PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

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.

Friday Night Movies 961

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.

Friday Night Movies 866

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.

Friday Night Movies 826

Godzilla 1985 Written by Shuichi Nagahara, Lisa Tomei, and an uncredited Tony Randel and Straw Weisman, directed by RJ Kizer and Koji Hashimoto.

I'm watching the Red Menace HD Reconstruction from the Internet Archive. It's a fan made wide screen release of the film. It's a massive 12.4GB file, it took over 8 hours to download. You can also watch it right on the Internet Archive with their player.

There's no Blu-ray or DVD release of the movie, some one tells me that the music rights are an issue that might never be resolved. Movie and music people are so greedy and stupid. There was a laser disc and VHS release but they were pan and scan

The movie is called Godzilla 1984 in Japan and, like the original 1954 Godzilla, it's been Americanized for release here. Godzilla surfaces again and the world is watching. Especially after he attacks and destroys a Russian submarine. The Russians are all mad and shouty, first they blame the Americans but they soon learn that it was Godzilla. 

Raymond Burr plays the same American reporter who appeared in the 1955 movie. He's called in as a consultant on Godzilla by the military. Both the Americans and the Russians want to nuke Godzilla but the Japanese Prime Minister says not while he's on Japanese soil. Secretly the Russians arm a nuke.

When Godzilla returns to Tokyo the military have their new Super-X Attack Plane and the scientists have an idea on how to lure Godzilla into a trap. There's plenty of collateral damage and stuff blowing up. I've see it a few times already but I enjoyed it again.

Gravy 2015 Written by James Roday and Todd Harthan, directed by James Roday. You might remember James from Psych. This is his first film. James and Dulé Hill make cameos in the film.

Jimmi Simpson, Micheal Weston and Lilly Cole are murdering cannibal psychopath scum, they seal everyone in a small Mexican restaurant for some late night torture and snacking. They get the drop on the staff and some of them die. The tide turns after a while when the bartender, Sutton Foster, starts fighting back. Still, hardly anyone gets out alive.

It's gruesome and gory with a twisted sick sense of humor. Certainly not going to be popular with some. I got to the end and thought it was sort of funny but barely average. I had bought the DVD a while back, so I have it, and I might watch it again someday.

Friday Night Movies 706

Daikaiju Mono is a 2016 Japanese giant monster wrestling comedy. A giant monster has appeared on the scene and a mad scientist has a way to fight it. He's invented a serum that turns the victim test subject into a giant human. With endlessly expandable shorts. He fights the monster but can't seem to beat it. The science solution is to make a new serum with evil cells. That works.

The movie is directed by Minoru Kawasaki and he co-wrote the script with Takao Nakano. I've seen three of Minoru's other movies, The Calamari Wrestler, The World Sinks Except Japan and The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack The G8 Summit. The last two were better than this movie, which in turn is better than TCW. Still even at his best the comedy is hit and miss for me. Part of that is cultural differences and part of that is the jokes just weren't that good. DM is fairly good fun but it's lacking in the gag department. It's fights are a bit weak but there are some pretty girls. I wouldn't recommend it to most, fans of Daikaiju movies might get a kick out of it, but the average schmoe isn't going to find as much there. I'm likely not going to buy it, so many others higher up the list.

We watched The Cyclops as our second movie. It was written and directed by Bert I Gordon. It's the second film he wrote and the third he directed. I've seen a few of his 2 dozen films, he's been known to turn up on old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I like them. They aren't great films by any stretch of the imagination but some do have a bit of imagination. Just no money.

I found the Blu-ray of The Cyclops Thursday and thought I'd splurge a bit. It's going for $22 on Amazon, it's part of the Warner Archives Collection. The used Blu-ray was just over 9 bucks, after a 20% off coupon and some tax. The disc played perfectly fine. There's nothing by way of extras but a trailer. That's OK, I don't mind a bare bones disc, the extras eat up a lot of time, and I don't have to feel guilty if I didn't take to time to watch them. I certainly don't listen to as many commentaries as I used to when the format was new.

I know I had seen the movie before but I didn't remember seeing it on a FNM night back in June of 2011. Here's the text of that post, the accompanying art has changed, but I feel pretty much the same way about the film. Tonight I commented on the four seater plane issue while we were watching the movie. I hadn't seen the movie before and the opening sentence is in reference to the previous movie we watched back in 2011.

I can't say as much about Bert I Gordon's The Cyclops. I hadn't seen it before and I'm always interested in seeing 1950's SF movies. This is from 1957 and it's fun enough and short.  That's the best thing about it, at 65 minutes there isn't much time to waste on padding out the story. Gloria Talbott is trying to find her missing husband. He crashed his plane in the mountains in an uninhabited part of Mexico. She's joined by her friend and hopeful suitor James Craig, hired pilot Tom Drake, and a uranium hunter, Lon Chaney Jr, who supplied some extra travel expense money. The plane has some trouble and lands in a flatish spot surrounded by mountains. Lon's scintillator tells him there's 8.5 on the meter and that gets him all excited. He's thinking to get rich selling the stock option on the claim. If he gets back to put the claim in that is, turns out Gloria owns the plane, and she's sticking to that valley until she finds her husband. They find part of his broken plane. Could he be alive? How would they get him back with 4 people already packing the four seater plane? Bert is like a lot of film makers when it comes to story. You know, film makers who don't care much about the details in their stories. The important thing is to get the giant monsters into the movie. Turns out the highly radioactive area has more than uranium.

That's James, Gloria, Tom and Lon in the plane. Soon after the group lands they encounter some of the local fauna and it's crazy big. A field mouse the size of a dog and a 12 foot hawk. We also have a giant , nearly transparent spider, a couple of huge, slightly opaque lizards and a giant one eyed husband. Yep, the husband is still alive and he's huge. They should have brought a cargo plane but who knew. The guy playing the giant guy is Duncan Parkin who would play a similar character in another Bert I Gordon classic War Of The Colossal Beast a year later. The script is pretty poor but at 65 minutes it goes by quickly. It was fun enough, even though the effects are pretty cheezy. It's barely worth watching for those that are less of a fan of the low budget science fiction film but I enjoyed it enough to be glad that I picked up a copy off of Turner Classic Movies the other night. Now I can watch it again later.

Meatball Machine 2005

Meatball Machine is a Japanese live action tentacle movie. It's all gooey and disgusting so some should like it. The rest is all yakkin' and furtive looks with a side of body modification. Not my cup of tea and I found it less than interesting despite the constant barrage of gore. Some days I feel wanting to watch all the SF movies out there is a chore not a pleasure. Maybe I should stick to watching everything before the turn of the century. I'd certainly enjoy watching a lot of those movies over, not this one.