DeepStar Six (1989)

At the tail end of the 80s suddenly everybody was making “terror beneath the sea” science fiction horror movies. Sean S. Cunningham’s 1989 DeepStar Six falls into that category. And it has a slight Alien vibe. 

Cunningham is of course best known as the director of the original Friday the 13th.

None of these movies did particularly well. Even James Cameron’s The Abyss lost a stack of money (due to its $70 million budget). DeepStar Six was made on a much more modest budget of $8 million and lost money.

So what went wrong with DeepStar Six? In my view nothing really went particularly wrong. This is a perfectly decent if not dazzlingy original sci-fi horror B-movie.

The setup is solid enough. The US Navy is building a missile base on the ocean floor. The crew of the undersea habitat DeepStar Six is responsible for the construction and to give the project some respectability and make it appear less sinister there’s a marine biologist with the team (you can’t have an underwater adventure without a marine biologist). The Navy can now claim that this is a scientific research project.

Of course things go wrong. One of the things this movie gets criticised for is that we have a long wait to see the monster. Personally I think that’s one of the movie’s strengths. The monster you don’t see is always scarier than the monster you do see. Until very late in the proceedings the members of the team have absolutely no idea what they’re up against. Is it something natural or man-made? They’re not even sure that it is a creature. If it is then what motivates its actions - is it hunger or a lust for killing or fear?

So the emphasis is on the effects on the crew of an unseen and inexplicable menace. Not knowing the nature of the threat means that they have no clue how to counter it. And they don’t know how much real danger they’re in. The fear builds slowly, which makes it all the more effective.

The pacing is pleasingly brisk. There’s a reasonable amount of action, there’s decent suspense and there is a sense of menace.

The special effects are old school (these were the pre-CGI days) and they look good. The miniatures are excellent. The interiors look good - DeepStar Six looks like a place where people live and work and it looks suitably claustrophobic. Obviously an undersea habitat is not going to be spacious.

The monster is not one of the great movie monsters but it’s OK.

The movie never looks cheap. It looks like some real effort was put into it.

I suspect that the big reason for its box-office failure was the lack of star power. The cast members are all perfectly competent but they’re basically solid character actors. Miguel Ferrer is particularly good.

A second reason might have been the lack of a human villain. There is one character who lets the side down but that’s the result of cracking under extreme psychological pressure rather than evil machinations. I like the fact that these are all people just doing their best but audiences love larger-than-life super-villains.

It might also have benefitted commercially from a bit more sexiness.

This movie isn’t perfect but it’s thoroughly enjoyable. It was treated harshly by critics at the time and still gets unfairly dismissed by online reviewers. It’s a B-movie and it isn’t trying to be profound. You just need to approach it with an open mind. And any movie with submarines and undersea action is inherently cool.

DeepStar Six is highly recommended as a beer and popcorn movie.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray looks lovely and they’ve included three (!!) audio commentaries.

The Lady and the Monster (1944)

The Lady and the Monster is a 1944 Republic science fiction/horror movie based on Curt Siodmak's excellent 1942 novel Donovan’s Brain.

In this case rather than one mad scientist we get two but they’re obsessed and blinded by hopes of scientific glory rather than being overtly mad or evil. Professor Franz Mueller (Erich von Stroheim) and Dr Patrick Cory (Richard Arlen) are doing brain research. 

They believe they are close to being able to remove a brain and keep it alive outside the body.

Obviously they need a human subject but they’re not evil. They are not prepared to commit murder in order to obtain a brain. Their hope is that they can find someone so ravaged by disease or so horrifically injured as to have no chance of survival. In which case they have convinced themselves that removing the brain and keeping it alive externally would not really be morally wrong.

Of course they would have to do this in secret - the police might misunderstand. Luckily Mueller has a huge isolated old house (which everyone refers to as The Castle) with a well-equipped laboratory in the basement. And he not only has Cory to assist him but also his pretty young ward Janice Farrell (Vera Ralston), an aspiring scientist herself.

A plane crash gives them their chance. They are able to remove the brain just in time. And it survives!

That’s all very interesting but what they now want to do is to find a way to communicate with the brain.

There are things they don’t know about this brain, at least at first. It belongs to a very very rich man named Donovan. That’s unfortunate because it means that his death will attract publicity. There is however a much bigger problem with this brain. I’m not going to spoil the movie by hinting at the nature of this problem.

Professor Mueller is not really evil but he is increasingly blinded by ambition and increasingly obsessed. There is also a suggestion that he has a sexual or romantic interest in Janice. This does not please the housekeeper Mrs Fame (Mary Nash) who seems to be carrying a torch for the professor. And Cory and Janice are in love so there’s plenty of jealousy. Mueller’s judgment becomes more erratic.

There are also factors (which I can’t reveal due to the risk of spoilers) that cause Cory’s behaviour to be become very erratic.

And there are nefarious plots being hatched in the background, unbeknownst to Mueller and Cory.

It’s interesting to watch von Stroheim and Arlen both playing obsessed characters and taking totally different different but equally effective acting approaches. While von Stroheim is outrageous and flamboyant he is more than a mere ham.

Vera Ralston was being pushed towards stardom by Republic Pictures boss Herbert Yates. She’s a bit stilted but since she’s playing the beautiful female assistant to a mad scientist her subtly odd performance and slight accent make her seem suitably exotic.

The very moody atmospheric visuals are the work of the great cinematographer John Alton. And the sets are quite impressive as well and there’s some good miniatures work.

This was an A-picture for Republic and it’s polished and professional and vastly superior to most of the schlock Universal was churning out in the 40s.

The Lady and the Monster is cleverer and more subtle than you might anticipate. This is fine entertainment and it’s highly recommended. And a must for von Stroheim fans!

This is part of a four-movie Republic Horror Blu-Ray set. The transfer is excellent.

Wolfen (1981)

Wolfen (1981) is a horror movie based on Whitley Strieber’s 1978 novel The Wolfen.

You’re probably going to assume that this will be a werewolf tale. It certainly has some affinities with the werewolf genre. Just as he took a very unconventional approach to the vampire genre in his 1981 novel The Hunger Strieber took an equally unconventional approach to the werewolf genre in The Wolfen. Not everybody likes Strieber’s fiction but I’m a big fan.

And the movie Wolfen is a long way from being a routine werewolf story. Some major plot changes were made but the clever central idea is retained.

A billionaire industrialist and his wife are murdered in Manhattan. Not so much murdered as butchered. They were under constant surveillance by an ultra high tech security and surveillance company but it didn’t help them.

Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) is a police detective who has been slowly putting himself back together after a crack-up. He has a reputation for being a bit odd but for getting results.

The favoured theory is that this double murder was an act of terrorism. Dewey finds himself with a partner, counter-terrorism expert Detective Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora). Dewey doesn’t really buy the terrorism theory but he’s happy enough to work with Rebecca. She’s a good cop and she’s easy to get on with.

There are a couple of slightly puzzling things about the murders. And then a body, badly butchered, is found in the South Bronx. There is one very surprising common element. Two hairs. The hairs are not human.

From the title of the movie the viewer will guess that wolves of some kind are involved, but are they werewolves or actual wolves? Could it be a psycho with a wolf obsession? Or an elaborate attempt to mislead the police? But until a very late stage Dewey and Rebecca have no idea what they’re dealing with.

Although it takes a long time for Dewey to get on the right track this is not a slow-moving film. Right from the start there are graphic murders, and gore. But they’re filmed in such a way as to ensure that we don’t see what is really happening. Which is as it should be. This movie relies to a huge degree on an atmosphere of spookiness and weirdness. The fact that we don’t know what’s going on makes it all much more unsettling.

There are so many things that I love about this movie. And so many things that I intensely dislike. I love the urban devastation - this is like a city being consumed by a wasting disease. I love the slow reveal of the truth. I love the optical effects which really do make us feel that we’re seeing many of these sequences through the eyes of someone or some thing definitely not human. These sequences really are spooky and menacing. I love the central premise.

