PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movie 874

The Thing Below 2004 Written by Raul Inglis and Keith Shaw (under the name Lindsay James), directed by Jim Wynorski under the name Jay Andrews. According to the IMDb Jim left the production before the special effects were done. They sucked and that might be why he changed his name credit.

A substance was brought up from a deep sea drilling project. No one's sure what it is so they send a sample to another location by ship. The stupid people in charge are idiots and in a big hurry, they send the ship out in a severe storm. The jar containing the substance is broken in a classic display of bad lab safety. The dark mass turns into an intelligent telepathic murdering mass of tentacles. The transport ship goes missing.

The Captain of the missing ship has a brother who has a ship. The brother goes to the rescue and finds the missing ship, the Captain is the only one left alive on his ship. They leave the ship and travel to the oil rig to see if anyone is left alive. Hardly anyone is and some more of them die.

Sadly it's all pretty poorly written, with plenty of cliches and coincidences mouthed by all sorts of cartoon cutout characters. The CGI of the ship on the sea and the creature are both really poor. I thought I hadn't seen it but my Watched Movie List says I had, four years ago almost to the day, probably something on Amazon Prime. Totally forgettable, shouldn't have watched it the first time, let alone today.

Censor 2021 Director Prano Bailey-Bond co-wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher. Prano is Welsh and it's her first feature film, she'd directed some shorts a few years ago.

Niamh Algar plays Enid, she works at the British Board of Film Classification in 1985. There was a big stink back then as people reacted to some of the more nasty horror films coming out on VHS. Some were nicknamed Video Nasties and video shops would rent out these movies for anyone to watch. There was a group for decency working to ban these horrible films and the authorities helped. Business's were raided and prosecuted. You can read more at the link above.

Enid and her co-workers watch the videos to classify them and recommend censoring the film where needed. Some films are simply beyond the pale and they get banned. Most of the films have been released uncut in the UK in recent years.

The video nasties are really the set dressing for the stage where Enid rapidly loses her mind and becomes a homicidal psychopath. It all stems from Enid's missing sister, lost when they were children. Enid took her into the woods and then couldn't remember what happened to her. It's caused a big rift between her and her parents. They've declared the sister dead but Enid clings onto to the belief that she might still be alive.

Enid watches a film that has a scene that appears similar to the memory of her trip into the woods with her sister. She finds another film by the same director and becomes fixated on an actress, thinking she looks like her sister grown up. A visit to the producer ends poorly to say the least and a visit to the set of the film the actress is currently working on ends with even more slaughter.

Decent into madness films aren't always the ones that I want to watch but I'd rather watch this than the one with the what are you looking at guy. It's quite well made with a good cast but I don't have any urge to watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it's current average, I might have given it a 7 but it yelled in my face and that's so rude.

Friday Night Movie 873

The Awakening 2011 Director Nick Murphy co-wrote the script with Stephen Volk.

Rebecca Hall plays a woman ghost debunker in post WWI London, she doesn't believe in them and she finds out the hard way that she's wrong. Dominic West is a teacher in a boy's boarding school, he asks Rebecca to come to his school and find out if they really have a ghost. They do.

There's a few scares but some of the nasty activity is man made, the young boy who died off screen was really killed when a disturbing teacher, who shouldn't be teaching anyone, locked him outside to toughen him up, the kid had a fatal asthma attack. Much of the staff seems messed up, the grounds keeper is a mentally deficient cowardly rapist who tries to kill Rebecca. The school's head housekeeper is played by Imelda Staunton, she's one of the most disturbed of the lot.

Sadly they ruin a good ghost story with all sorts of personal melodrama, not much happens while they spend a lot of time on figuring out what's behind Rebecca's miserable life. Not something that appealed to me that much. I wouldn't need to see it again.

The Day Of Destruction 2020 Written and directed by Toshiaki Toyoda. The movie is a scant 57 mins so we watched the even shorter prequel Wolf's Calling from 2019. There's a third short in the Resurrection Trilogy, Go Seppuku Yourselves from 2021. We didn't see that.

A monster lives in a old coal mine and it's created some mental issues in the people who live there. The story is told in a disjointed way with little by way of clues as to what's going on. Think art film with a noisy annoying soundtrack.

Some guy, commenting on the IMDb, says the three films are an angry response to the pandemic and the government's handling of the situation. I couldn't tell that from what's on screen. The films we saw look good but it's not enough, I'm looking for a story I can get my head around. Enigmatic personal stories just don't cut it for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

It Came From Below 2021

It Came From Below 2021 Written by Dan Allen and Sam Ashurst, directed by Dan Allen. A British horror film that turned up on the Internet Archive briefly.

