PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 686

Yatterman is Takashi Miike's 2009 re-imagine of the 70s anime of the same name. The two people on the top of the poster are the superhero team Yatterman. They have a couple of sidekicks, Yatterwolf and Annoybot Toybotty. Yatterman battles the evil Doronbo gang, Doronjo and Tonzra and Boyacky. That's them at the bottom of the poster. They battle every week. This time the groups are fighting over a broken stone statue that has magical powers. There's a lot of battle going on but hardly anyone seems to get hurt. Plenty of collateral damage though, which makes me wonder what the local officials thinks of all this nonsense. The conflict goes on such a long time, 111 minutes, that I was getting bored near the 90 minute mark and two others fell asleep. To be fair, I'm often bored when the story's forward traction takes a hit and one of those two always falls asleep. It's colorful and filled with noise but when it was done I didn't think I'd need a copy, unless it was a couple of bucks.

We had a second Japanese film today. The Vampire Doll is a 1970 horror film and one of a trio of Toho produced, Hammer like, vampire films packed on the Blu-ray set The Bloodthirsty Trilogy. All the films have a Western style vampire theme, something not so common for Toho. A young woman goes looking for her brother, he disappeared while visiting the house of his fiance. He had arrived, only to find his fiance had died in a car accident two weeks earlier. The brother then disappeared. The sister and her friend arrive and are told the brother had already gone. The sister sees the dead fiance and thinks she's alive. She's not, she's all undead. There's the usual sort of expected running about and yelling as the sister tries finding out what's really going on. It was fun enough to get to the end. I'm debating getting this set but haven't made up my mind yet. So many other things to buy.

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A couple of Christmas movies tonight. Both I'd seen before, both have killer snowmen, and both made me laugh.

Jack Frost is a 1997 horror comedy about a convicted killer who gets covered with goo that turns him into a sludge that animates the surrounding snow. This all happens on a road in the country right near the town where the killer was caught. The killer promised to return from the dead to kill the sheriff of the town. Happy coincidence or what, huh. The snowmurderer gets to killing and that sheriff has to team up with jerky government types to stop the murderous snowman. There's plenty of gags, gore and red snow. I seen this 3 or 4 times now and it makes me laugh each time. Worth checking out for those so inclined. You can see a watchable copy on YouTube here.

A Very Harold And Kumar Christmas is a 2011 comedy with our old pals Harold and Kumar. They've gone their separate ways, Harold is a responsible businessman with a nice house and a wife, Kumar isn't going to med school anymore and his girlfriend has left him. A package for Harold shows up at Kumar's and he takes a trip to Harold's place. The package turns out to contain a big ass joint that Kumar lights up. Harold gets mad at Kumar and tosses the joint out the window. It magically opens the window and flies into the special Christmas Tree that Harold's father-in-law, Danny Trejo, has raised from a pup. It goes up like it was made from gasoline and Harold and Kumar spend the rest of the movie trying to get a replacement tree. There's plenty of laughs, collateral damage and near death experiences. Santa gets shot, a baby gets high on cocaine and Wafflebot is motherfuckin' awesome. This is a Christmas movie that everyone should have in their library.

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Evil Of The Night is a 1985 horror film with a bunch of aging stars in several of the roles: John Carradine, Neville Brand in his last film, Aldo Ray, Tina Louise, Julie Newmar, Karrie Emerson and Bridget Holloman. It also stars a few porn stars like Amber Lynn, Crystal Breeze, Jerry Butler and Jody Swafford. It's co-written by director, producer Mohammed Rustam and Phillip Dennis Conners. It's teens on a beach being harvested by alien's secreted in a hospital. They want the blood platelets to use for a longevity formula. They want young people, 18-24, for their healthy platelets. The victims don't do that good a job a getting away or fighting back and they get slaughtered one or two at a time. Near the end one couple fights back and they get away. The aliens leave and the movie's over. It's not a good movie, it gets a 3.0 on the IMDB for a reason. It's only got 436 votes but with the new Blu-ray there could be dozens more. I gave it a 4 because it's better than a 3 but not too much. You can see it on YouTube, a decent watchable print, and make up your own mind.

Trophy Heads is another movie with older stars playing parts, they haven't quite got the years of some of our earlier cast, this time it's all 80s and 90s Scream Queens. It's a 2014 Charles Band film, he directed the film and he wrote the story that Roger Barron turned into the screenplay. It's a movie about a nut job who murders scream queens and mounts their heads on the wall to preserve them. I guess he didn't have a camera. His crazy mom helps him kidnap the women and everything else. Scream Queens Brinke Stevens, Darcy DeMoss, Jacqueline Lovell, Linnea Quigley, Denice Duff and Michelle Bauer are the poor ladies headed for the wall. I liked the idea of older Scream Queens working in the movie but I'm not anything like a fan of nut job slasher movies. Like the previous movie I gave this one a 4 on the IMDb. I'd certainly be less interested in seeing it again. It's just not that much fun, at least to me.

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The Hollow is a Legend Of Sleepy Hollow based horror film that came out in 2004. I got it for a couple of bucks and the only reason I picked it up was that it has Kaley Cuoco in it. It's written by Hans Rodionoff and directed by Kyle Newman. Hans has written about a dozen movies, mostly stuff I haven't seen. Kyle directed Fanboys 5 years after this movie and 6 years later he directed Barely Lethal. He directed several shorts and 4 episodes of The Crazies but no other features. I have seen none of the shorts or TV episodes. I did like Fanboys quite a bit and Barely Lethal a fair bit. I don't think The Hollow is up to those films, we were having a hard time getting into the movie, there was chatter, but in our defense the movie is pokey and meandering. Some guy is the descendant of Ichabod Crane and he's the chosen one to fight the headless horseman. It's one of those recurring curse things. It happens right on Halloween too. There's a few jokes but nothing that funny, there's a bit of gore but nothing excessive. It was a made for TV movie that premiered on the ABC Family Channel. Slightly trimmed of course. The acting is OK for the most part. Stacy Keach does over act a bit but he probably didn't care and he is the comic relief machine. I took a chance for 2 bucks and didn't come out with a winner. I don't feel it's a loser either. It's about dead average. Not sure I'll keep it.

We watched Jason Statham's Mechanic: Resurrection next. It's the sequel to the 2011 film The Mechanic. I liked the original enough to pick up a cheap copy years after seeing it. I recently found a DVD for a couple of bucks on clearance. I'd buy this one if I found it for a couple of bucks. I like Jason most of the time but he seems to make a lot of similar movies. He's a hit man in this film, a mechanic, and he's retired from his career. He was blown up at the end of the first film and he wants to keep out of the business but some dick won't let him. When he turns down the job to hit three people the dick gets aroused and fucks up Jason's life. Jessica Alba is tossed in there to be the lady in jeopardy and the romantic interest. There's plenty of killin' and oodles of action and stunts. They film in plenty of scenic places like Thailand, Bulgaria, Brazil, Cambodia, Malaysia and Australia. I enjoyed it but I wouldn't give more than a 6 on the IMDb where it's averaging a 5.6 right now.

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The VVitch is a 2015 supernatural folk tale that seems to put people into a hate it or love it camp. It got fairly good reviews and made $40 million on it's $3 million budget. It's written and directed by Robert Eggers and it's his first film. It's about as pretentious as writing The Witch as The VVitch on the poster. He saw the spelling in a 17th century pamphlet on witches. In the 17th century the head of a family of Puritans is banished from the plantation and he takes his family and goes a days ride away. They make a home for him and his wife and their 4 children. They build a house and some out buildings and a time later a fifth child is born. The older daughter is watching him when he's spirited away by a witch who  uses his flesh for a flying ointment. The family falls apart for the rest of the movie and it seems like it takes for ever. I didn't like it. It was like eating a worm.

