Short Attention Span Review - Jimi Plays Monterey (1986)

Last year, I picked up the Criterion edition of The Complete Monterey Pop Festival. That movie - Monterey Pop - is great in it's own right, Proteus for every music festival film since. As part of the set, there are two related films, Shake! Otis at Monterey and this movie, which is Hendrix's complete performance at the 1967 festival. It is astounding. A caveat, it is astounding if you like Hendrix and his blues/acid rock fusion. The sound is great, the print is pristine and you can feel the energy of Hendrix - and of an era long gone - blasting from the screen and the speakers. although every song is good, he really kicks it on two covers, Bob Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" and Chip Taylor's "Wild Thing" - 10 freakin' awesome minutes of "Wild Thing."

Hendrix was a master of the guitar and his music has a rawness that is hard to find these days. Buy the set and rock on.

MegaMonsterMonth! #8 - Eight Legged Freaks (2002) - Itsy Bitsy Spoilers.

Spiders...why does it have to be spiders? Okay, I don't like spiders. They have far too many legs and eyes for my taste. Hey, two legs is good enough for me, it should be good enough for them. Or something like that. Anyway, while spiders creep me out, I don't mind movies about giant spiders. And Eight Legged Freaks (which you can buy here) is a pretty good giant spider movie.

Synopsis

A barrel of toxic waste falls into a pond next to a spider farm. Farm owner Josh (Tom Noonan) catches contaminated crickets at the pond to feed his spiders, which causes them to grow. And grow. AND GROW! The over-sized arachnids break out of their cases and overrun the desert town of Prosperity, Arizona. Uber-hot sheriff Samantha (Kari Wuhrer), son Mike (Scott Terra), daughter Ashley (Scarlett Johansson), returning local guy and mine owner Chris (David Arquette), alien-obsessed talk show host Harlan (Doug E. Doug) and a bunch of extras wind up fighting a variety of arachnids of unusual size. In the end, our heroes prevail, the spiders are killed off and Chris finds gold in his family's supposedly played out mine. The end.

Analysis

David Arquette gets an example of spider fu.

A jokey homage to the giant insect and arachnid films of the Fifties, Freaks is a lot of fun. It's played mostly for laughe and, while the humor is hit and miss, it is mostly hit. The cast is game, with Wuhrer standing out as the tough (and hot...did I mention hot) sheriff. While all of the characters are one-dimensional archetypes, they're adequate for the movie and each has a few moments to stand out.

Special effects are key to a movie like this and they are well executed. While some of the spider animation look cartoonish, most of it is sufficiently realistic and creepy. A few scenes stand out, including an exciting sequence in which a group of dirt bikers are chased by jumping spiders and a scene in which the sheriff's family is attacked at home by an orb weaver. Overall, even though the film is 12-years-old, the CGI stands up.

While there is a nice balance between action and humor, there really aren't any deeper themes at work here. The toxic goo that is responsible for the growth of the spiders doesn't lead to an environmental message. The relationship between Wuhrer and Arquette is perfunctory. Because of the lighthearted tone, there is no sense of danger for any of the main characters. This is a lightweight movie.

Notes

Writer-director Ellory Elkayem was able to sell the movie on the strength of a short film with a similar theme, Larger Than Life. The film was made with funding from the New Zealand government, much like Peter Jackson. Of course, Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Elkayemm wne ton to make Return of the Living Dead: Rave from the Grave...so not all Kiwis are made equal.

Verdict

Made with tongue firmly in cheek and a good sense of how to mix humor, horror and homage, Eight Legged Freaks is a worth checking out. It won;t change your life; but it will make you laugh and, if you don't like spiders, squirm.

The trailer for Eight Legged Freaks:

Bonus Kari Wuhrer images after the break. Because I care.

MegaMonsterMonth! #7 - Poster Of the Day - The Amazing Colossal Man

Can you make a bald guy in a nappy look menacing? The poster for The Amazing Colossal Man shows that you can.

Telling the story of Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan), a man caught in the blast of a nuclear bomb, the film is entertaining. It lacks the thrills of contemporary giant monster movies, like Them (1954) and Godzilla (1954, released in the US in 1956) and suffers from a low-budget, short production time (reportedly, it was made in 10 days) and inept special effects. In particular, instead of following the Godzilla route and building large model cities, much of the Colossal Man's colossal action is accomplished by mattes, with Manning superimposed over static shots of buildings. The cheapness and lack of care in this process causes him to often appear transparent. However, having a talking menace, one that has a story arc and can communicate the fear and despair he is feeling as his body grows and his sanity slips, is effective. The film also benefits from decent acting on the part of Langan, Cathy Downs as his fiance Carol Forrest and William Hudson as Dr. Paul Linstrom.

Obviously, the poster was not trying to sell My Dinner with Andre the Giant. The film doesn't deliver anything as exciting as the image here; but, that was something common to Bert I. Gordon's films, where the posters depicted thrills that his low-budget productions could not deliver. It is playing up the action aspects of the movie and does so well. It is a dynamic poster, one that does the best job possible of making a man wearing a diaper look like a real threat. His look is one of concern at the assembled firepower, something that captures a salient point of the film; that Manning is a person, not a mindless beast. Although he is acting like movie monsters for decades - menacing fleeing mobs, carrying a helpless blonde - he is also a person and reacting as a person would if people were pointing guns at him. Manning's pose is awkward; it looks like he is about to fall over (maybe because of his lack of feet?); or, is he just shying away from the tanks and soldiers? If so, this reflects a theme that runs through the film; Manning is a sympathetic figure. A close look at the poster shows a man who is terrified that he is becoming "A Monster!"

Check out the trailer.

MegaMonsterMonth #5 - The Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). With Spoilers From The Bottom Of The Sea.

