PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 960

Massacre In Dinosaur Valley 1985 Written and directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini (under the name of Michael E Lemick). It's a cannibal movie that's an Italian and Brazilian co-production. It was shot in Brazil.

Some people gather in a small town to take a plane to Manaus. A professor wants to divert the flight and have the pilot land in Dinosaur Valley. People are not allowed area as there is a dangerous cannibal tribe in the neighborhood. The plane goes down and the professor is killed along with the pilot and a photographer's model. The rest head out for civilization and try to avoid the cannibals.

They don't do well at that, most die but three are rescued by some villains with an illegal mine that keeps slaves for labor. I thought the movie was rather sloppily made. The script is only so-so and in the hands of mediocre actors yields less than stellar performances. There is a fair bit of nudity but it's ruined by some raping and torture. The movie lives up to the massacre in the title as most of the travelers, cannibals and the villains are wiped out in a series of battles and chases. The Brazilian jungle scenery is one of the highlights of the movie. 

I'm not a big jungle cannibal fan for the most part. I know I wouldn't bother buying the disc for that reason.

Virgin High 1991 Written by Jeff Neill and Richard Gabai, directed, produced and starring Richard Gabai. I had forgotten I had seen this back in 1991. Not surprising seeing it again. It's pretty forgettable.

Richard and his pals are trying to score with women. Richard has a girlfriend, played by Traci Dali, but she's not having sex with him. Good for her. The other two guys don't even have girlfriends who are freezing them out. They really are an awful trio of losers.

Burt Ward plays the Traci's father, he's already disliking Richard and really who could blame him. Burt is mad when she returns at 12:45 AM when she was supposed to be home at 10:00 PM. He over reacts and sends her to catholic school. It's all Richard's fault, he stopped his watch and reset the time to 9:30 PM. When Traci nodded off because of the hour he starts fiddling with her cloths. He winds up tearing her buttons off and riping her bra. He's that sort of scumbag and I tired of him fairly quickly.

The trio of boys try to sneak into the catholic school looking for women without even realizing that Traci is there. Richard's impression of a priest is slap worthy and I'm no fan of the catholic priests. The Blu-ray of the movie has another Richard Gabi film, this one set in a convent and Richard and his pals are in that movie too. We watched a bit of it before going home and they are the same sort of characters.We didn't watch much and no one expressed an interest in seeing it the following week.

Virgin High has plenty of embarrassing moments and I'm not talking about stuff in the script. Not one I cared much for, now I'll have to try to forget about it all over again. Shouldn't be hard.

Friday Night Movies 959

Mojin: The Worm Valley 2018 Screenplay by Muye Zhang and directed by Xing Fei. A Chinese film that is a sort of sequel to Mojin: The Lost Legend.

Some cursed people set out to find the Mu Chen Orb. It's supposed to break the curse and cure the afflicted. They have some adventures on the way to the mountain they have to travel under. There's plenty of giant critters once they get below the surface. There's also a lot of talking and slow patches. The giant sets are nice and the action scenes are exciting.

I'm thinking it might play better if it was trimmed a bit. It also ends with a gaping open door for the sequel that never materialized. I enjoyed it but no where near as much as the first film. I bought the Blu-ray and I'll keep it but when I get around to watching it again I'll have my finger on the speed control.

Grotesque 1988 Story by Joe Tornatore, screenplay by Mikel Angel, directed by Joe Tornatore. Joe's been an actor and stuntman since he appeared as a gorilla in the the 1968 Planet Of The Apes. Except for a short film in 2012 he hasn't been acting since 1994. He wrote 8 films and directed 14 films. I don't recognize any of his work and none of his films gets more than a 4.9 on the IMDb.

Linda Blair and her best pal go visit her mother and father in a house in the mountains in California. Her father is an effect makeup guy who works on horror movies. In the middle of the night some punks break into the place and demand the money, jewels or drugs they mistakenly think are there. Hardly anyone survives the night. The movie switches from horror comedy to slasher to monster film to police procedural to revenge flick.

