PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Weeds Season 4

 

Weeds continues in season 4 with Nancy, Andy, Silas and Shane relocating to Andy's father's house in a small city near San Diego. SD is of course on the US Mexican border across from the fabled city of Tijuana. That will be important later. Right now the family is adjusting to Andy's asshole of a father, played by Albert Brooks, and his nearly dead mother. She'll ask Albert to kill her in a couple of episodes and they have to leave it to Nancy. That goes as well as can be expected. At least no one goes to jail. Our main gal needs some money and she hooks up with Guillermo who sends her on a test run to Mexico. He trains her to be a drug mule and we learn a lot about the trade. Doug shows up and he and Andy start running Mexician's across the border for cash. That goes poorly after a while. Doug becomes more and more of an asshole. He's the best at sabotaging his own life, no one has to help him any. Zoe Deschannel shows up. She's an old girlfriend of Andy's and she's on the run. She's completely self centered and a danger to be around. She did stab Andy for something to do with ther garden gnomes. Now she's stolen some casino's chips and they want them back. She disrupts everyone's life in one of the more comedic story lines of the season. Silas sets up a grow house in a fancy cheese shop and he starts humping the lady owner. She just wants his weed and his underage wiener and poor Silas doesn't do to well in the long run. Shane, the ever evolving psychopath, beats up a popular kid and has a three way with two slutty teens.

 

Guillermo's boss opens a Maternity store and G hires Nancy to run the thing. Celia comes to work for Nancy at the shop and she develops a drug problem. There's an intervention and rehab about half way through the season. Her family talks Celia into trying to reconnect with her older daughter Quinn. That doesn't go well and Quinn holds Celia hostage for $200,000 ransom. Like anyone going to pay that, huh. There's one of those drug tunnels in the maternity store and that ramps up the level of Nancy's involvement in the trade. They smuggle drugs, money, weapons and girls through the tunnel. Nancy finds out where it goes, after being told to stay out, and that leads her to the big boss Esteban. She starts a relationship with Esteban and that pulls her all the way into the crime family. Esteban is also the mayor of Tijuana. He's definitely a guy you wouldn't want to know. Nancy is ok with the weed going through the tunnel but she's not pleased with the rest very much. She turns the tunnel into the DEA and Guillermo winds up in the can. Her betrayal gets back to Esteban and he nearly kills her. Turns out she's carrying his baby. That will not go well. There were some entertaining shows and scenes but overall the show grows darker and things go poorly for most everyone. The series ends with another cliff hanger. Will Nancy die? What? No, of course not. There seem to be less jokes and they are crueler. I picked up seasons 5 and 6 at Target on Black friday so I'll be diggin' into those soon.

Ninjago 9440 Venomari Shrine

I stopped in at Target earlier and found they had the new Ninjago sets. Most of them are not what I would buy but I had to pick up a couple of the small $6.99 set. It's got 86 pieces and some of them are new ones. There's a white ninja in the set. He's got a new torso design, a new printed head wrap, and pearl gold shoulder things with a scabbard on the back. It can old two Katanas but only one comes with the set. There is a connection point for a 1x1 round plate bottom to go into. Turn it around and it can be some sort of space wear.

   

The lime green snakes are new and they look great. You get a couple in the set and I think I might need more than the 4 I already have. I have something in mind for them as well as the dark tan slope with the snake head printed on it. That looks pretty sinister. The pearl gold staff is kind of cool, especially once it has that trans green 1x1 round tile stuck on it. The set also has six of the new dark tan 1x2 with a different pattern on each side. That's the dark tan up on the left and the medium dark flesh version on the right above. You get 27 of the flesh ones in the new Forest Police Station. I think I would like the dark tan version better if I was buildings a building. They would certainly add some new texture to a moc. I would like to see a reddish brown or dark blay version. I'll have to accumulate some for a future build. All in all a nice little set from a theme I have little use for.

