Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 18 (Brain Drain)

They say that the devil is in the details.  Part of having a good story is giving the right amount of the right kind of information.  Unfortunately, Friday the 13th: The Series didn’t do that.  Some episodes were better than others, but all we really know is that Uncle Lewis left an antiques shop to Micki and Ryan.  When they discover that many of the items are cursed, they enlist the help of Jack Marshak to retrieve them.

In Brain Drain, Harry goes from having an IQ of 58 to being a genius.  His secret is something called the Trephanator.  It pokes a hole in the back of the neck of both the user and a victim.  The camera shows a neat shot of some liquids flowing and suddenly the user has the intelligence of the victim.  Harry magically becomes Dr. Stewart Pangborn, who continues the work of his victim, Dr. Robeson.

It’s not really clear why he does this.  He could easily skip town.  Granted, the trephinator isn’t the kind of thing you throw in your trunk.  It’s this big contraption and we wouldn’t have much of a plot if Harry didn’t use it again.  Enter Dr. Viola Rhodes, former love interest of Jack Marshak.  Has any former love interest ever made it to the end of an episode?  Even if she lives, there’s no chance that she’s going to stick around.

As with many of the previous episodes, the trio of antique hunters is able to get the cursed item back to their shop where they can store it safely.  Intelligence for the user comes at a price.  The victim is reduced in intelligence greatly and eventually dies.  (Harry becomes the item’s final victim, as is tradition in this series.)

As I mentioned, not many details are given.  It’s an interesting premise, all right.  Who wouldn’t want to be smarter?  However, Dr. Robeson is working on perfecting AI by teaching a gorilla’s brain to speak.  He’ll then transfer the intelligence onto a chip or something.  It’s not really explained how this works.  I’d imagine that this is one of those things were an expert on AI was sitting at home watching the episode, sarcastically wondering why they didn’t think of that.   (“Oh, yeah.  Just hook a primate brain up to a chip.  Why not?”)

It’s kind of a shame that all of these gifts come at a high cost.  I understand that they’re cursed, but every victim seems to have to die.  It’s not enough that the victim winds up with the mental capacity of a two-year-old.  It’s also an all-or-nothing proposition.  Someone can’t transfer just a little.  It might have made for a better story if Harry took a little at a time and worked his way up.

I’d say that the series so far has had as many marginal episodes as it has had horrible ones.  I’m kind of hoping that it picks up.  I really don’t remember a lot of these episodes.  I’m not sure if my memory is bad or if I didn’t watch it that much while it was first on.  Either one should tell me something.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 17 (The Electrocutioner)

I sometimes wonder how some older movies and TV shows ever made it to market.  Were audiences less demanding?  Did studios and networks not actually watch what they were letting through?  Friday the 13th:  The Series had some good episodes, but there were a few that required you to suspend disbelief.   I think The Electrocutioner has to be the least plausible yet.

The episode starts in 1978.  Eli Pittman is being electrocuted for a crime he maintains he didn’t commit.  They throw the switch, but the chair doesn’t work.  Since they can’t electrocute the same man twice for the same crime, they let him go.  It eventually turns out that he really was innocent.

In 1988, Ryan Jack and Micki are hunting down cursed antiques that Lewis Vendredi sold to people.  Next up is, lo and behold, the electric chair.  It turns out that a doctor has come into possession of it.  That doctor happens to be Pittman, who has changed his name and now become a dentist.  Ten years have passed and Eli is just now getting around to exacting revenge on those that wronged him.

The chair is now cursed.  It can be used to vaporize a victim, who is then turned into electricity.  When Pittman sits in the chair, he can absorb that energy and go out to electrocute someone, such as the warden of the prison he was held at.   Where does he get the victims?  He happens to be the in-house dentist at a reform school.  Many of the students are runaways to begin with, so it’s likely no one will go looking for them.

This seems to me the oddest way of getting revenge.  It might be more difficult to trick someone into the chair, but I would think it’s better than killing some innocent teenager.  One of the teens even admits to liking the dentist, which gives Pittman a reason to pause momentarily.

It also means having to kill twice the people, half of whom had nothing to do with Pittman’s imprisonment and electrocution.  Yes, a man who didn’t kill anyone now kills twice as much as he needs to.  I would think it would have been more efficient to buy a gun.  For that matter, you’d think Pittman would sue the pants off the state and everyone involved.  He probably could have gotten a nice pile of cash.

I also had to wonder why a reform school would have an in-house dentist in the first place.  I don’t know how many children they could have there that it would be worth the effort.  Even if we assume a relatively high turnover rate, it would probably have been simpler to use a nearby dentist.  If they’re going to have a medical staff, I would think psychiatrists.  This seems mostly like lazy writing.  I think they just needed a way to have a large supply of victims that no one would report missing.

Interestingly, they did seem to do some research.  When Pittman tries to electrocute two of the trio in their car, the current doesn’t affect them.  I was under the impression that the rubber tires would prevent something like this, but that’s not necessarily true.  If you’re trapped in a car during a lightening storm, the correct behavior is similar to what is shown in the episode.

This is an episode that I think was supposed to be serious, yet ended up being more laughable.  If you’re watching it, you could probably skip this one.  If it was airing on TV, I wouldn’t feel bad if you were doing something else when it came on.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 16 (Tattoo)

Gambling seems to be a mixed bag, morally.  It’s seen by many to be a victimless crime.  As long as you stay within your limit, what’s the problem?  Those that oppose it might point out that those that don’t stay within their limit might steal or physically hurt someone.

Take Tommy Chen.  As they say, he doesn’t have a gambling problem; he has a losing problem.  He’s borrowed from the wrong people and they want their money back.  Tommy has turned to gambling as a way of getting the money, but he’s up against someone with a cursed artifact.  One of the other players has a tattoo needle that can make the user lucky.  The catch is that they have to draw something deadly, like a venomous spider or snake.  When the tattooed person dies, the person who made the tattoo gets perfect luck.

One of my complaints with the previous episode, Vanity’s Mirror, was the lack of any direct moral lesson.  That holds true here, but the episode does seem to hit the marks with gambling.  The guy who Tommy owes money to isn’t a nice guy.  Tommy is also desperate enough to hurt and steal.  This is how he comes into possession of the cursed needle in the first place.

In hitting the marks, the episode is fairly cliché.  Both of the people that use the needle seem to know how to ink someone perfectly.  There’s also no shortage of available victims.  Several are tied up and another is so high on drugs that she can’t offer any resistance to danger.

Tommy is also shown to be a very unsympathetic character.   Most of the items require some sort of down side.  Usually, it’s death.  Tommy seems to have no problem using the needle knowing full well that it will result in someone’s death.  (I find it odd that so few of the people who use cursed items are either monsters to begin with or so easily persuaded to turn to evil.)

The entire series has been marginal episodes so far.  I’ve been getting DVDs from either the library or Netflix.  If you’re into light horror, this may be a good series for you, but I’d check it out of the library first.  This is one of the better episodes so far, but that’s not saying much.

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Friday the 13th: The Series -- Season 1 Episode 15 (Vanity's Mirror)

Some shows have internal consistency.  Shows like 24 have a single narrative.  Others, like the X-Files, may be more episodic, but at least have a mythology going.  I’ve come to realize that Friday the 13th: The Series is more of anthology that uses the same characters.

Micki and Ryan inherited an antiques shop that sold cursed stuff.  Along with the uncle’s former business partner, Jack, they’ve taken it upon themselves to retrieve as many of the cursed items as possible.  This serves as a backdrop for the episodes, which seem to follow an item-of-the-week format.  Each week, an item comes to their attention.  With some effort, the trio manages to get the item.

This week, it’s a compact that makes someone fall madly in love with the person using it.  All a lady has to do is use the mirror to reflect light onto an unlucky guy.  Suddenly, she’s his entire world.   The episode starts with a flower vendor using it on a customer that has never really noticed her.  She uses his newly found obsession to lead him into a back alley so that she can kill him.  Her success is short lived, as she’s soon hit by a bus.

