Cinema Beef : Burnt Ends #2 : Circuit Breaker aka Inhumanoid
Intro: Shh. It's all right.
Intro: No. No, it's not all right.
Intro: Nothing is all right.
Intro: Now, now, please, please, turn the ship around.
Intro: I'm not going to leave you alone.
Intro: I'm not like Foster.
Intro: No, don't. I'll shoot.
Intro: Hey, not.
Intro: I said stop!
Intro: I saw the way you were looking at me before.
Intro: What?
Intro: What?
Intro: The way you took care of me and touched me.
Intro: You want me.
Intro: You're crazy.
Intro: I know you want me.
Intro: That's why you wanted Foster gone.
Intro: So we can be alone.
Intro: So I sent him away.
Intro: for you,
Intro: for your writing,
Intro: for us.
Intro: No!
Intro: You're a murderer! Stop!
Intro: Well, then shoot me.
Intro: Kill me. Shoot me.
Intro: Shoot me!
Intro: Every man
Intro: must choose a mate
Intro: Katrina
Intro: and I choose you
Intro: I choose you
Gary Hill: Hey folks
Gary Hill: this is Cinema beef
Gary Hill: the burnt ends
Gary Hill: those are the crispy pieces
Gary Hill: on the end of the barbecue that
Gary Hill: they taste oh so good or maybe
Gary Hill: bitter in some of these
Gary Hill: in this sense but
Gary Hill: it's a single review show
Gary Hill: that we do
Gary Hill: just to have more reviews
Gary Hill: out there and you know watch some fun stuff
Gary Hill: and
Gary Hill: we are watching tonight
Gary Hill: Circuit Breaker aka Inhumanoid
Gary Hill: from 1996
Gary Hill: we'll get into all that after I introduce our guest
Gary Hill: he is
Gary Hill: one third of my
Gary Hill: broadcasting team on the last
Gary Hill: called Torchy's and he has this whole
Gary Hill: network of podcasts
Gary Hill: known as the Cinema Degeneration
Gary Hill: podcast. I don't know what you call
Gary Hill: podcast network but there's a bunch of them.
Gary Hill: I'm sure you'll tell us all about them.
Gary Hill: Cameron Scott is here. How you doing
Gary Hill: sir? I'm doing pretty good.
Cameron Scott: I'm pretty excited to talk about this
Cameron Scott: one because this is part of that
Cameron Scott: Roger Corman lineup that we were discussing
Cameron Scott: and yeah
Cameron Scott: I'm pretty excited. I got a lot of thoughts
Cameron Scott: on this one.
Gary Hill: I didn't know there were so many. We'll talk about it.
Gary Hill: This series, this is part of
Gary Hill: the Roger Corman Presents series
Gary Hill: that was on Showtime
Gary Hill: that were like full length movies.
Gary Hill: Apparently there was a whole season of like
Gary Hill: 15 or something and then like a whole
Gary Hill: second season of these.
Gary Hill: Just putting out, I'm sure with the help
Gary Hill: of Julie, because they're under the New Horizons
Gary Hill: label.
Gary Hill: If you rent something
Gary Hill: like this.
Gary Hill: Yeah, we're getting to the plot and the meat and potatoes of this.
Gary Hill: Circuit Break Reiki Inhumanoid.
Gary Hill: Look for it at your IMDB.
Gary Hill: It says...
Gary Hill: A family of three is traveling in space where they encounter a stranded spaceship.
Gary Hill: They manage to pull out one survivor who's in shock.
Gary Hill: However, when the father goes on to investigate the ship, he finds that everyone was murdered.
Gary Hill: Suddenly, the stranger leaves him on a damaged spaceship and starts to terrorize his wife and daughter.
Gary Hill: You know what?
Gary Hill: Fuck you people.
Gary Hill: It's just a little longer.
Gary Hill: It shows up to me that Stranger is really an emotionally unstable Android program without morals.
Gary Hill: Making him go on a killer rampage.
Gary Hill: Well, he did that already.
Gary Hill: Who will survive?
Gary Hill: The fun thing about these movies is they star a bunch of genre people that you love.
Gary Hill: Richard Grieco, take him, relieve him.
Gary Hill: He's charismatic as fuck to me.
Gary Hill: Plays Adam, our robot man.
Cameron Scott: He seems like he's the one person really acting in this movie.
Gary Hill: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gary Hill: You're not wrong about that.
Gary Hill: Everybody else is just kind of, eh, they're just sort of there, you know?
Gary Hill: Laura Harris, who I don't recognize for much, plays Katrina, the wife.
Gary Hill: Corbin Bernson, the great Corbin Bernson, plays Foster, the husband.
Gary Hill: Brittany Ashton Holmes, who might not sound too familiar,
Gary Hill: but she plays Amy, the daughter,
Gary Hill: but she was Darla in that Little Rascals movie
Gary Hill: that I'm pretty fond of.
Gary Hill: I think it's funny still to this day.
Gary Hill: Edie McClure shows up as Dr. Mary Ann Snow.
Gary Hill: Robin Gamble shows up as Adam's father, I guess,
Gary Hill: as Dr. Milton, you know,
Gary Hill: a little Paradise Lost right there.
Cameron Scott: Oh, yeah.
Gary Hill: And there's some other folks in this movie.
Cameron Scott: Not a big cast, though.
Cameron Scott: It's pretty isolated.
Gary Hill: Pretty tight, yeah, pretty tight.
