Of Unknown Origin
Blu-ray
Director: George P. Cosmatos
Screenwriter: Brian Taggert
Cast: Peter Weller, Shannon Tweed, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh, Louis Del Grande, Maury Chaykin
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 89 Minutes
Release Date: May 22, 2018

“If it can’t scare them to death, it will find another way.”

Directed by George P. Cosmatos (Rambo: First Blood Part II, Cobra, and Tombstone) and written by Brian Taggert (V: The Final Battle, Poltergeist III), 1983’s Of Unknown Origin is based on the novel, The Visitor, by Chauncey G. Parker III. The film stars Peter Weller (RoboCop), Shannon Tweed (Hot Dog… The Movie, Meatballs III: Summer Job), and a giant, man-eating rat.

Bart Hughes (Weller) is a Wall Street executive caught up in the rat race of corporate America. While his wife (Tweed) and young son (Leif Anderson) leave for a vacation, Bart stays behind to work on a project that should earn him a promotion. Alone in his newly renovated Manhattan brownstone, Bart discovers that he isn’t alone at all, but rather an unwilling host to an unwanted houseguest.

RoboCop 2
Blu-ray (Collector’s Edition)
Director: Irvin Kershner
Screenwriter: Frank Miller, Walon Green
Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O’Herlihy, Tom Noonan, Belinda Bauer, Gabriel Damon
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 117 Minutes
Release Date: March 21, 2017

“They say he’s got a brain. I wanna see it.”

Written by Frank Miller (Sin City) and Walon Green (The Wild Bunch), and directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), 1990’s RoboCop 2 picks up after Paul Verhoeven’s classic 1987 film.

After the success of the RoboCop program, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) has their sights on privatizing Detroit. The mega-corporation plans to have the municipality default on its debt, then foreclose on the entire city, taking over its government. The crime-infested sprawl that is Old Detroit will be bulldozed and rebuilt as Delta City, a city center independent of the United States government.

The Strain
Season 1 Episode 6: “Occultation”
Directed by Peter Weller
Written by Justin Britt-Gibson, Guillermo del Toro, and Chuck Hogan
Starring Corey Stoll, David Bradley, Mia Maestro, Sean Astin, Kevin Durand, Richard Sammel, Jonathan Hyde, Miguel Gomez, Natalie Brown, Jack Kesy, Ben Hyland, and Robin Atkin Downes
FX
Air Date: Sunday August 17, 2014, 10pm

Before my review of Episode 6 “Occultation” of The Strain, let’s recap Episode 5 “Runaways”….

Last week on The Strain (Stop right now if you haven’t watched! Spoiler alert!):

Bolivar’s (Jack Kesy) manager, Ruby (Regina King), brings over a urologist to address his manhood problem (that’s not a problem anymore!). Bolivar thought she brought over take-out. You know, the kind of take-out that screams, “Help! Don’t leave me!” as it’s dragged away and drained of blood from a giant tentacle. Ruby runs, twists an ankle, and limps out of there. She calls up The Strain‘s version of The Wolf to “make it go away” but he ends up as dessert.

The Strain
Season 1 Episode 5: “Runaways”
Directed by Peter Weller
Written by Gennifer Hutchinson, Guillermo del Toro, and Chuck Hogan
Starring Corey Stoll, David Bradley, Mia Maestro, Sean Astin, Kevin Durand, Richard Sammel, Jonathan Hyde, Miguel Gomez, Natalie Brown, Jack Kesy, Ben Hyland, and Robin Atkin Downes
FX
Air Date: Sunday August 10, 2014, 10pm

Episode 5 review of The Strain coming right up. But first…..

Previously, on The Strain (Spoilers!!):

Episode 4 “It’s Not For Everyone” needs to be watched on an empty stomach. Eph (Corey Stoll), Nora (Mia Maestro), and Jim (Sean Astin) perform and film a secret autopsy on the late, former vampire monster Captain Doyle Redfern. They discover new ammonia fragrant anatomy, complete with a man-sized stinger. This proves too much for Jim who confesses his complicity. Nora and Eph don’t care about his reasons and cut him off both professionally and personally.

On Thursday, the first trailer for next February’s RoboCop reboot/remake was released. I watched it twice – the first time squinting and achingly readjusting my eyesight as a YouTube embed played on my trading card-sized cell phone screen; the second time in high-definition on my laptop. Viewing it initially with lackluster screen resolution and barely passable sound quality, I felt that I couldn’t judge the content fairly, since I was only able to process a flurry of rapid-fire images. The most visually appalling that I could recall were Samuel L. Jackson‘s hairpiece and some the sight of the iconic cyborg police officer of a crime-ridden Detroit re-envisioned (and I use that term so loosely it would not stick even if I used applied super glue and hammered nails into it, crucifixion style) as the stillborn love child of Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s sci-fi comic book superhero Nexus and one of those Jaeger pilot suits from Pacific Rim.

So I waited until the second time when I could finally hear and see everything the trailer had to offer to decide for myself if this 2:20 spot that us fans of the original RoboCop had been waiting for with the kind of anticipation that can reduce your stomach lining to beef jerky was a positive sign of things to come. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have bothered with the second viewing because I hadn’t really missed anything on my initial viewing of the trailer. No matter what size you watch it on, be it Google Glass or IMAX, the trailer for the rebooted RoboCop represents everything the bad buzz that has been gathering and festering for months like locusts feasting on the decaying remains of Bubonic plague victims was priming us for: ugly, bland, humorless, monotonous, and derivative of not only the original RoboCop movies, but of every jacked-up and failed superhero movie ever made by a major studio.