The Spooktacular Eight #38: Curse Of The Golem AKA It! (1967)

Using this title because – like others realized before me – the original one, It!, was kinda ass and so generic, that even before you could have people confused with the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s story, you could have it confused for It! The Terror From Beyond Space from 1958.

No one was gonna confuse the film with 1989’s Soviet satyrical comedy history drama by Sergei Ovcharov, Ono, which also translated to “It”, but then again this is is why it’s better you check before giving your movie a stupid ass and generic title that the marketing tried to spin as a thing necessary to putt butts in seats or some crap like that.

I’d suggest you don’t call your new horror film IT, but nobody would anymore, unless for the inevitable remake of Pennywise story in a couple of decades.

Thankfully for the coulrophobics, Curse Of The Golem (also called Anger Of The Golem for some extra confusion) isn’t about clown or clown-shaped entities, it’s about a very classic monster that was also adapted for cinemas (and even had a series of sorts) well before Frankenstein (which also arguably inspired), the Golem from Jewish folklore.

And while i feel it’s famous enough that i don’t need to explain what a golem is… long story short, it’s a humanoid automaton sculpted from clay or mud and animated via a magic, and while there are many variations of the myth, the classic version has the golem created by Judah Loew, a rabbi in 16^th centhury Prague, using clay and put into the golem’s mouth a slip of paper with the name of God written into it, to give the statue life and so it could defend the other Jews of the Prague ghetto from persecution or straight up pogroms.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Dangerous Animals (2025) | Three On A Sharkhook

New shark movie with a big budget, a widespread cinematic release and it’s not a Jason Staham trashfest romp, another gonzo shark movie about an Esper Shark (TM) or something done with lunch money-allowance budget?

What has the gone world to?

Apparantly something good and conceptually simple, i guess that’s why it took so long for someone to make a good shark movie that also plays the “Uno reverse” card on the concept without overcomplicating it or being outlandish.

Meaning that Dangerous Animals is about a serial killer that hides his murderous calling by posing as a shark cage experience activity for tourist in Australia (which fittingly all good modern shark movies seem to hail from), killing people and filming as he feeds them to the sharks.

His next victim is a surfer girl, Zephyr, living a nomadic sort of lifestyle, whom finds herself kidnapped by the killer in preparation for his macabre rituals…

it’s so simple that a shark movie like this hasn’t been made before, but on the flipside it’s actually pretty good, thanks to a good budget, very solid acting and good characters, with a resilient leading lady/final girl and a good psychotic villain that does have a humourous side that actually makes him more believable as he use it alongside some charm to better camouflage his true self, without going overboard and making him feel cartoony or excessive.

It’s also pretty gory without going into full splatter territory, going for a more realistic tone to the chases and attempts of his victims to escape his grasp, making for a very tense film that is less predictable than one would expect, yet very satisfying even when it hits the expected notes, one also basically devoid of filler, exactly as long as it needs.

Pretty good.

[EXPRESSO] Borderlands (2024) | Money does grow on trees

Despite “Randy BoBandy” reminds us this thing was actually coming along and not going the way of the Bioshock film….i kinda wish it did, as it’s hard to believe this thing actually exists, not helped by lack of any real promotion for a 100 millions budgeted movie with actors like Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The plot follows the one of the first Borderlands but also borrows some characters from the sequel, with a bounty hunter, Lilith, tasked by the CEO of the Atlas corporation to get back his daughter, Tina, lastly seen on Pandora, a wasteland planet overrun by thugs, monsters and mercenaries, where is said to reisde Vault, a fabled crypt that allegedly contains the artifacts of a long lost, technologically advanced civilization.

Lilith then inadvertly becomes a Vault Hunter and is forced to team up with a gaggle of renegades, weirdos and psychos, including a robot unit called “Claptrap”.

Having played up to Borderlands 2 and some of its expansions, i will say that at least the Borderlands movie looks the part, and this might be one of the more apt videogames to film adaptations… shame the source material was not really good to draw inspiration for an action comedy film, given the puerile, meme-ridden and often more annoying than charming “sense of humour” the games had, which was tolerable at the time and didn’t quite age great…but heck, even the games were funnier, overall, thanks to their “throw shit at the wall” approach.

It’s a movie 10 years too late, and for an Eli Roth directed film based on a hyper violent videogame series, it’s a PG-13 affair, but the main issue it’s the movie just being a boring, unfunny, honestly kinda lethargic romp, where the weirdly casted A-listers half-ass it big time.

Snowbeast (1977) [REVIEW] | TV Yeti Jaws

(This Is An Enhanced Rewrite-Revision)

1975. Jaws hit theathers, proving to be a massive success and establishing the idea of the “summer blockbuster film” for Hollywood and the big cinema industry at large, launching the career of Steven Spielberg and going down in history as one of the best “b-movies” ever made, inadvertly spawning the absurdity of what amounts to a full fledged subgenre now, the “shark movie” one.

Why i’m even talking about sharks when tackling a movie about yetis/sasquatches?

Continua a leggere