PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 775

First up is the 1995 SF horror film Xtro 3: Watch The Skies. We watched the new Blu-ray, there were two previous DVD releases but the last one was 15 years ago. It's got a script by Daryl Haney and direction is by Harry Bromley Davenport. It's a British film and it seems to have nothing to do with the other two films. This one takes place mostly on an island off the coast of the US. Even though it's only 200 miles from shore it's supposed to be forgotten about or some such nonsense.

Robert Culp appears briefly as the General that sends the marines to the island. He tells them that there had been a munitions dump there during WW2. They  need the marines to sweep the island for forgotten bombs and other explosives so they can build a refueling station there. The marines are a mixed bag and hardly marine material. Still, they're really just there to get picked off one by one once one of the more useless marines accidentally lets the alien gets out of his concrete block house. Then it's all yelling and rushing about in the woods.

It's the least interesting of the series and should have been included with the other two in a three pack. Hardly worth buying when it's just so mediocre. You can see for yourself by clicking on the link in the title.

I hadn't remembered seeing Ninja Apocalypse before and had to sit through it again. Me so sad. Here's what I said just shy of two years ago.

Ninja Apocalypse is a 2014 post apocalypse movie that people are saying is a ripoff of The Warriors. They've certainly used that script as a template, big rally, assassination of the leader, blame the Lost Clan, chase them to their home base. It all takes place underground but it's the same idea, just with swords and some magical ninja powers. Sadly, it's nowhere near as good as The Warriors. Watch that instead. It's so much better. More fantasy than SF.

It didn't get any better the second time.

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First up, The Satanist, a 1968 horror movie of the nudie kind. A couple move into a house next door to a satanist. The whole movie is narrated by the husband of the couple, there is no sync sound going on here. There is a good bit of nudity, some satanic crap but hardly any story. It's written and directed by Zoltan G Spencer. The movie was thought to be lost until 2014. Like anyone should have been looking for it. Well, now I've seen it and wouldn't need to see it again.

Wicked City is a 1992 Hong Kong film based on a Japanese Manga. I saw it for the first time back in the 90s and hadn't seen it in a while. I didn't dig it very much this viewing. We watched a Chinese Blu-ray and the movie looks great, it just wasn't keeping my interest, the personal melodrama is turnin' me off. Others might like it more than me.

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Terrordactyl is a 2016 SF horror comedy about pterodactyls falling to Earth in meteors. Two hapless guys work as gardeners, they drink in a bar with a pretty waitress. The one guy has a crush on the waitress but can't get enough jam together to ask her out. A long haired vet drinks there too. They all get tossed into the middle of a flying invasion of space pterodactyls. The hapless guys turn out to have some guts, waitress has some brains and the vet has mucho guns and ammo. They battle their way around LA. The flying invaders look better than a lot of the CGI you see on the SyFy channel and the story is a fair bit better than most of their fare. Don Bitters III wrote the screenplay and co-directed with Geoff Reisner. Don has mostly been an effects guy for the last dozen years. This is his first film and so far the only one. He's currently directing episodes of Home Invasion. Not a title that makes me want to see the program. It's Geoff's first feature too, he's most a cinematographer, he's directing a new feature called F.E.A.R.

Return Of The Evil Fox is a 1991 Chines horror comedy written by Kong Mou and directed by Chuo-Chi Leung. An evil spirit is haunting a building and some religious types go after it. There's plenty of fighting, acrobatics, and flying about. There's some laughs as the movie pokes a bit of fun at the religious antics. It's about average for the time and place. I enjoyed the yelling and confusion and I'd watch it again someday.

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Sci-Fighters is a 1996 Canadian direct to video movie starring Roddy Piper. I hadn't ever seen it before so I picked up the two movie DVD. The other movie isn't SF, it's called Terminal Rush. Sci-Fighters is SF, set in a future where they have put prisons on the moon. Roddy is a special cop with extras powers, Billy Drago was Roddy's old partner. Billy killed Roddy's wife and now lives in prison on the moon. Billy gets infected with an alien virus and manages to escape to the Earth. He infects some people before Roddy gets on his trail. There's a bit of romance between Roddy and Jane Heitmeyer. There's random fighting, some good amount of sneaking about, some yelling, not much of anything original. It still manages to deliver a story but it's barely average. I wouldn't bother with it but I bought the DVD, lured in by a two pack of Rowdy Roddy Piper films. Turns out Terminal Rush is a Don Wilson movie and it's a good bit worse than Sci-Fighters. Roddy plays a terrorist who's taken over Hoover Dam. Don plays the sheriff who goes after him. I wouldn't watch it again but I might watch Sci-Fighters again.

