Posts Tagged ‘Monsters’


The Duplicate Man

January 10th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
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dir. Gerd Oswald
1964 / United Artists Television / 51′
written by Robert C. Dennies
from the story by Clifford D. Simak
 director of phogoraphy Kenneth Peach
original music by Harry Lubin
starring Ron Randall, Constance Towers, Mike Lane, Steven Geray and Konstantin Shayne
available on DVD from MGM, or for free viewing on Hulu and Youtube

There is no shortage of promise to be found in the truncated and too often disappointing second season of The Outer Limits, but Gerd Oswald’s late-run effort The Duplicate Man offers more in the way of it than most. Adapted from the Clifford D. Simak story Goodnight, Mr. James (published in the March 1951 issue of Galaxy for those interested – it’s an excellent read!) and ambitiously set in the future of 2011 The Duplicate Man never really transcends its limitations of time and budget, each of which was in ever shorter supply at this point in the series’ history (the episode was produced shortly before ABC let it known that the show was to be cancelled all together), but at least it tries.

The story concerns one Henderson James (Ron Randell), a noted astrobiologist who, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, has been secretly studying a deathly dangerous space creature known as the Megasoid in his estate. Fearful of their superior intelligence, telepathic abilities and murderous inclinations, the governments of Earth outlawed the importation of Megasoids in 1986, leaving James in quite a pickle when his own smuggled specimen escapes. Too much a coward to hunt down the creature himself, James turns to a drunken has-been with connections to the Federal Duplication Bureau, an institution that clones human beings in an extensively regulated manner, for help.

Shortly thereafter Henderson James awakens near a natural history museum, and finds himself armed with a handgun and driven by a singular purpose – kill the Megasoid, which has taken to hiding in one of the museum’s displays. The intervention of a museum security guard leads James to suddenly remember more about himself, his address, his job, and so on, facts that confuse his purpose and lead him to explore more about who exactly he is. When James eventually encounters the Megasoid things become even more complicated. The creature reveals that James is not James at all, but an exact duplicate of the real James manufactured for the express purpose of doing his dirty work. Though wounded in their encounter the Megasoid escapes, putting James mark II on the hunt for both the creature and existential enlightenment.

Robert C. Dennies’ penultimate contribution to The Outer Limits complicates the more straight-forward Simak source story in any number of ways, as in its focus on both James instead of just the clone and in the addition of a troubled marriage to the mix, but is most destructive in its expansion of the story’s relatively minor kill-the-alien opener into a full-fledged subplot (a move made to sate ABC’s demand for monsters). The more interesting human drama of The Duplicate Man is interrupted early and often, either by the appearance of the Megasoid itself or by the constant need to include it in the considerable conversation (like many of the second season episodes The Duplicate Man is talky stuff).

It’s a shortcoming that would be easier to overlook were the monster not such a dire creation, an ungainly gorilla-sloth-thing that adds to Second Chance‘s convincing Empyrian mask a ridiculously overstated forehead and a beak of hysterical proportion. Director Gerd Oswald is forced to cut the critter far too often, as it stalks endlessly about James’ property to fulfill its bloated narrative obligations, and unfortunate gaffs (like the appearance of actor Mike Lane’s shirt between the neck and body of the suit in some shots) only result in further embarrassment.

Otherwise The Duplicate Man‘s greatest failing is to be found in its two central performances. Co-stars Constance Towers (Shock Corridor), Steven Geray (Spellbound) and Sean McClory (appearing from beneath a ludicrous and ill-fitting leather head piece meant to cover unseen scars from a Megasoid attack) all do well enough in their respective, but relatively minor, roles. Star of the show Ron Randell (The She-Creature), as both Henderson James and James mark II, doesn’t fair nearly so well. Randell’s performance is leaden throughout, and serves only to detract from what should be the episode’s most appealing moments – like James mark II’s discovery of the simple pleasures of water fountains and greenery or Henderson’s eventual reconciliation with his wife. I’ve only seen Randall otherwise in the dreadful 40s sci-fi throwback The Most Dangerous Man Alive from 1961, and he made no better impression there.

On the brighter side of things The Duplicate Man‘s ambitious aesthetic often belies the paucity of its budget, and Oswald and his crew manage some creative futuristic flourishes through intelligible location scouting and the modification of everyday objects. The Chemosphere house in Los Angeles adeptly doubles for the residence of Sean McClory’s scarred smuggler, while James encounters plenty of familiar items with a modern twist (a public water fountain activated by a beam of light, a touch tone telephone decked out with a video display). My favorite touches have to do with the clothing, which is delightfully strange. The upscale suits the two James spend their time in are lacking any kind of lapels, while their collared button-up undershirts are punctuated with slim knotless ties. Nevermind that these changes could have been accomplished by any costume designer with a couple of minutes and a pair of scissors to spare, as the minimal effort pays off wonderfully in expanding the episode’s future setting.

It’s undeniable that there’s a lot wrong with The Duplicate Man, which too often undermines its big-idea aspirations (a rare enough thing in a second season episode) with silly pulp trappings – that monster is nigh unforgivable. But it certainly strives to be better than it is, with even the capably mundane director of photography Kenneth Peach putting in extra effort to give the show some much-needed visual oomph. All in all The Duplicate Man is one of the last really interesting things to come out of The Outer Limits before ABC kicked it off the air in favor of a low-cost variety show, and worth a watch if for that reason alone.


Shadow of the Colossus

December 1st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2005  Company: Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Studios, Team ICO
Designer: Fumito Ueda   Writers: Junichiro Hosono, Takashi Izutani, Masahi Kudo
Music: Kow Otani   Cast: Kenji Nojima, Kazuhiro Nakata, Kyoko Hikami, Naoki Bando, Hitomi Nabatame
Reviewed from the Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection, released September of this year for Playstation 3, and available for purchase through Amazon.com. The original Playstation 2 edition is also still available.

