Undead Backbrain

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

Here it is:

• Previous Backbrain article

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

• Source: Andrew Macrae

OK, it’s not as big as this one (sighted at Mesa Del Sol, Albuquerque NM), but the idea of a giant snake 12.8 metres in length (that’s about 40 foot long) is fairly daunting. We’re used to them in films such as Anaconda… but for real?

Jonathan Bloch and his colleagues have found vertebrae from a gargantuan prehistoric snake in the rocks beneath a coal mine in Columbia. Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, commented that the as yet unnamed creature would have been so big it “would have had trouble fitting though the door into your office.”

Estimating a snake’s length from fragmentary remains is difficult because most of the creature’s vertebrae differ only in their size, not in their proportions. Bloch and his colleagues can’t readily determine whether the segment that they unearthed came from the thickest portion of the snake, so their estimates of the snake’s size and weight are minimum values. The researchers contend that the ancient snake they discovered would have stretched at least 12.8 meters and weighed at least 1.27 metric tons.

• Source: ScienceNews via BoingBoing
• Credit: Mesa Del Sol Snake Picture

You know the world is in deep shit when giant dog droppings are rampaging across the countryside. Makes you wonder what the giant dog that produced them is up to.

Maybe Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World (US-1973; dir. Joseph McGrath) wasn’t just a movie…

You’re thinking this is fiction and I’ve lost all sense of good taste right now, aren’t you? The thing is, I didn’t make this up. It happened in Switzerland. It’s all true … sort of!

Go and read the full story if you don’t believe me.

… “Dust in the Wind” [Kansas] — created by Matt Ficner.

• via Boing Boing

Yes, Virginia, there is a Godzilla.

As we (meaning those likely to visit the Backbrain on a regular basis) know, fans can be obsessive. Kaiju fans aren’t much different from the rest of fandom, except in the fact that their houses become museums of kaiju art — models of Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, King Ghidorah, Ultraman … all those strange gigantic critters that Japanese filmmakers like to put on the screen and toymakers like to turn into sculptures and figurines.

Combine that with the combative nature of daikaiju eiga plotlines (Godzilla vs Mothra, Godzilla vs the Smog Monster, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla etc.), and perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that someone would want to translate the “versus” that exists between monsters into a face-off between obsessive fans.

The result is a short (17 minute) film called Showdown of the Godz.

Showdown of the Godz (US-2008; dir. Julien Calderbank)

Jesse (David Gasman) is the world’s biggest Japanese monster movie fan. Trapped in a stultifying insurance job and a deteriorating marriage, the only bright spot in his life is his obsession with a certain Japanese monster, which he shares with his adorable 7-year-old daughter Cassie (Ayla Guttman.) Jesse’s power attorney wife Mary (Alixx Schottland) drags them into counseling, where Jesse reluctantly promises he will forgo all things monstrous for one week to focus on the family.

But when Jesse sees a rare monster toy on display at NYC’s Monster Sushi, he challenges proprietor Ono (George Takei) to a Japanese monster trivia contest. If Jesse wins, he gets the coveted toy. If he loses, he owes Ono $1,000. Ono accepts on one condition: Jesse must face “a representative from Monster Sushi”—legendary Japanese monster movie archivist Matsuhisa Jin. Jesse goes into geek overdrive preparing for the showdown. But on the eve of the event, Mary leaves him. Devastated, Jesse is a no-show. But wise Ono has one last surprise up his sleeve that may just pull the family back together…

Starring George Takei of Star Trek fame, David Gasman and Alixx Schottland, the film sounds like a real hoot.

Note: When asked by George Takei “What’s so interesting about Godzilla?”, executive producer and kaiju fanboy Robert Troch apparently answered:

“My love of Japanese monster epics started as childish escapism and empowerment — something bigger than life, fun and powerful that I could identify with. Later, I grew to appreciate the other side of it — the craftsmanship, the behind the scenes stuff and yes, the art involved in creating rampaging giant beasts.”

It is, of course, a good question and one I have attempted to answer for myself in different ways many times over. So what’s your excuse?

For more on the film, its makers and where you can see it, check out the SciFi Japan website.

• Official website

This amazing creation (which was designed for Scooby-Doo 2) is animatronic, not CGI. It was made at WCT Productions under Bill Terezakis. Vince Akira Yoshida and Jim Gawley were responsible for the mechanics and the sculpt was done by Jamie Salmon.

Yoshida (who has done SFX work for Lake Placid, Freddy vs Jason, and many other films) comments that there were 11 movements altogether: “1 for the jaw, 2 for the upper lips, 2 for the bottom lips, 2 for the smiles, and 4 for the brows.” Though you can’t tell in the test (”because I used the brow to make it look like it was blinking”), the Head has a lot more expression than is revealed here.

Yoshida also programmed the gilderfluke system to lipsync the monologue from Pulp Fiction.

He says that this character was cut from Scooby-Doo 2 at the last minute. “This lipsync with the Pulp Fiction line was just a test to see if I could do it,” Yoshida said. “The actual dialogue for Scooby2 was not recorded at the time of my testing”.

• Source: Todd Tennant

Yes, you’ve seen it all before, but this time it’s for real!

This isn’t recent news, and you probably have seen it, but I love it anyway. As part of an event held in the Odaiba area of Tokyo, to advertise the film The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, organisers set a Loch Ness type critter on the loose. It was 15 meters long/high and created by projection onto sprays of water, with carefully placed water spouts to simulate the splashes.

Here is the ultimate in modern apartment living — a building guaranteed to protect you from earthquakes, ‘copter attack, and the general mayhem of society. It’ll even make sure you get to work on time. Too bad about everyone else, of course. And one wonders what life would be like once Godzilla turned up?

From Nicovideo via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery