PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

7306 Golden Staff Guardians

 

Here's a new Pharoah's Quest set, the second smallest of the first 6 released, that has 70 parts for 10 bucks USA currency. There's 3 minifigs, a motorcycle and a bit of a display set for that big golden staff the mummy's are keepin' their red eyeballs on. I like the motocycle, it's the same fairing as Mutt's bike from an earlier Indiana Jones set, but the Indy bike was black with dark red trim. The dark red fairing of this new version looks pretty nice with it's dark bluish gray trim and I'm no big mototcycle fan.

The hero guy is Mac McCloud. Besides that cool bike Mac's got a rifle and some dynamite. Handy for fightin' attack mummys. I think Mac's got a great costume. I like these new mummy's but their double sided heads mean you need to keep a hat on them, or they have eyes in the back of their heads. They come with the old mummy head dress in black. It looks pretty nice. They have really nice print jobs on their costumes which might not have much use other than being mummys. They have new swords, called Khopesh's, and Scarab Shields. Those look pretty cool. The shield comes in golden color in a larger set. I think they would make nice wall decorations for something. There's some tan and dark blay parts that can always come in handy. The double headed golden staff is ok but not as interesting as the snake headed staff that came with the collectible minifigs.

  
Nice bunch of props for the minifigs. The set isn't too bad and we're going have to get used to paying way more than 10 cents a part. Hopefully one can continue to balance that with parts that are under 10 cents a piece. Helps keep the average price per part down.

7279 Police Minifigure Collection

 
I usually don't buy City sets but I wanted this one for a part or two and the new German Shepherd dog. For me, most of it's a waste. I have enough cops, at least for now, but I just like buying sets. Luckily for me I got it with the 20% off coupon that the temporary LEGO store was passing out Black Friday. It was 10, 20 or 50 percent off anything you buy. I like getting coupons, I don't get enough coupons.

I really liked this dog. Here's the Bricklink description: Medium Dark Flesh Dog - Alsatian / German Shepherd (Police Dog). Nice, huh. Standing ready, ears peaked. Let's get them criminals! Bark bark! For some reason I am a big fan of the LEGO animals. Even the Duplo ones. There's not a whole lot of parts in the set, according to the box it's got 57 pieces and the price is $9.99 at the LEGO store. There are 4 minifigs and a dog with a few bits and piece to make a little car and a cash machine. You need something for the criminal guy to bust into with his brand new red crowbar. Then he can run off with the cash in his nice new tan backpack. I overheard someone at the LEGO Store calling this set the new City Battle Pack. Not far wrong, huh. It's got two cops and two criminals. The cops have the edge with a car and a police dog. The criminals have nice stripped shirts and little hats. One of the criminals uses the gold toothed pirate head from the recent Pirate theme sets and the rest are familiar too. One of the cops has a flashlight made with a black lightsaber handle. That doesn't appear in too many sets. There's not a lot to make me want to recommend the set to most fans but if you need to fill up your police stations this is the set for you. Those criminals sure have jaunty hats, don't they. Still, wouldn't make me trust them.

      

Nightmare Worlds 50 Movie Pack Part 3 Disc 5 & 6

It's the third batch of movies from the Mill Creek 50 movie pack. There are 9 movies on 2 double sided discs.

  

Disc 5 Side A

First up Eternal Evil, a 1985 movie with Karen Black also known as The Blue Man. Never was a big fan of Miss Black for some reason. She always does a good job but she's in more dramas than horror films and the horror films she's in are none too good. This is about that level, none too good, while still being watchable. It's just a dull thing with the occasional murder by a guy who learns to astroproject. His body goes on a killing spree when left alone. The cops get involved and it takes ages to get to the end of the story. There are some evil people who swap bodies and have been living for centuries. The stuff they might have seen, huh. Almost makes those murders worth it.

Evil Brain From Outer Space is the 4th of the Starman movies with Ken Utusi. It's made up of the last three short movies in the Super Giant series. The three movies were 159 minutes orginally and that has been cut down into a 78 minute movie. Lots is missing from the three stand alone stories. There's evil doin's as aliens try to invade the Earth. Between the exposition there's pretty much one chase or fight after another. Luckily Starman is there to help. Like the other's in the series it's entertaining for what it is but not that great. There are a whole underground lair full of costumed creeps that need a beat down. The monster Starman fights is pretty silly but the scenery is nice to see. There seem to be a lot more children in this movie than the first two in this set. I wouldn't mind seeing subtitled copies of the original series.

Disc 5 Side B

   
Shadow of Chinatown is a 1936 serial starring Bela Lugosi that has been cut down from 300 minues to 71 minutes. Bela partners up with an evil young lady who works for some evil businessmen who wants to ruin the merchants in Chinatown San Francisco. Bela and the lady work to ruin the tourist trade. There's a reporter or two, some cops and a lot of running about.

The Disappearance of Flight 412 is a 1974 made for tv movie with Glenn Ford as an airforce colonel that sends some men out on a mission in their radar plane. It sees some blips that don't fly normally and then two fighter jets disappear. The crew are locked up and interrogated but they don't know anything and at the end of the movie we don't either. Not worth seeing.

