PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 615

Mutator 1989 Lynn Rose Higgins and Gerald A Rose wrote the story, Lynn wrote the screenplay, it was directed by John R Bowey. The only actors I recognized were Brion James and Embeth Davidtz. I'm certainly a Brion fan.

It's pretty standard fare in the mutated monster genre but not that clever or well made. Brion goes to work as a security guard in the HQ of a large corporation. He meets the guys and learns that there had been a big escape in the summer, none of the mutated cats have been seen since. One of the guards believes they are still out there but the other two aren't believing him. The viewers had already seen what happened to the guy that Brion's replacing in the opening credits, a guard is stalked and slashed in the face by some unseen beast.

Since it's Brion's first day all hell breaks loose. Luckily the guard room has a big arsenal of guns. Brion's trapped in the building with 3 guards, the head of the company, and three animal rights activists who have broken in to release animals. One of the activists is the head honcho's daughter. It's all one from column A and two from column B here. I did have a laugh or two but that isn't enough to get it to above average. There's a copy on YouTube, link in title, but it's missing the opening credits segment that shows the guy that Brion replaces getting attacked. The copy I have from YouTube is a few months old and it's complete but it's also gone. Who would give two hoots about that movie to have it taken down?

The Rocket Man 1954 Story by George W George and George F Slavin, screenplay by Lenny Bruce and Jack Henley, directed by Oscar Rudolph.

Spring Byington is Justice Amelia Brown and Charles Coburn is Mayor Ed Johnson, they live in a the small town of Carlisle. George "Foghorn" Winslow plays an orphan boy called Timmy. When the movie opens he's with all the boys watching a special presentation by Captain Talray and the Outer Spacers. They're actors from a TV show, they put on a bit of a show, they've got a rocket prop with them, it smokes. At the end of the show they hand out toys to the kids. Timmy wants a ray guy but there were only two planes left. A spaceman materializes in a puff of smoke and no one notices. All of  sudden there's a ray gun in the empty box.

Timmy goes off with his ray gun and saves a boys life by halting a speeding car before it runs over a kid who's fallen in the road. Driving the car is Emory Parnell, he's Big Bill Watkins, a crooked politician from the area. Amelia tosses him into jail for ten days. For some reason he wants the orphanage that Timmy lives in. He gets one of his lawyers, John Agar, to put in a bid for him. John meets the lovely June Brown, played by Anne Francis, and falls like a ton of bricks. He turns against Big Bill.

With the help of the magical ray gun, most everything goes against Big Bill and that made me laugh a few times. It's a bit corny, hokey and a bit old fashion but it's was entertaining and I liked all the characters. I happy to see it and would recommend it to most anyone. There's a so-so copy on YouTube in 3 parts. The version I downloaded was all one file but it seems it's not there anymore. The 3 part copy has been up for 2 years, go figure. Part one, two, three.

Friday Night Movies 816

The Shadow Of The Cat 1961 Written by George Baxt and directed by John Gilling. A Hammer Film Production distributed by Universal International in the US.

A wealthy woman is murdered by the butler and buried in the swampy area of the estate. He's been promised a chunk of cash by the husband. The cook is in on the deal. They claim the wife left and the husband wants the police to find her.

The only witness to the crime is the cat Tabitha who quickly puts the frighteners into the trio. They try to capture the cat but she's too smart for them. The husband had made the wife sign a new will leaving all her money to him. For some reason he wants to find the old will and destroy that. Not sure why, no one outside the house would even know about the old will unless the trio told them about it.

A niece is invited to visit so the husband can keep an eye on her. She can't understand why they are all so afraid of the cat, even after it tries attacking them over and over. The body count rises as the truth comes out.

Fairly entertaining and a bit humorous. I would watch it again. You can see it on Daily Motion (see link in title), or download with the Firefox download app, there's a nicer copy you can download from the Rarelust blog.

Sabaka 1954 Written and directed by Frank Ferrin.

