PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Xenon Pictures Quadruple Feature

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Xenon Pictures Quadruple Feature DVD set claims Horror x 4 on the front of the box and the back says 4 Disc Set. Each movie does come on it's own disc.

Ghost Son 2007 I read on the box that the movie had John Hannah and Pete Postlethwaite in it, a possible good reason for picking up the set. You can see how easily misled I can be. In my defense, it was under 3 bucks. I'm a sucker for an under 3 buck multi movie set. I guess that's being easily misled by the price. But, I can't get enough of those cheap movie packs. I did have enough of this movie about half way through. It's not that it's bad or anything, it's just depressing. A sad ghost story about a sad lady, her murderous baby and her dead husband. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Vlad 2003 This is the director's cut. It's probably not better than the regular cut which I'm betting I won't ever see. I saw that it had Brad Dourif and Billy Zane in it. I like those guys, especially Brad, but they don't always get to be in the best films. Michael D Sellers is the guy responsible for the writing and directing. It's about Vlad's life but it's not very interesting to me. It scores a 3.4 on the IMDb but I gave it a 3 because giving it a 4 would be a slap in the face of all those other 4s out there.

Headhunter 2005 Here's a weird one from Paul Tarantino. A guy gets recruited by a headhunter. He goes to work, graveyard shift, and finds it's a weird fuckin' place to be. Then the poor guy gets a death sentence put on him, he's got to recruit someone to the company or be killed. Sucks to be working there, huh. I didn't care that much for the guy who's balls are in a vice, you work third shift, what do you expect. The whole premise is a weak one and it didn't always hold together. I still gave it a 4, occasionally it made me laugh a bit in my head, but I probably won't get back to it again.

Reality Kills 2002 If you go to look up the movie on the IMDb you have to know that it's called Reality Check and it came out in 2002, that or use actor's name. The DVD says it's got a 2005 copyright but that might be Xenon Marketing trying to distance this movie from it's earlier release. What's that noise? It's just Xenon's metaphorical dicks slapping the face of the DVD buyer. No matter, this is still the worst movie of the box, I can see that through the pink haze in front of my eyes. I only gave it a 2, though the IMDb average is a 3.3 and that's with 10% of the votes being a 10. It's a bunch of 20 somethings in a house, squawkin' overly loud. That's a fuckin' horror, that is. Lucky for me, something starts killing them. Eventually it's over. One of the cast is Nate Dushku, older brother of Elisha. I don't remember seeing him in anything but he was in Tru Calling for a couple of episodes.

All in all, not a winning bunch. Not sure if I should even bother keeping them.

Science Fiction Sunday 510

I watched the Outpost trilogy today. I had seen the first one but I see it was back in 2011. I hardly remember anything about it, corridors and snarling Nazi zombies mostly. Since I haven't seen the rest I decided to watch all three in one go. They're mostly horror but there's SF at their core, in that they deal with the outcome of scientific experiments by the Nazis to make super soldiers, AKA zombies. There a small number of films in that genre. All three films are made in Scotland but set in some unnamed Eastern Block country.

Outpost 2008 Directed by Steve Barker, screenplay by Rae Brunton, story by Rae Brunton, Kieran Parker and Steve Barker. They turned in a decent script, wrote some interesting enough characters and a good villain.

Ray Stevenson is an old mercenary who gets hired by Julian Wadham to guard him on a trip into a bad area. They make it to the entrance of an underground bunker without any trouble but once they get there things go bad pretty much right away. One guy gets shot by someone in the woods. Inside the bunker they get the generator working and turn on the lights. It turns out that the bunker was home to Nazi experiments during WW2. Julian is looking for a device the Nazis left behind. Sadly, their presence has activated the dead Nazis. One by one the men get cut down as they battle the snarlin' Nazi zombies. Their relief is too far out to save them.

I think it's the best of the trio. I give it high marks for the cast lead by Ray Stevenson. He often gets these tough guy roles and he does really well in them. In Outpost he's backed up by a good cast of people that I don't really know. Michael Smiley had been in a couple of movies that I had seen but I didn't remember him in either. No matter, they all do a good job on their characters.

Most of the movie is set in the underground bunker that the Nazis built. It's a all concrete, corridors and rust. And Nazi zombies. They did well making those sets and all the props. The make up is pretty darn good. I like that the story moves along at a nice pace, there's good action scenes and plenty of other stuff going on. Now I've seen this twice and I'd still watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it's not quite a 7 for me.

