PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Pool meets Sandi Toksvig: The Director's Cut

For those that are fans of Sandy Toksvig, here's an interview from The Pool, Lauren Laverne is the interviewer. It's short, just over 20 minutes, and entertaining. At least to me.

The Funhouse Massacre 2015

The Funhouse Massacre has 5 male inmates get sprung from an asylum for murderers. They're directed to a funhouse, which they then turn into a slaughter house. That's them at the top of the poster, they all have zany names like The Taxidermist, Dr Suave, and Animal. The lady with the big hair and the runny mascara is Dollface. She's the one who sprung the monster men from the asylum. The doctor with the blonde hair is her boyfriend. The Warden is played by Robert Englund. Sadly, he's only in the movie briefly.

Hardly anyone notices the scary men at the funhouse are murdering people for real. When the rubes finally catch on, it's pandemonium. It's got lot's of slaughtering and screaming and yelling and gore. The effects are a mixed bag, some less good than others. There are maniacs on the screen a lot of the time, so that's something. It's got a bit of a sense of humor and the script is adequate. It's just not inspired or anything. I only gave it a 4 on the IMDb and I wouldn't bother picking up a copy. The 2015 movie was written by Ben Begley and directed by Andy Palmer.

Mr Toad's Wild Ride 1996

Mr Toad's Wild Ride is the Disney re-title of the 1996 British film The Wind In The Willows. Disney wanted it to tie in with the ride of the same name at Disney World. The ride closed down 2 years later. Disney sucks on this one. Terry Jones wrote the screenplay and directed the film. He's joined by three of the remaining Pythons, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin. I read that Terry Gilliam was busy with 12 Monkeys and couldn't join them.

Terry Jones plays Mr Toad, Eric Idle plays Ratty, Steve Coogan plays Mole, Nicol Williamson plays Mr Badger, Michael Palin plays the Sun, Nigel Planer plays the Car Salesman, John Cleese plays Mr Toad's Lawyer, Julia Sawalha plays the Jailer's Daughter, Stephen Fry plays the Judge and Bernard Hill plays the Engine Driver.

It's a musical but, luckily for me, there's more mayhem than music. It was fun enough for me to get to the end and have a bit of a laugh. No big belly laughs but you can't always expect that. There's good acting, costumes and sets. There's a nice bit of collateral damage. It's a pretty and colorful looking film and there are plenty of explosions. There's acres of nice scenery and then they crash a train. As you can see, a film with a good balance of elements, is often entertaining. I'm glad I noticed this on Netflix and took a look.

Science Fiction Sunday 465

Humanity's End starts with nearly 7 minutes of backstory narrative, the movie is only 79 minutes long. It's one of those nearly all CGI movies with nothing much by way of physical sets. It's also painted a drab grey-bluish-green. I've come to dislike that sort of effect and it sure helps bring the movie's score down for me. Choices are often punished. It's a 2008 movie about some of the last human's in the galaxy. Clones have developed into super-clones and those dicks are killing off the humans. Human's that develop tougher, stronger clones deserve to die off. Did they learn nothing from Blade Runner. Where's that kill switch? The story is familiar, a bit of this and a bit of that from other movies you've seen. The characters are all dull and uninteresting, especially the noisy spaceship captain. I was glad to have seen it on Amazon Prime, wasting a Netflix DVD selection would have been sad.

The Day Of The Animals is a 1977 movie about some people walking in the woods. They get helicoptered up the mountain and now they are slowly going back to the bottom. Mostly they're city folk. Christopher George, Leslie Neilsen, Lynda Day George, Richard Jaeckel, Michael Ansara, Ruth Roman and Paul Mantee are the names in the cast that were familiar to me.

