Super Scary October!

In years past I used to post a trailer to a monster movie a day during the Hallowe'en month of October.  The last couple years I've gotten out of the habit of doing that fun tradition, so now it's time for it to have a comeback.  My plan is to do one a day this month, and that may mean some that have been posted here years ago, but a lot of those have been taken down for a wide variety of reasons so we'll just pretend these are all new and all different this time!  Hopefully, some of those trailers will be.  I'll try to check for them to make sure, but mostly I'll be posting my favorite genre movies.

Hercules vs a sea... monster?

There is supposed to be a sea monster in the fun peplum Hercules, Samson and Ulysses.  Since most of us fans only ever saw it in a pan and scan form (wow, I do not miss those days at all) it was awfully hard to tell just what the heck Herc was battling back then.  It's the main reason our heroes all get together, but it was quite a mystery for a long time.

Europa & The Pirate Twins (1981)

I remember seeing this for the first time on Channel 12's FM-TV, before it became "Teletunes" due to some copyright and/or trademark issues. FM-TV was so low budget back then, many times the tapes would jam while playing and the picture would freeze. It was amazing to see these "new wave" videos and they played such a wide variety of music back.

Pet sidekicks to superheroes

One of the fun things about comics from the 50s and 60s is that our heroes had pets that occasionally helped them out of various jams whilst fighting crime and villains.  I read more Krypto stories back then, so he's high on my list of favorites.  I saw a few stories about the Legion of Super Pets and I did know who Proty was, but I never read origin stories of Comet, Beppo or Streaky back in the day.  I do think my cat Thuvia is a relative of Streaky, though.

Kung Fu: The Punch of Death (1972)

Here's an "origin" story of Fan Sai-yuk, Fang Shih Yu or as the dub pronounces it in this movie, Fang Su-yi, which is just weird to hear.  Anyway, it stars Fei Meng as the hotheaded youth who causes a dispute between clans and ends up getting his father killed.  His mother then makes him train and take special herb baths so he is invulnerable to weapons.  After he nearly gets beaten to death by the two evil brothers he then gets his revenge during a tournament (a common plot for Fong movies).

Get the Led Out concert review

I'm happy to say Red Rocks as a concert venue is still great, and it's still not sparkly clean like some places I've been.  Rock and roll should always have a little grime to it, give it some kind of edge, rather than be so sanitized and safe that kids of all ages are  present.  Not that they can't enjoy the music, but really "rock and roll has teeth.  It can scratch your face off." as said by the late, great Wendy O. Williams of Plasmatics fame (that quote really scared my parents at the time when she said it in '82).

Get the Led Out - Stairway to Heaven

I used to go to Red Rocks at least once or twice every summer in the 80s. It's a great venue and my first experience there was when U2 recorded the live performance for MTV back in '83. However, it's probably been 35 years since I've been there, due to a wide variety of circumstances. Tonight I'll return to see this Led Zeppelin tribute band, which should be a lot of fun.

Kung Fu on Sale (1979)

This is a frustrating movie.  It's not bad, but it's not good.  It's mostly hampered by the insane way the editor speeds up the action scenes by taking frames out of them.  It's very jarring. The performers are all talented enough to get by with these fights making this decision even stranger.  There's a great fight scene in the rain with our hero fending off four attackers and none of this frame cutting nonsense is used, making it look that much better.  I will never understand why filmmakers think such things are a good idea.

War of the Gargantuas international trailer

Since I missed the double feature Saturday I've decided I wanted to watch the movie again. Question is, do I watch the US dub or my hybrid version that my pal Ted made with the dub from the "international" version. That came from a Greek tape of the movie called Katango's War and it calls the monsters Frankensteins as well as Sanda and Gaira.

Fire Monsters vs the Son Of Hercules (1962)

Maciste is a pretty great character to have around.  He's not bound by the constraints of time and place, that's for sure, since he appears all over the earth at in various eras, from the time of Hercules to 17th century Scotland to prehistoric times, such as in this fun peplum.  He sounds a bit like a muscle bound Time Lord, doesn't he?  It wouldn't surprise me one bit at all, given his intelligence and know how of interesting things (like how to make fire and also get rid of witch's curses and other interesting things like that, don'tcha know).

Laser Mission (1989)

This movie is apparently in the public domain, since there's about 6 million versions available on 12 million cheap DVD sets. It was Brandon Lee's third movie and one I've never seen before. It doesn't have a good reputation and having watched about 30 minutes of it I can say it's not a good movie. It's a very silly movie with a truly silly premise.

Zero Monsters and Gargantuas

This awesome double feature is happening today, about an hour south of where I live.  It's two great movies, neither of which I have seen on the big screen before.  I'm assuming it will be the dubbed version, causing some consternation to the "sub-elitist" crowd, but then, two of the actors didn't speak Japanese, so I guess it's OK for them to be dubbed, right?  I'll give that a moment to sink in, just cause I'm feeling like a jerk at the moment.

THE TATTOO CONNECTION (1978) trailer

As a general rule I don't much care for "modern day" martial arts movies. They usually have to find some contrived way of not using guns, instead of not even bothering to explain it. Enter the Dragon probably did it best, with Han banning them from his island fortress. So I have not watched many of these types of movies.

