Highlander 2 (1991)

Thanks to Karl for suffering through Highlander 2 for us. It really was only a matter of time before this movie would be posted on the Shack, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be the one to have to watch it!

Escape From Galaxy 3 (1981)

Yes, it’s the follow up to “Star Crash”…only without the sophisticated plot and great special effects. Yeah, it’s that bad!

Still not convinced? Check out this sample:

R.O.T.O.R. (1988)

Sorry for the long wait since the last review. If anybody is still out there…I humbly present R.O.T.O.R. as a peace offering.

Still not sure you want to go on? Let the trailer whet your appetite

“Beware SPOILERS, all ye who enter here…”

OK,
I managed to sneak out to the movies last Friday and see the new “The Thing” with some friends and, boy, I really, really wanted to like the movie more than I did, but I just couldn’t.

Why not?:

1) No character development
It seemed like every time somebody got killed I was like…”Who was that?”. The characters just seemed to exist solely to be killed by a monster. You never really saw anybody DO anything except drinking and getting killed. (Yeah, I know, the Doctor and the helicopter pilots had things to do, but, for example, who was the other woman on the post? What was she doing there? etc etc.)

2) No sense of “Who Dunnit?”
People just seemed to be inexplicably infected just to be able to move along to the next “gross-out transformation scene”. In the first one (1982), I was constantly trying to figure out who was alone with who?; where was he just now?; etc etc. Here, people suddenly got a weird look on their face and….”BLARGH! I’m a Thing! Look how gross I am!”

3) CGI
The creature effects ranged from Good to really, really bad. When the first thing popped out of the guy on the helicopter I was thinking, “oh no…that’s pretty bad.” And after that, I just could never really get back “into” the movie. Why couldn’t they just create real models of the monster like they did before?! It just totally ruins the mood when you can see that it’s a cartoon hand/head/tentacle/mouth etc…ugh. What a bummer.

4) The “Thing”
This monster in no way acted like the “Thing” should act. The Thing is supposed to hide, lay low, and then strike when somebody is isolated. The “thing” in this movie just seems to pop out of somebody and go ape-shit trying to kill everybody in the room, chasing people down hallways, etc. etc. It never seems to try and run away into the darkness and snow to hide like before. Kind of strange.

5) The UFO
Oh boy. Why? Still money left over in the CGI budget?

Now, before you complain that I’m a grumpy old man, here’s what I did like:

The final tie-in with the previous film is well done. (But the dog doesn’t look the same, but, hell, let’s overlook that.)

The Norwegian actors are fun to see and hear, and I’m glad they weren’t totally overshadowed by the Americans. (I live in Norway, so maybe I’m a bit biased:) )

By the way, why did they have to go all the way to America to hire a lousy paleontologist? And why were the helicopter pilots American? As one reviewer pointed out: it’s too bad the studio didn’t have the balls to film the movie entirely in Norwegian with English subtitles…that would have been cool.

Curious to hear what other people think as well.

Anyway, I can give you a couple tidbits in the mean time:

The CDC actually has instructions for surviving a zombie apocalypse.

No, seriously, it does. I thought that was pretty cool.

What have I watched/re-watched lately? Hmmm…

Romero’s “Trilogy of the Dead” boxed set (“The Night of the Living Dead”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “Day of the Dead”). Please tell me that you have this set on your DVD shelf somewhere.

“The Zombie Diaries” (part 1 and 2): A shacky-hand-cam “documentary” based on various zombie apoc. survivors. Pretty bleak, but entertaining.

“Stalingrad”: A decent enough version of the battle. I originally saw this with the original German audio and English subs. Was forced to buy the English dubbed version since it was the only one available in Region 2. AGGGGH! Stupid, stupid, DVD regions. I mean…come on already!

“Territory”: A cheap giant alligator movie. Entertaining to drink beer to before going to bed.

“Splice”: Pretty good story about creating new life via DNA manipulation. Who has the responsibility for the things created? (Not to mention some interesting inter-species boom-boom scenes!)

“Gremlins 1 & 2″ boxed set: What can I say?

Plus a lot of other crap…

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Yep, the rumors may be true after all: A “prequel” to John Carpenters “The Thing”.

I’ve heard rumors about it but I never dared to get my hopes up. It doesn’t look like any huge-named stars in the cast, so it might actually be a good.

Feeling cautiously optimistic.

Is it just me or does he always seem to look the same? Somebody suspected he was a cyborg. I have good memories of being a wee lad and listening to my dad’s album “Let’s Get Small”…I didn’t understand much of it (ah…youth), but still laughed my ass off at certain bits. (Embezzling cat, King Tut, etc.) His movies became a bit sappy for me after a while, but I still love “The Man with 2 Brains”…freakin’ hilarious even after all these years. (Just found out that Sissy Spacek did the voice Anne Uumellmahaye…ha!)

Thanks for the smiles…