PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 598

Up first is The Final Programme, it's British, it came out in 1973, and it's the only film adapted from a Michael Moorcock novel. The movie was called Last Days Of Man On Earth in the US and a few other places. Robert Fuest is the writer and director. His previous two films were the Dr Phibes series and they were much more entertaining.

I first saw it back in 2001 and rated it "fairish" on my Watched Movie List. After watching it again I'm not thinking it's much better than that and that ain't even barely average. I got more enjoyment out of the cinematography than the story. It's very stylish and colorful. The locations are quite interesting. It's the characters that are annoying. What a load of jerks and assholes.

It's somewhat in the future and there's been an incident or two, Amsterdam is ash, the Vatican is gone, it might be the end of civilization. Jerry Cornelius's father has died and he's left a programme to develop a hybrid human that's immortal and self replicating. The programme is on microfilm and it's in dad's safe at home. Some scientists, headed by Graham Crowden, want it.

Jerry leads a raid on the house and his brother defends the place. In the struggle Jerry accidentally kills his sister but the evil Miss Brunner gets the microfilm. Miss Brunner somehow consumes people. Jerry's brother shoots Jerry but he doesn't die. There's a good bit of chasing about by these two knobs. Again, the locations were more interesting than most of the action.

Eventually the microfilm, the scientists, Miss Brunner and Jerry are all in one place. The experiment goes on with a nice laughable ending. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm often laughing at stuff that isn't jokes. I'll probably never get back to the DVD, lucky for me it was used and fairly cheap.

Victor Frankenstein is a 2017 re-imagining of Frankenstein. There's little of the novel in the movie and the whole thing is now being told by a completely new character. He's one of a legion of new characters. It crapped out at the box office and I can see why. Those characters suck.

Total Film compared the movie to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes films, loud, flashy, busy, but I find it's lacking the interesting characters that come with Guy's films. The screenplay was written by Max Landis and the director was Paul McGuigan. His previous film was Push in 2009 and I didn't think too much of that, before that he directed the 2006 gangster film Lucky Number Slevin. That was a bit more entertaining.

Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, he's the narrator and he's got a hunchback. Victor, played by James McAvoy, finds Igor in a circus, acting a sad clown, but he's really knowledgeable about human anatomy. He's all self taught. Victor rescues him and the owner calls the coppers. A man was killed during the escape by a scummy circus guy and that's blamed on Victor and Igor. A completely insane Scotland Yard detective takes the case and when he finds out more about what Victor is up to, he goes full on religious zealot. He throws away his career in his drive to get Victor.

It goes on and on, though only 91 mins, it seems much longer, I was getting tired of spending time with Victor. It's nicely produced, the sets and locations look really good but all the flashy crashy stuff can't make up for a weak story. There are better Frankenstein films out there. I'd watch those again before I would watch this once more.

Friday Night Movies 797

Frankenstein Vs The Mummy is a 2015 horror movie, it's written and directed in Damien Leone.

Victor Frankenstein is paying the janitor for a fresh brain. The janitor kills a hobo and tries to bargain up the $5K he's supposed to get from Victor. They have a fight and the janitor's brain winds up in the creature Victor's is making in a dirty old basement.

By day Victor is a professor at the university where Professor Walton has just returned from a dig in Egypt with the mummy of a pharaoh. Best not ask yourself any of those embarrassing questions you might be having. There are no answers here. Victor's creature comes alive and so does the mummy. In the end they will battle it out.

It's endlessly talky, there's a bit of action, and a good bit of gore. Nothing exceptional, nothing to bring it to average and it's way too long at 114 mins. Just another Frankenstein movie, same as the next movie, neither as good as the original.

The Frankenstein Theory came out in 2013 and director Andrew Weiner wrote the screenplay with Vlady Pildysh.

What if Mary Shelley's book was really a fictional account of a real event, what if the creature really existed? That's the theory that Professor Jonathan Venkenheim believes. He takes a film crew to the Yukon in northern Canada. They meet a guy who has supposedly survived an encounter with the creature. They hire a guide and with very little stuff they head into the wilderness.

They camp in a yurt left by some trappers. At night 1 of the 3 snowmobiles is wrecked and another stolen. One of the guys goes for help and doesn't come back. They find him dead, others follow quickly, pretty standard picked off by the monster stuff. After the guide is killed, it's only the professor and the lady director. We don't know what happened to the professor, there's just some noise off camera, then the monster runs off into the woods carrying the lady director.

Good reminder not to go after the Frankenstein monster without a gang with guns, only the guide had a rifle. In the end he was useless and he'd killed 12 polar bears. Well below average story wise, nice Alaska scenery for a while. Not much to make me want to return to either of these again.

Science Fiction Sunday 595

The Dustwalker is a 2019 Australian SF movie about an alien something that thuds into the ground in the outback. It's like a lot of these sorts of movies, plenty of running about and yelling, with occasional monsters. The alien critter came inside a mysterious silver football. Something releases a virus that turns people into angry beasts with skin problems. The local policewoman leads a small group that tries to stay alive. A big critter burrows under the ground, it harvests the infected and burns them at the end of the movie. We don't know why. There's no real ending, the monster is still loose. It's just not that interesting, probably why it's score is 3.9 on the IMDb. It looks nice, if you like the desert. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Jurassic Thunder is another 2019 SF movie, both it and the first movie came from Amazon Prime. I've been hitting that as a place for unseen SF and Horror titles. Might as well get something for the yearly fee since I'm ordering less items from them. This one also scores low on the IMDb, a 2.0 from 127 voters, 55% of them ranked it a one. There aren't as many different dinosaurs in the movie as the poster would lie about. The T Rex they use has a machine gun and a laser on his head but you don't see that in this poster, you do see it other posters. The story isn't worth mentioning. It's embarrassing to watch. So is most of the acting and the CGI. The unintentional laughs were more out of pity. There's nothing good here at all. Someone should have taken the movie out behind the barn and put it out of it's misery. That might be cruel but it's what they deserve.

Friday Night Movies 794

The Girl In The Photos turned out to be a crappy 2015 slasher film with little of interest other than it was the last film Wes Craven produced and it's got Kal Penn in it. He plays a jerky photographer who leads his entourage to their doom in a small town. Claudia Lee plays a woman working in a store in the town. One day she comes into find a picture of a tortured woman on the store bulletin board. The police put it down to a prank but it's some scumbag who likes killing and making  statements with bodies. It's not much fun and I wouldn't need to see it again.

Pyewacket is a 2017 horror film about a stupid young high school student who pals around with people who preform rituals for their own selfish gain. She gets pissed at her mother for moving them to a house in the country. Mom is depressed from the loss of her husband and she can't stand being in the old house anymore. I can understand that but the daughter, a selfish cunt, can't. She preforms a ritual to wish death on her mom. Of course it releases Pyewacket, a demon spirit who comes creeping around. Regretting her choice the daughter tries to reverse the curse but that goes south and Pyewacket tricks her into burning her mom alive. The police just don't seem to believe her demon story. What a useless person. Glad she's off the streets. Not a good thing to watch, kind of below average and hardly anyone is likeable. Never going to see that one again.

Science Fiction Sunday 592

Black Site is a 2018 film about a secret government organization that traps elder gods on Earth and sends them back to hell. Their current captive for deportation is causing trouble, or at least, his followers are, they've attacked the instillation looking to get their god back. The fights are mixed with the main character's personal problems. Lot of yakkin' going on. I liked some of the scenes with the elder god, he's got a human for a host body. He's been alive for eons but his elder powers have been reduced to nearly nothing. Magic wards can hold him in place. I found the other characters less interesting. I'd put it about average but for all the personal melodrama. Since it was an Amazon Prime film I don't have to wonder what I'd be doing with the DVD.

Same for Agency Of Vengeance: Dark Rising. It's a 2011 Canadian film and the sequel to Dark Rising: Bring Your Battle Axe. I haven't seen that and probably won't. That's Brigitte Kingsley on the poster, she's the star and the producer. You'd think with two jobs she could afford some clothes. Her character is part of a secret government black ops group headed by Michael Ironside. He only appears briefly at the beginning of the movie. A demon god and his minions from the demon dimension are causing some trouble, Brigitte and her co-workers go off to fight them. There's a bit of fighting and way more personal melodrama that I care for. I thought it was even duller than the previous movie. No need for me to see it again, that's for sure.

Friday Night Movies 780

Top Knot Detective is a 2018 mocumentary about a 1990s Japanese TV show. Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce wrote and directed the film. The fake TV show, Top Knot Detective is a mix of samurais, ninjas, robots, monsters, prostitutes and this giant penis.

The show was only on a year or so and everything fell apart. The main star was a horrible guy who drank, womanized, took drugs, treated his friends and co-workers poorly. His shenanigans were always in the newspapers but he had some sort of audience attracting personality that just made him more popular. The death of the Company head caused a change in management and the show was cancelled. The main star fled the country. It's kind of funny and it's kind of sad, especially the ending, it takes a major downturn and kind of lost me there. I had a few laughs. I saw it on Amazon Prime. Others might like it. I doubt I need to see it again.

