Cuddly Kaiju, Filming Bigfoot, Killer Whales

Godzilla is the KISS of merchandising, having his likeness/logo/iconic beer belch attached to literal hundreds of products, ranging from designer underwear and hot sauce to 100% Toho™ cotton bed sheets and a themed hotels (Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, for a reasonable $125 a night). And thanks to Quantam Mechanix™, Godzilla is now a plush zipperhead. And no, that wasn’t me calling him names. Godzilla has been turned into a plush toy (fancy term for being stuffed) with a mouth that can be opened/closed with zipper lips. (That sounds like a cool name for a new Godzilla foe or a punk band.)

Godzilla Zippermouth Plush comes in a set of four: Godzilla Burning, Godzilla Atomic Breath, Godzilla Standard, Godzilla Black and White. This set sells for $139.99 and has these features: “Charming, edgy, and packed with personality, these Godzilla Zippermouth Plush are soft, cute, and full of details that will appeal to kids and even the most discerning collector. Measuring approximately 8 1/2-inches tall, each plush features individually stuffed claws; embroidered details on his eyes, nose, spine; and custom-dyed fabric that’s super soft to the touch. They also sport a trademark Quantum Mechanix™ zippered smile you can unzip to reveal Godzilla’s destructive grin!”

Destructive grin. A possible name for a rotgut craft cocktail. These plushies arrive in June 2023 and you can reserve yours here. And while you start a punk band and/or sip some rotgut, here are a few out now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/TV series that may or may not leave you feeling stuffed…

SOMETHING WALKS IN THE WOODS / Out now (VOD)

“A viral video shows a mysterious figure walking along the edge of the woods each day, and filmmaker Bill Howard sets out to spend a night there to find out exactly what it is.”

It’s Bigfoot looking to pound the film out of anyone pointing a camera in his general direction

THE REAPER MAN / April 18, 2023 (VOD)

“A grieving wife summons a dark spirit with an insatiable desire for revenge.”

I liked this better when it was called Pumpkinhead (1988).

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL / Release pending 2023 (VOD)

“After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.”

This one stars Nicolas Cage, who has already been in 415 movies so far this year.

THE SWARM / Release pending 2023 (Streaming Series)

“Whales begin sinking ships. Toxic, eyeless crabs poison Long Island’s water supply. The North Sea shelf collapses, killing thousands in Europe. Around the world, people are beginning to feel the effects of the ocean’s revenge as the seas and their inhabitants begin a ‘violent revolution’ against mankind. At stake is the survival of the Earth’s very fragile ecology — and ultimately, the survival of humanity.”

They had me at whales sinking ships. Points also for eyeless crabs.

Bigfoot’s Big Butte

In Sasquatch Mountain (aka, Devil On The Mountain/2006) — his third role in a Sasquatch flick — the legendary Lance Henriksen is the go-to guy for movies about Bigfoot. They should just start calling him “Hairy and the Henriksen.” (OK, now THAT was pretty darn clever.) Lance, though, is way more cooler as a hardened mountain man than I would’ve been. Hard to sell yourself as a believable outdoorsman while wearing a KISS T-shirt that smells like Bounce™.

A gang of bank robbers steal money from Lance’s small town bank and kill a cop in the process. Making a frantic getaway, they’re involved in a car crash with a supermodel with a low top who was making her getaway from a lousy marriage. The criminals take the supermodel hostage and head for the hills. Guess who lives there — Lance…and Sasquatch.

The mythical (ahem) beast is the reason Lance’s wife was killed 12 years earlier. No one believed him, so he kinda became that guy who “saw a UFO” type dude. While the criminals run through the woods, so doth Sasquatch, snapping in half the good guys because hey, Sas can’t differentiate between those that point guns at him and those that flee.

The cops follow and it turns into a stand-off until Sasquatch balances the scales of justice. Now the criminals and the cops have to work together to escape Sasquatch’s fuzzy wrath. Lots of character development with colorful dialogue. But it’s Lance who outshines them all. (He even calls one of the criminals “Pumpkinhead,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to his other mythical beast movie.)

Sasquatch, though, is overly hairy and looks like a heavy metal King Kong, but not as tall. He has a great howl, that will make your butt hairs stand on end — your REAR end.

Craig Wasson, who plays the lead criminal, hasn’t changed his hair since Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors(1987) And that was 20 years ago. Then again, I haven’t changed my hair since birth. Sasquatch Mountain has its flaws (unlikely cop and criminal behavior patterns/situations), but hey, what Sasquatch movie doesn’t? Until I star in one, anyway.

Hillbillies vs. Horror

Four movies in and ’ol Pumpkinhead’s legend of vengeance is like my underwear: darker and wearing a bit thin. Not that Pumpy isn’t cool, because he totally is. Rather, they’re running out of ways to tell the same story. This time they thought outside the patch, where the ongoing battle saga between the “still backwoods hicks” Hatfields and the McCoys is still raging via their descendants. First thought is, why do we keep letting these hillbillies breed? Second of all, with one billion square miles in which to move, why do they always live next door to each other? Geez.

So a Hatfield chick is in love with a McCoy dude and they meet in private to feel each other up. A sort of Hee Haw re-imagining of Romeo & Juliet, their secret is discovered and in the process end up with a McCoy sister getting killed in the face. Legal disclaimer: It weren’t no Hatfield that done it — they was a’chasin’ her through the woods and she fell down a sharp incline and whacked her head somethin’ powerful agin’ that there yonder tree.

