Godzilla Does Not Heart Tokyo

According to Wikipedia, S.O.S., the often used international Morse distress code, does not actually stand for anything and is not an abbreviation, acronym or initialism. Try telling that to Tokyo when Godzilla shows up; S.O.S. could very well stand for “Save Our Sh*t.”

In Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003), an appeal is being made on behalf of Mothra to return the bones of Godzilla to the sea and to let the dead die in peace. If Japan does not comply, Mothra will reign down upon them moth-y justice from above.

Eyebrows need to be raised here: Godzilla’s bones were used in the construction (!) of Mechagodzilla. Second issue: Godzilla is still alive and drawn to his own bones, which by extension dooms Tokyo to more G-styled ass smack. Issue number three: Mecha-G was built to defend the city from Godzilla, so how the hell are they supposed to give Godzilla his own bones back? Issue number four: If Godzilla doesn’t have any bones, who’s steering him – some guy in a rubber suit? That’s just crazy talk, and I resent you even implying it.

The warning comes from the ancestors of the Fairies, those two beer bottle-sized chicks from Infant Island that talk and sing in unison and call Mothra whenever anyone tries to look up their skirts. Mothra wants to leave the human race in peace, yet is willing to burn it into the ground unless the humans do what it says. Makes sense.

As with all the Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla movies, the fight scenes and city destruction is staggeringly cool. Making an appearance 43 years after he did in the original Godzilla vs. The Thing (what Mothra was called back in 1964) is that one guy. Now a grandpa, he looks just like he did back then, except his hair is white, probably from Mothra’s cocoon spray. Man, I hope Mothra doesn’t shoot that gunk on me.

Screamcicle

In a way, Frozen’s (2010) plot of three skiers caught on ski lift 90-feet in the air and left to dangle after the snow lodge shuts down for the week, is just like the predicament of the stranded skiers themselves: no where to go.

Two guys and a girl are on the last run of the day. It’s getting dark and conversation-stuttering cold. The lift operator has to take a pee. Lift shuts down, lights go off, screams go unheard.

What we’re left with is a LOT of talking and impending frostbite, until one guy decides to jump. He probably figured at the very least a sprained ankle or a fistful of snow jammed up his butt. Too bad he didn’t factor in two compound fractured legs and wild wolves scouring the mountain for something soft and screamy. Even though you hear the sounds of Nature dining, they don’t show ANY of it.

Crying turns into frozen leaks coming out the remaining eyeballs. Hypothermia takes care of the rest. The plan is to Spider-Man it across the razor-sharp lift cables to the support beam’s ladder. Then it’s all but a super fun happy slide down the hill to get help so that the endlessly crying chick with icicle burns on her face and hanging in a chair about to break can be rescued. Did someone just ring the dinner bell again?

Cool premise, cold delivery. Where is Frosty the Snowman when you need him?

Eight-Legged Snow Monsters

You’d think Ice Spiders (2007), a movie about genetically-supersized spiders skittering across a popular ski mountain, eating people and slicing them in half, would be cool. But like putting your face in a microwave oven, it only sounds cool.

A top secret government lab so secret, they had to make its scientists pinky swear not to tell anyone that they gene-spliced DNA from a prehistoric arachnid into several marketable brands of today spiders and force fed them steroids and cupcakes.

They wanted to harvest the spider’s webbing for new coats that bullets couldn’t perforate. And to pet them with gloves on. They do this at a lab high up in the snow-covered mountains because spiders don’t groove on the cold, and therefore would be contained if one or more should get out.

But these are honkingly big spiders, man, the size of go-karts with eight-wheels – and the cold just makes ’em hungrier. With the grocery store all out of Purina Ice Spider Chow™, these bugs get to buggin’ and go after skiers like they were Gore-tex™ flavored Slim Jims™.

Throw in a limp bacon back story involving a washed up ski instructor (who used to be a marine for 12 years), an Olympic Ski Team up on the mountain to do some two-legged sliding, a mad scientist and some military guys who run around in the snow in T-shirts, and you have a sci-fi movie formula so tiresome, your TV will actually fall asleep while showing it.

Deadly Diapers

Mutant claw babies are so darn cute when they’re born – expanded translucent cranium laced with colorful veins, pre-molar fangs, pink three-fingered claws, big bulging eyes that just eat away at your heart…

Right outta the womb the mutant claw baby rips through the hospital staff like medical taffy and gets away. It can’t walk, but it can sure crawl faster than most mutant babies I know. The ankle-biter won’t kill if it’s not frightened. Thing is, everything scares it. (Great plot twist.)

Not only three days old, little Jr. has already killed seven potential babysitters. Now that’s what I call daddy’s boy. Frank Davis probably isn’t wondering what knocked up his wife to bear a kid such as this, but how to stop the little bugger from eating the neighbors.

