PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 990

Charlie's Angels 2019 Story by Evan Spiliotopoulos and David Auburn, screenplay and direction by Elizabeth Banks.

A new re-imagining of the old TV series. The Townsend agency is in Europe and Patrick Stewart is the head of the branch. He's got a whole gang of Angels with Kristen Stewart and Ella Balinska as a couple of his top agents. At the end of the mission that opens the movie Patrick retires from the company. He's not happy about it but he takes the watch and leaves.

Naomi Scott is a whistle blower who wants some help from the Angels. She's invented a magical power device that can be set to kill people. She wants time to fix it but the head of her department at Brok says it's got to launch on schedule.She wimps out by not going over his head to Mr Brok.

An assassin tries to kill Naomi at her meeting with the Angels in Hamburg, the Angels fight back but he manages to force the Angels into the river. The assassin leaves them to drown and runs away.  Elizabeth Banks takes over the team after Djimon Hounsou is killed in the fire fight.

There's a whole bunch of sneaking about as the team breaks into Brok's HQ. The action scenes are fairly good, there's plenty of shooting and running about. There's a lot of double dealing and traitorous behavior. Eventually things get worked out.

I enjoyed the movie but didn't think it was quite as good as the Drew Barrymore films from the early 2000's. I don't seen anyone making any sequels so far. I ordered the Blu-ray and hope to watch it again someday.

Scream Queen 2002 Written and directed by Brad Sykes. The film was partially shot in 1998 but not finished until 2002. We watched the 2023 Blu-ray from Video Vengeance.

Linnea Quigley plays a scream queen, her car blows up while she's working on her latest movie. The director and the crew try to figure out what to do about finishing the film. Someone starts killing the crew.

It's a pretty predictable slasher film with super low production values, a poor script and a gang of actors that can't act, or, in some cases, barely even speak. It's shot on video and looks pretty terrible. It's such a poor movie I wouldn't bother picking up a copy. It's really something for the Linnea fans out there.

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Samurai Resurrection 2003 Based on a novel by Fûtarô Yamada, screenplay by Satoko Okudera, direction by Hideyuki Hirayama.

A Japanese Christian leader is killed and somehow resurrected. He resurrects other dead martial arts heroes and moves toward Edo where the Shogun is dying. He wants to take over Japan. Jubei Yagyu is working to stop him. One of the other viewers said this might be the only movie where a Yagyu is the hero.

There's plenty of fighting and the action is pretty good. The story jumps around and introduces a good number of characters. At times I was finding it hard to follow the story. There's a good bit of CGI, especially supplying scenes of a distant castle, some of it was quite good. I doubt I need a copy but it was still entertaining.

The Night Of The Hunted 1980 Written and directed by Jean Rollins.

Rollin offered to make a horror movie to a producer who asked for a porn film. Same budget and he'd make in 9 days instead of 10. Jean got the nod and he made a horror film about the treatment of people who were damaged by exposure to radiation. The main symptom is loss of memory as the cells in their brains decay. The victims are housed in a guarded building and overseen by a doctor who really can't do anything for them. The government is keeping it all hush hush.

I can't say I thought it was bad but there wasn't enough story. Mostly it seemed like an excuse to get the actors out of their clothes. Despite the shagging it's not a hardcore film like many of his works were. That's only partially true. The version we saw was the original release, it has not hardcore scenes. The film didn't make much money so the producer shot new hardcore scenes to re-release the film in another market. Pornstar Brigitte Lahaie appeared in several of Rollins non-hardcore films. She does OK as one of the victims who lost her memory.

From the Rollin Wikipedia page: Rollin himself had stated that "I don't think it is a very good film and it is probably one of my worst" and that if he could remake just one of his films it would be La nuit des traquées.

In the 60s and 70s Rollin made a reputation with lot of erotic horror films that were awash with naked vampires and sexy times. He had a decent following from them, people still write glowing articles about him. They weren't popular enough to pay well so he turned to making porn. I haven't seen much by him and what I saw didn't turn me into a more serious fan.

The Hunted 2003

The Hunted 2003 Written by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths and Art Monsterastelli, directed by William Friedkin.

Tommy Lee Jones is a retired Special Forces trainer and Benicio del Toro is one of his students. Tommy gets asked by the FBI to hunt down Benicio who's been killing citizens. He's killed so many people for the government that he's got PSTD. Some hunters set him off and he slaughters them all in a run through the woods. 

Benicio gets caught and Special Ops guys take him away to kill. He can't go to trial as he knows too much. Benicio escapes after killing all the agents. Tommy goes after him and eventually the pair fall off a waterfall. They battle to the end and Benicio isn't the winner. Tommy goes home.

It's about average for an action film. I bought a DVD cheap somewhere, I usually like Friedkin and Tommy Lee, I'm likely to rewatch it again sometime but not before a couple of Friednkin's earlier movies.

The Contractor 2007

The Contractor 2007 Story by Robert Katz and Andre Farwagi, screenplay by Robert Foster and Joshua Michael Stern, directed by Josef Rusnak.

Wesley Snipes is a ex-CIA guy who comes out of retirement to kill a baddie in the hands of the British police. Last time he had his hands on the baddie the guy escaped. This time Wesley succeeds in killing the guy. Things go wrong on the getaway, his driver is killed, Wesley is badly hurt. He manages to escape the police manhunt and hides in a safe house. He meets a 12 year old girl next door who helps bandage him up. Wesley's boss frames Wesley instead of helping him escape. Wesley will deal with him soon enough. despite all that it's has a sort of happy ending.

It's pretty average, some nice fights and driving, but a seen it all before story had me on the speed control. Not worth spending the time on. I'd be better off watching the Bourne series again.

Friday Night Movies 924

Overlord 2018 Story by Billy Ray, screenplay by Billy Ray and Mark L Smith, directed by Julius Avery.

On the eve of D-Day a plane filled with paratroopers is headed for Germany. Their mission is to take out a radio jamming tower. The plane is shot to pieces and heads for the ground, only a handful of men survive. They fall into the woods near the town where the tower is, four of them make it to the town where they are befriended by a local woman.

Strange things are going on in the church beside the tower. Turns out the German's are experimenting on people and have developed a serum that brings the dead to life. There's plenty of Nazi fighting once they get into the town. They barely survive the mission but some of the guys make it back to the US lines. They don't tell the commander what was there, preferring to hide the German's experimenting.

The opening airplane sequence gets pretty harrowing for the men, bullets and shrapnel tearing the plane up. It slows down once the survivors get to the ground then it picks up once they get situated in the town. The last act is mostly all action and some of it was pretty good. There's nothing really original here but they do well with what they have. The film didn't do that great at the box office but it's gotten a lot of fans on streaming services.

I thought it was odd that there was a black man in the paratrooper squad but the Wikipedia says he was a member of The Triple Nickels which was an all black squad. The paratroopers are supposedly made up of men from other squads. It's just not well explained in the film. One of the actors said in an interview it was about finding good actors rather than being historically accurate.

Other than that annoying bit I enjoyed the movie. I'd even think about picking up a copy if I see one cheap enough. I'd watch it again.

Max Havoc: Curse Of The Dragon 2004 Written by Irina Mishina, directed by Albert Pyun and Isaac Florentine. Albert directed the film in Guam and Isaac directed 10 mins of new content that added David Carradine and Richard Roundtree. Isaac said in an interview he'd declined screen credit because he didn't feel it was fair to Albert.

Mickey Hardt plays Max Havoc, an ex-kickboxer who ended his career after killing a guy in the ring. Max became a professional sports photographer and he's in Guam for a hotel publicity shoot. He visits his old trainer and friend Richard at his antiques shop. They agree to meet up after Max gets his work done.

On the beach Max meets a couple of sisters and gets a date with one of them. Back at the antique shop Richard gets a visit from a thief with a jade statue she's stolen from David Carradine. Richard gives her some money as a loan and she says she'll be back in 24 hours to get it back. Richard sells it to the older sister, she an old friend of his, and she finds out it's worth a fortune. She wants to use the money to fund the younger sister's medical schooling.

Trouble is, the real value to David is not in it being a piece of rare jade. It's been made into an urn for the ashes of the former leader of the Black Dragons. It's a secret crime club that David now heads. He wants those ashes back, he sends his minions, they find the thief and that leads to Richard's shop. Richard refuses to give up the buyer and the minions leave him and the thief dead on the shop floor.

Max gets in the middle of all this trying to save the sisters from the Black Dragons.  The older sister is a horrible person who's only interest is the money that the jade will bring. She puts everyone in danger, eventually leading to the Black Dragons kidnapping the younger sister. I was disappointed that the older sister made it to the end of the film.

Eventually it all comes down to a battle between Max and David's main fighter. Max wins, the younger sister is freed and David agrees to let them all alone. David gives them an ancient katana that he gives to the sisters to fund medical school.

Sadly the film isn't very good. It gets a 3.4 on the IMDb and that's not far off from what I was thinking. There is a sequel with Mickey and Dean Cain, click the links to watch. I'll get to that sequel at some point, or I wont. 

The Midnight Horror Collection - Flesh Eating Zombies

The Midnight Horror Collection - Flesh Eating Zombies has 4 movies on a single layer double sided disc. That's two low rez movies per side, the bit rate is low, about 2.5MB on average, the images look really poor. There's not much good to say about most of the movies either. You can find it on Amazon for 8 bucks and it's not worth it. I paid about 6 bucks for it and feel robbed.

Last Of The Living 2009 Written and directed by Logan McMillan.

I saw this back in 2010 but didn't remember that when I picked up this used 4 pack recently. The main guy looked familiar and sure enough the IMDb said I'd seen it before. It was a selection for Friday Night Movies, the link to the post is in the title, I still feel about the same as I did then. I might watch it again someday but the likelihood is low. 

