Undead Backbrain

In advance of the Spanish release of Outlander — the epic alien monster vs Vikings movie we here at the Backbrain have been anticipating for some time — the filmmakers have placed a variety of teasers, trailers and clips on the official website. This is great stuff and I’m even more excited about the film as the date for a general release draws closer.

Below is a clip that contains potential spoilers, but it’s too cool not to display for you. You get to see plenty of the monster — known as the Moorwen — as two of the main characters, Kainan and Wulfric, venture beyond the Village walls and confront it.

I should also point out that it’s in Spanish….

But make sure you go to the website for lots more.

• Source: Official website via Avery
• Previous Backbrain article

As promised, here are the first images from Brian Lonano’s Attackzoids! sequel, Attackzoids, Deploy! — which is currently in production.

“Costumes and props are being constructed as we speak and I just had a meeting with a composer to create an orchestrated score to enhance the newsreel approach that I hope to achieve with this film.

“All in all, the film is unlike any project I have ever done before … it’s more ambitious in its short length and so many things are being made from scratch. I know the low or no budget filmmaker has to buy certain things and modify them, but a large percentage of the effects, costumes and props you will be seeing will be hand crafted by the Robot Hand team.

“I am very excited to see how the film will turn out in the coming months. I hope to have the film completed by March 2009 and from there I will be submitting it to big genre festivals and perhaps try our luck at some Academy Qualified Festivals.”

Having seen the first film and enjoyed it, I’m keen to see where Lonano and his crew go from there.

• Previous Backbrain article

The full-length trailer for Elias and BiFF JUGGERNAUT’s poignant new vampire comedy, Dead Sucks, has been released via Fangoria.

Check it out here.

Personally, I found Terminator 3 rather ordinary — a reaction to the senseless and repetitious action sequences that was exacerbated by a desire to see the future war, not another iteration of a back-from-the-future Terminator hunt down. Making the Terminator a female just wasn’t high concept enough to save the film from overkill mundanity.

Terminator 4 (more correctly titled Terminator: Salvation), however, looks like it’s going to give me what I wanted! The War.

And what a War! Blood, devastation and rampaging robots! The future has (quite logically) been changed by events in the present and now there are many more kinds of Terminator, including the Harvester, which is giant-robot size, a Mototerminator and an underwater cyber-worm thingy.

Also this guy — a T-600, predating Arnie’s T-800 and Terminator 2’s morphing T-1000.

Meanwhile, below is a featurette on the Art of designer Martin Laing, which shows some conceptual snippets, though obviously the actual clips from the film are test sequences rather than the final product.

Anyway, it’s looking pretty interesting to me. What with Transformers 2 and its assorted imitators lurking just over the horizon, the next year or so will likely be a good time for giant robots.

• Source: Quiet Earth and io9, both including lots of other concept sketches. Via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery

The trailer for the newest DreamWorks film, Monster vs Aliens, has appeared, referencing 1950s monster flicks including The Blob and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. There’s a gigantic alien robot, a yeti, a mad scientist, a giant insect thing …. and lots of other good stuff.

Monsters vs Aliens (US-2009; animation; dir. Rob Letterman, Conrad Vernon)

When California girl Susan Murphy is unexpectedly clobbered by a meteor full of outer space gunk, she mysteriously grows to 49-feet-11-inches tall and is instantly labeled a “monster” named Ginormica. The military jumps into action, and she is captured and held in a secret government compound. The world learns that the military has been quietly rounding up other monsters over the years. This ragtag group consists of the brilliant but insect-headed Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.; the macho half-ape, half-fish The Missing Link; the gelatinous and indestructible B.O.B.; and the 350-foot grub called Insectosaurus. Their confinement time is cut short, however, when a mysterious alien robot lands on Earth and begins storming the country.

As a last resort, under the guidance of General W.R. Monger (on a desperate order from The President), the motley crew of Monsters is called into action to combat the aliens and save the world from imminent destruction. (Trailer Addict)

Set for release in March next year, it supposedly uses the newest 3D technology — True 3-D — so the image poking out at you isn’t all blurry and we don’t get nauseous.

I just noticed that Hugh Laurie (whom I fondly remember as Wooster in the British Jeeves and Wooster series of the 1990s) does the voicing for Dr Cockroach and Reese Witherspoon is Ginormica. Cool.

Just in case you had trouble with the download of the above trailer (which can be slow), here it is on YouTube:

• Source: io9 via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery

And now you can catch some footage featuring the most minimal SFX in a giant monster movie ever! Filmed entirely in camera, using perspective techniques and fingers!

Giant Cicada attacks a landmark

Giant Cicada eats a pedestrian!

Says Kaiju Search-Robot Avery:

Here’s at least some of this year’s Halloween special appearance of David “The Rock” Nelson on WGN TV News out of Chicago, Illinois. He’s absolutely nuts in it as usual, and we get to see a tiny bit of footage from both Killer Cicadas and Attack of the Giant Cicadas! It’s so terrible it’s terribly funny and just plain fun! When The Rock’s involved there’s never a dull moment.

And while we’re on the topic, here’s a faux movie trailer for another giant cicada movie, “Attack of the Giant Killer Cicadas”, this one not quite as no-budget as Nelson’s, but close. It really captures that ol’ Bert I. Gordon ambiance. View it here.

• Main Backbrain article on David “The Rock” Nelson
• WGN TV News

A crew on a remote construction site are plagued by a series of bizarre mishaps. As the incidents turn more and more savage, it becomes clear that the sole link to the deadly events …is a 50 ton bulldozer.

Crawler (US-2008; dir. Sv Bell)

Despite some earlier skepticism — in terms of Crawler’s originality (in comparison to Sturgeon’s “Killdozer” and the movie that came from it) and its validity as a candidate for the giant monster list — I think the film is going to get a big tick from me on both counts.

The director, Sv Bell, has commented to Kaiju Search-Robot Avery that, yes, the bulldozer does have those tentacles as seen in the poster above. And when you touch the thing or are touched by it you receive weird burns like the ones the guy in the picture directly below is suffering from.

This subsequently becomes an infection that turns you into something like a zombie.

So it seems that the bulldozer is a large, shape-shifting entity that creates zombies! Cool!

The film will be out in November. I look forward to seeing it.

• Source: Sv Bell via Avery
• Official website
• Trailer on the Critical Mass Entertainment website

This poster for Girara-no Gyakushuu Touyaku Samitto Kiki Ippatsu [lit. Guilala’s Counter Attack: the Touyaku Summit One-Shot Crisis] (Japan-2008; dir. Minoru Kawasaki) — otherwise known as Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit! featuring Guilala’s Western pseudonym — looks like it might be the one used for releases outside of Japan.

This appeared on a site related to the Venice Film Festival in August.

The following synopsis gives more details of the film’s plot and suggests its main satirical target beyond the daikaiju eiga genre, though it does contain one spoiler:

A parody of the Japanese daikaiju genre (in technical terms, a film with gigantic monsters) set during an imaginary G8 summit ravaged by Guilala, the monster from outer space. With a focus on environmental issues, the summit, which takes place in the summer of 2008 in Hokkaido, explores the various ineffectual efforts of the major world leaders (including the French President, who is exclusively concerned with matters regarding the fairer sex) to deal with planetary imbalances. The arrival of the monster from outer space sets off a frenzied race to take credit for saving the planet from the extraterrestrial threat, right up to the finale in which the Japanese leader is unveiled as an impostor, an emissary from an evil enemy dictatorship.

• Source: FarEastFilm
• Previous Backbrain article (follow the links for more info)

Thomas R. Dickens, the director of Alien Grey: Zone-X (US-2009) has sent Undead Backbrain some rather cool images from the movie — and a new poster. In the one below, you can get a much better view of the flying beastie that I failed to capture clearly for my earlier post on the Dickins’ Alien Monster flick. Click on the image to see all the excellent details.

Likewise, here is a dynamic snapshot of an alien-engineered dinosaur attacking one of the hapless intruders into Zone X.

Finally, the latest poster for the film:

More video material has been added to the website, so go check it out.

Thanks Avery!

Brian Lonano, the man behind the elegant short SF fascist-state robot invasion film Attackazoids, has just written to me to confirm that they are indeed planning on another installment in the ATTACKAZOIDS series. He says that it will (hopefully) be ready by mid-2009.

Here is the plot synopsis:

War is declared on the off-world settlement! Everyone from suburban homemakers to super scientists are uniting to deploy an army of the giant killer robot ATTACKAZOIDS!

They will be shooting in HD and, as Brian put it, the film “will feature all sorts of fun effects and doo-dads”.

Sounds like a hoot. As soon as there are images available, you will be able to see them here!

Source: Brian Lonano

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• Backbrain review of Attackzoids and Interview with Brian Lonano