As could be expected, the McCoys think the Hatfields did it. So the “Luv U 4ever” guy goes to Haggis, the town witch, to call upon Pumpkinhead for vengeance. (Her witch shack has been upgraded with extra rats and decorative stink bugs). Also returning as a “spiritual advisor” is Ed Harley (aka, Lance Henriksen), doomed to walk the earth, caught between here and there, a penalty curse for invoking the Pumpster. The drag is he can’t even see his own dead son, the one whom he brought down Hell in retribution for. That’s f’d up.

Disregarding ALL the warnings, the McCoy kid calls on Pumpkinhead to kill the entire Hatfield clan (there’s like, 20 of ’em)‚ except his beloved skirt. So they can be together. Forever. (That boy needs to get a clue into the ways of barnyard booty.)

In an ironic twist of fate, the Hatfields and McCoys have to team up against Pumpsie. It doesn’t work, because like drinking beer, once it begins IT CAN’T BE STOPPED. If you’ve seen the previous three Pumpkinhead movies you’ll know how this one ends.

Better than Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993) and Pumpkinhead III: Ashes To Ashes (2006), Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud (2007) is more gory, with P-diddyhead stomping on faces (making ’em go goosh!), slashing open bellies to let loose the intestines within, gouging eyeballs, ripping off limbs and making that eerie noise that sounds like a rattlesnake with an electric toothbrush caught in it’s throat.

Somebody needs to quit making these sequels long enough to let Ed at least time to change his shirt. That thing has got to be stinking up the place good after 20 years.

Pottery Horror

Based on the 1994 book Dan Leno & the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd, The Limehouse Golem horror movie (release date pending 2016) is a spin on the Jack The Ripper hot mess. Yeah, the theme is played, but the movie features none other than Professor Severus Snape, aka “Alan Rickman.”

While Professor Snape was able to handle a variety of Harry Potter’s magical indiscretions, how will the former Death Eater come to terms with the Golem who the press claims is responsible for a “series of gruesome murders shaking the community in the dangerous Limehouse district of London in 1880”? Wand to the ready – Expecto Patronum, b*tch!

As the press release goes, with no genuine leads, the police put the “vastly experienced Detective Inspector Kildare on the case.” Man, I hope Kildare smacks that mean Golem guy double hard.

Golem, by the way, is an icon of ancient Jewish folklore, appearing in the 1915 German silent film, Der Golem. (Oddly, the DVD cover says the movie is from 1920. I’m at a loss here.)

As the moving picture goes, a 16th Century Prague rabbi brings a clay statue to life to save the Jews from ongoing brutal persecution by the city’s rulers. A kind of Yiddish Pumpkinhead, the molded savior is later found 400 years later in the rubble of an old synagogue (a church you aren’t allowed in) and resurrected once again, this time to be a servant (an early model beer b*tch).

When I get around to resurrecting Der Golem, first thing I’d do is change his first name from “der” to “the”, then give him a new coat of paint and take him out for a spin on the pottery wheel. I bet he’d like that. Then I’d command him to smack my enemies – double hard.

Pumpkinheads and Pinheads

Vengeance (Pumpkinhead’s birth name) has been called back for active duty in Pumpkinhead: Ashes To Ashes (1994), this time avenging townspeople whose dead kin’s bodies have been defiled (i.e., buried in a swamp as well as stacked up in a barn like rotting bales of hay.)

Seems the local doctor/mortician (played by Doug Bradley, Hellraiser’s Pinhead, 1987) has been facilitating the deaths, extracting organs for re-sale, then discarding the bodies like so many empty yogurt containers. The small town can’t pay for medical care, so the doc balances the checkbook with no longer needed kidneys, hearts, eyeballs, stomach gunk, etc.

Helping him is his crystal meth-addicted hottie daughter, some other guy, and that Bud Wallace kid from the first movie, now all grow’d up.

After the bodies are discovered and lined up out in the street in the hot sun for inventorying, a highly attractive young mother comes searching for her little daughter’s body—and finds it among the putrefying corpses. Harsh-o-matic. So she gets three other friends to go in on hiring Pumpkinhead to balance their revenge checkbook.

Haggis the witch (Pumpkinhead’s enabler) is back, dispensing warnings, as does Lance Henriksen as the ghost of Ed Harley from Pumpkinhead (1988). But no one ever listens to them and P to tha’ H does his dirty business, all the while taking everyone’s soul to H-E-C-K.

This is the first time we get to see Haggis in broad daylight and she looks like a supermodel that’s aged 115 years. The medical gore is particularly graphic, but P-head’s vengeancing is just your basic meat ’n potatoes heart-ripping, choking, impaling, etc. In a glaring misstep, the movie makers turn Pumpkinhead into a digital video character during an attack scene in a church. Not cool. Everything else, cool.

Satan’s Serpent vs. Rap

All it took to summon a snake creature from the butthole of Hell was the Kulev Stick and some incredibly dense teens.

The I.D.Ts driving around in a monster truck plow over some guy’s wife. Insta-widow guy uses the Kulev Stick (a No. 2 lead pencil with mystical properties) to bring forth a bus-long half/snake, half alligator. This “snalligator” is called Vengeance, and puts the squeeze on whoever’s likeness is drawn on special toilet paper.

Taking the framework from Pumpkinhead (1988), LockJaw (aka Carnivorous, Carnivorous DMX and Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent/2008) changes the landscape only slightly by adding a rap guy (DMX) with thug tattoos and a bazooka (!) to do battle with the snalligator.

The only sex scene has the blonde supermodel going to Boner City while wearing her under garments, the movie’s best special effect. The wiggly beast doesn’t have any lines, but manages to kill/eat several people. The bazooka, it should be noted, takes second place to a homemade weapon one of the teens (“with an engineering degree”) builds: a table lamp with kitchenware taped to it.

While it never actually gets used, I bet that thing would’ve caused some serious damage. The only other impairment occurs from watching this painfully bad movie.