TUNE IN JUNE: Time Trax (1993)

Note: Here on Shlock to the System, June is TUNE IN JUNE, which is really just an excuse for me to catch up on some TV series I've been meaning to watch for a while. But I will also be watching a number of TV movies, particularly ones from the hey-day of the TV movie, the 70s and 80s.

 
Time Trax (1993)
Director: Lewis Teague
Starring: Dale Midkiff, Mia Sara, Elizabeth Alexander, Michael Warren, Henry Darrow
Format: VHS

Plot: Captain Darien Lambert (Midkiff) is a police officer in the year 2193, in the elite fugitive retrieval unit. He learns that a prominent scientist has developed a time machine called Trax. For a large fee, he has been sending dangerous criminals back to the year 1993, where they are safe from capture. When Darien corners the scientist, he escapes into the past. Darien also travels to 1993, vowing to retrieve all fugitives and send them back for punishment. Armed with a computer that looks like a credit card, named SELMA (Alexander), and a high-tech laser weapon disguised as a remote car alarm.

This is the two-part pilot of a TV series that apparently lasted two seasons (although I've never seen it, or in fact heard of it before I bought this pilot/movie on VHS). But I quite enjoyed it, and will hopefully come across the series one day and be able to check it out (as far as I can tell it's only available as part of Warner's MOD program, and sells at ridiculous prices).

Because this is a pilot movie, a good portion of it is spent setting up the characters and scenario, which does drag out a bit, but the action really ramps up towards the end, with an exploding boat, a chase through a jungle and someone falling off a massive waterfall. And it's no coincidence that things improve overall once the setting shifts from 2193 to 1993, because the portion set in the future isn't very convincing, or interesting for that matter. The "fish out of water" stuff in 1993 is much more fun.

Dale Midkiff is a likeable enough leading man and he has good chemistry with his love interest, the always-beautiful Mia (FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF), who plays dual roles - a woman in the future who Lambert falls for, and her great-granddaughter in 1993. A year after this she would also star in another time travel story, Jean Claude Van Damme's TIMECOP. Another piece of trivia is that both Midkiff (PET SEMETARY) and director Teague (CUJO) had previously worked on Stephen King adaptions, althought not together.

The hologram companion, coupled with time travel, did make me think of QUANTUM LEAP, with it's similar construct, but Time Trax doesn't have the wry sense of humour of Dean Stockwell's Al.

In summary, if I'd caught this Time Trax pilot back in the day, I'd be tuning in to catch the series to see if it develops well. The concept is interesting and any excuse to look at Mia Sara on a regular basis, am I right?

TUNE IN JUNE: Condor (1986)

Note: Here on Shlock to the System, June is TUNE IN JUNE, which is really just an excuse for me to catch up on some TV series I've been meaning to watch for a while. But I will also be watching a number of TV movies, particularly ones from the hey-day of the TV movie, the 70s and 80s.

Condor (1986)
Director: Virgil W Vogel
Starring: Ray Wise, Wendy Kilbourne, James Avery
Format: Streaming (Netflix)

Plot: In futuristic Los Angeles, a crime-fighting organization known as Condor goes up against the Black Widow, a female master criminal. The Black Widow steals the national security code and threatens to blow up Hollywood unless her old enemy, Proctor, a Condor operative, is turned over to her.

This ABC made-for-TV movie was intended as the pilot for a TV series, but it never happened. Which is a shame, because if this was a series, I'd watch it.

Sure, Condor is pretty damn cheesy but it's also good fun. Most of its appeal is due to leading man Ray Wise (it's hard to believe this is just four years before he'd portray Laura Palmer's dad on TWIN PEAKS), who plays a suave and wise-cracking detective, Proctor.

Attractive blonde Wendy Kilbourne (TV's MIDNIGHT CALLER) is his android partner, Lisa. Naturally Proctor doesn't like having a robot for a partner, and they constantly bicker, as is usually the dynamic in these sorts of shows. Proctor's prejudice against his android partner reminded me of the dynamic in the TV series Alien Nation (as well as Wise's minor resemblence to that series' star, Gary Graham). The late James Avery (Uncle Phil on FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR) turns up in a minor supporting role.

Aside from the good work by Wise, the main reason to watch this is to see how they handle "the future" in 1986. There's plenty of hokey "future" scifi stylings (hands-free driving, robot servants, laser guns, androids, hologram TV) and while the clothing might have seemed quite futuristic at the time, 30 years later it just seems like a slight variation on awful 80s fashions. One funny moment is when Lisa asks Proctor where his PC is. "My what?" he asks, and she replies "Personal Computer". In 1986 this was probably futuristic speak, but today it just seems quaint.

My only real complaint is with the pilot's villain, Rachael Hawkins (Carolyn Seymour), who is as bland as they come. A stronger antagonist might have helped this series get picked up.

Condor isn't anything special, but I was a kid of the 80s who grew up on the TV of the time. This reminded me of any of the various early-80s scifi/crime shows (Street Hawk, Automan, Knight Rider, Airwolf), minus the cool vehicle, but with the overall same sort of vibe. For that reason I enjoyed it, although it's probably not to everyone's tastes.

MAY-DE TO BE MOCKED - Princess of Mars (2009)

Note: Throughout the month of May I will be watching Mockbusters, those low-budget movies which are made purely to cash in on a recent successful blockbuster. I call this May-de to be Mocked!  

Princess of Mars (2009)
Director: Mark Atkins
Starring: Antonio Sabato jr, Traci Lords, Chacko Vadaketh
Format: AVI

Plot: A special ops sniper (Sabato jr) in Afghanistan is double-crossed and ends up close to death. His superiors use some scifi mumbo-jumbo to send him to a distant planet called Mars-something, where he becomes involved in the ongoing battle between humanoids (who control the machine making the planet liveable) and monster-looking sand people. He falls in love with the Princess of Mars (Lords) and fights to overcome her enemies.

This is a rare movie that cashes in on two blockbusters. It was originally marketed as "The classic story that inspired James Cameron's Avatar", and it then piggybacked on the 2012 release of John Carter, with which it shares an Edgar Rice Burroughs story as source material.

First an admission: I enjoy John Carter. I think it's a fun, pulp scifi movie that is unfairly maligned by many. With that out of the way, how did I enjoy this, another offering by The Asylum? The answer to that is, not very much.

The special effects are basic but passable and there's plenty of action to keep things ticking along (I particularly liked the fights with giant mutant spiders), but what really brings it all down is the acting. I wish I could say the acting is so bad that it makes this movie cheesy good fun, but I can't. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just there. And that's a problem when the whole story is built around a hero doing all sorts of swashbuckling, pulpy stuff. That hero needs to be charismatic, and soap star Antonio Sabato jr has all of the charisma of a desk lamp. Former porn star Traci Lords looks good for her age, but acting isn't her strong point - she just looks bored for most of the movie.




If you're bored and this is showing on TV or you've watched everything else on Netflix, maybe you might want to check this one out. Otherwise, it's definitely one you can skip.

We're only part-way through May, but I'm not sure if I can keep watching mockbusters produced by The Asylum. I need to find others, because watching Paranormal Entity and Princess of Mars on the same night has sapped the life out of me.

