PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 761

Fantômas Unleashed is the 1965 sequel to Fantômas, it's French, where it's called Fantômas se déchaîne. The story starts in France and then the action moves to Italy. Plenty of nice city and country scenery. André Hunebelle and Haroun Tazieff are co-directors, Jean Halain and Pierre Foucard wrote the script. André also directed three of the OSS 117 series.

All the main cast is back from the first movie, Jean Marais plays the reporter Fandor, the supervillain Fantômas and Professor Lefèvre, Louis de Funès plays Police Commissaire Juve, Mylene Demongeot plays Fandor's girlfriend Hélène Gurn, Jacques Dynam plays Juve's assistant Bertrand. The young boy in the picture is Olivier de Funès, the real life son of Louis de Funès, he plays Hélène's brother.

Fantômas is kidnapping scientists and he has an eye on Professor Lefèvre who  has a machine to control people. Juve and Bertrand are on the case and Fandor has a plan to substitute himself for the real Professor Lefèvre. There's plenty of people disguising themselves. Some of the makeup works better than others. Juve also has some new crime fighting weapons that mostly add a few laughs. The movie seems be be more comical than the first in the series but I didn't find it a problem, I like a bit of slapstick.

There's plenty of activity and I found that entertaining. Nice scenery, costumes and sets. The villain's lair was even grander than the previous film's lair. I'm happy with the set so far, I'll certainly want to watch them again.

The Dead Don't Die is a 2019 Jim Jarmusch film about the zombie apocalypse. He wrote and directed. All the action takes place in the small town of Centerville. I enjoyed Bill Murray in this quite a bit, same with Danny Glover, the rest of the cast were no slouches either. Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny are the police, Tom Waits, Caleb Landry Jones, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Tilda Swinton, Carol Kane, Larry Fassenden are among the locals, the RZA is the WU-PS driver, Rozie Perez is a TV newscaster, Iggy Pop is a zombie with a taste for coffee, Selena Gomez is a victim.

There's much going on in the story, murder, polar fracking, the earth shifting on it's axis, animals disappearing from houses and farms, zombies, popular culture commentary, all this is told to us from the local's conversations and new sources. As the endless day progresses there are murders, Bill and Adam find an open grave, zombies become more plentiful. So plentiful that hardly anyone survives their attacks. Sad, because they are the slow moving kind, just run the fuck away. There's not that much gore and what there is, is rather toned down, often there's a quick cutaway to a reaction shot.

It wasn't a popular movie, it struggles to get a 5.5 on the IMDb, and that's with almost 30K votes. The comments on the IMDb are often harsh but I enjoyed the droll take on the genre. If there's something that's being beaten to death in the horror genre, it's zombies. They're so mainstream, grandma's like them, country singers sing about them. The movie didn't make me a fan of country singer Sturgill Simpson, he sang the opening title song.

It made some money but it was a pretty cheap movie, $2.5 mil with a $14.4 mil return. There's a fair number of jokes, some big and some small. Generally it's all low key and slow moving. The living have as little urgency as the dead. It's self referential, maybe that was a problem for some people, maybe it was the slow pace, the complaints on the IMDb are all over the place, some make little sense. All I know is I'd like to see it again and hope to pick up a copy at some point. It's pricey now but it'll be under 10 bucks in a year or two, I can wait.

The Crazies 2010

The Crazies is the 2010 remake of the 1973 film of the same name by George Romero. This new version is written by Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, the director is Breck Eisner. the son of Brett Eisner. I'd seen is 2005 film Sahara and thought it was fun enough to pick up a copy when it turned up cheap at the used store. I also liked The Last Witch Hunter, a 2015 Vin Diesel film.

Timothy Olyphant stars as the sheriff of the poor town that has been poisoned by a toxin that turns people into crazy killers. It came from a crashed plane and soon soldiers come to kill all the infected and quarantine the town. It all turns to shit as the infected break out of the town.

I didn't think it was much more than an average infected town sort of film. I'll keep the cheap copy that I found at HPB and might watch it again someday. I should re-watch the original sometime before then.

Friday Night Movies 755

Our first movie is Killer Crocodile, a 1989 horror film featuring a giant crocodile. It's Italian and it's filmed in the Dominican Republic. Fabrizio De Angelis is the director and he wrote the script with Dardano Sacchetti. Fabrizio uses the name Larry Ludman in the film's credits. We watched a nice looking Blu-ray. Turns out I had seen the movie back in 1997 but I had forgotten most of it so it was almost new.

