GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024) ****

Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire is one of the best Monsterverse flicks.  It’s also one of the best Godzilla and/or Kong movies ever made.  The secret is that the human to monster ratio is about a 1.5:1, which is damn near perfect if you ask me.  Not only that, but the human drama propels the monster plot forward instead of stops it in its tracks, which is often the case in these things.  It also helps that the film is chockfull of kick-ass kaiju donnybrooks and giant ape slobberknockers. 

The plot is not necessary, but I’ll give it a whirl anyway.  Godzilla has awakened from his slumber (he’s been using the Coliseum in Rome the way a cat uses a pet bed) and seems to be powering himself up for an ominous cause.  Meanwhile, King Kong travels to the unexplored depths of the “Hollow Earth” looking for the last of his species.  He gets more than he bargained for when he comes face to face with the evil ape, Skar King who wants to lead his army of mad monkeys back to the surface so he can rule the world. 

Although Godzilla is somewhat sidelined for much of the picture, he does get to fight a giant sea serpent (as does Kong).  Once the King of the Monsters finally crosses paths with Kong, it leads to a great confrontation at the pyramids that plays like a giant monster version of the alley fight in They Live.  (No, seriously.  There’s even a “Rowdy” Roddy Piper-inspired suplex.)  The finale is one for the books.  It’s an all-out four-way tag-team brawl that begins with a terrific prelude featuring our monsters battling in zero gravity before touching down on Earth for some of the goofiest kaiju fight choreography since Godzilla vs. Megalon. 

That is to say, I loved every second of it. 

Oh, and did I mention Kong goes to the dentist?  When’s the last time you saw a giant ape have oral surgery in a movie?  Or that he gets a robot arm?  I mean, what’s not to love about this flick?  Sure, Kong may get more screentime than his co-star, but neither monster has a wasted moment (I liked the scenes of Kong bonding with a little ape dude), and we… shocker… care about what happens to both of them.  

This is about as far as you can get from last year’s instant classic Godzilla Minus One in terms of tone, style, and well… everything.  And that is perfectly OK.  Godzilla’s filmography is vast enough to embrace both approaches.  It’s a helluva great time to be a Godzilla (and Kong) fan.  

‘NEATH BROOKLYN BRIDGE (1942) **

A gangster (perennial tough guy Marc Lawrence) is looking to make a big score and he wants to use the East Side Kids on his crew.  Naturally, they don’t want anything to do with it, but the crook forces them to go along with the plan when he blackmails Muggs (Leo Gorcey) into thinking he’s committed a murder.  While the kids keep a woman who witnessed the murder at their clubhouse (disguised in drag as an East Side Kid), Muggs uses his ingenuity (or lack thereof) to outwit the gangsters. 

‘Neath Brooklyn Bridge is a middling entry in the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys series.  Gorcey and Huntz Hall are always fun to watch, but the gags aren’t as frequent or as funny as some of the gang’s later (better) stuff.  There are some amusing scenes sprinkled about (like when Hall tricks a fruit cart vendor into giving him free food), although it’s nothing that will exactly make you laugh out loud.  I guess that’s to be expected when Danny (Bobby Jordan) has a murder rap hanging over his head and Muggs is mixed up with shady underworld characters.  However, even the most grounded films in the franchise at least try to deliver in the yuks department.  The East Side Kids vs. hoods finale is also strangely lackluster and feels rushed. 

The supporting cast is unusually strong this time around, which helps somewhat. In addition to Lawrence’s fine performance as the lead heavy, we also have Reefer Madness’ Dave O’Brien as Danny’s older cop brother who tries to get the boys out of their predicament.  Noah Beery Jr. shows up around the halfway mark as Rusty, an older member of the gang who’s now a sailor on shore leave.  He sort of becomes the de facto romantic lead too, which was unnecessary if you ask me, as the romantic subplot gets in the way of the Kids’ jokes and antics.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: FEMALE MERCENARIES 2: THE MAD DOCTOR OF ZOMBIE ISLAND (2008) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 2nd, 2023)

I saw this listed on Tubi as Mad Doctor of Zombie Island, which sounded promising enough.  After sitting through a long prologue about a giant meteor crashing into the Earth (it looks like a wad of aluminum foil), two chicks getting into a Kung Fu battle, and a scene featuring the slowest death via quicksand in screen history, I was kind of flummoxed.  At about the ten-minute mark, the title “Female Mercenaries 2:  The Mad Doctor of Zombie Island” appeared, and it started to make sense why it didn’t make sense:  It was a sequel to a movie I had never heard of, let alone seen.  

Ten more minutes went by, and I was hopelessly lost again.  Characters come and go.  They die, only to reappear as clones.  I was starting to pull my hair out.  

Fortunately, at about the twenty-minute mark, the movie revealed its true purpose:  Gratuitous nude scenes, strangulations, catfights, and bondage.  If the filmmakers had cut the useless first two reels and gotten right to the good stuff, this might’ve skated by with ** ½.  Maybe.  All I know is that things got markedly better the less the actresses wore.  

Anyway, the “plot” has a mad doctor (who I assume died in the first movie) cloning herself on her secret island so she can continue her diabolical experiments.  Every time one of her prisoners dies, she clones them.  Sometimes she turns them into werewolves?!?  After she turns a couple of guys into zombies, their girlfriends team up to storm the island and get revenge.  

No wonder this was so weird.  It was one of those W.A.V.E. Productions where you can basically write your own fetish video and they film it for you.  I guess all the catfights and bondage stuff was OK, but I certainly don’t have a fetish for longwinded prologues and incomprehensible plots.  (Not that you would watch something like this for the plot, but oh well.)  All that stuff got in the way of the fun.  It didn’t help that the sound was bad, and a lot of the dialogue was muffled.  Still, the overly dramatic death scenes were good for a laugh or two.  I also enjoyed the long, lingering shots of the actresses’ butts when they’re lying on the floor dead.  

I’ve been meaning to check out the W.A.V.E. documentary, Mail Order Murder.  I see it’s on Tubi.  I guess I know what tomorrow’s movie is going to be. 

AKA:  Mad Doctor of Zombie Island.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: FEMALE MERCENARIES ON ZOMBIE ISLAND (1995) **

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 22nd, 2023)

In the year 2000, an asteroid (it looks like your grandma’s chair) hurtles toward Earth with the potential to wipe out all of existence.  Tina Krause’s solution?  Take a shower!

After the asteroid kills most of the population, sexy Doctor Pamela Sutch sets herself up on an island turning men into mindless zombie soldiers and performing brain transplants.  After she kills off most of the peaceful farming women on the island, the survivors swear revenge.  With some help from the zombie henchmen who long to become human again, they plan to overthrow the mad doctor once and for all.

Before I continue with this review, I have to get something off my chest:  There was no goddamn reason this needed to be 111 minutes.  The plot circles around and loops back on itself a lot.  The heroines are captured, then escape, only to be recaptured and escape again.  There are also long scenes where actors are forced to say an incredible amount of ridiculous exposition with a straight face.

That said, it has a scene of Tina Krause getting undressed, taking a shower, being chloroformed, and hogtied, not one but two long text crawls that look like they came out of a Sega Genesis game, and the world ends via piece of furniture, all BEFORE the opening credits start, so it’s not all bad.

Unfortunately, it seems like they added the opening after the fact as the rest of the movie is rather light on nudity.  I guess the filmmakers thought if they frontload it with a lot of T & A to lure you in, you’d forget what you were watching and why you were watching it in the first place.  Oh, did I mention this is a W.A.V.E. movie?  Questioning what the fuck you’re watching kind of goes along with the territory.

We do get some great gore along the way.  There are slashed throats, hilarious brain operation scenes, zombie attacks, and even some Kung Fu too.  I also enjoyed the fact that when the zombies eat people, it’s not raw like in a Romero movie.  They actually take the time to put their prey in a giant pot and cook them like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. 

What else can I tell you about this one?  There’s mud wrestling, bondage, discipline, electrocution, strangulation, wet T-shirts, catfights, and water fights.  I mean, a movie with all that going for it can’t be all bad.  It’s just way too long and much too slow moving in between the good stuff.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: EATEN ALIVE: A TASTEFUL REVENGE (1999) ****

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on March 15th, 2023)

(NOTE:  This film appears as a bonus feature on the Blu-Ray for Limbo)

Okay, so when I watched Mail Order Murder, the W.A.V.E. Productions documentary, this was one of the titles that really stuck out.  The short clips that were shown don’t quite do it justice.  This is one of the nuttiest fucking movies I’ve seen in a long time.  I think I may be hooked on W.A.V.E.

Stacey (Debbie D) gives it all for her company but is still passed over for a promotion by her bitchy boss (Barbara Joyce).  To make matters worse, the job goes to Stacey’s ROOMMATE (Tina Krause) just because she’s prettier than her!  The nerve.  What’s a gal to do?  If you answered, “Grab a shrinking gun, shrink her enemies down to size, and then eat them”, then this is the movie for you.  

I’ve never been one for drugs, but this movie left me high as a kite.  Director Gary Whitson gets maximum laughs from the hilarious concept and the acting and shrinking scenes have to be seen to be disbelieved.  Some of the greenscreen “special” effects will have you rolling in the floor with laughter.  

If you’re not familiar with W.A.V.E. Productions, they basically allowed fans to write in to them with a list of their fetishes and they would incorporate them into their next no-budget horror movie.  I don’t know who had a fetish for shrinking hot naked women and then eating them, but God bless them and keep them for all eternity.  I’m not sure if I too have the fetish now, but I kind of already want to see it again.  One thing’s for sure, it’s one of the most insane films I’ve seen in a long time.  