Fairy Tales on the other hand was like eating a doughnut sprinkled with boobies made from sugar. Even if the doughnut isn't great the boobies are fun and make you laugh. It's a 1978 movie that was produced by our old pal Charles Band. It's a sexy musical comedy directed by Harry Hurwitz. His first film was The Projectionist with Chuck McCann and Rodney Dangerfield. FT is co-written by Franne Schacht and Frank Ray Perilli from an idea by Charles Band. Frank has a part in the film. A Prince goes off to loose his virginity, before next Thursday, so he can inherit his kingdom. The only trouble is every time he gets near a willing lady he can't get it up. Some men try to help him but he only wants to have sex with Linnea Quigley. It's her first film and she plays a princess who disappeared years before the story starts. That's the kind of girl to pine for, huh. One who's missing and presumed dead. Takes the pressure off I guess. Anyway the Prince has fallen for her painting in his room. Now he needs to get off on his quest and in his search he encounters various naked, or near naked, ladies who sing and seduce. Sadly they have no luck. There's a whole slew of other fairly tales related characters who have some randy escapades. It all works out well for the Prince and he gets it up on time. It's not got a good script, the dialog doesn't rate a "top notch" from anyone and some of the actors strike out taking a crack saying the lines. Most of the songs are terrible, other than the song by Martha Reeves, of Martha and the Vandellas, that was OK. Still it was fun in it's goofiness and I got a few laughs. I wouldn't recommend it to many people but there are those that might like it. I'm thinking about buying one if it gets below 7 bucks for the DVD.

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I Drink Your Blood is a 1970 horror film about hippies, rabies and crazy killin'. It's written and directed by David E Durston who got his script ideas from the Manson killings and a deadly rabies epidemic in Iran. He directed a half dozen films over 12 years and this is his most famous film. And that's probably because it was the first, or one of the first, movies to receive an X Rating from the MPAA for violence alone. They released the film with instructions for the theaters to trim the film in their area and that resulted in a huge number of slightly different prints coming back to the distributor.

Some hippies are having a Satanic ritual in the woods when we meet them. One of the guys brings a local girl and the other members beat her up, rape her and drive her off. The next day they try to leave the area and their van breaks down. Rather than fix it they push it down a hill with one of the guys inside sleeping. Nice bunch of people, huh. Nearby there's a small town that's been evacuated for a dam project the hippies take over a small hotel. The grandfather goes after them and they beat him up. His grandson decides to get even by giving the hippies some meat pies laced with rabies laden blood from a dog he'd killed. The hippies turn rabid and attack the men in the dam's construction crew. There's some general mayhem and the movie is over. Hardly anyone survives.

It's about average, we got a few laughs, though some of it is pretty goofy. Worth a look for the fan of the exploitation film. The new Blu-ray looks nice and there are the two versions of the movie on it. I'd get one if it got cheap enough.

I have a copy of the 2014 psychological horror film The Babadook but I might get rid of it. I found it for a couple of bucks on clearance and we watched it tonight. I had heard of it and people seemed to be liking it. It was written and directed by Jennifer Kent and it's her first director's job. It's Australian and it's based on a Kent short film from 2010. Essie Davis is the main lead and I did not recognize her from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries where she plays Phryne Fisher.

Essie is a single mom and she lives with her son in a grey house. Really the whole place is a wash with monotonous grey. It's no wonder that weird things happen there. Her son was born on the day his father died. He had been in an accident on the way to the hospital. Essie's son is one of those hyper active kids who just won't shut up. That's a horror to me. When going to bed the son picks a book to read and it turns out to be the Babadook pop up book. It leads evil into the house and they spend the rest of the movie going crazier and crazier. It's a mental illness movie as opposed to a monster movie. I'd prefer the latter thank you very much. Not one I'm going to be bothering with again.

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Murder Unincorporated was our first feature tonight. It's a 1965 Japanese crime comedy that's part of the Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Collection Volume 2. It's directed by Haruyasu Noguchi, he only directed 9 movies in the 1960s, one of which is Daikyojû Gappa. It was called Monster from a Prehistoric Planet when originally released in the US. The IMDb doesn't list a writer so I'll forget about that. I wouldn't know who he was anyway.

Murder Unincorporated starts with the murder of a member of a criminal gang by a guy called Joe Of Spades. He says he's going to kill the rest of the members. They call in some assassins to kill Joe. That's some of the assassins up above. All of them have a radically different style in dress and murder technique. Many of their weapons are hidden in common everyday objects like books and baseball bats.

Jô Shishido appears in a good number of Nikkatsu films. That's him on the right above. This is the only comedy movie of his I've seen. The fight between Joe The Spade and the gang continues and there's plenty of dead littering the streets. It's all pretty silly but sadly not quite funny enough to make me laugh out loud. It's kind of slow paced for a comedy. It's all very colorful and that helps. I was happy enough to see it but I think I'll be watching some of the more serious Nikkatsu crime movies more often than this one. It was nice to see a Japanese comedy. I just don't see that many Japanese comedies. 

The House Of Seven Corpses is a 1974 horror film about some film makers in a haunted house. Paul Harrison is the directer, co-producer and co-writer with Thomas J Kelly. John Ireland is the annoying director, Faith Domergue is the aging star and John Carradine is the caretaker of the old house. The place is filled with death in it's past, plenty of murder and suicide. The movie moves along at a slow pace and there isn't much happening a good bit of the time. It's about average, nothing too much out of the ordinary here. You might think you've seen it before but it you hadn't. You can check it out on YouTube for free in the link in the title.

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Skiptrace is a 2016 Jackie Chan film and this time he's paired with Johnny Knoxville in this Hollywood film. It's got a script by Jay Longino and BenDavid Grabinski and the director is Renny Harlin.

I had forgotten that Jackie and Renny had worked together before. They never finished Nosebleed when the Twin Towers were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

Skiptrace is a comedy for the most part, kind of reminds me of the Rush Hour series. I see there's a rumor of a 4th in that series. In Skiptrace Johnny is a gambler and low life criminal who stumbles into a murder by Mr Wong, a man that Jackie thinks is the super criminal The Matador. Jackie has just had a bad time at work and his Lieutenant, played by Michael Wong, has sent him home for a month of leave and telling him to think about retiring. Jackie's dead partner had left a daughter when he died and he'd asked Jackie to take care of her. She comes to him with a problem. She's got to find Johnny Knoxville for Mr Wong. She goes to Jackie for help and he goes after Johnny.

There's plenty of running about, some good amount of fights and stunts. Jackie isn't moving as fast as he used to but he's in much better shape than I am and he's only a few months younger than me. Johnny is annoying but he does get thrown to the ground a lot so there's that compensation. It's not in my top bunch of Jackie movies but it's fairly entertaining. I'd rather re-watch some of his earlier Hong Kong movies before I get to this again.

Hatchet is a 2006 horror movie set in the bayou's of New Orleans. It's Mardi Gras and some people go on a haunted boat rise in the swamp. They go down a river that's home to a murdering monster and a bunch of them get killed.

When I picked up the DVD recently I had complete forgotten that I had seen the movie just short of 4 years ago. I remembered I had seen the 2010 sequel, Hatchet II, before the first movie, which I saw off of cable in January 2013.

Hatchet is OK, there's a good bit of the grizzly, a few jokes, and some naked boobies. It's currently got a 5.7 score on the IMDb and that's not too bad. I gave it a 6 because it's better than a 5 but not quite a 7.

Adam Green is the writer-director of the thing. The actors are OK, you might recognize Joel David Moore from Avatar, Bones or Grandma's Boy. Mercedes McNab was Harmony on the Buffy The Vampire TV series but here she's got her top off so there's that. You could do a lot worst than this.

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I was interested in our first feature, Project X, because it was directed by William Castle. He's one of my favorite directors. The screenplay was written by Edmund Morris and the story was adapted from a pair of novels, The Artificial Man and Psychogeist by L P Davis. i remember seeing books by L P Davis around but haven't read any.

It's a 1968 film about a secret agent set in the harsh future of 2118. Christopher George, on a covert mission to Sino-Asia, the evil superpower, has some problems. To avoid torture he's taken an anti-torture drug that's given him amnesia. The West has him back and he's been frozen until they figure out how to reverse the amnesia. Before he lost his memory Christopher had sent a message warning the West of a Sino-Asian threat. It order to trick his mind back to reality the scientists create a 1960's town and reprogram his brain to try to remember what the threat was. The military works with the scientists and Colonel in charge, Harold Gould, doesn't get along with them. Monte Markham is another secret agent working for the bad guys. He tries to interfere with the program.

Part of the mind control is depicted on the screen with a series of various effects shots like the ones above. There are some bits of animation by Hanna-Barbera. The Wikipedia says there is also a clip from an old Jonny Quest episode buried in there. The effects seem a bit old fashioned compared to the stuff available today but they do the trick for the film and it would have been something people wouldn't have seen before when it was new. Sadly it didn't do so well at the box office and it would be the the 2nd last film Castle directed, the last was the 1974 film Shanks. I enjoyed Project X well enough. I know it's not that great but I'll add a copy to my own library when it gets a bit cheaper.

Our second feature was The Magnetic Monster. There's a new Blu-ray out and we watched that. It's a 1953 SF film about a strange magnetic phenomenon that is causing trouble. Some crazy scientist invented it and it's getting bigger and bigger. At the rate it's growing it's only going to take a day before it will destroy the world. The scientists work hard to figure out the solution. It's written by Producer Ivan Tors and Director Curt Siodmak. Herbert L Strock actually directed a fair bit of the movie. He gets no credit for that but he does for being the editorial supervisor. Strock is mostly an editor and Tors hired him because of the amount of stock footage to be worked into the film.

Richard Carlson is Dr Jeffrey Stewart, one of the scientists at the OSI, and he comes to investigate some weird happenings at a department store along with his co-worker Dr Dan Forbes, played by King Donovan. Their investigation leads them to the magnetic monster and he's part of the team that figures out what to do with it.

That's the machine Richard uses to save the world. It's borrowed from the 1934 German SF thriller Gold. They use about 10 minutes of footage from the German film and they work it into The Magnetic Monster quite well. Richard even changes his clothes to match the workers in the German film. 

The Magnetic Monster is the first episode in Ivan Tors' Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) trilogy. The second and third films are Riders To The Stars and Gog. They're worth checking out for the SF fan but they aren't the greatest films. TMM gets a 6 on the IMDb and that's about where I would put it.

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The Neon Dead was first up. it's a 2015 horror film about a haunted house. The woman in the poster inherits the house, after she moves in supernatural beings start appearing. She calls in a couple of paranormal exterminators who work at the local supermarket and it's connected video store. One a nerdy guy the other is a knob with too much confidence. The single monster leads to more monsters and a backstory about an evil sorcerer. They battle him, and his gang of zombies, until the end of the movie. You can get a taste of it by watching the trailer in the link above.

Writer-director Torey Haas is mostly a special effects guy and this is his only feature film. Most of his effects work seems to be on shorts and a TV episode. I guess a guy needs to get some credits to get more jobs. It's a horror comedy but the jokes didn't generate anything like laughs in me. The script gets you to the end of the movie and there's some character development but it's very familiar to much any horror fan would have seen. The video images have been tweaked with and some of that is bothersome. The monster make up is goofy looking. Much of the problems are from the $17,000 budget. Still, they made a 80 minute movie and it's out on Amazon Prime. It's watchable but you might feel you've wasted your time and money. It's certainly not that little independent gem that I'm always looking for.

Today I found one. Blood Punch is a 2014 horror movie about a trio of people caught in a curse. Milton, Skyler and Russell are going to cook some meth and make millions. One big batch, created in a hunting lodge, off season of course. Milton meets Skyler in rehab and she convinces him to get involved with her and her boyfriend Russell. He's cop and he's stolen the ingredients to make meth. He just needs a cook and that's where Milton comes in. At the hunting lodge they all get high and take meth laced with peyote. When Milton wakes up he finds the video recorder and monitor from Russell's police car by the toilet. It's a message from himself and there's a lot to tell. The hunting lodge is on cursed Indian land and as you can imagine that causes some problems.

I read on the IMDb that director Madellaine Paxson and writer Eddie Guzelian developed the story together. Madellaine has written a whole pile of animation, much of it for Disney, shows like Hercules, The Legend of Tarzan, Kim Possible and many others. I haven't seem most of it. Eddie has written a lot of animation and often for the same programs as Madellaine. It's a first feature for both of them and Madellaine's first shot in the director's chair. They have come up with a nice twisty story and entertaining characters. The script is good, there's a nice sense of humor, and the actors have the ability to carry it off. Well worth a look.