THE PRIMEVALS

 

A publicity poster for The Primevals, highlighting the yeti (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The stop-motion monster/sci fi movie that I watched on 5 August 2024 was a staggering 55 years in the making from original concept to eventual release last year. Thankfully, however, it took me less than a day from discovering it online on 4 August to watching it on 5 August, and what an incredible treat it was!

Directed and co-written by the veteran stop-motion film and TV animator David Allen (who had also created in 1968 the short presentation film Raiders of the Stone Ring from which this feature-length movie ultimately evolved), and released in 2023 by Full Moon Entertainment, The Primevals opens with the killing in Nepal of a huge and highly aggressive yeti by a group of sherpas, assisted by a timely avalanche. But after its enormous carcase is successfully smuggled into the United States, and as a spectacular mounted specimen is publicly displayed to great acclaim, a scientific expedition led by anthropological expert Prof. Claire Collier (played by Juliet Mills) is swiftly assembled.

Its team includes one of her ex-postgraduate students, Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul), whose controversial PhD thesis had lately been rejected because it had dared to propose that the yeti was a real, undiscovered species (as this new discovery has now sensationally confirmed), not a myth (as mainstream zoologists had always traditionally deemed it to be). And when the exotically-named Rondo Montana (Leon Russom), a both burly and brainy Indiana Jonesian ex-big-game hunter, is hired as their guide, tracker, and bodyguard, the team duly treks through the Nepalese Himalayas in the hope of observing and possibly even capturing a living yeti.

They also wish to discover an answer to the riddle of why their preserved yeti's brain contains a deep, mysterious lesion, as if something – or someone – had cut through it but without killing the creature.

What they do discover, however, is beyond their wildest dreams – and nightmares. Namely, a hidden prehistoric realm populated not only by yetis as well as by primitive hairy pithecanthropine hominids but also by a race of reptilian aliens whose spacecraft had crash-landed here 100,000 years ago, when they were much more advanced in form and benevolent in behaviour than they are now. For due to their subsequent experiments here on Earth with gene splicing in a bid to improve their form in order to survive more effectively in this chilly montane climate, they inadvertently transformed themselves into the cruel, savage, retrogressive reptiles that they are today.

So much so, in fact, that they capture yetis, subject their brains to laser-like rays that turn them hyper-belligerent, and then stage horrific gladiatorial bouts in a specially-constructed arena for their own sadistic entertainment, in which a brain-frazzled yeti is pitted against captured pithecanthropines – the poor doomed proto-humans only lasting as long as it takes the yeti to smash them into pulp with one fist, i.e. not very long at all.

But what happens to the scientific team when they too are captured by these loathsome lizard-men and released into the arena as a maddened yeti's latest opponents? I'll say no more, so that you can enjoy finding out for yourself when you watch – as watch you must! – this marvelous movie.

 

A second publicity poster for The Primevals, highlighting the reptilian aliens (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Its plot is certainly fantastical, but equally it provides plenty of adventure and escapist fun. Also, it is one of the very few sci fi movies that I can recall in which extraterrestrial aliens and cryptozoological creatures both appear, making it doubly interesting to connoisseurs of the controversial. Happily, therefore, the stop-motion reptilian aliens and yetis (supplemented by some animatronics and puppetry in certain scenes) are absolutely superb throughout – Ray Harryhausen would have definitely approved. Indeed, the entire movie is redolent of his own much-loved First Men In The Moon and The Valley of Gwangi stop-motion film classics.

Tragically, however, David Allen, who had originally conceived this movie back in the late 1960s, and had tenaciously weathered as its director its seemingly unending gestation period throughout the remainder of his life, never lived to enjoy his cinematic labour of love finally being officially released in Canada during 2023, and a year later in the United States. Instead, he had died from cancer in 1999, aged just 54, but he had completed filming the live-action scenes in Romania and most of the stop-motion ones in 1994, so he'd at least been able to see the movie in virtually finished form.

What caused such a huge delay to the movie's progression after Allen's death were finance problems and seeking a company sufficiently interested in it to provide the extensive backing and publicity that such an ambitious, enterprising project required, resulting in it being shelved, beginning a production-hell hiatus that winded up lasting roughly 20 years. But after fellow producer/director Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment stepped into the breach (Band was a longstanding friend and admirer of Allen's work, and in the 1990s had agreed to become this movie's producer), these issues were ultimately resolved, with the final stop-motion scenes being filmed in 2022 following a successful online fundraising campaign launched by Band in 2018 raising US $40,000 to finance their production – overseen by this movie's original special-effects expert, Chris Endicott.

Worth noting, incidentally, is that in addition to the standard version of this movie, a special extended director's cut, 'The David Allen Version', containing an extra seven minutes of footage, has also been produced. Of particular interest is that various additional prehistoric animals that were storyboarded but did not finally appear in the standard version are animated into this extended one, which includes, fot example, a scene featuring the team fleeing from a dinosaur-like monster.

