Killer Bees On Horseback -- Once Upon A Swarm In The West

Henry Fonda, one of the greatest actors of his generation, was in many classic films, including the Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West.

Fonda was also in The Swarm. That's right the Irwin Allen movie about the killer bees that you used to see on late night TV; now it's hopefully in the free stuff on Amazon Prime or similar.

I thought what could be better than to combine these two films. So I give you Once Upon A Swarm In The West. 

Note: No one will be allowed to leave the theater during the thrilling "bees on horseback" sequence.

Children of the Popcorn

 

The Wrath of The Wraith

I can't believe I went through the entire decade of the 1980s without ever watching the movie The Wraith.

You know the one I'm talking about: the goofy flick about a ghost sports car and its mysterious black-clad driver that challenges the members of a gang to street races. Every video store open during the 80s was required to have this movie's poster pinned up on its walls.

Charlie Sheen drives the movie's well-worn plot of a murdered man who comes back from the grave to avenge himself upon his killers. It's like High Plains Drifter but with Clint Eastwood trading his spotted pony for a Dodge M4S Turbo Interceptor (according to Wikipedia, a "technology demonstrator vehicle").

The movie opens with a couple of animated balls of light coming down from the night sky (because 80s), zooming across the Arizona highways before colliding to form...The Wraith, an all black sports car, with a black-helmeted, black-jumpsuited asthmatic driver - seriously, as the camera is pulling into a closeup of Mr. Helmet Guy, we hear labored breathing; I guess coming back from the dead is strenuous work. His getup looks like a lovechild of a stillsuit from the movie Dune and a Borg from TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then H.R. Giger puked on it for good measure.

The gang of killers is a hilarious assortment of 80s weirdos and wasteoids: lanky leader Packard Walsh, played by lanky Nick Casavettes, who races hapless motorists for their pink slips (heads up: he always cheats); a strangely coiffed Clint Howard is Rughead (Eraserhead must have been his hairdresser); rounding out the gang are Skank and Gutterboy, a couple of perpetually high tweakers who looked like they were ported over from another 80s' gem, Class of 1984. Note: The Crow, another murdered man returns from the grave for revenge flick also has a gang member named Skank. What are the odds?

This is all just silliness writ large. A pre-Tiger's Blood Sheen makes a good pretty boy, but nothing more. His role requires no acting, just show up, look at prettier Sherilyn Fenn (girlfriend of the murdered boy, and now Packard's "property"), and drive a dirt bike. Spoiler: yes, at the end, we see Mr. Helmet Guy take off his helmet to reveal Charlie Sheen, but, between you and me, I don't believe for a second he drove the sleek ebony Murdermobile in all those races.

Speaking of races, don't expect any true fast or furious action from those in this film. The Wraith's races against the baddies always end with an explosion, and those were fairly decent, but the camerawork and race choreography leading up to the kaboom were substandard: I've seen more intense car chases on the local news.

The movie appears to have been a co-production with a local Dodge dealership because every single car - that's EVERY. SINGLE. CAR - is a Dodge automobile. In this town, Ford spells f-i-g-h-t.

I don't know if I could truly recommend a supernatural car chase movie where the sleazy villain has the name of your grandfather's old sedan (remember the Packard, ya'll?) but I guess if you are sufficiently drunk - and NOT driving anywhere - you could do far worse than to let your eyeballs melt to the sights and sounds of The Wraith.

 (Clint Howard from The Wraith from https://medium.com/every-day-is-movies)

Shorts But Sweet

Short films can really pack a punch, if done well.

With little to no budget these mini-movies can deliver the goods.

Sometimes the directors of these shorts hit the big time and the material is adapted for the big screen. Two such lucky filmmakers are David F. Sandberg with Lights Out, which plays so well with our fear of the dark. His 2013 short film below was adapted into a successful big screen version in 2016, also called Lights Out. Sandberg has Annabelle: Creation out in theaters August 11.

Director Andres "Andy" Muschietti and his sister producer Barbara Muschietti created their extremely chilling short film Mama in 2008. It caught the eye of visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro who produced the 2013 big screen version also titled Mama. Andy Muschietti has the highly anticipated movie version of Stephen King's It coming September 8.

It's not just horror movies that work in the short film realm. Neill Blomkamp adapted his now-classic sci fi short Alive In Joburg (2005) into his acclaimed big screen District 9 (2009).

BABY DRIVER Posters Run The Gamut From Cliche to Cool

Great movie poster illustrations are becoming a lost artform.

Here is a quite standard Hollywood poster for the upcoming BABY DRIVER. It's not terrible, with its collage of characters grouped at the top and the slanted angle of the car in the lower half.

Here's an image that could be on a poster, but targets the film's sure-to-be-classic rock song soundtrack. Now THIS is a cool image. It grabs your attention with the graphic of the car zooming out of Baby's ever present iPod.

This next poster I absolutely adore. Simple, clean graphics. No collage, no clutter.

Baby Driver movie and images Copyright 2017 Sony Pictures Digital Productions Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended.

Silent Running - Making The Movie

Silent Running was originally released in March 1972. It was a modestly budgeted (made for about $1 million) science fiction film, but one with a very big environmental message which is still relevant today: We have to protect our forests. 

A documentary crew followed director Douglas Trumbull and his cast and crew as they made the film, primarily shooting on the decommissioned US Navy aircraft carrier Valley Forge in California. This is one of the better documentaries showing the behind the scenes goings on of a great film.

Riddick 3, Audience 0

In this edition of Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy (NOT!), io9 reports that Vin Diesel just. won't. let. Riddick. die.

Yes, Pitch Black (2000) was good - a lean, muscular lower-budgeted sci-fi action thriller where Diesel really had a presence about him as the convict Richard B. Riddick with the spooky see-in-the-dark eyes.

Chronicles of Riddick (2004) spent some big bucks to only go waaay overboard and create an ass-load of backstory and shit around Riddick, making a shady convict anti-hero into a mythological prophesied space god (or something).

Since Chronicles didn't do gangbuster biz, Diesel and writer/director David Twohy tried to go back to basics with the modestly budgeted Riddick (2013). Audiences everywhere shrugged - what was this movie even about?

Now that Diesel's profile has been raised by the admittedly fun Fast & Furious franchise, Vin wants to do ANOTHER Riddick movie for the six people still interested in the character, AND do a TV series tie-in set in the "Riddick Universe."

Come on Vin, you might have a small, and I mean small, cult following around the Riddick character, but after three movies that received wide releases over a 13 year period, and only managed to gross on average just over $46 million each - audiences has spoken: they simply don't care for this character.

The mercs didn't catch up to Riddick, but audience indifference surely did.

Happy Back To The Future Day

Happy Back To The Future Day, everyone.

Though don't you think it's time to update that analog Flux Capacitor for a digital model? Just a thought.

(pic from AlienRobotZombies.com)

The Works Network Airs The Weirdest Movies

There’s a new(ish) over the air channel called The Works.  A quick Google search shows that it’s another one of those “retro” channels (like Me-TV, Cozi, etc); for movies it pulls from MGM’s library as it is owned by that studio.

Now MGM is one of the oldest and most prestigious of movie studios; their inventory also consists of the libraries of such companies as Orion Pictures, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and United Artists.  From  all those companies, there's a lot of great, interesting movies to choose from.

So, why the hell are they showing Mr. Hercules Against Karate?  It’s a martial arts movie from 1973, directed by Italian Antonio Margheriti, where “Two Americans go to Hong Kong to rescue the son of a Chinese restaurant owner who is being held hostage by his stepmother and the sadistic owner of a kung fu school.”

In that one paragraph, it’s a virtual United Nations of moviemaking: Italian director, American cast, Hong Kong locations and Chinese kung fu.  So naturally the title includes “karate” which is Japanese, you nitwits! 

The Works had previously aired Jon Voight’s first feature film, a surreal superhero comedy from 1967 called Fearless Frank, written and directed by Philip Kaufman of all people.  It was heavy on the surreal and light on the comedy as far as I was concerned.  It was just too wacky for me.

If The Works is going to continue to air this kind of strange, off beat fare, they really need to showcase it by having someone like Joe Bob Briggs (world’s greatest drive in movie critic) or Michael J. Nelson (star/head writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000) host the thing.  If not, I suggest they rename the channel WTF, because every time I switch over to it, my first reaction is, What The F—k?

Beware...WASPATULA!

In the tradition of weird/silly/stupid shit like Sharknado, Dinocroc, Piranhaconda and Mega Python vs Gatoroid (basically 99% of the flix The Asylum craps out), we present WASPATULA.

Yes, it is only a matter of time before some unthinking scientists - blinded by their own hubris and marginal cooking skills - tamper with Mother Nature to create GIANT WASPS WITH SPATULAS IN PLACE OF THEIR STINGERS.  (Suggested by friend of the blog Greg G.)

Mad Max: Fury Road Legacy Trailer

You know his name.

Max.

Mad Max.

The Road Warrior.

He's fueled up his V-8 Interceptor and is heading our way.

If you're up to no good, I feel sorry for you.

Mad Max: Fury Road opens May 15.

Now He's Voiced EVERYTHING

The movie Virtuosity just ended.  That's the flick where a pre-Training Day Denzel Washington plays a cop who has to take down a virtual reality program which is a composite of notorious serial killers ( played by Russell Crowe) that has escaped into the real world (don't ask).

I spied in the end credits "Special Vocal Effects by Frank Welker."  Frank Welker, the voice of Freddie in Scooby Doo, the source of "Spock screams" in Star Trek III, and the voice of billions (okay, millions) of cartoon characters over the last 40+years.

Frank Welker: the John (he's been in every movie ever made) Carradine of voice over actors.

It's Gun Fu Time - Equilibrium's Gun Kata Fight Scenes

The movie: Equilibrium.

The stuff: the Gun Kata fights. (You know you love 'em.)

Earth Star Voyager - Cheesy 1980s TV Sci-Fi

Hey, Internet. Here's Earth Star Voyager, the failed TV movie pilot from The Wonderful World of Disney that aired in 1986.  (I dare you to say Earth Star Voyager six times fast.)

The movie opens in outer space on a field of stars, so naturally the on-screen card reads "Outer Space 2082."  Disney wanted to make certain you knew where this was taking place. Disney also seriously stretched this thing out by running the credits first with the names of the characters and their positions, then listing the actors afterward instead of combining all that information, causing composer Lalo Schifrin to pad out his snazzy synthesizer theme music.

This is one of those shows assembled from the Sci Fi Buffet: one part dismal Blade Runner-esque future where our heroes walk polluted rainy streets (shot in what looks like an indoor mall with a lot of mist and open umbrellas); one part Soylent Green's dwindling resources, crowded streets and rationed food supplies; but mostly several heaping helpings of Star Trek. Or rather, "Teen Star Trek", with young cadet types who range in age from 16 to 24 holding down the usual Enterprise bridge crew positions of captain, science officer, navigator, communications officer, and engineer.  They are the crew of the titular spaceship Earth Star Voyager on one of those standard "Earth is falling apart, so we're looking for another planet to colonize" stories.

Writer Ed Spielman's script is very by the numbers with no surprises along the way. Instead of focusing on interesting character development it seems like Spielman spent more time coming up with the window dressing such as funny names for future food (veggie bio burger, nutra-shakes, thremo chips with amino sauce).

Despite being directed by veteran James Goldstone, who directed for the original Star Trek, and featuring the always engaging Duncan Regehr as a rogue space captain, this thing is a slog to get through: poorly acted by the pre-Disney Channel child stars, dull stock characters (some with goofy names like "Beanie" and "Huxley Welles"), and sub-par visual effects (that two foot long model spaceship shot in the dark at the beginning looks like a two foot long model spaceship shot in the dark). The main bridge set and several corridors look decent enough, so we know where they spent most of the budget.

Earth Star Voyager aired about four months after the syndicated premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and while the latter series certainly had its ups and downs in its first three years of production, the difference between the two shows is night and day. The Next Generation had better acting (none of these kids holds a space-candle to TNG's Wil Wheaton), more thoughtful stories, and a larger budget. Earth Star Voyager looks like a rebooted version of 1977's Saturday morning kid's show Space Academy compared to it.

Oh, and this cult gem has about the LONGEST plot write up I have ever seen on Wikipedia.

It's A Genre World, We Just Live In It

Lotta things happening in the genre worlds right now:

Christopher Nolan' s Instellar is set to move and thrill us in early November.

The super-cult TV favorite Twin Peaks is coming back, with original creators David Lynch and Mark Frost returning to run things.

Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man is rumored to be the "villain" in the upcoming Captain America 3.

And Warner Brothers is banking A LOT on their stable of DC Comics characters translating into movie blockbuster franchises.

To the Falcon Cave, Robin!?

Did the Batmobile/Tumbler make the Kessel Run in less than 3 bat-parsecs?

