PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 917

The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm 1962 Based on the biography The Brothers Grimm by Dr Hermann Gerstner, story by David P Harmon, screenplay by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P Harmon, directed by Harry Levin with George Pal directing the fairy tale sequences.

The film was filmed in three panel Cinerama widescreen. The film hadn't had a US video release since the 1989 VHS and the 1992 Laserdisc. The Wikipedia tells of a bootleg Italian DVD. I know I haven't seen it in decades. I'm sure I saw it on TV as a kid. The film's been restored and presented in two versions, letterbox and Smilebox. We watched the letterbox and the dragon sequence on the Smilebox.

That's the Smilebox. Letterbox below.

Laurence Harvey plays Wilhelm and Karlheinz Böhm plays Jacob, Claire Bloom plays Wilhelm's wife and Barbara Eden plays Greta, a young woman smitten with Jacob. Oskar Homolka plays the Duke and Walter Slezak plays a bookstore owner called Stossel. Other members of the cast that I knew were Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Terry-Thomas, Buddy Hackett, Otto Kruger and Arnold Stang. Stan Freberg does some voices for the Puppetoons puppets.

The Brothers Grimm have taken a writing assignment from the local Duke. They are writing his family history and are nearly at the end of the 6 month project. The Duke is mad because it's not quite finished and he knows Wilhelm has been devoting some of his writing time to the fairy tales he loves so much. The brothers need to get this work done or the Duke won't pay them, he'll toss them out of their house and send them to the debtor's prison.

Wilhelm is a problem, not a practical man, he causes issues, nearly dies and hallucinates fairy tale characters and gives them names. Interspersed with the bio story are three short animated and live action fairy tales. They were nice to watch but the bio stuff was less interesting. I would have liked to see more fairy tales animated instead of incorrect bio info. It's fairly long too, 140 mins.

The Blu-ray looks nice but I'm doubtful I need to add it to my library. I can say the same about our second movie.

Amityville In The Hood 2021 Written by Jeremiah Douglas and Dustin Ferguson, directed by Dustin Ferguson.

Some joker is growing weed in the Amityville house, some guys steal it and take it to California. It's Big M's weed and he follows the weed to Cali. The drug guys have a dust up and kill some people. The weed turns people crazy and they kill other people. Sadly, most of that sort of action takes places off screen. What we have to sit through are some bad actors reading crap dialog from a poorly written script that was never thought through in the first place.

It was hard to sit though without heaping scorn on the film. The movie scores a 1.8 on the IMDb. It's deserving, just about everything about it is poor.

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Buried Alive 1989 Vaguely based on Edgar Allen Poe stories, screenplay by Jake Chesi and Stuart Lee, directed by Gérard Kikoïne, produced by Harry Allan Towers. Filmed in Botswana and Johannesburg. We watched the new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. The image looks alright, there's are interviews with Ginger Lynn Allen and William Butler for extras.

A young teacher, played by Karen Witter, goes to work for Robert Vaughn at his school for troubled young women. These are some annoying bad girls with Ginger Lynn Allen leading the pack. Some women go missing and Robert says they ran away. He tries to come off as caring but he's really a self involved creep. The audience knows that there's someone in a Ronald Reagan mask killing those women and bricking them up in rooms in the basement of the big school building.

Donald Pleasence might be a doctor at the school, the script is unclear. It's generally a poor script. Donald comes off as creepier than Robert. More people die and the new teacher has some weird hallucinations about the murders. She discover one of the bricked up rooms. Arnold Vosloo is a local policeman. John Carradine plays Robert's deceased dad in the teacher's hallucinations.

There's plenty of running about and screaming, a fair bit of violence, a few scares  and an annoying score. Despite that it's somewhat dull at times. I thought it was below average but watchable. Not something I would need to see again.

Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World 1961 Story by Oreste Biancoli, screenplay by Oreste Biancoli and Duccio Tessari, directed by Riccardo Freda. An Italian and French production with Gordon Scott and Yoko Tani. The film was released in Italy under the name Maciste alla corte del Gran Khan. The American release is from AIP and they cut the original by nearly 20 mins. We watched the original Italian version from the fairly new Kino Lorber Blu-ray. The disc also has the AIP version. The picture looks very nice. There's a commentary by Tim Lucas and some trailers.

Gordon made a half dozen Tarzan films between 1955 and 1960. You can find a nice 6 DVD set from Warner Archive. The films look good and I find them entertaining but I'm a big Tarzan fan.

