Starring Egbert Jan Weeber, Bert Luppes, Caro Lenssen, Huub Stapel, Escha Tanihatu and Jim Deddes. Written and directed by Dick Maas for Parachute Pictures.
A victim gets his head lopped off!
Known as SINT in the Netherlands and SAINT NICK in the USA, this Dutch dark horror comedy features Netherlands’ version of Santa Claus (known as Sinterklaas) as a monstrous, lipless killer.
The film is titled SAINT NICK in America
The plot concerns the former bishop Niklas (Stapel) going on a killing spree in Amsterdam whenever there is a full moon on December 5th. He is aided by his army of burnt-faced zombie helpers, the Black Peters (Zwarte Piet in Dutch).
Some of the Saint’s well-armed, evil helpers
This is an enjoyable Dutch film which features festive traditions that non-Dutch viewers might find odd. For instance, some people (though the custom has become much criticised now) celebrate this period of the year by dressing up as Zwarte Piet, using blackface and Renaissance-style clothes!
A guy dressed as Zwarte Piet has a blade rammed through the back of his head and out of his mouth!
There’s a great sequence in SAINT where Niklas rides over the Amsterdam rooftops on his undead horse as he is chased by cops, ending with him and his steed crashing downwards through a building, onto the street below.
The Saint dashes across the city’s rooftops on his horse!
There are also lots of over the top, fun gore effects to look out for, including arms and heads getting sliced off, loads of impalements, folks being run over and a victim getting chopped in two!
A sword through the throat!
Bullets don’t harm the Saint, by the way, but Niklas certainly doesn’t like flamethrowers!
Niklas gets torched!
From the director of the murderous-bio-tech-elevator movie THE LIFT (1983), the serial-killer-lurking-in-Amsterdam’s-canals flick AMSTERDAMNED (1988), and the man-eating-lion-terrorising-Holland’s-capital-city creature feature PREY (2016), this Dick Maas horror film is an enjoyable, bloody, surprisingly well-made flick.
Niklas and his zomboid helpers
Finally, here’s a behind the scenes shot of the rooftop chase being filmed…
The pursuit over the roofs is definitely the movie’s standout sequence
Starring Xia Yi-Yao, Zhu Ya, Mu Sa, Yin Chao-Te and Zhang Lei. Written by Hou Shuang and Zhang Shengfan. Directed by Lin Zhenzhao. Jiangsu Zhonglele Film/Hubei Changjiang Publishing & Media Group Co.
Swamped by rats!
A doctor called Su Zhenghai (Chao-Te), his young son Yue Sheng and his two grown-up daughters Ting Ting (Yi-Yao) & Ling Ling (Ya) find themselves on a steam train on the verge of being overrun by disease-ridden, murderous rats!
Can any of the passengers survive this rodent onslaught?!
Also known as JUNKRAT TRAIN and RATS ON A TRAIN, this mainland Chinese movie is set during the period of the Republic of China and definitely delivers on what its title promises.
Quite an interesting composition
We don’t have to wait too long before swarms of (not-too-hot CGI) rodents start cascading from the roof of the carriages, engulfing anyone unfortunate enough to be anywhere near them.
Loads and loads of rats fall from the carriage ceiling!
The survivors rush to the front end of the train (a real steam train is used, which is cool), only to discover that those who have been bitten and lived are now showing signs of Yersinia infection, a disease which will definitely kill them, but there could be salvation; Su Zhenghai informs everyone that he works for the National Health Administration and knows that Sulfanilamide medicine, a cure for the disease, is stored at a hospital in the town their train is about to reach. The locomotive stops at the designated station and Su Zhenghai disembarks, leading a small group on a mission to get the medicine, but time is of the essence, because the train driver will only wait for two hours and then he’ll be forced to leave before nightfall… because the light-hating rats will be swarming everywhere once the sun sets.
Sometimes the rats pile on top of each other like the zombies did in WORLD WAR Z
Entering the rodent-devastated town, the group must traverse a street littered with many corpses and then cross over an alley packed with rats. They finally reach the hospital, which has been trashed by more rats…
The group stays in the sunlight and the rats lurk in the shadows
The rodent scenes definitely work better in darker locations, where the poor quality of the CGI rats can be obscured by low lighting, such as the sequence involving the characters venturing into the dungeon-like bowels of the wrecked hospital. Here the intrepid team finally finds the medicine in a gloomy, dank storage area, which is also the home of a massive rat’s nest. The medicine is grabbed, but the protagonists must run for their lives now, as a tsunami of rats spill from the towering nest. Floods of rats pour from every building like a furry tidal wave as our heroes hurriedly exit the town!
If he’s gonna die he’s gonna make sure he takes some of the rats with him: boom!
Back at the parked locomotive there’s a nicely-handled moment where the old train driver, accepting his fate, begins to sing a melancholy song as his carriage is swamped by vermin. This is a sweet example of how Chinese and Hong Kong movies can unexpectedly switch tone in a story and make the mood-shift work wonderfully.
Drivin’ through a swarm of rats
Doctor Su Zhenghai, played by Yin Chao-Te, remains unwavering throughout, never allowing himself to give up, unlike most of the other characters, finally inspiring the survivors (after his daughter gives an impassioned speech) to join forces and help push a derailed carriage off the train track so that they can escape. With some scenes of self-sacrifice and the virtues of everyone working for the common good highlighted at the end, this film’s message must surely be one that the Chinese authorities wholeheartedly condone. Looking past the political box-ticking, the mix of selflessness and cooperation does work well and adds some poignancy to the finale. And probably only an Asian film would end with a main character getting overwhelmed by ravenous rodents while the camera focuses on flower blossoms in the foreground to create a zen-like moment of sadness.
