12 Days Of Dino Dicember #4: Attack Of The Super Monsters (1982)

It really IS Christmas time, because today we’re doing a movie that’s both dinosaurs and vintage tokusatsu cheesiness from the 80s. How can you go wrong? You simply can’t.

Add drill spaceship to the mix and you really can’t go wrong.

Though it’s worth pointing out this is actually an edited down TV series (i suppose it’s just the first 4 episodes of the series mashed together, as it was a common practice at the time), Dinosaur War Aizenborg, itself quite the interesting piece of media, as it’s an hybrid anime and live action show, with sentai style rubber suit and stop motion puppets action for the dinosaurs and giant monsters, but animation for the humans and most regular animals, played over live-action miniature sets.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #3: Jurassic Expedition (2018)

I don’t know what it was with late 2010s and the small resurgence of “dinosaurs in space” movies, but yes, that off handed comment i made when reviewing Jurassic Galaxy wasn’t for naught, that movie had a “buddy” of sorts, released a year later as… Alien Expedition?

It’s amazing how that was actually the original title, which was quickly changed in most releases because dinosaurs bring all the boys to the yard, after all. “Jurassic” is a palatable adjective, it is.

Seriously, how the hell do you make a low budget sci-fi movie about dinosaur planets and NOT put a dinosaur relevant word in the title? You want people to eventually watch your movie, right?

Even more amazing is that the two movies also share the “dual brothers directors”… just pulling your leg, it’s a guy that just happens to be named Wallace Brothers, and only having made a single film before this one, David And Goliath from 2016, never heard of it before myself.

Continua a leggere

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.

Continua a leggere

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #1: Triassic Hunt (2021)

This one it’s a bit odd, as you would guess it being a mockbuster of Jurassic World 3 Dominion… or at least it was probably gonna be that, but that movie – along many others – was postponed time and time again due to complications caused by the pandemic, so The Asylum for once had the mockbuster ready to leech off a movie that wasn’t out yet, and released it anyway this last January.

I mean, nothing stops them from making dinosaur movies that are not mockbusters, but in the end it’s mostly a matter of labels, since this one as well isn’t exactly copying directly a more popular movie, just ripping off Carnosaur even more than Corman and Buechler did, to continue the circle of trash cannibalizing older trash.

Long live the new trash, etc etc.

Continua a leggere

Let the 12 Days Of Dino Dicember commence

Happy holidays, merry christmas, it don’t matter since we’re celebrating the 12 Days Of Dino Dicember from today till the Epiphany, so let us begin soon with it!

What is Christmas without an Ice Cream Bunny?

Think watching The Star Wars Holiday Special each year it’s not the hipster “christmas tradition” it was before? If so, i will propose something that’s also not new, as it has a cult following, but very very smaller in comparison, since it doesn’t have the Star Wars branding.

Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny.

If this didn’t trigger a PTSD-like reaction, i’m here to share my cursed knowledge upon you, because in a way this fits the Christmas period, and its deranged insanity.

Continua a leggere

Monster On The Campus (1958) [REVIEW] | Coelacanth Jekyll & Hyde

Since today it’s Coelacanth Day, it’s the only time of the year when it’s “proper” to review the only b-movie about the coelacanth, you know, that primitive/living fossile fish that was thought to be extinct for decades, most likely you know it because it’s also the basis for the pokemon Relicanth.

And even that it’s quite tenous, because this isn’t the late 50s version of Bloody Waters of Doctor Z you might expect, even though we’re still going into psychotronic territory and a coelacanth fish it’s involved, with a college professor that acquires a newly discovered specimen of said fish, and an accidental exposition to its blood, which of course it’s radioactive due to gamma rays and the 50s.

Though this is really a triviality, given that this detail comes very late in the movie, i guess it had to be made a radioactive thing by the studio for marketing reasons, maybe not, but it’s indeed very 50s.

This somehow results in the college professor mutating back into a monstruous hominid-troglodyte that wreaks havoc on the campus, like a inner city Eegah minus the Arch Hall Jr.

Continua a leggere

Presenting 12 Days Of Dino December

**Of course i had to go with this oldie, how couldn’t i?**

Maybe you were looking forward to another month full of dinosaur themed movies reviews, maybe you were dreading the ideas, so laboring under both hypotheses i’d figure to make a compromise (as it’s the essence of diplomacy and the cornerstone of love), so this year we’re not having Dino Dicember Part Deux, but we’ll go the more canonical route, and have 12 reviews for each of the “12 Days Of Christmas”, starting on December 25th up to January 6 (included).

Submitted for your approval, the coming “12 Days Of Dino Dicember”.

Biohazard: 4D Executer (2000) [REVIEW] | Parasite Evil

While we wait for the new Resident Evil film reboot, i’d figure we’d take a look at the other forgotten Resident Evil film series, the CG animated one that basically most people don’t remember, know or care to do any of that.

But before tackling the movies you’ve might actually vaguely heard about, we need to go deeper and unearth the first actual 3D animated Resident Evil movie, 4D Executer, so unknown and so “important” it never got the Resident Evil title, so it still uses the japanese title for the series.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Ghostbusters Afterlife (2021) | Inherit The Ghost

Ghostbusters is something i don’t mind but also don’t feverishly worship, i can do without new installments milking the golden nostalgia udders this franchise possesses

This one comes also to ride the nostalgia train for movies like The Goonies AND the popularity of Strangers Things, which itself feeds into that nostalgia for the 80s that Strangers Things was borne from, making for a kinda sad self-sustaining loop, as its par for the course on modern revivals of old material, doesn’t matter if there’s a reason for it or anything aside it nostalgia lucrative.

But at least this isn’t going the full remake-reboot thing, it’s actually a sequel, set 30 years after the events of Ghostbuster II, and follows the nieces of Egon, Trevor and Phoebe Spengler, moving out into the rural town of Summerville, where their grandpa left them an old farm. And more, as the two kids find out, when the odd quakes Summerville keeps experiencing break out in a supernatural pandemonium.

Here the movie has the localized subtitle of “Legacy”, which it’s way more fitting and indicative of what it wants to be, as it’s directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, famous comedy director that back in the day also helmed Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, while Jason is more known for Thank You For Smoking and Juno.

It would be better if ultimately Jason didn’t want to recreate so much his father work with the first Ghostbusters, treated as a holy scripture that MUST followed upon and passed down through the generations. BUT this one is made by someone that definitely knows his stuff and that clearly cares about the material, arguably a bit too much emotionally involved, but at least it makes for a decent movie, better than the mediocre 2016’s reboot.

It’s alright.