PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 456

 

We watched The Colony and it was a pretty poorly received by everyone in the room. It's a 2013 post-apoc film about a small group of people that live underground in a bunker called Colony 5. They have power but can barely grow enough food to stay healthy. The world has been covered with snow for many years and there aren't many people left alive. Laurence Fishburne is Briggs, the head of Colony 5 and Bill Paxton is Mason. They had been soldiers together and they pretty much run the place. Mason's not quite right in the head, he's overly paranoid and prone to anger. If anyone gets sick they're driven out of the colony. They get a choice, take a bullet or take a long walk in the snow. It's their choice, but Mason isn't listening, he's just shooting.

The other local colony, #7, sends a distress call and Briggs and a couple of the others leave to see what's up. Briggs leave a woman in charge and that puts a hair up Mason's already highly impacted ass. There's some snow traversing but luckily the 7th colony is only a day and a half away on foot. The guys rest overnight in a crashed helicopter. On the trip we see one of the weather control towers from the days before the snow. The towers used to keep the climate change in check but one day it started to snow and most everyone starved to death. The guys find blood at the entrance to the colony and locked in a room they find a scientist who tells them that they recieved a message from a group that has one of the weather towers going again. They have dirt but no seeds. Colony 7 sent a group to look for the hot spot but they never came back. Their tracks lead trouble right back to their door. 

Turns out cannibals have invaded and killed everyone at Colony 7. One of the trio from Colony 5 is killed when they stumble on the cannibal's butchering some of the locals. Briggs and Sam escape and camp out in the helicopter for the night. In the morning they find their footprints have left a trail for the cannibals to follow and the bitey guys are right behind them. Briggs figures to stop them on a bridge with some dynamite. It nearly works but Briggs is blowed to pieces. Sam makes it back to the colony, warns Mason of the cannibals but they don't believe him. There's a big fight at the colony when the scum shows up. The bad guys are killed, the colony ruined and the survivors wonder off into the snow hoping that the possible warm spot really exists. Boom, the movie ends.

I'm almost sad to say it's a Canadian film. It was made for $16,000,000 and it looks like much more money is up on the screen. The CGI is fairly good, not always perfect but certainly better than a lot of the stuff you would see on the SciFi channel. The camera work is good and so is all the behind the scenes technical stuff. The problem is the script, it's cliche ridden, totally predictable, and the characters do the stupidest things, all the time. The story seems to have the elements randomly picked from a hat. "Okay, second act? Oooh, grunting feral cannibals." I wouldn't recommend it to much of anyone. Not because it's awful, it's just an amalgom of the stuff you've seen before, but because there's nothing special to tie it all up in a good way. 

I'd recommend our next feature. We watched the BluRay of The Haunted Palace from the new Shout Factory 4 disc Vincent Price Collection. It's also got The Fall of House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Witchfinder General and it's U.S. version The Conqueror Worm. Most of these are pretty good films. The Haunted Palace is a 1963 film directed by Roger Corman. He did the same job on the first 3 of the other films listed above. THP is written by Charles Beaumont and it's based on a HP Lovecraft story called The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward and a bit of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. The movie barely uses any of the plot and elements from the Lovecraft story and I'm not sure what the Poe poetry is about, other than to attach Poe's name to the title to connect it to the previous Corman produced Poe adaptations. He made 8 of those for American International. The IMDb currently lists 405 production credits for Roger. That's a ton, huh. He's still one busy guy at 87 years old.

  

Vincent Price plays both Joseph Curwin and Charles Dexter Ward. Joseph lived in 1765 Arkham Massachusetts where he practised the dark arts and diddled some of the local young ladies. The angry townsfolk burn him alive, with his dying breathe he curses their decendents. Charles lives in 1875 and Joseph is his ancestor. Charles inherits the big ass house that Joseph brought back from the old country. Lon Chaney is the caretaker. The towns folk won't help Charles even find the house but the local doctor befriends them and point them to the house on the hill outside of town.

  

Charles is married to Anne who's played by Debra Paget. Neither of them is thrilled with the house, or the town and it's locals, and they don't plan to stay very long. At the house they find a painting of Joseph on the wall over the fireplace. It's kind of a creepy painting and as Charles stares at it he becomes possessed by his ancestor. Charles tells his wife he wants to stay and fix up the house to sell. The villagers have suffered from the curse and over the decades many of their children have been born with deformaties. Some are free to wonder the streets and some have to be locked away. It gets more tense in Arkham as the movie continues.

  

The possessed Charles grows more distant from Anne and closer to Lon and his other assistant Jabez. They are the same men who helped him 110 years ago. The trio of villains dig up the body of Joseph's mistress Hester and try to revive her. It doesn't work right away. Joseph, in Charles body, goes out and kills a couple of the decendents of the men who burned him alive so long ago. He enjoys his vengence way too much. Lon thinks it's a bit dangerous but Joseph doesn't care.

