This is Halloween 4! - The Alien Prequels and Spinoffs

Next up, I wanted to talk about the other movies from the Alien franchise like the prequels and the crossovers. I know the crossovers may not line up with the main Alien movies (especially after Prometheus…), but they still gotta be talked about. I’d probably even talk about Alien: Isolation, but I still can’t finish that game. Yes, there are Alien games out there and they vary from good to quite horrid. I might as well do this in the order they were released.

Alien vs. Predator

AVP was released in 2004 and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of movies like the original Mortal Kombat and the Resident Evil movies. In the movie, Charles Weyland leads a team of archeologists to an island in Antarctica. There, they find a strange pyramid that is revealed to be made by aliens… not those “Aliens”. They also find out that they aren’t the only living things there. It turns out that this pyramid is used for a training ground for the Yautja, aka “The Predator.” Three warriors come on the scene for training. Their prey is the Xenomorph that is being manufactured there in the pyramid for sport. The humans try to survive against these two foes.

This Predator knows what's up... he knows what another Black person did to a Predator! He knows that we the best!

I haven’t seen this movie ever since I rented it back in 2005, and I can kinda see why. This is a dull movie. After someone brought together Jason Vorhees and Freddie Kruger for a movie, I guess Hollywood thought they could also work. The comics and video games managed to do it well, but not this movie. The story feels pretty dull with what it tried to pull off. Outside of Lexa Woods (Saana Lathan), and Weland (Lance Henrickson), the human characters are kinda dull. They’re just here to die either by Xenomorph or Predator, and it’s all in that PG-13 goodness. Yes, the movie was PG-13 for some reason. I’m no gore hound, but that edginess was missed here. 

While the fights were good, I didn't like how some of the Predators went out. Then again, most of them were rookies.

Even though the story and characters don’t save it, everything else is okay. You get to see both groups in action here and it’s good for the most part. It was PG-13, but we at least saw quite a bit of alien blood. The visual effects are pretty good. They don’t rely on CG too much and go practical for most of the aliens. The look of the Predator’s pyramid was pretty cool. Overall, it’s far from a good movie, but it has its pluses. You also don’t need a lamp to see what's going on…

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

Requiem was released in 2007 and directed by Colin and Greg Strause. It takes place right after the first movie. The Predator ship from the last movie crashes into a small town in Colorado. In it were more facehuggers and a new form of Xenomorph. The Xenomorphs cause chaos in this small town while a lone Predator is sent to Earth to clean up the mess. The remaining survivors do what they can to survive this onslaught of Xenomorphs and Predator. 

If you wanna know what the fight scenes looked like, here's an example.

If I could give this movie another title, it would be “Alien Vs. Predator: I Need a Damn Flashlight”. I remember hearing how bad the movie was back then and never checked it out. After seeing it, I still feel like I wasted my time. There’s really nothing good about it. If there was something good in it, I probably couldn’t see it because of the dang lighting. I know this looked like it was done on a low budget, but what the heck? The directors seemed inexperienced and you can tell with the lighting, the acting, and even how the flights were shot. It’s weird that they didn’t use any of their music video experience to shoot this… thing!

An example of me trying to adjust the brightness on this piece of crap... it didn't help.

I don’t know what else to say about it. I can’t say much about the human characters since they felt like afterthoughts. All I know is that one brother was an ex-con, and the other brother had a crush on some hot blonde. “It sounds so interesting,” I sarcastically said. If there is anything good about the film, I can say that the costuming for the Xenomorphs and Predator looked good. Also, having one Predator go up against a legion of aliens does sound cool. Too bad that it had to be taking place in this movie. Overall, this movie needs all the insults thrown at it!

Prometheus

After almost 30 years, Ridley Scott returned to the Alien franchise with a prequel in Prometheus. I saw this with my friend, Nichole, when it was released back in 2012. It takes place in 2093, at least 30 years before the first Alien movie. In it, humanity finds out that aliens visited the Earth by surveying multiple cultures’ drawings and remains. Weyland Corp. funds a deep space expedition to the planet system that the drawings describe. Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), the woman who made the discovery, is hoping that they’ll find the key to humanity’s questions on this world. When they arrive on the planet, those questions get answered in a deadly way.

Shaw and David are two of the better characters from the franchise.

Even though the movie has some issues, this was a good movie especially on a rewatch. My first impression was that it was fine while Nichole hated it, but she was hard to please with some movies. Anyway, I thought that this had a pretty solid cast of characters with some interesting motivations. You have some trying to figure out the meaning of their existence while some are dabbling in some bad science. My faves were Shaw (Rapace), Javek (Idris Elba), Vickers (Charlize Theron), and David (Michael Fassbender). Fassbender stole the show as the first canonical Synthetic in the franchise. 