Scorched Earth is a 2017 Canadian US post-apocalypse movie that's below average. If it wasn't for John Hannah I wouldn't have watched it on Amazon Prime. It was free. I can't seen paying to stream crap movies, it's different with buying a shit DVD, you've always got the option of throwing it in the river. The movie parades around as a Western and it borrows a common plot from both the Western and the Martial Arts movie, a young child sees their loved ones killed by the baddie, they grow up and fight that creep to the death at the end of the movie. Ryan Robbins plays the guy who killed Gina Carano's sister, she finds him as an adult and takes a go at killing him. Ryan's a good actor and he's been in some entertaining TV and film but I wouldn't need to see Scorched Earth again.

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Killer Crocodile 2 came out in 1990, a year after Killer Crocodile. It was filmed back to back with the first movie but with a new director. Giannetto De Rossi is the director of the sequel and he's the guy who created the crocodile. He really made his name with film fans doing make-up effects for all sorts of Italian films, including some for Lucio Fulci. Sadly, he's not much of a director. He only directed two other titles, Cy Warrior in 1989 and a short in 1995. Probably a good thing. The script is by Giannetto, Fabrizio De Angelis and Dardano Sacchetti. Fabrizio was the director on the first film.

Anthony Crenna returns as Keith and Ennio Girolami, under the name Thomas Moore, returns as Joe. An annoying reporter lady comes to the swamp area of the first movie to investigate a rich developer who wants to build a resort in the area. There's still some radioactive barrels in the swamp even though the rich guy says they've all been picked up. Anthony is asked to go there to find the reporter.

There's another problem in the swamp. At the end of the last movie we pan across a giant croc egg sitting on the shore. In the sequel, enough time has past, the egg has hatched and released a giant man muncher into the wild. In a laughable scene some kids tip their boat and dump themselves into the crocodile's maw. It's laughable, not because kid's got eaten, though that can be funny. It's laughable because it's was executed so poorly.

Anthony, the reporter and Joe battle the baddies and the croc. The croc eats most of rich guy's henchmen. This time Anthony thinks to bring some dynamite. We were all disappointed in Joe's death, the movie loses so many points for that piss poor scene. They get a few good points for some of the croc attacks but it's not enough, even after they blew the shit out of that chompy prick. We did get to the end and I can't see wanting to watch it again.

I can say the same for The Shape Of Things To Come, the 1979 Canadian adaptation of the HG Wells novel. The Wikipedia says it hasn't got anything in common with the book. Not too surprised. The screenplay is by Martin Lager and the director is George McCrowan. George directed a few films and plenty of TV from 1960 to 1990. He died 5 years later. I know I've seen some of his work, Frogs and Shadow Of The Hawk the most recent.

Before the movie starts the humans on Earth had a battle with their robots and lost. The humans have set up on the moon and they survive by using the anti-radiation drug  Raddic-Q2. It's manufactured on a distant planet called Delta 3. Jack Palance has taken over Delta 3 and he's crashed a ship full of the drug into the moon men's city dome. He wants to run the moon colony as Emperor. If they don't agree he's going to stop the drug following.

No one wants that so Barry Morse, Nicholas Campbell and Anne-Marie Martin steal a spaceship and go to Delta 3. Some of the plot points make me wonder what the writer was thinking. Carol Lynley was the leader of Delta 3. She's got a few men out in a quarry, they meet up with the crew from the moon, eventually they beat Jack down but not before he starts the unstoppable planet destruction countdown.

Anne-Marie and Nicholas leave with a ship full of the radiation drug. Hope they can make more once that's gone. I don't know why they didn't all move to Delta 3 before it was taken over by Jack? It's not really clear if the drug was just manufactured on Delta 3 or it was something that was tied to the planet. I'm asking too many questions of a movie with no answers.

There's some action but it's often terrible. One sad scene with a guy who gets thrown against a wall had us laughing out loud. The story is dull and the dialog awful. The robots are laughable but not the worst I have seen. Small comfort. The special effects are poor for the most part. It's not a movie that I would need to see again but I've already bought the DVD. I guess I'll keep it so I can see that guard flip himself against the rock wall. That will give me laugh. You can take a look at the movie, there's a link in the title above, and see if you like it more than me.

