PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 843

Winterbeast 1992 Story, screenplay and directed by Christopher Thies. It's Christopher's only film, he passed away at age 50 in 2015. A no budget film that was shot on 16MM and Super8 film in 1986 and 1989. Filmed in Newbury Massachusetts.

The local Park Rangers are worried about the disappearance of some people on the mountain. Turns out there's a demon associated with a native carving. The demon is depicted with stop motion animation, not the best stop motion but it is somewhat imaginative. The little animated clips sprinkled through the film are sometimes the best thing about a scene. There aren't any credits listed on the IMDb page so I've no info about the animators. The IMDb Trivia Page says: The totem pole monster and the skeleton head that rips out of a man's stomach are both props taken from the Dokken music video Burning like a Flame.

It's a monster film with little or no production values, a cast with really limited abilities, a lack luster script, and minimal competency behind the camera. Yet, we were able to get through it with only a slight increase of the level of annoyance that time was passing so slowly. It's a movie that makes it's 77 mins seem like 90 plus. It has some entertainment value, the guy playing the crazy lodge owner was fun to watch, but a lot of my amusement seemed to be laughing at the movie not with it. There's a nice new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome but you don't need to take a chance wasting your money on that. There's a link to the movie on YouTube so you can test drive it. Who knows you might need that Blu-ray. I don;t think I do.

Savage Dawn 1985 Screenplay by Max Bloom and Bill Milling, directed by Simon Nuchtern. It's Simon's last film of nine, his most well known film has to be Snuff, notorious for being a film with scenes of real murder, but sadly he's only got an uncredited bit of material in that. None of his other films look familiar and they don't generate many good comments on the IMDb. Back in 1970 Simon was the sound editor on Hercules In New York, that's the film where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Hercules and Arnold Stang plays another annoying guy from New York. It has some entertainment value from it's oddness.

It's a bikers invade a small town film with Lance Henriksen as the loner, ex-career soldier spy who helps the townies fight back. George Kennedy plays Lance's old Company pal, crippled in a wheel chair but still willing to fight back. William Forsythe plays the leader of the 30 or so bikers. They cause some trouble in the bar and cheat at a no holds barred boxing match, so they get tossed out of the bar. Leo Gordon plays the sheriff, his gun and that of his deputy, push the bikers out of town. William promises to be back.

There's a couple of skirmishes with the bikers before the big all out push in the last part of the film. It's all typical action footage with fist fights, gun shooting, motorcycle riding, explosions and a big old Army tank. Some of the action footage is OK, some is not so good.

Karen Black plays a slutty lady who turns against the town and hooks up with William. They have a short relationship. Richard Lynch is the creepy reverend. He gets crushed by a tank. Sam Kinison has a small part as a bible spouting barber. He comes to a quick end.

It's better than Winterbeast but not much. Simon might be a mediocre director or he might be dancing to the beat of some music we can't comprehend. Some of his scenes work fine, others not so good. He didn't make anymore movies and he's still around. There's a watchable copy on YouTube that you can check out in the link above. Another film available on a Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray. It was still entertaining to watch but I wouldn't bother buying a copy.

Science Fiction Sunday 601

Robowar 1988 Another poor effort from the fine folks of Italy. Bruno Mattei used a pseudonym, Vincent Dawn, to try to trick audiences into believing they might be seeing an American made film. They aren't fooling anyone with half a brain. Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso wrote the screenplay using their real names, pointing out that no one really gives a fuck who writes this shit. I watched it on Amazon Prime and put a link to the movie on YouTube in the title above. Not the greatest upload but watchable. Not that I'm recommending that.

A special cyborg killer goes nuts on a mission to kill some guerillas on a jungle island. That's the band of soldiers, in the picture above, who are sent to stop the cyborg. The woman was someone they rescued along the way to their dooms. The guy, third from left, is the developer of the cyborg and he's a real dirt bag. He doesn't tell anyone anything until it's too late and one by one they get picked off. I couldn't hardly wait to see him get his.

It's all walking through the jungle, shouting cliches at each other, with occasional fire fights. It's dull and I don't need to see it again. At least I get to complain about it, maybe save someone from buying the Severin Blu-ray. My good deed for the day.

