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.

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Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) [REVIEW] | Airport Outbreak

While not the first CG Resident Evil movie ever (that “honor” goes to the previously feautured “Biohazard 4D Executer”), Degeneration is arguably the first proper full lenght animated feature based on the Capcom series, intended as an opposite entity to the live action movie series, as those followed the plots of the game very, very loosely, but Degeneration clearly sets itself within the universe of the games, set sometimes after Resident Evil 4 and before Resident Evil 5.

Why it is this film (and the following sequels) kinda ignored, you may ask.

The answer i feel it’s pretty much as obvious as kinda inevitable, and can be really summed up with “motion capture based 3D CG animation”, which has never been too popular among either hardcore or casual fans of the franchise, or self-proclaimed “animation lovers” for that matter.

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The Spooktacular Eight #4: Big Tits Zombie / Big Tits Dragon (2010)

Based on the manga Big Tits Dragon from Rei Mikamoto (Satanister, Reiko The Zombie Shop, Bloody Deliquent Chainsaw Girl, A Girl of The Iron Ghost), directed and written by Takao Nakano, a famous japanese satirist, or so the Wikipedia page says, in any case i never heard of him before, but giving his background in the japanese adult video market and the cast made out of famous faces from the japanese porn industry (again, so says Wikipedia, i can’t know everything), and given how he did a parody of sorts of Cronenberg’s Shivers (called Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy, which is up there with Killer Condom as titles you can give movies)….yes, he being involved makes total sense.

It was shot in 3D, which it won’t matter to me since i can’t access a 3D version, and of course there’s no european release of any kind, home video, streaming, nada. Actually, there is a german release and there was an UK release by Terracotta Productions (even had a limited UK theathrical run), but the latter is nowhere to be found, not on their store, site, or even on most ecommerce sites.

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Parasite (2004) [REVIEW] | Not that one either

Not Bong Joon-ho’s. Not the Charles Band’s kind of Parasite either.

Not even the manga by Hitoshi Iwaaki, sadly.

With this one we’re reaching deep into the ass of forgotten crappy b-movies from the early 2000s, dumped among many of its brethren on streaming sites, i discovered it while browsing Amazon Prime Video, and i would wager it’s pretty much available on the service anywhere in the world.

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Bone Eater (2007) [REVIEW] | So, as i pray

Yes, there’s more. There’s always more TV movie monster movies for me to dig up… often just picked to kill off some time on a sleepy saturday morning from my Amazon Prime Video watchlist (when the frigging service decides to keep or relist them without charging more for it, despite being obvious fodder, always were, always will). And there’s a 40 % chance Jym Wynorski directed them.

Jym Wynorski direct this as well, why even doubt he didn’t direct them all at this point?

And as you might have guessed from the year it was released (and my other reviews of similar TV movies), it’s another SyFy commissioned crapfest produced via CineTel films, who also brought us movies like Lavalantula, the Ghoulies franchise, Super Shark, Indipendence Daysaster, even the new strand of I Spit On Your Grave sequels (following the 2010 remake). Just to name a few.

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Mega Snake (2007) [REVIEW] | Snake Of The Father

Things lead to things, and so i accidentally started out a Tibor Takacs mini-retrospective of sorts. It just kinda happened, i guess.

And sadly, no, he never made a TV movie about killer frogs or slugs to complete the “asian rock-paper-scissors” trifecta or the “Aesop fables’ bingo”, but he did direct this for SyFy the same year as Ice Spiders, and that would the last creature feature from him until Spiders 3D, as he preferred to do more disaster movies about tornadoes (regular ones) and christmas-family movies, which is – in a way – quite usual for older genre directors to end up doing in the later years.

But today is snakes, or at least one singular Mega Snake, and it’s a bit more interesting than Ice Spiders, more ridiculous but also less by the numbers, even if it’s another Nu Image joint shot in the Bulgarian capital for the same reasons already discussed in previous reviews, as it’s quite cheap.

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Arachnicide (2014) [REVIEW] | Going Digital On Yo Ass

This one is a bit special to me as an italian, as it fills a niche of monster movies that basically went extinct over time: the italian b-movie made for the international market.

Yeah, as you could ascertain from the poster (and the cast list) having almost exclusively italian actors on it, this is an italian movie, and if the look of the actors didn’t give it away (i’d argue it does, at the very least it’s obvious that these are not American), the english dub ABSOLUTELY will make that clear as day, and sadly you can’t watch it in italian with english subs, not only on the UK DVD release i imported, but apparently in all english languages releases on streaming as well.

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Eight Legged Freaks AKA Arac Attack (2002) [REVIEW] | Barrel O’ Fun

While it’s one of the more famous B-movie about spiders and most of you it’s most likely quite familiar with it, i wanted to feature a good, fun one about giant spiders, and i feel it’s worth talking about it again, especially for newer generations, as this still holds up in hindsight.

The fundamental value it’s that Eight Legged Freaks it’s a homage to the 50’s monster movies made with affection, deep affection, and unlike some of the modern b-movies that are shit at the core and try to pass off their own cynical uninspired slob as “comedic”, this is an actual horror comedy that fully embraces, understands and playfully uses the many cliches of giant monster movies.

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Ice Spiders (2007) [REVIEW] | Ski Spiders

As promised in the review of Spiders 3D, here’s the review of the spider creature feature TV movie Tibor Takacs directed before the 2013’s Nu Image/Millennium Film one that happened to pretty much be a remake of the 2000’s movie Spiders, produced by the same company.

You might argue i maybe should have done this before Spiders 3D, and you would be correct, but i didn’t even find out Ice Spiders existed before doing research for the other one, so here we are.

I should have guessed that a movie like this would exist, because i do believe this type of genre B-movies (especially if made for TV like this one) will eventually fall victim to what i call the “Pokemon Singularity”, with desperate filmakers mixing and matching animals with a random element/type, and if we can have sharks made of ice, sand (so “earth”), fire (atomic), even ghostly “dark” sharks, sure as shit we can have a movie called Ice Spiders. Possibly about literal spiders made of ice.

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Spiders 3D (2013) [REVIEW] | Arachnids Of The Third Dimension

B-movie about spiders have tenaciously popped up decade after decade, because arachnophobia it’s quite common, so nothing is more cathartic than seeing spiders of giant size getting blown the fuck up… after eating people, rampaging through cities, etc.

So it’s no wonder than once in a while a new one comes out, this time Spiders 3D, also known as Spiders in home video releases, which might make people confuse it for the older one (already featured here), so the 3D monicker feels kinda necessary, as it was actually shot in that format… which is obviously lost on a regular DVD release.

This one comes from Tibor Takacs, a genre director better known for the cult movie The Gate and episodes of Sabrina The Teenage Witch old tv series (alongside the Sabrina Goes To Rome movie), whom we already spotlighted when we reviewed the TV movie The Black Hole, and fittingly this isn’t even the first time he did a creature feature about spiders with 2007’s TV movie Ice Spiders.

Which i guess i now gotta review as well, don’t see why not.

Don’t see why either, but whatever.

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