George Jones and the Giant Squid was written and directed by Dan Osborn and Vincenzo Perrella, whose previous work has gained them some attention, especially when their satirical vignette This is Perth “went viral” online in 2009, becoming the “most watched Western Australia short film of all time” and was awarded both Best Film and People’s Choice awards at the 23rd WA Screen Awards.

George Jones and the Giant Squid follows (though is not related to) the pair’s 19-minute satire It’s Just Gary (2010) and runs with the classic Moby Dick-esque theme of obsession over a sea monster.

Synopsis:

In the waters of a distant island lurks Old Bertie, a fearsome, gargantuan squid. The islanders, fearful of its wrath, make frequent offerings in an effort to appease it. When George Jones’ mother disappears, the young boy begins his hunt for the beast. George’s secret quest brings him face to face with dangers unforetold, and threatens to destroy his already fragile relationship with his heartbroken father.

Trailer:

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Directors Perrella and Osborn commented that the film was “inspired by our love of the fantastical and the absurd, but at its heart it is a story about a boy’s relationship
with his father.”

They commented:

Throughout the film, young George deals with uncertainties and injustices, faces the frustrations of being powerless, and makes attempts to satisfy his urge to know more. In short, he grapples with the issues that affect anyone making the transition to adulthood.

It was our desire to create a distinctive world, one that was isolated and stagnant, and seemingly open, yet oppressive. The costume, production design, locations and colour palette were all chosen to construct an archaic community that exists in a time and place that is unique unto itself. We intended, through performance style and musical orchestration, to create a distinctive, subtly comic tone that would enhance the fable-like quality of the film.

We were fortunate to be able to work with Luke Hewitt [as George Jones] and Leon Osborn [as Mr Jones] to create a palpable sense of tension between father and son. This was paramount in effectively evoking the real heart of the story as the characters each deal in their own way with the loss of George’s mother [Alison Van Reeken].

It was a privilege to work with such a talented cast and crew to bring our story to the screen.

George Jones and the Giant Squid has recently completed post-production and runs for just over 14 minutes. It was funded through the highly competitive ScreenWest/FTI Hyperlink initiative and had its premiere on on 21 July 2011 at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival. It has been officially selected (as one of the 45 films out of 2,200 films entered) for screening at Flickerfest International Short Film Festival 2012 Australian Competition. Flickerfest is Australia’s leading and only Academy® accredited and BAFTA recognised international short film festival. For those in the Sydney area (and anyone willing to travel downunder) the festival runs from 6th to 15th of January 2011 at Bondi Pavillion, Sydney, before touring nationally.

Check out more about George Jones and the Giant Squid on the official website.

• Sources: Ella Wright (Producer) via Avery Guerra; press release; official website; Perrella and Osborn’s website.

Gallery:

I’m not sure what the title of this new film from director/writer/dp/editor Michael Rigler says about the titular beastie (… it’s a big tentacle with a claw at the end? … hmmm, maybe… stay on until the end of this article and you may find out!), but viewing the trailer will give you clear insight into its old-school, monochromatic, tongue-in-cheek referencing of classic B-monster flicks from the 1950s.

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Synopsis:

The Tentacle’s Claw is the story of one man’s quest to use the power of mind control to take over the world, and the one woman who could stop him.

Dr Demonious Horlack has set up his laboratory of horrors in a quiet, seaside town. The former Nazi scientist has devised a way to control simple creatures using the power of the mind. With the help of his assistant Gunda, he has gained power over a giant cephalopod, and is using the creature as his personal assassin.

Fortunately for the people of the planet, there is a schoolteacher, Marie LeMay,  living in the same town. As the traumatic tentacle attacks start to take their gruesome toll, Marie begins to unlock innate, psychic abilities. Her brainy scientist boyfriend, Professor Dick Goodwin, helps her recognize the potential she has deep within the recesses of her mind. The stage is set for an epic, psychic showdown. But can she prevail, or will Dr Horlack carry out his evil plans to take over the world and make Marie his psychic slave-bride?

Once completed,  The Tentacle’s Claw will be feature length (there’s approximately 67 minutes of it at the moment, Rigler tells us). “My wife Tara Manuel is the star and producer,” he said, “and we made the film on a shoestring budget. We raised about $1,200 through a Cabaret we staged to feed the cast and crew and buy a few costumes!”

