Monday, December 29, 2008

December's Monster Movie of the Month - Reptilicus [Danish Version] (1961)

Rubber puppet lays waste to Denmark, turns attention to U.S.


This little film has been much maligned by... everybody. There are actually two versions of it out there - Danish (1961) and American (1962). I think it's generally the American version collecting the poor marks.

I can't say yay or nay on the American take, but the Danish didn't do SO bad. I mean, sure, the monster was a rubber marionette. And the film did include two "WTF" musical numbers. And... the monster was only on screen for maybe 10 minutes.

But gosh, those Danes had heart.

No subtitles for the print I (ahem) obtained, so I can't comment on how smart the dialogue was. But the characters seemed credulous enough. (Maybe a little stiff during line delivery at times, but who among us hasn't experienced that?) I got a kind of "gee, these guys are really giving it their all - bless their hearts" feeling, as I watched.

Anyway. The monster here was a big old flying dragon who, at the beginning of the film, was just a dragon tail--dug up by oil drillers. When this mysterious tail thawed out, it grew from a dragon tail into a full blown dragon. You know, like a lizard can grow a new tail if it loses the old one; this tail could grow a new dragon when it... needed to. Wow. I felt my I.Q. drop just writing that.

So. The dragon regenerates, starts breathing, gets loose, eats one farmer, a few cows and some houses. Then the army sets it on fire (those guys, always settin' stuff on fire!) and it scurries into the ocean. Because it's an amphibious dragon.

Army says: "if we can't burn it we'll blow it to pieces with depth charges!", and then does blow it into at least two pieces, since one of the dragon's little legs tears off and floats down to the seabed. (And I'm thinking "oh, that's gonna be the movie's parting shot" because, as the scientists then remind the army - if you blow the dragon to pieces, each piece could regenerate into a whole new dragon to worry about.) So the army, with sheepish grins, stops dropping depth charges.

So the scientists and the military go back to the lab and discuss a lot of things in Danish for awhile, work together, and come up with this: "Let's shoot a poison filled bazooka shell into the monster's mouth!" And so, they shoot it into the dragon's mouth and it dies.

But THEN! Just before the credits roll, we get a shot of the dragon leg on the seabed (Dan nods knowingly here). And it's toes are twitching....

Niiiiiice....

So it's true the dragon was brought to "life" as a puppet. By a puppeteer. Not a very gifted one. Well, that's not fair. I guess the puppeteer did the best he could with what they gave him.
The real lameness of the puppet was in it's design - little feet that didn't move when it walked and came waaay off the ground every time the dragon looked upward, since they were attached directly to it's neck. As in no legs. Just feet attached directly to it's neck.

And the gaping rubbery mouth that just hung open and kind of jiggle-jaggled when the dragon moved.

And the garish carnival-painted-on eyes. You know the type.

And those puppet strings were really, really obvious in some shots.

And listen. I don't know too much about the Danish mindset--maybe over there musical numbers are a can't-miss addition to any film.

There's a scene where a handyman walks outside the lab, sits on a park bench, and starts singing about the dragon. And if that's not weird enough, he's not even through the first line and about ten little kids - girls in frilly dresses and boys in pressed short pants - gather around him to listen and dance.

Where'd they come from? Did the lab have an on-site daycare for it's staff? Weird.

The movie's other musical number at least involved a couple of characters on a date - they listened to some nightclub singer do "Tivoli Nights". So it kind of fit into the story. No--"fit the story" is a little strong. But it did make more sense as a scene that didn't particulary fit the story.

My brain worked overtime trying to convince me, as the credits rolled, that this wasn't a monster movie at all, but a romantic drama/comedy/musical with some monster footage added to it. Now I know that's not true - the writer/director really did set out to make a monster movie (allegedly the then recent Godzilla films - big money makers in Japan - were it's inspiration).

Speaking of writers and directors, did you know this movie was written by the same guy who wrote and directed LAST month's MMOTM - The Time Travelers (1964)? Ib Melchior is his name. Apparently he's quite the celebrated fellow amongst B Movie aficionados. (Yes, I said aficionados.) Some of his other credits are Death Race 2000, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Angry Red Planet and (I modestly note) another MMOTM, Planet of the Vampires. Crazy. And he's still kicking around; 91 years old.


Right. That about wraps up the film - Danish version anyway. The movie(s) was/were a co-Danish/American project so they filmed it twice, with the Danish actors doing it once in Danish and again in English. But when the American print made it's way back to the US, studio suits thought the actors' accents sounded ridiculous (and they probably did). So they had the film dubbed with American actors (mistake #1). Then they decided the story itself was just lame and reshot a bunch of the movie with some additional American actors (mistake #2).Then  they just kind of put it in the blender and let it go.

