PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 608

Monstrosity 1963 Four people worked on the script, Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, Dean Dillman Jr and an uncredited Jack Pollexfen, the director was Joseph V Mascelli and and uncredited Jack Pollexfen. It's too bad they didn't work a bit harder. The film is also known as The Atomic Brain. That's the title I saw it under when it ran as the film in an episode of MST3K. It's also in one of those 50 movie packs from Mill Creek. Here's a handy checklist of the many multi movie packs from Mill Creek.

A wicked old woman has devoted her fortune to keeping herself alive. She's got a mad scientist in the basement of her big old mansion. That's him in the baggy clothes. He's played by Frank Gerstle and he had a long career in films and TV. He's got over 200 credits on the IMDb. The other man is the old lady's dogsbody, he's played by Frank Fowler and he only has 5 credits on the IMDb. The scientist calls him a gigolo and he does figure to come out quite well when the old lady gets her young new body. The wicked rich bitch sets him straight, what young woman wants an old man for a lover, he's none to happy. The old lady is played by Marjorie Eaton, she appeared in over 50 TV shows and films in a career that started in 1946 and ended in 1984, she died the following year at 85 years old. In one of her last roles she played an Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. Her film listing on the IMDb is quite interesting.

The poor undressed lady is a corpse the mad scientist had robbed from a grave, he's put the brain of an animal into her head and reanimated her. He's using atomic power, enough to blow the whole mansion to bits. In fact, he's rigged the machine to blow if they get caught. That will cover up the evidence.

That's another of his experiments in brain transfers. He's got a slave that kills there. The grave robbing is attracting the attention of the local news and the bodies aren't holding up too well after the transfers. The mad scientist wants to use live women as hosts for the old woman's brain. The old lady orders three foreign servants and takes her pick from the women that arrive. It soon becomes apparent that they are in danger so the women try escaping.

One woman is caught and has the brain of a cat put into her head. The scientist is happy with the transfer and plans to do the old lady next. Before that happens one bad thing after another happens and nearly everyone dies.

It's got an interesting plot at the core of the movie but the movie is strictly low budget and amateurish. It plods along at the best of times, the dialog is poor on top of that. People vote harshly on the IMDb, 30.4% of the votes are a 1 and 39.8% of the votes are a 2 or 3. It's a good reminder to keep an eye on the rich, they are some fuckin' ugly and untrustworthy people. You can see if you like it in the link in the title above.

Convict 762 1997 Screenplay by J Reifel, directed by Luca Bercovici. I had a disc with four movies on it and thought I only had watched two of them. I put this on and it seemed familiar. My Watched Movie List says I had seen it, back in 2003, and my comment was one word, Crap. I skimmed through it to see what it was about. A spaceship gets in trouble and has to land as a space prison to refuel. A short time before they arrive the prisoners had all killed themselves. Only Billy Drago and Frank Zagarino are alive. The captain and the crew, all women, make one mistake after another and they don't survive to well. It's not very good but I knew that going in. I went through it pretty quickly, speeding it up after watching the first third. I hope I don't forget and watch it again someday.

Cypher 2002 Written by Brian King and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Vincenzo is the director of Cube. Lot's of people liked it but I wasn't that keen on it. This was a good bit better. It's an odd story, sort of future is now with giant corps spying on one another. Jeremy Northam gets hired to be a spy at one corp, he's sent to infiltrate another corp and gets on there. Lucy Liu turns up as another spy of sorts, she helps him and leads him down one rabbit hole after another. It gets pretty complicated but you can mostly follow along. There's one double cross after another and plenty of danger. The corps kill agents when they don't have a use for them anymore. Or do they, who knows, not much is really explained. There's a fairly decent ending and some of the baddies get blown up, so that was OK. It's slightly above average for me. I'll keep the disc and might watch it again someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 607

Interplanetary 2008 Another evil corp with genetic research on it's evil mind plot. This time some saps have been sent to Mars, there they fall afoul of the corp's secret genetic lab which has produced some sort of monster. Everyone's dead there. It's a comedy by Chance Shirley, while it's better than average for one of these evil corp films, it's still only about average as a film. There were some good jokes in the lot of so-so jokes. It's pretty gory and there are some bare breasts. Sets, props and effects are fair to good and the monster doesn't look that bad. I wouldn't need to see it again. Another freebee from Amazon Prime, same as the film below.

Mission Stardust 1967 A 1967 Italian adaptation of the first Perry Rodan novel. I read it's not much like the book. It's directed by Primo Zeglio who co-wrote the screenplay with some other guys. The story has Rodan's new spaceship the Stardust run into some aliens on the moon. The aliens have superior tech but can't do much for one of their scientists. He's dying. He needs some Earthman help, an Earth doc figures out the problem and aims them at another Earth doctor who has a new cure. They have an adventure getting that done. There's a fairly decent alien spaceship and some other nice models but the effects let them down a bit. The props, sets and costumes are a bit better than you might expect. I liked it better than a lot of the Italian genre films I've seen but I wouldn't need to see it again. You can test drive it at the link in the title above. Maybe you'll get better mileage.

