PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 860

Robotrix 1991 Written by Jamie Luk and Man Sing So, directed by Jamie Luk.

A woman cop is killed when an Arab prince is kidnapped. Her mind is used in a robot body and she helps the police hunt down her killer. Might have been an interesting story line if they hadn't made it a comedy, then hampered it further with a Category III rapey prostitute murderin' subplot. It's poorly told and acted, the jokes suck for the most part. 

The Time Guardian 1987 Written and directed by Brian Hannant.

I couldn't remember seeing this before but I had. It's pretty darn forgettable. My mind still wondered off while watching, despite the nice Blu-ray on view.

Friday Night Movies 859

Nightmare Cinema 2018 Horror anthology film with 5 short films. Various people enter a deserted theater only to see a short film of their own death. Mickey Rourke is The Projectionist in the linking bits. Those scenes are written and directed by Mick Garris.

The films are heavily referential and copy iconic scenes from other horror movies. When the killer/hero in the first short suits up the scene is based on Bruce Campbell suiting up as Ash from the Evil Dead series.

The Thing in the Woods Written and directed by Alejandro Brugués. A crazed killer in the woods slaughters some college age characters. Alejandro is the director of Juan Of The Dead and that's worth seeing.

Mirari Written by Richard Christian Matheson and directed by Joe Dante. A woman has plastic surgery to fix the scaring on her cheek from a car accident. Richard Chamberlain plays the surgeon.

Mashit Written by Sandra Becerril and directed by Ryūhei Kitamura. A demon possesses children in a Catholic school.

This Way to Egress Written by David Slade and Lawrence C Connolly, directed by David Slade. A woman at a doctor's office sees the world decay around her.

Dead Written and directed by Mick Garris. A teenager is killed in a car jacking, he revives and sees dead people.

I liked some segments more than others but overall I thought it was worth seeing. I put the Blu-ray on my Wanted list at Amazon.

Captive Wild Woman 1943 Screenplay by Griffin Jay and Henry Sucher, directed by Edward Dmytryk. A Universal picture it was followed by 2 sequels Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive. All three films are collected in the 6th volume of the Universal Horror Collection along with The Monster And The Girl. It's a good Blu-ray series from Shout Factory, though kind of pricey. Each film gets it's own disc and a commentary, a couple of the films get a trailer, and all have new 2K transfers. I wouldn't recommend the series for everyone but the Universal Monsters are favorites of mine and I was happy to pick the sets up.  Right now you can find the whole series over at Hamilton books for $42 each. They're usually over $50 each on Amazon.

John Carradine is a doctor scientist who's working with glands as a method of curing deformities. He takes an opportunity to steal a gorilla and turn it onto Acquanetta. John has to kill someone to get the glands to transplant in the gorilla and he's the sort of doctor who doesn't see a problem with that.

Mildred Davenport is Acquanetta's real name, she appeared in 10 movies between 1942 and 1953. She didn't appear in another production until she guested on The Adventures Of Grizzly Adams in 1990.

Milburn Stone is a big game hunter and lion tamer, he's supplies the lions and tigers for Lloyd Corrigan's circus. He's the one who captured the gorilla. Evelyn Ankers is Lloyd's secretary and Milburn's gal. Martha Vickers is Evelyn's sister, she's getting some curing at John's clinic. Clyde Beatty does Milburn's lion taming scenes via footage from The Big Cage and Ray "Crash" Corrigan plays the gorilla.

I thought it was entertaining but I like these old films.

Friday Night Movies 858

Dead Space 1991 Written by Catherine Cyran, directed by Fred Gallo. A Roger Corman produced remake of Mutant AKA Forbidden World. You can see the animated prequel Dead Space Downfall on YouTube, it's a fairly good rip but the burned in subtitles in some Arabic tongue are a bit annoying. It's only good for finding out if the Blu-ray is worth buying. I haven't seen it but I'm going to guess, probably not. There's also Dead Space: Aftermath from 2011. The films are an off shoot of the games that were developed from the first movie.

In Dead Space Marc Singer is a Commander in the space fleet. He answers a distress call from a research station on a isolated and uninhabited planet. They are doing some sort of genetic research and they've created a virus that infects people and turns their bodies into murderous beasties. It takes a good bit to kill the monsters so the lab folk get picked off one by one. Marc kills the beast and leaves with his robot pal.

