PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 1040

Nosferatu 2024 Based on Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror by Henrick Galeen and Dracula by Bram Stoker, screenplay and direction by Robert Eggers. It's his fourth movie, I've only seen his first movie, The Witch and I didn't like that much. I compared it to eating a worm. I've not watched his two other movies, The Lighthouse or The Northman, not wanting to eat another worm. I was interested in Nosferatu despite the mixed comments on the IMDb.

Ellen Hutter is the wife of Thomas Hutter, she's got a bit of a fatal supernatural attraction. She was lonely as a child and a supernatural being contacted her mentally and made her his eternal slave. The being is Count Orlok and he's a despicable creature who sucks the blood out of people's chests. He never called again but he's always kept Ellen in his cold black heart until she married in 1838. Ellen is still bothered by disturbing dreams, ones she's had since her first contact with the supernatural beast. Orlok contacts an estate agent and has them send Thomas to Transylvania with a deed to a ruined manor house in the German town of Wisburg. Thomas travels from Germany to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania by horse, a 6 week journey. Ellen doesn't want him to go but he thinks this will give him a better standing in the firm and put some well needed cash in his pocket.

The Count puts the fear of Orlok in Thomas after he arrives. Thomas attacks the  Count and tries to kill him. Orlok is strong and fight back. Thomas escapes the castle by falling into the river, he survives and is befriended by some nuns. After recovering he leaves and heads for home. Orlok in the meantime has taken a ship on a roundabout route to northern German. I suspect it's for the onboard buffet, by horse and carriage would be a more complicated journey. The ship arrives in Wisburg and brings the plague with it. People in the town are dying by the dozens. Orlok starts sucking on Ellen's chest and killing the locals.

Lots of horrible stuff goes on in Wisburg, Thomas returns home to find the plague has killed off many locals. Orlok is taken to the manor house by Thomas's boss. The poor man is nearly insane. Ellen and Dr von Franz figure out a way to kill Orlok. The deed is done at great sacrifice.

I liked the movie more than I did The Witch. It looks great but it's a tad long and could use some noise abatement. Ending a scene with a big rise in volume is something I find more annoying than scary. I'm not sold enough to go buy a copy as I might never get around to it again. It does remind me to avoid marrying a possessed woman. Nothing but trouble.

Crash! 1976 Written by Marc Marais and directed by Charles Band.

Jose Ferrer is married to Sue Lyon, he's a partial invalid and she's much younger. He blames her for his condition and makes her life miserable. He uses occult means to drive her car off the road. She's hurt and unconscious when they police find her. John Ericson is the doctor at the hospital. She wakes but has lost her memory. Before the accident Sue had picked up an odd figure at a flea market. It's got some sort of powers and it later gives Sue the ability to control the car she was driving. It turns into a killing machine, riding around driver-less, forcing people off the road. All the cars seem filled with high octane aviation fuel. They explode with great fireballs. Later she possesses a wheelchair to kill Jose's doberman, the dog had attacked her and caused the accident in which she was hurt. Jose tries to kill her at the hospital, he fails but manages to escape unseen. John gets his nurse to hide her at her house.

There's a lot of running about and car chases mixed with some investigations into the occult. The movie is 84 mins long but it's pretty padded to get to that running time. There's a long sequence near the end where they show all the car crashes in fuzzyvision. The crashes and the explosions are fairly entertaining but the story is kind of weak. The cast is OK but no one stands out. I enjoyed some of it but it's not enough to make me want to buy a copy.

The Red 2024

The Red 2024 Written by Richard Barcaricchio and Ryan Coonan, directed by Ryan Coonan. An Australian movie that was called Rippy in the US.

A zombie kangaroo terrorizes a small town. The bodies are piling up and the sheriff in charge has to fight the beast with rather limited resources and the legacy of her dead father weighing her down. 

When I first saw the trailer I was hoping for something akin to Cocaine Bear. The film doesn't live up to that level of entertainment. It's somewhat lacking in humor, like it's a drama before it's a horror movie. It scores a 4.1 on the IMDb, I gave it a 5, I wasn't able to convince myself it was worth a 6. I wouldn't need to buy this one, doubt I'd watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 1030

Hellboy: The Crooked Man 2024 Based on The Crooked Man by Mike Mignola, screenplay by Christopher Golden, Mike Mignola and Brian Taylor, directed by Brian Taylor. The comic was written by Mignola and illustrated by Richard Corben. It's an entertaining story and Richard's art is great.

