THE GIANT CLAW, AND SO MUCH MORE! MINI-REVIEWING ANOTHER SIX SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES

 

Publicity poster for The Giant Claw (© Fred F. Sears/Clover Productions/Columbia Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Here are another half-dozen mini-reviews of science fiction and fantasy movies that I've watched of late, or very late!

 

 

Another two publicity posters for The Giant Claw (© Fred F. Sears/Clover Productions/Columbia Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE GIANT CLAW

On 19 July 2023, after a mere 64 years since first showing my face in this weird world of ours, I finally watched (in the shape of a very decent colorized version) that classic 'so bad that it's good' 1957 monster movie The Giant Claw, directed (and also narrated) by Fred F. Sears, and released by Columbia Pictures. To be fair, the actual storyline (gigantic alien bird from an antimatter galaxy attacks and destroys numerous military aircraft over North America) and acting (lead star was Jeff Morrow, as civil aeronautical engineer Mitch MacAfee) are decent enough for a 1950s B-movie of this genre. Instead, the problem lies almost entirely with its metaphorical elephant in the drawing room or, to be more literal, its giant bird in the skyline! Owner of this movie's titular talon(s), the bargain-basement model bird utilised is not just fowl but foul – it resembles the kind of tawdry, rubber-necked, bent-beaked ultra-cheapo 'prize' that you might find yourself taking home (or dropping into the nearest garbage bin) after successfully shooting a series of floating plastic ducks at a downtown funfair! Once it makes its first appearance, any hope of taking the movie even remotely seriously thereafter is entirely lost, its mad glazed gaze staring into the camera through a pair of enormous white ping-pong ball-like eyes, and its scrawny plumage recalling an irredeemably clapped-out feather duster! In other words, The Giant Claw is precisely the kind of monstrously crazy creature feature that I just had to review here in my movie blog, especially as I'd previously read so much about it (Morrow confessed in an interview, for instance, that he had crept incognito into a cinema screening this film at its premiere and was so ashamed at the laughter and jeers that arose from the audience each time that the bird appeared on screen that he lost no time in creeping back out in case someone recognised him!; and Ray Harryhausen had originally been selected to create the bird but the movie's budget was so low that they had to use a cut-price alternative model creator in Mexico City instead). And now, finally, I've actually viewed it in all its horrendous glory. A total turkey that's strictly for the birds? Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube and decide for yourselves! Or click here if you'd like to watch free of charge on YouTube the entire colorized movie version that I watched on there.

 

 

A couple of publicity posters for The Hidden (© Jack Sholder/Heron Communications, Inc./Mega Entertainment/New Line Cinema – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE HIDDEN

On 25 October 2024, I finally watched a classic 1980s sci fi movie that I'd long intended to see – The Hidden. Directed by Jack Sholder and released in 1987 by New Line Cinema, it's all about an evil half-insect/half-slug alien that physically occupies a human host to make him/her do its violent will, thereby turning its victim into a homicidal killer before exiting when the host is killed by police etc, and then surreptitiously entering a new human host. Its ultimate goal is to enter and control the next President of the USA, but on its trail is an indefatigable alien law enforcer in the human guise of fake FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher (played by Kyle MacLachlan), assisted by cynical LAPD cop Detective Tom Beck (Michael Nouri), who for much of the film has no idea what on Earth (literally!) is happening. He is particularly perplexed as to why hitherto law-abiding citizens are abruptly turning into mass murderers, until Gallagher eventually has no option but to tell him the jaw-dropping truth. The Hidden is a very tense, thrilling movie that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout, thereby fully justifying this claim as made in one of its posters included here, culminating in a literally explosive climax that at long last publicly exposes the alien villain in its revolting true form to an astonished, horrified human audience, followed by a most unexpected but very moving, touching finale. Highly recommended!! A follow-up film, The Hidden II, was released in 1993, in which it is revealed that the bug/slug alien from the original movie had secretly laid some eggs before being killed, and these are now beginning to hatch – uh-oh… I'll have to seek out this sequel and watch it at some stage. Meanwhile, please click here to watch an official trailer for the original movie on YouTube.

