A crew on a submarine dives thousands of feet into the ocean to try and figure out what happened to an earlier submarine, which everybody assumes is in a thousand pieces on the ocean floor and all crew members of that one are dead. They find what they believe to be the wreckage, but also seaweed in the area. Seaweed? It’s totally impossible for seaweed to grow at these depths, so now they have another mystery.
But the bigger mystery is the giant sea monster that almost drags them to their watery graves.
Despite that, they proceed with their mission to retrieve the black box from the previous sub.
Then it gets nicely complicated with what they thought was the beacon from the black box is actually an SOS from somebody, and then a large cave with massive air pockets. Then monsters. This is another one that has a very Roger Corman-esque vibe to it, and I very much like it. The blueprint of this movie is something we’ve seen a million times. This one is more or less an underwater version of the Roger Corman classic Forbidden World, but without any of the nudity. They spend too much time in the cave, but at least we get some action sequences. It gets a bit silly towards the end, but at least it keeps moving.
Is this one of those that TNT played endlessly on Saturday and/or Sunday afternoons in the 90s? Sure seems like one of those flicks. It’s certainly entertaining enough. Not gonna win any academy awards. Nice and short at an hour 20 minutes, too. Starring R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket) and Jack Scalia.
One of the great cyberpunk / post-apocalyptic / sci-fi flicks of the 90s.
After some apocalypse, society has fallen to pieces. No water, no food, no trees, no industry, no jobs. Very much a Mad Max style survival, where the city is one gigantic flea market with people trying to sell or trade scrap metal parts or whatever they can get their hands on.
One guy gets his hands on the remnants of a robot head, some sort of worker android that was blown to bits. He doesn’t have much use for it, but his girlfriend is a welder, a sculptor, an artist, she’s always making some weird awesome stuff with all the scrap metal around her place. It’ll be a christmas present for her.
Little does he know, though, that this robot head is actually an experimental prototype military thing with some advanced artificial intelligence. So once the girlfriend gets it back to her place and starts to organize body parts for it, it starts putting itself back together, and apparently, it’s sole purpose is to kill humans. It has some vicious weapons and is very nasty indeed.
But see, her apartment is a heavily fortified, super high security fortress, so by the time the boyfriend learns what this robot head really is, it’s already going berserk with all sorts of weaponry with the girlfriend essentially trapped inside, and with nobody able to get in to help her.
Meanwhile, we have this disgusting dirty old man peeping tom across the way who spies on her and sees that she is in some sort of danger. Should he help her? Should he at least call the cops?
This movie is pretty nuts. I love the way the robot violently thrashes around in the apartment with Terminator-like tenacity. Practical effects are top notch. It has a population control / offspring subtheme which is totally unnecessary. Seems like it’s gonna go off in some weird direction towards the end, but then we get somebody cut in half with blood spurting everywhere, so it gets back on track. Big finale is unexpected. Not the most spectacular thing, but it works perfectly fine.
This one is also known for the musician cameos. Most noticeable is Lemmy from Motorhead as the cab driver. We have Iggy Pop as the radio dj guy. We have Carl from Fields of the Nephilim as the anonymous and mysterious scavenger. Orchestral soundtrack is not that impressive. Other music is better- generally gloomy or moody new wave (P.I.L.’s The Order of Death is used a couple times), some swampy acoustic guitar, and with one standout song from Ministry, from back in the day when Ministry was scary industrial, menacing doom electronic and long before they became the cartoon heavy metal band they are today. Definitely an appropriate song for this movie.
Overall, really great one. Definitely one of the best out-of-control robot cyborg flicks of the era.
French gore flick. Not the gnarliest, most gore-ific movie I’ve ever seen, but ya, it definitely registers on the gore meter. This one’s for all the pregnant people out there.
We’re at a circus. The people who work the circus are pros, but it’s a tough job, very stressful. In a shocking discovery, one of the animal trainers finds that one of the tigers has been mutilated in such a violent manner that nothing human could have done it, and probably not any other kind of animal, either. Immediately following that discovery, an alien worm-like thing crawls into one of the female employee’s bedroom, and crawls into the woman, thus impregnating her. What that thing was or where it came from we don’t know. But we suspect that this pregnancy won’t be a normal one, and will probably end up badly for the woman at least, maybe for others as well.
