PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 827

Hard Ride To Hell 2009 Director Penelope Buitenhuis co-wrote the screenplay with Matthew Chernov and David Rosiak. Another of the dollar DVDs from the Dollar Tree. I've got a big stack of them but many of them make me wonder why I bought them.

Some young people are traveling in Texas in an RV. During an overnight stop in the badlands one of them accidentally sees some bikers doing some satanic stuff to some naked ladies. His phone goes off and the chase is on. The young people get some help from a knife salesman and a priest. Miguel Ferrer plays the head of the bikers and Katherine Isabelle plays one of the young travelers.

There's plenty of chasing and fighting, with additional biting and knife stabbing. Even so it's not overly gory. It's got a fairly good sense of humor, some of the characters were less annoying then the ones I usually find in these sorts of movies. There's nothing new here, just another story about some poor saps who went to Texas and got in some deep shit. It scores a 3.8 on the IMDb and that's with 22.2% of the votes being a 10. I wouldn't give it more than a 4, it's lacking enough to be a 5. I'll keep the DVD but I probably won't watch it again.

The Thompsons 2012 Directed by Mitchell Altieri ad Phil Flores under the name The Butcher Brothers. Mitchell co-wrote the screenplay with Cory Knauf, who also stars in the movie. It's a sequel to The Hamiltons from 2006. I haven't seen that.

The Hamiltons are a family of curse vampire like creatures. That's them in the poster. They had parents but they are dead now. They must kill and drink blood to survive. In the first movie they kill way too many people in one place, a security camera caught them, now the police are on their trail.

They've moved to Europe and changed their name to Thompson, eventually they wind up in the UK. The youngest kid got shot in the first movie and they are trying to keep him alive. They have a lead to possible help, a town and a name, Cory heads there and meets the lead. He's got a pub and it turns out that the people they meet are their ancestors. They are just as awful as the Hamiltons. Then it's a battle between parts of the same family until one side comes out on top.

I found it about average, it's well enough made but that Cory spends a lot of movie narrating his plight as a cursed murdering scumbag. He's kind of annoying. I wouldn't think I would need to bother with it again but I will keep the DVD, it was another Dollar Tree purchase.

The Nanny 2018 Written by Matthew Allen, Ed Dougherty and Marcel Sarmiento, directed by Joel Novoa. Another Dollar Tree dollar DVD.

A single mom hires Jamie Murray to be her new nanny, Noa and Michael are the two children. Jamie is a rather odd character and Noa really doesn't want her around. Turns out she had good reason to dislike the new nanny. Jamie triggers something in Noa and we learn eventually that Jamie is a fairy and Noa is a sort of changeling.

Nicholas Brendon has a date with mom, he uses that opertunity to kidnap Noa. Turns out he knows what the nanny is, he's looking for his daughter, she was taken by fairies. Jamie comes after him and so do mom and her friend the local policeman. It all has a sort of happy ending.

It's more an urban fantasy film than a horror film. It was about average. Script wasn't bad, nice countryside locations in Northfield Minnesota, good cast. I doubt I'd bother with it again but who knows. I'll file it away for the future.

Friday Night Movies 821

Species 1995 Written by Dennis Feldman and directed by Roger Donaldson. Roger has  banged out quite a few movies since 1971 but I can't say I ever watch many of them. I know I've watched Cadillac Man and The Getaway. I didn't care that much for either. I know I watched Dante's Peak on TV some time after seeing Species. It was about average for a disaster movie I think I went to see Species in the theater.

The movie opens with a nice fly over of the Arecibo dish. Ben Kingsley is head guy at a secret government lab that's been in contact with aliens. The aliens told them to make some DNA and mix it with human DNA, then tell the aliens what happened. When I first heard that I thought, how fuckin' stupid are these guys, by the end of the movie you know. Repeat 3 more times.

Michelle Williams plays the young alien human hybrid called Sil. They keep her in a locked room with transparent walls. They decide to terminate her but that goes wrong and she escapes. I wonder if those transparent walls have a warranty. While Ben gets a team together to track and destroy Sil she grows into Natasha Henstridge.

