Watched July 27, 2015
1983
Starring: Andrea Occhipinti, Jorge Rivero, Sabrina Siani
I had never heard of this movie before, it's pretty crazy but it fits into the early '80s Beastmaster type fantasy model. Lots of tiny loin clothes and crazy cave man adventures.
A young man, Ilias (Andrea Occhinpinti) is given a bow by his people with the task of going to a foreign land. Once he becomes a man he will be able to make the bow shoot laser arrows that go wherever he needs them.
The other land is ruled by Ocron (Sabrina Siani) a lady who wears a golden full head helmet and a tiny thong. She had something to do with making the sun rise. She rules a gang of weasel faced wookiees that kill people and bring the heads for her to eat the brains. Ocron has a vision of Ilias killing her, so she sends her
minions to kill him first. She summons a demon god to bring more bad
things to attack Ilias and Mace.
On his journey, Ilias meets up with Mace (Jorge Rivero) when Mace saves him from being attacked by Ocron's henchmen creatures. Mace is a random warrior who has no problem killing a man to take the boar that he has killed, even though he explains that he didn't kill the boar, he's on the side of the animals. Right before Mace saved Ilias, Ilias saved a mud haired girl from a snake. Mace knows the girl's family, they share a sheep that they stole from some guy with the family. The girl and Ilias make eyes at each other as they eat the meat. They all go to the sleep but the girl wakes Ilias to go make out, but then the girl is killed by the Ocron's creatures. Ilias is kidnapped and Mace is knocked out. Mace comes to and finds Ilias tied up, but they manage to escape the creatures anyway. They are then attacked by a mysterious poisonous arrow plant. While running away, Ilias is hit and gets a really bad infection, that could kill him. Mace leaves him to find a special plant that could heal him, but he is attacked again. He does makes it back to save Ilias from the poison. Ilias decides that he'll never become a man and heads home in a handmade boat. Mace is then captured by Ocron's creatures, but Ilias comes back and by doing that becomes a man that can shoot laser arrows.
Back together, Ilias and Mace decide to find Ocron, but that night Ilias is sucked into a black light cave. Mace goes after him but can't see what's happening, once he finds Ilias he is already dead and decapitated. Elias's head is taken to Ocron, but she knows that Ilias still has his soul even though he is head. Mace burns Ilias's body and rubs the ashes on his face giving him the laser arrow power. Mace finds Ocron, who takes off her mask to reveal a monkey skull face. Then Mace kills her and she turns into a wolf. Mace leaves to fight another day.
Lots of crazy things happen in this movie. At the beginning a young girl is ripped in half, then decapitated. Ilias has a crazy leather crop top and loin skirt combo outfit. If you like lots of fighting, oozing wounds, and exclusively topless women this movie is for you. It gets a little slow in the middle but the action scenes make up for it. There is also a part where Mace is saves from drowning by some dolphins.
Watched July 13, 2015
1994
Starring: Tracy Wells, Roddy McDowall, Mark Ruffalo, Sally Kellerman
I was blown away to find the not that great movie Mirror Mirror has a sequel, but it was a surprise VHS find.
Marlee (Tracy Wells) and her younger brother Jeffrey (Carlton Beener) are recouperating at a nunnery after the death of their parents. Marlee's much older step-sister Roslyn (Sally Kellerman) wants to get the money that was left by Marlee's parents. Roslyn has been working with Dr. Lasky (Roddy McDowall) to keep Marlee sedated until a certain date, I'm not completely sure.
Marlee is not sedated the whole time, she invites
a grunge band to come play in the nunnery's dance space but the mirror
doesn't like them and they are all burnt to a crisp but Marlee and
Jeffrey survive. This only adds to Marlee and Jeffrey's state of shock.
Roslyn hires a crazy groundskeeper to torture
Marlee so that she seems unfit to inherit the money. The haunted mirror is in Marlee's room. After the band was burned she lost partial sight, but when she looks at the mirror it's perfectly clear. She begins to dance again, her passion, for the mirror and she falls in love with the mirror. This makes them mirror demon do her bidding. Jeffrey seems autistic a first, playing his
violin, but he's fine and it turns out he's the only pure one the mirror demon can't
touch.
A young man, Christian (Mark Ruffalo) shows up randomly and starts hanging out with Marlee. The nuns explain that he's a former orphan. It seems that there are only there are only two nuns in the whole place. After a ton of dancing around by Marlee, the mirror demon goes berserk. It takes Dr. Lasky into the mirror zone, kills the groundskeeper with acid and makes Roslyn
look old, her worst fear. The mirror then tries to kill the blind nun, but Jeffrey stabs it. This makes
the demon come out to attack, but Christian takes one for the team and stabs the
demon with a special knife. Marlee then wishes none of this happens and it takes her back in time to
the trade places the very first woman who interacted with the mirror.
I found Mirror Mirror 2 to be long and boring. The plot of the older step sister trying to get money from Marlee didn't make a lot of sense. It makes the first Mirror Mirror look fantastic. There is too much dancing from Marlee, but it's kind of fun to see Mark Ruffalo in an early role. Overall it's really slow and dull with a very strange soundtrack.
Watched July 6, 2015
1987
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Nouri, Claudia Christian
It begins with a crazy dude robbing a bank and shooting a bunch of hostages. He then steals a Lamborghini and leads the cops on the crazy chase that ends in a death defying shoot out and crash. The robber is super burned during the car crash but somehow is still alive and taken to the hospital. At the hospital, just before he dies he transfers his internal alien parasite into the man in the bed beside him. The parasite's new body has a heart condition and gastrointestinal distress, but the parasite manages to revive him and get itself out of the hospital.
Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle MacLachlan) shows up as an FBI agent from Seattle to work with Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) the local detective on the case for all the people that the first guy murdered. Lloyd knows to chase the second guy from the hospital because he has some clue to how the parasite works, but he doesn't say that. He doesn't even reveal to Tom that he knows it's an alien parasite.
The parasite guy steals money from a record store, kills the clerk and takes a boom box. He then steals a red Ferrari. The cops track him down to a strip club but he has already transferred the parasite to a stripper, Brenda (Claudia Christian.) She wears this dress that just looks like a strapless red mini in the front, but the back is all straps with a huge dip that shows off her butt cleavage, it's nuts. Now infected, she fucks some random dude to death and steals his car. The cops chase her but she has a bunch of weapons from when the parasite was in its second body. Lloyd and Tom chase her from a car, but she runs out onto a roof top. She is shot a ton of times and Lloyd pulls out a crazy specialized weapon, but she jumps of the building before he can use it. She transfers the parasite to a dog before she dies.
The parasite goes from the dog to the owner who happens to work at the police station. At the police station, the parasite infected guy goes nuts and shoot up the place. Lloyd was acting so weird that Tom arrested him, but Tom now believes the alien parasite is real and get Lloyd out of jail. At the jail, the current parasite guy keeps shooting everything. Tom and Lloyd manage to shoot him, but the parasite jumps into another body first.
It all comes down to showdown where the parasite manages to get into a Senator that is about to announce his candidacy for president. Lloyd and Tom manage to get to the hotel where the press conference is and they shoot the bad guy but Tom is shot in the process. They Senator is dying and thecops are going to arrest Lloyd for shooting him. Lloyd using a flame thrower to light the Senator on fire which draws out the parasite and allows Lloyd to use his special weapon to kill it. The Weirdest part is the very end. Tom is dying in the hospital, he has a wife and young daughter. It turns out that Lloyd was such a good parasite hunter, because he's an alien too. But a good alien who has been tracking the party parasite who just wants to create havoc on Earth for some time. Tom is going to die, so Lloyd transfer his alien into Tom's body, so that Tom's wife and daughter will still have a dad, even though it's an alien dad.
This movie is great! The parasite is so gross and like a teenager, into slutty chicks, fast cars and loud music. I can't believe that I hadn't heard of this movie before, I highly recommend it.
Watched June 29, 2015
1994
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ron Silver, Mia Sara
Time travel loops often don't make sense, can you exist in the same place as yourself? Timecop tries to explain this, but it's not perfectly clear. Walker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a cop in 1994 who's newly pregnant wife is killed by some people where were trying to kill him. Jump to 2004 and he's now a time cop. At some point in the 1990's, time travel was invented, but they didn't want it to get into the wrong hands. Criminals figure out to how to time travel to commit time crimes, stealing famous treasures or investing in stocks. Walker now travels back in time to stop these thieves, but he is consumed with the loss of his wife and unborn child.
The officers somehow manage to track who is time travelling and can tell when someone is in the wrong place in time. Walker is sent back to 1929 to stop a stock market crash opportunist who was sent by McComb (Ron Silver) to make a bunch of money. McComb is a senator in 2004 who is running for president, but he needs money to fund his campaign.
The time cop initiative is losing funding because it is run by McComb, who only wants it for his own gain. Walker is sent back to 1994 with Fielding (Gloria Reuben) to stop another time crime. It turns out that Fielding was hired by McComb and she betrays Walker. Fielding is shot and Walker just barely makes it back to his own time. Now the time cop program is really being shut down, but Walker now has a plan to finally stop McComb. He manages one last trip back to 1994, and he is able to find his wife before she was killed.
At his house, Walker's past and future selves are trying to stop McComb and his henchman. 2004 McComb is going to blow everything up in the house including himself because his 1994 self will continue and become president in 2004. Walker brings 1994 McComb and pushes him into 2004 McComb where they merge and die. You cannot occupy the same place with two different time selves. Now is this timeline, Walker and his wife survive and McComb never becomes president.
There are some great action scenes, Walker kicks a man's frozen arm off and he does underwear splits to avoid getting electrocuted. The rule of not being able you can't touch you past future self because the same matter can't exist in the same place at the same time is very strange.There is a super gross and sensual love scene with Walker and his wife Melissa (Mia Sara.) I wish it had been cut out. There is a very dated roller blader at the mall. All of McComb's henchmen have the worst haircuts, but it's a very fun and enjoyable movie.
Watched June 22, 2015
1995
Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Kelly Lynch
Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) is an imprisoned former cop who was incarcerated after he killed some innocent bystanders during a stand off with a psycho serial killer who kidnapped and killed his wife and daughter. He is still a good cop so he has been recruited for a virtual reality program to train cops for intense scenarios. During a test of the program, named SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe) the other prisoner is killed in real life when his brain is overloaded in the digital world.
The programmer, Lindenmeyer (Stephen Spinella) who created SID is obsessed with it/him. He is approached by a man working in cybernetics to turn one of Lindenmeyer's sexy lady programs into a real being. Instead Lindenmeyer tricks the cybernetics guy into making SID into a cyborg. SID immediately escapes and begins killing people. His programming is that of tons of serial killers so he starts recreating some of those murders like the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson family. Even though Parker is still in jail, they recruit him as the only man who can track SID down, because one of SID's inspirations in the same man who killed Parker's family.
After his Manson style killing, SID goes to Media Zone, the coolest club and takes a bunch of people hostage. Parker shows up in time to chase him out of the club, but SID manages to escape again. SID has a special regeneration powers with nanobots, as long as they can get glass to take the silicon out of he can rebuild any damaged part of himself.
Parker teams up with Madison Carter (Kelly Lynch) the criminal psychologist who is also on the case to try to determine what SID will do next. After a train incident where they think that Parker shot a lady when it was SID, they lock Parker up and tell him that the tracking device they implanted in his brain has a neurotoxin that they can release if he escapes. SID wants to play the game so he kills the drivers and give Parker the keys to free himself.
SID kidnaps Madison's 10-year-old daughter and takes over a TV station that is having a heated debate on immigration. SID just wants people to watch him. Parker cuts the phone feed and it seems like all his viewers have left, which makes SID crazy. Parker chases SID onto the roof of the television station. During their battle, SID falls through a bunch of glass that cuts him into pieces. He starts to regenerate then Parker rips his chip out. But SID was the only one who knows where Kelly's daughter is being held, so what is Parker to do?
Jump to an alternate cut where Parker is thrown from the building and killed, but it's now the virtual world, but SID doesn't know it. SID shows Madison where her daughter is, the Madison detaches from the virtual world. Parker came back to to life in the digital world and is still battling SID, because Lindenmeyer won't let Parker out the digital world. SID almost fries Parker's brain in real life, but Lindenmeyer is killed and Parker can escape. Parker uses the tricks he learned from when his wife and daughter were killed to make sure he can get Madison's daughter out alive.
In comparing 1995 digital thrillers, this movie is way better than Johnny Mnemonic. The digital effects are pretty good, I feel they hold up mostly because they aren't trying to create realistic effects, the effects are for a digital world. Russell Crowe is a good villain and Denzel is great. The programmer is the worst and I can't believes they didn't hold him accountable for bringing SID to life, he really had it in for Denzel for some reason. When SID feeds on glass to make his limbs grow back it's pretty cool.
