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Santa Claws Asylum
InMovie News

Kittens conquer Christmas in Asylum’s Santa Claws!

August 29, 2014By

No, this is not the 1996 horror film Santa Claws, this is an entirely different, family friendly Santa Claws. With kittens. Lots and lots of kittens.

The film has existed in at least poster form since 2013, but now it exists in real form for a holiday 2014 release!

Santa is allergic to cats, so he has a policy against delivering them as gifts. But little Tommy has been SO good, and all he wants is one small kitty – Santa says OK. But instead of one, the whole litter climbs into the sack. When Santa has a major allergic reaction, the kitties have to take over and deliver the presents on time.

Kids love allergic reactions, and kids love kittens. I will assume that the kittens talk, unless the entire back half of the film is done in complete silence less a few mews. Which could also work if done correctly. Or maybe the film suddenly gets taken over by a narrator, who lets us into the action but becomes increasingly annoying until the kittens run him down with the sleigh.

Here’s hoping some smart kid left out an epi-pen for Santa!

Glenn Miller directs, he helmed The Co-Ed and the Zombie Stoner, so you know he knows how to handle pussy. I’ve probably made that joke 100 times in the ten years this site has been live. The script is by Anna Rasmussen, who wrote Social Nightmare and Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys, so it will be a fun time until the kittens get cyberstalked and attacked by monsters! Santa Claws stars Nicola Lambo (Barney: The Land of Make Believe), Evan Boynel (Goats), John P. Fowler, Erica Duke (Bikini Spring Break), and Ezra James Colbert.

I think we can all agree that this will be a thousand times better than that Grumpy Cat Christmas movie.

IMDB
via Asylum

Santa Claws Asylum

Dinosaurus RiffTrax
InRiffTrax

Dinosaurus! – new RiffTrax VOD!

August 28, 2014By

RiffTrax takes on another classic with Dinosaurus! Faithful friends of awesome cinema will remember this as the film where an Allosaurus fights a steam shovel, and also there is a Brontosaurus (suck it, Apatosaurus lovers!) and a Caveman running around. And an annoying kid. Damn that kid! Never fear, there are plenty of offensive ethnic stereotypes, and the main villain looks like Big Daddy from The Simpsons’ Spinoff Showcase!

Buy it today on RiffTrax.com before you become frozen in time!

Also a bunch of older VOD titles have been put up on Hulu+ if you are into paying for streaming content in plus format.

TarsTarkas.NET handled Dinosaurus! waaaaay back in 2005, when there still was the occasional dinosaur running around. Now the only dinosaur is this site….

Time for Dinosaurus! Not to be confused with Dinosaur U.S., the traveling show where patriotic velociraptors do a leggy synchronized dance to entertain the troops. No, Dinosaurus is a vintage 60s monster flick, complete with a caveman and drunk-looking stop motion dinosaurs (or are they dinosauruses? It’s never quite clear). The dinos find themselves unfrozen on an island chock full of stereotypes (stereotypuses?) including a square-jawed hero, a fat man-child sidekick named Dumpy, a kid who knows what’s really going on but gosh, gee golly, nobody will listen to him, and O’Leary, an Irishman so drunk and cartoonish he single-handedly inspired the formation of the Irish Anti-Defamation League. And, last but not least, the Island Manager (which is apparently a thing) whose hat and beard and general sliminess might just remind you of a certain fella whose interests include keeping the Master happy and slow pizza delivery.

It’s not about DinosaurMe, it’s not about DinosaurYou, it’s about DinosaurUs. We love this one and think you will too, join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Dinosaurus!

Dinosaurus RiffTrax

Here is a cool French Dinosaurus poster because why not?
Dinosaurus Poster French

Warbirds Japanese Poster
InGallery, Movie News

274 Amazing Japanese B-Movie Posters!

August 25, 2014By

The Guardians Japanese Poster

The Guardians


If there is one thing we like, it’s Ziggy comics! Ziggy is awesome. We also like Japanese posters of B-movies like those found on SyFy/SciFi Channel, because those posters are awesome as crap. So TarsTarkas.NET has collected 274 posters for your viewing pleasure, because we take delight in having odd numbers of stuff.

Many of the posters are taken from PosRen, which has hundreds of other posters that are probably just as cool, along with some that aren’t as cool. But these are the coolest, guaranteed. Just check out the overly long gallery below for your favorite flicks: Sharknado, Ghost Shark, Snakes on a Train, Nydenion (Okay, they can’t all be winners!) You can also find out which American franchises have been given unofficial sequels thanks to Japanese distributors renaming films! (Answer: A lot!)

FYI: The term UMA stands for Unidentified Mysterious Animal, it is a cryptozoology term that is much more popular in Japan than the US. I can’t explain why there are so many burnt bat outlines unless they are all Batman references for some reason. Maybe they are…

Now if you excuse me, I have to check out today’s Ziggy comic!

Maniac Cop 3
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (Review)

August 23, 2014By

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence

Maniac Cop 3
1993
Written by Larry Cohen
Directed by William Lustig and Joel Soisson
Maniac Cop 3
The final chapter of the Maniac Cop trilogy is a disappointing finale that fails to live up to the standards of the prior two films, but does sort of make up for it with the last reel and the simply crazy stunts. While Maniac Cop 2 was Frankenstein meets The French Connection, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence is Bride of Frankenstein meets The French Connection!

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence had a lot of problems getting made. The original script from Larry Cohen focused on Santería rituals and had a black detective lead character. Funding for the film require presale rights money from Japanese distributors, who were very happy with the prior two entries and were mysteriously dragging their feet on this installment, but wouldn’t give the exact reason. When the suggest was made to bring back white actor Robert Davi, suddenly the Japanese distributor was on board for funding. So…yeah. That meant the script had to be heavily rewritten to switch out the character, thus changing some supporting characters. They started shooting with only 70 pages of script (which is ~70 minutes of film, but probably less), not enough for a full feature. The producers were frantically trying to add pages as production went on, and an increasingly distracted and annoyed William Lustig (who was also working on a different film as producer at the same time) was losing interest in Maniac Cop 3. This eventually lead to him leaving production and Joel Soisson stepping in to film the scenes needed to pad out the running time. Which means the Frankenstein theme extends to the film itself!

The padding is obvious in a few cases, scenes seem to go nowhere or go on far longer than they should, and a few others are repetitive and just repeat the same information or give us extra evidence certain people are jerks. It becomes a distracting mess, and Maniac Cop spends most of his time hanging around a hospital killing whoever stands in the way of saving his promised bride, another cop who was shot in the line of duty. She’s supposed to be resurrected as his bride, but he keeps characters from pulling the plug on her, which is sort of weird. Maybe the Santería priest who brought Maniac Cop back from the dead needed some time to recharge?
Maniac Cop 3
I saw Maniac Cop 3 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in their Bay Area Now 7 program, under the Invasion of the Cinemaniacs! heading, specifically the part curated by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnite for Maniacs, who hosted two William Lustig triple features (a sextuple feature?) spread across two days. All three Maniac Cop films screened on Saturday night, while Friday featured Maniac, Vigilante, and Hit List. William Lustig returned for the second night of screenings and gave some more entertaining Q and As, some of which is peppered into the Maniac Cop reviews.

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence again takes place soon after the prior entry. The dirt is barely shoveled into Matt Cordell grave before he’s raised again by a Santería priest, who needs the Maniac Cop for “dark days” ahead. What exactly those dark days are, we will never know, because nothing like that happens.
Maniac Cop 3

Maniac Cop 2 William Lustig
InBad, Movie Reviews

Maniac Cop 2 (Review)

August 22, 2014By

Maniac Cop 2

Maniac Cop 2 William Lustig
1990
Written by Larry Cohen
Directed by William Lustig
Maniac Cop 2 William Lustig
Maniac Cop is crazy. Maniac Cop 2 is crazy to the infinite power! Imagine everything from the first film, but turned up to 11. Director William Lustig said he usually has a need to top himself, and since he had done so much with Maniac Cop, he felt he just had to keep pushing for the sequel. The result is what he considers his best film, and was my favorite of the screenings. Lustig described this entry as Frankenstein meets The French Connection

William Lustig said he and stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos watched a lot of Hong Kong action cinema in Chinatown theaters, which gave them inspiration on how to handle a lot of the scenes. And with that statement, suddenly the inspiration for what happens in certain sequences is clear. It’s not a direct riff, but the manic energy and just visceralness of Hong Kong cinema is what’s used to power scenes of Maniac Cop blasting his way through a police station, or the crazy car chase on flaming rims while Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) is handcuffed to the steering wheel. There is even an extended fight sequence while Maniac Cop is on fire! This is all real, no CG or anything (though Lustig did say he used a bit of digital work on the digital print to erase wires that were now too visible, and to touch up the flames that were too dim under the restoration. But nothing major, and it doesn’t show.)
Maniac Cop 2 William Lustig
I saw Maniac Cop 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in their Bay Area Now 7 program, under the Invasion of the Cinemaniacs! heading, specifically the part curated by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnite for Maniacs, who hosted two William Lustig triple features (a sextuple feature?) spread across two days. All three Maniac Cop films screened on Saturday night, while Friday featured Maniac, Vigilante, and Hit List. William Lustig returned for the second night of screenings and gave some more entertaining Q and As, some of which is peppered into the Maniac Cop reviews.

Set right after Maniac Cop yet somehow jumping from March to December (just ignore that bit!), Maniac Cop 2 begins with the ending of the original, the jumps right to a robbery in progress that the Maniac Cop stops…by shooting the store own and the cops on the scene and thus framing the robber. Maniac Cop continues on a killing spree as such, slaying cops and others take the fall, while last movie’s heroes Teresa Mallory (Laurene Landon) and Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) are cleared of trouble, but no one believes them when they say the Maniac Cop is still alive. Soon they are bumped off as we move to this film’s heroes, Detective Sean McKinney (Robert Davi being the most Robert Davi he can be) and Police Counselor Susan Riley (Claudia Christian). McKinney knows something strange is going on, and he’s one of those tough cops who’s not into things like therapy.
Maniac Cop 2 William Lustig

Maniac Cop William Lustig
InBad, Movie Reviews

Maniac Cop (Review)

August 21, 2014By

Maniac Cop

Maniac Cop William Lustig
1988
Written by Larry Cohen
Directed by William Lustig
Maniac Cop William Lustig

You have the right to remain silent…forever.

Maniac Cop is a timely film to watch the week I saw it, as Ferguson, Missouri was having yet another night of protests and police crackdowns due to the murder of an unarmed black man by the cops. Heck, the latest round of trouble was happening while I was watching the Maniac Cop trilogy! Some of the same elements are there, people trusting the police less because of the killing(s – because there have been several unarmed black men killed by police just this year), a media firestorm, and lots of violence. Maniac Cop was made in an era before increased police militarization was normal (though elements of that filter into the sequels), otherwise we might see Robert Z’Dar running around in SWAT gear in addition to the patrol uniform. Maybe that’s something that will be present in the rumored remake.
Maniac Cop William Lustig
Maniac Cop features the twisting of a symbol of trust into an instrument of fear. The juxtaposition of the police, who protect and serve, and one of their own who has become a killing machine plays into the plot, as the media firestorm causes all sorts of tragic results. But the police not always being a symbol of order is hinted in several spots, especially a “man on the street” bit as citizens are interviewed about the Maniac Cop. A black interviewee mentions how he knows several people who were shot in the back by police. They even say cops like killing. It’s chilling how this narrative hasn’t changed in decades. Lustig frames this with elements of film noir, the cynical style fits in perfectly with the concept of police killing people and lone detectives trying to prove who the real killer is.

I saw Maniac Cop at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (yes, Maniac Cop was screened at a museum!) in their Bay Area Now 7 program, under the Invasion of the Cinemaniacs! heading, specifically the part curated by Jesse Hawthorne Ficks of Midnite for Maniacs, who hosted two William Lustig triple features (a sextuple feature?) spread across two days. All three Maniac Cop films screened on the second night, while Friday featured Maniac, Vigilante, and Hit List. William Lustig returned for the second night of screenings and gave some more entertaining Q and As, some of which is peppered into the Maniac Cop reviews.

Of all six films, Maniac Cop was the only one I had seen previously, approximately 20 years ago on cable. I remembered vague things about it: Bruce Campbell, gunshots doing nothing to the gigantic Maniac Cop, the cop running over people, the final stunt off the dock, and the final cliffhanger shot.
Maniac Cop William Lustig

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