12 Days Of Dino Dicember #58: The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

For our entry on what now is the “Nessie subcategory” of Dino Dicember, we’re going away from the Irish lochs and into the b-movie version of Northern California, with The Crater Lake Monster.

Directed and written by Richard D. Stromberg, this is an infamous one, indeed, often hailed as one of worst giant monster films ever made, or at least one of the cheapest ever put into production, and unsurprisingly it has received the Rifftrax treatment.

The plot is an obvious, deliberate throwback to monster films of the 50s, and was originally meant to be about the Bigfoot, but due to a glut of films on the cryptid, Stromberg figured it would be better to go even further back and make it about dinosaurs, why not,

Archeologists find a cave in Crater Lake that has wall drawings depicting humans fighting something that looks like a Plesiosaurus, incredibile evidence that dinosaurs did actually exist in the same time as humans. Pity that a meteorite lands in the lake, causing a cave-in that completely destroy the discovered caves system and its wall drawings.

On the bright (?) side, the meteorite seems to revive or awake a long dormant creature within the lake, a giant plesiosaur akin to the more famous Nessie.

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12 Days Of Dino December # 55: The Invisible Raptor (2023)

Sadly i learned of this midway through doing last year’s batch of reviews for 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, so i wasn’t able to cover it back then, but we’re fixing that right now.

The idea is both cute and obvious as hell: a dinosaur film without the dinosaur.

More correctly, the dinosaur is there, it’s a velociraptor, but due to “science” it was made super smart AND invisible, escaping from the lab and going on a rampage, leaving it up to a disgraced paleonthologist (reduced to mascot costume shenanigans at a dino themed amusement park) to save the day from the invisible menace.

I don’t need to, but i will point out that this so obviously feels like them stumbling into a somewhat genius solution when they couldn’t afford the dinosaur in their dinosaur film.

The film knows everyone would have sussed that out immediatly, so it plays as a horror-black comedy that’s basically a spoof of all things Spielberg… well, mostly a flood of references mushed in together, with protagonist being Dr. Grant Walker, an appropriately named fusion of Indiana Jones with Dr. Grant and i suppose Chuck Norris’ character from Walker Texas Ranger, maybe?) as he teams up with an hapless security guard in trying to stop the invisible dinosaur, while everyone obviously doesn’t believe his story until it’s too late, Jaws style.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #52: Baby: Secret Of The Lost Legend (1985)

Unlike the other 1985 film review for Dino Dicember this year, this one is indeed a proper dinosaur film, and one that does know the target demographic its going for, not that a title like “Baby The Lost Legend” would led to people assuming the opposite.

It’s also another dinosaur themed by Disney, this time under the Touchstone Films/Pictures label

like One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, thought thankfully no “Yellow Peril” age chinese stereotypes, we’re moving to Africa as the movie premises involves a couple of archeologists trying to track down the local legendary monster known as mokele mobembe, whom happens to share many characteristics with sauropods, dinosaurs basically, leading the two to find a family of brontosauruses deep in the jungles of Congo.

The two are followed by the African military, which seems the dinosaurs as a potential treat and will have to escape them in order to save the baby and its parents as well…

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12 Days of Dino Dicember # 49: War Of The God Monsters AKA The Flying Monster (1985)

I know this is technically Giant Monster March material, but it’s Christmas, and kaiju are often dinosaurs in some way, so let’s have some technically correct fun with this obscure South-Korean kaiju film, The Flying Monster, better known as War Of The God Monsters because it is law for genre cinema films like these to have multiple titles.

1985 was definitely an interesting year for kaiju film as this was most likely made as a response to the North-Korean produced Bulgasari, itself made because of Return Of Godzilla debutting one year prior. Then King Kong Lives almost killed all of this new found momentum.

Directed by Jeong-yong Kim, War Of the God Monsters/ The Flying Monster (originally titled “Bicheongoesu “, which would translate literally to “(The) Undead Beast”), and it does somewhat still fits for Dino Dicember, the plot IS about a shunned professor trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist, with a young reporter trying to get a story from him.

But at it turns out, “Vegamunk” is right, as various giant dinosaurs (and a Pterodactyl kinda thing, the titular “flying monster” i suppose) suddendly appear, forcing the odd to confront the peril and find a way to save the world from the kaijusauruses.

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[EXPRESSO] Troll 2 (2025) | Altercation Of The Gargantuas

No, not THAT Troll 2, this is the recently released sequel to the Norwegian 2022 film “Troll” esclusive for Netflix.

