Alienator (1990)

Alienator is a very low-budget 1990 science fiction action movie directed by Fred Olen Ray. So you assume you’re going to have fun.

The title suggests that it’s going to be a rip-off of both Aliens and The Terminator. It doesn’t actually have much to do with either of those movies. But it does have an ultimate warrior android. It also owes a bit to The Astounding She-Monster (1957).

Jan-Michael Vincent is the Commander of a prison planet. This planet is in a distant part of the galaxy and although this is a humanoid civilisation it has no connection with Earth. No-one on Earth even knows that this distant interstellar civilisation exists.

A particularly dangerous prisoner, Kol (Ross Hagen), is about to be executed. The commander has no moral qualms about this. Any prisoner who has ended up on his prison planet has committed truly horrific crimes. The Commander has other things on his mind, like his assistant Tara (P.J. Soles). Or rather he has his mind on her cleavage. You can’t blame him.

Kol pulls off a daring escape, steals a spacecraft and ends up on Earth.

He encounters a bunch of college kids in an RV deep in the woods. Kol has been injured. The kids pick him up and take him to the cabin of forest ranger Ward Armstrong (John Phillip Law).

It soon becomes obvious that Kol is a pretty strange guy. He spins this story about being from another planet. And he claims that a deadly killer robot has been sent to hunt him down.

It soon becomes apparent that Kol really is from another planet and the killer robot from outer space is real as well. Ward and the college kids are not entirely sure about Kol but they seem to have no choice other than to try to help escape from the killer robot. They figure the robot is trying to kill all of them.

The robot, the Alienator, is a lady killer robot (played by female bodybuilder Teagan Clive). The Alienator seems to be unstoppable. Bullets definitely do not stop her.

Ward turns to the Colonel (Leo Gordon). The Colonel was in Nam. He’s a war hero and a super-tough hombre. The Colonel doesn’t buy all this outer space stuff but he’s a man who never runs away from a fight. The Vietcong didn’t scare him and killer robot girls don’t scare him either.

Of course Ward and the college kids and the Colonel have have all been operating on the assumption that the Alienator is the villain, or rather villainess. That might be true but the action on Earth is intercut with action on that prison planet and the situation might be a good deal more complicated.

This is a very low-budget movie which usually didn’t bother Fred Olen Ray who always figured (mostly correctly) that energy and enthusiasm could compensate for lack of money.

The problem here isn’t the crude spaceship models. The problem is the Alienator. She doesn’t look very scary in a conventional way. She looks like she’s hoping for a gig as bass player in a really bad 70s metal band. Her whole look is so terrible that it achieves a bizarre kind of greatness. And Teagen Clive does have a certain presence. She’s certainly memorable, and that’s what counts. Like P.J. Soles’ cleavage in the early scenes she gets your attention.

The overall tone is pleasingly odd, with everyone playing things as straight as they can no matter how goofy things are getting.

There’s no graphic violence and no nudity. It’s silly lighthearted fun.

Fred Olen Ray had a knack for getting away with movies like this. You get the feeling that he was having a great time. You’ll need a lot of beers and a big tub of popcorn but if you have those things you’ll have a good time as well. The Alienator is recommended.

My copy is a Spanish DVD release (in English with removable Spanish subtitles) and it offers a pretty decent transfer. I believe there’s a Blu-Ray release, from Shout! Factory.

Yeti Giant of the 20th Century (1977)

Yeti Giant of the 20th Century is a Canadian-Italian co-production and it’s very very obviously a King Kong rip-off. That’s A-OK by me. I love Italian rip-offs of Hollywood blockbusters.

This time it’s not a giant ape on a remote island but a yeti frozen for a million years in the ice in northern Canada. Now I know what you’re thinking. That’s a long way from the Himalayas. But what if yetis were found across the whole globe at one time?

Billionaire tycoon Morgan Hunnicut (Edoardo Faieta) has funded the expedition to retrieve the yeti. His pal, palaeontologist Professor Wassermann (John Stacy), thinks the yeti can be revived. And he’s right!

Hunnicut’s teenaged granddaughter Jane (Antonella Interlenghi) and her kid brother are on hand when the yeti is brought back from the north. Jane thinks the yeti is really sweet. OK, he’s thirty feet tall but she’s sure he’s just as gentle and friendly as her puppy dog Indio.