The Primevals has only just been officially released on DVD and Blu-Ray, but for those wishing to view this movie immediately there are actually two separate full uploads of it presently on DailyMotion that you can watch and download free and legally for personal viewing if you use DM's own downloader. Click here, therefore, to access one of these uploads, the one that I watched and thoroughly enjoyed. Or, for a tantalizing taster, click here to watch on YouTube an official trailer for The Primevals.

Certainly, if you adore as I do the superb stop-motion monsters from the golden Harryhausen-led era of cryptozoology-/mythology-themed creature features, you will definitely not want to miss watching this glorious homage to those timeless, iconic movies, that's for sure!

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.

 

A third publicity poster for The Primevals, featuring both the yeti and the reptilian aliens (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

LA PASSIONE

My official UK sell-thru VHS video of La Passione (© John B. Hobbs/Chris Rea/Warner Vision – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

If ever I was despairing of ever tracking down some item that I'd long sought but always unsuccessfully, Mom would smile and say: "Everything comes to he who waits". And so true did her words prove again on 20 September 2024. Back in 1996, British rock musician Chris Rea conceived, and penned all the music for, a semi-autobiographical movie entitled La Passione (Italian for 'the passion'), which is all about a young boy growing up in northeastern England during the early 1960s but of Italian immigrant descent, and whose family has imbued him with an interest – indeed, a passion – for motor-racing, but most especially for the Ferrari team and their signature blood red racing cars. The movie charts his development from child to adult with his Ferrari infatuation undimmed, and also features several Rea-penned songs, including two wonderful ones sung divinely by Dame Shirley Bassey. In fact, it was originally hearing those songs long ago that incited an interest, a passion, all of my own – to track down the movie in which they appeared and watch it.

But as La Passione has never been released on either DVD or Blu-Ray, is not present on YouTube or other legal online movie sites that I've scoured, does not appear to have ever been screened on British TV, and with the now-rare official UK sell-thru VHS video release of it listed on auction sites for extraordinary amounts – the cheapest example currently on ebay is priced at £49.99 – finding it seemed a remote hope. Until 20 September, that is, when I walked into a local charity shop, and there, among a pile of other second-hand UK sell-thru VHS videos, all priced at just 50p, was a mint example of La Passione, which I instantly purchased. So now I was finally able to view this elusive movie, and acknowlege, as I have done so many times previously, the wisdom of my late mother's words. Six days later, on 26 September 2024, I sat down and duly watched La Passione, plus the 30-minute 'making of the movie' interview with Chris Rea that followed it, so here now is my take on this film:

Directed by John B. Hobbs, but written by Chris Rea who also composed all of its music, including all songs, and released in 1996 by Warner Vision, La Passione is an unusual movie inasmuch as it incorporates several very different film genres, and is therefore best described perhaps as a semi-autobiographical motor-racing fantasy musical, though in reality – a humdrum concept that rarely intrudes upon its story, thankfully – it is more than any of these individual or collective components.

La Passione tells the story of a young boy, Jo Maldini (played by Thomas Orange), growing up in the industrial North-East of England during the early 1960s, whose family's male members, i.e. his father (Paul Shane) and uncles, of Italian descent, are all enthusiastic motor-racing fans, following with great fervour and passion (la passione) Italy's iconic Ferrari Formula One team.

When Jo watches a F1 race for the very first time (the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix), on their humble little b/w TV, he asks his father what colour the Ferrari cars are, which at that time were the famous Ferrari 156 'sharknose' racers, and his father replies: "Blood red!". From that moment on, Jo is totally besotted with Ferrari, their cars, and especially with their world-famous real-life driver, a very charismatic German count named Wolfgang von Trips (1928-1961), who was born in Cologne, and is played in this movie by Benedick Blythe.

Indeed, to the consternation of his family, Jo becomes so infatuated with the German driver – someone whom he has never even met and who is wholly oblivious to Jo's very existence – that he lives vicariously through the life that with the typical romantic innocence of a young child he imagines such an aristocratic, super-stylish, universally-popular figure as von Trips must surely be living in his grand castle and racing in and around Europe, adored by everyone. Consequently, when a horrific crash during the Italian F1 Grand Prix race at Monza in 1961 claims the life of his hero, Jo is totally distraught.

Years later, and now a young man (played by Sean Gallagher), Jo still grieves for von Trips, but his passion for Ferrari and their blood red sharknose racers remains undiminished, even though his own life is as dull as ever. For he is consigned now to a dead-end, joyless job working in his father's ice-cream parlour, which is barely keeping afloat financially, and spending three hours every day cleaning out the ice-cream machine, which is a hard, dirty, thankless but necessary task.

