Bug Hunt: Aliens

Boy you would think a hardcore James Cameron fan, I would have reviewed this movie by now. Hey gang! Welcome back to the blog. Y'know going through my writing reviews I noticed the total lack of this Action/SciFi film and it left me a bit surprised I never touched base on this movie. Picking up where the 1979 SciFi/Horror Ridley Scott film originated, this is the continuing story of Ellen Ripley and all the craziness she must endure. This is Aliens.

Rough pregnancy.

Directed by James Cameron fresh off of the success of The Terminator, the fate of Ripley, the lone survivor of the Nostromo with her encounter at LV-426 needs accounting. Also that deep freezing may be needed tending to. A deep salvage cargo run finds the escape pod from the Nostromo, finds vital signs on Ripley (Sigourney Weaver of Alien, Half Moon Street, Ghostbusters, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Ghostbusters II, Dave, Be Kind Rewind, Avatar and The Defenders) and Jonesy so they have to bring her in safely. Imagine how dark a film it would be if they ejected her cryo pod or if we went disturbing sexploitation route. Hey it could have gone there. Not likely in a Cameron film but it could.

57 years have past since her cryo sleep, all her friends and family most likely have died, moved on or out of contact. For details on her daughter,...go play the game Alien: Isolation. Maybe find the cut scenes on YouTube. Someone has bound to have done that by now.

Fine bunch of bad asses!!!

Ripley gives her full accounting of what happened down to detonating the ship and representatives of the company, Weyland-Utani is not pleased. They remain skeptical to her accounts and give her a dressing down to the likes of Chuck Connors' Branded. Aging myself again. The colony that has been terraformed and mining there has seen no evidence of the creature Ripley described in all their surveys of the planet. I mean there is skeptical and there is plain rude. The lot of them needed a Terminator visit, car crash included.

Stripped of her pilot status she is stuck in the loading dock moving cargo. A few months later one of the company's mouthpieces Burke (Paul Reiser of Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop II, Mad About You, Bye Bye Love, The Thing About My Folks, The Story of Us, Strange Relations, Funny People and Stranger Things 2) claims they will restore her flight status if she is a technical advisor on this mission to see the condition of the colony and its people.

Going in with a squad. Yeah one squad of Colonial Marines with the latest firepower and weaponry she should be just fine. With a heavy heart and hopes that they will exterminate the creatures, Ripley goes on the mission.

Momma looks grumpy

Lt. Gorman (William Hope of To Save the Children, The Saint, As Time Goes By, c-12: Final Resistance, Sword of Honour, xXx, Headhunter: Redemption, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Spiders 3D) and his combatants stand ready to investigate the colony after breakfast, weapons prep and mission debrief. Still love that Sgt. Apone (Al Matthews of Aliens, Superman III, Funny Money, The Comic Strip, The Apocalypse Watch and Aliens: Colonial Marines) was one of the first black men earning the rank of Sergant in the Vietnam war, so yelling at grunts was nothing new. With faces like Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton and Lance Henrikson, please appreciate I do not want to write out their entire lengthy filmography.

Still cracks me up that Schwartzenegger is the reason for Biehn and Paxton to look shredded like they did for the film. A few tips to beef up and stay stronger. Thanks Arnold!

No sooner has their drop ship landed and an armored personnel carrier is zooming about, the colony seems completely deserted with signs of re-inforced welding and small arms fire discharge. Yet no bodies.

The marines move in and are limited to using lighter weapons due to heading around the reactor. Yeah armor piercing rounds going through the reactor that is clearly thermonuclear could be...bad.

With minimal life signs the colonists are embedded in the walls, almost cocooned there. THERE WAS A FIRE FIGHT!!! Oh sorry. Wrong film.

Creatures start coming out of the walls attacking and dragging away marines and the rest have to leg it away. Ripley brings the APV in to their location and saves them.

With the need for a mass evac underway, the drop ship and its crew are maimed and blown up thanks to more of the creatures. Stuck on the planet, the marines barricade themselves, take watch and formulate a plan to escape. With the only resident not taken by the creatures, Newt (Carrie Henn of Aliens) explains they hunt at night so they need to stay indoors.

Now I am reviewing the special edition of Aliens, giving more looks at the colony prior to the infestation, the armament aside from pulse rifles and the M56 Smartguns with gyro mounts but it also shows Ripley's struggle in her new role as a dock worker and how life had slapped her in the face. And my personal favorite of big toys, the UA 571-C Automated Sentry Guns. 4 of these bad boys with display screen, scanners and 500 round drums.

Will the team survive until help arrives in 17 days? Can the creatures wipe them out?

So overall this version is superior to the theatrical release in the sense of wanting more story. It clocks out at 2 hours and 50 minutes instead of the theatrical 2 hours and 34 minutes. OoOo a whole 17 minutes more but it really makes the difference as far as story telling instead of just the straight up action sequences. I would recommend both versions. I just prefer the special edition.

HOW'S MY BREATH??!!!

Rotten Reelz Reviews Audio Review #45: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

You read the review, now enjoy the rant that is...well probably not for little ears, definitely not safe for work and may offend elderly grandmothers.

Halloween III Review!!!

Little Buddy says: Happy Halloween!..with bugs in his mouth.

Feel free to subscribe!  Leave a comment on the page!  Whatever trips your trigger!!

Halloween Movie Time: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

The tension, atmosphere, the foreboding terror. Young Jaime Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance tangling with the Shape a.k.a. Michael Myers...will not be reviewed today. Hey gang welcome back as we tackle the Halloween spoken in whispers, loved by many and loathed by Michael fans.

This is Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Nancy Drew and the Brawny Man are on the case!!!

Okay let's not run away already. Criminy. Now many of you are wondering of all the Halloween flicks, why does Jake decide to do the third film? Well one, it doesn't involve Michael performing acts of superhuman strength levels and regeneration. Two, this film is still being debated to this very day and three, it has been on the request back burner for a while.

Writer and director Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Fright Night 2, Aloha Summer, It and The Comrades of Summer) had the audacity, the temerity to give us a Halloween WITHOUT MICHAEL MYERS??!! As many surmised, Michael and Loomis blew up in the hospital in Halloween II and that was...well pretty much all she wrote. The initial plan was John Carpenter would write a new Halloween movie each year telling a different tale of Gothic horror during the Halloween season thus bringing an anthology of horror and macabre to the American and overseas viewers.

Is barfing insects up a sign of illness?

Unfortunately due to the low attendance and ticket sales at the box office, the idea was completely shelved because the audiences of the time just wanted more Michael in the same fashion of their Friday the 13^th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. An immortal killer that cannot be stopped but only made dormant for a time and until he rises again. Yup, that sure sounds like something people have NEVER seen.

Stupid 80s audience!!! So rather than some potential terror we are left with the first and only installment in that new direction. Is it a complete waste of your time? Does it have some bizarre and astonishing effects? Let's take a look.

So our story begins with a disturbed old man and of course the best stories always do. Shop keeper Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry of The Last Starfighter, Re-Animator, Mad About You, Empty Nest, Nick Knight and Guns of Paradise) is being pursued on a lonely road by two men in black? Making his way to the gas station, the attendant offers to take him to the hospital noticing Harry clutching a Silver Shamrock mask screaming, "They're going to kill us!!" FYI we are actually shooting and existing in Northern California not faux Haddonfield Illinois. SHOCKING!!!

Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins of Baretta, The Fog, Escape from New York, Lethal Weapon, A Stranger Waits, Maniac Cop, Striking Distance, Oz and Shannon's Rainbow) is clearly our hard ass protagonist. I mean look at him. Rugged, focused and an don't mess with me attitude.

Cripes it's Buddy.  Act natural, honey and he'll go away.

Seeing demented Harry rambling, the doc springs into action. And by springs into action, I mean check his charts, blood levels and medical history. Another man in black attends to Harry in the form of killing him, nips out to the parking lot, dousing himself in a high octane fuel and lights up. Subtle. What? Air bubble in his I.V.not good enough?

Next morning Harry's daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin of Going Ape!, Yellowbeard, Bullets over Broadway, Ride with the Wind, Distant Cousins and 12 Floors Up) comes to ID dead pappy, get mildly weepy and confab with Challis that Harry's death clearly had something to do with what is going on in Santa Mira.

Apparently the doc had no other patients so it is off to channel Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis Murder without a doofy detective for a son. Yeah I know it's off topic but did that kid every do his damn job as a homicide detective without daddy's help?

