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.

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Needful Things 1993 Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, screenplay by WD Richter, directed by Fraser C Heston.

Ed Harris is the sheriff of Castle Rock, Bonnie Bedelia is his girlfriend, Max Von Sydow is a demon. Max has opened an antique shop in Castle Rock. He's got great stuff and the price is cheap, in cash. It's the favors Max wants, those have a great cost. It's why I don't go to antique shops.

I hadn't seen it before, I bought the DVD some time back but it's just been sitting in a box waiting to get watched for a good long while. I'm endeavoring to clean out that box and get those DVDs put in their final resting place other boxes.

I liked the characters and the script was fairly decent. I thought it poked along at the beginning, I'm not always a fan of the melodrama that fills in between the interesting bits before the real action starts. Once Max gets to manipulating the locals things get more interesting, more often. Nice production values, I watch so many low budget films, it's a welcome change to see some money on the screen.

I was glad I picked up the DVD, I enjoyed it more than many SK adaptations. It certainly has a better sense of humor than a lot of the films made from his books. Books that I haven't ever read. I liked it enough to think I might actually try to get back to it some time in the future. Typically, I seem to have liked it more than the critics did when it came out. Oh, well, nothing new there.

Tomorrow I'm going to watch the extended TV version of the film, then I probably don't need to see it for a while. That's good, that box of DVDs aren't going to watch themselves. They have no hands, how could they work the DVD player. The TV version is just over 3 hours long. You can watch the original in the title link above and the long version here.

Psycho Goreman 2020 Written and directed by Steven Kostanski. It's a Canadian film and Steve is part of the Astron-6 Production Company. His previous films include Manborg, Father's Day, The Void and Leprechaun Returns. This isn't an Astron-6 release, it's on the RLJE Films label. They produce a lot of genre TV and film. You can stream PG on Shudder and it just come out on Blu-ray.

That girl in the picture, that's Mimi, she's a real fuckin' asshole. The kid to the left is her brother Luke, she mistreats him something fierce. Mimi mistreats most everyone, she's loud and selfish, she wants her own way and no one can tell her what to do. After a deadly game of Crazy Ball, Luke has to dig his own grave in the back yard. Luke strikes a coffin like box that's got a glowing red jewel on it. Mimi gloms onto that. They get scared when purple light pours out of the coffin.They fill in the hole just in time to go to bed.

The next day the dirt is out of the hole and soon after we meet the Arch-duke of Nightmares. He's been sealed in the coffin for a long time, placed there by The Templars, the powerful alien beings that defeated him and stopped his galaxy destroying rampage. Mimi doesn't care about his backstory but the flashbacks to his past were quite entertaining. Mimi renames him Psycho Goreman, or PG for short, after it turns out that the glowing jewel gives her complete control over him. Now starts the Arch-duke's nightmare. She bosses him about and he threatens her with a slow torturous death. Mimi soon has PG out on the town and some of the locals aren't always fairing too well after their encounter with an alien.

More crazy things happen and there are plenty of laughs. There's a fair bit of gore and the make up effects are mostly pretty good. The film looks great considering it had a budget of $1,500,000 Canadian dollars. Money well spent. I sure plan to watch it over again.

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Species 1995 Written by Dennis Feldman and directed by Roger Donaldson. Roger has  banged out quite a few movies since 1971 but I can't say I ever watch many of them. I know I've watched Cadillac Man and The Getaway. I didn't care that much for either. I know I watched Dante's Peak on TV some time after seeing Species. It was about average for a disaster movie I think I went to see Species in the theater.

The movie opens with a nice fly over of the Arecibo dish. Ben Kingsley is head guy at a secret government lab that's been in contact with aliens. The aliens told them to make some DNA and mix it with human DNA, then tell the aliens what happened. When I first heard that I thought, how fuckin' stupid are these guys, by the end of the movie you know. Repeat 3 more times.

