PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 793

First up, Knives Out, an entertaining mystery movie. It came out last year and it seemed to create a bit of a buzz. It turned up on Amazon Prime for free and that seemed like a good test price to see if I would want to pick up a disc. It's written and directed by Rian Johnson who's announced Knives Out 2. Rian's last movie was Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, before that it was Looper in 2012, I'm not familiar with any of his earlier work.

Christopher Plummer plays the rich head of a really scummy family. He's supported them but after he commits suicide it turns out that he's not left them any of his fortune. Daniel Craig plays a southern private eye who's been hired anonymously to investigate the death. Most of the action takes place in a big old house filled with plenty of nooks and crannies and stairwells. It's a nice old place but too many stairs for me nowadays.

The money helps bring out the family's evil side and they are some scum suckers. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Jeeden Martell, Riki Lindhome and Chris Evans are the family members. Ana di Armas plays the health care worker who gets the prize. Can she keep it. We'll have to wait for the second movie to know.

There's a good complicated story going on with good dialog and good actors to make it work. The characters are interesting, though some of them are truly repulsive. My only complaint was some of them didn't get punished so much, that might be mitigated by the second movie. I had plenty of laughs and was real happy to have seen it. I'd watch it again sometime, but I'll probably  wait for a 2 pack with the second movie before buying it.

 

I can't think of anything good to say about Unearthly, a 2013 low budget POS that was on AP. It's a totally directive and unoriginal. A 15 year old girl is on the hunt for a powerful medallion and some scumbag is also after it. Her dad, mom and boyfriend go after her. It's mostly people tramping about in the woods. There's nothing of interest there, sad dialog from stupid characters, crappy CGI, poor jokes and embarrassing action. It's the kind of movie you want to tell to Fuck Off.

Friday Night Movies 790

A couple more horror films off of Amazon Prime. First up Against The Dark, a 2009 post-apoc movie with a well padded Steven Seagal. Stephen doesn't do much other than walk, talk a bit, and wave a sword around. The mutant humans just seem to leap right on that sword. Everyone else breaks a sweat. I didn't recognize anyone else in the cast but David Keith. He head of the military in the area, he doesn't do much more than boss people around. He's going to bomb the area to kill the mutants, there's a clock ticking down. He going to bomb the place even if Steven and his band of hunters aren't out of the area. I didn't care much for it, nothing much interesting or clever here. Move along.

The Night Sitter was a good bit better, it's from 2018 and it's a bit of a horror comedy. Some guy hires a strange babysitter to look after his son and the son of his girlfriend. She's "new" to the area and it turns out she's there to grab as much cash and merch as she can. She calls a friend with a truck. In the meantime the two boys steal the key to dad's locked office. A strange book gets handled and the three mothers escape. They had been trapped in the book by some guys in the past. They are a trio of children killers, they kidnap the little nippers, hang them up by their feet and slit their throats. Easier to drain the blood from them. The girlfriend's kid is the first to get the treatment. The sitter's ex-boyfriend shows up, a neighbor shows up, they're just more fodder for the witches. They like killing children, but in a pinch, they'll kill anyone. It takes nearly half the movie for anything interesting to happen. It all looks fairly good but I soon got tired of the red/green/blue lights that are supposed to create some mood. I got to the end and didn't think I needed to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 588

Reigo: King Of The Sea Monsters is a 2005 Japanese giant monster movie. It's called Reigo: Deep-Sea Monster Vs The Battleship Yamato. I had seen the 2009 sequel not that long ago and wasn't planning on picking this up but it turned up cheap enough and I bought it. It's set during WW2 and there's a lot of going off to war melodrama at the start of the movie. Then everyone is on the Yamato for the monster attacks. They fight back, it's depicted in low budget CGI that doesn't have much going for it. Before the appearance of the big monster the navy kills off it's offspring. First some man size man eaters leap out of the water and smear the decks with some of the crew. The big monster, looking a little like Godzilla but with a shark body, puts up a big ass fight. Sadly the poor CGI makes it less interesting. A make or break effort looks like it might have ended the life of the creature. The Yamato limps back to Japan, most of the other fleet is on the bottom. It wasn't too bad, a little too much blather and the CGI help drag it down for me, but I have a copy and I'll probably have a big monster movie marathon sometime, maybe I'll watch it.

