PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 599

Aliens: Zone-X 2015 The IMDb just lists Thomas R Dickens as the director, special effects supervisor and cinematographer but not writer. This trailer lists Thomas as both writer and director, as does the poster. It's his second director job, the first was Faces, a 2009 film that has no votes on the IMDb. His special effect credits go back to 1993 when he worked on Addams Family Values. He was the design lead on Norbert the Dragon in Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone.

The movie is effects heavy, you can see some of the work above. Not much of a story and a poor script on top of that. A park ranger, with mystical powers, goes desert camping on his day off. An SUV filled with 20 somethings are in the same desert and they have a run in with a psycho biker. The biker is played by James J Zito III and he stands out, as one of the worst actors in the bunch of weak thespians. The SUV breaks down and they meet up with the park ranger. On their trek to safety they encounter some aliens. A bunch of them die before the aliens tell the ranger that they can see the future. What do they do with their great power? Come to Earth to kill the people who were going to die anyway. What a bunch of fucks! Not a movie I would need to see again, it was hard to listen to the dialog and watch the sad CGI. Lucky for me it was on Amazon Prime.

Bloodsucker's Planet 2019 Written and directed by Mark Beal. It's his third feature, not seen any of his other work. Very short, only 67 mins. It's styled like a 60s SF film and I often don't find those to be much fun. This was actually more fun than most of those parodies. I really enjoyed the animated credits at the start of the film.

The story has a cargo ship respond to a distress call from the planet Maya. When they land they find there's just one guy there and a female android. They later find out there's a couple of other beings there, a bug guy and a vampire lady. The crew gets the bite and one last living lady has a struggle to stay alive.

The acting is fairly good, most of them seem to know how to be still for a time. The previous movie had some people who just couldn't stop gesturing and flailing about while they talked. The script is fairly decent and the dialog seems natural. The production is well done and the effects similar enough to the time to get by. I'd watch it again but I don't know that I would buy the DVD.  Not for $20, the Blu-ray is $26, that's right out.

Science Fiction Sunday 598

Up first is The Final Programme, it's British, it came out in 1973, and it's the only film adapted from a Michael Moorcock novel. The movie was called Last Days Of Man On Earth in the US and a few other places. Robert Fuest is the writer and director. His previous two films were the Dr Phibes series and they were much more entertaining.

I first saw it back in 2001 and rated it "fairish" on my Watched Movie List. After watching it again I'm not thinking it's much better than that and that ain't even barely average. I got more enjoyment out of the cinematography than the story. It's very stylish and colorful. The locations are quite interesting. It's the characters that are annoying. What a load of jerks and assholes.

It's somewhat in the future and there's been an incident or two, Amsterdam is ash, the Vatican is gone, it might be the end of civilization. Jerry Cornelius's father has died and he's left a programme to develop a hybrid human that's immortal and self replicating. The programme is on microfilm and it's in dad's safe at home. Some scientists, headed by Graham Crowden, want it.

Jerry leads a raid on the house and his brother defends the place. In the struggle Jerry accidentally kills his sister but the evil Miss Brunner gets the microfilm. Miss Brunner somehow consumes people. Jerry's brother shoots Jerry but he doesn't die. There's a good bit of chasing about by these two knobs. Again, the locations were more interesting than most of the action.

Eventually the microfilm, the scientists, Miss Brunner and Jerry are all in one place. The experiment goes on with a nice laughable ending. It's supposed to be a comedy but I'm often laughing at stuff that isn't jokes. I'll probably never get back to the DVD, lucky for me it was used and fairly cheap.

Victor Frankenstein is a 2017 re-imagining of Frankenstein. There's little of the novel in the movie and the whole thing is now being told by a completely new character. He's one of a legion of new characters. It crapped out at the box office and I can see why. Those characters suck.

Total Film compared the movie to the Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes films, loud, flashy, busy, but I find it's lacking the interesting characters that come with Guy's films. The screenplay was written by Max Landis and the director was Paul McGuigan. His previous film was Push in 2009 and I didn't think too much of that, before that he directed the 2006 gangster film Lucky Number Slevin. That was a bit more entertaining.

