Industrial spy Harry Trent (Matt Mitler) escapes from two security guards by hiding in a space shuttle. He accidentally launches himself into orbit. As soon as he’s in space, Harry witnesses a bunch of pigmen attacking Earth. Harry spends five years exercising, eating frozen dinners, and drawing pictures of naked women on the walls o0f the space shuttle before finally returning to Earth, eager to defeat the pig men. After hooking up with Dana (Denise Crawford), Harry heads to Richmond to investigate rumors of an underground weapon that can defeat the pig people. Harry and Dana meet and team up with a biker named named Mad Dog Kelly (Joe Gentissi), who looks a lot like Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks.
A micro-budget science fiction film that doesn’t make a shred of sense, Battle For The Lost Planet is just barely redeemed by its lack of pretension. It doesn’t take itself seriously and neither should anyone else. Nobody in the movie view Harry as being any sort of hero and even Harry admits that he’s more interested in getting laid than actually battling for the lost planet. The movie is narrated by Old Man Harry, who is writing his memoir and who has decided to title the manuscript, How I Saved The World. It looks like he’s writing his story in a ten-page notebook so saving the world was apparently very simple. Just find a super weapon and turn it on. It’s too bad no one thought of that when the Earth was being invaded!
Battle For The Lost Planet is a stupid movie but I like it.
I’ve had the Hong Kong horror flick RIGOR MORTIS (2013) sitting on my shelf for quite a few years. I remember reading a lot about it when it first came out in Hong Kong back in 2013, so I just went ahead and bought it. There was a lot of talk about it resurrecting the Hong Kong “hopping vampire” genre of films that was very popular in the 80’s, led by movies like the MR. VAMPIRE series and ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND 2. My personal favorite Hong Kong films are the “heroic bloodshed” gangster films featuring actors like Chow Yun-Fat, Lau Ching-Wan and Andy Lau, but I do enjoy the idea of hopping vampires. In the spirit of October and Halloween, I decided to tear open the plastic wrap and finally give it a go!
Actor Chin Siu-Ho (portrayed by Hong Kong actor Chin Siu-Ho in a Meta version of himself) is suicidal after his wife leaves him and takes away their young son. He moves into a huge, dilapidated apartment building and immediately hangs himself. As his hung body is convulsing and jerking around, the supernatural story immediately kicks in and a pair of twin sister ghosts, who just happened to die tragically in the same apartment, emerge and take over his body. Out of nowhere, Yau (Anthony Chan), a neighbor, busts through the door, cuts the noose, and smashes Chin against a wall, saving his life and driving the ghosts out in one fell swoop! Yep, there are strange things afoot in this apartment complex and Yau decides to fill Chin in on a couple of items. First, he’s a vampire hunter, but there aren’t really any vampires left in Hong Kong, so he mostly just cooks rice these days. Second, there are a lot of ghosts hanging around the building that won’t leave, but there’s really no reason to be that scared of them because most of them aren’t trying to possess anyone, with the twin sisters being a notable exception. Wouldn’t you know it though, around the same time they’re having this conversation, an older neighbor named Tung (Richard Ng) slips and breaks his neck. Rather than just letting him die, his devastated wife Mui (Hee Ching Paw) goes to see her neighbor Gau (Fat Chung), a master practitioner of the blackest of black magic. Soon Gau has Tung’s dead body covered in dirt, wearing a mask made of Chinese coins and being fed crow’s blood. In seven days, Gau tells the wife, your husband will be back. I won’t go into all the details, because there are a bunch, but soon people will start dying, a vampire will be hopping, Yau will be living up to his family’s vampire hunting legacy, and Chin will be fighting ghosts and vampires, only this time without a director yelling “CUT” when things get dangerous!