I also saw Day Of The Mummy on Amazon Prime and I know now I definitely don't need to see it again. It's a 2014 adventure movie about a guy who gets hired by Danny Glover to find a big ass diamond. It was supposed to be buried in an Egyptian tomb. They go there, they have all sorts of trouble, the mummy kills most of them. Pretty standard stuff made more boring by POV camera stuff and plenty of tunnel walking. Many other better Mummy movies out there. Watch one of those.

Friday Night Movies 779

Missing Link is our first film, it's an animated adventure story with a Sasquatch that came out last year. Other than the rather strange caricatures of the people and critters it was entertaining. It's written and directed by Chris Butler who wrote and directed the 2012 film Paranorman, and wrote the 2016 film Kubo And The Two Strings. I enjoyed Paranorman but haven't seen the other. Before he was a director Chris worked in the art departments of Mr Bean: The Animated Series, Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins, Corpse Bride, The Tale Of Despereaux and Coraline.

There's a great cast doing the voices: Hugh Jackman, David Walliams, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Zach Galifanakis, Tim Olyphant, Zoe Saldana and Emma Thompson. Those were the ones I knew. Sadly, they the people didn't rush into the theater to hear them and the film couldn't spark enough attention to help out, the film grossed $26 mil WW on a $100 mil payout. No one likes seeing such poor sales figures.

Hugh plays Sir Lionel Frost, who dreams of finding a missing race of creatures and telling the world but he's dogged by his lack of ability. He so wants to be a famous explorer and join the big knobs at the Society of Great Men. In reality, it's just a bunch of bell ends and none so knobby as Lord Piggot-Dunceby, played by Stephen Fry. Sir Lionel gets a letter from someone in Washington State USA who has seen a Sasquatch, he sends a plaster cast of the foot. Lord P-D doesn't believe it but takes a bet from Sir L that would let Sir L into the club if he finds the creature. Secretly Sir P-D sends a scumbag, played by Timothy, to get rid of Sir L.

It's a fairly entertaining romp that takes us from London to Washington State, where we meet a missing link who wants to be called Susan. Then it's onto Santa Ana California where they reluctantly let Sir L's old girlfriend join the expedition to the Himalayas in search of the Yeti. There plenty of travel and some action. The scenery is pretty, the movie is very colorful. There's some humor but many of the jokes bring smiles instead of laughs. I did laugh out loud a couple of times and I grew to like the main characters. I'll watch it again, fortuitously someone has given me a DVD of the film, so I can.

I bought my own copy of Captive State, I got the Blu-ray on clearance for under 4 bucks. It's a 2019 SF movie about a settled alien invasion, it's ten years on and there's a revolution brewing. Erica Beeney and Rupert Wyatt wrote the screenplay with Rupert directing. Rupert has directed 4 other movies, Subterrain, The Escapist, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and The Gambler. I've only seen one of them, ROTPOTA, and I wasn't that keen.

I'm not too keen on Captive State, there's a core of a good story there but the film lets me down in little ways. I didn't like the music much and the soundtrack is harsh and unattractive. It might be used to augment the horrible stuff going on the screen but it doesn't help, I just kept being annoyed by it.

I did like the plot line following the rebels but there's way too much family drama mixed in there. John Goodman plays the head cop in Chicago like he was a big slab of grumpy ham. The sons of his late ex-cop partner are mixed up with the rebels. There's a plot to attack the aliens and the older brother returns from the dead to help deliver a bomb to the aliens, angered the aliens send in killer aliens for some revenge. There's another deeper plot going on but it seems to take forever to get to the end. That payoff is off camera and that was very disappointing. Everyone in the room complained. It's overly long on top of that, 110 mins, and parts of it just poke along. Disappointing but I'll probably keep the BR for now.

Friday Night Movies 778

A Journey To The Beginning Of Time is a 1955 Czechoslovakian children's film by Karl Zeman. It's called Cesta do praveku in it's homeland. It's mix of live action and animation tell the tale of 4 boys trip down a river to the ancient past. In the present one of the boys has a trilobite fossil. He talks to the other boys, wishing he could see them live. The boys get a boat and sale into a cave that is a door to the past. They encounter all sorts of dinosaurs before they get to the time when trilobites lived. 

