Watched January 12, 2015
2002
Starring: William Zabka, Dana Ashbrook, Simmone Jade McKibbon
Even though Anaconda (1997) was only a relative success it spawned several sequels and enough interest to inspire the made for TV movie Python (2000). To further capitalize on interest in giant snakes, the direct to video Python 2 was made. I can't say I'm above any of it since I bought Python 2 at a thrift store. You never know if a giant snake movie might be a hilarious gem.
A team of military men including Russian and American soldiers join together to capture a giant snake for the reward of $500 million. They track it down to a giant cave, but it's such a massive beast that it kills several of the soldier before it's stunned. Somehow they manage to get it aboard their plane in a custom built snake box. While flying back to their base they are shot down by some Russian rebels. The snake escapes its holding box killing more of the soldiers before the plane crashes.
Greg Larson (William Zabka) is next in the chain of command to capture the snake. Greg subcontracts the shipping to Dwight (Dana Ashbrook) because he has shipping business and a large truck. Dwight is an American while his wife Nadia (Simmone Jade McKibbon) is a Russian who cannot leave the country. Dwight has some slight back story about being a professional baseball player but having some sort of meltdown or fight that forced him out. She also can't leave the country and the solution is a bunch of
money that they'll get from this job. Greg only tells them that he has a large cargo that he needs to driven from Russia to a port where he can ship it out. Dwight and Nadia don't know that it's a giant snake.
Greg has a team that tracks down the snake to a military bunker. Somehow they know that the snake survived the plane crash. At first Nadia and Dwight just wait by the the truck for the cargo to arrive. Dwight is suspicious of the the situation and it confirmed when one of the soldiers comes out almost dead, they head into the bunker to find out what has happened. The snake has been found but has killed several of the Greg's men. Greg is given orders to at least capture the DNA of the snake if it's too dangerous to capture it alive. Dwight, Nadia, Greg and the remaining soldiers get trapped in the underground bunker. A snake shoots venom out of his mouth and it blinds Nadia but she is the only one who can fit through the ducts to get back to the minivan for the C4 explosives. She crawls out the bunker and brings back the C4. Little does she realize that Greg has been given orders to kill everyone. Dwight and Nadia manage to fight off Greg and snakes and make it out of the bunker before it explodes killing Greg and the snakes. Oh yeah, there were two snakes this time.
The plot is very simple, but still somehow confusing and the action scenes don't add much to the enjoyment. I mostly found it boring which sounds crazy in a movie about a giant killer snake. The CGI is very poor so the snake doesn't look remotely real. There is a very strange credit sequence. We first see the opening titles, then the movie starts with the soldier going to the cave to find the snake. Once that is over another opening title sequence that includes clips of parts of the movie that we have yet to see. It seems like they had to pad the movie to get the run time they needed. It made me think it was a TV movie with some strange commercial break placement, but IMDB says it was straight to video.
The actual locations don't make a ton of sense, I'm not totally sure it takes place in Russia or somewhere else. It seems like the snakes are impossible to kill, they are shot multiple times with no damage.
The visuals of the movie were nothing to paint a picture about so I went with a break dancing snake to tie in my favorite sequel subtitle electric boogaloo. Unfortunately the snake didn't breakdance in Python 2.
Watched January 5, 2015
1988 (the VHS tape I have said '88 but IMDB says '89)
Starring: Jill Schoelen, Donovan Leitch, Brad Pitt, Roddy McDowall
I wouldn't say that I loved Jill Schoelen's performance in Popcorn so much that I sought out her other work. It's happenstance that at a hippy thrift store in Petaluma, in a basement pile of VHS tapes that I found Cutting Class; another horror movie that she made before Popcorn. This also happens to be an early Brad Pitt movie, but that isn't saying much.
Paula (Jill Schoelen) is a high school student who is dating Dwight (Brad Pitt.) Their relationship is pretty weird, he's very possessive and wants to go all the way, but she's not ready. He's huge dick who drinks a lot, but she still likes him for some unknown reason. Brad's old friend Brian (Donovan Leitch) is let out of a mental institution, he was put there for cutting the brakes on his dad's car which lead to his dad's death, but he was proven insane and sent to the institution. Now he is deemed fit to reenter society and is back in high school.
