PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

City of the Living Dead

 
I just love this comic cover. Soon as I saw it I wanted to keep a copy for later revisiting. I say that but I have so many things like this that I never get back to. Burn them onto dvdr's and forget about them. Maybe when I retire. The cover might be the best thing about the book. I sure like that pose and the creepy skull guy. I'd probably have bought that comic if I had seen it on a newstand but I wasn't around in 1952 to pick it up. It's an Avon Comic. They broke into the publishing world in 1941 and for a while they published a lot of comic books. I'd never seen a copy of City of the Living Dead for sale but it wasn't something I was looking for either. It doesn't have a number and looks like it was a one shot from the little mention on the internet. I don't know where my Overtreet Priceguide is right now or I could look it up. Maybe they'd have something about it. Oh well. It'll turn up.

I found this over at the Digital Comic Museum. It's a place, like the Internet Archive, that collects public domain material and puts it out for people to download for free. The DCM only deals in comic books, old comic books, ones published before the mid-1950's. They are better organized than the IA, but you've got to register before you can download stuff. No charge, easy to do, downloads are quick. The comics are sorted by company and title. Not all runs are complete by any means but there are plenty of entertaining books to be seen. In the Avon section I found several issues of The Saint, a comic book adaptation of the Leslie Charteris crime series about my favorite globetrotting rapscallion Simon Templer. They weren't as good as the prose work but entertaining for me who has always had a soft spot for the TV series with Roger Moore. I have read many of the novels and collections of short stories and pretty much enjoyed them.

     

I thought the ads were fun to look at. Here's the best from the issue. The story art is really colorful and interesting to look at, even if it's not all great. The first story in the book is the strongest in art and writing. It's titled City of the Living Dead and the art's by A. C. Hollingsworth. I don't know who wrote it. A group of archologists travel to Mexico, and against the advice of the locals, they go to a dangerous and forbidden city populated by the living dead. I know when I hear about that sort of place I immediately want to rush over and see what's up. Lots of people die. Like that's a big surprise. The stories are about average for a horror comic, certainly not EC quality but readable. There are three more stories and a two page prose story. It's a good reason to stop in at the Digital Comic Museum and take a look around. They have lots of other entertaining books to look at. Lots of horror, science fiction, crime, western, humor and romance comics to pick from. Here's the Hollingworth splash page and the one to the witches story. That's some weird ass shit, huh.

   

Science Fiction Sunday 84

I hadn't watched Lobster Men From Mars in a while. It's a low budget movie within a movie type of movie. Tony Curtis is head of a studio with a good pile of profit. Normally that would be good but he's spent that profit and didn't pay his taxes. They need a write off for their current fiscal year and they have 6 days to create a big loss by releasing a flop. It's not a well thought out plot element, just an excuse to have this young guy bring in his film for us to see. We join Tony and the director of the movie in the screening room for most of the movie. There are some book end scenes of Tony at his office and the director at home before and after the screening room. The film they are watching is an alien invasion movie. Mars is running out of air so they send lobster man and his side kick, a gorilla in a space helmet, to take over the earth and secure it's air. Lobster man has a spaceship that gets spotted by a couple in a car. Deborah Foreman plays the gal and Anthony Hickox plays the guy. They investigate, find the craft, and tell the local cops, who laugh at them. Anthony's uncle is a scientist, played by Patrick Macnee, so they get him involved. Macnee plays the part like the kind of goofy scientists he used to play opposite when he was John Steed in The Avengers. That's a series I haven't watched in a while. Need to keep it in mind when I want to chain watch another long series. I've seen LMFM a couple of times before. I had a VHS tape that I transfered to dvdr several years back. It's a mostly entertaining comedy, some of the gags are A-ok,  and I enjoy their poking fun at the monster genre. I don't think I'll bother upgrading the copy I have even though there is a dvd out there. Perfect thing for the NetFlix'r.

  
I was flipping through the dvdr's after LMFM and there wasn't anything in the rest of the L's that was science fiction. On to the M's where the first vaguely science fiction movie I came across was Matinee. Vaguely because there's only science fiction elements in the movie within the movie. John Goodman plays a William Castle type film maker. It's 1962 and he's in Key West Florida promoting his new horror movie while the Cuban missle crisis is going on. The kids are forced to practice duck and cover, when they aren't learning about the red meat food group. John's new movie is Mant, about a man who turns into an ant, and it's filmed in Atomovision with Rumblerama. 

