When Jorg Buttgereit, the man who gave the world Nekromantik 1 and 2 makes a horror documentary, you just expect more. Although it goes through all the proper motions and boasts a strong list of interviewees (John Carpenter, Rick Baker, Kim Newman, Joe Dante, Greg Nicotero, and more) and subjects (Frankenstein, Godzilla, King Kong, etc.), Monsterland kinda falls flat. Don’t get me wrong. It’s perfectly watchable. It’s just not very thorough.
While I applaud Buttgereit for some surprising inclusions (like Tetsuo: The Iron Man), the bulk of the documentary plays like an old hat. The most irritating thing about it is that they couldn’t get the rights for some of the clips, so they are forced to play snippets from other movies to illustrate their point. For example, when talking about the original King Kong, scenes from the Peter Jackson remake are shown. Or when scenes from Godzilla vs. Destoroyah are played during a discussion of the 1954 Godzilla. And don’t even get me started on the scene where they show clips from a Frankenstein “fan film” in lieu of footage of Boris Karloff in the 1931 Frankenstein. Seriously. What the fuck?
Now that I got that off my chest, I will say there are some good moments here. The highlight is the interview with H.R. Giger who discusses designing the Alien and shows off some sculptures, artwork, and movie props. I also enjoyed the little sidebar that focused on “G-Fest”, the Godzilla convention where fans make their own homemade kaiju costumes.
Despite that, there were still a few things that stuck in my crawl. Like the weirdo guy who was obsessed with Ed Gein. I know they had to get this thing to the hour mark, but this crap could’ve easily been excised. Oh well. I guess if you want to hear John Carpenter talk about Halloween AGAIN, you should enjoy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment