Galgameth (1996) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

We already discussed the best known film from legendary South Korean director Shin Sang-ok (whom sadly passed away in 2004), and i feel one really deserves the epiteth of legend given the history behind the 1985 Bulgasari/Pulgasari, especially as it feels like a last middle finger to the then current North Korean dictator, as him and his wife (kidnapped to make movies for Kim Jong-il, again, not joking, at all) managed to escape while at a Vienna’s film festival.

We went through the whole ordeal for that movie’s review, so i’m not gonna repeat myself too much on this regard, but i do think we’re long overdue for a movie about the whole ordeal, since it’s a perfect case where reality is crazier than fiction.

After his escape in Vienna the director and his wife became US citizens for a while, and during the 90s he made some movies under the pseudonym Simon Sheen, including some “3 Ninjas” sequels, and today’s feature, the ever-so-obscure Galgameth, also known/released as The Legend Of Galgameth or The Adventures Of Galgameth, of course it has alternative titles.

And Galgameth is of interest for us because director Sean McNamara basically recycled the script from Shin Sang-ok’s Pulgasari/Bulgasari remake (the original 1962 Pulgasari is sadly a lost film) but made it into a sword and sorcery film for children. As you do.

Continua a leggere

Giant Monster March Lives Again

It’s March, so you know what that means, some select picks from the monster movie genre, as we try to not do the obvious ones but search deeper within the evergrowing sands of time, pulling out some familiar names as well as some of the more obscure entries, without completely forgoing more recent releases.

It’s not gonna be the more extensive year of the rubric, but i think the picks for this year’s Monster March are some of the better ones so far.

We’ll be starting on the 6th with some vintage rear projected cheese, after some EXPRESSO reviews of some recent releases i couldn’t get to before, see ya!

10 Hours-ish Into One Piece Odyssey

While i’m overburdened to even conceive putting out a full review for the game (since i’m still early into it, as the title may suggests, since it’s a JRPG we’re talking about) before Spring hits, i do wanna talk about it since i have been looking forward to it since the announcement, and i pre-ordered the collector’s edition with the figure and season pass and shit.

I mean, i have been expecting a proper One Piece RPG to wash the horrid taste Romance Dawn on the PSP/3DS left in me mouth for years, and i’m not feeling like digging out emulated and/or translated roms of those very old and very “Japan-only” One Piece RPGS on the Wonderswan and Game Boy. I do have some of those imported, but whatever, i do want to play something modern once in a while, you know?

Btw, these first impressions are based on the PS4 version running on a PS4 Pro (and there’s also a demo version available), so you know.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #24: The Last Dinosaur (1977)

What, no japanese rubber monstersaurus this time? Of course no, you silly billys.

I left this one for last, because it’s not just a japanese giant monster movie.

It’s a Japanese AND American coproduction, and it’s actually just one of the many movies to come out of the Rankin Bass and Tsuburaya Productions collaboration, including The Ivory Ape and The Bermuda Depths, just to cite the adventure/monster movie stuff or adiacent ones.

But this time you might already had an inkling of familiarity with the giant t-rex body suit shown in the poster, especially if you were already familiar with another piece of Tsuburaya Productions’ prolific output, as boy it does look like the evil t-rex mastermind from Attack Of The Super Monsters, and hence from the anime-live action series Dinosaur War Izenborg.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #23: Land Of The Lost (2009)

FIY, i didn’t know this movie’s history beforehand, i figured we could use a mainstream released feature with actors people might have actually have seen before, you know, in theathers and all, it wasn’t an obscure product from a country that no longer exists and it was “2YK survivor”.

So i just slotted into the list, only to later find out i basically enlisted “comedy Hitler” for this Dino Dicember, as this thing was widely hated back in 2009, with the deadly combo of being both a box office bomb and receiving overwhelming amounts of negative reviews from the press.

And also won 7 Razzies, which – as said before – i don’t really acknowledge, but by all accounts it had everything going against it, as it was regarded as an awful, awful sketch comedy, and made people extra salty because it was technically one of those “parody movie adaptations/remakes” of an older, beloved TV series, in this case Sid and Marty Krofft’s Land Of The Lost from 1974.

Which i never saw since i’m technically a Millennial and whatnot.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #22: Tyranno’s Claw (1994)

Time for something very obscure and very fun, with some history behind it, too, because when i think old monster movies from Korea, my mind goes immediatly to good old Pulgasari/Bulgasari.

And guess what, i’m gonna give myself a pat on the back, and you might too, since in 1994 the director of D-War: Dragon Wars and Yonggary (the 1999 movie, itself a remake of 1967’s Yongary, Monster From The Deep), Shim Hyung-rae, caught wind of the international dinosaur-mania, so he concocted one of the most peculiar and strange kaiju films ever committed to celluloid, Tyranno’s Claw, far from the obvious Jurassic Park mockbuster the year of release might suggest.

Even though there IS a “goat scene” …. this is something else indeed.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #21: Hatched (2021)

Clearing up some of the last year’s releases with Hatched, a 2021 dinosaur film about a woman and her family moving to her reclusive brother’s farmhouse to check on him, only to find out he moonlighted as Dr. Alan Grant, resulting in many living dinosaurs that trap the family inside the house.

Yes, the dinosaurs are coming from inside the house, hur hur.

I’ve heard this one described as “Michael Myers but if dinosaur”, for some reasons that don’t really make much sense when you think about it for more than 3 seconds, but i would say we’re more in Carnosaur or Raptor Ranch territory, because we’re yet again talking about someone doing clonosauruses around chicken coops and shit.

At least we’re not in space?

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #20: When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (1970)

The third (and penultimate) entry in Hammer’s “Cave Girl” series (One Million Years BC, Prehistoric Women, and lastly Creatures The World Forgot), when Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (or The World, in its UK release) is also one of Hammer’s prehistoric cavemen and dinosaur films to be confusingly retitled as “When Dinosaurs Chased Their Own Tails” for its italian release, which also altered the opening voice over narration to make some random ass sexist and classist remarks about dumb bimbos and how unlikely “lazy student protesters“ were in the stone age and so on.

It would be utterly random if i was not well acquainted with the comtempt and disrespect italian producers at the time had for most “foreign but not american” films (or for example the shameful adaptation/mangling they did of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, especially the movies), and combined with the fact we usually made cavemen movies as comedies. Sex comedies, too.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 19: Jurassic Thunder (2019)

Oh, boy, THIS one.

I was gonna include it in the original Dino December, but i eventually relented.

Not because it looked like crap, like really atomic level of trash, just a smidge above the realm of stuff like Weasels Rip My Flesh, quite the opposite, i’m even more intrigued by the fact it looks and most likely is utter bungum, as i keep gazing into the abyss (Mondo Zappa style) until the abyss itself gets bored or produces some new unholy artifact for my collection. Which it often does, actually.

I eventually didn’t bother as i was so irritated and angry at it, and i did want to review it, not use the movie as a verbal punching ball. So i let some time pass, and combined with the fact i don’t want to pity people in general, i’d say it’s time to review Jurassic Thunder in proper and earnest and whathaveyou.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #18: Cowgirls Vs Pterodactyls (2021)

In the spirit of exploiting terms like “gender equality” and “inclusive”, i had to follow up my review of Cowboys VS Dinosaurs with this one, because everyone (aside from nazis, fascists, and their “variants”) is welcome to make its own bad movie about dinosaurs, with effects that really stretch the modern goodwill towards crap movies to excuse stuff that’s embarassing even by film student standards.

So cowgirls can fight the other – and honestly more represented in cinema – group of specific dinosaurs, because we’ll pretend we can’t afford to create any other dinosaur that isn’t a pterodactyl.

I do like pterodactyls (and Aerodactyls), so whatever, what plot brings these two factions to fight for the fate of the land without having to kidnap emperors?

A stolen husband. Yep. One day a teacher’s husband is pteronapped, so she enlist the helps of a prostitute and a gunslinger (a rpg class not represented in the title, for shame) to save his ass.

One thing i was hoping for is them trying to do this as “period piece”… and they do!

Continua a leggere