Cory's Birthday Movie Celebration: Destroy All Monsters!

1968 monster mayhem

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A posse of alien chicks invades earth by unleashing the collective of monsters imprisoned on Monster Land. Some astronauts have to find a way to defeat them. Rawr!

That's right--the tradition of honoring reader Cory's birthday in the cheapest way imaginable is continuing. This year, I've picked what I believe to be fifth on his favorite Godzilla movie list.

This is a movie very obviously made for children. There's nothing wrong with that, and that's better than the cartoon I thought it was going to be with a first scene involving a rocket blast-off. All of these movies are a little goofy, but this one just feels goofier. I think it might be the heavy narration, especially during the first part of the movie. When the narrator said "a place called Monster Land," I again thought that I was watching a cartoon. I am glad that he introduced all the monsters though. I didn't remember their names later on though, except for the ones I'd already seen in the other movies. I'll tell you one thing about that narrator and his description of Monster Land. There's a whole lot of science going on there. Also making this whole thing so goofy that adults should be embarrassed for liking it (No, I'm not talking about you, Cory, because that would be a terrible thing to do on your birthday.): a scene where Rodan eats a dolphin; a scene where Rodan humps another monster, dryly, I assume; a doctor's suicide with an obvious dummy and the longest scream I think I've ever heard in a movie; the 1999 laser guns that make pew-pew-pew sounds; the dubbed voice of this old guy; and another dubbed voice that is supposed to sound French, I guess. One of the scientists says "the monsters look cute" at one point, and that might be part of the problem. Some of them are a little too cute. Despite the goofiness, this is almost wall-to-wall action. And I liked seeing the monsters in new locations with some familiar landmarks. The miniature stuff is well done although the movie's pretty much done with urban settings by the midway point. Some of the miniatures are complex and even having moving parts. And they're grander in scale, probably because they needed to make room for ALL monsters. The city does look a little devoid of people though, a little lifeless. Maybe at this stage in this series of movies, people knew the signs and found safe locations when they knew giant monsters were on their way. This is packed with monsters, probably too many! I still don't care much for Rodan, but I did like the spiky guy and the long guy. Son of Godzilla? Well, I just don't know about him. His voice is really silly, and he shoots smoke rings. I enjoyed the alien monster tadpole things, but the "burning monster" which turns out to not even be a monster at all is about the lamest thing ever. Oh, and Ghidorah and his trio of heads makes an appearance. They really weren't kidding with the "all" in that title! Of course, the star of the show is Godzilla, and he gets his moments. One series of scenes has some guys running from Godzilla in the woods, and I'm pretty sure some of the shots inspired shots in Jurassic Park. My favorite Godzilla moment comes early, a scene where he does a crotch chop move like that bowler Pete Weber. With the same lively music I've come to expect from these Godzilla movies and barely a slow moment, this is a fun and entertaining giant monster movie. Especially for children!

Happy birthday, Cory!

The Cat

1992 sci-fi kitty movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy apparently named Wei Si Li but who my English subtitles called Wisely and who is played by an actor named Waise Lee gets involved with a couple of people and a cat who are trying to save the world from an alien. I guess.

Really weird science fiction movie from the director of Riki-Oh. This actually has a fight scene that bests anything in that splatterific kung-fu extravaganza--a fight between the titular feline and a mean dog. Seriously, that is something else, one of those scenes that you watch and think, "I can't believe I'm seeing this on my television screen!" I call this a weird movie, probably because I don't understand it, but there's not much that really stands out as being weirder than any other science fiction movie if you think about it. Somehow, however, all the parts add up to something that just ain't right. There's a really cool monster, the kind that only Asians can manufacture. There's also this Robocop-type figure, flying cats, and other hardcore shenanigans, and it all made very little sense to me. That didn't stop me from enjoying myself, more than I did when watching Riki-Oh at least. My favorite bits include the gelatinous tree monster thing, an electrocuted dog, a subtitle that read "I never knew a cat could fight to and so hard!", tail repair, and a scene where the cat jumps through a window and makes a perfect cat-shaped hole in the glass. I didn't think glass could break that way, but who am I to argue with The Cat or, as it's also apparently known, The 1,000 Year Cat. This was sadly director Ngai Choi Lam's final movie.

House

1986 horror-comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A writer struggling with the loss of his son and break-up of his marriage moves into his late aunt's haunted house and has to battle both literal and psychological demons.

Entertaining horror-comedy here, but I kept getting distracted. First, it was good to see 80's sitcom superstars George Wendt and Richard Moll. But with Wendt, I found myself wondering how much he weighs now and had trouble focusing on the plot of House. Speaking of Wendt, if I were the director of House, I would have been a little more over the top with the horror and violence and included a scene where William Katt's character enters a hole in the house, stumbles around a bit, encounters a few ghosts, and emerges from George Wendt's rectum. That that scene wasn't in this movie shows that we're dealing with amateurs here. The second distraction was William Katt's V-neck sweater worn with nothing underneath. I'm talking about a deep V here. I suppose there's nothing wrong with the style choice, especially for 1986, but I was distracted because I was wondering whether or not I could pull that off in 2013. The third source of distraction was the appearance of a Masters of the Universe action figure, Buzz Off. I started thinking about the height of popularity of these toys and wondering if I was too old to be playing with them back in the mid-80s when I was entering my teens or when I was in my 20s. Luckily, I didn't need to focus too hard to get this. It's your typical haunted house movie with decaying fiends and silly shocks, but there's the missing child thing and a few Vietnam flashbacks to give this a bit more story. Things are a little too commercial, but the special effects are grotesque enough. A monster in an upstairs closet drips with ridiculousness, a reanimated giant fish, a bunch of tools, and a purple-dressed ghoul all recall Evil Dead 2. I wish that purple-dressed thing wouldn't have spoken though. I also wish "You're No Good" wouldn't have been used during one of the movie's better moments--a dismemberment montage. The music for most of this could have been lifted from any horror movie, and the Vietnam scenes seem artificial. But this has some creepiness and a few laughs. Just not George Wendt's rectum.

