PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 923

Seobok Project Clone 2021 Written and directed by Lee Yong-ju.

Seobok is a new species of human created by cloning and genetic manipulation. The process gave Seobok some mental powers but the companies goal is to tap into his bodily fluids and use that to create a longevity serum.

Seobok becomes the pawn of the old man who runs the company and one of the people in the intelligence agency who wants to sell Seobok to the Americans. Stuck in the middle is an ex-agent of the intelligence agency called Min who's supposed to get Seobok to his new digs. The transport is attacked by mercenaries and Min and Seobok go on the run. There's some fish out of water stuff and some gun fights along the way to the end of the movie. The factions interested in Seobok battle it out until most everyone is dead.

It's a longish movie, 115 mins, and it takes a while to get going. There's a few action scenes along the way but at it's core it raises questions of ethics in medicine. Is it OK to create a human clone for the purpose of harvesting it's biomass for medicine like an insulin pig and is it OK to kill everyone who opposes your plans. I enjoyed it for the most part but would have enjoyed it more if they had picked up the pace a bit. It's not going to get added to my library unless it's a free download which I probably wouldn't ever get around to again.

The Munsters 2022 Written and directed by Rob Zombie.

It's the Munster's origin story. A mad scientist puts Herman together and sends him out into the world. Herman gets some success as a comedian and meets Lily Gruesella and her father the Count. They get married and Lily's brother Lester tricks Herman into giving away the family castle to the Count's ex-wife. Herman, Lilly and the Count move to Hollywood, winding up at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

There's plenty of gags and slapstick, all briskly paced to keep the story moving. Some of them work well, other's pratfall. I got plenty of laughs from it and will eventually pick up the Blu-ray so I can watch it again someday. I need to re-watch the original show, I haven't seen much of it for years and years.

Friday Night Movies 920

Valley Of The Dead 2020 Based of the novel Noche de difuntos del 38 by Manuel Martín Ferreras, screenplay by Jaime Marques Olarreaga, Alberto Fernández Arregui and Cristian Conti, directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera and Alberto de Toro. Original Spanish title Malnazidos.

It's Spain in 1938, the Spanish Civil War is going on and stink of Nazis is everywhere. The Nazis arrive in a small town while there's a wedding going on. The Nazis kill all the people in the town square. They dump some blue powder on the bodies and take off.

The tall guy with the mustache in the poster is in a bit of trouble, luckily his uncle saves him from the firing squad at the last minute. He's sent on a mission to deliver a message to a general in a bad area. He takes a short cut and runs into a Nazi roadblock. He bullies his way into the area and gets caught by the enemy just as the Nazi experiment fires up a horde of murderous zombies. A small group locals with mixed political and religious views have to pull together to fight off the dead scum.

The group makes their way out of the valley but they're hindered by the rapidly growing zombie pop. One by one most of the characters fall, often with a nice bit of personal glory. It's got a nice bunch of characters and the script gives us just enough of their story before moving along.

There's a great variety of fighting and plenty of explosions. The CGI head shots are a bit samey but some of the other bits of action are well done. It's a 102 mins and it doesn't seen over padded or stogy. I'd be happy to watch it again.

Army Of The Dead 2021  Story by Zack Snyder, screenplay by Zack Snyder, Shay Hatten and Joby Harold, directed by Zack Snyder.

A zombie heist film set in Las Vegas in the near future. A military transport accident released the original zombie and it quickly took over Las Vegas. The army fought them and then walled in the city and left them alone. Six years later it's decided to nuke the place.

Before the big bomb boom an ex-soldier gets asked to sneak into Las Vegas and steal $200,000,000. He can have a quarter to split with his team. Dave Bautista plays the ex-soldier, he doesn't want to go but he wants the money to start a new life for him and his daughter. Moronically he lets his daughter go along on the heist.

Dave gathers a group of people, enters the city and meets up with the locals. There's a good bit of fighting and zombie killing. There's also a good bit of personal story, more than I cared for. It's a 140 min movie and rather indulgent. A good chunk of that run time could have been trimmed to create a leaner meaner movie. The CGI and physical effects are pretty good. I enjoyed the zombie tiger and zombie horse. Some money was spent, $70-90 million according to the Wikipedia. It didn't make any money at the Box Office, only a million smackaroonies from it's short theatrical release. It was popular on Netflix when it appeared there.

