The Crawling Eye AKA The Trollenberg Terror (1958) [REVIEW] | Nightmare In Alps Land

Since in recent years i found it was “HD remastered” on DVD by the Italian distributor Sinister Film (hence it was cheap and something i didn’t need to pay extra to import), i’ve been curious to check this out. Even if this italian re-release is under the “I Mostri Delle Rocce Atomiche”(lit “The Atomic Rock Monsters”) title, somehow an even worse title than the more common one its known in the US and worlwide, The Crawling Eye, which fuckins spoils how the monsters look.

But oh well, who cares, since the movie had quite the legacy, which included being the inspiration for the latter John Carpenter’s The Fog and being spoofed during the early days of MST3K.

Kinda funny how despite the DVD title the movie itself still shows the original title, The Trollenberg Terror…. i kinda understand why it was changed for international releases, honestly.

It’s not incorrect, thought, as the plot starts off with mountaineers being mysteriously decapitated on the slopes of the Swiss mountain known as the Trollenberg, scientists with a mountain observatory for catching cosmic rays finding there’s an odd cloud that simply sits upon the mountainside, never moving, while emanating a clear radioactive trace.

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[EXPRESSO] Mantopus! (2025) | Octaman’s Father

Had to see a newly released on Amazon Prime Video film called “Mantopus!” that is retro styled meta comedy about a now washed horror director finding the titular “man-octopus” hybrid in a mysterious antique shop and deciding to use it as the star of his final horror film, Mantopus, a Creature From The Black Lagoon knock-off.

It’s one of these modern retro styled comedies akin to stuff like The Lost Skeleton Of Kadavra, but set in the late 50s-early 60s, arking back to the drive-in era of monster movies, with a Michael Gough-looking director (as the whole movie it’s basically a tribute to him), a slimeball making stuff like the fictional “Frankenstein In Texas” to the dismay of his producer, running “not-American International Pictures”, but the director becomes mad and starts using the monster to eliminate his “enemies”.

I will say it’s an interesting proposition, because while it’s not too hard by now to emulate the visual style of these shlocky films, you ironically gotta have decent actors able to deliberately act bad the purposefully stock dialogue that seems somehow dubbed in post even when it’s obviously not, but Mantopus manages to get that and most importantly gets right the feel of these old movies, and the tone, that both makes fun but also celebrates with sincerity these films, that actually likes the drive-in trashfests about monsters with little to no budgets but high on violence and “nudity”.

It’s all done with affection instead of spite or mockery, the overacting is lovely as its the deliberate awkward delivery of basically every line and stock discussion, it’s a quite fun film, though it’s a very niche movie made for a very specific audience, one that loves cheesy horror of yore and will notice the posters aren’t for made up old movies.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #47: The Secret Of The Loch (1934)

Time for an oldie, and no, i don’t mean Gertie The Dinosaur (though eventually we’ll cover it), we’re “only” going back to the 1930’s with The Secret Of The Loch, released in the very same year the infamous “Surgeon’s Photo” depicting an unknown, plesiosaur-esque creature peaking out of the Loch Ness lake in Scotland, which in turn made more rumors and sightings of strange creatures around and about the lake go around, so jumping on the bandwagon was thing back then too.

As the infamous aforementioned photo allegedly depicting “Nessie” wasn’t 100 % proven to be a hoax until decades later, it helped set up what would become the entire thing of cryptozoology, but filmakers didn’t care to wait, gotta strike fast, so the British-based Ealing Studios did, with Milton Rosmer directing this comedy adventure film about the Loch Ness creature.

The first movie ever made about the cryptid in question, which nowadays it’s a rarely used subject, but eventually we had films about it like The Water Horse in 2007 or the more recent b-horror movie The Loch Ness Horror. As in, the one from 2023, not the one from 1981 also called that.

In terms of plot, The Secret Of The Loch is exactly what you’d think it would be, and displays some irony, because it’s about a nutty Scottish professor trying to prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster, in spite of everyone else calling him cuckoo for that, followed by a zany reporter that wants to get the scoop on the story.

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Giant Monster March is approaching the generators + Early April hiatus

It’s that time of year again where we let the MONSTERS FIGHT, even more as we have a new entry in Legendary’s Monsterverse with the collab episode of Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire hitting theathers internationally by the end of this month.

Also, i will be taking a break in April from the 1st up to the 14th of the month due to uni obligations and scholarly stuff, will be back from the 15th of April, though EXPRESSO review might still come out regardless.

Galgameth (1996) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

We already discussed the best known film from legendary South Korean director Shin Sang-ok (whom sadly passed away in 2004), and i feel one really deserves the epiteth of legend given the history behind the 1985 Bulgasari/Pulgasari, especially as it feels like a last middle finger to the then current North Korean dictator, as him and his wife (kidnapped to make movies for Kim Jong-il, again, not joking, at all) managed to escape while at a Vienna’s film festival.

We went through the whole ordeal for that movie’s review, so i’m not gonna repeat myself too much on this regard, but i do think we’re long overdue for a movie about the whole ordeal, since it’s a perfect case where reality is crazier than fiction.

After his escape in Vienna the director and his wife became US citizens for a while, and during the 90s he made some movies under the pseudonym Simon Sheen, including some “3 Ninjas” sequels, and today’s feature, the ever-so-obscure Galgameth, also known/released as The Legend Of Galgameth or The Adventures Of Galgameth, of course it has alternative titles.

And Galgameth is of interest for us because director Sean McNamara basically recycled the script from Shin Sang-ok’s Pulgasari/Bulgasari remake (the original 1962 Pulgasari is sadly a lost film) but made it into a sword and sorcery film for children. As you do.

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Giant Monster March Lives Again

It’s March, so you know what that means, some select picks from the monster movie genre, as we try to not do the obvious ones but search deeper within the evergrowing sands of time, pulling out some familiar names as well as some of the more obscure entries, without completely forgoing more recent releases.

It’s not gonna be the more extensive year of the rubric, but i think the picks for this year’s Monster March are some of the better ones so far.

We’ll be starting on the 6th with some vintage rear projected cheese, after some EXPRESSO reviews of some recent releases i couldn’t get to before, see ya!

Giant Monster March 2022 is GO!

Some things come and go, but giant monsters are forever!

Yeah, while i’m still keeping the bi-daily posting rate, starting tomorrow for this month every posting day when there’s not a new movie EXPRESSO review there will be a full lenght giant monster movie review. Simple as that, so see ya tomorrow for the first one of this year, hoping this will become a yearly institution! 🙂

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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Spiders (2000) [REVIEW] | Nu Spiders

The late 90s are not anymore. It’s the first year of the new millennium, the Y2K didn’t set off nuclear bombs leading the way for the world of Fist Of The North Star, just produced a lot of scams and made a lot of people work overtime to avoid “the bug” actually affecting things as believed.

Not that it matters, because for movies like this, it’s always the 50s regardless of what decade they are made in, it’s always about giant bugs or insects or arthropods made big thanks to the power of Radiation (©), or aliens, or both.

And since it’s the late 90s-early 2000s, you can take a wild guess this comes from our old friend Nu Image, taking a break from sharks to give the ancestors of Rachnera Arachnera their part as the killer giant animals protagonists of another creature feature. Alien killer giant animals, to be precise.

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