A girl by the name of Helen Mackie finds the compact and picks it up.  She accidentally figures out what it does when she uses it on a boy at her school.  The boy is now enamored with Helen, who makes him go into a trash compactor to retrieve something.

Why would she do this?  Helen isn’t that popular.  Her sister, Joanne, has a good-looking boyfriend, Scott.  It’s cruel that two sisters would be so different in terms of appearance and popularity, but life can be cruel like that some times.  Helen decides to use the compact to repay that cruelty to the other boys who tease her.  Thus, several of them meat a similar end.

This is the first episode where the team doesn’t actually retrieve an item.  As far as they know, someone walked off with it.  They just have no idea who.  (This isn’t far from the truth.  In the final scene, we see a hand reaching for it.)  This leads to some major overacting by Louise Robey, who plays Micki.  She’s all torn up over the fact that such a dangerous item is out there.  As Jack points out, they’ve had a pretty good run.  There are also a lot more items out there.  At 23, they’ve almost gotten 10% of the items in the manifest.  That means that there are more than 200 items still floating around.

My big problem is that the episode is more about the item than the issue.  There’s no talk of Helen being beautiful on the inside or using her inner light or anything.  She’s just a homely, awkward teenager that takes revenge when given the opportunity.  She only has a change of heart when she snares someone she actually likes.

Another thing that I noticed was an obvious lack of parents, or any adults for that matter.  All of these students go to a school that doesn’t seem to have many teachers.  Even at the dance, there’s an obvious lack of adult supervision.  Am I to believe that Helen and Joanna don’t have parents?  You’d think that a proud mother and/or father would want to see them off.  There’s no mention of parents working late or Joanna taking care of them.  Having some sort of adult present, other than Jack, Micki and Ryan, would have been a great way to have some commentary, even if it’s along the lines of, “kids these days.”

The show did manage to last three seasons, so I am hopeful that the episodes will get better.  I think there’s a reason why I don’t really remember the show, though.

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Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2017)

I don’t remember a lot of specific details from my childhood.  I remember having an Atari 2600.  I even remember liking a few of the games, such as Super Breakout.  Similarly, there were things about the Commodore 64 that I recall.  I think I may still have a few of the floppies lying around somewhere.

One thing I remember is playing with the He-Man toys and watching the cartoon as a child.  I don’t really remember that much about the show other than a few details, like Prince Adam being the alter ego and his mother being from Earth.  Since Netflix has the series available streaming, I might go back and have a look at a few of the episodes.

Power of Grayskull is a documentary that covers the basic history of the franchise.  The characters were first envisioned as toys, which came with small booklets containing comics.  There wasn’t much continuity between them, but the toys were popular.  Then, came the Saturday-morning cartoon.  And a movie.  And several other cartoon series.  The franchise has been around for a while..

I felt that the documentary dragged a little in the beginning, which covered the original toys and cartoon.  Part of this is probably because I already watched The Toys That Made Us, another Netflix production.  The episode covering He-Man seemed to have a lot of the same information at a third the running time.  Power of Greyskull went into more detail, but I didn’t really feel like I learned that much more.

For instance, there were interviews with Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella, both of whom were in the live-action movie.   Other people involved with the movie also talked about why Battlecat and Orko didn’t make appearances.  It’s sort of like a sampling of DVD commentaries about different aspects of the franchise.

Someone who hasn’t seen anything about He-Man before might enjoy this.  The main advantage for me was getting to see artwork, but I don’t know if that’s going to be enough for everyone.  If you only have a passing interest in He-Man, I’d recommend watching The Toys That Made Us, instead.  You get about the same detail at a third the time.

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Timecop: The Berlin Decision (2003)

I remember the first time I heard the term cash grab.   There were a few movies that came to mind.  I’m not saying that Timecop: The Berlin Decision is a cash grab, but the evidence would lean that way.  Consider that the two movies were directed by different people and have no overlapping actors or characters.  The script also seems to have been written by someone who has a very vague concept of time travel.  The movie seems like it’s a sequel in name only.

The movie is set in the year 2025.  Ryan Chan is the main protagonist.  He’s been sent on a mission to Berlin in the 1940s because it looks like someone’s going to alter history.  It turns out that Brandon Miller is going to try to kill Hitler.  Who is Brandon Miller?  He’s actually in charge of the Society for Historical Authenticity, which is charged with making sure that timecops don’t alter history.  And here he is, trying to assassinate Hitler.

Chan manages to stop him and preserve history.  In the process, Miller’s wife is killed.  Miller is subsequently tried and sent to prison.  Thus, Miller is now the main antagonist, sworn to take revenge on Chan and the rest of the Temporal Enforcement Commission.  He eventually escapes and starts erasing timecops from history by killing ancestors.  When this happens, the cop in question disappears in a puff of smoke.

So, Chan is sent back to stop Miller.  He’s first sent to the prison, although that changes history more even if Chan doesn’t interact directly with Miller.  So, Chan is sent way back to Texas in the 19th century.  This is because Chan is the last officer left.  How does an Asian guy have relatives that far back in Texas?  That’s not really explained.

Anyway, Chan chases Miller across the generations of the Chan family tree only to meet up with Professor Chan (Ryan’s father) and a younger version of Miller.  It turns out that Miller was a student of the professor’s and the two argued about the morality of changing history.  Chan is able to convince Miller the Younger to be a better person, which causes Chan and Miller the Elder to disappear.  Back in 2025, all is right.

So, where do I begin?  It’s never explained why Chan and the others can see officers disappear, yet the entire office is changed when Chan goes and comes back.  If an officer is erased from history, how does it mean that no one was hired?  Also, why are they still erased from history in the altered timelines?

Oh, and why does Miller skip generations at a time?  If he fails to kill one of Chan’s ancestors, why not go ahead or back a few years?  Why not chose a different ancestor?  You have a lot of great-great-great-grandparents to chose from.  32, to be exact.  Miller finally tries to kill Chan as a child, but kills the father by accident.  This actually happened in the original timeline, meaning it was always destined to happen?  That attempt was the tail end of a series of failures that only happened after Miller’s wife was killed, but didn’t seem to happen in the original timeline.

If you’re confused, don’t worry.  I watched it and I’m not even sure what happened.  Like I said, I’m not even sure the writer knew what was going on.  I think the plot was just a way of setting up some fight scenes.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the movie wasn’t originally intended to be a sequel.  It may have been slightly modified to ride on the coattails of the first Timecop.  If you’re in to time-travel movies or movies that make sense, I’d tell you to skip this one.

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Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 14 (Balance of Terror)

There were some things about the original Star Trek that made you wonder.  For instance, exactly how did stardates work?  It was supposed to be a way of having a standard calendar, but what was a year?  How did you measure a week or a month?  I don’t think it was every explicitly stated.  (To make matters more confusing, The Next Generation seemed to use a different system.)

Balance of Terror introduced the Romulan Star Empire, which posed an interesting problem: The Romulans didn’t have warp drive.  This meant that they had to go between stars at sublight speeds.  Romulans are suspected to be an offshoot of Vulcans, which would make them long-lived.  However, even if we assume this, that’s no way to run a star empire.  The closest star outside of our system is 4 light years off.   That means that it takes light four years to get from there to here.  It would take years (if not decades) to travel interstellar distances.  (For that matter, how did they destroy the outposts in short order?)

We can ignore that for now.  Why?  Because the Romulans have a cloaking device.  The have to become visible to use their super weapon, but they can travel and not be seen.  It makes for a pretty good episode because the commanders of both ships (Kirk on the Enterprise and the unnamed Romulan Commander) have to use their wits.  Both seem equal in skill.  The Romulan Commander even admits that they may have been friends under different circumstances.

