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.

Fort Apache, The Bronx 1981

Fort Apache, The Bronx 1981 Written by Heywood Gould and directed by Daniel Petrie. I thought I had seen this but it sure didn't look familiar. Another title added to the Watched Movie List.

Paul Newman and Ken Wahl are cops in the Bronx. The 41st precinct is a mess, where they work, and the streets are filled with life's left overs. The precinct is nicknamed Fort Apache. Plenty of unemployment, drugs, guns, hookers, crime and murder on those streets. The cops keep the peace by leaving people alone most of the time. Less people get shot that way.

As the film opens Pam Grier shots a couple of rookie cops in the face while they're having their lunch in their patrol car. She's a hooker who's really high. She turns up randomly in the film, until she's murdered. Ed Asner is a tough by the book police captain who's come to the 41st precinct to turn it's low arrest record around. He gets started on his tough on crime push and the citizen push back, soon the streets are filled with protesters. Typically Ed tear gasses them.

Some good stuff happens to Paul but since it's the sort of movie it is, all that turns to shit. Nothing much good seems to happen to anyone in general and it's a good reminder that plenty of change is still needed. I doubt I would bother watching the movie over but I have a DVD so who knows. I'll hang onto it anyway.

Science Fiction Sunday 614

Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970 Director Pierre Chevalier co-wrote the story and screenplay with Juan Fortuny. Pierre directed 29 films in his 30 year career and this was number 17. You'd think after than many films he'd have learned something about making a film. Sure can't see any of his skill showing here and that's taking into consideration that the version I watched from YouTube has been edited down by several mins. The scenes that are left just fail on their own.

In France it was called La vie amoureuse de l'homme invisible and that translates to The Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The Canadian English title, dubbed version, was Secret Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The US poster used the title Love Life Of The Invisible Man. A lot of the foreign titles seem to be a version of The Invisible Dead, which was the UK title. Someone ought to get knocked in the nut sack for all those title changes, I suspect a lot of someones need a touch of Paul Naschy's fleshless skull. 

It's a period piece about a doctor's encounter with a mad scientist called Orloff. He lives in a nearby castle and his name is abhorred by the locals. A young boy comes with a message from the shunned castle, someone is requesting the new doctor come up to the castle to see a sick person. The doctor has a bit of a hard time getting there but eventually he does get to see Orloff's daughter. She's worried because she's seeing things moving on their own, she thinks there's an invisible man in the castle.

There really is an invisible creature, that's him above, Orloff tells the doctor he created him, then he locks the doctor in his dungeon. Orloff is zonkers, he's got delusions of his invisible creatures taking over the world. The doctor escapes and tries to rescue the daughter, she uses flour to see if the beast is following. In the scene the screencap is from the doctor throws flour on the beast. It's a bit of a let down.

Mostly it seems like a pale Jess Franco film, there's some fair bit of nudity, some flagellation, but no hot lesbian action like Jess has a tendency to drift toward when he's working. The film stumbles around and eventually ends in flames. The castle is burning with fire and I'm burning with exasperation. What a piece of boring poop. Give it miss. I watched a 75 min version on YouTube, link above, and you can see that it's got a huge logo plastered over that lady's ass. It's not there all the time but it is annoying when it's on screen for 10 mins or more. I didn't mind the film being shorter than the version over on Rarelust, it's a 4 GB download that I wasn't interested in bothering with. There's a DVD version but the cheap one, at $12, isn't as long as the expensive one at$38, the Blu-Ray is even costlier at $48. I can't imagine wasting money on that when there are other things to waste money on.

Murder In Space 1985 Written by Wesley Ferguson, directed by Steven Hillard Stern. A Canadian film for the CTV Television Network that had an accompanying contest to guess the killer. Most of the film was shown and people could call in to guess who did it. The conclusion of the film was shown several days later. There was a $60,000 prize. That seemed like that also could be the budget for the film. That poster is a lie, no one gets spaced.

Michael Ironside heads a 9 person crew on a mission to Mars. They've been gone 5 months and on the trip back a woman gets murdered. A lady Russian scientist is suffocated and it's found she's two months pregnant. She's married to a member of the government who's known to be vengeful and murderous. Three more people die before they get back to Earth. It's as much political thriller and murder mystery and investigations into the crew bring up all sorts of interesting back story.

