Sperhauk ordered up a copy of Cemetary Gates over at NetFlix where the reviews ranged from 1 to 5 stars. It''s closer to the 1 than the 5 in my mind. The users at the IMDb give it a 4 but I wouldn't go that high. It's got 606 votes and 54 are a 10. That's just crazy talk. It's a below average low budget horror comedy that lacks enough jokes for me. The IMDb says the movie cost $930,000 and I am wondering where all that money went. Some animal right activists break into a lab and steal a caged critter. We can't see what's in the cage but it makes a good bit of racket. Reggie Banister, whom some might remember from the Phantasm series, plays the science guy in a very lackluster performance. His son and some friends are camping out in a graveyard to shoot a scene or two of their amateur zombie film. Sadly they are even worse film makers than the ones behind the helm of CG. Besides the son there are three pot smoking guys, an uptight girl and a dim blonde who takes her top off. The uptight girl is the son's girlfriend. They aren't the worst actors I've ever seen and I don't think a better script would help them any. The animal rights guys plan to release the lab critter into the woods so it can live out the rest of it's life. These guy's are two levels of stupid, kind of and really fuckin', and we aren't at all sad to see them get shredded by the lab critter when they finally open the cage. At first we only see hints of the whole monster but we know from the movie's NetFlix description that it's a mutated Tasmanian Devil. Great idea, huh. Sperhauk pondered on the length of time it took monster movie makers to mutate that critter's ass and get him up on the silver screen. It does seem a natural doesn't it. Sadly when the whole critter is finally revealed it doesn't look that great. The cemetary is run by a redneck sort of guy and his two sons. The family robs and murders to suppliment their income. Reggie and his boss decide to go hunt the lab critter and they wind up in the area too. Greg Nicitero and Howard Berger, of NKB Effects house, play a couple of monster victims out for a walk in the woods. I'm a fan of their monster making. It was fun to see them and though they aren't really actors they do a passable job. Greg, tripping on some mushrooms while getting back to nature, sees the monster as a friendly cartoon bear in one of the funnier scenes in the movie. They get chomped by the critter and that's the end of them. A stoner fisherman shows up and gets his head lopped off. He was kind of goofy. There's the usual hunting of the humans as the movie progresses. We learn that the monster killed Reggie's wife. And he never destroyed it, thinking only of the huge medical breakthrough he thought he would get from his studies of the TD's unusual immune system, so it came back to haunt him once again with his son in danger. Most of the characters get chomped but I didn't care much. It's a silly bit of business and a new movie to add to my Watched movie list but I wouldn't need to see it again.
When The Good The Bad The Weird arrived from NetFlix I watched it on thursday and thought it was entertaining enough to want to watch again the next day. So I brought it along. Joe had seen it and gave it a nob, he'd want to watch it again. Greg had just contemplated buying it the other day. I just stumbled over it on NetFlix a couple of weeks ago and hadn't noticed anything about it before. It's a 2008 Korean film that's set in 1930's Manchuria. Ji-Woon Kim directed this action packed Oriental Western. He does a wonderful job. I read that this was the most expensive Korean film made and the IMDb says that the budget was $10 million US. You can sure get a lot for a little in Korea and I'm betting most of the money is right up on the screen. There's been an amazing amount of time and effort spent on all the little details for the costumes, sets, and props. The Manchurian desert is the perfect place for a western movie setting. It makes a really great looking movie all the better. There's a lot going on even with the simple plot. We've got some dealing and double dealing, horse riding, a train robbery, lots of gun shooting and some amazing stunts. There's a map. It's worth a lot and seems important. Many people are after it. They all have guns and knives and they will kill you if you get in their way. Our three main characters from the title are all Koreans, all far from home, all bound in a deadly chase. The good is a bountry hunter who's looking for the bad, a killer sent on a quest to retrieve the map from the buyer, and the weird, a robber who stumbles into the map's path. He was just robbing the train and all of this trouble fell on his head. There's a lot of humor to go along with the high body count. I really liked the guys playing the main trio and all their sidekicks and pals were highly entertaining. I've been watching a lot of westerns of late and this Korean version certainly stands along side the best of the genre. I'll certainly think about picking one up.
Comments