Film Geeks - Episode 24 Is Up

EPISODE24 - Creature Feature Geeksure
Episode Notes: The geeks discuss the new X-Files movie, review an older Hellboy 2, and come up with their top 10 creatures from the cinemas they've seen. You're invited on a whimsical, splendiferious, gore fest, and creep factor ride that will make you soil yourself...but only by a little.

***We apologize for the quality of sound. Talkshoe had been slapping us around for weeks now and I believe we are going to record the show on Skype (if you want to join, download Skype and add username "agentx216" and we'll post the show up at Talkshoe still. This is redicious that Talkshoe has gotten this bad and we want to give you a better quality show because we feel we can add a lot of good content to your movie going experience. Too bad some of that is hampered by Talkshoe's ineffecutleness to provide a decent service to its users.***

Direct link - http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-14391/TS-134994.mp3

Link to this episode and others - http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/14391

Movie News

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/20080727/121719073700.html
Batman news - still not even close to Titanic. Come on guys, take vengence on the girls from middle school and high school who dragged you to see that movie 7 times in a row.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080727/ap_on_en_mo/comic_con_terminator_salvation
Arnold might have an appearance in Terminator 4 and other T4 news

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20213067_20213068_20214910,00.html
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog info

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Comic-Con-Sam-Raimi-Planning-Evil-Dead-4-9644.html
Evil Dead 4 - hopefully it'll be done classic Campbell/Raimi style and not current Raimi style

http://geeksofdoom.com/2008/07/19/boondock-saints-2-plot-details-production-diary/
Boondock Saints 2 - News

X-Files - I Want To Believe
- Go into it with the expectation of watching a longer version of the TV show, not a blockbuster movie
- Fox sabatoged this film with no press
- It's not an alien ladened conspiracy film but a decent thriller with a hint of creepy and paranormal thrown in
- Muder and Scully are what you expect after 5ish years of being gone
- No Dogget or Reis - good, Skinner shows up - also good
- The major flaw is that it focuses too much Mulder and Scully and is just a tad too light on the story
- Billy Connolly has a great part in the film
- How did Xzibit get in this
- The great soundtrack X-Files is known for was non-existent
- Grade - B-

Hell Boy II - The Golden Army
- Better than the first
- The visuals are stunning and it's great to see that not every little thing is animated
- Troll market is the highlight of visuals
- Ron Perlman has gotten into his role even better
- Doug Jones shows his limberness even more in this and does the voice of Abe instead of David Hyde Peirce, kind of weird at first. They also tap him to play The Chamberlain and The Angel of Death
- Seth MacFarlane is the voice of Johann Krauss
- A lot of things in this movie are very mechanical and yet still fluid
- The cheesey singing part was awesome
- Gives Abe and Liz more action sequences, Selma Blair looking hot
- Luke Goss who plays the Prince is a good action star
- Would like to see a third movie
- Grade - B+

Top 10 - Creatures (Not Human)

10) Giant Ants - Them!



















9) Klowns - Killer Klowns From Outer Space












8) Gollum - Lord Of The Rings















7) Godzilla - Godzilla movies















6) The Thing - John Carpetner's The Thing













5) The Shark - Jaws movies














4) Medusa, the Kraken, or just about anything Ray Harryhousen does


























3) Predator - Predator















2) Zombies and Deadites - George Romero series and Evil Dead series

























1) Alien - Alien series













*Briney added
- T-Rex - Jurassic Park











- Gremlins - Gremlins series












- Jabba, the Rankcor, and other Star Wars creatures






















Top 5 Worst
5) Chucky - Child's Play Series












4) The Leprechaun - Leprechaun series













3) Mole People - The Mole People













2) Gamera "he's a friend to children" - Gamera series

















1) Shrews - The Killer Shrews













*Briney added
- The Scorpion King - Mummy 2

Fear - Review

Fear

There are times when I think I'm too masochistic. I mean, sure I like bad movies, but there are a lot of bad movies that have a lot of charm. It's kinda like a mangy dog you pick up at the pound and you just fall in love with it because it's so helpless and sad. However, there are times when I think I'm one sick puppy.