MAY-DE TO BE MOCKED: Alien vs Hunter (2007)

 Note: Throughout the month of May I will be watching Mockbusters, those low-budget movies which are made purely to cash in on a recent successful blockbuster. I call this May-de to be Mocked!

Alien vs Hunter (2007)
Director: Scott Harper
Starring: William Katt, Dedee Pfeiffer, Randy Mulkey
Format: DVD

Plot: A newspaper reporter is out running when a fireball crashes into the mountainside behind him. He soon discovers that it is an alien spaceship, and with several other residents of his small town, he's soon on the run from spider-like extra terrestrials. Adding to their troubles is the presence of a cyborg-like hunter, who hunts both the aliens and the humans.

Ah, The Asylum. The company whose production line of low budget movies led to the coining of the term "mockbuster", or at the very least made it popular. Snakes on a Plane was a hit? The Asylum offers Snakes on a Train! Transformers becomes Transmorphers, and I Am Legend gives rise to I Am Omega. Rinse and repeat.

Naturally the offerings of The Asylum were going to feature heavily in this month's theme, and first up is Alien vs Hunter, or AVH as it is known for short. I wasn't a fan of Alien vs Predator, so I didn't hold out much hope for this low-budget rip-off, and after watching it, hopeless is probably a good way to describe it.

One of the most fun things about The Asylum's canon is the way they drag washed-up stars out of obscurity and put them back on the screen. Here it's a moustachioed William Katt, who to anyone my age will always be Ralph Hinkley, the Greatest American Hero. And to horror fans he's Roger Cobb from 1986's House. The only other "name" on offer here is Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle's little sister. That's marquee name value right there. Character actor Randy Mulkey plays a weapon-packed conspiracy theorist (this movie's equivalent of Tremors' Burt Gummer).

IMDB says this movie was made for $500,000 and it shows. The acting is just plain awful (Mulkey is about the only one who doesn't disgrace himself, while I kept hoping that Wittly Jourdan's annoying character would be killed so I wouldn't have to listen to any more of her whining). The special effects are ridiculous (especially the CGI work) and the low budget really shows in the filming locations, which are restricted to small rooms/tunnels and the woods.

With these kinds of movies the saving grace can be the cheese factor. Sadly it's in short supply here, with really only the design of the Hunter's suit standing out. This guy makes Omega-1 from the previously-reviewed Robowar look world class. It's like they put a guy in a suit of armour, then plonked a welding helmet on his head and a salad bowl on top of that. Don't be fooled by the DVD cover above, I'm not sure what movie the "hunter" on the right of the cover is from, but it sure isn't this one. The alien design is actually quite good - a mix of Alien and Predator on the top half and a spider's body on the lower half.

The bottom line is they could have had a lot more fun with this kind of material, but the script by David Michael Latt (SUPERCROC) is entirely predictable, director Scott Harper plays things way too seriously, and there's just not enough cheese. Hell, by half-way through I kept hoping against hope that William Katt would slide into his Greatest American Hero outfit and start flying about comically while trying to battle the alien and/or hunter. That would have made for a great movie. What we actually get? Not so much.

Entirely avoidable, even for fans of silly mockbusters.

Budget 5-pack #1: Sci-fi

Here in New Zealand (and Australia) a company called Flashback Entertainment has started releasing a series of 5-movie budget sets, sometimes on 5 discs, sometimes on 2. They're across various genres and cost $10 each. I've been picking up a few of them and decided I would sit down and watch one of these sets to see how good or bad they are, and give my thoughts in one review...

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007)
Director: Gabriel Bologna
Starring: Lorenzo Lamas, Sean Lawlor, Natalie Stone

Plot: A nuclear submarine is attacked by a giant squid and sinks to the ocean floor. A team of specialist retrieval experts (led by Lamas) is sent in to recover it, but discovers an undersea city controlled by the evil Captain Nemo (Lawlor), who's out to destroy the land-based world.

Comments: You've heard of Jules Verne's classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, right? Well this is *30,000* Leagues Under the Sea - that's 10,000 Leagues more awesomer!
Actually, no. This straight-to-DVD low budget film is from Asylum, kings of the cheap ripoff flicks. And boy is it bad. Not even ol' Renegade himself can save this steaming pile of crap. Lawlor's mildly entertaining, but the rest of the cast seem to be suffering from CGI-induced decompression sickness.
Surprisingly, the CGI's not that bad. It's just a shame the plot is so boring and predictable (full of standard fare like the male and female leads butting heads due to a rocky past relationship).
If the other four movies in this 5-pack are this bad, I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it through them all. Jules Verne must be turning in his watery grave!

Army of the Dead (2008)
Director: Joseph Conti
Starring: Ross Kelly, Stefani Marchesi, Miguel Martinez

Plot: College professor John Barnes (Kelly), his wife (Marchesi) and a group of friends go into the deserts of Mexico for a spot of off-road racing. But one of their group (Martinez) has another motive - to search for the fabled city of El Dorado and its mountains of gold. He finds it, but in doing so unleashes an army of skeleton warriors on the group.

Comments: Well, at least this one isn't a bastardisation of classic literature, or a straight ripoff of a blockbuster movie. So it has that going for it. But otherwise Army of Dead is a very-forgettable straight-to-DVD offering.
The storyline's passable, the desert racing set up allows for some fun action shots, and who doesn't like seeing an army of undead conquistador skeletons wreaking havoc? But on the downside the acting's excrutiating at times and the dialogue's terrible. What could have saved this movie is a high sleaze factor, but there's no T&A and the only gore is CGI-created.
Which brings me to my biggest gripe about Army of Dead. I'm not a fan of CGI, and so much of this movie's effects are generated on a computer. I can forgive CGI when it's necessary (like the giant squid in the previous movie or the skeleton warriors here), but CGI explosions? CGI blood? No thanks - I'll take a good practical effect any day of the week.

Transmorphers (2007)
Director: Leigh Scott
Starring: Matthew Wolf, Amy Weber, Shaley Scott

Plot: In the future, a race of alien robots have conquered the Earth, forcing mankind underground. After 400 years, a small group of humans develop a plan to defeat the mechanical invaders in the ultimate battle between man and machine.

Comments: At first glance (seeing the title without watching the movie) it's natural to assume this is a straight ripoff of Michael Bay's big budget Transformers movies. But after watching it I can tell the only thing it's got in common with Bay's trilogy is it has big robots. Some of them transform, kind of. Apparently this was originally going to be called Robot Wars, but the name was changed to cash in on Bay's blockbuster.
That's not to say that Transmorphers isn't completely derivative, because it is. Terminator 2, Cherry 2000, Screamers, any number of bad 90s sci movies - it rips them all off.
Transmorphers lives up to everything you'd expect from an Asylum movie - the acting is atrocious, the special effects look like they were created on an Nintendo 64 and the dialogue is grade school production bad.
I'll say this though - it's better than the first two movies I reviewed in this set. It starts off boring, but once the plot leaves the underground city and the fighting against the robots starts, there's enough to keep things interesting.
The dialogue will make you groan, the CGI/green screen effects will make you laugh... but hey, it's still better than the abortion that was Revenge of the Fallen (I didn't mind the first Transformers movie too much and haven't seen the third one).

