Harryhausen Rules

Neat compilation video of all the Ray Harryhausen creatures.

RIP William Monroe Wright 1926-2006

I've been extremely fortunate. In 31 years, I've only had to attend two funerals. I've known all my grandparents and even two great grandparents, all my aunts and uncles and haven't lost any friends or immediate family. It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently since I got the call last Tuesday that my grandfather had an aneurysm burst and probably wasn't coming home.

It all seemed so sudden. We'd literally seen him two days prior, looking more alive than I'd seen him in years. It was his 80th birthday party, which he got to celebrate with friends and family. If you'd told me then, I wouldn't get to speak to him again, I'd scarcely have believed it.

In fact, the day he went was his 80th birthday proper. He'd spent the day Christmas shopping with my grandma and they were on the way out the door to dinner when he fell in the hallway, and that was that. His body hung on for another week, but we'd really lost him that day.

There'd been a couple of medical scares in years prior. He'd been given six months to live at least a couple times, but he was determined to live better and stayed with us for longer than we'd expected him to. He got to see my two cousins and came so close to seeing my wedding and possible great grandkids.

I'd always felt a special bond with my grandfather, though we'd had few really long involved conversations. He was the archetypal strong and silent type, the kind of person who could tell you a lot with out saying a word. Yet, as I got older, I could see so much of myself in him. My mother always told me so and I really think it's true.

I see him in my sense of humor, in the way I tend to gently tease the ones I love. I can see him in the way I tend to observe more than participate, all the while happy to be there. And, of course, I'll always see him when I sign my full name. His name is my middle name.

These past couple of weeks have been really sad for me, but I think I'm done being sad for a while. This Christmas is going to be hard, as we'll all be thinking of him, knowing how much he loved having everyone around for the holidays. My grandmother, who I always knew was an amazing woman, has been really strong during all this, but I know it's going to be especially rough for her.

For me, I think the moment I lost my sadness was at the wake when I saw a line of people out the door for nearly four solid hours waiting to pay their respects. To know that my grandfather meant that much to so many people makes me feel good. I hope I should be so lucky to positively impact as many people in my life.

And I should also hope to be so luck as to go quickly, feeling no pain and having seen all the people I love one last time.

Rest in peace, Grandpa Bill. You will always be missed.

Working out Grief through Cratedigging

My grandfather passed away earlier this week. While I'll probably try to collect some thoughts later on about that, the day of the wake I took my mind off things for a while by doing some cratedigging. Here's what I came up with:



Interesting jazz(ish) stash here. From the back: Willis Jackson "Bar Wars" (a record long my "my list"), Paul Horn/Lalo Schifrin "Jazz Suite on the Mass Texts" (which I bought even though I have mp3s someone rapidshared), Bobbi Humphrey "Flute-In" (another from "the list" and another with Idris Muhammad on drums), "Lullaby of Birdland" ("12 Different Interpretations by 12 Modern Arrangers played by 12 exciting Jazz Groups" sounded too good to pass up).

Front row: Red Garland "Rediscovered Masters" (which I've been in a Garland mood, so that was a nice find), Al Hirt/Lalo Schifrin "Latin In The Horn" (I had no idea this existed!) Johnny Nash "I Got Rhythm" (this record has eluded me for too long.)



Now this is a fun batch. Apparently these all belonged to Keith Higginbotham (see the label stickers on the covers.) Looks like a nice batch of bubblegum/sunshine pop I love sooooo much!

Back row: The Happenings "Psycle", 1910 Fruit Gum Co. "Simon Says", Andy Kim "How'd We Ever Get This Way" and "Rainbow Ride" (one of these is supposed to be brilliant...I think.)

Middle set: The Peppermint Rainbow "Will You Be Staying After Sunday", The Rose Garden, Lover & Friend "Reach Out Of The Darkness".

Fronts: Bobby Russell "Unlimited", Bryan Hyland "Tragedy/A Million To One".



Then there was Spirit "Spirit of '76" and a German pressing of "Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde" which was a destiny find as I'd has "This Wheel's On Fire" running though my head all that day.



