Posts Tagged ‘Fantasy’

The FX Magic of Ray Harryhausen continues with ‘Mysterious Island’ and ‘It Came From Beneath the Sea’, this weekend at the Trylon Microcinema

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Take-Up Productions and The Trylon Microcinema’s month-long celebration of the career of one-man effects powerhouse Ray Harryhausen continues this weekend with two of my personal favorites: the loose and fanciful adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and the early monster-from-the-deep programmer It Came From Beneath the Sea.  It’s a veritable giant seafood buffet!  Showtimes are as follows:

Mysterious Island
Friday: 7:00pm, 9:00pm
Saturday: 7:00pm, 9:00pm

It Came From Beneath the Sea (HD)
Sunday: 5:20pm, 7:00pm

Tickets are $8.00, and can be purchased (cash-only) at the door or in advance online.  For the complete schedule for this series and advance ticketing information, click here.

The Trylon Microcinema is located at 3258 Minnehaha Ave S in Wtf-Film’s own Minneapolis, MN, and is the home of Take-Up Productions.

The FX Magic of Ray Harryhausen at the Trylon Microcinema – this weekend, ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and ‘Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers’

Friday, March 5th, 2010

The Trylon Microcinema, an intimate 50-seat house located at 3258 Minnehaha Ave. S in Wtf-Film’s own Minneapolis, MN, is quickly becoming the most exciting film venue in the city for eclectic cinema aficionados.  This past Halloween brought a month-long tribute to the cinema of David Cronenberg, for instance.  Films are screened in either 35mm or HD (non-film screenings are denoted on the schedule).

Starting this weekend, as lead-up to the big-budget remake of Clash of the Titans, the Trylon is hosting a retrospective of the special effects films of Ray Harryhausen, from his early days toiling on low-budget science fiction programmers to his heyday in the mid-60s.  This weekend brings a classic double feature, the epic fantasy Jason and the Argonauts and the ultimate in 50s alien invasion cinema Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. Screening times are listed below:

Jason and the Argonauts
Friday, 05 March: 7:00pm, 9:00pm
Saturday, 06 March: 7:00pm, 9:00pm

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (HD)
Sunday, 07 March: 7:00pm, 9:00pm

Cash is accepted at the door, or tickets can be purchased in advance online (see the link below).  Seating is limited, so I suggest planning ahead (and yes, I realize I posted this too late for anyone to act on the shows tonight – next week’s announcement will be more timely).

A full listing for Trylon and Take-up Productions’ Harryhausen celebration can be found here:  Titans.  Will.  Clash. – The FX Magic of Ray Harryhausen

Real Pocong, The

Friday, February 26th, 2010

company: Sinemart Pictures
year: 2009
runtime: 97′
country: Indonesia
director: Hanny R. Saputra
cast: Sakinah Dava Erawan, Nabila Syakieb,
Ashraf Sinclair, Kinaryosih
writer: Aramantono
cinematography: Khatulistiwa
not on home video in the USA

As is somewhat traditional in films, a small, young family consisting of mother Rin(i) (Nabila Syakieb), father (I)Van (Ashraf Sinclair) and little daughter Laura (Sakinah Dava Erawan) moves into a new home in the country, although as a non-Indonesian I’d call it “the jungle” or at least “the deep dark woods”.

Rini and Van are enthusiastic about their new house. It was cheap, and there are none of the dangers of the city threatening their daughter now. One would think that the country air could also be good for Laura’s asthma. There’s a certain lack of neighbours, though, with the only person living nearby the young physician Dr. Nila (Kinaryosih). At least she’s friendly and could probably be of help when little Laura has one of her attacks.

Less friendly are other inhabitants of the area. Right on the family’s first day in the new house, Laura follows a strange, unsmiling girl of about her own age deeper into the woods, until she comes to a weather-beaten old shack beside a well. There, the other girl seems to disappear into thin air. Instead, something dressed in white funeral shrouds jumps Laura.

When Rini finds her deeply disturbed daughter, she can’t get a word out of the girl, and puts her strange behaviour on an understandable reaction to the new environment. In truth, a pocong (female Indonesian ghost dressed in white shrouds that often seems to have religious connotations I won’t pretend to understand) has taken an interest in the girl. At first, it seems relatively benign, turning into a kitten and sneaking into Laura’s room, or singing her lullabies, but just too soon the ghost again lures the girl to the shack.