Gary Hill: This is directed by and written by Victoria Muspratt,
Gary Hill: who didn't do a ton, if I remember correctly.
Gary Hill: I'm going to look real fast.
Gary Hill: Directed, I think, either a remake or not,
Gary Hill: Macon County Jail from 1997,
Gary Hill: White Wolves 3 from 1993,
Gary Hill: and apparently directed what we call Magic and Mischief from this year.
Gary Hill: Didn't do a whole lot, though.
Cameron Scott: Quite a hiatus, though, isn't it?
Gary Hill: Yeah, I know.
Gary Hill: If you watch it, though, it's not so bad to where you wouldn't work again,
Gary Hill: but I guess maybe it was a bad experience.
Gary Hill: I don't know.
Gary Hill: I'm sure there's not a lot of research done about this movie,
Gary Hill: so we're going to talk about it right now.
Gary Hill: Cameron, thoughts and possibly prayers about Inhumanoid,
Gary Hill: a.k.a. Circuit Breaker.
Cameron Scott: Oh, well, geez.
Cameron Scott: Inhumanoid, a.k.a. Circuit Breaker, a.k.a. Roger Corman Presents Circuit Breaker.
Cameron Scott: I swore I had never seen this movie.
Cameron Scott: until you had suggested it.
Cameron Scott: I looked and I'm like, okay, this looks familiar.
Cameron Scott: And then I started to watch it.
Cameron Scott: I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've seen this,
Cameron Scott: but it was so, I'm just going to blow my load right here.
Cameron Scott: It was so lackluster in spots
Cameron Scott: that I feel like it was easily forgotten if I had seen it.
Cameron Scott: But it's really weird.
Cameron Scott: It's a mismatched kind of movie.
Cameron Scott: It crossbreeds genres or different tropes.
Cameron Scott: It's basically a healthy dose of, you know, the Terminator with a healthy dose of Dead Calm, you know, the George Miller joint.
Cameron Scott: And it's really weird.
Cameron Scott: It's very uneven.
Cameron Scott: I do like how it starts at the ending, so to speak, without blowing everything here right off the beginning.
Cameron Scott: It culminates in the adventure that it goes on with Adam, a.k.a. Richard Grieco, and his Andrew character.
Cameron Scott: But it's basically – it's a lot of dead calm.
Cameron Scott: I mean we're – Richard Grieco is playing the Billy Zane character and you got this Laura Harris playing the Nicole Kidman character who is like a troubled young lady who's –
Cameron Scott: I had a thing like because a note I made here at the beginning was motherfucking Edie McClure being all judgy with her like the fact that all former drug addicts are just horrible people, right?
Cameron Scott: And it's – I think it suffers from not having enough Edie McClure in it too.
Cameron Scott: I just – I find her to be a very calming presence in movies.
Cameron Scott: She's like a comfort food actor.
Cameron Scott: You see her and you're just like, oh, it's Edie.
Cameron Scott: But it does have a great cast.
Cameron Scott: The cast is pretty stacked for such a small, isolated, reservoir dogs kind of cast.
Cameron Scott: Not very many people in it.
Cameron Scott: But Corbin Bernson is being all Corbin, and Richard Rico is being suave for the rapey, rapey Adam Milton, I guess you could say.
Cameron Scott: Or do we just call him Adam at this point?
Cameron Scott: I'm not really sure.
Gary Hill: Yeah, you just call him Adam.
Cameron Scott: It's very, very biblical in that sense.
Cameron Scott: Yeah.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, I mean, they did everything, but like I pulled out three ribs to make this motherfucker.
Cameron Scott: But yeah, I would say this is only recommending, only recommendable for somebody that is a hardcore sci-fi nerd like myself, because it's bad.
Cameron Scott: It's all sorts of bad, but it teeters on the edge of being so bad it's good.
Cameron Scott: So I have to kind of give it a pass.
Cameron Scott: Like I said, it's a little weird. It's a little out there.
Cameron Scott: But yeah, I have to admit, as bad as it was and as kind of lame as it was at some points, I don't know what this says about my tastes here, but I liked it.
Cameron Scott: It was horrible, and I loved it.
Gary Hill: I mean, it has to do with Greco, right?
Gary Hill: Because, you know, even in bad stuff, you know, he always had a certain charisma about him that could really carry a production like this.
Gary Hill: I mean, if he watched stuff like it, if looks could kill, which, you know, it is a fun movie, but it's really stupid and it wouldn't work without Greco in it.
Gary Hill: It just wouldn't.
Gary Hill: I mean, this was the guy that replaced Johnny Depp on 121 Jump Street when he went to go be more famous in Hollywood.
Gary Hill: They needed that face, and that face kind of stuck around and acted in genre cinema that really elevated what could have been a real piece of crap.
Cameron Scott: Right, right.
Cameron Scott: Like I was saying earlier, Richard Grieco feels like he's the only person really acting in this.
Cameron Scott: Him and Edie McClure.
Cameron Scott: Edie McClure feels like she's acting her ass off, but everybody else is – even Corbin Bernson, who does a permissible job.
Cameron Scott: But, like, everybody else just kind of feels like they're sort of sleepwalking through this one, if I'm making any sense there.
Gary Hill: Oh, you are.
Gary Hill: You are, because you've got Laura Harris as Katrina, the wife and mother.
Gary Hill: She's playing this whole, oh, nobody believes in me because I was addicted to drugs.
Gary Hill: So I'm just going to play this really dry and sort of care of my daughter but fucking resent her at the same time.
Gary Hill: Because the reason, because in the hilarious scene of this movie,
Gary Hill: I know Child Death isn't funny, but they don't show it or anything.
Cameron Scott: It's done tastefully.
Cameron Scott: I'll say it's done very tastefully.
Gary Hill: It's done very tastefully.
Gary Hill: Adam puts Amy, the little girl, inside this room or something.
Gary Hill: She thinks they're playing.
Gary Hill: But there's a giant spinning fan that keeps getting closer and closer.
Gary Hill: And she's like, do it again, do it again.
Gary Hill: And he's like, okay.
Gary Hill: And then, of course, it gets close enough to murder her.
Gary Hill: and you know the whole
Gary Hill: her reaction to her daughter's
Gary Hill: death is kind of like a
Gary Hill: like an act
Gary Hill: coming down in a way like yeah
Gary Hill: I'm so emotionally gone from all these
Gary Hill: drugs that I'm not doing
Gary Hill: and you know which leads to
Gary Hill: you know the sunset boulevard
Gary Hill: beginning that this movie did not deserve
Gary Hill: of the oh yeah she's on
Gary Hill: drugs she fucking did it man
Gary Hill: you know get her get her get her
Cameron Scott: you know right right
Gary Hill: Our Devo slash paintball commandos that you see in the beginning of this movie, they're wearing Lego hats and pads and stuff.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, they look like fucking extras from a Devo music video.
Gary Hill: Oh, man.
Gary Hill: But yeah, it really works.
Gary Hill: And you forgot to mention one thing that I thought of immediately when you find out Grieco's a robot and he's all horned up was Saturn 3.
Gary Hill: It reminded me a lot of that.
Gary Hill: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it does.
Gary Hill: If you don't know what that film is,
Gary Hill: it's a film where, um,
Gary Hill: who's, um,
Gary Hill: who's the world-famous actor
Gary Hill: that I'm blanking on?
Gary Hill: Oh, Kirk Douglas?
Gary Hill: Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett
Gary Hill: invite a marooned
Gary Hill: Harvey Keitel,
Gary Hill: very dubbed in that movie,
Gary Hill: and his special robot
Gary Hill: on board, and
Gary Hill: he transports his robot, his conscience
Gary Hill: into this robot who's very
Gary Hill: horny for Farrah Fawcett.
Gary Hill: That's what this reminded me of.
Gary Hill: This sentient
Gary Hill: thing, you know, whose only
Gary Hill: weakness is his horniness, apparently.
Gary Hill: It plays really well in this movie.
Gary Hill: Like, yeah, you know what? My only
Gary Hill: weakness is girls that don't want to
Gary Hill: fuck me. She's kind of like a toxic
Gary Hill: male robot in a way.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Gary Hill: So it was really strange
Gary Hill: how rapey this thing was.
Gary Hill: Like, yeah, you know what? I want sex
Gary Hill: and I don't care how I get it.
Gary Hill: and this woman has fucking strange dreams
Gary Hill: about a fucking beast man
Gary Hill: for no reason that goes nowhere in this plot.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, we gotta talk about that a little bit.
Gary Hill: I don't know if this is like
Gary Hill: some weird come down fantasy that she has
Gary Hill: after she was addicted to drugs.
Gary Hill: Her, I guess, wishing that Corbin Bernstein
Gary Hill: was like this beast man
Gary Hill: that would fuck her in her dream,
Gary Hill: which I gotta say this for the filmmaker,
Gary Hill: you stole from Nightmare on Elm Street wholesale
Gary Hill: because the scene where she's walking up in the nightgown,
Gary Hill: all you're missing is a little more darkness in that hallway,
Gary Hill: and I'm waiting for Freddy Krueger to come out and come kill Amanda Weiss.
Gary Hill: I'm waiting for it to happen.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, I'm waiting for the daughter character to pop up,
Cameron Scott: the little Darla to come up and start going,
Cameron Scott: one, two, Freddy's coming for you.
Gary Hill: I'm waiting because it was filmed just like that,
Gary Hill: and it kind of hurt my soul a little bit.
Gary Hill: Like, hey, just steal it wholesale, and that's fine.
Gary Hill: but it leads you to this thing that maybe
Gary Hill: maybe Adam is a dream but of course he's not
Gary Hill: but it just goes nowhere
Gary Hill: this desire to have sex with a beast man
Gary Hill: go ahead brother I'm sorry
Cameron Scott: yeah the beast man
Cameron Scott: the whole sequence is just like
Cameron Scott: all of a sudden again
Cameron Scott: Edie McClurg leads in with her
Cameron Scott: former drug addicts are just horrible people
Cameron Scott: that can't be trusted
Cameron Scott: or trusted it in any way, shape, or form.
Cameron Scott: And then it goes right into our actress Katrina,
Cameron Scott: the character Katrina,
Cameron Scott: having this weird werewolf rape fantasy.
Cameron Scott: And it's so odd.
Cameron Scott: It is so strange.
Cameron Scott: And it has no place in the movie whatsoever.
Cameron Scott: I thought for sure, I'm like, okay, well, maybe in this future,
Cameron Scott: this weird sci-fi future we have here,
Cameron Scott: maybe we're going to get some fucking werewolves.
Cameron Scott: Nope, just in that werewolf freak fantasy thing that happened.
