KLUMPOK & THE YELLOW MONSTER OF SUNDRA STRAIT – A COUPLE OF SPECTACULAR SCI FI MOVIES...IF ONLY THEY COULD GET MADE, THAT IS!

 

Stunning artwork from 'Klumpok' in Stranger Than People, and the deadly globe-encapsulated yellow monster of Sundra Strait as once again depicted in spectacular artwork from Stranger Than People (both images © YWP – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial, educational Fair Use basis for review purposes only)

We've all read novels or short stories that we've felt sure would make marvelous movies, but which for one reason or another have never been selected by any film-maker to do so. This present Shuker In MovieLand blog article focuses upon two such works – a couple of short stories that I have long felt certain would transfer very effectively indeed from the typewritten page to the cinematic big screen but which, tragically, will almost certainly never do so, as their source is a nowadays exceedingly obscure, long-forgotten book from the 1960s. Yet it is one that made a huge impact upon me as a youngster. Its title? Stranger Than People – and indeed it was!

This fascinating  book is a compendium of famous true-life and fictitious mysteries – and here is what I wrote about it in the introduction to one of my own compendia of mysteries, Dr Shuker’s Casebook (2008):

It is well known that my passion for cryptozoology was ignited by the 1972 Paladin paperback reprint of Dr Bernard Heuvelmans’s classic tome On the Track of Unknown Animals, bought for me as a birthday present by my mother when I was around 13 years old. However, my interest in mysterious phenomena as a whole stemmed from an even earlier present – a copy of Stranger Than People, an enthralling compendium of mysteries from fact and fiction, published in 1968 by YWP, and aimed at older children and teenagers, which I saw one day in the Walsall branch of W.H. Smith when I was 8 or 9 years old, and was duly purchased for me as usual by my mother.

Within its informative, beautifully-illustrated pages I read with fascination – and fear – about Nessie and the kraken, vampires and werewolves, the Colossus of Rhodes and Von Kempelen’s mechanical chess player, dinosaurs and the minotaur, witches and zombies, yetis and mermaids, leprechauns and trolls, Herne the Hunter and Moby Dick, giants and the cyclops, feral children, the psychic powers of Edgar Cayce, and lots more. It even included two original – and quite superb - sci-fi short stories: ‘Klumpok’, about giant ant-like statues found on Mars and what happened when one of them was brought back to Earth; and ‘The Yellow Monster of Sundra Strait’, in which a giant transparent globe containing an enormous spider-like entity rises up out of the ocean; plus a thrilling (and chilling) fantasy tale, ‘Devil Tiger’, featuring a royal but malevolent weretiger that could only be killed with a golden bullet.

Needless to say, I re-read the poor book so many times that it quite literally fell apart, and was eventually discarded by my parents. After I discovered its loss, I spent many years scouring every bookshop for another copy, but none could be found. Not even Hay-on-Wye – world-famous as ‘The Town of Books’ with over 40 secondhand bookshops – could oblige. A few years ago, however, the Library Angel was clearly at work, because one Tuesday, walking into the bric-a-brac market held on that day each week in my home town of Wednesbury, on the very first stall that I approached I saw a near-pristine copy of Stranger Than People! Needless to say, I bought it, and to this day it remains the only copy that I have ever seen since my original one.

Tragically, however, this superb book did not appear to have had a very large original print run, was never reprinted, and as noted earlier it is nowadays long-forgotten and very scarce. Indeed, due to this book’s great rarity today, it occurred to me that few people will have been fortunate enough to have ever read those marvellous, original short science-fiction stories from it that I mentioned above, yet which remain among my own personal favourites within that genre and which, equally, I remain convinced would form the basis of excellent sci fi movie treatments.

 

My much-treasured second copy of Stranger Than People (© YWP/Dr Karl Shuker – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial, educational Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Consequently, after almost 50 years and for the very first time anywhere on the internet, utilising the Fair Dealing/Fair Use convention I was delighted to be able to rectify this sad situation a while ago by presenting two of them on one of Shuker In MovieLand's sister blogs, The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker, in the strict context of non-commercial educational/review purposes.