In the following days, she realizes she’s pregnant, with something, and her fetus starts giving her orders. The fetus demands blood. And if she doesn’t give the fetus blood, it will tear her insides to shreds.
So, she goes on a killing spree and drinks the blood of her victims. At first, she is troubled and repulsed by this. But, she comes to accept it to a certain degree.
I like how this one is filmed in gritty realism, and not as some sort of fantasy / sci-fi / supernatural thing. I mean, it is all those things, but it comes across as a really twisted, bizarre Jack the Ripper sort of thing.
It stays pretty weird the whole time, but goes a little bit comedic in the last third, with the car crashes and the telephone cord and the blood transfusion bus. And then the soccer team bus…
And it stays gorey the whole time, too. But it’s too much comedy for me. Recommended if you like Dead Alive or It’s Alive or Bad Taste.
Oh, it’s another one of these. Top secret military indestructible humanoid robot weapon soldier prototype escapes the research facility where it was created, and the people at the company that created it must now go track it down and find some way to kill it before it kills too many civilians. DIdn’t I just do one like this? Oh ya, CY-Warrior with Henry Silva. Also the made-for-tv movie Assassin with Robert Conrad. They’re all basically Terminator ripoffs, but there were so many of them, that they just about were their own sub-genre. Like they were all ripoffs of each other, and didn’t bother with any Terminator similarities. I don’t want to sound like I’m disappointed or I’m not looking forward to this one, though, because some of these ripoffs are a total blast. Let’s see how this one fares.
In most of the movies, the soldier prototype resembles a regular human. But in this one, it’s a giant alien reptilian monster thing, similar to Creature from the Black Lagoon or the alligator people from Land of the Lost or even the monsters in Humanoids from the Deep.
The creature gets loose, and somehow knows exactly where the person who created it lives, so it goes to his house and kills him. No idea why. You’d think that it might wanna shake his hand and thank him for giving it life. That guy’s niece barely escapes death herself, and goes to the cops with it. The cops are sympathetic, but her story is so fantastic that her case is quickly sent to the backburner. So she knows if she’s gonna get to the bottom of this, she’s gonna have to do it without their help.
At the same time, a newspaper reporter guy has been trying to dig up some info/dirt on the company that created the creature, but not having much luck. That guy and the niece eventually meet up and team up to try and infiltrate the company, figure out what this monster is and how to kill it.
A whole lotta nothing plot to get through in the middle part. Once they deploy their ‘elite’ military force consisting of like five guys with the most laughable uniforms ever, we finally get some monster action. We get the subplot of the power struggle at the company, and the CEO who becomes increasingly paranoid, and whatever that is that he injects in himself probably isn’t helping. That’s all well and good, but I would have gladly dumped all that for some more monster action.
In the end, it’s pretty weak. Never explained what he was injecting himself with. No idea what that thing was where everybody was stripped down to their underwear and taped up. Total wtf moment. Seems like one of those movies where they all were just making it up as they went along.
With the legendary David Gale (Re-Animator, The Brain), with a truly standout performance. If you’re a fan of his, definitely check this one out. If you just want to waste an hour and a half on a silly monster movie, you could do worse than this, but you also could do much better than this.
Based on Edgar Allen Poe, directed by softcore porn director Jim Wynorski, who had a one big horror movie hit with Chopping Mall and made some other, lesser known sequels- 976-EVIL 2, Deathstalker 2 and Sorority House Massacre 2. His non-porn movies are still littered with hot, naked women, because that’s just the way he does things. It’s just that he leaves out the sex parts and the story might actually be good enough to carry the entire hour and a half. This one, based on E.A.Poe, won’t have any problems in the story department. I just assume it’ll be the classic witch tale with a bunch of women with their boobs hanging out. Let’s check it out.
Oh, and it stars Lana Clarkson (RIP), who must have had something in her contract that dictates that her boobs must be hanging out for at least 50% of the time she’s on screen, for this movie and all her movies.
A woman is executed for witchcraft. Her daughter, an infant at the time, now 17 years later, is approaching her 18th birthday. And on her birthday in two days, she is to inherit a bunch of money from her dead mother, and she’s getting antsy and rebellious and wants to go out and see the world and meet the people in the nearby village, although those people still fear and antagonize the family, especially the women.
