PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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The Velvet Vampire is a 1971 movie about a vampire living out in the California desert. Stephanie Rothman is the director, she's also co-wrote the script with her producer hubby Charles S Swartz and Maurice Jules.

Sherry DeBoer and Michael Blodgett are driving in the desert when their car breaks down. They get picked up by a woman in a dune buggy. She takes them to her big old house and says she'll get a mechanic for their car. She secretly spies on the couple from a giant mirror in their bedroom. The car takes a long time to get fixed and the couple start having issues. Things don't so so well for Michael and Sherry runs off into the desert. Miss Vampire chases after and nearly catches Sherry at the bus station. Sherry rallies some help and manages to survive, only to fall into another vamp trap.

The weak thing about the movie was the script. It was really uneven. There's plenty of nudity and it's a bit weird at times but I didn't care much for any of the characters. Not that that's unusual with a horror movie. You can check it out on YouTube and see if you might want to purchase a copy. I'd pick on up for cheap if I see one but I'm betting I'm not.

Journey To The West: The Demons Strike Back is the 2017 sequel to the 2013 Journey To The West: Conquering Demons. It's based on a massive novel called Journey To The West by Wu Cheng'en. The first film was produced, written and directed by Stephen Chow. He produces and writes the sequel but it's Tsui Hark who's the director.

The story opens with a dream in the Monk's head. He wakes up and we find he's sleeping in the rough and traveling with a poor circus. The Monkey King, Sandy and Piggy are still traveling with the Monk. Their performance doesn't go so well and a town nearly gets destroyed. The bunch keep running into demons as they make their way around the countryside. They battle the demons and work their personal issues out at the same time. There's plenty of action and the film is packed with CGI from beginning to end. There are some fun characters, big action scenes, lots of slapstick, and plenty of jokes. It's quite visually stunning and very noisy.

I enjoyed it quite a bit and will be picking up a copy when the price drops a bit. I waited and picked up a copy of the first one for about 4 bucks. Stephen Chow made a pair of earlier Monkey King films that were also entertaining. He played the Monkey King and that was a big part of the enjoyment. There was a third sequel to the older films but there's no Stephen Chow involved with that production. I have not seen it.

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Up tonight is Death Duel, a 1977 Shaw Brothers movie. It's the movie that last week's selection Sword Master was based on, both movies are based on a novel by Lung Ku. Derek Yee, the director of Sword Master, is the main character in Death Duel. Chor Yuen is the writer and director of Death Duel. The story is similar to the newer version but it's somewhat more serious. The newer version has a happier ending too. It's got a lot of the usual fighting and the such. One fight throws people through all the walls in a house. That was fun. Nice sets and costumes and props and lights and music. Worth a look for the fans of such.

The Valley Of Gwangi is a 1969 giant monster film with dinosaurs by Ray Harryhausen. It's directed by Jim O'Connolly and the script is by William Bast with additional material by Julian More. Jim directed some episodes of The Saint a few years before this movie. James Franciscus is a promoter who stumbles into a goldmine. A goldmine with deadly teeth and stubby little arms. Former Miss Israel, fashion model and actress Gila Golan is the romantic interest. She wasn't in many movies, half a dozen, and an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie. One of the movies she was in was the 1966 spy spoof Our Man Flint. I need to watch that again soon. She's still around, the same can't be said of James, sadly he passed away in 1991 at the age of 57. Richard Carlson plays Gila's father and Laurence Naismith plays a greedy archeologist. There's gypsy's and cowboys, elephants and dinosaurs, fire, death and destruction. What more could a boy ask for in a film. If any hidden dinosaurs are reading this, make sure you stay hidden, human's can not be trusted. However, you can trust the movie to deliver a fun time for the monster fan.

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Doctor Strange was our first film. It's the new 2016 version with Benedict Cumberbatch. There was a 1978 TV movie that rewrote the origin story. It's better than the 1994 Fantastic Four movie that Roger Corman made. It was pretty poor. This new version is directed by Scott Derrickson, he co-wrote the script with Jon Spaihts and C Robert Cargill. Doctor Stephen Strange starts off as a full of himself surgeon. He has an accident which destroys his hands. Modern medicine isn't making his hands the way they were so he heads to Nepal to seek a magical solution. He studies magical stuff under The Ancient One in Kamar-Taj. The Ancient One is the head of an ancient society that fights evil. Strange doesn't want to join that, he wants magically repaired hands to operate again. He's not to get his way as the evil ex-student Kaecilius is up to no good. He's stolen some magical pages and killed the former librarian at Kamar-Taj. Kaecilius then tries to destroy The Ancient One's society. People die and Doctor Strange joins the fight. There's plenty of magical scenery, multi-dimensions, gears and Mandelbrot images. My only complaint was there was too much surgery. That's all part in parcel with the origin story but it got annoying after a while. I'd like to see more Doctor Strange films more than I would many of the other superhero guy's films. I had a fondness for the Doctor Strange comics from the 60s. I haven't read any in a while.

