PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 439

I watched the first season of The 4400 on YouTube.The first season was a 5 episode miniseries that first aired on USA in 2004. It lasted 3 more seasons and ended with a cliff hanger. That alone has kept me from bothering with buying a set.

I had had some interest in the series but hadn't seen any of it. It's about 4400 people who are left on the shore of a lake near Mount Rainier. They had all disappeared anywhere form months ago to several decades. They have no memories of what happened after they were abducted and some of them start to manifest powers. Peter Coyote plays Dennis Ryland, who heads the National Threat Assessment Command, a part of Homeland Security, that's taxed with dealing with the people from the 4400 that remain in the Seattle area.

Mostly we follow a couple of Peter's agents, Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie plays Tom and Diana, as they work with the 4400. When things start to get weird the media, one muckraking woman in particular, starts yelling about the threat of the 4400. Soon the members of the group are being hunted down and murdered.

There's plenty of melodrama mixed in as the characters try to get along with their lives. It doesn't go so well for some of them. Near the end of the season we learn more about what is really going on with the 4400. I liked it well enough while it was playing but I doubt if I'm going to spend the money on a DVD set. The DVD set was $23.50 on Amazon. I could buy something I'd rather watch over again with that money. I'll try season 2 next week and see what that's like.

Friday Night Movies 630

Call Girl Of Cthulhu was our first feature. It's a 2014 horror comedy written by director Chris LaMartina and Jimmy George. I haven't seen any of Chris's work before, he's got a few credits on the IMDb, and I doubt I will go search it out. The story in CGOC is about a nerdy virgin artist who falls for a call girl. I found him to be unusually hopeless. Unbeknownst to him the call girl's the chosen victim of a cult of Cthulhu worshipers. The head of the cult lures hookers to his "church" where he turns them into demon slave. The movie is packed with titties and tentacles but the script is a bit weak. I never got overly interested in any of the characters. It gets a 4.7 on the IMDb and as I found that to be about right. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the hardcore low budget horror fan.

Caltiki - The Immortal Monster is a 1959 Italian movie set in Mexico. An archeologist returns to camp, he's all screwed up and needs some medical attention. They wonder where his partner is and set out to the ruins to look for him. They find a cave with a giant statue of Caltiki and a deep pool of water. In the water they find a treasure of gold. The diver's second dive proves fatal as the blob monster makes an appearance. The party escapes but one man has some blob on his arm. The blob monster is destroyed by fire and the group returns to Mexico City. Doctors remove the bit of blob from the man's arm and scientists discover radiation makes it grow. A radioactive comet happens by and the blob grows and attacks. The man who got the blob on his arm goes nuts and kills some women before he's digested by the newly formed blob. There's a lot of reacting to so-so effects which are typical of the time. The blob monster looks like a big wet bunched up towel. Lucky it's a short movie, only 75 minutes, and it's over quickly. To it's credit it doesn't waste any time getting the story told. Riccardo Freda is credited as the director, under the name Robert Hamton in the US version, but the Wikipedia says that an uncredited Mario Bava also directed. This is before his first credited feature Black Sunday. I liked this better the second time around and in proper Italian with subtitles. I still wouldn't recommend to just anyone. More for the fan of such things.

Seeding Of A Ghost 1989

Seeding Of A Ghost is a good primer on what could go wrong when you ask a sorcerer to take revenge for the killing of your wife. It's a 1989 Shaw Brothers movie with Philip Ko as a taxi driver who's wife is raped and murdered by some punks.

The police think Philip killed her but we know better. The cops do find the punks but have no real evidence. The taxi driver asks a sorcerer to go after the punks with black magic. They proceed even though Philip is warned that there's danger ahead. Once started the black magic ramps up the body count. There's plenty of weird stuff going on. Stuff you don't often see in a movie. Imagine a desiccated corpse floating in the air, having sex with an animated spirit. There's plenty of nudity on top of the magical weird stuff, and don't worry, the naked parties are all pretty young things. In the end everyone pays a steep price. All told the movie is definitely wackier than most and it's not going to appeal to everyone.

Ambassadors Series 1 2013

Ambassadors is a 2013 BBC production. There were three hour long episodes and none since then. The DVD box optimistically puts Series 1 on there.  It's written by James Wood and Rupert Walters. The director is Jimmy Webb.

It's got David Mitchell, Robert Webb and Keeley Hawes in the lead roles and a bunch of other people I didn't know. David and Robert have appeared in oodles of stuff, some of which I've enjoyed. I particularly like their Mitchell and Webb Look series and numerous panel show appearances. I have their series Peep Show to watch someday soon.

Keeley, above with David, was recently in The Durrells, I enjoyed that a fair bit. I didn't recognize Susan Lynch's name but it turned out I've seen her in a few productions. She's one of the Embassy staff people in The Ambassadors, that's her on the right in the second picture above. Her Wikipedia page tells me she was the Selkie in The Secret Of Roan Inish. If you haven't see that, it's well worth a look, one of John Sayles better movies. Click on the link.

David is the Ambassador and Robert is the Deputy Head Of Mission. They man the British embassy in the madey-uppy country of Tazbekistan. It's right in there with all those real ex-Russian Central Asian countries and just as complicated.

It's more a light drama, with some irony fueled laughs, and every episode had one crazy bit that made me laugh out loud. Twice I played the scene back because it was quite well written and smart. All the scripts were good and the cast equally capable. I had read about it a while back but no one has posted a copy to YouTube so I could see if I liked it. I waited a bit until the DVD got to be under 10 pounds and ordered it. Glad I did. I enjoyed the series and wished they made more. Who knows maybe they will. You never can tell with the BBC.

Rhod Gilbert And The Award-Winning Mince Pie 2009

I've seen Welsh stand up comedian on plenty of panel shows and short clips from his stand up act and found him funny. I ordered his three stand up DVDs from Amazon UK and there were under 4 pounds each. I found that buying the single discs was cheaper than buying the three pack of his live shows. It's over 22 pounds and the 3 seperate DVDs were less than half that.

Rhod Gilbert And The Award-Winning Mince Pie is Rhod's third stand up tour and his first DVD. The tour started in 2008 and the DVD came out in 2009. Rhod's show is about his December 2007 break down at a motorway service station over that Award-Winning mince pie. He just wanted to know about that award but it gets out of hand and the police come by for a laugh.

Rhod takes you through the events that lead up to that breakdown on the M6. Along the way he shouts at pokes fun the things like buying bedding, airlines, torches with the power of a million candlepower, his cock, usual sort of stuff, all woven into his breakdown story. There's a nice mixture of exaggeration and anger. Often Rhod's anger is aimed at the things that annoy him, often the things are trivial. I can sympathize, often it's the little things that set me off. I was glad to have watched the show. I'll watch it again someday.

Ghost Team 2016

Ghost Team is a 2016 horror comedy with Jon Heder, David Krumholtz, Justine Long, Melonie Diaz, Paul W Downs and Amy Sedaris. It was directed by Oliver Irving, he wrote the story with Peter Warren and Peter wrote the screenplay.

All the characters in the movie have humdrum jobs, Jon in a copy shop, Melonie in a nail shop, Paul in a mall store where Justin is a security guard. Amy is a psychic who advertises on TV. David mopes around because he believes that aliens have stolen his girlfriend, why else wouldn't she show up on their wedding day. Jon and David are fans of one of those paranormal shows. Jon gets excited when the show offers a viewer a job. He wants to go ghost hunting and he finds an opportunity when a man comes into get some keep out signs laminated. He's got an old house in the country that's falling apart and he wants people to keep away. He suggests it might be haunted and Jon jumps at the chance to find some ghosts.

They gather at the house and set up. Not much happens for a while, then their whole world view changes. They think they've spotted something and they have. It's totally not paranormal but it takes a while for them to find out what's really going on and what to do about it. It's not a great movie, it only scores a 4.6 on the IMDb, I gave it a 5 because it;s better than a 4. I did like the characters some and I got a few laughs out of it. That's partly the actors that I like, driving that vote They all do a good job with a flat script. I wouldn't recommend it highly but it's enjoyable enough to watch, there's always something going and the story moves forward consistantly. I wouldn't buy the DVD unless it was 2-3 bucks.

Hogan's Heroes Season 3

The third season of Hogan's Heroes aired back in 1967 and 1968. There were 30 episodes. At the time TV shows seemed to be reducing the number of episodes a season more and more. Season 1 had 32 episodes, 2 and 3 had 30, 4 and 5 would drop to 26 and 6 would only have 24. In the 50's and early 60s shows often had 39 episodes a season. The stories in the season are about the same as the other so far, Hogan and his guys have adventures sabotaging the Nazis and helping Allied soldiers get home. I'm enjoying them when they are playing. I get a few laughs. I'm half way done and I'll be getting back to them some day soon.

La Setta 1991

Here's the third of director Michele Soavi's films. La Setta is co-written by Soavi, Dario Argento and Gianni Romoli. The movie was released here in the US as The Devil's Daughter. There was a VHS tape released here but no DVD. You can find a European DVD on Amazon or eBay for a reasonable price but you'd be getting a PAL DVD and you'd need a way to play that. The movie is about a Sect of evil fuckers that want to bring forth the son of Satan. Kelly Curtis, Jamie Lee's older sister, is their chosen vessel. Herbert Lom is the sect's elder who's orchestrating everything. Kelly fights back to escape the sect. It's a good solid horror movie with crazy people up to no good.

Science Fiction Sunday 438

I watched the first season of The Expanse. Not just this morning, I watched some yesterday and finished off today. There's only 10 episodes. I was kind of curious, I had read other people's comments about liking it. I might like it, it's science fiction, it's based on a novel, but it's from the SyFy channel. Right from the start it became apparent that the show was going to be one of those fun lackin' ones. It's far enough into the future that humanity has moved into the asteroid belts to gather material. There's one of those situations that have the people of Earth, Mars and the Belt all going against each other, scrabbling over resources. Earth needs metals, Mars needs something, I forgot what already, and the Belt need air and water. Rather than work together, everyone is jockeying for a better spot to eat more space pie. Add in some rebels, a tired old cop, and some crazy people with a bio-weapon and increase the dire to 11. All told it's OK, there are nice looking sets and space stuff, but I was tired of the political intrigue. It's the kind of show that I'm glad to see in streaming but wouldn't need to bother the DVDs, I pretty much decided not to watch it again. There's a second season but it's not included with Amazon Prime and I can't see paying for it. I'll check it out someday when it is free.

The Church 1988

Here's the second of Michele Soavi's films. The Church is a 1988 horror film that's more what I like. Demons, oooohh! Six people worked on the script, including director Soavi. The story starts in the past, some Teutonic Knights slaughter a village of witches. They bury the bodies in a mass grave and build a church over it. In modern day the new librarian finds clues in the library that lead him to break open the crypt. Demons come out, the ancient architect's mechanical door locks seal everyone in, and the killin' starts. It stars Hugh Quarshie, Asia Argento, and some folks I never heard of before. It's kind of creepy, kind of gory, and a bit long winded. It opens well, with the Knights and the slaughtering but when we get to the modern day it slows down until the demons get here. Then it picks up. There's some nice Goblin music in the score. More for the horror fan. If you like Dario Argento you might like this. If you don't know who Dario is, look him up.