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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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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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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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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[EXPRESSO] Anaconda (2025) | Thunder Of The Gigantic Tropic Serpent

Yes, the Anaconda serie is back…kinda.

You might have heard of this reboot being in the works for a while, and it being as a quasi-January release here definitely did not feed any hype, not that there was any in the first place, gotta admit.

In case you didn’t, Sony decided to reboot the Anaconda franchise as a Tropic Thunder sort of dealio, not a bad idea in itself even though it already felt kinda masturbatory and “lazy” since Jack Black was already in Tropic Thunder.

This film sees some friends that meet up together and decide to actually follow up on their childhood dream of being proper directors, instead of being relegated to menial cinema-adjacent jobs like making video wedding invitations or playing tertiary one-line characters on TV shows, when one of them propose the project of rebooting Anaconda, one of their favorites.

This means not only writing the script, getting some funding, but also going to the Amazon river and hire a snake expert so they can “shoot the shit” there. But things gets messier when they find themselves involved with smugglers and actually stalked by a giant anaconda…

To be honest, this is noticeably better than i would expect it to be, it’s actually quite ok.

It would be better if it was able to be more original instead of doing again Tropic Thunder via Be Kind Rewind and if it was a bit less of a compromise between a more edgy and satirical take on meta-cinema and being also “safe for kids”, to say nothing about how it is fairly safe in the “self-poking humour” department.

But i will admit it has some surprises and it’s actually funnier than i expected, it’s decent and knows it’s for the best to keep runtime on the short side.

[EXPRESSO] Send Help (2026) | Triangle of Sodness

Sam Raimi is back to cinemas with Send Help, which tells the tale of Linda Liddle.

Linda works as strategist for her company, and has been promised a vice-president role by the late CEO and father of the current one, Bradley, but she is shunned and humiliated by him when it becomes known he will put his incompetent friend, Donovan, in charge.

He still decides to invite her to a corporate flight as a gesture before axing her, but fate has is that the plane crashes, and only Linda and Bradley survive it, finding themselves stranded on a deserted island. Linda isn’t too fazed, as she also knewn a lot of survivalist tactics and skills (enough to try her hand at competing in a survival reality show), as even back in the office she was the actual employee holding the company together with their ability to actually get shit done, much to the disgust of the nepo baby that is Bradley.

The two end up having to work together, and put together their mutual hatred in order to survive and eventually get rescued…. or not.

While the plot it’s basically a mixture of familiar beats you’ve seen before, mostly Cast Away and stuff like Triangle Of Sadness, but mashed together very well, tackling the overdone “eat the rich” angle of late (alongside the obvious themes of workplace toxicity and corporate misoginy) but with a clever and funny script, many twists and some terrific performances by Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.

It’s also so very a Raimi movie, full of his sensibilities, which include a lot of projectile vomiting, ropes of blood shooting everywhere (to name the tamer ones), and his comedic horror sensibilites are full on display and recognizable as ever, great to have him back in full form.

Recommended!

Platformation Time Again #7: Wario World NGC/SWITCH2

For context: i played and completed the original release on Gamecube, previously reviewed it (more than once), but i recently played it from scratch and finished it again via the Gamecube Classics app on Switch 2, so this review is technically a rewrite, but it’s de facto new, almost completely done from scratch and rewritten/improved/revised to reflect my opinions on the game after re-revalution.

HISTORY

Wario needs no introduction, having been Mario’s Nemesis since its debut on Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, and having not only its own peculiar platforming series, but in 2003 it also branched off into a new genre, with the peculiar mini-games compilation of the Wario Ware series, which had just debutted some months prior.

Wario World was also a peculiar case since it was not only the first 3D outing for a series that had been 2D platformers or puzzle games of sorts (including the Super Famicom exclusive Mario & Wario, and his reskin of Bomberman games, Wario Blast), but was also not developed by one of Nintendo’s internal development teams.

It was actually handled by Treasure, a beloved software house known for classics like Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Guardian Heroes, Ikaruga, after their collaboration with Nintendo on Sin & Punishment proved successful, that lead Nintendo R & D 1 wanting to do so again, but this time on a 3D iteration of the Wario series/franchise.

Who would turn down to opportunity to work on a 3D “Mario” game with Nintendo’s blessing, after all?

