barugon

I was permanently scarred by this terrible film.

The main action of the movie is nothing special. It seems there's a tribe of snake-worshipping people in a remote mountain region of Northern China, where women rather than men are the leaders and decision makers. I suppose among some men, this is enough to make "Succubare" a horror movie... Anyway, occasionally Chinese men would wander into the village, take a fancy to the local girls, seduce them and then abandon them. Unfortunately for the men, the women had put them under a spell, derived from snake venom, which would make them die horribly in 100 days -- their bellies swollen like a pregnant woman's with live worms and snakes -- if they did not return.

Forget the cover of the US video. This has nothing to do with vampires, though there is one inept blood-drinking scene. The title itself is only marginally appropriate: "Succubare" is the Latin verb meaning "to lie beneath", and it's the root of the word Succubus, a female demon who would seduce men in their sleep. Actually, it's the MEN who are the seducers here.

But it's not the main action of this ludicrous film that's so objectionable. It's the little side-incidents. I'll overlook the slaughter and butchery of an ox that's performed on-screen. The participants seem very experienced, as though this is an unpleasant duty they actually do in real life; and I'm sure they really ate the animal afterwards... though I resent having the act thrust in my face as "entertainment".

What I WISH I could overlook (or HAD overlooked) are the numerous, totally extraneous shots of an unidentified man, who from time to time interrupts the story by eating living animals. He starts the movie by tearing apart a live snake with his teeth. In the course of the movie, he devours a bug, a lizard, a toad (I had to leave the room after this), and a whole mouse (I stopped watching at this point, and lost my appetite for days). Let me stress that this was totally unexpected, and had nothing to do with the movie... unless it's a cynical reference to love as it's portrayed in the film: a blind, selfish, predatory survival mechanism that tears apart the helpless... but then again, I'm probably just rationalizing to get the vileness out of my head...

I thought this was a really enjoyable movie, though aimed very much at kids. It reminded me of the old-style Gamera flicks, but with an important difference: the kid-heros behaved much more like real children than the insufferable brats of 60's monster movies.

However, my adult-brain has some reservations about it. Most of all, I found the inevitable "what I learned from the Monster" message appalling: the kids suggest it's best not to know too much, and much better to stay uninformed and let God straighten everything out. That's probably not the interpretation the film-makers wanted, but I thought that was what came across, loud and clear.

Another problem -- less serious and actually kind of endearing -- is the poverty of the special effects. Oh, don't get me wrong: some of the effects are first rate, especially those involving Mothra's transformations; and the matte shots are way ahead of the first "Mothra" (1996), where I found myself thinking of bad 70's sci-fi. But I've never seen more visible wire-work outside of a Full Moon picture. Otherwise impressive shots of Dagahrla streaking through the skies are ruined by the obvious cables running from its back. Then there's the Gogo, that bizarre Furby-like creature that creates miracles by peeing on things... even when you can't see the wire attached to his head, you just KNOW it's there.

Much more fun and far less ponderous than some of the later Godzilla flicks, this movie will appeal to anyone who has a lingering affection for the old Gamera movies, shortcomings and all. Just try not to think about it too much...

SUSPIRIA was greater than the sum of its parts. Not so INFERNO. Individual moments burn their way into the imagination -- in particular the underwater ballroom. But for everything that works, there are two scenes that fall flat: the eclipse sequence, for example, ends in unintentional comedy; and when Mater Tenebrarum revealed herself in her true form at the end, I had to keep rewinding the tape because I couldn't believe the effect was as badly done as it had seemed. Unlike SUSPIRIA, INFERNO doesn't go anywhere: Mark is an ineffectual voyeur, not a participant in the story, and his release in the end doesn't carry any emotional weight.

