PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Cycle Savages 1969

The Cycle Savages 1969 Written and directed by Bill Brame. It's the second film on the Midnite Movies DVD with Angel Unchained. Bruce Dern is a creep, he's part of a motorcycle gang of like minded garbage. People in the town are terrified of them and the cops are pretty weak ass. An artist sketches the gang at play and gets roughed up for it. That isn't enough in Bruce's tiny paranoid mind, he wants to cripple the artist's hands. That'll stop him. There's other bits of raping and looting going on and eventually some vengeance against the gang is delivered. It's a bit unpleasant and not that well made. It's not better than average for a biker movie. Neither of these are great but AU is more watchable.

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Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970 Director Pierre Chevalier co-wrote the story and screenplay with Juan Fortuny. Pierre directed 29 films in his 30 year career and this was number 17. You'd think after than many films he'd have learned something about making a film. Sure can't see any of his skill showing here and that's taking into consideration that the version I watched from YouTube has been edited down by several mins. The scenes that are left just fail on their own.

In France it was called La vie amoureuse de l'homme invisible and that translates to The Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The Canadian English title, dubbed version, was Secret Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The US poster used the title Love Life Of The Invisible Man. A lot of the foreign titles seem to be a version of The Invisible Dead, which was the UK title. Someone ought to get knocked in the nut sack for all those title changes, I suspect a lot of someones need a touch of Paul Naschy's fleshless skull. 

It's a period piece about a doctor's encounter with a mad scientist called Orloff. He lives in a nearby castle and his name is abhorred by the locals. A young boy comes with a message from the shunned castle, someone is requesting the new doctor come up to the castle to see a sick person. The doctor has a bit of a hard time getting there but eventually he does get to see Orloff's daughter. She's worried because she's seeing things moving on their own, she thinks there's an invisible man in the castle.

There really is an invisible creature, that's him above, Orloff tells the doctor he created him, then he locks the doctor in his dungeon. Orloff is zonkers, he's got delusions of his invisible creatures taking over the world. The doctor escapes and tries to rescue the daughter, she uses flower to see if the beast is following. In the scene the screencap is from the doctor throws flower on the beast. It's a bit of a let down.

Mostly it seems like a pale Jess Franco film, there's some fair bit of nudity, some flagellation, but no hot lesbian action like Jess has a tendency to drift toward when he's working. The film stumbles around and eventually ends in flames. The castle is burning and I'm burning with exasperation. What a piece of boring poop. Give it miss. I watched a 75 min version on YouTube, link above, and you can see that it's got a huge logo plastered over that lady's ass. It's not there all the time but it is annoying. I didn't mind it was shorter than the version over on Rarelust, it's a 4 GB download that I wasn't interested in bothering with. There's a DVD version but the cheap one, at $12, isn't as long as the expensive one at$38, the Blu-Ray is even costlier at $48. I can't imagine wasting money on that when there are other things to waste money on.

Murder In Space 1985 Written by Wesley Ferguson, directed by Steven Hillard Stern. A Canadian film for the CTV Television Network that had an accompanying contest to guess the killer. Most of the film was shown and people could call in to guess who did it. The conclusion of the film was shown several days later. There was a $60,000 prize. That seemed like that also could be the budget for the film. That poster is a lie, no one gets spaced.

Michael Ironside heads a 9 person crew on a mission to Mars. They've been gone 5 months and on the trip back a woman gets murdered. A lady Russian scientist is suffocated and it's found she's two months pregnant. She's married to a member of the government who's known to be vengeful and murderous. Three more people die before they get back to Earth. It's as much political thriller and murder mystery and investigations into the crew bring up all sorts of interesting back story.

Wilford Brimley is the head of the space project, Arthur Hill is the Vice President, Martin Balsam is the Russian liaison to the project. I don't think I recognized any of the other cast members. It's sort of interesting but it's not quite good enough to be much more than average. You can see it on YouTube in the link in the title above.

Metropolis 1927 Colorized version with English dialog. I started watching the fan edit version (see link above) but had to bail after about 20 mins because the English dubbed dialog was so annoying. I didn't mind the rather pastel colorization but the script was a buggin'! I kind of skipped through it and got to the end pretty quickly.