Nothing much notable about the film, other than it's an early appearance by Brian Cranston. He's the guy who wants to keep the critter alive so they can study it. It was funny to me when Marc shoved Brian's head in the creature's mouth to slow it down. Marc's not that much of a dick, Brian was already dead. He'd been infected with the virus and that virus had all the diseases known to man in it. Sometimes the script is the beastie. The IMDb trivia page has an entry that says the director didn't see the script until his first day of shooting. It explains a lot.

I couldn't remember seeing Dead Space but it turns out I had back in 1994. I can't say much good about the movie, it's short, only 78 mins, that's something. The old DVD release is only about 72 mins long, that's what's on YouTube. You're better off watching Forbidden World. That's not a great movie but it's more fun.

Blades 1989 Story by John P Finnegan, screenplay by William R Pace and Thomas R Rondinella, produced by William R Race and John P Finnegan, directed by Thomas R Rondinella. The film was made in New Jersey and released by Troma on VHS and later DVD. We watched the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray.

From the first few minutes of the "making of" we learn that John P Finnegan wanted to make movies. He wrote 3 and they all got made. He produced 2 of them and directed Girls School Screamers.

With Blades he had the idea to make a shot for shot remake of Jaws but set on land, in a golf course, with a lawn mower. It's a big lawn mower. It grinds men right up. John went to a NYC film school, William and Thomas were the couple of students that were interested.

They don't quite carry out the shot for shot but they capture enough iconic moments to give you that Jaws feel. It's supposed to be a comedy but there are more jokes in Jaws. Nothing tops "We need a bigger boat!" I did laugh out loud once but an hour later I can't remember what the gag was. The cast weren't too bad for people who mostly hadn't made a film before. All in all it's below average but watchable. I doubt I would need to pick up a copy.

 

Friday Night Movies 857

The Golden Blade 1953 Story by John Rich, screenplay by John Rich and William R Cox, directed by Nathan Juran. William was also the producer of the film, he mostly worked in TV, this was his first feature and he's listed on the IMDb as uncredited.

Nathan spent much of his later career directing TV on shows like My Friend Flicka, A Man Called Shenandoah, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Time Tunnel, Lost In Space, Land Of The Giants and Daniel Boone. He directed a few films that were of interest to me. His first film was The Black Castle and it was darn good. Some of my other favorites: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, The First Men In The Moon, The Brian From Planet Arous and 20 Million Miles To Earth.

The Golden Blade is set in ancient Bagdad. I enjoy the occasional Arabian Night sort of story, they're usually bright and colorful, there's some action and running about, a villain is thwarted and the hero gets the girl. Rock Hudson is the hero, he's the son of a sheik of Basra, he returns home to find his dying father, stabbed by some men in a raid. He finds a clue in a medallion and sets out for Bagdad for some revenge. Piper Laurie is the daughter of the Caliph, George Macready is the Vizier, Gene Evens is the Vizier's son. The Vizier has a lust for power, he's responsible for the raid on Basra, he wants to install Gene as the new Caliph. Some stabbing is going to need to be done.

Rock meets Piper in the shop of a merchant and it's there that the magical Golden Sword comes into his hands. It can cut through steel for the right person. Knowing Piper puts her and Rock in jail and he winds up being her body guard. She manipulates Rock and Gene into a fight for her hand. Gene finds out about the sword and steals it from Rock. Rock eventually comes to find out that Gene and the Vizier are the scumbags that need killing and a bit fight breaks out in the palace. The Caliph is killed, Gene is the new Caliph, Rock and Piper go on the run. The Golden Sword gets stuck in a wall and no one can pull it out except Rock. Some baddies get stabbed and there's a happy ending.

It's fun and a bit goofy with a good cast. The script is the weakest link, it's a bit  Arabian Knight and a bit King Arthur, some of the dialog makes me laugh. I still liked it well enough to order up the DVD, it's part of 5 Rock Hudson film pack that was only a tenner on Amazon. Five movies on three discs, better than some collections. There's a DVDr Archive version for 20 bucks and a Kino Lorber Blu-ray 3 film set for $24. I liked the movie selection on the DVD set better than the Blue-ray set, as well as the cheaper price.

Devil Story 1986 Written and directed by Bernard Launois.

The movie opens with a series of murders by a deformed man in a Nazi uniform. A woman is attacked by a cat but it seems to be in her mind. They stop for the night at the mansion of an old couple. They tell them a tale of crashed ship many years in the past. The wife is attacked by the deformed man and his mother. The mother is killed and the wife escapes. The old man from the mansion blames a black horse and spends much of the movie in a field shooting his shotgun over and over again. Then a mummy shows up and the crashed ship comes out of the cliff face.

It just goes on and on, piling one plot device on another, never seeming to care if they make sense or work together. Poor Bernard needed the help of a more experienced writer and director to make this film. Sadly he didn't get the help he needed. It was good at making us laugh and it's short. I wouldn't need to see it again so I'm not going to buy the new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray.

Friday Night Movies 856

Reset 2017 Screenplay by Zha Muchun, directed by Ghang, produced by Jackie Chan. The director is Korean, they filmed in Busan with a Korean crew.

The movie delivers on fancy action scenes wrapped in a time travel story involving parallel universes. Mi Yang is a scientist on the time travel project. Some baddie kidnaps her son to force her to steal the project's data. He kills the son at the meet up and Mi goes back in time to save her boy. He also blows up parts of the company's large fancy tower. He first try at saving her son doesn't work so Mi goes back in time.

The time travel project only has been able to send animals back in time 1 hour and 50 mins, the test subjects have a small but deadly amount of DNA damage. If I understand it correctly the person who travels in time winds up in a parallel universe. That doesn't seem like real time travel to me. If she manages to save her son in the parallel universe that would mean she didn't save her own son who's still dead. Best not to think about it, I guess.

There's action and more action as the baddies chase Mi around the streets and the through the building. She's pretty darn capable at the stunts for being a scientist. All the action is large and noisy, like it's been turned up to 12, there's nothing subtle going on, it's all in your face. There are so many ticking time bombs the noise becomes kind of wearing, especially at 105 mins. I wasn't sorry I saw it but I didn't appreciate it's lack of humor and seriousness. I'm not that interested in picking up a copy but I tempted to do so for our second feature.

Action U.S.A. 1989 Story by John Stewart and David Reskin, screenplay by David Reskin, additional material by James Desmarais, directed by John Stewart. John's a veteran stuntman who also wrote and directed a few movies. I can't say I've seen any of his other films.

A much more comical, and enjoyable, take on the action film. A drug dealer is gunned down by some baddies but his girlfriend manages to escape. The baddies think she might know where the diamonds are and she's seen their faces. She gets picked up by a couple of FBI agents and they chase each other around the back roads of Texas.

There's plenty of bullets flying, car chases, and occasionally there's something blowing up. There's a spectacular explosion near the end that was made that much enjoyable by all the burning tires flying through the air. We all seem to love a good explosion.

Cameron Mitchell is the boss but the diamonds belong to the Mob. His goons can't get the girl so Cameron brings in a hitman who's played by Ross Hagen. Some might remember Ross from Sidehackers. He's also a producer on the film that might be his best effort. It's not a great film, kind of clumsy in fact, but it's a happy bit of business that made me laugh out loud more than once. Worth a look for those that like an action film and have a good sense of humor. I've put it on my Want List.

Friday Night Movies 855

Deep Space 1988 Screenplay by Fred Olen Ray and T L Lankford, directed by Fred Olen Ray.

Charles Napier is a tough LAPD detective who's partnered with Ron Glass. Norman Burton is a General who's in charge of a secret government experiment to build a biological weapon, it's being stored in a secret satellite that's just crashed near LA. The creature was dormant but that doesn't last long and a couple of teens are ripped apart by it's tentacles.

Charles and Ron stop at the crash site, they steal a couple of small organic pods and take them home. The pods release murderous critters and poor Ron doesn't get to the end of the movie. There's a government agent who's had Charles pulled from the investigation. Bo Svenson plays the precinct captain and Ann Turkel plays the police lady that's Charles romantic interest.

Being off the case isn't enough to keep Charles from going after the creatures. Julie Newmar plays a psychic who keeps calling Charles, she's psychically linked to the creature. She literally phones in all her lines. Really, all her scenes are done in one location and she never appears with anyone else. She's only there to get Bo to the creature. During all this the first creature had escaped into LA's warehouse district and grown a huge number of teeth. It kills several people before Bo and Ann put an end it.

It's all pretty much average tough cop versus monsters stuff. Fred manages to cobble together a film but there's little original in it. It's got some action, some monsters, some humor, some gore, some romance, some bits were entertaining but some bits were a mite cringe worthy. To me some of the plot choices Fred makes are clumsy, even lazy. You can see a decent enough copy on YouTube in the title above. I wouldn't recommend it, better to rewatch a good SF monster movie, like Alien or Predator, they're more entertaining. They have better monsters too.

Tough Guys Don't Dance 1987 Based on the Norman Mailer novel of the same name, screenplay by Norman Mailer and an uncredited Robert Towne, directed by Norman Mailer. The last of four films Norman directed, he directed 2 in 1968 and 1 in 1970. I've seen none of them.

Ryan O'Neal is a would be writer, an ex-con drug dealer, and a heavy drinker. He wakes to find his father in the kitchen. Lawrence Tierney plays the father. He's got cancer and will die soon. Ryan tells him a long involved take about his wife leaving him before we get back to the present.

There are a pile of characters in that small eastern seaside town. Wings Hauser in the police chief, Isabella Rosselini is his wife and Neil's old girlfriend. Back when they were together he answered a wife swapping ad, they met up with some hillbillies played by Penn Jillette and Debra Sandlund. Debra is impressed with Ryan's bedroom skills and his desire to be a writer, she vows to get rich and support him. On the way back home to New York Ryan and Isabella fight and crash the car. She loses the baby she was carrying and the couple go their separate ways.

Ryan deals drugs and spends 3 years in jail. After he's out Debra comes back into his life, she's married rich and now she's got some cash to support him in his writing. Her rich husband is a guy Ryan used to know from prep-school. He's got a plan to make big cash form dealing cocaine. He's already got $100 mill, he just wants some kicks. Ryan and Debra don't last as a couple and she disappears. It just goes downhill for him after that. Things get so complicated that people start dying. A lot of bodies go into the ocean before the end of the movie.

It's an odd film and it made me think David Lynch. Someone else mentioned thinking similar thoughts. It came out the year after Blue Velvet and it has an oddness like that film, it's just not anywhere near as good. It made no money, earning barely back 20% of it's $5 mill budget and it has become a cult film of sorts. The kind that people laugh at, I suspect.

On the plus side it's got some entertaining characters, especially Wings Hauser as the police captain. He's a delightful maniac but he's so fragile that the death of Ryan's wife, she was also Wing's lover, gives him a stroke, leaving him a gibbering idiot. A nod to Lawrence Tierney, he was quite good, Tarantino saw him in this and hired him for Reservoir Dogs. He was even better in that. It's got laughs, some intentional, some not. It won Norman a Golden Raspberry Award for worst director. It was being marketed as a film noir murder mystery, when the negative reviews started Norman tried to make like the movie was a parody of the genre. No matter which version it is, it's still not that good a film. I was glad to have seen it, it has a certain uniqueness, I wouldn't need to buy a copy, I doubt I'd need to see it again.

Friday Night Movies 854

Flight To Mars 1951 Screenplay by Arthur Strawn, directed by Lesley Selander. We watched the recent Blu-ray from The Film Detective. This was previously released on a DVD by Image as part of the Wade Williams Collection. He's a cinema owner who owns the rights to several SF films from the 1950s.

We watched the Wade Williams DVD back in 2008, FNM157, and at that time the movie scored a 4.6 on the IMDb, the current rating is a 5.2. The new Blu-ray has quite a nice looking copy of the film, a commentary and a couple of short documentaries.

Arthur Franz, John Litel, Richard Gaines, Virginia Huston and Cameron Mitchell are the crew of a spacecraft headed to Mars. Arthur is an engineer, Virginia is his assistant, John and Richard are scientists, Cameron is a newspaper reporter. The interior of the ship was used in the film Rocketship X-M. and the suits the Martians wear on the surface were from Destination Moon.

 

The ship's landing gear is damaged by meteors and they decide to proceed to Mars knowing that they might not take off again. They're meet by Martians who have colorful clothing and speak English from listing to radio broadcasts from Earth. They seem friendly but we soon find they have a secret need for the Earth. The source of the Martians power is a mineral called Corium and that's going to run out soon.

 

There are two thoughts in the Martian government, ask for help or take what they want. The later group takes control and they vote to seize the ship when it is ready, make copies, then attack the Earth and take what they need. The humans learn of the plot and escape with the ship and a couple of Martians. That's when the movie ends.

There's a decent yarn there, a dangerous space trip, a crash landing, some Martian political machinations with a side of double crossing, a bit of action and a little too much romantic melodrama. It's a bit slow at times and 50s interplanetary dating leaves something to be desired.

Despite it's minor shortcomings I still enjoyed it. It's already an improvement over some of it's predecessors like Rocketship X-M. I doubt I'll buy the Blu-ray I already have the Image DVD. I hope to watch it over again someday.

She Devil 1957 Based on the Stanley G Weinbaum story The Adaptive Ultimate, screenplay by Kurt Neumann and Carroll Young, directed by Kurt Neumann. Kurt was German and he came to Hollywood in the early 1930s to make German versions of American films. He soon started directing American low budget films for various studios like RKO and Hal Roach. He worked for Sol Lesser and directed 4 Tarzan films. His contribution to SF cinema history is rather interesting, in 1950 he directed Rocketship X-M, in 1957 he directed Kronos, and following year The Fly. I've always found all three entertaining and re-watchable. Sadly he passed away in 1958 at age 50.

Jack Kelly is a doctor who's invented a curative serum that works on animals. He's given the opportunity to try it on Mari Blanchard, a dying TB patient of Albert Dekker's. The serum works a treat and Mari is up and about in no time. She's staying at Albert's big fancy house, Jack also lives there.

The serum has an effect on Mari's personality, she becomes more outgoing and aggressive. In a high end dress shop she beats a man, takes his $700, and hides in a changing room. The police come and search the store with only one entrance.  Mari's black hair turns blonde in a nice filter effect, she switches dresses, waltzing out to the shop sales floor she buys some dresses and lingerie before making her escape. Her blonde hair completely fools the people in the shop but the picture in the newspaper of her cast off dress makes Jack and Albert suspicious. When confronted she admits it and asks what are they going to do about it. They do nothing.

Soon her aggression turns to murder. During a party at Albert's house a rich guy has been making passes at her despite his wife being right there watching from the stairs. Mari doesn't care about the poor wife either, she does care about his cash flow, aiming to get some. Alone with the wife Mari's hair had turns black, soon the wife is dead, and the police come. The only witness to Mari running off says it was a woman with black hair and Mari's hair has turned back to blonde. Shortly after she marries the rich guy. Poor Jack had become smitten with Mari, despite her being a murdering scumbag, and he mopes around Albert's house.

Mari soon tires of the rich guy and kills him. She shows up at Albert's where the two men knock her out and reverse the effects of the serum. She wakes up from the surgery just in time to die. Hopefully the two doctor's chucked their serum in the trash.

I hadn't seen it before and was pleasantly surprised. Mari plays a delightfully evil creature who gets hers in the end. Who doesn't like that? You can see a copy on YouTube in the link above. You might enjoy it too.

Friday Night Movies 853

Martial Law 1990 Written by Richard Brandes, directed by Steve Cohen. I didn't think I had seen this before but I had back in 1999.

Steve McQueen's son Chad plays a police detective and Cynthia Rothrock is his girlfriend. Andy McCutheon plays Chad brother and David Carradine is a psycho gang boss who steals expensive cars for foreign customers. He's ruthless and prone to killing. He especially likes killing them with his special kung fu fist to the heart. The police keep finding bodies and Chad gets assigned to the case with Cynthia as his partner.

Andy gets deeper and deeper into David's clutches, trouble is he's not that smart and David's response to his failure is a fist to the heart. Poor Andy's mom. Chad goes all out to get David and give him a taste of his own medicine.

It's all rather familiar and the fights scenes are only passable. There's a lot of melodrama and that slows things down. At least it had David as a psychopath, he worked well with his psychotic second in command, played by Phillip Tan, both men enjoy killing way too much.

Barbarian Queen 1985 Written by Howard R Cohen, directed by Héctor Olivera. Another I wasn't sure I had seen, but I had. Other than for one character, I didn't remember anything else. The movie was one of the selections in a 2011 Friday Night Movie night.

Here's that post:

Sperhauk picked up a cheap DVD of a pair of Roger Corman movies. We watched Barbarian Queen. I wasn't sure if I had seen it before, my list of watched movies says no, but the movie came out in 1985 which was before I started that list and it sure didn't seem familiar. Lana Clarkson is the BQ and she's also the gal that Phil Spector murdered a few years ago. The BQ lives in a small village attacked by Roman's from the local camp. They kill and rape and burn the BQ's hut down. Most of the village was killed or carted off to be slaves. The BQ and three other gals who survived vow revenge. They get to the Roman city and meet a young girl who leads them to the resistance group. The gals want to rush in and the leader of the resistance is reluctant to act just yet. He's a big wimp, that one. The gals get captured, one or two get killed, but Lana stabs her way to success. There's a lot of nudity and not much of a story. There's a lot of rapin' and torturin' and a crazy mad scientist who gets his. You'd think a scientist would know that a human sized trough of acid is a dangerous thing to be leaving uncovered. I got a huge laugh out of his skeleton and goofy glasses in a later scene. It's got pretty big production values for a Roger produced film, huge sets and lots of extras. The fighting is crap. The director, Hector Olivera, made 5 films for Roger between 1985 and 1990. Hector had already been a film maker in Argentina and he used the money from Roger's films to make his own films. He's still making films down there but I haven't seen them. It's was fun enough for what it was.

I'm betting the Blu-ray we watched was better looking than the DVD we watched so long ago. I still feel the same way about the movie. I doubt I'll need to see it again.

Friday Night Movies 852

Treasure Raiders 2007 Story by Alexander Nevsky, screenplay by Alexander Izotov and Alexey Overchuk, directed by Brent Huff.

A befuddled action story involving a search for the treasure of the Knights Templar. It spends too much time being other movies and doesn't spend the time on being a good treasure hunt story. It's National Treasure, The Fast And The Furious and any random cops versus drug smugglers movie, all blended up and made weaker for it. The drug and street racing subplots don't add anything to the treasure hunt and eventually take up so much time that they have to set up a sequel that never comes along. A good screenwriter would have split the drug and racing from the treasure hunt and had two stronger stories to work with.

We really watched the movie to see David Carradine. I'm never going to see all of his films and I'm not even going to bother trying, there are too many. This was one of 13 roles he played in 2007, he was alright and it was a fairly decent part. He's part of the Knights Templar story.

It's a rather lackluster movie, Huff is not a good action director, his car chases were rather dull. I did like Nevsky, he might have been better used by a better director. I wouldn't bother picking up a copy.

That's one of the move interesting voting patterns that I've seen on the IMDb. Almost 60% of the votes are a 9 and it still gets a 2.7 as a final score. I smell a rat, comrade.

Beyond Dream's Door 1989 Written and directed by Jay Woelfel. I didn't recognize Jay's name but I have seen a movie of his, Trancers 6, the only one of his 9 other features I had seen.

This is a movie about nightmares intruding into people's waking reality. The guy in the blue shirt has a nightmare monster chasing him in the real world and he brings it to other people so they can be murdered too. There's plenty of monster chasing the victims and I did like the monster for the most part. The film is ambitious but generally it's below average for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Friday Night Movies 851

Wooshi: The Demon Slayer 2009 Written and directed by Choi Dong-hoon. A Korean fantasy comedy with plenty of action and effects.

The movie mixes events from the modern day and 500 in the past. Some of the characters are immortal beings, others have magical powers. Back in the past the goblins have taken the Flute Of the Prophecy. The Immortal Taoist Wizards band together with The Master and Hwadam and banish the goblins from our world. They retrieve the Flute, break it in two, and in trust half to The Master and Hwadam. When The Master is murdered his student Wooshi is blamed for the crime and imprisoned in a painting. We know it's really Hwadam what done the dirty deed. He's a real monster.

In modern day the Immortal Taoist Wizards find the goblins are escaping their imprisonment and hiding among the humans. They can transform, only their green blood gives them away. The Immortal Taoist Wizards get Wooshi and his dog pal Chorangyi out of the painting and they have a smashing time fighting the goblins. On top of that it turns out Hwadam has gotten even more evil.

It's action packed and the magical effects are top notch. The story has a nice sense of humor and the baddie gets put down. I was glad to have picked up the Shout Factory Blu-ray from Hamilton Books for a fiver. I'll watch it again.

Crumbs 2015 Written and directed by Miguel Llansó. A rather surreal Spanish-Ethiopian science fiction story set some centuries after a big collapse. Candy is a deformed man who lives with a woman in an abandoned bowling alley. He scavenges for ancient artifacts, there's some sort of economy left over that allows a trade in collectibles. Above the landscape, floating in the sky, is a dormant spaceship. It's been there since before the big collapse.

There's a rumor going around that it's coming back to life and Candy thinks they should be on the ship if it leaves. He sets off an a quest for tickets, wondering through the landscape, following the train tracks. Eventually he finds a guy running a cinema showing the Turkish Superman film.Candy throws his Superman top into the river and the movie is over.

It's such a personal story that I can't tell you what it's all about. It was sort of interesting to watch, wondering what was going to come next, but the message is so lost in the medium that Marshall McLuhan would just tell me to go to bed and not think about it.