PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

I'm From Arkansas 1944

I'm From Arkansas 1944 Written by Marcy Klauber and Joseph Carole, directed by Lew Landers.

A sow gives birth to 18 piglets in the small town of Pitchfork Arkansas. The town comes to host a lot of visitors: reporters hoping for a story, men from the meat packing industry hoping to find a way to increase meat production and some showgirls hoping to make some money entertaining.

There's not much story, there are a good number of musical numbers. The Pied Pipers appear as a folk group returning home for a bit of a rest. Country and western singer Jimmy Wakely appears as himself. Mary Ford, Les Paul's singing partner does three songs. There's a couple of yodeling songs from Carolina Cotton. It's got a few jokes and some were OK. I got a couple of laughs but mostly it helps pass the time. You can see it on YouTube.

Science Fiction Sunday 779

The Brain Eaters 1958 Loosely based on The Puppet Masters by Robert A Heinlein (uncredited), written by Gordon Urquhart, directed by Bruno VeSota. Roger Corman was approached by VeSota, he helped him raise money and distribute the film through AIP. The budget was $26,000 and the film was shot in 6 days. Heinlein had no idea they'd stolen some of his plot until the movie came out. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia.

After its release, science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein sued for plagiarism, asking for damages of $150,000, claiming that The Brain Eaters was based on his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters. Corman insisted that he was unfamiliar with Heinlein's work, both while reading the script and during the film's production. He did, however, see the obvious comparisons once he'd read the novel, so Corman settled out of court for $5,000 and acceded to Heinlein's demand that he receive no screen credit, as the author found the film "wanting". The lawsuit that resulted halted actor John Payne's intention of producing a film based on Heinlein's novel.

A strange cone appears near a small Illinois town. Small creatures take over some humans in order to establish a base for an invasion. Not of creatures from outer space like the local human's first thought but creatures from deep underground. The creature had been there for millions of years. Some locals team up with a Senator and his aid to fight the creatures.

I've seen this a few times over the years but it's been a while. It's only average but despite the low budget and lack of production values the film provides entertainment.

The Brain From Planet Arous 1957 Written by Ray Buffum, directed by Nathan H Juran under the name Nathan Hertz. Nathan was unhappy with the final film and used that pseudonym.

An evil brain shaped creature has come from Arous to take over the Earth. He picks John Agar to host his body. A second brain from Arous shows up and joins with John's fiance, her dog and her father to fight the monster within John.

At another that's barely climbs above average but is still entertaining. It's well referenced in other media and has become a bit of a cult film. It was the inspiration for the Zontar episode of Second City Television.

Friday Night Movies 979

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter 2023 Based on The Captain's Log from Dracula by Bram Stoker, screenplay by Bragi F Schut and Zak Olkewicz, directed by André Øvredal. Another attempt to revive the Universal Monsters Brand characters. This Dracula's image seems to be based on the Count Orlok from the 1922 film Nosferatu.

The story of the last voyage of the Demeter. It's the ship that Dracula hired to ship his boxes of earth to England. One of the boxes had his lunch but an accident released the contents to the deck. They find the lunch, a young woman, and the doctor believes her to be anemic. He gives her transfusions and she revives, eventually filling them in on the story of Dracula. Of course the evil guy needs some nourishment, first he drains the animals and then he starts on the crew.

It's a dark and bloody story that ends badly for the crew. Hardly anyone survives. It got nice production values and plenty of interesting images. I enjoyed it which is good as I bought the Blu-ray. I would watch it again. One of the better of the Universal Monster revivals that have been tried in recent years.

Prague Nights 1969 Screenplay by Vratislav Blazek, Jiri Brdecka, Milos Makovec, Evald Schrom and Frantisek Uldich, directed by Jiri Brdecka, Milos Makovec and Evald Schrom. An anthology film with a B&W framing story and three stories in color.

The framing story has a man get picked up by a countess, she tells him the three stories that fill the rest of the nearly 2 hour movie. The first story is about a second Golem being made in The Last Golem. The second story is about an indulgent 18th century countess who gets some just deserts in Bread Slippers. The third story is about a beautiful murderess who like poisoning people in Poisoned Poisoner.

It's a nice enough looking film but it's a tad long. The second segment was rather soporific. I was struggling to stay awake. Over all not one of the better anthology movies I've seen but I still enjoyed a good bit of it. I wouldn't need to buy it. You can check it out on YouTube. Link above.

Father Brown Series 11

Father Brown Series 11

Ten more episodes in Series 11, with Mark Williams as Father Brown. The episodes are very much like the previous episodes, bit of murder, bit of humor, bit of crime solving. Everybody gets a bit added to their back story. Nicely produced, good script and good cast. I enjoyed the series and plan to buy the DVD if there is one. I won't know for a while.

Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970

Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970 Written by Pierre Chevalier and Juan Fortuny, directed by Pierre Chevalier. A French Spanish production that was shot in France.

The new small town doctor is summoned to Professor Orloff's castle. He's warned that the Professor is mad by the Professor's daughter. The Professor warns the doctor that his daughter is mad. The doctor stays the night and has some sort of an adventure. Not the kind I would want.

I thought it was below average, it's rather dull, hard to keep an interest in the story. You can watch it on YouTube, I suspect it's the cut version with less nudity. I only say that because it's about 7 mins shorter than the 82 min run time listed on the movies IMDb page.

Dynasty 1977

Dynasty 1977 Written by Kuo-Hsiung Liu and directed by Mei-Chun Chang. A Taiwan-Hong Kong co-production shot in Taiwan in 3-D. It's released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Chao, the head of the Eunuchs, frames the Prince so the Emperor turns against his own son. The prince fights back, most of the movie is fighting and running about. Chao is a real baddie and a great martial artist. He's nearly unkillable, like a Boss in a video game it takes a lot of hits to put him down. I got kind of bored with all the fighting and started speeding things up a bit. The villain is entertaining, the rest of the main cast weren't as interesting.

The red-blue 3-D on this movie isn't as good as the 3-D in Revenge Of The Shogun Women Blu-ray I watched just a short while ago. Some parts were fine and had good depth, other parts were out of focus and fuzzy. I don't have any gear to play the 3-D version for 3-D TVs so I don't know what that was like. It's not like I'm going to buy a 3-D TV or a player, they've gone out production because of lack of interest and the lack of 3-D films. The image has lost much of it's color and often looks B&W. There is no 2-D version on the disc. There's a short featurette on the company that made the 3-D camera system, they only shot 6 films and two of them were the two mentioned here. There are some shorts in 3-D that have nothing to do with Hong Kong films.

Science Fiction Sunday 778

Alien Conquest 2021 Screenplay by Joe Roche and directed by Mario N Bonassin. Vaguely based on HG Wells War Of The Worlds. Produced by The Asylum.

There's nothing to recommend here. It gets a 2.7 on the IMDb for good reason. Poor script, poor action, poor CGI, poor actors, it's got the lot. The only actor I recognized the name of was Tom Sizemore. Sadly I didn't recognize him in the movie right off. It took me a while to connect this shambling hulk of a general with Tom's name. Tom died a couple of years after the movie came out. Too bad he didn't take the movie to his grave. Oh, well, life is unjust.

Arcadia 2016 Written and directed by Tom Large.

In the near future the world has become even more crowded. There's deadly disease going around. The rich live in a gated disease free community and hold the cure over people's heads. There's a resistance movement called Free Care. A guy is charged with capturing a member of the resistance and bring him to Arcadia. His reward will be a cure for him and his daughter. Things don't go so well for that guy.

It's mostly talking heads with little action. The script is soporific and the movie is rather boring. Both came from Amazon Prime and aren't very good. No reason to re-watch from my POV.

Friday Night Movies 978

Magic Cop 1990 Written by Sam Chi-leung and Tsang Kan-cheung, directed by Stephen Tung. A Hong Kong horror comedy informally known as Mr Vampire 5. We watched the 88 Films Blu-ray and it looks pretty darn good.

Lam Ching-Ying stars as a cop who lives on a small island. He's well trained in Chinese magic. A woman on the island asks him if he'll help transport her dead daughter back home from Hong Kong. In HK Lam finds out that the daughter has died more than a week before the incident in the restaurant. She'd been reanimated by Japanese magic and used in smuggling.

There's plenty of action as Lam fights the monsters and the Japanese magician. The stunts are fun to watch. There's a good bit of comedy and the jokes are mostly fairly good. The jokes with the local cops that get assigned to work with Lam are a bit weak but kind of typical of HK humor. The effects are mostly practical with occasional bits of animation to jazz things up.

I had forgotten most of the story from the last time I saw it, years ago, and it was entertaining and fun to watch. I'm pretty sure I have  DVD from years ago but all the movies are packed up and I can't check. Worth a look for those inclined.

Vesper 2022 Written by Kristina Buožytė, Brian Clark and Bruno Samper, directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper. A co-production from Lithuania, France and Belgium.

Vesper is a 14 year old girl who lives in the forest. The world has had some sort of biological disaster. The ones who caused the disaster are hold up in Citadel cities, helping themselves but keeping the remaining random population outside the Citadel under their thumb.

Vesper lives with her father in a run-down shack. Vesper has some education and she works to keep him alive after he'd been paralyzed while working for the Citadel. The only help he was given is a flying robot head that he can use communicate to with Vesper. One day a ship from the Citadel crashes and Vesper's whole world is smashed.

It's a dark future with only a bit of hope. It's a long film, 114 mins, and it moves along pretty slowly. Despite that I enjoyed much of it but haven't decided to bother with the Blu-ray. I'd take a download but haven't seen any in the usual places.

Luz: The Flower Of Evil 2019

Luz: The Flower Of Evil 2019 Written, directed and produced by Juan Diego Escobar Alzate. A Spanish film.

I didn't care much for this film. It's a religious drama that I saw over on Tubi. I could barely get through it. I wouldn't watch it again.

Russ Meyer's Vixen 1968

Russ Meyer's Vixen 1968 Written by Russ Meyer and Anthony James Ryan, directed and produced by Russ Meyer.

I didn't find much to like about Vixen, she's a racist. The movie is about her and her husband Tom. They run a resort in the Canadian wilderness. People visit, Vixen screws them, they leave. She even has sex with her brother.

Sadly the film is dull and uninteresting. The script is poor and so are the actors. The sex scenes aren't sexy. Even the attempted sky jacking is dull. I wouldn't want to watch it again.