These winged devourers digest their victims whilst they’re still alive!
The villainous high priest Maax (Rip Torn) attempts to thwart a prophecy by sending one of his witches to kidnap and murder the unborn son of King Zed. The witch uses magic to transfer the baby from the queen’s womb to the belly of a cow! Before the witch can kill the child, however, a villager intervenes, killing the hag-faced woman and raising the boy as his own son.
UK quad poster
The boy, named Dar, is taught how to fight and it’s revealed that he has the ability to telepathically communicate with all kinds of animals (presumably because he was born from an animal).
Dar and his eagleDar and his pantherDar and his ferretsDar and his (dead) dog
Dar (Marc Singer), now a man, witnesses his village being wiped out by a horde of masked barbarians called Juns, who are allied with Maax. Dar, the only survivor of the massacre, sets out to avenge his people. Along the way Dar is joined by an eagle, a pair of ferrets he calls Kodo and Podo, and a great panther.
Ruh the pantherA road lined with withered corpses
As the adventure continues Dar teams up with King Zed’s younger son Tal, bodyguard Seth (John Amos) and slave girl Kiri (Tanya Roberts), who turns out to actually be a warrior woman. After the death of King Zed, there’s a showdown with Maax atop a sacrificial pyramid, and then there’s a final battle with a mass of Jun warriors.
Can Dar and his allies survive all this? Yes they can… with a little help from some weird, winged devourer beings.
KiriDarSeth and Tal
Fight on the pyramid
Fiery finale
Don’t mess with Dar!
Director Don Coscarelli’s sword and sorcery movie is a fun romp, with Marc Singer proving to be a likeable hero and Tanya Roberts sticking in the memory as the attractive, feisty love interest Kiri. Then we have Rip Torn, who does a bit of scenery-chewing as the hawk-nosed bad guy Maax: he’s a high priest who is rather too fond of child sacrifice.
Maax is mad!
The screenplay, written by Paul Pepperman and Don Coscarelli, was based on a 1959 novel called THE BEAST MASTER, though the book is pretty different to the film: the novel’s hero is a Navajo warrior in a futuristic setting.
An amusing moment where Dar pretends his panther Ruh is a threat to Kiri
THE BEASTMASTER is a colourful adventure yarn that features a fine score by Lee Holdridge, witches with the bodies of young women and the faces of hags, spike-gloved berserker madmen, a ring with an eyeball that can spy on the heroes, and the aforementioned bird-humanoid creatures that wrap their victims in leathery wings to digest them alive!
A winged devourerWitches!Glowing-eyed berserker!Another berserker pic
The eyeball ring!
The fiery, climactic battle with the Jun horde is a well-mounted, exciting finale, where Dar has a one-on-one fight with the Jun leader and, basically, this modestly budgeted fantasy flick is a very, very enjoyable watch.
There’s an impressive explosion when the oil-filled moat is ignitedThe Jun leader!
I love this movie!
Dar and Ruh
Here’s some movie concept art by Nikita Knatz…
City of Aruk concept art by Nikita Knatz
And here are some posters…
German poster
Swedish poster
Turkish poster
Japanese poster
German VHS cover art
Thai poster
German 1-sheet poster
US poster
Believe it or not: this is actually a poster for the 1983 movie Yellowbeard, starring Graham Chapman!
Okay, a final look at those winged devourers…
These critters worship eagles, you know
Behind the scenes shots of a winged devourer costume
And here’s a publicity shot of Singer and Roberts…
In the UK two boys make friends with a stranded alien that resembles a small, metal ball. They try to help the silvery being return home, but have to deal with a crook called George “Filthy” Potter. A mothership eventually arrives and it disgorges a whole swarm of alien metal balls to deal with Potter.
Bad guy Potter gets rolled away by the Glitterball’s buddies!
This low budget British kid’s flick, made for the Children’s Film Foundation, features an extraterrestrial that looks just like a metal ball bearing. This silvery alien is hunted by the military and likes to eat a lot! As so often happens in these CFF movies, the main villain is a small-time criminal (played here by Ron Pember), but there’s never any real threat: it’s all very child-friendly.
Max (Ben Buckton) and Pete (Keith Jayne)
FX-wise, in many scenes the Glitterball is just a small, metal ball rolled along the floor, but for scenes where, for instance, it gobbles-up some food, stop-motion animation is used.
Glitterball’s got the munchies!
The Glitterball prepares to eat a banana…
The Glitterball: you can’t get a simpler-looking alien creature than this!
