Movie review - "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (2018) **1/2

 Look, not a great movie - as pointed out by Honest Trailers it copies the structure of The Lost World, continually references back to film #1 (and the Alien franchise), and the characters are just types. Also it's not as fun to see dinosaurs running amok in a mansion as opposed to an island or a city.

But the action is well staged and consistent; it doesn't pause. I found the subplot about the girl realising she was cloned quite effective. 

I wish they'd kill some of these raptors with poisoned eggs, like in the book. 

Book review - "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton (1990)

 Crichton's masterpiece. It's got everything - a big concept, a world that is well thought out (he fleshes out the theme park more than he could do in Westworld), fantastic sequences. Crichton's description of action wasn't always the best in his novels but it is here - it must be because he wrote it first as a screenplay. The initial attack of the T Rex, the aviary sequence, Grant poisoning eggs to kill raptors...

The violence is quick, brutal, terrifying. The films were so jokey in comparison.  I wish they'd do a film with the violence and terror of this, and the intelligence. You can't aruge with success though.

Movie review - "Jurassic World" (2015) **1/2 (rewatching)

 I respect the money this film made. It passes the time. Decent effects. But it's silly. So light. Dinosaurs on a rampage and no one seems to care. Chris Pratt camps it up as does Bryce Dallas Howard. Lauren Lupkus and Jake Johnson play it too light. That kid Nick Robinson is a sulky teen.

I just didn't like it. 

Good to have the park up and running though. 

Movie review - "Jurassic Park 3" (2001) **

 Written a few weeks before filming and you can tell. No characters are intresting. No relationships. Sam Neill is professional but his relationship with Alessandra Nivola is dull, as is Nivola (with a backpack, come on). Tea Leoni and William H Macy never seem like they were married or parents, the kid is dull, no support characters. Why no decent villains?

They could've just had Laura Dern looking for Sam Neill or vice versa.

Decent effects. You can see the money on screen. 

TV review - "The Lost World: The Journey Begins and Stranded" (1999) **1/2

 Pilot for the adventure series shot on the Gold Coast - there were a bunch of them made there around that time including Beastmaster, Tales of the South Seas and so on. It's silly tongue in cheek fun, played with conviction. The cast is fine - the standouts are the two women: feisty heiress Rachel Blakely (who has urst with the hunky hunter Will Snow) and the fur bikini wearing cavewoman. Variable effects, a sense of fun.

The director was Richard Franklin, who did a number of episodes, and the executive producer was John Landis.

Movie review - "The Saga of the Viking Women" (1958) **1/2 (warning: spoilers) (re-watching)

Really good fun. Corman films took on extra life with female protagonists - this has the bright idea of some viking women going looking for the men who went missing.

They wreck the concept by having Jonathan Haze come along -no slight on him, it's just the film would've been more fun without him.

Corman didn't think the script was great but I feel it's solid - decent conflict with Susan Cabot jealous over Abby Dalton's boyfriend. Gary Conway is in it and Richard Devon and his camp son are entertaining villains. I wish this movie had more money and time - it didn't need the sea creature, the women dealing with the men who've kidnapped their men would be enough.

Strong performances from Abby Dalton and Susan Cabot. They look great in their outfits and it's always moving and there's plenty of action. It's silly but fun.

Book review - "Dragon Teeth" by Michael Crichton (2017)

Posthumously published novel by Crichton which apparently he started in the 70s - it's in the vein of The Great Train Robbery or Eaters of the Dead, a historical romp. It's set during the bone wars, a period of time about which I knew little but sounds fascinating - the late 19th century when American paleontologists competed against each other on digs in the American west.

The first section of this I found stiff - the paleontologist characters weren't that interesting, neither was the hero. But it got better once the hero went out on a dig and got cut off, and gets great when he's stranded in Deadwood. The main baddy isn't that memorable, nor is the girl (Crichton was never that good on creating memorable characters) but Wyatt Earp pops up at the end and livens up everything. He's one of Crichton's most effective characterisations. 

There's lots of spooky tension in the second half and effective double crosses as the hero tries to salvage the bones. This is first rate stuff.

Crichton's writing most comes alive when he's done his research - say, on shoot outs in the main street of town, the law and economy of Deadwood, digging, the technology of early photography. This is when the book is at its best, that and tension/suspense. Curiously, he's not that good describing action.

But a book I'm glad I read which really picked up in the second half.

