THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: Zarkorr! The Invader (1996)

Directed by Michael Deak and Aaron Osborne and written by Neal Marshall Stevens, this movie has aliens send a 185-foot, laser-eyed monster called Zarkorr to destroy Earth. The only man who can stop it is postal worker Tommy Ward (Rhys Pugh), who is helped by a 6-inch-tall pixie named Proctor (Torie Lynch), who is a mental image projected into his brain by another group of otherworldly creatures. However, the beast can’t be destroyed by any weapon.

The Zarkorr scenes directed by Michael Deak were filmed before Neal Marshall Stevens wrote the script. That’s the kind of movie that you’re getting into. However, those are the best parts of this movie. Zarkorr is pretty awesome and I wish that he was in his own movie instead of this, something better and with a bigger budget. Yet he rises above, even if he gets defeated by a mirror.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: Sexy Rangers (2011)

The Muscle King is taking over the world with his kaiju but he never planned on Pai Energy, the power that comes from gigantic breasts. I am not making this up, trust me. That’s what powers the Sexy Rangers, who are the last — and most attractive — line of defense for our planet.

There’s never any nudity but it’s that Japanese perviness that lingers too long on cleavage, like when a character gets knocked down in an SNK fighting game and you wonder, “Did we need that juggle?”

Enemies include Queen Amorous, Uni Kong and a humanoid Polaroid camera who is called Unicong Camerang that takes photos of the girls in sexy poses. I guess he’s one of the bad guys, even if what he delivers seems positive.

Director Shinji Nishikawa wrote Godzilla vs. Destoroyah and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II and was the designer for Godzilla, Biollante and other monsters on Godzilla: Final WarsGodzilla 2000: Millennium and Godzilla vs. Biollante.

If you watch Japanese female pro wrestling, you may recognize two faces.

Yuzuki Aikawa was known as “The Gravure Queen of the Next Generation” — glamour modeling — who was the first Wonder of Stardom and Goddess of Stardom Champion and the first face of Stardom. She plays Pai Blue.

Yoko Yamada is an arm wrestling, MMA and freelance pro wrestler fighter. She started her career with S Ovation’s and Mariko Yoshida’s promotion Ibuki and is almost like a video game character come to life, as her father left the family when she was young as he was a gambler. He only came back when he had a stroke and she fights to raise money for his care. She plays Queen Amorous.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: King Dong (1984)

You can guess what movie this is trying to be. Also known as Lost on Adventure Island, this begins when Anna (Crystal Holland, who was only in two other movies, Surrender In Paradise — which is also about a shipwreck but at least has Ginger Lynn and Lois Ayres in the cast — and A Little Bit of…Hanky Panky) runs away from home and sails the seas, at least until her ship hits a battleship and she wakes up on an island filled with dinosaurs and, yes, King Dong who is really Supersimian, a female giant gorilla who is interested in Anna’s lover Alex (Chaz St. Peters).

Directed by Yancey Hendrieth, who also plays Buddy the Gorilla, and who wrote this along with his wife Dee, who plays Anna’s mother, this has a cast and crew that didn’t make another movie. Even Keith Finkelstein and David Dane, who did the stop motion effects for the dinosaurs and Supersimian. Buddy is just an ape suit.

It’s no Flesh Gordon, so just imagine how rough of a watch this was. Yet when someone asks, “Have you ever watched a porn parody of King Kong?” I can answer positively.

TUBI ORIGINAL: I Hate You to Death (2023)

Chris Stokes is the most dependable of all Tubi Originals directors. Between The Stepmother, Vicious AffairPicture Me DeadThe Assistant and so many more movies, he’s brought so much entertainment to us through Tubi.

In his latest movie, which he directed — and wrote with Marques Houston — Stokes introduces us to Kelsey Manning (Alisa Holiday), a woman who learns that her husband is living three lives. Instead of just putting up with his cheating or moving on, she connects with the other wives and they all plan revenge.

It all starts with Trevor (Daniel J. Johnson), her husband, being strung-up half-naked out a window. “I bet you wonder how we all got here, right?” She asks. Yes, we are wondering.

Life was good once. Trevor was the love of her life, “until he wasn’t” as she reminds herself.

Our next wife is Olivia (Erica Pinkett), who also thinks that she’s the only woman in Trevor’s life. They even have fancy black and white photos of themselves together in the bedroom.

The film cuts back to the night of the surprise party, as Kelsey leads a blindfolded Trevor into a hotel room where he’s confronted by Olivia and Naomi (Jadah Blue), the other wife. But before we meet her, we’re at a conference meeting where he announces that his company, Turnstr, has reached a million subscribers and is going public. Then he sleeps with an intern named Kat.

This movie is filled with flashbacks as now we go back two months to meeting some of Olivia’s friends at a wine place. He meets her friend Tracy’s man, Steve, who is having a party to celebrate her. This wine bar just lets you grab bottles and pour your own, so I have no idea how you pay.

There’s a flashback to Trevor meeting Olivia, so we’re…I don’t know how many flashbacks deep we are. But we’re back at another wine bar, then we’re back at Trevor getting hung out the window. And then we flashback another two months to another date with Trevor and Naomi, who wonders why she’s never met his family. She asks if it’s because she’s a socialite and not someone who works for a living. He’s also using a British accent when he’s around her.

I can barely keep up with my wife much less three wives. How is that even possible for this guy? How much energy does he have? I’m exhausted and I’m just watching the movie and not living it. Also, now Trevor has a British accent with Kelsey. Did he always have a British accent? Am I losing my mind?

Now there’s a two years ago flashback!

This movie is the Inception of Tubi Originals!

Now everything starts falling to pieces for Trevor, as he makes a breakfast meeting and a lunch one for the same day with two different women. In the same city. Are area codes even a thing these days?

We fast forward to all of the girls holding the ropes that have Trevor swinging above the pavement.

And then, if you can believe it, another flashback. Trevor seems to want to start planting seeds and having kids with these women and I have no clue how much energy this bigamist has. Maybe he just says these things to make them happy. I don’t know. He does have an amazing kitchen. Several kitchens. How does he know where to sleep? How does he do taxes for three residences? Am I going too deep into the reality of this?

When it comes to Kelsey, he tells her a totally different story about why he can’t have kids. Now he’s not using the British accent, in case you’re keeping track. He tells a story about his father dying from a drug overdose, but is that story true? How does he keep track of all of these lies?

It gets worse. Kelsey stopped using birth control hoping to have a kid with Trevor and when she told him she was pregnant, he made her have an abortion, which destroyed any chance for her to have children after. And now, as she confides in the other wives, he’s hanging from a window crying.

Then the ladies start to fight, as Naomi thinks that she’s the woman that Trevor picked. She doesn’t want to go to jail for murder, but. the other two girls have a plan. Well, Olivia has the plan and she’s the one that wants revenge. Trevor was the dream guy for all of them but he wasn’t real. And he was married to all three of them.

I’ve lost track of the flashbacks.

This movie isn’t even halfway over.

The big reveal is that Trevor has life insurance in all of the names of his wives and plans on cashing in. That’s when the girls come together to lure him to the hotel we started this movie in.

I will say that this is the most involved Chris Stokes movie yet and I was with it for the whole trip. There’s even some special effects at the end of this that are way past anything Stokes has done in his movies before, making this look like the most polished movie he’s done yet.

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

 

You can watch this on Tubi.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: Loch Ness Monster of Seattle (2022)

A giant sea serpent — much like the Loch Ness Monster — called Willatuk has been in the waters of Seattle for a long time. Well, at least as far back as 2012, when director O.W. Tuthill made Seattle’s Loch Ness: The Lake Washington Sea Monster.

Now, he’s showing how the residents of Seattle deal with the monster, like Chief Clamintile of the Wonkatilla Tribe, whose people worship it as the God of Ocean, or the hunter (Dan Schwert) who has been brought up by his father to kill the beast.

It’s all narrated by Graham Greene and the director/writer is better known for his music work, so that sounds good. I’m kind of astounded by this because a movie that has a horrific monster poster ends up being about interfamily strife and how we deal with the world. Of course, some of the actors are better than others, but this is an oddball movie that just worked for me, as it has a vision and didn’t get notes from anyone. It’s very much it’s own movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: The Deadly Mantis (1957)

Directed by Nathan Juran (who started as an art director before making this and movies like 20 Million Miles to EarthThe Brain from Planet ArousAttack of the 50 Foot Woman and so many more) from a screenplay by Martin Berkeley (Tarantula!Revenge of the Creature) based on a story by producer William Alland, The Deadly Mantis was made with a monstrous papier mâché model of the mantis that measured 200 feet long and 40 feet high with a wingspan of 150 feet. There are some smaller models and actual footage of a praying mantis.

As for the mantis, it escapes from “melting ice in the frozen north” because of the explosions of several volcanos. The creature starts flying toward Washington, D.C. Nothing can seem to stop this thing, not machine guns or flamethrowers. Col. Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens) and his men are on trying to stop it and they’re joined by Marge Blaine (Alix Talton), a magazine reporter who every army guy wants to get with.

How do you kill a gigantic mantis? You throw a “gas bomb” in its face. Good old fashioned U.S. ingenuity wins the day, as always. Of course, at the end, the creature is still moving but that’s just an autonomic reflex. Or maybe it was a planned sequel.

This played double features with The Girl In the Kremlin, which starred Zs Zsa Gabor.

In order to get in all of the various airplanes in this movie, stock footage of military aircraft was used. That’s usually how low budget films got planes but in this one, they are never really consistent and often, a plane can look like more than one different plane throughout the film. Air Force buffs will be driven mad, including the idea that Andrews Air Force Base is in Anacostia, D.C. instead of Prince George’s County, Maryland.

to add realism, but they were never consistent about the type of plane they showed – even showing pictures of drastically different planes that are supposed to be the same plane.

