PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1004

Reptilicus 1961 Written by Ib Melchior and  Sidney W Pink, directed by Poul Bang. We watched the new Blu-ray of the Danish version of Reptilicus. The English and Danish versions of the film were shot at the same time with the same cast and crew. Pink directed the English version for AIP, when he delivered a poor film, Melchior made changes. Pink was so upset he sued AIP but after seeing the finished version he dropped the charges. Pink is not noted for his direction, he's more a producer.

Miners are drilling for copper in Lapland, they find a frozen dinosaur tail and bring that to Denmark's Aquarium in Copenhagen. Scientist put the tail in a big freezer but it accidentally gets thawed out. Poor Peter will pay deadly for falling asleep later in the film. Surprisingly the tail doesn't start to rot, it starts to regrow a whole Reptilicus. That's the name the head scientist gives the creature, he compares it's regrowth to the starfish.

There's not much going on while the creature is regrowing. The head scientist's daughter falls for the tall and moody miner, the head scientist's other daughter falls for the gruff American general. There's a goofy janitor for some comic relief, he sings a song to some kids in a park. The main characters are either at the Aquarium or gallivanting around Denmark. At one point they visit the Trivoli Gardens and hear a song.

When the tail regenerates it becomes a whole creature and breaks out of it's holding cell. During it's rampages around Denmark, many die. They're fighting a creature with the ability to regrown from a single bit of flesh. That makes it dangerous to use explosives to kill it. Eventually they figure out what to do. The beast is knocked out and the head scientist says he'll dispose of it. They leave us with an open door for a sequel. Sadly, there's never been one.

The Danish version hadn't been released in the US before this Vinegar Syndrome release. It's quite a bit longer, 94 mins instead of 81 mins, and Reptilicus flies. The monster is a puppet, he's not the greatest but Denmark isn't famous for it's giant monster movies. A lot of reviews of both versions sure don't care for the monster. At least he doesn't spit green slime in the Danish version, that green slime was so fake looking in the English version. The Danish version is nicely restored, it looks and sounds great. We were all a bit excited to see this version. Most of us have seen this movie more than a couple of times. The Danish version is definitely more of a movie than the English version. It's still not a great film but it's fun to watch. I had fun watching it and would want to get my own copy to rewatch.

Intrepidos Punks 1988 Writers Tomás Fuentes, Roberto Marroquin and Ulises Pérez Aquirre. A Mexican bikers vs cops film.

Bikers break their leader out of jail and start a crime spree. Two cops are on their tail. The cops get a bit of help but they keep getting beat down. When the bikers aren't robbing and raping they're taking drug and having orgies. There's plenty of driving about and fighting. Both would be less dull if they had managed to edit the film better, it drags way more than it should. The car chase is unambitious. The biker gang has it's own theme, a lackluster song at best, sadly it's repeated Ad infinitum. Not one I'm going to pick up for myself. I was glad to have seen it but only in the I've seen another movie way, yay for me.

The Whip And The Body 1963

The Whip And The Body 1963 Written by Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino, directed by Mario Bava under the name John M Old. An Italian production with Christopher Lee.

 

Christopher Lee is Kurt Menliff, he's come to his father's castle to celebrate his brother Chistiano's marriage to Nevenka, who's played by Daliah Lavi. Kurt's real motive is to reclaim his title and fortune. He'd been ready to marry Nevenka when he had an affair with a young servant. The servant commits suicide and Kurt's father throws him out. While on the beach by the castle Kurt runs into Nevenka. He whips her and rapes her. Later that night Kurt is murdered with the same dagger that the young servant used to kill herself. Soon after Kurt's ghost returns to haunt the family.

 

What a shitty family, I wouldn't want to live with any of them. It's average story wise but it's pokey pace didn't do me any favors. I might watch watch it again but I'd speed up some of the slow bits. There's an audio commentary with Tim Lucas that offered up some film info, it didn't make me like the film more. Apparently Christopher Lee thought it was his best performance in a European film, he was sad he didn't dub his own voice.

Science Fiction Sunday 796

The Day The Earth Caught Fire 1961 Screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz and Val Guest, directed by Val Guest. A British disaster film about the Earth being blown off it's axis by nuclear blasts.

We follow a reporter about just after the US and the Soviets conduct nuclear tests. The weather starts to change over a short period of time. The Earth has gotten hotter, rivers and lakes evaporate. It's found that the blasts have tipped the Earth by 11 degrees and things are awful all over. Shortly after it's revealed that the Earth is closer to the sun. The heat rises and many die. The governments of the world hope to correct that by blasting off 4 more big nukes.

