PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 520

Exterminators Of The Year 3000 is a 1983 Italian post-apocalypse Road Warrior clone that fails to clone the quality of the original. Sperhauk found the Shout Factory BluRay for next to nothing and picked it up in the hope of some entertainment. Sadly, the film makers didn't do that good a job in cloning the entertainment in RW either. The few remaining people in the nuke shattered world are holed up in little communities and water is scarce. A little colony, surviving around a well, is having a desperate time as it starts to dry up. A man had left a week ago with a truck to get water from a place a couple of people seem to know about.

There's trouble in the wastelands in the form of a murderous band of roving water stealers under the command of Crazy Bull. He's a clone of The Humungus from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and he's half the man that guy was. When the first truck doesn't come back the colony decides to try again. Tommy is the son of the man who drove the first truck, he sneaks aboard one of the trucks. They're attacked, everyone is killed but Tommy, and he runs off. He comes across a guy called Alien trapped in a wrecked car from the alternate story thread. Alien's another cloned character, trying to capture the cool of Mel Gibson's Max, but failing in every way. He had stolen a car, called the Exterminator, from Crazy Bull but Alien isn't very good at holding onto things and it gets stolen from him. Tommy turns out to have a bionic arm. It's ripped off by Crazy Bull and reattached by an old astronaut who has a workshop out in the wastelands. Somehow the car Alien stole turned up there while Alien and Tommy are getting away from Crazy Bull. Once his arm is fixed Tommy can toss a rock so hard that it will bust a man's skull from a good distance away. We all thought it was one of the better bits of the movie. There just aren't enough of them to make the movie more memorable. The script is poor, characters behave idiotically and things happen for no good reason. The acting is so-so and the direction sloppy. Sperhauk did like some of the cinematography but again, it's too little to boost the film to more than 4 stars on the IMDb for me. It scores a 5 and it definitely isn't that good. People who enjoy these bad movies for their comical value seem to rate the movie much higher than I would. You can see the whole movie in the link in the title above but you'd be better off just watching Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior again.

Sperhauk's other recent arrival was the double movie set of the Amicus EC comic adaptation from the 1970's. Tales From The Crypt was the first of the movies and we watched that. I'd seen it before, I actually got to see the movie in the theater back in 1972. It's a British film with several good actors in 5 little vignettes. It's directed by Freddie Francis and adapted by Milton Subotsky from stories by Johnny Craig, Al Feldstein and William M Gaines. Only two of the 5 stores are actually from the Tales From The Crypt comic books. They adapted the stories from the B&W Ballantine paperback reprints which had stories from the whole line of comics. I know those reprint books, I had them. In the 1990's Russ Cochran worked with various companies to reprint most of the whole line of EC comics. The movie stars an interesting group of actors: Joan Collins, Peter Cushing, Roy Dotrice, Richard Greene, Ian Hendry, Patrick Magee, Barbara Murray, Nigel Patrick, Robin Phillips with Ralph Richardson as the Crypt Keeper.

A bus tour stops and some people get out to look at some catacombs. Five of them get lead to a room and shut in. They are confronted by the Crypt Keeper who makes them relive the reason they are there. Their stories are varied and a bit gruesome. In the first Joan Collins kills her hubby on Christmas. in the second a man abandons his family for another woman, in the third Peter Cushing, a elderly trash collector, is harassed to death by his rich neighbors who hate him because he's poor and friendly with the neighborhood children, in the fourth story Richard Greene is the victim of a "Monkey Paw" like statue that grants 3 wishes and in the last story a horrible man maltreats the blind.

The Crypt Keeper in the movie is more a gate keeper to hell which makes me wonder why the Richard Greene character is there. In the comic version the Crypt Keeper is more of a joyful gent who likes to share gruesome and ironic tales for a bit of laugh. The 1990's TV series Crypt Keeper is more like the comic version. The film's is well made with solid production values. The BluRay looks great. I enjoyed the stories as much as I did when I saw it in the theater ages ago. I'd recommend it to the horror fan. You can see the whole movie in the link in the title above.

