ALMIGHTY THOR

 

The official UK (left) and Nordic (right) DVDs of Almighty Thor (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I've long remembered seeing somewhere on YouTube several years ago a film clip featuring some very distinctive chevron-headed quadrupedal monsters, grey in colour, huge in size, and somewhat midway between mammals and reptiles in overall form. Their chevron-shaped heads were so memorable that their image stayed firmly in my mind, but I had no idea what the movie was in which they'd appeared, and despite a fair few attempts at relocating them on YT and elsewhere online as well, I was never able to do so – until 19 April 2021, that is.

For that was when, quite by chance, while looking on YT for a totally different monster movie (an Arabian Nights type film featuring a woman-headed bird, which once again I'd seen a clip of on YT ages ago but had never rediscovered or identified), a trailer for a fantasy movie entitled Almighty Thor popped up. And when I clicked this trailer, what should appear but the chevron-headed monsters that I remembered so well, plus some gigantic dragonesque hound-monsters that I also vividly recalled. Serendipity strikes again – another of my "found it at last" successes!

Here is that selfsame YT trailer for this movie, featuring these awesome monsters in all their respective cranio-triangular and canine terror! Moreover, I recently purchased Almighty Thor on DVD, and on 14 January 2023 I watched it, so here are my thoughts regarding this once-elusive movie!

 

The chevron-headed lindworms running amok in LA (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Directed by Christopher Olen Ray, and released in 2011 by The Asylum, Almighty Thor utilizes some of the principal deities from Norse mythology to weave an entirely new story that links legendary Asgard, home of the gods, to modern-day Midgard, the human world.

As is his wont, Loki, Norse god of mischief (played by Richard Grieco), is causing trouble once again in Asgard, but here he is much less mischievous and far more malevolent. Seeking to seize from Odin (former professional WCW wrestler Kevin Nash!) the all-powerful Hammer of Invincibility, Miolnir, with which he plans to kill the World Tree, thus initiating Ragnarok, the destruction of all life and existing worlds, replacing them with a new universe of his own creation instead, where he will be supreme ruler, Loki summons up from the Underworld the three enormous dragon-like hell hounds mentioned by me earlier here, which he utilizes to raze Valhalla in his relentless search for Odin and Miolnir.

 

Close-up of a lindworm (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Odin and his sons – the older, brave, battle-experienced Baldir (Jess Allen), and the younger, also brave but very inexperienced Thor (Cody Deal) – bravely attempt to thwart him, but Loki is adept in dark magic and succeeds not only in bringing about Baldir's swift death but also fatally wounding Odin. Rather than yielding Miolnir to him, however, with a final dying show of strength Odin hurls the mighty hammer through a space-time portal that immediately closes and disappears, frustrating Loki who now has no idea where Miolnir is. However, he suspects (correctly) that Odin had previously vouchsafed its location to Thor, who has survived the devastation of Valhalla, so Loki sends forth one of his humungous hounds of hell on Thor's trail.

Happily, however, before it can reach him, Thor is rescued by an eternally-young but highly-professional female warrior named Járnsaxa (Patricia Velásquez), who had protected Odin's father. She takes Thor with her through another portal into modern-day Los Angeles, and trains him in fighting skills before Loki can track them down there. But it's not long before he does, only for Thor to elude him by passing through another portal, this time taking him to the World Tree, which is where Odin had secretly told him that Miolnir would briefly appear. If Thor is not there to retrieve it, all will be lost, but after defeating its knight guardian, Thor does retrieve it, taking Miolnir back with him to Járnsaxa in LA.

 

Close-up of a hell hound (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Unfortunately, Loki is waiting, and after tricking Thor into momentarily lowering his guard by filling his mind with false doubt concerning Járnsaxa's loyalty to him, Loki steals Miolnir, jettisons Thor and Járnsaxa to the Underworld where he has already imprisoned the immortal shades of Odin and Baldir, and unleashes from that same infernal subterranean realm some mighty lindworms – those spectacular chevron-headed monsters that had been tantalizing my memory for years. They and the hell hounds duly wreak havoc in LA while Loki makes his way to the World Tree, to kill it using Miolnir and thereby commence Ragnarok. But does he succeed, or is Thor finally mature enough to perpetrate a plan of his own, one that will put paid to Loki's, and to Loki himself, once and for all?

It is almost a tradition among cinema critics, professionals and amateurs alike, to denigrate as a matter of course any movie produced by The Asylum. And whereas it is certainly true that there is no comparison whatsoever between Almighty Thor and any of the movies in the spectacular Disney/Marvel-produced Thor franchise, there is also no comparison whatsoever between the tiny budget available to The Asylum in comparison with the stupendous equivalent available to Disney/Marvel. Taking that fundamental difference into account, I personally consider that The Asylum has done a very creditable job with Almighty Thor, most especially in relation to its CGI hell hounds and lindworms, which are as well-designed in form and effective in execution as a fair few CGI monsters in various much bigger-budgeted movies.

 

Járnsaxa (left, facing backwards), a lindworm (front centre, facing forwards), and a hell hound (behind lindworm, facing backwards) (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

True, the scenes in LA were clearly – and no doubt cheaply – shot almost entirely in a few largely deserted back streets and a parking lot. And Deal's portrayal of Thor comes across not so much as a noble albeit still somewhat inexperienced god as a surly headstrong mortal teenager who has absolutely no idea what is happening for much of the time! Never mind – as far as acting credibility is concerned, there is one example that in my mind totally redeems this movie, and that is Grieco's performance as Loki.

