Snowbeast (1977)

Snowbeast (1977)

Directed by: Herb Wallerstein

Starring: Bo Svenson, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Logan

Haha, I remember watching Snowbeast back in high school… I never thought I’d see it again, honestly. But hey, I can never have enough of any movie with Clint Walker as a smarmy sheriff. Or just Clint Walker in general, really.

Snowbeast is a pretty simple movie: There’s a yeti killing people in a skiing town and the task of taking it down falls to a sheriff, some guy who works at the resort, and an ex-Olympic gold medalist skiier. Then they… kill the yeti. Snow bigfoot. Whatever. It dies. The end.

It’s a bit refreshing to see a movie so set in it’s cliche that it knows EXACTLY what the audience expects it to do, then does it, move for move. You can just tell there really was no effort of any kind put into the writing of this movie. That guy had to eat and he knew a guy who wanted to do a horror movie in the snow, that’s the behind-the-scenes look into Snowbeast, I’m pretty sure. Good ol’ Snowbeast.

Eegah (1962)

Eegah (1962)

Directed by: Arch Hall Sr.

Starring:  Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, Richard Kiel

Ah, Eegah. A classic MST3K episode, and I finally got to see the original film. What a… lucky guy I must be. I guess. Also, did you know that Arch Hall Sr. both directed and starred as the main chick’s dad, both under pseudonyms? Fun fact!

Eegah is a beautiful story about a girl who meets a freakishly giant caveman (played by the freakishly tall Richard Kiel, of course, whom you probably know as Jaws from James Bond) and the bond they form when the caveman kidnaps her father and then her herself. She almost gets raped (aww, how cute), but is saved by her freakish pixie of a boyfriend. This, of course, sends Eegah (the caveman, duh) on a rampage through a pool party until he’s shot and drowns in the pool. Really a terrible way to go for a guy who supposedly lived in a cave for centuries.

There really isn’t anything to say about Eegah… It’s bad. It’s just plain bad. It’s so bad, it’s funny. Hell, it’s a very pillar of ‘so bad it’s funny’ kind of movies. I would caution you against watching the actual version of this film unless you’re with somebody else and least one of you can make jokes. If not, then you have to just watch it in the dark in shame. Sorry, that’s just the way it goes.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

Directed by: Vittorio Sala

Starring: Rod Taylor, Ed Fury, Dorian Gray

Haha, wow! Dorian Gray is in this movie! I wonder if she just seems to age in this movie and not in real life… In any case, there’s absolutely no reason for Steve Reeves to be featured so prominantly on this (what appears to be a) VHS cover, since he isn’t in the movie at all. I mean, yeah, he was in movies LIKE this, but that doesn’t really seem like a good enough reason to be put on the cover, does it?

Okay, so there’s this guy named Colossus, and he… Wait… there’s nobody named Colossus in this movie. There’s one guy who’s kinda beefy, but that’s about it. Mostly we follow the wacky adventures of a boat crew as they visit a TOPSY-TURVY world where the WOMEN are in charge of the MEN! Isn’t that wacky?! There’s one guy who reminds me of Major Healy from I Dream of Jeannie who spends a lot of time trying to get laid and steals a bunch of jewelery from the ladies, and there’s a guy with an Egyptian hat or something… I don’t really know. There’s some excuses for battles and partial nudity, that’s really all you can expect from a movie like this.

I watched this movie just earlier today and I’m already starting to forget what the point of it was, so I guess I can pretty safely say that it wasn’t anything particularly interesting or different. But, then again, that’s not really a surprise, now is it?

Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen (2009)

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring:  Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode

Okay, I finally saw this movie the other day, and it wasn’t the theatrical release but the “director’s cut” with an extra half hour of beginnings and endings of scenes, apparently. Because of this, I guess I can’t really complain TOO much about the glacial pacing of the movie, but I have no intention of watching the theatrical version for comparison (because it’ll still be bad). Also, before we start this, no, I’m not a fanboy of the original comic. I did read it, and, well, I didn’t like it. I mean, it wasn’t a badly written story, I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like the movie for all the same reasons I didn’t like the comic… and more.

Basically, Watchmen takes place in an alternate past where there are actual costumed heroes (and one actual SUPERhero). This takes place in the 80’s, a few years after a ban on public costumed heroery, and some of these old guys start to get killed. Our main character (well, ONE of the four or so “main” characters), Rorschach, a hero who never stopped goes out to solve the mystery, and eventually… stuff happens. Kinda disjointedly, really.

The biggest problem with taking something like the Watchmen miniseries and turning it into a single movie is that the comics were designed to slowly reveal bits and pieces of this plot against the ‘supers’ until it finally culminated in a big climactic bit, which is really what the comic is known for. Now, that’s tough to simulate in a movie just to start out with, but Snyder decided to almost completely eliminate any plot-related stuff in favor of action sequences and other “cool” parts from the comic. That’s all well and good, I suppose, but it is kinda nice to have a STORY in your movie. The big reveal at the end is almost completely out of nowhere, since we’d only seen the character once before in the beginning of the film and then wasn’t dealt with at all for 2 1/2 hours until the end. All right, that’s all I’m going to bitch about that.

I could go on for a bit about the characters and how a few of them were done well, a few done poorly, and some that were a bit too close to the source material to work in a film, but I don’t really feel like it. The only other thing I think I’m going to mention is the action sequences. I guess I should’ve expected retardedly overblown and physics-defying action from the “visionary” director of 300, but seriously… Did Snyder not know that these people weren’t supposed to actually have super powers? There’s only one guy, and he never gets in a fist fight the whole time. Instead we get some ultra-violence porn wherever he could fit it in that’s just absolutely laughable. People are flying all over the place, going in no way the same direction as they’ve just been hit… It’s like there was a puppeteer controlling the fighting, but sadly the puppeteer had MS.

So yeah, that’s all I’m going to say. I didn’t like this movie. It was long and boring, too much stoner philosophy monologues (just like in the comics), not enough damn plot. You know, the more I think about it, the more Watchmen reminds me of the third Matrix movie. Huh. I think I’ll see it just as many times, too!

Warning From Space (1956)

Warning From Space (1956)

Directed by: Koji Shima

Starring: Keizo Kawasaki, Toyomi Karita, Bin Yagasawa

Warning From Space is one those great Japanese movies in the same vein as Godzilla, called… uh… Actually, I have no idea what the name of that particular genre is. Giant monster movies? This movie doesn’t have giant monsters, but it’s so the same kind of movie. Oh well, who cares?

Aliens that look like person-sized starfish with a big eye in the middle of them visit Earth to warn a scientist about some ray or something he made, I don’t really remember. It’s one of those things where the aliens are trying to save humanity from the progression of science that could be used for destruction, a la Plan 9 From Outer Space. This is… better. Slightly. Mostly because the starfish costumes crack me right the hell up.

Of course, nobody on Earth would take advice from such a goofy-looking creature, so one of the starfish aliens transforms into a lady and manages to save everybody from a meteor or something, which seems to have nothing to do with the original purpose of the aliens being there, but whatever.

There really isn’t anything remarkable about this movie except for the aliens which you only see a couple times, and I’ve already mentioned the hell out of them, so I guess that’s it for this. Um… bye.