Review 2016-03 Bermuda Tentacles

Just how much influence does pop culture have on regular culture? Take the great state of Texas for example. Everyone knows that Texas is known for big things, or doing things big. But now there is a bit of a sense that there is this sort of big craziness that goes along with Texas. The notion is that when they go crazy there, they go crazy big. Would it be that way without cultural monsters like Leatherface and J.R. Ewing? Or, is it that those abominations come from Texas that make it seem crazier than other places. More importantly, would Texas matter without them. The problem with pop culture and it’s influence is that while we can see where it starts (sometimes), and we can often see where it ends. The real conundrum is why it ever started in the first place. And so, there are other places that have achieved that sort of mythical like status, even when they don’t exist.
The Bermuda Triangle is just that sort of place. It isn’t a place at all. It’s just an imaginary line running between geographical points that has been attributed with paranormal like powers, mystery, and other spooky shit. The problem is that all of the hype has gone. For me it left back in 1977 when NOVA did a special proving that more stuff went missing outside of the Triangle than in. But look, even if they were wrong and Aliens with other mystical forces are at work in the Triangle, lets celebrate that we’ve got the buggers contained to one area. It’s not like you can’t vacation in Jamaica instead.

Bermuda Tentacles (2014)

Director	Nick Lyon
The Main Players
Trevor Donovan	Trip Oliver
Linda Hamilton	Admiral Linda Hansen
Mya (as Mya Harrison)	Lt. Plummer
John Savage	President  DeSteno

Synopsis:  

The President of the United States of America is forced to jettison in an escape pod from Air Force One as it flies through a severe tropical storm over the dreaded Bermuda Triangle, but the massive naval strike force and unknown extra-terrestrial forces from the deep hamper a special operations team sent to rescue him (they don’t seem interested in other survivors).

Review:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I love B movies. Sadly, this isn’t one of them. I don’t even have a rating for this one other than I wanted to call it Bermuda Testicles, but someone beat me to it on IMDB. It is a fitting title because when you look at the concept for the script:

President ejects over the Bermuda Triangle.

Navy goes in to get rescue him.

Special rescue team called in.

Giant space/alien/monster tentacles rise from the deep immune to all weapons.

Special team told to stand down - they go anyway.

Special team finds giant alien storage container full of all the missing crap in it.

They find POTUS and get away, or something like that.

Just imagine how big a pair you’d have to have to seriously go forward asking for development money to put this turd into production. If that isn’t a ballsy move, I don’t know what is.

A lot of reviews on line are sort of mean when it comes to Linda Hamilton. They seem to  focus on the way she looks and the mere fact that she is in this movie, which should speak for itself. I don’t know how actors get roped into these things, but we have to keep in mind that they are doing a job. It’s a bad movie, but not because of her. She did a great job and even Vivian Leigh could not have saved this one. I’m just surprised that none of the reviewers touched on John Savage showing up. Tentacles from space is no Deer Hunter. Savage couldn’t do anything for this one except that I will admit that I watched it to see the both of them in it. Everyone needs a reason/excuse.

Lets be honest here, I watched the entire thing, but I did it in stages thanks to the PVR. This movie was painful to watch and I just don’t remember how it ends. I know they make it, I just don’t know why, nor do I care. The cast should be dead. The aliens should have gone back to their home world and deleted us from their stellar maps. Those giant tentacles should have got out a huge jug of white out and blanked out our solar system. If they had been like Columbus the Queen would have been entitled to a full refund. These poor guys didn’t find anything worth writing home about.

Just imagine if you had been one of the aliens getting back to your world and trying to explain how things went on this new planet you discovered. They would be like, “Let me get this straight. They can make machines that fly. They’ve been to space. They’ve learned to harness most of the power from splitting the atom. And they think where you park is magic, and they shoot at you whenever you try to shake tentacles with them?” Hard to believe isn’t it. I’d probably blow us up too.