Transmophers 2007 Another Amazon Prime film that shares the cyborg battlebot idea with Robowars. I decided to watch it, even though it's from the dreaded film production house The Asylum. Occasionally it's good to be reminded how poor they are at making films. Leigh Scott is the writer and director. He's written a story about a robot invasion of the Earth, something that happened in the past, the remaining humans have hidden themselves underground and fight back as they can. The movie depicts the battle to take back the surface.

This movie shares something else with the previous film. It's script is also a bag full of cliches. Both films have nothing original going on in them. The acting is all over the place, a couple of people have slightly more skill than the rest and it stands out. It's even duller that Robowar, nothing much happens for nearly the first half the 86 min movie, I was forced to flick through the dull scenes with the 10 second jump button to stave off boredom. Not surprising, movies from The Asylum have a lot of talky scenes, it's cheaper than action and they have little money. Occasionally they shot scenes of people walking and talking in a corridor. That still doesn't make the films more interesting. Another one I wouldn't need to see again.

Friday Night Movies 792

First up the remaining movie in the Karel Zeman box set from Criterion. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen came out in 1962 in Czechoslovakia under the title of Baron Prášil. It was released in the US in 1964 under TFBM title. It's quite the thing to look at, a mix of animation and live action with colors that change from vivid to subdued as the scenes play out. The backgrounds are meant to look like Doré engravings. Furniture and props are painted to match the style of the engravings. The attention to detail is remarkable. Karel directed and wrote the screenplay. Jirí Brdecka, Gottfried August Bürger, Josef Kainar and Rudolph Erich Raspe also get writing credits.

An astronaut from Earth named Tonik, Tony in the US dubbed version, lands on the moon only to find the main characters from Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon wondering about. Baron Munchausen shows up and he joins the men in mistakenly thinking Tonik is from the Moon. The astronaut has a spacesuit on so he isn't saying much. The Baron decides to take Tonik for a visit to the Earth. They leave in the Baron's flying ship. Once out of the suit Tonik and the Baron have conversations.

The Baron's got 6 horses but they're the flying sort, I can't imagine what their brake horsepower would be. The Baron and Tonik have a series of adventures in the 18th century Ottoman Empire. They rescue a princess from a sultan, they fight his soldiers and escape. Later they get eaten by a whale and beat an armada.

 

It's very colorful and there's plenty of running about, derring do, fantasy and fun. I liked it well enough to want to watch it again someday.

My second film is Streets Of Fire, it's subtitled A Rock & Roll Fable. I picked up the 35th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray to replace a copy from an old laserdisc. Looks much nicer. I went to the theater to see it in 1984, a couple of times, in fact. The movie was written by Walter Hill and Larry Gross, Walter directed. It came out a couple of years after 48 Hrs and 5 years after The Warriors. The latter is still my favorite Walter Hill movie.

Diane Lane is a singer doing a show when Willem Defoe comes along and kidnaps her off the stage. He's called Raven and he's the leader of a scumbag biker gang called the Bombers. Raven wears ludicrous shiny black leather overalls and no shirt. Michael Paré is Diane's ex-boyfriend, Deborah Van Valkenburgh is Michael's sister, Rick Moranis is Diane's manager and current boyfriend, Amy Madigan is a soldier looking for a job and a place to stay.

That's Raven. What a cock! Rick hires Michael to go rescue Diane from that face. The local police aren't up to the task, that's for sure. Michael and Amy rescue Diane but Raven vows revenge. He wants a battle with Michael and he gets it. They slug it out with some sort of goofy long handled picks or hammers.

Larry Gross said he was influenced by the success of Flashdance and they decided to make a musical. I found I didn't care that much to listen to Diane sing anymore so I fast forwarded through those bits. I've always liked the look of the film, it's very 50s like but there's plenty of stuff in the movie that's out of that period. Like some musicals it's set in a bit of fantasy world. The musical numbers are colorful and bright, scenes in other places are often dull and dingy. The neighborhood is in the poor part of town and a bit rundown at best. The streets are a giant set that was built outside and covered with a tarp. It's a great set.

It's entertaining, I liked the characters, I liked the script, I liked the look. I was glad to have picked this Blu-ray up. There's a commentary to listen to and a whole second disc with two documentaries and more. I'll need several hours for that, so who knows when I'll get back to it.

Friday Night Movies 777

Color Out Of Space sees Richard Stanley return to feature film making after a long absence. All he'd made were documentaries since he got fired from The Island Of Dr Moreau back in 1996. That's a movie with some major issues behind the scenes and the final product didn't turn out worth seeing.

What's worth seeing are Richard's two best movies, Hardware and Duct Devil. I've not seen his only other feature film Brave, it just didn't seen like the sort of movie that I would want to watch. I've seen the documentaries that were included with the nice multi disc set of Dust Devil but they weren't of any real interest to me.

HP Lovecraft wrote the story The Colour Out Of Space back in 1927 and part of the story is set in 1882. Richard and Scarlett Amaris wrote the screenplay which they've set in the modern day. Some Lovecraft fans are digging the adaptation. I haven't read that story since I was a teen and don't remember a thing about it. I remember more of what happened in Die Monster, Die. That was a 1965 adaptation that I watched not too long ago. It's much less effects based than this new adaptation.

Nicholas Cage and Joely Richardson are the parents of three kids and they've moved into the country to get away from the big city. When the meteor falls they might have wished that they stayed there but things move so fast that they didn't have time to reflect before the nasty alien shit pretty much fucks them to death. Not much hope going on here. I liked parts of the story but other parts made me bored. I'm debating getting the movie but I'm not sure I want to bother with it again. I'm just not a big Lovecraft fan. There's talk, by Richard Stanley, of a Lovecraft trilogy of films, The Dunwich Horror might be next. I would be more interested in that. I liked the 1970 version with Dean Stockwell.

Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity is a 1987 Full Moon picture written and directed by Ken Dixon. He adapted the Richard Connell story The Most Dangerous Game somewhat poorly. It might be the reason that it's Ken's last movie, it was his 2nd feature, after his 1975 movie The Erotic Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe. That was retitled Bangin' Friday in my imagination. Ken directed 4 documentaries that feature unconnected clips from horror and SF films, one devoted to gore, one to nudity, another to violence, the last to zombies.

Two women, prisoners in a space prison, escape in a ship only to have trouble, they are forced to land on a planet. They find the place a bit of a jungle but manage to find the one house. A guy named Zed lives there, he takes them in and then hunts them. Cindy Beal and Elizabeth Kaitan are the space prisoners, Elizabeth seemed familiar, she was one of the three leads in the 1988 comedy Assault Of The Killer Bimbos. That was a fun movie, not great, but fun.

Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity is fun and kind of entertaining, it's just well below average. I gave it a generous 4 but haven't got much interest in getting a copy.

W 1983

W is a 1983 Filipino film about some scummy drug gang lords and the cops after them. Willy Milan wrote and directed. The film is also known as W Is War, W: La Vengeance Des Sauvages, Kersantti W - nykyajan Mad Max (Sergeant W - Modern Day Mad Max), Vendicator W, and Firestorm - Die letzte Schlacht.

That's all the baddies on the VHS cover. The head baddie is called Nosfero and he's the guy in the fancy uniform with the red sleeves. He has a pigtail growing out of the side of his bald head. He's a violent lunatic with a leather clad army of thugs. Don't worry, they're easily killed.

 

W in the title refers to W2, that's the code name of the cop investigating Nosfero. The drug gang have a base and that's eventually where W2 and the force attack. The first hour of the 90 min movie has various smaller encounters between the cops and the gang plus too much melodrama with W2 and his wife, the last half hour is nearly all battle time. That battle tries to capture the look of Mad Max 2 but doesn't quite pull it off. At least they have plenty of extras for the fight scenes. Lots of explosions too.

 

There's a link to the movie in the title above. You might get a kick out of it, for any number of reasons. I think it tries to emulate the over the top Hong Kong action crime films of the time but it's hasn't enough money or talent behind it. There were enough odd moments that it kept me going to the end. It's not available on DVD as far as I can see. There had been a VHS release, which is now pretty rare. I read of a DVD release but did not see any listed anywhere I normally look. The VHS isn't even listed on eBay. Luckily there are people who post such thing to YouTube and the like. It's often much better to see a movie before buying it. This is that sort of movie.

Science Fiction Sunday 563

Arachnoquake is a 2012 disaster movie that has imaginary spiders from the center of the earth. They don't look anything like the spiders in the poster above. The story is by Eric Forsberg, the script is by Paul A Birkett, the director is Griff Furst. He's the son of Stephen Furst. The only movie of his I've seen is Lake Placid 3.

The movie is set in New Orleans where earthquakes have damaged the ground, leaving huge holes in the roads, starting fires in the city, and releasing man eating spiders of various sizes. Bug Hall is a tour guide in charge of a cute little tram. That's his real life name. His movie sister and father are on a boat on the river. Both groups encounter killer spiders. There's plenty of chasing and being bitten. Often people break out in a big pusy sore that explodes.

