PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 212

Sperhauk picked up a copy of Zombie Strippers. Sounds good, huh. Has potential. Zombies and strippers. What's not to like. Some science guys develop a virus that can re-animate dead tissue. This can turn dead soldiers into zombie soldiers who can fight some more. Things get out of control and they bring in the military to mop up. It's a co-ed squad and those soldier chicks were fun. Kick my ass on my best day. Hidden in the building next door to the research lab is an illegal strip club run by Robert Englund. Public nudity has been banned in this slightly into the future movie. Bush is in his fourth term and he's just dissolved the congress for "Cramping his style, he he". 

The virus gets into a soldier who winds up in the strip club. He bites Jenna Jameson. Jenna's a well known porn star with big fake boobs. I don't find them attractive myself. Some of the other strippers were much nicer looking. The stripper gals were a mixed bag and some of them really hate Jenna's character. It looks like Jenna is killed when she gets bitten but nope. She re-animates and heads back to the stage. The customers love her, tossing piles of cash on the stage, and Zombie stripping catches on big time. The only problem? Jenna likes to eat her customers. They think she's taking them backstage for sex. Ha ha. Once they're dead they re-animate. Luckily the building has a huge cell with bars down in the sub-basement. They store the dead customers there. Another girl gets bitten and now there are two zombie strippers. And more dead customers. The regular strippers are no longer of interest since the pervo-bar has been raised. The money is rolling in and the customers still haven't caught on the zombie strippers aren't giving out lap dances in the back room. It goes bad when the zombie strippers start fighting amongst themselves and  the zombie customers escape. There's plenty of mayhem and gore, much of it pretty good. There are lots of jokes, some good, some not so good. The characters are fun and played big. They made me laugh. "It's Paco time!" The military finds the club and mops up this zombie infestation. The strippers battle it out until they are just quiverying gooey lumps of meat. Pretty much a happy ending. Glad zombies don't show up at my work.

I picked up Battle Warrior, or Nuk Soo Dane Song Kram, because it has Tony Jaa in it. I got ripped off. Oh, it has Tony in the movie. If you can find him, his face all covered up with his hair. He's got a couple of fights, but like Spiritual Warrior, another early Jaa film, he's a minor character in this movie. The main story has some guy with a valuable stone disappear in the Thai jungle and his daughter getting up a group to go look for him. They run into some hostile natives, zombies, and a manical drug lord. It's only 85 minutes but it sure seems longer. The fights are fair at best and poor far too often. Some of the leaping and jumping made me laugh. This is a 1996 film though the box does everything to cover up that fact. There's a 2007 copyright date and no running time on the box. It's a poorly made film, often out of focus, with bad sound and crappy dubbing. The Thai film industry is pretty far behind the times. They do a poor job with the Thai dvd also. It's way too dark and it was shot anamorphic but not transfered anamorphic. All the people look much thinner than they should. The effects are fair to poor. They blow up some stuff and that was fair to good. There were a lot of gernades at the drug lords camp. The drug lord guy was a hoot, hamming it up all over the jungle. Wonder he didn't get eaten by a lion. Maybe they don't have lions in Thailand. There weren't enough zombie warriors. They were another of the the drug lords layer of guards surrounding his camp. They didn't even mention them on the box. That's pretty poor marketing. It help me feel I hadn't totally wasted my money on a martial arts movie. I had totally wasted my money on a martial arts/zombie movie. That's better isn't it? Well I don't know.

Bricks, Babies and Robots, oh my!

Giovanni Seynhaeve had two interesting new LEGO creations on MOCpages today. The first one I looked at was the front of his house. It's a nice little piece of work that also serves to announce the new baby coming. Everyone likes babies. I saw that on a video just the other day. It's hardwired into us according to guy in the video. I really enjoyed the red and orange color of the building. I rarely build buildings with much red in them. Need to look at that in the future. His other creation is a cool robot mixer called M1X-R. It's for your kitchen. He's kind of cute, don't you think? I'd sure like a gang of little kitchen robots around the house. Cleaning robots would be also appreciated. You can see more of Giovanni's stuff at MOCpages.