So Detective McCrae is hot on the trail finding that Harry stayed at the local motel and almost the whole town are working for The Old Man of Robocop?? OCP runs Santa Mira!!!  There will be ED-209s running amok in the streets!!   Okay okay, fine! It's Conal Cochran (Da O' Herlihy of Good Against Evil, MacArthur, The Bionic Woman, Deadly Game, The Last Starfighter, Robocop, Robocop II, VR.5 and The Rat Pack) whose mask factory has saved the whole town's economy...with three masks. A witch, jack-o-lantern and a skull. Variety!!!  Two of the shop owners I just wanted to slap though. Buddy and Betty Guttman who cruelly named their son, Little Buddy. Oh sure Buddy Jr or Buddy the Second is most likely his name but Little Buddy is too close to My Buddy. Probably lock him in the basement when he has an original thought of his own.

This whole time watching this I am thinking, leave the town to the ominous and obvious dark forces. That could just be I am not an action hero with mighty pecs, zingy one liners and infinite ammo. Challis won't be swayed from skulking about as the townsfolk seem blissfully unaware of the disturbingly calm and cold security force dressed in black suits and ties.

Old Man tells Challis his masks will wipe out children on a global level and he will save this planet by replacing them...with androids apparently. Yeah I'm not sure if he thought this through well enough. Could be he is eco-friendly and wants to create a race of beings with solar cells, won't encroach more on wild life and use up natural resources??

With the dark arts, robotic servitors and a kooky curse underway, Challis must save the world in time for the sake of the children?

Okay a few of the obvious points I will no doubt have to make or fans will ream me. The Silver Shamrock theme is completely based on London Bridges children song because it was public domain. Stonehenge druid stones where transported to the mask factory but never explained. One of those, "Eh, the audience will get it or they won't," scenarios and personally that makes it fun.

With effects ranging from animatronic prosthetic, gore gags and creepy crawlers I found this film to be fun, bizarre and really out there. Many in Carpenter's mindset would agree Michael's story was finished at 2 and it was ample time to move on. While others just want a mute stalker slashing teenyboppers, elder men and women with a cold and methodical fashion. You already have that with Jason Vorhees!!!

With a budget estimated at 2.5 million dollars this film still brought in $14.4 million at the box office. Okay it wasn't a huge success but clearly folks didn't crap all over as much as the hype wanted you to believe.

They are sticklers for signing the guest book.

Creature Features Extravaganza: Monster Island

Welcome back readers if I have any left after Missile to the Moon. Hahahahaha!!! I'm kidding. I would think the rape revenge and women in prison movies would have cost me readers instead of 50's B-movie nonsense. Well I sense from the overall vibe that many felt that yesterday's creature feature was simply not enough creature, in spite of rock monsters and giant spider puppet. Seriously, my mom is terrified of spiders and all that damn thing would have done is made her snort and belly laugh. So today we forge ahead to the far away time of 2004, where a contest to party in the Bermuda Triangle courtesy of MTV. This is Monster Island.

Obligatory cheesecake shot!

Our story follows Josh (Daniel Letterie of Camp, Debating Robert Lee, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green), a teen with his head in the clouds and slacker by nature is off to the Bermuda Triangle to party his time away, gathered with friends to rock out with special guest star hostess of this event, Carmen Electra. So yeah the kid is stoked, obviously to those around him. Of course things can always go bad as the dreaded Nick Carter of the Backdoor Boys is also in this event. Yeah and um giant fauna due to atomic mutations and genetic manipulation. Still Nick Carter? Chilling.

Yup the acid kicked in already.

With backstage passes to hang with Carmen, Josh is eyeballed by her security guard/ bodyguard Eightball (C. Ernst Harth of Thir13en Ghosts, Capote, Dead Rising, Scammerhead, Almost Human and Joe Finds Grace). Yup that is his name. No he is not black so that joke is lost. Guessing he is a speed freak perhaps and has a real Bulk of Bulk and Skull via Power Rangers look about him. Jinkies it turns out Carmen has thoughts, opinions and is like a real person. Hey give the lad a break, he's barely 20 or so. He was probably too gobsmack at her looks to kick his brain into high gear. With freak weather happening a giant stop animation bug causes havoc and scoops up Carmen carting her to places unknown.