Daniel Radcliffe plays Igor, he's the narrator and he's got a hunchback. Victor, played by James McAvoy, finds Igor in a circus, acting a sad clown, but he's really knowledgeable about human anatomy. He's all self taught. Victor rescues him and the owner calls the coppers. A man was killed during the escape by a scummy circus guy and that's blamed on Victor and Igor. A completely insane Scotland Yard detective takes the case and when he finds out more about what Victor is up to, he goes full on religious zealot. He throws away his career in his drive to get Victor.

It goes on and on, though only 91 mins, it seems much longer, I was getting tired of spending time with Victor. It's nicely produced, the sets and locations look really good but all the flashy crashy stuff can't make up for a weak story. There are better Frankenstein films out there. I'd watch those again before I would watch this once more.

Science Fiction Sunday 597

I remembered liking Frankenstein: The True Story more when I watched it on TV back in 1973 than I did today. It played over two nights, which turns into 185 mins on DVD. It's a British and American production which I saw in Canada. The script is by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the director is Jack Smight. Below is a bit from the Wikipedia that I found interesting.

It was originally broadcast on NBC-TV in late 1973 in two 90-minute parts, but is often seen edited into a single film. Its DVD debut date was September 26, 2006. Included at the beginning is a short introduction featuring James Mason wandering through St John's Wood churchyard, London. He suggests that this is where  Mary Shelley is buried, which is incorrect (she is in fact buried in the family plot in Dorset), despite standing beside a gravestone bearing her name.

That short intro is over 5 mins long and it shows the best bits of action in the movie. Disappointing to say the least. Why waste time on stuff like that. They change a lot from the novel and their main gimmick has Michael Sarrazin playing the monster as a handsome man. At least for a little while, things go south in the looks department later in the show. Leonard Whiting is Victor Frankenstein and David McCallum is the professor that introduces him to experimenting with life. Nicola Pagett plays Elizabeth, Victor's to be wife.

James Mason plays Dr Polidori, a character  who didn't appear in the novel, he's loosely based on the Dr Pretorius from Bride Of Frankenstein, and he's a right old bastard. Jane Seymour is the bride in this one, at least her head is, the creature brings her damaged body to Victor, and Victor works his creature magic and brings her head to life on another body.

Jane fare better than the creature, she gets to briefly be lovely in high society, unfortunately her coming out ball turns into a slaughterfest after the creature shows up. It's all horror and sadness for the main characters, most of them die. It's a good reminder that you shouldn't fall in love with crazy people. It's a fairly well made production, kind of slow, and very brown looking.

Frankenstein is a 2007 British TV film that takes the opposite tack with the creature's look. It's written and directed by Jed Mercurio. His gimmick is to make Dr Frankenstein a woman and set her in the modern day world of bio-engineering. She uses some of her dead son's stem cells to grow organs in a soup of bio-goo, the bits and pieces coagulate into a creature that's not anywhere near as handsome as Michael Sarrazin. That's him below.

Behind all her work is a company that's got it's fingers into those secret black government programs that turn up so often in films. I'm leaning toward boredom with that plot line but that's just me. Helen McCrory plays Dr Frankenstein and she's mental. James Purefoy plays her ex-husband and he's a bit of a scum bag. Nothing much good to be said for the rest of the players in the secret world of genetics shenanigans. It's well enough made but I sure didn't care for it much. I'd be hard pressed to watch it again. 

Science Fiction Sunday 596

The Aftermath is a 1982 post apocalypse movie that was originally shot in 1978. Writer and Director Steve Barkett didn't like the original footage and recast. He worked on the movie for 3 more years. It's just one of those odd and slightly interesting things about the movie, here's another. Stanley Livingston, Chip from My Three Sons, co-wrote the first draft of the script with Steve Barkett in 1973, Stanley was going to direct but that didn't happen. 

