PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 674

Doctor Who 0059 The Daemons Five part story that aired May 22 to June 19 1971. Written by Guy Leopold and directed by Christopher Barry.

The story has another encounter with The Master, this time he's playing a vicar in a small town. There's something unusual buried there that The Master is interested in, it turns out to be an alien spaceship with a giant Devil like alien. He's been under the dirt for 100,000 years and his past appearances have created the Devil myth.

I wound up liking the story a bit better than I did in 2013 partially because I've come to like Jon Pertwee's Doctor quite a bit. He's usually quite entertaining. He's still annoying too.

Doctor Who 0060 Day Of The Daleks Four part story that aired January 1 to 22 1972. Written by Louis Marks and directed by Paul Bernard.

The Daleks are a nice change from The Master. The Daleks have taken over the Earth but 200 years in the Doctor's future. Rebels send some men back to kill a guy, they hope to change the time line and stop the wars that reduced the humans to their vulnerable state. The Doctor jumps right in to set thing straight.

There's plenty of stuff going on and I enjoyed the Doctor running about. There's plenty of gun battles and explosions. I enjoyed it about as much as I did back in 2013. I just skimmed through a bit of the revamped serial. The BBC added some poor CGI to jazz up the images and did a bit of story tampering. Neither were needed.

The Invisible Maniac 1990

The Invisible Maniac 1990 Written and directed by Adam Rifkin under the pseudonym Rif Coogan. It's Adam's third movie, he followed it with my favorite of his films The Dark Backward. Some of his early films stood out from the crowd and I've followed his career much more than many other film makers.

A repressed boy grows up to be a sexually repressed scientist named Dornwinkle. His mother caught him spying on his neighbor getting undressed when he was a young boy and she let him know how naughty and evil women are. As an adult he goes mad at a science conference when his invisibility serum doesn't work. Some of the scientists laugh at him and he kills four of them. Dornwinkle is sent to the State Institution for the Criminally Insane, six months later he escapes and gets a job teaching science at a high school.

Dornwinkle is harassed by some of the students and it makes him angry. He's perfected his invisibility serum but it has some side effects. The principal of the school, played by Stephanie Blake, tries to seduce Dornwinkle but he doesn't want any part of it, things turn ugly and the poor principal gets murdered. It's just the start of a spree as Dornwinkle takes out his revenge on the student body.

It's rough around the edges, a bit sick and pretty over the top but it's filled with laughs. Not the kind of film everyone is going to like but there you go. Sadly there's no legit DVD release out, there are bootlegs but I haven't bothered with one. You can see it on YouTube, link above. You can find a better copy to download at RareLust.

Naughty School Girls 1975

 

Naughty School Girls 1975 Written by Alonzo Pye and directed by Jean-Paul Scardino. The Blazer Girls seems to be the original title, the copy on YouTube I found has the Naughty School Girls title.

A comedy set in a private girls school, five girls want to raise $500 by selling their virginity at a $100 each. It's pretty typical of it's genre, there's a goofy story, a fair bit of nudity and some sexier bits. The jokes are so-so but the girls are cute. It's about average. You can see a so-so print on YouTube, it's watchable, but should you. Depends on how much time you've got left. YouTube has a plethora of these type of films, I haven't seen many of them, some might be better than this.

Friday Night Movies 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.

The Silent Partner 1978

The Silent Partner 1978 Based on the novel Think Of A Number by Anders Bodelsen, screenplay by Curtis Hanson, directed by Daryl Duke. A Canadian movie shot and set in Toronto.

Elliott Gould is a bank teller who discovers a hold up note on a deposit slip. He suspects someone is going to rob the bank and got scared away. Turns out he was right, Christopher Plummer, working as a mall Santa, has the plan. It works too, he gets a bag of money from Elliot and gets away. Christopher is really pissed when he finds that Elliott has glommed onto a large chuck of cash and blamed it on him. A big part of the movie that follows is devoted to Christopher trying to convince Elliott to part with the cash. Elliott refuses and things get ugly, Chris turns out to be a violent psychopath. After hearing the cash info on the news Christopher beats up a young woman for no reason.

