The Food Of The Gods (1976) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

As we gotta have a Bert I. Gordon film in the rubric every year, i figured we’d might as well knock off one of his lesser known films, as in, i don’t think color when i think B.I.G., but he did work until well beyond the 50s up into the 90s, and before passing away in 2023, he did screenwriting work for 2014’s Secret Of A Psychopath.

This is from the short lived “Wells period” of his career, working with Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures, though this isn’t the first time he adapted the Wells novella, since his 1956’s Village Of The Giants film also took the entire basic premise of a substance that makes people grow larger to join the giant humanoid trend of The Amazing Colossal Man but mostly used to make another entry in the “teensploitation” trend that was going on at the time with surf movies and shit.

This time is a less bastardized adaptation, and by that i mean it actually uses the H.G. Wells moniker and is slightly more faithful to book… at least its basic premise, since it doesn’t cover most of the more interesting chapters and its themes, it basically reduces it to another “nature revenge” plot, which indeed was all the rage after Jaws, as already discussed plenty of times.

Meaning this has more to do with the unproduced kaiju film Nezura (and -again – Jaws and the) than Food Of The Gods, since the focus here is on giant rats that have eaten the “FOTG”, in this case a substance springing from the ground in a farm in British Columbia, with the farmer, Mr. Skinner, considers it a gift from God himself, feeds it to the chickens, which grow to giant size, and so do wasps, grubs, and rats, making the island overrun by giant vermin.

Unaware of this, a professional football player and some his teammates head there for a hunting trip, but they get more than they wanted from it…

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[EXPRESSO] Hoppers (2026) | Mindjacking In Nature

While i skip most of Pixar’s (and Disney’s for that matter) output nowadays, i decided to give Jumpers a try even if the premise didn’t quite excite me.

The premise sees Mable, a young girl that loves animals and grew attached to a pond her grandma used to take her and relax with the sound of nature, trying to fight a local politician that is banking its campaign on expanding the highway by constructing over that very pond.

Much to Mable’s dismay, he can because the pond is actually devoid of animal life, but she finds out bringing in a beaver will make the other animals follow suite, and trying to do so, she discovers a secret university project where they use advanced robot animals and project their mind into these to infiltrate and monitor the fauna better.

She then forcefully “mind jacks” into the robot beaver using the device in an effort to make the animals swarm the pond and so demonstrate they can’t actually build over that habitat….

Gotta say, maybe Pixar isn’t completely washed up, because Jumpers is actually quite good.

First, it doesn’t take nowhere as long as expected for Mable to get into the “not Avatar” device and start journeying into the animal’s world, there is enough time spent to characterize Mable herself as a likeable young activist moved by actual love and respect for the animals, maybe a bit too much to understand some consequences, but well meaning, plus the animal world itself and its rules are actually more interesting than one would expect, harboring some genuinely surprising turns.

It’s an ecological fable that’s actually is more effective because it isn’t preachy, there are some fun designs and very cute animation quirks like the switching from realistic and “talking animals” vision of the events.

Final Verdict: Expresso

Here Comes The (Virtual) Boy Again

So because i’m a major league doofus, i actually preorder not the 20 bucks cardboard VR thingie to play the Virtual Boy on Switch/Switch 2, but the entire fuckin replica that costed me 80 bucks, because ultimately i’m a kindred soul to the protagonist of Shangri-La Frontier, we go hunting high and low for the kusoge, for the odd, for the grime undesired depths of the videogame scene.

Of course i’ve heard of the Virtual Boy, i’ve seen the AVGN episode, i’ve seen Nintendo itself take potshots at its failure too eventually in stuff like Tomodachi Life, but i was still curious, and there were some games i wanted to play on it proper, especially since this oddity never came out in Europe, so

I’ve played modern VR games occasionally at some arcades, so i was super curious to see for myself how the Virtual Boy measured up today via a big ass replica of the console itself, even if can’t load any games by itself and it’s an accessory needed to play via Switch or Switch 2, but sure as hell that beats me bothering to collect the original console and its library, i have to draw the line somewhere.

