PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 252

  

Doctor Who serial number 75, Robot, was the first appearance of the new Doctor, now played by Tom Baker. He's a bit more looney than the last bloke but people got used to him so much that he's many fans favorite Doctor. Robot is the first story of the 12th season and the serial started airing December 28 1974 and ran through January 18 1975. It's a 4 part story that was written by Terrance Dicks. He had already resigned as script editor and he convinced the new script editor that the leaving script editor would be given the first story of the next season. It wasn't true. He just wanted to have a job now that he was a free lancer. This episode was the last that Barry Letts would produce. He's stayed on for a few months helping the new producer learn the ropes. You can see the 4 episodes on Dailymotion. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4.

 

After the regeneration process is over the Doctor almost leaves in the Tardis but Sarah Jane convinces him to stay and help in the investigation of the stolen ray gun plans. Something powerful and heavy has been breaking into science labs, killing the guards, and stealing stuff. Turns out it's a secret society that has stolen the ray gun plans. It's part of the secret plan for world domination by a power hungry group of smart people want to tell people how to act and what to do. Wouldn't that be fun? Oh, and they have a huge robot guy to help inflict their new order. Patricia Maynard plays the misguided Miss Winters who's leading the group. In real life she was married to Dennis Waterman from 1977 -1987. Their daughter, Hannah Waterman, joined her dad on his show New Tricks.

 

There's some running around chasing down clues left in the wake of the secret society's actions. They leave a big trail and the Doc and Unit track them down quickly. That's the nice thing about the 4 part story, not as much padding. There's some collateral damage and some poor extras get murdered. There's plenty of machine gun fire and hot robot action. The robot has some personality and he has some trouble with his commands. The Doc figures out who's behind the evil plot and puts a stop to it. Sadly the robot doesn't have a good end. He wasn't evil, he was fooled by his masters. In the end, aren't we all. The story isn't too bad and I'm getting used to the new Doctor. There's a new character in Harry Sullivan, played by Ian Marter. He'll appear in the serials of the 12th season and the first story of the 13th. Mostly a good start to the new season and the new Doctor. I did like the robot getting all tall and stomping around. The effects work for that is about average for the show. Some shots are much better than others.

 

There's a nice documentary on the episode. Lots of the people involved are still around and they yak about the program. There's another short on the design of the Doctor Who opening credits with creator Bernard Lodge. He worked on the credits for the first four series. It's certainly some of the most iconic title work out there and the images are pretty neat. It's totally interesting how they did them. You'd never guess. There's another segment from the tv show Blue Peter where the hosts wind up on the Doctor's UNIT set. They talk about a pet shop in America which sells a record of dog horiscopes. They question the sanity of that, and really, who wouldn't. There's a photo gallery and a commentary that I am listening to right now. Barry Letts, Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Terrance Dicks all comment on the show.

Friday Night Movies 443

 

The Millennium Bug was something that I hadn't heard of, not that me not hearing about something isn't about par. I do discover stuff on my own but of late I've been driven by the British tv bug and my video explorations have taken another path. No matter. Since I don't need to see stuff when it comes out I can wait for it to pop up. I didn't have to wait too long to see this new comedy horror movie that uses no CGI as a selling point. TMB was made in 2011, released in 2012, and and I saw it tonight. The movie takes place on New Years Eve 1999, which, for those that remember, there was a scare about the 1999 to 2000 year change. It was thought that we'd have some chaos from all the computers going nutz when they couldn't deal with the time change. Nothing much happened, except businesses spent over 3oo billion dollars on possibly unneeded software protections.

 

A couple, dad and step mom, and their teenage daughter are all traveling to some remote abandoned town in some forested area. They camp out in the woods and are attacked by some hillbillies. The family are beaten and kidnapped, brought to the hillbillies filthy, and mold covered, house in the woods, where the daughter is going to be the bride for the hillbilly family's son. In the forest around the house a guy is looking for the millennium bug. It's a rare species that only comes out of hibernation once every thousand years to lay eggs and die, all after one day. Sounds like a really lousy life, huh. Mind you, the bug is huge and it can crash through the forest, eating people, so, it's got that going. Back at the house the kidnapped family fights back and there's plenty of punching, shooting and gore. Soon as the millennium bug appears more of them get chomped.

The movie is the work of a small group headed by writer, director, producer Kenneth Cran. It's his first movie and he did a pretty good job. Speaking of jobs, Kenneth had his hand in the art direction, set production, costumes and editing. The movie is fairly low budget but they manage to spend their money very well. The monster is done with puppets and large props. It's not perfect but it fits the rest of the production. The script is funny, a nice mix of redneck mutant charm, ludicrous violence and giant monster action. It made me laugh more than once. Glad I seen it.

I'm not so happy having seen Sharknado. It has to be one of the worst of the films from that crappy film company The Asylum. Over the years they have repeatedly gone out of their way to make some drek. Our previous film is proof that a low budget film can be well done. Sharknado certainly doesn't live up to the hype it got before and after it aired on the Syfy channel. I saw a few minutes in the middle on Syfy and some bits on YouTube. It would have been good to leave it at that but I was stupid. interested in seeing what I missed. It was nothing. Visually the movie is a train wreck. They had a budget of a million bucks and it just seems wasted. It was four times the budget of The Millennium Bug which looked a whole lot better. I can understand that the stock footage used in the film might not match what the film makers actually shot but much of what they shot doesn't match what they shot. In one shot the hero is hanging off a bridge over a raging torrent of water. He's there to rescue some stranded kids in a school bus. How he got there was one heck of a poorly written scene. In the wide shots of the bus you can see the water rushing by but in the shots of the hero rappelling down the street is dry. It's the laziest sort of film making.

The director, Anthony C Ferrante, summarized the plot in Uproxx's Danger Guerrero te "There’s a flood. And a storm. Don’t worry about it." Thing is, you need to worry about it some, or people start to compare you to Ewe Boll. Scriptwriter Thunder Levin doesn't seem to care much about his script either. I could be wrong, maybe he's just a poor writer. The script is poor, the dialog lame, it made us tired hearing it. We weren't digging the movie and the users on the IMDb are somewhat in agreement. They give the movie a 3.5 and well below average is about what it is. The users on Rotten Tomatoes give the movie a 41% which is a bit high but acceptable. The critics reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were 79% positive. What the fuck did they see?

I read this bit on the Wikipedia:

Reviewer Mary McNamara, writing for the Los Angeles Times, mentioned that the plot holes are "the whole point of movies like this" and that they are "fabulous in-home commentary. Often accompanied by the consumption of many alcoholic beverages."

Somehow, I bet I couldn't consume enough alcoholic beverages to make me like this movie. It does remind me that people look at movies in different ways, though I can't even imagine seeing plot holes as being the whole point of movies like this. There should be no encouragement for plot holes. Especially ones where it's obvious the writer didn't even try. I always assume some folks are drinking while watching, and writing. Since drinking impairs the brain, I've always felt that it explains a certain number of 10's on the IMDb, and several scripts. There are comments on movie sites that talk about the movie as being low budget camp and that it was meant to be like that. It just seems wrong to me to intentionally try making camp movies. It seems like an excuse a crappy film maker would use when he couldn't do something well. At least I now know that I won't need to see Sharknado again. Sadly I'll probably forget how poor this was when Sharknado 2 comes out next year. Hopefully, someone will remind me not to watch it.

70404 King's Castle

I haven't picked one of these sets up. I might not, I'm kind of waffling on it. $100 sets are lower down the list of sets to buy than the mid prices sets. We had a bit of a palaver on that subject at TwinLUG and others feel the same way. Seems as the set price rises people are less willing to part with their money. Untimately I think it doesn't matter what the set costs but what the parts are and their average cost. Over the years I have bought some of the larger $90-120 sets in multiples and been quite happy with those purchases. The most recent was that Monster Fighters Vampyre Castle. It's a good way to build mass in your collection. Any large castle would take several thousands of parts and dozens of figures.

Here's the description from Brickset which got it off the LEGO website.

Defeat the Dragon soldiers in the final battle at the King’s Castle!

Protect the King and his people from the Dragon soldiers at the King’s Castle! Fire the catapult, lower the drawbridge, raise the gate and lead the charge with the fearless White Knight on his armored horse! Stop the Dragon soldiers before they use the deadly battering ram and catapult weapon. This fantastic modular castle design features towers, a dungeon, the King’s throne, the knights’ table, a moveable staircase, secret escape door and more. Includes 7 minifigures with weapons and accessories: the King, White Knight, 2 King’s soldiers and 3 Dragon soldiers.