Outpost: Black Sun 2012 Steve Barker directed and co-wrote the script with Rae Brunton. The movie starts soon after the first.

Catherine Steadman plays a Nazi hunter like her dead father. She's on the search for a scientist named Klausener. She finds one of his old Nazi pals and after interrogating him to a heart attack she gets a clue and a ring with wings. In an area near the bunker she runs into Richard Coyle, they get intercepted by a small group of soldiers. The couple prove to be somewhat useful to them and they all wind up at the bunker. As you might guess, those Nazis are still there. They're still dead and they're even more active than before.

I didn't find this quite as entertaining as the last. It's still entertaining enough, there's plenty of running about, yelling and Nazi zombie killing. I wasn't quite as impressed by the super fast cutting of the shaky cam footage shot for the fight scenes. That got tiring pretty fast for me. Some of the CGI additions to the scenes aren't quite as good as you might hope. I only gave it a 5 in the end but I'd still watch it again.

Outpost: Rise Of The Spetsnaz 2013 Kieran Parker takes the director's chair for the third film and Rae Brunton is the script writer. This film is a prequel, set in 1945, to the first two films. It pits the Russian Spetsnaz forces against the Nazis.

A team of Spetsnaz soldiers cross paths with the German's from the bunker in the first movie. The German's pick up soldiers and peasants from the area to experiment on. We finally get to see more of the facility and how the experiments are going. Not so good, most of the test cases explode from the injection of serum and the rays of the machine from the first two movies.

I enjoyed it and I thought it was about as good as the second movie. I gave it a 5 on the IMDb. I thought Kieran did a pretty good job for his first movie. He hasn't directed any more but he continues to produce movies. I liked the characters and the script was good. The story moved along OK. I'll watch it again someday.

Ice Spiders 2007

Here's another low-budget SyFy Channel TV movie. Ice Spiders is from 2007 and it's about some giant spiders attacking the people at a ski resort. The spiders come from a research facility. They escaped and ate the scientists. Deserves them right, making giant spiders have been a stupid idea for centuries. Then it's chase, leap and chomp until the spiders are killed. Or are they? Who gives a shit. I didn't, it's below average and I shouldn't have bothered.

Red Lips: Eat The Living 2005

Red Lips: Eat The Living is a 2005 horror movie with Debbie Rochon. It's a 4 part anthology film that I thought was pretty poor. I gave it a 1. Don't bother wasting your time.

Dead Birds 2004

Dead Birds is a Civil War era horror Western that came out in 2004. It's got Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit and Mark Boone Junior in the cast. Some scum Confederate deserters are robbing a bank of some gold. They escape, leaving dead people in the town, and hold up in a mansion of a deserted plantation. They don't know it but the owner had sacrificed most everyone on the plantation to black magic and you know how that shit settles in, the scum are doomed. Doomed. It's just a matter of time as they are picked off. It's nothing special, barely average, but it was watchable to the end. Those were some miserable scum, it was easy to enjoy their demise.

Meg-A-Shark 8 Movie Collection

It's sharks all the way down in this 8 movie collection from Echo Bridge Entertainment. It's called Meg-A-Shark 8 Movie Collection. Not overly clever but at least's it's better than Multi Feature or 8 Movie Collection. I got it cheap, I think from the $5 bin at Walmart. Occasionally I'll find something cheap there, not often, Walmart, like every other retailer is continuously downsizing the DVD section in their retail stores. I was glad to see that none of the films were from The Asylum. Look for the silver lining, huh. Even though this collection was better than most EB collections, I doubt I'm going to watch any of these over. I'll keep the DVDs, I might want to watch Jeffery Combs again. Too bad it's not one of his better roles.

Toxic Shark has some vacationers wind up at a resort on a small island. It's a beautiful place with plenty of gals in bikinis. Ashley O'Neil is the writer and Cole Sharpe is the director of this made for TV movie from 2017.

Something has mutated a shark and it now spews toxic goo out of it's head. The goo eats away at boats and people who get splattered turn into agitated, crazy talkin' biters. There's the usual chomping of people and occasionally one of the infected gets a bite in. Kabby Borders, that's her above, is the smarty in the bunch and she figures out enough to keep a bit a head of the shark. Is she going to keep ahead of the infected? There's nothing too original in the movie but it does get a bit exciting near the end. Sadly the CGI works against it. It's gets a 3.5 on the IMDb but I gave it a 4.

Shark In Venice I had already seen. It's pretty poor. I only gave it a 2 on the IMDb.

