PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 56

Two trips to foreign lands tonight and universes apart. The Crimson Rivers was first up. Greg hadn't seen it and I like it enough to watch it every year or so. I had mentioned this movie in my blog a month and a half ago when we watched the sequel.

The first movie is based on a French novel, a police thriller. Joe found the movie, brought it, we watched it, and I thought it was great too. I've seen it several times now. It's a gorgeous looking film with interesting scenery and buildings, much of it dark and bleak. Reno is investigating an unusual murder. He's the guy they call in for such things. His investigation brings him into contact with another detective who is investigating grave vandalism. Turns out they are on the same path, a twisted one, that leads them to deep dark secrets and more murder, all set in the beautiful French Alps. Just another story pointing out that man, left unwatched, will fuck some shit up. Reno is joined by Vincent Cassel, both of whom do a great job. [PS March 4, 2006]

Once again I can only compliment the beautiful scenery and interesting buildings. The University library is a wonderous place, both inside and out. You can see a trailer at MTV. The director Mathieu Kassovitz is also an actor. You might remember him as the hall mugger in The Fifth Element. After he directed The Crimson Rivers he directed Gothika. I like that movie but never bought a copy. Not cheap enough. You can find The Crimson Rivers very cheap online.

Event Horizon is a Paul W. S. Anderson movie. I liked it enough to buy a copy of the new Special Edition DVD right now. And I have a copy already. The new one has a bunch of extras and a commentary. I have enjoyed Anderson's commentaries before. It's a good haunted house movie moved into a space ship. Seven years ago the Event Horizon disappeared. Now it's back. What happened? Lawrence Fishburn leads a crew to find out. Sam Neill joins the crew. He's the creator of the Event Horizon. It's a ship designed to fold space and thus jump to another far point in space instantaneously. It's uses an artificial black hole to power it's jump drives. They all want to know what happened, why was it gone? I'm not so sure I do, I know it's a horror movie out here, but I'll wait and see. In the movie world things go to pot right soon. I didn't have to wait so long. Turns out the ship has been, not to the end of the galaxy, but perhaps to another dimension. It's comeback all fucked up. Full of Evil, with a capitol E. Is it alive, or possessed? Who knows? Sam Neill thinks he does. Weird stuff happens and people start dying. There are lots of things happening at a brisk pace. It's a good looking film with great looking ship sets. The cast is good and the story gives them some good stuff to work with. It's held up to repeated watchings for me.

Sasquatch

Sasquatch was a right old turd. I checked it out because it has Lance Henriksen and it's was made in Canada. I sometimes like to hear the Canadian accents. It's called The Untold in Canada, and Inexplicable in French Canada. And really, it's inexplicable that anyone would buy this movie on it's own. Not for $12.99. Lucky for me I didn't even burn it onto a dvd. Now I can erase the tape. I could see getting stuck with it in a large collection of dvds. Of course, part of my mind is still reeling from my current journey through the Chilling Classic 50 Movie Pack. I used to think that 50 movies in a box wasn't such a bad thing. Now I'm like Dumbledore in the cave in book 6. "No, no, don't make me watch anymore." And like the book, my own mind also plays the Harry part and I open it up and dip right in. Someday I'll finish that pack off and kill Voldemort. There's got to be some sort of thesis here. I saw Sasquatch on the SciFi channel where they took out the brief nudity. There's a hot tub spring scene in the woods. I know. It's that bad. But that lack of skin saved me $12.99. I've seen plenty o' naked ladies, so I'm never worried that there isn't going to be any nudity. The only interesting thought for me came from Lance Henriksen playing a very simular, but less interesting character to the one he played in Alien Vs Predator. Isn't that sad? The sasquatch pretty much sucked too. The director used fade to black so often it bacame noticeable and annoying. Lance is the head of a bio-tech firm. His doin' poorly company has lost the companies new bio-tech money maker, and Lance's daughter, in a plane crash in the Pacific Northwest. After two months of fruitless air searching Lance leads a dirt bound rescue team. They find the plane, but everyone is gone. Luckily, the one-of-a-kind proto-type is there. It's that kind of movie, one of lazy choices, like serial killers and super secret government organizations. The latter all have their own super secret underground headquarters. If those concrete headquarters were all really there you couldn't dig under any large US city without running into one or six. Perhaps there is a super secret government organization that takes care of the undeground zoning. Somethings got to be done, but not about this movie. This is best ignored. There are better movies to watch, go watch those. Maybe someday soon, I'll have something good to tell you about. Not today.

Friday Night Movies 55

F.P.1 antwortet nicht is a 1932 German film that got an English version the following year and was released under the title F.P. 1 Doesn't Answer. Rather than redubbing the film they shot new scenes with English actors. CryptFilms has out a dvd that has both versions. It's a bootleg of fair to middlin' quality. The story started as a 1931 book by Curt Siodmak, then it got made into a 114 minute film in Germany, which was re-shot and re-edited into a 70 minute version for the English speaking world. According to the German Wikipedia there was a French version shot at the same time with Charles Boyer as the loser dashing pilot, who is played by Conrad Viedt in the English and Hans Albers in the German. The dashing pilot tries to help his friend, a ship designer, by stealing some plans for a floating oceanic airstrip and hotel. The stealing gets the plans noticed by the three owners of a family shipyard and the platform gets built. The designer and the dashing pilot both fall for the sister of the trio. The dashing pilot goes off on a 2 year plane journey while the construction is going on, and the sister falls for the designer. There is some intrigue and sabotage on the platform. Oh, no. The saboteur gasses everyone and starts the pumps going. The platfom will sink. Here comes the dashing pilot and sister to the rescue. More trouble. Everyone nearly dies but the day is saved. We watched the English version. It was understandable, except for the story that is, and the German was subtitle lacking. We did watch some bits of the German version and it has some interesting changes. Here's a great translated page about this very meldramatic film that drifts between interesting and tedious. Possibly the German version would have been different enough to make the story better. It's more an interesting curio.

As is Just Imagine, a 1930 science fiction musical that depicts the futuristic life of 1980. It's an odd thing, very of the times, I liked it pretty much. I'll have to get a copy some day. It's not available through the usual channels. Here's a nice illustrated page that talks about the movie. Here's a page at SciFi Channel that doesn't like it as much. Forry Ackerman liked it. Here's a page with some picutres from the film.

Chilling Classics Disc 2

Scream Bloody Murder is also known as The Claw Of Terror, Matthew, and The Captive Female. Those titles say it all. Well, except for Matthew I guess. Matthew, how the hell can you sell a movie with a title like that! Willard, now that's a title. SBM is a 1973 movie  that opens with a kid running his dad over with a bulldozer. The kid then runs over his own hand with the same bulldozer. What a dumbass. They give him a claw in the mental hospital. It's a state hospital. Now a grown man, he returns home on the day his mother remarries. After killing his step dad with a double bladed axe Matthew strangles his upset mother and hitches a ride out of town. Matthew beats the driver and his wife to death with a rock, steals their car and heads for LA. Hallucinations of his mother cause him to wreck the car and he hitches again. Surprisingly, he doesn't kill the truck driver. Maybe he was tired? After the ride he meets Vera, a painter/hooker, who befriends him. He kills her trick, a sailor, in repayment. Matthew tries to impress his new gal with lies. Needing a big house to back up his claim of wealth he kills a rich old lady and her maid and takes over the house. Bonus, there's a neat old car. Luring Vera to his new love shack, Matthew ties her up, and keeps her prisoner for days. Some guy looking for the rich lady stops by, only to be beaten to death and stuffed in a closet. Ironically, with the rich old lady and her maid. Vera doesn't make it, cut down by the claw. Matthew sees his mother in the dead hooker and runs away. He winds up in a church hallucinating madly. Matthew slices open his stomach, crawls toward the altar and collapses. End of film. Is he dead? Who the fuck cares! What a piece of shit. In the right hands this might have been more interesting but really, it's just a crazy guy killin' people. It would be more enjoyable if it was an evil Santa Claus. An' I'm just barely jokin'. I really don't find much enjoyment from a movie like this. If it had been more interesting or better made, it might have been more watchable.

The Bell from Hell also explores crazy sons. A young man leaves the mental hospital on a probational leave. He returns to the family home where an aunt and her three daughters live. She was the one who put him in the home. It was part of Auntie's plot to gain control of the family fortune. Sprung Crazy Boy is out for revenge. This 1973 Spanish film was directed by Claudio Guerín. In 1973, on the final day of shooting for "La Campana del Infierno" (The Bell Of Hell), Claudio fell or jumped to his death from the central bell tower constructed for the film. (IMDb).  There isn't much to recommend about this movie either. It's certainly a better made film than the previous film. The story might suffer some from translation and cutting. The film is 11 minutes shorter in the US version. There are some interesting scenes, like three naked girls hanging slaughterhouse style, but I still didn't feel I got my whole 40 cents worth of entertainment.

Metamorphosis is a poor Italian version of the The Fly. The science guy shoots up his own invention and gets fucked up.  Watch The Fly. Metaporphosis is pretty pedestrian, that's mostly what's wrong with it. Until the end. Science guy turns into an unbelievable monster. I wish I could find a picture of it. That rubber dino like creature was nearly worth 40 cents.

In Naked Massacre a crazed vietnam vet invades the house of some nurses in Belfast. He tortures and kills them. Why in the hell would anyone want to watch this? It's certainly awful. I can't believe it got a 4.8 on IMDb. I can only figure that the nudity counted for high scores from some people.

Man

Stephen Colbert has a new section on tonights The Colbert Report. "The Crazyest F***kin' thing I Ever Heard". That crazy fuckin' thing was a fly with little tiny glasses. I guess it's the degree of crazy. I just liked the swearin'. He also had Reza Aslan who is a writer, etc and fairly interesting. When Colbert asked him if he'd ever heard of Jesus, he said he had, he'd seen the movie. Colbert got a real big grin on his face and that must have cut off the flow of blood to the brain and he just sat there grinin' and starin'. It was a good bit of comedy. I bet they run that on The Colbert Report page on the Comedy Central website. They have a lot of short video clips to look at.

There were two ads in the Daily/Colbert block on Comedy Central. The first was for AXE Body Wash, which can be used to wash off the questionable hookup from last night. I wonder if they have that in extra stanky. AXE are also the people that have the ads for a body spray that will drive women crazy and those women will sexually assault you. AXE will not be responsible for anything that happens when you wear their product. I'd like to see that stand up in a court of law. I don't think putting it in a commercial will help. Especially one that has no charm. I can't rmeember who had the ad for some sort of male scent back in the sixties or early seventies that used the same concept. I wonder if you have to sign something when you buy those products. There's something in the AXE about The Order Of The Serpentine. Their web site is very annoying and I only stayed a bit. I felt unclean. I wonder if they have a body wash for washin' off their funk. I hate gettin' that on me.

The other ad was for Milky Way bars. I wasn't fully paying attention and I don't exactly know why the guy was all fucked up but I started watching when he started talking to a small woman in his hand. She was Asian and she was talking to him in a nice voice, making him feel better. "Hey, Baby!" "You smell good!" Then she changed back to a chocolate bar and he ate her. The voice over told me to eat Milky Way and I would feel better. Nice to know. Works in Harry Potter. You can see what I really was seeing here.

Teledildonics

There was an article on MSNBC.com today about Teledildonics (internet connected sex toys) for a couple to use while apart. Here's a review from Wired. Here's a naughty demo. Contains nudity. I knew you couldn't stay away. The Sinulator is like an early telephone. Still pretty lo-tech, certainly no holo deck. Don't forget to take the test drive. Has to be seen to be stuf...yeah. I think that's enough.

Half Blood Prince - Condensed

For those of you who haven't the time to read the 6th Harry Potter book, here's a condensed version of the story. Thanks to the Wikipedia for this funny bit. A few of the details have been changed, but you probably won't notice. Made me laugh out loud.

I downloaded over a gig of Harry Potter podcasts today. There are a ton of free ones over at iTunes. There are probably 60-70 of them, some with many episodes. Don't expect quality from all of them. Pottercast and Mugglecast have the most episodes but not all of them are on iTunes.

Time wasting video

Ezprezzo has two odd videos on their site right now. One is a music animation and the other is a huge chain reaction. High marks on the later for fire and chemical use. Be warned the chain reaction is 29:45 in length. It's interesting at times.

Friday Night Movies 54

Two quite different choices tonight. Thunderbirds is the 2004 Hollywood live action version of the 1960's British puppet show in SuperMarionation. I didn't see it when it came out, and hadn't picked up the dvd. Richard, from DreamHaven, lent me his copy. He got it for 5 bucks. That's a good price. I know I wouldn't pay more than that. I am getting stingier of late. Dvd prices fall quickly over at Target and it's worth waiting for some titles. I might buy this movie but even 5 bucks is high, especially now I've seen it. It was fun enough to look at, but the story is sadly lacking. It's got a fair momentum but the dialog is poor too often. Ben Kingsley plays The Hood. He has some facial stuff going on and I don't know what it's all about. He attacks the International Rescue space station with a really fast missle. Boom. Bill Paxton, the father of the Tracey family, heads a rescue team in the family rocketship. Woosh. Ben takes over the family's tropical island and traps the rescuer's on the space station. Remember me, he asks Bill. Nope. There's not much air left and the space station is falling out of orbit. Burny, burny. Owww. Start the ticking clock. There are various running around scenes as Allan, the youngest Tracey son, and his pal Fermat, son of Anthony Edward's Brains, and Tin-tin, the daughter of the servants, save the day. There are the typical lessons to be learned. Don't use so many commas? No. Teamwork...blah, blah, blah. There's a bit of puppy love as the boys begin to notice Tin-tin's recent blossoming. I know, but they said it. There are great sets and pretty good CGI. There's a woman with wacking great big teeth. That's kind of funny, oh, and she has the hots for Brains. Funny for us, not so funny for Brains, who goes from squirming under her warmed up pelvis to freezing in the walk in freezer. What a day for him, huh, hot and cold running terror discomfort. It's not that scary.

All the ships look like their ancient counterparts, just somewhat modernized. I don't remember any of the stories from the puppet show. I remember liking them during the 1965-1966 run. Brit shows were usually on Canadian tv shortly after their original runs. There were all kinds of machines in the original 32 episodes. The movie uses all 5 major Thunderbirds, an earth tunnelling device, some sort of beam weapon that cuts through solid material really quick, and a firefighting bulldozer with green foam that in a pinch can knock badguys on their asses. Woohoo. Green foam and pratfalls. I don't care for the young Tracey kid much but most of the other cast is fine. I like the woman with the big teeth and who doesn't like Bill Paxton? If you haven't seen his Frailty, it's well worth a look. Thunderbirds, eh, maybe. I'd rather watch Spy Kids.

Now jump back to 1944 and The Scarlet Claw, a Sherlock Holmes feature set in then modern day Canada. Not much in common with the previous feature. It has a special effect. There's a glowing guy. Wooo! There is a good summary of the plot at the IMDb. It was ok. A nice mixture of clever and dumb. A bit of action, some humour, and lots of murder. Not really what I would think of as Sherlock Holmes, there's a lot of gun play for one, but still an enjoyable mystery. Had me fooled. I thought it was the guy with the fake mustache, not the guy with the false mustache and beard. There's a nice tribute to Canada, quoted from Winston Churchill, at the end of the film. You can tell it's Canada, there are some evergreens near a lake, and men with beards. Some of the non speaking extra characters are a wonderful lot to watch.

When I was at work on friday I got some free donuts from Julie and Karen, the company library ladies, for not breaking the copyright law. Cake donuts, with sugar and cinamon, from the Cub. I am a staunch supporter of the copyright law, at work. I'm a bigger supporter of donuts. There are big fines if you get caught. Stealin' intellectual property, not the donuts. I think that's a misdemeaner. I didn't eat the donuts, there was a huge pile of treats at work that day. It was the new guy's birthday and he brought a huge slab of brownie. It was easily 11 by 17 inches in size and cost $5.95 at Sam's Club. Nice and moist, baked in it's own box, people were gnawing on that for hours. Wow. I have to cut down on sugars, and that's hard. Sadly no one ate the donuts at movie night, so, to save me from eating them, I forced most of them on strangers down at the bus station. "Hey, there's no fuckin' poison in those! Just eat it!" Some times you just got to speak the language of the people you are talking to. Anyhow, off for lunch, can't live on donuts. Mmmmm, donuts, and your sugary goodness, how I'll miss you.

Friday Night Movies 53

We had a hattrick of films tonight, but only in the sense there were three movies. Not all of them were goals by any stretch of the imagination. John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns was the only puck in the net, shot hard, decapitating the goalie. I might watch all-in-hockey once, but the real thing leaves me bored and is only good for jokes and analogies. Of course I'm still bitter about the time Bobby Hull cost me two bus rides and a wasted over an hour of my life back in 1972. Dick weed. Anyway back to John Carpenter burning us with cigarettes. Actually the title refers to the little round indicators on film which tell the projectionist that the reel change is coming. Made for Showtime's Masters Of Horror series this short 59 minute film packs a punch. Norman Reedus is a guy who owns a small movie theater. He's up to his ears in debt to his dead girlfriend's father. Luckily he's hired by Udo Kier to find a copy of La Fin Absolue Du Monde. People died in the theater at it's premiere and the film was destroyed. I like bloody and violent art riots. Udo is sure there is a copy left, an angel told him so. And the angel was right, the copy does exist, and Norman does find it. But all the search brings is death. Given the limited million dollar budget and short time frame Carpenter does a great job telling a nice spare quick paced story. CB was written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan. The unfortunately named McWeeny is also a writer over at Ain't It Cool News under the name Moriarty. They have several other films pending.

The cast is good and up to the material, especially Udo Kier who I always enjoy. Colin Foo is also rather fun. You can see clips of both of them on this page, Udo is clip number 1 and Colin clip number 2, pick the best res for your connection and enjoy. Clip 4 is not so nice and like the rest of the clips is far too dark. Since the advent of dvd's I have been watching a lot of John Carpenter. Cigarette Burns stands up with the best of his work, of which there has not been a whole lot of in recent years. Ghosts of Mars was out in 2001, and wasn't very well received by the public, and Vampires was 3 years before that. GoM is better than the 4.5 rating on IMDb. I enjoyed it in the theater and on home video. I haven't watched it in a while but that's never surprising, too many other things to watch for the first time. Right now as I write this the next day I have been chain watching some of the dvd's that Sperhauk is making out of the tapes I have of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's episode #909 - Gorgo right now. Got to make sure they are good copies before they go into the box until next time. I try to watch every dvd that comes into the house before it goes into the collection.

I don't have a copy of our next selection, Blood Theater and that's A-OK with me. It's friggin' awful! Worse than anything in the Chilling Classics 50 Movie Pack. Blood Theater, also known as The Movie House Massacre, was poorly written, directed and produced in 1984 by Ric Sloane under the name Alice Raley. He would later write and direct Hobgobblins which was featured on MST3K, and the Vice Academy series. I know, a series, damn. 6 of them, too. This guy needs a beating more than Paul Naschy. Sloane's lack of talent at these jobs makes BT's 75 minutes seem nearly endless. Fast forwarding through a few segments helped a lot, but it still seemed like a good solid two hours of torture broken by a couple of brief gaffaws. And the sad thing is that it's not bad enough to make you laugh intentionally. It's just crap, that's all, just crap. Mary Woronov is the best thing in the film and she's crap. She has nothing good to say, she's filmed oddly and she never takes her clothes off. There's a bit of nudity during an odd scene, but it makes nearly no sense like most of the script. BT gets a 4.1 on IMDb and that seems high to me. Sperhauk was of the opinion that this was the worst film he had ever seen. It's just there are so many bad films fighting for bottom place, and they can be judged by so many different wrongs. Best give this one a miss.

Slightly better was the short 47 minute film I Was A Teenage Mummy by Christopher C. Frieri. I can't find anything about him on the internet. Here's a review and synopsis. Here's a website for Ghostlimbfims. Greg bought their dvd with this horror spoof and two other shorts by the same guy. It was rather fun. Made me laugh. The story has an Egyptian exchange student go mad after being humiliated by the local greasers. He kidnaps a girl and turns her into a mummy. Very low budget in every way the film almost has enough charm to get you through it. I don't know about re-watchings. Still, better than the piece of crap that preceeded it.