THE GLITTERBALL was directed by Harley Cokeliss, who’d made the non-science-fiction movie THE BATTLE OF BILLY’S POND the year previously, also for the Children’s Film Foundation. Harley went on to be second unit director on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980), then directed flicks like DREAM DEMON (1988), BLACK MOON RISING (1986) and WARLORDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (1982).
Pete reads a copy of poster magazine SCI-FI MONTHLY
Brian Johnson did a lot of the special effects on THE GLITTERBALL, which was quite a coup for such a cheap production. Brian came on board after Harley, through a mutual friend, met up with Brian, who was supervising the model and effects work on Gerry Anderson’s SPACE: 1999 at the time. Brian was happy to help out, but needed Gerry’s okay to do so. Harley met with Gerry at his Bray Studio offices and Gerry generously gave his blessing to the project. Brian and his crew then created flying scenes of the mothership and made a working model of the Glitterball’s own min-spacecraft, complete with lights and an opening hatch.
The hatch of the Glitterball’s mini-spacecraft opens…
Barry Leith, who’d worked on the British children’s TV series THE WOMBLES, did the stop-motion animation.
Barry Leith animated sequences such as when the Glitterball eats some fruit
The novelisation of the film
THE GLITTERBALL was recently released on DVD by the BFI as part of a triple bill of Children’s Film Foundation movies, which also includes SUPERSONIC SAUCER (1956).
BFI DVD
Trend Video VHS cover
A close-up of the Glitterball’s mini-spacecraftThe mothership hovers high in the sky
Ambrose McKinley, a blind former soldier, moves with his seeing eye dog into a retirement community near a forest. He meets his neighbour Delores, but before they can get to know one another she is brutally assaulted that very same night, killed by something big and nasty. Ambrose is also attacked by the creature, his dog comes to his aid and the beast is eventually driven off, but Ambrose’s dog is fatally wounded. When the police find Ambrose the next day they assume it was an animal attack, but Ambrose knows it must be something else, something far more savage than a forest creature… and eventually he discovers that a werewolf stalks the area.
Werewolf in the house!
Poster
As the story progresses Ambrose tries to discover who the person is that transforms during nights of the full moon, and eventually he finds himself battling a whole group of newly-created werewolves at his home.
It’s outside…
I really enjoyed this movie, which boasts a strong central performance from Nick Damici. Damici starred in and wrote the script for STAKE LAND (2010) and its sequel, and was the screenwriter for the effective, gritty crime flick COLD IN JULY (2014). In LATE PHASES he is brilliant as the stubborn, say it as it is, wilful Vietnam War vet. He really takes this role seriously and it shows on the screen.
Nick Damici is the core element that makes the film so good
The movie, directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano, is well-plotted, with a story that kept me watching, wondering about the identity of the werewolf.
Fight!
Now, about the werewolves…
Robert Kurtzman’s Creature Corps company designed the lycanthropes with quirky, large-eared, broad-mouthed faces. I think this isn’t a look that werewolf movie purists will necessarily like, with these creatures sporting apish bodies and almost impish, furry faces that lack the long snout of other werewolf designs. They almost resemble wolf-gremlins.
Who you callin’ quirky?!
Big-mouthed werewolf!
But I like the fact the movie uses practical effects to bring the beasts to life and sometimes it is good to see a different take on the look of iconic creatures like werewolves, though many will argue the big-eyed wolf-beasts here stray a little too far into goofy-looking territory. However, as I liked the movie a lot, I just accepted these weird werewolves as part of the package.
Crashing through a window!
Leaping on a car!
LATE PHASES ends with a full-on transformation and a pretty gory showdown. With its satisfying mix of horror, humour and drama I think it makes a fine companion piece to that other wonderful, quirky horror flick set in an old folks home: BUBBA HO-TEP (2002).
The bulging, flesh-tearing transformationWolf claws erupt from his fingertips!A werwolf gets skewered through the eyes!
Also known as ZODIAC POWER 3: KICKBOXER FROM HELL, this is a cut-and-paste IFD movie that intercuts new footage featuring western martial arts actor Mark Houghton with a 1976 Hong Kong/Korean supernatural movie called THE OBSESSED, starring Nora (WAY OF THE DRAGON) Miao.
Poster
The film begins with a woman called Sophia being chased by sackcloth-wearing bad guys. She stumbles upon a kickboxer called Sean (Houghton), who saves her. Back at Sean’s home there is a funny conversation on the couch as Sophia explains things to Sean: “It’s a long story – I’m a nun, actually – but my partner and I are working undercover against Lucifer.” Excellent stuff! This explanation works as a tenuous link to the existing footage from THE OBSESSED: the newlywed heroine in this 1976 production, played by Nora Miao, is meant to be Sophia’s partner, who has now given up being a nun and has married a stocky guy called Robert.