• Includes 7 minifigures with weapons and accessories: the King, White Knight, 2 King’s soldiers and 3 Dragon soldiers
• Features battering ram/catapult weapon, towers, prison, collapsing back wall, King’s throne, knights’ table, moveable staircase, hidden escape door, weapon rack and flags
• Weapons include spiked mace, 3 swords, axe, crossbow and a bow with quiver
• Accessories include 2 shields and a treasure chest
• Push the battering ram to fire the catapult!
• Customize and build your own modular castle design
• Combine with 70402 The Outpost for an even more awesome model
• Measures over 11" (28cm) high, 13" (35cm) wide and 12" (33cm) deep
• Battering ram/catapult weapon measures over 1" (5cm) high, 3" (9cm) long and 2" (6cm) wide

The sets got 996 parts and that's about a dime each. Not too bad. A lot of the parts are ones I would like, just over half the set is blay pieces, 318 light and 200 dark, and some of those pieces are rather large ones. There's a good bit of blue and reddish brown. The other colors that make up the rest of the set don't have many large quantities but a couple stand out. I know I could find a use for the the 22 of the dark tan brick bricks and 47 of the blue 1x2 cheese slopes. The blays have several pieces with large quantities. In the dark shade you get 30 1x1 bricks, 16 brick bricks, 22 1x2 technic bricks and 14 1x2x3 slopes. The light blay shade has even more pieces with good quantities: 68 1x2 bricks, 34 1x1 bricks, 33 1x4 bricks, 21 1x4x5 wall with window, 18 3x3x6 wall, 22 1x2x3 wall and 16 1x2x2 wall with window. That's the last four items below.

These large pieces could come in handy for making a large castle or building. I would prefer that the large walls are windowless because that would make them more useful. I've accumulated a fair number of the 3x3x6 wall piece and it's angled face has me thinking about what I could build with them. I used a few in the Frankenstein MOC I made last year and I liked the look. I actually like using large pieces to build stuff, they make the work go faster. I just used a bunch of BURPS to create a large cliff face for a Viking MOC. I need to get working on that so I can have that ready for the next TwinLUG display in early October.

You get 7 minifigs, three of the Dragon Knights, three of the Lion Knights and the Lion King. Their costumes are nice and typical of the Castle figs. They have a nice mix of weapons and accessories. I do like the graphic on the Dragon Knight's shield. The King has a gold chrome crown and a pearl gold sword. Not too bad. There's some gold chrome coins and a gold chrome bar to go into the treasure chest. I sure don't need another treature chest but I can always use some gold chrome treasure.

All in all a nice set with a good price. It wouldn't just be good for the novice builder who's starting to build a collection but a good parts pack for the mature builder with a nice pile of pieces already. This would be a good set to get in multiples. I'd love to part out 3 or 4 of them.  You might even want to build it. I wouldn't bother.

Alan Price - O Lucky Man

Listening to the Animals the other day reminded me that I once was quite fond of Alan Price's soundtrack to the 1973 Lindsey Anderson film O Lucky Man! I haven't seen or heard either in many years. As I listen to the soundtrack now I find I still like the main song a fair bit. Though I haven't seen that movie in ages I still remember little bits of it. It sure made an impression on me when I was 20. Watching it on YouTube brought back some of those impressions. It's a nice mix of humor, drama, fantasy and politics all tied together by musical interludes with Alan Price on the piano. I decided to put it on my library queue to see the part that isn't on YouTube. The dvd will also look much better. It's got Malcolm McDowell in the title role and you know he's always worth a look at, especially at this early stage in his career. The movie he did before OLM was A Clockwork Orange and you know what a great turn that was. It's a movie I don't watch much any more. I have a funny story about going to see it for the first time. Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime. 

In O Lucky Man Malcolm is a young coffee salesman, he starts his new route in the north east of England. He meets lots of interesting people and he has quite an adventure along the bumpy path that leads him to the end of the film. It's just over three hours long and it's particularly weird and chaotic. With all the odd things happening, and all the twists and turns in the plot, the movie is definitely the kind of film that would polarise the audience. I found it to be highly entertaining when I first saw it. I saw it a couple of times in the theater when it first showed up in Winnipeg. In the 1980's I had a vhs copy from tv or a rented video tape. My copy was at ep and probably didn't look that good so it got taped over when tapes got cheap enough to record everything at the 2 hour speed. I never replaced it or bought the dvd. I never had a desire to see it again until the other day and it's a vague and passing interest.

 

Lindsey Anderson's If.. is not quite as long, only 154 minutes, and it too would appeal to a certain audience. More the art house crowd or people who like Janus Films or Criterion releases. This 1968 film is Malcolm McDowell's very first role. I remember liking it when I saw it in the early 70's. Just dipping into it on YouTube reminds me how much I would have hated going to an English Boys school. I'm undecided on rewatching the whole thing from beginning to end. Maybe later.

Anderson did a third installment to the Mick Travis trilogy called Britannia Hospital. I haven't seen that since it was new. I never liked it much then and still might not now. I don't plan to find out anytime soon. I have plenty to watch right now, thanks.

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles 16 Tales Of Innocence

The 16th movie in the series is called Tales of Innocence and it starts in June of 1918. The war is on the downward slide and Indiana is in Northern Italy in the first half of the story. He's sneaking across the front line between Italy and Austria to try to get the Austrian troops to give themselves up. The Alps scenery is very nice but not quite as pretty as the young Italian lady he's courting. He's got a rival in ambulance driver Ernest Hemmingway, played by Jay Underwood, but neither of them know that it's a hopeless cause, her heart belongs to another. In the last half of the movie Indy moves to Morocco and takes an assignment with the French Foreign Legion. There's a traitor that needs catching. He also meets Lowell Thomas who's travelling with Edith Wharton. Indy has a brief fling with her.

I enjoyed this one pretty much even though the two episodes that make up the movie have little to do with each other. There's some shooting and the Alps are pretty. There's a bit of romance and comedy. I had heard of Edith Wharton but didn't know much about her novels. Not something I would want to read for the most part. The Wikipedia says that the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses" refers to her father's family. There are some nice documentaries that go along with the movie that spend some time covering Wharton and Lowell and Hemmingway's lives. As always the documentaries total time is more than twice the length of the movie.

40032 Witch

This big ugly witch's head turned up at Target the other day. It's a polybag wtih 71 parts for a fiver. Being heavy on the green parts and having some nice black slopes gave me some incentive to pick up a couple of them. The yellow slopes are ok and the purple 1x2 tile is nice but really what are you going to do with one of them. Luckily for me that tile was recently on the Pick-A-Brick wall at the LEGO store in the Mall Of America and I wound up with a nice bunch of them. Now the 2 I got today are going into that baggie. Not sure what I will do with them yet.

You can see from the small illo on the polybag that her hat comes off. Now you can put stuff in her head. Funny. It's sure ugly though. I guess that's good for a witch, huh. At least one at Halloween. I guess I like my witches to be like the lady in Bewitched. I always thought Darren was making the wrong choice when he put his foot down and stopped Samantha from doing magic. That's like your wife having a hammer and you're pounding a nail with your face. People, they sure are stupid sometimes.

Eric Burdon & The Animals - The House Of The Rising Sun

 

Two things appealed to me when I first heard Eric Burdon singing the 1964 hit The House Of The Rising Sun. One was Eric's singing and the other was Alan Price's organ. Price arranged his version from a tradional song. It's a stunner.

Here's Eric and the guys doing a Rolling Stones song, Paint it Black, from the Winds Of Change album in 1967. Here's River Deep Mountain High, San Fransiscan Nights, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place and Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. There are some other good Animals songs but those are the only ones that I want to hear anymore. You might find some if you poke around on YouTube or any of the music services.

Collectible Minifigs Series 11

I'm finally catching up to the newest set of the Minifigures series. They came out near the beginning of September and I happened to wandered into the LEGO store a couple of days after they arrived there. I got a whole set and a few spares that first day. One of the guys who works at the store was going through the bin and he passed me several figures so the gathering was relatively painless. I wound up picking up a few more a couple of weeks later and now I have a 34 of them according to my inventory on Brickset.

 

I liked the green color of the packaging for this series. I thought there was a nice mix of figures this time. I got 2 of most of them and 3 and 4 of a couple. I checked the weapons and it's got 5, not including the scarecrow's pitchfork.

