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Mainstream Films:
2025 The Gorge
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Written by Zach Dean
Stars Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver
Run Time: 2 Hours, 7 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was better than we expected and more than we expected. The preview was done right, giving just a little taste of the movie, and it was good going into it blind. It wasn’t a perfect film, but we both enjoyed it.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on Drasa, sleeping in a cave. She marks another day off her calendar as she points her sniper rifle out toward a far distant airport. One shot, and her victim falls down dead. Credits roll.
We cut to Levi, getting up and driving to the beach as the sun rises. He’s told to report to the military base, where he meets Bartholemew, who’s a high-up spy. She talks about his history as a Marine Corps sniper. He’s got quite a list of kills. She’s got a job for him.
Meanwhile, in Lithuania, Drasa and her father visit a graveyard. They talk about her latest kill, an arms dealer who totally had it coming. The old man is dying, and she’s going away for at least a year, so they say their goodbyes.
Levi parachutes down over the no-fly zone and has to walk miles to his very isolated destination, an extremely deep gorge. He meets J.D., a soldier who briefs Levi. Neither of them has any idea what country this is. J.D. hasn’t seen a single person during the past year, and Levi will be his replacement.
Levi tours the observation tower where he’ll be spending the next year. There’s another tower on the other side, but Levi isn’t allowed to make contact with them. There’s a lot of technology and air raid sirens. It’s all very secret. Russians and Americans have been working together on this for decades without their own leaders knowing about this place. It’s even cloaked electronically from satellites.
Levi needs to stop what’s in the gorge from coming out. They hear “The hollow men” down below screaming. Those things are extremely lethal.
“The gorge is the door to Hell and we’re standing guard at the gate,” J.D. hypothesizes before leaving Levi on his own. The helicopter then comes to pick up J.D., and the man on board shoots him.
Levi walks the wall of the gorge, and there are some very heavy weapons and mines and barriers installed there. We see that Drasa is now working in the tower on the other side. A couple months in, she holds up a sign wanting to know his name. They both know they aren’t allowed to communicate, but they do it anyway. They soon learn that they are both master snipers. They make a lot of noise, enough to wake up whatever’s down below.
They see the things crawling up the walls, and they both shoot the horde. Between the machine guns and the explosives in the walls, they get most of the plant-covered creatures. Drasa gets splattered in the shoulder with molten metal from one of the mines. But like all hits and bangs and draggings and wounds in this movie, it’s not too big of a deal.
In the morning, they have to clean up and replace the mines. Something like a rocket or drone comes up out of the gorge and flies away.
As the months pass, they continue to communicate by holding up signs to each other. Levi assembles a zipline by shooting the other side with a rocket. As Levi crosses, he hears the creatures way down in the foggy gorge. They have a nice evening together. They talk about their assassinations over their careers.
On the way back across the zipline, one of the creatures sets off a mine, and the cable snaps. He pops his parachute and goes down. Drasa jumps into the gorge with a parachute after him as well.
Levi finds himself being attacked by a giant caterpillar and then he’s attacked by hungry tree roots. Suddenly, they’re attacked by more of those plant-creatures, but this time, they’re on plant-horses. These aren’t demons, they’re the men who were sent into the gorge in the 1940s, infected with some kind of plant plague.
They walk through the landscape, and there are skeletons and bones everywhere. Then they find a long-abandoned town and they stop in to hide in an old church. There are many bodies inside, at least some are apparently suicides. They’re attacked by a horde of skull-spiders and then more humanoid creatures, and it’s all very action-packed and intense (how much ammo could they be carrying?).
They leave the church and get into an old WWII-era lab. They turn on the generator and the lights come right on. They find a movie reel and watch it. The scientist on the film says it’s 1946, and the Allies have been working on biochemical missiles, but then an earthquake wrecked the base and broke their containment. The stuff they were working on merges the DNA of plants, animals, and even insects.
Levi figures out that people have been down here recently - there’s a modern computer. That explains the drone they saw months ago - it was taking DNA samples. Private companies have been studying this stuff to create super soldiers. There’s also a small nuclear bomb set up to self-destruct the whole gorge if necessary.
Drasa steps into a trap and is dragged away by one of the horsemen as Levi is left behind alone.
Drasa wakes up tied up in a room with a tree-man. They end up fighting with swords and knives. Levi eventually arrives to save her. From the uniform, Levi recognizes the “man” as the first occupant of his tower, back in 1946.
Levi explains what he’s figured out about the origin of the contaminant and the purpose of this place. They find lots of mutated people that have merged into one big creature. They set off a bomb to burn the creature.
They find some WWII Jeeps whose batteries, engines, and tires still work (really?). They drive to the side of the gorge and connect the Jeep’s winch to the cable remnant they have. Naturally, they are attacked again and now they’re finally low on ammo. They ride the Jeep right up the side of the cliff (that’s quite a winch!).
Halfway up the gorge wall, they are attacked by more creatures. They actually do manage to climb up past the mines and automatic defenses. Back in the tower, they wonder if they’ve been infected; they both know they were hired because they’re expendable.
They decide they have to destroy the gorge by setting off the failsafe. They know that they can spend up to five days without showing signs of mutations, so it’s too soon to know if they’re safe or not.
Levi calls at the scheduled time on the radio, and Bartholomew knows he’s been in the gorge. She points out that if it wasn’t him down there, then it must have been Drasa. She orders him to kill Drasa. Meanwhile, Bartholomew has video of the two snipers together from that modern computer in the gorge they were looking at; she knows all about what they’ve been up to. She and her best men pack up to go to the gorge…
The soldiers and Bartholomew arrive at the tower in a helicopter as Levi and Drasa are out in the woods running cable. They send drones out after the renegade snipers. Luckily, good snipers have no problem shooting down military-grade drones.
Now at an almost safe distance, Levi and Drasa shoot the cloak towers, exposing the gorge, which sets off the self-destruct nuke. With two minutes warning, Levi and Drasa are far enough away to run for it. Bartholomew and her guys try to fly away from ground zero. The bomb goes off, destroying the gorge, the towers, and the helicopter.
Drasa hides in a cave and marks off the days. She finds that she’s not infected and moves to France. She goes to the spot they had agreed to rendezvous, but Levi doesn’t show.
Months pass, and Levi eventually finds her. They’re happy ever after.
Brian’s Commentary
The plant-based zombie-things are very reminiscent of the virus in “The Last of Us.” The CGI is overall pretty good, although some of the creatures look straight out of a videogame. The Jeep, winch, and the near-unlimited ammo make this one a little hard to believe, but at least it never gets boring.
From the trailer, I expected the couple in the towers to talk and meet, but I wasn’t expecting all the time they spent down in the gorge and how much monster action we’d get.
Overall, I liked it!
Kevin’s Commentary
Boy they were tough surviving getting beat up and dragged around and blown up. And the ammo counts were questionable. But those issues aside, it was an entertaining film that didn’t go in the direction I was expecting it to. It was well cast, and the chemistry between the two main characters was believable. I’d recommend it.
Directed by Thordur Palsson
Written by Jamie Hannigan, Thordur Palsson
Stars Odessa Young, Joe Cole, Siobhan Finneran
Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was literally a chilling movie to watch, very cold and desolate. The location and vibe of it were perfect, giving a real sense of them being trapped and isolated. It was solidly good throughout, and then the ending is questionable. The more we thought about it and discussed it, the more we liked it. We both give it a thumbs up.
Spoilery Synopsis
We see various shots of the very cold land as the credits roll. Eventually, we cut to Eva walking through the snow. “Magnus said it was a place of opportunity if you can endure the cold and long nights.” Now, the small fishing town is starving, and it’s not looking good.
Ragnar is the leader of the community, and Eva points out that there have been bad years before, but men always ended up dying in those years. The roads are all buried, so no one’s going anywhere until spring. After dinner, Helga tells the men a story about two brothers who murdered each other.
Eva and Magnus owned the fishing station, and when he died, she was left in charge. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and neither do most of the fishermen.
In the morning, Eva and Helga watch the men take their boats to the beach. They all see a big sailing ship out on the horizon. It’s stuck on the rocks and sinking pretty fast, and it’s too far away for the fisherman to get there in time to help. Even if they did save some, they don’t have the food to spare for more mouths. It’s the same place they lost Magnus last year. It’s Eva’s call as to whether to try to save the men, and she tells the men to go home and take the day off.
Eva finds a barrel of food on the beach that probably came from the wrecked ship. They take a boat to the crash site to search for more barrels. They find survivors, too many for their boat, and they back off, letting the men in the water drown. They end up fighting off some of the men, and Ragnar is lost in the fight.
