Not so much frightful as funny this week: a period drama featuring steampunk dueling mecha, lots of destructive action and sexual innuendo — not to forget ironic comment on the underlying hypocrisies of the chivalric gentleman’s “code of honour”.
A Gentlemen’s Duel (US-2006; short [7:46 min.]; dir. Sean McNally and Francisco Ruiz Velasco)
Synopsis:
Fighting for the affections of Lady Bluntsworth, the two adversaries, Sir Eustace Weatherbury and Lord Du Bois do battle in their pugilist steam-powered armour, but who will be victorious?
It’s made by Blur Studio, who do excellent animation, such as Rockfish, which featured on Undead Backbrain last year. If, after watching the film, you want to garner some information about its creation and about even bigger robotic sequences that didn’t get into the finished product (see image below), here is an interview with co-creator Sean McNally.
In reference to the previous post on the new daikaiju eiga production, Death Kappa, Kaiju Search-Robot Avery came upon this cinematic incarnation of the folklore of Kappa — cute and funny instead of big and scary:
Kappa no ku to natsu yasumi [aka Summer Days with Coo] (Japan-2007; dir. Keiichi Hara)
Synopsis:
Small-town boy Uehara Koichi finds a curious-looking stone at the riverbank one day and takes it home. After he washes off the stone, much to Koichi’s surprise, little arms and legs pop out, and then a green head. It turns out that Koichi has brought home a young kappa (a river troll, in Japanese mythology) that has been dozing for three hundred years. Koichi names the timid, mischievous creature Coo – after the first sound it makes – and the Ueharas happily welcome the kappa into their chaotic family. Koichi and Coo become good friends, but Coo could not adjust to the Tokyo lifestyle and begins to miss his family. On a hot summer day, Koichi and Coo decide to go on a road trip to find his own kind. (WFAC website)
Nominated for Best Animated Picture at the Japan Academy Awards, and winner of Best Screenplay, Summer Days with Coo looks like something I’d like to see when I’m not in a mood for darkness and mega-destruction. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking — but it happens!)
Yōkai are a form of traditional Japanese monster spirits, best known to cinephiles from a trilogy of fantasy films from the 1960s: Yokai daisenso [aka Big Ghost War; Spook Warfare] (Japan-1968, dir. Yoshiyuki Kuroda); Yokai Hyaku Monogatari [aka The Hundred Monsters] (Japan-1968, dir. Kimiyoshi Yasuda) and Tôkaidô obake dôchû [aka Along with Ghosts] (Japan-1969; dir. Yoshiyuki Kuroda and Kimiyoshi Yasuda) — and the recent big-budget remake Yokai daisenso (2005; dir. Takashi Miike) [aka The Great Yokai War].
Yōkai are weird and, in folklore, omnipresent, having a wide range of bizarre and hybrid forms. They can be friendly, mischievous, spooky or outright nasty. Check out Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt’s book Yokai Attack: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide (Kodansha International) and you’ll see what I mean. Or go here for a more academic treatment. According to Komatsu Kazuhiko, a scholar of yōkai, the term means “an abnormal phenomenon, or a related thing or entity.” Think hobgoblins, ogres, gremlins and the like… but much weirder in a typically Japanese fashion.
One of the most well-known of the Yōkai is the Kappa, pictured here from the Yoda and Alt’s book:
The Kappa is a sort of river sprite. To quote the Wikipedia entry:
Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers. Their pranks range from the relatively innocent, such as loudly passing gas or looking up women’s kimonos, to the more troublesome, such as stealing crops or kidnapping children. In fact, small children are one of the gluttonous kappa’s favorite meals, though they will eat adults as well. Even today, signs warning about kappa appear by bodies of water in some Japanese towns and villages. Kappa are also said to be afraid of fire, and some villages hold fireworks festivals each year to scare the spirits away.
(See Gallery below for lots of images of Kappa, traditional and otherwise — courtesy of Kaiju Search-Engine Avery)
Tomoo Haraguchi — who worked on SFX for such films as Uzumaki (2000) and two of the 1990s Gamera trilogy by Shusuke Kaneko, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and Gamera 2: Advent of Legion, and directed the traditional monster epic Sakuya: Slayer of Demons (2000) as well as the more recent Werewolf Warrior (2004) — has announced the production of a new daikaiju eiga, Death Kappa, where the main giant monster is an oversized Kappa. Kappa are typically human-sized, but Haraguchi’s is intended to rival Godzilla.
Though it is currently early in production, Haragushi has made a promotional teaser in which he expresses his intention to create the film in a “traditional” way — with suitmation and model cities. Coming as it is from production company Fever Dreams, who were behind the analog gore of The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, the prospects for Death Kappa are looking good.
Thanks to Variety and a report that Spirit Pictures has picked up the rights to Joe DeVito (artist) and Brad Strickland’s illustrated novel Kong: King of Skull Island, sites across the net are enthusing over the idea that a new Kong frenzy is in the making. The story behind the novel is being described as a “prequel” to Merian C. Cooper’s classic giant monster flick King Kong (1933), though the dust-jacket’s description of the book is more suggestive of a sequel:
In 1933, American showman Carl Denham returned from a mysterious, hidden island with a priceless treasure. A treasure not gold or jewels, but the island’s barbaric god, a monstrous anthropoid called “Kong.” The savage giant escaped and wreaked havoc among the man-made canyons of Manhattan, but within hours of the giant ape’s death his body – and Carl Denham – disappeared. Twenty-five years later, the son of Carl Denham makes a shocking discovery that leads him back to the site of his father’s greatest adventure and to the answers that will unlock the century’s greatest mystery and history’s greatest miracle. (Amazon)
The rights to the original King Kong story are owned by Cooper’s family, as are the rights to his famously unmade War Eagles, and both have apparently been optioned by Spirit Pictures.
Back in May 2008, it was Fantastic Films International who was making the film, as I wrote about here, and their site still lists a Kong film, but one referred to as King Kong — The Beginning. Is FFI now making a different Kong prequel? Have the franchise rights changed hands, or is Spirit Pictures related to Fantastic Films International? If anyone knows, give us the goss. In the meantime, consider this image from Kong: King of Skull Island artist DeVito’s website:
This is a creature named Gaw, one of the non-simian inhabitants of DeVito’s Skull Island, here seen smashing his way through the gates that Kong would later (?) pulverise. Hopefully this is indicative of the sort of thing that will be making its way into the new production.
It will be even more exciting if Spirit Pictures is actually going to make War Eagles, which IMDb is still listing as due for 2010 release by Ray Harryhausen Presents, which I suspect is related to Spirit Pictures in some way.
For those readers of this site who’ve been living under a rock — or the big toe of a giant ape — and aren’t aware of War Eagles, it’s a project that Cooper planned as his magnum opus follow-up to King Kong. Kong SFX guru, Willis O’Brien, had been working on the project, which was aborted by the War. Read about it here. The story went :
Modern adventurers discover a lost tribe of Vikings in a secluded valley. These vikings have survived amidst some pretty fearsome wildlife, including dinosaurs and giant prehistoric eagles. As they reacquaint themselves with the modern (1930s) world, they learn of an imminent invasion of New York by Nazis in zeppelins and altruistically take to the skies on their tamed War Eagles to engage in a huge airbourne battle over the streets of Manhattan.
Groovy, eh?
Anyway, there have been lots of rumours, reports and copyright acquisitions relating to War Eagles over the years, and as far as I can see, a degree of uncertainty still reigns. You know the film industry — for every successfully completed project there are a thousand developmental non-starters. But I seriously look forward to what will come from these new reports. If nothing else, they sound convincing, with Spirit Pictures’ Steve Iles and Arnold Kunert (who has produced other Ray Harryhausen Presents films) being named as producers, and Andy Briggs assigned the writing job on both the Eagles and Kong films.
Except in Them! (and other less prominent giant mutation films), the ant is not really a suitable subject for monster films. They’re too small. But the interesting thing about ants — particularly the ones that gather into vast hordes, like the South American Army Ant — is that what they individually lack in size they make up for in collective rapaciousness.
So in a way, ant hordes — acting via a sort of gestalt consciousness — may indeed be thought of a giant monster.
Consider, for example, the classic 1938 short story by Carl Stephenson, “Leiningen versus the Ants” (which you can read online, if you’re not familiar with it) and its cinematic incarnation The Naked Jungle (US-1954; dir. Byron Haskin), which starred Charlton Heston as the man who takes up arms against the composite monster seeking to devour everything in its path.
Just completed and looking for a home in a few good festivals is a new film about hordes of ants — Invicta (US-2009; dir. Carolyn Banks).
The title Invicta refers to the scientific name of the relevant species — The Red Imported Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta). Invicta is one of over 280 species of Solenopsis, or Fire Ant — a particularly pesky import that originated in South America but has become a nuisance in places as diverse as in the southern United States, Australia, Taiwan, Philippines, and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and has hence become the target of largely ineffectual eradication campaigns.
According to the official website, the film is a blend of comedy, romance and horror, a genre that writer-director Carolyn Banks calls “Horror Tra-La.”
As the tagline describes it: “Love, greed and fire ants mix it up in rural Texas”.
Filmed almost entirely in Bastrop, Texas, the rough cut of Invicta “looks fabulous,” according to Banks, who added, “and since it was our first movie, I was prepared for the worst.” Banks has published novels and written and directed several shorts, but reckons:
“… a feature is a whole other animal. It involves juggling people and props and keeping everyone fed and in the right clothes and at the right place at the right time.” Also, she says, “moviemaking always comes across as so glamorous, but it’s hard, hard work both while you’re shooting it and afterward. Especially afterward.” (Upstartbastrop.com)
Banks at work with some of the crew
Oh, and apparently post-production effects are being handled by Craig M. Staggs, known in Hollywood as an animator on 2006’s A Scanner Darkly and in other SFX capacities.
Hopefully we’ll hear more of this film soon. Meanwhile, read an interview with Banks on the film’s website and check the gallery below for more pictures from the production.
This is one of my favourite cartoons – funny, cute and very sinister all at once. If your download rate can take it, hit the “HQ” button and watch the Pincushion Man do his thing in high quality.
Balloon Land [aka The Pincushion Man] (US-1953; dir. Ub Iwerks)
Synopsis:
High in the air floats Balloon Land, where everyone and everything is a balloon. The people, the animals, the trees and even the rocks are filled with nothing but air. Even the movie stars, such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, are balloons. The citizens of Balloon Land have but one mortal enemy: the Pincushion Man, who lives in the forest. A foolhardy young boy takes his girlfriend into the forest, determined to show he’s not afraid of the Pincushion Man. The boy and girl are nearly popped when the evil creature comes after them. They manage to escape into the seeming safety of the city. But the wily Pincushion Man tricks a guard into letting him in. It will take an army of Balloon soldiers to get rid of this threat. (IMDb)
I used this as the basis of a horror story once — “Beware! The Pincushionman” — which appeared in Southern Blood, edited by Bill Congreve (Sandglass Publishing, 2003), an excellent anthology that is, I believe, still available. In my story the Pincushionman becomes a delusional metaphor for failure and drug addiction.
Now, from Beeswax Media, comes a short daikaiju eiga filmed using… um, ultra-low-tech FX. It’s cute, it’s fluffy, it’s bizarre. It’s Ultra Cutie Daikaiju Chompin Fluffies! Below is Episode 1: Tickled Pink, in which
…Fluffy Yuk Yuk and Fluffy Bad Bad from the Oh No! Doom universe star in their very own Kaiju short. Hilarity ensues when an ill-tempered pink creature with an affinity for “yo momma” jokes messes with the ultra cutie couple, and he quickly learns the error of his ways.
The folk at Beeswax Media describe themselves as “a boutique creative and multi media agency specializing in the underground world of lifestyle and culture”.
I particularly enjoy Travis Lampe’s cartoon characters, which remind me of the work of Ub Iwerks:
Bikini Monsters (US-in production; dir. Terence Muncy)
Director Terence Muncy has sent Undead Backbrain some images and local newspaper articles relating to his new film, Bikini Monsters, which is currently in production.
Newspaper articles (the first from the Tampa Bay Tribune) — click on them to enlarge:
And finally Muncy has sent what he describes as an “early concept teaser”. He says:
It’s just a rough cut to have something available to give fans an idea of what’s to come.
Attack of the Slime People (US-2008; dir. Martin King)
Buddy Flavenoid (Robert Tiffi) is a lot of things — a Ed-Woodesque writer and director of B-horror films in 1950s Hollywood, a delusional auteur, a dab hand with a baseball bat, a lecher and a maniac — but what he isn’t is a good director. His previous picture — The Attack of the Atomic Reptiles — was a critical and box-office flop — and until now, years later, no one has shown any inclination to finance his self-perceived comeback magnum opus, Attack of the Slime People. When his agent/producer receives an expression of interest from a mysterious backer and the project is finally kicked into motion, it starts a chain-reaction of frustrations for Flavenoid that inevitably lead him into a world of horror and despair.
Determined that no one will compromise his “vision”, Flavenoid does whatever he must to get the job done his way, including such drastic acts as recasting the lead role — usurped by an annoyingly persistent “fan” named Sydney Point (Kyle Ingleman) — through the adept wielding of a baseball bat. Increasingly blackmail, take-over attempts, scorn, random projectile-vomiting strangers, sexual predation and the suspicion of police investigating the murders and disappearances surrounding Attack of the Slime People‘s production force Flavenoid’s inherent mania over the edge. As he loses the plot completely, he becomes one of the very Slime People that his unmade film is about.
Despite its title, Attack of the Slime People is not an attempt to make a retro B-horror film. It’s a comedy about filmmaking set in 1950s Hollywood and given the difficulties of low-budget independent cinema a surprisingly effective one. Director King has created a convincing sense of the time and the milieu, with its power-plays, immoral undercurrents, and amateur shenanigans hidden behind a “professional” veneer. In doing so, he keeps an ultimately successful, if occasionally tenuous, hold over the film’s balance between broad comedy, its more satirical elements and the central narrative, so that what could so easily have become an awkward and alienating farce succeeds in drawing us into its world of gross eccentricities and colourful stereotypes.
Co-writer Tiffi leads a decent cast who manage to give life to the stereotypes — but it is Tiffi’s ubiquitous presence that drags us over some of the film’s rougher patches, when it slides momentarily into uncertain exaggeration or when our attention is broken by ragged transitions. Mind you, at first it seems rather uncomfortably apparent that Tiffi’s comedy style is not going to be marked by subtlety. He constantly grimaces and gestures, waving his arms around like a demented windmill and mugging at the camera. But as the film proceeds I found that the extremes of his characterisation became the norm and created their own “truth”. There is even subtlety to be found in his moments of manic despair and thwarted ambition.
That’s the way it is with the film itself. It walks the edge, sometimes tumbles over, but not irrevocably; it may be exaggerated and low budget, but it is often funny, has good production values, pays close attention to detail (some beautiful 1950s cars are involved) and avoids having its postmodern approach devolve into pretentiousness by enjoying its own farcical nature and reveling in a sort of fannish appreciation of what makes 1950s B-horror so fascinating. Its moments of broad comedy, the period details that create a genuine illusion of the time, and visual and auditory references to 1950s B-horror aesthetics are enjoyable in their own right. I particularly liked the use of the iconic music stab from Creature From the Black Lagoon to mark moments when the metaphorical monster in Flavenoid rears its ugly head.
In the end, director King’s film may not reach the heights of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, but what he has created is modestly successful: an industry-referential horror comedy that is both unusual and entertaining. Those who appreciate 1950s B-film horror in all its tawdry glory will not be disappointed. Others will enjoy the farcical comedy and its evocation of a period in Hollywood history.
As indicated, here is a second “short feature” for your weekend viewing. This one is beautiful, poignant and sort of disturbing, all at the same time. It has won over 21 awards (list).
Sebastian’s Voodoo (US-2008; short [4:23 min.]; dir. Joaquin Baldwin)
Synopsis:
A voodoo doll must find the courage to save his friends from being pinned to death.
