PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 359

Sperhauk was nice enough to loan me his copy of Beyond Re-Animator and I watched that this morning. Miguel Tejada-Flores wrote the story that José Manuel Gómez and director Brian Yuzna turned into a script. It's a 2003 movie that was filmed in Spain with pretty much everyone on the cast and crew being Spanish. Jeffrey Combs returns as Herbert West the re-animator, he's been in prison for 13 years from his past experiments. He continues to experiment in his cell, killing rats and experimenting with the life essence from their dying bodies. Irish actor Jason Barry plays the prison's new doctor. As a young boy he'd seen his sister die at the hands of one of Herbert's animated corpses. He'd wound up with a syringe full of Herbert's re-animation juice. That and his sister's death have driven him into medicine and his quest to work with West. You'd think a guy would want a better dream but there you go. He's in prison with the criminals and several crazy men. Things go along quietly for a short time but it all goes to hell. There's a huge body count, a fair bit of gore and a few jokes. The script is pretty good as is the acting but sometimes the dubbing doesn't sound perfect. I enjoyed it but it's not quite as good as the sequel which isn't quite as good as the original. That's life, huh.

Digital Man isn't quite as good as the first movie I watched today. It's a Sci-Fi production about some cyborg soldiers. It's written and produced by Phillip J Roth and it first was released in 1995. A super cyborg soldier goes off line near a desert town and kills some of the citizens. A team of other soldiers is dropped in to put a stop to them. When one is killed the others find out it's a cyborg. There's a fair bit of shooting and explosions. There's a second story line about some of the officers and their dirty shenanigans. The script is ok and might not have been as familiar when it was new. Now I've seen plenty of films with that type of story. Look for Adam Baldwin, Paul Gleason, Ed Lauter and Susan Tyrrell in small parts. I wouldn't recommend it but there's a link in the title for those that need to waste some time.

Science Fiction Sunday 358

The Machine is a sad science fiction film from 2013. It's set in a secret experimental base. It's a place with little light and plenty of dark corners to hide scary things in. I guess with all the money they spend on technology the lights were left out of the budget. This is such a common practice I have begun to dislike it. There's a scientist named Ava, played by Caity Lotz, who goes to work for Toby Stephens. They both work for Denis Lawson who's the head of a project that adds brain implants to brain damaged soldiers. There's a brain scanning device and some AI research tossed into there. The soldiers are not very happy to be experimented on. There are secret things going on. Ava is warned off them so she digs around and Denis has her killed when she gets too snoopy for his liking. He's an evil creep who comes to a bad end later in the film. Ava's brain had been scanned and Toby uses that as the basis for an Ava looking cyborg that he calls Machine. During a test after Machine comes online a scientist is killed. Toby tells Ava that she shouldn't kill people. Denis tries to get Machine to kill the man who killed Ava but she won't, at least as first. When offered a choice between killing him and being killed herself Machine kills the man. Toby's daughter dies and he's despondent. Denis is afraid Machine's AI and wants the consciousness removed. Things get worse and worse as more unrealistic story decisions are made. There is a bit of a happy ending as Machine and Toby escape and go off into the real world. There's no humor, just sadness, it's all pretty familiar and only so interesting. The real interesting thing was the first name of the writer-director, Caradog W. James, but that was only good for a few seconds of my attention. This is his second feature and he did ok for the $1.5 million he had to work with. I just didn't care that much for the story. I wouldn't bother with it again.

Speckles the Tarbosaurus is a Korean animated film about a dinosaur named Speckles. He narrates the movie which starts when he's only a year old. It's one long chomp fest as the family hunts for food amongst the other lesser aggressive dinosaurs. There's plenty of death in this one, though not much gore. A T-Rex makes an appearance causing chaos. That event kills Speckles' family, they all fall off a cliff. Speckles has to grow up on his own but he soon finds a pal. About a third of the way it jumps to him being 5 years old, then a few minutes later it skips to him being 10. There's plenty of dino lore and quite a variety of critters. The animation is fairly good CGI. I'm putting it in the not sorry I've seen it but wouldn't need to see it again category.

Science Fiction Sunday 357

I finished watching the rest of the Johnny Sokko And His Giant Robot DVD set that I started last Sunday. There was only the one season and it's not surprising. The stories are pretty much cookie cutter and even the monsters repeat. Johnny Sokko is a kid who's voice activates the Giant Robot that an invading alien called Emperor Guillotine built. For some reason Guillitine built the command system to imprint on the first person that spoke into the microphone and then left it unguarded. Mind you this alien is a real idiot. Most of the villains in the series are idiots and the same can be said of any of the kid centered action shows.