Leprechaun 1 - 7

I breezed through the first 7 Leprechaun films over the last two days. I have box set that I picked up a while back but hadn't gotten around to watching yet.The set I have is out of print now but there's a new 8 film set that will be coming out October 8 with a pre-order price on Amazon of only $13.99.

It's a fun series with Warwick Davis in the title role as the gold loving leprechaun. He's short, ugly and he turns into a murderous little prick when you come between him and his gold. He's got a rather dark sense of humor and loves murdering people.

Leprechaun 1993  Written and directed by Mark Jones. Mark started his career in 1977 with an episode of the kids show Ark II. I saw that series a couple of years ago and it wasn't very good. Mark stayed in kids TV for most of his career. It's mostly not stuff I would watch. He did do a few episodes of The A-Team, I have that set to watch someday. most of his other work I haven't seen. He didn't work on the Leprechaun series after the first movie.

A dad and daughter rent a farmhouse in a small North Dakota town. Shay Duffin plays the dad and Jennifer Aniston plays the daughter. The previous owner had stolen a leprechaun's gold while in Ireland. The leprechaun followed him to the farm and killed his wife. The owner had trapped the leprechaun in a box with a four leaf clover, but before he can kill it with fire he has a stroke and collapses.

That's Warwick as the Leprechaun, he's a nasty bit of work, and funny as hell. Mark Holten plays Ozzie, he's a bit on the dim side and he works for a young guy who paints houses. Mark plays Ozzie as a grown man in the recent reboot of the series. The guys get hired to paint the house. Ozzie accidentally unleashes the leprechaun when he knocks the four leaf clover off the crate that's still in the basement. Ozzie finds the leprechaun's gold and that starts the little bastard killing, first it's the pawn shop owner that wound up with a coin, then it's back to the farm for a spot of vengeance and shoe shining. The leprechaun had been a cobbler and he likes clean shoes.

The guys give back the pot of gold but Ozzie has inadvertently swallowed a gold coin. They figure out that the farmer who had trapped the leprechaun last time might be able to tell them how to kill it. He survived the stoke and lives in a nursing home. The leprechaun hears them and gets to the nursing home before they do. Yelling and screaming for a while. With his dying breath the farmer tells the kids how to kill the leprechaun. They find a four leaf clover and put a stop to the little beast.

Mostly an entertaining film, it's pretty average, story wise, but Warwick prancing about puts it up a notch for me. I'd seen it before and I'll probably get back to it again someday.

Leprechaun 2 1994  Written by Turi Meyer and Al Septien with Rodman Flender directing. I hadn't anything else by Rodman except for Idle Hands and I remember liking that when it was new. I hadn't seen it since. Turi had directed an episode of Buffy and 3 of Angel, that's about all of his other work I've seen. Al seems to be Turi's writing and producing partner, they share many of the same credits.

Warwick plays a different leprechaun in this film. The leprechaun celebrates his 1000th birthday about a thousand years ago. He can now pick a bride and he's chosen the daughter of his human slave. The father thwarts the leprechaun and saves his daughter at the cost of his own life. The leprechaun vows to marry the man's descendant when he's allowed to marry again in a thousand years.

The story jumps to modern day LA and we join a stupid boy named Cody who works for a scumbag who gives tours of the dark side of LA. The scumbag is Cody's uncle and his name is Max. Cody's girlfriend is the lucky bride for our leprechaun though she doesn't know what's ahead for her when we meet her. Why such a nice girl hangs out with Cody is beyond me.

There's plenty of the usual running about and screaming. There's some gore and plenty of violence. The leprechaun is as cruel as the other leprechaun, at one point he plucks a homeless guys gold tooth out his mouth and adds it to his pot o' gold. Like the first movie it's got a nice sense of humor. I got a few laughs and I'll watch it again sometime.

Leprechaun 3 1995  Written by David DuBos with Brian Trenchard-Smith directing. I can't find anything on either Brian or David's IMDb listing that I recognize. It's direct to video this time.

My favorite vicious leprechaun is in Las Vegas this time. Warwick is still at it as the leprechaun. A stupid college student, John Gatins, is travelling to college in California. He gambles away all his college money and falls foul of the leprechaun. I was disappointed he survived. He was a stupid ass.

