Godzilla BFFs, Mutant Babies, Social Media Evil

A couple of new sales posters for the upcoming Godzilla: King of the Monsters (May 31, 2019). One doesn’t suck, one sucks, one is kinda okay. The “doesn’t suck” version, of course, depicts Godzilla choke-holdong it up in a no-holds barred street match with the clearly bigger King Ghidorah.

KH has three heads. Talk about multitasking; he could use one to bite Godzilla in the lunch sac, the second one to surf the Internet for kaiju porn, and the other to binge watch Game of Thrones on Netflix™. I wish I had three heads.

The first trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters is pretty badass, showing Rodan (mega huge Pterodactyl), the butterfly-esque Mothra (spokesbug for Raid™) and King G himself, who towers over the already embiggened Godzilla. 

Before you surf for kaiju porn, check out these upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may not require three brains to understand…

CYNTHIA (August 31, 2018 / Limited); September 18, 2018 (VOD/DVD)
Robin and Michael are college sweethearts who have everything — a perfect marriage, adorable cat, a beautiful home. But one thing is missing from this idyllic setting — a baby. After years of fertility treatments their dreams come true when Robin finds out she is pregnant. Is this a dream come true or a nightmare come to life?

Nightmare come to life. That’s what the doctor told my mom when I was born. Maybe he directed this movie. (This remind anyone of It Lives/1978)?

I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (September 14/2018-Theaters/September 21, 2019-VOD)
“The apocalypse proves a blessing in disguise for one lucky recluse — until a second survivor arrives with the threat of companionship.”

Leave it to someone to always impose on your personal time. There goes leaving the bathroom door open during personal moments. The apocalypse sucks.

APOSTLE (October 12, 2018)
“London, 1905. Prodigal son Thomas Richardson has returned home, only to learn that his sister is being held for ransom by a religious cult. Determined to get her back at any cost, Thomas travels to the idyllic island where the cult lives under the leadership of the charismatic Prophet Malcolm. As Thomas infiltrates the island’s community, he learns that the corruption of mainland society that they claim to reject has infested the cult’s ranks nonetheless — and uncovers a secret far more evil than he could have imagined.”

What some people call religious cults, I call ‘em the barfly regulars up at the Tug Tavern. They seem to be worshiping the bartender every time I walk in there. Heck, you could call me a cult member with a bar tab. All praise a full glass and a Lyft™ ride home.

E-DEMON (2018)
“On a mission to bring the Devil to Earth, an escaped demon manipulates a group of friends hanging out on a video-chat. Since this ruthless demon can possess multiple people at once, knowing who to trust is the key to survival.”

More tech-savvy stink demons. Suppose you could call them malevolent malware. And you can call E-Demons YET ANOTHER teen sci-fi social media movie. Hit the delete button.

The Devil Is A Jive Turkey

A bunch of ancient Chinese warrior monks with swords and crossing guard yellow pajamas put an evil amulet into a box. Then they put that box into a bigger box. And before it can do a “Pop Goes The Weasel” on ‘em, they landfill it into a deep cave-y hole, then slice themselves into sandwich bologna in order to maintain the secret whereabouts of said demonic jewelry, which would release a height/weight proportionate demon.

Flash forward to mid-1970s New York, where a really tall, muscular and shirtless kung fu instructor with an afro and anti-whitey attitude the size of Manhattan is teaching street thugs how to make that slappy sound when punching people in the sac, in this case a gang of Chinese gangstas, whom they are constantly turf warring.

Luke Curtis, the superfly of slapping (and kicking and karate chopping), decides to go to China to ramp up his punching skillz, taking along the street-slang yapping student, Rodan. (No, not Godzilla’s smart-mouth/beak pterodactyl, but a jive turkey.) It’s here Rodan steals the evil amulet (it thought outside the box) and it’s transported back to Harlem, where it unleashes the demon, who possesses a guy in a suit and turns him into a bug-eyed zombie that rips people open as if a birthday present. Then he goes into the subway where it’s nice and dark — exactly where you’d want to go to kill some time and other things. Soon, mangled bodies are showing up like pawn shop jewelry.

