PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 849

Gonks Go Beat 1965 From an original story by Robert Hartford-Davis and Peter Newbrook, screenplay by Jimmy Watson, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis. I'd seen a couple of Robert's other directing jobs, The Black Torment and The Sandwich Man. They were better than this film. A few of his other titles might have some merit. I downloaded a few from YouTube, someday i might have time to watch them. The DVD is part of The British Film series from Network. Gonks were a faddish toy from the era. Lulu sings the theme song Chocolate Ice.

The story is set some years in the future and the people of Earth are split into two groups. The folks of Beatland are hipsters who listen to an early form of rock n roll. The folks of Ballad Isle are pretty straight and listen to boring pop songs. They don't care for each other's music and there's tension on the planet as the annual musical contest comes up.

The Great Galaxian sends a representative to assess the situation and keep things from boiling over. He's supposed to bring the two sides together or he's going to be assigned to the planet Gonk. No one wants to go there.

Kenneth Conner plays the representative, he's a bit of a nervous Nelly and not very effective. He observes both sides and takes a meeting with Mr A&R, the man who runs the musical contest and is the contest's impartial judge. They come up with a Romeo and Juliet sort of plan to hook up a Beatland boy with a Ballad Isle girl. The couple preform a song at the end of the musical contest. It's the winner and everyone gets together and dances.

It's got a stupid story, poorly executed, with plenty of overacting, odd sets and the goofy turned up to eleven. Some of the 16 songs are hardly worth hearing. Of musical interest, the Beatland opening song features the Graham Bond Organization with Graham on vocals, sax and keyboards, Ginger Baker on drums, Jack Bruce on bass, Dick Heckstall-Smith on sax and John McLaughlin on guitar. All that talent and not much of a song.

The movie was a big flop but later developed a bit of a cult following. I hadn't ever heard of it until I ordered it from Network last week. I can't recommend it to anyone really, perhaps it's it's lucky there isn't a copy on the internet to look at. You can see some of the songs on YouTube.

The Outing 1987 Written by Warren Chaney and directed by Tom Daley. An American film that was released in the UK in April 1987 under the title The Lamp, it came out in September 1987 in the US under the title The Outing.

In an opening scene we see a monster murder the people on a ship. Only a little girl escapes, she takes a lamp and a bracelet with her. We jump to modern day and a nasty trio of scumbags comes to rob an old lady in her home. They kill the old lady with their bad acting and smash up her house looking for money they think is there. They find a box with the lamp and bracelet. The jinn in the lamp gets released and then slaughters the trio.

The cops send the effects from the house to a museum, though I can't fathom why. Alex is the teen daughter of the museum's archeologist, she decides to sneak into the place for a sleep over with her friends. Her horrible ex-boyfriend hears her plan, he sneaks in with a pal to get back at her and her new boyfriend. The friends pair off and the jinn starts killing.

First the guard goes, then a guy gets torn in two, some of the action seems to take place while the camera is looking in another direction. There's plenty of running about and yelling, often the sound goes from quiet to annoyingly loud. It doesn't take too long to kill most everyone off but the daughter. She gets rescued and destroys the lamp in the museum's incinerator.

It's got a few entertaining bits but it's got a tired story, awful characters and poor acting. Some of the monster bits weren't too bad but there's nothing outstanding. I wouldn't be picking one up for my collection. I'd only recommend it to the horror fan who wants to see it all.

Friday Night Movies 845

Cult Of The Damned 1969 Kino Lorber DVD that was originally titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go. Written and directed by Robert Thom. Around 1960 Thom wrote a play for his wife Janice Rule. It never got produced so he changed it into a screenplay and sold it to Sam Katzman who got finance from AIP. They were the producers of the Thom scripted Wild In The Streets.

It's Thom's only directing job but he'd written several films that you might have heard of: All The Fine Young Cannibals, The Subterraneans, Wild In The Streets, Bloody Mama and Death Race 2000. Most people into genre films probably have seen the last picture but hardly any of his other work. Probably good in the aggregate. I've only seen the last three and don't plan to bother with the others.

Wild In The Streets is a bit of a cult classic but it's a big ol' mess of a movie. Cult Of The Damned is an even bigger mess and it's tedious to boot. WITS had a good song, The Shape Of Things To Come, and COTD has Angel, Angel, Down We Go. It's an absolutely appalling song and later in the movie there's another song, by the same band, that's even worse.

Holly Near plays the overweight and neurotic adult daughter of a rich guy and his wife. Jennifer Jones plays the mother and Charles Aidman plays the father. The parents are an awful pair of abusers and manipulators. Jordan Christopher is the lead singer in a band that was hired to play at Holly's 18th birthday bash and coming out party. Holly runs off with Jordan and his band. They have some adventures and Jordon seduces her parents. Lou Rawls, Davey Davidson and Roddy McDowall play Jordan's band members and friends. None of them are very interesting, they aren't the sort of people I would like to hang around with. All their tedious and pretentious antics are slathered in psychedelic claptrap and crap pop songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

The IMDb calls it a crime drama. What are they on about? See if you can spot any crimes, other than the film being presented to the public, by watching it. A link to a fair copy on YouTube is in the title above but be warned, the movie did crap at the box office and Holly Near called it "trash". To be fair to the film the family thinks Holly had been kidnapped even though there's no indication of it. Mom wants to go to the police but dad doesn't want any publicity, he's got his own detectives on the case. That's just the sort of writing that might have made the Los Angeles Times call it "a pretentious mess" although "it can never be said to bore." I say, "Oh yes, it can!" They tried releasing it the following year under the Cult Of The Damned title in a double bill with The Vampire Lovers. The Los Angeles Times said it was "a terrible piece of trash." It's the same LA Times reviewer, Kevin Thomas, which made me think that his first viewing might still be bothering him a year later. I thought it was also possible he's mad that they tried to fool the public with a re-title of the film. It's certainly something that annoys me. With all the trash talk I still wouldn't like to see the movie tossed into the circular file. It's good to see these sort of films, if only to appreciate a well made film.

Monster Hunter 2020 Written and directed by Paul W S Anderson. Based on a Capcom video game.

Milla Jovovich plays a US Army Ranger Captain, head of UN team that's searching for a team lost in the desert. Milla's team gets overtaken by a big desert storm that forces them through a portal to a new world with giant monsters. After the team is decimated Milla teams up with Tony Jaa, a native of the new world. He'd gotten separated from his own team of monster hunters when he was thrown from their ship. Ron Perlman is the head of Tony's team, he's in the opening scene and doesn't show up again until the third act. I would have liked more Ron.

There's plenty of monster fighting and it's loud and bombastic. At times I was wishing they had dialed it back a bit but there you go, it seems there's always a new 11. After Ron turns up we get a much better idea of what goes on in the new world and why there should be a sequel. It's got a nice look to it and a wicked sense of humor.  The new world is a beautiful place, much of it was filmed in Namibia and South Africa, but it's filled with horrible giant bitey things, so, not much of a tourist destination in my mind. I enjoyed the thing and would watch it again someday. I'll put the Blu-ray on my Wishlist and keep an eye out for a nice price decrease.

Friday Night Movies 843

Winterbeast 1992 Story, screenplay and directed by Christopher Thies. It's Christopher's only film, he passed away at age 50 in 2015. A no budget film that was shot on 16MM and Super8 film in 1986 and 1989. Filmed in Newbury Massachusetts.

The local Park Rangers are worried about the disappearance of some people on the mountain. Turns out there's a demon associated with a native carving. The demon is depicted with stop motion animation, not the best stop motion but it is somewhat imaginative. The little animated clips sprinkled through the film are sometimes the best thing about a scene. There aren't any credits listed on the IMDb page so I've no info about the animators. The IMDb Trivia Page says: The totem pole monster and the skeleton head that rips out of a man's stomach are both props taken from the Dokken music video Burning like a Flame.

It's a monster film with little or no production values, a cast with really limited abilities, a lack luster script, and minimal competency behind the camera. Yet, we were able to get through it with only a slight increase of the level of annoyance that time was passing so slowly. It's a movie that makes it's 77 mins seem like 90 plus. It has some entertainment value, the guy playing the crazy lodge owner was fun to watch, but a lot of my amusement seemed to be laughing at the movie not with it. There's a nice new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome but you don't need to take a chance wasting your money on that. There's a link to the movie on YouTube so you can test drive it. Who knows you might need that Blu-ray. I don;t think I do.

Savage Dawn 1985 Screenplay by Max Bloom and Bill Milling, directed by Simon Nuchtern. It's Simon's last film of nine, his most well known film has to be Snuff, notorious for being a film with scenes of real murder, but sadly he's only got an uncredited bit of material in that. None of his other films look familiar and they don't generate many good comments on the IMDb. Back in 1970 Simon was the sound editor on Hercules In New York, that's the film where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Hercules and Arnold Stang plays another annoying guy from New York. It has some entertainment value from it's oddness.

