PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Multi Feature - Ghost House Underground

Multi Feature is another 4 pack of horror movies under the Ghost House Underground banner. I had forgotten that it was Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert behind those movies. For some reason I can't find a copy of the cover on the internet. I had to scan it.

I couldn't find a copy of the DVD on Amazon or eBay. I got this one from a recent trip to Half Price Books. I hit their clearance a good number of times a week. There's usually something for the consumer with dubious taste. One of the nice things about this set is the films are each on their own side of a two sided disc. I'd prefer to have them on a single disc but this is fine. At least they aren't all on one disc.

The Offspring is a 2009 film that was based on a novel by Jack Ketchum. In fact, Jack wrote the screenplay which Andrew van den Houten directed. The premise is some lighthouse keeper's children went feral. This was over 100 years ago and now the descendants are nomadic cannibals. They're back in the area they went through some years before. The local cops have a cannibal murder and they go ask Art Hindle for some advice. It's a slaughter fest until the end of the movie. Nearly everyone dies. Not as bad as some of the other movies on the disc, it's still barely a 4 for me.

Seventh Moon is shakycamed so close to the action that it's often out of focus and blurry. This can't be a choice of the film  makers, can it? Yes, it's some artsy fartsy bullshit that I for one could certainly do without, especially since it goes on through the whole movie. It's also dark much of the time. Really I don't know that they didn't just shake some sticks in a bush, I can't tell if there's anyone there or not. Amy Smart is in the film but there's nothing special about that. It's got a surprisingly high 4.7, I gave it a 1. Not worth a look.

The Children is a 2008 British film about some diseased children that kill many of their parents. The parents are useless and easily slaughtered. They had no defense against - children. It's also annoyingly filmed, there are so many scenes where they tease you then don't deliver anything. I wanted to sic some of those children on the film makers. Really, the only thing I liked about the movie was the snow. The English countryside is pretty when there's a blanket of snow. Most places are.

The Thaw is about the lack of snow. It's the only movie of this lot that I had seen before and it's much better than the other three. The thawing icecap uncovers some deadly shit and the bug that gets free does a really good job killing you. That's some horror show right there. There's plenty going on in the story and the scenery in British Columbia does well for the Yukon. I'll keep the set because of this one movie. It's good enough for another look down the line.

100 Million BC 2008

I noticed that 100 Million BC had Michael Gross in it and ordered it from Netflix. Turns out it's a film produced by The Asylum. It's about what happened during the Philadelphia Experiment. Some guys went back in time and got stranded. Later some more guys go back in time and rescue some of the original guys. Then some of those guys are eaten by a T-Rex who manages to get through the portal. If you have a portal through time, you should keep that shit shut, that's just some common sense. One thing you can learn from the movies? Time travel is dangerous. Sadly there isn't much joy for me here. The CGI dinos are so-so, nothing as good as on the poster. Pays for not doing my research, huh. It gets a well deserved 2.4 on the IMDb. No reason to watch it.

Friday Night Movies 697

Another Wolfcop is a 2017 sequel to the 2014 Wolfcop. It's the further adventures of a cop who's a werewolf. It's written and directed by Lowell Dean, who directed 13 Eerie and Wolfcop. I liked both enough to purchase them. Lowell has a new post apocalypse movie coming out. SuperGrid was shot in and around Regina Saskatchewan, and parts of the film are shot in a former Sears warehouse. It has some of the same actors that are in the Wolfcop movies.

Leo Fafard plays Wolfcop, Lou Garou when he's not all that hairy. The lady is Amy Matysio, she plays Sergeant Tina, she knows Lou is werewolf from the last movie. She's trying to cover for him and keep the rookies from finding out their Sergeant is also a werewolf. It's tough living a lie. Tina's been in a lot of TV shows and movies. She was in three episodes of Corner Gas, one of my favorite Canadian TV shows. Lou was in Corner Gas: The Movie, he played a werewolf in a fantasy scene.

That's Lou and Serena Miller, who plays Kat, and below is Yannick Bisson. Some might have seen Yannick's internationally acclaimed Canadian TV show Murdock Mysteries. I know I have. Here he gets to play the villain and swear, who wouldn't like that. Yannick's got a plan to release a horde of shape shifters on the world and he's picked Lou's town to fuck up. Lou's gonna fight back, and lucky for him, he's got some help from Sergeant Tina, Deputy Daisy, the late Willie Higgins and his sister Kat.

Lucky for the town's people, the villains prove to be easily killable. It made me laugh once in a while, it's got some gore, there's some action and goofy stuff going on. I could see buying this to watch again.

Beyond Re-Animator came out back in 2003 and it's the second sequel to Re-Animator. It's directed by Brian Yuzna and the script is by Xavier Berraondo and Jose Manuel Gomez.

Jeffrey Combs returns as Herbert West, the mad scientist in all his glory. At the start of the movie his glory is short lived as he's arrested and sent to prison. Thirteen years later the brother of one of Herbert's victims has grown up. He'd seen his sister die and did nothing to stop the infected man from killing her. He saw West in the police car and at the same time found a syringe of West's re-animation formula. Thirteen years later he's a doctor and he tracked West to the prison. His arrival will bring about the apocalypse to that institution. It's a good reminder to slow the fuck down on that obsessive kind of behavior.

It's been a while since I saw the movie, which for some reason is listed in my Watched Movies List as having first seen in 2015. I would have thought it was earlier than that.  That's when I gave it a 6 on the IMDb. I just downloaded the 2515 ratings I have given and sorted them by title. I had very few ratings at the beginning, I started in 2005 but it picks up after 2008. You can have a look at all the ratings I've given by downloading the Excel file below. No Excel, No Lookie.

Download IMDb Ratings 8-18-18

I still enjoyed the movie, and while it isn't quite as good as it's predecessors, I should pick up a copy.I didn't care that much for the young doctor who's obsessed with Herbert West. He's just an idiot, obsessed with all the wrong things. If only he'd have picked up a chair and bashed that infected guy, so many wouldn't have died.

Meatball Machine 2005

Meatball Machine is a Japanese live action tentacle movie. It's all gooey and disgusting so some should like it. The rest is all yakkin' and furtive looks with a side of body modification. Not my cup of tea and I found it less than interesting despite the constant barrage of gore. Some days I feel wanting to watch all the SF movies out there is a chore not a pleasure. Maybe I should stick to watching everything before the turn of the century. I'd certainly enjoy watching a lot of those movies over, not this one.

Science Fiction Sunday 502

I had some tedious fare to start the day. Raptor Island is about what you'd expect to find on the SciFi channel back in 2004. It's a made for TV movie so don't expect much by way of good CGI. Some Navy Seals are on a mission, the baddies gets away in a boat, the seals chase him to a tiny island with it's own smokin' volcano. From the title you can probably guess that this is where those raptors are and you'd be right. They're a low res menace that can stand up to the soldiers without much trouble. The humans find a Chinese plane, stuffed with broken caskets of radioactive material, that had crashed some time in the past. The Seals speculate that the radioactive material had seeped into the ground and made the raptors come alive somehow. Glad that sort of shit doesn't really happen. Now the critters are  chomping the humans. There's some gabbin' as the film makers try to shoe horn in some character development but the movie is mostly running through forests, climbing rocks and spelunking caves. There's a lot of gun fire but neither the baddies or the Seals can seem to hit much of anything. Most everyone gets picked off before the rescue helicopter gets there. Of course, it arrives just as the volcano starts blasting. Luckily, some of the raptors swim off into the sunset. Not so good, as you can imagine, and one I won't bother watching again.

The 9th Life Of Louis Drax is a 2016 thriller that's only SF element is the doctor and the boy's mental connection. And I'm stretching it. Louis is a kid who's supposed to be accident prone. His latest accident has put him in the hospital in a coma. His mental connection to the doctor, achieved through the EKG machine and the doctor's meditation, brings to light the real reason that Louis had a fall off a cliff. Once you get past that silly story element the rest of the story is just ferreting out an awful person. It's all rather dire, I didn't care much for it at all.

I did like War For The Planet Of The Apes. It was certainly more entertaining than today's first two choices. It came out in 2017 and it's pretty much one big battle. Caesar vs Woody Harrelson. The CGI apes and such have improved over the previous films and I liked them. In fact I'm rooting for the apes. I also like Steve Zahn as Bad Ape. I bought the Blu-rays of the original 5 films and plan to watch those at some point. I just haven't gotten to them yet. I enjoyed them when I saw them in the theater when they came out. I haven't seen them since the days of VHS.

Science Fiction Sunday 494

The Man From Earth is a 2007 film that was written by the late Jerome Bixby. It's directed by Richard Schenkman. Jerome wrote some good books and a several good TV programs in the past. He died in 1998. The last thing I saw by Richard was his abysmal Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies for The Asylum back in 2012. This movie is about a college professor who tells his friends and colleagues that he's a 14,000 year old caveman who used to be Christ. One of them dies and it turns out to be his son. I'm not as excited by the movie as most of the viewers. I see there's a sequel but I doubt that I'll bother.

Biohazard: The Alien Force is a 1994 film by Steve Latshaw, he directed and co-wrote the movie with Patrick Moran. A company has created a mutant that escapes. It likes killing and gets right on the job. We follow a guy with white pants and a reporter who's investigating the company. There's plenty of running around and sneaking about but none of it's all that good.

