Neighborhood Werewolf

In a plot lifted directly from 1985’s Fright Night, a handsome addition to the neighborhood moves into the creepy house next door to a single mom, her young son and hot teen daughter. Intrigued over potential bulges, the teen chick spies at him through a telescope meant for looking at Uranus. It’s there she sees him bring a hottie home for feeling up purposes in a scene that mimics Fright Night (1985) frame for frame. She immediately suspects him to be a werewolf (FN’s neighbor was a vampire).

An intersection of blatantly rubber-stamped events leads up to the werewolf shedding its skin, growing huge metal fangs and looking like an inside-out doggy. Suddenly turning into Rambo, the chick (she looks like Christina Ricci, but not as top-heavy) grabs a nearby gun, some silver bullets that also just happens to be nearby, and blasts the pup into pulp. Everybody thinks TV celebrity ass Redd Tucker did it, but he’s a big phony. (Kevin Sorbo in a cookie-cutter role templated by Roddy McDowall’s TV vampire hunter, Peter Vincent. It’s cool how I know all this stuff.)

During the confrontation the gal gets marked by the werewolf and her soul belongs to him for all eternity, blah, blah, blah. The punk rock pizza delivery boy gets turned into the new familiar (complete with nose ring and fuchsia streaks in his fur). The werewolf looks sorta cool, but has a plastic face. The chick is mostly wolf whistle worthy.

But the rest of Never Cry Werewolf (2008) is too “been there, chewed on that” to be of much interest. I’m jaded. So what. You try reviewing 1,887 horror/sci-fi movies and see how objective YOU are.

Ratting on Rats

In the easily enunciated Ratten 2 — Sie kommen wieder! (2006), genetically-altered rodents overtake a small town, first introducing themselves by dropping in on a hot fraulein taking a hot bath and showing das boobies. The rats, pouring out of an air vent over the bath tub, eat most of the girl, leaving nothing worth dating in their wake. Thanks for nothing, rats.

The vermin, liberated (or “befreit” – German for “be free” I think) by a minimum-wage lab assistant, have been genetically re-designed to die once their body temperature hits zero. (Um, aren’t we all like that?) This is where global warming is really gonna come back to bite us in the environment, as the rats are multiplying faster than math rabbits, and swarm through everyone’s nooks and crannies.

The plan is to lure them into an underground sewer so they can be frozen with cannisters of freeze-y stuff. Plans like this rarely go right, and one guy has to wade through one hundred thousand rodents to reconnect the wire that’s needed to ka-BOOM the place. That he doesn’t get bitten once was a real letdown. In fact, the muscle mice don’t really do anything cool.

Rats – I thought this was gonna be a good movie about rats.

Rebirth of Mothra

Death Ghidorah (or “Desghidorah” if you speaka de Japanese like me) is a giganto three-headed demon Hydra monster buried under a mountain. He can’t get out because of the Seal of Elias keeping the dirt locked in place. So imagine the look on the logging company’s face when they remove the seal and accidentally let Desghidorah out. Man.

Cheering this on is the evil Belvera, a six-inch tall female Elias who rides a height/weight appropriate winged dragon called Garugaru. (He’s not really a dragon, but rather a robot. I can see where you’d get confused.) Her equally-sized sisters Lora and Mona are much nicer and do Uber™ rides Fairy Mothra. Both sides battle to regain the seal to put Desghidorah back in his mountain hole. They’re gonna need help as the very Motorhead-esque Desghidorah is 200 feet tall and shoots flames at anything that looks edible.

Summoned by song (one of three, all which are annoying because they don’t have any guitar solos), Mothra, the giant 200-foot long moth who looks like an expensive pipe cleaner, does battle with Des, but keeps getting her plumose antennae snapped. She’s getting too old for this kind of crap and psychically summons Mothra Leo, her son whose still in the egg back home on Elias Island. Hatching prematurely, Leo looks like one of Godzilla’s high-fiber breakfast leavings (complete with rest rings), and swims across the ocean to help mom.