Humanoids from the Deep

1980 horror movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Damn science! Once again, scientists dick around and accidentally create rampaging monsters. In this case, it's fish men who go around slicing up men with their deadly claws and violating women with their hideous reproductive organs. I guess they should have all listened to the Native American.

This is also, as you can tell from the poster called Monster. But that's not nearly clever enough for a movie made by people who can afford three monster costumes, the amount that is shown on screen at the same time. Yes, this is a cheap production as you'd expect something from Roger Corman to be. But it made up for its cheapness with the half-man/half-fish rape scenes. I mean, you never saw Jaws rape anybody unless you saw that titular beast as the phallic symbol that he was and saw the whole movie as some sort of rape allegory. I kind of liked how the monsters looked in this thing. They had these enormous heads and elongated arms, the latter which I imagine made groping teenagers a lot easier. This movie also has a fantastic ending, one that only sort of looks like it might have been stolen from another (more famous) movie that came out the previous year. And there was a random ventriloquist dummy in this thing as well as a splinters joke that I'm definitely going to be using if I ever get my hands on a ventriloquist dummy. This isn't the worst of these low-budget sci-fi horror hybrids, and the climactic scene where the monsters unleash their fury at a carnival that for whatever reason wasn't cancelled has its moments. And those monsters really do look kind of cool in a very ridiculous way. But this just feels like something we've all seen several times before.

Monsters University

2013 prequel

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 18/20; Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 17/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: Awkward and definitely non-scary Mike, since a field trip to Monsters, Inc. as a little fellow, has always dreamed of being a scarer. Sully's the son of a former all-star scarer. They meet in college and with the former working as hard as he can to make up for a lack of natural talent while the latter gets by solely on his, they don't initially get along. In fact, their disagreement escalates to the point where an accident gets them thrown out of the scaring program. They have to join a fraternity of oddballs in order to enter a scaring contest and get back in the program. Then, the whole movie sort of borrows the plot of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise only without Curtis Armstrong.

Look at all those potential toys on the movie poster up there! At least they're almost all new faces. With the exception of the two main monsters and Randall, Pixar fought the urge to force a bunch of characters from the first movie into this thing. A lot of them make appearances, but they're on the periphery or maybe the periphery of the periphery. Waternoose, for example, is only seen briefly in a picture, and the details changed about him were funny. Roz and Ratzenberger's Abominable Snowman might be a little forced, but they not in the thing long enough to be any more than a gag. I went into this experience with low expectations. I wasn't thrilled about a sequel (well, prequel) to Monsters, Inc. anyway, and after the abysmal Cars 2 and the mediocre Brave, I just didn't have high hopes for this one even though the possibilities in this Monsters world really do seem endless, a well that I'm sure the Disney people wouldn't mind dipping into again and again with a television series or a bunch of sequels. This isn't upper-echelon Pixar exactly, but it looks like they're heading in the right direction. For me, a prequel should really deepen your understanding of the characters, allow the characters that you already feel like you know and love to develop and grow. This story does that with Sully and Mike very well, and it makes the friendship we see in the first movie something a little more special. Randall's developed as well, albeit more generically, and Buscemi does a great job taking a little edge off the voice since his character is way less confident and malicious and a lot, well, dorkier. Goodman and Crystal are good, too, and so is Helen Mirren as a new character--the sort-of villainous Dead Hardscrabble. Love how that character moves, and the sound effect added to her walking. The animation is a lot better than what we saw in the first movie, especially with the backgrounds and setting details. The first movie pretty much takes place in one setting, and it looks plastic at times and after a while is a little redundant. The ancient buildings and the foliage on the Monsters University campus allow for a lot more texture variety. There's almost nothing spectacular about the setting details in that first movie. Here, the backgrounds are really lovely, the Pixar people building on the photo-realistic details we're getting in CGI cartoons these days. The story itself won't blow away anybody who has seen any number of underdog stories on film, but there was a nifty unexpected twist at the end and the morals of the story--stuff about friendship and teamwork--are great and, like the best Pixar stuff, filled with heart. The new characters are mostly welcome additions, and some of them are really funny. The movie's a lot of fun, at least when you're watching it for a first time, and there are a couple scenes that are even exciting without being as goofy (or as long) as that door sequence from the first movie. A dramatic scene near the end of the movie is very well done. Oh, and there's one shot of Mike and Sully sitting beside a lake under a full moon that people will want made into a poster. Beautiful.

Here's my updated list of my favorite Pixar movies, something that I could more than likely change depending on my mood:

1) Toy Story (bonus for being the first/sentimental reasons)
2) Up
3) Finding Nemo
4) Ratatouille
5) Toy Story 3
6) The Incredibles
7) Wall-E
8) A Bug's Life 
9) Monsters, Inc.
10) Monsters University
11) Cars
12) Toy Story 2
13) Brave
14) Cars 2

I'm not really confident in that ranking. 1-6 could all shuffle a bit. 7-12 could shuffle. I'm really unsure where to put Wall-E. I'm confident that 13 and 14 are in the right place though. Regardless, it's still a remarkable resume from the Pixar people.

Oh, the short, a cutesy love story about umbrellas. It wasn't bad. I watched most of it thinking that it was really lazy. "This is just live action with some animated faces on the umbrellas," I thought. I'm still having trouble believing that it was all animated. They're just showing off. The story for this one was the sort of thing you'd see in a silent comedy, only with inanimate objects.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

2006 horror comedy musical

Rating: 15/20 (Libby: 18/20; Fred: 17/20; Carrie: 19/20; Josh: didn't rate)

Plot: A fast-food chicken franchise builds on a Native American burial ground. Amidst protesters, those Indian souls take possession of the foodstuffs and eventually the workers and customers. Poultrygeist!