Unfortunately director/co-writer Michael Wadleigh added some additional elements to the story and these additions are not just tedious, they seriously undermine the central premise. The political subplots is not too much of a problem. It adds an interesting red herring for the cops to deal with and it’s not intrusive. The hippie-dippie mystical stuff is however a major problem. The movie would have been a whole lot better with all that stuff cut.

There’s also a particular point about the nature of the killers which is stressed in the book but somewhat overlooked in the movie, and this does lessen the impact a little.

These things are annoying but happily they don’t quite succeed in sinking the movie. There are still the cool visuals and the weird menacing atmosphere and some great suspense and some genuinely very good ideas.

Albert Finney is pretty good. He wisely doesn’t try to make Dewey too eccentric or too odd. It’s an effective restrained performance. Diane Venora is a reasonably likeable female lead.

Wolfen has some major flaws but it’s sufficiently interesting and unusual to still be very much worth seeing. It remains one of the most intriguing horror movies of the 80s. In spite of those flaws, highly recommended.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray is barebones but looks great.

I’ve also reviewed the Whitley Strieber novel, The Wolfen.

Alienator (1990)

Alienator is a very low-budget 1990 science fiction action movie directed by Fred Olen Ray. So you assume you’re going to have fun.

The title suggests that it’s going to be a rip-off of both Aliens and The Terminator. It doesn’t actually have much to do with either of those movies. But it does have an ultimate warrior android. It also owes a bit to The Astounding She-Monster (1957).

Jan-Michael Vincent is the Commander of a prison planet. This planet is in a distant part of the galaxy and although this is a humanoid civilisation it has no connection with Earth. No-one on Earth even knows that this distant interstellar civilisation exists.

A particularly dangerous prisoner, Kol (Ross Hagen), is about to be executed. The commander has no moral qualms about this. Any prisoner who has ended up on his prison planet has committed truly horrific crimes. The Commander has other things on his mind, like his assistant Tara (P.J. Soles). Or rather he has his mind on her cleavage. You can’t blame him.

Kol pulls off a daring escape, steals a spacecraft and ends up on Earth.

He encounters a bunch of college kids in an RV deep in the woods. Kol has been injured. The kids pick him up and take him to the cabin of forest ranger Ward Armstrong (John Phillip Law).

It soon becomes obvious that Kol is a pretty strange guy. He spins this story about being from another planet. And he claims that a deadly killer robot has been sent to hunt him down.

It soon becomes apparent that Kol really is from another planet and the killer robot from outer space is real as well. Ward and the college kids are not entirely sure about Kol but they seem to have no choice other than to try to help escape from the killer robot. They figure the robot is trying to kill all of them.

The robot, the Alienator, is a lady killer robot (played by female bodybuilder Teagan Clive). The Alienator seems to be unstoppable. Bullets definitely do not stop her.

Ward turns to the Colonel (Leo Gordon). The Colonel was in Nam. He’s a war hero and a super-tough hombre. The Colonel doesn’t buy all this outer space stuff but he’s a man who never runs away from a fight. The Vietcong didn’t scare him and killer robot girls don’t scare him either.

Of course Ward and the college kids and the Colonel have have all been operating on the assumption that the Alienator is the villain, or rather villainess. That might be true but the action on Earth is intercut with action on that prison planet and the situation might be a good deal more complicated.

This is a very low-budget movie which usually didn’t bother Fred Olen Ray who always figured (mostly correctly) that energy and enthusiasm could compensate for lack of money.

The problem here isn’t the crude spaceship models. The problem is the Alienator. She doesn’t look very scary in a conventional way. She looks like she’s hoping for a gig as bass player in a really bad 70s metal band. Her whole look is so terrible that it achieves a bizarre kind of greatness. And Teagen Clive does have a certain presence. She’s certainly memorable, and that’s what counts. Like P.J. Soles’ cleavage in the early scenes she gets your attention.

The overall tone is pleasingly odd, with everyone playing things as straight as they can no matter how goofy things are getting.

There’s no graphic violence and no nudity. It’s silly lighthearted fun.

Fred Olen Ray had a knack for getting away with movies like this. You get the feeling that he was having a great time. You’ll need a lot of beers and a big tub of popcorn but if you have those things you’ll have a good time as well. The Alienator is recommended.

My copy is a Spanish DVD release (in English with removable Spanish subtitles) and it offers a pretty decent transfer. I believe there’s a Blu-Ray release, from Shout! Factory.

Genocyber (anime OVA, 1994)

Genocyber is a five-episode 1994 anime OVA directed by Kôichi Ôhata based on Tony Takezaki’s 1992 manga Genocyber: The Beauty Devil from Psychic World. The anime is a fine example of a good idea somewhat weakened by self-indulgent visual excess.

There’s a cyberpunk influence here, and a monster movie influence. Among other things it’s a mad scientist story.

This is a near-future world where attempts are being made, unsuccessful as usual, to eliminate war. As usual it seems that this peaceful utopia will be a global totalitarian state. National armies will be outlawed. There is a problem. Private corporations such as the Kuryu Corporation have more military power than most countries. And their ethical standards are much the same as those of governments - in other words they don’t have any ethical standards.

There are actually two mad scientists and they have been investigating the powers of the mind. There is within the human mind a mind shadow that can harness life energies and make them tangible, and potentially powerful in the physical world. The result is a kind of corporeal mind-creation, the Vajra.

Their research is centred on two sisters, Elaine and Diana. Whether they can be described as sisters or perhaps twins or whether they’re something else entirely is open to debate. They may be the daughters of one or other of the mad scientists.Diana has no functional body, only a cyberbody. Elaine has the mind of a child, or perhaps that of a wild animal.

Eventually two monstrous creations have come into being, the Vajranoid and Genocyber. This is the world of anime so it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions about which is good and which evil.

As usual when people try to bring about world peace it leads to war. A US supercarrier is involved. By chance Elaine is aboard the carrier. She has been adopted by a kindly female doctor, Myra. There’s another mad scientist and he has harnessed the Vajra to create the Vajranoid, a superweapon which is both cybernetic and biological and maybe something else. A lot of mayhem ensues. Cities get destroyed.

There’s an enormous amount of blood and gore. There’s so much that it quickly ceases to have any impact. Seeing a head explode might shock the first time but seeing a head explode for the 143rd time becomes tiresome. This anime needed more creepiness and dread and less gore.

That’s the first three episodes. Then it changes gear completely for the final two episodes. We’re in future society, the last refuge of humanity. It’s a utopia and like all utopias it’s actually a totalitarian dystopia. There’s another pair of sisters. There’s a young man and a young blind woman making a living with a sideshow act. There’s a strange religious cult. The cult incorporates element of Christianity combined with loads of other millenarian stuff. The connection with the three earlier episodes is rather tenuous. These two episodes feature a lot less gore, they’re much more atmospheric, they’re much weirder and much more interesting.

There are some genuinely cool ideas here. The plot is never fully explained. In fact the plot is totally incoherent. This OVA is not a complete success but it does have lots of WTF moments which I enjoy. I do like all the weird disturbing never-quite-explained sister stuff. These are sisters with a psychic link but the link is more mystical and mysterious than that. There are also plenty of suggestions of weird things being destined to happen.

I don’t object to gore but it tends to bore me. Too often it’s used to cover up a lack of real imagination. That’s a pity here since there is some real imagination in Genocyber. There’s a stupendous quantity of action. There’s some nudity and a small amount of sex.

This is a product of an era in anime when boundaries were being pushed and in which a major selling point for violent anime was that it was seen as very much not kids’ stuff. That did lead to excess for the sake of excess and Genocyber is guilty of that at times. Genocyber is very very violent indeed.

Whatever its faults Genocyber is unpredictable and in its own way memorable, and entertaining in a bizarre way. Recommended.

If you enjoy the wild crazy sex and violence-fuelled excesses of late 80s/early 90s anime then Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989) does it much better, as does the 1989-94 OVA Angel Cop.

Discotek’s Blu-Ray presentation is fine. The only worthwhile extra is a fairly informative essay.