 
That's Mant with his wife played by Cathy Mority and William Schallert who plays a dentist. It seems that a trip to the dentist turned fatal for the poor guy when he was bitten by an ant while getting his dental x-ray. Damn radiation! He starts turning into an ant, first human size, then giant size. Finally the army has to bring him down. We see about 20 minutes of that movie within a movie. It's black and white in a color movie. I hadn't seen the film in a while, maybe not since I blogged about it back in 2005. Back then I had just made a dvdr from my laserdisc. That way I didn't have to play the laserdiscs. I hadn't bought the 1998 dvd, it was pretty pricey and I had this nice laserdisc. In 2005 the 1998 dvd had gone out of print and people were asking rediculous prices for them. I went to Amazon while I was watching the movie today and found it was re-released in May 2010 for $17.49. Not too bad and adding it to The Dark Backward (Special Edition) in my shopping cart will put me into the free shipping zone. I do read that the dvd has no extras and Amazon's listing doesn't mention any. I guess I'll have to keep my dvdr copy. That's some pretty silly stuff. Makes me laugh. You can see the Mant! part of the film on YouTube. I've hidden a link somewhere in this post.

      
Matinee is directed by Joe Dante and it's one of his better films. There's plenty of things to see in this quickly paced complex look at monsters, kids and atom bombs. John Goodman proves once again he's one of the better actors out there. Keep an eye out for Dick Miller, Kevin McCarthy, John Sayles, Robert Picardo and Naomi Watts in the oddest places. Well worth havin' in anyone's movie collection.

Friday Night Movies 278

    
First up in our black and white double bill, a 1957 movie called From Hell It Came. I really thought I hadn't seen it but I had, back in 1992. At least I have a notation in my Week at Glance that says I was over at Sperhauk's and we watched "most of it" at Friday Night Movies. I have no idea what "most of it" means 18 years later. Maybe we bailed before the movie was over, or more likely we had a media failure. I had pretty much forgotten the movie and it was like seeing it for the first time. You'd think I'd remember the monster. It's a murdering man-size tree! Sperhauk picked up the dvd from Warner Brother's "print on demand" Archive Collection. They don't put much more than the movie on the disc with a generic menu and they charge 20 bucks a pop for a dvdr. These old movies rarely turn up anywhere but Turner Classic Movies so there isn't much oportunity to see them. There are a ton of torrents out there from the look of it but that's not something I do. Too much stuff to look at as it is.

Some science guys are on an island where the natives have suffered accidental fallout from one of those atom bomb test blasts that the USA was blowing off in the South Sea Islands of the Pacific. I mean, who knew there might be some wind? The natives have some sort of plague on top of the low level radiation and the science guys have brought white man's medicine. The natives are a superstitious bunch and the new chief, our main bad guy, has them convinced that the chief's son has murdered his own father with the white man's medicine. In reality the bad guy did the killing and now he's chief. He's a real dick, that guy. He had the help of the witch doctor, who's totally against the white man's medicine, and the wife of the dead chief's son, who's hot for the new chief. The son is railroaded, convicted, and sentenced to death. He's staked out while this is going on and a couple of guys wait with a big pointy knife and a mallet. Before they drive the fancy skull knife into his heart the dead chief's son curses the people who framed him. He will return from the dead and strike them down. Sure enough, it's true. He's planted in the ground and shortly after a tree grows over the coffin. Our dead guy has come back as the Tobonga. You can see the skull knife sticking out of Tobonga's chest so you know it's really the dead Chief's son. And he's ready to start killin'!

 
The science guys are joined part way into the movie by a gal scientist. That's Tina Carver in the middle with John McNamara on the left and Tod Andrews on the right. Tod's got a thing for Tina but she isn't interested in getting married. What she is interested in is digging up the Tobonga and injecting it with her special experimental formula. They do just that. At first nothing happens but they go away for nearly 8 hours and return to find the lab a mess and the Tobonga gone. He's been shambling about the island gettin' his vengence on. There's a lot of running about and goofy conversation. It often made us laugh. The dialog is as uneven as the directing. Dan Milner was mostly a film editor. He directed a movie in 1935 and not again until 1955 when he directed The Phantom of 10,000 Leagues which would be followed by FHIC.

