Ghost Machine (2009)

Directed by: Chris Hartwill

Writers: Sven Hughes, Malachi Smyth, Sven Hughes (original story)

To tell you the truth, my hearing isn't what it used to be and I watched this movie late at night, so I wasn't able to turn the volume up as much as it was required. The point I'm getting to is - I heard almost nothing of what the characters were saying at the beginning, so I had only a vague idea of who they were and where the story took place. Sure, they are some military types and it's some kind of abandoned prison, I gathered that much, but I missed the finer details.

 

I guess it wasn't that important anyway. The point is - we have some people in some abandoned prison (presumably) and they set up a rather cool setup for a military virtual reality simulation. Basically, in the simulator they run through the same rooms and corridors that exist in the real life, with the difference that in the simulation they have full military equipment, including weapons of choice. Neat!

 

The slight problem is - a scary female ghost has infiltrated the simulation and is killing people right and left. And it has that irritating super power ripped off from Freddy Kruger that anyone who dies in the simulation dies for real. It also seems to have a power to modify the scenery, erase a staircase here, add a wall there and similar. It seems that sometimes being a ghost rocks.

 

Fortunately, it's not one of those scary long-haired Japanese ghosts, otherwise I would've promptly stop watching. The ghost is well done and a bit scary, but it doesn't stare at you through the screen and the way it eliminates people is anything but ghostly - it uses chains and brings devastating damage to their physical bodies.

 

For what it is, Ghost Machine is a finely made film that keeps interest throughout, but there's hardly anything spectacular in it. For this kind of movie, to elevate above the average status, one ghost is not enough. Had the budget allowed it, they could have made a full scale ghost vs. military war, where the ghosts would use a Hellraiser-like arsenal of chains, hooks and similar stuff, while the army would respond with their ultrafancy futuristic weapons like plasma guns, BFG 9000, railguns et cetera. Oh well, maybe in the sequel... Overall, Ghost Machine is far from a must-see, but it's worth checking it out for its rather original idea.

Storage 24 (2012)

Directed by: Johannes Roberts

Writers: Noel Clarke (original idea and screenplay), Johannes Roberts (screenplay), Davie Fairbanks (screenplay), Marc Small (screenplay)

 

I really like it when a movie lives up to its title. This one promises us Storage 24 and boy do we get it! A whole truckload of Storage 24! In fact, the entire movie takes place... in STORAGE 24!.

 

Fortunately, there's a hideous alien monster that kills people in there, because, you see, a storage (24 or otherwise) in itself isn't a particularly interesting setting. Imagine this being a drama, where people just go around and talk and yell at each other and we have to wait all the way to the very end of the movie for someone to day of cancer... in a storage. I imagine that would really suck, even if the storage in question had been the infamous... Storage 24!

 

Apart from being faithful to its title and set in the Storage 24 (I would've felt really cheated if it had been Storage 23 or something), this was also a surprisingly cool movie. Generally, a low budget and a claustrophobic setting are a recipe for disaster, but Johannes Roberts turned out to be a pretty skilful director who managed to make it all work.

 

First of all, there are no crappy introductions - right at the beginning, the people in Storage 24 are startled by a loud noise, which upon further investigation turns out to be caused by a plane crash. One of the guys finds his car crashed by a plane engine and I thought at that moment that it would be really cool if he yelled something like "Donnie Darko, you son of a bitch!". Johannes Roberts obviously had different opinion, so he avoided this cheesy and nonsensical Donnie Darko reference.

 

The important thing about the crash (even more important than a squished car) is that it was a military plane that was carrying something really nasty. Our heroes soon find themselves locked in the Storage 24 (I don't really remember how that happened, I have this nasty habit of missing out on important details in movies) along with the mysterious content of the crashed plane. It's not a real surprise that said content is extremely hungry... and not a vegetarian.

 

The thing about that thing is that it's a very good looking thing. Don't get me wrong, it's not Cindy Crawford (hell, it's not even Keira Knightley!), in fact it's even uglier than most male members of the human population, but the design is great and worthy of a film with a much larger budget. Its mouth look slightly like Predator's and the body somewhat resembles a giant insect even though it walks on two feet and it likes eating people's faces with that hideous mouth of his.

 

So, anyway, it looks great, and there are plenty of scenes where you can see it in full glory. Low budget movies usually use that irritating monster POV during most of the killings and only show it at the end, but here it isn't like that. I imagine this was a wise production decision - save money on location and use it to make a decent looking monster. And it provides some nice bloody killings - for example, it was great when some older guy came to face the monster and tried to confuse it with his trash talk and the monster got pissed off and instantly ripped off half of his face.

