Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (1988)

I’m just going to be plain about this.  I’m not a fan of snakes.  I realize that there are people out there (maybe even one or two reading this) who love them.  I realize that, like most animals, they don’t have it innately in for humans.  I realize that my fears of them are massively unfounded and irrational.  But that’s the point.  Many times, fear is irrational.  It’s a ping deep in the darkest parts of the human mind that puts you on edge.  It’s the idea that there may be some nefarious lurker in the basement with you, over there in the part with no lights, just waiting to spring on you as you pass by.  Fear is the unknown.  Fear is ignorance.  Having said that, I still don’t think that, even if I knew everything under the sun there is to know about snakes, I would trust them in the slightest.  This goes back to my deep-rooted distrust of most things in this world.  Call me a pessimist, but I prefer the term pragmatist.  For instance, I love dogs, but I wouldn’t trust a strange one as far as I could throw it (and what with my bad back and all…).  This, of course, cuts me off from certain life experiences, but you know what?  I think I’m good with that (a mindset some folks just can’t seem to wrap their heads around).  Would I have the same phobia about snakes if I had a pet snake like Mozler (where this name came from is anyone’s guess, and my spelling is going solely from the way it sounded in the film) in Godfrey Ho’s Thunder of Gigantic Serpent (aka Daai Se Wong aka Terror Serpent)?  Possibly, but I’d still take Lassie over this any day.

Thunder cracks on the soundtrack, and snakes pour out of a mountainside.  Why?  Because.  Tense villain Solomon practices his beer can target practice and declares his great need to own a formula that makes plants (and soon animals, natch) huge so he can dominate the world food market.  Scientists in league with the military (who, if my eyes deceive me, have the Harley Davidson logo on their berets) kick off something called Thunder Project when their base is set upon by Solomon’s henchmen.  Young Ting Ting plays with her beloved and obedient Mozler, stumbles upon the formula, and – Voila! - next thing you know, Mozler is Kong-sized (or in this case, I suppose it would be more appropriate to say Manda-sized).  Oh, and Ted Fast (Pierre Kirby) is inexplicably on the case, too.

Humans (with or without special abilities) with special friends and/or pets (who almost certainly have special abilities) have been around for, what seems like, eons.  In everything from Flipper to E.T. to Willard and back again, there is a commune forged between the innocence of youth and nature (films like Willard and Stanley and so forth are slight exceptions in regards to innocence [though their protagonists normally start off as rather ingenuous before heading down a dark path], but I think it means something that the main characters in films like those are typically adults, not children).  Kids have the ability in films like this to touch something that adults usually can’t, and I think it comes from their purity.  Filmic kids see the world differently, and have none of the jaded perspectives of folks like their parents, authority figures, and so on.  This point of view is what creates the rapport children have with the natural (and sometimes supernatural) world.  Their love for each other is unconditional, and they would go to the ends of the Earth for one another (yet it’s often the non-human character who winds up making the sacrifice for the human and not the other way around).  Ting Ting and Mozler get along like a house on fire (the snake even saves the girl from an actual one), and Mozler appears to have the brain capacity of, if not a college graduate, a fourth grader.  He understands what Ting Ting says and nods in agreement with her when she asks him questions.  This is before he grows.  Afterwards, they toss a ball back and forth to each other.  But, as I’ve been trying to intimate, I don’t think it’s that Mozler is special in and of himself, so much as it is Ting Ting who is able to bring this out in the serpent.  Had the snake been with another child, I don’t think he would have been nearly so exceptional (and if Ting Ting had a pet lepidopteran, she may have inadvertently created Mothra).

Knowing what little I do about Ho’s work, I was kind of surprised at how many special effects are on display in this film.  Mozler is usually depicted as a duo of hand puppets, one for his head and one for his tail, with his midsection conveniently hidden out of frame, though we do get a life sized prop of his giant head that Ting Ting rides around on for a bit.  I’m a sucker for miniature work and practical monster effects, even when they don’t quite stick the landing (I am, for example, perfectly fine with the marionette from The Giant Claw).  That is not to say that the effects are very good, but they are plentiful and kind of fun.