Thanks to Bernard Roy Chandler who provided several revisions to this for me. I appreciate it and also am thankful for you correcting me.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: War of the God Monsters (1985)

Also known as Bicheongoesu (The Undead Beast) and The Flying Monster, this has Dr. Kim (Kim Ki-Ju) and Kang Ok-hee (Nam Hye-Gyeong) trying to prove that dinosaurs still exist and then, when they attack, trying to stop them.

Directed by Kim Jeong-Yong and written by Lee Mun-ung, this film keeps the budget low by taking many of its monsters from Tsuburaya Productions TV series. Pestar comes from Ultraman, Seagorath, Seamons, Bemstar and Terochilu are from Return of Ultraman, Verokron and Fireman are from Ultraman Ace and there are also kaiju from the Taiwanese film The Founding of Ming Dynasty.

It’s kind of strange because it barely works because this movie doesn’t seem to all work together but you get that when you mix new footage with 1970s Japanese TV effects. That said, I had plenty of fun watching it. I mean, even the worst giant monster movie is still pretty great.

You can watch this on Tubi.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: Yog: Monster From Space (1970)

Also known as Space Amoeba and Gezora, Ganime, Kamēba: Kessen! Nankai no Daikaijū (Gezora, Ganimes, and Kamoebas: Decisive Battle! Giant Monsters of the South Seas), this Toho movie is all about aliens that come to Earth and create gigantic monsters from a kisslip cuttlefish, stone crab and mata mata. It’s like the best sushi menu ever except it wants to eat you.

The Helios 7 space probe has an incident near Jupiter — alert Pittsburgh news stations, Hell is full — and comes crashing back down here, bringing the space amoeba with it. It first creates a creature called Gezora, which is the cuttlefish. The humans have a bunch of weapons left over from World War II and set it on fire, killing it.

The stone crab, which is called Ganimes, is next and the humans defeat it as if it were the Tall Man or the Car. They lure it into a pit and blow it up.

The amoeba gets smart and makes two monsters at once, another Ganimes and a mata mata named Kamoebas. Humans grab some bats — a lot of bats — and the space amoeba loses control over the monsters, who start to fight one another. Then a volcano is made live and everything alien dies, all at once.

Never doubt the humans capacity for killing, whether you are a kaiju, space amoeba or some other monstrous being.

Directed by Ishiro Honda, this was written by Ei Ogawa who intended for it to be called Great Monster Assault and have entire continents be destroyed by alien monsters.

This was also the last science fiction film made under Toho’s studio system, which established a subsidiary called Toho Eizo to specialize in tokusatsu films. Most of the actors were released from their contracts, Eiji Tsuburaya’s — who died days before filming started — special effects department was closed and even Honda’s contract ended.

Spagvemberfest 2023: Chino (1973)

I guess picking Chino for a month of Italian Westerns is a cheat, even if this is an Italian/Spanish production.

Based on the book The Valdez Horses by Lee Hoffman, it was released in Italy as Valdez, il mezzosangue (Valdez the Half Breed). It was directed by John Sturges (The Magnificent SevenBad Day at Black RockThe Great Escape) and Duilio Coletti, who producer Dino Laurentiis hired to do inserts and reshoots. Sturges was unhappy with the film, feeling that casting Jill Ireland as the love interest was a mistake. That said, once Bronson and Ireland got together, she was often his on-screen lover.

Chino Valdez (Bronson) is a horse breeder who suddenly has Jamie Wagner (Vincent Van Patten) in his life, an orphan who needs raising as much as the horses of Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi) need broken in. He also falls for the rich man’s sister Catherine (Ireland), a forbidden relationship between an entitled white woman and a half-breed poor horsebreeder.

European film lovers will enjoy seeing Fausto Tozzi (Cry of a Prostitute), Corrado Gaipa (the Italian voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi), Melissa Chimenti (Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals), Diana Lorys (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) and Annamaria Clementi (Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals).

I was struck in this movie by the Spanish countryside, as well as the fact that despite being an expert on horses, Chino has no idea that Catherine would never leave her rich life to live with him in a shack with no money in the middle of nowhere. His idea of love — and even making love — are basic ones that he’s taken from being raised in a harsh world of taming animals and surviving on your own instead being taken care of. He can make love to her, but he can never truly provide for all the other things she truly needs. Jamie understands that, even if he’s barely a man.

At the end, after it all goes wrong, Chino realizes that if he can’t have the life he wants, no one can have his work. He releases his horses into the wild instead of letting anyone else take them. Even his enemy Maral recognizes and respects that.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK THE SWINGIN’ SEVENTIES: Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring (1971)

Denise Miller (Sally Field) has come home after a year of living with hippies. Her younger sister Susie (Lane Bradbury) is about to do the same thing. As for Denise, her boyfriend Flack (David Carradine) is driving across the country to save her from her family. And her parents Ed (Jackie Cooper) and Claire (Eleanor Parker) wonder where they went wrong.

Directed by Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Jaws: The Revenge) and written by Bruce Feldman, this reunites Field and Parker, as they played sisters in Home for the Holidays. If you think it’s odd that she’s her mother in this, well, Bradbury is her younger sister but is really eight years older than her.

This also has a Linda Ronstadt soundtrack, if that makes you want to watch.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.