While I’ve toyed with reviewing books, comics and even a bit of music here at Wtf-Film, the one medium I’ve always wanted to cover, but never have, remains video games. I play quite a lot of them, after all, and unlike any number of naysayers I don’t see the medium as being any less a legitimate art form than the others I mentioned above. That’s not to say I think that all art is good art, and personal taste certainly enters into things, but the potential is there for video games to rattle off complex symbolism, big ideas and the just plain aesthetically beautiful every bit as well as the rest of the more lauded forms. What’s more they can do so in collaboration, while at the same time offering a brand of personal interaction with the material that’s unique unto themselves.

But I digress. I’m really not here to argue how the video game should be considered a valid artistic medium – really - you’ll find plenty of that elsewhere, and just as many dissenting opinions. Instead I present for your consideration a game that I certainly consider to be “good art”, the epic Shadow of the Colossus (or Wander and the Colossus / Wanda to Kyozou) from Japanese designer Fumito Ueda and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Japan Studio in 2005. As is too often the case I took a good long while catching up to Shadow, having never owned a Playstation 2, but its recent remastering for the Playstation 3 (along with Ueda’s freshman effort ICO) gave me all the excuse I needed to finally check it out.

Taking place in a nameless expanse at the “edge of the world”, Shadow posits the player as the boy Wander, who travels to the forbidden land with his faithful horse, Agro, and the body of the dead girl Mono in hopes that a mythical demon said to reside there can return her to life. The demon, little but a few wayward shadows and a disembodied voice echoing about an immense shrine, agrees to help, provided that Wander destroys the sixteen Colossi – the vessels for the demon’s divided evil – that roam throughout the territory. As each Colossus is defeated the evil essence within is absorbed by Wander, whose mortal form grows more corrupted and diseased with each conquest…

The simple narrative of Shadow of the Colossus is a familiar one, but is refreshingly free of the heroic ego that so often comes with the territory. Wander proves himself uniquely selfless as video game protagonists go, flinging himself out into the abyss and confronting certain annihilation with unflinching determination, but his singular devotion is to the point of fault. He is driven to sacrifice himself, agonizingly, to save a fellow mortal unjustly struck down (the scant dialogue suggests only that she was sacrificed for being “cursed”), but is so obsessed as to be blind to the consequences of unleashing the greatest evil known to his civilization. In his singular, destructive drive he reminds of Captain Ahab, neither villain nor hero, just a man slowly destroyed by his own obsession. It’s an allusion that becomes all the more fitting once the nature of the game’s action is taken into consideration.

With rare exception the Colossi Wander is fated to extinguish are appropriately massive in scale, and often appear as though they are built from bits of the landscapes from which they emerge. Alternately magnificent and horrifying, the Colossi are the fantasy equivalent of the sea-beasts of old, which a dwarfed humanity once sought to conquer at its own peril, though the odds against Wander, armed only with a sword, a bow, and his wits, seem even more heavily stacked. Each Colossi is a lumbering level unto itself, either to be tricked into allowing Wander passage on it or to be scaled outright so that its vital points, glowing sigils revealed by the sword, can be reached. The gameplay here is harrowing stuff, and quite unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Appropriately, it becomes as much a test of will for the player as for Wander, as you’re dangle perilously from the shaggy, debris-strewn bodies of skyscraper-sized humanoid giants and bizarre, impossibly proportioned animals with your stamina running out all the while.

Even so, success against them is rarely satisfying on its own terms. Much of that is to do with the context for the Colossi themselves, awe-inspiring titans tucked away in some forbidden corner of the world as guardians against the evil banished there. They aren’t the villains of the piece, even if Wander must approach them as such. Each is individual, unique, from a proportional pseudo-mechanical bull (one of the rare small Colossi) and a tremendous electric eel to the earth-shaking bludgeon-wielding humanoid bear that graces the cover art, and each is never to be seen again. For every ounce of awe their appearances inspire there’s just as much poignancy to their defeat, the Colossi crumpling tragically to the ground with venomous black mist spewing from their wounds. Wander’s reward for killing them is to have himself slowly destroyed, with no way of knowing whether or not the demon with whom he has bargained will keep its promise in the end.

Shadow of the Colossus balances its intense action set pieces and grimmer subject matter with an environmental design ethic that’s breathtaking. The forbidden terrain Wander must traverse to reach each Colossi is a vast, seemingly boundless affair, winding from darkened mountain passes through arid deserts and verdant hills to secluded wooded oases, imposing canyons and hot springs. It’s a world unto itself, separated from the outside by a towering, endless bridge and devoid of any living distractions beyond a few lizards, tortoises and birds. Though obviously once inhabited – a monolithic central shrine and other edifices of civilization past, including Asiatic temples, European castles and a massive buried Greco-Roman amphitheatre, are all testament to this – Wander is the only human life to be seen. It’s a place unencumbered by endless hack-and-slash antics, load screens, or droning soundtrack loops, a wide-open expanse both somber and beautiful, ripe for contemplation and all but demanding of the hours it takes to explore it all. I found myself wholly immersed in it, enchanted even, and after a work week worth of play I’ve yet to tire of it – something few of anything, much less games, can claim.

In lesser hands it would have been easy for Shadow of the Colossus, basically a series of boss fights scattered by lengthy violence-free trekking, to feel tired and insubstantial, but Fumito Ueda and his devoted creative team have made it into something truly special. The simplicity of its premise belies the supreme artistry with which it is related, and the sum experience of it all is quite unlike anything else. I’ll not open the can of worms that is the “best game ever” designation, but it’s certainly one of the best I’ve ever played, a potent mix of thrilling action, aesthetic wonder and quiet humanity that really is second to none. This is must-play material, through and through, and one of the easiest recommendations I’ve had in years.

Reviewed from the Ico / Shadow of the Colossus Collection, released September of this year for Playstation 3, and available for purchase through Amazon.com. The original Playstation 2 edition is also still available.