Wilford Brimley is the head of the space project, Arthur Hill is the Vice President, Martin Balsam is the Russian liaison to the project. I don't think I recognized any of the other cast members. It's sort of interesting but it's not quite good enough to be much more than average. You can see it on YouTube in the link in the title above.

Metropolis 1927 Colorized version with English dialog. I started watching the fan edit version (see link above) but had to bail after about 20 mins because the English dubbed dialog was so annoying. I didn't mind the rather pastel colorization but the script was a buggin'! I kind of skipped through it and got to the end pretty quickly.

There's a more interesting looking colorized version here but it's title cards are in German. You can see the B&W restored version of the film on YouTube. It's a version, with English title cards, that you can buy on DVD or Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Looks pretty good. Watch that instead.

Kapone Oi Ni Naku 1985 Capone Cries A Lot

Kapone Oi Ni Naku is a 1985 Japanese film that's also known as Capone Cries A Lot. It's based on a novel by Sueyuki Kajiyama, the script is by Takeo Kimura and Atsushi Yamatoya, the director is Seijun Suzuki.

I'm a fan of Suzuki's films, I especially like his yakuza crime films of the 1950s and 1960s. It was Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill that first drew me to Suzuki. Both films star Joe Shishido who's a favorite actor of mine. Both films have been in the Criterion collection for a long time.

Suzuki has a bit of a backstory, he worked for Nikkatsu from 1956 to 1967. It was Branded To Kill that got him fired from the company, he sued and they blacklisted him for 10 years. In 1971 Nikkatsu changed to producing pink films, violent and sexy films, that kept them going until 1993 when they filed for bankruptcy. They did leave behind some interesting Yakuza films and some of them are turning up on home video. I've little any interest in their pink films though I have seen a few.

The studio had been at odds with Suzuki for a couple of years, they claimed his films were too over the top and surreal. Some say, the last two films he made for Nikkatsu, Branded To Kill and Tokyo Drifter, are  masterpieces. They're certainly something to watch.

Kapone Oi Ni Naku is certainly something to watch but it hasn't got the impact that either BTK or TD have. KONN is set in the 1920s, the story starts in Japan and then moves to San Francisco. A singer travels to America seeking his fortune.

It's pretty slow moving. It's a comedy but I didn't find it all that humorous. There are plenty of interesting locations and sets.

I'd seen that cave in some other Japanese movie I had seen recently. Others might find the enjoy the story more than me. There's a link to the movie on YouTube in the title at the top of the post.

Student Bodies 1981

Student Bodies is a 1981 horror comedy that's sort of funny and sort of dumb at the same time. Some jokes work and others don't. I found it on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, the channel has already been taken down. There always seems to be some guys who post movies they shouldn't, when they get the third strike, it's big red bar time.

Mickey Rose wrote the script and co-directed with an uncredited Michael Ritchie. It's Mickey's only directing credit, mostly he wrote films and television episodes. He wrote Take The Money And Run and Bananas for Woody Allen and a few other films I've liked, or almost liked: The Candidate, Smile, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough, Fletch, The Golden Child and The Positively True Adventures Of The Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. I only have a couple of them on DVD but that's OK.

In Student Bodies there's a serial killer loose at Lamab High School. The killer, nicknamed The Breather, is played by Jerry Belson, he's credited as Richard Brando in the film credits. Jerry was mostly a writer, he started in 1964 working on The Danny Thomas Show, after that he wrote for The Bill Dana Show, Gomer Pyle: USMC, The Lucy Show, I-Spy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Love, American Style, The Odd Couple and more. He wrote one of my favorite John Astin movie, Evil Roy Slade, it's a bit of silly fun but highly enjoyable for me.

On SB Jerry was Exec Prod and Michael Ritchie got his credit for producer changed to Allen Smithee. I guess he didn't like the movie too much, maybe that's why he's an uncredited director. I didn't think it was too bad, about average, there are a lot of jokes and if one wasn't that funny, here's another one shortly. There's a lot of self referential stuff going on, title cards pop up during the movie to give info and crack a joke or two. The movie moves along briskly, something that I always enjoy. It was fun to watch even if it's not much more than average to me. I'd watch it again someday but I doubt that I'd buy a copy.

Vibes 1988

I didn't notice back in February that there was a new Blu-ray of Vibes. It's a 1988 romantic comedy with paranormal and supernatural stuff going on. I already had a DVD of the movie but this is one of my favorite movies so I decided to splash out and buy the Blu-ray anyway. Like the 2009 Sony DVD the Mill Creek Blu-ray has no extra features.

The movie opens with a couple of guys, Ramon Bieri and Michael Lerner, being lead through the jungle by a guide. They come to a heap of stones which turn out to be an ancient pyramid. The men shoot the guide when he tries to stop them from breaking open the stone peak. Once the stone is chipped off, it reveals a pyramid of glowing light. Ramon touches it and starts speaking in tongues, Michael grabs him and an electrical arc tosses him aside. Ramon disappears into nothing and we cut to New York.

Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum play psychics who meet at a conference held by Julian Sands. Cyndi can speak to a dead lady named Louise and Jeff can hold an object and tell you it's history and who had hold of it. Cyndi gets a visit from Peter Falk, he's got a story about a lost son and he needs a psychic to find him. He's got 50 grand to pay for help, Cyndi recruits Jeff and the trio set off for Ecuador.

Peter's story quickly unravels, it turns out that he thinks there's a lost city of gold in the mountains. Turns out Michael Lerner was his partner, they go visit him in the hospital, where he dies. Googy Gress plays a creepy physic that's teamed up with Julian Sands to get to the pyramid first. They know there's more than gold there. They all converge on the pyramid and there's a bit of gun fire, speaking in tongues and flashing lights, some of them don't make it back down the mountain. Finally after all their bickering Cyndi and Jeff get together only to be interrupted by Peter Falk.

The story was by Deborah Blum, Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel, Lowell and Babaloo wrote the screenplay and Ken Kwapis directed. It was panned by critics and didn't make any money. It cost $18 mill and didn't make back $2 mill. Even though there's been a DVD for the last 11 years that couldn't have been a big money spinner, in 2014 Sony let Mill Creek have the DVD rights. Still, I've always liked it. I know it's not a great movie and not all the jokes are good but it's fun and the baddies get theirs. I'll certainly watch it again.

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.

Friday Night Movies 767

First up is the 1982 film Parasite, it's directed by Charles Band from a script by Alan J Adler, Michael Shoob and Frank Levering. It's a bit in the future, the cities have some sort of corrupt government, but there's not much going on out in the country. A scientist, contaminated by a parasite in the work place, runs off into the desert. He stops at a small town and infests several of the townies before most everyone is killed. An agent of the gov is on his trail but like most everyone in the film, he's incompetant and winds up blown to pieces in the desert. Cherie Currie, of The Runaways fame, plays one of the locals, she dies too.

Robert Glaudini plays the scientist, he survives, and so does Demi Moore in one of her early roles. Sadly, it's not that good. I was getting dulled to sleep about the half way mark, it did pick up a bit after that. The actors are all over the place, quality wise, and they don't have much interesting dialog. Things the characters do, often make little sense. Stan Winston was one of three credited for the special effects, I don't know what he did, but hardly any of it was inspired. I'm not going to be picking up a copy, I had already downloaded a copy off of YouTube. That'll do if I ever want to see what happened again. I doubt that will come up anytime soon.

36.15 code Père Noël is a French film from 1989. It was released in the US as Game Over. It's very much like a creepy death-filled Home Alone, except it's much better. It's not really a comedy but I was getting some laughs. The writer and director is René Manzor, this is his second film and he's still at it. He directed an episode of Highlander and a couple of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles that were set in France. The rest of his work is mostly unfamiliar to me.

It's about a ten year old boy who believes in Santa. A crazy guy is fired at the kid's mom's store for being a slapping Santa. The Santa learns of a late delivery to the mom's house and he sneaks aboard the truck. He kills the driver and the caretakers before breaking into the mom's mansion. She owns a big store in Paris and it's the last shopping before Christmas so she's at work until late. It's the poor kid and his feeble grandpa that have to survive until someone comes to help.

