daniel Kaluuya, whom I liked, as the younger agent who looks up to Johnny. Rosamund Pike, who's the MI7 behavioural psychologist, becomes infatuated with Johnny and they eventually hook up. None of us were sure what she sees in him but that's the magic of movies. There's a pretty good villain who sends a delightful Asian hit granny after the owners of the three keys that figure so prominently in the story. Johnny battles her through out the movie, getting and losing the keys along the way, and granny mostly kicks his ass. Even though he manages to get through the case alive, and save the premier, he sure pulls a lot of boners. At one point he mistakenly punches out the Queen. You'd think he'd learn. There are some laughs but it dragged a bit for me and I get frustrated with his mistakes. How can a guy that dense get to where he is. Still people seem to like bumbling ass fellows in comedy films. I wish I did more.

The Tripperis a 2007 movie that was produced, written, directed and edited by David Arquette. It's a politics laced drug fueled horror comedy that mostly made me laugh. It's filled with in jokes and obscure references from politics, ecology and film. Paul Ruebens is a music festival promoter who's in the Santa Cruz area to hold a Free Love & Music Festival in the woods. Rick Overton is the mayor of a small town and Thomas Payne is the local head cop. David's brother Richmond Arquette plays the half baked deputy. Jamie King is part of a group of young adults going to the festival in the woods. Lucas Haas and Jason Mewes are also part of the group of 6 people in the blue van. David Arquette plays one of three rednecks. Their meeting with the van people doesn't go well and people get hurt. There's a backstory that creates the monster, in a Ronald Reagan mask, that walks the woods today. People start getting picked off, one or two at a time, then bunches. The first is a completely naked guy strolling through the woods, willie waggin'. Eventually Ronnie gets to chopping up the core cast. Thomas Jane chases after the insane guy in the Ronald Reagan mask who chops up a lot of people before he's shot by Thomas and beaten with a hammer by Jamie. There's some fun stuff and the movie doesn't drag too much. There's a lot of drug POV footage, most of which works well enough. They joke about it on the commentary. KNB does the gore effects and they do a good job. The movie cost about $3 millon and it looks pretty good for being shot on Super 16 and transfered to digital. Critics didn't like it very much and I'm not sure why. I thought it was fun enough. It was less than three bucks at Half Price Books so I didn't waste that much money. I'll watch it again sometime down the road.

Science Fiction Sunday 180

I hadn't watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space in a while. It's an alien invasion that's heavy on comedy and murderous clowns, or killer klowns as The Chiodo Brothers wrote in the title. The brothers are artists and effects guys and this is their only movie. They still work doing special effects for films. Stephen Chiodo directed the movie in 1988 and on the 2001 dvd the brothers says they are going to do a sequel in 2013. That's coming up, less than a year, wonder if they will do it. If you haven't seen KKFOS it's a nice mix of horror, comedy and science fiction all colored up in a rainbow of colors. It starts like a teen comedy with couples parking in the woods to make out. That's where we meet our hero couple Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder who are making out in the back of his SUV. After a brief comic interuption from a pair of ice cream selling comic relief machines a big fiery ball shoots across the sky. Grant and Suzanne think it's a meteor and decide to go check it out. Royal Dano is a farmer who's sitting on his porch with his dog when the meteor falls near. Royal and the bloodhound go check it out. They find a colorful circus tent with lights and music. It turns out to be a spaceship. Royal's brief encounter with the klowns leaves him pretty much dead and wrapped up in a pink lightbulb shaped cotton candy blob. The Klowns head into town to blast citizens with their rayguns turning them into cotton candy. Our hero couple show up at the tent and we get to seen the inside of the ship. It's pretty entertaining with colored lights, pipes all over, flashing control panels and a giant popcorn popper. We find out that the aliens are canning humans.

 

That's some of our klowns. They pie a guy so hard he becomes a smoking mound of goo. The pistol is nice, huh. John Vernon plays the local cop, a gruff old fart of a guy, who thinks the citizens calling about the klowns are pranking him. Jokes on him. Soon enough one of the klowns shoves his hand up John's ass and works him like a puppet. Haha, indeed. Our hero couple enlist the aid of the deputy and they fight back. Eventually the world is safe. Except if there's that sequel. Even after many viewings it still makes me laugh.

