12 Days Of Dino Dicember #7: Valley Of The Dragons (1961)

Stock footage. The quintessence of cheap filmaking since its very beginning, the saviour of many low budget productions for decades, constantly growing over time and often very fuckin free, etc.

It’s and always will be a constant for visual media, but there are case when you can take it too far, like the infamous Gamera Super Monster, the final Showa era Gamera film, composed almost entirely of stock footage from previous movies in the series. Sometimes you can indeed go even cheaper, but shouldn’t, unless you wanna risk destroying any goodwill, fanbase or prospects.

Though this isn’t the case, with Valley Of The Dragons we have instead the story of trying to adapt the Jules Verne novel Off Of A Comet/Career Of A Comet, which was actually not published in US territories at the time, due to it being very anti-semitic.

A very loose adaptation mostly made to chase the success of previous film adaptations of Verne’ stories…. and because producer Donald Zimbalist wanted to have it heavily based around the stock footage from One Billion BC, as he owned the rights to that.

In its own way, this is also pure cinema at heart.

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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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The Abominable Snowman (1957) [REVIEW] | Tibet Climbing, Joel

While i teased a Shriek Of The Mutilated review in the Snowbeast’s one…. i’m gonna keep teasing it a bit more, i’m not yet ready to rewatch and talk about that “fine specimen”, but i’m willing to keep the “yeti train” goin’, so let’s defrost a Peter Cushing film from the old Hammer catalogue with their 1957’s “The Abominable Snowman”, itself derived from their BBC series “The Creature”.

The plot sees antropologist John Rollason (Peter Cushing) and a scientist friend of his going to Tibet and being welcomed in a buddist monastery. The head monk questions them and he’s not convinced by John claiming to be there in order to study the local flora, and as soon as an american climber by the name of Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) joins them, the actual reason for their travel becomes clear: they plan to climb the mountains in a quest for the legendary snowman, the yeti.

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Snowbeast (1977) [REVIEW] | TV Yeti Jaws

(This Is An Enhanced Rewrite-Revision)

1975. Jaws hit theathers, proving to be a massive success and establishing the idea of the “summer blockbuster film” for Hollywood and the big cinema industry at large, launching the career of Steven Spielberg and going down in history as one of the best “b-movies” ever made, inadvertly spawning the absurdity of what amounts to a full fledged subgenre now, the “shark movie” one.

Why i’m even talking about sharks when tackling a movie about yetis/sasquatches?

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[EXPRESSO] The Ice Road (2021) | Truckin’ Vengeance

Nothing says “almost not quite Christmas” as Liam Neeson starring in an action thriller, which already really tells you a lot of what the movie it’s gonna be about, even before you learn what the plot it’s about. You know it does.

The Ice Road it’s about Liam Neeson (not gonna bother with his character’s name), an expert trucker tasked to face the icy roads of Canada in order to save 26 diamond miners that got trapped, and with his team he faces this desperate rescue mission, only to find out there’s even more danger out there, and it’s nor the cold nor the icy roads…

And no, it’s not surprise dinosaurs. I always expect that as well, to much disappointment, and this movie it’s no different. As in, it doesn’t have dinosaurs nor cannibalism, the rescue mission itself would be enough for a tense ride, but of course it would require a lot of talent to pull it off, and it would deprive Liam Neeson from having to get vengeance on someone for something, with the usual expected chases and brawls from an action movie with such an actor.

It’s not bad, i find the plot decent enough to make something more of the premise, scenario and ok characters, but it plays it safe, delivering the kind of fare you expect to see in a movie with Liam Neeson playing the main character (there’s also Lawrence Fisburne, which is nice) by now, it’s that kind of predictable action movie cheesy concoction, that at least delivers on having stuff happen and being entertaining enough.

It’s exactly what you think it’s gonna be, so i can’t really fault the movie for that, but i can for the cheap special effects just slightly above “Asylum quality”, they really felt like a joke.

[EXPRESSO] Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (2021) | Herbal Bundle

Finally time to review this one, the first reboot movie for the Resident Evil film series, distancing itself from the previous films by Paul W. Anderson in order to make a more faithful adaptation.

Helmed by 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts, Resident Evil Welcome To Raccoon City basically provides an abridged retelling combining the plot of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 into a single one. Not completely random as both games’ plot take place in Raccon City, where in 1998 the farmaceutical megacorporation Umbrella Corporation had basically withdraw from operating, leaving the city to wither.

After an epidemic turns people and animals into undead monsters, a squad of local police officers is sent to investigate the Spencer Mansion in the nearby mountain area, while other survivors rally to survive the horrors left by Umbrella.

There are various changes and differences, often kinda necessary due to the merging of the two plots, which leads to the movie feeling rushed, as i feared. Aside from some hamfisted (but still cute) references, the movie actually captures pretty well the horror B-movie spirit of the games, and actually wants to be a horror film.

And it succeds, the atmosphere is nice and creepy, there’s a lot of practical effects, the characters are mostly quite accurate, and most of the elements from the games are used with sense in-context.

It’s not perfect, the cast is decent but there is some questionable acting and the “plot mix” it’s a source of other issues, but overall it’s actually quite solid and enjoyable.

Shame because this is arguably the better, more faithful RE live action adaptation… but it’s shaping up to be a box office bomb, not surprising since it was released in late November, and the “Thanksgiving holiday weekend” window makes sense only for Americans.

Resident Evil Vendetta (2017) [REVIEW] | Remote Zombies

As Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City was released in theathers earlier this week (in most countries), let’s take a look at the final Resident Evil CG animated film, Vendetta, which is also technically the last of the “CG trilogy”, as in all three movies have Leon Kennedy as the main character and are set in the same universe of the Resident Evil games, to contrast with the live action film series (as previously said).

The biggest change – but not the most noticeable – is the animation, with this film produced by Marza Animation Planet instead of Digital Frontier, the studio behind all previous Resident Evil CG movies and even the short film Biohazard 4D Executer that we started this little retrospective with.

The name might not say much, but it’s actually a studio that started by providing CGI cutscenes for the Sonic The Hedgehog games, and eventually for both anime TV series and even full lenght features, working alongside japanese animation titans like Toei for the 2012 3D CG Space Captain Harlock movies, even Lupin III The First, and more recently being one of the production companies for the new Sonic The Hedgehog movies, in a kinda poetic turn of events.

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Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) [REVIEW] | Airport Outbreak

While not the first CG Resident Evil movie ever (that “honor” goes to the previously feautured “Biohazard 4D Executer”), Degeneration is arguably the first proper full lenght animated feature based on the Capcom series, intended as an opposite entity to the live action movie series, as those followed the plots of the game very, very loosely, but Degeneration clearly sets itself within the universe of the games, set sometimes after Resident Evil 4 and before Resident Evil 5.

Why it is this film (and the following sequels) kinda ignored, you may ask.

The answer i feel it’s pretty much as obvious as kinda inevitable, and can be really summed up with “motion capture based 3D CG animation”, which has never been too popular among either hardcore or casual fans of the franchise, or self-proclaimed “animation lovers” for that matter.

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The Spooktacular Eight #4: Big Tits Zombie / Big Tits Dragon (2010)

Based on the manga Big Tits Dragon from Rei Mikamoto (Satanister, Reiko The Zombie Shop, Bloody Deliquent Chainsaw Girl, A Girl of The Iron Ghost), directed and written by Takao Nakano, a famous japanese satirist, or so the Wikipedia page says, in any case i never heard of him before, but giving his background in the japanese adult video market and the cast made out of famous faces from the japanese porn industry (again, so says Wikipedia, i can’t know everything), and given how he did a parody of sorts of Cronenberg’s Shivers (called Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy, which is up there with Killer Condom as titles you can give movies)….yes, he being involved makes total sense.

It was shot in 3D, which it won’t matter to me since i can’t access a 3D version, and of course there’s no european release of any kind, home video, streaming, nada. Actually, there is a german release and there was an UK release by Terracotta Productions (even had a limited UK theathrical run), but the latter is nowhere to be found, not on their store, site, or even on most ecommerce sites.

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Ice Spiders (2007) [REVIEW] | Ski Spiders

As promised in the review of Spiders 3D, here’s the review of the spider creature feature TV movie Tibor Takacs directed before the 2013’s Nu Image/Millennium Film one that happened to pretty much be a remake of the 2000’s movie Spiders, produced by the same company.

You might argue i maybe should have done this before Spiders 3D, and you would be correct, but i didn’t even find out Ice Spiders existed before doing research for the other one, so here we are.

I should have guessed that a movie like this would exist, because i do believe this type of genre B-movies (especially if made for TV like this one) will eventually fall victim to what i call the “Pokemon Singularity”, with desperate filmakers mixing and matching animals with a random element/type, and if we can have sharks made of ice, sand (so “earth”), fire (atomic), even ghostly “dark” sharks, sure as shit we can have a movie called Ice Spiders. Possibly about literal spiders made of ice.

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