That's Steve and his son Christopher. Steve plays the main character, one of three astronauts that arrive back on Earth after a long space voyage. Christopher plays a young boy that Steve finds after they arrive in LA. Larry Latham plays the second astronaut and Jim Danforth plays the third. Jim's character dies in the crash landing. Jim worked on the effects for the film, along with Dennis and Robert Skotak. Dennis was also one of the two cinematographers, Robert was also a production designer and one of the make up artists.

Forrest J Ackerman plays a museum creator that has been taking care of Christopher. Steve hides in the museum, after meeting the pair he's asked by Forry to take care of Christopher, Forry is dying from radiation poisoning.

That's LA, devastated in a nuclear war. Could be worse, they do seem to find some working jeeps. The astronauts take over a mansion, one you might have seen in a Ted V Mikels movie. Ted was supposed to be a producer on the film but he got into an argument with Steve and was out. For some reason they still used his mansion. Steve's first movie role was in Ted's 1971 film The Corpse Grinders. Steve doesn't even get an IMDb credit for the movie. Joe Cranston is the co-screenwriter for The Corpse Grinders, Bryan Cranston is Joe's son. The other co-screenwriter is Arch Hall, father of Arch Hall Jr.

The woman in the pink top is Lynne Margulies, she was in a relationship with Steve during the filming. She's had an interesting life, here's her IMDb bio.

Lynne Elaine Margulies was born on February 28, 1957 in San Fernando, California. She's the younger sister of actor, wrestling manager, rockabilly singer, and trash film historian Johnny Legend. Lynne portrayed nuclear war holocaust survivor Sarah in the gritty end-of-the-world science fiction movie "The Aftermath." She edited and produced TV commercials for a few years in the early 80s. Margulies met legendary avant-garde comic Andy Kaufman while playing a small part in the offbeat comedy feature "My Breakfast with Blassie" and remained Kaufman's girlfriend right up till his untimely death from lung cancer at the tragically young age of 35 on May 16, 1984. Lynne not only was a creative consultant for the Kaufman bio film "Man on the Moon," but also co-directed the Kaufman documentaries "I'm from Hollywood" and "Andy Kaufman's Really Big Show." A talented artist, Margulies has a BFA in painting and drawing from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco, where she has taught classes on and off since 1995. Moreover, Lynne runs the DVD label Legendhouse with her brother Johnny.

Sid Haig plays the murderous scumbag that terrorizes the LA area. Sid and his minions kill and rape and steal. It's a pretty bleak world that Steve has returned to, the movie ends on a downer note with pretty much everyone dead.

I was more impressed with the backstory of the movie than with the movie. A lot of the scenes are fighting mutants and running about in cars. Some of the cast are way better actors than others, same with the stunt men. One guy could hardly figure out how to walk out of a building. Nothing normal in that performance. Plenty of gun fire and occasionally they set something on fire. I liked parts of the movie but generally it's below average. You can get a good idea what it's like by this trailer. You can check out the whole movie on this blog. There are DVDs and Blu-rays for those that need them. I just can't see paying $20 for the Blu-ray.

2103: The Deadly Wake came out in 1997 and starred Malcolm McDowell and Michael Paré. Malcolm is a ship captain who can't get a license. The big corporation offers him a name change, a captain's license, and an assignment. He gets a 100 year old ship, filled with the worst of the criminally insane, to take to Nigeria. Michael is the company security man who's sent along with the ship. He's got a thing going on with his boss. What he doesn't know is she's a backstabbing monster who's set him and the ship up for a big sink. There's also some chemical warfare weapons on board and several bombs. That isn't enough to stop Malcolm though, he's quite handy as staying alive. I enjoyed Malcolm but the movie is just not that good. Another one I wouldn't need to see again.

Science Fiction Sunday 595

The Dustwalker is a 2019 Australian SF movie about an alien something that thuds into the ground in the outback. It's like a lot of these sorts of movies, plenty of running about and yelling, with occasional monsters. The alien critter came inside a mysterious silver football. Something releases a virus that turns people into angry beasts with skin problems. The local policewoman leads a small group that tries to stay alive. A big critter burrows under the ground, it harvests the infected and burns them at the end of the movie. We don't know why. There's no real ending, the monster is still loose. It's just not that interesting, probably why it's score is 3.9 on the IMDb. It looks nice, if you like the desert. I wouldn't want to watch it again.