In the Disney/Marvel Thor movie franchise, I have always personally felt that Tom Hiddleston's Loki comes across as too mannered to be truly convincing as the Norse god of evil, but there is no such issue with Grieco. In Almighty Thor, his Loki is evil personified, his every glance, sneer, and snarl an act of savage, animalistic malevolence, and enhancing this is his deathly pale facial pallor. This in turn is even more apparent during the scenes shot in LA as Midgard, which in stark contrast to the full-colour versions in Asgard are shot almost entirely in a glacial pallet of black and pale ice-blue throughout.

 

Some lindworms disrupting traffic in LA! (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

All in all, therefore, and irrespective of the usual Asylum-berating carping and narking present in many online reviews of Almighty Thor, I enjoyed this film. And if you accept it for what it is, a low-budget fantasy flick with no pretences to be anything remotely approaching a movie of blockbuster proportions and production levels, whose creation was instead intended simply to provide some undemanding but decent entertainment with which pass a spare 90 minutes away, then you may well enjoy it too. Its monsters are certainly memorable (as my own above-described experience of them readily testifies), and so too is Grieco's Loki.

Indeed, echoing what I've said before in relation to various other films produced by The Asylum (and also Syfy, for that matter), Almighty Thor is exactly the kind of movie that I'd have totally loved had it been around back in my youth. So why not give it a go? Indeed, at the time of writing this review, Almighty Thor can be watched free of charge in its entirety on YouTube simply by clicking here.

 

A peckish lindworm! (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But what about the other mysterious monster movie noted earlier by me here that I'd long been seeking?

In fact, within only a very short time after I'd tracked down Almighty Thor and posted details about it on my Facebook timeline page, together with a mention of that mystifying Arabian Nights film containing the woman-headed bird, a FB friend posted a reply in which he conclusively identified this latter movie! So what was it? All is revealed in a separate, brand-new Shuker In MovieLand post – so click here to read it!

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.

 

Loki and his dragonesque hell hounds (© Christopher Olen Ray/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

JUNGLE RUN

 

Publicity poster for Jungle Run (© Noah Luke/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Having bought its DVD a few hours earlier that same day from a local shop, on 17 January 2022 I watched the recent creature feature Jungle Run, from The Asylum's prolific stable of such flicks.

Directed by Noah Luke, and released in 2021, Jungle Run stars Richard Grieco, and is all about two young adults, Amanda (played by Alyson Gorske) and Scott (Jack Pearson) – aided and abetted by a motley boat crew led by their captain/jungle guide, Lebecq (Wade Hunt Williams) – who are seeking their lost archaeologist father Nicholas (Richard Grieco). And so with intrepid determination, they journey boldly along the Amazon river (but actually filmed in Florida's Everglades) and bravely through the unexplored depths of the Amazon rainforest (actually Florida's Myakka River State Park), where every creature seems oddly but unnervingly hell-bent upon killing them!

To be fair, and cryptozoologists in particular take note here, this movie does feature some hugely entertaining monsters (with the emphasis definitely on huge!). These include several human-swallowing giant anacondas, humungous tree-dwelling spiders that drop down onto their unsuspecting human victims below with disconcerting accuracy, a massive killer vine tree that lassos its victims with lethal lianas, and gargantuan Venus flytraps that put Audrey II to shame (click here if that last comparison eludes you!).

Nor should we omit to mention a colossal shoal of uncommonly bloodthirsty piranhas that even strip off the wood and steel from the bottom of the boat ferrying their human targets in their frenzied attempts to tear them apart, plus a veritable army of small but deadly arrow-poison frogs that do their best to bite and bedevil them like a pack of chomping chihuahuas.

Biggest and most belligerent of all, however, is the rainforest's enormous and highly antagonistic guardian, the curupira – portrayed here as a monstrous humanoid reptilian entity with a big flaming head (literally!) who is not best pleased with humanity's continuing deforestation onslaughts, and has therefore turned all of the forest's wildlife murderously against them. There is also some interwoven supernatural hokum surrounding a mysterious glowing-green crystalline rock known to the rainforest's tribes as the Heart of the Jungle, which holds the key to the potency of the curupira.

Overall, however, the plot is very predictable – in time-honoured monster movie tradition, one by one the secondary characters all get picked off via a diversity of different but no less dramatic means by the assorted terrors that await on and in the Amazon, until only the principal ones remain standing (just!). In short, exactly what we would – and all that we should – expect from such a movie.

Equally, Asylum's CGI monsters, while more than adequate, do not compare to those created by bigger film companies (a common criticism aimed at Asylum by its critics and detractors). But, again to be fair, neither does the special-effects budget that it can afford. Consequently, imho it does very well with what funds it can employ.

Having said that, however, I do feel obliged to say to those viewers expecting to encounter in this movie the spectacular Angkor Wat-like ancient palace depicted on its UK DVD's cover – stop expecting, because said palace doesn't appear in it, anywhere, at any time, ever (unless I watched an edited version?).

Notwithstanding this notable non-appearance, however, as a major fan of the creature feature subgenre of B-movies I thoroughly enjoyed Jungle Run, as indeed I do with most of Asylum's often unfairly denigrated monster movies. So if you'd like to know more about it, be sure to click here to watch an official Jungle Run trailer on YouTube.

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.

 

Front cover of the official UK DVD for Jungle Run (© Noah Luke/The Asylum – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)