12 Days Of Dino Dicember #42: Caveman (1981)

Ah yes, the caveman movie with Ringo Starr, that was a thing, and honestly anything with actors or people that are actually known in the wider sphere of interests… it’s a welcome break from a lot cheap ass dinosaur flicks done with nobodies and with the cash of a ham sandwich, i’ve said this before but i’ll repeat myself since the 30 cents trash is by far the more numerically abudant.

Especially as it’s kind of ambitious for what’s conceptually just another cavemen comedy, as the main appeal is the cast, with Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, Barbara Bach, but it’s almost completely recited in “caveman language”, and in some theathers they even gave out a translation phamplet for 30 words in caveman lingo, which isn’t a complete gimmick since there is a sort of caveman dialect-vocabulary that’s recurring through the film, so no subtitles will ever be needed to watch it.

There is a plot of sorts, with Atouk, a caveman a bit too thinky and curious for its tribe, getting kicked out and joining a merry band of outcast cavemen, and with them they basically go on to improve themselves, invent fire, weapons, learn to walk not hunched like a baboon, all that stuff.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #40: Planet Of Dinosaurs (1977)

Yep, without the “The”, because dinosaurs in space don’t need proper grammar or explanation.

More sci-fi dinos, but this time with more of a budget, kinda, thought it’s one of those cases where the movie just will never be able to live up properly to it’s theathrical poster, which i love, it’s such a perfect sum of late 70s/80s cheese that’s kinda glorious.

I’m not even kidding, that theatherical poster kicks ass, ironically or not, it does.

The movie is actually a fairly typical mash of sci-fi and dinosaur flicks, set in a generic “future” where space travel is a thing, with the crew of the starship Odyssey forced to crashland on a planet that looks a lot like Earth, despite being many light-years away, and a prehistoric sort of Earth, ruled and inhabited as it is by many kinds of dinosaur.

The surviving members, lead by Captain Lee, try to survive in the hope of being rescued, until they encounter a mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, that proves to be a toughie, forcing them to find a way to kill it in order to survive on the planet.

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Ye Old Remaster Wsihslsti (for Saint Nick)

A bonus round, meant for the previous “draught”, but it still isn’t Christmas, as Mr. Wright would point out, so enjoy!

Since the industry is experiencing the inevitable resource creep and is eventually forced right now to reap what they sow, as the new consoles “have no games” because mainstream big budget videogames have pigeonholed themselves into a situation where is too expensive and takes too long to even make one of these (emulating the big budget cinema industry they wanted so much to be to a tee), remasters have been the way too go.

Old crap with new paint or fixes to the rope itself takes still less than making a new game from scratch, is easy as you can cater to the evergrowing nostalgia market (due to the gaming populace aging because natural entropy is a thing and your flesh will fail you, eventually) longing for ages long gone, be it the Atari early days or the mascote platformer craze of the 90s, you can safely bet on an already established name, and the market is big enough that even obscure shit like Felix The Cat videogames of yore and Bubsy can get a collection with improvements, quality of feature, and shady publishers like Piko Interactive can publish in 2022 (on Steam at the moment, with console releases coming) a somehow buggier, worse looking version of Glover than when it launched on Nintendo 64. In 1998.

Be it collections of enhanced ports or remasters that just update the graphical side of things, the public craves and buys these for a variety of reasons, publishers are more than happy as it cheaper all together, so in the spirit of the time i will be dotting down my own wishlist of remasters/ports/re-releases that i would like to see.

Order is casual, btw.

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Sabretooth (2022) [REVIEW] | Beeg Cat Means Beeg Trouble!

Before the year ends, it’s time to fullfil some promises nobody care about, so after reviewing Attack Of The Sabretooth (AKA Primal Park) back in whenever that happened, i realized almost before i finished writing the review, that this was sorta/kinda/vaguely a sequel to another movie about sabertooth tigers, as in they were sequelized only when localized in some foreign markets, as they have nothing to do with each other… aside from the writer, being Tom Woosley for both otherwise unrelated movies about extinct tiger species going about killing people.

Still more sensible than most of the italian cannibal film being retitled as “Cannibal Holocaust 2” when not even the lead actor’s dingus is a shared asset.

Simply titled “Sabretooth”, this is yet another TV movie that debutted on the ol’ Sci-Fi channel about killer animals that might or not be mutants or resurrected extinct evolutionary cul-de-sacs because Spielberg did a killing resurrecting the ancient lineage of the KFC bucket a decade ago.