The following morning, bodies start washing up on shore. Even the fishermen puke when Daniel cuts one of the dead open, and eels pour out. Helga is superstitious and demands that the men wrap the coffins in rope and do some other rituals to keep the dead from coming back.
As night falls, Eva gets a scare outside in the dark and tells Daniel, the new helmsman, what she saw. He says maybe it’s time to get their rifle out. He shows her how to use it, and the two start to get close.
Helga puts up a talisman above the door. “The Draugr needs to see it” to stay away. She describes a creature that's essentially a zombie powered by hate. Helga tells Eva all about the creature, who visits her dreams. Helga says it’s too strong, and soon, it’ll get in. “It won’t stop until it takes all of us. The only way to stop a Draugr is fire– burn it!”
The men finally get a good catch, so they’re all going to eat well tonight and celebrate with some booze. In the morning all the fish are gone, even the bait. The men argue and turn against each other with accusations. Helga is missing; was she behind the food disappearing?
They check out the coffins, and one of the dead men is missing. Eva orders that the coffins be tied up as Helga warned.
That night, Eva sees a dead man in her room, but he vanishes quickly. Hakon, the man who sealed up the coffins earlier today, becomes very ill and loses his mind. “It says we’re all gonna die.” Hakon then tries to kill Daniel until someone whacks him in the head with a hammer. Eva is convinced the Draugr is real; Daniel says, “The living are always more dangerous than the dead.”
Jonas wants to take the day off and build a giant cross on the mountain for protection. There’s an accident, and they carry in Daniel, badly scraped up and crazy like Hakon was. He was running from “a shadow.” Daniel kills Jonas and menaces Eva before cutting his own throat.
Only Eva, Skuli, Aron, and one other man are left alive. They discuss taking the boat to the nearest town, but what’s to keep the monster from following them? Eva wants to destroy it with fire. Its trail leads near the graves, so they head there.
Eva loses the others in the fog. She watches as Skuli walks over the edge of a cliff. Eva sees a dark shape standing over the body, and she gets out the rifle. No- it’s just Helga, who froze to death in that spot.
Back at the camp, Eva tells the two remaining men to get a boat ready; they’ll just have to take their chances. Eva runs into the monster in her room, and she shoots it. Then she pours oil over it while it’s still struggling and sets it on fire. She runs to her two men and tells them that it’s over, she burned it.
As they watch the building engulfed in flame, we get a flashback to a few minutes earlier, when the lone surviving man from the shipwreck begs Eva not to kill him and apologizes for taking some of their food. She can’t understand his language and shoots him before burning him alive. Or was that just the creature messing with her head as it died?
Brian’s Commentary
The location here is amazing; cold, creepy, and begging for a haunting. Who would ever try to build a village there? That place is bleak. They never mention the year that it takes place, but it’s 1871.
Initial thoughts:
The ending killed it for me. The explanation didn’t match what we saw earlier. That man wouldn’t have taken the entire catch of the day. He didn’t make the men sick, and he certainly didn’t take the dead man out of the coffin. This was really good up until the last two minutes. I did not like the ending at all.
After a few minutes thinking about it, I added this part:
Except maybe what we saw at the end was simply Eva’s mind trying to explain it all away. There really was a monster, and she did kill it, but part of the magic was that people would reason it away. If anything hinting at this was mentioned during the film, I may have missed it, but that makes the ending, even the “twist” more satisfying.
I will revise it to say I liked it a lot, although I’m sure many will hate the ending.
Kevin’s Commentary
So, at the very end, as the creature was dying, it did one last act of evil by messing with Eva’s mind. I’m going with that too. It does make the whole thing better, which had been really great up to that point. The cast was excellent, the setting and situation is creepy, and overall I liked it quite a bit.
2024 Grafted
Directed by Sasha Rainbow
Written by Lee Murray, Sasha Rainbow, Mia Maramara
Stars Eden Hart, Jess Hong, Jared Turner
Run Time: 1 Hour, 36 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s an interesting idea and well made in every way. There are some unbelievable points that we had a hard time getting past, but it’s fun overall. We’d give it a moderate thumbs up.