I should really learn that a movie that stars both Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon is going to hurt. Even a pre-CSI William Petersen and an always sexy Alyssa Milano can't help this movie.

Nicole Walker (Witherspoon) is your normal 16 year old girl. Sure she's in her rebellious stage but she still doesn't like skipping class or being out past curfew. So when she meets an almost perfect yet mysterious older guy named David McCall (Wahlberg) she stops being daddy's little girl anymore. Yet when she see the real David for the psychopath he really is and his good boyish charm melts away, she realizes that she picked the wrong guy in a seedy hangout bar. Who woulda thunk? Her father (Petersen) tries to protect his daughter the best he can, but soon David and his friends attack the family in their nice, safe home.

So dealing with Marky Mark first I have to be shown right, once again, that his attempt at acting is just the same way he plays every other character he's ever done, but with a bit more yelling. Half of his lines are whispering and on the verge of tears. When he tries to turn the character to the psycho he really is he doesn't do a very good job. All he has to do is frown and look at the camera with upturned eyes. Even when he completely flips and tries to take Nicole away to live happily ever after, you don't really see the person who actually believes that, you just see some guy who's kinda mean.

Reese Witherspoon has been trying to play the all American girl for so long now. She's tried it in this movie, "Cruel Intentions", and "Election". She's never been really able to pull it off. Her slutty character in "Pleasantville" seems like more the character she wants to be. I do have to say, getting felt up on a carnival roller coaster is pretty unusual. The thing I can say about her character is that I believe she's doing a good job at playing a 16 year old who's dating an older boy who turns out to be a psycho. She mopes and cries a lot, she never learns the first time that the guy is bad news, and once she finds how crazy he is she doesn't get the police involved in anyway.

I do have to say that the little kid in this film is awesome. Christopher Gray plays the brother, Toby Walker. The thing I like about this kid is that he's the smartest one in the family. The bad guys decapitate his dog and he takes his revenge out on one of the guys by running him over with a car. Does he check the guy to see if he's still alive only to be taken as a hostage when the bad guy gets up? No! He dials 911! He also saves his mom by himself, not to mention bringing the police to come and save the family.

There are three big problems that doesn't include the storyline or the acting. However, I must give a SPOILER ALERT, since some of them might give away the ending if you still plan on watching it.

1) When David goes out the window and onto the rocks below you can clearly tell that the falling object in a dummy; and no, I'm not saying that Mark Wahlberg did that stunt. This is a 1996 movie, films before have done much better jobs at showing people going over cliffs . It almost seems like the filmmaker did one take and didn't even bother to make it more realistic.

2) When David shoots his buddy for touching "his woman" it's one of the worst gunshots to the head scenes I've ever seen. You have a close up shot of the two men, David pulls the trigger, and the gun flashes. The other guy just says "Uhh" and drops to the floor. There is no bullet hole, there is no blood splatter, there are no pieces of bone and brains anywhere that would happen as a result of a gunshot to the back of the head at point blank range. It's not like there hadn't been a blood splatter scene in movie history before ("Pulp Fiction" was two years prior to this film). This shows sloppy work on the part of the director.

3) This is my favorite. In order to slow down David, Nicole takes the peace pipe he won her at a carnival and stabs his very hard with it in his back. I don't know about you, but I doubt anything won at a fair would make it more than a month without disintegrating, let alone being able to use it to forcefully stab an attacker. I think some carny is going to be getting sued if that were to actually happen.

Grade - D

The father is a moron in this movie, so is the mother, so is the daughter, so is everyone except the little boy. He's the only person that accomplishes anything to help save his family and he gets to take out some revenge on someone who killed his dog. Marky Mark falters severely at trying to convince me he's not just another whinny, whisper talking character he almost always plays (sometimes he both whines and whispers at the same time in this film). Witherspoon plays an okay 16 year old but she doesn't seem to do much in the movie. It's really hard to feel anything from this movie. I never really felt like rooting for either the father or the daughter and Wahlberg didn't scare me at all. If they were to just call the cops and get a restraining order on him, he would have went away quietly.

The Vampire Conspiracy - Review

The Vampire Conspiracy

When dealing with B movies, especially B horror movies, one must almost always take to heart the old saying of "Don't judge a book by its cover." Except the saying has the opposite intention. It always seems that the most money these types of B movies spend on something in the movie is always the artwork for the cover. This movie sounds from the description and the DVD cover like a decent movie you'd watch if it was on the Sci-Fi Channel. However, once you view the first few scenes you know you've been screwed over and almost lied to.

This plot is a dumbed down version along the lines of the "Saw" series or the "Cube" series. The "Cube" series is a B movie series, and a good one in my opinion, but this movie is worse than "Cube" but is still considered a B movie. I don't want to start calling movies C or D movies were the B movie looses all its meaning. I just wanted to make that clear that you can't judge and compare B movies without context.

Five strangers are abducted and put into a room together. They start out, like any of these types of strangers-abducted-and-put-into-the-same-environment goes, trying to figure out who the others are and why they are there. A 250 year-old vampire shows up and informs them that they are in a maze of his making. If they survive and make their way out of the maze, those left alive will receive the vampire's entire fortune. As they go from room to room they are given clues to help them what path to take. Not only do they have to decipher the seven word clues given to them but they must also fight off and/or escape from the vampire's undead army. Why were these people chosen? Will any of them make it out alive? Do you really care?

Ok so the end of my plot description makes the story sound sort of anti-climatic. In one sense it is. This is the same old story of a "Saw" a "Cube" and the 1999 version of "House On Haunted Hill"...but with vampires! However, on the other hand, this is a very low budget movie compared to any of those other movies. I'm never one to rag on a B movie for lack of picture and/or sound quality. I give each movie a fair shake. Yes, it would be nice if everyone could shoot movies with the same equipment that big, Hollywood pictures shoot with, but I think you'd loose some of the charm of these movies. "Saw 4" might have had a full blown autopsy scene, but you have to laugh at how much money they spent compared to some movies who use just some hamburger meat, red food coloring, and other sorts of fake internal organs and effects. I appreciate the charm of such techniques.

The main problem I had with this movie was more the set itself. This movie appears to have been shot in an old motel that's been converted into an independently run haunted house that pre-teens visit for Halloween with their dates who were all dropped off by their parents. It really is a weird look to a place for a vampire who has such "unimaginable wealth". If I had 250 years worth of interest in the bank, my death chamber would at least be decent looking. You don't have to go with the old gothic, dungeon-esk scene. You can really modernize it or put your own spin to it. However, it's kinda hard to be scared in what looks like an old, rundown motel.

Grade - D-
B Movie Grade - C

This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen but it definitely did have some big problems with it. This reminded me a bit of movies such as "Saw" and "Cube" a bit. Too bad it didn't push more into those types of story ideas. My biggest problem with the movie is the over use of the f-word. This movie sticks it in between every other word. It's not the only over used curse word in here but it definitely was the word most used. Another problem was that the ending made no sense at all, there is no conclusion and it ends up making the rest of the movie utterly pointless. The thing that bumps this up in the "B Movie Grade" comes from the attempt to tie all the characters in the movie to each other. The people in this movie find out later that while being chased by a horde of the undead, there is someone they are traveling with that, in someway and for some reason, want them dead. It's a nice try for the movie. This movie should really teach you to read the script to your movie after you binged on pot, coke, and beer before you shoot your movie.

Dragon Wars - D-War - Review

Dragon Wars - D-War

Alright, now we're talking! This is a bad movie! Yep, that's right, I am giving you the grade first! Grade - F. But that's no fun to judge B movies based on the standards of good movies. How could I take such glee in watching movie greats like "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" and "They Live" and countless others that I cherish.

I guess this movie is a big hit in Korea and was writen and directed by South Korean native, Hyung-rae Shim. This movie just has two stars of interest. Jason Behr plays our hero in this flick. You might remember him from that great, yet short lived, TV show "Roswell". I really like him in the show and it's too bad we haven't seen him in anything good. This movie has has "the black guy from 'The Office'". The black guy from "The Office"'s name is Darryl Philbin and is played by Craig Robinson.

I just want to start out by saying that whatever else I write about this movie will not do it justice. This is a movie that should be experienced through viewing more than reading a review. What I describe the story as is not as complete as it should be and is not as funny to see. The "complaint" I make are not as funny to read about, but watch it with the review and checkoff what you see and find it as hilarious as I did.

Every 500 years a group of lizards, who are really gods, do battle with the help of good and bad human subjects. So far, the good guys have thwarted all attempts for the bad guys to destroy the world. However, in the modern era, the people do not believe in dragon anymore and so are unprepared. Can humanity survive? Reporter "Ethan Kendrick" (Behr) has been chosen to be the protector and savior of humanity. Actually he is being called again because in his past life he was Korean and the protector 500 years ago. He must stop the bad dragon that is coming, the Imoogi, from eating a girl who has a mysterious illness. If the bad dragon eats her, he will gain the power to destroy the world. The girl is living in LA and so the dragon starts to wreaking havoc and destruction on the city. Ethan finds Sarah (the girl with the illness played by Amanda Brooks) and tries to protect her from not only the Imoogi but its minons who have the ability to summon dinosaur like creatures (both tank like and flying types). We later find out that there is a good dragon to come and protect them. Will Ethan and Sarah save not only themselves, but all of humanity?

I will give the grade on a B movie level scale first and then I will go into all the things to look for that make this movie so fun to watch.

Grade - C+

This movie is hilarious. It is so odd that I can't believe Shim wrote this sober. Maybe it's a Korean thing like "Pom Poko" is a "Japanese thing" movie.


1) There are flashbacks within flashbacks. This is a pet peeve of mine. It's like holding up two mirrors parallel to each other and seeing how far you can look back.

2) This movie tried to inject Korean words into the dialog and uses them. I got so mixed up on what was what that I just rooted for the destruction. The way the story is written or told through narrative make it very hard to figure out which dragon was the good one and which was the bad one.

3) There are 3 people in this movie who use to be Korean/Asian in a previous life. In this life, they have acceded and attained the level of whiteness. Then it goes on to say that the higher level above whiteness is godhood. I am not lying here. If you're Korean, in your next life, you will be white. After you die when you're white, this movie teaches, that you will attain godhood. I love it! It's like when Japanese anime base all their character looks as white people and not at all like them.

4) The bad monster is a moron. He needs to eat one person in order to be the supreme ruler of the world. However he goes from traveling 100 MPH chasing the girl and when he has her cornered, he, for some odd reason, slows down and drag it out, which means that he looses his prey and the win. He will seriously corner her on top of a building and after snaking up it with no problem, he will go towards her like she's going to hurt him. Towards the end of the movie he does the same bloody thing, which means he gets stopped.

Along those same lines, any minor distraction has to be dealt with by him instead of just quickly gobbling up his prey and THEN taking care of the minor problems after he's obtained his supreme power. A car will slam into him and he will scream, sure, but the car is destroyed and is therefore no longer a threat. Just eat the girl and then take vengeance!

5) There are helicopter pilots who believe as they are about to crash into the sides of buildings are going to avoid all injury by throwing their arms animately around their face.

6) There is an amulet Ethan wears for protect. What does it do? Why does he have to wait until he's tied up to use it? It didn't really seem to protect him at all.

7) The bad human-ish guy towards the end, instead of cutting off Ethan's head and taking out the girl's protector, he touches the amulet with his sword lightly and it suddenly destroys him. What reason is given? None. I don't know why he dies by lightly touching the amulet with his sword. I also don't understand why he did it. He makes a sarcastic comment on how well it has protected Ethan. Hey buddy! Don't touch the one thing that, for some reason, makes you evaporate!

8) Why does it take till the end of the movie for the good dragon to come help? He comes for no reason either. Also, the good dragon can somehow make the girl's energy ball, that the bad dragon needs to take over the world, to come out of the girl and he can ingest it. This causes him to transform into a super-dragon.

9) The Korean name of the movie is called D-War. But the American version is called Dragon Wars or Dragon Wars- D-War. That means you have a singular and a plural in the same title! So is the movie really Dragon War or Dragon Wars?

These are just 9 funny things about this movie. Watch it and send me others to add to the list.

This movie isn't all bad either. The animation looks pretty sweet. The biggest chunk of money was given towards the animation. The dragons fighting is awesome and the military fighting the dinosaurs are great battle scenes. If they put even half the thought and talent into the actual story that they did the graphics, this wouldn't be such a bad movie. This is definitely a great B movie though!