Cult leader wearing face paint!
In this part of the plot we see creepy things start to happen, such as a broken clock starting to work again in the family home and a scene where Robert and his wife are given their wedding photos… and each shot features the ghostly face of his dead first wife Lisa!
Back with the newly-shot footage, we cut to the dark HQ of the Lucifer-worshippers, who like to wear face paint and sackcloth. After some amusing trash-talk bickering (the dialogue in the new scenes is priceless), the two dudes who failed to catch Sophia are forced to fight to the death in a martial arts ring. One of the combatants dies when his groin is punched!
Jumping over to the haunted home yarn, we see a young maid encounter a ‘guest’ who is actually the ghost of Lisa. Lisa is always lit by green or blue lighting. At one point the slightly scabby-faced Lisa cackles as she eats some watermelon.
The Obsessed
Back with the Sean plotline, the sackcloth satanists capture Sophia as music stolen from HALLOWEEN plays on the soundtrack. The main satanist henchman, who prefers to wear shades and a red bandana rather than sackcloth, kills Sean’s brother! Before we can see how Sean reacts to this, we cut back to the ghost storyline. We see blue-lit ghostly Lisa brush her hair in a mirror and wonder whether the bent-over old housekeeper character is a nice or bad person.
The new wife is smothered by Lisa’s floating wedding gown… or is the wife imagining things? (Of course she isn’t!) The wife is then attacked in the garden at nighttime by Lisa, but hubby Robert still decides to go on a pre-planned business trip. What a caring guy!
Ah, here’s the midpoint twist: Robert is a bit of a deceitful womaniser and he’s gone to a hotel to meet his lover. Ghostly Lisa shows up and throws Robert into the sea, but Robert just brushes off this supernatural encounter like it was nothing and meets-up with his mistress in his hotel room. What a hound! As Robert’s lover takes a bath… a floating blue-lit hand appears, then Lisa strangles the mistress and throws her from a balcony!
Astounding special effects!
After we see the Lucifer worshippers perform a ceremony, burning a photograph of the wife, we see her become compelled to attack her nephew.
Robert returns home soon after and is shown photos of his house taken by some real estate guys. Each shot shows Lisa’s ghostly image, but Robert just blames the realtors for taking bad photographs!
Later, blue-lit Lisa watches Robert kiss his new wife, then there’s a flashback of Lisa’s funeral from a few years ago. In another scene there is some kind of seance/ceremony that takes place in the cemetery and the bent-over housekeeper starts speaking with Lisa’s voice, claiming that Lisa was murdered. Yikes!
Robert goes fishing and thinks back to when he was married to Lisa, who we see accusing him of marrying her just for her money. The flashback ends with Robert strangling Lisa.
Back with the Sean plot thread, he fights a sackcloth dude (who I’m sure I saw being killed at the start of the film). Wearing a red vest, Sean kicks ass and beats the satanist. He then fights another Lucifer-lover: “I don’t know what pain is, but you do!”
Meanwhile, the ghost story reaches the point where we see Lisa’s grave being dug up and there’s no body! After the old housekeeper is knifed to death by Robert, we see him go to the garden and dig up Lisa’s corpse. But why? Nobody knows it’s buried here, so why dig it back up? Anyway, Robert is soon taunted by Lisa’s ghost, which now has fangs. Robert is attacked by her and he is eventually captured by the authorities.
But what I want to know is this: why did Lisa’s ghost initially taunt and attack the innocent new wife and Robert’s mistress, rather than immediately target the murderous husband? I guess it will remain a mystery.
Lisa suddenly has vampire fangs!
Now the Sean-vs-satanists section of the film reaches its climax (“You’ll pay for my brother!”) as the hero confronts the Lucifer-worshipping bad guys at their HQ, where Sophia the young undercover nun is being held prisoner.
Sean and the main henchman fight each other with sledgehammers (as the theme from RE-ANIMATOR plays). The fight ends when Sean breaks the guy’s neck. Sean now begins to smash a series of skulls (that each have a candle) because he realises this is the way to remove the satanists’ power.
Sledgehammer fight
The cult leader, who sports KIϟϟ-style face paint, brings the broken-necked main henchman back to life, but Sean dodges a swinging sledgehammer blow and the final sacred skull gets smashed, causing the cult leader to die.
This guy is obviously a KIϟϟ fan
And then… we get an abrupt IFD-style finish: the end!
The scenes from THE OBSESSED are well enough done, with the story possessing a little bit of mystery, but not much effort is made by IFD to make this plot line seem at all relevant to the satanists story.
The new footage with Houghton (who appeared in such Hong Kong actioners as TIGER ON THE BEAT 2) is fun to watch, however, and I enjoyed listening to the sackcloth-wearing bad guys pettily swear amongst themselves. Some of the fighting was okay, too.
People are hunted by a tall humanoid extraterrestrial that kills his victims using spinning, living projectiles.
‘It preys on human fear’…
Kevin Peter Hall played the alien‘Man is the endangered species’
Directed by Greydon (SATAN’S CHEERLEADERS) Clark, this low budget film is structured like a backwoods slasher movie but with an alien instead of a maniac.
WITHOUT WARNING features lots of shots of people falling victim to the flying, fleshy, toothy blobs, showing the red tendrils sinking into human flesh to suck blood and exude yellow gunk.
Red tendrils sink into a victim’s face
Though the film’s pace sometimes flags, the attack scenes are messy, gory fun, with loads of close-ups of the tendrils digging under the skin or through clothing!
Tendrils pierce through clothing
Predating PREDATOR by seven years, WITHOUT WARNING has a (mainly unseen), silent, blue-skinned alien hunting humans (using those killer pancake organisms) for sport. The extraterrestrial hunter is played by Kevin Peter Hall, who also played the Predator in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Eek! It’s the alien!
The colourful cast, which enthusiastically chew the scenery, includes Jack Palance, Martin Landau, Neville Brand, Cameron Mitchell and Ralph Meeker. The movie also features a young David Caruso wearing very small shorts!
Martin Landau plays unhinged Vietnam vet Fred ‘Sarge’ DobbsBig ol’ Jack Palance
Watch out, Cameron!
David Caruso
The grungy, satisfying practical FX were created by Greg (VAN HELSING) Cannom. Makeup effects legend Rick Baker did uncredited work on the film, too, building the alien’s big-domed head.
The fleshy projectile has teeth!
Belgian poster
Oh no! Another pic of Caruso playing an obnoxious character in very, very small shorts!
A small group of archeologists and filmmakers become trapped in a newly discovered underground three-sided Egyptian pyramid. One of them gets injured by falling debris, then the situation becomes worse when scrawny feline things are encountered and then a larger god-creature joins in on the action…
Ignore the poster: there are no mummies in the flick
The found footage format is used well sometimes in the movie (the night vision views), though the director sometimes forgets it’s found footage and we see stuff not from the camera POV.
The night vision shots work well
The story features the usual found footage-style bickering dialogue that always becomes tiresome, though James Buckley from THE INBETWEENERS adds some humour.
There’s rather too much time spent trudging and crawling around tunnels and chambers, and there are no mummies featured in the movie (despite what’s indicated on the poster), but the rat-like cat creatures are interesting critters and the reveal that the one and only, actual jackal-headed god Anubis is imprisoned in the pyramid, eager to rip out hearts to judge souls, is pretty good.
One of the little feline-critters before we get to see its face
Anubis looks pretty coolA victim gets a clawed monster-fist right through his chest!
Alexandre (PIRANHA 3D, CRAWL) Aja produced the movie, but it’s a shame he didn’t direct it too, as he knows how to make really satisfying creature features. First-time director Grégory Levasseur, who is usually a producer and screenwriter, helmed this project instead and he doesn’t really manage to imbue THE PYRAMID with a decently creepy atmosphere or provide the kind of tension Aja would’ve easily brought to the film. But the movie does get much better in the latter portion of the movie, the CGI for the most part is just about acceptable, and there are some well-handled scenes, such as when a character gets skewered on floor spikes and is picked at by the rat-cat-things.
Trapped on spikes and nibbled by nasties!
Finally, I think Anubis is a pretty good creation: its jackal face looks like it’s been flayed of skin and the god-being’s preoccupation with judging victims by weighing their hearts is an interesting plot angle.
Its face looks good in close-up, and this is probably because a full-size model of Anubis’ head was built (see end of blog for photos), which I assume was used as photogrammetry reference for the computer FX department for details and colour, etc.
He’s behind you!
Anubis’ raw-looking foot
The introduction of the monstrous god-creature definitely helped nudge the movie up a few rungs of the enjoyment ladder for me, that’s for sure.
Anubis wants to judge everyone!
Here’s some of the concept art produced for the film…
Anubis concept
Cat-creature concept illo
Another concept illo of a cat-critter
Here are a couple of behind the scenes shots of a cool model of Anubis’ head…
A space capsule lands in the New Mexico desert and Dr. Linda Murphy (Arianna Scott) identifies it as a secret US-Soviet deep space probe that was launched years ago: it was a joint mission to try and make alien contact.
