Gamera The Super Monster!!!!

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Kristoph Johannes

Gamera The Super Monster~ 1980, Noriaki Yuasa, Japan

Gamera The Super Monster was released in 1980; a full five years after Terror of Mechagodzilla, the final Showa era Godzilla film Toho ever released. Let that sink in; by 1980, EVEN TOHO had given up. Godzilla, for years a big green cash cow, had stopped bringing in enough money to warrant the production of additional films. That’s a pretty clear sign that the kaiju genre needed some time off, and yet, here we are, five full years late to the party with Gamera Part Eight, and it is the single most critically underfunded Gamera outing ever.

“Spare some change?”

Gamera The Super Monster takes the now well worn Daiei tradition of recycling old footage and runs with it to an unforgivable extreme. There is almost no original monster content in the entire film, and no original monsters. It’s basically a clip show, they’ve cannibalized footage from previous Gamera adventures and cobbled together a cheapo monster montage, with some bizarre and crummy original footage sandwiched between sequences in an attempt to hold some kind of narrative together. The story they bring us concerns a little boy (surprise!) with a Gamera fixation (I”m sure the feeling is mutual) who winds up in the middle of some sort of intergalactic turf war. Unable to combat the nefarious invaders on his own, our kiddo throws in with three alien ladies who occasionally wear spandex superhero outfits, complete with capes, and together they work to foil the attempted conquest of Earth by a hostile alien race, who fly around in a damn Star Destroyer. Yep. A Star Destroyer.

The original effects are worse than terrible, and even the classic monster footage had to have felt positively prehistoric to audiences in 1980. This is, in a lot of ways, the Godzilla’s Revenge of the Gamera franchise, a film which makes no claim to even trying to satisfy an adult audience, instead playing straight to children, and compensating for it’s flimsy narrative with wall to wall monster combat, mostly snatched from pre existing footage- however, where Godzilla’s Revenge was a midseries celebration of ongoing cannon meant to give kids what they really wanted, Gamera The Super Monster is a cut and dry cash in attempt by Daiei and financiers to milk what pennies still remained in Gamera’s dying husk once and for all. Gamera The Super Monster isn’t a sequel, it’s more like a liquidation sale.

That having been said, there are some important concessions that need to be made before tossing this stinker out with yesterday’s ham; we are NOT the target audience for Gamera The Super Monster. This is, first and foremost, a children’s film, and it was a children’s film made for kids who probably couldn’t have just streamed Gamera’s entire catalog off of youtube illegally anytime they wanted. It’s possible that for the children of 1980’s Japan, this movie freaking kicked ass. Gamera The Super Monster plays like a greatest hits album for kids who don’t have easy access to these films in their own right. It’s all the monsters you love, and only the good parts. Then, holding the whole thing together, you get space ladies in capes flying around. Honestly, you could do a lot worse! I actually think in some weird way Gamera The Super Monster is a better kid’s film than Godzilla’s Revenge, it’s so much less bleak and depressing, our lead kid is nowhere near as annoying, and the non-monster sequences are anything but drab. Putting yourself in the shoes of a kid who had little to no access to home video, but who loved Gamera, you can probably see how a matinee showing of Gamera The Super Monster could rock your socks off like a mutha fucker.

So, through the eyes of the adult, we have the most lamentable flop in Gamera’s tragic career. For children, we have a shitty story (But who cares?) a spaceship right out of Star Wars, the MOST monsters ever in a Gamera film, and Japanese space ladies, complete with special powers which require choreographed arm movements to activate, like all Japanese people love. I am bound by honor to grade this film academically, but it’s worth an asterisk in the record books that this piece of garbage might be a masterpiece if you’re under 11 years old.

The Thrill of a Kill

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Kristoph Johannes

The Thrill of a Kill~ Lars-Erik Lie, 2011, Norway

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Remember the foreign exchange program from high school? What a great idea, right? Your school sends off it’s best and brightest to be immersed in a foreign culture for a full year, and in exchange, that country would send some exotic baddass from their ranks to come hang out in your boring town for a while, and everyone would be super psyched about it. Usually. Sometimes it didn’t really work out so well. Sometimes, you’d send off the third hottest cheerleader you had, and in return, you’d get some attic dwelling troglodyte who wrote Lego-land fan fiction. I can almost hear Belgium laughing their, deep, guttural, Flemish guffaws, even now. They’ve made a fool of you… You just know they could not wait to drop that kid like a burning sack of garbage the first chance they got.

That’s sort of how I feel about The Thrill of a Kill. At first glance, this promises to be Norway’s answer to Violent Shit, and damn, is that ever overdue. But then you dig in, give it a watch, and you quickly find out that that isn’t what you have here at all. Somehow, Violent Shit is like…. BETTER. Very much so. The Thrill of a Kill is a very specific kind of disappointment. It’s the motion picture equivalent of the foreign exchange student that your principal tried to send back.

THE PLOT~ Kimsy is whatever passes for “Goth” in Norway, which somehow is even lamer than the Domesticated American Goth. She’s a snotty, miserable little shit who mopes around the house all day, wretched and unemployable, and I’m assuming is really into Japanese cartoons. Feels like a safe assumption. Anyway, this is your main character. Aren’t you just elated? It’s unfortunate for Kimsy that her mother is about as big a fan of her as you and I are.

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As seen here.

Basically, mom’s had it up to her Nordic nostrils with Kimsy’s bullshit. “Why can’t you get a job like your equally gothy, yet somehow less worthless older sister?” Mom yells. “Fuck this,” thinks Kimsy, no longer able to tolerate her mother’s reasonable exasperation with her lifestyle choices. In a fit of rage both childish and boring, Kimsy, simple minded and angry at the world, grabs her nerd headphones, cranks up her unlistenable jams, and trudges out into the picturesque Norwegian forest to blow off some steam. We all know, however, that no steam is to be blown off today. No, rather, Kimsy is about to bumble into a situation which will do little to alleviate her stress level, for it is here, deep in the wilderness (I guess) that Kimsy falls into a deadly game of cat and whatever Norwegian cats eat with our film’s exciting movie murderer; Just Some Dude.

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As seen here.

Yep, our killer is truly nothing to write home about, folks. He’s just some pudgy, Norwegian dork who basically looks like the assistant manager of your local geek squad. He’s the kind of guy who, at the age of 42, likely has nothing whatsoever in his 401K, but who probably owns three replica swords from the Highlander movie series. This is perhaps the film’s most confusing shortcoming, it gives us a protagonist we can’t stand, and an antagonist we won’t even remember. Not off to an ideal start, Norway. Really expected better.

Anyhow. We spend sort of a long time learning the ins and outs of this loser’s back story, which is far from thrilling, but at least they’re trying. Turns out, our weird, murderous loser was the son of a single mother, who basically abused and neglected the shit out of him throughout his entire childhood, because she really wanted to focus on her career (prostitution.) Over time, this unhealthy environment transformed what might have been a perfectly adequate D&D dungeon master into a ACTUAL dungeon master, and our bad guy eventually learns to embrace a lifestyle of murder and misanthropy, as so many of us do… So I guess it goes without saying that Norwegian CPS really screwed the pooch on this one.

Anyway… Our pig nosed, weasel bearded, woman-butchering forest nerd stalks and menaces Kimsy for a while, until he decides that it’s time to kick things up a notch and drag her back to his freak ass Norwegian murder shack for the most uncomfortable scene in the movie. It get’s rough, and you’re gonna hate it.

So that happens for a while, but apparently Kimsy can only be missing for several hours without the rest of her family taking notice. “Hey, where’s that annoying creature we don’t love very much?” Her mom and sister begin to wonder, eventually realizing that there could be legal consequences to letting Kimsy be eaten by trolls once the sun goes down. The two conclude that they had best set out to find her and bring her back home, and we’re into act 2. For whatever reason, this phase of the movie starts off looking sort of promising. We sort of get the impression that Kimsy’s mom and sister are going to embark on some detective quest to track their missing family member down, and perhaps unearth more information in the process that could further flesh out the film and make things more interesting; but if there is one thing The Thrill of A Kill loves to do, it is to fall puzzlingly, frustratingly short on promised potential that should be relatively effortless to deliver upon. Kimsy’s mom and sister talk to a whopping one person on their quest, which provides them with no leads and no clues of any sort whatsoever, and then, they just bump into Kimsy at a gas station. Really. They stop for gas and see the murderer there, and as he drives away, they spot Kimsy tied up in the back of his car. Then they just follow him home. That’s it. Pretty easy.

What happens next is dumb, too. Basically, in an effort to rescue Kimsy (I know, what for, right?) a bunch of people die, Kimsy escapes and is recaptured more than once, and a penis get’s severed somewhere in all the commotion. You know what, whatever Norway. I don’t even care anymore. This is not a good movie.

if you wanna talk shop, The Thrill of a Kill is fraught with blatant inferiority in every aspect of its execution, and it never tires of finding ways to disappoint, even when expectations are astoundingly low to begin with. The music is garbage, the photography is boring, and the narrative only holds together because it’s so fucking cookie cutter that it would require creativity to screw up.

And let’s talk about this killer again. Really?!? This is what you’re prepared to offer? I know you’ve got better than this, Norway. You can’t scare up one ghost viking, or maybe some black metal kids or something? How in the fuck is it even possible that to date, Norway, a culture with such a rich history of brutality and violence, can’t do better than the office IT guy? Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?

In summation, The Thrill Of A Kill is a truly flimsy imitation of a specific type of splatter film, which are typically known to be very low quality, but are embraced regardless. However, this film’s inability to live up to these astoundingly modest requirements makes it very, very difficult to recommend to anyone. Basically, you would have to have already re-watched all the movies that The Thrill Of A Kill wants to be so many times that you’re sick to death of them, and are desperate for something, ANYTHING new. If you’re in that boat, then A) I kind of don’t understand what a day in your life must be like, and B) I guess I have a recommendation for you. it sucks ass, have fun. For everyone else, I really can’t imagine why you’d want to waste your time.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

D-

BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL!!!!!

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Black Devil Doll From Hell ~ 1984, Chester Novell Turner, USA

BlackDevilDollFromHellVHSscan Not to be confused with Black Devil Doll (2007), nor even Devil Doll (1964), Black Devil Doll From Hell is a humble, shot-on-video, exploitation fable directed by Chester Novell Turner and released in 1984. If the statements “I can handle no budget VHS exploitation” and “I don’t mind puppet rape” both apply to you, then there’s really no reason why you haven’t already seen this movie. For the rest of you, you can probably just go about your business and pass on this one.

THE PLOT~ When prudish, virginal, Christian woman Helen finds an ugly ventriloquist doll in an antique store, she finds herself transfixed by it, which is weird. Seeing this, the cashier hits Helen with her standard sales pitch; “That doll is cursed, it is not to be trifled with. If purchased it, it will grant you your heart’s true desire, but beware.” Sounds on the level. So, in a direct contradiction to her firebrand religious convictions, Helen buys the damn thing for reasons no human will ever understand, ever, and takes it home, where she proceeds to just go to sleep like she DOESN’T have a cursed ventriloquist dummy in her fucking house. Predictably, the dummy drops the act once she’s out, and begins to walk about the house freely, just like all ventriloquist dummies do. Here’s where things go all “monkey’s paw” on us; The doll grants your hearts true desire, right? Well, what does every God fearing woman truly want, beneath her well fortified façade of Christian values? Why, some red hot puppet sex, that’s what! So, our Black Devil Doll breaks her off a piece of sweet, hot, puppet lovin’ that she isn’t likely to forget anytime soon, which, initially, is just him raping her. Yep. Pretty bad. And it get’s worse, next, in an uncomfortable and blatantly sexist twist, Helen does a 180 on the whole “consent” biz and decides that she really, really loves sex with ventriloquist dummies after all. It’s like, her favorite. Hold up, though, cuz there’s another drawback waiting in the wings; Turns out the first times always free, but after that, the generosity dries up. Try as she might, Black Devil Doll just doesn’t like her that way anymore, and he soon abandons her altogether. Now irreparably damaged by puppet sex (who hasn’t been there, right?) Helen abandons her religious convictions and embarks on an ever more self-destructive quest to satiable her unquenchable lust for dong. Things don’t end well, and that’s the movie.

Horrendously offensive content aside (for now), Black Devil Doll From Hell is basically a morality play about addiction, but it also deals with the unavoidable folly of repressing your feelings and denying yourself your true desires. It’s sort of insightful, actually; Helen spent her entire life denying herself what she really wanted because of how society told her she was supposed to live, and then she got to be true to herself exactly once, and it basically destroyed her life, because she was so unprepared for it. That’s kinda heavy. Additionally, this movie addresses the many dangers of owning sexy puppets, so there’s a while lot to learn here.

It’s sort of hard to know how to feel about Black Devil Doll From Hell... This is one that has some very positive qualities, as well as some pretty glaringly negative ones. One thing is totally certain, though; as you now know, this movie is dammed offensive. We’ll touch on that more extensively in a little bit, but first, let’s briefly focus on the positive;

Every frame of Black Devil Doll From Hell basically permeates “triumph over adversity.” This is a film that was made with essentially no resources beyond the sheer dedication of Chester Novell Turner and lead actress Shirley L. Jones. It was shot on video, the music all sounds like it was composed using a Casio found in the trunk of an abandoned car, and it’s clear from start to finish that Turner was getting this done essentially on his own. From that angle, there’s a tendency to want to cheer him on, he made a movie with absolutely nothing, and back then, that was a lot harder to do than it is today. It’s also not even that terrible, all things considered, so this accomplishment certainly does deserves some credit. Black Devil Doll From Hell is a movie that exists because sometimes passion and ambition have their way over resources and adversity… We all want to believe in that message.

But here comes the hammer… Black Devil Doll From Hell is basically the one ingredient you would need if you wanted to have the average Millennial frothing at the mouth with complete and inconsolable fury. This thing exists in direct contradiction with the overly P.C. ideals that dominate the zeitgeist here in 2015, and usually, I’m all for that. In this case, however, I feel that I may have to side with the angry mob; Black Devil Doll From Hell is painfully, unforgivably sexist. It’s meant to be taken as a joke, but deep down in it’s bones, Black Devil Doll From Hell is predicated on ideas and beliefs that are damaging, and out of step with modern society

Our doll gives Helen what she truly desires, right? Well, the implication here isn’t JUST that human beings crave physical intimacy. The film also seems to imply that women crave subjugation and abuse as well, that they need a domineering male to control and belittle them. Maybe that’s not what Mr. Turner wanted to say, but that’s the message that comes across, and it’s more than a little damaging for Black Devil Doll From Hell. We can’t really rave about the movie as a technical achievement, and really, likability is the one thing this movie has going for it… So, you could see how not being very likable would be a major problem. The fact is, the strong, sexist content throughout the film essentially nullifies all or most of the goodwill Mr. Turner has earned just by getting the damn thing finished in the first place, and that leaves the film is a pretty sorry position indeed.

Unfortunately, this one is hard to recommend.

D+

THE GUYVER!

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

The Guyver ~ 1991, Screaming Mad George, Steve Wang, USA, Japan

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The Guyver is a real roller coaster. When you first hear about it, you like “An America adaptation of a Japanese Ultraman style superhero? That sounds like it’s going to suck really, really aggressively.” But then you find out it has Jeffery Combs in it, and you’re like “Oh… Okay. That’s kinda cool.” Next, at five minutes into the film, you’re thinking “Whoa, this is awesome! How is this movie not huge?” But then, as the credits roll, you think “Oh. That’s why.” After that, you’re just really sad.

As you’ve no doubt guessed, The Guyver starts strong- really strong. Right away the movie does its best to win you over by putting its very best attribute front and center- that being film’s numerous and remarkable creature effects. Suitomation, animatronics, makeup effects, holy smokes, you guys, The Guyver does all of this, and it does it WELL. Rad monsters abound, and these are the sort of practical effects that Hollywood realy doesn’t want you to know are even possible. Too bad, Hollywood, The Guyver spilled the beans. We now know that not every movie has to be Mark Wahlberg standing in front of a green screen for three hours, you’re more than capable of making physical effects that actually look awesome, you just don’t want to, and I’m sick of your bullshit. Go to hell, and take your lowsy CG with you.

But I digress.

