PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 69

Infection turned out to be disappointing. Sperhauk had been trying to get people to watch it for ages. Some hospital in Japan is going down the tubes. The hospital can't even pay the few staff that remain watching the few patients left. After the staff kills a patient in a medical misunderstanding they try to cover it up. That fails. Some infected guy is delivered and he liquifies and turns into a puddle of green goo. The staff follows that infected path to puddledum. Everything is very viscus and drippy. Good goo effects, but here comes the disappointing part. It's all in the mind of one of the doctors. Or is it? This ambiguous tale suffers from that age old problem. Vague ambiguousness. I don't mind a little "What the fuck?" in stories. I don't mind a little vagury, but if you want me to like your stories, I really need to get some sort of resolution here. I think doc's crazy and it was just a psycho killer doctor movie. Seen that.

The same director did a short for a series dvd. His part was called Presentiment. Some guy steals some info from the company he works at. As he goes through his criminal activities he gets calls from his mistress. He's a weak ass type, how he got a mistress is beyond me, let alone a wife. His mistress is waiting for him at the train station. She's going to toss herself onto the tracks in front of the 7:49 if he doesn't get there before then. Oh, that's how he got her. She's a nut bag. Anyway criminal boy is stuck on the elevator with three people who turn out to be illustions. The rescuers can't see them. Turns out the trio are ghosts on a death tour and our guy is the latest for the grim reaper. He gets stomped by some steal girders. They move on. Nice to know the dead have interests.

Invasion Of The Bee Girls is a 1973 sexploitation film written by Nicolas Meyer. It's also known as Graveyard Tramps. That's three years before he wrote The Seven-Percent Solution. You could say what a difference three years makes in a writer but some of TSPS is very slow moving and dialog heavy and so is IOTBG. At least I was expecting it in TSPS. On, what you think would be, the plus side there is more nudity in Bee Girls. But sadly, some of those breasts weren't very good. It happens, don't let the hype fool ya', they ain't all pretty in Hollywood. There isn't much else going for this movie from the Drive-In Classics 50 Movie Pack. Surprisingly, it's one that might have actually played in a drive in. Some mad scientist, a lady this time, turns women into deadly Bee Girls who mate and kill. I wonder if the writers thought this up in a bar while they were drunk. Makes ya' think.

Friday Night Movies 68

We watched Naked Beach Friends from the Ren and Stimpy Lost Episodes dvd. These were the episodes that Spike TV wanted. Wanted until the advertisers got to see this episode and it was all she wrote. I can see why. Ren and Stimpy go to the beach so Stimpy can romp in the sand and Ren can stare at the nearly uncovered female form. It's an unrepressed smorgasbord of flesh and sex jokes. There are so many sex jokes and odd naughty pictures that I felt they were interfering with each other. It's like a jack hammer, pounding out these jokes, ripping up the street where your mind lives. It's pretty crude stuff and I am sure that didn't win any friends for John K. He's a guy who can't keep a job, better he works on his own I guess. He has a definite idea on what he wants to do and he likes dirty crude sex jokes with a side of bodily functions and a dessert of sticky viscous goo. Yumm. Not to everyones tastes, to say the least. He's got a blog that has a ton of stuff to look at.

Greg continues to buy some great pieces of crap. Freakshow was one of his recent stinkers. Gunnar Hanson, who Greg says is a scientist in his day job, plays Freakmaster the side show announcer. He's the guy who played Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the 1995 movie Freakshow some young guy meets a young girl at a travelling carnival's shooting gallery. They flirt briefly before entering the empty Freaks attraction. It has the shittiest painted front piece I have ever see. Painted by the director. I think I remember it saying that in the end credits. It's a horror anthology movie. The dvd box promises 5 stories. The stories are pretty much the lame sort of things that get put in crappy horror movies. I was guessing what would happen next way too often. It did make me laugh. The demon baby in the first story made me laugh out loud, for a long time. Most of the effects were laughable, like the makeup tranformation for the werewolf family in the second story. There's some amazingly bad dialog in the movie. I can't even imagine anyone attached to the movie thinking this was good writing. I might be wrong, sadly, there is that slim chance. And it was 103 minutes long. There's a co-jointed fetus. It's really poorly made. Again with the laughing.

