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Goshzilla.com - Now in colour!
| Friday, September 18, 2009 - Horror (2 comments) |
When Evil Reigns [2006] - Sort-of Zombies attack a group of people trapped indoors. It's hard to rate these no budget movies. I know you can't hold them to the same level as most others due to the lack of funds. We're always saying that money doesn't make a good movies, so a lack of financial backing forces most to like the movie even if they didn't like it. Hoever this movie did indeed cost 5000AUD to make, so it's no longer exempt from the fact that it did tend to be dull in parts. continue reading...
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| Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Horror |
Dunwich Horror, The [2009] - A face with tentacles threatens the world of man and, somewhere in Providence, Lovecraft spins a little faster in his grave. The Dunwich Horror was easily one of H.P. Lovecraft’s best works during the time of his more prosperous years. Mixing themes such as the ignorance of man when faced with superior beings and the ancient mysticism and legends or rural New England, Lovecraft wove a tapestry of intrigue and terror. The Dunwich Horror also bears the rare distinction as being one of the few Lovecraft stories in which humanity, with their knowledge of the ultimate reality, are able to pose a significant threat to the powers that be. So how does the film adaption measure up? Short answer: it doesn’t. Borrowing the story’s title, a couple characters from the mythos, and the vague outline of the premise, the film adaption falls in many ways short of its source. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - Foods |
Soda Batch #1 - Red Bull Soda, Moxie, Java Pop We can't review movies all day, so let's mix things up a bit. In a blatant homage to X-Entertainment's tradition of taking a look at the overlooked, we present some random stuff found at the local job lot. There's a little good, a little bad, and a lot of awful. The kind that makes you cynical about finding decent soda for 25 cents.
  
top ingredients
Red Bull Cola:
While standard Red Bull may not be everyone's cup of tea, with it's carbonated dental sealant flavor, the cola version I must say is far worse. It has nothing to do with any flavor associated with Red Bull, so throw that out the window. Instead it tries to go for the 'cola taste' but somehow gets lost along the way. Rather than use some random root extract or just pile in real cocaine, they combine cinnamon and licorice. Not the cinnamon toast crunch deliciousness, but rather the kind you'd taste in those awful Red-Hots. I hate those, and I hate this soda. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - Horror |
The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter [1993] - When will people learn?! With ancient ruins comes ancient evils. I've always wondered how difficult it would be to make an adaptation to a work by H.P. Lovecraft. Surely, it would be a horror film and one would hope that a cerebral, psychological vibe would be present. How does one convey the psychological torment endured by Lovecraft's unfortunate protagonists? Surreal imagery, perhaps, or intriguing sound design and pacing to further facilitate the illusion of insanity. Often times, many film adaptations of Lovecraft's work fall within the realm of typical horror; where the man with the chainsaw in the closet is replaced by a fish-man in the closet. These adaptations fall short of what the source material intends, but sometimes you deviate for the sake of entertainment, which can have disastrous results.
The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter is the sequel to The Unnamable, a film which attempted to adapt the short story of the same name by Lovecraft. In it, we see the return of Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson) and his friend Howard (Charles Klausmeyer), survivors from their first encounter with the titular 'Unnamable.' Aside from the mysterious renaming of Klausmeyer's character (Howard Damon to Eliot Damon Howard), The Unnamable II deals with much of the same themes from the first, focusing on the battle between ordinary everyman characters and malevolent spiritual forces existing on the periphery of our world. continue reading...
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| Monday, September 14, 2009 - Horror |
Cut [2000] - Another generic slasher graces the direct to video market. In my defense, I found this in the $2 flat rate bin at the local job lot. Sadly, I was expecting some terrible jewels in the rough, but this is all I could find. There were some bizarre childrens videos, but they scared me even more. It was nightmarish.
Slashers really are the bane of my movie watching experience. There are very few in the genre that remotely are exciting and/or original. Even then, they're not particularly interesting to watch. In yet another 'if I didn't laugh, I'd cry' moment, someone from time to time has the idea to make a REAL slasher movie, forget about all the rest. Reminds me of the millions of rap songs talking about how other rappers don't know what they're talking about. But if all you talk about, is talking about others not talking right, where's the content. Same goes with Slasher movies about slasher movies. They attempt to make the ultimate slasher, or at least a movie about a classic, but then they fall into the trap of actually having to show the best example ever, and everything fails pretty hard. continue reading...
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| Friday, September 11, 2009 - Animation |
Felidae [1994] - A bunch of potty-mouth felines attempt to solve a string of mysterious murders involving cats. If you were to take a classic “whodunit” and replace all the major players with cats, you’d probably end up with something like Felidae. Hailing from our friends in Germany, Felidae carries the distinction of being the most expensive German animated feature film ever produced costing in excess of 10 million marks (about $7,453,381.23). However, what distinguishes this film from any other featuring talking cats is the sheer amount of gore, profanity, and sexual activity. It baffles me, to this day, that you only had to be twelve in Germany to see this when it first came out. continue reading...
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| Thursday, September 10, 2009 - Animation |
Watership Down [1978] - When their home is threatened, a group of bunnies will brave the wilderness in search of a new home. My fascination with the darker aspects of animated features has led me to review Watership Down. Based on the book of the same name by Richard Adams, Watership Down centers around a group of rabbits who must embark on a perilous exodus or risk being slaughtered by, you guessed it, humans.
Unlike The Plague Dogs, Watership Down focuses more on an epic adventure as opposed to a film meant to raise awareness. It’s no secret that rabbits are often viewed in our society as “cute and cuddly,” and their use in a narrative with such a bleak undertone makes the story all the more intense. In a way, Richard Adams uses these preconceived notions that have been imprinted in our minds and exploits them to create very real and potent emotional reactions. If you were to replace all the rabbits in Watership Down with humans and change the story to fit that premise, I don’t think you could elicit the same kind of reaction as you would with a story about rabbits. This is where the beauty of the story lies. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - Horror |
Slime City [1988] - Evil magical pudding turns a man into a killing machine. Once in the glorious 80's, there was a great movie about people eating slime and the mayhem it ensued. That movie was The Stuff, Slime City is about a single man who just melts away and kills random undesirables.
We don't get as much of a narrative here about renegades from the social takeover of a foreign substance, but rather just a story about someone getting mixed up in the wrong place. The lead is trying to move out on his own and get an apartment. He can't afford much, and ends up finding a run-down complex in the bad part of town. His girlfriend doesn't want to join him, which is for the best since there would be some awkward tension between them and the gothy rocker slutty chick next door. The other neighbors aren't much better, especially the depressing poet who is writing a one-line a year poem that won't be finished until he dies. Way to stick it to the man. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - Sci-fi |
The Vindicator [1986] - After being double-crossed by his boss, a man is turned into a machine dependent being who can't help killing. Sometimes a movie comes alone and is a blantant rip-off of another popular movie at the time, but still holds up pretty well. Vindicator is a combinatinon of Robocop and Spawn, but tells a decent story in the mean time, so you can't fault it all that much.
It starts out with a chimp in a cage being experimented upon with RAGE. If the movie wasn't as old, I'd say it took pieces from 28 Days Later, but wrong genre anyway. Defense mechanisms and motor control is managed through a computer program, and the lead technician wants to see how far it can go. The program response to being touched and causes the subject to violently attack. Without regard to safety, he watches the chimp fly into a frenzy until it passes out. Now it's ready for human testing, however they can't officially try it. continue reading...
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| Friday, September 4, 2009 - Comedy |
Bug [2002] - A squashed bug sets off a chain of events that will save the lives of everyone involved. Once in a while I'll end up watching a movie that falls outside my usual genre comfort. I'm not entire sure what genre this is; it's billed as a Comedy, and it's not quite a drama. Whatever it is, it's entertaining and keeps your interest from start to finish.
The story (or stories really) follow many different characters as their actions interweave and affect each other. Essentially the story begins when a boy steps on a bug. To get an idea of the complexity of the events, this action causes a man to stop and try to reason with the boy. This action results in getting a packing ticket for failure to pay the meter. The carbon copy of the receipt falls in a drain and clogs the water stream, causing the local Asian restaurant's sink to back up. The assistant needs to buy a plunger and borrows money from a friend, who later due to missing the $5, leaves a poor tip. The waiter now doesn't have enough cash to pick up some diapers for his baby and the baby cries all night waking up a couple who get into a discussion about having children someday. continue reading...
