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Sharktopus vs Pteracuda
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (Review)

August 30, 2014By

Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda

Sharktopus vs Pteracuda
2014
Written by Matt Yamashita
Directed by Kevin O’Neill

Mom! Dad! Why are you fighting! ::bursts into tears::

Sharktopus was one of the better performing SyFy original movies and helped lead the charge into the fray of combination animals running amok on an unsuspecting populace. As it’s also a Roger Corman production, you know that every last dime is going to get squeezed out of the film. Hence two sequels! Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda is the first of these, essentially the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy.

But Sharktopus is dead, how can there be another Sharktopus movie? Easy! Thanks to a handy recap of prior events, we learn that Sharktopus was preggers! A shark egg sack is among the pieces of Sharktopus that float out to sea and are quickly caught in a net for a boat being chartered by a Latin America amusement park that has sent it out to find cool stuff in the ocean, and Lorena Christmas discovers the baby Sharktopus 2.0, which she begins to raise.

Sharktopus vs Pteracuda

I’ll make you watch every episode of King of the Nerds, or else!


On the polar opposite side we have another genetically engineered creature built as a weapon with Pteracuda, which has the flight powers of a pterodactyl and the underwater strength of a barracuda. While talk mentions that the US military is probably going to settle on its drone program over these genetically manipulated monstrosities, Dr. Rico Symes is convinced that he can create a creature that is more destructive in air and at sea that can outclass the drones. Things look well, until Pteracuda is almost immediately hijacked and goes berserk.
Sharktopus vs Pteracuda

Good thing she was wearing her life jacket!


Dr. Rico Symes (Robert Carradine) – Dr. Rico Symes is the amoral genius creator of Pteracuda, doing the whole project in secret to the world and his own company. Symes must then stop his creation after it is hijacked, but refuses to stick his neck out while doing so. He founded Symodyne, which we know is bad because all companies that end in -dyne are evil! Not only that, but Dr. Symes kidnaps Lorena at gunpoint and drags her into his unmarked white van. Robert Carradine is awesome here, he is like an evil Lewis Skolnick on steroids!
Lorena Christmas (Katie Savoy) – Not a Ph.D., hired directly out of college by her uncle, who owns the aquatic theme park. Raises the new Sharktopus from a newborn, and recognizes its intelligence, and was trying to condition it to be nonviolent. I wonder if she’s named after Dr. Christmas Jones from The World is Not Enough.
“Ham” Hammerstein (Rib Hillis) – Leader of the security team hired by Dr. Symes as insurance in case something goes wrong with Pteracuda, and the only member to make it through the opening sequence alive. Weirdly loyal to Dr. Symes for most of the flick until he’s betrayed one too many times. Enjoys harpoon-based weaponry.
Sharktopus (CGI) – Sharktopus is really Sharktopus 2.0, either Son of Sharktopus or Daughter of Sharktopus. It doesn’t really matter for movie purposes. Just how Sharktopus got pregnant in the first place is not addressed. Raised in a theme park, Sharktopus is unable to throw off its created purpose as an alpha predator/weapon, and thanks to a control circuit lodged in its head, is sent out to fight Pteracuda.
Pteracuda (CGI) – Designed as a replacement/improvement of drones, Pteracuda is hijacked and soon is killing lots of people, leading its creator to go to extreme methods to hunt it down. Which means it fights Sharktopus! The hacker who takes control wants Pteracuda to attack a nuclear power plant.
Sharktopus vs Pteracuda

Seconds before the kiss

Ardennes Fury Asylum
InMovie News

Ardennes Fury is in the tank for Asylum!

August 29, 2014By

Brad Pitt has an upcoming World War II tank movie called Fury, thus Asylum has their own World War II tank movie – Ardennes Fury!

As the Battle of the Bulge rages on, an American tank unit gets trapped behind Nazi lines. With just hours before the bombs of Operation Ardennes Fury fall, the tank’s commander makes the risky decision to rescue an orphanage.

Tanks and orphans! They even got some World War II rein actors to help, and have a M36 Jackson Tank Destroyer running around. Nazis at the Center of the Earth director Joseph Lawson helms this mockbuster, and contributed to the story along with newcomer writer Stephen Llorens. Ardennes Fury stars William Thomas Stedham as Sgt. Lance Dawson, Bill Voorhees, Tino Struckman, Lawrence Garnell Jr., and Lauren Vera. The street date is November 11, but you’ll probably be able to find it on different distribution channels before that, depending on how it’s rolled out across America.

Facebook Page
via Asylum

Ardennes Fury Asylum

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

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