PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 718

Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island is a 2009 Japanese movie about a bunch of teens that go to an island looking for Akira's brother. Some strange lady says Atsushi, the brother, is on the island. They go there only to find the place over run by vampires. Turns out Atsushi had come to the island with his fiance a couple of years back. While there he had let the evil vampire out of the cage the islanders had locked up decades ago. Now most of the villagers are vampires and our group of stupid teens are locked in a cage awaiting their turn at the snack bar. They escape and eventually run into Atsushi and the resistance group. There's a bit of slaughtering, the vampires get the worst of it, and the movie is over. It's OK but not great. I gave it a 5 because it drags a good bit and the characters are all annoying. Especially that brother. I mean really, just leave the local shit the fuck alone. Let that be a lesson to you.

I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle is a 1990 British horror comedy that was more fun than our first movie. It's about a guy, Neil Morrissey, who buys a motorcycle that's possessed with by a demon. Some might remember Neil from the Brit TV series Men Behaving Badly. Neil's wife at the time, Amanda Noar, plays his girlfriend in the movie. They work at a delivery service. Neil buys a damaged Norton Commando from a guy. He doesn't know that it's got a demon in it but he'll soon find out. The bike starts sneaking about at night, killing people and using their blood for fuel. It attacks Amanda and puts her into the hospital. Neil enlists the help of a priest, Anthony Daniels, to exorcise the bike. There's another subplot with the Hell's Angels that inadvertently created the possessed bike. They don't fair to well. There's a fair bit of gore and some jokes. The acting was fairly good and the script by Mycal Miller and John Wolskel worked well enough. Director Dirk Campbell does a fairly good job, I gave the movie a 6, mostly based on it's dark sense of humor. This is Dirk's only feature film, he mostly works in TV but I can't say I recognize any of the programs or TV movies.

The Midnight Horror Collection - Road Trip To Hell

 

Here's another 4 pack of films from Echo Bridge Entertainment. The Midnight Horror Collection - Road Trip To Hell was another clearance set. Nothing stands out of this lot.

The Craving 2008 A bunch of dopes head to Burning Man and find there's a monster in the desert. There's a lot of yakkin' and scenes of the desert then they get picked off one by one. Pretty standard stuff but it's barely a 3 for me.

Sheltered 2010 A bunch of 20 somethings take shelter in a bartenders house. Turns out he's a psycho. Another 3 here.

Hell's Highway 2002 Four people are on a car trip. They pick up a woman who turns out to be a killer. It's barely a three.

Feeding Grounds 2006 I saw this on another movie multi pack and it wasn't that good then. I generously gave it a 2.

Maneater Triple Feature

RHI takes their single movie DVDs and packs them into a 3 pack of films. They've got a whole series of these Maneater films and I have more than a dozen of them in the multi movie format. The 3 packs are all single layer discs and there are no extras. Most of the three packs are $8-12 on Amazon, I got the two I have from Hamilton Books for $3.95 each. I also have a 6 movie set that puts two movies on a disc. The series was produced with SyFy and all the films aired on that channel after being on the video on demand cable channels.

Blood Monkey is a 2006 direct to video horror film about some college students going on a work experience in the Thai jungle. That would be a fuckin' nightmare to me, I wouldn't even want to go there to shoot a movie. The poor saps in the movie have the added bonus of F Murray Abraham using them as bait. He's trying to capture a new species of primate and he'd already lost his first research team to the vicious chompy bastards. Sadly, we see little of the BM's in the 90 minute running time and when we finally do, in the last seconds before the credits, it's just like any CGI movie ape. The movie is nearly the worst of the lot, the poor script by George LaVoo and Gary Dauberman really lowers the score for me. If you watch this sort of movie you've probably seen this story over and over again. People running in the woods being eaten by some critter. The scenery is OK and the production values fairly good. The only interesting thing about the movie is that it was directed by Robert Young. He started directing back in 1972 with Vampire Circus, over the years he managed to direct a few good films and TV shows. The movie that stands out most is Fierce Creatures. He worked on Hammer's House Of Horror, Minder and Jeeves And Wooster. I only gave the movie a 3, it's doubtful that I'll get around to watching it again.

In The Spider's Web is also from 2007 and it's the worst of the lot. I gave it a 3, though I might have given it a 2 except for the one actor. It scores a stunning 3.9 on the IMDb but that's because 215 of the 936 votes are a 10. That's some scamming there. In the movie Lance Henriksen is scamming people out of body parts and selling them on the black market. He's a real steaming pile of shit. The script is  pretty tired and there isn't much reason to watch it. Gary Dauberman wrote the script by himself and there are similarities to the first movie in the set. Perhaps Gary lacks imagination? Maybe he's just lazy. This movie's also filmed in Thailand but this time the jungle's pretending to be in India. It hardly matters, either place will kill you. That's what happens to the vacationing college students, picked off, one by one, in the jungle. Lance "helps" them by harvesting their organs. The local police Sergeant, my favorite character in the movie, helps a couple of them survive. I probably won't get back to seeing this anytime soon.

Maneater is a 2007 film and the best in the set. It's written by Philip Morton and directed by Gary Yates. It's a bit of a Jaws copy, there's a deadly predator on the loose, the town has a festival coming up, and the mayor is mad at the Sheriff for telling the news reporters of the tiger. The movie is filmed in Winnipeg and Stonewall Manitoba. Stonewall is pretending to be a small town in the Appalachians. I saw this back in 2016 and thought it was pretty average and thought I didn't need to see it again. I had forgotten that when I watched it. Then I looked it up on the IMDb and saw I had given it a 3 sometime in the past. You can download your votes from the IMDb and sort them by title to make looking up when you rated a movie easy-peasy. I actually liked it better this time around and bumped the score up a notch. I thought it was one of Gary Busey's better performances of late. He's not hardly chewing the scenery like he has been. I liked the kid who dreams of the tiger too. I might watch it again.

Demons: 4 Movie Midnight Marathon Pack

I got this for $3.95 plus shipping from Hamilton Books. It seems to have disappeared off their shelves since this copy arrived here. It's got 4 movies with a Demon theme all crammed on one disc. That's where the real demons are. Watching streaming and screwing up DVDs for the rest of us. Mind you, these movies aren't the ones that need to be on their own disc. It would be a waste and much more costly per movie. These 4 are about a buck each and that's pushing their worth. You never know what you're going to get with a multi movie pack.

Devil 2010 The movie has a story by M Night Shyamalon, the screen play is by Brian Nelson, John Erick Dowdle is the director. John Erick's precious movie was the 2008 Quarantine, I didn't care that much for that, Devil is a better film. Some people get trapped in an elevator the same day that a guy jumps through the window of a tall office block. People work to get the 5 people out of the elevator but pretty soon some weird shit starts to happen. One of the men is murdered in the dark while the lights flick on and off at random. One of the security guards is sure that the Devil is behind this but his boss thinks he's just really religious. The cops show up and the Detective in charge doesn't know what to make of it all. The obvious, someone in the elevator is a killer, and as they find out more about the people on board it looks like they all have some past indiscretions. Another lady is killed and things get worse and worse. The movie is only 80 minutes so they don't waste much time, all the details and backstory are presented while the movie trots along. It's well made, nicely shot and the script is good. I'd watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it scores more 7s but I'm not sure it's there. Still, worth seeing for the horror fan. The rest are not quite as good as the first movie.

Long Time Dead 2002 Marcus Adams is the director and he worked on the story with two other people and the screenplay was written by 4 people. That's probably why it's not so good. It's about some rather unlikable 20 something's who use a home made Ouija board to call up a djinn. Sucks to be them. They get picked off one by one. It's pretty much what you've seen before. I'm probably not going to bother watching it again. There's just nothing special about it.

House Of Voices 2004 AKA Saint Ange That's the name of the orphanage that a young woman named Anna goes to work at in 1958. It's in the French Alps but you hardly see anything of the outside once the bus drops her off. The place is being shut down and there's just one teen girl left in care and the administrator in charge left. Anna hears the voices and footsteps of young children but there's no one there. She finds out some stuff and the place kills her. It's not that interesting getting to the end and I speed up the last half.

Whisper 2007 Kidnappers abduct a young boy and he kills them. Ha ha. The kid is creepy and most of the criminals are stupid and need killing. There's a bit of a good story bit near the end but it's still about average.

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.