Above: Smoking (and surreptitious tentacles) can be bad for you

Above: Dr Horlack attacks Marie psychically, using a tentacle on loan from Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood

Above: Never trust rabbits, children or clocks during psychic attacks

Above: the secret is out! The bad guys (and Rigler) got their monster by mail order via the ads at the back of a 1957 issue of Confidential.

And finally, a special treat! An exclusive for Undead Backbrain readers — a glimpse of the monster itself! Say “Hi!” and be nice!

Filmed on location in Corner Brook, Newfoundland with a cast of local actors, The Tentacle’s Claw is slated for a January 2012 release. More pics, cast info and startling revelations that may kill you if you read them unprepared can be found on the official website. Dare you go there?

Source: Michael Rigler via Avery.

Giant squids/octopi — along with their soul-mates, the sea-serpent — are frequent visitors to the pages of ship logs and newspapers throughout the ages. They crop up in the indices of weird-shit books and magazines with a sort of casual inevitability that must be the envy of celebrities everywhere.

Source: Pierre Denys de Montfort (1810) reproduced in R. Ellis (1994), Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale Ltd. — via wikipedia.

Sometimes the really big ones are identified as the legendary “Kraken”, star of Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest (US-2006; dir.  Gore Verbinski) — though the visualisations of the Kraken in Clash of the Titans (US-2010; dir. Louis Leterrier) and indeed Ray Harryhausen’s version in the original 1981 film weren’t overly squid-like, apart from the tentacles. Still, it’s all grist for the fantasy mill, scientific accuracy or not.

Apart from the above mentioned, famous giant squids/octopi from the cinema include the nameless beastie from various renditions of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (in particular, the 1954 version directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Kirk Douglas as Ned and James Mason as the infamous misanthrope Captain Nemo), Ray Harryhausen’s tentacle-deprived Really Big Octopus from It Came From Beneath the Sea (US-1955; dir. Robert Gordon), the Whatever-It-Is from Deep Rising (US-1998; dir. Stephen Sommers) and the co-star of the recent “classic” Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (US-2009; dir. Jack Perez/Ace Hannah).

Early book illustration of “The Scene” from Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Then there’s the whole Lovecraftian tentacle-fest known as the Cthulhu mythos — but we won’t go there though if you’re interested you could go check out this Undead Backbrain article).

What this is all about is just my typically roundabout way of introducing you to a new giant squid movie. This one’s a short animated film called Giant Squid, directed by Maxwell O. Perry and released by Dimly Lit Films.

Created in the “limited animation” style of South Park, it tells the tale of a very nasty and very big squid and the poor sods who hunt it.

Synopsis:

When Elise’s boyfriend is abducted by a giant green killer squid in the Atlantic Ocean, she enlists the help of a marine biologist and a drunken squid poacher to track the squid before it is too late … but the squid has other plans.

Giant Squid has everything you need in a giant squid movie. This includes:

1. A large green squid:

2. Beautiful women:

3. Gore in abundance:

4. A beautiful woman in a bikini covered in blood:

5. An attractive female scientist complete with lab coat and glasses:

6. A expository scene delivered by the attractive female scientist:

8. A panicking naval commander:

6. A crusty old sea-dog who’s the only one that knows how to deal with the Squid:

7. A climactic scene where the giant squid trashes stuff:

8. A concluding scene (But who will prevail?)

Anyway, check out the trailer below:

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Giant Squid will be playing in the 1pm Matinee Block of films on Saturday 23 July (between films from South Korea and India) at the 15 Minutes of Fame Film Festival in Palm Bay, FL. For those in the general vicinity of Florida, the Festival takes place at the Palm Bay Dollar Movies at 160 Malabar Rd. Tickets are $2.00 each. Bargain!

Meanwhile there are some “Making of” videos that you can watch starting here.

Source: Dimly Lit website; Facebook page; YouTube Channel. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood

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Thanks for the heads-up, Avery!

You can read the Backbrain interview with the director, Stuart Simpson, here. Or check out the official website.

In 2012, Tokyo may very well be attacked by something with at least one very large tentacle. Will it have more than six of them? Who knows? But this investment teaser makes me hope that the money will be forthcoming and Gomera can trash Japanese cities in honour of his US ancestor, the sextopus from It Came From Beneath the Sea.

Odd name though. I’m not sure what Gamera will think of it.

The Gomera Project is the work of young Japanese animation company IDA, who are responsible for Cat Shit One. If you don’t know what that is, go to their YouTube Channel to watch the first episode in this animated satire that features a pair of rabbit soldiers from Special Force “Cat Shit One”, who are on the trail of unidentified enemy militia.