Edward Furlong is the only one in the cast that I knew. He's got to drive a bus load of cheerleaders out of danger, he crashes the bus but they get rescued by some soldiers. Edward's wife in the film is a 6th grade biology teacher, she autopsy's one of the critters and figures out what inside the beasts. There's no real need for the info, stomping and bullets kill off most of the spiders. I guess it fills time and adds some gore value.

There's a real sloppiness to the movie. In one scene the tour bus stops at an intersection for a bit of business, it's facing an area we can't see, there are buildings on it's left and right. In the overhead shot it's in the middle of a street with a huge park on it's right side. We never see the park in any of the ground shots. Too costly for a continuity person I guess. There's more of that lazy film making going on, near the end one guy keeps commenting on what's going on, he spots Bug in his diving suit but Bug's face is obscured by the gear, that guy wouldn't have any way of knowing who that was just by seeing him. The movie isn't keeping my interest if I keep noticing all the mistakes. I suppose many of the viewers on SyFy wouldn't care. I don't either, what a crappy movie, way below average. I gave it a generous 2.

Phoenix: The Warrior is another dip into the post-apocalypse genre. Unlike last weeks highly entertaining Turbo Kid, P:TW fails to elevate the PA film in any possible way. The movie is also known as She-Wolves Of Wasteland. It came out in 1988 and it was directed by Robert Hayes who co-wrote the script with Dan Rotblatt. Kathleen Kimmont plays Phoenix, she's one of the many women left after whatever happened happened. Men are scarce. She helps a runaway escape from Persis Khambatta. She works for an evil boss lady who experiments on people. Persis is her enforcer, she heads a gang of poorly clad ladies with guns. There's nothing good about the movie, it's a boring slog through all the junk yards and gravel pits in and around Riverside California. The Mojave Desert is nice but even that they manage to make dull. It's not worth a look, go watch the Turbo Kid. Fuck this piece of shit.

Science Fiction Sunday 557

First up a film from Amazon Prime's catalog of fine free SF films. Turkey Shoot is also known as Escape 2000 and it came out in 1982. Brian Trenchard-Smith is the director, he directed a lot of stuff I haven't seen, I have seen Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space, neither are great but they are watchable. George Schenck, Robert Williams and David Lawrence wrote the story that Jon George and Neil D Hicks adapted for their screenplay.

It's basically a prison movie but set slightly in the future. The evil warden has planned a hunt with prisoners as the hunted. Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey are among the five chosen and Michael Craig plays the evil warden. It's all pretty standard stuff, sadistic guards beating the inmates and then chasing them in the jungle. There's a big fight near the end that was fairly good and Steve puts up such a good fight that the warden doesn't survive. I've certainly seen worse prison movies. Not something I would buy but I got through to the end.

Second film from AP is the 2006 SYFY original TV movie Shockwave which is also called AI Assault by someone. It's directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews, Jim c0-wrote the script with William Langlois under the name Bill Monroe. I watched the movie under the name Teddy Jones. It's about a government AI robot project that decides to break out of the plane that's transporting them. George Takei is the pilot of the plane, Robert Picardo is one of the scientists in the plane, he can't stop the robots from escaping. The plane goes down on a small island. Hudson Leick and a couple of other guys are robbers, Josh Coxx is their unwilling helicopter pilot. Alexandra Paul is a scientist. Tim Thomerson, Michael Dorn and Billy Mumy are all military men, they send Navy Seals to the island the plane goes down on. The robbers get forced down onto the island with the robots because of a storm, then gets stranded when the helicopter breaks.  The robots are too clever for everyone's own good. It's all about as good as the usual SYFY movie. There's plenty of running through the woods and the like but it's pretty much below average in interesting stuff happening. Another one that I wouldn't bother buying.

Cobra 1986

Someone was nice enough to lend me a copy of the Shout Factory Blu-ray of Cobra, the 1986 Sylvester Stallone action film. Sylvester wrote the screenplay, sort of basing it on a Paula Gosling novel called Fair Game. George P Cosmatos is the director. The Blu-ray came out last January and it looks pretty good. I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen the movie. I wasn't watching a lot of action films in the 80s, trips to the theater were limited and there was someone else to help pick the films.