I truly appreciate a movie like RIGOR MORTIS. Actor-director-producer-singer Juno Mak was only 29 years old when he directed this film that truly does pay lots of respect to the popular MR. VAMPIRE series of films from the 80’s. His casting goes a long way in bringing back those nostalgic memories. Actors Chin Siu-Ho, Anthony Chan, Billy Chau, Richard Ng, and Fat Chung all appeared in the MR. VAMPIRE series, along with tons of other films during the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, and its fun for me to see them all here. Chin Siu-Ho especially sticks out to me because of the film he made with Chow Yun-Fat in 1986 called THE SEVENTH CURSE. And the image of a slow-motion Richard Ng, decked out in full Hong Kong vampire regalia, hopping his way towards some serious trouble, is pure fan service. That part had me sitting up with a smile on my face.
While the tributes to the Hong Kong vampire genre are all here, the tone of RIGOR MORTIS is decidedly different. Completely foregoing the elements of slapstick and comedy that existed in the 80’s films, Mak has made a moody, supernatural film that’s full of emotionally damaged characters in need of some sort of purpose or redemption. Most of the characters are incapable of dealing with the difficult events of their life even remotely in a positive way, and it’s their collective bad decisions that lead to so much of the death and destruction in the film. Chin doesn’t know how to deal with his divorce, so he tries to kill himself, unleashing the twin sister ghosts. Auntie Mui so hates the prospect of being alone that she wants to bring back her dead husband, unleashing the vampire. And when the vampire and twin sister ghosts join forces, things get really crazy! Now that I write out the things that Chin and Mui are dealing with, Yau’s situation doesn’t really seem that bad. Sure, he may not get to fight vampires like his dad did, but is that any reason to mope around? Chin tells him that he makes the best glutinous rice in Hong Kong, and since Chin has been a successful actor, I’m sure he’s had a lot of the best glutinous rice around. The compliment doesn’t move Yau in any way, with the man brushing it off as meaningless. It’s actually kind of sad that Yau finding his purpose requires a supernatural unleashing of evil and many tragic victims. Come on Yau!
Since Director Mak is going for melancholy horror, to be truly successful, a movie like RIGOR MORTIS really needs good performances from its cast, and it needs to be somewhat scary. Chin Siu-Ho is good as the former actor whose life has turned into a dumpster fire. He’s introduced to us wearing shades that would have been perfectly at home on Chow Yun-Fat’s face in the Hong Kong Classic A BETTER TOMORROW (1986). I enjoyed that nod to Hong Kong’s legacy of cool action stars. Thinking back on it now, I may have criticized his character’s moping around, but Anthony Chan’s performance as the vampire hunter Yau is probably my favorite performance of the film. He’s a man who doesn’t care, until he does, and then he’s all in. I also liked Kara Hui as a woman whose life was destroyed in the same apartment that Chin now lives in, and who now just kind of wanders around the building with her son Pak. Her character is somewhat peripheral to the main story, but there is definitely something appealing about her performance. Heck, it may just be that she’s really pretty. Old veterans like Richard Ng, Fat Chung, and Hee Ching Paw give solid, professional performances just as you’d expect them to.
So, the performances in RIGOR MORTIS are good, but is the film scary? I will say that if there would be any criticism I would level at the film, it’s the fact that I just didn’t find it very scary, or really even that spooky for that matter. The setting, the dilapidated apartment building, seems like a perfect background for jump scares, yet there are very few. Mak seemed to prioritize special effects driven visuals over sending shivers down our spines. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because Mak does find some true horror in his story. For example, one of the most horrific scenes in the film is our first real image of the dangerous vampire, whose fingernails grow in front of us as it sets its sights on a truly innocent young victim, a scene that proves that no one is safe in the world of this film. However, if you’re looking for a movie that’s going to make you jump throughout its hour and forty-five-minute runtime, this film did not have that effect on me.
Ultimately, I would give RIGOR MORTIS a solid recommendation to any person who might appreciate a modern take on Hong Kong horror films of the 1980’s. I’d also recommend it to people who enjoy visually impressive horror films that rely more on mood than outright scares. I probably would not recommend it strongly to those who insist on lots of gotcha moments in their horror films. For me personally, I enjoyed it very much, and I’m glad I finally got around to watching it. It may be time to pull out my old DVD of MR. VAMPIRE for a revisit!