There's nothing new here, some guys fighting zombies in areas that look liked video games. I was bored with the dull parts, especially all the character back story. Snip! Snip! I wasn't sorry to have seen it but I wouldn't bother with it again.

Friday Night Movies 917

The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm 1962 Based on the biography The Brothers Grimm by Dr Hermann Gerstner, story by David P Harmon, screenplay by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P Harmon, directed by Harry Levin with George Pal directing the fairy tale sequences.

The film was filmed in three panel Cinerama widescreen. The film hadn't had a US video release since the 1989 VHS and the 1992 Laserdisc. The Wikipedia tells of a bootleg Italian DVD. I know I haven't seen it in decades. I'm sure I saw it on TV as a kid. The film's been restored and presented in two versions, letterbox and Smilebox. We watched the letterbox and the dragon sequence on the Smilebox.

That's the Smilebox. Letterbox below.

Laurence Harvey plays Wilhelm and Karlheinz Böhm plays Jacob, Claire Bloom plays Wilhelm's wife and Barbara Eden plays Greta, a young woman smitten with Jacob. Oskar Homolka plays the Duke and Walter Slezak plays a bookstore owner called Stossel. Other members of the cast that I knew were Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Terry-Thomas, Buddy Hackett, Otto Kruger and Arnold Stang. Stan Freberg does some voices for the Puppetoons puppets.

The Brothers Grimm have taken a writing assignment from the local Duke. They are writing his family history and are nearly at the end of the 6 month project. The Duke is mad because it's not quite finished and he knows Wilhelm has been devoting some of his writing time to the fairy tales he loves so much. The brothers need to get this work done or the Duke won't pay them, he'll toss them out of their house and send them to the debtor's prison.

Wilhelm is a problem, not a practical man, he causes issues, nearly dies and hallucinates fairy tale characters and gives them names. Interspersed with the bio story are three short animated and live action fairy tales. They were nice to watch but the bio stuff was less interesting. I would have liked to see more fairy tales animated instead of incorrect bio info. It's fairly long too, 140 mins.

The Blu-ray looks nice but I'm doubtful I need to add it to my library. I can say the same about our second movie.

Amityville In The Hood 2021 Written by Jeremiah Douglas and Dustin Ferguson, directed by Dustin Ferguson.

Some joker is growing weed in the Amityville house, some guys steal it and take it to California. It's Big M's weed and he follows the weed to Cali. The drug guys have a dust up and kill some people. The weed turns people crazy and they kill other people. Sadly, most of that sort of action takes places off screen. What we have to sit through are some bad actors reading crap dialog from a poorly written script that was never thought through in the first place.

It was hard to sit though without heaping scorn on the film. The movie scores a 1.8 on the IMDb. It's deserving, just about everything about it is poor.

Friday Night Movies 906

Nobody 2021 Written by Derek Kolstad and directed by Ilya Naishuller.

Bob Odenkirk has a shit life until he runs into some scumbags on a bus. He beats some men nearly to death in some bone crunching action scenes. One of the badly damaged thugs is the younger brother of a Russian gang lord. That guy wants some payback, he sends his right hand man to Bob's house. Right hand man brings a few friends. Bob locks his family in the basement and kills most of the intruders before being tasered. Turns out Bob has a past life where he killed people. Bob escapes and goes after the Russian with a bit of help from his father and brother.

An entertaining story with a decent cast and a high body count. I like seeing the baddies get trashed. It starts a bit slow but once the action kicks in it's punch, bang, stab, boom all the way to the end. I'll want to watch it again.

Lethal Force 2001 Written, produced and directed by Alvin Ecarma. It's Alvin's only film and that's not surprising. It's not very good. There's a bad script, no actors, mediocre gore and piss poor action scenes. The only good thing about it was the running time, only 70 mins. Seemed longer. Not one I would need to see at all.

Friday Night Movies 896

Thunder Of Gigantic Serpent 1988 Screenplay by Yao Ching-Kang, Wu Wen-Liang and Godfrey Ho, directed by Lung-Hsu Yu, English version directed by Godfrey Ho. TOGS was created with scenes from a 1984 Taiwanese film called  King Of Snakes and new footage directed by Godfrey Ho. He had the film dubbed in English and we watched it tonight.

A secret military lab has developed a growth serum that makes plants grow huge. The creator is reluctant to let it be tested on animals without more research. An impatient General takes charge the day some criminals attack the lab to steal the formula. The scientists are all killed but one, she manages to escape the baddies and intentionally crashes her car after tossing the formula out in a specimen case. She bales out of the car but is knocked out and taken to a hospital before she can retrieve the formula.

An annoying little girl finds the case and inadvertently uses the formula on her pet snake. It grows to gigantic proportions and slithers around the city, destroying property and eating the locals. The little girl can't understand why the military would want to attack her pet. By this time, a few mins into the movie, we've all come to hate the annoying little girl. We're hoping she gets eaten. We're all down with the snake.

The annoying girl gets chased by the baddies, she escapes and then is kidnapped. She doesn't know anything about the formula and despite constant threats she manages to survive the kidnapping. We were disappointed. It's generally a disappointing film with it's cobbled together story, cliched script, bad dubbing and clumsy special effects. Made me laugh though. You can see it on YouTube, link in the title above.

Death On The Nile 2022 Based on the Agatha Christie novel, screenplay by Michael Green, directed by Kenneth Branagh. It's the second Christie film with Branagh as Hercule Poirot and Tom Bateman as Bouc.

A long flashback to WWI shows us the reason for Poirot's mustache, shrapnel scars below his nose. We jump ahead to 1937 and Poirot is watching a singer in a nightclub. Six weeks pass and Poirot encounters his old friend Bouc at the pyramids in Egypt. Bouc's mother is there, played by Annette Bening. Poirot agrees to go on a cruise with Bouc up the Nile.

There's a long good time spent on the ship meeting all the passengers and being filled in on their melodrama. Inevitably someone is murdered and everyone is stuck on the ship while Poirot works his little grey cells. There's the usual tension among the suspects but no matter, Poirot comes through with the goods.

It's a very gorgeous film, there's plenty of scenery filmed at the golden hour. It almost makes me wish I was boating up the Nile. Hopefully I'm not the one getting murdered. Branagh does a good job of playing Poirot. The script was OK but I didn't think much of the WWI backstory and the final scene which ties back to that. I'd still happily recommend it, there's a good murder mystery and a good cast. Branagh and Green are already in development on a third one. I know I'll watch it again sometime and I've got a Blu-ray in the Agatha Christie section of my collection waiting for that day.

Friday Night Movies 894

Scared To Death 1980 Story by William Malone and Robert Short, screenplay and direction by William Malone. Malone started doing makeup and costuming for Don Post Studios. This is his first picture, he'd go on to direct Creature in 1985 and 5 other pictures including the 1999 remake of House On Haunted Hill. He hasn't made a film since 2008.

There's a serial killer stalking the streets of Los Angeles. When we drop into the story about the time of victim number 12's murder. The police aren't getting any good clues from the crime scenes, the mayor and the newspapers are hounding the Chief. Detective Lou Capell gets some pressure from his boss. Lou wants to bring an ex-cop into the mix but the Chief is against it. The ex-cop is a guy called Ted, he had a drinking problem and now writes novels.

In a clumsy, poorly written scene we meet Jennifer, she's Ted's romantic interest. They get involved with each other as the movie progresses, eventually they join Lou in the search for the killer. Sometime along the way we learn that it's some sort of humanoid monster doing the killing. They get a substantial bit of help from one of the scientist's at a bio-lab and it's revealed that the creature is a bio-engineered thing called a Syngenor. It's one of those hard to kill warrior beasts scientist's are always making in movies and it takes a bit to put the creature down.

It would be an OK monster movie except for two big stumbling blocks, the script and the music. The script is poor and the actors can't do much with it. The actors aren't a stellar lot but they get their lines out. The music is annoying and way too loud some of the time. The Syngenor creature is a fairly well made suit. Ten years later another producer used the suit for his picture Syngenor. Like Scared To Death it's kind of a poor film. Both films have a score of 4.2 on the IMDb. I gave Syngenor a 3 some years ago and I gave Scared To Death a 4 last night. I must be getting soft headed in my old age. You can check them both out on YouTube, links above.

Last Night In Soho 2021 Story by Edgar Wright, screenplay by Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Caims, directed by Edgar Wright. It was the last film for Diana Rigg and Margaret Nolan, both of whom passed away in 2020. Margaret played the gold covered woman in the credits to Goldfinger and Diana played Mrs Peel.

