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/20th 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/20th 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 20th
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.
.jpg)
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)
.jpg)