Prime Time or  American Raspberry came out of the Drive-In Classics 50 Movie Pack. It's a movie like The Groove Tube or Tunnelvision. The director of AR also directed Tunnelvision. You can read a nice synopsis of the movie at Unknown Movies. It's a mix of funny and offensive. It's often offensively funny and occasionally funnily offensive. Sometimes it's bad or as the French say, "Fuckin' awful." The cast list is interesting to say the least. There are too many to mention and you might not know their names but some would remember their faces. "Hey, it's that guy!" "I like that guy!" "He was in some other movie, now what was it, oh well." It would be nice to have internet access while watching these movies. I can't remember all the details, need to look them up. When are we going to get that computer that goes in your ass. Hey! Not that! The organic kind that slips into the fleshy part of your sit upon and taps right into your brain so you don't have to have a keyboard or monitor. It's wireless too. I could see that going wrong, huh. That would be a different movie. Computer controled cyborgs secretly taking over the world for the head of a large corporation. I don't remember what was going on at the end of AR but there were some nukes blowing up. I guess it went wrong, huh. Oh, well.

Chilling Classics disc 6

Virus is a 1980 Japanese film that was cut from 155 minutes to 103 for US video. A military plane with a deadly virus falls to the ground and spills it's guts. Nearly everyone dies. There are some Japanese scientists in the antartic who are working for a cure while the world expires, which is depicted in the film with stock footage and boring scenes with American actors. The Japanese scenes were cut from this version so we don't know what happens to the families of the scientists. Eventually they blow up a whole lot of nukes and it's the credits. The full length might be better but it might also add a new level of tedium.

The Milpitas Monster is the second feature on side A. I covered that in the past when we watched it on Friday Night Movies Feb 24.

Side B starts with Funeral Home. A young woman comes to visit Gramma who's funeral director husband ran off years ago. Gramma turned the funeral home into a bed & breakfast. No one is allowed in the basement, except Gramma. When people start disappearing the niece and the local cop find out some weird stuff has been happening with Gramma. Nothing new here. Barely worth watching, let alone re-watching.

Lady Frankenstein is the second feature. It's a 1971 Italian feature starring Joseph Cotten as this version of Dr. Frankenstein. His daughter returns from medical school to help her father finish his work. His monster kills him and leaves. She puts the brain of her dying lover into the head of a dimwitted hulking handyman. The old monster returns. There's a fair bit of nudity and sex, and a whole bunch of killin', sometimes during sex. It's kind of funny and laughable but there are long periods of boredom.

Japan on virtual paper

I had been watching this auction for the last several days. It's a Mint Never Hinged 1934 Airmail Communication Souvenir Sheet that I'm betting won't fall into my hands too soon. It went for $1,114.55 earlier today. Those gray zigzag marks are the watermark of the paper. That's the most common one in the Japanese stamp history. At least I got a good scan for my virtual stamp album. It's worth a lot more than the one I have here in reality.

Friday Night Movies 67

We watched the first Episode of Salaryman Kintaro. It's a Japanese tv series from 1999 that did not do much for me. It was a bit funny, touted as a fighting show, kind of like a samurai film set in an office. Kintaro had his kid with him first day at the job, and Joe remarked that he was like Lone Wolf and Cub. Well, he's no Tomisaburo Wakayama, but he wasn't too bad. The show is tilted, along with the camera, to the melodramatic and there was too little fighting. What there was of the fighting was poorly executed. Canadian shows do better than this. Not American shows made in Canada but real Canadian shows. The fighting was better on Star Hunter or John Woo's Once A Thief. And there's little or no John Woo in John Woo's Once A Thief let me tell you. These Canadian shows make Buffy and Angel look great. If only SK had stolen from the Chinese like everyone else. Better were the confrontational elements in SK standing up to the corporate structure in the Japanese Construction Company he works at. It's bad enough to have to bow and suck up to the boss without actually having to bow. Of course, I have been chain watching the first two seasons of That 70's Show and their sarcastic attitude and high quality writing, acting and production have spoiled me.