One day, however, Jo hits upon a possible money-making scheme. No matter how much he washes, bathes, and showers after cleaning the ice-cream machine, he is never able to wash off his skin the strong vanilla smell of the ice cream, but to his great surprise he discovers that young women find it irresistible! As the specific vanilla formula that his father uses for his ice cream is one devised by his forefathers, handed down their family from one generation of ice-cream makers to the next, and thence to him, Jo proposes to his father that they use it as the basis for a completely new product – aftershave. However, his very traditionally-minded father is horrified by such a radical suggestion, and denounces it, and Jo, in no uncertain terms!

Totally despondent and disillusioned, Jo steals a sample of the vanilla, leaves for London, and after incorporating it into a range of products including perfume as well as aftershave under his own trade-name, La Passione, he becomes an immensely rich, mega-successful tycoon – so much so that he is at last able to turn his lifelong obsession into a tangible reality, buying every Ferrari car that he could ever want, and also spending time following the trail across Europe that his hero von Trips had once blazed.

He is even visited sometimes by the German racer's ghost, most dramatically at Monza, still driving his Ferrari sharknose, but von Trips's advice to him, combined with his own experiences, propels an increasingly jaded Jo to the stark realisation that it is the joy of a passion that counts, not all the material aspects of it, which tend only to drag it down from its elevated heights to the grim mundanity of reality, which in Jo's case includes the physical duties and responsibilities that owning and maintaining a fleet of Ferraris inevitably entails.

Consequently, Jo sells his La Passione empire to another businessman, and albeit still driving a Ferrari, though no longer a blood red one, returns to his father, who greets him warmly. His son, his prodigal son, is back, and together they will now enjoy together, to quote another Italian phrase, la dolce vita, the sweet life.

 

The real Wolfgang von Trips (centre, in red shirt), at the 1957 Argentine Grand Prix (public domain)

La Passione is a movie with a distinctly episodic structure, each episode progressing the plot yet also largely self-contained, and featuring either a segment of lush orchestral instrumental music, or a song. As noted earlier, my favourite songs are the two performed on-screen by Dame Shirley Bassey, making her on-screen movie debut here. (Moreover, it is the last movie of legendary actress Carmen Silvera, who plays Jo's stern but doting Italian grandmother.)

The first of these songs, 'Shirley Do You Own A Ferrari?', which also features Rea singing the role of Jo, is a very heartfelt and melodic but also somewhat wistful, wish-fulfilment number. It appears in a fantasy scene where the adult Jo, still working for his father at the ice cream parlour, meets Dame Shirley outside in the snow one winter morning, and he asks her in song that pertinent question after his father had mentioned how magnificent she had been on TV the previous evening. The remainder of the song is Dame Shirley's reply. Needless to say, the colour of her spectacular gown is blood red (click here to watch this lavish musical scene on YouTube).

The second is this movie's title song, 'La Passione', sung by Dame Shirley as we watch how Jo becomes a tycoon via the realisation, followed by the immense success, of his La Passione perfume and aftershave brand, and the luxurious jet-set life that he now leads, including purchasing every blood red Ferrari that catches his eye (click here to watch this heady, hedonistic musical scene on YouTube). There are also some solo Rea-sung numbers, none of which I'd heard before, but which again I enjoyed, especially 'Girl in a Sports Car' (click here to watch on YouTube this musical fantasy scene that Jo is daydreaming while alone in the ice-cream parlour) and 'When The Grey Skies Turn To Blue' (click here to watch on YouTube this very moving musical scene, the final scene in the entire movie, featuring redemption and reconciliation for both son and father), plus the devotional 'Dov'è Il Signore?' ('Where is the Lord?') sung by chorister Toby Draper (click here to listen to it on YouTube). Indeed, the soundtrack to this movie, written entirely by Rea, proved sufficiently popular when released to reach #43 in the UK album charts. And an up-tempo version of the title song, still featuring Dame Shirley but retitled ''Disco' La Passione', entered the UK singles chart, reaching #41, but placed higher in the Belgian and Dutch singles charts, and proved very popular throughout Europe.

As noted above, La Passione contains a number of fantasy scenes, supplemented by songs and even a couple of brief dance routines, which in my view makes it a musical, but then again it also features some fascinating stock footage of Formula One races from the early 1960s and in particular some rare, scarcely-seen clips of von Trips both on the racing circuit and relaxing with friends and family. In a 30-minute official 'making of the movie' interview that follows the movie itself on my video, Rea reveals that these clips were kindly loaned to him for use in the film by a tiny museum in Cologne dedicated to von Trips. In return, Rea generously made available to the museum on permanent loan, the exact replica used in La Passione of the Ferrari 156 sharknose that von Trips had raced prior to his untimely death in 1961, aged only 33. No original sharknoses still existed by the time that Rea came to make his movie (Ferrari factory policy during the early 1960s meant that they had all been scrapped), but a Lotus engineer friend offered to build a working replica for him, which he did, and this is what duly appeared in the movie and was subsequently loaned to the museum. Another replica was built by a motor-racing enthusiast, and a third one is exhibited at the Museo (formerly Galleria) Ferrari, based in Ferrari's home town of Maranello, near Moderna, Italy.