What a terrible punny title. The intention with our little bad movie club, obviously, is to watch a bad movie and make fun of it. Troma doesn't make unintentionally bad movies exactly. They understand their capabilities and the filmmakers are proud of what the disgusting and sometimes downright tasteless stuff they put on screen. And sometimes, as is the case here, they sneak in a movie that could actually be described as good. This accomplishes everything Lloyd Kaufman and his writers set out to do. Josh put it best: "Fun for the whole family: racism, sexism, fat people, geeks, lesbians, h[censored], [censored], handicaps [almost censored that one, too], white trash, rape, shit, vomit, and boobs." And, of course, a whole lot of cock. It's trashy, often looks stupid, and could possibly offend hippies, animal rights activists, Native Americans, liberals, black people, people with good diets, Middle Eastern peoples, women, and really anybody else. This pulls no punches, unapologetically and gloriously. And yes, there is the "choke the chicken" that you could have predicted before the movie even started. At the same time, there's some shrewd satire about our appetites as a society, both our literal appetites and our entertainment appetites, as well as some expected and bitter swipes at the (admittedly, fish-in-a-barrel-y) fast-food industry. The jokes are stuffed into this thing, and while a lot of them are terrible--some funny because they are terrible--a lot of this made me laugh the kinds of laughs that you almost hate yourself for. And did I mention that Poultrygeist is a musical? Because it is! With some standard musical choreography! The songs are good enough to sound like something from Rocky Horror and the lyrics are funny enough. The real fun begins when the mayhem does, and there are a few lengthy sequences where Kaufman and company are very obviously just seeing how many different ways they can think of for a zombie chicken to kill a human being. The violence is nearly orgasmic. Unfortunately for a lot of viewers, they'll miss out on the berserk zombie chicken mayhem because they'll turn the movie off during an extended scene where a bulbous man with gastrointestinal issues makes a mess of a bathroom. That's if they got past the creatively juvenile use of a Native American zombie finger in an opening scene featuring a guy with something other than an ax in his other hand. No, you don't want to know. This is a movie that surprises from its beginning to its end, and you might have as much fun watching it as it looks like the people who made it must have had. It's a real blast but definitely not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law, for example.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: The Giant Behemoth

1959 giant thing movie

Rating: 12/20 (Fred: 14/20 [Note: He did fall asleep for about ten minutes during this movie.]; Libby: 10/20; Carrie:  15/20; Ozzy: 16/20)

Plot: Atomic bomb testing leads to the formation of the titular monster which invades London.

Think about that title--The Giant Behemoth. Can you really have a tiny behemoth? Love the redundancy there. And then look at that tagline at the top of the poster. The biggest thing since creation!? That seems like the type of thing they put up there because they couldn't think of anything else and figured they could think of something else later but then forgot. The biggest thing since creation! I'm pretty positive I've seen bigger things. And I know my wife has if you catch my drift. Anyway, behemoth is a good word to know. And so is bathyscope which, thanks to this movie, my friends and I now know how to spell. This week's bad movie genre was "big things wreaking havoc" and although it took a while for havoc to be wreaked, the monster payoff was a satisfying one. I didn't expect stop-motion animation, and it wasn't the greatest stop-motion animation that I've ever seen, but it added a little personality to an otherwise drab production. Yes, the beast is stepping on the same toy car several times, you see the same people running and screaming in terror, and the behemoth takes far too long to trudge down a single block. But the special effects are at least fun, and the extras do a great job fleeing in terror. You do have to wait a long time before that payoff though. Clumsy science drives the first part of the movie, but at least the acting isn't too bad for a 50's sci-fi flick. My favorite performance by far is that of Jack MacGowran who plays a paleontologist. He's got the oddest expressions and plays the part as if he wasn't sure how a paleontologist should act so just decided to play it nonhumanly. The makers of this leaned a little on giant music to create suspense that otherwise probably wasn't there. This isn't the greatest giant monster movie you're likely to see, but it's not a terrible one and has a final twenty minutes that are definitely entertaining. Oh, and a great scene where the behemoth, which in this movie is pretty large, attacks a boat.

The Brainiac

1962 Mexican horror/sci-fi hybrid

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The titular baron del terror, if you go with the Spanish title, is burned in 1661 for being witchy and generally foul. He finds himself in 1961 via comet where he gets his revenge by killing off the descendants of those who executed him. Some astronomers try to stop him.

This gets a 15/20 from me because it's the most ridiculous monster that I've seen in a very long time. See that thing on the poster? That's not the drawing of a child who stumbled upon this movie on cable and then drew a picture of the thing. That's actually what the guy looks like! Those rubbery finger things move a little like lobster claws, spongy lobster claws. And his face, very obviously a mask, inflates and deflates, almost as if somebody is pumping air into it to make it look more alive or something. And that forked tongue ludicrously extends in a way that I assume is supposed to be menacing. This picture doesn't quite do the thing justice:

So the special effects aren't very good. Just check that burning baron in an opening scene and, after way more astronomy than you're likely to need, a comet. Or when the comet lowers a giant rock to the ground with a visible string. Or the use of what seems to be a flashlight turned on and off while pointed at the baron's face--when he is in his human form--to make him seem hypnotic since he's supposed to be, you know, hypnotizing people. But there's just something special going on here. There's a great atmosphere created, mostly with the lighting. Early on, there are people in black hoods against a backdrop of almost nothing, just a few fake trees. It reminded me of the setting for a Universal monster movie. There's also a great scene with the monster's shadow on a wall as he approaches a victim in a sheer nightgown. And despite the goofy look of the monster, you've got to appreciate his modus operandi. There are so many awkward silences during which the baron in his human form and a character who is about to die just stare at each other. And when he doesn't have a living human handy, he's got a goblet full of brains to snack on. There's also an actress I really enjoyed watching in this--Rosa Maria Gallardo. Boy, oh, boy. In a lot of ways, The Brainiac is just your typical B-movie; however, it's one of those type of movies I won't forget about which makes it stand above the others. Director Chano Urueta might have been going for cheap thrills here, but he accidentally stumbled upon something nearly magical.