"Attack of the Crab Monsters was the most successful of all the early AIP horror movies. I have to admit the title had a lot to do with the picture's success, but the plotline was the real secret. You always had the feeling when watching this movie that something, anything was about to happen. I think this construction, plus the fact that the creature was big and ugly, won over the audience." - Roger Corman

Synopsis

On a remote island in the South Pacific a joint military-scientific team is investigating the effects of H-bomb testing on nearby Bikini Atoll on local wildlife. They are the second team to be sent to the island, the first one having disappeared without a trace. It turns out that the radiation has caused local crabs to mutate, growing to enormous size. They also absorb the minds of those they kill, making the extremely intelligent. They are slowly destroying the island, as a prelude to, in the words of one of the crabs, attacking "the world of men." As our heroes are killed off, they come up with a plan to kill the crabs before their insidious evil can spread.

Analysis

Let's get the one worst part of this movie out of the way; the crab monster (only one was created even though there are multiple crabs in the films). It looks silly, like a big, mostly immobile paper-mache mockup on a dolly cart. The worst design decision was to give it a face. While this was supposed to make the crabs look vaguely (very vaguely) human, it really looks like it is half asleep, with droopy eye-lids.

Other than that, this is a solid B-movie. The cast does a nice job, particularly a pre-Gilligan's Island Russel Johnson as the no-nonsense hero and Pamela Duncan as a token lady scientist. The script has some nice touches, particularly the idea that the entire atomic structure of the crab monsters (and other mutants mentioned, but not seen) has changed, creating a new sort of matter. It really is just techno-babble, but it adds to the sense that in the Atomic Age, the things were are creating (even if inadvertently) are growing beyond our ability to control or even understand them.

Having an intelligent monster was a great idea, one that sets the movie apart from its contemporaries. In addition to creating a threat with a motivation beyond "crush city, eat people, repeat" it also leads to some inspired weirdness, such as having the crabs able to speak in the voices of those they have eaten.

Within the limitations of the budget, the movie manages to provide some suspenseful moments. With only five locations (a house, the beach, a cave system, an aquarium used for underwater scenes and a generic outdoors area) Corman does his best to keep moving between them and to avoid using too many static shots. The film is also pretty gruesome with a rather graphic decapitation and a hand being torn off during a cave-in.

Some of the dialogue is stilted and there is a half-hearted love triangle between Johnson, Duncan and Richard Garland. There are some significant plot holes. And, of course, the titular monster looks like an iconic representation of every cheesy special effect in every low-budget movie. But overall, it's a fun, fast-paced film that tells a decent story and does so in a way that makes the most of limited resources.

Notes

Legendary low-budget effects artists and monster maker Paul Blaisdal turned down Corman's offer to make the giant crab due to inadequate effects funds. Given that most of the films he worked on seemed to be made for spare change, this is saying something.

Verdict

What makes one B-movie worth seeing and another not? That's hard to say. In many cases, on a purely objective level, there is little to distinguish them from one another. Most have casts of c-list actors or former stars heading into obscurity. Effects are often rudimentary, hampered by a lack of time, money and expertise. Cinematography is often limited to master shots and production time is short, with little time for retakes. But some have that special something that others don't.

In the case of Attack of the Crab Monsters that something is its pace, the story, which, while not perfect, is engaging, and the overall quality (taking into account how little time and money Corman had). And, let's not forget that it has a charming goofiness about it. The monsters may look dumb, the actors may be stilted, the plot holes may be big and numerous, but as a whole, the movie is entertaining and a good example of how to make a successful, low-budget film. Definitely check it out.

Ken Rocks The Seventies Porn 'Stache

Wow, Mod Haired Ken...with sideburns...and a cheesy porn star mustache. The Seventies were simply an incredible time to be alive.

MegaMonsterMonth! #4 - War of the Colossal Beast (1958) - Now With 60-Foot Tall Spoilers!

Bert I. Gordon. The name is a legend among B-movie afficiandos. Active mostly in the late-Fifites and early-Sixites, Gordon produced and directed a string of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies.

Here are a few that any genre fan will recognize:

• The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) - The first part of the Glenn Manning Saga!
• Beginning of the End (1957) - Peter Graves versus giant grasshoppers!
• Valley of the Giants (1965) - Super-sized teenagers, a scourge of the 60s!
• The Food of the Gods (1976) - HG Wells comes back as a giant rat!
• Empire of the Ants (1977) - I want to pollinate Joan Collins! With sex!

Anyway, his films are generally low budget, have terrible special effects, laughable scripts, c-list actors...basically, everything you'd associate with drive-in fodder. They are also pretty entertaining, as long as you have the right mindset.

Synopsis

Picking up where The Amazing Colossal Man left off, Beast finds the 60-foot tall, diaper-clad Colonel Manning (Dean Parkin) horribly scared and driven insane from a bazooka blast he received at the end of the last film. He is living in the hinterlands of Northern Mexico, menacing the locals. He is eventually captured and brought to Los Angeles. While being held in an aircraft hangar, his sister Joyce (Sally Fraser) tries to reason with him, unsuccessfully. While chained to the floor, Manning has a lengthy flashback, retelling the story of The Amazing Colossal Man. All of the highlights of that film are shown. Manning eventually escapes. He makes it to the Griffith Observatory where he is surrounded by police and Army personnel. Joyce talks him out of destroying a convenient bus load of school kids. He has a brief moment of sanity, grabs hold of some high tension wires and evaporates. The End.

Analysis

By any reasonable standard, War of the Colossal Beast is a bad film. The acting is wooden. The effects are bad, even for the time, with Manning often transparent, a sign of poor mattes. While the make-up is effective in a few shots (and in stills) whenever he moves his mouth it looks like a latex appliance glued onto the skin. Which, of course, it is. The decision to go briefly to color stock for the finale when Manning electrocutes himself is pretty neat, even if it is only there for a ballyhoo effect; but it adds nothing to the movie. The music seems to be the same stock the Gordon uses in all of his films. And the direction is comprised mostly of static shots.

There are a few good scenes. The opening, where a Mexican teen (Robert Hernandez) is being chased by some unseen menace is well shot and tense. The initial appearance of the horribly scarred Manning delivers a jolt, as he emerges from behind a hill top, while our heroes stand among the wreckage of cargo trucks Manning has been raiding for food.