Lessons Learned:

• The only thing worse than tentacles are tentacles coming out of tentacles.
• The Bermuda Triangle is way deeper than we thought.
• They have a special day in the Navy when you can wear the uniform of your choice and you get to make up the ranks of others.
• Everyone in the Navy has a gun just in case.
• Take your best shot means something different in the Triangle.
• Old actors don’t die, they join the Navy.
• I don’t know if you’ve been told, Navy wings just fall out of the sky.

Review 2016-02 The Giant Behemoth 1959

Who invented the Monster Movie? I don’t mean the creature in the pond, or some hairy thing waiting for teens to go off looking for their missing friends. I’m talking about monsters the size of a building, or ones that can pick up and entire passenger train and then toss it to the side like I do with that can of sardines that’s been in the pantry for the last few years. Are they like me, just scavenging around looking for a snack?

I asked Google and it told me to go away, but eventually I got an answer. As far as the specific genre of the Creature Feature I was told the film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first film to have a monster that was created by man’s pursuit of the nuclear age. We built the bomb, we used it, and nature is striking back. The birth of an entire genre of B-Movies; nerd genesis.

The Giant Behemoth (1959)

Directors	Douglas Hickox, Eugène Lourié
The Main Players
Gene Evans	Steve Karnes
André Morell	Prof. James Bickford
John Turner	John
Leigh Madison	Jean Trevethan

Synopsis: 

            Dumping radioactive waste in our oceans serves as a wakeup call to a prehistoric beast that can shoot electricity and radioactive beams of destruction, but stopping it with conventional weapons might give us back all that waste we were trying to get rid of.

Review:

            Like the synopsis says, there is a lot of dumping of waste into the oceans at the intro with a lot of attention to making sure you realize it’s now the nuclear age. That’s right, the new age where all of your problems can both be caused and cured by the invisible stuff that makes the little machine click like crazy when you get near that monster or where the monster has been. Our giant monster doesn’t waist any time and heads to a small fishing village on the coast of England where it kills an old fisherman as soon as his lovely daughter is out of range.

            Eventually the monster sets its sights at trying to cause problems all over. In fact we even have a scene where it comes ashore going after a small country farmhouse. I was wondering if it was going to slip into one of those old travelling salesmen jokes about having to let it stay for the night and share a room with the daughter, but it killed them all instead with more invisible radiation waves or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. All we get to see is something glowing strange and then waves or energy like ripples in a pond radiating out towards the victims. We don’t get much of a view of the actual creature for now, and that’s really a good thing.

Eventually the monster gets tired of the costal offerings and starts moving into the more heavily populated area using the Thames as its private tour guide. There is a lot of mayhem and panic around London and the Army is brought in to create some strong holds with the hope of holding it off for a while. Of course their attempts are useless with a lot of soldiers finding out the hard way. The creature is estimated to be about 200 feet tall and they even identify which type of dinosaur it is but I can’t spell that one, and I don’t even want to look it up. Frankly, I thought it was a lot more interesting when you had to imagine what it might look like.

            In my imagination, I never thought of it to look like a crappy little plastic model of dinosaur. The stop motion isn’t bad. It’s what they are moving a bit at every frame that makes it hard to take this movie. The only way to salvage this one would bet to return to a simpler time. A time when most of us had like three or four channels to choose from. When you’re eight or nine years old and you’ve got a choice between this one and Hymn Sing or Meet the Press, you know where the dial is headed. Of course that depends on weather you even know what a dial is (sort of a manual remote attached to the T.V.). You sort of have to really enjoy suffering through this kind of stuff like I do, or suffer any number of other mental afflictions. I liked it, I just don’t know why.

             

Lessons Learned:

• Radioactive sea monsters are very coy.
• Fish are not supposed to glow in the dark.
• Scientists love a good conference, especially when there is a monster involved.
• Tower Bridge in London is a tourist trap even for monsters.
• Sea monsters and submarines go together just like fish and chips.