Shinjuku Incident 2009

I finally got around to seeing Jackie Chan's 2009 film Shinjuku Incident the other day. I hadn't been a rabid Jackie fan the last few years and I let it slide a while. I used to rush right out and buy any dvds of his films I could but this came from NetFlix. It's more of a drama than an action film and that dampned my desire to see it right away. Jackie is a Chinese guy named Steelhead who comes to Japan looking for his fiancée Xiu-Xiu. His brother is already there and he shows him how to make some money despite being an illegal. They get chased by the cops and Steelhead saves the cop from drowning. The man replays the favor and lets him go. Steelhead spots Xiu-Xiu but she's with another man. Steelhead works hard to get legal, and after saving the life of Xiu-Xiu's husband, Steelhead gets his papers. He's had to kill a rival gang leader but that gives him control of the Chinese illegals in Shinjuku. Jackie wants them to go legit and he opens a tractor business. The rest of the gang get more and more criminal and Steelhead isn't happy they are selling drugs. Steelhead's brother gets his hand hacked off by a rival gang leader. There's plenty of hatred from both the Chinese and the Japanese gangsters, things go downhill, and a lot of people die before the end of the movie. It's a pretty sad film and not one that I might want to watch much again. Good job from the cast in a fairly well made film. In the short bit of commnetary Jackie tells people they should stay in their countries instead of illegally going to find work in another. That's probably good advice but where would all the cheap farm labor come from then. 

What I Read In September 2014

I only added 6 titles to add books read list last September. About average for the year sadly.

Star Trek 51 - Enemy Unseen by VE Mitchell - The Enterprise is transporting some diplomats including a woman who had something going with Captain Kirk in the past. She's a nightmare and he doesn't want to have anything to do with her. Another alien gives the Captain three of his wives. Then someone gets killed and Kirk has to figure out what happened. Not a bad, but nothing special. I won't keep the book. It's in the outward bound stack.

Tarzan And The Forbidden City by Edgar Rice Burroughs - It's another Whitman book with an edited version of the 20th Tarzan novel. Tarzan helps a father, and his daughter, find the man's son. There's a big diamond mine so there some crooked men who get involved. Tarzan has to fight a lot of people and run all about through the jungle. Not too bad for what it is. Some of the other Whitman Tarzan novels were better. I should dig out the Burroughs novels and read them. I read the first four Tarzan novels back in the early 1970's and for some reason stopped. When I moved I sold the books. Several years ago I replaced the set, mostly for the Richard Powers covers, but they still remain unread. I have a stack of other Burroughs books to get to sometime too.

The Lost Princess Of Oz by L Frank Baum -  Someone has stolen the magic stuff from Ozma, the Wizard and Glenda the Good Witch. Dorothy and pals get to searching out who did it. They run about the countryside, following leads, and eventually figure it out. Then they have to catch that person and restore everyone's magical supplies. It was ok but I'm still not going to keep the big ass book that has the whole Baum Oz collection in it.

  

Star Trek 43 - The Final Nexus by Gene De Weese - The Enterprise is on a mission to find out more about some gates that allow ships to make large jumps across the universe. They are failing and destroying near by stars. It wasn't that interesting. Not a keeper. Glad I only spent a half a buck on it.

The Saint Goes On by Leslie Charteris - It's a collection of novellas. The High Fence has The Saint, Patricia Holm and Hoppy Unitaz up against The High Fence. He's a deadly killer who reacts like you might expect when Simon steals a small fortune in jewels from him. The Elusive Ellshaw has Simon join with Mr. Teal in a case of blackmail and murder. The Case of the Frightened Innkeeper has The Saint and Hoppy staying at a small inn on the English coast. The landlords daughter had asked for help for her father who's being forced to break the law. All three stories have been adapted for The Saint TV show. I enjoyed the whole bunch of stories. I always like the ones with Hoppy in them. He's quite the guy.

The Tin Woodsman Of Oz by L Frank Baum - The 12 book in the series has the Tin Woodman go looking for his sweetheart from the days when he was flesh and blood. He takes the Scarecrow along with him. Enjoyable enough.

30203 Mini Golf

There's another little set in the Target season area. It's the Friends 30203 Mini Golf polybag. It's $3.99 and there are only 26 parts so not as good a deal as the other polybag that's for sale in the same area. There's a cute little Friends girl named Emma in a sand green skirt. She's got a gold club so she can play the hole in the mini golf course. There's nothing too special about any of the pieces. The magenta flag is pretty much the only interesting part for me and I do like the little pink 1x1 flower head. I only bought the one. I might get a few more if they go on clearance. It could happen.

