UNDER SIEGE (1980) ***

A gang of thieves pull off a daring heist in a casino and the chief Inspector (Stuart Whitman) sends police Captain Sylvester (Hugo Stiglitz) to go after them.  While they’re on the lam, the thieves split up and go their separate ways.  One group is killed by the cops, and the other breaks into the house of a wealthy family and takes them hostage.  They demand a plane to make to their getaway, and the Inspector eventually relents.  Predictably, things don’t go as planned. 

Not to be confused with the Steven Seagal flick of the same name, this surprisingly sturdy action thriller from Mexico’s master of exploitation, Rene (Night of 1000 Cats) Cardona, Jr. sort of plays like a South of the Border variation on Desperate Hours.  It’s one of those movies that’s a bit better than expected at every turn.  Cardona gives us lots of scenes of controlled chaos as there are tons of shootouts (including a brief gun battle in a movie theater) and foot, car, boat, and plane chases aplenty.  The scenes inside the home are appropriately suspenseful, and the interactions between the thieves and the hostages are legitimately tense.  The finale is equally strong as the film sort of morphs into a mini-disaster movie when one of the family members is forced to land the plane when the pilot gets shot by the kidnappers. 

Whitman spends most of his screen time sitting behind a desk smoking a stogie and barking orders while Stiglitz does a lot of the heavy lifting.  Hugo even gets his own Dirty Harry rip-off scene where he jumps aboard a hijacked school bus.  The gory way the hijacker gets dispatched in this sequence was worth an extra Half Star in my book.  Both stars are quite good and Francesco (Sorcerer) Rabal, Marisa (Diabolik) Mell (who has a couple of brief nude scenes), and Antonella (The Gates of Hell) Interlenghi, who play members of the kidnapped family, do fine work too. 

Whitman starred in the awful Guyana:  Cult of the Damned for Cardona the previous year. 

AKA: Panic Makers. AKA: Hostages!

BEAKS (1987) **

Michelle (Waxwork) Johnson is a reporter who is tired of getting shitty assignments.  Along with her cameraman boyfriend (The Blue Lagoon’s Christopher Atkins), she goes to Spain to cover a story about chickens who turned on their owner.  They soon learn it is but one of a series of bird attacks that have been happening around the globe.  While they try to figure out why the birds have gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, the birds attack a vacationing family and a kid’s birthday party. 

Director Rene Cardona Jr. delivers a solid opening sequence where some eagles attack a couple of hang gliders.  If anything, it’s impressive from a staging standpoint.  I’m not sure how long it took the eagle wrangler to get the birds in the same shot as the hang gliders, but I respect that it was done for real.  Nowadays, they would’ve used CGI for that shit.  That doesn’t mean it’s particularly exciting or suspenseful as Cardona uses way too much slow-motion.  Not to mention the fact that I’m pretty sure PETA would have something to say about the way the bird was dispatched. 

Such scenes of cruelty to birds (often shown in slow motion) mean it won’t take long before you start rooting against the humans.  That may have been Cardona’s point all along, but he makes his points much too crudely for it to work as a social message.  Still, the bird attacks manage to have a kick to them as the close-ups of eyes gouged out and faced being pecked are nice and juicy.  Because of that, Beaks very nearly skates by thanks to those scenes alone. 

This was a multinational film production.  You can tell from all the countries listed in the credits and by the fact that every time it cuts back and forth from Spain to Italy to Peru to Mexico, there’s a little title card where the action is taking place.  I don’t think that was so much for the benefit of the plot, but to impress the audience how far and wide the film was filmed. 

Honestly, there was just too much filler in between the good stuff to make it worthwhile.  Cardona also relies way too heavily on slow motion.  In fact, the film probably could’ve been a good fifteen to twenty minutes shorter had he allowed those scenes to play at normal speed. 

Atkins looks like he may have been drunk or high (or both) but Johnson (who used an obvious body double for her nude scenes) is pretty good.  I can’t fault either performer as a trip to travel around the globe must’ve been pretty tempting, even if they had to star in a crappy killer bird movie in order to do so.  Gabrielle Tinti also pops up as a survivor of a bird attack, unfortunately without his usual co-star (and wife) Laura Gemser by his side. 

If there’s middle ground between The Birds and Birdemic, this is it.  As trashy and overlong (100 minutes) as it is, it’s still better than The Birds 2.  (Coincidentally, this was sold in some markets as The Birds 2.)  Or Zombie 5:  Killing Birds, for that matter

Suggested Drinking Game:  Take a shot every time you see a flock of birds take to the skies in slow motion.  (You’ll get drunk pretty quickly as this movie has more shots of doves flying in slow motion than John Woo’s entire filmography.)

AKA:  Beaks:  The Movie.  AKA:  Birds of Prey.  AKA:  Evil Birds.  AKA:  Beaks:  The Birds 2.

APARTMENT 7A (2024) ***

Apartment 7A is a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby.  I like that when Paramount decides to fiddle with a classic of that stature, they confine it to television (which is more than I can say for Warner Bros. and their uneven string of theatrically released Exorcist sequels).  First, there was the dreadful Made for TV sequel, Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby (starring Patty Duke!) and then the miniseries remake (which I still haven’t seen).  Now comes this, which went straight to Paramount+. 

Julia (The Wolf Man) Garner stars as Terry, a dancer who breaks her ankle and struggles to find work on Broadway. The Castevets (Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally) are a kindly old couple who help her get back on her feet by letting her stay in their spare apartment.  One night, Terry has drinks with the producer of the show (Jim Sturgess) and wakes up pregnant.  Pretty soon, she begins getting everything she wants, including the lead in a Broadway show.  She eventually realizes the devilish plans the seemingly benign couple has in store for her. 

The dancer Garner portrays is a minor character from Rosemary’s Baby.  If you’re familiar with that film, you probably already know she comes to a gruesome end.  Garner is fine in the lead, but it’s Dianne Wiest who steals the show.  She is a hoot in the role originated by Ruth Gordon, who won an Oscar for her work in the original.  She sinks her teeth into the scenery like a pit bull and devours everything in sight. 

Director Natalie Erika James is smart enough not to try to ape Roman Polanski’s style.  She does a good job at playing within the beats of Rosemary's Baby and letting the movie do its own thing within the confines of that film’s structure, without exactly replicating it.  I’m thinking specifically of the scene where Rosemary is drugged and impregnated.  Since Garner is a dancer in this one, the dream morphs into a Satanic Busby Berkeley dance sequence, and I must say, it is one of the best Satanic Busby Berkeley dance sequences on record. 

As far as 2024 prequels to horror classics go, it’s not a patch on The First Omen, but it works surprisingly well.  As with that film, the director is using the bones of a durable horror franchise to make statements about women’s rights, and the mix of social commentary and chills works more often than not.  While the pace threatens to peter out in the third act, the finale is decent enough to make up for the wait.  Thanks to James’ efforts, Apartment 7A feels like a genuine continuation of the original, and not just a typical made-for-streaming cash grab. 

ICED (1989) **

A mentally unbalanced skier flips out when his girlfriend makes time with a hot shot competitor.  He gets so mad that he commits suicide by skiing off a mountain.  Four years later, the now married couple go on vacation to a ski lodge where they rent a time share with a group of friends.  They get worried when someone doesn’t show up, and as the group splits up, a killer wearing snow goggles picks them off one by one. 

Iced is a lukewarm skiing themed slasher that has found something of a cult following over the last couple of years.  That’s probably due to people being nostalgic about it from renting it back in the ‘80s.  If you’re like me and missed out on it back then, there’s honestly not a whole lot here to recommend.  It’s mostly dull for the first hour or so as the killer waits an exorbitant amount of time before he starts racking up bodies.  The murder sequences include death by snowplow, ski pole, icicle, hot tub electrocution, bear traps, and good old-fashioned stabbing.  Too bad just see the aftermath most of the time. The POV shots from inside the killer’s cracked snow goggles are pretty cool though. 

Debra (Dr. Caligari) De Liso makes for a solid Final Girl, all things considered.  You’ve got to respect any actress who spends much of the third act running around in the snow in her underwear.  I do have to take points off for the laughable scene where she discovers the bodies of her friends and calls not the police, but her time share representative!  What?  Did she think because her friends were slaughtered, he was going to give her a discounted rate?

The completely random and fairly graphic sex scenes help somewhat.  It’s also fun seeing little Wednesday Addams, Lisa Loring all grown up and playing the sexpot of the group.  She has a couple of nude scenes that are altogether ooky.  

Even with a handful of highlights, Iced is still bound to leave you cold. 

Director Jeff Kwitny made Beyond the Door 3 next. 

AKA:  Blizzard of Blood.

IN THE LOST LANDS (2025) **

Well, they tried to slip a post-apocalyptic witchy werewolf western movie starring my girl Milla Jovovich under my radar.  As with anything tangibly Milla related, I try to stay on top of these things the best I can.  They almost snuck it by me.  Almost.  This one was (surprise) directed by her hubby Paul W.S. Anderson and is based on a story by none other than Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin.  (What’s with all the double middle initials?)

Milla is a witch with a tattooed face named Gray Alys (What’s with Anderson having Milla play characters named Alice?) who ventures into the “Lost Lands” at the behest of a Queen (Amara Okereke) who wants her to steal a shapeshifting spell from a werewolf.  She gets a burly cowboy (Dave Bautista) to act as her guide and together, they try to stay one step ahead of “The Church”, who want to execute Alys for her witchy ways. 

This is one of those hodgepodge movies that borrow liberal doses from other movies without finding a unique voice of its own.  It has cowboys and witches and werewolves and knights from the Crusades, and yet it just feels like it’s making shit up as it goes along.  Milla’s witch powers are often inconsistent and sometimes downright lame.  The human villains are paper thin and forgettable too. 

