Giant, Medium and Small Monsters

In Rebirth of Mothra III (1998), Godzilla’s favorite chew toy (a moth, but for all intents, a giant kite with mystical properties), has more split personalities than a psycho ex-girlfriend. Returning for this second  fantasy-framed sequel are previous incarnations AquaMothra and that Earth-hugging Rainbow Mothra.

Flapping new wings are Light Speed Mothra (she should rep for Nascar™), Armor Mothra (she’s into heavy metal), Primitive Mothra (should be called Netscape 3 Mothra), Fairy Mothra (a smaller, more crushable version) and Eternal Mothra (Been There And Continue To Do That Mothra). All of ’em are called on to show Grand King Ghidorah some in-yer-face humility. And if that wasn’t enough, they throw in some dinosaurs. Good call.

The Elias sisters, miniature fairy princesses — Lora, Moll and that totally bitchy Belvara — are at it again (see Rebirth of Mothra/1996). Belvara’s struggle for some sort of magic sword and her “all things hatred for humankind” set off a spectacular battle with all the interested parties. There’s meteor showers and more freakin’ kids getting in the way. (And you thought Gamera had it up to here with meddling brats?)

The three-necked Grand King Ghidorah is being blamed for the extinction of dinosaurs, and he’s not willing to take the rap. (In all fairness, it really was him, we just can’t prove it.) As GKG demonstrates, he’s not a 400-foot tall pushover. But as the shock-and-awe confrontation reaches the boil-over point, Armor Mothra provides a bloodless, wing-slicing smack down.

Here’s an idea — the next time criminal giant kaiju wanna get pissy, let’s do without the kids and make this a “winner takes all” monster-sized pay-per-view. Really, it’s the only way to save this sugary franchise from further rotting our teeth/brains/prehistoric legacy.

Grandma Zombies, More Sharks, Hollywood Bigfoot

Got a kick out of actor Rob Lowe’s recent statement that he and his sons had a face-to-face encounter with Bigfoot in the Ozarks while shooting a new docuseries called self-servingly, The Lowe Files (premiering August 2, 2017 on A&E). From the press release: “The reality show follows Lowe and his two teenage sons, Matthew and John Owen, as they travel around the country investigating mysterious phenomena and paranormal activity.”

This is what happens to your career when it runs out of gas. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lowe told the celebrity gossip magazine, “We had an incredible encounter with what locals call the ‘wood ape,’ which is in the Ozark Mountains. I’m fully aware that I sound like a crazy, Hollywood kook right now.”

Looks like Rob just wrote his show’s first review.

Speaking of kooky Hollywood things, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that you may or may not come face-to-face with on your TV/movie theater screen — whether you live in the Ozarks or not…

GRANNY OF THE DEAD (July 14, 2017)
“Regular guy Ed awakes one morning to find that his Grandma has become one of the living dead. Trapped in his home, Ed struggles to handle the situation. When he discovers the rest of the town’s elderly have also been infected by the zombie plague, Ed must become a hero in order to save his family and friends.”

Aren’t old people zombies already? I mean, minus the flesh-eating part? Then again, I suppose it’s easier to chew human flesh with dentures, provided said cheap meat has been cut up for you and served around 4PM at Royal Fork Buffet restaurants.

OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE (August 11, 2017)
“Three American tourists are making an audition tape of a shark cage dive for a reality TV show. A catastrophic turn of events leaves them stranded in the waters of South Australia surrounded by hungry great white sharks.”

When aren’t great white sharks hungry? As oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) expertly pointed out in Jaws (1975), “What we’re dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. All this machine does is swim, eat and make little sharks.” So yeah, looking forward to the sharks graphically doing at least one of those things. (Sorry, nature pervs — this is a PG-rated affair.) And while it sports the Open Water moniker, it’s only related to the previous two Open Water movies in name only. Odd, as the plot is nearly identical. This one, though, is found footage crapola, which in this case, probably works.

P.S. I wrote about this back on October 13, 2016 when it was merely called Cage Dive. With a title that uninspired, not surprised that they added “Open Water” to it to cash in. All things being equal, I would’ve done the same thing, but changed it slightly: Open Water: The Eatening.

DEATH NOTE (August 25, 2017/Netflix)
“Intoxicated by the power of a supernatural notebook, a young man begins killing those he deems unworthy of life. Based on the famous Japanese manga.”

I wrote about Death Note: Light Up The New World, the Japanese sequel, on April 25, 2017. You’re welcome. This Death Note is the American remake of the first DN movie, which came out in 2006. The new trailer is crazy cool nuts, the premise being that a “death note book” drops out of the sky and when you write someone’s name in it, they soon expire. My neck keeps hurting from looking up at the sky for falling books.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (October 6, 2017)
“Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.”

The original Blade Runner (1982) has long been considered one of sci-fi’s greatest movies ever in the history of the future. Hence (from Wikipedia™), film critics Chris Ridley and Janet Maslin theorized that “Blade Runner changed cinematic and cultural discourse through its image repertoire, and subsequent influence on films.”

Not everyone liked Blade Runner…or even understood it when it first came out (me included). But re-watching the seven different film cuts (including one where filmmaker Ridley Scott had full artistic license to edit), Blade Runner holds up surprisingly well, and makes the future look as bleak and doom-y as it does today.

ROAD OF THE DEAD (2018)
“Road of the Dead takes place six years after 2005’s post-apocalyptic Land of the Dead and is set on an island where zombie prisoners race cars in a modern-day Coliseum for the entertainment of wealthy humans.”

A return to the zombie genre he kinda started with Night of the Living Dead back in 1968, George Romero’s Road of the Dead is being described as Road Warrior (1981) meets Rollerball (1975) at a Nascar™ race, with significant inspiration from Ben-Hur (1959). That seems pretty dang awesome, especially since his Land of the Dead arrived DOA. So zombies driving race cars — can you say “morning commute”?