Ellie Turner leaves Cornwall for London to attend the London College Of Fashion. She wants to be a clothing designer. She's heavily into 60s style and music. Her roommate is a jerk so she leaves the dorm and takes a small flat on the top of an old house owned by Ms Collins, played by Diana Rigg. Ms Collins is old enough to have lived in the 60s.

Ellie starts having visions of a young woman from the 60s called Sandie who wanted to be a singer but wound up in the clutches of a creep called Jack. Matt Smith plays Jack and he makes a good spiv. In his first scenes Jack seems like a nice guy who likes a bit of fun, soon his darker exploitative side takes control. Next thing you know Sophie is a prostitute working for Jack and his pals.

Ellie follows Sandie's life and finds that she lived int he flat Ellie is in now. She sees Jack murder Sandie there but can't find anything about the murder in the newspapers. She does find there have been a lot of missing men in the Soho area. We'll find out where they've gone soon enough. Ellie's a poor detective, she misreads what's presented to her, at one point she accuses an old bar fly of being Jack but she soon finds out he was a copper who tried to help some of the local gals. If only she had talked to more people about what was going on, she might not have gotten so far off the track.

The story is jazzed up with flashy camera work and musical numbers. I did like the old 60s songs in the soundtrack. I knew most of them from my youth. I didn't care for the noisy music when the movie thought something was happening. It seems overly long, repetitive and kind of self indulgent. There's a decent twisty bit at the end and things work out for Ellie at fashion school.

I still enjoyed it, gave it a 7 on the IMDb and have put the Blu-ray on my Wishlist. It's hard to know if you would like it, it did poorly at the box office, raising $23 mil on a $43 mil budget.

Skyscrapper 2018

Skyscraper 2018 Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. Rawson's first film was Dodgeball in 2004, I thought it was entertaining enough, as I did We're The Millers. He directed another film with Dwayne Johnson, Central Intelligence, which I've not seen yet. This is more a straight up action film. He's directing Dwayne and Ryan Reynolds in an art related crime film, Red Notice, coming in 2021. Could be good.

Skyscraper is heavy on the visual and it's awash with CGI from top to bottom. There's plenty of gun blasts, explosions and fire. Everyone is in danger much of the time. Dwayne is a security expert, he used to be a cop until a suspect blew Dwayne's foot off. His old co-worker, also involved in the ten year old incident, brings Dwayne into a big project in Hong Kong. A Chinese businessman has built the world's tallest skyscraper. Little does Dwayne know he's just been dropped into the middle of an action film.

He does OK, saves his family and blows the bad guy up real good. I usually enjoy Dwayne in a film, especially when he's all dirty, you know he's been working hard. Poor Dwayne has to work pretty hard to save his family and by the end of the movie he's nearly covered head to toe with soot and other filth. It's a bit above average and worth a look for the action fan. I've got the DVD and I'll watch it again someday.

Vehicle 19 2012

Vehicle 19 2012 Written and directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil.

Pretty much average action film with Paul Walker as a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gets the wrong rental car from the airport and soon finds he's in the middle of a kidnapping. A prosecutor had been kidnapped by a crooked police detective and his gang of scumbos. She's tied up in the trunk because she's got evidence of their criminal activities and she was doomed until Paul came along.

The cops give chase, there's plenty of car racing and gun shooting activity. The movie is shot from inside the car so some of more interesting action bits are made less interesting by that choice. Great to see Paul's stubble though. Sadly the prosecutor gets killed and Paul has to fight his way to the courthouse for the inevitable stand off with the police.

It's no great shakes, I enjoyed it while it was on but it's still barely average. I think the DVD was a dollar at Dollar Tree and that seems like a fair price. I wouldn't need to see it again but I'm going to keep it anyway.

Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears 2020

Miss Fisher And The Crypt Of Tears 2020 The big screen version of the show takes Miss Fisher to Jerusalem where she breaks a Bedouin girl from jail. Miss Fisher is killed on the train ride out of the country but turns up shortly after by landing her plane at her funeral. The Bedouin girl is at the aunt's house under the guardianship of a Sheik who's killed shortly after we meet him. Miss Fisher and her old pal Detective Inspector Jack Robinson do some sleuthing and wind up in Jerusalem again. The eventually find the killer and stop a curse. I didn't care for the movie as much as I was hoping. It's played like a low throttle Indiana Jones but with out the big action. The humor is there and it does look pretty good. I can't say the same for the cover of the DVD, it's got one of the least flattering pictures of Essie Davis I've seen.