PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 859

Nightmare Cinema 2018 Horror anthology film with 5 short films. Various people enter a deserted theater only to see a short film of their own death. Mickey Rourke is The Projectionist in the linking bits. Those scenes are written and directed by Mick Garris.

The films are heavily referential and copy iconic scenes from other horror movies. When the killer/hero in the first short suits up the scene is based on Bruce Campbell suiting up as Ash from the Evil Dead series.

The Thing in the Woods Written and directed by Alejandro Brugués. A crazed killer in the woods slaughters some college age characters. Alejandro is the director of Juan Of The Dead and that's worth seeing.

Mirari Written by Richard Christian Matheson and directed by Joe Dante. A woman has plastic surgery to fix the scaring on her cheek from a car accident. Richard Chamberlain plays the surgeon.

Mashit Written by Sandra Becerril and directed by Ryūhei Kitamura. A demon possesses children in a Catholic school.

This Way to Egress Written by David Slade and Lawrence C Connolly, directed by David Slade. A woman at a doctor's office sees the world decay around her.

Dead Written and directed by Mick Garris. A teenager is killed in a car jacking, he revives and sees dead people.

I liked some segments more than others but overall I thought it was worth seeing. I put the Blu-ray on my Wanted list at Amazon.

Captive Wild Woman 1943 Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, directed by Edward Dmytryk. A Universal picture it was followed by 2 sequels Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive. All three films are collected in the 6th volume of the Universal Horror Collection along with The Monster And The Girl. It's a good Blu-ray series from Shout Factory, though kind of pricey. Each film gets it's own disc and a commentary, a couple of the films get a trailer, and all have new 2K transfers. I wouldn't recommend the series for everyone but the Universal Monsters are favorites of mine and I was happy to pick the sets up.  Right now you can find the whole series over at Hamilton books for $42 each. They're usually over $50 each on Amazon.

John Carradine is a doctor scientist who's working with glands as a method of curing deformities. He takes an opportunity to steal a gorilla and turn it onto Acquanetta. John has to kill someone to get the glands to transplant in the gorilla and he's the sort of doctor who doesn't see a problem with that.

Mildred Davenport is Acquanetta's real name, she appeared in 10 movies between 1942 and 1953. She didn't appear in another production until she guested on The Adventures Of Grizzly Adams in 1990.

Milburn Stone is a big game hunter and lion tamer, he's supplies the lions and tigers for Lloyd Corrigan's circus. He's the one who captured the gorilla. Evelyn Ankers is Lloyd's secretary and Milburn's gal. Martha Vickers is Evelyn's sister, she's getting some curing at John's clinic. Clyde Beatty does Milburn's lion taming scenes via footage from The Big Cage and Ray "Crash" Corrigan plays the gorilla.

I thought it was entertaining but I like these old films.

Jungle Man 1941

Jungle Man 1941 Story and screenplay by Rita Douglas, directed by Harry L Fraser.

Buster Crabbe is awash with stock footage in this less than adequate adventure film. Sadly, a lot of the stock footage is so poor it's hard to see what going on. He's a doctor-scientist who's developed a serum to defeat the local fever. The serum is on a ship coming from the US, the ship has been suck by a German sub, the locals are in jeopardy. Lucky for them Buster is a great swimmer and the sunken ship isn't that far down anyway. They pad out the story with visits from outsiders and trouble makers. Footage of Angkor Wat stands in for the City of the Dead, it's where the outsiders are headed. It's below average but I speeded it up a bit and it only took about 45 minutes, instead of an hour. You can see it on YouTube in the link above.

Bomba The Jungle Boy Volume 1

Volume 1 of the Warner Archive Collection Bomba The Jungle Boy has 6 of the dozen Bomba films. They come on 3 DVDr discs and there are no extras. Johnny Sheffield plays Bomba in all the films which were released from 1949 to 1955. Johnny had played Boy in 8 of the Tarzan pictures. He retired from acting after after the Bomba series. The Bomba character was introduced in a series of books, 10 set in South America and 10 set in Africa, written by ghost writers under the pseudonym Roy Rockwood. I've read 5 or 6 of the South American series in the last 6-7 years. They turn up cheap enough used that I pick one up when I see it, usually about 3 bucks at HPB, I guess, no one hardly wants them anymore. I have thought it was odd that I don't see the African series at all. I could find them on ABE Books but then I'd have to start paying more than I want for them.

