So here's the deal with this blog from now on...

Due to my increasingly demanding social life and work schedule, I am finding less and less time to sit at home alone watching strange movies. I'm going to keep this blog going, but it will no longer be twice a week. It'll just be once a week...on whatever day I want.

Keep it classy,

Grant.

Film Friday: Zebraman

In the history of superheroes, there are many contenders for "greatest hero of all time." Superman naturally comes to mind, but alas, no-one likes him because he is far too much of a boy scout to ever be considered "cool".  Batman is dark and brooding but his central pain stems from the death of his parents when in reality that's not very unique considering that Superman's entire planet and race is dead and Spiderman's uncle is dead and he ended up killing Mary Jane with radioactive semen (look it up).  We could go through all the X-Men, Avengers, Justice League, whatever... The fact of the matter is this: there is only one superhero who fits the title of best superhero ever.  That superhero is Zebraman.

Takashi Miike decided to take a break from making nightmare fuel and make something a little more family friendly. So he made a superhero movie about a nerdy schoolteacher who obsesses over a television show that he used to watch as a child. The show followed the adventures of Zebraman, defender of the earth and champion of good.  Zebraman was awesome because he had a kick-ass theme song and a motorcycle. So our beloved schoolteacher is still obsessed with him all these years later so much so that he designs his own Zebraman costume and plays Zebraman in his room! What fun!

One night after mustering up enough courage to venture out into the night in his Zebraman costume (he was going to show it to one of his students/fellow Zebraman fans), our teacher runs into a man with a crab mask on his head! Oh the horror! Crab-mask is about to rape a bitch, but teacher/Zebraman bravely whispers for him to stop.  Crab-mask then starts to attack, but wonder of wonders, suddenly....TEACHER HAS ALL THE MOTHERFUCKING POWERS OF ZEBRAMAN!

It is at this point in the movie where Zebraman becomes a contender for greatest movie of all time, because Zebraman just proceeds to sufficiently beat the crap out of Crab-mask and every other subsequent bad guy that he comes across. The costume begins improving and eventually Zebraman must rely on all of his powers to protect Japan from an alien invasion, which was foretold in the original television series which turned out to be a prophecy....yep.

The best part of Zebraman is pretty much a toss-up between his powers and his theme song. His powers are fueled by his belief in himself and comprise of the following, Zebra Back Kick, Zebra Screw Punch, Zebra Bomber, Flight, Super Strength, Zebra Sense, transformation into a Zebra Pegasus that can fire lasers, etc...

The Zebraman theme song is catchy as all hell and will get stuck in your head even if the words are mostly just "Zebraman" repeated.

Worth noting: this movie is great because unlike other superheroes, people look at Zebraman and instead of saying "Oh thank God, a superhero.", they give him a look like "What's with the costume buddy?"

Also, did I mention he has catchphrases? Zebraman has catchphrases:

• "Turn on the Black and White"
• "I'm not going to let you keep me down."
• "Don't stand behind me" *kick*
• "Black and White Ecstasy! Zebraman!"

I don't know what else to tell you...go watch this movie. Do it. Do it now.



Then go watch the crazy sequel Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City


5 out of 5 Zebras

Movie Monday: Attack of the Super Monsters

Usually, I can watch a movie and tell immediately after watching it whether or not it was a good movie. This is not the case with Attack of The Super Monsters. I am literally in a state of confusion. I cannot decide whether this is the biggest steaming pile of crap that I have ever had the misfortune of watching or if it is simply genius. Truth be told I did get a certain Wiseau-esque sick thrill from watching this "film", but seriously...I mean...it's just awful.

If you took one part Thunderbirds, one part the absolute worst Godzilla movie you've ever seen, and one part Voltron, you'd get Attack of The Super Monsters. Still not getting it? Let me break it down a little further for you:

Dinosaurs have escaped from their subterranean lair where they've been hiding out for the past 65 million years under the leadership of their evil lord Emperor Tyrannus. The dinosaurs have grown in size and intelligence to the point where they can speak our language. Emperor Tyrannus has decided to take over the Earth and destroy all humans.  Fortunately, a specially trained team known as Gemini is there to stop him. Gemini consists of two siblings and two completely worthless people. The two siblings are part cyborg and in times of extreme need can fuse their bodies together to call on the hermaphroditic power of Gemini for about 3 and a half minutes.

Throughout this "movie", Gemini manages to defeat every monster that Tyrannus sends up to the surface and then the movie just sort of ends leaving us to wonder whatever happened to Tyrannus himself.

Also, the movie can't seem to make up it's mind if it wants to use claymation, rubber suits, models, or animation. All of these are used throughout the feature and some are used simultaneously.


Again, I'm not sure if this is the greatest thing in the world or the worst thing....I'll just give it a very confused look out of 5

Film Friday: Hardware

Sorry about the unannounced hiatus from the blog. I've just been very busy lately and between work, parties, and personal life, I haven't had much time for anything else.


Enough apologies, back to business.

Hardware is a film from 1990 that is unremarkable in the sense that it is yet another post-apocalyptic science fiction film.  HOWEVER, it is remarkable in that it is one of the most beautiful, creative, and unique films I have ever seen. Imagine a very artistically sound cyberpunk version of Tank Girl meets Virus. 

Set in a dystopic future where the government has banned all forms of procreation and nuclear fallout is prevalent, the film tells the story of soldier Moses who has purchased scrap robot parts from a nomadic wanderer as a gift for his girlfriend. Moses' girlfriend proceeds to weld the head of the robot to a large metallic sculpture that she has been working on and then they have a lot of hot steamy sex while the neighbor across the way watches. 

The movie gets interesting when it turns out the robot is really an unstoppable government killing machine known as the M.A.R.K. 13, named after the bible verse that states "no flesh shall be spared".   It can repair itself, it can adapt, it can kill you in about a million different ways. Needless to say, this thing kills the crap out of people after it repairs itself with the metal sculpture that it was welded to.

This movie is great. It's beautifully shot, has amazing cameos from Lemmy and Iggy Pop, a great soundtrack, and decent acting. I'm not sure why this movie managed to stay so far under the radar but it has and that's a damn shame.

4 out of 5 mushroom clouds

Movie Monday: Monsters

If you're not familiar with the name Magnet and how it relates to films, let me catch you up. Magnet is a releasing company that has released some of the most interesting and entertaining films I've ever seen, many of which are foreign. Such films include: The Troll Hunter, Big Man Japan, Let the Right One In, and now Monsters. 

Monsters is a British film set in present-day America/Mexico. The set-up involves aliens crashing to earth six years prior and ever since that incident, a constant struggle has been underway to contain what is known as an infection. Walls have been built, airstrikes are carried out, quarantines are made, and throughout it all the residents of the infected zone have to suffer the collateral damage of the war. 

Our protagonists are Andrew, a photojournalist, and Samantha, the daughter of Andrew's wealthy employer. Andrew has been tasked with bringing Samantha back to America from Mexico, which involves traveling through the infected zone. After several unfortunate events which leave them without money and without safe passage, they choose to travel by land straight through the infected zone. 

They manage to reach the border only to see that the infected zone has been extended even further. They manage to reach a gas station where they place a phone call to the Army for pick-up. However, they soon encounter a pair of the aliens at the gas station. The aliens, by the way, are gigantic land cephalopods.  The pair of aliens begin to sing to each other and glow and caress each other, leading to a surprisingly tender moment in the film. The film then closes in a bittersweet ending and leaves the viewer with a lot of "what if" questions.

Great movie, not stellar, but definitely worth watching.

4 out of 5 squid aliens

Film Friday: Hell Comes to Frogtown

*sigh*  Let it never be said I'm not committed to this damn blog. Today's feature was recommended to me by a friend. I was actually somewhat familiar with the Frogtown franchise but only due to the later installments which feature Joe Estevez as the replacement for Rowdy Roddy Piper. Piper, who plays Sam Hell in the original film, was pretty fantastic in They Live, so I was willing to give this movie a shot. This was a mistake I would soon regret.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is set in a post-apocalyptic future just like 15 million other movies. However, Hell Comes to Frogtown chooses to set itself apart from those movies not by necessarily including a better plot or cinematography, but instead choosing to focus on lots of sex, mutants, and something called "The Dance of The Three Snakes" which I will talk about later.


In this post-apocalyptic world, fertility is low and the population is suffering. Our hero, Sam Hell, is captured by the military and placed under the care of the MedTech, a branch of the military specifically dedicated to making babies, complete with its own propaganda posters. Their reasoning for doing so is because lo and behold, Sam Hell has a higher sperm count than any man alive! Well, they immediately slap an electronic chastity Speedo on him and take him to go a-fornicatin'.

Hell and the MedTechs are sent on a mission into mutant territory (by the way in case you didn't get it yet, the mutants are giant frog people) to rescue five fertile females. Stuff happens, Sam Hell almost bangs a frog chick, and they save the females.  All along the way there's lots of boobage and slightly erotic facial expressions all of which are supposedly hilarious.

The most frightening part of this movie is "The Dance of the Three Snakes." This is basically when a human female is made to dance erotically for the commander of the frog people and if she does a good job, we see some wriggling under his tunic and he announces "You have aroused the three snakes! Come to me!"  So yes, he has three penises.

Is this movie good? No. No it isn't. Is this movie bad? Probably, but I've seen worse and I know coming from me that's not a fair statement because I've seen a lot of crap. So by normal people's standards, yes, this is a bad movie. 

But I didn't mind.


IT AROUSED THREE SNAKES OUT OF FIVE.

Movie Monday: Shogun Assassin

So I'm sure almost everybody has seen Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies by now. Near the end of the second film, when Black Mamba and her daughter are having some bonding time, they watch a film. That film is Shogun Assassin. 

The film is narrated by a boy, the son of our protagonist, who himself is known as Lone Wolf. Lone Wolf used to be the enforcer/decapitator/hitman of the Shogun. Eventually the Shogun grew fearful of Lone Wolf and sent ninjas to kill him. Well apparently the ninjas decided it would be funny to kill Lone Wolf's wife instead. (Yeah, I don't get it either; maybe they were drunk.) Anyway, Lone Wolf pretty much loses his shit and kills the crap out of everyone and goes on a journey of revenge, taking his son with him.  

The Shogun keeps sending ninja hordes after them but, of course, Lone Wolf kills them all. He's like if John Matrix and John Rambo had a samurai baby.

This continues for a good bit of the movie until Lone Wolf and son face off against the Three Masters of Death who each wield a unique weapon. Just like every other enemy we've seen up to this point, these guys are built up to be huge badasses and then they just get absolutely slaughtered by Lone Wolf. He then kills the Shogun's brother and walks off into the sunset with his son, who laments that he wishes things could be different.

For real though, this movie is fan-freaking-tastic. An oppressive shogun, a mystical sword, a wandering samurai, hordes of slaughtered assassins, kind of sounds like Samurai Jack, doesn't it?

4 out of 5 Ninjas

Film Friday: Garuda

So while I was at MechaCon last weekend, I stopped by one of the DVD merchants to search through their wares for any new and interesting titles for my blog. Among the more interesting fare were some relatively unheard of kaiju films. I love kaiju. I probably know more about Godzilla than anyone I know. Now one of the kaiju films that this guy was selling was called Garuda and I asked him about it. He informed me that it was in fact the very first Thai kaiju film and was inspired by the original Godzilla movie. I, of course, thanked the kind vendor for his time and instantly went home to pirate the movie. I'm glad I did so, because if I had bought this piece of crap, I would have been very put out.

Garuda draws it's name from the large phoenix like creature in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, and as bad-ass as the opening to the movie is, the poor special effects and annoying protagonists doom this movie from the start. Like a frozen M&M-filled burrito, this movie has all the ingredients for awesome but in the end it just makes a mess.

Anyway, let me try to QUICKLY summarize the plot for you. Basically, a giant bird-dinosaur/god/creature is uncovered under Bangkok and an elite team of military forces specifically trained to "kill gods" is called in. They kidnap some annoying paleontologists and lo and behold the thing gets loose and rampages. Death ensues. Finally about 1 minute before the credits roll they manage to beat the thing.

As awesome as that sounded, this movie sucks. The effects suck, the monster keeps getting inexplicably larger. The protagonist is completely unlikable and stupid. I really wanted to like this and I had high hopes, but honestly, I'd rather watch Death Kappa and that's saying something.

2 out of 5 actual garudas