Sil has an urge to mate and create more of her. Men fall for her charms and fall down dead after she pokes a pointy tentacle into them. Sil's body morphs when having sex, she becomes more the alien creature. Not the last thing you want to see as you get stuffed full of tentacle.

The team, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger are after Sil and have one encounter after another as they follow the trail of corpses. Alfred even impregnates her, he was easily fooled by a cut and dye job. They keep chasing her and eventually Sil and her offspring are destroyed. At est until the sequel. 

I like the movie for the most part, plenty of running about and stunts. The cast is okay, nice production values. I've seen it 3 or 4 times and enjoyed it.

Species II 1998 Written by Chris Brancatto and directed by Peter Medak.

Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger and Natasha Henstridge all return to the film. A mission to Mars is the big news as the movie opens. The crew of the ship collect some soil samples and bring a bit of alien DVD aboard. It thaws out and infects the crew. Marg has created a second Sil, calling her Eve, and isolated her in a lab. One of the returned astronauts pulls a pair of sisters and knocks them up with his super powerful alien sperm.

Micheal gets called in once the bodies start showing up. He goes on the hunt with Marg. They chase about until the aliens are put back in the bottle for the sequel. It wasn't quite as good as the previous film, barely average but watchable. Good monster effects though.

Species III 2004 Ben Ripley wrote the script and Brad Turner directed. It was a direct to video release that repeats the same story as the first two films. Just some different guys making the same mistakes as the previous. I'm only watching it to watch all four films. It's not awful but it is repetitive. The big difference is producer Fran Mancuso wanted to young up the cast to appeal to young adults. Big deal.

Species: The Awakening 2007  Ben Ripley wrote the script and Nick Lyon directed. Another direct to video of the about the same quality as the third movie. I might skip the last two when I watch the first two again some day.

Friday Night Movies 817

Cowboys Vs Dinosaurs 2015 Anthony Fankhauser and Rafeal Jordan wrote the poor screenplay and Ari Noval did a so-so job directing. Together they manage to make a pot boiler with little nourishment. Looks like the movie appeared on SyFy at some point. It's kind of typical of what they feature.

Rob Hills returns home after failing at the rodeo circuit, he's got some past history with the Sheriff, who's now living with Rob's old girlfriend. Eric Robert's plays Rob's father, they are reunited in a jail cell, one they should have stayed in. Vernon Wells plays the head of a mining company that has a mine in the area. The miners have opened a chamber and released some gas fueled dinosaurs. They get to chompin' the locals and rampaging about the town. Just about everyone dies but I didn't care, most of them were jerks. It's a film that brings little joy, other than rooting for the dinos.

Dispiser 20o3 Written and directed by Philip J Cook. Typical of Amazon Prime, they've listed this as being made in 2018 when it's a film from 2003. It's a low budget green screen movie with amateur actors and a so-so script.

The guy with the machine gun is an artist, he gets fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend the same day he dies in a car wreck. He wakes up in Purgatory where he meets up with some demon fighters. That's them in the background. They battle monsters and try to keep the faith.

It's a bit more interesting than the previous movie but still below average. Cook's a little more imaginative than the writers on the first movie tonight. Not something I needed to see or would bother with again.

Friday Night Movies 811

The Gallows 2015 Absolutely annoying film about some mostly horrible high school students doing a play about a hanging. It's a found footage film that's an eye sore. It makes my eyes sore. Twenty years ago the school players produced the same play and young man named Charlie was accidentally hung when the trick noose failed. Now, it's twenty years later and his spirit is killing off the cast, or something like that. There's plenty of whining and screaming, doors slamming and things jumping out at you. The brain staggering whip pans that are more annoying than scary, they can fuck off. It was cheap to make, $100,000, and it made $43 million. Yay, on their money making skills, maybe they can make a better film with out all the gimmicks. Be nice if they could put in some more interesting characters. I hope I don't run into the sequel from last year.

Hangman's Curse 2003 Based on a Christian novel by Frank Peretti, screenplay by Kathy Mackel and Stan Foster, directed by Rafal Zielinski.

I saw David Keith was in this DVD that I think came from Dollar Tree. I think all the films today came from there, I'd hate to have paid more than a dollar for these. I keep hoping to come across that gem but so far not even half way there.
David plays the head of crime fighting family that goes undercover to route out crime. We first meet them as drug pushers working with the police. Their next assignment is undercover at a high school that's been having students fall over and go into a coma.

