Anvil (aka The Story Of Anvil) (2009)

Harlan Ellison wrote a story once called The Cheese Stands Alone. In this story, a man goes in to a curious store where he is a shown a book that contains the high points of everyone’s life. Our protagonist discovers that his greatest moment was in a baseball game as child. He looks around to see that the shop is filled with people have looked in the book and discovered the pinnacle of their achievements were also in the past and have been unable to leave. Our hero is not so affected, and he leaves the store ready to continue his life. The Story of Anvil is a real life version of The Cheese Stands Alone.

Anvil were on the cusp of greatness when they played Super Rock ’84 in Japan. They already had albums that were faster and heavier than most metal bands and, if this documentary can be believed, the band were an influential force in the genre. For reasons never explained, except the theory it is because they were Canadian and not from the USA or Britain, Anvil never became famous and fell in to obscurity instead. That was until, 25 years later, this film introduces us the band that never stopped.

Steve "Lips" Kudlow (vocals, guitar) and Robb Reiner (drums) are still living metal and hoping that Anvil will make them the rock stars they want to be. It’s very sweet that these straight talking 50 year olds are rocking as hard as ever and living the life that 20 year olds live as they take mundane day jobs to pay for their music obsession. The film includes a European tour, a trip back to Japan, the release of their new album, some internal fighting, and a whole lotta love as friends and family do what they can to support the band.

It is interesting to compare the Story Of Anvil to Metallica’s 2004 Some Kind Of Monster. Metallica come across as bunch of spoiled, rich brats. Anvil come across as a bunch of guys living a dream, even if that dream is never fully realised. And, unlike commercially orientated, money hungry beast liek metallica, Anvil have never really changed their hair, their sound, or their album covers. Check out these covers from 1981 and 2007...

Popeye

The Amazing Screw-On Head (2006)

Mike Mignola is probably best known for creating the comic Hellboy which led to the Hellboy movies. He has done much more, and this pilot for an animated television series that, unfortunately, never eventuated is also based on one of his comics and is another glimpse of his genius.

There are two histories, the public history that everyone knows, and the secret history. The Amazing Screw-On head falls in to the second, as the eponymous star undertakes covert missions for president Abraham Lincoln. This time, Head (Paul Giamatti) goes after Emperor Zombie (David Hyde Pierce) and his vampire lover Patience (Molly Shannon) who have a predilection for killing Head’s servants (amongst other dastardly acts).

The Sci-Fi Channel, as much as I love watching their productions, normally don’t deliver the goods, The Amazing Screw-On Head is an exception. The creators have captured Mignola’s style wonderfully. Every scene is a visual delight and the dialogue is fast and clever. It made me think that this is how good the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen should have been.

Brotherhood Of Blood (2007)

“We’re vampire hunters not fucking accountants.”

Brotherhood Of Blood starts with a pair of vampire hunters imprisoned by their targets and then, through a series of flashbacks and killing and torture, we find out how and why. A major vampire, thought long dead, is on the way back and his return promises unpleasantness for vampires and humans. In the end there is a shoot out and a revelation.

This is a vampire film that plays out like a cops and gangsters film more than a traditional vampire story. There are two warring factions, a capture and imprisonment, rumours of the return of a major bad guy, and one of the players may not be who they think he is. The Usual Suspects meets Infernal Affairs.

Brotherhood Of Blood is super low budget (which is certainly okay), has a promising concept (which is also okay), and yet I struggled to stay focused. A plus for the movie is the cast that is talented and knows the genre, including Victoria Pratt (Cleopatra 2525, Mutant X, House Of The Dead 2) looking better than ever, Sid Haig (Galaxy Of Terror, House Of A 1000 Corpses), Ken Foree (The Wanderers, Dawn Of The Dead), Jason Connery (The Devil’s Tomb), Wes Ramsey (Charmed), and Rachel Grant (Angelina Jolie’s body double in Lara Croft Tomb Raider).

Dark Uprising (2007)

Xena Warrior Princess meets Evil Dead as Canada revisits the horror comedy.

The story is a bit muddled, but it starts with a young girl, Summer, vanishing in mysterious circumstances. Years later, Jason goes on a camping trip with best friend Ricky to win back his ex-girlfriend Jasmine. Jasmine is now batting for the other side, but Jason is oblivious to this, even though Jasmine’s new girlfriend, Marlene, is also on the trip and making out with her. A third girl, Renee, is on the trip and dabbling in the occult. A portal to other dimension opens and a “terrifying” demon enters our world, and so does a fully grown Summer who is now a beautiful warrior. Death, demonic possession and romance follow shortly after.

Dark Uprising is an easy to watch, light-hearted comedy where most of the humour is based around the characters, with the cast delivering their lines with the appropriate sincerity. Brigitte Kingsley (Summer) is not just an actor and eye candy, she is also a producer, and is good at all three roles. Landy Cannon (Jason) does a great job in a role that would make Bruce Campbell proud. Jason Reso (Ricky) has done some comedy in his wrestling days, as WWE Superstar Christian Cage, and pulls of a Sean William Scott style character here, sleazy and shallow and a foil to the hero’s honest naivety. Julia Schneider is also damn cute as the occult obsessed Renee , and Haley Shannon rounds of our quartet of natural beauties as Marlene. The plot is nothing much like Evil Dead even though I compare them, but Dark Rising is set in a forest and ends with an opening for a much bigger, Army Of Darkness style sequel.