Dark Universe is a 1993 Steve Latshaw film. An astronaut returns to Earth and turns into a monster. There's plenty of running about in the Florida Everglades but not much else that was that entertaining.

The Visitor From Planet Omnicrom is a 2013 SF comedy by writer Bill Lynn and director Mike Donahue. It stars Inge Jaklyn who was in In Like Flint back in the 60s. She's Frieda, a retired lady who's been stuck in her house for the last 20 years. Her son is a loser. R Daniel Long is Yorkie, an alien who's been sent to earth to destroy our vegetation. He crashes his space bike in the alley behind Inge's house and he asks her if he can stay there while he fixes his bike. They become friends and Yorkie abandons his planet's plans to destroy Earth after having Frieda's Eggplant Parmesan. Then Frieda and Yorkie travel to Omnicrom and stir things up there. It was pretty much fun from beginning to end. Certainly it was more entertaining than all the other movies today.

Where Evil Lies 6 Movie Collection

Here's another multi film collection from Mill Creek Entertainment. Where Evil Lies has got 6 movies on 2 discs. That's a better average than most of the discs in MCE's library. Currently this set is $6.25 on Amazon, I picked on up for 3 bucks in the HPB clearance section. Here's what's on there.

Devour 2005 This is about a dangerous magical video game that could kill everyone on the planet. It could be the devil. It could have been more interesting but it wasn't.

Population 436 2006 Jeremy Sisto comes along to a town that has certain rules about the population. They want him to stay and he doesn't. It's a pretty creepy place, glad I'm not living there.

Candy Strippers 2006 It's an alien invasion in a hospital with all the nursing staff and doctors being taken over by alien parasites. It's up to some young people to fight back. Not too good, it scores a well deserved 3 on the IMDb. It could be lower. It could have been higher if they had more nudity and gore but it wouldn't help the story or much of anything else.

Incubus 2005 Tara Reid and some pals have accident on a lonely road. They wander through the woods until they find a facility. They break in and discover a couple of dead people in lab coats. They unlock the security cell of a nearly naked man, he's strapped to a chair. Turns out that nearly naked guy is a psycho killer who had been executed 6 years earlier. It's all running and screaming once he gets out. Oh, yeah, he's some sort of demon too. Poor saps, sad for them. Sad for me, it's another one that's below average. I kind of blasted through the last half pretty quickly.

Wind Chill 2007 Emily Blunt is a collage student returning to her home town, she gets a ride from a guy in one of her classes, he takes a short cut and they break down and meet some ghosts. Bad shit happened at their accident site in the 50s and it doesn't seem to want to leave. There's the most walking around in the woods I've seen in a while. Another candidate for the FF button.

The Cottage 2008 This is the best film in the batch. I'd seen it before and enjoyed it a second time. Andy Serkis and Steve Pemberton are involved in a kidnapping that goes wrong for them. Their pain is my gain. The more they get hurt the harder I giggle. It's well worth the cost of the DVD set.

Better than many of the multi movie packs that I pick up. I'll keep it, I keep most of the multi movie packs I buy, as I want to watch The Cottage again some day.

Science Fiction Sunday 492

Some stuff off of Amazon Prime today and yesterday. Most of it's pretty new, the fall out of SF going mainstream is plenty of money to make SF films, but hardly any of it's any good.

Alien: Reign Of Man 2017 Some spacemen land on a planet and wonder around with the idea they need to find a device and turn it on to save the Earth. It's mostly a few people wondering around in the desert or the woods. Nothing worth seeing once it was all done and then there was a cliff hanger ending. Fuck that!

Grey Agenda 2017 Another alien invasion movie, they seem to be so popular with the film makers, you can't seem to swing a space rat with out hitting a new production. This time the greys are secretly on Earth having made a deal with the US gov to mine metals they need. Someone finds out and they tell the story in the most tedious and awful way.

Close Encounters Of The Alien Kind : Infestation From Mars 2004 Not so much an alien invasion, more a monster from space got loose. A secret project to collect samples from Mars goes wrong on the return trip. It lands in Sandusky, Ohio and turns a woman into a big muscular killing machine. It's all pretty much amateur hour and it just drags on at times but it was a bit better than the first two. Still couldn't recommend it to anyone.

Invasion Earth 2016 Here's another alien invasion movie set in a secluded location with a few random strangers. It's a British film that was probably filmed in Wales. The setting is a drug rehab program. Everyone's a character and we spend way so much time with each that there's hardly any time for the aliens. Not more than a 2 from me. The other's today are all 1s for me.

