PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 893

Grave Secrets 1989 Story by Jeffrey Polman, screenplay by Jeffrey Polman and Lenore Wright, directed by Donald P Borchers.

Paul Le Mat is a professor of the paranormal. Renee Soutendijk is a woman with a haunted B&B in the country. She hires Paul to investigate her haunting. After a rough start he does see some manifestations. It gets more and more serious and people are attacked by the evil headless ghost. Lee Ving plays a local lout who has his eyes on Renee but she's not interested in him. Trying to get close to her is going to get him killed. David Warner is another paranormal investigator, Paul asks him to come visit once he knows there's something going on. David gets possessed by the ghost and the evil rapey daddy story comes to light. Eventually they beat the ghost and the movie ends.

I didn't think much of it. I didn't buy Paul as a professor and his wardrobe left a lot to be desired. I can't say I've ever been a fan of Mat's work. There's a poor script with a poor ending and not much by way of humor. There's nothing too exciting on the screen until nearly the end of the film. At times the camera pans off the murderin' and we miss some violence that was just about to happen. That's sad, even for 1989, horror fans don't care much for that sort of nonsense. I can see why it's been voted a 4.5 on the IMDb. Seventy five percent of the votes are a 5 or below. I wouldn't need to see it again. If you want to take a chance you can see a poor copy on YouTube. We watched the new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray with a nice picture and good sound. I don't plan to buy one now that I've seen it.

Tiger Claws 1991 Written by J Stephen Maunder and directed by Kelly Makin. An American film that is set in New York City but made in Toronto. Canadian director Kelly Makin has a connection to The Kids In The Hall, he directed some episodes of the TV series and their movie Brain Candy. Sadly he's not the best action director. His comedy background seems apparent in some scenes in Tiger Claws. Is he trying to poke fun at the genre? Who knows.

Tiger Claws is part of a new set from Vinegar Syndrome that has all 3 of the films in the series on 2 Blu-rays. You can see a 1080p copy on YouTube, a well as Tiger Claws 2 and Tiger Claws 3.

There's a guy killing martial artists with his special Tiger Claw kung fu. Cynthia Rothrock and Jalal Merhi are mismatched headstrong cops who have to work together to catch the killer. Bolo Yeung plays the baddie. Cynthia and Jalal dig into the secret world of Tiger Claw kung fu. There's plenty of martial arts going on but some of it was sure lackluster. Kung fu movies made in the west often lack in the fighting department. There's plenty of cop talk and some personal drama to get past.

When it was all done I thought it was about average, I gave it a 5 on the IMDb, a lot more people gave it a 6 than a 5. I might have given it a 6 but it was the long winded training sequences that brought the score down for me.

Friday Night Movies 890

Strangler Vs Strangler 1984 Written and directed by Slobodan Šijan. A dark Serbian comedy about madness and strangling. We watched the Mondo Macabro Blu-ray that's coming out mid June.

The guy with the eyes is Pera the carnation seller. He goes about Belgrade with his basket of flowers and tries to sell them. Sadly the carnation has gone out of favor with the younger crowd. He doesn't sell out and on returning home he has to face his domineering mother. They have quite the life together. It's filled with yelling and hitting. Mama is a monster, it's no wonder that Pera cracks and starts strangling those that spurn his flowers.

The guy with the glasses is a musician, he's penned a song about the strangler and it's become a local sensation. Even Pera likes it, mama doesn't, so Pera strangles her too. The guy with the little mustache is the police detective on the strangler's trail. He's not having any luck getting any leads and it's slowly driving him bonkers. The local host of a popular music show gets tossed into this mess when she has the musician on her show.

It all comes to a head one evening and just about everyone gets strangled. Even the detective's cat gets strangled. Despite that I was laughing much of the way through it. It's a film filled with chaos and I enjoyed that well enough. I'm debating getting a copy. You can pre-order it from Deep Discount for about 22 smackaroonies, it's 30 bucks on Amazon right now.

