Zombie Ass Trailer

Noboru Iguchi’s Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead premiered at Fantastic Fest (review here), but here is a trailer for the rest of us!

The plot again:
We are going to flush you! The most crap-tastic zombie movie ever to emerge from the sewers of low-budget filmmaking is finally upon us, and it’s from the perverted mind of cinematic madman and legendary ass-fetishist Noboru Iguchi, creator of THE MACHINE GIRL, ROBO-GEISHA and KARATE-ROBO ZABORGAR! Given free reign by a generous, independent producer to plumb the depths of his toilet-obsessed imagination, Iguchi has created a splatter comedy guaranteed to warm the bowels of those with the stomach for it. Wracked with guilt over the suicide of her sister Ai, who was tormented by high school bullies, pretty young karate student Megu accompanies a group of older friends on a camping trip into the woods: smart girl Aya, her druggie boyfriend Také, big-boobed model Maki, and nerdy Naoi. Things start to go badly when Maki finds a parasitical worm inside a fish they catch – and wolfs it down alive, in the hope that it’ll help keep her skinny! Soon after, and not so unexpectedly in situations like this, zombies show up and begin to complicate things further. After they’re attached by a crowd of poop-covered undead who emerge from an outhouse toilet, the group seeks refuge at the home of strange Dr. Tanaka and his daughter Sachi. But unbeknownst to them, Tanaka has been conducting experiments on the parasites—and the zombies!—and has another fate in mind for the five strangers from the city. What’s the connection between the parasites and the zombies? And can Megu’s karate alone help them escape, or will she have to rely on the liberating power of farts to save the day? Featuring special effects by FF 2009-2010 guest Yoshihiro Nishimura, and some truly jaw-dropping contributions from Iguchi’s genius subconscious (parasite anus-zombies?!?), ZOMBIE ASS is a heaping plate of bad taste that may go down rough but is guaranteed to come out smooth and regular.

Watch a trailer of something called “Zombie Ass” at work at your own discretion!

via Twitch

Zombie Ass
Zombie Ass

Sector 7 (Review)

Sector 7

aka 7 gwanggu aka 7광구

2011
Written by Yun Je-gyun
Directed by Kim Ji-hun

Sector 7
Okay, team, we’re going to get to the bottom of the question “Does this film have phallic and vaginal symbolisms, or is it just stupid?”

Sector 7 is so by-the-numbers that if you squint really hard, you’ll learn how to count in Korean! Sector 7 decided that it wanted to take all the goodwill that The Host generated for Korean monster movies and throw it all away into the pit of despair, instead giving us a grab bag of scenes ganked from some of the most famous alien monster films of all time. Each scene is a roulette wheel spin random landing on what film they’re stealing from this time. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Predator, Leviathan, Lethal Weapon 3, probably other films I just didn’t care enough to remember. Oddly enough, I don’t recall any scene ripped directly from Alien 4. It’s almost as if Alien 4 is so bad no one should copy it…

Sector 7
Wait, am I a penis or a vagina? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??

But enough of what this films steals from, let’s go over what this film is. Sector 7 is Korea’s first 3D film, and was obviously filmed on a soundstage with the outside backgrounds CGIed in, giving it a weird visual nature. That combined with me watching a 2D transfer of the 3D film probably caused it to look less visually stunning than it is supposed to. But since there wasn’t really any iconic cinematography in the first place, it’s no big deal.

Sector 7
Shoot to kill any and all phallic references!

We get a prologue that is set in the long distant year of 1985, where a man investigating troubles with an underwater drill at the uncharted Sector 7 finds tiny floating jelly things, then horrible disaster strikes. But that horrible disaster factors nothing at all to the rest of the film, so ignore all that and let’s jump to 2011, where there is still an oil rig in Sector 7 and it is still uncharted despite the 16 years and the freaking oil rig that probably cost millions of dollars to build in the middle of nowhere. That logic continues into the rest of the film, but before that, let’s get to the cast…

Sector 7
You don’t look like my vagina to me!