As the group goes along they start to notice things aren't normal with the local critters. They soon get attacked by animals that they learn have been driven crazy by the decrease in the ozone level. The critters have gotten really aggressive and organized. Rats, snakes, wolves, a grizzly, eagles and vultures all feed on the flesh of the human. We must taste good, they keep coming back for a nibble. The whole depleted ozone turns Leslie into a murdering rapist, luckily that grizzly comes along with a big bear hug to put a stop to Leslie's nonsense.

I hadn't seen this movie since I had first seen it in 1999. I didn't make a comment on My Watched Movie List back then and I didn't remember anything from that viewing. Now I would say it's OK but not much above average. It's a 5.5 on the IMDb and that's about where it should be. There's a fair bit of action but there are long slogs of bickering and walking in the woods. Animals walking, humans walking, it doesn't matter, we shouldn't need to see all the path to get where we're going. I don't think I would need to see this again. Not having it on DVD means one less thing to store and probably never use. I have enough of that sort of shit.

Laserblast 1978

Someone gave me a copy of the Laserblast DVD, and since I hadn't seen it in a while, I watched it today. I didn't have a copy, though I did have a copy of it from when it was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's nice to have a copy without Mike and 'bots yakking over it. It's a 1978 SF film that was produced by Charles Band, you know, the guy from Full Moon Productions. This was back in the days when Charles was making entertaining genre films. Sadly today he's the man behind Killer Bong and the Ginger Deadman. They aren't anywhere near as entertaining. Laserblast is written by Franne Schacht and Frank Ray Perilli, with Michael Rae directing his only movie.

Kim Milford plays a 18-19 year old guy who finds an alien weapon in the desert. It was left after some aliens kill another alien in the desert. They so get caught by their boss, who sends them back to Earth to destroy the weapon. Cheryl Smith plays Kim's girlfriend, Roddy McDowall plays a doctor and Will Geer plays Cheryl's grandfather. Neither Roddy nor Will are in the picture that much. Sadly Eddie Deezen is, yakkin' and sputterin' until you finally cheer when he gets blown up. Eddie and his pal Chuck deserved it anyway, they're scum who tried to rape Cheryl earlier in the film.

Those are the aliens that leave the weapon behind after they disintegrate the user. They were created and stop motion animated by David Allen. They look fairly good. The weapon they left behind slowly takes over Kim's body and causes him to mutate. His skin turns green and his teeth get all pointy. Kim gets all vengeful and attacks some of the people who gave him a hard time in the past. Lots of stuff, mostly cars and people, get blown up. The film's pretty low-budget but they knew enough to keep some cash for explosives. It's nice to see film makers who have the right priorities. It gets a bad rap, and a sad 2.5 on the IMDb. It's better than that, not much, but better. It's certainly more watchable than many in it's rating range. Perhaps I have a bit of fondness for it from seeing so often on MST3K. Like me there are other fans of the movie, though I wouldn't rate it more than a 4.

Friday Night Movies 656

Tales Of Halloween was our first choice, it's a 2015 anthology movie with several different writers and directors. Unlike most anthology movies this one ties in all the stories into a Halloween night in some town. It's got a huge cast of people I didn't know and plenty I did. Several horror directors have small parts and a few people are in more than one segment. All in all it was OK but some segments weren't as good as others. Some just seemed to end without any good reason. It seems to have some fans but it can barely scratch up a 5.5 on the IMDb. I gave it a 6, 'cause it's better than a 5. Even though I laughed once or twice, I doubt I'd pick one up unless it was pretty cheap, I felt it was more interesting for the people working on it than for the story and I'm not sure I'd ever get back to it.

Hotel Transylvania is a 2012 cartoon story about single parent Dracula. He's  so afraid of the human's he builds a special castle/hotel to keep his daughter and all the monster visitors safe. Of course a human wanders in and points out the design flaw in the place. Rather than dispatch the human, Dracula disguises him and keeps him in the hotel. The daughter and the human fall for each other and the rest of the movie is spent dealing with that. It had a couple of laughs and there were some things I didn't laugh at much. I had been curious but not enough to pick up a DVD. I'd buy this if I saw the DVD in the couple of bucks price range but then again I might not.

