PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Mortuary 2005

Mortuary 2005 Written by Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, directed by Tobe Hooper. Tobe's second last movie.

Here's another movie where the main character takes over a dilapidated property only to find out it's haunted by some sort of supernatural something or other. It's Denise Crosby, playing a recent widow with two children. She thinks she's going to run a funeral home there but that's not going to happen. Crazy stuff happens and eventually everyone dies.

It's barely average, the effects ares nothing special, the characters aren't that interesting. I picked up the DVD on clearance for a couple of bucks, I doubt I'd watch it again.

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Love Brides Of The Mummy 1973 Written by Vincent Didier and Julio Salvador, directed by Alejandro Marti. A Spanish French co-production that was released on Blu-ray by Mondo Macabre in a limited edition of 1200 copies. It's out of print and going for prices I wouldn't begin to consider. You can download a huge file of the movie over at Rarelust. The film comes dubbed in French with English subtitles or an English dubbed version. It also comes in two versions, one four mins longer than the other. We watched the longer version.

A Count lives in a castle with his servant Paul and a severed hand chained to the wall. An Egyptologist of some sort comes to the castle, the Count tells him about the Egyptian sarcophagus that was delivered to his castle. He opened it up and reanimated the mummy only to find it needed a supply of blood to rejuvenate itself. The mummy can hypnotize people and he takes over minds of the Count and Paul. The Count fights free and the mummy and Paul lock him up in the dungeon.

The mummy continues with his kidnapping, rape, torture and blood sucking of the local women. There's plenty of nudity but it adds little or nothing to the story. You'd think you were watching a Jess Franco film from the lowest part of his career. This was the director's second and last film. It's not surprising.

Eventually the Count escapes his imprisonment and hacks off the arm of the mummy. We don't see the actual severing, there's not much by way of gore in the film. Even the blood sucking scenes are weak, the ladies look like someone has rubbed chocolate sauce all over their necks.

Not a very good movie when said and done. I wouldn't need the Blu-ray as I wouldn't need to see it again.

Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! 2003 Written by Patrick Casey and Worm Miller, directed by Worm Miller. Patrick plays the lead character in the film. He's a bit of a better writer than he is an actor.

The film was made with a budget of $500 in Bloomington Minnesota. I live nearby and worked in Bloomington for 35 years. Casey and Miller went on to write Hollywood films and TV shows. I have not seen any of their other work but heard of their recent Sonic the Hedgehog film.

Patrick plays a college student who's done with college. He's got no home to go to so he takes a room in a house with some other young guys. His roommates are mostly annoying but one is a serial killer. Some of the previous tenants are thought to be buried in the garden.

The script throws one curve ball after another at Patrick, he gets a job but it's a weird one, he gets a girlfriend but she's a hyperactive sexpot who humps everyone available behind his back, the annoying house is made more annoying by the clothes stealing monster in the basement. The film ends with a battle to the death and more dead bodies in the garden.

It's pretty silly and some of the jokes hit well. It's got a weak script with too many coincidences and easy outs. Patrick can't go home to his parents house because they're away on a 3 month cruise. That's according to their phone message, he seems to be learning of it for the first time. You'd think he'd know that was going to happen and have made arrangements. Patrick seems overly clueless.

Still, despite that weakness there's some good entertainment value in the film. It's also shot and edited fairly well. The actors are fair to poor but they got me through the film to the end. I've put it on my Amazon Wishlist. Time will see if I follow through with a purchase, plenty on that list right now.

Zombie Nation 2004

Zombie Nation 2004 Written and directed by Ulli Lommel. I hadn't heard of him before seeing this on the Internet Archive. He's directed 66 items on the IMDb, many of them are videos not feature films. I'm not familiar with his work and this film will keep me from trying out anything else.

A cop kidnaps women, strips them and chains them up in a deserted warehouse. He drugs them, murders them and disposes of the bodies. A voodoo woman brings some of the victims back to life. The dead want vengeance, soon the cop is getting some payback.

It's a poorly made film with nothing much going for it. It scores a 1.5 on the IMDb, I agree. You can see how bad it is over at the Internet Archive, link above.

Friday Night Movies 874

The Thing Below 2004 Written by Raul Inglis and Keith Shaw (under the name Lindsay James), directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews. According to the IMDb Jim left the production before the special effects were done. They sucked and that might be why he changed his name credit.

A substance was brought up from a deep sea drilling project. No one's sure what it is so they send a sample to another location by ship. The stupid people in charge are idiots and in a big hurry, they send the ship out in a severe storm. The jar containing the substance is broken in a classic display of bad lab safety. The dark mass turns into an intelligent telepathic murdering mass of tentacles. The transport ship goes missing.

The Captain of the missing ship has a brother who has a ship. The brother goes to the rescue and finds the missing ship, the Captain is the only one left alive on his ship. They leave the ship and travel to the oil rig to see if anyone is left alive. Hardly anyone is and some more of them die.