 

I love the graphics on the movie posters. Mike had mentioned seeing a resin model kit a few years back. Pretty entertaining monster kit. Eventually enough of the bad guys are tossed into the quicksand and the monster is vanquished. Tod gets the girl and the movie is over. It was entertaining enough, I don't think I'd run out and buy it but I'll certainly keep an eye out for it on TCM.

I couldn't remember a thing about The Curse of the Living Corpse either. I looked in my watched movie list and I had seen it first in 1992. Probably a rented tape or something off American Movie Classics. I rented a lot of movies back in the heyday of the video store. The movie is set in 1892 and there's a family that have just had a death in the house. The head of the family has died and his lawyer reads the will. The man who died had one of those rare medical problems that turn up in horror stories a lot. He might appear dead but he isn't. He was afraid of being buried alive. I can understand not wanting to wake up in a coffin, plunked into the hole, covered with dirt. And bugs. Ick. That dead guy had some stipulations, if they weren't met he'd return from the grave and start gettin' his revenge. So both our movies have curses. Dead guy outlines how each of the beneficiaries will die from his curse. Horribly, in the manner the victim fears most. Of course the stipulations aren't met and the old codger pops out of his grave and the murderin' start. This movie played as a double bill with another Del Tenney picture called The Horror of Party Beach. I think that's the movie people might have seen and might remember. The drive in business did well for him but he quite directing for years, only occasionally producing something. He had been a stage actor who got into assistant directing before turning to producing and directing his own pictures. Keep more of the gross that way. He directed I Eat Your Skin which I saw on Elvira's old series. It's not very good and I didn't care very much for it. My only comment on my Watched Movies List is Yuck. The Horror of Party Beach is pretty silly, especially the monster, but it's typical fair. Nothing outstanding, mostly entertaining.

 

The Curse of the Living Corpse shows an improvement. There are occasional nice bits of film making. The rest is pretty standard, murder in a haunted house type story. The dialog and acting is pretty entertaining. Bunch of people with excessive baggage or shitty personalities all tossed in together in a situation that leads to murder. The two brothers are a drunken bum and a creditor owing slime ball. They don't get along but the slime ball is boning the drunken brother's wife and the maid. The drunken brother is Roy Schieder in his movie debut. He's ok. The cops are called in and they provide the comedy. They can't solve anything and the corpses pile up. Then the murder is revealed and the quicksand gets him. Both our movies have quicksand and several people in each are sucked to their gritty wet death. I thought the quicksand looked better in From Hell It Came. The curse part turned out to be a fake in the second movie but it made up for it by having a naked lady flopping around in a tub. You couldn't see anything but you might have thought you did in 1964. Both of these movies were worth a look, especially if you're the cheesy horror movie fan type. Too bad Del didn't make but one more movie. Haven't seen it, wonder if he got better. He was showing some talent.

She Wolf of London

I watched the 1990 series She Wolf of London over the last week. It was fairly entertaining for a monster of the week sort of show. Kate Hodge plays a college student who comes to England to study under a mythology professor played by Neil Dickson. In her first episode she's camping out on the moors and a werewolf attacks. It's why I don't camp. I enjoy the peeing on a bush part but the rest just isn't up to snuff. Luckily for me I can pee on a bush in my backyard. Luckily for Kate the bed and breakfast where she's staying is also Neil's home, his amusing parent's, odd aunt and young cousin live there, and there's a great room in the second basement that Kate can be chained up during the full moon. Luckily for the viewer she manages to get out during the full moon. The werewolf doesn't appear in every episode but when she does she's played by Diane Youdale, a Brit tv personality who got pretty famous there on the Gladiator tv series. Her werewolf costume isn't very good. This version of the werewolf doesn't have any hair on her shapely legs. The face piece is pretty uninspired. Luckily for us most of the bad guys fair better with their costumes and make up. There's a good selection of evil doers and monsters, we have ghosts, zombies, a bog man, trolls, wizards, witches, demons, even a trip to a convention for an old science fiction tv series. Some of those fans were the scarest part of the episode.

Sadly some of the stripts were as weak as the werewolf costume was silly. That's probably why the series only ran 20 episodes. The first 14 were filmed in England, sometimes in small villages in the country side, and sometimes in London. Lots of nice old buildings to see. After some of the backers left, the last 6 episodes were filmed in Los Angeles and the series suffered a name change, to Love and Curses, with the 15th episode. Kate returns to LA in that episode after her friend is murdered. Her problem was cursed trolls looking for a place to stay in LA. They didn't go through a real estate agent to get that house and they used a sledge hammer for the down payment. Whap to the noggin. Neil is being phased out of the University so he tags along. He'd written a book that got optioned for a movie in a previous episode and that leads him to his new job as a host of a tv series on the supernatural. During SWOL a romance builds between Kate and Neil but nothing much happens, especially after they find out Kate turns wolfie if she get too excited. Goofy, huh. Rather like Moonlighting, but with monsters. It has something in common with Buffy and Angel and even The X-Files, especially the humorous episodes of those shows, but it's even more goofy. Occasionally it made me laugh. The dvd came out with all the episodes on 4 discs last Feb. I'd watch the series again. It was fun to watch.

Science Fiction Sunday 83

I watched Kronos, a 1957 movie with Jeff Morrow. He's a science guy who helps stop an alien invasion. A space craft flies by a motorist in the desert and the alien in the ship possesses the man at the wheel. The man drives to Lab Central which just happens to be where Jeff works. Jeff's gal works there and she feels he spends too much time on his science. Common complaint from the women of obsessed science guys. The driver passes his intruder into one of these science guys and crumples to the floor. The ship drops into the ocean and a big square machine stomps up on land in Mexico. It starts drawing power from everything around it. It grows as it sucks up the juice. Jeff and the science team at Lab Central are called into figure out what's going on. The possessed science guy accidentally gets a shock from some equipment and the alien is knocked out. He fills in the story from the alien POV. Dying planet, yada yada, need power. So now they know that Kronos is sucking up all the energy and storing it, but what can they do to stop the aliens and their Ravager of Planets. The aliens can retrive the energy and convert it into matter. They've destroyed many planets. What dicks, huh? The dvd is retitiled Kronos: Ravager of Planets here in the USA. I expect it's Wade Williams fault, he bought up a lot of those old 50's sf movies for his video label. He puts out fairly good dvd's though a bit pricey for the content. The movie and no extras to speak of, though occasionally some trailers. The copy I have is a widescreen tape from the last century. I dubbed it to a dvdr so I don't have to worry about the tape breaking or not being able to get a vcr anymore. I'm sure that day isn't too soon but you know how those things go. I didn't notice any stand alone vcr's at BestBuy the last time I was there but I just bought an LG dvdr Recorder paired with a vcr last week. It's for work. Occassionally someone has an old tape to dub onto a dvd. I phased out the vcrs in the conference rooms 2-3 years ago. Anyway the monster is sucking in Mexico, trampling the poor, literally downtrodden, folk with this mighty columns of squishyness, how will they ever stop it. Don't worry Jeff will come through for us. It's a fairly good low budget movie except when Kronos is on screen. The effects for our monster are weakass. Watching Kronos move is entertaining in itself. The legs go up and down and the machine moves forward. How does that work? You can see the trailer on YouTube. About the 1:33 mark the monster is on the prowl and a few seconds after that the announcer calls Kronos a metallic vampire. That sort of ties in with my second feature which is about some space vampires.