Paula's dad, William (Martin Mull) just happens to be the State Prosecutor who put Brian away in the mental institution. He heads out for a week long solo duck hunting trip. Not long after getting to the lake, he is shot by an arrow.
Brian begins stalking Paula, he just happens to show up wherever she is, at first it seems harmless. Paula is a model for the life drawing class, even though she seems really uncomfortable in her leotard. Brian randomly shows up and the art teacher forces him to pose with Paula. Later that day the art teacher is pulling large ceramic pieces out of a huge kiln, when he is pushed in and burned alive.
At the big basketball game, Dwight is playing while Paula and her best friend, Colleen (Brenda James) are cheerleaders. Sitting in the bleacher, Colleen slipped under to make out with her boyfriend. As she jumps down, she sees her boyfriends throat being slit then she is attacked. No one can hear her screams over the cheering of the game. Paula is worried that she can't find Colleen but she doesn't do that much about it.
Brian continues to act super weird, even though there is no proof that he is anything more than a creep. But his behavior is weird enough to get him suspended by the vice principal. Not long after we see the Vice Principal attacked and she is killed by having her face smashed into a copier, with the pages showing her slow demise. Dwight is suspicious of Brian so he chases after him through the school, but Brian escapes.
Later that night, Paula is washing her hair at home when Brian shows up like a total creep. Paula is convinced that Brian is about to kill her but instead he shows a photocopy of Dwight's special class ring on the hand that is pressing the Vice Principals head down and killing her on the copier. Paula falls asleep as Brian watches, which continues Brian's creep status. In the morning, she gets a call from Dwight and she is worried that he is about to kill again. It's Saturday, so the school is empty but Paula's finds the math teacher. They are chased through the school and end up in a classroom where there is a word math problem, which determines which door to escape from. It doesn't matter because Brian kills the math teacher. It was Brian all along, Dwight shows up to help Paula escape and they continue being chased through the school. They end up in shop class and all the power tools are turned on. Dwight's head in in a vice and he is about to get a drill into the skull when Paula confuses Brian enough to hit him with a hammer, killing him.
Paula and Dwight head home, they don't seem that freaked out but then Dwight almost runs into Paula's dad. The arrow didn't kill him, he's been walking home the whole time. Paula's dad then says the titular line of the movie.
This is a weird time with horror movies in that they are so self aware. This movie tries to be funny as well as serious but it gets a little lost along the way. Brian is a good creep, and it does seem like Dwight is the killer, but then the weird kid is the real weird killer like we suspected all along. There is a weird janitor character who hates Dwight the whole time. He ends up mopping up a bunch of blood and popcorn after the basketball game, but he doesn't tell anyone. I don't think they ever find the art teacher in the kiln. Brian kills because he's nuts and that's why Paula's dad was so adamant about keeping him in the mental institution.
I did like when all the parent's held up photocopies of the Vice Principals death. I liked Martin Mull as the dad but he's only in it for about five minutes. Brad Pitt plays a total jock dick, I don't know why Paula is with him at all. All the teachers are total pervs, as Paula bends over a lot for the Principal, Mr Dante (Roddy McDowall.) This is pretty whatever of a movie, not scary or funny enough.
Watched December 8, 2014
1991
Starring: Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, Dee Wallace, Derek Rydall
Maggie (Jill Schoelen) a college student, has been plagued by strange dreams. She has been writing down her dreams and they're so strange she is considering turning them into a screenplay. She is a member of the film club at her college, they all get together to make a plan to raise some money for the club by having a horror movie marathon at a local theater. The theater they want to used has been closed for about 15 years, since a film culminated in several real murders and a fire. All the students get together to clean up the theater and get it ready for their marathon. While testing the reels, they find a strange short film call the Possessor, it's mostly a close up of an eyeball, but it remind Maggie of her dreams. To make their marathon a success, they set up cools stunts to have during the movie like shock seats, a giant mosquito puppet, and smell-o-vision.