The episode works because it deals with the issues.  At least one crew member is paranoid.  No one has ever seen a Romulan, meaning anyone could be a spy.  When the appearance of a Romulan is revealed, it ups the paranoia.  Not only do they look like Vulcans, the Romulan Commander is played by Mark Lenard, who would go on to play Spock’s father.  Does this mean that Spock is one of them?  Even though Spock has been in Starfleet for years, his pointy ears are a liability now.

This is to say nothing of the potential for war.  The Romulans have crossed The Neutral Zone.  This would be an act of war, except that the Romulan ship has some deniability in that they usually can’t be seen.  If the Enterprise crosses in, that would give the Romulans cause to start a war.  (Does it really even matter who started a war?)

The thing I like most about the episode is the use of appearance.  Romulans and Vulcans look similar.  This is the only reason that doubt is cast upon Spock.  Simple appearance.  This still holds true today, where people of a certain nationality or skin color are suspect simply because of the way they look.  Sometimes, no other consideration matters.

The Romulans are also portrayed in a sympathetic light.  The Romulans all have families waiting for them.  They really aren’t much different that the crew of the Enterprise except that they’re from the other side of a border.  Reacting out of fear and impulse might be understandable, but will often lead us to the wrong conclusion. 

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Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 13 (The Conscience of the King)

I’ve always hated when someone says, “Oh, but he’s such a nice guy.”  Usually, the person that’s supposed to be such a nice guy really isn’t.  Maybe it’s someone accused of a crime.  Maybe it’s someone who’s a jerk.  There’s usually someone who knows that he’s not such a nice guy.

Anton Karidian would seem to be a nice guy.  He has a loving daughter.  He’s part of a Shakespearian acting troupe.  He seems friendly enough.  However, Dr. Thomas Leighton is on to him.  Leighton things that Karidian is actually Governor Kodos, referred to as Kodos the Executioner.  This is because, as governor of Tarsus IV, he killed thousands of people.  Food shipments were late and sacrificing part of the population would have saved the rest, except that the food arrived on time.

Kirk doesn’t believe Leighton at first, even though Kirk was on Tarsus IV at the time.  Kirk becomes concerned when Leighton shows up dead, so he arranges to have the Enterprise bring the troupe to their next destination.  Also on board is Lt. Kevin Riley, who was also present on Tarsus IV.

Riley manages to survive what looks like a attempt at poisoning.  There’s also an attempt made on Kirk’s life.  Kirk is hesitant to confront Karidian about it, even after getting a voice match.  At this point, does it really matter?  Kodos is believed dead and Karidian doesn’t show any intent to harm anyone.  Is bringing him to justice that important?

I think the episode may have faltered a little bit.  There would seem to be a parallel between Karidian and Nazi war criminals.  Does it matter how many people he killed?  Granted, what Kodos did wasn’t genocide, but he did still kill people.  I would think that many of his victims would probably have families who would want closure.  It’s also not as if Kirk would have to pass judgment on Kodos.  Kirk would simply be turning in someone suspected of being Kodos.

Letting him go seems like the easy way out.  There are only two people left who could identify him, so it’s not like anyone would know.  Right?  I can’t really think of a good reason to let him go.  Even if we were to say that he’s dying, wouldn’t punishment be for the courts to decide?  Get the man a good lawyer and let the justice system sort it out.

There is some debate within the episode on the potential merits of what he attempted.  Had the food ships not arrived, it would have cast Kodos in a better light.  He would have saved people that might have died otherwise.  However, Kodos did kill people and he was selective about it.  He saved the people that he thought were better.

I can see where the episode might be trying to show both sides of the argument.  Kirk is hesitant to do anything.  Riley is quick to take action.  Is it understandable that Riley would want revenge or is Kirk right to think it through?  Once someone like that has been caught, what would be the correct way to treat them?  My only problem is that the question would be better posed in a courtroom.

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Somnio/Infinity Chamber (2016)

WARNING:  I’m going to give away major details about the movie, including the end.


The movie doesn’t start well for Frank.  He finds himself in a room with no obvious means of exit.  His only company is a voice at the other end of a video camera.  The voice identifies himself as Howard.  Who is Howard?  He’s Frank’s Life Support Operator, in charge of keeping Frank alive during processing.  It takes a while, but Frank realizes that Howard is artificial intelligence.

Frank also comes to realize that no one is going to release him.  He has no idea why he was arrested.  Oh, and there’s a machine in the room that can make Frank relive memories.  The only one he seems to relive, though, is the day he was captured.  Why?  Well, there must be some important information there.

It’s somewhat difficult to give away much more without revealing the whole movie, hence the warning.  Frank does seem to escape.  Twice.  The first time, Frank quickly realizes that it’s an illusion.  The machine is tricking him into thinking he’s escaped.

The second time is more ambiguous.  There are three main theories on this.  One is that Frank really did escape.  Whatever coincidences you might notice are just that.  The second theory is that Frank was tricked into thinking he escaped to give up important information.  The third is that Frank is really his father, lying on the bed.

I’m not sure I buy any of these.  It’s possible that Frank did escape.  The camera used to monitor his cell is probably common enough.  Also, a government would probably buy in bulk, meaning the same camera would be used everywhere.

As for the second possibility, Frank shouldn’t be so trusting of any reality given the first failed attempt.  Then again, it’s possible that he knows and is intentionally misdirecting those that are watching.  He seems to have given away what his captors were looking for, but there’s no way for us to know that the information is accurate.

The third possibility is the weakest to me.  There’s only implication here.  I’m not sure I can totally accept it.  I do think that it’s all in his head, though.  My theory is that Frank was hooked up to a machine.  Much like the original Total Recall, I think that his mind snapped and what we see here is his fractured personality.  My theory is that Frank is really Fletcher, the guy in the next cell.

It kind of makes sense.  Fletcher is the Ego, or identity.  Frank would represent the id, which is the basic stuff like needs and desires.  The AI is the super-ego, which brings rules and order.  Howard imposes rules and tries to make sense of things.  The news reports would indicate that many people died in the prison.  I think that it’s actually it’s sort of like the theory that Frank is the only man except that it’s Fletcher who’s the old man.  He‘s laying on a table somewhere, taking on the identities of various members of the resistance.  Each body that was reported as having been found was a different life that Fletcher lived.

I’m not sure if the details come from Fletcher’s own mind or if they came from the other people having been probed.  Memories could have been transferred to Fletcher’s mind.  Fletcher as Frank may have been the first identity to escape with his mind realizing that the only way to maintain the illusion was to do so somewhere other than the cell.  The key to success was in actually living the person’s life, such as it was.

The biggest clue as to this is when Frank finds the ID number on the computer console and says that it was someone else’s ID number.  He claims mistaken identity.  When Fletcher and Frank talk, it almost seems like they’re the same person.  Fletcher gives Frank advice, but Frank seems to already know.  In any event, the ending is still leaves questions.  Most importantly:  What happens next?

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Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 12 (The Menagerie: Part II)

The Menagerie was the first two-part episode for the Star Trek franchise.  As I mentioned in the review of the first part, it was done as a means of getting the show back on schedule.  Spock abducted the former captain, Christopher Pike, so that he might be brought back to Talos IV and live out his days with a happy illusion.  He’s now confined to a wheelchair, but the Talosians could make him believe that he has is old body back.

Part II picks up where Part I left off.  Spock’s trial resumes, as does the transmission from Talos IV.  The transmission being shown is actually footage from the original pilot, The Cage.  Either way, appears that the Talosians’ reach goes far beyond their planetary system, making it seem useless to threaten would-be visitors with the death penalty.

This episode is almost entirely the reused footage from The Cage.  The episode ends with Spock taking Pike to the transporter room to be beamed down to the planet.  The Talosians give Kirk one final message that Pike will be taken care of.  However, I wonder if they’ll be able to do this.  It was established in The Cage that they had never seen a human before and it would stand to reason that they haven’t seen one since.  I’m not sure what they’ll do if Pike needs medical attention.