Haven Season 1

I really enjoyed the first season of Haven. It aired its first 13 episodes from July to September 2010. It's a supernatural crime show that's based on a Stephen King novella called The Colorado Kid. I haven't read that but then I haven't ever read a whole Stephen King book through. I started The Stand but had to give it back to an ex-girlfriend when we broke up and I started The Shining when I was on vacation but never finished it when I came home. I usually don't care for horror novels that much, I'd rather watch horror in a movie or a TV show. When I was digging around at the library for more stuff to borrow I noticed they had the first four season's of Haven. It sounded interesting enough to borrow the first set and as I said I really enjoyed it. The shows creators, Jim Dunn and Sam Ernst, don't follow the original novella at all, they build new characters, give them their backstories, toss in some action and drama and plunk it all down in the middle of the little town. They also added "The Troubles", a supernatural event that brings out the supernatural afflictions of the townfolk. They come out in various forms and people often die.  

Emily Rose plays Audrey Parker, an FBI agent who travels to Haven to investigate the death of an escaped convict. She makes a dramatic entrance when her car falls off a cliff. Like Audrey's car the escaped convict has fallen off a cliff. Unlike her car he's way too far away from the cliff face to have been pushed or jumped on his own. Lucas Bryant plays the local deputy Nathan Wuornos. He has no feelings in his body so he doesn't know if he's been hurt. Eric Balfour plays Duke Crocker, a guy with a rusty old ship who does some smuggling. Nathan doesn't like him too much but they've known each other since they were kids. That's the trio of main characters up above, you can probably guess who's who.

In the first episode Audrey experiences "The Troubles" first hand when she runs into a person who can control the weather. There's also someone putting big ass cracks in the ground. Audrey, digging into the death of the escaped convict, gets some info on the town from the local newspaper owners and operators, Vince and Dave. They are an interesting couple of guys, bit quirky. The Chief of Police, played by Nicholas Campbell, is also Nathan's father and their relationship has a fair bit of father and son drama. There are several relationship threads that run through the season, most of them don't end too happy. It's a troubled place, their troubles even have a name, they're so bad.

Audrey learns some clues about her mother. She's an orphan and doesn't have any info about her mother and her past. A picture in an old newspaper clipping has a picture of a woman that looks like Audrey. She thinks it's her mother. While they puzzle out the monster of the week Audrey and Nathan dig into the photo which is under a headline about the death of the Colorado Kid. They uncover all sorts of interesting tidbits. At the end of the first episode Audrey decides to take some time off work and dig into the story of her possible mom. That eventually leads to her getting reassigned to the town. Before the end of the season she's quit the FBI and moved to Haven. The Chief was partially responsible for that, he's an acquaintance of Audrey's boss, and somehow the two of them have worked this out. The Chief tells Audrey she handled herself really well in the face of some crazy stuff and he thinks she can do some good against "The Troubles."

It's pretty much a monster of the week show but I don't mind those. I like them, especially when they have more of a sense of humor than a bout of depression to carry the story along. This show has more humor than Grimm but less than Warehouse 13. Be nice to have a scale. There's a good bunch of detail in the mythology but they keep the melodrama down and that's fine with me. I like the main characters, Audrey and Duke more than Nathan. I like a bunch of the recurring characters more than him too. The scripts are pretty good, the afflictions fairly interesting, and the effects are good more than they're fair. They have a nice bunch of prop people and the Nova Scotia setting is really pretty beautiful. They even spend a bit of time on the water. While enjoying the season I got a few laughs, I enjoyed some crimes solved, I saw some monsters get beat down, and I put the other 3 seasons on my library queue. It will be neck and neck with the next Doc Martin series to see which program the library will deliver first for my TV.

