SCI-FI September!

[Inspector Abberline]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Good call on Dark Angel.

Have you seen Alien Agent? Stars Mark Dacascos and Billy Zane. It's not exactly top tier buddy cop / alien material but is worth a look. Actually there might not be a cop in it. But basically alien dude Dacascos teams up with an earth woman to stop other aliens on earth blowing shit up.

no but it sounds right up my photon torpedo....

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Inspector Abberline

no but it sounds right up my photon torpedo....

It appeared on my scanners as part of that Fight Factory line around ten years ago.

[Inspector Abberline]

Invaders from Mars (1953)
Little David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) is having a bit of trouble with his parents, especially Leif Erickson who has stabled his horse at the The High Chaparral, and has now been taken over by aliens, much to his boys annoyance... Steadily everyone in the town is taken over by these sand pit dwelling dweebs, who entice people into the dunes and suck em down like so many M & M's. Still are boy hero has some allies on his side in the form of Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter) and Dr. Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz), and ultimately the US Army in the end. What always stood out to me when ever I caught this on tv back in the day and still does to a point, is the paranoia and alienation the boy feels when ever he tries to explain what is happening, only to be dismissed by the towns folk who are slowly being brain washed.Also the look of the film is very striking, and the colours are so vivid and eye popping, that and the amazing sets, which seem to of been made to make its hero seem even smaller than he really is. It would be easy to say its surrealism, but then again I cannot think of anything else to call it apart from freaking weird looking, and it weired me out when I watched this as a kid. And I think this is one of those films that needs to be seen when you are young, because you appreciate the dilemma that David goes through and the trouble all those adults cause him... It also has an incredibly EC Comics feel to it as well, which is maybe just a coincidence but it does feel like a EC story come large on the screen, with its garish color palette and twisted imagery..

[trebor8273]

Some for sci-fi September



8.5/10



7/10




7/10

[Inspector Abberline]

Fantastic Voyage.(1966)
Anyone who enjoyed Honey I Shrunk The Kids...(hey someone must like that little f###er Rick Moranis) and more importantly Joe Dante's InnerSpace (1987) (hey someone must like that twat Martin Short), then you will love this technicolor lets shrink people and stick them into someones body film from the guy that gave us Soylent Green (1973). (I cannot say that name without shouting "Soylent Green is people!" ...while showing just a modicum of chest hair) Richard Fleischer, a director whose filmography is mightily impressive... Fantastic Voyage starts like a 1960s Len Deighton spy thriller, with a scientist Dr. Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) escaping them cruel and murderous Russians (if the hat fits and all that), but an attempted assignation bid leaves him in a coma...The secret everybody is after is the formula on how to shrink people longer than 60mins,and only he knows the secret.(or some such bollocks). So it's obvious right, shrink a group of eggheads, including Brit for hire Donald Presence and 60s sex icon Raquel Welch, and stick them in a nuclear submarine, shrink it and stick into your subjects blood stream.(im sure medically it can't be that easy, just lucky it's not a Carry On movie otherwise im sure they would have stuck up his.....). Mad as the story sounds, and it is. Fantastic Voyage has that classic 1960s feel and look, with some very cool for the time special effects and a premise that has your brain aching trying to figure out what would really happen if they could do this. That and the fact that if they have only 60 mins to complete the mission, and lets just say they did'nt could you imagine the mess five people would make if they expanded to normal size while being inside the body of a person.Also what if you took the wrong turning and ended up somewhere rather unpleasant...

[trebor8273]

A strange and powerful cloud is heading to earth destroying everything in its wake, admiral Kirk takes command of the refitted enterprise to stopped it. This is a strange film sometimes I watch it and it lives up to its Nick name of the slow motion picture of others times i enjoy it like i did yesterday , yep it could do with more action and better uniforms but it has has really nice effects with the cloud. 7/10

Next up Robocop.