Either way, the entire trial was an illusion generated by the Talosians.  They knew that Kirk would never just sit back, given the situation.   Starbase 11 contacts the Enterprise and tells them that no charges will be pressed.  I have to wonder, though, why go through all the effort in the first place?  Did the Talosians feel that it was a way of repaying Pike for what they put him through?

Consider that the Talosians wanted Pike to start a population of humans to rebuild their planet.  It would have been bad to keep him captive for this reason.  I suppose Pike is little more than a captive either way, but why is it better for the Talosians to have him now?  Is being able to think he’s healthy again really worth it?  Is their guilt that bad?

Unfortunately, we never hear form Pike or the Talosians again in any of the TV series or movies.  It would have been interesting for The Next Generation to at least mention it.  (I have to wonder what would have happened if the Borg assimilated the Talosians.  That really would have been a threat.)  I always wondered if the Talosians had kept their word.  Their final line, “Captain Pike has an illusion and you have reality.  May you find your way as pleasant,” could just be a way of alleviating any worry or guilt on Kirk’s part.  The Next Generation was a lot better with continuity.  It would have been nice to have even a small throwback.

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Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 11 (The Menagerie: Part I)

Certain episodes make more sense once you learn what happened behind the scenes.  It always bothered me that Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third-season finale had only Captain Picard get assimilated by the Borg.  It would have made more sense to me to assimilate more of the bridge crew, if not the whole ship.  Then, I read that there was some doubt as to whether or not Patrick Stewart would return.  Apparently, there was some sort of contract dispute.  Picard would live or die depending on the outcome.

Similarly, The Menagerie raised a few questions for me.  It starts with the Enterprise called to Starbase 11, ostensibly at the request of Captain Christopher Pike.  Commodore José Mendez is a bit confused by this, as Pike couldn’t possibly have sent out any such request.  Pike has been confined to a wheelchair since a recent accident.  That same accident has left him unable to speak with anyone.  His mind is still active, but his body is useless.

It turns out that Spock lied.  He’s brought the Enterprise to Starbase 11 to abduct Pike.  The reason?  Spock will bring Pike to Talos IV, where the inhabitants can let Pike lead a seemingly normal life.  Spock has the ship programmed not to stop until it reaches its destination.  In the meantime, he’s put on trial.

As evidence, Spock shows Mendez, Kirk and Pike footage from the first mission to Talos.  Using this, he explains his plan.  The Talosians can generate very real illusions.  Pike can believe that he’s living out any fantasy.  This is why Starfleet has banned travel to the planet.  Spock risks death not only for himself, but for the rest of the crew as well.

The episode ends partway through the trial.  As a cliffhanger, one would have had to wait until next week to find out what happened to Spock.  Of course, through the magic of steaming and home video, it’s just a matter of calling up the next episode.

The premise had me a bit confused.  The most obvious flaw, as brought up by others, is that Pike can only communicate through a flashing light.  One flash means yes; two flashes means no.  Morse code existed back then.  I would also imagine that other forms of binary communication existed, which would have allowed for better communication.  It appears to be done more to show how bad Pike has it.  He can’t even communicate with people, so going to live with the Talosians seems like a good idea.

That being said, why did Spock have to hijack the Enterprise?  We’ve met Harry Mudd, so there are shady individuals that would have transported Spock and Pike for a price.  I suppose that few would have been a match for the Enterprise.  One could also argue that Spock would have needed a decent ship with a doctor onboard.  Still, it doesn’t appear that Spock even entertained the idea.

The entire episode is little more than a cheat.  From what I’ve read, production was behind schedule.  The Menagerie allowed the show to produce two episodes wile basically filming one.  They just had to film the Starbase and the trial.  It also serves as a way of getting the original pilot into canon.  (If you haven’t seen The Cage, don’t worry.  It looks like most or all of the footage made it in.)

One might also wonder why the Talosians didn’t make an illusion of Pike so that he might speak for himself.  The truth is that Jeffrey Hunter wasn’t available.  He had already moved on to other projects.  He is shown in the footage from The Cage.  However, the man in the wheelchair is a different actor.

It’s an interesting premise, at least.  A main character risks life and career for a former commander.  It’s not the thinnest of plots, but it is up there.  It does help if you try not to think about it.  I suppose Pike is lucky that Spock was still serving on the Enterprise.  The premise might not have worked, otherwise. 

IMDb page

Idaho Transfer (1973)

WARNING:  This review gives away details, including the ending.


Some things are pretty straightforward.  A vessel that goes under the surface of the ocean is called a submarine.  You look at the name and you have a good sense of what it does.  Maglev comes from magnetic levitation.  Again, this gives you a good idea of how it operates.  Idaho Transfer gets its name from the fact that it’s about an experiment in Idaho dealing with matter transfer.  This is the only part of the movie that I really understand.

At some point before the start of the movie, someone was trying to figure out how to build a transporter.  They accidentally invented time travel.  For some reason, the people running the project chose 56 years as a good arc of time.  (The movie was made in 1973, meaning that the future is 2029.)  I’m not sure how they know the date, as there don’t seem to be any signs of civilization.  They’ve checked the area and everything looks abandoned.  There are also no TV or radio transmissions.

Time travel comes with several limits.  First, you can’t wear anything metal.  This includes jeans and eyeglasses.  It doesn’t seem to include any metal already in your body like iron.  I suspect that this is a way to get the teenage girls to strip down to their underwear.  (The girls are young enough that it’s a little pervy.)  Another thing is that anyone over 20 gets hemorrhaging in their kidneys, so no adults.

What this means is that the project sends a bunch of teenagers to study the future.  (By study the future, I mean pick up snakes to measure and tag them.)   The long-term plan is to send lots of teenagers through to rebuild society.  I’m not sure how they’re going to do that, since adults (read: people with any sort of proficiency or training) can’t be sent through.  I guess no one read Lord of the Flies.

Mostly, it’s the teenagers just doing stuff.  Two sisters, while in the present, talk casually about one of them being raped.  On a trip back from the future, one of them dies.  The other hides in the future and seems to mope around about it.  Oh, and the government takes over.  It’s never really said why.  Do they know about the secret time travel?  Are they tired of waiting for transporters?  Either way, the kids can’t get back to 1973.

So, they all decide to walk from whoever they are in Idaho to Portland.  (Yes.  The one in Oregon.)  They split into three groups.  A few stay behind in case the machines start working.  The main group takes a river path while two people take another path.  I’m not sure why it was a good idea for two people to travel separately like that.  It doesn’t seem like a safe thing to do, since they’re supposed to help rebuild society.

When the two teams finally meet up, another big revelation is laid out:  Going to the future makes you sterile.   Yes, the future of humanity depends on kids who can’t have kids of their own.  Apparently, at least the doctor knew.  I’m not sure if the rest of the adults knew, as well.  It seems like a bad idea to send the future of humanity ahead without fixing this.  This is despite the mopey girl thinking that she’s pregnant.

When she gets the news, she goes back to the main encampment to find almost everyone dead.  One girl attacks her, but little miss mopey manages to make it back to 1973, where she’s greeted by military personnel.  She locks herself in the room so that she can play with the controls.  She manages to send herself to another time, forward of everyone else.  (We can tell this because there are a bunch of supplies without any people.)

She’s picked up by a car and put in the trunk.  I think the implication here is that she’s been used as fuel.  Either that, or the family will be saving her for a snack.  (We can’t hear any screaming, but the trunk might be soundproofed.)  the girl in the back seat wonders what they’ll do when they run out of people to use.  Maybe they’ll have to turn on each other.

There are so many questions here.  First off, how did they manage to build the chambers in the future?  Time travel seems to rely on being deposited into a chamber.  It’s never stated that it’s necessary, but it does seem to be.  Even if you built it in the present, you have to trust that it will be there 56 years in the future.  What happens if a meteor hits and leaves a big crater?  There could be a landslide that covers the compartment?  So many things could go wrong.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to humanity didn’t seem to affect the chambers.  Why not send people into the future in increments?  This would at least narrow down when it happened.  Given that there were people in the future, it seems like they did really crappy reconnaissance.

