PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 833

A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop 2009 Screenplay by Shi Jianquan and Xue Jianchao, directed by Zhang Yimou. It's a remake of the Coen Brother's film Blood Simple.

Everything centers around the noodle shop in the middle of nowhere. The desert is beautiful, with rows of brilliant pastel colored hills. The people in the noodle house aren't quite so beautiful. The old man is the owner, his wife buys a gun, her lover is worried. The lover works at the noodle shop, the owner pays a soldier to kill the lovers. Of course, it all goes wrong, quite nicely, and it was fun getting there.

It's a nice adaptation and I liked the more humorous take. Glad I took a chance and bought the DVD, I'll hopefully get to watch it again someday.

Dog Eat Dog 2016 Based on the Edward Bunker novel of the same name, screenplay by Matthew Wilder, directed by Paul Schrader.

Nicolas Cage is a crook out of jail, he hooks up with William Defoe and Christopher Matthew Cook. They are absolute scum. They get hired to kidnap a kid, they screw it all up and everyone dies. Since it's a Paul Schrader film there's some onscreen jiggery pokery. The last several minutes are annoying. What am I supposed to make of that. Paul's inner brain and I don't get along.

It looked pretty good for a fairly low budget film. It was shot in Cleveland over 25 days with a crew of recently graduated film students. It didn't do well at the BO. Critics were mixed and it has yet to break 5 on the IMDb. I kind of feel 5ish, if it had been more original, I might have liked it a bit more but these aren't interesting individuals and I've seen their story over and over. I'll still keep the DVD, I might want to watch Nicolas and William chew some scenery.

Immortal Demon Slayer 2017 Director Derek Kwok co-wrote the screenplay with Hai Huang, Hezai Jin, Fan Wenwen and Henri Wong, they adapted Jin's book Wukong Biography. The movie is called The Tales Of Wu Kong in China and it's another Monkey King movie. It's supposedly set 500 years before Sun Wu Kong goes to war with the Heavenly Kingdom.

There's a long complicated plot involving a lot of people, some of them have powers of one sort or another, hardly any of them are on the same page. There's plenty of action, romance and murder. Good reminder, humans and gods don't mix, someone always winds up dead, and it isn't that immortal guy.

I enjoyed it for the most part and would watch it again. I suppose I could have a Monkey King marathon. That would take a while, I know I've got six Monkey King films, I think there's at least another. Oh, well, some other day. 

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The Gallows 2015 Absolutely annoying film about some mostly horrible high school students doing a play about a hanging. It's a found footage film that's an eye sore. It makes my eyes sore. Twenty years ago the school players produced the same play and young man named Charlie was accidentally hung when the trick noose failed. Now, it's twenty years later and his spirit is killing off the cast, or something like that. There's plenty of whining and screaming, doors slamming and things jumping out at you. The brain staggering whip pans that are more annoying than scary, they can fuck off. It was cheap to make, $100,000, and it made $43 million. Yay, on their money making skills, maybe they can make a better film with out all the gimmicks. Be nice if they could put in some more interesting characters. I hope I don't run into the sequel from last year.

Hangman's Curse 2003 Based on a Christian novel by Frank Peretti, screenplay by Kathy Mackel and Stan Foster, directed by Rafal Zielinski.

I saw David Keith was in this DVD that I think came from Dollar Tree. I think all the films today came from there, I'd hate to have paid more than a dollar for these. I keep hoping to come across that gem but so far not even half way there.
David plays the head of crime fighting family that goes undercover to route out crime. We first meet them as drug pushers working with the police. Their next assignment is undercover at a high school that's been having students fall over and go into a coma.

In the school the mom is a councilor, David's a janitor, the two teen kids are a popular girl type and a nerdy type. They find a lot of bullying from the football squad, they attack the nerdy kids and extort money from them. The school seems to do little. There's a group of Goths that have called up the curse some kid who hung himself at the school. Several kids have been cursed, they freak out and collapse, then go into a coma. No one can figure out what the drugs that are causing this are.

It turns out to have a mundane Scooby-Doo mad scientist sort of ending but someone does die. It's vaguely Christian but not in your face about it. I could see this being the pilot for a show. It was better than average for what it was and about average for a teen crime movie. Not much reason to watch it again. 