The night before the show, Maggie's mom Suzanne (Dee Wallace) goes to the closed theatre with a gun. As she approaches the marquee lights come up and the doors open for her. She goes into the theater and shoots at a shadowy figure, but the figure captures her.
The day of the show, all of the club members dress up as different characters to make the marathon really fun and it seems like it's going off well. The first movie, Skeeter is about a giant mosquito and to scare the audience they set up a model mosquito to swing through the theater. The teacher is running the fake mosquito, but there is a mysterious figure that takes over the remote and the teacher is stabbed by the mosquito. The audience doesn't see this and the killer hides the teacher's body. The real killer then makes a mask of the teacher and pretends to be him. The next victim is a student who has been in a relationship with the teacher, she goes to kiss him. As she pulls away, her lips rip off the costume revealing the strange mutilated face of the killer.
It turns out the killer is Toby (Tom Villard) one of the students in the film club. It turns out that Toby was a kid during the first fire and he was horribly burned, but survived. He now makes all sorts of masks to be different people. He captures Maggie and wants to finish how the first movie ended with a live murder. He puts on the movie, the strange one they screened that reminded Maggie of her dreams, then raises the screen the audience is now captive to a real murder, but they think it's just a show. Luckily Maggie's boyfriend Mark (Derek Rydall) comes to the rescue and Toby is killed.
This movie is super fun, it cleverly takes some horror movie tropes and plays around with them in a interesting way. There is a little bit of humor, but the deaths are still gross and weird. Toby is a really strange villain with how they constructed his face to be burned but could still put masks on it. Maggie looks like Lydia Deetz, but that seemed like a popular look at the time. I really like the movies that they played during their marathon: The Stench, Skeeter and The 50 foot electrified Man.
I illustrated by favorite part, the Shock Clock that tells the time that the movies start but also squirts blood out of a heart into a goblet.
Watched November 19, 2014
1996
Starring: Matt Frewer, Patrick Bergin, Austin O'Brien, Ely Pouget
The main discussion before watching this movie was if it mattered if we had seen the first Lawnmower Man movie. I had vague memories of having seen it at some point when I was a kid but didn't remember much. We put together that the first one was about a simple lawnmower man ( not a real thing) who was approached by a scientist with a conceit that he could make the lawnmower man smarter by connecting him to a computer. The lawnmover man then gets enmeshed in the digital world and tries to take over the real world. Well, the sequel picks up somewhere where the first one left off.
The scientist, Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin) who created the mind digitizing chip was taken to court and lost the patent on his chip. Jobe (Matt Frewer) the simple lawnmower man wasn't destroyed int he first movie, but he lost his digital mental powers. Jonathan Walker (Kevin Conway) brings the body of Jobe back it turns outs he is fairly okay. Jonathan and his fellow researchers reconnect Jobe to the cyber sphere where he quickly starts making a world of his own.
Peter (Austin O'Brien) is a kid who knew the lawnmower man before he lost his mind in the cyberspace. It's now the future and it looks a lot like Blade Runner. Peter is now a street urchin, who lives in an abandoned subway car with three other friends. They like to connect to the net and cruise around. The cyberspace experience is a 3D wonderland where you can fly around wherever you like.
In the cyber space, Jobe contacts Peter and asks him to find Dr. Trace. After he lost his patent, Dr. Trace shunned technology and moved to the desert. Peter and his friends manages to figure out where Dr. Trace and they tell him about Jobe.
With each session in cyberspace, Jobe keeps getting more powerful and kills some people that try to stop him. He is stuck in his wheelchair but one way he orchestrates the deaths is by overloading computers that are controlling flights so that they crash, killing both the intended target as well as a whole place on innocent bystanders. Jobe wants Dr. Trace to finish work on the chip because this will give him the power to take over the world. Dr. Trace connects with his former student Dr. Platt (Ely Pouget) who has been working for Mr. Walker and this leads him to Jobe. Controlling the media, Jobe makes a bunch of cities riot so that everyone jacks in to connect to his world cyber power to escape their terrible reality. I guess he's trying to take over the world by making everyone tied to the digital world. Dr. Trace, Peter and his friends all go into cyberspace and destroy the digital versions of the chip as well as the real chip in the real world. This stops Jobe from taking over the world and returns him to his simple, but kind self.