Science Fiction Sunday 158

The  15th Godzilla film The Terror Of MechaGodzilla would be the last film in the series for nearly ten years. The 1975 film did poorly at the box office, less than a million people went to see it when it was released, and Toho shelved everyone's favorite giant building buster. That break was probably a good idea anyway, the movie recycles the tired alien invasion plot once again and even though they toss in a new monster it just wasn't that great, especially if you watched the US version that appeared in the theaters. You can see that hacked up version on the Simitar dvd that came out several years ago. There's a 5 movie dvd box set that can still be found cheaply, though it's really not worth buying. I only mention it for the completest. The US version that played on tv was different again; it added a long prologue with clips from other Godzilla movies making it longer than the Japanese release by 6 minutes. You can see that on the 2007 Classic Media dvd along with the original uncut Japanese version. I watched the Classic Media versions today and parts of both the Video Daikaiju bootleg and the Simitar dvd. When I wrote this the 7 Godzilla Classic Media collection is only $18 on Amazon. Well worth the price since the movies were about 15 bucks each when sold separately.

 

The Terror of Mechagodzilla was called Counterattack of Mechagodzilla or メカゴジラの逆襲(Mekagojira no Gyakushū) and it was directed by Ishiro Honda with music by Akira Ifukube. The movie was written by a woman, Yukiko Takayama, and it's got a bit of a romance. One of the guys in the movie falls for the daughter of the crazy mad scientist who wants to destroy the world because he got beat up by other scientists. Problem is that the daughter is a cyborg and she's working for her dad. The mad scientist had found the titanosaurus in the ocean and using mind control he uses it to attack a ship. He's also working with the alien invaders to fix up the MechaGodzilla. That's part of his revenge plan. There are the usual antics and monster fights with some occasional good collateral damage. Nothing overly spectacular. Eventually the bad aliens are defeated and Godzilla swims out to sea. The movie is more than watchable, but only if you see the Japanese version.

 

Nine years later Toho returned to the Godzilla franchise and the big guy has gotten bigger. The first series of films had the big guy at 50 meters tall and in the newly started series he's gotten 60% bigger. That's 80 meters tall or about 267 feet. Some of the buildings in Tokyo had gotten pretty large over the last decade and he needed to be bigger to get his smash on. The Return Of Godzilla is the official Toho English title. The movie came out in Japan under the title Godzilla in 1984 and it came out in the US in 1985 under the title Godzilla 1985. The US version was edited heavily and new footage with Raymond Burr and some US military men added to make the movie more US-centric. I have a Video Daikaiju bootleg that runs 103 minutes and the US version is about 90 minutes so you can see there is a lot of material missing. The Japanese version is the one to watch but for some reason there isn't a legit US dvd to be had. Same with Godzilla Vs Biolante. Weird, huh. Oh, well. the internet provides.

The movie starts with a ship at sea, it gets attacked, and we know that Godzilla is back. He's also dropping giant 6 foot long fleas. Yuck, huh! The movie ignores the previous sequels as if they had not happened. It's 30 years after the first Godzilla movie and this is only the second appearance of the big guy. Something destroys a Russian sub and they get all yelly. Once they find out it was Godzilla they demand to drop a bomb on the critter. The US, not wanting to be left out of bombing something, tosses it's demands in the Japanese Prime Minister's face. The PM says hold the fuck up! No nukes! The Japanese Defense Force has tanks, missiles and the Super-X. It's a big fat VTOL spaceship looking craft that's got some super deadly cadmium missiles that knock Godzilla out. The Russians launch a nuke and the US explodes it in upper atmosphere. The radioactive fall out revives Godzilla and he beats the Super-X to the ground and pushes a building over on it. The scientists figure out a way to lure Godzilla into a volcano and they blow it up with him inside. Don't worry, he'll enjoy basking in that refreshing molten mass until next time. It's more like the early Godzilla films than the ones from the 1970's, somewhat more dark and much more deadly for the citizens unlucky enough to be out when Godzilla comes calling. It's a fun restart of the series and worth seeing.

3815 Heroic Heroes

I went over to the LEGO store at 4 am Black Friday. It opened at midnight and it was one of 100 stores in the Mall of America that did the same thing. I didn't really think I wanted to go to the store are midnight. I am more likely to be awake at 6 am than midnight. True to form I couldn't stay up until 10:30 PM. I woke up about 3:30 am and when I couldn't sleep I got up and went shopping. It was a waste of time. I stopped at the LEGO store and a Target and all I got was this SpongeBob set and it was only 10% off. I figured I wanted to buy something to keep the trip from being a total failure. The sale items at the LEGO store were sets that lacked any interest to me for the most part, City, Star Wars and a Ninjago. No Harry Potter or Pirates of the Carribean sets. Most places have had those themes on sale for the last month at the 25% off that the LEGO store had their sets marked. The only two new items that were 50% off were the Alien Conquest and Pirates of the Carribean battle packs of minifigs.