Galaxina / The Crater Lake Monster

March 28th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Galaxina – Year: 1980   Company: Crown International / Marimark   Runtime: 95′
Director: William Sachs   Writer: William Sachs   Cinematography: Dean Cundey
Cast: Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber, J.D. Hinton, Dorothy Stratten, Lionel Mark Smith, Tad Horino,
Ronald Knight, Percy Rodrigues, Herbert Kapltowitz, Aesop Aquarian, Angelo Rossito, Nancy McCauley
The Crater Lake Monster – Year: 1977   Company: Crown International   Runtime: 84′
Director: William R. Stromberg   Writers: William R. Stromberg, Richard Cardella
Cinematography: Paul Gentry   Music: Will Zens   Cast: Richard Cardella, Glen Roberts, Mark Siegel,
Bob Hyman, Richard Garrison, Kacey Cobb, Michael F. Hoover, Suzanne Lewis, Mary Eliot, Garry Johnston
Disc company: Mill Creek Entertainment   Video: 1080p (2.35:1) / 1080i (1.78:1)
Audio: Linear PCM 2.0 English, DTS-HD MA 2.0 English, Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Single Layer BD25   Release Date: 03/22/2011   Product link: Amazon.com

The dissolution of prominent cult distributor BCI / Eclipse may well have been the best thing ever to happen to Mill Creek Entertainment, a company formerly best known for their low price and lower quality bundles of ubiquitous public domain cheapies.  Having snapped up the catalogues of BCI / Eclipse and a number of other defunct distributors at fire sale prices, Mill Creek now have a variety of desirable properties at their disposal and are primed and ready to take position as King of the bargain home video market.  This double feature Blu-ray release sees the company delving into the library of Crown International Pictures, and presents a pair of oddball drive-in attractions – each of which is far more endearing than it has any right to be.

1980′s Galaxina is a parodic futuristic science fiction romance that takes aim at Star Wars, Star Trek, Alien and even Sergio Leone, and is infamously remembered for being released just two months before the murder of its centerfold star Dorothy Stratten.  The film follows the misadventures of the crew of Space Police cruiser Infinity, which is sent to the far reaches of the galaxy to retrieve a glowing blue rock of dubious import before the evil Ordric can get his robot hands on it.

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The Troll Hunter

March 23rd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Trolljegeren
Year: 2010   Company: Filmkameratene A/S   Runtime: 99′
Director: André Øvredal   Writer: André Øvredal   Cinematography: Hallvard Bræin
Music: Alan Wilson   Cast: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alf Larsen,
Urmila Berg-Domaas, Hans Morten Hansen, Robert Stoltenberg, Knut Nærum, Erik Bech,
Inge Erik Henjesand, Tom Jørgensen, Benedicte Aubert Ringnes, Magne Skjævesland
Coming to US theatres (June 2011) and on demand (May 2011) through Magnet Releasing.
Currently available on Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD in Norway: Platekompaniet.no

There are plenty who would say that the found footage genre has worn out its welcome over the course of the past decade, and I’m in no position to argue otherwise.  Much of the effectiveness of the format relies on its inherent verisimilitude, but after all of the shaky-cam horrors of the past few years (Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity 1 and 2, REC 1 and 2, Quarantine, and Diary of the Dead, to name a few) there’s little denying that the format has become just as transparent as any other.  The Troll Hunter may not do much to change that fact, but that doesn’t mean this comparatively light-hearted Norwegian monster romp isn’t a whole lot of fun.

The Troll Hunter owes at least a small debt to 1999′s The Blair Witch Project, the found footage blockbuster that, while far from the first, served as the catalyst for the current trend.  Both films find a group of aspiring college documentarians investigating an aspect of local folklore and feature plenty of footage of those same documentarians running from unseen somethings in the woods.  The Troll Hunter improves upon the Blair Witch formula through superior dramatics (which rest almost entirely on the shoulders of controversial comedian Otto Jespersen, who plays the title role) and a desire to entertain its audience with more than just a succession of cheap scares.  Of course The Troll Hunter also has trolls, and what’s more, it isn’t afraid to use them.

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Primal

March 10th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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Year: 2010    Runtime: 85′   Director: Josh Reed
Writer: Josh Reed, Nigel Christensen  Cinematography: John Biggins  Music: Rob Gibson
Cast: Zoe Tuckwell-Smith, Will Traval, Krew Boylan, Lindsay Farris, Rebekah Foord, Damien Freeleagus

Warning: there will be an especially egregious spoiler for one of the movie’s “surprises” in the second to last paragraph, but there are things late in the movie too ridiculous/awesome/tasteless not to mention.

The usual bunch of young ones travels into the depth of the Australian Outback to see and photograph some twelve-thousand year old wall paintings nobody has seen since an ancestor of Anja (Zoe Tuckwell-Smith) was at the place. The paintings are supposed to pave Anja’s friend’s Dace’s (Will Traval) way to a doctorate, but, this being a horror film and all, obviously are only steps on the road to…doom.

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The Green Slime

February 25th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Gamma Sango: Uchu Daisakusen (Gamma 3: Big Space Operation)
Year: 1968   Company: MGM / Ram Films / Southern Cross Feature Film Company / Toei Co. ltd
Runtime: 101′   Director: Kinji Fukasaku   Writers: Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair
Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa   Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima
Cast: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Ted Gunther, David Yorston
Robert Dunham, Gary Randolf, Jack Morris, Eugene Vince, Don Plante, Kathy Horan, Linda Miller
Disc company: Warner Archive Collection   Video: 2.35:1 progressive    Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles: None   Disc: DVD-R   Release Date: 10/26/2010   Product link: Amazon.com

After the discovery of an impending asteroid impact of apocalyptic proportions, Commander Rankin (Horton) heads to Earth-orbiting space station Gamma III – home of his old flame (Paluzzi) and former friend (Jaeckel) – where he mounts an all or nothing anti-asteroid offensive.  The mission is a success and the asteroid is destroyed, but a more insidious threat is lurking… Unbeknownst to Rankin and his crew a speck of primitive space-life is transferred from the renegade asteroid to the space station, where it spawns an army of tentacled monsters with a passion to kill, kill, kill!

The Green Slime is a delightful, dreadful, confounding paradox of late-’60s science fiction mayhem – an overly-ambitious and under-achieving opus that stands alone at both the top and bottom of its own singular heap.  Produced by Ivan Reiner and Walter Manley in cooperation with Japan’s Toei Company The Green Slime is the narratively unrelated but thematically similar offshoot of Antonio Margheriti’s Gamma One series, a collection of space station-oriented sci-fi cheapies produced in Italy by Reiner and Manley in the middle-’60s and distributed, with the exception of 1966′s Planet on the Prowl, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Though a considerable ad campaign and wide domestic and international distribution granted it a moderate financial success The Green Slime was a critical failure, and its release marked the end of Reiner and Manley’s careers in film production.

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Up From the Depths / Demon of Paradise

January 24th, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Up From the Depths Year: 1979   Company: The Pacific Trust   Runtime: 75′
Director: Charles B. Griffith   Writers: Anne Dyer, Alfred Sweeney   Cinematography: Ricardo Remias
Music: James Horner, Russel O’Malley   Cast: Sam Bottoms, Susanne Reed, Virgil Frye, Kedric Wolfe,
Charles Howerton, Denise Hayes, Chuck Doherty, Helen McNeely, Ken Metcalfe, Randy Taylor
Demon of Paradise Year: 1987   Company: Santa Fe Productions   Runtime: 84′
Director: Cirio H. Santiago    Writers: Frederick Bailey, C.J. Santiago    Cinematography: Ricardo Remias
Music: Ding Achacoso    Cast: Kathryn Witt, William Steis, Leslie Huntley, Laura Banks, Frederick Bailey,
Henry Strzalkowski, Nick Nicholson, Liza Baumann, Paul Holmes, Joe Mari Avellana, David Light
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: NTSC 16:9 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digitlal 2.0 English
Subtitles: None    Disc: DVD9 (Region 1)   Release Date: 01/18/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory, LLC

An undersea earthquake releases a giant prehistoric fish off the coast of the tropical island of Mahu in Up From the Depths.  The fish begins chewing through the local population of photographers and hotel personnel in Jaws-like fashion – a hotel manager tries to minimize the crisis, while fisherman and swindler Sam Bottoms (Apocalypse Now, The Last Picture Show) joins forces with a marine biologist to destroy it.

Another in a long, long line of Jaws ripoffs, and neither the first nor the last to have a Corman connection, Up From the Depths is most surprising in that it manages to be more awful than even its dreadful ad art (by the amazing William Stout, who looks to have churned out this derivative muck in a hurry) might suggest.  I can’t rightly blame director Charles B. Griffith (best known for writing such Corman delights as The Little Shop of Horrors and Attack of the Crab Monsters) for all the film’s troubles, even if his direction is often lamentable, as it’s obvious that Up From the Depths was a bad apple long before the cameras starting rolling.

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Garo

December 10th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 2005 – 2006   Runtime: 25′ (25 ep.)   Directors: Keia Amemiya, Makoto Yokoyama, Kengo Kaji
Writer: Yuji Kobayashi   Music: Shinji Kinoshita, Koichi Ota
Cast: Hiroki Konishi, Mika Hijii, Ray Fujita, Masaki Kyomoto

A secret war is raging (at least in Japan). Creatures from the Underworld known as Horrors regularly creep through the cracks between dimensions to possess humans whose darkest impulses accommodate the character of the respective horror and use them to commit various atrocities. Fortunately, humankind is protected by the Makai Knights, warriors of mystical bloodlines who are able to use a magical metal known as soul metal. When need be, a Makai Knight can conjure up full body armour made from the material, but (because that’s how it goes in tokusatsu shows) they can’t stand being clad in the magical armour for long.

Garo follows the attempts of the perma-scowling Golden Knight Kouga Saezima aka Golden Fang aka Garo (Hiroki Konishi, now called Ryosei Konishi to confuse everyone as much as possible) to keep his territory (which might be the Eastern half of Japan or of Tokyo) safe from the Horrors.

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The Lost Skeleton Returns Again

July 23rd, 2010 | article by | 4 Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: Bantam Street
year: 2009
runtime: 93′
director: Larry Blamire
cast: Frank Dietz, H. M. Wynant,
Brian Howe, Christine Romeo,
Kevin Quinn, Fay Masterson,
Robert Deveau, Daniel Roebuck,
Larry Blamire, Susan McConnell
writer: Larry Blamire
cinematography: Anthony J. Rickert-Epstein
music: John W. Morgan
and William T. Stromberg
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory, LLC.
Pre-order this film from Amazon.com

Plot: Two bands of adventurers, one good, one bad, and one including a man possessed by a living skull, head into the Valley of the Monsters on the hunt for Geranium, a rare element that will . . . something . . .

Writer, director and actor Larry Blamire has made something of a name for himself in cult film circles for his low budget send-ups of the B-grade science fiction of old, and is best known for the prequel to this film – 2004’s The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Picked up and released through Sony Pictures, The Lost Skeleton… proved pretty successful for a no-bugdet niche production with limited appeal beyond its target audience of bad cinema aficionados. A sequel seemed inevitable and, after the similarly themed 2007 effort Trail of the Screaming Forehead, the inevitable came to pass.

