Snow Monster (Review)

Snow Monster

aka 大雪怪 aka Da Xue Guai
Snow Monster 大雪怪
2019
Written by Sheng Fan Zhang and Pian Jia Leng
Directed by Huang He

Snow Monster 大雪怪
NetFlix isn’t the only streaming platform pumping out a ton of their original movies to drive up views, China has several big streaming companies and they are all creating their own content in a bet to win sole control of views. Streaming platform Youku has greenlit a ton of original content, but the films of interest to us are several that are basically SyFy Channel original movies! They got giant snakes, giant alligators, sea monsters, the list goes on and on. But most importantly, they have Snow Monster, which is pretty much King Kong in snow demon form. Also there are ice sharks! Yes, Snow Monster fights the ice sharks! This is some of what we call pretty amazing stuff.

The Snow Monster himself is not a gorilla or even an ape. It appears to be a huge furry satyr, complete with a long tail. The fur is snow white, the hands only have three fingers and a thumb, the legs are bent like goat legs, and the head is adorned with two large goat horns, one of which is partially snapped off. The monster himself is a mix of guy in suit and CGI depending on the scene needs, but more often than not he is just a guy standing there reacting to what is going on. This makes it sort of charming in a low budget cinema sort of way.
Snow Monster 大雪怪
Of course there are no English subtitles, but at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles! The plot is pretty easy to follow, the monsters don’t need to talk, and while we have all seen this before, and it’s fun to see it again done different with the shadow of the original sprawling over it. Part of the film has the same trouble the Peter Jackson King Kong did, in that we spend a bunch of time running around with monsters that aren’t the giant monster of the title. I don’t know how much planning you need for a Snow Monster movie but there are like 25 people credited. If this keeps up with the other Youku films I got on the docket than I will keep you posted, otherwise I would advise getting a job as a film planner as they seem to be giving them away! I identified who I could in the cast, but as I don’t know what the names of the characters they are playing are, I’m just going to refer to them by their real names. Since this is a harder to find movie (unless you are specifically looking for it), this will be more of a recap review.
Snow Monster 大雪怪
Snow Monster does keep the monster in the winter wonderland where it exists instead of having a sequence where it is brought back to the city to cause trouble. That’s obviously a cost consideration, but it also points to the reality of transporting a gigantic monster out of a hostile environment and then into an urban environment without their being any sort of issues, something most of the Kong films just handwave away.

Snow monster, snow sharks, monster birds, a random dinosaur skeleton that seems put there because there were big skeletons in Kong: Skull Island except those were Kong’s family and here it makes no sense unless Snow Monster’s dad was a tyrannosaur. It’s Snow Monster, baby!
Snow Monster 大雪怪
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More King Kong, more Godzilla, kaiju taking over theaters!

King Kong vs Godzilla poster
[adrotate banner=”1″]The most exciting news out of Comic-Con wasn’t blurry cams of trailers of comic book films or galleries of cosplay that are just excuses to post scantily clad women, but the news from Legendary Films about their upcoming batch of giant monster films. Yes, that’s plural, because in addition to two Godzilla sequels, the long-rumored King Kong prequel is confirmed for November 4, 2016!

Titled Skull Island, no details on the King Kong film are known at this time, but it sounds like an evolution of the 2009 story of Kong: King of Skull Island:

Producers at the shingle have picked up the rights to the book “Kong: King of Skull Island,” a prequel to the well-known tale of the big ape.

Penned by Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland, book focuses on the backstory of Skull Island and how the giant gorilla became king there. It introduces other giant gorillas and dinosaurs only hinted at in the previous films.

How much of that is still in effect, no one knows except Legendary Films, and they ain’t talking!

Not to be outdone, Godzilla 2 promises not just the return of Godzilla, but some other famous kaiju as well: Mothra. Rodan. King Ghidorah. This means lots and lots of monster mayhem! I’m totally in, and Godzilla‘s massive success means lots and lots more money for the budget, so there will be more monster fights. Gareth Edwards is set to return. No release date is set for Godzilla 2, but we will keep you posted.

Could these films be leading towards the ultimate match-up, Godzilla vs. King Kong? Because they better be! ::shakes fist:: King Kong needs to battle Godzilla again, because you can’t end things in a tie! You need another film where things end in a tie, or at least they stop fighting to team up against a greater threat.

Between these films and Pacific Rim 2, it’s a good time to be a kaiju fan!

And where’s Jet Jaguar???

via THR and THR

King Kong live on stage!

King Kong Stage
[adrotate banner=”1″]No, I’m not talking about the final scene of King Kong where he breaks free from the stage show to go on a rampage, I’m talking about a stage production of King Kong that will be happening in Melbourne in June 2013! Complete with a giant King Kong puppet, which I support because of the very tiny chance there will be a puppet apocalypse and the King Kong robot breaks free from the stage show to go on a rampage.

Five years in the making, KING KONG will feature a cast of more than 40 actors, singers, dancers and circus performers, and a team of puppeteers who will bring to life one of the most technologically advanced puppets in the world – a one-tonne, six-metre tall silverback gorilla.

The exciting score will feature modernised musical standards including I WANNA BE LOVED BY YOU, BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME and GET HAPPY from the worlds best contemporary artist, as well as dazzling choreography, traditional puppetry, breathtaking circus skills and advanced animatronics to showcase one of the most romantic and timeless love stories of our time.

The King Kong robot is made by Global Creatures, and here are some test videos of the prototype:


More info on the King Kong Live Blog
King Kong Live official site

King Kong (1962 – Review)

King Kong


1962
Written by Vishwanath Panday, Pandit Mathur, Mastji, and Majrooh Sultanpuri (lyrics)
Directed by Babubhai Mistry


Not that King Kong, there are no giant apes in this movie, though there are guys who sort of look like giant apes when you squint, or at least fat blogs. Nope, this is 1962s Indian epic King Kong, starring the great Dara Singh in his first starring role. You remember Dara Singh from Samson right? The Infernal Brains Podcast about Dara Singh? Well, if not, you now have a bunch of extra listening and reading to do! For the rest of us, this is an entry in the MOSS (Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit) Conspiracy Big Muscle Tussle, featuring dudes and chicks with muscles doing muscular things in muscular ways. Said muscular ways usually means punching many things. Click on the MOSS Page to see many more entries, as long as your roid rage is low enough you won’t Hulk Smash all our webpages. As for King Kong, let’s just say that there is a giant monster in the beginning of the film, but it’s all downhill from there!

Dara Singh was born in 1928 in the Punjab village of Dharmuchak. He wrestled in local tournaments while growing up, but went to Singapore to seek employment as a laborer. He ended up learning East Asian wrestling techniques – in addition to the Indian (and surrounding regions) technique called Pehlwani – and returned to India. With his brother Randhawa, the two became professional wrestlers and soared through the ranks. By the 1970s, Dara and his brother were the highest paid wrestlers in India, earning 30-40 times the going rate for bouts. Dara was also the “world champion” in the local circuits.
King Kong 1962
Prior to his lead role here, Dara Singh had been relegated to stunt work in films like Sangdil (1952), Pehli Jhalak (First Sight) (1955), and Jagga Daku (1959). In King Kong and many of his later films, Dara helped do the fight choreography, as he thought the usual Indian choreography didn’t look real enough. As Dara Singh comes from a lower caste, there was often trouble finding leading women who would appear with him. Besides Kum Kum from this film, his usual partner was Mumtaz (seen here in Samson) Dara’s lower caste status helped instill him as a hero of the common man, though his films usually had him suddenly discover his noble roots (as this one does.) After his movie career slowed down, Dara Singh gained a new generation of fans when he appeared in the 1980s tv series Ramayana playing Hanuman.

The movie’s title King Kong is even taken from wrestling. Though a reference to the giant ape, King Kong became a wrestling title, one which Dara Singh soon claimed, winning it off of stocky Hungarian wrestler Emile Czaja – who often went billed as King Kong (including his appearance in this film!) Dara winning the King Kong title gave him enough fame that director Babubhai Mistri decided he would be bankable as a leading man. The added fact that it was cheaper for people to buy movie tickets than to pay for wrestling tickets was just gravy. Due to distribution politics/drama, low-budget stunt films like King Kong were usually exhibited in rural areas, often with the director or star in attendance presenting the film.

Director Babubhai Mistri did effects work at Wadia Movietone, and directed many mythologicals in the 1950s (mythologicals being a genre of Indian cinema that does stories from the religious texts.) by by the 60s was unable to direct big picture films, thus he turned to the B movie circuit and making Dara Singh a star.

Like most surviving Dara Singh films, King Kong is available on badly encoded unsubtitled vcd with the craptastic video quality you expect. And the vcd has commercials on it..in the middle of the film! Luckily, a few Dara films have started to migrate to DVD, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some of his awesome stunt films on DVD soon…

As this is the inaugural Dara Singh starring flick, they didn’t trust him to headline the picture by his lonesome, so they threw in another character, the handsome swashbuckler type Badal (played by Chandrashekhar) There is also a comic relief sidekick for Badal. Comic relief sidekicks were so in vogue at this time, the evil warrior character Evil Guy also has his own comic relief sidekick. As you have probably noticed by some of the names, I haven’t figured them all out yet.

Jingu (Dara Singh) – A local warrior who lives with his mom, who has nicknamed him King Kong. His father is the disposed king, and he has a missing brother.
Radhi (Kum Kum) – The Princess’s maid and Jengu’s love interest. She does almost all the singing. This is Kum Kum’s lone Dara Singh co-starrer that I know about, she starred in B films and used that to get starring roles in big budget pictures.
Badal (Chandrashekhar as Chandra Shekhar) – Badal is the local handsome guy who hangs out with a Goofy Guy and crushes on the princess. He’s also the secret lost brother of Jingu.
Princess Rajkumari (Parveen Choudhary) – The Princess who falls for Badal when he saves her from slavers.
King Kong (Emile Czaja as King Kong) – The prior King Kong who is tossed out of the roll when Jingu proves himself the better man. Seeks revenge for his failure.
King Hingoo (Uma Dutt) – The evil king who disposed the prior king and now does evil stuff which is totally evil. Of course, we don’t actually see him doing much evil stuff, he just has some jerks working for him. But the dialogue probably mentions evil things that we don’t see…
Smoke Monster (Men in suit!) – YES!! The Smoke Monster is awesome, we demand more Smoke Monster! Too bad he dies five minutes into the film and the rest is people running around not fighting monsters. BOOOO!!