In 1957, the Commission — the governing board that regulated organized crime in America — seemed like it was on the very of collapsing. Bugsy Siegel was dead. Lucky Luciano had been exiled to Sicily. Meyer Lansky was more concerned with running his casinos in Cuba than with keeping track of who was angry with who in America. The ruthless Vito Genovese was moving in on everyone’s business and was suspected of being behind the assassination of Albert Anastasia and the shooting of Frank Costello.
Genovese, looking to solidify his control and perhaps bring some peace to the warring factions, called for a summit in upstate New York, at the estate of Joseph Barbara. Bosses from across the country gathered in Apalachin, New York. It started out as a nice weekend, with stories being told and fish being grilled. But then, suddenly, the cops showed up and 50 of the country’s most powerful mobsters made a run for it. Many of them ducked into the woods, where they were subsequently rounded up by the cops.
In the end, several mobsters were arrested and convicted of various crimes. All of those convictions were overturned on appeal. However, the arrests revealed to America that the Mafia wasn’t just an urban legend. Up until the bust at Apalachin, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover insisted that there was no such thing as the Mafia. After the bust, Hoover not only acknowledged that the Mafia existed but he also started a special division of the FBI to deal with it.
(Not that it did much good, of course. Being exposed still didn’t stop the Mafia from fixing the vote in Illinois during the 1960 presidential election.)
The 2019 film Mob Town details the events leading up to the Apalachin Conference. Robert Davi is properly intimidating as the ruthless Vito Genovese. The film’s director, Danny A. Abeckaser, plays Joseph Barbara while Jami-Lyn Sigler plays Barbara’s wife, tasked with putting together a dinner for a growing list of guests. Josephine Barbara goes from being happy about her husband working his way up the ranks of the mob to growing increasingly frustrated as the number of expected bosses rises from 30 to 50 and I have to say that I could very much relate to Josephine. Finally, David Arquette plays Edgar Croswell, the New York state trooper who figured out that something big was happening at the Barbara place. Croswell spends most of the film trying to get people to take him seriously. At the end of the film, he gets a congratulatory call from President Eisenhower. I’m enough of a history nerd that I appreciate any film that ends with a congratulatory call from President Eisenhower.
Mob Land was obviously made for a low-budget and it doesn’t always move as quickly as one might like. When Croswell isn’t trying to expose the mob, he’s pursuing a romance with Natalie (Jennifer Esposito) and Arquette’s permanently dazed expression doesn’t always make him the most convincing state trooper. It’s an uneven movie that traffics in almost every mob cliche but I can’t be too critical of it. Robert Davi was a more convincing Genovese than Robert De Niro was in Alto Knights. I appreciated the scenes of the Barbaras trying to get their place ready for the meeting. That was mob action to which I could relate.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have 1958’s The Brain Eaters!
In this noir-influenced tale of science fiction horror, a con-shaped ship crashes near a small town. Soon, the residents of the town are vanishing, just to return as mind-controlled zombies! This one clocks in at 61 minutes and it’s an enjoyable little B-movie. Like many films from the 50s, the main message seems to be that you should never totally trust anyone. They could be a communist. They could be an alien. They could be a Brain Eater!
Keep an eye out for Leonard Nimoy in an early role. Or actually, it might be better to keep an ear open. Nimoy isn’t easy to spot but you’ll recognize his voice towards the end of the film.
Can AI be used to make an entertaining horror short? We have a parking garage security guard searching the property because he hears a noise. He finds his coworker slain. A zombie starts rewiring the fuse box and turns off the lights in the garage. The zombie is smart He encounters the zombie and starts shooting and shooting, killing more and more zombies to heavy metal and that is the whole film. I enjoyed it. So, AI can make a fun horror short and actors will become a thing of the past. If you have 2.6 minutes to spare, check it out.
First released in 2009, ComeWhatMay tells the story of the Hogan family.
Judith Hogan (Karen Kelly) is an attorney at a prestigious law firm and has become so devoted to her work and her politics that her husband, a pro-life biologist named Don (Kenneth Jezek), is feeling left out in the cold. Don has written a book that argues that life starts at conception but he’s struggling to get it published and he knows that, even if he does find a publisher, he’ll probably lose his job as a result.
Meanwhile, their son Caleb (Austin Kearney) wants to transfer to Patrick Henry College so that he can join their championship moot court competition team. Judith agrees to pay for one year at PHC, on the condition that Caleb win the Moot Court Championship. If he doesn’t, she won’t pay for a second year and I guess …. well, I don’t know what will happen. I guess Caleb will have to go back to his old college. To be honest, it seems kind of petty on Judith’s part.
Judith has a lot on her mind because she’s going to be arguing an abortion case in front of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Caleb and his moot court partner, Rachel (Victoria Emmons), are going to be arguing for the repeal of Roe v Wade during their competition, despite Caleb’s fear that the moot court might not be willing to accept their arguments. Sitting on the moot court is the retired Supreme Court justice who wrote Roe v Wade. That would seem like a conflict of interest to me but what do I know? I went to a party school.
ComeWhatMay is a low-budget film, one that is made with more ambition than skill. It’s not the type of movie that’s going to change anyone’s mind about abortion and, if you’re pro-choice, you’ll probably be even more pro-choice after seeing this film. The film works best as a 90-minute commercial for Patrick Henry College. Seriously, the campus looks lovely! Watching this movie, I found myself missing college. There’s no better feeling that having your future ahead of you and also feeling like you know better than everyone else in the world. As for the acting, the cast was often amateurish, with the exception of Victoria Emmons, who gave a very earnest and likable performance as Rachel and who, at the end of the film, got to wear this floral dress that was just to die for.
Watching the film today, what’s interesting is how dated it seems. It’s 16 years old but, with its debate over whether or not Roe v Wade can be overturned, it feels like it might as well have been written and filmed a hundred years ago. We now all know that Roe v Wade not only can be overturned but, in fact, it would be overturned 13 years after this film came out. (Of course, the arguments that led to the overturning of Roe v Wade were a far cry from the largely emotional argument that Caleb and Rachel make in this film.) Seen today, ComeWhatMay feels like a time capsule.
In 1958’s Giant From The Unknown, something strange is happening in a California mountain town. Animals are being killed. Property is being destroyed. People are being murdered.
Sheriff Parker (Bob Steele) suspects that the murderer might be Dr. Frederick Cleveland (Morris Ankrum), mostly because Dr. Cleveland spends a lot of time in the mountains looking at fossils with his daughter, Janet (Sally Fraser). When a younger scientist named Wayne (Ed Kemmer) shows up to help Dr. Cleveland out with his research, Sheriff Parker is even more suspicious. Meanwhile, the local citizenry suspects that it might be a member of the local Native American community.
It turns out that everyone’s wrong!
The murderer is a formerly dead conquistador (Buddy Baer), who was brought back to life by a bolt of lightning and who is now wandering around the mountains and killing people. The conquistador walks around in his full conquistador uniform, which is in pretty good shape when you consider the fact that he’s been dead for over two hundred years, maybe longer.
The odd thing about the conquistador is that he’s regularly described as being a giant, even though he’s clearly not. I mean, he’s tall. He appears like he might be 6’5. That makes him taller than the average person but shorter than the average professional basketball player. The filmmakers regularly attempt to shoot him from a lower angle in order to make him look taller but there’s nothing that can be done to disguise the fact that he’s just a 6’5 guy wearing what appears to be a fake beard and mustache. If anything, he looks like the frozen-faced Burger KIng mascot. Maybe he would stop killing people if the sheriff would just order a cheeseburger and fries. I mean, seriously, his whole rampage could have been avoided.
The title is also incorrect about the giant being from the unknown. He’s very obviously from Spain. All one has to do is look at his uniform. I think the unknown element of this film is how the conquistador has spent centuries underground without losing any skin. For someone who has been dead for as long as this conquistador was, his hair is very clean and well-groomed. Watching this film, it’s hard not to feel that Dr. Cleveland should have spent some time researching conquistador embalming techniques because whoever preserved the “giant” did a very good job! Everyone should be so lucky to look that good for being dead for that long.
Giant From The Unknown attempts to do the usual thing where the monster falls for the only woman in the entire film. (Indeed, it was hard not to notice that town’s population seemed to be 99% male.) Unfortunately, the giant was a pretty silly monster so it was difficult to get wrapped up in his emotional journey. There are some monsters that you feel sorry for and there are other monsters that you just wish would go away. The giant is a monster who probably had a lot of good haircare tips and who could have probably helped out the entire town …. if only they had been willing to listen!
Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a former cellist who is still struggling to recover from a serious car accident and who has been at loose ends ever since her daughter left for college. Claire’s husband, Norman (Harrison Ford), is a scientist and a college lecturer. After their neighbor, Mary (Miranda Otto), disappears, Claire becomes convinced that Mary’s husband (James Remar) did something to her. Claire also becomes convinced that Mary’s ghost is trying to contact her, by appearing in the lake and filling the bathtub up with water whenever Claire isn’t looking. Norman tells Claire that she’s imagining things and pushes her to see a therapist. As Claire investigates, she discovers that Norman knows more than he’s letting on.
What Lies Beneath is a long and drawn-out ghost story that Robert Zemeckis made because he had time to kill while the filming of Cast Away was on hiatus so Tom Hanks could lose weight and grow a beard. That this movie was not a personal project for Zemeckis is reflected in his direction, which is surprisingly impersonal for a Zemeckis film. The film is a showcase for Michelle Pfeiffer, who gives a good performance as the emotionally fragile Claire and holds the film’s many disparate elements together. Harrison Ford sometimes seems disinterested but his casting still pays off when Norman gets to say and do some things that you normally would never expect Harrison Ford to do.
I remember seeing this in a theater in 2000 and being surprised by the ending. Looking back on it today, I just can’t believe that I sat through the entire movie.
Will Randall (Jack Nicholson), the editor-in-chief of a New York Publishing house, doesn’t get much respect, not from his wife (Kate Nelligan), not from his boss (Christopher Plummer), and certainly not from Stuart Swinton (James Spader), the sleazy executive who is plotting to steal his job and destroy his marriage. But then, one night, Will runs over a black wolf on a country road. When he tries to helps it, the wolf bites him. Soon after, Will starts to feel different whenever the moon is full.
I remember that, when Wolf came out in 1994, some people said that casting Jack Nicholson as a werewolf seemed like typecasting. Nicholson apparently understood this as well so he actually downplays his usual mannerisms for the first part of the movie and gives a convincing performance as a harried executive who is worried he’s about to lose his job. It’s only after he is bitten that Will Randall starts to come alive. Not only does he develop the predator instinct necessary to survive in New York City but he also, without fear, pursues his boss’s daughter, Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer, at her most beautiful). Typecast or not, Jack Nicholson is excellent in Wolf. Equally good is James Spader as Will’s business rival, who starts to show some predator-like aspects of his own.
Director Mike Nichols was not normally a horror director and, around the midway point, his direction falters and there are times when he just seems to be going through the motions. He gets good performances from his cast but doesn’t know how to craft a good jump scare. The best parts of the movie are when Wolf uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for petty office politics, with Will “marking” his territory while talking to Stewart and showing a renewed killer instinct. Wolf works better as a social satire than as a horror movie.
Fans of Frasier will be happy to see David Hyde Pierce in a small but key role. He delivers the film’s best line. Fans of Friends may also notice David Schwimmer in a small role. He says nothing worth remembering. Their presence, though, is a reminder of just how much American culture changed in 1994. By the end of the year, both went from small roles in Wolf to co-starring in the two of the most popular sitcoms in America.