The effects are lackluster as well.  Often times, it just feels like the actors are standing around on a greenscreen soundstage while 95% of everything around them is CGI.  (And not particularly good CGI either.)  It’s like watching a demo for After Effects or something.

The action is a mixed bag.  Anderson’s most successful action sequence is when Milla and Dave fight off mutants in a burned-out nuclear power plant.  That’s mostly because it feels like leftovers from one of their Resident Evil sequels. 

Milla looks good though in a black cloak and wielding two little scythes.  Bautista has a look that says, “Gee, I thought my career was in a better place than this”.  Neither performer phones it in, but it’s not exactly their best work either. 

As far as Jovovich and Anderson collaborations go, this is on the lower end of the spectrum.  That said, you’re either the kind of person who will watch a movie where Milla Jovovich sports silver Wolverine-style claws and fights hand to hand with a werewolf or you aren’t.  Despite flashes of this kind of enjoyable nuttiness, In the Lost Lands ultimately feels like a lost cause. 

SLAYERS (2022) ½ *

Slayers is a vampire movie.  It wants to be a horror comedy, but it fails miserably on both counts.  I will give it this:  It is (technically) a movie, and it does have vampires.  That’s about all I can say for it though. 

Thomas Jane stars as a grizzled vampire hunter with a Santa Claus beard.   When a group of social media putzes (I refuse to call anyone with a video blog an “influencer” because most of the time the only two things they influence are Jack and shit and Jack left town) get lured by a vampire to his mansion under the guise of using their social media platforms to roll out a new “vaccine”.  Naturally, the serum turns humans into vampires and it’s up to Jane to stake them before everyone likes and subscribes. 

Slayers goes so wrong so fast in so many ways it will make your head spin.  From the cringe worthy narration to the annoying YouTube and Tik Tok style videos to the video game graphics title cards, it is a fucking mess from top to bottom.  All this plays out like one long ADHD fever dream by a Mountain Dew-addled iPad kid who lost his last brain cell watching Skibidi Toilet. 

I guess the whole Tik Toker thing may have been borderline tolerable if the film was actually satirizing these sorts of individuals.  Instead, they’re thrown in there almost as a selling point.  Some fun may have been had watching these nimrods get slaughtered wholesale.  Heck, it might’ve even been watchable had the editor not chopped everything to bits and the graphics guy didn’t throw every chintzy title trick in the book onto the screen.  Not to mention all the stupid asides that would only make the most inebriated of souls chuckle.  (Example:  There’s a shot of some owls and their hooting is translated into English via subtitles.)

Near the end, the film uses clips from public domain movies like Nosferatu, Horror Express, and Silent Night, Bloody Night as flashbacks.  Seriously, don’t put clips of better movies into your shitty movie.  It will only make the audience want to watch those films instead. 

The sad thing is that Slayers manages to waste a solid cast.  Jane, Abigail Breslin, and Malin Ackerman are lost at sea with the limp material.  In fact, being a fan of the cast kind of makes it worse because you know they all deserve so much better (especially Ackerman). 

Considering Slayers is basically one long anti-vaxxer statement makes it especially hard to take.  Couple that with the fact it was filmed during the pandemic, which makes you think it honestly believes its convictions.  That sentiment right there is the final nail in the film’s… ahem… coffin. 

PLANET DUNE (2021) * ½

It’s been a while since I watched a “Mockbuster” from The Asylum.  Naturally, Planet Dune is The Asylum’s version of Dune, but done on a budget that wouldn’t even cover the catering cost for that movie.  It’s rare when they can get an actor to star in one of these things that’s tangibly related to the blockbuster they are mocking.  It’s kind of funny/sad that Sean Young, who starred in the 1984 original, agreed to appear in this.  In every scene, she has a look about her that says, “So… it’s come to this, huh?”  She gets through her dialogue scenes with all the energy of an actor who is getting paid just enough to leave their trailer.  You almost get the sense she gave the directors one take and one take only.  It’s enough to make her performance in Ace Ventura:  Pet Detective look dignified and thoughtful by comparison. 

A hot shot space pilot (Emily Killian) disobeys orders and is sent to prison.  There, she must fly freighters at the ass end of the galaxy on a desert planet.  When her mission goes sour, she and her crew are left stranded on the planet where they must contend with giant sandworms.  With no hope for a rescue, the crew tries to work together to survive.  

This is less a riff on Dune and more like a space version of Tremors.  That said, there is a scene where some characters ride on the back of a worm, so maybe this was one of those cases where The Asylum tried to get as close as they could to their inspiration without being sued.  The CGI sandworms themselves are pretty shoddy.  They look like The Langoliers with giant tails.  The spaceship effects are much better though, and while they aren’t exactly Industrial Light and Magic, they look more sophisticated than your typical Asylum joint. 

Too bad the movie itself just kind of sits there.  It would be one thing if it moved at a decent pace or had a sense of humor, but unfortunately that’s not the case.  Overall, it’s mostly forgettable and lame. 

Co-director Glenn Campbell also helmed the amusing Shark Side of the Moon.