The cops think it’s a war between the African American gang (some of who are white) and the Chinese gang, who all wear black t-shirts and white pants. Both sides make that slappy sound when executing really slow and inept kung fu offenses to upper and lower torsos.

A tentative truce is suggested and the Chinese kung fu master tells Luke about the amulet and its powers to possess people, use loved ones against its enemies and cause hallucinations that’ll definitely stain gold lamé bell-bottom jumpsuits (Luke’s stylish action wear) OR white pants. He ventures into the subway for a demonic kick-boxing confrontation that has runaway subway trains appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing, heavy duty smacking and the letting of blood.

The Devil’s Express (aka, Gang Wars/1976) is one of those “so bad, you can’t help but watch it” movies. Painful dialogue, exaggerated fight facial expressions and a manifested demon who looks like a glowing eyed mummy wrapped in cloth that’s been dipped in one of New York City’s finest garbage cans. The only thing better is Luke’s pimp-esque wardrobe. Now to go on Amazon.com to see if I can find a gold lamé bell-bottom jumpsuit to go with my platform shoes. Then it’s off to the subway for me.

Terror Birds: Droppings From the Sky

Terror Birds, as the ad poster indicates in entry level Photoshoppery, is “hatching soon.” As you can see, there is a monster bird claw coming out of a giant egg. And hatching is what giant eggs do. So that makes it a clever turn of phrase, yes?

No. It’s Art Institute™ grade advertising at best. But I digress. The real reason for griping is that Terror Birds, an obvious cash-in to Jurassic World’s (2015) rampaging box office success using once-thought extinct dino birds as the movie’s antagonists, has already been done. Several times, in fact.

One example: Pterodactyl, starring “terror birds,” was released in 2005 and had rap star Coolio shooting machine guns at the prehistoric monsters. (Not a fan of rap music, but Coolio is pretty dang cool.) Terror Birds stars a bunch of generic, scrubbed and polished white kids straight outta Scooby-Doo™ and/or Disney™. There’s your target audience right there.

On top of this, Terror Birds even steals concept art from Pterodactyl to the point of plagiarism. But that’s the least of anyone’s worries, as you can see by the plot:

“When Maddy Stern discovers her father has gone missing during a routine birdwatching excursion, she and her college pals trek out into the wilderness to find him, only to end up in a wealthy scientist’s desolate ranch aviary, where they encounter a pair of giant, hungry terror birds believed to be extinct for centuries.”

Now compare that to the plot of Pterodactyl: “A dormant volcano deep with the Turkish forest holds within it a deadly secret. Perfectly preserved, a nest of pterodactyl eggs are ready to hatch…”

Couple that with Coolio, steaming piles of pterodactyl droppings, machine guns, a volcano, and you have quality sci-fi entertainment. (Note to anyone who gives a dropping: stick it out to the end; there’s a final scene that’s pretty coolio.)

P.S. For all you hard-core pterodactyl fans, seek out The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (aka, Les Adventures Extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec/2010): “A popular (and supermodel hot) novelist flies around 1912 Paris on the back of a pterodactyl, dealing with her would-be suitors, the cops, and monsters.” Fun movie, but unfortunately no machine guns. Or Coolio, who wouldn’t be born for another 51 years. Pitié.

Keeping an Eye on Sci-Fi

The “beast” in The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes (1955) is really an alien, at times represented as a blinking soup can that acts as housing for irritating mind waves.

This morphing soup can, um, alien doesn’t have a million eyes on its own space face. Rather, it overtakes birds, dogs, barnyard animals, and even a steer (cow on steroids), to “see” for him.

So instead of finding the nearest girl’s locker room, the extraterrestrial dumbass attacks a farming family who bitch and argue so much, you’d wish they’d just stab each other in the pig pen with pitchforks.

The alien makes life even more uncomfortable for the Kelly family, who has a mute worker living on their property, doing glamorous chores like licking chicken eggs clean enough for market and turning cow pies when the sun cooks ’em to a nice pancake brown.

Under the control of The Soup, the minimum wage mute goes after the hot teen daughter, setting off a chain of events that is right up there with watching water heat on the stove. Why the alien didn’t mind-control a common pterodactyl or a C.H.U.D. was a serious misstep that resulted in everyone yawning in its general direction.