Though the film is titled Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World in the West, it's really one of many Maciste films produced in Italy starting with the 1914 film Cabiria.

In 13th century China with Mongol Warlord Garak leads an invading force that controls part of China. There's a resistance force and Maciste joins them to put an end to the Mongol rule. There's plenty of running about in the countryside on horses with oodles of fist fights and sword play. Maciste provides some Herculean feats of strength. There's a bit of romance between Yoko Tani and the rebel leader.

I thought it was a bit draggy at times. It sure made me less interested in picking up the Blu-ray. I've seen the AIP version, I have a copy in one of those 50 Movie Packs from Mill Creek, but it's been so long since I watched it I've forgotten anything about it.

Residence For Spies 1966

Residence For Spies 1966 Director Jesús Franco co-wrote the script with Michael Loggan. Both these posters have some quirks.

Eddie Constantine plays a similar character to the spy in Franco's Attack Of The Robots but it's not the same one. He's in Istanbul, undercover as a driver for the head of a girl's school. He's investigating the deaths of some of the students. There's a few dust up and some traveling about the area. He even makes an illegal trip to Greece and some cops get killed. There's a few pretty girls but the romantic parts with Eddie and his fiance aren't much of anything. The whole movie is a bit blah, not hardly as much fun as Attack Of The Robots. I downloaded it from Rarelust and was glad not to have paid for a disc of it.

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In Search Of The Castaways 1962 Based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, screenplay by Lowell S Hawley, directed by Robert Stevenson. Lowell and Robert both worked for Disney in the fifties and sixties. Lowell was the story editor and wrote scripts for the Disney Zorro series. That's always been one of my favorite Disney shows of the era. Robert wrote and directed films in the UK before going to Hollywood in 1939, you might have seen F.P.1. or the 1937 King Solomon's Mines.

In 1957 Robert directed his first Disney film Johnny Tremaine, he would direct 18 more films for them, including Darby O'Gill And The Little People, The Absent Minded Professor, Mary Poppins and Bedknobs And Broomsticks. Plenty of pleasurable memories watching those films when they were new, some we saw in the theaters but many were watched on one of the Disney TV programs or another. Sadly I only saw them in B&W, we didn't have color TV until I was into my twenties. The first time I saw Star Trek in color was on 16 film at an SF convention. 

In Search Of The Castaways has the children of a ship's captain appeal to the head of the shipping company to find their father. Hayley Mills and Keith Hamshere are the kids, Jack Gwillim is their father, Maurice Chevalier is the man who finds the father's note in a bottle, Wilfred Hyde White is the head of the company. It takes a while to convince Wilfred to make the trip but he goes and they have a grand adventure in South America, Australia and New Zealand.

There's plenty of action and derring do, the expedition battles nature and man. There's a giant flood, a tidal wave, a lightning storm and a volcano. George Sanders plays the smooth talking baddie who tricks Wilfred in hiring him, only to steal his ship and turn the rescue party into castaways. Some of the effects looks poor by today's standards but the models and matte paintings are still very nice. They get the job done and it's not something I would complain about. The only thing I would complain about are the songs. I started fast forwarding through them. There's a happy ending and it all looks nice and bright. I was happy to see it and will have to watch it again sometime.

The Great Spy Chase 1963 Written by Michel Audiard and Albert Simonin, directed by Georges Lautner. These are the same fellows that wrote and directed Monsieur Gangster which I just watched a short time ago. The French title of The Great Spy Chase is Les Barbouzes, french slang for spies, it was retitled for the US market. Lino Ventura appears in both films and both films are in release in the US from Olive Films. I watched the Blu-ray of The Great Spy Chase and it looks very nice. No extras though.

Bernard Sachs is a massive arms dealer, he's also a massive guy. All the spy agencies keep an eye on him. He's known to have acquired a number of patents for nuclear weapons. When he dies the spy agencies all want to get their hands on those patents, which are now in the hands of his wife.

All the spy agencies send people around to the wife's Bavarian castle to buy or steal the patents. Lino plays the spy from France, he's been assigned to take the body to the wife. Several other spies are on their trail. Things hot up at the castle as the different groups descend on the place. There's plenty of action, a massive body count, plenty of collateral damage, all slathered in barrels of slapstick. Made me laugh out loud a couple of times. Glad I picked it up.

