It’s Alive (1969) [REVIEW] | Farmers and Fishmen

Enough with the regular kind of crappy B-movies, let’s crank it up to uber shlock, with the misleadingly titled It’s Alive, not a Frankenstein style crap-fest like The Body Shop, it’s actually more a 50s style B-movie about a couple that runs out of gas in a remote rural town, and stumbles upon a crazy farmer, his imprisoned “wife” and his private zoo, which also includes a Gillman style monster.

I did watch it on Amazon Prime Video, which has the 2020 restored version, i can only imagine how worse the more common prints of the movie are. I truly can, it’s a cheap made for TV monster movie that seems to stem from a 50s script, but was clearly shot in late 60s /early 70s. Dat film grain, though.

Now, the question is: how bad does the monster look? Like the mermen with mouth-tentacles that look more like hot dogs from Horror At Party Beach?

Worse than Monster Of Piedras Blancas?

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Kaw (2007) [REVIEW] | Mennonite Paradise

YES, another one i was cojoled into watching and reviewing quickly because Amazon Prime Video reminded me they we’re gonna take it off their service in 5 hours. And since i’m still semi-quarantined at home, might as well watch it and review it.

This time it’s about killer birds, crows instead of general “birds”, because clichès.

And like a good chunk of these movie i’ve been “coerced” into reviewing by Amazon Prime Video removing, this is another TV movie for Sci-Fi Channel/SYFY, and it’s somewhat fitting that most of these movies about killer birds were made for TV, since the apocryphal The Birds II: Land’s End in 1994, a movie so good the director Rick Rosenthal (the original Halloween II, Bad Boys, American Dreamer, Halloween Resurrection) asked to be credited as Alan Smithee instead, was also a TV movie.

The title also echoes the “famous” snake creature feature “Sss”, you lure people into watching your movie better with this simplistic attitudine, so KAW is it. I love that in the italian release they added a subtitle with the intent to specify the ravens are not just your common, bargain basement ravens…. but if i were to translate it to english it would literally read “Attack Of The Common Ravens”.

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The Killer Shrews (1959) [REVIEW] | Dogs & Rugs

Since i’ve more than mentioned this movie during the review of Deadly Eyes/Night Eyes, what the hell, let’s pay some respects to what it’s now a cult classic, especially for the more seasoned cinema buffs from the U.S. Side, as the movie was featured on Mistery Science Theather 3000 (alongside his double-feature debut companion, The Giant Gila Monster, also directed by Ray Kellogg), becoming one of the favorite episodes from the fans, and it can’t be denied this movie had some impact, as it was also featured or referenced in some way in other shows about bad movies.

It also managed to spawn a direct sequel in 2012 (63 years after the original came out), Return Of The Killer Shrews later with James Best reprising the role of Thorne Sherman, and a remake/parody in 2016, Attack Of The Killer Shrews. A lot for a movie made on a very low budget and serving as a perfect example of the decline of the “nuclear era” monster movies, because even for the time the idea sounded silly, and showcased how desperate you must have been to go with “shrew” as the scary mutant killer animal for your monster movie.

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Deadly Eyes (1982) [REVIEW] | Game Of Rats

I would like to thank Canada for asking the question: can we remake The Killer Shrews and make it less crap, despite also making it about rats?

I mean, especially if you’re a fan of MST3K it’s hard not to think of that, not because the mutated animals are shrews, but because they did the same trick of dressing up dogs (daschunds here) with special effects to make the rats, alongside some puppet props.

To be fair, of course this movie was bound to have a bigger budget and be better given how notoriusly low the budget was for The Killer Shrews, how it was pretty much a “regional” drive-in flick with actors that were hard to understand due to the accents and dialect… and it’s a better movie all around. The old trick of using dogs masquerading as rats actually works here, because they do have better budgets for the effects, instead of just putting moss and bad wigs on the poor canines, so you don’t really notice they’re dogs while watching, and the rats puppets and props are actually decent-to-good in quality, so the answer to the question posed at the beginning is already “yes”.

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Garuda (2004) [REVIEW] | Harvey Birdmon

Sometimes it’s hard to forget that neither Japan or the United States have an exclusivity on making giant monster movies, even if often we still end up in the vague “asian sphere of influence” one way or another. This one as well, but it’s from Thailand, not a country you immediately associate with giant monsters, but it doesn’t matter, and director/producer/writer Monthon Arayangkoon tapped from thai folklore for the monster, the titular Garuda, originated from Hindu mithology as a legendary bird-like creature aligned with the element of wind, serving as a steed to the god Vishnu, and depicted as either a giant bird with half-open wings or an humanoid with bird features.

