26.5.13

naked space (1983)

aka The Creature Wasn't Nice. Spaceship.
"Whatever we do we have to be rational and calm."
The crew of a spaceship , including Cindy Williams, Leslie Nielsen and Patrick Macnee, run around and try and make this deeply unfunny film work, when an alien escapes on board. Inevitably they fail!
Deeply unfunny.

battlefield earth (2000)

"The planetship is hiding something."
Earth in the year 3000, and human's are slaves to an alien race, mining the planet of its minerals. When Terl (John Travolta) is told his tour of duty as head of security is to be indefinite, he sets in motion an attempt to get himself off this inferior world. Part of this plan involves a troublesome human (Barry Pepper).
Ham-fisted attempt at producing a sci-fi epic, that comes across more like a bad hair metal band's long form music video.

jungle warriors (1984)

aka Euer Weg führt durch die Hölle.
"I knew this thing would turn to shit."
A fashion shoot in the South American jungle goes wrong when the model's plane is shot down, leaving them stranded and at the mercy of drug baron (Paul L. Smith), and his sister (Sybil Danning). To make matters worse, mafia boss Vito Mastranga (John Vernon) has popped by to negotiate a drugs deal.
Plodding actioner that's not even entertaining on a boring day.

the daisy chain (2008)

"Don't you think you'll go crazy here after the bright lights of London."
Heavily pregnant Martha (Samantha Morton) moves to rural Ireland when her husband (Steven Mackintosh) gets a job teaching at his old school. There she meets a feral child, Daisy (Mhairi Anderson), a girl whom the locals think is a changeling and shun. Taking pity on her, Martha takes her in, but soon finds that where Daisy is, strange and disturbing events are never far away.
A promising story, with a pervasive unease, but one that fails to build consistently to its shocking ending.

tormented (2009)

"Kids today, no respect!"
A pupil kills himself due to being bullied, and despite not knowing him, head girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton) speaks touchingly about him at the funeral. That is until Jason (Olly Alexander) calls her a hypocrite. To compound her error of judgement, she starts hanging round with the bullying kids, just as they start getting text messages from the dead boy telling them that they are going to die.
A stalk and slash featuring a school populated by over age actors giving cliched approximations of life. This annoys rather than entertains, as there is a good film in here trying to get out, but it compounds its lack of sympathetic characters by throwing away the punchline far too early and easily.