I watched this film on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and it made me laugh a good bit. Not from being funny but from being ludicrous. It's generally just a below average low budget film with a poor script, a poor director and a cast with limited talents. Some of the older actors, Guy Stockwell, Tab Hunter and Charles Dierkop are a bit better than some of the other cast. Despite all that I ordered the Shout Factory DVD with 3 other films.

There's a slightly better copy on TubiTV and I've linked to it in the title above. From what I can gather the movie was released to the theaters at 79 mins, you can watch that version on YouTube. The movie was padded out for TV and about 14 mins was added. You can check out both versions and see what you think. I'm thinking it might be a while before I get back to it.

Friday Night Movies 937

King Kong Lives 1986 Screenplay by Ronald Shusett and Steven Pressfield, directed by John Gillermin. It was the last theatrical film for Gillermin, he'd direct a TV movie in 1988. Gillermin directed his first film in 1949, he continued to make a mixed lot of pictures through 1974. He directed The Towering Inferno that year, he followed with King Kong in 1976 and Death On The Nile in 1978. I think that was his peak period, despite King Kong being a box office disappointment. His 80s films were a bit lackluster, Crossover, Sheena and King Kong Lives.

After shooting King Kong in the 1975 movie it turned out he wasn't totally dead yet, some university had taken the body and kept him in a comma for the last ten years. Linda Hamilton plans to replace his damaged heart with an artificial heart. In Borneo Brian Kerwin comes across a giant ape lady. He captures her and brings her to Georgia so she can supply blood for the operation.

That goes well and Kong wakes up. He goes a bit nutty when he can smell a female in the area. He breaks out and frees his new lady friend. They run off into the wilds of Georgia with the military after them bent on murder. Linda and Brian team up together to try to save the giant apes. It doesn't go well for King Kong but Lady Kong survives and bears him a son. Kong get a bit of a look at his son just before he finally dies. Brian arranges a sanctuary for the giant apes in Borneo.

It's a below average film and a lot of critics panned it. At the box office it was a flop in the US and Canada, worldwide it took in $48 million on a $18 million budget, $44 million in ticket sales came from Russia where the film was a big hit. Marketing costs put the film in the red and helped bankrupt the De Laurentiis' Company.

I enjoyed seeing the new Blu-ray but it's still a below average film. There was some laughs, especially when Kong chomped down on a hillbilly. There's plenty of special effects but not all successful. I doubt I'd watch it again. I don't have a copy at home and I'm lacking an interest to buy a copy. I don't even have a copy of the 1975 King Kong.

Darker Than Night 1975 Written and directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada. It's a Mexican film by the same director that directed Poison For The Fairies. It's part of Vinegar Syndrome's 3 film set of Taboada films.

A young woman called Ofelia inherits her aunt's house and fortune. Ofelia is the blond gal and she's supposed to take care of her aunt's cat as part of the deal. Ofelia brings her three roommates along.

One of the gals is a cat hater and that eventually leads to a dead cat. Soon after weird things start happening. The dead aunt starts appearing, that's followed by appearances of a dead cat. One gal is killed and that's followed by a couple of other deaths. At no time do we see the police or any other business that might be associated with dead bodies.

There's not much scary going on and on the whole it's rather pokey. If I was kinder I'd say it was atmospheric. There's a lot of wasted time doing nothing before anything interesting happens. After seeing two film by Carlos I'm not thinking I need to buy this box set. There's a 2014 remake that I have not seen. It looks more promising than the original.

Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveler 1988

Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveler 1988 Written and directed by Michael Rubbo. A Canadian kids movie featuring stamp collecting. It's got music by the McGarrigle sisters and a really young Rufus Wainwright.

The kid with the red hoodie is Ralph, he's a stamp collector, that's his sister Nancy, the other kid is Tommy Tricker, he used to be in the stamp club but they threw him out for being a cheat. When the movie opens he's scamming his classmates by telling them that the stamp with an error he's selling is going to be worth a fortune in no time. It's not.

