Month: August 2015

Released: September 1992

Directors: Albert and Charles Band

Rated R

Run Time: 74 Minutes

Distributor: Full Moon Entertainment

Cast:
Jeffrey Combs: Dr. Anton Mordrid
Yvette Nipar: Samantha Hunt
Brian Thompson: Kabal
Jay Acovone: Tony Gaudio
Keith Coulouris: Adrian

There was a time during the 80s and 90s that a ton of sci-fi movies and horror movies were made.  Most of them were not particularly mainstream.  Yeah, we had the likes of Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, and Friday The 13th.  But what about the films that went under the radar?  What about the ones that most people never knew existed?  A good chunk of these films were produced and distributed by fairly independent film-makers.  Full Moon Entertainment was one of the companies that gave us the likes of the Puppet Master films, Trancers, Subspecies.  Now, a sizable amount of these movies were produced and directed by a man named Charles Band.  He actually formed the Full Moon company, so he’s had his hands in most of every movie put out by that company.  Were any of these movies any good?  Not really, but they had their own kind of cheesy charm about them.  One thing to consider when watching a Full Moon production, is that you have to consider that these movies are very low-budget.  Some of them may have gotten a theatrical release, they actually find life on home video as cult classics.  These films are targeted towards a particular……brand of audience.  A lot of these movies I grew up on as a kid, but haven’t really found them for years afterwards.  It wasn’t until a few years back that these movies have started reappearing on DVD.  One of the films that remember most fondly was Doctor Mordrid: Master of the Unknown.

The film opens as we see a man clad in what appears to be blue pajamas, Mordrid talking to a giant pair of eyeballs known as “The Monitor.”  Mordrid is a sorcerer from another dimension who has been stationed on Earth to await the arrival of something called the Death’s Head.  We then cut to a road somewhere in Brazil where a security guard driving a truck has been killed by his partner who then puts the contents of the truck on the ground.  A whole truck for three boxes.  There must be something valuable, because there is a person driving up behind them with a suitcase full of bottles filled with unknown substances.  After pouring out the contents of one of his bottles, the three boxes suddenly vanish.  Turns out the guy with the mysterious briefcase is Kabal, aka The Death’s Head that Mordrid has been waiting for.  Kabal is attempting to free his fellow demons from their prison in the Fourth Dimension to unleash Hell on Earth.  Really?  Why is it that these villains always think it’s a great idea to unleash the forces of Hell on to our world.  How many different ways can you do it?!  Apparently, the right chemical mixture with The Philosopher’s Stone will do just that.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m being a little silly describing the story.  The story is absolutely silly.  This is early 90s B-movie-fare, plain-and-simple, so the cheese-factor is right through the roof.  You have to go into a movie like this expecting it to be cheesy.

Let’s start with the silly factor, which is actually, the whole damn movie.  But, let’s get more specific.  The mysterious Monitor that contacts Mordrid is nothing more than a giant pair of floating eyeballs.  Doesn’t that just strike you as a little creepy.  Especially since they stay in the same expression throughout the movie.  Don’t get me started on that monotone voice.  That outfit that Mordrid is wearing is unbelievably ridiculous.  As I said above, it appears the character is wearing blue pajamas with a blanket for a cape.  It certainly doesn’t help that Jeffrey Combs is playing the character straight, which is an interesting choice, considering the ludicrousness of the character.  You would think that a being from another dimension would have a little bit more personality.  The other inter-dimensional being, Kabal, definitely has more personality, but he wants to murder the human race.  A dead-pan super-magician and a psychotic alchemist:  We can’t win.  You wanna see something funny?  The introduction of Kabal, reminds me of the pirate captain from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Cyborg.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look:

Apparently, villains really like dark sunglasses.

Now, if Jeffrey Combs is playing Mordrid a little too seriously, Brian Thompson goes the other direction.  Thompson is appropriately over-the-top and is clearly having a great time.  Brian Thompson is just a fun actor to watch.  He’s great at playing villains.  Yvette Nipar plays the plucky, yet intelligent love interest of Mordrid.  The character knows her stuff and yet is laughed at by her colleagues at the local police station.  The acting is very appropriate for a movie of this sort.  Now let’s discuss the visual effects.  This is clearly a low-budget film, even during the early 90s.  Visual effects had reached a new level when Terminator 2 was released the previous year, and Jurassic Park would revolutionize them again in 1993.  So, where does that put Doctor Mordrid?  WAY low on the totem pole.  The visual effects were clearly dated already when the film was released, and yet they were strangely charming.  Obvious magic effects are obvious and all that, but some of the stop-motion animation was pretty interesting.  Some of the creature and set designs were pretty unique.  The demons that you get to see towards the end of the movie look like animated trolls, but the real star of the show was the animated skeletal dinosaurs during the film’s climactic scene.  The visual effects were done by David Allen.  While most of the movies that he worked on were of the low-budget variety, he did have a hand in movies like Willow, Young Sherlock Holmes, Ghostbusters II, and Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.  The man is clearly talented, considering he cut his teeth on The Gumby Show during the 60s.  Fantastic stuff.  The whole floating castle/prison in the Fourth Dimension was pretty interesting to look at.  It has a very medieval look to it and yet it is guarded by a man with a laser-gun.  Here’s the castle I’m talking about:

Now, you can’t have a cheesy movie without cheesy music.  The film’s score by Richard Band strikes me as a bit of a rip-off of Danny Elfman’s theme for Batman.  It’s epic and yet it’s something you can’t take seriously.  At 74 minutes long, Doctor Mordrid moves at a pretty brisk pace.  I grew up watching this movie, so finally finding it on DVD was a relief.  Does it hold up after 20 years?  Not particularly, but then again it didn’t really hold up that well to begin with.  So, it’s not really as awesome as I remember it being, but it still has it’s bizarre charms that keep me hooked on it.  Here’s an interesting tidbit, Doctor Mordrid initially started out as a project to turn Marvel’s Dr. Strange comic into a live-action feature, but somewhere along the way, Charles Band lost the rights to that character, but he didn’t scrap the entire project.  Instead, he re-wrote and re-tooled the whole thing into what would eventually become Doctor Mordrid.  In the end, I’m actually grateful that he didn’t scrap it, because it is a visually interesting film, if not very good.  Seeing Jeffrey Combs playing a more sedate and level-headed character is surprising, given his filmography.  So, yeah, it is a very silly movie.  But the same could be said for almost every movie put out by Charles Band and Full Moon Productions.  Like I said before, you have to go into a movie like this expecting a lot of cheese, and I think you’ll be very surprised at how entertaining it really is.  All the stuff that I talked about earlier can be taken as a negative or a positive, but I really enjoyed the hell out of this one.  Personally, I recommend it.  9/10.

Released: May 2015

Director: Henry Hobson

Run Time: 95 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Distributed by: LionsGate Studios

Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Wade Vogel
Abigail Breslin: Maggie Vogel
Joely Richardson: Caroline
Jodie Moore: Dr. Vern Kaplan

If there is a name to symbolize the action films of the 80s, it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This man helped shape the action genre during the 80s and 90s with his muscular build and commanding screen presence.  He’s made a name for himself, starring in Conan: The Barbarian, The Terminator, Commando, and Predator.  These are the movies that really put the man on the map.  As far as his acting chops go, you could say that Schwarzenegger was always playing Schwarzenegger.  He’s never really had to much in the way of emoting in most of his films.  There was nothing wrong with that, as his movies would often speak for themselves.  He’s had a huge success, and ever since returning to the film world after a two-term stint as California’s “Governator,” he seems to have gotten comfortable getting back into the action genre.  He’s done action, science fiction, some horror and comedy.  You would never have expected Schwarzenegger to star in a zombie movie, would you?  I certainly didn’t, and you know what?  It may be one of Schwarzenegger’s finest performances yet.

