PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 664

The Sound was our first movie, it's a 2017 Canadian film that's written and directed by Janna Mattison. Rose McGowan plays a woman who blogs about the supernatural. She investigates the sounds that come from haunted places. She doesn't believe the supernatural exists. She goes into an abandoned subway and some weird shit happens. The Wikipedia says it's psychological thriller but it wasn't much thrilling or anything. It takes a long time to get to the end and I didn't like the movie much. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Necromancy is said to be Bert I Gordon's best movie. It might be, Bert directed two dozen movies and some of them are pretty dumb, Food Of The Gods, Empire Of The Ants, and The Amazing Colossal Man. I do like The Magic Sword, Tormented and The Boy And The Pirates and I know they aren't great films.

Bert wrote the script for Necromancy with Gail March. The 1972 movie was cut a bit, some nudity added, and then released on VHS in the US in 1983 as The Witching. The Blu-ray from Code Red has a version that's closer to the original film.

Michael Ontkean and Pamela Franklin are a couple who live in the city. Michael gets a job at a toy company in a small town. Orson Wells is the head of the company and he's also the head of a coven. Pamela isn't much interested in the coven but Michael gets right into it. She wants to leave but the coven won't let her. She's needed for a ritual to raise Orson's son from the dead. Pamela is going to be the sacrifice.

It's pretty much like a lot of other coven of witches movies. Poor gal trapped by evil shits. You get the idea. There's nothing new and exciting in the story. I thought the ending was a bit of a rip. It's not totally awful, you can see for yourself with a couple of versions of the film, original cinerama release and a special edition on YouTube.

Friday Night Movies 663

Our first feature is the Blu-ray of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. It's a 1983 SF movie written by Alan J Adler and directed by Charles Band. I hadn't seen it for years, it's one of those post-apoc Mad Max kind of movies, but with added mutants, aliens and magical crystal crap. It's got Kelly Preston, Richard Moll, Jeffrey Byron and Tim Thomerson.

Jeffery is some sort of space cop, he's after Jared-Syn, who's trying to take control of the planet with plenty of killing and maiming. There's plenty of roaming the wastelands, which is where Jeffrey runs into Kelly. She works in a crystal mine with her father. When Jeffrey finds them the father is dead, killed by henchmen of J-S. Kelly wants revenge and she teams up with Jeffrey. J-S kidnaps her with some magical crystal shit. Jeffrey runs into Tim and they pair up to go after Jared-Syn. That all takes a while and there's some fighting, explosions and so-so effects.

Sadly it's not so good but it is fun enough to get through once in a while. We had a fun time talking about all the goofy shit that was going on. I don't think I need to get myself a copy but I was happy to see it. I wind up liking these dumb action flicks. Nothing logical. Just dumb fun.

The Sisterhood is in the same vein as the first movie we watched. It's a 1988 Filipino movie directed by Cirio H Santiago and written by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver. It's after the nukes have fallen and there aren't many people left. Warlords have taken over and women are second class citizens. The Sisterhood are Amazon types who battle for women's rights. Their power has waned after a big battle, many of the Sisters have been captured by a warlord. A couple of the Sisters pick up a young woman to bring to their camp. One of the Sisters is captured by the warrior. The Sister and the young woman give chase. There's some fighting and such until the big mystical thing happens. That was kind of stupid, I didn't think much of it. It's not as good as the first movie, even accounting for the lower budget and production values. It's another I was glad to see but don't need to buy.

Friday Night Movies 662

Up first, the 1995 Clint Howard horror film Ice Cream Man. It was written by Sven Davison and David Dobkin. It was the first work for director Norman Apstein who hasn't done anything since. It's not a great film but it's average enough that a guy might have gotten another film deal out of it.

Clint is an ex-patient from a mental hospital who might have been released a bit too early. He lives in his own little fantasy world, one where he kidnaps kids and adults and mixes them into his ice cream.

Sometimes Clint gets a bit carried away but he really just wants to make kids happy with ice cream. If only he had a business plan, that and a more stable mind. There's an interesting cast: Jan Michael Vincent, Olivia Hussey, Sandahl Bergman, Steve Garvey, David Naughton and David Warner. I got a few laughs. You can see if you do, there's a copy on YouTube you can check out in the link in the title above.

