PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Ice House 1969

The Ice House 1969 Directed by Stuart McGowan. It was also released as Love In Cold Blood and The Passion Pit. It's a low budget horror-thriller with twin brothers David and Robert Story. Jayne Mansfield had been signed onto the picture but she died in a car crash just before shooting started.

Robert is an ex-cop, fired for being a baddie, he takes a job in an ice house. He makes a pass at at a local stripper but gets struck with a beer bottle. A second encounter gets the stripper strangled. He hides the body int he ice house and tries to keep people away from it. His brother David is a cop who's investigating the strippers disappearance. Robert doesn't like that much and he kills David and takes over his life. He quits the police force and takes over at the ice house.

There's not much more to the story than that. Plenty of nudity doesn't do much to make it a better film. The story is as poor as the acting. I wouldn't recommend it to much of anyone.

A Taste Of Hot Lead 1969

A Taste Of Hot Lead 1969 Directed by William Rotsler. No writer credited on the film or IMDb. Rotsler used to be active in SF fandom. He drew cartoons for fanzines. His day job was providing material for the naked lady industry.

It's a poorly made low budget softcore sex movie filled with poorly filmed sex scenes with some crazy people. Nothing to recommend in it.

Der Gorilla Von Soho 1968

Der Gorilla Von Soho 1968 Based on the 1924 Edgar Wallace novel The Dark Eyes Of London, screenplay by Horst Wendlandt and Alfred Vohrer, directed by Alfred Vohrer. Part of the series of Krimi films that Rialto studios released between 1959 and 1972. There were 39 films adapted from Edgar Wallace stories, more than a dozen adapted from Bryan Edgar Wallace works and more than 4 dozen by other writers. The films were mostly filmed in Berlin with location shots from around London to give the films an English feel. Der Gorilla Von Soho was released in the West under the title The Gorilla Gang. The book was previously filmed in England in 1939 and released in the US in 1940 under the name The Human Monster. That film is more horror story than crime story.

A gang of crooks run a charity, they murder rich men who sign over their money to the charity after they pass on. The crooks can't wait for them to die naturally, so they send a gorilla to kill the poor rich guys and toss their bodies in the Thames. The police notice the similar cases and send Inspector Perkins to catch the crooks before they kill more rich guys.

This adaption changes much from the original novel, it's rather more sleazy, scenes of the bleak nun run charity alternate with scenes of the sexy private gentleman's club that features semi-nude models to draw and photograph. It's got the usual sort of sleuthin', a bit of gore and that murderin' gorilla. It's fairly entertaining, I gave it a generous 6 on the IMDb, I'd watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 948

Space Monster Wangmagwi 1967 Written by Byeon Ha-yeong and directed by Kwon Hyeok-jin. A South Korean movie that's been unseen in the West until SRS Cinema licensed the film in 2022, they released it on media June 13 2023. I bought the DVD that was on Amazon.

SRS ruins the experience by having one of the loudest menu screens I've heard in a while. Another annoying thing, the box lies by claiming the film is 1080p but it's really 720p. It's probably talking about the limited edition Blu-ray which they don't sell through Amazon. They only made 2000 copies and aren't making anymore. I find the limited edition treatment as annoying as any really annoying thing.

Some space aliens invade the Earth, the giant monster guy is their weapon. He stumbles around a bit, scares the locals, knocks over some buildings, and uses a gas spray in it's head to burn some other office blocks. Despite the collateral damage it's hardly exciting stuff. A jet pilot, his wife and a homeless boy fight the monster and win. The aliens leave with their tails between their legs. The subplot with the bride and her mother was funny but it was really mostly padding to get the movie to 90 mins.

There were some funny bits and some odd bits. Different sense of humor. In a crowded space in a building a man really needs to go, he decides to go on a newspaper in a corner, the monster bumps into the building and he's knocked over into his own pooh. Across the room a woman gives birth to a child. There are several scenes with two scared guys, they just aren't that funny for the amount of screen time they get.

I did like the part where the homeless kid pees inside the head of Wangmagwi. That's not something you see very often. All in all it was kind of fun but not great. A lot of people on the IMDb, 19 out of 51 voters, gave the movie a 6 or a 7, I'm struggling to give it a 5.

Notzilla 2020 Written and directed by Mitch Teemley. It's a parody of kaiju films that was made in Cincinnati.

The JSDF kills a monster in Japan. A paleontologist takes her egg and heads for Ohio. Through a silly accident the eggs gets out of his control. An idiot scientist and his more capable assistant find the egg, it hatches and they try to take care of it. The paleontologist finds they and despite his warning not to get the monster beer, the idiot scientist does so. The little kids size monster grows really big and gets out.

