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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