And Roger Corman was also there to rip chickens up with its Carnosaur, then again, Clint Howard WAS eating chicken in front a chicken coup (and dinosaurs).

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The Super Ninja (1984) [REVIEW] | “Do You Remember, The 21th Night Of September?” Ninjas

Since this is also kind of a “ninja month” for me, time to dwelve deep back into the cut n paste ninjaexploitation we love to discuss here so much…. or is it really this time?

I mean, the movie it’s called The Super Ninja( but you can also find it titled as “Ninja Force”), it does have a different and confirmed director name on both IMDB and the Hong Kong Movie Database, it does fit the bill of a primo subject for the “Godfrey Ho cut-n-paste” treatment… but it’s NOT mostly made out of a different yet similar Taiwanese or Korean chrime thriller, there’s no stock footage lifted.

So, did i make a mistake, assuming this was another Godfrey Ho/Joseph Lai joing when it’s a completely random, stock footage-free ninja flick from the era that just happened to exist and get paired with IFD Films International’s output of super cheap ninja regigs of older, random asian films about crime, guns, or whatever

Because it was distributed under the other company name by Ho and Lai, Filmark International… and then just watching will trigger every flight or fight response by ninja film buffs, because it looks, feels and it’s even edited like the cut-n-paste colored ninja collages, but there’s no recognizable name in the credits that would make the connections made sense and obvious.

Then i found the name “Thomas Tang” attached as producer even in the “recent” italian DVD release by Freak Video, and all made perfect sense, because that is one of Godfrey Ho many film pseudonyms, stuff like the beloved “Elton Chong”, BUT that credit was just added in the international releases because – as already said – Filmark distributed the thing.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath Of The Mutants PS4 [REVIEW] | Arcades In Times

Since it’s un-officially “ninja month”, let’s talk ninja. Mutant teenage turtles ninjas.

And while their popularity and games based on the series still doesn’t waver, so much that we recently got a tie-in game to the 2023 animated film TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, TMNT: Splintered Fate, and one about the Last Ronin spin-off series by the TMNT original creators coming next year.

But we’re not talking about those, or the well received Shredder’s Revenge.

Nope, we’re going back to 2017, indirectly, thank to the recent release of the 2017 TMNT arcade game by Raw Thrills, in this expanded port (gaining the “Arcade” moniker and a new subtitle since there are literally dozens of TMNT game just called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”) handled by Cradle Games and distributed (even physically) by… shovelware maestro Gamemill Entertaiment.

Though this is not shovelware, i had the pleasure to play this machine/arcade cabinet more than once in my local arcades, and it’s quite fun 3D side scrolling beat em up, obviously trying to arken back to Turtles In Time, as these arcade TMNT titles often do, for nostalgia but also because it was indeed a quality title worth trying imitation and the flattery that – ideally – that would imply.

It’s a pleasant surprise regardless, since i doubt anyone was expecting this, expecially given how some digital only TMNT titles have gone delisted entirely, especially made for smarthphones offering and arcade releases. The TMNT Cowabunga Collection is great but some titles will always be bound to being emulated, at best, like the Tiger handheld games and such.

This not the case, as we get the game seen and played in the arcades as well as some new extra levels, which is a good things since Gamemill still asks more than it should for a physical copy, but we’ll discuss that later.

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[EXPRESSO] Red One (2024) | Christmas In Wakanda Pole

The Rock is back, as Santa’s bodyguard in Red One, which comes out in mid-November because fuck it, you’re already thinking of Christmas anyway.

One Red goes for the “Santa Is Real” school of phylosophy, but actually adds something as Santa is real and powerful as the legend says, as true as the various mythical creatures related to his figures, often working for/with him in a hidden Wakanda-esque city-factory, where they prepare all year so on Christmas they can actually deliver children worlwide their gifts in one night, using magic and top-tier technology to be unseen and unheard. This time however a legendary hacker manages to find a flaw in their security, which leads to a mysterious figure kidnapping ol’ Nick.

So its up to The Rock (as Santa’s grand general) to find out who’s responsible, alongside the same hacker that unknowingly helped kidnap Santa, and a gauntlet thingie that gives him bootleg Ant Man powers, because why not, it makes for some fun (albeit not original) ideas and visuals.