Mosquito (1994)

Who doesn’t love giant bug movies? So how could you go wrong with a movie about giant killer mosquitos from outer space? Such a movie is Mosquito, directed by Gary Jones and released in 1994.

A spacecraft from some unknown planet crashes into a swamp. Pretty soon the locals are having a major problem with mosquitos. A really major problem. These mosquitos are as big as a dog. There’s not much left of a person who has been bitten by one of these gargantuan insects.

Ray and Megan are young marrieds who encounter these bugs when Ray’s car splatters one. They hook up with an Air Force meteor chaser and they run into a nasty bank robber named Earl and his halfwit brother. They also hookup with a ranger from the State Park, the inept Hendricks. These six people will be all that stands between our planet and conquest by the giant killer mosquitos.

They are all pretty standard character types.

It turns out to be an epic battle for survival.

This movie doesn’t bother itself too much with complicated pseudoscientific explanations. The bugs are radioactive which doesn’t have any real significance but is presumably a nod to all those 1950s monster movies that used radiation as an explanation for everything.

This movie also doesn’t bother too much with the standard trope of the genius scientist who discovers the fatal weakness in the alien invaders. Our six heroes just rely on blasting the bugs with shotguns and hacking them with axes.

Earl also uses a chainsaw at one point which is a kind of in-joke - Gunnar Hansen who plays Earl is best known for playing Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

On the subject of casting, Hendricks is played by Ron Asheton, Yes, Ron Asheton the guitarist from legendary proto-punk band The Stooges.

Apart from the obvious influence of 1950s giant bug movies Mosquito also borrows ideas from a stack of well-known movies, from Aliens to Night of the Living Dead.

For my tastes Mosquito relies too much on crude humour, especially early on. It also relies too much on gore but in 1994 that was presumably a commercial necessity. I’m just not a fan of gore. But if you like gore and you like seeing giant insects getting splattered there’s plenty here you’ll enjoy.

There’s a certain amount of excitement and lots of mayhem.

The acting ranges from bad to very bad.

The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was made in 1994 so it was made almost entirely using practical effects, not CGI. The giant mosquitos are mechanical giant mosquitos suspended on wires. There is even stop-motion animation. Some of the effects work well, others not so well, but that’s largely a result of the very small budget rather than the limitations of practical effects.

This is a very bad movie. This is Z-grade schlock. Mostly I like Z-grade schlock but this is just not quite my kind of Z-grade schlock. How much you’ll enjoy this movie is a matter of taste. If you enjoy gore and crass humour more than I do then you’ll enjoy it more than I did. I’m hesitant to recommend it but I’m also hesitant about advising people not to see it.

The Blu-Ray from Synapse looks fairly OK. I suspect that this is a movie that never looked all that great. There’s an audio commentary featuring director Gary Jones and a couple of other members of the crew.

Species (1995)

Species is a 1995 science fiction/horror/monster movie and it seems to be mostly dismissed as being a rather schlocky riff on Alien/Aliens. That’s a little bit unfair as we will see.

The real-life S.E.T.I. (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) projects have for decades been sending out engraved invitations to any advanced life forms out there in the galaxy to come and invade the Earth. It’s a bit like sending out cards to every known burglar in the country letting them know that as far as you’re concerned your home is their home.

In this movie in 1993 an alien civilisation responds to these messages. The response is in the form of instructions on how to do some really cool genetic manipulations. Naturally scientists, led by Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), decide to try out these experiments. What could go wrong? If you can’t trust aliens from an unknown extraterrestrial civilisation on an unknown planet who can you trust? The U.S. Government naturally funds the project.

The result of the project is a little girl who becomes known as Sil. She looks like any normal twelve-year-old girl which is a bit concerning since she’s only a few months old. Sil also seems to be faster and more powerful than a normal twelve-year-old girl. The scientists are afraid of her. When they get really afraid of her they decide to kill her. They describe it as “terminating the project” which sounds so much nicer than murdering a child.

Sil’s execution by lethal gas is the opening scene of the movie but Sil escapes. Now she must be hunted down and destroyed. That proves to be quite a challenge.

