Two today, and these are the ones I kinda sorta built this whole thing around....dunno why they took so long to get to...
Screamers (1979)
Not to be confused with the 1995 film of the same name.
See that tagline?
"They're men turned inside out! And worse...they're still alive!".
A lie.
That's not in the movie at all.
Not even a little bit.
Deliberate exploitation hype.
Okay, like with "Slumber Party Massacre", backstory time.
From here.
Ah, yeah, around some corners, and up some streets, is this place that used to be Morrison's Gun Shop.
Been gone for ages, but lotta memories there.
Used to ride up there on my bike as a kid, and buy comics, and candy, and Garbage Pail Kids, and old paperback compilations of Mad Magazine.
Like County Road, they experimented with having a video rental spinner rack.
I think it was just flea market junk the family owned.
Exploitation schlock, old cowboy movies, the kinda junk early HBO & USA pawned off.
"Screamers", was one of the flicks.
I was aaaaalways deathly curious to see how they pulled off the effect of the turning inside out.
That box burnt into my soul.
Then, I recently saw it, and PPPPPTT!!
So, now to the flick itself.
Its original title was "Island of the Fishmen", and that's what it is.
It's about fishmen.
Sort of cannibalistic versions of "The Creature From The Black Lagoon".
Barbara Bach is the most famous person in it I recognize.
Cheap Italian drive-in shit.
What do fishmen have to do with inside-out guys?
Jack and shit.
Totally pulled out of a marketing creep's assholio.
Seriously, I've dug into it as far as Google will go.
The movie that the box evokes does not exist.
No one ever made it.
It's a thing of legend.
It's a fucking vapor.
All right, so here's the real plot.
A millionaire scumbag forces a scientist to turn indentured workers into mer-men to dive for treasures in the lost city of Atlantis which they've found.
The mer-men also double as guards, murdering and devouring any intruders.
The scientist is in bad health, so the protagonists are lured in to take care of him to keep the scumbag's scheme going.
So, it's "Island Of Dr. Moreau", meets "Creature From The Black Lagoon", meets "20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea".
...no inside-out men.
I promise you.
Seriously, forget it.
"Do the mer-men at least scream?".
Nope.
"So NOTHING on the box...".
(Cuts you off) Nope.
No, wait.
The name in that exact font is slapped onto the opening of the flick.
They bothered with that much.
That's it, keeds.
Is it worth watching?
Um.....it was for me to solve this mystery, and slay this ghost, but....nah, give it a miss.
It's like a million other weak-sauce Italian co-production pieces of cheese you would have seen in the 80's on some basic cable creature feature.
It'd be good MST3K/Rifftrax fodder though.
Next up, another deceptive box, but this skids by on being as vague as possible.
1 comment:
Oh, and Red Letter Media favorite Cameron Mitchell is in it.
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