While a low-budget can be used to explain some deficiencies (like threadbare special effects work or the caliber of a cast) it cannot be used to justify a poorly written story. The film lacks drama. The characters who should get most of the screen-time, Joyce, is often pushed into the background. There are scenes that are in the film just to pad it out, like a 3 minute segment showing different agencies in DC passing the buck about who is responsible for the giant. It's a weird sequence that stops whatever forward momentum the film has and one that adds nothing to the story. The long, unneeded flashback (well, unneeded except to pad the movie run-time with recycled footage) is another scene that has nothing to do with the story and has no apparent impact on the character of Manning. It is there solely so Gordon could reuse footage. There are a number of scenes like this that exist to extend the film to feature length.

Not all of Gordon's work was like this. The Amazing Colossal Man is pretty good with Glenn Langan displaying some real pathos as the man slowly becoming an alien in his own body. Earth vs the Spider is a likeable enough romp, some decent effects and some fun moments of giant spider action. Even Beginning of the End (showcased in one of the best MST3K episodes) had decent acting by the Beginning was literally achieved by having grasshoppers crawl on photographs). While Gordon never made a really great movie, he did make films that tried to be entertaining. Unfortunately, War of the Colossal Beast is just lazy.

Notes

Even though it continues the story of The Amazing Colossal Man, Beast has a different cast and wasn't marketed as sequel.

Verdict

Beast straddles the line between so bad it's bad and so bad it's good. It is not one of Gordon's better films, mostly because of how, even at only 69 minutes long, it feels padded. It has some amusing moments and isn't a horrible way to spend an hour. However, if you want to check out a decent Gordon movie, check out The Amazing Colossal Man or Earth vs The Spider.

Check out the trailer.

MegaMonsterMonth #3 - Godzilla (2014) - So. Many. Spoliers.

I really wanted to love this movie. As it is, I like it; but there are a lot of missed opportunities and plot problems that prevent it from being a great film.

Synopsis

In 1954, a massive creature, Godzilla, is discovered in the South Pacific. A multinational team - Project Monarch - forms to find a way to kill the monster; they ultimately use a nuclear bomb. This appears to succeed, as there are no more Godzilla sightings for decades. In 1999, at a mine in the Philippines, the fossilized remains of a huge animal are uncovered, along with what appear to be two cocoons. One of them is open, the other still sealed. The thing that emerged from the cocoon burrows its way to the nearest nuclear power source (all three monsters eat nuclear energy), a plant in Japan. Plant manager Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), wife/nuclear engineer Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) and son Ford (CJ Adams, later played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) experience the first attack of what will later be dubbed a MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism). Sandra is killed as the plant collapses. 15 years later, Ford is a bomb disposal expert in the US Navy, returning home from a 14 month deployment to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen as Elle Brody) and son (Carson Bolde as Sam Brody) in San Francisco. Joe is still in Japan, trying to prove that the plant accident was not a natural disaster or design flaw. Ford comes to bail his dad out of jail when he trespasses into the nuclear quarantine zone. Both head back in and find that Monarch has been monitoring a cocoon, the gestating form of the monster that destroyed the plant in 1999. A huge, flying creature emerges. Joe is killed. Ford starts a long journey home, while Godzilla emerges from the depths of the ocean and another MUTO - a female - emerges from the second cocoon, now at the Yucca mountain nuclear waste facility.

Honolulu and Las Vegas are destroyed and the three creatures converge on San Francisco. The military comes up with a plot to lure them offshore, using nuclear weapons fas bait, and then detonate the weapons, killing them. The female MUTO intercepts the train carrying the nukes, eating all but one. The male MUTO gets his hands (um, claws) on the remaining nuke, after it has been armed. Both MUTOs arrive in San Francisco, where they lay hundreds of eggs and use the last nuclear weapon as an incubator, preparing for the birth of hordes of giant monsters. Godzilla shows up, the three monsters fight, while Ford and a team of soldiers try to find the bomb and either disarm it or get it out of the city. They find the MUTO nest and Ford torches the eggs. Godzilla kills the two MUTOs after an impressive fight sequence and the nuke detonates offshore, because Ford is the worst bomb disposal technician in the military. However, he does survive and is reunited with his family, while Godzilla marches off into the sunset. The End.

Analysis

It is tempting to try and rewrite this movie, rather criticize it. There are a lot of great elements, but there are equal number of missed opportunities. However, writing a critique of a movie is not about speculating about what could have been. It is about looking at what is in the screen. And, what is on the screen is an uneven, but entertaining film.

Godzilla trashes the Golden Gate Bridge.

The biggest flaw is the central story of Ford and his family. His attempt to get back to his family is dull, with both Taylor-Johnson and Olsen putting in somnabulant performances. I enjoyed Taylor-Johnson in Kick Ass, so I know he can act. Here, he seems to have been told to imitate the most boring movie hero persona he could. There is no dramatic weight to the human relationship that gets the most screen-time. The supporting performance are wasted with the exception of Bryan Crantson who effectively portrays a man teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Since director Gareth Evans and writer Max Borenstein decided to have the human story as the primary focus of the film with much of the monster action taking place in the background or off-screen (something Evans did more effectively in Monsters) it is crucial that this story be, if not original, at least engaging and dwell-acted. It is neither. This is a serious flaw. The film has no emotional core and feels longer than it's two hour run-time.

What does the film do right? Just about everything else. The overarching story and explanation for the monsters is fine. Their "motivation" - the MUTOs want to reproduce, Godzilla as a top predator in an eco-system of giants, wants to eat them - makes sense and explains their actions. The effects work is flawless. When we are finally shown a full-scale brawl between the three creatures at the end of the film, the entire sequence conveys the epic levels of destruction and gives each monster a unique character, While lacking some of the weight of the best Toho films (CGI still has a flat look to it) this is some of the best computer generated monster effects I've seen. The score by Alexandre Desplat doesn't come close to equaling that of Toho's master composer Akira Ifukube; however, it isn't bad and complements the action.