I did enjoy our murderous demon eviscerating some of the locals. The Wikipedia says it was the highest selling direct to video film of 1995. I didn't see it back then. I gave it a 4 for hiring that Gatins guy. I thought he sucked.

Leprechaun 4: In Space 1997  Written by Dennis A Pratt and Scott Alkins with Brian Trenchard-Smith directing.

I saw this back in 2011 and gave it a three on the IMDb. It's not really any better a second time through. It's still fun to see Warwick Davis going at it as the murderous leprechaun but the space element is just stupid at times. I found myself speeding up the picture during some of the more dull bits. I'll be hard pressed to not do that if I get a chance to go through the series again.

Leprechaun 5: In The Hood 2000  Written by Doug Hall, John Huffman, Alan Reynolds, Rob Spera and William Wells with Rod Spera directing. I liked seeing Ice-T but the three guys who steel from him are just straight up stupid. There's plenty of running about and yelling. There's plenty of slaughtering. Just not really anyone on the human side to care about. Warwick as the leprechaun was fun enough. The leprechaun had a good time in the hood, getting high and killing people who steal his bling. I gave it a 4, the novelty of being in the hood wears off and it's less entertaining than some of the other films.

Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood 2003  Written and directed by Steve Ayromlooi. The leprechaun is still killing people in the hood. He goes after some pals who shared out the pot o' gold. There's not much to like about the group and I didn't mind their getting slaughtered. I gave this on a 4, it has a slow start but Warwick is totally wicked.

Leprechaun: Origins 2014  Written by Harris Wilkinson and directed by Zach Lipovski. It's a poorly received reboot of the series. There's no Warwick and it's all pretty standard stuff. There's no real humor or any reason to watch it again. I did like the poster, it's one of the best of the Leprechaun posters. It was nice that they returned to the right leprechaun in the 2018 film.

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The Happytime Murders is the Melissa McCarthy movie with the puppets. It came out in 2018 and I found the Blu-ray for 4 bucks. The local Half Price Books have started to charge more for their clearance Blu-Rays, up a buck from the previous norm of $3. So far, no raise on the DVD, in fact, I found a whole bunch of interesting things on DVD for 2 bucks each at one store. Typically DVDs on clearance are 3 bucks. What you find varies week to week.

I've been picking up Melissa's movies when I see them on the clearance shelves. Some are more entertaining than others. This was in the less entertaining category.

Melissa's a cop and Phil is a puppet, he was a cop, they worked together, there was some trouble, now he's a private eye. They're brought together again when someone starts killing the old cast members of the TV show The Happytime Gang. Phil's brother was on the show and he's the second cast member to get killed. It's got all sorts of crime cliches but with added aspect of puppets living with humans. The humans treat the puppets as second class citizens.

It's supposed to be a comedy but the jokes are pretty darn weak. I did like the look of the film and the puppets, especially that squirting cow. I just didn't get hardly any laughs out of it. I guess I'll keep it and watch it again someday but it's going to be a while. I figure to have a Melissa McCarthy retrospective once I get a whole bunch of them and some time passes. There are others like Spy, Ghostbusters, The Heat, that are more entertaining.

Second we watched Dark Waters, a 1993 Russian and English movie which was called Dead Waters in it's previous video release in the US. It was shot in the Ukraine. A young woman goes to see her friend who is staying at a convent on an island. She was born on the island and has a troubled past. Going to the convent pretty much fucks up the rest of her life. It's got a Lovecraftian type story that moved along way too slow for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

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Evil Ed is a 1995 Swedish horror comedy that was filmed MOS, or Mit out Sound, which means there wasn't any sound recorded at the time the scenes were shot. All the sound effects and actor dialog was looped in later. Only one of the actors dubbed their own scenes.It's directed by Anders Jacobsson, he worked ont he screenplay with Göran Lundström and Christer Ohlsson.

The movie is set in the world of film making. Ed is a film editor who gets assigned to finish editing Loose Limbs 5 after the original editor blows his head up with a hand grenade. The editing suite is in a mansion in the country. Ed slowly goes a bit nuts and starts hallucinating. People who come in contact with Ed don't fare too well, he kills his boss and puts the poor film delivery guy in the hospital. Ed's wife and daughter are worried because they haven't heard from Ed. They go to the house and we already know that's a bad idea. The wife manages to shoot Ed with a pistol and then taser him. Ed's carted off to the mental hospital, which he proceeds to turn into an abitour.

