[EXPRESSO] Evil Dead Rise (2023) | Book Of The ‘Burbs

I’m not the biggest Evil Dead fan, and i honestly didn’t see anything past Army Of Darkness (so i can’t/won’t compare this new one to the 2013 reboot), but since this was gonna be another stand-alone film (despite also being called a sequel to the originals), what the hell, i’m game.

And yep, this is Evil Dead, despite what people that saw the first movies decades ago and clearly don’t fuckin remember them at all will try to tell you.

It’s basically a modern reboot/remake that does some changes to freshen things up, by changing the setting from the cabin in the woods to a suburban slum, and focus on a couple of sisters that reunite just to be torn apart by the unwarranted summoning of a evil undead curse that originates from a forbidden tome spreads..… and also by giving the Book Of The Dead a new name, because i guess the Lovecraft estate did trademark Necronomicon or something?

But regardless, director/writer Lee Cronin did a very good job in trying to capture the spirit of the old entries (down to offering a variation on the static camera chase sequences), with lots of nasty gore effects, disgusting fluids – or worse – being vomited by the possessed, violent impaling, but also with a certain underlining silliness to them, not to the point of devaluing the raw satisfaction of knives to the brain, scalps being ripped open, eyeballs eaten off… it’s nasty but not interested in taking itself 100 % serious, as with the cursing provided by the Deadites equivalents.

Likeable characters, excellent gore effects, intriguing bits of new lore, and overall just very entertaining (while also being enjoyable as its own thing), with a lot going on, all well packed into a very tight runtime just above 90 minutes.

Dead Island: Retro Revenge PSN [REVIEW] #deadislandretrospective

So, we finally arrive at the last entry of the Dead Island retrospective, just in time for Dead Island 2 to finally release in stores, tomorrow actually, which sounds still kinda crazy to me after that memorable first teaser trailer with Pigeon John’s Da Bomb, but we’re almost there, for real this time.

The only game left is Dead Island Retro Revenge, which was originally released as a bonus game to entice people in buying the Dead Island Definitive Collection, with the main serving of that being the remastered/definitive edition versions of Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide, but can also be simply bought on Steam, PSN and X-Box Live for 5 bucks, and it’s actually well worth it.

Which is surprising, because while i do enjoy the Dead Island mainline games, i also fully understand why people hated them (i initially did too), but oddly Retro Revenge i’d say its the unexpected better one of the lot, as it keeps the series tradition of copying someone else’s shtick, but this time they chose One Finger Death Punch as the blueprint, and didn’t overcomplicate it.

But first, the plot, or the tiny narrative that exists to justify the game.

Continua a leggere

Popeye PSN [REVIEW] | …. For An Asset Burger Today

Catching up on last year’s output of radioactive trash videogame releases, i saw this on sale for 2 bucks on PSN, so i bought it, downloaded it on my PS4 (game is also available on Switch, digital only as well), and in a matter of minutes i wondered if this wasn’t somehow one of those asset flips that somehow isn’t (or wasn’t) on Steam but managed to land digitally on other platforms.

And yes, i was correct, it’s not on Steam, most likely a calculated move as it would have been singled out immediatly and bombarded with negative reviews, for Steam’s userbase had many experiences with awful cobbled together rushjobs by hacks that smosh pre-made Unity assets together with minimal extra work, even more as this is a licensed game.

One that was released without nary a beep, so that already clues you in that they wanted to release a stinker and hope nobody noticed that they wanted 15 bucks for this turd by Sabec Limited, better known for having the gall to sell Calculator (and many overly simple games and stuff like Pet Rock) on Switch, as in literally a calculator app that they sell for 10 bucks.