Dragon Lee vs. Five Brothers (1978)

Picked up a 19 pack of apparently PD kung fu movies the other day and this is the first one I watched.  My love of Shaw Brothers movies generally has spoiled me to watching the cheaper looking movies from other studios, but there are some real gems out there that didn't come from the Shaws, i.e. Ninja in the Dragon's Den being a prime example.  So while I have seen some of these before here and there, I'll be reviewing them as I watch them.  The DVD set features Bruce Lee's picture on it and there's not a one of his movies in it.  Just as well, though there's a ton of the lookalikes and even one of Brandon's movies.  I'm hoping to enjoy all of them to some extant, but after watching this one I'm inclined to believe more of them may be a chore to get through.

Batman vs Dinosaurs

Since there is a large dinosaur in the Bat-cave (robotic, I think, and come to think of it, just how the heck did they get a robot Tyrannosaurus Rex in there to begin with) this drawing could be based on that story.  Oddly enough, I don't know that I've ever read that particular episode in the annals of bat-history.  Go figure.  That robot has just always been something that's been present in the lair of the Bat since I've been reading comic books.  I'm also sure that Batman and Robin have faced real dinosaurs at some point in their long and storied careers.  Not currently, that wouldn't be realistic at all though, would it?

Watari Ninja Boy - Trailer

This is one fun movie, and just like the trailer it's full of ninja, fights and explosions, not to mention a fair amount of magic and blood. Sometimes these all occur at once! The movie is a bit episodic, since it's based on a comic book and assumes some familiarity with the characters.

The Flesh Eaters (1964)

I'd never seen or heard of this film growing up.  My pal Jim had mentioned it when we started trading VHS tapes back in the late 80s.  As a side not, I'm really quite glad that those days are gone (not meeting good friends to trade with, but hauling about heavy tapes in boxes and the cost of shipping them all over the country).  He'd mentioned it had a monster in it, but back then, you couldn't just look up movies easily.  A lot of information in books was wrong about many points if they were even mentioned at all.  Hard to trust them back then- for instance, the flying monster Gyaos was called a flying fox, and Varan was described as a flying squirrel.

Ultra Monsters, again

This time I've got various captures from a few different shows, including the second Ultra Galaxy series - that's Antlar vs Gomora right there, a matchup we all have wanted to see for a long time.  I'm glad it happened, but too bad it wasn't in a city where they could rampage around and destroy lots of buildings.  It's been a while since I've watched any of the Ultra Galaxy series, I'd like to see it again.  I know it was fansubbed at some point, but maybe Crunchyroll will license it for viewing in the future at some point.

Giant Octopus vs the Golden Gate Bridge

Here's a fun clip from It Came from Beneath the Sea, in glorious black and white. I never realized there was a Captain Stacey in this movie. He must have had enough of this and went back to NYC, where interestingly enough, he was killed by Dr. Octopus. I'm sure Stan must have seen this movie back when it came out.

Shagg into Mystery!

I first saw this comic book cover back in the late '90s, when Comic Con was still lots of fun, though it was trending toward obnoxious media-con-ism by then big time.  Had to have been after the Austin Powers movie came out, which was '97.  I remembered it because at the time I thought it was hilarious, due to the word "shag" having been introduced to a mass US audience then.  I wondered why Marvel never reproduced the story at the time, though I think it's probably not very expensive to find a readable copy of it.

The Ultraman ウルトラマン

Here's something that looks way more fun than any cartoon I've seen recently. I sure do miss 2-D cartoons these days. I know they are still being made, but it seems like all features are now CG. I'd like to see standard animation back on the big screen again. It would look really fresh now.

Ultraman trivia questions

These are the questions I asked at Comic Con this year for the Trivia Contest.  Astoundinly, especially to the Japanese creators, every question was answered correctly (except for the last one, but that was kind of my ringer).  It was a lot of fun to be part of!

My World...

I saw this recently and thought it was really cool looking.  It also reads really well, though I'm not sure if it is supposed to be scary, since it sounds like a lot of fun to me.  Sure, I can say that over the gulf of 65 million years, since I'll never actually get to find out how terrifying it actually would be.  I'm kind of OK with that as well, since it would be ever so disappointing to find out the therapods had feathers and walked around just like chickens.

Argoman The Fantastic Superman Trailer

I have a copy of this movie but it's nowhere near as nice looking as this trailer print is! I'd heard several years ago that there was a company that was going to put out a nice DVD of this movie, but I never did find out if they actually did it. I'd like to find it if they did, as it's a fun movie.

Tin Tin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece (1961)

Here's a charming movie based on the long running comic "Tin Tin" which I'll admit I've never read.  I also didn't see the more recent adaption of the character either, mostly due to my complete infamiliarity of the character.  I'm about a third of the way through this movie, which is in French but subbed in English.  I wonder why it never got a release over here, since it seems a fine adventure movie for kids.   I mean, if Pippi Longstocking can get several movies released over here, why not Tin Tin?