PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1010

Doomed Metropolis 2 The Last War 1989 Based on the novel Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Armata, screenplay by Kaizo Hayashi, directed by Takashige Ichise. A sequel to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis which we watched last November 2023.

The first movie ended in 1927, the sequel starts in 1945, it's near the end of the war and the American's are fire bombing Toyko. A Buddhist priest plans to curse the Allied leaders with magic. Before that gets to happen the spirits of the local dead revive the evil demon Kato. That's him on the poster, he's the baddie from the first movie.

Kato attacks the locals and some of them fight back. A young man, a nurse and a little blind girl, all with psychic powers, take on Kato. The nurse had encountered Kato as a child and still bears the damage. The young man nearly dies fighting Kato. The shaman realizing that Japan is losing the war attacks Hitler. The nurse prays to seal Kato away.

There's a fair bit going on but it's told so slowly it becomes rather dull. The recreation of WW2 era Tokyo looks pretty good and the cast is fine. The effects people did a good job. I'm sad I didn't like it more. You can test drive a copy of the movie on YouTube. Link above.

Sky Sharks 2020 Written by Marc Fehse, A D Morel and Carsten Fehse, directed by Marc Fehse.

A German SF comedy film about a secret Nazi ship frozen in the Antarctic ice since WW2. The ship housed a secret Nazi lab that was reanimating dead Nazi soldiers. The dead men would be zombied up then be given genetically modified flying sharks for steeds. The Nazi soldiers attack air planes, kill the passengers and crash the planes. A team of soldiers has to put a stop to the Nazi plan of world domination.

There's plenty of over the top Nazi action and the effects are pretty entertaining. The effects are by DigiTale Studios, they are known for their work on Game Of Thrones. Sadly the action packed beginning phases out for non-stop explanation which sucks the life out of the room. Everyone was complaining after a good half hour of this. There's more action in the last act but by then I was less responsive than I would have liked. I enjoyed most of the movie but not enough to go buy the Blu-ray. I might not want to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 808

Midnight Movie Massacre 1988 Written by Roger Branit, John Chadwell and David Houston, directed by Laurence Jacobs and Mark Shock. Filmed in 1984, released in 1988. It's also known as Attack From Mars. Don't be fooled.

The movie is set in the 1950s, people are watching a movie at a theater when an alien invasion happens. Exciting, huh. Not in the hands of these film makers. The film is poorly shot, written and acted. I couldn't think of anything good about it so I'll just say: Stay Away! Don't waste your time. I watched a poor copy on YouTube, I wouldn't bother posting a link.

Monolith 2022 Written by Lucy Campbell and directed by Matt Vesely. An Australian bottle movie set in a living room of a podcaster. I watched this on Amazon Prime.

Lily Sullivan plays a disgraced reporter who's turned to podcasting. She finds out about a conspiracy that is connected to her and her family. The whole movie takes place in her house with phone conversations and a few slight flashbacks. Lily was alright, she handled being the only actor on screen. The story was less than interesting to me. The Wikipedia says it's a science-fiction thriller but it certainly lacks the thriller part. Give it a miss. I should have.

Friday Night Movies 1003

The Breach 2022 Based the novel The Breach by Nick Cutter, screenplay by Nick Cutter and Ian Weir, directed by Rodrigo Gudiño. A Canadian Lovecraftian sort of story.

A boneless and mutilated body turns up near the town of Lone Crow Ontario. A backpack suggests he's a scientist called Cole who rented a house near the town about 18 months ago. It's an isolated house that's only accessible by boat. The Chief of police John heads up there with his ex girlfriend Amy and Jake, the local coroner. It's dark when they arrive, the house is empty. They decide to crash there and look for clues in the daylight. Why they wouldn't have waited to leave until the next day I don't know, just goofy choices by the characters.

During the night Cole shows up and all sorts of bad things happen. Sadly it just takes forever to get to the action. Turns out that Cole had built a device that connects to some other dimension or some such. Jake gets drawn to the machine, John pulls him out but he's been affected by the machine and starts to mutate. Cole's wife Linda shows up to complicate the night even more.

It's a nice looking film with plenty annoying cliches. It's John's last week at work before he leaves the town, Amy is his ex, she also dated Jake before John lived in the town, Jake still has bad feelings about Amy dating John and John breaking it off, Cole had caused the death of his daughter with the machine, his wife is damaged because of it. It all adds up to a lot of blather among the principles that slows down the story. I thought it was entertaining enough but it wasn't something I would bother with again.

Without Warning 1980 Written by Lyn Freeman, Daniel Grodnik,Ben Nett and Steve Mathis, directed by Greydon Clark. I bought the Kino Lorber Blu-ray from their current sale, I was interested in the commentary. I had seen the film before, I was just surprised it was in 2017 and a movie night. In that post I mention that the film has a 5.1 on the IMDb and it still has that rating. I gave it a 5 then and still feel the same way.