The film opens as young Maggie Vogel has run away from home to a post-apocalyptic city.  Turns out that there was an outbreak of a virus that has apparently turned a good chunk of the population into flesh-eating zombies.  After getting bitten by a zombie, Maggie is transported to a nearby hospital where her father, Wade finds her.  After making an arrangement with the doctors, Wade takes Maggie home.  Knowing that his daughter has only a matter of weeks before she becomes a zombie, Wade tries to find a way to not only keep her safe, but to spend as much time with her as possible in her final hours.  As you may have guessed, this is a pretty bleak film.  But unlike other zombie movies, Maggie doesn’t actually focus on the events surrounding the family, but rather the family itself, particularly the relationship between Wade and his daughter.  One of the main staples of zombie movies is the fact that a protagonist is trying to comfort a victim of a zombie bite before they turn.  The story in Maggie is very much a personal and intimate look at how something like a zombie apocalypse would affect a family.  If you knew that a member of your family was sick and had only weeks to live, how would spend that time with them?

I’ve never truly been a huge fan of zombie movies.  I’ve always felt that they were too formulaic and generally ripping off George A. Romero’s work.  Maggie takes the genre and gives it a much more personal take on it, and it’s very refreshing to see the zombie film brought down to a family level.  The whole zombie outbreak is just the backdrop for the drama that takes place on Wade’s farm.  Unlike other zombie movies where a person will become a zombie mere hours after being bitten, this film posits the idea that the transformation would take weeks.  As a result, the horror lies in Wade’s realization that there is nothing that he can do save several options towards the end of the line and none of them are happy.  So, Wade takes the time to help his daughter, and spend some quality time with her.  If you had told me several years ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger had the ability to do more than blow things up and give an Oscar-worthy performance, I would’ve laughed in your face.  Maggie shows that not only can he act, but he can really deliver a performance that is equally emotional and compelling.  I never would have expected that from the Austrian Oak.  While Arnold is fantastic, the real standout is Abigail Breslin as Maggie.  Her performance is extraordinary as a teenage girl who is forced to come to grips with her own mortality, and the fact that she doesn’t have a lot of time left.  She’s incredibly likable and very charming, and that makes the tragedy of the story all the more potent.  What really helps the story is the fact that it’s centered on a small farm in the Midwest, so there is a sense of isolation and desperation as people are forced to make desperate decisions to survive.  For those wanting a more action-packed zombie movie, look elsewhere.  You won’t find anything like that here.

Throughout the film you get to witness Maggie’s deterioration and her emotional reaction to what’s happening.  The make-up effects are pretty good.  It’s not a gory movie, but it is unsettling in how it portrays a victim decaying into something hideous.  The relationship between Maggie and Wade is the real centerpiece to the movie and when it centers on that, the film is amazing.  When it doesn’t, it does slow down a bit.  I liked how the idea of zombies is taken realistically in Maggie.  The infected are quarantined from the rest of the populace and people are arrested when they try to keep their infected loved ones from being taken into custody.  While Maggie and Wade are the main stars of the film, it kind of sucks to see Joely Richardson’s character of Caroline get stuck on the sidelines.  She’s not really given that much to do and it’s a shame as Richardson is a good actress.  The music of the film is very understated and helps elevate the dramatic moments of the picture.

While Maggie has issues, the performances in the film are simply fantastic.  Arnold Schwarzenegger gives the best performance of his career as a man who struggling to deal with a horrific situation, and Abigail Breslin is a revelation as the titular character.  As far as zombie movies go, this is probably one of the most unique.  Overall, I think Maggie is a fantastic film that focuses more on the family than the zombie outbreak.  It’s worth watching at least once.  Just don’t go in expecting it to be anything like Night of the Living Dead.  It’s not that kind of movie.  Maggie gets a solid 9/10.

Released: 1998-1999

Directors: Various

Run Time – 970 Minutes

Episodes: 22

Seasons: 1

Cast:
Paolo Montalban: Kung Lao
Daniel Bernhardt: Siro
Kristanna Lokken: Taja
Jeffrey Meek: Lord Rayden/Shao Kahn
Bruce Locke: Shang Tsung
Tracy Douglas: Vorpax