I'm currently very into movies that deal with the visualization of the internet, I find it very fascinating. So I'm currently compiling a list of awesome cyber movies, and this one makes the Internet look pretty cool. They put on glasses and jump into a 3D world, but they have to get permission to access it, so they can get kicked off. In the digital world all the kids ride on cool motorcycles. There isn't much hacking involved, mostly just jumping into 3D Internet space.
I enjoyed this movie, I'll have to check out the original and see how they stand up to each other. I'm sure the first one is better, but we'll see.
Watched November 12, 2014
1996
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Debi Mazar, Stephen Dorff.
Holy moly, this movie was so much more than I expected. The image on the VHS box makes it look like a serious space action movie, but it's much funnier and brighter than I expected.
John Canyon (Dennis Hopper) is a long haul space trucker with a load of pigs that he is taking to Interpork to sell. Keller (George Wendt) as the buyer from Interpork tries to gets the pigs for less than the agreed price. John won't sell, so he keeps the cargo and heads to find another job. He takes on a very strange job, supposedly it's a lot of sex dolls but the security surrounding the shipment is very high. The shipment is headed for Earth and needs to arrive on a specific date. John's pig cargo is suddenly stolen, so he's extra motivated to take on the new job. Before leaving he heads to the diner to check in with Cindy (Debi Mazar) his waitress friend. More than friends, he wants to marry her even though they have quite an age difference. While eating his diner and explaining what happening with his Interpork sale, Mike (Stephen Dorff) introduces himself to John. Out of the window they see that John's pig cargo is being stolen. A fight breaks out in the diner over the pig cargo, a window is shot creating a space vacuum that Keller is sucked into space through. John, Cindy and Mike all head to John's rig escape. Cindy wanted to come all along because her mom is back on Earth about to have an operation.
The cops keep following the crew, so they get off the space highway to escape. They run into black rock meteors that damage the ship/truck. While stopped the ship gets super hot so Mike and Cindy take off all their clothes and make out while John goes to fix the ship. The ship is damaged near the cargo connection and the cargo is protected by lasers so Dennis can't fix it. Luckily a giant cargo ship shows up and takes them aboard.
The group thinks that they've been rescued but they have been kidnapped. The captain of the pirate ship is half robot with a claw hand, peg leg, half a skull and one cyborg eye. He is immediately drawn to Cindy, but wants to kill John and Mike. Cindy volunteers to have sex with the Captain so he won't kill her friends. He tries to have sex with her with his robot penis even though he has a hard time getting it started. Before he can make the moves, she pulls out some of his fluid tubes and escapes. She finds John and Mike tied up and tries to free them but the robot Captain finds all of them. The pirates try to steal the cargo, but this activates the cargo which aren't sex dolls instead they are killer cyborgs. The cyborgs kill a bunch of the pirates and in the frenzy John, Mike and Cindy escape in the rig.
Somehow the ship got fixed, but the cargo cyborgs are still active. John and Mike put on space suits and go take care of them. They are close enough to Earth that they head through the atmosphere which burns up the remaining cyborg killers. They all manage to make it to Earth alive in escape pods.
It turns out the president wanted the cyborg shipment to use as his army, it turns out he just took over from the previous president only a week ago. The President tries to pay John off at the hospital where Debi's very youthful mom is waking up from her operation. Instead Mike throws the suitcase of money out the window, it lands on the president's car and blows him up. Mike and Cindy are now in love and John is totally into Cindy's mom who has been frozen for twenty years so she looks great.
The effects are great, lots of miniatures and weird CGI. Since I'm a sucker for bright colors, everyone has crazy costumes that I love. Cindy wears some crazy high waisted pants with a clear plastic jacket and it looks great. Much more fun than I expected, I'm glad I picked up this fun straight to video movie.
