12 Days Of Dino Dicember #4: Attack Of The Super Monsters (1982)

It really IS Christmas time, because today we’re doing a movie that’s both dinosaurs and vintage tokusatsu cheesiness from the 80s. How can you go wrong? You simply can’t.

Add drill spaceship to the mix and you really can’t go wrong.

Though it’s worth pointing out this is actually an edited down TV series (i suppose it’s just the first 4 episodes of the series mashed together, as it was a common practice at the time), Dinosaur War Aizenborg, itself quite the interesting piece of media, as it’s an hybrid anime and live action show, with sentai style rubber suit and stop motion puppets action for the dinosaurs and giant monsters, but animation for the humans and most regular animals, played over live-action miniature sets.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #3: Jurassic Expedition (2018)

I don’t know what it was with late 2010s and the small resurgence of “dinosaurs in space” movies, but yes, that off handed comment i made when reviewing Jurassic Galaxy wasn’t for naught, that movie had a “buddy” of sorts, released a year later as… Alien Expedition?

It’s amazing how that was actually the original title, which was quickly changed in most releases because dinosaurs bring all the boys to the yard, after all. “Jurassic” is a palatable adjective, it is.

Seriously, how the hell do you make a low budget sci-fi movie about dinosaur planets and NOT put a dinosaur relevant word in the title? You want people to eventually watch your movie, right?

Even more amazing is that the two movies also share the “dual brothers directors”… just pulling your leg, it’s a guy that just happens to be named Wallace Brothers, and only having made a single film before this one, David And Goliath from 2016, never heard of it before myself.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #2: King Dinosaur (1955)

Ah yes, time to slip back into the comfy territory of “featured on MST3K” old 50 movies about dinosaurs, and of course when talking about MST3K featured flicks, Bert I. Gordon (or Mister BIG, as he was nicknamed by good ol’ Forrest J. Ackerman) is bound to be involved somewhat.

This is actually his first directed movie, followed 2 years later by Beginning Of The End, aka the one about giant locusts and “mantises in pantises”.

Sorry, getting back on track. Yeah, King Dinosaur marks Mister BIG’ first feature length work, after some television commercials, and let’s just say that its first step it’s already a good indication of him being incredibly cheap and fast in making a movie. And i mean both, as the movie was shot in a week, and was indeed cheap, since it has only 4 actors and it uses stock footage, not only for the scene of the mammoth’s attack it’s lifted from 1940’s One Million BC, but the army and the atom bomb explosions are just military stock footage, and there’s no cheaper than free.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #1: Triassic Hunt (2021)

This one it’s a bit odd, as you would guess it being a mockbuster of Jurassic World 3 Dominion… or at least it was probably gonna be that, but that movie – along many others – was postponed time and time again due to complications caused by the pandemic, so The Asylum for once had the mockbuster ready to leech off a movie that wasn’t out yet, and released it anyway this last January.

I mean, nothing stops them from making dinosaur movies that are not mockbusters, but in the end it’s mostly a matter of labels, since this one as well isn’t exactly copying directly a more popular movie, just ripping off Carnosaur even more than Corman and Buechler did, to continue the circle of trash cannibalizing older trash.

Long live the new trash, etc etc.

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Let the 12 Days Of Dino Dicember commence

Happy holidays, merry christmas, it don’t matter since we’re celebrating the 12 Days Of Dino Dicember from today till the Epiphany, so let us begin soon with it!

Monster On The Campus (1958) [REVIEW] | Coelacanth Jekyll & Hyde

Since today it’s Coelacanth Day, it’s the only time of the year when it’s “proper” to review the only b-movie about the coelacanth, you know, that primitive/living fossile fish that was thought to be extinct for decades, most likely you know it because it’s also the basis for the pokemon Relicanth.

And even that it’s quite tenous, because this isn’t the late 50s version of Bloody Waters of Doctor Z you might expect, even though we’re still going into psychotronic territory and a coelacanth fish it’s involved, with a college professor that acquires a newly discovered specimen of said fish, and an accidental exposition to its blood, which of course it’s radioactive due to gamma rays and the 50s.

Though this is really a triviality, given that this detail comes very late in the movie, i guess it had to be made a radioactive thing by the studio for marketing reasons, maybe not, but it’s indeed very 50s.

This somehow results in the college professor mutating back into a monstruous hominid-troglodyte that wreaks havoc on the campus, like a inner city Eegah minus the Arch Hall Jr.

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20 hours into Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl

An EXPRESSO review would be pointless, arguably even a regular full lenght review would be not that useful, because people have been pleading for a remake of the 4th gen Pokemon titles for years, and given this remake has already sold like 6 millions units, i’d say there was not much convincing to be done about it anyway, it’s frigging Pokemon after all.

So let’s just talk about it after 20 hours spent into my Shining Pearl copy.

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Presenting 12 Days Of Dino December

**Of course i had to go with this oldie, how couldn’t i?**

Maybe you were looking forward to another month full of dinosaur themed movies reviews, maybe you were dreading the ideas, so laboring under both hypotheses i’d figure to make a compromise (as it’s the essence of diplomacy and the cornerstone of love), so this year we’re not having Dino Dicember Part Deux, but we’ll go the more canonical route, and have 12 reviews for each of the “12 Days Of Christmas”, starting on December 25th up to January 6 (included).

Submitted for your approval, the coming “12 Days Of Dino Dicember”.

[EXPRESSO] Cruis’n Blast NSWITCH | LETS GO CRUISINNNN

I knew the Cruis’n series was a fan favourite since the N64 days, but i never played one until the recent Cruis’n Blast, developed by Raw Thrills… and boy i played the shit of the arcade cabinet in these years. One of my favourite arcade racer ever, and i don’t even particularly care about racers.

Guess i wasn’t alone since an updated expanded version arrived on Switch (boxed to boot) for Halloween 2021, costing 40 bucks as MSRP.

In terms of content, it has the 5 tracks found in the arcade version, plus 24 brand new ones, now all laden with extra collectables necessary to buy and unlock new cars, also coming in more variety, regarding both regular vehicles and the triceratops n stuff.

Obviously stuff like the helicopter isn’t given away immediatly but will require getting gold trophies, collecting a lot of keys and money, levelling up cars and stuff, but there a good amount of content for the single player experience and gameplay it’s still such pure mindless arcade racer fun.

The controls and mechanics have been slightly altered and improved from the arcade version, but it won’t take much to discover how to “wheelie” over other cars, spin in the air and drift to collect a boost (Mario Kart style). Just remember that the original cabinet didn’t have a brake pedal, it’s that kind of uber arcade experience, with lots of spectacle and shit happening on the tracks, like the London Eye breaking loose, Yetis, etc.

More importantly, it’s indeed the absolute “Blast” the subtitle claims it to be, the IA isn’t bad even at Normal difficulty, and obviously it’s even better with 4 players.

I can’t recommend it at full price to due some performances hiccups and no online multiplayer, but i do recommend it, absolutely.

Kirby Star Allies NSWITCH [REVIEW] | Brainwashing Stars

While we wait for the first 3D Kirby game (affectionately dubbed “The Last Of Kirby” by me of now) to launch next year, let’s talk about the last main installment in the series, 2018’s Kirby Star Allies.

The Kirby series is arguably the most traditional of Nintendo’s portfolio.

Kirby is Kirby, and the developer, Hal Laboratory, believe that Kirby is Kirby because it’s simple, it’s traditional, and it’s accessible, especially regarding the main series and it’s main genre, platformer. We have seen interesting spin on the formula with Kirby Mass Attack, Canvas Curse and it’s Wii U sequel, Kirby even had small rhythm spin-off, an entire spin-off dedicated to fighting, a pinball spin-off, and even a racing game. Each, even a “battle royale”. Kinda.

But Kirby is mostly a series of platforming that are charming as they are incredibly traditional and fairly easy for experienced players, but fun, wholesome and entertaining regardless, in fairly typical Nintendo fashion, so the formula is the same each main installment, but there are new systems layered on top of the basics.

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