A young woman and her brother take two other stupid people into a cave to look for the monster that killed their father. They go unprepared, no food, no rope, no guns, no water, no brains. They get slaughtered when the monster comes out. Supposedly he's an alien who got trapped on Earth and lives underground. Nothing to support that other than a vague story told poorly.

I know caves are supposed to be dark but if you can't see anything it's not much of a scene. Way too much wobble cam and quick cutting really brings the score down on the IMDb for me. Add that other fatal flaw, the poor soundtrack, noises loud, dialog soft, hard to know what they're saying without subtitles. I gave it a generous 2, as opposed to giving it a vindictive 1. I'd give it a miss if I knew what I know now.

Super Hot 2021

Super Hot 2021 Written and directed by Taylor King. A young Indy director who has a small production company in Charlotte NC with his father. I've not seen any of his previous work.

The lady with the super soaker is Kandace Kale, this is her only credit on the IMDb. Kandace doesn't seem to have much emotional range, she rides that deadpan face through the whole movie, and she speaks in a dull monotone. Kandace hangs out with her 2 nerdy friends. I liked those two better, they had more ability in their acting. The movie spends a good bit of the first act proving their genre credits. We find out Kandace has a bit of crush on Carmen, the girl across the street from her house, and that leads Kandace and her friends into the clutches of some vampire models who want to stay young and beautiful forever.

The head vampire lady has a book that has a spell to resurrect Dracula into a host body. They need a virgin to sacrifice. Kandace believes that Carmen is going to be the sacrifice. Kandace and her pals attempt a rescue mission but that fails and one of the vampires goes after them.

The guy on the lower right side of the poster is Warren Van Helsing. He turns up just in time to blast the vampire lady attacking Kandace and her pals. They team up to fight the vampires. Despite being terrible at the job they have some positive results. I enjoyed Warren, he turns up at the right time, sadly, he wasn't much better at killing vampires as the nerds were. Still, he might have a chance to shine, the movie claims that he'll return, with Dracula, in a sequel.

I though the movie was fun enough but lacking in memorable gags. I watched it on Amazon Prime, it doesn't seem to be on DVD. No matter, I wouldn't be buying it anyway, I don't need to see it again.

Hawk & Rev: Vampire Slayers 2020

Hawk & Rev: Vampire Slayers 2020 Written and directed by Ryan Barton-Grimley, who also plays Hawk. Watched on Amazon Prime.

A silly comedy that slowly grew on me. Hawk's annoying and has a problem fitting in world. He's a security guard who believes there are vampires and it turns out there are. The vampires aren't the ones he thought they were, but he'll soon find out who the bitey guys are. The cast is fairly good and their characters are all rather quirky. There's a bit of gore, some it quite amusing, but it's not overly violent. Some of the CGI blood is weak. I got a few laughs out of it and enjoyed the film for the most part. I might buy a DVD, if it was cheap enough, but it just seems to be available on streaming platforms. I'd recommend it to the horror comedy fan. You might get a laugh out of it too.

American Sasquatch 2020

American Sasquatch 2020 Written by Matthew Fisher, directed by Matthew Fisher and Tony Newton.

A sad, low budget Bigfoot movie with a poster that has a better monster than what was delivered on screen. The IMDb says that the estimated budget was $10,000 and all I could think was, "they sure aren't getting much of it on screen". Much of the movie is talking heads talking about the possible sighting of a Bigfoot in the UK. You'd think that with all the leprechauns, fairies, boggarts, unicorns, trolls and other British mythical creatures there wouldn't be room for a Bigfoot but there does seem to be one in the movie. He keeps killing the people looking for him and all that I could think was, "at least they aren't making videos anymore." I found the movie on the Internet Archive but I couldn't recommend it to anyone.

Friday Night Movies 845

Cult Of The Damned 1969 Kino Lorber DVD that was originally titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go. Written and directed by Robert Thom. Around 1960 Thom wrote a play for his wife Janice Rule. It never got produced so he changed it into a screenplay and sold it to Sam Katzman who got finance from AIP. They were the producers of the Thom scripted Wild In The Streets.

It's Thom's only directing job but he'd written several films that you might have heard of: All The Fine Young Cannibals, The Subterraneans, Wild In The Streets, Bloody Mama and Death Race 2000. Most people into genre films probably have seen the last picture but hardly any of his other work. Probably good in the aggregate. I've only seen the last three and don't plan to bother with the others.

Wild In The Streets is a bit of a cult classic but it's a big ol' mess of a movie. Cult Of The Damned is an even bigger mess and it's tedious to boot. WITS had a good song, The Shape Of Things To Come, and COTD has Angel, Angel, Down We Go. It's an absolutely appalling song and later in the movie there's another song, by the same band, that's even worse.

