PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 788

Trilogy Of Terror is a 1975 TV movie produced and directed by Dan Curtis. The three stories are written by Richard Matheson, 2 of the screenplays are written by William F Nolan, the third is by Matheson. Karen Black plays the main character in each segment. In one she's drugged and blackmailed by a student at University. Turns outs out really bad for that guy. In the second segment Karen plays twin sisters, one straight laced and uptight, the other a blonde playgirl. Turns out bad for them.

The last segment really earned the movie some fame, Karen comes home with a tiny statue of a man who turns on her with murder on his mind. The little guy gets into all the horror film magazines and Karen gets mentioned for her hysterical performance. That segment doesn't end well for her.

Not a bad lot of stories. I know I saw them when the film first aired but I hadn't seen it since the 80s. I got a cheap DVD and watched it. There's some extras but they aren't for today.

Jeepers Creepers 3 is the third of the films in the series, it came out in 2017, 14 years after the second film and it's story takes place between the the first and second films. Victor Salva wrote and directed the film. It sure got panned when it came out but I didn't think it was that awful or anything, about average, maybe a little lower. There's plenty of running about while being chased by an unkillable monster and plenty of gory bits. It ends with an opening for a sequel, I'm not holding my breath. I'd rather watch the first one over again, it's way better.

Imogene McCarthery is a 2010 French spy comedy set in England in 1962. It's in the same vein as the recent(ish) OSS-117 spy comedies. Catherine Frot is Imogene, she works in the office of the Intelligence service for the British Admiralty. Her boss sends her on a secret mission, take some plans to an Admiralty man in Falkland in Scotland. She's a terrible spy, she gets drunk and passed out with three Scot fishermen on the train. She wakes up and makes her drop off only to find that the plans have been switched for old newspapers. She takes on a new mission, catching those three spies. She does too well, killing two of them, before she finds out that it was all a ruse to help flush out the mole in the agency. There's a bit of romance and some jokes. Not as much fun as the OSS-117 comedies but still worth a look. I'd watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 785

Trailer Park Shark is a 2017 big ass shark comedy. It's directed by Griff Furst, son of Stephen Furst. Griff wrote the movie with his brother Nathan Furst, Marcy Holland, Matt Muschamp and Xander Wolfe.

The movie is set in a squalled trailer park in Louisiana. A rich scumbag wants the park gone so he hires a stupid scumbag to blow up the levee. It floods the park and most of the trailer park residents are washed away with their trailers. A few survive and to make their day worse, somehow, a big ass hungry shark has come calling. Oh, yeah, he's an electric shark. His electric discharge knocks people out and shorts out electrical systems in boats.

The CGI is fair to middlin', you can see that shark top looks a bit low rez. Generally the physical effects work, the only one that was annoying was the rain effect. They had a physical spray system set up but it was so small you could see where the rain ended on the water. The physical gore is a bit of a step up over the CGI gore. The movie moves along briskly and there's always some new danger and slaughter.

I did like the movies sense of humor. I laughed out loud a couple of times and it was fun to see the scumbags get some chompin' action. Glad to have seen it and would watch it again.

This Is Not A Movie came out in 2011 and the Wikipedia says it's a Mexican experimental SF film. It's written and directed by Olallo Rubio. Edward Furlong plays three different versions of the same character. It's the end of the world and he's in a hotel room in Las Vegas discussing some philosophical stuff with his other selves. It's pretty artsy fartsy but I did get a good laugh out of one part. A physical gag that had little to do with the lack of story. Edward was pretty good as the different personalities. Sadly I wasn't that interested in his internal monologue. I had gotten the DVD cheap and will keep it. I might never watch it again. Who knows.

The Lost Patrol is a 1934 Boris Karloff film. It's adapted from a Philip MacDonald story called Patrol by Garrett Fort, the screenplay is by Dudley Nichols, the director is John Ford. Victor McLaglen, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny, Billy Bevan, Alan Hale and JM Kerrigan are some of the cast I knew. Merian C Cooper is an executive producer and Max Stein created the music.

It's a WWI film, set in the desert of Mesopotamia, with a troop of lost soldiers. They've been beleaguered by some spirituous Arabs who snipe at them with sad efficiency. The troop find an oasis and camp out, resting themselves and their horses. In the night two men are killed and the horses stolen. The troop are randomly picked off by the hidden enemy. Help arrives in the form of an airplane. The pilot lands and is killed.

As their despair grows Boris goes mad and he becomes a danger to himself and the troop. He's eventually killed by his own delusion. Rescue comes but nearly too late. It's all pretty bleak and horrible. Not much by way of humor going on here. It's very much like a horror movie, the kind with a human monster. It's still better than the other two films. I might even watch it again someday.

Hostile Hauntings 6 Movie Collection

Hostile Hauntings is a 6 movie collection from Pendulum Pictures. It's got 2 DVDs with 3 movies on each, no extras. They are all horror films with one thing in common. They suck.

