To fully appreciate Monster From Bikini Beach (US-2008; dir. Darin Wood) you have to take the “Truth in Advertising” approach to criticism. Look at the title. Right? Now what do you expect to find in this movie? Cheesy monsters? Bikini-clad beach bunnies? Trash cinema aesthetics? Okay, keep that in mind.
Monster From Bikini Beach is a pastiche of cheapie 1950s/60s B-grade exploitation flicks that fully knows that it has a minuscule budget, no subtext to speak of, actors of varying ability and a low-brow generic attitude toward narrative, artistic design and tonal ambiance. It has, in fact, embraced these things with enthusiasm, not simply of necessity but with deliberate intent. Therefore, what it offers is:
Bikini-clad women dancing on a beach
A “man-in-a-suit” monster — with an outrageously non-naturalistic design:
Lots of spilt blood:
And spaghetti guts:
Plus bikini tops being removed, accompanied by lots of screaming:
And gratuitous nudity (bare breasts mostly, of course):
And all of this in the pre-credit sequence!
Now if the above causes you to mutter tsshhh… rubbish and wonder where you left your copy of À la recherche du temps perdu, it’s probably fair to say that you shouldn’t watch this film or, if you do, you shouldn’t expect to get much enjoyment out of it. On the other hand, if you like cheap, energetic exploitation films from the ’50s and ’60s, you just might be on a winner.
In the township of Camaroville, which boasts the groovy Bikini Beach as its main attraction, a bunch of eager bikini-clad and body-painted beauties and their lusty partners have gathered to take part in a dance contest. With immaculate timing a terrible monster arises from the stereotypically murky depths — a primordial fiend whose over-sized claws and enormous mouth just can’t get enough of the local beach-blanket bingo. The story follows a crooked cop (Sammy Payday) and his naive squeeze as they try to score bigtime:
– and an eccentric, rather nerdy guy (Archie Barclay) and his attractive “I-wish-she-was-my-girlfriend” buddy, who realise the Truth early on and must work to Save the Party.
Will they be too late to stop the monster’s bloody rampage before the town is denuded of its bikini-wearing wildlife? Will they keep the monster away from the big televised final of the Dance Contest?
(If you answered that last question in the positive, just wait on a sec ’cause I’ve got Marcel Proust’s phone number here somewhere and I know he’d love to talk to you.)
It should be said that though the low-end nature of the project is sometimes apparent in various technical aspects of production — lighting, sound recording, SFX (though the gore and dismemberment is more than adequate for the genre), variable acting ability, occasional flat sections of narrative and some overkill in the dialogue (see Sammy Payday’s final soliloquy) — the cast, crew and director Wood do a smashing job with what they’ve got, and the result is an enjoyable way to pass the time — but only, as I’ve said, if you like this sort of thing.
In fact, Stephen Vargo as Sammy Payday and Galen Howard as Archie Barclay bring an eccentric and sometimes [endearingly] awkward energy to their roles that makes the whole thing less stereotypical than it might have been.
Other positives are lots of groovy beach music and the groovy retro design:
Oh, did I mention the cool monster?
and the gore?
It’s lots of trashy fun. If you get the chance, see it at a fleapit cinema near you!
Much can be forgiven when you come upon an honest example of truth in advertising. Unlike many independent, low-budget films (and many big-budget ones as well), Jay Lee’s Zombie Strippers lives up to its title. Promises are made for zombies and strippers and that’s exactly what the film delivers. Plenty of cannibalistic zombie action, with the sort of extreme comic gore the more avid proponents of the subgenre like so much, and plenty of attractive women dancing and taking their clothes off to loud rock music. On that level at least, there’s not much to complain about. This is B-aesthetic sex-horror schlock at its wildest.
After the requisite living-dead corpses — products of a covert Government research program designed to produce super-soldiers — break out of the secret installation where they were engineered, a strip club situated nearby (in Sartre, Nebraska) finds itself infiltrated by the viral menace and its leading lady “killed” bloodily. Of course, Kat (Jenna Jameson) might be dead but she and her silicone enhancementsre-animate well and prove a spectacular success on the stage. Encouraged by sleazy STD-obsessed club owner Ianna Esco (Robert Englund), other strippers decide to join Kat in living-death in order to increase their popularity with the patrons, oozing blood-smeared sexuality in orgiastic displays of cadaverous eroticism that go down a right treat with the audience. Seems sex and death are a perfect match. Attendance is up, money flows along with the blood and those who are merely naked don’t stand a chance of being noticed. Death becomes de rigueur.