Fitch assembles a team of four for the hunt. There are two scientists, Dr Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina) and Dr Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger). There’s Dan (Forest Whitaker), an unstable empath who seems to have various extra-sensory power. And there’s a government assassin, Preston Lennox (Michael Madsen).

Sil has grown up fast. She now looks like a gorgeous 20-year-old blonde woman (and is now played by Natasha Henstridge). Sil is confused but she has a strong survival instinct and she’s half-human while the other half is an alien predator.

Sil also has a strong instinct to reproduce. That’s what really scares Fitch. He has no idea how many offspring she can produce and how quickly she can do it. She has to be destroyed before she can breed.

This is a movie that you need to think about. On the surface it’s a monster movie with government agents hunting down a monster from outer space. But the more you think about it the more nuanced it becomes. Sil is not necessarily an evil monster as such, and her hunters are perhaps not quite the uncomplicated good guys they seem to be.

It’s important to note that the government scientists start trying to kill Sil before she ever tries to kill anyone. And although she ends up killing lots of people from her point of view she is killing in self-defence. Sometimes her ideas of self-defence are a little pro-active - she sometimes kills people who are merely potential threats. But to her they are very real potential threats. And the decision to hunt her down and destroy her is also made before she has killed anybody.

She just scares these scientists a lot, so the safest thing is to kill her.

Sil is only half-human. Her non-human half is animal-like, driven purely by the natural instinct to survive and to reproduce. Expecting moral judgments from her is like expecting a lion to agonise over the ethical implications of eating zebras, or expecting a tigress to consider the moral dimensions of killing in order to protect her cubs.

Fitch is a character with a little bit of depth. He thinks of himself as a rational man whose mind is never clouded by emotion, a man capable of taking tough decisions. He is however not as sure of himself as he seems to be. He cries when he orders Sil’s execution. He is also a lot more frightened than he’ll admit, and he’s also aware that he has screwed up pretty badly. Ben Kingley does a pretty good in the role, giving us hints that Fitch is only just holding himself together.

When judging Natasha Henstridge’s performance you have to remember that her character is not a woman. She is only half-human, and her human half is both intelligent and child-like. And totally unsocialised. She has to come across as not quit human and Miss Henstridge does a fine job of getting that across.

H.R. Giger did the monster design work, in his characteristic amazing style.

Species is an interestingly deceptive movie. You can enjoy it as a straight-out monster-hunting movie but there’s some subtlety and ambiguity there if you care to look for them. This is a monster who is very scared. I liked this movie a great deal. Highly recommended.

Species looks terrific on Blu-Ray.

Genocide (1968)

In the late 1960s Japan’s Shochiku studio made a short-lived and rather tentative attempt to break into the booming market for science fiction, horror and monster movies. Four of these movies are included in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku. While it’s a cool name for a boxed set it’s a tad misleading since these movies are certainly not typical late 60s horror films. They all combine horror and science fiction in weird and wonderful ways.

Genocide begins with a swarm of insects causing an American B-52 bomber to crash into the sea near Kojima Island, just off the coast of Japan. The three crew members survive and reach the island. The B-52 was carrying a H-bomb.

The crash was witnessed by Joji (Yûsuke Kawazu), a young Japanese guy who collects insects for a scientist. At least his gorgeous young wife Yukari (Emi Shindô) thinks he’s collecting insects. Actually he’s canoodling with a blonde named Annabelle (Kathy Horan).

The Americans really want to find their H-bomb. They do find the three crew members but two are dead and the third, Charly, has lost his memory (we later find out he’s lost his mind as well).

Joji is now under suspicion of murder. Yukari knows about the blonde and she’s not happy about it but she still loves Joji. She appeals to Dr Nagumo (Keisuke Sonoi) for help. Nagumo is the scientist for whom Joji collects bugs. Nagumo is keen to help.

So far it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Well it won’t make sense for long. Dr Nagumo is already disturbed by reports from around the globe of strange insect behaviour.

Dr Nagumo is more worried after he’s visited the cave in which the American airmen took shelter. He’s also worried about Charly’s condition. Charly has been seriously spooked by something. He is now terrified of bugs.

