The Curator of Schlock #321: Rec 3

22 Friday May 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #321 by Jeff Shuster

Rec 3: Genesis

This one’s just plain goofy.

As you know, I went all in on the canned pork n’ beans much to my regret. I guess I panicked a little while grabbing up a wheelbarrow full from the local Big Lots. But I am a lucky man tonight. It seems in my haste to grab up all the pork n’ beans that I accidently swept up a couple of cans of beans n’ franks. You read right. Frankfurter bits and beans! Also known as beanie weenies! A new taste sensation! I’ll be eating good tonight!

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Hey, I’ve got another Rec movie for you. This one is 2012’s Rec 3: Genesis from director Paco Plaza and is the third movie in the Rec series. Rec 2 left us with the big reveal that Ángela Vidal is now possessed by the head demon after the original possessed girl upchucked what looked to be a giant maggot down her throat. Ángela was able to leave the apartment complex by impersonating the priest’s voice. I’m sure those idiots in HAZMAT suits welcomed her as she left the building unscathed. I was anxious to see what schemes Ángela had up her sleeve in the next installment, but alas, Rec 3: Genesis is a side story about a wedding from hell.

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The movie starts out with a wedding DVD showing the nuptials of a lovely young couple, Koldo (Diego Martin) and Clara (Leticia Dolera). We get about twenty minutes of the beautiful and the wealthy being so in love with each other, something that I don’t really care to see while I’m living in a shack in the middle of a swamp eating beanie weenies.

I hate my life.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. The young, beautiful couple that we’re all rooting for!

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We get introduced to various members of their families. We have a grandfather whose hearing aid doesn’t work right and the groom’s future mother-in-law who’s described as a “milf” by the rotund wedding photographer. We get to see a children’s entertainer who calls himself John Sponge so as not to get sued by the owners of Spongebob Squarepants. There’s a guy running around keeping notes of all songs played at the wedding reception so that the artists get paid the proper royalties. Is that a thing?

Oh, and there’s Uncle Pepe, a veterinarian who got bit by a rabid dog earlier that day. I seem to recall a rabid dog being mentioned in the first Rec movie. And it’s highly probable that the demonically possessed virus infected this dog. You know, I remember playing that Doom game from the mid 90s. In addition to gunning down all sorts of demonic monsters from hell, you also had to shoot zombie soldiers before they shot you. I bet these were soldiers infected with the demonically possessed virus like in these Rec movies. They weren’t just plain old zombies.

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Anyway, Uncle Pepe goes feral and bites Aunt Lucille or whatever her name is and before long the entire wedding reception is a madhouse with each guest getting demonically zombified. The bride and the groom get separated and spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to find each other. The groom dons the armor of Saint George at some point. The bride gets her hand on a chainsaw and starts massacring any of the former family members who stand in her way.

Fun stuff.

I wonder how this series will wrap itself up.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #320: Rec 2

15 Friday May 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #320 by Jeff Shuster

Rec 2

The sequel to Rec in case you were wondering.

I have a confession to make. I don’t always understand what I’m watching when it comes to movies. Take Howard the Duck. I thought it was a movie about an anthropomorphic duck trying to survive in a mid 1980s Cleveland. Then the movie becomes about laser spectroscopes and Dark Overlords of the Universe. What I’m trying to say is that simple movies can get complicated to the point where I don’t know what’s going on.

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We need to talk about 2009’s Rec 2 from directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. It picks up where Rec left off. A group of three commandos led by a Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor) make their way through the crowd of onlookers outside of the quarantined apartment building. This is another found footage movie as each commando has a video camera in his helmet to help him record the situation inside the apartment complex. Once inside, only Dr. Owen can give the voice command to permit them or anyone else from exiting the building.

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They make their way up to the penthouse with all of the religious iconography and newspaper cutouts about the possessed little girl. Dr. Owen keeps demanding that everything gets recorded. Infected apartment residents attack and infect one of the commandos, but Dr. Owens is able to subdue and trap the infected commando with a Rosary and some prayers.

Huh?

And then Dr. Owens removes his helmet to reveal a priest’s collar. He’s not Dr. Owen from the Ministry of Health; he’s Father Owen from the Vatican!

