PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 619

Robot Riot 2020 Director Ryan Staples Scott co-wrote the screenplay with Aaron Mirtes.

A bunch of soldier's are parachuted into an empty town. They seem to be waking up as they are dropped, we quickly find out they have no memories of who they are or where they are. Turns out they're in a military testing site and they've got to battle some fighting robots. A mad ass general has set all this up, using unsuspecting volunteers, and dumped them out of the plane. Some die in the jump, some die by each other's hands, some band together to fight the bots. Eventually the mad ass general tells them what's going on. They are being experimented on and they must fight his robots. Some of the robots are fairly easy to kill with the few weapons they've been given.

They get a bit of help when the angry MAG tosses one of his own tech guys out into the streets of the town. Tech guy is rescued by the group and he fills them in about what's going on. He also knows where there's a kill switch for the whole project. It's all run and shoot as they try to get to the town's parimeter. Eventually they defeat the BOSS BOT and wipe out the MAG. Plenty of gun shooting and explosions. Some of the CGI is better than other bits but on average it's well enough done for a lower budget movie.

Sadly, there's nothing too original here. I did like some of the characters better than others. The dialog is all over the place, some of it good and some of it poor. I'd love to slap the dialog off the MAG's smirky lips, he's really a clone of most of those knuckle heads you see in other films, but less interesting. I saw this on Amazon Prime and wouldn't bother with it again. Same with my second film.

2307: Winter Dream 2016 Director Joey Curtis co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Sidu. Paul also stars as the main character.

It's well into the future and the world is an ice pack. Some people are still alive, they live underground, sucking up geothermal power to survive. The survivors had a shortage of man power so they genetically engineered some humanoids. They made then barren and bald, that changed as time passed. The humanoids can live in the frozen world and survive it quite well.

A humanoid was involved with an attack on a lab, he escaped into the wasteland, several soldier's have been sent to round him up or kill him. Doesn't seem to matter to the military guy who sent them on the mission. Paul turns out to be the husband of the murdered scientist at the lab. The group fails in their first encounter with the humanoid. They spot him but he gets the drop them them. The humanoid kidnaps one of them and blows up their truck. Now they're stranded and it's really frickin' cold.

Paul spurs them on, he's got his own addenda, his daughter is out in the waste land. Some true stuff comes out and Paul now wants to help the humanoid against his boss. It's all pretty much average but I got through to the end. More than some did, according to the IMDb comment section. I wouldn't need to see it again and there isn't a DVD in my future. Yay, one less thing to possess.

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Chamber Of Horrors 1940 Based on the Edgar Wallace novel The Door With The Seven Locks, screenplay by John Argyle, Gilbert Gunn and Norman Lee, directed by Norman Lee.

Before a rich guy died he'd stowed the family jewels in his crypt, it's got 7 locks on the door, the keys go to the person who inherits. After his death the lawyer's find the keys in their trust have been stolen. The baddies have 6 keys, someone has the 7th key, the baddies won't stop at murder to get it. People get murdered and detectives from Scotland Yard are on the case.

It's about average, fairly good cast, bit of humor, some murderin', a bit of gun play, all kept me interested.

A Shriek In The Night 1935 Story by Kurt Kempler, screenplay by M H Hoffman JR, directed by Albert Ray.

Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot are rival reporters who have a bit of a relationship. Lyle keeps asking her to marry him and she turns him down. They're both on the scene of a suicide, Larry tagged along with the police detectives and Ginger is working under cover as the dead man's secretary. The rich guy jumped out of his apartment window and smacked into the pavement 4 stories below. Ginger  thinks the dead guy was somehow connected to racketeer Joe Martini. The crook has an apartment in the building. The suicide starts to look fishy when another body turns up.

It's more of a comedy than the first film, there's a few good laughs and some yelling and running about. Entertaining cast for the most part. About average.

All Over Town 1937 Story by Richard English, screenplay by Jerome Chodorov and Jack Townley, directed by James W Horne.

An Olsen and Johnson comedy with the guys playing vaudevillians who get involved with a doomed production and murder. They are trying to help a young woman who's inherited the theater, she's got a backer but someone behind the scenes is sabotaging the show. 

There's plenty of noise and after a while I got tired of Chic Johnson's giggling. The rest of the film is about average. I did get a big laugh at the shoot out at the end. You never see anyone reload their pistols but the baddie and the cops hurl lead like confetti. Luckily they are such terrible shots and no one gets killed.

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C C & Company 1970 Written by Roger Smith and directed by Seymour Robbie. Roger is also an actor and he was married to Ann-Margret from 1967 to 2017 when he passed away. The copy I watched came from a three film set called Box Of Bikers Collection and was retitled Chrome Hearts. The copies of all the films are pan and scan with visible tape damage. Nothing restored here and they are all crammed on one disc.

Joe Namath is a biker in William Smith's motorcycle gang. Joe gets involved with the local motocross scene and gets into a fight with William over wanting to keep a hundred bucks out of the 6 hundred he won. Joe leaves the gang, taking his $500 back. He'd meets Ann-Margret, she works for a motocross guy, and starts a relationship, only to have it interfered with by the angry William. Joe talks William into having a race to settle the beef. It ends with Joe and Ann riding off into the sunset. Pretty much average and a bit dull. Too much motocross, a boring sport if there ever was. It was nice to see Sid Haig and Bruce Glover. It's the first time Ann-Margret did a nude scene but you don't see much of anything.

JC 1972 Director William F McGaha co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Thirty, William also plays JC Masters, a biker with a soft heart. When we meet him he's just quit his construction job and come home to his girlfriend. He's mad that the men were picking on him for his long hair and beard. Ironically they are calling him a woman. A woman with a beard. Yeah, it makes no sense but that's ignorant ass jerks.

JC takes his gal and some other biker pals to a small southern town to visit his sister. The townies are really driven insane by a biker gang with a black couple in it. Slim Pickens is the sheriff, he doesn't like bikers or black people but he's got a bit of brain, he knows if they kill bikers or black people, they'll get hung out to dry on the news. Not because it's morally wrong, just bad PR. Slim is a pretty big prick but his deputy is a nasty evil prick, he really wants to kill bikers and blacks. The deputy arrests the black biker guy when he comes into town for beer. The deputy and Slim beat the man unmercifully. JC rounds up the gang and they ride to the rescue. Sadly hardly anyone gets out of there alive, mostly just the biker gals who were far enough away to get away safely. The movie is well below average, a bit of a downer, and a good reminder that the south of the country hasn't moved along much since the 70s.

Cycle Vixens 1978 John Arnoldy wrote the script and co-directed with Peter Perry Jr. Cycle Vixens is the original title, Young Cycle Girls is the title on the film in the set. Another prick trying to trick the movie viewer into seeing a poor film they've already seen or been warned about.

Three young girls decide to ride from Colorado to California to see the ocean. They're riding little motorcycles and plan to camp out. They completely unprepared for the road and they have some bad stuff happen to them along the way, in the end they're murdered by a creep. It's a terrible film, poorly made. Nobody should watch it.

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The Birthday Party 1968 Written by Harold Pinter and directed by William Friedkin. Something that turned up on YouTube, I was attracted to the director and some of the cast. It started out as a play, one that director Friedkin is a big fan of, which the Wikipedia calls a Comedy of menace. I hadn't heard of that genre before but I'm not really into this sort of film.

Robert Shaw is a guest at a boarding house by the sea. There's an older couple, Helen Fraser and Moultrie Kelsall, who run the place. Robert is the only guest, it's late in the season. Two men, Sydney Tafler and Patrick Magee, show up and take a room. Helen tells the two strangers that it's Robert's birthday party and Sydney tells her he'd be glad to help get the party going. As the party goes on Robert becomes more and more agitated at comments made by the two new guests. They seem to know him, from their shared past. It often seems like they share a criminal past but nothing is ever really revealed. The party goes on late and in the morning the two men lead Robert out to their car with the promise of getting him some medical help. Then the movie is over.

I don't know what the fuck was going on and I sat all the way through it. The two new guests certainly had a level of menace and occasionally I laughed. The acting is all top notch but the story leaves me in the lurch. I might not want to see it again. I'm not going out to get the DVD.

The Loch Ness Horror 1982 Another one that I wouldn't need the DVD of, not that there is one. Director Larry Buchanan co-wrote the screenplay with Lynn Shubert. Larry directed a whole lot of low-budget films that deliver a vague story with poor effects, so-so acting talent, and nearly no production values. The Nessie head on a stick was later used in a segment of the sketch comedy movie Amazon Women On The Moon. The image below is from that movie and it was later used as a meme based on a tag line from South Park. I need treefiddy!

It does have a monster, Nessie from Loch Ness. Lake Tahoe is filling in for Scotland. It doesn't really look like the area around Loch Ness but it's better than the quality of the Scottish accents. Wow, they are Dick Van Dyke bad. You know, from when he failed doing a cockney accent in Mary Poppins bad.

There are three subplots, Nessie detection, egg stealing and government cover up. It can barely support them, I'd have dropped the whole military bit and gone full on monster but Larry is a notoriously bad film maker who forges on with out talent or cash. Eventually it's over and I can movie on. You Can check it out in the title above for a copy on YouTube. Not much reason to watch it.

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Cowboys Vs Dinosaurs 2015 Anthony Fankhauser and Rafeal Jordan wrote the poor screenplay and Ari Noval did a so-so job directing. Together they manage to make a pot boiler with little nourishment. Looks like the movie appeared on SyFy at some point. It's kind of typical of what they feature.

Rob Hills returns home after failing at the rodeo circuit, he's got some past history with the Sheriff, who's now living with Rob's old girlfriend. Eric Robert's plays Rob's father, they are reunited in a jail cell, one they should have stayed in. Vernon Wells plays the head of a mining company that has a mine in the area. The miners have opened a chamber and released some gas fueled dinosaurs. They get to chompin' the locals and rampaging about the town. Just about everyone dies but I didn't care, most of them were jerks. It's a film that brings little joy, other than rooting for the dinos.

Dispiser 20o3 Written and directed by Philip J Cook. Typical of Amazon Prime, they've listed this as being made in 2018 when it's a film from 2003. It's a low budget green screen movie with amateur actors and a so-so script.

The guy with the machine gun is an artist, he gets fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend the same day he dies in a car wreck. He wakes up in Purgatory where he meets up with some demon fighters. That's them in the background. They battle monsters and try to keep the faith.

It's a bit more interesting than the previous movie but still below average. Cook's a little more imaginative than the writers on the first movie tonight. Not something I needed to see or would bother with again.

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The Shadow Of The Cat 1961 Written by George Baxt and directed by John Gilling. A Hammer Film Production distributed by Universal International in the US.

A wealthy woman is murdered by the butler and buried in the swampy area of the estate. He's been promised a chunk of cash by the husband. The cook is in on the deal. They claim the wife left and the husband wants the police to find her.

The only witness to the crime is the cat Tabitha who quickly puts the frighteners into the trio. They try to capture the cat but she's too smart for them. The husband had made the wife sign a new will leaving all her money to him. For some reason he wants to find the old will and destroy that. Not sure why, no one outside the house would even know about the old will unless the trio told them about it.

A niece is invited to visit so the husband can keep an eye on her. She can't understand why they are all so afraid of the cat, even after it tries attacking them over and over. The body count rises as the truth comes out.

Fairly entertaining and a bit humorous. I would watch it again. You can see it on Daily Motion (see link in title), or download with the Firefox download app, there's a nicer copy you can download from the Rarelust blog.

Sabaka 1954 Written and directed by Frank Ferrin.

A film made more interesting by June Foray playing the baddie. She's the head of a Fire Cult that intimidates people into giving them cash to stay safe. Don't want your house burning down in the middle of the night? Pay up. Nico Marcel plays a young elephant handler named Gunga who's friends with the Maharajah, played by Lou Krugman. Reginald Denny plays a British guy called Sir Cedric. Other actors you might know are Victor Jory, Jay Novello, Lisa Howard, Peter Coe and Vito Scotti.

Most of those actors were part of the cast of a TV show called Andy's Gang, it was written and directed by Frank Ferrin. The character Gunga appeared on the show in serial segments set in India. The scenes with the Hollywood actors aren't shot in India, the stuff is India mostly travel footage or stock footage cut into the Hollywood shot stuff. I wonder if they feature is made up of parts of the serial but have no info on it. I didn't find much with a look at the Wikipedia or the IMDb.

It's somewhat enjoyable for what it is but it's not that good. You can check it out at the link in the titles above.

Seven Cities Of Gold 1955 Based on the novel by Isabelle Gibson Ziegler, screenplay by Richard L Breen and John C Higgins, directed by Robert D Webb.

A Spanish expedition comes to California looking for the legendary 7 cities of gold. Michael Rennie plays a Franciscan priest called Father Junipero Serra, he's been sent to establish missions in the area. He went onto establish a while bunch of missions in California. He was made a Saint.

In the modern day the Father's statues have been decapitated and/or sprayed with red paint, as current as October 2020. Not a popular guy among some, they deplore his forcing Native Americans to convert. The film portrays Serra as a gentle man but it's a Hollywood bio pic and not necessarily accurate. He was all for treating the locals like ignorant children who needed a beating now and again to be kept in line.

Anthony Quinn is the Captain of the ground expedition, he has to lead a troop through some hostile territory. Richard Egan is his Lt, later he has a rough time with the locals. He'd like nothing more than shooting a few of them to make them understand the power of muskets. When it comes to a fight the guns weren't that great a protection.

Eventually the Spanish prevail and many missions were built. The damage was done to NA culture, often the outcome when invaded, people are still mad today.

Not a bad movie but flawed by it's white washing of the past. Another that was more interesting for what it is than the story it tells.

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Birds Of Prey 2019 Written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan. Plenty of rock'em sock'em action as Harley Quinn sets out to make her own life now that the Joker and her have split. Trouble is, there's a lot of people who want to do HQ in and now that she's got no protection from the clown guy, she's up shit's creek. At least she has that hyena. A missing diamond and a huge fortune hidden inside it bring Harley and the soon to be Birds of Prey together as they team up to protect the teenage girl pickpocket who's swallowed the diamond. There's one fight after another as the various people vie for the diamond. Eventually it's got a fairly happy ending. Well, not for some of the scumbags, they're ending was just an ending. It had a good number of jokes and some of them made me laugh. I'd buy the DVD but someone was nice enough to pass on the DVD out of their Blu-ray. I'll want to watch it again someday. Much more entertaining that the recentish HQ movie Suicide Squad.

Satan's Black Wedding 1976 Nick Millard wrote and directed the film under the name Philip Miller. Nick has 59 directing credits on the IMDb, many of them under another name, none familiar to me. It scores an amazing 4.8 on the IMDb and this time it's not top loaded, it gets a lot of 5s, 27.8% of the 241 votes. I have put it down at a 2 and that might be a bit harsh but if I wanted to see a travelogue I'd have watched one. So much of the 61 minute movie is people walking or driving in cars. It's not nice scenery either, even the 3 min walk on the beach is tedious and dull. A guy comes to some town to go to his sister's funeral and falls victim to a clutch of Satan worshiping vampires. On top of that he's got a weak script and limp direction. What a piss poor movie. Nick needs some tender nut knocking from the fleshless skull of Paul Naschy. That'll take your breath away Nick, let me tell you.

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John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum 2019 Derek Kolstad created the characters and wrote the story, he's joined by Shay Hatten, Chris Collins and Marc Abrams on the screenplay, the director is Chad Stahelski.

Keanu Reeves returns as John Wick and the movie starts where the second film ended. John's killed someone in the New York Continental and the High Table has decided that John's got to go. The $14 million bounty on John's head has everyone wanting to kill his ass. As John kills his way through the streets of New York, hardly anyone seems to notice these blatant killings going on. That's New York I guess. I read that the film's body count was 164.

John calls in a favor from the Director and heads for Morocco. He wants to find the Elder and he has to kill a lot of people to get to him. The Elder gives him a chance to redeem himself but he has to kill the Manager of the New York Continental then knuckle down to what ever the High Table want. He agrees.

The High Table has sent an Adjudicator to punish the Manager and the Bowery King for helping John in the last movie. They need to step down, they have a week to get their house in order. Neither is too interested in giving up their power. That will cause trouble in the third act and I'm guessing in the 4th Chapter.

John eventually gets back to New York and killing some more people. He joins the Manager in defending the hotel from an attack by the High Table. Eventually the Manager turns on John to save his own hide. Lucky for us the Bowery King's minions find John and bring him to their boss. From the convo, it looks like there's some vengeance coming in the 4th film.

Some people complained that the film was just more of the same but it did well at the box office. I have to admit the fights got a bit tedious. Nothing that a bit of speeding up won't fix. I enjoyed it well enough but it's going to be a while before I get back to the series. It'll have to be all over when I do.

The Flesh And The Fiends 1960 Director John Gilling wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Leon Griffiths. Robert S Baker and Monty Berman were the producers.

I had watched the British version of the movie on YouTube about a week ago. A few days later someone mentioned the Kino Lorber DVD on a film blog. It was released as having the British version of the film and, as a bonus, the shorter US release but the reviewer pointed out that the version on the film was really the slightly longer European version. I decided to order that and it came today. Tonight seemed like a good time to check out the two versions on the disc. The slightly longer European version has a bit of nudity in a couple of scenes. They often did that in the UK in the 60s. You could see boobies in the European market much earlier than the UK or the US. Since I'd just seen the film and the tiny differences were so unimportant to the story I decided to put on the commentary by Tim Lucas. Lucas has plenty of info on the film. He's usually fairly competent as a commentary.

The story is about Burke and Hare, the cash for corpses guys, and their enabler Dr Knox. Peter Cushing plays the doctor, George Rose plays William Burke and Donald Pleasence plays William Hare. The two scumbos see what a lucrative trade there is in the dead. They're quickly offered an opportunity, being skint, they take it. Money figures large and the men quickly turn to murder to get fresh corpses.

Even though others question Dr Knox's lack of interest in the legalities of the scheme he plows on ahead ignoring anything but achieving his vision of a well trained medical force. Eventually Burke and Hare kill too many, they're arrested and tried. Hare turns King's Evidence and Burke gets a ride on the noose. Hare's blinded by some locals. Dr Knox pissed off those same locals but they don't do anything like that to him. He's exonerated by the medial board and the movie ends with him receiving a standing ovation from his class.

In the real story, Dr Knox was slowly pushed out of the University, he lectured in the US but lost his license to do that. He had a small practice before he died. Hare was released from prison and after the police help him out of town, they abandoned him on a road to England, no one ever heard of him again.

I really enjoyed the film the first time and again the second time. I did watch the shorter version of the film, released in 1965 as The Fiendish Ghouls, but I fast forwarded through some of the scenes a bit. They cut about 20 minutes out. The important scenes are there but some good info is missed. The British version of the film had been released in the US in January 1961 as Mania and then as Psycho Killers. It wasn't too popular and didn't get such good reviews. Some have come to appreciate it over the years. I liked it enough and I hope to see it again someday.

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Dixie Dynamite 1976 Lee Frost directed and co-wrote the script with Wes Bishop. Wes also plays the gun happy deputy. 

Warren Oates is a guy in a small Georgia town, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley are friends of his and daughters of a moonshiner. A local scumbag rich guy is secretly buying up the town and surrounding area because he knows there's gas under the ground. He's using his contacts to close up the stills and put the moonshiners out of biz. Then he buys up the loans for a tiny amount, compared to the value of the farm.

The girl's father is one of those poor saps and he's about to lose his farm. At the bar he gets in a fight and the local deputy kills him. The farm is sold and the girls turned out. They take to getting revenge on the scumbag behind it all. They blow up his trucks, his bank, his car and him. They even blow up the deputy. Happy ending.

It made me laugh, especially that deputy being blowed up real good. You can check it out on YouTube, link above. You might get a laff.

The Day Mars Invaded Earth 1962 Directed by Maury Dexter and written by Harry Spalding. Kent Taylor is a scientist on a project to send a robot to Mars. The robot fails shortly after landing but not before it sends a powerful signal to the Earth. Kent takes a bit of a vacation to visit his family. Marie Windsor plays his somewhat estranged wife, Betty Beall and Gregg Shank play his children.

The family members start seeing each other roaming around the estate where they're staying. The distant figures don't respond to a call and quickly move out of sight. Soon they're seeing themselves and wonder what the hell is going on. We learn a bit later that the probe on Mars worried the energy beings of the red planet and they've come to put a stop to the invasion from Earth.

It was fairly decent for a low budget picture from Robert L Lippert. I enjoyed it and added a copy from YouTube to my pile, I might want to watch it again someday. You can check it out at the link above.

 

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Dr Frankenstein On Campus 1969 Robin Ward plays Frankenstein, some might remember him as the boring guy from Starlost. Here he's the boring guy on campus. He's been tossed out of one University for experimenting and he's moved to Canada to get thrown out of another university. This time he's been sort of framed by the local radicals, he was passed a joint just as someone took a picture, then it got published. The others at the swinging party were reprimanded but allowed to stay at the school. Frankenstein then gets his revenge by killing some of the radicals that set him up. It's pretty piss poor and not worth watching.

Wrestling Women Vs The Killer Robot 1969 A mad scientist has invented a robot that he can program to kill. He's kidnapping scientists help in his evil project. The police join up with a couple of wrestling women to catch him. Not very entertaining. The slowness of the story isn't enhanced by the repetitive scenes of women wrestling. Not the best of this sort of thing, below average.

Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things 1971 Two criminals on the run are hiding out in Miami. Stanley is really immature and a problem, Paul is disguised as his aunt, he tries to keep Stanley from fucking up. It leads Paul to killing people who find out too much about them. He should have just killed Stanley, it would have saved him a lot of aggravation. Well below average, not one I'd probably see again.