Spoilery Synopsis
Wei, a little girl in China, talks about how corpse flowers work. They make themselves smelly to attract flies. She then feeds a mouse to a snake and then talks to her father about fixing his face; he’s got a large birthmark on his face, and so does his daughter. He works in his lab to make skin grafts. It does work, a little too well, as it grows right over his mouth and nose, sealing them shut. He cuts his face open with a scalpel, and it grows right back. He eventually suffocates as Wei takes over frantically slashing at him. Credits roll.
Wei is grown up now. Her family considers her a monster because of her face, so she packs up and goes to university in New Zealand. She wants to become a scientist like her father. She goes to stay with her very chatty Aunt Ling and cousin Angela in Auckland.
On the first day of school, Wei talks to John, a homeless man who looks terribly burned. She soon becomes a lab assistant for her professor, Paul.
At home, Angela has her friends Eve and Jasmine, over, and they laugh at Wei’s weird Chinese ways and get grossed out over her collection of medical photos.
We see that Paul’s funding is about to be canceled, and he’s only got two weeks to resubmit something.
Wei watches Angela’s friends and pretends to emulate them, with very poor effects. She invites them to a Chinese restaurant, and Wei orders chicken feet, which is surprisingly unpopular. She blames their treatment of her on her birthmark, which isn’t really that bad.
Paul invites Wei to work on her father’s research in his lab. They get right on it, and he starts reporting his work on skin grafting between makeout sessions with Eve. Jasmine comes in and also gets a job as a second lab assistant.
Wei remembers about the corpse flower, and that had some part in his work. She breaks into the museum and takes a sample of the flower to use in her work. She tries it on her leg, and it works!
Paul looks at Wei’s healed-up leg, and Eve takes a photo of them in a compromising position. Paul makes copies of Wei’s father’s notebook while Eve drops Wei off in the middle of nowhere.
Wei goes home and finds her shrine to her father has been ransacked by Angela, and the two girls fight. This ends with Angela being killed. Wei cuts off Angela’s face and injects it with her formula before putting it on her own face. The “magic” graft works quickly, and now Wei looks just like Angela. She hides Angela’s body under the bed.
Auntie Ling comes home, and she makes up with “Angela.” She leaves soon after on a business trip, giving “Angela” time to learn how to talk like an Aussie and walk in heels. Meanwhile, Paul and Eve talk about why he really keeps Eve around (it’s not for her brain).
When it’s time for Angela’s sports team, Wei breaks her own finger to get out of participating. She then hangs out with Jasmine and Eve, who tell her all their secrets. She then goes on a date with Angela’s boyfriend, whose name she doesn’t even know.
Suddenly, Angela’s face falls off, which shocks the boyfriend into falling off a cliff to his death.
Paul figures out about the corpse flower, but he gets some juice from a dying plant. He admits to Wei that he stole her work, which gets her angry. She sees Eve outside and gets an idea. She lures Eve home, one thing leads to another, and soon, with some hair color and contacts, Wei looks like Eve.
The police come by, looking for Angela and Wei, and they smell something wrong in the house right away. She manages to distract them into ignoring the smell and leaving.
After class the next day, Eve/Wei goes to visit Paul at home. She uses Eve’s phone to send that compromising photo to Student Affairs, especially now that Wei has disappeared. He’s arrested and ends up quitting his job.
Wei works to dispose of Angela and Eve’s bodies, but the noisy little dog draws in neighbor Sheryl.
Paul continues his work on his own, and he finally makes it work. Eve-Wei goes over and steals his formula. She goes home and peels off Eve’s face.
Jasmine comes over and wonders why Wei has blond hair and is wearing Eve’s dress. Jasmine is nice, but she sees more than she should; Wei kills her.
Paul notices his formula is gone and goes to Wei’s home to get it back. He knows what she’s done. He still plans on taking credit for Wei and her father’s work. She sedates Paul and knocks him out.
He wakes up all mutilated, but Wei offers to give him a taste of the skin graft. Like her father, it seals up his nose and mouth, but in his case, she gives him a metal straw. Sheryl hears the screams and calls the police. Wei runs away to the train station.
Wei comes upon John off to the side, and he helps her hide. The formula gets broken and injected by way of the broken glass, and Wei and John… merge.
Aunt Ling sees Wei on the street, but it’s not really her. Then she sees a deformed monster, WeiJohn out on the street.
Sheryl, on the other hand, takes the little dog home and is happy ever after.
Brian’s Commentary
Well, that was weird. I don’t think skin grafting works at all like that. Besides, Wei, Angela, and Eve all had very different body types, so would anyone actually believe they were who they pretended to be? It’s not so realistic, but it’s still fun.
This may have the most obnoxious dog in any movie, and he’s the only one with a happy ending.
Kevin’s Commentary
It was pushing it for Wei to impersonate Angela, but it wasn’t at all believable she could impersonate Eve who was taller, thinner, and paler. Just swapping face skin wouldn’t be enough to become that person. The underlying bone structure and muscles are different. But looking past that, it was well made all around, had good special effects, and an interesting story. I’d give it a moderate thumbs up in total.
1988 Slugs
Directed by Juan Piquer Simon
Written by Ron Gantman, Shaun Hutson, Jose Antonio Escriva
Stars Michael Garfield Levine, Kim Terry, Philip McHale
Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a pretty low end creature feature. It’s got some good moments of kills and mayhem. Mostly, it suffers from bad dialogue, overbearing music, weak acting, and choppy editing. It was just acceptable, not great.
Spoilery Synopsis
A young couple is out on a rowboat fishing. She’s bored and wants to go swimming, but something pulls him in and eats him first. Credits roll.
An old man and his dog sit next to an old house and get drunk. The man’s been living there, but he’s not much of a housekeeper and slugs are everywhere.
We cut to Mike and Kim Brady out with Maureen and her boring husband David. They pass Don and his wife, Maria, on the way out. Don is in charge of the city’s sewers. Mike and Kim go home and have a happy time. We see they have a slug on their window.
In the morning, Mike, the health inspector, talks to the sheriff about evicting the old drunk we saw earlier. They find the man’s head; something’s been eating him. Mike finds a bunch of little slime trails leading into the basement, but there’s nothing down there but trash.
Mike and Don check out a reported clogged sewer. Don finds something alive living in the pipes.
At school, the kids talk about Kim’s classes. They are annoying. An old woman nags her husband about the snail eggs on all her plants. He ends up getting bitten by a slug that’s hiding in his glove. He screams for help, but his wife is inside vacuuming with loud music. He cuts his own hand off before the entire greenhouse explodes in fire.
Kim and Mike hear about the old couples’ death, and Mike notices slime trails all through Kim’s garden. Then he sees the slug, and one of them bites him. He puts one in a jar to have it tested by the science teacher at Kim’s school.
Elsewhere, Maureen makes dinner, and we see her lettuce is moving. She chops up one of the slugs without seeing it, and they eat it. David gets stomach cramps after.
Mike and Kim take the slug to scientist John, who tells them all about slugs. They’re usually too small to eat meat, but these are way bigger than they should be. Later, John watches the slug eat a hamster; they aren't supposed to do that.
A couple of students wait until her parents leave and then make out in the basement. We see their bathroom is covered in hundreds of slugs. As is the bedroom. Soon, the young couple is slug food.
The sheriff calls Mike to check out the dead teens in the morning. Mike says it could be killer slugs, and the sheriff laughs at him. Don calls Mike about the slugs in the sewer and the old toxic waste dump that the city is built over. He’s got a whole theory about toxic gas being released.
David is at an important business lunch and his head basically explodes as the millions of little slugs crawl out. Mike takes samples from David to John and discovers that the slugs are indeed carnivorous.
Kim calls Mike; she’s got slugs coming out her faucet. Mike goes to the mayor and demands all the water in town needs to be shut down. The mayor ignores him, turning on the faucet to see what comes out, which is… nothing.
John tells Mike about poison that will kill the slugs, but they need to get all the slugs in one place. As Mike, Don, and John get their plan in place, we cut to a teen Halloweeen party with dozens of kids there. Don and Mike wander around in the sewers for an interminable amount of time, eventually finding the main breeding ground. Things go badly, and Don is eaten.
Mike crawls out of the sewer and tells John to pump in the explosive poison, which blasts manhole covers and cars and storefronts and buildings all over town. Amusingly, after we see all those fires and explosions, multiple fire trucks pull up to where they are just standing there where there is no fire. Kim stops by to pick up Mike, leaving the sheriff to clean up the mess.
Naturally, we cut to one surviving slug down in the tunnels. It only takes one to breed a new batch…
Brian’s Commentary
Some of the dialogue here is truly awful, and a lot of it seems to have been dubbed in post, so there’s really no excuse. It was shot in both the USA and Spain, and that explains a lot of it. The music is overblown and way too active for such a slow-paced film.