Films are made up of many parts, the story, the actors, the film makers, the sets, props and production values, all fighting for the few dollars these film makers have. Compound that with a general lack of talent and you've got a product that stinks up the house. I blame the availability of low cost HD video. It looks great, unless you don't know how to light it, understand how to use the camera or understand the basics of film making. Add to that poor attempts to cheaply add physical and CGI effects. Their posters suck too. I've really come to hate the photo shopped crap that the designers crank out. Luckily, some of the films were too embarrassed to put a poster online.

As a collection of mistakes in film making these 6 films are good examples of bad examples. It's almost like they're fighting to be called the worst film in the box. I couldn't pick the worst one. None of them needs to be held up as a shining example of what not to do in film making. We already have enough bad films, best these be forgotten. Here's the list so you can beware if they turn up on some streaming source or TV channel.

The Shunned House 2003 An Italian production about a couple that investigate an old building. Tedious and dull.

The Woodland Haunting 2 2005 An Elvis impersonator in a mental institution tells us about a haunting in Ypsilanti Michigan. Absolute shit.

The Somnambulists 2005 Not even a whole movie, a 24 min short with a 50 minute making of tacked on. Absolutely dull and boring.

Hellbound: Book Of The Dead 2003 Also called Cadaver Bay. Not worth seeing.

The River: Legend Of La Llorna 2006 Terrible looking CGI background and dull story.

Sleep Disorder 2005 Ghost hunting guy has nightmares that cause him mental suffering, We have to listen to his boring conversation with a psychiatrist. Utterly awful in every way.

Friday Night Movies 782

Stay Out Stay Alive is a 2019 horror movie playing on Amazon Prime. Dean Yurke wrote and directed. It's his first writing and directing work, he's mostly been in the digital side of things, working on effects for some of the biggest genre pictures from the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel Universe, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean franchises and many more.  SOSA is a much smaller picture than any of those, supernatural horror in the Yosemite woods with a fair bit of CGI to help out.

Five annoying 20 somethings go on a camping trip. I didn't recognize any of the cast except for Barbara Crampton, she plays a forest ranger. The 5 are a couple of couples and the older sister of one of the women. A small earthquake opens the entrance to an old mine and the older sister falls down the short shaft. She gets trapped by a boulder and she's there all night. She had gone off for a walk and two couples went to their tents. The next day it's hard for one of the women to get the sister and he boyfriend to search for her. Those two are a real treat to be around. They find her and try to release her. No go.

One of them finds some gold while poking around. Gold fever kicks in and things go downhill from there. As they dig into the mine they unleash the spirits of the Native Americans who were murdered and buried there back in the gold rush days. The spirits appear as animals or shadow figures and the CGI that does it is fair to good. The earthquake footage was fairly good too. What wasn't much fun was the annoying characters. I think it's barely average, mostly because it's such a familiar story with little to elevate it. Good to have seen it and not have bought it. Well, on DVD, I'm paying for AP and not getting many things shipped to me right now, so it's good to get something out of the monthly fee.

Attack Of The Southern Fried Zombies is another from AP. It came out in 2017 and Christian Hokenson, Mark Newton, Stephan Stromer and Daniel Wood wrote the story, Christian wrote the screenplay and Mark directed. It's set in Charleston Mississippi during a blues festival. One of the big draws are the rival meat pie vendors. Timothy Haug plays a crop duster who's working for one of the meat pie makers on the side, during the day his latest job is spraying a new herbicide on kudzu. The kudzu doesn't like it and it starts turning the dead into zombies somehow. At first it's just one poor guy but it soon spreads and the zombies invade the festival.

The characters we meet are a wide range of southerners, mostly done up for a laugh, some are fun and some are less so. The acting is all over the place and so is the dialog. You'd think with that many of them working on the story, there would be better dialog. Be nice to have better jokes too.

Once the murderous horde descends on the festival it's run or be killed. Some folks escape but many are slaughtered. The physical make up is only so-so and so is the CGI used for gun shot hits and explosions. There's no money here. I enjoyed a fair bit of it but I wouldn't need to see it again.

Monsterland 2016

Monsterland came out in 2016 and it's the work of more film makers than I care to list. It's an anthology film with a framing story about a guy who's caught up in a zombie outbreak. He takes refuge in a theater that's still running the film, has some popcorn, sits down and watches the short subjects.

It's a plethora of monsters, big and small, each from an Indy film maker, all different. Didn't like that monster, here's another right soon. Same with the production values and acting. I certainly think more of them were fun than not. The movie does have a fairly decent sense of humor and I had a few laughs. I'm going to get back to this at some point. I see there's a sequel, doubt I'll see, it gets poor reviews on the IMDb, maybe if it's cheap enough. I'm sure I've purposely bought worse films.

The Blood Rose 1970

The Blood Rose is a 1970 French film about a crazy artist who winds up causing several deaths. Claude Mulot is the director and he wrote the screenplay with Jean Larriaga and Edgar Oppenheimer. None of their work seems familiar, no matter, there's no time to watch it anyway. The Wikipedia says it's an unofficial remake of Eyes Without A Face. I saw that back in 2005 but don't recall anything about it. Other remakes of EWAF are The Awful Dr Orloff and Corruption. I've seen the latter but missed the former. Someday, maybe.

An artist bring his fiance to his crumbly chateau. At his gallery show the fiance's head is pushed into some fire by the artist's ex. She lives but her face is badly burned and the plastic surgeons say the skin is too damaged. Artist guy forces a disbarred plastic surgeon to help him by blackmailing the guy. They kidnap a couple of women for their faces but they die in the operation. The sister of one of the women arrives at the chateau and nearly becomes the face transplant. The big climactic scene sees most everyone dead.

It's about average, I wouldn't say I'd need to see it again, I certainly wouldn't buy a copy on DVD, I did save a download from YouTube.

Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror 1981

 

Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror is a 1981 Italian zombie romp that popped up on YouTube today. I hadn't seen it before, turns out it's pretty poor. Some dopey citizens come visit Professor Ayres in his villa. They don't know that earlier in the film he'd been attacked by zombies he'd accidentally freed from their tomb. They spend the film in small talk until the killing starts, then it's run about getting picked off one by one. I didn't like any of the people much and didn't care that they got killed. The zombies have shitty make up but they manage to get the upper hand shambling along as they do. These are some non-surviving fucks, that's for sure. It's a bit gory it doesn't make the story better. I wouldn't watch it again. Can't recommend it, other than to the zombie fan.

Dr Benderfax 1997

Dr Benderfax is a 1997 mad scientist comedy that was written and directed by Tom Hosler. It's his only movie and he has 11 total credits for it on the IMDb. I saw it on Amazon Prime and it follows a lot of the MS themes. Older MS onto a new process at his lab, young scientist coming to work for the MS because he admires the man's work, a bit of romance for the YS and a bit of rumpy-pumpy for the MS's assistant. Everything falls apart along the way and some poor saps get killed. Nothing was overly clever but there were a few good jokes in among the yakkin'. I wouldn't need to see it again or have a copy.

Friday Night Movies 775

First up is the 1995 SF horror film Xtro 3: Watch The Skies. We watched the new Blu-ray, there were two previous DVD releases but the last one was 15 years ago. It's got a script by Daryl Haney and direction is by Harry Bromley Davenport. It's a British film and it seems to have nothing to do with the other two films. This one takes place mostly on an island off the coast of the US. Even though it's only 200 miles from shore it's supposed to be forgotten about or some such nonsense.

Robert Culp appears briefly as the General that sends the marines to the island. He tells them that there had been a munitions dump there during WW2. They  need the marines to sweep the island for forgotten bombs and other explosives so they can build a refueling station there. The marines are a mixed bag and hardly marine material. Still, they're really just there to get picked off one by one once one of the more useless marines accidentally lets the alien gets out of his concrete block house. Then it's all yelling and rushing about in the woods.

It's the least interesting of the series and should have been included with the other two in a three pack. Hardly worth buying when it's just so mediocre. You can see for yourself by clicking on the link in the title.

I hadn't remembered seeing Ninja Apocalypse before and had to sit through it again. Me so sad. Here's what I said just shy of two years ago.

Ninja Apocalypse is a 2014 post apocalypse movie that people are saying is a ripoff of The Warriors. They've certainly used that script as a template, big rally, assassination of the leader, blame the Lost Clan, chase them to their home base. It all takes place underground but it's the same idea, just with swords and some magical ninja powers. Sadly, it's nowhere near as good as The Warriors. Watch that instead. It's so much better. More fantasy than SF.

It didn't get any better the second time.

The Strange Door 1951

The Strange Door is a 1951 adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson story The Sire De Maletroit's Door. Jerry Sackheim wrote the screenplay and Joseph Pevney directed. The year after this movie Jerry Sackheim wrote the excellent film The Black Castle. I didn't recognize any of his earlier films but I have seen his 1960 movie The Boy And The Pirates and enjoyed it. He wrote some good bit of TV, shows like My Friend Flicka, Lassie, The New Adventures Of Charlie Chan, Science Fiction Theater and Death Valley Days.

Joseph Pevney started in films in 1950 and switched over to TV by 1961. I've hardly seen any of his movies but I've seen a bunch of his TV. He worked on many popular shows from the 60s to the 80s.

In The Strange Door Charles Laughton is Sire Alain de Maletroit and Boris Karloff is his downtrodden servant Voltan. Sally Forrest is Sire Alain's niece Blanche and Richard Wyler (credited as Richard Stapley) is Denis de Beaulieu. Denis is on the run from a mob, they've been tricked by Alain to believe Denis has killed a man. Denis hides in Alain's chateau, not knowing the man is a monster.

Once there Alain intends to force Denis to marry Blanche. It's part of his messed up plan of vengeance on his young brother Edmond. Alan Napier plays Edmond, who's been trapped in the dungeon's for twenty years.

Luckily it's the kind of movie where the baddy doesn't get what he wants. I found it moody and entertaining and thought it was better than average. The Blu-ray looks very nice, I was happy to have picked it up and would watch it again. I enjoyed the Commentary by Film Historians Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Dr. Robert J Kiss.