The American President. He (or she, just hang on) is committed to protecting the nation from all enemies foreign, domestic or supernatural, right? We are assured that the Pentagon has considered plans for a Zombie Apocalypse, but if the movies are to be believed (and why wouldn't they be?) this is not the first time that the President has had to deal with the Undead Un-American Activities. Many of our greatest presidents have faced down some of our most classic monsters already, and they did not shirk their responsibilities.
What with the internet being the hotbed for "This + That" nerdistry and wannamemes that it is, there are as many spawns of this idea as a hot bed is wont to bring forth, especially with zombies. There is zombie every-damn-thing on the internet. Go on, think of a word, add zombie to it and Google. Yup, there it is. Zombie Pool, both billiards and swimming. Zombie Ice Cream. Zombie Pope. As such, I'm not addressing every damn variation on this theme, but simply hitting some of the bigger cinematic moments in American Presidents versus Classic Monsters. Fanfic (and there's puh-lenty) need not apply.
I was surprised to discover that this was a June release, because it has the key ingredients of a May movie; specifically traditional monsters, a forgettable story, B-list effects and double cheese. That's not to say that it's bad, mind you. I often have more fun with May movies than I do with, say, the July ones. They're frequently more fun, and AL:VH is certainly that.
The film doesn't so much posit an alternate timeline as a secret history. Lincoln, in his youth, had a run in with some pretty vicious vampires, which led him to a night job as a slayer of the undead while he pursued his legal and political career by day. He trains with a mentor hunter in the finer points of axe-handling, which you just know is gonna end poorly for the mentor yet motivationally for Honest Abe. This comes in handy, since there is a much larger vampire threat with endangers the future of American freedom... or something.
The movie makes more than a token effort to fit the vampires in around the events of Lincoln's life. Sure, whenever you shake a tree like this, four score and seven history nerds fall out to tell why nuh-uh, but for a movie that tell you in its title that it gives not one shit about such fussbudgets, it's more faithful than it needs to be.
The action is slick and cool. Lincoln is a reluctant badass, much as history holds him to be... plus, you know, the axe. Lincoln wields it like a kung fu artist and it provides a unique visual profile to what might otherwise have been some pretty rote violence. The not-terribly-memorable villain is played by an Englishman, because ALL the villains are played by Englishmen nowadays. The narrative takes itself seriously internally, but it is fully aware that you won't.
Really, the weakest thing about it is that I've seen it twice and I still don't remember the full core story. I think that's probably because it was pulled along more by the chronology of Lincoln's life (lives being less tightly structured than stories) rather than by A-to-B narrative tropes.
It's good mindless fun that won't fill you up or weigh you down.
This movie has every excuse to be terrible, and there's certainly no denying the bargain basement production values, but despite all the obvious shortcomings, it's really rather funny thanks to its script and performers. I can only assume it was conceived as a low-budget satire on the idea of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, being released straight-to-video within months of the bigger-budgeted film. Where Lincoln takes itself remarkably seriously, FDR takes absolutely NOTHING seriously, and that is its trump card.
As a younger man, Franklin Roosevelt was good at everything and so beloved by everyone that his massive ego was merely another beloved characteristic. And then he was attacked by a werewolf, and werewolf bites cause polio, dontcha know? In a sight gag that will recur throughout the movie, FDR's legs are reduced to wildly quivering children's legs. That sets the "story" into motion, and establishes the level and premise for much of the movie's humor. As FDR, Barry "Brad" Bostwick is an over-the-top caricature of the manly man of bygone days. He drinks hard, he laughs hard at his own jokes, and he's predominantly concerned with how the polio will affect his "cack." After the werewolf attack, he's more determined than ever to become President.
Little does he know at the time, but the werewolf was a German agent. It seems that all the Axis powers are werewolves, and werewolves Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini chat with each other on the phone like teenage girls while making their plans for world conquest. Fortunately, FDR is a take-charge kind of leader, and takes point on the D-day invasion with his armored and machine gun-enabled wheelchair.
In case I've been too subtle, this is not a delicate comedy of manners. It's crude in as many ways as possible, but there's an ounce of brain under the hood of it all, as opposed to, say, just another Wayans movie. My personal favorite joke comes from a left-field cribbing of Bon Jovi lyrics in a campaign meeting FDR has with a struggling constituent. Some people will be put off by some of the humor which comes across as racist or sexist, but there are enough instances that expose enough awareness to suggest that what they are really mocking is not races and sexes, but racists and sexists.
For a movie that didn't need to accomplish much to attain "so bad it's good" low-low-budget and expectations status, it really seemed to me that FDR: American Badass! delivered more than it needed to, and much more cleverly than is likely to be appreciated.
Bruce Campbell is a sad old man in a nursing home. He drifts in and out of awareness, and isn't sure he cares. He also may or may not be Elvis.
Ossie Davis is his best friend in the nursing home. He also may or may not be JFK.
Together they become aware of an entity that haunts the nursing home by night, sucking the life energy out of the home's defenseless residents. He definitely IS an Egyptian mummy!
