PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 609

 

A couple of disappointing SF films from Amazon Prime today. Both came out this year and one isn't an SF film and the other barely squeaks by.

The Tent has some guy out in the wilderness, living in a tent, after something called The Crisis. After a young woman joins him we spend a good long time listening to them chatter and try to avoid the invisible wheezing creatures that drag people off into the woods. Near the end we discover that the movie is all in the guys head, he's a dementia patient in a home. What the Fuck? That's the twist ending that people mention on the IMDb. It's dull and it meanders around, scenes don't seem to mean anything. It has 128 votes on the IMDb and 26 of them are a 1. There are 27 now.

Illuminate is a UFO film, short at an hour, it seems longer. Some guy disappears near Mt Shasta, later his grandson disappears. The grandmother tries to contact her husband bu using a TV set and a video camera feedback loop. He's believed to have been kidnapped by the Lumarians that live inside the mountain. The granddaughter astral projects and brings the brother back. It's just not that interesting. I wouldn't want to watch either again.

Science Fiction Sunday 608

Monstrosity 1963 Four people worked on the script, Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, Dean Dillman Jr and an uncredited Jack Pollexfen, the director was Joseph V Mascelli and and uncredited Jack Pollexfen. It's too bad they didn't work a bit harder. The film is also known as The Atomic Brain. That's the title I saw it under when it ran as the film in an episode of MST3K. It's also in one of those 50 movie packs from Mill Creek. Here's a handy checklist of the many multi movie packs from Mill Creek.

A wicked old woman has devoted her fortune to keeping herself alive. She's got a mad scientist in the basement of her big old mansion. That's him in the baggy clothes. He's played by Frank Gerstle and he had a long career in films and TV. He's got over 200 credits on the IMDb. The other man is the old lady's dogsbody, he's played by Frank Fowler and he only has 5 credits on the IMDb. The scientist calls him a gigolo and he does figure to come out quite well when the old lady gets her young new body. The wicked rich bitch sets him straight, what young woman wants an old man for a lover, he's none to happy. The old lady is played by Marjorie Eaton, she appeared in over 50 TV shows and films in a career that started in 1946 and ended in 1984, she died the following year at 85 years old. In one of her last roles she played an Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. Her film listing on the IMDb is quite interesting.

The poor undressed lady is a corpse the mad scientist had robbed from a grave, he's put the brain of an animal into her head and reanimated her. He's using atomic power, enough to blow the whole mansion to bits. In fact, he's rigged the machine to blow if they get caught. That will cover up the evidence.

That's another of his experiments in brain transfers. He's got a slave that kills there. The grave robbing is attracting the attention of the local news and the bodies aren't holding up too well after the transfers. The mad scientist wants to use live women as hosts for the old woman's brain. The old lady orders three foreign servants and takes her pick from the women that arrive. It soon becomes apparent that they are in danger so the women try escaping.

One woman is caught and has the brain of a cat put into her head. The scientist is happy with the transfer and plans to do the old lady next. Before that happens one bad thing after another happens and nearly everyone dies.

It's got an interesting plot at the core of the movie but the movie is strictly low budget and amateurish. It plods along at the best of times, the dialog is poor on top of that. People vote harshly on the IMDb, 30.4% of the votes are a 1 and 39.8% of the votes are a 2 or 3. It's a good reminder to keep an eye on the rich, they are some fuckin' ugly and untrustworthy people. You can see if you like it in the link in the title above.

Convict 762 1997 Screenplay by J Reifel, directed by Luca Bercovici. I had a disc with four movies on it and thought I only had watched two of them. I put this on and it seemed familiar. My Watched Movie List says I had seen it, back in 2003, and my comment was one word, Crap. I skimmed through it to see what it was about. A spaceship gets in trouble and has to land as a space prison to refuel. A short time before they arrive the prisoners had all killed themselves. Only Billy Drago and Frank Zagarino are alive. The captain and the crew, all women, make one mistake after another and they don't survive to well. It's not very good but I knew that going in. I went through it pretty quickly, speeding it up after watching the first third. I hope I don't forget and watch it again someday.