Of course there is a downside. The dead strippers tend to eat the patrons, but what’s a few dead guys between friends? Soon Esco finds his club full of ravenous beauties who are rapidly decaying, his basement full to bursting with zombified ex-patrons and the whole scheme threatening to crash down around him in a big apocalyptic mess.
The thing is, whatever some critics say, this film is not badly made. It may be tasteless — and will certainly offend those who fail to understand the true zen of stomach-churning danse macabre andbare flesh covered in gore — but it was put together with considerable enthusiasm, looks much less cheap than might have been expected, and is often funny. References to existentialist philosophy (especially from the mouths of the strippers), obvious political satire and the socio-ethical criticism that is suggested by the fact that the strip-club patrons get ludicrously turned on by all that gyrating “dead meat” may not make the film profound, but they do suggest that it needn’t be taken entirely at face value — though you should by all means take it at face value if you want to. Throughout, the film displays a tongue-in-cheek attitude and a comedic vim that raises it above most other sex-and-horror exploitation flicks.
On top of that, the acting’s okay (if sometimes overplayed), the direction lively, the zombie make-up excellent and the nudity abundant. In short, I can’t see how — if you’re happy to watch a film with the title Zombie Strippers! in the first place — you could possibly feel you didn’t get your money’s worth …
I saw the new Prom Night remake with Chris Barnes at a preview last night, which is odd as this is Australia and it doesn’t open in its home country until tomorrow. What did we do to deserve such treatment? My full review is on the Horrorscopewebsite.
Prom Night (US-2008; dir. Nelson McCormick)
Reviewed by Robert Hood
This modern slasher-horror film opens with a deceptively clever scene that mingles “teenage” protagonist Donna’s memories of the murder of her parents with her fears regarding the killer. Now, three years later, on the eve of her end-of-school prom night, Donna is once again having nightmares about the psychotic ex-teacher with a murderous obsession for her. Inevitably, of course, despite re-assurances to the contrary, the killer escapes from prison and comes for Donna as the coming-of-age ritual begins…
I find the whole prom night schtick, at least as depicted in American movies, far more bizarre than most of what happens in your average fantasy film, dark or otherwise. I’m sure many Americans find it equally as strange. Basically it appears to involve rich kids being celebrity bitches or assholes [aka arseholes] and strutting about in $2000 gear while agonising over their about-to-be truncated future, investigating the meaning of skin disorders or having sex. Still, it’s at base an end-of-childhood fantasy and this new remake of the 1980s slasher film Prom Night starts off treating it as such. This approach is fine if we must have another film about 20-something actors and actresses pretending to be teenagers, because the film also starts off with a couple of decent scenes that suggest that it might have A Theme (to do with maturation, loss and coping with fear-induced anxiety) – and the two aspects have the potential to complement each other. After all, the writers even include the double-edged, prom-night slasher statement: “You’ll remember this night for the rest of your life!” Alas, however, the film only starts with these things. Somehow the vaguely intelligent thematic stuff gets forgotten, or at least muddled, along the way.
Frankly it’s easier to talk about the less-than-admirable things this remake doesn’t do than it is to talk about the admirable things it does do.
It towers so far out of the atmosphere that meteors and planets revolve around its heads (though lack of oxygen proves no hindrance to its fire-breathing, I notice).
And when it chomps on the bad guy, he can definitely consider himself chomped.
The gargantuan multi-headed cobra is a manifestation of a female naga, Devi, granted the power of the Goddess in order to right a wrong. As a climax — filled with giant monster spectacle, song, superb clothes and romance — it really gives the story its own unique pizazz.
Assigning this film — Devi (India-1999; dir. Kodi Ramakrishna) — to a genre in the traditional Western sense isn’t easy and is probably irrelevant anyway. It veers wildly between fantasy, romance, farce, horror and supernatural mayhem, often so abruptly pursuing its own narrative logic that it appears to have little of the latter at all. You have to pay attention; its sudden cuts and abrupt scene changes aren’t tolerant of the slow-witted.
The DVD cover brands Devi “a special effects film”.
