Category Archives: Film Review

Love On The Shattered Lens: Romeo and Juliet (dir by Franco Zeffirelli)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Now that the Oscars and the Sundance Film Festival are over with, it’s time to start a new series of reviews here on the Shattered Lens.  For the rest of February, I will be looking at some films that deal with the universal topic of love.  Some of these films will be romantic.  Some of them will be sad.  Some of them might be happy.  Some of them might be scary.  Some of them might be good.  And some of them might be bad.  In fact, to be honest, I haven’t really sat down and made out a definite list of which films I’ll be reviewing for Love On The Shattered Lens.  Instead, I figure I’ll just pick whatever appeals to me at the moment and we’ll see what happens!

Let’s start things off with the 1968 film version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

“Oh my God!  Romeo and Juliet are hippies!”

Well, that’s not quite true.  I mean, it is true that Romeo (played by Leonard Whitting) and Juliet (Olivia Hussey) are played by actual teenagers in this version of the classic play.  It’s also true that, even though the film is set in a painstakingly recreated version of 15th century Verona, almost all of the actors have what would have then been contemporary haircuts.  Romeo, Benvolio (Bruce Robinson), and Mercutio (John McEnery) all have longish hair, dress colorfully, and look like they could all be in the same band, covering the Beatles and writing songs about dodging the draft.  Even Tybalt (Michael York) seems a bit counter-cultural in this version.

As played by Olivia Hussey, Juliet comes across as being far more rebellious in this version of Romeo and Juliet than in some of the others.  It’s hard to imagine that Olivia Hussey’s Juliet would have much patience with Juliets played by Norma Shearer, Claire Danes, Hailee Steinfeld, or even the version of the character that Natalie Wood played in West Side Story.  Olivia Hussey’s Juliet is always one step away from running away from home and hitch-hiking to the free Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway.  Like the audience that the film was intended for, Romeo and Juliet both know that their parents are out-of-touch and that their friends are only temporary.  Embracing love and pursuing all that life has to offer is what matters.

Was this the first film version of Romeo and Juliet to make explicit that the two characters had consummated their marriage?  I imagine it was since it was apparently also the first version of Romeo and Juliet to feature on-screen nudity.  That’s quite a contrast to the largely chaste 1936 version, in which Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard both seemed determined to keep a respectable distance from each other.  Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey have an amazing chemistry together.  They’re the two prettiest people in Verona and they just look like they belong together.  From the minute they meet, you believe not only that they would be attracted to each other but that they’re also meant to be lovers.

Of course, we all know the story.  The Capulets and the Montagues are rival families.  Juliet is a Capulet.  Romeo is a Montague.  Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, kills Romeo’s friend Mercutio.  Romeo kills Tybalt.  Juliet fakes her death.  Romeo commits suicide.  Juliet wakes up and does the same.  The Prince shows up and yells at everyone.  This film version moves around some of the events and it leaves out a few scenes but it actually improves on the play.  For instance, poor Paris (Roberto Bissaco) doesn’t die in this version.  Seriously, I always feel bad for Paris.

Throughout it all, director Franco Zeffirelli emphasizes the youth of the characters.  It’s not just Romeo and Juliet who are presented as young.  The entire Montague and Capulet feud is largely portrayed as being just a silly turf war between two competing high school cliques.  When Tybalt and Mercutio have their fateful duel, it starts out largely as a joke and, when Tybalt kills Mercutio, it comes across as if it was an accident on Tybalt’s part.  Tybalt appears to be just as shocked as anyone, like a scared kid holding a smoking gun and trying to explain that he didn’t know it was loaded when he pulled the trigger.  When Mercutio curses both the Capulets and the Montagues, it’s all the more powerful because Mercutio is undoubtedly wondering how the duel could have so quickly gone from playful taunting to a fatal stabbing.  The entire conflict between the Montague and the Capulets is a war that makes no sense, one in which the young are sacrificed while the old retreat to the safety of their homes.

Romeo and Juliet was a hit in 1968 and it’s still an achingly romantic film.  Whiting and Hussey generate more chemistry in just the balcony scene than Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire Danes did in the entirety of Baz Luhrmann’s version of the tragic tale.  Along with being a box office hit, it was also a critical hit.  The Academy nominated it for best picture, though it lost to Oliver!

City on Fire (1979, directed by Alvin Rakoff)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In an unnamed city somewhere in the midwest, Herman Stover (Jonathan Welsh) is fired from his job at an oil refinery.  Herman does what any disgruntled former employee would do.  He runs around the refinery and opens up all the valves and soon, the entire location is covered in a combustible mix of oil and chemicals.  One spark is all it takes for the refinery to explode and the entire city to turn into a raging inferno.

While Fire Chief Risley (Henry Fonda, getting a special “And starring” credit for doing what probably amounted to a few hours of work) sits in his office and gives orders to his subordinates, Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) cares for the injured at the city’s new hospital.  Also at the hospital is Mayor William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen) and local celebrity Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec (Susan Clark), who is having an affair with the mayor.  Diana also went to high school with Herman and he still has a crush on her.  When he shows up at the hospital to try to hit on her, he’s roped into working as a paramedic.  Also helping out at the hospital is Nurse Shelley Winters.  (The character may be named Andrea Harper but she’s played by Shelley Winters and therefore, she is Shelley Winters.)  At the local television station, news producer Jimbo (James Franciscus) tries to keep his anchorwoman, Maggie Grayson (Ava Gardner), sober enough to keep everyone up to date on how much longer the city is going to be on fire.

Mostly because it was featured on an early pre-Comedy Central episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, City on Fire has a reputation for being a terrible movie but, as far as 70s disaster films are concerned, it’s not that bad.  The special effects are actually pretty impressive, especially during the first half of the film and there’s really not a weak link to be found in the cast.  It’s always strange to see Leslie Nielsen playing a serious role but, before Airplane! gave him a chance to display his skill for deadpan comedy, he specialized in playing stuffy and boring authority figures.  He actually does a good job as Mayor Dudley and it’s not the film’s fault that, for modern audiences, it’s impossible to look at Leslie Nielsen without instinctively laughing.  Of course, there is a scene towards the end where Leslie Nielsen picks up a fire hose and starts spraying people as they come out of the hospital and it was hard not to laugh at that because it felt like a scene straight from The Naked Gun.

What the film does suffer from is an overabundance of cliches and bad dialogue.  From the minute the movie starts, you know who is going to live and who isn’t and sometimes, City on Fire tries too hard to give everyone a connection.  It’s believable that Herman would be stupid enough to start a fire because we all know that happens in the real world.  What’s less believable is that, having started the fire, Herman would then go to the hospital and keep asking Diana if she remembers him from high school.  It’s not asking too much to believe that Diana, as wealthy local celebrity, would be invited to the opening of a new hospital.  It’s stretching things, though, to then have her deliver a baby while the hospital is in flames around her.

Coming out at the tail end of the disaster boom, City on Fire didn’t do much at the box office and would probably be forgotten if not for the MST 3K connection.  A year after City on Fire was released, Airplane! came out and, through the power of ridicule, put a temporary end to the entire disaster genre.

Documentary Review: Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth (dir by David O’Neill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was Lord Lucan?

He was a British aristocrat, born not only wealthy but also with all the right connections.  His birth name was John Bingham but he eventually inherited the title of Lord Lucan when his father died in 1964.  At the time, the new Lord Lucan was 30 years and had been married for less than a year.  Lord Lucan was handsome and charming, so much so that Cubby Broccoli considered him for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  Lucan had no formal acting experience but he had the right look.  Nothing, of course, ever came of the idea of casting Lucan as Bond.  It’s rumored that he may have done a screen test but nothing can be said for sure.  Would Lord Lucan have had better luck with the role than George Lazenby?  Well, it’s hard to imagine how he possible could have had worst luck.