Tyrannosaurus Wrecks (2006)
Director: John Carl Buechler
Starring: Jeff Fahey, Dee Wallace, Tony Todd

Plot: Dr Harrison Parker (Jeff Fahey, LAWNMOWER MAN) has invented some kind of revolutionary DNA formula. He's at work late one night with a colleague (horror genre veteran Dee Wallace) when a group of corporate saboteurs (led by Candyman himself, Tony Todd) take over the building. In the process they unleash a living dinosaur on the city. As the dino goes a-chomping, the bad guys keep searching for the formula, which Dr Parker has hidden. A showdown looms between the good doctor and the leader of the baddies, who just happen to be old army buddies.

Comments: It was only when I sat down to watch this movie that I noticed the director's name. John Carl Buechler! A special effects guy who worked on a lot of horror movies in the 80s, before going on to direct a series of cheesy-bad flicks (Troll, Friday the 13th Part VII, Ghoulies III). Add to that a cast of washed-up genre veterans and it's fair to say my expectations were high!
And I'm happy to report this movie lived up to my expectations. But let me quantify that by adding that having to sit through the first three movies in this DVD set probably increased my enjoyment of Tyrannosaurus Wrecks (which is also known as The Eden Formula, a much lamer name).
What elevates this movie above the likes of 30,000 Leagues, Army of the Dead and Transmorphers is the acting (especially Todd, who hams it up), the comedy (which is actually, you know, funny!) and above all else its cheesyness. Tyrannosaurus Wrecks is at its best when the killer dino is on screen, a mix of stop animation and puppetry that's so unconvincing it'll have you laughing your ass off.
And unlike its aforementioned bretheren, this movie actually has gore! Sure, it's not the most convincing gore ever, but after sitting through three movies where the only blood was CGI-generated, I'll take multiple decapitations and body chomping any day of the week.
Tyrannosaurus Wrecks is a cheesy, fun, low-budget B-movie that definitely fits into the so-bad-it's-good category.

I Am Omega (2007)
Director: Griff Furst
Starring: Mark Dacascos, Geoff Meed, Jennifer Lee Wiggins
Plot: After a virus kills everyone on earth and turns the undead into zombies, Renchard (Dacascos) lives a lonely existence, roaming LA and killing zombies. But it turns out he isn't the last man on earth, and soon he's fighting against redneck militants (including Meed) as well as zombies, while trying to save the lovely Brianna (Wiggins).

Comments: The third Asylum feature in this set is definitely the best of them, but then that's faint praise isn't it? Taking into account its dirt-low budget, I Am Omega is actually a mildly-entertaining viewing experience.
This latest take on Richard Matheson's I Am Legend story unashamedly melts together that title (also used for the Will Smith version a few years back) and Omega Man, the 70s version with Charlton Heston. And let's not forget the best version of them all, Vincent Price's Last Man on Earth.
Taking a break from throwing out corny lines on Iron Chef America, Mark Dacascos (who I will always think of as the guy who replaced Brandon Lee as Eric Draven, taking up the mantle of The Crow for a late-90s TV series) is pretty good as the slightly-insane survivor. My only complaint is that apart from a short training scene and a tease involving nunchucks, Dacascos doesn't get to break out the martial arts. If director Furst had decided to go full hog and make this a cheesy guy-uses-karate-to-beat-zombies flick, it could have been legendary!
Instead we get a lot of boring set up in the first 45 minutes, before the action kicks in. But after that there's a good amount of bloody zombie-splattering and just barely enough plot to keep things interesting.
I know criticising technical aspects of a low-budget mockbuster doesn't make sense, but the editing (choppy in places and with long black screen transitions in others) here is annoying and distracting.
But I do love a good post-apocalyptic flick, and while I Am Omega rates well below the best of the genre (The Road Warrior, Escape from New York, Dawn of the Dead, The Road, Monsters, Zombieland, the list goes on and on), it's worth a watch if you've got nothing better to do.



Overall thoughts:
Best movie in this set: Tyrannosaurus Wrecks
Worst movie in this set: 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Is this set worth buying?: Well, it cost me $10. That's $2 a movie. How can you regret that? The only truly unwatchable movie is 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The other four range from barely watchable (Army of the Dead) to okay (Transmorphers, I Am Omega) to cheesy good fun (Tyrannosaurus Wrecks). I doubt I'll be watching any of these movies again, but for $10 you can't go wrong.

Drive-in Double Feature #1: May 1959

This is the first entry in a new semi-regular series here at Barbaric Bs of Schlocky Creek - the Drive-in Double Feature. The inspiration came from perusing some of the awesome retro double-bill newspaper adverts at one of my favourite blogs, Scenes from the Morgue (http://scenesfromthemorgue.wordpress.com/). I got to thinking how cool it would have been to see some of those double features back in the day at the drive in, and being the film nerd I am, my next thought was 'hey, I could do that now', minus the drive in of course.

So my wife and I sat down to watch two 1950s drive in movies (which played together in May 1959) back-to-back, and I even played some drive in "snack time" commercials in between. As I said, I'm a film nerd through and through.

Image courtesy of Scenes from the Morgue

Night of the Blood Beast (1958)

Director: Bernard L Kowalski

Starring: John Baer, Angela Greene, Ed Nelson, Georgianna Carter

 Format: Youtube

Plot: An astronaut returns from space dead. The base that recovered him is then cut off from the outside world by an alien. The revival of the dead astronaut, the death of a scientist, and the discovery of alien embryos inside the resurrected astronaut's body bodes ill for the survival of those trapped at the base and the rest of humanity.

Overall thoughts: You've heard of comfort food, right? Well, creaky old school B movies are the movie equivalent for me. Even if the movie itself isn't very good, watching black and white scifi/horror/whatever from the 30s, 40s and 50s usually puts a smile on my face. Night of the Blood Beast definitely falls into that category, and you'll probably need to share my perverse love of these schlockers to enjoy it. Like a lot of 50s scifi B movies, it's full of wonky science and ridiculous made-up techospeak dialogue. Director Kowalski (ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, KRAKATOA) doesn't have much of a script to work with (written by Roger Corman's brother Gene) and can't cover up the almost non-existent budget. He does manage to keep things interesting during the build-up to the arrival of the alien monster, which is when things turn to unintentional hilarity. It's not quite as bad as some other aliens (Robot Monster, It Conquered the World etc) from the time, but still laughable in a parrot-crossed-with-a-giant-slug kind of way. And naturally there's a morality message at the end, playing on audiences' fear of what space travel might eventually mean for mankind.

She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
Director: Roger Corman
Starring: Bill Cord, Don Durant, Lisa Montell
Format: AVI

Plot: Two men escaping the police by ship are blown off course by a typhoon and shipwrecked on an uncharted island populated by women who make a living diving for pearls. What the men don't know is that the women are also part of a shark cult that sacrifices young virgins to the sharks in the surrounding ocean in order to appease the shark gods.