Idaho Transfer is a movie that is on another box set that I have, maybe two. It's a 1973 movie directed by Peter Fonda. There's a time travel machine and the travellers discover that the end of the world is in just a few years. Most of the movie was shot in the bleak Craters of the Moon area in Idaho. Keith Carradine is the only well known actor to appear in the movie, most of the cast did not pursue a film career. I didn't find the film that interesting and I didn't care much about the characters. There's little or no hope in the thing. Not one I need to see again.

Disc 6 Side A

      
Good Against Evil is a 1977 TV movie about devil worshippers. You can see the first two covers have a good versus evil sort of look to them, but that third cover makes the movie look like porn. There's nothing like walls of fire and strippers in the movie. Some one want to fool the dvd buyer or renter into picking up a movie that isn't going to satisfy anyone. Some guy meets a pretty young dress designer and they start dating. Sadly Satan wants her for his bride and the couple has to fight his ass off. Richard Lynch plays the devil's minion. He's always pretty good as the villian. There's not much  of an ending as the movie was meant to be the pilot for a series that never got sold. It just didn't have much going for it and lacked any original ideas or interesting characters. It's not a movie that I would care to watch again. This box sure isn't offering much by way of movies to re-watch.

Alien Zone is another movie that I had seen in another box set under the title House Of The Dead. Not so oddly there are no aliens in the movie, it's just some business jerks retitling a movie or book to fool you into thinking you might want to see or read it again. I did scan through it and remembered that it was another piece of crap. Some guy's been out cheating on his wife. He gets dropped off on the wrong street in a heavy rain. A mortician invites him in to his funeral home and tells the guy a story about each of the four stiffs in his coffins. The first is about a lady that hates kids and she gets killed by some of them. It makes little or no sense, as did the second bit about a guy who invites women into his apartment and stranges them. In a weirdly filmed scene at the end of the segment it looks like he was arrested and we have to assume he was tried convicted and executed before he got to the funeral home. It's not clear. The third segment has a pair of detectives investigating a crime. That's about the best part of the movie and it isn't that great. The last bit has a guy fall down an elevator shaft and survive. Then a wall of nails nearly kills him. Where did that come from. The wall opens again and some wine rolls out. He drinks that, and several bottles more, and after we cut to the framing story the mortician says he died later, drunk, his liver rotted. The guy in the framing story runs away when the mortician tells him he's got a spot ready for him. Outside the cheatin' guy is murdered by the husband of the woman he was cheating with. Who wrote this? David O'Malley, not very good Mr. O'Malley, not very good. He's someone who needs his nuts kicked.

Disc 6 Side B

   
The Fury Of The Wolf Man is a crappy Paul Naschy movie from 1972. It's Spanish and it scores a 2.6 on the IMDb which means it's one of Paul's better movies. In the mountains of Tibet Paul is bitten by a Yeti and that turns him into a werewolf. What? He attacks his wife and is killed and later revived by a science lady. Now that's makin's some sense. I'm lyin' it's all pretty stupid. I'm not at all a fan of the late Naschy. He's a pretty piss poor actor. A lady scientist is making mutants and she stores them in her basement. That's just a bad idea. The bad ideas keeep on coming and eventually most of the people in the movie get murdered. Not a movie I would recommend to anyone.

House Of The Living Dead rates even lower on the IMDb. It rates a 2.3 and that's about right for this lack luster science and voodoo movie set, and filmed, in South Africa. There certainly aren't any zombies, that's not what the title refers to. A guy has been experimenting with the transfer of souls. He brings his finacee to the house against his mother's wishes. She wants the family to die off and this is not helping. The local's are unhappy with the guy and his evil ways. It all leads to death and madness at the end of the movie. It takes a long boring time to get to the payoff and it sucks. Yet another movie to avoid rewatching.

Science Fiction Sunday 106

One of the best of the 50's science fiction movies, Them is a tight fast paced giant bug movie. The 1954 movie is the first according to the Wikipedia. James Whitmore is a highway patrolman who comes across a catatonic little girl wondering around in the New Mexico desert. They find the trailer she came from, it's all damaged, and no parents. The patrolmen find a damaged store and a weird print in the sand. FBI agent James Arness shows up, followed by Edmund Gwynn and Joan Weldon, Edmund is a science guy and Joan is his daughter, a science gal. Edmund has a suspicion on what they are dealing with but he holds his cards close to the vest, wanting to be sure in his conviction. It takes a while to get to the giant ants but when they show up they are pretty well done. That's what the world needs, car size killing machines with a mindless determination to get the job done. I'd sure hate to see that coming after my ass. I'm sure they would want revenge for all the ones I squished in the past. The humans find the nest and two empty queen eggs. Oh Oh! That means there could be more colonies. Sure enough there's one on a ship, a ship full of sugar, still out at sea. That's easily sunk, now, where's the other one? Oh, boy, it's in LA and two little boys are missing. Besides the nice bunch of actors for the main leads there are some good small parts with appearances by Jess Parker, Richard Deacon, William Schallert, Leonard Nimoy and Dub Taylor. The script is good and director Gordon Douglas did a good job making the movie. He's a guy who worked for over 40 years and made a nice bunch of films. Them got a deserved Oscar nomination for special effects but didn't win. It's a good one and well worth seeing.