Frost: Portrait Of A Vampire 2003 Written and directed by Kevin VanHook. It's a movie about some mercenaries in Afghanistan being lead by a guy called Jack Frost. They're asked to kill and burn a man the locals bring to them. They believe he's a demon and they don't want to be cursed. A guy called Nat shoots it after it bites him in the leg. Later that night they're attacked and split up. Most of the men are killed, Frost survives, Nat disappears for a long time.

Frost figures out who attacked them and kills that prick. Then Nat turns up as a vampire and he's all bitey and evil. That's him in the picture above. Nat was the most entertaining bit of the movie. Frost is a big beefy block of wood with mirror shades. The script is nothing too original. There's plenty of fighting but not all of it so good. I liked the Nat parts, he made me laugh once or twice, but I doubt that I'd need to watch it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 601

Robowar 1988 Another poor effort from the fine folks of Italy. Bruno Mattei used a pseudonym, Vincent Dawn, to try to trick audiences into believing they might be seeing an American made film. They aren't fooling anyone with half a brain. Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso wrote the screenplay using their real names, pointing out that no one really gives a fuck who writes this shit. I watched it on Amazon Prime and put a link to the movie on YouTube in the title above. Not the greatest upload but watchable. Not that I'm recommending that.

A special cyborg killer goes nuts on a mission to kill some guerillas on a jungle island. That's the band of soldiers, in the picture above, who are sent to stop the cyborg. The woman was someone they rescued along the way to their dooms. The guy, third from left, is the developer of the cyborg and he's a real dirt bag. He doesn't tell anyone anything until it's too late and one by one they get picked off. I couldn't hardly wait to see him get his.

It's all walking through the jungle, shouting cliches at each other, with occasional fire fights. It's dull and I don't need to see it again. At least I get to complain about it, maybe save someone from buying the Severin Blu-ray. My good deed for the day.

Transmophers 2007 Another Amazon Prime film that shares the cyborg battlebot idea with Robowars. I decided to watch it, even though it's from the dreaded film production house The Asylum. Occasionally it's good to be reminded how poor they are at making films. Leigh Scott is the writer and director. He's written a story about a robot invasion of the Earth, something that happened in the past, the remaining humans have hidden themselves underground and fight back as they can. The movie depicts the battle to take back the surface.

This movie shares something else with the previous film. It's script is also a bag full of cliches. Both films have nothing original going on in them. The acting is all over the place, a couple of people have slightly more skill than the rest and it stands out. It's even duller that Robowar, nothing much happens for nearly the first half the 86 min movie, I was forced to flick through the dull scenes with the 10 second jump button to stave off boredom. Not surprising, movies from The Asylum have a lot of talky scenes, it's cheaper than action and they have little money. Occasionally they shot scenes of people walking and talking in a corridor. That still doesn't make the films more interesting. Another one I wouldn't need to see again.

Science Fiction Sunday 593

Sheborg 2016 is an Australian goopfest about an alien invasion. It's from Amazon Prime where for some reason they think it came out in 2018. They are often wrong about the date a movie was released because they are twats. I got the poster from the IMDb, they've recently pissed me off by stopping right click downloads of their images. Now you have to tell it you want to do a screen capture and crop the image out of the background and then download it. Another bunch of cocks. Daniel Armstrong is the writer and director and he calls the film Neo-pulp. The Wikipedia has this quote from him. "Neo-pulp lovingly embraces the most extreme, cliche, and supercilious elements of pop culture and pulp literature and puts them in a human context. SHEBORG MASSACRE itself is a 50s teen rebel flick set in a B grade sci-fi world from the early 80s, with horror style violence. It’s not a spoof, it’s not horror, it’s not action, it’s not sci-fi, it’s not drama. It’s all of these things. It’s neo-pulp."

Pretentious bullshit aside the film delivers a lot of goopy mess and plenty of yelling and running about. The fights are fair to poor and the CGI is low budget weak. The two main characters continuously get covered in blood. It's fun but not that great. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Even worse was Fatal Conflict, a 2000 cliche filled space adventure that doesn't have a pretentious description. It's just Kari Wuhrer battling some scummy criminals on a space ship.  There's a lot of running through corridors and a good number of fights. It's still not that good. Some of the dialog is laughable and the rest dull. Hardly worth the time for me to look at it, lucky for me I can skip ahead 10 seconds a click on the Amazon player. Not going to watch it again, that's for sure.