The movie was repackaged for US TV back in 1966. New footage was added and that version is available on the new Criterion collection of three of Zeman's films. We watched the original film. It looks better than you might expect a film from the Czech Republic of the era to look though it is a bit muted color wise. The kids have a fun adventure along the river of time and we know they got aback OK because the movie is a memory of one of the boys looking at the log book they made on the journey.

I enjoyed it enough to want to see it again so I when I got home I went looking for a copy and ordered one. I'll look forward to the rest of the films. You can read a much beefier review of the Criterion set here. It was George's review that made me interested in the set but it was 80 smackaroonies on Amazon last month so I was hesitant. It's dropped to $68 now. I found one that was $58, shipped to me, over at Deep Discount. It started at $58 but had a $5 off coupon, a benefit from signing up to their mailing list, and there's free shipping with an order total over $40. Bosh, order in, now to wait.

I wouldn't need to see Altitude again. It's a 2010 Canadian thriller that's really like an extended Twilight Zone episode. Almost the whole 90 mins have the cast packed into a small airplane travelling through a supernatural storm. The TV industry calls episodes where all the cast are stuck in one room a bottle show, this must be one of the most efficient. The whole movie cost $3.5 mill and a lot of that went to the CGI. It's fairly dripping off the screen. Sadly there's some awful characters and their annoying dialog that really bring down the level of enjoyment. Once the ending happens, well, I wasn't giving a shit at that point. Wouldn't need to add it to my stack of stuff, even if there is a nice big monster in there somewhere. Saved me some money.

Friday Night Movies 776

Tai Chi Hero is a 2012 Chinese action comedy directed by Stephen Fung. It's a jazzed up fantasy about the creation of Tai Chi. It's a mix of melodrama and martial arts. The action sequences were choreographed by Sammo Hung. It's the sequel to Tai Chi Zero, which I haven't seen. They do give us a bit of a recap at the start of the movie. Now the action takes place in a village that's going to be destroyed for a railway line. The zero from the first movie is now getting married to a member of the Chen family, it's the only way he can learn the family style without bringing disaster to the village. Disaster comes anyway as the village is attacked by the scumbag in charge of the rail expansion. He's got it in for the Chen family himself. Peter Stormare plays Lord Flemming or "Flamming" as he's listed in the credits. He's as atrocious character, much like his atrocious British accent. I sure wasn't sold on the movie, the melodrama parts were dull but I did like some of the action scenes. By the time it was done I was pretty much thinking I wouldn't need to see it again.

I've seen Dinosaurus! more than once but I do like movies with big monsters. The movie has two decent stop motion dinosaurs and the fight between the T-Rex and the steam shovel is OK. It's from 1960 and when I saw it back in 2017 the DVD was $54 on Amazon. Now there's a DVD for $14 and a Blu-ray for $20, the later is what we watched. The movie looks pretty good but it's still about an average production.

I do like the two posters above. Sometimes the foreign posters are more entertaining than the US versions. The movie is fairly entertaining, buoyed up by the stop motion dinosaurs, dragged down a bit by the average script. I'm debating the purchase of the Blu-ray. There are some extras that sound interesting.

Friday Night Movies 775

First up is the 1995 SF horror film Xtro 3: Watch The Skies. We watched the new Blu-ray, there were two previous DVD releases but the last one was 15 years ago. It's got a script by Daryl Haney and direction is by Harry Bromley Davenport. It's a British film and it seems to have nothing to do with the other two films. This one takes place mostly on an island off the coast of the US. Even though it's only 200 miles from shore it's supposed to be forgotten about or some such nonsense.

Robert Culp appears briefly as the General that sends the marines to the island. He tells them that there had been a munitions dump there during WW2. They  need the marines to sweep the island for forgotten bombs and other explosives so they can build a refueling station there. The marines are a mixed bag and hardly marine material. Still, they're really just there to get picked off one by one once one of the more useless marines accidentally lets the alien gets out of his concrete block house. Then it's all yelling and rushing about in the woods.

It's the least interesting of the series and should have been included with the other two in a three pack. Hardly worth buying when it's just so mediocre. You can see for yourself by clicking on the link in the title.

I hadn't remembered seeing Ninja Apocalypse before and had to sit through it again. Me so sad. Here's what I said just shy of two years ago.

Ninja Apocalypse is a 2014 post apocalypse movie that people are saying is a ripoff of The Warriors. They've certainly used that script as a template, big rally, assassination of the leader, blame the Lost Clan, chase them to their home base. It all takes place underground but it's the same idea, just with swords and some magical ninja powers. Sadly, it's nowhere near as good as The Warriors. Watch that instead. It's so much better. More fantasy than SF.

It didn't get any better the second time.