Jack and Elvis have to push themselves to their limits to confront the mummy and free the souls of their friends. While it takes the obvious guise of a monster movie, much of what makes Bubba Ho-Tep so good is the way it uses these recontextualized horror tropes to consider issues of age, ability and respect. The majority of monster movies are about impulsive young people who don't think about what they're doing. Jack and Elvis aren't like that. They don't run screaming like a bunch of ninnies. They face their enemy fully accepting that they will likely die. It's not about survival for them. They're past that point. It's about being useful, having value, and dedicating their lives to doing something with meaning. They continue to EARN respect, even if no one gives it to them anymore.
Must-see if you appreciate the way that Bruce Campbell can turn just about any line into something hilarious and cool. Easily one of the best mummy movies ever, which isn't really saying that much.
See also: JFK vs zombies in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Yeah, you could just as easily put Independence Day in this slot, but Mars Attacks! is the better movie by far. They're essentially the same movie, but ID takes itself completely seriously, which makes it all the more ridiculous. Mars Attacks! however, is based on a fan favorite trading card series from the 1960s and takes very little seriously. ID wants you to care about the outcome. MA! gives you credit for already knowing that the human have to win in the end, so it doesn't really matter if it's a silly victory. That approach is woven throughout the movie. ID teases you with its aliens and insists that they're badass and scary even after it's been revealed that they're cheesy and dopey. MA!'s aliens fully embrace their anachronistic origins and simply play their required role. This all frees up MA! to be more creative and fun while essentially doing the same things.
It's an ensemble cast, and just happens to include Jack Nicholson in two roles, one of whom is the President. While one might initially question the judgment of casting Nicholson in two roles when he is always so clearly Nicholson, Mars Attacks! reminds you that it couldn't possibly matter. The film is full of recognizable faces and at no point does it matter if they embody the role with transcendent gravitas. It's more like an episode of the Love Boat. It's just fun to have them there because they're them, and them being them is a convenient shorthand to who they're playing. There's no extra exposition required, which again, frees up MA! to be the silly fun that it is.
Nicholson's President oozes with transparent people-pleasing charm. His triteness is summed up with the go-to refrain for late 20th century naivete, "Can't we all just... get along?" shortly before he learned the hard way that the Martians have not come all this way to... get along.
See also: President Colbert vs aliens in Monsters vs. Aliens
Death Race 2000 is one of that select class of 70s exploitation films that manages to have it both ways. It's a brutal satire that gets away with just being brutal if that's the way you watch it. The premise presages the like of The Running Man, The Hunger Games or CBS's Survivor, where a cross-country race in which hapless victims of automotive homicide are scored for points, all of this in a bread-and-circuses effort to distract from the corruption of the government. The racers are all over-the-top personalities a la Hanna Barbera's Wacky Races, professional fake wrestling or "Real" "Housewives."
Under the surface of all these goings-on there's the political machinations of the president, and the underground movement to overthrow him. One of the most successful racers, Frankenstein played by David Carradine, is sympathetic to the cause. He's seen and been the worst of the best and the best of the worst.
In the interest of full disclosure, Frankenstein is not a Frankenstein's monster. He's just a man who survived a disfiguring accident and earned the moniker for his appearance. Nevertheless, it was too golden an opportunity to round out the roster of classic monsters faced by presidents.
Death Race 2000 was a midnight movie classic that has now attained the status of just plain classic. The satire is still bitingly timely, which says a whole lot of bad things about the ground we've covered in the past 40 years.
Obama vs Zombie image from the internet, no rights or credit claimed
When I was very young, my imaginary friend was a ghost named Marvin. I don't think he was ever the kind of imaginary friend that I played with or talked to, but he was my explanation for why doors would shut suddenly and I pointed him and his father out to my parents when we saw some laundry blowing in the breeze. Sometimes I made up stories about him -- at least I think I was making it up. In time, I expanded Marvin's cast of supporting characters. He had a skeleton friend named Mr. Bones who lived in our attic, and a vampire friend named Fangs who dropped by on rare occasion. I'm pretty sure there was also a wolf man, and there might have even been a Frankenstein's Monster of some sort, but these were additions that came toward the end of my "imaginary friend" arc -- somewhere in my first couple years of school. I don't think I made up as many stories about them, but it seemed natural to me that a ghost would have a supernatural supporting cast.
I suppose that's a large part of the impetus behind this article. From the very edges of memory, I was thinking about monsters who were friends with me and with each other. I don't know what planted that seed specifically, but given when I was born, there were all kinds of cheeseball possibilities from the 60s and early 70s. It's altogether likely that it was a combination of those elements that reinforced the idea for me and inspired me to add to Marvin's retinue. Looking back, it's easy to make fun of those things, but I sure wish I'd had access to some of these books back then. Adam Rex's books, in particular, would have blown my mind.
I'm not going to make any effort whatsoever to be comprehensive here. It's simply not possible, particularly given the history of monsters in comic books, and comic books' fetish for crossovers. So if I forgot your favorite, or simply something that you remember, that's okay. It's not a Master's thesis.
Neal Adams' Monsters - 1984 (collected 2003)
Written & Illustrated by Neal Adams
Comics industry superstar Neal Adams tried to break away from the Big Two in the 80s. The business of comics still wasn't quite ready, and Adams had neither the business acumen nor the writing chops to really make it work the way that it would for the Image founders a decade later. One of his projects was an anthology comic called Days of Future Past (I know, right?) and Adams' contribution to the short-lived title was a story than combined Dracula, Frankenstein and a Werewolf with his own designs, to avoid any legal toe-stepping with Universal and, one suspects, to show off a little because he was still Neal freakin' Adams after all.
The story would actually have been a better a better House of Dracula than "House of Dracula." It still works within the same themes as the Universal pictures, adds some new elements of its own, and remixes them into a much better story with more interaction between the monsters we'd like to see. It's not necessarily great, but it does pay tribute while improving upon the notion.
It turns out, the comic was expanded from a record and storybook that Adams originally made in the 70s. If Universal had taken the bait then and developed it as a movie, we could have seen much different development through the 70s and 80s.
Rampage is an arcade video game that puts players in the role of giant monsters tearing cities apart. While the characters are not licensed from existing monsters, they are clearly "inspired by" them. George is a giant ape, akin to King Kong. Lizzie is a giant dinosaur like Godzilla, but also looks a little Black Lagoon-y to me. Ralph is a giant werewolf. Okay, sure, why not? With its large character sprites, Rampage definitely looked different in the arcades, but I always felt that gameplay ran a little thin fell short of the concept's potential. Clinging to the sides of buildings and moving fairly slowly just didn't embody the sense of rampaging that I wanted from it. There would be sequels for consoles later on, but none of them were terribly well-rated. Small surprise.
King of the Monsters was a giant monster fighting/wrestling game for the SNK's Neo-Geo arcade/console system, which made it an unusual creature indeed. Players selected monsters which took their cues from Godzilla, King Kong and Ultraman characters, then fought it out in large cityscapes. The concept was great and the large figures in urban environments were impressive for their time (like Rampage), but (also like Rampage) the gameplay just really wasn't there. Being more inspired by Japanese wrestling games than martial arts styled fighting games, the controls were less intuitive and satisfying than a giant smash-fest really demanded. There was also a sequel. Due to its oddity and its SNK basis, it really didn't get much traction in the west, despite ports to the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
Darkstalkers - 1994
Capcom for Arcade and various consoles
Featuring: a vampire, demons, a mummy, ghosts, a Frankenstein type monster, a werewolf, an Uzi-packin' Red Riding Hood, a cat girl and more!
Darkstalkers (known as "Vampire" in Japan) is a 2D arcade fighting game series from Capcom, similar to the Street Fighter series, but with monster characters and more fantastical fighting techniques. There have been 3 main entries in the series and a couple compilations. It's also spawned cartoons and comics. It has been suggested that there won't be a new Darkstalkers game until Capcom gets a million requests. I suck at the games about as much as I suck at most 2D Capcom fighters, but it was always my favorite of the bunch because the characters are so cool. Some of the characters turn up in other Capcom crossover projects.
Featuring: The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, a giant samurai demon and a giant naked mole rat
Creature Features collects 4 monster tales illustrated by enemy of deadlines everywhere, Art Adams. The largest story is a fairly straight adaptation of Universal's Creature from the Black Lagoon. It's beautifully illustrated (let's just say they all are, because Art Adams), thanks also to the coloring by Matt Hollingsworth. The other main feature is a story from the Godzilla Color Special, and that's the real money shot, as far as I'm concerned. It's the story of an isolated Japanese island whose residents have turned their backs on the ways of the 20th century. An anti-kaiju strikeforce known as G-Force (90s continuity) is sent to evacuate the villagers due to an impending Godzilla attack. The villagers are unwilling to leave, and it soon becomes a moot point once Godzilla devastates the naval blockade. It turns out the villagers aren't quite so defenseless as they appear. Legend tells of an 800 year old demon that attacked the village long ago. The body of the demon became a huge statue which the villagers believed would come to life to protect them, which it does (although there's a story behind it). Every time Godzilla smashes the statue, it reforms itself from the dirt and stone, coming back bigger. With the help of G-Force, it's able to go toe to toe with the King of Monsters and ultimately redirect his course. Now, this giant samurai demon statue is a tribute of its own to the Daimajin trilogy from the 60s, about a guardian statue in medieval Japan. I like this story so much that I had partly convinced myself that it had been an actual movie, or that the statue had at least existed in one of the, at some point. It would indeed be a great Godzilla movie, or half a movie, at some point when Toho starts making them again. There are also a couple short stories in Creature Features. One stars Adams' own characters, Monkeyman & O'Brien against the Shrewmanoid and a giant naked mole rat, and the other is by Alan Moore. I don't know that piece, as I purchased all the original comics separately, but hey, Alan Moore, so that can't suck.
War of the Monsters - 2003
Incog Inc. for Playstation 2
Designers: Dylan Jobe, Kellan Hatch, Eric Simonich & Scott Campbell
This free-roaming fight game pays homage to giant everything in a 1950s drive-in movie setting. While none of the characters are licensed from existing franchises, it features a giant ape, a couple reptilians, giant robots in both American & Japanese varieties, a giant mantis and more, wreaking havoc across 10 highly destructible environments. Players can duke it out hand-to-hand or use ranged attacks, but the most fun comes from using environmental weapons. My favorite is skewering an opponent with an antenna tower and watching them flail around trying to pull it out. I love this game. I can only assume that it's been criminally slept-on, because it would have become a mega-series if it was getting the following it deserves.
Mommy? - 2006
Story by Arthur Yorinks
Illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Papercraft by Matthew Reinhart
If you haven't seen a pop-up book in a while, let me just tell you; they are doing amazing things in papercraft nowadays.