Cameron Scott: It was really, really weird.
Cameron Scott: And I would have liked some more clarification to why that was chosen.
Cameron Scott: As a filmmaker myself, I was just thinking to myself, okay, this made no sense.
Cameron Scott: This just felt like fucking random as hell.
Gary Hill: It makes you want to fucking write something in the script for yourself and say,
Gary Hill: well, here's the scene where she was sexually assaulted when she was addicted to drugs.
Gary Hill: And this guy had an incredibly hairy back, so she thought it was a wolfman or something.
Gary Hill: You know?
Gary Hill: Yeah, yeah.
Gary Hill: I'm not really belittling sexually assaulted people, but this being in the thing, you expect it to be some kind of foreshadowing.
Gary Hill: And not just, you know, which I will say that there's a part of the film where Greco reveals, Adam reveals, how he murdered his whole crew, which are retractable claws that come out of his hand.
Gary Hill: Now, the extension of these said claws look really bad,
Gary Hill: but when they're out and they're out to kill people, these claws,
Gary Hill: it's actually pretty good practical makeup.
Gary Hill: And it just looks really bad when they're first extending out.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, that one little quick CGI scene of them kind of popping out is really bad.
Cameron Scott: You could have just excised that entire shot,
Cameron Scott: and it would have been all the better for the movie.
Gary Hill: Yeah, but he can have claw hands like, you know, something they're ripping off.
Gary Hill: Again, Emory on Elm Street.
Gary Hill: Yeah.
Gary Hill: At least it's something.
Gary Hill: It's not a werewolf sex fantasy that doesn't go anywhere.
Gary Hill: But I've got to say for Edie McClurg, though, that this is not your normal Edie McClurg.
Gary Hill: She's not playing Mrs. Poole or that kind of character.
Gary Hill: She's playing it straight.
Gary Hill: And I don't see many roles of her doing that and playing the scientist type person.
Gary Hill: And it's different, but it's a welcoming difference.
Gary Hill: She's not playing that same character.
Gary Hill: Oh, definitely.
Gary Hill: Yeah.
Gary Hill: Oh, go ahead.
Gary Hill: I'm sorry.
Cameron Scott: No, I was just going to say definitely.
Cameron Scott: I thought it was a different change of character for her.
Cameron Scott: Usually she's played the character with a little bit more whimsy to her, a little bit more comedy and whatnot.
Cameron Scott: but she's playing it pretty straight here, and I appreciate that.
Cameron Scott: This is one of the first roles I've seen of her portraying a character like that,
Cameron Scott: so yeah, thumbs up.
Gary Hill: Another thing, this film's ripped off a lot of things,
Gary Hill: and Alien being another one of those things,
Gary Hill: right to the point of them looking for, not really looking for a salvage,
Gary Hill: looking for survivors, but she knocks Adam out of the airlock in this movie,
Gary Hill: just like in Alien.
Gary Hill: Of course, he's not dead, which is one thing I can appreciate about this movie.
Gary Hill: It's like, oh, she knocked him out of the airlock.
Gary Hill: It's a great false ending to make you think, oh, he's out in space somewhere.
Gary Hill: Like, no, he held onto your spaceship and now he's back on board again to beat the shit out of your husband and possibly sexually assault you.
Cameron Scott: Oh, yeah.
Cameron Scott: It's something I wanted to touch base on.
Cameron Scott: We already mentioned a bit before.
Cameron Scott: This dude killed her daughter.
Cameron Scott: Like, and it's revealed pretty soon, like after he gets on the ship, you know, because, of course, let's be a good Samaritan where we're all, you know, in space where, you know, Foster, Orton Bergson character is, you know, boards the ship, finds, you know, Adam.
Cameron Scott: I'm using air quotes here that you can't see Adam, you know, that Greco guy, and, you know, brings him on board and then he's unceremoniously goes back onto Adam's ship to look for more survivors because he said there's what?
Cameron Scott: What did he say in the confines of the movie?
Cameron Scott: There was four escape hatches.
Gary Hill: Yeah, 35 crew aboard, I think he said.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, yeah, and that everybody was dead,
Cameron Scott: but there could be somebody else left on there,
Cameron Scott: so he gets them to go back on.
Cameron Scott: Within minutes, within like five minutes,
Cameron Scott: he's done already killed the daughter.
Cameron Scott: You know, I was just like, okay.
Cameron Scott: We killed the kid, and the mom, Katrina,
Cameron Scott: has this total non-reaction to it.
Cameron Scott: She just like, it was just like somebody like, oh, no.
Cameron Scott: It was like the old George Carlin joke.
Cameron Scott: Oh, shit, I dropped the noodles.
Cameron Scott: Just, oh, shit.
Cameron Scott: I just dropped the noodles on the floor.
Cameron Scott: Oh, shit.
Cameron Scott: It wasn't like, oh, my daughter just got sucked into the garbage disposal
Cameron Scott: and got ate up like a Cuisinart.
Cameron Scott: Like, no, no, no, no, no.
Cameron Scott: But I got one question.
Cameron Scott: How did the blood end up on the Raggedy Andal that was outside of the garbage lock area?
Gary Hill: I have no answer for that.
Gary Hill: Maybe the door was a little bit faulty.
Gary Hill: I couldn't tell you.
Cameron Scott: I'm going to say, plot holes, plot holes.
Gary Hill: If the force of the fan was enough to grind a child, the child grinder 2000, not in a sexual way, but in a grinding a child kind of way.