The whole middle part is pretty tedious, with too much plot. But, we do get some bathing in the blood of virgins, we get some witchery incantations and resurrecting of the dead. And actually, no, the story is sort of a mess. At least this movie version of it. I haven’t read the original. But this movie, it’s not really made clear what they’re trying to accomplish. Something about immortality, I think. But then, if she came back from the dead once, she already has her immortality, so why does she need to bother with anybody else? And wait, does she want the daughter or the husband? What the hell, this movie is all mixed up.
Amateur hour on some technical stuff- the whole movie is in mono. All the music, mono. All the dialog and sound effects, mono. What the hell? Also, much of the dialog sounds very far away, meaning they weren’t using shotgun mics or any kind of spot mics. Probably just a strategically placed single mic to record the whole scene. Amateurs. But ya, as expected, plenty of boobs in this one. Not much else to sink your teeth into.
William Friedkin made some great ones early on, and a couple masterpieces early on- The French Connection and The Exorcist. Many of his later films were mediocre or misfires. But, he made some really great ones later on, too- Cruising, The Sorcerer (which is a remake of The Wages of Fear, which is such a masterpiece in the first place that it’d be impossible to screw that one up as long as you don’t deviate too much from the original). But he set the bar so high with those early movies that it was gonna be just about impossible for him to ever match those.
I like that William never even tried to do anything in the vein of some summer blockbuster, or anything really that would have any sort of mass appeal. He always did the weird, underground, alternative, niche movies, most of which had a darkness or a creepiness to them. This one is definitely one of those. In fact, this one might be the closest he came to making a traditional horror movie. Is it one of his better ones, or is it a misfire?
A young married couple move from Chicago to LA. They have a baby and hire a nanny. Things are going fine at first. But see, the thing is this nanny is an immortal druid whose immortality is sustained by sacrificing infants to the tree god in the forest. So you can see where she might pose something of a problem for the parents.
The bike accident scene at the beginning is pretty comical. The scene with the three hoodlums is really great.
The movie on the whole isn’t that scary. There’s a little tension to it, but not very much. The whole ending scene is actually kinda silly, but I like that they played it straight. If this movie were made today, it undoubtedly would be more of a comedy. But this one has no comedy in it at all, so I give it points for that. But it doesn’t really score too many points otherwise. Not gonna call it a complete misfire, but it’s as close to a time waster as he ever made.
Actors aren’t the best. Not disastrous, but could be better. Couple faces that I recognize, but I couldn’t come up with their names if I tried. No star actors.
Australian slasher. The backdrop is a girls high school, and all the jocks from the nearby all-boys school bully everybody else in town, and are assumed to hook up with any/all of the girls from the girls school. And oh ya, then there’s some psycho killer in the woods whose weapon of choice is a coil of razor wire that he uses as a noose / collar / lasso to knock off all of the horny teenagers.
Not the most revolutionary slasher I’ve ever seen, but I really liked it. It has some of that goofy, cheesy late 80s / early 90s vibe to it, lots of boobies, some really awkward hanky panky. My biggest complaint is that the body count is too low. A few people are dispatched early on, but then the entire middle section, the bulk of the movie, is all about boyfriends and girlfriends and stressing over final exams, and the killer pretty much disappears for many minutes, many scenes.
But overall, it’s a good one. Ending is good. Music by the inimitable, legendary Aussie composer Brian May (not the guitarist from Queen obviously. The Australian Brian May scored about every Australian movie you’ve ever seen. Basically Australia’s answer to Ennio Morricone or John Williams).
Canadian sex-crime flick in the style of the Italo sex-crime flicks. But the plot is so flimsy and the acting is so low budget and the sets are so cardboard that it doesn’t even rise to the level of Lifetime Network infidelity suspense movie. It feels more like a third rate soap opera with a little nudity thrown in than anything else.
It’s really not worth any more of my time to write out, nor any more of your time to read anything more about this one. Don’t bother with it.
The first one, Crime Zone (1989), is the odd man out. It has nothing to do with the other two. The other two are related. Future Force (1989) is the first of the two movies, and Future Zone (1990) is the sequel. I group all three of them here because they all star David Carradine, all three were released within two years, and they all have a very similar setting- a crime ridden city and the police are more like the military. And they all have similar titles.