Sadly it's all pretty poorly written, with plenty of cliches and coincidences mouthed by all sorts of cartoon cutout characters. The CGI of the ship on the sea and the creature are both really poor. I thought I hadn't seen it but my Watched Movie List says I had, four years ago almost to the day, probably something on Amazon Prime. Totally forgettable, shouldn't have watched it the first time, let alone today.

Censor 2021 Director Prano Bailey-Bond co-wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher. Prano is Welsh and it's her first feature film, she'd directed some shorts a few years ago.

Niamh Algar plays Enid, she works at the British Board of Film Classification in 1985. There was a big stink back then as people reacted to some of the more nasty horror films coming out on VHS. Some were nicknamed Video Nasties and video shops would rent out these movies for anyone to watch. There was a group for decency working to ban these horrible films and the authorities helped. Business's were raided and prosecuted. You can read more at the link above.

Enid and her co-workers watch the videos to classify them and recommend censoring the film where needed. Some films are simply beyond the pale and they get banned. Most of the films have been released uncut in the UK in recent years.

The video nasties are really the set dressing for the stage where Enid rapidly loses her mind and becomes a homicidal psychopath. It all stems from Enid's missing sister, lost when they were children. Enid took her into the woods and then couldn't remember what happened to her. It's caused a big rift between her and her parents. They've declared the sister dead but Enid clings onto to the belief that she might still be alive.

Enid watches a film that has a scene that appears similar to the memory of her trip into the woods with her sister. She finds another film by the same director and becomes fixated on an actress, thinking she looks like her sister grown up. A visit to the producer ends poorly to say the least and a visit to the set of the film the actress is currently working on ends with even more slaughter.

Decent into madness films aren't always the ones that I want to watch but I'd rather watch this than the one with the what are you looking at guy. It's quite well made with a good cast but I don't have any urge to watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it's current average, I might have given it a 7 but it yelled in my face and that's so rude.

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The Awakening 2011 Director Nick Murphy co-wrote the script with Stephen Volk.

Rebecca Hall plays a woman ghost debunker in post WWI London, she doesn't believe in them and she finds out the hard way that she's wrong. Dominic West is a teacher in a boy's boarding school, he asks Rebecca to come to his school and find out if they really have a ghost. They do.

There's a few scares but some of the nasty activity is man made, the young boy who died off screen was really killed when a disturbing teacher, who shouldn't be teaching anyone, locked him outside to toughen him up, the kid had a fatal asthma attack. Much of the staff seems messed up, the grounds keeper is a mentally deficient cowardly rapist who tries to kill Rebecca. The school's head housekeeper is played by Imelda Staunton, she's one of the most disturbed of the lot.

Sadly they ruin a good ghost story with all sorts of personal melodrama, not much happens while they spend a lot of time on figuring out what's behind Rebecca's miserable life. Not something that appealed to me that much. I wouldn't need to see it again.

The Day Of Destruction 2020 Written and directed by Toshiaki Toyoda. The movie is a scant 57 mins so we watched the even shorter prequel Wolf's Calling from 2019. There's a third short in the Resurrection Trilogy, Go Seppuku Yourselves from 2021. We didn't see that.

A monster lives in a old coal mine and it's created some mental issues in the people who live there. The story is told in a disjointed way with little by way of clues as to what's going on. Think art film with a noisy annoying soundtrack.

Some guy, commenting on the IMDb, says the three films are an angry response to the pandemic and the government's handling of the situation. I couldn't tell that from what's on screen. The films we saw look good but it's not enough, I'm looking for a story I can get my head around. Enigmatic personal stories just don't cut it for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

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Big Bad Wolf 2006 Written and directed by Lance W Dreesen. I hadn't remembered seeing this back in 2006. That post is in the title above. I didn't think it was going to be such a short while before I saw it again. It's still about average. I probably don't need to see it again at this point. That's an ugly poster.

The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch 1968 Based on the comic Hebi Onna by Kazuo Umezu, screenplay by Kimiyuki Hasegawa, directed by Noriaki Yuasa. The comic was published in the US under the name Reptilia in 2006. The director is also the director of the first series of Gamera films.

A young orphan girl called Sayuri finds out that her parents are alive and they want her to come live with them. They live in a nice house, the mother is an amnesiac from an accident and the father is a scientist specializing in snake venom study.

When Sayuri arrives at the house she's greeted by an ambulance, the maid had just died from a heart attack. The father has just learned he's got to leave right away for an opportunity to study a rare snake in Africa. He's gone until the very end of the film.

The next night Sayuri finds a snake in her bed but after her mother and the housekeeper arrive it's gone. There's also someone in the attic, looking at Sayuri's bed through a hole in the ceiling. Things start to get more and more serious and deadly for Sayuri. She's a plucky girl who stands up to danger in the end.

It moves a bit slowly for me but I was still entertained enough to order the Arrow Blu-ray. I'll want to watch it again.

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Satanic Panic 2019 Screenplay by Grady Hendrix, direction by Chelsea Stardust.