  

Eventually the townies revolt and attack the house. There's a good bit of chaos and running about. Lon and Jabez disappear from the movie and Charles is freed from the possession when the painting is burnt. Or is he? I don't know. What I do know is I enjoyed the story and the characters. It's kind of mildly creepy, the sets are fairly good and the Beaumont's script is pretty entertaining. Not to everyone's taste. 

Friday Night Movies 455

We watched Silent Night Zombie Night off of Amazon Prime and shouldn't have. It certainly doesn't live up to the Prime in Amazon Prime. This will serve as a warning for you, it's one helluva piece of boring shit. It's 90 minute length seemed much longer. It wasn't keeping our attention, that's for sure. The only thing notable about the movie is they made it for $100,000. As the title indicates it's Christmas and there are zombies. Problem is, there's hardly any Christmas. It's Los Angeles and there's no snow. They toss in the odd christmas carol on the soundtrack but the film makers lack the imagination to Xmas it up a bit. The zombies do come in two flavors; slow shambling Night Of The Living Dead types and some swift angry bitey 28 Days Later types. The thing is, writer and director Sean Cain just sucks at making a movie. It's totally awful, the script is stupid and there's one cliche after another. The actors are barely watchable and that's partly because the words they say make little sense. That's another thing, the movie has much too much drama in it and it's so poorly written it's hard to watch. Everyone watching was complaining about the dialog by saying words out loud. Sperhauk blames the popularity of The Walking Dead and that's certainly a show that has way too many scenes with people whining to each other about their problems. So don't bother with SNZN, it's pretty damn poor, don't fuckin' watch it, I mean it. I gave it a 1 on the IMDb and that was the lowest I could vote and still vote. It scores a 4.6, it's much worse than that and needs to be brought down a peg or two.

Our second movie was much better made but suffered from the same  dramatic problem. The Sword Identity is a 2012 Chinese movie about a sword, some warriors, 4 martial arts schools and their masters. It scores a 4.9 on the IMDb and it's should be a bit better than that. Some of the people on the site and in other reviews seemed to dislike the slow moving story but it seems a lot of them were expecting some sort of Hong Kong action film. It's not that, it's more of an art film. There's more introspection than poking swords into people. Hardly anyone actually dies. Two swordsmen come into a small town and challenge the four schools. They have a sword that isn't part of the Chinese martial arts tradition and that causes a stir. That seems to be at the heart of the story, traditon versus new ideas. The sword in question was created as a counter to the Japanese Katana by General Qi. He was a real guy but I'm not sure if the sword was. I'd not seen anything like it in other Chinese movies and I can't see anything when I Google it. I did find a mention of a sword in this paragraph from a bio of the general.

Qi's book also mentions staff fighting (Qi got his from General You DaYou) and the Miao Dao two handed battle sword (Shuang Shou Dao) which some people think he got from his enemy pirates but was actually developed in the Tang Dynasty and adopted by the Japanese from which to model their Ken. There is some feeling, however, that Qi might have wanted to revive training in this weapon after seeing it so effective in the hands of his nemesis.

When I looked up that sword mention it looked a lot different than the sword in the movie. Not sure what to think but luckily I won't care as the thought will slip out of my brain soon. The Japanese used to attack China in the past, on a pretty regular basis, and General Qi Jiguang was one of the mainland's best defenders. He doesn't appear in the movie, two of his men do, they are the men challenging the schools for the right to have their weapon accepted by the martial arts masters. There's a lot more story than that, much of melodrama about the lives of the locals. You can actually see the whole movie on the IMDb for free. I put a link to it above. I liked the movie well enough but it's likely that I wouldn't bother seeing it again.

Friday Night Movies 454

Sperhauk picked up the BluRay of The World's End and we watched that. It's the 3rd in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. The 1st is Shaun of the Dead and the 2nd Hot Fuzz. There isn't much connection other than the popular packaged ice cream cone. Sperhauk mentioned that all three had similar fence scenes. The World's End is written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright who also directed. It's got Simon, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan in the lead roles. Rosamund Pike, David Bradley and Pierce Brosnan all have nice parts too.

The lead guys were all chums when they were younger and one day in 1990 they tried to drink in each of the 12 pubs on the Golden Mile in the little town of Newton Haven. They failed, the guys drifted apart, and everyone left Newton Haven. Everyone grew up except for Simon who seems to be stuck in the past. He still acts and dresses like he did then we was a young lad. He's kind of sad really and not the sort of guy you'd want to hang out with. Better to watch on the telly. Now 23 years later Simon has an urge to get the guys back together and finish the pub crawl. Reluctantly they agree to come. Things start out normally and they have a drink in one of the pubs. Then another and another. The secret invasion plan is revealed when Simon knocks the head off of a human looking simulacrum. It's all rubbery and filled with blue goo. They race about trying to figure out what to do. There's some fights that don't quite seem right for near middle age men to be having. Edgar Wright explains it in a quote from GQ magazine that I lifted from the Wikipedia.