The yeti really is friendly but he’s easily frightened and when he’s frightened he can cuse mass destruction.

Hunnicut’s plan is to use the yeti as a publicity stunt for his business empire. What he doesn’t know is that there is a traitor in his company, a guy actually working for a competitor that wants the yeti put out of the way.

Of course the bad guy manages to engineer a situation in which the yeti seems to have killed some people so soon the Canadian cops are hunting down the poor yeti.

Jane is determined to save her gentle gigantic snap-frozen friend. Much mayhem ensues.

So it’s all pretty close to the original King Kong.

This was clearly a low-budget effort but when Italians make a movie such as this you know that even if the special effects are cheap they’ll be fun. Italians in those days couldn’t make a dull movie if they tried.

There are some cool visual moments. The yeti locked in what looks like a giant red telephone box suspended from a helicopter is pretty cool.

Hunnicut isn’t really a villain. He wants to make money out of the yeti but he really does also want to help Professor Wassermann’s legitimate scientific research. And Hunnicut has no desire to see the yeti harmed. He has no desire to see anyone get hurt.

The acting in general is OK. There’s a nicely slimy villain.

Antonella Interlenghi as Jane is no Fay Wray (or Jessica Lange) but she’s likeable and cute.

I like Mimmo Crao as lot as the yeti. The makeup effects allow us to see his facial expressions and he does a fine job of conveying the yeti’s animal-like nature - a gentle timid creature but very easily spooked and inclined to lash out in fear. This movie needs a sympathetic monster and the yeti is very sympathetic indeed.

The major weakness is the lack of a really spectacular show-stopping visual set-piece.

The ending marks a significant departure from King Kong. It’s perhaps not entirely satisfactory but I think it works.

Yeti Giant of the 20th Century is sentimental but it’s good-natured and enjoyable and has some pleasing goofiness. This is a pure beer and popcorn movie. Recommended.

Yeti Giant of the 20th Century looks terrific on Blu-Ray.

Alien from the Abyss (1989)

Alien from the Abyss is a crazy 1989 monster movie directed by the great Antonio Margheriti.

We start with a couple of do-gooders, crusading journalist Jane (Marina Giulia Cavalli) and cameraman Lee (Robert Marius), trying to get to an island where nuclear waste is being dumped into an active volcano. They get machine-gunned from the air.

They survive and reach the island. There’s a mad scientist, Dr Geoffrey (Luciano Pigozzi), but the guy who’s really in charge of the E-Chem facility is much scarier. That’s Colonel Kovacks (Charles Napier). He’s head of security and knows nothing of nuclear physics but the E-Chem head office lets him make the scientific decisions because they’re like totally evil and he can be relied on to maximise profits. Lee has taken incriminating video footage. He gets captured and tortured.

Jane escapes. She is rescued by a nerdy snake-hunter, Bob (Daniel Bosch). They’re pursued through the jungle by the E-Chem security guards. The guards are armed with automatic weapons but Bob has his trusty snakes as allies. Every snake on the island is deadly and there are lots of them.

Narrow escapes and plenty of mayhem follow before he gets her to his jungle hideaway and introduces her to his snakes. She is not impressed.

She is also not impressed that he doesn’t want to join her crusade against E-Chem and rescue her cameraman buddy.

But he changes his mind because Jane is a pain in the ass but she’s kinda cute.

The whole facility seems like it’s become a huge nuclear bomb about to explode.

That’s when the alien spaceship lands! We later find out that the aliens have been attracted by all the radiation. Aliens just love radiation.

This is one mean nasty alien. It’s not just the huge jaw-like chopper things. He can also slime you to death.

Colonel Kovacks has to figure out how to kill the alien. Jane just wants to get that videotape back. Bob just wants to get into Jane’s pants but he’s not having much luck.

The plant is getting closer to meltdown, the volcano could blow at any moment and the alien has embarked on a killing rampage. He’s one of those unstoppable monsters. Shooting him just annoys him.

I believe Margheriti was disappointed by the monster but I think he’s rather cool.

There are lots of gunfights and countless explosions. Lots of guys get chomped or slimed by the monster. This is what cinema is all about!