Science Fiction Seafood Platter 29

I time shifted a couple of SciFi original movies off of the SciFi Channel last night. Maybe you saw them. Maybe you were smart and didn't bother. It was the premiere of 2009's Sea Beast and a rerun of 2007's Eye of the Beast. Sounds like they have monsters. I like monsters. Sea Beast has Corin Nemec as a fisherman. He's no monster but he has played them on tv. He's not doing too well, poor catches have left him with little money to run his boat, and some thing just ate one of his crew. You might remember Nemec from the Parker Lewis Can't Lose tv series. I enjoyed that series when it was new nearly 20 years ago. It's not been out on dvd but I see the first season is listed as a pre-order on Amazon for the end of next June. $45 though. Seems steep. Nemec's IMDb page says he's always working but some of it seems worst than the stuff he does for the SciFi Channel. He plays both Richard Speck and Ted Bundy. A pair of human monsters, which I have little or no interest in. I think bad monster movies are more fun to watch than some sad drama with human monsters but that's me. I like the fake monsters. Sea Beast has a pretty good fake monster which was made a bit poorer because of the CGI. It's some kind of walking fish. She's a four legged eating machine that likes the water and is going to be a mommy. Hundreds of times. Oh, no. The town takes a terrible beating as the monsters start to attack. As is typical of the SciFi, there's a lot of body parts being bitten off. They like the decapitations on the channel. The monsters are also invisible, at least some of the time. When they get close they like to go visible. They have really long tongues that wrap around body parts and it that isn't enough, they spit goo that will first paralyze you, then kill you. Sucks, huh. Luckily they are in some little lake town and Corin is a resourceful guy. He takes care of the monsters but only after many people are slaughtered. Most of his friends, his brother and the guy he owes money for his boat. There's a happy ending for him, but sadly there's no happy ending for the monsters. They just had the worst week.

It's no better for the monster in the Eye of the Beast. James Van Der Beek is a marine biologist who shows up in a small fishing town to research why the fish population is going down. They don't like the science guy, which someone in the movie actually calls him, he can only bring them trouble. And it's a town with some trouble. The fish catch is dropping, there's racial tension between the Native Americans and some of the white fisherman, and there's a giant squid lurkin' in the water. You can see it right on the box. It's huge. The local law is a lone woman who's troubled by her past. She saw the monster get her dad when she was a kid and no one believed her. Soon they will. I showed them the box. More stuff happens, and while we know it's a giant squid, it takes a while to get some proof. There's a lot of tension in the town until that happens and yet the movie still plods along much of the time. Eventually James and the cop beat down the beast and save the town. Bad day for monster number 2.

Friday Night Movies 211

Our first feature was the new Tokyo Shock edition of Gamera The Brave. It's a 2006 picture. The first Gamera picture from Kadokawa Pictures. They have the rights to the character, which was created by the Daiei Motion Picture Company. Daiei made 11 films in the series. They aren't as good as some of the better Godzilla pictures but I've got a soft spot for them in my head heart. You might have seen a bunch of the early Gamera movies on Mystery Science Theater 3000. This Gamera is more kid centic than the last trilogy, more like the first series. The Gamera in this new film is much cuter than the original. Especially when he's little and hovering around the room. Awwwww! This new  rubber suit is much better made than the original. He's just too darn cute for me. The monster he's up against is a good one. He's anti-cute. Zedus is filled with teeth and anger and covered in spikes and pointy bits. He's pretty smart too, flipping Gamera over his head and launching him into a building. The effects mostly look pretty good and the buildings that get trashed are great looking. The story is kind of long winded and pretentious at times. There's a bit of monster action at the beginning then it turns into a cute animal and kid comedy for way too long. I did like the scenes in the kid's dad's resturant. We all thought we'd hang out in a place like that if that was our neighborhood. Back in the kid's world Gamera is hatched, bonds with our hero boy, and grows quickly for comic value. Then Zedus shows up and Gamera has to beat his ass down. G gets his ass stomped at first but after a couple shots of kid love and glowing red rock he's got the power. Flame shoots out of every orifice and it's Zedus stompin' time. The big fight that takes us to the end of the movie is pretty good. There's lots of stuff bust up and people eatin'. I think all the kids get through it ok. Gamera does too and he flies off to wait til he's needed again.