It's an alien encounter movie, the alien is in the woods hunting people with little fleshy discs that kill people, the alien stores the bodies in his larder, an old shack in the woods. Four young adults arrive in a van and a couple are killed pretty quick. The rest of the movie has the other couple try to survive. The locals are a lot of old actors, Jack Palance, Martin Landeau, Sue Ann Langdon, Ralph Meeker, Larry Storch and Neville Brand. The alien is played by Kevin Peter Hall.

I liked it better than the previous film and I'm listening to the commentary as I write this. Greydon has a fair bit of info about the film. I'm looking forward to the other bits on the disc. I might watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 995

A Haunting In Venice 2023 Based on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, screenplay by Michael Green, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

Hercule Poirot has retired to Venice in 1947. He's nearly forced to attend a Halloween party by mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. There's a lot of kids there when they arrive at the palazzo of Rowena Drake. Soon as the kids leave there's a séance with a medium called Joyce Reynolds. Rowena wants to talk to her dead daughter. She fell out of the palazzo and was drowned in the canal.

A number of guests join them at the table. Some odd things happen and Poirot reveals how the psychic typewriter works by revealing Joyce's assistant hiding in the huge fireplace. Soon after Poirot is attacked and nearly drown in a bowl of water. Shortly after that Joyce is tossed off a balcony and dies impaled on the lance of a statue. Poirot locks everyone in until the police can get there. A storm is delaying them until the rough water in the canal is passable. Poirot gets his little grey cells going to solve the mystery.

I found it an entertaining mystery and of the same quality of his previous two Poirot films. The story changes most of the details from the novel which takes place in the UK. I'd still watch the movie again sometime. Good thing since I bought the Blu-ray.

Seksmisja 1984 Written by Juliusz Machullski, Jolanta Hartwig and Pavel Hayný, directed by Julliusz Machulski. A Polish SF movie.

Two men volunteer to test a space travel hibernation device. Instead of waking up 3 years later they're revived 53 years later. The world as they know it is gone, ruined by the a man destroying virus created by the man who created the hibernation device. Since women are all of the human race left they've created test tube babies to increase the population. They all live underground as the surface is damaged and unlivable.

The two men are locked up and their fate is being decided on by the government. Shortly after being allowed some freedom the ruin their freedom with their stupidity. Just being there they damage the society. Eventually they get one lady on their side and she helps them escape the underground bunker. They tell her they would like to die free than be stuck down underground. Lucky for them there's a nice surprise on the surface.

It's all pretty silly and much more interesting than I was thinking it might be from the box. I enjoyed it but I'm not sold on getting a copy for myself. I'd take a download if I find one.

Science Fiction Sunday 792

Wavelength 1983 Written and directed by Mike Gray.

Robert Carradine meets Cherie Currie in a bar and they start dating. Cherie has some psychic abilities, she sees images in her head. Unbeknownst to her the images are from three aliens that are being held in an old WWII underground facility in the Hollywood Hills. The alien spaceship went down 2 weeks ago and somewhat comatose aliens are in storage containers. Of course the government wants to chop up the aliens for a look see.

Cherie discovers the aliens are in the facility. With the help of Keenan Wynn, a miner who helped dig the facility, she gets inside the complex. Robert tags along and soon both are captured. The military wants to kill them but the scientists discover that Cherie is getting messages from the aliens.

Robert and Cherie escape and release the aliens. They go on the run in the outside world. The aliens manage to phone home and a rescue ship shows up. The aliens escape in their big round space ship.

It's about average for this sort of movie. Nothing too special going for it other than the Tangerine Dream score. I found a copy of the movie on RareLust. There doesn't seem to be a DVD or Blu-ray. Not that I'd buy one if there was. I probably won't see this again.

Monsters Of Man 2020 Written by Jeff Hand and Mark Toia, directed by Mike Toia. An Australian movie with 4 quite good CGI robots. It cost about a million and took in less than 7K in box office.

A rogue CIA agent sets up a test of four fighting robots with a creepy heartless businessman. The evil government men, such a tired cliche, I'm so bored with it, have been for a long time. The robots are dropped into Cambodia where they are going to wipe out a drug operation. Of course things go wrong, one of the robots is damaged in the parachute drop. The computer team running the operation in Cambodia are holed up in a building guarded by a murdering cliche scumbag who will kill their families if they don't comply with his orders.

The robots land near a village that's guarded by men with machine guns. A half a dozen doctors are visiting in the area. Their van is wrecked by a booby trap and they wind up in the village. The machine gun men want them to move along but one of the women arranges for them to stay in her hut overnight and leave in the AM. In the mean time the robots arrive at the village and the killing starts when the machine gun men try to defend their village. The operations team is all upset and want to shut the robots down but the baddies say no. The murderous scumbags points out they were all fine with creating and programing the robots but now they're upset when the robots do their job. I'm bothered by that cliched trope.