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Gonks Go Beat 1965 From an original story by Robert Hartford-Davis and Peter Newbrook, screenplay by Jimmy Watson, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. I'd seen a couple of Robert's other directing jobs, The Black Torment and The Sandwich Man. They were better than this film. A few of his other titles might have some merit. I downloaded a few from YouTube, someday i might have time to watch them. The DVD is part of The British Film series from Network. Gonks were a faddish toy from the era. Lulu sings the theme song Chocolate Ice.

The story is set some years in the future and the people of Earth are split into two groups. The folks of Beatland are hipsters who listen to an early form of rock n roll. The folks of Ballad Isle are pretty straight and listen to boring pop songs. They don't care for each other's music and there's tension on the planet as the annual musical contest comes up.

The Great Galaxian sends a representative to assess the situation and keep things from boiling over. He's supposed to bring the two sides together or he's going to be assigned to the planet Gonk. No one wants to go there.

Kenneth Conner plays the representative, he's a bit of a nervous Nelly and not very effective. He observes both sides and takes a meeting with Mr A&R, the man who runs the musical contest and is the contest's impartial judge. They come up with a Romeo and Juliet sort of plan to hook up a Beatland boy with a Ballad Isle girl. The couple preform a song at the end of the musical contest. It's the winner and everyone gets together and dances.

It's got a stupid story, poorly executed, with plenty of overacting, odd sets and the goofy turned up to eleven. Some of the 16 songs are hardly worth hearing. Of musical interest, the Beatland opening song features the Graham Bond Organization with Graham on vocals, sax and keyboards, Ginger Baker on drums, Jack Bruce on bass, Dick Heckstall-Smith on sax and John McLaughlin on guitar. All that talent and not much of a song.

The movie was a big flop but later developed a bit of a cult following. I hadn't ever heard of it until I ordered it from Network last week. I can't recommend it to anyone really, perhaps it's it's lucky there isn't a copy on the internet to look at. You can see some of the songs on YouTube.

The Outing 1987 Written by Warren Chaney and directed by Tom Daley. An American film that was released in the UK in April 1987 under the title The Lamp, it came out in September 1987 in the US under the title The Outing.

In an opening scene we see a monster murder the people on a ship. Only a little girl escapes, she takes a lamp and a bracelet with her. We jump to modern day and a nasty trio of scumbags comes to rob an old lady in her home. They kill the old lady with their bad acting and smash up her house looking for money they think is there. They find a box with the lamp and bracelet. The jinn in the lamp gets released and then slaughters the trio.

The cops send the effects from the house to a museum, though I can't fathom why. Alex is the teen daughter of the museum's archeologist, she decides to sneak into the place for a sleep over with her friends. Her horrible ex-boyfriend hears her plan, he sneaks in with a pal to get back at her and her new boyfriend. The friends pair off and the jinn starts killing.

First the guard goes, then a guy gets torn in two, some of the action seems to take place while the camera is looking in another direction. There's plenty of running about and yelling, often the sound goes from quiet to annoyingly loud. It doesn't take too long to kill most everyone off but the daughter. She gets rescued and destroys the lamp in the museum's incinerator.

It's got a few entertaining bits but it's got a tired story, awful characters and poor acting. Some of the monster bits weren't too bad but there's nothing outstanding. I wouldn't be picking one up for my collection. I'd only recommend it to the horror fan who wants to see it all.

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Challenge The Devil 1963 Directed by Gieseppe Veggezzi under the name Joseph Vegh. There's no writer listed on the IMDb.

The IMDb trivia page: Filmed as a gothic movie under the title of "Katarsis" in 1963. Its production company "I films della mangusta" went bankrupt shortly after filming. The movie, which was about 90 minutes long, was bought by production company "Eco Film". They cut out half an hour and added newly shot scenes involving gangsters, a monk and a cabaret dancer. The finished product was 78 minutes long, retitled "Challenge the Devil" and released in 1965.

   

Part of the new Severin set The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee. A collection of five films, the remaining 24 episodes of an Italian horror anthology hosted by Lee, several interviews and extras, plus a soundtrack. The set will put you back a century plus and is really meant for the big CL fan. You can also find this movie on the bootleg DVD sites.

The movie has hardly any Christopher Lee in it. Most of the movie is told in a flashback by the guy in the striped shirt. He's a monk in a mission, his old friend comes to him for help. His old pal has been involved with an ugly woman who robs him of some documents. The gangster who wants the documents is upset and tries to kill the pal. The monk goes to see the ugly woman and his appeals for help fall on her deaf ears. She plans to blackmail the gangster and she doesn't care one bit that she's turned the pal into a wanted man. She'd known the monk when they were younger and she asks him how he came to be in that state.