Finally, this was the capper for me. Obscure Muncie garage band The Other Five. The top side is a Bert Russell tune which sounds kinda like Son of Hang On Sloopy. There's horns and everything, so someone put some money into this. The flip is an interesting arrangement of the Kink's "You Really Got Me." Great Nuggets style 7" and probably worth several times what I paid.

The cats aren't so impressed with the current stash though. They can't decide if they want to hear Sergio Mendes or perhaps something from my Command records library buried further in the stack.

RIP Bud.

There's absolutely nothing that can describe the rip out your guts and stomp on them feeling that accompanies the decision to put a pet to sleep. Nor is there anything quite like the self-doubt that accompanies that decision, no matter how right that decision is. When the pet isn't that old, I think it's even worse.

It's hard to understand how Bud could have gone from so healthy like he was in this picture from July to so sick in about three months like he did when everything started. It makes you feel so helpless trying to do everything you can and seeing no change or a change for the worse.

Eventually you reach that point where you know things aren't going to get any better and all you're doing is prolonging the misery. Knowing that doesn't make it any harder to let go.

Bud was a trooper and Bud was a survivor. Three years ago, he came back from hepatic lipidosis caused by a severe urinary tract blockage. I almost lost him, but he rebounded in time. This time, the hepatic lipidosis was symptomatic of a gall bladder blockage and by the time we discovered it, the chances of recovery weren't so good. It started looking like neurological damage was setting in. There was just too much happening, too many unknowns and I couldn't stand to see my friend suffer any longer.

I thought he'd be with me for a long time to come. I really thought we'd beat this. He'd looked so much worse before. While we could have rolled the dice and hoped for the best, the look in his eyes told me it was time to let him go.

It's still not easy. I'm totally cried out*, but that doesn't mean I'm not hurting.

Part of me feels it was too soon to bring not one but two new cats into my life, but the other part of me knows how much easier they are making this period on me and my fiancee. They will never replace Bud and we're not trying to. But, they needed home and we needed cats. Pets are incredible healing and having two little ones running around reminds me of all the good times Bud and I used to have. And that makes me smile.

So, here's Beans and Eliza (names subject to change.) We're glad they came to live with us and while we wish Bud could be here to meet them, we think he'd approve, wherever he is.





* - later that day I got a call from my dad. My grandfather had an aneurysm burst, fell and is more or less in a coma and probably won't be coming home. When it rains, it pours.

Review: Q: The Winged Serpent

Larry Cohen makes films that are awesome examples of why I love so called B movies. His films all have a unique vision, are slightly off center and unafraid to be different. The low-budget, almost guerilla way in which they are made seem to work in their favor and give them a look and feel that major studio releases can't replicate if they try, and believe me they have.

Don't get me wrong. Q also has many of the short comings typical of B movies. Even if one cast aside the absurdity of a giant half reptile and half bird Aztec god coming to life in modern (circa 1982) New York, you're going to find it hard to believe that only one guy, a spazmotic petty thief named Quinn (played by Michael Moriarty,) stumbles across the thing. The special effects are cheesy, the story gets a little convoluted and a little slow.

But there's no denying this is a very entertaining film. The cast (which, in addition to Moriarty includes David Carradine and Richard Roundtree) is great and plays with appropriate amounts of tongue in cheek. Really, it's the characters that drive this film and while the story has the usual Cohen mixture of horror, supernatural and religion, Quetzlcoatl almost becomes second to just watching the characters interact.

Of course, I also love watching the way Cohen stitches together scenes. There's a lot of subtle little touches that are clever and add to the humor of the film. It's also great to watch the way he nearly turns New York into a character in the film. Considering it was the architecture of the city (and specifically the Chrysler Building) that inspired the film's story, it's only appropriate you see so much of the city in the film.

The only thing that's kind of a bummer about Q is knowing they just don't make films like this anymore. Movies like these that don't try to bowl you over with effects or star power, and aren't afraid to laugh without going over into self-conscious parody or gross out humor just don't seem to come along too often anymore.

