Intruder
(★★★)
Well this was pretty entertaining… And relatable! A grocery store slasher!
Turns out that the Walnut Lake Market is closing, which comes as a surprise to the staff, who are told by the owners to stay late and mark everything half off! But right at closing, one of the cashiers ex-fella’s shows up and starts a scene and a fight and then runs off into the store!
So as they work the night away, cleaning up and marking down, people start dying left and right, always (somehow…) unbeknownst to everyone else in the store! But this mysterious killer didn’t show up with special weaponry, he just uses what is at hand… And there is all sorts of neat stuff in grocery stores: knives, saw, balers, etc…
It is broken-hearted revenge? Someone who is opposed to creating a food desert? Mystery abounds! As do cheap, but effective and interesting, gory kills!
Some pretty silly characters, some odd camera angles, and lots of exciting late-80’s grocery action (for those of us “who were there” to fondly remember the old days), makes for an acceptably fun watch. And the cast includes some surprises… Sam and Ted Raimi are both here, and look out for cameos from Bruce Campbell, Lawrence Bender, and Scott Spiegel (the director).
ah, Doom Asylum.
(★★)
Such a promising title! After a terrible (in many ways) traffic accident leaves a lawyer just steps from death and his girlfriend dead, he hides himself away in an abandoned asylum.
This slasher/comedy (well, comedy but not humorous at all) is pretty lame and the title should have been used for a much better movie. There’s very little story here… Not even enough to fill it’s 78 minute runtime so lots of time is made up of showing old movies which our antagonist is supposedly watching.
Starting Patty Mullin, in a much less interesting role than in Frankenhooker (along with the most fabulously lame boyfriend ever) and a bunch of other lame characters.
Anyway, these pals joyride out to the abandoned asylum, well, abandoned aside from some pretty noisy band who are playing there for no clear reason, and oh yeah, rumors of a madman who kills people with surgical tools.
All in all, it’s boring and badly acted and has very little substance.
Dug into the Vinegar Syndrome “Brett Piper Sci-Fi 2-fer” and watched Battle for the Lost Planet.
(★★½)
When a thief ends up stealing a spacecraft to get away from the security guards who have him trapped, he ends up being seemingly the only witness to an alien fleet wiping out life on Earth! His disabled ship turns out to be on a five year orbit that will return him to earth, but who knows what he’ll find?!
Of course, this is possibly the lowest budget sci-fi movie I’ve seen. The effects are, well… Let’s say that at times his spaceship looks more like a Playmobile jet plane than a movie prop, the cities that are being attacked by the aliens remind me the of the Troma Team cityscape, the “alien” makeup effects don’t even fully cover their faces, and everything else just looks pretty bad!
But it’s got post-apocalypse gangs, stop-motion monsters, a silly boss car, some terribly inaccurate subtitles (especially considering that the movie is in English and I assume that the subtitles are new as of this release), bad harmonica playing, and, most of all, an endlessly irritating lead character.
But it’s still kind of charming.
Then… Mutant War
(★★½)
I had to immediately follow up Battle for the Lost Planet with its sequel and, while it is still just as low budget as the first one, it also seems better in every way!
Okay, the stop-motion monsters are just as bad as in the first one, but in this, our lead guy is now the old wasteland pro, instead of the new guy like in the last movie. He’s more bearable, the music is better, the effects (while still just as cheap) look better, a better boss car, the story seems more interesting, and it has better harmonica playing throughout!
However, it ended up losing my interest towards the end so I didn’t end up rating it any higher than the first.
The Hyperborean
(★★★★)
This was pretty great!
Pretentious hipster son Aldous, wanna be cowboy son Rex and his influencer girlfriend Lovie, artist daughter Diana and her mediocre husband Ian, and of course, the cupper/butler Fontano, are all gathering at the weekend retreat of the father, Hollis, the wealthy whiskey scion as he has a big announcement to make.
This evening leads to his death (not a spoiler as he is dead when the movie starts). Lots of flashing back to the weekend and the completely unconcealed disdain that everyone has for everyone else.
See Hollis has a stash of not yet bottled 170 year old whiskey that he dug out of an old shipwreck in the arctic and wants to market. Maybe this whiskey doesn’t taste very good, and maybe the whiskey hides another ancient secret and this evening turns out like no one had expected. But it turns out that way in a very fun fashion!
And I enjoyed The Hyperborean so much that I followed it up with Hellmouth.
(★★½)
This one? Yeah, not so much. I liked it quite a bit right off the bat, with its quirky noirish nature and starkly black and white visuals.
But as it went on, it started to drag. The visuals got cornier and less interesting and the story got more twisted around and started to lose my interest.
Then I continued my Nick Cage party with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
(★★★)
A combination of Cage making fun of his career, and his reputation, while also celebrating himself for the same.
As an on/off Nick Cage fan since Raising Arizona, it was a pretty entertaining watch. Especially the first half… Much of the second half felt like a traditional “Guns and Chases” action movie, which I wasn’t too interested in.
It also was a nice angle to have his invisible friend Nicky (the early 80’s era Nick) along for the ride.
Sky Sharks
(★★)
When a giant old ship buried in the ice is thawed out, it frees an old Nazi experiment… Super Nazi zombies riding flying sharks!
Well, it sure sounded exciting… Two sisters and a creepy old ex-nazi father (who isn’t far from being a zombie himself) set out to stop them before they dominate the world!