 The tag team partnership doesn’t last long, with Mothra getting clobbered and going out to sea to die like an orange seagull. This p*sses off Leo so he cocoons himself, hatches yet again, and grows into a fully grown Mothra with extra powers (multi-colored energy beams). Good for him.

More of a movie for kids, Rebirth of Mothra (1996) does have its adult moments, like when Desghidorah bites into Caterpillar Leo like a hot dog and green/yellow goo shoots out. Probably mustard and relish. Only trees get crushed in this adventure, though a dam takes a strategic hit and flooding water knocks Desghidorah flat on his three-cheeked ass. So, like, that was cool.

Chick Horror

Three impending horror movies, all involving chicks, or “women.” This is not a new thing as it turns out every horror movie since the beginning of time had women, or “chicks” in ’em. That’s an impressive statistic. You go, girl(s)!

Anyway, here’s the what’s what…

THERE ARE MONSTERS (Releasing 2016)
Mother and daughter trapped and tormented in a black forest by a screeching creature – it is unlike anything we have heard before. Not human. Not animal. Like a thousand horses, like a mother’s clamor, a baby’s wail. Only a mother’s protective love, her most primal instinct, can save her daughter from what’s lurking in the darkness.”

A screeching creature. An argument can be made that it’s another female nagging her ex about missed alimony payments.

THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER (Releasing July 2016 on Direct TV)
Joan makes a bloody and determined pilgrimage across a frozen landscape toward a prestigious all girls prep school where Rose and Kat find themselves stranded after their parents mysteriously fail to retrieve them for winter break. As Joan gets closer, terrifying visions begin plaguing Kat while Rose watches in horror as she becomes possessed by an unseen evil force.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter was originally titled February. That’s not very scary OR marketable. But hey, not my movie. If it was I’d call it The Daughter’s Blackcoat. Chicks/women/ladies/gals dig fashion, so my title makes waaay more sense.

THE OFFERING (Releasing May 6, 2016)
When Jamie, a successful reporter, finds out that her sister has died mysteriously, she travels to Singapore to uncover the truth. There, she discovers multiple deaths linked to her sister and must join forces with her sister’s husband in order to defeat a demonic entity that is using new technology to complete an ancient mission.

A demonic entity who is tech savvy. I’ve experienced just such a thing, as indicated by that foul spirit who lives in my digital toaster and always makes the toast burn. (I set it on 3 but it always comes out looking like a 12.)

I should’ve made this movie and called it Burnt Offerings and… Oh, wait – already been done in 1976. That one should’ve been about a possessed toaster that blackens the bread, and they have to call in a “breakforcist” to scrape the soul clean. Heh.

Cannibal Dinosaurs

Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (1985). Misleading title. There are no dinosaurs. There is a valley, though. And cannibals, alligators, bugs, 50% naked women, snakes, 50% naked women, bugs… Let’s see, did I forget anything? Oh, yeah — 50% NAKED WOMEN! Meaning, only half their clothes are off.

Doesn’t matter which half as they’re supermodels. Specifically, supermodels whose toy plane has just landed in what looks to be a mud puddle somewhere in the Amazon jungle. Three guys, three chicks and a jungle full of cannibals who don’t like their meals with any dressing (heh). The grand plan is to walk back to civilization. Great plan.

One guy’s wife seems to be drunk all the time and rags on her Vietnam vet husband, the ONLY guy with skills to get them safely through the dense bushes. The other two guys think he’s a p*ssy for letting his wife walk all over him in front of the cannibals and alligators. (Don’t worry — he eventually responds with a solid right to the lip-sticked pie-hole.)

If the cannibals, who force the girls to take off the other half of their clothes weren’t bad enough, now the six survivors have to contend with white slavery business owners who are running a local illegal mining business. There’s a bit of grisly gore (shredded ankle), but only one cannibal meal, which seemed a bit on the light side given how hungry natives there are.

Still, the depiction of naked modern women in the untamed jungle is a juxtaposition that invites social commentary. That, and jungle boobies all over the place. Still, I was kinda hoping for a dinosaur or two, you know, to help make sense of everything.

Gappa Gappa Hey!

Playmate magazine is celebrating however many years in publication by opening a South Seas island theme park. They need concession stands, handi-cap accessible restrooms, twirly rides, alligator ticket-takers and exotic stuff from real islands. So they send an expedition to Obelisk Island get some. And boy, do they hit pay dirt — a Volkswagen-sized egg that looked like it came out of a six-passenger b*tthole.

The egg hatches and out pops a prehistoric parrot called Gappa. (Note: Gappa is not it’s name, but rather in reference to a race of prehistoric birds with f’d-up beaks.) Bringing the Gappa back to Japan was the first mistake. Thinking it didn’t have parents was the other. Gappa starts growing at a rate of a foot and a half per day. In a month it’ll be as tall as all the other Gappi in his school.

Finally noticing junior has gone missing, mama and papa Gappa come calling. Both are 200 feet tall, have leathery gargoyle wings, honkin’ beaks, a Godzilla-esque tail and a shark fin sticking out of their skulls. Quite stylish by any prehistoric standard. Attempts by the military to impede Mr. and Mrs. Gappa’s search ends up with the Armed Forces getting the business end of a beak. And speaking of bird mouths, when the Gappa arrive out of Sagami Bay, one has an octopus in its mouth — and keeps it there for actually quite a while (they’re kinda chewy). Calculating scale, the octopus is roughly the size of an underwater school bus.

Someone in a lab coat gets the idea to bring baby Gappa back to its parents so that mom and pop might quit breaking Tokyo. (They don’t call ’em scientists for nothing.) Everyone involved manages to get the little squirt into a net and lift it with blimps, which are towed by helicopters and delivered to the airport. (There are no more planes as the Gappa canceled all arriving/departing flights.)

The Gappas are reunited and fly happily into the sunset, which was made really pretty by smoke and flames from the burning city. “If there’s one thing the Gappa taught me, is that life is not all about ambition,” exclaims one scientist. Glad he got arrived at some introspection.

Made in the turbulent 1967s, Monster From A Prehistoric Planet (aka, Giant Beast Gappa, Daikyojû Gappa, Gappa: The Triphibian Monster) is full of cheese-y fun effects, one million explosions, wholesale destruction, and a little Japanese boy painted to look like an island native. (I could tell because his lips were pink while the rest of him was coconut brown.)

And good times were had by all.

Eight Legged Cash Machines

Not since Charlotte’s Web (1973) have we seen such a resurgence in the popularity of spiders gone wild horror/sci-fi movies. So much so, in box office terms, spiders are the new sharks.

With the release of Arachnicide on May 10, 2016, our creepy crawly bite-y friends add another light bulb in the Hollywood marquee that has given us Eight Legged Freaks (2002), Ice Spiders (2007), Camel Spiders (2011), Arachnoquake (2012), Big Ass Spider! (2013), and Lavalantula (2015) but to name a few. Sharknado & Co. might wanna up their game.

So why are spider movies so bankable? For starters, more people have been bitten by spiders than sharks. There’s 100% chance that you have a spider – or spiders – in your house at this very moment. And it’s highly probable you have spider eggs in your ears about to hatch.

That pretty much scientifically validated, Arachnicide goes like this…

“After years of experimenting, a researcher succeeds in creating an incubator that accelerates plant and animal growth. This technology is controlled by a powerful criminal organization and is being used to accelerate the growth of plants needed for the manufacture of narcotics and illegal drugs. To counter this criminal organization and destroy the laboratories they operate, the United Nations put together an elite team of operatives.”

“The L9 Commando is a task force composed of six of the best soldiers from different Special Forces Units. After successfully taking down the drug operation, the L9 Commandos are called on for an important mission that brings them to Albania, where they discover a sinister plan that could destroy everything. Arachnicide or die!”

Okay, so the plot is total junior high. But hey, I’d rather see spiders on the big screen than in my snack drawer or inside your ear.

Dashboard Aliens

Invasion (2005) is an n entire movie shot almost entirely with no edits via a police car dashboard cam. I should be so bold.