A film made more interesting by June Foray playing the baddie. She's the head of a Fire Cult that intimidates people into giving them cash to stay safe. Don't want your house burning down in the middle of the night? Pay up. Nico Marcel plays a young elephant handler named Gunga who's friends with the Maharajah, played by Lou Krugman. Reginald Denny plays a British guy called Sir Cedric. Other actors you might know are Victor Jory, Jay Novello, Lisa Howard, Peter Coe and Vito Scotti.

Most of those actors were part of the cast of a TV show called Andy's Gang, it was written and directed by Frank Ferrin. The character Gunga appeared on the show in serial segments set in India. The scenes with the Hollywood actors aren't shot in India, the stuff is India mostly travel footage or stock footage cut into the Hollywood shot stuff. I wonder if they feature is made up of parts of the serial but have no info on it. I didn't find much with a look at the Wikipedia or the IMDb.

It's somewhat enjoyable for what it is but it's not that good. You can check it out at the link in the titles above.

Seven Cities Of Gold 1955 Based on the novel by Isabelle Gibson Ziegler, screenplay by Richard L Breen and John C Higgins, directed by Robert D Webb.

A Spanish expedition comes to California looking for the legendary 7 cities of gold. Michael Rennie plays a Franciscan priest called Father Junipero Serra, he's been sent to establish missions in the area. He went onto establish a while bunch of missions in California. He was made a Saint.

In the modern day the Father's statues have been decapitated and/or sprayed with red paint, as current as October 2020. Not a popular guy among some, they deplore his forcing Native Americans to convert. The film portrays Serra as a gentle man but it's a Hollywood bio pic and not necessarily accurate. He was all for treating the locals like ignorant children who needed a beating now and again to be kept in line.

Anthony Quinn is the Captain of the ground expedition, he has to lead a troop through some hostile territory. Richard Egan is his Lt, later he has a rough time with the locals. He'd like nothing more than shooting a few of them to make them understand the power of muskets. When it comes to a fight the guns weren't that great a protection.

Eventually the Spanish prevail and many missions were built. The damage was done to NA culture, often the outcome when invaded, people are still mad today.

Not a bad movie but flawed by it's white washing of the past. Another that was more interesting for what it is than the story it tells.

Red Peony Gambler 8 Execution Of Duty 1972

Red Peony Gambler 8 Execution Of Duty 1972 Written by Kôji Takada, directed by Buichi Saitô.

Oryu visits Osaka to pay respect to a dying lady boss. The old lady divides her empire between two sons and that doesn't go down well with the more punk ass bitch one. He betrays the family for a yakuza headman who the other brother once slashed in the face. A war breaks out and the baddies get wiped out in a big ass fight at the end of the film.

Sadly there are no more in the series. I found this as entertaining as the previous 7 and would be glad to see them again. The whole set is on the Rarelust blog.

Red Peony Gambler 7 I'm Here To Kill You 1971

Red Peony Gambler 7 I'm Here To Kill You 1971 Screenplay by Tai Katô and Norifumi Suzuki, direction by Tai Katô.

Oryu finds herself in the middle of a battle between the villagers and corrupt officials. The village has a lead mine that's of military importance. The trouble is the polluted water and air are killing the rice crops so the villagers are starving. The company sends them some money but the corrupt officials decide to steal it and cover their tracks by killing anyone they can get away with.

That plan only goes so far before Oryu pushes back hard. She gets some help from Tomisaburô Wakayama and others. There's a fair bit of comedy when Tomisaburô shows up, a nice break from all the drama that's been going on. There's some real bastards for villains, it was nice to see them sliced when the end comes, they were total selfish pricks. Some days a guy could wish some kimono wearing lady would sort things out a bit. Almost done the series, one to go. Great so far.

Cave Of The Living Dead 1964

Cave Of The Living Dead 1964 Screenplay by Kurt Roecken (under the name C V Rock), directed by Ákos Ráthonyi (under the name Akos von Ratony). That's the US title of Night Of The Vampires, a German and Yugoslavian production.

A series of murders bring an Interpol detective to a small village with a famous grotto. The only bit of a clue is that the power goes out about the same time as the murders happen. He settles into the inn and in the night the woman in the next room to the inspector is killed. There's a vampire like bite on her neck but the doctor says it's heart failure. The inn keeper says it's vampires. We'd already seen a black costumed character sneak into the woman's room so we know something sinister is going on.

The detective starts investigating and gets some help in fighting vampires from a local old lady. He soon gets in invite to stay at the local castle by a professor who had arrived only 6 months ago. The professor is a bit of a dick but being in the castle eventually leads the detective to the solution of the murders.

I thought it was entertaining and some above average. I found a copy on YouTube that looks good enough to watch. Check the link in the title above.

The Cycle Savages 1969

The Cycle Savages 1969 Written and directed by Bill Brame. It's the second film on the Midnite Movies DVD with Angel Unchained. Bruce Dern is a creep, he's part of a motorcycle gang of like minded garbage. People in the town are terrified of them and the cops are pretty weak ass. An artist sketches the gang at play and gets roughed up for it. That isn't enough in Bruce's tiny paranoid mind, he wants to cripple the artist's hands. That'll stop him. There's other bits of raping and looting going on and eventually some vengeance against the gang is delivered. It's a bit unpleasant and not that well made. It's not better than average for a biker movie. Neither of these are great but AU is more watchable.

Science Fiction Sunday 614

Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970 Director Pierre Chevalier co-wrote the story and screenplay with Juan Fortuny. Pierre directed 29 films in his 30 year career and this was number 17. You'd think after than many films he'd have learned something about making a film. Sure can't see any of his skill showing here and that's taking into consideration that the version I watched from YouTube has been edited down by several mins. The scenes that are left just fail on their own.

In France it was called La vie amoureuse de l'homme invisible and that translates to The Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The Canadian English title, dubbed version, was Secret Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The US poster used the title Love Life Of The Invisible Man. A lot of the foreign titles seem to be a version of The Invisible Dead, which was the UK title. Someone ought to get knocked in the nut sack for all those title changes, I suspect a lot of someones need a touch of Paul Naschy's fleshless skull. 

It's a period piece about a doctor's encounter with a mad scientist called Orloff. He lives in a nearby castle and his name is abhorred by the locals. A young boy comes with a message from the shunned castle, someone is requesting the new doctor come up to the castle to see a sick person. The doctor has a bit of a hard time getting there but eventually he does get to see Orloff's daughter. She's worried because she's seeing things moving on their own, she thinks there's an invisible man in the castle.

There really is an invisible creature, that's him above, Orloff tells the doctor he created him, then he locks the doctor in his dungeon. Orloff is zonkers, he's got delusions of his invisible creatures taking over the world. The doctor escapes and tries to rescue the daughter, she uses flour to see if the beast is following. In the scene the screencap is from the doctor throws flour on the beast. It's a bit of a let down.

Mostly it seems like a pale Jess Franco film, there's some fair bit of nudity, some flagellation, but no hot lesbian action like Jess has a tendency to drift toward when he's working. The film stumbles around and eventually ends in flames. The castle is burning with fire and I'm burning with exasperation. What a piece of boring poop. Give it miss. I watched a 75 min version on YouTube, link above, and you can see that it's got a huge logo plastered over that lady's ass. It's not there all the time but it is annoying when it's on screen for 10 mins or more. I didn't mind the film being shorter than the version over on Rarelust, it's a 4 GB download that I wasn't interested in bothering with. There's a DVD version but the cheap one, at $12, isn't as long as the expensive one at$38, the Blu-Ray is even costlier at $48. I can't imagine wasting money on that when there are other things to waste money on.

Murder In Space 1985 Written by Wesley Ferguson, directed by Steven Hillard Stern. A Canadian film for the CTV Television Network that had an accompanying contest to guess the killer. Most of the film was shown and people could call in to guess who did it. The conclusion of the film was shown several days later. There was a $60,000 prize. That seemed like that also could be the budget for the film. That poster is a lie, no one gets spaced.

Michael Ironside heads a 9 person crew on a mission to Mars. They've been gone 5 months and on the trip back a woman gets murdered. A lady Russian scientist is suffocated and it's found she's two months pregnant. She's married to a member of the government who's known to be vengeful and murderous. Three more people die before they get back to Earth. It's as much political thriller and murder mystery and investigations into the crew bring up all sorts of interesting back story.