Remember that I said I had bought a copy of the 2002 Bruce Campbell film Terminal Invasion. Well, I did and we watched it tonight. Bruce is a convict being driven through a snow storm by two cops of some sort. They crash their car and the nearest place they find with people is this small private airport in the middle of nowhere. There are some other people waiting for the snow storm to end and their charter can take off. They suck mostly, constantly complaining about something, trying to browbeat the lady pilot into taking off so they can get to their important lives somewhere else. Trouble is aliens are hidden amongst the passengers and crew. Who will turn out to be the alien in human skin. We have 84 minutes to find out and it seemed longer. Even having Bruce to amuse us some of the time was not enough. A SciFic Channel original that is ok but not very good. Nothing you haven't seen before. The effects are pretty poor and the rubber suit parts are better. The script is average and some of the dialog is pretty fun, especially delivered by Bruce. I watched a few SciFi movies today, they were the same type of movies, but they were minus Bruce, and they suffered for it. Any movie is made better with a dose of Bruce. There's even a commentary on the disc but it doesn't feature Bruce so who cares about director Sean Cunningham.

2 New Buildings for Micropolis

 

That's the new Police Headquarters and City Jail on the right. The HQ is above ground and the jail is below ground. It's hard to escape from either part. The other building is the headquarters of The International Flextube Company. They are the Galaxy's largest supplier of flexible tubing. You see there product on all sort of buildings, robots and spaceships. You can see a few more pictures at MOCpages.

Poker Playing Dragons

 

I got a card in the mail today. It was selling Poker Dragons. That's them up there. Normally I like dragons. They're cool. I don't know that these are cool. Might be, but I don't think so. They are smoking and we know that isn't cool anymore. The Hamiltion Mint has a lot of crap that looks like this. Small dust collectors to fill up shelves. I am no stranger to having nick nacks and little statues that populate the flat surfaces of my house, and I certainly have no judgement when it comes to buying crap like this, but I don't think I'd ever have a reason to buy these. So many other things that are better.

   

Here's a Flickr pic from someone who's kid got the first statue for his birthday. It doesn't quite look as good as the painting. They are small dragons, 3 and a half to 4 and a half inches. The poker table is about 4 and a half inches. I was looking for a pics off the internet and found this colorful painting, by some guy named Thomas Patrick Reidy the III, of dragon's playing poker. Not a style that I care for that much but not a bad painting. Then there's the LEGO version. Not the best picture. More of SavaTheAggie's LEGO at Flickr.

Toxic Waste Dump

 

HORROR OF THE HUNGRY HUMONGOUS HUNGAN  --  BEYOND EVIL   --  EVIL CLUTCH   --  NIGHTMARE WEEKEND  --  MOMMY'S EPITAPH  --  PLAY DEAD  --  DEATH BY DIALOGUE   --  NIGHTFALL  --  CHILLERS   --  SCREAM BABY SCREAM

Not all DVD box sets are created equal. Sperhauk told me that the Troma 10 DVD set Toxie's Blood Bank was on clearance at Half Price Books for $10. It used to be on clearance for $20. It might be a bargain. Ten movies for ten dollars. Then again, it might not be a bargain. The cover art sucks but the tin is cool. Since I like a bargain, and I'm always willing to waste ten bucks, a couple of weeks ago while on my way to the TCLUG meeting I stopped in at the HPB on Ford Parkway and picked one up. I finally finished watching all ten movies. I'm actually still stitting through the last one in the tin. I started at the bottom of that list and worked my way backward. The dvd's are in slim cases and there are ten of them in the box. That's not a picture of my tin, I copied it from Amazon. That's one of the best places to get pictures of popular media for your blog. These were pictures that were uploaded by a lady from Houston. Shit gets around on the internet, huh. The open tin has a Half Price sticker on it, so you know she's a gal who's willing to take a chance on some crap in a tin. Aren't we all.

