This is just a quick tab for some of the other stuff I've seen recently and couldn't be bothered to write up.
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (Edward Neumeier 2008)
-
Much better than the dull second installment, this benefits from the re-introduction of Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and a slightly bigger budget. It's still no great shakes though, with crappy looking CGI work, misfiring attempts at satire, and thoroughly unlikable performances from the supporting cast. A disappointing improvement.
Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion: Grudge Song (Yasuharu Hasebe 1973)
This is part four in the series (I reviewed parts one & three
here and part two
here ). Directorial duties on this one were handed from Ito to Hasebe and it shows badly. Much of the beautifully framed photography is absent, and the plot feels like a tacked on after thought considering things were wrapped up nicely at the end of
Beast Stable. Kaji is still excellent to watch though, and the film does have it's moments, not least Scorpion's gallows encounter with a crooked cop. Good, but not great.
Death Ship (Alvin Rakoff 1980)
Ugghh!!! by rights this should go in my 80's Trash thread but I'm damned if I'm wasting time writing it up properly. George Kennedy and Richard Crenna's luxury cruise ship (which looks like left overs from
The Love Boat) sinks forcing them (and some other B-listers) to board a ghostly Nazi torture vessel. Cue an hour and a half of grimy uneventful boredom as they die one by one in remarkably un-gory ways. Oh and the boat collision sequence is pathetic; stick with
The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (Frank De Felitta 1981 TV)
+
This is a better than average TV movie with Charles Durning great as the leader of a lynch mob who gun down the local simpleton, Bubba (Larry Drake giving an excellent performance) when he's wrongly accused of murdering a young girl. Shortly after they meet with strange deaths at the hands of the creepy scarecrow Bubba was hiding in at the time of his death. This is predictable stuff, but De Felitta still manages to craft some genuinely hair raising scares, and there's a subtle atmosphere of foreboding throughout. Neat.
The Ghost Galleon (Amando De Ossorio 1974)
-
Third part in Ossorio's cult Blind Dead series (Part one reviewed
here part two
here ) and it's a complete wash out. A group of models on a seabound photo-shoot get lost in fog and end up boarding a spooky old galleon inhabited by the Templars (who for some unexplained reason are all at sea in this one). What should be a laugh riot is just painfully slow with banal dialogue and a complete lack of gore. In it's favour the galleon sets are really atmospheric, but why did Ossorio include that ridiculous model boat?
Screamers aka
L'Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (The Island of the Fishmen) (Sergio Martino 1979)
The American poster (above right) for this has to be the most misleading I've ever seen. Nobody is turned inside out and it's nothing to do with the Peter Weller Sci-Fi flick. It's actually a rather fun adventure film in the vein of
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977) and
Warlords of Atlantis (1978). This has bond girl Barbara Bach and Richard Johnson from
Zombi 2 (it was filmed right after on the same locations) as father and daughter on an island of genetically engineered fishmen controlled by a mysterious drug. Enter a group of shipwrecked convicts who expose a plot using the mutants to recover the lost treasure of Atlantis. This is good fun with amusing fish makeups (think
Creature from the Black Lagoon meets
Humanoids from the Deep) and some explicit gore spliced in by Roger Corman who purchased the film for the American market. Fun.
Reply to Topic
