Showing posts with label creature feature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creature feature. Show all posts
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| Dangerous tentacle of silicate |
When the body of a man is discovered with all of his insides somehow sucked out on an isolated island, Dr. Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) and Dr. David West (Edward Judd of First Men in the Moon) are called in for consultation by the local constable, John Harris (Sam Kydd). There the two men discover more dessicated corpses, and learn that researchers attempting to create living matter to counteract cancer cells only succeeded in creating silicon-based tentacled creatures ["silicates"] that feed on humans and animals by leeching away bone via osmosis. While the monsters themselves aren't the most frightening things in the world, Island of Terror is still quite creepy, has good performances from the leads, Kydd, and Carole Gray [Curse of the Fly] as West's plucky date, and offers some fairly unusual beasties in the bargain. There are a couple of illogical moments, such as when one character takes an axe to another's arm instead of chopping at the tentacle that ensnared it, and the idea of herding everyone on the island into one place so the monsters can congregate and feed on them is also a boner, especially when they've already herded some animals together for that purpose. Cushing is as marvelous as ever.
Verdict: Fun monster movie despite some dumb moments. ***.
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| John Merivale and Didi Sullivan |
CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (aka Caltiki, Il mostro immortale/1959). Director: Robert Hampton [Riccardo Freda]. NOTE: Cinematographer Mario Bava is said to have finished directing the film.
In Mexico Dr. John Fielding (John Merivale) and Max Gunter (Gerard Herter) are investigating ancient Mayan ruins with associates, when they come across an underground temple with a pool and a strange flesh-eating mass inside of it. This mass eats away Max's arm and drives him insane (although he was already slightly crazy), and breaks out of containment in a laboratory. This "immortal" menace -- an ageless, legendary and uni-cellular being -- reacts to radiation from a passing comet, and threatens to grow to tremendous size. Caltiki is a fairly entertaining picture even if the monster resembles a writhing, glistening carpet, and it has an exciting climax. Undoubtedly influenced by such earlier films as The Creeping Unknown, Enemy from Space/Quatermass 2 and The Blob, Caltiki was influential in its own right. It's hard to judge the performances due to the dubbing, but the actor who does the voice for Max makes him sound like a sneering Snidley Whiplash even before he loses his mind! Didi Sullivan is Fielding's wife, and Daniela Rocca is Linda, who is madly in love with Max, who continually mistreats her. Max's death scene is a grisly stand-out and the opening scenes in the ruins are rather creepy.
Verdict: As Blob movies go this one isn't bad. **1/2.
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| Indistinct baby monster pursues scientist |
In the future a breach in the floor of the Pacific Ocean lets loose gargantuan monsters, called Kaiju [Japanese for monster], that begin to decimate civilization. To combat them huge robots called Jeagers are built, which require two pilots, whose minds meld with each other and with the robot, as they go after the Kaiju. One pilot, Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) lost his brother during a battle, and now is teamed with pretty young Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi). Then there's the father/son team of Herc (Max Martini) and his obnoxious son, Chuck (Robert Kazinsky). Overseeing them all -- including two nerdy scientists named Newt (Charlie Day) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) -- is Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). The scientists attempt a mind-meld with one of the Kaiju's brains so they can pick up important information, but this nearly backfires on them. Of course the mostly one-dimensional human characters hardly matter in this kind of FX movie, although the overly weird-looking monsters are never as impressive as even the lesser efforts of Ray Harryhausen, and many sequences simply look cluttered, messy, and indistinct. Meant as a homage to Japanese movies about monsters and giant robots, Pacific Rim is a macho militaristic monster movie along the lines of Starship Troopers but without the extreme gore of that picture. There are a couple of somewhat memorable scenes: one of the monsters breaks into an underground shelter after the terrified people hear it thumping just above them; and a dead but pregnant Kaiju unleashes a smaller but still hungry baby monster. Otherwise the movie sort of holds the attention without ever really knocking you out on any level. The acting in this isn't bad, with a charismatic Elba [Prometheus] and intense Martini taking top honors; Martini, in particular, has some very good moments. Ron Perlman also gives a flavorful performance as a man who makes money selling various parts of deceased kaiju. Most of the sentimental scenes in the movie fall flat because the movie has no depth at all. Chiefly for nerds who grew up adoring Godzilla movies. I mean, I normally love creature features but I could hardly wait for this rather long movie to finally end. For my money there's nothing in this as eye-popping as, say, the tentacles of the huge octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea jutting out of San Francisco Bay and wiggling over the docks and freeway. Director del Toro's big bug movie Mimic is a much, much better, scarier, and more entertaining picture. He also directed Hellboy. Giant robots with human pilots inside were also the stars of Robot Jox [aka Robojox] in 1989.