With partakers fleeing left and right heading for the boats for safety, Josh and a group of devoted Electra fans journey into the unknown jungles to save her. Our party consisting of Maddy (Elizabeth Winstead of Sky High, Final Destination 3, Black Christmas, Death Proof, Live Free or Die Hard, The Thing, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Mercy Street) the gutsy brunette and ex-girlfriend of Josh, Jen C. (Chelan Simmons of It, Special Unit 2, Carrie, Snakehead Terror, Smallville, Chupacabra Terror, Supernatural, Final Destination 3, John Tucker Must Die and Love Under the Stars) the dingy but hopeful aspiring actress/musician, nerdy Andy (Cascy Beddow of Jeremiah, Carrie, The Mall Man, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Life As We Know It, Blade: Trinity and Colony), jock ass and self-centered Chase (Chris Harrison of Smallville, Black Sash, 11:11 and Monster Island)

K, we'll hang later. Peace.

This movie dips back into the 1950s grab bag of effects with scale model miniatures, large scale pneumatic armatures and stop motion capture effects of flying creatures. The film tries to play the tongue in cheek jobs with as much seriousness as allowed. Making their way to the caverns or in this case probably lava tubes, the lot encounters Doctor Harryhausen (the late, great Adam West of Batman, The Adventures of Batman and Robin, Superfriends, Zombie Nightmare, Return Fire, Night of the Kickfighters, Mad About You, Black Scorpion, Johnny Bravo, XIII, The Batman, Family Guy and Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders) a mad scientist responsible for most of the gigantic fauna roaming this island paradise and yes a nod to stop animation/visual effects creator Ray Harryhausen (The Animal World, Earth vs.the Flying Saucers, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Strange World of Planet X, The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon, One Million Years B.C., The Valley of Gwangi and Clash of the Titans).

The script is corny and it's meant to be. Giving love to those old Drive-In movies of the 1950s using the fades and dissolves to models scaled that were super imposed. Almost similar to Mysterious Island in its design.

You get the general vibe that all actors and performers in on this are there for a good time and a paycheck and well it seems just that. Carmen gets to embrace creature feature scream queen status akin to Fay Wray of King Kong or Joan Weldon of Them. It's campy, quirky, sarcastic and overall just damn odd. So naturally I felt a connection to it. Yup beat you all to the punchline, bitches!

Stop-motion animator David Bowes really captures the painstaking effect to make these beasties move along with life-size ant puppeteer George Groove making the ant rigs stomp their way through the kegger.

Yes it is once again slacker/outcast/rebel finds a cause, fights for it risking life and limb and may even get the girl.

Also I am so old I had to look up actress/producer/writer La La Anthony (Gun, Think Like a Man, 1982, Think Like a Man Too, Chi-Raq, Unforgettable and Power) and then it clicked with Unforgettable...but previously I forgot. False advertise, TV series! 

Gahh! You don't get my whimsy, childish behavior, girl!!

Creature Features Extravaganza: Missile to the Moon

Welcome back to the blog, girls and boys! So last week was me editing the crap out of two movie review videos. The links are up if you want to see them. This week I was looking at a wide range of creature features and thought we could enjoy those. And by "we" I mean me sitting through some of these turds, giving a humorous take on them and you enjoying the write up. This time around we hit a black & white from 1958.  With action, drama, scintillating dialogue...won't be in it.   But how about a mad scientist, two cons on the run and a rocket scheduled to go to the moon?  This is Missile to the Moon.

Sorority sisters rat out Cindy for stuffing her bra.

With director Richard Cunha (She Demons, Giant from the Unknown, Frankenstein's Daughter, Girl in Room 13 and When Strangers Meet)at the helm, what could possibly be to mock at?

For starters not only does this film feel like Catwomen of the Moon it actually has some of the props from it.

For more than 10 years, building and perfecting it, Dr. Dirk Green (MichaelWhalen of Wee Willie Winkie, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, The Dawn Express, My Three Sons and Sea Hunt) has been working with pre-NASA and the government to build better, superior rockets all the while, building his own rocket as well. Like in his backyard in Utah. No, that was not a joke. The colonel of this mission along with Dirk's assistant Steve (Richard Travis of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Mesa of the Lost Women, Cyborg 2087, Lassie, The Legend of Jesse James and Grand Jury) meet with the good doctor with a face-to-face on the news that the funding for his exploration dreams are getting pulled. Guess you don't want to drop that big of a bomb over the phone.

Hold me closer, tiny Colonel.