Gotta say, i was kinda impressed.

Kinda.

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Queen Kong (1976) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Time to give it up for the one and only… Queen Kong.

the only “Queenie Fo’ My Weenie”.

It’s very obscure and forgotten as Kong rip-offs go… and thankfully so, because it might be the worst one, as in “so bad it’s jarring” kind of bad.

Let’s be honest, this should have been a 10 minutes sketch on TV, making a full lenght movie out of the concept “let’s swap genders to the King Kong story” as some sort of performative progressive feminist take on the classic tale (purely performative, it’s just the same exploitation style brand of random racism and “sensibilities”) and let’s make it a parody because so we can stuff it full of whatever, like shitty comedy too and hackenyed gag.

plus since it’s “for a laugh” we can excuse away the shitty ass effects, it’s that kind of cynical film that deliberately ridicules itself in order to excuse how fuckin awful it really is.

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Giant Monster March is a-ready to go-go once more

FIY i also had a hands on ramble about the Virtual Boy accessory for Switch 1 and 2 that i planned to release earlier, but didn’t due to having to tie some uni knots, that article will still come out, for now we’re once again about to begin the now staple rubric of the blog, Giant Monster March, which will have some “obvious” picks alongside some a lot more obscure pulls this year.

I really wanted to make it extra this year but couldn’t due to the aforementioned universitary education business taking a lot of my time, but after all, the new Monsterverse Godzilla film is scheduled for 2027, so..

Snakes On A Plane (2006) [REVIEW] | Legal Drinking Age Snakes

I thought of reviewing Park-chan Wook’s So I’m A Cyborg But That’s Ok, since it February and we recently got his latest film, No Other Choice.

But then an Arrow Video newsletter made me aware of them doing a Blu Ray/4K UHD release of Snakes On A Plane, which i promptly preordered.

I mean, we already did Tromeo & Juliet for the Valentine’s Day review, and i’m not sure we’re gonna bring back “Snake Month” this summer, might as well celebrate good ol’ Snakes On A Plane‘s 20^th anniversary.

Yep, there’s no beating the “getting old” allegations, so strap that girdle up, take your pills, we’re going back to the very primordial soup, when Sharkenado wasn’t even a thought in the Asylum deseased pipeline of bullshit we’ll call a “mind”.

Oh, mind you, the Asylum did exist and in many ways proper started realizing who they really were due to Snakes On Plane, their had their proper epiphany in no small part thanks to this film, but we’ll discuss that when reviewing Snakes On A Train, sooner or later that review had to happen.

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[EXPRESSO] Whistle (2025) | Must Have Been The Aztec Wind

I’m not bothering with the new Scream sequels, for reasons that should be obvious (including its collaboration with GenIA crap and gambling giant Kalshi), so instead i did went to see this little new-ish horror film called Whistle.

This one also isn’t breaking any new ground, being a very typical teen slasher, this time about an Aztec sacrificial whistle, said to be used in order to call upon Death itself and offer it the souls during ritual sacrifices. After causing the mysterious death of a high school basketball player, 6 months later the death whistle shows up in the locker of a newly transferred girl with a troubled past of drug abuse, and alongside some of her new classmates, she hears the hellish sound it produces, which also signifies Death itself will come for them sooner than it should….

Yeah, you’ve heard this before, and yes, this is basically another variation on/of Final Destination, just using the old “Aztec curse instrument” spin to avoid being a complete rip-off, but it likeable how it basically owns the fact is not doing anything original, it knows, so it doesn’t even bother to be mysterious, and decides it might as well have some fun and give audiences what they expect.

Unsubtle as fuck, by design, the characters also being very typical but mostly stereotypes stock as ever, especially the jocks, the plot hits very expected beat like clockwork, and while i do wish it didn’t straight up copy the finale of Countdown, Whistle does seek out to entertain more than scare, and it does manage to do that, thanks to a brisky pace, decent acting and honestly decent-to-good gore effects and grisly supernatural kills.

It’s entirely forgettable but also quite serviceable slasher interested only in being entertaining and gory more than anything else.

I.K.U. (2000) [REVIEW] | LGBT Robosexual Runner

While i most likely won’t be reviewing the new Wuthering Heights film adaptation, to prove my platonical love for you, the audience, i will review this film i found on DVD in a flea market, and no, it wasn’t on the porn section.

I know i had to get it, it was like, 5 bucks at max, and with a title that screams “CINEMA” as IKU gets a IGN certified “10 out of 10” just for reference-pun combo that is the subtitle “I, Robosex” added in the Italian DVD release.

Sometimes i get to find import DVD copies of weird state sponsored video art when i go thrifting, sometimes i pick up fully localized and officially distributed “technically not porn” like this.

So, the hell is this?

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Tromeo & Juliet (1996) [REVIEW] | Troma Shaped Box

While i was adamant about never reviewing a Troma film again due to them defending Harry Knownles some time ago, after seeing the new Toxic Avenger reboot/remake i realized there’s no point as the company died years ago, the soul of it, anyway, and it’s sad that i somehow longed for when they were trash but punk for real, instead of pretending as they are today.

Plus, at this point, they have so little relevance left regardless, so whatever, as they have a right to keep trying to remake their old shlock classics (or do new installments on their old series like Class Of Nuke ‘Em High), so have i to review Tromeo & Juliet for a lark if i want (and so have you on this decision of mine, obviously), and because it’s that time of the year .

I was gonna say basically the same thing for the SGT Kabukiman review i planned last year, but that i had to delay, so i’ll refer back to this one for clarification in the future, instead of redoing the spiel everytime.

And i guess at one point i’ll have to do a full essay on Kaufman and Troma as a whole, because in a way it deserves more discussion that i’m giving it here, but let’s not get carried away, it’s time to revisit a Troma classic, their shlock loose retelling of Romeo and Juliet, with an obvious but also obviously catchy punny name, Tromeo & Juliet (still makes more sense than Gnomeo & Juliet).

Time to shit on Shakespeare, because why not?

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Big Top Pee Wee (1988) [REVIEW] | Romancing The Weiner Tree

Need to preface this one by saying that the title might not imply what you think.

As in, newer generations (especially not from the US) most likely don’t know that “Pee Wee” isn’t slang for something (and i hope it never was), it’s just a comedy character played by late American comedian Paul Rubens, which developed the character of Pee-wee Herman with Phil Hartman (of Simpson fame), originally debutting for a sketch, then getting its own weird “kids comedy show” called “Pee Wee’s Playhouse”, and success eventually brought the Pee Wee persona to the big screen, with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) also being the first feature lenght film directed by Tim Burton, with also Danny Elfman debuting here as a composer.

I didn’t grow up with the old show as i’m not american and “too young for that shit” at the time, but with the Burton film arriving here too i remember vaguely Rubens face, but regardless, the film launched Burton’s (and Elfman’s) whole career and is still fondly remembered.

I rewatched this very recently, like two weeks ago, and i can say it still holds up, a surreal cartoony live action ride brimming with irony and zany humour under its own mask of false naivetè.

Given, you have to understand what “Pee Wee Herman” is, and basically he’s a flamboyant manchild that dresses up like a golden age ventriloquist dummy, moves like one too, has a weird laugh, a child-like impatience and “lust for fun”, always surroding himself with some weird contraptions, and basically following his quirky autisms where they take him, be it a fixation on bycicles or something else.

So indeed, an idiot sauvant for the ages, even though i’m not sure how much well modern audiences would take to his character, as he may come off ironically pervish, which is almost funny in hindsight, thought the character isn’t that, and is more on an outcast living in his own world, hence perfect for Burton’s debut, he build a career on this sort of weirdos, after all.

But we’re not here to talk about his Big Adventure.

We are here to remember they tried making him a film series, following up in 1988 with Big Top Pee Wee, which has been mostly forgotten at best by audiences.

I never saw it before and honestly didn’t even know it existed until i accidentally stumbled upon it while searching for films about the circus.

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