 

 

A publicity poster and an official VHS video of Curse of the Crystal Eye (© John Tornatore/New Horizons – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

CURSE OF THE CRYSTAL EYE

My movie watch on 27 March 2024 was Curse of the Crystal Eye. Directed by Joe Tornatore and released in 1991 by New Horizons, this is one of a seemingly countless number of action/adventure movies spawned by other studios in the wake of Paramount's immensely-successful Indiana Jones blockbusters, in which a rebel character seeks ancient treasure and faces untold life-threatening challenges during his daring quest. In this particular offering, the rebel in question is ex-mercenary Luke Ward (played by Jameson Parker), who is gifted a sizeable priceless crystal that acts as an eye to guide him and his romantic-interest sidekick, namely diplomat's daughter Vickie Philips (Cynthia Payne in her final big-screen role), to the fabled long-hidden treasure of none other than Arabian Nights thief-leader Ali Baba. And guess what? Before you can say "Open Sesame", he and Vickie plus their back-up team of brawny mercenaries duly find the cave in which the ancient temple containing the treasure is concealed – but this is just the beginning, as the cave does not relinquish its splendorous contents quite so easily. Nor are they alone and unchallenged in their mission to relieve the cave of said contents... Curse of the Crystal Eye is an innocuous and mildly entertaining but instantly-forgettable adventure flick that passes 90 minutes' worth of time during a rainy spring afternoon or chilly winter evening, but signally lacks the much-vaunted fiery dragons promised in its publicity material. Shucks! Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube, or click here to watch the entire movie on there, free of charge..

 

 

French publicity poster for Pitch Black plus this movie's alien life-form the bioraptor (© David Twohy/Grammercy Pictures/Interscope Communications/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

PITCH BLACK

On 11 August 2024, I watched the sci fi movie Pitch Black, directed by David Twohy and released in 2000 by Universal Pictures. Pitch Black is the first entry in the Chronicles of Riddick film franchise, and it stars Vin Diesel as dangerous, taciturn, and thoroughly enigmatic criminal Richard Riddick. He is one of several passengers to survive the crash-landing of their space-craft on a mysterious desert planet seemingly devoid of all life forms – until an eclipse blocks out its suns. Then the terrifying bioraptors emerge from their caves – very large winged horrors that slaughter most of the passengers as they bid desperately to survive these nocturnal nightmares. A reluctant Riddick decides to help the other passengers, equipped as he is with specially-modified eyes that now possess perfect night vision – very useful during an eclipse where darkness brings forth monstrous entities of the murderous kind, Mercifully, however, these killer creatures are physically wounded by bright light, so the passengers strive frantically to equip themselves with any kind of light source (even capturing tiny bioluminescent creatures inside transparent glass jars to use as living lanterns – these creatures are actually the bioraptors' larvae), and pray that the eclipse will only be of short duration. The bioraptors are superbly designed, totally alien in form, and are seen clearly enough (even in dark scenes), frequently enough, and long enough for my interest to be maintained throughout. So much so, in fact, that I now intend to watch the other three entries (one of which is actually an animated featurette) presently in this series, with a fifth due out in 2025. Very enjoyable. Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

 

 

Three publicity posters for Synchronic (© Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead/XYZ Films/Patriot Pictures/Rustic Films/Well Go USA Entertainment - – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

SYNCHRONIC

My movie watch on 8 May 2024 was the sci fi thriller Synchronic. Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Benson also wrote and co-produced it), and released in 2019 by Well Go USA Entertainment, it stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan as New Orleans paramedics Steve and Dennis. They are also best friends, and are dealing with a series of grisly deaths linked to a mysterious new designer drug after which this movie is named. When Dennis's teenage daughter Brianna vanishes without trace, however, Steve learns from the drug's guilt-ridden creator its top-secret but shocking unexpected side-effect. Whereas adults with a calcified pineal gland who take a tablet of Synchronic can visualise the past and appear in it as ghost-like entities that can be injured or even killed there but physically remain in the present, youngsters with a non-calcified pineal who take a tablet are bodily transported into the past, and without a second tablet they are stuck there, forever! Steve has recently learnt that he has a pineal cancer, which has prevented his pineal gland from calcifying – and so, unlike most adults, if he takes a Synchronic tablet he can actually visit the past physically. Consequently, he uses a stash of tablets to search for Brianna in the past, but will be find her before his stash runs out, especially as Synchronic's creator has meanwhile bought up every available supply of it and destroyed them all before committing suicide? The film would have been interesting were it not so remorselessly bleak, and dark – in every sense. Not only was it overwhelmingly depressing, but also it seemed to have been shot almost entirely at night, filling the screen with shadows and near pitch-black vistas for far too much of its 102-minute running time. Even when Steve visited the past it was almost always at night. Did the studio forget to pay their electricity bill, I wonder? Synchronic offers an unusual premise, certainly, and provides a very poignant ending, but overall it was far too depressing for my tastes. Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

 

 

Two publicity posters for The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (© Henry Levin/George Pal/George Pal Productions/Avernus Productions/MGM – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM

On 12 April 2024, I sought out and, after owning it for many years, finally watched my sell-thru video of the classic 1960s fantasy movie The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, which was co-directed by Henry Levin and George Pal (with Pal also producing it), and also extensively featured marionettes created by Pal for the fairytale segments. Filmed in spectacular curved-screen Cinerama, and released in 1962 by MGM, it is basically a largely imaginary, highly romanticised history of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the two 19th-Century German brothers who famously collected and chronicled many of their homeland's traditional folktales. In the present movie, however, only Wilhelm (played by Laurence Harvey) is portrayed in this way, with Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm) presented as a highbrow law scholar who initially has neither time nor patience for his brother's fairytales, but is eventually won over to his cause, helping Wilhelm with his collating and preserving of them in published book form. Interspersed between the film's biographical storyline are three of their collected fairytales – 'The Dancing Princess' (a constricted version of 'The 12 Dancing Princesses'), 'The Cobbler and the Elves', and 'The Singing Bone', the latter two featuring some wonderful Pal puppetry/stop-motion animation, especially the dragon in 'The Singing Bone', and all three of them are sumptuously staged. A host of famous names also appear, including Russ Tamblyn, Barbara Eden, Jim Backus, Terry-Thomas, Claire Bloom, Martita Hunt, and Yvette Mimieux. This is a delightful movie very reminiscent in execution and whimsical treatment of its two sibling subjects' lives of the 1952 movie musical Hans Christian Andersen with regard to its own titular storyteller (played by Danny Kaye). Grimm by name but certainly not grim by nature, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is definitely a fun-filled, thoroughly enchanting film for all the family to enjoy. Please click here to watch an official trailer for this movie on YouTube.

Finally: 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.

 

George Pal's stop-motion dragon model from The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (© Henry Levin/George Pal/George Pal Productions/Avernus Productions/MGM – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

FANTASIA AND THE MANDELA EFFECT? RECALLING A PERPLEXING MOVIE MYSTERY FROM MY CHILDHOOD

 

The first of two publicity posters for Fantasia that remind me of the mystifying enie-containing example that I am certain I saw back in the late 1960s (© Walt Disney Productions/RKO Radio Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Just for a change, today's Shuker In MovieLand is not a movie (or TV show) review, but is instead a recollection of a movie mystery that has persistently perplexed me ever since I experienced it back in childhood during the late 1960s. So I've decided to document it here, in case any of my blog's readers can assist me in finally solving it.

Almost exactly five years ago to the day, on 22 November 2019, I experienced a potential Mandela Effect moment (click here for another, very famous/infamous movie-related example (Kazaam) featuring this mysterious phenomenon – and also featuring a genie!!) – i.e. discovering that I was totally unable to locate something that until now I had always been absolutely certain had definitely existed.

It concerns Walt Disney's 1940 movie masterpiece Fantasia, a multi-directorial fusion of classical music and classic animation.

Back in the late 1960s, when I was 8 or 9 years old, Fantasia was shown in my little English home town's exceedingly small one-screen cinema, but for one day only, and which, to my great frustration, just so happened to be a school day. Happily, however, knowing how much I (as a massive Disney animation fan) had always wanted to see this film and that this might well be my only chance to do so for some years (back in those far-distant pre-video/DVD/internet times, Disney movies were only viewable every so many years when they were periodically re-released by Disney to cinemas), Mom made sure that we went to see it that evening, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially as I'd read so much about it down through the years as a child.

 

My two official Walt Disney figurines of Hyacinth the Hippo, one of the incongruous ballet dancers featured in the hilarious Dance of the Hours segment (which also happens to be my favourite segment) from Fantasia; the left-hand figurine actually pirouettes when you wind her up! (figurines © Walt Disney Studios / photo (© Dr Karl Shuker)

All of this therefore made one aspect particularly puzzling for me. The cinema in question (now long gone) had a very large vertical display window looking out onto the street in which a publicity poster would always be placed in order to advertise to passers-by the movie being shown at that particular time. I can still well remember the official Disney-supplied publicity poster for Fantasia that had been placed there on that single day when this movie was being shown at this cinema.

It consisted of a dark background (a deep midnight blue, as I recall) edged by a collection of characters from this movie's several individual segments, including Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, various nature entities from The Nutcracker, some mythological creatures from Pastoral, assorted balletic animals from Dance of the Hours...and (about halfway down the poster's right-hand edge) a blue genie!

Needless to say, as a well-informed Disney fan I knew full well that no genie, blue or otherwise, featured anywhere in Fantasia, a fact amply reinforced by the unequivocal non-appearance of any such entity in this movie's screening that I watched at cinema that evening, so its inclusion in the poster always perplexed me – and even more so when, over 20 years later, I viewed the 1992 animated Disney movie Aladdin and realised to my great surprise that the Robin-Williams-voiced blue genie featuring in it bore more than a passing resemblance to that out-of-place version I'd always remembered so clearly from that late-1960s Fantasia cinema poster!