The Asylum definitely knows how to sell its movies
Now this capsule has landed back on Earth it is discovered that the chimp inside it is still alive after all these years… and now it is starting to grow in size! Alien green fluid that causes the ape to enlarge is then ingested by a local gila monster and it too begins to grow. Linda, along with her estranged father Noah and Russian astrophysicist Eva Kuleshov (Katie Sereika), find out that a spaceship from the Andromeda Galaxy is controlling the creatures and, presumably, wants to cause a collapse in the US government by sending the monsters to wreck havoc in Washington.
The movie endlessly cuts back to aerial shots of the Langley Research Centre
Abraham, the giant-size chimpanzee, becomes free of all alien control and finally fights the lizard monster in Washington and, after it wins the fight, the authorities decide not to kill the ape, allowing it to live in a base outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Abraham is captured for a while
APE VS MONSTER is a mockbuster from The Asylum, obviously intended to cash-in on the release of GODZILLA VS KONG.
This scene ain’t too bad, but it’s far too brief
The special effects are not totally bad for a release from The Asylum, which isn’t saying much, that must be admitted! The lizard monster and the spaceship are acceptably rendered, though Abraham the huge chimp looks, for the most part, rather poor.
The lizard-monster looks kind of okay…
…and the briefly-seen alien vessel is acceptable-looking too…
…but the giant chimp always looks kinda ropey
For some reason Abraham just grows larger but still looks like a chimp, but the gila monster evolves into a kind of bipedal dino-monster when it enlarges, even though characters continue to refer to it just as a gila monster.
Monstrous gila monster
The biggest let-down with the movie is the fact that there’s very little interaction between the monsters, despite the title, with a very brief battle between the creatures occurring at the very end of the movie.
The lizard critter reaches Washington…
…and we finally get the monster battle the movie title promisedFight!
Eric Roberts looks pretty careworn as National Security Advisor Ethan Marcos and he has to deal with some pretty clunky dialogue, much of the movie’s running time is padded out with talky scenes, and disappointment cannot really be avoided, thanks to the fact there are not that many monster scenes interspersed throughout the movie.
Eric RobertsLong shot of the monsters in Washington
So, pretty much what you’d expect from a film made by The Asylum. If you like these cheesy SyFy Channel-type mockbusters, this is definitely the movie for you.
In Lab 707 scientists are working on the Thunder Project, experimenting with a formula that can make plants and animals grow to large proportions. This formula is never really shown, though: it seems to depend more on using a see-through box and electricity, rather than vials and fluids.
Terrorists attack the army-run lab facility to acquire the formula, there’s a bloody shootout, but several scientists run into the countryside with the special case, which gets lost after a car crash, and is discovered by a young girl called Ting Ting. She decides to put her pet snake Mosler in the see-through box, switches on the case’s ‘lights’, and the serpent is electrified… and then it begins to grow!
Ting Ting and her (big) pet snake Mosler!
THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT is a cut-and-paste IFD Film Arts movie that uses lots of footage from the earlier Taiwanese monster movie KING OF SNAKE (1984) with added film material featuring martial arts actor Pierre Kirby.
Now that’s what I call a poster!
Mosler on the loose!
We get a cool scene early on where we see the scientists experimenting on a frog, making the amphibian grow much larger. The model used here is pretty decent.
Frog experiment…
For several scenes we see Ting Ting having fun with the semi-large Mosler: they play hide and seek, play catch with a ball and the snake also helps Ting Ting win a rollerblade race against a couple of other kids. Mosler, it is revealed, can understand what Ting Ting says and reacts to her by nodding or shaking its head. It also makes a sound like a parrot (or maybe it sounds like a screeching chimp?)
Meanwhile, we are introduced to military agent Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby). Ted Fast: now there’s a heroic name! Tough Ted is sent on a mission to hunt down the terrorist group’s leader Solomon (Edowan Bersmea).
Don’t mess with Ted Fast!
Some cops and army dudes in red berets also feature in the story, so we get various cops/Ted Fast/gangsters/army confrontations.
The army wears bright red berets
There is a bunch of shootouts, then we get a scene where the terrorists try to capture the snake, but their electrified trap makes Mosler grow much larger. Now the huge serpent makes a deep, roaring sound like a lion!
We get a couple of scenes where the terrorists (who come across more like gangsters) threaten Ting Ting’s family and they eventually kidnap the girl. Then we get some monster action with a plane-vs-snake sequence that ends when Mosler smashes the plane with its tale.
Mosler vs plane
The film does get rather preoccupied with terrorists and cops shooting it out with each other, but then we get some more monster snake action! Yay! First Mosler attacks a road bridge and then destroys a train bridge, including the train crossing it. Yikes! The formerly nice and playful Mosler is now a large-scale killer!