   

The movies were originally sold in three packs in 2004 and the Blood Bank tin came out in 2006. If you wait you can always get some crap at a cheaper price. The insides of the dvd cases have some adverts for that series of three packs. There were 7 sets with 21 movies. They must not have sold everything or they wanted another round of sales from a repackaging. That's Troma. This dvd tin collects ten of them and the other tin Toxie's Top Ten collects another 10. One movie missing. Who would you thank for that small mercy? You can still buy the Blood Bank tin on Amazon new for $45. The Top Ten tin is not available new anymore and the used prices range from $28 to $125. Not an acceptable price for the quality of the material assembled here. I certainly wouldn't have payed twenty for either tin. I might be cheap and not at all sensible but I know crap when I see it and even I have some vague sort of limit. You can pretty up a package with some bloody gore and a floating eyeball but you can't scrub the stink off those movies. And they are a stinky lot. Not worth a buck each that's for sure. Not considering those 50 movie packs run about 35 cents a movie. These are that same sort of movie. Crappy. Movies no one could make a buck putting out on their own anymore. Not even wide screen. The first movie I stuck on, Scream Baby Scream, was one I had seen before, back on 2/26/93. It was a Friday Night Movie selection. Neither Sperhauk nor I remember seeming it, but he did say he thought a scene or two was familiar. Luckily for me it was a completely new movie. Sucked though, and it was one of the better ones. It was written by Larry Cohen. Mostly they were bad movies because they were boring. Not much happens, and there's a lot of yakking, followed by more not much happening. Even a movie like Horror of the Horrible Hungry Hungan that has a fair bit of action, and an eye catching title, is so poorly made that you can only stare and mutter along with the hungan about what a horrible predicament you've found yourselves in. Life is hard for horror movie monsters and horror movie monster fans. Save your ten bucks. Buy yourself a nice lunch instead, or buy me some LEGO. Either way you've saved the 829 minutes that the box contains, not including the few trailers that I didn't even bother to watch. The sets are lacking any other extras. Really, who would spend money producing stuff like that for these movies?

Friday Night Movies 210

The Dark Knight was our first feature. It's pretty long. 253 minutes. Could be shorter. It's darker than the previous Batman movie but that's to be expected from something with the touch of Frank Miller on it. I don't care for Frank and his dark superhero take. I'll never forgive him for his adaptation of The Spirit. I'll go to my grave hating him for that and I haven't even seen it. I don't care for Frank's art very much either. It's a style thing. I liked most of the movie. I liked Heath Ledger's The Joker, but I've liked him in most of the roles he's been in. He's completely charming in 10 Things I Hate About You. That's a fun movie. There's less fun in TDK but that's to be expected. Their world is a dark nightmare of explosions and murder. Crime still runs rampant in the Gotham and Batman is pushing down hard on the crime bosses. They push back by hiring The Joker, a up and coming psychotic on the scene. He steals 68 million from a mob bank to get their attention. He also shoots all his co-workers. He's just a dick. Why would people want to work with him? He'll turn on you faster than Howard Stern. Harvey Dent is fighting against the crime bosses. He's the District Attorney and also in love with Bruce's oldest pal Rachel Dawes. Bad deal for her, The Joker plays a mean game with death as the prize. And sometimes our heroes fail. I like my heroes to win. I might pick up a copy of this when I can find one cheap. Real cheap. Perhaps free. I don't figure I'd watch it a lot.

 

Kazuo Umezu's Horror Theater: Bug's House or Umezu Kazuo: Kyôfu gekijô - Mushi-tachi no ie is one of those Japanese horror films that I just don't seem to care for. I don't know what happened. Some lady might have turned into a bug, and another lady might have been killed. No way of telling. If you see it maybe you can tell me.