Tommy is always on the scam, he convinces Ralph to trade a used Bluenose from his father's collection for a set of 1946 Peace stamps. Currently a mint hinged set of Peace stamps goes for $35 and a mid grade used Bluenose is about the same.

The Bluenose is Canada's 158th stamp and it came out in 1929. The Bluenose is regarded highly as Canada's most beautiful stamp. Depending on condition a used Bluenose can run up to and over $100, a mint stamp starts at that price and just goes up and up. Ralph's father has a block of 6 Bluenose stamps, there's a couple of mint blocks of 4 on eBay that at $600 and $800. A stamp shop in Montreal is offering a very fine never hinged plate block of 6 for $4495.

As Tommy's passing the Peace stamps to Ralph he switches them and leaves poor Ralph with some cheap stamps. Tommy is really a creep, even the stamp shop guys have heard of his shenanigans, but they still buy the Bluenose off of him. They find out it's a "man in the mast" variant and worth $600. Ralph's dad finds out that the Bluenose is gone and Ralph's in big trouble. Ralph and Nancy try to get the Bluenose back but it's already been sold.

The stamp shop gives Nancy an old album to try to appease her, it turns out to have a magical spell that allows the kids to travel by postage stamp. Ralph, Nancy and Tommy have a bit of an adventure, first in China and then Australia before there's a pretty happy ending.

It's not a bad kids movie, for me it fails a bit on the script and more so on the casting. In the making of short Michael Rubbo says he wanted an all amateur child cast. Some of them are better than others, they give it a try. Not sorry to have seen it but I doubt I'd need to watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 853

Martial Law 1990 Written by Richard Brandes, directed by Steve Cohen. I didn't think I had seen this before but I had back in 1999.

Steve McQueen's son Chad plays a police detective and Cynthia Rothrock is his girlfriend. Andy McCutheon plays Chad brother and David Carradine is a psycho gang boss who steals expensive cars for foreign customers. He's ruthless and prone to killing. He especially likes killing them with his special kung fu fist to the heart. The police keep finding bodies and Chad gets assigned to the case with Cynthia as his partner.

Andy gets deeper and deeper into David's clutches, trouble is he's not that smart and David's response to his failure is a fist to the heart. Poor Andy's mom. Chad goes all out to get David and give him a taste of his own medicine.

It's all rather familiar and the fights scenes are only passable. There's a lot of melodrama and that slows things down. At least it had David as a psychopath, he worked well with his psychotic second in command, played by Phillip Tan, both men enjoy killing way too much.

Barbarian Queen 1985 Written by Howard R Cohen, directed by Héctor Olivera. Another I wasn't sure I had seen, but I had. Other than for one character, I didn't remember anything else. The movie was one of the selections in a 2011 Friday Night Movie night.

Here's that post:

Sperhauk picked up a cheap DVD of a pair of Roger Corman movies. We watched Barbarian Queen. I wasn't sure if I had seen it before, my list of watched movies says no, but the movie came out in 1985 which was before I started that list and it sure didn't seem familiar. Lana Clarkson is the BQ and she's also the gal that Phil Spector murdered a few years ago. The BQ lives in a small village attacked by Roman's from the local camp. They kill and rape and burn the BQ's hut down. Most of the village was killed or carted off to be slaves. The BQ and three other gals who survived vow revenge. They get to the Roman city and meet a young girl who leads them to the resistance group. The gals want to rush in and the leader of the resistance is reluctant to act just yet. He's a big wimp, that one. The gals get captured, one or two get killed, but Lana stabs her way to success. There's a lot of nudity and not much of a story. There's a lot of rapin' and torturin' and a crazy mad scientist who gets his. You'd think a scientist would know that a human sized trough of acid is a dangerous thing to be leaving uncovered. I got a huge laugh out of his skeleton and goofy glasses in a later scene. It's got pretty big production values for a Roger produced film, huge sets and lots of extras. The fighting is crap. The director, Hector Olivera, made 5 films for Roger between 1985 and 1990. Hector had already been a film maker in Argentina and he used the money from Roger's films to make his own films. He's still making films down there but I haven't seen them. It's was fun enough for what it was.