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Humanoids From the Deep

July 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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film rating:
disc rating:
company: New World Pictures
year: 1980
runtime: 79′
director: Barbara Peeters
and James Sbardellati
cast: Doug McClure, Ann Turkel,
Vic Morrow, Cindy Weintraub,
Anthony Pena, Denise Galik
writers: William Martin,
Frank Arnold and Martin B. Cohen
cinematographer: Daniel Lacambre
music: James Horner
Order this film from Amazon.com:
DVD | Blu-ray

Plot: A race of humanoid coelacanths, mutated by a nefarious canning company’s genetic experiments on salmon, rise from the depths of the ocean to mate with human women, causing all manner of trouble in a small fishing village.

One of the seediest and sleaziest little numbers in the New World catalog, Humanoids From the Deep courted controversy upon release not only for its trashy, monster-rape content, but for the fact that it was all added in post-production, without the knowledge of its cast. Made under the working title Beneath the Darkness, the finished Humanoids…, complete with additional gore and scenes of graphic sexual violence, bore little resemblance to what the main cast had signed up for. Actress Ann Turkel was so perturbed by the circumstances that she tried to get her name removed from the credits and, refused that by producer Roger Corman, went so far as to petition the Screen Actors Guild to force Corman to pull Humanoids… from distribution. With SAG having never prepared for such eventualities, Corman prevailed and Humanoids… charged on.

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Galaxy of Terror

June 17th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Mind Warp: An Infinity of Terror
film rating:
disc rating:
company: New World Pictures
year: 1981
runtime: 81′
director: Bruce Clark
cast: Edward Albert, Erin Moran,
Ray Walston, Bernard Behrens,
Zalman King, Robert Englund,
Taeffe O’Connell, Sid Haig,
Grace Zabriskie, Jack Blessing
writers: Mark Siegler,
Bruce Clark and William Stout
cinematography: Jacques Haitkin
and Austin McKinney
music: Barry Schrader
Reviewed from a screener provided
by Shout! Factory LLC
Order this film from Amazon.com:
DVD | Blu-ray

Galaxy of Terror is due out on Special Edition DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory on July 20th, and is currently available for pre-order from Amazon.com and other online retailers.

The anonymous ‘Planet Master of Xerxes’ (a man whose features are obscured by orange light) orders a mission to the far off planet of Morganthus after all contact is lost with a starship there.  He hand picks the crew of rescue ship Quest without their knowledge, gathering a motley assortment of officers and engineers with variety of psychological conditions (one is claustrophobic, another traumatized by a past mission, etc.).  After a crash landing on Morganthus the crew begins to disappear, killed by their own subconscious fears after an ancient alien pyramid renders them all too real.

I fondly remember the salacious ad art for Galaxy of Terror, featuring a vulnerable beauty in scraps of clothing being menaced by a variety of unlikely beasts (including a buggy skeletal bat thing hovering with obviously impure intent), staring up at vintage late ’80s me from the seedy depths of the local rental store’s horror shelf.  Only elementary school-aged at the time, I’d never have dreamt of trying to sneak something like that passed my observant mother (the prominent cleavage on the cover would have stopped her cold long before she glimpsed the ‘R’-rating), but that didn’t keep me from wondering what horribly disgusting (and inherently exciting) events might dwell behind such an illustration.  I was a long time in catching up to the film, one of a seemingly endless number I remember passing over in youth, but it was easily worth the wait.
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Winterbeast

April 13th, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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rating:
company: Mercury International Pictures
and Winterbeast Entertainment Group
year: 1991
runtime: 76′
country: United States
director: Christopher Thies
cast: Tim R. Morgan, Mike Magri,
Charles Majka, Bob Harlow,
Lissa Breer, Dori May Kelly
writers: Christopher Thies,
Joseph Calabrese and Mark Frizzell
cinematographers: Bob Goodness
and Craig B. Mathieson
music: Michael Perilstein
order this film from Amazon.com

There are bad movies, and there are worse movies.  Then there is Winterbeast, which occupies an especially awful niche all its own.  Begun with the best of independent exploitation intentions by friends Mark Frizzell and Christopher Thies, Winterbeast‘s production collapsed before the film could be completed, leaving Frizzell to piece together what footage there was as best as could be done.  The complete uncompleted project was released to VHS in 1991 to near universal derision and forgotten . . . for a while, at least.  Stupid DVD revolution . . .

Winterbeast has a slight problem with narrative continuity.  Namely, there is none.  The best I can piece together is that an old mountain is an ancient gateway to Hell, and that a crazy lodge manager who looks and sounds like an older version of this guy is feeding his guests to totem pole monsters so that said gateway will spit out a big powerful demon . . . or something.  Combating the fiendish plot of the lodge owner (only a nutty Satanist would dare wear a plaid flannel shirt with a suit jacket and tie) are a group of under-introduced and mentally deficient forest rangers led by a guy with a perpetually changing mustache.

Now the gateway to hell / demon summoning storyline would have been easy enough to follow if said storyline hadn’t spontaneously combust (along with the surprisingly flammable lodge owner) an hour into the picture.  From that point on its an endless procession of monster attacks, at least one of which is pretty cool, and unconnected dialogue.  “Oh shit – I knew I shouldn’t have let them go up there!” says one man after looking at a white piece of paper.  Who is he talking about? Why is he worried?  What was on that piece of paper?  I don’t know.  Such are the mysteries of Winterbeast.

The ending comes rather unexpectedly.  The wintery demon appears and slow-mo chases changing-mustache guy and his pal, who is carrying around some disembodied head idol thing.  Changing-mustache guy grabs a Very pistol (and unlimited ammunition, apparently) and runs around shooting (badly) at the winterbeast with it.  After a few minutes of that he randomly takes aim at the disembodied head idol thing his buddy is carrying and destroys it, causing the winterbeast, who has just sprouted an Alien-style toothy protuberance, to smolder and die.  Changing-mustache guy and his pal laugh and wander off – the end?