Okay. So I’m going to try to explain what I think is going on. The Vatican decided to use medical science as a way to cure the demonically possessed. I think Father Owens rambles that the Vatican discovered that possessed people have a virus while possessed and if they could come up with an antidote for this virus, priests could just inject someone who gets demonically possessed instead of going through the whole exorcism ordeal.

Unfortunately, the virus mutated during their experimentation.

The virus can pass from person to person. The demon residing inside the original possessed person possesses each person the virus comes into contact with. So I guess the virus is possessed, which allows a single demon to possess several people at the same time?

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Father Owens needs the original blood sample from the possessed girl so that an antidote can be created. He directs the remaining commandos to hunt for the virus. By the skin of his teeth, one of the commandos retrieves the last vial of the possessed girl’s blood before one of the demonically possessed, zombie maniacs is able to tear him a new one. At this moment, Father Owens makes the stupidest mistake I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. He insists that the blood sample needs to be tested for authenticity before he will allow them to leave the building.

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Ummmm. Father Owens, you can test the sample outside of the building in a controlled facility far away from this demonically possessed, zombie maniac infested apartment complex. You got what you came for. Now get out of there. But no, he has to test the sample. He pours some of the blood onto a plate, holds a crucifix over it while saying some prayers, and the blood shimmers before catching fire. The remaining blood in the vial also catches fire and the commando holding it drops it on the floor. The blood sample is useless now, but Father Owens says they can retrieve a new sample from the original possessed girl who is hiding somewhere in the building.

What else?

We get some annoying teenagers sneaking into the apartment complex after destroying a perfectly good blow-up doll. Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) shows up again apparently having survived the first movie. They discover that the original possessed girl can only be seen through a camera’s night vision, as the demon is able to make her invisible to the naked eye. Nothing is going to go according to plan…well…actually…I suppose things go according to demon’s plan. To think, I was going to have June be Satan Month.

I guess Satan Month came early.

You’re welcome.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #319: Rec

08 Friday May 2020

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The Curator of Schlock by Jeff Shuster

Rec

That’s short for record.

Howdy y’all. Yeehaaaaaaa! I feel like a cowboy here, eating my Campbell’s Pork n’ Beans over an open campfire just like they did in the old west. This global pandemic will surely leave behind some good memories.

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I’ve had a lot of opportunity for introspection, looking back on life choices good and bad. For example, why at the start of this pandemic did I go all in on the pork n’ beans? Why no chicken noodle soup or canned chili? I could murder a man right now for a can of chili.

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Tonight’s movie is 2007’s Rec from directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. I’m assuming that it’s two directors and that one of them doesn’t have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on. The movie takes place in Barcelona, Spain and is Spanish language for those who you that need to be warned about such things. For those of you who can understand Spanish or don’t have problems reading English subtitles, be prepared for what may be the greatest found footage horror movie ever made.

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Rec begins with a TV news reporter named Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman, Pablo, shooting the latest in her documentary series While You Were Sleeping. Each episode features people who work at night while the rest of the city is sleeping. The episode they’re shooting will focus on the city’s firefighters. The two firefighters they’ll be following this night are named Álex (David Vert) and Manu (Ferrán Terraza). The firehouse gets a call in the middle of the night about an old lady named Mrs. Izquierdo, a local cat lady, being trapped in her apartment. The neighbors heard her screaming and are gathered in the lobby of the building.

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The four of them get over to the apartment complex as fast they can and are greeted by a couple of police officers that don’t care for a television crew poking around the premises. They all head upstairs and find Mrs. Izquierdo shambling about in a pink taffeta nightgown. Oh, her nightgown isn’t pink. That’s just blood smeared all over it. One of the officers approaches her and Mrs. Izquierdo promptly sinks her teeth into his neck, promptly tearing a chunk out while the other officer and firefighters pull her off.

This is one of those “things go from bad to worse” kind of movies. As the firefighters and remaining police officer try to evacuate, the lights in the building go off and we hear a man from the Spanish government informing them over a loudspeaker that the building is now sealed off. Everyone is under quarantine until further notice and to please be patient. This is not good. Let’s hope the disease that turned Mrs. Izquierdo into a rabid monster isn’t contagious.

