Directed and written by Larry Cohen, starring Tony Lo Bianco, Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levene, Robert Drivas, Richard Lynch and David Morten.
Poster
Peter J. Nicholas (Lo Bianco), a devoutly religious police detective, deals with several cases of mass murder, including a New York sniper attack. He discovers that each perpetrator utters the same excuse to explain their killing sprees: “God told me to”.
The sniper
Detective Peter J. Nicholas is a devout catholic
Digging deeper, Nicholas eventually finds out that an androgynous, glowing, christ-like being, identified as Bernard Phillips (Lynch), has influenced all these murderers… and this dude is actually a product of alien artificial insemination! Nicholas realises that he, too, is one of these hybrid beings, though his human genes overpowered his alien genes just enough to enable him to pass for ‘normal’ for most of his life, but now it is time for him to confront Phillips…
Richard Lynch as the glowing, messiah-like product of the alien insemination of a human female
Larry Cohen, as usual, throws lots of ideas into the pot. We have a horror-sci-fi-police-procedural plot encompassing mass killings, religious overtones, UFO abductions, psychic powers and throbbing alien vaginas! Cohen doesn’t quite pull it all off, unfortunately, and you’re left wondering what Phillips was hoping to achieve with his psychically-induced mass killings, what was the story behind the cabal of businessmen that believe Phillips is the new messiah, and whether the unseen, meddling aliens actually had an objective.
Chaos after a policeman starts shooting folks during New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade
That said, there’s a lot of memorable moments here. There’s the horribly compelling scene where one of the killers, a family man (Morten), describes to Nicholas, in an easygoing manner, how he systematically murdered his own wife and children. Plus there’s the opening sequence, where members of the public are picked off by a gunman standing atop a water tower.
Cover for the Blue Underground Blu-ray release
Cohen includes the alien abduction plot thread in an interesting fashion, never over-focusing on it, inserting these details as flashbacks and reminiscences. It’s here that we first get a glimpse of an unexpected close-up of a palpitating vagina (!), as a naked woman victim is levitated into a space vessel (actually footage of an Eagle spacecraft from the Gerry Anderson TV show SPACE: 1999). I remain utterly surprised that such up-close anatomical shots of a very vagina-like sex organ managed to make it into the movie!
Alien abduction flashback
Later, during the climactic showdown, Phillips pulls up his smock to reveal that he has a large alien vagina throbbing away on his torso! Phillips suggests that he and Nicholas should mate, to produce more progeny. Nicholas isn’t a fan of this idea, however, and decides to attack Phillips instead, leading to the glowing hybrid dude’s death and the destruction of a building.
This dude has got a torso-vagina
Nicholas finally unleashes his own psychic powers
GOD TOLD ME TO, also known as DEMON, is shot in Cohen’s typical style, meaning that it’s not overly well-lit or particularly glossy, it seems very choppy, editing-wise, but it is filmed with a no-nonsense verve and immediacy, with a lot of handheld location footage, that keeps the story’s momentum from flagging too much, even in the slower third act, which discards the mass killings plot line to concentrate on Nicholas’ unearthing of his own forgotten past. Cohen, as usual, gets his lead actor to deliver a compelling performance, in this case Tony Lo Bianco, who is a driven, earnest presence throughout the film.
Directed by Lien-Chou Ho and starring Lawrence Ng, Gon-Ha Yick, Hark-On Fung, Mo-Hau Cheung, Tau Chu and Paul Che.
The film’s title
SEXUAL DEVIL: quite a title for a Hong Kong ghost movie, right? However… this film turns out to be one of those productions that has a lurid, tasty title that is attached to a rather anaemic, flavourless story.
Female ghosts in Hong Kong movies very often wear white robes…
…and they also very often have echoey voices
Basically, the plot concerns a fashion photographer (Ng) and a ghostly girl, with some magic spell-making scenes added.
VCD cover
Shot on video, this production from Dragon Film Limited begins with some footage of animal cruelty (a lizard is stabbed in the mouth by a holy man) before, very quickly, becoming exceedingly dull.
When the main character does a photoshoot with two models…
…they look like blue-faced ghosts in his camera viewfinder
Video trick effects are used towards the end of the flick, of a white-robed girl spirit whizzing about the trees, but this only reminds you of how cheap ‘n’ TV-ish this film is when compared to bona fide Hong Kong cinema releases, such as A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987) or even ESPRIT D’AMOUR (1983).
The protagonist drives towards the ghost…
…and she ends up peering at him from the car roof
The one novel thing to occur in SEXUAL DEVIL is the silly scene in which an evil man uses lizards as projectiles, hurling ’em onto an attacker!
