Starring Ken Chang, Zhou Xiaochuan, Hu Xueer, He Qiwei and Li Junyao. Written by Lin Jianfeng. Directed by Luo Le. Produced by Michelle Mou. Sunrise Entertainment/Tencent Video
Who will survive this tomb-filled quest?
Aka CANDLE IN THE TOMB: XIANGXI SECRET, this tomb-raiding fantasy adventure, based on Zhang Muye’s novels, has hero Hu Bayi embark upon a search for what lies beyond Mount Pingshan.
What Hu Bayi uncovers includes loads of palace-tombs, toxic centipedes that crawl from funeral jars, booby traps, riddles, and a humungous, six-winged centipede monster.
Swarms of poisonous centipedes surround the adventurers
This production uses the formula that a lot of these Chinese-made adventure films follow: it starts with a full-on action-adventure-fantasy sequence, replete with danger, exotic locales and a monster, then it cuts back in time to a character telling a tale regarding these events.
A dude leaps straight at a giant, winged centipede-monster!
MOJIN: MYSTERIOUS TREASURE is a by the numbers Chinese fantastical adventure that’s merely adequate most of the time. It’s not as consistently entertaining as others of its ilk, but it DOES showcase a massive, flying, multi-winged centipede with a tooth-filled face… so how could I not give this film a go?! Plus, the film includes a rather nicely-done fight scene at the beginning, where the adventurers battle an almost unstoppable mummified warrior that emerges from a stone coffin.
Above: two shots of the reanimated warrior, who sports a rather cool-looking helmA multi-eyed monster centipede with many mouthparts!
The CGI is passable (most of the time), we get the usual digitally-created environments of dark, ancient tomb locales, and the story includes a secondary character who, as is always the way, turns out to be a selfish bad guy willing to murder Hu and his mates so that he can keep what is discovered all to himself. The villain this time is Joe, played well by Zhou Xiaochuan, who finds a legendary sword, which somehow infects him, mutating him into a lumpy-fleshed monster-man who kills the centipede-critter. The mutated/infected Joe then meets his own end when he is impaled on a stone throne. Hey, I admit that this film does have its interesting moments!
Above: three pics of Joe after he becomes a sword-wielding, lumpy-skinned adversary!
Other cinematic romps focusing on the heroic Hu Bayi character include CHRONICLES OF THE GHOSTLY TRIBE (2015), MOJIN: THE WORM VALLEY (2018), THE LEGEND HUNTERS (2021), and MOJIN: THE LOST LEGEND (2015).
This is the Monster Zone blog, so let’s finish with a few more shots of the massive centipede critter…
Do not trust the royal family of the kingdom of Aurea…
Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Brooke Carter, Nick Robinson, Robin Wright and Milo Twomey. Written by Dan Mazeau, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, and produced by Jeff Kirschenbaum, Chris Castaldi, Jonathan Loughran, Morgan Bushe and Emily Wolfe. Netflix, PCMA Management and Productions, Roth/Kirschenbaum Films
Elodie and her family should have stayed at home…
Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown), one of the daughters of Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone), becomes betrothed to Henry (Nick Robinson), the prince of the wealthy island kingdom of Aurea. Elodie agrees to the marriage initially because the riches being paid for this union will mean much needed money going to her father’s poor, needy land, but then Elodie finds herself actually starting to like Prince Henry, and it all seems too good to be true… and that’s because it is too good to be true! Henry’s elite royal family, headed by the imperious Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright), intends to feed Elodie to a grudge-bearing dragon!
Prince Henry seems like such a nice chap…
…but when Henry and the royal court dress up like this, then you know it ain’t going to end well…
Millie Bobby Brown is okay in the earlier scenes, which boast some luscious fantasy visuals of mountains, knights, royal courts and castles, but she gets far better, I think, once her character is put under duress in the subterranean cavern that Prince Henry has thrown her into.
This is a damn cool-looking fantasy film image!
The film as a whole becomes more immersive once we find ourselves in the cave system with Elodie, who must keep her wits about her as she attempts to stay out of the grasp of the dragon. The script benefits from an efficient forward momentum, with new plot developments keeping the story interesting, like the inclusion of the helpful messages (written by a previous sacrificial princess) that Elodie finds and uses to evade the fire-breathing beast. A cool touch is the discovery of glowing grubs, which are a neat way to provide the heroine (and us) with a light source. These grubs also have healing properties, which prove to be useful later in the tale. To keep the location from becoming samey, the cavern is subdivided into different zones, like a vertical tunnel lined with sharp crystals, a cave filled with stalactites & stalagmites, and so on.
A bioluminescent cave-grub creature!
A vertical cave shaft that is lined with sharp crystals
There are a number of striking visual sequences in the movie, including a flock of burning birds seen whirring through the cavern, a shot of ice melting as dragon-breath blasts it from above, and a later shot of flames lighting up the sky over the dragon’s mountain domain, which looks especially fantastical.
Dragon flames illuminate the night sky…
The female dragon is a pretty fine creation. She has a sleek build, with a solidly-built, ridged neck. Her throat glows before she breaths lava-like flames, and she possesses a long, prehensile tail, a spike-festooned head, a neck covered in spines, and large wings. This dragon has a characterful face, looking a little bit like Draco from DRAGONHEART, and, just like Draco, she can speak. I am not usually a big fan of talking movie dragons, but the way this one speaks, with a female voice courtesy of Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, it works quite effectively. The dragon also has a legitimate reason to want revenge on humans…
A damsel-versus-dragon face-off!The dragon’s body-structure gives her something of a stylised, heraldic look
DAMSEL’s plot machinations sees Elodie’s younger sister Floria being chucked into the dragon’s lair (because Queen Isabelle realises Elodie has evaded the dragon), and it all becomes really quite thrilling as Elodie goes back into the danger zone to save her sis! Elodie finally tips the balance in her favour after she finds the chance to explain to the dragon that the vengeful beast has been lied to over the years with regard to the identities of the sacrificial princesses.
Many of the caves are large enough for the dragon to fly around in
The dragon’s flame-breath has a lava-like quality to it
Robin Wright is sufficiently dastardly as the queen of the island kingdom, Ray Winstone is all right as the father who finally attempts to do the right thing, Angela Bassett is good as the stepmother who smells a rat, and Millie Bobby Brown just gets better and better as the film progresses. She looks very striking as the burnt, bruised, ragged, dirty heroine who eventually finds a way to exact revenge on Queen Isabelle and her sneaky, ruthless clan…
Elodie becomes more battered and bruised as the story progresses, but she will get her revenge!
A tale featuring mysterious, quirky, mountain-dwelling beasts!
This book collects the Silver John short stories, including THE DESRICK ON YANDRO
THE DESRICK ON YANDRO is a short fantasy-horror story written by pulp horror, sci-fi, fantasy author Manly Wade Wellman (May 21st, 1903 – April 5th, 1986), who created the wonderful evil-vanquishing character John, often referred to as Silver John or John the Balladeer. John roamed the Appalachian mountains with a silver-stringed guitar, which helped him to ward off evil (because the Devil and evil in general doesn’t like silver!) John speaks in a dialect that sounds authentic for the region, and Wellman’s turn of phrase in these stories lends a lyrical, poetic-folksy vibe to the narratives. THE DESRICK ON YANDRO was the second story about John to be written by Wellman, and it was first published in the June 1952 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.
THE DESRICK ON YANDRO was first published in this magazine
The yarn sees John agree to accompany a rich, pushy, unpleasant man called Mr. Yandro on a trip to Yandro Mountain, a mysterious place where Yandro’s grandfather, Joris Yandro, had courted a pretty witch, Polly Wiltse, who lived in a desrick atop the flat, wooded mountain peak. John and Mr. Yandro reach a cabin in the valley below the mountain, where Mr. Yandro is told by an old woman called Miss Tully that, seventy-five years ago, his grandfather had used Polly Wiltse’s witch-powers to locate gold on the mountain and then he had run away with the treasure, abandoning Polly.
Mr. Yandro, it seems, intends to trudge up the mountain and coerce the ancient Polly Wiltse into giving him more of the gold.
Miss Tully warns Mr. Yandro that ‘scarce animals’ live up on the mountain, creatures like the Toller – the hugest flying thing there is: its voice tolls like a bell, to tell other creatures their feed’s near. And she talks about the Flat – a critter that lies level with the ground, which can wrap around people like a blanket. Miss Tully mentions a furred beast called the Bammat, but Mr. Yandro suggests the old woman is referring to the Behemoth. Tully says that the Behemoth is from the Bible, and the Bammat is different, something hairy, with big ears and a long wiggly nose. Mr. Yandro laughs at this, saying that Miss Tully is referring to the extinct Mammoth. The old woman continues, telling Mr. Yandro about the Behinder – which is always hiding behind the man or woman it wants to grab, and she describes the Skim – a living thing that kites through the air, and she explains what the Culverin is – a creature that can shoot pebbles with its mouth.
