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. 

Friday Night Movies 906

Nobody 2021 Written by Derek Kolstad and directed by Ilya Naishuller.

Bob Odenkirk has a shit life until he runs into some scumbags on a bus. He beats some men nearly to death in some bone crunching action scenes. One of the badly damaged thugs is the younger brother of a Russian gang lord. That guy wants some payback, he sends his right hand man to Bob's house. Right hand man brings a few friends. Bob locks his family in the basement and kills most of the intruders before being tasered. Turns out Bob has a past life where he killed people. Bob escapes and goes after the Russian with a bit of help from his father and brother.

An entertaining story with a decent cast and a high body count. I like seeing the baddies get trashed. It starts a bit slow but once the action kicks in it's punch, bang, stab, boom all the way to the end. I'll want to watch it again.

Lethal Force 2001 Written, produced and directed by Alvin Ecarma. It's Alvin's only film and that's not surprising. It's not very good. There's a bad script, no actors, mediocre gore and piss poor action scenes. The only good thing about it was the running time, only 70 mins. Seemed longer. Not one I would need to see at all.

Friday Night Movies 887

Alien Private Eye 1989 Written and directed by Vik Rubenfeld, he was also the casting director and film editor. It's his only movie, the IMDb lists him as one of the creators of the TV show Early Edition, he's credited with writing one episode. I never watched that show more than a handful of times, so it's doubtful that I saw his episode. Up until right now the movie has only been available on VHS. You can see a poor copy on YouTube, see link above. The movie looks much better on the Severin Blu-ray.

The story revolves around the possession of a special disc that fell to Earth. A crook figured out it was a drug dispenser and he's been selling the highly addictive product in LA. An alien private eye is on Earth, he helps a woman being mistreated by some thugs and winds up in the middle of a mess. She's got one half the disc and the crooks have the other half.

There's plenty of chasing about with a few punch up and gun fights. Sadly they're so ludicrously staged. The car chase and subsequent crashes? Embarrassing. The whole movie is like that. Clumsy script and inept cast. Makes a combo for laughter. Sadly Vik's intended humor isn't cutting it. All in all a good film to have seen but one that wasn't as enjoyable as one might have hoped. Not going on my To Buy List.

Tokyo 10+01 2003 Written and directed by Higuchinsky. Another one that I won't be adding to my To Buy List. It's a comical sort of parody that people doing IMDb reviews think is of Battle Royale but it seems more like it's parodying The Running Man. The filmmakers make references to BR in the beginning of the film but that soon falls by the wayside as the contestants start running about. Was The Running Man released to long ago for the commenters to know about. Could be but who knows. Hopefully, I'll have forgotten about the film be tomorrow.

Eleven criminals are drugged and fitted with a poison timer bracelet. They wake up in a warehouse in a shitty part of town. They have 11 hours to get to the Baron's mansion. Then they'll be safe, they'll win a cash prize, get their record wiped clean and the poison dispensing tracker bracelet will be deactivated. A lot to play for.

Most of the contestants are pretty annoying and I didn't care much for them. In fact it was nice to see them get picked off one by one or in a small group. There's plenty of running about and yelling but not much else going on of interest. The poor DVD mastering didn't help either. Ultimately it was disappointing and not one I need to see again.

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.

Friday Night Movies 766

Tammy And The T-Rex was the first movie we watched. It's a 1994 movie that happened because director Stewart Rafill had a South American theater owner come to him with an offer to make a film with an animatronic T-Rex. There was no script and there was a time limit on the project, the T-Rex was headed for a Texas park and they only had a couple of weeks with it. The story, written by Stewart and Gary Brockette, took a week to write and they worked on the script as they shot the movie. Surprisingly it turned out better than it might have.

It was shot as an R film but the gore was cut from the first release in the US. We watched the new Vinegar Syndrome uncut DVD. Some of the gore effects are better than others. Occasionally one made me laugh. Good thing, the movie is a comedy. It's an early film for Paul Walker and Denise Richards, they play high school kids in love. Trouble is Denise has been dating a jealous monster named Billy, he kidnaps Paul and leaves him in a wild animal park. Paul gets mauled by a lion and winds up in the hospital. The mad scientist, played by Terry Kiser, steals him. It's all a bit clumsy that whole bit of business, Paul doesn't look like he was mauled, the explanation for it is weak at best. The director was constantly asking people for their input to make the film better as they were making it. I guess he didn't get the best advice.

Terry puts Paul's brain in the T-Rex model and it runs off. Paul kills Billy and some of his gang, other poor saps get the chomp too. Paul and Tammy are reunited but they still have to fight off the crazy mad scientist and the police. The T-Rex model is destroyed but Tammy keeps Paul's brain in a dish. She's on the look out for a new body. I liked the ludicrousness of it all, there were some funny jokes, most of the actors did a fair to good job. It was the weak script that was most annoying. I might want to see it again someday but I doubt that's going to happen, the Blu-ray is $35 and I wouldn't want to pay that.

Executive Koala is a 2005 Japanese film by the same director, Minoru Kawasaki, that directed The Calamari Wrestler, The World Sinks Except Japan, Kaiju Mono and The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack The G8 Summit. That's the films of his I've seen, they are comedies but they're more funny weird than funny ha ha. There's always the chance that some of the jokes don't translate to English very well. EK is the same way. It's about a koala that works in an office. He's man size, wears a suit, that's him on the DVD cover. No one seems to think this is anything weird, his boss is a rabbit. The police come and interview the koala about his girlfriend. She's been killed. Is he a suspect? He has trouble with blackouts. Maybe he did do it? More story elements are introduced that confuse the koala. He has a couple of fun dream sequences. Eventually we kind of know what happened. I was more interested in the story at first but about 2/3 of the way through my mind was wondering. I never got back on track. I would download the movie but not buy the DVD. That way if I never watch it again, I didn't waste any money on a DVD I never watched. I have enough of those, thank you, very much.

 

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.

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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.

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.