Fast cars and Drive-In Cult Classics

I didn't see much science fiction this weekend. Saturday I could hardly get going in the morning. Went back to bed after having breakfast. I just saw that in a movie. It seemed like a good idea in the movie. And it was in real life. I finally got back up about 10am and had me some Cheerios. I have a lot of Cheerios. I better eat 'em.

   

Those are all the different LEGO cars that I got from buying Cheerios. I have 5 of the 6 in the set. The Cheerios were on sale at the Cub Food Store this week. Two 14 oz boxes for 5 bucks. Sadly the first two boxes I bought were $3.83 each. I usually like to buy my Cheerios on sale. I'll buy a bunch if they have a good sale. Cheerios are on sale pretty regularily, you just have to keep an eye out. I was at the Cub at lunch on Friday. There they were, on sale, 2 for $5. I bought 4 boxes, and didn't get any cars I didn't all ready have. On the way home I stopped at a different Cub and bought 4 more.

At Friday Night Movie night last week Sperhauk gave me 4 cars from the boxes he had bought. He buys in bulk too. And I wound up with 5 different ones. It's just like buying trading cards in single packs. You always wind up with duplicates. The nice thing about LEGO is duplicates are desirable. I'm just thinking of them as building stock. I took the five I had over to the TCLUG meeting in the afternoon. I also took my Canadian Postal Truck. It was an exclusive to the Canadian Post office and one day in 1984 I happened to be at the Winnipeg Post Office at the right time. That's not a picture of my box. I'm pretty sure I have the box. I know I have the instructions, I saw them a while back.

 

I was thinking of looking for some Sci-Fi to watch on Sunday but when I got home from the TCLUG meeting my order from Amazon was waiting. That's the trouble around here, too many things clamor for attention. I'm such a slave to my possessions. They crack the whip and I jump. I had wanted to pick up the third dvd box set of The Addams Family. It was 12.99 at Amazon and I started looking around to bring my total to the $25 for free shipping. It's slower but can wait for free shipping. I was looking for cheap things and could hardly find anything I wanted. I don't keep a want list of movies and dvds. I would feel sad it was so large. So occasionally I buy something that strikes my fancy and watch that. I didn't find anything in the Amazon sale items. Too many. I did see a Bruce Campbell movie I hadn't seen that was cheap enough. It's a Sci-Fi channel original called Terminal Invasion. Sounds terrible, but nothing to poke your eyes out over. Guys gotta make a living. I'll watch it someday and let you know how it was. Then, because I wanted it, and I'd at least save the local tax, I figured to order the Drive-In Cult Classics Vol. 1. It's an 8 movie set for $10. That's the regular price. Lucky me, it turned out that the Amazon price was cut in half. None of the other three sets are half price. $4.99 for 8 movies. That's not too bad. I know, it depends on the movies. I ain't expectin' any great shakes from the series and I won't be dissatisfied. The movies in the series are Crown International films. They were a low budget exploitation house that made movies in the 1960's and 70's. They aren't great movies but they have a lot of nudity. That always put the butts in the seats. There wasn't any video or dvd back then, you needed to go to the theater to see naked ladies. What a pain. Anyway, here's the run down of the box. It's got quite the collection of stories.

     

Pick-Up (1975) has two gals hitch a ride with a guy driving a mobile home somewhere in Florida. They take the wrong turn and wind up stuck in the swamp. The film makers attempt to add some art to the exploitation. Parts of it are straight up exploitation. Get the girls out of their clothes for nearly any reason. And then, there are some flashback bits and some weird bits I can't explain. It might be one of the better films in the set and it scores a 5.1 on the IMDb. Pretty good score for this sort of movie. The girls are pretty and topless a lot. Mostly the story meanders about and not much happens. I'm not sure if it had a happy ending because of the ending. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

