No one here gets out alive

Before I head out of town for the weekend, quick thoughts on a few movies that probably don't warrant full posts:

The working title for "Steel Magnolias" as well: "Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell"

Yeah, I guess you can say the title sucked me in here. (Pun intended, you'll see.) This Japanese movie from the late 60s is about an airline flight that crashes amid weird lights and dead birds. Even stranger, one of the passengers gets corrupted by what we learn are space aliens and starts feeding on the blood of other passengers. You know, that's not going to get you any more frequent flier miles.

Despite some fun scenes -- a blood-red sky, a mannequin clearly standing in for a guy who falls off a cliff -- and goofy performances, not that much really happens here. Between that and the subtitles, it was a bit of a chore to get through the short running time of 84 minutes. Even so, if you see only one Japanese movie about an alien parasite that turns people into vampires ...

Hey, look alive out there: "I Walked with a Zombie"

Another amazing title, even moreso given it's from the early 1940s. I'll take this over such grandiose ones as "Gone with the Wind" or "From Here to Eternity" any day.

In this case, a nurse takes a job on a plantation in the West Indies, caring for a man's sick wife. While wifey appears physically fine, she's a little on the blank side, walking around but not talking at all. Could it be the result of some strange island magic? Because, you know, those dark-skinned folks are all about the hocus-pocus.

Yeah, this movie doesn't hold up well in a few ways, starting with the whole "spooky black people" thing. And for a "zombie" movie, there isn't any gory flesh-eating, decapitations, etc. George Romero surely must shudder at that thought, but I guess zombie movies had to crawl before they could walk, walk before they could run, run before they could lurch.

Magnum, P.U.: "Runaway"

Nobody quite succeeded like Tom Selleck in parlaying huge TV fame into a middling movie career. I mean, this guy was big in the early '80s. Yet consider these films: "High Road to China," "Lassiter," "Her Alibi." I mean, when "Quigley Down Under" seems like a great movie by comparison, you've got troubles.

"Runaway" was the sci-fi part of this crappy mix. It was bad in 1984, but I thought the robot spiders and missile-shooting gun were cool when I was 11, so I watched it again recently. It's worse now, but almost worth seeing for the villain: Gene Simmons.

Yes, Mr. Kiss is the bad guy, and he's hilarious. Not because he's over the top, as you might expect, but because he tries to show restraint and quiet menace, and fails miserably. I mean, you can't call someone "sucker" or say "that wasn't very nice" and be taken seriously. Believe me, I've tried. Then again, that might be because I had my face painted at the time.