Psychic Killer is a 1975 horror film that was written by Greydon Clark, Mikel Angel and director Ray Danton. Ray is a long time character actor who directed a good bit of TV and two films. He died back in 1992. Psychic Killer was originally released under the title The Kirlian Force. The new Blu-ray has the original title on the film.

Jim Hutton is a man who was falsely accused of murder and imprisoned. He gains some psychic powers from another prisoner. He's released when the real killer confesses. Jim then starts a program of revenge, astral projection style.

Paul Burke is a cop investigating the strange murders and Julie Adams is a psychiatrist who once treated Jim. There's a bit of romance going on between Paul and Julie. They are joined by a pretty good assortment of actors: Whit Bissell, Nehemiah Persoff, Neville Brand, Also Ray, Rod Cameron, Delia Reese, Greydon Clark and Mary Charlotte Wilcox.

Eventually Paul figures out it's Jim behind the killings but how can he prove that some magical bullshit works really works. Who'd believe that? So, Paul plans to kill Jim while he's in the collapsed mental state that he goes into when projecting that astral being. You can find out what happens at the link for the movie in the title above. 

Not a great movie, it tries to be entertaining, but it's score on the IMDb, a 4.7, that isn't too far off in my mind. Not a movie I would need to pick up on DVD but I did save a download from YouTube in case I needed to refer to it again.

Friday Night Movies 660

OSS 117 Se Dechaine is a 1963 French-Italian spy film that goes under the name OSS 117 Is Unleashed here in the USA. I hadn't ever heard of the series, that I remember, but I don't follow the spy genre as a rule. I liked the James Bond films when I first saw them in the 60s. I went on to read the novels back in the 70s. I re-read a few about 10 years ago and found they were still entertaining. I more prone to liking the James Bond style of spy film. I even went and bought the Blu-set of the Bond films. When it comes to more serious spy films I find I can take or leave them. I often I find the John LeCarre type story a bit of a bore. OSS 117 Se Dechaine leans toward the James Bond type of story but it's not quite as accomplished. I think that might be why hardly anyone I know here seems to have heard of them. Still, hard to keep up with all of film.

Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is the secret agent in the OSS 117 series of 88 books by Jean Bruce. He started writing them in 1949, 4 years before Bond, and after dying in a car crash in 1963, Bruce's wife wrote 143 more novels over the next 22 years. Bruce's daughter and her hubby wrote 23 more novels from 1987 to 1992. There was a 1956 film adaptation but that isn't included in the 5 film set I picked up. I had seen the 2006 and 2009 French parodies of the series, and I enjoyed those, but I knew that the older films are serious. After seeing some clips on YouTube I decided to take a chance on the set. Sometimes you just get a gut feeling that you need to see something. Nothing rational about it.

OSS 117 Se Dechaine was based on two novels by Jean Bruce. That isn't one of them to the left, it was the most Fu Manchu like cover of the bunch on Amazon. So I harvested it for here. The movie has a screenplay by Raymond Borel, Pierre Foucard and director Andre Hunebelle. Andre would direct the next 3 sequels in the OSS 117 series. One of the two comments on the film's IMDb page says that he'd read the books and the film stays somewhat true to the story and characters. Nice to know, even if I bought a copy of an OSS 117 book, I wouldn't be able to read it, all the ones listed on Amazon are in French. They got plenty of different books, some at high prices, some for $4-6 each.

Kerwin Matthew's plays Hubert in the 1963 film, and the first sequel. Hubert is one for the ladies, he's always on the make. Hubert's boss at the OSS cock blocks Hubert, who was seducing the Boss's assistant, and sends him to investigate the death of an American agent. The agent had been scuba diving and didn't come back. The man with the boat lies and tries to cover up the death of the agent. There's a fair bit of diving in the movie, set against the backdrop of the interesting looking cliffs of Corsica.The scenery of Corsica is pretty too.