Island of Terror

1966 science fiction horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Scientists using radiation to look for a cure for cancer accidentally create spongy turtlish tentacle things that pussyfoot around an island and suck out its inhabitants bones. Scientists have to helicopter in and try to stop them!

It was the last week of school, and I decided to spend my prep periods watching a movie since that sounds like something a barely effective teacher would do. I stumbled upon this randomly and accidentally watched a second movie in a row with Peter Cushing. And he has something happen to him here that is a very Star Warsy thing to have happen to somebody even though it is not something that happened to him in Star Wars. The monsters--Silicates, apparently--are really silly but are so different from anything I've seen in a movie like this that I kind of ended up liking them. They really are like spongy turtles with a stalk thing that sticks out the front of them and grabs potential victims. The slurping sound effects during those victims' demises are a nice touch. The problem is that they're not very menacing. They move so slowly and just kind of sit there when the characters are shooting at them, tiptoeing around them with Geiger counters, or hurling sticks of dynamite in their directions. Sometimes, they're crafty and fall out of trees on to unsuspecting victims. I can't imagine the things climbing trees. The solution to the titular island's problem--a solution that involves cattle--seems a little goofy, but I'm sure it makes perfect scientific sense. I'm not about to argue with science on this blog! This was produced by the same people who made Fiend without a Face which I rated harshly and made fun of. The titular fiends in that one resemble smaller versions of the Silicates. Anyway, this isn't a terrible movie. It's got the kind of script which can make scientists seem cool, something that causes me not to trust a movie quite as much, but it's got a little atmosphere, interesting scientific detective work, and some pretty cool little slurping monsters.

Funky Forest: The First Contact

2005 Japanese insanity

Rating: 15/20

Plot: I don't know. I think there's an alien invasion that leads to dancing. No, that doesn't sound right. "I don't know" seems a lot more accurate.

I certainly didn't think I was enjoying this behemoth of a movie--two-and-a-half hours of random insanity. There was choppiness, a pair of neo-and-Japanese Laurel and Hardy guys who kept popping in and out, dialogue that was so boring and pointless that I had trouble keeping my eyes open to read the subtitles, and some of what I'd refer to as mild weirdness. And then came So-and-So's dream, a sequence that involves a weird shirtless dancing demon, automatic weaponry, some red space-suited goggle girls, a big-breasted pink cartoon alien thing, a seaweed-covered Volkswagon, and a whole lot of sweet dance moves. Then, it calmed down again with a few more episodes in this episodic mind-warper, gave me a break with an intermission, and then threw "Wanna Go for a Drink?" at me, a segment that involved The Shorty Trio!, navel invasion, a yellow-furred man, rump-shaking, and the birthing of a tiny chef. Well, perhaps a picture would put this in your mind a little better:

Only there's no little chef yet because he comes from that television-looking thing. And I know you're looking at that picture, maybe for a third time, and thinking to yourself, "Yeah, but that's probably the only part of the movie that's worth watching." But you're wrong! Because there's also this:

That! There are a few sequences with these fleshy things that look like that might have been pulled straight from the pages of a William S. Burroughs book. One of my favorite scenes is "Youth Classroom" where some kids play these sorts of things as instruments. Oh, and you know what? The movie also has this:

That! Which I'm sure is making you wonder why I'm only giving this movie a 15/20 because any movie with that has to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Add that to the fact that this will likely win both my Dance Moves of the Year competition in my end-of-the-year blog post (a dance at a singles picnic that I would have watched twice had this movie not been two-and-a-half hours long--that scene also uses one of my favorite phrases--"Sausage fest.") and quite possibly my favorite musical moment of the year in what I can only assume is the titular funky forest, a piece that's got dueling synthesizers and violin throat singing. Stunning stuff. This is a sloppy movie that bored me in chunks and thrilled me in others. I also felt like I was missing out on a lot of satirical content or something because I'm not from Japan. Still, I liked enough of this to be really glad I stuck with it.

This movie contains Snickers product placement.

The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters

1965 children's entertainment insanity

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The titular gang races against a rival gang, fights a guy in a gorilla suit, cleans a starlet's home, and battles sinister aliens in a trio of adventures.

Look out! It's Ray Dennis Steckler, the creator of gems Rat Pfink a Boo Boo and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? This time, he takes a stab at kiddie entertainment, a trilogy of short films that are like The Little Rascals on mescaline. And with random monsters. In the first, they have a foot race against an antagonistic gang from another grove. They also encounter the same gorilla Rat Pfink and Boo Boo had to battle in that movie. I guess Steckler owned the suit. Or, more likely, the guy who plays Kogar the gorilla owns the suit. His name is Bob Burns, and during his sixty year career as an actor in almost 24 films, he's played Kogar the Gorilla, Gorilla Monster, or Tracey the Gorilla in eight of them. Not that he isn't versatile because he's also a mummy in one of these Lemon Grove things. And he's a "NY Stander" in Peter Jackson's King Kong movie. And he worked on special effects in the Lord of the Rings movies. This whole first adventure--crazy music, bad dubbing, cartoonish sound effects--makes for a maddening experience although it's both completely harmless and energetic enough to be watchable. There's even a Rat Pfink cameo. Oh, and Frankenstein is involved somehow. I should have probably typed "Spoiler Alert" before that though. Things pick up with a little sci-fi craziness with a sexy vampiresss and a grasshopper alien. When the latter talks, it's a beautiful thing. The former is also a beautiful thing, but I would never type that as to not invite accusations of objectification. I was totally objectifying her though. Steckler's in this himself as Gopher, the goofiest of the Lemon Grove Kids. He operates under his cool-guy moniker Cash Flagg here, and his finest moment is when he does a bunch of animal impressions. But his bad acting is overshadowed by his own daughter Laura as Tickles. Her acting almost makes it seem like she had decided at the age of five that she hated her daddy and wanted to ruin his career. Of course, she must have been a dumb five year old to not realize that her daddy didn't make very good movies in the first place. The sheer zaniness, a catchy musical number that probably took two minutes to write, and a bunch of cheap-looking monsters keeps this fun even when it's nowhere near good.

