The Giant Gila Monster (1959) Official Trailer

Yikes! It's coming!

https://youtu.be/QohcgiZXmE0?si=rmvHDH2Lu1yxe5Ft 

Hollow Man

I re-watched Hollow Man last night, the 2000 shocker starring grown-up brat packer Kevin Bacon as the man himself.

Despite fantastic special effects I now feel Verhoeven could have done a lot more with this story. OK, the process sent the invisible man mad but did that have to mean simply copping a feel from the female cast wherever he could. Is that all that invisibility is for for men?

My Missus actually got up and walked out. 

For true lab madness I'll stick to Darkman with Liam Neeson.

My next reventure back into the brat pack is going to be Flatliners. Remember that?

Disclosure Day

I must say I'm intrigued by Steven Spielberg's new film Disclosure Day coming this summer.

Having watched the trailer it strikes me as perhaps a Close Encounters for modern audiences and I for one am looking forward to what the old master has conjured up.

Are you?

https://youtu.be/UFe6NRgoXCM?si=tOMtYFQA5TaX9XAm

Shed Loads

 Like with any blockbuster toy or film, the knockoffs are never far behind.

No sooner had ALIEN burst into our lives the rip-offs were shedding their skin.

Here's just three.

I remember Within the Rock. It was a mid-90's TV film. I've only seen it once. It name checks Predator too!

Titan Find. Never seen this. I quite like the strapline, Where Space Ends, Hell Begins!

Another Within flick, The Intruder Within. This one is says 'an alien experience's in case you forgot it's an ALIEN knock-off!

Have you had the pleasure?

Any more ripoff aliens and predators out there?

Don't Block It!

 

Watched this tonight, The Block Island Sound from 2020 and enjoyed it.

A sort of The Happening set on the coast, the mystery in the island's surf is a strange reverberating noise sending residents bonkers. 

I wont say anymore.

Is The Goonie's Any Good?

I've been debating whether to watch The Goonies - 1985 - with my Grandson 

this Half term. He's 9 now.

For fun I had a look for it on VHS and realized it's a Spielberg film, which I'd forgotten. 

Have you seen the Goonies? Is it a good one for a young boy? 

Whilst searching I saw this VHS too, the Go-Kids.

It looks a lot like the Goonies artwork. I guess it must be a rip-off. There's even a Star Warsesque Luke/ Leia/ Lightsabre pose! 

Maybe it's actually a fan mash-up?

The original price was staggering, £59.95! Cor!

A Handful of Flicks

I've caught a few movies over Christmas holidays in between the mince pies and fireworks. A few thoughts.

Black Christmas: an all-time fave from 1974 with the brilliant John Saxon, Olivia de Hussey, Margot Kidder and Keir Dullea. Fabulously festive and grim in equal parts, it's self-contained Seventies world is a perfect Yuletide horror.

Christmas Horror Story: a modern addition to my Yule ghouls, this anthology anchored by the superb William Shatner has everything: Krampus, sprites, possessions and a warrior Santa. An annual treat.

Murder by Decree: Sherlock gets to grips with Jack the Ripper and uncovers a conspiracy of Freemasons, royals and bloody murder. Chris Plummer makes a great Holmes, as does James Mason as Watson.

Rocketman: a musical biopic about Elton John. Really ace central performance of Elton, plagued with another useless Dad ( a la the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic too) at the stories troubled heart. The songs are just majestic.

Elvis: what can I say. Colonel Tom screwed the King. This flick made me angry. A very sad tale of unimaginable talent and an evil manager who kept Elvis chained up.

All I need now is Scrooged to complete my holidays.

Have you seen any of these films readers? 

Sim's Christmas Carol

 

Late last night I caught A Christmas Carol, the 1951 black and white version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

For me personally, this is the best film version of the Dickens tale and one which starts Christmas proper.

The film somehow seems to capture the London fog, the poverty, the wealth and the downright eeriness of the mid- 1800's, not bad going in 1951. It feels like a genuinely scary ghost story, say, in the same creepy way MR James' tales were televised. It's British Gothic at its best.

The appearance of Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchett, a man running out of time for his son, harks back to his role in the equally fabulous and unsettling Dead of Night from 1945, amazingly after a WWII UK ban on horror being made, where he plays an architect lost in a recurring and very very disquieting dream. The finale with the dummy is simply stunning!

Both these black and white movies are just great and would go well as a double-bill.

What do you think readers? 

Labyrinth: Lost in the Maze

Me and the Missus saw Labyrinth on DVD last night. I'm pretty sure I've not seen it before, but it's so old, like me, I can't be sure.

