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Gryphon syfy
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Gryphon (Review)

January 29, 2007By

Gryphon

aka Attack of the Gryphon

2007
Directed by Andrew Prowse

SciFi Channel strikes again with another monster movie where CG runs amok and kills people, this time medieval people, and again their effort is less than stellar. At least it wasn’t painful. Parts of the film seem to be borrowed from many popular movies: the villain is Emperor Palpatine’s lame nephew, certain elements are directly culled from Lord of the Rings, and even parts reminding one of Braveheart are onscreen. The movie follows SciFi Channel’s Type A monster movie, where there is only one monster (or a small group) who is invincible.

The heroine is named Princess Amelia, which is also the name of the actress who played the princess in Dragon, another movie that Gryphon resembles. It’s low budget, has a single word title that is the monster, has a Princess Amelia (even if not by name), has a witch wife of the King who sees the future, and has bad CGI. It’s spooky how much Gryphon reminded me of Dragon. Princess Amelia actress Amber Benson played Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as I have only seen one episode of that show I have no idea who she is. The hero is Prince Seth, played by Jonathan LaPaglia, from The District, another show I didn’t really watch (but I saw several episodes of it, I just don’t remember him, either.) Where is Coach? He should be playing one of the kings.

Emmanuelle 2000
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle in Paradise (Review)

January 22, 2007By

Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle in Paradise


2000
Starring
Holly Sampson as Emmanuelle
Shauna O’Brien as Maggie Henson
D.J. West as Philip Henson
Anthony Skordi as The Sultan
Gabriella Hall as Ashley
Brad Bartram as Matt
Robert Donovan as Justin
Aysia Lee as Keiko
Directed by Kevin Alber (as Ura Hee!!)

Everyone knows Emmanuelle. Okay, almost everyone. Originally from a book, The Joys of a Woman by Emmanuelle Arsan, the series has grown, evolved, been ripped off, and moved into many different forms. The original Emmanuelle film debuted in 1969, titled Io, Emmanuelle, and most people have never heard of it. They have heard of the 1974 version, which starred Sylvia Kristel, and probably many of the other versions with a revolving door of actresses. Being a high class film that also involved a woman exploring her sexuality, it is safe to watch with your girlfriend, at least more safe than Interracial Gangbang Vol. 18. Emmanuelle spawned many sequels, most of which were in name only, and a long running series of rip off films titled Emannuelle, note the singular M in the name. These films usually starred Laura Gemser, who is often called the Black Emanuelle. There is also a randomly titled Yellow Emmanualle, and an “Emmanuelle” shows up during Bruce Lee’s journey through Hell in The Dragon Lives Again. Modern versions of the Emmanuelle films flourished with the advent of cable TV and new actresses, as well as a cable series with Sylvia Kristal reprising her role, telling stories to a fellow airline passenger that allowed younger girls to play her in flashbacks to have buckwild sexcapades. Modern series of Emmanuelle include the Emmanuelle in Space series and Emmanuelle 2000, which is the subject of this review.

The Emmanuelle 2000 series is a group of films that look suspiciously like episodic TV episodes combined with some random connecting material. Co-creator Rolfe Kanefsky said at The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive (http://www.asstr.org/~JR_Parz/FavMoviePageUpdate1.htm):

As for the concern about Emmanuelle and Pretty Cool. Here’s the back story. Alain Siritzky wanted to make a series of Emmanuelle films that ripped off “Being John Malkovich”. I came up with the structure for the series concerning the headband and necklace to make the whole concept portable. I also thought that the inventor should be a cripple to give the series more heart. By entering the mind of someone else, they can experience things that they can’t normally because of the wheelchair. Looking back now, this was a bad idea for an erotic series. HBO didn’t like the idea of a handicapped person and only aired one episode.

Similar Emmanuelle series include Emmanuelle in Space (7 films) and Emmanuelle’s Private Collection (1 film released so far: Emmanuelle the Private Collection: Emmanuelle vs. Dracula) There are 8 films in the Emmanuelle 2000 line:

  • Emmanuelle 2000
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle’s Intimate Encounters
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle in Paradise
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Being Emmanuelle
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Jewel of Emmanuelle
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle and the Art of Love
  • Emmanuelle 2001: Emmanuelle’s Sensual Pleasures
  • Emmanuelle 2000: Emmanuelle Pie (a reedited overseas version of Pretty Cool, with sex scenes added to make it Emmanuelle. There is a sequel in the works but I don’t know how related it is)

Background information is cool, but let’s get on with the recap!!!


Dragon Asylum
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Dragon (Review)

January 15, 2007By

Dragon


2006
Starring
Amelia Jackson-Gray as Princess Alora Vanir
Eliza Swenson as Freja
Matthew Wolf as Sir Cador Bain
Jon-Paul Gates as Lord Artemir
Rachel Haines as Naga
Jessica Bork as Damara
Jeff Denton as Gareth Morholt
Jason DeParis as Sogomo
Directed by Leigh Scott

The Asylum is a movie production company that was known for low budget horror films, some of which were surprisingly good quality. All of that changed in the past two years or so, as Asylum slowly started producing “mockbusters”, which are movies that are amazingly similar to popular movies, even so far as having similar titles. Examples include Halloween Night, Da Vinci Treasure, When a Killer Calls, H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, and the immortal Snakes on a Train. They’ve struck again, and as the movie Eragon premiered at the box office, the DVD shelves of your local video store filled up with Dragon. Dragon seems like it would be a natural lock of just having Eragon‘s plot (which is just Star Wars, which is just Hidden Fortress, which is just 9000 other stories throughout history) but instead they mainly target Lord of the Rings for the beginning and end, and the middle reminds one of Dungeons & Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God. Overall, the film not only misses its mark, but its mark doesn’t even seem to exist. Instead, we get fantasy name soup, dirty guys wandering around the forest, “Dark Elves”, and Playstation dragons.

To help slay Dragon, TarsTarkas.NET and FantasyFilmscapes.com are teaming up. It’s not an easy task, with many pitfalls, traps, and beasts of yore along the way. Okay, not really beasts so much as bad actors and shameful special effects. That’s something even a +2 Mace can’t help you with, even if you use it to smash the DVD into a million pieces, your brain is still traumatized and the repercussions will haunt you for the rest of your days. The introduction is co-written between Tars Tarkas and Iain Norman, and after that we’ll be alternating every 15 minutes, because too much exposure can cause headaches, vomiting, and even blindness. Once the darkness returns to take us, the reigns get passed on and a recovery period can begin. In the end, this Dragon will be dead, never to harm us villagers again. Join knights in armor Tars Tarkas and Iain Norman on our quest! Slay today.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Caved In: Prehistoric Terror (Review)

January 5, 2007By

Caved In: Prehistoric Terror


2006
Starring
Christopher Atkins as John Palmer
Colm Meaney as Vincent
Angela Featherstone as Samantha Palmer
Monica Birladeanu as Sophie
David Palffy as Marcel
Chelan Simmons as Emily Palmer
Stevie Mitchell as Miles Palmer
Directed by Richard Pepin

On the next Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Chief Miles O’Brien fights giant rhinoceros beetles! Well, that would still be better than that stupid baseball episode. Instead, we get another average SciFi Channel movie. Unlike some of their other movies, this one is not so terrible you want to gouge out your eyes and ears to become blind and deaf to the world. Now, that doesn’t make this movie any good. It is just as far from good as it is from bad in many places. In fact, at some points it’s laughable, and several of the characters are never in any danger at all, as the movie is incapable of doing anything inventive like kill off a member of the main family. The problem with the predictability is the film becomes uninteresting. While not committing the ultimate SciFi Channel sin of being boring, it is not anything you’d sit around and catch the second running of. Watch, rinse, forget. Not many films are brave enough to specialize an obscure beetle, but I bet the writer saw a special on the Discovery Channel that mentioned that rhinoceros beetles are proportionally the strongest animals on the planet. Some gears started to crank, electricity began to flow, the light bulb started to flicker…Bingo: make them huge! That also somehow makes them prehistoric, and meat eaters. Since real rhinoceros beetles only eat fruit and rotting wood, they are only dangerous to Jack Pumpkinhead from The Marvelous Land of Oz. He is nowhere to be found, though it would have made the film that much cooler. Instead of that weird fun, we have to put up with the Palmers. Not the Palmers from 24, but these are some professional outdoors adventure guides who show rich people around in the outside while overcoming the troubles of modern families like homework and teenage girls hogging the bathroom.

Caved In: Prehistoric Terror follows the Type B SciFi Channel monster movie formula: Large Swarms of similar creatures with a Giant Queen terrorize a group (similar films: Pterodactyl and Snakehead Terror.) Type A SciFi Channel monster movie formula: A singular or small group (4 or less) of monsters terrorize a group(similar films: Frankenfish and Manticore.) Type C SciFi Channel monster movie formula: A swarm of monsters with no queen terrorize a group (similar films: Komodo vs. Cobra and Curse of the Komodo.) Now that we’ve outlined the basic three plots, we can jump into the film itself, starting with the characters.

Escape From Hell
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Escape from Hell (Review)

December 4, 2006By

Escape from Hell

aka Femmine infernali

1980
Starring
Antonio De Teffè as Doctor Farrell
Ajita Wilson as Zaira
Christina Lai as Vivienne
Cintia Lodetti as Katie
Luciano Pigozzi as Warden
Serafino Profumo as Martinez
Yael Forti as Marika
Anna Maria Panaro as Marie Antoinette
Directed by Edoardo Mulargia

Women in prison (WIP) movies have a special place in many people’s hearts. The shining stars of exploitation cinema, they can be incredibly entertaining pieces of filth, or so poorly made you wish flaming death to reign down upon its creators. Which one is this? Let’s just say I’m cooking napalm in my backyard and taking flying lessons. Escape From Hell is a complete pile of junk. Made when Italy was pumping out films faster than you could blink, the directors there were bridging into areas that pushed the boundaries of good taste (including cannibal films with real footage of animals being slaughtered.) There is no animal death here, but there is plenty of brutality, rape, and disgustingly greasy people both male and female (and she-male as it turns out!) If you’ve suspected from that list that Troma is involved, you are right, as they produced the most recent DVD release. You expect a deal of filth in WIP flicks, but there is a limit that when crossed turns it from a naughty pleasure into a disturbing look into the director’s psyche. The major flaw of this film is the fact it takes itself far too seriously, not letting us have fun with the violence, lesbianism, or other nonsense. The serious tone makes the film far more depressing than it should be, as the exploitation factors become troubling to sit through.

Another film called Savage Island was spliced together from both Escape From Hell and Hotel Paradiso with 10 minutes of new footage starring Linda Blair. The two original movies shared some of the same actresses, but they were playing very different roles, and thus when combined together it makes an incoherent mess. Which means it’s only slightly less coherent than Escape From Hell is by itself. Escape’s few attempts at a good plot pop out with the alcoholic doctor, who became so embittered by the horrors around him he crawled into a bottle and never came out. The rest of the film seems to be the standard WIP cliché list. We have lesbians, a sadistic warden, rapist guards, an evil female turncoat guard who used to be a prisoner, beatings, lesbians, women tied up and left to die, the one good employee who helps the escape, posses, lesbians, gun battles in the jungle, and lesbians.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

The Brutal River (Review)

November 27, 2006By

The Brutal River

aka Khoht phetchakhaat

2005
Starring
Chartchai Ngamsan as Jamnong Phimaan
Jirapat Wongpaisarn as Pikul Phimaan
Worapod Cha’am as Narinthorn
Lukana Lisani as Karaked
Directed by Anat Yuangngern

Hey, America is not the only country that can produce SciFi Channel films where a giant CGI animal kills people; Thailand can create them as well! Even though it probably has no chance of ever appearing on the SciFi Channel, Brutal River is in spirit similar to the many dozens of films that premiere to the world on that network. Sure, the opening scrawl claims it’s based on a true story, but CGI carnage is the same in every language. A few problems, the pacing is way off, and the movie has habits of dragging, making it seem like it’s much longer than it is, while SciFi Channel flicks usually try to show the monster every 10-15 minutes or so for fresh kills. Oddly enough, other parts of the movie are pulled off quite well, as the film jumps back into quality B-movie territory. Thai film has received a boost recently due to the works of Tony Jaa becoming popular, the quality film Beautiful Boxer, and works of director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. Thai horror has also started to creep around into the public conscious thanks to the general Asian horror leakage. Thus, Brutal River is born! The best selling point of The Brutal River is one of the neat poster one-sheets, which is included with the rest of the screencaps here. I don’t want to say that Brutal River is a terrible film, but it’s just infected with its plot slowdowns ruining the pacing of the film worse than a rogue crocodile would ruin the local canal of a Thai village. That makes it a terrible film, even if you can get enjoyment from it.

Though I’ve watched several Thai films (okay, 2 Thai films), I am still a novice in identifying the actors and local nuances that define Thai cinema and culture. Chartchai Ngamsan (who plays Nong) seems to be the local heartthrob to bring out the ladies. He’s probably best known over here for the cultish Tears of the Black Tiger. Chirapat Wongpaisanlux (or Jirapat Wongpaisarn as she went by in this film) playing Pikulwould be one of our hot women, as well as Lukana Lisani (playing Ked) as the other hot girl. Following traditional Asian fame, many of these people probably have singing careers in addition to their acting careers. It would be nice to know any of that, but English information on any of them is scanty, and Google translations are far more miss than hit. We’ll just make up some facts to fill out the rest of the paragraph. Chartchai Ngamsan owns a riverboat casino and spends most of his non-acting time singing lounge acts onboard. He is the best Robert Goulet impersonator in Asia. Chirapat Wongpaisanlux spends most of her spare time spelling her name in various different ways so she’ll never be credited under the same spelling twice. This compulsion is due to her being trapped alone in an empty closet as a child with only a Scrabble board game for company.

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