The damaged robot comes back on line and ambles about before finding a tablet. It learns about stuff it hadn't known before and gets a humanity lesson from a young boy. The robot starts fighting the other robots. The damage to the robot keeps the operations team from shutting it down or setting off the self destruct. Things get worse and worse and most everyone is killed. The movie ends with the corrupt CIA guy going home and the rich guy taking off in his private helicopter. I was disappointed that there was no payback on their end. They are such scum.

I thought there were good bits and poor bits. At a 131 mins it's way too long. I wouldn't need to see it again. You can check it out in the link above.

Friday Night Movies 989

Underworld 1985 Story by Clive Barker, screenplay by Clive Barker and James Caplin, directed by George Pavlou. A longer version was released in the US under the title Transmutations. George directed Clive Barker's Rawhead Rex. Clive thought George ruined both movies. I can't say he's wrong. Clive went onto direct Hellraiser himself. Underworld didn't do so well and kind of disappeared. None of us had seen it before. I don't remember ever hearing about it.

Larry Lamb plays Roy Bain. He's hired by a criminal boss to look for Roy's old girlfriend Nicole. She'd been kidnapped from the brothel where she work, Ingrid Pitt plays the brothel owner, she's not in the movie much. Denholm Elliot plays Doctor Savary, he's created a drug that mutates people. It was supposed to eliminate pain in humans. Savary continued experimenting until he has created a big gang of mutants that are living under the city. He keeps them in the addictive drug but things head south after the kidnapping, hardly anyone survives when the baddies come calling.

It's got a decent plot line but the dialog leaves much to be desired. The story leaves a lot of loose ends and dead bodies lying around. I was glad to see it but couldn't say I would want to watch it again. We watched the 4K Ultra Disc from Kino Lorber. The longer  version is on the additional Blu-ray disc. I'm not driven to buy it. You can check out the shorter version on YouTube, see above.

The Questor Tapes 1974 Story by Gene Roddenberry, screenplay by Gene Roddenberry and Gene L Coon, directed by Richard Colla.

Lew Ayers plays Emil Vaslovik, a scientist who started Project Questor to build an android. He got partway and 3 years before he disappeared. Robert Foxworthy plays the android  named Questor. Mike Farrell plays Jerry, he worked with Vaslovik on building Questor. John Vernon plays Geoffrey Darrow, he's head of the project. They fire Questor up and he escapes not long after to go find Vaslovik. Questor takes Jerry along to help him with human interaction.

The pair travel to England and meet a lady who used to work with Vaslovik. Questor and Jerry run about a bit before Questor is shot and taken back to the lab. Jerry and Questor escape again and find Vaslovik at Mount Ararat. They learn some truth about Vaslovik and Questor. It opens the door for more adventures.

The movie was meant to be a pilot for a new series but Roddenberry couldn't agree with Universal and NBC on the changes they wanted and no series was made.

It's kind of entertaining and kind of dumb. It's sort of funny but it's not very exciting. It's often pretty slowly paced. I think I might have seen this when it was new, I would have been interested in Roddenberry at the time, I just can't remember anything about it. It was fun to see it but another I'm pretty sure I don't need to see again. Doubt I'd buy the Blu-ray.

Threads 1984

Threads 1984 Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson. It's a British and Australian co-production. Barry wrote the novel A Kestrel For A Knave that got made into the film Kes by Ken Loach. Not a book or a film that I've been interested in but both the novel and the film are widely liked and respected. Kes failed in the US, withdrawn within days of opening. Roger Ebert wrote a 4 star review praising the film, he blames the Yorkshire accents for it being pulled.  Suddenly, I'm interested. I love a good Yorkshire accent .

It's a post apocalypse story that ends really badly for Britain. The war starts in the Middle East and turns much of Europe into a wasteland with most of the population dead. We see most of story from the town of Sheffield. We meet several locals, some die and others aren't so lucky. By the end of the movie Britain has a tiny population who only have one working VCR to keep their children occupied while they starve to death.

The movie is totally bleak but well made for the time. The editing is the star here. The film cuts back and forth between the Sheffield locals and what's going on around the country and Europe. Information is dolled out in voice overs and title cards, images flash by in short snippets. The scenes with the locals are longer.

The movie gets an 8 on the IMDb and that's with 20,000 votes. Thirty percent are an 8, I can't disagree. I really enjoyed it despite not liking a bleak sort of story very much. Of course, the Post Apoc story is an exception. I would prefer a Mad Max sort of film than  a bleak sort of drama about a couple of twenty somethings who've ruined their lives by taking the wrong drugs too often or a bleak family drama filled with anger and people staring into the distance.