A triumph for Jim Henson's puppetry, I'm not certain it was for David Bowie. I haven't checked Google but being a Bowie fan I was underwhelmed by his performance and the songs he'd written. I found it quite boring. But then again it is a kids film so what do I know! 

Jennifer Connelly looks very young so I guess she did OK among all the foam rubber mayhem.

For me, Labyrinth hasn't the power of say, Legend, but I'd be interested to see Dark Crystal, another one I missed and see if fares better. 

Did you like Labyrinth readers? 

Monstrous Movie Music

I saw these amazing CDs for sale, all monster and sci-fi movie themes.

I assume they're copies of much older LP records. 

Does anyone know? 

Apocalypse Now and Then

I recently revisited one of my favourite films, Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It was the Final Cut so there were new things to see, namely, I think, the French family plantation section. I'm convinced I've never seen that before.

Couldn't spot anything else but it is a long flick. My favourite element is Martin Sheen's narration (it certainly sounds like him). I could listen to it all day long, especially as it fades out as the scene takes over.

The dialogue in general is just fabulous, even beyond the famous I love the Smell of Napalm ....

A great little line, one of many, is in the narration:

"Air Mobile (pronounced mobul), well, those boys just couldn't stay put!"

A superb movie: riveting, shocking, hypnotizing. Realistic? That I don't know. 

Do you like it readers? Are you a fan of Coppola?

Under Siege with the Horror Horn

 I have a few Go To films. Like old friends they're easy company and I enjoy knowing the lines.

Under Siege from 1992 is such a one, a naval actioner starring the cool cook Aikido 7th Dan Steven Seagal and one frantic terrorist Tommy Lee Jones. And oh yeah, the always exciting Gary Busey as a scorned XO. There's just something about the basic plot, the snappy dialogue and the sparse Terminator-style synth soundtrack that does it for me. Do you like it? 

Watching again I realised I knew the Captain, played by veteran actor Patrick O'Neal (✝️ age 66).

A face so familiar from appearances in just about every American TV of the 1970's, with that distinct rich voice of his, I knew he'd been in a movie significant to me as a kid.

Bingo!

Chamber of Horrors. Yes! A rarely shown horror about a wax museum and it's crazed owner, the prosthetic hand madman played by ... Patrick O'Neal.

I adored this film as a kid. It was released in cinemas in 1966, so it must have been a good few years later when it was on UK TV. Probably a Midnight Movie or an Appointment with Fear slot in the early 1970's. I was 10 Christmas 1970.

Chamber of Horrors was made even more memorable by a William Castle-style gimmick to keep the audience 'hooked'. It was called The Fear Flasher, along with it's Horror Horn and appeared just before anything gruesome happened! It must have been great at the flicks, popcorn flying everywhere! 

It had me good and proper watching it on TV; hook, line and cleaver! 

Do you remember the Fear Flasher and Horror Horn readers?

https://youtu.be/mwrHydY8uGQ?si=zlsAzUuMYqk08Ih_

Ex Machina

I re-watched Ex Machina last night,

A future flick from 2014. I enjoyed it but not ecstatically.

Basically about a gynoid called Ava, an imprisoned innocent and a megalomaniac, Ex M was an AI vision made when, unlike today, AI wasn't part of everything everywhere. 

The film is good to look at: minimal, stark, clean and polished. The inside of the house is a pristine underground white rat maze like you'd see on Grand Designs. Outside it's a shack in a remote lush valley. 

SPOILER! I found it awkwardly tense and ultimately a bit depressing, the robot killing it's captor in order to live in the real world, the innocent sacrificed.

Prescient it was and I'm still wondering what would an AI being like Ava do in a world full of humans?

It's probably not long before we find out.

Have you seen Ex Machina?

Tron Ares

Ever since I first saw Tron way back when I've been hooked.

The geometry, the costumes, the grid, Flynns, the bikes, the whole techno world: I loved it all, which looking back, is odd, as I'm not a gamer at all. In fact I've never played a single computer game in my life.

A few years back I saw the superb Tron sequel, Legacy and just this week I caught the new Tron Ares.

I was blown away, I loved it as well. 

No spoilers here. Needless to say the whole Tron architecture is still there, all the sights, all the lines, all the sounds.

Wunderbar!

Is it something you would see readers? 

Every Room is a Living Tomb

 

Not two old horror films I know at all but I love the garish poster art. There's just something about them.

Do you like them?

Favourite Movie Puzzler

Hello Woodsy

When I think of my favourite war films I think of .................   One of the actors was a star of the very first episode of The Twilight Zone.

