PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 923

Seobok Project Clone 2021 Written and directed by Lee Yong-ju.

Seobok is a new species of human created by cloning and genetic manipulation. The process gave Seobok some mental powers but the companies goal is to tap into his bodily fluids and use that to create a longevity serum.

Seobok becomes the pawn of the old man who runs the company and one of the people in the intelligence agency who wants to sell Seobok to the Americans. Stuck in the middle is an ex-agent of the intelligence agency called Min who's supposed to get Seobok to his new digs. The transport is attacked by mercenaries and Min and Seobok go on the run. There's some fish out of water stuff and some gun fights along the way to the end of the movie. The factions interested in Seobok battle it out until most everyone is dead.

It's a longish movie, 115 mins, and it takes a while to get going. There's a few action scenes along the way but at it's core it raises questions of ethics in medicine. Is it OK to create a human clone for the purpose of harvesting it's biomass for medicine like an insulin pig and is it OK to kill everyone who opposes your plans. I enjoyed it for the most part but would have enjoyed it more if they had picked up the pace a bit. It's not going to get added to my library unless it's a free download which I probably wouldn't ever get around to again.

The Munsters 2022 Written and directed by Rob Zombie.

It's the Munster's origin story. A mad scientist puts Herman together and sends him out into the world. Herman gets some success as a comedian and meets Lily Gruesella and her father the Count. They get married and Lily's brother Lester tricks Herman into giving away the family castle to the Count's ex-wife. Herman, Lilly and the Count move to Hollywood, winding up at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

There's plenty of gags and slapstick, all briskly paced to keep the story moving. Some of them work well, other's pratfall. I got plenty of laughs from it and will eventually pick up the Blu-ray so I can watch it again someday. I need to re-watch the original show, I haven't seen much of it for years and years.

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Monstrum 2018 Story by Jeong-uk Byeon and Heo-dam, screenplay by Heo-dam and Jung-ho Huh, directed by Jong-ho Huh. A Korean giant monster story set in the 15th century.

King Jungjong's got some trouble with his Prime Minister. The PM is turning the citizen's against the King with a series of plots to instill fear into the citizens. He plans to depose the King and take over. There's a plague going on, and now, a monster is killing the locals in the countryside.

Yoon Gyeom was a member of the King's guard but he had a difference of opinion with the king and was booted out of the court 5 years earlier. Yoon had gone to live in the countryside with his right hand man Sung Han and Myung, a young girl he'd saved from being killed by the Prime minister's men. The country is having many issues and food is short. Muck of them are the PM's doing. He's totally ruthless and human lives mean nothing to him.

The King send Heo to ask Yoon to help find and kill the monster. The King suspects it's the Prime Minister behind the beast but there is no proof. A large group of men are organized, they march into the woods intending to flush the beast and kill it. The group is half civilians rounded up to help and 100 of the Prime Minister's soldiers. The soldiers soon turn on the civilians but the monster shows up and all hell breaks out.

The rest of the movie is about trying to survive the monster and the Prime Minister. There's plenty of action, colorful locations, a great giant monster, plenty of court intrigue, an incredibly scummy villain, endless slaughter and wonderful explosions. Entertaining enough for me to order the Blu-ray. I will want to see this one again.

Men On The Hour 1977 Written and directed by Ming-Hua Chen. A dull kung fu film made soporific by the dubbing. It was a struggle to get through the thing. I have rarely seen a worse kung fu film. You can check it out on YouTube but I wouldn't recommend it.

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Wooshi: The Demon Slayer 2009 Written and directed by Choi Dong-hoon. A Korean fantasy comedy with plenty of action and effects.

The movie mixes events from the modern day and 500 in the past. Some of the characters are immortal beings, others have magical powers. Back in the past the goblins have taken the Flute Of the Prophecy. The Immortal Taoist Wizards band together with The Master and Hwadam and banish the goblins from our world. They retrieve the Flute, break it in two, and in trust half to The Master and Hwadam. When The Master is murdered his student Wooshi is blamed for the crime and imprisoned in a painting. We know it's really Hwadam what done the dirty deed. He's a real monster.

