Ruptured Review: Warlords Of Atlantis

             WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS

Country of origin- U.S.A. 
Year of release- 1978
Director- Kevin Connor
Stars- Doug McClure, Peter Gilmore, Shane Rimmer 

The film opens with a dramatic scene of a gigantic meteor hurtling towards prehistoric earth from the dark recesses of space. This meteor strikes the ocean with incredible force, and despite this and the fact it is the size of a small moon, it causes very little destruction, in fact it may as well have been a small rock for all chaos it caused. There was no mega tsunamis, no earth shattering earthquakes, just a big pile of nothing. But because this is a low budget b-movie I will forgive them for a complete lack of understanding of basic geography. We then cut to a more recent period of time, although the film doesn’t exactly tell us when it is set, I can hazard a guess it is before the first-world war. We are then introduced to are hero’s, mainly the squared jawed engineer, Gregory played by are favourite dinosaur bashing badass Doug Maclure. He has built a specialist diving bell for Professor Charles Aitken played by the every reliable Peter Gilmore. The purpose of the diving bell is apparently to go down to look at some fish; I am calling bullshit on that one right now. Gregory and the Professor are accompanied by a small crew of sailors, one of which is John Razenberger (the postman in Cheers) and a predictably pessimistic Captain. All the scenes on the boat are very well shot, and were shot on location in the Mediterranean ocean which gives the film the feeling of a higher budget production.

Eventually the time comes for the Professor and Gregory to climb inside the diving bell and be dumped over the side of the boat. During the decent the bell comes under attack from a long necked sea monster, that quickly becomes a pain in the ass for are hero’s as the monster keeps sticking it’s head through the open base of the bell and harassing Gregory and the Professor. This scene quickly becomes hilarious, as it turns into almost a Loch ness version of whack the weasel. Eventually Gregory comes up with plan to deal with this soggy long necked sod. He decides to electrocute it…he decides to electrocute it wile under the ocean in a metal bell while standing in a pool of water that has been splashed onto the floor. Nobody ever said Gregory was smart. But unbelievably this plan works, and Gregory and the Professor are unharmed, unlike the sea monster who is now deader than the last traces of common sense left in the film.

Soon after this the Professor finds what he really came in search for, a huge cave entrance with a solid gold pillar standing in front of it. The Professor orders the pillar to be brought up to the ships deck, and within seconds of its appearance on the ship the crew start to plot its theft. I don’t know, what is the world coming to when you can not trust a group of swarthy cut throats with a huge amount of gold? Soon the contact line between the bell and the ship is cut by a member of the crew, leaving are hero’s stranded under the seas surface. But Justice is swiftly delivered to the crew in the form of a well timed giant octopus attack, the octopus drags the crew and the captain down to the cave that the pillar was found in front of. As Gregory and the Professor see the crew dragged passed the windows of the bell and into the cave, they too are seized by the octopus and dragged into the cave.

Eventually Gregory and the Professor wake up floating in the bell, on the surface of a pool water in a desert canyon. They get out to find the crew alive, as Gregory and the Professor are not aware of the crews treachery they decide to work to together. Suddenly a figure appears dressed like a low budget David Bowie clone, flanked by a group of masked guards that rise from the water armed with tridents. The Bowie clone tells them he is going to take them to the city of Troy, unable to refuse due to the guards, are hero’s and the crew agree. On the trek to Troy, the Professor discovers that they are in fact in the meteor that we saw crash at the beginning of the film, and that meteor was in fact the entire kingdom of Atlantis. After an encounter with a millipede/frog/fish monster they reach Troy, which isn’t all that it seems.

 
To say that this film was very easy to watch is an understatement; it has likeable characters, fun monster effects and a ton of charm. I only have one problem with the film, and it is the pacing. It really is all over the place, at times it will take ten minutes to do something that could have been done in two. And sometimes they rush trough something that I would like to see more of in a matter of seconds. This is probably due to budget constraints, and I can forgive them for that, but it does effect the overall watchablity of the film. So all things considered I am going to give this one 6.5/10. I think if you enjoyed some of the directors other films like At Earths Core, and The People That Time Forgot you will get a lot of enjoyment out this one.                                            

Ruptured Review: Code Red

                        
                          CODE RED


Country of origin- U.S.A. 
Year of release- 2013
Director-  Valeri Milev
Cast-  Ralitsa Paskaleva, Paul Logan, Velizar Binev 

 Any film that has gasmask wearing Germans killing seven kinds of shit out of Nazi  zombies, and a transvestite midget stripper, must be seen to be believed.

The film begins with some footage of the battle of Stalingrad, with a dodgy voice over telling us how horrible it was. Because nobody knew that apparently. We then cut to a very nicely shot gruesome battle sequence of a German solider carrying a wounded comrade back to there outpost. It looks as though the Russians are about to take the German position, as it is only held by about five men. This scene is the best thing in the whole film, it is brilliant! It only go's on for about twelve minutes, but it completely blew me away. The visual style of the scene at times reminded me of Neveldine & Taylor (The Crank films), it had a great variety of shots including; POV, and dazzling panoramic shots that really put a smile on my face. This scene has not only the best cinematography in the film, it also has the best action and gore, all of which is practical. We see a solider thrust a rifle with a bayonet attached, into the middle of  a guys face, as if it were a spear. If that doesn't make you want to see this film, then I don't know what will. At one point in the carnage a bomber fly's overhead, dropping a barrel attached to a parachute, this gracefully floats down. Then explodes! Spewing out a thick gas which slowly creeps into the German outpost reanimating the Nazi and Soviet dead as it go's, leaving a lone German solider to fight off the flesh hungry horde. 

We then cut to the present day, where a block of wood, I mean are hero John, Is being briefed on a secret mission he is about to undertake in Bulgaria. The U.S government thinks some of the afore mentioned zombie gas, is still around, and that it is being kept in a weapons storage facility jointly run by the U.S army, and the Bulgarian army.
John must go there and follow up on a complaint made by a U.S army Doctor who was fired for attempting to expose a possible security breach. Sounds boring doesn't it, well that's because it is. the middle act of this film is duller than a fifty year old pen knife. I spent the whole time waiting for the inevitable outbreak scene where the dead would rise and people wound run around doing things about it. And once that begins the film changes gear completely. The strange thing about this gas, is that it doesn't just reanimate the dead, it turns the living into boil covered flesh hungry maniacs that sprint about faster than a horse with a mustard enema. I am not really a big fan of the "fast" zombie/infected style, but it really didn't bother me here, it was done very well and at one point there was some actual tension, which was a nice surprise.

The film had some interesting points that provided a great deal of entertainment, but it also had some moments that made me want to bang my head off the wall in irritation. The first main issue you notice about the film is the acting, if you can call it that, too call it wooden is an insult to the forestry commission. The worst of it most definitely came from are hero John, at times instead of battle hardened, he just looked constipated. But putting that aside, the next issue with the film is the biggest and the most awful, and it is the end. Calling it "the end" implies that it concludes the story and allows us to get up to have a piss. This film shows a photo slideshow of the final moments of the films climax, I am not joking, the film ends the story with a photo slideshow of stuff I would I have liked to have seen in the actual film! Did they run out of money? Did they just give on life? Who knows.

Although this film is at times a bit dull and a bit irritating, I still enjoyed watching it. It looks very nicely made for a low budget zombie/infected film, and that is pretty rare now. I was repeatedly reminded of films like 28 Days Later, Nightmare City and the Crazies while watching it, but that's not a bad thing, as I love those films. So I am going to give this film 5.5/10. It has plenty of blood gore and silliness to keep you entertained, but it is not without problems.