Lifeforce is a 1985 film directed by Tobe Hooper. It was written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby, who adapted Colin Wilson's 1976 novel The Space Vampires. I've seen the movie a bunch of times and not just because Mathilda May can't remember to wear her clothes. It's a pretty good alien invasion movie, lots of cool stuff happens, the naked alien is just a bonus. A shuttle is making a trip to space to get up close and personal with Haley's Comet. They notice that there's a huge spaceship in the head. It would be surprising if they missed it, the thing is 150 miles long. Running right over they find hundreds of dead bat creatures all dried up and floating. There are three crystal pods with naked people in them. They take a bat creature and the pods onboard the shuttle. While the shuttle is returning to earth mission control loses contact with the ship. A rescue team finds the ship and it's all burnt up inside, except for the three crystal pods, which are brought to London. The scientists are planning an alien autopsy, but before they can slice and dice, Mathilda May wakes up. Wasting no time she sucks the lifeforce out of the first man at hand. In seconds the guard is a desiccated husk in an ill fitting uniform. Glass breaks, more stuff happens, and our naked space gal escapes to suck again. She can also transfer to other bodies. That's a handy power. The alien guys wake up. They get busy. Anyone who has the lifeforce sucked out of them will wake in two hours and return the favor. If they keep sucking they can survive. Glad that doesn't happen to me, it's a tough enough life as it is. Once all that low level sucking has gone on the aliens collect the lifeforce and send it up to their ship. It's how they collect power. Seems space is filled with spacedicks, doesn't it? Steve Railsback plays the main hero of the piece. He was on the shuttle and he returned to earth in an escape pod. He has a psychic connection to the girl and he joins forces with a government guy. They race about chasing after the girl. It keeps building and soon London is in the middle of a full blown space vampire pandemic. The streets are on fire and the corpses are piling up like cord wood. How are they going to save the rest of the planet? It's my favorite of Tobe Hooper's films. The only one I've watched repeatedly. It's got some good spaceships and space effects by John Dykstra and the script is pretty entertaining too. It's well worth seeing for more than our delightful alien gal running around in her birthday suit.

Friday Night Movies 277

 
Mike brought a copy of RoboGeisha. It's a 2009 Japanese film by the same guys who made Machine Girl. It's another movie in a long line of body modification movies that seem to be so popular in Japan. What the fuck is up with that? In RoboGeisha a woman and her sister are caught up by an evil corporation and turned into secret geisha assassins. While they are getting trained up the sisters compete with each other to see who can have more weapons shoved into their bodies. The older sister had her breast removed and a gattling gun installed. They both have swords that shoot out of their armpits. There's machine guns in the younger sisters hair. Other women have swords that stick out of their asses and they can fire those little ninja throwing stars out of their butt cracks. Once they get their training the gals get right to killin'. It's a fairly fast paced kitchen sink style action comedy. Toss everything in you can think of, hope someone laughs.

 
There's a guy stabbed in his eyes with crunchy fried shrimp. It's actually pretty funny. There's a poor relationship, between the sisters, that often drags the movie to a shuddering halt. A lot of that should have been trimmed. It's a 102 minutes and that's way too long. There's corporate intrigue and assassination at the hands of the evil corporation. They want to destroy Japan by having a giant transforming robot temple toss a huge missle into Mount Fuji. He almost makes it too, trudging up the snow covered mountain with his house size bomb. You can see most of this goofy shit in the trailer. I've hidden a link somewhere in this post. There's the parents of the kidnapped geishas who fight for their children's return and get slaughtered in a hail of CGI bullet hits and blood sprays. The CGI is pretty fakey, especially all those gouts of blood bursting off the wounded. The physical effects are better but often so stylized you can only laugh, or wonder...wtf? At times nothing much makes any sense and you just have to go with it. About half of it was fairly entertaining but the rest dragged it down. It's not one I feel I need to see again, especially since better movies don't get rewatched enough as it is.

I had wanted to see The Orphanage, a 2007 Spanish ghost story, because of it's association with Guillermo Del Toro. He's the producer. The director is Juan Antonio Bayona. It's his first job, he made commercials and music videos, and he does well with the film making part. It's the story that bugged me. Laura, a former orphan, and her husband buy the orphanage she grew up in. They want to turn it back into a small home for special children. They have a son who has HIV. He makes some imaginary friends in the big old house. Nice place but we were sad that it didn't transform into a giant robot to save the say. It's funny the things you think of while the movie is keeping you from paying attention. There's a few noises from places around the house and the music thinks something is happening when nothing does. Laura argues with her son at the party for the prospective children and he disappears. The police come and they don't find him. Laura brings in some ghost hunters and they reveal a bit more story. Laura turns more depressed and obsessive about the house and the story of the ghosts until she's reunited with her son. It's a more adult ghost story, not many scares or startles to make you jump, which I don't mind sometimes. Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone was a more adult ghost story and Greg and I both mentioned liking it much better. Greg's wife picked up The Orphanage for a couple of bucks at a dvd store sale. He's going to put it out for sale in his comic shop. If I had one I would do the same. None of us liked the ending very much, it's kind of depressing, and by the time it came I was lacking any sympathy for any of the characters but the husband. At least he's free. Free to sell that house and get the fuck out of the movie. No wonder he was smiling at the end. We weren't.