Sylvester is a cop in LA, Bridgette Nielsen is a model that witnesses a murder. Brian Thompson plays the murderer, dubbed the Night Slasher, he's killed at least 16 people when we meet him. The Night Slasher and his minions come after her. Sylvester is put in charge of keeping Bridgette safe. He's got Reni Santoni and Lee Garlington on his team. We know Lee is secretly part of the Night Slasher's gang. They are a bunch of shit bags who believe they are meant to kill the weak. They mostly die like they are the weak ones. The body count is huge, well over 50 people take a dirt nap. It was picked on for being too violent but people put asses in seats to the tune of $160 million. The film cost $25 million.

I enjoyed it and would pick one up if it gets cheaper. There's a commentary with the director that wasn't too bad. There are interviews with the cast and a vintage featurette that were OK. The only thing that I didn't like much was the soundtrack, I sure didn't care for some of that 80s pop.

Exterminators Of The Year 3000 1983 Commentary

I listened to the commentary with Exterminators Of The Year 3000 star Robert Iannucci and it wasn't too bad. Robert's kind of chatty and he remembers some details. The problem is the moderator. I call him moderator, really though, putz is a better word. He's got some dumb shit to say and he's not really sounding very clever to me. Form their conversation it seems the putz can't even remember what Robert said 20 minutes earlier. I remembered and I've got a shit memory. Well, still, I've heard worse commentaries. There's a short 17 minute interview with Robert where he talks about his days as a model. He was a Calvin Klein model, one of the ones who forgot his shirt, and he appeared in a giant Time Square poster. The movie isn't made any better by the chatter, the putz tells Robert people on the internet say it's one of the worst movies ever made.

Friday Night Movies 751

Hell Comes To Frogtown is a 1988 comedy set in a post apocalypse world with mutants and Sandahl Bergman. It's story is by Donald G Jackson and Randall Frakes, the screenplay is by Frakes and it was directed by Donald and R J Kizer.

Rowdy Roddy Piper is Sam Hell, he's be caught having a sack full of sperm. It's his own and it's a rare thing in the wasted future. The powers that be have glommed onto his tackle, nationalized it, and surrounded it in a barrier of steel. Sadly, Sam is a bit of an idiot. It's a wonder he survived so far.

Sandahl takes Sam on a mission to the wastelands. The mission is to find a handful of kidnapped fertile women and rescue them. It hardly makes any sense, sending your valuable family jewels off to where the mutants live but it's a movie awash with a lack of sense.

The fertile women have been sold to the mutant leader of Frogtown, that's him above, the mutation gives the human shaped beings frog faces and hands. Mutants also eat people, which is amazing when you consider the post-apoc human's diet.

There's plenty of running about, yelling, guns shooting, fast driving, and other time wasters to help fill out those 86 minutes. It's fun enough but since I have a copy I wouldn't be upgrading to the new Blu-ray, nice as it looks.

I probably liked Hatchet III better than the first movie even though I gave both of them a 6 on the IMDb. I was a bit more generous with the first movie. Hatchet III picks up where the first two movies left off. The Honey Island shoreline is littered with bodies, in chunks.

In the opening scenes Danielle Harris kills Victor Crowley, chops him up with a giant chainsaw, then heads into town to tell the police. Danielle was in the second movie and only appears briefly at the end of the 4th film. There's a fifth one rumored and the end of the fourth seems like a big ass opening for one. Back in the third film the local law arrest Danielle, sit her in cell, and the sheriff heads off for the swamp. Several police and paramedic boats arrive. While Daniel was gone Victor pulled himself together and slaughtered just about everyone who showed up on those boats. He's a super natural killing machine that's ugly as hell.

Victor is a nearly unkillable vengeful spirit that was created by a voodoo curse. The sheriff's wife believes that Victor needs to find his daddy and she knows where the dead man's ashes are. They work, at least temporarily, Victor returns in the fourth movie which we watched a few weeks back.

The first two movies in the series were written and directed by Adam Green. He wrote the script on this one and BJ McDonnell directed.  This is BJ's only movie, mostly he's a camera operator, he's got over 160 credits for that on the IMDb. All he's directed since have been video shorts. I though BJ did a great job in keeping the style of the first two films. They have a good sense of humor and plenty of gore. Since I had missed the 3rd movie, and had all the others, it seemed like a good idea to pick it up. Now I can watch the whole lot over again someday, right from the beginning.