Gareth Edwards handles the actions scenes well. The four primary action sequences - the emergence of the male MUTO from its cocoon in Japan, an attack on Honolulu, an attack by the female MUTO on the nuclear weapons carrying train and the final, 30 minute long San Francisco battle - are all exciting and blocked well. Edwards likes to create ground/human eye level views of the action and this works, for the most par. Part of the fun of Godzilla films is getting a "god's eye view" of the destruction and we don't get much of this. As a Godzilla fan, I want to see kaiju tearing apart cities. Edwards gives us some of that throughout the film, but saves most of it for the battle of San Francisco. If the movie were 90 minutes long and not saddled by a cliche ridden and boringly acted central story, this wouldn't matter as much. As it is, having two monster battles (Honolulu and Las Vegas) reduced mostly to TV news footage and some aftermath shots is frustrating.

Even if the story is disappointing, the tone it strikes is not. The creative team takes the subject seriously, creating a fairly grim, frightening world in which humans are little more than annoyances in an emerging Age of Monsters. While not as disturbing or dramatic as the original, the film rightly stays away form the impulse (indulged in in the 1998 Roland Emmerich film) to treat the subject as an exercise in camp.

Notes

This film follows in the footsteps of Godzilla: 1985 by having the monsters home in on nuclear power. In Godzilla va Megaguirus this leads to Japan banning nuclear power plants.

The movie casts Godzilla as being a source of balance against the MUTOs, creating a semi-heroic character for him. This is sketchily developed in the current film (mostly through evidence-free, fortune cookie pronouncements from Ken Watanabe's Dr. Serizawa), although it has a long history in Toho's films, going back to Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. In that film, Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra team up to defend the Earth (although not necessarily mankind) from an alien creature, the massive gold dragon, Ghidorah. Godzilla would continue to be seen in an heroic light - defending the planet from aliens, hostile undersea kingdoms and even a monster spawned from mankind's pollution (Hedorah aka the Smog monster). After the series resumed in 1985 (after a 10 year break) Godzilla would go back into having a more ambiguous or outright malevolent character in subsequent films. At best, he would be seen as the lesser of two evils in movies like Godzilla: Final Wars and Godzilla: 2000.

The male MUTO takes to the air.

While the creative team emphasizes the human element in this movie, many of the previous films had strong casts and better stories following people living in the shadows of the giants. From heroic astronauts Nick Adams and Akira Takarada in Invasion of Astro-Monster to plucky reporter Chiharu Niiyama in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack to disgraced and traumatized soldier Yumiko Shaku in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, the human element has always been present. One of the most chilling scenes in modern Godzilla films occurs in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack . During the first use of Godzilla's atomic breath the scene cuts to a nearby school, where a teacher, seeing a mushroom cloud rising over the city, simply says "atom bomb." This more disturbing and powerful than anything found in the new Godzilla.

Verdict

In spite of the poor acting and characterization of the protagonist and the cliched, by-the-numbers primary story, Godzilla is still pretty good. The action scenes are well done, the effects are stunning and the overall tone of the story is grim and serious. The last 30 minutes are strong, ending hte film on an up note and, hopefully, showing what subsequent films in the American series will be like. This is a movie that is worth seeing on the big screen (although I've only seen the 2D version, so I can't comment on how it might look in 3D) one where the strengths overcome the weaknesses, even if it the balance is pretty close. Check it out.

Retro-Tech: Byzantine iPad

Or so this find is being dubbed by Turkish archeologists. Here's the story from Discovery News:

Turkish archaeologists excavating a harbor site on the European side of the Bosphorus have unearthed a 1,200-year-old wooden object which they claim is the ancient equivalent of a tablet computer. The device was a notebook and tool — in one.

The Byzantine invention was found within the remains of one of the 37 ships unearthed in the Yenikapi area of Istanbul, a site which has been at the center of excavations for the past 10 years.

[...]

Probably belonging to the ship's captain, the wooden object, whose cover is finely carved with decorations, is the size of a modern seven-inch tablet, but it's much thicker.

It consists of a set of five overlaid rectangular panels carved with frames and covered with wax. Notes could be taken on those panels, as shown by writing in Greek which is still visible on the wax.

A primitive "app" is hidden on the bottom panel: a sliding lid revealing a hidden plate with carved spaces.

"When you draw the sliding part, there are small weights used as an assay balance," Ufuk Kocabaş, director of Istanbul University’s department of marine archeology and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project...

While the glib comparison to a modern tablet is a bit silly, it does give insight into just how advanced Classical and Middle Ages civilizations were and how little we still know about them.

Here's the device.

MegaMonsterMonth! #2 - Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield promised, in the words of producer JJ Abrams to give America "our own...monster, and not like King Kong. I love King Kong. King Kong is adorable. And Godzilla is a charming monster. We love Godzilla. But I wanted something that was just insane and intense." Did the movie deliver? Not really. That doesn't make it a bad film; other elements of the movie do that. But, aside from the apparent lack of knowledge Abrams has about the long history of giant American monsters, it did not have the impact he thought it would.

Synopsis

A group of young urbanites living in New York City has gathered to say goodbye to their friend, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) who is leaving for a job in Japan. On the night of his going away party, an enormous monster emerges from the Atlantic and attacks the city. While the creature rampages, Rob, his brother Jason (Mike Vogel), his brother's girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), hanger on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) and stereotypically annoying friend and cameraman Hud (T. J. Miller ) first try to escape New York. While attempting to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, the monster attacks, destroys the bridge, killing Jason and stranding the rest of the party in Manhattan. Rob receives a call from Beth (Odette Yustman) who is his friend, recent one-night stand and secret love of his life. We get to see snippets of the last date in tiny snippets throughout the film. Beth is trapped in her apartment. Rob resolves to rescue her and the rest of the gang come along because...why not? They have some close encounters with the main creature and are attacked while traveling in a subway tunnel by dog-sized parasites that are dropping off the monster, losing Lizzy Caplan to a disease the parasites carry which causing the victims to explode. Eventually they find Beth in her apartment, impaled by re-bar but still alive. Freeing her, they make it to an evacuation site. Lily leaves in one helicopter, while Rob, Hud and Beth board the last chopper out before the "Hammer Down Protocol" is initiated by the military. The chopper is swatted out of the sky by the monster, who proceeds to eat Hud (best part of the movie). Rob and Beth survive just long enough to record goodbye messages and profess their love for each other before the Air Force blasts lower Manhattan - and the monster - out of existence. The End.

