PopSyndicate.com

Madison digs into a batch of newly-released monster movies to see if they stack up to the Creature Features of old.

Greetings and welcome to the first installment of Going Mad, my own little attempt to contribute to the littering of the intrawebz with rambling blogs. In these, I’ll be taking a look at all sorts of things I find of interest, from movies to comic books to quantum physics. Okay, maybe no quantum physics, but you get the point.

This, the first installment, is actually the first of three related pieces on my various sundry interests in cinema and how they’re surviving and thriving on DVD. In the near future, I will be taking a look at the other two (exploitation films and animation), but for now, I’m going with the one nearest and dearest to my corrupted little heart: Monster movies. After watching a documentary called American Scary recently (review on its way shortly), which is about the long lineage of horror hosts on television, it occurred to me that we need something along these lines again. We need a new Elvira, or Joe Bob Briggs to be on television introducing and watching these movies along with us. It’s not for lack of material, that’s for sure. The DVD market is thriving with creature features that are just begging to be exploited. From classics to obscure rarities to brand new Sci-Fi Channel (excuse me, ScyFy…god that looks so horrible) productions, there’s a bevy of these beastly films to sate the lusts of monster movie fans everywhere; even the worst ones are fun to watch usually, and that’s something this genre has a real edge on against others: You don’t see anyone extolling the virtues of bad dramas, but you put an incredibly fake giant monster in a film and boom – instant cult classic.

Let’s start out with a new film from the grand-daddy of all cheap-o creature features, Roger Corman. While he’s only the producer of this period piece, Corman is returning to his roots in a way, having tried to jump on the Italian Hercules/peplum bandwagon back in the 1960s with his version of Atlas. I have no clue what he’s trying to cash in on with this one (300 perhaps?), but Cyclops is pretty typical Corman. Taking place during Roman times, we have a somewhat-name actor (Eric Roberts, presumably shot before Dark Knight) as evil Emperor Tiberius, who wants to capture the last surviving Cyclops to throw into the gladiator arena. Mister One-Eye doesn’t really care for this plan, but that doesn’t matter as we have another subplot of a falsely accused Roman general named Marcus Romulus is tossed into the gladiator pits as well and forms an uprising, leaving it a three-way battle between his rebels, the Roman guards and the giant penis joke. Really, Roger? You waited ten years to rip off Gladiator? What happened to getting Carnosaur into video stores before Jurassic Park hit screens? Eh. Essentially, this is very Corman in every way: Decent sets, really simple acting and dialoge, and a CGI monster that seems to change size every few scenes. Released on DVD by Anchor Bay, it has nary a special feature.

Similarly in the bare-bones DVD department is not one, not two, but THREE new efforts from Genius and their “Maneaters Series” of creature features. Originally, the franchise, such as it is, was devoted to animal-attack films, with poor bastards in small towns coming into contact with pissed off bears, tigers and the like. Oh my. A good dozen films in, though, they’ve started to branch out a bit with some of their efforts, though not straying too far from their formula. Each one still has a former big actor slumming it up, and each has a lot of bad CGI. Of the three (Black Swarm, Yeti, and Swamp Devil) only Black Swarm fits into the original Maneater premise, as it deals with a mass of intelligent wasps descending upon a small town to cause havoc. It stars Robert Englund, and…well, that pretty much sums the whole thing up. Much more lively are Yeti and Swamp Devil. Eschewing the conventions, these two give us more more human-like monsters in the form of, respectively, an abominable snowman and a Man-Thing-like creature. As with all Maneaters films, they’re serviceable, but nothing spectacular. They always have very earnest acting and the stories never get too silly, so they’re definitely worth a rental or a late-night viewing on…ugh…ScyFy.

If you prefer your “pissed-off animal on a rampage” films to be of slightly more vintage style, then you may want to check out Yellow Fangs, now out from Cinema Epoch. In this 1990 effort, which was Sonny Chiba’s first job as a director, the true story of a 10-foot tall bear that terrorized a small Japanese village in the early 1900s is brought to cinematic life. Though it has some absolutely gorgeous scenery (the snowy mountains of Japan), the titular creature is a bit of a laugh, being played by what appears to be a very tall man in a bear costume. A bad bear costume. Otherwise, a pretty neat (and just plain pretty) film. Special features include the trailer, some stills galleries and one of the most brutally honest text essays on a film (by Bill Gibron) to be included with its subject. I have to agree with Gibron though – it’s a shame the film failed at the box office (how bad did it fail? So bad that Chiba, who financed it, was pretty much ruined afterwards and even changed his name!) because outside of the Godzilla-style monster, the movie is quite gripping and gorgeous to watch.