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At some point, the government sends in a doctor in a HAZMAT suit and we learn that the source of the disease came from one of the tenant’s dogs. I think this doctor has an injection that treats or kills the patient with the disease. That isn’t clear because no gets a chance to use it because everyone in the building keeps getting bit and turning into a raving maniac. Ángela and Pablo make it up to the penthouse apartment in effort to find a way out that isn’t known to the government officials outside. In this apartment, they discover all sorts of religious iconography, articles about a young girl possessed by the devil, and recordings about Vatican knowledge of this disease. We don’t learn much more because the end is nigh for Angela and Pablo. Maybe I’ll find out the rest in Rec 2.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #318: The Black Cat

24 Friday Apr 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #318 by Jeff Shuster

The Black Cat

Not the Karloff movie.

So Cat Month went awry. I wanted to review Uninvited. It’s the one with George Kennedy on the expensive yacht with the house cat with a mutant cat living inside it. Well, it got yanked from Amazon Prime status, and I ain’t paying for that noise. I went on a rage in my little cabin in the middle of the Florida Everglades, smashing all my bottles of Perrier, and now I’m quite thirsty. I wonder how sanitary the water is in these parts. I should have brought my Britta filter.

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This week’s movie is 1981’s The Black Cat from director Lucio Fulci. The movie features a black cat that goes around murdering people in a small English village. We begin with some guy getting into an automobile and while he’s driving, a black cat appears behind him and uses mind control to get the guy crash into a street lamp, killing him instantly. Does the cat have psychic powers like the weirdoes in those Scanners movies or is black magic involved?

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The next victims are a teenage couple who decide to lock themselves in a boatshed so they can shed their clothes away from prying eyes. I think the boyfriend of the young woman locks the shed from the inside, but the black cat steals the key while, at the same time, naturally, causing a gas leak. The young couple sucks on some bad air, causing them to foam at the mouth and die. The mother of the young girl who dies in that horrible way is Maureen Grayson (Daniela Doria). After the police discover the rotting cadavers of the two lovers, Maureen shrieks in horror at the sight.

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Still, she doesn’t grieve for long since Maureen is the cat’s next victim. The cat manages to set her house on fire and Maureen gets caught under some burning curtains. The whole scene is rather disgusting. Maureen’s face begins melting off as if she were made out of wax. She flails about for several minutes before finally deciding to end her life by jumping out the nearest window. Not a good way to go. That’s going to be a closed casket funeral.

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We have a couple of sleuths trying to get to the bottom of these mysterious deaths. One is Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck) and the other is American photojournalist Jill Trevers (Mimsy Farmer). We remember Mimsy Farmer from The Perfume of the Lady in Black. I believe her guts were eaten by a cannibalistic cult at the end of that movie, but I’m not one hundred percent sure of that. The two of them are fairly inept detectives, but really, how does one pin murders on a cat?

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It turns out there’s this crusty curmudgeon named Professor Robert Miles (Patrick Magee, whose tremendous eyebrows you might remember from A Clockwork Orange). The good professor lives in this old, dark house on the edge of town. He psychically feeds his hatred of the townsfolk into his pet black cat and the cat then murders them in horrible ways. Lucio Fulci apparently based this on the classic Edgar Allen Poe story, so naturally it has zilch to do with the original story, but it’s not bad. What more do you want from me? Sometimes “it’s not bad” is good enough.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #317: The Uncanny

10 Friday Apr 2020

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Donald Pleasence, Peter Cushing, Ray Milland, The Uncanny

The Curator of Schlock #317 by Jeff Shuster

The Uncanny

Peter Cushing and Ray Milland. Need I say more?

I’m still reeling from Night of 1,000 Cats. Did you know the Mexican cut of the movie is a full half hour longer than the American version? What did editors cut out? Did it show Hugo Stiglitz doing some really depraved things to those women he brought to his monastery? Maybe a childhood flashback shows him murder his parents and feed them to the family cat? A half hour is a lot of potential missing character development. I need to know what possesses a man to collect women’s’ heads.

I need closure.

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This week’s movie is 1977’s The Uncanny from director Denis Héroux. It is an anthology movie featuring three tales of terror and a framing story. This framing story involves a writer named Wilbur Gray (Peter Cushing) who has written a book on how cats rule the world. You see, cats are our masters and we’re their servants. They’ve just fooled us into seeing them as pets. An interested publisher named Frank Richards (Ray Milland) is intrigued by the book, but not completely sold on the idea. Wilbur then details three incidents involving felines his prove his point.

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Our first story centers around a young woman named Janet (Susan Pelhaligon) working as a maid in London in the year 1912. Her employer is old crone named Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood) who loves her many cats, but despises her jet-setting nephew, Michael (Simon Williams). She adjusts her will, leaving her nephew with next to nothing while her vast fortune will go to the care of her cats. Janet is actually having an affair with her nephew and murders Miss Malkin while attempting to steal the revised will.

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I know murder is wrong and all, but am I supposed to feel sorry for some old bitty who hoards her cash away just to give it away to some lousy strays after she dies? At least her prodigal nephew would give that money back to the community. Let him waste his money at fancy restaurants and hotels. As long as he’s a good tipper, we can look the other way, am I right? At any rate, the cats know what’s up and want to keep the will intact. Janet and Michael suffer a gruesome fate and the fortune goes to the cats.

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The other two stories are in a similar vein. You’ve got one about an orphaned girl named Lucy (Katrina Holden Bronson) and her cat, Wellington. They move in with her Aunt and Uncle and their cruel daughter, Angela (Chloe Franks). Angela incessantly bullies Lucy even though she knows Lucy’s mother was a witch and that Lucy inherited lots of books on black magic. I wonder how this is going to turn out.

More importantly, Katrina Holden Bronson is the daughter of Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland!

The final story takes place in the Golden Age of Hollywood where an actor named Valentine (Donald Pleasence) murders his wife and convinces the studio to cast his mistress in his deceased wife’s part. And his deceased wife had a pet cat, so you know what’s coming.

So The Uncanny is kind of a low rent Tales From the Crypt, but I got to see Ray Milland chewing the scenery with Peter Cushing. That was worth my 90 minutes.

Let’s see—I seem to remember that Peter Cushing was in some other movie in 1977, but I can’t quite remember what it is.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #316: Night of a 1000 Cats

03 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Hugo Stiglitz, Night of a Thousand Cats

The Curator of Schlock #316 by Jeff Shuster

Night of a 1000 Cats

Was this the inspiration for Dr. Tongue’s House of Cats?

I apologize for my near meltdown last week. Everything’s fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. Well I may presume too much. Let’s get our minds off the global pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout. Think happy thoughts. Think fluffy thoughts. What’s fluffy? Cats are fluffy. I’ve got an idea. How about a Cats Month for this blog I’m writing from my remote location in the Florida Everglades? Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t that sound peachy keen?

Tonight’s movie is 1972’s Night of a 1000 Cats from director René Cardona Jr.

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It’s a tour de force of screams, snarls, and entrails. The movie centers around a millionaire playboy named Hugo (Hugo Stiglitz). So the main character is named after the lead actor in the film if we are to believe the IMBD. Frankly, I don’t recall hearing his name mentioned in the movie, but how often do I pay attention to character names while watching these things. Still, I will call him Hugo for the remainder of the review and trust in the IMBD. (Do not confuse him with the Hugo Stiglitz of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds—that would be irresponsible).

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Hugo is a millionaire playboy as evidenced by the fact that he lives in an ancient monastery his ancestors inherited and the fact that he flies around in his own personal helicopter. This must impress the ladies since they fly up to his monastery to enjoy wine and cognac and to feast on meat dishes prepared by Dorgo (Gerardo Zepeda), Hugo’s malformed manservant. Hugo makes passionate love to these women before he tires of them and shows them his collection of severed heads.

Oh, yes. Hugo has a collection of severed heads in glass jars that he insists are made of wax, but none of the women buy what he’s saying since they know Hugo is a accomplished taxidermist. Are we to believe that he collects the heads of real animals, but would settle for wax replicas of human heads? I don’t think so. It’s around this time of discovery that Hugo chokes the life out of his latest female guest. Her head ends up in the collection, Dorgo burns her bones, and what’s left of her is ground into fresh meat.