Jurassic Thunder is another 2019 SF movie, both it and the first movie came from Amazon Prime. I've been hitting that as a place for unseen SF and Horror titles. Might as well get something for the yearly fee since I'm ordering less items from them. This one also scores low on the IMDb, a 2.0 from 127 voters, 55% of them ranked it a one. There aren't as many different dinosaurs in the movie as the poster would lie about. The T Rex they use has a machine gun and a laser on his head but you don't see that in this poster, you do see it other posters. The story isn't worth mentioning. It's embarrassing to watch. So is most of the acting and the CGI. The unintentional laughs were more out of pity. There's nothing good here at all. Someone should have taken the movie out behind the barn and put it out of it's misery. That might be cruel but it's what they deserve.

Science Fiction Sunday 594

The Terror Experiment is a 2010 secret government organization has a big ass problem movie. This time those wacky nut bags have a highly dangerous chemical lab in the city. A rebel group sets off a bomb in the building and it releases some of the gas that turns people into aggressive psycho lunatics. Then the killing starts. Jason London leads a group of survivors from the top of the building to the ground. Judd Nelson, Robert Carradine, C Thomas Howell and Lochlyn Munro are the few cast members I knew. It's pretty much a by the numbers bit that is well below average. Not worth watching again.

Painkillers is pretty much the same. I saw it on Amazon and it will go away after a while. The first movie was part of a multi pack of random SF movie, I'm stuck with that until I can get rid of it.  It's a 2015 film with a secret organization looking for a power source in a cave in Afghanistan. The team wakes up in hospital with no memory of what happened. Colm Feore plays the doctor supervising their memories return. The soldiers don't know that he's really an evil greedy prick and he only wants the power source for his company's personal gain. The soldier's get crazy after being on a memory drug and there's some fighting and dying. The head of the squad stops taking the drug and he partially figures out what was going on. He doesn't have it quite right and some more people die. It all sorts itself out by the end and there's a hint they'd like to make another movie. What would be the point?

Science Fiction Sunday 593

Sheborg 2016 is an Australian goopfest about an alien invasion. It's from Amazon Prime where for some reason they think it came out in 2018. They are often wrong about the date a movie was released because they are twats. I got the poster from the IMDb, they've recently pissed me off by stopping right click downloads of their images. Now you have to tell it you want to do a screen capture and crop the image out of the background and then download it. Another bunch of cocks. Daniel Armstrong is the writer and director and he calls the film Neo-pulp. The Wikipedia has this quote from him. "Neo-pulp lovingly embraces the most extreme, cliche, and supercilious elements of pop culture and pulp literature and puts them in a human context. SHEBORG MASSACRE itself is a 50s teen rebel flick set in a B grade sci-fi world from the early 80s, with horror style violence. It’s not a spoof, it’s not horror, it’s not action, it’s not sci-fi, it’s not drama. It’s all of these things. It’s neo-pulp."

Pretentious bullshit aside the film delivers a lot of goopy mess and plenty of yelling and running about. The fights are fair to poor and the CGI is low budget weak. The two main characters continuously get covered in blood. It's fun but not that great. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Even worse was Fatal Conflict, a 2000 cliche filled space adventure that doesn't have a pretentious description. It's just Kari Wuhrer battling some scummy criminals on a space ship.  There's a lot of running through corridors and a good number of fights. It's still not that good. Some of the dialog is laughable and the rest dull. Hardly worth the time for me to look at it, lucky for me I can skip ahead 10 seconds a click on the Amazon player. Not going to watch it again, that's for sure.