I feel confident saying that, though I’ve never met him. He’s currently eighty years old and in prison, serving several life sentences for a series of murders he committed in the 1970s, the 80s, and the 90s. Because he committed the murders at a time when Kansas did not have the death penalty, he escaped being executed. That said, he won’t be eligible for parole until the next century so we can rest assured that Dennis Rader will die in prison.
Dennis Rader was a serial killer who decided to give himself a nickname. He wrote letter to the local media in Wichita, Kansas and demanded to be known as The BTK Killer — for Bind Them, Torture Them, and Kill Them. It was a dumbass nickname but it stuck. Everything about the BTK case is disturbing but one that always gets me is that nearly got away with it. His last known victim was an elderly woman who he killed in 1991. By the time the current century rolled around, The BTK Case had gone cold and was being forgotten about. Rader couldn’t handle that so he started writing the local media and eventually the police again in 2004. Rader, being a moron, didn’t consider that he was mailing a DNA sample with every letter. Eventually, he sent the cops as floppy disk of his “writings.” What he didn’t realize is that the metadata from a deleted Word Document was still stored on the disk.
Dennis Rader was a deacon in his local church. He was also an dog catcher and compliance officer for Park City, Kansas. You know the self-important jerks who send you a letter threatening to fine you if you don’t mow your grass? Dennis Rader was one of those guys. When Rader was finally arrested, he was described as being a trusted member of his local community but let’s be honest. Everyone hates their local compliance officers. Most serial killers are driven by a need to control and dominate. Perhaps one reason why Rader had stopped killing was because he was able to channel his sadism into his job.
After he was arrested in 2005, he was on television constantly and he was such a continual presence that he even worked his way into a few of my nightmares. Rader confessed to his crimes in court, giving a monologue in which he dryly discussed each murder. Later, one of the primetime news shows interviewed Rader in prison and again, Rader discussed each murder in a flat tone and only showed emotion when he talked about the prospect of never leaving prison. It was disturbing to watch and listen to and sadly, the media made sure that we heard and listened to it a lot.
The Hunt For The BTK Killer was a made-for-television movie about Dennis Rader (played by Gregg Henry) and the detective (Robert Forster) who eventually arrested him. It aired in 2005, the same year that Rader was captured and eventually sentenced for his crimes. It’s a movie that was obviously shot very quickly to capitalize on the media attention that the case was receiving. As is often the case with the movies like this, it was filmed up in Canada. (Canadian film mainstay Maury Chaykin appears as a true crime writer.) All that said, it’s still an effective film. Gregg Henry, under a ton of makeup, plays Dennis Rader as being the type of busybody who gets off on telling people what to do and who believes that being a deacon at his church will absolve him from the murders that he committed. It’s a good performance and Henry is well-matched with Robert Forster. Forster’s naturally world-weary vibe made him the ideal choice for playing detectives who have seen the worst that humanity had to offer. Most importantly, the film shows how fear can change a community. When BTK is on the loose and sending taunting letters to the newspapers and the local television station, the people of Wichita soon start to suspect their neighbors and what was one a friendly town becomes a place where even Forster is at risk of getting accidentally stabbed by his terrified wife.
Dennis Rader was someone who obviously enjoyed the fear that he generated. He cried when he went to prison and hopefully, he’s still crying now.
Industrial spy Harry Trent (Matt Mitler) escapes from two security guards by hiding in a space shuttle. He accidentally launches himself into orbit. As soon as he’s in space, Harry witnesses a bunch of pigmen attacking Earth. Harry spends five years exercising, eating frozen dinners, and drawing pictures of naked women on the walls o0f the space shuttle before finally returning to Earth, eager to defeat the pig men. After hooking up with Dana (Denise Crawford), Harry heads to Richmond to investigate rumors of an underground weapon that can defeat the pig people. Harry and Dana meet and team up with a biker named named Mad Dog Kelly (Joe Gentissi), who looks a lot like Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks.
Through the Shattered Lens 