PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 586

Encounter is a 2019 alien encounter movie written and directed by Paul Salamoff. He's mostly an effects guy, this is the second film he directed. Luke Hemsworth is a guy who's crippled in an auto accident that killed his daugher. He's in a wheelchair and his wife left him. Some pals of his are out in the woods when a meteor lands.

They bring the strange pod back to the house and Luke gets to babysit overnight. The pod produces a tentacle and sticks it to the back of Luke's neck. It communicates in a way, with images, impressions and feelings. While it's connected to him, it gives him the power to walk. Everyone acts like he's taken over by the alien and there's a lot of noise. Things get worse, the FBI show up, they want the pod. One of Luke's pals calls his old biology teacher, played by Tom Atkins, and the man studies the pod. Nice seeing Tom, he's always been a favorite of mine. Once all these characters are grouped together it gets pretty shitty for the alien. There's a goofy bit at the end that made me less interested in seeing the movie again. I wouldn't need to buy one. It was on Amazon Prime, so at least I'm getting something out of my membership. I haven't ordered much of late and the free 2 day shipping has been anything but.

Strange Wilderness is a 2008 Bigfoot movie with Steve Zahn and a bunch of Adam Sandler's pals. I noticed it on AP and thought I might have a DVD of it, I did so I watched it. Bigfoot isn't totally SF but it's close enough for me. I've certainly massed a good number of Bigfoot films int he last 2-3 years. Not all of them have been that good. It's directed by Fred Wolf, he co-wrote the script with Peter Gaulke. Not a big fan of Fred's writing, films like Black Sheep, Dirty Work, Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts: Child Star are kind of poor to me. He did better writing on Without A Paddle and this movie. This is his first direction job, followed by The House Bunny the same year, the rest of his work seems to be of little interest to me.

Steve Zahn is trying to make a nature show with little talent or budget. His late father started the show but Steve's run it into the ground. He's going to get cancelled when some guy drops Bigfoot into his lap. Steve only needs to get a $1000 for the map, he scrapes it together only to lose it before they get to the map guy. Because Steve was 3 days late getting to the map guy, it gets sold to a rival wildlife show. Still, bad luck for the guy with the map puts Steve on the road to South America with the photo of the map.

If setbacks were punches to the face, Steve would have a cauliflower face way before they get to SA. Steve and his teams lack of knowledge and intelligence only works in favor of me laughing as they get banged up. They lose the map, they lose their guide, the lose the RV, they lose their equipment, they get a new guide, they find some equipment, they even find the Bigfoot. And cock it all up. Lucky for them, their next idea, sharks biting people, is a big hit.

It was fun enough, I laughed several times, but there were still more shitty jokes than I'd like to see. I'll keep the DVD, Bigfoot after all, and I'd watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 771

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

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

Friday Night Movies 757

Triloquist is a 2008 horror film written and directed by Mark Jones, he's the guy who wrote and directed Leprechaun. He mostly wrote TV shows and most of it wasn't stuff I would bother watching. He directed 5 theatrical films and I can't say I'd seen any but Leprechaun and Triloquist.

A crazy blonde girl called Angelina and her disturbed brother Norbert take a dummy on a corpse strewn trip across the desert. They're the children of a drug addled ventriloquist. She dies, overdosing on her hotel room floor, with the little children in bed. The kids get sent to their uncles home, he's an abuser, the dummy suffocates him. The dummy spent years locked up in a suitcase, he's taken out when Angelina is 17. The dummy kills a kid and Angelina blames Norbert. He's locked up and Angelina plans to break him out. She's got this deluded plan that Norbert and the dummy will headline in Las Vegas. There's an open spot since Siegfried and Roy retired.

The trio hit the road, robbing and killing all sorts of people. They kidnap a poor woman because Angelina wants to breed Norbert so the family name can continue. The dummy tries to get Norbert to leave Angelina but that never works out well. The police catch up to them and get shot. That poor cop in the picture gets blasted by the dummy and the dummy shoots off the screen, exit stage right.

That might be the best joke in the movie. Sadly, the rest of the jokes aren't that good. Generally the movie seems to plod along. I thought it was struggling to be average and didn't think it more entertaining than his Leprechaun movie. I bought the DVD cheap so I'll keep it but I might not get around to it again.

Garlic And Gunpowder is a 2017 crime comedy that wasn't very funny. It has an odd cast in a bunch of scenes, some of which are incomprehensible. It's the work of Steven Chase and Zachary Sasim, they wrote the original story, Harrison Smith wrote the screenplay and directed. Steven acts in the movie too. He's not that good at any of this stuff. I would give this a miss if I were you.

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.

Swarm Of The Snakehead 2006

Swarm Of The Snakehead is a 2006 movie I found on Amazon Prime. It's a Jaws like horror comedy about genetically altered fish that come on land and eat people. Gunner Hansen has a small part. It's not got the greatest script or cast but it gets you to the end. There is a huge body count, that's something. Oh, and a kid pees his pants. Not likely I'll see it again.

Nancy Drew 2007

I had watched the movie below this post when I remembered that I had the 2007 Nancy Drew film with Emma Roberts. I just picked it up in the last year but hadn't gotten around to it. I didn't realize that it was 12 years old already. It's directed by Andrew Fleming who wrote the screenplay with Tiffany Paulsen. Andrew also directed Dick, The Craft, The In-Laws and Hamlet 2. I'm particularly fond of Dick.

