The Beast In Space, Atragon and what not.

Well been busy busy busy these last few days no real time to ponder or write.

Anyway this will have to be quick.

One of the problems with doing any kind of soft core movie is that you have to find people who a) can at least act a little and b) look good and are willing to be naked on screen – this is of course not a problem with Hardcore where plots – if they exist – are along with the lines of people like to screw.

Anyway – the Europeans along with their superior health care have long been a lot better at the soft-core sex with some kind of story film than the US has been. Why? Blessed if I know, maybe they aren’t as screwed up about sex as we are – and just to add from what I’ve seen, sexual hang ups are the LEAST of the Japan’s problems.

The exception that proves the rule is a rotten little Italian/German/someothereuropeancountry production of The Beast from Space – a low rent combination of Star Wars, a little Indiana Jones tossed in and soft core sex poured all over it. It should be a guilty pleasure/utter hoot but it isn’t. For one the acting is really really bad as in: can we read this line with any less emotion maybe? Or with a little more stilted in your voice –please? And since this is in Italian and not dubbed you can't blame this on the dubbing.

The story is utter gibberish about looking for some kind of metal on an alien base on Venus – there’s a robot brain, hordes of extras who die over and over and over again (we’ll show the audience they are robots then they’ll understand why they all look the same –it’s brilliant!) a dream sequence that puts you to sleep, some sort of space pirate who wanders about; tons of dialogue like “check the R56 condenser.” “The R56 condenser reads alpha sir” (Side Note: up until star wars sci-fi films would waste what felt like years with this kind of nonsense ) – and there is a guy made-up to look like a Satyr: Horns. Lots of hair, cloven hoofs for feet and the film gives us several loving shots of his package.

Listen I know a lot of people who want to be actors and a lots of people who want to be in movies but really, when you find yourself agreeing to have extra hair pasted on your butt with the addition of wearing cloven hooves while otherwise naked while the cameras are rolling , well at that point I think you need to make some major decisions about your career choice.

No of course the story in one of these soft core epics is really not important. The only reason that I mention it was that sex scenes were, well how shall I say it – pretty damn boring – even for soft core early 80’s – it looked like gobs of pale white flesh wiggling for some reason – not very attractive, for a few moments I thought maybe this could be shown to teen agers as part of those abstinence only classes:

“See kids? Does that look like anybody is enjoying themselves? Of course not adults only do it because they loathe themselves and this helps.”

But it wouldn’t work – Teenagers aren’t that stupid – utterly self absorbed yes – stupid no.

Meantime got to finally watch front to back one of Toho’s non-Godzilla sci-fi films –Atragon about a Japanese SuperSub vs the Mu Empire (Mu being the Pacific Ocean version of Atlantis) the film was made in 1963 as Toho’s golden age was getting in full stride and features the aforementioned Super-Sub Atragon which can go deeper underwater than any submarine, fly and burrow underground like a steel mole. In short the usual impossible machine that only Toho can make – a version shows up in Godzilla Final Wars but let’s let that go. No sense in getting full on geek this evening.

The film is interesting for a couple of things – For one it features Manda, who most folks only remember from a cameo in Destroy All Monsters. Manda isn’t much as Toho monsters go – it’s looks a lot like a traditional Asian dragon long and thin with little legs ; it’s worshiped by Mu and it’s destroyed rather easily by Atragon’s cold cannon (something to do with absolute zero don’t ask what). It suffers the same fate in Godzilla Final Wars but again let’s not geek out too much.

Actually the most interesting part of the film is a debate or an examination of Japan Then/Now. The Atragon has been developed by a group of Japanese Sailors and scientists on an isolated Pacific Island, The conflict comes between the attitude of the Postwar Japanese and these isolated Sailors (including the Captain) – they at first refuse to use the sub against the Mu Empire because the sub is designed to attack Japan’s enemies (Mu was saying bad things about Japan, but had not by this phase in the movie done anything specifically rotten to Japan)- the word they use to describe their feelings is translated in the subtitles as patriotism but that’s not quite accurate but there really isn’t a word in the English language or exact combination of words that can describe pre-war Japan’s mind state – it was part Samurai code of the warrior , part reverence, part religious duty towards the state/emperor, part nationalism run amok but however you define it, it was why Japanese fought to the death on the islands in the pacific and were willing to strap themselves into airplanes loaded with bombs and dive them into ships. Post war Japan when through massive changes and part of that was a rejection of this mind set which to the more modern Japanese way of thinking had brought only heartache death and misery to the people.

There is a rather angry debate in the middle of the film about this as both sides state their case. Honda comes down in the end on the more we’re part of the world modern Japan but he does give the other side its innings.