Another chunk of the movie is devoted to Elliot's love life and the goings on among the bank staff. Many of the characters are morally ambivalent, there's a lot of cheating going on in their lives. Soon the two streams mix and people start to die. It becomes a fight to the finish. The cast was fairly good, Susannah York does alright as Elliott's main romantic interest, John Candy has a tiny part, as does another SCTV alum, Tony Rosato. The script was fairly decent in moving all the characters around but I found some of their personal melodrama to be a bit tedious. The film plods along using 106 mins to tell the story. It does pick up in the last act. My lack of interest in the characters only makes it slightly above average for me. It might have been a more effective thriller in 1978 though I don't think it's better than Marathon Man which came out a couple of years before. That's a much more tense thriller. I bought the Blu-ray and I might want to watch it again someday. 

Sleepy Eyes Of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess 1966

Sleepy Eyes Of Death 7: The Mask Of The Princess 1966 Story by Renzaburô, screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa, directed by Akira Inoue.

The Shogun's disfigured daughter Princess Kiku returns for another attempt at killing Nemuri Kyoshiro. Her face was disfigured at birth and it's driven her mad. She'd been banished from Edo for torturing and killing men and women. The Shogun is embarrassed by her behavior and like many royal figures they just send her off to live in a big house in the country. Nemuri ran into the princess in the fourth movie and she's still mad that he's not dead.

She hires some assassins who attack Nemuri at various times. There's plenty of swordplay and Nemuri's body count is 44. The baddies try framing him for murder but that doesn't work, their traps fail. Nemuri buys the contract of a young woman and gets her a job. The baddies kidnap her and threaten to hurt her if Nemuri kills any of their men. Stupid move, it's like signing your own death warrant.

I thought it was quite entertaining. There's plenty of action and running about and yelling. Just about all the characters are double dealing scum. I was happy for them to get stabbed up a bit. It's a nicely shot film, I enjoyed the images. There's some nice soundtrack music and plenty of time when there's no sound at all. They pack a lot in an 83 minute movie.

Sherlock Holmes And Doctor Watson 1979

Sherlock Holmes And Doctor Watson 1979 Created by Sheldon Reynolds, he was also the creator of the 1954 American TV show Sherlock Holmes with Ronald Howard and Howard Marion-Crawford. That was a more successful series, I've seen most of those episodes a couple of times and I find the episodes entertaining, it's in the public domain and all the episodes can be found on YouTube or DVD. Worth having a look at for the Sherlock fan.

The copies of Sherlock Holmes And Doctor Watson on YouTube don't look anywhere near as good as the Ronald Howard shows do, one of the reasons I ordered the German DVD set of all 24 episodes. Apparently the show was popular in Germany, they seem to be the only one to produce a real DVD release. The image is fairly good looking and the sound is so much better than the YouTube uploads.

Sheldon Reynolds filmed the series in Poland with British actors in the lead roles. Geoffrey Whitehead plays Holmes, Donald Pickering plays Watson and Patrick Newell plays Lestrade. British guest actors include Bernard Bresslaw, Sue Lloyd, Sally Travers, Julian Fellowes, William Morgan Sheppard, Geoffrey Talbot, Richard Greene, Catherine Schell and Victoria Tennant.

Some of the episodes were adapted from Doyle stories, some were recycled scripts from the 1954 series and some were original stories. Sheldon Reynolds directed a few episodes and the other directors include Roy Stevens, Val Guest, Peter Sasdy, Roy Ward Baker, Aurelio Crugnola and Freddie Francis.

There's decent sets and locations, Poland lends itself to the Sherlock time period quite well. The stories are entertaining and humorous, I usually had a laugh or two out of each one. I'm glad I picked one up.

Science Fiction Sunday 673

 

Doctor Who 0057 The Claws Of Axos Four part story that aired March 13 to April 3 1971. Written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, directed by Michael Ferguson. I have the single DVD on the left. I have ordered the 2 disc set on the right. I hadn't seen it until today and there are some fair number of extras listed that aren't on the single disc set. I'll get it a few days and watch it when it arrives. I probably had a good time. The extras on the series usually deliver something interesting.

The Master has returned to Earth inside a big alien called Axos. It's an intelligent transformable substance that can that can travel through space on it's own. It can create different sorts of humanoid creatures out of its own substance and send them off to do it's bidding. It likes to get stuck into a planet and suck up all the energy in it. Everything on the planet dies but that's just lunch to the alien.

Axos had captured The Master and all he could think of was trading the Earth for his freedom. Killing the Doctor is part of the deal. The Master is the one who really needs some killing. The Doctor and Unit battle the alien and eventually the Doctor comes up with a trick to stop Axos. The Master escapes in the meantime.