Mr. Yandro just sneers at all this talk of weird animals. The next day he and John make their way up the mountain trail. John notes that it wasn’t folks’ feet that had worn that trail, it was hoofmarks… and soon John starts noticing things peering from the foliage, such as a big, broad-headed Bammat, a creature with white tusks like ‘bannisters on a spiral staircase’. But Mr. Yandro is oblivious to the things lurking amongst the trees until it is too late, and then, finally, he discovers that all these unlikely beasts really do exist…
Artist Thomas Boatwright created some drawings of Silver John for a graphic novel treatment, but the comic book was never published. Here’s a DESRICK-inspired illustration. Check out the Bammat behind John!
Another one of Thomas Boatwright’s Silver John drawings produced for a graphic novel that never got produced. Shame!
THE DESRICK ON YANDRO is an enjoyable tall tale, with John playing something of a passive role, even though he is the narrator. But once it is explained by Miss Tully that the bitter witch Polly Wiltse had created a special song with the power (if it is heard by a member of the Yandro family) to draw a male Yandro relative back to her desrick, it becomes apparent that John has indeed played a very important function in the story: he happens to be singing this very song at a rich folks’ gathering at the start of the story, which triggers Mr. Yandro’s urge to seek out Polly.
When John and Mr. Yandro reach the desrick (an old term for a kind of cabin that’s made of strong logs with loophole windows), Yandro is set upon by various creatures, and he is chased into the witch’s desrick, never to be seen again. It is inferred that the old, haggard Polly Wiltse doesn’t care which generation of the Yandro family she punishes, just so long as they resemble the man who’d wronged her all those years ago.
Hedges Capers plays John in the film WHO FEARS THE DEVIL, aka THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN (1972)
I love the menagerie of uncanny critters that pop-up in this story. The Culverin has many legs, and has a needle-shaped mouth from which it spits a pebble at Mr. Yandro. The Behinder, which is a variation on the Hidebehind creature featured in lumberjack lore, is not explicitly described by John because it is too terrible a thing for anyone to want to remember properly. Several of the Skims are seen and they seem to be living frisbee-things, whilst the Flat resembles a black, broad, short-furred carpet rug! The specific look of the avian Toller isn’t gone into, we are simply told that it makes gong-gong-gong sounds.
Wellman wrote a whole bunch of short stories about John, plus five novels. In 1972 the movie WHO FEARS THE DEVIL, aka THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN, was released. This was a movie about Silver John’s adventures, and it was set within the same supernaturally-flavoured backwoods milieu of a bizarre rural Appalachia, just like in the books. Two of Wellman’s stories, O UGLY BIRD! and THE DESRICK ON YANDRO, were incorporated into the film’s script.
The section of the movie that is based on THE DESRICK ON YANDRO story features actor Harris Yulin playing Mr. Yandro. In the film the character likes to dress as an undertaker. This part of the movie boasts some nicely-lit night shots, and it adds scenes that weren’t in the original story, involving Susan Strasberg playing the old hag witch Polly Wiltse, who pretends to be an attractive, still-young woman. The movie also includes John’s dog, called Honor Hound, which accompanies him on his trek up the mountain (the dog isn’t in the short story). This segment of the movie is certainly engaging, but (no doubt because of budgetary reasons) all the quirky folklore creatures are not shown! In the movie adaptation, John and Mr. Yandro simply mention such creatures as Behemoths and Behinders, and there’s an off-screen roar heard at one stage… but we NEVER get to see the folkloric fauna, which is a damn shame!
In the movie Mr. Yandro dresses like an undertaker
John and Yandro climb up the mountain
Fortunately, the part of the film inspired by the O UGLY BIRD! story does show the monster! The filmmakers bring the feathered fiend to the screen as a Ray Harryhausen-style flying, fiendish animated fowl! The Ugly Bird scenes add a lot of much-needed action and fantasy thrills to the production, and they’re definitely my favourite moments in the film. The quirky & creepy-looking puppet was designed and made by key animator Harry Walton, who did 85% of the animation, with Gene Warren Jr. providing animation for four shots.
Ugly Bird attacks John!
The animated monster bird swoops through the air!
Despite the omissions in the DESRICK portion of the plot, and the rather loose directorial style, WHO FEARS THE DEVIL/THE LEGEND OF HILLBILLY JOHN remains an easygoing, episodic, folksy fantasia that’s fun to watch, even if the film lacks the specific atmosphere of the Wellman stories.
The film WHO FEARS THE DEVIL is reviewed in Imaginator magazine’s FOLK HORROR SPECIAL EDITION. You can find out more about this folk-tastic magazine HERE!
I first read THE DESRICK ON YANDRO short story within the pages of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MONSTER MUSEUM. This anthology book had stories about such beasts as a slimy blob-creature and intelligent ants, but it was the YANDRO tale that lodged itself in my memory.
The DESRICK story is also featured in various books that collect Wellman’s Silver John short tales together – JOHN THE BALLADEER, OWLS HOOT IN THE DAYTIME AND OTHER OMENS, and WHO FEARS THE DEVIL?
