Iron Sky: The Coming Race (2019) – This sequel to the 2012 tongue-in-cheek movie about a Nazi base on the moon (as opposed to any potentially serious movie about a Nazi base on the moon) adds a bunch of stuff from Edward Bulwer-Litton’s novel The Coming Race about a subterranean race of supermen using an all-encompassing power source called “Vril.” Except in this version, it’s David Icke-style reptilian shapeshifters who have guided the human race since its inception as its political and religious leaders (in fact, one of them sorta-accidentally-on-purpose created humans) and who are now fighting against the last remnant of humanity stuck in the Nazi moonbase after a nuclear war.
It’s far inferior to the original movie, but on the other hand, it has shapeshifting reptilian Hitler riding a T-rex on the moon, which is probably the entire reason the sequel was made.
Plan 10 From Outer Space (1995) – What is “Mormonism” missing? How about space aliens? A twenty-something Salt Lake girl becomes embroiled in flying saucers, Mormon death cults, sexual frustration, and general wackiness.
It’s been at least 20 years since I watched this last (probably longer, as I didn’t really know SLC landmarks well enough to recognize them), and I pity someone who isn’t at least a Utah resident who tries to watch and understand it. Plenty of the standard outside-looking-in stereotypes show their heads (Mormons “get their own planets,” etc.); it’s pretty much a movie for those who wish that the Latter-day Saints were as batshit insane as the Scientologists.
Evil Takes Root (2020) – A defrocked priest tries to figure out the supernatural menace which claimed the life of his one-time lover, and which seems to be concentrating now on her teenage daughter.
Aside from some cheap-looking CG, I had no complaints really, until the final ten minutes. Then there are revelations which entirely turn the movie into a different movie, and leave you saying, “Wait — if that’s true, then what was all this stuff in the middle of the movie?” Plot twists are hard.
Abandoned movies:
James Batman (1966) – This Filipino spoof/ripoff starts off just being slow and leaden. Then it tries to be funny, and I couldn’t even.