While it is certainly full of special effects and was considered “big-budget” for Bollywood, everything is relative. In fact, apart from occasional supernatural spectacle, the scenario keeps its focus domestic and confined to a small group of people; it’s rather like a romantic comedy, with horror elements and a thriller plotline thrown in. Much of it is pure romance, Hindi-style, and the SFX, while effective enough, are hardly state-of-the-art, even for 1999.
Still, it’s hard to complain when the clouds boil and the Snake God descends through them in a huge metallic “mothership” molded into the form of intertwined serpents (or something like that… it’s hard to say). Or when the evil snake demon Dantra towers above the heroine, his lower body a seething cascade of superimposed fire, and declaims on the inevitability of fate. These scenes, and the spectacular climax, are enough to justify the DVD’s tagline.
Besides that, actress Prema as Devi is gorgeous, as her divine character struggles to pay back a debt by manipulating time and defying fate and the “rules” of the Snake Realm — veering, like the plot, between character qualities that could be at odds with each other, except she somehow manages to encapsulate ditzy girlishness and divine authority with such aplomb that the mishmash nature of it all becomes part of the film’s bizarre appeal. Even her wardrobe changes illogically between leaving one room and entering the next, but it hardly matters; Prema’s spectacular array of dresses would be more important than conventional logic for most of the film’s audience, no doubt… and anyway she’s a goddess… She can do pretty much what she likes.
The film was a huge success in its home country, its mix of romantic comedy, Bollywood fantasy and traditional spirituality a winning formula. If it strikes Western sensibilities as rather chaotic, that’s our problem.
Ever seen the Japanese giant monster movie about a gigantic rampaging X?
It’s hard being a film commentator — and this is particularly so when attempting to do an encyclopedic overview of a somewhat esoteric genre such as, say, “Giant Monster Films”.
Hard to watch every film you should watch. Hard to find a copy of every film you should watch. Hard to verify the facts…
On some occasions, critics and commentators take the easy (or inevitable) route; and it becomes embarrassingly clear to anyone knowledgeable in the field that they haven’t seen the film they’re commenting on at all. In a best-case scenario, they admit to the fact. In many instances, however, you only realise that they haven’t seen it because they make some daft statement about what it’s about — not simply repeating “conventional” errors but creating sometimes outlandish ones of their own.
I read a brilliant case of this just the other day, so stunning in its absurdity that I could hardly believe it. I only recently acquired a copy of Robert Marrero’s book Giant Monster Movies: An Illustrated Survey. The book was admirable in being the only such book in the field, certainly when it was published in 1994. But it displays many of the problems outlined above, epitomised by this hilarious statement:
Up until now, I would have to say that between Toho and Daiei Films, every possibility to create a new movie monster had been explored. But I was wrong! Can you believe that in the film X - FROM OUTER SPACE (1967), the world is threatened by a giant X! Yes, I said a giant X! I’m not kidding. The Japanese/American co-production directed by Nazui Nihonmatsu tells how a giant, rampaging X is brought back from Mars when an exploratory space craft returns to Earth.
Now, I don’t know where Marrero got his information from, but it certainly wasn’t obtained through seeing the film or even via doing some rudimentary research on it. Firstly it is called The X from Outer Space in the US — it’s real title is Uchû daikaijû Girara (which translates as “Big Space Monster Guilala”). Secondly it is not a Japanese/US co-production, though it received an American dub (a very bad one as usual) and was released there. Thirdly, the “X” is picked up in outer space, not on Mars. But most importantly, though it contains one of the strangest monsters in Japanese film history, the monster Gilala, the titular X itself, is not a giant rampaging “X” at all. Fans know Gilala affectionately as “the Giant Space Chicken” and he looks like this (here seen chasing a jeep):
To press the point further, you can watch him in action, in this montage of scenes set to the music of Damon Alexander & Ten Cent Rentals:
Marrero compounds the accuracy problem by going on to talk about another giant X monster, this time the starfish aliens from Warning from Space [Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru], which he says came out the same year. Unfortunately for accuracy, not only did this film come out in 1956, but the image of the starfish monster he uses:
does not reflect the contents of the actual movie, where the starfish aliens are human-sized. The giant version was only on the advertising poster and (these days) DVD cover.
Now I don’t mean to rag on Marrero just because there are errors in his book — we all make mistakes and the possibilities for small glitches in info gathering are enormous. But there was not really much excuse for these ones, even in 1994. The X from Outer Space isn’t a particularly obscure Japanese kaiju eiga; it was, after all, released in the States, unlike many others. Any random giant monster fan could have told him that “X” wasn’t a literal X. So what was he thinking?