I felt spoiled from our second selection Planet Outlaws but in more of a rotted meat or cheese sense. It's the 68 minute version of the 1939 Buck Roger's serial starring Buster Crabbe. It's pretty bad. Editing it to 68 minutes takes almost all of the story out of the movie. The serial runs 4 hours and one minute with all the credits and cliff hangers. The short version is from the SciFi 50 Movie Pack. That is such a shit hole and I'm sittin' through this cocksucker again, 'cause I already watched that whole box all the way through. I was real tired friday night from being up since 3:30 am and this was making me more so. It was makin' me stupid. There's nothing good to be said about PO. Watch the original serial if you must or watch Flash Gordon, it's somewhat better and at least it's got Ming the Merciless. He has nice hats.

We rounded off the evening with a gory thing I couldn't much watch called He Never Dies. Then I went home and watched more That 70's Show to get the taste out of my brain. A cup of tea helped.

Japan Album

I went to a local stamp bourse on sunday. That a dealer's room in fan terms. I hadn't been to one in quite a while. 5 years maybe. The local business sure has changed. Last I went, there were 10 to 12 dealers at these monthly shows. When I started going in the early 90's there was a second track of them run by another guy which had most of the same dealers and a few different ones. There were three guys selling stuff sunday.

Dan Lemke, who I remembered from years ago, remembered me. It's a very conversational hobby in many ways. People are always talking. I think because there are chairs involved. Dan said that most of the dealers had closed up or died. A lot of them were old. I did get some nice things for my Japanese album. There was not much stuff to look at. These guys can't generate a lot of revenue to change stock all that fast. It's sad to see what has become of the hobby. There is a big show coming up on July 21-23. There are two or three of the bigger shows each year. More dealers come from out of town. I thought I would take a walk through on saturday. See what's going on.

I've been looking at the stamp business on ebay. There seems to be quite a bit of activity. I got some nice things there the last three weeks. I have 6000 stamps still on-paper coming. I will have to soak those. I soaked stamps for 2 and a half hours on saturday. I got tired before I filled my 4th drying book. Maybe 700-750 stamps. 6000 will take a long time. It's just a time consuming process. Very water intensive. I'll take a picture next time.

The picture above is a scan on the color copier at work. I have been thinking of changing my album for Japan, and maybe Iceland. I even ordered paper. 1000 sheets. It's only a 22 dollar investment. It's nice paper. Ivory, 90 pound text. I forgot what brand. I need to try some test pages of Japan. The guy at Stampalbums.com lets you download and test print several sample countries. Classic Japan is one of them. Classic stamps are ones issued until about WWII, something like that. It's a natural stopping point. I stopped at 1949 when I went through all the German stamps I had. That's when they split the country up. Even Berlin gets it's own stamps. But I'm not collecting that.

Richard (DreamHaven guy) is also a stamp collector, and he too has some of everything but no specific collecting goal. I'm sticking with Japan, and maybe Iceland. China, Canada, Latvia, Luxembourg, Vietnam, Russia, Poland, these are still some contenders. The nice thing about stamps, is they are small. Mind you I have about 20 boxes worth of stamp stuff so I have a lot of other countries to get through and keep some stuff and get rid of the rest.

Richard's mother, she of the naughty emails, is also a stamp collector and Richard tells me she has a 6 or 8 volume hingless world album. That's big bucks. For comparison. A Japan album from Scotts is $400 list complete with binders and you can find it for 250-300 bucks. A hingless Japan from SAFE-Dual is 300 bucks before the 45 dollar binders and I can't tell if those pages would fit in two binders or would I need three. Still too much money. Add three slipcases and you're over 800 bucks with shipping etc. You can buy a lot of stamps, hell, any crap, for 800 bucks. I told one of the dealers and some guy sitting next to me that I didn't mind having a poor copy of an expensive stamp when the alternative is not to have it. That guy was looking at an early US stamp from the 1860's. It was 19 bucks but a good one could be a couple of hundred.