Our second film had a lot of similar things going on. Sword Master is a 2016 martial arts film that's a remake of a 1977 Shaw Brothers film called Death Duel. There was a Death Duel novel by Lung Ku that both movies credit. Sword Master director Tung-Shing Yee was in Death Duel as a young man, playing the main character Ah Chi. He wasn't a director in those days. He co-wrote the script for Sword Master with Hark Tsui and Tin Nam Chun.

From the sounds of what I read I think this version of the movie really packs on the character development. It's pretty much one of those sad stories that they make in China a lot. Plenty of death and destruction. It's some years ago and a master swordsman banishes himself when he becomes haunted by all the death following him. He hides under the name Ah Chi. He gets a job in a whore house and takes a knife for a whore named Sweetie. He leaves and winds up in a village where he takes on a job with a poop collector. Sweetie turns up, beaten, and it turns out she's the sister of the poop collector. Another swordsman keeps turning up during the movie. He wants to fight the Third Master. When the swordsman goes to the Third Master's clan he find the TM has died 37 days before. He later finds out it's not true, sadly after he's taught Ah Chi his secrets of the martial arts. There's also a subplot with demon masked marauders who keep attacking everyone they meet and yet another subplot involving a woman who was to marry Ah Chi. He left her twice in the past and she's become insane from her anger. Everyone sure has an interesting life. Glad it's not me. Those interesting lives lead to a lot of dead warriors.

It's a good looking film, with plenty of big scenery and magical places. There's a fair bit of martial arts and some has CGI augmentation. Occasionally the CGI is poor but for most scenes it works well enough. The movie seems a bit slow at times. I enjoyed it but it put two people, out of four, to sleep for a long time. I'd pick up a copy if I found one cheap but I won't be bothered if I don't ever find one. I've got so much to watch and re-watch that one more movie won't matter much.

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Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them was our first film. It's set in the Harry Potter world but 54 years before Harry was born. Eddie Redmayne is magizoologist Newt Scamander. He's British and the book he's about to write is still used at Hogwarts when Harry goes to school. JK wrote the real world edition back in 2001. She gave away all the profits, along with the profits from a second book called Quidditch Through The Ages, to Comic Relief. So far the sale of the two books has raised more than £17 million.

Newt has come to the US to return a Thunderbird to it's South West homeland. An escaping niffler creates a series of events that lead to the capture of a real prick. I've seen the movie a couple of times now and enjoyed it both times. There's plenty to see, lots of nice locations, sets, props and costumes. They won an Oscar for their costumes.

Katherine Waterson, Eddie Redmayne, Alison Sudol and Dan Fogler are the main characters in the film. JK Rowling wrote the script and David Yates returns to the Harry Potter world as director. He directed the last 4 Harry Potter films. Only one of the characters from HP films appears in this film. You'll find out if you see it.

That niffler gets Newt in trouble right away and he spends the rest of the film trying to chase down the beasts that got away. He meets up with American Muggle, or No-Maj as they say in the US, Jacob Kowalski, played by Dan, a demoted Auror called Tina Goldstein, played by Katherine, and Tina's sister Queenie Goldstein, played by Alison. Those four are also signed up for future films in the series.

Things don't go so well for our gang. New York is in a bad state, the Wizarding World fears outing because of a series of attacks by some sort of magical beast. Newt, with the help of Jacob and the Goldstein sisters, manages to save the day. Then everyone gets ready for the sequel. I'm hoping they manage to make a few more. The movie was pretty popular, not quite Harry Potter popular but there's plenty of money coming in. I certainly plan to watch it again. Soon. Good thing I bought the Blu-ray. I usually don't do that for new releases. I like waiting a bit for the price to go down.

Our second film was the 1977 Shaw Brothers film The Mighty Peking Man. It was meant to capitalize on the popularity of the 1976 King Kong. It was released first in the US as Goliathon in 1980.

