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.

Alienated 2021

Alienated 2021 Written by Darryl Anka and Erica Jordan, directed by Darryl Anka.

A guy with OCD and father issues falls for a quirky artist who's an alien. I had issues with his father too, the actor playing him is using a terrible Irish accent that annoyed the hell out of me every time I heard it. The acting in general is weak.

The script needs a bit of a punch up, for a romantic comedy there just aren't enough good jokes. The whole film is below average for me. I started skipping 5 seconds ahead, especially when little is happening. I watched this on Amazon Prime and they don't have a 1.5 speed option in their video player. A major fault in my eye. Some of the free films AP offer aren't worth spending their whole running time with them. Life is short, I don't have time to waste.

Friday Night Movies 892

Dune 2021 Based on the Frank Herbert novel, screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth, directed by by Denis Villeneuve.

We only watched Dune today. Bed early, maybe.

The movie was noisy and dusty. I mostly liked it but for the sound. Much of the dialog was too quiet and much of the music was too loud. Nice scenery and CGI effects. I wished there were more bits with the sandworm.

When it was done I thought I would like to see the David Lynch version again. I bought the Arrow Blu-ray and didn't have a working Blu-ray then. Now I do. I need to pull that off the shelves. Same with the TV version.

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.

Friday Night Movies 875

Prisoners Of The Ghostland 2021 Written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, directed by Sion Sono.

Post apocalypse world after a nuclear waste accident. It's all stylized and noisy and colorful. The story is nothing more than Nick Cage being forced to rescue a woman for a warlord. There's plenty of staring into the middle distance and some fights. Nick gets one of his nuts blown off. Sucks to be him.

It was entertaining sometimes, dull sometimes, funny sometimes, annoying sometimes. Glad to have seen it but doubt I would pick one up.

Frankenstein's Daughter 1958 Written by H E Barrie, directed by Richard E Cunha. We watched the new Blu-ray from The Film Detective. It looks quite nice.

 

A sad old scientist works in his home lab with an assistant. Felix Maurice Locher plays the old scientist and Donald Murphy plays Oliver Frank, the assistant, who turns out to be a direct descendant of the original Dr Frankenstein. Dr Frank has a secret room off the lab and he's building his own creature. He's also experimenting with a serum that makes people ugly, he's given it to the old scientist's daughter. She escapes the house and after running about the street scaring people she returns home to pass out on her bed. She only has hazy memories of the night.

 

Sandra Knight plays the daughter and John Ashley plays her boyfriend. Wolfe Barzell plays the Igor character and Harry Wilson plays the monster. They call the monster a woman because they used a woman's brain. Sadly, the makeup man didn't know the creature was supposed to be female. There wasn't any more money to redo the make up but they did put some lipstick on the lips. Same say that Cunha saw the mask and cried. I don't blame him.

The creature gets out and terrorizes the town. The police come and things don't go well for several people. It's entertaining while being below average. I'm not sure I'll buy the FD disc, I might not want to see it that often. I'll put it on my Wishlist. Who knows.

Love And Monsters 2020

Love And Monsters 2020 Story by Brian Duffield, screenplay by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson, directed by Michael Matthews.

A large asteroid is headed for the Earth, warheads are launched and the resultant fallout turns cold blooded critters into giant monsters. Ninety-five percent of the population is killed in a short while, survivors hold up best they can. We meet Joel when the trouble starts, he's 17 and in love with Aimee, they get separated and 7 years later Joel finds her again. She's in another colony and it's only 85 miles away from his colony. Joel decides he's going to visit Aimee, even though he's the least likely of anyone in the colony to survive in the outdoors.

Joel befriends a nice Australian Kelpie he calls Boy, then he runs into Clyde and Minnow. Lucky for Joel, they are seasoned surface travelers and decent people. They teach him some travel survival rules. There's a nice variety of large carnivorous beasties out there and they run into a good number of them. Clyde and Minnow toughen up Joel and improve his aim with a crossbow. When they separate he's much better at surviving. He gets to Aimee's colony only to find her colony in jeopardy.