Arriving as a retirement dinner, Steve and his fiancee June (Cathy Downs of My Darling Clementine, The Amazing Colossal Man, Perry Mason, Surfside 6, Rawhide and Bat Masterson) feel booze and the dullest conversation possible will ease the tension. The tension that is so thick a f*cking lightsaber couldn't cut through it.   Meanwhile two cons have escaped the hoosegow and are looking for a place to hide on the lam.  Naturally Dirk's SPACESHIP isn't guarded, locked up or even inaccessible so those two thinking it was, I don't know maybe a tree fort hide there. Allegedly has an electric fence around it.  Still love they pull back the curtain to Dirk's pad and boom there's the rocket. So adequate engines, fuel, pounds per thrust and no shielding I saw, yeah his house will catch fire the moment of launch. Totally feasible.

With such craftsmanship one could hardly conclude it is a wooden rocket super imposed on a backdrop. Bet you also didn't know that most spaceships have lots of pegboard and flimsy restraints for car batteries as a means of additional electrics. Yeah me either. 

It's clobberin' time!

The sheriff in hot pursuit of these escaped crooks, just asks Dirk if he can look around his pad and is very noncommittal about the giant rocket in his backyard. I mean he had to have attempted some test flights, right? Calculations and preliminary gauging aside, what about the noise and racket of building the damn thing, prepping a launch platform...you know what? Fine, it is totally feasible. What the hell kind of permits would you need for that??!!!

Dirk looks up in the rocket spotting the two hoods and tells the sheriff no one is around. He bribes them with sandwiches, fruits and a few Cokes then tells them they are going into space whether they like it or not. Yeah Green couldn't build a one man rocket so why not make use of these young punks.

Steve and June start looking for Dirk when the pre-flight computer starts blaring, so they go TOWARDS THE BLAST ZONE!!!

Accidentally stowing away, regardless of extra weight, oxygen, fuel and....sorry sorry. TOTALLY FEASIBLE... The five of them are off to the moon. Thankfully they had just enough spacesuits, masks and O2 tanks at the ready. Funny how the moon looks an awful like region for the Vasquez Rocks and of course off to Griffith Park via the Bronson Canyon and the damn caves!!! Why not the 40 Acres in Culver City??!!

Dirk dies from car battery bonking him on the noodle and with his dying words to Steve he hands him this amulet McGuffin to assure them passage. The foolish foursome go and explore with guns. With scrub brush and cacti!!! Dreaded creatures composed of rock proceed to...walk very slowly but threatening our landing party so they proceed to try and drill them...with combustion pistols that has no atmosphere at all. A vacuum one might say. TOTALLY FEASIBLE!!!

Narrowly escaping the incredibly slow moving creatures our heroes head for the caves. Deep in this labyrinth of bat poop is an oxygenated area of the moon inhabited only by women. Con 1 and 2 start falling for the moon girls almost immediately. That's called being horny.

We need about 4,000 gallons of peppermint oil STAT!!!

So the queen mucky muck wants her space broads shipped to Earth and save their culture, blah blah blah. Oh did I mention diamonds just plentiful on the moon? Solves NASA's budget right there. Methinks Armstrong skipped that detail. Con 2 wants the diamonds and makes creeper eyes at all the girls. Seriously, this cat is a thug. This was shot in the seventies it would be Space exploration exploitation and his character would have raped more than half of the girls.

The plot is more thinly veiled than the moon girls, its subplots go really nowhere and ultimately no goal aside from get back home is even made. Also the killer spider puppet in this bit of nonsense is leftover from the 1955 Tarantula.

So good vs evil, Earth Men made mindless by hormones. Yeah there is no real redeeming value to this flick at all. An upside is Rifftrax via Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 made it bearable to watch and the riffs are damn funny.

Hey Lonnie, your balls hurt with your pants hiked up too?

Rotten Reelz Reviews Audio Review: Friday the 13th Part 2

Yeah, yeah.  I'll write something next week.   In the mean time, being Friday the 13th,  I present you a an audio review of Friday the 13th Part 2 and yes I swear I will work on some reviews of the written variety next week.   Now watch this and have fun!

Rotten Reelz Reviews Audio Review # 42: Vampire Journals

As a request I look into more Ted Nicolau movies, I made this review and who knows?  Perhaps I will do some more Subspecies.   It is entirely possible.  Vampire Journals is up and running, awaiting your peepers, comments and queries.   Have fun!