Category: Journal Entry

Double Dragon A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Doube Dragon (1994) – A Movie A Day 2021 #47

Double Dragon poster

As a life-long video game nerd, you’d think I would’ve seen Double Dragon before now. I was just barely a teenager when the movie came out, so you would think an action movie based on a game series I was a fairly big fan of would be something I’d jump at the chance to see. Thinking back, I’m really not sure why I didn’t see Double Dragon back then. It could be because I did see Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, and even my young brain didn’t like it very much. Plus, I probably saw the images of how Abobo looks in the movie (he’s one of the bad guys in the game) and said “no thank you.” Whatever the reason, I didn’t see it until now. Was it worth the wait? No, but it is an okay comedy action movie even if it has little to do with what I know about the Double Dragon game series.

Double Dragon is a bout two brothers, Billy (Scott Wolf) and Jimmy Lee (Mar Dacascos), who end up on a mission to protect one-half on a magical double-dragon talisman from getting into the evil hands of Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick). The talisman bestows great power of mind and body to whoever possesses both halves, and he already has the “mind” half. Shuko’s ultimate goal is to rule the city of New Angeles, formerly Los Angeles before the “Big Quake” that wrecked the city and put half of it underwater. For some reason Double Dragon takes place 13 years in the future (which is 2007 for those who don’t want to math), and that allows the filmmakers to do whatever they want with regards to roaming street gangs and big silly fight scenes. So, Billy and Jimmy attempt to fight their way to taking Shoku’s half of the amulet while not losing the half they posses.

One thing I didn’t like about this movie was Abobo. In the games, Abobo is a big muscle man that is almost always a serious threat to the player. In the movie, he starts out as a slightly menacing gang leader, but then he turns into some sort of goofy special effect that has no real bearing on the story and is just there for comic relief. The muscle suit built for him is utterly ridiculous, and not in a good way. It doesn’t fit in with anything else in the movie, and it just looks bad. Abobo is easily my least favorite thing about Double Dragon.

It gets better from there. The cast is quite good with Robert Patrick as the main villain, Alyssa Milano as a nice gang leader and friend to the Lee brothers, and Julia Nickson as Billy and Jimmy’s guardian. They all give varying degrees of silly performances based on the material they’re given, but they’re all very fun to watch. There are also a few cameos from people I guess the director though might still be famous in 13 years. Vanna White, George Hamilton, and Andy Dick all show up in the movie, so that was pretty fun too. Oh yeah, and Al Leong is one of Shoku’s henchmen. Al Leong has a reputation for being a henchman in tons of movies in the 80s and 90s, and I always love seeing him pop up unexpectedly.

I also thought the fight scenes were fun overall. There were big sets and locations for the actors to play around in, so that helped keep the fights fun and varied throughout the movie. It’s not the hard-hitting martial arts action you might expect if you’re a fan of the game series, but I think the director achieved what he wanted to with the action.

The director, Jim Yukich, made a movie directed at kids. He wanted to keep the characters fun and funny, and he wanted the action to be light on overt violence. I think he achieved that, though whether that was the best approach is certainly up for debate. In 1994, I think a lot of adults still saw video games as kids toys despite the demographic being much larger (and older) than that. Also, there was a Double Dragon cartoon going on as the movie was released, so it’s understandable that the people in charge of the movie might want to make something that would appeal to the same demographic as the cartoon. But games like Mortal Kombat were already out there, and the Mortal Kombat movie would read its audience better about a year after Double Dragon had been released. I think the core audience for Double Dragon was misread, and the movie suffered or it.

I mean, it’s not a great movie, and I’m not really trying to debate the awful reviews it’s gotten over the years. But it is kind of fun. Double Dragon is a silly action movie about magic and kicking. If you just cut out the scenes with Abobo, I think it’s fine. Robert Patrick’s performance is definitely a big draw, and although he doesn’t quite reach the levels of exquisite absurdity that Raul Julia did in his own turn as a video game villain in Street Fighter (also released in 1994), Robert Patrick looks like he’s having fun hamming it up on screen.

I do think Double Dragon would have been so much better if it hadn’t tried to complicate things with a post-apocalyptical ancient-Chinese-magic sci-fi-tinged story. The plot of the original game is fight through a bunch of gangs to save her. Simple. Sometimes simple is all you need, and you can let the fights speak for themselves. Instead, they went the Super Mario Brothers route and changed everything which alienated the fans of the games. Like me. It only took me over 25 years to come around and finally give it a watch.

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Frozen Scream A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Frozen Scream (1975) – A Movie A Day 2021 #46

Frozen Scream poster

Today I was trapped inside by an unprecedented winter storm with some of the lowest sustained temperatures in decades for where I live, so my daily movie search ended on a movie titled Frozen Scream. It’s not a good movie, and the Tubi plot summary was entirely misleading, so I didn’t have a very good time with it. Tubi (and the IMDB plot summary) promised me frozen zombies killing people, but that’s not at all what I watched. Allow me to explain.

Frozen Scream is about two scientists who hope to unlock the key to immortality. Their experiments have led them to injecting people with some sot of serum that heals them while reducing their body temperatures to slow the aging process. The procedure increases hostility in some subjects, and those people are the “frozen zombies” described in the various synopses I read. There are a few murders in Frozen Scream, but it isn’t anything like the zombie violence I was hoping for. It was really just guys in black robes swinging something, then a cut to a shot of some blood on the victim. The production values are almost non-existent, and that makes the little action there is completely baffling. It’s really hard to tell what’s going on a lot of the time until the action is already done with.

The story focuses on a detective, Kevin McGuire, as he investigates the disappearance of a few medical students. His ex-girlfriend, Ann, is a medical student who is unknowingly mixed up in the scientists’ zombie plot, and the action focuses on Kevin and Ann as they try to solve the mystery before becoming frozen zombies themselves. It’s a fine premise, but the presentation makes the movie rather difficult to watch.

As I stated above, any action in the movie is edited in a way that is more confusing than exciting. There is also narration by Kevin throughout the movie, but it seems like this was added in later because not enough footage was shot for the movie to make sense. Kevin explains exactly what he’s thinking and what is happening, and his narration often covers dialogue spoken by the characters in the scene. It’s really odd to watch. I enjoy poorly made b-movies, but Frozen Scream felt like it tried its best to keep the audience at a distance from what was happening. There were some neat ideas and likeable images, but overall it was a tough watch.

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The Giant Claw A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Giant Claw (1957) – A Movie A Day 2021 #45

The Giant Claw poster I first saw.

For today’s movie I came back to America for a staple of United States horror in the 1950s, the giant monster movie. I decided to pick one I hadn’t seen before but knew by reputation, The Giant Claw. I first became intrigued with the movie when I saw a poster for it. The poster I saw showed a giant bird-like creature, but it didn’t have a head. Did the monster actually look like that in the movie. It turns out, no, it doesn’t, but the mystery of the poster was explained by the fact that almost no one knew what the monster would look like until the movie was finished and screened for the first time. Why? Because the monster looks completely ridiculous. 

The story of The Giant Claw is about as basic as it gets for this type of film. A test pilot sees something he can’t identify in the sky, and various planes begin to disappear. Turns out a giant bird is the culprit, and the plot involves the test pilot and a beautiful mathematician (who of course ends up being the test pilot’s love interest) trying to figure out how to kill the giant beast. Silly destruction ensues, and the story ends happily (except for the people who died). What makes The Giant Claw remarkable is the giant beast itself. Well, I say remarkable, but infamous might be a better word. 