Science Fiction Sunday 592

Black Site is a 2018 film about a secret government organization that traps elder gods on Earth and sends them back to hell. Their current captive for deportation is causing trouble, or at least, his followers are, they've attacked the instillation looking to get their god back. The fights are mixed with the main character's personal problems. Lot of yakkin' going on. I liked some of the scenes with the elder god, he's got a human for a host body. He's been alive for eons but his elder powers have been reduced to nearly nothing. Magic wards can hold him in place. I found the other characters less interesting. I'd put it about average but for all the personal melodrama. Since it was an Amazon Prime film I don't have to wonder what I'd be doing with the DVD.

Same for Agency Of Vengeance: Dark Rising. It's a 2011 Canadian film and the sequel to Dark Rising: Bring Your Battle Axe. I haven't seen that and probably won't. That's Brigitte Kingsley on the poster, she's the star and the producer. You'd think with two jobs she could afford some clothes. Her character is part of a secret government black ops group headed by Michael Ironside. He only appears briefly at the beginning of the movie. A demon god and his minions from the demon dimension are causing some trouble, Brigitte and her co-workers go off to fight them. There's a bit of fighting and way more personal melodrama that I care for. I thought it was even duller than the previous movie. No need for me to see it again, that's for sure.

Science Fiction Sunday 591

Robot Revolution is an SF film from 2015 that's way below average. Steven J Niles wrote the screenplay and Andrew Bellware directed. I'd seen a couple of Andrew's other films, way below average too. This one is set in the future and police have android partners. A cop and her android are on a call in an apartment when they stumble on a rogue mad scientist's lab. The MS has created nanobots that can attack. She's loaded them in a container and armed them. Of course they get out and turn the locals into animated dead bodies that can be killed by a shot to the head. One clumsy thing after another happens and eventually the movie is over. Most everyone's dead. All this is filmed poorly with way too much video manipulation and POV shots. I'd give it a miss if I knew what I know now.

Same with Raccoon Valley, a dangerous biohazard is loose movie from 2018. The gimmick from writer and director Turner Clay is to have a deaf woman miss hearing about the down plane that leaked something deadly. The IMDb tells me the budget was $175 and I'm wondering where the money went. It surly can's cost that much to follow a woman in her own clothes wondering around in her own house. Her listless meanderings are accompanied by a horrid soundtrack that grate on my nerves. Surprisingly she kills two infected people. Zombie like people. Same old same old. I'm certainly not going to watch either again.

Science Fiction Sunday 589

The first two movies on Amazon Prime's home page were both SF so I watched them. Turned out they had something more in common than being made last year. In both movies most of the movie was filmed in a car. First was Cosmos, a 2019 British film about some scientist guys who study the noise space makes. They pack some computers, a telescope and some signal detectors in a car and head out to the countryside. While hanging out in the middle of the night they intercept a steady signal and then their own message coming back at them. It couldn't have gotten far enough into space for it to be bounced back so soon, the moon is too close and the other planets aren't at the right distance either. It also repeats more times than they repeated the original signal.

Eventually they figure out what's going on and in the last part of the third act it turns into an alien contact movie. That was the best part of the movie, the first two acts are slowed down by a lot of interpersonal melodrama, the movie runs 128 mins and it really could use some trimming. I could do without the whole backstory as to where they all used to work and the like. It managed to keep me interested through to the end but I'm not sure I would need to buy a copy. Worth a look.

I wouldn't recommend Manifest Destiny Down: Spacetime to just anyone. It's a 2019 SF movie about something involving multi-universes. A guy wakes up in his dorm room with a naked woman in his bed. He gets a telephone call telling him to meet at the rocket pad. He packs up the car and the pair take off. They're being chased by a guy who's an Agent Smith cosplayer but with real powers. He's the one who called and oddly the guy can't see him but the woman can. Once the guy takes his meds he can see Agent Smith all too well. He runs away. They chase up and down the CGI highway. It's all confusing and I'm not sure what happened to tell you the truth. It's a lot of talk about multi-universes and changing dimensions. It's noisy, enthusiastic and colorful but the CGI is pretty poor. Not sure I'd want to see it again, even if it cleared some of it up, I've not got the time. I wouldn't need a DVD of it that's for sure.