Dr. Grant Walker (Mike Capes) is a paleontologist who discovered the fossilized anus of a raptor, the kind of artifact that should have made him a legend but instead was stolen by the Tyler Corporation — not run by Steven Tyler — and the depression that came with this loss cost him his girlfriend Amber (Caitlin McHugh) and now finds him working in a dinosaur theme park, attempting to teach kids about science but instead doing dances with security guard and dinosaur suit wearer Denny (David Shackelford).

Yet life is looking up. It turns out that Amber is back in town, even if she has a young daughter with a name that no one can remember. There’s also a mystery, as a child and the guard dog for the park are both missing and gigantic piles of excrement are left in their place. Dr. Grant is sure its a raptor, but then he learns that his fossil created an invisible raptor which was to be used as a weapon for the government but has escape its captivity.

The journey to find the raptor will bring Dr. Grant and Amber back together, perhaps make Dr. Grant and Denny pals for life and definitely have them digging through a pile of raptor road apples in a child’s bedroom and finding a retainer, which is a definite sign that the raptor has a sweet tooth for little kids, even if they don’t want to tell the child’s grieving, drunk and attractive mother that news. The trail leads them to a chicken farm, run by Henrietta McCluckskey (Sandy Martin), where the raptor keeps assaulting the chicken mascot statue.

How did they make this monster? The answer is simple. “‘Did you see Jurassic Park? We did that.” Yet what this hilarious movie from director Mike Hermosa and co-writers Mike Capes (yes, the same person playing the lead) and Johnny Wickham does is audacious. It’s not just a loving homage to the biggest dinosaur movie ever, it’s also the second invisible dinosaur movie after Sound of Horror.

This is set in Spielburgh County and the jokes come fast and ZAZ-style furious, even having a moment that echoes Gary Busey’s weapon-filled vehicle in Predator 2 and so many nods to Amblin productions.  Yet even in this film that laughs at nearly ever demise and is filled with copious gore, it has a heart, an appearance by Richard Riehle as the town’s sheriff and several redemption stories. And oh yeah, a Sean Astin cameo and Vanessa Chester, Ian Malcolm’s daughter Kelly in Jurassic Park: The Lost World, shows up as a DJ.

I loved it, but then again, I’m a sucker for movies that reference movies and are filled with poop jokes and gore. You can even get an action figure of the Invisible Raptor here!

I watched The Invisible Raptor at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Joanne Mitchell makes her debut as a full-length director by taking her short Sybil and creating Broken Bird. Based on a story by Tracey Sheals and written by Mitchell and Dominic Brunt, it tells several stories about loss and grief, most importantly Sybil (Rebecca Calder), an assistant undertaker who styles herself like a modern day Louise Brooks, attends open mike nights where she reads obtuse poetry and dreams of being in love with Mark (Jay Taylor), a man who works at the Roman funeral museum.

There’s also Emma (Sacharissa Claxton), who has lost her child and is drinking herself into oblivion, which starts to impact her job as a cop and keeps her from investigating her case.

Meanwhile, Sybil’s imagination runs wild, always being disappointed by real men and choosing to romance those who are dead and unable to disappoint her. Sadness has infected her whole life, as she’s the only survivor of an auto accident that killed her entire family. While strange, she’s a hard worker and prized by her boss.

Once she learns that Mark has a fiancee named Tina (Robyn Rainsford), Sybil is let down yet again. When Mark dies — maybe not an accident — she finally gets the chance to touch him, even if he’s joined the choir invisible. At the same time, Emma gets closer to where her dead son’s body disappeared from after it was at the very same funeral home where Sybil works, a place where wonders what her boss Mr. Thomas (James Fleet)(James Fleet) keeps in the cold room.

Calder is incredible in this, pulling off a balancing act that requires her to be monstrous and yet sympathetic. There are moments where you will be on her side, despite the fact that she covets a widow’s lost lover and does all she can to possess it, even dancing before him and covering his face with her panties. It’s enough to wake him up, at least in her fantasies, and maybe that’s all she needs. Maybe this world isn’t for her.

I watched Broken Bird at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

If American audiences know director Lau Kar-leung and star Gordon Liu for anything, it would be this movie. A lot of credit for that goes to the Wu-Tang Clan, who referenced it in an album title and have as many alternate names for one another as audiences do for this movie (The Master Killer, Shaolin Master Killer and Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang).

Liu Yude (Liu) has been radicalized into the rebellion against the Manchu government, which ends when General Tien Ta destroys his school and then kills not just the students, but their friends and family as well. On the run, he goes to the Shaolin temple in the hopes of learning the fighting skills he’ll need for revenge.

As an outsider, he is turned away until the chief abbott has mercy on him. Yet a year later, Yude is now San Te and begins working his way through the 35 training chambers that each monk must complete. The top chamber is too much for our hero, where he must recite Buddhist philosophy from memory, so he begins on the bottom, amazing everyone at becoming the master of 35 of the chambers in just six years.

After numerous battles, he finally defeats one of the elders and announces that his goal is to create the new 36th chamber, one in which ordinary people will be given the skills to defend themselves. The temple officially banishes him but only does so to allow him to go back into the ordinary world and continue the revolution and stopping Tien Ta.