Definitely not 2000s’ Treasure, which was in a kind of identity crisis, coming off of both Sylpheed The Lost Planet and Stretch Panic/Freak Out/Hippa Linda not being well received (nor selling well either) and them basically having to take on more and more licensed tie-in work, for anything from Tiny Toons to anime series both well known (like the Bleach DS titles and the excellent Astro Boy: Omega Factor) or obscure, like a shonen series called Dragon Driver.

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Jack Frost: The Amytiville [MANWHA REVIEW] | The Teen Hellsing Years

This has been on my bucketlist for a while because it was such a transparent case to me.

As in, sometimes you have comics more or less explicit in showing their inspiration, their model to copy and emulate, happens a lot in shonen manga but it’s not always what one would assume

Sometimes it can be just a conflation of this kind of comics being very iterative and built (like most books and movies, for that matter) on clichès, on proven formats, time-tested formula, so similarities are often more coincidence than deliberate emulation of a specific series among the sea of many similar ones, expecially when in turn they influence each other as they go, and in time are themselves taken as examplse to follow.

But once i laid eyes on this manwha (a “korean manga”) by Ko Jin-Ho, Jack Frost: The Amityville, aimed at basically the same demographic of an edgy Shonen Jump series, then red the first volume, i was kinda happy in how immediatly obvious it was to me what this wanted to be.

As in, a more shonen take on Hellsing, the renowed pulp classic by Kohta Hirano about vampires, guns bigger than people, religious freaks with knives that double as lances and undead nazi cyborg monsters.

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[EXPRESSO] Primate (2025) | Not part of the “DK Crew”

From director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey At Night, Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City), we have a new entry in the now sparsely visited “killer ape” fringe of natural horror, simply called Primate.

The story is to the point as the title itself, since we have a familiarized chimpanzee, Ben, whom was nurtured and cared for, has been tought words and has become a family member, being bitten by a mongoose carring rabies, then contracting the virus and becoming violent, just when one of the sisters comes back to their family home in Hawaii, bringing some friends along…

So the sisters and her friends found themselves trapped with the rabid animal, and basically confined to the house’s infinity style pool, as Ben is afraid of water.

You’ve seen killer animals films before, you’ve seen killer ape films before, so there’s not really much to explain or discuss, as while Roberts still manages to make likeable enough characters, this is not a movie much about those; beside the two sisters’ bond, everyone (some more than others) are pretty much future “dead meat”, if you will.

It’s mostly about the body count and gore, which is pretty good and especially “crunchy” since it’s all done via quite practical effects.

Again, it is familiar territory, akin to a monkey version of Roberts’ shark films (or a Cujo remake, basically), it’s simple, but there’s nothing wrong with semplicity when it’s done right, and here is done very right. It’s a very well executed familiar formula that makes the best out of its few character and single location, but also knows it’s often for the better to keep these films short, clocking slightly under 90 minutes.

Honestly i don’t know what else you might want from a good killer ape film.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 4: DLC Pack 8: Special Selection PS4 [REVIEW]

Gotta admit, i kinda expected this one to release in early February, but nope, that “Early 2026” turned out to be indeed very early, as in, this DLC Pack just released January 22^th, as in, 3 days ago.

I guess why not since it was also the pack that revealed earlier who was gonna be in it, after all, people were eager to see who alongside Enel (which was indeed as obvious a prediction as it could have been) made the cut from the OP character popolarity survey polls’ results, with DLC Pack 8 being the “Legends” one, so to speak, more than the previous Egghead Pack.

(probably is also due to TK demands since the Dynasty Warriors Origins extensive DLC/expansion Visions Of Four Heroes came out the same day, and alongside the Switch 2 release)

I’m not even gonna try and say once again that this might be the last DLC pack for Pirate Warriors 4 as a whole, only to have to rectify that months later, especially now, as i will explain.

As most of you already know, this specific DLC character pack is a fan favourite heavy selection, and while Enel and King were the easily predictable guesses everyone thought, i was pleasantly surprised to see Zephyr/Z from One Piece Film Z made the cut, as i said before, very happy about that, can’t deny i’m a big fan of him and that film as a whole.

No Kaku playable, but i’ll take “Mr Z.” gladly, guess japanese fans do love him more than most expected, and how these polls are often made to be skewed towards the new popular characters seen in the anime.

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