I think the movie was made with a shoestring budget in mine.  Take that very few of the actors have any other acting credits.  Also, they’re almost all teenagers.  I think someone had access to a deserted area and a warehouse and decided to see what kind of script they could come up with based on that.   The one redeeming quality is that there seems to still be some good scenery in the future.  Some of the shots look like they were from ads for the National Park Service.

The big complaint that I have is that there’s no real tension or danger.  There’s no talk of grandfather paradoxes.  There’s no one chasing the teenagers.  It seems like the big threats are a train full of dead people and snakes that don’t bite.  This is the kind of script that might have been written by a bored teenager one weekend.  Had I not had access to this movie already, I probably wouldn’t have watched it.

IMDb page

The Most Unknown (2018)

Most documentaries are pretty straightforward.  They deal with something that’s known.  A documentary on the Civil War has a well-defined scope.  We may not know everything about everything on a subject, but there’s usually enough to present a view.  Even UFOs, there are things like Project Blue Book and Groom Lake to tackle.

How do you make a documentary on what we don’t know?  The Most Unknown is a self-proclaimed experiment in which the director tries to highlight several topics that aren’t that well-defined.  There are nine scientists, each dealing with something that we know little about.  One physicist deals with dark matter while a psychologist tries to tackle what consciousness is.

Another interesting thing about the documentary is the way that the various scientists are shown.  It’s almost like a relay race, where the first scientist meets the second.  The second then travels to meet the third.  In each case, the two scientists discuss the host’s field of study.  (The guest usually seems to understand what’s going on.)  What we get is a long string of snippets from conversations.

I don’t think it’s meant to be informative like a NOVA special might. It’s meant to give us an idea of what the big unknown is in different fields.  It’s showing that there are still things left to discover.  We may never fully understand what consciousness is.  We’ll probably never be able to catalog every species within my lifetime.  Even when these problems are solved, there will undoubtedly be new problems to solve.

It’s about 90 minutes, which makes it a bit long for a class.  It’s the kind of thing that could be assigned for homework, except that it’s available on Netflix.  It does look like there are screenings in theaters, but I don’t know how long this will go on.  I can’t say that you’ll be able to find one near you, even if it’s done indefinitely.  It is something that’s worth checking out if you have access to it.

IMDb page

Anno zero - Guerra nello spazio/War of the Planets (1977)

People have asked me why I watch bad movies.  Some are entertaining in their own right.  I watch others because they’ve become cultural icons.  (Plan 9 From Outer Space is pretty much only famous for being bad..)  My reason for watching War of the Planets is that I had it laying around.

When my brother cleaned out his storage unit, he left me with a set of movies that seem to be mostly Italian-produced, cheaply made science fiction movies.  I’m going through these to see if any of them have any redeeming qualities.  If there is one, this one isn’t it.  How bad is the movie?  I’d describe it as the most horrendous assemblage of random scriptwriting ever.

I’m not even absolutely certain that I have the correct IMDb page listed below.  May of the user and external reviews seem to be talking about the same movie.  The problem with movies like this is that there are often several different cuts and each cut can have several dubs.  For instance, there seem to be at least two first names for Captain Hamilton.  He’s either Fred or Alex, depending on who you ask.  Also, the title on the DVD is Cosmos: War of the Planets, whereas IMDB simply has it listed as War of the Planets.  (Apparently, Cosmos is used in the English title for boxed sets in Japan.)  This should have told me something going in.

The movie starts with some random stuff, including a guy fixing an ancient satellite alone, which he’s not supposed to do.  There’s a very strict buddy system in place and he’s just violated it.  Anyway, he’s reprimanded.  Rather than being punished, he’s given command of his own ship.  Eventually, that ship is told to go to the source of a strange transmission.  Captain Hamilton, if that is his real name, refuses because he can do that under the new rules.

At some point, the ship winds up at the planet.  I’m not sure if he changed his mind, if he stumbled upon the planet by accident or there was some other motive.  Anyway, the ship almost crashes, right up until it doesn’t.  The crew makes it to the ground safely, but the ship needs repairs if it’s going to fly again.

So, the crew explores the seemingly uninhabited planet.  Several crewmembers find some strange Stonehenge-looking thing and disappear.  In reality, they’re transported to the other side of a mountain where a giant robot attacks them.  Also, there are people on the planet who are supposed to be painted blue.  (In the version I had, they looked dark grey.)

The captain manages to find the robot, or a computer resembling the robot, and is instructed to replace a circuit board, which he does slowly to stall.  It turns out that this is the only repair that the machine needed.  Now, he can make more machines and board the ship to take over Earth.

Captain Hamilton manages to undo this by throwing a rock at a red button.   How does Hamilton know to hit the red button?  His onboard computer said that there would be a machine and its undoing would be a button that would probably be red.  Anyway, the robot blows up, apparently taking the planet with him.  I’m not sure, really.  There were a lot of explosions and stuff.

However, the crew does make it back with one of the planet’s inhabitants.  He doesn’t seem too broken up about the destruction of the planet or the rest of his people, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.  Either way, he looks good in an Earth uniform.  That is, until he gets blown out an airlock.  Why?  Because he’s in the same room as a mutated crewmember who starts attacking people.  No one seems to be broken up about it.  At least Earth is safe.  Or is it?

The only reason I might want someone to watch the movie is so that they might explain it to me.  If you have seen this movie and understand anything about it, please leave a comment.  For instance, there was supposed to be a ship above Antarctica.  Did I miss this?  Was this removed in one of the cuts of the movie?

Also, why did the robot need humans?  I get that the inhabitants of the planet weren’t too bright.  The Evil Robot Overlord may have tried, only to find them not good enough.  However, he could apparently move around.  If he did have a ship over Antarctica, couldn’t he have gotten himself to Earth or another planet?  For that matter, this robot is supposed to be the one that makes all the other robots and machines.  Why not make one to repair the main computer.  That would seem like a good plan.  Make sure that you always have one or two of those around.

If you can tolerate really horrid movies, this one may be for you.  It seems perfect for Mystery Science Theater 3000, although I don’t see it listed under the movie’s connections.  I’d say that there may be a copyright issue, but movies like this one tend to have lapsed or nonexistent copyright.  That’s how they find their way into the movie packs to begin with.  If you’re looking for a movie with a coherent plot and decent acting, I’d say keep moving.  There’s nothing for you to see here.

IMDb page

The Equalizer 2 (2018)

I’m not really certain what to make of Equalizer 2.  It seems like some effort was put into writing it, but I still have issues with it.  When the first movie ended, I though that the sequel would be along the same lines.  Not necessarily a remake of the first, but at least McCall helping someone.  In fact, the trailers alluded to this.  We had McCall talking to someone on a train to retrieve a girl abducted by her father.  However, once the girl is returned, this is the end of the character’s involvement in the movie.

The main story is McCall’s friend, Susan, having to investigate the apparent suicide of a CIA operative overseas.  It doesn’t go well, leading McCall to risk exposing that his death was faked.  It’s difficult to go into a lot of details for two reasons.  One, I would have to unnecessarily give away spoilers.  Two, I’m not entirely certain where the plot was going.  It seemed like it was setting up the final fight, yet there really wasn’t a three-act structure.

Add to this several other elements like the girl.  While McCall is working as a Lyft driver, he comes across a woman who he realizes had been sexually assaulted.  He drops her off at a hospital before dealing with the men she was with.  Again, this is only one five-minute stretch of the movie.  Then, there’s a Holocaust survivor who’s trying to prove that a picture was his.  I’m not sure what purpose this has other than to fill in the movie.

The movie wasn’t boring, but it was different.  I spent most of the movie waiting for the action to start.  Once I realized that it wasn’t going to happen, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  It might be that this is serving as a bridge to a third movie.  I’d like to rent the TV series that this is based on.  That might at least shed some light on things.  I remember the TV series being about a man who helped those that couldn’t be helped through traditional channels.  Even after a few days, I’m still sorting through it.  I’m waiting for that moment where it all makes sense, but I expect that won’t happen, either.

IMDb page

Project Kronos (2013)

Things aren’t always that simple.  I was just looking at a movie that was edited and redubbed from a Russian movie.  You also have movies, such as Frankenweenie, that have two versions by the same director.  When I was looking into The Beyond, I found that the director had also made this movie, which was similar.  Both movies are set up like documentaries.  The primary difference is that Project Kronos deals with humans looking for aliens whereas The Beyond has an unknown intelligence coming to us.

In Project Kronos, The Space Agency, Inc., wants to build a probe.  The problem is that the memory required would need a huge storage device.  The solution is to use a human brain, instead.  Gross?  Maybe.  Ethical?  Probably not.   It is an interesting idea and not without merit.  It’s pointed out that a human could deal with extraterrestrials better than an AI could.

It sort of reminds me of Prelude to Axanar in that it’s incomplete.  Both seem like they’re the first part of a documentary.  If you watch this before watching The Beyond, you might think that you got cut off or that you just watched the first of two parts.  In a way, the second part is The Beyond.  I think that it may have been a way of gauging audience reaction, not unlike a backdoor pilot.

If you can find the movie online, I’d say that Project Kronos is worth a shot.  It’s only 14 minutes.  It also looks like there’s another entry on IMDb called Project Kronos with the same writer/director.  This may be a full-length version.  I’m not sure, but it would be interesting to see how the two compare.

IMDb page

The Beyond (2017)

Many movies have some sort of reveal.  It serves as a way to resolve the tension.  With mystery, you find out who did it, usually in the final moments.  With horror, there may be a similar moment where you realize why the villain is so bad.  Even with a drama, there’s some sort of resolution.  Maybe the protagonist gets what they were after.  Such things are easy to define.

Not so much with The Beyond.  There is a well-defined threat: A wormhole appears not to far from Earth.  It’s like the roach trap, where probes check in, but they don’t check out.  They stop transmitting shortly after they cross the threshold, providing very little information.  Cue the fear and panic among those that know.  The military starts shooting at smaller voids.

Thus, a manned mission is devised wherein those participating are given robotic bodies.  The technology is so secret that participants have to have their deaths faked.   The original plan is to send two scientists.  When the launch comes, one scientist is sent with a soldier.  Only the scientist returns, providing some information.  The only message seems to be from another lost scientist, saying not to worry.

The movie is set up like a documentary, much like Europa Report.  It’s filled with footage of the principal characters going about their business and explaining what’s going on.  We get a lot of slow buildup leading to a climax that’s not much of a climax.  I didn’t even really feel like there was any actual danger to Earth.  I never felt like there was going to be some big threat.  Although there does seem to be a purpose to the events, we never get to see the intelligence behind anything.

I could see this as being the start of several similar movies or the pilot for a TV show.  It has an interesting premise that’s not really utilized.  Everything is very simple and scaled back.  In fact, the space agency is simply called The Space Agency.  There’s no reference to a specific agency, such as the ESA or NASA.  Similarly, the military doesn’t seem to be any particular branch of service nor is any specific country mentioned.  The Void would concern the entire planet.  I don’t recall much talk of various countries pitching in.  Maybe we’re supposed to assume that they are.

The 103-minute running time becomes a major disadvantage.  I’d understand if someone didn’t make it all the way through.  If you do stop midway, you’re not really missing anything.  In fact, this is one of the few cases where spoilers might be advantageous.  You can infer the message without wasting the time.

IMDb page

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

I’ve often wondered what an alien race might think of us.  I pointed out in a review of Dark Girls that they might not want much to do with us, given how we treat each other.  We have groups like the Ku Klux Klan that espouse the supremacy of those descended through Europe.  We tend to look down on each other.

When Ron Stallworth joined the Colorado Springs Police Department, he wanted to work undercover.  He got his chance by reporting on a rally hosted by local Black student union.  Speaking is Kwame Ture, who inspires Stallworth.  (Stallworth doesn’t agree with everything Ture has to say, but admits that he’s a powerful speaker.)

One day, while reading the newspaper, Stallworth sees an ad for the local KKK chapter.  On a whim, he calls and leaves a message.  This leads to a callback and a meeting.  It’s bad enough that Stallworth used his actual name.  Now, he needs to enlist fellow undercover officer Phillip Zimmerman.  Stallworth will be the voice on the phone while Zimmerman will play Stallworth for any face-to-face meeting.  The objective is to bring down the chapter of the Klan.  Although that doesn’t happen, the police do manage to stop a few cross burnings.

The movie is based on a 2014 book that Stallworth wrote about the investigation.  While I would imagine that the story is by and large true to the book, it looks like some liberties were taken.  (Ron Stallworth never actually altered his voice on the phone, for instance.)  It’s still interesting to see the events play out.  Apparently, Stallworth never intended the investigation to go that far.  A lot of it was making things up as they went along.

The movie plays out more as a comedy than anything dramatic or suspenseful.  (There is a sense of historical irony when characters comment on things that have actually come to pass.)  There isn’t a sense that either Stallworth or Zimmerman are in any real danger.  You know that even if they don’t win the battle, they’ll live to fight another fight.  They also won’t necessarily make an impact on the larger picture, as the KKK is still around.

As you might have seen in the trailer, the movie doesn’t shy away from using derogatory terms.   There are also a few tense moments.  This is not going to be a movie for children.  There are way too many situations that would either be inappropriate or go over their heads.  Even for adults, ther ewill be a few uncomfortable scenes.  The movie does deal with race directly.

It is interesting to see the parallels between the African-American students and the KKK.  Both want to advance their cause, although the students want equality whereas the Klan (or the Organization, if you will) wants supremacy.  Thus, Stallworth has to walk a fine line.  Those in the African-American community don’t like the police, and with good reason.  As Stallworth points out, the best way to affect change might be to do it from within.

IMDb page

Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 10 (The Corbomite Maneuver)

Space is a dangerous place.  Considering how little we know about the rest of the galaxy, I’m kind of surprised that the Enterprise wasn’t running into all manner of hostile aliens.  Sure, there are bound to be those that are friendly or indifferent, but it’s possible that there are many worlds out there where the native population is more than willing to defend its territory.  Some, like the Klingons and the Borg, were even looking for more territory.

When the Enterprise encounters a strange, glowing, cube-like object, Captain Kirk is ready to take it in stride.  Unfortunately, going around it doesn’t work.  Trying to outrun it doesn’t work, either.  Destroying it would seem to be the only option available.

Then, a giant spherical object shows up.  It’s a ship called the Fesarius and it’s commanded by Balok.  Balok isn’t all that happy about what Kirk did to the cube.  As punishment, The Enterprise is to be destroyed.  The crew is given time to make whatever final arrangements they wish.

During this time, Kirk tries to negotiate with Balok.  The title comes from a substance Kirk uses to bluff Balok.  He says that all Federation ships carry a substance called corbomite.  If the Enterprise is destroyed, the Fesarius will be destroyed, as well.

Being that the episode is so early in the first season, one would think that the Enterprise isn’t blown up.  Thus, we know there will be a peaceful solution.  What’s interesting is that the episode alludes to the movies and Kirk’s unwillingness to accept a no-win situation.  He’s not going to sit back and accept fate, but there doesn’t seem to be much that he can do.  If he can’t think his way out of a bad situation, he can at least bluff his way out.

Unfortunately, we don’t hear anything from Balok again.  I know it’s a big universe and there are a lot of strange, new aliens to get to and everything, but it does start a long tradition of introducing something only to have it forgotten about by the next episode.  When Balok says he’s part of the First Federation, it would imply that there are a great number of worlds.  Rather than set up some sort of diplomatic arrangement, Kirk sends one his officers to stay with Balok.  (Maybe that’s how they do things in the 23rd century.)