Abelar: Tales Of The Ancient Empire 2010 Here's another Kevin Sorbo film set in a Hercules like setting. It's not as good as that, not by a long shot.

Science Fiction Sunday 491

Here's a four pack of SF films from Echo Bridge. It's got four films on one disc, two to a side.

The Code Conspiracy is a 2001 film from The Asylum. It's written, directed and produced by Hank Whetstone. It was his only movie and I'm thinking that it was picked up for distribution by The Asylum. The movie is about a special code that David Warner pulled out of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It proves, scientifically, that God exists and the code can also predict the future. Some agents from Mossad are after David and so are thugs from a secret government organization. It's one long winded yak fest with some chasing and the occasional killing. It's pretty dull which makes me wonder why it's got a 7.1 on the IMDb. OH, here's why.

Looks like the movie has some fans, the reviews that give it a 10 extol the greatness of it's story and the religious content. Most of those reviews are by users that signed up to the IMDb, voted, and never reviewed anything else. I gave it a 1. It's just not worth the bother.

The second movie on the first side is Storm Troopers. It's a 1998 Jim Wynorski movie about a cyborg cop gone nuts. He escapes and the secret military project sends mercenaries after it. They don't do a good job catching the cyborg, most of the soldiers get killed by the cyborg. Some get killed by a woman who's just murdered her abusive cop husband. Her house is where the cyborg has his last stand against the mercs. Mostly it's yak, chase and shoot. There are a good number of explosions but that doesn't make the basic story any better. It doesn't get a 3.3 on the IMDb for no reason.

The Sender is a 1998 movie about a little girl with magical powers, she's in contact with some sort of alien being. Michael Madsen is her dad. When the government kidnaps his daughter Michael team up with the silver lame clad alien lady to go after her. More yakkin' and chasin' as the government goes after Michael. The action scenes are better than the ones on the other movies. They even launch a mobile home into the air in an unlikely crash with a truck filled with hay. Not a bad effort, just not quite believable. It's the best movie on the disc but it still only gets a 4 from me, and that's being generous because of the other fun actors in the cast, Robert Vaughn, R Lee Emery and Rance Howard.

The Invader is a 1997 SF film with Sean Young and Daniel Baldwin. Ben Cross is an alien who is chased by other aliens. Ben's the last of his race, He lands on Earth and knocks up Sean Young up with a special kiss. In three days she's going to have his baby. Another alien is on Earth, chasing after Ben. There's a lot of walking in the woods too. It's another movie that's struggles to get to average. I gave it a 4, it's better than a 3, but not by much.

All in all another disappointing pile of movies. I won't keep this, none of these is worth looking at again, glad I only paid a couple of bucks for the set.

Science Fiction Sunday 490

I couldn't sleep anymore so I got up real early and started watching crappy SF movies on Amazon Prime. The first two were from there and the other three are Netflix discs that arrived on Saturday.

Destination: Outer Space is a 2010 Christopher R Mihm film. He makes 50s style low budget films and in the last dozen years has achieved a bit of a following. I don't care much for his films and this isn't one I could recommend to anyone who wants a good movie to watch. It's not as interesting as that poster and the poster sucks.

First Man On Mars is another embarrassing SF film. Ludicrous script and characters didn't make me laugh. Even a couple of ladies in bikinis shooting couldn't help this film. It came out in 2016 and there isn't anything that I can recommend here either. Like the previous film, it's just a dull thing that should be ignored.

Bokeh is a 2017 Icelandic film about a couple that might be the last people on earth. They wake up in their Reykjavik hotel and no one is about. They go into the city and no one is about. In the country they find a guy but he dies soon after they meet. The whole movie is about the two of them falling apart and that was sure uninteresting. It looks nice and the scenery in Iceland was occasionally nice to look at. Sadly not a reason to watch the movie.

Epoch is a 2001 movie that's about the best of the lot today and it's still below average. David Keith is a science guy who gets taken to a weird thing that's appeared in Bhutan. They open the cone and inside get a message that leads them to think that the cone is a device for terriforming the planet. It's about to start up and the Chinese come calling with nukes to blow it up. David has to work hard to save the earth and his own ass. It's a TV movie with a TV movie budget and production values. I enjoyed it more than the others but don't need to see it again. There's a sequel but I'm not searching it out.

The Device is a 2014 that I won't need to see again. It's almost all bickering between two sisters and the husband of one of them. They find a strange metal ball in the woods and it cuts their hands. They keep it with them and eventually some poorly lit and hard to see aliens come over to listen to some yelling. Nothing much ever happens, just the three of them yakking. The aliens appear near enough to the end of the film many would have bailed by then and missed them. I was glad when it was over. There isn't anything like the image on the poster in the film. Give this a big miss.