Although The Guyver goes off with a bang, it has absolutely no stamina, like a long distance runner that hauls ass at top speed for four minutes, topples over sideways, and never even comes within eyeshot of the finish line. One gets the feeling that directors Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang (Wait, really?) knew things weren’t quite panning out, and so from early on we see them attempting to compensate… With humor. The Guyver becomes progressively zanier as it lags on, but its exhaustingly short on legitimate comedy, and shitty jokes are a real ineffective consolation prize when you’re watching a film that should, by any and all logic, be epic as hell. And The Guyver is NOT epic. Films like this needs a big third act, something that would take place on a space ship, or hopping across rooftops trying to repel an alien invasion, Avengers style- what we get instead is a made-for-TV budgeted costume drama where the bulk of the action takes place in one of two abandoned warehouses, or in a secret, underground laboratory which looks very similar to an abandoned warehouse with a few computers scattered around. Your eyes will try to call in sick twenty minutes into this virtual snoozestraveganza of bland locations and disinteresting bullshit, and you won’t hold it against them. The Guyver gives us everything it has in the first ten minutes, and after that, it flounders about wildly.

It does have a virtual Sega Dreamcast of beloved genre actors, however, which helps. In addition to the aforementioned Jeffrey “Herbert West” Combs, here playing a scientist called “Dr. East” (cute), we also have Mark Hamill (who is NOT the lead), Michael Berryman, David Gale, and, most importantly, Jimmy Walker, of Good Times fame. Walker plays a character called Striker, who is, more or less, the comic relief, which means that he a shit load of screen time. At one point, in an example of truly desperate and shameless pandering, Striker busts out Walker’s classic sitcom catch phrase, “Dyno-mite,” which is really sad. It’s worth mentioning that the Striker character periodically raps (horribly), and also transforms into a monster which looks something like what you’d get if you fed Jar Jar after midnight.

jar jar Yeah… That’s him on the right… I’m not proud of myself for gathering this screen shot, by the way.

Other than the effects, and the wealth of familiar faces, absolutely nothing in The Guyver shines. The music is obnoxious, the characters are lame, and the actual lead actor is one of the blandest humans I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing. In addition, the editing is actually kind of obnoxious, this is the first film in recorded history which has somehow engineered a transition effect even more objectionable than the oft reviled Star Wipe. I’d say the film is worth watching for that alone, and you’ll know it when you see it. Afterwards, however, slide this puppy back in the Netflix envelope from whence it came and part ways with it forever, as this is a classic cinematic wasted opportunity that you don’t need to sit through.

D+

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (AKA THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD AKA TURKISH STAR WARS!!!!!)

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (A.K.A. The Man Who Saved The World, AKA TURKISH STAR WARS!) ~ 1982, Çetin Inanç, Turkey

For decades, poor old Ed Wood (Rest in peace) has frequently been labeled the single worst director of all time. Really? If you really think that the man who brought us Glen or Glenda? lives at the absolute bottom of the cinematic barrel, then buddy, my suggestion would be that you clear your calendar, get your hands on some Turkish Pop Cinema, and prepare to have your damn mind blown, because you have no idea how far down that barrel actually goes. During the industry’s golden age (the devil-may-care European 1980’s), Turkey produced some of the most bat-shit insane movies ever known to mankind, and by comparison, Mr. Wood’s body of work would have appeared mature, reserved, and relatively well made. Here we are, thirty years later, and even deliberate attempts to match that magical 1980’s Turkish crazy don’t even come close. That’s probably for the best, take my word for it.

Possibly the most famous movie to come out of these truly bizarre artistic circumstances is Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, which, translated to English, apparently means The Man Who Saved the World, but to most psychotronic film fans around the world, it’s better known by it’s unofficial title; TURKISH STAR WARS.

I don’t know if Turkey even had copy write laws at this stage in the game, but Turkish film makers were evidently free to pilfer other people’s intellectual properties with impunity back in 1982. What you would get is this, Turkish folks would just go out and snatch up movies from The States (or wherever) and then Turkify the hell out of them, thereby crafting weird, Z-Grade, home grown imitations for the domestic market. Turkish Star Wars is, obviously, Turkey’s imitation of the Star Wars films, and while it doesn’t follow the plot of the Star Wars movies (it would have been a lot better off if it had) the movies DOES in fact use a good deal of stolen footage and music including numerous shots from Star Wars: A New Hope, as well as music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and also Flash Gordon.

THE PLOT~ In the future, Mankind is finally at peace, or something, I think… Except that we got alien problems like you wouldn’t believe, so actually, we are very much at war. Yeah… Also, uh, the human brain is like, really amazing, or something… but aliens don’t have brains… so… That’s part of the story, I guess… Ummmm… Earth has, in what I would call a completely incoherent perversion of logic, been broken into several different pieces over the years, and these pieces have all drifted off into space, becoming independent planets… but really, that’s not ever adequately addressed… Nor is the fact that Earth is somehow protected by a huge shield, which was created by the united consciousness of the entire human race. Basically, that’s kinda like this movie’s answer to The Force, so you might call that THE TURKISH FORCE.

I’m sorry, I know that none of this makes sense, and frankly, it’s not going to get any better. Here we go!

So, we Earthlings launch all of our fighters off into space, and no surprise, the mightiest of all these warriors just happen to be two old, grizzled Turkish dudes, named Murat, and Ali. Turkish Star Wars generously provides us with a Turkish Darth Vader (called The Wizard), a Turkish Obi Wan Kenobi (an old Muslim holy man), and a Turkish Princess Leia (some trashy Def Leppard groupie who doesn’t even have any lines until the third act of the film), but they’ve got NO Turkish Luke Skywalker for us. Poor show! Instead, we get two lumpy Turkish Han Solos, in the form of Murat (played by somewhat legendary Turkish actor/psychopath Cüneyt Arkin) and Ali (played by Aytekin Akkaya, who looks like someone The Fonz would but pot from.) While “flying” their damn X-Wings (more on this later) into combat, Ali and Murat are apparently shot down, or magically transported, or SOMETHING to a floating chunk of Earth that was once…. Egypt? Maybe? I don’t know, you guys, but they wind up on a planet that has several important holy sites from Earth on it, and they have no space ships when they regain consciousness. They just wake up partially buried in dirt on an alien planet with no knowledge of how they got there, and the first thing they do after dusting themselves off is to try and formulate a plan to get laid by whatever alien chicks might be lurking around nearby. These guys!

From here it only gets worse. Turns out the evil Wizard (aforementioned Turkish Darth Vader, he looks like ass) wants to capture our heroes and study their brains so that he can learn the secret of destroying Earth’s force field. Eventually, paths cross, but 85% of this movie is Cüneyt Arkin punching things like a damn lunatic. Seriously, this is worth taking time to discuss; Cüneyt Arkin is fucking ridiculous.

If you see this man, haul ass in the opposite direction, but it’s probably too late.

This film is just fight scene after fight scene, and Arkin appears to have formulated his own branch of martial arts without any previous knowledge of hand to hand combat, or just being a rational human being in general. For Arkin, it’s about hitting more, and most importantly, as hard as possible, every single time. Where a normal man would punch once, Arkin punches 11 times, and every single blow is 100% of Arkin’s mental and physical energy, his face contorted into a red mask of irrational Turkish fury, and the sound effects his blows create are bassy, over-driven explosions that could never occur in the natural world. He looks like a sixty year old man with the mind of a child, who just smoked a bunch of meth while watching Bloodsport and then decided to crash a Furry convention and beat everyone to within an inch of their life. (Oh yeah, the aliens in this movie looks completely terrible, most of them are just an unintelligible mass of synthetic fur with bike handlebar streamers attached to their fingertips. Really.)

So, there’s these guys, we see A LOT of whatever the hell they are.

And this fucking thing. Who okayed these costumes!??!

Late in the film, Murat is treated to some long, drawn-out exposition pertaining to Islam, and Jesus, who for some reason lives underground now, apparently, and when that’s finally over, Turkish Obi Wan is like, “look, bro, you gotta go get this ancient, magical sword, plus also there’s a human brain made of gold over there, too. Go get it, you can’t let the wizard get that shit, cuz then he’ll destroy Earth I think!” This brilliant plan totally backfires because everyone in this film is an idiot, but that’s besides the point. What I wanted to highlight about this sequence is that the sword he recovers basically amounts to our TURKISH LIGHTSABER, and damn is it stupid. It’s enormous, and the dumbest looking thing I’ve ever seen in a movie. Here it is:

“Just holdin’ my sword. This movie is every bit as good as Star Wars. Why you laughin’, bro?”