The bugs are definitely behaving oddly but there are humans on the island who are up to mysterious and possibly wicked things as well. At this stage we have no idea what they might be up to or which of the people on the island might be involved.

There are quite a few people acting strangely. There’s the creepy guy at the hotel. Maybe he just wants to get into Yukari’s pants but maybe he has another agenda as well. We know that Joji has been covering up his torrid love affair with Annabelle. He could be covering up other things. Dr Nagumo seems like a nice guy but we can’t discount the possibility he might turn out to be a mad scientist. We’re a bit suspicious of Annabelle. And the Americans get rather evasive when they’re asked about that H-bomb.

Up to this point the movie’s craziness level is in low gear but it will soon be kicked into overdrive. The motivations of the various characters are totally nuts. The nature of the mysterious happenings on the island turns out to be bizarre.

And then we get a full-blown psychedelic freak-out sequence.

The acting isn’t very good but it’s appropriate to the demented subject matter and I rather enjoyed Kathy Horan doing the dangerous blonde thing as Annabelle.

The special effects (and especially the miniatures work) are definitely iffy. That doesn’t matter in such an insane movie. It just adds to the fun. And some of the effects with the insects do work.

The plot is gloriously silly but you have to admire its boldness. Who says movies have to make sense?

Genocide is a wild crazy ride. The pacing is excellent. The craziness doesn’t let up. Thankfully there’s no comic relief. There’s an anti-war message but it doesn’t become tedious. There’s delightfully off-the-wall pseudo-science. It combines horror, science fiction and spy film elements. Genocide is just pure enjoyment. Highly recommended if you love insane psychotronic movies.

The DVD transfer is very good. So far I’ve watched three of the movies in the boxed set. The X from Outer Space (1967) and The Living Skeleton (1968) are both goofy fun while Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) is delightfully deranged.

Monster on the Campus (1958)

Monster on the Campus is a 1958 science fiction monster movie but it includes the words “directed by Jack Arnold” in the credits and that always inspires confidence. No matter how outlandish the ideas you know it will be a well-crafted movie.

This movie belongs to the smallest of all movie sub-genres - the coelacanth horror film. Yes, coelacanth, the famous “living fossils” - the fish species assumed to have been extinct for 60 million years before its rediscovery in the 1930s. These fish were at the time thought to have remained unchanged for several hundred million years. It was believed that they had not evolved at all. In this movie these odd fish spread horror and mayhem on an American university campus.

It all begins when the university acquires a fine specimen of a coelacanth. Professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) just can’t wait to start dissecting.

The coelacanth arrives in a truck, packed in a crate. While it’s being removed from the truck bloody water from the crate drips onto the roadway and Samson licks it. Samson is a German Shepherd, the much-loved mascot of a fraternity house. He’s a very friendly very gentle dog.

Shortly afterwards Samson turns savage. He has never done this before. He has to be locked in a cage for veterinary observation. Professor Blake notices something else very strange and inexplicable about the dog.

Professor Blake is feeling very tired and the campus nurse, Molly Riordan (Helen Westcott) offers to drive him home. Some hours later Molly’s dead body is discovered.

Professor Blake is now an obvious murder suspect but Detective Lieutenant Mike Stevens is inclined to think the professor is innocent. The fingerprint and footprint evidence seems to clinch the matter. Professor Blake is not the killer. But there is a killer loose on campus.

The footprints help to clear Blake but they mystify the cops. What kind of man could leave footprints like that?

Professor Blake comes up with a wild theory. I won’t spoil things by revealing his theory other than to say that it has to do with the peculiar nature of the coelacanth. The science stuff is this movie is delightfully silly and off-the-wall. You expect that in a 50s sci-fi monster movie, but in this case the insane pseudoscientific ideas are at least interesting and amusing and have some original elements.

The professor believes the giant dragonfly (two feet long) that flies into his laboratory window confirms his theory.

He tries to explain his theory to his department head and to his colleagues but they think he’s gone nuts.

His girlfriend Madeline (Joanna Moore) wants to stand by him but she thinks his theories are crazy as well.

