Arachnid (2001) [REVIEW] | David Bowie Joke Here

Here, have more spiders, why not?

For this specific creature feature, we’re going back to very early 2000s, and also picking this randomly from recent additions to my personal DVD collection.

Sure as shit it’s not to celebrate a 20^th anniversary release of the movie, when even the director, Jack Sholder, kinda doesn’t wanna hear anything about it and would rather forget Arachnid, even when people bring it up to say it wasn’t actually that bad.

A sentiment i do echo because this isn’t as crap as you might expect, and if nothing else, it’s not exactly done by a bunch of complete nobodies, as it was produced by none other than Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator, The Guyver, Crying Freeman, Dagon, Honey I Shrunk The Kids) and the special effects were done by Steve Johnson, behind fxs for movies like Species I and II, Nightmare In Elm Street 4, An American Werewolf In London, Big Trouble In Little China, pretty good resumè.

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Attack Of The Crab Monsters (1957) [REVIEW] | ….For Massive Damage

We review a lot of B-movies here, so i figured its time to tackle some of the most famous ones, and one can hardly go more typical and emblematic than stuff like Attack Of The Crab Monsters, of course directed and produced by Roger Corman, the king of 50s b-movies himself, for a double feature release alongside Not Of This Earth, both movies written by Corman’s trusted screenwriter, Charles B. Griffith, also behind later films like A Bucket Of Blood or Little Shop Of Horrors.

And you can already tell these movies were engineered for the drive-ins and the double-feature show, because they are both very short, Attack Of The Crab Monsters being the shorter one, barely clocking in over 60 minutes.

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Disgaea 6: Defiance Of Destiny (Switch) [DEMO] [HANDS ON]

So, the new Disgaea has a demo out, you betcha i was gonna take the opportunity to talk about it, even more since i will not be able to a have a review for it in a timely manner (or at all), i’m pretty sure, i know my schedule it’s gonna be hell when the game releases.

the demo is fairly beefy, and let’s you play the first 2 chapters (of 15, as i understand) of the story, making for 2/3 hours of content (maybe a bit more if you want to clear all the quests you can actually finish without the Item World available) more than enough to get a grip with it. I will not talk about the story because i’d rather let you enjoy it for yourself, just know this is primo Disgaea style of absurd and zany.

Yeah, it’s not like the demo for Disgaea 5 Complete where you could immediatly access uber-peta-leveled characters just to try them out, this demo is just a slice of main serving, so it makes sense you’ll be able to carry the save data to the full game when it releases this 29th of June.

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Queen Crab (2015) [REVIEW] | Crab Budget Z

It has been a while since we dabbled into the territory of modern Z-grade movies about killer animals, so it’s time to descend into the muk of the ultra cheap features, so cheap that they are barely discernable from freshman cinema assignments shot during the summer break of the past.

An advice for fellow collectors living in Europe: you don’t need to get the german version, there’s a cheaper UK DVD release under the title “Claws”, it’s the same movie, don’t be fooled by the wrong synopsis on the back of the box (and most likely on the Amazon item page as well), clearly written by people that didn’t actually see the damn movie, there are no “space meteor crabs” in Queen Crab.

It’s obvious from the first minute this is indeed a monster movie shot on a microbudget using cheap digital video equipment, but i was interested in it because it promised the giant crab done in stop-motion animation, indeed a tasty promise and a rare sight regardless of budget to any cinephile.

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Arachnoquake (2012) [REVIEW] | Phantom Uses Rollout

In a sense, i’m way overdue for reviewing this, not that i was getting emails about it, but because i realize i should have seen and reviewed this before Lavalantula and the sequel, 2 Lava 2 Lantula, especially the first one, who in hindsight sound a lot like a parody of that one, but featuring the bus driver as lead instead of the washed up celebrity played by Steve Guttenberg (and yes, that movie realized the irony in that casting), just taking place in New Orleans instead of California and this time the spiders are coming out due to an earthquake caused by fracking, instead of being long lost cousins of Phantom incased in magma for millions of years that woke up and started the eruption.

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[EXPRESSO] Oxygene (2021) | Desperate Struggle

Just dropped on Netflix, Oxygen (or Oxygene, as it’s a french-american production) it’s the kind of movie with a fairly direct title and premise, as a woman awakens in a cryogenic capsule, completely unaware how she got there and who she even is to begin with, but soon learns the oxygen in the capsule is running low and struggles desperately to survive the mysterious situation, remember who she is and how she ended up there before it’s too late.

My first thought was “this does sound like a sci-fi variation on Buried”… but then i remembered i never actually got around to watch Buried, so goodbye to that comparison. Still, you can get around the general premise of struggling for survival while trapped or confined to a cage/box, it’s not original or trademarked, so let’s look at this movie on its own, even more since from renowed horror director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes 2006, Piranha 3D, Horns, Crawl).