Stunts were coordinated by Brad Allen of martial arts film director Jackie Chan's team. Wright said: "In Drunken Master, Jackie Chan has to get drunk to fight, but this is more the idea of Dutch courage. You know, when you're kind of drunk and you think 'ah, I can climb up that scaffolding!' Or just that you're impervious to pain. One of the things we talked about is this idea that [the characters] become better fighters the more oiled they get."

That sure explains a lot. At one point I was thinking that they were doing drunken kung fu and sure enough. There are plenty of other gags as the story unfolds, some bit of introspection and goofy aliens. We all laughed a good bit, especially when they destroyed the world. Good job, guys. It's something I would watch again, and since Sperhauk was nice enough to pass along the DVD that came with his BluRay, I can. I'd recommend it to those that like the previous films.

Joe brought The Baytown Outlaws which seems to have been named The Baytown Disco at one point. I see a lot of posters with that name in my Google search. There's one right above this. Based on the description on the NetFlix envelope I just wasn't expecting much.

It's the Oodie boys to the rescue in this Southern-fried film about some redneck siblings hired to rescue a woman's godson from her gangster ex-hubby. Billy Bob Thornton plays bad-ass Carlo, and Eva Longoria is the ex-wife determined to thwart him.

Well, I should know you can't trust NetFlix to present a true picture of the movie and it turned out to be a much more interesting film. It's from first time director Barry Battles who does a great job with a $4 million dollar budget. He shot the movie in and around Slidell Louisiana. It looks great for the little money and there are some good actors in most of the roles. Clayne Crawford is Brick Oodie, Daniel Cudmore is Lincoln Oodie and Travis Fimmel as McQueen Oodie. Battles wrote the script with Griffin Hood and you can see that they have been heavily influenced by modern crime films like Way Of The Gun, Nude Nuns With Big Guns, Boondock Saints, and Hell Ride. All of those are worth a gander but they aren't going to appeal to everyone. Neither is this.

That's Brick at the wheel, McQueen beside him and Lincoln napping in the back seat. We meet the Oodie brothers as they blast their way into someone's house and kill every mutherfucker in the place. Turns out it's the wrong house. Oops, huh. That's their life. Their dad was a criminal and the boys take after him. Andre Braugher is the local sheriff and he's pretty much as criminal as the brothers. He had taken the brothers under his wing when they were little and now that they've grown up he pays them to wipe out local criminals. It keeps the crime down in his area. Eva hires the brothers to kidnap her godson from her ex-husband Billy Bob. He's a drug dealer with a WalMart style business plan. He treats his employees poorly and you can see why Eva is pretty clear that she doesn't want Billy Bob standing after the brothers pick up her godson. Of course the brothers are pretty incompetent and they leave Billy Bob dazed but alive. Billy Bob wakes up, gets pissed and sends a gang of female bikers after them.

 

The biker bitches pick up the brother's trail and find them in a bar. Michael Rappaport has a small part as the bartender. He's often makes a good job of a small part and he does ok here. Using their slutty ways the ladies divide and conqueror but it doesn't go so well for them. On the road again the brothers are attacked by some black road warrior motherfuckers in their armoured battle wagon. That's some funny shit but sadly the battle wagon guys don't fare much better than the biker chicks. Andre has been getting heat from the ATF and he tells the brothers that they are on their own for fucking up so much. Things come to a head at a closed camp of some sort. Several heavily armed Native Americans show up and start blasting. The brothers survive to get jailed, the natives do neither. Brick spins a story that keeps Eva out of it and she is reunited with her godson. She gets some revenge on Billy Bob, after all he had tried to kill her before the story started, and when the brothers get released she gives them a big ass silver pickup truck.

As I said it's not going to appeal to everyone but the people that like it seem to like it a lot. I sure liked it and felt it was worth seeing. I sure laughed a good bit. I'm not so sure that I would need to buy it, but I would watch it again sometime down the road.

Friday Night Movies 453

You can't imagine what the 1985 John Woo film Run Tiger Run looks like and there's no way I can capture it in words. Here's the trailer. It's a comedy, one of the few he made in that genre, and it's very Chinese. It certainly falls into the category of Makes No Sense comedy. If you've seen samples of Hong Kong comedies from the 1980's then you have an idea what this might be about. It's certainly more juvenile than most Stephen Chow movies of the time but not by much. I'll post some Stephen Chow comedies some time soon. I see there is a bunch of them on YouTube. Sadly this isn't on there. Joe found the Hong Kong dvd online somewhere and it sure turned out to be a hoot. We laughed along and often it was at the jokes. It stars Teddy Robin Kwan who's been in a couple of dozen movies and composed music for about the same number of films. About the most famous film he's acted in would be Jackie Chan's Twin Dragons. He was the front man in the 1960's Hong Kong English Pop band Teddy Robin And The Playboys.

