PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 222

 

Joe Netflix'd Girl Boss Guerilla based on the title. It's a Japanese film called Skeban gerira from 1972 that was released as part of a 2005 DVD collection here. The Pinky Violence Collection puts four of the nudity packed exploitation films in one set. NetFlix only sends one at a time. That's probably good. The girls are mostly pretty, and certainly topless, and they play a bunch of stupid biker chicks who consistantly make the wrong decisions. In the third of a series of 7 Girl Boss films the Red Helmet Gang come to Kyoto from Shinjuku. I did enjoy looking at the streets of Kyoto in the early 70's. The Red Helmets encounter some guy bikers right away and lead them to the side of the road. Sachiko flashes a tattoo'd boobie to distract the guys and it's on. They beat down the boys down in a poorly choreographed fight. The cast and crew might not be so good at giving us a good fight but they know their customers. They start off right away and then keep the boobies flowing. The girls are short of cash, they don't have any jobs of course, so they start stealing. That brings them to the attention of the local girl gang. There's a fight and Sachiko, the leader of the Red Helmet's, is now the leader of the Kyoto girl gang. It wasn't a very good fight either. The local Yakusa, a rather sad lot, turn up and demand their cut. There's plenty of strife from the criminal life, and like we learn on The Sopranos, it often isn't any better in their personal life. There's some conflict with one of the Kyoto girls and her Yakusa brother. There's a boxer who stops the Yakusa from beating Sachiko and they fall for each other. He's a stupid guy too but he can fight pretty good. The Yakusa kill him in one of the rare death scenes. Even when the Yakusa are blown up in what turned out to be one of the few interesting bits of the movie it all happens behind a hill and we just see a plume of smoke. It's a cheap movie. The actors are all over the place, like some of the jokes, though I might be missing something because it's Japanese. Four guys peeing in a river while complaining about having the clap isn't much different in any language. There's a lot of slapstick, and slapping, in this movie. Along with the titties. There's some beatings and topless torture later on. Girls tied up in chains. Not my cup of tea but somebody liked it. The guy at 10,000 Bullets had this to say. "Overall Girl Boss Guerilla is one of the best films to ever come out of the Pinky Violence genre." Pretty strong statement. I couldnt' say anything like that myself, but it's the kind of movie that inspires a loyal following amongst it's fans. I don't know that I would encourage Joe to get some more. The movie gets a 6.8 on the IMDb. I wouldn't rate it more than a 4 but mostly because it just isn't that well made. Like the score there are parts of the movie that work and other parts that are pretty sloppy. There are certainly better exploitation films out there.  The movie is a lot like the Crown International movies from the DVD Drive-In movie packs. They were cut from the same exploitative cloth. It's bright colors hide the flaws.

Same thing for Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. It was a 1974 exploitation film. The first from Academy Pictures. It was a new company founded by James Nicholson who has left American International Pictures and Sam Arkoff. The Wikipedia has a good bit of info on the making of the film. Peter Fonda and Adam Rourke are a failed race car driver and his ex-drunken mechanic. They are down on their luck and have no money. They have a plan to rob a store of it's payroll cash. Roddy MacDowell plays the store manager who's wife is held hostage by Adam while Peter saunters in to pick up the cash. $150,000. Their plan gets hijacked with the arrival of Susan George. She was Peter's pick up the night before and now he's stuck with her. They head out for somewhere. They got a plan. And a two way radio to listen to the cops. They are going to switch cars and in one bit of stupidity they hid the car in a festival or some weird gathering. They consistantly make stupid mistakes like that. Plan not thought out. The characters don't give you anything much to like about them. Vic Morrow plays the rule breaking police guy after them. I kind of liked him and I always like Kenneth Toby who plays his boss. They like to yell at each other. They got a big man love goin' on. Vic takes charge and directs the squad cars after the trio of idiots with a plan. Vic starts off in the police station, then he's in a car and then he gets a helicopter to chase them with. What a guy, and what a good helicopter pilot, who also acted in the movie. Peter drives crazy and manages to escape the police cars. Many of the police cars are wrecked, some in pretty good crashes and some in pretty poor crashes. Vic almost has them with the helicopter but it runs out of gas near the end of the movie. No matter. The kids are caught by misadventure in an ending that the box calls jaw dropping. The only thing that dropped was my rating of the movie. Movies that kill off their characters in such a contrived way don't get rewatched in my house. There are many better exploitation movies, though this one seems to have it's fans. Since this was a loaner, I now know that I don't need to pick this up.

Science Fiction Sunday 34

I am still trying to catch up on the wekend. It's nearly bedtime and I still want to finish this post. I did get some discs burned this long weekend. I burned about 16 dvdr's and a dozen cd's. Unfortunately I found a comic archive with lots of public domain comics and I downloaded about 5 gigs worth before I could stop myself. Mostly old western comics from the 1940's and 50's. I was especially interested in the Dell Four Color comics with adaptations of movies and tv shows. Have Gun - Will Travel, Maverick, Spin and Marty, and the Lone Ranger to name a few. Everything else was just gravy. Of course, I'm swimin' in gravy now. I've got hundreds of files to rename, extract and burn onto more discs. Then I'll read 'em when I get around to 'em. Between down loading sessions I was burning discs. While I was burning discs I figured to catch up on some movie watching and LEGO sorting. I am still dealing with the stuff that I got at that guys LEGO by the bag sale. It's all sorted into baggies by type, doors together, windows together, and those baggies need to be worked into the rest of the tubs. I still have about a 10 ream size paper box of baggies to sort into the building stock. I'll tackle some sloped bricks after rooting about in the boxes of dvd's. I think it had been a while since I had seen Dogora. Certainly I've seen it since I reviewed it in July 2005. I still have that bootleg. I still like the movie. I got this gorgeous b&w picture from Sperhauk. Worth sharing for the odd fan or two who's interested in that sort of thing. The dvd is nice and though low on extras has a nice copy of the print.

 

After that I watched The Day The Earth Stood Still. Not the remake but the original movie 1951 movie directed by Robert Wise. There's a newish two disc set out as of last December 2008. I have the previous 2003 edition and according to some guy on Amazon they cut the good 70 minute documentary for some slighter 23 minute documentary and screwed around with a good package. I'll keep the edition I have. That's the cover to it on the left above. You can still buy it on Amazon for half the price of the new edition. Hint hint. Then there are a couple of posters and a dvd cover I don't know anything about. After I watched the movie, I also listened to the commentary by Robert Wise and Nicolas Meyer, and then I watched the making of documentary. It's a good dvd with a nice bunch of extras.

Slaughterhouse Saturday

It sure is great that this is a long weekend. I seem to be a whole friggin' day behind. Saturday I was trying to clean my hard drive. I have a lot of files that had been accumulating for a good while. I needed to burn some cd's and dvd's to archive those files. The guys at work were telling me I just needed to get a second hard drive. You can get a terribite for about $120. I'd rather spend that money on some LEGO or snacks. Keeping things off your hard drive is a good thing. While I was doing the burning I couldn't use my pc so I watched some movies with subtitles that Joe had given me the day before. Might as well get them watched as not and then they can go back to Joe. All four movies were from Hong Kong and are recent films that are set in the past. All are about war. When I asked Joe what they were like, he just said, war is bad. Or something like that.

First up Three Kingdoms - Ressurection of the Dragon. It's a 2008 movie with Andy Lau and Sammo Hung that is based on a Chinese novel called Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's set somewhere between 160 and 280 AD. There is a lot of fighting and stabbing as the three kingdom's fight it out for control of China. The country would be united in 280 AD under the Jin Dynasty. Sammo is the narrator. He's playing a fictional soldier who befriends Andy Lau. Andy is playing a real character who was fictionalized for the novel and more so for the movie. Maggie Q plays the daughter of a general from one of the three kingdom's. She vows revenge for something Andy did. It's a sort of complicated story with quite a few characters. There's a longer review and synopsis of the story at this site. The story covers a lot of ground as the people get older. Years pass and Andy and the daughter finally have it out. The action is that blury jumpy quick cut stuff that doesn't show much of anything to the audience. Andy's character isn't that interesting or likeable. Not a movie that I would want to watch too soon again, what with war being bad and all. I am curious about John Woo's 4 hour movie, in 2 parts, that deals with the Red Cliff battle that was so important, The second part should be coming out soon on dvd. Woo hasn't made much after Windtalkers. Another movie about the horrors of model warfare and one I don't much want to watch again. It wasn't well recieved and there's a good reason for that. He did some video game work and then the two part Red Cliff.

Second was The Warlords, a 2007 movie set in the 1860's, with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takishi Kaneshiro. They are three men bound to a promise. Never a good idea. Jet is a general. He's the only survivor of a battle, the end of which starts the movie. He falls in with some bandits while he's recovering. They live by stealing food from the rebels. When he recovers Jet goes with the gang and they rob a rebel convoy.  The Quin army comes looking for the food, which had been stolen from them, and take it back. Jet rounds up the bandits and convinces them to join the army to gain a more stable life for their families. Those that don't die in battle I guess. Maybe there's a good pension for the widows. Or a swift death. The Quin army welcomes Jet back somewhat reluctantly. He proves to be a good fighter and there in lies the rub. He's too ambitious and popular. The Quin Lords with hold their love. And food. And everything else an invading army needs. The siege of Suzhou turns bad and the men, both inside and outside of the city, are staving as the fight drags on for a year. Andy convinces the leader of the city to surrender. Everything gets worse when the promise Andy made to the captured army isn't kept and the Suzhou soldiers are slaughtered. That causes a rift which only widens. Eventually Andy is too far off the beam to live. The Empress orders the death of Jet. He's become far too much of a problem. There's better fighting in this movie and some of the battle scenes aren't too bad. Trailer here. Looks pretty good, huh. The story is full of sadness and betrayal. Not one wins even after they succeed in battle. I usually like these movies the first time but unless they are more upbeat I just don't want to see them too often. The acting is good and the action scenes are gritty and fairly entertaining. There's just too much melodrama for me. People liked the movie and it won some awards. It deserved it as a good reminder that war is bad.

By now it's getting to be mid afternoon on saturday and I have burned some discs and sorted some lego. Back to the tv and my third movie. Seven Swords is not on a dvd. It's on a vcd. Two CD's in a double jewel case with nice color pictures and words all in Chinese. Joe gets some of these movies from Asian video stores on the internet. I haven't bought any in a while. For some reason they still sell a lot of this format in Asia. A vcd is usually half or less than the dvd. At least on the internet. I can't imagine how cheap they are in the streets of Hong Kong. A dollar? I wouldn't be surprised. The quality isn't as good as the dvd. Seven Swords is a 2005 movie set in the 1600's. Tsui Hark is the director. He's made some good films since he started in the mid 80's. Always something cooking with that guy. I have several favorites like Peking Opera Blues, the first two of the One Upon a Time In China series, and Knock Off to put you in the right direction. He also writes films and he's produced some of the very best of the Hong Kong output. Some bad guys are going to attack a village. The Quin Lords have decreed no martial arts. The bad guys are the enforcers of the law and they get so much a head for every head of a martial artist they bring in. Lucrative business, especially when the whole town does martial arts. Some martial arts guys go ask an older martial arts guy what to do and he gives them seven swords and some advice. They go off to save the people of the martial arts village next on the chopping block. There's lots of sound and fury in the fights. You might not know what's going on all the time but there's hardly any time to think about that before something distracts the mind. There's some melodrama and some dumb stuff. A little more lighthearted than the previous two films. The good guys are the winners and the bad guys are crushed like the bugs that they are. I enjoyed the movie mostly but it isn't going to be high on the top of my list to buy what with the high cost of war. That can't be good.

I didn't like The Empress and the Warriors as much as Seven Swords. Donnie Yen and Leon Lai star in this 2008 film. A young woman has to take over the kingdom when her father dies. There's a war going on. She's betrayed, escapes hurt, and is saved by Leon Lai who lives in the wood. Donnie Yen, who lives in the city, is the other good guy. He keeps things going in the kingdom until the princess is rescued. There's some more stuff but I was tired of the movie before the end. Mostly melodrama and less action than I like. War is boring at times. I was still burning discs and while that was going on I was dismantling the huge rock from The Shack on the Rock. It's a LEGO scene I did. I was ok with it but it wasn't a keeper. I have some pictures and memories. Digital and faulty. Isn't that the modern world for ya. The rock weighed 3 pounds. I thought it would be more. Sure was a lot of parts in there. I sure overbuilt that. Mind you I could stand on that rock. Now I got lots of light grey pieces to add to my stock. Now it's bedtime sunday and I still haven't blogged about the SF movies that I watched today. Maybe tomorrow. Monday holiday. Who doesn't like that?

Friday Night Movies 221

I'd seen Street Trash before, on April 8, 1989. I looked it up and that saturday I went to Sperhauk's to watch a movie, maybe two. Back in those days Friday Night Movies was often on saturday. My Watched Movie List Data Base only shows one new movie for that date and my diary entry only says where I was, not what I watched. I figured since 20 years had passed I probably forgot most everything about the movie. Mind you that's not a high-risk bet since I can't remember what happened to me yesterday or what I watched last week. Usually when I watch some old movie I haven't seen in a while something surfaces but Street Trash didn't seem familiar at all. It all set around a poor section in Oakland. That's across the bay from San Francisco in California in the USA. That's the place that the San Francisco Bay Bridge goes to. Well, if you're in SF obviously. In postcards Oakland's usually covered in fog. I was only in Oakland once for a day or two. Stayed at a hotel for a night to crash an SF convention and next day moved out to the tiny City of Emeryville. That city fronts the bay and is surrounded by Oakland to the east and south and Berkley on the north. We stayed in a modern condo with large glass windows overlooking the bay. It was very nice and we had the place to ourselves. Back in Oakland I saw a giant rat running down the sidewalk. I my head we battled to the death. In reality, I yelled and he kept on going where he was going. There are some nice buildings in Oakland, or there were 20 plus years ago when I was there last. Maybe they tore them all down since. I don't have any digital pictures of my trip and I haven't gotten around to scanning all my paper pictures. These pictures scavenged off the internet will have to do.

 

Street Trash

takes place on the mean streets of Oakland and it's a bleak dark deadly comedy of errors. A low rent neighborhood liquor store owner finds a 60 year old case of wine in his store basement. He figures he can get a buck a bottle for the stuff. Problem is Viper isn't very good for repeat business. Kills the customer by melting them from the inside out. That's the whole plot pretty much. There's a bunch of characters we meet and most of them are centered around a junk yard. There's a crazed Vietnam vet living there who bullies the other bums. He goes extra crazy and starts killing. That brings the cops. Soon people are dying left and right. It's a wonder anyone made it through the movie. The special effects are ok. They do the job and melt the victims in really gooey ways. The dvd boxes don't quite show the effects to their gooey glory. You can see some of it in the dvd preview trailer. Here's the toilet scene. There are some good pics here and here there is a good pic of the penis flying through the air during the game of keep away played by the bums in the junkyard. It's that kind of movie. The kind not for my mom. There's a bunch of fighting and murder mixed in with some slightly heavy handed social satire and some jokes and scenes that made me laugh. 

