Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter W

Warbirds (2008) The Japs occupying an anonymous Pacific atoll in World War II release something that starts killing them. 3 months later, a crew of female pilots are detailed to fly a B29 carrying Colonel Toller, his gang and a secret cargo from Hawaii to a destination in the Pacific. But they run into a storm and they're buzzed and damaged by something big. They land on an island with abandoned Zero fighters and 3 Japs.
   A flying something grabs one of the Yanks. Miss West, the head pilot, suggests sending a stripped down Zero to Australia for help and using other Zeros to cover its departure. But scores of pterosaurs attack and she loses the pilot in the lightened Zero. The Jap Captain, who was educated in the USA, plans to escape in the B29 after it has been repaired. He also wants to know what the colonel's mission is; like everyone else.
   The Japs are allowed to work on the plane. The Captain recognizes a Geiger counter and an atomic bomb when he sees them. Col. Toller goes to get fuel from a Jap dump and loses another man. Meanwhile, the Japs gain the upper hand. But Toller saves the day and the Japs end up dead.
   Miss West flies Toller & the bomb off the island with 2 pilots covering in Zeros. The pterosaurs attack, one of the pilots is killed and Toller drops the bomb on the island when a pterosaur attacks the B29. Betsy in a Zero survives, but she will have to ditch in the sea. Miss West promises to mark her position and send help, but everyone will probably be dead from the radiation in a few days anyway.

War of the Worlds (2005) is a Tom Cruise remake of the H.G. Wells story. Ray is a divorced crane driver with a stroppy teenage son and a wiseguy little girl, who are dumped on him by his pregnant ex-wife. Magnetic storm start hitting the Earth and knock out phones and power and vehicles. Ray, of course, is able to tell a mechanic pal how to repair his car.
   Martian creatures travel down bolts of lightning to machines, which were buried on Earth zillions of years before. The machines start zapping humans with ray guns and Ray heads for his ex-wife's place in the only working car. But Mom isn't there, she's in Boston.
   A plane nearly crashes onto the house. Ray is clued in about the tripod machines by a TV news lady. A crazed mob grabs the car but Ray and the kids make it on to a car ferry; which is sunk by the machines. Ray's useless son abandons the family to watch the US military scrapping with the machines. Ray's daughter is nearly kidnapped by a well-meaning couple.
   They end up in a crazy guy's bunker, which is invaded by Martians but the humans aren't found. The machines are harvesting humans outside. Ray murders the crazy guy then the stupid kid gets herself and her dad harvested. But the machines start croaking, the occupants killed by Earth's bugs, and Ray and his daughter are reunited with Mom and the useless son in Boston.

Warlock (1989) An evil Warlock was hurled forward in time from the Massachusetts of 1691 and a witch hunter went with him. The warlock rampaged around and made Kassandra, who was in her twenties, age at 20 years/day. So she became the witch-hunter's ally. He was after the warlock for zapping his wife and the warlock's mission was to recover the missing third part of the Grand Grimoire, which contains a secret name of God which, if spoken backwards, will cause creation to reverse.
The witch-hunter had a witch compass to track down his prey and they had a confrontation at a farm in the mid-west. The warlock got away but not before Kassandra had recovered a bracelet which he had stolen to undo the ageing spell. Everyone headed to Boston, and then it was off to a graveyard for a punch-up and the final confrontation.

Waterworld is Mad Max after the polar icecaps have melted, so the bad guys are racing around on jetskis instead of dune buggies. And there seem to be plenty of ciggies and bullets in circulation. The 'good guy' is a mutant with gills and the principal bad guy has lost an eye and put on a patch over the socket in the approved pirate style. The floating town is a good idea and the hero's gadget-strewn catamaran is great. The big old ship rowed with giant oars is a hoot. So is the mini airship. And it turns out that dry land isn't a myth, after all.