There’s a lot of weirdness on display in Winterbeast, like gross misuse of plaid flannel clothing of all colors and a creepy stuffed deer head that shows up in multiple locations and always seems to be staring at the audience.  Maybe it knows something we don’t.  Perhaps it read the script.  There are lots of monsters, though their purpose is as questionable as the rest of the picture.  The attacks all progress in the same fashion, more or less: A random stop-motion armature appears and roars while a few reaction shots from the human cast are cut in.   Then the monster picks up a playdough stand-in for a person, does something horrible to it, and disappears, never to be seen again.  Some of the stop motion creations are kind of neat, notably a thorny dragon thing that munches down on a cardboard stand-in for one of the actors, but their appearances are mercilessly brief.  The winterbeast itself is a man-in-suit creation that looks intimidating enough, but it doesn’t really do anything except wander around and eventually die.

The human action is as weird and inexplicable as the monster stuff.  Changing-mustache guy and thorny-dragon victim spend the first 11 minutes of the picture looking at porno mags, followed directly by a monster attack featuring the film’s only other gratuitous nudity.  Pretty much everything concerning the constantly screaming lodge owner is bizarre, though his pre-combustion song-and-dance number takes the cake.  Just before confronting the heroes and setting himself ablaze he puts on an old recording of the What Can the Matter Be nursery rhyme, lip-syncs to it for a few lines, then puts on a creepy plastic mask and starts dancing around in a room full of previously unseen dead bodies.  Then there’s the scene in which changing-mustache man and his pal look through a box of old native relics, ignoring a big fake penis that’s sitting atop everything else.

Weirdness aside, the majority of Winterbeast is comprised of useless and painfully static stretches of tempo-free dialogue.  There are some real zingers in the mix, like the lodge owner screaming, “There aren’t any demons in this town except assholes who try to create them!” or changing-mustache guy’s redundant, “I’ve seen this before.  I’ve seen it in a dream.  It was just like this!  I saw it in a dream.  It was just like this!” but most of it is dreadfully bland stuff.  I shudder to think of how much more of it I’d have had to sit through had the film ever been finished . . .

Unbearable as the film can frequently be, the DVD of it released by its creators under the Winterbeast Entertainment Group label is pretty sweet.  The film is here in an okay video transfer that presents with some encoding issues (blocking and the like) from time to time, but is plenty good enough for the title in question.  What makes the package worthwhile are the supplements, which are far easier to recommend than Winterbeast itself.  A 20 minute “Making Of” with the producer and director offers up plenty of production info as well as frequent jabs at the quality of the (un)finished product, more of which is to be had in the commentary track that accompanies the film.  A brief audio piece with composer Michael Perilstein turns into a hilarious ad for an upcoming CD release of the film’s score, while an extra titled “Soap Opera” offers a short, alternate cut of the film constructed from unused footage shot on video by a briefly hired television crew.  It’s good stuff all around, and more consistently entertaining than the film it accompanies.

I suppose the lesson of Winterbeast is not to count your ancient demons before they’ve hatched from a forest ranger’s chest . . . or something.  I’ve seen it three times now and I’m not sure I’ve gained anything from the experience, other than a handful of laughs and an inordinate amount of confusion.  The official Winterbeast site touts the film as “The Ultimate B-Movie”.  I can’t agree with that particular assessment, but its weirdness is hard to deny.  Recommended to those fond of tormenting their family and friends or cinephiles who have seen absolutely everything else the film world has to offer.  Others proceed at their own peril.

order this film from Amazon.com


The Deadly Spawn

February 22nd, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a. Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn
rating:
company: Filmline
year: 1983
runtime: 81′
country: United States
director: Douglas McKeown
cast: Charles George Hildebrandt,
Tom DeFranco, Richard Lee Porter,
Jean Tafler, Karen Tighe
James Brewster, Elissa Neil,
Ethel Michelson, John Schmerling,
Judith Mayes, Andrew Michaels
writers: Ted A. Bohus, John Dods,
Douglas McKeown, Tim Sullivan
cinematographer: Harvey M. Bimbaum
music: Paul Cornell, Michael Perllstein
and Kenneth Walker
special effects: John Dods, John Mathews,
John Payne, Kevin G. Shinnick,
Arnold Gargulo and Gregory Ramoundos
disc company: Synapse Films
release date: October 26, 2004
retail price: $19.95
disc details: Region 0 / NTSC / dual layer
video: 1.33:1 / pictureboxed / progressive
audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (English)
subtitles: none
special features: Two feature-length audio
commentaries, production photo and still galleries,
comic-style prequel short, outtakes and audition
tapes, new alternate opening, original trailer,
cast and crew biographies
order this disc from Amazon.com

Plot: A monster crashes to Earth in a meteorite and crawls into a damp basement, where it slowly eats its way through the members of the family living in the house above.

The Deadly Spawn is the sort of film that could only have emerged from years of heartfelt hard labor on the part of good friends, a grimly imaginative bit of gross-out monster horror that’s at least as much fun as it is rough around the edges.  The brainchild of writer and producer Ted A. Bohus and special effects man John Dods, the film touches base with just about every science fiction monster romp of the preceding 30 years, from It Came from Outer Space and The Blob to the then-recent Ridley Scott mega-hit Alien, while retaining a unique low-budget magic all its own.  Made for about the cost of my second car The Deadly Spawn is far from perfect, but that doesn’t stop it from being a hell of a good time.

The premise is simple: A monster crash-lands in the New Jersey countryside and finds a nice wet home for itself in a family’s basement.  Once there it grows, sending baby monsters out to conquer the surrounding town.  People are eaten, families destroyed, and a monster movie obsessed boy becomes on unlikely hero.

It’s best gotten out of the way early that the script by Bohus, Dods, director Douglas McKeown and production assistant Tim Sullivan, has its fair share of low points.  Long sections of the earliest two thirds of the picture are devoted to slow slogs of exposition, none of which is terribly interesting.  The main cast of high school kids is a welcome change from the traditionally irritating monster-chow variety, at least.  They spend the picture worried about real-world things – grades, studying, a dead uncle in the recliner downstairs – though a brief bit of romantic interest between two of them is better left skipped.  In the end the teenagers exist only to be threatened by the title monster, dependent on the real hero of the story (an eleven year old) for their survival.