I didn't laugh as much at Hood of the Living Dead which also takes place in and around Oakland. Total coincidence. Nice when it happens and there is some unplanned connection between the two movies. HOTLD is a low budget picture from the Quiroz Brothers, who've made a dozen pictures in the bay area. Some of it was ok, some of the time. and some of it dragged. It made that 86 minutes seem much longer. The story is one we have heard over and over. Some science guys have a serum that can reanimate flesh. The one guy uses it on his brother after he's killed in a driveby. It's bad in the hood, and in keeping with that theme, the reanimation goes bad, and the kid becomes a flesh eating zombie with good running skills. That spreads and soon there are a bunch of the creeps buggin' out in the hood. The science guys gang up and battle the zombie gang members. It's a blood bath and most everyone dies. The quality of the production varies, as does the makeup. The acting is fair to poor. Sperhauk picked this up from the clearance section at Half Price Books for 80 cents. We weren't sure that we got 80 cents worth of entertainment out of that. 20 cents each maybe.

What I read in March 2009

  

Not a very good month for reading, March wasn't. I read 7 titles and two of them were slim comic 100 page collections. I finished off The Dragon Chronicles series by Susan Fletcher. I read the second volume, Flight of the Dragon at the beginning of the month. It was more interesting than the first volume. I think the writting had gotten a bit smoother and the characters more interesting. It's a prequel to the first book and all the characters are new to us. One young girl who's had a brush with a dragons as a baby developes the ability to talk to birds and the king thinks she can call to dragons. He's got a secret revenge in mind and any dragon will do to fall under his blade. The young girl can call the dragons and does. Bad for the dragon who shows up. Horrified the girl runs away from the king and with the help of a hunky guy she saves the rest of the dragons and get them out of the kingdom. There's a whole lot of falconry in the book too. It isn't going to be a keeper.

Next I read the two volumes of Walt Kelly's Our Gang comics. There is a third volume out but I haven't gotten it yet. Each Fantagraphics collection reprints 8 stories by Walt Kelly from the Our Gang comics. The Dell Comics series started in 1942 and ran through 1949. The kids from the Our Gang (Little Rascals on tv) film series, were joined in the original comic books by other MGM stars. Tom & Jerry and Barney Bear each had stories in an issue. The covers of the Fantagraphics books are sadly not by Walt. Jeff Smith, of Bone, did a pretty good job, but they just aren't Kelly. Mind you Kelly isn't Kelly either. The Our Gang stories start with a pretty different style than the Walt Disney or Pogo work. The stories are ok little morality tales, or adventures. There's some danger on a regular basis and they are humorous. More for the fan of Kelly or some nostalgic interest in the 1940's. They are nice little volumes, fairly well produced with pretty good art. Some times the reproduction of old comics is not so good. The original art would all be gone and the source is often the comic itself. Better scanning software today, a lot can be cleaned up.

I still didn't care much for the Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. I kind of skimmed a bit each night for most of the month. Just a series and writer that I don't find I'm on the same page with. Into the sell pile with you. Nice cover on the book.

 

E Nesbit's The Book of the Dragons is a collection of short stories from 1901. Most of them were entertaining. Easy to read and often humorous. You can read E. Nesbit over on the Guttenberg Project. I didn't care for Elmore Leonard's A Coyote in the House. The cover makes me think animated cartoon and the writing screams make me into a movie. There are several reason's I didn't fit well with the book. Most everyone on Amazon gave it 4 or 5 stars. It wasn't a bad book, I just didn't care for the style, but then I've never been an Elmore reader. I read Get Shorty back in the days I used to man the counter at Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore three nights a week. That was 10-12 years ago and I haven't gotten anymore. This was loaner from Simba that was returned. I think she took it back to the bookstore. The third book in The Dragon Chronicles finished out the month. Sign of the Dove by Suzanne returns to the characters of the first volume and there's more dragons, danger and running about. Some stuff does catch on fire. I liked this one better than the first, and about as much as the second. Still going into the bin to get sold.

LEGO Cakes

Nathan sent the members of TwinLUG a link for LEGO cakes. There are only 7 of them, and some cupcakes. This one made me laugh. I liked the cupcakes. I always used to have fun decorating cakes and the like. Haven't baked anything for years. Not like I need more baked goods.