I doubt that I would watch 2036 Origin Unknown again. It's about inventing an AI that kills off the human population because they are heading to their destruction anyway. Or maybe it was all an AI's dream? Who knows? Not me, the film makers didn't tell me what was real or Memorex. Ultimately disappointing. Wasted that $1.95 plus tax and shipping.

Hostile Hauntings 6 Movie Collection

Hostile Hauntings is a 6 movie collection from Pendulum Pictures. It's got 2 DVDs with 3 movies on each, no extras. They are all horror films with one thing in common. They suck.

Films are made up of many parts, the story, the actors, the film makers, the sets, props and production values, all fighting for the few dollars these film makers have. Compound that with a general lack of talent and you've got a product that stinks up the house. I blame the availability of low cost HD video. It looks great, unless you don't know how to light it, understand how to use the camera or understand the basics of film making. Add to that poor attempts to cheaply add physical and CGI effects. Their posters suck too. I've really come to hate the photo shopped crap that the designers crank out. Luckily, some of the films were too embarrassed to put a poster online.

As a collection of mistakes in film making these 6 films are good examples of bad examples. It's almost like they're fighting to be called the worst film in the box. I couldn't pick the worst one. None of them needs to be held up as a shining example of what not to do in film making. We already have enough bad films, best these be forgotten. Here's the list so you can beware if they turn up on some streaming source or TV channel.

The Shunned House 2003 An Italian production about a couple that investigate an old building. Tedious and dull.

The Woodland Haunting 2 2005 An Elvis impersonator in a mental institution tells us about a haunting in Ypsilanti Michigan. Absolute shit.

The Somnambulists 2005 Not even a whole movie, a 24 min short with a 50 minute making of tacked on. Absolutely dull and boring.

Hellbound: Book Of The Dead 2003 Also called Cadaver Bay. Not worth seeing.

The River: Legend Of La Llorna 2006 Terrible looking CGI background and dull story.

Sleep Disorder 2005 Ghost hunting guy has nightmares that cause him mental suffering, We have to listen to his boring conversation with a psychiatrist. Utterly awful in every way.

Science Fiction Sunday 577

TimeSlingers is the Canadian DVD title for Aliens In The Wild, Wild West. It turned up at the Dollar Tree for a buck and I bought it. It's a 1999 Canadian Romanian production that was filmed in Romania. There's Americans, Canadians and Romanians in the cast. The screenplay is by Alon Kaplan and the director is George Erschbamer.

It's really an SF western aimed at the teen crowd. A really fuckin' annoying kid and his slightly annoying older sister go on vacation with mom and dad. The kids don't get along. The family stop at a ghost town and the kids find a space device that sends them back in time to the 1880s. They team up with a local guy to save some aliens who've landed and got captured by cowboys who want to sell them to a circus as freaks.

It's all pretty much by the numbers. I would have enjoyed it more for what it was but for the wise cracking shit bag teen boy. At it's best it's below average and I'm sure glad I didn't pay more it than a dollar. I'm going to keep it for now. I might want to watch it again. It'll probably never happen.

Vampire Wars is another DVD from the Dollar Tree, at least I think so, it's been languishing in the pile for a while. Hopefully it wasn't a $2 or $3 clearance item at Half Price Books. I wouldn't want to pay that much, even for a fun Michael Ironside performance. He's a nasty vampire guy in this 2005 Canadian TV movie that's also known as Bloodsuckers. The DVD is pricey on Amazon, starting at $22.01 and rising to $83.50. I'm still hopin' I didn't pay 2 bucks for it.

There are vampires in space and they aren't any too happy to have the humans among them, other than for food stuffs. The human's have spaceships that go out and wipe out vampires. We follow the crew of one of the spaceships as they battle the bitey guys. There's plenty of fighting, ray guns, gore, spaceships, tunnels, yakking and walking in the woods. The movie was filmed in Squamish BC. The human crew is made up of four humans and a turncoat vampire of some sort.  Michael is on one of the planets they stop at, at least he was entertaining to watch. He's a delightful bastard but he's still a vampire and he needs to get lit up. There's nothing great about it, barely average in every way. I wouldn't need to watch it again but I'll keep the DVD, who knows, maybe it will be worth even more money in the future.