Riders Of the Whistling Skull 1937 Based on a novel by William Colt MacDonald, original story by Oliver rake and Bernard McConville, screenplay by Oliver Drake and John Rathmell, directed by Mack V Wright.

A part of the Three Mesquiteers series from Republic. There were 51 films in the series with various actors in playing the Three Mesquiteers, including John Wayne for 8 films. Bob Steele, Rufe Davis, Jimmie Dodd, Sid Saylor and Tom Tyler also were part of the trio. I'd seen several of the series, including this one, back in 2010 but I've pretty much forgotten what they were all about. I watched about 350 westerns that year but I didn't blog about many of them.

For this film we've got Ray Crash Corrigan, Max Terhune and Robert Livingstone from left to right.

With a plot that seems right out of King Solomon's Mines, a young woman asks the Three Mesquiteers to help find her father. He's gone deep into the mountains where a dangerous tribe lives. He was looking for the lost city of Lukachukai. One of the men from the expedition arrives with news. They'd found the lost city but got captured by the local natives. Her father hid some of the treasure and made a map. The man drops dead.

The trio lead an expedition to the area and they find the natives hostile. Several people are killed before the locals are slaughtered. There's all the usual horse riding, gun shooting and punch ups you'd expect plus a little bit of torture, some music and a few gags. I enjoyed it but agreed that they were kind of weak on the lost city. It was a skull on the side of a mountain and a cave. We all liked the skull matte painting. Who wouldn't want that for a place to hang out. You can watch the film on YouTube, link above.

 

Attack Of The Undead is a short film by Michael and Peter Spierig. It was included on the Umbrella Blu-ray for their 2003 zombie film Undead. That was a fairly decent film that we watched at FNM night in 2006. This movie has a similar plot and characters but is only 37 mins. It was fairly entertaining but vastly inferior to the feature film. Good extra for the Blu-ray.

Sorority House Massacre 1986

Sorority House Massacre 1986 Written and directed by Carol Frank. The first of a trilogy of films. Why???? It's just a weak slasher film, nothing original, nothing for me to care about. I wouldn't bother with it again.

Friday Night Movies 877

The Dark Side Of The Moon 1990 Written by Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes, directed by D J Webster. While watching it I didn't realize I'd seen it a couple of years ago. I watched it on Amazon Prime and posted on a Science Fiction Sunday post in 2020. I gave it a 5 on the IMDb, I'm now thinking of changing it to a 4, obviously it's very forgettable, nothing stood out at all, not even the sexy robot.

It's a horror film set in space that ties the Devil to the Bermuda Triangle. The crew of a ship runs out of power and is heading for the surface of the moon.They find a NASA space shuttle floating in space but Nasa has been defunct for 30 years. Thinking they might find parts to fix their ship they board the shuttle only to find the Devil.

That lady in the photo is a robot that sits in a chair, a robot with a pushup bra and cleavage, who never leaves the chair. You'd think if you hired a lady to play a hot robot you'd have her running about, slowing off that skintight suit. She's not even strong enough to prevent having her head blown off. It's just one of the many poorly written bits in the show. The whole idea that the Devil's been waiting in a shuttle for years is pretty ludicrous. Same with the link between the Bermuda Triangle on Earth and a similar shaped space on the dark side of the moon. In a graphic they show the moon and the Earth and draw lines between the two triangle's points, like they are aligned. It gets even more embarrassingly complicated as the writers try to build their story.

Hopefully I won't forget and watch this one again. I'm definitely not buying the movie so it won't be around to tempt me.

Turkey Shoot 1982 Story by George Schenck, Robert Williams and David Lawrence, screenplay by Jon George and Neill D Hicks, directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Brian is the director of several films including Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space. I can't say I've seen more than those 3 films.

An Australian action film set in a miserable future where citizens, social deviants, are tossed into prison camps for rehabilitation. Camp Master Thatcher is a brutal creep who likes killing deviants as much as his guards do. He's organized a hunt with a politician, a psychopathic murdering lesbian and a guy who has a fat werewolf for a sidekick. It's just one of the many ludicrous things in the film.