The acting is mostly adequate for the kinds of movie this is. Luciano Pigozzi is fun as the cynical disillusioned mad scientist who isn’t as evil or mad as he appears to be.

And of course there’s Charles Napier being Charles Napier and he’s huge amounts of fun to watch.

It goes without saying that this was a low-budget movie (shot in the Phillipines) but Margheriti always knew how to make a low budget go a long way. And he keeps things powering along. If the action slows down for a minute or so, add more explosions.

This is a remarkably tame movie on the sex and nudity front. There is zero nudity and zero sex. Despite Bob’s best efforts. Jane is not going to come across because she has a Cause and that means more to her than a man.

There is naturally a great deal of silliness and goofiness but there’s adventure and excitement and an unstoppable slimy monster. And deadly snakes. And explosions.

Margheriti could handle most genres and he does a solid job here.

Alien from the Abyss (also released as Alien from the Deep) is not a movie you want to take the least bit seriously but it’s fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release looks very nice indeed and there are some extras.

King Kong Escapes (1967)

King Kong Escapes was a Japanese US co-production between Rankin-Bass and Japan’s Toho studio. Made in 1967 it was directed by Ishirô Honda but was inspired as much by The King Kong Show animated TV series of the time (which I've never seen) as by Japanese monster movies or the original King Kong movie.

At the North Pole the mad scientist Dr Who (Eisei Amamoto) has built a giant robot ape. He needs the robot ape to dig deposits of Element X out of a cavern. Dr Who is in the employ of an unnamed country which it’s reasonable to assume is meant to be China (Red China hysteria was huge in 1967).

He is taking his orders from the beautiful but deadly superspy Madame X (Mie Hama).

Meanwhile a super-advanced United Nations submarine skippered by Commander Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason) has to take refuge in an inlet in a tiny island. The island is of course the island on which the legendary King Kong was supposed to live and by one of those amazing coincidences which abound in this movie Commander Nelson (a character clearly heavily based on Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and his executive officer Lieutenant Commander Jiro Nomura (Akira Takarada) are totally obsessed by the subject of King Kong. They believe he really existed. They’re Kong experts.

Nelson and Nomura, accompanied by the ship’s nurse Lieutenant Susan Watson (Linda Miller), land on the island. They discover that Kong not only was real, he’s still around. The island is also swarming with dinosaurs.

Given that we know that Kong has an eye for a pretty girl we’re not surprised that he takes a shine to Susan. I can’t say that I blame him. She’s cute and blonde and adorable. But of course Kong has lousy luck with women. Whenever he thinks he’s found Miss Right something always goes wrong.

Kong has more urgent things to worry about. Dr Who’s robot ape has broken down so he decides to kidnap Kong. A real giant ape should even more useful than a robot one. Kong will be easy to control. He’ll be hypnotised. What could go wrong?

So far the action has taken place on Kong’s island and at the North Pole so the good people of Tokyo are probably breathing a sigh of relief that at least their city is not going to get stomped this time. But they’re wrong!

Doctor Who is perhaps not the brightest of mad scientists. His schemes always seem to contain some fatal flaws. He loses control of Kong. He thinks he can threaten Commander Nelson into helping him regain control of the recalcitrant ape. The key of course is Susan. Cute blondes can persuade giant apes to do anything.

Meanwhile Madame X seems to be cooking up schemes of her own.

There’s no point in complaining that this movie is very silly. It’s fairly obvious that it’s supposed to be silly. We’re not supposed to take it the least bit seriously.

The special effects are not very convincing but they’re fun and fun matters more than realism. The submarine miniature is cool. And there’s a flying sub. It’s not as cool as the one in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series and it’s more of a miniature hovercraft sub but it’s kinda cool as well.

We get a reasonable amount of mayhem with both Kong and the robot ape slugging it out, not just for dominance but for possession of the luscious Susan.

Mie Hama has huge amounts of fun as the sexy but evil lady spy Madame X. Linda Miller is just bursting with cuteness as Susan, Kong’s love interest. The two male heroes are perfectly adequate.

Eisei Amamoto as Dr Who manages to seem evil, crazy and incompetent all at the same time and his performance is most enjoyable.

King Kong Escapes is lightweight good-natured goofy fun and if you’re content with that then it’s definitely recommended.

King Kong Escapes looks lovely on Blu-Ray. The disc is barebones.

Species (1995)

Species is a 1995 science fiction/horror/monster movie and it seems to be mostly dismissed as being a rather schlocky riff on Alien/Aliens. That’s a little bit unfair as we will see.

The real-life S.E.T.I. (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) projects have for decades been sending out engraved invitations to any advanced life forms out there in the galaxy to come and invade the Earth. It’s a bit like sending out cards to every known burglar in the country letting them know that as far as you’re concerned your home is their home.

In this movie in 1993 an alien civilisation responds to these messages. The response is in the form of instructions on how to do some really cool genetic manipulations. Naturally scientists, led by Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley), decide to try out these experiments. What could go wrong? If you can’t trust aliens from an unknown extraterrestrial civilisation on an unknown planet who can you trust? The U.S. Government naturally funds the project.

The result of the project is a little girl who becomes known as Sil. She looks like any normal twelve-year-old girl which is a bit concerning since she’s only a few months old. Sil also seems to be faster and more powerful than a normal twelve-year-old girl. The scientists are afraid of her. When they get really afraid of her they decide to kill her. They describe it as “terminating the project” which sounds so much nicer than murdering a child.

Sil’s execution by lethal gas is the opening scene of the movie but Sil escapes. Now she must be hunted down and destroyed. That proves to be quite a challenge.

Fitch assembles a team of four for the hunt. There are two scientists, Dr Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina) and Dr Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger). There’s Dan (Forest Whitaker), an unstable empath who seems to have various extra-sensory power. And there’s a government assassin, Preston Lennox (Michael Madsen).

Sil has grown up fast. She now looks like a gorgeous 20-year-old blonde woman (and is now played by Natasha Henstridge). Sil is confused but she has a strong survival instinct and she’s half-human while the other half is an alien predator.

Sil also has a strong instinct to reproduce. That’s what really scares Fitch. He has no idea how many offspring she can produce and how quickly she can do it. She has to be destroyed before she can breed.

This is a movie that you need to think about. On the surface it’s a monster movie with government agents hunting down a monster from outer space. But the more you think about it the more nuanced it becomes. Sil is not necessarily an evil monster as such, and her hunters are perhaps not quite the uncomplicated good guys they seem to be.

It’s important to note that the government scientists start trying to kill Sil before she ever tries to kill anyone. And although she ends up killing lots of people from her point of view she is killing in self-defence. Sometimes her ideas of self-defence are a little pro-active - she sometimes kills people who are merely potential threats. But to her they are very real potential threats. And the decision to hunt her down and destroy her is also made before she has killed anybody.

She just scares these scientists a lot, so the safest thing is to kill her.

Sil is only half-human. Her non-human half is animal-like, driven purely by the natural instinct to survive and to reproduce. Expecting moral judgments from her is like expecting a lion to agonise over the ethical implications of eating zebras, or expecting a tigress to consider the moral dimensions of killing in order to protect her cubs.

Fitch is a character with a little bit of depth. He thinks of himself as a rational man whose mind is never clouded by emotion, a man capable of taking tough decisions. He is however not as sure of himself as he seems to be. He cries when he orders Sil’s execution. He is also a lot more frightened than he’ll admit, and he’s also aware that he has screwed up pretty badly. Ben Kingley does a pretty good in the role, giving us hints that Fitch is only just holding himself together.

When judging Natasha Henstridge’s performance you have to remember that her character is not a woman. She is only half-human, and her human half is both intelligent and child-like. And totally unsocialised. She has to come across as not quit human and Miss Henstridge does a fine job of getting that across.

H.R. Giger did the monster design work, in his characteristic amazing style.

Species is an interestingly deceptive movie. You can enjoy it as a straight-out monster-hunting movie but there’s some subtlety and ambiguity there if you care to look for them. This is a monster who is very scared. I liked this movie a great deal. Highly recommended.

Species looks terrific on Blu-Ray.

Monster on the Campus (1958)

Monster on the Campus is a 1958 science fiction monster movie but it includes the words “directed by Jack Arnold” in the credits and that always inspires confidence. No matter how outlandish the ideas you know it will be a well-crafted movie.

This movie belongs to the smallest of all movie sub-genres - the coelacanth horror film. Yes, coelacanth, the famous “living fossils” - the fish species assumed to have been extinct for 60 million years before its rediscovery in the 1930s. These fish were at the time thought to have remained unchanged for several hundred million years. It was believed that they had not evolved at all. In this movie these odd fish spread horror and mayhem on an American university campus.

It all begins when the university acquires a fine specimen of a coelacanth. Professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) just can’t wait to start dissecting.

The coelacanth arrives in a truck, packed in a crate. While it’s being removed from the truck bloody water from the crate drips onto the roadway and Samson licks it. Samson is a German Shepherd, the much-loved mascot of a fraternity house. He’s a very friendly very gentle dog.

Shortly afterwards Samson turns savage. He has never done this before. He has to be locked in a cage for veterinary observation. Professor Blake notices something else very strange and inexplicable about the dog.

Professor Blake is feeling very tired and the campus nurse, Molly Riordan (Helen Westcott) offers to drive him home. Some hours later Molly’s dead body is discovered.

Professor Blake is now an obvious murder suspect but Detective Lieutenant Mike Stevens is inclined to think the professor is innocent. The fingerprint and footprint evidence seems to clinch the matter. Professor Blake is not the killer. But there is a killer loose on campus.

The footprints help to clear Blake but they mystify the cops. What kind of man could leave footprints like that?

Professor Blake comes up with a wild theory. I won’t spoil things by revealing his theory other than to say that it has to do with the peculiar nature of the coelacanth. The science stuff is this movie is delightfully silly and off-the-wall. You expect that in a 50s sci-fi monster movie, but in this case the insane pseudoscientific ideas are at least interesting and amusing and have some original elements.

The professor believes the giant dragonfly (two feet long) that flies into his laboratory window confirms his theory.

He tries to explain his theory to his department head and to his colleagues but they think he’s gone nuts.

His girlfriend Madeline (Joanna Moore) wants to stand by him but she thinks his theories are crazy as well.

Poor Molly was just the first victim of the mysterious monstrous campus killer.

Professor Blake eventually figures things out and comes up with a plan to destroy the monster.

The special effects and makeup effects are mostly laughably silly (especially the giant dragonfly) but surprisingly there’s a transformation scene that is superbly done.

The various cast members try to take it all very seriously which adds to the fun.

Jack Arnold made much much better movies than this but he does his best with the material he’s given.

The sheer lunacy of the premise is delightful. The fact that we’re meant to think the professor is a genius but his scientific methods are so sloppy adds more enjoyment.

This is not by any stretch of the imagination a great movie or even a particularly good one. It’s strictly a beer and popcorn movie. If that’s what you’re in the mood for it’s worth a look.

Universal's Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection offers five films on DVD and all are worth seeing. The Monolith Monsters (1957) is particularly good. Monster on the Campus gets a very nice transfer (the movie is in black-and-white).

The Mole People (1956)

The Mole People is a 1956 Universal-International science fiction B-movie.

An archaeological expedition has made some surprising finds regarding a very obscure dynasty. I’m not sure where this is supposed to be taking place. They find a Sumerian inscription so one would guess Mesopotamia but it looks more like the Himalayas. After an earthquake they make another find - a very ancient oil lamp with another inscription which suggests that if they climb a rather forbidding mountain they will make some very exciting finds.

Three archaeologists - Dr Roger Bentley (B-movie stalwart John Agar), Dr Jud Bellamin (Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (Nestor Paiva) - make the climb. They do find something pretty startling - an ancient city. And it’s inhabited. The people are still stuck in the Sumerian era and they’re superstitious and suspicious of strangers. In fact they don’t believe that strangers can exist. Their city is to them the entire world. Luckily, after first deciding to kill them, the king changes his mind and decides that these strangers must be messengers from the goddess Ishtar.

The city is located beneath the surface of the Earth, as a result of a catastrophic volcanic eruption five thousand years ago.

The city’s population is extremely small but there are also the Creatures of the Dark (they’re the mole people of the title although they’re never referred to as such). They were once human. Now they’re slaves.

The problem for the archaeologists is to keep the king thinking that they’re divine messengers. The high priest (played Alan Napier) doesn’t buy their story at all and favours killing them. Before killing them he wants their magic cylinder that contains Ishtar’s divine fire. It’s actually just an ordinary torch (or flashlight for American readers). It would be useful to keep the slaves in line. The inhabitants of this buried city cannot tolerate bright light. It terrifies them and can kill them.

