Abraham Lioncoln vs. Zombies

Let me begin this review with a little background information so you'll know where I'm coming from. A company called Asylum Films has been producing direct-to-video films for years now, often releasing titles with names very similar to new theatrical releases. The most famous, or infamous example may be Asylum's Transmorphers, which debuted on video about the same time as the theatrical release of Transformers.

Naturally, purists cry foul when the company releases movies using this business model, but it's important to remember it is just that: a business model. Movies are made for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to turn a profit. If audiences are entertained by it, then it is not only profitable, but enjoyable. I can't fault Asylum for creating movies that resemble big-budget movies, especially since I've watched a few Asylum films. Today's review is for Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, which at first glance brings to mind the upcoming Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

It's easy to take pot-shots at Asylum for creating this, but let's be fair and point out a couple of things: One, AH:VH hasn't actually debuted yet, so it's impossible to compare it to ABVZ. Two, the former enjoys a reported budged of $70 million, while this movie was made for $150,000. The barometer for a film's entertainment value is not budget. For example, Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon is easily one of the worst, if not the worst movie ever made, though it cost like, Infinity Dollars. I'm not embarrassed to say Transmorphers was a better movie, though that's like saying a route canal is superior to an anal probe, but I'm getting off track.

Let's talk Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.

Was the much-less-expensive AHVZ entertaining? YES. I am happy to report that I am an unabashed fan of this film. I'm not bothered by the similarities in concept between this and that other Abraham Lincoln movie coming out this year. Besides, I've read the book that one is based on, and the story is not the same.

What the director Richard Schenkman did with a much smaller budget is pretty amazing. He and the special effects crew put enough spit and shine on this movie to make it look like a much more expensive film. The cast is large, comprising of the titular Lincoln, 12 Secret Service agents, a love interest, Confederate soldiers, Union soldiers, and hordes and hordes of zombies.

Top marks go to Bill Oberst Jr, who plays the title character. As Lincoln, he embodies a wise, compassionate, and level-headed leader. I appreciate his approach to playing Lincoln the way he did in this project. With the subject matter, it would be easy to see an actor play it way over-the-top, almost falling into parody-land. However, you could have removed zombies from this story and presented a period drama, and Oberst would be equally at home and just as effective. He shows restraint, remorse, and just enough zeal without going into smarmy territory.

Fans of history will spot several references which would later be worked into actual Lincoln quotes, which I won't divulge here. This part of the script by Karl Hirsch is perhaps the only thing that bugged me from time to time. He felt the need to fill the story with so many nudge-and-wink moments, that at times it felt a little forced, such as when Lincoln warns a young Teddy Roosevelt that when near zombies, "walk softly...and carry this big stick".

I'm not a history buff, but Oberst's portrayal does make me want to know more about the real Lincoln. There are at least two more Lincoln movies coming out this year, but I can't see one being more compelling than this presentation. I have to confess, the delivery of the Gettysburg Address toward the end had me misty-eyed.

Having said all that, do not fret, monster movie fans-this is foremost a zombie movie. There is plenty of mayhem to be seen here. Zombie attacks are numerous and bloody. The scenes are tense and at times genuinely scary. This version of zombie lore has a rule that I am haven't seen before. The zombies presented here are at times in a state of "sleep". In this state of suspended animation, they just stand around in a daze, unaware of people slipping by if they are quiet enough. You might think this renders them less scary, but it does set up some nerve-racking moments as our group of heroes try to sneak past large groups of sleeping zombies.

Lincoln's weapon of choice is a folding scythe which opens up kind of like a switch-blade. When folded up, he is able to hide it in his coat. When needed, he slings it out and goes to town on his undead quarry. Guns are effective against the zombies as well, but the gunfire noise attracts more zombies. Consequently, the best way to deal with them is hand-to-hand, which makes for a much more exciting movie anyway.

As I said before, there are real historical figures in this movie, including Roosevelt, General "Stonewall" Jackson, and even Pat Garret, all of which play a significant role. The appearances are not mere cameos, however. All play an important role, culminating in a final act that I won't give away here. Suffice to say it is well-written and unpredictable.

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies is available on Netflix, and in Redbox Rental kiosks as of this writing. Fans of B-Movies, Survival Horror, and zombie flicks will have a rollicking good time. I highly recommend this movie. 4 out of 4.

Didja Know?

Bill Oberst, Jr. just may not be the highest-paid actor in the United States, but he may be the most prolific. At the time of this writing, he has at least 18 projects including two short films in 2012 alone.