Danny Lee leads a group into the jungle to find a giant ape called Ah Wang. Danny and crew finds the big guy and his blonde jungle companion. Evelyne Kraft is Ah Wei and she's lived with the big fella since she was a child. A plane crash left her all alone in the jungles of India. Ah Wang befriended her and kept her safe. That's Danny on the left and Evelyne on the right. She doesn't seem to like wearing anything but that bikini. The other guy is the producer, he's a bit of a dick. Danny takes Ah Wang and Ah Wei back to Hong Kong. He's dreaming of all the cash the producer says they are going to make, but it all goes hell as the big ape gets away and starts breaking stuff. 

That's the big guy smashing stuff. In Hong Kong, he'll have plenty of things to smash, the place is filled with breakable buildings. That and tall places to fall from.

It's all pretty goofy. I got a few laughs from the movie and there's some nice monster suit action. The Shaw Brothers have a fairly good miniature model making team and they get to make some nice sets for this movie. The romantic subplot between Danny and Ah Wei kind of slows the movie down a bit. It's still a fun movie to watch with plenty of "what the hell?" kind of moments. We watched the British Blu-ray and it looked the best I'd seen it. Not everyone's going to be interested in this but fans of this sort of thing should have a nice time.

Crazy Guy With Super Kung Fu 1979

Sadly the copy of Crazy Guy With Super Kung Fu Netflix sent along on DVD sure sucks. It's all washed out, poorly cropped, and the sound is bad. It's pretty much a standard 70s Kung Fu comedy, some evil guy is lording it over the locals. A trio of goofy guys tries to fight him but they are beaten down by the baddie's henchmen. The trio get some training from a quirky master and finally kick the baddie's ass. With the exception of the training it's very much like the plot of the American Western. Something I was going to watch today but other things got in the way. It's not more than average, and there is some questionable comedy, but it's watchable and occasionally funny. You can see it on YouTube if you want but it's more for the die-hard fan.

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Our first film was a 2006 Hong Kong film called Dating a Vampire. A couple of University students take over an abandoned apartment in a block of flats that are due for demolition. There's one other apartment occupied and, unluckily for them, it's filled with vampire women. Erik falls for one of the vampire girls without knowing she's a vampire. It's got a script by Wong Jing. Unluckily for us viewers it's not every interesting. Two people fell asleep during the movie, one of them twice. This sure isn't a good sign. The director, Clarence Yiu-leung Fok, didn't turn in such a great job either. I'd seen one other film that the pair did, the 1992 action film Naked Killer, and that was a good bit better. Mostly because it has the beautiful Chingmy Yau in it. I'd give Dating A Vampire a miss and you'll be better off than I was.

On the other hand I'd say the opposite of The Gate. It's about average but it's fun to watch. It's a 1987 monster film about some little critters that come out of a hole in a families back yard. A rotten tree is cut down, the boys find a geode, and dig a bit more. Their parents see the hole and tell them it fill it in.

An accidental dog burial opens a gate to a demon world and some ugly little guys are unleashed on the kids staying home alone. They have to fight the monsters off and get the gate closed before their parents return after their weekend away. Sadly the critters pile on the collateral damage and the house gets some good damage to it.

It's a pretty light weight effort aimed at the teen set but I still found it enjoyable. I'd seen it before and would watch it again sometime. It's written by Michael Nankin, he has worked as writer or director on plenty of SF and Fantasy TV. It's directed by Tibor Takács, he's also worked on a lot of genre films and TV.

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We started to watch Werewolf Bitches From Outer Space, an Amazon Prime selection, first and bailed a few minutes from the start. It was after the horrible werewolf women appeared. I was curious because the movie had Janeane Garofalo in it. We didn't even get to her scene before the complaint level rose and we bailed. It's a rare thing. I did check out the movie myself when I got home and she does appear, a long way into the 73 minute movie, as an art gallery owner who does get attacked by the werewolf bitches from outer space. You can check out the trailer in the link in the title and that will give you an idea of the production. It just goes to show you that you can make a movie without any talent.

Stymied by that stinky diversion we went with another Amazon Prime selection, this time a 1982 Shaw Brothers movie from Hong Kong. Human Lanterns is the US title of Ren pi deng long which translates as Human Skin Lanterns. It's a mix of martial arts and horror.

Lo Lieh is a lantern maker who has a grudge against a couple of local noblemen. He uses their dislike of each other to his advantage. Lo kidnaps women from their houses and peels off their skin to make lanterns. The men blame each other for the kidnappings and battle.

Things get weirder and weirder and more and more henchmen die. By the end of the movie there's hardly anyone left. Not that I cared that much, hardly anyone is likeable, so I couldn't get too worked up over their going.