Holy shit, I just found Palo Albums, and their Japan album is about 875 bucks or $2020 if you want the hingless. They have thin binders and you need several more than the other albums. If I print my own, after paying the $20 yearly fee at Stampalbums.com I can get the cost down to 25 bucks, including my nice 90# paper. I love paper. There's a guy on line who prints those same Stampalbum.com pages and he charges about 20 cents a page to print them. It would cost about $115 with him. That's a better deal than the Scott or Palo, even if you paid someone to print them for you. Luckily I work in a print shop where I can get wholesale costs.

Friday Night Movies 66

I never liked The Dukes Of Hazzard when it was on tv. I watched an occasional show but never got into the series. The movie I liked. I was interested because it had been directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. He's a member of the Broken Lizard comedy troup. The group made three movies so far. Puddle Crusier, Super Troopers and Club Dread. All directed by Jay, who's also directed some tv episodes. This was the second time I had watched the movie. I saw it last week end and on this viewing I spent more time watching what was happening around the story. It was pretty darn good. Chandrasekhar gets better as a director each outing. He keeps the camera moving alot, he has familiar yet creative shots and pov's, and occasionally he does something very nice. It's a very fast paced movie, lots of car chases, yellin' and blowin' shit up. In that way it keeps true to the series which I read was based on a 1975 movie called Moonrunners. I did not know that. I'm sure I won't ever get interested in the series. None of those actors are of interest to me. I like the actors in the current movie, but I know many people don't like either Seann William Scott or Johnny Knoxville. Both were great fun for me. I find Scott endearing somehow. Even as Stiffler. He comes off as a nice fun guy in the behind the scenes featurettes and commentaries and that always counts for something to me. I like Knoxville too and I couldn't careless about Jackass, or it's movie. I did think Knoxville was great in the last John Waters film. If you haven't seen A Dirty Shame see the unrated version. Back in Hazzard Country, Georgia Burt Reynolds plays Boss Hogg. He's the evilest man in Hazzard County. Burt was ok, I mostly enjoy his work. The guys who played Cooter, Sherriff Roscoe and Sheve all had better parts. David Koechner plays Cooter, M. C. Gainey plays Roscoe and Kevin Heffernan plays Sheve. They are all fun to watch. Kevin's a Broken Lizard guy and the rest of the Lizard crew have parts in the movie. The next Broken Lizard movie is Beerfest. Willie Nelson is a good Uncle Jessie the moonshiner. He's fiesty and full of bad jokes that make you laugh. Jessica Simpson fills out Daisy Dukes short shorts and tiny bikini. She's pretty cute and she holds her own pretty much. Don't be makin' no cracks about Daisy, now. Them Dukes stick together and they exhibit risky behavior. It's that wild, devil may care attitude that I liked about the boys. They are outlaws but not criminals. They will sell moonshine, drive too fast, smoke pot, chase girls, fight in bars but they won't steal from you. They'll steal from Boss Hogg. Just to fuck him up. And since Boss Hogg is evil, you're rootin' for the boys to kick his big fat ass. Burt's ass isn't fat but it needs a mighty kickin' as he's up to no good in the movie. The drivin' is mighty fine too. I liked the chases, they were fun and nicely filmed. It's a movie I can and will watch over again. Unlike our second movie.