Like James Bond, Lord Lucan loved to gamble.  Unlike Bond, who was rarely seen to lose a hand whenever he sat down at the poker table, Lucan was not a particularly good gambler.  In fact, he lost so often that he was often broke.  Fortunately, his rich friends usually took care of him whenever he needed money or someone to testify as to his courage whenever he was accused of neglecting his wife, Lady Lucan.  When Lord and Lady Lucan separated in 1972, it forced the members of British high society to pick sides and most of them sided with Lord Lucan.  That remained true even in 1974 when Lord Lucan was accused of murdering his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.  Rivett, who bore a superficial resemblance to Lady Lucan, was bludgeoned to death with a piece of lead pipe while making a cup of tea in Lady Lucan’s home.  Lady Lucan claimed that she came across Lord Lucan in the house and that he admitted to having attacked Sandra in a case of mistaken identity.  Meanwhile, shortly after the murder, Lord Lucan reportedly called his mother and told her that he had just happened to be driving by his old home when he saw an unidentified man fighting with his wife.

The same night that Sandra Rivett was murdered, Lord Lucan vanished.  Both the police and Lady Lucan speculated that Lord Lucan had committed suicide by drowning himself in the Thames.  However, for years after Sandra Rivett’s murder, there were regular sightings of Lord Lucan around the world.  While many of those sightings were undoubtedly due to hysteria caused by the extensive press coverage surrounding the case, there were other sightings that seemed to be a bit more credible.  There was much speculation that Lucan’s powerful friends had helped him escape from Britain and he had relocated to either southern Africa or Australia.  As late as 2012, sightings of Lord Lucan were still being investigated.  If Lucan were still alive, he would be 86 years old today.

The story of Lord Lucan and the murder of Sandra RIvett is a fascinating one and the 2017 documentary, Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth, is a must-see for everyone interested in the case.  Produced for British television, this documentary is essentially an hour-long interview with Lady Lucan, during which she discusses not only her abusive marriage but also her feelings about the question of whether or not Lucan was still alive.  (For the record, she felt that he committed suicide “as a nobleman would do.”)  The documentary also features video that was shot by Lucan himself in the 60s, showing himself, his wife, and their wealthy friends touring Europe and basically acting like members of the idle rich.  Lady Lucan discusses how the notoriety surrounding the case affected her own life, leading to her becoming estranged from her children.  When asked if she was a “cold” towards her children, Lady Lucan chillingly replies, “All of my relationships are cold.”  When asked why she once claimed that Lord Lucan was still alive and hiding out somewhere in either Europe or Africa, Lady Lucan replies that she was “drugged up” when she said it and, as such, had no control over anything she said.  The documentary than shares a clip of a very stoned-looking Lady Lucan being interviewed in 1981 and saying that her former husband was still alive.

It’s an interesting story and a rather sad one.  Lord Lucan: My Husband, the Truth is a documentary that should appeal to anyone who is interested in true crime, missing fugitives, and the scandals of the very rich.  Despite the rumors of him still being alive, Lord Lucan was declared dead in 2016 so that his son could inherit his title and his place in the House of Lords.  As for Lady Lucan, she committed suicide shortly after being interviewed for this documentary.

Lord Lucan: My Husband, The Truth can be viewed on Amazon Prime.

 

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 (1976, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 begins with ominous shots of a crowded California interstate.  It’s the 4th of July weekend and old people are returning home, young people are looking for a party, and Sergeant Sam Marcum (Robert Conrad) of the California Highway Patrol is looking for a killer.  When one car swerves into the next lane and hits another, it leads to a chain reaction as hundreds of cars, trucks, and one motorcycle crash into each other.  While the vehicles crash, we see the people inside of them.  There’s Buddy Ebsen!  There’s Vera Miles!  There’s Sue Lyon (of Lolita fame) on the back of a motorcycle!  In a voice-over, Sam tells us that the accident will be classified as being due to “mechanical failure” and that 14 people are going to die as a result.  He might be one of them.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is a 70s disaster film so, after the pile-up, the movie flashed back 48 hours and we get to know everyone whose lives are going to eventually collide on Interstate 5.  Erica (Vera Miles) is recently divorced and trying to get back into the dating scene.  Albert (Buddy Ebsen) is trying to bring some joy to his terminally ill wife’s final days.  Lee (Scott Jacoby) and Penny (Bonnie Ebsen) are the hippies who are trying to get to Big Sur without getting arrested.  Burnsey (Sue Lyon) loves her biker boyfriend.  Some of them will survive the pile-up.  Some of them will not.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is an above average made-for-TV movie.  It’s got a notable cast and the movie does a good job of mixing together’s everyone’s subplots.  For instance, Burnsey and a group of bikers show up in the background of several scenes and harass Erica at one point long before the crash on the interstate.  It’s only a 100-minute film so the film doesn’t go into too much detail about everyone’s past but we learn just enough to make everyone stand out.  The crash itself is intense, even when seen today.  Made before the days of CGI, this is a film where the stunt crew definitely earned their paycheck.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a patrolman who is also Sam’s brother-in-law.  I was surprised when I first saw him but as soon as I saw the strained smile and heard the accent, I knew it was him.  Jones’s role is small and probably could have been played by anyone but the mere presence of Tommy Lee Jones definitely makes this film cooler than it would have been otherwise.