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| Thursday, September 3, 2009 - Animation |
The Plague Dogs [1982] - Two dogs escape a laboratory and are branded as deadly carriers. I’m always amazed when I re-watch cartoons from my younger years. Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, even Rugrats to some degree all had little kernels of adult humor I only now get. Rugrats had a very cerebral vibe with a lot of the background characters parodying many different roles from adult television shows (NYPD Blue, Dragnet, My Three Sons), Rocko’s Modern Life had homosexual innuendos and countless masturbatory jokes (case in point: a restaurant called the “Chokey Chicken”), and Ren & Stimpy…violently amusing to say the least. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - Action |
Crow: Wicked Prayer, The [2005] - Yet another guy dies and a crow brings him back for revenge. Dennis Hopper, David Boreanaz, and Danny Trejo, how can we go wrong. Well Edward Furlong and Tara Reid for starters. But so many other things go wrong in this movie. I guess technically I can't say it has no plot, since it copies the plot from the original. To recap: man loves girl, man wants to marry girl, man almost marries girl, man and girl die by thugs, crow resurrects man, man kills thugs but drama happens in the mean time to pad out the 90 minutes.
Do I have to continue with the review? Guess so, argh. Well the movie starts off with some random scenes of a chain gang shooting things up. An unknown sniper is on the steeple of a church and waits for an explosion in order to shoot the hand cuffs off an inmate. Turns out she (the sniper) is in cahoots with a satanic cult leader and they all run off to regain their cult status and become immortal. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - Animation |
Animal Farm [1954] - Who knew that pigs could screw up an egalitarian farm society? I was surprised when I found out there was a cartoon adaption to one of George Orwell’s most celebrated novels. Not because I didn’t think it deserved the honor of being immortalized through animation, but simply because I wasn’t sure kids were going to be able to digest this kind of story. The novel was harsh and unapologetic in its depiction of a dystopian society. In the end, there was no happy ending, just a hard lesson learned…
In this particular version of the story, the creators sort of pulled a classic bait and switch. If you were not familiar with the story or the title (in which case, welcome to life, the year is 2009), for all you knew, you were buying a classic animated feature with goofy-talking animals and pigs wearing people clothes. However, what you ended up watching was far from tame. No, what you ended up watching was how an ideal society like “everyone is equal” could go so horribly wrong when implemented by the wrong kinds of people (in this case, pigs). continue reading...
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| Monday, August 31, 2009 - Horror |
Autopsy [2008] - A group of people trapped in a hospital after a crash, become spare parts for the black market. Of many of the movies I've seen lately, this one comes out a little better than most. It's not really bad in a b-movie way, and it's certainly not a hollywood remake/clone piece, so that's certainly in its favor. It does tread in similar mid-range budget films the likes of After Dark Horrorfest entries though, but that's the trend lately.
As far as story goes, it's not terribly deep. However it does make up for that with very good effects and supporting roles by some acting veterans such as Robert Patrick from T2 and Dusk til Dawn, and the tattoo guy from every movie that needs a tattoo guy. However this movie didn't really need a tattoo guy, but still. The young cast seems to be carbon copy of many of the actors/actresses lately. I suppose if your role is Mardi Gras partier #3 though, there isn't a whole lot to flesh out. continue reading...
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| Friday, August 28, 2009 - Games |
Jetpack [1993] - Lode Runner's protégé is revisited to celebrate the revival of some guy from the early 90s! I often imagine old shareware authors to be a rare race of mythical beast; some kind of hulking mammoth or fleeting spirit that existed only at some point between 1985 and 1994 and only just long enough to craft a single piece of vibrant CGA wonderland before disappearing forever. As an awkward youth who came to know many of these shareware games through bargain bin CDs sold at WalMart, I saw many of these authors as undiscovered legends. Who were these people? I felt like I was the only person in the world who would ever bother to ask. Somehow these men had created no-budget games out of their basements, and over a decade later and a thousand miles away an eleven year-old boy sat staring at their names on a computer screen. These names really have no more significance than any other name in the phone book, other than that they were in my computer games right after the words "Created by". It's like finding a stranger's really geeky diary and creating some kind of connection with him as you admire his notes and doodles. I wanted those authors to be artists and celebrities that the world could follow, not just mysterious names on an obsolete title screen. continue reading...
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| Thursday, August 27, 2009 - Action |
Big Man Japan [2007] - A man grows to gigantic heights from time to time in order to fight monsters. While the idea of monsters attacking Japan isn't really a new idea, this movie certainly takes a different approach. First off, the monsters are ridiculous. They are all CGI based, as is the hero, but it isn't meant to be 100% realistic so they in turn went the other direction and thought up the most bizarre creatures possible. Some examples are the farting squid, the eyeball throwing furry, and the rubber band creature with a comb over.
The story is portrayed as a documentary on the Big Man Japan. While major scenes are filmed traditionally while showing the action of the fights, most of the movie is interviews with hero while detailing his life and others connected with him. Despite his work defending the city, his personal life is completely the opposite. While his grandfather was a national celebrity, the current Big Man lives in a run-down house with his cat. His only true friend is his agent, who in reality is more interested in selling off portions of his back for advertising when he grows. His family consists of his grandfather who is in a nursing home, and an estranged wife and daughter whom he cannot see often since her mother doesn't want her following the family line of business. continue reading...
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| Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - Games |
Bio Menace: Episode 1 [1993] - A mullet-wearing macho man is our only hope against nightmarish mutants. Welcome to the '90s! I was once told that video games in the early 80’s and 90’s were much harder than games today. At the time of hearing this, I didn’t really know if that was true. I had grown up most of my life only casually playing games. The number of games I owned was much higher than the number of games I had beaten. If a game was too hard, it found its way atop a bookcase where it was ignored for several years. It was only in 2000 that I became what could be considered a serious “gamer” and by that point, I found games challenging but beatable. With my hindsight vision being 20/20, I can now safely deduce that games were much more challenging than they are today. continue reading...
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| Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - Sci-fi |
Invasion of the Pod People [2007] - An ugly plant creates duplicates of people, who are nicer than their real life counterparts. If anyone offers you a potted ginseng plant, don't take it, or you will be killed by your own clone. And that's a terrible way to die. It would also place you in this movie, which is a terrible way to live, so you really can't win. Stay away from the plant...and this movie.
Pod People is basically a Body Snatchers copy, but filmed on video and with some corporate climate plot rather than a town under attack. As always, the clones are opposites of the people they take over, but given the fact that the characters here are so annoying and rude, the doppelgangers are somewhat more palatable. Most of the people grate on your nerves so badly, that it's a relief to see them knocked off; preferably in a more gruesome manner, but the worst we get is a slimy strangling. continue reading...
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| Friday, August 21, 2009 - Action |
Hell Ride [2008] - You know that old macguffin "what was in the briefcase?" Prepare to ask again. Up until recently, I never understood the obsession with rearranging the timeline in a story. Starting a movie at the end and then starting from the beginning from the closing scene always confused and disoriented me. By the time I realized what was going on, I had missed critical information occurring in the middle of the movie (which was now the beginning of the story). While I believe that such a method forces the viewer to pay attention and “put two and two together,” I don’t think it’s entirely necessary; often times I find it ancillary. I understand the need to make the audience focus, but I’ve often seen this method do more damage than good when done frivolously. continue reading...
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| Thursday, August 20, 2009 - Horror |
Crocodile [2000] - Yet another crocodile movie from Tobe Hooper. This time with annoying young people. Car ride cliché...check. Okay, off to a start then. Many years ago, Tobe Hooper made a movie called Eaten Alive. Not to be confused with the cannibal movie of the same (translated) name. This movie starred Robert Englund seven year before he would become the famous Freddy Krueger. His role played him as a rather perverse deviant, which at the time must have been shocking. In Crocodile, I imagine the twenty-somethings partake in the same activities, but now it's just being part of the 'progressive liberating movement' or whatever the kids are calling it these days. continue reading...
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