Overall thoughts: How's that for a great title? It's a pity the movie can't live up to it. She Gods of Shark Reef was filmed in 1956 by King of the B-Movies Roger Corman while he was in Hawaii filming Naked Paradise. It was put on the shelf for a year and a half, before being released as the secondary film of this double feature with Night of the Blood Beast. The truth is it's just not very good. Sure, the locale makes for some nice scenery, and there are plenty of nubile island girls dancing their way around, but all of that wears thin after a while when there's no real action to break it up (besides the opening scene, which is quite good). The sharks are small and not scary at all, the "human sacrifice" is ho-hum, and the acting is (apart from Don Durant) uninspiring. There's also bad logic galore (why can they swim to and from the "shark reef" whenever they want without being attacked by the sharks?) and a script that doesn't deliver on some interesting plot points (the shady Island Company remains off-screen, which is a shame).  Not one of Roger Corman's best, and that's saying something.

VHS update May 25

31 Nights of Terror #29 - Sharktopus (2010)

Sharktopus (2010)
Director: Declan O'Brien
Starring: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bursin, Sara Lane, Hector Jimenez
Format: DVD (Anchor Bay)

- In case you've missed me saying this before, I'm a fan of Scifi (or Syfy as it is now) TV movies like this and I always expect three things - cheesy CGI, a nature-run-amok plotline and a washed up actor from the 80s.
- The bad CGI is on show early - lesss than two minutes into Sharktopus we have some of the worst computer graphics I have ever seen.
- Washed up actor: Come on down Eric Roberts!
- Roger Corman alert! The King plays a pervy beachgoer who sees a girl get chomped by the titular creature and doesn't give it a second thought.
- The dialog makes me want to stab out my own eardrums.
- I've often wondered what became of Hector Jimenez after his awesome role in Nacho Libre. Now I know. His career has nosedived into this dreck.
- That's one more reason why I will never go bungee-jumping.
- So apparently the bungee-jumper who bought it was Roger and Julie Corman's daughter Mary.
- Okay, so not only is it half-shark and half-octopus, but it makes a roaring noise that can be heard even when it's underwater.
- Worst acting I've seen in a good while: Guy on beach who sees his buddy getting eaten by Sharktopus and has an expression on his face that's one of mild disinterest.
- Please, make it stop. The dialogue, the acting. Somebody make it stop.
- Thank God for Stumble so I don't have to keep watching this crap.
- Lol. That was a funny website. Sharktopus? Oh, right. That's still playing in the background and still sucking donkey scrote.
- It's over! Yay, it's over!

Overall thoughts: Yep, they messed up a movie about a freaking half-shark, half-octopus creature. How did they do it? Well, the bad CGI I can forgive, since that's par for the course with these movies. But the acting was pitifully monotone, the characters uninteresting, the dialogue written by a socially-inept monkey, and the plot more predictable than a fight between a pit bull and a kitten. I thought Eric Roberts might be able to salvage it, but even he phoned it in. Sharktopus does not have one single redeeming quality. Avoid at all costs or run the risk of wanting to club yourself to death with the nearest heavy object.

31 Nights of Terror #17 - Bats: Human Harvest (2007)

Bats: Human Harvest (2007)
Director: Jamie Dixon
Starring: David Chokachi, Michael Jace, Pollyanna McIntosh, Marty Papazian
Format: DVD (Sony Pictures)

- There in the opening credits is the magic word: Scifi (as in the TV channel they stupidly renamed Syfy). I've said in past reviews that Scifi made-for-TV movies are a definite guilty pleasure of mine.
- To recap, when I watch Scifi movies my expectations lower and I know I'm going to get a few key elements: Bad CGI, a washed-up big name actor or two, and loads of cheese.
- I sure hope this movie can live up to the standards set by the awesome killer bat movies of the past, like, uh... hmmm. Now that I come to think of it I don't remember ever seeing a good killer bat movie.
- I'm surprised there hasn't been more horror set in modern day Afghanistan (ie warzone), or maybe I've just missed them? I only remember Sand Serpents from 2009, which was pretty decent.
- The aforementioned washed-up actor here is David Chokachi, who apparently played a lifeguard on Baywatch.
- And the bad CGI? Well, apart from the killer bats, all of the helicopter shots are quite obviously computer-generated.
- Hey, it's Pollyanna McIntosh, who played the feral woman in Lucky McKee's messed up little flick The Woman (the review of which you can find on this blog).
- Okay, so this didn't stay in Afghanistan for long. Looks like Chechnya is going to be the setting for the rest of the movie.
- The bats disarmed that Chechnyan rebel. He's 'armless now.
- I just remembered a good killer bats movie, Bats, the one with Lou Diamond Phillips. No wait, that was awful.
- Oh, how about Fangs, the one with Corbin Bernsen from 2002? Nope, even worse.
- Hang on, according to IMDB this is a sequel to the Lou Diamond Phillips flick? Okay then.
- Over-used corny line #1: "You hear that?", "What?", "Nothing. No birds, no animals. It's too quiet."
- Over-used corny line #2: "I'm not going anywhere. I'm bleeding to death. You go, I'll get these bastards."
- These bats are apparently able to camoflage themselves against trees, or something like that. I dunno, I'm kind of zoning out.
- To summarise the last third of the movie: Explosions, bats swooping about, explosions, more bats, evil scientist guy is captured, explosions, more bats, big explosion, the end.

Overall thoughts: I mentioned in my notes that my expectations lower for Scifi TV movies, which is maybe why I usually end up enjoying them. Bats: Human Harvest is pretty much on par with most of its ilk, except for one thing that made it boring for me. Bats. They're just not a very interesting "killer creature" as far as I'm concerned. You always know the bats are fake and people running around swatting at the sky doesn't build suspense or terror. I doubt anyone could make a killer bats story that would keep my interest.

31 Nights of Terror #2 - Xtro (1983)

Xtro (1983)
Director: Harry Bromley Davenport
Starring: Philip Sayer, Bernice Stagers, Danny Brainin
Format: VHS (Thorn/EMI)

- Alright here we go with a movie I've been aware of for years but have never seen before now.
- Huh, I wasn't expecting it to be British.
- Bond Girl Maryam D'Abo in her early 20s. Mmmmm.
- Ah the 80s, when even the English had mullets.
- Dogs can always sense when there's a slimey space monster lurking about. Yep, the same creatures that eat vomit and lick their own asses are geniuses.
- Wait, did the monster just eat that woman or copulate with her?
- The monster effects haven't been too great so far, but the synth music soundtrack (which IMDB.com tells me was done by the director) provides suspense, shock and more than little bit of weirdness to proceedings.
- Well, I guess that answers my question about eating/copulating. One of the surrealist alien births I've ever seen.
- Naked Maryam D'Abo. Three words that should make any red-blooded male want to see this movie.
- Plot so far: Guy gets abducted by aliens then returns three years later. He tries to pick up where he left off with his wife and son, but his wife has since shacked up with another guy. Naturally dear old Dad starts acting strangely.
- D'Abo is extremely sexy but her ever-changing accent is distracting.
- Midget clown alert!
- And it just got weirder. Yes, weirder than a midget clown.
- There has been very little in the way of blood and gore so far. I've just checked and my VHS appears to be uncut at 83 minutes long.
- The monster effects got better towards the end.
- The ending opens the way for sequels. I believe two were made, but not sure if they follow narrative-wise or just in name.