Of course there’s a girl, Adad (Cynthia Patrick). She’s a slave. She’s not one of the mole people but she is one of the Marked Ones, who are presumably mutants of a sort. She certainly doesn’t look like a mutant. She’s blonde and cute and Dr Bentley is immediately smitten.

There are some dangers to be faced but there’s really very little action. This is a movie that doesn’t manage to create a great deal in the way of excitement or suspense.

The special effects are mostly very cheap although there are occasional effects shots that work. Matte paintings are used a great deal. It’s a technique I usually like but in this case the matte paintings are rather crude.

The disappearing into the ground trick however is pretty cool and works well on screen. The mole people are just guys in rubber suits but they look quite cool as well.

The acting is standard B-movie stuff, apart from Alan Napier who manages to be creepy and sinister and menacing. You get the feeling that this high priest enjoys putting people to death.

The basic idea is fine (in fact quite good) and while the script doesn’t do anything dazzling with it it’s serviceable enough. There is a surprising touch at the end.

Virgil W. Vogel directed. He spent most of his directing career working in television. A year after this film he directed the very entertaining lost world movie The Land Unknown (1957).

If you accept the fact that everything looks very artificial then this movie is a lot more enjoyable. In the scenes in the mine the artificiality becomes a definite asset, creating a nightmare underworld atmosphere.

Despite its faults and a certain talkiness this is an oddly likeable movie. It’s no masterpiece but it is reasonably good fun if you love 50s monsters movies and lost civilisation tales. Recommended.

This film is included in Universal’s five-movie Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection DVD boxed set. The Mole People gets an acceptable transfer. It’s presented in 1.37:1. The movie was shot in black-and-white. It has I believe subsequently had a Blu-Ray release.

King Kong (1933)

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong astounded audiences in 1933. It hasn’t lost any of its impact. It’s deservedly regarded as a classic, and it’s one of the most important movies in the history of genre cinema. 

This is a movie about a man who wants to make movies unlike anything ever seen before and that’s exactly what Cooper and Schoedsack were aiming to do, and they succeeded.

King Kong was made at RKO with David O. Selznick acting as executive producer.

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) makes what we assume are semi-documentary movies in wild and exotic places (such movies were indeed hugely popular at the time and Cooper and Schoedsack had made such movies). He’s been advised that what his films need is some love interest. He’s decided that that is good advice. He’s looking for a suitable actress but due to his reputation for risk-taking no agent will provide such an actress. Quite by accident he encounters Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), a former film extra down on her luck. She’s desperate and she jumps at Denham’s job offer. She’s told she’ll need to be on board the ship ready to sail at dawn.

The movie starts fairly slowly but that’s OK since we get a gradual buildup of the sense of mystery. This is a ship headed to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. We also get a chance to get to see just how obsessive Carl Denham is, and we get the chance to get to know Ann Darrow and care about her. She’s feisty, likeable and sexy. She also takes a very sensible and grown-up attitude towards Carl Denham. He’s certainly using her but he did rescue her from destitution and gave her a break when she needed it so she owes him. He also promised not to put the moves on her and he’s kept his promise. He’s played square with her and she intends to play square with him.

The destination turns out to be an uncharted island west of Sumatra. If Carl Denham wanted something special to film then he’s certainly found it here. Dinosaurs and a gigantic gorilla definitely qualify as something new. A great deal of mayhem follows, Ann gets to be up close and personal with King Kong, there’s plenty of slaughter. Eventually even more slaughter will follow, in New York, leading up to one of the most iconic ending sequences in movie history.

Of course it’s tempting to focus on Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation which was ground-breaking at the time and still impresses but King Kong has a lot more than that going for it. Once the action starts 40 minutes in it’s relentless. There is a solid hour of non-stop action and excitement and danger. It has a solid plot, basically a riff on Beauty and the Beast. The sets are wonderful. There’s tragedy (Kong is certainly a tragic monster). There’s romance.

It’s also a pre-code movie. Had this movie been made two years later it would have been a whole lot blander. The mayhem and violence wrought by Kong would have needed to be toned way down. And the hints of perversity would have been eliminated (any suggestion that Kong’s attraction to Ann was sexual would have been ruthlessly eliminated). It would have been just a routine monster movie. But in 1933 RKO didn’t have to worry too much about such things and King Kong is breathtakingly violent and loaded with perversity.

I love the extreme artificiality of the island. It’s like a fever dream. Or a voyage into the unconscious of a madman. The special effects are stunning but they’re not aiming for realism. If you’re going to make a fantasy movie it’s pointless trying to make anything in the movie look realistic. King Kong takes place in its own world where the rules are different.

The movie was shot entirely on sound stages and on the backlot. There is no location shooting at all. Which is a major plus - it reinforces the sense that we’re no longer in the everyday world. We’re not in Kansas any more.

Two acting performances stand out. Robert Armstrong is excellent as Carl Denham, effectively conveying the character’s complexity. Carl is unscrupulous and cynical but he’s basically honest and in his own way he’s an obsessive visionary who will sacrifice anything to get his vision on the screen. There’s a lot of Carl Denham in most of the great film-makers in cinema history.

The other standout is Fay Wray. She’s mesmerising and very sexy and she’s never whiny.

And, to be fair, Bruce Cabot is quite good as the handsome first mate Jack Driscoll with whom Ann falls in love.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and most importantly the film is uncut. Anyone who saw King Kong on TV in the 60s, 70s or 80s was seeing a heavily cut print. The audio commentary track features Ray Harryhausen, a very appropriate choice. It also features snippets or archival interviews with original cast and crew members including Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray.

King Kong works as well today as it did ninety years ago. A hugely entertaining visually stunning movie. Very highly recommended.

The X from Outer Space (1967)

Criterion’s Eclipse Series 37 DVD boxed set When Horror Came to Shochiku includes four movies made by Shochiku studio in 1967-68 as part of the studio’s short-lived attempt to jump on the science fiction/horror/monster movie bandwagon. The X from Outer Space (1967), directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu, is very definitely a science fiction monster movie.

It begins with plans to send a nuclear-powered manned spacecraft (nicknamed the Astro-Boat) to Mars. Previous missions have ended in disaster. The crew of four naturally includes a beautiful blonde girl scientist, Lisa.

The voyage runs into the usual hazards, such as meteor storms. They make a stopover on the Moon, which leads to romantic complications. Lisa is in love with the spaceship’s commander, Captain Sano, but she has a rival on the Moon. A cute astronaut girl named Michiko.

After leaving the Moon the spaceship runs into real trouble - a UFO. The astronauts find weird stuff on the exterior of their ship. They bring the stuff inside and discover a kind of egg-shaped object. They decide to bring it back to Earth. 

You won't be surprised to learn that this turns out to be a really bad move on their part.

The egg contains a monster and pretty soon he’s a really big monster. He’s 200 feet tall. He’s not very friendly. He wants to stomp things. He wants to stomp cities. Being a monster he has his heart set on stomping Tokyo. After that he’ll see what else there is in Japan to stomp. The monster is given the name Guilali.

He is of course unstoppable. And of course he feeds on nuclear energy.

Tanks and fighter jets don’t bother him in the least.

The only hope is to come up with a scientific answer. Lisa may have the solution - a hitherto undiscovered substance which may destroy Guilali’s power. But it will have to be brought back from the Moon.

It’s now a race against time. Can the astronauts bring the anti-Guilali substance back to Earth before Tokyo gets stomped?

There’s nothing very original here. It’s your basic Japanese monster movie. The studio was clearly aiming at a young audience and the movie contains just about everything that kids were going to love.

The special effects and the miniatures work might be cheap and cheesy but they’re fun and cool. The monster is goofy but he’s fun and cool as well. OK, he does look a bit like a dinosaur with a chicken’s head but he does look like a monster. Disappointingly he doesn’t breathe fire but you can’t have everything.

The best thing about this movie is that there’s no message. The monster isn’t anyone’s fault. This is just a lighthearted monster movie romp.

Once the monster begins his rampage the movie’s pacing accelerates. Which is a good thing. We’re not given time to notice any technical flaws or to notice the cheapness of the effects. It’s just action scene after action scene.

The acting is fine by monster movie standards. There are likeable heroes. Lisa and Michiko are smart, brave and adorable. The elderly generals and politicians are suitably grave and portentous.

There is the romantic sub-plot alluded to earlier and and given that this is really a kids’ movie it’s kept at an innocent and rather sweet level.

As since it is obviously aimed at kids there’s no point in being hyper-critical about plot holes or any failures in logic, or any lack of scientific plausibility.

The X from Outer Space is silly and goofy but I think it’s fair to say that it was intended to be nothing more than lighthearted fun, and I think it succeeds on the intended level.

The transfer is lovely. Both the Japanese (with English subtitles) and English-dubbed audio options are provided. The only extra is brief liner notes (which take the movie much too seriously).

The Terror Within (1989)

The Terror Within is a 1989 Alien rip-off produced by Roger Corman for his Concorde Pictures production company. It was directed by Thierry Notz.

Instead of being set in space it’s set on a post-apocalyptic Earth (which was obviously going to make it much cheaper). The apocalypse was the result of a plague. This movie does not waste time giving us any complicated background.

The eight or so surviving personnel of the Centre for Disease Control’s Mojave Lab are besieged by gargoyles. The gargoyles are monsters which are apparently some kind of human mutants. The Mojave Lab is in intermittent contact with the CDC’s Rocky Mountain Lab. How many humans have survived the plague is unclear. There are some but their prospects seem grim. The Mojave Lab personnel are safe within their fortress-like facility, or at least they think they’re safe.

Two of the personnel leave the lab to look for more human survivors. Those two do not come back.

One human survivor, a woman, is found. She is pregnant, but the father was definitely not human.

If you’ve seen Alien you know that the mother-to-be is going to be in for a really bad time.

Things get worse. One of the lab’s crew, Sue (Starr Andreeff), gets raped by a gargoyle. She is found to be pregnant but she’s been having an affair with David (Andrew Stevens). The baby could be David’s or it could be the gargoyle’s, which leaves the lab’s doctor Linda (Terri Treas) and the mother-to-be in a quandary. This also provides the movie’s sleaze factor.

The real action starts with a gargoyle running loose in the laboratory. The lab people are hunting the gargoyle, or maybe the gargoyle is hunting them. The problem is that gargoyles are just about unkillable. If only the gargoyles had some weakness. Of course it turns out that they do, but it might not be enough to shift the odds in the humans’ favour.

There are no original ideas in Thomas McKelvey Cleaver’s screenplay but at least he and the director understand the formula they are ripping off. They know which ingredients need to be included and they make sure those ingredients are present. The screenplay might be unoriginal but it’s perfectly serviceable.

Thierry Notz knows what he’s doing. There’s no need for subtlety. This movie requires action, scares, nasty monsters, gore and monster rape creepiness. It needs to be fast moving, and it is.

Considering that this was made on a Roger Corman budget it looks quite acceptable. The sets are simple but they provide a decent arena for the action scenes.

The big problem with the low budget is that the film cannot possibly reproduce anything approaching the monsters special effects of Alien and instead has to rely on guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters. The monster is a major weakness. It looks a little bit silly rather than terrifying. It didn’t bother me because I happen to love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters, although it has to be said that this is not one of the great guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

The acting is generally quite adequate. Andrew Stevens as David makes a perfectly fine hero. The two female leads are quite OK and both Sue and Linda get the chance to be heroic.

The acting weak link is the movie’s only well-known name, George Kennedy. He’s the lab commander, Hal. Usually the problem with George Kennedy is outrageous overacting but here he gives a very flat lifeless performance. He just doesn’t seem interested. Admittedly the part is badly underwritten and Hal is the least interesting character.

Instead of Ripley’s cat we have David’s dog, Butch. Butch ain’t pretty but he’s likeable and brave. I’m not going to tell you which (if any) of the humans survive the movie but I will tell you that Butch survives. I know some people find a movie impossible to enjoy if they think the animal star isn’t going to survive.

If you can accept the very cheap monster effects then this is a very competently done Alien ripoff. The action scenes are well-staged and it’s exciting violent fun with some decent suspense. I liked it. Recommended.

This movie is paired with another Concorde movie, Dead Space, in one of Shout! Factory’s Roger Corman double-feature DVD releases. The Terror Within gets a good anamorphic transfer.