   

The Barbarian comes with two swords and a grimice. I figured two would be enough. I felt the same about the Scarecrow. He's got a nice costume and a good hat but they only have some limited useage. The crow is the same as in the Lone Ranger sets. The pitchfork is one of my favorite accessories. I thought the Pretzel Girl was one of the cutest figures in the bunch, maybe the whole 11 series. I figured three might be a good start.

I wound up with 2 of the Evil Mech but it wasn't intentional. I had picked up a few extras at the LEGO store and the clerk ringing me up put my figures and the 5 figures another lady was buying. I had picked ones I wanted extras of, like the Yeti, and she had some random choices. I let her pick 5 and I list my extra Yeti and wound up with the Evil Mech guy. There have been too many mech suited guys but I'm betting that the kids like them. I like the Island Warrior and his mask. Nice costume. The Gingerbread Man is just awsome. He has a nice cup. i got two of him and 2 of the Island Warrior. I might want a couple more of the latter, change the hair and head and you've got a nice whole cast for a scene.

    

That Holiday Elf is really entertaining. He's got a nice teddy bear and the 2x2 red tile has a nice printed bow. I figured three would be enough, maybe. I got the same number of the Yeti. He's also pretty entertaining and he has a nice trans blue popcycle. I only got one of the Rock Climber. He's not that interesting.

 
The Welder is nice, I got a couple, and that was mostly for the torch. The orange 1x1 round brick could make a nice pop can. I got twice the number of scientists, you never know when you can use a lot of lab coats and there were two bottles in the package. Can't have too many bottles. She has a nice face and great hair. I like to grab as many of the accessories that I like when they come out. Thing is, the reality is you can't count on an accessory staying in production for any certain amount of time. I got a couple of the Saxophone Player for that reason. He has a nice hat but I have some of them from the Indiana Jones sets I got in the past. Now I can make a Blues Brothers MOC.

The Diner Waitress is really great. Everything is wonderfull about the figure. She's got a nice tray and pick ice cream and roller skates. I got two of them and the Grandma. She's got a new basket and a cat. I only got one of the Constable. Might come in handy.

The Lady Robot is quite silly. She's got quite the set of dials, huh. Now that Robot from series 5 can have a lady friend. I only got one so there isn't much chance of romance for the other robots I have. All in all I thought the series had a nice bunch of figures. My favorite is the Pretzel Girl but several of the others are welcome editions to the minifig collection. I just wish I had some time to do something with them. Most of them just sit in the storage tubs waiting to get used. Sad, really. Maybe when I retire. Then I'll have more time.

Science Fiction Sunday 251

 

Planet Of The Spiders is the last serial of the 11th season and the last appearance of Jon Pertwee in the title role. It's a 6 parter that started airing on May 4 1974. The Doc and the Brig are at a stage show we never see where they find a real clairvoyant. They take him back to the Doctor's lab where he dies in an experiment with the blue crystal that the Doctor had gotten from Metebelis Three. He'd given it to Jo Grant before she left the series and she mailed it back at the start of this serial. In a seperate stream of story Sarah Jane Smith is visiting a Tibetian meditation center with Mike Yates. He was the member of UNIT that sided with the mad men in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. After his discharge he's trying to find himself with some om ni pad me hum. Unfortunately there's a dangerous petty man, named Lupton, who has some misguided visions of grandeur. He makes contact with the spider people on Metebelis Three. After one arrives and takes over his mind there's a massive chase that helps fill up a lot of time. Lupton steals the Doctor's new car and the Doc and UNIT give chase in the Doctor's old car.

 

They race about the countryside and end at an airfield where Lupton steals a tiny gyrocopter. The Doc reveals that his new car can fly though the effects aren't so good. He chases Lupton for ages, then Lupton switches to a boat, and the Doc follows in a mini hovercraft. Just when the Doc catches up to Lupton and jumps aboard the boat the man disappears, transported back to the meditaiton center. It begs the question as to why he couldn't have did it right from the start. At least they had some goofy vehicles to look at. Barry Letts talks about the chase in the making of featurette and he said that Jon Pertwee had seen the mini hovercraft and talked the designer-builder to see if he'd like to have it featured on Doctor Who. He would and they give him a bit part, as the hovercraft driver. Jon Pertwee did much of the hovercraft driving in the chase. Jon liked his gadgets and odd vehicles.

