PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 921

Slayer 2006  Written and directed by Kevin VanHook. TV movie that aired on the SciFi Channel.

Casper Van Dien is a soldier, he's just barely survived an encounter with some day walking vampires in South America. The Army downplays the vamps but 6 months later he's back in the jungle looking for those vampires. He's got an additional cliche to deal with, one of many, in that his wife is also down in SA in the same jungle. Linda Carter is his Colonel and his ex's godmother.

In the jungle Casper's best pal Grieves is turned. He starts leading the vampires with his military knowledge. There's some running around the jungle and plenty of vampire fighting. Since it's TV there's not a lot of gore and the fights are just so-so.

The whole movie is way below average. Weak plot, dialog and production. It doesn't get a 3.5 on the IMDb because everyone likes it. Lucky for me one of the other guys got it from Netflix DVD. I hear that service is being phased out next year. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

The Intrigue 1916 Written by Julia Crawford Ivers and directed by Frank Lloyd. The film was photographed by James Van Trees, Julia Crawford Ivers son. The inclusion of a death ray weapon makes this silent film science fiction in some people's eyes. There's so little death ray it hardly counts.

An American inventor creates a ray gun but the US military turns him down when he offers to sell it to them. He heads for Europe and Baron Rogniat offers to buy the weapon. The Baron intends to kill the inventor but he's saved by Countess Sonia.

It's kind of interesting as a spy story with a bit of romance but there's no other SF elements, other than the ray gun, and that doesn't really get used much. You can see it on YouTube, click link above. It's got a bit of historical value in the end.

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Alien Private Eye 1989 Written and directed by Vik Rubenfeld, he was also the casting director and film editor. It's his only movie, the IMDb lists him as one of the creators of the TV show Early Edition, he's credited with writing one episode. I never watched that show more than a handful of times, so it's doubtful that I saw his episode. Up until right now the movie has only been available on VHS. You can see a poor copy on YouTube, see link above. The movie looks much better on the Severin Blu-ray.

The story revolves around the possession of a special disc that fell to Earth. A crook figured out it was a drug dispenser and he's been selling the highly addictive product in LA. An alien private eye is on Earth, he helps a woman being mistreated by some thugs and winds up in the middle of a mess. She's got one half the disc and the crooks have the other half.

There's plenty of chasing about with a few punch up and gun fights. Sadly they're so ludicrously staged. The car chase and subsequent crashes? Embarrassing. The whole movie is like that. Clumsy script and inept cast. Makes a combo for laughter. Sadly Vik's intended humor isn't cutting it. All in all a good film to have seen but one that wasn't as enjoyable as one might have hoped. Not going on my To Buy List.

Tokyo 10+01 2003 Written and directed by Higuchinsky. Another one that I won't be adding to my To Buy List. It's a comical sort of parody that people doing IMDb reviews think is of Battle Royale but it seems more like it's parodying The Running Man. The filmmakers make references to BR in the beginning of the film but that soon falls by the wayside as the contestants start running about. Was The Running Man released to long ago for the commenters to know about. Could be but who knows. Hopefully, I'll have forgotten about the film be tomorrow.

Eleven criminals are drugged and fitted with a poison timer bracelet. They wake up in a warehouse in a shitty part of town. They have 11 hours to get to the Baron's mansion. Then they'll be safe, they'll win a cash prize, get their record wiped clean and the poison dispensing tracker bracelet will be deactivated. A lot to play for.

Most of the contestants are pretty annoying and I didn't care much for them. In fact it was nice to see them get picked off one by one or in a small group. There's plenty of running about and yelling but not much else going on of interest. The poor DVD mastering didn't help either. Ultimately it was disappointing and not one I need to see again.

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Fish Story 2009 Based on the novel by Kotaro Isaka, screenplay by Tamio Hayashi, directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura.

As the movie opens a giant comet is due to crash into the Earth. A guy in a record store tells a couple of other men that a song on an obscure record is going to save the world. The rest of the movie is about that band and the song. It's a long dense story told in a non-linear way. I enjoyed it but haven't decided if I want to buy the movie or not. I'm not sure if I want to watch it again.