Review: Ray Sings, Basie Swings

Despite the title, this isn't really a recording of Ray Charles singing with Count Basie. The thought of those two titans of music collaborating is a pretty tantalizing prospect so when the producer responsible for "Genius Loves Company" discovered a 1973 tape of Ray Charles from a gig he shared with the Count, he decided to make it happen. Taking Ray's vocals from the otherwise unusable concert recording, he got the modern Count Basie Orchestra to lay down the tracks and "Ray Sings, Basie Swings" was born.

On the surface, it really looks like a grave robbing Frankenstein job going on here. Basie has been dead since 1984 and this Ray Charles tape is over 30 years old. The fact that Charles died in 2004 and had one of his biggest years in decades only adds to the feeling of exploitation.

Oddly enough, this album works in spite of it self. Mind you, this is nowhere near as good as an actual meeting of Charles and Basie would have been, but for a vocal track recorded with a different band, laid on a new track from a ghost band, this is a lot more enjoyable than it should be.

It helps a lot that Ray was in fine form on that night in 1973. He's got a lot of energy and sounds like he's having a lot of fun. Though it wasn't intended, Ray's style actually fits in well with the Basie sound which the current orchestra does a pretty good job of emulating. I don't think ghost bands are ever as good as the same band with their leader, but this isn't bad.

The end result is an album that is sure to make purists gag but if you can get past the feeling of necrophilia, is actually a fun listen. No, it's nothing essential, but it's far from the travesty it probably should have been.

Review: Candy Tangerine Man

Candy Tangerine Man starts off similar to a million other blaxploitation films. We see Baron pimping his girls, cruising around in a Rolls Royce (that looks like it was stolen from Ronald McDonald) and generally being a stone cold player. When he drops a young girl he's won in a pool game against his rival off at a bus station with a wad of cash and tells her to leave prostitution, we get a hint that Baron is a pimp with a heart of gold.

That act of kindness doesn't quite prepare the viewer for what comes next. Baron drives to a secluded location, ditches the fly threads and the Roller, dons a square shirt and tie and drives a four door back to suburbia where he has a wife, two kids and a yard to mow. Our hero leads a secret life, it seems.

Like every blaxploitation hero, Baron is looking to get out of the game after one last score. In this case, it's some sort of fake bond paper scheme. (See, it's hard out there for a pimp, so Baron has to diversify.) Along the way he has to fight off his rivals, corrupt cops and even associates turning on him.

In many ways Candy Tangerine Man is every blaxploitation film you've ever seen. It's kind of disappointing that the one thing that really sets it apart, the whole secret identity angle, isn't pursued more. In fact, it really serves as little more than showing Baron's motivation for leaving the game.

The other thing that was kind of disappointing was the two cops following Baron. It's as if the director couldn't decide if they were supposed to be slapstick comic relief or psychopathic scum, so they alternate roles from scene to scene. They also give one of the slowest, most boring car chases I've seen. Of course, between the Baron's Rolls and the 70s cop car, you probably had ten tons of steel on the road so I shouldn't be to surprised they couldn't break 40 MPH.

While there isn't a lot here that hasn't been done before, fans of the genre will probably enjoy this one quite a bit. It manages to have a very sleazy low budget vibe without looking like a completely low budget production. It isn't the best blaxploitation film I've ever seen, but it is one that deserves to been seen more than it has been. With what looks like a legit DVD issue on the way finally, that should be a little easier to do soon.

Why the Donnie & Marie Star Wars Special is the most Awesome Star Wars show ever.

It's funny. For a while I've been looking for this particular Star Wars related clip and last night I discovered it was right there under my nose the whole time. (It was hidden on the Return of the Ewok DVD I had acquired a while ago.) Anyway, I'm pleased to say it maybe even surpassed my expectations and is at least as good as the Holiday Special (at a fraction of the running time) and possibly even better.

Let me break down some of the many reasons why:

- Inspired casting. Donnie and Marie as Luke and Leia was a bit obvious, but how about Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo? Red Foxx as Obi Wan? Paul Lynde as whoever the character was Peter Cushing played in the first Star Wars movie. You heard me. PAUL LYNDE.

- Han Solo sings Sly & the Family Stone's "I Wanna Take You Higher." Unless Lucas digitally added that to a "special edition," I don't recall that happening in any of the movies.

- Singing and dancing stormtroopers. Mel Brooks, eat your heart out.

- Vader has a batallion of ice skating girls for no apparent reason.

- This is more curious than greatness, but apparently Han flys an Apolo rocket and Vader pilots the Millenium Falcon. Huh?

- I think this script would have been rejected by the makers of the "Turkish" Star Wars for not making any sense.

Trust me, there's more. Check it for yourself (for as long as YouTube allows this to live):

Part 1:




Part 2:

Free Zone Halloween Extravaganza! With mp3s!

As promised, here's my part of the 2006 Free Zone Halloween Extravaganza! Enjoy!

Hour 1, Songs that remind me of Halloween:

http://rapidshare.com/files/837834/1028061.mp3.html

The Raving Vampire Part 1 - Souls Unlimited
Rockness Monster - Akimbo
Monsters I've Met - Shel Silverstein
Sukie In The Graveyard - Belle & Sebastian
Mr. Hyde - The Coachwhips
I Was A Teenage Werewolf - The Cramps
The Mask - Dangerdoom (f. Ghostface)
Voodoo Soul Stew - The Daktaris
Ghost Train - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Satan Is Real/Straight to Hell - Hank III
The Ghost - I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
Children With Horns - If Thousands
Meathook - Jawbox
Cowboys and Aliens - Kitchens of Distinction
Psycko - Laika and the Cosmonauts
Hunted By A Freak - Mogwai
You Have Killed Me - Morrissey
Psychic Vampire - The Wipers

Hour 2, Halloween favorites and other creepy stuff:

http://rapidshare.com/files/845851/1028062.mp3.html

There Is A Haunted House In Town - The Wonderland Singers
The Whip - The Vampires
The Monster Mash - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett
Suspicion - Alfred Hitchcock
The Shreik of Agony - Bob McFadden and Dor
The Wrists Twist - Frankie Stein and his Ghouls
Spirits, Monsters, Witches - Gershon Kingsley & Peter Waldron
Excerpt From A Christian Perspective on Halloween - Mike Warnke
Black Mass - Mort Garson
Little Green Riding Hood - The Children of the Night
Phantom of the A Go-Go - Don Hinson and the Rigomorticians
Creatures - Frankenstein and the All-Star Monster Band
Vampire Bat - Wesley Willis
Frankenstein - Boris Karloff
Random Horror Music and Sounds
Godzilla - Blue Oyster Cult
Godzilla Genealogy Bop - Mystery Science Theater 3000

(Big thanks to Scar Stuff for a lot of these tracks. Saved me a lot of time converting old records and introduced me to some new stuff.)

Hour 3, Giant Monsters Stomp Tokyo:

http://rapidshare.com/files/853564/1028063.mp3.html

Godzilla Approaches and Main Title - Godzilla (1954)
Japanese Army March I - Godzilla (1954)
Tokyo In Flames and Ending - Godzilla (1954)
Main Theme - King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
Mothra's Song - Mothra
Main Title - Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964)
Main Theme - Monster Zero (1965)
Young Go Go - Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966)
Godzilla vs. Kumonga - Son of Godzilla (1967)
Monster March - Godzilla's Revenge (1969)
Give Back Sun - Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)
Godzilla March - Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972)
Gojira and Jet Jaguar Punch Punch Punch - Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)
Car Chase - Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973)
Miyarabi's Prayer - Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)
Main Title - Terror of Mechgodzilla (1975)
Gamera March - Gamera vs. Viras

(Huge thanks to X-Y-Z Cosmonaut for providing most of these tracks.)

Mystery Smell: Solved!

There's only three of you that are going to care, but you know that funky smell that a majority of the dollar DVDs have? Anyone else wonder what that's all about?

Recycled DVD cases.

You're welcome.

From back when I actually liked computers

I'll always head over to Platypuscomix site as there's some great "child of the 80s" stuff happening there, but I gotta say the Applepalooza feature really takes me back. I can't count the hours I wasted playing that same version of Spy Hunter on our old Apple ][c. (BTW, IIRC you have to get the rocket launcher to shoot down the helicopter, which requires playing a near perfect game.) Pooyan was another fave.