Science Fiction Sunday 33

I hadn't seen A Boy And His Dog for a while. I decided to watch it and after the movie played out I listened to the commentary with director L Q Jones, cinematographer John Morrill, and film critic Charles Champlin. The commentary came from the 1996 laserdisc. It's pretty chattey and they talk about a little of everything. I have the 1999 dvd from Slingshot which comes in a weird clear plastic clamshell like case. They don't use them anymore. I'm sure they were costly to make, heavy to ship, and easy to break. There's not much on the dvd by way of extras besides the commentary. There are a couple of trailers, one for the release, and one for the re-release. The movie looks ok to me, better than the laserdisc. I had a copy of the laserdisc but it was warped and I got rid of it. It's a 1975 movie that's based on a Harlan Ellison story of the same name. I read the story back when I read some Harlan Ellison. That was about the time the movie came out. I read some Harlan short stories which I had mixed feelings about. I enjoyed his novel The Juvies, a gang story of the 50's. His collection of articles on tv was called The Glass Teat and I enjoyed suckin' on that. I didn't enjoy the second volume nearly as much but many years had past between volumes and I had changed. I had seen some of his tv and movie work before and after I knew who he was. Ellison wrote the scripts to Demon with a Glass Hand for the Outer Limits and The City on The Edge of Forever for the original Star Trek series. Both are highly thought of. Both are very good. More recently he worked on Babylon 5. Even better and more highly thought of, at least in this house. I used to like seeing Harlan as a guest on Tom Snyder's last talk show, The Late Late Show, back in the late late 90's. Used to be some good conversation on that show. It's the show Craig Kilborn took over, leaving The Daily Show free to hire Jon Stewart. What a stroke of luck.

There's not much luck in the dark bleak world of an alternate future. It's 2024 and Vic (the boy) is a 18 year old kid who lives by what little wits he has in the post apocalyptic wastelands of the American southwest. He's pretty close to Topeka Kansas. The few people on the surface live a crappy life. There are little groups of people, banding together to find and protect their food. They trade with travellers who cross the desolate wasteland. Vic is a solo, meaning he's all by his lonesome, hunting for food and pussy. Blood (the dog) is a rover. He's a telepathic dog who only talks to Vic. He's also smarter than Vic, certainly more well read, but not really much more moral. He sniffs out danger and finds the women knowing full well what's going to happen. Women aren't protected very well in this alternate future hellscape. The movie has taken a lot of heat for that but it just isn't the issue for me. I believe the movie tells the deep dark truth about humans. "Not very nice, ate the fish." That's A Douglas Adams joke. Of course I've just been emersed in the 3rd season of Deadwood all weekend and I'm pretty much thinkin' bleak thoughts. The two stories are odly compatable. They both have the theme of building community and the corruptions that occur when performing that deed. In Deadwood the community is made up of men from other communities who desire to bring that commodity to the lawless camp. In ABAHD too many of the community are still in the enjoyin' murder stage. At least on the surface. In the one underground community we see, the people live a ridged life of servitude to the committee. Two of the committee appear in the forms of Jason Robards and producer Alvy Moore. I mostly remember Alvy as the wacky, weird talkin' County Agent from Green Acres. The underground city of Topeka is where the bait comes from. Quilla June Holmes, cute and blond, played by Susanne Benton, is the bait. Don Johnson playsVic, and Blood is a dog named Tiger, who also appeared on The Brady Bunch. After a bit of shooting, and the naughty bits of Miss Quilla June, Vic is lured into the underground city of Topeka There he learns he has to get 35 women pregnant. Wowie! Now you know anything that good has to have a big ass catch. Yessiree. Vic is strapped down and plugged into a mansize milking machine. Once the gals are knocked up he'll be knocked off. Yeow! It's no paradise in Kansas, not any more. Conform or die. That might be better than just to die on the surface. Vic doesn't think so and he bolts. Poor little Quilla June, head of the secret revolution to take over the committee, heads after him when her scheme fails. So much like the characters on Deadwood with their schemes and plans. And like so many of those unlucky souls Quilla June comes to a sad end as an animal's dinner. Vic and Blood walk off into the sunset. L Q Jones says that the sequel would have picked up right after that freeze frame. Vic would be shot dead by a girl and Blood would become her dog.  The movie is no masterpiece but it's well made and there are good actors in it and they do a good job. Most of them were amateurs, men, women and children from the local military in California where it was shot. It's well worth seeing. I think it's impact is lessened by the time past since it creation but it still holds up pretty well for repeated viewings.

 

While the sequel was never made, the dog died before they could, the story of Vic and Blood continued in a 2 issue comic book series that Richard Corben illustrated in 1987. In the comic Vic is eaten by a giant bug. Blood escapes to live another day. I've read it that comic a couple of times but I can't remember anything much about it. I see flashes of the Richard Corben art in my noggin but I'm not so interested in the story. I've been a fan of Corben since 1969. That was back in the days he did underground comix. He later moved into working for more mainstream comic companies. The 2 Vic and Blood comic books were collected a couple of years later into the paperback on the left. You can't get a copy cheap anymore. The book on the right came out in 2003 and is still available. The newer editon has a newer short story by Ellison. I read that and don't remember anything about that either. The Corben art is pretty entertaining. I do enjoy his style. Maybe I should dig out that pile of his stuff to look at again. Oh, damn, where's the time.

TwinLUG Meeting May 17, 2009

      

We had our monthly meeting today. I was there, and Max and Roy and Alice and Erik and Tom and Dean and Gary and Matt and Laura. There were some new Micropolis modules, minifig cookies, and a SigFig Picnic. These are Max's pictures. You can see some more at his Flickr account. That's Lon's Conservatory in the first pic. Lon is actually from the TCLUG group that meets over at Brian's house. I got enlisted to bring it to the next Micropolis build. Just a small one today. I didn't bring anything but Grampa's Iron Fist. That's Gary biting off the minifig's head. He baked the cookies. They were good. The minifig cookie cutter came from LEGO. There is a woman shape and a guy shape. He also got the roller cookie cutter but found it wanting. The SigFig picnic was silly fun. Roy built a huge pig on a spit. It was a pig that was elephant sized. That's going to take a long time to cook. Tom had a huge grill with an alligator cooking away. Max, the more sensible chef, had a tub of beers and a regular size grill with turkey drumsticks and hamburgers. I brought the ants. There was a late arrival named Bill. He's part of the local train group GMLTC. He brought a motorized Emerald Night to look at. Very cool. Almost makes me want to get a train and run it about. Oh, wait. I have one. Unfortunately it's a tiny oval from the old 9 volt series and you can't get cheap track anymore. Boy, I tell you if there is one lesson to be learned that's important, it's nothing is permanent. Some of the participants went off to eat at Pizza Luce.

Tights Robot

Sperhauk sent me the link to Tights Robot Part 1. It's a short, two part film by a guy in his Godzilla group. It's a giant monster movie, but shorter, only about 13 minutes. There's goofy stuff that I found enjoyable, like buildings getting stomped, and a costumed superhero who grows big to fight the giant monster. Kind of like Ultraman or that ilk. The actings not that great, nor the special effects but I still got a laugh or two out of it. These guys are obvious fans of the genre. Here's the link to Part 2.

Friday Night Movies 220

Greg brought the Midnight Movies two pack dvd. Both movies have to do with head transplants. I am as sure that I watched The Thing With Two Heads (1972) back in the 80's as I am sure that I never saw The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971). Both were low budget films distributed by American International. They are out on DVD from MGM. Both movies are widescreen and look pretty good. Sadly they aren't great movies by any stretch of the imagination. TTWTH scores a 2.8 and TI2HT scores a 2.3. I wouldn't vote them much higher. The enjoyment is in the story and the way it's presented.

Ray Milland and Rosey Grier star in The Thing With Two Heads. Neither are high on my list of favorite actors but they do an ok job here. Ray's a dying doctor and bigot. Near the beginning of the movie he meets the doctor from Minneapolis that he's hired sight unseen. It's Don Marshall and he's black. Ray tries to send him away but he's got a contract and Ray is stuck with him. Ray's pioneering head transplants and has successfully transplanted the head of a gorilla onto another gorilla. After the first head settles in, he cuts off the original head and the beast still lives. That's kind of fucked up for those gorillas. Since Ray's dying he wants to find someone with an incurable head problem so he can use the body for himself. That's where Rosey Grier comes in. Rosey was a football player back in the 60's who turned actor. He was a regular on the 60's Daniel Boone series with Fess Parker. He was also the guy who helped capture Sirhan Sirhan right after Robert Kennedy was killed. In the movie he's a death row inmate who's headed for the electric chair even though he says he's innocent. Ray takes a turn for the worse, and desperate, the doctor who works for Ray puts out a call to the warden at the local prison. Any deathrow inmates who want to sign up for a medical experiment that will kill them in 30 days? Do a good deed, live an extra 30 days. Rosey, from the electric chair, signs up for the experiment. Did I mention Ray's a big-ass bigot? Yep. He hates black people.  The operation happens and the two are joined together. They sure don't like it. Rosey likes it even less when he finds out they are going to cut off his head. This wasn't what he thought he was signing up for. He beats down the doctor and the guards and escapes. He kidnaps Don and makes him drive them away. That starts a poor car chase that lasts nearly a third of this 91 minute movie. After they race up and down for a bit the car is smashed and they steal a motocross bike. It's Rosey and Ray and Don, all on this tiny bike, being chased through a motocross track by the police. After what seems like an eternity the cops have crashed all their cars and Rosey and the gang escape. Rosey takes them to his girlfriend's place. When she sees them together she's a bit freaked out and her first line is: "You get into more shit..." More stuff happens. Eventually Ray's head is removed and left in the hospital connected to the machine that keeps it alive. Ray demands a new body. Rosey rides off into the credits with his girlfriend and Don. Nothing is resolved. A sequel is needed but not wanted. Sperhauk suggested that a weekly sitcom could be developed out of this movie. Ray and Rosey, up to some fun each week. I know I'd have watched it in the 70's. It's one of those movies that makes me laugh a lot.

The Incedible 2-Headed Transplant was not as much fun. There are fewer laughs. The movie opens with a homicidal maniac, named Cass, who's just killed the parents of a young woman he's now planning to rape. He's interupted by the cops showing up. They save the girl and Cass is tossed into jail. He escapes soon after. Out in the country side Bruce Dern is a mad doctor who's quit his job and is working on transplants in a room in his house. Pat Priest, who played Marilyn Munster in the 60's series, plays his wife. She's troubled because Bruce spends too much time in the lab with his assistant Max. The assistant is an older man who was a doctor but his hands were ruined and that ended his career. Bruce and Max have been working on a series of animal head transplants. They've got a bunny, a fox and a monkey. All with two heads. Pat calls Casey Kasem, who's a doctor and Bruce's friend. Bruce shows him the transplants and Casey is intrigued. Also working for Bruce is Andrew who's his handyman and gardener. Andrew has a 30 year old son named Danny. He'd been in an accident and has the mentality of an 8 year old. Of course Cass shows up. He kills the gardener, and kidnaps Pat. Bruce and Max go after her. They find Cass and kill him. They bring his body back to the house and transplant the head onto Danny. Why wouldn't you, Danny is upset from his father being killed, maybe this would cheer him up. Things turn bad and the homicdal Cass takes over Danny's body and they run away. Most everyone dies and we didn't care very much. You can see the whole movie here. It's the poorer of the two movies. The script and the characters just aren't as interesting as the other two headed transplant movie we had just seen. Still it makes a nice two pack of exploitation movies. I'd pick one up if I found it cheap.