Source: Twitchfilm via Avery Guerra. Text: Robert Hood.

What could be better than that?

But if it isn’t enough, io9 has three clips from the film, and RoboJapan offers an article on the excellently Blobbish music.

• Source: via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery. Writer: Robert Hood.

Sharktopus is produced by B-Film legend Roger Corman.

Sharktopus (US-2010; dir. Declan O’Brien)

Thanks, Roger! You’re an inspiration to B-flick filmmakers everywhere.

• Summoned from the depths by Kaiju Search-Robot Avery
• Writer: Robert Hood

Gamera tai uchu kaiju Bairasu [trans. Gamera vs the Outer Space Monster Virus] (1968; dir. Noriaki Yuasa) was the fourth Gamera film from would-be rival to Toho’s daikaiju eiga crown, Daiei Studios. Like the same period’s minor Godzilla film Oru kaiju daishingeki [trans. All Monsters Giant Attack] (1969; dir. Ishiro Honda) [aka Godzilla's Revenge] — which was made, at least in part, in reaction to the success of the Gamera films — Gamera tai uchu kaiju Bairasu was firmly aimed at juveniles, not the adult/cross-generational audience that Godzilla generally appealed to. Things were kept relatively cheap during this time, full of stock monster footage from previous Gamera flicks and containing minimal new city-trashing. What it did have in abundance was a plethora of surreal weirdness — and Boy Scouts.

Gamera tai uchu kaiju Bairasu is an alien-invasion daikaiju film featuring a bunch of Boy Scouts who are kidnapped by pointy-headed alien cephalopods in flying beach balls to be used as a shield against the protective antics of the child-friendly flying turtle.

Oh, yeah!

The aliens plant a brain-control device on Gamera and send him off to trash Tokyo (in black-and-white footage from the first Gamera film), something he hadn’t been able to do since that film in fact, as he had subsequently become rather too much the Good Monster to indulge in such anti-social behaviour.

Naturally the alien plot goes awry thanks to the kids. In the last ten minutes or so of the film, the master squid chops off the heads of the other aliens (who are hiding in human bodies) and absorbs them. In true daikaiju fashion, he thus becomes a huge alien squid-monster so that Gamera can fight him, monster-on-monster, in defense of Earth (and the children). This even involves Gamera being skewered through the chest, though that doesn’t seen to faze him too much.

Some of the cast were played by Americans, specifically the second lead Carl Craig (on the right below), which helped when the film was subsequently manhandled into an American format as Destroy All Planets [aka Gamera vs. Viras]. Gamera vs Viras was never one of the best to start with, though it looks way better and less cheap in the original format than it has tended to look in the pan-and-scanned, cut, and endlessly recopied US version that most viewers in the West are familiar with.

Now Retromedia’s new release of the US version — with the silly title that was no doubt meant to suggest Toho’s famous Godzilla epic, Destroy All Monsters — seeks to redress some of the visual problems that have plagued available public-domain versions of the film.

Fred Olen Ray is reported as saying:

We’ve transferred an original 16mm AIP-TV print and color corrected it two times to produce the best version of this film available… But the real reason to catch this Special Edition is the commentary track by American star, Carl Craig… his recollections of the film making process is fascinating. Hosted by Brett Homenick and Damon Foster, recorded in Chicago by our own Randy Carter. (As reported by Brett Homenick)

It is, of course, no substitute for a copy of the Japanese original, but this release will be the best edition of the AIP-TV version of the film ever made available on DVD and should please many fans.

• Source: Amazon.com; Brett Homenick; via Avery Guerra; also Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo! by Stuart Galbraith IV and Videohound’s Dragon: Asian Action and Cult Flicks by Brian Thomas.
• Written by Robert Hood

We all like a good bit of giant squid action. Artist Maxwell Perry (pictured below) is intent on providing some in a short animated film called Giant Squid. The film, produced through Dimly Lit Films (“Fine Purveyor of Short Animated Culture”), is a follow-up (not a sequel) to his previous animation — a zombie cartoon titled Frantic Undead, which we’ll be featuring shortly.

“I’m an artist who has always loved monster movies and genre cinema,” Perry told Undead Backbrain’s newshound, Kaiju Search-Robot Avery. “Over the past several years, I found myself gradually moving past traditional drawing and painting towards using video and animation in my work. I realized that what I really liked was narrative storytelling and that unique combination of image and story that only comes with animation.”