I've read quite a few professional reviews of La Passione, and have been dismayed by the negative tones and comments in some of them, which largely dismiss it as a bland, superficial vanity project. True, Rea is indeed of Italian descent and grew up in the North East of England, his father was indeed an ice cream seller, and Rea has indeed always been passionate about Ferraris, meaning that this movie was very much a personal labour of love project for him, but what is wrong with that? Such projects often provide a refreshing change from the all-too-often formulaic, repetitive nature of Hollywood studios' big-budget output, and this movie certainly does, so I totally disagree with their less than glowing assessments of it.

Anyone who harbours a heart and not a swinging block of concrete inside their chest cannot be other than moved emotionally by the young Jo's poignant desire to live the glittering life of his hero even though his own modest surroundings and background ostensibly indicate to the viewers that this ain't gonna happen any time soon, only for them to be proved wrong of course when it does – via the magic of a movie like this one! But above all, what Rea has captured so effectively on film is the movie's own title – passion, and plenty of it. And not just passion either – the power of dreams too, and above all else, the limitless, immeasurably potent potential of the imagination.

I had a friend once who stunned me into abject, open-mouthed silence when, while chatting one evening about movies that we had seen, she stated uncompromisingly that she couldn't watch anything that wasn't real. What?? Everyone is born with an imagination, but not everyone chooses to utilize it. Some, like my erstwhile friend, apparently prefer to lock it up and then throw away the key, whereas, in stark contrast, I have always obtained great delight in harnessing my own imagination in order to discover where it will take me and what it will show me. In this respect, I am reminded of another, even earlier friend, who told me that he only ever watched fantasy films, as there was already more than enough dull, unmagical reality in ordinary, everyday life without spending time watching even more of it on screen. This is my view too, though in less extreme form than his, as I do enjoy watching some non-fantasy movies in addition to fantasy ones.

The reason I bring all of this up here is because it seems to me that the film critics who denigrated La Passione and the passion, dreams, and imagination that it conveys and celebrates may themselves be somewhat lacking in those qualities, rather like my first—mentioned friend appeared to be, and may therefore be unsuitable for, possibly even incapable of, offering an unbiased, objective, and informed opinion regarding this movie.

As I am sure that you can tell, I absolutely loved La Passione, and am now even happier than before that I have finally tracked down and watched it. Consequently, if somehow you too ever locate this movie, I definitely recommend that you watch it, and also the interview with Rea afterwards. You do not need to be a motor-racing fan to enjoy it (though I'm sure that this would enhance your pleasure of it even more) – all that you need to have is an imagination, an understanding of what true passion is, and an appreciation of Chris Rea's stirring, emotive music contained in it – a love of the vocal tour de force that is the sensational and most definitely magnificent Dame Shirley Bassey wouldn't go amiss either!

I haven't been able to source an official trailer for La Passione anywhere online, but if you'd like to view for free on YouTube the entire 30-minute post-movie interview with Chris Rea concerning La Passione, which is extremely interesting and informative, please click here.

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.

 

A 1961 Ferrari 156 sharknose racer (© Calreyn88/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

 

The back cover of my official UK sell-thu VHS video of La Passione (© John B. Hobbs/Chris Rea/Warner Vision – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the second movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© J.A. Bayona/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

I launched this present blog of mine, Shuker In MovieLand, on 27 July 2020, but for quite some time prior to then I'd been posting on my Facebook home page various accounts that I'd written about movies watched by me lately. Some of these accounts were only very short, little more than micro-reviews, but certain others were longer and more detailed. I was reading through all of these recently, and it occurred to me that although I'd written them some years ago, before my blog existed, there was no reason why I couldn't, or shouldn't, post them here now, with the longer accounts reworked into full reviews, and selections of the shorter ones presented together as single multi-movie posts. So here is one of the longer ones, presenting in expanded form my original take on what subsequently proved to be the second installment from the second film trilogy within the blockbuster Jurassic Park/World movie franchise.

On 7 June 2018, I went to what was then my local cinema (now closed) and watched Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the second movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy – the latter cinematic trio serving as a sequel to the original Jurassic Park film trilogy inspired by American sci fi author Michael Crichton's eponymous 1990 novel. I'd been waiting with great anticipation for ages for this movie to be released, so that I coul finally watch it, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

Directed by J.A. Bayona, with Steven Spielberg as its executive producer, co-written by Colin Trevorrow (who directed the other two movies in the Jurassic World trilogy), and released in 2018 by Universal Pictures, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sees the return of Chris Pratt as velociraptor handler/whisperer Owen Grady, and Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing, formerly the operations manager of the dinosaur theme park Jurassic World before the mayhem of its genetically-engineered living dinosaurs and pterosaurs loose and on the rampage, as dramatically portrayed in the previous movie, Jurassic World (2015), had forced its permanent closure. The abandoned theme park, or what is now left of it, is situated on the isolated Central American island of Isla Nublar, uninhabited by humans since the park's closure, and where the escapee dinosaurs and other resurrected Mesozoic monsters are able to roam free, undisturbed, unthreatened – but not for much longer.

