The A-Z of Marvel Monsters (2017)

I love Marvel's monster stories.  They are so fun and outlandish, and far closer to the Japanese movies than DC's monster stories.  They had names and personalities.  I know Marvel has had some of the stories packaged in TPBs, but I haven't been able to acquire them.  This book is 130 pages, 26 of which are dedicated to the various beasts, and then there are several stories about a few of the more notorious ones.  I would have gone with the monster SHAGG, but they didn't ask me.  The art for the ABC monsters is all new, and looks pretty good.  The introduction was written by Jolly Jack Kirby, from 1994.  How prescient of him!  It's a fun recollection of his time with Atlas/Marvel before superheroes.  It is only his monsters that are featured in this tome.

Sven- The Haunted Strangler (1958)

 

This movie was only 80 minutes long, but it sure seemed to drag on and on.  It was not my cuppa, for sure.    Karloff is investigating a 20 year old case about a killer.  This leads to him being possessed by the spirit of that killer.  This then leads to a rather predictable end after a long amount of time.  It includes more killings. The cast is good, but I don't know that I ever need to watch this movie again. 

Billy Ass and the Assboys (Official Video Copyright 2022 ) [Made by Danhausen]

     Yes, I know that I am posting another video, but damn this made me laugh far too much.  Praisehausen to Danhausen!  Music by Two Minutes to Late Night.  it's all very nice and very evil!

The Haunted Strangler Trailer- (1958)

  I don't think I have ever seen this movie before.  This sort of thing is not my favorite style of movie, but some of them are more enjoyable than I would think.

Eternals (2021) finally

 

this movie sure lived up to it's name.  There is a good movie in here, but taking out at least 40 minutes would help.  There was no conceivable reason for it to be 2 hours and 38 minutes.  And it's very confusing.  Where were the rest of the superheroes while the world was about to be destroyed?  And why didn't I suss out Sersi was dating Dane Whitman of all people?  I am more annoyed about that than I should be.  I was kind of surprised how many Eternals they "killed", but since they are all artificial life forms they can come back over and over and over... The cast was good, for the most part.  I did like the last minute voice over cameo, but what the heck does Blade have to do with the Black Night?

MOTW - Mummy Man

 

Zap!  Mummies can be revived with electricity as well as Tana Leaves.  This mummy is found deep in a remote cave, and was estimated to be around 7000 years old.  Naturally, it is taken to Science Patrol HQ, where they plan to do experiments on it and find out more about it.  This goes awry when Mummy Man is revived and goes on a spree of some kind.  It finally gets stopped, or killed, but that revives next week's monster.  

Marvel Studios’ Eternals | Final Trailer

                        I hope I will be finishing this movie tonight.  That is my plan, but I bet it last longer than I do.

The Eternals (2021)

Started watching this last night.  I am almost sure the title refers to the 2 hour and 28 minute run time, rather that the titular characters themselves.  Damn this movie is far longer than it needs to be now.  I thought this was an odd choice for a movie, since the Eternals were a new addition to the Marvel Universe.  Especially since they were actually not even set in the MU comic book universe to begin with.  They don't really make sense to exist there anyway, since Marvel had long established the real Olympian Gods have existed there.  Roy Thomas finally brought them together in a great long story line, leading up to Thor #300.  That was my main introduction to the characters.  The two pantheons had a brawl with their counterparts having some choice words for each other.

Sven- Earth vs the Flying Saucers

 

This is a fun movie, even if it is on the lower end of my favorite Harryhausen movies.  Sven aired it last night, and it had all his general fun shenanigans.  The movie is just kind of... there.  It's the saucers, they just aren't that much fun as Ray's regular menagerie of monsters and creatures.  Ray's effects are excellent and the movie is compact, everything is properly spaced out.  For the life me though, I don't know why these aliens are attacking the Earth though.  It has to be in there, right?

Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers trailer

               Sven is showing this tonight.  Normally I don't do three video posts in a row, but yesterday was an exception.  I am looking forward to this since I needed to see if for a future issue of the zine!

Louie Anderson RIP

                     Louie Anderson passed on today at the age of 68.  This was my introduction to his humor, and I still say "the cranberries!" a lot, but not many people actually understand that.  He was pretty gentle with his humor, though one can see he might have had a few family issues.  He was great and will be missed.

Rocky Horror Picture Show-Hot Patootie-Bless my soul

Singer and Rocky Horror Picture Show star Meat Loaf passed on today.  He was 75.  I not a huge fan of his standard music, but I do love his performance here.  RIP.