Hellboy, Bobbie Jo Song and another agent are guarding a box in a box car. Inside the box is a size changing supernatural spider. It gets agitated and busts out of the box, Hellboy gives it a beating and the car bounces off the track. The spider escapes and Hellboy and Bobbie Jo give chase. The other agent didn't make it. They find themselves in a small community in the Appalachian Mountains and get involved with the locals. Turns out the place is filled with witches and pals of the devil. Things don't go so well after that.

Hellboy and Bobbie Jo pal up with a young man called Tom Ferrell and a witch called Cora Fisher, they hang out in Cora's house. A bad witch called Effie Kolb comes by with Tom's father, she'd turned him into a horse and ridden him around for years. Transformed back into a man, the father soon dies. Tom wants to bury him in consecrated ground at a nearby church. The trouble that area is home to The Crooked Man, an agent of the Devil. Hellboy battles the evil man and that's quite enjoyable.

I found the whole film entertaining and one of the best adaptions of the Mignola comics. More than any of the live action films that preceded this. We watched the 4K from Australia which some say is the better transfer. The film had a budget of $20 mill but only made $2 mill at the box office. Critics dumped on the film and the public didn't watch it. Too bad for them. I was happy to watch it and I'll want to watch it again so I'll order the Blu-ray.

Blood Suckers 1971 Based on the novel Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven, screenplay by Julian More, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. The film has had a lot of titles over it's life, it's a mess of trickery. I've seen three other Hartford-Davis films: The Sandwich Man, Gonks Go Beat and The Black Torment. I thought they were better than this one. I have another, Corruption with Peter Cushing. I should remind myself to watch that some time soon. The film is part of the Cushing Curiosities box set from Severin.

Richard is a young don at a fictional Oxford college. He'd gone to Greece to study, he's late in returning and no one's heard from him. His friends travel to Greece, among them his possible fiancee Penelope. They find he's fallen in with a bad crowd who have wild parties, take drugs and have sex orgies. During the 10 min long psychedelic sex orgy a woman is stabbed repeatedly and dumped in some bushes.

Chriseis is the head of the bad crowd, she's the worst sort of person, her hobbies include wild dancing and murdering. She's got some hold over Richard. We also find out Richard is impotent, he can't participate in the orgy. Sad. Richard had come to Greece hoping to find his manhood. He didn't get his end away, he got turned into a vampire instead.

Chriseis has taken Richard to a castle where she plans to kill another woman. Richard's friends chase after and rescue him from Chriseis. They return him to the UK where he's supposed to marry Penelope and graduate. He botches both of those plans when he calls Penelope's father a thief who's come to steal your souls at the graduation ceremony, a bit later he kills Penelope by chomping on her neck. The friends chase Richard over the college roofs until he falls off the building. Lucky for Richard he impales himself on the big iron spike of a convenient fence. Richard's pals return to Greece to stake Chriseis.

It's a mess of a film, apparently it ran out of money and many things weren't filmed. This version has the most material of any past version and it's only 87 mins. The commentary by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons fills in a lot of detail behind the scenes. They speculate that the 10 min orgy is edited for maximum length to pad out the film. I sort of enjoyed the film but can't believe I'll get back to it soon. There's plenty of nice scenery when they are in Greece. Saturday morning I'm listening to the commentary and mostly enjoying that. There are some info filled interviews that I liked.

Science Fiction Sunday 826

Metamorphosis 2022 Directed by Liangyan Chen. The film and the IMDb list no writer. An Asian dinochomp film that's mostly people running in corridors.

A scientist has created a T-rex that can turn invisible. It gets out when the cleaning lady opens the cage to clean up the meat blobs on the floor. The beasty pops into view and gobbles her up right quick. Given free range of the lab the T-Rex starts chomping on the other scientists. People run around yelling and trying to escape.

Besides the T-Rex there are two giant snakes to run away from. Hardly anyone survives but it's not overly gorey. It's like a PG rated film, maybe it was made for TV. It scores 4.8 on the IMDb. I gave it a 3 because of the giant snakes. They were entertaining. The story on it's own would get a 2 from me.

Danger! Danger! 2021 Written and directed by Lexie Findarlee Trivundza and Nick Trivundza. A time travel movie with too little time travel and too much blather.