As much as dad tries to save his “son,” the cops take 93 minutes to corner the little bloodsucker and shoot the diapers off it, wherein the mutant falls into the Los Angeles sewer system. Wash all of life’s little problem’s down the drain, I say.

What made the baby a monster in It’s Alive (1974) in the first place? Global warming™? Radioactive Juicy Juice™? Gerber’s Genetic Hybrid Strained Peas™? I’m thinkin’ all of the above. Great old school schlock fun is another thing I’m thinkin’.

Aliens Want To Make Out With You

The women of Earth are so hot, aliens from other planets want to suck face with them. The Mysterians are one such race of extraterrestrial make-out artists, wanting only two things from us: a small plot of land (which they already took, those butt-heads) and permission to marry – and subsequently put it on the launching pad with – Earth women.

The reason is to keep their race from becoming extinct. But Japanese scientists aren’t about to share Earth booty with these mysterious Mysterians and their multi-colored capes and space motorcycle helmets.

The visitors warn that their technology is hundreds of years advanced than ours, and that they can easily wipe us out like the arrogant bugs we are. To prove this, they make the ground open up and swallow an entire village. Not cool, guys.

Then a giant robot with a Spy vs. Spy face, pointy hands, and wearing a corrugated metal dress comes out of the side of a mountain and sprays its cartoon ray beams around, making stuff blow up and catch the hell on fire. Once again, not cool.

Scientists meet with the Mysterians on board their domed spaceship, which looks like a giant plastic golf ball. The discussion is brief – they want some ’o that fine Earth trim. Our skanks aren’t up for grabs, so it’s on. We have to hurry as they already took five of our finest up into their city-buzzing UFOs.

The military bombs the stink outta them, but to no avail. In fact, we’re getting served by their bitch-slap retaliation. Time to switch to Plan B, which is using a bank of death rays that they were saving for Godzilla. As a one/two death punch, the scientists send up a space shuttle that can not only fly, but hover and make smoke happen.

The attack grows stronger and the aliens relaunch the giant robot. That thing is a total douche and meets its end by falling into a hole it made himself. Ha! The girls are rescued with the help of a handsome scientist (aren’t they all?) who was working to sabotage the Mysterians from the inside. His parting words: “Don’t use science for wrong!” True that.

The Mysterians are handed a good old fashioned Earth whuppin’ and head back into space. Screw them. The 1959 special effects are cheesy, but entertaining. Lots of death rays being traded, but it seemed like there was too much reliance on beams instead of tried and true “my fist, your helmet” action.

Since you’re writing this all down, the robot was later upgraded and re-used as M.O.G.U.E.R.A. (Mobile Operation Godzilla Universal Expert Robot Aerotype) in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994). Too many syllables, but hey, if you’re gonna go to all that trouble of making a giant robot with a heavy metal dress, might as well get some mileage out of it.

40 years of Possession, Puking and Peeing

Yet another release of The Exorcist (1973), arguably the scariest horror movie of all time, on its 40th anniversary. The first time I watched The Exorcist, I peed my pants. I re-watched it a year later at a midnight showing in 2012 and only peed my pants a little bit, due more to too much diet coke and smuggled airline bottles of Jagermeister™ than graphic depictions of demonic possession and projectile vomiting as a result of demonic possession.

Still, you gotta hand it to ’em – The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and first horror film to be nominated for Best Picture. In your face, all other horror flicks that’ve ripped this one off for four decades.

So the new version is on blu-ray and not only features a bible full of extras (see below), the cover deviates from the iconic photo of Father Merrin preparing to go into the House of Projectile Vomiting in order to liberate Regan, a 12 year-old girl from the clutches of Pazuzu (aka “Captain Howdy”) that fictional pop culture mega evil figurehead.

And just so you’re aware of the significance of the cover’s stairway, that’s the part of the movie where Father Karras took flying lessons out Regan’s three-story window and brings it in for a rough landing. (Note to whoever gives a triple somersault, the actual stairway used in the movies is located in Georgetown, Washington D.C. at 36th St NW and M St NW. Watch out for falling priests.

So if you wanna shell out for what is the seventh configuration, here’s what you’ll get…

• Beyond Comprehension: William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (NEW) 40 years after his novel was published, The Exorcist author, screenwriter and producer returns to where it all began. First stop is a cabin/guest house in the hills of Encino, California, where Blatty wrote the novel.

The author visits the place for the first time in 40 years and shares not only memories of writing the book, but also discusses how it inspired him. We then meet Blatty in two key and iconic locations; Georgetown University where the film was shot, and at the now-famous Exorcist steps. Throughout, Blatty reads from his novel, including an excerpt from a chilling newly published passage.