Lee Brown Coye cover art for this edition published by Arkham House Press in 1963
Mike Mignola’s and Richard Corben’s comic book tale HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN was heavily inspired by Manly Wade Wellman’s Appalachian-set Silver John pulp-fantasy-horror stories. I really enjoyed the 2024 movie adaptation – it’s well worth seeking out!
Starring Chin Siu-Ho, Kara Wai, Philip Kwok, Kei Kong-Hung, Jason Pai Piao, Yuen Tak and Lung Tien-Hsiang. Written and directed by Lung I-Sheng. Produced by Mona Fong for Shaw Brothers.
Feng Ling (Wai) is sent by her master to locate the special fiery bow and arrows that are the only treasures that can stop a mystery villain from using the lethal Six-Stringed Demonic Lute to wreak havoc everywhere. Along the way she teams-up with her brother Old Naughty (Tak), a likeable thief (Kwok) and his son, a good guy called Yuan Fei (Siu-Ho) and a powerful martial artist known as the Woodcutter (Tien-Hsiang).
This dude’s got a huge chopper!
DEMON OF THE LUTE’s director, Lung I-Sheng (aka Tang Tak-Cheung), was primarily an actor in the Hong Kong film industry. He was also a martial arts director on many films, and he was the action designer on the very wild BUDDHA’S PALM (1982). This fantasy wuxia, you’ll be pleased to know, is equally over the top! It really is lots of fun, crammed with loads and loads of exotic characters! Let’s look at just some of them: there’s Red Haired Evil, who rides a small chariot drawn by german shepherd dogs and hurls his Thunder Flying Wheel weapon like a frisbee, Eagle Man, who can flap his costume’s wings to fly like a bird, Long Limb Evil, who can super-extend his arm, and Fatty Elf, who can entangle folks in his lengthy beard.
Red Haired Evil, riding his chariot pulled by dogs!
Eagle Man!
Watch out for Fatty Elf’s super-long beard!
One of my favourite fantastical characters in this outlandish fight flick is Skinny Elf, who has a misshapen forehead – he likes to sit on the hero’s shoulders and can’t be shaken off!
Above: two pics of Skinny Elf!
Utter strangeness abounds throughout this production, with warriors erupting from a giant silver ball, Feng Ling using her rainbow sword like a guided missile, a horseless wagon whizzing around with the deadly lute inside, some trees momentarily becoming monsters, Old Naughty riding his horse backwards, and a kitschy killer lute that glows with LED strip lights when it’s played.
Monster trees attack!
The lethal magic lute’s strings are made from dinosaur ligaments!
Though some of the music and on-screen antics become rather too childish (this film dedicates itself to children in the opening credits), DEMON OF THE LUTE has much to offer, including Kei Kong-Hung, who is surprisingly good as the thief’s plucky young son Xiao Ding Dong.
I dig this hairdo!
Let’s end this review with another look at Skinny Elf…
Written and directed by Jirí Barta. Music by Vladimír Merta. Art direction by Lenka Kerelová. Cinematography by Jan Vycítal. Edited by Helena Lebdusková. Produced by Krátký Film Praha and Studio Jirího Trnky.
This short film from Czechoslovakia uses a mixture of live action and stop motion.
The movie begins with close-up shots of an axe chopping into logs. One log splits into multiple pieces of wood, some of which have faces. These wooden sticks rush about the landscape, seemingly elated that spring is coming, with the stop-motion footage intermixed with time-lapse photography of seeds germinating and the ice receding.
This stick has a woman’s face
The wooden stick with a maiden’s face is attacked by a crow, which pecks the stick to pieces and swallows the splinters.
The crow attacks the lady-stick!
The stop-motion crow now turns into a creepy, skull-faced, winged piece of wood. This weird log-thing flies over the countryside, enters a cavern lit by candles, and roosts upside down like a bat, becoming an icicle. Sunlight enters the cave and the icicle becomes the death-faced stump again, which fights a wooden carving of a knight on a horse. The knight wins!
The crow turns into this evil stick!
The winged stick-monster flies over the woods
This heroic piece of wood is shaped like a knight on a horse!
The other sticks carry the winged, skull-headed piece of wood aloft and place it atop a bonfire on a hill. Then, instead of burning the bonfire, a stick with the maiden’s face uses a newly-grown leaf to make the bonfire burst into a flurry of spring growth, with long blades of green grass consuming the monster-branch, transforming it into a normal piece of wood once more.
The crow-stick is engulfed by a ‘bonfire’ of fresh grass
Jirí Barta’s sweet-and-sinister short is inspired by Vesna, a female character from Slavic mythology, who is associated with rituals conducted in rural areas during springtime. Here she is represented as the wooden stick with a maiden’s face that is consumed by the black crow, then returns anew to ignite the return of spring, as symbolised by the bonfire of rapidly-growing grass.
The branch-of-badness is swamped by the blades of grass.,..
…and it becomes a normal piece of wood again, which sprouts fresh leaves
The yarn, which possesses a typically surreal Eastern European folktale vibe, begins in an upbeat manner, turns darker with the arrival of the crow-stump-creature, then seemingly becomes upbeat again after the (ritualistic-looking) ‘burning’ of the winged branch transforms it into a regular stick again, which starts to grow fresh leaves. This would be the happy ending, right? But Barta chooses to finish the story by showing the sticks being collected by a villager to be used as firewood. The final shot is of smoke issuing from a chimney! The end!
The stop-motion animation of the sticks and the puppet crow was done outside, on location in the Bohemian Forest, the High Tatras, and the Koněprusy Caves.
The animation was filmed on location in the outside environment
Barta’s other short films include THE VANISHED WORLD OF GLOVES (1982), THE PIED PIPER (1986), THE LAST THEFT (1987) and THE CLUB OF THE LAID OFF (1989).
Starring Bryn Fôn, Morgan Hopkins, Sean Carlsen, Victoria Pugh and Morgan Llewelyn-Jones. Written and directed by Craig Williams. Produced by Julien Allen for Two Draig Films.
‘Fate will unwind as it must’
When Gwyn (Fôn) gets an early morning phone call, it’s obvious he is being informed about something that is serious, and it’s also clearly an occurrence that has happened before. What seems to concern Gwyn and his wife Anwen (Pugh) most is the fact that this event has started sooner this time around..
Gwyn gets an unwelcome call
We follow Gwyn as he fetches items hidden in his attic, makes another call, then heads out to pick up the two other members of his team, Emlyn (Hopkins) and Dai (Carlsen). These men drive over to a farm, where they physically attack and subdue Dafydd (Llewelyn-Jones), who they shove into the boot of their car. They drive Dafydd to Bwlch Pen Barras mountain, get him out of the vehicle, and lead him further up the slope. The young captive’s wrists are tethered to a tree branch with rope, black markings are applied to Dafydd’s face, and Gwyn calls out to the Queen of the Mountain as something horrible happens to Dafydd off-screen…
Dafydd is the latest sacrifice…
This short Welsh movie, shot on nicely-grainy Kodak Super 16mm film, purposefully leaves a lot of details unanswered, so viewers must fill in the blanks themselves. Just what is it that has happened sooner this time? How are the sacrificial victims chosen? Is this a ritual tradition that has been undertaken by multiple generations of Gwyn’s family?
The film’s title is the main clue to explain what is actually occurring in the story: the word ‘Wyrm’ relates to dragons, such as the one featured in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. A red dragon, of course, is the most prominent symbol of Wales and it is included on the kingdom’s flag. Though the legendary creature is a symbol of national pride in Wales, in local myths dragons can have a more ambiguous or infernal significance. Writer-director Craig Williams has said in an interview that there are still folk stories which carry symbolic weight today in which dragons protect villages for a price, and he explained that he wanted to draw on that idea in the context of a horror film.
Some viewers will be frustrated that the finale refrains from actually showing the creature: THIS IS A MONSTER-RELATED MOVIE THAT DOESN’T SHOW THE MONSTER! But, though I can sympathise with that opinion, I found some tasty tidbits to savour throughout this folk-horror-urban-fantasy’s brief running time, including the sweetly unnerving opening music by Dafydd Ieuan & Cian Ciarán (of the band Super Furry Animals). The overall no-nonsense vibe of the piece is the film’s main selling point, as it depicts the average Joe characters going about their business in a down-to-earth manner. Gwyn is very restrained and world-weary, Emlyn is rather fretful, out of shape, and is evidently content to follow Gwyn’s lead, whilst Dai likes to act the hard man, obviously getting a kick out of what he’s doing.
Above – shots of the protagonists (top to bottom): Gwyn, Emlyn and Dai
THE WYRM OF BWLCH PEN BARRAS was originally shot as two versions, one in English and one in Welsh. But it soon became apparent to Williams, during the postproduction process, that the Welsh version felt far richer and seemed more true to the material, so that was the one the director submitted to film festivals.
This unflashy short film acts almost like an extract from some larger work, and it poses enough questions (Why has the Wyrm’s need for a sacrifice become more regular? When will the rituals not be enough?) to make me want to see them answered in a more substantial follow-up movie – and hopefully a sequel would put the scaly ‘Queen of the Mountain’ on screen!