There's a couple of prime idiots above. That's Doctor Botanus and Dangor the Executioner. It's uncertain if he's the same character with a different name or different character altogether but the same actor that plays Dangor plays Fangar in other episodes in the series. He had vertical teeth and a clean forehead when he's Fangar. All of those idiots work for Emperor Guillotine, the alien who arrived in a space ship in the first episode, and none of them are competent enough to make the Emperor's plans come to fruition. I suspect Doctor B is an alien too. He pays the ultimate price for failure in Emperor's organization, when Guillotine disintegrates him.

There's the usual evil villainous plan to thwart each week and the villains always have a giant monster that needs to get punched or stomped by the Giant Robot. There are only 17 monsters for the whole 26 episodes so some monsters get two or three beatings during the run of the show. All told it's not much of a series, I've seen other similar shows that were more fun. I wouldn't need to watch these anymore. Glad I saw them off of Netflix and didn't buy the series. Better spend my money on something better that would lend itself to re-watching.

Science Fiction Sunday 356

I got tired of watching crappy SF movies on YouTube so I decided to watch the first couple of discs in the Johnny Sokko And His Giant Robot series. It's a Japanese production from Toei Company Ltd called Giant Robo, or ジャイアントロボ which translated is Jaianto Robo. There was only one season or series and the 26 episodes aired from October 11 1967 to April 1 1968. The Japanese series, and manga, were  created by Mitsuteru Yokoyama who also created Tetsujin 28-go, which was called Gigantor in the US.

The English version was developed by Reuben Guberman for the US under the title Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. It was produced by American International Television. Salvatore Billitteri was the line producer and Manuel San Fernando director.

It's very typical of these TV shows, mostly aimed at the younger crowd, with a giant robot, a kid, some spies and a baddie of the week. There's a baddie overlord, in form of the alien Emperor Guillotine, who's head of The Gargoyle Gang. Johnny Sokko is the kid and because he spoke first into the control microphone for the Giant Robot he's now in charge of the robot. He gets recruited by Unicorn, a good guy spy group, and they battle the baddies.

Each week there's a new giant monster for the giant robot to fight. That's Tyrox above, they fight in the desert of Arabia. Tyrox is a robot that's also a mobile prison. One of the Unicorn agents gets caught and Johnny has to sneak in to get her out. In another show the monster is a giant plant, in the first episode the monster is an octopus like creature with tentacles, in the 5th episode the monster is a giant silver and red hand called the Claw. The monsters are about average for the TV production of the time, some are better than others, none are outstanding. The stories are fun enough, at lest they have some imagination, and there are plenty of goofy things happening. I'm enjoying them for the most part.

Science Fiction Sunday 355

Lost - Black Earth is a low budget Australian film. It's an alien invasion movie that I only got about half way through the 47 minutes. It seemed pointless to continue. You can see it in the link in the title above.

Thrill Seekers is a 1999 film that's also known as The Time Shifters. It's written by Kurt Inderbitzin and Gay Walch and directed by Mario Azzopardi. Casper Van Dien, Catherine Bell, Julian Richings and Martin Sheen are in the cast. Casper is a reporter who got his crew killed getting the story at a burning power plant. A few years later he gets a job at a National Inquirer type of paper. His first story pulls him into a time travel story where people from the future come back in time to watch disasters. Casper had seen the same guy in pictures of three old disasters over nearly a hundred years. He's flying to do some checking and who is on the plane? You guessed it, it's the guy in the picture. Turns out the guy in the picture, Julian Richings, is one of the time travelers. Casper crews things up for them and changes the time line. The time travel company sends agents after him. There the usual jeopardy for Casper and his ex-wife and son. The time travelers have issues of their own and one shoots the craziest of the them but not before she blows up part of the stadium. The inventor of time travels gets one of the travel devices and things go on and on and on. It's nothing great, that's for sure. Not really worth wasting time on but now that I'm done I won't be seeing it again.