The biggest problem with the drama is just how superfluous most of it is, though the true star of the picture – the toothy, multi-headed brainchild of John Dods – and its crafty implementation more than makes up for it.  The Deadly Spawn‘s extensive displays of monster-oriented death, mayhem and destruction are certainly its biggest selling point, and with good reason.  The chief creature, roughly a man’s height with three heads and fleshy stalks protruding from its back, spends quality screen time with the young hero in the basement in a series of wonderfully shot scenes.  There are moments where the low key lighting and imaginative framing seem positively inspired.  The most memorable of the scenes by a fair margin is when the child and spawn first meet, the boy watching as the monster vomits up his mother’s disembodied head!

While fans of the new breed of bargain basement monster horror (now industrialized and dominated by a few awful straight-to-video companies) will be accustomed to gore, the violence of The Deadly Spawn was quite graphic and intense for the time.  The many monster attacks are quick-cut and bloody, and rendered all the more effective by the free-for-all nature of the scripting (the film happily abides by Joe Bob Briggs’ rule for horror, that anybody can die at any time).  The Deadly Spawn opens with a classic cult scare, with the monster devouring not one but both of the parents of the household.  Later a teen-aged love interest is unceremoniously beheaded and tossed out of an upper floor window!  An attack on a vegetarian luncheon provides some welcome bad-taste laughs while the schlocker ending takes the “?” finale of The Blob to its logical conclusion, with a gargantuan spawn devouring the countryside.

The John Dods directed special effects, made for little more than the price of the 16mm stock they’re filmed on, are generally excellent.  The full-sized spawn puppet is a magnificent creation, even if it does look a little too much like a trio of razor-toothed cocks perched atop a bulging scrotum base.  Some of the simplest techniques manage the most impressive results, like the tiny tadpole spawns wriggling along barely submerged tracks or two-dimensional paper and foam puppets filmed in silhouette.  There’s little doubt that CGI would be used for such effects these days, but I’ll take the foam-and-rubber work of Dods and company over that newer method of doing business any day.

The Deadly Spawn was quite a success when 21st Century Film Corp. released it theatrically in 1983 (after nearly three years in production), making back ten times its production budget in its opening week in New York.  It was on home video that the film found its real cult following, both in America and especially in mainland Europe (it was banned as a “Video Nasty” in England), and I remember passing by its graphic over-sized Continental Video box many times as a child.  It looked terrible to me then, the cover showing the full-size creature surrounded by dismembered limbs, but it was one of the first videos I rented when I went to work at my hometown’s own (and now defunct) Video Spectrum years later.

The home video market has come a long way since the time The Deadly Spawn was released, and Synapse Films deserves no small amount of praise for doing such an exceptional job of bringing the film to its long-awaited digital debut.  Working from the original 16mm camera negatives, Synapse has delivered the most definitive video release of the title to date.



The 1.33:1 progressive transfer presents The Deadly Spawn in its originally intended aspect ratio, and while the pictureboxing  (to compensate for overscan on traditional television sets) limits the available resolution a bit my complaints about the transfer otherwise are slim.  In fact, I don’t think I have any!  The wonderfully grainy image presents with strong detail and accurately captures the highly variable nature of the photography.  Extensive color correction makes for exceptional results, and the frequent reds (seen in blood, bath robes, and even a telephone) really pop.  There is some minimal damage, limited to infrequent dirt and speckles, but nothing distracting – I’d wager this looks better than many of the 35mm blowups that played theaters in the 80s.   Audio is a healthy Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic track that faithfully reproduces the highs and lows of no-budget recording.  There are no subtitles.

Proving that The Deadly Spawn was as much a labor of love for Synapse Films as for the original creators, the supplements are stacked.  First up are two audio commentaries, one with writer and producer Ted A. Bohus and another with special effects man John Dods, writer / director Douglas McKeown, production assistant Tim Sullivan, executive producer Tim Hildebrandt and actor Charles Hildebrandt (the 11 year old hero of the film).  The cast and crew track makes for tremendous fun, while the Bohus track tends towards the more serious and informative, covering the troublesome nature of the lengthy production as well as the distribution issues with 21st Century Film Corp.  Other supplements are more traditional, including a theatrical trailer (sourced from tape), extensive stills galleries, filmmaker biographies, and even a bloopers and outtakes reel, though there are some standouts.  We get audition tapes for the cast, a contemporary John Dods introduction to the creature listed as “A Visit with The Deadly Spawn 1982″, an alternate opening with some new effects added, and even a comic book prequel to the film.

I’ll never be one to call The Deadly Spawn a great film, but it’s certainly a fun one and I’ve been a fan for a long while now.  The reasonably priced Synapse Films disc was released on my birthday, 2004, and I picked up my copy as soon as I was off work that evening.  It’s a great disc by any estimation and comes highly recommended to both fans of the feature and monster horror buffs in general.  As for the film, it may be a little shabby but I love it all the same.  This reviewer says see it!

order this disc from Amazon.com


Whale God

February 1st, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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a.k.a. Kujira Gami
rating:
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 John Houston’s 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 Takashi 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 Takashi 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 vs. Godzilla

January 29th, 2010 | article by | 4 Comments »
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part of the Goin’ Bananas B-movie roundtable:

rating:
companies: Universal International
and Toho Company Ltd.
year: 1963
runtime: 91′
countries: United States / Japan
directors: Ishiro Honda
and Thomas Montgomery
cast: Michael Keith, Harry Holcombe,
James Yagi, Tadao Takashima,
Kenji Sahara, Ichiro Arishima,
Yu Fujiki, Jun Tazaki, Akihiko Hirata
writers: Paul Mason
and Bruce Howard
music: Peter Zinner (supervisor)
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: A television executive has King Kong imported to Japan while Godzilla is simultaneously unleashed from his imprisonment in an iceberg.  The two march inexorably towards each other, leading to an epic final battle atop Mount Fuji.