Monster from a Prehistoric Planet

1967 monster movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A magazine mogul wants to take a volcanic island and turn it into a resort spot called "Playmate Land." After exploring the island, scientists bring back a baby monster and bring it back home. Its parents get pissed off and come looking for it, destroying all kinds of architecture in the process. Can they reunite the destructive monsters with their offspring before it's too late?

From Wikipedia: "In the scene where the Gappas rise from the ocean into a city, one of the Gappas was carrying an octopus in its mouth, hoping to bring food to its missing offspring, assuming it was found (this scene was meant to be humorous)."

I was wondering about that. I completely missed that the makers of Gappa: The Triphibian Monsters or whatever the hell this movie wants to call itself were trying to be funny. I did wonder why one of the monsters had what I thought was a squid hanging from his chin. I thought it was like a waddle or something that helps distinguish between the male and female monsters, but it was shot off awfully easily by one of the toy tanks. I apparently assumed incorrectly that this was unintentionally funny. The two-monsters-destroying-miniatures mayhem wasn't terribly done, but there was nothing special about it. The other effects were mostly embarrassing. There's a volcano on "Playmate Land" that made me laugh every time I saw it. I've seen science fair volcanoes that are more realistic than that one. Speaking of that island, I can't figure out the title of this movie at all. First, there are multiple monsters, not just one. Second, nothing about the island makes me think it's prehistoric. There's an English-dubbed tribe there. The bearded leader of the tribe (Bumon Koto in his only role) is very good and says, "Are you Japan people?" at one point, and there wasn't a Japan in prehistoric times. And third, the monsters aren't from a planet. They're from an island, one that some guy wants to name "Playmate Land." Oh, that guy's model of "Playmate Land," complete with little plastic animals and a recording of bird sounds, might have been the best special effect of the movie. The characters certainly say "Playmate Land" enough, and if I had seen this previously, I could have invented a drinking game where I drank a shot every time somebody said "Playmate Land" and ended up completely smashed and weeping by myself instead of just soberly weeping by myself. But maybe the endless repeating of "Playmate Land" was part of the intentional humor of Monsters from a Modern-Day Volcanic Island or whatever the hell this movie is called. There was a character inserted into this mess who was obviously there for comic relief. He was irritating, the Jar-Jar Binks of Big Bird Things from Playmate Land. Those bird things are more goofy than menacing, by the way, and the bird noises they make are just grating, really some of the worst noises that I've ever heard. And I work with middle schoolers! Sometimes, they sound like a bird in a lot of pain, sometimes they sound like a human being imitating a bird in pain, and sometimes it just sounds like a stylus being moved across a record really repeatedly. The dialogue--poorly translated, I reckon--is equally painful.

Guy: Look at this. A lake under a volcano.
Girl: Are we dreaming?
Guy: [grabs girl's arm] We're here. See.

I will say this about this movie. The reunion with the baby at the end is one of the most touching moments in the history of guys-in-rubber-giant-bird-costume cinema.

Dinosaur Island

1994 dinosaur movie

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Some military guys' plane crashes, and they end up on the titular island. Luckily for them, the scantily-clad women who inhabit the island believe they're gods who have come to destroy the lamest-looking T-Rex you're ever likely to see.

"Die, you dinosaur dick!"

Jim Wynorski and Fred Olen Ray co-directed this movie, one that I'm sure very few people would confuse with Jurassic Park which came out the previous year. This one's got more boobs in it though. Jim Wynorski, subject of this documentary, and Fred Olen Ray teamed up to direct this one. The former's got Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders, The Hills Have Thighs, Busty Cops and the Jewel of Denial, The Devil Wears Nada, House on Hooter Hill, and The Bare Wench Project on his resume while the latter is known for Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Dirty Blondes from Beyond, The Teenie Weenie Bikini Squad, Bikini Frankenstein, Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds, and Girl with the Sex-Ray Eyes. Out of Olen Ray's 125 director credits, 19 have the word bikini in them. So I shouldn't have been surprised that there was a bare breast in the first second of the film. Literally, the first second. But if any of my wives are reading this, I watched this because I love dinosaurs. Fans of breasts should be happy. Fans of dinosaurs? Well, not so much. And fans of movies where the dinosaurs and the characters are really on the same island will be really disappointed. And the funniest thing about the whole movie, to me at least, was this note before the title credits:

I don't know where they stole these dinosaurs from (I assumed stock footage), but it's obvious that whatever cheap camera was used to film the creatures was not the same cheap camera used to film everything else. But the makers of this don't really expect anybody to buy that the dinosaurs are real. No, this is a little more tongue-in-cheek, the script made up of jokey rapport that is more miss than hit. "You got a problem with your privates, Private?" is a classic though. And I did chuckle when one of the island gals said, "Maybe they can save us from The Great One," which made one of the soldiers ask, "Jackie Gleason?" but in retrospect, that was a pity chuckle. All kinds of cartoony sound effects are used in this, too. The fight choreography is extra special, and the acting is about as bad as you'd expect it would be. Worst of the bunch is Antonia Dorian as Princess April, all open-mouthed and doe-eyed and delivering every one of her lines with this angry surprise. She's potentially my blog's first female Torgo winner. The woman playing Queen Morgana is bad, too. Apparently, she mistook "savage" for "wooden person" or something. But I don't know what I'm complaining about. You've got dinosaurs, guys with guns, bare-breasted splash fights, a cat fight complete with a wardrobe malfunction or two. What else could a warm-blooded American male want in a movie? But again, I want to make it clear that I only watched this because I like dinosaurs. That and I was fooled into thinking Jeff Goldblum would be in it.

Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter

1966 Western Horror hybrid

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The titular outlaw and his burly sidekick Hank Tracy are on the run and hide out in a castle where the titular daughter of Dr. Frankenstein's daughter and some other guy are experimenting with the regeneration of humans.

First, I had to penalize this a point for having an inaccurate title. Frankenstein's daughter isn't even in this movie; it's his granddaughter. This movie is more boring than a movie called Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter should be. The famous outlaw is played by John Lupton who I know exactly one thing about--he's the most boring actor to ever live. This also has Rayford Barnes playing Lonny Curry, a twerpy backstabber and member of the Wild Bunch gang in this movie. I noticed that he somehow found his way in Pekinpah's The Wild Bunch, and as far as I know, twerps weren't allowed in that movie. His performance is also boring. Roger Creed plays the generic Wild Bunch gang leader and puts the accent on the wrong syllable in the word decoy, but it's expected because most of his work in film was as a stuntman. He probably hit his head a few times. Cal Bolder's got too much muscle for the Old West. He's an imposing enough figure, but his voice doesn't match his body. I did like in one scene how he punches a guy who falls back into a horse with enough force to knock off the horse's rider. I'm not sure why Bolder, after he's Frankenstein-monstered, is named Igor by the granddaughter. Didn't writer Carl K. Hittleman, who also did some writing for The Buster Keaton Show and wrote Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, read Mary Shelley's novel? (Note: I typed that with the knowledge that there is no Igor in Frankenstein.) I really can't think of any reason why anybody would want to see this. My favorite thing about it was the shot of a Wild West town with the creepy mansion overlooking it from a hill in the background. I also kind of liked these goofy red, yellow, and black helmets with antennas that one of the scientists and the soon-to-be-resurrected people wore. I'm not even sure two of the colors on that helmet existed in the 19th Century, and I'm not sure what those helmets were supposed to do. Either the subject on the table gets a helmet or everybody in the room gets a helmet, right? Did this movie not have enough of a budget to get a third helmet? I was confused by the whole thing and have had trouble sleeping since watching this. This movie also lost a full point for having what might be the most irritating sound effect in the world.

My favorite thing about this is a note before the movie about how the company releasing this on dvd is dedicated to preserving film history. Really? This movie?

Tokyo Gore Police

2008 gore police movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Ruka, a witness to her father's head explosion, overcomes tragedy to become the main mutant-killing cop. Those mutants, known as "engineers," have the ability to turn their injuries into weapons, and Ruka and her po-po buddies have to find out who is behind their creation. Meanwhile, she tries to figure out who was responsible for her father's murder.

Well, this was hard to take seriously. You're five minutes in and you've already got an exploding head, a decapitation, a severed arm that grows back as a slimy chainsaw arm, a guy who gets a chainsaw arm to the mouth, a fight with chainsaws. You have to wonder: Did this movie shoot its proverbial wad too early? How can anything top this? Well, hold on to your scalps, motherfucker, because this is a wild ride down a bloody slip 'n' slide. I was unsure whether or not I was liking this movie and actually had to watch it in a few installments. Around the time a character I didn't recognize Michael-Jacksoned his crotch and ended up at a party where people are wearing inflatable costumes and gas masks and the entertainment is a urinating chair woman and a snail girl, I realized that this is my kind of movie. My kind of party, too! I sighed and realized that I would eventually, when my stomach could handle it, watch all of Yoshihiro Nishimura's movies. I figured that Meatball Machine was one of those, but apparently there are a bunch of people in Japan making movies like this which once again makes me wonder what is wrong with the Japanese. H-bomb dust is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. Since I watched this movie in fifteen installments, I found it almost completely incomprehensible. But its cheap style--lots of askew camera work, assaults on at least two of your senses, a rhythm inspired by shaken baby syndrome--keeps you enthralled, and the mathematical part of your brain has all kinds of fun trying to figure out what the budget for "red squirty stuff" might have been. There are some goofy satirical moments in this with some commercials that ironically seem to poke fun at the masses' need for violence--including a Wii-type game where you slice a guy up--and some commercial propaganda about how nice the police are, but this is either too silly or too completely insane to really make any kind of point. You really can't watch the scene where a guy [SPOILER ALERT] gets his penis bitten off by a woman whose legs later turns into a giant alligator (or crocodile) mouth and take things seriously for the same reason that somebody trying to film my honeymoon to release as a sex tape wouldn't have been able to take things seriously. I'm sure the actor who played the guy who gets his penis bitten off read all the way to the part of the script that said "And then the guy walks in with his new giant penis gun," stopped reading, and said, "OK, I don't need to see anymore. I'm in!"

That penis gun puts us all to shame.

If you're ever in the right mood for something like this, I'm kind of worried about you. But this will definitely be your cup of whatever that red squirty stuff is if you are.

The Godmonster of Indian Flats

1973 monster sheep movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Mine fumes or something create a mutant sheep in a place that might be called Indian Flats but seems to be called Virginia City, an old mining town in the West. The godmonster is taken to the lab of the scientist you typically see in towns like this that movies like this take place in. Meanwhile, a businessman strolls into town wanting to purchase land for reasons that I didn't bother paying attention to, but some guy named Silverdale isn't selling. When the businessman refuses to leave town, Silverdale has to get his main thug, the town's sheriff, and the town's sheriff's sideburns involved. Later, the godmonster ruins a picnic.

This is the type of movie that will change your life. You just won't be the same after the closing credits of this one. There's all kinds of nonsense at the beginning with the guy I thought was going to be the main character. I think his name must have been Tito. We're told it's a "time full of banjo dust and starry-eyed broads looking for a good time," and Tito steps off a sheep truck in Reno, wins two-hundred bucks in a slot machine in a room that is at first completely empty but then almost full a few seconds later, and then ends up in a room with these people

where he is eventually beaten and robbed. I posted that picture only because I'm pretty sure that piano man is either Shane MacGowen or the crazy drugged piano player from Reefer Madness. Then, he's in his barn where there's a sheep attack that is sonically and visually the most bizarre thing I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a while. First, the guy's in a darkened barn while the sheep running at him are in daylight. Then there's the sheep noises, one which I swear is a a guy going "Baa! Baaa!" Eventually, I lost track of what was going on and just assumed the guy was being sheep-gang-raped which, I have to admit, is a movie first for me. Next morning--sheep mutant. But the main conflict of this movie is Silverdale and his cronies vs. the black guy who rolls into town looking to buy some property, and that conflict dominates the screenplay. In fact, the godmonster doesn't really do much of anything for about an hour. When filmmaker Fredric Hobbs finally unleashes the mutant sheep, the movie becomes magical. He lumbers around with his freak limbs--scaring girls trying to picnic; dancing with Tito's love interest in a scene that rivals the dance scenes from Pulp Fiction, Beauty and the Beast, or anything from Footloose; and blowing up gas stations. He's about as intimidating as John Merrick after a night of drinking. But it doesn't matter because although he's in the title of this thing, he's really nothing more than a distraction. This movie's really jumpy with some odd transitions where sounds or last pieces of dialogue bleed into next scenes. There were a few times when I just lost track of what was going on, and I suspect most of the characters did, too. One baffling scene features a fake dog funeral complete with a tiny dog coffin following a fake dog murder following a wacky parade. It put me in a stupor from which I still haven't recovered. The movie also contains the following brilliantly-written line: "I've been following you all the way from the glory hole." If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that. . .

This isn't really a trailer as advertised, but it does contain two great godmonster scenes.

http://youtu.be/SLTUV1RitPM

Equinox

1970 demon movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Picnicking college kids find a laughing old guy and an old book in a cave and incur the wrath of some devil monsters. That, in case you don't have much picnic experience, is worse than ants.

There's a promising start with the opening credits, creepy Bernard Hermann-esque music with shots of clock innards, something I never mind seeing in movies which makes me wonder if I should have become a watchmaker. Then, this really goes nowhere for a while. There are a few minutes of a guy running awkwardly and a car driving by itself and then some talking. The story's told in flashback by the lone survivor of the worst picnic of all time. That's one of the few reasons this 1970 movie feels like a 50's B-science-fiction movie. There's some terrifically bad performances throughout Equinox. Director Jack Woods keeps popping up as the creepy Forest Ranger Asmodeus. Woods apparently thought it would be good for his career to show extended close-up shots of himself doing this:

A crazy laughing guy in a cave is really awesome, and I'll have to figure out his name if he ends up winning my Torgo Award this year. And science fiction/fantasy author Fritz Leiber has a small role as Dr. Waterman and although he gets no speaking parts, he still manages to be really awful. It's a special performance. Things aren't looking good, but then there are these great stop-motion tentacles, a stop-motion ape thing murdering a stop-motion old-guy-from-cave, and a stop-motion devil bat thing that nearly saved the movie. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing anyway. Low-budget effects, but pretty cool. There's also an exploration of the evil book that reminds me a lot of what Sam Raimi did with his book in the Evil Dead movies. Parts of this manage to be effectively eerie, and it's worth a look if you like 1950's B-movies that were made in 1970. Oh, and it ends with a "The End" that morphs into a question mark which you've got to love. You just imagine the makers of this saying, "Hey, our story won't really make anybody think that a sequel is needed, but just in case, we should probably put a question mark at the end!"

Question: Why did Criterion release this one?

Young Frankenstein

1974 comedy classic

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A descendant of Dr. Frankenstein tries his best to live a life of obscurity but can't escape his famous ancestor's reputation. He inherits his castle, gets himself a hunchbacked Igor and a sexy laboratory assistant, and finds the notorious doctor's secret library. He begins to experiment.

I'm just going to say it--Gene Wilder's work in this is the greatest acting performance of all time. Let me make sure I'm being clear here because I'm not just talking about a performance in a comedy or a performance by a person with hair like that. I'm talking about the greatest acting performance of all time. His highs and lows are pitch perfect, and so is his comic timing. And I just love it when Gene gets mad. It's exhilarating, and I would honestly not be surprised to open a National Geographic and find an article about a tribe of people in some country I've never heard of who do nothing with their time but chew on leaves and have religious experiences while watching scenes from Gene Wilder movies. Now I'll accept one argument to my claim that this is the greatest acting performance of all time. Only one though--that Gene Wilder tops himself as Wonka. I'll give you that. The psychedelic boat ride scene with that creepy poem is about as good as it gets. But his work in Young Frankenstein has got to be in the top two. The rest of this cast is great, too. Love Feldman's hammy Igor, Boyle's monster, Leachman's Frau Blucher, and Teri Garr's Inga, the latter with sex appeal that rivals Mamma Fratelli's. Kenneth Mars' inspector character isn't around much but nearly steals every scene he's in with a Peter Sellers-esque role. Not all the gags work here, expected with something that Mel Brooks put together, but when this connects, it hits hard. Fans of childish word play will have a head start. And I really like how Brooks keeps things classic with the black and white, the score, and the elongated exterior and interior shots of the castle. One could argue, by the way, that things go a little too far with a song and dance number when Frankenstein and his creation perform "Puttin' on the Ritz" as it almost clashes with that classic feel. But you know what? Just thinking about that scene cracks me up so much that it's difficult to both type and swallow. And I know that tribe in the National Geographic loves that scene. That's probably why they don't wear pants actually!

Me: Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein--greatest performance in movie history.
Jen: Gene Wilder? What happened to his career?
Me: He had cancer.
Jen: That's not funny.