Apparently the director initially wanted stop-motion animation for his monster, but since the budget didn’t allow that, he had a puppet built instead. The actors filmed their parts not knowing how the monster would look, because all the monster carnage was done with effects and cutaways. The monster ended up looking like some giant, malformed buzzard that look more sad and goofy than in any way frightening. The bird creature ha been mocked repeatedly over the years, so I’m not really going to add to that. I’ll just say that it’s not so much the campy effects that hurt the beast, it’s the gloriously goofy design. It’ actually quite cute in a lot of ways. The thing is, the first third of the movie is nicely done (if somewhat formulaic), but the monster’s appearance completely undercuts any tension that was building up for its reveal. 

Overall though, I enjoyed the movie fine. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen nearly this exact same plot play out numerous times, but I’m totally cool with that. The lead actor were fun to watch, and their struggles and triumphs were entertaining. I think if I watch The Giant Claw again I’ll have a better appreciation for it. That probably won’t happen for a long time, but as gar as American monster movies from the 1950s go, it’s fine.

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Back Sunday (1960) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Black Sunday (1960) – A Movie A Day 2021 #44

Italian poster for Black Sunday (aka The Mask of The Demon/Satan)

Around this time last year I started reading and collecting The Dark Side magazine, a publication from the United Kingdom that seems to focus largely on older horror movies, though it does do reviews on more modern films as well. In the latest issue I purchased, there is an advertisement for a book published by The Dark Side that chronicles Italian horror cinema. As a huge fan of Italian horror and exploitation movies in general, it was a quick and easy purchase to make. Some of my favorite horror movies are from Italy, and I’m always eager to learn more about what I have and haven’t seen yet. The book, titled Italian Horrors: Cannibals, Zombies, Strange Vices and Guilty Pleasures, arrived just the other day, and it’s already inspired me to dive head-first into a bunch of Italian horror movies. So for today’s movie, I picked an Italian classic that I’m almost embarrassed to say I hadn’t seen before. Today I watched Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.

I’ve seen a handful of Bava’s later horror movies, but Black Sunday is the earliest of his films I’ve watched so far. According to IMDB it’s also the first non-documentary movie where he was actually given a directing credit, although Italian Horrors mentions that he helped finish other directors’ work prior to Black Sunday. Bava’s direction is confident and evocative. Bava gives Black Sunday a classically gothic feel while incorporating many beautifully gruesome images that would tend to become associated with Italian horror in the following decades. 

Black Sunday stars Barbara Steele in a dual role as an evil witch, Asa, and the witch’s beautiful descendant, Katia. Two centuries ago, Asa was captured by villagers and sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft. The first step in the witch-killing process is to hammer a mask of Satan (a bronze mask filled with spikes) onto her face, but before that happens, Asa curses the man in charge of her demise. That man is Asa’s own brother, and the curse she places on him will be passed along to his descendants. The mask is then applied with a gush of blood. An attempt to burn Asa at the stake is then made, but it is thwarted by a sudden downpour. Regardless, Asa’s body is placed in a tomb with the mask of Satan to keep her powers in check and a cross placed on her stone coffin as added insurance.

Two hundred years later, a professor, Dr. Kruvajan, and his assistant, Dr. Gorobec, stumble upon Asa’s tomb. Their curiosity gets the better of them, and, one giant bat attack later, Asa’s stone coffin is busted and all of the safeguards keeping her dead are removed. A few drops of the professor’s blood after the bat attack begins the process of revival for Asa, and the bulk of the movie follows Asa’s attempts at regaining her full strength with the help of her undead lover Javutich. Asa feels a connection to Katia, and her ultimate goal is to drain Katia of her life force. What ensues is gothic horror complete with a creepy castle, mysterious deaths, and torch-bearing villagers. 

I’m glad I finally watched Black Sunday, because it’s great. I love the mood, and Barbara Steele is magnetic in both of her roles. The story itself is good but maybe not too far away from a lot of other gothic horror movies, but the way its presented makes it memorable. There are many images that are now going to be vivid parts of my memory. One of the more iconic images is Asa’s hole-covered face after the mask of spikes is removed, but there are a good amount of creepy moments just as memorable. From Asa’s desiccated head with bugs crawling out of her eye sockets, to the spurt of blood when a not-so-dead dead guy is stabbed in the eye, to the flame-licked face of Asa as she stares through the fire meant to kill her, Black Sunday is a beautiful movie. 