Directed by Jim O’Connolly, produced by Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen, written by William Bast and starring James Franciscus, Richard Carlson, Laurence Naismith, Gila Golan, Curtis Arden and Freda Jackson.
‘Cowboys battle monsters in the lost world of Forbidden Valley’: how can any self-respecting monster movie fan resist that tag line?!
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a dino-tastic story set in Mexico at the turn of the 20th century. It follows the adventures of rodeo circus owner T.J. Breckenridge (a dubbed Gila Golan), her former beau Tuck Kirby (Franciscus), a British paleontologist (Naismith), a Mexican boy called Lope (Arden) and various cowboy members of the circus, as they find themselves in peril in the Forbidden Valley, a rocky zone that is full of prehistoric creatures! Woot!
Gwangi won’t be caged for long!
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a vibrant monster-fantasy-western that features stop-motion effects courtesy of the great Ray Harryhausen, a rousing score by Jerome Moross and likeable performances from the likes of James Franciscus and Richard Carlson.
Pteranodon attack!
Plot-wise, the movie is a lost world adventure with a western twist, which then transitions into a King Kong-style finale, where the titular dinosaur Gwangi is brought back to civilisation to be displayed at Breckenridge’s circus but, as always happens in these tales, the beast escapes and runs amok in the local Mexican town.
Gwangi on the rampage! The dinosaur reaches the big cathedral…
…and there’s a cat-and-mouse encounter inside the building, as Tuck takes on the giant predator…
…and eventually Gwangi is burnt to death, as the cathedral catches fire and starts to collapse
‘The strangest round up of all as cowboys battle monsters!’
Harryhausen’s effects are definitely the movie’s main selling point, and for this production we get to see an Eohippus, a Pteranodon, an Ornithomimus, a huge Allosaurus (Gwangi) and a Styracosaurus roaming across the screen. A stop-motion model of an elephant is also used when the pachyderm fights Gwangi during the finale.
Ornithomimus
Styracosaurus
Dinosaur versus elephant!
The real stand-out moment is the roping sequence, when the cowboy heroes attempt to capture Gwangi using lassos. This is a wonderful action scene, showcasing Harryhausen’s top-notch stop-motion skills.
The roping scene rocks!
Another mouthwatering effects set piece is Gwangi’s fight with the Styracosaurus. Lots of roaring and biting! I love stop-motion dino battles!
Dinosaurs duking it out!
Some earlier scenes with El Diablo the Eohippus, a tiny prehistoric horse, are also memorable, with Harryhausen putting just as much effort into these quieter, sweeter moments as he does with the more bombastic dinosaur encounters later on.
He’s a cute lil’ thing, ain’t he?
Tuck & T.J. with El Diablo the Eohippus
The Eohippus says ‘hi’ to its much bigger descendant
I’m not a fan of the solid-latex model of Gwangi that’s used for the scenes where the dinosaur knocks itself out while trying to push its way through the narrow gap to escape Forbidden Valley. I think Harryhausen himself was never pleased with these shots, as this inflexible model definitely has no ‘life’ to it: it looks especially stiff in the shots of Gwangi lying unconscious on the ground. Harryhausen had done similar scenes in his previous dinosaur adventure, ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., for instance, where Ray presented us with a marvellous shot of a dying Ceratosaurus lying on the ground, with its belly inflating and deflating as it desperately tries to keep breathing. So it’s such a shame a similar effect couldn’t have been used in GWANGI, though I’m sure Harryhausen was under a lot of budget and time constraints (but the Styracosaurus model in GWANGI was equipped with an inflatable air ‘bladder’ to simulate breathing).
Gwangi’s skin colour changes a few times over the course of the movie because, as there was so much animation to do, Harryhausen didn’t have enough time to do proper colour testing, so Gwangi ranges from grey to blue to purple-ish. I actually don’t think these colour changes are distracting and I’m sure I never spotted them when I viewed the movie as a kid.
I would’ve liked more atmospheric matte paintings like this one
The full-scale Pteranodon model and Gwangi head, used for close-ups, are not as effective as their stop-motion counterparts, but I’ll stop quibbling now and reiterate that THE VALLEY OF GWANGI is a colourful, entertaining fantasy flick, replete with monsters, gypsy curses, a belligerent circus elephant and even a dangerous-bull-in-a-bullring scene!
Trying to break the Pteranodon’s neck!
Angry gypsy folk
Shot in Spain, which stands in for Mexico, the movie utilises the odd rock formations of La Ciudad Encantada, a distinctive geological site near the city of Cuenca (which is also featured in 1982’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN), to create the prehistoric vistas of the Forbidden Valley.