Check out the video link to Variety.com at the end to find out the latest tit for tat shenanigans between Star Wars: Episode VII director JJ Abrams and Batman v Superman helmer Zack Snyder.  LINK.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1

Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy is simply the most fun movie to hit theaters in years.  Its soundtrack of classic rock staples only adds to the film's many charms.  Give the tunes a listen, and you'll be groovin' like Dancing Baby Groot in no time.

Fan-made Dancing Baby Groot

Guardians of the Galaxy is perhaps the most fun movie to grace multiplexes in many a year.  Jaded cynics can surely find fault with it, but many people, including me, just sat back with a large ice cold beverage and enjoyed the frak outta this movie.

I don't know what kind of merchandising Marvel/Disney has out for the movie, but I know they are kicking themselves they didn't think of this little gem like Patrick Delahanty did: an actual Dancing Baby Groot!

Mad Max: Fury Road - The Road Warrior Returns

The Road Warrior (1982) is one of my all-time favorite movies.  The bleak, desolate world created and brought to life by director/co-writer George Miller, actor Mel Gibson and their amazing team of filmmakers, artists, craftspeople and, lest we not forget, stunt drivers feels so real, you want to shake the dust out of your clothes after watching the movie.

Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2 as it was known in its native Australia and other parts of the world, was so influential that to this day, over 30 years after it was first released, cheap knockoffs are still made that ape aspects of the movie - mainly its football shoulder pad, leather-clad fashions.

I'm always drawn to characters like Max.  A wounded man who just wanted to be left alone after the tragedy he suffered, but who did the right thing when no one else did, or could do.  That fits the mold of many a classic Western film character too (and more than a few characters from Samurai films).

Now, finally, MAD MAX IS BACK.

Mad Max: Fury Road, scheduled for released May 2015, puts George Miller back in command, with Tom Hardy donning the weathered and tattered Main Force Police uniform of Max Rockatansky.  Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron, sporting a very cool mechanical arm, co-stars.

Start revving your engines.  The chase is about to begin...again.

Divert Away From Divergent

Here's some free advice: AVOID THE MOVIE DIVERGENT AT ALL COSTS.

This Harry Potter/Hunger Games/any high school-set story was a terrible crush of a bore.  It's set in a dystopic, post-apocalyptic Chicago just so we can see all the familiar city landmarks overgrown with weeds.

Shailene Woodley, who I enjoyed in the movie The Descendants, is our focus here as Triss, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood who has a decision to make, and it's not what frappaccino to order at Starbucks.  In Future Chicago, everyone is divided amongst five factions: Abnegation (selfless); Dauntless (brawny law enforcement); Erudite (brainiacs/nerds); Amity (peaceniks); and Candor (honesty).

When you come of age you have to take a sort of future SAT test to determine which faction you will belong to -- think the sorting hat scenes from Harry Potter.  The silly thing is, even if the test determines which faction you should be assigned to, you can still just chose whichever faction you want to be in.  So why have the friggin' test in the first place?

This movie is so serious that it is unintentionally funny.  Early on, we are introduced to the various factions.  We see the Erudites teaching school, the Abnegationists running the government, etc.  When the Dauntless people arrive by running up the street grinning and laughing, I fully expected them to break out into song, as if Divergent were channeling Newsies or West Side Story.  Not only do the Dauntless-ites run onto the scene, they immediately started climbing the framework of the L Train, which they seem to ride a lot when they aren't running everywhere.  It was a supremely stupid, silly scene, although 12 years old doubtless thought it was rad.

Triss goes against the SATs/sorting hat and picks Dauntless, and the rest of the movie is her getting schooled at their rock quarry HQ.  When we first see the digs, all the Dauntless kids are hanging out and chatting away; it looked and felt just like high school.  And this movie had that extremely juvenile feel of high school, with the jocks (among an entire faction of jocks) bullying Triss and her other non-steroidal friends.  Plus it included a couple of High School Cafeteria Scenes (TM).

The cast was uniformly pretty and bland (see the usual casting on any show on The CW).  Woodley has large expressive eyes, but she tears up a few times in the movie and, I swear, it was like somebody held up a Fresnel lens in front of her because her eyes become ENORMOUS when she cries.

At some point the movie remembered it should have some kind of plot since the whole waste of movie was Triss training at/for Dauntless High, so they shoehorn in something about a mind-control drug and one faction wanting to take control of the gubmint.  South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone hit it on the head in their movie Team America that every movie should have a montage.  Divergent could have seriously benefited from that axiom with all the training nonsense. 

I can't believe there are supposed to be two more movies after this one.  I think they're called Astringent and Detergent.