Italian Horrors (the book I keep referencing)

If you’re a fan of gothic horror, Black Sunday is a must-watch. I should have seen it years ago, but hey, at least I’ve seen it now. If nothing else, for historic purposes Black Sunday should be seen by pretty much any fan of horror. For one thing, Mario Bava had a tremendous influence not just on Italian horror, but on horror movies around the world. Also, in reading Italian Horror, Black Sunday was one of the early horror movies in Italy after the genre had been forbidden when Mussolini took power in the 1920s. There were horror movies in the very early 1920s, but it took until 1956’s I Vampiri for the genre to start its comeback in Italy. The Italians certainly made up for lost time by producing some of the most gruesome and transgressive horror films ever made, but even if you’re not into that, Black Sunday feels like it made up for lost time in a different way. It feels more akin to one of the Universal monster movies from the ’30s and ’40s, which, by the way, were regaining attention thanks to the Hammer horror movies being produced in Great Britain beginning in the mid-1950s. It was such an interesting time period for European horror. 

As I sit here writing this, I want to dig back into Italian Horrors. The first main chapter covers some of the writers of the yellow-covered crime paperback books that inspired one of my favorite sub-genres, the giallo. So don’t be surprised if you see a deluge of black-gloved killers in some of my upcoming movies of the day. Oh yeah, and if you want to check out the book I’ve been referencing this whole time, you can order it here: https://thedarksidemagazine.com/product/italian-horrors-cannibals-zombies-strange-vices-and-guilty-pleasures/

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Wonder Women (RiffTrax version) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Wonder Women (1973) – A Movie A Day 2021 #43

Wonder Women poster

For today’s movie I went into my digital library over on RiffTrax to see if there was anything I’d bought but hadn’t watched. It turns out I had started watching a movie titled Wonder Women, but I must’ve never finished it because I could not remember how it ended. Well, I’ve seen it all the way through now, and, as with most of the RiffTrax movies I’ve seen, it’s a lot of fun.

Wonder Women is an action movie from 1973 with a mad scientist/sci-fi undercurrent. Set in the Philippines, the diabolical Dr. Tsu (played by Nancy Kwan) has a business harvesting body parts from top athletes to transplant them onto old rich people so she can make tons and tons of money. Dr. Tsu has a small army of beautiful women who all know martial arts to do her bidding, and the first scenes we see are of her female army swarming and kidnapping a bunch of different people from sporting events. One of the athletes has a huge insurance policy though, so a private contractor, the womanizing Mike Harber (played by Ross Hagen), is called in by the insurance company to find out where he went. This is all just an elaborate excuse to have a bunch of fight and action scenes with pretty women, and for that, Wonder Woman absolutely delivers.

It’s cheap and cheesy, and it’s kind of sleazy sometimes as well, but its kind of a typical action exploitation movie that feels like a distant cousin of the James Bond brand of spy movies. The womanizing hero doesn’t necessarily have any fancy gadgets, but the villain is over-the-top with 1970s-futuristic science stuff stacked all around her domain. Also, Dr. Tsu’s henchman is the great Sid Haig, so yeah, there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

That said, Mike, Bill, and Kevin from RiffTrax absolutely make the experience much better. I would probably enjoy Wonder Women on its own, but the RiffTrax guys enhance everything they lend their voices to. If you’re going to check this movie out, I recommend watching the RiffTrax version. I bought the movie a while back, but it looks like it’s included in their $5.99 a month streaming offering they began fairly recently. So go do that.