A meteor with an alien in it crashes on the outskirts of town. If you get near it, you turn into a zombie. Some people get near it. Interesting premise presented in a reality context. (Looking at people/aliens/zombies through a police cam at night is freakin’ freaky, man.)

But Invasion has a tough time holding your interest past the first 15 minutes. They have the police car driving through an endlessly winding back road endlessly. There’s a screaming prom queen out there, earning her title the hard way, when the meteor craziness went down. Somehow she ends up in the cop car and screams for help on the radio.

This frustrated conversation is hysterical. (She tells the sheriff back at the station to cram his badge where meteors don’t shine, using words unbefitting of someone with her royal pedigree.) I liked her. Not the endlessly winding roads, though. Maybe if some of the roads were a bit more straight.

Row Yer Boat To Hell

A big ass huge cargo ship roams the seas, its only passengers being seven people who suddenly wake up and don’t know where the hell they are. And Hell™ is precisely this vacation’s destination. Think Titanic meets Poltergeist.

Each of these douche bag victims has done something in the past that put them on the You Lose Cruise. There’s a couple of greaseball crooks, a scheming Russian guy, a movie producer, a model/actress/do-it-with-anyone-who’s-a-producer chick and a prison inmate.

The steward shows up and informs them that they can wander about the ship, but to not try and breach any closed doors (ghosts are doing stuff behind them). And no jumping overboard, either, ’cause the water will eat your brains. Sorry — wishful thinking. Of course, they need someone to break the rules to set an example for the others. I’d do it but I’m busy.

As they find out this tub is commandeered by Charon, The Ferryman, the guy that takes you to Hell, which just happens to be inside that lightning-powered whirlpool off the port bow. As it’s discovered, they’re already dead; Going to Hell is just a formality at this point. But the steward informs them there is one path to redemption. For me that’d be about 12 life preservers duct-taped to my body. And some cool sea goggles.

The wretched special effects in Ghost Voyage (2008) only serve to emphasize dialogue no one would speak even if they were a drunken sailor. Main star Antonio Sabato, Jr. was in no trouble of drowning because his wooden acting skills can easily keep him afloat until another crappy horror movie comes along to pick him up.

The Thrill’a Godzilla

As the days stomp closer to July 29, 2016 and the release of Godzilla: Resurgence (re-titled from Shin Gojira for we American round eyes), what do we exactly know about 31st movie starring the world’s greatest monster/franchise?

For starters, I wasn’t asked to be in the movie. That I have no acting experience (except in front of a judge) and am basically unknown to all of Japan’s movie-making industry is beside the point. I’ve spent half my life watching and re-watching Godzilla movies; If that doesn’t qualify me for a starring role, I don’t know what does.

A new trailer, while cooler than shiitake, doesn’t offer any clues other than how the military and government frantically strategize on how to protect their taxable real estate. All it shows is Godzilla playing in his wreck room.

One thing announced is that Godzilla: Resurgence will feature 328 cameos and supporting appearances, including, Kengo Kora, Ren Osugi, Akira Emoto, Kimiko Yo, Jun Kunimura, Mikako Ichikawa, Pierre Taki, Takumi Saito, Keisuke Koide, Arata Furuta, and Atsuko Maeda. Like you can pronounce any of that.

They can fit in every person in the world with too many consonants in their names, but ignore my easily spelled birth title? Heck, I’d only need round trip airfare to Japan, seven nights in a five-star hotel (the Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo would be lovely), and a few yen to spend while I prep for my movie moment.

As reported by myself in a first report (September 23, 2015) of Shin Gojira/Godzilla: Resurgence, the new G will be 118.5 meters (389 ft) high – over 10m taller than 2014’s Godzilla. That’s close to the same height as Six Flag’s Sky Screamer amusement park ride in Dallas, Texas. If I was on that ride and Godzilla showed up to watch, the people below better have umbrellas.

Godzilla: Resurgence is being released in IMAX, 4DX, and MX4D formats, whose screens are a mere 72 feet tall. Pffft – I’ve been on kiddie rides bigger than that. And I don’t scream on them nearly as much as I used to.