Only this time, Laura doesn’t return.

The police (who are never actually shown by the film) find not a trace of the child, nor any explanation of what happened, so the desperate Rini seeks the help of a medium, very much against Van’s will. The medium diagnoses the place to be haunted and declares a pocong to be the child snatcher, but seems unwilling to act on her findings. Only when Van calls her out in a fit of aggressive scepticism she deigns to do something, and I can’t say that I find giving the sceptic an amulet that is supposed to help him cross over to the spirit world and then drive away never to return to be a very responsible action.

Surprisingly enough, Van actually uses the amulet to cross over (through a gate of pine trees, no less), and manages to bring Laura back. Of course, this is not the end of the family’s troubles.

The more films of the (as it seems still merrily continuing) Indonesian horror film boom I see, the more impressed I am with it. Of course, quite a few of the films are terribly generic, or marred by the sort of comic relief that is neither comical, nor any kind of relief, but you can say that of every country’s genre film output at the best of times. The important thing is the good films, and the good horror films made in Indonesia in the last five years or so tend to be very good, and quietly ambitious in exploring the possibilities of their genre.

The Real Pocong definitely is one of those good films. Directed by Hanny R. Saputra (whose other films I unfortunately know next to nothing about), it is a film that treats its horror story as a fairy tale. One just needs to have a look at the plot structure - like the way the film uses repetition - or the elements (the deep dark wood, the road into the other world, the child-snatching supernatural creature etc) of the plot to realize this.

The characters are more archetypes than psychologically “realistic” people. As such, they don’t always act as rational or logical as some viewers might want them to – especially Rini’s inability to completely understand what is happening around her in the final third of the film could be very problematic to some – but I’m not too sure I would find people learning that their little daughter has been kidnapped by a ghost and then acting rationally and logically that much more believable. Thankfully, the handful of actors is good enough to provide performances which do not confuse the archetypal with the inhuman.

I was especially impressed by Sakinah Dava Erawan. Child actors are often terrible, and I find it somewhat unfair to blame them for it, seeing that they just don’t have much life experience they could draw from, but I didn’t find it difficult at all to sympathize with this little girl. Cleverly, the first part of The Real Pocong lets the film’s audience share Laura’s perspective, her mixture of terror and wonder and the naturalness with which she treats the stranger occurrences around her; as a child, she doesn’t have the grip on what should be reality and what not a grown-up possesses, and because we share her view of the world, we don’t get to have that grip either.

As any good fairy tale would, the movie does well addressing anxieties people typically don’t want to be confronted with quite directly. The Laura-centric half of the film embodies many childhood anxieties. It’s not only the more banal ones like “the thing in the cupboard” or “the thing under the bed”, but the fear of not being understood by one’s parents, and the more painful fear of not being able to trust them.

The second half of the film puts the same (slightly painful) spotlight on the big parental fear of the loss of one’s child without going down either the road of Spielbergian kitsch, nor that of exploitative melodrama.

Apart from that, The Real Pocong also manages to be quite creepy (again, as a good fairy tale should be). While some of the special effects look a bit ropey, the production design and photography are excellent. This is one of the few horror films whose actions take place nearly entirely by daylight, and it proves that a director who knows what he’s doing doesn’t need darkness to build a mood of dread.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

7th Voyage of Sinbad, The

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

company: Columbia and
Morningside Productions
year: 1958
runtime: 88′
country: United States
director: Nathan Juran
cast: Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant,
Richard Eyer, Torin Thatcher,
Alec Mango, Danny Green,
Harold Kaskef, Alfred Brown,
Nana DeHerrera, Nino Falanga
writer: Ken Kolb and
Ray Harryhausen
cinematographer: Wilkie Cooper
special effects: Ray Harryhausen
and George Lofgren
disc company: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
release date: October 7, 2008
retail price: $28.95 / $107.95
disc details: Region Free / dual layer BD50 / BD Live
video: 1080p / 1.66:1 / color
audio: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround (English, French),
Dolby Digital 5.1 surround (Thai),
Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (English)
subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish,
Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, Thai (Spanish,
Korean, Thai, Chinese for supplements)
special features: Audio commentary (with Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippet, Randal William Cook, Steven Smith and Arnold Kunert), Remembering The 7th Voyage of Sinbad featurette, The Harryhausen Legacy featurette, The Music of Bernard Herrmann featurette, A Look Behind the Voyage featurette, ”Sinbad May have been bad, but he’s been good to me” music video, Ray Harryhausen interviewed by director John Landis, This Is Dynamation vintage featurette, Photo Gallery, Previews (Casino Royale, Men In Black, CJ7, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, Blu-ray Disc IS High Definition!)
order this film from Amazon.com
individual Blu-ray | 4-disc Ray Harryhausen Collection