Given how surprisingly important is Popeye as a franchise for videogames, aside from wondering how the hell Sabec Limited was able to license the almost centenary comic strip series from King Features Syndicate, it’s kinda fitting that this 2021 release pretty much boils down to a remake of the 1982 arcade game (also simply called “Popeye”), the one that inspired Nintendo to make the original arcade Donkey Kong.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Super Mario Bros The Movie (2023) | Fungine Fun

Anteprima in una nuova scheda

So the new Super Mario Bros movie, the new animated one, is here, and i gotta say i’m pleasantly surprised, since it’s still handled by Illumination, which is… a prolific studio, let’s put it like that.

The plot is what about you’d expect and combines elements from both the previous film iterations of the Mario franchise, so you have Mario and Luigi as unsuccessful plumbers in Brooklyn that one day, while trying to fix a flood, get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach is preparing a plan to fight Bowser, as he got hold of the magical Super Star and is bent on world domination… after he pops the question to Peach, that is.

Yeah, there is the isekai element but the world isn’t the weird Blade Runner-looking dino society of the 1993 live action film, instead the one most audiences remember from the videogames, and i say “the videogames” because basically every popular iteration of Mario is represented, there’s even the karts and the Kongs play a not small role in it, as the movie crams a lot of action, varied setpieces and fuckton of references in every scene, making for a pleasing 90 minutes romp where there’s no downtime nor faffing about random shit to pad out the runtime.

Animation is top notch and the script (which is still very “Illumination”) it’s also a lot funnier than one would wager, so older audiences will get more laughs out of it than expected, instead of groaning their way through most of it.

If i went to see it when i was 12, i would have lost my shit, but even disregarding that, The Super Mario Bros animated film stands as a good kids movie, very fun indeed.

It’s better than the Sonic live-action films, i’d say.

Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach! (1986) [REVIEW]

Before this deal of an animated Mario movie was written between Nintendo and Illumination, heck, 7 years before the infamous live-action film with Bob Hopkins and John Leguizamo, Nintendo already had its Super Mario anime movie, with Super Mario: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach, based on the seminal Super Mario Bros game, which was released just 1 year prior.

While not totally unknown, for years it had been quite the rare, obscure and elusive piece of forgotten Mario media, with some horrible VHS rips flying around the web of thing, until some absolute chads in 2021 came together to fund and execute a 4K restoration project of the film from a rare (possibly even the only surviving) 16 mm print secured by another madlad called “Carnivol”, and then put it on Youtube for free, with updated (and upgraded) english subs.

So you can easily check it out there, not gonna put the link directly because Nintendo, but the effort it’s more than laudable and the people behind the restoration deserve some money thrown at them.

Continua a leggere

Nezura 1964 (2020) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Would it really be a Giant Monster March if i didn’t reserve a spot for a japanese monster movie?

This time though we’re going for a triplette, as this one does not only – indirectly – involve the Friend Of All Children himself, but also it’s a dramatized biopic of a now defunct movie studio regarding the failed production of the Giant Horde Beast Nezura, which was slated for a 1964 release in theathers, but was never finished or completed.

Which led the company, Daiei, to try again in entering the kaiju market, this time with a more shameless but also safer choice of a reptilian creature, a giant turtle with fangs, the ability to travel through space by rotating firejets when retracted into its shell, Gamera, and squarely aim its movies at a far younger audience than what the Godzilla series targeted at the time.

But before he could fly into the deep abyss of space to defend all the younglings of the universe, Daiei was indeed planning something else, something else that wasn’t original at all either, as the producers were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, with the idea to replace the swarm of avians with one of rats.

Continua a leggere

Konga TNT (2020) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Since the sequel to the Asylum’s “Godzilla VS Kong” mockbuster from 2020, Ape VS Mecha Ape, is not gonna officially be released here in time for the rubric (or at all, who can sah for certain), let’s dig through some other “based on comic book series you never knewn existed” garbage, we did the Fred Olen Ray produced Reptisaurus film, so here another Konga film, called Konga TNT.

Not based on the 1971 film with Michael Goeff, but on the Charlton Comics produced comic book series that spawned because of the movie, and how you’d like if Konga was basically remade from the director/producer behind Oujia Shark, Brett Kelly?

Because that’s what we’re getting, a homegrown no-budget knock off of a King Kong knock off.

Continua a leggere

Reptisaurus (2009) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Cheap, direct to video shitfest from Fred Olen Ray, the final frontier for the franchise you’ve never heard about until this very moment…. or did you really?

If you’ve been lurking and watching all things monster movies from a good decade or more, you probably already know of Reptilicus from 1961, the only Danish movie monster that had the privilege of being remembered by film historians, and like some of the others “Godzilla inspired” films, managed to get a shlocky comic book series, one that eventually crossed with the one based on Gorgo, of all fucking things.

But since this is that kind of story, Reptilicus’ comic book only lasted two issues. TWO.

Then the publisher, Charlton Comics, waited for the copyright on the name to expire, redesigning the creature a bit and retitling it as “Reptisaurus”, which at least gave the series more issues and a special one-shot, and – as said before – got a cameo in an issue of the Gorgo comic book series, also published by Charlton Comics.

Continua a leggere

Devil Monster AKA The Sea Fiend (1936) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

Really feeling the old with this one, but i don’t really care since it’s one of the few – as far as i know, the only – monster movies about a killer manta ray. And thankfully it’s so old that it is in the public domain (in the United States at least) and can be found at the Internet Archive… at least in his edited version released in 1946, which was apparently more focused on South Seas drama and also supplemented the 20 minutes of material cut from the original with stock footage of native girls, half dressed ones, which was oddly a loophole for the Hays Code prohibition on nudity by considering them “etnographic scenes” of “native” life (the parenthesis doing a lot of lifting here).

The old art of technically correct nudity, the best kind of nudity.

Also, in a similar fashion to Universal’s treatment of their monster movies back in the 30s, there was a different Spanish language version shot back-to-back, called El Diablo De Mar, which also used some of the same actors and footage from the 1936 english speaking version, upon which we’re basing this review, and which can be found on Youtube at the time of writing.

Continua a leggere

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet is broken again, so its’ DLC review might arrive quite late

(the scheduled review for Giant Monster March will arrive tomorrow due to complications)

Wanted to post this earlier, but whatever, we’re doing it now, because i was planning to review the DLC of the latest Pokemon mainline games, i did so for the latest ialian blog, but… Pokemon Sword/Shield wasn’t held together with shit and sticks, say what you will but it wasn’t.

But sadly Pokemon Scarlet/Violet really IS “Pokèpunk 2077”, as after they announced the 2-part expansion for the game… it turned out the more recent patch actually made thing worse, including a bug that potentially could wipe or corrupt saves, low chances but not THAT low given the install base, so bad it had Game Freak say it would be better to just “import” your squad and whatnot to Pokemon Home before the worse happens.

Which means i haven’t touched the game after i played and reviewed it at launch, and i plan to keep it that way, hoping that the next patch will be proven to have fixed any chance of that shit happening, i’m not risking it.

And sure as shit i’m NOT pre-ordering the Expansion Pass, NOT when they should have delayed it as a project to work AFTER they at least addressed some of the many bugs, glitches and MANY technical issues (some of which were improved upon…. by reducing the already laughable amount of NPCs on screen at once).

But because this is Pokemon and Scarlet/Violet sold like gangbusters, fuck you, we’re going ahead with the DLC plans (takes me back to the same shit happening with the buggy ass Batman Arkham Origins situation), as in one expansion split in two parts and with a matsuri/japanese festival theme… one they’re also charging 10 bucks more than the Expansion Pass for the previous games, all made worse when the teased new Pokemon feel like “rejigged Yokai Watch designs”, and a one legged Suicine.

So don’t expect a timely review of the first part of the DLC, maybe one of the expansion on the whole when it has been released all, depends all on how much it takes for Game Freak to unfuck this specific bug and hopefully NOT reintroduce in a later patch, who can really say what will happen?

Maybe they will fix the issue by the time the first DLC rolls out, and in that case i will review it