Movie review - "Jurassic World" (2015) **1/2

I don't care if it made a billion dollars it's not very good, a Spielberg film made by someone who isn't Spielberg. It's all a bit crap - the two juveniles get on the nerves (a posey teenage boy who seems interested in his hair, a bratty kid wanting to see rides); an underdeveloped personal connection with Bryce Dallas Howard (she's their aunt - who cares?).

Bryce Howard and Chris Pratt seem to be sending up their roles - uptight gal and cocky guy. The action scenes felt lazy - there's little stand out suspense and not much logic. Even though it's set off the coast of Costa Rice, it's a very white American cast.

It's colourful and some of the special effects are okay. I like the actors. I know it made a lot of money - surely that was nostalgia and big screen spectacle rather than anything else?

Movie review - "The Lost World" (1960) ** (warning: spoilers)

20th Century Fox's attempt to repeat the success of Journey to the Center of the Earth with another respected English character actor and occasional star in the lead (Claude Rains) plus some handsome lunks under contract to the studio in support (David Hedison, Jill St John, Michael Rennie), in addition to character actors, a comic animal and special effects.

Claude Rains has a lot of fun with dyed red hair and beard - I think he could have gone even more hammier. Jill St John later grew into an okay actor but she's dreadful here - she copped it for wearing tight pink pants but that's not the problem, it's her acting. Michael Rennie is the big game hunter who is along on the ride for back story; there's also journalist David Hedison, St John's brother Ray Stricklyn (who basically has "surplus to requirements character ready to die" tattooed on his head... only he lives!), Fernando Lamas as a suave (surprise!) pilot; Richard Haydn as a rival professor; Jay Novello as a comic relief scaredy-cat. Throw in a beautiful native girl, a long lost previous explorer who's discovered (wasn't this in The Land That Time Forgot?) and you've got an awfully big cast. Too big really.

I guess they wanted Rennie and Hedison to fighr over St John and Haydn and Rains to fight with each other and Stricklyn to romance a native girl, and Lamas to turn traitor... but honestly some of these roles could have been doubled up.

I didn't mind the back story about the previous expedition although the connection of the survivors felt tenuous - I wish Rennie had had more a personal link than "I was going to be their guide". The romance between Stricklyn and the native girl is really under-developed; ditto that between St John and Hedison.

It lacks a sense of wonder and adventure - I think setting it in the present day was a mistake, these things always feel more "real" set in the past. The special effects aren't that great either - we never really get decent dinosaur action - and instead of stop motion action they use enlarged lizards. The movie feels like it was made for a million dollars too little or something.

Irwin Allen fans will enjoy the scene of the cast creeping along a narrow passage way avoiding fire - which would pop up in The Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out. Kids will probably like it. Its in colour and is harmless.

Movie review - "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" (1970) **1/2

The success of She and One Million Years BC kicked off a fantasy cycle for Hammer, of which is one of the best. It repeats One Million Years' formula of hot cave women and cave men running around wearing not much fighting each other and some dinosaurs.

Victoria Vetri was selected to fill Raquel Welch's fur bikini as a woman who is about to be burned at the stake but escapes and falls for a man from another tribe, Robin Hawdon. He's got dark hair, so have the women who want to get off with him and Vetri is a blonde (there's a bit of pro-blonde propaganda in these films eg Slave Girl).

The story is silly - Vetri and Hawdon running around, clambering over cliffs, trying to escape nasty cavemen, the elements and dinosaurs (who are constantly used as a deux ex machina). This is a bit more "sea-oriented" than other entries - several times characters clamber on to rafts and people almost drown.

The dinosaur stuff is pretty good: lizards, birds, snakes, crabs and what-not. It is hard to tell the actors apart at times but Vetri is very statuesque and the cast is extremely good looking. This is one of the sexiest movies in the series - Vetri and Hawdon are really into each other and they go for it in that cave (there's a version with a nude swim too).

Movie review - "The Lost Continent" (1969) ***

Hammer fantasy which serves to show that Michael Carreras really isn't much of a writer or director but is a lot of fun. It's got something for everyone really: a ship containing an assortment of passengers (frizzy haired man with pencil moustache who looks like a pimp, a mysterious woman with an accent who looks like a man, slutty blonde who just wants to be rooted, alcoholic jazz playing pianist, molesting doctor) led by some odd sailors (an officer with unconvincing blonde dyed hair, Eric Porter as a harsh captain with a taste for beating people to a pulp), gets in a storm and wind up in a lost swamp area.

They hop off the ship then hop on again, a repetitive story beat which is just one of the many story problems this film has. The land they arrive in is populated by weird deadly sea creatures, a woman with large breasts and several of her friends who kept above the water with balloons and oppressed by descendants of the Spanish inquisition led by a crazed child. 

It's kind of an insane, mad film that probably needed to be done with greater gusto. It definitely needed to get to the Lost Continent earlier - they could have started the movie with the main characters in the life boat waiting to see if the boat was going to blow up. Their adventures once they get there seem rushed. Also there's some silly decisions like inserting an awful theme song.

It also lacks some Hammer star power - Eric Porter was okay but no Cushing, Lee or Andrew Keir. Suzanna Leigh is a delight in low-cut outfits as an aspirational tart who looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, the support cast seem to be having a high old time. Not top rank Hammer fantasy but worth checking out as a slightly classier version of Slave Girls.

Book review - "Hammer Fantasy and Sci Fi" by Bruce Hallenbeck

There was more to Hammer than horror and this is a long-over due book, focusing on their fantasy and sci-fi films (the completist in me wishes that someone would do a similar one for their psycho thrillers, swashbucklers, war tales and crime dramas... not really their comedies, though). The introductory summaries of science fiction and fantasy feels perfunctory but the book gets better once it start talking about Hammer's films.

In hindsight, Hammer's record with sci fi and fantasy is very impressive - the Quatermass movies that put them on the map, X the Unknown (which really started Jimmy Sangster's writing career), The Abominable Snowman, One Million Years BC (which produced the most famous Hammer image), She, The Damned... these movies rank with the best the studio ever came up with. However when they went wrong they really went wrong - Creatures that Time Forgot and Moon Zero Two helped wreck the company and rank with the worst movies Hammer ever made.

This is an enthusiastic book which perhaps over relies a little too much on secondary sources and could have had more detail but has plenty of pictures and is full of interesting stories, like the troubles making When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and The Lost Continent (major head ache epics). Michael Carreras was more of a creative figure for these films - not always to their benefit. I enjoyed the critical round ups of the movies, particularly the appreciation of The Damned.

Move review – “Prehistoric Women” (1967) **

Enormously enjoyable crappy Hammer glamour production with a hunter (Michael Latimer) looking for the white rhinoceros finding himself in a prehistoric era where the world is run by brunette women who lord it over blonde girls and the men (who are slaves). In other words this is Hammer’s version of those sexist 50s sci fi films about all women societies such as Cat Women on the Moon.

 

There’s some great awful dancing (for a white rhino sacrifice), a few cat fights, a hilariously bad white rhino, lots of very attractive women in fut bikinis (Edina Ronney is the leader of the blondes), some dancing black tribesmen, very dodgy sexual politics (though to be fair the film acknowledges that the blondes were originally slave owners). 

 

The best performance is from Martine Beswicke who plays the villainous queen; she's in great form, whether trying to seduce Latimer and make him her toy boy, having milk baths, standing naked in front of Latimer, sacrificing blondes, or getting impaled by a rhino on wheels. Steven Berkoff is in the cast!

Movie review – “The Vengeance of She” (1967) **

Although H Rider Haggard wrote a an acceptable sequel to She, Ayesha, Hammer decided to come up with their own sequel to their 1965 film, although it re-uses several characters. This one is set in the present day an actually starts quite eerily with Olinka Berova someone walking along a deserted road – then promptly gets silly with a truck driver trying to rape her, but said truck driver is run over by his truck. The girl winds up on the French Riviera on a yacht owned by rich dissolute Colin Blakely, and including his wife and psychiatrist (Edward Judd)! Berova jumps off the ship and Blakely has a heart attack rescuing her. She takes off in North Africa and Judd decides to follow her.

This isn’t much of a set up. The girl is driven by visions in her head but isn’t that keen to find whatever is driving her. (The jazz longue music score doesn’t help). The shrink takes off after her but not until around 40 minutes in (he’s accompanied by the ship’s captain) – and we’ve never really established that he’s obsessed with her. (When the girl falls out of the water its Blakely not Judd who rescues her.)

It’s so unexotic – Judd’s a shrink for God’s sake. He goes looking for her in a jeep –that’s not adventurous (where are the camels, the feeling of being cut off from civilisation). And it’s set in the present day. (NB It also feels as though some scenes have been cut out around this point). I always remembered Edward Judd’s performance from this film as a prime example of the not-really-attractive-enough-too-old-British-leading-man – there’s a bunch of them in British cinema, including Ian Hendry in Theatre of Blood. His character isn’t very likeable – why is it so great Berova goes off with Judd, who manipulates her mind, instead of Richardson? They’re both brainwashers. (Richardson looks old and tired here, much more so than the previous film even though this was only made a few years later.)

On the sunny side Berova is very attractive, genuinely looks like she could be a reincarnation of Andress, and frequently walks around with not much on. And some of the supporting players are fine. But the whole film is a great opportunity missed.

Movie review – “Creatures the World Forgot” (1971) **

More prehistoric shenanigans from Hammer, although unlike One Million Years BC and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, there are no dinosaurs – which is more realistic and would have been cheaper to make but kind of misses half the point of making these films. The other half point is to see women in caveman bikinis but that’s not enough on its own – and this movie compounds the error by focusing most of its attention on the guys.

There’s about 20 minutes of backstory about a tribe fleeing from a volcano, and fighting, and meeting another tribe and having one of their women (at a sort of cave man orgy), and fleeing again, until the woman gives birth to twins and the story starts. One twin is light hailed (Australia’s Tony Bonner!), one is dark haired; consistent with the film’s theme that light haired people are a more advanced than dark, the dark haired twin hates the blonde, and tries to take over the tribe a la Cain and Abel. Even though Bonner beats his brother in a fight he doesn’t kill him, but takes off to set up his tribe elsewhere – he runs into another tribe, gets a woman from that (it’s a repetitive sort of movie), then has to fight his brother.

There is always something happening – usually a fight – but much of the action is repetitive, and there is little characterisation or complexity to speak of. It’s not even that sexy – Julie Edge is the main woman looks fetching but isn’t given that much to do. (There’s also a beautiful mute girl who does more action but Bonner goes off with Edge at the end which seems a little unfair.) Director Don Chaffey and producer Michael Carreras seem more interested in scenes of men wrestling with one another on the ground.

It looks terrific, though: the Namibian scenery is stunning (deserts, rocks, forest, waterfalls). Bonner has the physique of a caveman, although his blonde hair and beard (which makes him look much older) are a little odd. Hammer did not make any more films along this line.

Movie review – “Saga of the Viking Women” (1957) **

One of Roger Corman’s least regarded films (especially by himself) is up on the net on the AMCTV website. It’s actually not too bad – I don’t think Corman has ever made an out-and-out bad film – although stories about Vikings don’t lend themselves to low budget filmmaking.

From the beginning of his career Corman showed an interest in female protagonists and this is no exception: the plot is about some viking women who go looking for their men, who went out on an expedition a few years ago and haven’t come back – that’s not a bad idea for a film. Neither is the idea they wind up in a foreign country where the architecture gives hints that maybe the Vikings are around. Sure enough they are there – kept as slaves.

This has some good looking women in viking outfits and impressive photography. It’s also quasi-feminist, with women Vikings beating up various men – one even beats the effeminite local prince in an arm wrestle. Sometimes the low budget hurts – the crappy back projection sea monster at the beginning and end, rather sparse banquet halls, poor acting, and sometimes the actors look plain silly in their outfits. Structure-wise the last ten minutes feel added on – the film feels like it should end when they escape and havet the baddy at their mercy. But they let him go, enabling him tohave a funeral for his son then chase after them.

But there’s plenty of action – there’s always someone running around, either on horseback or throwing a punch, a burning at the stake. There’s also a funeral where they throw a live woman on to the pyre to keep the dead prince happy (the prince was killed by a bolt of lightening) and a bit where the goddies pray for rain and it comes.

Susan Cabot adds some star quality as a priestess viking tempted to betray her people and Abbey Dalton is pretty. The men aren’t much – Cormon seemed to have a lot of bland blonde leading men around this time, the king of the Vikings is one he looks like a footballer called Chad.

Movie review – “The Lost World” (1925) **1/2

Fun version of Conan Doyle’s classic tale of exploration, led by Wallace Beery’s fine old barnstorming performance as Professor Challenger, foul of temper and fond of throttling journalist. He heads off to the Amazon with an interesting group of characters (heartthrob journo, rival professor, pretty daughter of missing prior explorer, gentleman shooter, an unfortunate black face servant), all of whom offer interesting subplot potential, none of which is really taken up except a blah romance involving journalist and the daughter.

There are some good sequences arriving at the Lost World and fleeing from dinosaurs and escaping from the ape men, but most of the time our heroes stand around being passive while dinosaurs slug it out and volcanoes. There is a last act where a poor old brontosaurus gets stuck in mud and falls off the plateau; they ship him back to London where he escapes and goes on a rampage. The poor thing is quite entitled, and you’re glad that he swims away at the end. (None of the expedition seem too concerned about the damage they’ve indirectly caused to London.) The best performance comes unexpectedly from Lewis Stone who plays the middle aged hunter who loves the girl only to lose him to his young friend – he gets the last close up.

Movie review – “The People That Time Forgot” (1977) ***

Enjoyable sequel to The Land That Time Forgot which has square-jawed Patrick Wayne leading an expedition to find Doug McClure. He sails to the Antarctica then fliers in a plane with a spunky female journalist, a Brit and Shane Rimmer, that American actor who seemed to be in every second blockbuster of the 70s. While all the cavemen in Land were Neanderthals, wearing lots of make up, here there’s a tribe of basically humans – including a fetching cave girl with ridiculously expansive cleavage. Several of them speak English – apparently Doug McClure taught them (because that’s what you need to know when there’s only one English speaker on the land – English).

Like the earlier film this is an entertainingly silly tale with a real feel for adventure. There are too many flash backs to the American guy back at the plane and not as much action as in the other movies, but it is still rousing and the search of Doug McClure gives the film a strong narrative drive.

Wayne was supporting his Dad in movies back in the early 60s; he’s a handsome lunk but he’s not much of an actor – Doug McClure was better. So it’s good to see McClure back in the film – the fate of his character gives the movie some depth (Penhalgion’s is killed). Sarah Douglas tags along as a female reporter – I couldn’t pick her at first but she’s one of the three villains in the second Superman. (NB This is copyrighted to AIP not Amicus; presumably AIP took over or something – not that they’d have to buy the rights of a non-copyrighted work.)

Movie review – “Warlords of Atlantis” (1978) **

Doug McClure and Kevin Connor team for their fourth period adventure film, although this is the first not based on a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. McClure’s part of a deep sea diving expedition in a not very convincing contraption (it is open at the bottom); he winds up in Atlantis. He and a mate get there via the contraption but then the guys on the ship just swim there, which seemed like cheating somehow.

Atlantis itself is a bit silly. I know the other films made by this team were silly too but this one is especially so. The locals wear Prince Valiant haircuts, the art direction isn’t as impressive and there’s not as much action. Some sloppiness which hints at a lowered budget - when an octopus attacks the ship water gets on the lens – couldn’t they protect the camera? Also the story isn’t much: it was a mistake to have so many sailors wind up on the expedition; the plot is mostly arrive-get arrested-escape; there’s no emotional connection (the romance with the girl seems perfunctory); McClure is starting to look old. Also there’s this irritating coda about mutinous crew members, when we don’t really care.

The cast include Shane Rimmer and a pre-Cheers John Katzenberger. Atlantians include Daniel Massey and good old Cyd Charisse, who even flashes her legs for old time’s sake – they’re still great! And the opening credit sequence is spookily enjoyable. But generally this is pretty poor. It needed a stronger story and atmosphere, and more effort all round.

Movie review – “At the Earth’s Core” (1976) ***

The Land That Time Forgot proved popular so the same team turned to another Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, this one about an expedition to the centre of the Earth. Unlike the adventurers in Land, the explorers in this one asked for the trouble they got into – Doug McClure and Peter Cushing (with bald spot) try to drill through the earth, before winding up in a mystery land. It’s a studio created land this time (being underground), imaginatively put together by the art department, and some of the locals are humans, including a comely Carol Munro. There are also various weird creatures.

The actual plot is the standard lost world/time travel one – foreigners arrive in an exotic location, help oppressed locals throw off their tyrannical overseers (I don’t know who invented this – HG Welles in The Time Machine maybe? - but everyone uses it.)

McClure gives a broader, more comic performance than that time – for the first ten minutes after which he returns to the requisite he-man stuff. Cushing is also atypically cast, as a stuffy professor (he’s okay, but his put-on voice gets wearying very quickly and isn’t the reason you cast Cushing is to have someone play a whip-smart dude? There are lots of more appropriate actors in England to play stuffy.)

Like Land I laughed at some of this – cavemen speaking English, some of the creature effects (paper mache doesn’t look so crash hot in close up), the sex bomb performance of Munro (she’s always grinning even when her life is in danger and wears far too much make up) - but still enjoyed it. The sets are great and it had a real spirit of adventure and plenty of action; in its quiet moments (eg McClure creeping through caves) were particularly effective. Some of it was reminiscent of Return of the Jedi – McClure’s fight with a dinosaur in a dungeon, the make up of the evil creatures.