Uncivil Liberties

Uncivil Liberties

Be advised when dealing with B movies! If you know it's a B movie, but the box looks awesome, they are trying to fool you! Be advised! This is a B movie. Good thing I don't hold that against them. I'm not going to hold the poor video quality or the iffy acting against them. I judge these types of movies based on plot and entertainment. After all, if I expected Hollywood gold from every movie, every movie would end up like crap. I applaud these brave heroes who shirk off Hollywood stigma and strive to make a good indie film!

The story is set in the near future in America. The two main characters that we follow are on opposite sides of the wall of "security". In this dystopia, the US government is spying on its own citizens, both secretively and outright, in the same of security. There are a group of rebels made up all sort of disenfranchised citizens with different reasons why they are rebelling. On the side of the rebels, we follow Mike Wilson who decides that he wants to renounce his rebel ties because of the violence that is asked of him to carry out. On the side of the government, we follow Cynthia Porter who rebels against the government spying operation she helped to create by sabotaging her program. Oh the irony! Cynthia's own program is turned against her while Mike's former rebels deem him a security risk. Oh the irony!

I would talk about the "stars" in this film. But as of right now, they aren't.

Grade - D-

Oh how I wanted to like this movie! This movie had a lot of potential. It started off really good and seemed to have a good plot. Then they lost me in the middle; especially with a 20 minute slow chase through the forest. I tell no lie! 20 minutes...chasing a guy...through the forest...for no reason! The main problem I have with this movie is that I have no clue what their message was. They say there is a system, then there isn't one, then there is again.

I didn't care about the low production or the amateur cast...this movie was about the story; and because of that...it faltered. The story could have been better if they would have stuck to the "rebels vs. the system" plot line...but it didn't. Not to mention, I wasn't really given a sense that people in this movie were being tracked and exploited by the system/government. Again, the plot seemed to sea-saw in the message which hurt them the most. If you're going to make a movie about a overbearing government surveillance system that both sides admit you should show it working, show why it's bad (or good depending on your message), and your story elements should revolve around it in some way!

Cannibal Campout

Cannibal Campout

This is one of those campy horror movies I've talked about before. This movie was made with a home video camera and sold to mom and pop video stores. Those were the good ol' days when you didn't have to compete with horrible, Nazi-like chains like Blockbuster, shrink wrap covered each movie, and DVDs were a thing of the future!

The story is about four high school teenagers who go to the woods camping. They are attacked by three psychos who want to do what any psychos in the woods want to do - feast on their flesh. It's your typical B movie, 80s self made slasher flick.

Jon McBride directed and stared in the movie and it's interesting to note that he actually went on to direct and star in a few more movies. Quiet a few of these "actors" and "directors" do one picture and then end it. He also did "Woodchipper Massacre" which isn't as good as "Cannibal Campout" and is a bit too boring in my opinion. He also stared in the atrocious Alien Conspiracy trilogy but only in Grey Skies. Amy Chludzinski also stars as a prominent character. She's probably the best character in this film. It's sad to see she didn't do any other acting. Her character is the only one I've seen in these types of films who is pregnant and that it plays a part in the overall story. It was a gutsy move to do what they did with her character.

Grade - C

I've seen a lot worse with these types of movies. With these movies it's easy to complain about the picture and sound quality, the acting, and the weak plot. However, you could complain about the overuse of CGI, using stars because they're bankable, and weak plots in today's Hollywood crapshoot. This is a really decent B movie flick. The story, the director, and the actors know exactly what the purpose of the movie is. They don't try to make it bigger than it can be. The story is suppose to make you aggravated and yell at the characters as to what they are doing wrong; including splitting up, saying "what's the worse that could happen", and not leaving when they should. At least one of the characters puts up a fight. The bad guys are a little boring but one of them stands out among the others. The one psycho who wears a flight helmet would have been much more menacing if they could have put him in an old gas mask, those things are freaky. If you're a fan of this genre this is a good movie for you. If you get the DVD there are even a bunch of extras which is amazing. Most of these re-releases are just thrown onto disc without any consideration to trying to improve the picture quality or give fans a few extras.