That's the agent in the middle and baddies on either side of him. The guy on the left is the boat owner, he's a hired hand who's  more stupid than evil, greed drives him. The blonde is in it up to her eyeballs but she's a bit of a cliche, the good person in a bad spot. She's tied up with one group, the American's are involved, the French, and maybe others. It's still not an overly complicated story, the baddies are up to something in a secret cave, Hubert and his allies put a stop to that. Back to the seducing.

I enjoyed the movie. While it might not have the polish of a James Bond film, it does OK. The only complaint I had was the fights. They need some better fights. Maybe we'll see an improvement in the next films.

The Vampire's Ghost is a 1945 Republic film that's based on John William Polidori's story The Vampyre. Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay with John K Butler, the director was Lesley Selander. Lesley directed a lot of Westerns, with a lot of the popular Cowboy stars of the 30s and 40s. I've seen a few of them. TVG is really short and until recently the only way to buy the movie was from the bootleggers. Sadly Olive films have packaged it at a high price that might mean many won't bother. You can see a copy posted on Daily Motion in the link in the title above. 

That's John Abbott, Charles Gordon and Peggy Stewart on the lobby card. John plays the owner of a bar in a tiny African port town. He's secretly a 400 year old vampire who is getting tired of the life, or lack of it. He's always having to move, once the locals start to notice the blood drained bodies piling up. Charles is the captain of a ship and Peggy dances in the bar. She's quite the beauty.

There have been a trio of death's before the movie starts and the locals are pounding the drums non-stop. How annoying that would be, yet another reason to stay out of the jungle. John tries to keep from being discovered but eventually it all comes out.

It's not a bad film. Though the sets are the fakey jungle of the low budget studio, there's a good bit of story here to keep you from spending too much time on the flaws. The actors are all pretty good, one of advantages to the studio system, people get plenty of chance to learn their craft by working.

John Abbott is an interesting choice for the vampire but he does well. John was born in London in 1905 and before he was in the movies he was a well known Shakespearean actor in the UK. You might have seen John is any of the 2-300 movies and TV episodes he'd been in over his 48 year film career. He started making films in 1936 and he retired when he was about 80. He died 10 years later, in 1995.

Friday Night Movies 659

John Wick 2 starts 4 days after the first movie. John comes calling at the Russian gangster's chop shop to pickup his stolen car. It gets wrecked while John's paying the storage fee. Santino comes calling on John to call in a marker John had given him. John refuses the job and Santino blows up his house. John's told, by top crime boss Ian McShane, that he needs to make up with Santino and do the job he wants or John's a dead man. Turns out that Santino wants his sister killed, she's the head of a big crime family in Rome. After the assassination Santino puts a contract on John and all sorts of assassins come out of the wood work. The rest of the movie is John killing all the assassins and paying back Santino. It ends with a cliff hanger that hopefully will get answered in the last movie of the trilogy.

It's a violent slaughterfest that happens in a criminal fantasy underworld with it's own currency and rules. The only cop we see is John's friend Jimmy. They don't seem to show up when the shot outs are going on and the only consequences are internal to the criminal world. We were thinking that the body count was higher than the first film and the internet says it does, 77 in the first 128 in the second. Lot of job openings in the underworld the day after the movie. I enjoyed the movie and look forward to the last film where John has to kill all the criminals in the underworld to get out his new predicament.

Bloody Knuckles is a 2014 Canadian horror comedy about a severed hand. It's written and directed by Matt O'Mahoney. It's his first film, he'd directed 7 shorts over the previous ten years and worked as a props guy on TV shows and movies.

That's Travis, he's an draftsman by day and an a cartoonist at night. He'd created a comic series that's got some local popularity. I found the art to be crap but that isn't going to stop people reading a comic. He does an issue about a local Chinese businessman, named Fong, who's really a gangster with his own gang of thugs. Fong is incensed and he has Travis brought round for punishment. He has one of his henchmen cut off Travis' hand and throw it in the sewer. Travis gets tossed onto the same street and he barfs down the sewer. His vomit lands on the hand. Travis's life life falls apart and days pass. The hand shows up at Travis' apartment, magically animated by the puke, seeking vengeance. It won't take no for an answer. The hand's a dick. A murderous dick.

There's a woman reporter who gets something on Mr Fong and his mob. The gangster kidnaps her and Travis, intending to put a stop to their annoyance. Lucky for them, the hand, joined by Homo Dynamous, comes to their rescue. They battle Fong to the death.

I got a laugh out of it, it's not great, it's a bit brutal, but it's entertaining. It's well enough made, there are interesting characters, and there are a good number of jokes of mixed quality. There's a good bit of gore as body parts get chopped off. The script is about average and the actors up to that or better. The only guy I didn't find to be that good was the guy who played Fong. It gets a 5.7 on the IMDb and I gave it a 6, it's not quite as good as a 7. I liked it enough to put the Blu-ray in my Amazon Wish List, it's under 8 bucks, so I'll stick it in my next order. I'll want to watch it again. You can watch, or download, a fairly decent copy from YouTube in the title link above.

Friday Night Movies 658

We watched a movie and it's sequel tonight, not something that happens that often. The first movie was Dear God No! and it came out in 2011. It's a low budget Indy film written and directed by James Bickert. I hadn't seen any of the direct to video movies he's done already, though you can see his 2000 film  Dumpster Baby on YouTube.

Dear God No! is about a gang of murderin', rapin' bikers, called the Impalers, who have a new policy of leaving no witnesses during their crimes. That kid in the picture, he couldn't outrun a bullet. The Impalers scumbag ways cause such a stir in the area, hardly anyone likes nuns getting raped and murdered, that the head of the local biker association tries to reign them in. Two of the Impalers are his sons and they decide to stab their Dad as an answer to his request that they cool it. That pisses off the local biker gangs and they're on the trail of the Impalers.

After a series of fights the Impalers take over the cabin of a ex-Nazi mad scientist who has an interest in mutations. He's got one in his basement. It's a mighty Sasquatch like beast that rips the head off everyone he meets, unless he tears them in two. The bikers had hoped for a quiet place to hole up, maybe have a bit of rape and murder, but they get a monster that beats their asses.

It's not a great movie but mostly it was entertaining. There's a bit of it that gets fairly nasty as the bikers rape a pregnant woman and rip out her baby. It just underscores the need to rip the heads off those scummy bikers. There's a fairly good sense of humor and some good gore. The script is fairly good and Bickert captures the look and feel of a 70s biker film well enough. I could use less of the fake film damage that is applied to the film. It's quick moving and doesn't flag too often. I was happy to have seen it but it's sure not for everyone.

Sadly the 2016 sequel, Frankenstein Created Bikers, is a bloated, ponderous behemoth that needs some editing. At 125 minutes it's a good half hour way too long. It slows down so much at times that the movie seems like it's 3 hours. The story picks up where the first movie ends. The ex-Nazi Mad Scientist didn't die from the hail of bullets and his burning house collapsing on him. He manages to resurrect nearly everyone from the first movie but things aren't going to well. Everyone's mad at everyone and they stop the movie to complain to each other. That part of the dialog was sure poor, all the good will from the first film was squandered by the tedious characters yakkin' away. At least he didn't add all the fake film damage. In the 5 years between films writer director James Bickert has improved in his ability to put images on screen but his writing has suffered. He needed someone to tell him it's way too long and uninteresting. After awhile a lot of the characters sounded the same. Too bad, I liked that first movie well enough to consider the Blu-ray of FCB, it has the first movie as a bonus, but the lack of fun in FCB has put me off. I'll settle for the copy of DGN! that's on YouTube right now. You can find it in the link above but beware it's not for the squeamish. Both movies are the kind of movies that are going to offend someone.

Friday Night Movies 656

Tales Of Halloween was our first choice, it's a 2015 anthology movie with several different writers and directors. Unlike most anthology movies this one ties in all the stories into a Halloween night in some town. It's got a huge cast of people I didn't know and plenty I did. Several horror directors have small parts and a few people are in more than one segment. All in all it was OK but some segments weren't as good as others. Some just seemed to end without any good reason. It seems to have some fans but it can barely scratch up a 5.5 on the IMDb. I gave it a 6, 'cause it's better than a 5. Even though I laughed once or twice, I doubt I'd pick one up unless it was pretty cheap, I felt it was more interesting for the people working on it than for the story and I'm not sure I'd ever get back to it.

Hotel Transylvania is a 2012 cartoon story about single parent Dracula. He's  so afraid of the human's he builds a special castle/hotel to keep his daughter and all the monster visitors safe. Of course a human wanders in and points out the design flaw in the place. Rather than dispatch the human, Dracula disguises him and keeps him in the hotel. The daughter and the human fall for each other and the rest of the movie is spent dealing with that. It had a couple of laughs and there were some things I didn't laugh at much. I had been curious but not enough to pick up a DVD. I'd buy this if I saw the DVD in the couple of bucks price range but then again I might not.

Friday Night Movies 655

Demon Wind was our first film, it's a 1990 horror movie about a haunted house and the numskulls who visit. It's written and directed by Charles Philip Moore and it's the second of the 11 films he's written and the first of the 4 films he directed. Corman fans might remember the Not Of This Earth remake he penned but didn't direct. Yeah, you probably remember it was pretty poor. I know I do. 

I thought that the actress that played Elaine, the lead guy's girlfriend, was familiar but could not remember why. Francine Lapensée is the actress, she has 14 credits on the IMDb and none of the titles are familiar. My Watched Movie List says I had seen Demon Wind back in march of 1993 but I didn't remember the story at all. Mind you it's so much like so many haunted house stories that they tend to blur together. Eric Larson plays the boyfriend, I hadn't heard of him, nor any of the rest of the cast. The pair are off to grandma's house with some pals. Eric had just seen his father and the next day daddy slit his wrists, so he's a bit disturbed. 

At the house they encounter some evil spirits and one by one the monster's put the bite on our travelers. Eric becomes infected but manages to defeat the demons. He gets to leave with Elaine but all the other's are dead. Pays to take some friends when you go into monster country. It's a below average movie and there isn't much of anything that is worth mentioning.

Angel-A is a 2005 Luc Besson movie, he produced, wrote and directed this encounter between a looser in Paris and an angel. Jamel Debbouze plays Andre, a scumbag looser, and Pie Rasmussen plays Angel-A, an angel. Andre owes money to all sorts of low lifes and he can't pay. He's going to jump off a bridge into the Seine when he's joined by a tall blonde woman on the bridge, she jumps and he jumps in after her. He pulls her to shore and they spend the rest of the movie making Andre's life better. There's a bit of humor, some small bit of action, and plenty of crying and character development. I liked the angel but I didn't care for the scumbag too much. Glad I saw it, there are plenty of beautiful shots of Paris and the B&W photography is nice to see. I don't think I need to see it again so I'm not going to pick up a copy.

Friday Night Movies 654

A couple of different films today. Madhouse was first, it's a 1974 Vincent Price film. It was a US/UK production from American International Pictures and Amicus Productions. Probably there was money that AIP got from English sales that they couldn't remove from the UK without great taxes. The studios could use this money to make films in the UK and many did. 

It was Vincent's last film for AIP. He'd done a number of films with Roger Corman over 14 years.  I didn't think I had seen Madhouse but it did look familiar after a while. I looked on my Watched Movies List and I had seen it August 26 2004. Turns out I have the Midnite Movies DVD of Madhouse and Theater Of Blood. Both movies are listed as watched the same day. That's the nice thing about failing memory, movies are always new, and you've forgotten that prick you used to know.

 

It was based on a novel, Devilday by Angus Hall, but the Wikipedia says the movie has little similarity to the book. The screenplay is by Ken Levison, Greg Morrison, with Robert Quarry adding some uncredited dialog and text. Robert's also in the movie, playing producer Oliver Quayle, and during a costume party he wears the costume he wore when he was Count Yorga in Count Yorga, Vampire. The director is Jim Clark, who seems to be mostly a film editor, he did direct 3 other features, one with Marty Feldman, and another with John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

Vincent plays actor Paul Toombes and he's just finished the 5th in the Doctor Death series. Doctor Death was created by actor turned writer Herbert Flay, played by Peter Cushing. The movie uses clips from earlier Vincent movies for the Doctor Death films and others in Paul Toombes career.

Paul is having a big party to celebrate the fifth film. He announces to the party that he's got a new bride. A little later someone cuts her head off. Paul falls apart and goes into a home for years. The case was never solved, the police did suspect Paul but had no proof. Even Paul doesn't know if he did the crime, his mind is so confused.

Paul gets out of the home and, at Herbert's request, he comes to Hollywood to appear as Doctor Death in a new TV series that Herbert has created. Then the murders start. The local fuzz are on the plod and Paul is a suspect again. Don't worry the real truth will come out and, in a nice twisty ending, the murder will get some fulfilling justice. It's not a great film but most of it's entertaining. Since I already have a copy I don't even need to go buy one. I really should start dipping into the old movies that I have more often.

Wolf Devil Woman was our second feature and, like our first feature, I didn't think I had seen it. After a while I thought some parts were familiar and, sure enough, I had, back on June 4 1999.

Wolf Devil Woman is a 1982 Taiwanese fantasy horror film. It's turned up on Amazon Prime but there are bootleg DVDs out there. You can also see it on YouTube, there's a link in the post. It seems to only come in a pan and scan version and while you might miss seeing someone in a scene the other characters are talking to, you can mostly guess what's going on. I'd like to see a better copy of the movie but who knows if they saved any of the original negatives etc.

Actress Pearl Ling Chang wrote and directed the movie and she stars as Wolf Devil Girl. She's got 31 credits on the IMDb as an actor, her three directing credits come in the last two years of her listings. One of the three was the sequel to this movie, Wolf Devil Woman 2, but the other has no info on the IMDb. I'll be getting a copy of WDW2 and I report on that later. Her career as an actress ended in 1983, except for a 1991 role. She's fair in front of the camera but it's not that typical a role, so not a good gauge. She's pretty much in the so-so range as a director. Pretty straight forward shots and not too imaginative.

The movie opens with a couple, and their baby, on the run in the snow. There's a battle and some guys loose some of their limbs. Makes for nice red slashes on the snow. The couple can't escape the baddy and his minions, so they bury themselves in an avalanche of snow. The baby survives and is raised by wolves. Years later, a couple of guys, on a quest for the 1000 year old ginseng, kill her wolf mom and bring her to civilization. There she learns who killed her parents. Now for some revenge. You can see the movie on YouTube, in the title above, and find out what happens next. It's just goofy enough, at least part of it is, but make no mistake, it's a pretty poorly made thing. I still enjoyed watching it, the first time I gave it an AOK, and I still agree. The dubbing is pretty much fun in itself.

Friday Night Movies 653

The Curse Of Robert is a 2016 British horror film that turned out to suck the life out of the room. It's written and directed by Andrew Jones. I blame that guy and the music guy let me down too. This is the second Robert the Doll movie, the first was Robert, the third came out in 2017 and it's called Robert And The Toymaker, the fourth is The Legend Of Robert The Doll and it's coming out next year. After seeing this one I hope I can remember not to watch those.

A young woman goes to work at a small museum as a night cleaner. She gets creeped out by a weird doll that legend has is cursed. The doll really starts killing, it takes ages to get there, and then, hardly anything happens. The police blame the cleaner and eventually arrest her and pack her off to jail. The movie is thunderously slow and the characters are dim witted and unimaginative. A review of this, on the IMDb, said that Robert was ponderous and slow but The Curse Of Robert has a much faster pace. I can't even imagine how dull that first film must be. I think it's safe to say that if you run across any of the Robert series you should just walk away. Save yourself some boredom. The only good thing about the movie, it was a free loaner.

What's sort of like a good thing? The first movie made our second selection seem much better. At least for a while. 2019: After The Fall Of New York is a 1983 Italian French SF film. It's a hodgepodge of post apoc movies, a little bit of Escape From New York, a bit of Mad Max, you get the idea. It might be punk on story but there are plenty of stunts, gun shooting and fire. There's plenty of rubble and dust to keep all the characters dirty. A guy is sent to New York City to collect the last fertile woman and bring her to a spaceship being readied for Alpha Centauri. Hopefully, on that brave new world, they can rebuild the human race from that ladies 500 fertile eggs. Good luck. If you get a chance to see it, you might take a look, it's goofy and fun, just not that great.