• Talk of the Devil (NEW) – While at Georgetown University, William Peter Blatty heard about a true case of possession from Father Eugene Gallagher. At the time the film came out, the priest talked at length about exorcism, the true story and about Blatty; this footage is now available for the first time in many years. It is as revealing as it is shocking.·

• Two Commentaries by William Friedkin

• Commentary by William Peter Blatty

• Introduction by William Friedkin

• 1998 BBC Documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years of the Exorcist

• Raising Hell: Filming The Exorcist set footage produced and photographed by Owen Roizman, camera and makeup tests, and interviews with director William Friedkin, actress Linda Blair, author/screenwriter/producer William Peter Blatty and Owen Roizman.

• The Exorcist Locations: Georgetown Then and Now – featuring a tour of the iconic locations where the film was shot.

• Faces of Evil: The Different Versions of The Exorcist – with director William Friedkin and author/screenwriter/producer William Peter Blatty discussing the different versions of the film and featuring outtakes from the film.

• Original Ending

• Interviews: The Original Cut, Stairway to Heaven, The Final Reckoning

• Sketches & Storyboards

• Radio Spots

• TV Spots

• Trailers

• Premium: Excerpt of The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir

Too bad they didn’t include some moist towelettes or an adult sized pair of Depends™. Those will probably come with the 50th anniversary version.

Hardcore Horror

Necromentia (2009) is a highly stylish homage to Hellraiser (1987), with several stories about going to Hell (where I live), necrophilia (swapping spit/autopsy fluids with the dead), Goth (a style ethic you can buy at the mall), Emo (crying/whining/moping), S&M (you and your sex partner punching each other while doing it), and the gouging of face with a gasoline-powered sharp thing.

The movie’s demon talks like Saw’s Jigsaw and out S&M’s Hellraiser’s Pinhead. And the gore looks painful – a guy has a Ouija™ board carved into his back fat in order to facilitate his journey into Hell to retrieve his dead girlfriend, whose body he’s been taking a LOT of liberties with.

 Necromentia’s story line is as hard to follow as the path to Hell. But for an indie, it looks amazingly graphic and grimy. Then again, if you’re gonna have a guy wearing a pig’s head, hardcore masochism and spooky demon voices, you can’t have a garden of spring flowers and singing lawn mowers. It would totally kill the mood.

Dead Dates

A canister of experimental space gunk is ejected out of an alien-operated UFO and crashes to Earth in 1959. This happens to coincide with the escape of a criminally-bonkers mental patient. A black extraterrestrial slug gets out of said container, wiggles inside the criminal, which makes him go a’hackin’ on two teens making out in a car.

Mind jump ahead to a college in 1986 where a nerdy guy and his handicapped friend need to pledge to a frat in order to become cool enough for the campus hottie to notice him so that he can one day feel her up. Their task is simple: Steal a cadaver from the university’s medical center, put it on the steps of a rival frat house, then rock out.

Once inside the morgue, they discover two bodies kept in a cryogenic tube. Of course they open it. Wouldn’t you? The body comes back to life and makes a grab for them. OK, screw the fraternity.

Elsewhere, plagued by the memory of the 1959 killings, Detective Ray Cameron (whose sweetheart b*tch was out with another guy and was murdered in the first paragraph) has to investigate the break-in. Of the two bodies, the missing one just happens to be the 1959 corpse of the guy who was making out with the cop’s girlfriend.

The mental patient’s body though, was never found as Cameron buried it on campus, right under the dormitory of his rest-in-pieces ex. But where did the body go? Why, back to the dorm at the university where he used to wait outside the window for the two-timing skirt, of course! When dead head gets there, his noggin splits open like a cantaloupe left in the fridge for two months and alien leeches leak out. Ewww!

Later, Cameron shows up to investigate the murder of the house mother, who has just been hacked to death by some sort of criminally-insane mental patient with an axe. You could turn off the DVD player right now and be satisfied. But DON’T DO THAT as this thing just keeps getting weirder and wilder.

Meanwhile, the big dance is coming up and the Delta frat house – on their way to get their chicks – are involved in a bus accident (thanks to a zombie dog) and everyone bloodily dies. That’s a temporary situation as the slug-like Creeps bring them back to life as leech-filled zombies.

Night of the Creeps (1986) sets up the movie’s famous line as uttered by Detective Cameron who has arrived at the sorority house: “I got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is they’re dead.” Awesome.

More gore-filled fun as the Creeps make their way into the sorority house basement where medical science project specimens (brains) are being kept. Flamethrowers, aliens, zombies, alcohol, exploding heads, slugs, axe murderers, chicks. Hallmark™ could not have made a better movie.