This shot features some of La Ciudad Encantada’s mushroom-shaped rock formations
Nom-nom-nom!
Jerome Moross, the composer who worked on such films and TV series as THE BIG COUNTRY, GUNSMOKE, WAGON TRAIN and HAVE GUN – WILL TRAVEL, provides a soundtrack that really injects a thrilling, full-blooded western vibe into GWANGI. It’s a great score, with a main theme dripping with urgency (that I happen to be listening to right now as I write this!)
Here’s some free advice, cowboy-dudes: don’t use a blanket to ward off a vicious Allosaurus!
I was never quite sure why the cowboy decided to spear the herbivore, rather than the more dangerous predator…
The scene where Gwangi lunges into view and snaps-up the fast-running Ornithomimus in its jaws was later recreated in JURASSIC PARK, this time featuring a Tyrannosaurus Rex plunging into shot to gobble up a fast-running Gallimimus.
Anyway, this is a Ray Harryhausen movie about cowboys venturing into a lost world of dinosaurs, so of course I will always love this movie!
THE WILLIS O’BRIEN CONNECTION This film was actually a project that Willis O’Brien tried to develop, many decades earlier. It was titled THE VALLEY OF THE MISTS and it had been in preproduction at RKO for a while but, like a lot of O’Brien’s projects, it unfortunately fell through.
Here are some storyboards drawn by Willis O’Brien…
Here’s a hand-filled report (by O’Brien) on a printed RKO Radio Pictures form detailing visual effects requirements for an action sequence titled ‘Edge of Cliff’, which would’ve been featured in his iteration of the Gwangi movie…
RKO Radio Pictures form
Even though Willis O’Brien’s Gwangi movie was never made, some of his old production materials came into Ray Harryhausen’s possession and he proposed making his own version of the film to his producer/business partner Charles Schneer, who agreed that it should be their next project. And so THE VALLEY OF GWANGI finally went into production. Hooray! Though, as some people have pointed out, it’s a shame that O’Brien, who put a lot of effort into conceptualising the original Gwangi concept, didn’t receive a credit in the 1969 movie.
RAY HARRYHAUSEN CONCEPT ART Here are some really gorgeous examples of Ray’s well-rendered concept art for his movie…
Styracosaurus versus Gwangi
Cowboy chases an Ornithomimus
In Ray’s concept drawing for the pteranodon attack he drew the flying reptile with accurate-looking pterosaur wings. In the movie his stop-motion model was equipped with stylised bat-like wings.
Rays’s hand-drawn scale concept drawing for the Pteranodon features Ray’s signature bat-like wing design
Ray’s concept drawing for Gwangi, with cowboys and a horse shown for scale
Interestingly, long before Ray Harryhausen made his Gwangi movie, he actually painted this scene, way back in the 1930s. The painting’s title is: ‘Allosaurus attacking a cowboy’. So, I guess Ray was destined to make THE VALLEY OF GWANGI one day…
Lovely painting!
POSTERS FOR THE MOVIE Uber-talented artist Frank McCarthy, responsible for vivid, astounding poster illustrations for DUEL AT DIABLO, THE DIRTY DOZEN, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, WHERE EAGLES DARE and many more, produced the striking artwork that adorns almost all of the poster versions for THE VALLEY OF GWANGI.
Here’s McCarthy’s illustration without the poster blurb. It’s a glorious piece of promotional art that exaggerates the scale of Gwangi. The mounted cowboys, dwarfed by the size of the mega-Gwangi, ride their steeds away from the dinosaur and gallop past supersized skulls, adding a lot of dynamism to the composition. A couple of scared, attractive women and the burning cathedral (from the end of the movie) add extra flavour to the artwork.
Stunning stuff!
McCarthy produced several preliminary design sketches that explored possible compositions for the Gwangi poster…
This Frank McCarthy preliminary artwork explores the idea of showing Gwangi from a reverse angle
This rough prelim sketch depicts a very upright-looking Gwangi
This is the Frank McCarthy preliminary artwork design that was chosen for the poster. ‘This is it’ is even written on the design!
Let’s check out a whole bunch of Gwangi posters now…
US three sheet poster
Italian poster. This puts a scantily-clad female at the front of the action. Those Italians!
Japanese B2 poster
German poster
US six sheet poster
Japanese STB poster
UK quad poster
Belgian poster
French grande poster
UK quad double bill poster
US half sheet poster
Italian locandina poster
Australian daybill poster
French moyenne poster
US insert poster
Poster from Argentina
US window card
US one sheet
Italian poster. This one actually doesn’t use Frank McCarthy’s dinosaur illustration: it features a spike-backed carnosaur instead (which was cribbed from a comic book)
A much more recent Mondo poster for the movie, designed by Mike Saputo
Poster for a screening of the movie by the Bristol Bad Film Club (I’m sure the club didn’t think this movie was actually bad!)
