PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 939

Left For Dead 2007 Written by Chad Leslie and directed by Albert Pyun. Am American Argentine production that was filmed in Argentina in 12 days. Albert won the Best Director award at the 2007 Costa del Sol Fantasy Film Festival.

A horror western with a demon gunfighter. Victoria Maurette plays Clementine, she's looking for a man called Sentenza, he deserted her and their baby. She meets a gang of whores who murdered all the people in a town. The head of the whores is looking for Sentenza also, he left her daughter pregnant and ran off.

They find Sentenza in the ghost town of Amnesty which is home to the dead soul of slain preacher Mobius Lockhardt. He made a pack with the devil to remain among the living. He can't leave the town and he can't die.

The whores get picked off one by one. There's a fair bit of action but the jittercam, jump cuts and freeze frames became annoying right quick. The characters were mostly entertaining, the lesser characters disappeared quickly, it's only an 84 min movie, no time to waste.

It's got a low score, a 3.2, on the IMDb but I thought it was more like a 5. That score would improve if there wasn't all the camera and editing trickery. That IMDb score is buoyed up by 54.5% of the votes being a 9 or a 10. I'm not sure who's voting, don't care. Don't think I'll bother with the DVD, maybe if I find it on clearance sometime.

Accion Mutante 1992 Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Álex de la Iglesia, directed by Álex de la Iglesia. It's Álex's first film. A Spanish French production.

In a post-apocalyptic future the world is ruled by the rich and beautiful. A group of disable people, calling themselves mutants, plan to take down the rulers. Sadly, the mutants are mentally disabled and cannot formulate a plan that they can follow through. The kidnapping the movie opens with fails because they suffocate the victim.

The next kidnapping victim manages to survive in a complicated plot that I wouldn't even attempt to cover. It's a chaotic film with weird stuff going on all the time. The mutant group falls apart from the inside and nearly everyone dies.

I'd seen this 22 years ago but couldn't remember a thing about it. It's noisy, colorful, violent, funny and worth a look for some. Not everyone is going to like this one. We watched the new Severin Blu-ray release and it looks nice enough. The movie was pretty low budget, nice that the film elements survived. Doubt I'm going to add this to my collection.

Friday Night Movies 933

The Grave 1996 Story by Peter Glatzer, screenplay by Jonas Pate and Josh Pate, directed by Jonas Pate.

A couple of bottom feeder criminals in prison hear a story about a grave with a treasure buried in it. They escape and one of them gets shot stealing clothes from a hillbilly's clothes line. The pair hitch a ride and the guy gives them his truck so he can report it stolen for the insurance. It was a poor truck I would hardly think he'd get anything for it.

The guys seek medical help from a guy they know who is a mortician. He can't help much at all, the wounded guy dies but not before giving up the story about the grave. The mortician and his two even stupider friends decide to dig up the loot themselves. The other escaped convict shows up only to be killed by the mortician's pal. They don't find any treasure in the grave except a ring the dead guy was wearing. They  bury the convict in the grave.

Things get more complicated when a prison guard who knows about the grave murders one of the mortician's pals. Equally disruptive is the second escaped convict's ex-girlfriend. Most everyone dies.

I enjoyed it but wouldn't seek out a copy for me. Doubtful I would get around to it again. There are better stupid criminal movies out there.

Skeleton Man 2004 Written by Frederick Bailey and directed by Johnny Martin. Made for TV horror film with Michael Rooker and Casper Van Dien. It aired on the Sci Fi Channel.

An archaeologist digs up an Indian burial ground. He takes the skull of a native called the movie calls Skeleton Man. SM pops into existence through a portal and kills the archaeologist and anyone else who enters the wooded area his grave was found in. Some soldiers dies while on maneuvers and the military sends in Micheal, Casper and a few other folks for Skeleton Man to kill. Most everyone dies before Michael blows up a chemical plant.

The explosion might have killed the Skeleton Man but it seems unlikely as he appears again in the end credits. I'm unsure if that's what they meant, it's not clear. Nothing much is clear in the movie, it's just an excuse to kill people off. It's a slasher film with skeleton on a horse. It would have been better if the horse was doing all the killing. A good story would also have helped. Not one I'm going to need to see again.

Friday Night Movies 932

Frost: Portrait Of A Vampire 2003 Written and directed by Kevin VanHook.

Jack Frost is a mercenary, one of his men, a guy called Nat, gets bitten by a vampire on a mission in Afghanistan. After the war Nat goes onto another job and Jack becomes a painter and art historian.

Nat goes on a job in Mexico for some scumbag. That scumbag likes to keep his activities on the down low and he has Nat and the gang killed after the mission. Nat manages to escape but he's wounded. After wandering in the desert for a while, Nat dies and becomes a vampire. The vampire lore in the movie doesn't follow the Dracula lore. These vampires can go out in the day and you seem to get turned after you die, no matter how long it takes.

Jack learns that the scumbag had Nat and his men killed. He goes to visit the scumbag for a spot of revenge. That's the end of that guy. Nat shows up in San Diego and kills some people. He hides out at his wife's place but she soon sees the vampi side of him and runs to Jack. Jack finds Nat who warns him he won't kill Jack if Jack leaves him alone.

After Nat kills his wife and Jack's girlfriend all Jack can do is hunt the prick down. The actress who plays Jack's girlfriend is quite pretty but she's a terrible actress, she might be the worst of a rather poor lot. Most everything about the movie is poor. It gets a 2.4 on the IMDb for good reason, 48.1% of the votes are a 1. I gave it a 2 because I'm mean. I did like the nice animated bats but that's only a few seconds. There isn't anything to make me want to recommend it to other horror fans. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Goodbye 20th Century 1998 Written and directed by Darko Mitrevski and Aleksandar Popovski. Perhaps the only film made in Macedonia that I've seen. It's a weird post apocalypse film that means more to the film makers than I can figure out.

It's a triptych of stories, the first takes place in the post apocalypse world of 2019. A man is being executed by the leaders of a tribe, he fails to die no matter how often they shoot him. I don't know what's going on but I liked the cast's costumes. The second story is set in 1900. It's a 3 min short in sepia. A man has fallen in love with his sister, he buys her from their father. After they marry, the husband is killed by members of the wedding party.

The third story is set New Years Eve 1999. A man dressed as Santa returns to his apartment building to find a wake going on. Things are kind of normal for a bit. Violence breaks out and nearly everyone's dead at the end of the segment. I did like the red headed ladies costume. I'm not sure what was going on, I am sure it's probably not worth thinking about anymore.

It's an odd film, very stylish but lacking a good story. It's mostly well filmed and produced but there's no real narrative, the first and third segments could have been part of more interesting films, one that's been fleshed out with a story. We watched the new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray, it looks fine, you can see a copy on YouTube or download a better one off of Rarelust. One of them is in the link above.

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.

Friday Night Movies 904

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.

Friday Night Movies 873

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.

Friday Night Movies 866

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.

Friday Night Movies 864

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.