PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 909

Iron Mask 2019 Screenplay by Oleg Stepchenko, Dimitry Paltserv and Alexey A Petrukin, directed by Oleg Stepchenko. A Russian Chinese co-production that's a sequel to Forbidden Empire. Starring Jason Flemyng, Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rutget Hauer, Helen Yao and Charles Dance.

 

Titled Тайна печати дракона in Russian, the English translation is Viy 2: Journey To China. Titled 龙牌之谜 in Chinese which translates to The Mystery Of The Dragon Seal in English. It's called The Iron Mask or just Iron Mask in the US.

Jason is a cartographer who's mapping Europe, Russia and China. Along his route he helps a young man who turns out to be a Chinese Princess. Jackie is in prison in the Tower Of London with Tzar Peter I, Arnold is the Warden, he likes a punch up, anyone who beats him can go free. The Tzar escapes and winds up on a ship with Jason's wife. They are bound for China.

The Princess returns to her town to find an evil sorceress is posing as the Princess. There's a lot of leaping about and yelling to get that set right. There's plenty of nice scenery along the journey. It's a nice production but the dialog is kind of poor. I enjoyed the movie and hope they get to release the third film. It's supposed to come out in 2022 but nothing so far.

Amityville In Space 2022 Written and directed by Mark Polonia. Mark had directed over 70 pictures in the last 37 years. From the look of this one he hasn't learned how to make a good movie yet. He seems to be following The Asylum's business plan, make low budget horror movies, make a lot of them, don't worry that they aren't very good. I thought AIS was worse than some of The Asylum's poorer pictures. Mark's a big liar too, there's nothing in the movie that looks like that poster. There is a house in space, it's been exorcised from Earth. You can see it in the trailer in the title above. It's sad looking. Most of the effects are poor.

There's a space ship filled with spacemen and women who are traveling about the galaxy blowing up black holes with bombs. They spot the house near a black hole. A strange humanoid enters the ship and gives the human's hallucinations. A priest comes to help them and some of them live to escape.

We were joking about while watching, there was a complaint that I thought was quite valid, the film makers don't seem to take any steps, even baby ones, to make their movie better. We were coming up with all sorts of ways to improve scenes and ways that wouldn't increase the budget. Is Mark lacking imagination? Could be. I think he just didn't bother. I wouldn't bother watching the film again.

Friday Night Movies 903

Crimes Of The Future 2022 Written and directed by David Cronenberg.

David returns to his love of body horror for the first time since 1999s eXistenZ. The film he made seems to me to be very much in that world and made in that era. I'm not a big fan of eXistenZ and I didn't find COTF to be even as entertaining as that film. Over the years I've come to see Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence as my favorites of all his films. I doubt I'd need to see it again.

The Spine Of Night 2021 Written and directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King.

It took 7 years to make this rotoscoped fantasy adventure. It seems to take a long time to play out it's 93 mins. There's a decent but unoriginal story about creeps seeking power and the people who rise to stop them. It plods along at at one point it was nearly putting me to sleep, I wasn't the only one. I sure don't think I'll need to see this again.

Re-Elected 2020

Re-Elected 2020 Written by Eric Looney and Max Radbill, directed by Max Radbill. I caught this on Amazon Prime, free with membership.

It's a cabin in the woods with zombies film. Some 20 somethings visit the family cabin and the stupid half brother releases three zombies when he reads a cursed copy of the Declaration of Independence. A zombie Washington, Lincoln and Jackson come looking to destroy the document and take over the country. The film is very Evil Dead like but without the talent of Sam Raimi behind the wheel. It's filled with dumb jokes that weren't making me laugh. If I was mean spirited I would say it was poor as fuck. I gave it a 1 on the IMDb. I won't need to see it again. Hopefully I'll forget about it soon.

Friday Night Movies 883

Werewolves Within 2021 Written by Mishna Wolff and directed by Josh Ruben. It's based on a video game that the Wikipedia says was set in the middle ages.

A forest ranger Finn comes to his new assignment as a snowstorm snows in the tiny village of Beaverfield. Finn meets up with various town people like Cecily the mail lady, Trisha and her creepy hubby Pete, Devon and his hubby Joaquim, Gwen and her hubby Marcus, lodge owner Jeanine and her hubby Dave. Also in town is developer Sam, he's the reason people are divided in the town, some want to sell out and let the pipeline takeover the town, others don't, they need a unanimous vote to let the pipeline go through.

Cecily tricks him into dropping a parcel off at isolationist Emerson's despite knowing that the man is prone to shooting at people. Finn manages to get away. That evening there's a power outage and the people find out that all their generators are damaged. They congregate in the lodge where they are attacked by a quick moving creature. Pete has his hand bitten off and Gwen manages to shoot him while she's taking wild potshots at the creature. It's all downhill from there as one after another are picked off. 