Gigantic Roger Ward plays the head guard, that's him above. You might remember him from Mad Max where he played the Max's boss the Police Captain. As well as writing novels and screenplays, he's acted in over 1500 TV episodes and 50 movies. He has a magnificent mustache on top of all that.

Left to right are: John Lay, Lynda Stoner, Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey, they are the poor deviants who've been chosen by the Camp Master as the hunted. They get a bit of a head start in leaving the camp but they are unarmed. Supposedly the victims are free if they manage to survive the day but in reality the Camp Master is going to see they don't survive. He loves his deviant killing. Sadly, the hunt isn't going to go so good for him or his fellow hunters.

I knew I had seen the film before but I didn't realize it was so long ago, my Watched Movie List says March 2 1996. That was when it was on VHS under the name Escape 2000 and cut down to about 75 minutes. The Severin Blu-ray runs about 93 mins and the picture looks much nicer. It's mostly entertaining, though it does drag before the hunt, it takes about 42 mins to get to the hunt. Despite some laughs and entertaining bits, it's still only about average. The silly stuff made me laugh. I'm looking at you, fat werewolf. On the other hand, some of dialog and plot points made me cringe or sigh. No plans to pick up the Blu-ray, I doubt I need to see it again.

Friday Night Movies 872

Raiders Of Atlantis 1983 Story and screenplay by Vincenzo Mannino and Dardano Sacchetti, directed by Ruggero Deodato. The Italian title is The Atlantis Interceptors.

After releasing Cannibal Holocaust director Deodato was embroiled in a controversy about the graphic violence and animal cruelty. Animals being killed on screen was one of the problems, some thought it was a snuff film, the human killings were so realistic. Deodato was arrested and charged with murder. He lost his film making license and had to explain how he did the effects. He even had to produce the actors in court to show they were still alive.

The same year Deodato made The House On The Edge Of The Park, a vague remake of The Last House On The Left. It got put on a list of video nasties in the UK and was heavily cut. Like Cannibal Holocaust it's got a lot of gore, sexual violence and brutal murdering. I don't find films about human monsters appealing and don't care for either of them.

Deodato didn't get his film makers license back for three years and he filmed The Atlantic Interceptors. It starts off pretty ordinary, some guys are helping some scientists to raise a German submarine from the ocean floor. Somehow this causes the sunken island of Atlantis to rise. It's been under a dome for all these centuries and it's ready to take it's rightful place on land. Part of that rightful place involves getting rid of the human population already settled on land.

Ordinary ends and Deodato is back to his gory murdering ways as a vicious gang of Atlantian soldiers rage over an island city. Deodato has seen Mad Max and somehow he can't not copy those costumes. The rising of Atlantis caused a big storm and our main characters are washed up on the island that the Atlantians are attacking. This has taken less than a day and somehow the Atlantians have already got all sorts of tricked out motor bikes and old cars. Where they got them is one of the many unanswered questions that the film leaves hanging.

 

There's plenty of action, gun battles, explosions, people getting hacked up, all that sort of thing but it's not interesting enough to make up for the stinky script. Another one that I'm not going to bother buying. I won't need to see it again.

Endgame 1983 Written by Alex carver and Joe D'Amato, directed by Joe D'Amato. Joe directed almost 200 films in his career, most of the ones I've see have been mostly pretty poor. Much of his later work was porn, both hardcore and softcore. Joe used a lot of pseudonyms in his career, trying to keep his directing work separate from his cinematography work.

He didn't do very well with Endgame either, it's a poorly thought out post-apocalypse film, New York is a wasteland but it has a TV network. Endgame is a popular show on the network, hunters track and kill their human prey. The prey can fight back and Al Cliver is a guy who's survived several hunts. There's a threat from the mutant population, those in charge send teams to hunt them down, the mutants have allies who try to help them survive and move away to safety.