Ho was notorious for making Frankenstein films.  In other words, he (and frequent producing partner Joseph Lai) would buy the rights to one film, shoot some additional scenes (oftentimes with white actors to give them, I’m guessing, an international flavor) and then edit everything together in a patchwork fashion whose seams not only show but also threaten to burst open at the slightest touch.  This is why many of his films feel like two films smashed together (or three of four, for all I know); Because they were.  This also explains the schizophrenic, disjointed, nature of his films.  Scenes rarely lead one into another.  Characters (like our own Ted Fast) act as if they are in their own storyline which ties in only tangentially to the main storyline, popping up every so often to have a martial arts scuffle and then disappearing again from the film for a long stretch (or even the remainder of the runtime).  It’s an economy of filmmaking (one could even call it a dearth of economy of filmmaking) that leads to some very odd choices (and what I would argue is the primary reason for Ho’s fanbase).  Characters often have information there is no way they could possibly have just to keep the movie hopping along.  Sequences just happen for no motivated, structured reason.  There are long scenes of characters watching one another and then reporting back to their superiors rather than actually taking any sort of action or talking and saying nothing outside of some exposition and filler.  Still and all, I did find myself enjoying this film to an extremely minor degree, lumps and all.  If you’re familiar with what a Godfrey Ho film is like, you know precisely what you’re getting here.  If you’re not familiar with his oeuvre, this is as good a place to start as any.

MVT:  Giant Mozler is the tops for me.  I have always loved giant monsters, I always will, and Thunder of Gigantic Serpent shows their giant monster quite often (wires and all), so I got my fix.

Make or Break:  The Make is the first time you realize that Mozler is actually reacting to what Ting Ting is saying to him.  If you can go along with this, you can go along with everything else in the film.

Score:  6/10

The Colossus of New York (1958)

Say what you will about the 1950s (and I know a lot of folks today love to bemoan how repressed and repressive it was underneath a false veneer of happiness; I personally love watching films from that time because the filmmakers had to be extremely sneaky and creative in order to discuss more subversive/unpopular topics), but that era had a tremendous amount of style to burn.  The future was still being sold as a predominantly positive thing back then, with everyone soon to receive their own personal jet packs and live in utopian cities comprised of fully automated houses that would take care of people’s every need and whim (and have a look at Tex Avery’s World of Tomorrow cartoons for some great parodying of notions like these, even though I believe they may have been produced in the Forties).  The future was sculpted in glass and metal, and it was a glorious interweaving of smooth curves and jagged angles.  It felt like the future should feel.  Fast forward to today, where the future lives.  It is still carved largely from metal and glass, but no one is buying its promises any longer.  People have become cynical to the point that no matter how good looking the future may be on a surface level, it’s not to be trusted.  There is an undercurrent of grime that just makes it all feel ugly and worthless, no matter how attractively designed.  We’re not encouraged to think about a positive future anymore, and when we do, we’re deemed naïve, unrealistic.  I know this because it has happened to me.  Further, I’ve become the cynic I used to think was holding me back.  I tend to criticize the negatives before I laud the positives.  Despite this, there is an ember of hope that still burns within me.  The odds on it being fanned into a flame are slim (there’s that cynic again), but it exists, and it is this sliver of light on which Eugene Lourie’s The Colossus of New York turns, even while journeying to some dark places.

Dr. Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin) applauds his brother Henry’s (John Baragrey) innovations in automation, while he himself is gearing up (no pun intended) to accept a Peace Prize (I don’t recall the actual name “Nobel” being bandied about) for his work in fighting world hunger.  After Jeremy is killed in an accident, his neurosurgeon father, William (Otto Kruger), suddenly has a stroke of genius(-ish): with Henry’s assistance, he transplants Jeremy’s brain into a robot body.  Meanwhile, Henry starts to make time with Jeremy’s widow(-ish), Ann (Mala Powers), and surely all of this will work out splendidly, right?

When people think of Science Fiction from the 50s, most automatically conjure films of the Atom Age Monster ilk like Them! and The Deadly Mantis or Space Adventure films like Fantastic Planet and Queen of Outer Space.  But there were more toned down, slightly grittier movies to be found as well, and The Colossus of New York is one of those.  The film doesn’t fit snugly into a single category, and if anything it may be described as a Robot Gothic Melodrama.  It largely takes place at the Spensser family manse, and it’s all about the secrets and twisted inter-relationships among a family that appears happy so long as everything is going along smoothly (read: “a false veneer of happiness”) .  The chief antagonist is patriarch William.  He is obsessed with his son Jeremy and the idea of continuing his work to the point of monomania.  In contrast is Henry, who, even though he is well-regarded in his field and is essential to William’s scheme, is judged as the lesser brother by his father.  Henry’s pursuit of Ann, while a genuine expression of long held emotions, has an air of bitter revenge to it as well.  What better way to get back at his dismissive father than by taking something that meant so much to his favored sibling?  Ann and son, Billy (Charles Herbert, whom you’ll recognize from that same year’s The Fly), are the emotional lynchpin of the film, although even in that respect, the filmmakers are more concerned with the men of the family.  The relationship between the Colossus and Billy is far more important to the film and its characters than the relationship between Ann and pretty much everybody, except in how that motivates the deranged actions of the robot.  Billy is the Spensser male untouched by madness or poor decision-making skills.  He, above them all, recognizes good from evil instantly, and he doesn’t allow appearances to deceive him (he does, after all, trust a giant, metal man with a creepy voice within moments of meeting him).  It’s Billy who most deserves to be saved from this family, and it’s he who can deliver salvation to them (especially his dad), because he’s innocent (cynics might argue that he’s naïve).

