You can hardly go more Z-grade cinema than with Zarkorr! The Invader from Full Moon Entertaiment, at least regarding movies that do have production values and some backing behind them. Of course, you can go even worse, as the company itself demonstrated last year by making a zombie movie about the Coronavirus… and by that i mean putting a shitty comical dub track over Bruno Mattei’s Hell Of The Living Dead, with a tiny bit of new footage to act as a “framing device” of someone watching Hell Of The Living Dead while quarantined at home. Good lord.
But thankfully this is just Full Moon Entertaiment doing a direct-to-video kaiju movie, about aliens that have been observing Earth for centhuries, and one day decide to challenge mankind by sending in a huge monster called Zarkorr to wreak havoc with its size and lazer eyes. As the human champion, they choose an incredibly average postal worker, Tommy Ward, as the only one who can defeat Zarkorr and save the planet.
But they clearly don’t quite believe in him, as they also send a pixie to explain the situation to him and acts a guide, as she tells how Zarkorr is specifically programmed to kill him, but also that there might be a way to kill the monster with its own powers, as he’s invulnerable to weapons.
It sound weird but not that weird, as far as giant monster movie go, problem is that the confrontation with Zarkorr is frankly a bit pathetic in both concept and execution, as he conventienly finds a capsule near the place where Zarkorr landed, and it opens for Tommy, becoming a shield that reflects the lazers back at the monster, and in a matter of 1 minute, puff, it’s done, Zarkorr is defeated, just like that.
Can’t even bother to have Tommy grown giant as well and have an Ultraman style fight.
I mean, you went with the rubber suit for Zarkorr, you even had the pixie style character like the Mothra Twins, or at least something else that isn’t so frigging convenient and anticlimactic. But maybe i’m expecting too much, i mean, these are the same ones responsible for Dollman, Evil Bong, Creepozoids and plenty of crap like these, so i would suggest not setting big expectations.
I will say that the monster itself it’s kinda cool, there’s something charming about it, and yes, indeed the best parts are the scenes where Zarkorr rampages and destroys things (with a roar borrowed from the T-Rex from Jurassic Park), thanks to the surprisingly decent rubber suit costume and the miniatures. Nothing incredible for the late 90’s, obviously, but considering the circumenstances, the effects are enjoyable and fits with the 50’s style plot, down to having a police officer join the ragtag group of heroes.
Zarkorr is indeed the best part of the movie, as the plot it kinda crap, especially due to the script dumping all its exposition and rules for the monsters at the beginning in a fashion that it’s generous to call “inelegant”, in an attempt to make the motivations clear right off the bat… which kills pretty much any potential surprise or tidbit to learn about the creature. It also means most of the movie is the poor postal worker trying desperately to have people believe him… and them honestly reacting exactly like anyone would when an agitated postal worker blabbering of aliens and him being the chosen inadvertedly kidnaps a scientist in a tv studio and confronts the police with a hostage.
It’s a very dumb movie, but not THAT funny because of it, even if does have some genuinely funny lines and the overall silly tone helps in making it kinda watchable, even with the mediocre acting and the stock characters. Though, i do honestly love how stupid and over the top the “hacker” character is, an incredible monstrum of nerdy clichès that i can’t help but find kinda charming in how annoying he is, thanks to incredibly hammy performance. XD
It’s a middling Z-movie, you can do worse, you can do a LOT better, but at least it’s a short sit, at 80 minutes tops. Meh.
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