Cha Hae-joon (Ha Ji-won) – A very driven oil hunter lady who searches Sector 7 desperately for oil because her father was the guy in the prologue and he died looking for oil. Sector 7 is desperate to let you know that Cha is driven and tough, between the scenes of her running around an averting oil rig disasters and the scenes of her running off to keep looking for oil after they’re ordered out, we learn that she’s driven to look for oil. She’s the Ripley of the film. Ha Ji-won can also be seen in Sex is Zero and Love So Divine.
Kim Dong-soo (Oh Ji-ho) – Cha’s boyfriend who is the handsome guy on the oil platform. He’s better than her in motorcycling, but not in surviving monster attacks. SPOILERS!
Lee Jeong-man (Ahn Seong-gi) – Lee Jeong-man is the Division Captain and also Cha’s uncle. He’s totally not involved in a conspiracy….
Hwang In-hyeok (Park Jeong-hak) – The oil rig captain who is a jerk, and will do jerkish things. Because he’s a jerk. So jerkish.
Park Hyeon-jeong (Cha Ye-ryeon) – The oil rig’s genetic researcher, because we need genetic researches on oil rigs. For some reason. Definitely not conspiracy reasons! Why do you keep thinking there is a conspiracy going on?
Jang Chi-soon (Park Yeong-soo) – a creepy guy who gets infected by one of the tiny underwater floating creatures when he tries to eat it. Also he does creepy stuff like perv on Park Heyon-jeong.
Monster (CGI) – The nameless monster is like a generic generic version of the Host monster, but with less distinguishing characteristics and a bunch of goofy tentacle things for extra grossness. And that’s not to mention the prehensile tongue. Is set on fire more often than Beavis’s bedroom.
Sector 7
I bet there are phallic references here!

Hamilton's Invaders

Hamilton's Invaders

Hamilton’s Invaders were a toy series in the 1960s where blue army men fought giant bugs with movable parts. They were inspired by the 1950s giant insect movies, which by that point had begun their long foray into reruns on tv. In addition to the giant bugs, you could also get a Hamilton’s Invaders helmet and grenade gun to wear while you play, for total immersion or something.

The main giant bug was Horrible Hamilton – a large green bug with legs that moved when it rolled. There were additional bugs – Spooky Spider and Gruesome/Brutal Beetle – along with smaller nameless bugs. The blue army men (called Blue Defenders) were meant to represent the United Nations, because only the combined might of the world’s armies could defeat Horrible Hamilton and his bug crew!

Check out these pics!
Hamilton's Invaders
Hamilton's Invaders
Hamilton's Invaders
Hamilton's Invaders

Why are we talking about Hamilton’s Invaders? Because the helmet wore by the Golden Skeleton gang in Golden Skeleton is the Hamilton’s Invaders helmet with a gold skull glued on top of it! B-movie inspired, B-movie used.

Hamilton's Invaders

Images via here and here and here

2011 TarsTarkas.NET Year in Review

2011 was a banner year for TarsTarkas.NET (as usual!) It is the year we got our mojo (and pageviews) back! It’s the year we got two lawsuit threats. It’s the year we got banned from Google Adsense. We started getting into free sneak previews of films, giving TarsTarkas.NET scoops on films like The Smurfs Our video and podcasts also continued and got better.

For 2012, we have a slew of things lined up, both new and old. Some of the upcoming projects I won’t mention so I don’t jinx them. But we will have more podcasts. More Infernal Brains. More discount Puppet Explosion 411. More weirdo obscure stuff. More awesome less obscure stuff. More reviews. More movie news. More book reviews. More things on the TarsTarkas.NET Blog that don’t seem to be entirely movie related. We’re going to finish some of the projects we’ve started and abandoned on the way (or at least get them closer to completion!) We’re going to pump out some of the 90 drafts sitting in WordPress at 90% done.

Thank you for your support from 2004-2012, and beyond. TarsTarkas.NET hopes to continue to earn your views by giving you quality content and reviews.

Potato Judge

The Potato Judge finds you....GUILTY!!!