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King Kong returns again once more

[adrotate banner=”1″]King Kong is back again, this time in animated form (again), in a new film which will be done from the point of view of King Kong. I don’t know if this is the evolution of the long-rumored King of Skull Island project. The story is based on Mike Weber’s story (he’s producing) and is coming out of the Fox Animation studio.

A History of Kong movies/shows:

  • King Kong – The original and still the best (1933)
  • Son of Kong – a quick followup made late the same year
  • Wasei Kingu Kongu – a lost 1933 Japanese cash-in on King Kong
  • King Kong Appears in Edo – a lost film from Japan featuring a giant ape attacking Edo from 1938

    Animated musical The Mighty Kong 1998 (where Kong survives falling off the Empire State Building)

  • King Kong fought Godzilla in 1962’s King Kong vs Godzilla
  • The King Kong Show – a 1966 cartoon series that also became inspiration for King Kong Escapes
  • King Kong Escapes is the live action film where Kong fights his robot duplicate
  • King Kong – Dino De Laurentiis’s 1976 big budget remake with a giant King Kong mockup and a climatic battle on the twin towers
  • King Kong Lives followed up ten years later in 1986
  • 1998 gave us the animated musical The Mighty Kong

  • Kong: The Animated Series was an official animated series in 2001
    Peter Jackson remade King Kong in 2005, which was twice as long as the original despite following the same plot and time period

  • 2005’s Kong: King of Atlantis was an animated movie based on the 2001 series made to cash in on Peter Jackson’s film.
  • Kong: Return to the Jungle was the 2006 follow up to Kong: King of Atlantis

Kinky Kong (Review)

Kinky Kong


2006
Directed by John Bacchus

Seduction Cinema vs. King Kong! It is a softcore King Kong erotic parody that actually does a good job of following the plot of King Kong. It was much more close than I was expecting, which was a great surprise. Seduction Cinema does put out a lot of garbage, but there are many jewels in the rough, and I am happy to report this is one of them. Kinky Kong was filmed after Misty Mundae left to pursue other options, so she won’t be joining us, though other Seduction Cinema regulars are present. John Bacchus and Seduction Cinema have a rich history of ultra-low budget softcore produtions, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the group, you have a lot of catching up to do. Try our reviews of That 70’s Girl, Bikini Girls On Dinosaur Planet, or Vampire Vixens to get acquainted with the production company. Then consult your local library. After you get kicked out of the library, consult your local internet. Just be sure to turn off the safe-search function.

This is not the first erotic King Kong film. Ignoring all those movies where girls just bone normal sized apes (a surprising amount of films, by the way) there are actual King Kong hardcore porns. The most famous is 1985’s King Dong, directed by Yancy Hendrieth and starring Crystal Holland.

Normally the Seduction Cinema sex scenes are incredibly long, to the point where I just list the time instead of mentioning the action. Someone must have set some standards, as now most of the sex scenes are exactly four minutes long. This ruins my time counting gimmick, so I guess I’ll have to go watch some of their older films to go back to that fun. Oh, well. Let me find my DVD of Playmate of the Apes

Seymoure Ass (John Fedele) – The director who has the idea for their madcap adventure. Super flatulent, and has a ridiculous 1920s Brooklyn accent throughout the film.
Fannie Sparrow (Sabrina Faire) – Fannie Sparrow is the Ann Darrow, the girl Seymoure saves from shoplifting to star in his own film set on an island where there is a giant ape.
Charlina (Darian Caine) – This tough girl is the cook on the ship and also a lesbian extrodanaire. She knows that every situation can be solved with some lesbian sex. And she is right. See Darian Caine in Batbabe if you dare…
Brunhilda Patel (AJ Khan) – One of the native girls on the island who was starring in her own movie, and becomes one of Kinky Kong’s objects of affection. Another lesbian because you can’t have too many lesbians. See AJ Khan in Vampire Vixens and That 70’s Girl.
Jack Friskell (Duane Polcou) – John Driscoll is no hero now, instead being a sailor who is distrustful of women. So much he plays for the other team. Is in love with Kinky Kong, but Kong spurs his advances.
Kinky Kong (Dan Schwab) – He’s kinky. He’s kooky. He’s all together Kongy. He’s Kinky Kong, and he’s got a diaper full of love for every girl on the planet! No one can measure up to Kong, literally! Trapped on Bone Island, Kinky Kong is soon set free in New York City where the opportunities to live up to his given name are endless!
T-Rex (CGI and a rubber mask) – This Tyrannosaurus looks like he has a couple of branches missing from his family tree! His bad vibes almost ruin a perfectly good bout of lesbian sex, so Kinky Kong is forced to administer jungle law to keep the T-Rex from ruining everything. Kinky Kong is successful.


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