And so it was that on 22 November 2019, when for some unknown reason the memory of this curious movie poster from my young days long ago popped into my head once again, I decided to track it down online, as I would like to have a picture of it on file, if only as a fondly-recalled memento of my childhood. But could I find it? Not a chance!

 

The blue genie from Disney's 1992 animated movie Aladdin (© John Musker/Ron Clements/Walt Disney Feature Animation/Buena Vista Pictures Distribition – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I did find two different Fantasia posters that both recalled to various extents the one that I had seen back in the 196os – one of them opens this current blog post of mine, and the other one closes it – except of course that neither of them contains the elusive blue genie.

So then, when viewing this poster on that fateful evening in the late 1960s when I watched the movie at the cinema, did I momentarily enter a parallel dimension in which such a poster truly existed? This is the dramatic explanation that the Mandela Effect proposes in cases like this.

The less radical alternative explanation is that I only thought I'd seen a genie on that poster. The problem with this notion, however, is that as a keen birdwatcher from the earliest of ages, my powers of accurate observation were already well-trained by then, so I would not have mistaken some other character on that poster for a genie, especially as I already knew all of them, being very familiar with this film from reading so much about it beforehand, as already noted here. Moreover, there is no other character in Fantasia that looks anything remotely like a genie anyway.

Consequently, my mystery of the seemingly non-existent yet tenaciously-remembered Fantasia genie remains unresolved. So, does anyone else who was a child of the 1960s recall seeing a genie-containing Fantasia poster? Or has anyone ever encountered a picture of such a poster online? If so, I'd love to see your comments below!

Finally: 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.

 

The second of two publicity posters for Fantasia that remind me of the mystifying enie-containing example that I am certain I saw back in the late 1960s (© Walt Disney Productions/RKO Radio Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

GUNS AKIMBO

 

Two versions of Guns Akimbo, the left-hand DVD containing the full, uncut 18-Certificate version, the DVD on the right containing the slightly cut 15-Certificate version (© Jason Lei Howden/Occupant Entertainment/Four Knights Film/Maze Pictures/Cutting Edge/The Electric Shadow Company/Umedia/Ingenious Media/WS Filmproduktion/Deutscher Filmforderfonds/FilmFernsehrFonds Bayern/Hyperion Entertainment/New Zealand Film Commission/Saban Films/Altitude Film Distribution/Leonine Distribution/Madman Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My film watch on 16 October 2024 was Guns Akimbo, as recommended recently to me by a fellow movie fan on Facebook.

Directed and written by Jason Lei Howden, released jointly in 2019 by Saban Films (in North America), Altitude Film Distribution (UK), Leonine Distribution (Germany and Austria), and Madman Entertainment (Australia and New Zealand), and filmed in Germany and New Zealand, Guns Akimbo is basically an action-packed but relentlessly-violent dark comedy/sci fi/crime thriller on steroids, and set in an alternative near future.

It stars Daniel Radcliffe, in a role (albeit still as the hero) about as far removed from his Harry Potter movies as it is possible to imagine – and then some! (Although his character in Horns – click here to read my review of that movie – may run it a close second!) But don't take my word for all of this – here's what IMDb has to say about Guns Akimbo via a very succinct but accurate summary of its veritable rollercoaster of a plot:

Miles [played by Daniel Radcliffe] is stuck in a dead-end programming job. Still in love with his ex-girlfriend Nova [Natasha Liu Bordizzo], he spends his waking hours between pining for her and scouring the internet as a social-justice troll, cowardly leaving anonymous insults to those who post objectionable content online. Meanwhile a cyber-gang, called Skizm, is running an ultra-violent game across his city, in which violent criminals fight to the death for the entertainment of an online audience of millions. Miles feels safe and secure insulting the sick audience of this game, but soon finds himself abducted and thrust into the game, forced to fight with an insane, gun-crazed, escaped lunatic [a female assassin named Nix, played by Samara Weaving]. His only tools, but also his biggest handicap, are the two huge pistols that have been literally bolted onto his hands. Initially, Miles's lifetime of running from his problems pays off as he – barely – manages to elude his seemingly unstoppable opponent, but when Nova's life is threatened unless he takes an active part in the game, he must finally stop running and overcome his fears to fight for the girl he loves.

Scorching along at a blistering pace that never pauses for a second all through its 90-odd-minute action-pummelling running time, peppered with as many bullets as there are expletives – and there are innumerable expletives – the movie itself plays like a maximum-speed computer video game, which in essence is what its plot is, but a game featuring real people in a real-life setting who suffer real-life deaths.

And if you're wondering how all of that can possibly happen so brazenly, in full view of the police yet unchallenged by them, it's because they are well and truly ensconced in Skism's cash-cached pocket. So Miles can expect no help from them.