Science Fiction Sunday 605

Deep Freeze 2002 Story by Robert Boris, screenplay by Robert Boris, Dennis A Pratt and Matthew Jason Walsh, directed by John Carl Buechler. John Carl's mostly been an effects guy, his first job as a director is a segment of the 1984 film The Dungeon Master, he followed that with Troll two years later.

Deep Freeze is another scummy company doing something they shouldn't, this time it's drilling through the ice in the Antarctic to the ocean floor. They're looking for oil but they find giant trilobites that are still alive. A bunch of newly hatched college students come to work for a 6 month stretch only to find that one of the giant trilobites has started slaughtering the crew. On top of that they find out that the drilling has caused geological problems and the company plans to blow the place up before the UN shuts the place down. They plan to get the trilobite out of there first but they aren't too worried about the staff. None of that goes to plan and one by one the people get picked off. It's pretty substandard stuff and not one I'd need to watch again.

Xenophobia 2019 Here's another substandard one that lowers the bar even more. A alien abduction support group meet only to find the aliens have already taken over. Not going to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 601

Robowar 1988 Another poor effort from the fine folks of Italy. Bruno Mattei used a pseudonym, Vincent Dawn, to try to trick audiences into believing they might be seeing an American made film. They aren't fooling anyone with half a brain. Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso wrote the screenplay using their real names, pointing out that no one really gives a fuck who writes this shit. I watched it on Amazon Prime and put a link to the movie on YouTube in the title above. Not the greatest upload but watchable. Not that I'm recommending that.

A special cyborg killer goes nuts on a mission to kill some guerillas on a jungle island. That's the band of soldiers, in the picture above, who are sent to stop the cyborg. The woman was someone they rescued along the way to their dooms. The guy, third from left, is the developer of the cyborg and he's a real dirt bag. He doesn't tell anyone anything until it's too late and one by one they get picked off. I couldn't hardly wait to see him get his.

It's all walking through the jungle, shouting cliches at each other, with occasional fire fights. It's dull and I don't need to see it again. At least I get to complain about it, maybe save someone from buying the Severin Blu-ray. My good deed for the day.

Transmophers 2007 Another Amazon Prime film that shares the cyborg battlebot idea with Robowars. I decided to watch it, even though it's from the dreaded film production house The Asylum. Occasionally it's good to be reminded how poor they are at making films. Leigh Scott is the writer and director. He's written a story about a robot invasion of the Earth, something that happened in the past, the remaining humans have hidden themselves underground and fight back as they can. The movie depicts the battle to take back the surface.

This movie shares something else with the previous film. It's script is also a bag full of cliches. Both films have nothing original going on in them. The acting is all over the place, a couple of people have slightly more skill than the rest and it stands out. It's even duller that Robowar, nothing much happens for nearly the first half the 86 min movie, I was forced to flick through the dull scenes with the 10 second jump button to stave off boredom. Not surprising, movies from The Asylum have a lot of talky scenes, it's cheaper than action and they have little money. Occasionally they shot scenes of people walking and talking in a corridor. That still doesn't make the films more interesting. Another one I wouldn't need to see again.

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. 

Science Fiction Sunday 593

Sheborg 2016 is an Australian goopfest about an alien invasion. It's from Amazon Prime where for some reason they think it came out in 2018. They are often wrong about the date a movie was released because they are twats. I got the poster from the IMDb, they've recently pissed me off by stopping right click downloads of their images. Now you have to tell it you want to do a screen capture and crop the image out of the background and then download it. Another bunch of cocks. Daniel Armstrong is the writer and director and he calls the film Neo-pulp. The Wikipedia has this quote from him. "Neo-pulp lovingly embraces the most extreme, cliche, and supercilious elements of pop culture and pulp literature and puts them in a human context. SHEBORG MASSACRE itself is a 50s teen rebel flick set in a B grade sci-fi world from the early 80s, with horror style violence. It’s not a spoof, it’s not horror, it’s not action, it’s not sci-fi, it’s not drama. It’s all of these things. It’s neo-pulp."

Pretentious bullshit aside the film delivers a lot of goopy mess and plenty of yelling and running about. The fights are fair to poor and the CGI is low budget weak. The two main characters continuously get covered in blood. It's fun but not that great. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Even worse was Fatal Conflict, a 2000 cliche filled space adventure that doesn't have a pretentious description. It's just Kari Wuhrer battling some scummy criminals on a space ship.  There's a lot of running through corridors and a good number of fights. It's still not that good. Some of the dialog is laughable and the rest dull. Hardly worth the time for me to look at it, lucky for me I can skip ahead 10 seconds a click on the Amazon player. Not going to watch it again, that's for sure.

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.

Science Fiction Sunday 587

Deep Evil is a 2004 SF movie about a secret lab that cloned an alien. It's gotten out and killed nearly everyone. A black ops team is called in to find the experiment but it's way too late for that, so they nuke the base. The only survivor is picked up by the Army and they've never heard of him or the Colonel that sent them on the mission. Almost all the story is told in flashback. It could end badly for humans but we'll never know.

It's a pretty much a by the cliche movie, egotistical scientists, insane military men, mutating monster, secret lab, plus all the stupid mistakes the characters make. Mind you in the current state of things it sure seems some of the locals wouldn't act any smarter than the morons in the movie. I wouldn't need to see this one again, or at all really.

Sharktopus VS Whalewolf is a 2015 big monster comedy that's sequel to Sharktopus and Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda. I saw the first of the series last June but not the second. The second and third have different casts. Casper Van Dien is a drunken boat captain in the Dominican Republic. He has an encounter with the Sharktopus while his boat is carrying a funeral party. The Sharktopus attacks and a woman is lost overboard. The police throw him into jail. Catherine Oxenberg is a German mad scientist that's slicing human and animal genes in her aging research. She makes a whale wolf out of a Dominican baseball player who was worried about his getting old. He won't have to worry much longer, especially after he's turned into a big creature.

There's plenty of critter attacks and the body count is high. The gore is mostly CGI and pretty low rent. The physical gore is a bit of a step up. The police are helpless, the Inspector is Casper's old girlfriend. The local voodoo priest has his hooks into Casper and he wants a piece of the Sharktopus in payment. His juju won't save his ass in the end. It's a sloppy film with little money but there were a few laugh out loud moments for me. They weren't all reactions to jokes. Still, it's deliberately taking the piss out of itself, that made it all a bit better. I still didn't think it was even average. It's below 4 on the IMDb for a good reason. I wouldn't need to see it again and it's certainly not going to end up on my shelves unless they pack it in a cheap multi pack. Even then, I'd only buy it on clearance.

Science Fiction Sunday 586

Encounter is a 2019 alien encounter movie written and directed by Paul Salamoff. He's mostly an effects guy, this is the second film he directed. Luke Hemsworth is a guy who's crippled in an auto accident that killed his daugher. He's in a wheelchair and his wife left him. Some pals of his are out in the woods when a meteor lands.

They bring the strange pod back to the house and Luke gets to babysit overnight. The pod produces a tentacle and sticks it to the back of Luke's neck. It communicates in a way, with images, impressions and feelings. While it's connected to him, it gives him the power to walk. Everyone acts like he's taken over by the alien and there's a lot of noise. Things get worse, the FBI show up, they want the pod. One of Luke's pals calls his old biology teacher, played by Tom Atkins, and the man studies the pod. Nice seeing Tom, he's always been a favorite of mine. Once all these characters are grouped together it gets pretty shitty for the alien. There's a goofy bit at the end that made me less interested in seeing the movie again. I wouldn't need to buy one. It was on Amazon Prime, so at least I'm getting something out of my membership. I haven't ordered much of late and the free 2 day shipping has been anything but.

Strange Wilderness is a 2008 Bigfoot movie with Steve Zahn and a bunch of Adam Sandler's pals. I noticed it on AP and thought I might have a DVD of it, I did so I watched it. Bigfoot isn't totally SF but it's close enough for me. I've certainly massed a good number of Bigfoot films int he last 2-3 years. Not all of them have been that good. It's directed by Fred Wolf, he co-wrote the script with Peter Gaulke. Not a big fan of Fred's writing, films like Black Sheep, Dirty Work, Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts: Child Star are kind of poor to me. He did better writing on Without A Paddle and this movie. This is his first direction job, followed by The House Bunny the same year, the rest of his work seems to be of little interest to me.

Steve Zahn is trying to make a nature show with little talent or budget. His late father started the show but Steve's run it into the ground. He's going to get cancelled when some guy drops Bigfoot into his lap. Steve only needs to get a $1000 for the map, he scrapes it together only to lose it before they get to the map guy. Because Steve was 3 days late getting to the map guy, it gets sold to a rival wildlife show. Still, bad luck for the guy with the map puts Steve on the road to South America with the photo of the map.

If setbacks were punches to the face, Steve would have a cauliflower face way before they get to SA. Steve and his teams lack of knowledge and intelligence only works in favor of me laughing as they get banged up. They lose the map, they lose their guide, the lose the RV, they lose their equipment, they get a new guide, they find some equipment, they even find the Bigfoot. And cock it all up. Lucky for them, their next idea, sharks biting people, is a big hit.

It was fun enough, I laughed several times, but there were still more shitty jokes than I'd like to see. I'll keep the DVD, Bigfoot after all, and I'd watch it again.