There’s no way that plan would have killed all the slugs anyway. Other than the death of one random teen, all the talk about the big Halloween party goes nowhere; they don’t even know they’re in danger.
This movie is really, really dumb.
Kevin’s Commentary
I’d been led to believe this was a great horror movie. It is not. Like Brian mentioned, there were far too many slugs over too big of an area for that plan, or any plan, of destruction to work. Some would have survived most anything. It had some good moments, some gross practical effects, but it wasn’t a winner overall.
1973 The Night Strangler
Directed by Dan Curtis
Written by Richard Matheson, Jeffrey Grant Rice
Stars Darren McGavin, Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland
Run Time: 1 Hour, 14 Minutes
Watch it:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The first outing, “The Night Stalker,” was so popular that they brought Kolchak back for another case in another city. Once again, a killer is on the loose, and only Kolchak believes there are unusual factors at play. It’s another good one, and it's clear why they went on to a series after this.
Spoilery Synopsis
Kolchak, from the first film, tells us that he’s going to tell us the true story about what really happened, since the regular press lied and covered it all up. He tells us about a belly dancer walking home late at night down a dark alley in Seattle. She soon notices that she’s being followed. Someone grabs her from behind.
Tony Vincenzo, the editor of the local newspaper, hears Kolchak yelling about the vampire story, yet again. He rehires Kolchak for the new paper, which is owned by grouchy old Mr. Crossbinder (John Carradine). Tony assigns Carl to check out the dancer’s murder.
He goes to interview the other dancers who worked with the dead girl. Louise Harper doesn’t have much time to talk and laughs off the murders.
Sure enough, there’s another murder, and Kolchak finds out it was another strangulation. At the coroner’s inquest, Kolchak asks if the victims had lost blood, and the officials admit that yes, there was a small loss of blood, as if a needle had been used to withdraw some. The morgue attendant tells Kolchak that the way the victim’s necks were broken, that the murderer was inhumanely strong, and the bodies have residue of decayed human flesh on them as well. Tony is not pleased with this revelation.
Kolchak goes to the belly dancing bar to talk to Louise. The bar is right next door to the Underground Tour, a place where the city got built over an older city, and most of it’s still down there. Back in 1952, there was a very similar series of murders; six women were strangled in exactly the same way. If it’s the same guy, there are going to be more murders.
There is another murder, and this time, there’s a witness. There are vampire-like marks on the victim’s neck, and the killer was seen holding a big hypodermic needle. The killer is said to look like a dead man. The newspaper researcher comes back with more details from 1931… every 21 years, the murders start again. Yep, in 1910 and 1889 as well, each time with the same description of the ultra-strong dead man.
When Tony agrees to run a story of the facts, the police are not amused. That night, the Strangler kills again, and both Kolchak and the police chase after him. Kolchak takes a picture, but the police confiscate his camera.
Carl and Louise go on the Underground Tour and see the whole subterranean world under the city. The fire of 1889 was built over completely. They go off the route and get attacked by a homeless man. Otherwise, they don’t find anything down there.
Carl tells Louise all about the vampire story in Las Vegas. They go to see Professor Crabwell, an expert on mythology and monsters. She talks about ways that men have managed to live for very long times through an “elixir of life” that uses blood as an ingredient. It would require periodic replenishing, maybe every 21 years.
The next victim was in her dressing room at the club; the killer broke in and killed her right in front of her friend. Carl tells the police captain everything he knows. Captain Schubert knows all about the old-time murders and history of the killer. Sometimes the killer looks like a dead man, and sometimes, he’s described as “quite handsome.” Carl can’t explain that.
The police call Tony, who takes Carl off the case. That doesn’t stop Carl at all. Carl hears about Dr. Richard Malcolm, who talks to Mark Twain about immortality. Malcolm was a surgeon in the Civil War.
Carl gets more information about Malcolm Richards or Richard Malcolm, or his other aliases before disappearing. He’s even got pictures of the man taken many years apart. The murderer is an immortal man. He’s got so many details that even old man Crossbinder approves; still, the newspaper agrees to kill the story.
Carl and Louise go out at night trying to bait the killer– until they get separated. The killer stalks Louise, but they are both grabbed by the police first. The killer, now desperate, breaks into a restaurant and kills the woman working there. This is the sixth killing, so there won’t be any more and the killer will go underground for another 21 years.