Part 1: Crime Zone (1989)
This one takes a while to get rolling.
The city has been reduced to a giant slum, kinda like a low-budget Blade Runner city, kept in check by a draconian police force and sex is illegal. Male lead is mid 20s, seems to have his head on straight, is a cop, but is fired. He hooks up with a dancer from the local strip joint (bleach-blonde Sherilyn Fenn), who also seems to have her head on straight, but perhaps more easily takes risks than the guy. Upper classman / rich guy but possibly a slimeball David Carradine comes along and hires them both to infiltrate a hospital, which is more like a tightly guarded military compound, occupied by hordes of police with all their guns and lasers and cameras and patrolmen, to steal some computer disk that has some unspecified valuable information on it, with the promise of freedom from Soleil, the city that the authorities have on extreme lockdown, and deliver them to some utopian society.
Of course, complications arise, both with the heist and with further developments after the heist.
Acting is OK. Appropriately cheesy sometimes. Lead actor is good. Sherilyn Fenn is OK, David Carradine is completely flat, no personality at all. The third act falls apart. By the end of it we don’t really care who lives or dies or how it happens. You just want the damn movie to end.
Trailer-
Full movie-
Part 2: Future Force (1989)
Crime is so rampant that the police have given up trying to enforce any laws. Instead, it has relinquished control over to private citizens who are up to the task. David Carradine is one of those citizens, and he has a secret weapon- a super human, high tech glove which outpowers anything and everything else on the streets. Lasers and shit.
So it’s something about a guy who strong-arms his way or blackmails his way (it’s never explained) to the head of the small battalion of steroid addicted vigilantes, and there’s a t.v. news reporter, and before you know it, everybody has a bounty on their heads, including David Carradine. Then there’s the foul-mouthed priest with a bazooka and his buddy with one leg. And a brainiac in a wheelchair. And David is better in this one- he flexes some good sarcasm and throws out some good one-liners. He even breaks out a few of his old kung-fu moves. Of course, he’s a lot older and fatter and slower than he was a couple decades prior for the tv show, so it’s pretty comical.
But it’s a better movie than that first one. Better dialog. Acting by everybody other than D.C. is awful.
Trailer-
Full movie-
Part 3: Future Zone (1990)
David Carradine is back as a civilian police officer with the high tech, super powered glove, and this time with Charles Napier leading his small battalion of steroid addicted vigilantes. A new addition to this flick is a young cop guy who’s looking to partner up with D.C., so it kinda turns into a buddy-cop movie.
The plot is sorta all over the place and nonexistent at the same time. There are some people with big bags of cocaine, there are gunfights and car chases, and I don’t know why any of it is happening. We do get a They Live-esque fist fight in an alleyway, which is cool.
All of the bad guys aim worse than stormtroopers, and all the good guys aim like elite snipers.
But then the whole thing flips on its head and turns into a time travel / time portal thing. Although maybe I’ve seen too many of these types of movies, but I saw that one coming from a mile away. Then they try to squeeze in another curveball right at the very end, but it’s another that we all see coming from a mile away.
The comedy relief and one-liners in this one are cringe-worthy. The music sounds like a cross between Perry Mason and Leave It to Beaver.
Well, this was a pleasant surprise. Super cheesy 90s style LA horror. Reminds me of Up All Night on USA Network. But, it actually does get kinda weird in the second half. Don’t bog your mind down with anything having to do with any coherent plot and you’ll be fine.
The standout is a hallucinatory night club scene which is like all the 90s underground LA clubs (Kontrol Faktory, Das Bunker, Helter Skelter…) combined with a low budget, neon and goth version of The Shunting or Nightbreed (although not nearly as gonzo or insane as either of those, but what is, right?).
Throw in a couple of real oddball performances (especially the nerdy guy) and a Euro temptress / demoness showing off her fake boobs every now and then, and this one is a keeper. Excellent slow motion finale with the most unlikely of heroes. The only recognizable name is Karen Black, who has a relatively small part.
There’s a super lo-fi version (360p) on youtube if you can’t find any other way to view it.
B-movie Roundup 