A guy parachutes onto a tiny island near Africa. He hopes to find a time machine in a temple. Trouble is there are Nazis there looking for the same device. He gets shot by the Nazis and rescued by a couple of Americans. He manages to find the machine and the movie ends like it's part one.

It scores a surprising 2.8 on the IMDb, I gave it a 3 but only because of all the nice location shooting at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park. I love that place, I don't care for the movie that much. I'm not going to watch it again, that's for sure. This one was on free with membership on Amazon Prime.

Friday Night Movies 1025

The Keep 1983 Based on the novel by F Paul Wilson, screenplay and direction by Micheal Mann. We watched the new 4K of the film from Vinegar Syndrome. Both versions are already sold out. It's not been available on DVD or Blu-ray in the US before this.

I had seen the movie on Amazon Prime back in 2016 and maybe on VHS when that was a thing. I linked the 2016 post in the title above. The version on the Blu-ray is the 96 min theatrical version, Mann had delivered a 3.5 hour version but Paramount wanted it cut to 2 hours. That was cut to 96 mins after testing poorly with audiences. The cut parts of the movie weren't available to restore it.

Nazis take over a keep in the Carpathian Mountains. They are warned not to stay there overnight by the locals but Captain Woermann, played by Jurgen Prochnow, doesn't heed the villagers. His men see some T shaped nickel bars embedded in the wall of the keep, they think they're silver. Ignoring their captains orders to leave them alone a couple of the soldiers pry one out and release some evil. They die screaming and others follow. Sturmbannfuhrer Erich Kaempffer shows up with some more men and slaughters a few of the locals. He thinks partisans have been murdering the soldiers but we know it's not. The soldiers struggle with the evil and eventually all the men are wiped out.

There's a couple of subplots, one concerning a Jewish scholar and his daughter and another with the village priest. The evil entity wants the scholar to remove a talisman from the keep, that action will allow the evil entity to escape into the world. Scott Glenn plays a being that put the evil entity into the keep. He returns to keep him there. The scholar and his daughter manage to survive the battle. The remaining villagers help them escape.

I didn't think I needed to see the movie again back in 2016 and I was probably right. The image looks good but the sound is a big weak point. The Tangerine Dream score is way too loud. The film volume is fine for conversation but once the music kicks in it's like a fistful of knives stabbing your brain. In 2016 I thought the TD score was good, now, not so much.

Adult Swim Yule Log 2022 Written and directed by Casper Kelly. I never heard of this or the creator. He did a lot of work on various cartoons and on Adult Swim, most of which I have never watched. There's a sequel that aired December 6 this year.

A couple book a mountain cabin from Air B&B only to have the local sheriff tell them be to on the watch for a killer. Hubby doesn't believe there's a killer in the area but we know he's there, hiding in the cabin, we'd seen him murder the cabin's cleaner. The sheriff also tells them the limb the hubby is burning in the fire place was cut off the local hanging tree. It's supposed to be haunted and it is, in spades.

The arrival of 4 podcasters reveals that the booking company has double booked the place, rather than leave the cabin all of them decide to share the place. The killer makes an appearance again, he's called Pleatherface and he's got his mom with him. Pleatherface is looking for a wife, sadly all the women he's met so far haven't survived the mating. One by one the tourists are picked off, some by Pleatherface, some by the animated burning log that bashes their heads in. It's a good reminder not to rent an Air B&B in the woods.

It gets more and more crazy as aliens pop in for a visit and the fireplace is revealed to be an portal to evil, past and present. No one  survives  the night and we were mostly entertained. I don't plan to pick up a copy but I might want to see it some again someday. Some would get a kick out of it.

Friday Night Movies 1023

Frankie Freako 2024 Written and directed by Steven Kostanski. It's produced by Astron-6. We watched the Shout! Factory Blu-ray.

The movie is set in the 80s. An annoying uptight yuppie called Coner has an encounter with an freaky alien from another dimension after calling a party hotline. Coner wakes up the next morning with the house trashed. Lucky for him his wife is out of the house for a couple of days. She's returning home today and he has to figure how to clean up the place before her return. Unfortunately Frankie Freako and his two pals are still around. On top of that more aliens are coming.

It's a whirlwind of noise and debris. It's got plenty of fun bits and nice special effects and great stop motion. I just found Coner way too annoying to like him. I still didn't warm to him after the surprise ending. It's all made me rather less likely to pick up the Blu-ray, especially at the current $25 price.