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What is this human meat for you might ask? The meat is for Hugo’s other collection, his collection of one thousand feral cats that he keeps fenced in and secured from the rest of the castle. Every night, he tosses handfuls of ground up human flesh to the cats for reasons unknown. I’m not really sure what motivates Hugo to do any of this. At some point in the movie, Dorgo beats Hugo at a game of chess so Hugo gives him the honor of being the one to toss the lady flesh to the throngs of feisty felines, only to push him over a mezzanine to be devoured by their hungry jaws.

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Hugo’s latest conquest is a bored housewife. She figures out his plan and makes a run for it. Hugo would have caught up to her, but the cats manage to get through the fence and decide the bite the hand that’s been feeding them. The young housewife manages to escape as we see an army of cats parading around Hugo’s dead body.

What the hell did I just watch? I better watch it again.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #315: Uncle Buck

27 Friday Mar 2020

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John Candy, John Hughes, Uncle Buck

The Curator of Schlock #315 by Jeff Shuster

Uncle Buck

An unsung John Hughes classic.

Maybe I should thought this whole staying-in-a-cabin-in-the-middle-of-the-Florida-Everglades-while-the-world-goes-to-pot scheme through. Granted, I’ve got enough Campbell’s Pork and Beans to last me three months, but I forgot to buy Beano and I’m down to four rolls of toilet paper. Still, there are plenty of leafy plants sprung around this place. Wow. Three leaves! They say three leaves are better than two.

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Tonight’s movie is 1989’s Uncle Buck from director John Hughes because I just don’t care this week. I’m scared out of my mind and I need a 80s comedy to calm my nerves. I need some John Candy in my life. I mean look at this poster. The movie just screams, watch me! You can tell the nice suburban family wants nothing to do with their crude and crass Uncle Buck (John Candy). This is the kind of movie Elaine from Seinfeld would rather see than something like Howard’s End.

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I aspire to be just like Buck Russell. The man doesn’t have a job. He refuses to work and enjoys smoking cigars. He makes a living by making sure-thing bets at the horse track. His girlfriend, Chanice (Amy Madigan), convinces him to take a job selling tires at the garage she manages. Buck reluctantly agrees, but bails on her as soon as his brother, Bob, calls with a family emergency. Bob needs Buck to watch the kids while he and his wife, Cindy, go to Indianapolis to stay with her father, who just had a heart attack.

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They leave Uncle Buck in charge and the children wake up to find him making some disgusting scrambled egg concoction. I’m sorry, but he sprayed yellow mustard into the frying pan. That’s a no, no. So we’ve got a surly teenager named Tia (Jean Louisa Kelly) who makes it no secret that she can’t stand Uncle Buck and wants him out of their house. More understanding are her younger siblings Miles (Macaulay Culkin) and Maizy (Gaby Hoffmann). Uncle Buck has no problem winning them over. He chews out the assistant vice-principal at Maizy’s elementary school after she criticizes the six year-old for not taking her academic career seriously. Oh, and when a drunken clown shows up at Miles’s birthday party, Uncle Buck punches him in the face a few times.

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Uncle Buck was a childhood staple of mine, repeated viewings on gray Saturdays in the dead of winter. It’s not the best John Hughes comedy, but it’s far from the worst. I love Uncle Buck’s regular threatening of Tia’s handsy boyfriend, Bug (Jay Underwood), or the scene of him cooking an obscenely large stack of pancakes for Miles and Maizy. And this movie was my first introduction to Macaulay Culkin, who would make a huge splash the following year in Home Alone.

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I miss John Candy. He was taken too soon from this world, but he left me with some good memories. Great comedians often do.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #314: Leprechaun 3

20 Friday Mar 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #314 by Jeff Shuster

Leprechaun 3

Vegas, Baby, Vegas.

I wish a belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day to one and all. I hope you all had a good time feasting corned beef and cabbage, maybe a pint of Guinness. I stayed in due to that worldwide pandemic that’s got everyone freaked out. I even closed up the Museum of Schlock and will be blogging from a remote location in the Florida Everglades. I just hope that thieves don’t ransack the Nightmare City display. Those sports coats from the movie set me back six figures.