It's a bikers invade a small town film with Lance Henriksen as the loner, ex-career soldier spy who helps the townies fight back. George Kennedy plays Lance's old Company pal, crippled in a wheel chair but still willing to fight back. William Forsythe plays the leader of the 30 or so bikers. They cause some trouble in the bar and cheat at a no holds barred boxing match, so they get tossed out of the bar. Leo Gordon plays the sheriff, his gun and that of his deputy, push the bikers out of town. William promises to be back.

There's a couple of skirmishes with the bikers before the big all out push in the last part of the film. It's all typical action footage with fist fights, gun shooting, motorcycle riding, explosions and a big old Army tank. Some of the action footage is OK, some is not so good.

Karen Black plays a slutty lady who turns against the town and hooks up with William. They have a short relationship. Richard Lynch is the creepy reverend. He gets crushed by a tank. Sam Kinison has a small part as a bible spouting barber. He comes to a quick end.

It's better than Winterbeast but not much. Simon might be a mediocre director or he might be dancing to the beat of some music we can't comprehend. Some of his scenes work fine, others not so good. He didn't make anymore movies and he's still around. There's a watchable copy on YouTube that you can check out in the link above. Another film available on a Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray. It was still entertaining to watch but I wouldn't bother buying a copy.

The Creature Below 2016

The Creature Below 2016 Story by Stewart Sparkle, screenplay by Paul Butler, directed by Steward Sparkle. This is Stewart's first feature, I just watched his second feature Book Of Monsters a couple of weeks ago.

Anna Dawson plays a marine biologist who finds a strange creature in the sea. When an accident shuts down her boss's project she takes the creature home. She tries to raise it but can't seem to get it to eat. Oh, darn, it needs human blood for sustenance. Since the movie's no where near over Anna starts gathering people to feed the little beast. Turns out, the creature has taken over her mind, more people die. There's a fair bit of violence and gore but it's pretty familiar and predictable. Not something I would bother watching again so I wouldn't need a DVD. You can watch it on YouTube.

Friday Night Movies 837

Pixels 2015 Story by Tim Herlihy, screenplay by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, directed by Chris Columbus. I have a box of DVDs waiting to be watched for the first time. Tonight I stuck my had in the box of discs and pulled out one at random. I couldn't find a good sized copy of the cover to the DVD via Google so grabbed the one on Amazon. The IMDb has posters of movies but they've changed their web page to only allow screen captures of the images posted to their page. Annoying, it now takes longer to grab an image. I noticed that the DVD was only $3.74 on Amazon and the Blu-ray a tenner. You can pick up a used copy for $1.96, costs more than double for shipping.

The movie opens in the 80s and the early arcade games were all the range among the kids. A trio of kids are competing in an arcade championship, they grow up to be the adults in the film Adam Sandler is a home-theater installer and Kevin James is the President of the United States. The arcade action was recorded and put in a capsule that was launched into space. It seems aliens have found the capsule and interpreted the recording as a call for war. Now it's on. The attackers come in the form of 80s arcade game images.

It's that connection to the arcade that pulls Adam into Kevin's world after a military base on Guam is attacked by the video game Galaga. They soon find a message from the Aliens telling them that this is the first challenge for the rights to the Earth. Adam gets a hand from Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage.

There's a bit of romance between Michelle Monaghan and Adam, Josh meets the love of his life, a character from a video game. There's plenty of giant arcade play as the attacks start happening. A giant Pac-Man roams the streets of New York. Eventually the Earth is saved and all is well enough.

It made me laugh occasionally and I was happy to have seen it. I'd want to watch it again someday. I keep meaning to watch all my favorite Adam Sandler movies in a marathon but there's so much I still haven't watched.

Tremors: Shrieker Island 2020 Written by Brian Brightly and Don Michael Paul, directed by John Michael Paul. This is the 7th Tremors film, JMP is the director of Tremors 5: Bloodlines and the 6th film Tremors: A Cold Day In Hell. I've not seen any of his other films except for Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy. The rest don't seem to interest me much.

A billionaire hunting enthusiast has had four graboids grown and placed on his island. He's set up a hunting party for other rich assholes. Of course, those guys are in over their head and one by one his paying customers get chomped on by one of my favorite tunneling monsters. Also on the island are some seismic researchers, Caroline Langrishe is in charge and Jon Heder is the comic relief. Caroline is also the mother of Bert Gummer's son, Bert is of course played by Michael Gross, his son Travis is played by Jamie Kennedy in the 5th and 6th films.  Travis is in jail so Caroline sends Jon to round up his father. Bert's gone native and living in the wilderness. Still, he comes and takes on his old enemy.