The army watches as Mosler approaches a bridge
The snake proceeds to break a dam, causing mass flooding and more deaths. Jeez, Mosler is a real psycho-killer now!
After some Ted Fast martial arts action we cut back to Ting Ting, who is being held captive by a bad guy in a tall building, and then Mosler returns once more, to attack the west district of a large city.
Crowds and the Mosler puppet are featured together in some simple but acceptable matte shots. The populace run in panic! Flames and screaming! Mosler wipes out a disco! In an earlier scene with the military we are told that the west district has been evacuated, but there are civilians everywhere in these shots!
Mosler starts wrapping itself around the skyscraper where Ting Ting is being held prisoner and jets finally arrive, shooting at the snake, which glows around the edges of its body each time it is hit (maybe because electricity had been used to enlarge it?)
I like it when monsters coil around buildings, don’t you?
Here come the fighter planes
Neon-glow around the snake when it gets shot
After one of the jets crashes into Mosler’s face, the huge snake falls to the street below and dies. Ting Ting cries. Oh, that poor, mass-murdering snake!
Poor Mosler…
There’s a final showdown between terrorist leader Solomon and Ted Fast: “Go ahead, shoot, make my day, punk!” And then the movie finishes!
THUNDER OF GIGANTIC SERPENT, as with GAMERA: THE GIANT MONSTER, features a kid who continually pleads for her ‘pet’ monster to be left alone, even after it causes untold destruction and death! Mosler, it must be said, does start off as a rather nice critter, but after it goes on its binge of dam-busting and train-wrecking it becomes rather difficult to regard the great serpent as anything but a menace.
The effects are not of Toho quality, that’s for sure, but I enjoyed Mosler’s rampage through the city, ending with the model military jets attacking the puppet snake whilst it is coiled around the skyscraper.
Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) leads a small posse into a desolate region to rescue some people who have been abducted by a cannibalistic clan of troglodytes.
Poster
I like horror westerns, such as DEAD BIRDS, RAVENOUS and THE BURROWERS, and this one is a really good example of the sub-genre.
First of all, this film stars Kurt Russell, who is always worth watching, and it has good characterisations, with Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins and Matthew Fox shining in their roles. Fox’s character, for instance, could’ve come across as quite unlikeable, but much of what he does and says is practical and is actually the right thing to do.
Kurt Russell with epic moustacheMatthew FoxA closer look at Russell’s very manly facial hair
Skulls…
The troglodyte burial ground (inspired more by a Native American medicine wheel, rather than a burial ground)
A large chunk of the running time focuses on the leads trekking across the desert, and I think these scenes work well, driving home how dangerous and arduous such an undertaking like that would actually be.
Dutch artwork
The action is brutal
With Sid (SPIDER BABY) Haig in a cameo role, well-written dialogue throughout and Kurt Russell sporting a truly awesome moustache, this film also boasts some very disturbing, monstrous antagonists…
Sid Haig
A nice lookin’ poster
The cave-dwelling tribe of cannibals featured in this movie are a truly nasty group of cinematic bad guys: they are covered in dry mud, have weird throat pipes that produce an eerie wail and they are utterly pitiless. The violent action at the end of this movie is jaw-droppingly savage, especially the scene where they scalp and upend a character, then start hacking him between the legs, bisecting him! This is something you don’t easily forget! My eyes are watering as I write about this moment!
Scalped
Cutting around the bone throat pipes…
…and pulling them out of a troglodyte’s neck to inspect
These guys are nasty!Sheriff Hunt has his belly sliced open……and then one of the savages rams a red-hot metal hip flask into his wound. Ouch!
BONE TOMAHAWK was S. Craig Zahler’s directorial debut and he’s gone on to write and direct two other gritty, violent movies I like a lot: BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 and DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE.
Savage headgear
Off with his head!
BONE TOMAHAWK is a well-made, brutal film that is really worth hunting down if you’ve not seen it yet.
Skirmish!Things get barbaric in the third actA cannibal inspects a rifle
Region 2 DVD cover
Cool poster!
Here’s Mauricio Ruiz’s concept design for the look of the troglodytes…
The troglodytes were eventually portrayed in the film with a different look compared to this design
In a recent post I wrote about Hong Kong director Godfrey Ho, who created a bunch of films for IFD Film Arts that utilised his cut-and-paste technique: splicing footage from different (already existing) movies together, then adding additional recently shot scenes to act as ‘plot glue’ for the new story. Of all these patchwork films my favourite is undoubtedly SCORPION THUNDERBOLT.