I started watching Time Walker and didn't think I'd seen it before. I had, but under the name Being from Another Planet. It's a 1982 movie directed by Tom Kennedy and written by this gang: Tom Friedman and  Jason Williams (story),  Tom Friedman and Karen Levitt (screenplay). I'd seen it razzed on in episode 405 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which first aired July 4, 1992. A mummy in it's coffin is brought to the college campus in California where it's x-rayed. Jewels are revealed and stolen. The mummy is stolen next and weird things happen on campus. People die. The jewels are handed about and it turns out the mummy is really an alien who needs those jewels for it's transporter. More people die as he collects them. It's below average fair that was made more interesting by Mike and the Bots yakking on and on.

It seems YouTube turned up more crap that wasted my time. I saved some by speeding up the film in VLC player. Too bad they don't have a button for making a movie better instead of just a shorter. That would be some magical algorithms, huh.

Science Fiction Sunday 354

RZ-9 is a 2015 SF movie about a crappy future. It's written by director Iain Carson and David Rhoades. They pluck a few ideas out of a hat, pack them into an action film, but never flesh them out too well. They spend more time shooting guns than telling a story. It's the first feature for the both of them, maybe they'll get better. It's a bit into the future and some terrorists blow up Los Angeles. A couple of years later a guy named Paterson, working as a drone driver, is troubled he's being asked to bomb civilians. Then he finds himself on a watch list because of his religious affiliations so he uploads a virus into the operating system at the drone HQ. He goes on the run, taking his sister with him, and gets saved by the resistance. He's killed about 50 minutes into the movie but his sister keeps going with the resistance. RZ-9 is a soldier who keeps following them. He lets the sister go and she goes onto to work against the government. There's plenty of gun shooting and fighting in the woods. The IMDb says the movie is 90 minutes, the YouTube version is only 77 but they cuts off the end credits which is fine with me, it gets me done sooner. I speeded it up myself after a bit. It's mostly pretty dull, there's no good reason to recommend it. It gets a 2.6 on the IMDb but I gave it a 2, it's certainly not a 3.

The 2015 Fantastic Four re-imagines the Marvel characters world. It's directed by Josh Trank who wrote the screenplay with Jeremy Slater and Simon Kinberg. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are kids in school. Reed is a boy genius who invents a transporter. Ben works with him and 7 years later they get scholarships to the Baxter Foundation where they meet Sue and Johnny Storm. They all work on the transporter with Victor von Doom. Tests reveal a different world from which they hope to gather resources to save the Earth. The team wants to travel to there after a monkey survives the return trip but the Baxter Foundation's supervisor, played by Tim Blake Nelson, says they will send NASA people there. Disappointed and drunk they sneak in and travel to the parallel world. The ground explodes with green glowing goo and everyone gets blasted with something that gives them superpowers. Victor is left behind in the pulsating green energy goo. When they return to the Baxter building they are taken to Area 57 where they're put under observation. Reed runs away and time passes. Johnny, Sue and Ben get help controlling their powers and they go looking for Reed. They find him and bring him into the group. They go back to the parallel planet and rescue Victor. He's turned into something attuned to his new world. He wants to put a stop to the plan to suck resources from the parallel world so Reed and his team try to stop him. They all return to the parallel world where there's plenty of fighting and CGI. It's all dark and bleak and that's not the Fantastic Four I remembered. It doesn't seem to have many fans, not me that's for sure, and it gets a deserved 4 on IMDb. I wouldn't recommend it and wouldn't need to see it again.

It seems like YouTube is holding back the good films this week, or I haven't dug down deep enough. I usually find something I haven't seen in the first couple of pages when searching for science fiction movies on YouTube. Territory 8 is a 2013 film written and directed by Kelly Schwarze. I hadn't seen either of the movies he'd already directed and probably won't. This movie is about a chemical weapons research lab that has an accident. One of the two scientists finds a sick woman outside the lab. They bring her in and find out she's part of the group of people that were quarantined in Territory 8 after they were contaminated by an airborne chemical weapon accident. The survivors are all slowly dying and everything has been covered up by the company. One of the scientists tries to help her and wants to use the untested cure that the other scientist has been working on. Soon after the angry survivors show up and there's a battle in the facility and nearly everyone dies. It's mostly not worth watching. It gets a 2.4 on the IMDb for a reason. It's kind of dull and even at 2 times the normal speed it seems to drag.