In spite of my joy at seeing a musicologist put through all the pains of Hell, I was disappointed by INFERNO. Argento should really have read his de Quincey a little more carefully. De Quincey's Three Mothers aren't evil witches, but personifications of sorrow, grief and loss -- strong, true, overwhelmingly important emotions which are conspicuously lacking in INFERNO. Oh, come on, Dario -- Mater Lachrymarum shows up as a fashion model type, complete with backlighting, wind-blown hair and a cat. Mark is surrounded by killings, including that of his own sister, and he seems completely untouched by it. Then Mater Tenebrarum turns into a cartoon of Death and goes, "Booga booga!" This is trivial stuff, no matter how beautifully filmed.

In the US, this is probably the least well known of the classic kaiju eiga. Sure, "Dogora" may not be a very good movie overall, but in my opinion it has one of the very best monsters in film history. Dogora is an enormous space jellyfish, vast, mindless, and cosmically terrifying. It floats through the atmosphere, draining the Earth of life-giving carbon. The full-grown Dogora is only on screen for five minutes (!!), but it's still an awe-inspiring sight as this huge, transparent creature, the size of a small town, sucks up buildings, vehicles, bridges and minerals.

The remainder of the movie is mostly an uninspired detective spoof, with two inept policemen and an enigmatic American agent hot on the trail of a gang of jewel thieves. It seems the monster has been getting to the diamonds first... With such an incredible monster, and such well-executed effects, it's a real shame the rest of the film is so mundane.

It's SUPPOSED to be a comedy. Unfortunately, the US television version dubbed the movie as a serious monster film, with disastrous results. Worse, though, is the Toho "international" version -- it may be more accurately translated, but it's performed by the most inept readers you'll hear outside of a Sandy Frank production. Anyway, even if you don't know Japanese, watching "Dogora" in the original language with no subtitles is still probably more enjoyable than suffering through the English versions.

This movie seems to be edited together from episodes of a serial -- it jumps from sub-plot to sub-plot, and introduces a whole raft of new characters without developing any of them. It's Shin-Toho Studio's entry in the Superheroes from Space genre, which puts it side-by-side with those MST3K staples, "Invasion of the Neptune Men" and "Prince of Space".

Like those other movies, this one is frequently laughable. Jump cuts are used to make it seem as though the hero, Starman, and his monster opponent are jumping great distances... but the effect only works if you're under the age of ten and in a very forgiving mood. The meandering plot is juvenile; and the opening scene features an interplanetary council of some of the most hilariously unlikely aliens you'll ever see. Worst of all, I find Starman an uncharismatic and slightly stuffy hero.

What distinguishes "Evil Brain", though, is its monsters, which are genuinely disturbing: one is a swift, chattering beast, with glaring eyes (one of which is on its stomach), huge fangs and long "cobalt nails". It also has two filigreed crests on its head (like bizarre Mickey Mouse ears), breathes smoky radioactive fumes, and has the ability to turn invisible... The other mutant is a silent woman whose face resembles a beaked bird of prey. She also has special skills: she can turn invisible, and she kills with one touch from her fingertips. In fact, she kills a young mother while her two small daughters are playing (a scene which probably explains why this movie doesn't turn up on TV any more!).

Finally, as I write this, I note that IMDB recommends I might also enjoy "Tanin no Kao/The Face of Another". Hmmm... I'm afraid if I followed "Evil Brain" with Kobo Abe's intense, disturbing, and very mature fantasy, my head would explode.

I have some big problems with this movie.

It's not the overall jokiness of it all... although I wish it had been a little more substantial, given that it suggests that Christians, Jews and Muslims have been wrong about the whole afterlife deal, and that the world is controlled by animal-headed deities. That's a different issue.

I'm also willing to admit some of the FX were jaw-dropping. The wall of sand, for example. But there were other "jaw-dropping" moments, too -- for instance, the "jokes": my mouth hung open (wider than the Mummy's) in astonishment, but no laughter came out. Next, there's the appalling racism of the screenplay: the Egyptians are at one point compared (unfavorably) to their camels. The only time we really get to see the non-Anglo inhabitants of Cairo, they're shown as a mob of fanatic zombies. And don't even get me started on Beni...

Then there's the technical errors. Big ones. It's amazing that the equally shoddy "Godzilla (1998)" was torn to shreds by audiences for its every inaccuracy, while this movie wasn't. Here are some examples:

-- Brandon Fraser is wandering into the Sahara, with no horse, no water, nothing. "The desert will kill him," says the mysterious Arab, watching from the cliffs. Next, a subtitle: Three Years Later. Brandon's alive in Cairo. No explanation is given for his miraculous survival. This is known as "cheating". The mysterious Arab pulls a similar stunt at the end of the movie.

-- Egyptian books. The "codex", our modern book with pages, covers and a binding, is a recent European invention. Egyptian "books" would have been papyrus sheets, not big volumes bound on the left!

-- The Mummy steals the eyes of a man who's nearly blind, yet somehow manages to see perfectly clearly.

-- The Plagues of Egypt?? Those were supposed to have been sent by the Old Testament God of the Hebrews, weren't they??

-- It's bad enough that they wasted the talents of Bernard Fox as pure Mummy-fodder, but... did they have to have him crash *exactly* on top of a spot of quicksand??!!

-- How is it that the wastrel brother, described in the beginning as an indifferent Egyptologist, suddenly reads hieroglyphics and hieratic fairly well? (And here's a minor quibble: I find it hard to believe these turn-of-the-century English types could read ancient Egyptian clearly and correctly enough for the Gods to understand...)

-- Simple question: where did those fully-saddled camels come from at the end?

-- Why does the mysterious Arab THANK Fraser et al. for helping to clean up the mess that they themselves created? You'd figure he'd chase them away and warn 'em never to come back, on pain of death. After all, look at all the people and historic monuments that have been destroyed because of those foreign grave-robbers!

OK, enough. This movie is the cinematic equivalent of a Circus Peanut: it seemed like a harmless bit of fluff, but left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Made in the wake of Lugosi's success in "Dracula", this movie follows the same basic pattern: innocent maiden threatened by a ghastly villain, pursued by monsters, and eventually saved by the strength of her love for the ineffectual hero... with the help of an eccentric foreign Doctor. It has a few big shortcomings: the hero, for example, who's insufferable; the heroine, Madge Bellamy, who shows little difference between her normal state and her zombie existence; and the final disposal of the zombies, which is more comical than suspenseful. But on the plus side, there's Lugosi at his most menacing, and a few scenes (like the scene in the sugar mill) that haven't lost their ability to shock. The camera work is much more active than the notoriously stagey "Dracula"; and some of the effects, while not always very successful, seem to look all the way forward to "Bram Stoker's Dracula" some sixty years later!

In any given horror movie, there's the hero, there's the heroine, and then there's The Expendibles. You know the ones I mean: the goofy sidekick, the Bad Girl, the bully who gets knocked off by the REAL threat in the last act... you know who they are, and the order in which they will be slaughtered. And you probably don't care. Occasionally one of the Good Guys gets knocked off, and that's supposed to be shocking, or innovative.

Horsepucky.

One of the strongest reactions I had during The Blair Witch Project was a growing sense of disgust for almost every other recent horror film I've seen. Hey -- I went to school with plenty of people like Heather, obnoxious artiste types who blather about the Lacanian interpretation of the Flintstones over decaf espresso. Yes, she's annoying. But she's more recognizably human than the stock characters that usually pop up in horror films. I recognize her, and I wish she would shut up, but I care what happens to her. And I'm grateful to the filmmakers for giving us slightly annoying, unpredictable characters, who frequently don't do what you'd expect them to, or what they _ought_ to do to advance the plot.

I think one of the major reasons for the commercial and critical success of this movie is its complete rejection of formula. Marketing alone is not enough to ensure success! Think about it: who ever would have thought a virtually scriptless movie, shot by neophytes with hand-held cameras, could earn the acclaim (and revenues) it has? Yet here it is: with over a thousand comments, and some truly emotional responses pro and con.

At a time when Hollywood seems committed to remaking every film, TV show or SNL sketch, or adapting every novel ever written for the screen, here's little gem of a movie that doesn't do ANYTHING it's supposed to do. It doesn't play by the rules. Without professional cinematography, it still comes closer to a purely cinematic experience than anything you'll see this year... And there's something lurking, unseen but clearly felt, in the shadows around the edges of the film: brilliance. ...but if they make a stupid sequel, I'll sic a real witch on 'em...

They took a perfectly good Japanese monster movie -- one that was apparently begun for US television anyway -- and ruined it. They excerpted a few minutes of monster footage and used it to pad out their own, utterly different movie, featuring a cast of non-actors and a script that treats the Japanese people as something less than human. To be avoided at all costs.

I think this was Toho's fourth "giant monster on the loose" movie, and it's also probably the least known. The American "version", "Varan the Unbelievable", is a travesty and should be avoided at all costs.

The Japanese original has some really good things about it. It features one of Akira Ifukube's best monster-movie scores, in which he introduced some themes that would be re-used in practically every kaiju eiga that followed... There's also a wonderful "Lovecraft-gone-Japanese" feeling about the protagonists' arrival in the village: they interrupt a strange ceremony, and a sea of masked faces turns to watch them. This is followed by an eerie scene as they follow a mist-shrouded path to the forbidden lake.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is a little uninspired. It doesn't have the emotional tension of "Godzilla" or "Rodan", although the monster costume and attack scenes are very, very good.

Here's the fun thing about a really bad work of art: it tells us so much more about the artist than it does about ourselves... in fact, more than the artist himself probably realizes. I think that's the reason I enjoy Ed Wood's films so much, especially this one: they have nothing to do with life as I know it, but they must have been immensely personal to him. It's like seeing Wood up on the screen, shouting, "Here I am! Please love me!" And you kind o' have to...

There's a story about a famous composer who was conducting a choir. He kept telling them to sing softer, softer! until finally the choir just stopped singing completely. The composer didn't even notice: he kept conducting with a blissful smile on his face. The only music he heard was the music in his head, and it was perfect! Well... it's the same with Ed Wood. He couldn't be bothered to notice the cardboard tombstones falling over, or the difference between Lugosi Béla and his stand-in. He saw what he wanted to see, and to him it was beautiful. And by some miracle, he found casts that managed to act so unimaginatively that they didn't stand in the way of the basic Woodenness of his vision. Good? Lord, no. Endearing? Absolutely.

I don't see why so many people prefer Michele Soavi's first film, "Stage Fright", to his others, especially this one. This is one of my favorite Dark Fantasy films. Of course, it's got producer Dario Argento's fingerprints all over it -- the incredible camera-track from the depths of the crypt all the way up through the building into the cathedral itself, for example... And there's one moment which reminded me of Mario Bava: when two characters are opening a door, and the camera ignores them, fixing instead on a curious dangling keychain.

This movie isn't so much a crib from the "Demons" series -- seeing as it started out as the third part of the story, from what I've heard -- as it is a blatant riff on an M.R. James ghost story called "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". The church, the Thing in the bag, the stone with seven eyes, and the inscription: DEPOSITUM CUSTODI are all from James... but this is just the framework. The rest is pure Dario Argento/Franco Ferrini-style improvisation.

The movie begins with a slaughter of witches. The witches are shown as peaceful, innocent people, who just happen to stand for everything the Church abhors. So the Church comes down on them like a load of bricks -- literally: a cathedral is built over the witches' mass-grave. Centuries later, an odd assortment of characters are trapped in the cathedral as What Has Been Repressed comes back, in a much less benign form...

As in the "Demons" series, the contaminating evil is seen as something from outside, a point of view that's completely opposite to that of Argento's own movies. Corruption enters the body through contact with fluids or blood, and then takes advantage of our inner weaknesses. Sounds like an AIDS metaphor to me, but hey -- I'm already reading way too much into this...

The other thing I love about this movie is that some of it was filmed near the place I used to live in Budapest, and it was filmed while I was living there. The lunatic car ride over the bridge and through the tunnel, after the heart-pulling scene, ended right on my old doorstep. I saw the lights and equipment set up around St. Stephen's Cathedral, but I never knew what the film was until I saw it on video years after. :)

This is a fairly standard 60's Giant Monster rip-off, like those produced in Japan by Daiei, Shochiku and Nikkatsu Studios in the wake of Toho's success. Yongkari's special powers are his ability to burrow through the earth, and a death-ray he sometimes projects from his horn. He has a wonderful roar, and even starts dancing to a rock version of a famous Korean folk song...

But then there's the ending. Once again the scientists trying to stop Yongkari do about as much damage to the environment as the monster did... Our heros dump chemicals on the beast. There has never been a more horribly realistic demise in rubber-suit monster movie history, as Yongkari sinks to the ground, twitching and bleeding.

As a grown-up, I look back on this movie and cringe. EIJI OKADA is in this, for crying out loud! What a comedown from "Hiroshima, Mon Amour". We have to wait half the movie for the monster to even show up. And a long, long wait it seems to be, as mankind's advance into space turns out to be a succession of cocktail parties and lame jokes.

Just when terminal boredom is about to set in, out pops Guilala: a huge bug-eyed rubber chicken with wings growing out of his cheeks, and the kitchen sink on the top of his head! He can turn himself into a ball of fire and do cannonballs into lakes! Suddenly I'm eight years old again and this movie is Really Cool!

Thankfully, the rest of the movie is just a pretext for scenes of that wonderfully cockeyed beast, destroying some of the worst models in monster movie history (example: there's a jet fighter Guilala smashes that looks to be larger than the oil tanker he's just sunk).

Do yourself a favor: watch the opening credits for the bouncy theme song ("The stars are our destiny...") which you will NEVER get out of your head. Then fast forward to Guilala's first appearance, turn off your brain, and prepare to laugh your head off. Just brace yourself for Peggy Neal's inane "What I learned from the monster" speech at the end.

When I first saw this movie, I hoped this would have more of a brooding, menacing feel to it than it did. I half expected them to return more to the tone of the 1954 GOJIRA, especially since they made so many other references to the original, like bringing back Momoko Kochi as Emiko.

Instead, G. vs. Desutoroia was shot in the usual nervous style of the Heisei series, which so irritated me at first that I found myself counting seconds, to see if ANY SHOT in the whole movie would make it to ten.

On repeated viewings, though, I felt the movie held together better than most of the others in the 'new' Godzilla series. As usual, the human characters seem simply to be along for the ride (the exception is G. vs. Mechagodzilla (II), where I found myself actually caring what went on between the humans). In this case, it's only natural that the Big G. takes center stage.

The final moments are absolutely amazing. Akira Ifukube's classic "the-army-mobilizes-against-Godzilla" theme is heard for probably the last time: not as the usual march, but in a slow choral arrangement that will tear the heart out of any Godzilla fan...

Godzilla may be back in the form of the new, improved Little Godzilla, but PLEASE someone reassure me that we've finally seen the last of that psychic Miki Saegusa. By the time the Heisei series was over, I knew more about Godzilla's inner life than I did about hers. IMHO the whole Psychic thing added nothing to the continuing story... give her a 900 number and an infomercial and keep her out of Godzilla Millennium!

This penultimate outing for the New Improved Godzilla seems like a throwback to the Fukuda years. The battle scenes are fun, as usual, though the US video panning-and-scanning makes it very difficult to see what's going on in many scenes. However, some of the FX are just terrible: the space sequences are more Ed Wood than Star Wars.

And then there's the humans. It seems the Godzilla movie makers are much more comfortable with monster interaction than with humans. Even if you've seen the other episodes in the series, and have followed the "development" of psychic Miki Saegusa, you'll probably feel like you've missed something somewhere... I certainly did. Ishiro Honda knew how to integrate a love story subplot into a monster movie reasonably well, usually giving it a hefty dose of tragedy to balance it out (Gojira, Monster Zero, Terror of Mechagodzilla...); but in SpaceGodzilla, the pair-ups at the end don't have any emotional truth to them at all. It's not quite as bad as the end of Godzilla 1984, though (in which the hero and heroine, who have been getting closer throughout the movie, finally look deeply into each others' eyes and... nod their heads decisively).

All in all a mixed bag, which pales by comparison to its predecessor, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (2), and the Grand Finale that followed it, Godzilla vs. Desutoroia.

Innovative is the word here: and because he went so far to break with the formula, director Yoshimitsu Banno got into some deep trouble with the Powers-that-Be at Toho. Banno used split-screens, animation, dream-sequences, even a black-and-white sequence that creeps in so subtly you don't really notice until the color suddenly springs back in... all kinds of experimental tricks that make the film completely different from Jun Fukuda's by-the-numbers series entries.

Most interesting are all the references to the original GOJIRA: early on, Dr. Yano when he encounters Hedorah, making him resemble the doomed Dr. Serizawa of the 1954 movie... and Banno even goes so far as to re-stage the famous and frightening fish tank scene. For the first time since the 50's, we see human casualties and measure the destruction in human terms. A sympathetic character is even (apparently) killed. In fact, the only thing that really disappoints in the movie is... the monster battle scenes. Long tense minutes go by, and the monsters just stare at each other.

It's been said of horror movie sequels that audiences aren't really looking for new installments; deep down, they want the same movie, over and over again. That's pretty much what we got from Godzilla, from the late 60's through today -- except for All Kaiju Daishingeki (Godzilla's Revenge) and this movie.

Finally, let's not forget this is the movie where Godzilla learns to fly, by tucking his tail between his legs and breathing fire with all his might.

Laughable dialogue doesn't detract too much from this moody, sometimes disturbing Italian Gothic. The story seems to be loosely adapted from an M.R. James ghost story called "Lost Hearts". Although the torture scenes in the uncut version are remarkably strong for their time, there are other things that are more disquieting. Most hideous of all is the character of Solange, the maid, whose youth has been restored by a dead woman's blood. When she speaks of how the blood grows cold and heavy in her veins, it's a very unsettling moment. The black-and-white photography is beautifully atmospheric. Ennio Morricone's music is more conventional than usual -- especially the mazurka that represents Muriel, which is too simple and sentimental for a Barbara Steele character... but the tremendous Fugue for organ which dominates the soundtrack deserves special mention. In spite of its lapses, and with apologies to Mario Bava, this is still my favorite Italian Gothic horror film!

Throughout his career, Franco has borrowed ideas from his atmospheric first shocker, Gritos en la Noche/The Awful Dr. Orloff. This movie is almost a complete remake of that film, with Klaus Kinski an inspired substitute for Howard Vernon as the main maniac. A couple of things really get in the way of

my enjoyment, though: first, the city Jack terrorizes looks no more like London than, say, Marrakech. Or Beijing. Or Dubuque. Another irritating thing: the English dubbing on my print confuses Victorian English with Elizabethan English -- it's all "prithee"'s and "milord"'s and "wilt thou"'s. Ouch.

Viras (a sort of space squid) and a shipful of aliens who dress like surgeons attempt to take over the Earth, two Boy Scouts at a time. Along comes Gamera... Suddenly, the movie grinds to a halt: we're treated to ELEVEN MINUTES of miscellaneous footage from the first three Gamera movies. Once the movie gets going again, we find Viras has implanted a mind-control device in Gamera's neck. He sends our hero turtle off to wreak havoc. This time we get to see even MORE footage from the previous movies: the dam attack scene from "Gamera vs. Barugon" and -- here's the kicker -- black and white footage from the original "Gamera", spliced in with no concern for continuity. The rest of the movie features some astonishingly gruesome images, including disembodied floating arms and Gamera getting impaled on Viras' pointy head. Basically, it's a cheap, cheap thrill for eleven-year-olds and immature adults like me.