That's when the flashback kicks in, the monk had been a part of a group of assholes who drive fast, drink a lot, and beat total strangers. As we see them driving about they run a car off the road and beat the driver for no reason. They leave him lying on the road and drive off. They next encounter a seemingly abandoned castle and break in. The castle in the film is the Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano Italy. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married there.

The castle isn't empty, Christopher Lee lives there, he tells them he'll give them all his riches if they find his dead bride. She's somewhere in the castle. They start looking and weird things start happening. They're ordeal is kind of lame but they all get a dose of goodness and leave the castle. They help the man they beat and it turns out to be Christopher Lee. Was Christopher the devil or something like that? That's what many reviews say. It's hard to know, it's sadly not that well told a story. No matter, the harrowing tale from the monk turns the ugly woman around and she coughs up the docus to help the pal.

It's cobbled together nature and weak story make it below average for me. It's more interesting with Christopher in there, it's also unlikely to have survived without him. Still, I was glad to see it. It's often fun to see some of the lesser works by one's favorite film stars.

Witching and Bitching 2013 Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Álex de la Iglesia, directed by Álex de la Iglesia. It's Spanish title is Las brujas de Zugarramurdi or The Witches of Zugarramurdi. It's a real town and you can read about it's occult past on the Wikipedia.

In an incredible opening scene some guys rob a pawnshop in a crowded town square. Jose and Tony are the main robbers, Jose has brought his son along and Tony isn't too happy about that. Things go wrong and the police are right on hand. The square the pawn shop is in is like Time Square in New York, crowded with tourists yet the police and robbers wage a fierce gun battle with plenty of victims.

The robbers are disguised as street performers, the kind you'd find posing with tourists for a bit of cash. Jose is Christ, Tony is a green army man, their associates are Spongebob Squarepants and Minnie Mouse. Only Jose, his son and Tony get away. They hijack a cab and force him to drive to France. The cab's poor passenger hopes they don't kill him but if he knew what happens after they get to Zugarramurdi he'd would have hoped for a quick and speedy death from a bullet.

The cab driver bonds with Jose and Tony over their troubles with  women. Jose and his wife are split up and he had his son that day. Jose's wife is one his trail and so are a couple of cops. The chase culminates in Zugarramurdi where some wildly entertaining things happen. The town is home to a lot of cannibal witches and they are a nasty lot with a desire to take over the world.

The story gets wilder and wilder as it moves fiercely along, it makes the 112 min running time seem to fly by. It's gory, gross and hilarious. I'll need to get a copy, it's one I would want to see again sometime.

The Wizard Of Baghdad 1960

The Wizard Of Baghdad 1960 Story by Samuel Newman, screenplay by Jesse Lasky Jr and Pat Silver, directed by George Sherman.

Dick Shawn plays a genie who's a real cock up, in fact, he's so bad they've made him mortal and sent him to Baghdad for a last chance mission. He's got to make a prophecy come true by restoring the son of the slain king to the throne. He was a terrible genie and he's not much better as a man. Lucky for him he's got a smart horse, that critter does most of the heavy lifting, in pulling a cart and thinking.

There's the usual Arabian fantasy stuff going on, costumes, horse riding, sword fighting, palace intrigue, a bit of romance and some jokes. Mostly they fail on the jokes, it's just not that funny a movie. Besides the weak script, I find I found Dick Shawn to be quite unfunny. He hasn't been interesting to me for quite some time. Oh, yeah, he sings the title song while flying on a magic carpet behind the credits. He's got another song a ways into the movie. Not liking either one.

I just barely gave it a 5 on the IMDb, it's slightly better than a 4 to me, 5.1 is it's current score. The IMDb Trivia page says that this was the first film for Billy Mumy, he plays a small boy called Aladdin, Dick talks to him briefly in the market place. I hadn't seen it before, I wasn't missing anything. I doubt I would need to see it again. You can check it out on YouTube, if you are so inclined.

Eye Of The Devil 1967

Eye Of The Devil 1967 Based on the novel The Day Of The Arrow by Robin Estridge, screenplay by Robin Estridge and Dennis Murphy, direction by J Lee Thompson. J Lee has directed a few films I recognize but I haven't seen that many of them. The Guns Of Navarone, Cape Fear, Taras Bulba, John Goldfarb Please Come Home, The Chairman, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes and The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud. A lot of big studio thrillers and action films. This is a big studio horror film, think Rosemary's Baby, for those that don't like horror films too much.