Science Fiction Sunday 353

As has been my routine of late I checked YouTube when I got up to see if there were any interesting science fiction movies that I might want to watch. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 was right near the top of the list and though it wasn't what I was exactly looking for I watched it. I had enjoyed the first movie but didn't think this was as good. It's written by Josh Heald who wrote the story for the first movie and co-wrote the script. Perhaps he should have had some help, tighten that script up a bit. It's directed by Steve Pink who had directed Hot Tub Time Machine and About Last Night. The story starts 5 years after the last movie left off. Rob Cordray is still a jerk, he treats his son, and everyone else, poorly. Someone shoots him in the dick during a big party so the guys drop him into the hot tub time machine. They hope to use it to catch his killer. The time machine takes them to the future where they spend the a lot of time trying to figure out who, of all the people that Rob has pissed off, might have actually shot Rob in the dick. You'd think with a story like that the movie would have a chance to make back it's $14 million cost but it only netted $12.8 million at the box office. The critics hated it and that's probably why it didn't do well at the theater. I never read any critics for the most part, not until I've seen the movie anyway. Mind you, there's good reason not to get excited about the film, it doesn't seem to have the heart that the other film had, and while there are a fair number of gags and jokes, many aren't that great. I miss John Cusack, who was in the first one, here he appears briefly at the end. It scores a 5.1 on the IMDb and that's about where I would put it. I probably wouldn't bother watching it again and I'm not going to pick up the DVD either. There's a link in the title and if it still works when you read this you can watch the movie for free on YouTube. The other two movies watched today also have links in their titles. I'm not doing you a favor by putting those there.

There's not much battle or space in Battlespace. It's a 2006 low budget SF film that starts off in space before spending 40 minutes running about on some planet's desert without hardly any fighting. They do blow up a spaceship and it's so close to the main character, the blond lady on the DVD cover, that you can only wonder why she isn't blowed up too. The movie jumps back into space about the 58 minute mark and it's all low grade CGI of people green screened into their spaceships, etc. There is a brief bit of spaceship on spaceship action but the shots are so poorly executed they aren't exciting in anyway. Then there are more long dull scenes on a planet, occasionally we pop back into space but still little or no battle. Oh, 12 minutes before the end of the 85 minute movie there's a bit of a fist fight. It's pretty poor. I blame writer/director Neil Johnson. What he spent his $1.8 million budget on I sure don't know? He should have used some of the money to hire a writer. Then he might have had a better story. He's directed a lot of music videos which could explain his lack of an interesting narrative. He's directed a few other movies that I hope not to see. This scores a well deserved 2.6 on the IMDb. I voted it a 1 because they don't have a Punch In The Nuts star. I thought Eve Connelly was right to quit acting in films. She plays the main character, she's pretty, she fits her Lara Croft outfit quite well, but she can't act very well. I see in the User rating page that there were 38 users, out of 352 cast votes, that gave the movie a 10 but 40% gave it a 1 and 20% gave it a 2. I think the people have spoken.

I didn't think I could see something poorer than Battlespace but The Time Machine (I Found At A Yard Sale) filled the bill. It seemed like a natural to watch, I'd just seen a movie about a time machine. It's a 2014 movie that was written and directed by Steven A Sandt. It's got a miniscule budget, $3500, and there isn't much up on the screen. A guy buys a golden magical box at a yard sale and has an adventure in time and space. It's got a stupid story, bad dialog, poor actors, crappy sound and sad CGI effects. There is a belly dancer who did a nice enough job. It gets an unusually high 1.7 on the IMDb. Of the 61 votes cast 2 users gave it a 10 so you can see that screws up the average. It's kind of sad that the Steven only has one other friend who would lie for him and give the movie a 10. It scores no 9s, 8s, 7s, 6s and 3s. It gets two 5s and three 4s. That must be Steven's other friends who felt they could stretch the truth a bit. Maybe they worked on the movie. Almost 79% voted the movie a 1 and that's the lowest you can get vote. Really, there's no reason to watch the movie, there are other better films to be seen. Save yourselves.

Science Fiction Sunday 352

Project London is a low budget SF movie about a guy who joins up with a rebel underground to fight the controlling and some what fascist powers that be and stop an experiment that turns people into monsters. It's set a bit into the future and there are plenty of robot battle suits that look like they jumped out of a manga or anime. There's plenty of noisy robot battle action and the CGI, most of which was designed on small platforms by volunteers, looks pretty good for the most part. The acting is poor to average and the story not much better. I saw it on YouTube this morning and I'm glad I didn't waste a Netflix pick on it.