Keeping with the international theme, we move on to Wild Country, a Scottish effort newly-released to the States thanks to Lionsgate. You know, Lionsgate: The company that just doesn’t know any better sometimes. Yeah, them. Seriously, in prepping for this, I checked out the Wild Country listing at IMDB and saw a massive theme in peoples’ comments – UK residents everywhere had to chime in and apologize in advance for it making it over here. That’s always a good sign. Anyway, it’s basically a werewolf movie with slasher movie set-up: A group of cross-country trekking teens find an old castle with a baby abandoned in it. On their way to return the kid to civilization, they’re picked off one-by-one by a werewolf-like creature. Okay, I have to agree, overall the warnings were spot-on; this was pretty bad, but I will give it points for giving us a neat and cool new interpretation of the werewolf. Totally unique in its design, it’s the best part of this film. And for me to be able to give it even that much of a recommendation considering I was forced to sit through a trailer for The Spirit before the film started shows that it has some merit. Good lord, Miller, the hell were you thinking? Anyway, we get one extra on the disc: A making-of doc that doesn’t do much for me.

We don’t have to travel the Atlantic to get bad monster movies though, that’s for sure. After all, we have The Asylum right here, bringing us new films almost non-stop, no matter how often people tell them to stop. I’ll be honest – I’m not an Asylum hater, really. Yes, every single film they do is just a crappy rip-off of a better film currently in the public eye (Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, Sunday School Musical), but hey, that’s the kind of stupid crap I thrive on. These aren’t going to win awards or gain cult status, but they can be entertaining in their own way (except Monster; that piece of excrement just plain blows warm monkey scrotum). Anyway, their latest contributions to the field are, no laughing please, The Day the Earth Stopped and Merlin and the War of the Dragons. Day the Earth Stopped - I have noooooo idea what this one could possibly be riffing on – is about a bunch of giant robots that suddenly appear across Earth, demanding we prove our worth or be obliterated. It’s a bit lagging (and by “bit” I mean it moves at a snail’s pace most of the time), but it’s directed by C. Thomas Howell and stars Judd Nelson. Ponyboy directing Bender, whodathunkit? A better film by leaps is Merlin one of now-several attempts by Asylum to break into the medieval fantasy market. It’s actually not that bad and has a feel to it that doesn’t bely its origins as an Asylum product. The dragons, CGI, are a helluva lot better than their usual efforts. At least Asylum gives us a good number of extras on these discs, including commentaries, behind-the-scenes docs and whatnot. Asylum’s announced their next release as Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. I don’t care how bad that one is, I’m already drooling. Consider it my own personal Snakes on a Plane. Er…Train, I mean.

Going back to the “big leagues” we now take a look at Warner Bros.’ Alien Raiders. Upon first look, this cover makes the film seem much more…well, Lionsgate, than Warners. The tagline is “A Sci-Fi Shocker.” Really? That’s how you plan to sell this film to your audience? It’s a shame, because there’s some promise here. The story’s minimalist at its best – taking place almost completely in a grocery store, it’s the tale of a group of robbers who show up to hold the shoppers and cashiers hostage. Except, as we learn, these aren’t robbers at all – they’re a group of scientists tracking an alien invasion and they know it has infested some of the people within the store. Similar in ways to The Mist, Alien Raiders has a lot of potential if you can get past the crappy title and B-movie hack work done to sell it. A Sci-Fi Shocker. I’m still shaking my head at that. We do have a plethora of special features on this one, a far cry from our previous subjects. Four separate shorts are devoted to various aspects of the film, including the really nice special effects. A fifth is a mock blog by one of the characters after the ordeal is over. As a film in general, Alien Raiders far surpasses pretty much all else covered here so far.

And finally (yes, I know you’re all as ready for me to shut up as I am), we jump in the WayBack Machine to visit an honest-to-goodness classic Creature Feature newly-arrived on DVD: Michael Reeves’ She Beast. Released in 1966, this was Reeves’ first credited directing job, and one of the best of his short career. It takes a few pages out of the Hammer style of gothic horror, and stars the ever-smoking hot Barbara Steele. It’s one of those “witch takes revenge hundreds of years later” stories (see also: Haunted Palace, Black Sunday, etc.) but it definitely has its moments. Steele plays Veronica, a young woman who drowns in a car crash. During her attempted rescue, a good samaritan accidentally retrieves the body of a witch who was put to death in the same river 200 years before. Though the film has been released numerous times on public domain DVDs in the past, this new transfer from Dark Sky Films is widescreen and contains a gorgeous transfer. With a running commentary by the film’s producer (Paul Maslansky), co-star Ian Ogilvy (who stars as Steele’s boyfriend), and Steele herself, it’s a great addition to all horror fans’ collections and easily replaces previous editions.

This short look at some of the more recent Creature Features on DVD is by no means complete. There are literally dozens of these being released every month, some classic, some new, some that should have stayed buried. But the point is and was to show that there’s still a large array of goofy monster films to keep us genre fans happy or at least sated. True, we may not have the added privilege of a busty Elvira, wise-cracking Ghoulardi or sleazy Joe Bob hosting them, but they’re out there.

And that concludes my first part of this three-part series. I know I’ve droned on and on a bit, but we’ll be touching on a lot of other subjects over time and hopefully I’ll be able to get a little looser in tone after this trilogy is over. That said, be sure to check in next time as I take a look at a massive stack of exploitation DVDs currently sitting on my shelf. Boobies!