Featuring lots of flying armored sharks, nazi zombies, incongruous scenes of topless ladies (often covered in some fella’s blood), some boring scenes with lame music that make you feel like you’re stumbled into a bad music video, ridiculous gore, and so much high contrast and bad CGI that big swaths of the movie feels like you’re watching an animated movie from the 80’s on VHS while someone is shining a flashlight on the screen…
Really not that good. Some of the flying shark scenes were okay.
Also, had another Catamount Party! This time we watched A Fish Called Wanda
Finally watched Prisoners of the Ghostland!
(★★★½)
And it was an odd and enjoyable little number.
Over in Samurai Town, their creepy evil leader, The Governor, has lost his “granddaughter” as she seems to have headed off down the road to the Ghostlands. Even though it seems to be assumed that no one comes back from the Ghostlands, the Gov happens to have an incarcerated criminal who he can lock into a bomb laden suit and send in to the Ghostlands to retrieve her… So he does.
The most interesting part of the movie is the set of Samurai Town, and wondering what Samurai Town is… Is it an example of what their vaguely post-apocalyptic society has become? Is it an amusement park attraction? A colorful trafficking destination for enslaved woman? It s a little unclear as it seems to consist of just about about a single street. And oddly, though it has a distinctly Edo-era feel about it, with painted ladies and samurai, it is also merged with the Wild West and every adult seems to be either sword/gun toting thug, or a woman locked behind bars.
Which, contrasted with the Ghostlands and its weird group dance chants and mobile library room where Enoch reads Bronte to the masses, makes for a couple of odd and intriguing cultures to keep you pondering.
Kidweek brought two classics rewatches to the screen this week.
Up.
(★★★★★)
Just the best Pixar movie! And not only is it a great movie, it’s a great story with a wonderful idea! And with grumpy Ed Asner, adventure, the tepui of Venezuela (which I ave long been fascinated by), the charming Dug, and the delightful character of young Ellie, it’s a lot of fun.
The story of Ol’ Carl, finally taking that dream trip that he and his late wife had dreamed of (well, he promised and there was no backing out), Up is the story of youthful dream adventures put on hold by regular life… But was it put on hold, or just replaced by a different life adventure?
As the rest home comes calling, Carl sees the last chance for their dream appear upon the horizon, and he takes us along on this grand adventure of a lifetime!
and…
Explorers!
(★★★★)
I Don’t have much new to say about this one since my 2008 Review. But I have recently shown the kid Stand By Me, and also The Goonies at some point in the past, and he loved both of those, so he was asking about other movies in a similar vein… This is what came to mind as it’s always a favorite of mine.
Vampires
(★★½)
I kinda didn’t want that watch this but just was out of ideas at the moment and figured I’d give it a shot. I mean, John Carpenter after all…
And, well, it’s a high budget b-movie. A bunch of vampire hunters (led by James Woods) and featuring Mark Boone Junior who I always like and who dies too soon, and Daniel Baldwin (who is a Baldwin and so lasts for too long). They have ridiculously campy equipment (especially the crossbow and the custom staking stakes) and lots of terrible assholish macho dialog.
Basically they kill a bunch of junior vampires, which pisses off the big vampire which leads to him being a big party wrecker and leaving lots of violently deceased bodies. It’s generally entertaining and there are some fun effects, “drag a vampire into the sunlight and see what happens”. But Sheryl Lee and her changing, um, situations, are probably the high point. Plus it has an interesting origin story for vampirism.
Space Truckers
(★★★½)
I knew nothing about this, but I sought it out because I am such a big fan of Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond movies, I was curious what path he took later. And, wow.
The story of an independent space trucker, in an era when most have gone corporate, whose independent attitude costs him the payment for a load of square pigs. He needs to go to the mysterious Mr Zesty to find a load. And oh, what a load it is! Well, that’s unknown… It’s bound for Earth and it says Sex Dolls but is very mysterious and oddly high security for such cargo.
This silly and raucous trucking adventure features lots of zero-g antics, space ship scenes, and pirates!
And it’s worth watching for the square pigs and the fabulous costumes, and you also you get to see Charles dance, Dennis Hopper, Debi Mazer, and George Wendt!
I also watched
Manhunter
(★★★½)
Much different… But I thought that this was pretty good… Except for the lead. I didn’t think he was up to par in his acting, and the character itself was obnoxious. Aside from that, the movie was good. As a long time fan of Silence of the Lambs, it was interesting to see an earlier representation of Lector. I liked the story and, even though I didn’t like the lead, I did appreciate his deciphering of the clues.
Most of all I enjoyed Tom Noonan and Dennis Farina’s roles.
Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteur aka Signals: A Space Adventure
(★★★½)
When the ship Laika finally hears signals that they take to be signs of intelligent life, they get quite excited! But are very soon thereafter destroyed but asteroids…
Another ship investigates and this begins a strange combination of elements… Lots of outer space footage of ships and space stations, reminiscent of some of 2001, but lots of it! Nice internal space ship scenes, most of which are pretty slow and action less, but still engaging.
In the midst of all this slow moving space drama, there are lighthearted scenes of people that seem a bit incongruous with the rest: people playing around at the beach, lots of slow moving scenes of people in zero-g, and even a musical bit of people maneuvering around in zero g. And just some odd music in general.
So it’s a bit odd, but I quite liked it. The sets and ships are pretty neat, the slow moving and meandering story was engaging enough, and it had a nice feel to it.