 

The movie also avoids some usual clichés in the character department. Not only the black guy doesn't die first, he becomes the leading hero (!). We don't see this very often (we did in Creature two years ago, but that's about that). Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that the actor who plays that lead role was also a producer and one of the writers, but be that as it may, he's a very likeable character.

 

There's also some drama between the characters, which thankfully never gets overdone. The black guy has this blonde ex girlfriend who left him for unknown reasons and only later he finds out that she's been screwing his best friend for quite some time. That "best friend" is some white guy who looks OK at the beginning, but shows his true colours when crap hits the fan and turns into a major asshole. Luckily, all of these people (including another blonde and some other guys) are normal grown ups, so we don't have to put up with another brunette-blonde-stoner-black guy-geek formula that usually comes up when a film deals with younger people (teenagers or students).

 

Basically, these are the two main ingredients that make this movie not suck - the characters that resemble real life people and a well made monster. There's also some well placed humour scattered around, for example when the ugly Predator-like monster gets distracted by a toy puppy. Of course, this is not Alien or Halloween and you won't feel that kind of tension, but you will (probably) be entertained.

 

I also have to mention the ending, without spoiling it, of course. It's that usual twist ending that's certainly been seen before, but the way they did it here was quite... interesting. I certainly don't mind that kind of stuff, I immensely enjoyed the robot at the end of Feast 3, but some people will probably find it a bit out of place.

Android (1982)

Directed by: Aaron Lipstadt

Writers: James Reigle, Don Opper, Will Reigle (idea)

It may come as a shock after reading the movie's title, but this one is actually about an android (!), but... wait for it... an android being aware of his own mortality and wanting to escape it, if it's all hum..., sorry, androidly possible. Now where have we seen that before... oh yeah, that obscure Ridley Scott movie that conveniently appeared in theatres just a few months before this one. I'm sure it was just one big coincidence.

 

Be that as it may, Android is a film about Max, who's an android. I'm not exactly sure exactly at which point of the movie are we supposed to realize that, because someone told me that just as the movie started. But anyway, once you see his walk, there's no doubt anymore. Anyone who walks like that can be nothing but android. The movie credits even outrageously claim that Max is played "by himself" (meaning - by a real android), but after checking the IMDb I realized it was not the case - it was actually Don Opper, one of the writers. Darn you, guys, you almost had me fooled!!11

 

Where was I? Oh, yes. Max works and lives on a distant space station where his boss and creator, an excentric dr. Daniel, played by Klaus Kinski, conducts some illegal experiments related to the creation of artificial human life or something (read: androids). For some reason, the good doctor is in a desperate need of a fresh living human female, but those incompetent uneducated bastards from Earth don't know the first thing about science, so they refuse to make the delivery and the good doctor's project is on the way to its demise.

 

Klaus Kinski actually wants to create a female android more perfect than Max, because he belongs to a series that has a slight defect, causing its members to start killing and raping women and stuff. After the successful creation of the female robot, he would shut Max down. However, Max overhears his monologue about this.

 

In the meantime, a group of runaway convicts appears and seeks refuge in the station. Kinski is at first pissed off that Max has let them in, but gets all sweet when he realises that one of them is a woman. After spying on her while she was changing, his instruments show that she's an almost perfect match for what he needs (we are never told what exactly it is). Then various bad stuff happens and many people die, which illustrates the fragility of human life.

 

As you may expect, the acting is mostly horrible, Don Opper and his front teeth look absolutely ridiculous, but at least he gives us a few laughs along the way. The story is unspectacular, but it does the job of keeping you awake and also serves a major plot twist towards the end about which we don't give a rat's ass because we don't care about any of the characters anyway. There's great sexual tension which unfortunately never fully develops into anything concrete, but there is some pointless nudity to make up for that.

 

My favorite thing, of course, is the portrait of the future technology. Serious science fiction films suffer a great deal for that aging thing - as you can't create new technology, you have to use what's available at the moment, even when a movie takes place in distant future. No matter how inventive you are, your film will look ridiculous after twenty years or more - the most obvious example being, say, movies that take place in 2000's in which computers don't appear because the movie was made 30 or 40 years ago. However, I think low budget B-movies actually profit from this, as it adds to their goofy charm. Look at how Max plays a space shooter video game with graphics straight from the early 80's, how the doctor doesn't use a laptop or anything similar but keeps his notes in a good old-fashioned notebook, look at the clothes they're wearing, the portrayal of spaceships, etc. Android is a rather silly movie, but one you'll probably enjoy.