Not so Lost In Space, the 1998 movie based on the 1965 tv series. It's directed by Stephen Hopkins who's only directed one other movie I like. Predators 2. LIS is filled with great noisey special effects that look good but the story just isn't there. It's pretty much the same story as the tv show just all jazzed up by Akiva Goldsman. I don't care for many of his movies. William Hurt plays Mr Robinson and Mimi Rogers plays Mrs Robinson. Gary Oldman plays the evil Dr Smith, Matt LeBlanc plays the pilot, Heather Graham plays Judy Robinson, Lacy Chabert plays Penny Robinson and Jack Johnson plays Will Robinson. The evil doctor sabotages the ship and after plunging into the sun they warp somewhere. They encounter a large earth spaceship and investigate. They are attacked by critters and while escaping they blow up the other ship's engines. They are too close and the explosion makes them crash on the planet below. Lots of stuff happens but I just wasn't that interested.  There's a sort of happy ending but by then I was almost sorry to have bought the dvd. I guess that one should go on the get rid of pile.

I also watched The Last Broadcast this morning. It's not science fiction but I hadn't seen it in a while and thought I would throw it on the dvd player. It's a movie that cost $900 to make, and that's 1998 dollars, so that must be closer to a grand today. According to the Wikipedia it did about $12,000 business at the box office. It's a documentary about a death of the cast and crew of a paranormal cable tv show. The 4 guys go out to the woods to look for the Jersey Devil and only one of them comes back alive. Two are found dead near the camp and the other man's body never shows up again. The live guy is hooked for the murders and sent to prison where he dies mysteriously while the film maker is making this documentary. There's a bit of a twist ending so I won't give that away. It's not great or anything but it's interesting enough. I found it more entertaining than that othe movie about the Jersey Devil The Blair Witch Project. I sold the dvd to TBWP soon after I saw it. I wouldn't watch TLB very often. You can watch the while thing here. You might like it. 

Burn 'Em Up Barnes - a Mascot Serial in 12 Chapters

 

I watched Burn 'em Up Barnes today and it turned out to be pretty entertaining. You can see it at the Internet Archive. It's got Jack Mulhall as a race car driver who feels guilty when his cameraman friend was killed during a race. He let the guy sneak into a restricted area on the track with a dangerous curve and a car went right through the camera. Before dying the friend asks Jack to take care of his kid brother who is played by Frankie Darro. Lola Lane plays the pretty lady with the school bus company that's barely holding on to solvency. A chance meeting puts her and Barnes together right when he's looking for a new enterprise. He's adamant about staying out of the race business. That doesn't last long before he's back behind the wheel again. Edwin Maxwell, Jason Robards, and Francis McDonald all play the villains. Robards is the father of Jason Robards Jr. Maxwell, a rich car company guy, wants Lola's land because he knows there is oil on it and she don't. He can make millions for $5000, if only he can get her to sell. It's touch and go, she nearly signs off several times before he finally scares her into selling the land. Lucky for her Jack and Frankie, with the aid of comic relief machine Julian Rivero, keep battling back until they finally beat down the criminals. Happy ending. Yay! The story is ok, there's a bit of romance, and the action is typical of the time.

 

One stand out is Frankie Darro who has some interesting action bits. He climbs up walls and jumps into cars windows just like Jackie Chan would do 40 years later. In one nice sequence in Chapter 12 he gets chased on foot. He jumps up and grabs a small pipe (above left) then he uses that to get him to the large pipe which leads to the fire escape and several open windows. It's a nice bit of work, with great timing, that Jackie would have enjoyed. I know Jackie has great respect for the silent actors who did their own stunts. Darro worked in pictures for 51 years. He started in 1924 at age 6 and 9 years before the end of his career he did a couple of episodes of Batman in 1966. He's said to be inside Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet in 1956. I've seen him in several movies from the 1930's. Most of them are on the IA. The rest of the cast does a good job and there's plenty of stuff to do. A fun bit of entertainment that is worth taking a look at.