Guns Akimbo is not my usual kind of movie, but it is so outrageously OTT, and it also greatly benefits from Radcliffe's very successful combining of non-stop frenetic action with black but broad comedy. This very effectively lightens what otherwise would be an unrelenting bloodfest, albeit one of a graphic comic-book nature rather than anything even remotely realistic (thankfully!), boasting as it does a body count of uncountable, unaccountable proportions.

It also sports a pumping soundtrack, including rocking tracks by the likes of Iggy Pop, Rick James, and Cypress Hill, plus two superb pounding cover versions by American industrial metal band 3Teeth. One of these is of British glam rock band The Sweet's smash hit single 'Ballroom Blitz', and the other one is of Dead Or Alive's classic UK #1 single 'You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)'.

In short, Guns Akimbo is certainly a movie that moves, in top gear and beyond at all times, so my attention and interest never flagged even for an instant throughout it. Consequently, action/crime-thriller fans and computer video game geeks alike will love it, I'm sure – as, albeit very unexpectedly, did I!

Last but not least: Nix has named her much-used pistol Kindness, and has also written along its side this seemingly odd name for a death-dealing weapon – until of course you suddenly realise that when she is shooting people dead with it, she is quite literally killing them with Kindness! Quality!

Of the two Guns Akimbo DVDs whose photos open this movie review, I own and watched the version depicted on the right, i.e. the slightly edited 15-Certificate one, and that was immensely violent – how much more so, therefore, was the uncut 18-Certificate version depicted on the left?! The mind boggles!

Anyway, if you'd like to immerse yourself albeit briefly in Skism's played-for-real killer computer game of death within which Miles finds himself lethally trapped and unceasingly targeted by his Kindness-wielding nemesis Nix, please click here and here to watch a couple of truly explosive official Guns Akimbo trailers on YouTube.

Also: 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.

 

SOCIETY

 

Publicity poster for Society (© Brian Yuzna/Wild Street Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Many years ago, I turned on the TV one evening and out of sheer boredom watched a movie whose plot was unknown to me, as was its title, because I'd missed the opening credits. It starred Billy Warlock as a seemingly disturbed teenager named Bill (but also called Billy by some characters) who didn't fit in with either his rich Beverly Hills family (mother, father, and sister) or the rest of society there, so much so that he secretly suspected he'd been adopted, and he was now seeing a psychiatrist at his father's behest.

As this mystery – and mysterious – movie progressed, Billy experienced several strange sights involving various locals, including his own sister. Jenny, who in one scene seemed momentarily to contort her body into a bizarre, anatomically-impossible position, as did another young woman in a later scene. But clearly these were simply hallucinations, figments of Billy's fevered imagination...weren't they?

Slowly but surely, however, events became ever more strange, ever more sinister. Something was definitely very wrong here, but nothing prepared me for the unutterably unreal, shockingly surreal climax, in which everything was finally revealed (in every sense too!), and which is unquestionably one of the most eye-popping, jaw-dropping, brain-bursting 'wtf scenes' that I have ever witnessed in any film!

Even if I hadn't revealed its title by heading this present review with it, many of the more informed film aficionados reading the above summary would have already guessed by now the identity of this truly bizarre movie, as there is nothing else out there that is remotely like it, but it took me a long time back in those pre-internet days to do so. Eventually, however, I discovered that it was called Society, was directed by Brian Yuzna in his directorial debut, and was originally released in 1989 by Wild Street Pictures.

On 27 August 2024, around 30 years after watching it all unsuspectingly on TV, I rewatched Society, but this time on DVD, in its full-length, uncut version, and from the very beginning. In so doing, I discovered a scene half-hidden by the opening credits that hints at what to expect, but which I'd not viewed or known about first time round, due to having missed the movie's beginning, thus explaining why the grotesque climactic revelation came as such a shattering surprise. And what is that revelation?

SPOILER ALERT – Read no further if you don't want to know!

Here it is.

After Billy escapes from a hospital where he has been forcibly taken as a supposed corpse (long story…), he returns home to confront his parents once and for all, only to find a sizeable party taking place there – but this is no ordinary party!

To Billy's horror and disbelief, his parents and sister as well as many of the guests, including his psychiatrist, are all engaged in a terrifying orgy, one in which a lot more than mere sex is taking place, although it is true to say that there is certainly plenty of flesh on show!. Incredibly, they are physically melding and melting into each other, a process dubbed shunting by this movie's producers, their bodies' flesh sucking and slurping and squelching and sliding into and onto each other, a vast amorphous abomination of obscene pulsating protoplasm – but even that is not the worst of it.

