Continuing my theme of lately-watched movies of the seriously strange kind that I began here, permit me to present without further ado a second six-pack of offbeat cinematic offerings.
JOURNEY TO THE
SEVENTH PLANET
My movie watch for 25 June 2022, screened on the UK retro TV channel Talking Pictures, was a low-budget but fascinating Danish-American sci fi curio from the early 1960s entitled Journey to the Seventh Planet, which was directed by Sidney W. Pink, and released in 1962 by American International Pictures. The planet in question is of course Uranus, whose name has often led (depending upon how you pronounce it!) to all manner of saucy jokes, thereby explaining no doubt why Seventh Planet was used instead within this movie's title! Anyway, it's all about the first scientific space voyage from Earth to the afore-mentioned planet, where the thoughts of the astronauts (led by Captain Don Graham, played by John Agar) are infiltrated and manipulated by a hidden, subterranean entity that has plans to invade the Earth by possessing their bodies and then controlling the minds of everyone else there. Due to this subliminal mind manipulation, the astronauts see Uranus not as the ice planet that it really is but one that is covered with lush forests resembling those of their homelands on Earth, and incongruously populated by former girlfriends, but also by whatever most terrifies them. In the case of one astronaut, his greatest fear is rats, so a gigantic cyclopean rat looms large to attack him (see the representation of this monstrous mammal by Swedish artist Richard Svensson that opens the present Shuker In MovieLand series of mini-reviews). It's all very redolent of the original Star Trek episode 'Shore Leave', as well as the classic movie Forbidden Planet. The acting is as wooden in some cases as the trees in the imaginary forest, but visually it is colourful and always entertaining. Incidentally, the original monsters created for this movie, which appear on lobby cards and publicity posters like the one presented above, never made it to the finished film, because one of its co-writers successfully lobbied to have them removed and replaced by new creations, such as said one-eyed mega-rat, a stop-motion monster produced by Jim Danforth. Click here to view an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.
LITTLE MONSTERS
Did you know that there really are monsters under your bed when you're a child? That is the premise of a very funny and highly inventive fantasy movie from the late 1980 but which I watched for the very first time on 5 January 2023 – Little Monsters. Directed by Richard Alan Greenberg, and released in 1989 by United Artists, it stars Fred Savage as lonely 11-year old Brian Stevenson who befriends the blue-skinned, highly-erratic, and very mischievous but friendly humanoid monster Maurice (Howie Mandel) that he traps under the bed of his younger brother Eric (Fred's real-life younger brother Ben). Maurice takes Brian on several extremely enjoyable visits to the alternate monster-inhabited universe existing beneath the beds of children all over America, but there is a downside to their fun and friendship – Brian discovers to his alarm that he is turning into a monster himself... Little Monsters is family-friendly fantasy at its very best, with imaginative sets for the monster realm, plus a thrilling climactic scene and an ultimately poignant ending marking the passing of childhood dreams and the onset of maturity. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and am very surprised at how little it is remembered today (not to mention how difficult it was to obtain in physical format). Click here to view an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.
ROCK MONSTER
My movie watch on 14 November 2022, courtesy of Legend TV here in the UK, was one of SyFy Channel's quirkier fantasy-themed creature features – Rock Monster. Directed by Declan O'Brien, and released in 2008 by Syfy Channel, Rock Monster is all about American student Jason (Chad Michael Collins) visiting with some friends an Eastern European village to take possession of an inherited mansion, but while travelling en route through a forest they encounter a sword in a stone – really! – and, yes indeed, Jason pulls it out in best Arthurian tradition. In so doing, however, and initially unknown to any of them, Jason's action has revitalised a gigantic rock monster containing the undead soul of an evil wizard slain by a knight 800 years ago. Said monster soon causes all manner of death and destruction in and around the village, and one of the village's inhabitants, an evil dude named Dimitar (David Figlioli) who clearly buys his clothes at a Matrix cast-off shop and possesses a blood-red keystone, is also determined to possess the sword, at any cost. This is because once the keystone is placed inside the sword's hilt and the latter raised up into the sun's light, its holder will absorb the wizard's soul from the rock monster and become both immortal and invincible. In the meantime, Dimitar controls the rock monster who does his evil bidding. Not looking good for the students – except for the crucial fact that Jason is a descendant of the selfsame knight who originally slew the wizard 800 years ago and he therefore embodies the power to repeat his ancestor's brave feat, as he alone can harness the sword's latest magical capability. Like I said, Rock Monster is a distinct oddity of a movie in which modern-day familiarity and ancient fantasy rub shoulders and share screen time often in a very uncertain, uncomfortable manner. Nevertheless, it is a fun, undemanding watch, and the rock monster is entertaining, albeit more akin to those kinds of entities found in computer games than on the big or small screen. Click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.
RAGING ANGELS
On 25 February 2022, only a couple of days after viewing the classic 1997 Keanu Reeves/Al Pacino supernatural/horror thriller movie Devil's Advocate (based on Andrew Neiderman's eponymous 1990 novel), I watched a much lesser-known but in some ways comparable fantasy/horror movie, Raging Angels. Directed by Alan Smithee, and released in 1995 by Vidmark Entertainment, Raging Angels features much the same premise as Devil's Advocate, except that this time it is not a firm of lawyers but a world peace organisation that is at the heart of the diabolical activities, fronted by a charismatic rock star named Colin (played by Michael Paré). Oddly, the sinister-looking character on the cover of the DVD here is not the villain (Colin) but the good guy, musician Chris (Sean Patrick Flanery), who never looks sinister like this in the actual movie. Chris has his work out trying to rescue his singer girlfriend Lila (Monet Mazur) when she is lured by Colin into some very grim goings-on, but who will succeed – Chris or Colin? Raging Angels also stars Shelley Winters and Diane Ladd, and features plenty of Heavy Metal/Glam Rock tracks along the way, not to mention a climactic sky-hosted angel-demon battle of truly animated activity, in every sense. Click here to view an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.
CRYSTAL SKULLS
Arriving home from an appointment earlier than I'd expected on 2 August 2022, I was just in time to catch on the UK's Legend (formerly Horror) retro TV channel the sci fi movie Crystal Skulls, which I'd wanted to watch for some time. Directed by Todor Chapkanov, and released in 2014 by SyFy Channel, Crystal Skulls is all about 13 legendary ancient crystal skulls reputedly hidden in various secret locations around the world. Dying zillionaire William Hadden (played by David Rintoul) has managed to locate and retrieve 12 of them and now seeks the 13th, in the belief that when they are all united, the energy that they will release will cure his cancer. However, all does not go to plan when the 12 that he has already acquired and placed together begin emitting powerful beams of energy, resulting in an enormous electromagnetic pulse that shuts down much of Western Europe's power supplies. And when gung-ho NASA soldier Colonel Bailey (J.R. Esposito) tries to destroy them, events take an even more dangerous turn – as in the onset of the apocalypse! The world can only be saved from imminent annihilation if the 13th skull is found and placed alongside the other 12. So off sets rogue professor John Winston (Richard Burgi), armed with a book of notes that his lost father made when he had – seemingly unsuccessfully – sought the very same skull many years previously. Will he save the day – and all other days to come, for that matter? Indiana Jones trekked much the same movie trail in far greater style and spectacle, but this low-budget alternative, filmed in Bulgaria, is still a very watchable movie, and for me was well worth the wait to see it. Click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube.
THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE)
And finally: On 8 October 2022 I returned home from a car boot sale with a big bag full of dumped unsorted DVDs. After I went through these very welcome freebies, I discovered several that were new to me and which I decided to keep to add to my own collection. I also found one truly notorious Dutch monster movie, and in its so-labelled "Uncut, Uncensored, Director's Cut" version, no less. So, albeit not without some trepidation, based upon what I knew from having read and heard tell about this film, I watched it later that day. Directed by Tom Six, who also wrote and co-produced it, and released in 2010 by Bounty Films, this truly grotesque "mad scientist creates human monster/body horror" flick was entitled The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Yes indeed, it's that one! In it, said mad scientist, retired surgeon Dr Josef Heiter (played by Dieter Laser), abducts three young people (a male Japanese tourist and two female American tourists), drugs them, then, while they're unconscious, sews them together so that when they awaken they discover to their horror that they're now a three-segment monstrosity, linked to one another in an anus-to-mouth-to-anus-to-mouth human chain so as to yield internally a single continuous gastrointestinal tract! As a zoologist, I was probably less shocked by this notorious film than various friends who've viewed it in the past have been, especially as the infamously repellent aspects involving how this 'human centipede' feeds its three segments mercifully occurs either off-screen or are only implied via deft viewer-shielded camera angles when on-screen. Also, for me its twisted premise is in reality so profoundly ridiculous that I found it impossible to take the movie even remotely seriously anyway. Nevertheless, I shan't be viewing it again – or either of its two sequels (which are said to be far more explicit). If you want to know more about this bizarre movie, you'll have to read it up for yourself, or view the official G-rated trailer for it currently on YouTube if you so wish, but I shan't be providing a link to it here.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment