CRYPTOZOO

 

Publicity poster for Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

What if someone well-meaning but ultimately misguided decided to create a Jurassic Park-like establishment, yet populated it not with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but instead with mythical monsters and cryptozoological mystery beasts – on the idealistic yet somewhat ingenuous assumption that because they should at least in theory be safer behind bars, albeit ensconced within this veritable crypto-utopia, than risking capture or even worse out in their natural wild habitats, they would therefore actively prefer to be in captivity?

That is the basic premise of an extraordinary adult-oriented animated movie set in San Francisco's late 1960s hippy 'Flower Power' period that I watched on 7 August 2024 – just a day after watching Mad God (click here to read my review of it) and two days after watching The Primevals (click here to read my review of it), thereby concluding my long-planned viewing of these three wholly independent but equally exceptional yet by no means widely-known animated or semi-animated movies. Directed and written by Dash Shaw, and released in 2021 by Magnolia Pictures, this now duly-watched third movie is entitled – what else in light of its premise but? – Cryptozoo.

Unfortunately, however, the US military see these entities (which are all termed cryptids in this film, irrespective of each example's respective scientifically undiscovered vs wholly mythological status) as being potential bio-weapons. Think what could be achieved with a platoon of petrifying gorgons, or a phalanx of flying horses, a herd of harpoon-horned unicorns, or, above all else, a small yet potentially invaluable dream-devouring baku that could be trained to consume anyone's dreams that were anti-governmental?

Sure enough, the military duly hire a talented but merciless cryptid hunter named Nicholas (voiced by Thomas Jay Ryan) who utilises a traitorous faun, Gustav (Peter Stormare), to track down and capture the baku. Opposing their plans, however, are the staff of the Cryptozoo, especially its elderly owner Joan (Grace Zabriskie) and her principal assistant Lauren Grey (Lake Bell), a veterinarian cryptozoologist, plus a friendly gorgon named Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia). But when meddling trespasser Amber (Louisa Krause) releases all of the zoo's cryptids, total havoc swiftly ensues.

How will all this chaos resolve itself, will the baku evade capture, and in the final analysis could it be that the zoo's staff need the cryptids more than they need them?

Winning the Innovative Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival that aptly hosted its global premiere on 29 January (aptly because that was the birthday of my late mother, Mary Shuker, who had always supported and shared my lifelong cryptozoological interests), Cryptozoo took four years to animate, from 2016 to 2020. And whereas the traditional hand-drawn mode utilised has yielded a relatively simplistic style (especially with regard to how the human characters are depicted), it is exceedingly colourful, exhibiting a very distinctive beauty and imagery wholly unlike the full-length CGI-laden animated movies more frequently released nowadays. Indeed, both in visual terms and in its philosophical approach, Cryptozoo is certainly influenced by the 'peace and love' ethos of the specific time and place in which it is set.

Its cryptids are portrayed very effectively, in particular the flying horse, camoodi, griffin, and tengu (no Mongolian death worm as far as I could see, sadly). Having said that, they were given far less screen time than I'd have liked or expected for a cryptozoology-themed film, especially as there are several slow-paced conversation-heavy sequences that warranted editing in favour of more cryptid content, I felt, when watching this movie.

Speaking of conversations, however, I should mention that quite apart from those already named above, Cryptozoo's impressive vocal performers also include the likes of Michael Cera and Zoe Kazan.

Needless to say, cryptozoologists and zoomythologists are likely to love this film, as will animation traditionalists, but I'm sure that its appeal will extend beyond those specific categories of movie viewer if given a chance.

So why not do that? For Cryptozoo can currently be watched in its 95-minute entirety free of charge here, on DailyMotion. Or if you'd prefer to view a couple of trailers for it first, please click here (for a general one) and here (for a baku-themed one) 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.

 

And just in case you were wondering what it looks like, here is the baku as it appears in Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MAD GOD

 

Publicity poster for Mad God (© Phil Tippett/Tippett Studio/Shudder – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 5 August 2024, I watched a stop-motion animation-featuring movie that had taken a staggering 56 years to complete – The Primevals, finally released in 2023, and reviewed by me here. A day later, on 6 August 2024, I watched an almost exclusively stop-motion animation movie with another seriously long production period, over 30 years this time. The creation of modern-day stop-motion movie maestro Phil Tippett, but very much an adult horror movie in nature, as opposed to the family-friendly stop-motion animation-featuring fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen, it is entitled Mad God (aka Phil Tippett's Mad God in some sources), with imho the emphasis very much on mad.

Not only directed but also produced and written by Phil Tippett, who also contributed to the cinematography, and released in 2021 by Shudder, Mad God is as much a series of loosely-connected sequential vignettes as a single cohesive, coherent story. As for its content and tone, the prologue is more than sufficiently daunting to inform you in no uncertain manner of what to expect from the movie itself. Here is that prologue, which consists of a quote from the biblical book of Leviticus:

If you disobey Me and remain hostile to Me, I will act against you in wrathful hostility. I, for My part, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless idols. I will spurn you. I will lay your cities in ruin and make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not savor your pleasing odors. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle it shall be appalled by it. And you I will scatter among the nations and I will unsheath the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin.

The principal character in Mad God is an enigmatic anonymous humanoid figure clad in iron, wearing a face-obscuring gas-mask, armed with a tattered map, and carrying a suitcase, who is named in the credits merely as the Assassin. He(?) descends inside a diving bell into a ruined, infernal, post-apocalyptic city populated by indescribably hideous monsters and monstrosities, the stronger ones taking savage, sadistic delight in mutilating and slaughtering the weaker ones with unnervingly, unnaturally casual indifference. Even the Assassin himself does not shrink from nonchalantly trampling underfoot a squabbling group of tiny gnome-like entities.

But perhaps the most stark scenes of wanton cruelty are those featuring what appear to be identical (cloned?) humanoid but faceless drones or slave workers carrying out the Mad God's will with regard to extensive construction work, overseen mercilessly by flogging foremen. Moreover, health & safety guidelines are conspicuous only by their absence here, as the drones are regularly maimed, decapitated, or worse by flying sections of machinery, metal shards, etc. And when they have served their purpose, these poor helpless, hapless souls meekly line up to throw themselves down into a deep fiery pit where they are instantaneously incinerated. If ever a work force was in dire need of a representing trade union!

As for the titular mad god itself, this is seen only as a pair of eyes and a huge mouth with hideous teeth and black-scorched flesh surrounding it that appears on screens attached to a lofty tower, and utters all of its vile dictates in an unintelligible, incongruous babble of baby talk.

Meanwhile, avoiding being attacked himself, the Assassin uses his map to find and fend his way through this perilous city's grim and grimy subterranean bowels, brimming on every side with violence, horror, blood, black bile, gore, and more – a veritable vista of Hell itself, surely – until he finally reaches his destination, a location inside the base of the Mad God's tower containing an enormous pile of suitcases identical to his own.

The Assassin opens his case, takes out a bomb, and sets its clock ticking, but never discovers that the clock isn't functioning properly, because a rapacious monster, having crept up behind him unseen, now seizes him in and drags him off onto the darkness.

We next see The Assassin strapped to an operating table, fully awake, where a human surgeon crudely slices open his abdomen, and then inexplicably hauls out great quantities of jewels and books from inside it, plus copious amounts of blood and black innards, before finally pulling forth a bawling larva-like infant that a nurse hurriedly takes away.

She hands it to a huge, fantastically-designed entity resembling a Venetian plague doctor but wholly composed of a floating mass of black ribbons, who in turn takes it to a dwarfish alchemist who calmly grinds up the screaming infant into a fluid that he transmutes into powdered gold. This is then thrown up into space and creates a whole new cosmos

And that is by no means all that happens in this macabre yet mesmerising 82-minute movie, which includes hardly any audible dialogue, functioning almost wholly on a visual level – with regard to which I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it before, nor do I particularly wish to see anything like it again. Or to put it another way, every time you think that the next scene cannot possibly be more horrific than the previous ones, you are invariably proved wrong!

One professional movie reviewer described Mad God as "a cacophony of savagery and cruelty – [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror", and I know exactly what they mean!

Equally, however, I freely confess that technically and visually this is a truly astonishing spectacle. For apart from a couple of brief scenes featuring humans, Mad God is composed entirely of stop-motion animation, and is therefore a definite triumph of sorts within that specific cinematic genre. Consequently, this unique, experimental horror movie makes undeniably fascinating (albeit highly disturbing) viewing. So much so that although I may well never watch it again, as someone with a sizeable collection of animated films on DVD and video I readily recognize that any such collection demands that Mad God be included in it. And not merely because there is absolutely nothing else like it in this particular genre, but also, as noted earlier, because of its unquestionable technical brilliance. So I do plan to purchase its DVD in due course.

I simply wish that all of the highly-skilled, immensely creative, and seemingly tireless workmanship that went into producing Mad God could have instead been directed toward preparing something as beautiful as this is nightmarish. Judging from one albeit brief segment in Mad God that presents the creation of a brand-new universe, the production team could most certainly have prepared such an alternative, visually gorgeous movie, because that particular segment is indescribably exquisite and inspirational.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Mad God took over 30 years from its beginning to its release. Tippett began filming it in his spare time during the late 1980s, after working on RoboCop 2. A few years later, however, now working on Jurassic Park and seeing at first-hand the truly spectacular nature of its CGI dinosaurs (his involvement in their creation earning him an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), he shelved his own project as he feared that with the advent of CGI, stop-motion animation was now obsolete.

And there Mad God remained, in creative limbo for the next 20-odd years, until encouragement and assistance from volunteer animators and other film crew plus donations via Kickstarter combined forces in 2009 to reignite Tippett's interest in it and relaunch work upon it, which continued in stages until the film was completed in 2920, and was then officially released in 2021, premiering at the 74^th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Another mammoth movie-making undertaking was finished at last, and its success has confirmed, as did that of The Primevals two years later, that the days of stop-motion animation are still far from over. Fittingly, in the Ray Harryhausen Awards for 2022, Tippett was elected to the Harryhausen Hall of Fame.

In summary: albeit an indisputably astounding feat of stop-motion animation, Mad God is not for the faint-hearted, but for those of you made of stronger stuff you can currently watch it in its entirety free of charge on DailyMotion by clicking here. Or if you prefer a more guarded approach to its bloodcurdling contents, click here to watch an official Mad God trailer 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.

 

JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962)

 

My official 50^th Anniversary Edition DVD of Jack the Giant Killer (© Nathan H. Juran/Zenith Pictures/United Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 24 August 2024 was a stop-motion classic from the early 1960s – Jack the Giant Killer.

Directed by Nathan H. Juran, co-produced by Edward Small, and originally released in 1962 by United Artists, Jack the Giant Killer stars Kerwin Mathews as Jack, the film's valiant young farmer hero, and he had also lately starred as Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was the first of the three iconic Ray Harryhausen stop-motion Sinbad-themed fantasy films. Indeed, because of perceived similarities, Columbia Pictures, who had released the above-named Sinbad movie, threatened to sue the makers of Jack the Giant Killer.

However, the latter avoided legal action by withdrawing the movie in its original form and re-releasing it with additional content as a film musical, the original non-musical version not being re-released for another 30 years. This latter is the version that I watched, however, courtesy of my special 50th Anniversary Edition DVD, which also contains an official folded-up poster of the movie.

Jack the Giant Killer is (very) loosely inspired by the traditional English fairy tale of the same title, but has been greatly expanded on screen, with an evil sorcerer named Pendragon (Torin Thatcher, who had also starred in The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad alongside Mathews) abducting Elaine (Judi Meredith), a Cornish princess, and conjuring forth all manner of monsters in an attempt to thwart Jack's bold attempts to rescue her.

These include not only the single-horned gigantic satyr that Jack had killed earlier when rescuing Elaine but also a two-headed giant, a flying dragon, and some dragon's-teeth warriors, all vividly brought to life via stop-motion animation (as was a bizarre tentacular sea monster that battled the two-headed giant), plus a host of incandescent skeletal witches engendered very effectively on-screen by a novel process dubbed Fantascope.

Yet although very satisfactory, produced as they were by master animator Jim Danforth in one of his earliest film assignments, these did not quite match Harryhausen's spectacular creations, but Don Beddoe as a bottle-entrapped, rhyme-riddling leprechaun who assists Jack in his battles against Pendragon and his minions provides some amusing asides.

Overall, therefore, Jack the Giant Killer is a highly entertaining fantasy film for all the family to watch and enjoy, shot in glorious Technicolor, and with every word of dialogue totally coherent, not a mumble to be mis-heard anywhere. Ah, the good old days!

Worth noting, incidentally, is that in 2013 two separate Jack the Giant Killer-themed fantasy movies were released. Both featured CGI-rendered giants and other monsters, as well as incorporating notable plot elements from another Jack-entitled English folktale – Jack and the Beanstalk. One of these films, Jack the Giant Slayer, was a big-name production, starring the likes of Nicholas Hoult (as Jack), Ian McShane, Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, and Eleanor Tomlinson, and is set in medieval times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). The other film, Jack the Giant Killer (aka The Giant Killer), was a straight-to-DVD 'mockbuster', starring Ben Cross and Jane March, with Jamie Atkins as Jack, and is set in modern times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). As I own both of these movies on DVD, I plan to watch them in the near future, and am particularly intrigued to see how the version set in modern times plays out.

Returning to the 1962 Jack the Giant Killer movie reviewed by me above: if you'd like to watch the official (albeit somewhat colour-diluted) trailer for it, please click here to do so on YouTube, or click here to watch on that site the entire movie free of charge (and in far richer colours).

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.

 

SHUKER IN MOVIELAND MEETS FORTEAN TIMES! SHARING SOME MONSTROUSLY-ENTERTAINING CREATURE FEATURE REVIEWS!

 

Front cover of the current issue (#446, dated July 2024) of the British monthly magazine Fortean Times, featuring yours truly as its cover star! (© David Sutton/Etienne Gilfillan/Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My film review blog Shuker In MovieLand hits the big time! A selection of its Fortean (and especially monster)-themed creature feature reviews has been compiled by me in the form of a monstrously-entertaining front-cover-linked lead article that has been published in the current issue (#446, dated July 2024) of the iconic British monthly magazine Fortean Times, or simply FT to its worldwide array of fans.

FT via its countless contributors and readers down through the decades has been steadfastly reporting and investigating across the vast and thoroughly fascinating spectrum of mysterious phenomena ever since the early 1970s (when it started out as The News), and I am very privileged to have been contributing articles and news reports (the latter via my regular, longstanding Alien Zoo column) ever since the 1990s, concentrating upon cryptozoology and animal anomalies of every conceivable (and inconceivable!) kind.

Moreover, as readers of this present blog of mine know, I am also passionately interested in movies, particularly fantasy and sci fi-themed ones, but never more so than those that incorporate monsters and other mystery or fantastical beasts. So in my latest FT article as highlighted here, I have collated a diverse selection of my Shuker In MovieLand reviews of creature features that I have very much enjoyed watching over the years. And I hope it will encourage you to watch and enjoy them now too.

I'm not going to say anything more regarding my article's contents, so as not to spoil the surprises awaiting FT readers, but I do wish to express my sincere thanks to FT's editor David Sutton and its art director Etienne Gilfillan for making my article an FT reality, with Etienne not only doing us all proud in not only assembling the dazzling collection of illustrations accompanying its text but also creating the front cover's truly amazing associated artwork!

 

Another magazie front-cover appearance, from issue #14 (November 1997) of the now long-defunct British monthly magazine Uri Geller's Encounters, to which I contributed a number of cryptozoological articles (© Nina Pendred/Paragon Publishing Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

No doubt you'll recognize the very handsome chap (cough cough!) attired in best Indiana Jones accoutrements taking centre stage on the FT cover as he prepares to cinematically confront a veritable host of horrors...and that's just the audience! – or most of it. For I also wish to highlight the delightful fact that the happy little lady with the extra-large box of popcorn is none other than my dear little Mom, Mary Shuker, who always enjoyed watching monster movies with me back in the good old days. How I wish that she were still here, to know that she was now a front-cover star! She would have been so proud. Thank you so much, Etienne, for such a wonderful and very touching tribute to her.

So, be sure to seek out and purchase a copy of FT #446 if you can (it's out now!), and have a monstrously good time reading about some very varied creature features of the cryptozoological and zoomythological kind. Go on, you know you want to!

For mor information concerning FT, please click here to visit its official website.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's 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.

 

Close-up of the front cover of FT #446, showing Mom happily selling popcorn to a truly beastly audience! (© David Sutton/Etienne Gilfillan/Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

CABIN BOY

 

Official American DVD of Cabin Boy (© Adam Resnich/Tim Burton/Touchstone Pictures/Tim Burton Productioms/Skellington Productioms/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

It's not often that either a Disney movie or an offbeat fantasy movie entirely escapes my attention, which makes the film that I watched last night on the British retro TV channel Talking Pictures rather special, because it is both a Disney/Touchstone movie AND an offbear fantasy movie yet was previously wholly unknown to me.

Directed and written by Adam Resnick, co-produced by Tim Burton, and released in 1994 by Buena Vista Pictures, the movie in question was entitled Cabin Boy.

Its titular character begins the movie as a petulant, thoroughly-obnoxious spoiled brat named Nathanial Mayweather (played by Chris Elliott), son of a zillionaire and newly graduated from colleage, who is meant to board a luxurious ship to take him to his father's plush hotel in Hawaii. Instead, his insulting treatment of a village local (a pseudonymously-credited David Letterman) sees him deliberately guided onto the wrong vessel.

Namely, a sleazy fishing boat whose rough-and-ready crew, skippered by the grizzly-mannered (and looking!) Captain Greybar (Ritch Brinkley), are setting far out to sea for three months in order to catch fish and have no time for a horrified Nathanial's hysterical histrionics once he discovers this awful truth.

 

Nathanial (Chris Elliott) and Trina (Melora Walters) in Cabin Boy (© Adam Resnich/Tim Burton/Touchstone Pictures/Tim Burton Productioms/Skellington Productioms/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Thanks to his desperate but disastrous attempt to redirect their boat towards Hawaii, however, they all find themselves heading instead to a mysterious ill-omened sea zone named Hell's Bucket, containing an equally-dreaded island.

In revenge, Greybar and his crew make Nathanial serve them as their cabin boy, albeit with predictably preposterous results. Both en route to the island and upon arrival there, Nathanial and the crew find themselves confronting all manner of outlandish outsiders.

They include everything from a sex-starved six-armed woman named Calli (a sly nod to Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad antagonist Kali), a scowling scolding ginormous aerial cupcake (designed by Tim Burton and voiced by Jim Cummings), the fishing boat's female figurehead (Rikki Lake) who comes alive at the most unexpected moments, a belligerent iceberg monster (as in a belligerent monster actually composed of an iceberg!), and a half-man half-shark deepsea denizen named Chocki who takes pity upon hapless, hopeless Nathanial, rescuing him from assorted maritime perils, and played, incongruously, by none other than Hollywood's erstwhile song-and-dance musicals star Russ Tamblyn!

Nor is that all. Nathanial mistakenly 'rescues' from the waves what turns out to be a round-the-world swimming competitor in the shapely shape of Trina (Melora Walters), thereby disqualifying her. Unsurprisingly, Trina is initially resentful of Nathanial's well-meaning yet nonetheless calamitous action, but as the movie's romantic interest for him, she eventually falls for his goofy, bumbling charm.

 

Calli, played by Ann Magnusson (© Adam Resnich/Tim Burton/Touchstone Pictures/Tim Burton Productioms/Skellington Productioms/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Needless to say, by the end of the movie Nathanial's experiences have transformed him into a sharing, caring kinda guy, and everyone lives happily ever after – except for a vengeful giant named Mulligan (Mike Starr), that is. Mulligan is the aggrieved husband of Calli, with whom Nathanial had lately travered his rite of passage into manhood.  Not surprisingly, Mulligan is hardly best pleased about this, but he finds himself belted in every sense of the word by the newly-invigorated Nathanial in a bold, unselfishly brave bid to save his fellow shipmates from Mulligan's ire.

Cabin Boy is every shade of zany imaginable (and then some!), with Elliott giving a riotously funny performance as Nathanial, amply augmented by countless sight gags and amusing asides – I loved it!

To experience a salty snippet of the maritime mayhem awaiting you in Cabin Boy, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer for this movie 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.

 

Confronting the iceberg monster (© Adam Resnich/Tim Burton/Touchstone Pictures/Tim Burton Productioms/Skellington Productioms/Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

TITANS AND GIANTS AND MONSTERS – OH MY!!

 

Publicity posters for The Titan, Village of the Giants, and The Food of the Gods (© Lennart Ruff/Voltage Pictures/42/Automatik Entertainment/The Amel Company/Motion Picture Capital/Nostromo Pictures/The Post Republic/Signature Entertainment/Netflix / © Sean S. Cunningham/Carolco Pictures/Tri-Star Pictures / © Bert I. Gordon/Berkeley Productions/Embassy Pictures – all three posters reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 Time for another six of the best(?) and the rest(!) movies watched recently by me, drawn forth from the cinematic genres of science fiction and fantasy to be mini-reviewed here for your merriment and mirth during this festive season!

 

 

Publicity poster for The Titan (© Lennart Ruff/Voltage Pictures/42/Automatik Entertainment/The Amel Company/Motion Picture Capital/Nostromo Pictures/The Post Republic/Signature Entertainment/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE TITAN

On 16 November 2023, I watched the futuristic sci fi movie The Titan. Directed by Lennart Ruff, and released in 2018 by Netflix, The Titan is set in the year 2048 with Earth vastly overpopulated and doomed to ecological destruction very soon. Sam Worthington plays US fighter pilot Rick Janssen, one of a team of volunteers submitting to a make-or-break radical, highly controversial scientific program of genetic manipulation to transform them into humanoids capable of surviving on Saturn's giant moon Titan. For if successful, it is envisaged that humanity will then migrate there and establish a new life and civilisation on this new world. Although interesting overall, I found this movie's plot oddly unengaging, probably because the entire movie concentrates upon the program to create these new humanoids, with its actual, ultimate success story, Rick, only seen in his new, flying form on Titan for all of a minute at the very end of the film. Much more of it should have been devoted to the end result, I feel, rather than to the build-up, which drags on, and on, and on... Please click here to view an official trailer for The Titan on YouTube, or click here to view the entire movie while it is free to do so on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (© Wes Anderson/Indian Paintbrush/American Empirical Pictures/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR

On 6 November 2023, I watched the new Netflix mini-movie The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Directed by Wes Anderson, and released in 2023 by Netflix, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is based upon a Roald Dahl short story of the same title, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character, with Ralph Fiennes as author Roald Dahl. Henry is an inveterate gambler who has no problem with cheating if it means winning, and who learns indirectly from a mystic (Ben Kingsley) how to see without using his eyes, thereby enabling him to win every game – only to discover, however, that without the risk of ever losing now, there is no longer any thrill to gambling, So instead, he puts his ill-gotten gains to philanthropic use. Also starring Dev Patel and Richard Ayoade, and just 40 minutes long, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is visually sumptuous, a gorgeous palette of pastoral multicolour, and scenery that changes on-screen in the manner of a theatre stage production, but hampered imho by a purposefully stilted dialogue presentation that resembles someone reading in a gabbled monotone manner from a book, which grates after a while. Please click here to view an official trailer for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for Pixels (© Chris Columbus/Columbia Pictures/Happy Madison Productions/1492 Pictures/LStar Capital/China Film Co Ltd/Film Croppers Entertainment/Sony Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

PIXELS

On 8 November 2023, my movie watch was the very funny sci fi/fantasy-themed comedy film Pixels. Directed by Chris Columbus, and released in 2015 by Sony Pictures, Pixels stars Adam Sandler as a jaded, drifting, all-grown-up video-game arcader named Sam Brenner whose skills in and knowledge of 1980s classics like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and Centipede become invaluable to the US President (who just so happens to be Sam's best buddy from childhood – what are the chances??) when Earth is challenged by real-life Space Invaders – a race of aliens who threaten to destroy our planet if Earth's representatives cannot beat them in a series of real-life, full-sized, full-power versions of these vintage games. The special effects are incredible, the story itself is thrilling, the characters mostly likeable (Peter Dinklage's gaming cheat Eddie – Sam's mean rival back in the day – is somewhat less so). Never having been a gamer, however, I probably missed a fair few in-jokes along the way, but I still enjoyed it very much, so I feel sure that avowed gamers would love it! Please click here to view an official trailer for Pixels on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for DeepStar Six (© Sean S. Cunningham/Carolco Pictures/Tri-Star Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

DEEPSTAR SIX

On 9 April 2023, I watched on the UK's retro horror/sci fi channel Legend TV the 1980s underwater sci-ft/monster movie DeepStar Six, which I'd been wanting to watch for some time. Directed by Sean S. Cunningham, and released in 1989 by Tri-Star Pictures, DeepStar Six takes its title from the name of a deepwater US Naval facility that blows up a cavern on the ocean bottom. This in turn causes a huge sea monster to be released through the resulting fissure that destroys the facility and relentlessly pursues the survivors as they desperately attempt to escape to the surface in their vessel. The most recognisable star in this movie is Greg Evigan, previously of BJ and the Bear TV fame, who plays its hero – submarine pilot McBride. As for the monster: although often described in reviews of this film as a gigantic prehistoric sea scorpion or eurypterid, it actually looks nothing like one, at least as far as fossil evidence of such creatures' appearance is concerned. DeepStar Six is a very formulaic 'painting-by-numbers' monster movie, but is entertaining nonetheless, though it takes a heck of a while before we finally get a good look at the monster. Please click here to view an official trailer for Deepstar Six on YouTube.

 

 

Publicity poster for The Food of the Gods (© Bert I. Gordon/American International Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE FOOD OF THE GODS

My film watch on 9 September 2023 was the 1970s monster movie The Food of the Gods, as shown on the retro UK TV channel Talking Pictures. Directed, co-produced, and written by Bert I. Gordon, and released by American International Pictures in 1976 in the USA, in 1977 everywhere else, The Food of the Gods is based in only the most tenuous way upon the eponymous sci fi novel by H.G. Wells. Apart from featuring a mysterious substance that causes animals who consume it to grow to enormous size, the movie and novel have entirely different storylines. The movie is set in North America, not England, and focuses upon a group of people cut off from civilisation on a small island where the said Food of the Gods has oozed out of the ground, creating colossal highly-venomous wasps, gigantic carnivorous chickens, huge flesh-biting maggots, and hordes of murderous bloodthirsty mega-rats, most of which seem hell-bent upon targeting the elderly Mrs Skinner, played by veteran actress Ida Lupino in her penultimate big-screen role. Sadly, most of the special effects are risible, especially the close-ups of the rats attacking and killing their human victims, which also go on for far too long imho. My biggest disappointment, however, was discovering that this monster movie didn't feature Joan Collins, whom I'd been looking forward to seeing in it – only for me to remember somewhat later that it was Empire of the Ants that she'd appeared in! Doh! Please click here to view an official trailer for The Food of the Gods on YouTube.

 

 

Full cover from the official Region 1 DVD of Village of the Giants (© Bert I. Gordon/Berkeley Productions/Embassy Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS

Speaking of The Food of the Gods: on 9 December 2023, my birthday movie watch was a truly strange flick from the mid-1960s entitled Village of the Giants. As with the previous movie mini-reviewed by me here today, it was (very) loosely inspired by the H.G. Wells novel The Food of the Gods, but that is not the only similarity shared by these two films. Like the previous movie here, this one was also directed, co-produced, and written by the selfsame Bert I. Gordon, but was released in 1965, by Embassy Pictures. In Village of the Giants, a gang of unruly teenagers led by the obnoxious Fred (Beau Bridges, in one of his earliest movie roles) ingest a goo created by a child prodigy aptly nicknamed Genius (a very young Ron Howard), grow to ginormous proportions, and terrorise a small American town, until local hero Mike (Tommy Kirk) and friends come to the rescue. This movie suffers from a serious identity crisis, inasmuch as it seems to have no idea what it is meant to be, switching between such normally discrete cinematic genres as screwball comedy, Swinging Sixties musical, sci fi, thriller, and even mild teenage sexploitation flick – unfortunately, however, it doesn't succeed as any of them. Indeed, whenever they are reminded of this movie, its nowadays most famous stars apparently squirm with embarrassment, and I can well understand why! Please click here if you would like to view Village of the Giants in its entirety and free of charge on YouTube, or click here to view an official trailer for it 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 surprise surfacing by the giant deepwater sea monster from DeepStar Six (© Sean S. Cunningham/Carolco Pictures/Tri-Star Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)