So for any of you reading this article of mine here at Shuker In MovieLand but for some inexplicable reason have never visited my Eclectarium before (shame on you, shame, I say!), just click here to access scans in the form of readily-readable enlargements of the original story and picture pages for 'Klumpok' from Stranger Than People, and here for those for 'The Yellow Monster of Sundra Strait' (and yes, it is spelled 'Sundra', not 'Sunda', in the story, although whether by accident or design I cannot say).

I hope that you enjoy encountering the giant ant gods of Klumpok and the Sundra Strait's globe-encapsulated spider monster just as much as I did – and still do – and afterwards perhaps you will also share my own continuing conviction that if any film-maker seeking original, never-previously-filmed sci fi stories should chance upon these two, they would surely repay both financially and critically however much time and effort were duly spent in achieving their greatly-deserved, long-overdue movie metamorphoses.

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.

 

LOVE AND MONSTERS

 

Publicity poster for Love and Monsters (© Michael Matthews/21 Laps Entertainment/Entertainment One/Paramount Pictures/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commdercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 4 November 2021, my evening's DVD movie watch was the post-apocalyptic monster movie Love and Monsters, which I purchased in American Region 1 DVD format as there doesn't appear to be a UK Region 2 DVD release for it as yet (happily my DVD player can play all regions).

Directed by Michael Matthews, and released by Paramount Pictures and Netflix in 2020, Love and Monsters opens with the imminent threat of an asteroid smashing into good old Planet Earth. Consequently, scientists send forth rockets to divert it from its path of destruction, which they do. However, the resulting chemical fall-out mutates cold-blooded creatures into enormous monsters that destroy most of humanity, with the few survivors forced to live in underground colonies in order to survive.

Following that bleak introduction, the movie traces the bold bid by teenager Joel (played by Dylan O'Brien) to trek 85 miles across the planet's surface to reach the colony housing his pre-apocalypse girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick). En route, he battles all manner of monstrous mega-beasts, encounters a smattering of fellow human survivors, and is faithfully (even doggedly?) accompanied by an abandoned dog named Boy (played by two different Australian kelpies, Dodge and Hero). The verbal interactions between Joel and Boy (okay, mostly from Joel, less from Dog) are priceless, lots of the dry one-liners that I love, with O'Brien putting in an entertaining performance throughout.

 

Joel and friends surrounded by an immense centipede (© Michael Matthews/21 Laps Entertainment/Entertainment One/Paramount Pictures/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commdercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

No A-listers from the acting world appear in Love and Monsters (though I did spot Bruce Spence, who played Blondie the Aussie surfer in Oz: A Rock 'N' Roll Road Movie, 1976), but inevitably it's the monsters that take centre-stage anyway. They include an immense vicious centipede (is there any other kind?), a lengthy-tongued toad of titanic proportions, colossal snails, venomous hallucination-engendering water leeches, vermiform horrors known as sand gobblers, and a gargantuan crab that unexpectedly proves to be Joel and Aimee's salvation.

These multifarious mutated monsters of the CGI variety are wonderfully imagined and created, albeit equipped with rather more tentacles than is visually appealing. My personal favourite is the salmon-pink giga-gastropod, a kind of super snail and slug combined, replete with horns and tubercles, that seems rather more pacific than its unequivocally carnivorous congeners. Nevertheless, Joel wisely chooses not to put its perceived passivity to the test, electing instead to remain safely out of reach and overtly non-confrontational until this mighty mollusc has slithered on by.

There is also a touching scene in which Joel encounters a forgotten, long-obsolete female android, called a MAV1S Robot, whose batteries are almost discharged. With no means of recharging her, they spend her final functional moments looking up together at a host of shimmering multicoloured sky medusae suspended like living Chinese lanterns in the evening sky overhead.

 

Never seen a ginormous salmon-pink super-snail/slug before, Joel? Well, you have now! (© Michael Matthews/21 Laps Entertainment/Entertainment One/Paramount Pictures/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commdercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The climax of Love and Monsters contains two major twists, neither of which (at least to me) was foreshadowed in any way, and which I'll leave for those who have not watched it yet to discover for themselves. Let's just say that menacing monsters notwithstanding, this is not just a monster movie, not simply a road movie, not merely an action movie – it is also very much a coming of age movie, in which Joel definitely does come of age during his many trials and tribulations confronted along the way. Through the course of his arduous, life-threatening quest to find Aimee, Joel journeys far more than the 85 miles that he treks in physical distance, because he gradually transforms from the lovestruck, clumsy, teenager living only in the moment that we see him as at the movie's beginning into the experienced, courageous, forward-thinking man that we see him as by its ending.

It was a great shame that due to the covid lockdowns, Love and Monsters received a limited cinema release, because it is exactly the kind of film that deserves - indeed, requires - spectacular big-screen viewing to do it full justice. Nevertheless, it makes thoroughly enjoyable, captivating viewing on any size of screen.

So be sure to check out a trailer for this excellent movie here on YouTube, and encounter from the safety of your armchair the giant creepy-crawlies only too ready to greet – and eat – the likes of Joel and Dog. And be grateful that the horrors lurking in your herbaceous border are of far less sizeable stature!

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The full cover of the official Love and Monsters DVD (© Michael Matthews/21 Laps Entertainment/Entertainment One/Paramount Pictures/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commdercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MIMIC

Publicity poster for Mimic (© Guillermo del Toro/Dimension Films/Miramax Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Not having viewed a Guillermo del Toro movie since Cronos in early May, I decided to remedy this sad situation on 21 July 2020 by watching Mimic.

Not only directed by Guillermo de Toro but also co-written by him (alongside Matthew Robbins), and originally released in 1997, Mimic begins in harrowing and somewhat topical manner with a deadly plague, albeit not a pandemic as it is confined to New York's Manhattan Island, where a new and very virulent ailment, Strickler's disease, carried by cockroaches, is decimating the population's children, with every effort made to kill its carriers or vaccinate against it failing. In desperation, Dr Peter Mann from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) brings in Dr Susan Tyler (played by Mira Sorvino), a brilliant entomologist.

Tyler boldly utilizes genetic engineering to combine the DNA of two very different species – a termite and a mantis – in order to create an entirely novel species. She dubs this new bug the Judas breed, because its purpose is to infiltrate the cockroach colonies that live in the city's Underground train system and betray them, by secreting an enzyme that will increase the cockroaches' metabolic rate so drastically that they will be unable to eat enough nutrients to fuel it and thence die of starvation, thus destroying the carriers of Strickler's disease. As for the Judas bugs: to ensure that they do not become as big a problem as the cockroaches that they will be exterminating, they have been programmed by Tyler via the inclusion of a suicide gene in their DNA to die in just 180 days, and are unable to reproduce because they are all female. So what could possibly go wrong? Let’s just say that distant memories of Jurassic Park had already begun to kick in by now…

Anyway, the plan seems to work beautifully, with the cockroaches dying en masse, Strickler's disease in turn being eliminated, and Manhattan's surviving, and future, children no longer in peril. Three years later, however, two youngsters bring to Tyler a very strange, sizeable insect that they had found in the Underground, and a much larger, dog-sized one, preserved in a deep-freeze and originally found in the city's sewage treatment plants, is shown to her and Mann by a worker from there. Moreover, what they don't know at this time (but the movie viewer does) is that people are being surreptitiously abducted by even bigger, shadow-obscured insects in and around the Underground. What they do know, however, filling Tyler in particular with horror, is that the two strange insects seen by them are evolved versions of the Judas bug. Far from having been wiped out by the genetic controls that she had set in place when engineering them, they have not only survived but also transformed via a massively-accelerated breeding cycle into a very much bigger and far more advanced form than the original strain created by Tyler three years earlier. But the worst discovery is yet to come.

SPOILER ALERT – IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE FOLLOWING KEY PLOT REVELATIONS, READ NO FURTHER!

Throughout the movie so far, there have been glimpses of tall, dark-garbed figures standing concealed in shadows, their faces obscured, watching Tyler and others involved in the investigation of the evolved Judas bugs and the threat that they could pose to humans. However, the true nature of this threat is made abundantly clear to Tyler one evening when alone on a subway (or Underground station, as we call them here in the UK). Looking around, she sees one of these shadowy figures, standing watching her, so, somewhat perturbed but also curious, she walks closer to the stranger (as you would if alone in a deserted subway at night!), on the pretext of asking what time it is.

Then, as she draws near, the figure's face seems to part in two horizontally, with the two halves flicking back, and its long dark cloak-like coat unfolds into four sections, which then swiftly rise up and open out, revealing themselves to be two huge pairs of wings, and from behind the façade that had seemed to be its face, the figure's real face lunges forward, revealing it to be the hideous visage and fearsome jaws of a predatory mantis-reminiscent insect – an insect that is standing upright on its rearmost pair of legs, masquerading as a human, and as tall as a human! Tyler flees, but the giant insect takes flight and chases after her, swiftly seizing hold of her with its limbs' claws, and flying away with her into the darkness of the subway's hidden underworld.

Subway scene from Mimic (© Guillermo del Toro/Dimension Films/Miramax Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Nevertheless, it's not long before Tyler is missed, and also before the scientists discover precisely what these mega-insects represent. Their accelerated evolution, which has even equipped them with superior mammal-like lungs supplanting the less efficient tracheae of other insects, has rendered them highly effective predators, by turning them into superb mimics of what has become their preferred prey - humans. So don't get too attached to Mann's assistant, Josh Maslow, the character played by Josh Brolin…

As is always the case with a del Toro movie, there are several different sub-plots, much to set your imagination aflame, and a lot of shocks along the way before the final, nerve-jangling climax is reached, when the vast underground nurseries of these uber insects are discovered, ready to let loose countless of their merciless, ravenous killing kind upon the unsuspecting human race inhabiting the world above, plus a do-or-die confrontation with the most important giant insect of all. Retained from the termite component of their ancestry, these creatures are a social species, mostly female workers and soldiers, but with a single fertile male, the king (unlike social bees, wasps, and ants, social termites have a king as well as a queen). If this crucial insect, key to the colony's perpetuation, can be destroyed, the entire colony will die.

The official Blu-Ray release of Mimic, the Director's Cut version (© Guillermo del Toro/Dimension Films/Miramax Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The CGI/animatronic sfx that bring the giant Judas bugs scuttling, screeching, and soaring across the screen are extremely impressive, so much so that I confess to being relieved that I was watching this particular movie on TV rather than on the big screen at the cinema! The acting is decent too, although to be fair the insects are always going to attract more attention from viewers than their human co-stars.

Also, for me personally it didn't help that Tyler's entomological mentor, Dr Gates, was played by none other than F. Murray Abraham, best known to me as the composer Salieri in the Mozart faction biopic Amadeus – I was half-expecting at any moment to hear Mozart's explosive high-pitched giggle suddenly shatter the eerie stillness in the Underground's cavernous depths!

Mimic is undoubtedly a very thought-provoking monster movie, one with a message – tamper with genetics and the laws of creation at your peril. To put it another way, don't try to play God, or Frankenstein, if you cannot foresee the future that your creations, or monsters, may themselves bring into being.

Overall, therefore, Mimic is an excellent film, which during the early 21^st Century generated two straight-to-video sequels (Mimic 2, 2001 and Mimic 3: Sentinel, 2003). I own the first of these two, so I'll be watching – and reviewing – it in due course, just as soon as I've stocked up on bug repellant for peace of mind's sake! Meanwhile, here is a gripping trailer to lure you into watching the entire movie!

A publicity poster for the official cinematic release of Mimic in Thailand (© Guillermo del Toro/Dimension Films/Miramax Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Incidentally, Mimic the movie was inspired by a short story of the same title written by American science fiction author/publisher Donald A. Wollheim (1914-1990), which was first published in the December 1942 issue of the monthly sci fi/fantasy magazine Astonishing Stories – click here to read it for free online.

As you'll discover, the short story's plot is entirely different from that of the movie, except that it does feature a human-sized (but this time entirely harmless) insect masquerading as a man until found dead one day, whereupon its extraordinary secret is sensationally exposed. If I'm honest, however, I actually found this outwardly innocuous tale far creepier than the movie – but to find out why, you need to read the story, especially its ending... I'll say no more.

Finally: for a movie with a not-dissimilar basic premise to Mimic – giant insects that adopt human form in order to bring about the destruction of our species – but which is instead played entirely for laughs, please click here to read my review of Meet the Applegates.

And always remember, readers – never approach a mysterious cloaked stranger to ask for a light in a deserted subway:

A gif from the subway scene in Mimic (© Guillermo del Toro/Dimension Films/Miramax Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

To view a complete 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!