PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 802

Terminator Dark Fate 2019 Story by James Cameron, Charles H Eglee, Josh Friedman, David S Goyer and James Rhodes, screenplay by David S Goyer, Justin Rhodes and Billy Ray, directed by Tim Miller. The 6th in the Terminator series and a sequel to the first two films but not the three that followed.

Rev-9, a new style terminator, comes from a well changed future to kill a woman called Dani who's going to be a problem for the future robots. Instead of the rise of Skynet there's been a AI revolution called Legion. The machines want to kill off the humans. The resistance to Legion sends an augmented soldier called Grace to destroy the terminator and save Dani.

Linda Hamilton plays Sarah Connors 25 years on. She saves Dani and Grace and they escape for a bit. Rev-9 keeps on coming and there's a seemingly endless series of flights and fights with plenty of explosions and collateral damage. At some point Arnold Schwarzenegger turns up, he's a T-800 and he's been alerting Sarah to the arrival of the Legion terminators. That's how she arrived to save Dani and Grace. Near the end of the film they finally destroy the Rev-9 and hope to stop the rise of Legion.

Mostly it was entertaining but I got tired of the constant battle by the end of the second act. At least it was only 128 mins, so many of these action films are over long. I'd still watch it again at some point.

Attack Of The Giant Teacher 2019 Written by Nobuhiko Ishii and Yoshikazu Ishii, directed by Yoshikazu Ishii. A Japanese low budget kaiju musical movie.

A teacher is informed his school will close at the end of the school year. He gets his class to put on a musical and they do. In space an alien plans an attack on the Earth. The teacher grows large to fight the alien.

Sadly the musical isn't interesting to me but I liked a few of the characters. I'm sure the budget meant the giant alien action only happens in the last act. Most of the effects were CGI and the low budget didn't help there either. Doubtful I'll get back to this one, thankfully someone passed a copy to me and I didn't buy a copy. You can see it for free on YouTube, link in the usual place.

Godzilla Minus One 2023

Godzilla Minus One 2023 Written, directed and visual effects by Takashi Yamazaki. It did well in the box office, more than a 1000% return on it's $10-12 million cost.

A kamikaze pilot called Kōichi fails in his mission, he claims plane trouble and lands at a repair base on Odo Island. The ground crew of mechanics can't seem to find anything wrong with his plane. Later that night Kōichi and the ground crew have an encounter with Godzilla. He's small in 1945, only 3 or 4 times the height of a man. The pilot fails to fire on Godzilla and all the ground crew are killed except the lead mechanic Tachibana. They return to Tokyo with Tachibana hating him.

Back in Tokyo Kōichi find his parents have died in the bombing of the city. There's not much left in his old neighborhood. He takes in a young woman called Noriko, she comes with a baby called Akiko, the dying parents asked Noriko to take care of their dying baby. Kōichi gets a job and so does Noriko. Things seem to get better over the next couple of years. Kōichi struggles with survivor guilt. Deep in the ocean Godzilla has been caught in the nuclear radiation from a test on Bikini Atoll. He gets much bigger and starts attacking ships. He eventually winds up in Tokyo and the real action begins.

Godzilla destroys a lot of the city with his new heat ray. Noriko disappears in blast area and Kōichi vows to get revenge. The government is unhelpful and the military has been defanged. A local man funds a plan to attack Godzilla, Kenji, a friend and co-worker of Kōichi, has a plan to use freon to sink Godzilla in a deep bay, he's hoping that the pressure will kill the beast. Kōichi is involved with an alternate plan to kill Godzilla.

There's a lot of good CGI and plenty of explosions and heat blasts. All incredibly good considering the small budget. The cast is fine and Godzilla looks pretty good. The story is complex and you can take a lot of things out of it. The pilot is angry, the lead mechanic is angry, Godzilla is angry. No good comes of that. At least it has a happy ending and it leaves a big ass door, wide open, for a second movie. One of my takeaways from the movie: I thought that the Emperor and the government leaders got off lightly after the war, they needed some more punishment, more ritual suicide. I'll definitely want the Blu-ray so I can watch it again.

Friday Night Movies 984

The Great Yokai War Guardians 2021 Screenplay by Yûsuke Watanabe, directed by Takashi Miike. A Japanese kids film about Yokai monsters. Miike made a Yokai film back in 2005 that's set in the same sort of world.

A pair of young brothers join up with some Yokai to stop a giant rolling Yokai from trashing Tokyo and releasing a dangerous Yokai buried beneath the city. There's plenty of monsters and yelling. I like the mythology of the Yokai and there's a nice assortment of them on screen much of the time.