Analysis

This movie starts with one strike against it; found footage. Readers of this site know I do not like found footage movies, in general. Why? Because it is often used as a lazy way to hide a low budget.

Not all found footage films are bad (I include mockumentaries in this genre). Anything - The War Game, Privilege, Punishment Park - by Peter Watkins is great. This is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest movies ever made, using the framework of a rockumentary to showcase its deadpan humor. Blair Witch is a tight, little horror movie, where the visual format heightens the tension. [Rec], [Rec2] and Apollo 18 show how the visual style of this genre can be used as an integral part of the story, enhancing the film. But, with the recent glut of found footage films, the bad movies greatly outweigh the good ones.

With Cloverfield it does not work. While the idea is sound, since the movie steadfastly refuses to focus on the action - we see very little of the monster - it would require a story and characters that we can become invested in. In this regard, the screenplay is a complete failure. Our protagonist is enamored with a women who is presented as a vapid, kind of whorish, woman-child. Three weeks after sleeping with Rob, she shows up at his party with a new boyfriend. That is not the mark of a friend and does not make for a character we want to see rescued. Of course, Rob is a shallow dolt as well, whose main traits are his product rich hair and slavish devotion to a woman who shows little interest in him. There is no particular motivation for any of the characters to follow him on his trip to save Beth other than the movie needed a camera operator (Hud) and some cannon fodder. Since you can't possibly care about one-dimensional, rather unlikable people - Hud's character in particular is so stupid and so annoying you wonder why anyone would befriend him - there is no reason to have any feelings about Rob succeeding or not.

Lizzy Caplan, the best thing - well, best human thing - about the film.
Too bad she explodes.

Things might have been better if we had seen more of the monster. While the narrative device limits the number of believable panoramic "glamor" shots of the monster, it does not explain why the camera seems to be shy about focusing on the monster for more than a few seconds. And, why is almost everything either a dutch angle, shaky cam or a nauseating combination of both? In low-budget found footage movies, this conceit - that the camera operator behaves in a way that no real person would, focusing on anything but an effects heavy monster - is done in order to save money. With a budget of $25 million, Cloverfield did not suffer from a lack of funding. Even when the creature is in the scene, in a location where it would be in full view, Hud would rather film things like his friends reactions, rather than the enormous monster destroying the city. This starts out as an interesting artistic choice, but becomes increasingly annoying as the film wears on.

And, it does wear on. For a movie with a run-time of only 85 minutes (of which 11 minutes are closing credits) it drags. It has no interesting characters, a story that focuses on things I don't care about, a visual style that is frustrating in that it shows very little of what we want to see (a monster destroying New York city) and far too much of what we don't want to see (generically pretty people engaged in a quest that has no dramatic weight to it).

A decent shot of the creature.

There are a good parts to the film. The effects team does a great job of animating the creature and a creating a convincing ground level view of the destruction being left in its wake. The monster has a pretty unique look to it, one that succeeds in creating a believably otherworldly menace. There are a few nice shots. A real stand out is a brief scene in which a B-2 bomber unloads a string of bombs on the creature. You get a good feel for how big the creature is and how devastating the fighting between the monster and the military as been in the city.

As far as the story, only knowing what the characters know - that on a seemingly normal day, the city they live in is attacked by a monstrous creature - works to keep our interest, at least to some degree. Trying to piece together what is happening, catching little hints of the larger story scattered here and there, is engaging. Having the little parasites dropping off the larger creature is a nice touch, both because it hints at a complex ecosystem and gives the characters something to fight. And the ending, with almost everyone dead, is satisfying, avoiding a cliched "our heroes make a last minute escape" finale.

Notes

Cloverfield had an intensive viral marketing campaign, with websites, hidden messages in trailers, videos you could piece together...a whole host of items that hinted at what the movie was going to be about, without giving too much away. Unfortunately, by the time the film was over, I had a feeling more effect was put into the marketing than into telling an interesting story.

Verdict

Cloverfield is a movie I wanted to like. I've given it a number of chances, hoping that in the right mood the film would finally appeal to me. Unfortunately, each time I watch it, I wind up thinking about the missed opportunity to actually achieve what Abrams set out to do; create a monster (and, a franchise) to rival Godzilla. Unfortunately, with the thin characters, dull story, lack of monster action and terrible use of the found footage tropes, the film fails to achieve much of anything. Since it is so short, seeing it once for the good elements is worth the investment of time.

Discovery Channel Goes All Monstery

Apparently, The Discovery Channel (or is it just Discovery? Or just D?) is having some kind of monster show marathon on 31 May. Because Bigfoot equals science now? Well, whatever. Check out the details here.

MegaMonsterMonth! #1 - Gappa: The Triphibian Monsters (1967)

I'm starting off MegaMonsterMonth! (yes, that exclamation point is gonna be used every time) with Nikkatsu's only entry in the kaiju eiga genre, Gappa. While I had seen clips of this movie for years, it was only recently that I saw the complete film. Overall, it's a fun, colorful film and a decent example of the kaiju eiga of the 60s. Oh, kaiju eiga means "monster movie" and is applied to Japanese films featuring giant creatures.

Synopsis

Remote Obelisk Island in the South Pacific. Representatives of Playmate Inc. arrive to retrieve animals and "South Seas beauties" in the words of the kind of sleazy company president (played by Keisuke Inoue) for "Playmate Land", an island theme park he plans to build. While on Obelisk Island, the research team finds a giant egg, out of which hatches a baby gappa - a 6 foot tall (but rapidly growing) bird-beaked lizard. The team takes the new-born back to Tokyo where the head of Playmate wants to put it on display. They are followed by two very angry parents. Parents who are 200 feet tall, fly and breath fire. Will civilization fall before the family reunion?

Analysis

Gappa is pretty entertaining, more so if you are familiar with the tropes of kaiju eiga of the time. Screenplay writers Gan Yamazaki and Ryuzo Nakanishi dump every cliche of the genre into the mix, adding the missing baby angle and a wry, if at times broad, sense of humor to a story that seems very familiar to fans of the genre.