One final note: This film was directed by the made-for-TV horror specialist, John Llewellyn Moxey.  Be sure to read Gary Loggins’s tribute to this often underrated director.

Scarred City (1998, directed by Kim Sanzel)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

John Trace (Stephen Baldwin) is a patrolman who has managed to shoot four unarmed suspects in one month.  Most people would say that it might be time to put Trace on desk duty but Lt. Devon (Chazz Palminteri) thinks that Trace will be a perfect addition to the SCAR unit.  SCAR is an elite group of police officers who deal with the city’s worst thugs by gunning them down.  A typical SCAR operation involves setting up a fake adult bookstore just so they can ambush a group of men who come in to rob the place.

Even for someone as trigger happy as John Trace, being a member of SCAR proves to be too much.  When the SCAR team murders a group of gangsters who were having a party in a mansion, Trace is disgusted when two prostitutes are blown away as well.  When he discovers a third prostitute, Candy (Tia Carrere), hiding in an upstairs bedroom, Trace helps her escape.  With both the police and the mob now after them, Trace and Candy try to escape the city.

For some reason, Stephen Baldwin appeared in a lot of direct-to-video action films in the 90s.  I guess it was because he had appeared in The Usual Suspects and, at the time, he was also the cheapest Baldwin brother available.  (The Baldwins were hot commodity in the 90s.  Today, you could probably put William, Daniel, and Stephen all in the same film and still have enough money left over to hire a halfway decent cinematographer.)  Stephen has such a goofy screen presence that it was always strange to see him playing either tough cops or hardened criminals.  In Scarred City, he does that thing where he closes his eyes while delivering his lines and he looks even more awkward handling a gun than usual.

However, for a direct-to-video Stephen Baldwin action film, Scarred City isn’t that bad.  The script is surprisingly witty and even the bad guys get their share of good one-liners.  “Pretty fucking dead, sir,” one of the cops yells to their lieutenant when he asks how one of their partners is handling having been shot.  (Later, the same cop looks at her partner’s dead body and says, “Thanks to his dead ass, we’re going to have a parade.”)  Tia Carrere and Chazz Palmentiri both bring a lot of life to their otherwise underdeveloped roles and the action scenes are violent, exciting, and well-shot, which is good since the last half of the movie is a nonstop chase.  Scarred City may just be a B-movie but it’s a good one.

The Swiss Conspiracy (1976, directed by Jack Arnold)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In The Swiss Conspiracy, David Janssen growls his way through another international crime thriller.

Janssen plays David Christopher, a former Treasury agent who is now living in Geneva.  When a Swiss bank is contacted by blackmailers who threaten to reveal the secret account numbers of some of its most prominent and unsavory clients, the bank’s president, Johann Hurtill (Ray Milland), hires Christopher to find out who is behind the plot.  Unfortunately, one of the account holders is a U.S. gangster named Robert Hayes (John Saxon, naturally) and he’s not happy about having to work with a former fed.