I thought it was entertaining and enjoyed the movie. There's plenty of destruction and noise. It's main flaw is it's way too long at 118 mins. I'd stillwatch it again but I'm doubting I'd buy the Blu-ray from SRS.

The Whale God 1962 Based on the novel The Whale God by Koichiro Uno, screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, directed by Tokuzo Tanaka. Music by Akira Ifukube. Another Blu-ray from SRS.

A Japanese fishing village is visited by a giant whale each year. The local name for it is the god whale. It's a big one and hard to kill. Many fisherman have been killed by the god whale. The village is obsessed by the god whale and Shaki is really obsessed. Ei, a whale widow, offers to sleep with the man who kills the god whale. The head man in the village makes an even better offer, his title, and and daughter are up for grabs for killing the god whale. Takashi Shimura plays the headman.

A visiting man wants a chance at the prize. Katsu Shintaro (Zatoichi) plays the visitor and he's a bad guy. He rapes the Ei and she has a baby before the god whale returns for his annual visit to the area. Shanti helps Ei with the birth, he tells the village the baby is his and marries Ei. The head man and his daughter are unhappy. Things get worse when the god whale returns.

I enjoyed it despite it's rather slow pace. It's also an SRS Blu-ray. You can test drive the movie at the Internet Archive. See link above.

Friday Night Movies 968

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis 1987 Based on the 1985 Hiroshi Aramata novel called Teito Monogatari, screenplay by Kaizo Hayashi, directed by Akio Jissoji. The novel was written in 10 parts over two years, two more parts were added in the following two years, the movie adapts the first third of the novel.

The movie is a retelling of Tokyo's history from 1912 to just after the 1923 earthquake but with the premise that the occult and demons are real. Tokyo is supposed to be one of the most haunted cities in Japan. Living far below the city is the spirit Taira no Masakado. Supposedly it's a powerful being capable of destroying the city.

Kato wants to release Masakado and destroy Tokyo. He kidnaps a medium to communicate with the spirit. Other folks oppose him and try to stop waking up Masakado. They battle for a while, eventually the 1923 quake happens and the story ends around 1927.

I got most of that from the Wikipedia, the movie isn't very forthcoming with a lot of details. It's a complicated story with plenty of characters coming and going. I thought it a good looking movie but I thought the film makers valued style over story telling. They did a good job bringing the 1920s to life. I still enjoyed it for the most part but I doubt I'd rush to see it again. You can see it on YouTube.

Demon Of Paradise 1987 Written by Frederick Bailey and C J Santiago, directed by Cirio H Santiago. A New Horizon Pictures film that's set in Hawaii but filmed in the Philippines.

Some jerks are dynamite fishing, the explosions awaken an ancient monster that lives in the lake. The jerks are tossing lit sticks of dynamite into the lake when the monster attacks, he causes them to drop a lite bundle of dynamite sricks into the boat. The result blows the boat to smithereens killing at least a couple of the jerks. That was a decent explosion and the first warning against using dynamite in this nearly 90 min PSA on the dangers of mixing liquor, stupidity and explosives.

The local resort owner wants to exploit the monster, the local sheriff wants to evacuate the area, the local scientist wants to find the creature and capture it. The latter team up to try to fight the beast. The sheriff and the scientist have to fight another beast when they want to close the resort for the safety of the tourists. The resort owner goes full on asshole to stay open. It's very Jaws meets The Creature From The Black Lagoon but without the charm of either of those films. More people get killed, two more boats get blown up and the tourists run away. The police fight the monster with bullets and dynamite and barely survive.

There is some nice scenery but many other parts of the film don't rise to the same level. The script is poor as are the actors. The cinematography is fairly good and so is the monster makeup. The music was a bit of a mixed bag, some bits better than others. I enjoyed it somewhat but it's still below average. I'm not likely to watch it again. There's a decent copy of the movie on YouTube that you can watch if you want.

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It Follows 2014 Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Filmed for $1.3 million in Detroit.

A young woman has sex with a guy and besides his semen he passes along a curse. A supernatural entity will follow and kill her until she has sex with someone else and passes along the curse. If she dies without passing the curse along to someone new the curse will go back to following the person who infected her.

Seems like she needs to let it kill her and set it on the guy who infected her. That would be too easy and the young woman spends most of the movie running from the slow walking creature that's stalking her. The movie never introduces someone to help them or tip them off on how to kill it. They do try to kill it but the creature is unkillable. It's also invisible to everyone but the infected person. Not a good combination.

It's a nice looking film but it's deliberate slow pace is wasted on me. My mind would wonder and I'd wish something would happen. It's one that I'm not going to bother adding to my pile of films.

Shin Ultraman 2022 Written by Hideaki Anno and directed by Shinji Higuchi.