I can't say that for the second feature this am. They Are Among Us is a 2004 SciFi Channel original film. I couldn't remember what it was about just from the title. Turns out it's some sort of alien parasite movie with Alison Eastwood, Bruce Boxleitner and Nana Visitor. Some creatures might have fallen to the earth in a meteor ages ago. No matter they are here, they merge with humans, form colonies, and plan to take over the Earth. Nana is one of the aliens and Bruce is still human. They have a son which the colony plans to use to merge the two races together. That's how they plan to take over. Turn everyone in the world. They have patience, that's for sure. Alison Eastwood is a gal with a mission, hunting the creatures. The script is fair and the story moves along but it's not that great or anything. It gets a score of 4 over at the Imdb and that's about what I'd give it. This movie might have been a pilot for a series that didn't get made. The whole movie sets up all sorts of loose ends. Other colonies, Alison chasing after the aliens and the aliens chasing after the son. There are certainly better alien parasite movies out there.

Recently Comcast made everyone get a box for their cable signal. It's got On Demand and that has some free movies. I have been watching some of them. It's not a great selection, it doesn't seem to change very rapidly, and I have most of the better movies. The quality of the movies are ok, not HD, certainly watchable. Occasionally there is a widescreen movie but most of them are fullscreen versions. Still, free movies, and a chance to see some stuff I wouldn't consider paying for. I watched Screamers the other day. It's a 1995 movie with Paul Weller. I don't think I have seen it since it came out. I might have caught part of it on the SyFy channel at one time or another. I seem to recall it wasn't that great or anything and I never bothered to pick up a dvd. It's based on a Philip K Dick short story about robots that mimic humans and sneak among them bringing death. Two corporations are fighting on a planet and one of them brings in robot killing machines. Even as effective as they are, the machines evolve. Soon they are out of control and killing their own creators. The companies are thinking of abandoning the colony and chaulking it up to a bad business decision. Too bad space OSHA doesn't come riding to the rescue. The movie still isn't that great. Mostly there is a good story there but it's pretty hopeless and depressing and a great reminder not to let the companies do anything they damn well want. Really, who but stupid corporations and evil governments release powerful technology that comes back to bite us on the ass. Oh, well, glad I didn't go out and buy this.

Friday Night Movies 299

Why anyone might want to remake Night Of The Demons is beyond me but some guy did. Adam Gierasch is the director. He directed Autopsy and one more coming out. Haven't seen either and if they are anything like this one I hope not to. The original is a 1988 movie with Linnea Quigley. She was in a lot of movies where her clothes seem to fall off pretty easily and NOTD was no exception. She danced around naked a bit and there's is that somewhat famous scene where she sticks a lipstick into her nipple. There isn't as much nudity in the current movie even though main star Shannon Elizabeth has doffered her top in the past. They do remake the lipstick scene but neither Sperhauk or I thought it was improved in anyway, which begs the question, why even remake such a recent movie. In both movies some kids are slaughtered by the demons that are inhabiting the place they wind up partying. A funeral home in the original and a New Orleans mansion in the remake. One by one they get murdered and turned into demons. Edward Furlong plays a drug dealer and he really looks the part. One of the girls will get through the movie and escape. Unfortunately we didn't escape seeing this dull horror movie. It drags on at times and there isn't anything much exciting going on for long stretches. There are some flashbacks to explain why the demons are there. Didn't like the characters much and wouldn't bother watching this one again.

Same goes for the second movie, a pretentios bit of bother called Franklyn. Greg got a bootleg of this 2008 movie from a guy he knows. The story unfolds in two places, London in our world and some alternate reality type of place. That place looks pretty interesting, but the whole movie doesn't stay there. In fact that other reality turns out to be all in the imagination of one of the characters not something that is happening alternatively to our world. At the core of the story we have a dad looking for his mentally disturbed son who's killed a guard while escaping from a mental institution. There's a girl who tries to kill herself for some sort of bogus unthought out art project. She's one of those people who thinks she wants to be an artist without actually being one. They have schools for them and that's a shame. There's a guy who's fiancee walked out on him before the wedding and he's all bummed out. He's actually seeing an imaginary friend from his youth. Sadly none of these story bits are that interesting and I didn't find the characters very appealing. The 98 minute movie drags on and we started talking about what a piece of prentiousness it was. You can always tell how unengaging a movie is by the amount of conversation that occurs. It scores well, 6.1, at the IMDb as people seemed to like it. It got quite a few tens on that site, and if 10 is the best movie ever, than it's no ten. The guy who gave a copy to Greg really liked it but I don't know why. There are parts that look interesting but once you get to the payoff it's all very anticlimactic. You might like the thing but for me it's yet another movie I won't have to buy or look at again. Luckily for Greg someone gave him a copy. Yay, for bootleggers!

What I Read In July 2010

I'm still behind in these book reviews, it's near the end of November and I'm just hittin' July. Ten books, three of which were heavily illustrated, and five which are not keepers.