In the school the mom is a councilor, David's a janitor, the two teen kids are a popular girl type and a nerdy type. They find a lot of bullying from the football squad, they attack the nerdy kids and extort money from them. The school seems to do little. There's a group of Goths that have called up the curse some kid who hung himself at the school. Several kids have been cursed, they freak out and collapse, then go into a coma. No one can figure out what the drugs that are causing this are.

It turns out to have a mundane Scooby-Doo mad scientist sort of ending but someone does die. It's vaguely Christian but not in your face about it. I could see this being the pilot for a show. It was better than average for what it was and about average for a teen crime movie. Not much reason to watch it again. 

Frost: Portrait Of A Vampire 2003 Written and directed by Kevin VanHook. It's a movie about some mercenaries in Afghanistan being lead by a guy called Jack Frost. They're asked to kill and burn a man the locals bring to them. They believe he's a demon and they don't want to be cursed. A guy called Nat shoots it after it bites him in the leg. Later that night they're attacked and split up. Most of the men are killed, Frost survives, Nat disappears for a long time.

Frost figures out who attacked them and kills that prick. Then Nat turns up as a vampire and he's all bitey and evil. That's him in the picture above. Nat was the most entertaining bit of the movie. Frost is a big beefy block of wood with mirror shades. The script is nothing too original. There's plenty of fighting but not all of it so good. I liked the Nat parts, he made me laugh once or twice, but I doubt that I'd need to watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 804

Creepshow 1982 Screenplay by Stephen King, directed by George Romero.

Five short segments connected by a framing story. Tom Atkins plays a father that tosses away his kid's Creepshow comic. The segments are the stories in the comic. A ghoul pops out of the grave looking for a cake he never got. Stephen King plays a country boy with bad luck. Leslie Nielsen plays a nasty hubby who drowns his wife and her lover only to have them come back from the dead for vengeance. A forgotten crate at a university is opened, releasing a man eating monster. EG Marshall gets eaten by cockroaches.

I hadn't seen the movie in a good number of years. I remember liking it well enough when I saw it in the theater but I never bought the DVD. I went looking for a DVD recently and found a 3 disc set from some unknown foreign country. The box has no company identifiers or address, no copyright and production info. The discs have no logos on their labels. They all play fine and at 30 bucks they were cheaper than buying the DVDs separately. A DVD of the third film is particularly high on Amazon, $20 for used and $50 to $115 for a new disc. More and more I'm receiving bootlegs from Amazon. Quality wise they are a mixed bag with older classic films being at the poorer end of the spectrum. These DVDs look like they are just copies of the US releases. The third one still has the HBO Video logo on the DVD menu. There are Blu-rays of the films but the first movie is well expensive. It would be over 90 bucks for the three and they aren't worth it to me. I could buy a lot more DVDs with 60 bucks.

I mostly enjoyed the segments though I skipped the cockroach fest. Those guys creep me out more than the goofy monsters and ghouls. It had a fair sense of humor and a laughed a couple of times. I'd look at it again.

Creepshow 2 1987 Stephen King wrote an outline that George Romero adapted, the director is Michael Gornick.

There's only three stories this time, as well as a live action and animated framing story about a boy and his plants. Tom Savini plays the Creep who gives the boy a Creepshow comic before it all turns to animation. It's loose and sloppy animation that isn't that good. At least some giant man eating plants got a big meal by eating some bullies.

In the first segment a scumbag and his pals rob and kill a nice old couple running a store near a native reservation. George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour play the old couple. It was Dorothy's last film. After the poor couple are killed and the robbers run away, a wooden statue of a native brave comes alive and dishes out vengeance to the scumbags. The segment looked pretty good and I'd watch it again.

In the second segment some college kids go swimming in a cold lake and get killed by something floating in the water. Took a long time to get to the end and it wasn't that interesting. I might fast forward through it next time.

The last segment is about a woman who kills a hitchhiker and runs away. I just didn't find it that interesting either. A definite need for speed on the re-watch.