Webs (2003) Workers checking a building due for demolition find a nuclear-powered device, which is a portal to another dimension. They find a vanload of cash then zombies attack them and one guy is killed. A man and a woman rescue them. Ray, the motormouth, screw-up black guy, won't shut up and a giant spider appears! Ray and Sheldon make it back through the portal but Dean is left behind.
He meets Dr. Morelli, who built the portal 30 years ago. In going to his alternate Chicago, he also opened a portal to somewhere else, which let the spider queen through. She has been eating everyone and turning some of her victims into zombie soldiers ever since. Ray & Sheldon return with guns, having been unable to persuade the authorities in their Chicago that their story about the zombies and the spider is true.
Dr. Morelli is captured during a battle with zombies, so everyone goes after the spider queen apart from Ray, who has a broken leg. He makes some booby traps. Ray fucks up one last time and the zombies eat him. Dean has to take out a Sheldon zombie. The queen gets Dr. Morelli but Dean electrocutes her and dives into the portal with the girl as the queen explodes with the portal mechanism. They come out on a tropical beach, which sounds like it's deep in spider territory!

Welcome To The Jungle (2003) What's The Rock been doing since WW$. Starring in this film, for one thing. Beck is a debt collector, who wants to open his own restaurant and who has the gimmick of giving people 2 options: Option A, do what he wants; Option B, be forced to do what he wants. He has to wreck half a football team and a club to get a part payment on a player's debt, then another guy on the team mugs him for the loot and delivers it to the boss.
   Beck says he wants out and Billy, the boss, gives him one last job; collect his son, Travis, from Brazil. Beck ends up in the jungle at the El Dorado mine. Travis is looking for El Gato, an 800-year-old golden artifact, which both Hatcher, the mine owner, and the local terrorists want. Hatcher double-crosses Beck so he wrecks Marianne's bar and Hatcher's army, and strolls off with Travis.
   Travis tips the jeep over the side of a mountain into a river. The guys are caught in traps set by the local terrorists. Beck has to fight them until Marianne shows up and squares things. Hatcher's men attack the terrorists and Beck, Travis & Marianne get away. Travis leads them to a cave, which starts crumbling. But they get out with El Gato, which Marianne plans to sell to buy prosperity for her people.
   She drugs the men and strolls off with the golden cat, only to be picked up by Hatcher. Beck & Travis send a stampede through the mining town and Beck destroys most of it. Hatcher ends up dead at the hands of the terrorists and Beck takes Travis back to California. He hands him over to complete his deal with Billy, then he drugs Billy and his entourage and lets Travis go.

When Eight Bells Toll (1971) Anthony Hopkins stars in this adaptation of the Alistair McLean novel as Calvert, a naval intelligence officer, who is sent to Tor Bay (in Scotland, not Devon) with a guy in specs (a Harry Palmer prototype?) to investigate the disappearance of shipments of bullion. Most of the natives are either hostile or under the thumb of the bad guys. Calvert's Rescue helicopter is shot down and Specs ends up tied to the anchor chain of their boat. So Calvert's Whitehall Warrior of a boss (Robert Morley) has to help out.
The wife of a holidaying Greek shipping magnate defects to Calvert's side as he and the boss go in search of the latest batch of missing bullion, which turns up on a deliberately scuttled ship. The bad guys are keeping their hostages in a cliff-top castle, which Calvert infiltrates. The Greek shipping magnate's real wife is among the prisoners.
Calvert enlists the local shark fishermen for an assault on the bad guys. And when the shooting is over, he lets the lady defector go (she's another bad guy) with one bar of gold, which is very nice of him.

Who Am I? (1998) Sinister Chinese troops attack in South Africa to steal a weapon based on a meteorite and the scientists who created it. Agent Jackie Chan falls out of a chopper, loses his memory and is adopted by the local tribe in an area with coconut palms. Jackie saves the life of the brother of a female rally driver, and his boss orders him killed when Jackie gets his picture in the papers as a hero.
The guys making the weapon blow up their lab and destroy the local power grid. The South African Internal Security police grab JC but he escapes. Several times, reacquiring the rally driver and a female journalist, who's really a CIA agent. She takes him to Rotterdam after cracking a code. Morgan, JC's boss, spots him and tries to have him killed.
Cue another series of punch-ups and JC, as he's in Holland, invents clogate. Then he screws up a pay-off to the Head Bad Guy. Morgan bamboozles JC, but not completely. Morgan is bagged with overkill and no one gets the computer disk with the weapon's secret.

