Even Number Star Trek Movie Week: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Welcome back Trekkers and I do apologize for yesterday’s lack of blog but do to a herniated disk I was kind of down yesterday.  Let’s play another rousing game of “RECAP”.  When last we left our heroes, Spock was rescued from the clutches of death, Klingons were being jackasses and Kirk battered up his ship yet again…So returning to Vulcan with Spock the crew spend 3 months there so Spock can be mentally sound again before they face their charges of mutiny, piracy and disobeying the Prime Directive.  Without further adieu, this is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

 

Damn Skype.  Is this working now?

Kirk: Spock, where the hell’s that spoiler you promised me?

Spock: One damn minute, Admiral.

After sacrificing the Enterprise that was almost scuttled and ready for decommission anyway, Kirk and crew manage to kill almost entire Klingon Bird of Prey agglomeration, nick it and take off to Vulcan all to save Spock and McCoy.  They must journey back to Starfleet headquarters in beautiful San Fran…CISCOOOOOOOOO…. um to face the charges they have committed and accept whatever punishment comes their way.   On the way there an alien probe proceeds to disrupt almost all technology on Earth firing some sort of audio modulation in the deepest of oceans.  To what purpose no one on Earth knows.

Sir, the Star Babies are attacking after 400 years!

Spock has a theory after researching the sounds for a bit coming to the conclusion that it is the exact same sound a Humpback whale makes; which species is now extinct in the 23^rd century due to whaling not being outlawed.   Spock begins to calculate a slingshot maneuver the Bird of Prey will have to take around the sun in order to travel back into a time line where these whales exist, snag a few and have them speak on behalf of the planet.  Easy peasy, right?

Our gallant crew land in San Francisco in barbaric time of 1986.  These savages still have fossil fuel based vehicles, carry firearms and even swear.  Soldiering through this Dark Age, Kirk and Spock find a pair of Humpback whales in the Sausalito Institute.   They join a tour group led by Dr. Gillian (Catherine Hicks of Peggy Sue Got Married, Child’s Play and 7^th Heaven) who is avid in the survival of the whales and is against whaling for the blubber and oils for perfume, skin cream and cologne.    Yes the evils of across the pond and Mary Kay is in full swing demanding the heads of these noble creatures.

I have a quick couple of notes for this movie.  This would be Leonard Nimoy’s second time at bat for directing film after the success of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock which netted Paramount a cool $76 million on a 17 million picture.  Not too shabby, eh?  Nimoy along with writers Harve Bennett (Mod Squad, The Invisible Man, Riding with Death and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Steve Meerson (Back to the Beach, Double Impact and Anna and the King), Nicholas Meyer (Time After Time, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Sommersby, Voices and Fall from the Sky) and Peter Krikes (Back to the Beach, Double Impact and Anna and the King) colluded together to flesh out this story and offer their collective tidbits to an entertaining film that the CGI generation would sneer at the blue screen effects and scale models.  To which I say, don’t like it, well no one is forcing you to watch it.

Read the Tek series, people. I worked hard on it!

Carpenter Week: Prince of Darkness

Hey kiddies!  Back again with a creep factor of about 6 with our next Carpenter flick and boy o boy it is a doozy.   Wouldn’t you know it that this all happened because of grad students, scientists and their pesky priest?   Grab some popcorn, invite some friends and dare to look away.   This is Prince of Darkness.

Spoilers walk the Earth!!!

A priest (Donald Pleasence of The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice, Buried Alive, Escape From New York, Halloween 1,2,4,5, and 6) doesn’t go into a bar but actually conducts a lecture with a gathering of students and renown Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong of Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, Year of the Dragon, Big Trouble in Little China, The Golden Child, The Last Emperor and Bloodsport) meet together in the basement of a disused church in Los Angeles.   The priest requires and humbly requests their expertise investigating a mysterious cylinder contain a swirling green liquid.  The metaphysics student Brian Marsh (Jameson Parker of Callie and Son, Simon &Simon, The Legend of Prince Valiant, Have You Seen My Son, Something Borrowed, Something Blue and JAG) feels confident that they will crack the case of the cylinder of potential doom.  Careful research of the text with the cylinder translates to the essence of the Anti-Christ.  Yeah damnation in a bottle and I though Axe was bad.   So of course we cannot pack it up there and split, no our team has to conduct a variant of experiments to see if we can quantify evil.  

Over a period of two days, small spurts of the liquid manage to escape the cylinder and start possessing the students one at a time trying to wipe out everything in its path.   The survivors are barracked in the church and an army of hobos also possessed are looking for any potential escapees.   So let’s bunk down into the deconsecrated church and hope for the best.   Each survivor shares a recurring dream, a message from the future if you will, explaining the world’s end in from the far away time of 1999.

As this lunacy is being deciphered, student Kelly is absorbed by the remaining liquid and creating the Anti-Christ.  A hideous, maimed figure that seems to regenerate any damage inflicted by human and also has a high concentration of telekinesis and brother she is ticked off.     The Anti-God demands to be brought into the mortal world and that’s what Anti-Christ Kelly is all about via second act.   Can our haphazard scientists, students and priest stop the madness that will engulf the world or will they be too late?

With the capable hands of FX gurus Mark Shostrom (The Boys Next Door, From Beyond, Evil Dead II, Phantasm II, Dick Tracy and Star Trek: Generations) and Kevin Quibell (Starman, The Running Man, Black Rain, Speed, Twister and Hard Rain) the creature FX, Visual and prosthetics look believable, eerie and downright nasty.  Anti-Christ Kelly about made me want to run fleeing for the hills or possibly skip lunch.    Proof is in the pudding as they say and thus far Carpenter proves he can do scary, gore, humor and a bit of sci-fi.  Have a happy folks and keep the lights on for this one while you watch it.