It's a pretty good film. It's B&W except for some yellow tinted bits at the beginning and the end. It's a talky film but the script is good and there's a good cast behind it. I liked the scenes at the newspaper office as the staff deal with the crisis. There's a bit of romance mixed in with all the horrible calamity. It seems a bit bold for 1961. They use a good bit of stock footage to depict the disasters around the world. It's done quite effectively.

There's a rather ambiguous ending. Not sure why people do that sort of ending. Not my favorite story element. I watched a DVD from Kino-Lorber that has the 2014 remastered print. Looks nice. I'd want to watch it again sometime. Definitely worth seeing.

It Came From Somewhere 2022 Written by Steve Hermann and Bryan Parkerson, directed by Ashley Hefnew and Steve Hermann.

The movie is a modern attempt to recreate a low budget picture from the 1950s. It's a mash up of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Teenagers From Space. These parody films rarely work for me. The film makers never seem to understand that Ed Wood wasn't setting out to make a bad film. He thought he had something going on but he had more enthusiasm than talent.

This time the aliens are planning to take over the Earth by enacting Plan 10. The alien's soldier monster gets loose and befriends a little girl. One alien is a killing machine, the locals get blasted one after another, their skeletons pile up as the alien moves on. The other alien falls for an Earth woman. Ultimately the aliens fail in their mission. The Earth is saved until the next alien invasion.

Sadly it's not that good. Lucky for me it was only an hour. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. You can watch it on YouTube but I'm not going to watch it again. It's an insult after the first movie.

Friday Night Movies 991

Dark Intruder 1965 Written by Barré Lyndon, directed by Harvey Hart. Lyndon's real name was Alfred Edgar, he was a British guy who moved to Hollywood in 1940. He wrote a good number of films but I've only seen a handful. I did like Hangover Square, Man In The Attic and The Man Who Could Cheat Death. Harvey Hart directed several movies but he was mostly a TV director. He worked on a lot of shows, mostly just one episode. You might have seen his work on The Wild Wild West, Seaway, Ben Casey, Star Trek, T.H.E. Cat, Peyton Place, The Mod Squad, Mannix, The Starlost and a lot more. Hart directed 5 episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Dark Intruder was made as the pilot of a series called The Black Cloak. It was to replace The Alfred Hitchcock Hour as it was coming to an end. The Black Cloak didn't sell so the TV movie was padded out to 59 mins and released as a film. It was part of a double bill with William Castle's I Saw What You Did.

Leslie Nielsen plays a playboy and supernatural investigator in 1890 San Francisco. He gets involved in a strange murder case involving friends of his. Mark Richman plays the friend who's having some issues before his wedding. There's also someone murdering people, the killer leaves a statue as a calling card. The statue changes a bit after every killing, revealing more of the Sumerian demon each time.

I thought it was a fun bit of business. It has a nice supernatural story with a decent monster. It's short but there's a fair bit of story. I bought the BLU-Ray at the Kino Lorber sale that's just ending, I was glad I did. I'll watch it again someday and I'll also try to listen to the commentary some time.

Secret Of The Incas 1954 Based on The Legend Of The Incas by Sydney Boehm, screenplay by Sydney Boehm and Ranald MacDougall, directed by Jerry Hopper. An American adventure film that was set and filmed in Peru. The film spends a good bit of time at Machu Picchu. The scenery looks nice.

Charlton Heston plays American Harry Steele, a shady guide who lives in Cusco, Peru. He hopes to make a big score with a fabulous Inca treasure. Nicole Maurey is a Romanian defector who's on the run from Romanian officials. Lucky for Charlton the Romanian guy chasing her has a small plane, just the thing for Charlton to steal and fly to Machu Picchu so he can gather up the treasure and escape to the US.

Things don't work out too well for Charlton, local thug Thomas Mitchell makes himself a partner in the heist. Thomas was a tired old man who had a belly full of failure when he horns in on Charlton. Things get worse for him before the movie ends. When they get to Machu Picchu they meet Robert Young and some other scientists who are digging in the same tomb Charlton wants a crack at.

The Wikipedia and the IMDb have people saying the movie was an inspiration for Indiana Jones character. He wears a costume that could have inspired Indy but the character is not very much like Indy. He's a bit of a cheat who's mostly in it for himself. You can check out his fate, link in the title. You might enjoy it, especially if you like 50s adventure films. It's nice when they have a good budget and can film on location. I was glad to have picked up the Kino-Lorber DVD. I liked it and hope to watch it again sometime.

Friday Night Movies 988

Smile 2022 Written and directed by Parker Finn. It's his first movie, he'd directed a couple of shorts, he's doing a sequel to this movie and it's due later this year. The movie did well at the box office, raking in $216 mil on a $17 mil budget.

A psychiatrist meets a disturbed young woman who kills herself during their initial meeting. More disturbing things happen as the psychiatrist discovers there's some sort of evil entity that kills by inhabiting the person who's just seen the suicide. The psychiatrist falls apart as the evil inhabits her. Her ex-boyfriend is a cop and between them they figure out what's going on. There's also a whole second plot as the psychiatrist works out the trauma from her mother's suicide.

It's 115 mins and rather dull at times. There's a lot of staring into faces and faces staring at nothing. It could easily be trimmed of a lot of the vague symbolism and dead air. Other's might like the slow pace but I'm wishing the story would get on with the story. It looks good and the effects are fine. It wouldn't bother picking up a copy as I doubt I'd bother re-watching it. I'd check out the sequel, maybe we'll find out what happens to the cop.

Dr Terror's House Of Horrors 1965 Written by Milton Subotsky and directed by Freddie Francis. An anthology film from Amicus Productions. They did a series of anthology films in the 60s and 70s. We watched the new Vinegar Syndrome 4K disc. It looks nice.

Six men share a train compartment. The man in the hat, Peter Cushing as Dr Shreck, gives them a tarot card reading and tells them a story about themselves. All the stories are different but all lead to something horrible happening to the man. There's a bit of a twist at the end.

I thought it was fairly entertaining. It moves along briskly and there's a bit of humor in the pay off for each story. I pretty sure I had seen it in the past but it's not on my watched movie list. I don't have a copy but I might pick one up. I'd watch it again sometime. You can see a copy on YouTube, link above.

Friday Night Movies 979

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter 2023 Based on The Captain's Log from Dracula by Bram Stoker, screenplay by Bragi F Schut and Zak Olkewicz, directed by André Øvredal. Another attempt to revive the Universal Monsters Brand characters. This Dracula's image seems to be based on the Count Orlok from the 1922 film Nosferatu.

The story of the last voyage of the Demeter. It's the ship that Dracula hired to ship his boxes of earth to England. One of the boxes had his lunch but an accident released the contents to the deck. They find the lunch, a young woman, and the doctor believes her to be anemic. He gives her transfusions and she revives, eventually filling them in on the story of Dracula. Of course the evil guy needs some nourishment, first he drains the animals and then he starts on the crew.

It's a dark and bloody story that ends badly for the crew. Hardly anyone survives. It got nice production values and plenty of interesting images. I enjoyed it which is good as I bought the Blu-ray. I would watch it again. One of the better of the Universal Monster revivals that have been tried in recent years.

Prague Nights 1969 Screenplay by Vratislav Blazek, Jiri Brdecka, Milos Makovec, Evald Schrom and Frantisek Uldich, directed by Jiri Brdecka, Milos Makovec and Evald Schrom. An anthology film with a B&W framing story and three stories in color.

The framing story has a man get picked up by a countess, she tells him the three stories that fill the rest of the nearly 2 hour movie. The first story is about a second Golem being made in The Last Golem. The second story is about an indulgent 18th century countess who gets some just deserts in Bread Slippers. The third story is about a beautiful murderess who like poisoning people in Poisoned Poisoner.

It's a nice enough looking film but it's a tad long. The second segment was rather soporific. I was struggling to stay awake. Over all not one of the better anthology movies I've seen but I still enjoyed a good bit of it. I wouldn't need to buy it. You can check it out on YouTube. Link above.

The Mummy's Shroud 1967

The Mummy's Shroud 1967 Written by John Gilling and Anthony Hinds, directed by John Gilling. A Hammer film that I don't ever remember seeing in the past. It's not on my watched movie list but that only goes back to 1989.

An archaeologist and a rich guy find a tomb thought to be home to the boy Pharaoh Kah-To-Bey. A flashback tells us of the overthrow of Kah-To-Bey's father and the boy's escape into the desert with his father's servant Prem. The boy dies and Prem takes the boy's medallion. When they open the tomb and find the mummy, it's the medallion that makes them think it's Kah-To-Bey in the tomb. The mummified body is put on display at the Cairo Museum. The scene above is after they've found the grave of Kah-To-Bey, it's Prem propped up in the sarcophagus and the boy Pharaoh in the foreground.

The archaeologist and the rich guy are warned off before they open the tomb but they don't listen. A secret society resurrects the mummy and sure enough it starts killing people. The rich guy takes advantage of the archaeologist and puts him in a mental asylum while he's a bit sick from snake bite. The rich guy wants all the credit for the expedition. The archaeologist escapes the asylum and is killed by the mummy shortly after. Even the rich guy can't escape the creature, it just keeps on coming.