Noah is another film that I watched on YouTube. It had what I believe were Vietnamese subtitles. It's a 2014 film co-written, with Ari Handel, and directed by Darren Aronofsky. He's not a film maker I watch normally. I did see Pi when it came to DVD but I haven't wanted to see it again and I haven't wanted to see any of his other films. After seeing his re-imagining of the Noah story I'm not much interested in seeing that again either.

Mock Up On Mu is my hat trick of un-interesting films I watched today. It's a fake documentary with all sort of clips that are more meaningful to the film maker than me. It's about L Ron Hubbard and some bullshit that I couldn't get into so I abandoned it about 20 minutes into the film. I wouldn't recommend it.

Science Fiction Sunday 351

Europa Report is a found footage film that depicts the spaceship that travels to Europa and finds some sort of life in a body of water. It's a 2013 film written by Philip Gelatt and directed by  Sebastián Cordero. I hadn't heard of either guy before. It's got Sharlto Copley whom some might remember from District 9 and Dan Fogler from Balls Of Fury and Fanboys. He'll also be in the upcoming adaptation of the JK Rowling book Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. Europa Report is one of those movies where everything goes wrong and I don't care for those when it's SF. Everyone dies but they leave some footage of their find. I was glad to have watched it on YouTube. I put a link in the post to the movie on YouTube, you might like it better than me. At least I know that I won't have to watch it again.

Darkfall Resurrection is a 2013 SF film with vampires. It's Australian and the only movie from writer-director William Goldman. Some students are hearing a story from their teacher. The teacher's daughter Alexandra is a person of legend but the story told is set before she became a legend. One hundred and fifty years ago he was on the moon above doing research when the group finds a skeleton of a human lycanthrope. Further digging uncovers a vampire which starts feeding. Some werewolves show up and there plenty of killing and yelling. Much of the movie is shot in the dark and often there is little to see. There's a mix of humans and aliens, their make up is poor to fair. The writing is about the same. I though the poster was crap too. Lucky for me it's short, only 70 minutes, which I helped by playing it at 1.5 speed. Not something I would recommend but you can find out for yourself at the link in the title. 

10,000 Days is a 2014 film about the aftermath of a comet hitting the earth. The world has become covered in ice and the people have mostly been wiped out. It's 27 years later and a colony of left over humans has some bad days. It's written and directed by Eric Small who was a co-creator of the TV series Penn & Teller: Bullshit and the digital series 10,000 Days. Both of those series were award winning but this movie is just sad. I started speeding up pretty soon after it started and still it's 81 minutes seemed long. There's no reason to watch it.

All these crappy films make me want to watch something good.

Science Fiction Sunday 350

Project Almanac is a found footage time travel movie that I saw on YouTube this morning. It's a 2015 film written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman. It's directed by Dean Israelite. I hadn't heard of any of them but the IMDb says it's their first feature film and that Dean will be directing the 2017 Power Rangers movie. In Project Almanac some high school students find the plans to a time machine in David's dead father's basement lab. David and his pals video everything so we have plenty of footage of them building and testing the machine. They knew it works since they had seen an older David in a mirror in a video from his 7th birthday. No one had never notice that before but it's there. Besides the tests there's a bit of romance as David gets a chance to get closer to the girl he likes. The machine has a three week limit but that's still enough for all the characters in the gang take a chance to make some money, ace a test or get some revenge. Of course they have some problems, teens and time travel, what could go wrong, huh. Their experimenting causes problems for other people causing them to get hurt and die. They try to fix the harm they did several times and still have a happy ending. It's ok and though the found footage material is better than a lot of movies like that I just didn't buy that they would film certain scenes they did. Not too fond of the ending either. It's not something I would need to see again.

Transformers: Age Of Extinction was also up on YouTube today. I have it on my Netflix queue but it's pretty far down the list and this copy looks fine to me. It's the 4th film in the series and Michael Bay is still in the directing chair. It's written by Ehren Kruger, who wrote the two previous Transformer's movies and several other, slightly better, films like Scream 3, Reindeer Games and Imposter. Mark Wahlberg is a scientist who works out of his barn. He gets an old truck to repair and it turns out to be Optimus Prime. The government comes looking, they are secretly hunting down the remaining Autobots and Decepticons and destroying them. Also interested in the robot is Stanley Tucci, head of a company that is making their own Transformers. Like the previous films this is one long chase with battles between hunks of transforming metal. There's a huge lot of collateral damage and people get slaughtered left and right. It's too long and I was getting tired of it after a while. I turned the speed up to get to the end sooner. It's another I wanted to see but don't care that much if I ever see it again.