Kolchak and Louise go back to where the killer simply vanished from the police and find a way into the Underground. Carl goes in “for my exclusive” and tells Louise to call the cops in half an hour.
Carl walks through the lost city looking for Malcolm. He wanders around and takes photos until he finds the body of the homeless man from earlier. He finds a room full of mummified bodies sitting at a dinner table.
Carl encounters Dr. Malcolm, who doesn’t look like a dead man anymore. He’s more than willing to tell Carl his story before murdering him. He found the elixir of life, but he learned that it wasn’t permanent. He aged rapidly, but the elixir made him young again after taking it again. He has one final dose that he has to take in a minute. Carl smashes the dose, and Malcolm attacks. Halfway through strangling Carl, Malcolm ages rapidly and dies.
The next day, at the paper, Carl finds his bags have been packed– he’s been fired again. The paper has published a coverup story. Tony tried to print Carl’s story, but Crossbinder killed the story. There is much screaming and yelling between the two men.
Carl records into his tape about the whole conspiracy, and we see that Tony’s in the car. He’s been fired too. They’re off to New York– and Louise is going as well. They argue all the way there…
Brian’s Commentary
The first movie was the most successful TV movie of all time, so a sequel was inevitable. This one had a vampire-like murderer, but it’s not a vampire this time. Other than not being a vampire, the rest of the story is very similar to the original. The eventual TV series took most of the same ideas but used a wider variety of creatures and killers.
I remember when I was little, I always wanted to visit Seattle to see the underground city there, which was always said to be real. I doubt it’s as elaborate as this movie would portray it, but it’s still a cool idea. No, I’ve never actually gone. I suspect it wouldn’t be so well-lit in reality.
If the killer had been living in that place for more than a hundred years, why didn’t he clean up all the cobwebs and corpses?
It’s not as good as the first one, but it was still pretty cool.
Kevin’s Commentary
This was just as entertaining as the first movie, and as entertaining as the series to come. I appreciated how consistent it all was. The basic formula of something weird happening and Kolchak being the only one who figures it out and believes was a lot of fun, and Darren McGavin is perfect in the role. I’d recommend seeing this movie and all the other media.
Short Films:
2017 Short Film: We Summoned a Demon
Directed by Chris McInroy
Written by Chris McInroy
Stars Kirk C. Johnson, Carlos Larotta, John Orr
Run Time: 6 Minutes
Watch it:
What Happens
It’s clearly the 80s, as two nerds try to do a magic spell to make them cool. It doesn’t work. “You’re less cool than you were before!” They go off for tacos, but then the ground opens up, and a demon rises. That’s not gonna go well, is it?
Commentary
These guys do not hide well. They are, however, cool. You just gotta be cool.
It’s got a retro aesthetic without being too obvious about it. It’s pretty low budget, but it looks good for what they had. It’s a lot of fun.
2020 Short Film: The Outsider
Directed by Ludvig Gur
Written by Ludvig Gur, H.P. Lovecraft
Stars Kola Krauze, Magnus Lennartsson, Anna Guldkula
Run Time: 11 Minutes
Watch it:
What Happens
We open on a man who’s locked inside a shed with no companionship other than a butterfly. He’s got nothing to read except a Bible. He dreams of frolicking out in the fields, but he’s stuck in the shed. When the butterfly finally gets out through a small hole, the man decides it’s time to escape.
Commentary
This one is based on an old H. P. Lovecraft story, which I wasn’t familiar with going into the story, which probably helps. I didn’t know what was going on until the end, although I had suspicions.
It’s very nicely shot, the effects are good, and the ending is really well done.
2018 Short Film: Recursion
Directed by Caden Butera
Written by Caden Butera
Stars Bonni Dichone, John Gessner, Steve Lloyd
Run Time: 10 Minutes
Watch it:
What Happens
We open on the spaceship Iris, which is planning to mine resources from an uninhabited planet. There’s a storm, so a couple of guys have to land manually to put down landing beacons for the main ship. Once they get down there, they find that this uninhabited planet may not be completely uninhabited after all.
Commentary
Someone watched the original “Alien” too many times– not that that’s a bad thing. They took a lot of what made “Alien” great and made a whole new story with much of the same look and mood. The ending is a little confusing until you remember the name of the film. “Oh, I see!”
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