I have to say I found it rather sly of I. Honda the director to slip all this into a Sci-Fi movie and make it a rational part of the plot rather than a “message” that he wanted to paste onto the film – like some of the more embarrassing original Star Trek episodes Eden for example.

Well that’s enough for Sunday

Details on our new shows and other things coming soon.

Until then – Peace Love Manda!

Sick Day Movies.

Wasn’t feeling well yesterday.

You know that seems to be the intro to the typical self absorbed blogger BS. “there I was x, y and z and you know what happened?”

We’ve all read them. I’ve written them. And frankly these days unless X, Y and Z are interesting as in “there I was getting my costume cleaned and repaired after the last furry convention” (don’t know what a furry is – check the web. Honestly some of the things that people will do to get off just boggle my mind. You have to wonder what the hell happened to screwing. It reminds me of an old Doonesbury strip where Uncle Duke is being driven to lecture some young republicans by Zonker. As they are driving along Duke is taking some kind of drug “what’s that?” Zonker asks. Duke says something like “The penal glands of rocky mountain goat” and there is a moment of silence.
“What ever happened to grass?” Zonker asks at last.
“I don’t know. You can’t even get busted for it anymore.”
That’s the sense I get trolling the web. What you’d take as really weird is now just vanilla baseline perversion these days.

Ah – that wasn’t what I was going to write about but there you are.

anyway back to yesterday – I have been promising myself that I would write about how fantastic Argoman from the movie of the same name is a dick but alas I find that movie was so unpleasant and so nasty in spirit that writing about it was just too damn painful. It’s not like an insult to my intelligence like a lot of films such as Cloverfield was, those I can write about until the cows return to their domestic abode, no this was just painful to watch and write about so I’m just going to give up, unless there is a major request for my review of an obscure Italian superhero film there is no point in putting me through that. I’m sure MYST3K looked this over and opted instead for Puma man.

So as I was saying I wasn’t feeling well yesterday and ended up when I wasn’t sleeping – sitting on my couch staring at some bad movies that all come in this package of 50 films called Nightmare Worlds. I’d paid about $15 for it and frankly I was over charged.

Still I did learn some things.

Fred Williamson made some god awful films in Italy in the 80’s one of them was something called Warriors of the Wasteland – dreadful acting dreadful special effects and a story line that was – well I fell asleep on this (I told you I wasn’t feeling up to snuff) and after rewinding to see what I missed realized that had I managed to stay awake I’d still be as confused as I was when I woke up. The story such as it is involves Fred and this other guy named Scorpion who fight against some white clad guys after a nuclear war. The only thing I remember well from the film was the Scorpion character spent the last 1/3rd of the film wearing a Plexiglas breastplate. Something for the ladies I guess.

Then I fell asleep to Werewolf Woman which you wouldn’t think I would given the amount of nudity and gore in the film but well you know 1970’s gore is well 1970’s gore and these days not that scary or even gross. The story a woman is raped as a young girl and as a result has issues with men that are resolved by her tearing their throats out – it’s albeit a more complicated than that but that’s about it. There’s a real film lurking in there somewhere as the woman deals with the horror by becoming convinced that she is possessed by the spirit of her ancestor who was said to be a werewolf.

The thing is – nowadays werewolves and vampires just aren’t scary anymore – crazy people remain scary but the whole truing into a beast thing has lost its zing at least movie wise.

The last film was a 1950’s relic called The Unknown World. The story consists of 5 scientists (one a woman) and a playboy ner do well who go deep into the bowels of the earth to seek a place where humanity can survive the coming atomic war. (as I said very 50’s – I don’t mean to scoff as we dodged a damn big bullet there – I mean terrorists earthquakes tidal waves yada yada yada are all rotten but the day after day over hang of 1,000’s warheads ready to go on minutes notice with the promise the nobody survives this can warp people in ways we will never really understand because it happened to us).

The film runs into the problem that a lot of films set underground in the bowels of the earth have – once you get them down there isn’t a lot that can happen baring discovering of a lost civilization in the depths – and apart from that all of it does happen – cave ins – bad air, no water, fighting among the crew but you kept thinking – why was this film made? – okay there is the anti-war or more accurately anti apathy message (in the end we can’t run away from this) but really you can almost feel the writers desperation “what the hell do we do now?” “How about giant bats? They live in caves.” “Nope we don’t have the budget for it.” “Damn” and it all ends with survivors re-emerging into the light of day and their problems solved – except for the dead folks.

Well – I’d do more but I have to learn this song. That’s in Spanish. I have to remind myself not to have these really good ideas anymore.

The picture is from a series of Godzilla Hykius - all of them are wonderful go see them at http://godzillahaiku.tumblr.com/

Peace, Love, I really should have paid more attention in High School when I was taking Spanish.