PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 621

BraveStorm 2017 Director Junya Okabe co-wrote the screenplay with Joseph O'Brien. The movie is based on 2 old TV programs, Silver Mask and Super Robot Red Baron. It's mostly annoying characters and robots punching each other. An alien has landed on the Earth and he's building a giant robot that will poison the atmosphere. Some grand kids from the future come back to get grandpa to help fight the baddie. I liked the robot battles most of the time but all the backstory and family drama was much less interesting. Got to the end but wouldn't need to see it again.

Max Reload And The Nether Blasters 2020 Directed by Scot Conditt and Jeremy Tremp, they also wrote the story and Scott wrote the screenplay. It's a movie with some annoying gamers who have to save the world from a cursed video game. Kevin Smith turns up here and there as their boss, the owner of a video game store. He hams it up in all the scenes he's in but he's not a real part of the game battle. The script is weak and the gags aren't always funny. It's a bit below average but I might watch it again someday. It was on Amazon Prime for free, like the first movie, I can't seen buying a copy. Probably won't have the time to get to see it again anyway.

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Real Steel 2011 Based on a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson called Steel that was first adapted for an episode of the Twilight Zone. Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven wrote the story for the film and John Gatins wrote the screenplay, Shawn Levy directed.

Hugh Jackman is a big asshole who has to spend the movie getting to be a father to his estranged son. He learns to be less of prick with a bit of help from a an old girlfriend and a robot sparing partner. It's totally predictable and like so many movies about a dad who's shit at being a dad. I did like the robots. I got the DVD for cheap and will keep it. Don't know if I'll get the chance to see it again anytime.

Quantum Apocalypse 2010 Screenplay by Leigh Scott and directed by Justin Jones.

A big comet hits Mars, bits of Mars are headed for the Earth. The Russians and the Chinese blow off nukes at the poles to change the position of the Earth but all that does is kill New York and London. American scientists figure out the comet's path was changed by a big anomaly that's appeared in space near Mars. The anomaly is headed for Earth and it looks like that's going to be totally deadly to life on the planet. An autistic guy saves the day with his math calculations.

It's somewhat exciting but the whole movie is weighted down with the family drama of the main characters. They do all sorts of annoying things and die. Lucky for them the big nuke off at the end of the movie tosses the Earth back through time and everyone is A-OK. The anomaly is gone and Mars is OK too. Watched from Amazon Prime, well below average, I won't need to see it again.

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Beyond The Sky 2018 Story by Rebecca Berrih, Fulvio Sestito and Rob Warren Thomas, screenplay by Marc Porterfield, Rob Warren Thomas, directed by first timer Fulvio Sestito. This movie has 30.2% of it's IMDb votes in the number 10 position, number 9 gets a whooping 16.5%, giving it a score of 5.7. I suspect that UFO fans have found the movie that speaks to them.

A somewhat annoying guy is a documentary film maker, as the movie starts he tells us he's investigating UFOs. He's got a backstory, his father claims that his wife was taken by aliens. He wants the truth but doesn't think it's out there.  Peter Stormare plays the father in a few flashbacks, Ryan Carnes plays the son, and Jordan Danger plays the abductee that Ryan meets on his journey. Dee Wallace and Don Stark play people in the UFO community.

Weird things happen to Ryan and his cameraman Claude Duhamel, it leaves them shaken but not scared off. After meeting Jordan she tells them that she has been abducted 3 times, at 7, 14, and 21 years of age, In a few days she's 28 years old and she looking for a way to stop the abductions. Ryan's determined to put a stop to it but it's beings with superior tech, so he's pretty much gonna fail.

I watched this off the free movie selection at Amazon Prime and thought  it's much better made than the average UFO film. That's a nice change. I thought it was more of a 5 or 6 than a 9 or 10. It does have a better story than a lot of it's genre pals and it kept my interest for the most part. I probably wouldn't need to watch it again but it was OK when it was on.

The Alien Dead 1980 Director Fred Olen Ray co-wrote the screenplay with Martin Nicholas. The big name star Fred brought to the film was Buster Crabbe, it was Buster's second last film, he was 72 and he'd make it for 3 more years.

A meteor falls into the bayou and it turns humans into flesh eating zombies that live under the water. They've eaten all the alligators and now they're looking to the land for a quick snack. Chomp and it's back into the H2O. There's the usual endless jawing with country types, some yelling, a flash or two of boobies, some zombie action and cars driving down country roads ever so slowly.

Takes a lot of scenes to make and 87 minute movie, too bad they weren't better. It's pretty much the usual zombie clone, not something I would need to watch again. Certainly not something to buy unless it's part of a large glut of films in a cheap cheap set. When I wouldn't feel bad about not watching it. I'm kidding, I'd feel good not watching it.

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Star Odyssey 1979 A messy Italian space opera with plenty of aliens, space ships and robots but not much by way of quality film making. Al Bradly is the director, he's really Alfonso Brescia trying to disguise that he's really Italian. He directed several movies and yet they keep hiring him. 

Earth is attacked by a superior alien force. A scientist gathers some other scientists together to build a weapon that would defeat them. It's a story told poorly in every possible way. I can't think of anything in the film that would make me think these are people with talent. Sometimes a poorly made film will elicit some laughs but here it's just awful to the point of embarrassment. There's a copy of the film you can avoid on YouTube.

Vampire Vixens From Venus 1995 Here's a movie that's even worse than the previous one. Even a bevy of fake breasts can't make this film bearable. The gals are aliens who aren't really vampires. They're shape shifters and the shape they take are those of bimbos on the pull. They seduce men to get them aroused, they they plonk a machine on their heads and suck life out of them. The remains are a pod of twisted skin and goo. The extract is sold back home.

Michelle Bauer and JJ North are two of the Venusian's, neither of them are good actors, and they're in good company with the rest of the cast. The script is poor, both in story idea and dialog. The main cop character is really annoying, at best. They've got him acting all clumsy, inefficient, unobservant, clueless and gullible, it's so poorly done, it's just awful to watch. You can check it out on YouTube, link above, but why would you want to? Neither of today's are films I need to watch again. That's a good thing.

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Mutator 1989 Lynn Rose Higgins and Gerald A Rose wrote the story, Lynn wrote the screenplay, it was directed by John R Bowey. The only actors I recognized were Brion James and Embeth Davidtz. I'm certainly a Brion fan.

It's pretty standard fare in the mutated monster genre but not that clever or well made. Brion goes to work as a security guard in the HQ of a large corporation. He meets the guys and learns that there had been a big escape in the summer, none of the mutated cats have been seen since. One of the guards believes they are still out there but the other two aren't believing him. The viewers had already seen what happened to the guy that Brion's replacing in the opening credits, a guard is stalked and slashed in the face by some unseen beast.

Since it's Brion's first day all hell breaks loose. Luckily the guard room has a big arsenal of guns. Brion's trapped in the building with 3 guards, the head of the company, and three animal rights activists who have broken in to release animals. One of the activists is the head honcho's daughter. It's all one from column A and two from column B here. I did have a laugh or two but that isn't enough to get it to above average. There's a copy on YouTube, link in title, but it's missing the opening credits segment that shows the guy that Brion replaces getting attacked. The copy I have from YouTube is a few months old and it's complete but it's also gone. Who would give two hoots about that movie to have it taken down?

The Rocket Man 1954 Story by George W George and George F Slavin, screenplay by Lenny Bruce and Jack Henley, directed by Oscar Rudolph.

Spring Byington is Justice Amelia Brown and Charles Coburn is Mayor Ed Johnson, they live in a the small town of Carlisle. George "Foghorn" Winslow plays an orphan boy called Timmy. When the movie opens he's with all the boys watching a special presentation by Captain Talray and the Outer Spacers. They're actors from a TV show, they put on a bit of a show, they've got a rocket prop with them, it smokes. At the end of the show they hand out toys to the kids. Timmy wants a ray guy but there were only two planes left. A spaceman materializes in a puff of smoke and no one notices. All of  sudden there's a ray gun in the empty box.

Timmy goes off with his ray gun and saves a boys life by halting a speeding car before it runs over a kid who's fallen in the road. Driving the car is Emory Parnell, he's Big Bill Watkins, a crooked politician from the area. Amelia tosses him into jail for ten days. For some reason he wants the orphanage that Timmy lives in. He gets one of his lawyers, John Agar, to put in a bid for him. John meets the lovely June Brown, played by Anne Francis, and falls like a ton of bricks. He turns against Big Bill.

With the help of the magical ray gun, most everything goes against Big Bill and that made me laugh a few times. It's a bit corny, hokey and a bit old fashion but it's was entertaining and I liked all the characters. I happy to see it and would recommend it to most anyone. There's a so-so copy on YouTube in 3 parts. The version I downloaded was all one file but it seems it's not there anymore. The 3 part copy has been up for 2 years, go figure. Part one, two, three.

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Orloff Against The Invisible Man 1970 Director Pierre Chevalier co-wrote the story and screenplay with Juan Fortuny. Pierre directed 29 films in his 30 year career and this was number 17. You'd think after than many films he'd have learned something about making a film. Sure can't see any of his skill showing here and that's taking into consideration that the version I watched from YouTube has been edited down by several mins. The scenes that are left just fail on their own.

In France it was called La vie amoureuse de l'homme invisible and that translates to The Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The Canadian English title, dubbed version, was Secret Love Life Of The Invisible Man. The US poster used the title Love Life Of The Invisible Man. A lot of the foreign titles seem to be a version of The Invisible Dead, which was the UK title. Someone ought to get knocked in the nut sack for all those title changes, I suspect a lot of someones need a touch of Paul Naschy's fleshless skull. 

It's a period piece about a doctor's encounter with a mad scientist called Orloff. He lives in a nearby castle and his name is abhorred by the locals. A young boy comes with a message from the shunned castle, someone is requesting the new doctor come up to the castle to see a sick person. The doctor has a bit of a hard time getting there but eventually he does get to see Orloff's daughter. She's worried because she's seeing things moving on their own, she thinks there's an invisible man in the castle.

There really is an invisible creature, that's him above, Orloff tells the doctor he created him, then he locks the doctor in his dungeon. Orloff is zonkers, he's got delusions of his invisible creatures taking over the world. The doctor escapes and tries to rescue the daughter, she uses flour to see if the beast is following. In the scene the screencap is from the doctor throws flour on the beast. It's a bit of a let down.

Mostly it seems like a pale Jess Franco film, there's some fair bit of nudity, some flagellation, but no hot lesbian action like Jess has a tendency to drift toward when he's working. The film stumbles around and eventually ends in flames. The castle is burning with fire and I'm burning with exasperation. What a piece of boring poop. Give it miss. I watched a 75 min version on YouTube, link above, and you can see that it's got a huge logo plastered over that lady's ass. It's not there all the time but it is annoying when it's on screen for 10 mins or more. I didn't mind the film being shorter than the version over on Rarelust, it's a 4 GB download that I wasn't interested in bothering with. There's a DVD version but the cheap one, at $12, isn't as long as the expensive one at$38, the Blu-Ray is even costlier at $48. I can't imagine wasting money on that when there are other things to waste money on.

Murder In Space 1985 Written by Wesley Ferguson, directed by Steven Hillard Stern. A Canadian film for the CTV Television Network that had an accompanying contest to guess the killer. Most of the film was shown and people could call in to guess who did it. The conclusion of the film was shown several days later. There was a $60,000 prize. That seemed like that also could be the budget for the film. That poster is a lie, no one gets spaced.

Michael Ironside heads a 9 person crew on a mission to Mars. They've been gone 5 months and on the trip back a woman gets murdered. A lady Russian scientist is suffocated and it's found she's two months pregnant. She's married to a member of the government who's known to be vengeful and murderous. Three more people die before they get back to Earth. It's as much political thriller and murder mystery and investigations into the crew bring up all sorts of interesting back story.

Wilford Brimley is the head of the space project, Arthur Hill is the Vice President, Martin Balsam is the Russian liaison to the project. I don't think I recognized any of the other cast members. It's sort of interesting but it's not quite good enough to be much more than average. You can see it on YouTube in the link in the title above.

Metropolis 1927 Colorized version with English dialog. I started watching the fan edit version (see link above) but had to bail after about 20 mins because the English dubbed dialog was so annoying. I didn't mind the rather pastel colorization but the script was a buggin'! I kind of skipped through it and got to the end pretty quickly.

There's a more interesting looking colorized version here but it's title cards are in German. You can see the B&W restored version of the film on YouTube. It's a version, with English title cards, that you can buy on DVD or Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Looks pretty good. Watch that instead.

Science Fiction Sunday 613

Sinbad The Fifth Voyage 2014 Director Shahin Sean Solimon co-wrote the screenplay with Evelyn Gabai. He also stars as the lead character Sinbad. I hadn't heard of him but I do recall seeing a trailer for his first film, a 2008 fantasy adventure film called Djinn, that I've still not seen. This film is a fantasy adventure too. I didn't know any of the other actors, except Patrick Stewart, he provides the narration as an older Sinbad. He's doesn't even have that many lines.

In the story Sinbad returns to his homeland only to find the Sultan and his court frozen in the palace. They free the Sultan and learn the princess was kidnapped by a villain called The Deev. Sinbad takes his crew and they set off to rescue the princess from the sorcerer. There's plenty of fighting, much of it with creatures. There's a fair bit of CGI with some stop motion animation to honor Ray Harryhausen. Quality of the production varies from scene to scene.

It's a pretty straightforward plot but one that doesn't have that good a script to support it. The actors aren't all equal, sometimes they just cant do much other than push their way through the dialog. The main baddy is painful to watch at times. Sometimes it was fast forward time. Over all it's below average and not something I would need to see again. All three films today came from Amazon Prime's free film selection.

Notzilla 2020 Written and directed by Mitch Teemley. Here's a parody of Godzilla that's made and set in Cincinnati. It's a bit of a mixed bag and probably more for the Godzilla fan. Some of the jokes are fairly funny but many are poor. I didn't like the scientist jokes much at all but I did like it that Notzilla had a visible zipper running up the front of the suit. It's a pretty low budget film and the CGI is appropriate for the budget. I got a few laughs out of it and might watch it again someday but I wouldn't buy the DVD unless it's under a fiver.

Shangri-La Near Extinction 2018 Written and directed by Nick Wauters. It's another post-apocalyptic film. Scientists create a biological weapon that got out of it's cage, it's a creature that takes over the minds and bodies of humans. At first they tried to kill the creature with a vaccine but that didn't work, in 2045 they created a man-made ice age to kill it. In the 500 years since that happened most people have died, little pockets of people have survived, there's a fair bit of working technology around. A guy is leading a small group in search of the legendary Shangri-La, a supposed safe haven. They have to keep an eye out for human's infected with creatures, mutated beasts and human paramilitary groups. Even the infected human's have broken up into different factions. There's plenty of flashbacks as the backstory gets filled in. I thought it was below average and sort of like a bunch of other films. The CGI was used fairly well but they didn't have a big budget so it looks better in some scenes than others. I'd probably never watch this one again. I didn't like spending time with the people in the group much. There isn't enough other good stuff to make me want to see it again.

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Hyperspace 1984 Written and directed by Todd Durham. I'm watching a copy from YouTube that's been released under the title Gremloids. Todd only directed two films, this one and the 1984 horror anthology Tales Of The Third Dimension. Todd's big claim to fame is his creation of the Hotel Transylvania franchise, he's got a story credit on the first film.

Hyperspace is a Star Wars parody with Chris Elliot, Paula Poundstone and Lord Buckethead. Some guy in the UK liked Lord Buckethead so much that he dresses up like him and runs for election under the Gremloids Party. He never seems to win. In the movie Lord Buckethead comes to the Earth thinking he's arrived on another planet, one that's got some rebels who've got some important plans. LB has some Jawa like hooded shorties helping him. They must have Stormtrooper genes as they can't hardly hit anything with their ray guns. LB kidnaps Paula, thinking she's a princess called Serina. She isn't, it's just another of LB's mistakes. He's a major idiot, that one.

Alan Marx plays an exterminator who rescues Paula and helps defeat the invasion. Chris is a cowardly scientist that manages to blunder his way to the end of the movie. Luckily the local baker was a space superhero in disguise and it mostly comes out OK for the locals. The minions manage to escape the Earth in the late LB's ship.

It was fun but really poorly made. The acting is pretty much amateur stuff. They don't have much of a script to be working with, there are jokes but many of them aren't that funny. The effects are poor to fair, you can see the lack of funds on the screen. It's not something I would need to have on DVD, I'd probably never watch it again. I did see it once before but that was almost 20 years ago. You might get a laugh out of it if you're seeing it for the first time.

 

Earth Vs The Spider 2001 Directed by Scott Ziehl, story written by Mark 'Crash' McCreery, Cary Soloman and Chuck Konzelman, screenplay by Cary Solomon, Chuck Konzelman, Max Enscoe and Annie DeYoung. It was part of the series of made for TV films that used older American International Pictures titles for new stories. All of the films in the series created new stories instead of just remaking the original film. This film isn't about a giant spider but a reimagining of the Spider-Man origin story. A lot of reviews claimed it was just a rip off of The Fly. I can see that.