Trollhunter

2010 troll movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Some documentarians--a couple guys and a gal--investigate murmurings of some kind of monster in the woods. Hey, wait a minute!

Actually, the kids are trying to figure out what's killing bears, but they stumble upon a guy who claims to be the titular hunter of trolls hired by the government to keep these giant trolls in their place and the secret of their existence a secret. He reluctantly agrees to let them tag along, probably because the girl is kind of cute.

Hell yeah! Rampaging trolls? I'm all over that. This puts a new spin on both monster movies and the found footage genre. The special effects are very good in that the giant trolls manage to mesh with the settings, but I do with they would have done a little more. They're really kind of there to be seen and then later turned to stone or evaporated. One would think that this found footage stuff would get old, but this Blair Witch-but-with-special-effects works because it's got a sense of humor. It toys with Norwegian folklore and never quite takes itself seriously enough to be a straight horror movie. The acting works well enough to keep the "This is real!" claim at the beginning afloat even though there isn't a single person on earth who is going to watch this and think it's real.

Well, I take that back. I did have a student this week who genuinely thought the Paranormal Activity movies were real. Maybe I should show him this and see what he thinks.

I liked the title character played by Otto Jespersen, ruggedly and aloofly, and I may have given this movie a bonus point for how pretty Norway looked. This is a very cool movie with a nicely indeterminate ending, and I'd say it's a must-see if you're into trolls.

A*P*E

1976 Korean King Kong kookiness

Rating: 2/20

Plot: There's a guy in a poorly-constructed ape costume on the loose. He's beating up sharks, destroying models that are as poorly made as the ape costume, and most terrifying of all, fluctuating in size. The army's called in to help. Meanwhile, the monster goes ape for Kurt Cameron's mother. And God ain't gonna stand for that!

Look at that poster! I want that son of a bitch hanging in my living room.

It's 1976. Korea finds out that America is going to release a Kong Kong remake and decides to beat them to the punch with this thing, a half-serious-attempt/half-spoof that ends up a fantastically entertaining affair for mostly wrong reasons. The action's fierce from the get-go in this one as we start in medias res because as most Kong aficionados would tell you, all that stuff on Skull Island is pretty dull. No, here we start on the boat with some characters talking about how they hope the gas will keep the monster out. Cue a big giant monkey hand (great effects, as you could probably guess) and an "Oh shit!" leading into some badly-edited chaos ending in the boat blowing up in a sparkly explosion. And you'd probably guess that an explosion would end the big opening action sequence, but you'd be wrong. The magic is only beginning as we have a fight scene between the guy in the ape costume and a rubber shark (a Jaws reference maybe?) in which the monkey dunks and spanks his foe repeatedly. You could almost say that the movie jumps the shark right here, but you'd have to quickly correct yourself and say that it actually spanks the shark instead. Great fight scene though, almost masturbatory.

The monkey on land is even goofier than the monkey fighting a rubbery shark in the water. Now I'll admit that I've not actually studied gorillas, but I'm fairly positive the guy in this suit hasn't either. I'm not sure apes act like this, and if a bunch of monkeys ever got their hands on this movie and watched it together, they'd get ahold of a bunch of typewriters and a room so that they could eventually type out a letter of complaint to the makers of this movie. The monster in this has terrible posture and kind of humps around awkwardly. Later, during a scene which has to be included just as filler, we get to see the ape throw a snake for no reason (it's not nearly as exciting as the poster makes it look up there) and actually hit the camera. Lesser filmmakers would probably have shot that scene over again, but not the makers of A*P*E.

Speaking of that title, what's with the asterisks? A M*A*S*H thing?

But back to that monkey because believe it or not, there's a scene in this that actually manages to top that ape-on-shark action at the beginning. You didn't think a movie as classy as A*P*E would shoot its proverbial wad too early, did you? This scene involves some parasailors. One points and screams. Then, there's a shot of a cow. Then, there's a shot of the ape lumbering over a fake cow. It's pure bliss, but where I shot my wad (non-proverbially) was when the ape started clapping and dancing. But the ultimate monkey shot (that's a pun though it has nothing to do with anybody's wad) might be one of a peeping Kong with mouth agape that made me laugh for a solid thirty-five minutes because I have time in my life for thirty-five minute fits of laughter.

Other special-ed effects: The makers of this really seem fond of their fake-rocks-on-strings trick, and there's a scene where the monkey vomits blood. It's beautifully realistic.

Just as the makers of this have seemingly never seen an ape, they also have likely never seen humans or heard them communicate. The Korean characters are great as they speak English without dubbing. An American character named Colonel Davis (played stoically by Alex Nicol) seems to be impersonating The Duke with all his lines. Imagine John Wayne saying "Now what kind of bullshit you trying to hand me?" and you've got Colonel Davis. My favorite Colonel Davis tough guy moment is when he yells, "Screw the logistics!" in a way that would make Chuck Norris cower in fear. Oh, no wait. I forgot that he says, "Let's see him dance for his organ grinder now!" That's badass! The curly-headed hero gets plenty of chances to be manly, too. He's the type of guy who jumps on the sides of Jeeps and says, "I'll just hang on here," after all.

But the most awkward or unnatural human moment in this? There's a scene with fleeing Koreans, and you just have to see this one guy running down the stairs. It just has to be the guy who plays the ape without his suit.

Oh, there's also a scene of endless battle preparation, a montage that actually features one soldier who waves at the camera.

You also have to wonder what kinds of movies the makers of this have seen. At one point, the ape disrupts the production of a kung-fu movie that apparently features circus performers. And what kind of movie is Joanna Kerns' character making in this? They show the filming of two scenes of this movie-within-a-movie, both featuring attempted rapes. The rapist, by the way, might get the line of the movie: "Gentle? This is a God-damned rape scene and you want me to be gentle?"

This makes four Korean monster movies I've seen in the last month, and although this is definitely the worst of them, it's also the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend to anybody.