The Teacher (1974) is everything an exploitation film should be. It's got sex, murder, hot chicks, ugly men, blackmail, stalking, and Dennis the Menace. Really, Jay North, TV's Dennis Mitchell is playing Sean, the young guy of 18, who takes up with Diane, the hot 28 year old friend of his mom. Sean's pal has a brother who's out of the Army, and he's not right in the head. The two pals are sneaking a peak at Diane with the crazy brother's binoculars. The crazy brother catches them using his binoculars. He really gets mad when he finds they are sneaking a peak at the topless love of his life. Too bad Diane thinks he's crazy and frightening. He scares Sean's pal, his own brother,  into falling to his death. He blames Sean and starts to torment him. Crazy guy is also stalking Diane and eventually most everyone is dead. Kind of a downer ending, man. Glad I'm not living La Vida Loca.

The Stepmother (1972) has a poor title and the story is pretty typical. An architect comes home late at night to find his client sneaking out of his house. The house where his wife is. He strangles the client in a fit of rage. Oh, oh. That's not good. This is a client who owes him money I might add. He takes the body out in the desert and buries it. The cops dig it up and the man hunt is on. First they suspect another guy. He killed his wife and buried her in the same area, but he just has no motive. The cops start to suspect our architect guy and they start buggin' him. It doesn't take much to set him off. He's high strung and guilty. He starts crackin'. He accidentally kills his partner and then he finds his wife in bed with his son from his first marriage. I guess Juniors all grown up now. It's one bad thing after another with these people. I wonder if the dead guys house got forclosed on?

The Sister-In-Law (1974) has John Savage playing the carefree younger brother. He goes to visit his older brother, who's a writer. Turns out the writer isn't writing and he's making a living being a drug mule for the mob. He couldn't be a waiter? The writer has a bit on the side and he even brings her to the house. Savage, being the brother he is, seduces his brother's wife and mistress. The brother sends him on a drug run but Savage and the mistress toss all the drugs into a stream in the woods. The writer fingers Savage to the mob and heads for France. I don't think there was anyone you'd want to root for in this movie. I felt sad that not enough of them died.

     

Trip With The Teacher (1975) is the most nastiest film of the bunch. It's poorly made too. Pedestrian film making at best. It scores a rightly deserved 2.1 on the IMDb. It's got Zalman King, of the Red Shoe Diaries, as a sleazy biker who holds some girls hostage. The girls were travelling on a small bus with a driver. There are 4 girls and their teacher on a trip through the south west. They meet a trio of bikers. Zalman and his brother had stopped along side the road when the helmet wearin' hero biker guy comes by. Not suspecting they are sleazy dirt bags under their Easy Rider exterior he decides to ride along with them. They encounter the bus while getting gas and each group goes it's way. The bus breaks down. Who comes along? The bikers. Things quickly turn nasty. Surprising for such a slow moving movie. Zalman kills the bus driver and the brother drives the hero biker off a cliff. It was a small cliff. The teacher is slapped around and raped by Zalman. He tries to get his brother to rape one of the girls but the guy is so bent out of shape for killing the hero biker all he can do is drink. Things turn uglier as Zalman takes off his sunglasses. That's an ugly man. One of the girls tries to escape and Zalman suffocates her in the dirt. Ugly and nasty. The hero biker returns from the dead while Zalman is killing that girl. Remember he had a helmet. He's ok. He ropes the sad brother from on top of the cabin and strangles him. That was kind of cool. That guy was a fuckin' asshole. Now we get some vengence as the girls fight back. Everyone puts the boot to Zalman. He couldn't die soon enough for me. I don't need movies to remind me how much life can suck. I do like a bit of vengence.

Best Friends (1975) has Richard Hatch and his pal just returning home from a tour in Vietnam. They rent a mobile home and take it to San Diego. They have their best girls, one of whom is played by Susanne Benton. Some of you might remember her as the girl from A Boy and His Dog. She's the one that Blood eats. And rightly so. He was starvin'. She doesn't fair to well in this movie either. Turns out Richard's pal is a bit wacko from the army and he might not have been medicated enough to play out in the real world. He starts acting all weird and next thing you know he's attacking Richard and the girls. More bad things happen. It's just a sad movie, with nothing much fun about it.

