PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Legends Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977

Legend Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977 Screenplay by Masaru Igami, Isao Matsumoto and Ichirô Ôtsu, directed by Junji Kurata.

 

Made by Toei Company, the studio was inspired by Jaws, the film did poorly in the Japanese theaters but was a block buster in the Soviet Union. It was known in the US as The Legend Of Dinosaurs and it was used in the last episode of the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which was produced by KTMA. That version was chopped up a good bit, the original movie got a US DVD release in 2007 from Media Blasters and that's what I watched.

A woman falls into a cavern, in the Aokigahara region near Mount Fuji, she awakes to find fossilized eggs, one of which hatches. She runs off and scares a construction crew with her hysterics. A geologist called Takashi goes to take a look, while hiking around Mount Fuji he's knocked out and wakes up in the cabin of a family friend. Takashi continues his hunt for the eggs, on the way he meets an old girlfriend Akiko. She's there with her friend Junko, a scuba diver, who wants to dive in the lake where a couple in a small boat went missing.

A diver is injured in the lake, livestock have gone missing, wild theories of living dinosaurs are tossed out to the dubious public. Well, turns out it wasn't a dinosaur, it was two, one of them a plesiosaurus and the other a rhamporhynchus. The pair battle it out and the volcano erupts killing both dinos. It's a bad day on Mount Fuji and the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

I was much more entertained by the movie than on MST3K. It was like seeing a whole different movie, the MST3K version had so much trimmed out of it. It's a more adult film than I thought, there's a bit of gore, mild by today's standards and a brief bit of nudity. I'd watch it again.

I'm not sure why it did so poorly in the Japanese box office. It was Toei's biggest budget, $2.8 million and it didn't even get a third of that back in receipts. It never got released theatrically in the US but it was released to TV in 1987.

Gawain And The Green Knight 1973

Gawain And The Green Knight 1973 Based on the poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight by Anonymous, screenplay by Philip M Breen and Stephen Weeks, directed by Stephen Weeks.

Nigel Green is the Green Knight. This is his last feature film as he died the year before. Murray Head plays Sir Gawain, you might remember him from his big hit One Night In Bangkok, he's also brother to Anthony Head. He's made a dozen albums but I've only heard that one song. He's made 14 movies but this is the only one I've seen.

The story follows the poem much better than The Green Knight. The Green Knight shows up on New Years Eve and offers a challenge to King Arthur's knights. The Green Knight offers a knight the first blow, a year and a day later his will meet the knight to take his turn. Gawain is the only one that volunteers. The king tells him to strike a blow that will leave the GK incapable of striking back. Gawain lops off the head of the Green Knight, the trick backfires after the GK picks up his head and says he'll see Gawain in a year and a day.

Gawain leaves to find the Green Knight, along the way he has some adventures that involve a woman called Linet, she's played by Ciaran Madden. She's part of a decent cast that includes Anthony Sharp, Robert Hardy, David Leland, Murray Melvin, Tony Steedman, Ronald Lacey, Willoughby Goddard, Geoffrey Bayldon and Richard Hurndall.

The effects for this film aren't as good as The Green Knight but the story makes more sense. I enjoyed it well enough and thought it was just a bit above average. You can see it on YouTube, link in the usual place.

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.

Empire Of The Ants 1977

Empire Of The Ants 1977 Written by Bert I Gordon and Jack Turley, directed by Bert I Gordon. Bert's still going and he'll be 100 on September 24 2022.

I'd seen this not that many years ago and thought it was entertaining in a slight way. It scores a 4.2 on the IMDb and that's not an unfair score. I gave it a four. It's just not one of Bert's better works. Not that Bert had many good films in the 2 dozen he directed. There's a reason they featured on MST3K so often.

I found a Blu-ray of Empire Of The Ants and Jaws Of Satan. I didn't have either film and it was cheap. Now someone's selling copies on Amazon for $65 to $81. Stuff goes out of print quite quickly, despite not being worth that much moolah.

I mostly picked up the Blu-ray because it had a commentary by Bert. Despite his faults I was kind of interested in the guy because of his 50s films. He started as monster and horror film maker and has kept an oar in the genre ever since. Sadly Bert doesn't keep his oar in the water of the commentary. I don't know if it was his age, his lack of interests in doing a commentary, whatever he just wasn't participating very much in the process.

It doesn't help he was being interviewed by Kevin Sean Michaels. This guy was the worst host of a commentary I've come across. He was lackluster, didn't ask good questions and made dumb conversation. Only on a tiny number of occasions did he get Bert to reminisce about his past films for more than a yes or a no. It was mind numbing and frustrating to sit through. Boo on you Kevin.

Michaels film credentials including being an art director at Troma and making some short films, some TV and some documentaries. I can't say I've seen anything by him. I might be interested in his first couple of films, Vampira: The Movie and The Wild World Of Ted V Mikels. Hopefully they'll be less boring than this commentary.