The movie is only about thirty-five minutes long, which is about all the running time this insane premise could stand.  It’s almost like they shrunk the movie down to size too.  That is a good thing, though.  When you strip down something like this down to its barest essentials, it makes the weird-ass sequences seem even weirder.  

Speaking of being stripped down and bare, there’s a lot of nudity here, which also helps make it an unadulterated classic.  There’s a sequence where Debbie D and Sunny try on swimsuits for like ten straight minutes that is cinema at its purest.  Heck, I’m not even gonna talk about the scenes that take place INSIDE Debbie’s stomach where the shrunken girls are digested on something that looks like a Slip n’ Slide from Hell.

Even though it’s only thirty-five minutes long, Eaten Alive!  A Tasteful Revenge is still somehow packed with flashbacks, an overlong end credits sequence, AND post-credits bloopers.  I usually object to so much padding, but these scenes were so nice the first time that I didn’t mind seeing them twice, if only to double-check that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.  If you thought you’ve seen it all, by all means, check this sucker out.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: LIMBO (1999) *

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on October 27th, 2022)

About ten minutes into Limbo, it became apparent that B-Movie Scream Queen-turned-first time director Tina Krause rented Jacob’s Ladder one night and decided to make her own loose remake using the crappiest home video equipment available.  That probably wasn’t the worst idea in the world, but the problem is that there is barely any connective narrative tissue to hold the thing together.  Because of that, it looks like one long, cheap, SOV music video.  

A woman named Katherine goes to a bar where she is given an ominous warning by an unseen stranger.  After Katherine picks up a cute waitress (Krause), things spiral into a lot of shaky-cam/let’s-use-every-filter-and-editing-trick-that-came-with-the-camera music video sequences.  She returns to the bar the next night where she picks up another stranger and the cycle repeats itself until Katherine learns she’s actually dead and in limbo.  (Hey, it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the title!)

This one was a tough sit.  Although I enjoy seeing Krause in her low budget horror movies, this is by far the worst one I have seen.  It was also by far the shortest flick I’ve watched this month (it’s only fifty-four minutes), but it sure as Hell felt like the longest.  

It's not all terrible.  If you can make it to the homestretch, there are a couple of decent gore effects (given the budget).  We get a pretty good face ripping scene as well as a not-bad gut ripping sequence.  However, that doesn’t make up for all the schizophrenic editing, incoherent storytelling (a vampire subplot is dropped into our laps in the late going), piss-poor camerawork, and piss-poorer sound.  

I admire Krause’s ambition.  More Scream Queens should take the cinematic reigns and direct their own movies.  I just wish that Krause’s directorial effort was closer in spirit to her other low budget vehicles instead of an overlong, experimental, wannabe student film.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: BLOODY MUSCLE BODYBUILDER IN HELL (1995) ****

FORMAT:  BLU-RAY (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on November 9th, 2022)

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell is basically a low budget, hour-long, shot-on-video Japanese remake of Evil Dead 2.  After reading that sentence, you should already know if you are the target audience for this sort of thing.  Even if you didn’t dig it as much as I did, you have to admit:  It has one of the greatest titles in movie history.  

Shinji (writer/director Shinichi Fukazawa) is a bodybuilder who takes his girlfriend and a psychic to investigate his father’s supposedly haunted house.  Before long, the vengeful spirit of his father’s former lover possesses the psychic and uses his powers to lock the couple in the house.  After being tormented endlessly by the possessed psychic, our hero eventually uses his love of weightlifting to smash the demon once and for all.

Some scenes follow Evil Dead 1 and 2 pretty closely, and the recreations are quite impressive considering the time and resources that were available.  Fans of Sam Raimi’s trilogy will enjoy these moments to be sure (everything from the headless corpse attack to the iconic “Groovy” scene is here), but I was even more impressed by Fukazawa’s original flourishes and twists on Raimi’s standbys just as much.  The eyeball stabbing scene is great, and the part where a necklace comes out a person’s mouth and digs into their eye is kind of freaky.  The film even manages to one-up Raimi when the dismembered hand fuses together with a severed head, creating a Bride of Re-Animator-esque creation.  Also, those who were always incensed that Evil Dead 2’s poster boy, the skull with human eyes, was nowhere to be found in that movie will be pleased that a very low budget version shows up here.

In front of the camera, Fukazawa mimics Bruce Campbell’s performance rather closely and nails many of his facial tics.  Weirdly enough, this was his only movie, and it’s sort of a shame.  Even though it’s clearly a riff on Evil Dead (I hesitate to call it a “rip-off” as it’s more of a homage than anything), his own unique spins on Raimi’s films are enough to make you curious what he might’ve been able to do with a completely original premise.  

“Sayonara, baby!”

AKA:  The Japanese Evil Dead.