Malibu High (1979) was a hoot. Kim , a student in high school, is flunking out. She doesn't do her home work and has an attitude. She takes crap from everyone about her grades and her habits. None of either is too good. Kim decides to turn her life around. She becomes a prostitute. Her pimp works her out of a van and keeps 60%. She stays in school though. She's got a plan for that too. She seduces most of her teachers, the male ones, and has sex with them to get good grades. When one doesn't want to play along she turns to blackmail. He gives in like the pocket protector wearin' momma's boy he is. She moves up to a bigger flashier pimp. One of her customers gets all freaky and she kills him. Plants an ice pick in his back. Harsh. Pimpy frames another guy for the murder. Even harsher. He's connected to the mob back east, so you know he's a dick. Next thing you know, he's asking Kim to shoot a guy. She finds she likes it and soon enough she's killin' everyone. She almost has no time to hook anymore. It's such a ludicrous story, and so poorly told, it's hard not to laugh. Enjoy this one with a group. Many a laugh to be had, especially when Kim comes to her own bad end.

Cindy and Donna (1970) Cindy and her half sister Donna still live at home. They go to school. Mom and dad are heavy drinkers. Dad likes the young hookers and doesn't bother with mom anymore. Poor mom hits the bottle soon as she gets in the door and sadly she can't even get picked up at the bar. Donna leads a wild life at night and Cindy, only 17, is starting to wonder what's going on in her body. Donna gets involved with some sleazy guys and things go down hill. Cindy gets caught up in the sex and drugs and rolls down the hill. Will she survive to the end of the movie? Will Donna? Who cares.

Somehow I went from LEGO cars to sleazy movies. I guess I drove to the drive-in in my mind in a tiny car. It's not like I expected much from these movies. They aren't much different than the group in the 3rd volume. The level of film making doesn't have a very high bar to leap over in the exploitation business to be acceptable, so most of them don't try too hard. Can't screw around with the audience anyway. They came to see some boobies. Some were funier than others, I'd rewatch those. People acting badly is the main theme of most of these movies. With their clothes off as often as possible. Audiences like watching films where people make the wrong choices. Makes me think though. Think it's a good thing I see most of this sort of behavior in the movies. I just don't want to see that in the streets of my town. I don't mind gum wrappers in the street. I don't want to see naked dead hookers instead. Movies not for everybody. I certainly wouldn't want a steady diet of them but occasionally it's fun to wallow about in the filth. On TV.

Friday Night Movies 209

Alfonso Brescia's La Bestia nello spazio or Beast in Space is a 1980 Italian SF film that sucks. It's a vague sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 film The Beast. You probably don't want to see that one either. It's a giant penis version of The Beauty and The Beast story. We watched it on the 4/25/97 edition of Friday Night Movies.  Luckily I don't remember anything about it. My comment was "Wow beast cum and a couple of nudie cuties". Greg, who brought both movies, tried to tell me about it and all that did was make me fell better about having a failing memory. My day to day book had a note about there being a lot of horse's fucking in The Beast. The Brescia film has only one scene of horse's fucking. I don't know if I should feel cheated. Here's a guy who liked it. Go figure. Beast In Space was one of many films, Battle of the Stars, Battle of the Planets, War of the Robots and Star Odssey, that used the same sets, actors and props. They were all sf and they all suck. The stories are stupid, the effects crap and the sets are poor at best. I have most of them in one or another of the 50 dvd movie packs. They were hardly worth the 35 cents that they cost. They certainly don't provide that much entertainment value. Beast In Space is the one with the most nudity and there's even a XXX version. It doesn't help make it better by any stretch of the imagination. Mostly it's boring, even the sex scenes, and the beast guy has a pretty poor costume. There's a lot of man ass too. Sure was nice to see that dvd pop out of the machine.