It's was fairly funny and fairly gory. I laughed a some of the jokes and situations. There were a good number of in-jokes, things like Ed's full name, Edward Tor Swenson, or characters using lines from other horror movies. Worth seeing for the horror fan. I thought I hadn't seen it but I had, back in 1996, back when it was on video tape.

Don't Knock Twice is a 2016 Welsh horror film that was ultimately kind of boring. There were some nice bits with the demon witch monster thing but there was a lot of family drama. There's a nice bit at the end with the monster but hardly enough to get me to like it more. It's more a drama that's got horror elements.

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We watched The Brain first, it's a 1988 movie that I hadn't remembered seeing. I looked when I got home and there's a listing on my Watched Movie List that says I watched a movie with the same name in 1990. Trouble is there's an earlier movie with the same name and it could be that movie. I didn't make any notes on the listing and my Week-At-Glance diary listing has no details for that day. Not that it matters, lets move on, I've already wasted enough time thinking about it. The Brain is written by Barry Pearson and directed by Edward Hunt. Haven't seen any of the other work they've done, probably won't at this stage.

The story is about David Gale, playing a scientist, who's got an alien organism that resembles a giant Brain in his lab. It's a dick of a brain and it eats people. David has a TV show that secretly uses the airwaves to take over the local's brains. Lucky for the rest of us the show is a local show, for local people. Oh, wait, it's planning to go national and then global. Not all the people receiving the transmissions wind up under the influence of the Brain. The transmissions affect their brains and some of the victims slip over the deep end and start killing.

Our hero is a knob named Jim, he gets in trouble at the start of the movie for tossing a brick of sodium into the toilet. It reacts and the water sprays out of the sinks and toilets. He's laughing until they come down hard on his ass. The whole sodium scene was kind of annoying, it's there to set up sodium, it will be important later. There are many times when the movie refers to Sodium, signs on walls especially, you could almost have a drinking game with the movie. Every time sodium popped up, anywhere, you have a drink. You'd be on your ass before the end credits. That's the Brain below. It gets out of it's tank and moves about. People are tasty sweaty snacks to it.

Harping back on that sodium sequence with Jim, the film makers want to get him caught for the prank. Not sure why, they make him out to be a dick, what's up with that? Annoying characters aren't my favs. Even with some annoying writing I didn't think it was a bad movie, just average. I don't know that I need to go buy that new Blu-ray, it was only released on April 30 and the thing is gone from Amazon. Luckily I downloaded a copy off of YouTube a couple of years ago. I never got around to watching it.

Shadow Builder is a 1998 horror film that was based on a Bram Stoker story that I never read. I read the novel Dracula 40 or so years ago, after Chester Cuthbert recommended it to me. That's where I got a copy from, I pretty sure I don't have it anymore, I got rid of so many books over the years. So many weren't ones I wanted to reread and there's always a shortage of room no matter where I hang my hat.

Shadow Builder is directed by Jamie Dixon, he's mostly a special effects supervisor with 70 credits in the last 29 years. SB was his first film, his second was Bats: Human Harvest in 2007. I liked B:HH but it wasn't quite as entertaining as SB. Michael Stokes wrote the screenplay.

Michael Rooker plays a priest who kills demons and people involved with demons. He shoots an evil Archbishop in the opening scenes. There's been some sort of ceremony and a man was killed. Michael travels to the man's town to see if he can learn anything. From the local priest he learns that the man had a son. It turns out that the shadow demon is after that kid. Things go downhill in the town once the shadow demon starts killing. He gains power from the killings and he needs a bit of power to do what he needs to do with the kid.

There's plenty of running about and lots of yelling. The gore and effects are fairly good. The story works well enough. I liked Michael Rooker and Tony Todd. Tony plays the local crazy person. All in all I liked the movie and would watch it again someday.

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Aquaman up first. Like a lot of the superhero movies, it was kind of fat and bloated, sure could have used some trimming. I doubt I would bother with it again.

Aswang is a 1994 horror film about a poor girl who decides to sell her baby to a creepy guy. He won't inherit his mother's fortune unless he has a child. Turns out the reality is more hideous than that. It was called The Unearthing when it came out on video in the US years ago. An Aswang is a mythical creature from the Philippines. It eats unborn children. You can see where this is going, huh. You can see the whole movie in the link above. It was alright but nothing great. I wouldn't need to pick up the DVD anytime soon. Which is fine, it's out of print and the price is crazy on Amazon.