Giant Squid draws inspiration from Moby Dick and Godzilla movies in pretty much equal parts, he explained — which sounds right up our alley. He explained:

The plot centers around a teenage girl, Elise, whose boyfriend is abducted by a monster squid. Elise then tracks the squid down with the help of a marine biologist and an Ahab-like squid poacher named Cappy. Mayhem ensues.

Conceptually, one of the underlying aims of my animations is to draw attention to the amount of creativity that goes into making a low- to no-budget independent work by creating them on a minuscule scale. I try to poke fun at and embrace common horror movie tropes simultaneously.

Giant Squid is not meant for young kids, but my hope is that if you’re the type of person that enjoys a good laugh during an especially gory horror film, you’ll find the humor in my work.

Giant Squid is currently in production and is set for completion in August.

Teaser Trailer:

Some clips from Giant Squid:

Storyboards:

The Dimly Lit Films YouTube Channel offers some Making-Of Videos as well. Go there to check them out!

And stay tuned for info on Maxwell Perry’s Frantic Undead!

• Sources: Maxwell Perry; Dimly Lit Films website
• Writing: Robert Hood  |  Research: Avery Guerra

Sherlock Holmes (US-2010; dir. Rachel Goldenberg)

[Note: This review involves some spoilers.]

In the Asylum’s latest monster mash (preceding the upcoming Mega Piranha), Sherlock Holmes pits his deductive skills against a slew of monsters, mostly large ones. There is, of course, an evil genius behind them. If that statement alone doesn’t pique your interest, don’t bother reading on.

First, some background observations. Filmmakers and writers alike seem rather fond of taking classic naturalistic (more-or-less) franchises and cross-pollinating them with fantasy tropes. Recent examples have been particularly outré — and commercially successful, even if artistically they often leave a bit to be desired. Look at the not-altogether surprising way the Jane Austen/Seth Grahame-Smith collaboration Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was embraced by readers — a hybrid novel that was a huge bestseller and is now supposedly being turned into a film.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories — hugely popular at the time of their publication and well beyond — have been a target of this sort of artistic hybridization for some time. A while ago I read the anthology The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade Books), which features stories written by major authors in which the iconic consulting detective must deal with cases that are rather more fantastical than had been recorded previously by Holmes’ official biographer, good friend Dr Watson: Holmes vs aliens, ghosts, demons, even dinosaurs. Most of them are excellent reads; some are stunningly good. But how valid is it?

While the original stories sometimes presented bizarre and apparently supernatural scenarios, Holmes’ rationalist approach inevitably resulted in uncovering the less-fantastic realities that lay behind them. Good examples are the oft-filmed “The Hound of the Baskervilles” with its supposedly supernatural curse, and “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” (which was filmed in Hammeresque fashion as “The Last Vampire” in the superlative Jeremy Brett TV series of the 1990s). Many would argue that being rational lies at the heart of Holmes’ very identity.

Paradoxically, the hybridization process works pretty well in the case of Holmes. The apparent blasphemy that lies behind the posthumous addition of the fantastic to the rationalist Holmes mythos is somewhat justified by three factors. Firstly, there’s Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s espousal of spiritualism, along with his rather naive propensity to take up dubious causes, such as that of the notorious “Cottingley Fairies”. Secondly, Conan Doyle’s other major “franchise” writing, the Professor Challenger stories (The Lost World, The Poison Belt, The Land of Mist, “The Disintegration Machine” and “When the World Screamed”) had a strong fantastical quality, being science fiction or supernatural in theme — so that if such elements had sneaked into Doyle’s own Holmes stories it wouldn’t have been all that surprising. Thirdly, the fact that Holmes is called upon specifically to look into cases that appear to defy logic and are exceedingly baffling lays the groundwork for the stories to offer actual rather than apparent supra-natural solutions. After all, one of Holmes’ most famous sayings is “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. This cries out for a fantastical re-interpretation.

Holmes, of course, has had a long, and remarkably strong, history of appearances on TV and on film. Recently, two movies with the title “Sherlock Holmes” have been released  — one a mega-blockbuster directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey, Jr. as a hyperactive Holmes, and the other the aforementioned low-budget effort from The Asylum. Both, in their own ways, stretch the parameters of the Holmes mythos, and, though not equal in profile, both do a decent job of staying true to the Holmes universe — more or less.