Memories of Fragasso’s tale of non-trolls and faux-Orson Welles ghost grandpas aside, the plot of this Troll 2 sees the government call back the main protagonists of the first movie, Nora, the troll expert, Andreas, working for the prime minister, and soldier Kristopher, as another giant troll is awaken, and trying to find a solution will have them end up investigating the history of Norway’s christianization, finding a peaceful troll to befriend and help them in stopping the other one.

The first one was decent, this is honestly just a mediocre affair that hasn’t enough of either drama or comedy to sustain itself, so it feels kinda meandering to and fro’ action scenes of the trolls fighting each other, and even by giant monster movie standards, these are way too brief to be satisfying, despite the solid effects for the creatures.

There are subplots and characterizations stubs that ultimately amount to very little as the movie doesn’t develop really anything proper, even with the plot taking an adventure, Indiana Jones-esque bend, it’s all just kinda thrown in there, with too much of the movie spent of re-establishing characters and clumsily giving everyone some emotional baggage; honestly it feels incredibly rushed in every regard, and it’s hard to feel any conflict as not even the actors feel that invested in the stock roles they’re given.

It doesn’t feel like a sequel that took 3 years-ish to make, even just a couple of decades ago this would have been cranked out the very next year (tops) after the original dropped.

While teasing a sequel that might be better, this Troll 2 is simply too generic, cliched and unfocused to rise above mediocrity.

[EXPRESSO] Pokemon Legends ZA NSWITCH 2 | Mega Starmie From Space

Pokemon spin-off time with Pokemon Legends ZA, bringing us back to the 7^th gen and the Kalos region of Pokemon X & Y.

5 years have passed from the defeat of Team Flare, and as a new trainer, you get involved in not only the new main attraction of Lumiose City, the night-bound Royale ZA, but also the strange events that see wild Pokemon undergo uncontrolled Mega Evolutions in the city, maybe related to the new company hired to rebuilt the city, and the reapparance of the mythical pokemon Zygarde…

Gameplay iterates on Legend Arceus foundations, but changing the focus from exploration to battles, now a real time affair with moves operating on cooldowns, which is strangely intuitive, works really well and provides some needed freshness to the classic formulas.

Also, i love how often deliberately goofy the new Mega Evolutions are.

On the downside, it does indeed take all place in a big open world city, which is bigger than i anticipated, has some fun sidequests and some internal variety (thanks to designated wild areas where to catch pokemons) but isn’t quite as packed or varied as a Yakuza game, and also suffers some incredibly archaic movement mechanics.

Speaking of archaic, even on Switch 2 we have the same modern issue of Game Freak being handled EDF style budgets (comparatively) for games that sells gorillions, but have jpeg windows and characters with great designs sporting lypsynched words with no voice acting.

The story is good, even the NPCs have hilarious shit to say, the city it still rewarding to explore and there is a decent amount of content, i had a good time with it, more than i expected, but this could and should have been even better, for many – that should by now be obvious – reasons.

The Spooktacular Eight # 30: Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead (2012)

Can’t believe we’re finally doing this, but after post-poning it for years and basically featuring every other Noburo Iguchi film, it’s time to go deeper into the septic tank with one of the lesser known films from the well known (among the expected circles) gonzo gorefest-pink film-tokusatsu extraordinarie director, his Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead.

What a fuckin title. Can’t say you didn’t know what it was about when you walked in.

I would love to play the “what has this blog gone to?” bit more but i was this close to feature Monsturd in a previous Spooktacular Eight, but didn’t, not yet, hope this literal zombie shit fest will do as i also consider it kinda the “cut off” film for Iguchi, even though he didn’t actually stop making films like these, heck, the same year as Zombie Ass he also directed the aptly titled segment “Fart” for ABCs Of Death, and his last movie is 2023’s romance anthology Tales Of Bliss And Heresy.

So while his career didn’t die, i guess the foreign fan and specialized press interest around japanese horror gorefest with ludicrous premises, excessive displays and absurd special effects kinda petered out around that time, and i would assume this would be the case in Japan too, though that didn’t stop other directors to put out similar stuff like Bloody Delinquent Chainsaw Girls live action adaptation (which i didn’t know got two sequels in 2019, taking notes).

Enough foreplay, what is Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead about?

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Platformation Time Again #4: Pac Man World/Pac Man World Re-Pac PS1 | PS4 | GBA

HISTORY

Pac Man needs no presentation, so ingrained as an icon of videogames from their golden era of the arcade machines, that even your grandma knows what it is.

But the 80s were far gone even back when Pac Man World released in late 1999 for the original Playstation, and Namco Bandai was struggling to find how to reinveint his legacy franchises or make new successful ones in the wake of the financial recession in Japan at the time.