2016-01 Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster

One of the main reasons I like B-Movie Sci-Fi is how horribly inaccurate they are at predicting what the future will be like.  Is 2001 still relevant now that it’s 2016?  Better yet, how about those pesky Soviets that gave H.A.L. and friends a hard time back in 2010 with the Soviet guy telling Dr. Floyd they would just be giving a ride to some poor Americans. Arthur C. had some pretty cool ideas about how things might work and how we could use space to make our lives on the blue marble better, but he never saw Ronnie coming to take down the evil empire. Could you imagine writing that one back in the day and the synopsis certain to get you punted from the writer’s guild. Friday 9pm – Aging former Hollywood has been rises to leader of the free world while fixing a nation and taking down wall of another. That would be a much harder sell back than trying to get Benjie 7 – Dog in Space made.

This installment comes with equally bizarre notions about the future and what we will be capable of. Robots, Space Monsters, and riding around with your best girl on your Vespa just like we dreamed about as kids.

Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965)

Director	Robert Gaffney
The Main Players
Marilyn Hanold	Princess Marcuzan
Lou Cutell	Dr. Nadir
James Karen	Dr. Adam Steele
Robert Reilly	Col. Frank Saunders / Frankenstein

Synopsis: 

            A barren Martian Princess travels to Earth with her personal evil physician with the intention of kidnapping women as breeding stock on Mars, until their plans are disrupted by a mentally ill American space android.

Review:

            This one is right up the alley of some others we’ve looked at so far. I’d have to say the one I find most similar to Franky would have to be Curse of Bigfoot. The main reason for this is just like COB, Frankenstein never actually shows up in this movie. It turns out Franky is a complex type of android made from transplanted human parts. Think Robocop but far less sophisticated and no cool gun. Franky is our man, sort of, with gigantic radio tubes sticking out of his brain with a mission to visit Mars and let us know what’s going on there.

            The Princess Marcuzan along with the incredibly creepy Dr. Nadir are on a mission to find some girls to bring back to Mars when they accidentally mistake Franky’s rocket for a missile attack. Franky winds up ejecting and making it back to Earth, but the Princess and Nadir are after him to make sure he doesn’t ruin their plans; I guess. Their landing team catches up to Frank and shoots him. They don’t kill him but manage to damage his head badly turning him into a homicidal maniac/monster. Meanwhile, back at NASA Adam and Karen, Frank’s support team are searching to find him in case he survived. Word comes in that Frank’s capsule landed in Puerto Rico with other reports of violence in the area as well; off to San Juan.

            Soon the aliens grab their first hot 1960s’ beach babe and they aren’t disappointed. The princess examines her long enough to bring her sexual orientation into question. With their superior alien intelligence and technology they realize the bikini is the single determining factor for breeding suitability, so it’s off to pool parties and the beach. Nothing says the 60’s like groovy music accompanied by bikini go-go dancing, and it makes it a lot easier for aliens looking for girls, to find them.

            Eventually Adam and Karen catch up to Frank, and like the great novel Karen is able to sooth the beast calming him her tender touch. She needs to go for help and stuff that doesn’t really matter leaving Frank with Adam. On her way she is captured by the alien space thugs because there seems to be only two roads in all of P.R. unless they need to use stock footage. Once Karen is in the clutches of the Princess and Nadir, only then do we finally get to meet the space monster. I’d like to say it was worth the wait but I’d be lying. I won’t be giving anything away when I say Karen gets rescued by Frank, and then he deals with the bad guys and monster. Is that a spoiler?

            You really should check this one out. I own it but you can watch it on YouTube if you search for it. If not for the pure entertainment, then watch it just to see what passed for entertainment back then. I can only guess that in some places, the miracle of pictures coming to life on the screen was enough to mesmerize these simple folk. Or it could be that it was just so boring then that kids would go see anything, or in this case nothing if you take out the girls in bikinis.

             

Lessons Learned:

• Aliens always wear helmets to conceal their identity and to cut down on casting costs.
• Space monsters are all bark and no bite.
• Pointy ears do not make everyone seem smarter.
• Are all alien space ships a lot bigger on the inside than they look on the outside?
• If Mars really did have a population and they had a war that killed almost everyone off, now we know why.
• This movie makes alien abduction look like fun.