Commando Ninja 2018 Written and directed by Benjamin Combes. He's a pretty talented Frenchman, besides the writing and directing he did the cinematography, editing and art direction. He produced a fine looking film on a budget of €31,953 and that includes a lot of nice CGI and practical sets and props. The film was fan funded using Kickstarter and filmed over a couple of years.

It's an amazing flight of fantasy that parodies action films of the 80s. It delivers plenty of action, gore and gags. There's one surprise after another. I had a blast and think it's just the sort of thing the right person would like. You can see it for free on YouTube. There's a Blu-ray and I'm putting it on my Wishlist. I'll want to watch this again.

The Midnight Horror Collection - Flesh Eating Zombies

The Midnight Horror Collection - Flesh Eating Zombies has 4 movies on a single layer double sided disc. That's two low rez movies per side, the bit rate is low, about 2.5MB on average, the images look really poor. There's not much good to say about most of the movies either. You can find it on Amazon for 8 bucks and it's not worth it. I paid about 6 bucks for it and feel robbed.

Last Of The Living 2009 Written and directed by Logan McMillan.

I saw this back in 2010 but didn't remember that when I picked up this used 4 pack recently. The main guy looked familiar and sure enough the IMDb said I'd seen it before. It was a selection for Friday Night Movies, the link to the post is in the title, I still feel about the same as I did then. I might watch it again someday but the likelihood is low. 

Grave Mistake 2008 Written by Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina, directed by Chris LaMartina.

A poor looking zombie movie. The zombies are created by toxic waste and the guy who did the dumping is the step father of a young boy he likes to punch around. The kid has a couple of friends at the local gas station, he hangs out with the goofy mechanic and the long haired owner. They all team up when the town's citizens turn to flesh eating monsters. They try to survive but one by one they get picked off. The usual sort of fair but done poorly.

I'm not sure if they intentionally desaturated the color or it was just poor equipment and lighting. No matter, it sucks to look at. The film is really grainy on top of that. It just makes the below average script and the poor acting harder to see. It's made in Baltimore and the film makers say that it was made for about a grand. More money might help the look of the film but not so much the story. I have seen one other feature directed by Chris, the 2017 Call Girl Of Cthulhu, it wasn't very good. I wouldn't need to see either again.

Awaken The Dead 2007 Written and directed by Jeff Brookshire.

Another low budget film that looks awful. Desaturated color and dense grainy image equal a poor viewing experience. The script is a hodgepodge of goofy choices and coincidences. An ex-assassin is now a pacifist priest, a woman is an ex prostitute and daughter of the man who's caused all the zombies to appear in a town. He's invented a formula that can be sprayed on a town by a small plane. It turns everyone into flesh eating zombies. The father is the guy who trained the priest to be an assassin in some sort of black ops program. That secret black ops element is something I've gotten really tired of in the last few years. None of the actors are good enough to make anything much of the script. Not worth seeing, should be avoided in the future. Hopefully, I'll remember to look these up on my blog in the future. So easy to forget the easily forgettable.

I Am Omega 2007 Based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, screenplay by Geoff Meed, directed by Griff Furst. Griff is the son of Stephen Furst. Griff has acted in a lot of productions and directed 17 films, most of them for TV. I've only seen Lake Placid 3 and now this one. The film is produced by The Asylum. Never a sign of quality.

The only thing positive I can say about this movie is that it stars Mark Dacascos. He's been in some good films in his 30 year career, so sad to see he worked for The Asylum. Still, paycheck. The Asylum made their name by making low budget films that had a similarity to upcoming big studio films, releasing them months before the studio film comes out. They make money by not spending anything on their films. The Sharknado series is one of their more well known properties. One of my favorites of Mark's films is the 1997 action film Drive.

In this movie Mark is hold up in his compound trying to survive the zombie plague. He's forced to help save a woman and get her to scientists who are trying to create a cure, she's got some sort of antibody. The guys who enlisted Mark's aid are insane liars, they want to maintain the status quo so they can keep on killing people. They need killing and the film delivers.

Despite that, it's not a very good film, nearly any of the previous versions is more entertaining. I particularly like the 1964 Vincent Price film The Last Man On Earth quite a bit. I've seen that 4 or 5 times so far and really like the grimness of it. I will watch it again someday, I can't say the same about Mark's film, much as I like Mark. I'd rather watch him again in something good like Brotherhood Of The Wolf, Cradle To Grave, or John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum.

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Crypt Of The Vampire 1964 I thought I hadn't seen this movie before but it turned out I had. Sadly, it was only a short time ago. Here's the post from November 26 2018. I'd seen the movie under the title Terror In The Crypt on a Retromedia DVD. The version we watched was the new Severin Blu-ray box set of Vincent Price films. I haven't pulled out the Retromedia DVD to see what it looks like but I'm sure the Blu-ray is head and shoulders above.

Prospect 2018 Written and directed by Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell.

Here's a newer SF that's fairly decent. It's about a teen girl called Cee and her father Damon. They are miners of a sort. The gems they want from the forest moon of a planet are found near the surface in a gooey pod. They need careful extraction, do the wrong thing and the gem is destroyed. Damon is good at this but Cee isn't trained. Their landing pod is damaged in the landing and they aren't where they were supposed to be. They were supposed to connect up with some mercenaries who have discovered a mother lode called the Queen's Lair. There's lots of money there but the mercenaries don't know the trick of gem mining.

On the trek to meet the mercs Damon is approached by two strangers while Cee is a little ways away. She takes a chance attacking but she only wounds the leader, a guy a called Ezra, in the arm. The other stranger shoots Damon at the same time Damon shoots him. Cee runs away and Ezra puts Damon out of his wounded misery. Cee and Ezra meet up a bit later and after Cee shots him they agree to work together. They ask for help from some locals, that goes bad and so does their encounter with the mercenaries. It's touch and go for them.

I've been watching a lot of newer SF off Amazon Prime, and often, it's not so good. Dull is usually what's going on. This was a step up from the usual fare of a low budget SF picture like you'd find on the SYFY channel. A lot of them are well below average for me. Prospect has good characters and decent dialog, nice scenery, and fairly good spaceships. I might not need to buy a copy but I enjoyed watching it much more than most modern SF films.

Science Fiction Sunday 638

No Such Thing 2002 Written and directed by Hal Hartley. I've only see his 1994 film Amateur, I can't remember anything about it.

Robert John Burke is an immortal monster who's lived since before there were humans. Some might know Robert from Dust Devil, where he played the Dust Devil. Sarah Polley plays a reporter sent to Iceland to investigate the disappearance of a team that disappeared. Her fiancé was part of the crew sent to investigate a monster who lives on as island.

The plane Sarah was on goes down in the sea, she's the only survivor, she's badly hurt. She's stuck in Iceland for a long while. Julie Christie is the doctor that helps her recover and later helps her to go to a village in Iceland near to where the monster lives.

After arriving in the village the locals get Sarah drunk. Next morning they leave her passed out and naked body on the monster's front door step. He's a drunken, bored immortal and he wants her to kill him. Sarah shoots him with a 45 automatic but bullets aren't going to do the trick. The monster just heals up. He tells her that there is one scientist who can kill him. They spend the rest of the movie trying to get together with the scientist.

I liked the monster, I liked parts of the movie, I just didn't care for the whole thing. Why do the whole plane crashing, injury and recovery thing? I probably didn't care that much for Amateur and that gave me leave to ignore Hal's films in the past. Going to continue that in the future. My Watched Movie List says "interesting" in the film's comment section. That could mean anything 21 years ago.

The Last Sentinel 2007 Written and directed by Jesse V Johnson.

It's in the future and cyborg policemen have taken over the world, they are hunting down the humans. Don Wilson is an enhanced human soldier who's got an AI assistant. He joins up with Katee Sackhoff in a fight to the death. There's plenty of scenes filled with gun shooting, yelling, and stuff blowing up. There's a fair number of flashbacks to the soldier life he had. It was nice to see Keith David as his colonel and Bokeem Woodbine as his soldier pal. Nice work from the cast, fair script, fair production values. Nothing overly special about it in the end.

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Deep In The Valley 2009 Written and directed by Christian Forte, the son of pop singer and teen icon Fabian.

