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.

Blastfighter (1984)

 The cover of my VHS copy of Blastfighter

Blastfighter (1984)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Starring: Michael Sopkiw, Valentina Forte, George Eastman

Format: VHS (Medusa)

Italian director Lamberto Bava is best known to most of us as the son of the great Mario Bava and for his gory horror movies Demons and Demons 2. But he dabbled in other genres as well. In 1984 he helmed two action movies, the much-maligned Devil Fish (victim of a MST3K lampooning) and the lesser-known Blastfighter.

Jake "Tiger" Sharp (Sopkiw, 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK) is an ex-cop just released from jail for the murder of the man who killed his wife. He heads to his old hometown in the mountains of Georgia, where he is soon butting heads with the redneck locals, led by former rival Tom (George Eastman, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS). Tom, his brother Wally (Stefano Mingardo, ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS) and their hillbilly buddies are torturing wildlife for a Hong Kong businessman, who uses the animals to make aphrodisiacs for the Asian market.

Tiger's daughter Connie (Valentina Forte) shows up unexpectedly and after the war escalates father and daughter are soon fleeing the killer hillbillies through the mountain forest. With his back against the wall, Tiger retrieves a special gun given to him by a cop buddy and goes on the rampage, killing the rednecks off until he faces a final showdown with Tom.

Plot-wise, Blastfighter is a fairly predictable revenge-in-the-woods flick with elements of Deliverance, Walking Tall and First Blood. If it were an American production it would definitely be worth watching, but the Italian influence makes it even more fun. It's got the overdubbed voices we all love from Italian cinema (including some hiliarious redneck accents), a synth-heavy Euro soundtrack by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis (who did a bunch of Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill comedies), and even a cameo by another Italian director, Michele Soavi (CEMETERY MAN), who was assistant director for this film.

Most of the fun comes from the Italian take on American hillbillies, which is pretty campy, and there's more unintentional humour in famiiliar places (like vehicles exploding in huge fireballs from just a small crash into a ditch). There's also a really cool action set piece towards the end, with lots of explosions, smoke and spotlights, and the final shot (playing off an earlier scene of a truck full of animal carcasses) is well done.

Blastfighter is an excellent revenge flick and well worth hunting down, if you'll excuse the pun.

SUMMER OF 87: Finished

It's just after 10pm on Saturday night and the SUMMER OF 87 VHSATHON has come to a close, 36 hours after it started.

In those 36 hours I've watched 12 movies, all of them released in the year 1987 and all on VHS. It's been fun. I got to see my first Andy Sidaris movie and I loved it. The good movies (Hard Ticket to Hawaii, American Ninja 2, The Stepfather, I Was a Teenage Vampire, Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission, Creepshow 2, Death Wish 4, Three for the Road) vastly outweighed the bad ones (Hello Mary Lou, Teen Wolf Too, Munchies) 8 to 3, which is an equation I'll take any day. There weren't as many action flicks as I would have liked, but I was restricted to what I had on hand on VHS. And the main thing is I made myself watch 11 movies for the first time, many of which I've repeatedly passed over on my shelves.

So, all in all SUMMER OF 87 was another fun edition of what has now become an annual movie marathon at Queen's Birthday Weekend. Who knows what next year will bring?

SUMMER OF 87 #12 - Three for the Road

The cover of my VHS copy of Three for the Road

 

8.15pm, Day 2:
Three for the Road
Director: Bill L Norton
Starring: Charlie Sheen, Kerri Green, Alan Ruck, Blair Tefkin
Format: VHS (Roadshow)

Plot: A crafty political aide (Sheen) and his soft-spoken pal (Ruck) are assigned the job of delivering a senator's out-of-control teenage daughter (Green) to an institution.

- NOTE: I was originally going to end this marathon with NEAR DARK, easily my favourite vampire movie of all time. But I watch that one a lot, and my wife decided to join me for this finale, so I picked something we could enjoy together. So comedy it is.
- This movie is like a convergence of two of my favourite 80s movies, bringing together Charlie Sheen and Alan Ruck (both in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF) and Kerri Green (who was in THE GOONIES). Sheen and Ruck also acted together on the TV series Spin City and Sheen and Green starred together in 1986's LUCAS (with Corey Haim).
- I've never seen this movie. In fact, before I found it on VHS I had never heard of it. I don't think it's ever been released on DVD.
- Hey, it's Uncle Phil (James Avery from Fresh Prince of Bel Air) as a Jesus-freak truck driver.
- Nice undies Charlie.
- Blair Tefkin. I remember her from the original scifi series V, a role she got when Dominique Dunne was murdered (look it up if you're unfamiliar with the case). Here Blair is definitely switching things up from her square girl role in V, as she plays a fast-talking southern party girl.

