Discount Puppet Explosion 411 – Two teams compete to give the best reviews of bad movies. In this episode, Team B reviews the sequel to Creepies in order to score over Team Jawesome. Featuring more giant spiders, more models, more awful CGI, and more Johnny Mustache! Will it be enough to score another win? And what is Team B’s reaction to Team A’s rebranding as Team Jawesome? Find out on this episode of Discount Puppet Explosion 411!
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Discount Puppet Explosion 411 – Two teams compete to give the best reviews of bad movies. In this episode, Team A tackles the giant spider flick Creepies. Who won the first round of competition? And what is Jawesome? Find out on this episode of Discount Puppet Explosion 411!
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2009
Directed and written by Mark Atkins
The Asylum are the masters of the Mockbusters, the films released on DVD the same day that films with similar titles open in the theater. We got Transmorphers, The Terminators, and Dragon. Thanks to the magic of the public domain, the first couple of Barsoom books are copyright free in the USA, thus allowing Asylum to get away with this cash in. Surprisingly, this is not a mockbuster of John Carter of Mars, the upcoming Pixar film due out in 2012, but is a mockbuster for Avatar, complete with mentioning Avatar on the DVD cover.
Now, a few of you will not be that familiar with the story of the Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter books. A brief explaination: John Carter is a Virginian and former Confederate soldier who is wandering around the West and goes in a cave, and ends up on Mars, called Barsoom by the natives. He’s captured by Green Martians, who are 14 foot tall green Martians with tusks and four arms, who admire his great strength and hopping ability (a gift from his Earth muscles on the lighter gravity of Mars) and train him up to be a warrior. They also capture some Red Martians, who are human-like except for their red skin. Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, is the main captive, and Carter falls for her and soon they are escaping and lots of fights happen. And everyone on Mars is naked all the time. Guess which part is not in the film! Most of it, actually.
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Barsoom – planet of substandard emissions standards
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So here at TarsTarkas.NET we have a vested interest in Princess of Mars because there is a dude named Tars Tarkas in it. He’s played by Matt Lasky, who has also left comments on the blog, so we got that going for us.
But the question is…is Princess of Mars a good film? Ha! It’s not the worst thing Asylum has churned out, but it is far from a masterpiece. It isn’t awful, but parts make absolutely no sense. I would have much preferred that they just went with an original story, but, whatever. I can say it is the best Barsoom movie ever, because it is the only Barsoom movie! Yet. I will not rag on some of the CGI or costumes (except when they get really bad…) because at TarsTarkas.NET, we forgive small budgets. We don’t forgive bad writing, so expect that to get pointed out.
Enough jibber-jabber, let’s do this thing, Martian style!
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1982
Starring
Lau Seung-Him as Monkey King (Sun Wukong)
??? as Pig (Zhu Bajie)
??? as Tangseng
??? as Sand Monk (Sha Wujing)
Monkey King and his friends encounter two con job fake priests, Spider Women with a Giant Fire-breathing Spider, and flying birdmen lead by shapeshifting bats. This is a collection of what looks like three episodes of a Journey to the West (or Monkey) Series combined into a movie. Problem is, the movie is is Chinese, with zero subtitles! I completely missed the giant “No Subtitles” sticker on the video box, totally enthralled by the painting of a giant flame-breathing spider on the video cover. Not knowing what’s going on in a movie isn’t a new phenomenon here at TarsTarkas.NET, even when the film is in English! Unlike the trickle of Turkish cinema that pops around without any subtitles at all, this time we got the movie’s number. Armed with a Chinese-speaking girlfriend (HI, Honey!) we trudged bravely forward. There is also a second advantage, with a film involving a story with such history as this, it’s easy to find some further information online, so that will be stop number one!
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1955
Starring
John Agar as Dr. Matt Hastings
Mara Corday as Steve (Stephanie) Clayton
Leo G. Carroll as Prof. Gerald Deemer
Clint Eastwood as Jet Squadron Leader
Tarantula immediately sets the tone for it’s 1950’s sci-fi-ness by a bleak opening involving a dying mutant in the desert. Over the course of this movie the White Hero and Cold Female Scientist will work together to defeat the Monster Menace caused by the Old Mad Scientist in what would be a cookie cutter movie. It came out in 1955, one year after Gojira but one year before Godzilla with Steve Martin hit the US shores. How much that movie influenced this is unknown to me, but this is a pretty well made for the time giant monster movie on par with some of the earlier movies in the daikaiju genre. It even features a young Clint Eastwood as the leader of a jet squadron that is sent to send the spider to Spider Hell. This movie does differ in the spider is a real spider blown up to enormous size as opposed to a man in suit, so it is similar to other classics such as Giant Gila Monster.
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aka Kairyu daikessen
1966
| Hiroki Matsukata as Ikazuki Maru |
| Tomoko Ogawa as Sunate |
| Ryutaro Otomo as Oroki Maru |
| Bin Amatsu as Yuki Daijo |
This Movie seems like it would have it all. Ninjas, Giant monsters, sword fighting. Yet somehow it manages only be average. It has a plot similar to Dune, or 5000 other movies where sons of murdered kings return for revenge. So let’s get Started…
NINJA ATTACK! The movie opens strong as a horde of ninjas attack a castle. The master awakens, but is betrayed by his subject Yuki Daijo and the evil wizard Oroki Maru. Master is killed, but his son Ikazuki Maru is shuttled off on a boat. But Oroki Maru turns into a dragon and gives chase. The Dragon has a very familiar roar, suspiciously like another giant lizard known to attack Tokyo and breathe fire. But let’s not dwell on that and get back to the chase. The Dragon destroys the boat and is about to kill the boy when a bird comes out of nowhere and slices the Dragon, with blood spraying EVERYWHERE! It is quite magnificent. The bird grabs little Ikazuki Maru and flies off. The bird also sounds suspiciously like another flying monster that attacks Tokyo on some regularity, but it is best not to dwell on that, either.