We didn’t get to see what attacked Dafydd in this film. If there’s a sequel we want to see the dragon!
Written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. Directed by Ralph Bakshi. Produced by Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta, Lynne Betner, John W. Hyde and Richard R. St. Johns. Polyc International BV/Producers Sales Organization.
US one sheet poster
Italian poster
An enormous octo-monster attacks!
The evil Queen Juliana and her son Nekron utilise their ability to weaponise glaciers to force their opponents to retreat southwards. Princess Teegra, the daughter of opposition leader King Jarol, is kidnapped by Juliana’s subhuman minions, because the ice queen believes Teegra should be her son’s bride.
Above: five images from the film
In the ensuing adventure, Teegra escapes from the subhumans but is eventually recaptured, blond-haired hero Larn, who grows close to the princess, vows to free her from Nekron’s icy lair, and wolf-masked warrior-dude Darkwolf kicks subhuman ass! Added to the mix are various monsters, a witch, and lots of lava at the end.
Teegra!
Larn!
Darkwolf!
You can tell Queen Juliana is evil just by the way she laughs
Part of the wave of early 80s sword and sorcery films, this Ralph Bakshi animated production has a fairly minimal plot, written by Marvel scribes Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas, that provides lots of opportunities for the underdressed protagonists to be chased by or fight caveman-like subhumans. Adding to the sword and sorcery credentials of this film is the fact that fantasy artist supreme Frank Frazetta was Bakshi’s main collaborator on the project.
Princess Teegra has a quick wash during her adventure
The mix of rotoscoped characters and painted background scenes (painted by Thomas Kinkade and James Gurney) lacks the finesse of Disney, but the style does capture the feel of Marvel’s Conan comics (which were written by Roy Thomas) and the action is more violent than anything seen in a Disney movie.
Ouch! This isn’t the kinda thing you see in a Disney cartoon!
Since my first viewing of the film when it was released, I have retained a fondness for it. Being a Bakshi film, FIRE AND ICE has a small budget that hurts its large scale moments (such as shots of a fast-moving glacier wrecking a village): these scenes are somewhat lacking in detail and seem a little rushed. But the smaller scale action sequences (all the hand-to-hand combat stuff ) are really well handled. There’s something about Bakshi’s rotoscope technique (the use of live action photography to act as the source material for the cell animation) that gives the fight action a vicious, realistic-looking, adult edge.
Darkwolf hacks up some more enemies!
The design of the production definitely has Frazetta’s aesthetic fingerprints plastered all over it. Amongst other things, Frazetta created sculpted busts to aid the animators, and he produced character designs.
Three busts, of Teegra, Darkwolf and a subhuman, which were sculpted by Frank Frazetta to aid the animators
The shapely fantasy femme Teegra, the Neanderthal-like subhumans, and the axe-wielding berserker Darkwolf are all obviously the creations of Frazetta: you can see their likenesses in many of his paintings. Most of the characters are very under-clothed, and it’s no surprise that the film’s Costume Designer was Frazetta!
Teegra likes to roll around
Don’t make Darkwolf angry!
Charging subhumans!
The creatures featured in the film include a cyclopean lake octopus, a giant swamp lizard, black-furred wolves, a bug-like beast that chows down on a subhuman’s arm, and pterosaur-esque flying reptiles that are ridden into battle against the villains.
A reptile runs rampant!
Above: two shots of the lake octopus-monster’s purple-coloured eye!
A subhuman dude falls victim to a weird bug-thing that attaches itself to his arm!
Above: three pics showing the pterodactyl-type creatures that are used for an aerial assault on the bad guys
FIRE AND ICE is a pulpy, fast-paced, rollicking fantasy-action adventure that doesn’t pretend to be deep or meaningful. Basically, it’s a fine piece of animated eye candy that’s always worth an occasional rewatch.
A Teegra model sheet
Above: two Darkwolf model sheets
Teegra concept art by Frank Frazetta (graphite on 12 field 3-peghole animation paper)
One of Frank Frazetta’s original Darkwolf character designs
This was Frazetta’s suggestion for how the US poster for FIRE AND ICE should look
Here are behind the scenes shots showing the live action actors who were used as reference for the rotoscoping…
Above: three photos taken during the live action filming (Frank Frazetta can be seen in the bottom two pics and Ralph Bakshi is in the top shot)
Let’s end this post with one more look at the rampaging rotoscoped mayhem…
Starring Basima Hajjar, Ashraf Barhoum, Fatima Al Taei, Yagoub Alfarhan and Haifa Al-Agha. Written and directed by Shahad Ameen. Produced by R. Paul Miller, Stephen Strachan and Rula Nasser.