Devon Gummersal is a security guard who's a big comic fan, his favorite comic is The Arachnid Avenger. He works at a research facility, on the night shift with an older man. One night the place is attacked and the old man killed by the creeps. Devon is fired but before he goes he injects himself with some spider serum. He gets sick but recovers with super strength and the ability to shoot web out of his navel.

At Devon's apartment building the woman he's always fancied is attacked by a rapist just as he's arriving home. He kills the guy by tossing him down a hallway into a broom closet. Dan Aykroyd is the tired old police detective who shows up to investigate. Devon likes his new powers but the serum soon turns his body onto a mutated human spider, very much like the process in the Jeff Goldblum film The Fly. It goes downhill for Devon after that.

I'd seen this back in 2001 but had forgotten it. Turns out it's not great but it's alright. The physical effects are by Stan Winston and they're fairly good. I liked Dan Aykroyd in the picture and the rest of the cast was competent to good. The jokes were better, on average, than the first film, which was meant to be a comedy, but some do fall flat. I would watch it again someday but I'm not going to bother with the DVD. If I don't see it again, it won't matter.

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Creatures From The Abyss 1994 Original title Plankton. Written by Richard Bauman and directed by Al Passeri.

Stupid college students take a dinghy out for a spin but they didn't pack the spare gas can. Stranded they come across and board a small yacht. It's got a lab for experimenting on fish in it. One of the experiments is alive and it's already killed most of the crew. What a predicament! How are they going to survive?

It's got more than enough annoying scenes with the college students, a bit of nudity and plenty of mutated fish monsters. Good reminder to stay off the sea for me. You can find out how those college students did by checking the link above. I didn't think it was great or anything, better than a lot of Italian SF films, still below average. I wouldn't need to go buy the DVD or anything. This is the second time I've seen it, that should be enough.

The Strange World Of Planet X 1958 British film that was marketed in the US under the title Cosmic Monsters. Rene Ray wrote the 6 episodes of the 1956 TV series, she also wrote the 1957 novelization this film was based on. Rene was an actor who started working in 1929 and retired 30 years later. I've only seen 4 of her nearly 50 films. The screenplay was by Paul Ryder and the director was Gilbert Gunn.

Forrest Tucker is working for Alec Mango, a scientist who's obsessed with his new invention. It bombards metal with magnetic fields. It's such a powerful machine that the magnetic fields bother the TVs in the near by town. Forrest has his suspicions that the fields are dangerous but his worries fall on the Alec's deaf ears. He's not going to let any insignificant troubles like that stop his work. Alex is a real dirt bag, he'll kill for his work.

Something is lurking in the woods, several people are attacked and a couple of women are killed. Luckily they get some help from a foreigner. Gaby André plays a French computer expert who's come to replace a man who was hurt. She joins with Forrest in thinking things aren't alright in the lab. Martin Benson plays the mysterious Smith, another foreigner who's come to help.

All in all it was fairly good, about average, mostly worth seeing, maybe not worth seeing more than a couple of times.

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Crossbreed 2019 This SF film from Amazon Prime has some mercenaries trying to kidnap an alien from a space ship. Turns out there has been some gene splicing going on and the alien is a manufactured warrior done up by another alien race. One that's headed for the area to retrieve the being. Vivica A Fox is the president of the US area and Daniel Baldwin is Secretary of Defense. They are the one that sent the team in there. Another evil government official has sent his own team in there to steal the thing. It all falls to shit and all pretty formulaic and familiar. Lots of shooting and fighting and yelling. No need to see this one again, nor the next movie.

Battle Star Wars 2020 I normally skip movies by The Asylum but I didn't notice the logo when I clicked on the AP Watch button. It's up to the companies usual level, there's an unimaginative title and an unimaginative script. The acting is about average for a low-budget film, they do as well as they can with the script. Perhaps one of the good things about The Asylum and other low-budget film companies is they give a chance to young actors who might not get hired for a larger budget film, it's an add to their CV and some experience.

The IMDb trivia page says is: This film is a ripoff of a famous film series called Star Wars. That's sort of what it is, just done poorly, there's more yelling and story is less interesting. I have to say that the SF effects, spaceships and the like aren't as bad as their normal CGI efforts. They lucked out and got someone good at the job. I suspect they'll be able to get a better job soon enough. Not really worth bothering with, unless you need to see all the SF films there are.