Richard Harrison wields his golden sword
As I have not watched this mad movie in many years, I felt that it was my duty to feast my eyes once more upon this unhinged, incident-filled IFD gem.
But did I still like it? Read on…
The enjoyability of Godfrey Ho’s cut-and-paste movies can depend a lot on how interesting the older source movies were that he cut into his new productions. With SCORPION THUNDERBOLT he utilised a lot of footage from the Taiwan-set Korean horror film GRUDGE OF THE SLEEPWALKING WOMAN (1983). Also known as SNAKE WOMAN, this Korean film featured lots of fun cop and monster scenes that greatly enhance the watchability of Godfrey Ho’s movie.
Poster for the original Korean movie
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT begins as it means to go on by using music from STAR WARS, then quickly cuts between shots of a spiky-fingered witch, Richard Harrison playing a character called, well, Richard, and a blind flute player.
Richard plays… Richard
We then move on to a night-time scene where a woman is pursued by a madman and we assume he is intending to attack her… but no, he leaves her alone, and a snake monster kills her instead! The local cops start to investigate the murder and a couple of them try to figure out what the creature might look like by constructing a papier-mâché model of a snake-tadpole critter wearing lipstick. Yeah, that’ll be a great help, guys!
The snake-tadpole model… with lipstick?
As the film progresses it becomes evident that the partly naked young witch (often seen slapping a drum with her spiky hands) and the blind flute player are the people who cause someone to transform into the rubbery snake-beast.
After the cops seek out the madman featured in the earlier scene, who is now shown swinging around a disembowelled dog at what is presumably the garden of the local asylum, we get shots of the always hyperactive witch, wriggling eels, and a flashing crystal ball. We now find out that the underdressed witch wants Richard’s magic ring.
Screaming victim
The witch’s first attempt to get the ring and kill off Richard involves using… a sexy hitchhiker! Richard stops and gives the hitchhiker a lift after she flashes her breasts at him. She tells him she’s an actress and invites him to a screening room where she shows him her latest film, which involves body painting and sex. Soft core posturing soon begins in the mini cinema as she tries to seduce Richard and, as Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene plays on the soundtrack, Richard succumbs to temptation and has sex with her, intercut with the screening room’s projected sex footage and a red-lit shot of frogs in a bowl(!) The actress/hitchhiker tries to kill Richard with a blade hidden in her lipstick (cue music from CARRIE) and, when he overpowers her, the woman dies as orange foam appears on her lips.
Don’t pick up that hitchhiker!
Fight during the act of coitus!
We now cut back to two of the cop characters (from the GRUDGE OF THE SLEEPWALKING WOMAN footage), who are off-duty and spending time at (male cop) Jackie’s apartment. An escaped criminal wearing sunglasses, who has a grudge against Jackie, invades his home and ties-up the female cop (Lee), then rips and cuts off her clothes. After the criminal bites Lee and injects her with some kind of aphrodisiac, Jackie manages to get loose and a long fight ensues between him and the bad guy. This skirmish soon moves from inside the apartment to the street outside.
The fight is watched by three young women in a nearby apartment (that seems to be fitted out with its own home disco equipment). As one of the women goes off to have a shower and another partakes in some solo disco dancing, the snake monster enters their home and slaughters two of them!
Glistening-skinned monster hands grab a victim in the shower
Another shot from the shower scene
One of the main characters, a woman journalist called Helen (Juliet Chan), is featured in a scene where she and an admirer run in slow motion along a beach in swimwear as an easy listening tune plays. I’m not sure why this occurs, other than the fact it’s mentioned that it is Helen’s birthday!
More not-particularly-pertinent scenes ensue, including a cop-related moment where they break into the apartment of an angry, drunk guy who is potting billiard balls between his tied-up wife’s legs, plus a sequence in a nightclub with lots of tinsel decorations hanging from the ceiling.
We now switch back to Richard working out at home. His home has lots of wall mirrors. Here he is attacked by a plumber with a big wrench… who is under the control of that pesky witch!
Meanwhile, a relationship blossoms between cop Jackie and Helen the journo. They have a romantic day out in some woods… using a shotgun to try and shoot rabbits (so romantic!) They then do a bit of fishing and both accidentally fall into the lake (as so often happens when you go fishing). Later, as they drive home, loads of snakes crawl out of the car seats (as music from CARRIE plays) and the serpents are soon slithering all over the outside of the car and inside it! Jackie loses control of the car and it crashes, but he and Helen are okay, though Jackie does have one remaining snake poking its head out of his shirt.
Snakes on the windscreen!
