Posts Tagged ‘Science Fiction’


Robo Vampire

March 21st, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Year: 1988   Company: Filmark International Ltd.   Runtime: 90′
Director: Charles Lee   Writers: William Palmer   Cinematography: Anthony Mang
Music: Alan Wilson   Cast: Robin Mackay, Nian Watts, Harry Miles, Joe Browne, Nick Norman,
George Tripos, David Borg, Diana Byrne, Alan Drury, Ernst Mausser, Sorapong Chatree
Available on OOP DVD from BCI / Eclipse. Product link: Amazon.com

Confession time.  I’ve been slacking off on my Wtf-Film duties as of late, content with letting the movies come to me by way of screeners or the odd pre-order.  That’s not to say that I haven’t covered some good stuff, with Phenomena and The Beyond arriving from Arrow Video or Shout! Factory’s latest MST3K box, but all of those properties fell right into my lap (or mailbox, rather).  The simple sad fact of the matter is that I’ve been lazy, satisfied to bask in the relative comfort of review discs while this site’s purpose fades into the ether.

Well no more, I say!  I long for that elusive high, the blissful intoxication of chancing upon a film of mind-altering strangeness.  It’s high time that the hunt was on again, and I’ll be damned if today’s find didn’t get the dopamine a-flowing.

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Alien 2: On Earth

March 8th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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a.k.a.: Alien 2: Sulla Terra / Alien Terror
Year: 1980   Company: GPS   Runtime: 84′
Director: Ciro Ippolito   Writer: Ciro Ippolito   Cinematography: Silvio Fraschetti
Music: Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (as Oliver Onions)   Cast: Belinda Mayne, Mark Bodin, Roberto Barrese,
Benny Aldrich, Michele Soavi, Judy Perrin, Don Parkinson, Claudio Falanga, Vincenzo Falanga, Ciro Ippolito
Disc company: Midnight Legacy   Video: 1080p 1.85:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 03/22/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Alien 2: On Earth is the first release in the Midnight Legacy Collection, and is reviewed here from a screener provided by the company.

When a manned NASA space mission returns from orbit sans crew the world is stunned, but telepathic speleologist Thelma (BelindaMayne) senses that something far worse is on the horizon – something to do with strange blue rocks that have begun showing up all over.  Thelma puts her fears aside to lead a spelunking expedition in the American southwest, but is forced to confront them head-on when the rocks begin sprouting meaty alien monsters with a penchant for human destruction…

Those of you convinced that Luigi Cozzi’s Contamination, in which throbbing alien eggs that make people explode are sent around the world by the possessed owner of a coffee plantation, is the strangest of the gory Italian knock-offs of Ridley Scott’s Alien should think again, as Ciro Ippolito’s obscure 1980 effort Alien 2: On Earth definitely holds its own in the oddball department.  I apologize for my unabashed adoration of this one in advance – it’s just hard for this reviewer to hate any film that tries so hard to tie a failed space mission, ominous rocks, telepathy, caving, apocalyptic doom-and-gloom and bowling together, even if the end results are a little suspect.

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Mystery Science Theater 3000 XX

March 3rd, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Experiments: Project Moonbase, Master Ninja I, Master Ninja II, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: NTSC 4:3 / 16:9   Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: none   Discs: DVD5 (3) DVD9 (1)   Release Date: 03/08/2011   Product link: ShoutFactory.com
MST3K XX is reviewed here from a screener provided by Shout! Factory.

I’ve not counted myself among the MST3K faithful for years now, having been recently possessed by a more analytical appreciation of “bad” cinema.  That said, I’ve always had a soft spot for original host and series creator Joel Hodgson, and this latest 4-episode DVD boxed set from Shout! Factory acts as an all-in-one history of his half-decade turn as space-bound test subject Joel Robinson.  This is classic MST3K through and through, and enough to tempt this reviewer back into the fray.

MST3K XX‘s four episodes span three seasons: Project Moonbase from season 1, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad from season 5, and Master Ninja I and Master Ninja II from season 3.  Project Moonbase has its own historic significance, being from the first official season, and The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, featuring the American bastardization of a Russian fantasy film, is an undisputed classic of the series, the real gems of the collection lie right in between.  For my money season 3, with its focus on Sandy Frank, Bert I. Gordon, and the mighty Miles O’Keeffe, is the best the show ever had, and Master Ninja I and II are just more evidence for my case.