There's a decent copy on YouTube, link above. The 1080p video looks pretty good. I thought it was worth a look and I think there are a few out there who might be interested. Others might like to avoid it if they don't care for bleak stories.

Science Fiction Sunday 777

The Aftermath 1982 Written, directed, produced and starring Steve Barkett.

Three astronauts return to Earth to find the place has been blown to pieces. There's mutants and marauders roaming the country trying to kill the survivors. One of the spacemen is killer and the remaining two head for LA. They meet an old man and a young boy hiding in a museum. Forrest J Ackerman plays the old man. He dies from radiation poisoning and the young boy goes off with one of the astronauts.

The boy and the astronaut rescue a woman from a gang of scavengers and rapists. Sid Haig is the head of the gang. The gang run off only to return later, the woman is kill and the astronaut vows revenge. He kills most of the gang but Sid kills him. The boy shoots Haig and walks off while the credits roll.

I got through it and didn't think there was much that good about it. The story is weak and the production values poor. I found a copy somewhere and it's been sitting on a hard drive since July 2020.

Debug 2014 Written and directed by David Hewlett. Another film from Amazon Prime.

A group of computer hackers prisoners are taken from prison to an abandoned spaceship to shut it down. Little do they know that an evil AI is in charge. Jason Momoa plays the bad AI. I didn't recognize the rest of the cast, not that it maters, most of them die at the hands of the AI anyway.

It's got a nice look to it and I liked the sets. The story is below average. and I wouldn't need to watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 976

Sons Of Steel 1989 Written and Directed by Gary L Keady. An Australian musical post apocalypse film. Keady had written and directed a short film called Knightmare that was the basis for Sons Of Steel. That short was shown in theaters before David Lynch's Dune. That exposure lead to the feature being made.

Rob Hartley is Black Alice, he does most of the singing in the film. He gets involved with some crazy people who digitize him, he's freed over 100 years in the future where he has a bit of an adventure. There's not a whole lot of plot going on, the musical numbers eat up a lot of the 104 min run time. It's dark and gritty and heavily influenced by Max Headroom. There's even a badly rendered floating CGI head giving commentary. The acting ranges from decent to poor. I enjoyed it despite the little going on but it's not something that I'm going to need to watch again.

Final Cut 2022 Based on the Japanese film One Cut Of The Dead, written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Michel is the director of two OSS 117 films and The Artist. I really liked the OSS 117 films but have no interest in The Artist.

A French director is approached to direct a live TV remake of a Japanese zombie film. There's a film within the film thing going on. The crew in the film are making a zombie movie and the set gets invaded by real zombies. There's also the production company watching the film making on a monitor.

We first see the production as broadcast, there are some weird production choices that make the viewer wonder what's going on. Then we find out more about what happened behind the scenes. Typically the production is hampered by poor planning, accidents and the weak personal habits of the cast and crew. The only competent guy is the musician doing the background music, Jean-Pascal Zadi plays Fatih, he was entertaining. As things go wrong he has to change his music to fit the changed scenes. He's one of the few who can think on his feet.

I got a few laughs out of it but don't feel the need to buy the Blu-ray. You can see the original Japanese film on YouTube. I should check that out.

Friday Night Movies 966

Visitors From The Arkana Galaxy 1981 Written by Miloš Macourek and Dušan Vukotić, directed by Dušan Vukotić. A Yugoslav-Czechoslovak comedic SF production.

That's Andra, Robert and Bibi, Andra is an alien, Robert is a hotel clerk and budding SF writer, Bibi is his girlfriend. Robert neglects Bibi to work on his book. From what we can see he's a poor writer and Bibi's frustrated with him. Unbeknownst to Robert he has the power to create stuff with his mind. The act of writing his book brings the aliens  to life and they come to visit him. Things get worse when Andra and her two children turn up.

 

The alien visit causes havoc in Robert's life, especially when the local citizens learn about them. Things get better when Robert mans up a bit. Weird things happen through out the movie. There's even a monster that kills people. There's some special effects that were about average for the time and place.

I enjoyed it and would watch it again sometime. Not sure I would buy the Blu-ray.

Babylon 5: The Road Home 2023 Screenplay by J Michael Straczynski and directed by Matt Peters. An animated film set in the Babylon 5 universe.

John Sheridan has become the President of the Interstellar Alliance and has moved to Minbar. The opening of a new power station that uses tachyons sends him on a journey through time and space. He visits with various people in his life and some in alternate universes. Some of them help him figure out what's going on and how to get back to his time and place.

I would have preferred more of a story. I thought it was a bit like an intro for people who hadn't seen the series before, it could be used as the pilot for an animated series. I wasn't that keen on the character design but I got used to it. I'd like to see new B5 material.

The Blu-ray has a commentary with J Michael and Bruce Boxleitner and a featurette. I hope to get to those soon.