 

Moving along Sarah Jane gets teleported to Metabelis Three and the Doc finally gets his Tardis fired up in the third episode and gives chase. The Doctor helps the down trodden people who supply sheep, and themselves, as food for the spiders in winning their freedom. There's the usual running around and getting caught mixed in with the yakking. Once all the spiders are dead the Doc returns the crystal to a cave that kills him. He's replaced with the new Doctor in the last minutes of the show.  

I was not impressed with the story for the most part but you can watch it yourself and make up your own mind. I found it too long, padded and kind of dull at times. The blue screen didn't work well on several shots. You'd think they would have done a better job for the final serial with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. Producer Berry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks would leave the show at the end of this season. I'll be finding out what the new people do next week.

The extras filled asecond disc. There was a nice piece on Pertwee, one on John Kane who played a pretty good part as a mentally challenged man who gets smarter because of the blue crystal, a piece on Barry Letts and his desire to get back to directing, a Now and Then location short, a photo gallery and a 102 minutes version of the story with all the credits trimmed out. It's the first time that I have seen that. There's also the usual commentary but I never listened to that. Most of these discs have a PDF of the radio times listings. I don't find them too interesing but occasionally there's a nice picture in the listing.

Friday Night Movies 442

 
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is a 2010 film by Luc Besson. It's based on a Jacque Tardi comic series. I'm not a fan of his work, I'm pretty sure Idon't have any, though I might have downloaded some once. I The story is set in 1912 and Adele is looking for a mummy. She's got a near dead sister who needs some help. She thinks Ramesses II's mummified doctor might have the cure she needs. Professor Espérandieu has a method to bring ancient dead things back to life. While Adle is off collecting her mummified hope the Professor bring a 136 million year-old pterosaur egg back to life. It flies around Paris eating random sheep and scaring some of the population to death. Professor Espérandieu gets blamed and sentenced to death. Adele has to bust him out of jail so he can bring the mummy she brought home back to life.

 

Unfortunately it was the wrong mummy.Turns out he's actually Ramesses nuclear physicist. I know, who would have thought there was such a thing. Luckily the spell to wake the dead mummies travelled all the way to the Louvre Museum where Ramesses is resting. Well, not for long, soon he's back at Adele's and his doctor gets to work. During all that the police are looking for the dino. They even bring in a big game hunter. That doesn't go to well. I was briefly sad and glad to see some payback at the end. There's plenty of action and yelling and running around. The CGI creatures and scenerey are quite nice most of the time, there's plenty of great real scenery too, and the characters that romp about in it are fun. The script is a delight and the mummies are the nicest you'll find. Pleasant helpful mummies is such a nice change of pace. I'd highly recommend this, especially to mummy fans.

 

I'm not sure who I would recommend No One Lives too. It's a 2012 Ryuhei Kitamura movie that was shot in English in the USA. A shitty bunch of criminals has a chance meeting with a cold blooded mass murderer, his girl and the lady in his trunk. It goes so badly for the gang. They had been blissfully robbing some house of it's fancy stuff when the people come home. One of the nastiest members of the gang, Flynn, shoots the family and the gang flees the scene, abandoning their loot. In a bar their anger is directed at Flynn and this makes him even more stupid than he normally is. He goes looking for trouble and bothers Luke Evan and his gal. They were were just eating. Somehow Flynn gets it in his head that Luke and his gal are well off and follows them so he can kidnap them. Once he's got them locked up in a garage Flynn looks over the car and finds a woman in a secret compartment in the trunk. She's the daughter of a wealthy family who had disappeared. The 2 million smacker reward is looking like a mighty nice payback to Flynn. He hopes to make ammends for the fuck up at the robbery. He gets a surprise from the kidnapped lady, who tells them in no uncertain terms that they're all going to die. Damn, if she isn't right and the gang get picked off one by one. Later, after the slaughter and crazyness, all that's left is a dark bloody mess. As you might guess my mom wouldn't like this one. There's some nice looking sets and scenery, the script is ok, the actors are pretty good, and the production values are great for 2.9 million bucks. It did a $74,000 box office in limited release, so no one saw it. It will do better on dvd. We saw the Blu-Ray and that looks really nice. You might like it, but then again you might not.