Wilford Brimley is the head of the space project, Arthur Hill is the Vice President, Martin Balsam is the Russian liaison to the project. I don't think I recognized any of the other cast members. It's sort of interesting but it's not quite good enough to be much more than average. You can see it on YouTube in the link in the title above.

Metropolis 1927 Colorized version with English dialog. I started watching the fan edit version (see link above) but had to bail after about 20 mins because the English dubbed dialog was so annoying. I didn't mind the rather pastel colorization but the script was a buggin'! I kind of skipped through it and got to the end pretty quickly.

There's a more interesting looking colorized version here but it's title cards are in German. You can see the B&W restored version of the film on YouTube. It's a version, with English title cards, that you can buy on DVD or Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Looks pretty good. Watch that instead.

Friday Night Movies 815

Birds Of Prey 2019 Written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan. Plenty of rock'em sock'em action as Harley Quinn sets out to make her own life now that the Joker and her have split. Trouble is, there's a lot of people who want to do HQ in and now that she's got no protection from the clown guy, she's up shit's creek. At least she has that hyena. A missing diamond and a huge fortune hidden inside it bring Harley and the soon to be Birds of Prey together as they team up to protect the teenage girl pickpocket who's swallowed the diamond. There's one fight after another as the various people vie for the diamond. Eventually it's got a fairly happy ending. Well, not for some of the scumbags, they're ending was just an ending. It had a good number of jokes and some of them made me laugh. I'd buy the DVD but someone was nice enough to pass on the DVD out of their Blu-ray. I'll want to watch it again someday. Much more entertaining that the recentish HQ movie Suicide Squad.

Satan's Black Wedding 1976 Nick Millard wrote and directed the film under the name Philip Miller. Nick has 59 directing credits on the IMDb, many of them under another name, none familiar to me. It scores an amazing 4.8 on the IMDb and this time it's not top loaded, it gets a lot of 5s, 27.8% of the 241 votes. I have put it down at a 2 and that might be a bit harsh but if I wanted to see a travelogue I'd have watched one. So much of the 61 minute movie is people walking or driving in cars. It's not nice scenery either, even the 3 min walk on the beach is tedious and dull. A guy comes to some town to go to his sister's funeral and falls victim to a clutch of Satan worshiping vampires. On top of that he's got a weak script and limp direction. What a piss poor movie. Nick needs some tender nut knocking from the fleshless skull of Paul Naschy. That'll take your breath away Nick, let me tell you.

Addams Family Reunion 1998

Addams Family Reunion 1998 Absolutely awful.

Halloween With The New Addams Family 1977

Halloween With The New Addams Family 1977 Screenplay by George Tibbles, direction by David Steinmetz. George is a veteran writer who started writing an episode of The Betty White Show in 1954, over the years he wrote hundreds of TV episodes for shows like Dennis The Menace, Leave It To Beaver, The Musters, Family Affair, My Three Sons, One Day At A Time and The Partridge Family. He wrote right up to his death in 1987. This is the only listed credit for David on the IMDb.

John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, Ted Cassidy, Lisa Loring, Ken Weatherwax and Felix Silla all play their original parts from the 1960s TV show. Halloween is on the family and Gomez has a conflict. He's been invited by his lodge to Tombstone Arizona. Gomez's brother Pancho is staying with the family. There's a gang of crooks that want to rob the family safe. They've got cameras in the place but haven't figured out where the safe is located. They send in one crook dressed as a city inspector, Vito Scotti plays the guy, he barely gets out of the place alive.

The family is hosting a big Halloween party, the crooks sneak in to the party in disguise and look for the safe. They all suffer mental and physical damage from members of the family. Sadly, all the mayhem, yelling and physical violence isn't enough without good jokes. It's a poor movie, even with a happy ending. I guess it's the reason that no one has put it out on DVD. There was a VHS. I watched a copy on YouTube but can't really recommend it. I'll stick to the original TV series and some of the movies.