 

That's Bin Bin, Teddy Robin Kwan, Tsui Hark and Yin Tze Pan in the pictures above. Bin Bin plays two roles, he's Babe, the grandson of rich Tsui, and Benny, the son of poor Teddy. Babe lives in a nice big house and Benny and Teddy live in a shack by a small river. Babe's parents were killed in a car crash before the movie starts. Yin Tze Pan is the governess that Tsui hires to take care of his grandson before he's murdered by his other son. The reading of the will puts the inheritance in Babe's hands, unless he dies, then it reverts to the other son. You can see where that's going. The other son has some goofy henchmen and they all plot to kill Babe. Yin hides Babe, telling the other son he's run away. The henchmen pick up Teddy and Benny, thinking he's Babe. Back at the big house mayhem ensues. Mostly all of the other son's schemes backfire and he takes a fierce beating. The henchmen fare no better. There's a bit of romance, and violence, as Teddy and the other son fall for Yin. When things look pretty dire for the good guys they are aided by the local street kids who come to the rescue. At one point dozens of kids pee down on the heads of the henchmen. That's the most peeing I've ever seen in a movie. As you can see there's a lot of stuff going on in the movies 87 minutes. It might not be very sophisticated but it's hardly ever dull.

 

I got a copy of Pagan Island from NetFlix and we watched this 1961 film next. It's written and directed by Barry Mahon. He made a lot of exploitation films between 1959 and 1970, usually with plenty of nudity. This is on a dvd from Something Weird Video with Fiend Of Dope Island and a bunch of short subjects that have a south sea island theme. The film is cast by Bunny Yeager. She was a photographer who mostly shot nudes. The under water sequences were filmed in the Seaquarium in Miami Florida. You can certainly tell.

 

A sailor, played by Eddie Dew, is pulled from the sea and recounts his sad tale to the men on the ship that rescued him. Eddie's ship went down and he managed to get on a raft and make it to an island. There he finds a bunch of young women who worship the sea god depicted by the statue above. He's suspected by the women but he kills a bunch of invading natives with his gun and they give him the run of the island and the ladies. It never gets too hot and heavy. Things don't work out so well when he falls for the young woman who is the intended bride of the sea god. It's kind of slow moving but there are some pretty girls and they flash a boobie now and again. We all enjoyed the statue of the sea god and I wouldn't mind one in my front yard.

 

The statue seems to be the work of Lewis Van Dercar. He was a painter and sculpture who worked in Maimi Florida. There's a short on the dvd about him and in the short the head of the statue on the sea god is on his mantle. Here's the first part of an hour long memorial about him.

  

He seems like a character and his house is pretty cool. Here's a few screen caps of his art.

 

   

Friday night Movies 452

The guys watched Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea first. It's a 1961 film that was produced and directed by Irwin Allen. You might be familiar with some of his tv work which leaned heavily toward science fiction.

• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–68)
• Lost in Space (1965–68)
• The Time Tunnel (1966–67)
• Land of the Giants (1968–70)
• The Swiss Family Robinson (1975–76)
• Code Red (1981–82)

I'd watched Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and blogged about it back in January 2011 on a Science Fiction Sunday post. Here's that review.

Walter Pidgeon plays Admiral Nelson, designer and builder of the Seaview, a massive atomic submarine. They are on a trial run in the arctic when the Van Allen radiation belt catches fire. The sub surfaces, after 3 days under the polar ice cap, to find the sky burning. Ooohhh! Pretty. Pretty deadly too! If they don't put out the burning sky soon the people of the earth will be charred to a blackened nub. Ummm! Crispy! If this movie was set today we'd have to worry about spontaneous human grease fires breaking out all over the USA. The sub heads to New York City and a meeting of the scientific community at the UN. Walter thinks they should fire a nuke into the fire and blow it out. There are opposing views that think we should wait. Walter says no and takes off for the firing point over the Marianas Trench. He's got a certain window of opportunity to fire the missile and can't wait. There's lots of activity and danger on the way, both inside and outside the ship. There's a minefield that takes out a couple of guys in the mini-sub. There's tension in the crew, some of whom want to go home and be with their families in the end times. There's sabotage from some traitor on board the sub. That person will get some payback later when they eaten by a shark. Ha ha! Really, what do you expect. The sea is a dangerous place. The crew also has to fight off a giant octopus. See, told you. That giant octopus scene would become the signature of the tv series that would follow in a few years. I guess giant octopus, and their plus-size aquatic brethren, are common in that universe's ocean. Glad that isn't the case here. Mostly it's a good action movie even if the science is hokum. The under water stuff is ok for the time. There are some good actors in the movie beside Walter. Peter Lorre plays the Commodore, Walter's old friend and fellow scientist. Peter gets to walk some sharks in the comic part of the movie. Robert Sterling plays the captain of the Seaview. He had a 47 year career starting in 1939 with lots of bit movie parts and ending with a guest shot on Murder She Wrote in 1986. He was George Kerby in the 1950s tv show Topper. Barbara Eden is a Lieutenant on the sub. When the movie opens Barbara and Robert are planning their wedding, due to happen in three weeks. Michael Ansara plays a scientist rescued from an ice flow. In real life he was married to Barbara Eden at the time the movie was made. Frankie Avalon plays a sailor and he also sings the movies opening theme song. It's really awful, even for Frankie and I have seen all his beach party movies. Mostly the movie is pretty entertaining. You can watch episodes of the tv series over at Hulu. The first season is pretty entertaining, for a 60's action show.