The cast does a nice job, although Keisuke Inoue doesn't just chew the scenery; he hacks it up with a chainsaw while it's begging for mercy. The quality of the isn't significantly inferior to what was coming out of Toho at the time. The design of the gappa is a little silly (the beaks make them look like giant chickens), but the suits aren't badly made and move fairly well.

The plot - dealing with a lost child and upset parents, was put in by the writers because;

"We felt that kids could relate to the kid monster and the drama of him being separated from his parents and put on display in a carnival"

This plot point works since it gives the creatures some motivation beyond "I'm big and scaly and therefore must destroy Tokyo."

Gappa Junior doesn't look too happy with his accommodations.

There are a few standout scenes. The first shot of the baby gappa, still covered in amniotic fluid and writhing on the ground is a little creepy. The emergence of the adult gappa from an underground lake, with the suits wrapped in shadows, is an effective way to introduce the monsters. The first adult gappa attack on a Japanese city has a nice mix of men-in-suits wiping out miniature buildings and street level views from the terrified population. During this attack, the female gappa has an octopus in it's mouth, a meal for baby, one assumes, and a very nice touch.

There are a few things that detract from the film. The miniature work is uneven, with the model ships looking particular bad. The volcano on Obelisk Island is on screen for too long, given that it resembles something a high school student would make for a science fair. The flying gappa (they are "triphibian" after all) look bad, in part because of the effects, in part because the creature designs don't lend themselves to flying. There is some poorly realized rear screen projection. However, keeping in mind when the film was released and the budget, the effects generally look dated, not bad. Other notes

Mom and Dad out for a night on the town.

Although the film's plot resembles that of Gorgo - with an infant monster being found and exploited, only to have mom come and, in the case of Gorgo, level London to retrieve it - the screen play writers claim not to have seen the 1961 British film. While the plots do have similarities the idea of a monster being put on display for the public goes back at least to The Lost World (1925). Even the idea of monsters hzving offspring goes back to Son of Kong (1933). If any movie did have an influence, it was probably Toho's Son of Godzilla which was in production around the same time as Gappa and was released the same year.

Although giant monster movies didn't suit Nikkatsu, they did find a lucrative niche in another film genre, the Pinku eiga of the 70s and 80s. These films are softcore pornography, although they often were cross genre with some being period pieces, crime dramas, yakuza movies, etc. Many mix sex, violence and sexual violence. Nikkatsu's Pinku eiga generally had higher production values than their competitors.

Stuart Galbraith's book Monsters are Attacking Tokyo contains the interviews with Gen and Ryuzo. It is a great book for those who are interested in Japanese sci-fi, although it is out of print and was published in 1998, so it is, understandably, a bit out-of-date. Still, if you can pick up a copy, do so.

Verdict

Gappa is a lot of fun. While not the best kaiju eiga it is an entertaining monster film with good acting, decent effects and monsters who have some motivation beyond "crush, kill, destroy." Check it out. You can buy Gappa at Amazon.

The trailer for Gappa:

I Am A Crackhead

No, this is not some kind of weird Internet confession thing. I'm just surprised I didn't decide to celebrate the release of the new Godzilla with a giant monster review series. Well, that's going to change. Check back every day for the next few weeks for a review of some mega-monster flick you should be watching.

Review - Jodorowsky's Dune

There are some movies that have never been made, that still capture the imagination of the student of film. These can movies that were begun, but abandoned, like the 1937 adaptation of I, Claudius. It can be versions of a movie that were eventually produced, like Vincent Ward's proposed version of Alien 3, which would have taken place inside a wooden space station. It can even be something like alternate casting; for example, Harvey Keitel as Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now instead of Martin Sheen (Keitel lasted through the first week of shooting before Coppola replaced him).

Of all these "what if" films, Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune is one of the most famous. Jodorowksy (El Topo, The Holy Mountain), who was to direct, orchestrated the pre-production effort, creating a massive book of paintings, storyboards and a script that would have translated to a 10 - 14 hour long movie. Copies of this book were sent off to every major studio...and turned down as commercially nonviable.

Jodorowsky is a challenging film-maker. Each of his films inspires discomfort in the viewer. However, while he does push the boundaries cinema, it is not in a purely exploitative or sensational way. No matter how anarchic they may seem at times, his films are carefully constructed so that the images convey the themes and thoughts of the story.

When I was a kid and learned that he had almost made Dune - one of my favorite books - I started looking for everything I could find about it. Even in those pre-Internet days, you could find enough to make your mouth water. Art by Chris Foss and H.R. Giger. Costume designs and storyboards by Moebius. Fragments of the script and character descriptions. A cast that might have included Orson Wells and Salvador Dali. Even the proposed length of the film was inspiring; what kind of amazing things could be shown in a 14 hour long movie? Of course, to my 10-year-old-self practicalities - like what kind of theater would show a movie of this length...and how many people would sit through it - didn't matter. The details that were available were enough to inspire an epic of the imagination.

The documentary is completely engaging. Although it is primarily a "talking head" film, the creators do liven things up a bit with some animation based on story boards, showing how a few scenes would have looked. The style of the animation - line drawings that look like the storyboards set in motion - is perfect for a film about a movie that only exists on paper. We are shown some of the art produced for the film, which is tantalizing, promising a baroque future unlike anything seen up until that time.

More impressive than the development and production details are the people involved. The passion (and disappointment) that is still in the voices of men like Chris Voss and Michel Serdoux (who provided initial funding and was the film's producer) is what really grabs you. These men seem to have believed what Jodorowsky told them; this film would be "a prophet" a transformational experience for the audience.

The centerpiece of the film is Jodorowsky. He is a natural story-teller. Hearing him describe his dealings with Dali, his meeting with Mick Jagger, his vision for the film, is captivating. The screen oozes with his enthusiasm, not just for this film but for art and for life. It would take a very dull person to walk away from this movie and not be inspired to try and create something. Maybe not a mutli-million dollar movie that was to shape the minds of its viewers; but something that comes from the soul.

Although Jodorowksy's Dune will never be made, it is still inspirational. A good case can be made - and is made by the documentarians - that Jodorowsky's Dune influenced many films in the decades that followed. While they point out specific scenes that they speculate may have been lifted - or inspired - by Jodorowsky's pre-production work, I would say that one should look more broadly. First, it brought together a number of talented individuals who would go on to work in later films, like Alien, that would set the visual tone for science fiction movies to the present day. Second, while Star Wars was instrumental in creating the "big budget sci-fi epic" trend, the idea that you could have a mainstream release of more thoughtful science fiction films still exists. Dune and some of it's contemporaries that made it to movie theaters (e.g., The Final Programme, Rollerball, Phase IV, A Clockwork Orange, Solaris) showed that you can do "message sci-fi" using the trappings of cinematic science fiction to look at serious themes. While the "event movies" - mindless sci-fi action films like the Transformer and Star Trek films - still dominate the ranks of big budget genre movies, there are plenty of other films that want to challenge the audience in ways that Jodorowsky would recognize. Films like Melancholia, Moon, and Her all have thought-provoking themes, using science fiction to reflect the concerns of the day. And, there are hybrid event/message movies like The Matrix series, that mix big budget action with complex stories and themes.

One thing to keep in mind: since Jodorwosky's Dune was not made, we are able to create the movie in our minds. There, it is a vast epic, one that would set the senses and the mind afire. Would it really have been like that? Would a ten hour long film made by a idealistic surrealist with the effects technology of the mid-Seventies have lived up to our dreams? Probably not; but the story of Jodorowsky's Dune shows that the attempt to realize the dream can be just as important actualizing it.

Jodorwosky's Dune is a great film about a fascinating chapter in film history. And, it is a tribute and inspiration to dreamers everywhere.

A good site with much of the public information about Dune, including Jodorowsky's version, can be found at Dune: Behind the Scenes.

Favorite Non-Godzilla Kaiju

Everyone loves Godzilla. How can you not love a 400 foot tall radioactive dinosaur that periodically turns Tokyo into a glowing parking lot? You can't; that's the only possible answer.

However, Godzilla is not the only megafauna that stalks the silver screen. Within the Godzilla, there are dozens of monster. And giant monsters have an enduring popularity. King Kong, the super-sized ants from Them, the killer mollusks from It Challenged the World...stupendous spiders, mammoth moths, a big bald bad-ass in diapers (that would be Colonel Manning of The Amazing Colossal Man and War of the Colossal Beast), the angry baby-monster from Cloverfield...the list goes on and on. It would seem almost impossible to chose a runner-up to the Big G.

You're lucky that I get paid to do the almost impossible. I'm going to limit the choices to the marauding mega>monsters from Japan, the kaiju. Which one, after Godzilla, does it for me?

The Gargantuas from War of the Gargantuas. Although they only appeared in this movie, they are considered canon monsters in the Godzilla universe, with the creatures mentioned in Godzilla against MechaGodzilla and featured in the comicbook series Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth.

The Gargantuas...it's not easy being brothers.

Although they only starred in one movie, they made a big impact on your humble author's young psych when he first saw the movie many, many years ago. Unlike many more elaborate kaiju designs, the Gargantuas are basically guys on fur suits. This allows them to be much more acrobatic and fluid in their movement and fight scenes. Care was taken to give them distinct personalities (although these basically boil down to "good brother" and "bad brother.") The sibling rivalry appealed to me, since my own brother and I had a similar relationship...although our fights never quite devastated Tokyo. The effects are pretty standard for Toho at the time (1966), although there are a couple of standout scene including one at Tokyo's Haneda airport that highlights the creativity that the best Toho films had.

The film started as a sequel to the previous year's Frankenstein Conquers the World (aka Frankenstein vs Baragon starring the awesome Nick Adams and the super-hot Kumi Mizuno), but was changed into a stand-alone film early in development (although a few details point to the earlier film). The film has a pretty good cast, the weakest actor being Russ Tamblyn, who plays the protagonist (Dr. Paul Stewart) in full-on "I need a paycheck and don't give a shit about the movie" mode. The score, by Toho regular Akira Ifukube, is pretty grim, in keeping with the overall tone of the movie.

The main thing to recommend the film, however, is the agility of the monsters, how exciting the fighting sequences are and the rather grim and serious overall tone of the movie. All of this makes War of the Gargantuas one of the most enjoyable Toho kaiju movies.

Oh, and did I mention the awesomely bad song "Feel in My Heart" warbled by Kipp Hamilton? Listen to it once and you will never get it out of your brain. I first saw this movie 30 years ago and its been bouncing around in my head since then...which would explain so many things...

Gaira, the "bad" Gargantua expresses displeasure at being bumped from a flight. Who can blame him?

Kipp Hamilton wants to haunt your dreams. Listen to this and she will.

Guardians Trailer 2 Is Out

...And it is awesome! Knowhere looks sweet, Rocket and Groot sound great, the action scenes look intense, the Nova Corps uniforms are neat, shit explodes, Zoe Saldana is hot in green body paint, Chris Pratt seems to have the right balance of snark, heroism and charisma that Starlord needs...pretty much everything about this movie is appealing. Of course, at this point we've seen about five minutes of footage, so who knows; however, Marvel has consistently delivered entertaining movies. And, since few people outside of comic-book geeks (like me) even know who the Guardians are, they can run with the characters and story-lines.

Although Winter Soldier was amazing (I guess I should get around to reviewing it), I think Guardians is the Marvel flick that will be the most satisfying of the year (I'm including X-Men: All-Wolverine, All The Time and Spider-man 2: Electric Boogaloo in that statement).

Post by Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Gets A New Teaser

I'm really looking forward to Guardians of the Galaxy. It looks like a ton of fun, with a good sense of humor and chock full o' swashbuckling adventure. It is also based on a comic I really like. There is a new trailer coming out, so Marvel has released a teaser. For a trailer. Seems odd to me. I guess all teasers are for upcoming trailers, but since we've already had a full trailer, why not just release new trailers?