Malibu Shark Attack is a 2009 movie, script by Keith Shaw (writing as Lindsay James) and direction by David Lister. Plenty of beauties in beachwear here too. The sharks come from an underground earthquake that creates a tsunami. They're some sort of extinct goblin shark that chomp everything, and everyone, they come across. Plenty of nice scenery but a familiar sort of story with a bit of romantic twaddle tossed in. Petra Wilson is one of the life guard ladies, I don't think I recognized anyone else in the cast. They were fair to good for the most part. The CGI sharks were on the less than great side but passable. Kind of like the movie.

SharkMan is a 2005 TV movie that's also called Hammerhead or Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy. There's a different movie from 2001 called Sharkman. Jeffrey Combs plays a scientist, he's a real sack of shit, he's got a guarded compound where he experiments on people. William Forsythe and several others are invited to the island. Some of the guests are doctors and it turns out they weren't able to save Jeffrey's son from Cancer before the movie started. Time has past, Jeffrey's a dick, he's going to punish them. Turns out his son didn't die, instead Jeffrey has turned him into a mutant shark creature. He sics him on the doctors and there's some chasing going on. Jeffrey kidnaps a female doctor from the group. He's going to mate her with his son. That goes pretty badly. William goes on the attack and finishes off Jeffrey and his family. Too bad some of the CGI is pretty piss poor. The shark mutant doesn't look too bad but they keep it in the dark much of the time. The movie is shot in Bulgaria and sadly they managed to pick some of the most boring locations. It gets a 3.0 on the IMDb and I gave it a 4. For some reason 43% of the voters give it a 1. It's not that bad, it's just a programmer meant to fill time on TV.

Shark Zone is a direct to video production from 2003. The movie starts with the sinking of a Spanish galleon. Then a helicopter drops off a diving party. Jimmy and his father are diving together with half a dozen other people. They're looking for that sunken treasure ship. First a shark eats the jerky guy and then nearly everyone else. Jimmy is the only survivor, ten years later he's still troubled over his father's death. Jimmy is part of beach security for a town. The mayor is a copy of the mayor from Jaws, he puts the town's profits before the people's safety. Jimmy sees sharks just before they attack the beach. Many don't make it. Jimmy and his crew go shark hunting while the body count mounts. There are a lot of sharks and they're hungry. Add to that a subplot about a greedy bastard who wants that gold on the sunken ship. He kidnaps Jimmy, who wasn't interested in looking for it. Greedy guy pays for his greed from the inside of  shark. It's another movie that's watchable but nothing special.

Shark Attack is a 1999 TV movie with Casper Van Dien and Ernie Hudson. Casper goes to a small town to see an old friend who needed some help. The man dies before he gets there, eaten by a shark. Casper is a shark expert and he doesn't understand why there have been so many shark attacks. He joins up with a blonde lady who worked with his friend. The movie is filmed in Port Alfred South Africa. It's yakkin', some scuba diving, some shark attacks but nothing stands out. There's a smug and annoying scientist who made a drug that cures cancer. He's testing it out on humans without anyone checking up on him. What could go wrong? It's a 3.4 on the IMDb and that's about right.

Shark Attack 2 is a direct to video sequel that came out in 2000. This time the sharks are attacking around Cape Town South Africa. No one from the first movie is in this movie. A giant great white shark is captured and installed at a water park aquarium. It kills a guy right away and the viewing area is filled with kids. They'll have a story to tell at school tomorrow, huh. The big shark gets away and in searching for it they find a whole gang of great whites. A scientist finds out info on the previous movie's experiments and they think these are the offspring of those sharks. A surf competition provides some snacks and some gore. Like the previous movie, it's watchable but still not much better than the 3.1 score it gets at the IMDb. I gave it four because all these shark movies are making me loopy.

That and the shot where they shoot a shark through the head with a 45 automatic and his bloody head falls out of the scene. Nice. I'm not a fan of the shark.

Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is the 2002 direct to video sequel that has absolutely nothing to do with the other two movies. John Barrowman stars with Jenny McShane. John would later be in Doctor Who and Torchwood. Jenny played another character in the first movie. John plays a lifeguard who finds an unusual shark tooth. Jenny is a natural history researcher who gets involved when John tries to find out what sort of shark had a tooth like that. She comes to visit to tell  him it's a magalodon. Right after that, the shark eats a couple of people at a water park. Jenny goes looking for the shark and it finds here. She tags it with a camera. Then there's plenty of shark chasing and people eating until the big fella has to pay for his appetite. Then mama megalodon shows up. It's not great but a bit better than it's 2.8 score on the IMDb but I guess people hate the movie more than me, 44% of the votes are a 1. I still only gave it a 4.