I came to like Joel and Boy, they would make good traveling companions in the post-apocalypse world. There's a fair bit of action and a good bit of talking and walking. I liked the monsters, the CGI was quite good. The location shooting was quite nice to look at, they filmed in Australia, plenty of lush forest and beautiful beaches. I had fun watching it and that's the best thing I can say about it. I picked up the Blu-ray after seeing the crab scene, I'll want to watch this again. There's a couple of making of videos and some deleted scenes for extras.

The Intergalactic Adventures Of Max Cloud 2020

The Intergalactic Adventures Of Max Cloud 2020 Written by Sally Collett and Martin Owen, directed by Martin Owen. A British movie that's a bit of a love letter to the the side scrolling video games of 30 years ago.

The young woman in the poster is Sarah, she's played by Isabelle Allen, she's a gamer who gets transported into the Max Cloud video game. She becomes Jake, the chef on Max's ship, he's the guy on the left side of the picture above, he's played by Elliot James Langridge. Max is the guy next to him, he's played by Scott Adkins, I just watched him in a movie last night. The cowboy looking guy is Brock Donnelly, he's a baddie played by Tommy Flanagan. The lady on the right is Sally Collett, she plays Rexy, like Sarah, she's been brought into the video game. John Hannah plays Revengor, he plays the boss that's got to be beat at the end of the game.

Sarah hopes that by winning she can get released from the game, the problem is she's only got one life, the game won't pause, and her pal Cowboy is playing for her. He's not a very good gamer and that nearly puts an end to poor Sarah. Don't worry she'll be fine. She gets some help from an unexpected source.

It's a pretty silly movie, while still being fairly clever. I liked the characters and the mix of live action and video game. A good bit of the action is depicted in game format but mostly it's live action on a set. The production values were fairly good and the sets entertaining, their cheapness fits the style of the period game. There are good number of gags, some were funny to me, some were less funny. I might not have gotten the joke, or they just weren't that good. They poke fun at heroes, sidekicks and gender roles in games. Those jokes were easy to get but some might have a dim view of them. The rating spread on the IMDb is kind of interesting. Just over a third of the votes are in the 5-7 range but it's overall score is only a 4.8, I think it should be higher than that. No matter, I still enjoyed it, I'd recommend it to the person who might like a video game parody. I'd even watch it again but doubt I'll buy the video. Maybe if it gets cheap enough, it's just fairly new.

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.

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021 Story by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields, screenplay by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, directed by Adan Wingard.

Godzilla surfaces and attacks an Apex Cybernetics facility in Florida. A conspiracy theorist called Bernie thinks that's something is going on at that location. He's gotten a job there so he can spy on the company. He finds a dodgy shipping order in his search but isn't sure what it means. During the attack he stumbles onto a powerful device but has to leave because of Godzilla stomping about. Bernie joins up with one of his listeners and her pal to sneak into the Florida Alex location. They get shipped to Hong Kong in a secret underground transport system.

The Apex CEO hires Alexander Skarsgård to lead an expedition to the Hollow Earth. They take Kong along, he's sedated and lying on a barge. Godzilla attacks to convoy of ships, there's a massive punch up and big G puts Kong down. Alexander saves the ships from further attack by shutting down all the ships and pretending to be dead. The CEO believes Kong came from the HE. Turns out he was right. A good thing for the human's in their fancy high tech helicopters. Kong beats down some giant flying beasties that chomped on one of the fancy choppers. Lucky for us, the stars of the movie where in another chopper. It's dangerous working in corporate America.

CEO guy sent his daughter with the expedition to HE. She's a ruthless cold hearted type that comes to a bad end, at least from her POV, I was kind of digging the fire ball created by her chopper as it was crushed by Kong. Back in Hong Kong, the conspiracy trio have chanced upon a test of Mechagodzilla. Turns out that CEO guy is there and he's large and in charge. Godzilla pops up and opens a tunnel to the Hollow Earth. Kong and Godzilla yell at each other until Kong jumps into the hole and lands in Hong Kong. There's some big battle scenes and more people and places succumb to the monster mash. Eventually it's all sorted and Kong and his pals on on vacation until the next sequel.

Mostly entertaining but seems long winded even at 113 mins. There's a Blu-ray due in a couple of weeks, that should look better than the version I found online. I'll order one after the price falls a bit. I'd want to see it again.