A fairly decent mummy film but no where near as good as The Mummy, the first of the Universal Mummy films. Hammer's film is in color and it looks fine. It's a bit low budget but most of it works well enough. I'd still watch it again. You can see a decent copy on YouTube. Link above.

Friday Night Movies 964

Castle Of The Creeping Flesh 1968 Written by Adrian Hoven and Eric Martin Schnitzler with an uncredited Jesús Franco, directed by Adrian Hoven. A West German film called Im Schloß der blutigen Begierde. We watched the Severin Blu-ray which looked fine.

A Baron hosts some people at his castle. They ride in the woods. A woman falls while riding alone and is found by a servant of the Count. It's set in modern day but the Count decorates his house like he's in living a couple of hundred years in the past. The Baron and his guests visit the Count and he couldn't be happier.

The Count just happens to need some body parts for the experimentation he's conducting. He's trying to restore his just murdered daughter back to life with those body parts. He's successful but the organ donor dies. It's a common enough sort of plot device but the movie ruins it for me with scene after scene of some sort of open heart surgery. We were thinking that it might have been a pig that was being operated on. It didn't seem like a human operation. Some of that got fast forwarded through, not something that happens very often.

On average the story is barely average and with all the surgery stuff, I sure wouldn't bother seeing  it again.

The Tale Of Tsar Saltan 1967 Based on an 1831 story by Alexander Pushkin, screenplay by Aleksandr Ptushko and Igor Gelein, directed by Aleksandr Ptushko. A Russian film by the same director who directed Sadko and Sampo.

The Tsar marries a young woman and her mother and two sisters are upset. The young woman goes to live with the Tsar and the mother comes along. The Tsar offers the sisters jobs and they come live in the castle. The Tsar goes off to war. Mom and the sisters scheme against the young woman, they kidnap her and her just born son, seal them in a barrel and throw them into the sea.

The young woman and son wash up on the shore of a small island, he rescues a swan who turns out to be an enchanted princess. She magics up a city and makes the son a Prince. Eventually the Tsar comes to visit and finds his wife. The mom and sisters aren't punished enough for my liking.

It was interesting enough but not as entertaining as Sampo and Sadko. I enjoyed it but wouldn't need to pick up a copy for myself.

Friday Night Movies 953

Gorgo 1961 Story by Eugène Lourié and Daniel Hyatt, screenplay by John Loring and Daniel Hyatt, directed by Eugène Lourié. We watched the new Gorgo Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. I've watched this movie several times over the years, this is the nicest version so far.

A giant monster wanders into an Irish village on Nara island. An enterprising seaman and his partner catch the beastie and take it to London to put on display for 5 shillings a head. The seaman lets some scientists take a gander at the creature, they find out that it's a youngster. The seaman speculates that there could be an adult out there.

Of course the parent comes calling to Nara Island, it leaves a devastated village and heads out to sea. The Navy can't stop it and neither can the buildings of London. Many die in the city that day. Successfully rescuing it's child the beasts head back to the sea.

Even after many viewings the movie holds up. I'm enjoying the movie and it's a good reminder that taking a giant beast into the city is just a bad idea all around.

Evil Dead Rise 2023 Written and directed by Lee Cronin. The fifth in the Evil Dead series.

The movie opens with an unrelated scene by a lake. One woman scalps another woman and cuts the head off of a man.  Cut to a rundown apartment building in LA. It's due for demolition but there are still a few families living on site. The son of a woman finds a book and 3 phonograph records in a secret room. He plays the records, a man reciting some foreign words opens a portal to evil and mom gets turned into a deadite. Most everyone dies.

There's plenty of yelling,  running about and slaughter but the film lacked the humor that the series had in the hands of Sam Raimi. I might have enjoyed it more with a lighter tone. Deadly dark films aren't my jam. It did make me realize I wouldn't need to pick up a copy. My other complaint is about the constant references to other horror film scenes that Lee shoehorns into the film, like the elevator filled with blood opening onto a lobby from The Shining. One or two references would be fine but 8 or 10 are too many.

Planet Of The Vampires 1965

Planet Of The Vampires 1965 Based on One Night Of 121 Hours, by Renato Pestriniero, screenplay by Alberto Bevilacqua, Callisto Cosulich, Mario Bava, Antonio Román and Rafael J Salvia, directed by Mario Bava. The English version of the film was written by Ib Melchior and Louis M Heyward.

Someone gave me the Kino Lorber Blu-ray of the movie. I've seen the movie 2 or 3 times already. It's one of the few Bava films I've seen more than twice. I was interested in the Tim Lucas commentary so I watched the movie with that on. It was interesting for the most part. He's got a lot of info. At some point I'll watch the movie once again.