LOBBY CARDS Here are just some of the bobby cards for the film…
Lobby card
Lobby card. Laurence Naismith is just about to get squashed!
Lobby card. Dino fight!!!
Lobby card
Lobby card. Two big prehistoric beasts have a face-off!
Lobby card. Gwangi gobbles up an Ornithomimus!
ART INSPIRED BY THE VALLEY OF GWANGI Here are some cool artworks by illustrators who were inspired by the movie…
Gwangi-inspired cover art for the 1983 May issue of ‘Fantasy Book’ magazine, by Alan Gutierrez
Here are some Gwangi-tastic illustrations by the very prolific and very talented artist Jamie Chase…
Tuck encounters Gwangi
It’s lasso time!
William Stout…
William Stout’s rendition of the Gwangi vs Styracosaurus battle
Illustrator & designer Ross Persichetti produced some illustrations, featured on ArtStation, that were inspired by THE VALLEY OF GWANGI. Ross’ faux Gwangi sequel was called ‘Return to the Valley of Gwangi’
Gwangi chases a stagecoach!
Another faux ‘Return to the Valley of Gwangi’ concept illustration by Ross Persichetti
PRESSBOOK Pages from the Gwangi pressbook…
‘This is not 50,000,000 years ago… this is today!’
Page depicting various posters and accessories
VARIOUS BITS AND PIECES Here’s a bunch of different Gwangi-related items…
Dell movie adaptation comic cover
A page from ‘The Monster Times’ magazine
VHS cover
Hungarian DVD cover
UK DVD sleeve
German black and white ad
A shot of Ray Harryhausen with his clever set-up for the Gwangi vs elephant fight scene
Finally, here’s one more look at Gwangi in action…
I love how Gwangi stops to scratch his nose! Such a great touch from Ray, that adds more ‘life’ to the animated star of the movie. It is, of course, also a nice nod from Ray to Willis O’Brien’s dinosaur from KING KONG, which had an itchy snout too.
Directed by Fred F. (EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS) Sears, written by Samuel Newman and Paul Gangelin, starring Jeff (THIS ISLAND EARTH) Morrow, Mara (THE BLACK SCORPION) Corday and Morris (GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN) Ankrum, produced by Sam (ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU) Katzman.
Let’s just appreciate the space beast’s cheap wonderfulness!
Check out those giant claws…
Jeff Morrow plays Mitch MacAfee, a civil aeronautical engineer who spots an unidentified flying object near the North Pole. Fighter aircraft are sent to chase the object, but one of the jets goes missing and officials believe it was all a hoax. But then more aircraft disappear and it is eventually discovered that the ‘UFO’ is actually a gigantic alien bird…
US one sheet poster
…and this is all we really need to know about the plot, right? It’s about a giant space buzzard attacking Earth!
It’s building a giant nest!It’s laid a giant egg!
Watch out, dude!
Okay, it’s hard not to poke fun at a movie that boasts a monster that is, well, a shoddy marionette with bulging eyes and flared nostrils!
It’s just so stupid looking!
It’s also hard not to snigger when the movie’s characters repeatedly describe the critter as being the size of a battleship! They say it so often!
Don’t ya just love its dopey features?!
And yet… I like the mad imagination of this film.
The filmmakers actually made a movie focusing on an enormous space bird that is from an antimatter galaxy that has an antimatter forcefield to protect it from bullets and rockets! That’s insane! It’s such a preposterous and absurd concept that you just have to wonder how the hell the plot got the green-light to be made.
But thank goodness it did!
The Giant Claw wrecks planes!The Giant Claw smashes-up New York!
The batty, tatty, bent-beaked behemoth gets a lot of screen time and, as a monster movie fan, I appreciate this!
This scene, where a photo of the beaky beast is shown on a screen, made me laugh out loud!
What adds to the film’s enjoyment is the fact that the concept is so utterly loopy but Jeff Morrow takes the whole thing very seriously. So let’s spare a moment to respect Jeff for his professionalism!
Jeff Morrow deserves our undying respect
It has a beak… with teeth!
Here are some yummy posters for the movie. The artists pretty much never want to show what the bird monster’s goofy face looks like! Can’t blame them…
Australian daybill poster
US half sheet – style A – poster
Australian one sheet poster
Italian Locandina poster
US half sheet – style B – posterItalian poster
US insert poster
Italian poster
US six sheet poster
Here’s a pressbook…
‘Winged monster grips entire nation!’