Friday Night Movies 793

First up, Knives Out, an entertaining mystery movie. It came out last year and it seemed to create a bit of a buzz. It turned up on Amazon Prime for free and that seemed like a good test price to see if I would want to pick up a disc. It's written and directed by Rian Johnson who's announced Knives Out 2. Rian's last movie was Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, before that it was Looper in 2012, I'm not familiar with any of his earlier work.

Christopher Plummer plays the rich head of a really scummy family. He's supported them but after he commits suicide it turns out that he's not left them any of his fortune. Daniel Craig plays a southern private eye who's been hired anonymously to investigate the death. Most of the action takes place in a big old house filled with plenty of nooks and crannies and stairwells. It's a nice old place but too many stairs for me nowadays.

The money helps bring out the family's evil side and they are some scum suckers. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Jeeden Martell, Riki Lindhome and Chris Evans are the family members. Ana di Armas plays the health care worker who gets the prize. Can she keep it. We'll have to wait for the second movie to know.

There's a good complicated story going on with good dialog and good actors to make it work. The characters are interesting, though some of them are truly repulsive. My only complaint was some of them didn't get punished so much, that might be mitigated by the second movie. I had plenty of laughs and was real happy to have seen it. I'd watch it again sometime, but I'll probably  wait for a 2 pack with the second movie before buying it.

 

I can't think of anything good to say about Unearthly, a 2013 low budget POS that was on AP. It's a totally directive and unoriginal. A 15 year old girl is on the hunt for a powerful medallion and some scumbag is also after it. Her dad, mom and boyfriend go after her. It's mostly people tramping about in the woods. There's nothing of interest there, sad dialog from stupid characters, crappy CGI, poor jokes and embarrassing action. It's the kind of movie you want to tell to Fuck Off.

Friday Night Movies 790

A couple more horror films off of Amazon Prime. First up Against The Dark, a 2009 post-apoc movie with a well padded Steven Seagal. Stephen doesn't do much other than walk, talk a bit, and wave a sword around. The mutant humans just seem to leap right on that sword. Everyone else breaks a sweat. I didn't recognize anyone else in the cast but David Keith. He head of the military in the area, he doesn't do much more than boss people around. He's going to bomb the area to kill the mutants, there's a clock ticking down. He going to bomb the place even if Steven and his band of hunters aren't out of the area. I didn't care much for it, nothing much interesting or clever here. Move along.

The Night Sitter was a good bit better, it's from 2018 and it's a bit of a horror comedy. Some guy hires a strange babysitter to look after his son and the son of his girlfriend. She's "new" to the area and it turns out she's there to grab as much cash and merch as she can. She calls a friend with a truck. In the meantime the two boys steal the key to dad's locked office. A strange book gets handled and the three mothers escape. They had been trapped in the book by some guys in the past. They are a trio of children killers, they kidnap the little nippers, hang them up by their feet and slit their throats. Easier to drain the blood from them. The girlfriend's kid is the first to get the treatment. The sitter's ex-boyfriend shows up, a neighbor shows up, they're just more fodder for the witches. They like killing children, but in a pinch, they'll kill anyone. It takes nearly half the movie for anything interesting to happen. It all looks fairly good but I soon got tired of the red/green/blue lights that are supposed to create some mood. I got to the end and didn't think I needed to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 557

First up a film from Amazon Prime's catalog of fine free SF films. Turkey Shoot is also known as Escape 2000 and it came out in 1982. Brian Trenchard-Smith is the director, he directed a lot of stuff I haven't seen, I have seen Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space, neither are great but they are watchable. George Schenck, Robert Williams and David Lawrence wrote the story that Jon George and Neil D Hicks adapted for their screenplay.

It's basically a prison movie but set slightly in the future. The evil warden has planned a hunt with prisoners as the hunted. Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey are among the five chosen and Michael Craig plays the evil warden. It's all pretty standard stuff, sadistic guards beating the inmates and then chasing them in the jungle. There's a big fight near the end that was fairly good and Steve puts up such a good fight that the warden doesn't survive. I've certainly seen worse prison movies. Not something I would buy but I got through to the end.

Second film from AP is the 2006 SYFY original TV movie Shockwave which is also called AI Assault by someone. It's directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews, Jim c0-wrote the script with William Langlois under the name Bill Monroe. I watched the movie under the name Teddy Jones. It's about a government AI robot project that decides to break out of the plane that's transporting them. George Takei is the pilot of the plane, Robert Picardo is one of the scientists in the plane, he can't stop the robots from escaping. The plane goes down on a small island. Hudson Leick and a couple of other guys are robbers, Josh Coxx is their unwilling helicopter pilot. Alexandra Paul is a scientist. Tim Thomerson, Michael Dorn and Billy Mumy are all military men, they send Navy Seals to the island the plane goes down on. The robbers get forced down onto the island with the robots because of a storm, then gets stranded when the helicopter breaks.  The robots are too clever for everyone's own good. It's all about as good as the usual SYFY movie. There's plenty of running through the woods and the like but it's pretty much below average in interesting stuff happening. Another one that I wouldn't bother buying.

Dragon Hunters 2008

I took a chance on Dragon Hunters and was entertained enough to get to the end. It's an animation from France, Germany and Luxembourg that is based on a TV series of the same name. The big guy is Lian-Chu, the girl is Zoé, the weaselly guy is Gwizdo and the blue bunny is Hector.

The world they live on is all bits and pieces, floating by, people move from one bit to another in their travels. Lian-Chu, Gwizdo and Hector are dragon hunters, they don't make much of a living from it because no one has any money. They run into Zoé and she tags along. They battle the world destroying monster and save the world.

It's light hearted and little is new. I did like the floating islands and the general look of the film. I was glad to have seen it and I'll put it away to watch again someday.

Wolfhound 2006

Wolfhound is a 2006 Russian Slavic Fantasy film. It was part of a two pack of films from Hamilton Book for $3.95. Wolfhound was shrink wrapped with Outlander, an alien invasion set among the Vikings, each movie a separate DVD. I had seen Outlander last year and enjoyed that but didn't have a copy.

The movie has a common plot, the last surviving member of a tribe grows up to get revenge on the man who killed everyone in the village. Even the villain having an identifying tattoo on his hand has been done over and over again. Still, you can hardly have any new plots, it's what they do with the details.

The big hunky guy is Wolfhound and the young lady is a princess. Their paths cross and off they go on an adventure together. There's plenty of danger and a bit of romance. There's big action scenes and spectacular countryside. There's an OK villain, a pretty princess and a good hero.

The movie has one of the largest budgets of any Russian film. There's a lot of big sets, a lot of extras, and plenty of good to decent CGI. I enjoyed it but it's a bit long at 142 minutes. Mind you, there's plenty of people that need killing so I guess you have to spend the time. Luckily it moves along at a fair pace and I got to the end. Glad to have a copy, someday I might get back to it. 

Meg-A-Shark 8 Movie Collection

It's sharks all the way down in this 8 movie collection from Echo Bridge Entertainment. It's called Meg-A-Shark 8 Movie Collection. Not overly clever but at least's it's better than Multi Feature or 8 Movie Collection. I got it cheap, I think from the $5 bin at Walmart. Occasionally I'll find something cheap there, not often, Walmart, like every other retailer is continuously downsizing the DVD section in their retail stores. I was glad to see that none of the films were from The Asylum. Look for the silver lining, huh. Even though this collection was better than most EB collections, I doubt I'm going to watch any of these over. I'll keep the DVDs, I might want to watch Jeffery Combs again. Too bad it's not one of his better roles.

Toxic Shark has some vacationers wind up at a resort on a small island. It's a beautiful place with plenty of gals in bikinis. Ashley O'Neil is the writer and Cole Sharpe is the director of this made for TV movie from 2017.

Something has mutated a shark and it now spews toxic goo out of it's head. The goo eats away at boats and people who get splattered turn into agitated, crazy talkin' biters. There's the usual chomping of people and occasionally one of the infected gets a bite in. Kabby Borders, that's her above, is the smarty in the bunch and she figures out enough to keep a bit a head of the shark. Is she going to keep ahead of the infected? There's nothing too original in the movie but it does get a bit exciting near the end. Sadly the CGI works against it. It's gets a 3.5 on the IMDb but I gave it a 4.

Shark In Venice I had already seen. It's pretty poor. I only gave it a 2 on the IMDb.

Malibu Shark Attack is a 2009 movie, script by Keith Shaw (writing as Lindsay James) and direction by David Lister. Plenty of beauties in beachwear here too. The sharks come from an underground earthquake that creates a tsunami. They're some sort of extinct goblin shark that chomp everything, and everyone, they come across. Plenty of nice scenery but a familiar sort of story with a bit of romantic twaddle tossed in. Petra Wilson is one of the life guard ladies, I don't think I recognized anyone else in the cast. They were fair to good for the most part. The CGI sharks were on the less than great side but passable. Kind of like the movie.