Gary Hill: I imagine there was a substantial splatter.
Gary Hill: And, yeah, I don't know.
Gary Hill: Let's see when they dial out and say, you know what?
Gary Hill: But by the way, Katrina, I fixed your problem.
Gary Hill: And the whole conversation they have, I guess, goes into it.
Gary Hill: When she's like, the child's hungry.
Gary Hill: Because your child gets hungry.
Gary Hill: You've got to feed it and take care of it.
Gary Hill: She goes, now see, I'm like her slave.
Gary Hill: And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Gary Hill: See, that's another thing.
Gary Hill: She's playing as a woman of whimsy that is on drugs.
Gary Hill: But she's supposed to be not on drugs in this movie.
Gary Hill: Even when her daughter gets taken by the child grinder 2000,
Gary Hill: her reaction is the reaction of a person who is on drugs.
Gary Hill: Like, I just watched my child get shot in the chest.
Gary Hill: This is how I'm going to react if I am on drugs.
Gary Hill: And she's not supposed to be on drugs.
Gary Hill: It's strange.
Gary Hill: Her whole performance is strange.
Cameron Scott: It felt like she was acting in two different movies from one scene to the next.
Cameron Scott: But I agree that the exchange of dialogue between Grieco and her is really odd because he tells her straight up, you won't have to be her slave anymore.
Cameron Scott: You're free now.
Cameron Scott: It was like, well, damn, you could have just – could have gave her up for adoption.
Cameron Scott: You didn't have to go into the Child Grinder 3000 as you so eloquently put it.
Cameron Scott: And I also – I mean I also did not buy a bit his story like in the beginning when he's telling her.
Cameron Scott: Like I don't know why I would believe him because it's Richard Grieco, you know.
Cameron Scott: But – and he's shady as fuck.
Cameron Scott: But when he's telling her this, she should not have bought his story about, oh, Foster got jettisoned from the connection with the mothership and there's bodies everywhere.
Cameron Scott: But there's a nuclear breach and my ship exploded.
Cameron Scott: So your husband is gone.
Cameron Scott: I'm Foster now.
Cameron Scott: call me Foster. And then he gets super creepy. He's like, yeah, call me Foster. Say it. Say it.
Cameron Scott: It's just super fucking creepy, man.
Gary Hill: The part where Foster finds Dr. Milton on the board of the spaceship,
Gary Hill: and they're having that conversation about, you know, Adams, you know, he's perfect in every way,
Gary Hill: except for, you know, his emotions could get the better of him.
Gary Hill: I want to say so bad. He had to kill everybody on board, and he sees your ship.
Gary Hill: It's like he could spill all the sex on board.
Gary Hill: So he had to go get some, you know.
Cameron Scott: Oh, yeah.
Cameron Scott: That's so weird.
Cameron Scott: That's so weird.
Cameron Scott: Like, I love, like, when Foster finds the real Dr. Milton,
Cameron Scott: and he's like the other Adam, the one who claimed to be Dr. Milton,
Cameron Scott: didn't he say he was only two months old, said he's basically a baby?
Cameron Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Scott: So he's a baby two-month-old android.
Cameron Scott: So he has no morals.
Cameron Scott: That's something he said.
Cameron Scott: He made him without morals because that seemed like a great thing to do.
Cameron Scott: Because this also harkens to something we're dealing with now with AI.
Cameron Scott: It's like, you want Terminators?
Cameron Scott: Because that's how you get fucking Terminators, man.
Cameron Scott: You create robots, androids, AI without a set of morals in place.
Cameron Scott: It just seems shady.
Cameron Scott: I'll just say that.
Gary Hill: Yeah, it does.
Gary Hill: especially you know the the way he is i mean he's just like any other toxic male that that there is
Gary Hill: and it's almost like they instilled that in him and i'm watching this movie with the mute on right
Gary Hill: now just so i can watch it in our time and i'm getting to the finale which is is is the most
Gary Hill: exciting part of this film so in a way i'm glad they sunset boulevard of this bitch because you
Gary Hill: know once they get him back on board and the daughter's dead they can't fit they can't put
Gary Hill: back together again because the child grinder 2000 did a great job of tearing her up but um right
Gary Hill: they fixed the husband they fix adam too and adam is just just killing everybody on the ship right
Cameron Scott: now and then this is the last third of this movie is stellar the last third is great it is stellar
Gary Hill: it is and to get there though it's just a weird experience so i wish there was more more and more
Gary Hill: like this, but even
Gary Hill: in the end, you know, Katrina,
Gary Hill: she's like under psychiatric
Gary Hill: care because she supposedly murdered
Gary Hill: her child, and
Gary Hill: she almost has this look on her face
Gary Hill: like, yep, I'm waiting for sex from
Gary Hill: Adam. Like, yep, I'm waiting for it.
Cameron Scott: I'm waiting for it, you know.
Cameron Scott: Again,
Cameron Scott: it's just like Nicole Kidman's character
Gary Hill: in Dead Column. She ends up using
Cameron Scott: the sex
Cameron Scott: as a weapon because at least in this
Cameron Scott: movie, unlike Dead Column,
Cameron Scott: sex can kill this motherfucker or at least overload him you know because he's not you know he doesn't
Cameron Scott: know anything about these emotions that's the thing that the the the actual doctor says is that
Cameron Scott: you know if he gets overloaded by certain emotions we're not going to say exactly which ones but if
Cameron Scott: he gets overloaded he'll like he'll uh you know he'll reset you know or like have a shutdown like
Cameron Scott: a computer would. So I think that's
Cameron Scott: what they're doing here with
Cameron Scott: the Katrina
Cameron Scott: character. She's using it
Cameron Scott: but she does kill him.