Overall thoughts: I've heard this movie referred to as a "mess", but as far as plot goes it's actually pretty straight forward, in that everything at least makes sense. But at the same time there are definitely quite a few trippy, offbeat (or, in the modern parlance - WTF?) moments. The monster effects range from quite bad to quite good and the musical soundtrack is extremely effective in adding to the surreality. I guess the word I would use to sum Xtro is "different", which is a good thing, trust me. I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite like Xtro.

August 9 - City Limits (1984)

The cover of my VHS copy of City Limits

City Limits (1984)
Director: Aaron Lipstadt
Format: VHS (Vestron)

In the future a plague has wiped out most of the population. Motorcycle gangs the Clippers and the DAs share control of a major US city, fighting gunless battles. Young Lee (John Stockwall, CHRISTINE) leaves the desert and goes to the city in search of adventure and joins the Clippers. A corporation from outside the city sides with the DAs, but wants control of the whole city, so starts breaking the rules. Lee and the Clippers must fight back, and soon they unite with the DAs to try to rid their city of the evil outsiders.

This was the second film by director Aaron Lipstadt, who went on to a lengthy career directing TV. It's easy to see how he made that transition, because City Limits has a definite television feel to it. The fights and violence are done in a non-exploitive way and the overall vibe is that of a slightly grittier version of an 80s TV show like Street Hawk or Blue Thunder.

Like most 80s futuristic scifi action flicks, this one is clearly influenced by The Road Warrior, with lots of bulky costumes and motorbikes covered in armor. The sets are your usual post-apocalyptic cityscapes.

The acting is really quite good. Stockwell does a good enough job as the naive young hero and is ably supported by a cast that includes legend James Earl Jones (two years after his villainous turn in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, but back to playing a good guy role) and a whole host of young up and comers. They include Rae Dawn Chong (a year before her star turn in COMMANDO) and Kim Cattrall (already established as an actress but a couple of years prior to breaking out in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and MANNEQUIN).

Also in the cast are familiar faces Robby Benson (WALK PROUD), John Diehl (KICKBOXER 2) and DON OPPER (CRITTERS franchise), who also helped write City Limits. And look out for bit parts by stuntman extraordinaire Gene LeBell and Jason Vorhees himself, Kane Hodder.

The biggest failing is the plot. It lacks direction and just seems to meander along. The concepts are good, but Opper, Lipstadt and company just plain failed to turn them into anything noteworthy.

That's not to say City Limits isn't worth watching. It has a great cast, some interesting ideas and the odd piece of good action. Oh, and Kim Cattrall gets her kit off.

July 18 - Dead Space (1991)

The cover of my VHS copy of Dead Space

Dead Space (1991)
Director: Fred Gallo
Format: VHS (Video Box Office)

If you've been following my blog for a while, you probably know that I'm an unashamed fan of Roger Corman (as shown by my Cormania movie marathon), as any true b-movie fan should be. The King of B Movies is, was and always will be the man when it comes to cutting corners and getting results on low budgets.

Dead Space is a prime example of Corman's recycling abilities. Not his skill at deftly sorting plastic and glass ahead of trash day, his ability to take his earlier projects and reuse footage/scripts/ideas time and time again.

To the uninformed Dead Space plays like a straight forward ripoff of Alien. Heck, Alien and Aliens have been ripped off (badly) so many times, it's a safe bet to think Fred Gallo went that way here, right?

Wrong. What we have here is in fact a remake of an Alien ripoff, which reuses footage from a Star Wars ripoff. Got all that?

Roger Corman is the common thread. He's Executive Producer here and Dead Space is a remake of his 1982 effort Forbidden World (which was clearly inspired by Alien). There's spaceship fight scenes lifted from Battle Beyond the Stars, another Corman masterpiece.

This is the feature film debut of director Fred Gallo (who went on to helm such quality fare as DRACULA RISING and STARQUEST II). It stars Marc Singer (BEASTMASTER, V) as a Han Solo-esque wise-cracking spaceship commander named Krieger (who instead of a Wookie companion has a robot buddy named Tinpan). They respond to a distress call and travel to a planet where scientists have created a kind of mutant virus that has broken free and is out of control.

The virus quickly takes monster form and it's up to Krieger and Tinpan to help the scientists survive. Among them is a pretty female scientist who quickly becomes Krieger's love interest (played by Laura May Tate of SUBSPECIES) and another played by future TV star Bryan Cranston (of Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad fame).

Dead Space does it level best to be Alien, but of course it falls short. It's a copy of a copy and like a third-generation videotape it's watchable in parts but unwatchable in others. Singer is as solid as ever, the support cast is good enough, and there are fleeting moments of claustrophobic dread, but what really lets Dead Space down (but also adds to the cheese factor) is the alien/monster effects.

Whereas Alien and its sequels had top notch monster effects, here you get rubber puppets with barely any movement. It's impossible to take it seriously and it pushes Dead Space from scifi/horror to unintentional comedy pretty quickly.

It's a shame, because there's nothing overly campy or cheesy about the rest of the movie. Decent monster effects could have made this a good movie. Instead it's stuck halfway between being good and being so bad it's good. I guess that leaves it being just plain bad, but at the same time there's a certain charm to Dead Space and it's not a complete waste of time.

Previews on my VHS: Double Impact, The Taking of Beverly Hills, Boyz in the Hood, The Unborn, Disturbed, Mystery Date

July 15 - Slither (2006)

Slither (2006)
Director: James Gunn
Format: DVD

This is one of those movies I've seen around a lot over the past five years and have always been intrigued by the great cover art, but our paths just haven't crossed. I bought it on DVD a few weeks back and tonight popped it in seeking a fun, popcorn movie night for me and the wife.

And boy we weren't disappointed! What a great, fun movie. It's a clear homage to the scifi movies of the 50s and 60s, with lots of humour and gore. There's so many influences it'd be hard to list them all, but the best I can do is describe it as Night of the Creeps meets The Blob meets Night of the Living Dead meets Tremors.

A comet crashes to earth and some kind of slug-like creature emerges to wreak havoc on a small rural American town. The colourfully-named Grant Grant (Michael Rooker, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) is infected and begins changing into a blob-like creature that feeds off stray animals. Determined to stop him are his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks, SPIDERMAN) and her childhood flame, now the town sheriff, Bill (Nathan Fillion, SERENITY). But soon thousands of alien slugs are scurrying around town, slithering into the mouths of people and turning them into zombies.

Rooker is as great as ever, Banks does a good job as the attractive damsel in distress and I actually liked Fillion in this. I haven't seen Firefly or Serenity, but I find him gratingly smarmy in his TV series CASTLE. Here his dry humor works with the outrageous things happening around him. The highlight of the acting is definitely the performance of Gregg Henry (RAISING CAIN) as the weaselly town mayor.