Chris Pratt is a porn hound who works in a liquor store, Brendan Hines is his roommate. Brendan is about to marry his ball breaking fiancée and he's decided to quit his job at her dad's company. She says no, that's final. Later Chris and Brendan are sitting around the house having a beer when a giant package is delivered. It's a vintage porno booth from famous porn producer DJ, it was a prize in a radio call in show and Chris won.

The pair get in and are transferred to the porn version of their world, all the women they see are porn actresses from our world playing the characters they played in their movies. Chris knows all their names. They meet DJ and he tells them they are on a quest and the quest must be completed before they can leave.

The pair have encounter after encounter with busty young ladies but we never see anything. No nudity here. A romantic subplot develops between Brendan and one of the porn stars. Chris finds out who his daddy is and daddy's rich. Things work out well enough for both guys.

It's not a great film but I had a few laughs. I wouldn't need to see it again. I'd buy the DVD if it was at the Dollar Tree for a buck. As it is I spent a minute bit of my Amazon Prime annual fee to watch it, same with the following.

Alien Invasion 2018 Written and directed by Marc Carreté. He's from Barcelona, the film was made there but set in the Rocky Mountains. The original title is After The Lethargy, some reviews use that title. It's AI on the IMDb.

That lady on the DVD box is a journalist who wants to investigate a strange abandoned instillation in the woods by the Rock Mountains. The woods no one has been allowed into for 40 years. Supposedly there's dangerous bears there but it soon becomes apparent to our reporter that there's something else going on here.

If you guessed aliens, nil poi, it's mentioned in the title, and there's that picture on the DVD. The journalist meets up with a ranger, he's going to guide her through the woods. Right off they run into bears but manage to hide in the old abandoned building. One bad thing after another happens to the journalist who should have listened to her mother and stayed home.

It's somewhat familiar and predictable and not really better than average. There's fair CGI for the alien and the location is nice. The acting is alright, other than the occasional off accent. I wouldn't need to bother with this one again but it was watchable.

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.

Science Fiction Sunday 617

Toomorrow 1970 Written and directed by Val Guest. Val wrote and directed a lot of TV and feature films, his next film after this was the fan favorite When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth.Producer Harry Saltzman had a three picture deal with Don Kirshner and they wound up loathing each other during the production. The write up in the Wikipedia details the problems and why the film was shelved for 40 years. I read online that there was a poor quality DVD out but I watched a copy off of YouTube. The DVD came out after Kirshner died in 2011.

It's a science fiction musical with Olivia Newton-John, she's in a band with the other three guys in the pictures above. According to the IMDb Trivia page Olivia was so "disenchanted with filmmaking that it took a lot of coaxing to get her to agree to star in Grease (1978)." Val didn't have that good a time either, he never got paid, even after he sued the production company. In a way it's not surprising, the film biz is cut throat and there are a lot of scumbags out there.

Benny Thomas, Vic Cooper and Karl Chambers play the guys in the band Toomorrow. Vic has invented a new sort of music synthesizer. Roy Dotrice plays an alien who's been studying the Earth people for 3000 years and today his boss tells him that they've discovered at there's magical healing power in Toomorrow's music. It's all about Vic's invention, the Tonalizer, the aliens want it and the band, it's Roy's job to figure out how to make that work.

The band plays several times in the film and I can't say I much liked the pop music, not because it's awful, it's just bland melody. There's plenty of running about as the band members try to get through their day at college. Roy pops up and offers a place to practice, he lives in a big old mansion and the band takes him up on the offer. Now Roy has to get them on the space ship. Some of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but I don't suppose anyone really cared. I didn't but I still don't think it's anything other than about average. Nothing notable about it really. I got a laugh or two and I might watch it again someday.

Mutant Swinger From Mars 20o9 Written and directed by Michael Kallio. It's another one of those "lost 50s science fiction films" that people make these days. Martians have come to Earth for women. One of them impersonates a suave guy who picks up chicks 4 at a time. It's sort of like the 50s but not quite. There are way too many in jokes. It gets tedious. It was on AP and I don't think I'd watch it again anytime.

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.