Poor Molly was just the first victim of the mysterious monstrous campus killer.

Professor Blake eventually figures things out and comes up with a plan to destroy the monster.

The special effects and makeup effects are mostly laughably silly (especially the giant dragonfly) but surprisingly there’s a transformation scene that is superbly done.

The various cast members try to take it all very seriously which adds to the fun.

Jack Arnold made much much better movies than this but he does his best with the material he’s given.

The sheer lunacy of the premise is delightful. The fact that we’re meant to think the professor is a genius but his scientific methods are so sloppy adds more enjoyment.

This is not by any stretch of the imagination a great movie or even a particularly good one. It’s strictly a beer and popcorn movie. If that’s what you’re in the mood for it’s worth a look.

Universal's Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection offers five films on DVD and all are worth seeing. The Monolith Monsters (1957) is particularly good. Monster on the Campus gets a very nice transfer (the movie is in black-and-white).

Hardware (1990)

Hardware is a 1990 post-apocalyptic science fiction-action-horror movie that borrows heavily from other movies in these genres. There’s nothing original about the ideas but the execution is interesting if a bit pretentious at times.

It’s the usual post-apocalyptic setup. The United States is now mostly a radioactive scrap heap. The government is vicious and tyrannical but perhaps not very efficient.

One way to survive in this world is by scavenging. There’s a lot of discarded tech stuff around if you’re prepared take a few risks to find it. Some is just junk. Some is worth money.

A strange wandering dude finds a couple of interesting items in the desert. A mechanical hand and a robot head. He sells them to a scrap dealer, who sells them on to Mo Baxter (Dylan McDermott). Mo gives them to his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis). Jill is a crazy artist who makes weird sculptures out of scrap metal, discarded tech and plastic dolls.

Mo is a kind of Space Marine but he’s not particularly motivated. It pays well and he needs the money.

Jill is paranoid, which is a sensible thing for a girl to be in this world. Her apartment has ultra-sophisticated security.

The relationship between Mo and Jill is uneasy. They’re in love but relationships are difficult in this world. Mo’s job takes him away a lot of the time, which Jill resents.

The robot head is not mere junk. Unfortunately it still functions although nobody has realised that yet. It’s part of a military android. The world is in ruins but the government can still find the money to finance horrific killing machines for the military. The Mark 13 combat android is very nasty indeed. It is of course only supposed to kill the enemies of the state which would be fine if it were functioning properly, which it isn’t. It sees everyone as an enemy.

And it’s now sitting in Jill’s living room. This is not going to end well. Of course we know it will go on a killing rampage.

Jill also doesn’t know that she is being watched by a very creepy Peeping Tom in a neighbouring apartment. His name is Lincoln and he’ll play a part in this story.

Mo’s good-natured spaced-out buddy Shades will play a part as well.

There are several rock stars in this movie which is appropriate since it plays a bit like an ultra-violent MTV video. Iggy Pop’s voice is heard for about 90 seconds in total (as a DJ) but he got prominent billing and a pay cheque so I guess he wasn’t complaining. Lemmy contributes a cameo as a water-cab driver.

This was a low-budget movie but the special effects are very impressive. It has a very strong and very effective cyberpunk vibe, but this is a grungy decaying post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world. There’s nothing wildly original about the aesthetic at work here but it’s executed very well. The killer android looks convincingly evil and menacing. The budget may have been small but the money that was spent is all up there on the screen.

The whole thing is hyperactive and gets a bit self-consciously clever at times. It tries very hard to be arty. Sometimes it succeeds. There’s a lot of gore.

The acting is barely adequate.

There is a steamy sex scene which apparently got the movie into trouble with the moral watchdogs.

What this movie does have is plenty of action and energy. It’s reminiscent of Alien in the sense that it’s about horrifying events taking place in a confined space. There’s nowhere to run to for either the monster or his potential victims, so it’s kill or be killed. And that works extremely well.

Hardware offers exciting mayhem done in a visually interesting way and it’s highly recommended.

Hardware looks great on Blu-Ray.