Al gets hired to guard a lot of mutants, mostly telepaths, and he hires a few guys to help him. They run across other groups of humans, most of them bent on murder. There's lots of fighting, gun battles, and interminable driving about. It's got a poor script, some parts are absolutely ludicrous, add some lousy production values and it's a real stinker. Still, it was a smidge better than the previous movie but not one I would need to buy.

Friday Night Movies 867

Spookies 1986 Written by Thomas Doran, Brendan Faulkner, Frank Farel, with additional material by Ann Burgund, directed by Brendan Faulkner, Thomas Doran and Eugenie Joseph.

The Wikipedia has an explanation about the making of the film:

Spookies started out as a feature film entitled Twisted Souls, written and produced by Frank Farel, Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran and directed by Faulkner and Doran.^[1] Principal photography for the film began at the Jay Estate in Rye, New York in late summer of 1984 and finished in October of that same year.^[1] Twisted Souls was being edited when creative and legal issues between the producers and the financial backer prevented final post production work (final editing, scoring, post-effects, etc.) from being carried out.

The original Twisted Souls footage directed by Faulkner and Doran consists of all the travelers who arrive in two cars and all the monsters and effects they encounter within the house. The monsters include: the demon Ouija girl, the muck men, the spider woman, the snake demons, the hallway demon and the Grim Reaper.^[1]

In 1985, the financial backer of Twisted Souls hired Eugenie Joseph to direct more footage, which was pieced together with the finished footage from Twisted Souls to create Spookies.^[1] The added scenes, written by Ann Burgund (under the name Joseph Burgund), feature an entirely different cast and include all the footage of the boy looking for his birthday party, the man in the tree, the cat-man, the old magician, the girl in the coffin, zombies, the witch in the basement/cave and the little blue boy.^[1]

The end result is a below average silly horror film with annoying characters. The original monsters are fairly interesting with decent make up. The additional monsters are much less interesting, with the zombie horde only slightly more interesting than the living. There's a watchable copy on YouTube for those are interested in seeing the film but less interested in spending money on the new Blu-ray. I won't be bothering with the Blu-ray myself, there are plenty of other films I want to buy first.

Explorers 1986 Written by Eric Luke and directed by Joe Dante.

I've had the DVD on my Amazon Wishlist for ages but it always got pushed further down the list by other films. I remember liking it when I saw it in the theater when it came out but upon seeing it now I'm liking it less. Especially the third act with the aliens, mostly embarrassing.

I deleted the DVD from my Wishlist, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't bother watching it again. I'd watch something like The Last Starfighter instead. That was more fun.

Elves 1989

Elves 1989 Written by Jeffrey Mandel, Mike Griffin and Bruce A Taylor, directed by Jeffrey Mandel.

Some stupid girls have a pagan ritual in the woods and Kristen's blood activates an ancient evil elf. He's an ugly bugger but he's got a plan for world domination. He's going to mate with Kristen and produce a race of elves from her womb. Unbeknownst to Kristen, her grandfather is an ex-Nazi, there are some active Nazis in town and they've come looking for Kristen. Dan Haggerty plays a ex-cop with a drinking problem. He gets a job as a department store Santa and stumbles into the elf Nazi nuttiness. He helps Kristen fight the elf and the Nazis.

It's a below average movie for me, there's nothing that stands out here. Elf guy is pretty poor, he's hardly articulated. There's a bit of nudity, a bit of gore, plenty of running about and a cliche ending. You can check it out on YouTube but there's no real reason unless you've interested in seeing as many genre films as you can.

Avengers From Hell 1981

Avengers From Hell 1981 Screenplay by Kin Lo, directed by Pei-Chuan Li. A guy I know passed along a few 1980s Chinese horror films from the Shaw Brothers that haven't had a DVD release.

It's an anthology movie, 3 stories with ghosts and murder. In the first, a cop runs into a ghost in an abandoned house, in the second Philip Chan is cheating on his pregnant wife when he kills his pregnant lover, in the last a ghost helps a man win at gambling. They'll all have a bad time with the ghosts, some of them won't survive.