The island's volcano is threatening to erupt, and with devastating force, enough to make the Krakatoa eruption look like a hiccup, and which will definitely destroy all life on the island (and quite probably the island itself), including, therefore, the dinosaurs. Moreover, as they exist nowhere else on Earth (yes. I'm excluding birds from all such considerations!), this will result in a second dinosaur mass extinction, on a far smaller scale but just as comprehensive as the one that wiped them out the first time, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 million years ago.

 

Chris Pratt as Owen Grady, Blue the velociraptor, and my official Jurassic World franchise 2017 Mattel 12-inch-tall Owen Grady action figure (© J.A. Bayona/ Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Universal Pictures / © Mattel – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

To make matters even worse for the imperilled dinos, a United States Senate committee votes against US Government involvement in any plan to rescue them from their doomed island homeland before the volcano erupts. However, a ray of hope appears upon the horizon when Jurassic Park founder Dr John Hammond's now immensely rich former partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) invites Claire to his vast mansion where he and his assistant Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) discuss with her their bold plan to rescue a representative selection of the dinosaurs and relocate them to a new island sanctuary.

Inspired by this exciting news, Claire agrees to help them, by making available her knowledge of the park's systems as well as of the dinosaurs themselves. She also recruits Owen to come on board, particularly with regard to capturing Blue, the last surviving velociraptor, whom he had reared and trained, and who therefore trusts him.

However, there is treachery afoot, as they subsequently realise when they reach Isla Nublar and discover that the dinosaurs being trapped there are destined to be transported not to any island sanctuary but instead to the Lockwood mansion, where Lockwood's young orphaned granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) overhears a mysterious auctioneer named Eversoll (Toby Jones) secretly discussing plans to sell the dinosaurs to the highest bidders in a private auction to be held there. But what if any of the winning bidders choose to use their purchased dinosaurs as bio-weapons – and who at the Lockwood mansion is behind all of this skullduggery anyway? Furthermore, it turns out that the dinosaurs are not the only genetically-engineered entities in the mansion – isn't that right, Maisie?? Deep waters indeed!

The CGI dinosaurs are even more spectacular than in previous movies within this franchise, and I certainly will not be losing any sleep over their absence of feathers or any other palaeontological inconsistencies. If I can suspend disbelief to watch middle-aged men performing incredible stunts that defy physical reality and gravity in equal measure (yes, Tom Cruise, I'm thinking of the Mission: Impossible films as I write this), I can certainly do the same regarding any dinosaurian discrepancies and deviations from current mainstream opinion within the palaeo-community.

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World, the first movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

My Jurassic Park trilogy and Jurassic World  trilogy  complete DVD collection plus my Jurassic Park trilogy steelbook edition (© Steven Spielberg/Joe Johnston/Colin Trevorrow/J.A. Bayone/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

And speaking of the dinosaurs in this movie: whereas in previous Jurassic Park/World films the dinosaurs were breathtaking and dramatic, in this much darker, horror-driven entry, however, the carnivorous dinos in particular are little short of demonic at times, fully justifying this film's 12A certificate in the UK. Small children may indeed have nightmares from watching it, especially in relation to one particular scene, featuring Maisie cowering in her locked bedroom as a genetically-engineered wholly novel dino-horror called the Indoraptor that is positively fiendish in both form and behaviour seeks – and ultimately achieves – entry into her room. I'll say no more, but it's decidedly creepy, even Gothic in places.

In summary: the plot of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is nothing if not eventful, providing a toxic combination of megalomania and financial greed, plus a natural catastrophe thrown in for good measure, yielding a deadly game in which the dinos are unwitting pawns.

As for its ending: back when I first watched this movie in 2018, it seemed not so much an ending as a launch-pad for what could well be an unlimited number of sequels. Indeed, there is a brief but memorable post-credits scene that provides a very clear indication of the directions that such sequels might pursue.

With the subsequent completion of this trilogy by the release in 2022 of a third, concluding movie, Jurassic World Dominion, however, this might no longer be the case. Having said that, film franchises that have been as financially successful as this one (its six movies have collectively grossed approximately 6 billion US dollars at the box office alone!) have a tendency not to lay down and die all that easily, so who knows? It may yet be that the dinosaurs are not the only ones to be resurrected!

