Giant Bug vs. Enormous Bug

There is only one thing The Deadly Mantis (1957) has over the almost identical Them! (1954), a nuclear monster movie hailed by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time: The bug looks cooler. Yeah, I said it.

The giant ants in Them! look like someone stuck pipe cleaners into a couple of potatoes and spray-painted ’em with Rust-oleum™. The giant mantis in The Deadly Mantis looks exactly like a mantis, all alien-esque, spindly and icky. (While we’re on the subject, The Outer Limits’ Zanti Misfits (1963) look more like what ants are supposed to look like minus the big bulging eyeballs, though I’ve seen a few of those things crawling around just after last call.)

Taking the page-by-page format of the “giant insects eat civilization” right out of the Them! playbook, the title 200 foot-long Mantidae (biology name) was de-iced after a volcano thawed it from its icy cube in the North Pole. (I didn’t know they had active volcanoes in the North Pole. Snowball fights, yes; but lava?)

The military stationed up there (building a massive early detection network) sustains severe preliminary damage as the mantis feeds itself on mess hall chow (servicemen). Then it flys south, theorized to be heading to South America where I here it’s warmer than the North Pole and more suitable for getting an all-around tan. (Note to self: Use that tanning salon coupon before it expires.)

On its way for a vacation, the mantis buzzes Washington, D.C., and takes a poop rest on the Washington Monument, totally mocking visiting hours. Jets are dispatched, but the launched missiles rarely connect with their exoskeleton target. (Note to the city down below: the air force was just trying to help, man – get over it.)

One heroic pilot accidentally rams his jet into the bug due to London-grade fog that seems to be covering the entire East Coast, ejecting before ka-BOOM! The mantis hits the ground and crawls into the Manhattan Tunnel, mimicking the giants ants that took up homeless camp residence in the vast Los Angeles drainage tunnels and mocking New York Port Authority’s toll charges. The bail-out pilot leads the charge into the tunnel, armed with chemical gas can bombs, and throws it right onto the face of mantis. In your face, deadly mantis!

But for all its plagiarized similarities to Them!, The Deadly Mantis has two very funny scenes. One is with a bunch of military guys jailhouse rockin’ each other in the rec room as there are no dames around at the North Pole, and the other where a scientist and a dame (visiting journalist covering the story) and a military dude are theorizing how big the monster is, guessing that it’s probably over six-feet tall. This while the mantis is right outside their window and rising up over three stories. I just about crapped sno-cones over that one.

In conclusion, while the sci-fi sorta classic The Deadly Mantis looks good, it isn’t as good as Them!

P.S. For more big bug fun, watch 1957’s Beginning of the End – it features REAL giant grasshoppers. Those things goon me out for some reason.

Face Without A Face

The Faceless Man wasn’t born faceless. He had the geographical misfortune of chillin’ on the villa of Pompeii when the famous volcano blew its load, encasing many taxpayers in searing lava juice that, once solidified, turned them into stone cold stone mummies. This made it impossible for those affected to make boom boom happen in a hygienic method.

Once such stoner was uncovered after being covered since 79 A.D by an Italian farmer. First order of business – kill people, ’cause that’s what mummies do. (Note: Mummies aren’t really good for anything else, so cut ’em some slack.)

The mummy, whose name is Quintillus Aurelius (which is hard to pronounce in any A.D.) stays frozen in time until it’s time to strangle future humans and retrieve a gold brooch or “vintage bling.” (Quick thought – how did the archaeologists figure out his name? Quinty’s wallet must sure be encased in stone as well, yes?)

Q pulls up his hot pockets and goes after Tina, medical researcher Paul Mallon’s fiancée. I can see why – she’s a hot blonde and makes him hard as rock. Heh. But Tina screams and passes out a lot, so it’s very easy for the need-for-snail-speed mummy to pick her up and walk into the ocean for a little skinny dipping.

And here’s where Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) has its best, albeit short, moment: he starts to dissolve when immersed in sea water! Granted, he looks like freshness expired pie dough over-rolled in discount flour. But dang if he doesn’t start turning to Alka-Seltzer™ when the water reaches his swimsuit area. It was either gonna be that or sink to the bottom of the ocean because hey – MADE OF STONE!

