PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Maneater Triple Feature

RHI takes their single movie DVDs and packs them into a 3 pack of films. They've got a whole series of these Maneater films and I have more than a dozen of them in the multi movie format. The 3 packs are all single layer discs and there are no extras. Most of the three packs are $8-12 on Amazon, I got the two I have from Hamilton Books for $3.95 each. I also have a 6 movie set that puts two movies on a disc. The series was produced with SyFy and all the films aired on that channel after being on the video on demand cable channels.

Blood Monkey is a 2006 direct to video horror film about some college students going on a work experience in the Thai jungle. That would be a fuckin' nightmare to me, I wouldn't even want to go there to shoot a movie. The poor saps in the movie have the added bonus of F Murray Abraham using them as bait. He's trying to capture a new species of primate and he'd already lost his first research team to the vicious chompy bastards. Sadly, we see little of the BM's in the 90 minute running time and when we finally do, in the last seconds before the credits, it's just like any CGI movie ape. The movie is nearly the worst of the lot, the poor script by George LaVoo and Gary Dauberman really lowers the score for me. If you watch this sort of movie you've probably seen this story over and over again. People running in the woods being eaten by some critter. The scenery is OK and the production values fairly good. The only interesting thing about the movie is that it was directed by Robert Young. He started directing back in 1972 with Vampire Circus, over the years he managed to direct a few good films and TV shows. The movie that stands out most is Fierce Creatures. He worked on Hammer's House Of Horror, Minder and Jeeves And Wooster. I only gave the movie a 3, it's doubtful that I'll get around to watching it again.

In The Spider's Web is also from 2007 and it's the worst of the lot. I gave it a 3, though I might have given it a 2 except for the one actor. It scores a stunning 3.9 on the IMDb but that's because 215 of the 936 votes are a 10. That's some scamming there. In the movie Lance Henriksen is scamming people out of body parts and selling them on the black market. He's a real steaming pile of shit. The script is  pretty tired and there isn't much reason to watch it. Gary Dauberman wrote the script by himself and there are similarities to the first movie in the set. Perhaps Gary lacks imagination? Maybe he's just lazy. This movie's also filmed in Thailand but this time the jungle's pretending to be in India. It hardly matters, either place will kill you. That's what happens to the vacationing college students, picked off, one by one, in the jungle. Lance "helps" them by harvesting their organs. The local police Sergeant, my favorite character in the movie, helps a couple of them survive. I probably won't get back to seeing this anytime soon.

Maneater is a 2007 film and the best in the set. It's written by Philip Morton and directed by Gary Yates. It's a bit of a Jaws copy, there's a deadly predator on the loose, the town has a festival coming up, and the mayor is mad at the Sheriff for telling the news reporters of the tiger. The movie is filmed in Winnipeg and Stonewall Manitoba. Stonewall is pretending to be a small town in the Appalachians. I saw this back in 2016 and thought it was pretty average and thought I didn't need to see it again. I had forgotten that when I watched it. Then I looked it up on the IMDb and saw I had given it a 3 sometime in the past. You can download your votes from the IMDb and sort them by title to make looking up when you rated a movie easy-peasy. I actually liked it better this time around and bumped the score up a notch. I thought it was one of Gary Busey's better performances of late. He's not hardly chewing the scenery like he has been. I liked the kid who dreams of the tiger too. I might watch it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 521

Finally wrapped up UFO today. The last 7 episodes were about as good as the others. There were less security lapses this time but the humans are taking a beating at the hands of the aliens. Since there are no more shows I only wonder if we survive. Luckily, for me, I'll forget about that by the time I've finished this post. I did notice that they used that red dress again. That lady gets caught by the aliens and turned into a bomb. She nearly blows up the Shadow HQ. Now I'm done with the series and I won't have to watch it again. I'll keep the DVDs, they might be out of print someday, then I can sell the set for some money, which I can use to buy something better.

Boris Karloff & Bella Lugosi - 4-Movie Horror Collection

Here's a nice package of four older films with Boris Karloff and Bella Lugosi. It's from Universal and there are two discs, each with 2 movies, and it's under 10 bucks on Amazon. Well, worth having in any good horror collection.

The Black Cat is a 1934 horror film and it's the best movie in the set. It's one of my favorite horror movies. You can't get much better characters than Hjalmar Poelzig and Dr Vitus Werdegast.

It's directed by Edgar G Ulmar, Peter Ruric wrote the screenplay, the two of them wrote the story and Tom Kilpatrick is an uncredited writer.

The Raven is a 1935 film with Bella as a surgeon who's a big Edgar Allan Poe fanatic, especially the parts where Poe talks about torture. Bella's got a torture dungeon in his basement. A judge asks him to come out of retirement and operate on his daughter. Bella eventually agrees and operates. Bella falls for the young woman but the judge objects since she's already engaged to a young man. Crazy sets in, Bella straps the judge to a pendulum and puts the young woman and her fiance into a room with walls that move to crush them. Entertaining but not anywhere near as stylish as The Black Cat.

David Boehm is the screenwriter and Lew Landers is the director, using the name Louis Friedlander.

The Invisible Ray is from 1936 and this time we find Boris playing a scientist who's discovered Radium X. It's powerful and deadly, soon he's completely poisoned by the stuff. Boris starts to get all paranoid on us, thinking that other scientists are after his formulas. He slips over into mad scientist territory, starts killing, and enjoys it. Bella is one of the scientists that Boris is after.

It's directed by Lambert Hillyer, the screenplay is by John Colton, with Howard Higgin and Douglas Hodges writing the story.

Black Friday is from 1940 and Boris is a surgeon who transfers part of a gangsters brain into an injured professor's body. The professor wakes up and starts to recover. Soon after the gangster starts to take over the professor's body. That can't be good, huh. Bella turns up as a local gangster boss. He tangles with the gangster. It's OK but the least interesting of the lot. Still, I'd watch it again sometime.

It's directed by Arthur Lubin and Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor wrote the screenplay.

Friday Night Movies 712

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.