There's a struggle between the idiot scientist and the paleontologist, the idiot wants to kill the creature and the paleontologist wants to revert him to his original zine. There's plenty of running about as they put their plans in motion. A romance develops between the paleontologist and the assistant.

There were a lot of jokes but I wasn't finding them that funny. A lot of it fell flat to me. It's almost like they're trying too a little too hard. It's got a good size cast and they all have a quirky personality. A bit tiring. There were so many in jokes and movie references they became rather distracting. Someone gave me a download, I'll keep it but I might not get back to it anytime soon. You can watch it on YouTube.

Agent 077 Trilogy

Agent 077: Mission Bloody Mary 1965 Written by Sandro Continenza, Marcello Coscia and Leonardo Martin, directed by Sergio Grieco. All three films are Italian, Spanish and French productions.

Ken Clark is Dick Mallory, a spy on the trail of the Black Lily, a bunch of criminals who've just stolen a nuclear bomb code named Bloody Mary. Dick tracks the gang from France to Spain and to Greece. I remember a lot of water and plenty of running.

Agent 077: From The Orient With Fury 1965 Written by Sandro Continenza and directed by Sergio Grieco.

Dick's trying to keep a disintegrator gun out of the hands of some baddies. They chase Dick from France to Spain and onto Istanbul in Turkey.

Agent 077: Special Mission Lady Chaplin 1966 Written by Sandro Continenza, Marcello Coscia, Giovanni Simonelli and Hipólito de Diego, directed by Alberto De Martino and Sergio Grieco.

This Dick is on the trail of a man who tried to sell a dog tag from crew member of a sunken nuclear submarine. The man is killed and Dick has to find the submarine on his own. When he does he finds the sub nukes are all missing. Oh oh!

They're all about the same production wise, the actors are good enough for dubbing. There's a fair bit of action, baddies fall left and right but there's nothing overly exciting about them, they aren't James Bond quality and not as entertaining as the OSS 117 series. You can find them all on YouTube, see links above.

Friday Night Movies 912

Blade Runner 2049 2017 Based on characters from Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, story by Hampton Fancher, screenplay by Hampton Fancher, directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Ryan Gosling is KD6-3.7, he's a blade runner for the LAPD, he's also a Nexus-9 replicant, nobody likes him. KD6-3.7 lives in the large LA sprawl and hunts rogue replicants, he retires them. It's a pretty crappy future, most everything is smog bound and it rains a lot. After KD6-3.7 retires a protein farmer a box is discovered on the property. It contains the remains of a replicant that died in childbirth. KD6-3.7's boss thinks this could be a bad thing to let the public know about, he wants the child found and destroyed.

Kd6-3.7 runs about getting into one scrap after another. People are dropping left and right. There are a number of factions interested in the child and the reproduction rights of replicants. The Wallace Corp is the main villain, the CEO has his pet psycho, a cold hearted murderin' lady. KD6-3.7 finds Rick Deckard in Las Vegas. No one goes there, it's all sand and radioactivity. There's a bunch of fighting when the psycho lady turns up, more people get killed, Deckard gets kidnapped and KD6-3.7 is left for dead. He's not. He sets off on a rescue mission.

It's quite a long movie, 164 mins, and there's a lot of slow moving stuff goin' on but it didn't drag too much. There's usually something to see but that future sure looks miserable. I mostly liked the movie but not as much as the first movie. I'd be curious to see a sequel. I see there's a TV show set 50 years in the future coming out from Amazon.

Massacre Gun 1967 Screenplay by Yasuharu Hasebe and Ryūzō Nakanishi, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Hasebe made a good number of films for Nikkatsu  including the Stray Cat Rock series.

Joe Shishido is Ryūichi Kuroda, a yakuza hitman and the eldest of three brothers. That's his brother Eiji on the right and Saburo on the left. Eiji is a yakuza and Saburo is an up and coming boxer. Boss Azakawa orders Ryūichi to kill his girlfriend. He goes home all miserable, Saburo tries to comfort him but fails. He's young and ignorant, he goes to Azakawa and confronts him. Saburo's going to quit boxing for him so Azakawa has both his hands broken. When the other two brothers find out things get out of hand and nearly everyone dies.

It's a familiar story, yakuza vs yakuza, high body count, little learned. The Arrow Blu-ray looks really nice. I'd certainly watch it again sometime but it's no Tokyo Drifter.

Blood For Blood 1971 Screenplay by Hideichi Nagahara, directed by Yasuharu Hasebe. Another Nikkatu gangster film by the same director as the film above.