All and all about average for me. Nothing overly special about it.

Creepshow 3 2006 No Stephen King involvement here, the segments are written by Ana Clavell, James Glenn Dudelson, Scott Frazelle, Pablo C Pappano and Alex Ugelow, Ana and James are also the directors. Ana and James were the directors of the direct to video Day Of The Dead 2: Contagium. I've not seen that film. It's an official prequel to the 1985 Day Of The Dead and hardly anyone liked it. I just downloaded it from YouTube and will file it away to watch when I get around to re-watching the original series and the remakes. I should look to see what I am missing and fill in the gaps before all the DVDs disappear or get really expensive.

The framing story is a crappy CGI animated segment that can be ignored for the most part. The five stories are connected with characters from each segment moving through the same sets and encountering other segment's characters.

In the first segment a weird professor gives a dad a new remote to test. Each click changes the family reality, only the daughter is aware of the changes and the changes are fucking her up.

In the second a security guard buys a radio from a homeless guy. The radio talks to him, leading him to $300,000 dollars hidden by an evil pimp guy. They both live in the same apartment and the pimp houses his whores in the place like it's his personal brothel. It doesn't go so well for the guard, the pimp has his own radio.

In the third segment a call girl serial killer meets up with a demon guy and becomes lunch.

The professor from the first segment invites some old students to his wedding in the fourth segment. The two think his pretty young wife is a robot and dismember her body to find out how she ticks. It turns out the professor also made the radios from the second segment.

In the fifth segment a doctor is assigned to a clinic in a poor part of town, he doesn't want to be there and he has no respect for his patients. He buys a hotdog only to drop it to the ground. He passes the dirty dog to a homeless guy who dies after taking a bite. Rather than help the doctor turns his back on the guy and leaves. The dead guy follows him around and scares the life out of the prick.

It seems to be universally hated by reviewers and fans, at least from the IMDb and Wikipedia entries. A lot of the complaints were the film was humorous. Of course, I enjoyed it, I even laughed out loud at times. I liked the connections between the segments and enjoyed them better than some of the segments in the first two films. I watch a lot of genre movies and I often seem to find what genre fans think are bad films to be enjoyable and vice versa. What am I like?

Friday Night Movies 799

 

Knocking On Death's Door 1999 Screenplay by Craig J Nevis and direction by Mitch Marcus. Produced by Roger Corman and shot at his studio near Galway Ireland. The movie is set in New England.

Newlywed students buy a haunted house to look for the ghosts rumored to be in the house. They're there to look for the ghosts. They soon find him. It's a much your typical haunted house story, a bit sexier than some, but really it all boils down to some poor sap getting murdered and he can't move on. David Carradine plays the local doctor, other than that there's nothing much special about the movie. It's part of a two movie DVD that came out in 2003.

The Doorway 2000 Michael B Druxman is the writer director. Also made at Roger's Irish studio and also set in the USA.

It's another haunted house story, this time there are 4 students looking for cheap housing. The jerky guy has made a deal to fix the place up for free rent and some cash. The other's aren't too happy with him once he's sprung this surprise. They aren't as unhappy as the demon that lives in the house. She's been murdered and walled up in the cellar. She's been stewing down thee for years and she's pretty nasty on top of being a mean angry demon. She gets busy and people start to die.

Roy Scheider is their professor, he goes to the house to help with the problem. It's pretty typical stuff and below average in interest to me. I might never get around to re-watching these two films but I'll have that DVD anyway.

Science Fiction Sunday 597

I remembered liking Frankenstein: The True Story more when I watched it on TV back in 1973 than I did today. It played over two nights, which turns into 185 mins on DVD. It's a British and American production which I saw in Canada. The script is by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the director is Jack Smight. Below is a bit from the Wikipedia that I found interesting.

It was originally broadcast on NBC-TV in late 1973 in two 90-minute parts, but is often seen edited into a single film. Its DVD debut date was September 26, 2006. Included at the beginning is a short introduction featuring James Mason wandering through St John's Wood churchyard, London. He suggests that this is where  Mary Shelley is buried, which is incorrect (she is in fact buried in the family plot in Dorset), despite standing beside a gravestone bearing her name.