The film also touches on ideas of identity, and it does so in several interesting ways.  The first and most obvious deals with the concept of the relationship between the mind and the physical, human body.  This is even brought up directly in a conversation between William and family friend John Carrington (Robert Hutton).  William scoffs at John’s idea that a person’s soul is the synthesis between their body and mind.  William believes that a person’s mind can exist and continue on without a flesh-and-blood body.  John espouses that the human mind removed from the human body is removed from humanity.  And of course, he is ultimately proved correct.  Once Jeremy’s brain is encased in the Colossus’ body, it’s a swift progression into inhumanity and insanity.  This is displayed in the Colossus’ visual perception and communication ability.  When he is first activated, Lourie provides the audience with shots from the robot’s perspective.  The screen is filled with static and television scan lines.  He is (and we are) instantly lost to the real world (of the film), a watcher from within his new body.  His voice, likewise, is unearthly.  It warbles and crackles, and many times it elevates into piercing screams that can unsettle even the hardiest of wills.  His face is inexpressive, and his voice is frightening.  Unable to articulate his “soul,” Jeremy’s mind descends into madness that much quicker.  There is a theory that the process of transforming Jeremy into a cyborg is flawed and may, in fact, have caused his derangement.  The implication is that, because this new body was made by men and not by nature/God/what have you, it is even more imperfect, more distant from the natural world, and therefore more impersonal/evil.  Nevertheless, this same detachment from humanity grants Jeremy a sense of ESP, as well as the power to (mechanically) hypnotize mere human minds.  With the granting of these new, formidable powers comes the classic corruption we’re perennially warned about, yet only the physically weakest of the characters is powerful enough to triumph in this spiritual conflict.

The Blu-ray of The Colossus of New York from Olive Films is pretty darned nice, despite its lack of extras.  The picture quality is exquisite, with deep pools of black accentuating the Noir-esque lighting and compositions.  The Mono audio is enhanced for DTS-HD, and it really brings out the sound effects as well as Van Cleave’s spare, stirring piano score.  I think it would be very difficult to top this release in the presentation department.  Check it out.

MVT:  The Colossus is one of those iconic, yet still somehow rarely spoken of monstrous creations that just works, especially for its budget constraints.  Charles Gemora and Ralph Jester’s design elegantly gives the character a sense of massive power without showing you every last rivet.

Make or Break:  You can see some influence of this film on Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop in the scene where the Colossus first awakens, and it’s an astonishing scene that feels offbeat for its time.  If the Dutch director never saw this film, I would be surprised, but then again, great minds do think alike.  Or so I’m told.

Score:  6.75/10        

Blue Monkey (1987)

Marwella (Helen Hughes) has a small greenhouse which she tends with great passion.  Another of her (not-so-great) passions is her handyman friend Fred (Sandy Webster), and Marwella is delighted when he asks her to dinner.  After Fred pricks his finger on a plant Marwella had received from the Micronesia area but had been doing poorly of late, he collapses and is rushed to the local hospital.  A large, larval worm emerges from his mouth, and suddenly a little prick is the least of Fred’s troubles.

William Fruet’s Blue Monkey (aka Insect! aka Invasion of the Bodysuckers) is yet another in the long, long line of films I read about way back in the day in the pages of magazines like Fangoria (issue 69, in fact).   And like a great many of those (another would be Slaughterhouse, which I reviewed on this very site some time ago), they slipped through the cracks of time and eventually faded to little more than distant memories.  But before that occurred, they became grand flights of fancy as they played out in the theater of my mind.  Never mind that, one, the theater of my mind would never translate into a coherent film narrative, and two, there is a reason why some things are best left unknown.  Thus, this film looks good on paper, while it ultimately fails on screen.  This is not for lack of material, mind you.  In fact, part of the reason that it fails is the sheer amount of material in it.  By that same token, this same volume is what marks Blue Monkey as a slight standout in the Horror genre.  Just for all the wrong reasons.

If you were simply to read the above synopsis, you would think this was a straight ahead monster flick (or maybe a melodrama about two elderly people falling in love and failing in health).  However, you have a subplot involving the disease that sprang from the same plant as the insect.  You have Jim (Steve Railsback), our hero cop, who is only in the hospital in the first place because his partner Oscar (Peter Van Wart) was shot in the stomach while on duty.  You have the comedy stylings of SCTV alumni Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke as the Bakers, who are expecting their first baby any second now.  You have the tiresome exploits of the grating child patients (one of whom is played by the soon-to-be-worth-a-damn Sarah Polley).  You also have the notion that the hospital is actually a remodeled insane asylum.  But for as intriguing as any one of these elements may be, they fail because they never form a cohesive whole when they’re all put together.  Each of these subplots seems to exist in different films from this one, and they rarely intermingle with each other in any meaningful way.  This would be fine and dandy if the disparate pieces were at least entertaining in their own right, but they’re more missed opportunities as a whole rather than successful fragments.

If filmmakers like David Cronenberg have taught us anything, it is that our bodies hate us and are looking for the first available opportunity to revolt and kill us.  Diseases, viruses, what-have-yous are scary because they are faceless (unless you’re an epidemiologist or the like).  They are the brutality, the caprice, of nature incarnate in much the same way as the animal/insect world.  They cannot be reasoned with, or jailed, or chopped into pieces like a flesh and blood enemy might be.  They embody the loss of control we see in a great many Horror films, and worse than that, they do not discriminate (or in so much as they discriminate according to the wishes of filmmakers/storytellers).  You can employ whatever safeguards you like, but if a disease wants to get you, it will get you.  And even if you choose not to believe in the all-pervasive nature of diseases, this is how they are perceived by a vast number of people.  Ergo, they are excellent fodder for genre films.  You might find it risible that Jason Voorhees could be hiding under your bed, waiting to stab you with his index finger, but a disease could already be inside your body, waiting to burst forth, and that’s suddenly not so ludicrous anymore.  Either way, you stand a good chance of seeing your innards on the outside (at least from a cinematic standpoint).  The only difference is whether they’re taken from the outside in or the inside out.

Naturally, one would think that people should feel safe in hospitals (and especially if one is afraid of dying from disease in the first place).  Yet the vast majority of non-medical personnel don’t take a great deal of solace in these institutions, and this is a significant reason why hospitals are excellent locations for Horror stories.  These are places where people are literally paid to stab, cut, and drill the bodies of their customers.  Even if the practitioners aren’t malevolent like we imagine, relishing the torment they bestow on us, there is always the possibility that they are incompetent (and no, that’s not a statement or accusation on my behalf; merely an observation on the general perception/misperception by the average person).  What if you receive the wrong medicine?  What if they amputate the wrong limb?  What if they leave an instrument inside your body?  The point is people die in hospitals every day.  You may survive your surgery, but there’s no way to tell if there won’t be complications afterward, from infections, to organ rejections, to just sudden fits of death.  Every patient in a hospital is vulnerable, and there are more than enough dark corridors and eerily silent rooms to creep out the most stalwart among us.

Because the threats in Blue Monkey are so impersonal, one would think that it would help greatly if the characters weren’t.  Sadly, they are all stereotypes of the flattest variety.  Dr. Carson (Gwynyth Walsh) is the classic, capable female doctor who instantly turns into a Screaming Mimi when faced with things outside her range (read: giant insects).  Marwella and her blind pal Dede (Joy Coghill) are the matter-of-fact, elderly folks who just happen to know more than they think they do.  Jim is the classic hardassed cop who grinds his teeth and flips out at the smallest piece of bad news (being played by Railsback doesn’t really help in this regard).  The children all act like little adults in that oh-look-how-cute-they-are-but-not-really way that simply makes them annoying rather than charming.  Even John Vernon gets to briefly strut his bureaucratic jerkoff routine for the camera.  Nevertheless, not one of these people manages to be engaging, so following them around on their little misadventures is nothing less than heavy lifting for the viewer.   This is one of those films I think it’s better to read about than experience, and that’s pretty sad.

MVT:  Once again, I have to give the award to the practical effects.  They’re cool to look at when they show up.  That said, they’re shot in such an insignificant fashion (quick cuts, low lighting, strobe lighting, shaky handheld) that you never get to fully appreciate the work that went into them.

Make or Break:  The first scene with the kiddy characters was like a prelude to the kiss of death the filmmakers would deliver just a short way down the road.  

Score:  5.5/10