12 Days Of Dino Dicember #5: Claw (2021)

From Gerald Rascionato, mostly know as the director of Open Water 3: Cage Dive, this is the other dinosaur movie he made in 2021 that we mentioned in the review of Triassic Hunt, simply titled Claw.

The premise is fairly simple, with two friends forced to spend the night in a ghost town (after getting a flat tire), where they find themselves hunted by a prehistoric predator.

Almost immediatly i got Raptor Ranch vibes, since we also have a scientist creating dinosaurs via a ramshackle laboratory in a middle-of-nowhere town (here Southern California instead of the usual rural town of backwoods stereotypes), the dinosaur pen, the dinosaur outsmarting his creator, etc.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #4: Attack Of The Super Monsters (1982)

It really IS Christmas time, because today we’re doing a movie that’s both dinosaurs and vintage tokusatsu cheesiness from the 80s. How can you go wrong? You simply can’t.

Add drill spaceship to the mix and you really can’t go wrong.

Though it’s worth pointing out this is actually an edited down TV series (i suppose it’s just the first 4 episodes of the series mashed together, as it was a common practice at the time), Dinosaur War Aizenborg, itself quite the interesting piece of media, as it’s an hybrid anime and live action show, with sentai style rubber suit and stop motion puppets action for the dinosaurs and giant monsters, but animation for the humans and most regular animals, played over live-action miniature sets.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #3: Jurassic Expedition (2018)

I don’t know what it was with late 2010s and the small resurgence of “dinosaurs in space” movies, but yes, that off handed comment i made when reviewing Jurassic Galaxy wasn’t for naught, that movie had a “buddy” of sorts, released a year later as… Alien Expedition?

It’s amazing how that was actually the original title, which was quickly changed in most releases because dinosaurs bring all the boys to the yard, after all. “Jurassic” is a palatable adjective, it is.

Seriously, how the hell do you make a low budget sci-fi movie about dinosaur planets and NOT put a dinosaur relevant word in the title? You want people to eventually watch your movie, right?

Even more amazing is that the two movies also share the “dual brothers directors”… just pulling your leg, it’s a guy that just happens to be named Wallace Brothers, and only having made a single film before this one, David And Goliath from 2016, never heard of it before myself.

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12 Days Of Dino Dicember #2: King Dinosaur (1955)

Ah yes, time to slip back into the comfy territory of “featured on MST3K” old 50 movies about dinosaurs, and of course when talking about MST3K featured flicks, Bert I. Gordon (or Mister BIG, as he was nicknamed by good ol’ Forrest J. Ackerman) is bound to be involved somewhat.

This is actually his first directed movie, followed 2 years later by Beginning Of The End, aka the one about giant locusts and “mantises in pantises”.

Sorry, getting back on track. Yeah, King Dinosaur marks Mister BIG’ first feature length work, after some television commercials, and let’s just say that its first step it’s already a good indication of him being incredibly cheap and fast in making a movie. And i mean both, as the movie was shot in a week, and was indeed cheap, since it has only 4 actors and it uses stock footage, not only for the scene of the mammoth’s attack it’s lifted from 1940’s One Million BC, but the army and the atom bomb explosions are just military stock footage, and there’s no cheaper than free.

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Silent Night (2012) [REVIEW] | Remake Night

Ah yes, Christmas horror, a tradition now decades old, one that inevitably leads one to talk about the Silent Night, Deadly Night series, that – while not inventing the notion, as Bob Clark’s Black Christmas was already a decade old itself by then– had quite the impact back in 1984, and definitely helped the subgenre grow into a profitable niche, while also spawning two sequels and two other numbered entries that really had nothing to do with 1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night at all.

So yeah, if you know me.. you already know we ain’t talking about any of those directly, there’s always a catch, so we’re revisiting the 2012 remake of the 1984 original Silent Night Deadly Night, simply called “Silent Night”, following the then common trend of remakes shortening titles.

It was either that or Silent Night, Bloody Night, which is – odd as it may sound – not a rip-off and actually pre-dates both the original Black Christmas and the original Silent Night, Deadly Night.