And while you can kinda tell this is from a director not ashamed to show graphic imagery, it’s not exactly a horror movie or an horror sci-fi, more a straight up sci-fi thriller, one that will take its time to “get into gear” from its not too interesting set-up, but it’s worth because it’ll gradually grab you more and more, as you – alongside the “amnesiac” protagonist – will learn what is actually going-on, and let’s just say it delivers quite a powerful twist, but also manages an amazing balancing act between being extremely bleak and sporting some positivity in spite of it all.

Melanie Laurent is also excellent in the role of “Liz”, which is good and vital since it’s mostly a one-woman show, but one incredibly well executed.

Very pleasantly surprised by this one, pretty good.

Recommended, indeed.

Alligator II – The Mutation (1991) [REVIEW] | Back To The Sewers

Another chapter in the accidental saga of Jaws rip-offs and their often interesting tales of genre producers basically kicking a young James Cameron out of the director’s chair, of people making movies about barracudas that actually just used them to trojan horse a completely different thriller plot, of alligators becoming giant in Chicago’s sewer system due to pharmaceutical experiments on dogs, and producers pestering poor Joe Dante into directing rip-offs of his own movies…

Once again we wander in the territory of “we wanna make another one and trick people into thinking it’s a sequel by slapping a number 2 and a subtitle on the title”, but i struggle to even justify this one’s existence. Sure, the first one ended with another baby gator being flushed down the same sewer, but usually you’d want to cash-in into a movie like this right away…. not 11 years later.

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Boa VS Python (2004) [REVIEW] | Serpentine Showdown

Unified Film Organization had some success with reptile themed TV monster movies, heck, even to warrant making a “B-movie sequel” to 2000’s Python. But it just happens in 2003 the long-gestating Freddy VS Jason crossover movie was released, and so of course unrelated companies that didn’t even operate in the same market space felt entitled to sponge off the renewed interest in horror crossovers. While – for mere coincidence – Robert Englund was actually in Python, of course calling him back for pennies after he just play Freddy Krueger again was stupid to even attempt.

What do? Since you can’t trademark actual existing animals, they figured whatever, a boa was in New Alcatraz, Python did have a genetically mutated version of the titular animal, so let’s make these two CG animals battle to the death, call it Boa VS Python, job’s a good ‘un, print, beautiful.

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[EXPRESSO] Ape VS Monster (2021) | Cranky Kong VS Zilla

Maybe it’s the pandemic and all, but i kinda missed having the Asylum pop-up to do their mockbuster version of whatever Hollywood blockbuster came out.

There’s something oddly comforting, almost reassuring in that.

And given how much Godzilla VS Kong was delayed even before the pandemic, you’d think they would have used this unexpected advantage to make the mockbuster come out earlier, but nope, so only now it’s time for the off-brand, million times cheaper Asylum offering, with Ape VS Monster.

In mockbuster tradition, the plot actually doesn’t have much to do with the movie/s “mockbustered”, and this time it’s about an ape that comes back to earth from a space pod launched decades before, crashing and releasing an alien substance, accidentally making the ape itself and a passing Gila monster grow into giant size. Eventually they fight, after the faffing about of the human characters, mostly good for old Cold War cliches, and so Eric Roberts doesn’t have to leave his war desk too much, while the main protagonist tries to save the simian, Abraham, whom she shares a special bond with.

Of course they copied that here too.

Considering everything, like not having the backing of the Monsterverse narratives, the budget, and… The Asylum being The Asylum….i will admit they really tried with this one, even if the monsters – mostly – looks about as “good” as you would expect, the production values are slightly better than i expected (cinematography is also a tad better), and there’s a bit more to the plot and to the characters (mostly), direction is fine, making for an entertaining 90 minutes low budget flick.

I have more to say (and we’ll talk about this one in more detail eventually), but for what it is, it’s actually alright, honestly surprised it ain’t worse.

Python (2000) [REVIEW] | ….and all i got was this lousy t-shirt

There was a time before we got for granted monster movies about giant hybrid animals, but still after the 70s and 80s brought along any kind of killer animal, even slugs.

It was the new millenium, the 90s just ended and what that meant for b-movies is that now it’s fairly cheaper thanks to computer graphics, not that it’s necessarily that easier, but for the cheapo companies that banked on pumping out crappy monster movies for the TV or home video markets, it meant not having to bother anymore with animatronics or puppets or that much more in the way of practical effects for the monster or animal you wanna make the movie about.

Not that you couldn’t use both practical AND digital effects for the creature, but it was never much of a concern anyway for movies like these and the companies that made them, which – let’s be honest about this – gladly welcomed the new, cheaper tools now available, as they meant larger profits to be made.

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