Maurice "Wild Things" Sendak pays tribute to the Universal Monster movies of his youth in this very simple tale of a little boy looking for his "Mommy" in all the wrongest places. The pop-up art does more than merely fold out of the page. It creates a deeper sense of space, and often animates as it unfolds. The scene with The Mummy is a real show-stopper. The papercraft doesn't just show off the art, it plays a role in telling the story. But oh that art! Sendak clearly had fun illustrating it, and the whole product just radiates with the love that its creators put into it.
Adam Rex started out as an illustrator. I think he painted card art for Magic: The Gathering before he moved into children's books. Then he started writing them too. Then shifted into juvenile & young adult fiction, and he does it all brilliantly. I've loved everything he's done, but this was my first real exposure to him. The whole book is filled with poems that play with classic monsters. Imagine Shel Silverstien wrote a book about Universal (and other) Monsters and had it illustrated by the Usual Gang of Idiots from Mad magazine, and you'll have kind of a sense of what to expect here.
Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich must have worked out well for Adam Rex, because 2 years later he was back with more monster madness. This time, there's a bit more of a narrative thread connecting them as Frankenstein prepares to marry his Bride.
Sometime more IS better!
Rex has gone on to write the HI-LARIOUS juvenile lit book "The True Meaning of Smekday" (soon to be a major motion picture!) and the young adult satire, "Fat Vampire." He's partnered with Neil Gaiman on Chu's Day and Chu's First Day of School, so, you know, the guy's got mad nerd cred.
While very similar on paper to Adam Rex's Frankenstein books, The Monsterologist goes a very different direction with it. Like the previous books, it's meant to be a humorous poem tome about a very similar variety of monsters, framing them as the research notes of a monsterologist. This device serves to distance the reader from the monsters and their personalities. It's hard not to compare it negatively in light of Rex's books. While it's certainly a different beast, those different choices don't seem to serve it well. I just didn't find the poems to be funny or endearing. Sadly, the art only magnifies this distancing from the material. McCauley's art isn't really fun or cuddly. It's very graphical with a more punk aesthetic better suited to something like the New Yorker than a children's book. They clearly invested in book production, employing gatefolds and die-cuts inside and a pseudo-leather embossed cover with metallic ink. It's an interesting piece of graphic design, but it disappoints in almost every category as a children's book.
King of Tokyo is a tabletop board game by superstar game designer Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering, RoboRally, Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, etc). It's based on the general premise of Godzilla movies, and each player plays a monster inspired by Godzilla, King Kong, a Cthulhu-like Kraken, a giant robot bunny, etc. It's a most-ages game that uses Yahtzee-like dice mechanics to empower your monster as it fights to become the last monster standing.
It's much easier to grok than it initially seems like it will be. Strategy centers around a simple kind of resource management, balancing life, damage, victory points and power cells that allow you to buy cards to power up your creature. In our own gaming sessions, we've found that more is better -- more monsters is more fun, and setting a higher bar for victory lengthens the game, making the power-up cards more worthwhile and the strategy of dominating or yielding Tokyo more significant. My only real complaint is that it has a LOT of little pieces, which really comes into consideration if you have younger kids around. Not necessarily a complaint, but a questionable choice is that the dice are pretty big for an Ages 8 & up game. It can get kind of... dicey ... shaking 6 or more dice. You may want a cup, a la Yahtzee. That being said, it IS a lot of fun to go all rampagey and try to get the upper claw on your friends and family.
Featuring: ghosts, a vampire, a werewolf, ghouls and more
When sudden death comes to the family of a toddler, he wanders off to a nearby historical graveyard. When the cause of their deaths pursues him, the ghosts in that graveyard take it upon themselves to raise the boy and keep him safe. Renamed Nobody Owens, or "Bod," he is granted the freedom of the graveyard and raised in the ways of ghosts, with additional tutelage by Silas, a neither dead nor alive resident of the cemetery. The flow of the narrative is semi-episodic, illustrating chapters in Bod's life which offer fun little encounters and adventures in their own right which will each provide the lessons he needs to overcome the dark forces which pursue him.
Highly recommended for spooky kids.
It's also come to my attention that the novel for kids has been adapted into a graphic novel with Gaiman's frequent collaborator and American national treasure, P. Craig Russell, so that's bound to be a gorgeous and satisfying option. I fully expect this one to get turned into a movie, so wait for that if you're lazy, or get on it now if you enjoy telling people you told them so.
So... I kinda lied. I ended up deciding to include more comics after all. It's still not comprehensive, but it's representative. Continue on to the penultimate chapter of the Monster Mash-Ups IN The Monster Mash-Ups - Part 9: Comics Appendix!
Monsters and monster mash-ups really started to make a comeback in the 21st century. I believe that Buffy played a large role in this. It may not have been the most statistically successful show, but it was dramatically influential on the next generation of film & television writers, and particularly upon the geek arts fan base. Your traditionally male fantasy & sci-fi crowd dismissed it as girl stuff or wrote it off as lacking the grim-browed seriousness they demanded at the time, but in our post-broadcast digital media era where binge-viewing is becoming the norm, holders of the platinum geek card now know better than to underrate the power of the Whedonverse. I would go so far as to claim that the ever-deepening long-form narrative of Buffy and Angel made shows like Lost possible, and therefore much of what we expect from televised drama today.