The second movie was The Black Sleep. It's a 1956 movie that's the last film that Bela Lugosi was in before he died. It stars Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Akim Tamaroff and Tor Johnson. Basil is a surgeon in 1872 London who has a wife in a coma because of a brain tumor. It's too deep to operate but Basil is determined to save her, even at the expense of others. He saves a former student, played by Herbert Rudley, from the hangman with a drug that simulates death and collects the body to revive. Herbert claims he was framed and didn't kill anyone. Still, once revived, he's happy to be alive and is quite happy to go to work for his former teacher. They work in a secret lab behind the fireplace. Up to the lab and down to the dungeon. Bela plays the old butler and he looks pretty frail. The movie was shot in 1955 and Bela would die the summer of the following year. Akim plays a gypy tattoo artist and kidnapper. He collects bodies and stuff for Basil. Tor, Lon and John play victims of Basil's experimentation. They look pretty messed up what with their damaged brains and all. Eventually they revolt and cause everyone some issues. Herbert falls for Patricia Blake, one of the two nurses in the secret surgery, who turns out to be the daughter of Lon's character Mungo. Poor Mungo had been a brilliant surgeon before getting a brain condition. Basil had tried operating on him and the reasoning centers of the brain were damaged. It's made him fairly dangerous. The other nurse on staff is the only one who has some control over him. You can see there are plenty of things that could add to the drama and problems for the characters. Eventually things boil over and there's a pretty fun bunch of crazy actions. Lucky for them, Herbert and Patricia manage to escape being murdered and the police clear Herbert of the murder he was charged with. It's a fairly entertaining piece of work with a complicated plot set in a big old castle with lots of dark and dangerous corners. Nice sets, costumes and good make up effects. Kind of typical when compared to other low budget horror films of the time. Well worth a gander.

Friday Night Movies 451

Killer Elite is a 2011 film with Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro. It's another crime shoot'em up with a fair bit of action and a fairly good story. It mixes assassins, secret paramilitary groups and rich assholes, most of which don't survive to the end of the movie. Jason is a hit man and he's on a job with Robert, Dominic Purcell and Aiden Young at the opening of the movie. They have to kill some guy and they do that by attacking his car. Jason does the killing only to find the guys kid was watching. He decides to quit after that. Two years later Jason's down under where he's got a girl and a house. An envelope from some baddies who have Robert in their clutches brings him to Oman. To save his pal he has to kill 3 British SAS soldiers. A disgraced shiek wants these men dead because the men killed his sons in a war in Oman in the late 1970's. The Shiek's tribe will not let him come back unless the men are dead. The movie is set in 1980 and is supposed to be based on a true story. I did read that some of the real SAS people claim it's all bullshit. The movie changes a good number of the "facts" to make the story more cinematic. I'm guessing the fights and explosions are on the more cinematic list of changes. Jason's girlfriend, played by Yvonne Strahovski, becomes a pawn in the game. Luckily Jason and Robert are looking out for her. I hadn't seen but one of her other movies and that was the Lego feature The Adventures Of Clutch Powers. She did the voice for the cute and  sassy woman in that but here she's someone in over her head. It's directed by first time director Gary McKendry and he did an ok job. He had mostly worked in commercials. Maybe that's why he doesn't waste much time. The story moves along quite quickly, there are some good stunts, and plenty of interesting places to look at. It's something we all agreed we enjoyed watching but not something any of us thought we would need to buy.

Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture (やさぐれ姐御伝　総括リンチ, Yasagure anego den: sōkatsu rinchi), is a 1973 Japanese film from Toei. It's a film in the naughty Pink violent genre so you can expect a good bit of nudity and fighting. It's directed by Teruo Ishii and written by Ishii and Masahiro Kakefuda. I don't know much of anything about them. The movie is a sequel to director Norifumi Suzuki's Sex & Fury which I haven't seen. Sadly NetFlix doesn't have a copy of the 2005 dvd anymore and it's probably not the kind of thing I would want to spend some money on. In FYT our main character Ochi gets caught up in a drug smuggling ring. The sleazy criminals hide bottles of white power in women's pussies. The gang beat Ochi but she fights back and eventually reigns death down on them. It's a comical and very stylish movie with a streak of crudeness. It's filmed in the slums and it rarely ventures outside. Even when it does it's tight almost claustrophobic shots. It's a modern day movie that barely acknowledges it. There are guns but the characters mostly use swords. I think we all found it entertaining and fun to watch. Even if the script isn't prefect there are all those naked ladies to keep your mind from noticing.

Friday Night Movies 450

Badges Of Fury is a Jet Lee Hong Kong film that came out earlier this year. It's a makes-no-sense kind of action comedy. In fact, both of our movies have that in common. It's kind of reminicient of Scary Movie, or Stephen Chow's films. Jet is a cop and the people on either side of him are his co-workers. The guy's his younger and more inexperienced partner and the woman is his boss. The other two women play sisters. Someone kills four men with the same type of needle shot into their armpits. It's death by acupuncture. The clues point to first one sister and then the other. There's plenty of goofy comedy though some of the jokes might not be as funny to Western tastes there's nothing really offensive. There's a fair bit of romance and the girls are pretty. There's plenty of fighting, running, jumping and shooting as the cops go about their investigations. Some of the action has a bit of digital help, besides the wire removal type work. CGI houses in Asia are coming along really well, their only limitation is the film budget. In a chase Jet Li jumps down a stairwell and floats several stories before touching down in front of the fleeing crook. The CGI didn't look as good there but most of the rest worked well. There's plenty of nice shots of the city and it's buildings. I enjoyed it and laughed out loud once or twice. I might want to see it again. It only scores a 4.4 on the IMDb but I think it should be somewhere between 5 and 6. It's not perfect but for the right eyes it would be entertaining enough to waste the time on it. I don't think I need to buy one. Unless it shows up really cheap.

 

Dasepo Naughty Girls is a 2006 Korean comedy set in a high school. Sperhauk had noticed it on one of the streaming services that he gets with his Roku and thought it had potential. It does. Like I said, it shares the makes-no-sense genre with our first movie. It's also got a heavy touch of the fantastic, one of the students is a cyclops. Of course the other students pick on him. His sister is a dude. One of the boys falls for her then finds out she's got a penis. He's bummed out. There's a lot of high school romance as well as some social commentary about the poor. One of the girls wears a plush human shaped doll on her back. She carries her poverty with her. Pretty allegorical for a goofy comedy, huh. Near the end it climbs off her back and leaves. There's a good bit of nice CGI. It's used to pump up the color to create a more hyper-real image or to create entertaining wipes between scenes. There's animated fantasies of the characters thoughts and cross dressing. The comedy is often broad and there are plenty of sight gags and physical comedy. Often the characters break out into song and dance. There's about as much plot as a variety show and that's what it's like. It moves from little sketches with the charcters to  dance numbers to odd abstract or absurd bits that have little to add to the story. There's always something to look at, the girls are all pretty and some of the guys are nearly as pretty as the girls. The sheer volume of the jokes means there's something for everyone. It's not that edgy or rude, there isn't even any nudity. It's worth a look for the right person.

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We watched the Blu-Ray of This Is The End first. It was pretty funny. The movie is written and directed by Seth Rogan and his childhood friend and writing partner Evan Goldberg. Rogan joins his fellow actors on screen as themselves. Jay Baruchel is in town visiting Seth. They are pals in real life too. Seth wants to go to a party at Franco's new house but Jay isn't as keen. He'd rather stay at Seth's and smoke all the weed Seth bought. He doesn't know most of the people and he hates Jonah Hill. At the party the two mingle with all the comedians and actors until Jay wants to get some smokes. They're down the street at a convenience store when the Apocalypse comes to call. People are ruptured in beams of blue light and there's mass hysteria and chaotic behaviour. When they return to the party no one knows what's going on. No calls to heaven there. The end times comes crashing in and a huge sinkhole opens up in the front yeard. Many of the guests get sucked down into the fiery void. Yeow, huh! The rest of the movie has the left over guys fight to stay alive as demons and cannibals roam the earth. Things don't go to well and only some of the guys get through the movie.

The movie is well enough shot though some of the CGI is a bit murky. Most of the movie is shot in the Franco house. It had a smallish budget, 32 million, and did well at the theatres, with a 122 million box office. It gets nice reviews and good scores on the media sites. I'm in total agreement with that. It  made us all laugh and I would want to watch it again.