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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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The Green Slime – Opening Credits

February 24th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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The opening credits for The Green Slime offer good insight into the two biggest differences between the often laborious 96 minute American release version and the comparably brisk 77 minute Japanese cut – the music and the editing.  The American version features the Charles Fox title theme we’re all familiar with, while the Japanese is scored with a brassy cue from Toei composer Toshiaki Tsushima’s score.

As for the editing, both title sequences use the same footage, but they cut to entirely different scenes.  The Japanese cuts directly the a UNSC office, where Commander Rankin (Robert Horton) has been called to deal with an asteroid crisis, while the American credits cut to a pointless scene of Rankin’s commanding officer confronting some of his peers and walking to his office.


The Green Slime – Trailer Show

February 23rd, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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I’m only working up one review for posting this week at Wtf-Film – I’ll give you three guesses as to what film I’ll be covering, and the first two don’t count.  The Green Slime finally saw release on DVD on October 26th last year, when Warner issued it as part of their DVD-R-on-demand Archive Collection, and it’s taken me a while for me to catch up to it.  I’ve finally snagged myself a copy, and since Warner couldn’t be bothered to include any supplements (a big reason I’m ambivalent about their Archive Collection releases) I’ll be posting some of my own.

First up is this collection of advertising material – original theatrical trailers for both the American and Japanese releases of the film and, my personal favorite, a 60 second radio spot that succeeds in making a G-rating sound creepy.


Star Crystal (1986) Closing Credits

February 14th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
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In theory an alien terror film in the mold of Alien and The Thing, Star Crystal is in practice a hilariously awful science fiction absurdity the dreadfulness of whose conception should not be underestimated.  It’s impossible to really put the ineptitude of this one into words, but these closing credits (complete with an ill-advised pop number about…. Star Crystal…) should give you some idea of what to expect from it.


Robinson Crusoe on Mars

February 2nd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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Year: 1964   Company: Paramount Pictures   Runtime: 110′
Director: Byron Haskin   Writers: Ib Melchior (original screenplay), John C. Higgins
Cinematography: Winton C. Hoch   Music: Van Cleave   Cast: Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, Adam West
 Disc company: Criterion Collection   Video: 1080p 2.37:1    Audio: Linear PCM 1.0 Monophonic English
Subtitles: English SDH   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 1/11/2011   Product link: Amazon.com

When a mission to investigate Martian gravity goes awry, astronaut Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) finds himself abandoned on the red planet with the mission’s test subject, a woolly monkey named Mona, his only companion.  The odds of rescue against him, Kit must depend on his survival training and a good deal of luck to secure the necessities of life – air, food, water, and shelter – in a world seemingly dead.

The first half of Robinson Crusoe on Mars is hard science fiction at its best, a simple, pure story of human resilience on a planet hundreds of millions of miles from our own.  Shipwrecked astronaut Draper (the underrated Paul Mantee in one of his few starring roles) takes to the challenge of Martian survival with the unflappable spirit expected of a space explorer in the time of the Apollo Project.  Ib Melchior’s original (and extensively illustrated) screenplay had Draper fending off all manner of alien monsters, but John C. Higgins’ (He Walked by Night) adaptation of the same offers a brand of adventure far more grounded in reality.

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Robinson Crusoe on Mars – Trailer

January 18th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
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There’s really no guessing as to what the source material for this under-appreciated science fiction gem may have been, and director Byron Haskin and screenwriter John C. Higgins (working from an original screenplay by Ib Melchior) craft what is undoubtedly one of the more offbeat variations on the Defoe novel.  Astronaut ‘Kit’ Draper crash lands on the red planet with only woolly monkey Mona to keep him company, and must fight against the elements to survive in the inhospitable wasteland.  True to its origins, Draper eventually stumbles upon an alien slave operation and helps a fellow humanoid to escape.

Though begun with lavish intentions, the financing behind Robinson Crusoe on Mars had all but dried up by the time the project was in production – as evidenced by its occasional dependence on props, designs and even costumes from Conquest of Space, Destination Moon and War of the Worlds.  While the more epic aspects of the film (a great subterranean trek to the Martian pole, for example) were necessarily downsized, the all-important human element remains strong.  Distributor Paramount Pictures advertised Robinson Crusoe on Mars like a generic science fiction actioner, with ad art featuring the title character waving a ray-gun while flying saucers buzz about overhead.  The theatrical trailer is likewise misleading, and grossly overplays the infrequent action of the story.


