News and Opinions

I recently reviewed Warner’s first volume of the Cult Camp Classics box sets, and had a number of kind words to say about Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. I thought I would expand on those remarks, going on at a bit more length as to why this film is so oddly endearing.

First, to re-iterate the review: “I quote Jeff Rovin: ‘If Attack of the 50-Foot Woman was intended to be taken seriously, it’s the worst film ever made. If it was intended as a put-on, it’s one of the great science-fiction satires.... Either way, the movie is hilarious. If Tennessee Williams had written a script for Ed Wood, the result might well have been this tale of rich alcoholic Allison Hayes and her obsessive love for her no-account husband William Hudson, who, along with floozy Yvette Vickers, is plotting to get her out of the way, in one manner or another. An alien giant who needs diamonds to fuel his UFO (called a ‘satellite’ in the film) expands both diamonds and Hayes. Cue giant rubber hands and transparent double-exposure effects. Cheap as the film is, the cast sink their collective teeth deep into the overheated storyline. The result is both hilarious and gripping.”

Okay, kaiju fans, there’s another real treat that recently hit DVD. While Classic Media has been releasing one definitive edition after another of the initial Godzilla movies, Tokyo Shock has stepped up with a non-Godzilla Toho effort: 1965's Frankenstein Conquers the World. Present in the 2-disc set are the US release (so if you want to hear Nick Adams speak English, that’s the one to watch), the Japanese version, and the international release. These versions feature a rather different, and utterly bizarre, e...ding, and I’ll be talking about it, so be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

Godzilla’s daddy Ishiro Honda is at the directorial helm again, and it is interesting that, just as the Godzilla films were becoming more and more comical, this effort is, relatively speaking, quite dark. Its opening doesn’t look like a Toho effort at all: as beakers bubble in a gothic lab, we might as well be watching a product of Hammer Studios. The year is 1945. German soldiers burst in on a scientist, grab a box and ship it by sub to Japan. The box contains the beating heart of Frankenstein’s monster (and yes, the name “Frankenstein” is used indiscriminately to refer to both monster and scientist here, *sigh*). The Japanese plan to use the heart to design unkillable soldiers is rudely interrupted, however, as the lab is located in Hiroshima. Wrong place, wrong time. Years later, in a rebuilt Hiroshima, scientist Nick Adams and his team run into a feral child, who turns out to be the regenerating monster. Being radioactive, he also gets really big and escapes. Meanwhile, the monster Baragon (a dinosaur with big, floppy, puppy dog ears) is rampaging about, and Frankenstein (I’ll give in and call him that, since the movie does) initially gets the blame. He eventually confronts Baragon in a dramatic mountaintop finale backdropped by a raging forest fire.

After a brief absence (dja miss me?), here we go with The Wishlist, Part 2. This time around: The Reflecting Skin. This 1990 British film, directed by Philip Ridley, did get a DVD release in Japan in 2005, but has yet to show up on these shores, and more’s the pity.

The film takes place in the American Midwest in the 1950s, and has the supersaturated colours and creepy beauty one would associated with Terrence Malick, and, as with Malick, all sorts of nastiness lurks under the beauty. The protagonist...is eight-year-old Seth (Jeremy Cooper), whose overactive imagination invests his world with all sorts of horrors. He believes, for instance, that his neighbour, a woman going by the wonderful name of Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan), is a vampire. He is understandably upset, then, when his brother (Viggo Mortensen, before he was Viggo Mortensen), recently returned from the armed forces, begins a relationship with her.