In modern day the Immortal Taoist Wizards find the goblins are escaping their imprisonment and hiding among the humans. They can transform, only their green blood gives them away. The Immortal Taoist Wizards get Wooshi and his dog pal Chorangyi out of the painting and they have a smashing time fighting the goblins. On top of that it turns out Hwadam has gotten even more evil.

It's action packed and the magical effects are top notch. The story has a nice sense of humor and the baddie gets put down. I was glad to have picked up the Shout Factory Blu-ray from Hamilton Books for a fiver. I'll watch it again.

Crumbs 2015 Written and directed by Miguel Llansó. A rather surreal Spanish-Ethiopian science fiction story set some centuries after a big collapse. Candy is a deformed man who lives with a woman in an abandoned bowling alley. He scavenges for ancient artifacts, there's some sort of economy left over that allows a trade in collectibles. Above the landscape, floating in the sky, is a dormant spaceship. It's been there since before the big collapse.

There's a rumor going around that it's coming back to life and Candy thinks they should be on the ship if it leaves. He sets off an a quest for tickets, wondering through the landscape, following the train tracks. Eventually he finds a guy running a cinema showing the Turkish Superman film.Candy throws his Superman top into the river and the movie is over.

It's such a personal story that I can't tell you what it's all about. It was sort of interesting to watch, wondering what was going to come next, but the message is so lost in the medium that Marshall McLuhan would just tell me to go to bed and not think about it.

Tidal Wave 2009

Tidal Wave 2009 Written and directed by JK Youn.

It's a 120 min Korean disaster movie that takes about 75 mins to get to the tidal wave and all the destruction. First we meet a whole bunch of people and then many of them get slaughtered by the water. It's always a good idea to live far inland. The melodrama is a bit tedious and the CGI is fair to good. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Jonathan Ross's Asian Invasion

Jonathan Ross hosts Jonathan Ross's Asian Invasion, a three part look at Asian cinema, circa 2006.

Episode 1 Japan Jonathan spends some time with Ryuhei Kitamura who's first film Versus was a big international cult hit. I liked it, I even have two DVDs of it. Jonathan takes Ryuhei shopping for DVDs, he then shows clips from Casshern, Ping Pong, Wild Zero, The Calamari Wrestler. He talks about other directors and their films: Shunji Iwai, "Beat" Takishi Kitano, Takashi Miike, Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii and others.

Episode 2 Hong Kong Jonathan talks to one of my favorite Chinese actors and directors Stephen Chow and looks at the comedy of HK cinema. Then he spends some time looking at crime cinema and Michelle Yeoh.

Episode 3 Korea Jonathan visits Korea to look at their movies.

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Stung is a 2015 movie about some giant wasps that attack an outdoor party. The caterers try to survive but have a tough time of it. Adam Aresty is the screen writer and Benni Diez is the director. It's the first feature for the both of them. It's not too bad, there's some gory bits, a bit of comedy, some horrible monsters and a fairly good cast. The wasps are the borrowing kind, they're also ones that  lay their eggs in other insects. Once they become massive, they lay their eggs into the biggest hosts available. Did you guess the party guests? You'd be right.

That's Matt O'Leary, Clifton Collins Jr, Lance Henriksen and Jessica Cook. Lance and Clifton are the only ones that I knew. Lance makes it through two thirds of the movie. Often you only seen him in small roles these days. Mostly it was a fairly good movie, though a bit slow to get rolling, I enjoyed it but didn't feel the need to go pick one up once it was over. Good combination of CGI and practical monster effects. Sadly, nothing else was that special about it.

I think the same can be said about our second feature, Sector 7. It's a 2011 Korean movie about a monster on a oil rig. It was 3D and that might explain some of the goofy shots. The monster is another fast growing critter, it comes on board as a luminescent swimmy thing that escapes and grows massive. The beast reminded me of another Korean monster, the thing from The Host, but that was a much more interesting monster. The creature starts killing and it's pretty much chase about and die. The one thing that bothered me was two of the characters had motorcycles on board the rig. They even ride them around in an early scene. That only makes sense when they use the bikes to defeat the critter later. I can't believe anyone would let them ride their bikes on a rig. I'd only give the thing a 5 and wouldn't need to pick one up.