Typical of the Shaw Brothers of the time there are plenty of interesting sets. The street of lanterns is particularly nice. There's plenty of nice props and lots of extras to fill the space. There's a good bit of fighting and some nice wire work. At one point a fight nearly levels a house. That was a really nice bit of work. It's got a nice level of humor, a good thing, as it is a bit gory. Most people wouldn't puke at the scenes with the ladies getting their skin peeled off.

The direction by Chung Sun was good and the story was interesting enough. I like these older Shaw Brothers movies, especially since they started issuing them in widescreen subtitled versions. Well worth checking out, I think it stands out a bit from the crowd.

I can't say the same for Non-Stop. It's a 2014 Liam Neeson film about a bomber on a plane. It's directed by Jaume Collet-Serra who's previous film was Unknown with Liam Neeson. He followed this up with Run All Night with Liam Neeson. He skipped Liam for his next movie, The Shallows with Blake Lively in a bikini, but they reunite for the 2017 movie The Commuter. I did see Unknown, enjoyed it well enough, and I did see Jaume's first movie, the 2005 remake of House Of Wax. The latter was OK but I enjoyed the original so much more.

Non-Stop is about Liam, a sad sky marshal, on a flight to London from New York. Right after it takes off the bomber texts him and the game is a foot. Bomber boy is going to start killing someone every 20 minutes unless he gets 150 million bucks in his account. Liam tries to figure out what's going on and at the end of twenty minutes someone is dead. Sadly Liam has killed his fellow sky marshal. Admittedly the guy has a huge bag of coke in his briefcase and he was going to fire his gun in the bathroom. It soon turns out that the dead sky marshal isn't the bomber. Things get more grim as the pilot is poisoned and dies. The TSA turns against Liam when they find out that the account for the ransom money is in Liam's name.

Things get worse for Liam, the bomber seems one step ahead of him. Liam misjudges people and then they find a ticking time bomb. What to do, no one really believes him.

The movie is stuck on a plane so there isn't much going on scenery wise. I like a bit of variety in locations in a movie. Some of the script, by a trio of first timers, is weak. The bombers motivation is the let down at the end of the movie. Most of the direction is fine, the action fairly good, but once you get down to it, it's all pretty much a bag of cliches and you'd be better off to watch Unknown. I didn't feel I needed to buy the DVD now that I've seen the movie.

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Female Convict Scorpion is a 2008 Chinese Japanese film called Sasori in Japan. It's based on a manga and a 1972 movie. A woman is forced to kill her boyfriend's sister or the villains will kill the boyfriend. She goes to jail and becomes a monster. She escapes and starts getting her revenge on the people who forced her into her current situation. It's an arty film with a bit of a weak script, I often felt myself wandering out of the movie. The last third, mostly revenge, is the most interesting part of the movie. That's we learn much of what the story is all about. It gets a 4.9 on the IMDb, I gave it a 5, but I wouldn't give it a 6.

Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is a 1975 movie that was directed by Juan López Moctezuma. He directed The House Of Madness, or The Mansion Of Madness, which about inmates taking over the mental institution. I had seen that and it was weird enough to stand out. This is pretty weird too.

Cristina Ferrare play Mary, a bisexual blood drinker, maybe a vampire, who drugs people, often during sex, slashes their necks, then drinks the blood that gushes out. Mary's an artist who drives a VW Minibus and on her travels she picks up a guy for a lover.

John Carradine plays her long lost father. He kills the same way as Mary and the bodies are starting to pile up. There's some cops trying to figure out who the serial killer is and Mary and her lover are suspects. Things go sour for Mary but she has a happy ending riding off in her VW van. More entertaining than our first movie by a fair bit. It scores a 5.3 on the IMDb and that's about right with me.

Heaven and Hell 1980

Heaven and Hell is a 1980 Shaw Brothers movie that's also known as Shaolin Hellgate in the US. It's one of the 94 movies that director Cheh Chang made between 1950 and 1993. I've seen a few of his movies, One-Armed Swordsman, The Flying Dagger, The New One-Armed Swordsman, The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires and Five Deadly Venoms. Most of those are well known enough to have had frequent tape and DVD release. There are probably some other good films in his list but who knows if I'll ever see them?

The movie starts off in Heaven. A guard helps a couple escape punishment and as punishment he gets reincarnated to the Earth as a Cab Driver. The Heaven set is all pastels and soft light with plenty of pretty girls.

