Our first feature was the low budget indie film Automaton Transfusion. Made for $30,000 and shot in 9 days. That's what all the chatter over at the IMDb sez. I don't hold that against it, nor for it. The oddly named movie gets a rather high 4.3 and it has some defenders in the message boards there. I don't think any of us liked it much at all. Fangoria said it was one of their top ten films of 2006. Yet another reason not to care about that magazine. There was a constant stream of complaints about the movie during its, rather short, 75 minute running time. First the title is hard to read and remember. Automaton is not a nice word. I don't even like saying it. It seems unnatural. Maybe that's just me. I'm weird about words. While I was watching the movie I didn't see any automatons, but I was thinking of more your robot automaton. The Wikipedia says an automaton could be a mindless follower, so I guess that's the zombies. I don't remember seeing any transfusions in the movie either. Unless they meant the constant biting. Lot of exchange of fluids going on there. You know what is in the movie? Nothin' new. It starts in a morgue where a dead body drips blood on the floor. The young man working there turns out to be the son of the older man. Then the credits start, and they are annoying, then we head into high school, which is mostly annoying too. Some of the camera work is that busy, jerky motion stuff. Not so interesting anymore. The acting and the directing were ok at times and poor at others. Occasionally it dipped down into really poor. There were some big plot holes and some story elements that made no sense. One piece of direction that everybody disliked was when two of the main male teens came home. In seperate scenes they both went into their own houses and walked around like they expected monsters to jump out at them. And there was no reason for that. Just didn't make any sense. The gore was pretty good and I'm sure that is what is driving the high number on the IMDb and some of the other highly positive reviews out there. People were excited that they left the zombie pulling a fetus from a woman and biting it in front of her. I actually couldn't tell it was a fetus and I couldn't hear her dialog. I probably had lost some interest at that point. I think that shouldn't be the reason someone gives a movie a good score. I didn't like most of the teens and the story was pretty much the old standard US military experiment gone wrong. That plot is on Sci-Fi a couple of times a day. They reveal the exposition starting at the 63 minute mark and it seems like it takes forever, over half the last 12 minutes, which also includes the end credits. There's a brief running scene then the screen goes blank and it's To Be Continued. What kind of crap is that? There is supposed to be a trilogy, but that's no excuse for ending the movie in the middle of a scene. We complained. The next movie is in pre-production for 2009. Maybe the writer-director guy could learn something and make a better film. Somehow I doubt that I will find out. The dvd had a title card that said it was For Sale Only. It came from Netflicks. Glad no one bought it.
After that disappointing film Joe wanted to have his eyes washed out with something better. Oh, I know that feeling. I think it has to do with getting older. I don't have that much time left to waste on some of this stuff. Oh! The suffering in my mind. Joe was thinking he'd like to see a Samurai film but there were nearly none there and we settled for The Queen Of Outer Space. Wow. That was great. We laughed until we went home and I am still smiling. Zsa Zsa Gabor is a scientist in this Charles Beaumont and Ben Hecht creation. Maybe not as good as some of their other works but it sure made me laugh. Some earth guys leave for the space station only to have it blow up right in front of them. They are hit by the same ray that got the station and they crash land on a snowy planet. The footage of the crash came from some other movie, Flight to Mars or World Without End, and the uniforms came from Forbidden Planet. Turns out that planet is Venus and it's packed with girls in short dresses and guns. The men have been banished to a moon because of their warlike tendencies. The women are secretly lonely but afraid of the queen. The queen fears that the Earth will attack her planet. She has built a death ray. It's a nice one too, got some nice yellow dots on it. The queen is intrigued by the Captain of the earth spaceship. He's got eyes for Zsa Zsa, and once you get the Queen's mask off she's pretty bad off. Radiation burns all over her face. Spurned, the queen's thoughts turn to vengence against all earthmen. The dialog is great. Needs to be heard to be believed. The sets are simple, colorful and second hand. It doesn't matter, it made us laugh. And that's better than some old crappy zombie movie that just made us complain. Eventually the earth guys win over the women and even the Professor gets a bevy of beauties rubbing his face. Nice to see a happy ending.
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