It's a fairly fun film with some nice scenery. The cast were mostly good. There's a few gags and I liked the main character. Still, I don't think I would need to see it again so I'm not going to buy a copy.

Steel Dawn 1987 Written by Doug Lefler and directed by Lance Hool. Hool's son Brett plays the young boy in the movie. Hool's father Conrad was a producer on the film. The film was filmed in Dead Vlei, Namib-Naukluft, Namibia.

Patrick Swayze is a drifter in a post-apoc world that's all desert. He gets involved with a woman and her son. She's running a water reclamation farm near a small hovel based town. Patrick's real life wife Lisa Niemi plays the water farmer. Brion James plays Lisa's main handyman on the farm.

Anthony Zerbe plays the local baddie. Like every western he's after the valley and he's got a gang of thugs to threaten people out of their farms. Lisa isn't having any of it but Anthony has a violent streak. Poor Brion gets murdered and Lisa and her son get kidnapped. Patrick comes to rescue them. After he walks off into the distance.

It's barely average story wise and they managed to make the desert less interesting than I thought it should be. It kind of dragged during the personal melodrama. We all did like the dog and thought he should have been in the movie more. Another that I won't bother to pick up.

Friday Night Movies 878

Resident Evil Welcome To Racoon City 2021 Written and directed by Johannes Roberts. I'd seen Johannes 2011 TV movie Roadkill, I gave it a 4 on the IMDb. It's the only movie of his I've seen, the others on his IMDb page don't look that interesting.

This is a reboot of the story from the video game. In this new start we get a bit of backstory about Claire Redfield and her brother Chris. As children they were taken care of by the Umbrella Corp. The Umbrella orphanage is run by Dr Birkin, Claire ran away when he wanted to experiment on her, her brother stayed with Dr Birkin and as an adult he's a local cop. Claire has been gone from Racoon City for all these years and it's been 5 years since Chris heard from her.

Claire shows up on the worst night, the Umbrella Corp has nearly abandoned Racoon City since the place has become contaminated by their experiments. At 6 am they plan to blow the Umbrella Corp complex and cover up their crimes with a giant hole in the city. Claire wants to encourage her brother to leave the city but he's not listening and heads for the police station. Claire is attacked by the neighbors so she runs off with Chris's motorcycle. The police station is attacked by the zombies and the corporation has barricaded the town to contain the outbreak.

There's a lot of running and shooting, there are zombies everywhere. Most of the characters we meet are killed and turned to zombies. There's plenty of gore and CGI, most of it fairly decent. I enjoyed it enough to pick up the Blu-ray today at Target. I'll want to watch it again someday, mostly as an afterthought when watching the whole series again.

The Mad Doctor 1940 Early drafts of the film, titled The Monster and Destiny, were written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur though they get no screen credit. The screenplay is by Howard J Green and it's directed by Tim Whelan.

Basil Rathbone is a doctor in a small town, he murders his wife for her money and leaves town a month later. A local doctor, played by Ralph Morgan, took Basil at his word that she died of pneumonia, he signed off on the death certificate without examining the body. He has suspicions but doesn't want to believe anything is wrong.

Basil moves to New York with his pal Martin Kosleck. Both men are wanted in Vienna for a double murder and Martin is loyal to Basil for saving him from the gallows. Their relationship is one of the more interesting in the film. Before Basil murdered his current wife he murdered another wife in Savanna.

In New York Basil sets up as a psychiatrist, he meets Ellen Drew, a rich single woman with what appears to be depression. She nearly jumps off a balcony and Basil saves her. He helps her with her problems and woes her at the same time. Ellen's ex-fiance, John Howard, learns of Basil's past and tries to save her from being murdered.

I liked a lot of the film, especially the rain soaked opening credits. Both films tonight had a rainy opening sequence. Basil and Martin are an interesting pair of psychopaths. Basil is dominant, Martin just isn't a thinker, he makes bad mistakes when left to his own devices. I almost wish it was developed more but wishing something was different in a film is a waste of time.

There's a good mystery and the investigation is fairly well handed, the romantic scenes between Basil and Ellen were much less interesting, they could use a bit of 1.5 speed. I'm getting old, I haven't got a much time to waste on twaddle like that. There were complaints of a lot of coincidences in the last act. It might be why Howard J Green isn't a better known screenwriter. Still, I had a more positive experience than a negative one and I'd watch the film again for the good bits.

You can see a fairly decent copy of the film on YouTube, see link above. There is a recently released DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I'm putting it on my wish list in anticipation of an upcoming Kino sale. I'm curious about the commentary.

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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 Movies 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.