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

 

I never read much of this comic book- martial arts doesn't always translate well to a static image.  This could be because many artists didn't actually study, and of course, there wasn't much readily available information about any styles (or even Asian culture) during the 70s.  There were tons of movies, but those were not documentaries.  I enjoyed the stories I did read, Iron Fist, Sons of the Tiger, The White Tiger, and this one, but none of them were on my must read list.  To make a long story slightly shorter, I have no real attachment to the Son of Fu Manchu Xu Wenwu.  I really enjoyed this movie, though.  The fights were good, the acting was there and the omnipresent CGI didn't overshadow said fights.

ridiculous Monster of the Week- Gango

 

After battling several really cool looking monsters in a row, Ultraman goes up against this thing.  The next several are kind of weird, if I am going to be generous.  Gango is created by a thief who stole the meteorite that created it.  When the dink gets knocked unconscious Gango wanders around causing damage, but isn't really malicious.  Ultraman can't destroy the monster, but fortunately, the pillock wakes up and Gango disappears.  Ultraman takes the stone back to space.

Rogers Musical (Full Version)

I can't be the only one who wants to see the full musical (as long as it's about 30 minutes or so), can I?  This is pretty great, and really well done.  Those singer/dancer/actors have to be in great shape for all that action.

Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 CE

 

I never got to read much of the Gold Key/Dell comic book output growing up.  I liked some of them, but they were not the draw the Marvel books were.  Magnus and Doc Solar were also about done being published by the time my comic book reading career started, so I had to rely on older readers collections to see any books about them.  So it was very rare I got to enjoy these books.  It's a great concept, a lone man stopping rogue robots (and some other various types of malefactors) is inspired, and Russ Manning's artwork is wonderful.  It's too bad that there wasn't just a little more continuity in the stories.  Only Marvel was doing that in the 60s, and it has since gotten out of control, so perhaps it's just as well the stories were what they were.

Sven- Tarantula (1955)

 

"A tarantula!"  Sven used the clip from Disorder in the Court where Larry fights a toupee, and wins!  This movie was one I saw several times growing up, so I am quite familiar with it.  It's interesting that Sven showed Earth vs the Spider two weeks ago.  This is the better movie, but the awesome arachnid here does not get to a town at all.  It just eats a lot of cattle and some people.  At least in the former movie the spectacular spider goes through a town for a bit of a rampage.  Like I said, this is the better film, overall- the acting, directing and effects are all good, and the makeup for the acromegaly are pretty scary.  It helps that it is not true acromegaly, since it is chemically induced.

thoughts on Superboy Season 2

 

Season two has brought some changes to the show- mainly replacing the first Clark/Superboy with the new Gerard Christopher, who is doing his best to channel Christoper Reeve as Clark, at least.  That is a little too much, especially now.  I liked John Newton's more confident Clark, but I see why they chose this direction.  Much worse is the loss of TJ White, as he left college to be a photographer for his father's paper, the Daily Bugle.  He is replaced by the really annoying and rather creepy Andy McCallister.  Bleah.  The new Lex Luthor seems to be a Joker clone now, since he acts a bit crazy.  That's not much fun, either.

Tarantula Official Trailer #1 - Nestor Paiva Horror Movie (1955) HD

Tomorrow on Sven we get this classic movie.  I saw this a few times growing up, so it's a favorite.  It was always fun to see CLint Eastwood save the day, so to speak, even if we didn't know it was him at the time.  I'm looking forward to this one!

The "Legend" of the Lone Ranger (1981)

How does Hollywood screw this up?  It's a great concept and they still turned it into a stinker.  It could have been great.  I have been a fan of the Ranger since as long as I can remember- possibly the third hero I ever discovered, after Batman and Spider-man.  I had watched a lot of the original series, though early on I did not know of his origin or the two serials.  I loved Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels.  So when this movie was released I wanted to see it. 

MOTW- Jirass/Kira

 

This is one of the most iconic Ultra Monsters from the first Ultraman series.  The reason is pretty obvious, since it is a modified Godzilla suit.  Some fans take it to be a de facto Ultraman vs Godzilla fight, but that just isn't so.  Some Godzilla fans get upset that Ultraman won the battle, thereby besting their hero.  It seems like this sort of jibber jabber has died down in recent years, or I have just quit paying attention.  Either thing is good.  Jirass was created by a crazy scientist, and does have an electric ray blast.  Ultraman is forced to kill the rampaging beast before it can really run amok at Kitayama Lake.

Super Spider-man!