Basima Hajjar plays Hayat
The people of a small coastal settlement sacrifice some of their daughters to unseen sea creatures (we only get a brief glimpse of a clawed, webbed, gill-man-style hand) and, in return, the village’s fisherman are able to hunt for Sea Maidens, which are the main food source for the population.
A Sea Maiden that Hayat has dragged to the village
One of the hunters dies from a wound suffered during a fishing trip: it can be dangerous capturing Sea Maidens
Plot-wise, we never discover how the life cycle of the mermaids & mer-creatures actually works. The teenage girls given to the sea in the nighttime ceremonies somehow become the fish-tailed Sea Maidens that are hunted, but just how the female humans mutate into mermaids isn’t explained. Just what is it that the gill-men want: does the transformation of the girls form part of the clawed gill-men creatures’ elaborate reproductive process, perhaps?
A Sea Maiden is caught and dragged onto a fishing boat, where she starts to crawl along the deck…
A close-up shot of the sand-speckled face of the captured Sea Maiden
The main character, an outsider girl called Hayat (Hajjar), has fish scales growing on her left foot – and, when it is her time to be sacrificed to the sea-gods – she survives the ordeal and returns to the village the following morning, dragging a dead Sea Maiden with her. Had Hayat maybe come into contact with a gill-man at a young age, and she’d somehow been turned into a human with slight Sea Maiden qualities? Who knows? The details surrounding the whole ecology of these strange sea beings isn’t gone into by writer-director Shahad Ameen, as already stated, because, for Ameen, this isn’t her main concern. Instead, this wonderful-looking b&w film (a Saudi Arabian/UAE/Jordanian/Iraqi production), filmed around Musandam in Oman, plays out more like an allegory or fable, focusing on how Hayat is instrumental in changing a society’s dark, age-old traditions and practices. The film can definitely be seen as a look at how a determined female character navigates her way through a patriarchal social structure.
Hayat’s left foot has fish scales growing on it
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Of the actors, Ashraf Barhoum stands out the most, playing lead fisherman Amer, who starts to see something special in Hayat. Along with lovely landscape photography, the film boasts several memorable moments, including the scene in which the tide withdraws completely, leaving nothing but the dry, cracked seabed.
Ashraf Barhoum, as Amer, imbues his character with thoughtfulness and toughness
A dead mermaid is found on the dry, cracked seabed
The stranded Sea Maiden corpse is buried by Hayat and her father Muthana (played by Yagoub Alfarhan)
(Shahad Ameen also made the 2013 short film EYE & MERMAID, another production that tells a mermaid-focused tale)
Starring Felicity Kyle Napuli, Angeli Bayani, Jasmine Curtis-Smith, James Mavie Estrella, Beauty Gonzalez and Shion Hayakawa. Written and directed by Kenneth Dagatan. Produced by Bianca Balbuena, Stefano Centini and Junxiang Huang Epicmedia.
Do not trust this ‘fairy’!
During the Second World War in the Japanese-occupied Philippines, a well-off merchant, who is accused of hiding a stash of gold, decides to seek help, leaving his wife, daughter and son to fend for themselves in their large, isolated home. The daughter, Tala (Felicity Kyle Napuli), encounters a ‘cicada fairy’ (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) dwelling in a derelict, chapel-like jungle shack. This fairy persuades Tala to allow a cicada to crawl into her ill mother’s mouth, which seems to heal her at first, but a large, fleshy cyst develops on the mother’s back… and soon she begins to lose her humanity, eats the pet dog, and pleads to be locked up so that she can’t harm her children. Tala realises that the seemingly friendly fairy can not be trusted, but when her brother, Bayani (James Mavie Estrella), then accidentally shoots himself in the stomach, she’s forced to return to the fairy’s hut-chapel to plead for help again…
A cyst develops on the mother’s back
The ‘fairy’ is rockin’ a pretty cool headdress!
IN MY MOTHER’S SKIN, a Philippines/Singapore/Taiwan production, has a persuasive aura of doom, which is accentuated by the movie’s score. Catholic imagery abounds, with the family home full of statues and other Christian iconography. The ‘fairy’ character, interestingly, resembles a fantastical parody of the Catholic concept of the Virgin Mary. Her striking, gilded costume has a headdress resembling a fan of sparkly insect wings, and she at first comes across as benign and helpful when Tala meets her in the wooden shack in the forest, which has stained glass windows featuring images of ‘angels’ with insect wings.