Science Fiction Sunday 573

Isolation is a 2005 SF Irish film film about cattle mutations. A scientist is experimenting on cows at a farm. He wants to make them grow faster. It partially works, a calf is born already pregnant. Sadly, the new born has wicked teeth and can bite the dickens out of fingers and teats. It's fetuses are even worse mutants, fanged flesh lumps with exoskeletons. The scientist kills the calf but one of the fetuses escapes during the autopsy. The escapee starts poking it's flesh pods into any handy living thing, infecting cows and humans alike. It's all very much an Alien/The Thing sort of movie. It's all goopy, bloody and there are a lot of cow entrails. There's a fair bit of struggle as the monster and the scientist kill off the humans and cows. The scientist went mad, well, madder then he already was, and started killing people. Essie Davis plays a vet who gets pulled into the middle of the mess when she visits the farm. It's written and directed by Billy O'Brien. I didn't mind it but I wouldn't need to see it again. I'm glad I don't feel the need for the disc, there are two on Amazon, one for $34.,95 and another for $143.03. Not worth it, I doubt I would even download a free copy.

Octaman is a 1971 SF and horror film about a human octopus mutation. It's written and directed by Harry Essex. Rick Baker is the costume designer. Kerwin Matthews, Jeff Morrow, David Essex and Pier Angeli all deliver lack luster performances. It's set in Mexico, the scientists find a weird octopus that can crawl on land. They can't get money to study it so they make a deal with a circus owner to fund the capture of more of these creatures. Turns out there's a big human size critter and it can kill humans pretty easily. They round up some locals and try to capture that big beast. Hardly anyone comes out of that alive. It's all pretty below average. Meandering script, sad monster attacks, poorly shot locations, shit day for night effect, not much was good about the film. Another one I wouldn't need to see again. I get so forgetful, if only I had a way of warning myself not to watch it again. Anyway, you can see it on YouTube, there's a link in the title.

Friday Night Movies 773

The Beast And The Magic Sword is a 1983 Paul Naschy movie that was made in Spain and Japan. It's the tenth in the Count Waldemar Daninsky film series about a guy's who's a werewolf. This movie starts in the 16th century Spain with Irineus Daninsky, an ancestor of the Count, wanting to cure himself of the werewolf curse. Some witch hunters attack the guy who might have helped Irineus. The man lies dying when Irineus shows up, before he dies he sends Irineus to Japan to look for a man called Kain.

In Japan Irineus searches for Kain. He's there so long that he's killing the locals during multiple full moons and the local authorities have taken notice. Kain and Irineus paths cross while the wolf is out, werewolf footprints allow Kain to follow Irineus to his house. Kain offers to help Irineus cure his curse but he can't seem to help quick enough and Irineus consults a witch. Irineus is kind of an asshole, he doesn't seem to care much to keep the werewolf locked up during the full moon, and he's willing to go see an evil witch against everyone's advice. She turns out to be a horrible monster and things go poorly for Irineus.

Surprisingly, it's one of the better of Naschy's movies. He wrote and directed it under the name Jacinto Molina. His real name is Jacinto Molina Alvarez and he used the first two names for most of his writing and directing credits, he acted under the name Paul Naschy. He directed 23 movies and acted in over 100. I just don't find him that interesting. Some of his horror movies are downright poor to me. I often joke about digging up Paul's body and using his fleshless skull to crack other poor film makers in the nuts. I wouldn't crack Paul for this one, his werewolf make up is better than some of his make ups in the past, and he managed to make a nice looking film. Sadly, his action scenes are a mess, some downright poor and others fair at best. It's a long film, nearly 2 hours, and it's a long slog to sit through. I'd give it a 5 or a 6 but wouldn't need to see it again.

Raiga: God Of The Monsters is a 2009 Japanese giant monster film. It's the sequel to Reigo: King Of The Monsters from 2008. I haven't seen that but they put in some clips in the current movie. There's a 2019 sequel called Raiga Vs Ohga.

Raiga: God Of The Monsters is pretty much a comedy monster movie. We spend a lot of time with a loud and annoying family, their loud and annoying friends, and some loud and annoying government types as the sea monster comes calling. Rather than get out of town the people we meet stumble about yelling and being annoying. The beastie does some damage to the city, the monster is a guy in a suit, but the cityscape is mostly altered by medium rez CGI. Some of the effects are better than others, some are crap like you'd find on the SyFy channel, they use big explosions to cover up a lot. At times I was thinking the buildings were filled with fireworks and gasoline.

