PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.