PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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.

Friday Night Movies 902

Monstrum 2018 Story by Jeong-uk Byeon and Heo-dam, screenplay by Heo-dam and Jung-ho Huh, directed by Jong-ho Huh. A Korean giant monster story set in the 15th century.

King Jungjong's got some trouble with his Prime Minister. The PM is turning the citizen's against the King with a series of plots to instill fear into the citizens. He plans to depose the King and take over. There's a plague going on, and now, a monster is killing the locals in the countryside.

Yoon Gyeom was a member of the King's guard but he had a difference of opinion with the king and was booted out of the court 5 years earlier. Yoon had gone to live in the countryside with his right hand man Sung Han and Myung, a young girl he'd saved from being killed by the Prime minister's men. The country is having many issues and food is short. Muck of them are the PM's doing. He's totally ruthless and human lives mean nothing to him.

The King send Heo to ask Yoon to help find and kill the monster. The King suspects it's the Prime Minister behind the beast but there is no proof. A large group of men are organized, they march into the woods intending to flush the beast and kill it. The group is half civilians rounded up to help and 100 of the Prime Minister's soldiers. The soldiers soon turn on the civilians but the monster shows up and all hell breaks out.

The rest of the movie is about trying to survive the monster and the Prime Minister. There's plenty of action, colorful locations, a great giant monster, plenty of court intrigue, an incredibly scummy villain, endless slaughter and wonderful explosions. Entertaining enough for me to order the Blu-ray. I will want to see this one again.

Men On The Hour 1977 Written and directed by Ming-Hua Chen. A dull kung fu film made soporific by the dubbing. It was a struggle to get through the thing. I have rarely seen a worse kung fu film. You can check it out on YouTube but I wouldn't recommend it.

The Great Alligator 1979

The Great Alligator 1979 Story by George Eastman, screenplay by Casare Frugoni and Ernesto Gastaldi, directed by Sergio Martino. Original Italian title Il fiume del grande caimano. That translates to The Giant Alligator River and the movie appeared under that name in a few places, in the US it was The Great Alligator. In Canada it was The Big Alligator River, that title was also used on the US DVD box. West Germany has my favorite title Der Fluß der Mörderkrokodile.

There's about 25 mins of nothing much going on until the alligator starts attacking a new tourist resort in Africa. It's really Sri Lanka but I couldn't tell. Mel Ferrer is the resort owner and Barbara Bach is assistant. A photographer is visiting the area when the attacks begin. Many locals are slaughtered and the living local believe it's the tourists fault. There's some tribe and tourist friction.

It's a below average giant monster movie but not by too much. I got a few laughs out of it but that first long stretch before the critter shows  up is a hump. When it does show up it lacks greatness. You can see if you like the movie on YouTube in the link above.

Grizzly 1976

Grizzly 1976 Written by Harvey Flaxman and David Shelton, directed by William Girdler and David Shelton. The poster says the bear is 18 feet, in the movie the bear is said to be 15 feet tall, the bear in the film is called Teddy and he's 11 feet tall. Still massive, they don't call them Ursus arctos horribilis for nothing. Teddy, Christopher George and and Richard Jaeckel were in the 1977 film Day Of The Animals together. It's a similar story to this film.

Christopher George is a park ranger where the grizzly decides to pick up lunch. There aren't supposed to be any grizzlies in the area, they were all wiped out by the locals a long while ago. Andrew Prine is a helicopter pilot who had a bad time in Vietnam. Richard Jaeckel is a naturist who studies the forest and provides the park staff with bear info. The local black bears aren't much of a problem but they like to know where they are and what they're up to anyway.

The grizzly starts slaughtering from the get go and he's eating the victims. He chomps on a smorgasbord of campers, hikers and hunters, man, woman and child. Christopher wants more help to hunt the bear. Rather than get more rangers or qualified help his boss lets the press in for a look around. He doesn't close the park right away. Then he lets a gaggle of hunters in, hoping they'll get the bear. That doesn't work out so well, many more are killed.

There's a lot of forest activity, it was filmed in Georgia and the area seems nice enough. I wouldn't care to go camping but I'd drive thought if I was nearby and younger. The campers there seem to like it, until the bear ravages them in their campsite. There's a fair body count and a lot of blood being splashed around. The gore makeup is of mixed quality, often fairly decent. Some of the grizzly interaction scenes aren't that well shot but the mechanical bear looked fairly good. Sadly the bears paws change from black to brown on occasion.

Despite the weaknesses the film did fairly well at the box office. The $750,000 cost turned a nice $39 million. It was the most financially successful Indy film of the year. I enjoyed it but only gave it a 5 on the IMDb where it has a 5.2 average. I watched it on YouTube, it's a fairly decent copy, here's the link.

Friday Night Movies 889

Innocent Bystanders 1972 Based on the James Mitchell novel The Innocent Bystanders, screenplay by James Mitchell, directed by Peter Collinson. Mitchell wrote several John Craig spy novels under the name James Munro. I've not heard of them before. Not planning to look for them either. Spy books are pretty low down the list of genre fiction for me. Collinson directed The Italian Job in 1969 and Ten Little Indians in 1974. I liked both of those well enough but I've not seen any of his other work that I remember.

Stanley Baker is a spy working for Donald Pleasence, they work at one of the spy agencies in the UK. Donald is a nasty man with a plan to sacrifice Stanley as a decoy for his younger agents. Donald is not happy with Stanley, he thinks the man has passed it.

Stanley has to go to Turkey to find a scientist who's hiding. There's plenty of trouble for Stanley, other agents, including those on his side, want him dead and he's kidnapped Geraldine Chaplin. She has clues on the scientist's whereabouts.

There's all the usual sort of spy stuff going on, punch ups, gun shooting, explosions, and plenty of driving around. The action moves from London to Spain and  then to Turkey. Plenty of fairly interesting locations. There's a bit too much personal melodrama between Stanley and Geraldine, it seems to slow the second act down. The movie runs 111 mins and it's pretty slowly paced.

Stanley turns out to be less than washed up, he manages to beat the baddies and the goodies, get some cash and move on. It's was mostly fun to watch. I'd watch it again, good thing because I've bought the Blu-ray, but I'd be fast forwarding through some of that personal drama.

I thought Stanley was entertaining is this movie but a bit less interesting than he was in Hell Drivers. That's my favorite trucking movie. It's a hell of a movie and I'm no big fan of a drama. This one stands out. Stanley is an ex-con who's gone to work for a gravel hauling company. The cast includes Herbert Lom, Patrick McGoohan, Peggy Cummins, David McCallum, Sean Connery, William Hartnell, Jill Ireland, Alfie Bass and Sid James. Here's a copy of the movie on YouTube.

The Great Spy Chase 1963 I watched this last December on a FNM night when we were all kept at home during a snow storm. You can see the post in the link above. I enjoyed the movie for the second time but both other viewers took a snooze during the last act.

Friday Night Movies 885

The Hunter Will Get You 1976 Written and directed by Philippe Labro.

Jean Paul Belmondo is the Hunter in the title, he's a guy the police hire to do jobs they can't. Bruno Cremer is the baddie, he's a thief who kills everyone who sees him on the job. The police and the Hunter are on Bruno's trail and he's a tough guy to track down.

Bruno tricks young stupid men into being an accomplice in a robbery and then kills them once the job is done. Patrick Fierry is one such man, sadly, for Bruno, Patrick is only winged in the arm when the job is done. He manages to get arrested and put into jail. Jean Paul joins him their and they used the corrupt prison guards expensive secret escape plan to get away.

There's plenty of running about as Bruno goes about his business. Patrick winds up providing an important clue to Bruno's ID and location. Sadly, he's not clever enough to keep out of trouble. It won't go well for him in the end.

I enjoyed it for the most part but there were things that didn't make sense in the script. Not big things, more annoying or cliched things. I'm not going to be rushing to watch the Blu-ray again anytime soon. I am interested in hearing what the commentary says I just need to slot that in at some point.

Blood Of The Vampire 1958 Written by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Henry Cass. The movie was an early production from Robert S Baker and Monty Berman. They wanted to get some of the market that Hammer was getting and they hired Jimmy Sangster to write the screenplay. He wrote a lot of Hammer films over the years.

I thought I hadn't seen the film before, it sure didn't look familiar but that turned out to be one of those false memories, I had, back in 2016, I even posted about it. You can read that to find out what the film was about.

I liked the movie back then but didn't buy the DVD, I probably got it from Netflix DVD or the library. Tonight we watched the new Blu-ray from Scream Factory. It looks very nice. I'm tempted to buy one.

Friday Night Movies 819

C C & Company 1970 Written by Roger Smith and directed by Seymour Robbie. Roger is also an actor and he was married to Ann-Margret from 1967 to 2017 when he passed away. The copy I watched came from a three film set called Box Of Bikers Collection and was retitled Chrome Hearts. The copies of all the films are pan and scan with visible tape damage. Nothing restored here and they are all crammed on one disc.

Joe Namath is a biker in William Smith's motorcycle gang. Joe gets involved with the local motocross scene and gets into a fight with William over wanting to keep a hundred bucks out of the 6 hundred he won. Joe leaves the gang, taking his $500 back. He'd meets Ann-Margret, she works for a motocross guy, and starts a relationship, only to have it interfered with by the angry William. Joe talks William into having a race to settle the beef. It ends with Joe and Ann riding off into the sunset. Pretty much average and a bit dull. Too much motocross, a boring sport if there ever was. It was nice to see Sid Haig and Bruce Glover. It's the first time Ann-Margret did a nude scene but you don't see much of anything.

JC 1972 Director William F McGaha co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Thirty, William also plays JC Masters, a biker with a soft heart. When we meet him he's just quit his construction job and come home to his girlfriend. He's mad that the men were picking on him for his long hair and beard. Ironically they are calling him a woman. A woman with a beard. Yeah, it makes no sense but that's ignorant ass jerks.

JC takes his gal and some other biker pals to a small southern town to visit his sister. The townies are really driven insane by a biker gang with a black couple in it. Slim Pickens is the sheriff, he doesn't like bikers or black people but he's got a bit of brain, he knows if they kill bikers or black people, they'll get hung out to dry on the news. Not because it's morally wrong, just bad PR. Slim is a pretty big prick but his deputy is a nasty evil prick, he really wants to kill bikers and blacks. The deputy arrests the black biker guy when he comes into town for beer. The deputy and Slim beat the man unmercifully. JC rounds up the gang and they ride to the rescue. Sadly hardly anyone gets out of there alive, mostly just the biker gals who were far enough away to get away safely. The movie is well below average, a bit of a downer, and a good reminder that the south of the country hasn't moved along much since the 70s.

Cycle Vixens 1978 John Arnoldy wrote the script and co-directed with Peter Perry Jr. Cycle Vixens is the original title, Young Cycle Girls is the title on the film in the set. Another prick trying to trick the movie viewer into seeing a poor film they've already seen or been warned about.

Three young girls decide to ride from Colorado to California to see the ocean. They're riding little motorcycles and plan to camp out. They completely unprepared for the road and they have some bad stuff happen to them along the way, in the end they're murdered by a creep. It's a terrible film, poorly made. Nobody should watch it.

Red Peony Gambler 8 Execution Of Duty 1972

Red Peony Gambler 8 Execution Of Duty 1972 Written by Kôji Takada, directed by Buichi Saitô.

Oryu visits Osaka to pay respect to a dying lady boss. The old lady divides her empire between two sons and that doesn't go down well with the more punk ass bitch one. He betrays the family for a yakuza headman who the other brother once slashed in the face. A war breaks out and the baddies get wiped out in a big ass fight at the end of the film.

Sadly there are no more in the series. I found this as entertaining as the previous 7 and would be glad to see them again. The whole set is on the Rarelust blog.

Red Peony Gambler 7 I'm Here To Kill You 1971

Red Peony Gambler 7 I'm Here To Kill You 1971 Screenplay by Tai Katô and Norifumi Suzuki, direction by Tai Katô.

Oryu finds herself in the middle of a battle between the villagers and corrupt officials. The village has a lead mine that's of military importance. The trouble is the polluted water and air are killing the rice crops so the villagers are starving. The company sends them some money but the corrupt officials decide to steal it and cover their tracks by killing anyone they can get away with.

That plan only goes so far before Oryu pushes back hard. She gets some help from Tomisaburô Wakayama and others. There's a fair bit of comedy when Tomisaburô shows up, a nice break from all the drama that's been going on. There's some real bastards for villains, it was nice to see them sliced when the end comes, they were total selfish pricks. Some days a guy could wish some kimono wearing lady would sort things out a bit. Almost done the series, one to go. Great so far.

Friday Night Movies 813

Dixie Dynamite 1976 Lee Frost directed and co-wrote the script with Wes Bishop. Wes also plays the gun happy deputy. 

Warren Oates is a guy in a small Georgia town, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley are friends of his and daughters of a moonshiner. A local scumbag rich guy is secretly buying up the town and surrounding area because he knows there's gas under the ground. He's using his contacts to close up the stills and put the moonshiners out of biz. Then he buys up the loans for a tiny amount, compared to the value of the farm.

The girl's father is one of those poor saps and he's about to lose his farm. At the bar he gets in a fight and the local deputy kills him. The farm is sold and the girls turned out. They take to getting revenge on the scumbag behind it all. They blow up his trucks, his bank, his car and him. They even blow up the deputy. Happy ending.

It made me laugh, especially that deputy being blowed up real good. You can check it out on YouTube, link above. You might get a laff.

The Day Mars Invaded Earth 1962 Directed by Maury Dexter and written by Harry Spalding. Kent Taylor is a scientist on a project to send a robot to Mars. The robot fails shortly after landing but not before it sends a powerful signal to the Earth. Kent takes a bit of a vacation to visit his family. Marie Windsor plays his somewhat estranged wife, Betty Beall and Gregg Shank play his children.

The family members start seeing each other roaming around the estate where they're staying. The distant figures don't respond to a call and quickly move out of sight. Soon they're seeing themselves and wonder what the hell is going on. We learn a bit later that the probe on Mars worried the energy beings of the red planet and they've come to put a stop to the invasion from Earth.

It was fairly decent for a low budget picture from Robert L Lippert. I enjoyed it and added a copy from YouTube to my pile, I might want to watch it again someday. You can check it out at the link above.