12 Days Of Dino Dicember #37: Two Lost Worlds (1951)

h boy, two lost worlds for the price of one?

Sign me up for one ticket, Jimmy boy, because you know a movie it’s good when it marketed the same way as grocery store coupon for breakfast cereals or boxes of cuetips.

It’s kinda funny too how curiously there wasn’t a Lost World adaptation (talking about the Conan Doyle book, obviously) in the 50s, so i guess, just in case, they doubled the worlds lost, just to give you more bang for your buck, or make you believe that only to get suckered into watching a dinosaur film that couldn’t even afford its own dinosaurs.

Leaving aside the dinosaurs/reptiles don’t show up until 45 minutes into this… 61 minutes film, this in independent production that literally borrows his dinosaur footage from One Million B.C., the 1940 film that will end up being mined of its of stock footage for decades, as in used not a quick reference to the olden days, just ripped off because they couldn’t afford the special effects for the prehistoric creatures they wanted to as a selling point on the poster.

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[EXPRESSO] Longlegs (2024) | Itsy Bitsy

Oz Perkins (Psycho 2, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel And Hansel) is back with the awaited horror-thriller Longlegs.

Set in 90s Oregon, the story sees Harper Lee (Maika Monroe), a newly recruited FBI agent, sent out to collect info on the serial killer that slaughtered entire families over the last two decades, signing cypher letters he leaves on the murder scenes as “LONGLEGS”, when she has an intuition that lets her immediatly find the house where the killer is hiding in.

While managing to escape, the hunt is on, and as Harper keeps putting together the scarse and often cyphered info available, she not only notices the murders having some ritualistic pattern to them (like the focus on details about children), but that she herself is somehow involved or known to the killer in some fashion she not aware of.

It’s a brutal thriller that soaks itself in an “old fashion”-esque style, not only by using exploitation-style editing (and playing with the screen format to replicate the old 8mm films feel in flashbacks, for example), but also in how it handles the plot and the supernatural element in it, in a way that enhances the grisly nature of the events while also giving an explanation that doesn’t undermine (or contrast in any semblance) the creepiness of it all, especially thanks to an amazing performance of the Manson-esque killer by an almost unrecognizable Nicholas Cage.

It’s also not a very long movie, but it’s pretty intense, manages to make you question the nature of the killer and its methods until the end, and the reveal is not out of nowhere or feels out of place with the detective/police procedural stuff, making for a maybe slightly retro horror thriller, but damn if it ain’t some extra creepy, deliriously morbid fuckin shit.

Quite recommended.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies (Rare Replay) XBOX ONE [REVIEW] | Analog Monster Bash

How i didn’t cover this one here yet i don’t know, but the spooky-ookie climate is here and now i feel there’s no escaping it, as a self-confessed Rareware/Rare nut, so time to dust off the X-Box One , insert Rare Replay in, and giving it another go after a literal decade and more since i’ve played and completed the game on the original X-Box. I’m not bustin that one out of its drawer/tomb, sorry.

Grabbed By The Ghoulies it’s more than the fairly obvious choice for the “Halloween game” feature review, as its still hails from the disastrous era when Nintendo simply sold Rare to Microsoft, killing a lot of the company’s projects…. or in this case making them shift the originally intended platform (in this case the Gamecube, as one could guess), as this one was actually the first Rare game to be shipped under the X-Box banner, and honestly i’m kinda sad that i pine for that era of Rare games nowadays, but i do, especially considering the post-360 stuff they did… or didn’t.

For better historical context, it was also the early 2000s, and more specifically, it was that brief period in gaming where – for whatever reason – action games wanted to implement a different control scheme for combat, as in, trying to simplify and skip the old way of combined button imputs to do moves… by making you control the melee combat with the right analogic stick, which since inception had been created to control the camera, a usual problem many 3D games had.

Actually, scratch that “for whatever reason”, as it was probably this game to kick off this short lived trend, since the very next year we had a Jet Li game, Rise To Honor, implement a similar control scheme, then in 2005 the Tekken spin-off Death By Degrees did too… and later Too Human, and also Neverdead, because some lessons are never to be learned by certain people.

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The Spooktacular Eight #18: The Dunwich Horror (1970)

We cover surprisingly little Lovecraft content, so let’s rectify that a bit with one of the earliest film adaptation of a popular tale of Mr. Racist, The Dunwich Horror, arguably one of the most well known stories of his and hence one of the most adapted alongside The Color Out Of Space, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Herbert West- Reanimator, and obviously The Call Of Cthulu.

Speaking of official adaptation, at the very least, and even so this is just the second oldest film adaptation, as Roger Corman (whom also was an executive producer here) did a loose but credited adaptation in 1963’s The Haunted Palace, part of his Edgar Allan Poe series but in this case just borrowing the name from a poem later tied to Poe’s Fall Of The House Of Usher, in reality adapting The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward.

And loose adaptation of Lovecraft’ works was the name of the game at the time, which was when his work finally started gathering popularity and beginning his revival to a staple of horror and science fiction that is today.

So since this is the first properly marketed wide spread film adaptation, i’m willing to cut it some slack as the “first (proper) try” of adapting material that struggles to be adapted in audiovisual form, we’re already had the “cosmic horror is difficult to make on film” talk before (when talking of 2001’s Dagon by Brian Yuzna, if not mistaken), i’m not gonna repeat myself this time.

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Introducing “Platformation Time Again”

If you happen to be a long time reader or followed any of my previous italian blogs (not ruling that out), this announcement will feel like a deja-vu, but yes, i’m starting over this column about platforming games with a brand new format and a “when i can” irregular posting.

If you have no idea what i’m talking about and somehow skipped the “column about platforming videogames” part just above, yes, this will be a column about platformers, with in depth, structured reviews with no regular cadence, a new entry/review will basically happen when i can actually set time aside to play and dissect a game, so irregular cadence it is.

And yes, it will be all written a new from scratch, so don’t worry about that.

Not much in the way of rules, just i don’t plan to review hacks or bootlegs, at least for now, but i doubt this rule will change over time. Just making this clear.

As to why, i’m a big platformer buff, so i missed doing these, hence are we again. 🙂

Also, i might be commissioning a request for the column’s logo later down the line.

MIGHT.

The first entry/review for Platformation Time Again will hit later today, bye!

Parasite Dolls (2003) [REVIEW] | Bubblegum Boomers

Wanted to get around to this for years, as i distinctly remember its cover displaying in the anime section of pretty much any video stores here in “Da Boot” back in the 2000s, and also being pretty featured or sold online. The power of anime cyberpunk and early CG.

Curiously, i’m not really familiar with the series this being a spin-off for, Bubblegum Crisis, which may sound sacrilegious to many, but i never saw as it was distributed on VHS at the time here too, but it was never pushed as much as others, at least as far i remember, i was a more casual anime fan back then and i would have been busy catching localized broadcasts of Dragon Ball, Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star and -especially – Ranma ½ anyway.

Parasite Dolls does feel immediatly like a product of the late 90s early 2000s, as in it’s not a feature film per sè, not a compilation film of 3-4 episodes, but an anthology/mini series of 3 stories set after the events of the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV series.

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[EXPRESSO] Twisters (2024) | That Power Is Yet Unknown

I have to say, for generational reasons, i missed the time where this movie was so widespread, so i watched the 1996 original for the first time just hours before going into theathers to see this follow-up/stand alone sequel, simply called Twisters.

The original was a fun ride, full of hilarious characters played by an amazing cast, though the main focus where the admittely amazing special effects for 1996, and plain old tornadoes were enough to intrigue general audiences.

That said, there is a strangely refreshing quality today to the 90s style approach to disaster movies, even if it’s less “sequel” and more of a remake (a “remaquel”?), as there are parallels, some elements carrying over and characters having similar dynamics, and a similar premise of groups of “tornado hunters”, despite no returning characters from the 1996 movie.