They are holding one of Billy's friends, David (Tim Bartell), captive, and it becomes swiftly apparent that these shapeless monstrosities previously in human form are intending to devour him, via some hideously intrusive means – and indeed they do. Not for the squeamish, I might add, though amazingly there is literally no blood to be seen anywhere in this stomach-churning scene, but the unholy melding of flesh in all its voyeuristic vision of revulsion is horrific enough for there to be no need for any additional gore.

Moreover, after the doomed David is consumed by these incorporeal nameless ones, who reveal that they constitute an alternate species that has always existed and which devours lower-class humans (this entire movie satirises society living off those it deems are beneath it), Billy is next on the menu, having been captured by his psychiatrist while still in (mostly) human form. Happily, for Billy's sake, however, one of the other guests, who is of this same shape-shifting, shunting species but has not become part of the current abhorrent assimilation, remaining instead in her usual guise as a young woman named Clarisa (Devin DeVasquez), just so happens to have taken a romantic liking to him. So she rescues him, and together with Billy's best friend, Milo (Evan Richards), who has surreptitiously arrived in the hope of assisting him, they flee the house and drive away. The end.

Or is it? Because here is a very strange thing.

When I watched Society for the first time, roughly three decades ago on TV, I distinctly recall that while in this house of horror, Billy had covertly tampered with its gas supply, and that as they drove away into the distance at the end, the house suddenly exploded – a fitting fate for the revolting life-form(s) inside it. Yet no such scene was featured in the full-length DVD version that I watched in August, nor is it present in a version presently viewable on YouTube (see later). But this is not all.

The very next day after watching it on DVD, I mentioned having done so to an extremely knowledgeable film buff friend, John, who remarked without any prompting from me whatsoever that he particularly remembered the finale "when the house blows up"! Needless to say, therefore, he was most surprised when I told him that although I remembered it too, this scene seems no longer to exist. So as it appears unlikely that we both independently imagined an identical false ending, what has happened to the house-exploding one? I have researched this mystery online, yet can find no mention anywhere of the house exploding. Another example of the Mandela Effect? (Click here for more movie-related info concerning this anomaly presented and discussed by me.)

The body-shunting scene is a truly gruesome sight to behold (and if you don't believe me, click here if you dare, to watch a segment of it on YouTube; incidentally, this segment is labelled on there as 'Society Ending', but it's not, because the escape of Billy, Milo, and Clarisa isn't included). Nevertheless, it is also an incredible feat of on-screen special effects, including extensive prosthetics, and was achieved by internationally-renowned Japanese sfx/make-up supremo Joji Tani – or, as he is much better known to his legion of fans globally, Screaming Mad George. He has designed and devised make-up and special effects for many significant fantasy and sci fi movies, including Big Trouble In Little China, Predator, some of the Nightmare On Elm Street and Silent Night films (click here for my review of the first Elm Street entry), The Bite (reviewed by me here), and Progeny, plus many more.

A sequel movie, provisionally entitled Society 2: Body Modification, was in development as of 2013, but nothing more has apparently been heard of it for quite some time now. However, after acquiring the comic-book rights to Society, two sequels in comic-book format were published in 2002 and 2003 respectively by Rough Cut Comics.

Would I recommend this film? If you enjoy singularly grotesque, gross-out, bizarre, macabre, and totally off-the-wall comedy/horror flicks of the indisputably crazy kind, the chances are that you're gonna love it! Conversely, let's just say that if you don't like body-horror fests featuring gallons of glutinous shunting slime and semi-fluid melding flesh, Society may not be the movie for you!

But don't take my word for it – click here to view an official Society trailer on YouTube; or click here to watch the entire movie, as it is currently free to watch on YouTube.

Finally: 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.

 

CRYPTOZOO

 

Publicity poster for Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

What if someone well-meaning but ultimately misguided decided to create a Jurassic Park-like establishment, yet populated it not with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but instead with mythical monsters and cryptozoological mystery beasts – on the idealistic yet somewhat ingenuous assumption that because they should at least in theory be safer behind bars, albeit ensconced within this veritable crypto-utopia, than risking capture or even worse out in their natural wild habitats, they would therefore actively prefer to be in captivity?

That is the basic premise of an extraordinary adult-oriented animated movie set in San Francisco's late 1960s hippy 'Flower Power' period that I watched on 7 August 2024 – just a day after watching Mad God (click here to read my review of it) and two days after watching The Primevals (click here to read my review of it), thereby concluding my long-planned viewing of these three wholly independent but equally exceptional yet by no means widely-known animated or semi-animated movies. Directed and written by Dash Shaw, and released in 2021 by Magnolia Pictures, this now duly-watched third movie is entitled – what else in light of its premise but? – Cryptozoo.

Unfortunately, however, the US military see these entities (which are all termed cryptids in this film, irrespective of each example's respective scientifically undiscovered vs wholly mythological status) as being potential bio-weapons. Think what could be achieved with a platoon of petrifying gorgons, or a phalanx of flying horses, a herd of harpoon-horned unicorns, or, above all else, a small yet potentially invaluable dream-devouring baku that could be trained to consume anyone's dreams that were anti-governmental?

Sure enough, the military duly hire a talented but merciless cryptid hunter named Nicholas (voiced by Thomas Jay Ryan) who utilises a traitorous faun, Gustav (Peter Stormare), to track down and capture the baku. Opposing their plans, however, are the staff of the Cryptozoo, especially its elderly owner Joan (Grace Zabriskie) and her principal assistant Lauren Grey (Lake Bell), a veterinarian cryptozoologist, plus a friendly gorgon named Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia). But when meddling trespasser Amber (Louisa Krause) releases all of the zoo's cryptids, total havoc swiftly ensues.

How will all this chaos resolve itself, will the baku evade capture, and in the final analysis could it be that the zoo's staff need the cryptids more than they need them?

Winning the Innovative Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival that aptly hosted its global premiere on 29 January (aptly because that was the birthday of my late mother, Mary Shuker, who had always supported and shared my lifelong cryptozoological interests), Cryptozoo took four years to animate, from 2016 to 2020. And whereas the traditional hand-drawn mode utilised has yielded a relatively simplistic style (especially with regard to how the human characters are depicted), it is exceedingly colourful, exhibiting a very distinctive beauty and imagery wholly unlike the full-length CGI-laden animated movies more frequently released nowadays. Indeed, both in visual terms and in its philosophical approach, Cryptozoo is certainly influenced by the 'peace and love' ethos of the specific time and place in which it is set.

Its cryptids are portrayed very effectively, in particular the flying horse, camoodi, griffin, and tengu (no Mongolian death worm as far as I could see, sadly). Having said that, they were given far less screen time than I'd have liked or expected for a cryptozoology-themed film, especially as there are several slow-paced conversation-heavy sequences that warranted editing in favour of more cryptid content, I felt, when watching this movie.

Speaking of conversations, however, I should mention that quite apart from those already named above, Cryptozoo's impressive vocal performers also include the likes of Michael Cera and Zoe Kazan.

Needless to say, cryptozoologists and zoomythologists are likely to love this film, as will animation traditionalists, but I'm sure that its appeal will extend beyond those specific categories of movie viewer if given a chance.

So why not do that? For Cryptozoo can currently be watched in its 95-minute entirety free of charge here, on DailyMotion. Or if you'd prefer to view a couple of trailers for it first, please click here (for a general one) and here (for a baku-themed one) to do so on YouTube.

Finally: 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.

 

And just in case you were wondering what it looks like, here is the baku as it appears in Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MAD GOD

 

Publicity poster for Mad God (© Phil Tippett/Tippett Studio/Shudder – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 5 August 2024, I watched a stop-motion animation-featuring movie that had taken a staggering 56 years to complete – The Primevals, finally released in 2023, and reviewed by me here. A day later, on 6 August 2024, I watched an almost exclusively stop-motion animation movie with another seriously long production period, over 30 years this time. The creation of modern-day stop-motion movie maestro Phil Tippett, but very much an adult horror movie in nature, as opposed to the family-friendly stop-motion animation-featuring fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen, it is entitled Mad God (aka Phil Tippett's Mad God in some sources), with imho the emphasis very much on mad.

Not only directed but also produced and written by Phil Tippett, who also contributed to the cinematography, and released in 2021 by Shudder, Mad God is as much a series of loosely-connected sequential vignettes as a single cohesive, coherent story. As for its content and tone, the prologue is more than sufficiently daunting to inform you in no uncertain manner of what to expect from the movie itself. Here is that prologue, which consists of a quote from the biblical book of Leviticus:

If you disobey Me and remain hostile to Me, I will act against you in wrathful hostility. I, for My part, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless idols. I will spurn you. I will lay your cities in ruin and make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not savor your pleasing odors. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle it shall be appalled by it. And you I will scatter among the nations and I will unsheath the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin.

The principal character in Mad God is an enigmatic anonymous humanoid figure clad in iron, wearing a face-obscuring gas-mask, armed with a tattered map, and carrying a suitcase, who is named in the credits merely as the Assassin. He(?) descends inside a diving bell into a ruined, infernal, post-apocalyptic city populated by indescribably hideous monsters and monstrosities, the stronger ones taking savage, sadistic delight in mutilating and slaughtering the weaker ones with unnervingly, unnaturally casual indifference. Even the Assassin himself does not shrink from nonchalantly trampling underfoot a squabbling group of tiny gnome-like entities.

But perhaps the most stark scenes of wanton cruelty are those featuring what appear to be identical (cloned?) humanoid but faceless drones or slave workers carrying out the Mad God's will with regard to extensive construction work, overseen mercilessly by flogging foremen. Moreover, health & safety guidelines are conspicuous only by their absence here, as the drones are regularly maimed, decapitated, or worse by flying sections of machinery, metal shards, etc. And when they have served their purpose, these poor helpless, hapless souls meekly line up to throw themselves down into a deep fiery pit where they are instantaneously incinerated. If ever a work force was in dire need of a representing trade union!

As for the titular mad god itself, this is seen only as a pair of eyes and a huge mouth with hideous teeth and black-scorched flesh surrounding it that appears on screens attached to a lofty tower, and utters all of its vile dictates in an unintelligible, incongruous babble of baby talk.

Meanwhile, avoiding being attacked himself, the Assassin uses his map to find and fend his way through this perilous city's grim and grimy subterranean bowels, brimming on every side with violence, horror, blood, black bile, gore, and more – a veritable vista of Hell itself, surely – until he finally reaches his destination, a location inside the base of the Mad God's tower containing an enormous pile of suitcases identical to his own.

The Assassin opens his case, takes out a bomb, and sets its clock ticking, but never discovers that the clock isn't functioning properly, because a rapacious monster, having crept up behind him unseen, now seizes him in and drags him off onto the darkness.

We next see The Assassin strapped to an operating table, fully awake, where a human surgeon crudely slices open his abdomen, and then inexplicably hauls out great quantities of jewels and books from inside it, plus copious amounts of blood and black innards, before finally pulling forth a bawling larva-like infant that a nurse hurriedly takes away.

She hands it to a huge, fantastically-designed entity resembling a Venetian plague doctor but wholly composed of a floating mass of black ribbons, who in turn takes it to a dwarfish alchemist who calmly grinds up the screaming infant into a fluid that he transmutes into powdered gold. This is then thrown up into space and creates a whole new cosmos

And that is by no means all that happens in this macabre yet mesmerising 82-minute movie, which includes hardly any audible dialogue, functioning almost wholly on a visual level – with regard to which I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it before, nor do I particularly wish to see anything like it again. Or to put it another way, every time you think that the next scene cannot possibly be more horrific than the previous ones, you are invariably proved wrong!

One professional movie reviewer described Mad God as "a cacophony of savagery and cruelty – [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror", and I know exactly what they mean!

Equally, however, I freely confess that technically and visually this is a truly astonishing spectacle. For apart from a couple of brief scenes featuring humans, Mad God is composed entirely of stop-motion animation, and is therefore a definite triumph of sorts within that specific cinematic genre. Consequently, this unique, experimental horror movie makes undeniably fascinating (albeit highly disturbing) viewing. So much so that although I may well never watch it again, as someone with a sizeable collection of animated films on DVD and video I readily recognize that any such collection demands that Mad God be included in it. And not merely because there is absolutely nothing else like it in this particular genre, but also, as noted earlier, because of its unquestionable technical brilliance. So I do plan to purchase its DVD in due course.

I simply wish that all of the highly-skilled, immensely creative, and seemingly tireless workmanship that went into producing Mad God could have instead been directed toward preparing something as beautiful as this is nightmarish. Judging from one albeit brief segment in Mad God that presents the creation of a brand-new universe, the production team could most certainly have prepared such an alternative, visually gorgeous movie, because that particular segment is indescribably exquisite and inspirational.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Mad God took over 30 years from its beginning to its release. Tippett began filming it in his spare time during the late 1980s, after working on RoboCop 2. A few years later, however, now working on Jurassic Park and seeing at first-hand the truly spectacular nature of its CGI dinosaurs (his involvement in their creation earning him an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), he shelved his own project as he feared that with the advent of CGI, stop-motion animation was now obsolete.

And there Mad God remained, in creative limbo for the next 20-odd years, until encouragement and assistance from volunteer animators and other film crew plus donations via Kickstarter combined forces in 2009 to reignite Tippett's interest in it and relaunch work upon it, which continued in stages until the film was completed in 2920, and was then officially released in 2021, premiering at the 74^th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Another mammoth movie-making undertaking was finished at last, and its success has confirmed, as did that of The Primevals two years later, that the days of stop-motion animation are still far from over. Fittingly, in the Ray Harryhausen Awards for 2022, Tippett was elected to the Harryhausen Hall of Fame.

In summary: albeit an indisputably astounding feat of stop-motion animation, Mad God is not for the faint-hearted, but for those of you made of stronger stuff you can currently watch it in its entirety free of charge on DailyMotion by clicking here. Or if you prefer a more guarded approach to its bloodcurdling contents, click here to watch an official Mad God trailer on YouTube.

Finally: 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.