UK Crap

SKYGGEN-THE MIND OF A KILLER-2006-Take my advice please! Don't bother with this terrible shot on video garbage about some guy in England with amnesia who is suspected of being a serial killer. Sometimes a mysteriously laughing guy shows up. Everybody is killed and confused flashbacks show the guy was abused as a child. It's all talk, bad acting, direction and editing by star/writer/director Jemshaid Ashraf and goes on forever. This guy read too many Stephen King novels (well, there are too many Stephen King novels...but anyway....) They show outtakes too! 

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Negative (should be) Deleted

MESSAGES DELETED-2010-More derivative pretentious horror garbage (this time from Canada) with a wannabe screenwriter (Matthew Lillard from the SCOOBY DOO movies) tied to a series of murders because the killer is using stories he wrote. It's all the work of a deranged film student in this drawn out talkie bullshit with not one likable character. The screenplay is by (former?) director Larry Cohen (IT'S ALIVE). The director Rob Cowan is usually a producer (THE CHERNOBYL DIARIES, THE CRAZIES remake). Filmed in British Colombia.

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Propaganda

THE HOAXTERS-1952-In this post-WW2 cold war propaganda short film Adolf Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini are compared to snake oil salesmen. It uses footage of war torn Germany, Italy and Japan and blames everything on Karl Marx the “fourth pitchman of the apocalypse” and says communism is the new snake oil. Stalin (a WW2 ally) is shown watching troops march in Red Square. FDR, Truman, Adlai Stevenson and Dwight David Eisenhower all agree that Communism is the new Nazism. Howard Keel, George Murphy, Walter Pigeon, Robert Taylor, Barry Sullivan and James Whitmore are credited as narrators and Sid Tomack appears as a salesman. No director is credited for this MGM production but the screenwriter Herman Hoffman later directed TV shows and soap operas so it might be him.

DECEMBER 7TH-1943-This film commissioned by the US Navy was directed by John Ford and Greg Toland. Uncle Sam (Walter Huston) explains what's going on in Hawaii (before Pearl Harbor). It kind of ignores how the US came to the islands but talks about all the Japanese who worked and settled there (many of them American citizens). It tries to say that most of the Japanese who live there were loyal to America except those that were part of the Shinto religion (actor Philip Ahn, of Korean descent plays a Shinto priest). Yet then it implies that most of the Japanese were spies who helped bring about the bombings and collaborated with The Nazis. After Sam has a debate with Mr. C (Harry Davenport) he falls asleep. Everyone then goes about their business on that fateful Sunday morning. Many actual and detailed and tragic scenes are shown. It then goes on to show how the attacks negatively affected the Japanese-Hawaiians. Dana Andrews appears as the spirit of a dead sailor while Ralph Byrd and Robert Lowery have un-billed roles as does the narrator Irving Pichel.

 It won a 1943 Academy Award for best documentary short subject.

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Man In a Dino-Suit

THE LAND UNKNOWN-1957-A Naval science team goes to the South Pole. The group consists of Commander Hal Roberts (Jock Mahoney; TV's Yancey Derringer), Lt. Jack Carmen (William Reynolds), Capt. Burham (Douglas Kennedy) and Maggie Patterson (Shawn Smith aka Shirley Patterson), a woman reporter. The group has helicopter trouble when a pterodactyl hits them. They are forced to land in a hidden sub-tropical area dating to the Mesozoic era. They meet stock footage of two giant lizards fighting. Then they are chased by a T. Rex (guy in a costume) but a strange noise calls off it's attack. When giant plants menace the group Maggie is kidnapped by Hunter (Henry Brandon) who's been living there for years and thinks he owns the place (he's a survivor from a previous expedition). He blows a giant sea shell that scares off the dynos. Hunter wants the men to leave but let him keep Maggie who briefly escapes but runs into a giant sea reptile and faints. Later Hunter gives them a map to find his old helicopter. The guys rescue Maggie and even take Hunter back to civilization.

It seems at one time Universal was planning on THE LAND UNKNOWN to be a big budgeted film to be shot in color with an all star cast and Jack Arnold directing. For some reason the studio cut the budget, the color and the cast turning it into a B movie. Arnold left the project and contract director Virgil Vogel was his replacement. He'd made the equally cheap looking THE MOLE PEOPLE the year before. Screenwriter Lazlo Gorog penned Bert I. Gordon's EARTH VS. THE SPIDER a year later.

LAND really suffers from terrible SFX, too much stock footage and phony scenery but still manages to be more entertaining than boring. In movies since the early '40's actress Shawn Smith also acted under the name of Shirley Patterson. One of her last film roles would be in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE.

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Equinox

EQUINOX-1970-After an explosion, a man runs through the forest (after finding a dead woman). He makes it to the highway but is hit by a car that has no driver. A couple in another car stop to help him. A year later, the man, named David (Edward Connell), is in a mental institution ranting about good and evil and obsessed with a cross he has. A reporter named Sloan tries to interview him (“nutty stuff”). When Sloan shows David a picture of the missing Dr. Waterman (fantasy/horror writer Fritz Lieber), it triggers a flashback and he attacks Sloan. Through a tape recording he made earlier David relates how he and three friends (Susan, Vicki & Tim) go to visit Waterman in his secluded cabin. They find the cabin a wreck. They also meets a weird acting sheriff named Asmodeus (co-director Jack Woods)! Later they discover a castle in the distance and decide to check it out. After hearing eerie laughter and finding non-human tracks, they make torches and enter a dark cave. They meet a crazy old man who gives them an ancient book. They leave the cave and Dr. Waterman suddenly shows up and steals the book. Giving chase, David tackles him and he dies but his body disappears. Meanwhile, Susan (Barbara Hewitt), left alone is terrorized by Asmodeus who puts on a strange ring, turns rather evil looking, slobbers on her and tries to molest her but her cross drives him away. When David reads the professor's notes he learns that Waterman used the ancient book (“a bible of evil”) to open up a demon portal (very weird flashbacks accompany the narration). The castle disappears, the guys go to investigate and Asmodeus sends a (stop motion clay) monster to kill the old man from the cave. Somehow David kills the monster using only a sharpened tree branch. Susan becomes possessed and attacks Vicki (Robin Christopher). Later Asmodeus tries to convince Jim (Frank Boers) to give him the book, then sets a giant green caveman on the group. David goes after Jim when he enters another dimension where Asmodeus kills Jim and impersonates him. They have a fight and Asmodeus-Jim turns into a winged demon and kills Vicki. David and Susan run (with the book in tow). The winged demon is destroyed by a cross on a grave but Susan also dies. A mysteriously shrouded creature tells David in a year and one day he will be dead. The scene of David being hit by the driver-less car is shown and the tape ends. It happens to be a year and a day later and David is strapped into a straitjacket yelling for his cross he lost in his tussle with Sloan. On his way out the reporter eyes a pretty woman as he leaves: Susan, now obviously a demonic assassin.....

EQUINOX was originally filmed in 1967 by Dennis Muren on a budget said to be around 6000 dollars! The interesting stop animation was done by Jim Danforth (who'd created similar creatures for the X-rated FLESH GORDON) and Dave Allen (he later animated “The Pillsbury Doughboy”). Producer Jack H. Harris picked it up and had sound editor Jack Woods direct new scenes (leading to several continuity lapses). Despite those errors, the small budget and some bad acting E is a lot of fun (and a little frightening at times) and obviously inspired Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD.  

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