 

My three official Jurassic World franchise Mattel pehistoric animal action figures: my 42-inch-long Blue the velociraptor, my 30-inch-long giant mosasaur sea-lizard (the mosasaur escapes from its pool into the ocean at the beginning of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), and my 32-inch-long Brachiosaurus (the Brachiosaurus meets a tragic end in this movie) (© J.A. Bayona/ Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures / © Mattel – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

My Uni-Amblin official  Jurassic World and The Lost World: Jurassic Park metal pencil cases (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures / © Uni & Amblin – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

Incidentally, I should warn you that certain trailers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that have been highly visible online ever since its release actually offer a very slanted (even imho a quite deceptive) idea of what happens in the main part of the film. So if you still haven’t watched this movie yet but plan to do so, don't be misled by any such trailers into thinking that you already know what will be happening.

What does happen is a dynamic tour de force of escapist action, adventure, and suspense, supplemented by the stirring music of John Williams, and populated by a host of awesome CGI dinos (and also some animatronic model ones for certain close-up scenes), all of which I enjoyed immensely, juat like I did when last year I watched the above-mentioned third movie in this trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion (2022). And yes indeed, courtesy of this latter film a feathered non-avian dinosaur finally appears in the Jurassic Park/World franchise! Was it worth the wait? Be sure to watch Jurassic World Dominion and judge for yourselves!

Meanwhile, please click here to watch on YouTube an official Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer (one, moreover, that is suitably dramatic but thankfully does not contain any of the ambiguous excerpts alluded to by me earlier here).

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.

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World Dominion, the third movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

 

FROM FRANKENFISH, OCTAMAN, AND A PLANET OF APES, TO A ROBOTIC WAR DOG, THE LAST LOVECRAFT, AND A WEIRD WORLD WHERE STRINGS ARE THE THINGS! - OR, REVIEWING A SCINTILLATING SIX-PACK OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FILMS!

 

The official American DVD for Frankenfish plus two publicity posters for Battle For the Planet of the Apes and The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Chthulhu respectively (© Mark A.Z. Dippé/Columbia TriStar/Syfy / © J. Lee Thompson/APJAC Productions/20^th Century Fox / © Henry Saine/Devin McGinn/Dark Sky Films/MPI Media – all three images reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Time for another six-pack of mini-reviews of movies watched by me recently – or not so recently, as the case may be – all of which fall within the science fiction/fantasy film genre.

 

 

My official UK DVD of Frankenfish (© Mark A.Z. Dippé/Columbia TriStar/Syfy – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

FRANKENFISH

On 16 May 2024, I watched my recently-purchased DVD of the 20-year-old TV monster movie Frankenfish. Directed by Mark A.Z. Dippé, and released in 2004 by Columbia TriStar for the TV channel Syfy), Frankenfish is a very generic MM, and is all about some huge, voracious, genetically-modified Chinese snakehead fishes Channa argus let loose into a Louisiana bayou where they wreak bloodthirsty havoc upon its alligators and human inhabitants alike. Consequently, the aptly-named Sam Rivers (played by Tory Kittle), a medical examiner, is dispatched to the besieged bayou, together with biologist Mary Callaghan (China Chow), only to discover that they have as big a battle on their hands with the locals' firmly-ingrained superstitions and faith in black magic solutions to the situation as they do with the monsters themselves – which lose no time in picking off the humans, one by one... Amusingly, whoever wrote the DVD's back-cover blurb presumably had no idea what a snakehead is and was therefore led badly astray by its name (and had apparently not even watched the movie itself, in which snakeheads are accurately described). For the blurb writer described the movie's monsters as being not only "massive, genetically-engineered, flesh-eating fish" but also as having been "scientifically bred with a deadly snake"! Now that's a monster movie I'd definitely pay good money to watch!! As for this one, the monster fishes when seen briefly out of the water are ok, but as the main storyline takes place almost entirely at night, I didn't see as much of them as I'd like to have done. But in compensation, there is a very unexpected and entertainingly chilling closing scene to look out for, featuring the ever-troublesome character Dan (Matthew Rauch). If you'd like to watch an official trailer for this movie, please click here to view one on YouTube.

 

 

German publicity poster for Octaman (© Harry Essex/Filmers Guild/Heritage Enterprises Inc – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