I loved the aesthetic of the Grumman F9F Panther and early US jet fighter powered by a Rolls Royce designed engine.

I suggest posting my image asking for someone to identify the movie.

Anyone?

Terranova47

USA

For Your Eye Sockets Only

 What can I say about Alien Earth, the new TV series on Disney+?

Superlatives don't really cover it.

Think supremely fantastic and cringingly yucky in equal measure, maybe somewhere round the dripping joints between films like the Thing and Sputnik grafted onto a waiting open Alien.

Not for the faint-hearted and completely compulsive. 

For me the current icky award goes to one of the show's smaller varmints.

But before I reveal it, it's interesting to dawdle over some precedents ... But watch out!

This golden oldie sets the scene, a movie that terrified me as a kid and one I know as the Trollemburg Terror! Is it one you know?

This is the box art to a model kit.

Cuneo's painted slithering devils spring to mind as well, as introduced to us on MC by Wotan 17 years ago.

I just couldn't help jiggling this into a clip, but it's Cuneo's artistry.

Similarly Bill brought us his fondness for rubber uglies on MC and this oily eye-squid fits right in (a phrase which comes into its own on Alien Earth! 🐙 )

Once more I was compelled to meme it.

But none of these wrigglers can prepare you for the truly cringing orb that is Alien Earth's small and parasitic crawling eye!

You've been warned!

Yuk!

Brave New Marvel: Wolverine, Deadpool and Captain America

Being back on Disney+ and a huge superhero film fan, I've caught up with two Marvel flicks I haven't seen. 

Wolverine and Deadpool:

Two interconnected experimentees with a long history of really disliking each other, this big-hitter flick was inevitable. With Hugh Jackman's Logan movie often cited as one of the best super hero films ever made, I was excited to see Wolverine and Deadpool. Wolvey donning his old yellow Spandex was a delight to an old fan like me missing the glory days of the X- Men. Deadpool was his usual jocular self, the film largely a vehicle for his katana-sharp humour rubbing Logan up the wrong way. It was an interesting watch and moved me forward in the saga.

Captain America: Brave New World: 

I hoped for so much from this flick. I adore the Cap. As it turns out it's Steve Roger's super-soldier Cap I adore. Not Sam Wilson's metal-winged angel. Noble nevertheless, Falcon America is a poor second for me, like Robin standing in for Superman. No powers, no super strength. The film was sadly a Brave New Mess, a lukewarm domestic story lacking in the right serum, that couldn't even be saved by the novelty of a red Hulk Indy. I'm really glad I saw it though and shall seek hopefully more meaningful falconry in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Have you seen either of them? 

Mystery Sci Fi Films

We're currently enjoying James Spader in the Blacklist. Seeing him rang a bell and a whole cache of sci Fi flicks came knocking.

Anyone know the names of these? I've forgotten! 

James Spader is an astrocryptologst reading symbols in a cave.

Jodie Foster is in touch with her deceased Dad via the family radio.

Jodie Foster works with a massive radar dish.

Amy Adams climbs into a landed UFO. 

Val Kilmer faces booming pulses on Mars.

How it Ends and Annihilation

After a good few years gap, I've re-watched two American disaster movies.

*

How it Ends (not Howard's End!) is essentially a road trip flick with a bit of added Sci-Fi chucked in. A prospective son-in-law and his ex-military and aggressive father-in-law-to-be set off in a car from Chicago to find the apple of both their eyes, the wife-to-be/ daughter in Seattle.

Much fresh gasoline is needed and there appears to be no end of huge, full Jerry cans along the road as long as you're prepared to shoot, ram and burn your way to get to them. 

Basically, a growing bromance set against a global and unfathomable catastrophe, it's dour tone and vision of rising civilian violence reminded me of the more recent Civil War.

We never get to find our what caused the world-wide disaster.

*

Annihilation is about the Shimmer, a strange and rapidly expanding geographical zone where everything mutates.

Soldiers were sent in. One came back. Scientists were sent in. One came back. They were a married couple and the film is more or less an analogy of grief, a terrible world turned upside down.

Within the Shimmer things are changing. Crocs are massive, bears scream with human voices and plants grow into people. There are some fantastic special effects and startling imagery here.

Yukky moments include large internal organ snakes and scary bits include a tense mutated bear attack.

The cause of the shimmer remains unknown but there's a definite suggestion it's alien.

I enjoyed it more than How it Ends as the sci-fi is cranked up to the max.

*

Have you seen either of these readers?