The Japan government has set up a department to try to deal with the kaiju invasion. One day the team is surprised when Ultraman appears, they're even more surprised when one of the team turns out to be Ultraman. The menace quotient is upped when another alien appears. He's playing everyone by pretending to be a good guy but his real plans are soon revealed.

There's some decent kaiju action and some nice model work. That's surrounded by some slowly paced talking and sitting interludes. It makes the 113 min run time way longer. I could feel time slowing down. Eventually it's over. I enjoyed some of it but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I wouldn't buy this one either.

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Junk Head 2017 Written and directed by Takehide Hori. An animated film set far in the future with Takehide doing most of the work on the film himself.

The human's on the surface of Earth are living longer with massive body modification that makes them rather cyborg like. The mods have affected their reproductive systems and they are breeding less. A deadly virus kills 30% of the population and the possible extinction has the authorities send a cyborg guy to the lowest depth of the miles high mega city. There are biologically engineered beings there who are thought to be breeding.

Things go wrong for our cyborg guy, his head seems to be the only human thing about him and he looses that when his quickly dropping ship is blasted with a rocket.  His head is salvaged and a new robot body is created by the locals. That's the new body on the poster. The guy in the black suit is one of the locals, there's a good variety in species down below, some of them are monsters that can eat you up in a bite or two. Luckily the monsters don't have an appetite for cyborgs.

Our cyborg guy has some adventures with the locals and we meet a lot of characters. His body gets trashed and he's rebuilt. The story ends without a resolution but there's not been any sign of part 2.

Despite it's rather slow pace the story kept me going to the end. I might watch it again someday but I'm not going to buy the Blu-ray. It reminded me of the Brothers Quay but with less dust and rotating dismembered doll's heads. It's odd and not the sort of film that would appeal to everyone. You can check out a decent copy on YouTube with subtitles. See if you like it.

My Best Friend Is A Vampire 1987 Written by Tab Murphy and directed by Jimmy Huston.

I had forgotten that I had seen this film back in 2018. That does make me feel better knowing that, I thought the geeky gal was familiar and I couldn't see anything on her IMDb credits that I was remembered seeing before. I didn't have a copy of my Watched Movie List on my tablet as I deleted the app I was using last week for being way too annoying to use.

The movie was part of a four film DVD set. Here's that post. I thought it was sort of funny the second time around. I might even watch it again when I've forgotten I've seen it already. You can see it with ads on YouTube.

Legends Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977

Legend Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977 Screenplay by Masaru Igami, Isao Matsumoto and Ichirô Ôtsu, directed by Junji Kurata.

 

Made by Toei Company, the studio was inspired by Jaws, the film did poorly in the Japanese theaters but was a block buster in the Soviet Union. It was known in the US as The Legend Of Dinosaurs and it was used in the last episode of the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which was produced by KTMA. That version was chopped up a good bit, the original movie got a US DVD release in 2007 from Media Blasters and that's what I watched.

A woman falls into a cavern, in the Aokigahara region near Mount Fuji, she awakes to find fossilized eggs, one of which hatches. She runs off and scares a construction crew with her hysterics. A geologist called Takashi goes to take a look, while hiking around Mount Fuji he's knocked out and wakes up in the cabin of a family friend. Takashi continues his hunt for the eggs, on the way he meets an old girlfriend Akiko. She's there with her friend Junko, a scuba diver, who wants to dive in the lake where a couple in a small boat went missing.

A diver is injured in the lake, livestock have gone missing, wild theories of living dinosaurs are tossed out to the dubious public. Well, turns out it wasn't a dinosaur, it was two, one of them a plesiosaurus and the other a rhamporhynchus. The pair battle it out and the volcano erupts killing both dinos. It's a bad day on Mount Fuji and the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

I was much more entertained by the movie than on MST3K. It was like seeing a whole different movie, the MST3K version had so much trimmed out of it. It's a more adult film than I thought, there's a bit of gore, mild by today's standards and a brief bit of nudity. I'd watch it again.

I'm not sure why it did so poorly in the Japanese box office. It was Toei's biggest budget, $2.8 million and it didn't even get a third of that back in receipts. It never got released theatrically in the US but it was released to TV in 1987.

Friday Night Movies 873

The Awakening 2011 Director Nick Murphy co-wrote the script with Stephen Volk.

Rebecca Hall plays a woman ghost debunker in post WWI London, she doesn't believe in them and she finds out the hard way that she's wrong. Dominic West is a teacher in a boy's boarding school, he asks Rebecca to come to his school and find out if they really have a ghost. They do.

