Last movie watched...

[Professor Bear]

Gullible and ignorant as I am, I thought "all this talk of the STV market makes me want to watch Nemesis right the fuck now" and so that is what I did - thanks, Poundland dvd section!
I remember waiting for it to come out after reading about it in Impact, an action-oriented movie magazine in the way Fangoria was to horror movies, dedicated to the art and craft of making films on micro-budgets and the enthusiasm and talent of the people who worked on them and the bonds they formed with their fans, and Albert Pyun, prone to making nonsensical and overly-violent narratives as he was such as Captain America, Radioactive Dreams, Cyborg, Sword and the Sorcerer and Knights, was well-known for wringing every last penny's worth of visuals out of his miniscule budgets, so his sci-fi kung-fu thriller Nemesis was anticipated among the lovers of low-budget STV thrillers of the time for its sky-high budget of 1 million dollars.
It stars world's hardest plank Oliver Gruner, who is an ex-commando with muscles on his muscles and really likes fights so for years after his first disastrous screen test he kept acting purely because no-one would risk telling him he wasn't much good at it, and I kind of picture him showing up on the first day of filming like Superman in Man Of Steel showing up for work at the Daily Planet, like he just shows up one day uninvited and everyone is in unspoken agreement that this is what we're doing now because he will basically tear you in half otherwise.  He was the odd duck in his family as all his siblings became rocket scientists and brain surgeons - and I am not being figurative there, actual fucking brain surgeons and rocket scientists - but he applied his genetically-gifted brain to the science of killing and joined the Commandos Marine, which are like the SAS only without the hygiene and good manners (I assume - they are French), but he never went to the same heights as other continental non-actors like Van Damme partially because people would be like "say, you want to do an interview in a room with a man who has for-sure killed people, is built like a brick shithouse, and doesn't take bad news well?" (again: French), and the casting agents would be like HAHA FUCK NO but mainly because he really is quite terrible so that was the end of that bit of upwards career mobility and he got stuck starring in gloriously flawed zero-budget shite like this, a film where he looks impassively at a shard of metal jammed through his kneecap and says "oh no" with the same level of emotion one associates with asking yourself out loud if you left a window open before you locked up the house to go shopping.
This is not a good film, but in being so dated it has many things to recommend it, such as the shooting at the start where every bullet put into a chamber and fired from a gun is built up like it's the one that's going to hit the hero, and then they fire the bullet and it misses by a country mile - or makes random things like flagpoles explode - and then the process repeats like twenty times, and then the hero saves a puppy who is a solid 8 on the cuteness scale by crawling through the dirt to hide it in a safe so it will be protected from the coming explosions.  I have done a Google search, and it is one of these:

An "Alaskan Malamute", apparantly, which Gruner then takes to live in the desert.  It was too afraid to say no, and needless to say, it is not long for this film.
There is a law that if it was made in the 1990s and featured someone being kicked in the face, it had to star Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and sure enough he's here, as is action c-movie stalwart Brion James and they are comforting presences even when called upon to glower at the viewer.  The script is also reassuringly old-fashioned in exploring such outdated tropes as "if I get a pin in my hip does that make me a Transformer now?" and the way it's shot feels so solid compared to modern action no-budgeters, with prosthetic effects, lots of bullet damage to environments, actual on-set and location-filmed explosions, and non-shaky camera shots of things exploding or characters running or shooting or punching each other or falling backwards down a fun park slide while shooting at things, or jumping through windows as buildings explode - and even a stop-motion endoskeleton!  Yep, it is a film that tops off with the protagonist having a fistfight with the Terminator while hanging out of a plane in flight, so it's occasionally pretty ambitious even if it does look cheap as heck a lot of the time with its amber filters over stock footage establishing shots of Los Angeles or wherever, and atrocious editing here and there.
Like I say, it's not good and it has dated poorly, but that gives it a charm it sure didn't have at the time to make it kind of endearing to a modern viewing.

[Hawkmumbler]

If I ever need to read a good review, I look over SFX and go straight to Jame T. Bear.