Reviewing a TV show is a lot different than reviewing a movie.  A movie will generally take about 2 hours of my time, give or take a few minutes.  Then, I can work on my review and generally get it done in the same day, if I’m not distracted.  A TV series, on the other hand, requires more time and investment to absorb the whole thing.  A lot of the TV series during the 90s ran for about 20-25 episodes.  That’s about nearly half a year.  Some of the more well-known TV series were pretty decent hits during that time:  Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and its spin-off, Xena: The Warrior Princess, Babylon 5, Charmed, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.  That’s just to name a few, and those ones were pretty successful during their runs lasting about 5 or more seasons.  Unfortunately, there were some shows that were not as successful, such as The Crow: Stairway To Heaven, despite positive reviews.  The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr was another show that got canned after one season.  Sometimes, things just don’t work out.  If they wrap up the season properly, it’s fine.  Disappointing, but at least there’s some kind of closure.  There were a couple of shows that got ended on cliffhangers and I absolutely hate that.  The Crow was one that ended prematurely, as did Blade a few years back.  But the one show that I really enjoyed and followed completely was Mortal Kombat Conquest.  It was a show based on the video game of the same name, but had the visual aesthetic of the movies, which were also based on the game.  The way this show ended, really rubbed me the wrong way, but I’ll get to that later.

The show begins at the final battle of a Mortal Kombat tournament, a tournament that will determine the fate of Earthrealm(ours).  Kung Lao faces off against Shao Kahn’s sorcerer, Shang Tsung, and defeats him in combat.  Instead of killing Shang, Lao spares his life, winning the tournament.  After returning to Earth, Kung Lao is charged with training new fighters for the next tournament.  With the aid of the thunder god, Rayden, Kung Lao sets out with two new friends, ex-bodyguard Siro, and the lovely thief Taja.  For a TV series based on a video game, there’s surprisingly a great of story to be found here.  Each of the 22 episodes has it’s own little story which tends to be wrapped up pretty nicely by the time the episode is over.  The overall story is essentially Kung Lao’s struggle against his mortal enemies, Shang Tsung and the Outworld emperor, Shao Kahn.  I’m not going to get into the stories of each episode as there is way too much to cover.  Mortal Kombat Conquest serves as a prequel to the live-action films, released in 1995 and 1997, respectively.  The show actually managed to get popular enough to last a full 22 episodes.  I don’t think it would have lasted half a season if it wasn’t for people who played the games didn’t tune in.  The show premiered on TNT in 1998, just as shows like Hercules and Xena were really hitting their stride.

From a technical standpoint, it was a mostly solid show.  The set designs were pretty interesting, even though they were relegated to a handful of locations.  The costume designs were bizarre to say the least.  For the women, being scantily clad was basically the norm as it was for most of the action shows that were on at the time, including the ones that I mentioned.  The show was clearly aimed at teenage boys, so seeing gorgeous women in almost nothing was probably one of the reasons why the show managed to stay on the air.  The show was modeled after the movies, so some of the costumes were clearly inspired by the theatrical productions.  For example: The costumes for Scorpion(the yellow ninja), Sub-Zero(blue ninja), and Reptile(green ninja) were clearly taken from the first movie.  My personal interest in the show was the characters, the fighting and the visual effects.  There’s clearly a lot of fan-service in the show, as various episodes feature characters from the games such as: Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Rain, Quan-Chi, Rayden, Kung Lao, Shang Tsung, Shao Kahn, Reptile, and Noob Saibot.  The costumes for some of these characters were not that good.  Quan-Chi’s outfit looked like a very poor cosplay version of the character.  It was hideous.  And again, some of the women were basically wearing next to nothing.  The area in which Mortal Kombat Conquest excelled at was the fight sequences.  This is what drew me to the show.  The fight scenes were phenomenal.  While there was some use of wires in later episodes, it was mostly done without, and the stunt-work was incredible.  Featuring the talents of renowned stunt men J.J. Perry and Johnny Nguyen, the show delighted with high-flying acrobatics and insane martial arts moves.  Each episode featured a minimum of three fight sequences, so things were never boring.  One of the episodes that a lot of people consider to be the best was from an episode called, “The Serpent and The Ice.”  This particular episode featured a major fight between Scorpion and Sub-Zero, making it one of the most memorable fights of the show:

Is it cheesy?  Very.  The whole show is replete with unbelievably cheesy dialogue and mostly terrible acting.  I think that’s part of the charm, because the show seems to know that’s not the best out there, but runs with it.  I’ll be honest, it’s still a hell of a lot better than Mortal Kombat Annihilation.  As far as actors go, the show features the talents of Daniel Bernhardt, who is a fantastic martial artist in his own right.  He plays Siro, an exiled bodyguard.  Kung Lao is played by Paolo Mantalban(No relation to Ricardo, I’m afraid), who is NOT a martial artists, so the fight scenes you seem him in are mostly done by a stunt double.  Kristanna Lokken fares a bit better as the drop-dead gorgeous Taja.  The one actor that really pulled his weight though, was Jeffrey Meek.  He has the fortune of playing TWO characters in this show, Rayden and Shao Kahn.  While he does go over-the-top with Kahn, his portrayal of Rayden is probably the best I’ve seen.  As much as I loved Christopher Lambert in the role, Meek knocks it out of the park, portraying a character that is equal parts mentor and smart-ass.  He gets some of the best lines in the show.  Everybody else is pretty much disposable.  The visual effects are mostly a mixed bag, with some pretty heinous CG.  The show literally features sequences from the films.  There’s a shot that filmed for the first Mortal Kombat film at a monestary, which is constantly used.  A lot of the shots from the second film feel more appropriate here, because the visuals are not that good.  There’s also some very obvious blue-screen work.

While the show was goofy enough to begin with, it really started heading out to left field towards the end of its run.  One of the main problems with the show was when it introduced a new character, Kreeya, who was a queen from a different realm.  She would mate with the strongest warriors that a realm had to offer in order to produce an army of scantily clad women.  I….don’t really know where to go with that, to be truthful, except that it was very poorly thought out.  Those episodes were…..lame, except for some of the fight scenes, of course.  One of the more interesting episodes, though, was one where Quan-Chi had our three main heroes poisoned with a potion that let their inner demons take control.  It was the first episode to feature Quan-Chi.  The show definitely had some very interesting ideas and explored more of the mythology that the games introduced.

I mentioned earlier that the way the show ended bothered me.  It ended on a cliffhanger.  It’s not the first show to do that, nor was it the last.  It’s no less idiotic, though.  The final episode of the show featured Shao Kahn appearing to win, with all the main characters seemingly killed off.  That’s a great way to end a season, but not a show.  I did some research, and it was initially intended for Mortal Kombat: Conquest to have a second season to tie up all the loose ends that the final episode left behind.  The final two episodes were intended to be a dream sequence by Kung Lao, and that was going to be addressed in the second season.  It definitely felt like the final episode, “Vengeance,” was deliberately done that way to launch a follow-up season that never happened.  Why didn’t it happen?  One of the reasons that I read about was that the budget on the show was getting to be too much for Warner Bros. to pay for.  It was a great episode, but it left everybody wondering what was going to happen.  Some people that it was a great and different ending to a show, and I can definitely see that perspective.  However, the show was essentially billed as a prequel to the movies, so we know that Kung Lao would survive only to be killed by the four-armed Goro in the next tournament.  There’s plenty of fan-fiction out there that offered their own explanation for what happens next, but it’s really disappointing to see a show that I really enjoyed end on such a note.  If they had made a two-hour TV movie tying up those loose ends, in lieu of a second season, I would have been happy with that, but they didn’t.  Instead, we end up with a show that’s half-way completed.  There have been plenty of shows that suffered the same fate, and no show really deserves that regardless of its quality.

Mortal Kombat Conquest, while certainly cheesy as befitting some of the shows during the 90s, kept me hooked from beginning to end, and I have no problems watching at again.  I just really wished they didn’t end the show the way they did.  The production values were surprisingly decent for the time.  They were definitely better than Mortal Kombat Annihilation, that’s for sure.  The show has gotten mixed reviews all across the board, with some saying its a vile abomination.  I don’t think that’s fair, and while it’s definitely the same quality as the Machinima series, Mortal Kombat Legacy, I still think that Conquest is still a very entertaining diversion that deserved a second season.  The show is now available on DVD for about 10 bucks on Amazon, so it’s definitely worth checking out, just for the action scenes alone.  It doesn’t have any special features I’m afraid, but all 22 episodes are their in the original 4:3 format as it aired in 1998.  No commercials, so you can enjoy it at your leisure.  Overall, I’m giving the show a pretty solid 8.5/10.  Cheesy as hell, but still a lot of fun, and one of the few TV shows that I will watch to completion.