Murat does kill a bunch of monsters with the sword, but he quickly realizes that a life where he doesn’t constantly punch things just isn’t worth living. Having firmly made up his mind, Murat takes this priceless, centuries old relic of human culture, and melts it down into a liquid, thereby destroying it forever. That’s step one. Step two is that he takes his friggin’ hands and deliberately dunks them into his newly formed super-heated pool of molten metal. Yep! Step three SHOULD be him screaming his ass off on a gurney while being hustled into the E.R., but this is Turkish Star Wars, so rather than melting his hands off into cauterized stumps like we all know would really happen, Murat is instead endowed with giant, golden gauntlets, thus finally granting him the ability to punch again, only this time with all the added might of a Turkish Lightsaber. Now in glove form! I think he also does the same thing to his feet, I don’t remember the little gold sneakers before… But anyway, this is the extreme to which Murat’s need to punch drives him, and he spends the remainder of the film violently punching monsters into furry, disembodied corpses. The twist ending is that he doesn’t actually punch the wizard to death, but shockingly, goes for a karate chop, which actually slices his astro-nemesis in half, lengthwise. Don’t get too excited, the effect is garbage.

The last thing a Furry sees before it dies.

More than anything else, Turkish Star Wars is a romance about one man’s undying love for punching things. In this film, there is no Turkish Death Star. We do briefly see the American Death Star at the beginning of the film, but it disappears without explanation and is never mentioned again throughout the rest of the movie. I think the implication is clear; Murat just punched the Death Star into dust over the course of a few afternoons and that was that; no photon torpedo’s required.

Everything here is bad, bad, bad. The only parts of Turksih Star Wars that aren’t unforgivably shitty are the parts that they just stole from somebody else, and they don’t even do that right. The sequence I mentioned before, which has Murat and Ali flying off to engage in their outer space dogfight, is pretty frustrating. In essence, it’s a collection of close ups of either actor wearing a motorcycle helmet and sitting in front of a screen which is playing clips from A New Hope. They reuse the same shots over and over, and often, the shot playing on screen behind them will cut to a new shot while our foreground footage does not, and vice versa. Additionally, the footage behind them regularly informs us that our pilots, who are facing directly into the camera, are frequently flying backwards, and sometimes, backwards while at a 45 degree angle. Come on, they couldn’t do better than this?! It’s just terrible.

Good work, Cüneyt. You’re totally in space right now.

There’s another famous sequence in the film that basically amounts to Ali and Murat’s Turkish Jedi training, where Murat fastens enormous boulders to his ankles and jumps all over the place.

Plus, look at that physique!

People seem to remember this scene as the centerpiece of the entire film, but I’m not sure why. I’ll agree, it looks completely silly, but no more so than any other sequence. At one point in film, Turkish Darth Vader drinks human blood through a crazy straw. That’s pretty silly. Later on, the bad guys capture Ali and Murat, and devise the ultimate, most unbearable, most inescapable form of torture ever, being buried alive! The movie really hypes this whole deal up, they really want you to think that this is just the most grim fate imaginable, and that no one could possibly be mighty enough to overcome so gruesome an ordeal… Then, when they actually do it, they just sort of toss a few scoops of dirt on our heroes and call it a day. Ali and Murat don’t look the least bit pained, they just sort of sit up, and the aliens flip out. The movie flips out, too, this incredible feat (sitting up) is really glorified as being an unparalleled display of strength and fortitude, and honestly, they had very, very little dirt on them when it happened. You also could have sat up and survived this alien torture, were it you in their shoes. It’s absurd, but the film doesn’t appear to realize this, and the truth is, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam is full of ridiculous shit exactly like that. All Turkish pop cinema is! Where Turkish Star Wars strays from the pack, however, is that it’s both wacky as fuck, and somehow, boring as hell. Most of you wouldn’t survive this film in a single sitting, and that’s the sad truth. In order to reach Turkish Star Wars, you must first travel through numerous lesser nonsense films, or else it’s going to feel like the longest 90 minutes of your life.

That’s Turish Darth Vader, by the way.

Yeah… It’s not that great. Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam ‘s notoriety is 100% due to it’s unlicensed connection to Star Wars, rather than any distinction it may have earned in it’s own right, positive or negative. Clearly, this is a complete piece of shit, but it’s not the shittiest of its ilk, nor is it even the craziest. So far as that goes, Turkish Star Wars is actually pretty middle of the road. People who like these movies tend to do so because of their high spirited enthusiasm, and wild, reckless abandon, but if you don’t come into Turkish cinema with a positive attitude and some hardcore rose-tinted glasses, it’s going to give you ample reason to hate on it with every fiber of your being. Whatever your take on Turkish cinema as a whole, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam is an experience to be had.

“FFFFUUUUUCCCCKKKK YYYYYOOOOUUUUUU, FFFURRRYYY MMMMAAANNNN!!!!!” – Murat. (P.S. This would make such an awesome poster.)

D+

REBIRTH OF MOTHRA II!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Rebirth of Mothra II – 1997, Kunio Miyoshi – Japan

When Toho kicked off it’s brand new Mothra franchise, they really started off on the right foot. Rebirth of Mothra was an excellent kaiju adventure which was geared for kids, but remained entertaining for adults, and which managed to carry an effective message of environmental consciousness without coming across as too preachy or obnoxious. That’s a hard balance to strike, and they pulled it off; Rebirth of Mothra was a surprisingly solid effort which I really enjoyed. For Rebirth of Mothra II, we get the embarrassing dud we expected out of its prequel; and it sucks super, super hard. This thing fumbles at every turn, so strap yourself in for a rocket ride to dudsville, everybody.

THE PLOT~ Three school children Goonies their way into a grand adventure involving a lost, sunken temple, ancient cursed treasure, a big pollution monster, and magical furby pee. Then Mothra shows up and kills a boring sea dragon. Roll credits.

That’s about it. It feels slapped together, and the Mothra sequences feel tacked on. It’s so haphazard that it really could have been a non-Mothra script about a bunch of kids on some crazy adventure that just wasn’t panning out, so they slopped on a well known Kaiju and called it a sequel. The adventure angle makes this movie feel like a weird, sucky Atragon, but without the submarine, or really anything that made me love Atragon. It even references the Lost Continent of Mu, so clearly, the writers did have Atragon on their mind when they cobbled together this clown-party, but it’s not enough, and what we get is just a sham of a movie.

This time around, Mothra’s up against Dagahra, which is sort of a dragon/stingray combo type thing, but that sounds cooler than it is. He just doesn’t feel that special, or that well concepted. Apparently, his thing is that he eats up pollution (oh, that’s good, right?) and then poops out evil, murderous starfish creatures (there’s the catch, we don’t want those Starfish creatures around), so he totally needs to be stopped, obviously, but the movie does an extraordinarily poor job of establishing that the environment is even that polluted to begin with. This really needed to be conveyed SOMEHOW, and it just wasn’t. Not well. I don’t think it’s out of line to call this the single least effective environmental fable in the extended Zilla-Verse. Boo, Rebirth of Mothra II! Boo!

And then there is Mothra himself- that’s right HIMself. The Mothra in this film, I have learned, is Mothra Leo, the son of the Mothra we all know and love; making this the first mothra in Toho history which is expressly noted as being male. Honestly, this gender switch up sucks, Mothra being female was always a huge part of her charm, and this just feels like an unnecessary change that makes the character that much less unique. All these monsters are dudes, let’s leave at least ONE lady in the fray.

The worst part of the movie comes at the end, in the final showdown between Mothra and Dagahra. Mothra, like, morphs into what I call an X-Wing Mothra, and then splits off into countless tiny X-Wing Mothras, so he/they can fly into Dagahra’s mouth and zoom around until they reach the reactor core and target it with their photon torpedos. That may have been Return of the Jedi, actually, but the same exact thing happens in Rebirth of Mothra II, so what the fuck ever. Then, the squadron of X-Wing Mothras exit the exploding Death Star/Dragon/whatever, and rejoins to form normal X-Wing Mothra Leo, and then morphs back to non X-Wing Mothra, meaning that Mothra’s X Foils are not permanently locked in attack formation, he can apparently revert back and forth whenever the movie needs to get stupider. It’s fucking lame. Fun fact; people have liked Mothra since the 50’s, and we don’t need to have her transformed into a dude which is shaped like a spaceship. You ruined everything, Toho.

Our three kids, meanwhile, are tasked with surviving the bumbling antics of two adult thieves, who have become Belvera’s newest henchmen, but their actual purpose is to illustrate to us the evils of human greed, and consequences thereof. None of that matters, because this message is lost due to how horribly disinteresting and poorly done the film is. You’ll be happy it’s over, and you’ll take nothing with you, Rebirth Of Mothra II is boring, ineffective, and overly childish to the point of being obnoxious, and frankly, it damages Mothra’s proud legacy.

Turdsville!
D

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah!!!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah ~ 1991, Kazuki Ohmori – Japan

godzilla_vs_kingghidorah_91

Dammit, Toho. This one may take a little while.

So, right off the bat, let’s try to soften the blow with some good news; Godzilla VS King Ghidorah looks great. The monster suits, Godzilla especially, are lookin’ top tier. Also, there is some excellent monster photography, including a few Godzilla shots which are frame worthy. Now. Time to drop the hammer.

Godzilla VS King Ghidorah is stupid. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY stupid. The plot starts off passable, albeit teeth gnashingly recycled, and then degenerates into utter illogical garbage. Beyond being super convoluted, the real death blow to Godzilla VS King Ghidorah’s integrity is that it centers around time travel, but was written by someone with a staggeringly poor understanding of what time travel actually was. Someone who, had they watched Back To The Future, would not in a million years ever be able to figure out what the fuck was going on. Let’s hop down a line for emphasis here:

THIS IS THE WORST TIME TRAVEL MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

We’ll get to why in a little bit, but first, let’s delve into the terrible, terrible plot.

THE TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE PLOT- Japan; circa 1991- Godzilla hasn’t been seen for a while. That’s always a bad sign, if he isn’t already stomping you to death, it’s because he’s working out so he can stomp you extra hard tomorrow. Japan, of course, is stressed out about this. Suddenly, wow, would ya look at that, it’s a UFO! I sure hope this isn’t like every other time we’ve had UFOs show up, where it starts out with them being nice and saying they’ve come to help us, but then later we learn it was all a ruse and in fact they have some giant monster related scheme to kill us all. Oh, thank goodness, the people inside the UFO are really nice and say they’ve come to help us. I bet this isn’t going to be like the two hundred and thirty eight previous examples of this happening in a Godzilla movie (It’s exactly like all those other times. Rehash time, everybody).

So, the people in the UFO are (get ready for this) NOT aliens, they’re apparently humans from the distant future! They’ve brought one Japanese girl, the rest of them are all frump faced, red haired white people with giant foreheads/receding hairlines and zero screen charisma whatsoever. Japan just RAIDED the bottom of the Hollywood barrel to recruit as many Caucasians as possible, and you’re going to feel all the money they saved via the power of horrible acting. But I digress; All these future folks tell us that in the future, ain’t no Japan no mo’, on account of Godzilla stomping the shit out of it so many times. So, they’ve come to save it. How? Why, by going back in time again! They just stopped off to pick up a few people. Who are they picking up and why? Well….

THE WHO
1. Kenichiro– A writer of non-fiction books about strange phenomena. At the time of this film he has just uncovered information regarding the origin of Godzilla and is in the process of writing a book about it. The people from the future have his book, and they know 100% of the information he could tell them already. FACT: There is absolutely no reason for them to need to stop and pick him up, and he contributes nothing to their mission. He is brought along for absolutely no practical reason whatsoever, and it benefits the aliens in absolutely no way. He’s the main character.
2. Miki– An employee of some Japanese Paranormal society. Her contributions to this mission also add up to an intense lack of anything whatsoever. She also does nothing. There was no reason for her to come.
3. Professor Mazaki– A dinosaur expert. Guess what? He does nothing for this mission, either.

THE WHY
1. No reason at all.

Here’s the mission: Apparently Godzilla was not always the towering, unkillable champion of city smashing and monster throw-downs that we now know him to be. No, he started his life as a fairly ordinary dinosaur which had somehow managed to survive extinction and used to live on an island in the South Pacific. Why, pre-radiation Godzilla even fought for the Japanese in WWII! It wasn’t until later on that atomic testing had exposed Dino Godzilla to fallout, thereby transforming him into a damn giant monster. The future people’s plan to save Japan involves traveling back in time to that island right smack dab in the middle of WWII (Good news; more bad lines and horrible acting from white people in abundance here) and remove the dino from the island before his radiation exposure. Accompanying our 90’s era Japanese people are:

Some Japanese girl from the future named Emmie– The one future dweller we ever see who isn’t a balding, frump faced ginger.
M-11– an android, the ultimate balding, frump faced ginger, and the single worst character in anything, ever. I hate him.
Dorats – three suspiciously Ghidorah-like, biologically crafted super pets from the future. Why are we bringing those? Uuuuhhhhhh…..

500px-Dorats_and_Emmy

Those are the damn Dorats.

So, when they find Godzillasaurus, he’s basically dying on a beach. He’s mortally wounded. They could just kill his ass, but that’d be a dick move, so instead they teleport him to the bottom of the Bering Sea, which sounds like it would also kill him, but as this movie teaches us, there is no better, or more safe, place for a wounded person to just lay for hundreds of years without food or oxygen than the bottom of the ocean, it’s like hitting the pause button, you can stay there Indefinitely and just relax. So, they do this. Success! Next they return home, only to find that, oh hell, now instead of Godzilla, the f’ing Dorats have been mutated into Ghidorah, and now we got him rippin’ our shit up. Even worse, evidently this was the future people’s plan all along, they wanted to remove Godzilla from the equation so that Ghidorah could destroy Japan, not save it.

So, for a little bit, that’s a big issue, until the Japanese conclude that their only option is to take a nuclear submarine down into the Bering Sea to atomic blast that somehow not dead dinosaur who has been laying down there mortally wounded on the ocean floor for fifty years and create a brand new Godzilla, which could fight Ghidorah for them. They head down there in their submarine, but in a major act of “Well what do ya know, that’s a coincidence!” There just so happens to have already been a major nuclear incident right at that very spot in the Bering Sea years ago, so when they get there, there already is a Godzilla, fully formed and waiting. Yep. Out of the whole ocean, that’s where the spill was. Terrible, terrible writing. Just unthinkably bad.

So, Godzilla shows up, there’s a big fight, he kills Ghidorah by tearing off one of it’s heads and chucking him the ocean, and then he kills the future people. But then- oh no! We have Godzilla to worry about now! What are we gonna do? Oh, I know, let’s go into the future(?) and get Ghidorah from the bottom of the ocean, make him a cyborg, bring him back, and then kill Godzilla with our new even more dangerous, mechanized monster who we just tried to resuscitate Godzilla to defeat mere hours ago! And THAT’S WHAT THEY DO. WHAT?! This is, in effect, robbing Peter to pay Paul, only to be like “Oh, no, but how to we pay Peter? Oh, wait, I know, we’ll rob Paul!”

So, this is terminally convoluted in a way that is staggering and incredible, but that’s nothing compared to the glaring time travel issues which plague this turkey. Basically, after our heroes go back in time to stop Godzilla’s origin and remove him from history forever, making it so that he NEVER EXISTED in the first place, they return home, and everyone still knows about Godzilla.

WHAT!?!??!?!