He’s usually depicted as a protector figure, always ready to fight the serpent enemies (which means the naga), but in this case he’s depicted as a bloody rampaging monster, but i guess being trapped into the concrete under Bangkok for thousand of years will make anyone snap into a rampage.

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Frankenstein VS Baragon / Frankenstein Conquers The World (1965) [REVIEW] | Atom Heart Monster

Strange as it may sound, you really can’t talk about King Kong and Godzilla beating each other up without talking about the Frankenstein’s monster, but we already talked about the backstory of the original “Monkey VS Nuclear Dinosaur” kaiju flick in its review, so let’s just say that this movie is actually Toho bringing back the partially scrapped idea of having Kong fight a monster created by Frankenstein for King Kong VS Godzilla, which would itself spawn a follow up a year later, with War Of The Gargantuas. And of course, tasking yet again Ishiro Honda to direct it.

Also, this one introduces a monster that would eventually cross into the Godzilla franchise, Baragon, not be confused with another, completely different but – for pure coincidence – very similar looking (at a glance) monster from the Gamera franchise, Barugon, with a “u”. A minor monster, brought back just for the giant monster brawls installments of the Godzilla series (where pretty much every frigging Toho kaiju was invited for a quick cameo), but here the main antagonist to the “Frankenstein” monster, as the original japanese title makes it abudantly clear.

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The Screaming Skull (1958) [REVIEW] | Sans Sense

Another classic stinker remembered today thanks in no small part to MST3K, you hardly can go lower than this independent cheesefest, which was originally released in the way most of this crap was back then, the old double-feature for the drive-in market, alongside either Earth VS The Spider or Terror From The Year 5000, both fittingly riffed by the Satellite Of Love’s crew of bots and men.

It’s technically based on the eponymous tale written by Francis Marion Crawford – which it’s quite good and can be found in The Complete Wandering Ghosts collection – itself based on a folk tale of a skull said to be that of a black slave, whose request for burial in his native country was denied following his death, and how it was subsequently followed by strange occurrences and unexplainable shrieking noises that emanated from the wooden box in which the skull was kept.

“Technically” as the movie doesn’t credit Crawford’s novel, and the plot follows a couple, Eric and Jenni, that moves to the house belonging to the husband’s late wife, Marion, which has been curated and cared for by Mickey, an odd gardener loyal to the late wife’s memory. Jenni witnesses some eerie events involving a skull around the house, and begins to think that she’s going insane..

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Life After Beth (2014) [REVIEW] | Getting Over It (feat. John C. Reilly)

Celebrating Valentine Day’s as you do, with one of the most notable movies in the “zombie romance” subgenre that isn’t Warm Bodies.

(BTW, yes, i knew about Vlad Love, i’m gonna cover it in some way, but it finally started airing just today, so i would have never had a review for it ready by now)

You might be led to think this is a rip-off of that, as in the roles happen to be switched (the girl is the zombie one), but… don’t, because the 2010’s didn’t invent zombie romance (there was a musical-romcom about zombies in 2007, called “Zombie Love”), heck, we had Teenage Zombies back in 1959… but then again that movie was fuckin terrible and didn’t actually feature teenage zombies, so at the very least these modern romantic comedies about zombies got that.

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This week, on Cells At Works: BLACK…

Yeah, the latter episode of Cells At Work darker, edgier spin-off series, Code BLACK, shows what happens when you have trombosis.

Which means big ass katamari of red blood cells cadavers, of course. Which almost kills the body of this poor unhealthy, overworked bastard. You know, the same that got gonorrhea from 10 seconds of coitus some episodes earlier.

So, this week’s lesson is don’t get trombosis, or the King Of The Cosmos will make huge rolling spheres with your literal “dead blood” and stuff your inner holes with it. I guess.

The Curse Of The Komodo (2004) [REVIEW] | Now Without Curses

Yeah, we’re reviewing the original after the…. follow-up (sequel isn’t really the right word by any stretch of the imagination) that was Komodo VS Cobra, where a mutated Chris Latta is pitted against a radioactive Komodo dragon for reptile supremacy.

Why? Because i was bored and fired that movie up on Amazon Prime Video without doing much research, i mean, it’s not like Piranhaconda (also by Jim Wynorski, incidentally) it’s a crossover between the Piranha series and the Anaconda franchise. And i like i explained in that review, it’s not like it really mattes, since that movie recycled pretty much everything from its *cough * “predecessor”, so inevitably describing the plot of this one also works for most of the sequel, that basically added another giant monster and changed some characters just because it kinda had to.

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