Science Fiction Sunday 82

I put on The Invisible Maniac. It's a 1990 Adam Rifkin movie, which he directed under the name Rif Coogan. Next he would direct The Dark Backward which I enjoyed even more. I hadn't seen The Invisible Maniac for a while. I'm working through the I's in my box of dvdrs for science fiction sunday. It never got a legit release on dvd but it's available as a vhs tape, download or bootleg dvd. My copy came from an old VHS tape I made when I caught the movie on HBO back in the early 90's. It's not very good, pretty low-budget, but it has an audacity that I find entertaining. A kid is watching the neighbor lady strut around her bedroom through his telescope. She's pretty hot and she gets pretty naked. Then his mom comes in and yells at him and berates him for looking at the next door lady. She laughs at him and next thing you know he's all fucked for the rest of his life. He's a sensitive one. There's some credits and we jump ahead many years. Our kid's a grown man scientist and he's got a formula that he claims will turn him invisible. He gathers together some science people and his formula fails. The science people laugh at him and he snaps, taking four lives. He escapes from the mental hospital, and with a new name, gets a job at a high school as a science teacher. His students react poorly to his quirky behavior. They gang up and drops their books on the floor at the same time. Teach is startled and they laugh at him when he yells at them. He gets crazier and crazier. Soon the killing starts. It's definately not for the weak at heart but it's pretty funny for what it is. There's lots of nudity as the high school girls continually forget to keep their clothes on.

  
It Came From Hollywood was right after my first movie in that box of dvdr's so I watched that too. It's short, only 75 minutes. John Candy, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner and Cheech and Chong host this 1982 look at low budget movies. There's lots of clips from all sorts of science fiction, monster and horror movies. Other exploitation themes get a mention too. There are some short sketch bits that go between the clips. They aren't anything special but it's fun to watch anyway. I've seen a lot of those movies.

I couldn't remember anything much about It Came From Somewhere Else and since it followed the previous movie and I had a bit of time before the TwinLUG meeting I put that on too. It's a 1988 low budget alien invasion parody and parts of it are ok. There's some aimless wondering around but there are enough odd bits of business to keep me mostly interested. It's set in a horrible Minneasota town, up near the Canadian border, filled with some horrible people, who get invaded by aliens. The acting is bad and there isn't any production values to speak of but it still occasionally made me laugh. Like when they revive a frozen guy by attaching jumper cables, from a car's battery, to his nuts. It worked, he's fine. Some of the jokes are a bit more refined than that one. It's mostly black and white with bits of color when there is some gore or for a rather odd scene where a guy is sitting in a waiting room and a girl comes in, does a quick strip tease and leaves. It's that kind of movie. Not for everyone but fun for me. And really who am I trying to please but me. Get outta here. Go watch a movie.

Friday Night Movies 276

We scored a hattrick of movies tonight. Sperhauk NetFlixed Hell Ride. It's a 2008 movie, produced by Quentin Tarintino, about a bunch of bikers in the American southwest. That's a pretty place, especially out in the mountains and mesas and cactus. The movie shows off a lot of wonderful scenery in it's 84 minutes. Hell Ride is directed by Larry Bishop who co-wrote the script and plays Pistolero the leader of the Victors. Larry's an actor I couldn't place but the name was sort of familiar. My memories going so I'm not sure where I had seen it. Turns out he had a part in Kill Bill 2 and he's been acting since the 60's. I hadn't seen any of his work that I remembered. He'd been on Kung Fu and Love, American Style. I bet I saw him in the former and I might have seen him in the latter show. I'm pretty sure I saw most of KF back then but I didn't always watch LAS.  He was pretty entertaining in Hell Ride and his direction is a lot better than most of the 60's biker films that I've seen. This is only his second director job, though I do feel a heavy QT influence.

       

That's  the Victors roarin' down the road in the left picture. There's lots of bikes cruising the highways in this movie. Some of the bikes are pretty nice. That's Larry Bishop in the front and Michael Madsen and Erik Balfour just behind him. That's The Gent, in the middle picture, played by Michael Madsen. I like that guy,  he's been in several good movies, you might remember him as the ear cutting psycho in Reserviour Dogs. Dennis Hopper, with the sidecar, plays Eddie Zero. He was a member of the Victors back in 1976 when some bad shit went down. We flashback to this during the movie.

     

The Victors are having some trouble with a gang from that past. David Carradine plays The Duece, he used to be in the The 666er's but he left and the gang faded away. Well, Vinnie Jones, is reforming the gang and he feels the 666er's should take over the Victor's territory. He's Billy Wings and he likes to shoot people with a gas powered arrow shooter. He's a mean and vicious dog of a guy. Pretty much a variant of the part he often plays. Some of the Victor's are ready to change sides, rather than dying. There's a subplot that has the son of a murdered woman seeking revenge. Erik Balfour plays the son. He's pretty cool. I liked him in Six Feet Under a few years ago but haven't seen much of this other work, like 24, which often falls out of the range of my interests. All these wild ones get whipped around by the plot elements and they start fightin' and killin' and the bodies start pilin' up. Larry knows what to give his expolitation audience. Between the hog ridin' and biker shootin' scenes there are naked girl scenes. Lots of scenes and lots of girls. These biker seem to know all the places to go where chicks hang around with their clothes off, especially for money. The dialog is pretty entertaining, again better than the movies that inspired this. I'd watch this one over again.

Mike brought a copy of Geharha: The Dark and Long Haired Monster that he found somewhere. Joe said he'd seen it listed on Amazon for $54 that day. It's a short, 20 minute, Japnanese monster movie about a big hairy monster that attacks Tokyo. It's the start of a series of short films, but at that price I doubt I'd buy them. It is pretty funny and the monster is pretty entertaining. He's all hairy and that helps protect him. His burning hair gives off a smoke that makes humans ill. He knocks down buildings and things burn up pretty good. There's the usual military attacks that blow up more buildings than monster. It was pretty silly and a good lead in to our second feature.

 

 
Joe NetFlixed a copy of Black Dynamite. It was a hoot, and yes, he does battle Nixon with nunchucks. Another homage, this time to 70's Blaxpoitation movies like Shaft or Dolomite, but with an intentional comic twist. Michael Jai White, who co-wrote the script, stars as Black Dynamite, the biggest Mac Daddy of them all. It's the 1970's and someone has just killed BD's brother. He's all upset. Then he find out that someone is selling drugs in the community, to the orphans! Now he's mad! It all needs to stop, now! Black Dynamite is just the guy to do it.

 
There are all the elements of the typical 70's picture but they've been goofed on. Poor photography, bad dialog, poor actors. Sure made me laugh. The movie looks more like a 70's picture than our first movie. I loved the costumes, the hair, the cars, the dialog, the characters, it's all good. The Kung Fu was great, that Black Dynamite sure can kick some ass. He beats down every weak ass mofo he comes up against. He's an ex-CIA agent that had been screwed over during a job. He quit, angry at the agency. He gets dragged back into their clutches reluctantly, when his old buddy offers to help him track down the drug kingpins behind his brothers death. He's not to reluctant to take back his old licence to kill and soon puts it to good use. There's a lot of fighting and slaughter in the movie. Many bad guys bite the big one. There's a lot of pimps in the movie too, with great costumes and dialog. Tommy Davidson and Arsenio Hall play a couple of them. There's an evil plot. Someone is putting a drug into a popular 40 OZ beer that shrinks the black man's penis. Black Dynamite joins forces with the local black militants to find the source of this joint shrinkin' poison. Black Dynamite heads for Kung Fu Island where he finds Kung Fu treachery at the hands of Dr. Wu. Eventually he has to head for Washington and his showdown with Richard Nixon.

 

It's a pretty fun bit of business and we were laughing pretty steadily. I would add this to my collection when it shows up cheaper. I certainly think it's rewatchable in every way. 

7573 Battle of Alamut

   
I picked up a copy of the largest Prince of Persia set and actually built it. I had no good reason to do it. Took it apart a few days later. It was cluttering up the work table and I had to get started on the Undersea Diorama for the Springcon. There's a lot of nice parts in the set, 821 of them, for 80 bucks. That's under a dime a part. Not too bad for sets of late, though, and you've heard it here before, many of them are small; 43 white cheese slopes, 17 pearl gold 1x1 cones, 17 of the light pearl grey small barb. Not that those parts couldn't be handy for something sometime. There's a nice new large door in dark brown. Great for a castle, a barn, or a viking lodge. You control the action. At least in your own tiny fantasy world. Yay?

     

There are many parts, a hundred and eight, in the newish medium dark flesh color. I like that color. You get 22 of the 1x4 brick with 4 studs on a side. Those are always good to have. There are 16 of the new half arch. I used almost all of the parts in that color, from all the 5 of the POP sets I bought, for a recent building for Micropolis. There isn't much variety in parts in that color yet, especially in basic brick. There's a lot of 1x2's in the set, 22 of them, and 12 of the 1x3, 3 of the 1x6 and 9 of the 1x8. It was kind of limiting but I think that the building came out ok. I got all the 1x2x5 trans blue bricks from the Pick-A-Brick at LEGO store. Here's some more samples of parts in medium dark flesh. It's an intriguing color.

     

There's another camel in this set. A tan one. The $30 Prince of Persia set has a camel in dark tan. I like the camel, in both colors, it's a nice lookin' critter. There's a scorpion in the set, in pearl gold, it's supposed to be a statue. There's a lot of pearl gold, 55 pieces, in the set. I especially like the quarter domes and the 1x3x2 curved slope that goes along with the quarter domes. A guy, speaking non-genderly, could make some nice awnings with those pieces. Mix in some other color and you're headed for some striped awnings. Obviously there are a lot of other parts, Bricklink says there are 17o unique pieces in the set. Lots of variety is good, helps beef up the building stock.

     

All that has some potential. Just stare at the parts until an idea comes. I guess it's more like, if they come, you will build it. That's good, no one wants to get sent to the cornfield. Maybe I'm mixing up my media metaphors. There are seven minifigs in the set. Another Dastan. At least he's got his shirt on in this set. Some of them have nice costumes which could be useful down the road. That's Nizam, lookin' like a villian, in the middle, and Seso on the right. Not sure about that guy, haven't looked up the movie's story at all, but his eyes look all evil like. I'll see eventually see the movie on DVD some time in the future. I can wait and I don't like going to the theater very much anymore. And when it comes down to spending money on a visit to the theater or buying a movie on dvd. I'll take the dvd most of the time, thank you very much.

   

That a couple of Alamut guards, and two hassansin guys below. Some of them have nice pointy hats, all have good faces, and the last guy has that head scarf. Their costumes might not be quite as nice as Nizam's but they look a-ok. I have a feeling that hassansin is a cleaned up term for hashshashin.

    

The Wikipedia has this to say about them: The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, Hashashiyyin, or Hashasheen from which the word assassin is thought to originate), was the Persian designation of the Nizari branch of the Ismaili Shia Muslems during the Middle Ages. The Nizari, or Hashshashin, as they were designated by their enemies, split from the Isma'ili Fatimid Empire following a dispute regarding the succession of their spiritual and political leader the Fatimid Caliph Ma'ad al-Mustansir Billah. I had heard of them because of the Hawkwind song, about the Persian Master of the Hashshashin, Hassan-i Sabbah. What dramtic names they have to these western ears. I think I'm safe in gussing it wasn't the Hawkwind song that LEGO or Disney might be worried about, I'm sure the hashish connection to the name is enough to scare the corporate lawyers. Maybe it's a myth, mabe not. Doesn't affect the figures or the set. It's a good set with some useful parts. And that camel rocks!

Showdown at Hogwarts

 

I hadn't built anything Harry Potter in a while and thought it was time. In the 5th book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by she who needs no introduction, Harry, Ron, Fred and George have a snowball fight while Hermione looks on.

  
It's Christmas day and that evening is the Yule Ball. I figure that bit of Hogwarts is all I want to tackle of the castle. Imagine how massive a minifig size castle would be! I'd need a lot more tan than I have, and more grey. Better set sight lower.