   
What the Dicken's by Gregory Maguire was the first of his books that I didn't keep. He's a guy who's right on the cusp of getting the boot when I am done with the books I have. I like the kids series he's done and I have read Wicked which was ok but I don't think I will revisit it. I've got the sequel and a couple more but they are pretty far down the to-read stack so I won't get to them for a while.I have only read 5 of the 7 books in the kids series and plan to re-read the series once I have them all. They don't turn up in the used book sections at Half Price books very often. For some reason I didn't click with the story or the writing in What The Dickens. Some kids are stuck at home in a hurricane and their older cousin tells them a story about a rogue tooth fairy. Seems the fairies are organized and live in colonies. That part was fairly entertaining but the framing story of the kids, and their emotional baggage, trapped in the house during a power failure and heavy winds wasn't that interesting. I didn't like the kids or the ending. Not recommended by me.

The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snickett is the 10th book in the series. I read the first 9 a while ago and had to stop. This month I plowed on, determined to finish the series, and get it off my shelf. The kids are on a slippery slope I guess. I have already put it out of my mind. I was reading pretty fast to get done. Only 3 more to go. Luckily for me I was also reading a good book at the same time. Here it is.

Harry Potter And the Chamber Of Secrets by J K Rowling. I am on the 8th go around and in this book Harry faces deadly peril when he goes into a secret chamber and kills a giant Basilisk with a shiny silver sword. That sword will come in handy later in the series for looping off the head of a large snake. Exciting year for Harry, his second year in school, in mine I got glasses. H'mm, that doesn't seem as thrilling does it.

   
The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snickett is the 11th book of 13. That's a nice sight, the end of the series. I'm pretty sure there is a grotto in this book. The cover seems to indicate there was some sort of underwater activity. Some people disappear or die I think. I'm too uncarring to go look up the synopsis on the Wikipedia. I have to think that this is one of the largest disappointments in a series I have ever picked up, just in sheer mass. I can only hope there's some reward for being stupid determined enough to finish them. I'm betting it's not cake.

    

Freddy The Politician by Walter R Brooks is the 6th book in the series. It came out in 1939 and was originally called Wiggins For President, but the title was changed in 1948. I didn't find a dustjacket for the earlier edition but I did find the stamped cover of the book on a Freddy fan site. Odd thing that cover. Mrs. Wiggins is a cow and she's pretty practical and level-headed. The animals, and people, mostly seem to like her. That's her up there, as drawn by Kurt Weise. You can hear her laugh for miles around. It scares some of the smaller critters. The gold foil stamp on the book on the right is from the current Overlook Edition. It's just a nicely made book no matter how you look at them. The $23.95 price might keep some people away but the $9.95 paperback price is more reasonable. A big wind storm blows a woodpecker off course and he winds up at the Bean farm. The Beans are planning a trip to Europe and they are worried about leaving the animals on their own. Freddy starts a bank and the animals organize a government to show how responsible they are.

 
As always the endpaper has some great stuff going on. That's the bank. The vault is underground, in tunnels, guarded by critters. Occasionally there's a robbery to be thwarted. Before there's even a chance for the bank to get robbed the woodpecker takes control with trickery. Freddy is kicked out and replaced with the woodpecker's father. Simon and his family of rats show up and work with the woodpecker to turn the first animal republic into a dictatorship. They use the clockwork wooden boy to keep the other animals in line. A 1939 wooden mech. Run by a woodpecker. Think about it. Freddy foils their plans and drives them out of the state. Mrs. Wiggin becomes president and all is well. Brooks' novel preceeded Orwell's Animal Farm by 10 years. I doubt that Orwell would have read a kids novel from the USA, so I am betting he didn't steal the idea, but you never know. I had to read Animal Farm in school when I was younger. I would have enjoyed reading the Freddy version, it's more fun and does the same job. Here it's 40 years later and I am still reading the Freddy books. Where is Mr. Orwell on my shelves? Nowhere, man. Any of his books have long since been purged. Who wants to read his sad sort of novels? Not this piggy that's who.

   
No piggies in Ottoline And The Yellow Cat by Chris Riddell, but that's ok, it's a delightful combination of text and illustration, and there are plenty of other critters. Chris is the co-author and illustrator of The Edge Chronicles. Here's he's telling a story all himself. There are lots of illustrations as you might expect. I'm onboard with Mr Riddell's work so they all look great to me and lots of people were heaping the love over at Amazon. Ottoline lives in a nice apartment while her parents are usually away being globetrotting adventures. They send back nice things to fill the place up and occasionally we get a glimpse of the various collections that have accumulated. The parents have arranged all sorts of household services to be delievered, so Ottoline is not wanting for food and clean clothes. They leave Ottoline in the charge of Mr. Monroe, a small and hairy guy who was found in  a bog in Norway. He's kind of like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family, all hair and legs. Ottoline gets involved with dog napping and a cat burglar, who's a real cat. There's a lot of funny bits and pieces in the book. Well worth the read for most anyone who likes a good story and especially those who like a bit of sillyness as well. Definately going into the keeper pile.

 
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snickett is the 12th book in the series and the villany ramps up. Lots of people get burnt to death. There's lot's of other activity in the hotel before the fire. It just goes on and on. One more to go.

The End by Lemony Snickett is the last book in the series. There is The Beatrice Letters which I do have but haven't read it yet. There isn't much of a resolve to the series. Frustration upon frustration, but it's over, and I might never get around to reading TBL. Certainly not a series I will read again. I'm glad that I only wasted nudie magazine credit on used copies of most of them and even that was a waste in the long run.

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Magical Scenes From The Sixth Film In The Harry Potter Series Pop-Up & Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Poster Annual 2010 are a pair of illustrated books from the 6th movie. I buy this type of book when I see them used or remainered. Harry is so popular that it happens pretty regularily. My Harry Potter book collection keeps growing a bit at a time. Good thing, it's already huge. There sure are a lot of HP besides the series and I don't even have them all. If what I have were all on bookshelves I bet it would be more than a dozen feet long. That includes books about the series, coloring books, sticker books, foreign editions, etc.

Nightmare Worlds 50 Movie Pack Part 2 Disc 3 & 4

Here's the next 8 movies in the set. Not too many good ones in this batch and the quality of the video is all over the place. Some of the movies look like they started as VHS copies and probably were. That's our pals at Mill Creek Entertainment. Of course I shouldn't complain I know what sort of crap to expect from these low-budget sets. I just like the cheapness and the convience of getting a big bunch of movies packed into a small space. Occasionally there are some ok movies to watch in these movie packs. This box just doesn't yield up as many of the better ones for some reason.

Disc 3 Side A

First stinker on deck, The Nightmare Never Ends, from 1980, which also has been released under the title Cataclysm. It was also cut down to about 30 minutes and used as a segment in the 1985 anthology movie Night Train To Terror. That's a right piece of crap too. TNNE scores a 3 on the IMDb but I wouldn't give it that good a score. Richard Moll plays a writer who writes a book on the death of God. His wife thinks he's going to roast in the firey pits of hell, but he just doesn't believe it. I personally would enjoy seeing that. Richard's wife is disturbed at a hypnotism show, in a trance she sees a scene of some women killed at a Nazi dinner party during WWII. Later that night the hynotist is murdered and 666 burned into his chest. Weird, huh. Some old Nazi hunter claims a 20 something guy at a disco is the same guy he saw kill people during the war. No one believes him, even after he is murdered. Cameron Mitchell, a local cop, investigates. He questions the smug 20 something guy but doesn't get anywhere. We see he's a minion of the devil who likes to murder people. He's got hairy hooved legs. There's a guy who fights against the devil's minions but he's pretty ineffectual and he gets killed. It tries to be arty and creepy and there's almost a good story there but it just isn't that well made. The music stinks too. Certainly not worth watching again.

More evil Nazi's in Counterblast but not the supernatural kind. It's a 1948 British movie about an escaped Nazi scientist. He kills an Austrian scientist and takes his identity. He fools everyone and hides in England. The movie was released under an other name to fool people into paying for something free on tv. While the movie was in syndication at many tv stations around the country, some producer bought the theater rights and changed the name to Devil's Plot. That's the movie business, rife with scum. Speaking of scum, our scientist continues to work on his secret germ-warfare so that when the Nazi's rise again he'll he ready to help out. Things don't go very well for him. Things fall apart quickly, and after failing to follow orders of his secret Nazi masters, he's on the run. He hides out on a ship only to be gassed when they fumigate the ship to kill the rats aboard. Haha. It's not too bad a movie but one that I wouldn't watch very often. Unfortunately I know I have this movie in another box set. That's double the chance of accidentally watching it again. If only there were some way to leave myself a message not to do it.

Disc 3 Side B

We start the B side with All The Kind Strangers, a 1974 made for tv movie about a group of orphans who live in a house out in the country. Mom died giving birth to the youngest of her seven children and daddy fell off the roof after drinking some of his own moonshine. The kids have been alone in the house for 5 years, mostly under the control of eldest son John Savage. He wants to keep the family together like their father wanted. He's going to do it at any cost. Stacy Keach picks one of the kids up on the road and drops him off at the house. The kids force him to stay so he can be their new dad. They have already got Samantha Eggar trapped in the kitchen. They have dogs that keep the adults in line. It's a bit interesting but I just couldn't buy that a grown man couldn't get out of the situation as poorly as Stacy does. Mind you these are some pretty fucked up kids. It comes out that John killed the other kidnapped dads when they said they didn't want to stay. He drives all their cars into the river. Robbie Benson plays one of the kids and that reminds me how little I like his annoying smirk. Not an enjoyable movie for the most part, one I don't need to watch again.

A bit better than the average in this box is the 1956 Italian movie The Day The Sky Exploded. Hell, it's better than most Italian movies I've seen. It gets 4.1 on the IMDb and that's pretty fair. It's very much like the low budget American science fiction movies of the 50's. A rocket from the Earth knocks a huge astroid out of orit and it's headed straight for us. Glancing off the moon it breaks into a thousand pieces. There's havoc on the ground as the  USA and USSR work together to send a fleet of nukes into space to blow up the oncoming danger. The effects aren't that great but they get the job done. They use some stock footage of rocket launches to pad out the 79 minute running time.

