I had totally forgotten that I had seen the 2017 SF movie The Recall back in March 2018. I know my memories is failing but it is a rather generic alien invasion movie. There have been so many of them that they tend to blur together. Often a scene or image in the film will trigger a reminder, it happened in The Recall but not until nearly the end of the movie. Here's that blog post:
The Recall is another alien invasion story. It's from 2017 and it's mostly told from the POV of some vacationing friends in a remote mountain cabin. The TV news tells of some strange weather formations and visits to a military base fill us in that the government knows we've already had some contact with aliens. Wesley Snipes is an ex-astronaut who's gone starin' off into the distance survivalist after his encounter with the aliens. The vacationers have a run in with Wesley, and then, some aliens. The men in the group are fighting all the time, none of them seem to be able to work together, and by the 38 minute mark two of the 5 are dead by their own hands. I hate the stupid in horror films. I guess their stupidity is a good reminder that we're doomed when it comes to alien invasions. I did like the CGI floating alien brain critters and the visit to the alien ship was kind of creepy. Still, there's nothing much to recommend, another time filler for cable and streaming venues.
Hercules In The Haunted World is a 1961 Italian film that I have seen before. I remembered having seen it but nothing much about what's in it. A lot of those Sand and Sandal action films tend to be similar. We watched the new Kino Lorber Blu-ray, it's got three versions of the film. We watched the original Italian version, there's a US and UK version. I'm more intrigued with the various versions of the film that I ordered the Blu-ray myself this morning. Now I can find out what the others are like and listen to the commentary by Tim Lucas.
The movie is directed by Mario Bava, the script was written by Mario, Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari. I'm no big fan of Mario's but occasionally I like one of his films. When I saw this back in 1996 I watched the US version.
Reg Park is Hercules and Christopher Lee is the evil King Lico. According to the Wikipedia Lee dubbed his voice in the Italian version but someone else dubbed him in the US version. Italian movies of the time were mostly shot without the sound being recorded live. All the voices are dubbed, even in the Italian version.
Hercules has to go to Hades to retrieve the Stone Of Forgetfulness to revive his love Daianara. He takes Theseus along with him. They hook up with a comic relief machine in the form of some guy called Telemachus. King Lico is planning to take Daianara for his bride when Hercules restores her to her normal state. Hercules has his hands full and he got to put a stop to that prick too. Busy guy.
There's plenty of walking about, some sailing, some feats of strength and a big giant stone guy. There are a few jokes but they aren't that good. It's about as entertaining as these movies get, it's about average for the genre. There's a dded bonus in this one of Chris Lee but he's not in a big chuck of the movie. I guess I'll be watching it again when the Blu-ray comes but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's not interested in the Sword and Sand genre.
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