Plot: Sinbad journeys to the mysterious and monster-infested island of Colossa with the untrustworthy magician Sokurah to find the ingredients for an elixer to restore his shrunken bride-to-be to her appropriate size.

I’ve used the word too many times in my past three reviews from the Ray Harryhausen Collection, but The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is the landmark Harryhausen picture.  A socko Technicolor fantasy not quite like anything else before it, the picture melds man, magic, and monsters to create a thrilling special effects spectacle that would be frequently imitated (as in Jack the Giant Killer, a flat-out rip-off with similar monsters several of the same cast) but never duplicated, not even in Harryhausen’s bigger budgeted ’70s Sinbad efforts.  52 years after the fact the rougher edges may stick out like sore thumbs, but the film is as magical as ever.

Kerwin Mathews (The 3 Worlds of Gulliver) is Sinbad, the legendary sailor with the eyes of an eagle and a penchant for getting into monumental trouble.  A wrong turn lands him on the island of Colossa, where he encounters sorcerer Sokurah (Torin Thatcher in a show-stealing, scenery-chewing performance), a man with a magic lamp and a serious disagreement with the local wildlife.  Sinbad’s crew narrowly escapes an attack by a grotesque cyclops, rescuing Sokurah from certain doom but loosing the lamp in the process.  The magician pleads with the captain, offering him prize jewels in return for his turning back for Colossa, but Sinbad refuses to risk his ship or crew again, opting to journey back to Baghdad instead.

While at home disaster strikes.  Sinbad’s bride-to-be Princess Parisa (Kathryn Grant, Anatomy of a Murder) is found to be shrunken to only a few inches in height, an international incident that threatens to ignite a war between her temperamental father and the kindly Calif of Baghdad.  Their only hope is the scheming Sokurah, who contends that the only means to save the Princess is to return to Colossa and mix up some jumbo-grow from the egg shells of the Roc who nest there.  Sinbad agrees to the plan, but is forced to take on a crew of imprisoned thugs to account for his former sailors, most of whom were none too keen on returning to an island of man-eating cyclops . . .



This modest production was the most expensive of Harryhausen’s career up that point, totaling some $650,000 once all was said and done (a far cry from the $3.5 million of the underwhelming Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger or the $16 million of Clash of the Titans).  Still effectively a B-picture, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad has its fair share of cost-cutting maneuvers, the most obvious being the stock footage stand-ins for Sinbad’s ship which changes almost every time we see it.  A few moments aside, however, this is a grand production, full of colorful photography of Spanish locations and brimming with classic Harryhausen creatures.

The animator had his hands full this go around, with a pair of cyclops, a Roc and its chick, a fire-breathing dragon, a sword-wielding skeleton and a seductive snake-woman to contend with.  It was his most expansive menagerie of creatures to date, and makes for some of the most memorable effects setups of his entire career.  The action-packed introduction still makes an impression after all these years, the first cyclops bursting forth from an ominous cave in pursuit of Sokurah and his magic lamp.  The scene has all the impact producers had obviously intended for a similar sequence from the dull Italian Homer adaptation Ulysses 4 years earlier – that film’s man-in-suit cyclops is no match for Harryhausen’s fearsome rock-lobbing creation.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad never slows in its pace or its fantasy, and Sinbad’s brief stint in Baghdad is punctuated with the dance of the snake-woman and some excellent process photography of the shrinking Princess Parisa.  Ken Kolb’s quick-footed screenplay spends no more time in Baghdad than necessary, touching on the essential plot points (the threat of war, Sokurah’s scheming) and sending Sinbad back to sea in fifteen minutes flat.  Dialogue is hokey but sweet, the Mathews / Grant romance just sincere enough to give the action-packed second and third acts the emotional backing they require.  A bit of pond-side love talk is a welcome homage to The Thief of Baghdad, a major influence on a then young Harryhausen.