Disc 4 Side A

 
Maybe that's the tape that Death Warmed Up came from. I don't know. It sure looks like a transfered tape all the colors are off and it's very fuzzy. It's a 1984 New Zealand horror film starring Michael Hurst. He was Iolaus on the Hercules, The Legendary Journeys series with Kevin Sorbo. That series was produced in New Zealand by Sam Raimi and Rob Tappert, of the Spiderman movie series. Michael is the son of a scientist working on brains. Another brain guy drugs and hynotizes Michael into killing his parents. He's just a dick of a scientist and didn't like the competition. Michael gets stuck in a crazy person place and six years later is cured and released. He returns to the island where it all happened with his new girlfriend and another couple. The guy who made Michael kill his parents is still fucking people up. He helps one guy so much that his brain explodes. It's kind of poorly done and that's about what the whole movie is like. There's a bit of gore, some nudity and some New Zealand country side. Even if the transfer was great, nothing would look as good as any episode of Hercules. Not a fun movie and one I won't return to anytime soon.

Poor Grant Williams, he's one of the leads in The Doomsday Machine, and he's a pretty shitty guy. He was the shrinking man in that famous 1957 movie and the geologist who fights the giant growing rocks in The Monolith Monsters. They're better parts and he's better in those movies. Sadly that's the peak of his career and he died at 52. TDM was started in 1967 and when the money ran out they stopped. Someone finished the movie and it got released in 1972. Grant, three guys and three gals are sent into space. When they get up there the Chinese destroy the world with a really bad bomb. It burns up the surface of the Earth and our 7 people are all that are left. They are headed for Venus and on the way Grant has a harder and harder time getting with the program. He goes crazy and atacks one of the women and forces her into the air lock. She accidentally hits the button that opens the door. Oops. That was a pretty darn stupid scene, no matter how dramatic that is supposed to be, and the airlock button was a little push button on the wall that someone could easily hit with their elbow. It's the stuff like that, the lack of detail and sloppy writing, that keeps me from thinking anything good about this movie. Don't watch it. Watch something better, anything.

Disc 4 Side B

I don't think I have too many movies with Rock Hudson, he was never a favorite of mine. I think I have one of Rock and Doris Day's comedies from the 1960's. Embryo, from 1977, has Rock as a science guy. He developes a formula that grows the fetus rapidly. He first made a dog grow up quickly. Then he obtains a human fetus from a dying woman and in a few weeks he's got Barbara Carrera in the house. He gives her an excellerated learning course that ends with them in the sack. She becomes pregnant and starts to age quickly. Barbara is really a smart person with lots of book learning but she's got no moral sense and soon there are deaths. The thing ends badly for everyone pretty much. Not a bad movie just one that isn't very interesting. Lot of talking and dull science stuff. Not something I would need to watch anymore.

Christopher Lee is in the dull End Of The World. It's produced by low-budget film maker Charles Band with an assist from brother Richard. They made a ton of crappy to not so crappy SF and Horror films over the years. Lee is a priest who's got trouble at the convent. Turns out he's been taken over by an alien. He's part of a group of aliens that wants to keep the Earth from spreading it's disease's around the galaxy. Filthy Humans! It's got Scott Kirk and Sue Lyon as a scientist and his wife who recieve a radio signal. It lures them to the aliens and they are coerced into helping them. Dean Jagger, Lew Ayers and MacDonald Carey all have some small parts. It's pretty dull at times and what little effects there are are none to special. They do blow up the earth but it looks pretty poor. It scores a 2.6 on the IMDb and that's about where it should be. This movie, like a high number of movies in the box set, has some noise in the background of the soundtrack. Kind of annoying. Luckily I won't need to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 105

Got a bit behind this weekend, spending most of saturday in Wisconsin visiting Dave and Stacy Sterling with some other TwinLUGers and then sunday there was the TwinLUG meeting with the new LUGbulk. I got 30 cows. That was more exciting than the pair of movies I watched in the morning.

 
Terror Beneath The Sea is a 1966 Japanese movie starring action star Sonny Chiba. There's a mad science guy, hiding out under the ocean, creating fishmen from humans they've captured. Sonny Chiba is a reporter. He's at a demo of a new sub when something flashes across the viewing screen. Was it man? Maybe. Sonny starts to investigate with help of Peggy Neal. They run about a lot and on a hop into the sea they are captured by the bad guys. The ones that are making the fishmen. The bad guys nearly turn Sonny and Peggy into fishmen but luckily they escape. The fishmen are sexless which doesn't sound like much fun. The movie is pretty typical of the 60's Japanese science fiction movies, maybe not as good as the better Toho stuff but watchable. The fishmen are kind of goofy looking but that's ok, it fits the movie. More for your Japanese sf movie fan than just anyone.

 
The 1967 British movie The Terrornauts is about an alien invasion. It's got a great poster doesn't it? Some scientists get radio signals from an astroid in our solar system. They send a signal and some aliens show up. It doesn't go well for the bunch in the lab as the aliens steal them and carry them off to another planet where they test the humans. There's an astronomer, and electrical engineer, their boss, an accountant and the tea trolley lady. That's our lucky group below.

 
Seems there's some awful aliens coming to destroy the Earth. The kidnapped humans are to be the crew that stops them. It's an odd little film, not great, but unique enough to make it interesting. I did like the characters, especially Charles Hawtrey as the accountant and Patricia Hayes as the tea trolley lady. It gets a 4.5 on the IMDb. The effects aren't too bad for the time and the story is a bit goofy but that's ok. Sadly it's something that isn't readily available, no dvd release. You can get it as a bootleg from a place like this. I got my copy off of tv ages ago and transfered the tape to a dvdr. Glad I did, it was fun to watch again.