OCTAMAN

There are movies so bad that they're really good, and there are movies so bad that they really are bad! One of the sizeable number of films that I watched during the last week of March 2024 (I was definitely in a movie-watching mood that week!), the early 1970s creature feature Octaman, falls fairly and squarely into the latter category, at least imho. Directed and written by Harry Essex (who had also previously written the screenplay for the classic 1954 monster movie Creature From the Black Lagoon), and released in 1971 by Heritage Enterprises Inc, Octaman stars Kerwin Mathews (he of title character fame in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The Three Worlds of Gulliver, as well as Jack the Giant Killer – reviewed by me here) and, in her final movie, Pier Angeli (she of early 1950s fame as the impassioned love interest of a certain young, ill-fated actor named James Dean – click here for my review of Dean's short but stellar film career) as a couple of scientists, Dr Rick Torres and Susan Lowry, investigating some radiation-polluted rivers and lakes in Mexico (with Jeff Morrow co-starring as a third scientist, Dr John Willard). Here they discover a couple of small but mutant land-crawling freshwater octopuses (conveniently overlooking the zoological fact that octopuses are exclusively marine), and then encounter a murderous humanoid octopus mutant, Octaman, the size of an adult human and able to walk bipedally too, but bristling with tentacles, who duly picks off most of the cast list, one by one. Seen in close-up, Octaman looks okay, but in full view he's definitely of the 'man in a rubber suit' movie monster variety (with Read Morgan being the man in question here), and made unintentionally hilarious by his array of tentacles swinging from his shoulders like the extra arms on a sweater knitted by someone's deranged auntie. It's all exceedingly silly, despite the ultra-serious performances of the acting roster, but enjoyable too, in a supremely undemanding, typical B-movie manner. If you'd like to watch a short but initially somewhat graphic trailer for this movie, please click here to view it on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for Battle For the Planet of the Apes (© J. Lee Thompson/APJAC Productions/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

Back in the 1980s, I watched on TV the first four movies in the original five-movie Planet of the Apes saga (Planet..., Beneath the Planet..., Escape From the Planet..., and Conquest of the Planet...), whose concept was directly inspired by the Pierre Boulle sci fi novel Monkey Planet (1963, and which I've read). Yet for some unknown reason, I never got around to watching the fifth, concluding movie, Battle For the Planet... (directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring John Huston, Paul Williams, Austin Stoker, and Roddy McDowall as Caesar, and released in 1973 by 20^th Century Fox) – until the evening of 11 September 2024, that is. I've long owned this movie quintet as a DVD box set, so that evening I decided to complete my watching of this classic sci fi series and finally discover how it all ended. Sadly, however, I was rather disappointed, finding it something of an anti-climax after Conquest of the Planet..., in which, as its title confirms, the apes conquer their human subjugators who had long enslaved them in North America, and thereby become set to take over from humans as Earth's ruling species. In my view, the series should have ended there, because the ending of Conquest of the Planet... neatly brought the four-movie storyline full circle, connecting right back to where it had all begun at the beginning of Planet. Conversely, Battle For the Planet... is little more than an adjunct to this cycle, its plot operating outside it, in which the relatively small ape community grandly dubbed Ape City now led by super-intelligent chimpanzee Caesar (who had led the successful ape rebellion in Conquest of the Planet...) is attacked by an equally modest-sized army of radiation-crazed humans (who had been living not too far away in the subterranean highly-radioactive remnants of a once-mighty human city), whom the apes ultimately destroy. But it's all very localised, very small-scale – more like Battle For a Local Neighbourhood of the Apes, in fact, rather than a Planet. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that the scriptwriter for all four of the previous movies fell ill when preparing one for this fifth movie and after withdrawing from it was replaced by two scriptwriters with no previous sci fi experience and who had never even watched any of the previous four movies. Ah well, it was still an enjoyable enough movie watch, even though by the standards of the preceding four, which flowed seamlessly each into the next, it was basically superfluous to requirements, with its ending not incorporated within the cyclical storyline collectively yielded by the previous quartet of movies. Now that I have at last watched it, however, I can move on to watch the 2001 Planet of the Apes remake starring Mark Wahlberg (which I especially wish to see as its twist ending is the one used by Boulle in his original novel, not the wholly different albeit iconic twist ending featuring the destroyed Statue of Liberty in the very first Planet of the Apes movie), and then the current quadrilogy reboot beginning with Rise of the Planet... I'd deliberately deferred from viewing all of these until I eventually watched Battle For the Planet... one day, and which now I have done. If you'd like to view an official trailer for this movie, please click here to do so on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for A-X-L (© Oliver Daly/Lakeshore Entertainment/Phantom Four Films/Global Road Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

A-X-L

My midnight movie watch on 14 February 2024 was the enjoyable sci fi film A-X-L, which was directed and written by Oliver Daly, who based it upon an original proof-of-concept short film made by him in 2015, entitled Miles. Co-produced and released by Global Road Entertainment three years later in 2018, A-X-L features as its titular subject a top-secret, multi-million-dollar robotic war dog empowered with highly sophisticated A.I. but also human-like empathy. A-X-L (Attack-Exploration-Logistics) was created for the US army, but escapes after being mistreated and damaged during a trial, and hides away in the desert, where he is discovered, repaired, and befriended by teenage off-road biker/machine builder Miles (played by Alex Neustaedter) and his soon-to-be girlfriend Sara (singer Becky G). A-X-L bonds with Miles, but unknown to them the military have a tracer on A-X-L and have no intention of letting him stay on the loose, determining to recapture him at any cost... The storyline thus follows the generic, tried-and-trusted 'kids and weird buddy pursued by officialdom' plot utilised down through the years in everything from the likes of E.T. and Short Circuit to countless of those popular made-for-TV movies churned out by Disney during the 1970s. However, the storyline, derivative or otherwise, is secondary anyway here to the scene-stealing CGI-rendered A-X-L, which I found very impressive. Indeed, its canine mimicry is so accurate that at times I wondered whether a real dog had been employed in some form of motion-capture capacity to create A-X-L on screen, or via rotoscoping as often utilised in movies prior to the development of advanced CGI techniques. A-X-L is an entertaining thrill-and-spills feel-good family movie, but elevated from so many others by the eye-popping visuals provided by A-X-L, both when in action and when at play. If you'd like to view an official trailer for A-X-L, please click here to do so on YouTube.