It's nicely dark and there's a nice sense of humor. The acting was fairly good, especially the kid and the grandfather. I'd consider getting a copy but the DVD is only from Germany and $25 on Amazon. I wound up with a copy, not that great looking, from YouTube. You can see it in the link above. You might enjoy it.

Friday Night Movies 765

The VelociPastor is a 2018 movie about a priest who becomes a velociraptor and kills baddies. It was written and directed by Brendan Steere. I don't know who did the poster but the dino that the pastor turns into does not look like that. It looks like this.

Wow, just fuckin' wow! I guess you can't expect much with a $35,000 budget. In many ways it's a lot like a Troma release. Not always a bad thing. A good bit of the movie is shot in the woods, the same spot is used for modern day China, modern day USA and 1960s Vietnam. It's in China that the Pastor gets hold of the magical dinosaur tooth that turns him into a dino. It doesn't always turn him into the complete creature, often it's just his hands that turn into claws. Still fine for killing scum.

The Pastor joins up with a prostitute to wipe out criminals and the police are on their trail. There's plenty of running about and yelling, some bad fights and worse dialog. It's got a bit of good sense of humor but not enough to make me like the movie more than a 5 on the IMDb. That's being a bit generous, as I did get a few laughs from the movie's more ludicrous moments. Unintentional laughs but you take what you can get. You can see it's IMDb score of 5.9 is heavily skewed by the 20% of the users that voted it a 10. Are they deluded or are they the director and his pals? Not one I would pick up.

Dangerous Men is another that I'm going to skip on picking up for myself. It's a movie that was made back in 1984 and it had a showing in 1985. The film maker John S Rad edited it for 20 years before finally releasing it in 2005. Rad rented 5 theaters in LA for a week and the ticket sales were $2238. John is really Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad, he produced, wrote, directed, co-edited the movie, and wrote the music. It got a video release in 2015 but John had passed away 8 years before.

It's a crime movie, with a rape revenge sort of story. Melody Wiggins and Coti Cook play a young couple, they're on the beach when they encounter a couple of bikers. The bikers plan to rape Melody but Coti puts up a fight and kills one of the bikers. The other biker kills Coti and distraught over his friend starts to walk away. Melody runs after him, convincing him to take her with him. She convinces him she wants a real man and he takes her along to a motel. She fucks him up good with a steak knife. On the run Melody gets a ride from an older guy who tries to rape her in the desert. She gets the advantage, strips him of his clothes and leaves him naked in the desert. The movie cuts back and forth between Melody and the naked guy int he desert for a quite a while. He's lucky to only get a sunburn on his nob. He could have been leaving other fluids on the desert.

Melody picks up a prostitute and pumps her for info on the dangerous streets and people. She kills some johns and a pimp. The cop is still on her trail. She's eventually arrested in a park and doesn't appear in the rest of the film. The action follows the cop as he busts a white biker named Black Pepper. It ends in a clumsy way.

The whole movie is just generally clumsy, poor dialog, story elements that make little sense, goofy music, bad acting, crappy fight scenes, all the sort of things that make people laugh at this non-comedy. The IMDb Trivia page has some interesting tidbits.

Jahangir Salehi died in 2007 and never lived to see the movie receive a full national distribution from Drafthouse Films in 2015. However, his daughter, when later interviewed, said she was not sure he would have understood the film's place as a "so bad it's good" movie. At a midnight screening he was able to attend before his death, he referred to everyone laughing in the theater as "just a bunch of drunk people."

The car which is pushed down into a gorge belonged to Jahangir Salehi's daughter. Even though she had paid for the car herself, Jahangir took the car without her permission and only told her she would never see it again. It wasn't until 20 years later when she saw the film that she learned what had happened to it.

Melody Wiggins, who plays Mina, the would-be main character, broke her leg during filming in the 1980s and refused to return to production after Jahangir Salehi would not cover any of her medical expenses.

Sadly it's just not good enough to enjoy much. How sadly deluded the director must have been. It gets a 4.4 on the IMDb and that seems high to me. I gave it a 3. You can see a copy on YouTube in the link in the title above.

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.