Cameron Scott: Okay. I know we're jumping way, way, way
Cameron Scott: to the head here jumping all around.
Gary Hill: He does have to die eventually. She is
Gary Hill: pulling the whole reverse
Gary Hill: psychology. Yes, I will have sex with you
Gary Hill: now but I figured out a way to
Gary Hill: kill you. So yeah, she does
Gary Hill: get him in the end.
Gary Hill: The journey before that, it wasn't
Gary Hill: psychological in her part. It was just like
Gary Hill: oh wow, I'm playing this distressed mother
Gary Hill: who just lost her child to the child grab her 2000.
Gary Hill: Let me act just like this, like I am on drugs,
Gary Hill: but I'm not on drugs.
Gary Hill: And plus there's this whole plot where they just drop all together
Gary Hill: to say, hey, we have to have this little girl back to us
Gary Hill: within 48 hours. Can you do that?
Gary Hill: Oh, by the way, plot to the movie,
Gary Hill: let's stop to see what this broken spaceship is about.
Gary Hill: You know, not concerned about this 48 hours
Gary Hill: that could possibly be, you know,
Gary Hill: detrimental to their child.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, because
Cameron Scott: old Corbin
Cameron Scott: Bernson is more intrigued with
Cameron Scott: saving, salvaging
Cameron Scott: this ship or salvaging what
Cameron Scott: might be left of the crew than trying to
Cameron Scott: save his own daughter. And what does he get for
Cameron Scott: his troubles?
Cameron Scott: He gets clawed up by fucking
Cameron Scott: Greco Terminator.
Cameron Scott: Oh, they fixed him, though. He's okay.
Cameron Scott: You know?
Cameron Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Scott: I do love the part when Grieco has got a hold of him after he's done sliced and diced him like so much confetti.
Cameron Scott: And Foster is just laying there, and she starts to shoot at him.
Cameron Scott: She gets Grieco in the shoulder with one shot, but then he just pulls up Corbin Bernson and uses him as a human shield.
Cameron Scott: And she has this look like, oops, I accidentally shot my husband.
Cameron Scott: Oh, well, what can you do?
Cameron Scott: Dum-de-dum-de-dum.
Cameron Scott: dum dum dum dum dum
Gary Hill: yeah exactly
Gary Hill: we won't go too crazy further than that
Gary Hill: we were pretty deep into this
Gary Hill: like I said the finale is the best part of the movie
Gary Hill: even right now she's like
Gary Hill: Adam is convinced
Gary Hill: that you know she's going to give it up
Gary Hill: because she's playing pretty much the same
Gary Hill: tone she's been playing this entire movie
Gary Hill: but she's using it to her advantage
Gary Hill: now and it's
Gary Hill: I'm looking forward to diving into more of these
Gary Hill: Roger Cormor presents because all I really remember is
Gary Hill: Black Scorpion and that was the one that was on
Gary Hill: VHS at your store a lot
Gary Hill: was that one.
Cameron Scott: Yeah, there was actually
Cameron Scott: a Black Scorpion 2 that came out
Cameron Scott: as well.
Gary Hill: Any final things you'd like to say about
Gary Hill: this Gemma film?
Gary Hill: I'll have to say one thing.
Cameron Scott: If you're looking for
Cameron Scott: some knockdown, dragout,
Cameron Scott: great sci-fi action,
Cameron Scott: don't look for it in the first half of this movie.
Cameron Scott: Stay for the second half.
Cameron Scott: Folks, if you're listening
Cameron Scott: in and home, I implore you, if you can find this movie streaming anywhere or you have
Cameron Scott: a copy of it on old school VHS or whatnot, watch it.
Cameron Scott: It's worth sitting through and trudging through the first half of this
Cameron Scott: movie to get the much better stellar second half. Because I feel
Cameron Scott: like all the action, all the blood, all the gore, all the nudity, all the
Cameron Scott: little tidbits that you look for in a Roger Corman produced movie
Cameron Scott: is there at the end. And as
Cameron Scott: As far as the other Roger Corman-produced movies of this,
Cameron Scott: I'm always down to review some more of these
Cameron Scott: because some of these were really good.
Cameron Scott: I remember Burial of the Rats being really good.
Cameron Scott: They did a remake of Wasp Woman and Not of This Earth.
Cameron Scott: That was really good.
Cameron Scott: There's a remake.
Cameron Scott: If you haven't seen it, dude,
Cameron Scott: I definitely got to recommend the remake they did of A Bucket of Blood
Cameron Scott: because that is good shit.
Gary Hill: That cast is stacked in that thing, too.
Gary Hill: I was surprised that it was as stacked, that cast.
Gary Hill: I mean, these films, I only looked like the first 15 of them,
Gary Hill: but it's pretty stacked with genre people.
Gary Hill: I mean, Paul Bartelsch has been a few of these things,
Gary Hill: and I'm not surprised there, but before he passed on,
Gary Hill: he was in some of this stuff.
Gary Hill: And yes, you can find Circuit Breaker on YouTube for free to watch,
Gary Hill: an hour and 35 minutes right there.