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Centipede Horror A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Centipede Horror (1982) – A Movie A Day 2021 #42

Centipede Horror DVD

Today’s movie is one I discovered a while back while part of a movie group on Facebook based on a shared love of gross and trashy movies. One day someone posted an image of a DVD cover for a movie titled Centipede Horror, and the name combined with a crude drawing of centipedes crawling out of someone’s mouth and all over their face had me doing some Google and eBay searches until I found it. It was easy to track down, and since I bought it I’ve watched it a few times. Why? Because I enjoy gross and trashy movies. 

Centipede Horror is a Hong Kong horror movie from 1982 featuring lots and lots of centipedes. The movie starts with close-ups of centipedes skittering around while a voice-over tells us how gross and dangerous they are. The danger is, of course, overblown, but it’s a good and creepy way to start the film. The story follows a man named Kai-Lum Pak as he tries to track down the cause and reasons behind his sister’s death. His sister died after coming down with a mysterious illness after a trip to the ambiguously referred-to location of “Southeast Asia,” and after she died centipedes started crawling out of her body. The focus of the movie is on the mystery behind her death, so I won’t spoil the story any more than that if you by some chance want to watch Centipede Horror, but I will say magic is involved. Lots of great and gross magic. 

Centipede Horror uses loads of live centipedes in a few particularly skin-crawling scenes, so if you’re squeamish about that sort of thing, you’ll maybe want to skip this movie. I have to commend the actors for their dedication. They allow themselves to be covered with live centipedes, and at least one actor has to put some in her mouth (which is the scene the crude DVD cover drawing is based on). There’s also a scene where a shaman performs a kind of exorcism on a young woman which forces her to vomit up blood and live scorpions. The scorpions are revealed in a cutaway, so they weren’t actually in her mouth thankfully. But yeah, I’m sure by now you’re getting the idea about what the main draw of the movie is. Bug stuff. Or, I guess, arthropod stuff, but that doesn’t sound as fun. 

Beyond the bugs, another big draw is the magic. Kai’s investigation meanders a bit, but many different magical guys get involved to try to harm or protect Kai and those around him. At certain points this leads to dueling shamans who are trying to out-magic each other from afar. It’s kind of silly, and it’s great. 

There is a lot of downtime while we’re following Kai, so the movie does drag in places. The backstory is interesting enough and involves a grudge that goes back generations, but when there aren’t any bugs or magic on the screen, I just kind of want to get to the next scene. The final third of the movie is paced well though, so overall it’s well put-together.

I think I’ll skip the recommendations on this one, because if you’ve read this far then you already know if you’re ever going to watch it or not (and fair warning, the trailer below shows a bunch of what I talked about above). Me? I’m sure I’ll watch it again at some point. 

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Haunted Office A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Haunted Office (2002) – A Movie A Day 2021 #41

Haunted Office DVD cover

For today’s movie, I wanted to pick something with one of my favorite actors of all time, Shu Qi. I became a huge fan of Shu Qi’s back around the year 2000 when I saw her in the movie Gorgeous. After watching her steal scenes from one of my favorites of all time, Jackie Chan, I had to see more. So, I imported and watched a bunch of her movies on DVD, and I’ve been a superfan ever since. There are still lots of her movies I haven’t seen yet though. She’s been in tons of stuff, and finding her movies in the United States can be difficult and pricey in a lot of situations, but I’ve been trying to slowly see everything Shu Qi has done. Some of her movies are easier to track down than others, and today’s movie of the day is one that wasn’t too difficult to find. Plus, it gets bonus points for co-starring Karen Mok, another great actor I discovered while I was collecting a bunch of Hong Kong DVDs nearly two decades ago. Today’s movie is Haunted Office, a Hong King supernatural horror movie that is fairly light on scares but has a nice twist at the end.