The image that spawned many memes of chads and handsome Squidward.

It’s paced well especially in the first half of the movie. It plays as a standard exploration movie with the horror waiting to come out and play. When the horror hits, it doesn’t hold back. There’s one grueling scene that probably scared a few from going under the knife or getting preggers. The visual effects are awesome with the layouts, the ships, and the aliens that we get. I will say that there was one character whose makeup looked kinda horrible. You might know who I’m talking about.

Looks familiar, doesn't it?

While I do like the movie, it does have some problems. It really starts to fall apart in the last act with some things not being explained all that well. In fact, you’re left with more questions at the end than answers. You also have some weird character decisions made by folk here, but I think that was done to rack up the body count. I later found out that there were some important scenes left on the cutting room floor. I don’t know who made the decision to cut them out, but I wanna throw something at them. Lastly, the movie sets up that the Xenomorph has a creator, and I’m not exactly a fan of how or who that turns out to be. Overall, even though it's flawed and far from what most think of an Alien movie needs to be, this was good.

Alien: Covenant

Finally, Covenant was released in 2017 and was directed by Ridley Scott. It takes place 11 years after the events of Prometheus. This movie revolves around the Covenant: a colony ship carrying 2000 people to a new, habitable world. The Covenant gets damaged because of a solar storm, and this takes out some members including the captain. The remaining members suddenly find a new hidden world not far from their location. Even though their new XO, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) is resistant to the idea, the new captain decides to survey this new planet for colonization. When they get there, they discover a habitable world that contains many secrets and a familiar danger.

I don't think a chiropractor can fix what's about to happen to this poor man.

Even though it’s not as good, I did think it was a decent follow-up to Prometheus. The story here is good and grim. Honestly, this may be the darkest of the franchise with how everything goes down on the Engineer’s homeworld. The cast is fine for the most part with Daniels and Walter/David (Fassbender) being the highlights. Seriously, when we see David return here, it’s cool… and a little terrifying. If you were clamoring for more alien action, you’re gonna get it. Thankfully, it’s well-done action as we see this new Xenomorph do its thing. I wonder if the creators were inspired by some of the video games like Alien: Isolation and some of the Colonial Marines games.

Here, we got Fassbender pulling double duty and reminding me of Data and Lore from TNG.

While I do like this one, it has its issues. Outside of Daniels and the Synths, the rest of the cast is a bore. The acting’s fine, but they’re just there to die in interesting ways. They even do some pretty dumb things again. It also starts to turn into a more standard Alien movie, and while that’s cool, something feels missing. While the effects are good, some of the CG felt a little off. I mentioned in the Prometheus review that we get an origin for the Xenomorph. We get more confirmation here, and I’m not sure if I like that or not. Lastly, and this is a personal one, one character from Prometheus suffers a fate that I kinda hate. It sorta drug the movie down for me. Overall, while it had some problems here and there, I did like this one. 

Daniels was a good lead lady.

………………………………………….

In the end, we have a mixed bag. I know some aren’t fans of the prequel movies, but they did feel underrated and should be watched at least once. As for the AVP movies, I’d stick with the first one. There’s no need to watch Requiem. Well, all there’s left is Romulus, and that might be a post here. I’m not sure yet. Either way, I’m outta here. Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there.

This Is Halloween 4! - The Original Alien Movies

Well, if you were wondering what franchise I was talking about last time, this would be the one. The Alien franchise added a new layer to horror and scifi. It also started the career of the awesome Sigourney Weaver. Unfortunately, it’s one that I’m not an uber-fan of. Over the years, I saw the four movies either on TV or at someone else's house and not all the way either. My folks weren’t renting this for us. I somehow ended up watching Aliens at the young age of 7 at my uncle’s house for some holiday, but I didn’t finish it. I guess they thought I couldn’t take too much Alien-ess. It was kinda like that for Alien 3, but I caught the ending instead of the beginning.

Since Alien: Romulus has come out, I thought I’d watch all the movies in full. I’m waiting for streaming to see Romulus, but my sister thought it was good. For this part, I’m only looking at the original four movies featuring our heroine, Ellen Ripley. I’m saving the prequels and spin-offs (yeah, I’m touching on the AVP movies too) for another post. 

This Is Halloween 4! - A Bit of 80's Randomness

Well, we’re getting closer to All Hallow’s Eve, so it’s time to get back into posting about some horror movies. Today’s bunch is a random lot from the 1980’s. I have a couple of more posts about a somewhat beloved franchise coming up, so I wanted to get these added since they don’t really tie in at all. The only hint I can give is that this franchise involves cool ladies surviving the odds. Yes, that is quite vague!

I’ve been meaning to talk about a couple of these for years, so now is the best time to do so. It’s a mixture of overall weirdness. We got vampires, sexy were-cats, de-evolving scientists, and even more sexy werewolves... the 1980’s were weird. First, it’s The Lost Boys from 1987 because I might as well get the best out of the way. Next is Altered States from 1980, a movie straddling the fence between sci-fi and horror. Next is a new viewing for me. For some reason, Cat People from 1982 piqued my interest. Finally, I save the “best” for last with Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf from 1985. 

Random Thoughts On... Days of Our Lives????

Who knew that struggling to get an old kitchen floor up would inspire this post? Maybe that crappy glue got to me or something. Anyway, we were trying to get our house together before our new son, “Baby A”, was born. Yes, that was his name until we centered on something more concrete like Alexander, Anthony, Aaron, or Thalmus... yes, that last one is made up. I don’t know how he would feel being named after a 70’s blaxploitation actor.  Anyway, as I struggled to get that floor up, I started thinking about actors from Days of Our Lives. Then, that went to thinking about weird plots from the long-running soap opera. If you’re wondering why a black dude from the South knows quite a bit about the show, blame my grandma for that. So, here are some random thoughts on my time with the show.

“In the Beginning…”

For those who don’t know, Days of Our Lives is a soap opera that started in 1965 on NBC and is still running these days. They apparently switched to streaming on Peacock recently, so I hope the old ladies got a nephew who has some streaming knowledge. Days (or DOOL for short) was your usual soap opera. It revolves around a couple of families in the fictional Salem, IL. You get a whole lotta drama. This person is in love with that person, this person’s cheating with that person, someone wants to plot to get their love interest away from their true love, and all-around calamity ensues. Also add in assassins, evil business moguls with cool accents, Satan, plastic surgery, many cases of amnesia, hidden twin siblings, illegitimate kids, and a biiiiiatch named Sami. 

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Weird Music Videos – “White Horse” by Laid Back

This may be the first post where the video AND song are both weird. Also, Hello there! Yeah, I been gone for a little bit longer than I wanted. Life’s still going on, you see. The Lord has been good to us. We’re even having another boy soon, so that’ll be two rascals me and Liz will have to chase. So, let me talk about a Danish song that apparently hit the R&B charts back in the 80’s… yeah. I think America didn’t know what to do with this song.

“White Horse” was done by Laid Back, a Danish electric group. While the song was released on the B-side of their album in 1983, it somehow got a lot of traction over here in the US. I guess we really liked those beats or something. I actually remember my first interaction with this song from 1998. Me and my dad were driving down to Huntsville for Thanksgiving and this song came on 104.3 WZYP during their 80’s hour. Even he was wondering what was up with this song. He even brought it up to my cousin and great uncle who were visiting from Chicago. Apparently, I talked about this song here years ago, so it may be time for a redo and something more detailed.

So, what was this song about? And what was up with the video???

• Shady Dancing Dude – We get introduced to some shady Danish dude being followed by a shady Danish reporter who I guess wants to know about the white horse. Shady Dude also got some dance moves, and I can’t blame him. That intro makes you want to move. I see why this hit the charts over here.
• This song makes no dang sense – After a pretty long, upbeat intro, we learn a few things. First, if you want to ride, don’t right the white horse. Second, if you want to be rich, you gotta be a – uh, let’s say witch. You’ll figure it out. Finally, and most importantly, if you must  ride, ride the white pony. Some say that’s about drugs which makes a lot of sense because they were probably on drugs when they wrote this! I remember one commenter said that the white pony is sex… Okay?
• Cross-eyed Lady – During the video, we see a sultry lady dressed in a suit with a short skirt. Why she has the captain sailor’s hat, I have no clue. She also looks a bit-cross-eyed during it all which adds the video’s weirdness. All I can say to that is “Anchors Away!”
• David Hasselhoff?? – Look, when I first saw this vid, I was like “Michael Knight’s in the house!” I know John Guldenburg (the guitarist) looks nothing like Hasselhoff, but it stuck out to me. Maybe they have the same vibe.
• White Pony – The video ends… with a white pony in a hotel. Don’t know what’s being said there, but at least the fun has ended.

………………………………………..

Le me guess... she hit up some of that White Horse before shooting this video, right?

In the end, this is definitely one of the weirdest 80’s songs. That’s probably why it was such a hit. Even their other hit,“Sunshine Reggae,” isn’t too bad. That’s all I know about the duo. They got a bit of a discography, but I’m not too interested in it. Anyway, that’s all I got for now. Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there.

This may or may not be me dancing to "White Horse".