At least he does point out that there aren’t two endings to King Kong vs Godzilla — though he also refers to the Big G as “the green giant of showbiz” at one point …
Oh, well. As I said at the start, it’s hard being a film commentator. I’ve been struggling with elusive details and the sheer volume of primary material (the films themselves) for some time, as anyone who has been noticing the progress of my Giant Monster Movie list would be aware. There is an unending cornucopia of films to be dealt with, plus a scarcity of secondary sources — or at least secondary sources that can be implicitly trusted.
Even if it were possible to view every film without going completely bonkers, many of them are simply not available. In these cases — and where you believe that the film is not a culturally or historically significant one — you tend to rely on the descriptions of Those Who Came Before. As we’ve seen, this can be dangerous. Generations of critics have fed on the false information of TWCBs, so that each subsequent commentary too often simply repeats the errors and the prejudices until they become assumed knowledge. Examples of this from the history of the King of Giant Monsters, Godzilla — certainly as reflected in the writings of mainstream critics — include: Godzilla is a big, green lizard (he’s mostly a sort of charcoal grey/brown); there are two endings to King Kong vs Godzilla; Godzilla is female; suitmation is a cheap-arse technology.
Those of us working in the era of digital technology and the internet have a distinct advantage over film writers of the past. First and foremost is the relative availability of the movies themselves. DVD has brought important (and not-so-important) films back all clean and shiny-new, with proper aspect ratio restored, random edits removed and scratches and blemishes expunged. It has also inspired collectors to come forward with versions long thought lost — or films that haven’t seen the light of day for decades suddenly rising from their celluloid graves.
In many instances where older film commentary has been forced to state that a certain film is “unavailable” or “lost”, we suddenly find that a trip to the local DVD store will reveal it now re-released, a print having been found in the bowels of the Earth somewhere or a knotty copyright issue having been resolved. For example, after some 70 years we can now view the 1925 The Lost World in a version that isn’t almost too scratched and blurry to watch and which has been restored to about 93 minutes, instead of the 65-minute edit that has been the only version available for so long. Another instance of a “lost” film being at least partially re-discovered, albeit in a fragmentary form, and brought to DVD is The Mechanical Man (1921). Even a Boris Karloff film as “recent” as 1936 — The Man Who Changed His Mind — was listed as a “lost” film until re-discovered in a vault somewhere in Europe during the 1990s. My favourite example, though, is the BBC TV production of Nigel Kneale’s SF ghost story, The Stone Tape (1972). I recall attending a science fiction convention in 2001 or 2002 where one panel discussing Kneale’s oeuvre bemoaned the fact that while the show was legendary for its scare quotient among those who had seen the original broadcast, it had not been aired since then (or at least very rarely) and had never been available on VHS due to copyright problems. Then suddenly there it was, on DVD. I bought a copy from the UK and finally got to see it. It was, indeed, scary as hell. (Now, I notice, it’s out-of-print again! You have to be quick!)
Anyway, my point is that these days we have the advantage of (relatively) easy availability. In older books of film commentary it is obvious than the writer may be writing about films he/she saw at the cinema only once and possibly many years before. In some cases twenty or thirty years may have passed since they’d last set eyes on it. Does your memory stretch back that far with any real accuracy? Mine certainly doesn’t. I’m sure I’d forget how King Kong comes out if I didn’t see the film every year or so…
That’s why I have to do research. And it’s why I love DVD technology — and all the generous individuals out there in cyberspace who are willing to share their knowledge, their time and their enthusiasm in the pursuit of accuracy.
I just stumbled upon this review of my zombie story “In the Service of the Flesh” by the insightful Chuck McKenzie on the Horrorscope website. It’s always good to get a rave review. The last sentence is particularly pleasing.
‘In the Service of the Flesh’ is Rob Hood’s latest contribution to the zombie genre, and it’s a beaut. I can’t say too much about it without giving away the plot, so I’ll limit myself to mentioning only that it’s laugh-out-loud funny, and boasts levels of gore that would make George Romero blanch. This may well be the very best zombie tale I’ve ever read.
from a review of Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror 2007 Edition on the Horrorscopewebsite, 4 March 2008.
Chuck has been writing his own online “real-time” tale of a zombie apocalypse on his “One Day At A Time” blog. Here’s where it began and here’s the latest installment. It’s definitely worth your while to check it out: a full-on zombie novel… and it’s free.
And here is the Brimstone Press website, so you can order of copy of the book that includes “…the best zombie tale…ever…”
The Mechanical Man [aka L’Uomo Meccanico] is a real find — a silent film, made in Italy in 1921 and directed by André Deed. It features a female evil genius, a “giant” rampaging robot and even a climactic battle between the Mechanical Monster and a second robot, built to the same specifications in order to stop the first one’s rampage. Until very recently The Mechanical Man was considered a lost film, but a fragmented copy of it was discovered by the Brazilian Film Studio of San Paolo, Brazil, and it has finally been released to DVD by Alpha Video.
In fact, the robot isn’t quite as big as the cover suggests. Nevertheless, for 1921, it has considerable presence and in many ways represents a significant starting point for the giant monster/mecha subgenre that was to develop over the following decades.
The film is not in great shape. The print used by Alpha (the only one available) does not appear to have been digitally enhanced or significantly cleaned up, and is blurry and faded in places. Severe damage means that it has been truncated due to lost footage. Originally it was said to have been 1,821 metres long, but all that remains is 740 metres worth of film, with lots of gaps. Alpha Video has done a decent job of stitching it together using explanatory cards, and the mere fact of having it available is enough to justify it’s less-than-pristine condition. Certainly there is sufficient of it existing to give a real feel as to what the film would have been like in its original state.
By applying our imaginations to the viewing, even through the ragged editing that is a consequence of its fragmentary nature, it’s easy to see that it must have been a compelling experience for contemporary audiences. The Mechanical Man is full of excitement, odd snatches of humour, control mechanisms with large wheels and impressive dials, romance, intrigue, giant robot rampage, ballroom spectacle, violent destruction (such as doors being kicked in and metal walls being cut apart with the robot’s blow-torch appendages) and, of course, climactic dueling robots. None of it is good enough to have the sort of undated fascination of the classic silent scifi/horror films (such as Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Hunchback of Notre Dame or even The Lost World) — but as a historic document it is priceless and Alpha Video is to be congratulated for making it available at all. Despite my earlier comments on the poor shape of the print, they have done as well as they could in its presentation here — with explanatory “narration”, very canny colour tinting, an effective music score and some unpretentious interpolation of English translations of on-screen writing. For giant monster film historians, The Mechanical Man offers what may be the first cinematic sign of tropes that would become central to the subgenre.
The DVD also contains Will Rogers’ 1922 version of The Headless Horseman.
Below is a series of screenshots capturing classic giant robot moments from the film.
The Mechanical Man approaches the door of the house where the protagonists are hiding out:
The robot breaks into the house to the horror and consternation of all:
After hunting down the comic-relief protagonist, and failing to throw him over the parapets in a cupboard, the robot seeks to rectify its mistake:
At the masked ball, the robot is at first thought to be someone who has cleverly disguised himself as the Mechanical Man, and for a while cavorts with the revellers — quite the mechanical man-about-town:
But evil intent will out!
And the robot takes on a soon-to-be-time-honoured pose, diaphanous heroine fainted in his arms:
But a second robot turns up to deal with him:
Hopefully, one day, a complete print of the film will turn up in someone’s dank and gothic cellar. Have you checked yours lately?
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (US-1985; dir. B.W.L. Norton)
Though the dinosaurs in this dinosaurs-in-the-modern-world epic aren’t presented as monsters, the mother brontosaur is given a chance to do the classic monster rampage as she desperately tries to rescue her baby, Gorgo-fashion — raging through a jungle village if not a metropolitan city. And she does a pretty good job of it, too, all things considered.
Trespassers is one of those not-quite-a-zombie-flick zombie flicks that draws on some of the aesthetics of recent successes in the genre without embracing the full package. It has a supernatural scenario that involves a curse and a horde of cannibalistic, semi-decayed human monsters — the product of the curse. But if you pay attention to the somewhat inelegantly inserted back-story that occurs toward the end, you’ll soon realise that the “monsters” are neither zombies nor corporeal ghosts — they are men and women who have simply been cursed with an insatiable hunger for everything, whether human flesh or not.
[Jim] Wynorski is responsible for Komodo vs Cobra, about which the best I can say is that it isn’t anywhere near as awful as Attack of the Sabretooth — another recent sub-Jurassic Park, low-budget, TV-oriented, monster-on-the-loose effort.