David Niven is a owner of a vineyard in France. He lives in Paris and the vineyard is in the countryside. There grapes have been poor for three years in a row. David is called back to the Château. The lady in thepicture above is Sharon Tate, she's a witch who lives on the estate. David Hemmings plays her brother, he's a mental case with a bow and arrow.

Deborah Kerr plays David's wife, she's been left at home with the kids, David did not want her coming there. She can't stay home, she's a nervous type, she bring the children a day or so later. The first thing that happens is she's shot at by David Hemmings.

Sharon slinks about and Deborah really dislikes her, she wants David to toss them off the estate but he won't and won't explain why. We know he's got some sort of connection with them but it's a while before the whole story comes out. Turns out the estate needs a blood sacrifice to make the grapes grow strong. David's the man for the job and that's pretty much how it ends.

The movies B&W and looks nice. Sadly there's nothing nice about a family that uses witchcraft to stay afloat, especially one where the head of the family is the target for sacrifice. If you're going to be evil you'd think you'd sacrifice someone else. Once I found out how stupid the plan was I would in contempt of the family and the story. Poor marks from me. I doubt that I would watch it again.

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 2

The second volume of Creepy Creature Double Feature has two more 60s horror films of a low budget nature. It's from VCI and it seems to be the end of the series. For films like these I don't mind that they are paired up, saves having two DVDs to store.

The Crawling Hand 1963 Story by Bill Idelson, Robert Malcolm Young and Joe Cranston, screenplay by Bill Idelson and Herbert L Strock, directed by Herbert L Strock. A lot of new film makers working on this and they all have some interesting credits in their later careers.

I recognized Bill Idelson's name from writing episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, he's written a whole bunch of other TV including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Flintstones, Get Smart, The Odd Couple and more. He wrote a couple of TV films but this is his only feature film.

Joe Cranston was mostly an actor, his only other writing credit is for The Corpse Grinders for Ted V Mikels. Joe's first acting credit was for Space Patrol in 1953, his last was My Three Sons in 1961. Joe's only directing credit is the 1988 movie Turnabout in which Bryan Cranston and Ernest Borgnine take on a Mexican drug lord bothering their small town near the border.

Robert Malcolm Young wrote mostly in TV, shows like It Takes A Thief, Then Came Bronson, Mod Squad, Night Gallery and The Streets Of San Francisco. His other two feature films were Trauma in 1962 and Escape From Witch Mountain in 1975.

Herbert L Strock directed a lot of TV in the 50s and 60s, working on shows like Science Fiction Theatre, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, The Veil and Maverick. He directed some low budget SF films over the years, Gog, Battle Taxi, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Blood OF Dracula and How To Make A Monster. He's uncredited on The Magnetic Monster and Riders To The Stars.

The men running the space program are having trouble with their second rocket, it's run out of oxygen and the astronaut is telling them to blow it. They do and bits of their man rain down on California. Rod Lauren finds a severed arm on the beach and takes it home. The arm is possessed by some alien force, it animates and kills Rod's landlady. Alan Hale Jr is the local police captain. His men find fingerprints and they turn out to belong to the astronaut. Peter Breck and Kent Taylor are questioned at the Space Program but they play it cagey and don't tell him what's going on with their astronaut. At this point they aren't sure of whats going on. Paul gets taken over by the alien force and attacks people. The arm is hurt and some cats bite it. Peter finds the arm and gathers it up, only for it to escape at the end of the film.

Despite the ending, there's no sequel. It's not a great film but I liked it despite it's weaknesses, somehow it's fairly compelling. They had the core of a good movie but didn't quite pull it off. Some of the yakking scenes are pretty clunky. It's an 89 min movie and there's a bit of filler. I enjoyed Alan Hale Jr and some of the other actors were fairly good. I've managed to sit through it several times over the years, it appeared in the first season of MST3K. I tend to have a soft spot for the 50s SF and horror genres. I think that's partially from growing up in the period.

The Slime People 1963 Screenplay by Blair Robertson and Joseph F Robertson (as Vance Skarstedt), directed by Robert Hutton. Blair didn't write much in her short career, an episode of Bonanza and two features, Agent For H.A.R.M. and The Phantom Gunslinger. She appeared in TSP as Mrs Castillo. After TSP Joseph wrote and directed Love Feast in 1969. It stars Ed Wood as a cross dressing erotic photographer. Joseph wrote and directed a couple of other mainstream films before writing and directing over 2 dozen porn films under the name Adelle Robbins. I know I've seen a few of them but don't remember them.