Yeah. People remember something that never existed. Remember how Kenichiro was writing a book on Godzilla before he went back and stopped Godzilla from ever having existed? Well, now when he returns home after his mission, in a world where Godzilla never existed, he has a voice-mail message on his answering machine about the Godzilla book he’s working on. When Godzilla DOES appear, people understand him to be “Even bigger than he was before.” WHEN before?! There isn’t supposed to have been a before anymore, you stupid assholes! How did this movie happen?!?! This is a world where THIS conversation could have taken place:

“Hey, man, you remember that horrible monster that used to kill everybody, but then we went back in time to stop him from being born so now he never existed and none of us should have ever heard of him?”
“Oh, you mean Godzilla?”
“Yeah!”
“Oh, yeah, man, I hate Godzilla. He killed my father!”
“Really!”
“Yeah!”
“Well… Is your father alive now, then?”
“No, man, Godzilla killed him.”
“Oh, wow. I bet you’re sure glad Godzilla never existed now, then, huh?”
“Yeah, I just wish he hadn’t ever existed ever before he killed my dad.”

Another thing about time travel, these future assholes control a time machine, so they should be able to go back in time again since they screwed up the first time and didn’t actually stop Godzilla from being born. But they don’t. They conclude that the second (Second, as in, in reference to the first time, which now never happened?) birth of Godzilla was “Unavoidable.” Really? What about if you went back in time to that beach and blew that damn dinosaur’s head off of his body and then threw his fucking corpse into the sun? He was already mortally wounded when you got there, if you just killed him, then: poof, no Godzilla! No? Totally unavoidable, huh?

Apparently, in GVKG anything similar to a dinosaur is essentially unkillable, which makes it weird to think about how they’re all extinct now.

Also, when Emmie goes into the future to dredge up a decapitated (one third decapitated? He’s got three heads, minus one, so how does that work?) Ghidorah who has literally been laying motionless on the bottom of the ocean for 200 years, missing body parts, but still somehow “not dead,” , she has traveled to a world where Japan was permanently destroyed by Godzilla in the 1990’s, there is no Japan, and no Japanese culture. She travels to retrieve Ghidorah in a small submarine co-piloted by a white man who is somewhat reluctant to help her, given that her goal is to save a long extinct culture which he deems to be entirely insignificant. As he does this, while talking to a Japanese girl, he is speaking to her IN JAPANESE. So…. Yeah…. Makes no sense.

Let’s move on. Let’s move on, in fact, to M11.

m112

M11 sucks so, so hard. He’s an android from the future, brought back to carry out the dastardly machinations of our villainous dickhead time travel guys. He has abilities far exceeding the capabilities of a normal human, including enhanced durability, super strength, and a form of travel best called the “Andro-Douche-Glide.” He’s also, in a movie where giant lizard monsters travel through time, the least realistic thing in the entire film. Why? Because WHY would ANYONE, while building an android, chose to build one as stupid looking as this chud? M11 is a frump faced ginger doofus with an average build, receding hairline and less screen-charisma than his co-stars who are actually, literally made out of rubber. It’s clear that Toho really scraped up the worst out-of-work actors Hollywood could spare for their white people in this movie, but M11 is their worst. He sucks so, so bad. He’s also nothing more than an excuse for Toho to rip off The Terminator like crazy, which is embarrassing and the furthest thing from cool.

Maybe the worst thing about Godzilla VS King Ghidorah is that they strayed so far from the source material that they’ve actually managed to lose the thesis statement, this movie doesn’t even seem to possess an awareness that nuclear warfare is a bad thing at all. At a few points throughout the film they almost seem to bemoan the lack of readily available nuclear weapons, and using these weapons weapons is treated as a possible solution to problems more than once throughout the film. That’s a pretty huge jump from the chilling tale of an atomic, city crushing bogeyman that we all loved back in ’54.

On second thought, though, that’s not the worst thing about the movie.

m11 1

Fuck you, M11.

NOTE: Now, while we’re wrapping up, I need to address something. As I have come to understand it, popular G-Fan consensus is that the time travel in this movie DOES make sense, in that the dinosaur they moved into the ocean was actually not the 1954 Godzilla at all, but in fact, the Heisei Godzilla, the creation of which they inadvertently caused themselves, thereby meaning that this film erases nothing, and that this is why everyone still knows about Godzilla when our time traveling nimrods return from their island hopping WWII adventure. Well, that’s a fun little theory, but I’m forced to disregard it, because it’s not expressed in this film at any point, meaning that that is fan speculation, and I don’t review speculation which does not exist in the actual film. Furthermore, that solution, while it does tidy up some loose ends, isn’t less stupid. That would just mean that everyone in the entire movie is a moron, and that’s why no one ever realizes that this time travel was ineffective, and this is never pointed out. No matter how hard we try to contort our perceptions of this film to desperately make it make sense, it doesn’t, not on the screen. Godzilla Vs King Ghidorah is horrible, it’s really, really stupid, it doesn’t make sense, and there is nothing any of us can do about that, no matter how much we wish it weren’t the case. Refusal to accept that is essentially a more mild form of the same phenomena that compels mentally ill people to keep the corpses of loved ones about the house in hopes of creating the illusion that they never died. This movie sucks ass. Let’s not live in denial. Move on.

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare!!!

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare – 1987, John Fasano

ROCK-N-ROLL-NIGHTMARE

Rock N’ Roll Nightmare promotes itself as being a cool, Canadian made horror film filled with gruesome monsters, hot babes, and a fantastic heavy metal soundtrack. In reality, the only one of those things that it actually manages to be is Canadian. This film is successfully Canadian.

Written by and starring Z-Grade hair metal singer Jon Mikl Thor, it follows a supposedly popular heavy metal band called Triton as they bed down in an isolated Canadian farmhouse turned studio for a month in hopes of recording new material. Don’t let the rural setting fool you, this is a hard rockin’, chart toppin’ juggernaut of a heavy metal band, so expect to see these rowdy rock stars on their worst behavior! Oh, yeah, you’re gonna see a whole lot of:

Being Polite
Reading Quietly before bed
Staying positive
And doing the dishes, as seen here:

Whoo- Rock and roll!

Seriously- I thought these guys were a heavy metal band!!! In the 80’s!!!! Do you have any idea how often people do the dishes in this movie? It’s absolutely ridiculous, it happens over and over again- In 90 minutes they do they dishes more often than I do in a week. Motley Crüe didn’t do the dishes, they probably didn’t even have dishes! What the hell is going on here?!?!

mormons

THESE are your ROCK STARS?!?!

Well… They are Canadian… And anyway, I guess it’s not really fair to call them total prudes- they do pack in kind of a lot of sex scenes into this movie.

ugly horrible people

Including one where these two get it on. I bet you’re all real excited for that.

So, considering that Triton is a band which would probably look more at home slinging religion door to door than touring with Def Leppard, you might assume then that their secluded recording session in the Canadian countryside would be a pleasant, productive affair, but friend, that’s where you’d be wrong; dead wrong!

You see, while working on their new material, all of which is just terrible, by the way, Triton is plagued by two dark, wretched entities. Firstly; there is an enigmatic, creeping force of pure evil, sent straight from Hell, which haunts this farm house and slowly kills each member of Triton, one by one. Secondly, and probably worst of all: they must tolerate Stig, their drummer, who is a massive hunk of bullshit shaped into a human.

This is Stig, the biggest piece of shit in the whole fucking world.

Stig sucks like crazy. The actor playing Stig also sucks. He’s walking, talking proof that the universe is a fundamentally miserable and stupid place without purpose or justice, and part of what makes him suck the way he does is his stupid accent; this character has the lousiest, phoniest sounding Australian accent of all time, it’s cringe inducing. It makes Tarantino’s accent in Django Unchained sound like some serious pro-level shit. It’s as if the closest thing to dialogue coaching this guy got was to be shown a photograph of a Koala bear and to be told that Australians “Sorta sounded like people from England, only slower. Okay, action!” Later on in the film Stig is murdered (thank you) and replaced by a demon replicant with an American accent, but nobody in the band seems to mind the change given that this new Stig is a better drummer and is also less obnoxious.

If it is wrong to kick a man when it’s down, then it is, frankly, unethical to apply any form of criticism to Rock N’ Roll Nightmare whatsoever, but I am going to go ahead and confirm what you probably already suspect; this is a low budget, lame, badly made film with little in the way of talent, on, or off screen. That’s really about all that can be said, except for, that is, a detailed, photographic essay on the film’s climax, which is what I’m about to show you now. Ordinarily I would shy away from revealing the end of a film in one of my reviews, but this time I’m bending that rule to hell and back, because, A) the ending is the only part of this movie worth talking about in the first place, and B) absolutely no one cares. That being said, if you fear spoilers, turn away now, cuz they are comin’ atchya, fast and furious. Turned away yet, have you? Okay, off we go, to the film’s hilarious climax:

So… What happens is that after everyone has been dead and demon replicated except for Thor, Satan shows up and confronts him in the barn while he’s working on one of his shitty little songs. Having caught his prey seemingly offguard, this hideous demon-king reveals his evil plans and big, fake looking puppet body, but is surprised to find that Thor is actually already aware of the ongoing demonic situation, and doesn’t really seem to care about it. “That’s kinda weird,” Satan thinks to himself. Well, apparently the reason for all that is simple; as Thor explains, he ain’t human, he’s actually an Archangel called Triton The Intercessor; and he’s here on Earth incognito for some sort of top secret Angel-stakeout, and so he knew what these demon guys were up to all along. He doesn’t really LOOK like what you imagine an Angel to look like, he mostly looks like a Post-Op sex change Michelle Pfeiffer, but whatever, he’s totally an angel, you guys, and that’s not all; apparently none of the people in this entire movie were even real. This gaggle of dorks were all mere illusions Angel-Thor crafted using his magical powers to give Satan a false sense of normalcy, thereby creating the perfect Devil trap. Yep! That’s the Shyamalan twist at the end of Rock N’ Roll Nightmare; it was all an elaborate ruse to bust some Demons and send them to Heaven Jail. How blown is your mind right now?

What comes after Thor’s big reveal is… Well…. It’s SUPPOSED to be a fight scene… I think… I mean… I’m pretty sure…. You know what, here, I’m going to go ahead and just show you some images from the climax of the film; you look them over and then you tell ME what you see.

Here…:

satan am i seeing boobs

on his chest Did anybody else just see gay porn?!?!?!?!

Roller Blade

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Kristoph Johannes

Roller Blade ~ 1986, Donald Jackson

11lll4j

Things have changed since the rock ‘em sock ‘em dog days of 1986. Let me set the scene for you, and give you some perspective (I was two years old); At that time, The Berlin Wall was still standing fully intact, a constant impediment to the freedoms of the East German people. The Soviet Union was still in operation, ideologically opposed to American values, and seemingly determined to squash out the spirit of democracy, by force, if necessary. The threat of Nuclear War loomed threateningly in the zeitgeist of the entire human race, and the future was very much a topic of much debate, as well as pessimistic speculation. In 1986, it really did seem like we might just be looking at an apocalyptic doomsday in our near future, at a world where barren, Radioactive wastelands would blanket the entire Earth, where mutants and bandits would pillage without compassion for the weak or the unfortunate, and where a militarized religious order of roller-skating babes would fight to protect what was left of human civilization. This really did seem like an unavoidable certainty, just waiting to happen. Honestly, I don’t know how we have avoided that reality for so long, and I’m forced to assumed we have only postponed it… For now.

THE PLOT ~ The evil Dr. Saticoy, who looks like a combination of a Canadian Mounty and a gimp, and who constantly carries a hand puppet, not unlike Mr. Hat, hatches an evil plan to steal a power crystal from the noble Bod Sisters, a chapter of roller skating nuns who have been charged with keeping order in an apocalyptic wasteland filled with adults who ride around on rollerskates. It’s very realistic. Soon, the Bod sister’s are infiltrated by one of Saticoy’s spies, the crystal is stolen, and a confrontation between vicious, uncivilized killers and attractive young women on rollerskates comes to a head. Movies like this exist. Go watch them.

So, there’s other stuff in there… Saticoy’s spy ends up redeeming herself, some ranger type dude gets his son kidnapped, and there’s this dude who talks just like David Lee Roth, but really, who gives a shit? All of those things are Roller Blade’s honest attempt at giving you a plot to care about, and, to be frank, it’s a failure you probably predicted going in.

It’s truly amazing that movies like this can happen; movies with a concept so riddled with madness that hearing it explained it is infinitely more entertaining than actually watching it play out. Far too often these movies fall into the same trap; no matter how nutso your idea is, you either have to be equally insane, or legitimately talented, and if you’re not one of those two things, your movie is going to suck. Again, when you’re making a ridiculous ass psychotronic film, the worst thing your movie can be is boring. Roller Blade is not worth 90 minutes of your time, and that’s the tragic truth. You’ve probably imagined a better movie just reading the description, so quit while you’re ahead.

The real reason Roller Blade is important, though, is that it is, doubtless, an uncompromisingly realistic portrayal of our inevitable future. Is there a chance that soon the human race will engage in an atomic war so furious that vast expanses of the Earth will be left total uninhabitable? Without question; yes. And when this happens, what is the only logical outcome of this scenario? Well, any intelligent person knows that within weeks what is left of humanity will form a limited government/police force/religious order of roller babes to skate around and kill mutants. That’s a given! The logic is airtight, so if you want any chance at survival, it’s time to bust out your skates and get real comfortable with zooming around in short shorts (and that’s addressed to both male and female readers.) Roller Blade may not be entertaining, but neither was Driver’s Ed; however, both are necessary forms of education without which, we would be woefully ill prepared. I’m not sure if the future really will include a hand puppet enthusiast mounty-gimp, though. Probably. Hell, somewhere in the world that’s probably already a thing.

Also worth noting; Donald Jackson did manage to pull off at least one pretty solid film, Hell Comes to Frog Town, released two years later. It’s a good old time, friends. Review forthcoming!

D-

Santa’s Slay!

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Kristoph Johannes

Santa’s Slay ~ 2005, David Steiman

santas slay

It’s December 2014, and things have changed. All celebrities now have sex tapes. Mountain Dew comes in no less than one hundred and thirty five flavors, The Learning Channel hasn’t shown anything educational in 15 years, and women are now so objectified that breast implants are no longer enough, indeed, anyone who’s anyone now has butt implants, as well. We’re all dumb as shit, isn’t it time we had a Santa Claus more reflective of our generation?

Enter Santa’s Slay, a 2005 horror comedy which casts professional wrestler Bill Goldberg as a foul mouthed, muscle bound Santa Claus who hates children and murders people constantly for no reason. Now you’re talkin’ my language! If that kindly, Jolly Old Saint Nick at the mall can no longer hold your interest after years of exposure to X-Box and Monster energy drinks, and if you demand a Santa who frequents strip clubs and spits fire balls at innocent people, then it sounds like Santa’s Slay is just the pick me up your Holiday season needs!

THE PLOT~ Nicolas Yulesen is our main character, and he totally sucks. He pretty much spends his days complaining and being emasculated by his girlfriend, Mac. Also, he lives with his bonkers ass grandfather, who mostly stays at home cooking up crackpot inventions and scroogin’ it hardcore with his aversion to the Christmas holiday. All the people in town think Nicolas’s Grandpa is nuts. Fact is, Grampa knows more than he’s letting on. As Nick comes to find out, his gramps is in possession of an ancient tome called The Book of Claus, which tells the true story of Santa, a centuries old antichrist type creature, born of an immaculate conception between Satan and a virgin woman. He’s totally evil and can breathe fucking fire balls. The only reason this Santa ever gave anybody anything that wasn’t straight lethal is because he was obligated to after losing a wager with an angel centuries ago. The conditions of this wager stated that Santa Claus must spare humans, act nice, and deliver presents for one thousand years- which, of course, pissed Santa off real bad, but he had to do it because of the demon honor code, or something, but guess what? Times up. Santa is now free to make up for lost time and really get back to slaughtering people super hard, as is his true heart’s true desire. Soon, he arrives in Hell Township (that’s where these fucking people live), and he’s aching for a Yuletide blood bath. It’s up to Nicolas, Grandpa, and Mac, to survive the night, and if possible, defeat Santa.

As mentioned above, this is a hard fightin’, killer Santa Claus for the new millennium. I can’t imagine why he doesn’t ride around in a Monster Truck blaring Metalica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, but what he does do is ride is a sleigh pulled by a buffalo, which he calls a “hell deer,” and that’s also awesome. Goldberg does a good job portraying an enjoyable, likable killer, which is important in this era of horror cinema, because let’s face it, nobody goes to see Nightmare on Elm Street for the teenagers. Santa’s Slay has its problems, but none of them can be traced back to Goldberg’s performance, or his Santa character. They get a pass. Good job, dude.

The problems that stick a little harder stem from two sources. The first one we’ll talk about is budget; Santa’s Slay looks more like a high end made-for-TV movie than anything intended for theatrical release. The meager production quality might alienate mainstream movie-goers, but really, this movie wasn’t banking on bringing them on board anyway. Horror movies like Santa’s Slay come with a built in fan-base of hungry viewers who just want to see people get murdered by Goldberg, or Freddy, or whoever it may be, and they are more than accustomed to budget conscious production value. Hell, some of them even like that stuff.

One particularly heinous aspect of this cheap-o production, however, is the soundtrack. Damn, dude, it’s bad. It’s all weird Christmas pop, like something Brian Setzer would record with members of the All American Rejects, but would later be embarrassed about, and would never release. Most, or all, of these songs were probably recorded specifically for this movie; and they are a heavy burden for any film to bare. If I’m playing Devil’s advocate, I guess I can see how they don’t necessarily hinder the fun of watching Goldberg murder an entire police force, but it does limit the film’s potential. Santa’s Slay is fun, but it was never going to be a classic with horrible jams like this clogging up it’s screen time. Honestly, if they ever released a soundtrack to this movie, it would be a one way ticket into hell’s deepest pit.

Here’s something super crazy about this movie that I didn’t expect; the other problem with Santa’s Slay? It’s pretty damn racist! This may look like a cheesy Christmas slasher, and it is, but it’s also a biting criticism of Christians, Christianity, and Christmas, from a distinctly Jewish perspective. Seriously! It would be easy to ignore this subtext if subtext isn’t your thing, and I’m sure a big chunk of people eager to follow the cinematic career of professional wrestlers fall into that category, but seriously, this statement is in there if you look. Let’s break it down a bit:

Santa’s Slay doesn’t really have a hell of a lot of good things to say about Christmas, or Christians in general. In fact, the role of Jesus Christ in Christmas is utterly ignored in Santa’s Slay, something the film would like to suggest is accurate, given the current secular and commercialized nature of the holiday. I’ll give them that. Instead, the focus of Christmas is shifted more onto Santa Claus himself, who is pretty much the anti-Christ, thereby meaning that Christmas is a lot more misconception and a lot less immaculate conception (Budum-CHING!). Additionally, all identifiably Christian characters in Santa’s Slay are basically major pieces of shit… Most notably, Pastor Timmons, the town religious leader, played by the always excellent Dave Thomas (the Canadian one, not the square hamburgers one) who is a cowardly, lecherous, deceitful con man. Yep.

The opening scene is another good example, Santa’s Slay kicks it into high gear right out of the gate by opening with a multiple victim kill scene, which features Santa Claus butchering an entire family of wayward Christians. Santa get’s them all, but before they are slain, each of these characters takes a moment to establish to the audience that they are selfish, despicable, spiritually bankrupt pieces of trash. And the kicker? Most, possibly all, of these characters are played by well known Jewish actors, like James Caan, Chris Katan, and Fran Drescher. Hell, Santa Claus himself is played by Bill Goldberg, who is himself Jewish. It’s hard to imagine that this isn’t deliberate.

It’s not all Jewish actors portraying Christians, though, we also have some Jewish actors playing Jewish characters, such as Mr. Green, who runs the local deli where Nick works. Mr Green is portrayed in a way that is admittedly stereotypical, but also likable, and markedly positive. He comes off as an honorable, decent man, who goes out of his way to tolerate and accommodate the needs of various unruly gentiles which he can’t seem to escape, and he does so out of a inherent goodness that most of the film’s Christian characters flat out lack. Early in the film he is subjected to the intolerant ways of an elderly Christian woman, and Mr. Green takes it in stride and even wishes her a Merry Christmas when she balks at his initial, more P.C. offering of a “Happy Holidays.” The non-Jewish characters never display this sort of acceptance, or even awareness of others throughout this entire film. In Santa’s Slay, our good guys are good guys, but they’re not great guys, and in general, this movie is not very complimentary of Christians, or their most holy time of the year. It sort of feels like a large group of Jewish people in the entertainment industry converged and worked together to make a movie about all the things Christians do that piss them off, and that project is Santa’s Slay; a big, inside joke that we don’t quite pick up on.

I can deal with the anti-gentile sentiment, because whatever, dude, but the fact is; Santa’s Slay isn’t actually very tolerant of anyone else, either. Although the anti-Christian stuff actually forms the basis of the film, it’s still more covert. Much more readily apparent is the film’s small-minded and often bigoted attitude towards like, everybody. For instance;

The only black person I think you see in the entire movie: Nick walks up to the counter of a convenience store, and the figure behind the counter slowly and ominously turns to face him. The films plays with the suspense of not knowing who you’re about to see, letting you wonder if this is perhaps going to be Santa, or perhaps someone else equally threatening. Finally, the identity of this person is revealed, and it’s not Santa, its… A BLACK MAN?! Record scratch! Santa’s Slay makes an enormous, wildly offensive stink about this. Weird, electronic hip hop beats kick off, because, you know, he’s black, and he says “Whassup?” You know, like black people do. CRINGE. When Nick mentions to the clerk that he doesn’t recall ever seeing him before, the man behind the counter tells him something about moving here because it got too dangerous in “the hood.” Did a seventh grader write this scene? Really, this is just astoundingly tone deaf. Santa’s Slay plays off this exchange as a big joke, and the punch line is “Holy shit, that guys not white!!! Can you imagine?!” It’s the worst.

And it doesn’t end there! Later, Nick gets in trouble and meets the captain of the local police force, who is introduced in a similar fashion to the store clerk. His name? Captain Caulk, clearly enunciated as “Captain Cock.” Apparently, this character is gay, and although his sexual orientation in no way plays a role in the events of the film, they still go out of their way to point this fact out, for no real reason. Essentially, this character is exploited for what I assume is supposed to be comedic value. Was 2005 really that long ago? I feel like this sort of thing would never make it into a movie in this day and age unless it was deliberately trying to provoke outrage. Maybe we have come a long way after all.

The bigotry actually doesn’t feel especially malicious, if you can believe it. I know I’ve really called it out here, but it’s less glaring in the grand scheme of the movie. It really feels like this prejudice is more rooted in ignorance, than in hate, sort of like what you might hear from a high schooler who hasn’t really gotten a perspective on the real world yet. The bigotry in Santa’s Slay feels redeemable, like we could take Santa’s Slay, slap it in the face, and then make it hang out with gay people or black people for a weekend or two, and then it would maybe realize the error of it’s ways and step back in line with more socially progressive attitudes toward diversity. It does seem to be a little more adamant about looking down on Christians, but I wager that in the eyes of director David Steiman, all the black and gay stuff is seen more as a harmless joke than an expression of hate. This doesn’t excuse it, not by a long shot, but clearly, Santa’s Slay isn’t very smart, and neither is it’s writer/director. There’s just no reason to take anything this movie says seriously, and so you’ll only get as offended as you let yourself. If you’ve watched Family Guy or South Park, you’ve probably already seen much worse. The only difference is that what Santa’s Slay offers isn’t going to be as funny.

Still, all of that remains a hard pill to swallow… It’s really, really easy for me to forgive the aspects of Santa’s Slay that just plain suck, because dammit, this is a movie where Santa Claus lights Fran Drescher’s head on fire and murders her in the very first scene, and where the fate of humanity rests on the outcome of a curling match. Santa’s Slay had this one in the bag, and it really had to go out of it’s way to shake me. More pernicious is the bigotry woven in to the very fabric of the film, but as I mentioned above, these derogatory statements don’t carry much weight. When you saw the worlds “Brett Ratner’s Santa’s Slay, Starring Bill Goldberg,” were you expecting this to be a socially progressive experience? Santa’s Slay isn’t progressive in any way whatsoever. The movie still manages to be fun by virtue of premise alone, and the execution is passable, but if you’re sensitive to things like outrageous bigotry and anti-Christian sentiment, then you should probably pass on this one.

Also, Brett Ratner’s attachment to this film hurts it in a way more devastating than any racist content ever could. You suck, Brett Ratner

D+

Fantastic Crap Comics

by Christopher Ochs

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