So the movie (which was not awards material to begin with) got sliced and diced into something-not-of-this-earth. The flying Danish dragon became a non-flying American dragon, who spits cartoony goo from it's mouth to melt things (and people). Sigh. I am not a fan of our studios "improving" on foriegn movies before releasing them here. (coughgojiracough)

It's a one brain movie, but I've always had a soft spot for it in my heart. So it gets

TWO AMPHIBIOUS DRAGON BRAINS.

Oh, and in what I can only surmise as an attempt to boost film sales, the American version was released with a little softcore-porn novelization of the film alongside (which, I swear, was purchased in complete innocence by yours truly many a year ago), taking all the major characters - quite chaste in the movie(s) - and having them jump each other's bones throughout.

Nothing explicit, mind you, just that cheesy 1960s stuff: "Expertly she guided him, her body accommodating itself to the savage lance of his manhood while the world spun around them in a riot of sensation". And yes, that's a direct quote from the book.

Savage lance. Heh.



The Trailer






The Details

Cast
Carl Ottosen ... Gen. Mark Grayson
Ann Smyrner ... Lise Martens
Mimi Heinrich ... Karen Martens
Asbjørn Andersen ... Prof. Otto Martens
Bodil Miller ... Connie Miller (Danish version)
Bent Mejding ... Svend Viltorft (drilling crew chief)
Povl Wøldike ... Dr. Peter Dalby
Dirch Passer ... Dirch Mikkelsen
Ole Wisborg ... Capt. Brandt (Royal Danish Guard)
Birthe Wilke ... Herself (nightclub singer)

Director
Poul Bang (Danish)
Sidney W. Pink (American)

MPAA Rating
Denmark:A
USA:Unrated

Runtime
Denmark:92 min
USA:82 min

Taglines
Invincible...Indestructible! What was this awesome BEAST born 50 million years out of time?

See a mighty city trampled to destruction! See missiles and atom bombs powerless! See civilisation rioting with fear!

Language
Danish | English

Link(s)
Reptilicus at IMDB
Reptilicus at Wikipedia

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Audition (1999) Uncut Version

Man uses trickery to attract wife, loses leg for his trouble




The Review

Well.

At the behest of Patrick Galloway, author of Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand, I finally watched this movie. I'd been avoiding it. Didn't know much about the story-line, except that it had some reportedly graphic torture scenes.

Now, I'd been avoiding it because - well, I'm just not into torture. Giving or receiving. (Or watching.)

Sure, I like a creepy ghost story as much as the next guy. And I like seeing bad guys get what's coming to 'em (I love that). I even like the occasional over-the-top-never-happen-in-real-life-bloodbath-spectacular (supernatural or not).

But watching Human Being "A" gleefully saw off Human Being "B"s limbs, while Human Being "B" is tearfully pleading for his life - that's just not entertainment. (To me.)

"Torture-porn", I believe is what they're calling it, and it's become quite a mainstream hit these days.

Anyway, the plot itself is pretty run of the mill - lonely guy finds perfect girl who turns out to be homicidally unbalanced. What people say sets this one apart is that we get to watch said perfect girl saw off various body parts from various persons while those persons are restrained and awake. Using piano wire. In bone-crunching, blood-spurting, agonized-screaming detail.

From what I hear, many in the audience walked out during early screenings, causing the director to make some (minor) cuts before general release. There were even a couple of cases of mild shock, with one audience member being briefly hospitalized. And, both John Landis and Rob Zombie, over-the-top horror directors themselves, said they found the film extremely difficult to watch. I know! (A word of caution following this link - some of the video is pretty graphic, although the worst bits have been cut.)

I actually thought the movie itself was quite good - most graphic of the torture aside. As far as lonely-guy-perfect-girl-homicidally-unbalanced movies go, it did it's job with verve most others lack. The movie slowly builds an excruciating sense of tension, which never lets up for a second. And the story unfolds so that it increasingly reveals, a bit at a time, how horrifyingly screwed up this girl is - and how much trouble our hero is really in. The plot's been done a hundred times, but this movie steps it up a notch.

But the most graphic of the torture distracted me from the story's climax.

So. (Shakes fist angrily) TAKE THAT, PIANO WIRE SAW GIRL!

I do have to say that, while I'm still no fan of torture-porn, that girl really sawed and gouged with gusto and panache. Even as I winced at what she was doing, I had to admire her enthusiasm.