I'm betting the Blu-ray we watched was better looking than the DVD we watched so long ago. I still feel the same way about the movie. I doubt I'll need to see it again.

Golden Temple Amazons 1985

    

Golden Temple Amazons 1985 Story and screenplay by Jesús Franco, adaptation by Georges Friedland, directed by Alain Payet and and uncredited Jesús Franco. Part of a trio of women in the jungle themed films in a three disc set that I bought used for under a tenner. Someone is asking $332.30 on Amazon for a copy, the cheapest one is $46.49, the cheapest one on eBay is $49.98 and the only other one on eBay is $54.35. Not surprisingly nothing turns up under eBay's sold items option.

The movie starts in the past with the killing of a couple of people by some mostly topless women on horse back. The man had stolen some gold from their land and they wanted it back. He refuses and waves his shotgun around. No matter, he's pricked with an arrow to the heart. The stunned wife fares no different. The couple's young daughter witnesses the killings before being taken away from the scene by one of the families servants.

Years past and the young daughter is a grown woman who runs around the jungle mostly topless. She finds out who killed her parents, it was a nearby tribe of amazons that are being lead by a man, and now she wants revenge. The local chief tries to stop her, his son disappeared in the amazon's area, she goes anyway. She's soon kidnapped by the amazons, she escapes and rescues the chief's son. 

Sadly, it's pretty dull, even the young topless amazons weren't distracting enough not to recognize that. I gave it generous 4 because of the nice Spanish scenery. Not one of the better jungle epics, that's for sure.

Friday Night Movies 805

Crystalstone 1987 Written and Directed by Antonio Peláez. Pablo is a little boy who's mother dies as we meet them. His mother's sister if going to keep Pablo's sister and send Pablo to work with her relatives in a town far away. Pablo hears her telling the cook and he runs off with his sister Maria in tow. They run through town and wind up on a train. In another city they witness a murder and help rescue the man who was wrongly accused of the crime.

Pablo's mother gave Pablo a cross before she died, it turns out to be one of three that are fairly easy to find, even if they have to do a bit of grave robbing. It leads them to a giant diamond and their long lost father. It was OK but nothing too special. It's part of a two pack with the movie below.

The Boy And The Pirates 1960 Story and direction by Bert I Gordon, screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Jerry Sackheim. Jimmy and his friend Kathy are playing by the beach. Jimmy's really into pirates. He finds a fancy bottle, rubs it and a genie pops out. The genie takes him back to the pirate days and he has an adventure with them until he returns home. It's pretty entertaining, though meant for kids, it's a slaughter fest once they get involved with pirates and buried treasure. It's not overly gory, it's light hearted and there's plenty of yelling and grog. I'd seen it before and I enjoyed it again.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 2018 Written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, directed by J A Bayona. A greedy prick wants dino DNA off of Isla Nublar. There's also debate in Washington what to do about the dinosaurs on the island, the volcano is due to erupt anytime. No one wants to save them in the government but that doesn't matter. Remember that greedy prick? He's got a plan to rescue some dinos and sell them to creeps from other governments. He's even got a guy who's made him a nasty ass new dinosaur that likes killing and can be directed. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard get called in to be on the rescue expedition to the island. They are nearly left behind while the volcano erupts and the dinos rampage. It's noisy movie that alternates the exciting times on the island with scenes of that greedy prick setting up his big score. It all goes to hell when the dinosaurs arrive at the lab and the bidding begins. It was alright for the most part. Someone gave me a DVD of it and I'd watch it again. I should have a marathon some day. It's been a while since I watched the first movie.

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.