[Radbacker]

Re Tranformers:The Movie, it definatly had a release in Australia, i remeber we were visiting the city and it was on, i pleaded and begged to go see it but was over ridden by mum who decided we could watch The Boy Who Could Fly instead!!!!  now i cant remeber a thing about the Boy Who Could Fly (did the boy ever fly or was he delusional? i cant remember) but god damn i remember every scene from T.F The Movie even though i had to wait over a year to get the video version.
Straight to Video had many great releases but unfortunatly many crap ones too, great memeories of Critters not seen for ages but remember it being above the norm for a STV, anyone remeber The Wraith? man that car (which is all i remember and i think some boobies in a swimming scene).  In fact i think alot of these movies were got out on the hope of a bit of boobie action.

CU Radbacker

[NapalmKev]

Transformers the movie did get a UK cinema release. I was a massive Transformers fan in my youth*, so you can imagine my disappointment when Mother took me to see Go-Bots the Movie instead!

*I've still got the original Marvel UK comic run from issue 39 to about 225, pretty much mint condition. Don't think i'll ever part with 'em.

Cheers

[Frank]

Gullible and ignorant as I am, I thought "all this talk of the STV market makes me want to watch Nemesis right the fuck now" and so that is what I did - thanks, Poundland dvd section!

I wasn't familiar with the auteur responsible's other work, but I remember at the time Nemesis (1992) had a certain buzz about it - it was definitely being discussed as representing either a new high or a new low in something. I mainly wanted to see it because of the child-like fascination the name Nemesis held for me, even though I knew perfectly well Gruner wouldn't have horns or backwards legs like Charlie Sheen in The Arrival.

We didn't stop laughing and cat-calling from the moment we put the tape on, thanks to the film's (presumably arch and self-aware) fetishisation of automatic weaponry. It takes the assumption that the audience are only really there for the gun battles to its illogical extreme by making a gun battle the default response to any situation, in a way which presages the gag in Loaded Weapon where Emilio Estevez uses his .45 to crack open a brew.

When I eventually saw Stallone using preposterously powerful automatic gunfire to create a hole in concrete and get from one room to another in Judge Dredd (1995) I added ripping-off Nemesis to the charge sheet I was constructing in my head. Except Nemesis used the gag to much better effect.

[Professor Bear]

I think the buzz centered around Gruner as the next big STV thing, as Van Damme's STV films had made so much money that everyone assumed he was buggering off to mainstream Hollywood, so around that time there was lots of buzz trying to figure who'd be the next breakout kung-fu star on the STV market, which is why low-budget studios were taking chances on star vehicles rather than just adding newcomers to the backing cast of films with proven STV draws and seeing how they went down, as was the case with the likes of Cynthia Rothrock, Steve James, Mark Dacascos, and even old Chuck Norris himself, who started out as Bruce Lee's punching bag.  It was such a lucrative market that you had STV films like Rapid Fire, the Perfect Weapon and Excessive Force debuting in theaters despite their unknown leads, tiny budgets and constant appearances from the boom mike, and Nemesis (along with his debut feature Angel Town) had a short theatrical run despite clearly being STV fare as someone thought Gruner could be a name draw sooner or later.

Pyun was great for coming up with daft visuals on no money, though.  He didn't have a good reputation for getting performances out of his actors and his narratives and editing were dreadful, but if you wanted your sci-fi to look alright for next to no money, he was your man.  Fun fact: his Van Damme vehicle Cyborg was originally a sequel to the 1985 Masters of the Universe movie.

[JamesC]

Scanners

I'd never seen this before and I really enjoyed it.
There are some pretty ropey performances and, other than from Michael Ironside, there's a severe lack of charisma on screen. Patrick McGoohan seems to be half asleep. I also thought that the female character was woefully under-written.
Despite this the story is pretty good and the effects stand up well. They're not realistic but they still have a good gross-out factor.

I'll add this to my list of films that should be remade along with Logan's Run and The Keep. All these films share a great central premise and are entertaining but could really do with a bit of script doctoring, some modern effects and a better cast.

[Hawkmumbler]

Michael Ironside? How do you get better than that?

[Recrewt]

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Thanks to the Horror Channel's Lucio Fulci season, I was able to catch this little gem at the weekend.  Firstly, if there is an award for best film title then this would win hands-down, what a name! 

The film starts with a boat arriving in New York that has a zombie on board.  This is then traced back to a tropical island that is suffering with a mysterious infection which brings the dead back to life.  The local Doctor is trying to get to the root of the infection but unfortunately has to spend most of his day wrapping the undead in sheets and shooting them in the head.