Check it out here: http://www.platypuscomix.net/applepalooza/index.html

Free Zone Halloween Show

Alright. I did my Halloween show last night and frankly I'm proud to say it's killer. I'm going to try something I've thought about for a while. I'll post mp3s of the show after it airs. I'm going to do this via Rapidshare and I'll have each hour as a seperate file.

I always have a lot of people ask me about doing this, so we'll see how it works out. Obviously, this is a lot easier to do when the show is prerecorded as I'm not taping the shows off the air anymore. (That was a pain.)

Years from now, I'll probably be glad I have two plus spindles of old Free Zone shows. :)

Anyway, keep watching the skies...err...this space and I'll probably have the shows and playlist posted this weekend for your downloading enjoyment.

And be sure to listen to Tim D. on Saturday night, if you have the chance. An extra hour of daylight savings time Free Zone excitement there. :)

I'm still here.

Things have been crazy busy and crazy stressful. I won't get into all that.

I did want to drop a heads up that you should really check out the Free Zone this Friday night. I'm still semi-retired, but I'm putting together a hell of a halloween show this year, including an hour of nothing but Godzilla music.

As always, the show is on 88.7 FM WICR midnight to 3am Friday and Saturday (technically Saturday and Sunday morning, but you get the idea.)

To my out of state readers, if you want to check it out, check the WICR home page http://wicr.uindy.edu/ and you should get a popup for streaming. (Good luck, it's norotiously flaky.)

Science Fiction Double Feature

I didn't feel like going out Saturday night, but I felt like killing a few brain cells in a non-chemical related manner. So, I cooked up a fantastic (if I do say so myself) double bill of post-Star Wars coattail riders. Just in case you weren't around then, Star Wars inspired a ton of movies trying to cash in during the late 70s. Most of these are pretty bad, but they are usually amusing to watch.



First up, I went with Message From Space, a 1978 Toei production with an international cast. Not a lot of star power here, though we get Vic Morrow as a boozy ex-army guy, the chick who played Sister Street Fighter in the Princell Leia spot and Sonny Chiba doing another cameo where he appears late in the movies, does a little swordfighting and is disguised so much, you can barely tell it's him.

Message From Space plays like a Japanese fantasy movie that happens to take place in space. The planet Jillucia has been taken over, so the elder throws these walnuts...err..."Liabe seeds" into space to find the people who will save their planet. His daughter Esmeralida (who is Sister Street Fighter) is sent to find them and avoid the bad guys, yada, yada, yada.

Of course the walnuts seeds find a standard issue "ragtag bunch of misfits" who have to come together and save the world. A lot happens in this movie and frankly it's difficult to get a grasp on everything. (This seems to be a standard feature of a lot of Japanese fantasy film I've seen.)

Here's what you really need to know: the story is cribbed from Seven Samurai, the ending is pure Star Wars, there's a "funny" robot sidekick (think Twiki with less charm) and the bad guys all look like metallic silver witches. The effects in this film aren't bad. They're not as good as Star Wars, but they're leagues better than, say, Fugitive Alien.



Next up, I went with a classic, Luigi Cozzi's immortal Starcrash. I hadn't seen this one before, and frankly was a bit skeptical about if it would live up to the hype. Well, let me tell you, it does.

Space smuggler Stella Star is out running space police with her humanoid(?) sidekick Akton when they come across a ship that had been attacked. They stop to check for survivors, and are pinched by the cop and his robot partner. After a day in hard labor (where Stella stages a prison break that results in the deaths of many other prisoners,) Stella and Akton are called upon by the Emperor to find a missing scout ship that was spying on the bad guy and just happened to have the Emperor's only son on it.

This flim follows the episodic serial formula kind of like Star Wars where they get in a scrape, they get out of it, then another one, then they get out of that, etc., etc. There isn't so much plot development as there is a goal and one thing after another on the way to attaining it.

Starcrash is a wonderful slpat of technicolor vomit on the screen. Who knew outerspace looked like a disco? Everything in this movie is a bright primary color, even the stars in outer space.

Not only is this fun to look at, but Cozzi tried damn near every effect avaliable at the time short of CGI. I mean, there's even stop motion animation in here, which I know isn't cheap or easy. Sure, the models look like random parts glued together and spray painted in stripes, but you can tell he was really trying to get it right.

And dig the John Barry (James Bond) soundtrack. Christopher Plummer as the Emperor? And David Hasslehoff??? (OK, maybe not Hasslehoff.)

There's a lot I love about Starcrash, but I think my two favorite things were Joe Spinell as the popeyed baddie Count Zarth Arn and his evil ship that looked like a giant palm with the fingers curling inward for an attack. Stella Star's spacekini wasn't bad either.

If you want to see Message From Space, you have few options right now. It's not officially out on DVD here or in Japan. It was out on VHS and it's not too difficult to find a DVD of that. Starcrash is out in both an official and "public domain" version. The official version is anamorphic at the correct aspect ratio while the PD is cropped and retitled Female Space Invaders. However, the color on the official version is very dull from all the screen shots and reviews I've seen. I went with the PD version. The panning & scanning isn't too bad and the colors are approporately loud (plus the disc is about a quarter what the official one costs. Personally, I feel having the colors right for Starcrash is most important, but your mileage may vary.

Fun double feature. Maybe I try a couple other Star Wars wanna bees this weekend.

Review: Yongary Monster From the Deep (Alpha)

Being a fan of Gamera means you often times catch some flack about how cheesy the movies are. I'd argue part of Gamera's charm is the fact that the films are so darn cheesy. But, let me tell you this, if you're lactose intolerant, stay far away from Yongary. It's a whole week's worth of dairy in one serving.



Meet Yongary. He's our new exchange monster from Korea (though, according to legend, he has some Japanese blood in him too.) As you can see, he kind of looks like someone took Godzilla's body, stuck Gamera's head on it and then put a rhino's tusk on the nose just for fun. Admittedly, suitamation in 1967 (the year kaiju broke) was on the down swing quality wise, and the Yongary suit looks at least as good as that year's model of Godzilla and Gamera suits.

Much like the cobbled together suit, this movie is also cobbled together. If you take the bulk of Godzilla (the movie) and graft on the Kenny from Gamera, you've got Yongary's basic plot. And this is the first kaiju movie that I think was written by a ten year old Kenny, as there's just little going on here that makes much sense.

A mysterious earthquake is moving across Korea as a result of Chinese nuclear tests. It turns out the earthquake is actually Yongary who can borough through the ground. Yongary emerges to drink some gasoline and stomp some buildings. Ichio (our Kenny) observes Yongary itching after coming in contact with some sort of ammonia compound. Our hero dump a ton of the ammonia on the monster, causing severe rectal bleeding (you think I'm making this up?) and a disturbingly realistic death scene while Icho waxes reflexive on "did we really have to kill him?"

The End.



Now, I can't catalog all the things just plain wrong with this film, so let me just list a few:

- Ichio seem to be the only person to have a name in this film
- Everyone is an unlikely mixture of two rare things (like the Prime Minister's son and the country's top scientist)
- Korea is developing an itching ray for reasons never explained
- Yongary's death scene is very disturbing
- Civilians (including children) are allowed on highly dangerous military missions

You get the drift.

Ichio in this film is downright sadistic. We're introduced to the itching ray early in the film as he uses it to pull a prank. When he's caught and informed he almost caused his victims to scratch to death, he responds with "yeah, but you gotta admit it was funny."

Later, Ichio sneaks out to get a better look at Yongary. You think he's going out there to make friends with the monster, but no. He's brought the itching ray again! While he's sending the monster in to a fit, he takes delight in the fact that it looks like he's dancing. (A rock version of a Korean folk song starts playing. Words can not describe how bizarre it is.)

Finally, Ichio sits there watching Yongary's painful death shakes with a big shit eating grin on his face. Why he pulls the last minute introspection bit, I don't know. It really seems half hearted and despite what he's saying, he doesn't seem too broken up to see the monster die.

Then there's Yongary's stunning special effects. You don't need to look closely to notice things like a flame thrower nozzle in Yongary's head or an extra wheel balancing a cut in half jeep. It seems cardboard boxes were used extensively in this film representing everything from bricks to models of buildings. There's also horrible matte shots and the worst blue screen effect I've ever seen.