War of the Robots (1978)

I like to think of myself as the Jackie Chan of B-Movie Reviewers. I'll explain. I'm not saying I'm a kung-fu master, or a stunt-man or anything like that. Jackie is well-known for being those things, for sure, but that's not what puts him at the top. His edge is his willingness to hurt himself for his viewers. He has fallen from buildings with no wires or CGI, been slammed on concrete floors, and even once nearly died when he fell from a tree in a stunt gone wrong in Yugoslavia.

Well, once in a while, I put myself through painful experiences for this blog. While I'm not popular or even paid to do this, I feel an obligation to try on obscure B-Movies in order to dig up treasures for others who might want to check them out. On occasion, I find something so wonderful, so monumental, that I believe everyone should experience it once.
Today is not one of those days.

In 1977, Star Wars burst onto the scene and changed the way we view movies. The summer blockbuster was born. Naturally, this precipitated a slew of imitators, most notably from Italian film-makers armed with a small budget and a gaggle of good-looking bad actors. There are some examples of good efforts, some not as good, and some that make you cry for the sweet release that Death would bring.

In 1978, Italy unleashed War of the Robots on an unsuspecting public to cash in on the Star Wars craze. The basic plot of this film involves a group of space pilots who chase rogue aliens across the universe to re-capture two friends, Lois (the apple of hero John's eye), and Professor Carr. The heroes are in a space station that is going to blow up soon, unless they get Professor Carr back in time. Why is the station overloading? And where are the robots of "War of the Robots"? I don't know.

The capture involved a group of terrorists who look like blond Aryans or something. They come in the dead of night, wearing shiny jump-suits and sporting blond bowl-cuts. There are maybe five or six actors playing these guys, and they are used repeatedly, making me wonder if they are clones, or what. I don't know.

This leads to one of my many beefs with this movie. The appearance of the blond bowl-cut bad-guys is so similar to some of the blond bowl-cut good-guys, it quickly becomes confusing on who is who. Did the Italian film-makers assume that in the future, everyone would be blond, and most would have a bowl cut? I don't know.

At any rate, our heroes hop in a ship and chase aliens along their known trajectory, and come across two ships. Now, if it were Captain Picard in this situation, he would hail them, and determine if this group of ships has their friends. Then, they would negotiate their return.

This is not Star Trek, though.

The heroes don't ask questions, they just blast away, killing the aliens quickly, and do not even ponder if they just vaporized their friends. At any rate, they decide to land on a nearby planet to check it out. Why did they choose the planet? I don't know. Once they are there, they do encounter inhabitants who attack them initially, because you know, it's their planet and the humans are technically invaders. After a brief encounter, we get a look at the inhabitants. They have in interesting look, having evolved the way cave salemanders have evolved, with weird-looking eyes. The makeup job was well-done:

As you can see, the effect is rather creepy, and one of the highlights. Back to the story...the leader of the aliens accuse the humans of being "men and women of Anthor". What does that mean, what is Anthor, and why is it significant? I don't know.

Soon, the blonde Aryan-looking dudes show up, wreaking havoc and fighting our heroes some more. During this segment, one of my biggest laughs occured. The heroes are inside the caverns while they leave behind a senior commander. He is supposed to be from Texas, at least in this American English dub. He has the funniest faux Southern accent this side of Nicolas Cage. His Texas-ness is stressed by the fact that when he is in charge, he feels compelled to remove his space boots, and put on cowboy boots. They go so well with his shiny space-suit.

Our heroes do eventually end up on the bad-guys' planet, and we get to see one bright spot in the film. It does boast some interesting set-design. This is before the days of CGI and elaborate back-drops. The set for the bad guys lair took lots of construction and design work.

The heroes have another fight with blonde Aryan-looking dudes, who this time, whip out light-saber looking weapons. Yay, now something I can relate to! They fight, and learn that Carr and Lois have either been working as double-agents, or are brainwashed by the aliens. It is never explained, but by now, my brain is mush, and I don't care.

Oh, and the aliens want Carr to build a machine like the one he built on Earth. I don't know what kind of professor he is, nor do I know what the machine is he built on Earth that the aliens want on their planet. Maybe it's a kickin' expresso machine, and they are jonesing for some good java. I don't know, nor do I care by now.

Still...light sabers! They fight the blond Aryan dudes, eventually breaking one of them open, and showing us that these are the robots of "War of the Robots". Finally, some clarity.

They escape, with the aliens in pursuit, and during the chase, now-evil Lois confers with the alien leader, whose name is Gonad.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not sure if the Italian dialect has a homonym for 'Gonad' that means something other than the American vernacular, but it is pretty funny, especially when Gonad is kind of, shrivelled and odd-looking. He actually looks like the Emperor from Star Wars:

The heroes fly away, have another space battle, and save the day. Oh, and there was another sub-plot about someone named Julia who also loves John, and appeared for about a millisecond in the beginning. She shows up and saves his useless life twice, and he decides she would be a better mate than the girlfriend-turned-Empress of the Aliens Lois. Whatever.

Lois turns on Carr and kills him, making me wonder if she is a triple-agent. I'm lost, and my eyes are bleeding. More battles ensue, and the good guys win. Can I go home now?

"War of the Robots" was made in Italy, and upon its release in the United States, the credits were re-worked to change the names of most of the actors to more American sounding names. For example, Giacomo Rosse-Stua was billed as James Stuart. Therefore, if you are a reviewer who is looking for background information on a given actor you might pull your hair out. That would stink. Again.

Bottom line, if you are interested in a nonsensical movie with some unintentional laughs, you can check this out. However, unless it comes out as an episode of Cinematic Titanic, Rifftrax, or Mystery Science Theater 3000 I'm not going near it again. Tread carefully at your own risk.

One-half out of four.

Flight To Mars (1950)

If you have observed the news in recent weeks, you will have noticed a lot of attention on the Mars Rover story. JPL gathered $2 billion and developed another robot with excavation tools and cameras for sampling rocks and soil on the Mars surface. The purpose of the mission is to try to determine whether Mars sediments and rocks contain fossilized bacteria or other evidence of life on Mars. The reason JPL was able to justify that kind of money on this mission is that we have an unquenchable thirst to know more about Mars. Did life exist there? Are there microbes present now? Was there, or is there presently, water underground? Because of all the focus on Mars recently, I decided to watch another movie centered around the Angry Red Planet.

Enter "Flight To Mars", released in 1951. This is a charming little movie that cashed in on the space movie craze of the early 1950's. This film follows a group of scientists and one reporter to Mars. Reportedly shot in five days, the movie does feature impressive special effects for the day, as well as some of the best set design in a genre film for the decade. The ship itself is sleek looking on the outside, as many 50's star ship depictions are. The interior looks pretty authentic, incorporating gyros to keep everyone upright and able to walk around. If you are a sci-fi film buff you may think you've seen this before when we get inside the ship, and you'd be right. The interior is the same interior from "Rocketship XM", shot the year before.

We also get plenty of character development while on the way to Mars. We meet Dr. Jim Baker (Arthur Franz) who is leading the mission. His assistant is along for the ride, in the form of the beautiful Carol Stafford, played by Virginia Huston. She has been at his side for three years, learning the trade and becoming indispensable. She also has been in love with Jim, who is more interested in tweaking his instruments than his love life. He is stringing her along, and obviously loves his job more. Enter the reporter, Steve Abbot (Cameron Mitchell). Steve is our everyman in this story, not invested in the science at all. He is more concerned about the human element of the story.

Being that Steve is a reporter and more observant than the average person, he quickly picks up on the fact that Carol loves Jim, Jim loves science, and Jim treats her rather coldly. Steve jumps on the opportunity to hit on Carol at every turn, which she rejects because she prefers to be mistreated by a guy who barely acknowledges her existence.

When the crew makes it to Mars, things go wrong as they often do in these movies. Fuel is used up because the ship has to re-route around an asteroid field. They lose some of their landing gear, forcing them to crash-land on the Martian surface. The crash scene, by the way, was pretty well done and reused multiple times in other movies. Our heroes put on their oxygen masks (but no suits!) and look around. The ship is too damaged to fly again, so they set about making a plan. They discover ruins, and surmise that the civilization may have been dead for millions of years.

Soon, they meet the inhabitants. Interestingly, the Martians have to wear space suits, while the humans only have to wear an oxygen mask. By the way, the space suits worn by the Martians were used previously in the movie "Destination Moon". This is where the movie falls into one of the conventions we see in a lot of older sci-fi films of the day: the Martians look exactly like us. This doesn't cheese me off nearly as much as it used to. The human-looking Martians also speak perfect English, having learned it from Earth broadcasts. Thankfully, they weren't watching Jersey Shore, so they don't speak like idiots.

We learn that the Mars population lives underground, drawing their power and building materials from the element Corium. Unfortunately, the Corium is running dangerously low, prompting the Martians to hatch an insidious plan to help the humans fix their ship, and then steal it, heading to Earth to plunder their resources. Not all Martians fall into this camp. Some want a peaceful resolution, including the Martian girl Alita. Alita is played by the stunning Marguerite Chapman, a tall brunette best known for co-starring in "Seven-year Itch" with Marylin Monroe. Alita is also something of a scientist herself, and quickly catches the eye of Dr. Jim Baker. Not surprisingly, he spends most of his time working to repair the ship with the leggy Alita, all but forgetting poor Carol.

This gives Steve the opportunity he needs to leap on Carol, once she gets over Dr. Baker. Once the movie gets over the soap-opera elements, it gets into gear. The scientists learn about the plan to steal the ship, and hatch a plan of their own. I won't tell the rest of the story, but I will say that once it gets into gear, things flow better.

"Flight To Mars" was written by Arthur Strawn, and incorporates elements of the Russian silent film "Aelita: Queen of Mars", most notable the title character, which became Alita in this movie. Overall, this is an enjoyable film. I'm taking a point away because of the human-looking Martian copout. I recommend it for fans of the genre. Three out of Four.

Destination: Inner Space (1966)

In 1966, before we ever had movies like "Abyss", "Leviathan", or "Deep-Star Six", viewing audiences who stuck around for the second feature at the drive-in were treated to "Destination: Inner Space". This is not to be confused with 1987's "Innerspace" with Dennis Quaid. While other sci-fi films from the era tend to concentrate on outer-space adventures or flying saucer invasions, this one stood out as an underwater invasion, albeit with only one antagonist.

It seems a marine biology lab is perplexed by the repeated appearances of some large submarine or other object appearing on their radar, then disappearing. They call in a Navy commander, Cmdr. Wayne, played by Scott Brady. He confirms that this is not a navy ship, nor any type known thus far. The team, including him, diving expert Maddox, and Sandra, don their gear and investigate. They discover the large form is actually an alien probe, kind of like a flying saucer. In fact it is referred to as a USO, or Unidentified Swimming Object.

The ship itself is a pretty good effect. The model is remote controlled and moves about pretty well. Unfortunately, the size of it wasn't conveyed very well, as in one scene when a small fish was caught on camera swimming by it, completely killing the illusion. Additionally, the film suffered in the area of miniature sets. The underwater lab is obviously small, but the movie was made on a minuscule budget.

At any rate, as our heroes discover, the alien ship contains a strange metallic rod emitting radiation. They obviously haven't seen movies like this, because they don't know to leave it alone, deciding instead to take it back to their lab. The rod grows in size, and when nobody is around, it hatches something. When the scientists come back to investigate, they discover the busted rod. This leads to one of the genuinely scary moments in the movie. As our intrepid scientist is looking around, the monster leaps out of a corner. I have to be honest, while the design of the creature is not super-scary, it did scare the bejesus out of me here.

The rest of the movie involves a couple of moral questions, a surprising feature in a 60's schlock film. The main scientist, Dr. Lasiter keeps butting heads with Commander Wayne. Lasiter wants to keep the monster alive and study it, as it presents an opportunity to learn about an advanced alien species. Naturally, Cmdr. Wayne wants to destroy it, because you know, he's in the military, and they like to blow stuff up.

In addition, we have some characterization going on, when we learn that Maddox and the navy commander have some secrets from their past, having served together before. They each blame the other for a tragic accident that killed several sailors years before. They eventually settle their differences, and commence to kicking alien butt. The crew also includes a love interest for our hero, in the form of marine biologist Dr. Rene Peron, played by the lovely Sheree North. North was primarily known for the fact that about ten years before this film, she was the studio's replacement for Marylin Monroe once Monroe started acting all Lyndsey Lohan-ish. Ironically, she herself would be replaced by Jayne Mansfield, but in this film she actually plays someone of some substance and not window dressing. That was handled by the other girl in the cast, the younger Wende Wagner, Maddox's love interest. She has little to do other than stand around, look pretty, and scream a lot.

I'm probably too harsh on Ms. Wagner. After all, she did her own stunts, and was a natural in the many scuba scenes, actually having been a certified diver and reputedly an expert surfer. There is plenty of underwater shenanigans going on, as the creature swims about back and forth to the lab wreaking havoc. The beast himself looks like a cross between a pirahna and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. While he is not as cool-looking as the aforementioned Creature, he is still more awesome than the monster from "Horror at Party Beach".

The monster is played with unholy relish by stuntman Ron Burke. Burke was an expert swimmer himself, and moved about underwater in a pretty menacing way. The creature shifts his head a little bit side-to-side, calling to mind a shark swimming along. The design incorporated a large hunch on the back for the fin, allowing Burke to breathe through standard scuba gear. While he was on land walking around he wasn't that scary; but underwater was a different story. Props to the design team and Burke for his performance.

This movie received almost no notice upon its release in 1966, but is getting some more recognition now among sci-fi/horror fans thanks to entering the Public Domain. It is well worth a look. I rate this movie 3 1/2 out of 4.