It's going to appeal to the monster fan to some extent. I got a laugh or two out of it but I didn't feel I needed to see it again and wasn't planning to get the new Blu-ray. I'd rather spend my remaining movie watching time watching something a bit better, there are all those Toho movies to watch again, and again. I guess that's movie triage for ya.

Friday Night Movies 771

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

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

Friday Night Movies 769

Garo Special: Beast Of The Demon Night is a Japanese TV movie from 2006. It's a further adventure after the 26 episode TV show ended. It's set in modern day Japan but with a magical religious group that hunts demons. Lord Legules is an evil prick who wants to unleash his horde of demons on the human world by opening a passage to the demon world. The three guys on the poster are Makai Priests, they fight the demons, usually as they are but once things get serious they magic up some shiny armor and bigger swords. There are plenty of fights, all shooshing through the woods, and the last 20 minutes is all one big battle. It got a bit much and made me less interested. I don't think I need to see it again.

I would be interested in seeing The Uncanny again. It's a 1977 anthology horror film about murderous cats. It's a Canadian and English production filmed in both countries. It's screenplay is by Michel Parry and the director is Denis Héroux. It was the last film for Denis as a director, he would go onto produce some good bit of TV until 2000.  I haven't seen any of his other work.

There's a nice cast, Peter Cushing and Ray Milland are writer and publisher, Peter pushing his new supernatural tinged crime book where all the crimes are avenged by cats. Ray's skeptical as Peter outlines three different cases.

In London 1912 a rich woman, Joan Greenwood, rewrites her will with lawyer Roland Culver, leaving all her cash to her cats and a meal to her scumbag nephew. Simon Williams play the nephew and Susan Pehhaligon plays the maid. Simon and Susan has a secret romance, they are waiting for Joan to kick off and then they can play with all her riches. The news of the will change pushes Michael to murder, he convinces Susan to poison Joan's medicine. None of that goes as planned and the cats avenge their mistress's death.

In the Quebec 1975 story a young teenager named Lucy comes to live with her aunt and uncle. Katrina Holden Bronson plays Lucy, she's the adopted daughter of Jill Ireland and Charles Bronson. In the film her parents have just died and all she has is her cat. The mother, played by Alexandra Stewart, doesn't care for the cat but hubby, played by Donald Pilon, says that Lucy should keep her cat as it's the only thing she has. The daughter, played by Chloe Franks, is a real piece of shit and she manipulates the parents into getting rid of the cat. Lucy is heartbroken. The cat comes back and the killing starts.

In Hollywood 1936 Samantha Eggar is the mistress of Donald Pleasence, he's an actor married to Catherine Bégin, she's an actress too. They are all in a play but Samantha is only Catherine's understudy. When Catherine is murdered, Donald puts Samantha in the play. Catherine's cat comes looking for vengeance.

After telling Donald his theory on the evil of the cat, Peter leaves. He's attacked by cats on his way home and Donald burns the manuscript. It was entertaining and colorful with more than the average number of murdering cats. You can check out a copy on YouTube in the link above. You might get a laugh out of it.

Science Fiction Sunday 568

The 2004 Hallmark mini-series Frankenstein was pretty faithful to the Mary Shelley novel and it reminds me once again what an ass that Frankenstein was. Surely not the sort of person that you'd like to get to know. Alec Newman plays Viktor Frankenstein, some might remember him from the Dune mini-series of a few years ago. It's directed by Kevin Connor and the screenplay is by Mark Kruger. They follow the novel quite well, much more so than most of the other adaptations, and it's a sad ass story. One bad thing after another happens to Frankenstein, fueled by his fear of death. It looks good and there's lot of nice locations and sets. William Hurt plays Viktor's professor and William Hurt plays the ship captain that Viktor tells his story to and Luke Goss plays The Creature.

This is the place Viktor lives in. I liked the wedge coming out of the front of the building. It's a fairly long production, 204 minutes, in two parts. I was happy enough to see it but wouldn't rush to see it anytime soon.