Animal Apocalypse - 4 Movie Set

For some reason Amazon lists this under the title of When Animals Attack. How am I supposed to find it under that title? Google, of course. It's another multi movie set that I got for under 3 bucks. I wanted the first movie in the set and it was worth paying the 3 bucks for that. Turns out that it's a better than average collection, especially since it's from Mill Creek.

Bats: Human Harvest is a 2007 made for TV monster movie. The monsters are hungry bats who can bite a man's arm off as the glide by. I can only assume that humans taste yummy, the bats seem to relish chowing down. It's a sequel to Bats and while it's not quite as good as that it's still a nice average getting eaten' in the woods movie. The woods are supposed to be in Afghanistan but it's really around Sofia Bulgaria that the movie is filmed. It's a good average movie, I enjoyed it well enough, I'd watch it again but who knows if that will ever happen.

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu In America is a 2006 medical thriller about a pandemic. I didn't care much for it, the monster is too real. It was made for TV. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Kaw is a 2007 movie about ravens killing people. Good for them. People are dicks. It's got Steven McHattie as an old coot and Rod Taylor is the medical examiner. Sean Patrick Flanery is the Sheriff and it's his last day, he's moving to the city for a new job. There's plenty of people being killed by ravens and some ravens get blasted. There's a descent script and a good cast. Even the CGI ravens looks respectable. I liked it and would watch it again.

Nightwing is a 1979 killer bat movie that was directed by Arthur Hiller. This time the bats are attacking at an Indian reservation in New Mexico. The plot mixes vampire bats with oil hungry business men. The close up puppet bats were designed by Carlo Rimbaldi, the guy who created the phone home guy, and they look kind of grotesque in a nice way. Large shots with many bats are animated by hand and they often look to flat to seem real. Most of the script is fair and the actors OK. I enjoyed it for the most part, it's not more than average, and even though I have a copy I doubt that I'll ever get back to it.

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.

Multi Feature - Ghost House Underground

Multi Feature is another 4 pack of horror movies under the Ghost House Underground banner. I had forgotten that it was Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert behind those movies. For some reason I can't find a copy of the cover on the internet. I had to scan it.

I couldn't find a copy of the DVD on Amazon or eBay. I got this one from a recent trip to Half Price Books. I hit their clearance a good number of times a week. There's usually something for the consumer with dubious taste. One of the nice things about this set is the films are each on their own side of a two sided disc. I'd prefer to have them on a single disc but this is fine. At least they aren't all on one disc.

The Offspring is a 2009 film that was based on a novel by Jack Ketchum. In fact, Jack wrote the screenplay which Andrew van den Houten directed. The premise is some lighthouse keeper's children went feral. This was over 100 years ago and now the descendants are nomadic cannibals. They're back in the area they went through some years before. The local cops have a cannibal murder and they go ask Art Hindle for some advice. It's a slaughter fest until the end of the movie. Nearly everyone dies. Not as bad as some of the other movies on the disc, it's still barely a 4 for me.

Seventh Moon is shakycamed so close to the action that it's often out of focus and blurry. This can't be a choice of the film  makers, can it? Yes, it's some artsy fartsy bullshit that I for one could certainly do without, especially since it goes on through the whole movie. It's also dark much of the time. Really I don't know that they didn't just shake some sticks in a bush, I can't tell if there's anyone there or not. Amy Smart is in the film but there's nothing special about that. It's got a surprisingly high 4.7, I gave it a 1. Not worth a look.

The Children is a 2008 British film about some diseased children that kill many of their parents. The parents are useless and easily slaughtered. They had no defense against - children. It's also annoyingly filmed, there are so many scenes where they tease you then don't deliver anything. I wanted to sic some of those children on the film makers. Really, the only thing I liked about the movie was the snow. The English countryside is pretty when there's a blanket of snow. Most places are.

The Thaw is about the lack of snow. It's the only movie of this lot that I had seen before and it's much better than the other three. The thawing icecap uncovers some deadly shit and the bug that gets free does a really good job killing you. That's some horror show right there. There's plenty going on in the story and the scenery in British Columbia does well for the Yukon. I'll keep the set because of this one movie. It's good enough for another look down the line.