Saturn 3 (1980)

Directed by: Stanley Donen

Writers: Martin Amis (screenplay), John Barry (story)

 

 

Nothing beats a good sci-fi movie! But if you have none handy, something like Saturn 3 will do. This is a movie about love, isolation, conflicts of different cultures and a giant homicidal self-aware robot who wants to have sex with a woman. Well, at least he’s not gay.

I missed quite a bit of the beginning of the film, because I was telling my girlfriend about John Carpenter’s Dark Star, but here’s the gist of it: Some guy (supposedly a spaceship captain or something) is preparing to go somewhere, but some other guy kills him and takes his place. It turns out that this guy is Harvey Keitel and he visits Farrah Fawcett and Kirk Douglas, who live alone in a solitary base near some planet. Since it has a ring, and the movie is called Saturn 3, I’m guessing it’s supposed to be Saturn, though in all honesty I have to say it’s probably the fakest looking Saturn I’ve ever seen.

 

It also appears that the Earth is horribly devastated by something (again) and that it relies on off-world colonies or some other thing to produce food and other stuff for them. Douglas and Fawcett are apparently running one of those places. Alone, of course.

So, Harvey Keitel brings with him an object that looks like a trash bin, but it actually contains a huge artificial brain, which he uses to construct a menacingly looking large robot. Due to the advanced technology, the robot is able to pick information directly from his brain. This is done with some implants that Keitel puts in his head (remember, this was before they invented Bluetooth).

 

Alas, along with some undeniably useful knowledge (like how to play chess, for instance), the menacingly looking robot also inherits Keitel’s desire for Farrah Fawcett. As we all know from our biology classes, if there’s only one female and multiple males, they will proceed to fight for her. Of course, she’s in love with Douglas and doesn’t want Keitel (or his robot), but when has that ever stopped him? Holly Hunter also didn’t want him in Piano, and he just stood before her naked and – wham! Fortunately, he doesn’t do that here.

Instead, his first objective is to remove Douglas, but then the menacingly looking robot suddenly decides he’s pissed off at Keitel for killing that guy at the beginning of the movie. Fawcett, Keitel and Douglas then realize they have to work together to get rid of the menacingly looking large robot, who is in fact incredibly slow and looks like it’s about to fall apart any minute (that’s 80’s technology for you).

 

After a few failed attempts, they finally succeed and Keitel takes out the robot’s brain. But the robot decides it’s still too early to call it quits (after all, the movie is barely halfway through), so it uses some additional parts to rebuild itself into a really cool giant robot that’s even more menacingly looking than the previous version, complete with shiny red and blue cables and whatnot. This version of the menacingly looking robot is more successful than the first one, so it cuts off Keitel’s hand (which inspired Oliver Stone a year later to make a film about a hand) and drags him away (it was a really bad day for Keitel, because moments before that he got into a fight with a naked Kirk Douglas over Farrah Fawcett and got his ass kicked). Douglas tries to kill the robot by throwing some plastic buckets at it and for some reason fails miserably and after that the robot does some things that are not quite nice, so Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett decide they have to kill it. What happens next (and what happened to Keitel) I won’t tell you.

While Saturn 3 is certainly not a match to the greatest science fiction B-movies like Forbidden World, it does have its moments. The set looks OK and I really liked all versions of the menacingly looking robot. The sound is also interesting, there are lots of echoes and the music is often psychedelic, reminiscent of older sci-fi movies. As for the actors, Keitel acts like a robot (no pun intended), but since he’s otherwise a great actor, I’m guessing that was part of his character. Douglas was OK, but Fawcett was horrible. She should have had less lines and more nude scenes. Overall, one maniac robot and loads of silliness make for a cool movie that should keep you entertained while you prepare to watch something that actually makes sense.

Teenage Caveman (2002)

Directed by: Larry Clark

Writer: Christos N. Gage

 

Chances are you have probably heard of this movie before, and if you’ve read a few interviews you might have noticed that most people tend to easily dismiss it as pure crap. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is probably the fact that this movie is pure crap. Now, as is often the case with low budget movies, that doesn’t necessarily make it unwatchable. That depends on your tolerance to irritating teenage idiots and the amount of weed you currently possess. Personally, I’ve never smoked weed, but a cousin of mine who did said that it made him enjoy some pretty questionable films, so I thought it might help in this case, too.

What little story this complete failure of a movie has goes something like this: There’s this tribe in a post-apocalyptic future and it has this really annoying religious fanatic as a leader. He preaches abstinence and similar stuff, but that doesn’t prevent him from having piles of dirty magazines under the bed and from screwing all the attractive females in the tribe. Damn hypocrite! Well, we all know what Mel Brooks said about kings, right? (Hint: He said “It’s good to be the king!”). However, he really crosses the line when he choses none other than his son’s girlfriend for the honour of inserting his royal higness into her. The son gets pissed off, kills him and he and his girlfriend leave the tribe with a bunch of other nondescript (teenage) characters. For the brevity of the text, I skipped a few not so important scenes, like the son being sentenced to death.

So, the party, led by the late tribe leader’s son (whose name is David, but we will call him Ronald Reagan for the remainder of this review) and his girlfriend (Sarah, to be called Barbara Bush from now on) wanders through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, only to stumble upon the remains of a Great City, whose name isn’t mentioned, but someone on the IMDb said it was Seattle, so I guess it was... Seattle. However, we will call it Portland.

Portland is of course deserted, however, our “heroes” stumble upon two young people (have you noticed that everyone’s young in Larry Clark’s movies?) who live there and enjoy everything that modern technology has to offer, including, but not limited to, movies, music, drugs, jaccuzi baths, computers, drugs, paintings on the walls, drugs, music, drugs, alcohol, fancy shmancy scientific equipment, drugs and similar stuff. One of them is Tiffany Limos, whom you might now from another Larry Clark movie and the other is the late Richard Hillman who delivers one of the most ridiculous performances I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but damn my shoes if he isn’t overacting like a bastard son of Crispin Glover and Matthew Lillard.

 

Anyway, Ronald Reagan and his sidekicks have no knowledge of any of this modern stuff (as you may recall, they’d spent their entire lives in a primitive tribe), so they readily throw away the patriarchal bonds that binded them and plunge into the pool of drinking, heavy partying, drugs, sex, alcohol, loud music, sex, drugs, computer games, sex and similar things. All except Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush, who find their hosts suspiciously suspicious, and for the right reason!

 

It turns out that these two are actually somehow genetically modified and thus immortal (!) and they want to use the unexpected guests for some sinister experiments. Ronald Reagan and Barbara Bush try to warn the others, but fortunately they are just too stupid to listen, so they all die by spontaneous combustion. Don’t ask, just thank the heavens for little things. After that, Richard Hillman’s character transforms into a hideous monster and dies and I’m sure Tiffany Limos also dies, I just can’t remember exactly how. Ronald Reagan is apparently infected with the same substance that made those two immortal (we will not dwell on the fact that they are both dead) so he takes Barbara Bush and returns to take the control of his old tribe. End. Sorry, I spoiled that for you.

The stupidity of the screenplay is something we can live with, however, the horrible acting and the characters that are more than irritating pose more of a problem. Fortunately, the fact that almost all of them die in horrible ways atones for that a bit. What also sucked is that the movie never provides a decent post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Everything takes place indoors (in two or three rooms) and even when they condescend to give us an outdoor scene or two, it just sucks and it’s boring and it doesn’t show anything interesting. The only thing (apart from almost everyone dying) that makes this at least semi-watchable is Larry Clark’s fascination with naked teenage bodies. He sets the record for the most gratuitous bath scene ever – in this one, all the main characters just hop naked into the bath together, immediately upon being introduced. It’s not completely unwise to stop watching the movie when that scene ends (what’s even wiser is also skipping the part before that).

Technotise: Edit i ja (2009)

Directed by: Aleksa Gajić

Writer: Aleksa Gajić

Wow! A Serbian animated sci-fi movie, now that’s definitely something you don’t see every day! In fact, you never see it! What’s more important – not only is this not crap, it’s actually a great movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

It takes place in Belgrade in the year 2074. Edit M. Stefanović, a young psychology student and the lead character in the story, after failing an important exam, decides to implant in her body a memory chip that is used to improve capabilities, so to speak. Of course, those chips are illegal, but when has that prevented students from cheating, eh? Anyway, the story takes an unexpected turn when Edit sees the actual formula of Life, Universe and Everything, you know, the one that reduces everything to a single equation (the thing Steven Weinberg wrote about in Dreams of a Final Theory). It is explained that when a computer sees that equation, it briefly becomes aware of itself and then immediately shuts down. However, the chip in Edit’s body reacts in a completely different way – it starts to multiply and gains more and more control, threatening her very existence.