Lobby cards…
Lobby cardLobby cardLobby cardLobby card. I think Jeff Morrow is aiming at the Mexican special FX dudes who built the gimpy puppet…
Some other materials…
VHS cover
An illustration by hobbyist Tracer67
This fan-made poster shows the creature’s face in all its goofy, bent-beaked glory (and even includes lots of drooling saliva too)!
Directed by William Cheung Kei, produced by Tsai-Ching Wang and starring Yun-Peng Hsiang, Yuen Kao, Ping-Ou Wei and Lui Cheung.
An unscrupulous businessman orders his workers to kill loads of snakes infesting a construction site. After a new apartment complex is built there, thousands of snakes return and attack the building’s occupants to get their revenge.
Poster
This Hong Kong-Taiwanese movie features the killing of lots of live snakes and unashamedly shows the deaths in loving detail, so be warned before you decide to give CALAMITY OF SNAKES a watch. If you can stomach these mondo moments of real-life reptile butchery, then the movie certainly delivers on its promise of multiple moments of snake-attack mayhem!
Killed in the bath!
The film starts as it means to go on, with the slaying of various species of snake infesting a pit during the building of a new apartment development in Taiwan, owned by Mr Chang. Ignoring the protests of his architect, Chang refuses to deal with them humanely, ordering his workers to splat the serpents with shovels instead. Chang himself gets in on the act by using a digger to dice more snakes.
Continuing this theme of snake-related nastiness, we then see a live snake being slit open and skinned alive for its bladder at a market. Not too long after this, the snakes start to strike back, as foreseen by Chang’s superstitious wife, beginning with an attack on a construction worker and a call girl… as they have sex!
The film lives up to the promotional artwork for once
Attempting to deter any further snake assaults, Chang’s geeky righthand man employs the services of a snake expert, who sprinkles a powdery concoction of cement, tobacco and sulphur around the place because “all snakes fear these things”. After a rainstorm washes away the powder, the snakes return, so Chang uses mongooses to deal with some of the serpents.
The director obviously believed viewers really, really wanted to watch a lot of mongoose vs snake action, because he presents us with an extended series of close-up mammals-murdering-reptiles shots. This sequence just goes on and on!
It doesn’t end well for many characters in this movie
Realising that he needs more than mongooses, Chang calls in a snake-hunting master, a dude with white eyebrows, who we first see performing some kind of stage show, pulling a snake from his mouth and allowing it to bite his tongue. It is theorised that a boa is influencing the other snakes to attack en masse, so the master sets out to kill it.
Big boss snake
In an over the top confrontation in a storage building, the master fights the large boa, which bites off some of his fingers, leaps about energetically and roars! This is an enjoyably kinetic, fast-moving scene, shot like a kung fu fight, that sees the master use a rope to finally strangle the big snake. The master leaves, assuming his job is done… but it’s shown that there’s another boa lurking around.
Master versus the boa!
The focus of the movie shifts to the newly opened apartment building now, where we are introduced to various characters, including rich, old guys, a precocious child, and a large lady who loves her food. These stock characters, plus more scenes involving the cost-cutting boss and the idealistic architect, give CALAMITY OF SNAKES a vibe reminiscent of 70s disaster movies.
VHS sleeve
There are some incredibly lowbrow comic moments added to the cheesy mix, including a scene where speeded-up footage of the overweight woman eating too much food is intercut with shots of a pig with its snout in a trough, though there fortunately aren’t too many of these ‘funny’ scenes!
The snakes attack everyone in the apartment complex
When snakes start flying up out of the building’s basement level and begin to infest the complex, slithering into lifts and overflowing into lobbies and bedrooms, the actors are soon rolling around the place, with loads of real, writhing snakes crawling over their bodies and faces. The snakes in this movie are obviously treated badly, but the actors don’t fare much better, as an endless flood of real reptiles are hurled at them! I do hope these thespians were paid well enough!
Covered in snakes!
There are a lot of snakes used during this finale, and I do mean a LOT! Entire corridors are deluged with slithering serpents. There are snakes in punchbowls, snakes in the bath, snakes on the reception desk and a tsunami of snakes that spill from a lift!
Snakes in the foyer
Chang, at one point, grabs a samurai sword and the movie treats us to a sequence featuring the slo-mo hacking of snakes, complete with close-ups of the various portions of the decapitated reptiles twitching on the floor.
Snake on the face!
