The Spooktacular Eight #28: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

Enough of Mark Polonia’s stuff, let’s go deeper into the homegrown cinema territory with a “classic” by David Wascavage, Suburban Sasquatch.

Sometimes you think you know a certain genre, then see shit like this or Fungicide that makes you realize, yes, we can go lower than an early Polonia Bros direct-to-video film made in the late 90s, there is a 10^th circle of movie hell… or heaven, depending on whom you ask.

If you ever wondered what those Donald Trump VS Bigfoot VS Nazi Shark fuckin movies would have looked like if they were made in the 90s, and were somehow worse than Curse Of Bigfoot… well, wonder no more, because while this was made in 2004, it looks like the first Feeders film or something like that, it’s that territory of shooting your own shit with pocket change (and some “locally sourced” weed as stand-in for salaries) as budget, with your friends as “actors” and location shooting meaning you most likely recorded the footage (“filmed” is too strong of a word) somewhere in some woods or field near your home, or inside a friends’ house.

This is HIGH amateur hour stuff, my fellows bad movie buffs, so amateur it hurts.

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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.

The Cyclops (1957) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

Really scraping the bottom of the Bert I. Gordon barrell with this one, but i did mention it twice before, and – as i said when reviewing 2008’s Cyclops – it’s not like we’re drowning in cyclops movies, at all, and this one has some of that “so bad it’s good” qualities, so for this year’s Giant Monster March’s finale it’s time to end as we begun, meaning to fall face first into a vat of Gouda, groan like a fuzzy giant toddler and “do the cyclops”.

At least it has Lon Chaney Jr. past his prime as a Universal horror star but not yet being reduced to a pathetic, drunken parody of himself (the epitome of that would be him in 1971’s Dracula VS Frankenstein, which nowadays is kind of a cursed movie as it was the undignified end of many actors careers and lives), not yet, here we have him in his post-glory phase were he did a lot of work pretty much any support roles in any kind of movie, mostly westerns, exotic adventure flicks, and horror films once in a while, mostly cheap, low budget, often indipendent productions.

The Cyclops definitely fits the bill, being a Bert I. Gordon film and what that entails, and here a plays a villanous mining expert in search of uranium, part of a posse led by the wife of a pilot that disappeared 3 years ago in the jungles of Mexico, as she still believes he’s alive despite all odds, but guess what, it’s a 50s b-movie, so the mining for radioactive material results in mutated everything, from spiders, lizards, eagles, mice and whatever animal stock footage Bert could superglue together.

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Robot Holocaust (1986) [REVIEW] | Nobody expects the… Robot Holocaust?

Since newer generations of shit movie seekers might not be familiar with this one, let’s cover one of the “classics” in terms of poverty filmaking, one that indeed rivals the many horrible trashy exploitations movies we italians pumped out for the international market during the 70s and 80s, to a legendary degree. If you didn’t know, you would be forgiven in believing this was just another italian production with the usual combination of american actors and italian shooting locations.

Robot Holocaust has certainly that kind of aura to it, even more when it goes for the double whammy of having a sci fi story mixed the sword and sorcery bullshit… minus actual magic.

And i gotta say, upon revisiting it its still an impressive piece of legendary so bad its good shit, a relic from a past filled with movies like these that were so bad and poor in everything they ended up being accidentally funny, hilarious while being so bad it borders on being utright unwatchable shit.

For many of you, this isn’t anything new, at all, as the movie it’s pretty well known among older generations of crap cinema conosseurs, it’s “basic knowledge”, but Robot Holocaust deserves its place in bad movie history, and its legend it’s worth retelling over and over, even if it doesn’t involve Andre The Giant.

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Sharkenstein (2016) [REVIEW] | VS Baragon (not included)

It was just a matter of time before we reached the Nazi end of the sharkxploitation spectrum, and this – as we will find out later in Shark Month – isn’t even the only shark movie like this.

At least in regard for this combination, it’s from Mark Polonia (of the Polonia Brothers), so you already known what to expect, including a kickass poster that we just know it’s bound to be better than the movie itself in every way. I do like the posters they make for these flicks, genuinely do.