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Tonight’s movie is 1995’s Leprechaun 3, which is also known as Leprechaun 3: In Las Vegas. This makes sense as the movie takes place in Las Vegas. Brian Medwin Trenchard-Smith serves as director this time around, and Warwick Davis returns as Lubdan the Leprechaun. I didn’t know this character had a name. Granted, I’m no Leprechaun expert, but I imagine this series of movies has its devotees much like the Friday the 13^th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I can’t imagine anything in this world sadder than Leprechaun fandom. They probably flipped out over the WWE Studios remake that completely negated the canon.

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The movie begins with a stone statue of Lubdan getting sold for twenty bucks to Gupta (Marcelo Tubert), an Indian pawnshop owner in Las Vegas. Gupta is warned not to remove the magic medallion around his neck. Naturally, Gupta removes the charm and before you know, Lubdan is snacking on his ear remarking, “I love Indian food.” Gupta manages to ward him off with the charm. Lubdan runs away with his pot of gold coins, but leaves one behind. Now this is interesting. Gupta finds a CD-ROM on World Folklore and researches all he can on leprechauns. For instance, leprechauns love potatoes, but can’t stand the presence of another leprechaun. Also, you can wish for anything you want if you make the wish while holding a leprechaun’s gold coin.

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What’s a CD-ROM? Well, before the Internet became the sole source of all knowledge and wisdom in modern society, human beings used to store information on these interactive CDs they’d slip into CD drives on their personal computers. They contained fancy graphic and sound, sometimes even little mini games. Will Smith sung about a 101 Dalmatians CD-ROM that he bought for his son in his 1997 hit song, “Just the Two of Us.” I hope I gave you younglings some valuable history.

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Back to the movie. Uhhhh. There’s a scene of Lubdan the Leprechaun running into an Elvis impersonator, or maybe Elvis himself? Lubdan actually digs Elvis’s threads and Elvis digs Lubdan’s threads. Elvis even compliments Lubdan’s pointy boots and wonders if they come in blue suede. It’s actually a cordial meeting and it’s nice to see Lubdan not try and take a bite out of Elvis. See, we can be civil.

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I remember that Big Trouble in Little China movie. Lo Pan is described as “The Ultimate Evil Spirit,” but I think Lubdan could give him a run for his money. In fact, I’d like to see a Big Trouble in Little Ireland movie, get to see Jack Burton versus the evil leprechaun. Of course, I also want to see Chucky vs. Leprechaun. And how about TRON 3 already! Why aren’t I running Hollywood?

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #313: Jason X

13 Friday Mar 2020

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The Curator of Schlock #313 by Jeff Shuster

Jason X

Friday the 13^th…in Space!

Happy Friday the 13^th! Be sure to avoid walking under ladders, toss that spilled salt over your right shoulder, and if a black cat crosses your path, turn around and walk in the opposite direction. And I guess since it is Friday the 13^th, I have to now visit a chapter from the ongoing saga of Jason Voorhees, our favorite mentally-challenged mass murderer. Tonight, we’ll be covering the tenth movie in this series, Jason X.

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2001’s Jason X from director Jim Isaac stars David Cronenberg as Dr. Wimmer, a scientist who wants to study the regenerative powers of one Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder). Another scientist named Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) wants to put Jason in cryogenic stasis because Jason has the tendency to go around murdering lots of people. Dr. Wimmer overrules her, but that doesn’t matter since Jason escapes his bonds and massacres everyone except for Rowan, who he stabs before she switches on the cryogenic machine freezing them both.

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Four-hundred and forty-five years later, an archaeological expedition is exploring a now- ruined Earth. A Professor Brandon Lowe (Jonathan Potts) and a bunch of future victims—I mean students—find Jason Voorhees and Rowan LaFontaine still frozen and retrieve them. They have fancy nanobots to repair wounds. Hey, if some machete-wielding maniac chops off your arm, some nanobots will fix you good as new.

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This is a bizarre movie. It’s a Canadian production like most Friday the 13^th movies, but it has more of a feel of a Canadian science fiction series. Two of the main actors in this movie, Lexa Doig and Lisa Ryder, both starred on Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. It wouldn’t surprise if they used the same sets from that series for this movie. Funny. Lexa Doig played an android on Andromeda and Lisa Ryder plays an android in Jason X.

The rest of the movie takes place on a spaceship. The students use the nanobots to save Rowan’s life while they leave what they believe to be the carcass of Jason Voorhees to defrost in the lab. Professor Lowe thinks people will pay big bucks to see a woman from the early 21^st century, but his colleague on a nearby space station says no one will care. However, he suggests that people would be willing to pay to see the corpse of Jason Voorhees since he is a famous mass murderer even hundreds of years in the future.

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I guess Professor Lowe’s dreams of wine, women, and song gets dashed when Jason re-animates and starts massacring the crew. There are some space marines on the ship, but Jason makes quick work of ’em. So much for the BFG. Later in the movie, we get to see a fight between Jason and the android, Kay-em 14 (Lisa Rider). It’s kind of neat because she feels no fear due to her being a robot and all. She kicks his butt and it seems that Jason is finally down for the count. Then some nanobots fix him up and turn him into Uber Jason. I wonder if Jason X is considered Friday the 13^th canon, or if I must forget about it under penalty of torture.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #312: Gerry Anderson’s UFO

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Science Fiction, The Curator of Schlock

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Gerry Anderson’s UFO

The Curator of Schlock #312 by Jeff Shuster

Gerry Anderson’s UFO

Old TV > New TV

No movie this week, but that doesn’t mean I have nothing to blog about. Besides movies, I have wasted a large portion of my life watching copious amounts of television shows. And let me tell you that there is no bigger waster of time than watching television. For every masterpiece such as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, you get sucked into a ton of series that jump the shark after season three (I’m looking at you Boardwalk Empire). And heaven help you if you’re a fan of science fiction. I know that fans of Star Trek and Doctor Who must be reeling over the demise of their once cherished television series. I have no words of comfort to give you, but I can suggest that if dig deep into the past, you might find something worth your time.

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Over the past few months, I’ve been watching Gerry Anderson’s UFO, a neat little science fiction series that aired from 1970 to 1973. This was Gerry Anderson’s first foray into a live action television series. Previous efforts involved puppet shows such as Thunderbirds and Stingray. One of the advantages of working on those puppet shows is the ample expertise with model effects Anderson’s team attained while working on them. On UFO, we get flying spaceships, a moon base, and even an underwater submarine. I’m sure audiences back in 1970 would have been wowed by special effects more akin to 2001 A Space Odyssey than the limited scope shown on the original Star Trek or Doctor Who.

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What’s the show about? In the not too distant future, the governments of the world become aware that aliens from outer space are abducting human beings for sinister purposes. The United Nations sets up a secret organization called SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization) in order to avoid widespread panic among the populace. The show takes place in a retro-futuristic future 1980s where people actually have a better sense of style than the real 1980s. Check out the ladies with the purple hair.

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Col. Edward Straker (Ed Bishop) runs SHADO while he pretends to run a movie studio by day. In fact, SHADO operates from an underground bunker beneath the studio. Those are like my two dream jobs: movie producer and planet Earth defender. Other rotating members of SHADO are a who’s who of character actors from British and European cinema of the 1970s. I saw some of my Gialli and Hammer Horror regulars make an appearance on this show. Stephanie Beacham even guest-starred.

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This is an episodic series at its core so don’t expect too much progress on the fight between SHADO and this alien race. We do find out in the first episode that the aliens are harvesting human organs to keep their own race alive. They are a dying and infertile race due to years of their polluting their planet’s environment. One episode revolves around the aliens turning regular human beings into killing machines by altering their body chemistry. Another favorite of mine involves a madman using time travel technology given to him by the aliens, allowing him to freeze time and capture Col. Straker.

I’m nearing the final episodes of this show and I doubt I’ll get any closure, but closure is overrated. It’s enough that I get to see spaceships blowing up those spinning UFOs. Gerry Anderson had planned to follow up to this series and that eventually became the show we now know as Space 1999. I look forward to tackling that one some day.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.