The rats are behind you, mate!
If you’re willing to look past the less-than-stellar rodent special effects (they really are quite poor), RAT DISASTER is a solid merging of horror, disaster and animals-on-the-attack movies, with some on-the-nose family dramatics also blended into the genre mixture.
There’s going to be a lot of fighting in this film!
Starring Luke Goss, Bokeem Woodbine, Danny Trejo, Paul Sloan, Chasty Ballesteros, Luciana Faulhaber, Jason Mewes, Jacqueline Lord and Dan Swayze. Written by Paul Sloan and Christian Sesma. Directed by Christian Sesma. Produced by Ryan Noto, Christian Sesma, Elias Axume, Jack Campbell and Tony Piantedosi.
Paul Sloan, Bokeem Woodbine, Luke Goss and Luciana Faulhaber play bounty hunters Ronnie, Crenshaw, Wade and Rose
A small team of bounty hunters, led by Wade (Goss), succeed in apprehending their target, a woman called Mae (Ballesteros), but matters get out of hand when they find themselves under siege in an isolated, deserted motel, fighting against trigger-happy cartel killers. It also slowly becomes apparent that there’s more to Mae than meets the eye…
Mae licks the tip of Rose’s gun
Okay, as this is the Monster Zone blog site, I will be upfront and reveal Mae’s secret: she’s actually a vampire! The vampire aspect of the story, though, is used more to add some mystery to the mainly action-oriented movie. Some moments hint that Mae is not just a ‘normal’ foxy asian (pole dancing) gal, but this supernatural facet of the tale remains secondary to the central tough-bounty-hunters-shooting-it-out-with-cartel-thugs siege plot line. But, hey, this is okay by me because the combat scenes are pretty intense and well-handled, with bodies getting blasted, knife fights, and rocket launchers used with relish by the combatants.
He’s a cartel footsoldier!
She’s a vampire!
Above: there’s a great deal of shooting in this movie!A rocket is launched!
Rose is captured by the cartel bad guys for a while
THE NIGHT CREW is actually a modestly-budgeted production, but it benefits from director Christian Sesma’s quest to try and put every dollar he has on the screen. Sesma has said that his mindset is always to make his films as if he had a hundred million dollars (even though, with some of his projects, he often only has several hundred thousand dollars to play with!) Sesma has admitted that this attitude has been called overly ambitious a lot of times by critics, but at least he has managed to give many of his low cost movies (such as his heist film PAY DIRT) a sense of scale by shooting some of his movies near his home in the Coachella Valley, making the most of local locations like Thermal, Palm Springs and the Salton Sea, using the desert vistas, stunning blue skies and expansive palm groves to turbo-charge the visual appeal of his thrillers, revenge stories and actioners. For THE NIGHT CREW Sesma bases the movie in and around a real, derelict desert motel complex (which, in reality, was situated twenty minutes from the director’s house). With the abandoned motel location dressed up with trash bags and some of its walls spray-painted a bit, the place was made to look more dilapidated for the movie.
‘The hunters become the hunted’
Trejo’s character likes to have blood transfusions
Sesma also gets the best out of Luke Goss, who plays the lead bounty hunter. I think Goss, when used well (such as by Guillermo Del Toro in HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY), delivers compelling performances, and here he takes his Wade role seriously.
Luke Goss as the stoic bounty hunter Wade
Bokeem Woodbine, Paul Sloan and Luciana Faulhaber, meanwhile, are fine as the rest of Wade’s team, Danny Trejo’s baddie Aguilar is very much the kind of big, grizzled guest star thug that Trejo can play in his sleep, and Jason Mewes, as usual, finds it hard to shake off comparisons to his Jay and Silent Bob character.
Jason Mewes as security guard Chachi
In France THE NIGHT CREW is known as BLACKWATER
After all the shootings, grapplings, stabbings, kickings, punchings and deaths, the mortally-wounded Rose and Wade (spoiler) are turned into vampires to keep them ‘alive’. Then they, along with Mae, go over to Aguilar’s place, where the cartel boss sprouts some vampire fangs of his own.
Mae turns the dying Rose into a vampire……and then the newly-undead Rose turns the dying Wade into a vampireA toothy Trejo!
These blood-sucking vampire elements only become a main part of the story at the very end of the film, and it is obvious that Sesma was hoping to springboard these characters into a more supernatural-themed sequel. I, for one, would’ve loved to have seen Luke Goss play a kick-ass vampire bounty hunter in a follow-up flick.
Vampire Mae rips out the throat of a nasty cartel villain
After Sesma sold his movie, however, he was then in the hands of the distributors, and, according to the director, a weird distributor put the movie out at a weird time – and THE NIGHT CREW just kind of fell by the wayside, meaning there was no appetite for a sequel. Which, for me, is a pity, as I think, with a bigger budget and an action-horror plot focusing on vamp bounty hunters, THE NIGHT CREW 2 would’ve been a bloody fangtastic flick!
Luciana Faulhaber and Luke Goss didn’t get the chance to return as undead bounty hunting vampires in a sequel. Oh well.
Let’s end with a look at the Brazilan DVD cover artwork for the film…
Starring Clare Langford, Andrew Mullan, Gabrielle Curtis, Tom Hall, Andrew Cunningham, Christopher Ettridge, Jackie Haliday and Ryan Wichert. Written, produced and directed by Mark Duffield.