The hunters do manage to mortally wound the graboid they encountered but it gets tougher and tougher to survive against the graboids and shriekers. The later have developed a new shriek that incapacitates the humans. Things look better once Bert arrives but soon enough the rich douche bag in charge has locked him up in an old bunker. Some people are so arrogant they deserve to get eaten by graboids. There's plenty of running and screaming. Just what you don't need with graboids around.

The movie looks great, during the day there are lush tropical forests and plenty of explosions, at night the scenes are lit with flames and explosions. Who ever was doing the flame effects was really good at their job. One by one the monsters are defeated, finally the last beast is left and it's a bitter sweet moment as Bert disappears into the flying dirt. Michael Gross has said he'd like to do another movie but he's 73 and it could be a couple more years before it happens and he might be too old to do the action stuff.  I enjoyed the movie and thought it was a nice addition to the series. Kind of wraps it up but still leaves a door open.

Tar 2020

Tar 2020 Written by Timothy Nuttall and Aaron Wolf, directed by Aaron Wolf.

It's another movie based on a monster from the dirt, jazzed up by putting the monster in the La Brea Tar Pits. Nothing too original here. Nice to see Timothy Bottoms and Graham Greene but that's about it. Watched on Amazon Prime, not going to need to see this one again.

Friday Night Movies 832

Needful Things 1993 Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, screenplay by WD Richter, directed by Fraser C Heston.

Ed Harris is the sheriff of Castle Rock, Bonnie Bedelia is his girlfriend, Max Von Sydow is a demon. Max has opened an antique shop in Castle Rock. He's got great stuff and the price is cheap, in cash. It's the favors Max wants, those have a great cost. It's why I don't go to antique shops.

I hadn't seen it before, I bought the DVD some time back but it's just been sitting in a box waiting to get watched for a good long while. I'm endeavoring to clean out that box and get those DVDs put in their final resting place other boxes.

I liked the characters and the script was fairly decent. I thought it poked along at the beginning, I'm not always a fan of the melodrama that fills in between the interesting bits before the real action starts. Once Max gets to manipulating the locals things get more interesting, more often. Nice production values, I watch so many low budget films, it's a welcome change to see some money on the screen.

I was glad I picked up the DVD, I enjoyed it more than many SK adaptations. It certainly has a better sense of humor than a lot of the films made from his books. Books that I haven't ever read. I liked it enough to think I might actually try to get back to it some time in the future. Typically, I seem to have liked it more than the critics did when it came out. Oh, well, nothing new there.

Tomorrow I'm going to watch the extended TV version of the film, then I probably don't need to see it for a while. That's good, that box of DVDs aren't going to watch themselves. They have no hands, how could they work the DVD player. The TV version is just over 3 hours long. You can watch the original in the title link above and the long version here.

Psycho Goreman 2020 Written and directed by Steven Kostanski. It's a Canadian film and Steve is part of the Astron-6 Production Company. His previous films include Manborg, Father's Day, The Void and Leprechaun Returns. This isn't an Astron-6 release, it's on the RLJE Films label. They produce a lot of genre TV and film. You can stream PG on Shudder and it just come out on Blu-ray.

That girl in the picture, that's Mimi, she's a real fuckin' asshole. The kid to the left is her brother Luke, she mistreats him something fierce. Mimi mistreats most everyone, she's loud and selfish, she wants her own way and no one can tell her what to do. After a deadly game of Crazy Ball, Luke has to dig his own grave in the back yard. Luke strikes a coffin like box that's got a glowing red jewel on it. Mimi gloms onto that. They get scared when purple light pours out of the coffin.They fill in the hole just in time to go to bed.

The next day the dirt is out of the hole and soon after we meet the Arch-duke of Nightmares. He's been sealed in the coffin for a long time, placed there by The Templars, the powerful alien beings that defeated him and stopped his galaxy destroying rampage. Mimi doesn't care about his backstory but the flashbacks to his past were quite entertaining. Mimi renames him Psycho Goreman, or PG for short, after it turns out that the glowing jewel gives her complete control over him. Now starts the Arch-duke's nightmare. She bosses him about and he threatens her with a slow torturous death. Mimi soon has PG out on the town and some of the locals aren't always fairing too well after their encounter with an alien.

More crazy things happen and there are plenty of laughs. There's a fair bit of gore and the make up effects are mostly pretty good. The film looks great considering it had a budget of $1,500,000 Canadian dollars. Money well spent. I sure plan to watch it over again.

The 9th Guest 1934

The 9th Guest 1934 It started as a 1930 mystery novel called The Invisible Host by Bruce Manning and Gwen Bristow, Owen Davis adapted that into a play called The Ninth Guest in 1930, Garnett Weston adapted that lot for the film and Roy William Neill directed.

Eight people get invited to a party in a big fancy penthouse apartment. Most of them know each other and they aren't the best of pals. At first they think that one of them invited the lot but soon a mysterious voice comes over the PA system. They're all the voice's enemies, soon they're going to die. There's no way out, the doors are locked and electrified.

The murderer says someone is going to die every 15 minutes and he's a man of his word. He invites them to outwit death and escape. Some doe. You can find out by watching the film in the link above. I enjoyed it, it's a bit better than average, but it managed to keep my interest and it's short. A lot of people gave it a 7 on the IMDb but I only gave it a 6. Those two rankings are over 55% of the votes. It's got 453 of them, not too bad for an old movie. You can get a DVD for 6 bucks on Amazon. It's from Reel Vault, part of Oldies dot com. They have a lot of odd stuff including a lot of public domain titles.

Critters Attack 2019

Critters Attack 2019 Written by Scott Lobdell and directed by Bobby Miller. A reboot of the series with Dee Wallace and some people I hadn't seen before. From reading about the film I see there was a Critters TV series on Shutterfly, I have not seen Critters: A New Binge.

The movie opens with the Critters landing, once on the ground they start munching people. Even the park rangers get chomped. A young gal takes a babysitting job I hope of getting in good with a lady from the college she hopes to attend. She takes the woman's two teen children out to a park, her brother tags along because he likes the daughter. They go to the park where they stumble onto the new critter invasion.

They can't get much help from anyone, so they devise their own defenses. They do learn from the dying cop that the Critters can be killed with high pitched noises. Dee shows up randomly in the movie, eventually she joins up with the kids and they blast the beasties. The movie ends with a hint of more Critters to come.

Nothing overly great about the movie but the series left much to be desired as it plowed on. It's not overly gory and there's a few gags. I gave it a 5 but it was more a 4. I wound up ordering the DVD after I watched the first four title but it sat for ages. Finally getting it off the unwatched movie shelf. 

Science Fiction Sunday 622

Coherence 2013 Written and directed by James Ward Byrkit.

A group of old friends get together at a house the night a comet is due to pass over. It's all personal chatter and backstory until the weird stuff starts happening. The lights going out seemed normal to seeing yourself in the street. They figure out that the comet has created a rift between parallel universes. They discuss the other selves, whom they're really bothered by. One guy is much more disturbed than the others, to the point of violence, he really wants to kill them before they come for him. Some of the rest of the group turns violent as they try to deal with all that's going on.

It was a lot better than some of these small budget films with people talking and talking while little happens. It was shot in 5 days with $50,000. Even with that tight a budget, there's a bit of physical action, some fairly good actors, and a decent script. Nicholas Brendon and Elizabeth Gracen were the only ones in the cast that I knew. I'd think it's leaning more to being a horror movie than an SF film but that's OK, I'm running out of unseen SF films to see in general, I can't afford to be picky. I don't think I'd need to see it again.

These three films are all from Amazon Prime. It's the only way to keep up with the slightly newer SF films. I've near enough stopped buying DVDs, I have my favorite titles already and often I don't want to take a chance on something I don't know about. I'm not getting out to the used stores to check for cheap discs that I can take a chance on and the postage rates from the UK have gotten too expensive for me.

In Bright Axiom 2019 Director Spencer McCall co-wrote the script with Geordie Aitken, Farouz Gipson and Wylie Herman.

Some artist types think they should start a space for artists to flourish, or some such. People are invited to the mysterious society housed in a weird building. It's more like a cult but the guys behind the group say it's not a cult. It fails quickly, the organizers don't really have any idea what they are doing. The story is told in documentary style. It's not that interesting and not really SF. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Empire Of The Sharks 2017 Written and directed by Mark Atkins. Produced by The Asylum.

In this Waterworld type film some people in a tiny floating village are up against the warlord John Savage. His minion isn't happy with the tribute from the village and he takes some women as prisoners. The slaves are forced to work powering a machine that takes the salt out of water so they can drink it. Some of the villagers form a plan to rescue the women. They hire some scum who fuck things up for a while but eventually they got eaten by sharks so I laughed.

It's about the usual level of quality of the average film from The Asylum. It's not something I would watch again, not that I should have bothered in the first place, but I was happy to have it on in the background as I sorted stamps.