Michelle Williams plays the young alien human hybrid called Sil. They keep her in a locked room with transparent walls. They decide to terminate her but that goes wrong and she escapes. I wonder if those transparent walls have a warranty. While Ben gets a team together to track and destroy Sil she grows into Natasha Henstridge.

Sil has an urge to mate and create more of her. Men fall for her charms and fall down dead after she pokes a pointy tentacle into them. Sil's body morphs when having sex, she becomes more the alien creature. Not the last thing you want to see as you get stuffed full of tentacle.

The team, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger are after Sil and have one encounter after another as they follow the trail of corpses. Alfred even impregnates her, he was easily fooled by a cut and dye job. They keep chasing her and eventually Sil and her offspring are destroyed. At est until the sequel. 

I like the movie for the most part, plenty of running about and stunts. The cast is okay, nice production values. I've seen it 3 or 4 times and enjoyed it.

Species II 1998 Written by Chris Brancatto and directed by Peter Medak.

Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger and Natasha Henstridge all return to the film. A mission to Mars is the big news as the movie opens. The crew of the ship collect some soil samples and bring a bit of alien DVD aboard. It thaws out and infects the crew. Marg has created a second Sil, calling her Eve, and isolated her in a lab. One of the returned astronauts pulls a pair of sisters and knocks them up with his super powerful alien sperm.

Micheal gets called in once the bodies start showing up. He goes on the hunt with Marg. They chase about until the aliens are put back in the bottle for the sequel. It wasn't quite as good as the previous film, barely average but watchable. Good monster effects though.

Species III 2004 Ben Ripley wrote the script and Brad Turner directed. It was a direct to video release that repeats the same story as the first two films. Just some different guys making the same mistakes as the previous. I'm only watching it to watch all four films. It's not awful but it is repetitive. The big difference is producer Fran Mancuso wanted to young up the cast to appeal to young adults. Big deal.

Species: The Awakening 2007  Ben Ripley wrote the script and Nick Lyon directed. Another direct to video of the about the same quality as the third movie. I might skip the last two when I watch the first two again some day.

Science Fiction Sunday 616

Star Odyssey 1979 A messy Italian space opera with plenty of aliens, space ships and robots but not much by way of quality film making. Al Bradly is the director, he's really Alfonso Brescia trying to disguise that he's really Italian. He directed several movies and yet they keep hiring him. 

Earth is attacked by a superior alien force. A scientist gathers some other scientists together to build a weapon that would defeat them. It's a story told poorly in every possible way. I can't think of anything in the film that would make me think these are people with talent. Sometimes a poorly made film will elicit some laughs but here it's just awful to the point of embarrassment. There's a copy of the film you can avoid on YouTube.

Vampire Vixens From Venus 1995 Here's a movie that's even worse than the previous one. Even a bevy of fake breasts can't make this film bearable. The gals are aliens who aren't really vampires. They're shape shifters and the shape they take are those of bimbos on the pull. They seduce men to get them aroused, they they plonk a machine on their heads and suck life out of them. The remains are a pod of twisted skin and goo. The extract is sold back home.

Michelle Bauer and JJ North are two of the Venusian's, neither of them are good actors, and they're in good company with the rest of the cast. The script is poor, both in story idea and dialog. The main cop character is really annoying, at best. They've got him acting all clumsy, inefficient, unobservant, clueless and gullible, it's so poorly done, it's just awful to watch. You can check it out on YouTube, link above, but why would you want to? Neither of today's are films I need to watch again. That's a good thing.

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The Portrait Of Dorian Gray 1945 Based on the novel of the same name by Oscar Wilde, screenplay and direction by Albert Lewin.

 

I saw this picture back in 2006 but haven't seen it since. I recently got the DVD and decided tonight's the night to put it on. You probably know the story, man stays young while a painting of him ages. You can click the paintings for a larger size image. The picture on the left was painted by Henrique Medina and the one on the right was painted by Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. The Medina painting is shown in color in a brief scene in the B&W film. It's believed to be in a private collection. The Albright painting is in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. Ivan's identical twin Malvin was hired to paint the good Dorian painting but it wasn't used in the film. Ivan made changes to both the good and bad paintings while the film was being shot.

Hurd Hatfield lays Dorian. I knew nothing about Hurd, even though his IMDb listing says I've seen him in a few TV shows and movies. He worked steadily from 1944 until 1991, he passed away in 1998 at the age of 81. The other fellow is George Sanders playing Lord Henry Wotton. I'm more familiar with George's work and a big fan of him as The Saint and The Falcon. He's a bit of a rotter here and he convinces Dorian that a lifestyle of pleasure and hedonism is the way to go. Dorian's pretty shallow and he's easily swayed by Wotton. Dorian is generally a pretty piss poor example of a human being.

Dorian is having his portrait painted by artist Basil Hallward, he's played by Lowell Gilmore. That's him in the middle between Peter Lawford and Donna Reed. Donna is Gladys Gilmore, Basil's daughter and Peter is David Stone, a man in love with Donna. Their lives become a mess from being involved with Dorian. Gladys is a child when the painting is finished, about 18 years pass and she grows into a lovely young woman. Dorian looks the same but his painting is growing more and more grotesque from his naughty life style. Dorian asks her to marry him and she excepts. What's wrong with these people?

Angela Lansbury is Sibyl Vane, a singer in a small tavern in a rough part of London. Shortly after the portrait is finished Dorian sees her sing and returns over and over to the tavern. He proposes to her but Lord Wotton's influence causes Dorian to offer her a choice, sleep with him before marriage or get out. She walks but returns. The next day Dorian sends her a letter telling of his disappointment in her giving into him, he ends the relationship and includes a pile of cash. She commits suicide.

Time passes and Dorian becomes known as a bounder and his portrait has become as grotesque as he is inside. Gladys brother vows revenge but fails. Dorian becomes more and more evil. In the end he destroys himself.

It's a pretty darn good looking film, plenty of great sets, really good cast, everything about it is top notch. Might be the best film I've seen this year. Well worth a look.

Molly And The Ghost 1990 No writer is credited on the film or the IMDb. Don Jones is the director. I can see why the writer might have taken his name off the film, there's nothing much good about it. A horrible 16 year old runs away to LA and moves in with her older sister. She steals money and jewelry from her sister and tries to seduce her husband. Thrown out she hires a hit man but she's so stupid she mails him a picture of herself. He kills her and she become's a vengeful ghost. It's a pretty piss poor film and should be punched in the face. I started fast forwarding after a while.

The Mind Benders 1963 James Kennaway wrote the original screenplay and adapted that into his novel of the same name, Basil Dearden directed.

Professor Sharpey jumps from a moving train and a huge pile of money is found in his briefcase. He's suspected of selling secrets to foreign interests. Major Hall comes to investigate Sharpey and he finds he'd been involved with a project studying the effects of cold and isolation on men. That project has morphed into a study on sensory deprivation, Professor Sharpey had worked on the project with Dr Longman and Dr Tate, scientists at the University. Major Hall is played by John Clements, he's on the right, the guy on the left is Michael Bryant who played Dr Tate. Dirk Bogarde plays Dr Longman.

The Major finds that the process of cutting off the body from all sensation leaves the mind messed up and the person susceptible to easy manipulation. If this is the case it might be that Professor Sharpey could have been an easy mark for spies after being in the tank.

Longman had been in the tank for four hours and taken a leave. He's at home with his wife Oonagh and their four children when the Major comes to call. Longman believes that Sharpey could have been easily swayed by some spies. The Major talks a reluctant Longman into going back into the tank. They leave him in for 8 hours and he's pretty much a broken man.

As part of the experiment they tell Dirk his wife is a pain and he doesn't really love her. Dirk seems to recover but the seeds have been planted and his marriage breaks apart. That's Dirk with Mary Ure, who plays his wife Oonagh. Now the Major has to try to rectify is awful blunder.

That's Wendy Craig, it was one of her early film roles, she'd been in a few TV programs and would go onto star in the beloved series Butterflies. There's a few people in the cast that I knew, Terence Alexander, Roger Delgado, Edward Fox, Geoffrey Keene and Norman Bird. The good script gives them good material to work with. It's well filmed and directed. Everything about it is way above average. It's also a good reminder that human's are fragile. Well worth seeing. It's another film that turned out to be one of the best films I've seen this year. I have the Kino Lorber DVD and it looks nice. There's a commentary that I listened to part of, might get around to it again someday.

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Knocking On Death's Door 1999 Screenplay by Craig J Nevis and direction by Mitch Marcus. Produced by Roger Corman and shot at his studio near Galway Ireland. The movie is set in New England.

Newlywed students buy a haunted house to look for the ghosts rumored to be in the house. They're there to look for the ghosts. They soon find him. It's a much your typical haunted house story, a bit sexier than some, but really it all boils down to some poor sap getting murdered and he can't move on. David Carradine plays the local doctor, other than that there's nothing much special about the movie. It's part of a two movie DVD that came out in 2003.

The Doorway 2000 Michael B Druxman is the writer director. Also made at Roger's Irish studio and also set in the USA.

It's another haunted house story, this time there are 4 students looking for cheap housing. The jerky guy has made a deal to fix the place up for free rent and some cash. The other's aren't too happy with him once he's sprung this surprise. They aren't as unhappy as the demon that lives in the house. She's been murdered and walled up in the cellar. She's been stewing down thee for years and she's pretty nasty on top of being a mean angry demon. She gets busy and people start to die.

Roy Scheider is their professor, he goes to the house to help with the problem. It's pretty typical stuff and below average in interest to me. I might never get around to re-watching these two films but I'll have that DVD anyway.

Dr Benderfax 1997

Dr Benderfax is a 1997 mad scientist comedy that was written and directed by Tom Hosler. It's his only movie and he has 11 total credits for it on the IMDb. I saw it on Amazon Prime and it follows a lot of the MS themes. Older MS onto a new process at his lab, young scientist coming to work for the MS because he admires the man's work, a bit of romance for the YS and a bit of rumpy-pumpy for the MS's assistant. Everything falls apart along the way and some poor saps get killed. Nothing was overly clever but there were a few good jokes in among the yakkin'. I wouldn't need to see it again or have a copy.

Science Fiction Sunday 575

The first of two SF films from Amazon Prime today is The Dark Side Of The Moon. The listing says the movie is a 2019 release but it's really from 1990. Chad and Carey Hayes wrote the script and DJ Webster directed. It starts out as a routine space repair mission but ship failure puts them out of power and drifting to have a gander at the moon's backside. They see an abandoned shuttle and connect up to it, hoping to find more oxygen than they have. Now it becomes more of a horror movie, there's some sort of evil entity on board and he's got fresh victims. There's plenty of running about and murder. It doesn't end well for much of anyone. It was watchable for the most part but hardly more than average. The IMDb score is a 5.0 and I'd vote that. I wouldn't need to see it again and there's little chance of it falling into my hands on DVD. You can even get a Blu-ray, what a waste of 20 smackaroonies.

Second feature is the 2013 SF film Dark Space. It's written and directed by Emmett Callinan. Six young adults rent a spacecraft to take them to Centari Five. One of them screws with the ship to make it go faster and they wind up on a unknown planet with all sorts of damage to the rental. Hopefully they have space insurance. Not that it will matter to 5 of them. While they are out looking about some space mercenaries attack them. They've been sent to wipe out the indigenous population so who ever sent them can take over the planet for their own use. One of tourists teaches the natives how to kill with a rock and she escapes in the mostly repaired ship. It was alright, I watched it to the end, but it's still a bit below average. Some of the dialog is annoying and it's all the same sort of thing I've seen before. Another one I wouldn't need to bother with again. Not sorry to have taken a look.

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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.