Poster
In Victorian London a young gentleman named Lorcan (Mullan) checks into a hospital, where his rare illness is studied as he receives blood transfusions. He meets a sensitive nurse called Amy (Langford) and they fall in love, but Lorcan’s true nature will doom their relationship…
Andrew Mullan plays LorcanClare Langford plays Amy
We realise early on that Lorcan is not a normal chap when he puts his hand into a shaft of morning light and blood bubbles to the surface of his skin, and he also drinks blood from a nurse’s cut finger. Lorcan does attempt to act normally and bonds with Amy, who shows him around London but, later, after he is taken to see an illegal bareknuckle fight by a hospital worker, Lorcan is unable to stave off his darker urges any longer, killing a would-be mugger, then winching the body aloft on a rope and bathing in his victim’s blood!
A behind the scenes shot of Andrew Mullan filming the scene where he bathes in a victim’s dripping blood
Amy supplies Lorcan with a jar of blood from the hospital and, as their connection to each other intensifies, they eventually have sex, triggering a transformation in Lorcan… who becomes a sharp-toothed demon-lover equipped with large, bat-like wings! Lorcan proceeds to feed on Amy’s blood like a vampire.
Their love is doomedAbove: three shots of Lorcan after he changes into the hairless Nosferatu-like demon
As the story unfolds, Lorcan loses his hair and stalks the hospital naked (save for a top hat), sporting Nosferatu-style front-fangs and pointy ears, savagely killing Amy’s friend (and fellow nurse), Rose. This murder is witnessed by Rook, the sneaky hospital worker, who decides to make money from Lorcan’s supernatural savagery by forcing him to fight in an illegal bareknuckle boxing contest. Lorcan sucks the blood from his opponent and sprouts his great demon wings, much to the surprise of the crowd.
It gets a bit bloody in the fighting ringLorcan in full winged demon mode!
Amy, still in love with demon-Nosferatu-Lorcan, allows him to feed from her neck again, but, when she finds Rook’s severed head in a hat box, she realises Lorcan is out of control. Meanwhile, Dr Edward and Professor Darkwood, two professionals who have unravelled the origins of Lorcan, discuss what can be done to deal with the demon but, frustratingly, they never actually get around to doing anything. So it is left to Amy to take care of the demon by locking herself in a church belfry with Lorcan, permitting him to drain her of her blood, buying time (as in 1979’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE) for the sun to rise and destroy the demon. After the sunlight causes the crestfallen Lorcan’s demon-wings to catch fire, he reverts back to human form and lies next to Amy’s body, where he expires beside her.
Dr Edward and Professor Darkwood should’ve talked less and got their asses in gear to confront the demon!
Director Mark Duffield, who made the very enjoyable Thai-set horror film GHOST OF MAE NAK (2005), goes out of his way here to ensure this production is filled with lots of period detail. It’s actually quite amazing that Duffield managed to make this feature-length Victorian horror-romance for the astoundingly tiny sum of £25,000 (which included the cost of submitting it to film festivals and putting it out on DVD)!
Lorcan, fully transformed, during his gambling den fight
Serving as art director, editor, cinematographer and producer, Duffield also supplied the Victorian props and costumes and, most importantly, wrote the script. Though the plot needed more narrative drive in places (due to the passivity of characters like Dr Edward and Professor Darkwood), and the nature of Lorcan’s true origins remained somewhat fuzzy (is he the cursed progeny of an incubus, or is he the direct descendent of Legion, the fallen angel?), Duffield is to be praised for choosing to focus his story on a visually interesting, winged, hairless, William Blake-style demon, rather than plump for an easier-to-do supernatural being like a vampire.
Andrew Mullan kitted out as a Victorian gent
Andrew Mullen is at his best when playing Lorcan in the earlier portion of the film, when he is seeking help for his blood condition and seems vulnerable and genuinely unsure of what he truly is (he even gives Dr Edward the papyrus texts that could potentially provide information to bring about his downfall) – but after Lorcan falls in love, triggering his descent into full demonhood, Mullen struggles somewhat to exude the required moody-but-intriguing qualities to really convince us he’s a magnetic, brooding man-demon capable of captivating Amy. Clare Langford, however, is quite affecting in the role of the caring, good-natured, bookish, empathetic Amy. She does convince us that Amy is a loving character capable of falling under the spell of Lorcan. Andrew Cunningham also delivers a decent performance as the likely lad chancer Rook.
Andrew Cunningham plays Rook
To boost the film’s production values, Duffield shoots some scenes of his lead characters visiting London locations like Tower Bridge and the Albert Memorial, and he also manages to capture several gorgeous-looking skyscapes, most notably when Lorcan climbs onto the hospital roof. Deciding not to let his tiny budget get in the way, Duffield had sets built and fills the story with such elements as a dude dressed in a bear pelt fighting in the bareknuckle ring, and street scenes featuring extras wearing Victorian costumes.
Location shooting in London added some scale to the filmOne of the film’s lovely skyscape shots
The music score by Stephen Bentley-Klein is quite sumptuous, helping to infuse the film with an old school horror movie vibe. Duffield adds to the Hammer/Amicus/Tyburn-esque nature of the production by including nods to Jack the Ripper, Dracula, Dr Jekyll and so on, eschewing the urge to go too hyper gory. Perhaps (due to the minuscule size of the budget, crew and time schedule) the lighting is merely adequate in places, but even then Duffield offsets the flatness of the lighting by making the edges of the frame in some scenes slightly blurred and out of focus. It’s an interesting touch.