 

Message from Space has been released in the US by Shout Factory and it's the first release of the movie on dvd. You can watch the whole movie on YouTube above. This 1978 Japanese movie, with a $6,000,000 budget, was the most expensive movie made in Japan at the time. It's not a great movie but it's fairly entertaining. There are some slow parts and the acting is terrible at times. That goes well with the goofy script. As a story it's all over the place. People and their actions often make no sense but there you go. It's all helped to get the movie some of that cult status stank on it. It one that people like to watch because it's bad. I just like to watch movies for the stories and this is a pretty popular one. The simple people of Jillucia are being attacked by the war mongering Gavanas Empire. The Jillucians send 8 magical glowing walnuts Liabe Seeds to collect some heroes to save their world. They get a couple of annoying spaceship pilots, a over-excited and loud young rich girl, a cast off Gavanas warrior (Sonny Chiba), and Vic Morrow and his second best robot. It takes a while to get them together and they don't exactly save the planet. The effects are typical of the time in Japan. Some are ok and some not so much. The characters are all exaggerated like they belong in one of those Japanese action shows, like Kamen Rider, which the Toei Company also produced. The Gavanas warriors all wear helmuts with horns on them. Did they think they're Wagnerian vikings? I don't know. What I do know is that it's heavily influenced by Star Wars. There is music that is very similar and there are space ships racing through a trench to blow up the huge enemy ship. It's no where near as good as SW but it has it's own style and approach to the story. It's so rooted in the Japanese culture and mythology that I'm sure we are missing something. Certainly there isn't the need to obey strict rules in story telling or staying in one certain genre. None of us felt we had wasted our 105 minutes but you'd have to be the judge of that for yourself.

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Joe brought the Blu-Ray of Oblivion. That's the Tom Cruse movie that was released earlier this year. It's set about 65 years in the future and the Earth is a shambles. Tom tells us about the big alien invasion while he's getting ready to go off to work in his flying car. There was a war to end all wars and it killed many millions of people and pretty much wrecked the planet. The Earth people won the war but lost their world. The people are being housed on a floating station before they are sent to Titan to colonize. Tom's job is drone maintenance and he's one of the two people left on the earth. He flies to the damaged drones and repairs them. They are heavily armed flying balls who mostly maintain and protect the huge plants that are sucking up water from the ocean to turn to fusion power. It powers the waiting station and the colony ships that go to Titan. Tom lives with Victoria in a combination work station and living quarters. He does the repair work and she manages the station work. There are some left over aliens on the planet and they keep attacking the drones and stealing stuff. Turns out it's all a lie. Tom finds out what's really going on when his ex-wife shows up.

The movie is a feast of special effects and fancy geegaws. There's plenty of fighting, slaughter and explosions. The scenery is great, much of it was filmed in Iceland's volcanic area. It looks cool, all desolate and rocky. I still have flashes of scenery from the year we lived in Churchill Manitoba. It was all rocky and spare, no trees, lots of water and ice in Hudson's Bay. I haven't had much interest in actually going back there. It's far. I thought the story was very much like a 1950's sf novel. One lone man, against all odds, brings down a much more powerful entity. I liked a lot of those novels when I was younger and still like the story idea. The story in the movie is a bit weak and it makes the 124 minute running time seem longer. So much of the movie reminds me of scenes from other movies. Director Joseph Kosinski says in an interview that the film is an homage to SF movies of the 1970's. He'd directed some video game commercials and that got him the job to direct Tron: Legacy in 2010. He does great on the special effects and whooshing about but it would be a better film if he was more of a story teller. I enjoyed it well enough but doubt I would bother buying a copy.

The Colossus Of New York is a 1958 movie by Eugène Lourié. He directed 4 movies and the other three are all giant monster movies. You might have seen The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Behemoth, the Sea Monster or Gorgo. All are entertaining and so is TCONY. It's not perfect by any stretch but it's got a good idea and some fairly good actors. The script is a bit weak at times and I like the movie enough to have seen it 3 or 4 times so far. I have a copy I recorded off of tv and watched it for Science Fiction Sunday in 2009. The post about the movie follows the posters below.

 

It's the same with robots that go out of control, they get smashed down. That's the sad story of The Colossus of New York. It's a low-budget film from 1958 directed by Eugène Lourié. He did not direct many films, he mostly worked as a production designer or art director. His directorial debut was 1953's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms which is based on a Ray Bradbury story. I like it, it's fun to watch, and Ray Harryhausen worked on the stop motion beast. Lourié would go on to direct The Giant Behemoth and Gorgo would be his last directed film in 1961. In TCONY Ross Martin is a brilliant doctor. He's the son of another brilliant doctor played by Otto Kruger. Ross is hit by a truck and dies. Oh, no. His dad saves the brain. Good idea? I don't think so but the deed is done. The dead doctor's brother is a mechanical genius and he works with dad to put the brain in a robot body. Much as I might like to get my brain put into a robot body so I could take over the word, I would not want to be in this hulking behemoth. He's huge. Well, as you might image things get worse and worse for everyone and robot man has to be destroyed. Seen that coming. Don't put brains into robots I guess. It hardly ever seems to work out well.