SharkMan is a 2005 TV movie that's also called Hammerhead or Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy. There's a different movie from 2001 called Sharkman. Jeffrey Combs plays a scientist, he's a real sack of shit, he's got a guarded compound where he experiments on people. William Forsythe and several others are invited to the island. Some of the guests are doctors and it turns out they weren't able to save Jeffrey's son from Cancer before the movie started. Time has past, Jeffrey's a dick, he's going to punish them. Turns out his son didn't die, instead Jeffrey has turned him into a mutant shark creature. He sics him on the doctors and there's some chasing going on. Jeffrey kidnaps a female doctor from the group. He's going to mate her with his son. That goes pretty badly. William goes on the attack and finishes off Jeffrey and his family. Too bad some of the CGI is pretty piss poor. The shark mutant doesn't look too bad but they keep it in the dark much of the time. The movie is shot in Bulgaria and sadly they managed to pick some of the most boring locations. It gets a 3.0 on the IMDb and I gave it a 4. For some reason 43% of the voters give it a 1. It's not that bad, it's just a programmer meant to fill time on TV.

Shark Zone is a direct to video production from 2003. The movie starts with the sinking of a Spanish galleon. Then a helicopter drops off a diving party. Jimmy and his father are diving together with half a dozen other people. They're looking for that sunken treasure ship. First a shark eats the jerky guy and then nearly everyone else. Jimmy is the only survivor, ten years later he's still troubled over his father's death. Jimmy is part of beach security for a town. The mayor is a copy of the mayor from Jaws, he puts the town's profits before the people's safety. Jimmy sees sharks just before they attack the beach. Many don't make it. Jimmy and his crew go shark hunting while the body count mounts. There are a lot of sharks and they're hungry. Add to that a subplot about a greedy bastard who wants that gold on the sunken ship. He kidnaps Jimmy, who wasn't interested in looking for it. Greedy guy pays for his greed from the inside of  shark. It's another movie that's watchable but nothing special.

Shark Attack is a 1999 TV movie with Casper Van Dien and Ernie Hudson. Casper goes to a small town to see an old friend who needed some help. The man dies before he gets there, eaten by a shark. Casper is a shark expert and he doesn't understand why there have been so many shark attacks. He joins up with a blonde lady who worked with his friend. The movie is filmed in Port Alfred South Africa. It's yakkin', some scuba diving, some shark attacks but nothing stands out. There's a smug and annoying scientist who made a drug that cures cancer. He's testing it out on humans without anyone checking up on him. What could go wrong? It's a 3.4 on the IMDb and that's about right.

Shark Attack 2 is a direct to video sequel that came out in 2000. This time the sharks are attacking around Cape Town South Africa. No one from the first movie is in this movie. A giant great white shark is captured and installed at a water park aquarium. It kills a guy right away and the viewing area is filled with kids. They'll have a story to tell at school tomorrow, huh. The big shark gets away and in searching for it they find a whole gang of great whites. A scientist finds out info on the previous movie's experiments and they think these are the offspring of those sharks. A surf competition provides some snacks and some gore. Like the previous movie, it's watchable but still not much better than the 3.1 score it gets at the IMDb. I gave it four because all these shark movies are making me loopy.

That and the shot where they shoot a shark through the head with a 45 automatic and his bloody head falls out of the scene. Nice. I'm not a fan of the shark.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is the 2002 direct to video sequel that has absolutely nothing to do with the other two movies. John Barrowman stars with Jenny McShane. John would later be in Doctor Who and Torchwood. Jenny played another character in the first movie. John plays a lifeguard who finds an unusual shark tooth. Jenny is a natural history researcher who gets involved when John tries to find out what sort of shark had a tooth like that. She comes to visit to tell  him it's a magalodon. Right after that, the shark eats a couple of people at a water park. Jenny goes looking for the shark and it finds here. She tags it with a camera. Then there's plenty of shark chasing and people eating until the big fella has to pay for his appetite. Then mama megalodon shows up. It's not great but a bit better than it's 2.8 score on the IMDb but I guess people hate the movie more than me, 44% of the votes are a 1. I still only gave it a 4.