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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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[EXPRESSO] Spider Man: Far From Home (2021) | Multiverse Mayhem

I feel kinda bad for this part of the new Spider Man series because… yeah, let’s get this out immediatly, Marvel themselves already did it years ago as one of the best animated movies i’ve seen in a while, a miracle all the way that worked as well as it did also thanks to be being not bound to the fucking MCU. And that is finally getting a 2 part sequel too, really looking forward to those.

This one…. yeah, whatever, guess i’ll have to watch it so we can get over it, might be even fun.

This one follows directly from the ending of Far From Home, where Mysterio revealed Spider Man’s real identity being Peter Parker and framed him as a murderer. As he, his friends and family have trouble living with this false stigma, Peter asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell in order to make everyone forget that Peter Parker IS Spider Man, but something goes wrong and multiverse portals invade this reality/continuity, bringing a lot of well known faces from the Spider Man series……

Given the existence of Into The Spiderverse and me not liking too much the new MCU Spider Man movies…. you can color me surprised, because this one was incredibly easy to mishandle, but to my surprise it manages to balance the fanservice and the many villains with a story that actually makes this Peter Parker go through some decisive character development, with a lot at stake and some meaningful consequences.

It’s “also” quite fun, with some funny moments that actually don’t feel forced, there just because the Marvel algorhythm requires some quirky (but not TOO quirky, risque or creative) comedy bits.

Definitely the one i’ve enjoyed the most out of these MCU Spider Man movies, and arguably the better one overall.

[EXPRESSO] House Of Gucci (2021) | This Is The Dynasty

House Of Gucci is not “accurate”, let’s make it abundantly clear.

It’s definitely an instance where it’s important to emphatize the “inspired by real events” disclaimer, because this isn’t “All The Money In The World” Ridley Scott, this is him going full soap/telenovelas on the real life Gucci family feud that started in the 70s and culminated in 1995, with Patrizia Reggiani ordering the assassination of Maurizio Gucci, her husband and also the entrepreneur & president of the Gucci fashion firm.

The story here is presented with the focus on Patrizia introducing herself to Maurizio as a way to get into the Gucci family business, then manipulating and orchestrating the Guccis to turn against each other in order to force the hand of Maurizio in taking rein of the company, despite him starting out as totally indifferent to his heritage and without any true ambition to get involved in it.

She basically turn what start out as fairly decent people into monsters for her own ambition and ruthless desire for dominance, and at one point a tarot card reader is involved, etc.

This is a 2 hour soap opera with a huge movie budget, make no mistake about it, that it’s the main tone of House Of Gucci, as a bombast story about the rise and fall of a dynasty (pun not intended but fitting nonetheless), with very little interest in realism, given the odd – and i feel deliberate – direction some of the cast was given, as some actors feel like they’re acting in a completely different movie, like an unrecognizable Jared Leto in overacting overdrive as “Gucci’s Fethry Duck”.

Despite the sometimes inconsistent tone and it being really trashy, there’s a magnetic kitsch charm to it all, great performances, and it’s massively entertaining all the way through.

Ninja Dragon (1986) [REVIEW] | Dragon sold separately

You thought you were safe from improptu last minute Godfrey Ho ninjas, just because it’s dicember? How sweet, how naive, that’s how the ninjas get you.

That and cut-n-paste editing.

Yeah, sorry to having to bust out these rewrites, but all the major cinema releases i’m interested in basically release all together in a few days, so let’s a quick ninja dip before we talk of the lesser Spider Man multiverse movie hitting theathers.

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The Abominable Snowman (1957) [REVIEW] | Tibet Climbing, Joel

While i teased a Shriek Of The Mutilated review in the Snowbeast’s one…. i’m gonna keep teasing it a bit more, i’m not yet ready to rewatch and talk about that “fine specimen”, but i’m willing to keep the “yeti train” goin’, so let’s defrost a Peter Cushing film from the old Hammer catalogue with their 1957’s “The Abominable Snowman”, itself derived from their BBC series “The Creature”.

The plot sees antropologist John Rollason (Peter Cushing) and a scientist friend of his going to Tibet and being welcomed in a buddist monastery. The head monk questions them and he’s not convinced by John claiming to be there in order to study the local flora, and as soon as an american climber by the name of Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker) joins them, the actual reason for their travel becomes clear: they plan to climb the mountains in a quest for the legendary snowman, the yeti.

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