Of course, it sure didn't hurt that the technology capable of bringing the fantastical to life was improving at an exponential rate. In a very short amount of time, we've seen the spawning of an environment where even the slightest flaw in the illusion triggers self-righteous nerd-rage, so one has to question what we've really gained.
A DiC Entertainment animated musical about monsters that aren't scary anymore (probably because of all the terrible cartoons made about them), based on the name of that song you hate.
Do I even need to say it? 'Cause I'm certainly not going to watch it.
Featuring: Godzilla, Baragon, Mothra & King Ghidorah
I've never been a hardcore Godzilla fan in the past. I didn't often seek them out but made a point to watch them when I stumbled across one here or there. So if you, like I, have been baffled by the continuity of the overarching Godzilla saga, that's because there really isn't one. Different eras have a certain loose connectivity, but overall, it just really hasn't mattered. In Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, that point is made somewhat clearer. It overlooks everything but the original 1954 movie, so when Godzilla rises again, he hasn't been seen in almost 50 years. The other monsters, Baragon, Mothra and King Ghidorah are all new, per this continuity. They're now legendary guardians of Japan, summoned from their ten thousand year slumber beneath all-but-forgotten shrines.
The effects are certainly updated, but not as much as you might think. I don't think there's any CGI here, or if there is, it's really just to add effects (atomic breath, etc.) to a more refined version of the same kind of effects that they used for, well, almost 50 years. The monsters are still sweaty dudes in rubber suits. There's less use of miniatures except where direct interaction is required. Instead, outdoor scenes are shot on location and edited together with the hot monster on monster action. It mostly works. The increased realism just makes things like Ghidorah's heads thrashing around, Baragon crawling on his knees and Mothra's slow, rigid wings stand out all the more starkly.
Also needing some updating is the writing and acting. Cornball nostalgia is one thing. Modern cornball is just cornball. I don't mean it to sound that bad. It's still a lot of fun and it does look pretty good most of the time. The fights are kind of brutal, with monsters sinking their teeth into each other and some definitive destruction. Also, because they're not beholden to any particular continuity, they don't cheap out on the conclusion. Giant Monsters All-Out Attack mostly lives up to its name.
Underworld - 2003
Written by Danny McBride (No, sadly, not that Danny McBride)
Directed by Len Wiseman
Featuring vampires, werewolves (lycans) and a hybrid vampire/lycan
Underworld pays homage to the classic movie monsters with an updated mythology and stylish execution. Kate Beckinsale is the perpetually leather-and-latex-clad vampire, Selene. It's her job to fight the werewolves (here known as "lycans" and not beholden to full moons) in the centuries-old war between the two species of night-dwellers. She stumbles onto a Lycan plot to create a hybrid vampire/werewolf, which throws the internal politics of both clans into chaos, especially when she falls in love with the hybrid and learns that all is not as she has been told in this clan rivalry. There are some pretty clever ideas at work here and the creators build a suitably re-imagined world for these warring factions to inhabit. The lycans are well designed, as is everything, and the action is as slick as the raindrops beading off Beckinsale's shiny hiney. Bill Nighy makes full use of his fangs to really chew the scenery in a tonally appropriate way. It takes itself ridiculously seriously, but I never felt that it expected me to.
Freddy vs. Jason - 2003
Written by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift
Directed by Ronny Yu
Featuring a disfigured homicidal maniac who's already dead and a disfigured homicidal maniac who cannot die
It seems that Freddy just can't get his kill on like he used to. The teens of Elm Street have been shielded from his memory, and just don't fear him anymore. So he tricks Jason into doing a little stabbing on his behalf, just to prime the pump for a comeback, as it were. The film seems to hinge, in part, upon the idea that making kids ignorant is an effective defense against fear, which strikes me as wrong, but obviously no one is here for the subtext. Worse, however, is the misogyny, much of which falls upon Katharine Isabelle's character (she discovers the mangled body of her apparently abusive boyfriend, then gets murdered herself while she's being raped). Speaking of rape, Freddy seems much more rapey here than I recall him being in the original Nightmare films. Where once it was his backstory, it now seems to occupy more of his thoughts... and menace.
But you did come for the bloody fan service, and FvJ delivers that. Jason eventually figures out that he's been manipulated and the two master slashers turn their attention to each other. Jason takes a beating in Freddy's nightmare world, and Freddy takes a beating in Jason's physical world. The end seemingly calls back the end of King King vs Godzilla with an uncertain outcome and one figure swimming away. All in all, what can one expect from a trashy monument to trashy fun?
Van Helsing - 2004
Written and Directed by Stephen Sommers
Featuring: Dracula & his brides, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, Mr. Hyde, some creepy little troll things and vampire demon babies
I'll let you in on a little secret. A large part of the motivation behind this article was to show Van Helsing in its proper context. It is, after all, a Universal monster mash-up; a fact which has been overlooked by rage-nerds from all across the internet. Is it silly? Sure, but that's its legacy too. Have you SEEN House of Dracula? Well Ihave now. Silly can be a whole lot of FUN, and "fun" is the lightning-charged heart of Van Helsing.
