Ultraman Max is the eighteenth installment in the Ultra Series, originally airing in Japan from July 7, 2005 to March 25, 2006. Across 39 episodes and one special, the special anti-monster task force DASH (Defense Action Squad Heroes) battles invading alien monsters, helped by Ultraman Max, who is secretly Touma Kaito, a DASH team member.
Unlike Ultraman Nexus, which went for a darker tone, this is a return to the original Ultraman series, bringing back old favorite monsters like Red King, Gomora, Antlar, Zetton, Eleking, Pigmon and Baltan. It also has a belief that humanity’s future will be a positive one, unlike so much of the science fiction of the 2000s.
There’s even a black and white episode that’s a tribute to the original Ultra Q and Ultraman Xenon makes a guest appearance.
Ultraman Max has an interesting role. As a Civilization Guardian, he studies developing civilizations and works to help the species of other planets exist as one. Like so many of the Ultras before him, he has bonded with Touma Kaito after a great sacrifice, honoring the human by saving his life and sharing a body with him.
I like the idea that even the evil aliens have to admit that they like Earth in this story and how we have a place in the universe. Ultraman Max himself is inspiring, as he believes in the human race and in having faith in others. He’s learned a lot in his 7,800 years of life.
Another cool part of this show is that the monsters aren’t just aliens, but mythological creatures from Earth’s past. This series gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling and memories of being on my parent’s couch, jumping all over the room and blasting imaginary monsters with my Ultra Beam pose.
Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) has unintentionally won a screen test when he shows remorse for a past crime. This convinces casting director Dabney Shaw (Larry Miller) that he’s a method actor and ready to head out to Los Angeles. At a party thrown by Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen), who has recently come to terms with his daughter Veronica over his wife’s inheritance, he meets the man who is to prepare him for the role he’s been hired for, Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer) and also runs into someone he’s been in love with since he was seven, Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan).
And then things get weird.
Partially based on the Brett Halliday novel Bodies Are Where You Find Them, Shane Black was on a downward slide when he wrote this, suffering through the failure of The Long Kiss Goodnight and a rejection letter from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He tried to get away from action and worked on a romantic comedy, but ended up back where he started. However, this was an attempt to reimagine the detective genre, using the spirit of the 1950s and 1960s yet modern characters. For example. Perry is gay, but Black wanted in include his sexuality as he had never seen “the gay guy who kicks down the door, shoots everyone, and bails your ass out before.”
Originally titled You’ll Never Die in This Town Again, this was the movie that showed Hollywood that Downey was ready to be a star again. He has said that this movie was “in some ways the best film I’ve ever done.” As for Kilmer, well, he missed doing comedy.
I loved everything about this movie, which is because, well, I love everyone in it. And I love Shane Black. This is the first movie he directed and he was asked by Empire, why is it set, like nearly all of his movies, over the holidays? He answered: ““I really wanted to set it at Christmas. At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about it. It seemed natural, because I hadn’t done a film at that time for quite some years. And there was no hesitation because I went with Joel Silver, and we’d already done a Christmas movie together with Lethal Weapon. Even Last Action Herowas a Christmas movie. So it was, why not? And Christmas helped a lot. The idea of this lonely guy in a brand new city at Christmas, wandering. It’s a bizarre, ironic take on Christmas in LA. It’s not Christmassy at all, except it’s, “There are miracles to find if you look closely enough for them.” Harry even says, “Last Christmas, we kind of changed the world,” meaning “We actually did something at Christmas that a) mattered and b) was impossible.” It was one of my favorite things to work on.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site back on December 21, 2017. Remember, it’s not who’s first. It’s who’s next.
If you ever wanted to watch a movie where Bill Goldberg hits Chris Kattan with the same sidekick that ended Bret Hart’s career, good news. I have found the movie for you.
Yep, the Mason family — including James Caan, Rebecca Gayheart, Fran Drescher and Kattan — are all fighting during Christmas dinner, but Santa arrives in time to kill them all. And that’s just the start.
Santa is really Satan’s son — the son of a virgin birth like Jesus — who used December 25th as the “Day of Slaying” until an angel defeated him in a curling match and he was forced to deliver gifts for 1,000 years.
Now, it’s 2005 and Santa is ready to get some revenge.
This film was directed by David Steiman, who was a production assistant for Brett Ratner. It’s a slick-looking film, one that ended up way better than I thought it would be.
It has some interesting picks as stars, like SCTV’s Dave Thomas playing a perverted pastor and Robert Culp playing the hero’s grandfather (who ends up being the curling playing angel who defeated Satan’s son). Plus, you know, Bill Goldberg as Santa, which gives him the chance to use his “Who’s next?” catchphrase after the credits.
There are much better Santa as killer movies you can watch this holiday season. And we’ve covered so many of them over the last few days. But if you want to be a completist — and if you’re a wrestling fan and want to see Vince Russo die in a strip club massacre — then go ahead and watch this.
One day in the woods, Moni (Ivana Baquero, Pan’s Labyrinth), Koldo, Peti, Eugenio and Tito discover that a woman in a Santa suit has fallen into a pit. That woman is bank robber Rebeca Expósito (Maru Valdivielso) who they decide to keep as their secret. They decide to start feeding her and trying to get her to tell them where the millions she store are, but soon, she’s escaped and she has an axe.
Luckily, they have the training they’ve picked up from a childhood of watching horror movies on VHS, like the film within this film Zombie Invasion which looks a lot like The Gates of Hell. It also has Elsa Pataky from Beyond Reanimator and Fast and the Furious. Oh yes! She’s also in Argento’s Giallo.
As the Santa with an axe chases the kids, only what they have learned from those films — and The Karate Kid — can save them. Maybe. Maybe not. This has a dark ending with a little bit of hope, as at least one of the kids gave her actual food and not just junk. Also, she didn’t shove something into her eye like she was some kind of Fulci-obsessed lunatic.
Películas para no dormir means 6 Films to Keep You Awake. They include Blame by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (Who Can Kill a Child, The House That Screamed), Spectre by Mateo Gil, A Real Friend by Enrique Urbizu, The Baby’s Room by Alex de la Iglesia (El Dia de la Bestia) and To Let by Jaume Balagueró (Rec). This story was Paco Plaza (who also directed Rec) and written by Luiso Berdejo (Quarantine).
This is a great watch and I loved the other ones I’ve seen, so I need to hunt them all down.
The second American Pie direct-to-video film, The Naked Mile is about Erik Stifler (John White), who has been given a pass from his girlfriend Tracy Sterling (Jessy Schram) as he goes to the University of Michigan to visit his cousin Dwight (Steve Talley) and take part in the Naked Mile, a party that involves people, well, running a mile naked and partying. If you were wondering, who comes up with that, it would be Jim’s father (Eugene Levy).
The Naked Mile is a real thing that used to happen at the University of Michigan from 1985 to 2000. Senior students would celebrate their last day of class by running or biking a course through campus. The school was upset that this event was destroying their reputation.
Directed by Joe Nussbaum and written by Eric Lindsay, the main humor in this comes from a fraternity made up of smaller people who end up sleeping with really attractive women. I realize that 2006 is centuries away from today, but this is also so many miles — naked or clothed — from the quality of the American Pie films.
Look, if there weren’t going to be any more American Pie movies in theaters, there would always be people who would rent the direct-to-video sequels. You know, like me. I’m a completist. How many Amityville movies does it take to stop my OCD? How many Hellraiser films? Well, here you go: a whole series of American Pie movies that just have Jim’s dad (Eugene Levy) and Stifler’s family to have the smallest of all threads.
Well, also Chuck Sherman, who is now a guidance counselor and sends Stifler’s little brother Matt (Tad Hilgenbrink, who is also in Lost Boys: The Tribe) to band camp where he’s guided by, yes, Jim’s dad. There are also plenty of hot young women — and also a little older ones, because Ginger Lynn plays the camp nurse — to be part of his new adult video Bandeez Gone Wild. He’s following in his brother’s footsteps, as Stiffler is a porn director, despite the alternate world of American Reunion where we learn that he’s suffering in the world after high school.
He also falls for Elyse Houston (Arielle Kebbel), who has the entire band play a Tal Bachman song. You know, the guy who sang “She’s So High.” Oh man, the 2000s, right? The music in this is strange because it has a lot of covers, as I imagine the lower budget could accommodate Andrew W.K. but led to a cover of James’ “Laid” and Linda Perry playing Pink’s “Get the Party Started.”
Director Steve Rash also made Under the Rainbow, Son In Law, Can’t Buy Me Love and direct-to-video sequels to Bring It On and Road Trip. This was written by Brad Riddell, who made Slap Shop 3 and I had no idea there was a Slap Shot 2.
It seems hard to think about it today, but in the 1990s through 2000s, zombies weren’t interesting to Hollywood. Then 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead were surprise hits and Fox, was trying to buy the name Night of the Living Dead and decided to talk to George Romero, who wanted to make a movie he called Dead Reckoning. Universal Pictures ended up giving him more money than he ever had for a film and he decided to make everything he didn’t get to do in Day of the Dead.
There are some fun moments here — Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright cameo as zombies thanks to their Romero lovefest Shaun of the Dead, Savini’s Blades character from Dawn of the Dead has a few moments of being awesome, I’m always happy to see Asia Argento and I like the idea of the zombies using tools and becoming evolved after Day — but the fact that this is set in Pittsburgh yet shot in Canada has made me kind of upset.
The reason for my anger? It’s because this entire movie is based around the city and has Fiddler’s Green, an area for the rich and powerful ruled by Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), being protected by two of the three rivers as well as Dead Reckoning, a battle truck co-commanded by Riley Denbo (Simon Baker) and Cholo DeMore (John Leguizamo).
If you aren’t from Pittsburgh, the name Kaufman is amusing because the fancy department store down was Kaufmann’s and was always used to my childhood as an example of being rich. “Did you buy that suit from Kaufmann’s?” people used to say.
As for Argento, she plays Slack, a fighter in the gladiator pits where humans and zombies battle for the entertainment of the powerful elite. There’s also a zombie called Big Daddy (Eugene Clark) who has learned how to plan, lead and use tools.
I realize it’s not the worst zombie film — it’s not even the worst Romero Zombie film — but it feels like a movie standing it place, treading water and reliving its past, which is pretty much what the zombies do as they attack Fiddler’s Green.
In the late 70s, a group of ambitious Pittsburgh filmmakers decided to work together to make a movie called The Manipulator and later Effects. Due to a distributor problem, it was never released in theaters or on home video with just two theatrical screenings. One was at the U.S. Film Fest — which is now the Sundance Film Festival — and then the world premiere at the much-missed and long-gone Kings Court Theater in Oakland on November 9, 1979.
26 years later, Effects would finally be released on DVD and shown at the Warhol in Pittsburgh. Today, there’s a gorgeous AGFA blu ray release of the film and you can watch it any time you’d like, but at one point — as Tom Savini reminds you in this documentary — all he could do was tell people about the movie because there was no way to see it.
Directed by Michael Felsher and featuring nearly everyone involved with the film — David Belko, Susan Chapek, John Harrison, Dusty Nelson, Debra Gordon, Joe Pilato, Pasquale Buba, Savini, George Romero and Marty Schiff — the bulk of this story takes place poolside at John Harrison’s house as the cast looks back on a movie that was hidden for so long. There are also moments filmed at the old Mind Over Media building, a place I worked at just a few years afterward.
This was a bonus feature on the releases of Effects, but this new blu ray has so much more, like an exclusive feature-length edition of AfterEffects with over 15 minutes of never-before-seen interview footage, commentary from Felsher, more interview clips with George Romero, deleted scenes, highlights of the evening Effects played the Warhol, the 2005 DVD trailer and a book with all-new tributes to Buba, Pilato and Romero.
I often think that so much of the culture that I love is disappearing, that the people who made it are fading away. This has been shown to me so many times this year. This movie allows me to look back on so many that are gone and sit amongst them, learning how Pittsburgh once made its own films. Great films.
This is worth the watch just to hear how much Pilato loved his first lunch at the Squirrel Cage.
26. GAMESHOWS: Roll the bones, try your luck, gamble with your life!
ARGs are the new RPGs, as a game called The Pathway causes the deaths of Jake Gray’s (Jensen Ackles) friends Conrad (Teach Grant) and Dakota (Dominique Swain). The game itself is operated by Aiden Kater (Martin Cummins) and his Satanic followers who are tricking people into killing their targets or ending their own lives.