Into The Wild Green Yonder is the fourth of the Futurama movies. I have been enjoying them and this was no exception. It made me laugh and that's always worth my cash. I hope they sign up to do some more. I don't know how these sold. The movies are supposed to be cut up and run in syndication on the Cartoon Network. I never watch that network. Too many other things to watch. The movie opens with the Planet Express crew on Mars. They are watching Mars Vegas blow up. Leo Wong, Amy's rich father is building a new version of the town with a giant miniature golf course that will take up 12% of the galaxy. You'll be able to fire giant balls out of giant cannons and try to beat the planet size hazards. A sun is being turned into a black hole for the ball return. Some ladies are protesting the project but they aren't making any headway. Fry gets a piece of jewelry lodged in his head and it gives him the power to read minds. Leela and Amy join the protesters and Fry, having his own secret agenda, falls in with Leo. It splits up the Planet Express crew and it looks like they are out of business. There's a lot of jokes and if you don't like one, another might tickle your funny bone. I laughed out loud several times. I'm also looking forward to the commentary by the show creator's. All the Futurama commentaries have been fun, both on the show and the movies.

I had to laugh at a couple of posts from the IMDb message board. Here's the first by Dratnor.

I've seen it three times, and many things just didn't make sense.

Firstly, what was Bender doing? He has an affair with Donbot's wife, gets killed and neither Donbot ore the wife are mentioned again. He only reenters the story courtesy of trying to bring down Leela in a really tenous connection, and he shows up again to break them out as 'his rap sheet is now longer than yours'
He wasn't needed in the story and should have been left out, or had a more effective side plot.

The Madfellows weren't explained. How/why can they read minds?
The Feministas, why were they angry at Leo Wong?

The ending is most bizarre of all. No one, except Fry and the Madfellows knew about the Dark One, they were all there to observe the completion of the golf course, and no one cared that a manta ray showed up. and then they all leave and go in a wormhole, whilst Fry and Leela declare there love.

Back to me. I see this sort of comment so often, but usually the people haven't seen the movie three times and still don't get it. The next comments were some fairly polite responses but the last guy BlindedByMarqueeLights was a bit more blunt.

Bender, Fanny and the Donbot: After recieving the "warning" from the Don, Bender decided to end the affair rather than have something worse than being riddled with bullets and burried in a shallow grave happen to him and Fanny. When she asks if she'll see him that night he answers "probably not." That's all a smooth talker like Bender needs to say to get the point across.

The Madfellows: Number 9 did explain their origin. They're the protecters of the secret about the Encyclopods. As for the mind reading thing, just like Fry's random accident causing him to become telepathic, I think each member has their own specific reason for being able to read minds. Some of them are just loons, some are schizophrenic, some have objects lodged into their skulls, some have plates in their heads or receptive fillings, others were just born telepathic. Did that really need explaining? It's just a bunch of people who can and/or think they can read minds.

The Ecofeminists vs. Leo: ...you were actually watching this movie right?

The Ending The audience seemed to be pretty awestruck that a giant mantaray evolved from a star, I dunno what you're talking about.
The reason the crew and their loved ones left is because Brannigan decided to still arrest them, they were making an escape. They were headed in the direction of the giant wormhole and knew Zapp was in hot pursuit so rather than being chased all around the knowable universe (on the new, alternative fuel, whale oil, which makes the ship run slower) they decided to take the chance, knowing that Zapp probably wouldn't have followed them into something so possibly dangerous. It's basically like Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff.


next time try actually watching the movie numbnuts.

Garth again. I don't know if I would compare the ending to Thelma and Louise. Jumping into a worm hole to an unknown destination is simply not the equivilent of driving your car off a cliff. There could be anything on the other side of the worm hole and there's only ground bound death on the cliff diving. I don't think T&L had a flying car. Even if they did, it wouldn't matter, that movie was about making all the wrong choices. So, if Futurama comes back, there's a nice set up for trips to different parts of the galaxy, or they could trick Zap into the wormhole and go back to Earth and set up Planet Express again. Anything is possible. If nothing happens then I'll have these 4 movies to re-watch. I'm sure they'll make me laugh all over again.