[Inspector Abberline]

The Devil-Doll (1936)

Mad scientist Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) and Lionel Barrymore as Paul Lavond escape devils island together and manage to return to Marcel's home in what looks like a swamp,and Marcel's crippled wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano),who seems to be sporting an Elsa Lancaster hairdo.What Lavond does not know is that Marcel has come up with away of reducing people to one-sixth of their size in order to help the worlds food shortage,either that or he has a thing for action figures...Lavond See's this as away of getting revenge on the three associates that swindled him and got him sent to devils island.So as soon as Marcel kicks the bucket,Lavond and Malita head for Paris to extract his REVENGE...Even Though there is 100.000 franc reward for Lavond,the police are unable to catch him,this is because Lavond is now crossdressing as an old woman,whether this is just to escape the police or for his own fun we are never quite sure,but he does seem to spend a lot of time in drag,looking something along the lines of Mrs Brown meets old mother Riley...In The shrinking people down to size genre,Devil Doll is not as fantastically as say Dr. Cyclops with its horned rimmed scientist and definitely no where near as thrilling as the great The Incredible Shrinking Man..In fact Todd Browning gives us a rather sedate thriller that never really capitalises on its miniscule murderers,and it gets a bit bogged down in melodrama when Lavond tries to win back the affections of his now estranged daughter,played by the rather attractive Maureen O'Sullivan.Devil Doll doesn't have any of Browning classic trade mark Gothic feel of his previous films and certainly not enough of the science fiction mumbo jumbo to make it a really satisfying.If you really want something salacious in the shrinking people stakes check out Attack of the Puppet People

[Inspector Abberline]

Beneath the Planet of the Apes.(1970)

The only thing more hairy than Mr Heston's chest is the back of a gorilla,so with only the briefest of cameos Chuck manages to wander off into the Forbidden Zone,leaving poor Nova hanging around holding the horse's...So It is left to John Brent (James Franciscus) to fill the chest hair wig and carry on where Heston left off..Coincidence abound as the first person Brent bumps into in the middle of the desert far from anything is the loverly super Nova on a horse.Luckily she's clutching Taylor's dog tags and eveything falls into place,well as about as much as it can do after you go forward in time crash land on a planet and fight monkees,( not the 60's beat combo)...Its Pretty hard to match the originals impact of its ending or for that first sighting of the gorilla's on horseback...But Beneath tries its damnedest to move the story along,with the odd flash back just in case anybody had not seen the first film...Of Course Brent has to go through the whole OMG its talking ape's routine and then go through the whole be-befriending Dr. Zira and Cornelius,just as Taylor had to.It's hard not to like Beneath,its goofy and not as fresh as the first film,but it has lots of good moments,naked monkeys in a sauna,human mutants who really could of used some sun-screen and a giant gold vibrator..Its fun nonsense and its always enjoyable seeing several rather respectable actors having to play monkeys..I have lost count how many times I have watched this over the years,but it is only recently that I have noticed that Roddy McDowall as Cornelius is only shown in flashback at the start and its David Watson as Cornelius doing a McDowall impression in the rest of the movie...

[Demoncrat]

Review!! I too love Beneath ...

[Inspector Abberline]

The Thing with Two Heads (1972)

Have you ever wondered what you would do, if a two headed gorilla went on a rampage in your scientific laboratory...?no,And I expect Ray Milland never ever thought about it either until he made this film..Out of all the scripts that must of come his way (although at his age and at the time these would of been dwindling) what would of made him think that this was the one.Then again he would go on to work with Frankie Howerd,appear in the Love Boat and make the TV Movie The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana so he would be no stranger to horror and misery.Although im pretty sure no one ever suggested that to save Lady Diana,they should have her head transplanted onto the body of Camilla Parker Bowles,all the while being filmed by the guy that gave us The Black Gestapo (1975),maybe in a parallel universe perhaps...Factoid,Rick Baker plays the gorilla,this was in his gorilla phase where he was the go to guy for anything simian..No doubt this has made its way onto a few so bad its good lists,but I think its genuinely better than that,every body involved gives it 100%,theres no gurning at the camera or stupidness for the sake of it,in fact while it obviously had a meagre budget its still very well made and dare I say well directed. Of course it helps if you embrace the whole madness of what your seeing,a racist doctor having his head transplanted onto a rather large black fella 'Rosey' Grier,but hey if people can watch and enjoy Avatar (2009) then anything is possible.Also it pays not to study Ray Millands head to much when he's not in close up....You jive.