Pac Man World was made specifically to celebrate the series’ 20^th Anniversary, and Namco (not yet Namco Bandai) figured to play it fairly safe: 3D platformers were on the rise and “all the rage”, everyone with some cash to spare was throwing mascotte characters at the wall to see what would stick or syphoon some of the leftover bread from the success of Mario and Sonic, heck even Bubsy tried this new fangled substance known as 3D by injecting it between its bobcat toes.

So why the fuck not, since Namco did have a popular mascote character already, one that was iconic and synomous with videogames and not a pantless cat with a shirt, the formula had already had its success stories so there was a blueprint and a track record to try emulate, Pac-Man was becoming old enough to drink in most countries, so fuck it, we’re going platforming in tridimensional fashion… and it was a success.

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Pirate Warriors 4 and The DLC-enening, Part 3 [The Endurance] (UPDATED)

Yesterday was One Piece Day, so as expected and announced, they revealed the winners for that poll/survey for characters fans would like to see as future DLCs for Pirate Warriors 4…. well, indirectly revealed some of the winners.

As in, they announced the third Character Pass, which this time is gonna be made of 2 character packs instead of 3, with the second (technically DLC Pack 8) being a “Legends” sort of deal, since it has fan favourite Enel back into the fray (being one of the characters culled from the roster despite being in Pirate Warriors 3), King, which was basically a given due its popularity, and Zephyr, from One Piece Film Z, this not a given at all, i was kinda expecting Shiki to make the cut, but i’m glad because Film Z is one of my favourites of the OP films, and my boy “Z” deserve some more representation.

As for the other DLC pack that is slated to released first this fall (with DLC Pack 8 instead having a “Early 2026” release date as of now), DLC Pack 7, they just revealed that the first of the batch will be Rob Lucci in its CP0-Egghead version, as in with the Awakening form and all of that.

The other two characters will be revealed later as the release window for the DLC pack approaches, and i would love to see Kaku (damn he loves giraffes) but i doubt it, same for Vivi, playing as her with Karoo as the built-in mount would be funny, but i think Baby 5 could be more interesting to play as given her literal “weapons morphing” Devil Fruit.

Honestly a bit miffed this is just 6 characters instead of 9, you can pre-order the Season Pass itself and the bonuses are 3 bonus costumes (not sure for whom) and a new special ability/move for Shanks, that both his base and Film Red versions can use.

No word on that next-gen versions they announced on upcoming, not here anyway, but i would be surprised if it’s not out by October.

(also, damn, that new trailer for the second season of the Netflix live action One Piece show looks good)

So see you for the eventual reviews of both DLC packs, bye!

UPDATE: the PSN store page for the Character Pass 3 is up in my region…. and it’s still 30 euros, like the other Character Passes, which had 9 characters.

This has 6. And i’m NOT ruling out the other two undisclosed characters of DLC Pack 7 being more new/slighty revised updated version of already playable ones, like Egghead versions of Zoro and Sanji, especially since i assume that’s the theme they’re gonna go with.

Jesus Christ, Namco Bandai, wanna make the next character pass even more famished of content? Fuck’ sake.

[EXPRESSO] Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) | Freaks On A Leash

I didn’t see the 2015 reboot and i barely remember some things from the 2005 iteration (“no one” has seen the Roger Corman version so i’m not gonna ask), but i’d say fans of the Fantastic Four will be pleased with finally having a more than solid film made about the beloved superhero quartet.

It definitely helps that Fantastic Four: First Steps is basically a standalone entry, taking place in another version of Earth where everything is a retrofuturistic 60s space age utopia, and (like the recent Superman reboot) it skips doing the origin story and it starts with the team already established, with a ABC style show recapping how they got their powers and became the city heroes/guardians, mythologized and even with their own saturday morning cartoon.

It does indeed play heavily on the family angle, as Sue and Richard are to have a baby….a joy shortlived by the appearance of a female Silver Surfer announcing their planet will be destroyed by Galactus, prompting the team to go back to space and trying to resolve the situation, complicated by an odd proposition i won’t spoil…

Again, it does play his card sincerely (as did Gunn’s Superman, guess this is new style for comic book movies now), there’s space travel, a bit of fighting, and it’s definitely the best offering from Marvel in a while…. it’s simply not as good as the James Gunn’s Superman reboot that we saw just 2 weeks ago, but i can’t fault the movie for that.

I can fault it for the characterization being somewhat lacking, as the Fantastic Four come off – despite the great performances – as a bit too perfect, too easily accepted and with any rough edges or weirdness (mostly) sanded off, like their media image plastered on ads or products.