PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 769

Garo Special: Beast Of The Demon Night is a Japanese TV movie from 2006. It's a further adventure after the 26 episode TV show ended. It's set in modern day Japan but with a magical religious group that hunts demons. Lord Legules is an evil prick who wants to unleash his horde of demons on the human world by opening a passage to the demon world. The three guys on the poster are Makai Priests, they fight the demons, usually as they are but once things get serious they magic up some shiny armor and bigger swords. There are plenty of fights, all shooshing through the woods, and the last 20 minutes is all one big battle. It got a bit much and made me less interested. I don't think I need to see it again.

I would be interested in seeing The Uncanny again. It's a 1977 anthology horror film about murderous cats. It's a Canadian and English production filmed in both countries. It's screenplay is by Michel Parry and the director is Denis Héroux. It was the last film for Denis as a director, he would go onto produce some good bit of TV until 2000.  I haven't seen any of his other work.

There's a nice cast, Peter Cushing and Ray Milland are writer and publisher, Peter pushing his new supernatural tinged crime book where all the crimes are avenged by cats. Ray's skeptical as Peter outlines three different cases.

In London 1912 a rich woman, Joan Greenwood, rewrites her will with lawyer Roland Culver, leaving all her cash to her cats and a meal to her scumbag nephew. Simon Williams play the nephew and Susan Pehhaligon plays the maid. Simon and Susan has a secret romance, they are waiting for Joan to kick off and then they can play with all her riches. The news of the will change pushes Michael to murder, he convinces Susan to poison Joan's medicine. None of that goes as planned and the cats avenge their mistress's death.

In the Quebec 1975 story a young teenager named Lucy comes to live with her aunt and uncle. Katrina Holden Bronson plays Lucy, she's the adopted daughter of Jill Ireland and Charles Bronson. In the film her parents have just died and all she has is her cat. The mother, played by Alexandra Stewart, doesn't care for the cat but hubby, played by Donald Pilon, says that Lucy should keep her cat as it's the only thing she has. The daughter, played by Chloe Franks, is a real piece of shit and she manipulates the parents into getting rid of the cat. Lucy is heartbroken. The cat comes back and the killing starts.

In Hollywood 1936 Samantha Eggar is the mistress of Donald Pleasence, he's an actor married to Catherine Bégin, she's an actress too. They are all in a play but Samantha is only Catherine's understudy. When Catherine is murdered, Donald puts Samantha in the play. Catherine's cat comes looking for vengeance.

After telling Donald his theory on the evil of the cat, Peter leaves. He's attacked by cats on his way home and Donald burns the manuscript. It was entertaining and colorful with more than the average number of murdering cats. You can check out a copy on YouTube in the link above. You might get a laugh out of it.

Science Fiction Sunday 564

Sci-Fighters is a 1996 Canadian direct to video movie starring Roddy Piper. I hadn't ever seen it before so I picked up the two movie DVD. The other movie isn't SF, it's called Terminal Rush. Sci-Fighters is SF, set in a future where they have put prisons on the moon. Roddy is a special cop with extras powers, Billy Drago was Roddy's old partner. Billy killed Roddy's wife and now lives in prison on the moon. Billy gets infected with an alien virus and manages to escape to the Earth. He infects some people before Roddy gets on his trail. There's a bit of romance between Roddy and Jane Heitmeyer. There's random fighting, some good amount of sneaking about, some yelling, not much of anything original. It still manages to deliver a story but it's barely average. I wouldn't bother with it but I bought the DVD, lured in by a two pack of Rowdy Roddy Piper films. Turns out Terminal Rush is a Don Wilson movie and it's a good bit worse than Sci-Fighters. Roddy plays a terrorist who's taken over Hoover Dam. Don plays the sheriff who goes after him. I wouldn't watch it again but I might watch Sci-Fighters again.

Scorched Earth is a 2017 Canadian US post-apocalypse movie that's below average. If it wasn't for John Hannah I wouldn't have watched it on Amazon Prime. It was free. I can't seen paying to stream crap movies, it's different with buying a shit DVD, you've always got the option of throwing it in the river. The movie parades around as a Western and it borrows a common plot from both the Western and the Martial Arts movie, a young child sees their loved ones killed by the baddie, they grow up and fight that creep to the death at the end of the movie. Ryan Robbins plays the guy who killed Gina Carano's sister, she finds him as an adult and takes a go at killing him. Ryan's a good actor and he's been in some entertaining TV and film but I wouldn't need to see Scorched Earth again.

Friday Night Movies 764

Turbo Kid was fun the second time around. I liked the movie so much I ordered the 3 disc Blu-ray and DVD set. We watched the Blu-ray, it looks very nice.

Fantômas Vs Scotland Yard is the third of the Fantômas trilogy and it came out in 1967. It's directed by André Hunebelle and the screenplay is by Jean Halain and Pierre Foucaud. The trilogy is based on a series of novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain. I've read the first two Fantômas novels and they were entertaining enough. The books have more complicated stories and Inspector Juve is a much more intelligent and capable character. The third movie has Inspector Juve acting even more like an idiot than the first two films. I got tired of him about half way in.

Fantômas has decided the tax the rich. He'll kill them if they don't pay up. I didn't think there was anything much wrong about that plan. We wouldn't miss any of the rich and when Fantômas decided to add criminals to the mix, I didn't see that as a problem. The criminals and the rich sure did. Since Fantômas is a master of disguise he can be right under your nose without you suspecting anything. Sure enough, both groups spill the beans right to the heavily disguised super villain.

Juve travels to Scotland with Fandor and his girlfriend Hélène and Juve's assistant Bertrand. Lord MacRashley is being threatened by our villain and he's called together a lot of his rich friends who are in the same predicament. They plan to capture Fantômas so they don't have to pay his tax.

 

The criminals get together after they are told they too need to cough up some of their ill gotten gains. Their plan is to capture Fantômas, kill him, and pretend he's still alive so they can still collect the tax from the rich. Great plan. Too bad, they just told it to a disguised Fantômas. Now they need to get punished. Our super villain is a harsh man. If I ignored the Juve nattering the movie was watchable but less interesting than the previous two. It's too bad but I'd still watch the trilogy again.

Science Fiction Sunday 562

Turbo Kid is a 2015 Canadian, New Zealand and US post-apocalypse movie that made me laugh out loud 3 or 4 times. It was the totally wacky gore effects that had me guffawing , they were great. Three people, François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell, share the writing and directing credits. They wound up with a fun story about the post-apocalypse. They have a great sense of humor.

Munro Chambers is a young man living in the wastelands. There's a sort of community nearby, he scavenges to survive, trading with a man in the village. There don't appear to be any cars about, everyone rides bicycles. Munro's a fan of the Turbo Kid, he finds a comic and then the Turbo Kid's suit with it's still active weapon gauntlet. He also runs into Apple.

Laurence Leboeuf plays Apple, Munro runs into her in a playground, she follows him home and he decides to let her stay. She's odd, no doubt about it, but there's a sort of a reason. She adds a nice bit of humor to the movie.

Michael Ironside plays warlord Zeus, he like to torture people, he makes them fight in his arena. Hardly anyone survives the fights, if they do, he kills them anyway. The corpses of the dead are placed in a water reclamation machine and Zeus sells the water. No one will miss him when he's gone.

All the stuff going on is the usual sort of thing you'd expect in this sort of movie, it's just got a nice bit of a skew that makes me smile and occasionally laugh out loud. I saw it on Amazon Prime and put the DVD on my want list.

I wouldn't bother watching Global Meltdown again, it's a 2017 Canadian film about the end of the world. A bunch of people in a small town have to evacuate and they enlist the help of Michael Paré, he's a survivalist loaner who has a radio. Two news people from the west coast bring news of massive damages to cities there. They see a news clip of San Francisco being covered in water and hear that the rest of the places the TV people flew over where the same.

The town grows too dangerous and they head into the mountains where it's likely to be more stable. Society breaks down in two days and Michael goes full on cannibal. He gets more rabid and murderous, especially after joining up with some other scum.

It was going on for a while and I was thinking it was about average and watchable but nothing special. It took a downward turn when the conspiracy guy showed up. Then it was all preachy and annoying. I got to the end and didn't much enjoy it.

Corner Gas Animated Season 2

The second season of Corner Gas Animated has 11 episodes and I enjoyed the lot. They aired last summer and like the first season they aren't available on DVD yet. You can see them on Amazon Prime in the US.

Corner Gas Animated Season 1

Someone I know was nice to pass along the first season of Corner Gas Animated. The 13 episodes first aired in 2018 on CTV's Comedy Channel but haven't gotten to DVD. I'd say yet there but it could be that they don't plan to bring the set out. In the US it's available over at Amazon Prime with ads. The whole cast from the regular series returns to voice their characters except for Janet Wright who passed away. They have a nice replacement in place with Corrine Koslo. The stories are about the same as they were on the live series but the animation gives them a chance to do stuff they couldn't do on the live show. Kind of like when they did the movie. There's plenty of jokes and silly situations. I was entertained from the first scene to the last. I look forward to watching series 2 and eventually series 3.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 12

I watched Season 12 of Murdoch Mysteries this last few days. I hadn't noticed the Blu-ray of the season had arrived in July. It's one of the few series that I've collected in Blu-ray. I could have waited a bit and got it cheaper but I didn't. It was another entertaining bunch of shows. The usual cast is there and the murder's are varied.

In the first episode the Murdoch's new Frank Lloyd Wright house is christened by a murder. Someone has killed a guy by tying him up and putting him in Murdoch's new closet size microwave potato cooker. He blowed up and made a mess.

I though the outside of the house was fairly good except for the decorative panel to the right of the front door. I thought it was kind of weak. The inside was much more interesting though many visitors seemed confused by the open rooms. Murdoch was slow to cotton to the place but he eventually grew to like it as much as Dr Ogden.

There are a whole bunch of different story arches for some of the characters. Julia is pursuing her desire to be a surgeon, she has a bad time when a patient dies but it turns out to be murder. Constable Crabtree has some ups and downs in the romance department. He also helps the Murdoch's with the book they are writing on crime detection. That book turns out to be a big problem. The book is fine but the series of copycat murders based on the book's chapters is a real head ache. A new nemesis is born of that show. Inspector Brakenreid finds out he's got a daughter and runs off to help her, as a result his wife kicks him out. His elder son John is a constable and he's wounded severely while on a case with Detective Watts. Both Watts and Murdoch have to deal with murders involving people from their past. There's plenty of other plots but my favorite was the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers parody. All in all a very entertaining series. There is a short interview with cast members for each episode.

Science Fiction Sunday 559

Fast Color is a 2018 film about some ladies with mental powers and the government dicks after them. It's more a family drama than anything. There's lots of talking and little action. I thought it dragged a bit. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Replikator is a 1994 Canadian movie about cloning problems. It's some corporate secret project bullshit that wasn't much fun. It's a sucky future and the population needs replacement body parts. I liked Ned Beatty but I didn't care for most of the other characters. The poster features Italian pornstar and politician Ilona Staller, La Ciccolina is her porn name, she appears for little or no reason and doesn't even take her clothes off. The rest of the movie is people chasing each other around, there's dirty dealing and double crossing going on, it's all rather sordid and uninteresting. The movie scores low on the IMDb for good reason.

The Key Man 1957

The Key Man is another film from Network's The British Film series. It came out in 1957 and was known as Life At Stake in the US. It's based on a play by J McLaren Ross, he wrote the screenplay and the director was Montgomery Tully. I didn't recognize anything by J McLaren and I have only seen a couple of Montgomery's numerous films, Battle Beneath The Earth and The Terrornauts were his last two films, I've seen them and they were watchable, average but entertaining. I have one of his other films, The Counterfeit Plan, in my to watch pile.

In The Key Man Lee Patterson is a crime radio show host, he's on the trail of the loot from an old robbery. I didn't remember Lee being on Surfside 6 but I do know I watched that series back when it was new. Lee's Canadian, I didn't know that either, and he worked in the US and Britain. He appeared in episodes of shows like The Avengers, Combat!, Perry Mason, The Virginian, and The Alaskans.

Back in the movie, the crook who absconded with the loot has just gotten out of prison. Lee goes hunting for him and runs into another interested party. They're after the loot and they'll toss some violence at our poor Lee. Nothing really special here, average with a decent script that moves along at a nice brisk pace, it's only 63 minutes so there's not much time for shenanigans. Glad to have seen it. I'd look at it again sometime.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 11

Season 11 of Murdoch Mysteries has another 18 episodes and they started airing in September 2017. There was a third Christmas Special called Home For The Holidays. They sure don't apply the same quality to the Blu-Ray covers that they do the series. Those are the same pictures and they aren't the only covers that the pictures appear on.

The 10th season ended with Murdoch in jail, his wife, Dr Ogden, was kidnapped, Inspector Brackenreid is missing, Constable Crabtree and two other officers were shot down in a church. All that only takes an hour to clean up then it's back to the usual stuff. Murdock and the coppers have cases involving the Ontario wine industry, Helen Keller, organ transplants, a high speed underground train and a cooking contest. One episode takes place in real time during a car accident. A poor man is pinned against the train by the car, if they move the car he'll die.

Besides Helen Keller the show gets a visit from Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt and the Jolson Brothers. There are some good laughs and some sad stuff, usually with a bit of moral message. I could do with less of the sad stuff but there you go. That's what the fast forward button is for.

The Christmas Special finds Murdoch and Dr Ogden visiting Murdoch's brother on Victoria Island. They get involved with an archeologist's murder and wind up in the middle of a dispute between the Songhees and Haida. When Dr Ogden and her niece's autopsy the family dog the girl's mom wigs out. It's a nice mix of drama and comedy. I'll have a long wait until I get season 12.