A decent story, I didn't think it was quite as slow in the third episode as I felt it was the first time I watched it, I turned the speed up a bit when they were rushing around outside a lot. It was barely noticeable. I have much to watch and need all the help I can get.

Doctor Who 0058 Colony In Space Six part story that aired April 10 to May 15 1971. Written by Malcolm Hulke and directed by Michael E Briant.

Jo gets a tour of the Tardis for the first time. If the massive inside wasn't enough to boggle Jo's brain, the Time Lords decide to free the Doctor's Tardis for a special job they want done. When the Doctor tries a take off, the Tardis delivers Jo and him to a planet where some colonists are having a rough time trying to survive. Jo doesn't believe she's on another planet but it all becomes real right quick. The colonists live in a rock quarry with nearby aliens. Crops don't grow and the colony is nearing the end of their food supply.

A mining company ship arrives and tries to scare away the colonists with tricks and murder. The colonists push back and the Captain of the ship calls for an Adjudicator. The Master turns up as the Adjudicator, he's got an agenda of his own. The planet is home to an alien race that built a super weapon and that just might be what The Master needs to conquer the universe. One track mind that guy. Again, ignored by the Time Lords. They are dicks those TLs.

After the usual running about and yelling you'd expect from a 6 part story the Doctor puts an end to The Master's plan but The Master escapes. Plenty of people are dead but the colonists have their planet back. I'm almost ready to be tired of The Master but I know he turns up in the next serial. No matter, soon enough The Doctor will get the Tardis fixed and be off jaunting about the Universe again. I'll be checking that out sooner or later.

The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection

The Sherlock Holmes Vault Collection consists of four restored Sherlock Holmes films from the 1930s. Three of the films star Arthur Wontner and one stars Reginald Owen. The Film Detective put the set out and each film is on it's own Blu-ray with a commentary, an essay in a booklet, a small postcard of the film's poster, and a series of short bits and pieces.

The Wontner films are much better looking than the Owen film. I suspect they might not have had any good film elements to work with as the Wontner films are much sharper and darker. I've seen these films 2 or 3 times already and they're all fairly entertaining. I like Wontner as Sherlock more than Owen.

I wasn't that impressed with the extras. I tried all the commentaries. I bailed on the one by Jennifer Churchill on The Fatal Hour because she wasn't that interesting and giggle too often at her own comments. I quit listing to the Atkins and Breckman on A Study In Scarlet because they had too much uninteresting banter and laughed at their own jokes too much. The Ney commentary on The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes was fairly good but he spent too much time on studio history than the film. The Sutton & Legan commentary on Silver Blaze was mostly worth listening to though it had a bit of time wasting banter. The Sam Sherman featurettes were short and sort of interesting. The short films and other Sherlock items were a mixed bag, mostly public domain material but not the best of that sort of thing.

I'm glad to get the nice versions of the Wontner films and will watch those again sometime. The rest I'd pretty much skip across the board. I got no time for it.

Here's the list of what's on each disc.

Disc 1

• The Fatal Hour (1931) featuring Arthur Wontner
• Essay by Don Stradley
• Commentary Track with Jennifer Churchill
• The Adventures of Sam Sherman: Part One featurette
• Recreated Sherlock Holmes Radio Broadcast
• A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918) cut bonus short
• A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918) uncut bonus short
• Baffled (1900)

Disc 2

• The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) featuring Arthur Wontner
• Essay by Jason A. Ney
• Commentary Track with Jason A Ney
• The Adventures of Sam Sherman: Part Two featurette
• The Copper Beeches (1912)
• Blind Man's Bluff TV episode (1954)

Disc 3

• Silver Blaze (1937) featuring Arthur Wontner
• Essay by Don Stradley
• Commentary Track with Phoef Sutton & Jordan Legan
• The Adventures of Sam Sherman: Part Three featurette
• Sure Luck Holmes Felix the Cat cartoon
• Cousins of Sherlocko (1913)

Disc 4

• A Study in Scarlet (1933) featuring Reginald Owen
• Essay by C. Courtney Joyner
• Commentary Track with Peter Atkins & David Breckman
• Elementary Cinema an original production by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures
• Slick Sleuths Mutt & Jeff cartoon

Also includes:

• 4 original poster replications in ease disc case

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.