Cypher 2002 Written by Brian King and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Vincenzo is the director of Cube. Lot's of people liked it but I wasn't that keen on it. This was a good bit better. It's an odd story, sort of future is now with giant corps spying on one another. Jeremy Northam gets hired to be a spy at one corp, he's sent to infiltrate another corp and gets on there. Lucy Liu turns up as another spy of sorts, she helps him and leads him down one rabbit hole after another. It gets pretty complicated but you can mostly follow along. There's one double cross after another and plenty of danger. The corps kill agents when they don't have a use for them anymore. Or do they, who knows, not much is really explained. There's a fairly decent ending and some of the baddies get blown up, so that was OK. It's slightly above average for me. I'll keep the disc and might watch it again someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 607

Interplanetary 2008 Another evil corp with genetic research on it's evil mind plot. This time some saps have been sent to Mars, there they fall afoul of the corp's secret genetic lab which has produced some sort of monster. Everyone's dead there. It's a comedy by Chance Shirley, while it's better than average for one of these evil corp films, it's still only about average as a film. There were some good jokes in the lot of so-so jokes. It's pretty gory and there are some bare breasts. Sets, props and effects are fair to good and the monster doesn't look that bad. I wouldn't need to see it again. Another freebee from Amazon Prime, same as the film below.

Mission Stardust 1967 A 1967 Italian adaptation of the first Perry Rodan novel. I read it's not much like the book. It's directed by Primo Zeglio who co-wrote the screenplay with some other guys. The story has Rodan's new spaceship the Stardust run into some aliens on the moon. The aliens have superior tech but can't do much for one of their scientists. He's dying. He needs some Earthman help, an Earth doc figures out the problem and aims them at another Earth doctor who has a new cure. They have an adventure getting that done. There's a fairly decent alien spaceship and some other nice models but the effects let them down a bit. The props, sets and costumes are a bit better than you might expect. I liked it better than a lot of the Italian genre films I've seen but I wouldn't need to see it again. You can test drive it at the link in the title above. Maybe you'll get better mileage.

Science Fiction Sunday 606

Interpreters: A C & Earth Chronicle Quantum 1 2019 Written and directed by Michael Ryan. A movie as clumsy as it's title. It has an interesting plot, aliens have secretly come to Earth and are stealing souls from certain humans for snacks. Some humans are working with them and are totally fine with selling out the rest of humanity for a cash payout. An ex-black ops guy helps the local sheriff with  murders in a small town, thus uncovering everything. It looks fairly good but the prob is the 119 min running time. It just pokes along at times and nothing much happens, lucky I had the right arrow key to help move things along. At least some of the worst sell out humans get theirs in the end. It's not something I would need to see again.

Invasion Planet Earth 2019 Director Simon Cox wrote the screenplay with Simon Bovey. Aliens attack the Earth, capture humans, and take them to their ship. Turns out they're the good guys. It was terrorists who bombed the US and then the bombs started to blast and blast all over the world. The aliens are there to pick up any survivors they can. Trouble is it takes a long while to get to the core concept and the images they show you are often unclear. We follow some people around and much of what they see and hear is all in their heads but they don't tell us that for a while. I don't mind thinking about what a movie says, I just don't care to try to figure things out without any info to go on. Another one I wouldn't bother with again. Both are on Amazon Prime.

Science Fiction Sunday 605

Deep Freeze 2002 Story by Robert Boris, screenplay by Robert Boris, Dennis A Pratt and Matthew Jason Walsh, directed by John Carl Buechler. John Carl's mostly been an effects guy, his first job as a director is a segment of the 1984 film The Dungeon Master, he followed that with Troll two years later.

Deep Freeze is another scummy company doing something they shouldn't, this time it's drilling through the ice in the Antarctic to the ocean floor. They're looking for oil but they find giant trilobites that are still alive. A bunch of newly hatched college students come to work for a 6 month stretch only to find that one of the giant trilobites has started slaughtering the crew. On top of that they find out that the drilling has caused geological problems and the company plans to blow the place up before the UN shuts the place down. They plan to get the trilobite out of there first but they aren't too worried about the staff. None of that goes to plan and one by one the people get picked off. It's pretty substandard stuff and not one I'd need to watch again.