One thing of note is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance of Jonathan Goldsmith, The Most Interesting Man in the World.  And yes, he wore a red shirt.  I remember seeing a meme with Goldsmith as The Most Interesting Man in the World, captioned with something like, “I don’t always wear a red shirt, but when I do, I make it all the way to the end of the episode.” 

Like many of the other early Star Trek episodes, The Corbomite Maneuver is more enjoyable if you don’t take it too literally.  It’s more about trying to convey some sort of a message.  I’d say that it’s not one of the best episodes, but it’s on par with the series as a whole.

IMDb page

Vampire Sisters (2004)

If you ever want to find mediocre or bad movies, there are certain things you have to look for.  No one’s going to say that their movie is crappy.  Instead, you might look for a set of movies.  More movies usually means less quality per movie.  (Yes, $10 will get you 50 movies, but few of them will be worth the effort.)  The straight-to-video label is also a good indicator of low quality.  Movie theaters have to be selective about what they show.  Even made-for-TV indicates a certain standard.  I got Vampire Sisters as part of a six-pack of vampire movies, only to find out that it was also released direct-to-video.

The movie is about three sisters who run an adult site called vampsisters.com.  They just happen to be vampires that use the site to find unwitting victims.  Whenever they’re hungry, they find a local client or two and invite them for a special bonus.  That bonus is ostensibly a private show, but it soon turns into the sisters’ snack time.  The main story is nothing more than several people being invited to the sisters’ house.  Along the way, they attract the attention of Det. Sonny Renko, who is investigating the various missing persons.  When he links all of them to the site, he decides to go in undercover with Det. Jennifer Hunt.

You’re not going to have many surprises here.  The movie hits all of the vampire tropes, like commenting on garlic or having a Bible turn up.  It’s little more than soft-core porn.  (Yes, there is some nudity.)  The story is just a way of stringing together a few various encounters.  It seemed like it was the kind of thing that was meant to serve as a sampler.  (One guy liked pain.  One victim was a woman.  It’s the kind of thing that’s meant to attract a larger audience.)

The acting is also what you would expect.  Many of the actors have ben in a few other movies, although nothing I’d recognize.  The dialogue is so stilted that it’s as if they’re using the first or second take of each scene.  It’s just good enough that it might warrant a single rental.  I wouldn’t buy it, though.  It has low-budget written all over it.

IMDb page

Alien Contact: Outer Space (2017)

I used to think that there was some barrier to having a movie made that would guarantee that most movies would be good.  Even though there isn’t someone giving thumbs up or down to let a movie through, you have to get financing.  You have to find a distributor.  Professionals have to commit time to the project, both in front of and behind the camera.  There are several stages at which someone could conceivably derail a movie and spare an unsuspecting public.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that many such movies do actually make it to market.  It’s just that most people never hear about them.  Maybe they’re condemned to late-night television.  Many are packaged and sold as those 50-packs of movies.  Others, like this, manage to find their way to streaming services.  I’m not sure if the distributor lowered their fee to make some of their money back or if someone at Netflix actually liked the so-called documentary.

I looked at the description thinking that it might actually be informative.  The blurb talked about new facts being uncovered or something.  Talk about misleading.  It sort of reminds me of Chariots of the Gods in that it mentions some bizarre phenomenon and gives some random details before moving on.

There’s a minute or two on the Ashtar Galactic Command.  Technically, it’s about an incident wherein some garbled audio was transmitted over the airwaves because a transmitter was easy to hack.  It was probably some prank, but the documentary passes it along as if it was some serious threat that was never followed up on.

There is also a section on numbers stations, which are these strange radio stations that broadcast seemingly random numbers.  From what I’ve heard, no one knows what these things are.  Are they coded messages to spies?  That seems to be the prevailing theory.  Alas, we may never really know.

This is the kind of thing that you might watch and maybe look up the stuff on Wikipedia.  The documentary doesn’t go into any real depth on anything.  It’s like a shout out to a few strange phenomena.   These might even make for a few good ideas for a sci-fi series akin to the X-Files.  It’s too bad that the narration is boring and the animation is generic.  I think we finally may have found something the History Channel would pass on.

IMDb page

Occhi dalle stelle/Eyes Behind the Stars (1978)

There are two kinds of bad movies:  Some seem to aim for bad while others don’t seem to aim for anything.  Eyes Behind the Stars seems to be the latter.  It’s a story of a photographer that stumbles on evidence of aliens, but seems to be put together somewhat hastily and doesn’t make much sense.

It starts with the aforementioned photographer and a model doing their thing when they start to get a weird feeling.  Their watches stop working, so they stop with the modeling.  Later that day, the photographer is taking more pictures.  He somehow manages to capture images of space ships without seeing any.  (I’m not sure if he had some indication of where the ships were or happened to capture the images by accident.)

While developing the pictures, an alien comes and takes all evidence from the photographer.  How do we know it’s an alien?  He has this weird metallic suit and a motorcycle helmet.  He also has fisheye vision.  Fortunately, a reporter has some of the evidence.   The reporter talks to people and goes places to hopefully put a story together.  Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.  The aliens are on to him.  There’s also a group called The Silencers that don’t want the public knowing about aliens.  (I never understood why fear of public panic has always been the go-to excuse.)

There are also members of the Royal Air Force involved in this.  (At least, I think they were British.  They may have been American.  Or Italian.  Or maybe aliens.)  Somehow, information was leak.  The bas commander wants answers.  I’m not really sure how it fits into the rest of the narrative, except that I think they found the aliens’ landing site or something.

Oh, and the photographer and model were abducted by the aliens.  The model is returned, but not the photographer.  What’s a reporter to do?  He hires a psychic to probe the model’s mind for answers.  The psychic feels that the model saw something that fried her mind.

The movie ends with some text saying that the entire thing was based on real events.  Well, a set of real events.  Everything supposedly happened, although not necessarily as the same series of events.  That would at least explain why the writing was so bad.  Someone hobbled together a conglomeration of narratives to come up with something that sort of made sense to them.  The movie is sort of like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but without the scene at Devil’s Tower to bring everything into focus.

The entire plot is barely cohesive.  I kept waiting for something to tie it together.  That never happened.  I also thought there might be some big reveal, like who the aliens are or what they might want.  That never happened, either.  It’s just some reporter chasing a story and the aliens chasing down the evidence.  The least they could do is maybe spend some money on makeup.  Give us some idea of what the aliens look like.

I think that this is going to be a frustrating movie for anyone that watches it.  If you go into it expecting a normal movie, you’ll be sorely disappointed.  If you’re in to bad movies, like I am, I wouldn’t get this movie by itself.  I’d get it as part of a set of movies, which shouldn’t be hard to do.  I was able to watch it as part of a collection my brother had.  (The DVDs were so disorganized, I’m not really sure which collection this was part of.)  This is definitely among the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

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Extinction (2018)

I remember learning that Netflix doesn’t necessarily produce its original movies.  The company may buy the rights at some point during or after production.  This is good for movies that might not otherwise make it to a screen.  This can be bad for viewers who don’t always get the best movies out there.  It ends up padding Netflix’s offerings with mediocre movies.  Take Extinction.  The movie was going to be released in theaters.  When distribution fell through, Netflix stepped in.

The movie takes place at some point in Earth’s future.  No date is shown, but technology has advanced considerably.  Peter and Alice are two normal parents.  Peter works at a factory and Alice has some sort of public-works job.  Their kids seem like normal children.  They even live in a nice apartment building.

Peter and Alice have just finished hosting a party.  Suddenly, attacks come from above.  No mention is made of a foreign nation and the ships are unfamiliar, so it must be aliens.    One guest from the party remains, so the adults find their kids and try to think of a way to safety.  The factory where Peter works is a safe place, but it’s ten blocks away.  Alice knows enough about the sewer system to get them there.  Along the way, they have to fight off the aliens.

Yes, we do get the big reveal.  We find out who the invaders are and what they want.  I found it wasn’t really enough to support a feature-length film.  It’s the kind of thing that would be better suited for a Twilight Zone episode.  Unfortunately, we don’t really get enough suspense (or anything else, for that matter) to support the movie.