Typepad jsut added a nice feature to the blog. It automatically collects links to names and gives you a menu of choices. Click and the name is automatically linked. Sweet.

Friday NIght Movies 371

Helldriver is a 2010 Japanese film about an alien invasion that turns half of Japans population into flesh eating zombies. It's an everything and 2 kitchen sinks kind of movie. Sponge like it's pulls in so many bits and pieces from all sort of genre movies that I wouldn't want to list them. It's gorey and over the top but sadly not a great movie. The director, writer, editor, makeup artist and character designer Yoshihiro Nishimura is pretty indulgent. He did makeup and special effects on The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police and Samurai Princess amongst others. He directed TGP and SP and ten more films most of which I haven't seen. A meteor punches a hole through Hara's mom, a really evil bitch, and mom rips Hara's heart out of her chest. She's the embodiment of the entitled. Somehow she fuses Hara's heart in her chest, perhaps by magical evil will power. There isn't much reality in this cartoon like movie. A goo covers both women. A fountain of black particles come pouring out of mom. They infect the population and mom becomes Queen of the zombies. Hara, somehow still living but in a coma, gets a mechanical heart and a chainsaw sword as part of a government project. She wakes up after several months to find the world is a really fucked up place. She gets in trouble and in jail she's given the chance to join a group going into zombie territory to attack the queen. She's got it in for mom and she goes on the trip. It's one battle after another with lots of goo and blood and limbs flying. We did see some things that we hadn't seen before, like a giant human shaped mound of zombies that grab a couple of missiles so it can fly or a car made from the body parts of zombies. It seems like a lot of the movie was shot on green screen and backgrounds added. It doesn't look good at times. It's not much better than average but it sure packs in a lot of stuff in it's 117 minutes. It doesn't drag so much as suffer from too much repetition and over long scenes. The director likes huge fountains of blood pouring out of chopped off arms and heads, like there's a firehouse inside the body, after you see that several times it starts to tire. It's mostly comic but occasionally it gets too much like torture porn for me and that's sure not going to make everyone happy who sees it. Here's the trailer. It might be all you need.

 

Sperhauk had a copy of Werewolves on Wheels. You can watch it on YouTube above. It's a 1971 biker movie with hardly enough werewolves for my taste. We follow some bikers, played by some real bikers mixed in with actors, as they drive around the US southwest doin' their biker thing. It's pretty darn dull, except for a funny encounter with a weird guy at an isolated gas station. Nice hat, dude. The guys stop in near a monastery and the monks give them bread and wine. The guys give them some trouble and they get cursed by Severn Darden. The gang members start getting attacked in the night. We only see a shadow of a beast and some growls. The werewolves don't appear until near the end and it's shot in the dark so we don't see much. Not totally horrible, kind of draggy, but a bit of an oddity. It is a biker werewolf movie and here's a chance to see it without spending any money.

Science Fiction Sunday 179

The 1953 Jack Arnold film It Came From Outer Space has always been a favorite. It's a good reminder to aliens, if you come here, you might get killed by an unruly mob of scared jackasses. Damn! Some people are jerks, huh. Not so Richard Carlson, he works hard to help the aliens, even after they take his girlfriend. As the movie opens Richard, an astronomer, is out with driving in the desert with his gal when they see a meteor crash. The next morning they fly out to the crash site with a friend who has a helicopter. There's a big hole and Richard runs down there only to find a ship and an alien. Yoww! he says and runs back to his friends, escaping as the ship is covered in a landslide. No one believes him in the town but when strange things start to happen the police finally give him some credence. The sheriff wants to kill the space creatures and while Richard keeps him in check for a while it isn't long before he's got a mob with guns marching on the ship. Richard finds a way to the ship through an old mine and aids the aliens in escaping the planet. It's a well told story with fair effects for the time. Ray Bradbury wrote the original story and Harry Essex wrote the screenplay. Having the aliens being uninterested in conquest was pretty uncommon for the time. Mostly people have seemed to like the movie. It's called a classic a lot and it scores fairly high on the IMDb. The movie moves along pretty well and it's got a nice ending. It's definitely one that should go on the SF movie shelf.

The 1959 Journey To The Center Of The Earth is probably more adventure fantasy than science fiction but it was sitting near the previous movie and I wanted to watch it again. I like following James Mason and Pat Boone on their trip through the bowels of the earth until they are blown out of a big hole. I certainly want to watch it, not experience it. The movie starts in Edinburgh when we meet Professor Lindenbrook (James Mason) and his student Pat Boone. Pat likes the professor's daughter. He brings the professor a nice volcanic rock as a present. It leads them to a clue about the Arnie Saknussem expedition nearly 300 years before. There's some suspense and murder as soon as they get to Iceland as Arnie's ancestor kills a rival professor. See, already being a spectator is paying off. James and Pat join forces with the widow of the dead professor, a tall Icelander and his goose. They head into the cave that Arnie's message pointed them toward and then it's all tunnels and monsters and caverns and man eating plants and underground oceans and lava until they get back home. Oh, yeah, Atlantis is there too. The movie is quite different from the book it's been adapted from. The 1959 special effects are fairly good and the sets are interesting and often fairly large. The story is a bit exciting at times, occasionally there's a bit of humor. The dvd is the 2002 restoration and it looks pretty darn nice. Parts of the movie were filmed in Iceland and Edinburgh, with some of the underground stuff filmed in Carlsbad Caverns. Another good movie to have in a collection and certainly one of the most entertaining of the adaptations of Jules Verne's novel.

Friday Night Movies 370

Joe brought the Rudy Ray Moore film Shaolin Dolomite from NetFlix. I'm not a big Rudy fan, his work is some of the poorest of the Blaxploitation material you can see, and this is probably at the bottom of that stack. It's Rudy in what can be barely called scenes filmed in 1999 that have been cut into a 1986 Tiawan action film by Robert Tai called Ren zhe da or Ninja: The Final Duel. Rudy is in the movie for 8-10 minutes and has no real interaction with the Tai film. His scenes are dubbed poorly, mostly he just mumbles, swear and muggs for the camera. The rest of the movie has been dubbed with dialog that been spun to a black audience. Tupac steals a bell from the Wu-Tang clan and joins up with some ninjas. One of them is Ninja Ho, a gal who in one fight doffs her top and battles with some bare titties. She doesn't do that again and the movie is poorer for it. Tupac's got it on for a Shaolin Temple and the Abbott. He attacks. The temple joins forces with a couple of fighters from the Shabazz clan and Davey Crockett. I don't know how he got there but I do know that Asia is a mysterious motherfuckin' place. The fights are fair but it's strictly 1970's old school. There's lots of jumping and acrobatics but that's not enough to keep my attention. The movie at 110 minutes is far too long and I could barely keep my eyes open at one point during the last big fight scene. There's not much reason to buy this that's for sure. It's not even bad enough to get more than a chuckle from and Rudy just isn't that entertaining here.

The 2011 Japanese film Yakusa Weapon with Tak Sakaguchi was much more entertaining. It's a violent action comedy about a falling out between Yakusa. Tak is the son of one family and he had a falling out with his father some years before the movie starts. He's a mercenary in South America but when Red Tiger tells him of the death of his father he returns home. Dad was double crossed and murdered, shot 108 times. Tak wants to get his revenge on the new family boss. He battles them in some fun fights and after getting his arm and leg blown off he's taken to hospital where they attach an artifical arm and leg that are the "best of Japan". That means they installed a machine gun on his arm and a rocket launcher in his knee. They're transformable so you can't always tell he's got a machine gun arm. There's lot of whacky shit like that in the movie. One guy uses the dead body of his girlfriend to create a naked woman weapon that has a machine gun in the neck hole and a bazooka that shoots rockets out of it's vagina. There's a lot of yelling and martial arts. Tak has a couple of pals who help him out and he gets hooked up with his old flame, other than that it's mostly a gettin' vengence movie. It might be a little long at 106 minutes but it sure doesn't plod along like our first feature.