I like the the posters. I found a bunch of the lobby cards and posted them here. Yay, for Google.

 

 

   

   

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I hadn't seen tonight's first movie Star Trek Into Darkness yet, some of the others had. The new BluRay looks pretty nice. The movie is a rehash of the Kahn story from the original series. I didn't know that going in. It's a bit disappointing, though for the most part I liked the movie. There's lots of whooshing about, fighting, stuff blowing up and a great villian in Benedict Cumberbatch. You might keep an eye out for his Sherlock series. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Sultana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Simon Pegg return as the main command crew. Bruce Greenwood guests as Christopher Pike, Peter Weller as the head of Star Fleet and Alice Eve as his daughter. Her real dad is Trevor Eve, who stars on the long running British tv show Waking The Dead. Leonard Nimoy pops in for a brief bit near the end. It's directed by JJ Abrams and written by three guys, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, who work together a lot on medium to large budget sf and summer blockbuster type movies, sometimes with Abrams. I think their skills lean more to the technical than to story telling.

The story story opens with Spock trying to freeze a volcano on a world with a primitive people. The volcano will destroy the planet. Spock is lowered into the volcano and things go wrong. Spock's tether breaks and he's luckily landed on a bit of lava that's more solid than the rest. He has to start up the bomb and they can't beam him out of there because of a plot device. Kirk risks all, comes out of hiding, the natives see the ship, but they rescue Spock. When they get back Kirk looses the Enterprise because he broke so many regulations, including the Prime Directive. He created a cargo cult out of some primitive people when he showed them that the Enterprise can fly under water. While that's happening in space there's another sub-plot back on Earth. Benedict and a man with an incurably sick and dying daughter come to a deal. To save his daughter the man blows up a building that houses a secret Star Fleet project. When Kirk returns he gets a scolding and Admiral Pike gets the Enterprise. Kirk gets reduced to first officer under him and Spock is reassigned to another ship. After the bombing the Brass meet and are attacked by Benedict. Lot's of them die, including Pike and Spock's new captain. Kirk is given his job back and Peter sends him after Benedict, who is now on the Klingon home world. He had an amazing transport device that can teleport people from Earth to the Klingon home world. Wow, huh. They catch up to Benedict and he gives himself up. Peter shows up and it turns out he's set up the Enterprise to start a war with the Klingons. He believes it's coming and we might as well get on with it. Things don't go so well for Peter and San Francisco is partially destroyed when his ship crashes on it.

Mostly an okay movie, bit too serious at times and not hardly original. There are scenes in the movie that seem borrowed from other sf films. The production values are great, lots of interesting scenery and sets and spaceships. The script was better than some of the plot devices that it hung on. There was some nice humor, mostly with Simon Pegg, that helped lighten the tone. Not sure I would run out and buy the movie now that i have seen it but it might get cheap somewhere.

  

Greg brought a 3 park of Euro-sleeze and we watched The Sinful Dwarf. It's a 1973 Danish film with some English people speaking English. A young couple, hard on their luck, rents a cheap flat in a rundown building. The old lady who rents the rooms is a retired entertainer. The dwarf in the title is her son. They have some rooms to rent and a secret sex prison in the attic. They keep 3 naked female heroin addicts in the room and men come have sex with them for cash. The husband of the young couple is a writer who isn't working. No one wants his stuff and the couple are skint. Hubby takes a job in a toy shop that has a secret drugs business going on. It's where the woman who runs the sex prison gets her H. Stupidly the dwarf and his mom kidnap the wife while the husband is muling drugs from Paris. He thinks he's bringing toys back but once he overhears the dwarf and the shop owner talking he calls the coppers in for a bit of help. They raid the rooming house, find the sex prison and free the wife and the other women. It's sure not a well made movie, some parts are more watchable than others, and that's not just for the content. The dialog is pretty sad at times but the actors aren't that great so there you go. The sets are cheezy and the dwarf usually more comical than scarey. There's plenty of nudity and simulated sex. The girls were nice enough. Ann Sparrow plays the wife and it's her only film. I could see why. The box touts it up as being at the top of the sleaze game but it doesn't quite deliver the most depraved film ever. I've certainly seen worse and more repulsive not that I've seen that many sleaze films. They aren't a genre that I care for that much. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you might like to see what a sleaze film is like. As those things go, this is on the side of less horrible.