There's a few scares but some of the nasty activity is man made, the young boy who died off screen was really killed when a disturbing teacher, who shouldn't be teaching anyone, locked him outside to toughen him up, the kid had a fatal asthma attack. Much of the staff seems messed up, the grounds keeper is a mentally deficient cowardly rapist who tries to kill Rebecca. The school's head housekeeper is played by Imelda Staunton, she's one of the most disturbed of the lot.

Sadly they ruin a good ghost story with all sorts of personal melodrama, not much happens while they spend a lot of time on figuring out what's behind Rebecca's miserable life. Not something that appealed to me that much. I wouldn't need to see it again.

The Day Of Destruction 2020 Written and directed by Toshiaki Toyoda. The movie is a scant 57 mins so we watched the even shorter prequel Wolf's Calling from 2019. There's a third short in the Resurrection Trilogy, Go Seppuku Yourselves from 2021. We didn't see that.

A monster lives in a old coal mine and it's created some mental issues in the people who live there. The story is told in a disjointed way with little by way of clues as to what's going on. Think art film with a noisy annoying soundtrack.

Some guy, commenting on the IMDb, says the three films are an angry response to the pandemic and the government's handling of the situation. I couldn't tell that from what's on screen. The films we saw look good but it's not enough, I'm looking for a story I can get my head around. Enigmatic personal stories just don't cut it for me. I wouldn't need to see it again.

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Big Bad Wolf 2006 Written and directed by Lance W Dreesen. I hadn't remembered seeing this back in 2006. That post is in the title above. I didn't think it was going to be such a short while before I saw it again. It's still about average. I probably don't need to see it again at this point. That's an ugly poster.

The Snake Girl And The Silver Haired Witch 1968 Based on the comic Hebi Onna by Kazuo Umezu, screenplay by Kimiyuki Hasegawa, directed by Noriaki Yuasa. The comic was published in the US under the name Reptilia in 2006. The director is also the director of the first series of Gamera films.

A young orphan girl called Sayuri finds out that her parents are alive and they want her to come live with them. They live in a nice house, the mother is an amnesiac from an accident and the father is a scientist specializing in snake venom study.

When Sayuri arrives at the house she's greeted by an ambulance, the maid had just died from a heart attack. The father has just learned he's got to leave right away for an opportunity to study a rare snake in Africa. He's gone until the very end of the film.

The next night Sayuri finds a snake in her bed but after her mother and the housekeeper arrive it's gone. There's also someone in the attic, looking at Sayuri's bed through a hole in the ceiling. Things start to get more and more serious and deadly for Sayuri. She's a plucky girl who stands up to danger in the end.

It moves a bit slowly for me but I was still entertained enough to order the Arrow Blu-ray. I'll want to watch it again.

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021

Godzilla Vs Kong 2021 Story by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields, screenplay by Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein, directed by Adan Wingard.

Godzilla surfaces and attacks an Apex Cybernetics facility in Florida. A conspiracy theorist called Bernie thinks that's something is going on at that location. He's gotten a job there so he can spy on the company. He finds a dodgy shipping order in his search but isn't sure what it means. During the attack he stumbles onto a powerful device but has to leave because of Godzilla stomping about. Bernie joins up with one of his listeners and her pal to sneak into the Florida Alex location. They get shipped to Hong Kong in a secret underground transport system.

The Apex CEO hires Alexander Skarsgård to lead an expedition to the Hollow Earth. They take Kong along, he's sedated and lying on a barge. Godzilla attacks to convoy of ships, there's a massive punch up and big G puts Kong down. Alexander saves the ships from further attack by shutting down all the ships and pretending to be dead. The CEO believes Kong came from the HE. Turns out he was right. A good thing for the human's in their fancy high tech helicopters. Kong beats down some giant flying beasties that chomped on one of the fancy choppers. Lucky for us, the stars of the movie where in another chopper. It's dangerous working in corporate America.

CEO guy sent his daughter with the expedition to HE. She's a ruthless cold hearted type that comes to a bad end, at least from her POV, I was kind of digging the fire ball created by her chopper as it was crushed by Kong. Back in Hong Kong, the conspiracy trio have chanced upon a test of Mechagodzilla. Turns out that CEO guy is there and he's large and in charge. Godzilla pops up and opens a tunnel to the Hollow Earth. Kong and Godzilla yell at each other until Kong jumps into the hole and lands in Hong Kong. There's some big battle scenes and more people and places succumb to the monster mash. Eventually it's all sorted and Kong and his pals on on vacation until the next sequel.

Mostly entertaining but seems long winded even at 113 mins. There's a Blu-ray due in a couple of weeks, that should look better than the version I found online. I'll order one after the price falls a bit. I'd want to see it again.