PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1016

Upgrade 2018 Written and directed by Leigh Whannell.

Grey is a car restorer takes his wife Asha along to meet a client called Eron who lives in a massive hole in the ground by the sea. Eron reveals his new chip to the couple. On the way home the couple's car fails and they are attacked by criminals. Asha is killed and Grey has his spinal cord cut. Months later Grey is approached by Eron who wants to install the STEM implant. Eron claims Grey will walk again.

The chip does work and it talks to Grey. It  helps him get revenge on the men who murdered his wife. The chip can take over his body and make him a super fighter. He starts killing the people responsible. The police are on his trail but they have no idea how he could be killing anyone what with being a paraplegic. Eventually the whole story is revealed and it's all bad AI. Most everyone dies.

It's a fairly good action revenge film with a downbeat ending. Not something I would want to watch again.

Assassin Of The Tsar 1991 Written by Aleksandr Borodyansky and Karen Shakhnazarov, directed by Karen Shakhnazarov.

Malcolm McDowell is an inmate in a Russian mental asylum called Timofeyev. It's 1991 and a new doctor arrives to take over. He meets Timofeyev who claims to have killed both Tsar Alexander in 1881 and his grandson Tsar Nicolas II in 1917. In reality the assassins were two different groups of Russians. Timofeyev also tells the new doctor he died, twice. The new asylum doctor talks to the retiring doctor. Big parts of the movie are flashbacks of the assassinations.

It's vaguely interesting but I don't know much about the death of the Tsars. I was struggling to stay awake in the middle act but it's soporific quality knocked Joe out for nearly half an hour. Malcolm did a great job with the character, that was the highlight of the movie for me. It's not enough for me to sit through the movie again.

Curfew Series 1 2024

Curfew Series 1 2024 Adapted from the 2022 novel After Dark by Jayne Cowie, screenplay by Lydia Yeoman, Jess Green and Sumerah Srivastav, directed by Joasia Goldyn.

In the future the Britain government have placed a curfew on men, they have to stay home from 7 PM to 7 AM. This has cut violence on women but it's left the country fractured. The only men allowed out after curfew work for the police and emergency services. All men wear an ankle bracelet which is monitored by the police. Step out of your gaff after 7 PM and the police will be right over to pick you up. The police use GPS to track men and road cameras to track everyone day and night.

A woman is murdered and her body dumped in front of the Women’s Safety Centre, District One, London. It creates a stir in the press and the community. It has to be a woman who did the deed, there were no men in the area when it happened. The news gets to blaming and the people are riled up. We follow some cops around as they investigate, connections and clues lead them to a family but there's no evidence. It's there but the police didn't make the connections well enough. We also learn some of the women in the police force had an agenda, stuff was covered up to support the curfew before the oncoming election.

Sadly for those ladies things fall apart and plenty of bad news gets out, the story starts with a mundane, cliched murder, then it drags us through a clumsy police investigation and ends with a vague future. It's not something I'm planning to watch again.

The Quatermass Xperiment 1955

The Quatermass Xperiment 1955 Based on the BBC TV production The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale, screenplay by  Richard Landau and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. Produced by Anthony Hinds for Hammer Film Productions. I watched the Kino Lorber Blu-ray.

Brian Donlevy plays Professor Bernard Quatermass, he's waiting for the rocket ship he launched into space to return. The ship crashes and only one man of the three man crew emerges. He's damaged and can hardly communicate with anyone. The only evidence of the other two are their still sealed spacesuits. They take the astronaut to the Rocket Group's hospital to see Doctor Briscoe and Doctor Blake. They don't know what happened to him.

The Astronaut mutates, his hand merges with a cactus, he kills the man his wife sent to get him out of the hospital. He scares his wife and goes on the run. He kills some people who cross his path, eventually he mutates so much they need to kill him. It's not a good film to recruit astronauts but there's no room in science for feelings. 

It's a pretty good film and I've seen it a few times before. The KL has two commentaries, one with Val Guest and another by Gary Gerani. There are some interviews and featurettes with Val Guest. They don't have the US version of the film, The Creeping Unknown, but they do have a featurette on the differences between the two versions. Over all a nice Blu-ray, one I plan to watch again sometime in the future.

 

Baba Yaga 1973

Baba Yaga 1973 Based on Valentina by Guido Crepax, screenplay and direction by Corrado Farina. A Italian and French co-production.

A young woman called Valentina gets hit by a car, the woman who hit her calls herself Baba Yaga, she tells Valentina their meeting was per-ordained and drives Valentina home. On her steps Baba Yaga takes the clip from her garter claiming she'll return it tomorrow. That night Valentina has some vivid dreams, the next day she meets up with Baba Yaga and gets her clip back. Baba invites Valentina to visit her house. Her visit is the first of a series of weird events which reveal Baba Yaga as a bit of a baddie, maybe she really is a witch.

 

Like the comic book the movie has a bit of nudity and sexy goings on. Despite that there's a lot of dead time in the movie. People stare into the distance a lot. It didn't do so well in theaters. It could of used a bit of humor and more naked ladies. I didn't dislike it but I'm not going to re-watch it any time soon.

Science Fiction Sunday 815

Magellan 2017 Written by Scott Baird and Rob York, directed by Rob York. An SF movie I watched on Amazon Prime.

An astronaut goes on a 10 year mission to the moons of some of the larger planets. NASA has picked up some signals from there. The astronaut picks up the transmitters and starts touching them with his bare hands. Things get a bit odd before the movie peters out.

It's rather dull and frustrating. The astronaut doesn't act very much like an astronaut. His rather cliched wife doesn't have the mental capacity to deal with his long absence. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Alien Hunt 2024 Written and directed by Aaron Mirtes. An SF film made in Tennessee. It was on Amazon Prime.