30313 Garbage Truck

I picked up a few copies of this cheap set from the Target Season area. It's got 48 parts for $3.49 which makes them just over 7 cents each. I picked the set up for the green garbage bins. Not the usual color for them, mostly they come in the two shades of grey. You can find other colors of the previous version of the part. Some of them are pretty pricey, the red bin starts at $4.59 and there are only 5 listings on Bricklink. You get two of the nice green ones in the set and they have 2x2 green dishes for their covers. That's really the only interesting feature of the set for me. It's got a single minifig in a worker's uniform. Perfect to have for that added background in some large scenes but not so useful on it's own. The little truck is ok but the parts aren't as interesting as I might like. Not something I would bother to build. I parted out the 4 sets I got and put some of it away and others into a tub to sort in the distant future.

Science Fiction Sunday 328

The Happiness Patrol is the 150th serial in the series. It's the second serial of the 25th season and the 3 episodes first aired November 2-16 1988. Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor and Sophie Aldred is Ace. It was written by Graeme Curry and Chris Clough is the director. Andrew Cartmel is the script editor and John Nathan-Turner is the producer.

The Tardis appears on the darkened street of the planet Terra Alpha. I did like the sets on this serial. All dark and moody, odd for a happy planet. It's an Earth colony in a future hundreds of years ahead of Ace's time. The planet is run by Helen A who forces her citizens to be happy. It's a right miserable place. She sends out an army of gun totting women, the Happiness Patrol, to keep an eye on citizens and execute the sad.

That's Helen A up on the right. The Doctor figures the way to get right into the thick of things is by getting arrested. Turns out there are no prisons on Alpha Terra, too gloomy, but there are waiting areas where guards blast those that run off. The Doc and Ace escape in a rather embarrassing go cart, it barely moved along at walking speed, and make contact with more people. They work their way up to Helen A and start kicking her castle down. Helen A was a poorly disguised Margaret Thatcher.

That's the Kandy Man, he's Helen A's private robot Chef and Executioner. The Bassett Candy Company, makers of Licorice Allsorts, didn't care for the guy. The BBC had to agree not to let Kandy Man appear again. That's the Bassett's character on the left, his name is Bertie Bassett. The Kandy Man doesn't look that much like Bertie but I could see where people would mistake it for the candy company mascot. I used to like Bassett Allsorts but don't really eat them anymore. Some people online picked on the Kandy Man and it being part of the shows demise but I liked him and agree with the creators who think he fits in with the rest of the show. It's all rather over the top and cartoony and Kandy Man fits in there quite well.

The Doc and Ace make more allies and the joyous citizens revolt. The Kandy Man is destroyed and Helen A makes a run for her escape shuttle. Sadly her picked on hubby beat her too it. She wanders the streets of the city finally coming upon the Doctor. He lectures her on what being nice is really about but she doesn't buy it. She does break down when she sees the dead body of her giant rat like creature. I couldn't shed a tear for it. It's a murderous little shit, glad to see it dead. Doubt if Helen A would learn much from the lesson and the Doc's words but some people have a hard time learning anything. I like the story and the sets, hair and costumes really stand out visually. The Doctor was a nice mix of light and dark. The commentary on this serial and the last serial talk about making the Doctor a darker character. For some reason I'm enjoying this season's stories more than the ones last season. I'll hope the trend continues.

Audio commentary with moderator Toby Hadoke. He talks to Sophie Aldred, Chris Clough, Graeme Curry, Andrew Cartmel and composer Dominic Glynn. There's a making of featurette, some deleted scenes, a 46 minute featurette on politics in Doctor Who, a photo gallery, isolated score, info track, Radio Times listing and a coming soon trailer. The commentary was good, lots of info, and the featurette on politics was fun. Considering many of the stories are about toppling corrupt power mad leaders you'd just accept that the Doc's a rather political guy. I always like to see the depot tossed into the pot and boiled.

Friday Night Movies 519

Groupie Girl was retitled I Am A Groupie here in the US. It's a 1970 British film about a young woman who leaves her home town by sneaking into the van of some musicians before they return to London. It's written by Derek Ford and Suzanne Mercer. Derek was also the director and Suzanne, according to one reviewer, was a groupie. Groupie Girl is Derek's first director job, he'd been a writer, often with his brother, who wrote a fair bit of TV in the 1960s. I hadn't seen most of it but I did see the episode of The Saint he wrote. Derek directed several sexploitation films but I don't think I've heard of any of his 15 films. Here's a few they listed on the Wikipedia: The Wife Swappers 1970, Suburban Wives 1971, Commuter Husbands 1972, Keep It Up, Jack 1973, Sex Express 1975 (also filmed in a graphic hardcore version), What's Up Nurse! 1977 and What's Up Superdoc! 1978. Seem familiar?

  

Esme Johns plays the young woman and it's her only listing on the IMDb. She climbs into the van when they band isn't looking but quickly gives up her hiding spot when the band gets lost getting back to London. She gives up her virginity when the band stops for a potty break. She hangs out with the band, getting to do a montage, until she gets dumped by the guy who screwed her. She takes up with a guy in a second band and he treats her pretty poorly. The band tires of her and passes her through the open door of the their van to the open door of a van belonging to members of a third band called Sweaty Betty. This is while the two vans are going down the highway. Their high speed shenanigans and incredible stupidity lead to the second band crashing their van into a parked dump truck. They all die and the members of Sweaty Betty, played by the members of Opal Butterfly, take Esme home with them and call their manager to let him know what happened. Things take a darker tone as the manager tries to keep the guy out of the hands of the police. Esme suffers for a while before she leaves, heading for who knows where.

  

That's Esme Johns with the Collinson twins up on the left. The Collinson twins were in the centerfold of the October 1970 Playboy and they appeared in a few exploitation films from 1969 t0 1971. Their last film was Twins Of Evil where they play vampire girls who have a hard time keeping their clothes on. I thought that was a sensible choice, they don't want to get their nice things all bloody. Groupie Girl was released in a hardcore version in France; in 1973 as Les demi-sels de la perversion or The Pimps of Perversion and again in 1974 as Les affamées du mâle or Man-Hungry Women. The hardcore inserts credited are to Derek Fred. I have a feeling that might be even more of a mess than the original release. It's pretty low-budget film and isn't that well made. It kind of looks like 70's porn, 16mm, poorly lit and poorly staged in crappy locations. The actors are a mixed bag, the only one anyone might have heard about was Donald Sumpter who's been in so many much better productions.

The bands are played by real bands. English Rose plays the first band that Esme takes a trip with. One of the members of the band, Jimmy Edwards, commented on this blog's review of the movie. "Jimmy was a vocalist with many bands, including Cult (1963-1964), Neat Change (1965-1968), English Rose (1968-1972), Masterswitch (1976-1978), Jimmy and The Profiles, Time UK (1983-1985), Sharp (1985-1986), as well as associations with Flintlock, Sham 69 & Mean Streets." (Wikipedia) None of those bands seem to be familiar to me. Opal Butterfly was the band that caught Sperhauk's eye when he was reading about the movie. I hadn't heard of the band but I did know two of it's members. Simon King and Lemmie were in the band and both of them would go on to play in Hawkwind. Lemmie had either left, or was tossed out of, OB when the movie was made but Simon was there and he gets to have a few lines in the film. Opal Butterfly did a couple of songs for the soundtrack. I wasn't too keen on the soundtrack and didn't care for the Groupie song much. Still the movie was entertaining in it's way. I wouldn't go buy one but I might make a copy off of YouTube. You can see the movie by following the link in the title at the top of the post.

The Blood Of Fu Manchu is the 4th of the Christopher Lee Fu films. It's a 1968 film produced and co-written by Harry Alan Towers. Jesús Franco is the director and co-writer. He was credited under Jesse Franco back then. Sadly he's not that good at either job and the film is the worse off for it. It scores a 4.5 on the IMDb and that's barely what it's worth. Richard Greene plays Nayland Smith in this film and he spends half the film poisoned and able to do little other than lay there. Howard Marion Crawford returns as Dr Petrie and Tsai Chin returns as Fu Manchu's deadly daughter Lin Tang. This time Fu's in the Amazon jungle hidden in a fortress. He's got a new snake based poison that blinds the victim and slowly kills him. It takes 6 weeks. Fu's put the poison in beautiful woman, one kiss and it's darkness and a lingering death for the recipient. He's going to send the deadly ladies to figures of power who could interfere with his plans for world domination. One of the first to get the smooch of death is Fu's long time archenemy Nayland Smith. It happen pretty quickly in the movie and Dr Petrie spends a good part of the movie dragging Smith around. They travel to South America where they encounter an adventurer, a bandit and a doctor. They partner up, one way or another, and there's plenty of actions and fights. Not many of the fights are any much good. At least they shot the jungle stuff in Brazil and the locations look good. Most everything about the movie is about average but the lack of Nayland Smith really drags the story down and even when he's ambulatory Richard Greene isn't my favorite Smith. I much preferred him in the 1950s Robin Hood TV series. Sadly it isn't my favorite Fu film but I'm glad I watched it. Mostly anyway. 