Haunted Office feels like an anthology movie even though the stories do sort of overlap in places. Effectively though, the movie is made up of three separate short stories that all happen to take place in the same office building. The first story stars Karen Mok as Pat, an office worker who encounters some ghostly happenings centered around the bathroom on the floor her office is on. The second story stars Jordan Chan as Richard, a young and spoiled head of a small business who connives to get a nice old lady to quit so he doesn’t have to pay her pension. And the third story features Shu Qi as Shan, an office worker haunted by a female ghost, and Stephen Fung as Ken, Shan’s new fellow employee who tries to help her out. All three stories are simple and fun ghost stories with little twists at the end. Then at the very end of the movie, all three stories are brought together for one big final twist. They’re all enjoyable, but I don’t want to say any more than that about the plots for fear of ruining any surprises if you happen to watch the movie.

Shu Qi’s story was my favorite, then Karen Mok’s, then Jordan Chan’s. Jordan’s Chan’s story was basically a comedy while the other two were more serious, so there’s good variety in the film. I didn’t realize Haunted Office is basically an anthology movie until I got well into it, so the pacing seemed really odd at first. We see Shu Qi and Stephen Fung in one of the first scenes with Karen Mok, but then we follow Karen Mok and don’t see the other two until over halfway through the movie. Jordan Chan’s story acts as kind of a bridge in the middle, but really, there’s no meaningful crossover until the final couple of minutes of the movie. It works fine, I just wasn’t expecting it at first.

That’s really all I have to say about Haunted Office right now. It’s light and fun, and there’s just enough going on in the background that you can probably start piecing together some of the mystery that is revealed later on in the movie. I give it a recommendation for fans of Hong Kong horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

 

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Alien Dead A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Alien Dead (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #40

Alien Dead art used on the limited edition Blu Ray I have.

When I’m not sure what I want to watch, a good genre standby for me is a zombie movie. More often than not I’ll be able to find something to enjoy about a zombie movie regardless of the quality. And really, although it’s not an exact formula, the cheaper the zombie a movie is, the more I might be inclined to like it. There are huge exceptions to that rule on either end of the budget spectrum, but I’m just trying to convey the fact that I can love a zombie movie even if it is, by all normal standards, a terrible movie. That brings me to today’s movie of the day, Alien Dead. 

Alien Dead is the second feature written and directed by low-budget maestro Fred Olen Ray. “Maestro” might be generous, but Ray has produced, written, and/or directed tons of movies over the past 40-plus years, and he’s still working to this day. He’s inspired many, many filmmakers in that time, and it’s safe to say he is very well respected in the filmmaking community. I haven’t seen a ton of his movies, but the ones I have seen absolutely stick with me. My dad had a VHS copy of Ray’s third film, Scalps, when I was a kid, and I made sure to save it when he down-sized his tape collection years ago. Scalps is laughable in many ways, but I enjoy it unironically for its many endearing qualities. Alien Dead, the movie Ray made right before Scalps, fits into that same category for me. 

Alien Dead takes place in the swamps of Florida. We follow a small-town news reporter, Tom Corman (who I’m guessing is named in reference to Roger Corman), as he attempts to solve the mystery of a local woman’s disappearance. The town sheriff, played by Buster Crabbe who is probably most famous for playing Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon in the 1930s, is disinterested in, well, pretty much everything, and he blames alligators for the woman’s death. As Corman digs into the story though, he discovers that the swamp’s gators have disappeared. Unknown to Corman and the sheriff, mysterious human-like monsters are rising out of the waters of the swamp to kill and sometimes eat people. So basically, Alien Dead is about water zombies. I guess I could have said that first and saved a paragraph.

There’s really not much more to the story than that. The zombies attack and kill people, and by the time Corman and the group of like-minded people he collects along the way realize what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything except fight for their lives. The plot is simple and straightforward, and the way its presented is fun if you like super-cheap, no-budget horror.

The zombies vary wildly in design. Some have full rubber masks, some of which you can plainly see where the mask stops around their neck. Other zombies just have gray makeup applied. Then other zombies have kind of a combination of the two with makeup appliances haphazardly smooshed onto their faces. It’s great.

The zombie attacks are equally unbelievable. There are many moments where there will be a wide shot with no zombie, then it cuts to a close-up where the victim is suddenly surprised by a zombie that appears just off screen. It makes no sense, and I love it. And the biting is mostly just the zombies rubbing their mouths on people while drooling blood. Many takes hold long enough so you can see that they aren’t actually biting anything.

Speaking of takes being long enough to catch stuff that probably shouldn’t be shown, there were more than a few times when it seemed like the cuts were too early or too late. People would be perfectly still during a crossfade then suddenly start acting as if is some just yelled “action” (which is probably exactly what happened). Other times the camera will hold on someone too long and they’ll look directly into the camera as if to say, “are we done?” 

I could probably go on, but you get the idea. Alien Dead is a bad movie, but it’s also great. What I mean to get across when I say that is not that I love it because it’s bad, just that I love it and it’s bad. Nothing I’ve written is meant to make fun of it. I genuinely enjoy the movie for what it is. To me, Alien Dead is an example of someone who wanted to make a movie and did what they had to do to get it done. It has an endearing quality that I love, and I’ll absolutely be watching it again at some point. 

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The Reckoning (2020) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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The Reckoning (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #39

The Reckoning poster

Today’s movie was initially chosen while looking for a newer horror movie in an attempt at doing better at keeping up with recently released films. I only watched a few newer movies in January, so I want to make a stronger effort to keep up. As I was looking around at what’s come out lately, I discovered that writer/director Neil Marshall’s latest, The Reckoning, released on video on demand just a few days ago. My decision was instantly made.

I became a fan of Neil Marshall when I saw Dog Soldiers back around 2002, and I became a huge fan of his after The Descent in 2005. The Descent is still my favorite of his followed closely by Dog Soldiers and Doomsday (I haven’t seen Centurion), but I haven’t been able to add to my Neil-Marshall-movie-rankings list for a very long time. Sure, he directed Hellboy in 2019 (which I enjoyed), but as far as the movies he’s written and directed, he hasn’t put one out since 2010. That is, until The Reckoning debuted last year amid the theater-less world of the pandemic. I’m sad I didn’t get to see Marshall’s latest on the big screen, but I’m overjoyed that I just finished watching it at home! Where does it fall on my list? It doesn’t topple my top two, but given time I think it could fight for the third spot. 

The Reckoning is set in England in 1665 during the England witch trials while the bubonic plague was wreaking havoc across the land. The film follows a woman named Grace whose husband contracts the plague and kills himself to prevent the inevitability that he will pass it along to his wife and baby girl. Grace is then accused of being a witch by the lecherous and conniving squire who owns the land Grace and her family live on, and the rest of the film follows Grace is she is tortured in an attempt to get her confess to entering into a pact with the Devil. Grace’s will is strong, but the mental and physical strains she endures push her will to the breaking point. 

One thing I really enjoy about Neil Marshall is the tone of his movies. He approaches them seriously, but his directness can sometimes be blunt to the point of campiness. I think that’s most apparent in the utter ridiculousness of Doomsday, but I can see bits of it in The Reckoning as well. There’s a scene where the squire that accuses Grace voices his concerns to a bunch of people in a pub, and the whole scene is almost comical in how things quickly escalate. The squire tosses out the bait, end everyone almost immediately chimes in with some variation of “now that you mention it, I saw her once and then a bad thing happened one day so she must be a witch.” Subtlety is thrown out the door, and the idea of mob mentality, something you can build a whole movie around, is summarized in about a minute and a half. It’s great in its own way, and I enjoy it. 

Marshall is also unsubtle with his flair for blood and violence. The Reckoning is a violent movie and there are a few graphicly bloody shots scattered throughout, but I appreciate that it’s not all focused on the torture of Grace. Most of Grace’s torture happens off screen (at least, the physical acts of torture), and we often just see the bloody aftermath. The best/worst of the blood and gore is reserved for the people who really deserve it. Decapitations, crushed heads, multiple stabbings, and more happen on-screen in a way that makes you want to cheer rather than squirm. Mostly. 