Some hunters have to deal with an alien creature that looks remarkably like the alien in Alien. It's got a so-so script that's filled with cliches, the actors are amateur, the sets and setting says low budget. I'd give this one a miss.

The Cleaner Series 3

The Cleaner Series 3 Written by Greg Davies and directed by Tom Marshall. The 6 episodes aired on the BBC the other day.

Greg Davies returns as Wicky, he's a crime scene cleaner. There's only one other regular cast member, Zita Sattar plays Ruth, Greg's girlfriend. Every day Wicky's off to a different location where there's been an accident or murder, there's usually some blood in need of a good cleaning. Wicky meets some weird characters and a bit of danger.

The guest cast includes Steve Pemberton, Rosie Cavaliero, Ben Willbond, Gemma Whelan, Vicki Pepperdine, Paula Wilcox, Sheila Reid, Sharon Rooney and more that I didn't know.

The stories are funny, I laughed out loud quite a bit. The first two series are on Britbox, I suspect the third will turn up soon.

The Spider Woman Strikes Back 1946

The Spider Woman Strikes Back 1946 Written by Eric Taylor and directed by Arthur Lubin. Part of Universal's monster collection. I watched the Lino Lorber Blu-ray. Gale Sondergaard played the Spider Woman in the 1943 Sherlock Homes film The Spider Woman. This film isn't a sequel to that film but Universal hoped they could get sequels to this. They never happened.

Gale is the town's richest woman and she's got a lab in her basement where she robs younger woman of their blood to create a serum. Brenda Joyce plays a young woman who takes the job of Gale's secretary. Rondo Hatton plays Gale's man servant. It takes a while for Brenda to cotton on to her predicament but she manages to get away at the end.

Sadly it's barely average. Some say it helped kill off Universal's horror line. Universal didn't even put it out on Blu-ray. Lubin claims he hated the film, he didn't want to direct it, he was forced by his Universal contract. A lot of this background is covered by Tom Weaver and David Schecter on the audio commentary. That was almost more interesting than the movie. There's a nice making of featurette on the making of the movie.

Friday Night Movies 1015

China O'Brien 1990 Story by Sandra Weintraub, screenplay and direction by Robert Clouse. We watched the Vinegar Syndrome 4K/Blu-ray set.

Cynthia Rothrock plays China O'Brien, she's a cop who quit the force after killing a kid who was threatening the police with a machine gun. She goes home to visit her father in a small town that's being taken over by a criminal gang. Her father is the sheriff and he's fighting a losing battle. After he's killed by the crooks China decides to run for sheriff. There's plenty of fighting, shooting and explosions as the criminals make their grab for the town.

Lucky for China and her new friends the criminals are pretty poor at that. Richard Norton and Keith Cooke are her new pals. They're both decent at martial arts, laying some beat downs on the baddies. Sadly most of the stunt men seem to struggle at lumbering. Back in the 90s when Jackie Chan was trying to gain a hold in the US market he complained that the US stunt men were way too slow. Jackie was throwing 2-3 punches before the US stuntmen could react. That's the problem here, the US stuntmen aren't up to her speed. China and her pals clean up the town with some dubious policing methods.

Golden Harvest backed the film despite it being set in Park City Utah, they wanted to help make Cynthia more famous in the US. I'm not sure how much it helped for the movie to go direct to video and not get played in theaters. I thought I had seen this before but it's not on my watched movie list. After seeing it I doubt I need to see it again.

My Grandfather Is A Vampire 1992 Written by Michael Heath and directed by David Blyth. A New Zealand film with Al Lewis as a vampire grandfather.

A kid travels from California to New Zealand to visit his grandpa only to find he's rather sickly. They have some adventures and a bit of fun but grandpa gets sicker and dies. Surprisingly grandpa rises from the dead and that causes a whole lot of trouble. It eventually get resolved and there's a sort of happy ending.

It's kind of amusing, Al Lewis is fun but over all it's only average. I'm not going to buy it, I doubt I'll have the time to watch it again.

The Cabinet Of Caligari 1962

The Cabinet Of Caligari 1962 Written by Robert Bloch, produced and directed by Roger Kay.

Glynis Johns plays Jane, she has car trouble and seeks help from a nearby estate. Caligari is the owner and he's played by Dan O'Herlihy. They offer her a place to stay the night.In the morning Jane realizes she's become a prisoner. She becomes afraid of Caligari from the way he treats her. She seeks help from others on the estate including a young man called Paul. Odd things happen until there's a cathartic moment and Jane learns what's really going on around her.

I was kind of curious about the film, I've an interest in the 1919 original, I've a slight interest in Robert Bloch. It's got a good cast but the script is only fairly good. According to Bloch the screenplay was rewritten, and ruined, by Roger Kay. I enjoyed the first half the movie but my interest was flagging in the second half. It perked up briefly during the cathartic moment but it's still only average for me, I wouldn't think I'd give it another go around.

Spiritually A Cop 1991

Spiritually A Cop 1991 Written and directed by Wai Shum. A Chinese action comedy about a ghost and the police.

Fong Lui wanted to be a cop but the police force says he's too short. He gets killed near the start of the movie and a ghost pops out of his body. Stanley Sui-Fong Fung plays the head cop of the precinct, his main desire is to get married and go on his honeymoon. Hoi Mang plays a visiting monk who is the only one who can detect the ghost. He helps Fong get used to being a ghost. The ghost is a misogynist, he doesn't think women should be on the force. The monk helps him get past this too. Yukari Ôsnima plays one of the female cops in the precinct.

There's plenty of fights and some gun battles, most of the fights are fairly good. There are plenty of gags, not all the gags are great, misogyny comments aside, but a good number of jokes landed. It's pretty average but I enjoyed it anyway. I might watch it again.