 

 

My official DVD of The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Chthulhu (© Henry Saine/Devin McGinn/Dark Sky Films/MPI Media – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE LAST LOVECRAFT: RELIC OF CHTHULHU

On 15 July 2024, my movie was the hilarious sci fi/fantasy comedy movie The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Chthulhu, which was directed by Henry Saine (who also produced the movie's opening credits animation), and released in 2010 by MPI Media. As its title suggests, The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Chthulhu is all about the last known (albeit wholly fictitious in reality) descendant of cult fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft. Namely, a geeky call centre worker named Jeff (Kyle Davis), who finds himself entrusted with one half of an ancient relic that if rejoined to the other half will bring forth from the ocean depths the long-submerged city of Lovecraft's ancient and colossal dread deity Chthulhu, and release him from his dungeon there to ascend and conquer humanity on the surface. Not good. So Jeff and comic-book aficionado/best buddy Charlie (Devin McGinn, who also wrote this movie's screenplay), plus super-nerdy/ex-high school acquaintance/Chthulhu expert Paul (Barak Hardley), go on the run together in a bid to keep the half-relic hidden until the rapidly-approaching star alignment during which period the relic's two halves must be rejoined if Chthulhu is to ascend has come and gone, whereupon the world will be safe once more. But the valiant relic-bearers three are being hotly pursued by Chthulhu's cult (who possess the other half-relic), including a host of humanoid Star Spawn and reptilian Deep Ones, with the ability to become huge tentacular nightmares. Who will succeed? This movie is very, very funny (but sadly under-rated), and reminds me a lot of the Simon Pegg sci fi comedy film Paul (which I've reviewed here). Highly recommended!!! Interestingly, The Last Lovecraft ends with a brief epilogue that sees the adventurous trio in Antarctica seeking the Mountains of Madness written about by Lovecraft, indicating that a sequel movie was planned, but if so, nothing has come of it so far. If you'd like to watch an official trailer for this movie, please click here to view one on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for Strings (© Anders Rønnow Klarlund/BOB Film Sweden AB, Bald Film/Film and Music Entertainmemt/Mainstream ApS/Nordisk Film/Radar Film/Sandrew Metronome Distribution/Zentropa Entertainments/SF Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

STRINGS

On 6 April 2024, I watched a truly extraordinary puppet-featuring animated fantasy movie from 20 years ago entitled Strings, but which I'd only learnt about very recently. A Scandinavian-UK co-production directed by Anders Rønnow Klarlund (and upon a story by whom this film was based), and released in 2004 by SF Film, Strings is set in a fictional world where all of the humans and other organisms are marionettes, whose strings (of which they are fully aware at all times) stretch upwards to Heaven, where they are presumably controlled by an unseen divine puppeteer. Down on Earth, though, the marionettes interact with one another just like humans and other animals normally do, which in the case of the humans involves treachery, murder, and violent warfare. You'll guess from this that Strings is no cosy family fare for children, involving as it does the adult son, Hal Tara, of a seemingly slain king, The Kahro, leaving his city of Hebalom determined to exact merciless revenge upon those responsible for his father's apparent murder, and whom he seeks far and wide before discovering to his horror that he should be searching much closer to home. During his quest for answers and retribution, moreover, Hal finds that all is not what it seems or what he had always believed it to be, with regard both to his father and to the longstanding enmity existing between the Hebalonians and a rival warrior race, the Zeriths. Revelations are in plentiful supply here, that's for sure! The puppetry is truly incredible, albeit set predominantly in shadows and rain-saturated settings, and the English-dubbed version harnesses the vocal talents of such notables as James McAvoy (as Hal), Julian Glover (The Kahro), Derek Jacobi (who excels as The Kahro's scheming evil brother Nezo), Samantha Bond (Eike, Hal's mother), and Catherine McCormack (Zita, the feisty Zerith warrior maiden with whom Hal falls in love and from whom he learns the terrible truth about why her people came to hate his). A movie totally unlike any that I've ever seen before, Strings is a surreal viewing experience that I definitely recommend to anyone seeking an outré oeuvre of the cinematic kind! If you'd like to watch an official Strings trailer (albeit darker in viewing quality than the actual movie itself is), please click here 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.

 

 

A-X-L publicity photo-shot (© Oliver Daly/Lakeshore Entertainment/Phantom Four Films/Global Road Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)