Alien Uprising (2008)

A squad of marines awaken from a cryogenic sleep on their spacecraft and are sent on a mission to quell an uprising on a prison planet. They arrive to find they aren’t the first team to be sent there and that there is monster killing the inmates. Prisoners and soldiers join together to fight the by-product of genetic experimentation.

Alien Uprising makes me think that someone watched the Alien movies while drunk and half asleep, and then tried to recreate them with their friends when they woke up. The sets and effects are as dodgy as those from Doctor Who in the eighties, which is okay if you have a story the equivalent of Doctor Who. Alien Uprising doesn’t, and not even cute women with guns kissing can save it.

100 Million BC (aka Jurassic Commando) (2008)

Michael Gross (Tremors) builds himself a time machine from parts left over from Stargate and goes searching back in time for Christopher Atkins who hasn’t been seen since Blue Lagoon.

100 Million BC is The Asylum’s take on The Philadelphia Experiment (which they mention in the opening scenes) and 10,000 BC, only they can't afford a naval ship, just poorly animated dinosaurs. Gross lost a naval ship in WW2 and newly discovered cave paintings locate it way back in 70,000,000 BCE. Gross leads a team back in time on a rescue mission, and are followed back to the modern day by a Giganotosaurus. It’s not as much fun as it sounds, but at least Atkins’s has lost the perm he had in Blue Lagoon.

Marine Boy (aka Undersea Boy Marine)

Australia is currently in the closing stages of a long, slow transition to digital television. The delivery of new channels has been exciting and depressing. Channel Ten started promisingly with 1HD, mainly because it aired the SF shows that were being lost during the channel’s regular broadcast schedule, including Battlestar Galactica and Smallville. Sadly 1HD is now a 24hr sports channel, broadcasting American time fillers like paintball and baseball, and the SF shows are lost again. Channel 9 has joined the fray with GO!, and it is also off to a good start. The channel has peppered its programming with Warner Brother superhero cartoons (Teen Titans, The Batman, and Justice League), but the biggest surprise is the appearance of the original Marine Boy.

Marine Boy is one of a string of great Japanese cartoon shows from the sixties. Some of them have been remade (Astro Boy, Gigantor), at least one became a movie (Speed Racer), some were plagiarised by the west (Kimba the White Lion became the Lion King, and elements of Gigantor surfaced in The Iron Giant) without acknowledgement, and others are awaiting rediscovery (Prince Planet).

Marine Boy can breathe underwater (thanks to oxy-gum), swims quickly thanks to his propeller boots, and is protected by his orange suit and sonic boomerang. He helps his father (Dr Mariner) at Ocean Patrol to protect the oceans, along with comedy duo Piper and Bolton, Professor Fumble, and Neptina (a topless mermaid with a magic pearl).

I’m not sure what we should make of the sexual connotation of a half naked prepubescent girl with a pearl necklace, or her provocative fondling of it. Some of the interaction between Marine Boy and his father is also a little suspect. Or maybe I am reading too much in to the imagery.

The show is reliably formulaic and generally has a big, nasty villain, some hideous henchmen, a diabolical plan, and Marine Boy saving the day. If some of the voices seem familiar, then you may have heard them in the original Speed Racer or other dubbed anime. In a marketplace that thrives on cheap nostalgia and fake retro, Marine Boy is a welcome piece of authenticity, complete with inventiveness and violence.

Riverworld (2003)

Phillip Jose Farmer wrote an impressive series of books as part of his Riverworld saga. Sometime in the future, an alien race resurrects everybody who has ever lived on planet Earth and places them on a carefully constructed planet. If you died, you were resurrected somewhere else on the planet. The original novels focused on British adventurer, writer, linguist Richard Burton and Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) and their attempts to explore and understand the strange, new world, but there were plenty of other famous historical figures that contributed to the tales.

The SciFi channel decided they could adapt the story for the small screen. Reworking and condensing a book to fit the running time of a feature movie is a daunting task, but the SciFi channel decided adapting one book was too easy, so they took the plot elements from the first two books and mangled them in to one movie. They also decided that an historical legend like Richard Burton wasn’t good enough for their audience, so they replaced him with a fictitious American astronaut.

The film starts with the resurrection of astronaut Jeff Hale (former Marlboro Man Brad Johnson), who finds himself on the beach with Alice “in Wonderland” Hargreaves (Emily Lloyd) and Emperor Nero (Jonathan Cake). Nero replaces King John who was the villain in the book. The Sci-Fi channel must really not like British characters. There are a series of adventures where the characters are captured and escape and make their way to the village of another group (that includes an alien who died on Earth), led by Sam (Cameron Daddo), who are building a riverboat.

I have no major complaints with the actors (Daddo is his usual one dimensional self, Johnson is as bland as his character, Cake is wonderful), or the effects people for doing what they could with a limited budget, but I have a problem with whoever decided on the plot for movie (which is really the pilot for a cancelled series). Reducing the concepts and imagination of Farmer’s book had to happen for television, but making such a grand idea so mundane did not.