Heaven gets depicted in a number of Hong Kong movies, especially anything to do with the Monkey Kong story. This isn't that. It's more a helping people quest. The cab driver kills a gangster, helping another couple, and winds up in Hell.

In Hell the cab driver rounds up some other good men and they battle their way out of Hell. There's plenty of fighting and jumping around. The sets are fun, very colorful and oddly shaped. I can understand the surreal look to the sets in Heaven and Hell but what's this one all about.

Who knows? No me. I enjoyed the movie for it's crazy style. Worth a look for the fan.

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Split Second was our first feature. It's a 1992 Rutger Hauer movie about a serial killer critter that rips the hearts out of people in 2008 London. The water level has risen, courtesy Global Warming, and the city is continuously flooded. Rutger's a cop with some mental problems. The monster got his partner, in a flashback from 3 years previous, and that's left Rutger a bit screwed up. He was suspended just before the movie starts but once the monster that collects hearts returns to the scene Rutger's got his badge back. The Chief of Detectives, Alun Armstrong, gives him a new partner, in the shape of Alastair Duncan, and they go hunting the monster. They find they need some big fuckin' guns. Kim Cattrall is Rutger's dead partners wife. They had a fling after the partner died and then broke it off. She gets caught up in the monster hunt and even gets bitten by the beast. Don't worry she survives. Michael J Pollard, Pete Postlethwaite and Ian Dury all turn up in smallish parts.

It written by Gary Scott Thompson who went on to write The Fast And The Furious and Hollow Man. The director was Tony Maylam with Ian Sharp directing the fight in the abandoned subway. I haven't found out why that was but there you go. Sometimes life is a mystery. The critter was designed by Steve Norrington who went onto direct a few movies.

I had forgotten that I had seen it, 23 years ago, so it was pretty fresh to me. It gets a respectable 6.2 on the IMDb. Back in the days of it's first run it did fairly poorly. It opened the weekend of the LA riots, which may or may not be a factor, and the critics didn't care much for it. Here's some comments, courtesy of the Wikipedia, by some oiks in the newspapers of the day.

Lawrence Cohn of Variety wrote, "Split Second is an extremely stupid monster film, boasting enough violence and special effects to satisfy less-discriminating vid fans." Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's hard to think of a less satisfying creature feature in recent memory than the simply terrible Split Second". Stephen Holden of The New York Times called it "fairly dull". Doug Brod of Entertainment Weekly called it "utterly soulless and imitative".

I'm not sure what's up their collective asses but we all found it entertaining and worth the watch. It's got a fun attitude and there's a pretty good monster. It also doesn't try to be more than it is. It's cops vs critters and the good guys are here to kick some ass. After they get some big fuckin' guns..

Reviews like the above are why I don't bother reading the critics, pretty much anytime. We used to have a local critic here, in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, that would watch part of a genre picture, leave and complain in the paper what a piece of crap it was. The problem was he was often wrong in what he said was going on or missed some important plot point. If you don't care for genre films don't review them. I complained on the inaccurate crap in his reviews but the paper didn't care. I just quit reading his reviews and eventually the paper.

Our second feature was the 2015 Chinese fantasy action film Mojin: The Lost Legend. It's based on a series of novels by Tianxi Bachang who also wrote the screenplay. It's directed by Wuershan. It's set in 1998 and the story is about some treasure hunters. Hu Bayi, Wang Kaizuan and Shirley Yang have gone into retirement in New York City. Hu is going to marry Shirley. Days before the wedding Hu learns that the woman he had loved years ago is supposed to be alive. She had been killed falling down the elevator shaft of an old Japanese War complex in Mongolia about 20 years before. The comrades had found an ancient Japanese underground installation and dead Japanese soldiers had come back to life and killed nearly everyone but Hu, Ding and Wang. They managed to escape but Ding falls to her death. A rich business woman and cult leader named Ying comes to the trio and says she knows where the legendary Equinox Flower is buried. Wang had promised Ding he would find the treasure and he decides to go on the trip. Hu and Shirley decide to follow and they show up again once the action has moved to Mongolia. The grave of a Mongolian Princess is where the EF is supposed to be. It's a magical artifact that can raise the dead. That's what Ying is counting on. She's riddled with cancer and dying. She wants the curative power of the EF. They find it and it's not so helpful and pretty much everyone dies but our heroes. There's plenty of action and incredible sets and interesting CGI. Chinese CGI just keeps getting better and better. This movie cost $37 million US and grossed $278 million. It broke some sales records in China when it was released. I can see why, it's pretty darn good. I'd recommend it and plan to add it to my collection.