40263 Christmas Town Square

The second of the two Christmas themed sets is 40263 Christmas Town Square. It's got an even better piece count than the other set. At $9.99 for 179 pieces that comes to just a smidgen more than 6 cents each after you add the tax.

There's a large brick built tree in an enclosure, a pretzel and cupcake stand, a light pole with mailbox, a snowman and a lady pulling a sled. Lovely, and combined with the other set, you can make out a nice little scene. Of course, add in some imagination and ambition, and you can add more detail to your own town square.

Some nice minifigures that were made of pieces that have been in several sets already. The head of the little girl in the middle has been in 52 other sets, her nice blue sweater is in 3 other sets, same as the brown sweater on the little boy. The woman's purple top has been in 6 other sets, but the short pants in flame yellowish orange has only been in 1 other set. I was surprised to see that the top hat has been in 70 sets total, but not surprised to see that the 1x1 round plate has been in 701 sets. Sets worth getting for the right person. Certainly they would make great gifts for the right person.

 

40262 Christmas Train Ride

I picked up the two new Christmas LEGO sets at the LEGO store today. 40262 Christmas Train Ride might lack imagination in it's title but it's got a plethora of little bits going on.

There's a train, a bench, a hot chocolate and cookie stand, a tree, a light post and bench, and a stall that seems to be for selling tickets to the train.

One guy sells the hot chocolate and cookies, the other guy drives the train, the little girl is ready to go for a ride. It's all pretty cute, and at $9.99 for 169 pieces there's very good value too.

Broadchurch Series 3

Like David Tennant's character in Broadchurch, I keep being drawn back to the dismal cliffs of doom. At least for one last time, the third series is to be the last one. David's character had been gone for a while after the second series, now he's back. He's working with Olivia Coleman in investigating the rape of a woman during a big party. As they dig into the suspects all sorts of family drama plays out. David's got troubles with his teenage daughter, she wants to leave because someone hacked her phone and posted a picture she's embarrassed about. Topical, huh. Olivia is having trouble with her older son and grandfather. Friends and family of the victim have all sorts of things going on. Lot of people behaving badly, that's for sure. Luckily the coppers figure out who done the crime and slag them into the pokey. It's an 8 part story and that's a lot of time to fill, sometimes the show lags, especially when everyone's being upset. I prefer the quicker pace of a Midsomer Murders or Jonathan Creek. It's a well made series, you see great actors and great locations. I was particularly interested in seeing Lenny Henry, and he did not disappoint. I originally tuned in to the first series because of actors. It was David Tennant and Olivia Coleman and they kept me coming back for the second and third series. I'll be curious to see what they do next.

Hellnight 1981

Hellnight shares a disc with Fade To Black and I watched it right after that movie about a crazy psycho guy. Hellnight is a 1981 film that was written by Randy Feldman and directed by Tom DeSimone. It's produced by Irwin Yablans and Bruce Cohn Curtis. Linda Blair is the big name star, she's a student at a college and she's one of four pledges who have to spend a night in a haunted house that rumored to have the a madman in the basement. Vincent Van Patten, Peter Barton and Suki Goodwin play the other three students. Members of the fraternity have rigged the mansion with speakers and effects to put a scare into the pledges. Unknown to the whole group, there really is a crazy person, you can tell, he wears no socks or shoes and his ill fitting clothes have turned to rags. I won't even mention his hair. He's running about the old abandoned mansion, the place is honeycombed with secret passages and the basement leads to underground tunnels. He's not trying to scare anyone, he's killing them. He manages to do a good job, one by one our students fall, only brave Linda battles on. It's another that battles to get above 6 on the IMDb, I gave it that, it's not too much over average but I liked it anyway. There's a fair commentary with Yablans, Curtis, DeSimone and Linda Blair. Not as interesting as I might like but entertaining when they remember to talk.