Xenophobia 2019 Here's another substandard one that lowers the bar even more. A alien abduction support group meet only to find the aliens have already taken over. Not going to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 604

Aliens & Gufors 2017 Written and Directed by Fred Paskiewicz with additional material written by Eric Reiss. Goofy alien encounter movie with three goofballs UFO guys who've set up a UFO shop in a small town in the desert. They want to write a book about visiting aliens but they aren't too competent. The local abductees have plenty of stories but no one has any proof. Not that it's stopped all the other UFO book writers from writing their books. When a local farmer has a landing in his field it stirs things up and the boys finally have something to dig into. It's a comedy with some jokes, a bit of romance, a touch of heart and plenty of goofy characters. It's about average for a comedy and I laughed out loud a couple of times. I saw it on Amazon Prime but you can also check it out on YouTube. Link in the title. I'd watch it again.

Eleven Eleven 2018 Written and directed by Chris Redish. Another alien encounter comedy but not quite as entertaining as A&G. Charles Baker is a nebishy guy who gives tours of alien abduction sites in and around Sedona Arizona. He'd been lured into a spaceship 17 years ago and had sex with an alien gal played by Krista Allen. Since the ship never left Earth he's looked down upon by the local abductees. The alien woman returned and left him with their half alien love child. Seventeen years had past and she's back interrupting his life. It's not a happy life, his wife is deeply religious and absolutely no fun at all, his daughter is at odds with everything, he has no friends and his tours are crap. The alien woman tries to get him to leave Earth but he's still in love with his wife and doesn't want to go. It all works out fairly well in the end. I'd be less likely to want to go back and see this again, the jokes aren't as good and the only time I laughed out loud wasn't as a scripted joke.

Science Fiction Sunday 603

Dead Drift 2015 Originally presented as a series of web shorts, they've been edited together into a movie. The story is about a spaceship that's on a mission to Titan. On the way they have an alien encounter with that purple woman. Her story is ludicrous and her husband is a hillbilly. Captain Banks and his engineer are the only people on the ship. There's a AI hologram called Hannah and it's way more intelligent than either of the humans. The humans were what ruined the movie for me. After a half hour of their stupid blather I was pretty tired of both of them. The movie is 90% talking and it's from 2 uninteresting, weak and infantile knob ends. The CGI is the kind you get on a $10,000 budget and it would be fine if there was a decent story behind it. Sadly not the case, at least it was something I didn't buy a physical copy of, I do pay Amazon Prime, so there is that. I did like a few of the jokes that had to do with naming things, the spaceships that the main characters drive are the JF Sebastian and the Roy Batty. There's other SF media references that pop up. In the end I found it weak and uninteresting, not something I would want to bother with again.

Space Captain: Captain Of Space 2014 Same with this movie, AP, and even worse than the previous film. It's a Flash Gordon parody by people who don't seem to see those old films as anything but a joke. Well, they can all fuck off!

Science Fiction Sunday 602

The Lost World 1960 Producer Irwin Allen directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Bennett. I'm no big fan of Irwin's work but I have seen a few of his disaster movies over the years. I liked his next film, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, well enough but most of his films don't turn out to be the films I collect. Sometimes I'll wind up with one when it turns up cheap in a compilation set.

I haven't seen the 1960 version of The Lost World in years and years. I noticed a DVD set while searching for something else and ordered it. It's a two disc set with a copy of the 1925 version as a bonus. The 1925 version runs 76 mins, there are two longer restored versions out there, one at 93 mins and the second at 110 mins. I've got a couple of public domain DVD compilations that have 64 min versions. The 76 min version has changing tints instead of a steady single color. The picture looks alright but it's not as nice as the Blu-ray of the 110 version. That version is about 36 bucks on Amazon right now and I'm not buying that.