I enjoyed the cast as well. Charlotte Kirk plays Grace, and she pulls off a great combination of vulnerability and strength. Steven Waddington is sufficiently scummy as the squire, but the better bad guy in the movie is Sean Pertwee as John Moorcroft, a witch hunter. Pertwee is maybe best known as Alfred in the Gotham TV series, but he’s worked with Neil Marshall before in Dog Soldiers. He also played Smith in one of my favorite outer-space horror movies, Event Horizon. Pertwee has a feeling of proper menace throughout the movie, and I wanted to see Grace get revenge on him more than anyone else. 

The final act of the movie turns into a bit of an action/revenge film, and that’s pretty much what I was hoping for. Again, Neil Marshall is not subtle. The Reckoning is not an A24 arthouse movie about witches, it’s a sometimes campy, often violent genre film about sweet, sweet revenge. Is is historically accurate? Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely. Hopefully Neil Marshall won’t take another ten years to write and direct another movie. 

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Forbidden World A Movie A Day Journal Entry

by chrisA Movie A Day / Journal EntryLeave a Comment on Forbidden World A Movie A Day Journal Entry

Forbidden World (1982) – A Movie A Day 2021 #38

Forbidden World poster

Do you remember a few days ago when I wrote about Dead Space and said it’s a remake of a movie from 1982? Well, I said I would see that original movie pretty soon, and soon is now. Today’s movie of the day is Forbidden World, a sci-fi monster movie that borrows more than a little from Alien, yet feels original enough in its presentation and story that I won’t be talking about Alien for the rest of this journal entry (which is something I couldn’t avoid when writing about Dead Space). Forbidden World is a campy sci-fi b-monster-movie with lots of action, tension, blood, gore, and beautiful women. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I might have a new film to add to my list of favorite movies about groups of people isolated with a murderous monster (yes, that is a list I have in my head).

If you read my journal entry about Dead Space, then you already know the plot of Forbidden World. It’s pretty much the same movie, only Forbidden World is far, far better. The basic plot is that a hot-shot space pilot answers a distress call at an isolated research facility on an alien world. The pilot, Mike Colby, journeys to the facility with his android companion, and they discover that a group of scientists have created something that has grown out of control. The creature they made begins to attack and kill the people at the facility one by one as it gets bigger, grosser, and more dangerous.

So yeah, the basic plot points are the same between Forbidden World and Dead Space, but there’s so much more depth in Forbidden World. Characters’ motivations make tons more sense, the creature is explained way better, and the special effects, though still low-budget and cheesy, look great. I’m glad I saw Dead Space first, because without knowing anything about either movie, I was able to enjoy Dead Space fine for what it is. Comparisons to Forbidden World would have been impossible to avoid had I seen it first, and that would have caused me to enjoy Dead Space less.

One of my favorite aspects of Forbidden World, besides the copious amount of blood and gooey alien monster fluids, is the presentation of the movie. For one, I just love the 70s/80s look and feel. It’s something that can be difficult to describe, but I know it when I see it. The costumes, the sets, the lighting, it all has that classic sci-fi feel of the era. But more than that, the way the movie is edited can be quite unique at times. 

Starting very early in the movie, there are moments when we’ll see flashes of other scenes, often when music is playing. It feels almost like a dream sequence of sorts, but it’s not. They could be flashbacks or flashforwards depending on the scene, and when put together they give the whole movie a very fun vibe. I’m probably not explaining it well, but I suppose I’m just trying to say that the unique editing helped to evoke certain tones while I was watching. I liked it a lot, and it got me interested in the movie right away.

Forbidden World is definitely something that I’ll revisit at some point. I often get cravings for just this type of monster movie, and I’m very happy that I found another to add to my go-to list.

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