Cameron Scott: So, yeah, it's a nice, decent.
Cameron Scott: It's a good watch because it's like it's barely an hour and a half long.
Cameron Scott: So it's not like these movies of today where everything is two hours and 20 minutes long and you just got to you got to carve out a whole chunk of your afternoon to watch it.
Cameron Scott: It's a good fun watch.
Cameron Scott: If you want something cheesy, you want something a little, you know, off the beaten path.
Cameron Scott: You want something a little bit something you can sink your teeth into.
Cameron Scott: You know what I mean?
Cameron Scott: that's not on the road so traveled,
Cameron Scott: I could recommend this movie.
Gary Hill: Yeah, I could recommend it too.
Gary Hill: It's a heavy recommend,
Gary Hill: but like Cameron said,
Gary Hill: if you think the first half drags,
Gary Hill: once you get back to the present day
Gary Hill: of the movie's premise,
Gary Hill: it really gets exciting.
Gary Hill: And she's just awful.
Gary Hill: That's like the biggest flaw of this movie
Gary Hill: is her and her acting.
Gary Hill: And I don't know who gave her direction
Gary Hill: to act like that, but I guess
Gary Hill: the reason why this director didn't do a whole lot
Gary Hill: more movies, I guess, because he
Gary Hill: made her act terribly around
Gary Hill: genre people who, Corbin Bernson
Gary Hill: and Richard Grieco, Ian McClurg especially,
Gary Hill: who know the game.
Gary Hill: So they don't need direction.
Gary Hill: They just think, hey... Yeah, I mean, like, Corbin
Cameron Scott: Bernson is doing what Corbin Bernson
Cameron Scott: does, and Richard Grieco is doing what
Cameron Scott: Richard Grieco does. But they're
Cameron Scott: all, like, professionals, and
Cameron Scott: the lady that played Katrina,
Cameron Scott: what was her name, Laura Harris, just
Cameron Scott: it just felt like she was not prepared for this or maybe it was like like you said maybe it was the
Cameron Scott: direction that she was given maybe it wasn't solely on her you know i don't know but i yeah i felt like
Cameron Scott: she was the weakest link but one thing i want to mention though this has a fucking uh a really good
Cameron Scott: soundtrack that's done by marco beltrami that he has done a ton of fucking genre stuff he has done
Cameron Scott: and so much friggin' music that is not even funny.
Cameron Scott: But, yeah, stick around for the soundtrack.
Cameron Scott: The music in this movie is really stellar.
Gary Hill: And the in-space stuff looks decent, too.
Gary Hill: I forgot to mention that, you know, a lot of, like, old-school techniques used,
Gary Hill: you know, matte painting on top of models, which didn't look awful.
Gary Hill: And I've seen a lot worse than this movie, let's put it that way.
Cameron Scott: Oh, same, same. Seen a lot worse.
Gary Hill: I mean, Jason X, as much as I love it, you know,
Gary Hill: Those effects look exponentially worse than this with spacecrafts.
Gary Hill: And it's a nice touch, the old school model on matte painting.
Gary Hill: And, you know, it's fun.
Gary Hill: It's fun.
Gary Hill: This is good enough.
Gary Hill: If I had to rate it, though, and I'll ask you for your rating, too,
Gary Hill: I'd give it better than Middle of the Road because of where it goes in the finale.
Gary Hill: It's a six, I think.
Gary Hill: What do you think, Cam?
Cameron Scott: You know, I was thinking a six as well.
Cameron Scott: I'll match your six because I feel like anything a five and under I can't recommend.
Cameron Scott: But, you know, above a five I can recommend.
Cameron Scott: So, yeah, I'll give it a six.
Cameron Scott: It's better than most of your run-of-the-mill sci-fi movies of this era because it didn't rely on a whole lot of CGI.
Cameron Scott: And I felt like at the time when they relied on CGI, it just made it look cheaper.
Cameron Scott: And I like a lot of the models and the matte paintings that they used and whatnot.
Cameron Scott: you know, the forced perspectives they use for the outer space shots,
Cameron Scott: I felt like it worked for this kind of film.
Cameron Scott: And I was happy to not see a whole lot of CGI.
Cameron Scott: So, yeah, yeah, I'll match your six.
Gary Hill: All right, cool.
Gary Hill: I think Cameron will be in with me on the next one too,
Gary Hill: unless I put one up before, but the next time you'll hear Cameron,
Gary Hill: you'll heal, you'll heal, you'll heal Cameron.
Gary Hill: You'll hear Cameron on one of these.
Gary Hill: We're doing a film that neither of us have seen before,
Gary Hill: but called Night Force from 1987.
Gary Hill: it stars Linda Blair
Gary Hill: and one of the Van Patten boys
Gary Hill: James Van Patten
Gary Hill: and Richard Lynch
Gary Hill: in a rare good guy role
Gary Hill: I'll give that spoiler right now
Gary Hill: he's not playing a bad guy
Gary Hill: and this is 1987
Gary Hill: which is really strange
Gary Hill: for Richard Lynch
Cameron Scott: yeah to not play an evil conniving bastard
Gary Hill: yeah very strange
Gary Hill: this is directed by
Gary Hill: what's this guy's name
Gary Hill: I just had Lawrence David Folds, who gave us genre stuff like The Young Warriors, which is another toxic male movie.
Gary Hill: Don't Go Near the Park, which is one I haven't seen.
Gary Hill: I've heard of it.