Verdict: It Came from Beneath the Sea is more fun, has better effects, and is only half as long. **.
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| Watch out for that mouth! |
On isolated Erin Island, where nothing much ever happens, Garda [or cop] Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) comes to work temporarily. Ciaran O'Shea (Richard Coyle), who drinks more than he should, is the island officer she is assigned to. Before long they both have their hands full with alien monstrosities of varying sizes -- one is absolutely huge -- who have slimy tentacles the better to snatch you up with and insert you into their toothy maws for dinner. Scientist Adam Smith (Russell Tovey) and the others determine that people who survive attacks by the monsters have a large amount of alcohol in their systems, so the two cops gather up the island residents to the local pub and get everybody drunk to save their lives; liquor is toxic to the hungry creatures. This is a likable, mildly gruesome horror-comedy that is abetted by good actors playing engaging characters; it's scary and funny but ultimately a little too silly for its own good. The FX and photography are top-notch.
Verdict: Not as much fun perhaps nor as inventive as Attack of the Crab Monsters, but it has its moments. **1/2.
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| Peekaboo! |
THE CRAWLING EYE (aka The Trollenberg Terror/1958). Director: Quentin Lawrence. Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster.
In 1956 British TV presented a six-part sci-fi thriller entitled The Trollenberg Terror, directed by Quentin Lawrence but with a different cast [apparently this TV production is lost]. Two years later a feature-length film of the same title was released, renamed the juicier Crawling Eye for American distribution. Two young ladies who do a mind-reading act, Sarah (Jennifer Jayne) and Anne (Janet Munro) Pilgrim, are heading for Geneva by train, but get off at the small village of Trollenberg due to Anne's compulsion to do so. Another passenger named Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) also disembarks and they all go to the hotel, where they learn that there have been a series of terrible mountain-climbing tragedies. High on the Trollenberg mountain there is an observatory that is researching cosmic rays, and has observed a radioactive cloud that moves about as if it were being directed ... Alan remembers similar incidents in the Andes, and that certain people with psychic abilities, like Anne, could be manipulated by whatever beings there are in the cloud. Speaking of which, said cloud starts moving down towards the hotel, blocking off escape, and the creatures inside reveal themselves ... The Crawling Eye is a suspenseful, creepy movie with some interesting notions (such as corpses being reanimated and going after victims with cleavers), headless bodies, and surprisingly convincing monsters that figure in the climax. The actors are all good, with Laurence Payne particularly effective as the reporter Prescott, and Tucker managing to summon up some energy in his portrayal of the hero; Jayne and especially Munro are also convincing, although Warren Mitchell is perhaps a little too weird as Professor Crevett. The movie has its share of illogical and silly moments, but it's still a superior "creature feature."
Verdict: If it blinks, watch out! ***.
A gigantic egg is discovered in the Philippines and taken to what is supposed to be a nuclear power plant in Japan. When a "meltdown" occurs scientist Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) must close a hatch on his own wife (Juliette Binoche) to keep radiation from leaking. That's pretty much the last dramatic thing -- in the human sense -- that happens in this new/old take on Godzilla, in which the main monsters are not the Big Guy but a pair of creatures known as "MUTO"s [Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism]. It was the emergence of one of these creatures that actually caused the meltdown. It also develops that Godzilla actually did appear back in 1954 (when the first Godzilla film was released), and he's come back to set nature right and get rid of the MUTOs, who are ravaging Las Vegas after causing much destruction on Honolulu. Joe's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is one of the military men fighting against the monsters. Godzilla got surprisingly good reviews and fan reaction. Unlike the first American Godzilla film with Matthew Broderick, the movie doesn't ignore what's happened in the Japanese films -- Godzilla is a good guy fighting the bad monsters; there are little kids running about; one of the MUTOs attacks an elevated train -- but what the geeky fans of the Japanese movies may love about the series pretty much sinks this reboot. There's not enough of Godzilla, whom others have described as "a guest star in his own movie." The too-metallic MUTOs remind one of the monster in Deadly Mantis, and while Godzilla doesn't look bad, some of his scenes are so underlit that it's hard to see what's happening or be especially impressed. There are a couple of good scenes and shots -- Godzilla swimming under a bridge where the people look like ants; the flood that washes through Honolulu --- but these aren't enough to save the movie. Only slightly better than Pacific Rim, another movie influenced by Japan's monster flicks.
Verdict: Too much pandering to the geeky fans of the Japanese series -- but it appears to have paid off commercially. **.