Wolverine plays Van Helsing, who is to the Catholic church what James Bond is to MI-6, right down to the unlikely gadgets that prove surprisingly handy. In the opening, he pursues Mr. Hyde (as in Dr. Jekyl and...) through Paris, bound to bring him in dead or alive. His next assignment is Transylvania, where he's sent to assist a gypsy woman (Kate Beckinsale in leather pants, natch) who represents the last in a bloodline committed to ending Dracula's reign of terror. There's really quite a lot going on in this movie. Tense moments of exposition bridge action-packed set pieces. They team up with Frankenstein's monster, which is a really fantastic character/creature design.
In fact, the whole movie is packed with great designs for costumes, monsters, gadgets and places. Are some of the CGI effects imperfect? So what? They serve their purpose. Zip it, whiners. Van Helsing packs a TON of effects for a May release. It's not supposed to look like a July movie. The fact is, the effects are fine and they move the story and action along the way they need to. Van Helsing is exactly what it means to be, and that's a roller coaster tribute to Universal's monster mash-ups that actually has more story and indulgent thrills for today's less patient audiences. Perhaps its greatest fault is expecting joyless geeks to catch the wink.
Hellboy - 2004
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comics by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: demons, a gill man, a clockwork assassin, a reanimated corpse, a demon-infused Rasputin & the Old Ones
In the interest of full disclosure, there wasn't much chance of me disliking Hellboy, being a fan of the comic since before it came out (I saw Mignola's sketchbook at a con, so neener), but if it had betrayed the source material, I totally could have turned on it as well. With Guillermo del Toro at the helm, there was really very little cause for concern.
During WWII, Allied soldiers interrupt a bizarre team of Nazi operatives amid a strange occult ritual. When the smoke has settled, they discover that the ritual had some effect, although it's unclear whether it was the desired effect. A bright red demon child with a giant stone hand was pulled into our world, whom they dub "Hellboy." Hellboy is raised by Dr Bruttenholm ("Broom"), the paranormal scientist on the team, and as he grows, he goes to work in pretty much the only way he could; serving the Bureau for Paranormal Research & Defense as their number one monster puncher.
Decades later, the Nazi operatives are still active. Serving the Reich was really just a conduit for their true plans; bringing about the end of the world for their Lovecraftian god. It turns out that Hellboy has a role to play in their plans, but he's really not the "destiny" type.
Hellboy's world is filled with all kinds of creatures drawn from literature and legend, and he's right at home in the middle of it with his teammates; gill-man Abe Sabien, and Liz Sherman who starts more fires than the one in Hellboy's heart.
Dark Horse Comics originated the crossing-over of the Aliens and Predator franchises, which then spread back to the cinematic worlds despite some pretty major ret-conning. Predators come to modern day Earth, activating an Alien-stocked ritual hunting ground in a pyramid under the Antarctic ice. A human expedition from Weyland-Yutani Corp makes the mistake of getting in the way, so, death. It's thin and corny without a thought in its head, but it's a reasonably fan-pleasing affair from the guy behind the Resident Evil films. Hold that, back up a little. It's pleasing for the fans that just want to see Aliens and Predators unleashing violence. It offers little of the dramatic tension of the original Ridley Scott Alien, but then so little else has.
Godzilla: Final Wars - 2004
Written by Isao Kiriyama & Ryuhei Kitamura
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Featuring: ALL of the giant monsters
What a difference three years makes! Someone at Toho evidently had the same thoughts that I had about Giant Monsters All-Out Attack." Final Wars still uses location footage, but far more extensive use of miniatures to put the mass back in "mass destruction." But let me rewind a moment...
Final Wars is indeed the final Godzilla movie from Toho. They vowed not to make another for at least ten years, and they haven't. I understand they even filled in the pool they used to shoot water scenes, so if and when they come back, it seems pretty clear that they are going to have to have retooled their production line.
The film takes place in an alternate universe. I guess they'd really all have to, but at least in the past they've been presented in a real-world-dealing-with-unreal-monsters framework. Where All-Out Attack chose to ignore all but the first movie, Final Wars embraces the legacy. In the continuity here, Godzilla first appeared in 1954, then continued to return along with most of the other monsters. It's non-specific about which movies and stories are continuity, but the idea that the monsters from all previous films existed in some form or another is more the point. It's paying tribute to the totality of Toho history before it closes the book on them -- and whoa baby, close the book it does.
As a reaction to the regular appearance of kaiju, the world has united to form the Earth Defense Force, many of whom are also mutated humans with increased strength and speed. They fend off the monsters with a giant drill-tipped flying submarine and springboard-enhanced karate poses. Oh yeah, Final Wars borrows a bit from the Ultraman types of shows that Godzilla inspired. The non-monster parts are much more action-packed in their own right, with acrobatic combat, sword fights and a motorcycle chase that would make Tom Cruise jealous. Where the human drama failed to live up to the scale of the rest of the movie in All-out, Final Wars pushes it way, way over the top. It's cornier than ever, but it works, even if there's too much of it in the third act.
So here in this alternative future, aliens suddenly appear to offer their friendship in a totally-not-suspicious way. It's essentially an updating of the story from Destroy All Monsters only with humans that actually do something. I'm sure this is hardly a coincidence, since Destroy was originally intended to be a "final" Godzilla movie for director Ishiro Honda. The Xillians, as they're known (because of course their true name would be too hard for we feeble humans to speak) took away the monsters as a gesture of good will, but when their true faces are revealed (literally) they unleash them on the world with nothing powerful enough to stop them. Except Godzilla. Destroy All Monsters' big third act throw-down featured all the monsters against King Ghidorah, which seemed kind of lame because they all just gang-rushed him. It made Godzilla look not-so-impressive and resulted in an overly brief fight. Final Wars gets the sides right. Godzilla fights EVERYONE, including making fast work of the weak-sauce American Godzilla wannabe (not to mention the Sydney Opera House). And they're not kidding about "final" either. Many of the opposing monsters get impaled or decapitated, and the final final showdown between our boy G and a super-mega new Kaizer Ghidorah occurs in the ruins of a place that can't strictly be called Tokyo any longer.
I don't know how any Godzilla fan could be disappointed with Final Wars, but birds gotta fly and nerds gotta bitch. It's an insane, over-the-top, all-action, self-serious-but-totally-silly music video of leather-posing wire-fu and rubber suited monster mashing, and it delivers. This is all I could have wanted (and more) to close out 50 years with the King of Monsters.
If Freddy Kreuger and Jason Vorhees are monsters, then isn't the Joker too? I say, sure, why not?
The Batman vs Dracula is a feature length animated feature from the "The Batman" period of animated Batman adventures. Which means it's not as good as the original Batman cartoons from the 90s, but it's still pretty good for a second-string team. The premise is pretty simple. Joker and Penguin break out of Arkham and race for a treasure stash in Gotham Cemetery. Penguin breaks into the wrong tomb and inadvertently raises Dracula from dusty death, and Dracula makes it his business to turn Gotham into a city of the undead. Batman disapproves of this business plan.
In Dracula, he has met a fellow bat man who is more than his match as a combatant -- 'scuse me, comBATant -- but then Batman is more than just a fighter, isn't he? Joker finally turns up at the tomb and gets himself vamped, which gives him some good scenes, but it's really not his film. Penguin serves in the Renfield role and Vicki Vale gets stuck with Mina Harker duty. The vampires are brutal and creepy, with a strong Nosferatu influence. They present a viable threat on a mass scale. That's what really sells the movie and makes it work as both a vampire tale and a Batman story worthy of the longer form treatment.
Evolution picks up immediately after the original Underworld, following up on its semi-cliffhanger conclusion. The last surviving vampire elder is back, and more powerful than expected. More of the history behind the "immortal" species of vampires and werewolves is revealed in what essentially amounts to a chase movie. Selene & Michael flee the powerful Marcus, expanding our view of their world and encountering new characters from whom it is made, including the immortal father of both clans. Totally satisfying follow-up to the first with more monochromatically stylish violence.
Requiem rides the coattails of the first AvP's "BOO!" ending without really continuing the story. An alien-infected Predator crashes into a remote American mountain town, and then there's death.
At least I assume those noises were death, because almost the entirety of Requiem takes place in the dark. The woods at night. The sewer at night. Powerless buildings at night. It's not scary, it's just hard to see. It really undermines the fan service, and without the fan service, there's nothing left. See that picture? That's what happens when an Alien gestates in a Predator. That's the best part of the whole movie, and now you know.
Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man look back on their lives and relationship.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - 2008
Written by Guillermo del Toro
from the Comic by Mike Mignola
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Featuring: a demon, a gill-man, tooth fairies, an elemental, faeries, trolls, magical robots, an angel of death and plenty of god-knows-what
Hellboy and friends are back for more, and more is what they get. This sequel is overflowing with all manner of weirdness, and a surprising amount of beauty. As much as I liked the first, I really prefer The Golden Army.
After centuries inhabiting the hidden places in the world, the embittered prince of Faerie has treacherously laid claim to the throne, and the pieces of the crown that will empower him to control the Golden Army; a force of magical mechanical soldiers capable of destroying the world as we know it. His quest to gather the missing piece of the crown brings him to the attention of the BPRD and Hellboy. The search to understand his attack sends Hellboy into back-to-back outstanding set pieces; first delving into the Troll Market, where the creatures of myth do business under the noses of mankind, followed immediately by open combat with a giant elemental plant god, which is one of the most poignant battles you can imagine in such an wild and fantastical film. It's both thrilling and heartbreaking. And that's what makes me really love this movie. For all its high concepts and cartoonish violence, it has a tremendous amount of heart -- particularly in the nihilistic context of so many of our other big action films these days. Hellboy and Abe grapple with the concept of love like the outsiders they represent. Characters do bad things, but often for good reasons. This is not the mustache-twilring E-vil of the first movie's Nazi death-worshipers, and its willingness to love makes it lovable.
From the seedier side of the Victorian age comes this horror/comedy about the misadventures of two grave robbers. Professional ghoul Arthur (Dominic Monaghan) offers his confession about his career stealing and selling corpses. His sentence is death, one way or the other, but he steadfastly denies having ever committed murder; of which the priest hearing his tale (Ron Perlman) is skeptical. The story is delivered in vignettes, which apparently confuses some viewers, but you are not them, my friend, and you do not need your hand held. Arthur explains how he got pulled into the business, and how an unscrupulous doctor (with more societal respect) was able to blackmail him and his partner into taking more dangerous jobs for even less money than usual. That sends them to a crossroads where they unearth a woman's corpse wreathed in garlic, with a stake through her heart. Another high-risk job leads them into conflict with a rival -- and much more ruthless -- gang of ghouls; the House Murphy. That conflict comes to a peak when both Arthur & Willie and House Murphy compete to retrieve two crates of unusual corpses lost at sea.
I Sell the Dead is a wholly unique story, presented with a consistent flow of good humor. Arthur and Willie don't question much and they haven't seen the movies we've see, which just makes it funnier when we're in on the jokes that elude (and chase) them.
Twilight - 2008
Written by Who Freaking Cares
Directed by It Couldn't Possibly Matter
Featuring: Sort-of Werewolves and Not-really Vampires
"Harry Potter is all about confronting fears, finding inner strength and and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." --Stephen King
They made four of these freakin' things but I'm only mentioning it once and that's simply to satisfy my own self-imposed sense of obligation. I'll watch Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong, but I won't watch these. I'm sorry and you're welcome.
The completely unnecessary prequel that no one asked for. I can only assume that it was an excuse to bring the dead characters played by Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen back and remind us of things that we already knew about them. Due to its setting prior to Selene becoming a vampire, the similarly sassy English lassie Rhona Mitra fills the leather and latex cat suit. I suppose it might be satisfying for the fans who are all-in on the series mythology, but there's very little dramatic tension since we know how things are going to turn out 600 years later. While I never felt that the previous cared if I didn't take them seriously, Rise seemed to expect it. Looking back, I can only recall one stand-out action set piece, and it doesn't measure up to those than came before it.
Monsters vs Aliens - 2009
see link for writing team
Directed by Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon
Featuring: a gill-man, a blob, a 50 foot woman, an insectoid mad scientist and a kind of squirrel/caterpillar giant monster thing... versus aliens
It's Susan Murphy's big day. She's primped, prepped and pumped to marry her beau, Derek, and so what if he told her that the honeymoon in Paris is cancelled so he can audition for a news anchor job in Fresno? They're a team, aren't they?
And that's when a meteorite lands on her.
Moments later, scuffed by unscratched, she returns to the church to get on with the first day of the rest of her life. She has that glow about her -- wait, not that glow, the other glow. The hit-by-a-meteor-and-absorbed-cosmic-power-and-don't-they-grow-up-so-fast-no-I-mean-REALLY-fast kind of glow. In a matter of seconds, she's a 50 foot woman, and not much longer after that, she's in the custody of the US government. Fade to black.
Susan wakes up in a giant, windowless facility and soon discovers that she's not alone. She shares this prison with gill-man otherwise known as the Missing Link, Dr Cockroach; a mad scientist who overdid the insect DNA, a brainless blue blob called BOB, and, oh yeah, Insectosaurus, a squirrel-bug-dinosaur kind of thing that towers over even Susan. They have all been collected by a super-ultra-secret military division and kept imprisoned so the world never has to deal with the inconvenient knowledge of their existence. And that's the way it's going to be... until an intergalactic tyrant shows up looking to collect the power from the meteorite that started everything for Susan.
Monsters vs Aliens is better than average work from Dreamworks Animation. Well, let me be more specific; the story is better than average. The animation is weirdly stilted at times. Characters frequently goosestep inappropriately. Things don't move dynamically but remain rigid. Character design and art direction really lack the kind of inspiration that would make MvA truly special. The most disturbing are the normal humans. I would guess that they're all built on the same skeletal frames, then basically draped with meat. It results in some mechanical movement taking place within slack, dangling flesh. I think the root of the problem is the split that the animators targeted between cartoony and realistic. They seem to be trying to have it both ways and end up having neither. Obviously not everyone cares as much about that kind of thing as I do.
I still really enjoy (have enjoyed and will enjoy again) Monsters vs Aliens. The story has heart. The characters you're supposed to like are actually likeable. Susan's personal breakthrough feels earned. There are some big laughs, and lots of little homages to monster movies of the past.
As crazy as the title sounds, it really does nothing to express how babblingly insane the film itself is. Right off the bat, it helps to think of this as a cartoon that just happens to have people acting it out. The characters are all over-the-top exaggerations, perhaps best expressed by the high school social clubs to which they belong, including Lolita fashionistas, a suicide obsessed "wrist-cutters" club, and a ganguro club trying to emulate African Americans to an offensively caricatured degree. The principal of the school dresses as a kabuki performer, and doubles as a mad scientist assisted by the school nurse at night. However nutty that all sounds, I can assure you that you really have not grasped the full madness of this film.
Everything plays out in the biggest, craziest possible way. Monami is the new girl in school. It turns out she's also a vampire who has set her sights on Mizushima. To seduce him (and draw him into her world) she gives him chocolate laced with her blood. Unfortunately, Mizushima already has a girlfriend; Keiko. When Keiko figures out what's going on, she confronts Monami which leads to her falling from the school's roof It just so happens that the Kabuki/mad scientist principal is also Keiko's father, and he and the nurse conduct one of their experiments on Keiko's body to bring her back to life. Thus she becomes the titular "Frankenstein Girl" to Monami's "Vampire Girl."
And so the stage is set, and it won't be done until the stage is mopped with a bucket of blood. I can't call it a good movie, but it's ridiculously entertaining -- and I do mean ridiculously.
In the Venn diagram of Universal Monster crossover fans and sufferers of OCD, House of The Wolf Man is where they overlap. A modern film made to look like the completion of the 1940s "House of..." films with a nerd-pleasing trilogy.
Sadly, I am unable to discuss it in any greater depth as I have not yet been able to see it.