“The wall may be low, but the Buddha is high.” With dialogue like this, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin shows that the journey to master oneself through fighting skill is not even about the actual fighting. It is mastering emotion and going inward to better oneself. The war is often with ourselves.

After suffering numerous defeats at the hands of the Qing kung fu experts, five patriots return to the ruined Shaolin temple — that burned down at the end of Shaolin Temple — to perfect their kung fu and take revenge.

Hu De-Di (David Chiang), Cai De-Zhong (Ti Lung), Fang Da-Hong (Mang Fei), Ma Chao-Xing (Alexander Fu Sheng) and Li Shi-Kai (Chi Kuan-Chun) must now become their own masters, training themselves and overcoming self-doubt in order to become legends.

However, one of their number is a traitor, which adds some intrigue to the proceedings. The best part of the movie is the huge battle and escape at the beginning, as each hero gets an introduction and a freeze frame with their name as we rock out to their theme song. Better than that, the villains get the same treatment, including a villainous song for them to do evil to.

Chang Cheh directs this and Wang Lung-Wei again plays the traitorous villain, which is pretty astounding as he died at the end of the last film, but you can’t keep a great heel down. There’s also a bad guy in this that can snap necks with his ponytail, which is definitely the kind of martial art that you don’t see in many films.

Filled with the stars of the second and third generations of director Chang Cheh’s stable of actors such as Alexander Fu Sheng, David Chiang, Ti Lung and Chi Kuan-Chun, as well as several of the actors that would later become collectively known as the Venoms Mob, Shaolin Temple — also known as Death Chambers — is so much more than just the prequel* to Five Shaolin Masters.

The leaders of the Shaolin Monks have started to come to the conclusion that time is running out and they must train more fighters to fight the Qings, yet they’re still forcing fighters to sleep outside the temple for weeks at a time to test their resolve.

Two of those fighters — Fang Shih Yu and Ma Chao-hsing — are accepted and must survive the even harsher world that is inside the temple. Fang Shih Yu struggles to learn tiger boxing and keeps failing until a mysterious person begins teaching him the tiger-crane style, which makes him a much stronger fighter.

Yet will all the training — and new monks — be enough when the Qing army attacks and attempts to burn the temple down?

This movie has an amazing training sequence that lasts ten minutes within the maze inside the temple. You have to respect people that only are concerned with fighting and meditation when they’re not building thrill rides that beat people into submission. And the last half an hour is one gigantic fight as the monks use all the skills that they’ve learned in the film.

*Actually, it’s the fifth part of the Shaolin Cycle, following Heroes Two, Men from the Monastery, Shaolin Martial Arts, Five Shaolin Masters and The Shaolin Avengers.

In short, Ma Yung Cheng leaves behind the poverty of Shantung for the corrupt city of Shanghai, a place where he becomes the first Chinese fighter to defeat a professional Russian wrestler (Mario Milano, who was born in Italy, started wrestling in Venezuela and became a star in Australia), only to find that the fame that he achieves is more dangerous than he ever imagined.

This film is a marvel of the Shaw Brothers production team, as while most of their movies had two months to shoot, this only had one, meaning that director Cheh Chang was only able to direct during the night while uncredited director Hsueh-Li Pao directed during the day. They needed all the time they could get, as the battle with the Russian took six days and the hatchet mob fight took ten.

Ma Yung Cheng and the gangster he befriends, Tan Si, are two men who have ideals in a world that has none. Having that mindset is their hubris; even when Ma Yung Cheng becomes a gangster, he refuses to allow his men to take money from the poor for protection and also honors the territory of Tan Si. Their enemies will not allow them the same courtesy.

Imagine if Scarface had stabbings and punches in the face instead of all that cocaine and you’ll have a bit of an inkling of just how awesome this movie is. I mean, I lost count of all the blade and axe wounds and the final battle is as heartbreaking as it is incredibly packed with action.

The first film by Lung Yi-sheng, this is the tale of Yuan Fei the Flying Monkey (Chin Siu-ho), who takes on the challenge of finding a weapon that can defeat the Demon Lute, which has been made from the muscles of dinosaurs. In his journey, he meets swordswoman Feng Ling the Rainbow Sword (Kara Wai), the drunken Old Naughty and his scissors, the Woodcutter and his son Doraemon, called that because he carries around a Doraemon doll.

They will battle  The Long Limb Evil, a demon who has an arm that can keep growing; the One Eyed Dragon, who has a crazy spider eyepatch; Red-Haired Devil, who can attack with his afro and the demonic lute itself, which becomes a transparent hand with six fingers that keeps grabbing for our heroes before they use the only weapon can stop it, a bow that was jammed into the stone wall of a cave.

There’s a dog-pulled chariot, a rainbow sword, gigantic axes and wirework fights that are made for kids, all set to 80s guitar-driven music. There are some people online who have given this poor reviews and what kind of heartless creep to you have to be to watch something so perfect and judge it that way?

You can download this from the Internet Archive.