Nothing special about it, just a good average film that delivers some noisy action, murder, and a bit of comedy. My only complaint, too much Mahjong.

Nightmare City 1980

Nightmare City 1980 Screenplay by Piero Regnoli, Tony Corti and Jose Luis Delgado, directed by Umberto Lenzi. I thought I had seen the movie before but it sure didn't look familiar. It was shot on location in Madrid and in studios in Rome.

A big military plane lands and deformed humans exit with murder on their minds. There had been a recent nuclear accident and these men seem to have been affected. They run fast and bite hard, they need to feed on blood to stay alive. A bullet to the head will also put them down but it doesn't seem to bother them much in other body parts.

The city gets over run and the military fight back. A reporter moves in and out of the story trying to get to his wife. They escape the city but the contaminated follow quickly. Most people are overwhelmed by the horde of deformed. This goes on quite a while and then the reporter wakes from a dream. He goes off to the the airport only to see the plane from his dream land. Three writers and that was the best they could come up with to end the story. That ending is so contrived that there should be a round of smacks to the heads of the film makers with Paul Naschy's fleshless skull.

I found most of it about average for a monster movie but it loses points for the cliched ending. I didn't think there was much to recommend about it, just a lot of scenes of slaughter and some talking heads to fill in the gaps. I got the DVD cheap and I'll keep it. I might want to see it again someday but it seems doubtful.

Friday Night Movies 858

Dead Space 1991 Written by Catherine Cyran, directed by Fred Gallo. A Roger Corman produced remake of Mutant AKA Forbidden World. You can see the animated prequel Dead Space Downfall on YouTube, it's a fairly good rip but the burned in subtitles in some Arabic tongue are a bit annoying. It's only good for finding out if the Blu-ray is worth buying. I haven't seen it but I'm going to guess, probably not. There's also Dead Space: Aftermath from 2011. The films are an off shoot of the games that were developed from the first movie.

In Dead Space Marc Singer is a Commander in the space fleet. He answers a distress call from a research station on a isolated and uninhabited planet. They are doing some sort of genetic research and they've created a virus that infects people and turns their bodies into murderous beasties. It takes a good bit to kill the monsters so the lab folk get picked off one by one. Marc kills the beast and leaves with his robot pal.

Nothing much notable about the film, other than it's an early appearance by Brian Cranston. He's the guy who wants to keep the critter alive so they can study it. It was funny to me when Marc shoved Brian's head in the creature's mouth to slow it down. Marc's not that much of a dick, Brian was already dead. He'd been infected with the virus and that virus had all the diseases known to man in it. Sometimes the script is the beastie. The IMDb trivia page has an entry that says the director didn't see the script until his first day of shooting. It explains a lot.

I couldn't remember seeing Dead Space but it turns out I had back in 1994. I can't say much good about the movie, it's short, only 78 mins, that's something. The old DVD release is only about 72 mins long, that's what's on YouTube. You're better off watching Forbidden World. That's not a great movie but it's more fun.

Blades 1989 Story by John P Finnegan, screenplay by William R Pace and Thomas R Rondinella, produced by William R Race and John P Finnegan, directed by Thomas R Rondinella. The film was made in New Jersey and released by Troma on VHS and later DVD. We watched the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray.

From the first few minutes of the "making of" we learn that John P Finnegan wanted to make movies. He wrote 3 and they all got made. He produced 2 of them and directed Girls School Screamers.

With Blades he had the idea to make a shot for shot remake of Jaws but set on land, in a golf course, with a lawn mower. It's a big lawn mower. It grinds men right up. John went to a NYC film school, William and Thomas were the couple of students that were interested.

They don't quite carry out the shot for shot but they capture enough iconic moments to give you that Jaws feel. It's supposed to be a comedy but there are more jokes in Jaws. Nothing tops "We need a bigger boat!" I did laugh out loud once but an hour later I can't remember what the gag was. The cast weren't too bad for people who mostly hadn't made a film before. All in all it's below average but watchable. I doubt I would need to pick up a copy.