First up is the 2018 Dwayne Johnson movie Rampage. Dwayne is a primatologist who works at the San Diego Zoo. He's in charge of the gorilla's and the giant albino gorilla is the leader of the gorilla tribe. He's not so big yet, that comes when a company's experiment on the space station goes tits up. For some reason they're genetically manipulating genes to make monsters. A lot of that sort of thing gets funded in the movies and based on the outcomes it's a good thing we aren't there yet in the real word.
Things go wrong on the space station, a giant rat gets out, and the lone survivor escapes in an escape pod. She's got three specimens of the pathogen. Malin Ackerman plays the CEO of Energyne and she wants the pathogen bad enough to deny the lone survivor on the space station use of the escape pod. That poor scientist gets the pathogen but leads the rat to the escape pod. She gets away but the rat scratches the window. That weakens it and on reentry the whole pod blows the fuck up. The three samples are supposed to be in containers that will survive reentry. They don't. George, that wolf above, and an alligator are turned into giant aggressive killing machines.
The science is dubious but that's easily pushed off to the side, it's just an excuse to get some monsters running about, munching on the locals, and creating a lot of mayhem and property damage. The military is outmatched by the critters. Malin has added a homing system to the pathogen. She plays a signal in Chicago and the critters home in on it. There's a big battle on Lake Shore Drive. That soon heads over to trash some buildings. Dwayne works hard to save George from the military, he's aided by Naomie Harris, a good scientist fired by Malin for objecting to the research and trying to shut it down.
There's plenty of monster action, the beasts fight anything that happens by and they're hard to kill. The pathogen gives then recuperating powers. There's a good bit of comedy and I had a great time. I usually like Dwayne's pictures and will watch this one again sometime soon. I was lucky to pick up the Blu-ray at Walmart, packed in a bin with other films, DVD and Blu-ray, for cheap. Amazon lists the Blu-ray for $14.99 today. Oddly, I picked up 4 Dwayne movies that day, Jumanji and Baywatch on Blu-ray and Pain & Gain on DVD.
Our second film is a 1980 Italian horror movie called Nightmare City. It's set in an unnamed European city but filmed in Madrid and studio in Rome. A plane full of living dead arrives at the airport, they jump out of the plane, firing machine guns at the airport staff and security. Soon enough the city is overrun by the flesh eaters. The military is useless. The power is out in much of the city. The infected are quick and smart, not like your typical shambling zombie or the furious runners of 28 Day Later.
Typically, the movie has more than one name, but that doesn't make it any better. There's a some action, a story of sorts, and some tedious bits scattered about. There's a twist at the end that put the movie down a couple of notches for me. I can't figure why they would do it? That gag was old in 1980.
From the Wikipedia: John Kenneth Muir in his review of 1980s horror cinema, referred to Nightmare City referred to the film as a "cobbled together disaster" Muir went on to say it's not the worst zombie film of the 1980s which he felt belonged to Hell of the Living Dead.
There's a DVD available that puts both Nightmare City and Hell Of The Living Dead on the same disc. I didn't buy a copy but there is something about having a couple of the worst zombie films of the 1980s. I did see Hell Of The Living Dead and in My Watched Movie List I said it was Crap fun. I can't remember anything about the movie. I didn't quite think NC was the worst of the 80s lot but it is barely average. I gave it a generous 5 on the IMDb. I wouldn't need to get a copy.
I don't think I have seen any of these. I may not immediately go looking for them.
Posted by: Gary Mattingly | December 02, 2018 at 10:17 PM