French VHS cover
Whilst staying at a hotel, Helen and Jackie have their TV switched on in their room – and we see the blind flute player being interviewed (why?!) by a reporter, who informs his audience that this guy is a night-watchman (but he’s blind!) who has overcome gout and arthritis and can play the flute. (Oh, the madness of it all!) Helen, who is actually the snake monster, transforms into the beast when the flute player performs his music on TV, resulting in the deaths of a clumsy waiter and two hotel guests in a bath.
We cut back to Richard and witness his fight with a blade-wielding assailant who wants his special ring. Richard uses a yellow towel and his fists to beat the guy.
Richard finally decides to find out why various people are trying to kill him, so he heads up into the hills to chat with a fortune-teller. After fighting and breaking the neck of another attacker as he ascends some steps, Richard eventually reaches the fortune-teller. Here Richard is informed that there is a witch who lives in a red castle: she is thoroughly evil and only Richard’s magic ring can destroy her powers. Richard is given a golden sword and a mystical mirror and is told that, on the 15th day of this month, he must go to the gates of the castle, place the ring on the mystic mirror, chop it with the sword, then throw it into a fire. As he is given this information some EXORCIST 2 music is played briefly.
Underdressed witch!
Back with the serpent-beast story, Helen confesses to Jackie that she’s the killer: she’s not human, she’s a snake demon! Cue a backstory flashback (utilising music from CARRIE) that reveals how a family of snake-killers living in a forest are visited by the ‘Prince of Snakes’. After some slo-mo romantic running through the trees, the daughter of the snake-killer makes love with the Prince, who turns into a big snake coiled around her. The daughter becomes pregnant and has a baby, that turns into a mini snake-monster as it suckles on her breast! This baby, of course, is revealed to be Helen.
After this confession in Jackie’s home, Helen starts her transformation, so she leaps through a window and becomes the rubbery snake monster as she runs down a street. The monster attacks Jackie’s female cop partner Lee, who has to dive into a parked car. The creature tries to get into the vehicle to kill Lee, but she improvises a home-made flamethrower with an aerosol can, forcing the creature to retreat. This is an effective, gripping scene!
Monster outside the car
Home-made flamethrower!
Straight after this we get a homage to the Harry Dean Stanton scene in ALIEN, where a guy is pulled up out of shot by the monster whilst a dog (rather than Jones the cat) looks on.
Over at the witch’s castle we see her perform an expressive, modern dance routine with a couple of minion guys wearing face paint. She spikes them with her metal nails, as you do.
We now get a showdown between the cops and the monster in a forest. To save Lee, who has been captured by the snake-beast (which can fly about the place now), Jackie cuts his own chest, attracting the monster, which starts licking his blood. The creature becomes Helen once more, but that flute player (he gets everywhere!) is in the area and his music turns Helen back into the serpent-beast. After gliding about on wires, it is shot by the police team and the main theme tune from ALIEN plays as the critter dies, transforming back into Helen. Jackie, utterly distraught, carries her body away.
Okay, let’s zip back to Richard for a final time!
He heads for the red castle and fights a face-paint dude, shouting: “Get out of my fucking way!” He battles a staff-wielding assailant next and finally reaches the gates of the castle. He breaks the ring on the mirror with the golden sword and the witch’s home bursts into flames, she dies, and music from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK starts to play!
Richard in action
The film ends with a freeze-frame of Richard Harrison smiling at us, victoriously holding up the golden sword. Classic!
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT’s bizarre amalgamation of intercut scenes somehow, at times, transcends its cut-and-paste origins to become a thing of jaw-dropping wonder. As an example: the screening room sequence (shots of a manic, spike-fingered witch, Richard Harrison performing some soft core sex, a red-lit shot of frogs in a bowl, projected body-painting footage) comes across more like an avant-garde art short featuring unrelated imagery, rather than what it is: Godfrey Ho splicing together footage to concoct yet another one of his patchwork flicks!
What can I say? You’ve just read about all the insane stuff that occurs in this madcap gem of a movie. You will either end up being someone who thinks this is a film that must be loved and cherished, or you will be someone who is wrong!
Another poster
German VHS cover
French VHS cover
A bit about the snake monster… The creature attack scenes certainly work better when we see only its wet-looking, black, rubbery tail or clawed hands assault the victims. When we see the full monster suit it initially looks effective due to the way it is shot, with it either being backlit, slightly out of focus or seen in quick cuts. During its final showdown with the police in the forest, where we get to clearly see rather too much of the monster, as it is swings about on wires, the suit is not shown to its best advantage. Still, I like this beast!
The original Korean movie was sometimes called Snake Woman (the monster never looks like a half-snake, half-woman creature, by the way)
Another Snake Woman poster
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.
Monster Zone 