Alpha has taken their disc from the old pan and scan VHS. It doesn't look bad and since this is a pretty horrible movie that everyone assumes is public domain, I doubt this is ever going to get a better DVD release. This movie isn't for the purists anyway.

It's been a while since a movie gave me this many unintentional laughs. Well worth the $5 or whatever this disc will set you back.

Here's box art from a couple of super 8 digest versions of this movie. As with all the pictures in this review, I've shamelessly lifted these from other sites. (Thanks Stomy Tokyo, DVD Drive-In, Shill Media...)

Review: Voyage Into Space

Voyage Into Space was a movie AIP assembled from five episodes of Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. Sokko was a very silly show where a group called Unicorn is defending the Earth against to Gargoyle gang led by the evil Guillotine. Unicorn's star agent is ten year old Johnny Sokko who, due to being in the right place at the right time, controls a giant robot called...err...Giant Robo.

Sokko controls Giant Robo with his wrist watch transmitter. This robot, who looks a little like King Tut, is apparently indestructible. He can fly, shoot missiles out of his fingers and lasers out of hit eyes. This is pretty convenient as Gargoyle keeps bringing new monsters down upon the Earth and only Giant Robo can defeat them.

Sokko is like the Uber-Kenny. Minutes after seeing Giant Robo for the first time, he knows all about it and knows how to control it completely. In true Kenny fashion, he becomes the proxy savior of the planet. One has to wonder how all the Unicorn agents who were working their way up paying dues have to feel about some snot nose kid coming along and because he just happens to have a robot, he becomes top agent.

There are a few things I'm curious about though. For one thing, I never understood why Unicorn always seems so reluctant to have Johnny call in Giant Robo. I mean, that always seems to be the option that saves the day, so why not just cut to the chase and bring in the Robo? (Yes, I know, the show would be about five minutes long otherwise.)

I also have to wonder why AIP called this Voyage Into Space considering there is no voyage and the whole thing takes place on Earth.

Budgets are low, stories are implausible and footage is recycled. Still, this is great fun if you dig seeing men in rubber suits wrestling around. These episodes work pretty well in movie form and I'm not sure for me anyway I'd really need to own all 26 episodes on disc.

The Terror of Tinytown's Big Adventure

On his new spoken world album In The Grip of Official Treason, Jello Biafra uses the Terror of Tinytown as an allegory for the Iraq war.

Wow. I didn't see that coming.

In the changer

It seems like the only time I get to listen to music for fun anymore is when I'm driving. Maybe that's why I find myself making so many gas wasting trips out for nothing in particular. It also seems like this is a year for me where I'm rediscovering heavy music.

The CD that has really floored me so far this year is the new one from Envy, Insomniac Doze. I've long thought Japan has some of the most interesting bands in the world, and this disc is no exception. Envy combines the progressive hardcore of Neurosis with the loud/soft dynamics of Mono and the end result is an album that is as beautiful as it is brutal.

I'm also really digging the new one from Mastodon. It's called Blood Mountain and is pretty progressive metal. Mastodon have long been recommended to me as a band I'd like, but I never heard them until now. This is what I'd imagine music majors making a metal record would sound like, though it never gets wanky or gratuitous. I'm convinced listening to this disc makes my own drumming more interesting, so that's a plus too.

Though you couldn't exactly call it progressive, Slayer's new disc Christ Illusion also features some impressive drumming courtesy of Dave Lombardo, who is back in the fold to reunite the classic Slayer lineup. And it's hard to call this album anything but classic Slayer. It's not breaking any new ground, but at this point in their career, who expects them to? Sometimes it's just great to hear an awesome band doing what they do best.

And here's an oldie I've been up on: The Deftones White Pony. I wasn't keen on much of the nu-metal thing, or whatever you want to call it, but when a friend played this for me back when it came out, I had to admit it was damn good. I recently scored a copy of this for $1, so that was pretty sweet. I don't know how the rest of their catalog stacks up, but this disc is some classic moody angst music.

Review: No Blade Of Grass (WTF-film)

It's astonishing to me the multitude of ways fiction writers have come up with to end the world. No Blade of Grass is based on a book I haven't read, so I can't tell you how close it comes to that. The film version, however, plays a bit like Panic in the Year Zero, with famine caused by a grass/grain destroying virus being the culprit this time.

Nigel Davenport is tipped off by his daughter's government scientist boyfriend that London is about to go under martial law so they high tail it out of there to find his brother's farm in the country. Apparently being in the country has made the farm immune to the virus. The country almost instantly slides into kill or be killed mode and along the way they pick up a slightly unhinged weapons expert and damn near the entire population of a small village and fight bikers, army and farmers.

There's not a whole lot of set up to the story. The movie starts as the family gets the call to pack up and go and the previous year is detailed in a few flashbacks. While this is going on, we also get a few flash forwards to some terrible scene about to happen. In fact, almost anytime a character in the movie says something optimistic, scary organ chords break in and a clip of something violent yet to happen pops up flashing tinted red.

The flash forwards are interesting and keep you disoriented and on edge. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot happening here to build tension. Everything in this movie happens so nonchalantly, the electricity that a world sliding into anarchy would have never happens. There's also a love triangle that starts and fizzles out and there's the requisite environmental warning message interspersed periodically throughout the film.

I wonder how the book is because there are some good ideas here. It just seems like the movie gets it wrong somehow. It's not a bad film, and if you're into the apocalyptic environmental disaster thing, you'll probably want to catch this. I just don't know how much I could recommend others look for this rather obscure film.

WTF presents another reconstructed version on this disc. A majority of the film is from a widescreen print that looks pretty good, a little artifacting aside. There are a few more gristly scenes cut back into the print from what appears to be an Italian VHS source. I'm guessing the widescreen source was a cable showing, possible TCM as this is an MGM film. I'm thinking cable because of what was cut out (some nudity and a rape scene) and a few instances of language that are blocked out. The VHS shots are pan and scan and in the one scene with dialogue, it goes to Italian. It's a minor annoyance, better than not having the scenes in there.

Other than that, there's an image gallery on the disc and this time around, that's it. No complaints, just not the usual bounty of extras WTF puts on their discs. If you can't wait for TCM to show it again, or you want it unedited (even with an aspect ratio and language change,) this is a nice disc to own. Not the best movie I've ever viewed, but it was decent enough and it fits in with the WTF collection quite nicely.

And this is the last of my WTF reviews, at least until they put out a new disc. To sum up, I don't know who is behind these releases, but it's obvious it's someone with a love of film. There's more going on here than your standard bootleg. I look forward to whatever they put out in ther future.

Review: Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds (WTF-film)

Environmental conditions have caused fossilized dinosaur eggs to hatch. The dinosaur terrorizes a small town near Mt. Fuji. Our hero rushes to the scene hoping to find the dino and reap financial rewards, but eventually seeks it as a way of finishing his father's (who was also a scientist and predicted such things) work. He finds the dino and it fights with a prehistoric bird. His girlfriend screams a lot. Fuji erupts and kills the prehistoric creatures and our hero and his girlfriend narrowly escape.

I wanted Legend of Dinosaurs to be good, but it just wasn't. The story, which combines elements of various Godzilla films, the Loche Ness Monster legends and even a pinch of Jaws, was just boring. The monsters were stiff and uninteresting. The characters sucked. Etc., etc.

There are three things of note about this film. In spite of this feeling like typical kiddie fare, it's actually pretty bloody in spots. A girl is ripped in half and a dinosaur has his eye gouged out. Plus there's a breif bit of nudity.

The second thing, and the one redeeming quality of this film, is the totally out of place cop show jazz/funk soundtrack. I really expected to see some Ford LTDs chasing through San Fransisco when the music got going. There's some great music in here, aside from the cowboy band (and all the horribly out of time clapping.)

Finally, this was the last film featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 before it left it's local market and headed to the Comedy Channel. This was another of the infamous Sandy Frank's syndicated TV edits with terrible dubbing and vile panning and scanning.

WTF presents essentially the region 2 disc with subtitles, new menus and an isolated music track. The video quality is alright, better than the pan & scan version but nothing you're going to show off your HD TV with. I really have no complaints with the disc, I just don't consider it an essential purchase unless you're a kaiju completist.