Writer/director James Gunn (the screenwriter on the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) has to be commended for making this so much fun without making it overtly silly. Sure, there's some wacky stuff that goes on, but mostly it's played straight with moments of humour. There's no T&A, but oodles of gore (a man gets split in half, a woman explodes etc).

All in all this is one of the most fun movie nights I've had in a while.

July 14 - American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)

The cover of my VHS copy of American Cyborg: Steel Warrior

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)
Director: Boaz Davidson
Format: VHS (Cannon)

Just one of many in a long line of low budget early 90s scifi actioners directly inspired by Terminator 2: Judgement Day, this clumsily-titled flick is an above average effort, filmed in Tel Aviv, Israel by Palestinian director Boaz Davidson.

It's one of two scifi movies Davidson helmed in the space of three years, the other one being the Michael Pare vehicle Lunar Cop (which I've previously reviewed). This one is a major improvement over that - my major gripe with Lunar Cop was its unfuturistic future sets, but here the sets are dark and dirty as they should be in a post-apocalyptic tale.

The male lead, Joe Lara, is also a big improvement on Pare. Lara's not going to win any acting awards, but he's believable as a brooding action hero.

After derivative opening narration that fills us in about mankind going sterile and cyborgs now ruling the roost, we meet Mary (Nicole Hansen). She's humankind's last hope, a pregnant female (although her creepy-as-hell fetus is out of her body and riding around in a plastic jar). She needs to get to the port of the ravaged city to catch a ride to Europe, but out to stop her is a cyborg (John Saint Ryan, DELTA FORCE 3).

To Mary's rescue comes street warrior Austin (Lara, STEEL FRONTIER) and together they battle their way through the city to get to the port, encountering various cyberpunk-esque characters along the way and battling the chasing cyborg. Naturally they fall in love in the process and there's a nice plot twist towards the end.

The acting is good for a movie with such a low budget (and missing any big name actors) and, as I previously mentioned, the post-apocalyptic cityscape sets are nicely done. The fight scenes are good enough, mainly consisting of gunfights and martial arts. My only real gripe is that the cyborg could have been more menacing - he just plain sucks at shooting people only a few feet away and struggles to beat a puny guy like Austin in hand-to-hand combat. He does have a nice spin kick though, something Arnie never had.

There's no gore to speak of and the closest we get to T&A is Hansen showing off some decent cleavage and pouring water over herself. This movie rates low on the unintentional humour front and there's not much in the way of cheesiness. It's just a solid low budget scifi actioner which did enough to keep me interested from start to finish.

Previews on my VHS: Stalin, The Bodyguard, Unforgiven, To The Death, Tommyknockers

June 18 - Zarkorr! The Invader (1996)

The cover of my VHS copy of Zarkorr! The Invader

Zarkorr! The Invader (1996)
Directors: Michael Deak, Aaron Osborne
Format: VHS (Video Unlimited)

What would happen if Full Moon, the now-defunct production company responsible for a string of demon doll movies (Puppetmaster series, Dollman vs Demonic Toys etc), went to the other end of the scale with a Godzilla-esque rubber suit monster flick?

Luckily for me, I won't have to go to my grave without ever knowing the answer to that question, because I've now seen Zarkorr! The Invader.

After the titular Zarkorr ("185 feet tall, 300 tons & deadly laser eyes" the front cover screams) busts its way out of the side of a mountain, New Jersey postal worker Tommy Ward (Rhys Pugh) is visited by a pint-sized alien who tells him he's been chosen to save mankind from the monster (apparently because he's the most average person on the planet).

He kidnaps a crypto-zoologist (Deprise Grossman) and enlists a cop to help his cause. They in turn go to a nerdy genius (Charles Schneider, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR) and spend what seems like an age in his laboratory talking about how to beat Zarkorr. Determining that they need to go to Arizona to find the monster's off-switch (or some such baloney), our trio impersonate government agents and head off. They find some kind of egg and use it to defeat Zarkorr. The End.

While the plot has a few quirky elements, it doesn't throw up any surprises. The actors are a bunch of nobodies. In fact the male and female leads have no other credits to their names. Schneider is the standout, both for giving the most lively performance and the most grating one. Boy does he ham it up bigtime.

The one thing that I will forever associate with Full Moon movies is chintzy keyboard music. Zarkorr doesn't disappoint on that front, with Richard Band once again twinkling the keys with cheesy enthusiasm.

And what about the monster effects? This is a man-in-rubber-suit monster mash right? Yes it is, and there are enough shots of Zarkorr laying the smackdown on model buildings to keep most kaijuu fans happy.

Zarkorr doesn't take itself seriously and has the right vibe for what it is - a low budget American homage to Toho movies (Godzilla, Mothra etc). Go into it with the right mindset and you're in for a fun time.

June 13 - Hellhole (1985)

The cover of my VHS copy of Hellhole

Hellhole (1985)
Director: Pierre De Moro
Format: VHS (Hoyts)

Hellhole is a nifty little women in prison exploitation flick, transplanted from the usual prison setting to a mental hospital, produced by b-movie auteur Samuel Z Arkoff and his son Lou.

Susan (Judy Landers - who looks damn recognisable but I can't place where I know her from, even with the help of IMDB) witnesses her mother being murdered by a sleazeball called Silk (Ray Sharkey) and ends up in a mental institution with amnesia. Silk disguises himself as an orderly to try to find out the location of discriminating papers, but he's not Susan's biggest problem.

The mental hospital is run by the evil Dr Fletcher (Mary Woronov, DEATH RACE 2000), who is turning patients into zombies for her own sexual perversion in a hidden dungeon the patients call Hellhole. Coming to Susan's aid is an orderly (Richard Cox, THE VINDICATOR), and together they try to uncover Dr Fletcher's secret and expose it to the world, while avoiding Silk, some of the nastier patients and Dr Fletcher's corrupt security guards (including Robert Z'Dar from the MANIAC COP series, in one of his earliest roles).

Hellhole is full of the standard WIP fare, with bucketloads of full frontal nudity. There's a topless fistfight in the girls' shower room with a dozen or so naked girls cheering, two lesbian scenes and even a threesome in a mudbath.

The horror elements are minimal, although the "zombie" patients make for some nice, chilling moments. Woronov is in great campy form as the deviant lesbian boss woman and Sharkey oozes sleaze while looking like the lovechild of Freddie Mercury and Bowser from Sha Na Na.

For a movie with a great title like Hellhole, I would have liked to have seen more gore, but it delivers as a WIP sexploitation flick, with an abundance of naked chicks with 80s hair.

Previews on my VHS: American Ninja, White Nights, Santa Claus: The Movie

June 6 - Project Shadowchaser

Not the cover of my VHS copy of Project Shadowchaser

Project Shadowchaser (1992)
Director: John Eyres
Format: VHS (Hoyts Home Video)

I'm sure most b-movie enthusiasts find themselves in this situation: You see a tagline like "Die Hard meets the Terminator" on the front cover of a movie and, knowing that it can't possibly live up to the either of those movies, decide you just have to watch it.