Memories Of Murder 2003

Memories Of Murder is a 2003 Korean movie written and directed by Boon Joon-ho. It was his second feature, he wrote and directed the 2006 film The Host and the 2013 film Snowpiercer. I liked The Host quite a bit, an interesting take on a monster film, Snowpiercer wasn't nearly as interesting to me. Memories Of Murder isn't as entertaining as The Host but more interesting than Snowpiercer. MOM was adapted from a stage play based on the events surrounding Korea's first serial killer. I watched it even though it was about a serial killer. I lack a big interest in the serial killer genre, mostly because it's been done over and over again. In the movie a series of murders of young women have the town stirred up. The 2 small town detectives working on the case are pretty useless, they have no idea how to really investigate, evidence is ruined, and they beat the suspects, one of whom is a mentally handicapped young man. They get assistance from a cop from Seoul who actually knows some crime stuff. He helps clear their bad arrests and moves the case closer to a solution. It all falls apart and the case goes unsolved. It's a fairly good film but one I might not bother watching again anytime soon.

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Train To Busan is a Korean zombie movie that came out last year. It was super popular there and it's gotten good reviews for the most part. I got Netflix to send me a copy and I'm glad I did. I used to buy a lot of these movies and because of that I've got oodles of DVDs sitting on shelves and in boxes that I haven't seen but the one time. It's not always lack of interest in not seeing a movie again, it's also a never ending stream of new material to watch.

Train To Busan is mostly a standard zombie, runny bitey variety, with the action centered on a high speed train to Busan. The hour long trip turns into a slaughter-fest as the man made monsters run amuck. One bitten girl managed to get on the train just as the doors closed and she quickly turns the travelers into zombies. Some folks manage to survive and a couple make it to Busan. The movie has a fairly heavy hand on the melodrama and I didn't care much for that. I thought it was like Ang Lee had seen World War Z and made a zombie movie. I don't like Ang Lee in pretty much anyway.

Melodrama aside the movies got all the usual zombie stuff going on, there's plenty of chomping and screaming and fighting. There's nothing much new to add to the zombie genre and it was mostly enjoyable. I thought it could be cut down from 118 minutes to 95-100 minutes and that would speed things up just fine.

Slaughterhouse Rock is a 1988 horror film that was written and directed by Dimitri Logothetis. A guy named Alex is having very disturbing dreams about a killer who was imprisoned in Alcatraz. His college professor is knowledgeable in the occult and she takes him to Alcatraz to defeat the demon. The baddie is pretty gruesome as is Toni Bazil as a dead pop star trapped for eternity on the Rock. It's got all the 80s horror stuff that the fans like, a monster, some boobies, some slaughter and a noisy soundtrack. The latter has 5 Devo songs that aren't going to get on my favorite Devo songs list. They aren't awful but they were lesser songs. The writing is poor and the actors aren't that good so it doesn't seem to matter much. I got a few laughs and had some groans. I wouldn't need to buy me a copy but I was happy to have seen it. Here's the trailer.

Invasion Of Alien Bikini

Invasion Of Alien Bikini starts off with a big lie in the title. It doesn't have anyone in a bikini. There's a gal in her underwear but that's about it. The poster lies too, that's not the underwear that she's wearing in the film. She's starts out in a floral dress and later reveals she's wearing black undies. The Korean poster almost makes it look like a comedy. It's mostly a torture film. She's an alien who wants some sperm and he's a fucked up guy has taken a vow of celibacy until he gets married. She can't seduce the guy well enough to make him break his vow so she resorts to torture. She needs that sperm tonight, right now, in order to get pregnant when her alien ovaries expire, and for some reason she just can't go to another guy. It's not like sperm is something rare.  

I had just signed up for Amazon Prime, I need more options for viewing more crap, and it was the first movie I watched this morning. It was short and fit the window I had. I didn't look it up, figuring it was Korean, science fiction and bikinis, and that could have amounted to something. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's just not any fun. Go watch a better Korean film like The Host, Natural City, or either of the Yonggary films.

Sadly, I haven't seen much more than those three. Easier to find a Japanese film or a Chinese film at this point. Korean films are turning up occasionally. Recently I saw Keep Running. Zombie Soldier! It was one of our Friday Night Movie selections and it appeared on Amazon Prime too. I didn't see if it was still there when I was looking this morning. I'm sure it was cheap to buy and why it was offered as a free item for Amazon Prime users.

My favorite non-SF Korean film would be The Good, The Bad, The Weird. Well worth seeing. You might watch The Warrior's Way, made by a Korean director with an international cast. It's quite good.

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Gor is the 1987 movie based on the John Norman novel. Did you know he's still alive, he's 84, and the 34th Gor novel comes out this year. I don't think I read more than the first novel and I can't be sure I finished that. The movie is based on that book with a screenplay by Rick Marx and Harry Alan Towers. Rick has written over 50 screenplays and this is only the second film of his I've seen. The other title was Gor II. Most look like low level soft core sleaze. Why watch soft core when the real thing exists. Harry Allen produced over 100 films and I've actually seen quite a few of them. He wrote 59 films and I've seen a few of the ones he wrote under the Peter Welbeck name. He wrote the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films and Psycho-Circus. His films aren't always great but they often entertain. It's directed by Fritz Kiersch. I didn't know the name but I see the only thing I have seen of his before is the 1984 Children Of The Corn with Linda Hamilton. I didn't much care for that.

I hadn't seen this picture before, though I had seen the sequel on Mystery Science Theater 3000 a few times. In this movie we meet Tarl Cabot, a professor of physics, giving the last class before break. He was expecting to go on vacation with his teaching assistant girlfriend but she decides he's not cool enough and runs off with Arnold Vosloo. Tarl leaves and crashes his car on route. Because he's wearing a special ring his father left him he's magically transported to Gor. He finds a village being sacked by Oliver Reed. Ollie takes the village's Home Stone and orders everyone killed or enslaved.

Cabot kills Oliver's son, by accident, he's not a swordsman. Tarl runs off and encounters the villagers who managed to escape. They're holed up in a cave. They train Tarl up and tell him the Home Stone could be used, along with his magic ring, to transport him back to his Earth. Tarl chases after Oliver, with 4 other villagers, and they spend the rest of the movie traveling to Oliver's castle and fighting him. There's plenty of action but not the best kind. Much of the sword fighting seems to be in slow motion. The fist fighting is a bit better. The costumes aren't too bad. The rest of the production values are pretty low and sadly there's no nudity. Either would have helped keep the interest up. You can see it on YouTube, in the link above. I wouldn't recommend to anyone really but it is better than Gor II. Watch Arnold's Conan instead. It may not be a great movie either but there's plenty more going on in that one to make it more fun to watch.

 

Keep Running. Zombie Soldier! is the world wide release title of what's running on Amazon Prime as Zombie Soldier. It's a 2015 Thai horror comedy set in an ROTC camp with a gaggle of flamboyant gay cadets who keep encountering a couple of ghosts. One of the ghosts is mad at three of the cadets because they ran off when they got caught doing something they shouldn't have been doing. The Lieutenant followed them, right into a mine field, where he got blowed up. Now he's back for some revenge. The other ghost is a guy the Lieutenant killed. Not physically, he just made the guy exercise until his heart gave out. The other ghost helps the cadets fight the Lieutenant. There are no zombies in the film, just ghosts. It's kind of funny and kind of stupid with plenty of shrieking and wrist flailing. If you closed your eyes you'd think the cast was a bunch of 9 year old girls. It sure wasn't what I expected but I still got a laugh or two. I can just see some folks tuning in and going "What The Fuck!!!" and turning it right off. It's not often we see Thai comedies so I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to see something unusual for a horror comedy.