On the way to the island we are treated to an underwater shark v zombie face-off.  I'm sure many of you, like myself, have wondered which would win in a fight so this movie goes some way in answering that. 

On the island it's basically a lot of running around, crashing cars into trees and the final hold-up in a hospital that looks suspiciously like a church.  Fortunately, it's a hospital with plenty of guns and all the ingredients for Molotov cocktails.  Somehow, some of our 'heroes' manage to escape to a boat and then there is a nice little twist at the end with a great finishing shot. 

The zombies look great in this with suitable make-up and worms added where appropriate.  These are old-school zombies so they don't move very quickly apart from the final lunge.  They are quiet on their feet though with several people caught out by them sneaking up on them (you would have thought they smelt a bit – no?). 

It's true that they really don't make films like this anymore.  Instead of all the subtext nonsense that Romero liked to clog up his 'dead' films with, this is played straight for gore.   I suppose you could say the acting is bad and that it is not very suspenseful but it is hard not to like this movie.  I would recommend it to anyone who was an interest in horror.   

[Spikes]

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Tis a grand film that, and one that was regulary rented out during the 'Video Nasty' era.
In fact, ive still got a geniune VHS copy of this, bought for £2, from a Video Shop that was shutting down.

[Greg M.]

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Thanks to the Horror Channel's Lucio Fulci season, I was able to catch this little gem at the weekend.

Can't beat a bit of Fulci, nor indeed a bit of the mighty Ian McCulloch in one of his triad of Italian splatter movies. So was it the proper version with the eyeball / splinter scene, or did they cut it?

[Hawkmumbler]

Corcking piece of cine-trash...I actualy prefer it to Dawn of the Dead.

[Daveycandlish]

DIAL M FOR MURDER in 3D. Hitchcock's only foray into the 3D fad but what a stylish filn it is! Stagey, obviously, but the 3D works so much better here than in any of the CGI blockbusters or recent years. When Grace Kelly is reaching behind her head (and into the audience) for the scissors to defend herself, or indeed the whole murder sequence is wonderfully suspenseful. It's been on TV umpteen times but if you get the chance see this re-issue at the cinema. Brilliant. It's the first film I've seen which has made me wish I had a 3D tv so I could buy and watch it again.

[Recrewt]

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Thanks to the Horror Channel's Lucio Fulci season, I was able to catch this little gem at the weekend.

Can't beat a bit of Fulci, nor indeed a bit of the mighty Ian McCulloch in one of his triad of Italian splatter movies. So was it the proper version with the eyeball / splinter scene, or did they cut it?

It was, I believe, the full version - it certainly included the eyeball / splinter scene.  I will never complain about a splinter in my finger again! 

[JamesC]

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Thanks to the Horror Channel's Lucio Fulci season, I was able to catch this little gem at the weekend.  Firstly, if there is an award for best film title then this would win hands-down, what a name! 

The film starts with a boat arriving in New York that has a zombie on board.  This is then traced back to a tropical island that is suffering with a mysterious infection which brings the dead back to life.  The local Doctor is trying to get to the root of the infection but unfortunately has to spend most of his day wrapping the undead in sheets and shooting them in the head.

On the way to the island we are treated to an underwater shark v zombie face-off.  I'm sure many of you, like myself, have wondered which would win in a fight so this movie goes some way in answering that. 

On the island it's basically a lot of running around, crashing cars into trees and the final hold-up in a hospital that looks suspiciously like a church.  Fortunately, it's a hospital with plenty of guns and all the ingredients for Molotov cocktails.  Somehow, some of our 'heroes' manage to escape to a boat and then there is a nice little twist at the end with a great finishing shot. 

The zombies look great in this with suitable make-up and worms added where appropriate.  These are old-school zombies so they don't move very quickly apart from the final lunge.  They are quiet on their feet though with several people caught out by them sneaking up on them (you would have thought they smelt a bit – no?). 

It's true that they really don't make films like this anymore.  Instead of all the subtext nonsense that Romero liked to clog up his 'dead' films with, this is played straight for gore.   I suppose you could say the acting is bad and that it is not very suspenseful but it is hard not to like this movie.  I would recommend it to anyone who was an interest in horror.

It's a great title but I'd give the award for 'Best (Zombie) Film Title' to 'Zombie Nosh'.