That exact tagline is on the cover of my VHS copy of Project Shadowchaser, and yes, I just had to watch it. Looking over the cast, I saw the names Martin Kove and Frank Zagarino, and the need to watch grew even greater! The Kobra Kai sensei and Argan from Barbarian Queen in the same movie? Sign me up!

Directed by John Eyres (who helmed the not-bad 2001 teeny horror flick RIPPER), Project Shadowchaser is set in the future, when a team of terrorists led by silver-haired cyborg Romulus (Zagarino) take over a hospital and hold the President's daughter (the weird-eyed Meg Foster, THEY LIVE) hostage. The FBI (led by Paul Koslo of ROBOT JOX) order the hospital's architect unfrozen from the jail he is in for murder, so they can get inside the building and free her.

The only problem is they unfreeze the wrong man, Desilva (Kove), who plays along with the mistake on a promise of a full pardon. When the team of agents sent in with him winds up dead, it's up to Desilva to try to beat the terrorists himself. He rescues the President's daughter, but rather than escape she chooses to stay and kick some terrorist butt with Desilva. Romulus proves to be virtually unbeatable, leading to a showdown between man (and woman) and machine.

Joss Ackland (Hans in MIGHTY DUCKS) also features as the scientist creator of Romulus.

Everything you need to know about Project Shadowchaser is in that tagline I mentioned at the start of this review. There's lots of crawling around a high-rise building attacking baddies ala Die Hard, and Romulus is clearly a Terminator rip off. Of course, Martin Kove isn't Bruce Willis and Frank Zagarino isn't Arnie, but Kove has barely enough charisma to pull it off and Zagarino is actually quite good as a cyborg. I was critical of his wooden acting in my review of Barbarian Queen, but here it's an asset.

There's nothing special about Project Shadowchaser - the special effects, camera work and fight scenes are okay if unspectacular. It rates poorly on the cheesyness scale, so don't expect any unintentional laughs. But hey, it's an okay way to spend an hour and a half.

Previews on my VHS: Strictly Ballroom, 1492, Stepfather 3, Prototype, Hangin' with the Homeboys, Bram Stoker's Dracula

CORMANIA 2011 #8 - Attack of the Giant Leeches

10.14am - Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
Our King's role: Executive producer
Cast: Ken Clark (12 TO THE MOON), Yvette Vickers (REFORM SCHOOL GIRL), Jan Shepherd (KING CREOLE)

Plot: Down in the bayou, an old trapper sees a giant creature in the water, but his buddies don't believe him. He turns up dead, discovered by ranger Steve Benton (Clark) and his girl (Shepherd). Then other people start disappearing and it's up to our intrepid couple to try to discover what the creatures are and destroy them.

Observations:
- Full disclosure: I have seen this movie before, but not for quite a few years.
- Love the organ music that accompanies the opening credits. Definitely gets you in the mood for some good ol' 50s scifi b-movie greatness.
- Ah, domestic violence. "Some day I'm gonna give that shecat the whuppin' she deserves".
- Damn that's a small robe Yvette Vickers is wearing.
- Classic line: "Oh, go soak your fat head".
- Poor old storekeeper Dave Walker. His cute young wife gives him grief and she's screwing around on the side.
- A young couple can't outrun a big ol' fat guy? Really?
- Men in rubber suits alert!
- Nan. There's a name you don't see young women using much these days.
- Nothing takes the work out of canoeing better than drinking moonshine out of a jug.
- Man, those rubber suits are awesome.
- Nice shots of bodies floating up through the water.
- Gotta love hokey science. Apparently these giant leeches might have been caused by "some kind of gigantism" caused by atomic energy from rocket launches at nearby Cape Canaveral.
- Hmmmm, it must be cold in that water. Her headlights are on full beam.
- There ain't no problem dynamite can't solve.

Overall thoughts: If you're a fan of low budget 1950s scifi monster movies, this is right up your alley. Of course by today's standards it's all a bit hokey, but take yourself back to when this movie was released and it must have been quite chilling. Despite Mystery Theatre 3000 having riffed on this, it's actually a fairly decent little movie. Gotta love those rubber suit monsters!

June 1 - Digital Man

The cover of my VHS copy of Digital Man

Digital Man (1995)
Director: Phillip J. Roth
Format: VHS (20th Century Fox)

After being on a bit of a war movie kick lately, I decided I needed something completely different and cheesy 90s scifi seemed like just the thing. With a line on the back of the VHS that says "He's Terminator, Cyborg and Robocop welded into one", along with a photo of Adam Baldwin, my hopes were high.

I've never heard of director Phillip J. Roth, but it seems he has a thing for cyborgs. His credits include such legendary titles (yes, that's sarcasm) as APEX, Prototype and Interceptor Force 2.

After some cheesy Playstation-esque CGI in the opening sequence, we're thrust into a situation somewhere in space in the future, where terrorists have stolen the launch codes for dozens of nuclear missiles. In response, the authorities send Digital Man (Matthias Hues, KICKBOXER 2 - minus his trademark long blonde hair) to take care of business.

On the flight back from taking out the terrorists, a botched sabotage attempt sees D1 (as Digital Man is officially known) crash land back on earth, in the desolate desert landscape of the Badwater nuclear testing range. The authorities, fearing that D1 has gone rogue, send a crack team of space commandos to decommission him and take back the launch codes.

There are civilians - made up of various cartoonish rednecks - living in Badwater, who soon find that D1 doesn't come in peace. The commandos (led by Kristen Dalton of the DEAD ZONE TV series and Ken Olandt of SUMMER SCHOOL, offering a romantic subplot) come to the defence of the locals, engaging in a series of explosion-laden throwdowns with Digital Man. Can they stop him before he transmits the launch codes and brings armageddon?

Digital Man is a sci-fi western (the soundtrack even features harmonica music). It takes the basic plot of countless westerns (including a number of Clint Eastwood vessels) of a lone stranger coming to town to protect its inhabitants from a ruthless gang of baddies and flips it on its head. So instead we have a gang of good guys protecting the locals from one ruthless stranger (although D1 never comes across as overtly evil, no matter how many innocent people he knocks off).

The line I mentioned from the back of the VHS correctly suggests that Roth unashamedly rips off bigger-budget scifi fare. The fact that Hues speaks with an Eastern European accent (he's German) makes the comparisons with The Terminator unavoidable, but the D1 POV shots with computer options are right out of Robocop.

The costumes are fantastically hokey - Digital Man and the commandos shoot guns that look like giant leafblowers, and the commandos' costumes consist of silver American Football pads over black clothing. The special effects are just as cheesy, particularly anything involving a spaceship or lasers, but there are plenty of big, pretty explosions to make up for it.

The cast of Digital Man includes lots of recognisable faces. On top of the always-enjoyable non-Baldwin-brother Adam Baldwin (PREDATOR 2) there's Paul Gleason (MANIAC COP 3), Ed Lauter (DEATH WISH 3), Don Swayze (DRIVING FORCE), Amanda Wyss (NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST) and even a brief appearance by Clint Howard (EVILSPEAK). The most fun character is a gun-toting granny played by the always-lively Susan Tyrrell, who is on screen too briefly to be able to to ham it up like she did in John Water's CRY-BABY, but still stands out.