Terror of Mechagodzilla

December 24th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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Origintal Title: Mekagojira no Gyakushu Alt.: The Terror of Godzilla
Year: 1975   Company: Toho Co. Ltd.   Runtime: 83′   Director: Ishiro Honda
Writer: Yukiko Takayama   Cinematography: Mototaka Tomioka   Music: Akira Ifukube
SPFX Director: Teruyoshi Nakano   Cast: Tomoko Ai, Katsuhiko Sasaki, Akihiko Hirata,
Katsumasa Uchida, Goro Mutsumi, Toru Ibuki, Kenji Sahara , Kotaro Tomita, Ikio Sawamura
Godzilla: Toru Kawai   Mechagodzilla: Kazunari Mori   Titanosaurus: Katsumi Nimiamoto
Order this film on DVD (Japanese and English versions) from Amazon.com

It’s 1974… Toho Co., LTD’s famed Godzilla series is dying a slow unnatural death. The 20th anniversary came and went and the celebratory film, GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA, was a bigger success than usual at the box office. But the audiences just weren’t flocking to the cinemas to watch monsters when they can watch them for free thanks to Tsuburaya’s seemingly endless lineup of superhero shows. Desperate for some new blood and ideas to infuse into the series, Toho held a contest to come up with the story of the next entry of the Godzilla series, already slated to be a follow-up to MECHAGODZILLA. This is what won:

It’s some time after the fierce, jazz-driven, spaghetti western and Sonny Chiba-inspired showdown between Godzilla and Mechagodzilla and Interpol has sent out an exploratory submarine to find the remains of Mechagodzilla off the Bonin Islands (you’re not supposed to remember that Godzilla destroyed Mechagodzilla on Okinawa. Shhh!). Their detectors can find nothing of the metal beast (but not for the obvious reason) and suddenly they are beset by an underwater cyclone. Attempting to surface, they are attacked by the sea dinosaur Titanosaurus (Nimiamoto) who promptly makes short work of the sub.

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Godzilla Raids Again

December 21st, 2010 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Origintal Release Titles: Gojira no Gyakushu / Gigantis the Fire Monster
Year: 1955   Company: Toho Co. Ltd.   Runtime: 82′   Director: Motoyoshi Oda
Writers: Shigiaki Hidaka, Takeo Murata, Shigeru Kayama (for his novel “Gojira“)
Cinematography: Seiichi Endo   Music: Masaruo Sato   SPFX Director: Eiji Tsuburaya
Cast: Hiroshi Koizumi, Setsuko Wakayama, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Masao Shimizu,
Seijiro Onda, Sonosuke Sawamura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Haruo Nakajima, Katsumi Tezuka
Order this film on DVD (Japanese and English versions) from Amazon.com

At the end of the 1954 classic Godzilla, paleontologist Dr. Yamane (veteran Toho star Takashi Shimura) gravely intones that, should nuclear testing continue unchecked, the world may soon be faced with more Godzillas.  He couldn’t have guessed how right he was, though for other reasons all together.  Godzilla was a smash success in Japan, seeing over 9 million admissions in its initial theatrical run and earning two Japanese Academy Award nominations, and producer / distributor Toho Company was eager to strike again while the iron was hot.  It wouldn’t take long for Dr. Yamane’s prediction to come true - Godzilla Raids Again marched onto Japanese cinema screens in April of 1955, less than 6 months after the debut of its predecessor.

Not long after the events of the first film a downed tuna spotter and his friend discover a new Godzilla, alive and well on a remote Japanese island.  Worse still, the creature seems locked in mortal combat with a new giant monster – the prehistoric Angilas!  The Self-Defense Force mobilizes and the country lies in wait, fearing the destruction that would result should the dueling titans make landfall…

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Godzilla vs. Megalon

December 20th, 2010 | article by | 3 Comments »
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Origintal Title: Gojira tai Megaro Year: 1973   Company: Toho Co. Ltd.   Runtime: 81′
Director: Jun Fukuda   Screenplay: Jun Fukuda   Story: Takeshi Kimura, Shinichi Sekizawa
Cinematography: Yuzuru Aizawa   Music: Riichiro Manabe   SPFX Director: Teruyoshi Nakano
Cast: Katsuhiko Sasaki, Hiroyuki Kawase, Yutaka Hayashi, Robert Dunham, Kotaro Tomita,
Wolf Otsuki, Shinji Tatagi, Hideto Odachi, Tsugutoshi Komada, Kenpachiro Satsuma

I’ve never been known for having my finger on the pulse of good taste, so I suppose it’s only to be expected that one of the (and perhaps the) most universally reviled of all Toho Company’s beloved Godzilla franchise would also happen to be one of my personal favorites.  The first of the series to be released domestically through Cinema Shares and the only of them to retain its original Toho-given English title*, Godzilla vs. Megalon was a staple of UHF television programming in my youth – I can at least claim to have come by my bias naturally.

It seems important to note that Godzilla vs. Megalon initially had nothing to do with Godzilla at all.  Toho had conceived the project as the solo debut of the robot Jet Jaguar (the result of a creative children’s contest held by the company the year before), a concept they abandoned out of fear that the new character would be unable to carry a feature all his own.  The shooting schedule was eventually slashed to a mere three weeks and the screenplay altered to include both Godzilla (in his first new suit since 1968) and his previous foe Gigan.  Whether or not Toho’s scheming worked is difficult to assess, but one thing is for certain – Godzilla fought Megalon to the lowest audience turnout ever seen for the franchise up to that point**.

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Attack of the Crab Monsters

December 14th, 2010 | article by | 2 Comments »
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Year: 1957   Company: Allied Artists   Runtime: 63′
Director: Roger Corman   Writer: Charles B. Griffith   Cinematography: Floyd Crosby
Music: Ronald Stein   Cast: Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, Russell Johnson, Leslie Bradley,
Mel Welles, Richard H. Cutting, Beach Dickerson, Tony Miller, Ed Nelson, Maitland Stuart
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 16:9 interlaced 1.78:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: Dual Layer DVD9 x2   Release Date: 01/18/2011   Product link: Amazon.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

There’s something to be said for keeping the menace of your science fiction thriller under wraps, but producer / director Roger Corman obviously wanted audiences to know what to expect from the moment they saw the title of this Allied Artists cheapie on the theatre marquee.  Monsters were big, big business in the latter ’50s, and 1957 saw the world menaced by giant grasshoppers, giant vultures and even a disgruntled walking tree stump.  In retrospect Corman’s crab monsters were no sillier than the rest and his film, which could easily have been just a footnote in the history of creature features, has appeal as a minor camp classic thanks to some inspired casting and a penchant for narrative ridiculousness.

The story concerns a rag-tag group of scientists and Navy personnel who descend upon an isolated Pacific atoll after the inexplicable disappearance of an earlier research team.  Almost immediately after their arrival their transport plane explodes, stranding the group while inclement weather prevents them from communicating with the outside world.  Meanwhile strange things are happening on the atoll, which was heavily irradiated as a result of a nearby H-bomb test.  Booming explosions and odd clacking sounds are heard in the night, while each new dawn reveals that some part of the land has vanished…

More disturbing still, the members of the research group are disappearing one after the other, their disembodied voices spookily rising from somewhere unknown.  The culprits are soon revealed – huge mutated telepathic (!) land crabs are attacking the researchers with obscure intent, and its up to our heroes to stop them before there’s not a scrap of atoll left to stand on!

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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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Genocide – War of the Insects (1968)

December 7th, 2010 | article by | No Comments »
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I know I’m one of the few who honestly appreciates director Kazui Nihonmatsu’s (The X From Outer Space) obscure find-the-bomb killer bug thriller, the unflinchingly nihilistic Konchu Daisenso – better known under its international title Genocide or translation War of the Insects.  The plot concerns an island hunt for a lost H-bomb that encounters a bizarre Commie project to train killer bugs and an even stranger effort by Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan (Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell) to destroy all humanity with them.  Turns out everyone is screwed anyway, as the bugs have a doomsday plot all their own…

No poster could ever effectively demonstrate the overarching oddity of this one, penned by Goke: Body Snatcher From Hell alums Kyuzo Kobayashi and Susumu Takaku, though this Mexican lobby card based on a variety of producer Shochiku Company’s own ad art certainly tries.  The artwork features giant bugs, explosions, a lecherous Caucasion and hottie Kathy Horan wielding a pistol while wearing a yellow bikini.  The outlandish text translates as follows:

More Exciting than The Naked Jungle! More Terrifying than Dracula and the Thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock!
The World is in peril… Humanity is on the verge of extermination in a last war… the Final War!
Huge Insects Invade the Earth!

The central still features Chico Lourant (the Wester Island native in Gamera vs. Jiger) as an American bomber pilot tied down and tortured by communist spies as vindictive Holocaust survivor Kathy Horan looks on.  It seems important to note that the giant insects promised by both this poster and Shochiku’s own trailer for the film never materialize, but the regularly-proportioned bees and wasps cause no end of mayhem all the same.

This is another Mexican lobby card I’m proud to have in my slowly growing collection, with ridiculous artwork and stunning colors.  Size: approximately 13″ x 16″  Title: La Invasion Destructora (roughly The Invasion of Destruction)  Company: Organizacion Apolo, S.A. and Centro Independiente de Peliculas, S.A.


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