Species

Species (1995)

Runtime: 108 minutes

Directed by: Ronald Donaldson

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge

From: MGM 

Somehow, a movie I’d never seen before last night. Recently, I was to cancel the MGM+ subscription I had on Amazon but they gave me a sweetheart deal to stay on for a few more months. Plus, they have a few 24/7 streaming channels, this playing on their Marquee channel late last night.

I was happy to view lurid sci-fi/horror trash which had an overqualified cast & crew in a fun milieu. Creating a human/alien hybrid via instructions sent to you via alien signal was a poor idea, especially when she becomes Natasha Henstridge and wishes to mate; yes, end-of-the-world potential. In my opinion, nothing wrong w/ trash where the film was sexual & was happy to present nudity. Henstridge is a lovely lady, swell for this sort of motion picture.

The movie is silly yet full, full of campy dialogue… at least I hope it was meant to be campy! If not, then it accidentally was a win. The team tasked w/ hunting down the villain was Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Alfred Molina, and Forest Whittaker, the latter having telepathic abilities; that’s a quality crew. Having an established director like Roger Donaldson was also a nice asset.

Species does not have high, arty aspirations; apparently, the script was originally more high-brow but instead we received an exciting film with fun protagonists (late in the movie, they bond over… Long
Island Ice Teas), & formidable villain in a world with nice bloody practical effects, a creature created by H.R. Gigler, early CG which wasn’t offensively bad, and a few chuckles. Who knows if the sequels will ever be viewed but this was an engaging 90’s creature feature.

Hot Spot

Hot Spot (2026)

Runtime: 101 minutes

Directed by: Agnieszka Smoczynska

Starring: Andrzej Konopka, Reika Kirishima, Noomi Rapace, George Aurimas Cris, Filippa Kaye

From: Many different European companies

Going into a theatrical movie almost blind doesn’t always work out. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I had even heard of Hot Spot; one location in Orlando has it. The movie is from the lady Polish director w/ the long name that did The Lure. Some will be offended that none of her movies had been seen by me before, not even The Lure. I knew that it featured Noomi Rapace & a lady who was in Drive My Car—yet another picture unseen by me as of now. Otherwise, the setting was the only other detail known.

This should have been to my tastes, and as first I thought it would be. The world is a dystopian hellscape-water a precious resource-where everyone is plugged into AI to survive. There are those that oppose this of course-they resemble the Fremen from Dune. Our detective lead is an 80’s-looking dude w/ an amazing head of blonde curly head (the director’s husband, it turns out) who not only had the appearance of a JOE EXOTIC cosplayer, but listens to 1980’s songs and has incredible fits. He rides in a driverless car which is a 90’s Citroen sedan. As a synthwave 80’s-sounding tune is heard, I was hoping this would be an oddity right up my alley.

Now, I never saw a trailer for the film; from reading other reviews, that was incredibly misleading anyhow. From the opening, I thought the story would concern a murder and that Rapace would be involved. Well, her role wasn’t too large anyhow; what the movie was about instead… unfortunately this is one of those where the director has literally told viewers this is more about “vibes” than “plot” or “story.” That is typically an “uh oh” for me.

Sadly, this is one of those obtuse, irritating European arthouse flicks I’m happy to normally avoid… only it seems that even some who enjoy such things found Hot Spot to have a muddled plot. This being shot in English (I know done mostly to earn financing) wasn’t the best idea when the accents and pronunciations were sometimes incomprehensible to my ears, and I usually don’t have a problem with such things. That didn’t help with my confusion, but I’d have been baffled anyhow even w/o this issue. A major plot point could either be literal or figurative… it’d be WTF if literal but then again this is a world that now has hairy small sandworm creatures and a supporting lady has elf ears, except that it appeared they were a fashion accessory as it looked as she took them off before a major event occurred.

I know some will enjoy this weird & HORNY film and that’s great. I at least was more puzzled than angry about the experience. The cinematography was nice, as was the desert setting which featured Brutalist architecture. It is a shame that an original property like this from Europe that has details I enjoyed featured a nothingburger of a story which missed the mark this badly. Perhaps it’d be better for everyone (me included) if a streaming rental at home w/ subtitles occurred as that’d eliminate a major problem but I would still not care about the characters, feeling totally detached from the experience.