Friday Night Movies 298

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.

Nightmare Worlds 50 Movie Pack Part 1 Disc 1 & 2

I love these 50 movie packs and their cheesey movies. I picked up Nightmare Worlds for 10 bucks. Twenty cents a movie isn't too bad, huh, and neither is that cover. Got some sort of alien invasion tripod thing going. Like H. G. Wells' War Of The Worlds. That's not a movie that appears in this box.  It's better than any of the 50 movies in this pack but someone still owns the copyright on that one. It's not one you can find online for free, at least lawfully. Most of the movies in these movie packs are public domain movies. They show up on various online sites and in dvd collections. Mill Creek seems to have captured the market on jumbo boxes with all the 10, 20, 50 and 100 movie packs they have released. Some of the movies must be really good since they often show up in box after box. It's hard not to wind up with duplicates. I am thinking that someday they will market a 500 movie pack on BluRay. I bet they can get 8 or 10 movies a side. A lot of these movies are short. Often a blessing. There are 12 double sided discs in the box, most of which have 2 movies a side, one of them has 3 shorter movies on each side. Makes a nice double bill for the most part. Not that the movies are all nice, it's all folks in fucked up situtations like, invading aliens, horrible contaminations, nukes, or whatever miserable situation the screen writers think will work and entertain an audience. There's a lot of failure in this box. Still 20 cents a movie and since I'm going for my world record of number of new films watched I figured why not give this box a chance and hopefully forget that I saw them.

 Disc 1 Side A

Leader of this pack of mangy curs is Alien Contamination,  a 1980 Italian film, called Contamination in it's homeland. It came out in the USA under the AC title in 1982. A cargo ship arrives in New York City with no one at the helm. Since the film makers don't have the budget to crash a ship into a dock they have someone in a helicopter watch some stock footage of a ship and radio for help. Cut to the dock and someone tells us they boarded the ship and stopped it just in time. No one alive is on board, the crew's bodies scattered around the ship, their chests burst open. There's a fair bit of gore in this movie, at least at the start. The military investigates and finds some large odd looking eggs in the hold. Eggs burst open spraying people with a blood like goo. It really fucks them up and their chests burst open within a minute. Lots of goo comes out when that happens but no critters. Scientists are called in, we settle into the lab, nothing much happens for a while, then a rat explodes. They find more eggs and burn them. There's a bit more in the lab but nothing explodes. It's pretty dull. The science lady in charge goes to see an astronaut that had been on Mars two years ago. He had a bad time in a cave. Even when we see it in the flashback we can't guess what happening. Someone shined a light down a tunnel and he freaked out? I don't know. Doesn't matter really. Looks like there were eggs in the tunnel. Astronaut gets drafted by the science lady and they are off to South America for some egg hunting. Someone slips an egg into the bathroom when the science lady is showering. The bad guy is telepathically attached to the eggs. He captures the science lady and ties her up. The astronaut flies into the jungle and finds a big alien critter. It's not bad, certainly not great, it does eats people. That's kind of fun. The astronaut rescues the science lady and shoots the alien in the eye. A couple of minutes later it bursts into flame. What the... Hey, it's that kind of movie. It's all pretty lackluster and not overly entertaining, even for 20 cents. It is letterboxed and the print is ok but the color is kind of dull. In other words it's much better than most of the movies you get in these 50 Movie Packs. I hope not to spend as much time on each movie as I did this. I don't always get what I hope for and sometimes it's jut fun to complain about these movies.

Alien Species has a fleet of UFO's arrive and start attacking the Earth in this 1996 movie. Some deputies and criminals are stuck in the path of the invasion. They hook up with a couple of girls. Charles Napier stars as the Sheriff. He's the only thing vaguely interesting in this movie. It scores a deserved 2.1 on the IMDb. It looks shot on video and the effects are weak. It was shot in Clovis California. Well, that's two vaguely interesting things now. The criminal guy, long haired handsome, blows up one of the ships and the aliens call in all their fighters and leave. Don't worry the criminal says, they'll be back. There was some speculation on the IMDb that it might have been a made for tv movie pilot. Makes sense with the open ended story.

Disc 1 Side B

 

That's the High Council from the 1964 Japanese movie Atomic Rulers Of The World. Aren't they great looking. I love when they wave their arms around. Oh, you haven't seen that? Look here. This movie is made up of the first two episodes of Super Giant. It's a series of 9, rather short, science fiction movies about Starman. The series ran from 1957 to 1959. American producers bought them and they cobbled together 4 movies for US TV and three of those movies are in this box. That's Mill Creek for you, too dickish to put the fourth movie in place of one of the 46 other movies. Starman is made of the strongest steel and the High Council sends him off to help the other planets in the Galaxy fight evil and corruption. The original two episodes were 50  minutes each and the made for tv movie is 83 minutes according to the IMDb. The Mill Creek dvd version is only 73 minutes. Ken Utsui played the Starman. I read he didn't like the part much and he didn't like stuffing cotton is his groin area. The producers thought that the ladies liked that sort of thing. Now if you watch the movie you'll probably be thinkin' less of poor Ken. A guys gotta work and sometimes being an actor is a tough humiliating job.