Tala bows before the ‘cicada fairy’ in her chapel-like shack in the jungle
The film is like a Filipino Guillermo del Toro production, mixing fantasy folktale elements with horror. The horrific aspects of the film include the mother becoming a veiny-faced cannibal with an extendable tongue. Tala uses her animalistic mother to deal with a violent would-be robber at one point, telling the man he can find the hidden, stolen gold in her mom’s bedroom. This crook, of course, gets killed and munched on by the mother. A fantastical component of the tale involves a golden, glowing fruit that the ‘friendly’ fairy instructs Tala to eat. Tala refuses to do this, and horror comes to the fore again as soon as Tala returns to her home, finding Bayani’s severed head lying on the floor and her long-tongued mother waiting to attack her.
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Memorable moments include the fairy biting off the head of a bird, and glimpses of the youthful-looking fairy’s true, wizened visage.
Tala’s mother becomes a long-tongued killer
It all ends depressingly, with the newly returned father hugging his son’s severed head and crying, as the movie strives to appear deeper and more meaningful that it actually is, though IN MY MOTHER’S SKIN definitely possesses some rather striking imagery, with the ‘fairy’ character proving to be, without a doubt, the film’s most interesting element.
Starring Cui Erkang, Zhang Ruiyao, Su Suxia, Cheng Qi, Zhang Ying and Yin Shaosheng. Written by Liu Jiahong and Wang Runz. Directed by Ji Zhizhong and Tony Wei. Tencent Penguin Pictures
One of the hydra-creature’s toothy heads
A dying general transfers the power of the Cyan Dragon into the body of Xiang, a lowly footsoldier, who must learn to harness the energy to defeat an enemy nation led by a villain capable of beckoning a massive, multi-headed monster. The general’s sister, Ling, tutors Xiang on how to use his powers while they head for the frontline of the war, but Xiang must contend with his instincts to avoid the oncoming danger… and he also starts to fall in love with Ling.
Xiang and Ling
THE CYAN DRAGON is a Chinese-made flick that starts with acrobatic 300-style war scenes, set within green screen-type virtual vistas, that are very cool and exciting to watch, with lots of wirework and characters utilising different powers.
Soldiers are routed by the villain’s multi-headed serpent beast!
This is where we’re first introduced to a group of masked bad guys who look great on-screen. They each have their own supernatural skills: one killer leaves a smoke-like black trail as he swiftly moves about, another has a hand that transforms into a swollen lava-fist, and the chief villain is able to summon a hydra-creature from beneath the earth.
This dude can turn his hand into a big lava-fist!The masked bad dudes and their hydra-monster!
During this opening skirmish we also get to see how the power of the Cyan Dragon can be used, as the doomed heroic general restructures the material of his sword, causing it to become super-extended, so that he can skewer many adversaries onto his blade at the same time. This battle set piece is great fun and thrilling to watch, so it’s a pity that it is the only such large scale fight featured in the movie.
The lead villains all wear masks
With Xiang becoming the host to the Cyan Dragon energy, the plot takes time to show us how the protagonist is initially rather unheroic, needing warrior woman Ling to keep him on track. Xiang, Ling and a couple of escorts set off on their mission, where they are stalked by the masked dudes, who use a kind of floating, brass spying drone-device to track them.
Ling is the stern, fighting-femme heroine
The ending sees Xiang and Ling fighting the remaining chief villain in a snowy landscape, trying to survive as the baddie briefly subdivides into three different warriors and then expands in size to become a giant fighter with a fiery halo.
The main antagonist becomes extra-evil!
When Ling is killed by the villain, Xiang screams in anger and sadness, zooms upwards through the clouds, out of Earth’s atmosphere, entering the void of space! Then he powers back down to Earth, now dressed as the fully-armoured fighter Cyan Dragon!
Our hero slams back down to Earth and says… “My name is Cyan Dragon!”
Cyan Dragon mauls the masked chief, but the villain has one ace left up his sleeve, as he summons the many-headed super-beast once again!
The return of the hydra-critter!For a while the villain becomes part of the gigantic monster itself, by melding with its throbbing innards
This finale, with the totally CGI Cyan Dragon warrior battling the CGI hydra monster in a CGI landscape, is little more than glorified computer game footage, but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.
When Xiang becomes encased in his armour he does look very CGI, there’s no doubt about that, but the action’s enjoyable to watch anyway
The movie is entertaining and thrilling in places, with lots of wirework and too-cool-for-school villains. It’s a shame, then, that the film is so short. It would’ve been more satisfying to see Xiang spend time to fully explore the growth of his powers, and the notion that his energy can be personified and interacted with (it leaves his body a couple of times and takes on the form of a small dragon-creature) should really have been dwelt on longer.
Above: three shots from a scene where Xiang chats with a tiny dragon, which is the embodiment of the energy now inside him
The movie is also known by the title BLUE DRAGON OF ALIEN BATTLEGEAR.
The armoured Cyan Dragon warrior versus the huge hydra-monster!
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