Irwin's take on the movie puts the story in modern day. Professor Challenger returns from a trip to South America where he saw some dinosaurs on an isolated plateau in the jungle. He lost his proof, now he's looking to go back and get some more. The knuckleheads in the picture are the lot that goes with him on his return trip. Left to right it's Jay Novello, Fernando Lamas, Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Vitina Marcus, Richard Haydn, Jill St John and David Hedison. Most of their characters adapt poorly to the situation, though not all of them get eaten. Jill St John's character brings a poodle along for the trip and it's one ugly poodle. Her character is made to be a moron, look how she dresses. She's all. "I'm all woman and I can handle myself", but when confronted with dinos she doesn't do so well. To bad they didn't eat the poodle. The script doesn't treat the characters very well at all, poor Jay Novello only has two traits, greedy or scared. It's harder to care for the characters when they aren't so likeable.

Fernando is a helicopter pilot, he takes them to the plateau where they land. Later that evening a dinosaur knocks the helicopter off the cliff. Now they're stranded. Luckily they find a local lady and kidnap her. She leads them to her tribe and they get captured. Eventually they escape but only after a conveniently close volcano starts to erupt. Why a tribe would live next to a volcano is a bit odd but people do lose all common sense when it comes to buying property.

It's got big sets, plenty of nice models, props and the like. They used some sets from the 1959 Journey To The Center Of The Earth. The dinosaurs are less entertaining, mostly lizards and alligators with bits pasted on them. Irwin wanted stop motion but didn't have the budget for it. He was so cheap he even used a bit of dino crashing through the woods 4 times in a short time period. It's kind of embarrassing and the movie suffers for it. I got through to the end and thought I wouldn't need to see this again for a while.

A World Away 2019 I got to the end of this film and thought I wouldn't want to see it again. I really didn't need to see it in the first place but it was free on Amazon Prime and most of the online reviews were positively pooping on it. Who wouldn't want to look at that sort of a train wreck. Director Mark Blanchard is mostly to blame, he wrote the thing with Patrick McEveety. Mark hires his three kids to play the leads, that's the three in the foreground of the poster, they're all rather uninteresting.

The story is about some aliens, the two in the right on the poster, who lose their magical power source, called The Source, on Earth. Their spacecraft is being chased by some other aliens. They are played as bumbling villains who might have appeared on the Power Rangers TV show, if they had been better acted. A young girl has The Source on a rope, around her neck. Her dad takes her and some friends for a plane ride only to crash in another dimension. That dimension has it's won version of Vasquez Rocks. They all survive and eventually meet up with the aliens. The girl returns the device and everyone gets teleported home. The girl is taken away by the aliens to be cured of her disease.

It's poorly made, there's not much money in the budget I'm guessing, but a better director could have worked with that and come out ahead. Not the case here, it's was tedious and tough to watch. Be warned.

Science Fiction Sunday 601

Robowar 1988 Another poor effort from the fine folks of Italy. Bruno Mattei used a pseudonym, Vincent Dawn, to try to trick audiences into believing they might be seeing an American made film. They aren't fooling anyone with half a brain. Rosella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso wrote the screenplay using their real names, pointing out that no one really gives a fuck who writes this shit. I watched it on Amazon Prime and put a link to the movie on YouTube in the title above. Not the greatest upload but watchable. Not that I'm recommending that.

A special cyborg killer goes nuts on a mission to kill some guerillas on a jungle island. That's the band of soldiers, in the picture above, who are sent to stop the cyborg. The woman was someone they rescued along the way to their dooms. The guy, third from left, is the developer of the cyborg and he's a real dirt bag. He doesn't tell anyone anything until it's too late and one by one they get picked off. I couldn't hardly wait to see him get his.

It's all walking through the jungle, shouting cliches at each other, with occasional fire fights. It's dull and I don't need to see it again. At least I get to complain about it, maybe save someone from buying the Severin Blu-ray. My good deed for the day.

Transmophers 2007 Another Amazon Prime film that shares the cyborg battlebot idea with Robowars. I decided to watch it, even though it's from the dreaded film production house The Asylum. Occasionally it's good to be reminded how poor they are at making films. Leigh Scott is the writer and director. He's written a story about a robot invasion of the Earth, something that happened in the past, the remaining humans have hidden themselves underground and fight back as they can. The movie depicts the battle to take back the surface.