Which is why I'm not in marketing.

Anyway, check it out.

New Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Trailer Has A Lot Of Apes

The new trailer for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is out and it is almost completely new footage. We get to see a lot more of the apes, including glimpses of the society they are creating. The CGI apes look pretty amazing. And the film looks like a pretty bleak, post-apocalyptic film, the kind of movie that Battle for the Planet of the Apes wanted to be. I love all five of the original films; but the last film in particular is a weak entry, mostly because of how cheap it looks, how it was not the kind of epic ending the series needed. Dawn, on the other hand, looks pretty epic.

Daily Poster - The Curse Of The Werewolf (1961)

Click to enlarge

Hammer films often had great posters, sometimes better than the movies they were advertising. This is not the case with The Curse of the Werewolf; the film is great, one of Hammer's best. Featuring Oliver Reed as Leon the werewolf and the stunning Yvonne Romaine, Curse has strong performances, great, bestial werewolf make-up and a hard, exploitative edge (for example, Reed's character is the product of the rape of Romaine, who dies in childbirth).

The poster is a good advertisement for the film, although it isn't exactly playing fair with potential viewers. With multiple images of the werewolf and his victims (although the prone, buxom woman below the central wolf image looks like it is mother, not a vicitm) and the promise that he will "kill...Kill...KILL!" the movie takes a considerable amount of running time before we see the monster and has a light body count (Reed's character only kills four people). The first act is set before Leon's birth. The film also spends time developing Leon's character as a child (played by Justin Walters), before transitioning to the adult Reed. The film is not boring; but it does take its time building up to a pretty spectacular werewolf rampage in the film's finale.

One interesting detail; the color of the werewolf on the poster is brown. In the film its fur is white, as you can see from the image at right. This was an understandable change. While the white color works on the screen, the decision to change the color for the poster was a good one. On film, the unexpected coloration lends the werewolf an even more supernatural, almost ghostly appearance. As a painting, it would have looked odd, maybe even comical. One of the other interesting features is the tiny image form the finale of a mob of torch-bearing villagers having cornered the werewolf; it's not often you see a spoiler on the poster!

What really sells the poster, however, is the energy it conveys. The bold strokes, the up-front image of the monster, the terrified victims and the overblown tag-lines all promise a full-scale, no-holds-barred carnival of terrors. There are a few weird artistic choices that don't quite work. The sky blue on the right side is too much of contrast with the dark tones of the werewolf and the night sky. The light source on the right side werewolf's face is also a strange contrast with the moon behind its head on the left. However, these are mild criticisms of an otherwise exceptional movie poster.

As bonus, here are some images of Yvonne Romaine. Hammer always featured attractive women and she is one of the hottest.

Trailer For New Call Of Duty Has Pretty Explosions

The trailer for the new CoD game, Advanced Operations, is out. Like all CoD trailers it looks good. Set in 2054, the game will follow the adventures of an employee for a private military contractor against a global terrorist group. Of course, one can assume there will be twists in the story-line (any bets that the terrorists are being sponsored by the corporation to allow the CEO - voiced by Kevin Spacey - to take over the world?) but most of us aren't playing CoD for the storyline. We playing it to blow stuff up. And this game looks it has lots of options as far as blowing stuff up is concerned. Exo-skeletons, hover-bikers, drones up the wazoo, various types of BFGs...all of this looks pretty good. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what kind of multi-player modes are available, what the actual release game-play looks like, etc. The normal stuff that comes out between a kick-butt trailer and the actual release of he game. However, this does look like another "must-buy" in the CoD series.

Short Attention Span Review - We Are What We Are (2013) - So. Many. Spoilers.

Synopsis
In Redneckland, USA, a family living on the fringe of a small town has a dark secret. They've been eating long pork for centuries. The latest generation (two teenage girls, one boy around 5) are a little reluctant to embrace the family legacy. Mom dies from kuru (which comes from eating human brains), dad is infected, the locals are getting suspicion when a teen goes missing and bones - showing signs of being boiled) start turning up in the river...and the eldest daughter has to take over for mom when it comes to killing the yearly people feast. Cannibal wackiness ensues.

Analysis
What a great movie. Really, this is one of the best films, horror or otherwise, I've seen this year. The acting is low-key and very believable. The quiet nature of the characters and the way the actors portray them makes the instances of violence far more powerful than they might otherwise be. I was particularly impressed with Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers who portray the teen cannibals. Both do good jobs portraying complex characters, who are torn between a life they have been raised to believe is correct, but not one they really want to embrace. Director Jim Mickie and cinematographer Ryan Samul give the film an appropriately dark, washed out look, one that perfectly captures the grimness of the story without being showing or gimmicky in any way. There are a few moments of graphic violence, but these are used sparingly, like a scalpel, not a machete.

There are a few plotholes that nag. The biggest one is, how does this family keep reproducing for centuries? There is one tiny hint that there might be incest involved, but it certainly is not explicitly stated. So, how exactly do you explain to new family members the finger in the soup? Also, there is a real question of how a family living in a small community could keep this secret for centuries. But, these plot issues do not detract significantly from the overall story and viewing experience.

This is a glorious twist on family values, on concept of loyalty to one's "kin," on the idea that small town America, the place where people have deep roots (our cannibal family's ancestors arrived in the area in the late 18th century), is somehow a better place than the urban coasts. While this is not a new theme (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of a satirical looks at the American family and pioneer spirit) the sombre, quiet nature of this movie sets it apart from its backwoods slasher relatives.

Additional Notes
This is a remake of a 2010 Mexican film, Somos lo que hay. I have not seen this version, so I can't compare the two. Based on the trailer, however, it looks like it has a very different tone, from the setting (urban) to the parent lost at the beginning being the father, rather than the mother, leading to a different set of family dynamics and familial expectations for the children to the apparent lack of reluctance on the part of the kids to participate in the family past-time. However, I'll have to track the film down and see if these impressions are correct. You can see the trailer here at IFC films.

Verdict
See it now. It is currently on Netflix, so if you can stream, stop reading this blog and check it out. Or, you can buy the movie on Amazon.