I felt like it was a very minimal effort.  Peter and Alice had just enough of a history to make it so that the story could move along.  We don’t even know exactly what they do.  We just know that Peter does something technical in a place that could provide shelter and that whatever Alice does means that she can get them there.  Even having children seemed to be a way of giving them something to protect.

A lot of things seemed cliché about the movie.  The main group has to make it down the side of a building on one of those window-washing perches.  Seriously, though:  Has that ever worked?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where no one was in danger of falling off.

At the risk of sounding cliché, myself, the movie looks like it could set up a series or at least a sequel.  It’s like a pilot episode that had additional material put it to bring it up to 95 minutes.  I think maybe a sequel was planned, but I’m not counting on it ever being produced.  I think maybe Universal had the right idea in not distributing it.


IMDb pageBen Young

The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)

The Spy Who Dumped Me is a fairly descriptive Title.   Audrey gets dumped by Drew only to find out that Drew is a spy.  Not only that, Drew needs Audrey to deliver a package (in the form of a fantasy-football-league trophy, no less) to someone in Vienna.  He’s shot before he can give her details, like what her contact might look like.  So, Audrey is off with her best friend, Morgan, to Vienna.  It just so happens that they have their passports in their glove box, so they can basically go straight to the airport.

If you’ve seen other movies with unwilling spies, you could probably figure out how the movie will unfold.  Morgan and Audrey have no idea what they’re doing, no idea of who to trust and are put in several dangerous situations.  Somehow, they manage to survive and do what’s best.

Had I not had MoviePass, I probably would have skipped this one.  I really don’t think I would have missed anything.  I don’t feel like the movie did much that was new or different.  There were a few good jokes, but most of those were in the first half of the movie.

The movie seems to take a certain number of liberties.  For instance, I’ve always wondered how someone could get on an international flight so easily.  It was a bit of a stretch that the two main characters happened to have their passports available.  According to the US State Department, they wouldn’t need a visa to go to Vienna if they’re staying under 90 days, but they still had to pay for the ticket, which probably weren’t that cheap at the last minute.

Morgan also seems to have a very big skill set.  Given all of the things she claimed she could do, I assumed she might have been exaggerating.  However, she did seem to actually know Edward Snowden and was able to handle herself on the trapeze.  (Even though she was telling the truth a few times, it’s difficult to tell where she draws the line.)

To say that the movie was better than I expected would be an understatement.  Plotwise, it was almost exactly what I expected.  Even though there were no real surprises, it was at least entertaining.  While I don’t think the trailers give away the entire plot, I don’t think anyone will be surprised coming out of the movie.

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Death of a Nation (2018)

When I was a child, I remember hearing that a lot of people would vote along party lines.  Republicans would go and select any name with (R) beside it.  Democrats would select anyone with (D) by their name.  It confused me because it meant that winning a race usually meant getting your party to turn out.  How could we become so partisan?  Then, Obama got elected and Republicans stonewalled.  Trump got elected and Democrats stonewalled.  Is this what politics has come to?  Sadly, the answer is yes.

Enter Dinesh D'Souza.  I hadn’t heard of him, but he apparently has a few movies out.  (I only knew about this one because of a poster at my nearest AMC.)  The movie opens with a reenactment of the final moments of Adolph Hitler’s life.  There are all sorts of segments with people not believing that Trump will win the primary or the general election.  There are calls for impeachment.

D’Souza draws a comparison between the current Republican president and the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  You see, both are hated by Democrats.  Lincoln, for wanting to free the slaves and end the way America operated at the time.  Similarly, Trump is working to make America great.  Democrats will whine, sure, but we’ll survive.

The only problem I have with the documentary is that it’s basically propaganda.  There are way too many shots of flags or the Statue of Liberty for me to say otherwise.  There’s also a lot of the usual rhetoric, like how Democrats are evil and believe in eugenics because, you know, Margaret Sanger.  D’Souza also compares Democrats to Hitler and Mussolini because both dictators wanted to take away people’s guns, just like Obama.

Yes, D’Souza invokes reductio ad Hitlerum.  Because Hitler and Mussolini did it, it must be bad.  I’ll admit, it is similar to saying that Trump is like David Duke because both used America First.  It’s a line that a politician might be inclined to use if they were running for president.  It’s a little more complicated than that; Trump has done other, more serious things like demonize the press.  (No leader should do that.  The free press is necessary to a free society.)

There are a few interviews, some of which seem more skewed than others.  An interview with Richard Spencer seemed overly edited.  It may be coincidence; choices had to be made given how many people were interviewed.  Still, the entire argument is skewed towards the right.  D’Souza points out that the Democratic Party was founded to support slavery and that the Republican Party tended to be more liberal.  He then tries to say that nothing has really changed.  Democrats still oppress minorities and Trump would welcome anyone of any nationality.  Yes, Mr. Shithole Nation, the same guy who wanted Mexico to pay for the wall, would welcome everyone regardless of origin or background.

Oh, and apparently, Hitler learned everything he needed to know about genocide from Andrew Jackson.  I’m not saying that Jackson was a great president.  He did try to forcibly relocate Native Americans.  But to blame Hitler on Democrats seems like a bit of a stretch at best.  Add to this the claim that Hitler was pro-homosexual, as he tolerated gays among the Sturmabteilung.  There are a lot of claims in the movie that seem unbelievable.

Everyone is welcome to hold their own views and canonize anyone they want, but it will always amaze me that Trump will have as many people voting for him as he did.

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Official Site

Vampire Hunter (2004)

I had started this blog with two goals.  First, I had wanted to repost as many of my reviews from Epinions as I could.  The second goal was to review as many bad movies as I had the patience to sit through.  I had also wanted to review better-known movies, as well.  However, I wanted to specialize in those films that were of lower quality.  I found these movies to be easier to review on a certain level.

I came to realize in recent months that I was getting away from this.  I was reviewing a lot of TV shows and short films.  I’m not going to stop doing this, but I wanted to get back to the crappy movies that I loved.  Then, I met Vampire Hunter.

The movie is part of a six-pack of movies, which usually tells me that it’s going to be bad.  The same person wrote, produced, directed and starred in the movie.  This is almost always the mark of a stinker.  If those two things didn’t scare me off, the bad video and audio quality should have.

As the name implies, it’s about a man who hunts vampires.  We start with John O'Ryan doing some sort of martial-arts/exercise routine. We find out that he’s pretty good at drawing pin-up girls and has an awesome action-figure collection.  He’s also about to cross paths with Morgan Bane, art dealer and vampire extraordinaire.

Bane is hundreds of years old and is bored with life.  He’s looking for a new woman to have a fling with and maybe find someone to fight.  He’s already gone up against Ramone, having turned his one true love.  When John’s wife, Heather, makes an appointment with Bane, Heather becomes Bane’s next infatuation.  With Ramone’s help, John might be able to defeat the evil vampires and save Heather.

This movie is of such low quality that it’s actually impressive that it found any distribution.  It has the telltale audio and video distortions of a VHS tape that’s been sitting around for a decade or so.  I knew early on that I wasn’t going to be able to make out most of the dialogue.  Fortunately, I was able to follow the basic plot.  This isn’t saying much, though.  It’s the garden variety of crosses, wooden stakes and garlic that’s common with low-budget vampire movies.

The quality was so low that I’m actually wondering if it was deliberate.  Many of the main actors do have other credits, although many of those credits aren’t for acting.  Sean Gallimore, who stared as John O’Ryan, has fifteen credits in the art department, including The Lion King.  Leonardo Millán, who played Bane, did Voicework for Grand Theft Auto V.

I’m not really sure what the impetus was for making the movie.  Was it something that Gallimore wanted to do?  Did he want to show off some skills or try something different?  IMDb shows an estimated budget of $5,000.  It’s possible that he just had some spare time.  Despite there being talent here, it doesn’t look like a lot of effort was put into it.

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