While the Guy Ritchie film can be seen as the most unorthodox, it is only stylistically that it deviates in any serious way from the norm of the original stories. Other apparent “changes” to Holmes can pretty well all be justified in terms of facts derived from Doyle’s work (yes, Holmes was a boxer and had studied an Asian martial art). Sure, Robert Downey Jr’s Holmes  doesn’t act or dress much like Basil Rathbone’s version, being inordinately hyperactive and scruffy in appearance, but in fact Rathbone’s always immaculately dressed detective introduced a few of the now-accepted iconic Holmes elements without much textual justification (such as the deer-stalker hat and magnifying glass). His Holmes isn’t any more “authoritative” than Downey Jr’s, though it helped establish the post-Doyle norm.

In the Asylum film, on the other hand, Holmes himself and the way he acts is closer to this norm, as portrayed by Ben Syder, and it’s the fantastic elements that can be seen as controversial. Sherlock Holmes (US-2010; dir. Rachel Goldenberg) has Holmes and Watson (Gareth David-Lloyd) pitted against a giant octopus, a bipedal, T-Rex type dinosaur (somewhat smaller than the real thing — though recent paleontological discoveries have coincidentally revealed such a beast to have existed), a fire-breathing dragon and a sort of Victorian-period Iron Man (Dominic Keating). [This latter fact is ironic, as it allows the film to be seen as playing off both of Robert Downey Jr's two recent blockbuster franchises at the same time!] Given that it eventually offers a non-supernatural, pseudo-scientific explanation for its “anomalies”, The Asylum’s Sherlock Holmes is almost traditional in approach — though the addition of a slightly divergent family history and a sibling who isn’t Mycroft may worry purists.

To get maximum enjoyment from the film, it’s probably best not to think about it too much — the logistics behind some of the depicted events really don’t make a lot of sense. Sure, there’s a plot that hangs together more-or-less and a script by Paul Bales that works well, scene-by-scene — but if you dig back into the whys and wherefores there’s plenty to make you mutter ironically to yourself “Right! As if.” every now and then. Never mind. If you’re into the sort of monstrous genre silliness that features in the Asylum’s previous, rather successful foray into giant monsterdom, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (US-2009; dir. Ace Hannah), then  Sherlock Holmes‘ absurd undercurrents aren’t going to worry you much at all.

More significantly, what you’ll get when you watch this Holmes at work is a strong dose of good, entertaining B-flick fantasy adventure. If it’s the fact that the fantasy is dressed up in a cloak of science fictional “real-world” logic (in steam-punk mode) that makes you question the more unlikely aspects, it’s easy enough to ignore the fact and just enjoy the spectacle. I mean, a giant octopus in classic ship-assault overdrive, a T-Rex loose in Victorian London’s backstreets (doing a prehistoric re-interpretation of Jack the Ripper), and a dragon busy fire-bombing the city in anticipation of the Blitz are all things calculated to warm the hearts of exploitation-film geeks everywhere.

What’s more, director Rachel Goldenberg has effectively made the jump from the production to the direction side of things, delivering a relatively tight, well-directed film that knows what we want to see and gives it to us consistently, or at least as consistently as the budget allows. The film is not static, and apart from one fairly pointless and over-emphasised scene where Watson is put in danger by climbing a precarious cliff-face it is well paced. The CGI monsters are scattered throughout the proceedings with due regard to audience patience levels — and they’re not bad at all in mid-budget terms. The mechanical dragon in particular is a beauty, even if the fight with it could have been spiced up significantly given an injection of funds.

Of course, the film isn’t perfect. Ben Syder is competent enough, but his depiction of Holmes lacks presence, especially in contrast to Gareth David-Lloyd, who creates a much stronger Watson than Syder’s slightly diminutive Holmes. David-Lloyd’s experience in the BBC series Torchwood certainly shows, and much of the professional conviction that this Asylum production displays comes down to his presence in it. While not a mega-star David-Lloyd can project his personality onto the screen and is well-enough thought of at present to give the film an air of being well above average in the cinematic pecking order, marketing-wise. It’s a lesson that The Asylum and other small production companies making low-budget genre movies should note — there’s value in spending a bit of money to get at least one actor on aboard who has contemporary credibility. Here, Dominic Keating (of Star Trek: Enterprise fame) gives similar value as the human villain.

Filmed on location in Wales, with a competent UK supporting cast and ready-made sets, Goldenberg’s Sherlock Holmes may not reach to the pinnacle of the Conan Doyle filmic canon, but it should be welcomed as a curious offshoot by Holmes aficionados and by the rest of its genre audience as a quirky and enjoyable evening’s entertainment.