This movie shares something else with the previous film. It's script is also a bag full of cliches. Both films have nothing original going on in them. The acting is all over the place, a couple of people have slightly more skill than the rest and it stands out. It's even duller that Robowar, nothing much happens for nearly the first half the 86 min movie, I was forced to flick through the dull scenes with the 10 second jump button to stave off boredom. Not surprising, movies from The Asylum have a lot of talky scenes, it's cheaper than action and they have little money. Occasionally they shot scenes of people walking and talking in a corridor. That still doesn't make the films more interesting. Another one I wouldn't need to see again.

Science Fiction Sunday 600

The Gamma People 1956 Directed by John Gilling,  screenplay written by John Gilling and John W Gossage. John directed 3 dozen movies in his nearly 30 year career, I've liked a few, The Reptile, The Mummy's Shroud, Blood Beast From Outer Space and The Pirates Of Blood River. Near the end he directed multiple episodes of The Saint, Department S and The Champions.

Leslie Phillips is a British journalist and he's traveling by train with fellow American journalist Paul Douglas to a music festival in Salzberg. That's Leslie on the left, Paul on the right and Eva Bartok in the middle. Leslie and Paul's coach is the last one in the train, the iron bar holding the cars together breaks, the uncoupled car rolls down the track as the train gets farther and farther ahead. Two boys switch the train to a track that takes the car into the Duchy of Gudavia, a fictional country, where they are arrested by the local police.

The country is under the iron fist of Count Boronski. He's a dictator with a gang of mind damaged zombies to keep the people in line. Anyone who disagrees with him winds up tossed off a cliff. He has the guy's released from the jail.

The Count experiments on the children with gamma rays, some become smarter, other's are not so lucky. The arrival of the journalists gives the locals a rebellious spark and there's a good bit of running about and yelling. You can find out how they get out of their predicament by watching the movie in the title link above.

I'd seen this back in 2011 and enjoyed it all over again. It moves at a nice pace and I liked the mix of humor and drama. I'll be glad to watch it again.

Frozen Alive 1964 Directed by Bernard Knowles and screenplay by Evelyn Frazer. I can't say I've seen many of Bernard's films but I have seen a lot of his TV work. He directed episodes of The Adventures Of Lancelot, The Buccaneers, Ivanhoe and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

I'd seen this back in 2005 and had forgotten the story. A scientist is experimenting on suspended animation at the World Health Organization Low Temperature Unit in the Berlin Division. His wife is a drunken shrew who's not happy being married to a scientist. Movie scientists seem to marry the wrong women fairly often.

All that family drama eats up much of the film's 67 mins. It moves slowly, dragging me along, slightly bored. The big excitement near the end happens when the wife accidentally shoots herself while hubby goes into suspended animation at the lab. The police stop by to see the scientist and he's in the fridge. Eventually, it's all sorted out. You can find the movie on YouTube, if you care, in the link in the title above. It's no wonder I forgot the story, it's just not that good. I'll hopefully be reminded, by my post, that I really don't need to see this one again.

The Cosmic Man 1959 Directed by Herbert S Greene, screenplay by Albert C Pierce. Arthur wrote the Terror In The Midnight Sun and a few other films I've seen, Women Of The Prehistoric Planet, The Navy VS the Night Monsters, Dimension 5 and Cyborg 2087. I think I've seen most of his movies. Herbert was mostly a second unit or assistant director, I only recognize a few of the titles on his IMDb page. He only directed one other feature, Outlaw Queen in 1957, which I haven't seen.

A strange glowing white ball arrives on Earth and comes to rest in Stone Canyon near Oak Ridge California. It's really Griffith Park and the Observatory stands in for the Pacific Institute of Technology.

Scientists join military men at the site, they differ some on their approach to the glowing globe. Their attempts to move or penetrate the sphere come to naught. John Carradine plays the visitor but you aren't supposed to know that right away. Sadly, it was kind of obvious. There's some drama and a bit of action but in the end it's hardly average. I still enjoyed it and I might even watch it again. You can see it on YouTube, see above.