Wing Commander (1999) Earth declares war on the Kilrathi in 2654 and the Pegasus station falls, allowing the aliens to grab a nav-com, which will let them get to Earth in 40 hours while the fleet will need 42 hours to return. The admiral sends a message to Mr. Taggart's small ship, which is taking 2 pilots, Lts. Blair & Marshall, to the warship Tiger Claw in the Vega Sector. The captain is Hercule Poirot minus his moustache and the first officer used to be in charge of Das Boot.
   Blair falls foul of the female Wing Commander Deverell right away. Tiger Claw is ordered to gain intel on the Kilrathi. Blair, whose mother was an Pilgrim, also falls foul of other crew members. Pilgrims were the first humans to explore deep space and they 'lost touch with their heritage'. Fun & games in an asteroid belt and No. 1 keeps accusing Blair of being a traitor. Taggart turns out to be in naval intelligence.
   Tiger Claw takes a good battering in a huge battle. No. 1 takes over for the injured captain. The spaceships are a cross between a submarine and a 18th/19th Century ships of the line in operation & tactics. They use nuclear depth charges and fire broadsides from point-blank range!
   After some hand-to-hand combat, the humans find the nav-com, which tells them the Kilrathi's jump point for the assault on Earth. Taggart sends Blair to the fleet with the data as his Pilgrim genetics will let him accomplish the hazardous navigation involved. WC Deverell shoots out a missile heading for Tiger Claw and becomes stranded in space. Blair drops an enemy ship into a singularity. The rest of the Kilrathi fleet is shot to bits, Taggart rescues Deverell and Blair returns to Tiger Claw for a final clinch.

Without A Clue (1988) Michael Caine & Ben Kingsley star in this Sherlock Holmes spoof. It begins with 2 crooks stumbling into a trap. Another triumph for Sherlock Holmes? so why is Dr. Watson so loudly pised off? Because he created the character, he hired actor Reginald Kincaid to play the role, and the actor is getting all the credit for Watson's detective work.
   Mrs. Hudson approves when Watson throws the drunken actor out. The editor of The Strand is less than thrilled by a new series by Watson featuring The Crime Doctor. Watson is forced to take the actor back for the next case. The plates for printing £5 notes are missing, and so is Mr. Giles, the head printer.
   Everyone, including Lestrade, heads for Windermere, where Giles seems to have drowned. Professor Moriarty nearly kills Holmes while trying to assassinate Watson and Holmes freaks out when he learns that Moriarty is behind everything. Roughs fail to kidnap Miss Giles, proving to Watson that the Windermere affair was just a sham.
   Moriarty gets away after a shoot-out at the riverside and Holmes gets Watson killed (apparently). Holmes carries on alone when Lestrade rubbishes Watson. Fun & games for Holmes & Mrs. Hudson at the theatre where Kincaid played his last role. Watson returns from the dead at Moriarty's printing plant and exposes the fake Miss Giles. Holmes sets fire to the fake money, he and Moriarty fight a duel on the stage and the gas main goes up, taking Moriarty with it(?) And Watson gets a round of applause from the press at the end.

The World Is Not Enough, had James Bond body-skiing down the Millennium Dome as part of the opening chase and mayhem sequence. Having replaced M with a woman, the casting director introduced John Cleese as R, the successor to Q, who's getting on a lot. The plot, if anyone cares, is about a dastardly plan to use a Soviet nuclear weapon – stolen from a deactivation centre which is blown up – to stop oil shipments from the east via Turkey and force everyone to use a new pipeline. In fact, at one stage, Bond takes a trip through part of the pipeline while chasing a bomb.
We have a token trip to a casino, the famous martini and some ritual shagging. One of the best characters is Robbie Coltrane as a jolly Eastern European gangster, whose premises are ripped to bits while helicopters with dangling, fiendish tree-chopping gadgets are chasing our hero. The gadget-ridden car, which didn't have all that much of a part, is also written off during this sequence. And in the end, Bond writes off a Russian submarine while preventing its reactor from exploding.