Anthony Crenna is one of a group of Eco-warriors visiting Dominican Republic, they are looking for a reason that the local waterway is poisonous. Van Johnson is the Mayor and Bill Wohrman is a villainous American who's dumping radioactive waste in the swamp. That crap makes a croc a giant man munching prick who slaughters the group one by one. Van hires a local hunter to blast the croc, he doesn't do so well and it's up to Anthony to do the big beastie some harm. Anthony is the son of Richard Crenna.

I laughed a lot but the movie is hardly a comedy. Some of the acting isn't that good but the giant crocodile is fairly descent. Sadly it doesn't have enough onscreen chomping action. They cut away on several scenes just as the croc gets up close. There was a big laugh in the room when the beastie got done in. I wouldn't need to pick up one for me. The Blu-ray has the sequel and we are contemplating that for next week. No one wanted to double dip.

The Vineyard also came out in 1989. James Hong stars in, co-wrote and co-directed this goofy low-budget horror movie. James has a problem, he needs blood to keep alive. He's got a dungeon filled with people chained up, ready to draw a pint or two. He's also got some zombies buried in the woods near his island home. He lures some idiot actors to his island, they think he's going to hire them for a movie, he just wants their blood and he doesn't care if they live or die. He's a dick alright. That's James in his lab in the photo below.

Robert Ito pops up in a short scene, Michael Wong plays one of the people who've come to visit. I didn't recognize anyone else from the cast. It's about average and more fun than the crocodile movie. I don't think I need a copy. I might never get back to it.

Big Legend 2018

Big Legend is a 2018 Bigfoot movie. A guy and his girlfriend go camping and she's taken by Bigfoot. We jump a year and the guy is getting out of a mental institution. He packs up some guns and heads back to the woods. Sure enough Bigfoot is still there and still a murderous prick who will eat you. The guy meets up with another guy who fills him in on some background on Bigfoot. The area is posted with markers that were nailed to the trees by the ancient locals. They mean don't go in that part of the woods. They do.

It's a man monster slugfest with plenty of running in the woods and some gory bits. I found I enjoyed it more than some of the other Bigfoot movies I've seen recently. It's not Abominable good but I don't feel bad for paying 4 bucks for it. I'd watch it again.

Big Legend is written and directed by Justin Lee. This was his first feature, one of four that came out in 2018, he had directed some TV and a few shorts before this. He's only had one movie out this year but another has been completed and another's in post production. I haven't seen any of his other work. I thought he did a good job and delivered a good solid film.

Kevin Makely plays the guy, he's a more likeable guy than you find in many a horror movie. Adrienne Barbeau has a small part as Kevin's mom. Todd A Robinson plays the other guy in the woods and Skotty Masgai plays The Beast. That's how he's credited in the film. Lance Henriksen plays a guy who shows up at the end of the movie, he's putting together a team to hunt monsters and he wants to know if Kevin will want to join him. Be nice to see some more monster hunting.

Leprechaun 1 - 7

I breezed through the first 7 Leprechaun films over the last two days. I have box set that I picked up a while back but hadn't gotten around to watching yet.The set I have is out of print now but there's a new 8 film set that will be coming out October 8 with a pre-order price on Amazon of only $13.99.

It's a fun series with Warwick Davis in the title role as the gold loving leprechaun. He's short, ugly and he turns into a murderous little prick when you come between him and his gold. He's got a rather dark sense of humor and loves murdering people.

Leprechaun 1993  Written and directed by Mark Jones. Mark started his career in 1977 with an episode of the kids show Ark II. I saw that series a couple of years ago and it wasn't very good. Mark stayed in kids TV for most of his career. It's mostly not stuff I would watch. He did do a few episodes of The A-Team, I have that set to watch someday. most of his other work I haven't seen. He didn't work on the Leprechaun series after the first movie.

A dad and daughter rent a farmhouse in a small North Dakota town. Shay Duffin plays the dad and Jennifer Aniston plays the daughter. The previous owner had stolen a leprechaun's gold while in Ireland. The leprechaun followed him to the farm and killed his wife. The owner had trapped the leprechaun in a box with a four leaf clover, but before he can kill it with fire he has a stroke and collapses.

That's Warwick as the Leprechaun, he's a nasty bit of work, and funny as hell. Mark Holten plays Ozzie, he's a bit on the dim side and he works for a young guy who paints houses. Mark plays Ozzie as a grown man in the recent reboot of the series. The guys get hired to paint the house. Ozzie accidentally unleashes the leprechaun when he knocks the four leaf clover off the crate that's still in the basement. Ozzie finds the leprechaun's gold and that starts the little bastard killing, first it's the pawn shop owner that wound up with a coin, then it's back to the farm for a spot of vengeance and shoe shining. The leprechaun had been a cobbler and he likes clean shoes.

The guys give back the pot of gold but Ozzie has inadvertently swallowed a gold coin. They figure out that the farmer who had trapped the leprechaun last time might be able to tell them how to kill it. He survived the stoke and lives in a nursing home. The leprechaun hears them and gets to the nursing home before they do. Yelling and screaming for a while. With his dying breath the farmer tells the kids how to kill the leprechaun. They find a four leaf clover and put a stop to the little beast.

Mostly an entertaining film, it's pretty average, story wise, but Warwick prancing about puts it up a notch for me. I'd seen it before and I'll probably get back to it again someday.

Leprechaun 2 1994  Written by Turi Meyer and Al Septien with Rodman Flender directing. I hadn't anything else by Rodman except for Idle Hands and I remember liking that when it was new. I hadn't seen it since. Turi had directed an episode of Buffy and 3 of Angel, that's about all of his other work I've seen. Al seems to be Turi's writing and producing partner, they share many of the same credits.

Warwick plays a different leprechaun in this film. The leprechaun celebrates his 1000th birthday about a thousand years ago. He can now pick a bride and he's chosen the daughter of his human slave. The father thwarts the leprechaun and saves his daughter at the cost of his own life. The leprechaun vows to marry the man's descendant when he's allowed to marry again in a thousand years.

The story jumps to modern day LA and we join a stupid boy named Cody who works for a scumbag who gives tours of the dark side of LA. The scumbag is Cody's uncle and his name is Max. Cody's girlfriend is the lucky bride for our leprechaun though she doesn't know what's ahead for her when we meet her. Why such a nice girl hangs out with Cody is beyond me.

There's plenty of the usual running about and screaming. There's some gore and plenty of violence. The leprechaun is as cruel as the other leprechaun, at one point he plucks a homeless guys gold tooth out his mouth and adds it to his pot o' gold. Like the first movie it's got a nice sense of humor. I got a few laughs and I'll watch it again sometime.

Leprechaun 3 1995  Written by David DuBos with Brian Trenchard-Smith directing. I can't find anything on either Brian or David's IMDb listing that I recognize. It's direct to video this time.

My favorite vicious leprechaun is in Las Vegas this time. Warwick is still at it as the leprechaun. A stupid college student, John Gatins, is travelling to college in California. He gambles away all his college money and falls foul of the leprechaun. I was disappointed he survived. He was a stupid ass.

I did enjoy our murderous demon eviscerating some of the locals. The Wikipedia says it was the highest selling direct to video film of 1995. I didn't see it back then. I gave it a 4 for hiring that Gatins guy. I thought he sucked.

Leprechaun 4: In Space 1997  Written by Dennis A Pratt and Scott Alkins with Brian Trenchard-Smith directing.

I saw this back in 2011 and gave it a three on the IMDb. It's not really any better a second time through. It's still fun to see Warwick Davis going at it as the murderous leprechaun but the space element is just stupid at times. I found myself speeding up the picture during some of the more dull bits. I'll be hard pressed to not do that if I get a chance to go through the series again.

Leprechaun 5: In The Hood 2000  Written by Doug Hall, John Huffman, Alan Reynolds, Rob Spera and William Wells with Rod Spera directing. I liked seeing Ice-T but the three guys who steel from him are just straight up stupid. There's plenty of running about and yelling. There's plenty of slaughtering. Just not really anyone on the human side to care about. Warwick as the leprechaun was fun enough. The leprechaun had a good time in the hood, getting high and killing people who steal his bling. I gave it a 4, the novelty of being in the hood wears off and it's less entertaining than some of the other films.

Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood 2003  Written and directed by Steve Ayromlooi. The leprechaun is still killing people in the hood. He goes after some pals who shared out the pot o' gold. There's not much to like about the group and I didn't mind their getting slaughtered. I gave this on a 4, it has a slow start but Warwick is totally wicked.

Leprechaun: Origins 2014  Written by Harris Wilkinson and directed by Zach Lipovski. It's a poorly received reboot of the series. There's no Warwick and it's all pretty standard stuff. There's no real humor or any reason to watch it again. I did like the poster, it's one of the best of the Leprechaun posters. It was nice that they returned to the right leprechaun in the 2018 film.

Friday Night Movies 751

Hell Comes To Frogtown is a 1988 comedy set in a post apocalypse world with mutants and Sandahl Bergman. It's story is by Donald G Jackson and Randall Frakes, the screenplay is by Frakes and it was directed by Donald and R J Kizer.

Rowdy Roddy Piper is Sam Hell, he's be caught having a sack full of sperm. It's his own and it's a rare thing in the wasted future. The powers that be have glommed onto his tackle, nationalized it, and surrounded it in a barrier of steel. Sadly, Sam is a bit of an idiot. It's a wonder he survived so far.

Sandahl takes Sam on a mission to the wastelands. The mission is to find a handful of kidnapped fertile women and rescue them. It hardly makes any sense, sending your valuable family jewels off to where the mutants live but it's a movie awash with a lack of sense.

The fertile women have been sold to the mutant leader of Frogtown, that's him above, the mutation gives the human shaped beings frog faces and hands. Mutants also eat people, which is amazing when you consider the post-apoc human's diet.

There's plenty of running about, yelling, guns shooting, fast driving, and other time wasters to help fill out those 86 minutes. It's fun enough but since I have a copy I wouldn't be upgrading to the new Blu-ray, nice as it looks.

I probably liked Hatchet III better than the first movie even though I gave both of them a 6 on the IMDb. I was a bit more generous with the first movie. Hatchet III picks up where the first two movies left off. The Honey Island shoreline is littered with bodies, in chunks.

In the opening scenes Danielle Harris kills Victor Crowley, chops him up with a giant chainsaw, then heads into town to tell the police. Danielle was in the second movie and only appears briefly at the end of the 4th film. There's a fifth one rumored and the end of the fourth seems like a big ass opening for one. Back in the third film the local law arrest Danielle, sit her in cell, and the sheriff heads off for the swamp. Several police and paramedic boats arrive. While Daniel was gone Victor pulled himself together and slaughtered just about everyone who showed up on those boats. He's a super natural killing machine that's ugly as hell.

Victor is a nearly unkillable vengeful spirit that was created by a voodoo curse. The sheriff's wife believes that Victor needs to find his daddy and she knows where the dead man's ashes are. They work, at least temporarily, Victor returns in the fourth movie which we watched a few weeks back.

The first two movies in the series were written and directed by Adam Green. He wrote the script on this one and BJ McDonnell directed.  This is BJ's only movie, mostly he's a camera operator, he's got over 160 credits for that on the IMDb. All he's directed since have been video shorts. I though BJ did a great job in keeping the style of the first two films. They have a good sense of humor and plenty of gore. Since I had missed the 3rd movie, and had all the others, it seemed like a good idea to pick it up. Now I can watch the whole lot over again someday, right from the beginning.

The Return Of The Living Dead 3 1993

The Return Of The Living Dead 3 is the second sequel in the series and it came out in 1993. I know I saw it back in the VHS days but it's not listed on My Watched Movies List. John Penny wrote the script and Brian Yuzna is the director.

Kent McCord is a military guy and J Trevor Edmond is his son. Trevor and his girlfriend Melinda Clarke sneak into dad's secret military base to see what they can see. Dad's reanimating dead bodies with a toxic gas. They put exo-skeleton's on the zombies to be able to control them. Of course, zombies being what they are, there's a break out and the chomping starts.

Kent gets sent to another base but Trevor doesn't want to go and give up Melinda. He rides off on his motorcycle with Melinda but there's an accident and she's killed. What to do? Certainly the best thing to do would be to take her to dad's reanimated corpse program. Yep, she's a zombie before you know it. The pair have some adventures and Julie learns to control the brain eating by stabbing herself with bits of glass and metal. It's a sad romance that ends in fire.

I enjoyed it this time around and wold watch the film over again. I've got the last two films to watch and will get to those now.

Friday Night Movies 726

First up, the 1999 short film Cool Air. It's based on the Lovecraft story of the same name. Bryan Moore is the director and he stars as Randolph Carter. Carter moves into a room in a boarding house only to have some ammonia tainted water dripping through the ceiling. It comes from the border in the room above whom the land lady says is a doctor. Randolph meets him when he has a light heart attack. Doctor Muñoz helps Randolph out and fills the writer in on his condition. He needs cold to survive. Of course the chiller dies one day and though the doc has had this problem for twenty years he's unprepared to deal with the breakdown. He sends Randolph out for ice and an electrician. Failure brings Randolph and the electrician back too late, they find Muñoz turned into a puddle of gel and bones lying on the floor. It was a well enough made bit of film making. The actors were good to poor, the doc was OK, Bryan not quite that good, and the left over cast members skewing to the poor with bouts of over acting. I listen to the long dialog speeches of the doctor and eventually my mind wanders off in some personal reverie. I wouldn't need to see it again. The Night Gallery version was better.

Black Panther is last year's Marvel Films hit. I wasn't that keen on it and after watching it I might want to see it again but probably won't bother. It was big, noisy and flashy but it was so long I failed to get to the end without my mind wandering off. I wasn't the only one complaining, there was a lot of conversation going on. It's long and in need of paring down. 

Demons: 4 Movie Midnight Marathon Pack

I got this for $3.95 plus shipping from Hamilton Books. It seems to have disappeared off their shelves since this copy arrived here. It's got 4 movies with a Demon theme all crammed on one disc. That's where the real demons are. Watching streaming and screwing up DVDs for the rest of us. Mind you, these movies aren't the ones that need to be on their own disc. It would be a waste and much more costly per movie. These 4 are about a buck each and that's pushing their worth. You never know what you're going to get with a multi movie pack.

Devil 2010 The movie has a story by M Night Shyamalon, the screen play is by Brian Nelson, John Erick Dowdle is the director. John Erick's precious movie was the 2008 Quarantine, I didn't care that much for that, Devil is a better film. Some people get trapped in an elevator the same day that a guy jumps through the window of a tall office block. People work to get the 5 people out of the elevator but pretty soon some weird shit starts to happen. One of the men is murdered in the dark while the lights flick on and off at random. One of the security guards is sure that the Devil is behind this but his boss thinks he's just really religious. The cops show up and the Detective in charge doesn't know what to make of it all. The obvious, someone in the elevator is a killer, and as they find out more about the people on board it looks like they all have some past indiscretions. Another lady is killed and things get worse and worse. The movie is only 80 minutes so they don't waste much time, all the details and backstory are presented while the movie trots along. It's well made, nicely shot and the script is good. I'd watch it again. I gave it a 6 on the IMDb, it scores more 7s but I'm not sure it's there. Still, worth seeing for the horror fan. The rest are not quite as good as the first movie.

Long Time Dead 2002 Marcus Adams is the director and he worked on the story with two other people and the screenplay was written by 4 people. That's probably why it's not so good. It's about some rather unlikable 20 something's who use a home made Ouija board to call up a djinn. Sucks to be them. They get picked off one by one. It's pretty much what you've seen before. I'm probably not going to bother watching it again. There's just nothing special about it.

House Of Voices 2004 AKA Saint Ange That's the name of the orphanage that a young woman named Anna goes to work at in 1958. It's in the French Alps but you hardly see anything of the outside once the bus drops her off. The place is being shut down and there's just one teen girl left in care and the administrator in charge left. Anna hears the voices and footsteps of young children but there's no one there. She finds out some stuff and the place kills her. It's not that interesting getting to the end and I speed up the last half.

Whisper 2007 Kidnappers abduct a young boy and he kills them. Ha ha. The kid is creepy and most of the criminals are stupid and need killing. There's a bit of a good story bit near the end but it's still about average.

Animal Apocalypse - 4 Movie Set

For some reason Amazon lists this under the title of When Animals Attack. How am I supposed to find it under that title? Google, of course. It's another multi movie set that I got for under 3 bucks. I wanted the first movie in the set and it was worth paying the 3 bucks for that. Turns out that it's a better than average collection, especially since it's from Mill Creek.

Bats: Human Harvest is a 2007 made for TV monster movie. The monsters are hungry bats who can bite a man's arm off as the glide by. I can only assume that humans taste yummy, the bats seem to relish chowing down. It's a sequel to Bats and while it's not quite as good as that it's still a nice average getting eaten' in the woods movie. The woods are supposed to be in Afghanistan but it's really around Sofia Bulgaria that the movie is filmed. It's a good average movie, I enjoyed it well enough, I'd watch it again but who knows if that will ever happen.

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu In America is a 2006 medical thriller about a pandemic. I didn't care much for it, the monster is too real. It was made for TV. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Kaw is a 2007 movie about ravens killing people. Good for them. People are dicks. It's got Steven McHattie as an old coot and Rod Taylor is the medical examiner. Sean Patrick Flanery is the Sheriff and it's his last day, he's moving to the city for a new job. There's plenty of people being killed by ravens and some ravens get blasted. There's a descent script and a good cast. Even the CGI ravens looks respectable. I liked it and would watch it again.

Nightwing is a 1979 killer bat movie that was directed by Arthur Hiller. This time the bats are attacking at an Indian reservation in New Mexico. The plot mixes vampire bats with oil hungry business men. The close up puppet bats were designed by Carlo Rimbaldi, the guy who created the phone home guy, and they look kind of grotesque in a nice way. Large shots with many bats are animated by hand and they often look to flat to seem real. Most of the script is fair and the actors OK. I enjoyed it for the most part, it's not more than average, and even though I have a copy I doubt that I'll ever get back to it.