Grave Mistake 2008 Written by Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina, directed by Chris LaMartina.

A poor looking zombie movie. The zombies are created by toxic waste and the guy who did the dumping is the step father of a young boy he likes to punch around. The kid has a couple of friends at the local gas station, he hangs out with the goofy mechanic and the long haired owner. They all team up when the town's citizens turn to flesh eating monsters. They try to survive but one by one they get picked off. The usual sort of fair but done poorly.

I'm not sure if they intentionally desaturated the color or it was just poor equipment and lighting. No matter, it sucks to look at. The film is really grainy on top of that. It just makes the below average script and the poor acting harder to see. It's made in Baltimore and the film makers say that it was made for about a grand. More money might help the look of the film but not so much the story. I have seen one other feature directed by Chris, the 2017 Call Girl Of Cthulhu, it wasn't very good. I wouldn't need to see either again.

Awaken The Dead 2007 Written and directed by Jeff Brookshire.

Another low budget film that looks awful. Desaturated color and dense grainy image equal a poor viewing experience. The script is a hodgepodge of goofy choices and coincidences. An ex-assassin is now a pacifist priest, a woman is an ex prostitute and daughter of the man who's caused all the zombies to appear in a town. He's invented a formula that can be sprayed on a town by a small plane. It turns everyone into flesh eating zombies. The father is the guy who trained the priest to be an assassin in some sort of black ops program. That secret black ops element is something I've gotten really tired of in the last few years. None of the actors are good enough to make anything much of the script. Not worth seeing, should be avoided in the future. Hopefully, I'll remember to look these up on my blog in the future. So easy to forget the easily forgettable.

I Am Omega 2007 Based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, screenplay by Geoff Meed, directed by Griff Furst. Griff is the son of Stephen Furst. Griff has acted in a lot of productions and directed 17 films, most of them for TV. I've only seen Lake Placid 3 and now this one. The film is produced by The Asylum. Never a sign of quality.

The only thing positive I can say about this movie is that it stars Mark Dacascos. He's been in some good films in his 30 year career, so sad to see he worked for The Asylum. Still, paycheck. The Asylum made their name by making low budget films that had a similarity to upcoming big studio films, releasing them months before the studio film comes out. They make money by not spending anything on their films. The Sharknado series is one of their more well known properties. One of my favorites of Mark's films is the 1997 action film Drive.

In this movie Mark is hold up in his compound trying to survive the zombie plague. He's forced to help save a woman and get her to scientists who are trying to create a cure, she's got some sort of antibody. The guys who enlisted Mark's aid are insane liars, they want to maintain the status quo so they can keep on killing people. They need killing and the film delivers.

Despite that, it's not a very good film, nearly any of the previous versions is more entertaining. I particularly like the 1964 Vincent Price film The Last Man On Earth quite a bit. I've seen that 4 or 5 times so far and really like the grimness of it. I will watch it again someday, I can't say the same about Mark's film, much as I like Mark. I'd rather watch him again in something good like Brotherhood Of The Wolf, Cradle To Grave, or John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum.

Friday Night Movies 852

Treasure Raiders 2007 Story by Alexander Nevsky, screenplay by Alexander Izotov and Alexey Overchuk, directed by Brent Huff.

A befuddled action story involving a search for the treasure of the Knights Templar. It spends too much time being other movies and doesn't spend the time on being a good treasure hunt story. It's National Treasure, The Fast And The Furious and any random cops versus drug smugglers movie, all blended up and made weaker for it. The drug and street racing subplots don't add anything to the treasure hunt and eventually take up so much time that they have to set up a sequel that never comes along. A good screenwriter would have split the drug and racing from the treasure hunt and had two stronger stories to work with.

We really watched the movie to see David Carradine. I'm never going to see all of his films and I'm not even going to bother trying, there are too many. This was one of 13 roles he played in 2007, he was alright and it was a fairly decent part. He's part of the Knights Templar story.

It's a rather lackluster movie, Huff is not a good action director, his car chases were rather dull. I did like Nevsky, he might have been better used by a better director. I wouldn't bother picking up a copy.

That's one of the move interesting voting patterns that I've seen on the IMDb. Almost 60% of the votes are a 9 and it still gets a 2.7 as a final score. I smell a rat, comrade.

Beyond Dream's Door 1989 Written and directed by Jay Woelfel. I didn't recognize Jay's name but I have seen a movie of his, Trancers 6, the only one of his 9 other features I had seen.

This is a movie about nightmares intruding into people's waking reality. The guy in the blue shirt has a nightmare monster chasing him in the real world and he brings it to other people so they can be murdered too. There's plenty of monster chasing the victims and I did like the monster for the most part. The film is ambitious but generally it's below average for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

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. 

Friday Night Movies 811

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.