As expected, this is yet another one of those that could simply be called “The Rock/Dwayne Johnson movies”, as it features everything you’d associate with the actor and his filmography, so it has monsters, fantasy stuff, action, comedy, The Rock having “legal plot armor”, all in a family friendly package, even more as this one it’s a christmas film, so JK Simmons can’t reprimand Mark Grayson or insult Peter Parker.

The final battle is a bit of an anticlimactic cop-out, but overall, this one of the better ones as of late, far from turds like Black Adam but also definitely above middling and completely forgettable stuff like Red Notice, there’s definitely a bit more creativity and energy to be found in it, making for a decently entertaining action-comedy-fantasy Christmas romp.

[EXPRESSO] The Substance (2024) | Perfect Yous

From director Coralie Fargeat (previosly known for 2017’s Revenge), The Substance tells the tale of a middle aged star, Elisabeth Sparkle, a forgotten movie star also known for her aerobics program that for her 50^th birthday gets laid off by her dipshit sleazy producer because he thinks she too old.

Later she is given an USB key with a video promoting a black market drug called “The Substance” that promises a new, better, sexier, younger you, if you remember the simple rules the promo laids out, which include respecting the balance of days between the “old” and “new” you.

But worry not, this is not a set up to a Perfect Blue/ Black Swan scenario… not quite, because this is the kind of movie that takes that general idea and decides subtext is for the meek & weak, so in this case the premise is far more literal than you could expect, more of a body horror, entertaiment biz oriented pastiche between Dr Jekyll and Hyde, Seconds and The Neon Demon, with an exploitation style to it.

It’s in the way The Substance handles these ideas that it finds a fresh variation/angle in tackling the subject matters and themes of feminism, the cycle of power and abuse, mercification, self-loathing, using satire as blunt as they get, with some frankly stellar performances by the cast.

The ending is a bit hockey as it’s an odd mash of references (in a movie that maybe does get carried away in tributing other films) that almost feels like a joke on purpose made to deliver a smorgasmboard of spectacular gore effects… one i’m willing to 100 % accept, since it also serves as the perfect cap of a story about self-destructive spirals and excess.

Regardless, it’s one hell of a ride i highly recommend.

[EXPRESSO] Venom: The Last Dance (2024) | Knull In My Soup

Venom’s most likely uncanonical (for now anyway) adventures with his human host Eddie Brock come to an end in Venom The Last Dance, the third and final movie of the series, already prodiving something rarer than an unicorn for modern superhero films: closure.

Sure, they will most likely do some films about the Symbiotes or whatever later, but this one does actually close this storyline.

Speaking of which, we continue to follow Eddie and Venom’s escape from the authorities, now complicated by the army having captured the other Symbiotes in a hidden desert base, and especially by Knull, an imprisoned god that created the Symbiotes and is sending out monster aliens (called Xenophages) around the galaxy in order to find and retrieve the Codex, the only thing able to break him free.

That said, it’s a Venom film, meaning it’s a mess of garbage that somehow manages to work in spite of the many, many issues it has, and be entertaining enough, sporting a trashy 90s charm, and while The Last Dance’s plot feels more structured and focused (more than Let There Be Carnage), the humour is even worse (it’s funnier when it doesn’t mean to), the villain is easy to forget even exists, characters are prone to overconvenient bouts so the plot can continue, and while the new Symbiotes are cool, they don’t do much until the end.

On the flipside it’s not drawn out, it’s a film that goes by fast, maybe too fast, as it’s hard for anything of note to “sink in”, with the highlights being the Venom Horse and a hippie UFO believer than bring his family along for a road trip to Area 51, for what amounts to a somewhat generic ending to the series and about the same level of “quality” seen before.

The Spooktacular Eight #23: Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

I planned to review Blood Friends for this year’s Spooktacular Eight, after finally seeing and reviewing Vlad Love earlier this year, but since i can’t manage to find some actual english subtitles for the thing and time is a-ticking, instead of a Mamoru Oshii film we’ll feature a Noburo Iguchi one, with Mutant Girls Squad.

Which is also co-directed by fellow gore-tastic filmmaker Yoshihiro Noshimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver, Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl) but also Tak Sakaguchi, better known as an actor in many films, like Versus, Godzilla Final Wars, the Azumi films, and even some of the aforementioned Iguchi-Noshimura gore flicks, but he also directed a live action Otokojuku film adaptation and Yoroi: Samurai Zombie.

Here they direct a chapter of the three the movie is divided in, and you can tell which one did, definitely if you have previous experience with their works.

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