Like all the earliest of Toho’s science fiction and fantasy films (Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, Gigantis the Fire Monster, Half Human, Varan the Unbelievable, The H-Man, Gorath, The Human Vapor, and The Last War in particular), King Kong vs. Godzilla was altered considerably for importation into the American market.  In this case co-producer John Beck, working from a treatment by an uncredited and unpaid Willis O’Brien, was given full reign over how Toho’s production would be presented in the States as part of his contract with the company.  The end result is a film almost entirely unique from the Japanese original, and one of the most altered Toho productions outside of Crown International’s treatment of Varan the Unbelievable.

In its original form King Kong vs. Godzilla is much less science fiction than comedy, a satire of television marketing.  Producer Beck was none too pleased with the light-hearted sensibilities of the picture and sought, with his version, to present audiences with the more traditional monster romp they were undoubtedly expecting.  His success in this regard was minimal, his efforts to improve things rendering King Kong vs. Godzilla an unintentional comedy rather than an overt one.

Taking a cue from Terry Morse’s financially successful redux of Godzilla: King of the Monsters! a few years earlier, Beck oriented his film around newly-shot sequences featuring news reporters in the United States (Michael Keith, The Worm Eaters) and Japan (James Yagi, of The Outer Limits episode The Hundred Years of the Dragon).  Neither Michael Keith or James Yagi had the star credentials of Raymond Burr, who had appeared as the villainous Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock’s Rear Window just two years before his turn as Steve Martin in Godzilla: King of the Monsters!.  More unfortunately, Beck’s integration of their sequences into the film proper is poor at best.  They play as little more than lengthy info-dumps between the Japanese footage and stop the pacing of the film cold.

Michael Keith plays UN reporter Eric Carter, who communicates with James Yagi’s Omura via stock inserts of the alien satellite from The Mysterians.  Beck must have been working under considerable financial limitation here, as the two sets the reporters occupy have all the depth and realism of a sub-par grade school shoebox diorama.  Each comes complete with a ‘television’, or rather a piecing together of cardboard slabs upon which crumpled monochrome prints of shots from the film are stuck.  It’s sad stuff, indeed, and a far cry from the comparably lavish production values of the rest of the picture.


Harry Holcombe (The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Billy Jack Goes to Washington, Empire of the Ants), the most accomplished of the American cast by a wide margin, appears as Dr. Arnold Johnson, who is perhaps the worst paleontologist in screen history.  Using a children’s picture book as a visual aid, Johnson explains to reporter Carter that the recently appeared Godzilla may well be a cross between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Stegosaurus while comparing his brain to a marble and recommending that electricity might be a viable offensive measure against him (given that he’s a reptile, as though his being anything else would make him any less susceptible to electrocution).  Yes, it is as dreadful as it sounds, though not entirely without its unintentional comic charm.

The English overdubbing of the Japanese footage isn’t nearly so bad as it could have been here, besting Columbia’s for the earlier Battle in Outer Space and a marked improvement over the endless narration found in Half Human or Gigantis the Fire Monster, though Beck’s attempts to play the film straight appear to have been lost in translation.  Television executive Mr. Tako (the wonderful Ichiro Arishima) still comes across as a daft madman and Furue (Yu Fujiki) still plays the bumbling sidekick to Sakurai’s (Tadao Takashima) straight man.  Furue provides one of the most memorable parts of the dubbed version, introducing a minor subplot about his corns and how they ache when monsters are afoot.  The dubbing even improves upon the original Japanese in one respect, making the American submarine crew sound less like the amateur actors they are.

Beck’s King Kong vs. Godzilla runs just 91 minutes, five minutes shy of the original running time, but I’d wager that no more than 75-80% of the original survived the editing process.  Lost is much of the early character development, replaced by Beck’s bricks of exposition.  Perhaps the biggest loss is in the soundtrack department, where Ifukube’s score (one of the very best of his career) is replaced with stock tracks from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Monster that Challenged the World, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, among others.  The stock tracks aren’t bad by any means, but their unconnected bundle of disparate themes can’t compare with the power of Ifukube’s work.


Thankfully, the majority of the monster footage remains intact, less a few shots here and there.  Reviews of the film in America more or less ignored the dramatic inadequacy of the film, focusing on the aptitude of the Japanese effects crew instead.  In this respect Beck’s King Kong vs. Godzilla still makes for an entertaining watch, in spite of its disparaging ineptitude in other areas.

Universal, who released the film domestically as Universal International in 1963, missed a grand opportunity to present a deluxe edition of this film when it chose to bring it to DVD in 2005, but such is the nature of the business.  Those looking for the uncut original will have to rely on Toho’s own expensive home video iterations, as this Universal Studios Home Entertainment DVD caters only to the American release version of the film.

King Kong vs. Godzilla is in a horrendous state of preservation in its native Japan, and Toho’s recent high definition restoration had to rely, in part, on an awful standard definition video master from the ’90s in order to account for footage in too sad a shape to be transferred.  Universal’s print is in comparatively excellent shape, with much of the footage lost in the Japanese restoration appearing nearly pristine here.  The 2.35:1 progressive and anamorphic widescreen transfer presents the film in its original aspect ratio for the first time on American shores and, save for some damage (dust and scratches), its a beauty.  Beck’s additions to the drama look even cheaper in the original scope, while Eiji Tsuburaya’s effects production shines.  Audio is English only Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic, with optional English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles available.

The single layer disc boasts absolutely nothing in the way of supplemental material, not even a trailer.  Still, the price is low (at least for the double bill with King Kong Escapes) and the quality of transfer high, making it worth the upgrade from the awful pan-and-scan Goodtimes releases that have been kicking around for the past decade plus.  Fans will certainly want to indulge.


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