The fire department is eventually called and dudes in snazzy silver boots & helmets come to the rescue, chopping up snakes with fire axes and spraying them with extinguishers. But even the firemen have trouble dealing the second big, roaring boa, forcing them to resort to using flamethrowers! This, of course, gives the filmmakers the excuse to now present us with a multitude of shots of snakes being burned alive.
Flamethrowers!
The boss boa is no pushover, however, especially as it fights like a martial arts master! The critter flies around the rooms, slapping away people with its coils (cue loud, kung fu-style punching noises) and it even hurls a large eagle statue and a drum kit at the firemen, then agilely leaps away from their flamethrowers!
The big puppet beast is finally set alight, whereupon it wraps itself around Chang, then constricts him and immolates him at the same time!
The big boa and nasty Mr Chang both go up in flames
CALAMITY OF SNAKES is an unashamedly exploitative, schlocky, infamous extravaganza that comes across like a mad animals-attack genre film infused with 70s disaster flick trimmings. If you can withstand the many, many mondo shots of snake snuff footage hurled at your retinas (which is kind of hard to do), this is a dumb, fun, subtlety-free, unhinged, revolting-yet-watchable, one-of-a-kind creature feature that you’re not likely to forget in a hurry (for various reasons!)
Directed by Mick (CRITTERS 2) Garris, written by Stephen King, starring Brian (BEYOND LOCH NESS) Krause, Mädchen (THE BORROWER) Amick, Alice (STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT) Krige, Jim Haynie, Cindy Pickett, Mark (STAR WARS) Hamill and Ron (HELLBOY) Perlman.
One sheet poster
Also known as STEPHEN KING’S SLEEPWALKERS, this is a fun, cheesy tale about a mother & son who are the last of their kind: a shapeshifting species originating in ancient Egypt that feed on the life energy of virgins and, for some reason, are afraid of (and can be killed by) pet cats!
These ancient beings like to consume the life force from virgins!The shapeshifters can be seen for what they really are in mirrors…Ron Perlman loses some fingers!One cop is murdered… with a corncob!
At the beginning of the film we see Charles Brady, the Sleepwalker son, start a new school, where he is charming and friendly, so that nobody guesses he’s actually a werecreature who has regular sex with his mom!
Charles Brady seems like such a nice young man……but he’s not!Mother and son are rather too fond of each otherMommy can get rather catty…
The premise is interesting, but some stuff isn’t explained: why can Charles take the life force from victims but his mother can’t? How on earth can Charles make himself and his car invisible? Why does the previously charming & subtle Charles suddenly become a wise-cracking, campy, cartoony villain halfway through the film?
Splat!
Charles doesn’t like being stabbed in the eye with a corkscrew!
But there’s definitely stuff to enjoy: the full-body werecat creature suits, the goofy early 90s ‘morphing’ special effects, the moments of blood-squirting fun, and the cameos from Clive Barker, Stephen King, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper and John Landis.
It’s morphing time!
Supposedly Stephen King’s wife Tabitha wrote a treatment for a SLEEPWALKERS sequel, which would have featured a women’s basketball team, but the project never progressed beyond treatment stage.
Sleepwalker monster!
If you are happy watching a movie featuring a cheese-tastic, not-too-deep tale of incestuous werecat beings seeking out virgins in modern America… you won’t be disappointed.
Feel the burn!
Here are some posters…
French posterSpanish posterFrench poster
Some lobby cards…
Lobby cardLobby cardLobby cardLobby card
A publicity shot…
Alice Krige, Brian Krause and Mädchen Amick
One more look at those old school morphing effects…
This slimy, mutant muck gets everywhere!Watch out for the lumps of self-replicating meaty protein!Please don’t step in the mutated gunge
Directed by Allan (PROGRAMMED TO KILL) Holzman, written by Tim (GHOST WARRIOR) Curnen, from a story by Jim (CHOPPING MALL) Wynorski and R.J. (BEASTMASTER 2) Robertson and starring Jesse (SILENT RUNNING) Vint, Dawn Dunlap, June Chadwick, Linden Chiles, Fox Harris and Michael Bowen.
‘Part alien… part human… all nightmare’
Also known as MUTANT and SUBJECT 20, this Roger Corman-produced ALIEN rip-off is lurid, colourful, exploitative and splattery. It uses some of the sets that were featured in Corman’s GALAXY OF TERROR (1981), a film on which James Cameron was the production designer.
Also known as MUTANT
This story concerns space ranger Mike Colby (Vint), who arrives at a research station that is under threat from a mutant organism that has evolved from an experimental life form, known as ‘Subject 20’, that has been created by the group of scientists on planet Xarbia.