  

I decided this was the set I would take a chance on. I got a 10% off coupon at the counter. If would have been a 20% or more I might have bought more sets but I stuck with my selection. I mostly got it for the minifigs. There are some good goofy parts there and might come in handy. S'Bob comes with a raygun, in red, with a dark azure ice cream piece for the barrel. It's pretty nice but it hardly makes up for the weak boat that the guys drive. It's not up to their costumes. There are several dark azure parts in there but there aren't enough of them around yet to be anything but an accent so they have a limited use. The rest of the thing is made up of common parts. There aren't very many of the parts either, only 95 for $14.99, not made much cheaper by using the discount. I'd buy another on clearance but mostly I would want another of the red space pistol, the dark azure ice cream, and those costumes. Not much of a reason to get one. Target had a couple of the large $100 sets for 65 bucks but neither of them interested me too much. I'm going to wait a bit for the clearance sets after the holidays.

Friday Night Movies 349

  

I hadn't heard of Killer Tongue before Sperhauk picked up the cheap copy we watched first. It's a lowbudget Spanish film from 1996, so it looks much older. It's been poorly transferred to the dvd and a big part of the film is cropped off the sides. It really looks like they took a copy of the VHS tape and transfered that to dvd. There's a widescreen Spanish dvd but I don't have one. The movie is about an alien who takes over the body of a gal living out in the desert. Lots of weird things happen in movies set in the American southwest. This movie is actually filmed in Almería, Andalucía, Spain which has masqueraded as the American southwest many times. There have been a lot of interesting films shot there.

When the movie starts Melinda Clarke and her hubby rob a bank and he gets caught. They have hid the money and she's waiting for him to get out of the prison. They plan to meet in a secluded place in the desert. The alien crashes there and takes over Melinda's body and it turns her poodle dogs into gay men. Not gay dogs, human gay men. Her body gets covered with a black rubber skin and some bumpy bits on the back. That must have been hot to work in out there in the desert. A giant tongue comes out of Melinda's mouth and eventually it starts talking. It sounds like Harvey Firestein. Robert Englund is the guard at the work camp that Melinds's hubby is locked up in. One of the fellow inmates is Doug Bradley whom some will remember as Pinhead from The Hellraiser series. More weird stuff happens and the glowing rock the alien rode in on blows some people up. The gore and tongure effects are pretty good for the most part. They are simple physical effects that are easy enough to do. Eventually Melinda and her hubby are united and the movie ends. Sure was a silly one. Almost like they were trying to make a cult film. Glad I seen it. It did make me laugh several times and some of those laughs were actually from the jokes.

 

Another foreign film for our second feature, the 1967 Mexican movie La Isla de los Dinosaurios  is less of a comedy but I still laughed some. The movie has some scientists looking for Atlantis. They fly into a storm and crash on as island filled with dinosaurs and cavemen. Some of the dino footage is from the 1940 film One Million BC. The Mexican film makers match the old footage fairly well. One of the gal scientists gets lost while swimming and she falls in love with a caveman. He's a big hunky guy. She teaches the tribe some manners and gives the hunters spear points. The story is pretty silly but that's cavemen and dinosaur movies for you. It's certainly no Jurassic Park but it's entertaining enough to watch once or twice.

30028 Creator Wreath

 

Here's a good set for a sale or the post holiday clearance. It's at TRU and the 50 parts cost $4.99. Luckily when I was there they had a Buy 1 Get 1 at 50% off sale. It's these small impulse exclusives that make up my main purchases at that store. The snowman they've had the last couple of years is another good one to pick up, especially on a sale. The snowman has a nice bunch of parts including 6 of those 1x1 with the stud on the side in white. The wreath is ok but there aren't any parts that drive me to want to buy a bunch of the set. It's strong on green parts, there are slopes, hinge parts and small plates. The yellow parts in the bells might be ok to have too. Depends on what you build. The wreath looks ok, nothing special, I've seen better, but the bells are nice. I built one and then parted it out later.

Firefly - revisited

Some of the TwinLUG members are interested in doing some sort of Firefly diorama for the comic con next May. The group has had a LEGO display at the comic con for the last three years. We usually have a Micropolis display on a couple of tables and and something that has minifigs on the other two. Last year we had a large western themed display and the year before that it was undersea stuff. At the October TwinLUG meeting there was a movement to do some sort of Firefly display, along with the Circus themed build, and drop, or reduce, the Micropolis display. The layout hasn't grown much in the last year and I wouldn't mind waiting a year or two before hauling it out again. It's just not that fresh anymore. Without the Micropolis that gives us a greater chance to do some minifig dioramas and I like doing those the best. It would also give me a chance to tear some of the buildngs apart and reuse those parts for something else. I keep running low on certain sizes of plates.

Firefly is Joss Whedon's short lived western themed space show. He was the guy who created Buffy and Angel. I liked those shows better than Firefly. I was disappointed in the series when it aired in 2002, never became a fan, and hadn't seen it since. Since I had no recollection of the tv show, other than Nathan Fillion kicking a guy into the engine of his space ship, I wasn't sure what could be adapted for a LEGO display. I bought the dvd set 4-5 years ago but never watched it. I  have the 2005 movie but didn't want to watch it until I watched the series from beginning to end. I just wasn't that interested in watching them so they sat, collecting dust. Fox, the network that sucks the network that ran the series originally, broadcast the episodes out of order, leaving the 2 hour pilot to run after several of the later episodes which aired first. The dvd has the three episodes that didn't air originally. So, now having some sort of excuse, I dusted off that set and spun those discs to see what's what.

If you haven't seen it, and that's likely since the series averaged just under 5 million viewers an episode when it aired, it's about a space ship full of characters in a universe set 500 years into our future. Earth is dead and everyone's moved to a new solar system with several planets and moons, some of which were terraformed into being habitable places. The rich and middle class live on the nice planets near the sun and the poor colonists live out on the rim of the system on some dust balls. The poor have little, their towns and villages look vaguely like early western towns, all tents and crude wooden buildings. At least that's the idea. The reality is there's so much junk thrown in there you can hardly count the influences that breeze by. It's often more Asian or middle eastern than American west. America and China were the two main powers that lead the race into space. People speak a mix of English and Chinese and the hicks from the outer moons have a touch of the hillbilly brush, what with all their ain'ts and ye-haw's. The rustic desert planet has some potential for minifig displays. Getting anyone in the LUG to do anything is another matter. I'll work on something if stuff starts to appear from the ones who suggested it.

Moving left to right that's Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Ron Glass, Sean Maher, Morena Baccarin, Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk and Summer Glau. That's the whole main cast and there are some good actors in there, they all do a good job on the show. Of course their characters have a long involved sad ass story. Nathan, who's now on the ABC show Castle, plays Mal, the captain of the Serenity. Buffy fans will remember him as Caleb the awful evil preacher that likes stabbin' people. He was one creepy guy there and while he's not so evil here he's a mess of contradictions and anger. Mal was on the losing side of the big civil war. The outer planets tried to throw off the yoke of the inner planets and fail badly. Joss had read a book about the US Civil War and felt he needed to explore the life of the guys on the losing side. It's a common enough story element. Gina plays Zoe Mal's tough second in command. I've seen her in several genre shows and always seem to like her. She played Jasmine in the fourth season of Angel, did several episodes of Hercules, an episode of Xena, and she was one of the main characters on Cleopatra 2525. Zoe was in the ill-fated war for independence with Mal. The colonies were eventually crushed by the Alliance. They were a couple of the only survivors of the Battle of Serenity Valley. Mal named the ship Serenity. Alan is the pilot of the rather unattractive Firefly class ship and he's married to Zoe. Adam plays Jayne, the muscle, he's kind of a dope, and a complete asshole. Joss said it outloud first. Right in the commentary. At one point Adam sells out Summer and Sean and Mal lets him come back on the ship, after a stern warning. I don't know that I'd be that forgiving. I might be more inclined to space him. Adam had been in some Angel episodes in the 5th season playing an enforcer at Wolfram and Hart. Jewel plays the cute farm girl engineer. She keeps the outdated and worn out ship running. Ron plays a traveling space preacher with a dark past. He's connected to the Alliance somehow but we never find that out. Morena plays a real high end call girl. She rents a shuttle on the Serenity and travels with the ship from place to place. High end call girls, or Companions, are given high status in the system. She opens doors for Mal and they have a bit of an attraction but nothing ever comes of it. Mal doesn't approve of her profession. This from a guy who steals and kills. Summer and Sean are a brother and sister. He's a doctor, which is good for a ship that, on a weekly basis, has people get shot to near death. Summer had been experimented on by doctors and she's got some super soldier programming in her head. She's some sort of precog but her mind is a jitter and she can't focus. They are on the run from the Alliance. Mal, no fan of the Alliance, figures it might come in handy to keep them with the ship. He could use the money and the medical help. You know, shot folks, bleeding all over, they need a patchin'. So each week they all get some scheme on. There's cargo to smuggle or stuff to steal, then things go wrong, people get hurt and occasionally someone dies.

I liked the show better the second and third time through but I'm not goin' totally fanboy on it. It will never replace Babylon 5 as my favorite space show. Sperhauk had mentioned he's currently watching Firefly on BluRay. He voiced the opinion that Firefly is not a science fiction show which is something I never pondered on. I did find other people who said the same thing out on the internet. The science fiction and western themes certainly are subservient to the story of the characters. Even Joss admits a lack of interest in science in the show. I read that in an interview. I'm not much impressed with the space ships in Firefly. The Serenity looks like a big fat overweight square bodied goose in a lot of shots. Other than the ships glowing back end there isn't much that resembles it's namesake. The whole Reavers bogeyman sub plot comes to naught in the series but we learn the story behind the cannibal serial rapers in the film. Turns out it was the Alliance's fault. The film kills off a major character and I sure didn't care for that. The film was disappointing on a lot of points and it makes me less interested in revisiting the series. That's ok, I can revisit Starhunter instead.

  

I always thought that the Canadian tv show Starhunter was very similar to Firefly but much more entertaining. It's from a more sophisticated society, so there's real swearing and nudity. Starhunter was first run in Canada in 2000 and it was syndicated in the US in 2002. I taped it and eventually transferred those tapes to DVDR, only to replace those with the DVD sets. They have them on NetFlix and Hulu and Joe said he picked up the first season dvd set at Target for $5 not long ago. It's about $10 on Amazon.

Starhunter has a small crew on a larger ship and that gives the show a better chance to develop those characters more fully. Firefly has 9 people on board and only 42 minutes to divy up. Starhunter episodes are 47 minutes each and there are only 4 characters. The episodes were cut when they ran in the US. Most of Starhunter takes place on the Tulip which is commanded by Dante Montana who is played by Michael Paré.  He's a bounty hunter and while he's out catching criminals he's looking for the son who was stolen by the Raiders ten years earlier. Tanya Allen plays Percy the ship's young female engineer. Claudette Roche, one of the best known dialect coaches in Hollywood, plays Lucretia, a tough ex-marine who was put on the ship by Dante's boss Rudolpho to keep an eye on things. He calls at the start of each show with a job for the crew and then we don't hear from him much again. There's also a ship computer that pops up as a hologram. He can be annoying but useful. He and Percy has a tangled and vicious relationship that often leads to destruction. They've all got their issues, that's for sure.

In Starhunter the earth is so screwed up that hardly anyone lives there anymore. The human's are scattered across the solar system. They live on the planets and moons or in space stations of one sort or another. The 100 year old luxury liner Dante and crew fly about in is falling apart and there's always something breaking down. The ship is huge and there's plenty of room to roam around in. It's a cool looking ship that shows it's age and condition. The insides are really nice and there are lots of nice textured surfaces and cool lighting. Most of the other ships in the series are pretty nice and there's a good variety. The show had 22 episodes in the first season. Mostly the episodes are self contained but woven through the season is a subplot about the secret organization The Orchard and the secret of the Divinity Cluster.

After a year long hiatus the series was revamped and it returned with 22 more episodes under the title Starhunter 2300. Tanya Allen is the only one in the ship's crew to return. She'd fallen into a wormhole and jumped 15 years into the future. Dante is lost in time but Rudolpho shows up in person to reclaim his ship. He'd only appeared in video feeds in the first series. Turns out the ship belongs to Percy, who can claim salvage rights as the insurance company has already paid off Rudolpho's claim. Broke, and shipless, Rudolpho joins Percy on board the Tulip for some adventures. Dante's son Travis, his pal Marcus, and a tough lady special forces soldier make up the rest of the crew. The shows were pretty low budget but they did pretty well with what they had. There are lots of sets and locations and a fair amount of CGI. The plots were interesting, with a mix of drama and comedy, and lots of gun play. The acting is a mixed bag, some were better than others, but all were watchable for the most part. I'm rewatching them again and enjoying the stories all over again.

Bones Season 4

Season 4 starts with Bones and Booth over in England for a conference. They're asked for some help by Scotland Yard. One of the Yard Investigators is murdered so they pitch in and catch the murderer. They had some nice location shots with Bones and Booth running about London and the surrounding countryside. Then it was back home for the usual stream of destroyed bodies popping up each week, their bones peppered with clues to the mystery. We've got a nice bunch of messy corpses in unusual places this season, like a tv reality show host stuffed into an outhouse, murder by dog in the woods, torn apart by an elevator in an office building, squished in a crushed car in a junk yard and microwaved on a plane in flight to China. Yuck, huh. There's the usual sort of personal drama as the characters go about their work. Bones has some issues with her father who comes to work at the Jeffersonian. He's played by Ryan O'Neal who does a great job. Stephen Fry drops in for one episode, nice to see him return. Angela has a return engagement with her old flame Roxie. But it doesn't last, the gals break up, and Hodgkins
gets some rebound sex. Bones and Booth join a circus as a knife thower and his assistant. Bones wears a lot of skimpy stage costumes. Booth gets trapped by the Gravdedigger but he's saved. They catch the Gravedigger and Bones hits her with a briefcase. Booth gets into a fight with another hockey player during a game. When that guy turns up frozen in the lake Booth becomes a suspect. Bet he didn't do it. Angela finds her husband and he's a big handsome hunk. He takes so long to sign the papers that Angela and Hodkins break up. Zack gets the occasional visit from people in the lab and he breaks out and visits them once. The interns taking Zack's place continue to rotate through the season adding a nice bit of comic relief. Carla Gallo plays one of the interns and she's great. Hardly anyone can stand her except for John Francis Daley. They eventually hook up and that's some more fun stuff. Booth gets a brain tumor near the end of the season and he hallucinates the last episode turning their normal world into a colorful noir about a night club called The Lab. There are cops, criminals and murders. Despire that, it's generally more lighter hearted than the last season. I enjoyed it pretty much. I'll have to NetFlix the rest of the series when I work through all the other things in my queue. I stopped putting dvds on there when it got over 100 discs.

Science Fiction Sunday 157

 

The Godzilla rampage continues with Godzilla vs Megalon. It's the 13th Godzilla film and it came out in 1973. That's the Japanese poster up on the left and the cast on the right above. The US version of the movie has Godzilla and Megalon fighting on the top of the World Trade Center which never happens in the movie. That's the movie business for you, slapping you in the face with their lies and selling you $4 soda and $6 popcorn to add insult to injury. "Extra salt in your wound?" That's $3.50. It's directed by Jun Fukuda and it's one of my least favorite of any in the series. The script was originally intended to be a vehicle for the fan created Jet Jaguar character who would fight Megalon. Toho thought the script didn't look like a salable movie and it wasn't produced. Producer Tanaka had it rewritten for Godzilla and Gigan and it was shot in three weeks. It's very rushed and there isn't much of a plot. Seems there's people living under the sea in a secret hidden city named Seatopia who have been bothered by the undersea nuke tests. They finally make themselves known. They plan to steal Jet Jaguar and use him to control Megalon. They want to attack the surface people and destroy their world. They fail on the first try to steal Jet but the second attempt works and Megalon starts stomping stuff in Tokyo. The inventors of Jet regain control and use him to go get Godzilla. The Seatopians call on the aliens from the previous movie and they send Gigan to help out. Godzilla and a newly enlarged Jet beat their asses and send them packing. It's watchable but I find myself fast forwarding through parts of it. Mind you I've seen it a lot of times, partially because it's a Mystery Science Theater 3000 selection, and because I have several copies from several sources that I've accumlated over the years. Media Blasters is releasing a new DVD next week. I'll have to keep an eye out for that from NetFlix, to see what it's like, when it gets cheap I can upgrade.