Snowbeast is a 1977 NBC made for tv movie with Bo Swenson and Yvette Mimieux. It's from the Drive-In Classics 50 Movie Pack. A made for tv movie in a Drive-In movie box. Yet, another lie foisted on us by Mill Creek Entertainment. It's a boring movie. There's a monster in the woods attacking people. You never see much of anything monster wise, you spend most of the first half of the movie following Bo and Yvette's tedious marital problems. Then, there's the skiing, there's a shit load of skiing, and a shit load is more than one man can carry. You can't carry this movie on the back of skiing. The cast is poor to average, and they match the script, which was written by Outer Limits alum Joseph Steffano. He was a producer on the first season of OL and he wrote a couple of episodes, as well as both versions of Psycho. Here he's gone retarded and turned in a boring script, made worse by the director Herb Wallerstein. He was a tv director in the 60's and 70's. When you finally see the Snowbeast he's a big disappointment. Not too surprising though. After the movie had been running several minutes I started to get the feeling that I had seen this movie before. Turns out I had. It's in the Vault of Horror collection from Brentwood. They did several 10 movie collections. Besides VoH I have the Kung Fu and Sherlock Holmes collections. When I watched it originally, scanning furiously, I figured I'd never see it again but I forgot and picked this movie from the box makin' everybody suffer mightily. Sperhauk also scanned through the skiing, but that sure wasn't enough to keep us from getting bored. Luckily, I had brought a book along. I brought the 2005 Sakura Japanese Stamp Catalog to show off. It gave me something to look at that wasn't Bo Swenson.

Friday Night Movies 65

You would have thought I would have seen Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster before. And I should have but it just hadn't crossed my path. I never mind waiting and it was nice to see such a good copy on dvd. Here's a page with some good pictures of the cast. It's pretty fun. We all enjoyed ourselves watching this 1965 alien invasion movie, which also has several other names. Duel of the Space Monsters, Frankenstein meets the Space Men, Mars Attacks Puerto Rico, Mars invades Puerto Rico, and Operation San Juan. Nasa, and there was some wonderful 60's footage of Nasa buildings, grounds and surrounding town in the movie, is sending rockets into space. In the backstory the rockets are blowing up. It's aliens, but Nasa doesn't know that, yet. After the film starts Nasa sends an android/cyborg named Frank into space. He gets blown up, but he escapes, and his pod lands in Puerto Rico. Luckily they were making the movie there. The aliens follow Frank and blast him. He's burned but not dead. Now he's the Frankenstein in the title. The aliens have a goal on earth. Collecting women for breeding. Their race is in a bad way and they need some gals. So, they're in Puerto Rico. On the beach. Where the girls aren't wearing so much. They capture some, they capture Frank, they capture the people who are coming to rescue Frank, then they get blowed up. Poor Dr. Nadir, he's the guy with the pointy ears, he only wanted to save his race. He has the worst makeup, made even more evident by the nice picture quality. The other pictures are both Bruce Glover. He's Crispin Glover's dad. I didn't put a face to a name when Greg mentioned it. Once I saw his face I remembered him. This was his first movie. He'd been on tv, in Car 54. Here he plays an alien and also wears the suit for the space monster. He's not that colorful in the B&W movie. It's still pretty much fun. Made me laugh.

Our second feature also had Frankenstein in it. Or rather Franqenstain, as he was called in Santo el enmascarado de plata y Blue Demon contra los monstruos, a 1970 mexican melange of wrestling and monsters. And what monsters! There's Franqenstain, a male vampire, a mummy, a wolfman, a female vampire in lingerie, a cyclops/zombie, and the mad scientist who leads them. The mad scientist has a hunchback helping him. The hunchback is a dwarf. How can you get any fuckin' cooler than that. There are some green faced guys too, the henchmen of the mad scientist. They were all brought back from the dead, as was maddie and all the monsters. There's lots of fighting and driving around in cars. Santo has a convertible. He can jump in and out of it. Then there's more wrestling and fighting. Someone's always getting slapped down, and knocked out with a long chuck of something right to the head. You can read a much more detailed discription of the movie here. Here's a page of the films of El Santo. He's quite a guy, born in 1917 he was 53 when he made this movie. He died in 1984 after making more than 50 films. This was a fun film some of the time but it sure lagged a bit when it was wrestling, or talking. You can see some so-so pictures from the movie here.