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| T-Rex and time travelers |
In the future Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) works for an outfit that sends wealthy clients back in time to hunt dinosaurs, the animals' slayings timed to occur just before they would have died anyway. This is done to prevent anything screwing with the time stream and affecting the future. Travis meets a lady scientist, Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), who claims she not only helped create the time machine and was shut out of enjoying its success, but that Ryer and his associates are endangering the world with their time jumps, on one of which something comes back from the past. This happens because boss Charles Hatton (Sir Ben Kingsley) wants to save money by turning off the energy-using screen that would prevent this. Because of this anomaly, the world is affected by time waves that create new "prehistoric" animals and even begin affecting the human race itself. Can Travis and Sonia manage to set things right in a world beset with dangerous monsters, hysterical humans, and weird sweeping changes to the landscape and everyone else at all the wrong moments ...? A Sound of Thunder has a great idea and is entertaining for the most part, and some scenes are rather well-done (a struggle with a hungry underwater creature, for instance) but there's just something off about the movie. By no means as bad as, say, a Syfy Channel Original, there's still something second-rate about the entire enterprise. Edward Burns, who often makes and stars in smaller personal films, seems uncomfortable in the role of action hero, although Kingsley is more on the mark as slimy Hatton [although you still have to wonder what he's doing in this movie]. McCormack and the other cast members are all professional and then some. The effects are uneven, although there are a host of good-looking futuristic baboon-dinosaurs, and most of the other monsters are at least well-designed. Ultimately the movie isn't terrible, just unconvincing. Hyams has directed better movies, such as Outland and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and Kingsley has appeared in worse movies, such as Thunderbirds.
Verdict: Interesting disappointment. **1/2.
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| Talia Shire, Richard Dysart and Robert Foxworth |
Dr. Robert Vern, who usually works in the ghettos of Washington D.C., accepts an assignment to do a survey for the Environmental Protection Agency in the timber lands of Maine, where a dispute is raging between the Original People [Indians] and factions in the lumber industry. Not only does Vern discover that the natives are being seriously affected by something in the area, with an alarming number of still-births and deformed babies, but he suspects a huge mutant creature has already resulted from toxicity caused by the sawmill on the river. To make matters worse, his wife Maggie (Talia Shire) hasn't yet told him of her pregnancy, but she's eaten the same fish the Indians have; it contains a poison that "jumps the placental barrier" and lodges in the fetus. Then that monster comes a'calling ... David Seltzer's paperback novelization of his own screenplay for Prophecy was released several months before the film came out, and it was such an excellent horror novel that monster movie fans awaited the movie with anticipation. The trouble is, there hasn't been a more disappointing monster since The Giant Claw. The FX people came up with a mere lumpy and unconvincing disfigured bear instead of the creature described in the book or depicted in the movie's poster, something that bore traces of every step of the evolutionary ladder. But despite this serious deficit, Prophecy is not a complete waste because the story pulls the viewer along, the acting is solid, and the movie has genuine suspense in good measure. Along with Foxworth [Falcon Crest] and Shire, Richard Dysart [The Thing] is notable as a lumber man and Armand Assante [Human Target] scores as a militant Native American known as John Hawks. In real life methyl mercury poisoning did have very adverse effects on Indians in Canada, though so far no monsters have been sighted. John Frankenheimer also directed Seconds and other first-rate movies. NOTE: You can read more about movies like this in Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies.
Verdict: Good in spite of itself. ***.
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| One Might Big Crab! Note two men at lower right. |
Pete Adams (Steve Hanks) is a teaching assistant and researcher working with Dr. McNeal (Barry Nelson), who hopes to increase the size of crabs as, presumably, a food source. Pete is attracted to a woman, Jan (Jo McDonnell), who is doing a story on McNeal's work, but, implausibly, is unaware that her father was driving the car in which his parents died years ago. Pete's surrogate parents are Moody (Robert Lansing) and Rosie (Nita Talbot), the former of whom owns the tavern where Rosie works as barmaid. Meanwhile, an accident at a nearby reactor unleashes radioactive waste into the water. The combination of growth hormones and radioactivity engenders bizarre behavior in ordinary crabs, as well as creates a crab of especially humongous stature. Island Claws combines a "nature turned nasty" plot about killer animals running amok with a giant monster on the loose. The scenes with the small crabs moving en masse toward potential victims are creepy, with the crustaceans being good little actors, but they never really seem to be "attacking." The big crab -- yes, there's only one [at least Attack of the Crab Monsters had two crabs] -- appears to be a full-size mechanical model that lacks great mobility but is efficient enough and is generally masked in darkness. A sub-plot involves a family of Haitians who sneak ashore and are at first blamed for some of the strange deaths in the area. There is some attempt at creating three-dimensional characters, and the acting is generally good. Bill Justis' eerie music is a plus. Island Claws holds the attention and isn't badly done, but ultimately there's not enough of the monster. Ricou Browning, who played the Gill Man in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and its sequels, was co-scripter along with Jack Cowden.
Verdict: Has its moments, but can't beat Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters. **1/2.