A crowd scene (note that Duffield sometimes blurs the side of the frame)
Creature Effects Designer James Alexander deserves a pat on the back for sculpting the demon’s bat-like wings, which are a fine example of practical effects done well. The shots of the outstretched wings are, for me, the standout moments in the film, and it’s to Duffield’s credit that he strived to include this imagery in such a modestly-budgeted movie.
Behind the scenes still of Mark Duffield posing with Andrew Mullan as the demon
The Creature Floor Effects Supervisor, Sophie Clayton, warrants a lot of praise for helping these shots work too. She was also the Creature Effects Technician and puppeteer working the wings, as was fellow Creature Effects Technician Miriam Hammond.
Upper class demons like to wear top hats!
As a self-funded project, DEMON is an eye-catching film that showcases Duffield’s ability to oversee an entire production almost single-handedly, and it poses the question: imagine what Duffield could achieve if he was given the opportunity to helm a bigger-budgeted genre movie? He’d surely show us what he could REALLY do then.
PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT concept study, depicting Conan fighting the tentacle-faced monster Yug-Ommog
The first Conan movie to reach the screen, of course, was John (RED DAWN) Milius’ awesome R-rated CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982), which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, was written by Milius and Oliver Stone, and boasted a stunning soundtrack composed by Basil Poledouris.
CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982) poster
This movie was a big success and was followed by CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984), which was originally written by Marvel Comics scribes Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, who had wanted the sequel’s finale to be really epic, featuring a stop-motion, winged demon. But it was decided to make DESTROYER a PG movie, it was rewritten by Stanley (FIRESTARTER) Mann, and, to save on money, the stop-motion flying demon became the man-in-suit monster Dagoth, played by Andre The Giant. A script for CONAN III, a sequel to CONAN THE DESTROYER, was written by Karl Wagner, but the flick never got any traction. Another Conan movie, however, did manage to successfully bypass development hell years later and reached cinemas everywhere. This was CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011), starring Jason Momoa, a movie I’ve just never been very keen on. But, hey, everyone has their own views concerning the pros and cons of these three produced Conan films. What I find really interesting are the other Conan projects that DIDN’T get made.
So let’s delve into these unproduced Conan movies now. If any of the projects featured creatures in them we’ll definitely take a close look at these beasties (because this is the Monster Zone blog, right?)
MILTON SUBOTSKY’S CONAN
Milton Subotsky, famous for producing such horror films as TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974), actually attempted to purchase film rights to Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian stories a long time before they were acquired by Hollywood, but Subotsky ended up buying the rights to Lin Carter’s Thongor stories in 1976 instead. Subotsky had never planned to make his Conan film too violent and bloody, so perhaps it was a good thing that he didn’t acquire the Conan stories and decided to do an adaptation of Carter’s novel The Wizard of Lemuria. The project, called THONGOR IN THE VALLEY OF DEMONS, was bankrolled by United Artists – and preproduction drawings were made and a stop-motion monster puppet was built – but UA then withdrew from the project… and THONGOR was no more.
Subotsky was considering casting David (STAR WARS) Prowse as Conan
CONAN THE CONQUEROR
This would have been a Raffaella De Laurentiis production, written by Charles (THE FLY) Pogue. It looked like there was every possibility this film would get made, but Arnold Schwarzenegger ultimately never committed to the project, which was subsequently reworked to become the cheesy-but-sorta-watchable KULL THE CONQUEROR (1997), starring Kevin Sorbo as Howard’s Atlantean hero. Pogue’s version of the script would have featured a shark attack sequence.
Shark-themed cover for issue 192 of Marvel’s The Savage Sword of Conan comic. The CONAN THE CONQUEROR movie would’ve featured a shark attack sequence.
KING CONAN: CROWN OF IRON
A script, detailing Conan having a son and becoming King of Zingara, was written by John (THE WIND AND THE LION) Milius.
A sample page from the Milius script
The film would have been produced by the Wachowskis, who were still hot from their success with THE MATRIX. But the Wachowskis lost interest in the project, then Robert Rodriguez became connected to the production, though John Milius also departed the film, and, eventually, chances of the movie getting made evaporated after Rodriguez found himself juggling too many projects and was unable to commit to it. The film would’ve featured… the Ice Worm!
Cover page of John Milius’ script
IRON SHADOWS
This low budget project actually went into production!
‘Coming soon’. Yeah, right
The film, based on the Robert E Howard 1934 story Iron Shadows in the Moon (aka Shadows in the Moonlight), started shooting in Thailand, a country where a small budget can definitely go further. The fact that the original story was not too epic in scale also ensured that the production had a chance of putting something interesting on screen. Starring Pasi Schalin in the role of Conan, IRON SHADOWS was produced by George (CINEMA OF VENGEANCE) Tan and directed by Kit Mallet… in 3D!
Pasi Schalin played Conan
Thinking that there would be no copyright issues because the original Conan story was in the public domain, the filmmakers got a nasty surprise when they received a cease and desist letter from the Conan rights-holders. The production ground to a halt, but some of the footage that had been shot can be found online.
Pasi Schalin wearing Southeast Asian-looking warrior garb
The original Howard story featured a fight between Conan and a grey man-ape, a gang of pirates and living statues. A fanged, Grinch-faced man-ape costume was created for the film, and shots were taken of it on location.
Publicity shot of Andrea Stefancikova, the grey man-ape, and Pasi Schalin
Be careful, Conan, there’s a grey man-ape lying down by that boulder…
Here are two behind the scenes shots of the grey man-ape…
Above: the two pics of the man-ape show that he kind of resembled a ‘bigfoot’
Some screenshots from the IRON SHADOWS footage…
Above: three shots from the unfinished film. The bottom image shows Toby Russell (son of Ken Russell) playing a robed, ivory-skinned god who comes down to Earth during a flashback scene.
Interestingly, even though the production stalled and was never completed, George Tan did toy with the idea of restarting the project. He commissioned David Fitzgerald (a sculptor and also the voice artist on the 2019 short THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON) to build a new, far better-looking man-ape costume.
Version 2 of the grey man-ape…
This second version of the man-ape costume had extended arms and more of a gorilla-like build. Fitzgerald also gave the ape creature long, grey hair hanging from its head.
The mark 2 man-ape had a long, slashing bony claw on each hand
Some behind the scenes shots of the ape costume under construction…
The under-skull of the man-ape costume takes shape
The detailed ape outer face with moveable jaw and lots of skin texture
The man-ape’s head with the long, grey hair added
Clay sculpt of one of the ape’s feet
This ape suit was completed and delivered to Tan, but IRON SHADOWS has remained in limbo.
PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT
George (TRINITY GOES EAST) Tan, producer of the unfinished IRON SHADOWS film, commissioned another Conan script, called PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT. Based a non-Conan tale by Robert E Howard, the story was retooled to include Conan and a swamp-god monster called Yug-Ommog.
The script involved the inhabitants of a treacherous swampland zone praying to the great stone idol of their local deity, known as Yug-Ommog. George Tan oversaw the construction of a full-scale model of the idol and also ordered the creation of a tentacle-faced Yug-Ommog monster costume. This creature suit was constructed by low budget effects expert Brett (MUTANT WAR) Piper, who created Yug-Ommog by repurposing a critter costume originally built for the 2009 film MUCKMAN.
Concept sketches showing how the arms of the original Muckman creature costume were going to be updated to become the arms for the Yug-Ommog monsterThe revamped arms, ready to be used for Yug-OmmogAbove: two shots of the Yug-Ommog monster suit’s deformed head
Below are some behind the scenes shots of the idol statue, which was constructed in Thailand…
Above: these three shots show how the idol statue would have been very phallic-looking
The ‘stone’ base, on which the Yug-Ommog idol statue would stand
George Tan then hired gifted artist Jose Luis to draw a comic book version of the script. These gorgeous-looking illustrations would have served as a complete storyboard to aid the shooting of the film – and the drawings would also have formed the contents of a tie-in comic book, to be published when the film was released.
Detail from a Jose Luis comic page, showing Conan making his way through swamplandDetail from a Jose Luis comic page, showing Conan facing-off against Yug-Ommog
PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT didn’t go into production, unfortunately, and Jose Luis’ fine artwork, reminiscent of the kind of b&w illustrations that filled the pages of the wonderful 1970s Savage Sword of Conan comic books, has yet to be published anywhere. Shame. But you never know, one day we might get to see the artwork.
This preproduction sketch (not drawn by Jose Luis) explores how Conan would look after he gets covered in slime, blood and mud!
CONAN: RED NAILS
An animated feature film, based on the superb Robert E Howard Conan story Red Nails, went into production around 2005, with actor Ron (HELLBOY) Perlman cast as the voice of Conan. The sceptre-wielding villain Tolkemec would have been voiced by Mark (STAR WARS) Hamill. However, as is so very often the way, the production, by Swordplay Entertainment, stalled and it seems very unlikely it will now see the light of day.
A screenshot from some early, rough test footage animation showing Conan running into action
Some rough animation test footage was shared online, showing a battle sequence involving a big demon and some zombie warriors (none of which featured in the original Howard story)…
Above: two screenshots from the animation test footage
PEOPLE OF THE DARK
This project would have featured the proto-Conan character known as Conan of the Reavers, in a plot based on Robert E Howard’s 1932 short story People of the Dark.
The script included deformed ‘Little People’ (the Children of the Night), who are the grotesque antagonists in the story’s extended flashback sequence. The monstrous descendant of the Little People, a reptilian ‘worm’ creature that appears at the end of the yarn, also featured in the script, which was commissioned by producer George (TOP FIGHTER) Tan.
Preproduction concept drawings of the Little People
Very early stage concept drawings were done of the creatures. A concept sketch was done of Conan the Reaver too, exploring what he’d look like if the script was changed to make him a 17th century character.
Size comparison preproduction concept artAn alternative concept design for the regressive worm creature
Concept designs for the ‘Children of the Night’ creatures
Preproduction sketch for a 17th century-style Conan the Reaver character
The whole project seemed to fizzle, though, as Tan focused his efforts on child-focused motion comics. And that was that. Oh well.
A location that would’ve been considered if the decision was made to set the film’s flashbacks in the iron age (as in the original story), rather than in the 17th century
IN CONCLUSION…
The George Tan projects, if they’d been made (and if Tan had been able to fend off any legal actions from rights owners), would certainly have been low budget B movies. But I actually have no problem with this: Hollywood movie versions of Conan always strived to be big scale, epic affairs, so these much smaller-scale Tan-produced films could’ve been the movies that were able to, potentially, use the kind of plots that were similar in scope to many of Robert E Howard’s more tightly-plotted, modestly-scaled Conan short stories. Maybe Tan will finally get one of these films made. I certainly hope so.
But, hey, most folks crave big-canvas Conan productions, and KING CONAN was certainly the Conan project that many, many fans wanted to see get made. Hell, 1982’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN even ends with the image of Arnie’s Conan sitting on the Aquilonian throne!
Arnie in old age makeup as King Conan at the end of CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982). The question is: would present-day Arnie be too old to play King Conan now?
One creative guy found a way to have KING CONAN on his shelf in some form: he printed out the Milius script and custom bound it…
Niiiiiiice
Perhaps, one day, there will be a KING CONAN movie. Let’s wait and see…
Starring Takurô Tatsumi, Yôko Ishino, Yasufumi Hayashi and Megumi Odaka. Written by Kazuki Ômori. Directed by Takao Okawara. Produced by Shogo Tomiyama and Tomoyuki Tanaka for Toho.
Will the human protagonists be able to make a difference?
Godzilla is on the verge of a nuclear meltdown and the Japanese defence forces try to freeze the great beast, in an attempt to cool down his rocketing temperature. But there’s another big problem… a mega-monster known as Destoroyah…
Big G is overheating!
GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH was the final Toho Godzilla movie of the Heisei era (this era spanned the years from 1984 to 1995).
Steam rises off the super-heated uber-beast!
Directed by Takao Okawara (who also directed GODZILLA 2000, GODZILLA VS. SPACEGODZILLA, GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA and GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA II), with a script written by Kazuki Omori and special effects by Koichi Kawakita, this film begins memorably with Godzilla, who is coated in hot, glowing, lava-esque rashes, going on a wrecking spree in Hong Kong.
The rampant radioactive reptile stomps through Hong Kong!
It is revealed that Godzilla’s internal nuclear fission processes are going so haywire it seems that Big G is threatening to explode… which is a disaster that could destroy the world. If this wasn’t bad enough, as already mentioned, another monster appears: a creature that is a conglomeration of masses of crustaceans that were mutated by the Oxygen Destroyer weapon used to kill the very first Godzilla back in 1954.
Roaring kaiju!
The winged form of Destoroyah
Destoroyah is a novel, nasty kaiju, becoming a massive beast with a large, central head-horn, glowing orange eyes, big tusks projecting from its face, huge shoulder horns and massive wings!
The monsters have a face-off
Godzilla bests this great beast, which has killed Big G’s son, Godzilla Junior… but Destoroyah returns to fight again, in the guise of a swarm of multiple-legged mini-Destoroyahs! Even after Godzilla wipes out these things, Destoroyah returns yet again in winged form!
Japanese poster
But Destoroyah is eventually killed and the terminally overheating Godzilla stands alone, dying… so the Japanese defence forces desperately shoot cryo-lasers and fire coolant-projectiles to prevent a full-on meltdown. As an Akira Ifukube theme, reworked with choral voices, plays on the soundtrack, Godzilla roars while his flesh falls off him and he decays… and the human characters watch on as radiation levels rapidly reduce… …and the camera moves through the smoke and steam and there, backlit, is Godzilla Junior, who has been brought back to life by his dying father’s energies, and has rapidly matured, ready to take on the role of king of the monsters. This is truly the most emotional moment in Godzilla history! I’m wiping away a tear as I write about it!
Bye bye big buddy
This was an awesome way to end the Heisei-era Godzilla series, with a very memorable-looking Godzilla, who is in pain much of the time, glowing with uncontrollable inner-heat, emitting steam, bleeding lava, his back-plates flickering erratically. In many scenes the water actually boils all around him as he strides through the sea. Great stuff!
Finally, let’s check out an amazing poster by the late, great Japanese artist Noriyoshi Ohrai. Here Noriyoshi ensures that the image of the terminally overheating ‘burning Godzilla’ is centred in the painting, with Godzilla Junior positioned in front of him, hinting at what happens during the movie’s finale…
Starring Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David Weston, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee and Skip Martin. Written by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell. Directed by Roger Corman, produced by Roger Corman and George Willoughby.
Some of the cloaked representations of the killer plagues…
Prince Prospero (Price) invites a select group of rich, decadent nobles to take refuge in his castle as the Red Death plague ravages the surrounding countryside. Prospero abducts three local villagers, Gino (Weston), Ludovico (Green) and Francesca (Asher), takes them to his castle and plans to corrupt the innocent Francesca with the help of his consort, Juliana (Hazel Court on top form), who wishes to marry Satan. Prospero intends to force Gino and Ludovico to fight to the death as sadistic entertainment for the nobles, and a lavish masked ball is also planned… but a red-cloaked figure crashes this party and brings an end to the jaded revelry…
Vincent Price and Hazel CourtSkip Martin, as Hop Toad, will get his revenge…
Vincent Price, as the satanist Prince Prospero, is excellent here, managing to be equal parts sadistic, theatrical and thoughtful. His character even manages to find a shred of goodness within himself at the end, when he asks for Francesca to be spared.
Price, as Prospero, intends to lead Francesca (Asher) astray
Nicholas Roeg provides the lush technicolor photography for this Roger Corman production, which has an eloquent screenplay, focusing on Prospero’s philosophical musings regarding the nature of evil and innocence, written by Charles Beaumont & R. Wright Campbell, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ (1842) and ‘Hop-Frog’ (1849) .
Lobby card
A dream sequence (during Juliana’s fatal betrothal to the devil) utilising expressive dance styles and the climactic masked ball are dealt with in an arty manner (too arty for some viewers, perhaps) that, I think, helps the film become simultaneously lurid & sophisticated.
The revellers, even after they succumb to the Red Death, continue to dance…The Red Death reveals his face… and it is the face of Vincent Price!Juliana brands herself with an inverted cross
Juliana’s dabbling with the occult ends bloodily…
The title sequences, at the start and at the end, are vividly-coloured and well-planned. They’re just some of the components that make this such a great-looking film. The series of different-coloured rooms in Prospero’s castle are visually striking, as are the hooded figures that personify the various plagues. These cloaked, humanoid representations of plagues are the closest the film comes to having monsters (and my excuse for reviewing THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH on the Monster Zone blog), though the film also treats us to a character dressed in an ape costume, who meets a fiery end.
The hooded plagues discuss how many victims they have claimedThe plagues, all dressed in different coloured robes, prepare to slowly march on towards new lands and new victims
This is my favourite Corman movie. Corman rated this movie as one of his favourites too, though he did complain at the time that the British crew was slow compared to US crews. He did, however, get to use impressive sets from Hal Wallis’ BECKET production and had sumptuous cinematography courtesy of Nicholas Roeg thanks to the fact he made the film in the UK.
Death in human form
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is imaginative, colourful and exceedingly re-watchable!
‘We defy you to stare into this face’
Lancer Books did a novelisation of the movie…
Written by Elsie Lee
This is the comic book adaptation…
From Dell Publishing
Finally, here’s an awesome Italian poster for the film…
Starring Zheng Long, Peng Bo, Shi Xuanru, Pang Yong and Cao Tiankai. Written by Xie Wenjun, directed by Guo Yulong and Xie Wenjun. Produced by Li Shi.
Cool bit of promotional art
A ginormous snake escapes from a snake farm (that’d been using illegal growth hormones in its feed to breed larger reptiles for its snakeskin handbag business) and slinks down to the nearby Haixi Flight Attendant Aviation College, where it runs amok, accompanied by masses of regular-sized, aggressive serpents. A valiant security guard (Long) and a feisty student (Bo) team-up to help a group of survivors holed up in the college buildings live through the ordeal.
The huge snake claims another victim!
This film should technically have been called ‘Rising Boas in a Flight Attendant Aviation College’, but I guess that title was far less punchy! Setting this film in this location does provide the filmmakers with an excuse to show droves of screaming female students, wearing figure-hugging white skirts and light blue blouses, clattering around in their high heels, as the huge snake rampages about the college, in scenes that really ramp up the movie’s cheesy fun factor.
A film that mixes killer snakes with student flight attendants!Stampeding student stewardesses!
Some girls and their teachers get gobbled up, then the story transitions into the siege-focused part of the plot. Despite a title that Freud would have salivated over, the film steers away from showing anything too lascivious, contenting itself with an occasional shot of, say, a small snake slithering from a dead student’s skirt or the scene where a snake crawls over an underdressed character whilst she’s in the middle of indulging in some blindfolded foreplay with her boyfriend. But none of this is as exploitative as the sweaty promotional art, which seems to promise something more risqué. There’s nothing here that reaches the delirious, manic, mondo heights of 80s Hong Kong schlock-fest CALAMITY OF SNAKES, for instance.
Boas like bras?
A sequence with the guard hero hanging from cables strung between two buildings, with the mega-snake curled up below him and two smaller snakes making their way along the cables, is well-handled, with special effects that are on a par with the kind of FX seen in similar flicks.
A variation on one of the promotional images
The massive boa looks quite good in some of its scenes
By the midpoint the film tries to become a little more serious, as more people get picked off and squabbles break out amongst the survivors. There’s a pause in the action to allow an elitist, selfish student to be lectured about the importance of working people, in a speech bound to please the Chinese Communist Party censors, and then the fun stuff kicks back into gear as the huge snake launches another attack.
Nom, nom, nom…
The guard protagonist has a moment of self-doubt (heroes in these movies often do), but he’s soon taking part in an enjoyable finale that sees the survivors tooling themselves up with homemade fireworks-bazookas. This extended showdown, ending with the recently-eaten security guard somehow surviving and crawling back out of the dead snake’s mouth, helps make this movie mindlessly marvellous in its own trashy, limited way, but it would’ve been far better if it had retained the silly, kitsch vibe of the first act.
The survivors use ‘fireworks-bazookas’ during the finale!
Starring Seo In-guk, Jang Dong-yoon, Choi Gwi-hwa, Sung Dong-il, Park Ho-san, Jung Moon-sung and Jung So-min. Written by Kim Hong-sun, directed by Kim Hong-sun, and produced by Gu Seong-mok. Cheum Film/Contents G
Guns!More guns!
Wow! This is a really visceral, cool & bloody action-horror-sci-fi flick!
Lots of blood!
A group of South Korean prisoners are transported from the Philippines in the cargo ship Frontier Titan, overseen by a large team of Korean police officers, led by Seok-woo (Ho-san). The surly cons are kept in line by the cops, but it all gets very bloody as a murderous team takes over the vessel, the prisoners are freed, and then an unstoppable being escapes from his restraints in the bowels of the ship…
Poster
There’s a lot of stabbing in this flick
Just to reiterate: this ultra-violent flick is fond of knifings (and shootings, bludgeonings, etc)!
The start of PROJECT WOLF HUNTING is paced nicely, showing us around the ship and introducing the cops, the cons and the ship’s crew members. But soon the killings start and we’re left in no doubt that director Kim Hong-sun intends to deliver a non-stop, blood-drenched, action-filled movie where the visceral, violent aspects of the story take precedence over the plotting and characterisations. This approach has been criticised by some reviewers, but I appreciate Hong-sun’s commitment to making such a no-holds-barred production where the brutal carnage and action is the whole point of the movie. And, anyway, this isn’t to say that the characters are blandly sketched, because the director still manages to imbue many of the bad guys with a warped, sick charisma, especially the tattooed psycho Jong-du (In-guk) and the ruthless, machine gun-toting inside man Kim Gyu-tae (Moon-sung).
Kim is a cold-blooded killer, like many of the other characters!