I've enjoyed several of Steven's other films and enjoyed them more than this movie. I've put it on my Wish List but I'm thinking it will be on there a long time. I think it'll be a while until I get to needing to see it again. I'd really should watch Manborg, Pyscho Goreman, Leprechaun Returns, The Editor or Father's Day again. I'd be interested in seeing his forthcoming reboot of Deathstalker.

Suitable Flesh 2023 Based on the HP Lovecraft story The Thing On The Doorstep, screenplay by Dennis Paoli, directed by Joe Lynch.

An entity steals people's bodies to remain alive. Heather Graham and Barbara Crampton are psychiatrists who find themselves in the middle of a struggle for their bodies with Bruce Davidson and Judah Lewis. Both the psychiatrists are terrible at their jobs and the story isn't very much like a Lovecraft story. It could be any sort of demon or alien getting it's body stealing going on.

I didn't care that much for it, it's long, slow and frustrating. Hardly anyone watching was on board with all the palaver going on between the characters. It gets less interesting as the movie plays out. I was just glad it was over and I could go home.

Friday Night Movies 1011

M3GAN 2022 Story by Akela Cooper and James Wan, screenplay by Akela Cooper, directed by Gerald Johnstone. An American New Zealand that was filmed in both countries.

A little girl called Cady is the only survivor of a snowy car crash, she goes to live with her aunt Gemma. The aunt works for a electronic toy company who have a talking fur ball. Gemma wants to step up the robotic doll and she secretly works on M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), a robot doll that bonds with the child and guides it. 

Of course it's only a short time before M3GAN learns how to be more human. She kills the neighbor's dog after it bites Cady, then the neighbor, more will bodies follow. Don't buy your child a robotic companion, that's what I got from the movie.

I didn't care for the characters that much and the personal drama dominates the story. Now that I've seen it I'm guessing I wouldn't bother watching it again.

Nécrologies 2018 Written and directed by Fabien Chombart, Guilaume Defare, Nathalie Eqoque, François Message and Alexis Wawerka. A French anthology film with 5 short films and a framing story.

A guy is taking selfies in a graveyard in the middle of the night. The caretaker catches him and takes him to the office to call the cops. The caretaker winds up telling the guy some stories about the dead in the graveyard, at one point the guy tells one of his own.

The first couple of weren't too bad but the middle act nearly put me to sleep, it picks up a bit at the end. Another I probably wouldn't bother re-watching.

Friday Night Movies 1010

Doomed Metropolis 2 The Last War 1989 Based on the novel Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Armata, screenplay by Kaizo Hayashi, directed by Takashige Ichise. A sequel to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis which we watched last November 2023.

The first movie ended in 1927, the sequel starts in 1945, it's near the end of the war and the American's are fire bombing Toyko. A Buddhist priest plans to curse the Allied leaders with magic. Before that gets to happen the spirits of the local dead revive the evil demon Kato. That's him on the poster, he's the baddie from the first movie.

Kato attacks the locals and some of them fight back. A young man, a nurse and a little blind girl, all with psychic powers, take on Kato. The nurse had encountered Kato as a child and still bears the damage. The young man nearly dies fighting Kato. The shaman realizing that Japan is losing the war attacks Hitler. The nurse prays to seal Kato away.

There's a fair bit going on but it's told so slowly it becomes rather dull. The recreation of WW2 era Tokyo looks pretty good and the cast is fine. The effects people did a good job. I'm sad I didn't like it more. You can test drive a copy of the movie on YouTube. Link above.

Sky Sharks 2020 Written by Marc Fehse, A D Morel and Carsten Fehse, directed by Marc Fehse.

A German SF comedy film about a secret Nazi ship frozen in the Antarctic ice since WW2. The ship housed a secret Nazi lab that was reanimating dead Nazi soldiers. The dead men would be zombied up then be given genetically modified flying sharks for steeds. The Nazi soldiers attack air planes, kill the passengers and crash the planes. A team of soldiers has to put a stop to the Nazi plan of world domination.

There's plenty of over the top Nazi action and the effects are pretty entertaining. The effects are by DigiTale Studios, they are known for their work on Game Of Thrones. Sadly the action packed beginning phases out for non-stop explanation which sucks the life out of the room. Everyone was complaining after a good half hour of this. There's more action in the last act but by then I was less responsive than I would have liked. I enjoyed most of the movie but not enough to go buy the Blu-ray. I might not want to see it again.

Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched 2021

Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched - A History Of Folk Horror 2021 Written and directed by Kier-La Janisse. A documentary on folk horror films. Severn put out the film as a separate release and packaged it in a box called All The Hunts Be Ours with 19 folk horror films in December 2021. I'd recommend getting the film or the box set when there's a sale on, the box is normally $170, on sale it was $125. That's still pricey but it's packed with plenty of extras, over 15 hours worth.

I finally picked up the set, on sale, and watched the documentary. It's long, 191 mins, but entertaining, at least to this film fan. The movie interviews around 50 film makers and people who write about film. The movie looks at over 200 films, TV plays and episodes. I've seen quite a good number of the films mentioned but there are way more I haven't seen. I'll get a chance to see 19 more of them with the box set. Some films get their own disc but most have to share with a pal. I'd only seen one movie of the lot, Viy, but had no physical release of that.

Here's the list of films in the box:

• WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED 192 mins
• EYES OF FIRE 86 mins
• LEPTIRICA 65 mins
• WITCHHAMMER 107 mins
• VIY 76 mins
• LAKE OF THE DEAD 77 mins
• TILBURY 57 mins
• THE DREAMING 90 mins
• KADAICHA 88 mins
• CELIA 103 mins
• ALISON'S BIRTHDAY 99 mins
• WILCZYCA 103 mins
• LOKIS: A MANUSCRIPT OF PROFESSOR WITTEMBACH 100 mins
• CLEARCUT 98 mins
• IL DEMONIO 100 mins
• DARK WATERS 89 mins
• A FIELD IN ENGLAND 90 mins
• ANCHORESS 108 mins
• PENDA'S FEN 90 mins
• ROBIN REDBREAST 76 mins

Science Fiction Sunday 805

Jurassic Triangle 2024 Written by Harry Boxley and directed by Victor De Almeida. There's nothing in the movie that is as good as that poster. The CGI is especially low budget and awkward.

A portal to another dimension appears in the sky. A helicopter full of people passes through it and winds up somewhere else. It's a place with dinosaurs, some based on real dinos, some imaginary bitey scuttley things. Everyone gets killed because the pilot was trying to find his daughter, she was a previous victim of the portal. They find her long dead body just before the movie ends so it was all for nothing. That's what I feel about the movie, it's all for nothing. Lucky for me my failing memory will wipe it from my noggin. I recommend staying away, it might linger in your memory and you'd only have yourself to blame.

The Loch Ness Horror 2023 Written and directed by Tyler-James. Another poster filled with lies. Nothing in the movie looks that good.

Just about everything about this movie is poor, the script, the dialog, the actors, plot devices. You name it's bad, except for the ship. It looks a real ship. The unrealistic bit about the ship is that 3 or 4 people are going to run it along with a few scientists. As the movie starts a submarine is attacked and goes off line without us knowing for sure what happened. A corporate type sends 4 people to take a big ship out to sea with a handful of other characters like a medic and a guy who runs the submersible.

The crew turn out to be gun toting psychos that have been secretly told to kill the beast. It's such a cliche move it's embarrassing. It continues in that same vein to the Gorgo like ending of the movie. Nothing original, nothing to elevate the film, nothing to make me more entertained than the slight amount I get from complaining. Another one I should have given a miss.

The Black Demon 2023 Story by Carlos Cisco, screenplay by Boise Esquerra, direction by Adrian Grünberg. The movie is set in Mexico but it was filmed in the Dominican Republic.

A man and his family are on a vacation trip in Mexico, the man is an inspector for an oil company. He's a bad man, falsifying records of poor working conditions and bad safety habits, the company gives him lots of money to cover stuff up. He's got to take an afternoon out of his vacation to inspect an offshore well just a short way from the town.

They find the town nearly empty and everyone is hostile to them. He goes out the ship and the family stay in the town. Things continue to go downhill as the man finds out there's a giant megalodon attacking the well. The townie's pick on the family and chase them to the shore. A man takes them out to the boat, he leaves them and runs, the shark eats him a short way from the well. Ha ha.

The man discovers he's being set up for poor practices by the company, they've set a bomb to go off while he's there, he uses it to destroy the shark, sacrificing himself to save the others.

Another cliche ridden film. The acting was better than the script. The CGI was at the lower end of acceptable. I enjoyed it more than the previous two but I wouldn't need to see it again.

All three of these were in the free section of Amazon Prime. I'm not including links, can't be arsed, you shouldn't watch these anyway.