Gary Hill: Check it out, though.
Cameron Scott: Don't Go Near the Park.
Gary Hill: Yeah, it sounds familiar.
Gary Hill: It's from 1979, though.
Gary Hill: Anyway, two siblings cursed in prehistoric times survived for millennia by feasting on the entrails of young people,
Gary Hill: crawling at what eventually becomes a park in contemporary Los Angeles.
Gary Hill: That just sounds crazy.
Gary Hill: I'm in.
Cameron Scott: I'm in on that one.
Gary Hill: Starring Aldo Ray.
Gary Hill: And I'd imagine a very, very young Linnea Quigley.
Gary Hill: This is 1979.
Gary Hill: But I watched this one already.
Gary Hill: And I can tell you, spoiler on the review,
Gary Hill: I had a pretty good time with it.
Gary Hill: And we'll get to that next, though.
Gary Hill: Night Force from 1987 on your next Burnt Ends episode.
Gary Hill: Cameron, I mentioned that you do a bunch of stuff with your cinema degeneration.
Gary Hill: Lay it down, man.
Gary Hill: What you got coming?
Cameron Scott: Well, I got so many shows that I couldn't possibly mention them all here because I'm a crazy son of a bitch that does way more than he should.
Cameron Scott: But a couple of the ones that I have coming up here as of late, I just dropped an episode on Zombie 8 for a show called Sequel 2 Deja Vu,
Cameron Scott: which is all just sequels, sequels, more sequels.
Cameron Scott: I'm getting ready to drop another brilliantly insane episode,
Cameron Scott: which is the podcast I do on nothing but Nicolas Cage movies.
Cameron Scott: We're getting ready to drop 8mm sometime either tomorrow or the day after,
Cameron Scott: depending on how deep I get into the editing.
Cameron Scott: And for Grindhouse Pizzeria, all my Grindhouse Exploitation drive-in fare,
Cameron Scott: we are doing Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry,
Cameron Scott: which is a fucking phenomenal car chase flick with Peter Fonda.
Gary Hill: I recently watched 8mm,
Gary Hill: and it doesn't go too good for Nicolas Cage in that movie.
Gary Hill: It's like the more rapey ending of his Wicker Man.
Gary Hill: It's like, yeah, you know what?
Gary Hill: He's looking for a machine.
Gary Hill: It's going to go real bad for him.
Gary Hill: So spoiler for 8mm, you know.
Gary Hill: Yeah, it doesn't go well for anybody in that movie.
Cameron Scott: No.
Cameron Scott: Especially not Joaquin Phoenix.
Cameron Scott: It does really not go well for him.
Cameron Scott: Nobody wins in that movie.
Cameron Scott: They don't.
Cameron Scott: But that's everything I got coming up in the pipeline here in the next couple of days, next week or so.
Cameron Scott: Yeah.
Gary Hill: Cool.
Gary Hill: Got stuff burning in the fire, too, on this end.
Gary Hill: Recording some beef on Thursday night with Cameron, actually, as a guest, more than likely.
Gary Hill: He agreed to do it.
Gary Hill: And Torchy's on Sunday night with Wild Bill in our Patreon episode of The Shootist featuring John Wayne.
Cameron Scott: I'm looking forward to watching this shoot us again
Cameron Scott: it's been some years, it used to be my grandpa's favorite move
Gary Hill: nice, yeah I found it
Gary Hill: it's on Paramount Plus by the way
Gary Hill: if you have that
Cameron Scott: I do
Gary Hill: yeah, look what you did
Gary Hill: me were here supposed to do an episode today
Gary Hill: my fucking brain got fried
Gary Hill: because of work obligations
Gary Hill: Shaolin Soccer is the next weapon
Gary Hill: on that one
Gary Hill: Dragon Ball Z soccer player
Gary Hill: is just murdering the ball
Gary Hill: and doing insane things
Gary Hill: within the soccer games, starring and directed by the great Stephen Chow.
Gary Hill: That should be a fun conversation.
Gary Hill: It's not a dumb movie.
Gary Hill: It's just an insane movie.
Gary Hill: That's the bit I've been on my end.
Gary Hill: And we'll be back here right in the smoker with you guys
Gary Hill: with Knife Wars from 1987, like I mentioned.
Gary Hill: I'm pretty sure this might be on YouTube, too, if you guys want to watch ahead.
Gary Hill: I will look quickly while I have you guys on the line.
Gary Hill: why not right
Gary Hill: theme music sung by
Gary Hill: Linda Blair by the way
Gary Hill: it's one of the most 80's things you'll ever hear
Gary Hill: and I'm wondering
Cameron Scott: more 80's than Chuck Norris singing
Cameron Scott: the Walker Texas Ranger theme song
Gary Hill: when the eyes of a ranger
Gary Hill: are upon you
Gary Hill: all the wrong you do
Gary Hill: he's gonna see
Gary Hill: this is not on YouTube by the way
Gary Hill: I wish it was but
Gary Hill: if you can find it
Gary Hill: go for it
Gary Hill: it's a cool 75 minutes
Gary Hill: we'll talk about it next episode though
Gary Hill: 75 minutes
Gary Hill: that hardly even has time to suck
Gary Hill: there you go
Gary Hill: that makes it efficient right
Gary Hill: come on now
Gary Hill: this has been the Burnt Ends
Gary Hill: and we'll see you guys
Gary Hill: all again next time
Cameron Scott: later