Doc Martin Series 4

Series 4 of Doc Martin aired in the fall of 2009 and this series had 8 episodes. At the end of the previous series Doc Martin and Louisa decided not to get married. Martin Clunes plays the Doc and Caroline Catz plays Louisa. After the last series ended Louisa had left the village and taken a job in London. She returns to Portwenn 6 months pregnant with Martin's baby only to find that Martin's old girlfriend has turned up on the scene. Louisa tells Martin she doesn't expect anything from him. They'll bother and annoy each other all through the series.

Louisa takes apart time job at the school until the school master is unfit for duty. Martin tries to keep her from taking the job because of her being pregnant. She gets it anyway. There's the usual stream of patients with all sorts of ailments. Doc Martin still rubs his patients the wrong way and they him. He tries to fight his blood phobia to return to surgery work. He gets offered the Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine position at a prestigious college in London. He does better and better but it's not totally licked.

I'll miss Katherine Parkinson, this is her last season playing Doc Martin's receptionist Pauline Lamb. She's an annoying character but she does help him a good bit. She takes a phlebotomist course so she can draw blood for the Doc. That's some urine gone blue from being in the sun. If you put your wee in the sun and it turns blue you could have whatever the guy in the program had. You might want to go see a doctor. There's still a nice group of people playing all the secondary parts. Everyone does a great job, and why shouldn't they with such nicely written parts. Even the small bits are tasty ones.

The show's writing has been top notch through the whole 4 series. There's some good comedy with a bit of drama. I so prefer that to some drama with a bit of comedy or just full on drama. I'm laughing pretty regularly, all through the 8 episodes, and the end of the last episode of series 4 brought tears to my eyes. The writers for this series were Jack Lothian, Richard Stoneman and series director Ben Bolt. They have been the main writers on the 2-4th series, along with a couple of people who only wrote a single episode. The first series was written by  Dominic Minghella who was also the series creator. I have the 5th and 6th series from the library and will devour those as soon as I can. I see there are random episodes on YouTube. I should have looked sooner but I've been busy with all this TV, anyway you should know where to find it.

The Box Of Delights 1984

I found reference to The Box Of Delights while reading about British TV. It's a 6 episode series that ran on BBC in 1984 and on PBS at the end of the 80's. It's based on the 1935 novel of the same name by John Masefield.  It turns out to be the sequel of The Midnight Folk. I haven't read either one. The Box Of Delights novel is adapted by Alan Seymour and the programs are directed by Renny Rye. Young Kay Harker comes home from boarding school to get stuck in a story filled with supernatural danger. Patrick Troughton plays a Punch and Judy man called Cole Hawlings. He meets Kay on the train and tells him a man named Abner Brown is after him. He gives Kay a magical box that can shrink the user, fly through the air and travel in time. Abner and his henchmen, all dressed as clergymen, show up looking for the box. They have a flying car and that makes it hard for Kay to keep out of their clutches. Lucky for him it's easier to do with the help of the box, as long as he can keep hold of it, he keeps dropping it. Kay gets a bit of help from a friendly humanoid mouse. There's a certain level of goofiness to it. Patrick shows up again and there's more running about before Abner and his gang are thwarted. Patricia Quinn, Magenta from The Rock Horror Picture Show, appears as one of Abner's cronies. The program is heavy on special effects, which are mostly done with Quantel Paintbox and chroma key by the BBC, and they don't always look too good. The story was ok, old school fantasy, steeped in English magic and legend, and it was ok to watch. It's out on DVD in the UK but not here in the US. I don't need a copy since it's not something I would need to watch again. There's a link to the episodes in the title above. You might like it. Who knows.