The second and third acts are dominated by the return to Colossa, an effects tour-de-force that pits Sinbad and his degenerate crew against a hungry cyclops (one of his unfortunate crew is tied to a spit and set to roasting) and a vengeful two-headed Roc, understandably angry after her chick is unceremoniously slaughtered for food stuffs.  A visit to Sokurah’s island lair reveals a classic fire-breathing dragon (later to do battle with Colossa’s second cyclops) and a skeleton with a taste for swordplay.  A battle between Sinbad and the latter is brilliantly choreographed, and was impressively reduxed for the epic conclusion of the later Jason and the Argonauts.



The 7th Voyage of Sinbad added three important elements to the Harryhausen / Schneer combo – money, color, and the inimitable talents of composer Bernard Herrmann, who would contribute scores for three of the team’s future films.  Perhaps more important than the vivid Technicolor photography and the higher budget is Herrman’s contribution, brooding and booming themes that elevate Harryhausen’s fantasy to a whole new level of awesomeness.  Nathan Juran takes another memorable turn as director while Wilkie Cooper keeps the photography interesting. All the while the fine cast (dominated by Torin Thatcher, who manages to overact without slipping into self-parody) keeps the us buying what the often goofy screenplay is selling.  Perhaps my favorite character of the entire piece is the dim-witted brute Golar, who answers with a brainless “That’s right!” every time his weasel of a sidekick says anything.

If it seems to you at this point that I can’t say a bad word against this film then you’re correct, as my opinion of the picture is anything but unbiased.  My first encounter with it some 20 years ago left my sketchbooks full of visages of Colossa’s monsters and my brain craving anything and everything Harryhausen.  These days I can recognize the real dogs of his filmography, The Valley of Gwangi and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and the like, but The 7th Voyage of Sinbad still rides high.  It’s a fantastically devised fantastic film that hasn’t lost an ounce of its entertainment value in the half-century since it premiered.

Sony has debuted their 50th Anniversary Edition of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as both a stand-alone Blu-ray (and SD release, for those who have yet to make the format jump) and as part of the Blu-ray exclusive 4-film Ray Harryhausen Collection on October 7, 2008.  The collection puts it alongside the three science fiction films Harryhausen produced at Columbia prior to this one, It Came From Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and 20 Million Miles to Earth, the first two of which are presently only available on Blu-ray as part of the collection.

A lot of work went into preparing The 7th Voyage of Sinbad for its high definition debut, and with one minor exception (to be immediately explained) the effort has paid off magnificently.  Some digital post-processing has caused an odd blip in the presentation, neatly erasing the tip of the cyclops’ horn during one scene.  The blip seems to only occur during one set of shots, in which Sinbad’s drunken crew attacks the monster with spears (see the first capture below).  The oddity only effects a few frames of the film and wasn’t overly distracting to me personally (I only noticed during my fifth or sixth run through of the disc), though others touchier than myself will take more offense.  Consider it room for improvement on an inevitable future edition.



Otherwise Sony’s 1.66:1 aspect 1080p transfer is a winner all around, loaded with that film grain I have such an affinity for and finally presenting the film with the stunning color it deserves.  The earlier DVD edition of the film was more tightly cropped and quite washed out, and my still older VHS looks to have been mastered from a print in the midst of shifting to the red.  Detail is strong and the highly variable photography, from crisp location work to thick process shots and everywhere in between, is recreated beautifully.  I’ve certainly never seen the film looking this good before, and it only adds to the palpable excitement of it all.  The primary audio track is a great Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround mix in English, which presents Herrmann’s thrilling score in magnificent stereo.  An original Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic mix in English is included for posterity (and appreciated by this reviewer, who has listened to the film with each at least three times over now), as well as dubs in French (Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround) and Thai (Dolby Digital 5.1).  Subtitling options on this region-free disc are extensive, and include Spanish, Korean, Thai and Chinese translations for the supplements.

The supplements are in keeping with those on the other discs in the collection, and are plentiful but varied in value.  The two real winners are the packed commentary track (there really should have been two for this relatively short film, given how many people are crammed in) and a nice Remembering . . . featurette.  There’s some overlap of information, obviously, but both are welcome.  A piece on the music of Bernard Herrmann is informative but runs too long.  The Harryhausen Legacy does the same, comprised of testimonials from famous fans of Ray’s work.  The oddest extra is certainly the “Sinbad may have been bad, but he’s been good to me” music video, actually a collection of ad art for the film with the music playing over it.  The song is one of those hilariously out-of-touch studio promotional jobs, a jazzy and awkwardly written number made available as an EP to theater owners and advertisers.  As with the other discs in the series, the supplements (aside from some unrelated previews) all appear to be 480p SD.  The disc, like all others from the Ray Harryhausen Collection, is BD Live enabled.

While there’s certainly some room for improvement to be made in any future editions of this film (mostly relating to that odd glitch in the processing), Sony’s 50th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray package is an excellent way to experience the film all the same.  I find myself again highly recommending the Ray Harryhausen Collection, though I’ve linked to the individual release of the film as well.  I saw this one at an appreciably impressionable young age and it’s remained a favorite ever since – I can’t help but rate The 7th Voyage of Sinbad as highly recommended.

order this film from Amazon.com:
individual Blu-ray | 4-disc Ray Harryhausen Collection

Whale God

Monday, February 1st, 2010

a.k.a. Kujira Gami
company: Daiei Motion Picture Co.
year: 1962
runtime: 100′
country: Japan
director: Tokuzo Tanaka
cast: Kojiro Hongo, Shintaro Katsu,
Shiho Fujimura, Takeshi Shimura,
Kyoko Enami, Kichijiro Ueda,
Koji Fujiyama, Bontaro Miake
producer: Masaichi Nagata
writer: Kaneto Shindo
cinematographer: Setsuo Kobayashi
music: Akira Ifukube
special effects: Chikara Komatsubara,
Takesaburo Watanabe and Hiroshi Ishida
production design: Shigeo Mano
disc studio: Kadokawa Herald Pictures Inc.
and Daiei Video
release date: May 26, 2006
retail price: 4,725 Yen
disc details: Region 2 / NTSC / single layer
video: 2.35:1 / anamorphic / progressive
audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic Japanese
subtitles: none
order this film from Amazon.co.jp

Plot: A small fishing village is terrorized by a seemingly unkillable whale.  Shaki, whose family has been all but destroyed by the creature’s rampage, becomes obsessed with killing it.  Meanwhile a brutal drunkard comes to the village, intent on killing the whale himself . . .

This is a classy production from the early ’60s Daiei Motion Picture Co. and perhaps the first excursion by the company into the realm of giant monsters.  Clearly influenced by the John Houston epic 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, this period production forgoes the rampaging reptilian behemoths so popular in genre cinema around the world at the time.  Instead it focuses on that first great sea monster, which man sought to conquer upon setting out across the open sea – the whale.

While similarities between screenwriter Kaneto Shindo’s (writer and director, Onibaba, Children of Hiroshima, working from a story by Koichiro Uno) screenplay and Melville’s novel are slim, the basic themes of life, death, obsession and revenge remain, as does the ethereal, almost supernatural constitution of its menace.  The creature has all the outward attributes of a Right Whale, regularly hunted along the coast of Japan at time the film was set, but possesses a uniquely monstrous disposition, and the title of the film, Kujira Gami (literally Whale God), points in no uncertain terms to the nature of its sea-dwelling antagonist.

Whale God introduces its title beast right out of the gate, as a fleet of fishermen from a small seaside whaling village track their prey against menacing skies, unaware that it is they who are hunted.  In the turmoil of the struggle between man and beast an elderly member of the crew (the grandfather of Shaki, played by Daiei contract star Kojiro Hongo) is drowned – so begins the familial curse of the whale god.  Shaki’s father and, years later, older brother (Koji Fujimura in a very brief appearance) are both killed in their respective attempts at avenging the death of the old man, leaving only Shaki to carry on in their stead as his mother, obsessed with the whale, slowly dies.  The young man is driven into depression and alcoholism, waiting for the day when the whale that destroyed his family returns.

Meanwhile, the wealthy head of the town’s whaling industry (the legendary Takeshi Shimura in a hefty supporting role) is growing tired of losing men to the beast, and promises his only daughter (the beautiful Kyoko Enami) to whoever can kill it.  Shaki jumps at the opportunity, but so does the ferocious Kishu (Shintaro Katsu), a stranger to the town.  Kishu makes a job of intimidating the townspeople, attacking other fishermen in the local tavern and raping a young women (Shiho Fujimura) who is in love with Shaki.  9 months later the young woman gives birth to Kishu’s child, but it’s Shaki who offers his support, marrying her and acting as father for her child.



There’s an interesting religious angle to Whale God, something that is difficult to fully explore for someone with such a limited understanding of Japanese (the otherwise exceptional Kadokawa / Daiei DVD of the film is woefully bereft of subtitles).  The majority of the fishermen keep to traditional faiths, joining each other in intricate rituals celebrating the livelihood that bonds them together.  Standing out among the crowd are Shaki, a Christian who worships in the small chapel of the local missionary and is married in a Christian ceremony, and Kishu, who appears to be not so much a-religious as anti-religious.  Kishu’s vendetta against the whale is obviously motivated by his own greed and ego, and it’s no surprise when his effort to kill the creature turns into an exercise in unintended self-sacrifice.

Nor is it a surprise when Shaki, his nobler goal of killing the beast to honor his dead relatives (whose collective sea-side grave site he visits often) firmly in mind, succeeds where Kishu failed, mercilessly striking out against the whale amidst gushes of black blood and salt water.  After the fight is through Shaki lies prostrate atop the massive harpoon-studded corpse, victorious but physically broken.  Whale God’s ending is unexpectedly surreal, the dying Shaki opting to spend his last few hours alongside the remains of his vanquished foe.  The final image, of the young man lying in a coffin with the massive disembodied head of the whale sitting just beyond, is among the most memorable of the film, though this reviewer will need a translation to decipher what it all means.

The considerable language barrier isn’t enough to keep one from appreciating the technical aspects of Whale God, a gorgeous production with a strong emotional base that’s evident even without understanding all the words.  Photography by Setsuo Kobayashi (Blind Beast) is stunning.  Captured in all the glory black and white scope has to offer,  I doubt the film would have resonated nearly so well if it had been produced in color.  Director Takuzo Tanaka won’t be a terribly familiar name, best known for directing a handful of the Zatoichi and Sleepy Eyes of Death films, but his handling of the Kaneto Shindo source script is superb.  Akira Ifukube offers up another stunner of a score (one of nine he would compose that year alone), with themes reminiscent of his work on both the earlier Children of Hiroshima and the later Daimajin series.

The cast is a veritable who’s who of big-name Daiei talent, headlined by Kojiro Hongo (best known in these parts for his frequent work in the Gamera series), Shintaro Katsu (the blind masseur himself, who is a sight to see seeing for a change), Kyoko Enami (of Gambling Woman fame), and Akira Kurosawa favorite Takeshi Shimura (Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Gojira).  Of all of them, it’s Katsu’s brutal Kishu makes the most lasting impression, lumbering about town looking for fights and proving nearly as much a monster as the whale.



More a drama than a special effects film, Whale God still boasts some impressive enactments of Japanese whaling techniques not seen since the end of the 19th century (all simulated, mind you).  The special effects team headed by Chikara Komatsubara and Takesaburo Watanabe appears to have been well funded, and makes good use of a huge wave pool and a full-size mock-up of the monstrous whale’s head.  The final confrontation between it and the human cast is both exciting and disturbing, and I wonder just how many gallons of stage blood were expended in the filming of it.

Unavailable in the States in any official format (Animeigo, save me!), Whale God receives a fine DVD treatment from Daiei Video and Kadokawa Herald Pictures Inc.  The scope and progressive transfer does justice to the exceptional production design, offering a nice level of detail and a variable amount of visible grain.  Contrast is healthy but, as with a good number of Japanese DVD transfers, a little flat.  Damage is relatively minor, though it’s obvious that no real effort went into cleaning up the image for its digital debut.  The single layer encoding seems a bit slight for a film of 100 minutes, but I noticed no obvious deficiencies.  Audio is well rendered in a Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic track, though I must lament again the lack of subtitles.

Supplements are pretty routine but welcome all the same.  Relating to the film, we get the original theatrical trailer (non-anamorphic and sourced from an earlier transfer for laserdisc), a gallery of still images, and a healthy collection of cast and crew biographies, all in Japanese of course.  Also included is a brief background and filmography of Daiei’s special effects films, with trailers for several of them (including the early color sci-fi Warning from Space).  Not really an extra but too bizarre not to mention is an optional female voice-over, which soothingly guides you through the menu selections and operations for the disc.  I don’t recall encountering anything quite like it before.

The Kadokawa / Daiei DVD is going to be a tough sell for stateside film fans given its lack of subtitles, high retail price tag, and regional encoding issue, though its the best option out there until an enterprising English-friendly company makes a move (I suggest emailing these guys with the suggestion).  I’m of the opinion that the film is worth putting up with all of that, though I realize that I’m a little eccentric in that respect.  Whale God comes highly recommended, with high hopes that an English-friendly release may someday become a reality.

King Kong Escapes

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

part of the Goin’ Bananas B-movie roundtable:

a.k.a. Kingu Kongu no Gyakushu
company: Rankin/Bass Productions
and Toho Co. ltd.
year: 1967
runtime: 96′ / 104′
country: Japan / United States
director: Ishiro Honda
cast: Rhodes Reason, Mie Hama,
Linda Miller, Akira Takarada,
Eisei Amamoto, Shoichi Hirose,
Toru Ibuki, Nadao Kirino
writer: Takeshi Kimura
cinematographer: Hajime Koizumi
music: Akira Ifukube
special effects direction: Eiji Tsuburaya

dvd company: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
release date: November 29, 2005
retail price: $14.98
details: Region 1 / NTSC / Single Layer
feature: progressive / 2.31:1 anamorphic
audio: Dolby Digital English (2.0 Mono)
subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
order this film from Amazon.com
single disc
| double feature with King Kong Escapes


Plot: The evil Dr. Who conspires to mine the mysterious radioactive Element X using his mechanical King Kong.  It’s up to commander Nelson and the real King Kong to stop them.

The second and last of Toho Co. ltd.’s King Kong cycle is a real doozy of a motion picture.  Co-produced with Rankin / Bass Productions (of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and The Last Dinosaur fame) and based on that company’s earlier collaboration with Toei Animation, The King Kong Show, it’s easily one of the sillier things to originate on Toho’s lot.  But that’s okay, as King Kong Escapes is immense fun regardless.

Baring no relation to the earlier King Kong vs. Godzilla, with the exception of the fact that the character of Kong is in it, King Kong Escapes concerns UN submarine commander Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason, younger brother of Rex This Island Earth Reason) and his scientific interest in the Kong legend.  When his submarine runs into mechanical trouble near the island where Kong is said to live, Nelson and his friends, Lt. Commander Nomura (Akira Takarada) and Lt. Watson (Linda Miller), decide to take the opportunity to investigate it.  There they find living dinosaurs (rather, a living dinosaur and a giant sea snake), a single elderly native, and the giant ape King Kong, who takes a shining to Lt. Watson after saving her from the jaws-n-claws of of a scaly island inhabitant.

Meanwhile at the North Pole, the fiendish Dr. Who (Eisei Amamoto), arch nemesis of Commander Nelson, is using his super-machine Mechani-Kong (the plans for which the fiendish Dr. Who fiendishly stole from Commander Nelson) to mine for the rare radioactive Element X.  But Mechani-Kong is no match for the power of the element, its delicate wiring destroyed by Element X’s deadly emanations.  With Mechani-Kong out of commission until repairs can be made and the country backing the project threatening to pull financing, Dr. Who is left with no alternative but to fly to Kong’s island and kidnap the real thing . . .