Working with occultist Marisol (Shannyn Sossamon), Jake finds Ivan Reisz (William Sadler), a man who lost his wife and child to The Pathway and demons, but then he learns that the child was raised as a human. And that’s who The Pathway was created to get and turn back over to Satan who ends up being Ivan’s wife. What? Oh, let’s take it one step further. Marisol and this woman and the devil are all the same person.
What a twist! Maybe none of this was real! Oh man, the 2000s, when every movie had to have oh so many turns along the way. Oh well. Nearly everyone in this also ended up being in the show Supernatural. Adam and Seth Gross, who wrote this, went on to write the DOA movie, which maybe doesn’t mean as much.
Visual Vengeance has brought back two Blockbuster Video shelf favorites, both concerning the infernal Mexican goatsucker known as el chupacabra! In the book Latinos and Narrative Media: Participation and Portrayal, these films are credited with starting the trend in movies about the chupacabras.
Blood of the Chupacabras (2003): If you read any reviews that came out on this movie’s original release, they all decry the fact that the poster and cover art are so amazing and the actual monster is not. But you know, that’s part of the charm in director and writer Jonathan Mumm’s movie (he also edited and composed some of the music).
The town that this takes place in has near Andy Milligan level supernatural coincidences: there’s a witch. There’s an old vampire hunter. There’s a singer. There’s an old prospector! And yes, there’s a chupacabra controlling possessed townsfolk from within a cave.
There are so many people in this town and let me tell you, I kind of love that the majority of this movie is people arguing over rent and trying to figure out how to survive in their downtrodden lives and then realizing, “Oh yeah. There’s a monster that kills goats in a cave.” That’s how real life is. You know that there are so many evil creatures in the woods outside of town but you live in a capitalist society and the cogs of the military-industrial complex are greased in the blood of the working man.
In addition to all of those characters — seriously, if you missed meeting new people in the new COVID era, get ready to meet so many people and then meet some more people — this movie has a synth score that in no way tries to sound real. You may be too young to remember organ stores in the mall and the poor souls that worked there that had to non-stop play synth and organ ditties while we shopped around them. Who were these people buying these gigantic organs? Where was the budget to hire so many people to play them? Where did they all go?
I digress.
I love when people review this movie and say it has so much talking. Yes, it’s a 1950s drive-in movie with no budget shot on video (with some 16mm from the first pass at making it) with rubber suits, early CGI and untrained actors. Revel in it. Soak it up. We should all be so lucky to live in a world that this movie exists and we do.
Revenge of the Chupcacabras (2005):
Just look at that image of a humanoid chupacabra and remember 2005, a time when life was much, much simpler than today and we had no idea. We could still rent movies in stores. And yeah, things are probably more convenient today, but we also had movies with chupacabras. Two in a row, no less, from Jonathan Mumm, who directed and wrote this.
You know what’s really crazy? This movie isn’t even about a chupacabra. It’s about a kidnapping. A chupacabra shows up — and it looks better than the first movie because people whined that they got a cool looking poster and that monster wasn’t in the movie and have you people never watched an exploitation movie before?!? — but this is really about a kidnapping. I am all for the bait and switch, folks.
Also in 2005, you could kidnap an attractive college student and ask for $2 million and no one laughed at you. Today, we don’t believe in science so we would just giggle and try and negotiate the ransom.
This movie makes me want to love it and as such has a scene where a priest investigates the possessions going on in this small town and gets killed by a chupacabra and honestly, that’s all I want movies to be about.
The tagline is “It can smell your fear.” Can it also smell how happy I am to look over and see this movie on my shelf and be so happy that I own it, much less the gorgeous Visual Vengeance blu ray? You got me goat killer!
You can get this from MVD. Bonus features include:
Both available for the first time ever available on blu ray, scanned from the archival SD masters from original Betacam tapes
New audio commentaries on both films with director Jonathan Mumm
Archival behind the scenes features
Blooper reels
Archive video from premiere and festival appearances
Super 8 movie: Professor Bloodgood
Limited Edition Slipcase by Earl Kessler — FIRST PRESSING ONLY
Collectible Mini-poster
Stick your own VHS sticker set and more
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