Holly Near plays the overweight and neurotic adult daughter of a rich guy and his wife. Jennifer Jones plays the mother and Charles Aidman plays the father. The parents are an awful pair of abusers and manipulators. Jordan Christopher is the lead singer in a band that was hired to play at Holly's 18th birthday bash and coming out party. Holly runs off with Jordan and his band. They have some adventures and Jordon seduces her parents. Lou Rawls, Davey Davidson and Roddy McDowall play Jordan's band members and friends. None of them are very interesting, they aren't the sort of people I would like to hang around with. All their tedious and pretentious antics are slathered in psychedelic claptrap and crap pop songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

The IMDb calls it a crime drama. What are they on about? See if you can spot any crimes, other than the film being presented to the public, by watching it. A link to a fair copy on YouTube is in the title above but be warned, the movie did crap at the box office and Holly Near called it "trash". To be fair to the film the family thinks Holly had been kidnapped even though there's no indication of it. Mom wants to go to the police but dad doesn't want any publicity, he's got his own detectives on the case. That's just the sort of writing that might have made the Los Angeles Times call it "a pretentious mess" although "it can never be said to bore." I say, "Oh yes, it can!" They tried releasing it the following year under the Cult Of The Damned title in a double bill with The Vampire Lovers. The Los Angeles Times said it was "a terrible piece of trash." It's the same LA Times reviewer, Kevin Thomas, which made me think that his first viewing might still be bothering him a year later. I thought it was also possible he's mad that they tried to fool the public with a re-title of the film. It's certainly something that annoys me. With all the trash talk I still wouldn't like to see the movie tossed into the circular file. It's good to see these sort of films, if only to appreciate a well made film.

Monster Hunter 2020 Written and directed by Paul W S Anderson. Based on a Capcom video game.

Milla Jovovich plays a US Army Ranger Captain, head of UN team that's searching for a team lost in the desert. Milla's team gets overtaken by a big desert storm that forces them through a portal to a new world with giant monsters. After the team is decimated Milla teams up with Tony Jaa, a native of the new world. He'd gotten separated from his own team of monster hunters when he was thrown from their ship. Ron Perlman is the head of Tony's team, he's in the opening scene and doesn't show up again until the third act. I would have liked more Ron.

There's plenty of monster fighting and it's loud and bombastic. At times I was wishing they had dialed it back a bit but there you go, it seems there's always a new 11. After Ron turns up we get a much better idea of what goes on in the new world and why there should be a sequel. It's got a nice look to it and a wicked sense of humor.  The new world is a beautiful place, much of it was filmed in Namibia and South Africa, but it's filled with horrible giant bitey things, so, not much of a tourist destination in my mind. I enjoyed the thing and would watch it again someday. I'll put the Blu-ray on my Wishlist and keep an eye out for a nice price decrease.

Friday Night Movies 841

Possessor 2020 Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Andrea Risenborough works as an assassin, Jennifer Jason Leigh is her handler. They have a process, they kidnap people, put a chip in their brains, Andrea takes over the host body and uses it to kill her target. After the hit is done all she has to do is kill the loaner body and jump back into her body. It seems an inefficient process, the kidnapping business and killing two for the price of one, but it does eliminate the assassin making a mistake and leaving a trace of evidence on the scene.

As the movie open Andrea is on the job and rather than shoot the target she knifes the man and stabs him repeatedly. Then she can't kill the host, instead letting the police shoot her down. Jennifer is a bit worried on that but there's a big job in the offing and she wants Andrea to do it. Andrea's having some mental issues from from being inside those other heads so much and Jennifer would really like to see her disassociate herself from her husband and son.

The hit on the rich guy and his daughter starts with the kidnapping of the daughter's fiance. He works for the father who really doesn't care for him. The remote controlled fiance starts a short program of odd activity with the family which might explain why he cracked and killed father and daughter. Andrea gets through some of the day to day pretty well and does the hit. The daughter dies but daddy is in a comma. To top that fail, Andrea can't force her host to kill himself.

The fiance's personality becomes aware of her presence and disables the chip, now she's trapped in his head. The fiance battles with Andrea for control and things get worse and worse. Jennifer sends a guy to help but the fiance kills him. Andrea's family suffers the same fate when the fiance visits them. The fiance kills the husband and Jennifer uses the process to take over Andrea's son and uses him to stab the fiance, the son is killed before the fiance dies. Now Jennifer's got her main assassin free of that pesky family stone around her neck.

It's a fairly good movie about some really horrible people. My only complaint is the evil corp, not a fan of that overused plot element. I'm not going to rush out to buy the Blu-ray, I'm unlikely to ever want to watch it again. I'd be more likely to order our second movie.

Uncle Peckerhead 2020 I watched this last December on Amazon Prime and posted about it here. Other's hadn't seen it and they enjoyed it as much as I did seeing it again. I've got the Blu-ray on my Amazon Wish List and hope to see the price fall a bit.

