Art by Elden Ardiente.

Source: Deviant Art; shared by Kean Gilbert via Marianne Plumridge

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