SAM-104 (Don Olivera) and Mike Colby (Jesse Vint)
With some oddly edited moments and an okay electronic score, this film presents us with a mutated creature that turns its human victims into lumps of self-replicating meaty protein.
There’s lots of fluid dribbling and dripping about the placeAs the organism evolves, it gains a maw full of big teethVenturing out onto the planet’s surface……they come across this toothsome life formA cocoon-type thingy attached to the rocksA gunged-up and splattery corpse
Obviously aiming at the young male market, the movie has the two female characters, Tracy Baxter (Dunlap) and Dr. Barbara Glaser (Chadwick), taking saunas & showers… even though there’s a monster on the loose!
Tracy Baxter heads for the sauna/sunbed room, which is, of course, an essential feature of all distant research bases!
Dr. Barbara Glaser is rather, erm, underdressed
Tracy and Barbara even try to communicate with the creature whilst wearing very short bathrobes. This doesn’t end well when one of the women gets transfixed by a spiked tentacle. Ouch!
“I know! Let’s try to communicate with the revolting mutant beast whilst wearing bathrobes!”Dr. Glaser gets skewered by the critterTrying to escape the mutant organism!
So is this a classic creature feature? Well, it certainly doesn’t reach the heights of science fiction greatness, that’s for sure, but it manages to be a pretension-free sci-fi-horror flick that is a perfect example of the kind of exploitative, pulpy, gaudy production that got made in the 80s.
And the film definitely scores points for giving us a finale with a difference: we get to see the hero performing DIY surgery on a scientist suffering from cancer, so that he can remove the large tumour… and then feed it to the creature, which then proceeds to vomit itself to death!
Classy stuff!
The creature suffers from terminal upchucking!
Some posters…
French posterUS poster
Some other cool stuff…
Finnish video sleeveGerman VHS sleeveAnother German VHS sleeve
US VHS cover
Newspaper ad
Scream Factory SteelBook cover with artwork by Laz Marquez
Directed by Haruyasu Noguchi, written by Iwao Yamazaki and Ryuzo Nakanishi, starring Tamio Kawachi, Yoko Yamamoto, Yuji Okada, Kōji Wada and Tatsuya Fuji.
‘Even mightier than King Kong!’
Two heraldic-like winged monsters trash Japan in an attempt to take possession of their offspring, which a Japanese expedition has removed from Obelisk Island, the young beast’s volcanic island home.
‘Vast! Hideous! Invincible!’
They’re heading to Obelisk Island…
…where they discover an enigmatic statue
Also known as MONSTER FROM A PREHISTORIC PLANET and GAPPA, this Japanese kaiju movie was made by the Nikkatsu Corporation and has a story that is pretty damn similar to the British giant monster movie GORGO (1961), although this time it is not just one parent that goes looking for their child… it is two adult monsters!
You lookin’ at me?!
These massive, beaked Gappa beasts can fly without flapping their wings, supposedly rocketing through the air at speeds faster than a jet, they blast dozens of planes out of the sky, and they expel heat rays from their mouths.
Rest assured – these critters are really going to smash stuff up until they find Gappa junior.
Mom and pop Gappa glide over JapanThe Gappa monsters contemplate their upcoming bout of destructionBaby Gappa is poked and prodded by humans. Bad humans!Wrecking stuff!
“You know, I’ve decided to quit my job – I guess I’m an ordinary woman, I should stay home, marry an office worker and wash diapers.” (!!) Thus says a woman journalist at the film’s conclusion. Amazing what a country-wrecking pair of prehistoric monsters can do to instil old, conformist attitudes into one of the female characters!
Prepare to fire missiles!
Finally, you’ll be pleased to know, Baby Gappa flies (well, glides) home with monster mom and dad. All together now: “Awwww!”
Effects-wise, the monster suits in this movie are rather stiff, lacking the pliability of Toho’s creature costumes, but if you fancy switching your brain off and watching a colourful time-waster featuring miniature vehicles and buildings getting trashed by suitmation critters that breath heat-rays… this is the flick for you.
Just zappin’ some pesky planes
About the different versions of the film… In DAIKYOJÛ GAPPA, the original Japanese version, a rock & roll theme song called ‘Gappa, the Colossal Beast’ accompanied the opening credits and the ending – and the scene with the monster parents reuniting with their child towards the end of the film had a ballad called ‘Keep Trying, Baby Gappa!’ In all overseas prints, however, the opening and ending songs were removed and replaced with orchestral music, whilst the ‘Keep Trying, Baby Gappa!’ ballad was replaced with an instrumental version.
Gappa-tastic!
Okay, now for the best bit, let’s check out some niiiiiice posters for the movie…
Japanese poster
Italian poster
Czech poster
German poster
Polish poster
French poster
Another German poster (yup, they are using ‘Frankenstein’ in the title, just like for so many other kaiju releases in Germany)
Mexican poster
Some video and DVD covers…
German DVD cover (okay, we all know Frankenstein doesn’t actually feature in this movie…)
US DVD cover
DVD double feature
UK VHS sleeve. The Gappa creatures do not look like that!
US Betamax video cover
Some assorted wonderfulness…
Box art for plastic model kit. It’s remote control too!
Directed by Colm McCarthy, written by Colm McCarthy and Tom K. McCarthy, starring Kate Dickie, Niall Bruton, Hanna Stanbridge, Josh Whitelaw, Therese Bradley and James Nesbitt.
Ignore this rather generic monster’s-hand-in-the-foreground DVD cover design, the movie itself is really good
Grim vistas
Mary (Dickie) is a woman who comes from an ancient, almost mythical Celtic race. She hides out with her son Fergal (Bruton) in a dingy area on the outskirts of Edinburgh, using magic to protect them from a killer called Cathal (Nesbitt), who is also using magic to hunt them down on behalf of the clan Mary ran away from. Whilst this is happening, local people start getting murdered – but is Cathal to blame for these deaths… or is it someone or something else?
Mary, played by Kate Dickie, is a very protective mother, though she definitely has her reasons for behaving this wayA sharp-nailed beast begins to kill the locals
OUTCAST is a British movie that features an interesting mix of social realism (it’s set in a dour Scottish housing estate) and horror/fantasy (the characters from the undefined clan can deploy gritty magic, some of which involves using disemboweled pigeons for divination, runic tattoos, etc).
Some of the estate’s residents ain’t very friendlyVarious tattoos form part of the magic utilised in the movie
The story shows us how Mary, the grim, overprotective mother, is using her magical abilities to hide her teenage son Fergal from the people trying to track him down, whilst also revealing how Fergal starts to become tempted to step away from his isolated way of life, so that he can begin a relationship with a local girl called Petronella (Stanbridge).
Fergal becomes fed up with living a life of isolation…
…and he becomes very close with Petronella
Meanwhile, of course, lurking amongst the dirty, rain-soaked estate, is a murderous monster… which is finally revealed to be a novel-looking humanoid thing with pallid & veined skin, a thick upper torso, a thin waist and troll-like face. But who is it that is transforming into this creature? You’ll have to watch the film to find out!
Above: two shots of the strange, clammy-skinned humanoid!
This weird being has an almost troll-like visage
I do think that maybe the filmmakers could have explained this down-and-dirty mythology they created a little more clearly, though it could be argued that this kind of tale benefits from the fact everything is left somewhat mysterious and open to interpretation.
‘Beware the beast within’
The film is well worth tracking down (but don’t use a disemboweled pigeon to help you find it, okay?)
Cathal is assaulted by the man-monster, which has pale, moist, veined skin
The special effects for the critter are without doubt on the low budget side, but the monster makes up for it with its rather unique look
Directed by Stephen Traxler, written by Stephen Traxler, starring Alan Blanchard, Judy Motulsky, J.C. Claire, Dennis Falt, Mello Alexandria and Win Condict.
Poster
Slithis on the rampage!
Over in Venice Beach, California, a marine monster starts killing dogs, before going after people, but the local cops doubt that it actually exists. A journalism professor (Blanchard) starts looking into the murders, helped by Dr. John (Claire), and he discovers that the weird critter may actually be linked to nuclear waste…
It’s Slithis!
Red, red blood…
Also known simply as SLITHIS, this flick was shot in 12 days on a budget of 100,000 dollars. There was a “Slithis Survival Kit” offered at drive ins!
The Slithis Survival Kit!
Radiation can be bad for you
The thing is, this man-in-suit creature feature could have been a 70s schlocky classic if more time had been spent on the monster attacks instead of focusing so much running time on the protagonist’s drawn-out amateur detective work. Oh well. There’s also one of the all-time worst pieces of ham acting courtesy of the actor playing a police lieutenant!
Slithis is attacked with an anchor!
But, you know what? I do kinda like the shambling Slithis monster (played by Win Condict) when it is actually on-screen. The funky fella is a kind of bulky gill-man with suckers in its mouth and a dorsal fin on its humped back.
Slithis attacks again!
Slithis ain’t very nice to people…
US VHS sleeve
Director Traxler went on to handle production supervisor duties on movies including WATERWORLD, INVASION USA, GLEAMING THE CUBE and DRACULA’S WIDOW.
German VHS artwork
Finally, here’s a colourful Blu-ray cover…
Slithis!
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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