When the superhuman killing machine Alpha (Gwi-hwa) begins his murder spree at the midpoint, the carnage intensifies. Alpha, who has swollen flesh around his eyes that are sewn shut with outsized staples, stomps loudly about the ship like a part-zombie terminator. This monstrous dude cannot be reasoned with and is revealed to be a lobotomised human weapon test subject for the Kemono Project, a Japanese-run experiment dating back to the Second World War. We’re even treated to a flashback that shows Alpha bludgeoning a team of Japanese soldiers to death with a human skull!
Alpha is initially in storage below deck……but once the zombie-like Alpha awakens he really goes on a killing spree!
An extra layer of complication is added for the surviving cops (and several ‘nice’ cons) when it’s divulged that the pharma company Aeon Genetics is behind the presence of Alpha on the ship: they’d been bringing Alpha to South Korea to find out why he doesn’t age. With chaos reigning on the cargo vessel, Aeon flies in a helicopter full of mercs, but these all end up dying in grisly ways too, just like most of the cast.
This isn’t merely ‘a super soldier extravaganza’, it is an ‘extraordinarily gory super soldier extravaganza’!
In a film where various characters are revealed to be the super-powered results of experimentation, arterial blood-jets go off like lawn sprinklers, and heads get caved-in on a regular basis, this well-shot, ultra-violent sci-fi-horror-actioner keeps you constantly guessing as to which characters might stand a chance of surviving until the end of a movie that’s awash with puddles, squirts, rivulets and torrents of blood. In case you didn’t know already: I think this flick is bloody ace!
This scene doesn’t end well for all the Japanese characters!
Alright then, one more shot from the movie…
Seo In-guk, as a tattooed psycho-killer, knifes yet another victim!
Starring Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Anthony Wong, and Yen Shi-Kwan. Directed by Johnny To, with action by Ching Siu-Tung. China Entertainment Films Production/Paka Hill Productions.
Criterion Collection cover
A villainous Evil Master (Shi-Kwan) dwelling in the sewers below a city sends an invisible assailant out to kidnap children, one of whom may be the preordained ‘King’ of China’…
The Evil Master……and here’s what he turns into later!
THE HEROIC TRIO is the gold standard Hong Kong sci-fi/comic book-style super-femmes movie (okay, I know that there were not exactly loads of this specific kind of movie back in the early 90s!)
Fighting and twirling!
Though directed by Johnny To, the film has action director Ching Siu-Tung’s stylistic fingerprints all over it. This is a prestige, sumptuous genre production dripping with lush lighting, large sets and audacious, over the top action moments, spiced up with humour, violence and lashings of manga aesthetics.
It’s the Heroic Trio!
Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Cheung play heroines Wonder Woman, Invisible Woman and Thief Catcher, in a preposterous yarn about an Evil Master (Yen Shi-Kwan) forcing the Invisible Woman to steal babies in the hope that one will turn out to be the next Emperor of China. Invisible Woman switches sides, after some face-offs with the other two super-babes, and the trio clash with the Master and his roaring, bird-eating super-minion Chan Gau (a fit, agile Anthony Wong).
Anthony Wong plays Chan Gau
All right then, I know that in today’s world one shouldn’t objectify women… but, boy, these three actresses were at their beautiful best here. The late Anita Mui demands the viewer’s attention whenever she’s onscreen, playing the most empathetic of the three and looking great in her silver mask. Michelle Yeoh is always a good reason to watch a movie, and here she gets to play both a (blackmailed) associate of the bad guy and also a hero. Maggie Cheung, as Thief Catcher, wearing kneepads, small black shorts and stockings, gives her character an irreverent, mouthy attitude at first, but she begins to add more gravitas to her role after being poisoned by needles and suffering from guilt after the death of a baby.
Anita Mui is Wonder Woman
Maggie Cheung is Thief Catcher
When I saw this on its release, when Hong Kong films were still at their zenith, it was perhaps easy to take THE HEROIC TRIO slightly for granted, but now I appreciate much more the full-on commitment the filmmakers’ had to producing a colourful, outrageous entertainment, using all the techniques and skills at their disposal, piling on tons of wirework stunts and practical effects.
A fight in the Evil Master’s underground lair
The film features some great sets, including the Evil Master’s subterranean lair beneath the city, where babies lie in numerous bird cages suspended from crisscrossing lengths of chain. There’s also a big train station set, which is rigged so that a full-scale train can be slammed through a wall in a standout set piece action scene!
Battlin’ babes at their best!
The film is full of incident and fun visuals: the Master looks evilly resplendent in a grand costume, Chan Gau goes on a killing spree with a flying guillotine, and Wonder Woman’s cop husband gets to stoically put his life on the line several times. But the main focus is always on the three heroines, who are willing and able to use throwing weapons, dynamite, swords and machine guns to beat their enemies!
Another shot of the Evil Master
With on-the-nose sentimental scenes that work within the heightened, pulpy world of the story, and a mad finale in which the skeletal corpse of the Evil Master latches onto Invisible Woman by entwining around her with his limbs & ribcage so that he can use her like a human puppet to battle her friends, THE HEROIC TRIO may occasional contain action shots in which you can see the wires, and maybe the Invisible Woman is not invisible very often in the story, but who really cares? This is the kind of production that was made by Hong Kong creatives operating at their peak, something you’ll never see again.
The Evil Master becomes a raw-fleshed, skeletal monster!Close-up of one of the living skeletal corpse’s legs!Invisible Woman (Michelle Yeoh) gets grabbed!
If you haven’t seen this film before, track it down and give it a watch!
It’s a lot of fun!
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.
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