There's a more interesting looking colorized version here but it's title cards are in German. You can see the B&W restored version of the film on YouTube. It's a version, with English title cards, that you can buy on DVD or Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Looks pretty good. Watch that instead.

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Birds Of Prey 2019 Written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan. Plenty of rock'em sock'em action as Harley Quinn sets out to make her own life now that the Joker and her have split. Trouble is, there's a lot of people who want to do HQ in and now that she's got no protection from the clown guy, she's up shit's creek. At least she has that hyena. A missing diamond and a huge fortune hidden inside it bring Harley and the soon to be Birds of Prey together as they team up to protect the teenage girl pickpocket who's swallowed the diamond. There's one fight after another as the various people vie for the diamond. Eventually it's got a fairly happy ending. Well, not for some of the scumbags, they're ending was just an ending. It had a good number of jokes and some of them made me laugh. I'd buy the DVD but someone was nice enough to pass on the DVD out of their Blu-ray. I'll want to watch it again someday. Much more entertaining that the recentish HQ movie Suicide Squad.

Satan's Black Wedding 1976 Nick Millard wrote and directed the film under the name Philip Miller. Nick has 59 directing credits on the IMDb, many of them under another name, none familiar to me. It scores an amazing 4.8 on the IMDb and this time it's not top loaded, it gets a lot of 5s, 27.8% of the 241 votes. I have put it down at a 2 and that might be a bit harsh but if I wanted to see a travelogue I'd have watched one. So much of the 61 minute movie is people walking or driving in cars. It's not nice scenery either, even the 3 min walk on the beach is tedious and dull. A guy comes to some town to go to his sister's funeral and falls victim to a clutch of Satan worshiping vampires. On top of that he's got a weak script and limp direction. What a piss poor movie. Nick needs some tender nut knocking from the fleshless skull of Paul Naschy. That'll take your breath away Nick, let me tell you.

Addams Family Reunion 1998

Addams Family Reunion 1998 Absolutely awful.

Halloween With The New Addams Family 1977

Halloween With The New Addams Family 1977 Screenplay by George Tibbles, direction by David Steinmetz. George is a veteran writer who started writing an episode of The Betty White Show in 1954, over the years he wrote hundreds of TV episodes for shows like Dennis The Menace, Leave It To Beaver, The Musters, Family Affair, My Three Sons, One Day At A Time and The Partridge Family. He wrote right up to his death in 1987. This is the only listed credit for David on the IMDb.

John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, Ted Cassidy, Lisa Loring, Ken Weatherwax and Felix Silla all play their original parts from the 1960s TV show. Halloween is on the family and Gomez has a conflict. He's been invited by his lodge to Tombstone Arizona. Gomez's brother Pancho is staying with the family. There's a gang of crooks that want to rob the family safe. They've got cameras in the place but haven't figured out where the safe is located. They send in one crook dressed as a city inspector, Vito Scotti plays the guy, he barely gets out of the place alive.

The family is hosting a big Halloween party, the crooks sneak in to the party in disguise and look for the safe. They all suffer mental and physical damage from members of the family. Sadly, all the mayhem, yelling and physical violence isn't enough without good jokes. It's a poor movie, even with a happy ending. I guess it's the reason that no one has put it out on DVD. There was a VHS. I watched a copy on YouTube but can't really recommend it. I'll stick to the original TV series and some of the movies.

The Addams Family 2019

The Addams Family 2019 Story by Matt Lieberman, Erica Rivinoja and Conrad Vernon, screenplay by Matt Lieberman, directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon.

The movie opens with a bit of backstory on how the newly wed Gomez and Morticia wind up in a big old mansion on a fog shrouded hill in New Jersey. Thirteen years later civilization has moved in at the bottom of the hill and developers have drained the swamp that created the family's beloved fog. The lady in charge of the housing project is a psychopath that doesn't want to have the Addams family eyesore looking down on her development.

There's a subplot involving each of the two kids, Pugsley has to preform a sword dance at his coming out party before all the invited family members. Tuesday is intrigued by the world outside her house, she's never left the grounds of the family home her whole life, now she's going to try school.

There's plenty of noisy stuff and gags, I got a few laughs out of it. The look of the characters is truer to the original Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. They aren't an attractive family in those cartoons but they are funny. I'd happily watch the movie over again and I can, someone gifted me their DVD copy from the Blu-ray DVD combo. Nice. Feel free to send along any old DVDs you don't want.

Angel Unchained 1970

Angel Unchained 1970 Screenplay by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, direction by Lee Madden. Another of the MGM Midnite Movies series. Don Stroud plays Angel, he's part of a motorcycle gang who are having a fight as the movie opens. Angel leaves the gang and winds up on a hippie farm. He falls for Tyne Daly. The locals are pretty mean to the hippies and Sheriff, played by Aldo Ray, isn't much good for anything. Angel calls the biker gang in for some help. They're as much trouble as the locals. It's a good reminder that hanging with hippies or motorcycle clubs isn't that much of a good thing. It's about average for this sort of thing. Not going to be one of my top ten biker films.

Science Fiction Sunday 613

Sinbad The Fifth Voyage 2014 Director Shahin Sean Solimon co-wrote the screenplay with Evelyn Gabai. He also stars as the lead character Sinbad. I hadn't heard of him but I do recall seeing a trailer for his first film, a 2008 fantasy adventure film called Djinn, that I've still not seen. This film is a fantasy adventure too. I didn't know any of the other actors, except Patrick Stewart, he provides the narration as an older Sinbad. He's doesn't even have that many lines.

In the story Sinbad returns to his homeland only to find the Sultan and his court frozen in the palace. They free the Sultan and learn the princess was kidnapped by a villain called The Deev. Sinbad takes his crew and they set off to rescue the princess from the sorcerer. There's plenty of fighting, much of it with creatures. There's a fair bit of CGI with some stop motion animation to honor Ray Harryhausen. Quality of the production varies from scene to scene.

It's a pretty straightforward plot but one that doesn't have that good a script to support it. The actors aren't all equal, sometimes they just cant do much other than push their way through the dialog. The main baddy is painful to watch at times. Sometimes it was fast forward time. Over all it's below average and not something I would need to see again. All three films today came from Amazon Prime's free film selection.

Notzilla 2020 Written and directed by Mitch Teemley. Here's a parody of Godzilla that's made and set in Cincinnati. It's a bit of a mixed bag and probably more for the Godzilla fan. Some of the jokes are fairly funny but many are poor. I didn't like the scientist jokes much at all but I did like it that Notzilla had a visible zipper running up the front of the suit. It's a pretty low budget film and the CGI is appropriate for the budget. I got a few laughs out of it and might watch it again someday but I wouldn't buy the DVD unless it's under a fiver.

Shangri-La Near Extinction 2018 Written and directed by Nick Wauters. It's another post-apocalyptic film. Scientists create a biological weapon that got out of it's cage, it's a creature that takes over the minds and bodies of humans. At first they tried to kill the creature with a vaccine but that didn't work, in 2045 they created a man-made ice age to kill it. In the 500 years since that happened most people have died, little pockets of people have survived, there's a fair bit of working technology around. A guy is leading a small group in search of the legendary Shangri-La, a supposed safe haven. They have to keep an eye out for human's infected with creatures, mutated beasts and human paramilitary groups. Even the infected human's have broken up into different factions. There's plenty of flashbacks as the backstory gets filled in. I thought it was below average and sort of like a bunch of other films. The CGI was used fairly well but they didn't have a big budget so it looks better in some scenes than others. I'd probably never watch this one again. I didn't like spending time with the people in the group much. There isn't enough other good stuff to make me want to see it again.

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John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum 2019 Derek Kolstad created the characters and wrote the story, he's joined by Shay Hatten, Chris Collins and Marc Abrams on the screenplay, the director is Chad Stahelski.

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick and the movie starts where the second film ended. John's killed someone in the New York Continental and the High Table has decided that John's got to go. The $14 million bounty on John's head has everyone wanting to kill his ass. As John kills his way through the streets of New York, hardly anyone seems to notice these blatant killings going on. That's New York I guess. I read that the film's body count was 164.

John calls in a favor from the Director and heads for Morocco. He wants to find the Elder and he has to kill a lot of people to get to him. The Elder gives him a chance to redeem himself but he has to kill the Manager of the New York Continental then knuckle down to what ever the High Table want. He agrees.

The High Table has sent an Adjudicator to punish the Manager and the Bowery King for helping John in the last movie. They need to step down, they have a week to get their house in order. Neither is too interested in giving up their power. That will cause trouble in the third act and I'm guessing in the 4th Chapter.

John eventually gets back to New York and killing some more people. He joins the Manager in defending the hotel from an attack by the High Table. Eventually the Manager turns on John to save his own hide. Lucky for us the Bowery King's minions find John and bring him to their boss. From the convo, it looks like there's some vengeance coming in the 4th film.

Some people complained that the film was just more of the same but it did well at the box office. I have to admit the fights got a bit tedious. Nothing that a bit of speeding up won't fix. I enjoyed it well enough but it's going to be a while before I get back to the series. It'll have to be all over when I do.

The Flesh And The Fiends 1960 Director John Gilling wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Leon Griffiths. Robert S Baker and Monty Berman were the producers.

I had watched the British version of the movie on YouTube about a week ago. A few days later someone mentioned the Kino Lorber DVD on a film blog. It was released as having the British version of the film and, as a bonus, the shorter US release but the reviewer pointed out that the version on the film was really the slightly longer European version. I decided to order that and it came today. Tonight seemed like a good time to check out the two versions on the disc. The slightly longer European version has a bit of nudity in a couple of scenes. They often did that in the UK in the 60s. You could see boobies in the European market much earlier than the UK or the US. Since I'd just seen the film and the tiny differences were so unimportant to the story I decided to put on the commentary by Tim Lucas. Lucas has plenty of info on the film. He's usually fairly competent as a commentary.

The story is about Burke and Hare, the cash for corpses guys, and their enabler Dr Knox. Peter Cushing plays the doctor, George Rose plays William Burke and Donald Pleasence plays William Hare. The two scumbos see what a lucrative trade there is in the dead. They're quickly offered an opportunity, being skint, they take it. Money figures large and the men quickly turn to murder to get fresh corpses.

Even though others question Dr Knox's lack of interest in the legalities of the scheme he plows on ahead ignoring anything but achieving his vision of a well trained medical force. Eventually Burke and Hare kill too many, they're arrested and tried. Hare turns King's Evidence and Burke gets a ride on the noose. Hare's blinded by some locals. Dr Knox pissed off those same locals but they don't do anything like that to him. He's exonerated by the medial board and the movie ends with him receiving a standing ovation from his class.

In the real story, Dr Knox was slowly pushed out of the University, he lectured in the US but lost his license to do that. He had a small practice before he died. Hare was released from prison and after the police help him out of town, they abandoned him on a road to England, no one ever heard of him again.

I really enjoyed the film the first time and again the second time. I did watch the shorter version of the film, released in 1965 as The Fiendish Ghouls, but I fast forwarded through some of the scenes a bit. They cut about 20 minutes out. The important scenes are there but some good info is missed. The British version of the film had been released in the US in January 1961 as Mania and then as Psycho Killers. It wasn't too popular and didn't get such good reviews. Some have come to appreciate it over the years. I liked it enough and I hope to see it again someday.

Queens Of Mystery Series 1

Queens Of Mystery Series 1 I enjoyed the series a fair bit, it's very colorful and has a nice sense of humor. Olivia Vinall plays Detective Sergeant Matilda "Mattie" Stone, she's just gotten assigned to the town she used to live in earlier in her life. It's a town that's home to her three aunts. They are the ones that raised her from 3, her mother disappeared and she doesn't know who her father is, the sisters know more than they are telling.

Siobhan Redmond plays Jane Stone, Julie Graham plays Cat Stone, and Sarah Woodward plays Beth Stone. They are all unmarried mystery writers with Jane actually operating a mystery bookstore in a small town that's known as a book town. Mattie lives above the bookstore with Jane. Julia Stevenson is the narrator, she comments on the current story, what people are thinking and what's happened in their past.

There are three stories with six episodes. The first story is set in the book world, an author at a book event is murdered while giving his award acceptance speech. Sarah is actually a suspect and winds up in a cell. Mattie has to work to get her out.

The second story is set in the rock world, Cat Stone used to be in a rock band that made some records. She had to leave the band when she got pregnant. Now the band is getting back together. There are issues between the band members and some of them start dying.

The third story is set in the theater world. Jane's detective is being made into a play and it seems to be cursed, someone is killing the actors.

I was happy to watch the series and hope they can make the second series.