THREE TORTURED BRAINS

Oh, and that book by Patrick Galloway is really good, by the way. It's got some films I'd rather pass on, but a lot of great unknowns (at least to western audiences) to put on your list. I pulled about 20 movies out of it that are now on MY list.




The Trailer






The Details

Title
Audition aka: Ôdishon

Cast
Ryo Ishibashi ... Shigeharu Aoyama
Eihi Shiina ... Asami Yamazaki
Tetsu Sawaki ... Shigehiko Aoyama
Jun Kunimura ... Yasuhisa Yoshikawa
Renji Ishibashi ... Old man in wheelchair
Miyuki Matsuda ... Ryoko Aoyama
Toshie Negishi ... Rie
Ren Osugi ... Shimada
Shigeru Saiki ... Toastmaster
Ken Mitsuishi ... Director
Yuriko Hirooka ... Michiyo Yanagida
Fumiyo Kohinata ... TV station presenter
Misato Nakamura ... Misuzu Takagi
Yuuto Arima ... Shigehiko as a child
Ayaka Izumi ... Asami as a child

Director
Takashi Miike

MPAA Rating
Unrated (for violence/torture and sexuality)

Runtime
115 minutes

Tagline
She always gets a part.

Language
Japanese with English Subtitles

Link(s)
Audition at IMDB
Audition at Wikipedia

Friday, December 12, 2008

Blood Tide (1982)


James Earl Jones battles Rubber Monster Puppet, both lose in the end.




The Review

I counted 31 different releases of this movie for sale on Amazon.com - 28 on DVD and 3 on VHS. I'll bet that's about the number of folks who've actually watched it, too.

The movie's in the public domain, which explains the prolific number of releases - it's free for the taking. All a company has to do is pay for production costs, recover those through sale or shipping price and - Whallah - 100% profits.

You can find the film with a Google search for "download blood tide". If you want to. But if the folks who made it didn't bother to renew their copyright when it expired, well... that oughta tell you something.

I watched it because it was free. Right after I got my iPod, I went through this download-everything-free-whether-it's-good-or-not phase. So it's on my iPod.

The movie is an early-80s-feels-like-late-70s horror flick that was shot in Greece. Boils down to some treasure hunter (James Earl Jones) who accidentally lets a monster loose, and the locals start sacrificing virgins (actual virginity encouraged but not required) to keep it at bay.

And that's pretty much it.

James Earl Jones can usually be counted on to make anything he's in at least watchable. Not this time; even James couldn't carry the weight. If you took everything even remotely "plot-ish" from the film, and spliced it together, you'd have a movie that lasts, maybe, 15 minutes.

The other 67 minutes is just filler: beach-and-surf cavorting people, mysterious nuns, nighttime scuba divers, dark church hallways and scary-unseen-monster-music. And lots of stern looking villagers who glare at "outsiders", then turn and glare at each other.

There's a lot of glaring in this movie.

Oh, and a side-plot with some guy trying to find his sister before she sacrifices herself (?) to the monster. Even though (we learn) she's not a virgin.

Interestingly (kind of), during my Amazon.com count, I noticed a new (2008) reissue of the film on DVD boasting an MPAA rating of "Unrated" and a runtime of 125 minutes (as opposed to the usual "R" and 82 minutes). I can't imagine what the extra 43 minutes consists of....

So. James Earl Jones blows up the monster at the end. But, through a lack of planning, he also blows up himself. (Oh, um, belated Spoiler Alert....)

Bottom line - even though it's free, this movie's likely not worth your time to watch. Unless you're in bed with a cold, or recovering from having your wisdom teeth pulled or something.

Maybe then.

ONE FISH-FED BRAIN



The Trailer

Couldn't find an online trailer for the film, but here's a little Earl Jones magic to demonstrate the film's flavor. And I apologize in advance, because Mr. Jones really is a fine actor....






The Details

Cast
James Earl Jones: Frye
José Ferrer: Nereus
Lila Kedrova: Sister Anna
Mary Louise Weller: Sherry Grice
Martin Kove: Neil Grice
Lydia Cornell: Barbara
Deborah Shelton: Madeline Grice
Sofia Seirli: Sister Elena
Despina Tomazani: Lethe's Mother
Rania Photiou: Lethe
Spyros Papafrantzis: Dionysis
Irini Tripkou: Virgin
Annabel Schofield: Vikki

Director
Richard Jefferies

MPAA Rating
R (for some language and a topless virgin or two)

Runtime
82 minutes

Tagline
The myth is alive!

Language
English

Link