On her first day as a pizza delivery girl Samantha runs afoul of Rebecca Romijn and her nest of Satan worshipers. The coven needs a virgin to bring forth Baphomet and their first choice, Rebecca's daughter, gave her virginity up when she found out she's going to die during the process. Since Samantha is a virgin and right there, Rebecca attempts to use Samantha for her new sacrifice but the general incompetency of the coven, and the help Rebecca's daughter, give Samantha a fighting chance.

There's a fair bit of humor and gore with plenty of dumb characters providing some slapstick action. It looks good, it moves along quickly, and it's got a fairly solid story. I thought it was better than average, say a 6 on the IMDb. You can check it out for yourself on YouTube while it's up there. See link above.

Legion Of The Dead 2005 Written and directed by Paul Bales. Paul became the Chief Operating Officer at the films production company The Asylum the year after this film came out. It's the only film he's directed, though he has written 9 others.

The story is about accidentally finding a secret Egyptian tomb in the California desert. The hieroglyphs say that an ancient princess was so evil they sent her body over the sea to be buried. A lightening storm lights up the old gal and she awakens as a beautiful young woman. Her lust for power brings death to the dig and the students get slaughtered one or two at a time.

There's too much melodrama in the mix, the main character, played by Courtney Clonch, was involved with the doctor who heads the dig, a guy on a previous dig had something for Courtney but she choose the doctor and he's all pouty she's at this dig. Courtney's sister shows up on the site just as the princess needs a virgin for a sacrifice.

Bruce Boxleitner plays the local sheriff, he doesn't appear that often, hired for a day or two to add a name to the credits that someone might have heard of before. The Wikipedia says that Bruce and co-star Zack Galligan are on screen for a total of ten mins running time. They also say that their scenes don't really add anything to the story. That's for sure, in fact, there are other scenes in the film that are filler. Sad, it's only an 82 min movie.

There's a fair bit of action and noise, plenty of slaughter and a couple of jokes. Sadly, it's not all that good. Despite the poorly lit scenes, poor acting, and mediocre dialog, it's more watchable than much of the product from The Asylum. The worst thing about it was the absolutely abysmal soundtrack, the voices were too quiet, music and effects too loud. That sound guy needs to get some training or a whack in the pee-pee from the flaming skull of Paul Naschy. You can test drive in on YouTube, see link above.

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.

Spliced 2002

 

Spliced 2002 Written by Ellen Cook and directed by Gavin Wilding.The last of the three film DVD set that they couldn't even bother naming.

A Canadian film that's also known as The Wisher. The latter title is also the title of the film within the film, it's a popular horror movie that Mary wants to see. Her father forbids her to go as she's been having issues with nightmares and sleepwalking. Her father says it's because of the horror movies.

Mary goes anyway and wishes her father would go away. He's killed on the way to the theater to pick her up. Six weeks after the funeral she starts seeing the Wisher character from the film of the same name in the real world. She makes other wishes and they come true. More people get slashed by the Wisher. Mary gets some help to fight the Wisher. It turns out to be the shy student in her class who possibly was pushed over the edge by some subliminal messages in the film.

It looks fairly nice but it's lacking a well told story. The story piles gathers up a good lot of plot elements. It sure reminds me of a whole bunch of the other films they came from, the Wisher has Freddy Kruger hands but they're made of glass instead of metal. They even copy Freddy's signature move of running his claws along a wall. You probably know the one, it's shot from behind, about butt height. It's one I wouldn't need to watch again, I should watch some of the films this borrows from, first. Not a very good DVD set when all is said and done. That's often the case for these low budget film collections.

Satan's Little Helper 2004

  

Satan's Little Helper 2004 Written and directed by Jeff Lieberman. Part of a Triple Feature 2 DVD set, this DVD is two sided, backed with Spliced, and Blood Gnome is a single disc. Jeff directed a few films, this was his first, and last, since 1995. I've seen Blue Sunshine and my comment on my Watched Movie List was "wow, crap - Z king sucks". I'd seen Squirm on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and my comment was "Yuck".

In Satan's Little Helper a stupid 9 year old called Dougie has a fixation with a video game where he plays Satan's Little Helper. In real life some horrible guy is dressed up as a Satan like figure, he's killing the locals and using their bodies to dress up his house for Halloween. Dougie's sister has come home for Halloween and she's brought her boyfriend. Dougie isn't too happy about that, he wanted to Trick or Treat with his sister only, he stalks off in a huff, and soon after encounters the fake Satan. Dougie thinks the guy is real and he tells his new pal that he should send the boyfriend to hell. Dougie is a real creep. Satan beats the crap out of the boyfriend and dumps him in an alley.

Dougie bring Satan guy back to his house and everyone thinks he the boyfriend. Dougie and Satan guy are sent to the store for candy to give out to Trick or Treaters. Their shopping trip leaves a trail of deaduns, and still Dougie thinks it's all playing. Back at home Dougie's dad is dispatched and everyone finally realizes that it's real. They are a thick bunch at best. It gets worse and the movie ends on a cliffhanger. Annoying!

I'm thinking below average even though it had a few good moments. Not something I'd need to watch or re-watch. Hopefully I won't bother with it again.