Hardly anyone wants to buy the movies either, or they wouldn't be in the Archive. I've seen them on Turner Classic Movies but how often do they turn up on there, every 2-4 years, I don't know. Even then people aren't running to vote for them on the IMDb. They sure don't have many votes: 209 on the 1st, 103 on the 2nd, 126 on the 3rd, 110 on the 4th, 102 on the 5th, and 114 on the 6th. I'm giving them all a 6, they might not all be that good but most of them are better than a 4 or a 5.

Monogram produced the movies and set them in Africa. Monogram wasn't a big studio and their budgets were small. There's plenty of stock footage, I've seen some of the same footage used in multiple pictures. During the first picture, they shot a bunch of shots of Johnny swinging through the jungle on vines. They used multiple cameras to film the same shots from multiple angles and used that footage in all the pictures in the series. You get to recognize some of the shots from picture to picture. Still, the first picture made a good bit of money, $500,000 on an $85,000 cost, and it would have made sense to continue with the series.

Eventually the series wound up in the Warner Archive, now I have them to enjoy. I'd already seen 3 of the series, all in this set, but I'm watching them all in order. It's been a while since I've seen them, so I've mostly forgotten everything anyway.

Bomba, The Jungle Boy 1949Written by Jack DeWitt and directed by Ford BeeBe. Jack might be most well known for A Man Called Horse and its sequels. Ford started writing in 1915 and directing in 1921. He retired in 1955. I've seen a good few of his films but nothing from the silent era.

It seems most of the visitors coming to Bomba's jungle area have a young lady about Bomba's age traveling with them. In the first of the series a wildlife photographer and his daughter are looking for critters to film. They get into trouble, Bomba rescues the daughter while the father and his men are looking for her. There are plenty of dangers but Bomba knows his jungle lore and he keeps the daughter safe. It's no Tarzan but it's good light hearted entertainment.

Bomba On Panther Island 1949 Ford Beebe is back in the director's seat and this time he's written the script. Nothing like two checks per movie.

Bomba's tacking a killer black panther when he encounters a brother and sister building an agricultural station. The brother is a real asshole but the sister is nice. Their maid is said to have the spirit of the panther in her and the locals are scared of her. Those locals aren't too keen on Bomba either. Then the brother nearly burns down the jungle. Bomba saves the day. Things go back to normal in the jungle when the white people leave. You just can't take white people anywhere.

The Lost Volcano 1950 Ford returns to write and direct another thrilling Bomba The Jungle Boy adventure.

That kid is Tommy Ivo, I'd just seen him in a couple of Durango Kid pictures last Wednesday, he's playing the same annoying kid here. He just never listens and is always getting into trouble. Tommy gets kidnapped by the guys on the left side of the picture. They want the gold and jewels that Tommy knows about. Bomba comes to save his ass and toss the baddies out of the area.

The Hidden City 1951 Carroll Young provided the script this picture and Ford Beebe is the director. Carroll wrote 5 Tarzan pictures and Jungle Jim.

Bomba is the one getting rescued this time. He gets hurt when the Emir of Hidden City sends men to kill him. What a dick, huh. Bomba falls in the river and gets pulled out by a young woman. She nurses him back to health and in one of those fairy tale stories it turns out she's really the true queen, not that dickish Emir. That guy really is a cock. Well all be glad to see the back of him. Bomba will set things right.

The Lion Hunters 1951 Ford's back rockin' the script and directing.

Some white people are kidnapping lions and Bomba is bugging the hell out of them by letting their stock go. You sort of feel sorry for the old guy who thought he'd invest his last buck trapping lions in zoos and it's all gone to shit. He should have bought himself a nice little bar somewhere. At least he doesn't end up like the greedy guy who he hired to help him trap the lions. That guy got his. Keep an eye out for Woody Strode as Walu.

Elephant Stampede 1952 Again Ford gets two paychecks for writing the screenplay and directing.

It's guys killing elephants that are plucking Bomba's nerve this film. That one guy is pretty much a scum bag. He'll kill anyone to get what he wants. Bomba is shot at repeatedly but he manages to keep from getting shot too much. He puts an end to the elephant hunting. The elephants used in the film are Asian elephants, they're easier to train, fake large ears are used to cover up their normally smaller ears. Movie magic, huh!

Well, all told I enjoyed the series. The stories are simple, the movies are short, they're nice to watch without having to think about them much.