Giant Shark. Giant Octopus. Giant Fun. Kinda.

The DVD cover of Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus (2009) depicts a giant octopus battling a giant shark while pulling a luxury liner to its new port at the bottom of the ocean. There is no luxury liner in the movie. There’s hardly any mega shark and giant octopus, either. All the cool parts – which add up to barely two minutes onscreen time—were featured in the YouTube™ trailer. (You owe me – I just saved you the $3.99 rental fee.)

’80s mall pop star Deborah Gibson, who has more teeth than the mega shark, plays a rule-breaking oceanologist, tracking whales, hammerhead sharks and eels in WTF, Alaska. There, entombed in a glacier, is a Megalodon shark and a giant octopus, frozen in a romantic embrace. Both creatures are the size of Japan, give or take three feet. As soon as the ice breaks (like you didn’t see that coming), both swim away as if momentarily interrupted, even though it’s been thousands of millions of years since catching cold.

Feeling a bit peckish after his nap, the shark leaps 30,000 feet in the air and chomps on a commercial plane loaded with flavorful passengers. (That part I could believe. What I’m having trouble with is the plane was in the clouds; How could the shark see it? Totally unrealistic.)

The shark later bites the Golden Gate™ bridge in half and swallows several Navy warships. Not to be outdone, the giant octopus snacks happily on 35-story deep sea oil rigs loaded with bite-sized humans (think shrieking chocolate chips).

The plan is to lure each beast into a holding area for study purposes: San Francisco Bay for the shark, Tokyo Bay for the octopus. This ends in mixed results (see “bridge chomped in half”). The military plan –conceived by a trash-talkin’, ponytail-sportin’ Lorenzo Lamas, is to blast ’em to Fish ’n Chips Land. That also ends in mixed results. It’s finally decided to lure the two digital monsters together to finish their “tastes great/less filling” argument started back in that Pleistocene epoch tavern.

With Lorenzo and Deb Deb on board, you know the “acting” and “dialogue” is Z-grade stuff. No one cares, as all we want to see is the shark and octopus biting Texas-sized chunks outta each other. In order to save money, the movie producers use – over and over – two-second footage of the shark zooming in for the mega-munch. Need him to turn left? Flip the film over. The octopus looks like wiggling clay. Megalodon has teeth so white he could be a Crest™spokeshark.

The death battle results in Giant Octo getting two arms bit off. He must be a magical cephalopod because all eight arms were intact when he and M-Don sank to the bottom of the ocean (and continued to sink as the credits rolled – five minutes after they killed each other).

Why do you keep letting me rent these movies? This is ALL your fault, people.

Shaolin Vs Evil Dead: Ultimate Power

In the sequel to Shaolin Vs. Evil Dead (2004), a Taoist priest (no relation to Judas Priest, although he does look fairly metal) turns into a vampire and goes on a mega kung-fu ass-kicking jamboree. For most movies, that would be enough of a plot to call it a day. But that’s just the tip of Hondo sword in Shaolin Vs. Evil Dead: Ultimate Power (2006).

There’s a long-yet-cool backstory as to how the priest got all vampire-y, but needless to say, he has unresolved anger issues, most of which is directed at his stepbrother, who was named head Tao priest of the clan over him. That’s like having your younger sister baby-sit you.

The hand-to-hand combats are spectacular and full of jaw-opening martial arts maneuvers, like flying through the air and punching people in the sushi tray. But it’s when the final battle takes place that all ninja Hell-o-rama makes your mind explode with some sort of glee-like substance.

Hak (the vampire priest – cool name as it sounds like “hack,” as in hack your enemies in the face with a hacking fist chop) calls forth his unholy army – hundreds upon hundreds of undead vampires whose coffins shoot out of the ground and release the stinky contents therein. The scene where wave after wave of vampires leap over the temple walls to go after one guy is so incredible as to inspire a poem that rhymes.

Japanese vampires, though, can’t walk, run or waltz, so they hop. Seeing a thousand vampires hop in unison is totally AWESOME. It’s like Riverdance™, but with zombies.

As the bad priest and good priest battle, this thing turns even more surreal; One minute the vampire battles a stone giant under the earth’s surface, the next doing kung-fu kicks to the Place of Sacred No-Touchy in a column of water that just shot up from the ground.

Really, there’s no way to fully describe the thought-bending special effects or fighting sequences unless I was on thought-bending substances, like sparkle glue or a red cabbage salad with Percoset™ dressing.

The action is as fast and unrelenting as the punching, which is totally AWESOME. From now on I’m gonna hop wherever I go so people will think I’m a Japanese vampire. Only then I will become one with cool.