 

These first Spidey stories are super.  Between Stan and Steve they got everything right.  Stan and his soapy style stories combined with the amazingly unique Ditko artwork were perfect for the book.  Add to that they had no history to adapt or retcon, which makes for really good, if somewhat simple, plots.  Of course, none of this is new, and this period of Spider-man has been written about extensively.  I still think it's quite funny that Stan applied the soap opera formula to his heroes- add some pathos and perhaps bathos and voila, a new genre of heroes is formed.

The Female Stooge

 

That is Christine McIntyre, who starred in over 20 shorts with the boys, mostly with the Shemp and Joe Besser iterations of the team.  She had charm and charisma, and could hold her own with all the Stooges.  She also had an amazing voice which she showed off first in Micro-Phonies (1945), towards the end of Curly's run.  She was such a great performer she has been the unofficial female stooge for some time.

Frogs (1972) - Official Trailer (HD)

Sven is showing this- I wish I liked it more, but it's... I dunno.  Even as a kid I didn't care much for it, or find it remotely scary.  The trailer is pretty good, though.  Cast is top notch as well, mostly.  It won't bother me if I don't see all of this one.

Big Buy and Rusty, the Boy Robot

 

I watched some of this show when it aired in 1999, though Fox Kids only broadcast the first six episodes.  I was rather surprised to find out later that there were 20 more I had never seen.  That was a pleasant surprise, since it was a good show.  Later, thanks to a certain Buccaneer Body Of Water (which is now gone) I found all the episodes, but never got around to watching them.  A few were also slightly corrupted, so I deleted them.  I was glad to find this show on legit DVD.  It's really quite good, and while geared toward kids, it has several continuing story lines and does not talk down to the intended audience.  There is plenty of action and monsters and robots to keep the kids entertained, but the interplay between the characters to keep older minds working.  There are plenty of callbacks to other robot shows her as well.  It's almost a team up of Astro Boy and Mazinga Z.

finicky cat Morris

I got this book when it came out, and haven't actually read it since then.  Morris had his 15 minutes of fame after starring in 58 9 Lives cat food commercials in the 70s.   As a kid, we loved those, even when we didn't have a cat.  Much of his appeal came from the delivery of  John Erwin, who was later on the voice of He-man in his original series of toy commercials.    I mean, the He-man series.  Anyway, Morris has been played now by several cats, as the original crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 1978.  Morris also co-starred, or rather, let some humans show up, in a few movies back then as well.  I tried watching one, Shamus with Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon in 1973, and there was not nearly enough cat in it.

MOTW- Gabora

One of the few ultra monsters that got named in the US dub, Gabora menaced a bunch of Boy Scouts.  It had been awakened by a hurricane.  The beast needed uranium for food, which made it dangerous to everyone. It was a pretty tough creature, and Ultraman needed the Science Patrol's help to finish it all.  I do have to wonder why Japan had uranium mines, since the country tended to eschew nuclear power, but perhaps that had changed by 1993.  This world of ours may never know, which is quite alright.

Three Fantastic Journeys of Karel Zeman

Just got this Criterion set. Mostly for Journey to the Beginning of Time, but I'll watch the others as well. I'm even going to start with the original version of the movie, rather than the dubbed one.  The picture quality is a great so far, and the subtitles are very clear.  I haven't watched the US dub for some time, but that is up next.  I have a DVDr transfer from the GoodTimes VHS tape, so I am looking forward to the better version overall.  The packaging is pretty great as well.  Each movie has a separate disc and a unique holder that is a pop up when it opens.  Criterion does a great job, I must say.  This is just the second Criterion set I have ever owned, though I have seen several other DVDs of theirs.

Spectreman, revisited

 

I have talked about this show on occasion, but not often.  I never saw the show growing up, and the copies I saw later were grainy and had been dubbed by at least a generation of two.  Add to that, only 24 episodes had been released on VHS, so seeing the complete series, even in the 90s, was a pipe dream.  I knew of one fan who had the entire run on tape, but he wouldn't trade them since it would spread through the Japanese fan community like wildfire.    Fortunately the entire series is on YouTube, to varying quality, but it is there, and we can Spectreman battle Dr. Gori and Karas for 63 episodes.  This makes the show more fun to watch.  I have experienced that with The Space Giants as well.

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

 

I think only Jimmy Wang Yu could have made a movie like this in the 70s.  The Shaws made the first Flying Guillotine movie the previous year, with the always great Chen Kwan Tai as the lead.  This first one was heavy on plot and light on martial arts action, but it is quite good.  Somehow Wang Yu did not get sued for using the exact same looking weapon in this sequel to The One Armed Boxer and he produced a classic movie as well.  He did get some help from the Lau brothers with fight choreography, and it helps make the martial arts look more authentic.