   

Starman's creators, the High Council, are worried that the fictional Earth country with the atom bomb will go through with their plan to take over the world with nukes. Or nuke, the bad guys only seem to have one of the things. The High Council sends Starman to Earth and he uses his Globe Meter, superpowerful watch-like wrist jewelery, to detect the bomb. That attractive wrist accessory also lets him fly through space and understand all human languages. Oh, and it magically changes his Starman costume to a nice black suit and a fedora. Makes a Rolex look like a piece of shit, huh. The effects are low budget, cheesey lookin', and at times, damn goofy. Occasionally Starman makes a backward jump for little or no reason. He starts high up, jumps down and when they run the film backward it looks like he jumps backward to a higher point. There isn't much reason to do that but there you go. At least there's something happening. It's not an exciting movie some of the time. Eventually the plan is thwarted, Starman is headed back to the Emerald Planet, and I'm headed for the next piece of crap.

The last movie on the B side of the double sided dvd is Bill Rebane's 1978 movie The Alpha Incident. He made a few low budget films, some of which turn up on these public domain sets, and none of which are that great. Monster-A-Go-Go was featured on MST3K but I can't remember a thing about it. The Alpha Incident is a miserable story about a group of people who are tossed into a situation where they are fucked and that's the whole story. George "Buck" Flower is the stupid guy who just has to sneak a look at the secret government package that is going by rail car. The single guy guarding it falls asleep and Buck not only breaks into the box but breaks open a vial of some sort of virus from Mars. He cuts his hand in the process, doesn't tell anyone, and carries his new plague into the small train station contaminating everyone there. The guard quarantines the place. He has to wound 'em a bit to keep 'em there. The scientists tell the group that if they fall asleep their brain will blows up. You'd think that something that awful would have two guards watching, wouldn't you? People drift off to sleep and blow their minds. The guy who survives being asleep is blasted at the end. End of quarantine. Barely worth a first look.

Disc 2 Side A

Here's the third of the Starman series. It's films 5 and 6 of the series. The translated Japanese tile of #5 is  The Artificial Satellite and the Destruction of Humanity and the #6 is The Spaceship and the Clash of the Artificial Satellite. I almost always enjoy the translated titles of Asian movies. Attack From Space is about some invading aliens who come to Earth to take it over. They have their fancy uniforms and they are pretty nasty. They kidnap some science guy's kids to make him give up his new rocket engine and come work for them. It almost works, and Earth would be really in trouble but for Starman. There's a lot of running around and a lot of yakkin' as the humans figure out the alien plot. Sometimes it was interesting to watch what was going on in the background. It's Japan in 1957. That's only 12 years after the war. There's a cool sequence that's filmed in the graveyard. It's a pretty nice place, row of tombstones on narrow paths that wind their way up a hill. The movie is made from two 39 minute movies and only a couple of minutes were chopped out. The effects are fair for the 50's, considering where the shows came from. It's a fun enough movie to watch, but I think mostly because of the goofy stuff that goes on and the time and place of it's birth.

I couldn't say the same for Beast Of The Yellow Night. It's a 1971 movie made in the Philippines. A guy is saved from death by the devil but he has to sell his soul. And the devil isn't done with that guy, he wants the guy to help him harvest more souls, so occassionally, he turns the guy into a werewolf to kill people. It's a pretty poor looking beast, the makeup isn't too great. Here's a blog with some pictures and lots of description on the story. It's a pretty lame movie for the most part. The film making is average but there's not much of a script and the actors are not the greatest. Not hardly worth the 20 cents.

Disc 2 Side B

What a poor piece of business is Warriors Of The Wasteland. Sadly I have seen this a couple of times and it just gets worse and worse. It's a 1982 Italian film called I Nuovi Barbari or The New Barbarians. It's post-apocalyptic and the Templars roam the earth in search of the last surviving humanity. To kill them! Some people are stupid, huh. A former Templar helps a small group of people to stand up to the killers. There's lots of driving around in the countryside, too much talking, and some crappy fighting. Nothing to great in this movie that's for sure. Fred Williamson is the biggest star in the thing. That's kind of sad. Here's a blog by the a guy who thinks you should see this movie. I wouldn't go that far. Watch it if you want. I'm hoping I remember not to watch it again when I'm digging through the 50 movie packs with watching something crappy in mind.

Same goes for Werewolf Woman, a 1976 Italian movie about a crazy woman who thinks she's a werewolf. It opens with Annik Borel dancing naked in a ring of fire. It's more scarey than some of the murder scenes. It's the past and some villagers are up in arms after the monster woman. She actually turns into a creature that is vaguely werewolf like. It's like she was slightly flocked. Still naked. The villagers catch her, tie her to a pole, and burn her. Annik wakes up and she's in the modern day. Was it a dream or a look at her real past? Annik starts killing one lover after another. After a bit the police notice there's something going on. The start the hunt and in a real anticlimactic ending they rush in screen left and grab her. End of the movie. There's a lot of full frontal nudity in the movie but not much is very sexy or anything. I don't find Annik to be that attractive and there is the whole killing thing. That takes the lead out of a guy's pencil. It's pretty dumb. Worth some of that 20 cents for the high running around naked in the woods scenes but not much.