 

Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla is the 14th Godzilla film and it came out in 1974. Here's the trailer. I watched the Columbia Tristar dvd that came out in 2004 and it has the uncut film with a Japanese audio track and English subtitles. There's a second audio track with the English dub from Toho's International version. It's widescreen and parts of the movie are really colorful and they look very nice. Jun Fukuda returns to direct and this time he has a better script to work with. There's a lot more monster action and the story of the invading aliens is fairly complex and mostly interesting. It's so much better than the previous one even with the often repeated alien invasion plot. The aliens create MechaGodzilla to try to defeat the real Godzilla and take over the world. King Ceasar is the new monster. He's the guardian of Okinawa. That's where the cave with the prophecy is found. The aliens from the Black Hole Planet are gorilla like but hide themselves behind human faces. They want the statue that reveals King Ceasar to the world and they keep trying to steal it. Eventually the signs of the prophecy start popping up and the statue is placed in the right spot at the right time and King Ceasar jumps out of his hole in the ground and defends himself against MechaG. There's a lot more entertaining monster battles in this movie. The rays from MechaGodzilla are fun. It's just an all around slightly better than average Godzilla movie. It scores a 5.8 on the IMDB and that's not far off the mark.

Friday Night Movies 348

Our first movie friday was The Devil's Rain, a 1975 movie with Ida Lupino, Eddie Albert, Ernest Borgnine, William Shatner and Tom Skerritt. John Travolta makes a brief appearance. Sperhauk picked up the dvd for 2 bucks and considering the movie it was almost a good deal. It's not your greatest devil worshiping cult movie. William is Ida's son. They live in a rather isolated ranch house. Dad is missing and everyone is worried he gotten in some trouble. He has! He returns to the ranch all fucked up. He's got a message from Ernest, the leader of a Devil worshipping cult. Give up the book or die, he utters before melting in the rain. The book is a big black hardcover. It's an important icon to the cult. They all signed the book 3oo years ago and when it was stolen by William's family they were doomed to spend their lives on earth, unable to ascend to the fiery depth of Satan's bosum. William challenges Ernest to a faith off and looses big time. Tom Skerritt is William's brother. He comes looking for William with his wife and Eddie Albert, a psychic researcher. They find the container of the cult's souls and destroy it. That turns the cult members into goo and just when you think Tom has beaten the devil a twist ending puts him in the arms of Ernest all the while thinking it's his wife. That's Ernest on the right. He's been possessed by the Devil and he's got some entertaining makeup on. It sure could have been an entertaining movie with all the devil and the rain and the yelling and the horns but sadly it's a bit boring and not every interesting. Too bad all those actors didn't get a better script which had three writers listed. The director was Robert Fuest who diected the 2 Dr. Phibes movies and The Final Programme. He would move into tv after this film bombed. Not  amovie even I would want to bother with a copy of. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Seeing Ernest in his goat horns was pretty entertaining but that's not enough of a reason to watch the movie.

Our second selection wasn't much of a feature. Hard Revenge Milly is a Japanese fight movie with some young gal getting her revenge for the attack on her and her family by some criminal creeps called the Jack Brothers. They murder her husband and set her baby on fire before stabbing her repeatedly. She survives and goes after the gang chopping and hacking them to death. It's not much and I didn't care for it much. I was glad to go home to hit the hay. I had to get up and be at work at 7am saturday so I could get ready to host a couple of dozen Boy Scouts to our in-plant printshop. I was acting as host, along with another gal from work named Spring, and helping the kids earn a merit badge in Graphic Arts. I know the printing side and Spring was helping them with the design part. She had graphic arts training in her home land of China. We helped the kids make posters and bumper stickers and maybe taught them a bit about the graphic arts. It was fun but it wore me out.