Of course, this all is hardly new, I imagine this kind of stuff happens regularly in Japanese anime/manga, but that’s not really important. While maybe not being tremendously original, the story is very well written and serves to keep your interest throughout. The film is based on the graphic novel Technotise, which was illustrated by Aleksa Gajić and written by Darko Grkinić, and it shares its characters, though the story is different. Aleksa Gajić (primarily a great comic book artist, rather than a filmmaker) wrote the screenplay by himself. Why Grkinić wasn’t involved I don’t know, and the “making of” featurette doesn’t give an answer – in any case, he did work on the film, in the animation department, and he also voiced one of the more amusing supporting characters.

The real star of this movie is the animation. It’s really refreshing to see something hand-drawn after all those 3D animation films which I find somewhat soulless. The graphic novel look is carefully recreated, and while there is some 3D animation in there, it all looks like you have a moving comic book in front of you. The 2.5Dishness is provided by the occasional multilevel background scroll, like in some older platform computer games, and there are numerous funny visual references (for example, the modified Yugoslavian police cars from 1980’s) that give the movie a really unique appearance. Unfortunately, if you’re not from these parts, most of these will fly right over your head, but that’s really not that important as it’s not critical to the story in any way. Okay, I’m not very good at words and stuff like that, but trust me on this one – this looks good! To round the audio-visual appearance, there is great electronic music which really fits the atmosphere and is also a great listen on its own (a feature supported on the original DVD).

If we really have to bitch about something, it’s the characters, which are mostly dull and uninteresting, with some being real pain(s) in the ass(es) (I can’t even begin to think how to correctly plural this). Also, with the exception of some supporting characters voiced by some legendary Serbian actors, the voice acting is weak, to say the least. But that’s about it.

What’s really amazing is the fact that this movie was entirely made in a small apartment in Belgrade, by only 15 or so people (led by Aleksa Gajić, who worked pretty much on everything). Shows how talent, dedication and hard work can largely make up for lack of money. Let that be a lesson to all of you youngsters out there!

I think this one is pretty hard to find outside former Yugoslavia. I know there is a (subtitled) English version, but how available it is, I don’t know. If you stumble upon it, be sure to check it out, and in the meantime watch this trailer to give you a taste of it. Over and out!

 

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Directed by: Stuart Raffill

Writers: Stuart Raffill, Stanford Sherman

Some movies are hard to describe, because their quality doesn’t lie in any particular segment that you can analyze, measure and put on paper (or screen). If I had to describe why this movie, without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely rules, I’d simply say – it has SOUL. And if that’s not enough for you, then go watch Lars von Trier or something and leave me alone.

Okay, let me elaborate this just a little bit: The Ice Pirates is a wacky space adventure with enormous quantity of... stuff. Stuff that happens, I mean. You have people dressed as pirates, swordfighting (for no apparent reason, powerful futuristic weapons are rarely used!), cheap sex jokes (so cheap, in fact, that they work), talking severed head, a frog woman, main music theme that’s an obvious rip-off of the Star Trek theme, Mad Max-like desert car chases, random alien parasites, unicorns, eunuchs, Templars, politically incorrect (without being offensive!) racial jokes that you’d never see in a today’s movie etc. etc. etc.

Of course, all this would have been a horrible mess if it weren’t for the glue to, well, glue it all together. And in this case, I’d say that glue are the surprisingly likeable characters, especially the main hero (Mel Brooks, take note!), played by Robert Urich, who really nails it down. He reminds me of John Terlesky in Jim Wynorski’s Deathstalker II, or, if you want a more mainstream comparison – Bruce Campbell’s Ash from the Evil Dead series. Take for example an otherwise amazing film like Spaceballs, being slightly less amazing than it could have been, due to Bill Pullman’s uninspired performance. Exactly the opposite happens here.

The main hero’s space crew is also great and it includes Anjelica Huston and Ron Perlman. So it’s really great to watch this characters going from one adventure into another, being completely aware of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the film. Although its inspirations are obvious (Star Trek, Star Wars, old pirate movies, to name a few), The Ice Pirates is not a direct parody of any particular movie or genre. It doesn’t try to pack jokes into every single frame, it lets itself breathe (so to speak) so it will never make you tired – and when something works (and that’s very often), it really does WORK!

 

My favorites here are the running joke with malfunctioning robots and an absolutely hilarious fight sequence near the end, where everyone ages rapidly during some weird time-space phenomenon. I allmost fell on the floor laughing during this one. Add to all this the special effects and set design that are way above the movie’s low budget and you have a clear winner. I know tastes are different, but if you don’t like The Ice Pirates, something is wrong with you and you need to see a psychiatrist.