Joe Shishido is a yakuza who gets out of prison after 5 years. He returns home to his old gang is being squeezed out by a couple of the local gangs and a gang from Tokyo. It's a blood bath as the rival gangs kill each other in vivid color.Hardly anyone gets out of this alive.

The film looks nice but the story is only about average. No matter, it's still one I'd watch again.

Das Phantom Von Soho 1964

Das Phantom Von Soho 1964 Based on the novel by Bryan Edgar Wallace, screenplay by Ladislaw Fodor, directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb. A German production with location shooting in London. In the US it was titled The Phantom Of Soho and a dubbed version has been in the public domain for a while. It turns up on those cheap DVDs from places like Mill Creek and Alpha Video.

A fairly decent version of the German version has turned up on YouTube. It's worth a gander for the Krimi fan or those who've seen the US version and liked it.

Someone is killing business men who visit the strip clubs of Soho. The police are having a heard time tracking down the killer. There's plenty of suspects but clues are few and far between. The chief of police gets a bit of an assist from his friend, a lady who writes mysteries.

A good solid crime story with a good cast. I liked the locations and sets. An entertaining film that's still so after 3 views. I looked at the first several minutes of the English dubbed version and the dialog is very similar to the English on the subtitles.

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals 1969

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals 1969 Written by William Edwards and directed by Oliver Drake.

I picked up a bootleg DVD second hand because I notice that the movie had John Carradine in it. He doesn't show up until the last quarter of the 80 min movie and he's only in it for 5 mins or so. Still, that might be the best thing about the movie. For the most part it's so poor in every way I couldn't bring myself to give it more than a 1 on the IMDb.

The story has Anthony Eisley come under the curse of the mummy of an Egyptian Princess called Akana. He's got her sarcophagus, and a second sarcophagus with another mummy in it, in his rundown house in Las Vegas.

Princess Akana comes alive after Anthony spends the night with her mummy. The overnight stay enables a curse that turns him into a werejackal under her power. Agitated, Anthony runs out of the house and kills a couple of Las Vegas cops. The Princess gets her orders from the god Isis. The ambitious god wants to see a return to power but the script fails her and her plans dissolve with the Princess at the end of the movie.

The mummy also comes alive and it's the fattest mummy I've seen in a long while. There's several scenes of the fat mummy and the werejackal running about downtown Las Vegas. The fat mummy winds up in a nightclub where he kills two dancers.

I can't stress how poor it is. You can see for yourself, there's a copy of the movie on YouTube, link in the title above.

The Wild Ride 1960

The Wild Ride 1960 Screenplay by Ann Porter and Marion Rothman, directed by Harvey Berman. The third of the films on the Biker Triple Feature DVD set.

Jack Nicholson plays the spoiled son of a well off family.  He's such an asshole and a danger to society. He plays chicken with a cop, the cop crashes and winds up in the hospital. No dash cams back in the day and the cop never regains conciseness before dying. The cops know it was Jack but they can't prove it. He spends the movie acting like an asshole and pushing his weight around. After he kidnaps his best friend's girlfriend and causes the death of his friend, Jack turns himself in to the police. It's a big bag of heavy handed melodrama that isn't that interesting. I'd give it a miss the next time.

The Rebel Rousers 1970

 

The Rebel Rousers 1970 Written by Michael Kars, Abe Polsky and Martin B Cohen, directed by Martin B Cohen. It's was Martin's only directing job. He wrote one more film, Humanoids From The Deep, and produced handful more. The Rebel Rousers was filmed in 1967 but not released until 1970. The Rebel Rousers is part of the Biker Triple Feature DVD set.

Cameron Mitchell comes to a small coastal town looking for his girlfriend, she ran away because she's carrying his child. On the street Cameron runs into Bruce Dern, a friend he hadn't seen in some time. They say hello and Cameron moves along to find his girlfriend. He finds her and it turns out that she's played by Diane Ladd. They visit a while and go for a drive.

Bruce is part of a motorcycle gang that includes Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nicholson. Bruce is the voice of reason in a gang that is happy to loot, rape and pillage. Bruce isn't there when the gang decides to bother Cameron and Diane while they are parked. Things turn violent and even Bruce's intervention doesn't stop Cameron from getting a mighty beat down.

Things get worse as the bikers get more and more out of hand. Eventually the locals rise up, shoot Jack, and drive the bikers off the beach. Not enough bikers died that afternoon. They really were dicks. Not the kind of people I would like to hang around.

It's alright, nothing stands out as special, other than the interesting cast. I doubt I'll watch it again but I'll keep the DVD anyway.