The plot takes more than a page from Frankenstein VS Baragon/Frankenstein Conquers The World, as it basically rips off the idea of the Creature’s heart (and in this case, also the brain) being immortal, and applies it to a “Franken-shark” created by mad scientist Dr. Klaus, as he continues a previously shut down experiment about weaponizing sharks the Third Reich started during WWII.

Now, more than 50 years later, the experiment has been concluded and the “super Nazi shark” is set loose on the small seatown of Katzman Cove, where three friends have come for a boating trip, and now have to survive this unexpected threat so obviously NOT cooked up by The Doctor from Hellsing.

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The Curse Of The Komodo (2004) [REVIEW] | Now Without Curses

Yeah, we’re reviewing the original after the…. follow-up (sequel isn’t really the right word by any stretch of the imagination) that was Komodo VS Cobra, where a mutated Chris Latta is pitted against a radioactive Komodo dragon for reptile supremacy.

Why? Because i was bored and fired that movie up on Amazon Prime Video without doing much research, i mean, it’s not like Piranhaconda (also by Jim Wynorski, incidentally) it’s a crossover between the Piranha series and the Anaconda franchise. And i like i explained in that review, it’s not like it really mattes, since that movie recycled pretty much everything from its *cough * “predecessor”, so inevitably describing the plot of this one also works for most of the sequel, that basically added another giant monster and changed some characters just because it kinda had to.

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Zoombies 2 (2019) [REVIEW] | Aardvark Undead Attack

Apparently the first one did alright from a financial standpoint, so 3 years later, we got a sequel, also directed by Glenn Miller.

And by sequel The Asylum means adding a number to the title, because despite the first one doing sequel bait at the very last second, this doesn’t follow up on the adventures of Kifo, undead silverback gorilla with a broken heart and rotting flesh, no. Guess trying to give the zombie gorilla a Frankenstein’s monster style “vengeance arc” was too much effort, so they didn’t do that.

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Zoombies (2016) [REVIEW] | A Friend That’s Good With The Dead

Even with a title like this, you wouldn’t expect the movie to basically shit itself in the first scene, which happens to be a fictitious commercial for an endangered species zoo called “Eden Wildlife Zoo”, an advertisment that looks it was made in Windows Movie Maker… in the early 2000’s, by people that barely knew what a computer was.

I can’t stress how childish and amauterish this is, even for The Asylum, who in this case must have allocated 100 bucks for editing and production, combined, given how much animal footage seems just ripped from free libraries or used what one of the employee recorded when it took a family trip to the zoo. It looks like they’re playing a joke, but they’re not, and in the first 2 minutes they already shit down their own pants. But fear not, the CG monkeys you seen in the first 5 minutes are somehow worse, i – almost – can’t believe it. I’ve seen snippets from Primal Park, so i can’t really call it “the worst”, but still, it’s really shitty regardless, almost impressively so.

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3 Headed Shark Attack (2015) [REVIEW] | Triple Trejo

3 Headed Shark Attack 2015

3 years have passed, and with the help of Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray back to direct, the little shark grew another head, because why not, let’s make a series out of this wafer thin premise!

As you might imagine, this is not a sequel, it’s just another shark movie, but this time he has 3 heads instead of 2, we gotta escalate something, and the plot doesn’t revolve around improbable college summer seminar at sea. We have them bikini clad (and clad-less) ladies, young people partying, drinking, and being victims of shark interruptus, but it’s more an incidental, an inevitability of this kind of shlock. Continua a leggere “3 Headed Shark Attack (2015) [REVIEW] | Triple Trejo”

The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE (2020) [REVIEW] Shlock Stock Drop

The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE 2020

In case you haven’t seen my review of the OVA, yeah, i found out after writing the review that the OVA was just an edited down version of the movie, also called The Island Of Giant Insects, so in retrospect it’s no wonder that was such a choppy mess, one that was made just for marketing purposes, and now is a completely pointless product.

For sake of completition, i feel compelled to witness myself – in full this time – the horrors in The Island Of Giant Insects. Continua a leggere “The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE (2020) [REVIEW] Shlock Stock Drop”