I enjoyed Emma Roberts as Nancy, she's a prim and proper gal who likes old fashioned things, but she's ready for action too. This Nancy lives in River Heights, she's already known as being involved with mysteries, in the opening scene she defuses a hostage situation with a couple of low level robbers. Kris Kattan plays one of the robbers, he's one of many cameos. Nancy's father, Carson Drew, isn't happy about his daughter getting mixed up with criminals again. He's got a big job on his mind, one that will require Mr Carson and Nancy to move California for a while. She promises to quite sleuthing if she can pick out house they are staying in, she picks out a mansion once owned by a dead movie star.

That's Ned Nickerson, Corky and Nancy in her blue Nash Metropolitan convertible. I have loved that car since the 60s, it's my all time favorite car. I liked Ned's character but didn't care for Corky much, he didn't contribute anything to the movie for me. Nancy gets involved with the dead movie stars past and there's a mystery there. One that proves to be a bit dangerous. Nancy gets threatened, chased, knocked out and kidnapped. She manages to escape with some daring moves. She's a cool cookie.

I found the main mystery fine but some of the high school scenes, less interesting. Sadly Bess and George are reduced to a brief scene at the start of the movie. I would have preferred those gals to the gals in Nancy's new high school. It was less enjoyable than the new Nancy Drew movie but I not going to toss it away or anything. I'd watch it again, Emma Roberts created a fun Nancy, I'd want to see that again.

Return Of The Living Dead - Rave To The Grave 2005

Return Of The Living Dead - Rave To The Grave is the last of the films in the series. It's from 2005, William Butler and Aaron Strongoni are the writers, Ellory Elkayem is the director. Peter Coyote has some Trioxin and the Russians are after it. They want to destroy the stuff but they fail and some zombies are created. Peter is killed and the story moves to the survivors of the last movie. They're in college. They hear of Peter's death and find a couple of barrels of Trioxin in his house. That creates more zombies. Again, the film doesn't come up to the level of the first three films. Oh, well, that shit happens, huh.

The Return Of The Living Dead - Necropolis 2005

The Return Of The Living Dead - Necropolis is the 4th film in the series. It took until 2005 to return to the series, William Butler and Aaron Strongoni are the writers and Ellory Elkayem is the director. Peter Coyote is a mad scientist who's gone to Chernobyl to find the last of the Trioxin 5. It doesn't go so well but he gets his Trioxin 5. One of his nephews is hurt in a motorcycle accident and pronounced DOA. His friends find out that it's not true and try to rescue him. Peter catches them and takes them to the nephew. The zombies get out and the nephew gets bit anyway. After a lot of carnage Peter gets away with a couple of barrels of Trioxin 5. He'll return in the next movie. It's not quite good enough to be average but I got through it. Now to go watch the last one.

Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th 2000

I never saw Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th until today. I vaguely remember it coming out on video back in 2000. It's a parody of Scream and it's working title was I Know What You Screamed Last Summer. I think I like that title better. This movie was shot before Scary Movie but released after. Scary Movie was much more popular. It spawned several sequels and Anna Faris.

The IMDb Trivia page says the actors in the commentary weren't allowed to mention Scary Movie. The DVD I picked up has no commentary, or any kind of extras, and I can't find a copy of any DVD online that has a commentary. Is this bullshit. You never know.

Here's another bit from the Trivia page about the movies that take a hit. It's as I found it. I'm too lazy to make up my own list.

This movie parodies Scream, I know what you did last summer, Friday the 13th, Childs Play/Chucky, Nightmare on Elm St, Frankinstein, The Wolfman, Dracula, Mentose, Beefy, Jack Daniels, M-TV, Something About Mary, Dude, Where's My Car, Wild Things, Grease, Christine, Porkys, The Partridge Family, Dawson's Creek, Party of 5, Good Times at Ridgmont High and Phantom of the Opera as well as also mentions other parody movies, Airplane, Naked Gun and Weekend At Bernies.

It's written by Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms with John Blanchard directing. John might not be familiar to everyone, even to fans of SCTV and Kids In The Hall, he was the director of 74 episodes of SCTV and 91 of KITH. He worked on several other TV series over the years and doesn't have any credits after 2008.

The cast has several people I know and like, Tom Arnold, Tiffani Thiessen, Danny Strong, Julie Benz, Mink Stole, Rose Marie and Shirley Jones.

Five teens receive notes from The Killer, who's letting them know that he knows what they did. There's plenty of running about and a few flashbacks. Some might say those flashbacks would be Rashomon influenced and mostly they would be people who've seen both movies. There's lots of jokes, some good and some not so good. Snowman! I thought John did a great job directing the movie. I liked it well enough, I got a few laughs, and I gave it a 5 on the IMDb. It's sits at 4 right now, there are a lot of 1 votes, and it's better than that. I'll be keeping it and hope to see it again someday. Perhaps, in a block with the Scream and Scary Movie series.

Otis 2008

I picked up Otis on a whim, it was in the clearance section and it was 20% off weekend at HPB. It's a 2008 horror comedy about a crazy pizza driver who has a penchant for the prom. Otis is the pizza guy, he's a big fat mess who lives in his late parent's house. It's a big mess, too. Kevin Pollock is his older brother. He keeps turning up at the house to slap Otis and remind him what a piece of shit he's become. Kevin doesn't know that Otis is even more of a POS than he suspects. He'll find out too late that Otis has a dungeon, he keeps his victims in there, girls he's planning to take to the Prom. Sadly the gal we meet at the beginning of the movie dies in a bathroom accident and Otis has to get a new gal.

He picks the young daughter of Daniel Stern and Illeana Douglas. The police are called in but have little success. The daughter escapes and the family decides to get some payback. It's darkly funny as the family goes off the rails. It's pretty bloody, not for the weak hearted. I got several laughs and I'd watch it again.