Writer Takeshi Kimura (Attack of the Mushroom People, Rodan, Gorath) must have had quite the time trying to craft a half-way serious story around the basic framework of the Rankin / Bass cartoon show (the villain Dr. Who, Mechani-Kong . . .), but the result, even if it is little more than an exercise in high camp (complete with heroes, villains, and a hypnotized giant ape), isn’t half bad.  The past relationship of Commander Nelson and Dr. Who goes largely unexplored, though they certainly behave as stereotypical old enemies that they are, playing chess and chortling about the futility of each other’s plans.  A bit of human interest is a boon to the silly dramatics, and the G-rated romance between Lt. Commander Nomura and Lt. Watson figures well into the climactic Kong / Mechani-Kong battle.

The focus of proceedings is, as it should be, squarely on the monsters, and there is no development in the full running time that doesn’t somehow involve them.  Even the representative of the unnamed country financing Dr. Who, a beautiful Mie Hama (You Only Live Twice) in her final giant monster film appearance, has a change of heart at their behest, deciding that nuclear domination of the world isn’t worth a few thousand human casualties at the hands of Kong and his mechanical alter ego.  Kimura’s story brings the human cast and their monstrous counterparts together early and often, a fact that’s sure to make genre fans happy.

There’s a strong sense of humor running throughout the film, and while Kimura and director Ishiro Honda never allow the picture’s self awareness to interfere with the storytelling comedy is still an important part of the proceedings.  Dr. Who’s hard-hatted henchmen are played with a distinctly comic edge, and when introduced to Commander Nelson and his crew his Mechani-Kong (a machine seemingly ready-made to break down at the worst of possible moments) offers up a friendly wave.  Dr. Who himself, full of over-the-top schemes and brimming with ego in spite of his utter lack of success, is the kind of villain you almost hate to see get his just deserves.

Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects production is on the fantastic and colorful side, appropriate for a film inspired by a cartoon series.  The miniatures still look great after all these years, and even the smallest (a toolbox that drops onto Kong’s face, spilling its contents) are rich with detail.  The best part of the show remains the climactic Tokyo showdown, which sees the dueling Kongs exchanging blows atop a massive reconstruction of Tokyo Tower.  Limits on time and budget rear their ugly heads in a few snippets of stock footage and in the constrained scope of the miniature downtown Tokyo, though the lively action keeps them from being as distracting as they were in films like Monster Zero.



King Kong Escapes fared well when imported for American distribution in 1968, receiving an English dub well above the norm for the genre and a slight edit that tightens the pace while adding a few shots and angles nowhere to be found in the Japanese release variant (a la War of the Gargantuas).  This 96 minute cut, around 8 minutes shorter than the Japanese, is my favored cut of the film, and the slight editing only really becomes an issue in the few moments where it clips Akira Ifukube’s score (notably during the Tokyo Tower sequence).

Universal Studios, the American distributor of the film, had been sitting on renewed rights to King Kong Escapes since 1996, only stepping up to release it on home video in 2005.  Like the simultaneously released King Kong vs. Godzilla disc, those hoping for any kind of deluxe release will be disappointed as Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s DVD is about as bare as bare-bones releases get.  That said, the film itself looks better than ever before – a big win for kaiju fans here in the States.

Universal presents King Kong Escapes in its original scope (actual aspect ratio 2.34:1) for the first time stateside since its original theatrical release.  The detailed progressive transfer is smooth in motion and remarkably void of damage, save some light speckling.  The bright color scheme really pops and contrast looks spot on.  This is a gorgeous transfer with some visible grain and great detail, and one of the best of an older Toho SPFX film that’s been seen in the States.  Audio is presented in a fine Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic English track that sounds quite good, retaining nice punchiness in the low end and doing justice to Ifukube’s excellent score.  Optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles are available, and there are no supplements.

For a disc with such horrendous packaging design (from the menus to the disc art to the sleeve, the graphics are consistently awful throughout), it sure does a fine job of presenting the film in question.  I was very late catching up to this (four years, and I call myself a fan!), and have no problem recommending the release or its double-feature pairing with King Kong vs. Godzilla to those who have yet to pick it up (a lot of retailers appear to be dumping the two pack from their stock, and I got my copy at well below the Amazon price – shop around!).  As for the film, it’s one of the more enjoyable of Toho’s late ’60s product and a fixture of my memories of growing up on aging UHF stations. Highly recommended.