The movie moves as slow as Quintillus and the scares come in the form of realizing he’s not the Etruscan gladiator slave he once was, but reduced to nothing more than what the volcano shardded.

Dinosaurs – Past and Present

Jurassic World, the upcoming sequel is the ground-breaking Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001), wherein prehistoric dinosaurs were regrown in a lab and let loose on a modern world. How did the scientists do this? I’m thinking some sort of magic. Regardless, manipulating the gooey dino DNA resulted in rather thrilling and surprisingly realistic sci-fi action.

Jurassic World, releasing June 2015 in one billion theatres, has some long lineage dating back to 1925 with The Lost World, the first dinosaur movie. I remember that year during regressive hypnotism. Sported short hair back then, which was the style of the times. I now have long hair because I don’t give a crap about the style of the times.

But I do give a crap about dinosaur movies. (OK, that sounded a weird.) Are not rampaging dinosaurs the forefathers of guys like Godzilla, Gorgo and Reptilicus? If you watch The Lost World you can all but see a road map running through history that leads straight to contemporary mega box office monsters, most notably King Kong in 1933, which also gave birth to the first scream queen: Fay Wray. She was kinda hot. Wonder if she ever monkey’d around? Heh.

Before you go looking for The Lost World (hey, that’s kinda funny), you should know that this is a silent film. That means no audible screaming/cussing/crying/more cussing. Also, you’ll have to use your imagineering to make up dino roars. Think blowing into a tuba that’s filled with Drano™.

So Paula White, the daughter of missing famed explorer Maple White (named after syrup, one might surmise), brings dad’s journal to Professor Challenger (sounds like one of the X-Men) with proof that dinosaurs still exist – in Venezuela, of all places. A big time-y newspaper finances a “put it on the glass” expedition because hey, dinosaurs sell papers.

When the search party arrives, they encounter Bigfoot, heretofore referred to as “Ape-Man.” (Not very catchy. Grunt Grunt would be more suitable, I should think.) Grunt Grunt no like humans. Can’t say I blame him. But the explorers have bigger problems; they’re surrounded by battling beasts – an Allosaurus b*tch slaps an Edmontosaurus. A Tyrannosaurus delivers a slobber knocker to an Agathaumas, including a Pteranodon who should have kept his beak out of T-Rex’s Kool-Aid™.

Among the warring monsters, they find the leftovers of Maple. He was flattened like a pancake. (Heh.) No time to grieve – that volcano is belching up lava like last night’s Burrito El Grande Supreme. Before everyone can bail, they trap and capture an Apatosaurus and manage to get it in onboard their homeward bound (London) steamship. Turning fish into chips, all is well until they go to unload the boat and the darn dino escapes.

Romping and stomping across London Bridge, the beast’s El Grande Supreme weight causes the structure to go boom, thereby dumping Apatosaurus into whatever waterway runs underneath the bridge. Professor Challenger is sad. The monster swims away. FYI: There’s a highly unnecessary love triangle that ends in a big fat fail for one jilted Joe. The end.

So yeah, dinosaurs, past and present. I’m all in because hey, I give a crap.

Volcano Zombies

On the surface, the upcoming Volcano Zombies (2014) sounds like a reasonable excuse for me to lay on the couch in a perpendicular manner for 90 minutes or so.

Then I started over thinking it.

Before I goon out, here’s the plot: “A sheriff must help an estranged family evacuate before a volcano erupts, at the same time fighting off a horde of lava-filled zombies brought to life by the cursed mountain.”

Too many questions…

• Why was the family estranged?

• What does “estranged” mean?

• Why does a sheriff have to help out? Why can’t a motorcycle cop or a detective?

• Why was everyone living so close to a live volcano as to be needing evacuating?

• Why is volcano cursed?

• Who cursed it? Does he/she/it have a vendetta against all things pyroclastic flow?

As for the lava-filled zombies, I’m OK with that. I already parked my brain at the door when I read that part, so all good here.