It feels very 90s and it does harness the energy of the original for the most part, with good effects too, in general managing well to update the formula, but intriguingly the core plot actually tackles more how these natural disasters impact peoples’ lives, who’s actually profitting from these, etc.

It’s a shame the movie isn’t willing to concede some needed characterization, more depth to the themes, anything that detract from the “rollercoaster” type of entertaiment, i mean, climate change isn’t mentioned once, and the co-protagonist could almost be cut, as Glenn Powell’s amazing performance of “Tyler Owens”, the ringmaster of a hillbilly storm chasers posse, steals the show.

Twisters almost manages to marry these two different approaches to the formula, but kinda falls short, though in the end it’s still a more than decent movie, one that does feel like a modern take on Twister, even if a bit frustrating since it feels crutched by compromises because of its very legacy.

Shark! AKA Samuel Fuller’s Shark AKA 4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno (1969) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

You can hardly get any more basic with a title like “Shark!” (shouted, of course), so it’s no wonder it got mostly forgotten in time, its status as a pre-Jaws shark film not helping, hence leave it to the italian home video market to release under the title of “4 Bastards For A Place In Hell” (4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno), far more eye-catching and way fuckin better than just “Shark (exclamation mark)” though making one expect to see a spaghetti western, because deception and bullshit was always the name of the game when localizing titles of movies here in Italy.

Though it also can be summed up as “the shark movie with Burt Reynolds in it”, as we have basically a shark-laden style “Treasure Of The Sierra Madre” plot as well, with the protagonist being a gunrunner that loses its cargo near a Sudanese harbor town, making him stuck there, until he’s hired by a woman to help a scientist raid a sunken ship in shark-infested waters for some.. “valuables”.

Pity is, he faces competition from other people hired to do the very same thing..

Not to be confused with 1975’s Shark Treasure by Cornel Wilde, also about a sunken treasure and criminals, and one that also publicized itself on the realism of the sharks in it, because… minds think alike, especially when you’re gonna cash into Jaws’ success.

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Tiger & Crane Fists AKA Savage Killers (1976) [REVIEW] | “That’s A Lot Of Nuts!”

To give us some respite from the videogame reviews dominating this #MeleeMay, i’ve figured we could check out some old fashion cinematic melee action, as in some old ass kung fu flick from Hong Kong. Which doesn’t narrow it down at all, so why not review a movie a lot of people most likely have seen… but also not actually, factually seen first hand?

I’m not talking about parroting opinions from a film Twitter account, i’m talking about Tiger & Crane Fists (also known as Savage Killers) , whom american and international audiences will have some familarity with, even if they don’t think so, because its the film used by Kung Pow – Enter The Fist and given a comedy dub job, because it was the early 2000’s, and – among other things that didn’t age well at all – parody/spoof movies actually made some sense to exist and come out in theathers, after taking off big in the 70s and 80s with the various Mel Brooks films, the Police Academy franchise, and continuining through the 90s with the Naked Gun series.

And then absolutely nothing else after.

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It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955) [REVIEW] #giantmonstermarch

It was another age. Another time.

The land was green but not good, as it was irradiated with radioactive sludge.

It was indeed the age of the atoms, the nucular spectacular of what new horrors science could do, and then eventually what kind of cinematic entertaiment companies could spun out of the Atom Age fad, monster movies being the more obvious one, as even the second Godzilla movie was more cheesy, and more in tone with other disaster flicks where the giant creature stomping and romping about was in some way born or mutated by radioactive fallout.

Before mutated anything, there was a man that already stunned the world of cinema with its special effect wizardry, Ray Harryhausen, having learned the ways of the magic known as stop-motion animation from his mentor, the legendary Willis O’Brien, whom worked on bringing the original King Kong to life, as well as the dinosaurs in the 1925 film adaptation of The Lost World.

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