Digital Man is good corny fun. Fans of scifi western should enjoy it, as should anyone looking for scifi that's not too heavy on plot and full of flashy explosions. I'm pretty sure it's never had a DVD release, but if you happen to come across the VHS, check it out.

Previews on my VHS: Buffalo Girls, Warriors, Never Say Die, Nine Months, The Brothers McMullen.

May 24 - Sinai Commandos and a Franco Nero double feature

Today's viewing consisted of a nice little triple feature of b-movies set in exotic places - the Middle East, Colombia and Mexico - two of them featuring Italian action star Franco Nero.



Sinai Commandos (1968)
Director: Raphael Nussbaum
Format: DVD (First Look's Grindhouse Experience Vol 2)

The concept of a rag-tag bunch of soldiers fighting their way through enemy territory to destroy a radar station/ammunition dump/gun position/whatever has been done countless times in war and action movies. But while the setting for these tales is usually World War II (Pacific, Europe or North Africa), Vietnam or Korea, Sinai Commandos offers a new setting - the Six Day War in the Middle East.

I'll admit to knowing very little about that conflict before watching this movie (and subsequently doing some internet research). As the name would suggest, it was fought for six days (June 5-10 1967), between Israel and the combined forces of its Arab neighbours.

Depending on your political leaning, the war was either an act of aggression by Israel or a pre-emptive strike of a defensive nature. Either way, when all was said and done, Israel had taken control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Golan Heights from Syria and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.

But enough about the history - you want to know about Sinai Commandos, am I right? Well, needless to say this Israeli-American-German production is firmly on the side of Israel being the heroic underdogs fighting back against the evil Arabs.

Directed by German Raphael Nussbaum (whose credits also include 1976's intriguingly-named THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA), it stars Robert Fuller (a veteran of westerns, including long stints on TV shows LARAMIE and WAGON TRAIN) as the leader of a group of Israeli soldiers sent into the Egypt-held Sinai region to blow up a radar station that will allow Israel to turn the tide in the war.

Joining their mission is a pretty woman (Esther Ulmann - her only acting credit) who sneaks them into enemy territory on her father's speedboat and tags along after the boat is sunk. The rest of the commando characters aren't fleshed out too much, with the exception of womanising Private Bulgaro (Reuven Bar-Yotam, making his on screen debut before going on to a career in US television).

While things start off quite slowly, once the action starts Nussbaum does a good enough job of keeping things interesting. As you would probably expect from a movie of this nature, the plot boils down to a string of firefights, as the commandos move on from one incident to the next amidst the barren rock landscape of the Sinai.

Baring in mind this movie was made in 1968 (they didn't mess around in getting it done after the war), it's missing the trappings of later war-action movies. Forget outrageous explosions and cartoonish characters, but if you're after a straight forward war flick with lots of machine guns and grenades, Sinai Commandos is worth a watch.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. History lesson over.



Alien Terminator (1988)
Director: Nello Rosatti
Format: AVI (VHSrip)

When I was preparing to sit down and watch this, I thought it was the 1995 film with the same name, an erotic scifi flick starring former Las Vegas showgirl Maria Ford. That's the problem when all you've got is a computer file with a name - there's no cover, so mix ups can happen.

So imagine my delight when I started watching and the opening credits appeared. Franco Nero! George Kennedy! Directed by Nello Rosatti!

Instead of a bad 90s skin flick, here we've got an Italian production, shot in Colombia, which was originally titled Top Line. Alien Terminator is the name it got upon video release in the UK.

The previous year Rosatti had
directed Django 2, the sequel
to the groundbreaking 1966 scifi western Django. The sequel once again starred the great Franco Nero as the title character and was filmed in Colombia. It doesn't take much deduction to figure out Rosatti probably filmed Alien Terminator while he was on location, especially since the two movies share another couple of actors in common - William Berger and Rodrigo Obregon.

Nero plays drunken author Ted Angelo, who lives in Colombia on the dollar of his rich publisher ex-wife (Mary Stavin, HOWLING V). When he comes across some priceless Aztec artefacts that get his museum curator friend (Berger) killed, he and his friend's assistant (the lovely Deborah Moore, WARRIORS OF THE APOCALYPSE) are thrown into a dangerous series of events that involve secret agents, an evil artefact collector (Kennedy, COOL HAND LUKE) and a UFO buried inside a mountain.

The first two thirds of the movie are entertaining enough, unfolding like a jungle adventure mystery, but with a name like Alien Terminator you could be forgiven for expecting more... well, alien terminators. For that you'll have to wait until the last third, which is thankfully when things really pick up. As well as the long-awaited arrival of a terminator-ripoff alien robot, there's also an exciting highspeed pursuit through windy mountain roads with Angelo on the back of a truck being driven by drunk chicken farmer, as well as shootouts, explosions and a twist ending that's nicely done.

Nero struggles through his lines in English, but does well as an ageing action star. His funniest line comes during a shootout with the alien terminator, when his lady friend asks "Who could have built a machine like that?" and he replies "Not even the Japanese".

It's a shame there couldn't have been more of the fun stuff in the last portion of this movie throughout its running time, as the build up takes a bit too long to get going. But if you go into Alien Terminator knowing what to expect - a jungle adventure with some elements of scifi - you shouldn't be disappointed.



The Shark Hunter (1979)
Director: Enzo G Castellari
Format: DVD (First Look's Grindhouse Experience Vol 2)

In the late 70s, Jaws rip-offs were a dime a dozen. Following Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster came Mako: Jaws of Death (1976), Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), Piranha (1978) and a whole host more.

The Shark Hunter (aka Il cacciatore di squali, aka El cazador de Tiburones) isn't a direct riff on the adventures of Bruce the shark, but it is clearly cashing in on the craze. Directed by Enzo G Castellari (1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS), it stars Franco Nero (DJANGO) as a Quint-esque grizzled shark hunter haunted by the past. In his case it's the deaths of his wife and child and a plane crash in the waters off Mexico.

Sporting ridiculous long blonde hair, Nero's character (Mike di Donato) lives at a Mexican beach resort (shades of the other Nero movie I've watched today, where he was an American living in Colombia). He is
happy hunting sharks, but has also devised a plan to
retrieve 100 million dollars from the sunken plane
from which he was the only survivor.

A local crimelord (Eduardo Fajardo, DJANGO) and his assorted hired muscle are also after the money, as is a former colleague of di Donato's from a shady American agency (Michael Forest, BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE). Jorge Luke (CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER) offers the comic relief as loud mouth local Acapulco, who becomes di Donato's sidekick.

The race is on for the money, with plenty of shoot outs, explosions, fist fights and high speed chases (including one between a seaplane and a speedboat) to keep things interesting. And the sharks? Well, they mostly just swim around looking menacing until the finale, when they finally get to chomp on some suckas.

The DVD I watched was a straight rip of a VHS (with hard Dutch subtitles), so the picture quality wasn't that great. A lot of the underwater shots were too dark to see what was going on, but luckily there's not too many of them.

The Shark Hunter is above-average 1970s action and a must for any fans of Franco Nero.