That short intro is over 5 mins long and it shows the best bits of action in the movie. Disappointing to say the least. Why waste time on stuff like that. They change a lot from the novel and their main gimmick has Michael Sarrazin playing the monster as a handsome man. At least for a little while, things go south in the looks department later in the show. Leonard Whiting is Victor Frankenstein and David McCallum is the professor that introduces him to experimenting with life. Nicola Pagett plays Elizabeth, Victor's to be wife.

James Mason plays Dr Polidori, a character  who didn't appear in the novel, he's loosely based on the Dr Pretorius from Bride Of Frankenstein, and he's a right old bastard. Jane Seymour is the bride in this one, at least her head is, the creature brings her damaged body to Victor, and Victor works his creature magic and brings her head to life on another body.

Jane fare better than the creature, she gets to briefly be lovely in high society, unfortunately her coming out ball turns into a slaughterfest after the creature shows up. It's all horror and sadness for the main characters, most of them die. It's a good reminder that you shouldn't fall in love with crazy people. It's a fairly well made production, kind of slow, and very brown looking.

Frankenstein is a 2007 British TV film that takes the opposite tack with the creature's look. It's written and directed by Jed Mercurio. His gimmick is to make Dr Frankenstein a woman and set her in the modern day world of bio-engineering. She uses some of her dead son's stem cells to grow organs in a soup of bio-goo, the bits and pieces coagulate into a creature that's not anywhere near as handsome as Michael Sarrazin. That's him below.

Behind all her work is a company that's got it's fingers into those secret black government programs that turn up so often in films. I'm leaning toward boredom with that plot line but that's just me. Helen McCrory plays Dr Frankenstein and she's mental. James Purefoy plays her ex-husband and he's a bit of a scum bag. Nothing much good to be said for the rest of the players in the secret world of genetics shenanigans. It's well enough made but I sure didn't care for it much. I'd be hard pressed to watch it again. 

Friday Night Movies 796

Army Of The Dead is a 2008 zombie film of little originality. Joseph Conti directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Ciccolini and Tom Woosley. A professor and some students take an archeology trip to the Baja Peninsula.

According to the movie, four centuries ago Coronado sent 1000 men to find El Dorado, they disappeared. Well, the professor thinks he knows where the city is and he's secretly made a deal with some scumbags to steal the gold. His students are clueless about his plan. The prof finds the city and of course releases the curse. It animates the 1000 lost skeletal conquistadors. They are totally bent on slaughtering the professor and his minions. 

Sadly the CGI is only fair, it's about the same for the rest of the movie. The actors are adequate but the script isn't that interesting. You've certainly heard it all before in any number of the other 'trapped by some evil force that's killing everyone' movie. There's nothing much exciting about the location, I've seen the desert before, and better photographed too. I wouldn't need to see it again, that's for sure.

Subferatu is a 2020 everything but the kitchen sink comedy that blends time travel, Nazis, vampires, submarines and Gilligan's Island. It's written and directed by Patrick Penta. I found it over at Amazon Prime, same as the previous movie.

A small pleasure craft is out for a 3 hour tour when a big storm comes up. Their ship is floundering when they are rescued by a submarine commander in the Nazi navy. There's only a small crew on board the sub and they don't realize the survivors came from the future. The ship was in the Bermuda Triangle and the skipper's name is Captain Gavin McCloud. That's him in the red shirt.

The Commander tells the Captain that it's the day after Hitler killed himself. The Commander wants to surrender his sub but only if he can sail it into New York harbor. The Captain doesn't know if he traveled back in time, or the sub came forward, but he knows it's going to be somewhat of an issue to show up in the harbor. On top of that possible trouble, there's a vampire on the sub.

It's definitely goofy, it made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times and I snickered once in a while. It's pretty self aware, the Captain talks to the audience from the start, and while the jokes are not all top raters there are a lot of them. It's a cornucopia of genre movie references, so keep an eye, and and ear, open. The actors, the film was made in Seattle, are mostly OK, the characters are pretty broad so they have a lot of wiggle room in their roles. I wasn't sold from the start but the general goofiness won me over and I had a good laugh. Sadly it's not out on DVD, I might buy a copy if it was cheap enough.

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.