With The Swiss Conspiracy, you know what you’re getting into the minute that the film opens with a narrator giving a lengthy explanation about how Swiss bank accounts work.  This is one of those 70s thriller where the budget is low, the plot is often nonsense, and the entire cast seems to be more interested in hitting the slopes than actually making a convincing movie.  The cast is full of familiar actors who, at the time of filming, had seen better days.  Along with Ray Milland, John Ireland, Anton Diffring, and Elke Sommer all have small roles while “German screen sensation” Senta Berger is cast as the woman who might be in love with David Christopher.  Martin Landau is not in this movie but it certainly feels like he should have been.

David Janssen made a lot of movies like this in the 70s.  Janssen was a good actor and he was especially skilled at playing grizzled tough guys but in The Swiss Conspiracy, he seems to be more interested in checking out the sights than in anything else.  You can’t really blame him because the film was shot on location in Zurich and the local scenery is always more interesting than anything else that’s happening on screen.

The Swiss Conspiracy was directed by Jack Arnold, a veteran B-movie director who was also did The Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man.  His direction in The Swiss Conspiracy is workmanlike and undistinguished but he does make great use of the locations.  The Swiss Conspiracy may not be a great movie but I’ll damned if I don’t want to hop on the next plane and head to Switzerland for the week.

Birds of Prey (dir. by Cathy Yan)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Once upon a time, there was this comic book company called DC. DC was fortunate enough to be owned by Warner Bros. back in 1968. I’ve always thought of this as a good thing, despite not being the best of fans. It meant that any tv show or movie would have the full backing of Warner Bros., and DC would never need to shop around for production and/or distribution  rights for their work. So, when Superman finally happened in 1978, it was a watershed moment in the history of Comic Book films. It would take more than a decade for the WB to finally make a film about a second DC Hero with Tim Burton’s Batman.

But over the last 30 years, we’ve had:

  • 7 Superman Films (5 Original, plus the Singer reboot, the Snyder Reboot and a sequel with Batman v. Superman)
  • 4 Batman Films (4 Original, plus the Nolan Reboot and Snyder sneak-in on Batman v. Superman
  • Green Lantern 
  • Wonder Woman
  • Aquaman
  • Suicide Squad
  • Shazam!

That’s not counting films like Steel, but generally, outside of 2011’s Green Lantern, the support for DC’s character base outside of what they needed for Justice League really wasn’t strong, in my opinion. So getting a movie that stands outside of the usual top tier is worth trying, even if it stutter steps the way Suicide Squad did.

So, Birds of Prey, fully known as Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn) isn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it and give me a bit of hope for what comes next from DC/WB. The film focuses on Harleen Quinzel (Margot Robbie, reprising her role from Suicide Squad), who suffers a bad break up from The Joker. To cope, she gets herself a new place and a new pet hyena (a good throwback to the Paul Dini / Bruce Timm Batman: The Animated Series version of the character). When she runs into mobster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor, Doctor Sleep), he gives her a mission to recover a precious diamond from Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Bosco), a young pickpocket. Also thrown into the hunt for the diamond is Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell, True Blood), who works for Sionis. Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez, Do the Right Thing) is looking to take down Sionis and The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Death Proof), who has her own reasons.

The performances are nice, and it seems like everyone enjoyed themselves. No one really phones in their roles – both McGregor and Robbie excel with their parts, and there’s nothing really wrong with anyone’s work here. I haven’t much to say on that.

The story for Birds of Prey, written by Bumblebee‘s Christina Hodson, is a bit unsteady at first. It makes sense, given Harley’s madness, and makes for some fun exposition in the same way Suicide Squad did. Of particular note are the fight scenes, which feels a lot like what you’d find in John Wick. Birds of Prey has its own particular style.  My only real problem with the film was the change over in Cassandra Cain’s character from the comic, who is pretty dangerous. Bosco’s Cain isn’t really written that way, but her pickpocket abilities does make up for it, somewhat. It’s not a terrible thing, but if you’re expecting the Batgirl you’ve read about, it’s not happening. Additionally, Moviegoers expecting to see either Jared Leto or Ben Affleck will probably be a little disappointed. Birds of Prey works with the inclusion of the two DC majors, but I enjoyed that.

Overall, Birds of Prey is a fun popcorn flick that may not be as strong as Shazam!, but offers quite a bit in the way of humor and action. I’m happy that DC’s taking these chances, and hope they continue to do so going forward.

At least it’s not another Batman film.

New Jersey Drive (1995, directed by Nick Gomez)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

New Jersey Drive takes place in Newark, New Jersey or, as it was known in the 90s, “the car theft capital of the world.”

Jason Petty (Sharron Corley) and Midget (Gabriel Casseus) are teenagers in Newark.  Neither one of them is dumb but, as young African-American males living in the inner city, neither one feels that they have much to look forward to in the future.  They can’t even walk down the street, without getting hassled by the police.  So, they live for the present and that means stealing cars.  At first, stealing cars is just something that they do for fun.  It’s the challenge that attracts them.  However, one night, a cop’s car gets stolen.  That cop is a corrupt racist named Roscoe (Saul Stein) and he is soon going out of his way to make Jason and Midget’s life miserable.

New Jersey Drive may sound like an early version of one of the Fast and Furious films (the first F&F came out six years after New Jersey Drive) but, at heart, New Jersey Drive is less about stealing cars and more about a generation of young men who, because they have nothing to look forward to in the future, have no problem taking dangerous and sometimes stupid risks in the present.  While Midget is the one who truly loves cars and Jason is the one who is mostly just along for the ride, both characters seem to be aware that it’s only a matter of time before they either get caught or get killed for stealing the wrong car.  Today, we would say that Midget and Jason have no respect for authority but can you blame them when the only authority figures that they ever see are racists like Roscoe?  The police in New Jersey Drive come across like an invading army, a sea of white faces driving up and down black neighborhoods and searching for people to arrest.  For all the cars that Jason and Midget steal, they’re just as likely to get in trouble just for walking down the street.

Sometimes, New Jersey Drive is predictable.  In the years immediately following the release of Boyz ‘N the Hood, there were a lot of films about young men growing up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and having to deal with a combination of racist cops and dangerous gangs.  New Jersey Drive‘s story hits a lot of the expected beats but there were also some scenes that took me by surprise.  When one of the two main car thieve is arrested and incarcerated, the film went off in a different direction than what I was expecting.  At first, Jason and Midget seem like stereotypes.  Midget is the wild and crazy friend while Jason is the smart one who is always hanging out with the “wrong crowd.”  By the end of the film, though, both Midget and Jason have shown some unexpected complexity and they both feel like real people instead of just plot devices in a movie.

Nick Gomez, who has done a lot of television work since the release of this film, does a good job directing New Jersey Drive.  The film captures the high that Jason and Midget feel when they successfully steal a car and Gomez also does a good job of capturing the feeling of the world closing in on the two of them as the story unfolds.  New Jersey Drive is an underrated piece of work that still has the power to inspire audiences to stay the Hell out of New Jersey.

 

 

Film Review: Gamera vs. Monster X (dir Noriaki Yuasa)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world’s favorite atomic turtle is back!

1970’s Gamera vs. Monster X (a.k.a. Gamera vs Jiger) once against finds humanity doing something stupid and nearly getting destroyed as a result.  This time, the trouble stats when a large statue is removed from an island and transported to Japan, where it will be the centerpiece of a gigantic expo.  Gamera, who is a giant turtle that can fly and breathe fire, tries to stop the humans from doing this but, of course, they ignore him.

(Seriously, this was the 6th movie featuring Gamera.  You would think that, by now, humanity would have learned to listen to the turtle’s concerns.)

Moving the statue awakens a dinosaur named either Jiger or Monster X, depending on which version of the film you’re watching.  Jiger is pissed off about the statue being moved so it sets out to destroy humanity.  Gamera tries to stop Jiger but Jiger stabs a quill into his chest and …, oh no!  Is Gamera dead!?

No, don’t worry.  Gamera may be incapacitated by he lives still.  It’s just that he’s got something inside of him now and …. well, basically, Jiger inserted an egg inside of Gamera.  And now, for some reason, a bunch of little children are going to have to navigate a minisub through Gamera’s blood stream so that they can get rid of the egg and the mini-Jiger waiting with within…..

What?

Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense but it’s a Gamera movie!  What you do expect?  I mean, this is a movie about a world where, because Godzilla doesn’t exist, it falls to a gigantic, radioactive turtle to serve as the world’s protector.  In order to watch a movie like this, you have to be able to accept the reality of a giant turtle.  Once you’ve accepted that, it’s much easier to accept the idea that the future of the world depends on not just a giant turtle but also three kids in a small submarine.

(One thing that we discover, while watching this film, is that Gamera is bigger on the inside than the outside.  Seriously, at one point, the kids get out of the sub and walk around inside of Gamera.  And I know that Gamera’s big but he never looked like he was that big.)

Anyway, the important thing is that Gamera must be saved so that he can defeat Jiger and the expo can go on as planned.  Because I don’t believe in spoilers, I won’t tell you how it ends but I will say that you should never lose faith in a giant turtle.

I was just looking over my notes and I discovered that, since 2017, I’ve actually watched Gamera vs. Monster X on three separate occasions.  Despite having seen it more than once, I still have to say that I really don’t have the slightest idea what the Hell’s going on in the majority of the film.  I guess it really doesn’t matter, though.  You don’t watch a Gamera movie for the plot.  You watch it for a giant turtle fighting other big monsters.  On that front, Gamera vs Monster X delivers.  It’s enjoyably incoherent.

Tonight, if you’re looking something to watch other than the Oscars, Gamera vs. Monster X is available on YouTube.

Film Review: Zontar, The Thing From Venus (dir by Larry Buchanan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Look, I get it.  Not everyone is as crazy about watching the Oscars as I am.  Some of you have absolutely no interest in watching the Oscar tonights and right now, you’re saying, “If only there was something else to watch!”  I hear you and I’m here for you.

And fear not!

There is something else for you to watch!  Just go to YouTube and look up Zontar, The Thing From Venus!  You can watch the whole movie three times in a row while everyone else is watching the Oscars.  Don’t ever say that I didn’t do anything for you.

What is Zontar, The Thing From Venus?  It’s a film from 1966 and it was directed by Texas’s own Larry Buchanan!  It tells the story of what happens when a creepy scientist named Keith (Tony Huston) manages to contact a big, three-eyed bat named Zontar.  Zontar’s from Venus and it wants to rule the world.  Keith thinks that humanity could benefit from being conquered by a ruthless alien warlord.  So, Kieth arranges for Zontar to come to the Earth.  While Zontar hides out in a cave, it manages to shut down everyone’s electricity and, using a bunch of smaller, flying bats, it also possesses almost an entire town.  Keith thinks it’s great but that’s because Keith is an idiot with fascist tendencies.

You know who isn’t impressed by Zontar and all of his high-and-mighty rhetoric?  Another scientist named Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar).  Dr. Taylor knows that Zontar is up to no good but how can he stop him?  Well, he’s not going to do it by driving a car because Zontar’s knocked out America’s electrical systems.  So, instead, he rides a bike from location to location.  Seeing John Agar awkwardly trying to balance himself on a bike is more than worth the price of admission.

(Of course, since this is on YouTube, the price of admission is only your immortal soul and your internet privacy.)

Anyway, if all of this sounds familiar, that’s because Zontar is a remake of an earlier Roger Corman film called It Conquered The World.  For some reason, in the 60s, American International Pictures gave Larry Buchanan a handful of money and told him, “Go direct some crappy remakes of some of our best films.”  Zontar is probably the best known of Buchanan’s remakes and it’s also probably the most fun.

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  It’s nowhere near as good as It Conquered The World but, at the same time, it doesn’t have the slow spots that show up in most of Buchanan’s other films.  The story moves fairly briskly and Buchanan keeps the picture in focus and, considering some of Buchanan’s other movies, that’s a bit of a minor triumph.  Zontar is an impressive monster.  In fact, I’d say that batty Zontar is probably a more effective creation than the smiling crab that showed up in It Conquered The World.  Finally, you get to see John Agar trying to ride a bicycle and that’s always an entertaining sight.

Zontar is enjoyably dumb.  If you want to kill 80 minutes but you don’t want to have to do any thinking, watching Zontar is definitely one way to do it.