Doctor Who: Pyramids of Mars

This is my second-ever Who, and the 1975 serial is the first w/ Tom Baker: 

I know Whovians will be delighted I finally saw Tom Baker in the role. This serial was one of a few recommended by a mutual on Letterboxd who is a diehard fan; I also see that the general consensus on the site is rather high. I won’t compare Jon Pertwee and Baker, given that I’ve only seen one serial of each. Baker had a few conceited moments… but he is a Time Lord and not human, which companion Sarah Jane needs reminding of. Plus, there are also a few angry moments-considering this tale has end-of-the-universe stakes, it’s understandable.

It was nice to see the inside of the TARDIS for the first time-not to mention the usage of the Sonic Screwdriver, another device from Who that was known beforehand due to cultural osmosis. This tale had quite the plot: the Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen was a familiar face from the Pertwee serial I saw… Invasion of the Dinosaurs) are in 1911 England. A professor visits Egypt and discovers a tomb, which unbeknownst to him gives a long-entombed alien named Sutekh a conduit to not only escape, but destroy all life in the universe. “Sutekh the Destroyer” is an apt name.

The effects are low-budget yet were all charming-even w/ the TARDIS “flying in space” on a string-and I was greatly entertained by this tale which was engrossing whether indoor (on decent sets) or outdoors in the woods, which I’ll presume is a common shooting location for Who episodes. The budget and effects were irrelevant when I enjoyed Baker as the Doctor, Sarah Jane & her interplay w/ him (including humorous moments), Sutekh was quite the intimidating villain-a masked villain marvelously voice-acted by Gabriel Woolf-and the story was a fun yarn which involved “mummies” and while not horror, still had some frightful moments.

This won’t be on my Spooky Season list for this year, BUT I do plan on seeing at least one Who serial horror-related by the time Halloween arrives. I’ve done Google searches so the possible candidates are already known by me.

 

A Chinese Ghost Story

A Chinese Ghost Story (Sien Lui Yau Wan) (1987)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Tony Ching Siu-Tung

Starring: Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong, Wu Ma, Lau Siu-Ming, David Lam Wai

From: Cinema City/Film Workshop/Golden Princess Film Productions

Now here’s a movie that could have only come from 80’s Hong Kong-compliment. This is in fact a tale which involves ghosts (a family of them, in fact), the undead, horror, comedy-usually at least worthy of a chuckle-romance, and action. Heck, a key character even sings a song midway through the picture. To quote a Letterboxd mutual, this might have been inspired-at least partially-by the Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice & definitely was inspired by old Chinese lore.

A dim-witted tax collector stays at a haunted temple-after encountering red-eyed wolves-meets a bearded Taoist priest, and encounters a lovely lady; despite the context clues and her telling him she’s a ghost, he just won’t believe. Sure, the ghosts in this universe have a physical corporeal form, but our lead is still amusingly dopey—which is much better than an infuriating sort of dopey.

The film is a singular journey, one that’s greatly compelling as the viewer doesn’t know what will happen from scene to scene. They were obviously inspired by The Evil Dead; however, the most bizarre plot points, I have no idea how they came up with such loony ideas, especially involving a tongue! It’s not as bonkers as The Boxer’s Omen-but only a miniscule number are to that level anyhow. I was always interested in the trek our lead experiences while experiencing this creative lore, whether it’s sweet love, his unknowing close encounters w/ the undead, stop-motion animation or the wild climax.

Ghost Story has two sequels; it may be years before those are viewed but undoubtedly I’ll view at least one other movie from this part of the world for Spooky Season 2026.

Sheba, Baby

Sheba, Baby (1975)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: William Girdler

Starring: Pam Grier, Austin Stoker, D’Urville Martin, Rudy Challenger, Richard Merrifield

From: AIP

This Pam Grier blaxploitation effort is leaving Prime at the end of the month; this plus “Director: William Girdler” intrigued me.

The fact that most of the movie is set & filmed in Louisville, Kentucky was also of interest; that’s not a common filming location, especially for blaxploitation. Grier is an ex-cop in Louisville turned Chicago PI-she must be successful, judging by her Gucci bag-who returns to her hometown to protect her father-owner of a loan company-from gangsters that want him to sell out. Austin Stoker is her dad’s business partner and potential love interest.

Is Sheba as good as Coffy or Foxy Brown? Nope. This does not mean there wasn’t fun to be had. The acting, action beats, characters, period clothing, funky score, & scenarios are all fine. The villains are all hissable; the setpieces include action on a river and a chase through a county fair. For the older Americans reading this review, you might be amused that a short scene is set at a Burger Chef restaurant; there’s a long-defunct chain from the past.

It was also nice seeing Austin Stoker and D’Urville Martin in major roles—the latter was a bad guy known as PILOT. The movie is funny as there are multiple characters w/ pro wrestling monikers: BRICK, SHARK, HAMMERHEAD, KILLER, WHALE, RACKER, and TANK. Pilot was one of several hysterical OOT characters.

It was the standard boilerplate blaxploitation that included some offensive terms I won’t repeat here; thankfully, I enjoy the standard boilerplate, along with the few William Girdler films I’ve checked out. Grizzly and Day of the Animals were unpolished yet still fun animal attack pictures. In the future, more will be viewed.

 

Do Not Enter

Do Not Enter (2026)

Runtime: 91  long minutes

"Directed" by: Marc Klasfeld

"Starring": Adeline Rudolph, Jake Manley, Nicholas Hamilton, Francesca Reale, Javier Botet

From: Lionsgate!

It’s also good advice: Do Not Enter the world of this movie!

By now I’ve heard many bad things about this film from Lionsgate that was dumped on Prime; however, the detail that this is based on the novel Creepers by David Morrell (! Yes, the dude who wrote First Blood) made me curious. Curiosity definitely killed the cast in this case.

From a popular review on Letterboxd from someone I don’t follow, many changes were made from page to screen. The book didn’t include Gen-Z asstagonists as our urban explorer leads. These bozos (including a guy I’ll call Temu Austin Butler) are YouTubers, although not even successful YouTubers. Given how unlikable they are, no wonder. They can’t even find success after discovering alleged Basquiat graffiti. Well, they and a Vice News reporter (!!)-the novel did come out in 2014-visit an abandoned hotel purportedly containing the missing money of real-life gambler/gangster Meyer Lansky.

The movie is just wretched. Do Not Enter is as “scary” as a basket full of fluffy kittens, is the entertainment equivalent of soma pills when it isn’t insufferable, it was impossible to even somewhat like any of the characters besides the reporter until villains that are even worse show up, and they rip off ideas from much better horror pictures. This includes the actual big bad that has killed previous visitors, and of course wasn’t in the novel either. The climax was not only WTF, but also pathetic.

I could dwell on Do Not Watch-how the place has no electricity (most of the movie is dimly-lit, which sadly is a common modern genre problem) yet security cameras are running… or how a key character survived a fall from a great height, or how insulting the scene after the climax was. Instead, one solace I can take for viewing a crummy motion picture: warning others to stay away. I know it dropped 5 months ago but don’t watch this at Halloween-or any other time of year-as it’s not even a funny sort of bad.

Hallucinations

Hallucinations (1986)

Runtime: 60 minutes

Directed by: Mark Polonia/John Polonia/Todd Michael Smith

Starring: The directors

From: CineGraphic Productions

I know some will laugh that this is my first POLONIA BROTHERS joint. I’ve never viewed one of Mark Polonia’s solo efforts either. Zero budget horror is not something I partake in; who knows what I’d think of his modern films (usually involving sharks) but I do have to give Mark and his late twin brother John props for making a horror picture an hour long that wasn’t so bad the viewing experience was like an endurance test… and it was all done at their house during one snowy Pennsylvania winter when they plus the other director-their friend Todd Michael Smith-were all gangly teenagers.

They portrayed siblings (Smith’s character was adopted; one of the twins was “mentally handicapped”) whose unseen mother “always worked,” explaining why the trio are the only actors in the film. The three have a fractious relationship w/ each other; subsequently, the teens all experience the titular hallucinations that range from “bad thing happens to their cat” & “figure in monk robes” and “snake/tube demon” to other phallic imagery; as this is a film where one of the brothers in his tightie-whities adjusts his peen right on camera… only teenage boys could create such a film!

This is not the time to be pedantic; while the rating isn’t that of a 5-star masterpiece, this does not mean that mad respect won’t be given to them by me. This had more practical effects than expected-and they typically looked great for what presumably was hardly any cash. This includes fake blood and various props. There’s even a prosthetic chest and a DIY version of Freddy Krueger, along w/ other things I dare not spoil. The plot is rather threadbare and more like a demo reel. At the same time, there was a lo-fi musical score + an explanation at the end for the bizarre imagery. Sure, the tape goes wonky a few times and at times the dialogue is quite difficult to decipher; who cares when you see a puppet urinate on a photograph!

I won’t go down the rabbit hole of zero budget horror yet I was still glad to have seen something unique like Hallucinations. If John Polonia hadn’t passed away in 2008, I’m sure he and twin Mark would still be making movies together, nevermind the critical opinion or their quality. The exuberance, the teen excitement, the authentic awkward teen moments, this helps the viewer overlook its limitations.