Golden Skeleton (Review)

Golden Skeleton

aka Jin ku lou aka 金骷髏

1967
Written and directed by Wong Fung
Golden Skeleton
Josephine Siao Fong-Fong kicks butt in this crazy awesome groovy 60s spy conspiracy Jane Bondish thriller! Despite a slow start and a confusing last minute, Golden Skeleton has become one of my favorite female spy films because the villains are just so weird. The leader Golden Skeleton is a guy in a gold skull mask, his henchmen have space cadet uniforms and masks, and Golden Skeleton is seldom seen without a pair of babes in midriff-baring hot pink catsuits flanking him. Just what evil is Golden Skeleton up to? Does it matter? What matters is cool things happen. Just go with it and enjoy the spectacle. We don’t need no stinking subtitles. Okay, fine, I did a bit of Googlin’ and found some plot points not explained by watching and making up things.
Golden Skeleton
Director and writer Wong Fung helmed 88 films, including How The Ape Girl Stole The Lotus Lamp, Blonde Hair Monster, Midnight Were-wolf, The Lady Killer, Blue Falcon, and a whole host of the Wong Fei Hung films (which he wrote even more installments than he directed!) Born in 1923 in Guangxi, he began writing films in 1950, and directing in 1959. Wong Fung joined Shaw Brothers in 1973, and retired in 1980. He passed on sometime in the 1990s. The cinematography was done by Lee Maan-Git, who also worked on Bruce Li in New Guinea.
Golden Skeleton
The soundtrack is 100% jazzy jazz. It is interesting how the all jazz soundtrack makes everything seem cooler and cooler. I should use jazzy jazz to soundtrack my life, then I’ll live in a constant cool high that will come crashing down around me when my iPod runs out of batteries. Hopefully I won’t be near any tall buildings to hurl myself off of! Just kidding, I’d totally kill myself by feeding myself to lions at the zoo, not tall buildings.
Golden Skeleton

Pink Bomb aka Agent SAA9 (Josephine Siao Fong-Fong) – The secret agent on the case against Golden Skeleton and his goons. She’s relucently forced to accept help from Agent Guy SAA6 under her boss’s orders. Spends as much time fending off his clumsy advances as she does kicking the butts of Golden Skeleton’s goons. Pink Bomb’s real name is Jenny Lin. See more Josephine Siao in How the Ape Girl Stole the Lotus Lamp and The Furious Buddha’s Palm.
Agent Guy aka SAA6 (Cheung Ying-Tsoi) – Agent Guy is our James Bond wannabe. He spends most of the film clumsily trying to seduce everything he meets. Sometimes he almost makes it! He’s also bumbles away from attempt after attempt on his life, having the luck of fools. You cannot stop Agent Guy, because he’ll trip over his own shoelace and find a code to save the world.
Chen Ho aka Agent SAA10 (Gwan Jing-Leung) – Agent SAA10 is also on the case, even though he seems to be more of a third wheel who can’t save the day himself. But he’s good to have along to absorb blows until Pink Bomb gets around to punching out the guy he’s fighting. Gwan Jing-Leung is a former Peking Opera actor (he trained under Yu Jim-yuen, father of Yu So-Chau and trainer of the Seven Fortunes (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and all them.)) Golden Skeleton was the first film produced by Gwan Jing-Leung, who also did the fight choreography. He produced a few more films before focusing on stunt work.
Agent SAA5 (Go Fung) – It’s yet another agent! This guy is totally not suspicious at all…
Golden Skeleton (It is a mystery!) – Who could the mysterious Golden Skeleton be? He runs a giant criminal conspiracy that does…something. And he has lots of people in high places at secret agencies, because he has people everywhere! Golden Skeleton knows that having his followers dressed in ridiculous outfits is the way to go, along with having hot babes standing beside you. This is real supervillainry, folks!

Golden Skeleton

John Carter of Two More High-Res Images

Just when you thought it was safe to not have high-resolution images of John Carter (of Mars, dammit!), here are two more to make it not safe! If you base your safety on having high resolution images of John Carter, you are probably insane and need medication. Please get help after you are done reading more articles on TarsTarkas.NET! We’re almost as good as strong psychological drugs. Almost…

John Carter chat time

Tharks hold a conference to talk about this weird jumping guy


John Carter Matai Shang

Matain Shang (Mark Strong) and evil green martians plan evil things that are evil