This is Robert Hutton's only director job and I can see why he didn't direct again. He also stars in this film about subterranean beings that invade the surface to takeover the world. There's too much boring talking and wandering about in the fog that was created by the slime people. Their costumes are pretty poor. Sadly they ate up half the $80K budget. Still, good costumes won't help a dull script much. I had to run this at 1.5 speed in some of the walking about scenes. It too was on MST3K. More fun to watch it there.

One fairly entertaining film and one less so, about average for some of these low budget movie sets. Maybe I'll watch them again some time in the future. Or will I?

Science Fiction Sunday 602

The Lost World 1960 Producer Irwin Allen directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Bennett. I'm no big fan of Irwin's work but I have seen a few of his disaster movies over the years. I liked his next film, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, well enough but most of his films don't turn out to be the films I collect. Sometimes I'll wind up with one when it turns up cheap in a compilation set.

I haven't seen the 1960 version of The Lost World in years and years. I noticed a DVD set while searching for something else and ordered it. It's a two disc set with a copy of the 1925 version as a bonus. The 1925 version runs 76 mins, there are two longer restored versions out there, one at 93 mins and the second at 110 mins. I've got a couple of public domain DVD compilations that have 64 min versions. The 76 min version has changing tints instead of a steady single color. The picture looks alright but it's not as nice as the Blu-ray of the 110 version. That version is about 36 bucks on Amazon right now and I'm not buying that.

Irwin's take on the movie puts the story in modern day. Professor Challenger returns from a trip to South America where he saw some dinosaurs on an isolated plateau in the jungle. He lost his proof, now he's looking to go back and get some more. The knuckleheads in the picture are the lot that goes with him on his return trip. Left to right it's Jay Novello, Fernando Lamas, Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Vitina Marcus, Richard Haydn, Jill St John and David Hedison. Most of their characters adapt poorly to the situation, though not all of them get eaten. Jill St John's character brings a poodle along for the trip and it's one ugly poodle. Her character is made to be a moron, look how she dresses. She's all. "I'm all woman and I can handle myself", but when confronted with dinos she doesn't do so well. To bad they didn't eat the poodle. The script doesn't treat the characters very well at all, poor Jay Novello only has two traits, greedy or scared. It's harder to care for the characters when they aren't so likeable.

Fernando is a helicopter pilot, he takes them to the plateau where they land. Later that evening a dinosaur knocks the helicopter off the cliff. Now they're stranded. Luckily they find a local lady and kidnap her. She leads them to her tribe and they get captured. Eventually they escape but only after a conveniently close volcano starts to erupt. Why a tribe would live next to a volcano is a bit odd but people do lose all common sense when it comes to buying property.

It's got big sets, plenty of nice models, props and the like. They used some sets from the 1959 Journey To The Center Of The Earth. The dinosaurs are less entertaining, mostly lizards and alligators with bits pasted on them. Irwin wanted stop motion but didn't have the budget for it. He was so cheap he even used a bit of dino crashing through the woods 4 times in a short time period. It's kind of embarrassing and the movie suffers for it. I got through to the end and thought I wouldn't need to see this again for a while.

A World Away 2019 I got to the end of this film and thought I wouldn't want to see it again. I really didn't need to see it in the first place but it was free on Amazon Prime and most of the online reviews were positively pooping on it. Who wouldn't want to look at that sort of a train wreck. Director Mark Blanchard is mostly to blame, he wrote the thing with Patrick McEveety. Mark hires his three kids to play the leads, that's the three in the foreground of the poster, they're all rather uninteresting.

The story is about some aliens, the two in the right on the poster, who lose their magical power source, called The Source, on Earth. Their spacecraft is being chased by some other aliens. They are played as bumbling villains who might have appeared on the Power Rangers TV show, if they had been better acted. A young girl has The Source on a rope, around her neck. Her dad takes her and some friends for a plane ride only to crash in another dimension. That dimension has it's won version of Vasquez Rocks. They all survive and eventually meet up with the aliens. The girl returns the device and everyone gets teleported home. The girl is taken away by the aliens to be cured of her disease.

It's poorly made, there's not much money in the budget I'm guessing, but a better director could have worked with that and come out ahead. Not the case here, it's was tedious and tough to watch. Be warned.