Friday Night Movies 839

VFW 2019 Screenplay by Max Braillier and Matthew McArdle, directed by Joe Begos.

Stephen Lang is the bartender at the VFW post, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly and George Wendt are his old Army pals. They come to the bar to drink and hang out. It's nothing special but it's a place for them. That all gets interrupted by the arrival of a young girl, she's stolen a big bag of drugs from a psychopath drug dealer. He sees her run off with the stash and sends his younger brother and a few henchmen to get her back.

The thugs rush the bar and David Patrick Kelly goes down with an axe in the shoulder, nearly all the thugs are killed including the psychopath's little brother. The psychopath sends an small horde of fucked up drug addicts to kill them. There's plenty of action, oodles of body parts hacked and sent flying. It's a battle to the end and hardly anyone comes out alive at the end.

I enjoyed it, a good solid action film with a great cast. It had a nice, dark sense of humor, good gore, and a great score. My only complaint is the action was in the fast jump cutting style and I'm not as big a fan of that. I'd still watch it again. Worth a look for the fans of that sort of thing.

Psycho Goreman 2020 I watched it a month or so ago and posted about it on FNM. It's still funny and Mimi is still an asshole.

Friday Night Movies 837

Pixels 2015 Story by Tim Herlihy, screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, directed by Chris Columbus. I have a box of DVDs waiting to be watched for the first time. Tonight I stuck my had in the box of discs and pulled out one at random. I couldn't find a good sized copy of the cover to the DVD via Google so grabbed the one on Amazon. The IMDb has posters of movies but they've changed their web page to only allow screen captures of the images posted to their page. Annoying, it now takes longer to grab an image. I noticed that the DVD was only $3.74 on Amazon and the Blu-ray a tenner. You can pick up a used copy for $1.96, costs more than double for shipping.

The movie opens in the 80s and the early arcade games were all the range among the kids. A trio of kids are competing in an arcade championship, they grow up to be the adults in the film Adam Sandler is a home-theater installer and Kevin James is the President of the United States. The arcade action was recorded and put in a capsule that was launched into space. It seems aliens have found the capsule and interpreted the recording as a call for war. Now it's on. The attackers come in the form of 80s arcade game images.

It's that connection to the arcade that pulls Adam into Kevin's world after a military base on Guam is attacked by the video game Galaga. They soon find a message from the Aliens telling them that this is the first challenge for the rights to the Earth. Adam gets a hand from Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage.

There's a bit of romance between Michelle Monaghan and Adam, Josh meets the love of his life, a character from a video game. There's plenty of giant arcade play as the attacks start happening. A giant Pac-Man roams the streets of New York. Eventually the Earth is saved and all is well enough.

It made me laugh occasionally and I was happy to have seen it. I'd want to watch it again someday. I keep meaning to watch all my favorite Adam Sandler movies in a marathon but there's so much I still haven't watched.

Tremors: Shrieker Island 2020 Written by Brian Brightly and Don Michael Paul, directed by John Michael Paul. This is the 7th Tremors film, JMP is the director of Tremors 5: Bloodlines and the 6th film Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell. I've not seen any of his other films except for Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy. The rest don't seem to interest me much.

A billionaire hunting enthusiast has had four graboids grown and placed on his island. He's set up a hunting party for other rich assholes. Of course, those guys are in over their head and one by one his paying customers get chomped on by one of my favorite tunneling monsters. Also on the island are some seismic researchers, Caroline Langrishe is in charge and Jon Heder is the comic relief. Caroline is also the mother of Bert Gummer's son, Bert is of course played by Michael Gross, his son Travis is played by Jamie Kennedy in the 5th and 6th films.  Travis is in jail so Caroline sends Jon to round up his father. Bert's gone native and living in the wilderness. Still, he comes and takes on his old enemy.

The hunters do manage to mortally wound the graboid they encountered but it gets tougher and tougher to survive against the graboids and shriekers. The later have developed a new shriek that incapacitates the humans. Things look better once Bert arrives but soon enough the rich douche bag in charge has locked him up in an old bunker. Some people are so arrogant they deserve to get eaten by graboids. There's plenty of running and screaming. Just what you don't need with graboids around.

The movie looks great, during the day there are lush tropical forests and plenty of explosions, at night the scenes are lit with flames and explosions. Who ever was doing the flame effects was really good at their job. One by one the monsters are defeated, finally the last beast is left and it's a bitter sweet moment as Bert disappears into the flying dirt. Michael Gross has said he'd like to do another movie but he's 73 and it could be a couple more years before it happens and he might be too old to do the action stuff.  I enjoyed the movie and thought it was a nice addition to the series. Kind of wraps it up but still leaves a door open.