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 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.

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.

 

Science Fiction Sunday 598

Up first is The Final Programme, it's British, it came out in 1973, and it's the only film adapted from a Michael Moorcock novel. The movie was called Last Days Of Man On Earth in the US and a few other places. Robert Fuest is the writer and director. His previous two films were the Dr Phibes series and they were much more entertaining.

I first saw it back in 2001 and rated it "fairish" on my Watched Movie List. After watching it again I'm not thinking it's much better than that and that ain't even barely average. I got more enjoyment out of the cinematography than the story. It's very stylish and colorful. The locations are quite interesting. It's the characters that are annoying. What a load of jerks and assholes.

It's somewhat in the future and there's been an incident or two, Amsterdam is ash, the Vatican is gone, it might be the end of civilization. Jerry Cornelius's father has died and he's left a programme to develop a hybrid human that's immortal and self replicating. The programme is on microfilm and it's in dad's safe at home. Some scientists, headed by Graham Crowden, want it.

Jerry leads a raid on the house and his brother defends the place. In the struggle Jerry accidentally kills his sister but the evil Miss Brunner gets the microfilm. Miss Brunner somehow consumes people. Jerry's brother shoots Jerry but he doesn't die. There's a good bit of chasing about by these two knobs. Again, the locations were more interesting than most of the action.

Eventually the microfilm, the scientists, Miss Brunner and Jerry are all in one place. The experiment goes on with a nice laughable ending. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm often laughing at stuff that isn't jokes. I'll probably never get back to the DVD, lucky for me it was used and fairly cheap.

Victor Frankenstein is a 2017 re-imagining of Frankenstein. There's little of the novel in the movie and the whole thing is now being told by a completely new character. He's one of a legion of new characters. It crapped out at the box office and I can see why. Those characters suck.

Total Film compared the movie to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes films, loud, flashy, busy, but I find it's lacking the interesting characters that come with Guy's films. The screenplay was written by Max Landis and the director was Paul McGuigan. His previous film was Push in 2009 and I didn't think too much of that, before that he directed the 2006 gangster film Lucky Number Slevin. That was a bit more entertaining.

Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, he's the narrator and he's got a hunchback. Victor, played by James McAvoy, finds Igor in a circus, acting a sad clown, but he's really knowledgeable about human anatomy. He's all self taught. Victor rescues him and the owner calls the coppers. A man was killed during the escape by a scummy circus guy and that's blamed on Victor and Igor. A completely insane Scotland Yard detective takes the case and when he finds out more about what Victor is up to, he goes full on religious zealot. He throws away his career in his drive to get Victor.

It goes on and on, though only 91 mins, it seems much longer, I was getting tired of spending time with Victor. It's nicely produced, the sets and locations look really good but all the flashy crashy stuff can't make up for a weak story. There are better Frankenstein films out there. I'd watch those again before I would watch this once more.

The Lady Vanishes 1979

The Lady Vanishes is a British comedy mystery from 1979. It's based on the 1938 screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, they took the story from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. George Axelrod wrote the screenplay for this film and Anthony Page directed. It's a Hammer Films production and Michael Carreras is the Exec Prod. 

The plot of the story follows the basic plot of the 1938 Hitchcock film but jazzes it up for the modern day. They also move most of the action to Germany, the original film has them in a fictional country. No matter, they still need to get over the border to escape the Nazis. Cybill plays the part Margaret Lockwood had and Elliot Gould plays the Michael Redgrave bit. Cybill plays a much more gregarious character, she's American, than the more staid and English one played by Margaret. George's character is also changed to an American. They're broader characters are fitting for the level of comedy in the film.

That guy with Cybill in the picture above is Arthur Lowe. Some might recognize him from Dad's Army and plenty of other TV shows and movies. Here he plays the part of Charters, Ian Carmichael plays his counterpart Caldicott. They are self absorbed Englishmen who are focused on getting home for the last days of the Cricket Test Match. Like the fellows in Hitchcock's film they act rather pompous and selfish but when push comes to shove, Charters picks up a gun and pops some caps into some Nazis. Over the years I've grown to like the pair of Cricket fans. They appeared in several movies, on radio and TV, they even have their own Wikipedia page. Arthur and Ian easily fill the shoes of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford.

 

Angela Lansbury plays the May Whitty part of Miss Froy. As usual she's quite good. She helps Cybill after they meet on the train and then she disappears. Cybill goes looking for her after she's told there wasn't an English woman in the compartment earlier. She pulls George into her search and eventually they uncover a naughty Nazi plot.

They've got a fairly well written story that moves along quite well. I found Cybill's character kind of annoying but she gets the job done. I've never been a big Cybill fan. Good cast and plenty of nice locations. I still prefer the original but this wasn't too bad. I'd watch it again.