Overall thoughts: This seems to be a forgotten 80s comedy - you just don't hear anything about it. I'm not sure why that is, because it's actually pretty good. The closest comparison I can think of is another 80s roadtrip comedy, The Sure Thing, except here the girl's the loose cannon and the guy the square. At this point in his career Charlie Sheen was a likeable lead man, Alan Ruck puts in another solid performance as a neurotic sidekick, and I was happy to get to see Kerri Green on screen again, because she never made another mainstream movie after this. If you're a fan of these types of movies it's worth tracking down Three For The Road.

SUMMER OF 87 #11 - Death Wish 4

 The cover of my VHS copy of Death Wish 4

6pm, Day 2:

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
Director: J Lee Thompson
Starring: Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, John P Ryan
Format: VHS (Kerridge Odeon Amalgamated)

Plot: Architect/vigilante Paul Kersey (Bronson) takes on the members of a vicious Los Angeles drug cartel to stop the flow of drugs after his girlfriend's (Lenz) daughter dies from an overdose.

- Unfortunately this marathon hasn't had as much action as I would have liked. Let's change that with some mindless revenge!
- I've seen the original Death Wish but none of the sequels.
- J Lee Thompson (GUNS OF NAVARONE, the original CAPE FEAR) is a top director. I somewhat liked what he did with another Bronson vehicle, WHITE BUFFALO, and he also helmed the underrated slasher HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME.
- I've always had a bit of a thing for Kay Lenz (WHITE LINE FEVER, HOUSE).
- Wow, Dana Barron, who plays the daughter of Kersey's girlfriend, sure did grow up between 1983 (when she played Clark Griswald's annoying daughter Audrey in NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION) and 1987.
- And there's Mark Pellegrino (Satan on SUPERNATURAL, Paul Bennett on DEXTER) in an early bit role as a punk rocker!
- Dig the Wine Salesman bit. Kaboom!
- Pellegrino's not the only Supernatural alumni in this movie. Mitch Pileggi has a bit role as well.
- Bronson + uzi + factory full of bad guys = a good ol' time. Well, not for the bad guys.
- A sure sign you're watching a movie made no later than the 1980s: it contains at least one scene set in a Roller Rink.
- Well, that was certainly an impressive exit for the main bad guy.

Overall thoughts: I haven't seen any of the other Death Wish sequels, so I can't tell you how well this one stacks up against them. But as a standalone it's fairly good. Not as jam-packed full of action as I was hoping, but it has enough explosions, gunfights etc to keep things entertaining. Bronson is as brooding as ever, albeit getting old by this stage and pushing the bounds of credibility as an action star. But he blows away people with a big gun, and that's about all you want from a Death Wish movie, right?

SUMMER OF 87 #10 - Munchies

 The cover of my VHS copy of Munchies

3.40pm, Day 2:

Munchies
Director: Bettina Hirsch
Starring: Harvey Korman, Charlie Stratton, Nadine Van der Velde
Format: VHS (CEL)

Plot: Simon Watterman (Korman), a space archaeologist, discovers the "Munchies" in a cave in Peru. Cecil Watterman (Korman again), Simon's evil twin brother and snack food entrepreneur, kidnaps the creature. What Cecil does not know is that the creature, when chopped up, regenerates into many new creatures -- and are they mean!

- Disclosure: No, I haven't seen this one.
- From the long line of Gremlins rip-offs (Critters, Ghoulies, Hobgoblins, Beasties, Spookies etc) comes this Roger Corman-produced effort, directed by Bettina Hirsch, who worked as an editor on Gremlins. This was her only directing gig, which doesn't bode well.
- From the look of the cover I'm expecting a second-rate Gremlins knockoff with an emphasis on sex and toilet humour. Although the PG rating tells me any sex will probably be more implied than shown. Boo-urns!
- They're not even trying to disguise how much of a ripoff this is. Arnold sounds just like Gizmo.
- I wonder how much they spent on creature design for this movie? My guess is $20 tops.
- Alright I get it now. They're proudly flaunting the fact this is a Gremlins ripoff (look for all the in-jokes - Gizmo in a newspaper ad, licence plate that says OHGIZMO etc).
- Veteran comedian Korman sure is hamming it up as Cecil Watterman, and Alix Elias, who plays Cecil's wife, is just plain annoying.
- I bet Robert Picado (STAR TREK VOYAGER) looks back on this movie as a career highlight. Or not.
- As I suspected, the only T&A is pretty tame (panty flashes). And no gore to speak of. Those two things would probably save this movie. Okay, they wouldn't save it, but maybe make it more bearable.

Overall thoughts: Dumb. So very dumb. Take Gremlins, remove Joe Dante's stylish directing, replace the monsters with cheap, annoying knockoffs, switch the talented cast for nobodies and hammy cartoonish acting... well, you get the picture. The best thing is if you haven't seen Munchies, you don't need to. I've seen it and I can safely tell you to avoid it.